Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine. Today. My guest is dr. Rhonda Patrick. Dr. Patrick is known to some of you as a podcaster and one of the Premier Educators in the landscape of mitochondria metabolism stress, and other aspects of brain and body Health, her podcast.
Just found my fitness is one of the Premier podcast in the world, for disseminating knowledge, about how the brain and body work and how we can use behavioral tools micronutrients supplements and other protocols in order to maximize our immediate and long-term Health. Dr. Patrick did her formal training in cell biology? Exploring the links between mitochondrial metabolism apoptosis, which is naturally occurring, cell death, which is a healthy form of cell death, that occurs in our brain and body throughout the lifespan.
Anne and cancer biology. She then went on to do postdoctoral training with dr. Bruce Ames investigating the effects of micronutrients meeting vitamins and minerals and how they affect metabolism inflammation, DNA damage, and the aging process. She has published Landmark review, articles, and primary research, meaning original research articles. In some of the Premier journals in the world, including science, nature cell, biology Trends, in cell biology and facet. Indeed. Dr. Patrick is an expert.
In an extraordinarily broad range of topics that impact. Our health. For today's episode. We focus primarily on the major categories of micronutrients that are essential for brain and body health. I have to confess that before the discussion with dr. Patrick. I was aware of only one of the categories of micronutrients that we discuss and so you'll notice that I am wrapped with attention throughout the discussion and I think that you'll want to have a pen and paper handy because she offers not only a very clear understanding
Of the biological mechanisms by which other micronutrients operate, but some very clear and actionable tools and items that we can all embark on. If we are to optimize our brain and body Health. We also discuss behavioral protocols. Dr. Patrick is well, known for her understanding of the scientific literature on sauna and the use of heat and cold for optimizing things like metabolism, longevity, cardiovascular health, and I'm delighted to say that we discussed that as well. And how
Real protocols can interface with supplement based and nutritional protocols. I'm confident that you'll learn a tremendous amount of information from dr. Patrick much of which is immediately actionable and if you're not already following and listening to her, excellent podcast, you'll absolutely want to do that. It's found, my fitness.com is the website where you can get access to that podcast. It's also on Apple and Spotify and YouTube as found my fitness. Dr. Patrick also has a terrific newsletter that I recommend signing up for its found my fitness.
Dot-com newsletter is where you'll find it and it includes research on fasting micronutrients, sleep depression, Fitness longevity and far more along of course with actionable. Protocols. I'm pleased to announce that the huberman Lab podcast is now partnered with Momentis supplements are motivation for partnering with Momentis is to provide people one location where they can go to access the highest quality supplements in the specific dosages that are best supported by the scientific research.
And that are discussed during various episodes of the huberman. Lot podcast. If you go to live momentous.com hubermann, you will see those formulations. I should mention that we are going to add more formulations in the months to come and you will see specific suggestions about how best to take those supplements. Meaning what dosages and times of day and in fact how to combine those supplements with specific behavioral protocols that have been discussed on the podcast and our science supported in order to derive the maximum benefit.
From those supplements. And many of you will probably also be pleased to learn that momentous ships, not just within the United States, but also internationally. So once again, if you go to live, momentous.com huberman, you will find what we firmly. Believe to be the best quality supplements in the precise dosages and the best protocols for taking those supplements, along with the ideal behavioral protocols to combine with those supplement formulations. I'm pleased to announce that I'm hosting to live.
This may the first live event will be hosted in Seattle, Washington on May 17th. The second live event will be hosted in Portland, Oregon on May 18th. Both are part of a lecture series entitled, the brain-body contract during which I will discuss science and science based tools for mental health, physical, health, and performance. I should point out that while some of the material, I'll cover will overlap with information covered here on the huberman Lab podcast and on various social media posts. Most of the information I will cover is going to be
Distinct from information covered on the podcast or elsewhere. So once again, it's Seattle on, May, 17th Portland on May 18th. You can access tickets by going to human lab.com, / tour and I hope to see you there. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our
sponsor is athletic greens. Athletic greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral, probiotic drink. I've been taking athletic greens since 2012. So I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking athletic Greens in the reason. I still take athletic greens once or twice a day, is that it helps me? Cover all of my basic nutritional needs. It makes up for any deficiencies that I might have. In addition. It has probiotics which are vital for microbiome Health. I've done a couple of episodes now on the so-called gut microbiome and the way is
Which the microbiome interacts with your immune system, with your brain to regulate mood. And essentially with every biological system relevant to health throughout your brain and body without let it greens. I get the vitamins. I need the minerals. I need, and the probiotics to support my microbiome. If you'd like, to try out, let it greens. You can go to athletic, greens.com huberman, and claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs, which make it easy to mix up athletic greens, while you're on the road, plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K to our ton of data.
Now, showing that vitamin D3 is essential for various aspects of our brain and body Health, even if we're getting a lot of sunshine, many of us are still deficient in vitamin D3. And K2 is also important because it regulates things like cardiovascular function calcium in the body. And so on again, go to athletic greens.com huberman, to claim the special offer of the five free travel packs, and the year supply of vitamin D3 K to today's episode is also brought To Us by thesis, thesis makes what are called nootropics, which means smart drugs. Now to be,
I'm not a fan of the term nootropics. I don't believe in smart drugs. In the sense that I don't believe that there's any one substance, or collection of substances that can make us smarter. I do believe based on science. However, that there are particular, neural circuits and brain functions that allow us to be more focused, more alert access creativity, be more motivated at cetera. That's just the way that the brain works different, neural circuits for different brain States. And so the idea of a nootropic that's just going to make a smarter all around fails to acknowledge that smarter is
Many things, right. If you're an artist, you're a musician, you're doing math, you're doing accounting different part of the day. You need to be creative. These are all different brain, processes thesis understands this. And as far as I know that the first nootropics company to create targeted, nootropics for specific outcomes. They only use the highest quality ingredients, which of course is essential. Some of those I've talked about on the podcast, things like DHA, ginkgo biloba, phosphatidyl serine. They give you the ability to try several different blends over the course of a month, discover, which nootropics work best for your unique brain.
History and genetics and goals. And with that personalization design, a kit of nootropics that's ideal for the different brain and body States. You want to access. I've been using thesis for more than six months now and I can confidently say that their nootropics have been a total Game Changer. My go-to formula is the clarity formula or sometimes I'll use their energy formula before training to get your own personalized. Nootropic starter kit, go online to take thesis.com huberman, take a three-minute quiz and thesis will send you four different formulas to try in your
First month, that's take thesis.com huberman and use the code huberman at checkout for 10% off. Your first order. Today's episode is also brought To Us by inside tracker inside trackers a personalized nutrition platform. The analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals. I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done. For the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term Health can only be assessed with a quality blood test. What's unique about inside tracker. Is that while
A lot of different tests out there for hormones and metabolic factors Etc with inside tracker. You get the numbers back in terms of your levels, but they also give you very clear. Directives. In terms of Lifestyle nutrition and supplementation that can help you bring those values into the ranges that are best for you and your health goals and that's very different than a lot of the other programs where you get a lot of information. We don't really know what to do with that information inside tracker makes that all very easy to understand and very actionable based on the very easy-to-use dashboard at inside tracker.
If you'd like to try inside tracker, you can visit inside tracker.com huberman to get 20% off any of inside. Trackers plans. Just use the code huberman at checkout. And now, for my discussion with dr. Rhonda Patrick, Rhonda welcome has been a long time coming even longer than you know, because even before we discussed you coming on this podcast as a guest. I've been watching your content for a very long time. So I want to start off by saying thank you. You were the spearhead to break through from academic.
It's too public education. So I consider you first in and the rest of us are just in your wake. So thank you for that. It's been.
Oh! That is so kind. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's absolutely true. I'm so excited to be here having a conversation with you.
So thank you. It's absolutely true. If anyone does their research, they will realize that the statement I just made is absolutely true and there isn't even a close second, you know, any other public facing Educators that have formal science training and do.
Regular posting of content came in several years after you initiated it. So we're all grateful. I have so many questions, but I want to start off with a kind of a new but old theme that you're very familiar with. So temperature is a powerful stimulus as we know for biology and you've covered a lot of material related to the utility of cold, but also the utility of heat and as I learn more and more
More from your content. And from the various papers. It seems that there's a bit of a conundrum in that cold can stimulate a number of things, like increases in metabolism, Brown fat, etc. Etc. Hopefully, you'll tell us more about those. But heat seems to be able to do a lot of the same things and I wonder whether or not the discomfort of cold deliberate, cold exposure and the discomfort of heat might be anchoring to the same pathway. So would you mind sharing with us a little bit?
Bit about what happens when we get into a cold environment on purpose. And what happens when we get into a hot environment on purpose? And I'm hoping that this might eventually lead us to some point of convergent understanding. So if you
would, I would love to, let's take a step back and I think you brought up a really important Point here. And I think that point has to do with the intermittent challenging of yourself. And, and whether that is through, you know, temperature changes like cold or heat.
Or through other types of stressors, like, physical activity or perhaps, even dietary compounds that are found in plants. These are things like polyphenols or flavanols. Humans were, you know, we evolved to intermittently challenge ourselves. And before we had instacart where you could basically just get your food delivered to you before the Industrial Revolution, you know, occurred, we were out hunting and I say we not us.
But humans we were out, you know, Gathering we were moving and we had to be physically fit. You couldn't, you know, catch your prey. If you were a sedentary slob, right? We're moving and you had to like, you know, pick your berries, you had to move. And so, physical activity was a part of everyday, life and caloric, restriction are intermittent fasting was also a part of it. This is another type of challenge, you know, we didn't always, you know, have a pray that we caught or maybe temperatures were such that you
There was nothing for us to gather. Right? So food scarcity, was something common as well as eating plants. So getting these compounds that I mentioned. So this is, these are all types of stress intermittent challenges that activate genetic Pathways in our bodies. These are often referred to in science as stress response Pathways because they respond to a little bit of stress, you know, physical activity is strenuous fasting, is a little bit stressful, heat cold. These things are all types of little intermittent challenges.
And there is a lot of cross talk between these stressors and the genetic Pathways that they activate, and these genetic Pathways that are activated help you deal with stress and, and they do it in a way. That is not only beneficial to help you deal with that little stressor exercise or heat, it stays active and it helps you deal with the stress of normal metabolism. Normal immune function happening just life aging, right? So, this concept,
Referred to as hormesis, right? This is a little bit of trap stressful challenge that activates the stress response Pathways in a beneficial way. That is a net positive. That actually, you know, is it has a very profound antioxidant anti-inflammatory response or you know, or whatever the response is. It could be the production of more stem cells. These are cells that help regenerate different cells within tissues or something like a tapa G which is a process that can clear away all the gunk inside of our cells pieces of DNA protein aggregates.
That's so you'll find that the stress response pathways are activated like by a variety of stressors. So for example, one pathway is called heat shock proteins and as their name would apply, one would go. Oh they're activated by heat will correct. They are activated very robustly by heat and we can talk about that. But you know, you can eat a plant like broccoli Sprouts, which is high in something called sulforaphane. This is a compound that is sort of like a hormetic compound or as David Sinclair likes it.
It's a Xeno hormetic compound. I love that. I love that term and it activates heat. Shock proteins, among other things. It also activates a very powerful detoxification pathway called Nrf2, which helps you detoxify things like carcinogens that you're exposed to. Well guess what? Heat activates that. So what I'm getting at is there is overlap like cold, also activates each shock proteins, really, really cold. Yes. It activates. These are stress response Pathways and they are activated by various.
Types of stressors. Now, you know, you're going to more robustly activate heat shock proteins from Heat versus cold, but there is some overlap. So I think that sort of forms a foundation there.
Yeah, that's very helpful. And you know, it brings to mind in the context of the nervous system. I was so people, you know, you only have a small kit of neurochemicals to work with there, isn't dopamine for Netflix and then dopamine for relationship and dopamine for work, etc. They're guilty.
There's a generic pathway by which motivation craving in Pursuit emerge Etc, at just like adrenaline is a generic theme of many different behaviors. And I it seems that it is the job of biological systems to be able to take a diverse range of inputs. Even unknown inputs. Like we don't know what technology will look like in three years, but you can bet that some of those novel technologies will tap into the very systems that I'm talking about now. And there certainly will be other stressors to come about that will tap into these.
Both ways. I have two questions related to what you just said before. We talk a little bit more about cold and heat, you mentioned plants as a route to creating intermittent challenge. There's a lot of debate mostly online about whether or not plants are friends or plants are trying to kill us the extreme version from the carnivore types. Pure carnivore. Diet types of that plants are trying to kill us from the plant-based diet. Folks. It seems like it's more about what's healthy for the planet animals.
And maybe for us. But if we set aside that argument and we just raise the hypothesis that plants have compounds that are bad for us, but maybe by consuming them in small amounts. They're creating this hormesis type scenario. So then I think we conceivably, solve the problem. We could say, yes, plants are bad for us. But in small amounts, they provide this hormetic response and they're good for us, right? So in the same way that heat is,
Is too much heat is bad for us too much. Cold is bad for us can kill us, can kill neurons, but appropriately dosed in an intermittent challenge, type of scenarios can be good for us. Is that how I should think about plants and these compounds? Do you think of them as good for us or as bad for us there? A very sharp blade and we want to use them potent lie.
I actually I think that it's impossible to Impossible. I mean, you'd have to eat nothing but the same plant all day every day in large. I mean, the bioavailability of
These these compounds in the plants. They are attached with food Matrix, you know, it's not like taking it in a supplement form, as well. It's such that like, it's very difficult to make it toxic. Now. There are some cases, for example, if you eat cabbage, and I think there's some group in Africa or somewhere. That's like, that's all they eat is cabbage. And there is a great region in cabbage. It's not so far if, and it's another compound, but that's all they eat every day. Nothing, but that. Yeah.
And they get neck. Yeah, and they're like iodine deficient on top of that. So, you know, I do think there's there, you can, of course make, I mean, there are types of plants that are toxic in small quantities, right? I mean that big Hemlock.
Exactly. So you so don't, don't play this game with
Hemlock, but you're not going to get poison from eating. You know, you're you're you're serving of broccoli at dinner, right? So, I mean, it depends on the plant. Its. I don't these generalizations are kind of, they just
Useful. And I think that a lot of people online in the blogosphere, it they gravitate towards them because it's easier. And it's a lot more
Sensational, plants meat and starches. I'm one of those rare omnivores out there. Now, I feel, I feel like a rare. It's rare to be an omnivore, but I think once you step out of the social medias, as you said the blogosphere the most people, I would say 99% of people on the planet are probably omnivores, right? And someone will probably correct me, but I know.
I doubt the number Falls below 90 98.
I think if you look at data, you know, and and when we have carnivore data by like I can't wait to see it. But like right now it's a lot of. Ok, well, this is a lot of anecdotal evidence and there's, you know, there's a good there's a lot of good starts with anecdote, but like people change a thousand things at once and they don't realize that, but they do. And so anecdotal data is only so good, right? It's a starting point.
And so we don't really know why long-term what carnivore diets are going to do, you know, they may be beneficial short term. They may, you know, be beneficial for reasons of elimination of other things like who knows? Right, lots of possibilities, but I do think with respect to plants, you know, that there's the the there's so much evidence. Like, for example, sulforaphane is one that I really like, because there's just evidence that sulfur Fein is a very powerful, activator of the Nrf2 pathway, and this is the path.
Way that regulates a lot of jeans. And a lot of genes that are related to it, like glutathione production genes that are involved in detoxifying compounds that were exposed to from our food, like heterocyclic amines. In fact, there have been jiwa steady. So these are genetically. These are studies that are genome-wide, Association studies for people listening that aren't familiar. People have a variety of versions of genes and we have a gene that's able to make heterocyclic amines.
Basically detoxify it. So it's not as harmful and, and people that don't have a certain version of that, that's doing it. Well are very prone to like colon cancer and increased cancer risk, but if they eat a lot of broccoli and cruciferous vegetables, it negates that risk because they're getting sulfur Fein, which activates a lot of the glutathione transferred glutathione transferase and synthase Gene. So glutathione is a major antioxidant in our brain and in our, in our vascular,
Our system and our body basically. So, you know, there's there's evidence that it that that eating things like, you know, compounds that are like sulforaphane or broccoli or block broccoli Sprouts, which have like 100 up to 100 times more so far. If and then broccoli are activating glutathione in the brain. There's human evidence of that. I mean, that's amazing. That is amazing and placement.
Yeah. Sorry to interrupt. I just want to make sure when so, broccoli Sprouts are different than broccoli, and you just told us that they have much there. Much.
Sure in these these compounds so note to self. I should have broccoli Sprouts. Not just broccoli. Can we cook the broccoli and still get these nutrients or do we have to eat raw? I confess eating raw. Broccoli is really aversive to
me. So there's the sulfur Fein is formed from a compound called glucoraphanin, which is in the broccoli and the enzyme that converts it into sulforaphane is myrosinase and its heat sensitive. So, you do somewhat lower the sulforaphane.
Bill's when you when you cook the broccoli, however, there was a study, a few years back that showed adding 1 gram of mustard seed powder, ground mustard seed powder, which also contains the myrosinase enzyme to your cooked broccoli increases the sulforaphane by
fourfold. So so this is great because I confess I like broccoli if it's cooked to the appropriate density not too mushy, but definitely not raw. The idea of eating raw broccoli to me just sounds horrible, but I
The way Mustard Seed sound, so just a little bit of mustard seed powder added to the cooked. Broccoli can recover some of these
compounds. Yes. So what I do is I will, you know, lightly steamed my broccoli and then I add a little bit of my kerrygold butter and then I add some Mustard Seed powder on the top of that and it's kind of little little kick like it's just a little spice, you know, and if you don't case that it's expired. Like it should have a little
kick and because I know people will want to know how often and how much you know, are you.
Eating this every day or most days of the
week. Well, I had shifted to supplementation with sulfur Fain. I've admitted, I'm admitting right now that I've been terrible about it the past like I don't know, six months or so
the supplementation or the
roof or the broccoli. Yes, the supplementation. And and so there's another way to get, there's another compound and it's actually called Moringa and dr. Judge Fahey, who's really the expert on
And sulforaphane, he's a good friend of mine. He's been on the podcast a couple of times. He he basically thinks and, you know, has done a lot of research on Moringa as well that it's like a cousin and it activates the Nrf2 pathway similarly to sulforaphane. And so I've been buying this cooly, cooly, Moringa powder. I don't have any affiliation with him.
Really cool. He is a brand Huli, Huli the grand that you have no
affiliation affiliation, but you had Fahey, like, has researched it like, like that specific brand and so it's
Like legitimately it's legit, you know, it's like science back in terms of actually containing Moringa and activating Nrf2 and I add it to my smoothies. So that's what I've been
doing. What are some appropriate dose ranges. So, of course, we give the usual recommendations that people should talk to their physician etcetera etcetera, but if people are going to, what do you take? That's always the, let's take, let's say this enables. The Davidson Clarion approach. What do you where he'll talk about what he does as a way to deal with this, in
Everybody's different and should in all seriousness. Should anytime you add or delete something? From your consumption? Should consult some trusted. Health care. Professional. Trusted by you. What do you recall? The the dosages? I
do. A big heaping tablespoon.
So Moringa. Cool. Cool anymore and it sounds like a song.
Okay. I know. But, you know, for people also listening was like, well, why would I do that? You know, I mentioned the glutathione in the brain, I mentioned it in.
Plasma, it's been shown to lower DNA damage and people and white blood cells. It's also been shown. There's been several different studies in China. In China. There's a lot of air pollution and I mentioned that it, you know, it's a very powerful activator and enter of to and I know you're familiar with interrupt you but enter of to is like a transcription factor, that is it is it is binding to a little specific sequence in a variety of different genes. And it's like turning them on or in some cases, turning them off. It's regulating what's being activated or what's not?
Being out of it are being turned off and some of the genes are basically these, these detoxifying Pathways. We talked a little bit about the glutathione, but there's also ones that are involved in Airborne carcinogens like Benzene. So Benzene is found in air pollution. I mean, cigarette smoke. If you're sick, if you're smoking cigarettes, still like please try to quit. Yeah, but you didn't your dear me. Yeah. It just learned
nothing of the lung cancer, you're mutating your
DNA and heart disease risk, heart disease risk, but and anyways, people and this has been repeated.
And more than one study that literally after 24 hours of taking can't remember off the top of my head, what the dose of sulfur fainting from broccoli extract broccoli, broccoli seed extract was or broccoli, Sprouts extract, not the seat. It was the Sprouts. Anyways, they started excreting like 60% Benzene and acrolein. I mean, that's something that we get in cooked
food. It's coming out in their urine.
Yeah.
Well, I'm not a smoker and I have to be honest. It's rare that I hear of supplement for the first time because
Ben, you know, deep diving on supplement since I was in my teens this is fascinating and it brings me back to this question that we have before and I appreciate that, you answered it very clearly plants have compounds that are good for us. They're not just stressing us. They're activating Pathways, that are reparative. That's what that's what I'm taking away from everything. You're telling
me, right? And, and that our bodies were supposed to be getting that stress to have those Pathways activated like it.
It is like, you know, right. I mean this is conserved among different animals. Like this. Is this is, this is something that is, is this supposed to happen? And in our modern day world, we don't have to eat plants. We don't have to move anywhere exercise. We don't have to go through periods of not eating food because we can have it at our fingertips at any second, right? So, I mean we've got this
Conundrum of, we're never activating these stress response Pathways that were supposed that we're supposed to activate. We're supposed
to. I find that fascinating and again drawing a parallel to the nervous system. So, what I'm hearing you say is that historically we would have to go through some stress, some confront colder, curd, front heat, or confront effort, or, or hunger in have to exercise essentially in order to obtain these compounds and then those compounds are reparative. I feel that resembles.
The dopamine pathway always say, you know, there's nothing wrong with dopamine. People think about dopamine hits as bad or dopamine is that there's absolutely nothing wrong with dopamine. The problem is dopamine, especially high levels of dopamine released without the need for effort to access that dopamine is problematic. So, a line of cocaine gives you a ton of dopamine with no effort except to ingest the drug. Whereas working for four years or more to get your degree, will release a lot of dopamine and a lot of cortisol along the way as We Know
And it's a considered a healthy accomplishment. In most cases, a tremendous amount of if you were approaching the spring and they'll be a lot of graduations weddings are coming up. Now. That pandemic is kind of hopefully slowing and they'll be a lot of dopamine high levels of dopamine are great. But only after the effort of having done something in order to access it. And so that's what I'm taking away from what you're saying, is that we need to go through this intermittent different types of intermittent Challenge and we can, we are rewarded.
With particular compounds that are reparative both for the challenge but then make us stronger. It is hormesis, really. Is it seems that case of what doesn't kill us. Makes us stronger. What so you
mentioned I add to that when we just said, because, please because this has been shown with, for example, sulforaphane and animal studies, you precondition give the animal sulforaphane, and then you expose them to like, you know, hypoxia or some sign of ischemic stroke condition, whatever they do to induce that and the sulfur faint, it basically,
Text that like it there precondition and their their read, their stress response pathways are primed. And so when they're then exposed to the ischemic stroke, they their outcomes are so much better so much better than the animals that didn't get the sulforaphane 48 hours before whatever it was, you know, and, and this is like, this has been shown in multiple animal studies with sulfur and specifically in the brain. I know Mark Matson, dr. Mark Madsen, he's a lot often thought of as the intermittent fasting King, but you know, he's a neuroscientist and he
He did publish some work and talks about sulforaphane as
well. I'm really glad you brought that up because that example up because many of the questions I get on social media and elsewhere are about traumatic, brain, injury, and TBI in, you know, is just one example. And people always think, oh, Sports, it's football. Whenever you say, TBI, people always think football and I just wanted to just take a mint moment to editorialize 90% or more of traumatic. Brain injury is construction work at home accidents.
Football players are at the hockey players are martial artists are a tiny fraction of the people who have TBI and concussion of various kinds. It just so happens that within those communities. Many of them 75% or more experienced those. So it's sailing within those communities. But passion is prominent. People are always asking what can I do in order to offset brain injury. I had a concussion two years ago. What can I do? And it's been it's been a tough question because I really don't have anything for them. I mean you tell them sleep well,
Well, eat well exercise, but it sounds like some of these reparative Pathways either should be explored in the context of brain injury or I'm guessing are being explored in the context of brain
injury. Yeah. So a couple of things there one is that? I mean, traumatic brain injury. I mean it's terrible but it's also it's so interesting because it's also like literal real-time brain aging like, you know, like it's you're able to like accelerate it and understand. So I often think of when I think of
Had a Brain Injury. I think of so much overlap between Alzheimer's disease and dementia. And these neurodegenerative diseases because there is, there are there are a lot of similarities that there, you know, and so sulforaphane. I personally think and I do think there's been some animal research with TBI, I mean and so far feign mostly preconditioning rather than treatment. So again, it's like well, I mean, if you're going to if you want a healthy lifestyle thing in your construction worker, or your fill in the blank, that's, you know,
Anna. I mean, anyone that drives our, I mean, you're at risk to some degree, right? Or bicycle bicycle. Yeah.
Around Stanford. We have, you know, I would say, people demonize motorcycles, people demonize a lot of things, but moving fast through space on a small object. Next to, a three thousand pound vehicle. I mean, we've lost we have a number of friends have died. We have known people with traumatic brain injury. I'm not against cycling or cyclists, but it is it's a risky sport by any stretch, so in
In things, like Moringa or eating my broccoli Sprouts, may be cooking them a little less than I'm currently cooking them putting on The Mustard Seed. Is there evidence that? Well, first of all, Nrf2 is expressed in neurons, right? So, those, those cells should be protect, are there other cells of the body that could possibly gain protection from these
Pathways, well, lungs for one, but, you know, just even in plasma cells. I mean, I think it's pretty Nrf2 is pretty.
Whatis Lee expressed Liber? So there's I mean there's there's so many animal studies that have looked at all those things. I try to kind of gravitate towards human one because it's a little a lot more relevant. But but I think, you know, overall like I mentioned, you know, DNA damage lower like 24 or 24, 34 percent lower in human blood cells after broccoli. Broccoli sprout, powder, supplementation, and I made a video on this like, years ago, 2016, maybe. And I think I have like, the references on
To exact amount. I can't remember to the video, but it was it's kind of an old videos to the 2016, but I also had jet on the podcast and he did talk about this. But, you know, it's also been shown in randomized, controlled trials, to help, treat autism, and autistic symptoms. And yet again, it's doing interesting things in the brain and I think if I think it does have something to do with the oxidative stress and the glutathione, which would be relevant for TBI treatment. It hasn't been shown empirically that that helps.
With treatment, but I do think someone could do that study. I think that it's should be done honestly, because it's a low-hanging fruit. I mean, if there's any impact and there is at least one preliminary study that glutathione is increased in the brain after humans are, you know, basically taking sulforaphane, so
which is really for people listening. That's so important because a number of compounds that people take in supplement form. Don't cross the blood-brain barrier or they get metabolized in ways that what's listed on the bottle almost becomes.
Relevant, for what your cells actually experience, that's very reassuring. We will get back to heat and cold in this theme that I tried to service by just find this too interesting to to diverge at this point from from these themes. So what other compounds or micronutrients do you place in the top tier of useful interesting?
There are animal studies may be there. Hopefully also some human studies. We've talked about a few. I know you've talked a lot about omega-3 fatty acids. So if you had to do your kind of top three, yeah, your superstars of nutrients for the brain and body sounds like we've got 11 set. What would you put in alongside
them omega-3, the Marine omega-3 fatty acids. So these are found in Marine types of, you know, animals fish, cold water, fish fatty fish.
So there's a there's three fatty acids. There's one from a plant. And and that's often referred to as a l.a. People call it short alpha-linolenic acid. And then there's a coat, I Cosa pentanoic acid, or EPA and doka hexanoic acid, which is DHA.
Yeah, basically has two of the most difficult words to pronounce right next to it. Oh, and spell right next to Ophthalmology, which if you can spell it, I know people who have appointments in Ophthalmology departments that don't how to spell off the Mala G little secret. There's a, there's an extra piano.
In there. So the AL a the I'm not going to attempt to for not pronounce it because your pronunciation was perfect a both of these two compounds and you sit on Marine sources, so fish. So sardines, Cod this sort of thing, but what about Krill? I've seen krill oil and there was a few years back, people were saying, Krill is a better source for Omega 3s. Then is fish oil. I took some krill oil capsules made me itch all over so I
stopped you have it.
Fish allergy. No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I'm not a big fan of shellfish. But I like, you know, I've always stirs every now and again or shrimp or something and feel, fine. So,
yeah, we can talk about sources. So Krill is a source mostly of a type of DHA, and EPA, that's in phospholipid form. So, it's a phosphatidylcholine omega-3 fatty acid, and that's different than most most of the. Well, if we're talking about fish oil.
Pants, that's a different story. But if you're talking about comparing fish to creating Krill, like we're talking about why would never eat Krill are we talking about the supplement? So it's a yes, I apologize.
Alemana Krill supplement versus fish oil, fish oil supplement. And if you if it fits in the conversation, talking about great sources of Omega-3s in their whole form. I've a bad feeling you're going to tell me sardines
reading through ART. Yeah. They're they're awesome. Anyway,
except for except for the taste
and and for the potential
Eminence Mercury. I think was want no show us. Yeah, it was Mercury and Joe is telling me about like he used to eat sardines. Every Joe Rogan was telling me that he used to eat sardines everyday and and then he had like really high mercury levels and I was really shocked because sardines are like, you know, low in the fish, you know, group. So there are the higher up you get like swordfish and sharks like really high Mercury because they're eating all the other fish, right, but I think some
Some Brands. And if you look at like consumerlab consumerlab, there's it's like a third party site that I'm not affiliated with, but I'll use them because they do a lot of analysis of different foods and supplements. And so you can look at like some of their sardines and they have like they have a list of like ones that are pretty decent. But anyways back to your question about fish oil supplements versus krill oil supplements. So the one of the major differences is the that fish oil supplements. If you get a high quality one,
It's in a triglyceride form. So your you've got like a glycerol backbone with Three fatty acids, and that's attached. And those are either DHA or the EPA and or if you have a lower quality fish oil supplement, then you have what's called ethyl Ester form. And typically. The reason for that is its, when fish oil is purified, its run through this column with alcohol or something. They cleave it off, the glycerol backbone, and then it's just kind of easier to
Leave it like that then like Reese terrifying, it which cost more money, so you can get it. An ethyl Ester form which isn't as bioavailable. And in fact, if you don't take it with food, you're going to be in trouble. You're not going to absorb much of it at all. Would you see this
on the packaging? Is it going to say? It's in this ethyl? Ethyl form.
Some official Browns will put it on their website, perhaps, on their packaging, but you most the time you'll have to dig for it on the website and or call them. But I think
For the most part ones that are like higher end. Will mark it at like triglyceride form and it's not that ethyl Esters bad. It just means take it with food. So so the one of the major prescription Omega-3s out there is both of them actually Lavazza, which is a mixture of DHA and EPA, as well as the cepa, which is a highly purified EPA. These are both prescribed by physicians to patients with hypertriglyceridemia. So high triglycerides, among other things, I think maybe dysregulation of
Lipids as well.
This is amazing. So for people, so these are prescription drugs that are essentially very high potency purified, Omega-3s, but they're given to people for lipid issues. So this is the treatment of issues with fat metabolism, by giving people fat. Yeah. It's just a really just want to push home again. I'm not carnivore. Keto or anything. I'm an omnivore but but to just push home, that we one thing that's so wonderful that you've done over the years that you continue to do is to move away from these very
Broad sweeping statements about, you know, fat is bad. I mean, here's a case where we're saying, fat is not only good. It can be used to combat issues with fat metabolism. And then there, you know, fats are not just one thing there, many things. So anyway, I just didn't want to put a little highlighter and a point of appreciation there and make sure that people are are sensitized. To the fact that if you hear, that fat is bad, you have to ask what kind of fat, right? And here, we're talking about these Omega-3s. Okay, so the triglyceride form
Can be taken with or without food and there's prescription forms. What? I can't, I don't know if I can get ahold of the prescription form unless you have my necklace, right? I have a friend with high triglycerides. No, it's a legal folks. Don't care, prescription drugs,
but what you talk to your doctor and you say I'm already taking this from, I mean, I don't know how it works. Anyway,
what's the dosage that you recommend people get? So one way or
another? All right. Okay, so the dosage that Physicians prescribe for high triglycerides.
Example is 4 grams a day
for grams of EPA
of. Yes, of the of asifa. I think, Lavazza is also prescribed at four grams a day and you can you can get either those from your physician. My father-in-law, just got one of them describe used to use. We were buying our own Omega-3 for years and years. It's like hey, you can actually get this in health insurance can cover it and it's really purified form, but you have to take it with food. That was the bottom line. I've totally gone on tangents, but like you're asking more interesting questions anyway,
so what?
Ali. I asked about mechanism and then I talk about protocols but in the
or the y, or the Y, but we haven't gotten there yet, but
I think that and we definitely will get there. But I think a number of people nowadays are just really excited about what they can do for their health. And so here, we're, we're just raising the importance of Omega-3s and then we'll definitely get to the why? And the underlying?
Yeah, I think for G is, I mean, and in fact, like, you know, Bill Harris, dr. Bill Harris is, he's just one of the Pioneers on omega-3 fatty.
Research, he was on our podcast, not, you know, last August. And he was saying the reason FDA chose that was literally just because how much they could get people to take like it. Like it wasn't like an upper and like, oh, this is not anything above that is unsafe. That wasn't the case. I mean, it was, it was, it was just purely like cost and like like, you know, compliance, you know, so like what they can get into a pill, the amount they can get and how many pills they can get people to take.
I'm smiling because
Our good friend, such and Panda at the Salk Institute, who's done a lot of important work on intermittent fasting and other incredible work on circadian rhythms Etc. When I was talking to him in preparation, for an episode on intermittent fasting. He, I said, why The 8 Hour feeding window and he said, well, the graduate student who ran, those studies had a partner. I think it was a girlfriend as I recall. Hope, I didn't get that backward and the partner said, listen, you can be in lab.
Ten hours a day, but you can't be in lab 14 hours a day if you want this relationship to work. And so, it was eight hours of feeding window plus some measurements and time to walk into the lab park, the car Etc. And so the 8 Hour, feeding window that everyone holds, so holy was actually just born out of this relationship between these two graduate students, you know, had they been single? I was single all through graduate school or most of it anyway, and I lived in the lab. So if it'd been me, we'd all be intermittent fasting. Would mean eating 14 hours a day. That was a joke. Not a good one, but just want to make
Claire, I'm joking, but the point that you're making is a really good one, that the 44 G amount is not a threshold based on anything, except the threshold of people's willingness to actually take the stuff. So and I think that's important for people to hear because so often we hear the eight hours feeding window, you know, four grams of EPA, you know, 150 minutes of cardio. And it's really a question of what you can reasonably do in a study.
So I take 4 grams a day. I take two in the morning two.
The morning and I take two Rams in the evening. I take my EPA in the morning and I take my DHA in the evening. Split them. I do. I don't know if I don't think it's necessary. Not necessarily. I'm I just happened to buy. I happen to get a certain fish oil supplement that's like separates them. And so, you know like Lavazza Lavazza is a great one and I was all like in one and it's easier. What
if someone doesn't have a prescription. So I take over-the-counter fish oil. I know I feel better because I've done the experiment of going on and off. I take the mainly for, I don't
Depression, but my mood is better. My joints feel better. I just feel better. And I like to think that my platelets are slipperier and, and they're, they're, you know, cruising through any little obstructions in my veins or arteries. That's the image I have in my head, but I don't have any data to support that part.
Yeah, I mean, so, I'm if you're asking for like, where do people get
these? Well, let's just look at the bottle and it says 2 grams per serving, but then I look and it's
50 milligrams of EPA right or 1000 milligrams of Epi. Let's it, half of it as EPA. Then, do I want to hit a threshold of EPA or threshold of of what's listed on the bottle right? On the, on the front of the bottle? And because my understanding is that we need to hit a threshold level of EPA in order to derive these important benefits.
I think to G is is a good threshold. Now, the international fish.
Oil standards ifs, oh, they have a website where they do third-party testing of a ton of different fish oil supplements from around the world and they measure the concentration of the omega-3 fatty acids in the actual supplement because nothing is ever what it says on the bottle, and then they also measure measure, contaminants. So, Mercury pcbs, dioxins, things that you'd find potentially and fish that are harmful to humans, and they also,
Mercury. And then oxidized fatty acid. So these omega-3 fatty acids are polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are extremely prone to oxidation. So, please keep your fish oil in the refrigerator because it's colder. Yeah. Yeah, they're extremely pronouns in the cupboard. So now I know that the the shelf life, you know, increased as lower oxidation. It makes perfect sense, right? Yeah. So anyways, they measure that and I typically like to look for, they give you a total oxidation number. It's called.
Toto, Toto, know, t, 0, t, 0, x 2. Tow talks is what we call it for short and I like it to be at the least under 10, ideally under six. It's really hard to find all the right mixtures of things, but people can go to this website and they can browse through the products. I have put together an Excel sheet, which I have a YouTube little screen cast that I'm yet to publish press the publish button on. But it basically, you have to go back and check and update because these are from different lot.
First, you know, the products they do have up to like 2027 or something. And so I've gone through and found my top picks of each High EPA Brands and hide, eh, eh Brands if I were to buy some, the ones that I would choose because of the low total oxidation and the high concentration of either EPA or DHA. Now, people can go and do this themselves. It just takes some work.
No, I'm glad that you did the work. I'm going to put up a tweet every week. No with you tagged, until this list is
Published online. Sorry, Rhonda, but I'm gonna do it. I know it's very sadistic of me but in service to the community and myself.
And I chose five brands from region. I try to choose. I try to find one in like Europe and one in Canada. So, there's great, a great selection of thank you. You ask that whether
I don't want to do that work and I trust you. So yeah, I try and get two grams per day of EPA. Yeah, from supplementation. I'll now put it in the refrigerator mood is better. I made that decision mainly based on the data that I'm aware of look.
At comparison of people doing that, anywhere from two to four grams of EPA per day, compared to ssris serotonin, selective serotonin reuptake Inhibitors and treatment of depression. And I don't want to take an SSRI if I don't have to, and fortunately, I don't have to. But the data, by my reader remarkable people, that take these things in sufficient doses, meaning, the epa's are able to get by with much lower dosages of ssris for depression relief, or in some cases to come off the other ssris completely.
The or avoid going on anti-depressant medication. Now, of course, this is not something people should Cowboy mental health issues are serious. But what other reasons I'd love your thoughts on that on that to help part and it. So maybe you could tell us, what are some things that getting two to four grams of EPA per day, is going to help within our brain and the rest of our body.
So, do you do you know, so I actually published a paper back in 2015, about the role of Omega-3 and vitamin D in
Depression, bipolar disorder, bipolar disorder schizophrenia, and impulsive behavior. But so, like, within that paper, like the doing background research, and this was a review article, by the way. I was just connecting
dots because I know I'm gonna I'm gonna grab, but I confess, I don't know the paper, but I love quality reviews because the references there in are so
useful. Well, there's a huge role for inflammation, the cause of inflammation and depression and you know, I think we did a short animated.
Video on this as well as years ago. Back when I was in publishing that that work where you know, people are injected with lipopolysaccharide. I mean, this is something that we're we're generating from our from our gut mostly from, you know, our gut permeability, which happens a lot endotoxin. It's also called, it's like, they're it's endotoxin lipopolysaccharide. It's basically the outer membrane of a bacterial cells when bacteria are DOT. Dye. So like when the immune cells and our gut come into contact with the bacteria because we drank
Alcohol five days in a row or whatever. We released endotoxin or something. Stressed us that we release endotoxin into our body and that causes inflammation. And so you can inject people with lipopolysaccharide and cause depressive symptoms. However, if you take those same cohort, of people give them EPA. And I think it was somewhere around 2 G and then inject him with lipopolysaccharide. We're establishing causation here, right? It totally the depressive symptoms versus the placebo. So the placebo was saline control. So there is this was a
Tseebo controlled because obviously hugely important for depression ameliorated the depressive symptoms that was caused by lipopolysaccharide.
Amazing. An LPS. Lipopolysaccharide is no joke, I years ago when I was working on thermal regulation, we would inject animals with LPS to induce fever. It is there's a the vagus nerve registers the president's of LPS signals to these particular hypothalamic areas and cranks up body temperature because basically it's a signal that the body is, in fact,
Right, amazing. So I will continue with my two grams per day. Maybe I'll wrap it up to four. I'm not doing the DHA separately if there's DHA in the same. Yeah, supplement. Is that okay? Yes.
Yeah. And and, you know, to kind of boy we have we got a lot of things to hit back on because you're one of your original questions was krill oil versus fish oil and DHA. Yeah. DHA specifically is it's, you know, in Fausto.
Bad form it. It's more bioavailable. So our bodies, you know, if you're comparing exact quantity or concentration, you know, and triglyceride form versus phospholipid form. You will get more in your plasma cells, or in your plasma, plasma cell in your, in your plasma with krill oil. However, krill oil supplements are so low dose. Like, I mean, good luck getting 2 grams of Omega-3,
23 from krill oil and also krill oil supplements are notoriously rancid. I don't know, for whatever reason.
That's what made me itchy all over.
I think they're just, I like I haven't found a good krill oil supplement. I prayed pretty much stay away from it. And if you smell it too, I mean, it's just like, like it just smells rancid. So but the thing is, and I also published a paper on this back in 20.
19 or yeah, something like that about DHA and phospholipid form, getting into the brain, in a through a different mechanism than DHA and triglyceride form. And so it's going through a transporter, called the MF s D2 a transporter and I think it's very relevant for people with an apoe4 allele. So I kind
of with an Alzheimer's acceptable,
right? So, so, like 25 percent of the population has an allele in a gene called apoe4 and
Basically, it is a but we, but the for is referred to, as the bad kind of version of it. This is something in our blood, our bodies. It's also in our brain and if people have one of these versions, if they got one from their mom, or their dad, they have a two-fold increase risk for Alzheimer's disease, if they get to, which is much, it's much more, it's less common. I think it's like two percent of the population has. Some he has two alleles, but they have like a 10 or 11 fold increased risk of Alzheimer's disease. So, there is a role for
Good form DHA in the brain, but you also make phospholipid DHA inside your body and you can do that by taking in more triglyceride form. So 2 G like the magic more 2 grams or more is the magic number, I think so. So kind of back to like the wife or fish oil and I personally think it is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory things, dietary lifestyle things that we can, we can get easily.
To be easily. That is it's going to powerfully modulate. The way you think the way you feel and the way you age and a variety of different.
Types of studies kind of led me to that conclusion. A variety of, you know, observational studies. So there's been lots of work by dr. Bill Harris and his collaborators looking at what it's called, the omega-3 index. So, this is actually the omega-3 level in red, blood cells. So, red blood cells turn over about every hundred and twenty days. So it's a, it's a long-term marker of Omega-3 status. This is very different from 99.9% of any study. You see or any lab?
You go to, to get your omega-3 levels tested, you're getting your plasma phospholipid levels tested, which is kind of like, you can think of it as what. Did I eat a couple days before I had fish Maya. Maga three levels are great. But did you eat fish like that every week or was it like, you know, was like, you went out to dinner. So it's not a great biomarker for long term, Omega 3 status. It's kind of like the, you know, fasting blood glucose levels versus the hba1c which is like a long term marker, right? Of your of your
Blood glucose level. So the omega-3 index. He's done a variety of studies observational studies. So for people listening, these are studies that are obviously flawed because they're not establishing causality there. You know, you're looking at people's Lifestyles but in the sit in the case of Bill Harris has work. He's measuring something. So he's measuring the omega-3 index and he's measuring Omega 3 and x and people. And then looking at their mortality risk, for example, their cardiovascular disease risk and
He is found is that most first of all, standard American diet, has omega-3 index of 5% Japan by contrast has an omega-3 index of around 10 to 11% big, big difference there. And they also have about a five year, increase life expectancy compared to people in the US.
And I think that's mainly due to their fish intake Seafood into what he showed
was. I think it's a big part of it. I mean, you can't always say it's the only
Nothing, but what he showed in his data was that in and I think it was Framingham study where he, he looked at the omega-3 and next and people that had a omega-3 index of 4 percent or lower. So close to what the standard American is a little bit lower. They had a five-year decreased life expectancy compared to people that had an 8% omega-3 index. And so big difference there, right? Five for five years, life expectancy. But here's the really interesting thing. Andrew. He also
It's smokers and smokers and their omega-3 levels. And so, we stratified it. Right? And he found smokers that had no Amega 3. We're like the worst of all. I mean, it was like, it was just like worse, right? We all know smoking is bad for us and we'll take take years off, our life expectancy. But smokers that had the high level like smokers that were taken their fish oil or eating fish or whatever. It was. They were doing to get him up to 8%. They had the same life expectancy as non-smokers with the Aloha, Mega three index. Well, right.
Right, well, and that's, that's amazing. And it's also amazing to me that people still smoke cigarettes, but I see a lot of people vaping and I and I'm, and I know a lot of people consume cannabis right? People love as there been any studies of specifically, a vaping or people smoking marijuana and like all cause mortality
and seen those I haven't seen. Those are
not motivated enough to come in as research subjects. That was, that was again a poor joke.
It is hard to study, people marijuana use. Unless I'm told by my colleagues that study this stuff, unless you offer people marijuana in which case they'll do it. But again, they're actually not very good research subjects in all seriousness because they are not very motivated or consistent and they forget their appointments. So that's incredible. And you mentioned that the data on pollution related to the plant compounds earlier. So it's almost like these things are again are acting in a reparative
way.
Mega threes are I mean there they are resolving inflammation. There like blunting inflammation there. They're doing so many different like they affect so many different parts of the inflammatory pathway, which is I think it plays a huge role in the way. We age. The way our brain ages the way we feel our mood, just our joints, all that and so it's it's amazing but it's not you know,
I love fish oil. I feel better when I take it. I tried to eat some fatty.
A couple times a week. I do want to just touch on food sources for a moment. First of all, are there plants that are rich in Omega-3s and second by, I have some friends who are really into meat and I like me a lot. My dad's Argentine, but I don't eat very much of it. I try knee high Quality Meats and relatively limited amounts, but I do it pretty often, but I've been told by these sources of a
Reasonable Authority. That if an animal grazes on really good grasses, for instance, that the meat can contain a lot of Omega-3s which in principle makes sense based on this omega-3 index. Because you're telling me that a lot of it. This omega-3 is sequestered into the red blood cells. So if I'm eating high quality grass fed meat and the grasses had Omega-3s, do the my steaks have Omega 3s or no,
so, there was a study published that compared conventional meat, so meat, that is the that
Animals are fed, you know, corn or soy, or whatever it is, which is
terrible. Yeah, for animals and people, as far as I can tell, I'm sure I'll get I'll get some attacks, but that's okay. I won't read those comments. The the, again a joke. I read all the comments but the it seems to me that the these animals have to get either be taking fish oil or eat plants that are very rich in Omega-3s in order for the meat to actually contain sufficient
Omega-3s. So the me.
Meet comparing the conventional meat to the grass-fed organic, pasture-raised, cows or cattle. There were higher levels of alpha linoleic acid and a la is it can be converted into EPA and DHA, but the conversion is very inefficient and very dependent on a variety of factors. Including genetics, genetics is a huge, you know, regulator like some people.
I can do it much better others. Like you're getting like five percent of conversion to EPA. Estrogen is a major regulator of making that more efficient and, and makes sense. Because pregnancy, when your estrogen just goes through the roof. I mean, these omega-3 fatty acids, play a very important role in brain development. So you're, you know, women are supposed to be converting any l.a. They can into the longer chain, omega-3 fatty acids, right? So so
Estrogen does affect that but I would say plant sources. So if you're looking for the AL a plant sources would be, you know, walnuts flax seeds. Those are probably the highest but if you're, if a person is a vegan or a vegetarian, their best bet is to actually get micro algae oil and you can supplement with micro algae oil because microalgae do, it's they do make the the DHA and so that would be a better source for
People that are that are vegetarian and vegan rather than doing the the flaxseed oil, because that conversion efficiency, you know, the enzymes that convert a la into EPA and DHA. Again, there's it's
inefficient. And then for people that eat fish sardines, you said salmon, salmon, and you have to eat the skin as I understand
it have to be okay, it's good. It's rich with with oil. Yeah, and and and the reason I say like, like I /, I think the best would be wild Alaskan. Salmon.
Amin versus a farm raised because of farm raised again, they're feeding them. They're feeding them corn. They're feeding them like green and stuff and then they give them astaxanthin. So astaxanthin is a carotenoid. It's the carotenoid that's in things. Like Krill Crustaceans that make their red pigment.
It's also being used. Now, as a supplement and there's a prescription form to try and rescue some age-related vision loss because of the, the role of the vitamin A pathway and photoreceptors.
Yeah. Well, you know, actually the correct
Noise themselves, so like lutein and zeaxanthin. They're really good at sequestering singlet oxygen, which is some damaging right to that as
we age the because the retinal cells cells, the IRS, so metabolically active, they accumulate a lot of reactive oxygen species and mitochondrial repair and limiting reactive oxygen species. Is a major theme of trying to rescue Vision. I think. Yeah, so that is that's a whole other podcast and story. There's some really interesting data now on the use of red light.
Light to try and Trigger these Pathways from you plunge. That's my good friend of many years, an amazing scientist, Glenn Jeffries Lab at University College. London. I'm, we should talk about that at some
point. It's not today. That study like 2020, was it not able s? So do they? They yeah,
it's looking real. I mean, you know,
it's there that are cautious.
They're appropriately British and cautious about it. You know, I've always joke. If those Studies have been done over here, everyone would already know about it. Glenn is a very conservative guy, but they've done this stuff. Now, in pigs, and
In models, and now also to studies in humans. It's looking pretty pretty interesting. So sardines but also anchovies. I'm an all I'd by the way, I hate all the food items that I'm describing. I can barely tolerate salmon. I don't like fish at all. Actually, I like live soil and fish tanks. When I was a kid. I just don't know. I find fish unless it's in sushi for my find it absolutely repulsive and I don't know why I probably have some
mutations. Do raw fish is actually higher in Mercury than
cooked. Okay. Well, that's good. Now. I don't really like sushi that much.
Anyway, you're giving me great reasons to not eat fish. But except I should eat these other fish sources or supplement more heavily. That's the message. I
made certain my everyday. My like first meal almost is like a can of sardines and an avocado with
like avocado is good.
Yeah with a little bit of lemon and then some little hot sauce like, you know,
just avocado
omega-3's. Avocado is a very good in mono and saturated fat. It's not really high in polyunsaturated fat, omega-3. Really. I mean, it's either the, the
Jamie Pierre, that's in the Marines sources, fish or its plant a la source, which is like the flaxseed or the walnuts.
So it's rough. I mean, all these companies now are making these plant-based products that taste like meat my wishes that they would just make a fish that tastes like a steak. But that's
fish come out, albino. The ones that they farm raised because they don't eat any of the joking. I don't want to genetically modified fish, that tastes like a steak
all that, you know, I love the taste of sake.
The point here is that, if you don't, if you, if one doesn't see themselves regularly consuming these fish, these fish sources of Omega-3s. It seems to me that the only way to really get them is from supplementation
and supplementation is a good way to get a high dose and to get back to your dose point. There was a couple of studies that that basically, you know, I think there was that there's some way they showed that people that are in the
4%, omega-3 index range in order to get to the eight percent, right? The Five-Year increased life expectancy. If we're comparing the two groups was to supplement with, at least 2 G. It was about 2 grams a day and that and I think it was a little bit less if it was triglyceride form, but I think to G is a good safe number. So most Americans that are not eating a lot of fish and they're not supplementing a probably around four to five percent omega-3 index, and to get to the 8%. And I think that's a good
Empirical way of thinking about it, right? Okay. Well, I want to get to that 8%. By the way. I'm almost 16 percent omega-3 and it was going
to ask about about testing so so we're can somebody measure where and how can somebody measure their omega-3 index, which again, just to remind people as the essentially, the percentage of Omega-3s that you have in your blood with the caveat that the omega-3 index will be heavily biased by what you ate in the previous
day's, not omega 3 and X. Okay,
so you make owners
I thought you said in red blood cells, if I ate salmon two days ago, my omega-3 index is going to go up. No, that was plasma. I misunderstood The
Plaid. So most people are measuring like if you look at a lot of studies and honestly, Andrew, I think a lot of the reason for conflicting data is because people are measuring plasma omega-3 levels. Okay, put that the phospholipids. It's in a phospholipid. Right? So, your phospholipids are carrying thing. These are lipoproteins. Like you're carrying things like omega-3 and triglycerides and stuff, and shuttling them around. So, the Omega
The index is actually in the red blood cells and red blood cells. Take 120 days to turn over. So if you're going to do a baseline test, if you want to know before supplementing what your level is, you have to wait to 120 days before doing the second test after supplementing to know how much you want to because the that's how long it takes for your red blood cell to turn over. So the omega-3 index, Bill Harris has a company that he co-founded is called Omega Quant.
And they measure the omega-3 index. They have a variety of different index test. You can do like a basic one or a little more advanced was from a blood draw. It. It's a little blood spot thing. Yeah, and you know, like he uses the money to, like, funnel back into doing lipid research. So, he's like out there doing all sorts of interesting studies on Omega-3s, is great. But I, the Omega 3 and X is great. I think that honestly more people and more researchers should be using it. Because the conflicting data, all we'd always comes down to
What were measuring the sensitivity of it, you know, are we even measuring anything? So, you know, you're giving someone 500 mg of DHA and you don't see any effect. Well, did you measure what their levels were and did you measure the amount of Omega-3, indexed, you know, there's all sorts of problems with randomized, controlled, trials, and I think that it just need to like, as scientists. We need to come together and like make some progress. I mean, you know, let's all talk to each other. Let's let's, let's figure things out like this. This
Is out there, it should be used. It should be used not just by bills group. I like
everyone. Yeah well and I'm learning so much from you and I agree. We need more collaboration. I've always enjoyed really fruitful collaborations in my lab at Stanford. And collaborating is just so much more fun online. There seems to be a bias more towards creating silos as opposed to Bridges, but I appreciate that you bring up the need for more collaboration and and knowing which measures are best. And in this case that now,
Thank you for the clarification. I understand this Omega 3 and X is going to be best. You mentioned you. So you're basically what now? I mean I look at you. I think you are sixteen percent
omega-3 and dolphins are 19%. I'm almost is that your goal, you're trying to
get there is to the interesting. Actually. They should probably do something. We were trying to achieve the Omega-3 ratio of the your favorite species. Now that we've covered a bit of how to get these things into one system, depending on what one eats etcetera and some of the better measurements.
How is omega-3 and some of these other related lipids, how are they having these positive effects in my mind? And this is, this is incredibly Elementary, but my understanding is that at some level, they're making platelets more slippery. Is that true or not? I hope I'm happy to be wrong. How is it possibly impacting my mood? Is it through the synthesis of membrane on neurons that allows neurons to release more transmitter like serotonin and dopamine. I mean, what are some of the
Purported, reported and known
mechanisms. I think some of the the most well, known mechanisms. Do you have to do with the, the omega-3 fatty acids being very powerful Regulators of the inflammatory process in some way, shape, or form, whether that has to do with resolve ins that are produced. So these are from the metabolites of like DHA. For example, resolve ins play a role in resolving inflammation. Like you want your inflammatory.
Ponce to be activated when it's supposed to be but you want to resolve that inflammation and inflammatory response in a timely manner, right? And resolve ins help do that. And so resolve ins are one. And then there's these, specialized Pro mediating molecules the spms, that also help resolve the inflammation. There's, like, you mentioned the leukotrienes and prostaglandins, and these things are being affected by EPA and they do affect platelets and platelet aggregation. And they, you know, they do affect that whole pathway as well. And so, there's,
Just and there's, you know, I think there's just so many different ways and inputs. And so when we talk about inflammation, honestly it that that's a big general term, but you're talking about when you're talking about serotonin release, you know, at the level of neurons, you know, we know that these inflammatory molecules cross the blood-brain barrier and I just mentioned to go about injecting people lipopolysaccharide and causing depressive symptoms. You know, it's known that that omega-3 actually specifically EPA
Is able to help serotonin inflammation inhibits the release of Serotonin. And so EPA is actually able to blunt inflammatory responses along with DHA as well. DHA. Does that through solvents and stuff and this then helps more serotonin, be released because you're, you're not having so much inflammation getting into the brain and affecting serotonin release, right? That's one mechanism and then another would be well, DHA itself has been shown. It's it's a very important fatty acid that makes up cell, membranes, many cell,
Including in our neurons. And as you very well know, Andrew the structure and function of receptors of Transporters, these membrane-bound proteins on the surface of our cells, including neurons are affected by the membrane fluidity, you know, like how rigid, and how fluid the cell membrane is and DHA plays a role in that. And so, for example, an animal studies if you make an animal deficient in DHA, their serotonin receptors, dopamine receptors are affected because
because the structure of them is affected through the fluidity of the membrane. And so, I think that's another mechanism and, and I'm talking sort of General because I'm not a neuroscientist.
Nobody makes perfect sense. I mean, we know, for instance, neuroplasticity and the almost always involves the recruitment of more receptors or an improvement in some feature of receptor to neurotransmitters, and they literally move laterally in the membrane. That kind of float around like little rafts. Sometimes they.
In fact, in lipid rafts. And so it makes perfect sense that these molecules like DHA, which are part of the structural fat of the neuron because of course, the outsides of neurons are basically fat, not just the myelin that people have heard of but the actual membranes that if getting that right? And you wouldn't want it as rigid as concrete, but you wouldn't want it as soft as need to come up with something here. It's like gooey stuff. The kids play with, it's like that goo. Anyway, there's a yeah, it's disgusting and it's too soft. To be a member.
Rain for a neuron.
That's okay because machine someone I put it on something,
put in the comments and tell me what that disgusting gooey stuff is you don't want your neurons to be that gooey and yet you don't want them to be like concrete
either the bounce. It's
about and in mentioning DHA. I'm just going to realize I'm backtracking, but I want to make sure that we close all the hatches for people. We talked a lot about EPA but our food sources of DHA that you find particularly attractive either.
Taster by potency for DHA. What what are just a few that we could throw out? Because I am a, I am aware that there are supplements where you can get a nice ratio of EPA to DHA or you take them separately as you do, but if I want to make sure that I'm getting enough DHA. What do I need to be? Sure. I'm eating on a regular
basis. Well, the fish is packaging, the DHA and EPA, and the ratio. And but I also do eat salmon Roe, which is very salty, and it's a, it's a really high source of the faucet of phosphatidylcholine.
DHA that we tested fish eggs. It is. Yeah. Yeah, and actually, I did that. I
like, for some reason, do you? Yeah, I'll eat. So I'm discovering something about myself. This is, was not meant to be nutrition nutritional psychotherapy, but you're doing that for me. Anyway, I'm discovering that. Yeah, I like eating embryonic fish. I just don't like eating the actual fish. Okay. Well, okay. So fish eggs are okay, there caviar
beads caviar. Yes, and and that's a good source of the phospholipid form. And I was consuming that a lot because I wanted to get the phospholipid form.
It's actually really good. There's been some animal studies and piglets and rodents as well showing that consuming phospholipid DHA. During fetal. Brain development, like gets wait like 10 times more DHA in the brain. Again. It's
makes sense based on fetal development. So do I need to inject by Beluga caviar stuff can get pretty expensive at $200, and
10 need to, okay. I think it's a, it's a matter of preference and
You're supplementing with your your 2 to 4 grams of fish oil. I mean that you're going to get phospholipid form anyway, because your body's going to make it. Okay,
I've seen some containers of what I assume to be quality fish eggs that are not at the caviar level. You can find in the better grocery stores that aren't super expensive, right? I wouldn't dip as low as to go eat. For instance, like fishing bait, like, when we were kids, we used to go fishing. You put the fish egg on the thing. That's probably not good. Although it's good enough for the fish fry, okay.
We have joking here, folks. I'm just trying to protect you from yourselves. Don't get any crazy ideas about eating fishing bait. Okay, so that's great to know. So, we have these plant based compounds. We have the Omega 3s. So you PA DHA, and then you mentioned, there's a third category. What would you place in your third category of foods or supplement based nutrients that our health brain and or body Health can really benefit
from? I mean, I think the most obvious would be vitamin D.
Which is actually as you know with steroid hormone that we produce when we're in this sun depending on the time of year. We can make it in our skin and depending on how much melanin we have on our skin or whether or not wearing sunscreen or how old we are. It's a very there's a sliding scale on how efficient that process is. And it sort of, as I
understand there's an inverse relationship with the darker, the more darker, the darker your skin is naturally. The more vitamin D. You need to consume. Is that
right?
The darker, your skin is the harder, it is. So there was a study out of the University of Chicago. This is several years ago where they looked at African Americans and compared African Americans to Caucasians with light skin fair skin and how well they could make Vitamin D from sun exposure and how long they had to be in the sun to make x amount. Right? And it turns out that African Americans with darker darker pigmentation, which protects them from the burning rays of the sun. It's a natural. Sunscreen had to stay in the
The sun like six times as long as someone with none of that natural sunscreen, so I think the, the take-home there is, you know, a lot of people with darker skin living in sub-Saharan Africa, or people living in India with darker skin or in the Philippines, you know, these equatorial regions where there's there. You tend to see darker skin could because it's protection from the burning Rays. Another taoiseach. They are in the sun more, right? Yeah, and they're getting more vitamin D, but people that may be moved to United States.
Minnesota or in a place where, you know, UVB radiation isn't, you know, getting to the atmosphere or 12 months out of the year? It's only getting there for months. For example, or even living in our modern day Society where people just don't go outside anymore. I mean, we're inside where our laptops in school were at work when our cubicle whatever so supplementation does play a major role not only for people with you know, darker skin that aren't outside all the time, but for every one seventy percent of the u.s. Population has inadequate vitamin,
D levels, 70 of the whole amazing. U.s. So this is everyone and and so I think that insufficient levels defined as less than 30 nanograms per milliliter and and that's sort of defined by the the endocrine Society looking looking looking at a lot of different aggregate studies. And all-cause mortality. For example, there's been a lot of different meta analyses of all-cause. Mortality studies where vitamin D levels are really seem to be
Between 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter. And so in order to get to that level, if you are not outside all the time. I live in Southern California, where you're always outside, without sunscreen on, I always wear sunscreen because I'm trying to protect my skin from so many wrinkles and stuff. Right. But also skin cancer is you know, somewhat of an issue as well. So so so basically the point is that vitamin D is a steroid hormone, meaning it actually binds to a receptor.
And another receptor dimerizes with it, vitamin the retinoid receptor and that complex goes into the nucleus of a cell, where your DNA is, and it recognizes little sequences of DNA called vitamin D. Response elements are called vdr. He's their specific sequences of DNA that this complex vitamin D. Receptor bound the vitamin. D receptor goes inside and recognizes and turns on a whole. Host of jeans, turns off, a whole host of jeans. I mean, this is, this is important stuff.
Like imagine 70% of the population, having insufficient testosterone writes a steroid hormone,
which might we might be headed there, but probably not. No, I think that it's names are very important. And I think that one of the issues is that vitamin D is called vitamin D. It's not called DHEA or you know, variant blah, blah blah. It doesn't sound like a hormone. I also, I'm glad that you're mentioning skin as the major kind of interface between the environment and the
Vitamin D synthesis, because a lot of people think of skin as just a protective sheath around us or something to Adorn ourselves with earrings or tattoos or whatever but skin obviously serves those roles, but the skin is an endocrine organ. It has a capacity to make things that impact hormones and to make hormones. There's this beautiful study out this last year where this took place in over, in Israel, where they had people get outside for 20 or 30 minutes a day, three times a week, exposing a culture.
Acceptable yet, you know, substantial amount, or their skin, during that time and saw big increases in testosterone and estrogen. And this is through a karate in a site linked pathway involving p53 that had a bunch of this was done in humans, but they did some knockout studies in parallel and what this study told me or reminded me is that skin is an endocrine organ. So the idea that son could trigger the activation of production of a hormone is really interesting and makes total sense. So when vitamin D gets into cells and it's binding
These vdr. He's what what sorts of things are they triggering? So like for testosterone, we know it's going to trigger protein synthesis muscle growth, tendon, strength, Etc, with estrogen. It's going to be a keeper neurons. Going your joints feeling good. I always remind people that, by the way, because it's guys are always seem to want to increase your testosterone and reduce their estrogen. Just remind people, if you reduce your estrogen guys, your libido will plummet to near zero. Don't crush your estrogen. It also makes you stupid.
If you're not already stupid it will make you stupid. So, estrogens vitally important for males and females when vitamin D gets into cells, what sorts of things is it
stimulating. Okay. So first of all, it's regulating more than five percent of the protein encoded Human Genome more than 4. And this was, you know, I say more than because when I was looking at this data, really in-depth back in starting and you know, 2012 to 2014, it was that
And then it's now grown. But one of the important things that you'll find interesting that I published on back in 2014, was that I had gone through this this big published database where someone had, you know, published all these jeans. They found beauty. Are he's in and basically I found that tryptophan hydroxylase one and tryptophan hydroxylase to was on there. And so then I started looking at the sequence and is doing some in silico work. And it turns out that the vdr, he's
You can hydroxylase to. So, for people listening. Tryptophan. Hydroxylase is an enzyme that converts tryptophan into serotonin. So tryptophan is what we, an amino acid that we get from our food. You convert serotonin, you convert tryptophan into serotonin into the gut in the gut, but you also do it in the brain. However, serotonin does not cross the blood-brain barrier. So tryptophan has to get into your brain and then you have to convert it to serotonin in your brain. Well, the enzyme that does that in your brain,
NG is called tryptophan. Hydroxylase to, and it's activated by vitamin D. The one in the gut is actually tryptophan. Hydroxylase one, some of my, my published work hypothesize that. It might actually be repressed by vitamin D because it has a sequence. The sequence itself, this 12 nucleotide sequence can determine in to some degree whether it's going to be activated or turned off. And so like I was able to kind of look at that and think oh, maybe this and that. And so since then there have been some groups that have
Confirmed more with in Vivo and, or in vitro studies, is I, mine was all in silicone, all that stuff. But anyways, so serotonin a really important one, but most people, I mean, this is regulating our immune immune cell immune system. It's regulating our blood pressure, you know, all that, that water retention, you know, I mean bone, of course homeostasis 5% more than 5%. I mean, I can't tell you like so
much. I mean and was 70.
Percent of the u.s. Population deficient. I'm beginning to think that this could be the linchpin and a number of really important issues. So, supplementing. Vitamin D3 is what? I, normally, here's the, I do, I take, I think I end up taking 5,000 IU's, sometimes 10. I use a vitamin D3 per day, just done that for a long time. And I've had my levels tested in, they're in range, but I have a family member. I'll just mention this. I have a family member who was not feeling well.
Kind of feeling off a little load. I had some digestive issues. This went on a long period of time was taking on my recommendation, 15,000. I use of D3 and was still deficient in D3 now. Takes and I'm not suggesting anyone do. This is a special case, perhaps but no, chronic illness that were aware of needs to take. 30,000. I use per day in order to bring their D3 range, just into normal, which is to me, is striking because they eat quite, well, they're healthy.
Wait at cetera, but it and it's made a tremendous difference in terms of their mood. Now, of course, is correlative. Now, they feel better. They're doing it. Who knows are probably also getting outside more, but I mean, I think people need to get tested for, they need to get their D3 levels tested. But where, where, and what is a good starting range for people to think about D3, supplementation? And again, foods that can increase D3,
so, vitamin D3 is a good way to supplement with it. Their vitamin D2 would be a plant source.
Often find it as fortified in like foods. Like milk. Usually D2. There's been a
chance to drink milk, besides kids out here. It's like, you can't find cow's milk. I'm get all the lot
Mills that you're getting oil. Yeah, one their fortified a nose as well. Oh, they are. Are they are? Yeah, the Fortified and I have a hard time finding. No note milk and all that stuff. Yeah. They're there in all that stuff. Vitamin D is naturally to some degree in fatty fish. Like, you know, like you think about,
Cod liver oil, right. It's like has vitamin D, but it's not. You're not going to correct a deficiency with eating writing with eating fish for your vitamin D. Like you're either going to correct it with sun exposure being in the right area, having the right amount of sun and being the right age because as you get older, you become very inefficient at doing that, converting vitamin D, making vitamin D3 in your skin.
That's probably what was going on here because this person is getting up in there.
There's a lot of single nucleotide polymorphism my morphisms. We talked about apis.
For previously, but there's a variety of genes that people have very common actually. In fact, I've had many people that have had to do done that exact same thing. So, measuring your vitamin D levels before, and after supplementation is the only way you're going to figure that out, right? Very important. If you don't measure it, like, you don't know. Like, you know, you can't know what you don't measure. So, so, there's a variety of snips that basically make that conversion inefficient. And in fact, there have been
A lot of these mendelian randomization study. So these are studies where people scientists will look at common Snips people that have these common variations of a gene that's a little more than one percent of the population. So it's not a random mutation. It's actually found in a sizable percent of the population and then they've looked at various outcomes and a lot of times they'll look at genes that are also involved in some kind of Lifestyle factors. So vitamin D and Snips that basically
The conversion of vitamin either vitamin D precursor and to D3 or in D3 into 25. Hydroxy vitamin D, or into the act of steroid hormone, which is 125 hydroxy vitamin D, and there's a variety of different steps that show people. And so you're not looking at vitamin D levels at all. You're looking at just this nips and you know, if they have it, there have low vitamin D. Okay. So it's really a way of doing a beautifully randomized, controlled trial, with an observational study because your
You're not biased, you know, vitamin D levels are also associated with health people that are have higher vitamin D are either outside more than more physically active or they're aware of their health and their supplementing, right? So you always have to worry about that. When you're when you're doing an observational super dealing around position is beautiful for that reason where you now just random people are randomly have these genes and it's not like there's no health status. Like if you have the snip like your friend like you're a family member was healthy and all that, you know, they were healthy and yet they couldn't get their D levels up, right? So,
These mendelian randomization Studies have found that people that can't convert into the, the precursor the 25 hydroxy vitamin D, which is usually what's measured. It's the most stable form of vitamin D in the body. They have a higher all-cause mortality. If they can't do it. So people with, you know, that don't have it have a lower all-cause mortality. They have a higher respiratory related mortality. They have a higher cancer related mortality. So, to me now, why did I get on this rant? Oh, because your front your family member.
So basically they also are more likely to get multiple sclerosis. This is all been done with mendelian randomization. And so it really does Hammer home the importance of measuring. Your vitamin D levels and being being very proactive about that. I mean you can you can do it, get it done. Anyway, your doctor will do it, you ask them to do it, you know, so I'm supplementation wise, typically, if you don't have one of those Snips for, for the most part, taking 1000, IU's of vitamin D will raise blood levels by around 5 Ng.
Per ml. So let's say you're deficient your 20 nanograms per milliliter, and you want to get to 40, you're going to need at least 4,000. I use. If you're normal, don't have any of these Snips that change your metabolism of vitamin D. Right? Does it
matter when you take it, relative to sun exposure, time of day with, or without food?
I've seen some not-so-great preliminary evidence, suggesting maybe time of day is important. I don't think it real. Like, I can't
Don't seem to, you know, to find anything that really suggests because like the for it to actually be converted into the hormone mean, it's stored just relax, the steroid hormones are slow and yeah, it's not like immediate thing. Right? So like, you know, maybe we'll get some new data. That's like otherwise, but I just don't. Yeah, I
it simplifies the problem anyway, so for people who are going to be stubborn and not, get their D3 levels test or their D levels tested and simply say, oh, I'll just take some D3.
Me by the way until I got tested I through 5000, IU's into the mix and figured. Well, it's not going to kill me. It'll bring my vitamin D levels up. And I realize, that's a bit of a course way to approach it. But, you know, I feel fine and I'm still breathing an ambulatory. So is, is that reasonable 1,000 to 5,000, IU's for most people will be reasonably safe again. We're not making just assuming that people are going to just jump to it without the blood test.
Of course. I think that if we, if we, if we look
Look at the the the literature the scientific literature. It is extremely hard to get like hypercalcemia, which would be the major concern with really high levels of vitamin D3 supplementation. I mean, we're talking like hundreds of thousands of IU a day for a long time. So 100's of thousands. Yes. Yes. Now the the upper tolerable intake was set by the medicine Institute to be 4,000. Just it was just like the safe. It was kind of like one of those things.
Where it's safe, I personally take 5,000 IU's a day as well. And you know, my levels really hover around 50, Nano grams per mil and I do out. You know, I don't put sunscreen on like all the time. Like I do put on my face and I wear a hat but like some of my skin is being exposed by do make it, you know, from the Sun as well. But
I'm glad you brought up the fact that you keep arms exposed if you because in these studies that I mentioned before looking at sun exposure on skin and increase.
Has in other hormones, testosterone, estrogen. Mainly it was it became clear from looking at those data that the amount of skin that you expose is important, which makes perfect sense. Once you hear that, but I think most people are thinking, oh, I'm out in the sun. But are you wearing shorts and a t-shirt or are you wearing a sweatshirt? And it's a hoodie or, you know, are you, are you all covered up out in the sun? Well, that might be great for setting your circadian rhythm by way of light, to Through The Eyes because that's the primary mechanism for that. But seems to me that the more of your body.
That you can safely and appropriately, please, folks, appropriately exposed to the Sun, the more vitamin D. You're going to create, right? So laying out in on your back deck in shorts and a t-shirt with arms exposed, and legs expose is a very different stimulus than walking around in jeans and a sweatshirt. Absolute, right? Okay. Yeah. Okay, especially if your sunscreen on your face, I know it almost seems like, trivially simple, but I'm not sure that people are used to thinking about their skin as a interface.
To create these hormones. Yeah, so surface area
Matters, by the way, you know, there have been studies looking at people that are deficient in vitamin D. In this case. It was African Americans. That were given a 4000 IU A Day, vitamin D supplement to bring them back to sufficient levels. And this was that this was a smaller smaller study than I would like, but It reversed their epigenetic aging by like three years because again, it's a hormone.
It's regulating more than 5% of your protein, encoding Human Genome. There was, there's been studies. Looking at Vitamin D, receptor knockout mice, and I use this a lot in my presentations. When I'm talking about vitamin D and Longevity, but if you look at these animals, the vitamin D receptor, as I mentioned earlier, vitamin D binds to the receptor and then it complexes with the retinoid receptor. And they go into the nucleus. Has a complex and reg you turn on and turn off genes. Well, if you get rid of that receptor, which is what you can do in animal studies. You can just
You can sort of determine like what effects there will be with no vitamin D. Right? Like what, how do you study? No, no vitamin D. And so what was found was that these animals and if in fact, I don't think it was a complete knockout or, you know, because I think it might be embryonic lethal, but somehow, some high pony.
Yes, which is basically geek-speak for a gene is very is ridiculously reduced, and its function, number and function. Number of people know what I mean, but but isn't eliminated completely.
Yeah, right. Well, these animals, if you look at
After the age of four months, I mean the mice look like I made the their accelerated aging, their wrinkle. They have no hair. I mean, they just I mean their lifespan lifespan shorter. I mean, they just they you can look at this animal and not know anything about my sore work with them and be like that animal. Looks like it's, you know, of course my slave spends only like two two and a half years, but like 500 years old
right now. Looks like it went to graduate school twice. Yeah, actually graduate schools. A lot of fun. I like to think I age backwards and
At school, which is not true. I look at the photos. I definitely aged forward you. On the other hand. Look exactly the same way. You did 10 years ago. I'm not saying that to flatter you but it's absolutely true. I mean, the data or the data, it's remarkable. So I think it's I'm definitely going to try and get my omega-3 percentage up there. I'm not going to, you know, hinge it all on that, but clearly you're doing a lot of things, right. So, if I'm taking vitamin D3, I still need to get out into the sun correctly. Okay. I think a lot of people don't know that.
At least I have family members that have been a little bit resistance. Like, I take my vitamin D. So I don't need to get outside as much. I think people are really afraid of getting out into the sun because they're worried about melanomas and and I'm, as to be honest. I'm ascared of sunscreen as I am of melanoma like that. Some of the things in sunscreen are really spooky mainly the compound. And here I'm not one of these conspiracy. I drink, tap water with some folks. I'd like people cringe lie. I drink tap water. I have the occasional croissant or donut. I'm not, you know, I'm 90%.
90% of the time. I'm doing the right things the right way. I think, although, I'm now going to improve on them with this new knowledge. But, but I don't like what I see in most sunscreens, because if you look at these compounds, they cross the blood-brain barrier. I don't want compounds crossing the blood-brain barrier, get him dioxide dioxide. Some of the triclosan is that are also in these cleansers. I mean it's once, you know, a little bit about neurons, folks. You realize that neurons you got are basically the ones you got for your entire life.
You know, there's a reason why there's a blood brain barrier of blood ovary and a blood test. He's barriers because the genetic material resides in the testes, the ovaries and the Brain, those neurons don't turn over. There are a few new neurons, but not that many unless you're a mouse frankly, as so. Protecting those is very key and a lot of things in sunscreen are downright dangerous. So, I think there are some screens that are safe, but it's very hard to figure out which sunscreens are free of these compounds. I'm amazed that they're still on the market.
Frankly. I've
Ways, geared towards the ones with that the minerals that are like reflecting it. It is it is somewhat difficult to penetrate things all the way through the skin into the, get into the bloodstream. I don't, but, I don't know, maybe some of these compounds get in there easily. I have seen the evidence with some of those things.
Only go. There is a something. There they go. Transdermal, and they,
and they get in. Okay. Well, I know that there's some of them react with the sun and while they do protect from the UVA and or be they like form mass of reactive oxygen.
Species and carcinogen. I mean it's like the very thing you're trying to protect yourself from might actually cause right. We don't know. I mean like it's completely speculation, but there is like I think some more more and more evidence come out with some of those compounds and I can't remember all all of them off the top of my head but a lot of high-end ones also have have, you know, it's the chemical sunscreen one right? Chemical ones.
We should do. I'm proposing that we do a journal Club, a journal Club folks, is where academics get together and read paper. They get
Read papers and they get together and they pick apart the papers. There's a strong correlation between being an early graduate student in being the most critical because once you've actually published some papers, you realize that, you know, most of these people are doing their best within the context of what they can do, but it'd be great to do a journal Club at some point about sunscreen because I'd love to really figure out what's in these compounds. I mean, people are using them like crazy, and I'm not one of these people who's like, oh I won't use commercial toothpaste, or anything like that. I I'm like I said, I drink tap water. I use commercial toothpaste, whatever.
When it comes to sunscreen, it freaks me out because some of these compounds do go, transdermal and some of them cross the blood-brain barrier, and I'd like to keep my neurons free of that stuff. Anyway, we're speculating. Now, where we're at, but get out in the sun and get your D3 levels up, Okay. So we've talked about these plant based compounds the Omega-3s and D3. Unless there's something else that you just absolutely must throw into the mix. I'd probably will return us to the
Ation, and I opened up with which is about cold and heat which admittedly I pull this off that that path. So I wanted I take full responsibility for that. But before I do that, I just want to offer you. The opportunity is there are there. Is there anything that to supplement based or food based compounds that you you know, you think are especially useful for brain and our body. How
do you think magnesium is important in there as well? I mean I think you know again about 40 percent of the u.s. Population.
Doesn't get enough magnesium. It's an essential mineral. We're supposed to be getting from our diet and it involved in everything. It is, it's involved. It's also involved in vitamin D metabolism. And in fact, being deficient in magnesium may make it more difficult for you to actually make vitamin D hormone. So that one, 25 hydroxy, vitamin D. So one of those other factors again, talking, we talked about genetics, but there's also a magnesium status, as well. Considering 40%, That's a big number.
Now, you know, magnesium is also involved in making ATP. The the energetic currency of ourselves there and you know, basically all of our cells need ATP to do anything. And they're also, it's also involved in utilizing ATP, as well as DNA repair enzymes. These are enzymes that are involved in repairing damage to our DNA. I personally think that magnesium insufficiency is a Insidious type causes and Insidious type of damage daily that you can't look in the mirror and see, like, when
Deficient in vitamin C. You're like my gums are falling apart. I have scurvy, right? But like you can see DNA damage. You can't see it. But it's happening. It's happening right now in my body games happening in your body. It's happening normal metabolism is happening, you know, every day. But we repair that damage. We have repair enzymes in our body called DNA repair, enzymes. They require magnesium. Magnesium is a cofactor for them. What that means is, you know, cofactor means enzymes, need it to function properly. And so,
Without that cofactor, they're not doing it properly and I like the way I like to think about magnesium. It's easy to because people could what food should I eat right now? Actually? Thats next question. Well, magnesium is at the center of a chlorophyll. Molecule chlorophyll is what gives plants their green color. So dark, leafy greens are high in magnesium. It's one of the end people. Basically, what is the 40% insufficients insufficiency in the u.s. Tell us, people aren't eating their greens. They're not eating their greens. They're eating they're packaged food during their processed foods.
Our American diet isn't really high and dark leafy greens. So so dark. Leafy greens are how I like to get my magnesium. I think it comes along with all these other important. I mean, you get calcium in them, you get vitamin K1, you're getting a lot of other micronutrients and you're getting other compounds that we don't know about. And once that we know about like sulforaphane,
right? As with broccoli. Do I need to eat the dark leafy greens raw? And in this case, I'm a little more open to it because I actually like the
The taste of dare. I say kale and kale is a dark leafy green, right? Start. I mean, it's obviously I'm
not moody and into, yeah,
I'm gonna try Chrome app meaning. I'm not, I'm not colorblind, but I just want to make sure it falls under the strict category because every once in a while, I'm like, oh you eat my vegetables. I like avocados and people were my mouth cause inaudible, I love vegetables. Also, but socail, what are some other
examples and kale spinach chard like Swiss chard rainbow chard. Romaine lettuce is the
bitterness and important component to the
sign of everything is um, no, but
For sulforaphane, so far refrained for cruciferous vegetables. That would be the Brassica family. But your question about cooking them. So magnesium is it is bound to the food Matrix and and it can be somewhat less bioavailable. But, you know, so cooking it can somewhat release the the Magnesium but it goes into the water too. So like you have to, like,
Either steam it or kind of, you know, like get your water in you doing with it like yeah, you know, I personally don't worry about it. Okay, so don't worry. I great. Like if you don't worry, I'm not going. I also like I to supplement with many. I do take her around, so, supplementation with magnesium. I mean, this we could go on and on, let's keep this short and sweet because we're gonna get back to the other stuff. But, you know, it can cause GI distress at like high doses. I personally like to take around 130 or 135 milligrams.
That way, it's not like a huge ball list my gut, I
think it depends on the form of magnesium
to yes. Yeah. I mean you can take like magnesium 3 and 8 for example, and you know, isn't as effect, you know, it doesn't affect the gut as much magnesium citrate. Citrate is what I
take. Yeah. It is too pretty. I take pretty potent gut stimulus. I mean, I feel like it's a little bit harder to man to fly. Take 100
135 milligrams, should be pretty good and citrate. Actually, boy. Do we want to go here?
So, I mean, I
It's up to you. And we can, we don't have to. I personally have been supplementing with magnesium for a long time. Yeah, I've I use 3 and 8 and this glycinate and malate for different reasons. So I, yes, I would love to go there. If you're, if you're
willing, I would seem a light would be the best and that that has to do with the short chain at fatty acids, being good for the gut. And a lot of work done by a former colleague of mine and good, friend, Mark sugar, Naga, showing that Lee short-chain fatty acids, citrate malate lactate, but
Specifically malate really. Lacked are the other major ones that get into to the gut epithelial cells and our energy source for the mitochondria and the goblet cells. So, anyways, whole other
okay. Yeah, I take Molly because I was told that it would be helpful. First of all, it doesn't make me sleepy like some of the other forms of magnesium which act as a mild sedative for me. They do tap into the gabaergic pathway, neurotransmitter folks that
In general, broad sweeping generalization. Here can have somewhat of a, of a sedative quality, which is why I take magnesium, three, and eight and orbis glycinate before sleep 30 to 60 minutes before sleep. Definitely enhances my transition time to sleep and the depth of sleep. No question in my mind experience. There's some data that 3 and 8 can be cognitive, can be neuroprotective. All those are still. Those studies are still ongoing. I'm getting the sense that maybe you're a little more skeptical of that
than I am. Yeah.
No, I'm iíve seen the studies with the three and eight. I think like looking at the actual data, from the one clinical study. There wasn't statistical, significance until all three of the pieces of data are pulled together, but that really could just be because their sample size was too
small. Right, right. Yeah. Thinking that that paired with the their standards that yeah song Lose work on with. So in the this is getting kind of inside ball of Neuroscience, you know that the quality of the labs matters, folks, and that's something
That's not accessible to people outside of fields. And you know Go song Lou. And some of the other folks with at that time at MIT did I think very highly of their work and so they animal studies are indeed just animal studies, but I was pretty impressed by what they did in those studies. Very pioneering thing. When you think about this being done 10, 12 15 years ago and then yes, we need more human clinical data, but I think for me, I figured that given the safety profile mag, three and eight given that it helps me, sleep better, and sleeping. Better is just better for everything.
Frankly, that's why I take it, amiss glycinate, and three, and eight seem to be somewhat interchangeable. But there's, I don't know of any reports that bisque glycinate can be neuroprotective. But malate, I take during the daytime. I for me. And again, this is subjective. It has a tangible effect in improving the recovery time from exercise. So it, I don't know that I've been sore from a workout. Since I started taking Molly, and I used to get very sore from even kind of trivial work out. So I don't know what's going on there.
R but I keep taking
it Mal a again, the short chain fatty acid. And I mean, you know, when you do have yet, when you do intense extra exercise, you really send or toxin from your gut, i-i'm. Just going back to the interesting work because the the malate being the short chain fatty acid. And you know, you know, marks you're going to showing this is all an animal research by the way, but I mean it was like, you know, feeding these animals malate. I mean, it really protected the gut and no Toxic release, and it affected, metabolic syndrome and all sorts of things, but I think Mellie mallets.
And I always try to eat green. Apples are really high in folic acid. Oh, good to know and tart cherries, tart cherries, really high in it as well. It also tastes really good. But I was really interested in the Magnesium three and eight stuff. I take a supplement called magnesium by Moon Juice and it's like, a little powder. It's got a little bit of monk fruit, but it tastes good. So, I do it a little bit before bedtime as well. Probably several more hours though, because I don't like to drink tons and tons of fluids before I go to bed. And it has magnesium, three, and eight and a variety of other.
Versions of magnesium in it as well. And I really like it. But I thought the Magnesium three and eight stuff was super interesting. I, you know, would love to see more clinical data as well. But I think, you know, once we get it, it'll probably be like, oh, yeah, it's getting into the brain, and it's awesome. So, you know, why, wait,
right? I what and along those lines. I once put out a post that said, you know, I feel like there are a number of different categories of health, concerns health information, consumers, online and understanding which one you're in for which topic can alleviate a lot of the strain and stress of finding the information.
There's some people that are perfectly comfortable with data from a mouse study. It's like if it's done in mice, great. I'll try it. Other people say, no it has to be done in humans, double-blind placebo-controlled, studies, you know, randomized, clinical, trials, Etc. Then other people are just say, you know, what, I don't even care about any of that. Just tell me what you do and then other people are saying, you know, I don't even care what you do. Just tell me what to do. And then there's this other category which are if it's in pill form or powder form, they'll take it. And so, I think a lot of the battles of people picking apart people's posts.
And things have to do with that, that that people don't realize that people are showing up to the table in one or some combination of those stances. We know people that will try anything and we know people that won't take anything. So the idea here is to create a, an array of possibilities for people. And I think the animal data are very impressive. We should have you back on. I
take it with the hope of because I feel like the angle Theta is very promising and so I'm like it probably is, why not?
Well and
So you're doing things right? So cold and heat Converge on some common Pathways related to what you called intermittent challenge, which I love I think if, you know, intermittent fasting cold heat exercise. I mean, maybe even intermittent sleep deprivation. I keep waiting for the intermittent sleep, deprivation movement. I will say, I pull a few all-nighters per year, just for work, demands and procrastination and deadlines. And I'm the worst.
Combination of academic because I'm both a procrastinator and a perfectionist. So you end up pulling some all-nighters, the sleep. I get the next night is pretty amazing. I must say. It's the sleep of gods, but I don't recommend any when you sleep deprivation for that, but I can imagine that we also evolved having some sleepless nights. So this idea of intermittent challenge is a really attractive one, and I want to make sure that we credit you with the phrase. Intermittent challenge. No,
not it, dr. Mark Matson.
Okay. Dr. Mark Max and God bless. And he has used those. Were that race. Okay, great.
Mike just
like dr. David Sinclair. I love the Zeno hormesis. It was in like one of his Publications to so many years ago and I just love it. Brilliant, brilliant term. So Mark Matson is
Harvard guys are pretty smart. You know, it's I mean, it's a good school. I guess. Of course, it's a good school. We will credit the appropriate people. Thank you for that clarification. So you've talked a lot about the use of deliberate what I call deliberate, cold, exposure, only to distinguish it from cold that you might just be,
Accidentally exposed to, but it's sort of obvious. When we say, cold exposure. There are some amazing data on cold. The other day. I saw a post from you, and if you include this and talks before, I did not know this, until I learned it from you, so credit to you that even 20 seconds of immersion in, I think, was for degree 49 to refit 49 degree Fahrenheit. Okay. I was translating a selfie of at 49 degrees Fahrenheit water. So cold water can lead to long lasting increases in epinephrine adrenaline.
And I have to presume other neuro neuromodulators in neuro chemicals as well. What are some cold protocols that you find particularly interesting, or attractive from the standpoint of? I don't pick your favorite metabolism. Neuroma / mood affects Brown fat stimulation, which of course weaves back to metabolism. You know, we could we could do an entire episode all about coal, but what I'd love to know is what sort of
Activity or stimulus to you. You think is a reasonable and particularly potent one to use in terms of cold.
So today I did three minutes at 49 degrees Fahrenheit. I have a cold
tub to getting up to your neck.
Well, I try, I keep floating up and so I'm like, it's like really hard. So the like I would say, like, okay, maybe most of my shoulder. I mean, really, I'm floating up. I was telling I was telling, my husband was like this. There's too much water in here for me. I cant you.
Salt in there. Is it like the Dead Sea, where you float on top?
Is there salt in there? I don't, he takes care of all the stuff that, you know, it's the, it's the plunge.
Yeah, they make been, by the way, where the podcast nor I am sponsored by plunge. They did give me one at thing. Is fantastic. Also, because it circulates, the water Dad, what you make sure that you break up the thermal layer and it's even colder. It is
even colder. It sucks. Anyways, so, look, I'll give give it a, I'll be honest here. I wish I did more cold than I do. I do cold when I'm going to
Go on a podcast. I definitely do Cole what I'm going to do podcast when I'm going to give a talk or when I'm anxious. I need to make it more of a ritual. I love doing this on. Hate the cold heat, it unless it's summertime. It's a lot easier for me to get in the pool in the summer time. But what I do love about the cold is how I feel after and I feel less anxious. I feel good. I feel more focused which is why I usually do it before any type of public speaking.
Or just when I'm just anxious, I'll just get in there. And so the 20 seconds at 49 degrees for I think it was 49 degrees Fahrenheit, which was really a good number because time and temperature. Do you time or duration? I guess would be a better word and temperature do matter. But but you know, you can you can do 20 seconds at a colder temperature, which is I prefer or you can do a minute or longer at a warmer.
Temperature. I think there was another study showing 59 degrees Fahrenheit at one hour was, like, 23 for the who wants to go to one
hour. Yeah. I'm familiar with that study. I, I love to this is really reveals. Just how absolutely nerdy I am. And maybe why some times and relationships in my life where challenge, I love reading the methods sections of papers. So, you know, people can come at me with a number of things about papers and I have might miss something for. Surely. I miss certain things like anybody else, but the methods I sort of I Relish in
The methods and that paper is really interesting because they had people sit in lawn chairs, basically in swimming pools. So for an hour and it wasn't real, it was chilly. It wasn't super cold. I mean 60 is not, it's not warm, but it's not ice cold obviously, but an hour is ridiculous at some level, but the increases in dopamine were massive and lasted hours. So it's really. So the mood enhancing effects that you report are there. Not you're not imagining that.
Those are almost certainly a consequence of having slowly elevating but significantly elevated dope. Dopamine that goes on for hours. That's almost a dreamlike profile for dopamine because most everything else, like an Adderall or Ritalin, a cup of coffee and a workout drink or pre-workout drink or something is going to give you a big spike in Adrenaline and dopamine. N a big crash and somehow. It creates this really nice contoured profile. So I whatever you're experiencing, there is very nicely.
Boarded by the data.
Well, I need to get I need to get doing it more. I've had a couple of scary experiences going from hot to
cold. We're playing
blood pressure changes. I think, where I basically went straight from a really hot jacuzzi. I was in there for like 30 minutes. I mean, I was, I was doing hatred. Who is he? Okay? Yeah, 104 degrees Fahrenheit. It's toasty and then I'd for 30 minutes and then I went straight into at the time. It was our pool. I was in like, February the wintertime.
Time. And it was 50. It was in the 50s, it was cold. And and I was in there and I was like, listening to Simon Garfunkel. I was like trying to stay in a long time ago. My cold and I was trying to press Dan because he like goes in there for like he'll stay in there for like 15 minutes, but I started to feel really Blinky like low blood pressure or something and I got scared. So, I got out and then I couldn't stand. Like I had vertigo or something. And I was so scared. So scared and
And I've had a couple of times to we're just going straight from the sauna to it to the cold plunge where I'm starting to feel. Like I feel a little blood pressure change or something, and it makes sense as the sauna is causing vasodilation. And the cold plunge is called cold, exposure is causing vasoconstriction until like a very, you know, just shock to my system. And so now I wait like, I wait like a few minutes before going in but I do need a kind of like make it more the cold more routine.
Cuz I talk all about the science. I'm familiar with all the science and, you know, the the nor epinephrine or adrenaline, you know, it's affecting brain and mood and, you know, way more about that than I do. I know how I feel and I know it's a neurotransmitter and, you know, it is it is released at least in rats. They've shown or was it - I think it might've been rats, but multiple studies showing that it's released from the cold in the
brain and now in humans as well. So, in that study, but that's the, we can put a link to this. It's it published in 2000.
The internal physiology that big dopamine increase. They also looked it up a nephron and cortisol and it's awesome. Really? Yeah. So this has been deleted rain. Oh, I didn't do not rise much. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're very hard to measure doping directly from the brainless. We're doing microdialysis known as unfortunately. There's unfortunately their skulls were intact. Fortunately for them. Unfortunately for the research committee their skulls were intact so they couldn't measure directly in the brain. But obviously there's a correlate there, you know, it's a very real effect.
I think that, but the advantage of not doing it too often, is that? You're not cold-adapted? Now, it's very hard for anyone to get truly cold-adapted some people start to look forward to the cold. And what I think they're looking forward to is the feeling afterward that dopamine rush. But if you get cold-adapted, then it's certainly blunts the, some of the
effect. But I want to be cold-adapted because that means I have more mitochondria in my adipose tissue and on, perhaps even muscle like
It's been
shown the. So maybe it is a good opportunity to cold and you see p 1. If you could educate us on UCP one. I find this really and she and I learned about it from you.
So yeah. Well, so norepinephrine actually released in the plasma does act as a hormone basic instructions. One thing it does, but it also regulates a variety of molecular functions that have to do with adaption to cold one happening happening to be, you know, shivering is a very inefficient way to produce heat, which is what your body is trying.
To do when it's exposed to cold and your muscles are basically Contracting and producing heat from that, but that's just not very efficient. So the the more eloquent way to do it or elegant, I guess way to do it is, you know, to basically have your mitochondria produce tons and tons of heat. So the way it does, this is, by activating a gene called you cp1 uncoupling protein one or up a nephron is Upstream of that activating it. So that what that does is essentially, so mitochondria.
Are these little organelles inside of your cells that are responsible for producing energy. Usually that's in the form of adenosine triphosphate ATP. And that's what lets everything function inside your body, from your neurotransmitter production into your heart, beating Etc. However, you can uncouple your mitochondria basically your mitochondria there like a little battery so they have them while they have a double membrane first of all their structure, but they have a negative charge on the inside and they have a
Of charge on the inner membrane. So in between the outer membrane and inside the inside part, like in Iran, like a neuron. Yeah, so I guess. It's like a neuron, it's like a battery negative and positive. Well, basically, you can uncouple that that charge and so that positive charge, proton, start leaking out of the mitochondria and your mitochondria freaked out. So this is called uncoupling and they start to its maximum respiration as we call it. They try to make as much energy to like, I got to get those that that proton back that
Electrochemical gradient. And so they just go insane and they and this case it's uncoupled energy. So that energy, they're making is actually heat, not ATP, but heat is, but you're essentially burning substrates, who cares you're burning? Your burning glucose, you're burning lipids, you know, you're basically burning things and making heat. And so that's what uncoupling and does. And that is a much more efficient way of producing heat, then shivering. So, as you become more adapted, maybe the longer
Duration that you've stayed in the cold or more times you've done it. You'll no longer shiver anymore. You will start to then just do this uncoupling type of thermogenesis as it's called. And another type of adaptation that occurs is you actually produce more mitochondria in your adipose tissue and and that actually happens also regulated by nor epinephrine or adrenaline through a protein called PGC 1 Alpha. And what that protein does is it makes more mitochondria.
Andreea in your adipose cells. So / out of post-sale. You're getting more mitochondria. It's a beautiful way to basically make more heat when you're it's one of those things where it's like, it's your body's going. Okay. I'm going to be exposed to this cold next time. How can I make sure I don't die. Oh, I can have more mitochondria and I'm going to make more heat and so you're making more mitochondria in your adipose tissue and and this is often referred to as like the Browning of fat. And the reason for that is because if you look under a microscope at a lipid,
I'd draw. But you know, I basically a fat cell not a lipid drop it at a site you'll find that it looks darker because there's more mitochondria in there. So it's referred to as Browning fat. And so we don't want to get into the whole beige fat Brown. It, you know, there's this whole I'm sure you've had experts on that, talk all about that.
But yet I mean, I always think of wife that beige matte Brown fat and beiges kind of intermediate, right? Can be converted into beige.
But and beige can take on thermogenic characteristics essentially. And
So you can activate beige fat. So that it's thermogenic, in the sense that it's burning glucose and or, you know, fatty acids, and and producing heat. So, so, the more you expose yourself to cold, the more you can Brown your fat so, to speak. And, and therefore, you can tolerate the cold for longer periods, which people do notice. And you can then have the thermogenic qualities of having more Brown adipose tissue or beige.
ETA beige adipose tissue which is, you know, you'll get a lot of naysayers out there saying oh my brown fat doesn't regulate metabolism at all. The reality is there's like thousands of researchers trying to build pill up brown fat and thermogenic like they're trying to make it a pill because it does affect metabolism. You know, it's not the only thing and certainly if you're obese and trying to lose weight, you're not going to like do that just by doing cold exposure. You need to do dietary and exercise changes if you know predominantly, but
It does, it does affect metabolism. And you know, this is this has been shown in human studies. So it is interesting another, it's another possible mechanism for affecting metabolism. And that's an adipose tissue. But you also make more mitochondria and muscle tissue and this is regulated not by a norepinephrine but it is still PG. C 1 Alpha. Interestingly not like not that anyone else really cares about me and maybe you do
it, right. I'm eating this.
Us up
so p g c 1 Alpha is respond is response to norepinephrine and adipose tissue to make more mitochondria, but in in muscle tissue, it's unclear what the regulator is. Cold exposure, does it? So this is this was shown at least in a couple of studies. I've seen where people that were exercising. I believe or maybe may have been men only. They were exercising. Did some separate training and then did Coldwater immersion something, like 50 degrees Fahrenheit, 15 minutes and PGC went off.
Which is a biomarker for mitochondrial biogenesis, which is the generation of new. Mitochondria, by the way. That's awesome. You want more mitochondria your muscle its associated with improved muscle, mass improved endurance. I mean mitochondria are essentially either the making energy in your cell and we, you know, we don't make more mitochondria and normally like, you have certain inputs extra high intensity interval training exercise. Can do it
actually make more mitochondria.
Yes. Yeah, and that's been shown in people and I mean training or
just high intensity interval training.
And I haven't seen weight training. I've seen it in in high intensity interval training, endurance training, but that doesn't mean that it hasn't been shown. I just haven't seen it or that it hasn't been looked at. And
so, you know, I'm always looking for reasons to finally do more hit type high intensity, interval training work. I do weight training and I do low intensity cardio. There was a
brilliant study by at the time. He was a postdoc Matthew Robinson and he's now gone on to start his own Lab at the
City of Oregon, Health Science Center, right place and and he did a study where both young and old older people were they had this whole high-intensity protocol which I can't remember what it was, but their protocol for x amount of time. I'm sure it was at least a month. They then measured biomarkers of mitochondrial, biogenesis and their muscle tissue and the the amount of mitochondrial. Biogenesis and old people specifically, it happened in both young and old from
Um, hit from the high intensity interval training. Was, I mean, it was like enormous and least fifty percent. I think so. I mean it was just like, whoa, and so like, why would you want that? Well, you know, mitochondria, you're my tack on, you don't make yourself at your cells are turning over. You make new cells, you replace old ones with your mitochondria. You don't really do that. For the most part you can mitochondrial, biogenesis does happen, but you have to stimulate it to happen and the way your might have like what happens with your mitochondria is they essentially are bobbing around inside of yourself?
1080, they fuse with other mitochondria exchange exchange, all their content mitochondrial, DNA, and then Fizz back apart. And that's how they kind of stay youngish. But like as you age, you keep doing that with the same pool of mitochondria and you're going to get a bunch of old mitochondria mixing old stuff together, right? So why wouldn't you want to like bring up new healthy young mitochondria, into that pool, right? So in my mind when I hear mitochondrial biogenesis, I'm like aging like that's the first thing. So anyways, cold exposure does.
That amazing things as well. So,
you know, it's I and please thank you for offering to, you know, somehow filter that the level detail, but I assure you that listeners of this podcasts are familiar with getting drinking from the fire hose of mechanism. And that was really helpful. And again, this is just one example of maybe four or five other things that you said, at least that are going to inspire me to change my behaviors. I'm gonna start doing some high intensity interval training. Dr. Andy Galpin was on this podcast recently.
And he told me that that the subtle is own to cardio and weight training is great. But that I really should be doing some max heart rate work per week, going into max heart rate for 90 seconds and resting and repeating that maybe even mile repeats. I'm just curious as a brief aside before we talk about heat what what sort of cardiovascular other types of training? Do you do, do you do hit? I imagine you are doing high intensity, interval training. If you could just give us a sense of the Contour of your week as it relates to exercise.
And because you've been very gracious and sharing some of what you do for supplements and food, what about exercise?
So I it all depends on my week, of course and what I've got going on with my son and my work schedule, but I typically I do a lot of high intensity interval to badas on a stationary cycle. I use Peloton because I just like that instructor there, like telling me what to do and then me competing with everyone else on what, yeah, you know, so it
works revealing something about your psychology. This is what we just learned about.
This podcast is actually just a Decoy for psychological assessment of the guests not getting but so now we know you're competitive good that explains. A lot of how you got through graduate school and then to do what you do. So you're getting on the Peloton. And what does it look like for someone who's not familiar with Peloton? I know what they are. But I've never been on one. You are pedaling against the instructor for how many
seconds. So I'm your, there's a bunch of people that are online either doing the class with you at the same time, or have all time doing as he
You can you can kind of toggle on what you want and like you can try to compete against the wall. So it's really about it. Oh, yeah, okay, and the instructor is just there to like whip you like, like, you know, make you there's there's a part of the Brilliance with Peloton is like I used to do Rush, what's called Rush cycle, and I used to go and it's basically you go in and group cycle and have an instructor there. And you do all this high, intensity interval training stuff. And I loved it because there was a competitive aspect to it. That had me
Working harder than I would work. If it was just me in the room, like, without an instructor or anyone there, and it was just like, I'm at a gym. Any gym, and I'm just on a stationary cycle, listening to a podcast doing something, which is fine if that's your group, right, but there is something about that group setting that kind of make hold you accountable to write and and the Peloton made it somehow virtual. It was amazing. And I remember, being back at recycle. This is before pandemic, and people talking about Peloton in my class and I'm like, I was
Oculus. Why would I do that? Like that's never going to work. I need to like be here. I mean and then the pandemic it and I was like all over the Peloton and it works for me really well, so I tend to do that at least three times a week. Sometimes I do it more like, you know 24 and I do a 10-minute just 10 because it's efficient and I push my ass, I push myself really hard. That's the Tabata. It's a 20 seconds on 10 seconds off and it's 10
minutes and on means you're pedaling like your life
depended maxing it.
And there's
A lot
of resistance. So you
do. So you basically there's a part where your, I always do resistance. I'm like the power. I do the power 4, there's a part where you're sitting set cycling. You're trying to go really fast, but I always crank the resistance up. I always go above what they give me and then and then there's a part where you're standing and you really crank the resistance up which I really do in like you feel it in your glutes and going up the hill. Yeah, exactly. And so they like break it up and most of the time you'll have like those two to two parts. And I love the efficiency of it. You just, you get it done. And people sometimes hear me.
Go 10 minutes or really? You think you were getting like, look like you Mak, you do Max, you Tabata for 10 minutes and it like it's intense. Yeah, most people can't Sprint for
the for the Gate of an airplane. They're about to miss carrying a backpack. So if you think about, if I think about that and then I just described myself the little sprinting through the airport and going. All right, Andy Galpin. I got my 90 seconds, max heart rate in for you carrying this thing, but 20 seconds on 10 seconds. Off repeating that over and over for 10 minutes. So
The time you're done, you're
cooked. And then I because I'm competitive during the recovery that they give you at the minute at the end. I'm pushing it, Max right? Number two, right, three times a week. Yeah, three times a week. And then I always have my sauna on preedy, preheating up, takes about an hour and a half, and I get it to about 1 89 degrees Fahrenheit. I hop right in the sauna after my my Peloton.
So the elevated heart rate continues, is that the
the yeah, I mean, I literally they down a bunch of water and then I get in and, and then I liked either.
Read a science paper, prepare for a presentation or a podcast or I hash over things in my mind and it's interesting because something about getting in the sauna. I think the stress the heat stress of it, I used to. So I started doing the sauna in 2009 in graduate school. Okay, and
I your early adopter.
I started doing it every day. I lived across the street. I live in a studio apartment with an we live in this, like small Studio, part of a small sperm, you never imagined.
And is across the street from a YMCA because I was poor writers, very poor, very poor. I mean, so, you know, I recall,
I recall, I live in my
lap. Wow,
but it, and again, I lived in my lab as opposed to talk. And as I admit, I lived in my lab, with my Bulldog, as a faculty member for other reasons, but I get it, I, when your graduate student, you're
poor. Yeah, and so, I used to, I used to go to the the sauna before going into the lab and
I would and I wouldn't, I started noticing that I was all of a sudden, able to handle stress better like the stress of my six-month setback because of failed experiment, which is crushing on top of the pressure from your advice, my advisor and my own pressure because I'm very competitive with myself and I put a lot of pressure on myself. So I was having a hard time. I mean, I was very stressed out in graduate school and this sauna started to really noticeably affect my
80. And my ability to handle stress and I was like, what is going on here? So I started looking into the literature and, you know, started getting interested in the effects on the brain. And in fact, at the time, I had a friend who was not actually experimentally. But theoretically looking into the the opioid system and basically so when you get in the sauna, you release a lot of endorphins endorphins are the feel-good hormone, feel good, opioids that you know, make you feel
Oh good, but you also release something called Dyne orphan. And dine orphan is an endogenous opioid that binds to a receptor called the Kappa. Opioid receptor, which dine orphan is responsible for that dysphoric. Feeling when you're in the Saint on your heart. And when you're running doing exercise and you're like, you feel uncomfortable. Well, I think that's time orphans. You can. Absolutely. No, I think it is, it is.
I mean, that there's evidence in Alcoholics that some of the symptoms of withdrawal,
The Experience are related to dine orphan. And dine orphan is known to negatively impact the dopamine receptor system. So basically it's the feel like garbage
pathway, right? You feel like garbage and so you think that that would not be good. But this is where my friend that comes in. He was looking at the effects of like, treating morphine or heroin addiction and you know people that are using those drugs they basically the endorphins or the, you know,
Morphine or, you know, heroin, they bind to a receptor and the Brain called The Mule opioid receptor and as they pee, they take these drugs that mule up your receptor becomes down regulated. And so you need more and more of the drug to feel as good as you did, right? Well endorphins also binds to that receptor and he was looking into some of the other other drugs that are like, Salva Salva, Salva Nuria, Salvador Omar, something the Salvia, it's called it defines the Cowboys. Opioid receptor. It also makes you kind of feel like
Comfortable. Anyways, he had put some studies in front of me that showed basically binding of the, you know, either dine orphan or, you know, whatever ligand to the Kappa opioid receptor basically sensitized is the Mew opioid receptor to the feel-good endorphins and also changes. I think it also up regulates it or something. So basically there's a lasting effect of feeling good. So the endorphins that you release later from hugging someone or a joker, laughing out, or whatever you
Feel it for longer. Right? And so anyways, this is a with a sauna, with respect to this on. It's a big sort of hypothesis of mine. I did kind of publish that part of my hypothesis and a review article, but I do, I would do wish more people would kind of look into. That would be amazing. But what I was getting at I think, was, I would use, I would use the sauna to memorize things. This is way back in the day and I still do it. And I wanted to talk to you about this because you're of your
That there's something about being in the sauna and like, and I think, I don't know if it has to do with the like, the stress response. Like, when you, when you have an emotional trigger, like, you remember things better,
right? Absolutely. That there is a clear and known explanation for mechanism for this.
So in the sauna, I mean, you also release norepinephrine just like you do in the cold. There's a lot of overlap, you know, you're really, you're you, it mean, it is a stressor, but I like use it to remember things.
I'm going through something. I want to go through a presentation or a talk, or a podcast or whatever and I go in that sauna and I mean you should try it. Like if you haven't already I don't know if
you I have a sauna in a cold plunge now and I haven't tried prepare. I read books in the sauna in the evening. It's a it's a time. I insist on having my phone out of there, mostly because I initially because I thought I'd cook the phone but also just to get some separation from the phone and screens the evening. So I read books, the only challenge. Sometimes you dripping sweat onto the books, but I'm willing to forgo a few pages of a book. The
the the the idea that being in this semi stressful environment. Would Aid in the learning and retention of information is really well, substantiated by this beautiful work by guy named James McGraw. I don't know if his lap still active, but he was at UC Irvine for a while and then I think it University of Arizona, as well. They have a great memory group at both places. Very strong and learning and memory, both places. And he was the one that really defined this kind of inverted u-shaped.
Shin for the relationship between adrenaline and memory. Basically, if you're too relaxed and not stressed enough, you're not going to remember any information at Peak levels of stress. You actually are a memory machine, at least within the context of whatever it is. You're trying to learn. So very well, what you're describing is very well matches with that. And of course, it tapers off as you really increase, adrenaline to the point where people are starting to lose autonomic function, where they're just they're panicking basically, but obviously,
You're keeping it in range. The other thing that I would like to ask you about is in the saint, of course, there's vasodilation and profusion of blood to the brain is a wonderful way to enhance cognition. There's even some really nice data showing that during inhales as opposed to exhales. People are better at learning information, believe it or not, during the inhale, you're taking in and absorbing and remembering more than during exhales. And these are beautiful studies done in humans, of course, so I can imagine that vasodilation getting more perfusion of blood to the brain, plus a little bit.
Stress or maybe a lot of stress from the epinephrine and yet, it's and then, of course, there's going to be the, I don't want to call it Placebo, but there's gonna be the context, the condition Place context of it. Like we've we if we had a good experience, remembering something in the sauna. Once we tended the positive Association effect of that location is real. Just like if people go to a new city and they get robbed, like if you go to a Cincinnati, I've never been to Cincinnati. We get robbed in Cincinnati, your purse gets taken, your wallet gets. Taken, you kind of hate Cincinnati as a tourist, but that could happen.
In any number of different cities, right? The opposite is also true. So if it's something good happen someplace, I'm imagining that it's a combination of those effects. But I'll start, we very hard to do this in the cold. I feel like the cold is a very potent address. I think it takes you too far down that curve. The McGaw curve. I
have to sing songs or something when I miss Jack. Oh, yeah, I think. Yeah, but afterward, you're very efficient at learned after I am and with respect to the sauna the bay so dilation does occur. So there's a lot of overlap between moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and heat stress.
And as you can imagine, when you're exercising, your elbow by elevating your core body temperature, your you're sweating, and when you're actually in the sauna, blood does get redistributed to the skin. To facilitate sweating but much like exercise blood flow. In general, is improved to the brain to the muscles everywhere. So, you know, I think generally speaking that and this, you know, there's studies showing that sauna use is associated with a much lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, like people, you know, people
People that use it for 27 times a week have greater than 60 percent reduction in dementia, and Alzheimer's disease, risk. And how many
ones? Oh, we're sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. You said people who use it. I apologize. Maybe you tell us again. People use it for 27 times per week. Have
they have a greater than 60 percent reduction, in dementia risk and Alzheimer's disease risk, compared to people that use it only one time a week people that use it two to three times a week, have something like a 20, a little greater than 20% reduction in risk as a
Those dependent effect on dementia risk, and also a disease risk. It also has a profound like there's a, there's a big link between the cardiovascular system and the Brain. Obviously, blood flow. A big one, right, you know, like you need to get blood to your brain, but cardiovascular mortality. So mortality from cardiovascular disease. If people use are actually this was men if menus Asana 427 times a week. It's a 50% reduction in cardiovascular related mortality.
Add to one time a week. Again, dose dependent manner two to three times. A week is something like twenty, four percent lower death from cardiovascular disease. There's also lower, you know, sudden cardiac deaths like a heart attack. That's like 60, something greater than 60% lower. If, if men use it for 27 times a week, versus once again, a dose-dependent thing. And the thing that's so profound. They're also to me when again, looking at the methods when I look at the data and this is all work from dr. Yar allow Cannon, he's in
The University of Eastern Finland and just one of the world experts on sauna use, especially with respect to cardiovascular health, what some of his data has also shown is that if you look at the duration, the time spent in the sauna, so a lot of the, so I mentioned the temperature, I do is about, I do like one 89 degrees Fahrenheit. Typically I go in there. I'm pretty heat adapted. And so, the more you do, the more you do the sauna or any sort of heat stress, whether it's a hot tub Jacuzzi you
Become adapted. You're basically start to sweat at a lower core body temperature to cool yourself down all. These sort of physiological changes start to happen earlier. And so I stay in for like 30 minutes. I mean, so I say a long time, that's a lot. You have to listen to your body. Most of the studies that I just talked about were from the duration the time spent in the sauna when I said 50% reduction in cardiovascular disease related death. What was shown was that men that were in the sauna for only 11 minutes even if they
At 47 times a week that reduction was only like eight percent. So 250, it had to be greater than 19 minutes. So, like 20 minutes is The Sweet Spot at about 174 degrees Fahrenheit. And so, and most, most of the song is in Finland, by the way. They're, they're, they're humid. So they, they, they put hot water hot, not hot. They put water on Hot Rocks to create Steam and so it's something usually between 10, to 20 percent, humidity in The Finnish sauna. So those those studies were, I would say,
most of the time you're going to find that their humidity is also elevated, but to me the, the dose-dependent nature of it and the duration knowing like, you know, to me that's a very strong data that this is more causal than some, you know, corollary thing. Because that's always the problem with observational studies, including these, which they corrected for a whole host of factors like, cholesterol, you know, exercise is just everything. Does everything under the sun. I mean, they correct for those. And on top of that, you have the dose-dependent nature of the
In the time, spent in the sauna and the frequency. So to me, it's like something's going on here. Plus. There's been studies intervention studies where it's like, you know, comparing directly head-to-head moderate-intensity, aerobic exercise on a stationary cycle, to 20 minutes in a sauna. They're, they're physiologically the same things happen. So,
Heart rate elevates while you're doing the activity blood pressure increases while you're doing the activity, but then after heart rate, decreases resting, heart rate decreases below. Baseline blood pressure is improved. So it decreases below. Baseline. This is happening the same in moderate intensity cycling versus sauna. So again this sauna like this heat stress or something about it that really mimics this moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, which is really great for people that can't go for a run. I can't even get
A bite. So, you know disabled people granted. There are some safety concerns, they're pretty mild but they do exist. You know, so people that had a recent heart attack or have some rare kind of heart disease or problem. Drinking alcohol and ever do that. Elderly people low prone to low blood pressure. Always talk to a physician before doing this on it is it is stressful pregnant pregnant women. Yeah. I definitely avoided sona's when I was pregnant, but the it is. I think it's very relevant for disabled people and also people like that are set
And Terry, I've been sedentary most your life, like my mother. I've been able to get get her in the sauna because she's not. I mean, I did get her on the Peloton once, but it's really much easier. She feels like it's a spa treatment and and it's like she can listen to her music in there and like I care about her health, but she's mostly been a sedentary person. And so I find it much easier to convince her to get in the sauna. Then you get on Peloton. Ideally you do both. The question would be well, I exercise I run I do my hi.
Density interval training. Why do I need to get in the sauna? And and the reality is is and so I published all this and I review in the the experimental gerontology last year. I guess early late last year and basically cardiorespiratory Fitness, which is a marker of, it's a marker of Health cart, you know, cardiorespiratory Fitness is improved in people that do exercise and sauna compared to exercise alone or sauna alone. So for those
Healthy fit people out there already exercising. There's a synergistic effect by also adding a sauna into that routine and to me, that's great. And there's so many beneficial things happening with the heat stress in addition to like mimicking orbeck exercise. There's the heat shock proteins that we talked about earlier and those it kind of brings me back to my early days of science when I was at the Salk Institute for biological studies, doing research on Little Nemo.
Worms that we are someone else injected amyloid-beta 42, the peptide, the 42 amino acid peptide that is involved in amyloid, plaques found in the brain correlated with Alzheimer's disease and other brain disorders. We injected those into the muscle tissue of worms, and basically these worms become paralyzed with age because the the aggregate aggregated proteins these proteins aggregate. Well he
Chuck proteins. One of the main things they do is they basically make sure the proteins inside of your cells, maintain their property or three-dimensional structure and are folded, right? And so they don't they're not prone to aggregating and forming these plaques in your arteries, and also in the brain. And there's back to my warm studies I was doing. I would, I would Elevate hate shock proteins in this worms. And it would totally, you know, correct, the problem. Where the, they would no longer become paralyzed. They'd move around like they were you.
So many animal Studies have been done looking at Alzheimer's disease, you know, like all a human like Alzheimer's disease in a rodent and heat shock proteins, protecting from it, you know, so he Chuck proteins are robustly activated in humans. This has been shown to even or, you know, 50% higher over Baseline levels after just 30 minutes at 163 degrees Fahrenheit and the sauna. So and they stay activated at least in rodents for you know,
48 hours, at least. So, you know, having these heat shock proteins around making sure they're properly taken care of our proteins, who are not aggregating in our brains, and in our, in our plaques could be another potential way that it's on is protecting from Alzheimer's disease and other, you know, cardiovascular health as well as longevity. So, you know, there's there's people that have Snips in heat, shock protein Factor 70, that if they have one of them so they got
One from their parents where they have more active heat shock protein 70. They live on average one year longer than people that don't have that snip and if they have two versions, they got one from their mom and one from their dad. They live on average two years longer than people that don't have that snip. So it's also been associated with human longevity as well as in lower organisms. So you can heat shock a worm or a fly and they live 15% longer. This is tough work done by Gordon Lithgow at the buck Institute years and years ago. So anyways, I guess what I was getting at was the heat shock protein.
There are part of that stress response pathway that we talked about earlier and, you know, they're also activated by cold as well. Cold Chuck does activate heat shock proteins, not as robust. So for a free enacted activates them again. It's one of the reasons I think we should get all of these things because they are more robust inputs, you know, their input activating mechanisms are more robust free, you know, different ones. So there is crosstalk there is you know, I mean, I guess I could be more accurate to say there's overlap, but but
You know, it's also like you want to get the most robust from all of them, right? I do so, I mean, that's why I want to do the sauna and exercise and eat myself, you know, my broccoli sprouts and, and all that stuff. So,
all right, it's super interesting. A couple couple of questions came up for me. One, is you mentioned these Snips? These nucleotide repeats, basically genes that some people have more of or less of than others that can predict longevity. In some sense. Is that the
Fox 03 pathway,
that's one that can. Yeah, I mean Fox 03 is in fact, if you go back to the warm studies I was talking about that was like one of the first things when you see it with your own eyes, you can take these worms that you basically decrease their insulin signaling pathway and their igf-1 worms have what are called homologous genes. So they have a lot of similarities to humans. They have an insulin like receptor. They have an IG F1 like receptor and they make something like Fox 03, which we have.
And basically if you if you decrease that insulin signaling pathway there, Fox 43 is always active in those worms and they live like a hundred percent longer and and not only do they live longer. I mean, they are like a very young worm. I mean they are like you look at this thing and you're like this looks like the worm that was just born like hours ago. What's going on the things that the end of its life. Now as a side note, the thing that always got me on this was by the way, this was discovered by Cynthia Kenyon and
This was like back in the 90s and honestly, I'm not sure that anything has been as exciting in the warm world since then, but I thought I mean, it was a really big finding the only the only caveat there is that the worms go through this dour. It's called add our stage when this happens when you decrease their insulin signaling and stuff, and they like, go into this like metabolic stasis. Like I'm not eating as much or moving. And and so it's like, okay. Well, they live a hundred percent longer but like, they go into this weird State, you know, I
know people like this some in the longevity
Unity. They know who they are, but they'll get the last laugh, because I'll be dead, well fed, but dead, and they'll, they'll still be going. So, in terms of the many data on sauna, and I also just want to acknowledge these finished groups that did, this work is really pioneering right? When you think 20 years ago long before social media or any of this and they're out there up there. I should say measuring cortisol and growth hormone and all this stuff in people getting
Now sauna, very, very interesting. So, 20 minutes seems like the Threshold at 170 degrees, Fahrenheit more times per week, seems to be better than fewer. When you went in terms of all-cause, mortality, cardiovascular risk, according to what I just learned from where would
be a good? I think, minimum effective
dose, or times a week and you combine it with the cold. I've also seen a protocol. Where is a very extreme protocol. I don't recommend this to people right off the bat, where they had
subject human subjects get into the sauna for 30 minutes. Get out for five thirty minutes, get out for 53 minutes for a total of two hours of exposure. But that was what led to these. Massive, 16 fold increases in growth hormone. I should have a so and they had to do it, very seldom. So it sounds like these protocols, you're describing 20 minutes done, four times per week of far, more reasonable for most people to access, but I know people are probably desperate to know what if they don't have a sauna, you know, a sauna is a kind of a unique item.
I have a couple questions. Can people use hot baths with the appropriate warning. Of course that without getting into description of the mechanics and the underlying biology. It's pretty obvious that the testes. If they get too warm, you'll you'll kill sperm. That's the reason why the testes are housed in a structure called the scrotum that can move around. So just to be, you know, we are biologists just talking about realities here. So, if you're trying to conceive children or keep your sperm healthy,
Guys should probably stay out of warm hot
baths for at least six months, that's been shown. So, six months, so sperm production. So sperm, motility goes down, and sperm production goes down, but that is completely rely corrected. If they stay out of the sauna out for six months. So it's so 36 months later. It's back to normal
great. That's very useful information. I'm sure to number of people out there. So there, if people don't have access to a sauna, and we get this about cold to, people always say, what about cold showers. And I always say, well,
Studies may not have mainly been done on immersion because it's hard to keep things controlled and cold showers. It's just doesn't make for a very good experiment because how you get a bigger person less of them is under the shower. And so it doesn't make for a good experiment. So it's not as good as immersion. But with the with heat, I could imagine that a hot bath. We work almost as well.
So there's been some studies looking at. For example, activation of heat shock proteins, also brain-derived neurotrophic Factor increases with heat stress. And so, the saw the the hot bath at around 104 degrees Fahrenheit, which is typically, what studies.
We use for temperature, which is actually cooler than what. I cracked my bath hot. It's so hot.
You're very heated up dude.
I'm very yeah, and it's at 20 minutes from the shoulders down and that is like a very robust activation and heat shock proteins and in brain, derived neurotrophic factor, and then he Chuck proteins are also protecting against muscle atrophy. So that's also having to do with the protein structure in the muscle tissue as well. And this is been studies and animal animal data as well as some recent human data, as well as
Local hyperthermia, or local heat treatment, but essentially, a showed that it protected. I mean, it was like, there was a study where they were looking at muscle disuse and it was it was something like they local heat treatment prevented like almost 40% of the muscle, atrophy, from disuse. So like and it's funny because I used to use this on. I, when I was injured and stuff, I would go in the sauna because I like, I didn't know at the time because I was graduate student, but I knew like just from experiments that like, you know, like I'm not losing as much muscle life.
Feel better. Like I, you know, like at the time I was reading all about the growth hormone and stuff back then, but and I knew about heat shock proteins and so I kind of knew but that data wasn't around yet. And so now we have the data and I've always liked, felt like I wasn't losing my muscle, like I should have been when I was doing this on and I was doing it, literally seven days a week. It was
like, hardcore. This is also during graduate
school. Yeah. Now I now I'm doing I'm doing the sauna like a bare bare minimum.
Three. But I try to do for because of that it all depends on my schedule. I also like to do long runs. I really it's like long being like three miles, not like campaign substitute long, but I really, for me and I, we were talking about this earlier, like, off-camera that the runs for me are are for my brain. And there, I get this mind-wandering effect where I daydream and I think about things, I work through problems. I get creative, I come up with ideas and this is all happening on the runs and
And so I just, I miss my runs if I don't do them and I miss it because of the brain effects, I get from it. And when I exercise, I, it's funny because I'm a female and you think that I'd be exercising, you know, to stay fit, and in shape and care, you know, care about my figure. But when I exercise, literally, what I'm thinking about is my brain and I'm like, this is the best long Jagged longevity. Drug. There is this, is it right here around the like you, you're always wondering, you're always wanting to know you're wanting to do the best. Like if you don't exercise your missing,
Essential dose and so that for me is the motivation, the doping seeking thing. I'm looking for admittedly. I need to I do not do enough strength training and I have to do it. Have to have to have to like I'm just I'm so after the endurance and the hit and I really need to add that in because muscle mass is also extremely important for aging as well, you know, so that's that's my, that's my
fault. Well, the the brain effects are really interesting. I also,
So run I try and get one longer run per week and a few other ones and I do it without a phone. I don't listen to podcasts. I occasionally we'll listen to music, but I really try not to. I also find that my mind solves problems it, I feel like it washes out the cobwebs. So, to speak some of the most brilliant and prolific, neuroscientist that I know who've had very long careers. Eric Kendall, Nobel Prize winner Columbia comes to mind for all his work. On memory used to swim a mile a day. And now I think swims,
A mile a day, but he's in his late 90s and he's still sharp, which is incredible, and his lab has done some work. Showing that any load bearing. Exercise, repeated. So endurance work, unlike the Peloton or cycling, that's really load bearing. All the yurt cycling really hard with the resistance but causes the release of osteocalcin from the bones which acts in an endocrine way sort of like a hormone can actually travel to the hippocampus and at least in these animal studies induce the proliferation of neurons.
Growth of synapses bdnf a number of Downstream things which kind of makes sense if you were to put a just so evolutionary story on this, you know, a body that's active can signal to the brain that the body still needs cognition, you know, an inactive body in some ways is depriving the brain of any signal above what the body is doing, right? This isn't obviously, I'm making this up as conjecture, but we know in Ocean and various ocean animals that they'll swim around for some period of their life and then they will have a completely
Missionary portion of their life and basically the brain degenerates. There. You don't need much of a nervous system if you're not moving, so I think there's really something there and also just letting your the ideas in mind drift. I love that you and I appreciate that you shared your protocols because I think right now, we're in an interesting time in public health information history where people are just kind of getting bombarded with cold is good, heat is gold. It's cold is good, heat is good. Excuse me. I misspoke. They're all these micronutrients and
Course macronutrients are important to and today you've really enriched us with the description of the underlying mechanisms and the logic behind them. But also sharing what you do is really informative because I think people need a jumping-off place and obviously they need to start someplace and getting heat adapted etcetera takes time. But I really appreciate that you're willing to share your protocols and that you do the things that you that you teach and educate people about as a final question because I have half to ask.
Red light sauna, or no red lights on. I've been a little bit vocal about my feelings that none of the red lights on is I've ever been in got hot enough and it was frustrating. It's like I feel like it's neither here nor there. However, I do acknowledge that red light and low level light therapies are now known to do a number of interesting things with a Nobel Prize in 1908 for phototherapy for Lupus. So, you know, it's not like a new thing. The idea that light and light could do things positive for our biology, but,
You have a red light in your sauna. Do you think it's useful? And I mention this because this is the number one question. I get about sauna red light or no, red light or some, some intermediate answer.
So I don't have an infrared sauna, but I do have like, I have a song that has lights. It makes red light, but I don't think it's the red light that you're talking about. Okay, it's not activating it at a specific wavelength, which
is it's usually so that the range that seems to be helpful and I have, I confess I use a red.
Light Panel for other things is 670, NM out to about 720 nanometer. So it looks like red, and very dim the lights dim red and bright red. And the idea is that red light can travel. The photon energy is such that it can travel down through the Deep layers of the dermis of the skin.
All right, you know, I don't have a red light in my sauna. I don't know if it's essential or not. I don't think.
Based on all the studies I've talked about. I think that would be a is a you know, the the potential effect on mitochondria is interesting. I do think there's a lack of really good solid evidence in, you know, humans, but I do that not might only be because it just not studied enough and that's usually the case. So perhaps, you know, like there's the Juve right, the Juve they have those pant red light
panels. You can cozy or the to ones. I know Koz and Juve there there, as far as I know.
I'm probably an insult, both companies at the same time, but I'd rather insult them both at the same time than than just compliment one or insult one. Both of them seem excellent for getting the appropriate wavelength of red light and I do not have a relationship to either.
Yeah. Well, I personally think that the the sauna in and of itself. It's about the heat stress. And typically, the question I get is infrared sauna or regular sauna and there are some differences as well. Infrared saunas, maybe the infrared saunas are the ones that have the red light that you're talking about infrared saunas, only get
To around 140 degrees Fahrenheit. So, as I mentioned, the studies were about 174 degrees Fahrenheit, and so you really have to stay in a longer period of time. However, there have been some studies coming out of Japan. They use infrared sauna. It is whole protocol, it's called way on therapy. And they, they get people and infrared saunas and then they wrap them in a towel, and like they stay warm for x amount. So it's like the whole protocol ends up.
Being like an hour long. But again, it's 140 degrees Fahrenheit. So it's an infrared sauna and it's been shown to improve a variety of like coronary heart disease and conditions, heart related conditions. Like there have been some improvements. So obviously there's there's evidence that infrared saunas can be beneficial for cardiovascular health. I do. I've used infrared saunas many times that my in-laws, they have an infrared sauna and I have to crank that thing up for a while until it's maxed. And then I have to sit in there for an hour at least.
Just, I do sweat a lot. And that's another thing we didn't talk about. You do, sweat some heavy metals in some, some heavy metals are excreted, predominantly through sweat, and others through urine. So, so, for example, cadmium, there's like a hundred, twenty five fold increase in cadmium excretion from sweat when you get in. The sauna also, LED is something like 17 fold excretions. Hire. Another one is aluminum. It's about four fold higher. So infrared, you do sweat a lot, too. And that's because the
The different main difference is that you're heating your body up through thermal radiation versus the ambient. Hair are like a standard, you know, sauna is a heater and the heater heating up the air, and that's how your heating yourself up. So, I'm, it is a little bit of a different mechanism. I prefer regular saunas, most of the data out there from from the heat stress itself, like, the your heart rates elevating when you're in there, you're feeling hot. You're getting that cardiovascular. I mean, that's what you're feeling when you're in a hot sauna, and that for me takes a really long time.
Infrared sauna get at the very end, but I do think there are some benefits from infrared and they are more affordable. They're less of a fire hazard. But again, hot baths are I think a good alternative modality for heat stress compared to like a regular sauna. So
great. That's a really helpful answer. I said, I use the red light but not in the sauna and and thank you for reminding us of that 174, °F threshold. That was mainly used in all these studies.
So, we covered a lot of territory, but I just want to thank you again. It was extremely thorough and extremely informative. I'd now have my notes are always look a little bit. Like they were drawn out by a macaque monkey who has no knowledge of the English language, but I can decipher this to tell you that there are at least 10 additions to my current protocols that I'm going to add and I'll have lots of questions. So I apologize in advance for that, but I'll be half of the listeners and
Just directly from me. Thank you so much for your time. I learned a ton.
My pleasure. Thanks for having me on. It was really awesome conversation. So I enjoyed it
a lot. Let's do it
again. Totally great.
Thank you for joining me for my discussion with dr. Rhonda Patrick. I hope you found it as interesting and as actionable as I did once again, if you'd like to learn more about dr. Patrick's work. Sign up for her newsletter and to listen to her, excellent podcast. Go to found my fitness.com. You'll find links to the newsletter, as well as the
Podcast there or you can go direct to the podcast. By going to found my Fitness on YouTube, found my Fitness on Apple or found my Fitness on Spotify. And once again, the newsletter is found my fitness.com newsletter, if you're enjoying and or learning from the huberman Lab podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and apple. And on Apple. You have the opportunity to leave us up to a five star review, if you have suggestions,
Tons of topics or guests or feedback of any kind, please put that in the comment section on our YouTube page in addition. Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning of today's podcast. That's the best way to support this podcast. We also have a patreon. It's patreon.com slash Andrew huberman and there you can support the podcast at any level that you like as also mentioned the beginning of the episode. We are now partnered with Momentis supplements. So if you go to live momentous.com huberman, you'll find what we firmly believe.
Leave to be the highest quality supplements available in the specific dosages that match the peer-reviewed science and recommendations made on various episodes of the huberman lot podcast. You will also find specific Protocols of how much to take in. When what time of day, what time of night, etcetera, and you also find behavioral tools that can synergize with those supplements. Many of you also be pleased to learn that momentous supplements, of course, ships within the United States, but also internationally. If you're not already following us on Instagram and Twitter.
You. So it's huberman. Lab on both Instagram and Twitter there. I teach science and science based tools some of which overlap with the content of the huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content of the huberman Lab podcast. Thank you. Once again, for joining me for my discussion with dr. Rhonda Patrick, and as always, thank you for your interest in science.
