The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1267: Rhonda Patrick | Protecting Your Brain and Body from Modern Life

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

From microplastics in your brain to multivitamins that actually work, Dr. Rhonda Patrick of FoundMyFitness separates real science from wellness hype here!Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1267What We Discuss with Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Microplastics are accumulating in our brains at up to 10 times more than other organs, and studies show people with Alzheimer's disease had up to 10 times more microplastics in their brains than those without, suggesting these invisible particles may be driving neuroinflammation and cognitive decline.That "BPA-free" label on your water bottle is essentially a marketing sleight of hand. Companies simply replaced BPA with BPS — a chemical now proven to be just as harmful as its predecessor, still disrupting hormones and leaching into everything you drink.Screens and phones are the new sitting (which was the new smoking). Early screen time exposure in children is now linked to depression, mental illness, and even sensory processing issues later in life — and the dopamine-hijacking effects mirror how hyper-palatable processed foods rewire taste preferences.A basic Centrum Silver multivitamin taken daily for two years delayed global brain aging by over two years and episodic memory decline by nearly five years in older adults, contradicting decades of "expensive urine" dismissals from the medical community.Your brain's best friend might be sitting in your gym bag. Creatine at 10 grams daily accumulates in brain tissue, eliminates afternoon energy crashes, and supercharges cognitive performance under stress — a cheap, evidence-backed hack anyone can start today.And much more...And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: Noom: Go micro for macro results: noom.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Special thanks to Noom for sponsoring this episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Screens are hyper stimulating. Ooh, this feels good. I want more of this versus go play or read a book. But once they, like, go out and play, they really enjoy it. And they do learn a lot through playing. But like you said, you have to be there to watch them or someone has to be there to watch them.

And so there is just this big issue with kids getting too much screen time. And I just think there's going to be a lot of negative consequences. screens and phones are the new smoking. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people

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Today's guest is someone who does what almost nobody else in the health world does. She takes dense, intimidating biochemistry and turns it into stuff the rest of us can actually use to not die early and maybe even feel good in the process. Dr. Rhonda Patrick, you know her from Found My Fitness. She's the reason half the internet suddenly thinks about magnesium and omega-3s and vitamin D before breakfast. She's been digging into microplastics, micro-nutrients, sauna protocols, cold plunges, hit for your brain, cancer prevention, creatine for cognition, basically all the stuff that's either going to save your life or is just expensive pee. And she's here to help us separate the real science from the wellness hype. So let's get into it. What's legit? What is BS? And

what small practical changes actually move the needle. Here we go with Dr. Rhonda Patrick. I don't know how old you are. I'm 45. I don't want to talk about dating. I haven't wanted to talk about dating for a decade, minimum. I'm in the same age group as you. Also, like, I don't know about you,

but how bloody irrelevant are we right now in the dating? Like, if you had to teach someone how to date right now, can you use Tinder? I don't know anything about it. No. No. I just know swipe, left, swipe, right, and I'm not even sure which one is which.

It's so different. It used to be like you go hang out at a place. The place was like, oh, you go and you practice talking to a girl. Yes. The girls are like, you're all dressed up and you look nice, whatever. And it's just so different. Now it's like swipe. Yeah.

Actually, we had it better, though, Rhonda, because I will tell you, the people that write in now with their issues, there are just issues that, like, humans shouldn't have really when dating. If you suddenly found yourself single tomorrow and I suddenly found myself single tomorrow, We could like go to a bar and talk to people. This new generation is like, why would I ever do that? You might meet like three people. I'm like, yeah, but you're meeting zero people. And they're like, no, I evaluated a thousand people while I was in line at Starbucks or whatever, you know, like 20.

I'm like, but you didn't. You just looked and saw if he was like six feet tall and a lawyer and then you were like, no, but you have no idea what this person is like. And then you date all these guys that are six foot tall in lawyers and they're all dickheads. And you're like, why? Why are they all dickheads? And I'm like, because the wrong criteria. You need to talk to somebody. and all these guys who are doing it are like,

oh man, she's not hot enough next. And I'm like, I don't know, she seems quirky and fun. And they're like, ah, who cares? And I'm like, all of your ex-girlfriends that you loved were quirky and fun. And now you're looking for bimbos on Tinder. Like, what are you doing? And it's because when you only have that one channel to go on, you can't measure things appropriately as a human.

Like, we're just not evolved to look at a picture and be like, this is going to work for me for the rest of my life. Like, you can judge sexual attraction kind of maybe a little bit. And then like, that's it. That's all you got. And then you have to meet in person and, like, talk to them. Yes. And then they can't do that because they're like, ugh.

I'm just going to send you DMs on this thing until I get bored and uninstall it. Well, that's a whole issue that we're going to deal with as our kids grow up and get to the age of adolescence and beyond. I'm terrified. My son and I have a boy and a girl, six and three. And I'm like, I am woefully unqualified to help you navigate this. Like, I give no clue. My advice to you is to as your children get to, you know, first, second grade, you talk to the parents, and you guys have your group of parents that kind of all agree.

We're going to get a landline, and the kids are going to talk on the phone like they used to. It's not going to be like screens and just kind of hold off on the iPhone technology. There's these phones. Tinkan is the one that we're all doing, which is there's only a contact list there. And so your kids can only dial people that are on that contact list. I like that. Dial in the number where like you actually have to remember numbers. I think if you can delay the screens as much as possible, I mean, there's so much data coming out now on screen time use and earlier screen time use and later associations with depression and mental illness. And girls are particularly vulnerable to that comparison sort of phenomena where you get a lot of that on social media, right? There's a lot of the comparisons. And I remember just being in junior high and high school and the comparisons in real life were enough.

And so I can't imagine that layer of, here's the filter and here's where everyone looks perfect. And you're comparing yourself to this not real thing. I've just basically gotten a group of parents. And we've, in fact, almost the whole class. We have like a group chat for our class. Yeah. All the parents are like, yeah, I'm on board. We're going to just delay the smartphones as much as we can because even if they have the smartphone and you're like, well, they don't have social media.

They just, it's that dopamine getting used to the screens and it's sort of like the gateway. I think we've already kind of blown it a little bit because my kids love eating and watching iPad. And that I thought was okay because they'll still talk to us. But then some days they're like, I want my iPad in bed. I want my iPad all day because I'm not doing anything. And you really have to like fight them on this. And on the one hand, they seem to be learning so much. Like my son will go, if you have this and this and this and you put a layer of plastic in between it, it's harder to break the glass.

And I was just like, wow, how do you know about like how bulletproof glass works or what? If you put a hot thing and a cold thing, it melts it and it boils it so quickly that there's air and it expands and it explodes. And I was just like, wow, I probably learned that in high school or something. Maybe middle school, not when I was six. So it's really impressive that all the things they learn, but then you hear like, and then they get an eating disorder. And you're like, uh, I don't know if this tradeoff is worth it, of course. There's somebody to say for like educational types of shows because you do learn things. And especially like if it's something that your son is interested in, I'm engineer.

or science, they really remember it and retain it. And so there is an argument to be made for like some moderate educational type of screen time, but it is addicting and it's hyperstimulating. Even though it's educational, it's education in this hyperstimulating way. It's not like reading a book. And so you have to like keep that in mind that these reward circuitry areas in the brain are being just activated and activated when they're watching the screens. And so I think that's sort of the argument. It's like, well, what about educational? types of content. My son, he's eight, and he only uses his iPad for flashcards. So he does these onky type of flashcards, which are spaced repetition. He's been learning language with it.

And so it really is amazing. And that's really all he knows the iPad for. We haven't done video games. He doesn't do any sort of shows on the iPad or anything. Now, we watch movies as a family, but we don't do like TV shows, you know, the short sort of addicting where you're like always wanting the next one. Maybe you should kind of dial it down a little bit. bit. Keep it to some educational or like as a reward. Like, oh, you did this thing. You read some pages in a book with me. Now we can do a little bit of this show that you love. We do the reward stuff and we watch the shorts on YouTube. What scares me is I'll go, yeah, you can watch the show about exploring the ocean. Yes, it's fictional and he knows that and it's kind of cartoony, but it's still sciencey in a way and it's

not that bad. And then I leave the room and I go get the mail and then I open a Diet Coke. I know we'll talk about that later. And then I come back and it's like, kids buying crap off Amazon and jumping in a puddle of balls. And I'm like, I thought you were watching the Explorer show. And he's like, I don't know, this came on afterwards. And I'm like, okay, I got to block this channel. And I do that and then repeat the next day. And I come back and instead of Russian kids jumping in a puddle of balls,

it's Filipino kids jumping in a puddle of balls. And I'm like, I'm fighting a war against YouTube kids to block every channel that is just full of nonsense where they don't even talk, right? They're just doing action things and there's like special effects and sound effects. I'm like, I just want to block all that. I have to sort of find a way to filter. They might even have this. I need to filter in the things he's allowed to watch

instead of filtering out the 10 million things I don't want him to see. And they don't really make that easy because they want your kid to sit there for 10 hours watching other kids jump into a puddle of balls and then like buying the toy that's affiliated with it or nagging you for it. It just drives me nuts.

It's like television except for my mom knew what I was watching on television because it was on in the house. So she could be like, I don't like the Fresh Prince of Bel Air questionable choice, but whatever, and she could turn it off, but I could be sitting next to him, and I'm like, oh, you're still watching that? What the heck is this? Like, I lean over two degrees, and I can see he's watching something totally different. So I basically have to monitor him completely all the time and have the audio be exposed to it distracting me, or they're going to slip in some

little thing that I don't want. It's very tricky, and I'm really, it's as bad almost as social media, I feel like, in terms of the trickiness that they pull off with it. No one's going to monitor it like that. Yeah, I haven't even, we haven't even, we haven't even. done YouTube kids at all. What you're just describing right now makes me realize I don't ever want to do it. No, it's like I assumed YouTube kids was full of educational content, but no, it's just full of like nonviolent, maybe non sort of gross stuff. Even then I was doing a show, gosh, I should remember the guess, but I was doing a show

where they were talking about things that they slip into YouTube kids. There's self-harm content that just creepy people will turn into a cartoon and they'll upload it to YouTube kids. and try and get it past the filter because they want kids to see it. And they, I don't know, it's like somebody's getting off on having violent cartoons in there that somehow get past the filter and tell kids to, like, jump off of high things. And they're deliberately trying to hurt kids. That's dark. Wow.

YouTube finds them eventually and blocks it because parents are like, what do you mean? No, do not climb up on the roof and jump off. This is super dangerous. What the hell is this? But the people keep making it. It's very bizarre because you think, like, what kind of psychopath is literally making cartoons for this? in uploading it, it's very, very odd. I think it was actually in the New York Times that I read this, along with those, like, kid influencers that end up getting sexualized. Like, the whole thing is just,

it's just such a weird, dark, gross thing. And none of it is what I intended to talk about on the show today with you. It's hard as a parent, look, man, you and I are doing reasonably well. I've seen your business grow over the last 10 years since I last talked to you. 10 plus years. I don't even know how long it's been. I'm work from home. I watch my kids. I've got a nanny who's an auntie. She's paying attention. if all of this stuff is slipping through with all of these people around that actually love my kids, they care. This is not like a random daycare person with 20 kids to look after, right? How are people who have two parents working, their kids in daycare, half the kids have phones,

half the kids have iPads, they're sitting in the corner watching? How are those people monitoring this? And the answer is that there's not. They just have no idea what their kids are consuming. They have no idea. And like you said, you know, they may put on a show that's like fairly educational and seems safe and then they're going off and they're doing their work or, you know, whatever project, whatever they're working on because it is kind of like an easy, cheaper babysitter in a way for a lot of

people. And it is dangerous. Even if it was the educational material, like there's only so much screen time that you should allow a child to have as well. There's even like a weird study that came out recently in the past year where it was like screen time like an early age, two, three years old, was associated with these like sensory problems later in life, kids that like, oh, their clothes are always itchy. And so they're really particular about the clothes they wear and issues that children can have. And I was like, who would have thought that correlation, you know, between like screen time and sensory issues? So this is new territory we're in for sure. And we're sort of more of aware of the negative effects of social media on mental health. But it's just not just social media, right?

It's screen time. I almost think about it, like comparing processed foods, hyper palatable, salty, sweet, savory foods. Once the kids taste that, like, that's all they want. I'm not hungry. I just want ice cream. Like, wait a minute. Yeah, I want ice cream or chips or, like, something salty and processed that taste really good.

But I feel like the screens are kind of the same way where it's just hyper stimulating. Ooh, this feels good. I want more of this versus go play or read a book. But once they, like, go out and play, they really enjoy it. And they do learn a lot through playing. But like you said, you have to be there to watch them or someone has to be there to watch them. And so there is just this big issue with kids getting too much screen time. And I just think there's going to be a lot of negative consequences.

Screens and phones are the new smoking. I totally agree with it. I mean, look, it's bad for your neck, even, the phone thing. It's bad for your neck. It's bad for your posture. We know that sitting is bad for you. What are you doing when you're on a screen most of the time? You're not walking.

You're not jogging. you're sitting there with this stupid thing. And I'm just as guilty of this, man. If I'm in a boring conference call, I am playing angry pigs or whatever the heck that thing is called. I'm in it. And then I'm like, why does my neck hurt? Oh, because I've been here for 40 minutes listening to accountants chatter,

but at least I'm on level 95 of this stupid game. This stuff is addicting even when you're aware of it. And kids are just helpless against a lot of this stuff. It's really... Especially if they're watching you do it too, right? I mean, thankfully, you're addicted to X. Oh, gosh. If you look at X all the time and they see you doing.

it. Thankfully, I'm pretty good about that. What they see me doing on my phone is studying Duolingo, and then my son's like, this is boring. I'm rolling over and going to sleep. But still, yeah, it does freak me out how much this could, like you said, show up later. My son, he's very impulsive, and I was like that when I was younger, so it's not like, oh my God, it's the phone. But I don't know. Is the phone making it worse? Would he have been less impulsive if he never watched anything on his screen? Like, maybe, I don't know. I've already, the train has already left the station. But yeah, it bothers me, and especially looking at the stuff that happens to girls, like you said, with the eating disorders and the comparison and stuff like that, it gets so dark,

and it makes me want to move to the woods like the Unabomber and write on a typewriter and make them chop wood all day. But that's maybe not good parenting either. Let's move on to a more cheerful topic, microplastics. This is something that I have talked about many times on the show, but it seems like there's a lot of super alarmist people, and then there's also people that go, eh, it doesn't do anything, it's fine, we don't really know. And it's like, well, you don't have direct, this is causing this, but you have a lot of correlation. And I know that correlation is not causation, but like a whole ton of correlation, how much more do you need before we decide that that's a problem? Does that make sense? Yes, correlation's not causation, but like, I don't know

if it's a really strong correlation, maybe it's causing it even if we can't directly prove that all the time at every single instance. Yeah. You're describing the largest problem we have in medicine and health, right? Yeah, in science, where we have so much of this observational data that has a lot of correlations, especially when you see them time and time again, the same direction. And you try to do some randomized controlled trials to get biomarkers to kind of see if you get something similar. But you, you can't give people microplagic. It's unethical. So with things that are harmful, it's just you'll never going to get a randomized controlled trial.

We're like, we're going to feed you microplastics and see what happens. It's not going to pass the ethics committee, right? I mean, the good news is we're already all eating microplastics. So we don't really have to worry about that. Yeah, the ethics part. Yeah, but we do have animal evidence that you can at least establish causation. And that helps strengthen the data. When it comes to microplastics, you probably don't want to talk to me like all my friends.

Like every time there's some new thing I have, you know, and they're just like, don't ask me. Like, if you're chewing that gum, I'm like, don't ask me about the gum. Like, there's microplastics and gum. So, do you have to worry about, okay, she asked me, but I also don't want to, I want to be invited back to these baby showers and not be like, well, we invited Dr. Rhonda Patrick, and she said the cake has microplastics in it. So we threw it in the trash. And the bride was really upset about that. And yeah, anyway, Rhonda's not coming to the next thing. Don't worry. It's an ongoing problem. But yeah, I think microplastics are a problem. Most people, probably a lot of your listeners, There's no journaling what they are.

I mean, these are like small pieces of plastic that come off larger plastic pieces, right? And they get into our bodies mostly through what we're ingesting, but also what we're breathing, the air we're breathing. They're in the air as well. Air is a big source of microplastic pollution as well. And so there's microplastics and then there's different sizes of microplastics. And as they get smaller and smaller and smaller, they're called nanoplastics. And the smaller they get, they become more, I would say, dangerous in a way because we're we can absorb them easier. So these microplastics, you might just think, well, I don't drink

water out of a plastic bottle, therefore I'm not getting as much microplastics. But the reality is that's unfortunately not true. Yes, if you aren't drinking out of a plastic bottle, then you're eliminating some of these microplastics that you could be taking in. But it's in our water sources. And so unless you have a type of water filter, the best kind would be a reverse osmosis water filter because that filters out even the smaller, smaller ones, like the nanoplastics. But any type of filter is better than none, to be honest. Any kind of carbon-activated carbon filter is better than no filter. It's on the plants that we eat.

So vegetables and fruits because it's in the soil and they get on the plants. It's in the plants. It's in meat. It's all over the place. It's everywhere. We're ingesting them all the time. Does it make sense to buy a reverse osmosis filter if you're already eating it with your salad and your steak and the can of whatever spin drift that you had?

Yes, maybe less is better. but I don't know if I'm having like five or eight glasses of water a day from my reverse osmosis filter. But then I'm drinking a Diet Coke and I'm drinking a spin drift. Then I'm having a smoothie and then I eat a salad and then I have a steak and all of that other stuff has microplastics in it. Why did I spend all that money on the reverse osmosis filter? It seems unavoidable. It's almost like fine. I won't drink aquafina out of a plastic bottle.

But am I making a dent in what I'm consuming even at all? You are because tap water is a major source. of the microplastics that we ingest in. Okay. Probably one of the biggest major sources. So I would say the most effective thing that you can do is get a filter, drink filtered water, get some sort of reverse osmosis. Countertop water filters are great.

There's the water drop. One, there's a variety of ones that you can get that really do a good job. So let's talk about microplastics. Essentially what's happening is they get into your system, they're in your gut. In your gut, that's the point of, are you going to absorb it? And once it gets into your circulation, that's the point of no return. So once the microplastics get into circulation, they circulate, and then they go to organs. They're transported to organs, and they accumulate in organs.

And so there have been a variety of studies now that have found microplastics in everything from placenta, testes, kidneys, heart, brain. It's just everywhere. And this is human organs. Yuck. In fact, there was a study that sampled both human sperm and dog sperm and found 100% all the samples from both humans, from men and dogs, had microplastics in them. So the dogs are eating. I mean, dogs are getting it too, right? They're drinking the same water. They're getting the same stuff. It's getting everywhere in our organs. But the point is, is that if there's

something you can do to prevent your body from absorbing it, that's the best, right? And there is some animal evidence that actually, first of all, size matters. So the bigger the microplastic size. Yeah, story in my life. The bigger the microplastic size, the less likely you are to absorb it. So the smaller ones are more dangerous in that regard because they get through the gut epithelial cells easier. Okay. But what's even, I would say, more promising is that dietary fiber seems to prevent absorption. Really?

In a couple different ways. Soluble fiber or? Particularly soluble fiber. So soluble fiber, people may be familiar. There's a lot of different names for it. Fermentable fiber, prebiotics, right? Those are all sort of interchangeable ways of saying soluble fiber. Soluble fiber was like back in our day when like that's what they used to call it.

Right. Now there's too many words for it. But essentially you'll find that type of fiber in fruits. Fruits is a big one. The skins of fruits. Some vegetables as well. But you can supplement with it like inulin. You know, there's a lot of these prebiotic fibers people take as well.

Beta glucans is another one. But the soluble fiber, what it does is it kind of, it's viscous and it creates this mucus thing around the microplastics and even the smaller nanoplastics, and it prevents your gut from absorbing them, and it sort of brings it out through your feces. Wow. You actually excrete these microplastics, nanoplastics through your poop, essentially, instead of absorbing it. Great. Yeah. And so, again, this is based on animal studies, because like I said, I've talked to one researcher at Harvard, and I sort of seeded this idea in her head. I was like, the study needs to be done in humans, where you, like, measure their microplastics and then get them on a high fiber diet and then

measured again. But essentially, if you eat the fiber with the microplastic ingestion, that's great. But even like any time around it, right, because it takes a while for you to digest. So if you're eating it even within like a couple of hours of taking in your spin drift, which is lined with plastic. Right. Exactly. People don't realize that. They think aluminum cans are safer because they're not plastic. They don't realize that those cans are lined with plastic to prevent the soda water or whatever from corroding the aluminum. So at this point, we don't have any technology yet. Let's wait for the nanobots that are going to come in and like filter out the microplastics. But we don't have those right now. And so once it is absorb into your circulation, it does get transported to

organs. And there have been a couple of disturbing studies. One study was published. This was out of Brazil. And it looked at microplastic levels in different organs and found that interestingly, the brain seemed to accumulate microplastics almost like 10 times more than other organs. That's scary. It's scary, but also it was shocking to me because we have something called the blood brain barrier that theoretically, right? Protects our brain, right? It's supposed to not let stuff into the brain.

And so I thought about this for a while, and it's not really known why the brain is accumulating so much more microplastics than, say, like other organs, like the kidneys, you'd think, or something would accumulate more. but the brain is the one that had the most. I told you earlier about the breathing in the air, and that's another source of microplastics. So air pollution, these rubber tires are made with plastic fibers and all that stuff. So, yeah, there's plastic particles, dryers going in.

There's tons of microplastics in our clothing. And so we're breathing in microplastics, especially like if you live in an urban area. Well, if you breathe something in, it can actually bypass the blood brain bear and get into the brain. And so I think possibly what's happening is you're getting a twofold hit. You're getting what's going in through your circulation with the nanoplastics because nanoplastics are small enough to get through the blood-brain barrier. And then you're breathing in these particles. And that's also getting in.

And so therefore they're getting into the brain. And you might go, well, what are they doing in the brain? And again, that's where animal evidence is a little bit more enlightening. But just looking at the human data, we do know that higher levels of microplastics in the the brain were correlated with Alzheimer's disease. So people that had Alzheimer's disease had up to 10 times more microplastics in their brains than people that did not have Alzheimer's disease. Before we find out how many microplastics I've personally inhaled today, let's talk about something else that gets inside you consensually. We'll be right back. Have you ever had a moment where you think,

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else to bring change. You can be the one who makes a difference. GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform, trusted by over 200 million people. Start your GoFundMe today at gofundme.com. That's gofundme.com. Gofundme.com. Now, back to Dr. Rhonda Patrick. I don't know if you know the answer to this, but when you say blood-brain barrier, I've heard of this a million times, but I just realized I don't know what it is. What is it made out of? Is it actually a barrier? or is it just the system of circulation doesn't quite go there? What is it? Yeah, it's actually a barrier.

There's like endothelial cells that are held together by these proteins, like they're called tight junctions. And it's essentially like protecting the brain. It is permeable, so it does allow things. There's active transport as well. But it is a real barrier. Is it in my neck or brain stem, spine? Like, where is it?

Where is this located? It's in the brain, it's surrounding the brain. Oh, I see. It's a little force field around the brain. Kind of. Interesting. You got it. When it comes to like the things that actually get in there, these microplastics have been shown to cause inflammation. And those studies haven't done in animals. Of course, it's this foreign molecule. It's this foreign body. Your immune system and the brain has immune cells as well. They're called microglio cells. And when they see something foreign, they get activated and they sort of fire off all these weapons called cytokines, inflammatory cytokines, that are trying to destroy. it, but it turns out it is a foreign molecule, but it's not a infection or anything like that. And so you end up getting this vicious cycle of low-grade inflammation in the brain, which is known to cause dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

That is well established. Yikes. I think there's enough evidence here to be concerned about the fact that microplastics are accumulating in the brain. They're associated with Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and we know that they're causing neuroinflammation. Yikes. And so that's enough to say, well, maybe I should take this a little more seriously and try to eliminate these microplastics as much as they can.

And the number one thing you can do is get a water filter, for sure. That's the best. I didn't realize water was, it totally makes sense now that you say it, that most of us are drinking a ton of water. And if there's a ton of microplastics in there, more so than is on my salad or whatever, then there it is. I mean, it's just, ugh, it's quite depressing to think about how we're just totally surrounded by all this.

So you mentioned earlier, you said once it's in the circulatory system, that's the point of no return. So is there nothing we can do to enhance that? our body's ability to eliminate microplastics? Not that I know. There's a couple of problems with the microplastics. You know, one is they are creating inflammation. I mentioned in the brain.

They also do this in the heart. We can talk about that study as well. But the microplastics also have chemicals associated with them. Physphenol A being one, BPA, BPS, which replaced BPA in some products. But now we know is doing the same thing as BPA, if not worse. And so these chemicals are disrupting hormones. they're endocrine disruptors, and they're in the microplastics. And so you're having like this little constant leech of these chemicals, these plastic associated chemicals in your body, right? And that's

not good either. These endocrine disruptors are also associated with negative health outcomes like cancer, neurodevelopmental disease, important for early development, pregnancy. That's a big time that you want to avoid those types of chemicals. But also just hormone dysfunction. There's a lot of problems that are associated with is endocrine disruptors. And there are ways to excrete those plastic associated chemicals. And so I find that at least a little bit. I see. So you can get rid of like the secondary, some of the secondary issues caused by it, but the credit card that's in your liver is, is there to stay. Yeah. The credit card, by the way, that was kind of debunked. Yeah, it was. It was. I've said before on the show that what was it there? Like, you're eating a

credit card worth of plastic every single day or every single month and it's just like, not really. Every week. Every week. And it was a pretty valid scientific paper that published this. But it turns out other researchers went back and found that the way they did this calculation, like the gram weight of it was equivalent to a credit card. Essentially, they were measuring microplastic particles that were from the ocean. The particles that we're taking in aren't necessarily as big as the ones that are in the ocean.

There's a lot of microplastics in the ocean. And so the sizes were bigger. And so it's not quite the same. We're still taking in a lot of particles every week. The other thing that you mentioned before that size matters, but this might be the inverse kind of of that, which is, I'm going to go ahead and guess that if I chewed up a credit card, my body would go, ugh, you ate a credit card and it would come out the other end. If I eat a credit card zapped into a bajillion different little molecules of plastic, I'm just going to absorb all that, right? So it's actually maybe better. Yeah. I wish I were only eating a credit card worth and it came in my salad and I just had to deal with it that way. But instead, I'm breathing it in and it's pretending to be something else in my body, essentially. It's tricking my body into absorbing it. So like bigger chunks of plastic, it's probably, well, you tell me, that's almost safer to ingest.

It is. And it's interesting that you brought this up, Jordan, because there was a study that was disturbing that was published a few months back. I think it was like in the summer. There was a study out of France that compared microplastics in water from a plastic bottle versus glass bottle versus can, aluminum can, right? And you would think, if I were to ask you, which of those three types of containment do you think had the lowest amount of microplastics? It depends where the water itself is from, right? Is it pure water that's going in each of these things?

Yeah. I mean, assuming the water's constant. Okay. Would you think more plastic is coming from a glass bottle, a plastic bottle or an aluminum can lined with plastic? I just assume that the plastic bottle is leaching into the water and there's more of it. Yeah. Exactly. You would. However, what they found was that the glass bottle had the high number, particle number, of microplastics. And everyone was all in a tizzy. Like, when I'm out, I get water from a glass bottle versus plastic. Yeah. And it was like, well, how is this possible? What turns out the lid that they're putting on the plastic bottle has like paint and stuff on it. And the paint is made of plastic, you know, those plastic polymers that make up paint. When they're in these facilities and they're putting the caps on the bottles, some of that's kind of like coming off, you know, friction, right? On the glass bottles. Yes. Oh, my gosh.

Okay. But here's the good news. The size, while the plastic particle number was greater, so was the size. So they were actually much larger because it was essentially little flakes of the paint coming off. It wasn't dissolved. And the larger the size is not absorbed as well. And so I think, and there's now that's going to be studies that have to show this, I think that even though the glass had more plastics, I still go for the glass because this size was bigger.

The plastic size and the plastic bottles was much. smaller and that's the stuff that gets absorbed in the gut. So it's just endless. You were asking like what you can do to get rid of them once they're in circulation. And I said really, there's nothing right now, honestly. But we do have ways of excreting these chemicals. Most people think of sweat as the main way. And sweat does excrete a little bit of these chemicals. But the main way BPA and these plastic chemicals are excreted is actually through urine. And so you essentially want to do something that's going to speed up that process of excreting it through your urine. And that's where this compound comes in that's from cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and particularly broccoli

sprouts called sulfurophane. Sulfuriphan, it's about 100 times more present in broccoli sprouts than broccoli. And I say it's present, but actually it's, the plant has to be crushed or like you bite the plant before the sulfurane actually is activated. It's stored as a precursor. or then it forms sulfur. And so I'm just trying to be accurate here. Yeah. But essentially that compound activates our body's detoxification pathways. So our bodies have these pathways that excrete harmful compounds because, you know,

we've been exposed through them throughout our evolution, right? Not necessarily the same types of toxic things, but there's toxic things from plants and everything, right? So it activates the detoxification pathway called NRF2. And that has been shown to, for example, benzeney, Benzine. Benzine is a carcinogen that we breathe in through air pollution. Smokers take it in. It's in cigarette smoke. Wildfire smoke has it as well. But there's been a couple of studies in China where benzene is extremely high because air pollution is high. And individuals taking in this sulfurophane compound from broccoli sprout extract excrete about 60% more benzene within 24 hours of taking the sulfurophane extract. So sulfurophane activates these detoxification pathways. Well, benzene, the enzyme, the enzyme, that basically cause the excretion of benzene also cause the excretion of BPA and some of these plastic chemicals. And so I think even though it hasn't been directly shown that sulfurophane is also

something that's going to be excreting BPA. There's animal evidence to back that up, but it hasn't been shown in humans yet. I do think that sulfurane is another tool for people that they can use. There's great supplements out there. I use one called Avmicol. I don't have any affiliation with them other than I really like their product. No, we'll link to it on the show notes. They've got 12 publications backing up their formulation showing that it's doing X amount of things like improving brain function on autistic children. It's just doing a lot of things because detoxification is very important for brain health, not only for the brain, but other organs as well. So I think sulfur is another great way to at least try to detox yourself from some of these plastic chemicals as well.

Is the number one practical step that we should take to limit exposure? Is that just get a water filter because that's this huge vector of ingestion because I can't really filter out what I breathe, right? You can if you're working from home and you can filter it out when you're in your home so you can get a hepa filter. You can get these like Honeywell hepa filters and have them in every room. They're pretty small and they work. Air filters in your house. Water filters in your house. Those are the two top things that you can do. And then from there, try to avoid drinking out of plastic bottles as much as you can. Try to avoid heating plastic. So these to go coffee mugs, like if you go to Starbucks or whatever your favorite to go coffee places, those paper cups are also lined with plastic because,

again, they don't want the hot water, you know, just breaking down the paper cup. So we know that heat causes microplastic breakdown and plastic chemical breakdown by like 50 fold. So you're really taking in a lot more microplastics. If you're drinking hot tea or hot coffee out of a to-go coffee mug. Bring your own mug in. Bring your own mug in if you want or drink it there with their mugs. That's not the paper mug. That's the other thing that's a real big, I would say, contributor to our microplastic exposure. The other thing would be obviously like we talked about trying to avoid the plastic water bottles, but other things too, tea bags. So tea bags have microplastics in them, all tea bags. There was a study that came out comparing all the different

types. It's hundreds to thousands of them per milliliter drop. It's crazy. It's. It's crazy. So loose leaf tea is the way to go on that because if you do drink a lot of tea, there's a lot of benefits to tea. And that is like the silver lighting as well because obviously there's so many studies out there on the benefits, health benefits of tea, reduced dementia risk, reduced cancer risk, all sorts of benefits. And it's not like everyone's drinking loose leaf tea, right? So at least we know that whatever polyphenol benefits you're getting from the tea, maybe they're negating some of the microplastic negative effects as well. If you can avoid tea bags as much as possible, Now anytime I'm out, I used to drink tea and it's like, I can't do it if it's not loose

leaf because all I can think about is I'm drinking plastic tea, you know? Yeah. Now I'm like, can I go to Phil's coffee or Starbucks and be like, can you put this in my mug and they'll go, sure, I just need to pour it in this paper cup lined with plastic first and then you can pour it in your mug. And it's like, doesn't that defeat the entire purpose? Yeah. No, you need to ask someone to pour it into your mug.

And if not, you just have to drink. A lot of these places have mugs, right? They have ceramic mugs. I mean, unless you're getting it to go. go. If you're getting it to go, make it in the ceramic mug, and then you can pour it into yours. Like, I don't know. Yeah, they'll have to figure it out. I mean, this is California, for God's sake. I can't be the most high maintenance person here. This is the Bay Area. There's a lot of cooks. The only coffee shop that I know of that does not line their paper cups with plastic is

blue bottle coffee. They use polylactic acid from sugar cane. And I really think that everyone's to switch to that. I guess there's not enough people putting pressure on these companies. to do that yet, but hopefully, like, with more awareness of it, people will put pressure and the companies will switch. How long, though, did it take to ban, what was it, BPA? I remember, again, I don't know how old you are and I won't ask, but when I was little, I played-BPA's not banned. It's not?

No. Oh, my God. No. You're talking about red number five, red number five. So when I was little, I used to play soccer and they would give us these water bottles. And I remember going, mom, this tastes really gross, because it tasted like a solvent. And everyone was just like, whatever, and we would drink it. And I was like, I don't like that. I'm not going to drink that water. So I remember I had to get a

different water bottle. And we had these cups in my house and I hated them and they were this weird plastic and I wouldn't drink out of them because they tasted weird. And then later on it was like, oh yeah, this plastic leeches into the water and it, I thought it was BPA, but maybe not. And now they switched to BPA-free and different kinds of water bottles that don't do that. And it was just really, really obvious that these soft, squishy water bottles were made out of a plastic that leached because I remember once I put hot water in one and the thing completely deformed. And I was like, it just melted basically. And I was like, so you're drinking that.

And it tasted like some kind of rubbing alcohol mixed into the water every time you drank from it. And I just was like, there's no way this is good for you. I remember thinking that at like eight years old. I was like, there's no way that this is supposed to be like this. Well, you're right on the fact that BPA, it does leach into your water bottle. And there was a marketing push that said, this is BPA free. and people thought that that was safer because it was like BPA-free and it's still, you'll see it everywhere. But the problem is that they replaced BPA with something called BPS. So BPA wasn't banned. It was just a lot of companies decided, oh yeah, now we know BPA is bad. It's disrupting hormones. It leaches into the liquid or whatever content, food, whatever's in there. And so they switch to BPS. And it's like now they market as BPA-free and everyone thinks that means it's safe, except for the fact that now it's been enough years.

over a decade, a couple of decades now, at least, that you've seen this BPA-free stuff. And now we have science on BPS. Guess what? It's doing the same thing as BPA. How about no more B-P? The B-P is clearly the problem here, Rhonda. The plastic is the problem. What does the BEP stand for? Do we know? Do you know? Bisphenol. Okay. And that's just plastic, the type of plastic? It makes the plastic more durable, like you said. It makes it more durable.

It's funny because I was talking about this gum thing, and I had no idea there was plastic and gum. Did you know that gum was made out of plastic? I didn't. I mean, now that you say it, it makes perfect sense. But I also didn't know that there was plastic on salad. So here we are, right? Well, gum base is made from plastic polymers. But it didn't start that way. It was around World War II where the gum base shifted from this plant tree sappy kind of stuff that you used. used to used in gum. So it was a gum used to be plastic free. And then World War II, that's when the gum base shifted to these plastic polymers. And so now essentially all gum, unless it's marketed as plastic free and you look at it and it's made from this tree, sappy stuff. I forget what that stuff is called. And if you look on Amazon, it's very expensive to get gum. And it's terrible. It's terrible. It like dissolves. You like chew it and then

it's mush. Yeah. You're chewing and swallowing a bunch of plastic when you're chewing gum. And so you really do want to get the plastic-free gum. I did find a brand that was like from the Netherlands that was really good that I like, but it's hard to get. Yeah, yeah. So you have to stick with the simply gum, which is what you get on Amazon, and at least it's plastic-free. What's the brand of the Netherlands? Because I have Dutch show fans, and if they want to do me a salad, they can mail me a bunch of this. It's called true gum.

Okay. Yeah, and you want to get the xylitol form because xylitol actually cleans your teeth and, like, kills off bacteria that cause cavities. so I've reversed so many cavities and had friends that have reversed them from chewing xylitol gum. So I was chewing gum like all the time and then I like found out it was plastic gum and of course I was just, I was so upset

just thinking about all the plastic that I ingested and after that now I've switched to the Simply gum and also the true gum. True gum is my favorite. It doesn't disintegrate as quickly. My gosh, Dutch show fans, don't forget your boy on Christmas. I'm on the market for some gum.

I do chew gum every day. and I love it. It's kind of like, I don't know, I chew it when I'm like hungry or when I'm outside. I don't know. I just like it. It's something about it. And yeah, now I'm swallowing a bunch of plastic. That's super disappointing. You mentioned before about brain aging, brain issues. And I know you'd mentioned before we talked here on the show that multivitamins can maybe help slow brain aging. And I was shocked to hear that because honestly, what I thought, multivitamins, I've been told you pee the whole thing out. It's placebo, it's expensive urine, it's just a marketing push. It's up there with like Kellogg's putting like, hey, we have vitamins in your cereal. It's like, whatever, man, you know, they just sprinkle some

on there so they can print it on the box. That's kind of what I thought it was. Yeah. Well, I'm sure you thought that because that was the, I would say, the message from the medical community and the scientific community for the last, I don't know how many decades, it's expensive urine. And in fact, 10 years ago, it was exactly 10 years ago, this huge study came out. It was called enough is enough. Not only are multivitamins useless, they're harmful. And that review article, I remember just looking at each and every study and just tearing it to shreds with how awful the study was, not even measuring the nutrient in the blood and like thinking you're giving someone a vitamin and it's doing something and all sorts of problems, right? Well, we've come now 10 years later

and there have been three very, very large, randomized controlled trials that have been done. They're called the Cosmo Studies. And these trials have given older adults. These are people age 65 or older. A standard run-of-the-mill, your least bougie multivitamin that you could think of called Centrum Silver.

Yeah, I was going to say, what is this? Like Centrum Silver? Yeah, funny. Yeah. Centrum Silver. And they gave these older adults, the Centrum Silver,

multivitamin for a year or a placebo, right? So they were getting either a placebo or syndrome silver. A variety of different endpoints have been measured. So we're talking about the brain endpoint here, the brain health. And essentially what was found was that these individuals that were given the multivitamin, not only did they not have accelerated brain aging. This is clearly not bad for you. It delayed brain aging. So global brain aging, there was a battery of tests that were done, global brain aging was delayed by 2.1 years compared to the placebo group. Essentially, cognition was improved and something called episodic memory. So when you remember people, events, things like that, that's the stuff that goes as you get older, older adults.

They can't remember things that they did, right? I mean, it's just like that that's part of the short-term memory that goes away, episodic memory. Well, there's something called episodic brain aging. And again, it's a battery of tests that are done. Well, episodic brain aging was also reduced by 4.9 years. So essentially five years of reduced episodic brain aging and the individuals that were given the multivitamin compared to a placebo. And this is after just a year. I think it was a year. It might have been two at the most.

You can't remember. It was either one or two years they were given this multivitamin. But it just goes to show, I mean, how easy is it for someone to take a multivitamin? vitamin pill. I mean, it's the easiest thing that you can give your parents or your grandparents or do for yourself. Super easy. And what's happening is it's filling all these micronutrient gaps that we are not getting from our diet. When I say micronutrients, I'm not talking about fat. I'm not talking about carbohydrates. I'm not talking about protein. I'm talking about vitamins, minerals, these essential fatty acids, essential amino acids that you get from these multivitamins.

most of the multivitamins you're getting are in the Centrum Silver case, you're getting the vitamins and the minerals and you're getting some plant phytochemicals like lycopene or lutein. These are carotenoids that are found in plants. And so you're getting those as well. And we know that the majority of people are not getting them from their diet. 50% of the U.S. population doesn't get enough magnesium from their food. Another 45% doesn't get enough calcium. 35% doesn't get enough vitamin A. 25% doesn't get enough. vitamin C. It goes on and on. So what a multivitamin does is help fill those gaps that you're just not getting from eating a good diet. And these micronutrients are important. They are doing things that help delay aging, that help improve all these functions, whether we're talking about neurotransmitter synthesis or reducing inflammation or reducing oxidation that plays a role in brain aging, all these things, right? And so it's something that people don't think about because you don't see that kind of damage when you look in the mirror, you can't see oxidation or inflammation. I mean, sometimes if you're really inflamed, you'll feel it like if you're sick.

But like the really small chronic type, it's kind of like, oh, brain foggy. I don't really, you know, you're just like, this is my normal, right? Yeah, sure. So when I tell people about this multivitamin study, it's thousands of people. It's compared to placebo. It's the gold standard that all these physicians want. And yet they're still going, it's expensive urine. It's expensive urine.

And it's like, who doesn't want their parents and their grandparents or yourself when you get to that point to delay your global brain aging by two years and your episodic brain aging by five years? Yeah, no kidding. It's a no-brainer. So do you take a multivitamin now or is it like you take it when you're 60 and then you worry about this? Oh, absolutely now. I've been taking it for the last at least 15 years. Oh, wow. Ever since I was a graduate student.

I was convinced early on that even though I try to eat a healthy diet, it's hard. hard to get all of your vitamins and minerals from food. And on top of that, the soil is very different. And depending on where your vegetables are from, depending on where you're eating your meat from, you're not getting all the micronutrients that you should be getting, even if you're eating their foods, right? The soil is depleted of some of these, like selenium and things like that. And so it's just really hard to get these important micronutrients. And so a multivitamin is something that I think everyone should take starting now. It's not something that's going to be harmful. and if anything, it's going to be beneficial, it's filling these micronutrient gaps.

But on top of that, I think there are other things that are important to supplement with as well, because you can only pack so much into a multivitamin, right? Let me jump on that in a second, but do you recommend any specific? I mean, we're not, I take it Centrum Silver as not the gold standard multivitamin for most people. It's not, but I like the fact that at least the general population can go to Walmart or CBS and afford that, right? Yeah. I don't take Centrum Silver. the one that I take is one by pure encapsulations.

I like theirs because it's just one you have to take. And they do a pretty good job of getting the methyl folate. You're getting the right types of like B vitamins. I also like Thorn. They have a two-a-day one as well. You can find your sort of more bougie ones. And the reason I like those brands is because there's a lot of NSF certification, which essentially just means less contaminants coming into your multivitamin.

But there's other good brands out there as well. And then maybe depending on like what your gaps are, like maybe, you know, for some women that are highly athletic and, you know, they might need a little more iron. Going for one with iron might help. But that would have to be premenopausal women, of course. And postmenopausal women do not need iron and men do not need iron as well. I did a crazy blood panel. Oh, several. But they showed me where I was deficient and everything and I supplement that stuff like Kou10 and selenium and then like magnesium and zinc, things like that. So do you think you stack that with a multivitamin because there's stuff in the multi that you're just not getting?

Yeah. I think with some of these, for example, magnesium, just because of its molecular weight, you can't pack enough of it into a multivitamin to fill the micronutrient gap. Yeah. I take two decent sized pills at night. Exactly. Each one is the size of a multivitamin. Right. Magnesium is one that I think that is needed as an extra supplement in addition to the multivitamin, just because magnesium is so important for.

You have to have magnesium to make and use energy. You have to have magnesium to repair damage to your DNA that's done every day to prevent cancer incidents. And there have been studies that have found, for example, for every 10 milligram decrease in magnesium intake, there was an 24% increase in pancreatic cancer incidence. So it's like a dose-dependent association here, right? Less magnesium, more pancreatic cancer. So magnesium is one people aren't, they're not getting from their foods.

It's mostly found in dark leafy greens because it's at the same. center of a chlorophyll molecule. Chlorophyll give plants their green color. And so if you don't eat a lot of dark greens, then you're not getting enough magnesium. It's also found in oats and some nuts like almonds, but that's not the stuff people are eating every day. So it does help to supplement. For men, you want to get about 400 milligrams of magnesium day for women about 350. If you're athletic, if you use the sauna, you have to go up between 10 to 20 percent more because you're sweating out magnesium. I see. So you're losing it. And so you have to replenish that. you can replenish it with electrolytes, but you might, like some of these really athletic people,

like endurance athletes, or if you're using this on every day, you're losing a significant amount of magnesium. So you do have to kind of make sure you're supplementing with even more than perhaps the, you know, RDA, which would be for amount 400 milligrams a day. So that's great. You want to make sure you're getting the right form of magnesium. So magnesium, back in the day, you know, the magnesium oxide, dioxide, like that was what everyone was taking. And it's just not very bioavailable. You don't absorb a lot of it. So what you want to take is the salt form. So you want to get these organic salts like magnesium malate, magnesium citrate, magnesium tarate. Those are pretty bioavailable, absorbable forms. Or magnesium glycinate is another really good one. That's what I take. I like it

because it has a glycine molecule attached to it. And so I take that at night because glycine also helps improve sleep, relaxes you. It's like calming and helps with sleep. And so that's something I like to take as well. I think I take magnesium three in eight. Okay. Does that sound right? So magnesium three and eight is another form of magnesium. It's been marketed as a brain magnesium. Perhaps that's why you're taking it. So there have been, there's a company that patented this certain form of magnesium that is thought to more readily pass and cross the blood brain barrier based on animal studies. So there's animal studies showing that you can take magnesium 3 and 8. So it's actually magnesium L3 and 8. And that basically, when you take that magnesium, it gets into your bloodstream and it's primarily going to the brain.

And so there have been two randomized controlled trials, both done by the company that makes the supplement. Just keep that in mind. Potential conflict of interest doesn't mean it is. But those two studies have found that people given the magnesium L3 and 8, those individuals did have improved cognition compared placebo. And so that's kind of great corroborating evidence. Perhaps it is getting into the brain more. I would say that if you are taking magnesium L3NA, that you probably also want to take another magnesium for the other functions because let's say it really is going to the brain more readily, then perhaps you're not getting as much to the other systems that you need for DNA repair, for example. I see. Or for the energy production, like not in the brain. So it might be a good idea to take the L3 and the magnesium glycinate.

I see. Okay, I'm writing this down because I definitely only take that kind of magnesium. And I know someone sent me like magnesium breakthrough, all six forms of magnesium or whatever. Yeah, I take these very specific things that I was deficient in or stuff like specifically for sleep. But I don't take anything that's like, here's a bunch of stuff packed into one or like, hey, you probably need more of this because you eat. like crap, like a busy person generally. Well, you mentioned KU10 as well, and that's another one that's really interesting. Some multivitamins have a very small amount of it, like 50 megs, which is better than nothing,

but it's really a small amount. You're probably taking something that's much higher than that, maybe 100 or 200. It's a good question. I don't know. You don't know. Okay. It's a big enough pill. Like it's a tablet.

It's separate from everything else. They're usually pretty big pills. Kukuten is something that you do make in your body. It's important for your mitochondria. which is essentially energy-producing little organelles inside most all of your cells except for red blood cells. So really important for muscle health, for brain health, for sperm health, everything. It's really important for everything. And so there have been studies showing that supplementing with COQ10 can improve cardiovascular health, can help with mitochondrial health as well.

People that are actually taking a statin, it's essential because statins are inhibiting cholesterol synthesis and the same pathway that is producing cholesterol in your body. It's called the HMG COA pathway also makes CO-10. And so people that are taking statins, their co-Q10 levels plummet, and that in turn affects their muscle, their mitochondrial health, brain health. So people taking a statin absolutely should be supplementing with some sort of co-Q10. I think ubiquinol is better than ubiquinone because ubiquinol is the reduced form and it's more bioavailable. And so you can basically get more bang for your buck. However, the majority of studies that have been done have been done with the cheaper KU10 because it's more stable. And there's obviously benefits from that. You just have to take more of it.

I see. Mine is from pure encapsulations, which you mentioned before. So hopefully it's, hopefully they've got it covered. I don't know. Yeah, that's a good one to take. Yeah. My friend recommended that. And I was like, why is this twice the price of the stuff on Amazon? And he's like, because it actually is the stuff and not sawdust from China. And I was like, it's a fair argument, I suppose, for buying things on, especially if something you're putting in your body, you want to make sure it's the thing that it says on the label and the thing that you want. Absolutely. Speaking of expensive urine, I need a quick break. We'll be right back. Now, for the rest of my conversation with Dr. Rhonda Patrick. When we're talking about slowing cognitive decline,

are we talking about very subtle effects or is it really noticeable? Do you have any idea? I'm always curious about this. It depends on what study or, compound or lifestyle modification that we're talking about. So for example, if we're talking about like doing a 10-minute high-intensity interval training session, there have been studies that show that immediately processing speed is it faster, reaction times faster. And so you perform better cognitively, right? So that would be something that's noticeable immediately. But if we're talking about like a multivitamin, that's not something necessarily that's going to be noticed, particularly because, like I said,

and I guess coming back to me, the study was actually two years long because they do these tests at the baseline and then they do them two years later and you're comparing your progression. Because as we're older, as we reach the age of 65, brain atrophy,

you start to lose between 1 to 2% of your brain mass per year. You know, losing brain mass, you're, you know, losing coxia function along with it, right? It's not just like you lose brain and everything stays the same. There are ways to counter that.

We can talk about, out with exercise, but so if we're talking about like a multivitamin, you know, you're not going to like, it's not like a neutropic kind of effect that you're going to necessarily feel. Like if I want that kind of effect, I go to the hit. I do like a quick high intensity interval training, 10 minutes, blood flow to the brain. Now there have been some studies showing that taking plant polyphenols, for example, the EGCG that's found in like green tea or in cocoa, cocoa powder, that increases vasodilation, increases blood flow to the brain. brain, which is obviously what exercise is also doing. So you're getting a similar effect. The exercise is

more robust. But it does have this sort of immediate cognitive enhancing kind of effect where you perform better as well. When we're talking about delaying brain aging, oftentimes, yes, cognitive function is improved along with that. But it depends on what's being measured and what we're talking about essentially, right? So with these older adults, they are performing better on their cognitive test. And so will they necessarily know it? They might. After a couple of years, they might. But it's not like you and I would notice it as a younger person. You mentioned the high intensity interval training. So you said you do quick 10 minutes. Is that kind of the minimal effective dose, you'd say, 10 minutes? I would say to really improve something like global executive function and speed up your

reaction time, your processing speed as well. Yeah, I think 10 minutes is probably the minimal amount of time. It has to be vigorous intensity exercise. So there was a study that compared light, moderate, and vigorous. And when I talk about these, it really, it's funny because the definition kind of varies from study to study, but generally speaking, ballparking. When I talk about vigorous intensity exercise or when you read about vigorous intensity exercise, it's the kind of exercise that you're doing when you can't have a conversation, not even a breathy one. Oh, wow. You're really pushing hard. Your heart rate is 80% max at least, right?

So you're getting to that 80% maxone. Now, high intensity interval training isn't going to keep that vigorous intensity the entire 10 minutes. You're going to be pushing it for intervals and then recovering and then pushing it again and then recovering, right, because 10 minutes consistent of that would be a lot, right, of not being able to talk. Like, that's almost impossible. So the high intensity interval training is really the best tool for that cognitive

enhancement that's pretty immediate that I've seen. You can do these what are called. exercise snacks, which are also vigorous intensity exercise. You just do one or two minutes of something intense, like a burpee, and get your heart rate up, and you will feel better. You will feel more alert. I mean, it's pretty obvious that increasing the blood flow to your brain for like two minutes is doing something. And what's fascinating is that for the longest time, if you think about these exercise guidelines that we always hear about, physical activity guidelines, it's always moderate intensity and vigorous intensity.

And the vigorous intensity is like cut in half what the moderate intensity is. Right. So they'll say 150 to 300 minutes a week of moderate intensity exercise. Well, what is that? That's the kind of exercise that you can, that's not walking. But it's the kind of exercise that you're basically, you can have a breathy conversation, but you can still like talk. Well, when it's vigorous intensity, they say 75 to 150 minutes, right?

So it's cut in half. Well, it turns out there was this new study that just came out that researchers had these wearable devices on, I think it was the biobank data. People were wearing these wearable devices where researchers could track their heart rate. And people were doing these sort of vigorous, intermittent lifestyle activity type of physical activity, which is like an exercise snack. So essentially, they're not necessarily dropping down and doing burpees for two minutes. That's like a structured exercise snack. They're like taking advantage of everyday life situations and getting their heart rate up. So they're taking the stairs, but not only taking the stairs, they're getting after it, right?

They're kind of sprinting up the stairs. And they're getting their heart rate up. Or instead of driving to work, perhaps they, you know, take a quick five-minute bike right to work. Or they're walking briskly to work because they live close to where they're at. Whatever. Or they're doing housework and they're kind of really moving around. Whatever these lifestyle activities are that they're doing, they're getting their heart rate up for one to three minutes. What was interesting was a lot of data has come out where it's been shown that, yes,

people doing these vigorous types of snacks, these intermittent lifestyle snacks, they have a lower, 40% lower all-cause mortality, a 40% lower cancer-related mortality, 50% lower cardiovascular-related mortality, than people not doing them. But this new study that came out was super interesting because it actually compared moderate intensity exercise to this sort of short burst of these exercise snacks and looked at outcomes as well. And it found that it wasn't. It wasn't a lot of the a one to two ratio for moderate intensity versus vigorous intensity for lowering cardiovascular disease risk or cardiovascular related mortality. In fact, for every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise, people had to do four minutes of moderate intensity exercise to get the same lowering

effect for cardiovascular related mortality. So in other words, you got to do four times as much exercise if you were doing moderate versus vigorous. And then for light, it was insane. It was like you're going, some cases you were going like 54 times as much. So I don't know what's more important to you, but I like time efficiency. And the fact of the matter is that vigorous exercise is definitely the king when it comes to reducing cardiovascular mortality, when it comes through all-cause mortality, and slightly even more with cancer-related mortality as well, although that's the one that even any type of exercise really did have a beneficial effect. That's interesting. Yeah, I work out with my trainer three times a week, and at the end,

we do that like killer finisher where you're just beat, but then he's like, okay, rope climb times 20, kettlebell swing times 20, toes to bar times 20, three rounds and you're just, like, no breaks. And like at the end, you're like, I'm going to puke if I had any food in my belly. That's vigorous, right? Yeah. Before that I'm weight training, which I guess would be moderate. So I'm hoping that that three times a week is enough. It's a good balance.

It's quite amazing how low the bar really is, though. Any exercise is better than none, and yet most of us don't really get any at all. And even doing these short bursts of like one to two minutes, three times a day, where you do get your heart rate up. Yeah. But it's so short. And this is even in people that identify themselves as non-exercisers. So they don't have a trainer. They don't go to the gym.

They're just doing that everyday stuff where they're getting their heart rate up. Sprint up the stairs. Be that weird out work that sprints up the stairs. It's the vigorous type of exercise that's so important for the brain. it's been shown, you know, and that has to do with the fact that you're producing lactate when you work really hard. And lactate is, it's not just the muscle burn. It's getting into the brain. And it's signaling to the brain to activate a variety of important pathways, including something called brain-derived neurotrophic factor B-D-NF.

I've heard of that. Yes, B-D-NF helps you grow new neurons. So as an adult, it's responsible for the growing of new neurons called neurogenesis. it's important for neuroplasticity, so it helps increase neuroplasticity, which goes down with age. Neuroplasticity helps your brain adapt to a changing environment. If your brain can adapt to the changing environment, you're not going to be able to keep up. So it really is important for cognition. That's also important for mood.

If you can't adapt to a changing environment, people get depressed. And neuroplasticity, decreased neuroplasticity is something often found with depression as well. And so it's also important for learning and memory. You know, I talked about how when you're in older age, once you reach the age of 65, you start to lose between one to two percent of brain mass per year. And particularly in a region called the hippocampus part of your brain, which is the part of the brain that's really largely responsible for learning and memory. And so that's terrible because it's, you know, you're losing that part of your brain. And then it's like, how am I going to remember or learn anything, you know, as the years go by? And there was a great study that was published.

It's been a while. I think the study came out in like 2012. But it was a randomized control trial in older adults who were either in an exercise group or they were in the control group. And the control group was this sort of stretching. So they thought they were getting a treatment, right? Placebo controls are important. They thought they were getting a treatment, but it was actually not the treatment. It was a stretching control.

The exercise group were doing on the moderate to vigorous. scale of physical activity and they're doing it three times a week, 30 minutes each session. And it was largely aerobic exercise. They did do a little bit of muscle strengthening stuff, but it was largely aerobic exercise. And by the end of the year long trial, those older adults that were in the exercise group, not only did they not lose the 2% of their hippocampal brain region, they gained 2%. Wow. They gained 1 to 2%. So they were not only not losing, it, they were increasing the growth of new neurons, right? That BDNF activation from the exercise was growing new neurons to replace what they were losing through normal aging. And it was not

only replacing it, it was actually adding mass. So important as we get older. So there's every reason to want to do aerobic types of exercise. Again, lactate's very important because you're activating that BDNF, which is what is growing the new neurons. They gain. their brain mass, but they also had improved cognition. So they both went hand in hand, right? Which is what you want to see, right? You don't want to see someone gaining brain mass, but still not performing well in their cognitive tests. Ideally not. No. You mentioned before magnesium. Another thing I take, I take omega-3. I take a bunch of vitamin Dio's deficient in both of those things. But I'm trying to think of something I take that I'm not deficient or that I,

oh, creatine. Here's something that I've been taking for forever. It used to be like gym pumps or whatever. I've read something online recently that, oh, it's like, like, Like it has cognitive benefits. Is that true or is that creatine being like, hey, we need to market harder. Let's say we have cognitive benefits. No, it's definitely true. I'm probably responsible for that whatever you read. You might have been.

That might have been why I noted it here in the show notes. Yeah, it's funny. Creatine has been around forever. I have not taken it forever. I started taking it. I would say like two years ago, you're going to have to two years ago because that's when I started to really get into strength training and resistance training. Okay.

I also have a coach and I'm deadlifting. I'm doing Olympic weightlifting and stuff. And so I started taking creatine around then for my muscle. And if you look at all the data out there, five grams a day is what you really need to have, you know, improved muscular performance. And so people listening going. You said five grams? Yes, but don't. We're going to expand on that.

I'm saying that's what I was taking in the past tense. Yes. So creatine is something that our body does make. We make about one to two grams in our liver. And we also make something similar like that in our brain as well. It's very important because creatine gets stored in our muscle, in our brain as creatine phosphate. And creatine phosphate is essentially donating a phosphate group so that you can make energy. So phosphates, it's called ATP.

You probably heard of ATP before adenosine. Oh, I remember that from maybe middle school, high school, something like that. Yeah. Well, ATP is the energetic currency in our body, right? That's energy. Without ATP, we would die. We would have, no, we couldn't make energy. And ATP is essentially adenosine tri-phosphate.

There's three phosphate groups on it. You need to add those phosphates. So every time you use energy, you use one of those phosphates. You have ADP, adenosine dye phosphate, two of them. So then you have to add one back to make energy again. So you want to keep recycling it, right, so that you can have energy. Creatine phosphate is essentially doing that. It's storing that phosphate to give you the energy, right?

So it's why your muscles love it, particularly when you're working out, because you're using up so much energy and you need to recycle it really quickly, right? And so that's why creatine comes in handy. So, yeah, the creatine that you make from your liver, your muscles are very, very greedy and they consume most of that creatine because they're largely like using a lot of energy. And so there have been studies that have found if you supplement on top of what your body makes, five grams is really enough. At five grams, your muscles start to get saturated, at least over a course of a month.

They get saturated. that's enough. So they take in the five grams that you're supplementing with and they're great. And that will improve your training volume. So it's not going to like increase muscle protein synthesis in the way protein would where you're gaining muscle mass. It's making you work out better. And that's why you're getting muscle mass, right? Because you're performing better with your exercise. Yeah, it's improving training volume. You're doing an extra like one to three reps per set. So that all said and done, I was doing the five grams a day because that's what all the science showed is what you need and your muscle. are saturated after that. Yeah. Then it turns out more and more researchers out there in the creatine field, we're looking at other organs, particularly the brain. And that's something I'm super interested in, as you know, brain health. There was a study out of Germany showing that it takes about 10 grams before you start

to accumulate creatine in certain brain regions. Five grams, I just told you, your muscles are greedy. They take it all in. And so if you're only supplementing with five, that's great for your workouts, right? it's great for your improving your training volume, but what's left over for the brain? There's not a lot of spillover, right? And so you have to get to that, like, 10 gram range.

And it wasn't until about 10 grams that creatine stores were saw to increase, to be seen to increase in brain regions. And so that's why now I've shifted from 5 to 10 grams a day as my baseline. Okay. There have been some other studies that have found that creatine works. It's not just like you take creatine, and like sit around and do nothing and it's going to do this all these miracles right it works well when you're putting an effort it works well when you're stressing your body so exercise is a type of stress right

you're stressing you're using the energy it's helping replenish that right same goes for the brain it works well in a stressed context so stress could be in the form of sleep deprivation like you're not getting enough sleep or your work related stress or emotional related stress i personally have a lot of cognitive stress every day. I'm learning a lot of material. It's very stressful on me. So I think that I'm stressed constantly in that regard. I feel like my brain's constantly stressed. But that's where the creatine shines. And so studies have found, for example, people that are sleep deprived, if they supplement with between 20 to 25 grams of creatine, depending on their body weight, not only does the cognitive deficits that usually appear when you're totally sleep deprived

not appear in people that took the creatine, they actually performed better than their baseline levels when they were actually getting enough sleep, which is astounding. Wow. You know, your brain consumes a lot of energy as well. It's a very energetically demanding muscle.

So it makes sense that creatine would be very beneficial for the brain as well, particularly when there's stress around, right? That's when you need extra energy when they're stressed around. And so, like I said, my 10 grams a day is my baseline. One, based off that germ, study where I know it's accumulating in the brain. Two, because my anecdotal data has shown me that

if I take 10 grams a day, I don't get afternoon sleepiness at all anymore. Oh, man, I need that. Everyone just perked up at that. It could be a placebo effect. I'm not going to discount that. It's very possible. I've done it. I've only had my five grams and I get the sleepy. I've done it so many times. And like I said, it could totally be placebo because I know. I'm like, I didn't get the five grams, but there's plausible mechanistic data out there to explain why it would work as well. And so I think that it's very possible. That's why I'm not getting the afternoon sleep in this anymore. And when I'm traveling and I go to a different time zone, I just got back from China like a month ago. I take 20 grams and it's life-changing. It's a huge game changer for me. Like every day while you're over there,

basically? No, I took it for like the first three to four days. When I first got to China, we're talking like, your body wants to be sleep when it's awake and awake when you're asleep. When I first got to China, I had to get up the next day and give a talk. I had to, like, go do Q&A's. I had to, like, be on my game. And I was able to really, like, I was doing a great job. I was, like, very cognitive on my game. And I took my 20 grams.

I had, like, my one cup of coffee. And I was great. So for me, it really helps with the just being able to perform. well, again, maybe it's placebo, but there's studies showing that it has been shown to do that. It's so cheap. Just take it. Like, it's not, this is such a cheap supplement you can get and mess with for yourself and see if it works. And even if it's placebo, take it. Well, let's talk about that because for one, all the gym bros out there already know this, creatine monohydrate, right? Like, that's the form you have to take. And I would say, yes, that is the form you should take.

It's the one that's 100% going to work. With that said, you do want to look for a legitimate brand. So, for one, don't take gummies. Okay. Like, this study just came out, I don't know, a couple months ago. Ninety-eight percent of all creatine gummies out there had no creatine in it. Zero. That does not surprise me. No surprise. Yeah. Zero. Well, if you talk to any supplement manufacturers and ask them, hey, how easy is it to dissolve supplements into a gummy? And they're going to be like, it's so hard. It's so hard to dissolve it to actually get it to dissolve into the gummy. And then you have to heat it up and like things are heat sensitive and all sorts of like problems occur. So don't take gummies too. I think you should look for an NSF certification on it because there are a lot of

creatine powders out there that have little hitchhiking heavy metals like lead that get into it. And so I take Thorne because it is NSF certified as well. I'm sure there's some other brands out there. That's one I take. I also like them because they have travel packets, five gram travel packets. And so every time I'm traveling, I have all my packets with me. And I'm taking my four packets a day. Yeah, you don't want to bring a giant bag of white powder through TSA and have to explain that. I've done that many times. And I label it creatine.

Yes. And it's worked so far with my Sharpie on there. So that's only a matter of time until my luck runs out, I think, on that. Right. Yeah. I'm a big believer in the brain effects. And there's a lot of other mechanisms besides the energy production as well. It's been shown to like lower inflammation. And to make creatine in your body, it demands a lot of methyl groups. So methylation is something that's important for gene expression. So you might have heard of epigenetics. Yeah. These methyl groups are just carbons with three hydrogens on them. And they're all around our DNA. And they're in certain patterns. And those patterns will activate genes or they're turn off genes in certain ways. So they're very important. But those methylation groups, you need to.

to get them, right? You need to make them and they need to be used. But in order to make creatine, you have to use them as well. So it's a big sink. Actually, 40% of all methylation made is used to make creatine. So when you supplement with creatine, you're actually freeing up those methylation groups to be used for other things. So it's also really important for that as well. It's on my top list of supplements now for the brain. I give it to my mom. I mean, I wish my dad would take it, but he takes the centrum silver. Like he's been doing that for like decades, like without me even telling him, that's like the pill. Why don't he take creatine? It's just like, That's such a low bar.

It's just two little capsules. I've got them taking omega-3 and vitamin D and the powder is just too much to ask. What about capsules? They do have creatine capsules. He could just take two of those. Because it is gross to dissolve. It doesn't dissolve. You just put the creatine in the water and it tastes like sand.

If he won't do that, just give them capsules. Maybe I'll do that. The capsules, you have to take a lot because you need, like, to get the brain effects, 10 grams. Like, there's just no way. That's just four capsules. Really? Are they two and a half grams? Yeah.

They're bulky. Yeah. I'll look into it. I'll look into it. I definitely have to have you come back because we didn't talk about sauna, cold therapy, coffee, a little bit about brain fog, cancer stuff, alcohol. I mean, I have all these notes, but I'll have to save it for next time. I got to ask, does your kitchen look like a laboratory with all the little supplements you have? Or are you pretty?

It does. It does. My pantry, almost whole half, I would say three-fourths of that side is supplements. Yeah. And then when you go into my actual kitchen, there's this cubby hole in my kitchen where, like, it's supposed to be for the toaster and you have a whole. a little door that slides down and make it like you can't see all the electronics. That's where all my supplements are that I use on a daily basis, you know, and the pantry is like my stock. So it's like a

pharmacy. I do take a lot of supplements. I do take ones that are most evidence based. But for sure, it's definitely a little bit crazy if you were to come see my house. I think next time I'll ask you for your whole stack because it's not a short explanation if you've got that much real estate dedicated to it. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. It's a pleasure to see you and talk to you again. It's been so long. I won't wait 10 years before the next round. We'll get something on the books. Sounds good. Coming soon. Thanks. Enjoyed it. You're about to hear a preview where Uba Butler pulls back the curtain on how fake five-star reviews, viral hype and algorithmic blind spots quietly shape what we believe is real. The whole idea of the restaurant was that it was an appointment-only

restaurant. So no walk-ins. It shocked me how much work people were doing in their own minds to build up the idea and the gravitas of this fake establishment. And yeah, people were doing anything they could to get a table. And the more the phone calls increased, the more people that called me, the more people that wanted to talk to me, the more that I told them they couldn't come and the more they wanted to come. People curate their lives based on consensus. The whole thing for me comes from a place of curiosity as well.

And it also started this process of beginning to question slightly these platforms which we all considered to be completely trustworthy. I don't know exactly how many people went in search of it, but it must have been significant because we were getting hundreds of people trying to book. And yeah, it became the number one rated restaurant in London. How far could the bollocks go? And it hit me that maybe the end of the story

was to open it for one night only and serve real customers, real food. If enough people say something is great, will you deny the fact that you've got a bad meal in front of you? Will you deny your taste buds and buy into the nonsense? That's what I did. I basically opened my garden shed for one night only to see whether people would believe the reviews they'd read online more than their objective experience. We really are living in the golden age of bullshit. It is so easy to convincingly lie to people. Check out episode 1235, where Uba Butler exposes just how fragile online trust really is.

Fantastic conversation, tons of practical takeaways here, and this is just scratching the surface of what Dr. Patrick dives into. too regularly. So if you want more deep dive science on micronutrients, brain health, longevity, sauna protocols, cancer prevention, all the latest research that she's pulling apart, definitely check out her podcast and newsletter over at Found My Fitness. She drops insanely detailed breakdowns, study summaries, and tools you can actually put to work. Links to her podcast, newsletter, and everything we talked about today will of course be in the show notes, along with transcripts and ways to support the show. Those deals are all searchable and clickable on the deals page at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show.

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