The Best Vitality & Health Protocols | Dr. Rhonda Patrick

are doing these short bursts at least a minute long,

but up to three minutes. They're moving faster with intent.

“And it's having outside the facts on health outcomes.”

So for example, individuals that do on the high end, so they're doing three minutes of this short burst of an unstructured type of exercise snack, and they do it three times a day. So it's a total of nine minutes a day.

That's associated with a 40% reduction in all cause mortality, 40% reduction in cancer related mortality, a 50% reduction in cardiovascular related mortality. Wow.

Nine minutes a day. Welcome to the Hubert Medellette podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Hubertman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology

and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Rhonda Patrick, a biomedical scientist and leading public health educator. For over a decade, Rhonda has been one of the most trusted voices in building science-based health protocols.

Today we discuss what the latest and best research says we should all be doing to improve our health and vitality and avoid disease. Rhonda shares with us her exact exercise nutrition, supplementation, and sauna protocols,

and we get really detailed about the mechanisms and logic behind each one. We also discuss the things that science say you can do to significantly reduce your cancer and cardiovascular risk, including how to reduce

visceral fat and arterial plaque. Today's discussion truly leaves no stone unturned. We discuss how eating can increase inflammation, believe it or not, waste a support your gut health, creatine, vitamin D, white broad vitamin and mineral,

and fiber support is crucial,

as well as the different forms of magnesium and each of their unique effects. We also discuss omega-3s and why prescription sources of omega-3s may be the cleanest and most cost-efficient way to obtain sufficient omega-3 intake.

We also discuss the importance of prioritizing regular resistance training and hit workouts over protein. You still need protein,

“but emphasizing the exercise component is crucial.”

And we discuss fiber, micro nutrients, and why short-term fasting can be beneficial. Dr. Rhonda Patrick is a true wealth of knowledge. And today, she generously provides us a master class on how you can design and adjust the exact health protocols

to meet your specific needs. 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, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion, with Dr. Rhonda Patrick. Welcome back, Dr. Rhonda Patrick.

Excited to be here. It's been a while, I'm so excited. There's so much to go into. And I'll start off the same way I started last time because it's even more true.

Thank you for being first person into this public science health education business. I don't know if everyone's aware of it, but you were the first person in, which is why I didn't say, first man in, because the first person in was in is a woman.

And you've done a marvelous job of educating people on science, how to parse papers, and data, health practices, and the rest of us are just trying to follow in your wake. So thank you very much. I just want to thank you for being first.

Oh man, thank you so much for that. And also thank you for doing what you do. I mean, you really do a great service for science communication, education, helping people love science, and get healthier.

- Thank you. Well, you're the pioneer.

It's not always easy being a pioneer, but we all benefit.

So let's jump in at exercise because lately, you've actually been posting your workouts, which is awesome. And your clearly very fit. I learned before talking to you today that you were a competitive athlete.

You were a long jumper or a triple jumper. - I was a long jumper, but I would say my real competitive athleteness comes from my jumper roping. - Okay. (laughs)

- On a professional jump roping team. - Professional. - Yes, yeah. It was, we would compete. So my friend and I started the team when we were in second grade,

and it was called the San Diego San Skippers. It was part of the International Roapsgiving Organization, which was actually started by her uncle. But there's jump rope teams all around the world.

“And, you know, now I think there's a new name,”

but like I got taken over by the universal jump rope team or something like that. I don't know exactly what it is, but. So I was on a team and every year, we would compete in Boulder, Colorado,

there's competitions for all kinds of jumping rope. And I would perform and start jump rope teams around the school, round different schools in San Diego. So I used to get out of school, get out of school free card and my partner and I would go

and start, do workshop to other schools and help them start jump rope teams. And the idea was, cardiovascular health, healthy heart, and so, so that's really, I would say my roots

- Awesome, I love skipping rope.

“Is okay to say skipping rope or jumping rope there?”

- Yeah, okay. - skipping rope, jumping rope. - And actually it's a great opportunity for me to ask you what your thoughts are about. Exercise isn't just linear, right?

You know, like real jump rope can cross overs. And these days I'm seeing a lot more about rope flow. I think it's David Wack and others online or, you know, stuff that's getting people out of the standard, you know, curls, bench presses, lunges,

you know, and getting movements that are more just for lack of a better term across the body. Do you think there's something to that in terms of real physical benefits? I mean, I imagine there is.

- Sure, I mean, I wouldn't be the expert to be able to give you a good answer on that, but I do think that jumping rope in general has unique benefits. In addition to obviously it's a great cardiovascular exercise

you're getting the weight bearing aspects as well for building bone density.

“And I think that earlier for me, you know,”

I was doing it as a young girl. So important, right? 'Cause you're kind of banking that bone density early on which is important 'cause at some point, you know, my deposit will hit and estrogen goes down

and so you start to lose more bone. But yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of benefits to jumping rope beyond what I'm describing as cardiovascular benefits and bone benefits that someone else could answer.

- I'm certainly gonna get back to jumping rope now that we, you know, resurrected in this conversation. And I have to say, bone density measurements aside, you have awesome posture. I noticed people's posture.

- Oh really? - Yeah, I didn't need me to put you on the spot here, but yeah, when I walked in, I was like, if you ever interacted with Rhonda in person,

which I have, you have amazing posture.

And these days, good posture is rare. So, no, it's maybe the things are related. I imagine they probably are bone health and posture and so forth. In terms of the sorts of exercise that people are more

familiar with, what's your routine look like? And what sorts of things in your routine are non-negotiables and where's the place for experimentation and kind of what you're exploring now? - So for me, exercise is part of my personal hygiene

as you and I were discussing, it really is a non-negotiable. I absolutely have to do exercise, just like I have to brush my teeth. And, you know, I kind of got that from Dr. Ben Levine, who is probably one of the world leading cardiovascular exercise

physiologists. UT Southwest and Dallas, so no shout out his name because I've really learned a lot from him, but the non-negotiables for me really are getting cardiovascular exercise and getting my resistance training.

So building muscle, maintaining muscle strength as well. So my routine for me, I work out probably about five to six hours a week. And those workouts, I largely am doing a combination of high-intensity interval training that's not necessarily

like the Norwegian 4x4 where I'm going as hard as I can. For one minute, our four minutes and then recovering for three minutes and doing that four times, it's really, you know, the Norwegian 4x4 is a hard workout. It's really good for proving your cardiovascular pre-fitness,

“which I think is one of the best markers for longevity.”

And we can talk about that. I do a lot of, you know, it's a mixture of doing, you know, rowing machine, getting on the assault bike, and then doing, mixing it in with lifting weights, doing some deadlifts, you know, doing squats.

So it's really for me non-negotiable to do my biggest intensity exercise is what I would call it. So you're really kind of getting your heart rate up to, you know,

80% max heart rate at points, not always,

but especially during the intervals. I would say that's a non-negotiable for me. How many days a week are you doing that? I do my longer hit workouts. So I have four days a week where I'm doing at least an hour.

So two of those, two of those sessions are more of a cross-fit type of training. Where I'll do the first 30 minutes will be strength training. So I'll just be lifting heavier with, you know, fewer reps. What's the rest between sets?

Sorry to get granular, but people will wonder. What's funny is I typically rest about two minutes between my sets. I recover pretty quick and my coach usually tells me that I'm spot on and I'm like ready to go

and it's been about two minutes. So I usually, that's my recovery time. And so the first 30 minutes strength training and that will be deadlifts, it'll be, you know, squats. I'll be cleaning, I'll be doing front squats.

Sometimes I do barbell or back squats, right? Like it's a mixture of different types of strength training. And then the last 30 minutes is more of a high intensity and it will training session session. So it'll be like, you know, where I'm getting my heart rate up.

So I'm mixing in the row machine. And then I have like, maybe I'm doing cleans, but they're lighter, right? So it's like more reps, but lighter load, right? So that's, I do that twice a week and that each is an hour session. And then I do also twice a week about an hour and 20 minutes.

Of it's also more high intensity, but I have more recovery time

And so, but it's a very similar.

We do, you know, rowing machine assault bikes. We do the skier, you know, row kez that skier. And then we mix it in with, you know, chest presses. And we do, you know, assisted pull-ups. And we do, you know, lighter squats with like larger, you know, more reps.

So that's another, you know, two hours a week. So I have four hours a week of just doing a lot of that sort of crossfit, hit type of training. And then I mix that in with my more like runs that I do, which I would say are still, they're still considered vigorous intensity. They're just not quite as high intensity.

And I do probably, I run in like maybe six miles a week. So maybe maybe at my max, but these days I'm mostly running probably four like four miles a week. So those runs tend to be like sometimes they're two miles, sometimes they're three miles.

And you know, you enjoy running.

I do. I do. And I think it's important as well. And sometimes I'll run with my husband and we just kind of like chill out and talk and, you know, it's, it's a nice time for me as well just to kind of do that with him.

And then on weekends, I'll probably do like a hike with my family. And sometimes we'll do like a sprint up the hill and, you know, but it's more just enjoyable time in nature, still moving, but, you know, it's kind of family time, too. Wait vests on the run or hike? No, I don't know.

I mean, I'm kind of wanting to experiment with that, but not really. I'm just kind of sometimes we bring our puppy and, you know, so it's more about the experience.

“I think then like, I'm like, I get, I get a lot of work out throughout the week.”

Sure. But it's like you said, it's non-negotiable for me. And times when I'm like, like, today, so, you know, I had a long drive and so I got on my palleton and I did a 10 minute, you know, I did a 10 minute to bought a back to back. So it was like two back to back to bought us, right?

So it ended up being 10 minutes.

It was like 30 second recovery in between the two to bought a sessions, two to one ratio,

20 seconds on, 10 seconds off. But like, I have to do something every day. And if I'm traveling or I have like an early podcast or something, I'll just jump on the bike and I have to get that blood, sometimes I'm in my hotel room and I don't want to go to the gym.

I don't have time. And I just in my room. I do, I do the air squats, I'll do hi-nees, jumping jacks and I they repeat for 10 minutes. I'm getting my heart rate up and I'm, you know, I've got sweat on my brow. Like, I'm not, it's not like the most intense workout.

But it's so important for me, you know, there's a variety of brain benefits that have been shown with even just 10 minutes of this vigorous type of intensity of workout. You do, you know, where you're, I mean, you probably have seen this, this data where it's like, just 10 minutes of this vigorous type of exercise, you're immediately increasing neuronal connections, there's been studies showing that you have an improvement in executive

function by like 14%, which is pretty big.

“I think it was like a 50 millisecond improvement processing speed or something, which”

doesn't sound a lot, but actually it translates to a big improvement in executive function. So my brain works better, I feel better, you know, better mood. There's even studies that have compared impulse control after various types of intensity of workout, so like, there's one study that compared a more low intensity versus moderate intensity versus high intensity, so you're talking about like walking versus maybe, you

know, jogging slowly, where you can still have a conversation versus like you're doing a hit workout, right, when you're on, when you're on, you're not really talking because you're going as hard as you can during that interval. And it was the high intensity, you know, vigorous intensity exercise that really increased plasma serotonin, which has been shown to associate with brain serotonin.

So the studies have been done, and serotonin is very important for, as you know, for impulse control. I mean, a lot of people think about serotonin with respect to mood, because we have these selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, SSRIs that are used to treat, you know, depression, major depressive disorder.

But serotonin, as you know, does so much more than that. And impulse control is one of the, the big things that serotonin plays a role in. And so the studies show that plasma serotonin increased in the higher intensity group, and that correlated with improved impulse control. So, of course, for us now in the modern days, society, we live and we're constantly being

“bombarded with, you know, social media, and all these things, and like, you have to be able”

to kind of like, filter that out and not, like, just go with the impulse, like, check my social media, check my, you know, and how many likes did I get, or whatever, you need to just be able to focus. And so that, for me, you know, serotonin is important, so I like to get that vigorous intensity exercise as well.

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I love the mention other functions of serotonin because as you went out, it is so heavily associated with this mood aspect and certainly has a role there, but the impulse control piece is I think is an on-trivial aspect to the effects of exercise and just generally, I'm curious to you bring your phone or feel compelled to check your phone during workouts or are you able to just say, I'm compartmentalizing now, this is the workout you might

“put on music or maybe text here or there if you need to, but are you able to compartmentalize”

or do you struggle with the phone during workouts? Oh, I don't bring my phone to my workout at all, like I don't know, I do have a watch that I wear that, you know, if there's an emergency sale, get a text message, oftentimes I put it on silent, like on no notifications, like I don't want to be bothered, but I don't really check my phone, I don't really like checking things like social media for me, it's

just a distraction and frankly, I think it's terrible for people's brains, even though like, my business kind of depends on it somewhat, I think social media is not really good for people to be honest, so I don't really check my phone or bring my phone, my workouts, my workouts are, I like to chat with my friends when I'm working out with them and that's fun. Yeah, it's in real life. Yes, that's in real life. That's in real life and yeah, phones

phones for me are not something that I bring to my workout. Great, yeah, I've been experimenting with not allowing the phone in my gym and just the workouts go so much better and I find that the mental and physical resetting aspect of workout just seems to be enhanced, but something that you were already there and I'm just arriving, so I have a couple other specific questions about your workouts because for my own interest and I know many people will wonder for the dedicated

weight workouts, are these whole body workouts and you said low reps, maybe you could just tell us what low reps is for you and then the, seems like the ever present question is to failure, close to failure, I mean, just to round out that portion of the workout picture. The workouts that I'm doing with my strength training workouts with my coach, it really depends most of those workouts are their, their multi-joint workouts. So I am most of the time doing some other front squat,

back squat or I'm cleaning it as well, right, which obviously the weight goes down if I'm doing if I'm cleaning it because it's hard to clean. It's also the heart, like it's the thing that I hate doing the most. Oh yeah, cleans with front squat because it's really hard and for me, I mean, for others who've been doing it for years, I'm sure it's like, you know, they love it, but for me, it's very hard. I've only been doing clean since, you know, February 2024, so I'm pretty new to it,

and so it's mentally, like, I have to overcome that challenge, which by the way, once I started

doing all this sort of weight training, I've always been in endurance junky, like I used to

right, that's what comes easy to me. Weight training and resistance training, strength training,

“definitely not something that I've done my whole life. I'm so glad that I started doing it,”

but very, very challenging for me. And so I would say the biggest effect was on my brain and the ability to handle stress better, where it was like unbelievable because it was so hard and I just didn't want to do these cleans, you know, and these front squats. And then the rest of my day was not as hard and that, to me, was like the biggest surprise for this type of training. But anyway, so I do a variety of, if I'm doing, if I'm going heavier, then it, you know, depends. Sometimes

I'll start off, it's like, okay, we start off, we do five reps, and then we go down to four, and then we go down to three, and then we go down to one. Right. We do singles. We do, I know, yeah,

yeah, and that's the hardest. It's the hardest. But then there's like, my coach will like,

it's just one. It's just one. You know, sometimes what do you like, six, five, and then we do four twice, and then we do three twice. Right. And so, it all depends, you know, also on the day. There's

“some days where I'm just like, you know, can we do lower reps and like lighter weight, right?”

Where I'm just like, it's, this is the day for me. I'm stressed. I'm not here. Like, so you kind of have to modify your workout, right, according to how you feel that day. But I would say that those, the majority of my strength training workouts are, or deadlifting, you know, I love deadlifting. I think I'm pretty good at pulling that weight up, lifting that weight up. It's just straight bar, hex bar. I do a straight bar. I do a straight bar. There's so many variables. It's straight bar,

straight bar, and it's the same deal with that. Like, most of the time with strength training will do,

you know, we start off at like five or six, and then work our way down. And then I, I usually do a drop set after, you know, any of those sessions where I'll do 10, and then it's like, a lot lighter, right? So those, those are typically my strength training sessions or multi-joint. Sometimes I'll do accessory sessions, you know, where I'm working, I do, you know, the dips, or the Bulgarian, you know, the Bulgarian split squats. I mean, just the accessory stuff that you're

working the like smaller stabilization muscles and stuff like that. I love that you call Bulgarian split squats accessory smaller muscles. For a lot of people, that's the compound work, which is just, I have to say, I am inside. I'm just like so delighted because, I mean, obviously weight training is something that's caught on broadly for men and women now, but I don't know many women, and I know they're out there, but I don't know many women who are working down to singles on multi-joint,

like real multi-joint, like, you know, dead lifts, coins. I know they're out there, but it's not that common to see in gyms, and this is going to note out spark a debate because, you know, some of the older slightly ordinary, but very credentialed strength training folks have been online recently saying that as people pass 35, that they shouldn't do squats, that they shouldn't do dead lifts, and certainly shouldn't do them heavy because of this whole thing of, you know,

you can do higher reps and you can go to failure and still get hypertrophy. But what I love is that you're not necessarily talking about hypertrophy, maybe some hypertrophy, but this is about strength. This is about building more strength, and triples and doubles and singles, that's awesome. It's hard. It's so hard, and it's the part that, I'm like all about, let's like the last 30 minutes, we're in its hit, and that's hard. It's a different kind of hard,

but for me, the strength training is the hardest, and there's definitely a mental component, right, where I do not want to do it. It's like you talk about cold plunging, right? Like you, you just, it's so unpleasant, and you don't want to do it, and like you do it, and it's like

“that mental toughness that you're building, right? That's what I experience when I'm doing these,”

you know, strength training exercises that I'm doing, and, and I don't know if it's going to get easier, or maybe it will. It hasn't yet. I still, I still dread it, but I do it, and I'm proud of myself for doing it, but it is, it's definitely hard, and I am getting stronger, I think mentally, and obviously physically, as well, but, um, have to add in the aerobic as well, though, I think that's really important. That's your base. Yeah, yeah, you love it.

I love it, and if you think cardiovascular strength training is very important, you know, for long-term health, as well as, you know, obviously building muscle and strength. Well, on the one hand, I want for you as a friend to, for you to hate the heavy work last, on the other hand, I don't because of this literature, I'm sure you're familiar with it, but the anterior mid-singulate cortex is the brain area that is hyperplastic throughout the

life span, which is rare for a brain area, and it enlarges when we do things we don't want to do. I mean, it's so clear. It's not just about doing hard things about, it's about doing the hard thing

I don't like the cold plunge, which is why I do it. I don't think it's magic. I just think it's

a surefire stimulus that I hate to get mentally stronger, and I think having something that you really despise, that you know is good for you, seems to keep this anterior mid-singulate cortex volume either increasing or the same, and that's, actually, the thing in these so-called super-agers, that is the strongest anatomical correlate that we have. So, on the one hand, I hope it gets easier on the other hand, for your sake. I hope it doesn't get easier, because it's still,

it's going to be so much more beneficial. I have a coach who can tell when it's getting easier, and she will definitely up the weight. I mean, it keeps going up, and so it gets easier in a sense, but it doesn't, right? So, I mean, I think that's the whole point is your building strength,

and you keep making it heavier, and it becomes harder again, because now it's heavier.

But, and I haven't gone injured, so that's also, you know, not going wooded. Yeah, no, not going wooded. I, thank you for rounding out that picture. It's super inspiring for men and women, you know, so. It's not easy to post on social media, because obviously I'm a newbie, so I have all sorts of things that I can weigh as I can improve, but I'm posting it, you know. Well, in the fact that you're working down into triple doubles in singles, I think is something

that I'm trying to do more of, and I think this notion that you can get hypertrophy with higher reps if you take it to failure. Sure, I totally agree with the studies, totally agree with the data,

“but not everything is about hypertrophy. I think that's what people forget. It's not all about”

growing muscle, NVO2 Max, which is great, but it's just, it's not all about the top contour, and what I love about the way you approach everything is, you go through multiple layers of the health stratus as it were. This is probably a good opportunity to talk about protein, because I have a very specific question about protein. We all hear one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight or lean body weight that's sort of what's thrown at us. By doing the

heavier weight training, do you notice that your protein appetite has increased like appetite specifically for protein foods? I don't know that I have, you know, I interestingly have been doing a little bit more intermittent fasting, in which people think about intermittent fasting. They think about it as just one thing, one intervention, I think it's two. There's a behavioral aspect to it, where it's a tool to sort of lower the amount of calories you're taking in.

The other one would be this metabolic switch, but so I've actually, since I don't know September, maybe, last September of 2025, been doing more intermittent fasting, and what I mean by this is just really just eating less. And the reason for that is because I noticed that everything that I was doing, which was, you know, I eat healthy, I actually says a lot, and yet I was sort of gaining more fat in the, the belly section, right, the visceral fat.

“And the only thing that really helped me stop that, but the, put the, put the brakes on,”

was getting more in a calorie deficit. So, maybe my drive to do that kind of is skewing, whether or not my appetite for protein would go up, but I personally am on the scale of 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram body weight, which is probably a little bit less than the pound. You know, it's a kind of a throw away a gram of quality protein as defined as something with,

you know, lots of the essential amino acids and so forth, per pound or per lean pound of body mass.

Yeah, so just something I think I and many other people shoot for, but I'm curious how religious you are about the, you know, getting a certain protein amount or per meal. Basically, it wasn't working for me in terms of like, I was really trying to get aim for like the higher end of the, for me, you know, 1.6 grams per kilogram body weight, or even a little bit above that. And what I found what was happening is that I was actually gaining, gaining more weight,

because I think I was consuming more calories at the same time. If, if you're getting it from Whole Foods, right, like that's just kind of naturally going to happen. And so I had to slide down, but I'm still, I'm still like, I said, I'm still getting within that range of like, probably on average, maybe 1.3, 1.4 grams per kilogram body weight. And it's really, it's really worked well for me, but like, people are different and you have different goals, right? You know, like, I'm gaining

“muscle mass and I feel like all my training is like the most important thing and I think that we need,”

generally speaking, I think people should become more obsessed with training and less obsessed with protein. Like the protein will complement the training. And as you mentioned, if you're training, perhaps you're appetite for protein will increase. And so you'll start to eat, you know, more protein

Probably not the answer, I think you were expecting, but it's, it's really, for me, I just, focusing on getting more protein was, was not working for my body in terms of, but then again, I'm 47 years old, you know, that very menopause phase, very different than someone who's 37, maybe. I don't know the answer to that. I do know that I hear from more and more people these days that they are having a hard time getting that 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. It

feels like a lot to them as what they're saying. They feel like they're kind of forcing themselves to do it. You didn't feel that way. Exactly. So I'm actually really pleased with your answer, not because I have an agenda here, but because I and many other people seem to feel like, unless there's a lot of resistance training or tremendous demands, like hiking,

while backpacking, where you burn tons of calories, you're carrying your basically rocking nine hours

“and hey, right? That they have a hard time getting that much protein down. And I think that's also”

the case if people are eating starches, like I write an oatmeal and some breads and things like that, not a lot of bread, but, you know, it sounds like you eat starches. I do eat oatmeal too. It does say she ate you these days, because I really kind of more focused a little bit on, I did want to to calorically restrict somewhat without, you know, being unhealthy. Obviously, you can take every stressor to a bad unhealthy place, right? You don't want to starve yourself. You don't want to like

not eat enough food. But my meals are mostly like healthy protein. So I have homemade turkey burgers, eat a lot of, I eat a lot of those. And then I eat chicken, you know, I had pasteurized chicken. I do still eat wild Alaskan salmon. And then I'll also mix in some like filet manion,

like I like grass-fed steak as well. Those are my protein sources. And always, I pair with greens.

So or like some sort of vegetable, most of the times it's, it's greens, because they're the most

“micro nutrient dense. And so these days, I'm eating a lot of sauteed collard greens that are like”

pre-prepared, has garlic and onion. And I'll put that, you know, have that with my meal or I'll have some, you know, sauteed kale. Sometimes I'll have a salad with it. But the portions are smaller and like I said, I also do a little bit of intermittent fasting. We can talk about that as well. But that's kind of these days what I'm doing for my meals. I haven't eaten as much. Sometimes I'll eat the high protein oats. They have the high protein oats that have you seen those? No, I know,

meal, but I like protein foods. I like vegetables. I like fruit. I feel very lucky to like those foods mainly. Yeah. And then the starch for me has to be very clean. I like oatmeal rice. Homemade pasta is all eat. Like if I go out, I'll have, sometimes I'll have some homemade pasta or a sourdough bread or something. But I find that most starches that are out there in the world have a bunch of other junk in them. But I just feel lousy. Get kind of sleepy afterwards.

So it sounds like we eat pretty similarly. Although I probably eat more starches than you do. It's the more process types of carbohydrates that, as you mentioned, it's like typically, you don't feel good after you eat them. And you know, part of that's the post-prandial inflammatory response to some of those who are a little more inflammatory. I mean, a lot of attitudes and stuff that are affecting the gut, gut permeabilization,

you're leaking lipopolysaccharide into the bloodstream, right? That's activating the immune system. We used to inject, I don't do any animal experiments anymore. And I'm actually grateful to not do them. So I didn't like working on animals, but it was what we did until I decided to work on humans. But we used to inject LPS to stimulate and inflammatory response to kind of prime regeneration response that you could get through macrophages and things like that. And so LPS

“is a very potent way to generate local or even systemic inflammation. I think hearing that”

some starches will stimulate LPS that's interesting. Let me clear. I'm not challenging. No,

no, no, I'm not challenging. It squares with my experiences. I'm one of these. I never get

stomach aches. I never get headaches. If I do something badly wrong with my stomach or my head. But if I eat certain starches, I'll be like, oh, like, I feel lousy and I'm wondering if it's this. So we have about a gram of LPS in our gut, like that's on average, because you know, lipopolysaccharide is the outer component of a cell membrane and gram negative bacteria, right? We have a lot of bacteria in our gut. We have a lot of bacteria in our gut. So when we eat food,

typically, like our gut epithelial cells, we have a tight junction that's holding them together. When we eat food, they transiently open and then close. It's kind of a normal response, right? I would say the opposite end of the spectrum of that would be like celiac where they eat gluten or something. It opens up and stays open until you get like a ton of LPS leakage into the system which causes massive inflammation. It just happens with meals in general. You do get somewhat

of a LPS response from a meal. Now the type of meal does matter. So when I say refined carbohydrates,

something that is refined sugar, typically with saturated fat. So those types of foods really cause

like LPS response. You know, it's inflammation. It's bad. It's hard on the gut. But the post cranial inflammatory response essentially is that LPS getting into the system, activating the immune system which draws the energy. I mean, it's like, it's very energy consuming to activate your

“immune system, right? That's why when you're sick, you're so sleepy too, right? Well, there's also”

cytokines that are somnogenic and promoting sleep, but like activating your immune system requires a ton of energy. And so when you're constantly activating the immune system, you know, that's an energy sink, right? And so you do feel tired. And that's why a lot of times after a meal, you're feeling kind of lethargic. To protein foods of the sort that you listed off before,

do they cause less opening of the tight junctions of the gut? I think that the big deal with the

opening of the tight junctions in the gut is, you know, I mean, eating a big meal will do it, eating a very like ultra-processed food meal will do it. Interestingly enough, just eating a bunch of saturated fat without a fiber matrix. So like, like, butter, you're just like eating butter. Don't ever do that. But like, if you just eat butter, that's been shown. When she was little, now she's all grown up, but when she was little, I taught her

at a, like, a little bit of a terrible butter and she loved it. So then when we do the thing where we, we do that, we won't do that. I mean, a little bit's fine, but like, I mean, there's, there's study showing that it does, like, saturated fat is hard on the gut. Yeah.

Like I said, it's a sliding scale, like meals in general do it, but it's like you, it's like you

would think the healthier foods that you're eating, like whole foods, you're getting less of that LPS response. And then, of course, there's gluten and that complicates the whole story, especially for people that are celiac, right? Because that's, that's just a small percentage of people are

“actually, yeah, right? But a lot of people seem to believe, and I believe them, that when they eat”

gluten, they feel worse than when they don't eat gluten. I'm sure there's some people that are sensitive to gluten that do feel worse. And then I'm sure some of that's the no-cibo effect, right? That's been shown with gluten in, in particular, did you have you seen that study? Where people, there's been, so, so they were, people that think they're, you know, gluten sensitive. And so, they were enrolled in a study. And these individuals were separated into two groups. One group was

getting, given the gluten, bread with gluten, and the other group was given the bread with the gluten, and the people that were given the bread without gluten had a terrible abdominal response, like they were bloated. They felt terrible. I mean, it was all, and there was no gluten in the actual bread, but they thought there was. So, it was thought that there's a no-cibo effect where it's like the opposite of a placebo effect where you just, you're, you've got that phenotype where you think

things negative are going to happen, and you can make them happen. You can change your immune system, you can change your brain signaling, and, you know, so, probably a combination of both with that

“regard. In addition to, like, the, the large, so we're talking about in the context, that's why”

it sparked my, you know, interest is like, you're talking about playing tired after meal, and I do think that is part of that reason for feeling sleepy, but, you know, it's interesting about LPS. You talked about injecting it to mice, and I've also done experiments injecting LPS into mice. There have been studies where people have been injected with an amount of LPS, that is, you know, similar to what you would find. You're got releasing into your bloodstream,

or a placebo control, which, in this case, was saline, and individuals that were injected with the LPS high amounts of inflammatory markers, like TNFL, I mean, we're talking, like, up to a 50% increase over baseline, right? So high amounts of inflammation, which makes sense, LPS is activating the immune system, is like, there's a foreign invader, right? It's not a foreign invader, it's just the food you ate that caused transient gut permeability, and those individuals

also feel depressive symptoms, and feelings of, like, social withdrawal. So the inflammation is affecting the brain, right? These inflammatory factors are getting the brain crossing the blood brain barrier, and affecting the way we feel. And we know now that inflammation plays a big role in major depressive disorder and depression, and not in all cases, but there's a subset, right? Where it's really like, it seems to play a big role. In fact, interestingly, there's been

some studies showing that people that don't respond to SSRIs are have very high amounts of c-reactive proteins. So this was the biomarker for a classical biomarker for inflammation. I would argue it's not that sensitive, but nonetheless, it is a biomarker for inflammation. And so people that don't respond to SSRIs have high amounts of inflammation, which kind of raises its question of, is there like this subset of depression? That's really inflammatory driven, right?

Interesting. So the LPS is affecting not only our energy levels, but also our mood. And then, there's also evidence that, so we know that LPS binds to LDL particles through

want to ever go get your cholesterol measured, like, after right after your sick, or had a very stressful event, something that causes inflammation, because you will increase the BLDL production increases, and LDL production increases. And it's sort of an adaptive response to bind that LPS, to prevent it from, you know, causing more damage. And so it actually binds to LDL particles

“on the ApoB protein. So ApoB is a protein that is on these lipoproteins. And it's a very important”

protein, because that is what's used by the LDL receptors present on our liver to recycle LDL particles. So what happens is these LPS particles are now bound to, you know, our lipoproteins, and our lipoproteins are still doing their function, right? They're going around and they're giving, you know, triglycerides and fatty acids, and to some to re-cluster all to our cells that need it, right? We're constantly making new cells, and repairing, and we ourselves need that

as they donate triglycerides and fatty acids, they get smaller in size. The lipoproteins, you probably heard a small dense LDL, right? Like, that's a very dangerous type of LDL particle. And that's one that's kind of been donating along, getting rid of triglycerides, and whatever, if you think about a train with cargo, it's donating, you know, dropping off the cargo. And so when it's time to get recycled back into the liver, what you know,

the APOB proteins obscured by that LPS, and it's not recycled. And so it gets lodged into the arterial wall. And because there's an LPS bound to this, you know,

small dense LDL particle, macrophages, which, as you mentioned, it's like the first line of

“defense against something like a bacterial invader, right? It comes and choose it up, right?”

It gets rid of the problem. So macrophages come in because they're seeing the signal of LPS and think it's a foreign invader when it's actually just a small dense LDL particle bound to LPS that came from the gut, tries to engulf it, but it can't, because it's not bacteria. And you get the macrophage stuck to that liproprotein LPS, you know, complex, and you get the formation of a foam cell. You probably heard of a foam cell to be getting of atherosclerosis. And so this is

where gut health and the food we eat is sort of, it's linked to cardiovascular health, right? Got permeability, getting that LPS into our regulations, actually not a very good thing,

because you're basically, you know, slow dripping in that inflammation, that inflammatory signal,

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drinkag1 with the numeral1.com/huberman to get six free travel packs and a bottle of vitamin D3K2 with your subscription. Thank you for explaining that so clearly because I don't think anyone has ever explained how exactly gut health is signaling cardiovascular health or pushing or pulling down on or

“raising cardiovascular health is a neuro guy. I think about the vagus nerve as the primary conduit”

between gut and brain, and I was recalling that LPS injected into the gut is how you actually experimentally induce a fever because the, and if you cut the vagus, no fever. So there's this, there seems to be something about the way that the gut communicates with, with the brain and other organs that is critically dependent on the some threshold level of LPS. Thank you also for reminding us that LPS is present in the gut because we have yeast in our gut. Some amount of yeast.

You mentioned tight junctions and the way I think about tight junctions, please correct me because I'm going to get some of all of this wrong, is that essentially they form like a cellular fence in the gut and that transient opening or partial opening of these is a normal process. But it sounds

into the bloodstream. So they'll have bacteria circulating, and if some of that is small enough

to get across the blood brain barrier, that's another way that bacteria can start to cause inflammation at the brain level. It's LPS, which is like the outer component of bacteria that have died, actual live bacteria getting in. I don't know as much about that perhaps as well, but I know that the LPS is getting in, and I do know that the LPS, you know, activating the immune system and stuff and the resident, we glue, glial cells and stuff in the brain, does breakdown the blood

brain barrier. It's like the early, like we know neuroinflammation is really some of the early parts of breaking down of the blood brain barrier, which is the early stages of neurodegenerative disease. It is how the gut is gut health is linked to the brain and to neurodegenerative disease as

“well. So it's the inflammation. I think that's really, it's really powerful in terms of,”

it's a driver of the aging process in general. Like this inflammation, inflammation, you've heard of inflammation. You know, I think now it's pretty clear to me that is, if you're thinking about the molecular events that are leading to these hallmarks of aging, which lead to the phenotypes and, you know, frailty and the diseases, right? Like, type 2 diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, like, go up the stream of that and the inflammation is that the core of it. And so we hear this

word inflammation a lot and it's like, what does it mean? You know, and it's a lot, it means a lot of things. It's not just the gut. The gut is a component of it, but there's other things as well, right? I mean, you can have stress, you know, any emotional stress, like that can lead to inflammation, not getting enough sleep, right? There's a lot of things that can lead to inflammation. And so it is kind of an important point to think about is really like trying to have your

inflammation low, right? And how do you do that? I'm going to take three different jumping off points here, all related to what you said. So don't think I'm a random subject generator here. We will get back to fasting at promise. Lately, you've posted a bit about glutamine as a potential tool to perhaps buffer the immune system under times of stress. I've also been interested in elglutamine as a way to reinforce tight junctions in the gut. I don't know if that literature is robust

or not. I have to say I started taking elglutamine years ago and times when I was working a lot not sleeping enough because someone told me it would help me not get sick. And indeed, I didn't get

sick as much as the imaginary control experiment that I never got to do. I mean, I don't know if

it helped or not. But I continue to take elglutamine when I'm feeling run down. I take a couple of other things too. But could you tell us about how or if or how elglutamine is important for gut

“health? And if and how elglutamine might be helpful for reinforcing the immune system?”

There's not a ton of evidence in terms of like what's in the scientific literature supporting these statements. But there is some, you know, and it's enough to kind of go well. I'm going to try to maybe experiment with it. So, you know, I first became interested in glutamine because when I was doing my graduate research, I was doing a lot of cancer metabolism studies and I would do nutrient withdrawal and I would, you know, remove glucose from cancer cells and see what would happen.

And it's like, okay, well, I would get, I would remove glucose from, you know, lymphoma cancer cells in the petri dish and a lot of them would die. But they went all die and I was like, why aren't they all dying? Turns out, well, they had glutamine there. So, glutamine was enough to sustain them and so glutamine can be converted into many things. So, glutamine can be an amino acid, right? So, amino acid, glutamine can be converted into the, um, the crebs cycle so it can be converted into

intermediates that are used to make energy by the mitochondria and glutamine can be converted into glutamate, right? Neurotransmitter, right? So, there's a lot of pathways and different fades for glutamine.

“So, I became interested in, and that because it was like, oh, glutamine's important for the”

survival of these cancer cells, um, then I was doing a lot of activating immune cells studies, as, you know, my, my graduate advisor is an immunologist by training, and so it was also doing

that. Turns out, glutamine was essential for the activation of immune cells. So, that was kind of

always in the background of my mind. And then, in my postdoc, I did my post-lect with Dr. Bruce Aames, and my colleague, Dr. Mark Shikanaga, was doing a lot of gut work, and this is why I know a lot about the LPS and the gut, like, it's from him, like, brilliant guy. He's now a photographer, like, not in science at all, but brilliant guy, and a lot of really amazing experiments looking at, you know, gut permeability and things that can help buffer, you know, gut permeability,

and one of those things were glutamine. So, glutamine can get converted into these intermediates that are used by mitochondria in the gut epithelial cells, and so this, like, an easy source of

grain of salt, right? Like, at some point, you know, in my opinion, animal studies are really

important for understanding the mechanism behind where things work, and we need human studies, you know, as well, looking at the totality of evidence is important. It's the human studies that we're lacking. It's not a ton of them there. The ones that I have found, more compelling, not necessarily, I mean, with the gut health, it's, you know, it's sparse with humans. I found more compelling with respect to glutamine and human studies was the immune system,

and this is where I started putting, connecting the dots, right? Where I started coming across this literature of these endurance athletes, who do get a higher amount of respiratory track infections, you know, like, what I mean endurance athletes, I mean these guys that are, like,

“outrunning marathon all year, like, they're just constantly training for a marathon, right?”

And so they're really like, they're putting a lot of demand, right? Energetic, expenditures happening at a really high rate. So they're, they're more prone to respiratory infections, and there's a few studies out there showing that if these athletes take a higher dose of glutamine, I think it's like 30 grams or something high like that, that they had a lower incidence of respiratory track infections for the ones they weren't doing yet. And then I went back to my,

oh, I know that glutamine's really important for T cell activation, and I was like, I'm going to take this because being a mom and having a child that's bringing everything home, like a vector,

you know, you're, like, desperate. You're the strong end. Yeah, exactly. And I never used to get sick,

ever, like, I would never get sick. And then all of a sudden, I was getting sick, like, three times a year. And I was like, do I have cancer? Like, what's going on? Like, I literally was, like, worried. And, and then I started taking glutamine. Now, I take it just, I only take five grams on a daily basis. But if, if my son's sick, if there's any exposure, if it's like, during the season, if I'm traveling, I go up to 15. I go up to 20. Because it can be a little

hard on that. Not all at once, not all at once. I usually do it like in five, so I do five grams, five grams, five grams. And, you know, I have to, with the caveat of, I do that, but I also take a lot of creatine as well. And so I don't know which one or both. But like, I really don't get sick, I'm not getting sick. And even, even if it's brought home in my house, I'm not getting sick. And maybe it's a placebo. And you know what? I am a okay with that, because placebo effect is real,

“as long as I'm not getting sick. So I do think, I think with the glutamine, you know, it's not”

something that I would feel comfortable saying that it's, there's a lot of evidence, it's overwhelming, and with confidence that it's improving gut health and it's improving, you know, it's going to help give your immune cells energy, particularly if they need to be activated, you know, upon exposure to any pathogen. But I feel like it's worth experimenting with, perhaps maybe if someone has colon cancer, that would be more of a concern because I did mention that cancer cells can't just let everything.

Anything that's good for you, right, folate. I mean, if you don't have a net folate, you can cause double-stranded breaks to your DNA, which lead to mutations that lead to cancer. But if you have cancer and you take a bunch of folate, you need folate to make new DNA, and so they like the folate, right? So it's like, it's an abnormal growth. So any of the cancer associated with the proliferate? I saw the recent study on touring, which scared a lot of

people because touring's in a lot of energy drinks, but that was an in vitro study. Yes, I was going to ask, you know, is there increased cancer risk if you're supplementing with glutamine because cancer cells like glutamine? So my personal opinion, I'm obviously not a medical physician. This is not a prescription. It's just my opinion. I personally am not scared of getting

cancer from taking glutamine. If I had a colon tumor and a tumor in my colon, the first site

that the glutamine is seeing, maybe the liver as well, since that's also the next step. But barring like having a tumor already in my liver or in my colon, those are really the only types of situations that I would be worried about taking glutamine. I don't think it's going to cause cancer, right? Now I guess the question is like, what if you don't know you have? Hopefully the cost will come down on whole body and where I, it's actually the cost is coming

down on whole body MRIs. Hopefully more people are able to get those. It's not just such a high-end

“exclusive thing in the near future. Kind of like blood draws. You should be like panels of blood testing.”

You know, my God, I'm, if you really need it, I'm now the cost of blood draws is really low. Right. So hopefully people will be more aware. Yeah, I will take a tablespoon of glutamine once or twice or three times a day if I'm feeling run down. You mentioned being exposed to pathogens from vectors of different sorts. Before we went on mic, we were talking about neck and a seat of cystine. I take it once a day consistently, but I'll take it three times a day. If I'm

traveling a lot, because I'm around sick people when I travel, especially in winter, or if I feel like I'm getting run down. And they're the data are pretty interesting. There's at least one study showing that it reduced flu transmission where people were deliberately exposed to flu. I think it took the number of people that contracted flu compared to the placebo group, somewhere from the high 70% area. I don't remember the exact number now. We'll put a link to

Roger Schwelt, who and said he was a big proponent of NSEL assisting for people that are

around sick people. Do you take Mac? So my only concern with taking on a daily basis is it is a

“pretty powerful antioxidant. And I think that we need to understand antioxidants and the opposite”

which should be generating oxidation, right? It's not like oxidation is bad. It's bad when it's constant slow drip oxidation that's damaging other parts of our body, DNA, proteins, lipids. Some oxidation you want, like if you're exercising, there's a burst of oxidation. To get the adaptations. So you get the adaptations. And so my concern would be for one maybe timing it around your exercise, so not taking it close to when you're exercising. And these studies come

out of, you know, studies that have been done with high dose vitamin E plus vitamin C. I haven't seen a lot of vitamin C studies alone that are blunting exercise adaptations. There's maybe one at a high dose. Most of the time it's vitamin C and vitamin E vitamin E, alpha to copper all when I say high dose usually it's 400 I use just to give you a reference point to RDA is like 24 I use or something. So we're talking about. But a segment can be 200 to 800.

So it wouldn't be hard to blunt that exercise effect by accidentally. Yeah, I don't take vitamin E.

It's spike my prostate specific antigen, which I always told isn't is a known effect among

your all just. The select trial was done. So the select trial was was looking at selenium and vitamin E. And if it could slow the progression of prostate cancer and it turned out that the opposite was found and it was really kind of due to this high dose of alpha to copper all, which also has other effects of lowering another type of vitamin E in the body called gamma to copper all, which is anti-inflammatory. And I think that has something to do

with inflammation actually can increase the PSA, right? So anyways, the point here is that with neck, my only concern would be, you know, launching the oxidation that you're getting from beneficial because I know you're highly active. I'm training hard. I don't want my training to be short-circuited from neck. I'm perfectly happy to only take neck if I'm feeling run down or exposed to illnesses around me. So that's when I that's when I take it, but it's mostly because of

I wasn't familiar with the flu influenza data that's interesting. I was just it's good for long health too, like so although if smokers take it, I think it has the opposite effect where again, it's like the cancerous cells are using it to their benefit. You know, we used to think anti-oxidants oh, it's so good, you know, just more, more, more, and it turns out it's not the case, right? Like

“and that's why a lot of these other types of formetic stressors or plant phytochemicals, they're actually”

generating an antioxidant response endogenously in our body by activating these antioxidant

pathways, which are so much more powerful than what you would get from an antioxidant, right? And so

that's kind of, it's not like you don't want something antioxidant. It's just like you don't want to overdose on taking too much knack and too much vitamin C and too much vitamin E, because there's also something called reductive stress. So we know about oxidative stress, oxidative stress is when you're, you're again, you're causing these these reactive oxygen species to damage things like your DNA, for example, and over time, eventually that happens in a part of the gene that can

be oncogenic and lead to cancer. Well, reductive stress is like the opposite of that. So it's like too much of the reducing equivalents, like the, you know, the NADH, the NADPH, the, you know, so, and it also has negative effects. So you kind of don't want to go too far in either ends of the spectrum, but also you want to instead of having this like slow leaking effect of these pro-oxidants that are happening from eating a bad diet, from, you know, inflammation,

things like that. You want it to be a short burst where you switch it on. You have the adaptation,

“it's off, right? And the adaptation, the adaptation happens in the recovery period, right?”

When you're, for example, if you exercise, it's a big burst of reactive oxygen species, that is beneficial and you want it, right? And you don't want to blunt those adaptations. And so that's, that's kind of my concern with daily dosing of knack. Great. I don't cold plunge in the six-day hours after resistance training for exactly the reason you're talking about, yeah, I want the inflammation. I want the increased blood flow. I don't want a short circuit that.

I'm perfectly happy to only take knack under conditions where I'm bit run down and, and that's also when I'll take glutamine. If you take out glutamine regularly, I personally observe that I get stronger at a steady state of starch intake. And I don't like dropping starches too low because I get weak. Yeah. And I also can't sleep as well if my starches are too low. I just am too wired. Yeah. There was a, there was a new study on eating starches and

on the podcast and people said, "Oh, you know, he's gorging himself with pasta and then passing out and that's the worst time." I wasn't saying that. I'm saying that if you're not, if you're running like crazy, I'll hear from marathoners and ultra people and people are doing

a million things. I'll say I'm not sleeping well and they're exercising like crazy. It's like,

"When was the last time you had a bowl of pasta?" Like, "Oh, no, I don't hate pasta." And then they'll have some rice or some pasta, like, "Oh, I slept like a baby." And they were having it at launch. Yeah. And I just think that the brain doesn't shut down well when you have high levels of cortisol. And the cortisol starch thing is an interesting one. I'm so glad you brought this up because I think this is something that I did want to talk about really and it has to do with stop eating three hours

before bed for that very reason. So there was a new, even a new state, but there's been several studies now really showing that this is important for that cardiovascular reset, right? Your parasympathetic activity is supposed to go higher. You're in your rest and recovery phase, right? When you're eating food, that's the sympathetic activity, right? That's activating the sympathetic nervous system.

“As you're eating. Yeah. Yeah. And even as you're digesting, so if you have to think about it,”

like you digests, it what it takes like five or so hours to fully finish about depending on the meal, right? So if you're eating right before you go to bed, you are, you are not in that parasympathetic activity, you know, part of the cycle that you want to be in. So there was a new, even a new study that I shared, like, I don't know, a couple days ago, even showing that if you stop eating three hours before bed, so these people were actually, it's interesting, they're, they had their

blood pressure measured for starting in the mid afternoon all the way throughout the night.

So the first study that really not just one endpoint looking up blood pressure, but just measuring it

continuously. I don't know if it was every 15 minutes or something like that, but it was found that they're during sleep. If they had stopped eating three hours before bed versus the group that did not stop eating three hours before bed, their blood pressure dipped, like lower. So you get that barrel reflex dipping, right? So this is like part of the parasympathetic activation. As you know, very important for the blood pressure to go down, heart rate went down, like, you know, much, much

“lower, and that reset is so, so important for cardiovascular health. I think what was found was”

it was something like translated to like 20% lower risk of cardiovascular events, like heart attacks. So it's really, it's really significant. Yeah, and it really is an easy thing to do to think about stopping eating, you know, three hours before you go to bed. Like that's, that's something I think that it's not that hard to implement, and it will improve your sleep as well as your cardiovascular health. Although I think in that study, I don't know that sleep was really subjective, and I don't

think it really was improved more, but other studies have found that as well. That sleep doesn't improve. I know Sachin Panda, he's been on my podcast for podcasts, he's had studies showing that it seemed like stop eating three hours before bed, really, it does seem to improve sleep. But this parasympathetic activation, you know, you don't want to have a meal right before you bat because you want, you want to be in the rest and recovery part, right? So yeah, I think people

here, and I understand why the nomenclature and the buzzwords of, you know, fight or flight for sympathetic and rest and digest for parasympathetic. But yeah, the other evidence shows eating stimulates the sympathetic nervous system. It's not a stress event, but it requires energy. Anything that requires energy raises body temperature, and your body's doing work. It's an awake event. It's an awake event. It's a great way to put it. While you're sleeping. Yeah, and that's

why these phrases, while I don't demonize anyone for creating the fighter flight. Well, I mean, there's ways that you want your sympathetic nervous system to activate that are not about

fighter flight. Like I actually think that people just got the first hour of their day more active

and energized bright light exercise caffeine, if you're me and Lord knows I'm grateful that caffeine exists in the first hour of the day, or first hours, if you can't manage that because of schedule, and then the last hour of the day was strongly parasympathetic. I mean, everything would get better without having to think a ton about exactly how you're doing that because on a given

“day, you just do what you can. And that's what you want, right? I mean, so cortisol is circading”

dependent as you know. I mean, in the like early morning of early hours of morning, that's when you want it to peak, right? Part of the awakening response. Like you want it to go up. And it's interesting. The reason I'm going on this is because it's a little bit of a soapbox for me, but so with the with the with the cortisol activation, people don't realize this, you know, obviously it's a hormone, and it's binding to two different receptors. There's a

glucocorticoid receptor, and then there's the mineral o-corticoid receptor, and both of those when cortisol binds to it, they go into the nucleus of the cell, and they're changing the expression, so they're activating genes and deactivating genes, like 20% of the human genome. It's a large percentage, right? And this is on multiple different organs. So it cortisol has a very important role, and you want that peak. You want that spike, right? That's what you want,

morning, going out bright light exposure, as you mentioned, like that's very important for that cortisol

awakening response. But you can also actually like intensity intense exercise can switch it on, but what's interesting, and so can an intermittent fasting, that it was interesting to study from Mark Matson's lab, showing that the types of stressors that are beneficial, these traumatic stressors like exercise, like intermittent fasting, perhaps even cold exposure, like these types of exposures change the receptor density of the receptor. So if you look at

what activates cortisol in a negative way, chronic stress, let's say emotional, financial, psychological, chronic sleep deprivation, that bad type of stress, you're not getting a big spike, you're getting a slow drip of it. And so what happens is when you have that type of stress, you're increasing the glucocortocortocort receptors, and you're decreasing the mineral cortocortocortocort receptors. There's a different biological response in the brain, in the hypothalamus,

but also in other organs as well, when you're activating cortisol through a beneficial type of stress, the traumatic stressors, like intermittent fasting, like exercise, I believe probably deliberate cold exposure as well, where it's a different biological response. And also, if you think about it, you actually want cortisol to do its function. You want it to change the expression,

just what's supposed to do, right? The problem is, is when you have that slow drip,

then not only are you're increasing, they're changing the receptor activation, but also they become resistant to the cortisol, and so you're not getting the benefits. You know, cortisol represses inflammation, right? It suppresses immune system, but like, so you're not getting the

“anti-inflammatory effect from cortisol. It's being dysregulated, and that's what you don't want.”

You don't want cortisol to be dysregulated in terms of like the genes that are supposed to activate or deactivate. You want it to be doing what it's supposed to, it's supposed to regulate. We're supposed to have the cortisol, you know, activation response. So anyways, that's something that I kind of want to clear in people's minds, because I feel like a lot of people get worried about, oh my gosh, I'm doing, you know, hit, and it's activating my cortisol. Well, that's fine.

It's like, you know, I mean, I guess if you do too much hit, right? You can always take something

to the extreme, okay? With that caveat, obviously, I'm not talking about that, but with that caveat, like you do, you want your body to be able to turn it on, and then turn it off, and have the adaptation, have the response, right? And like I said, it's a different biological response than the chronic type of cortisol activation that you get with the bad types of stress. Yeah, I guess same goes for intermittent fasting. And maybe you could share with us what your

intermittent fasting protocol is. I know that recently cortisol has been like increasingly demonized as the stress hormone, stress hormone, and people, it's all pictures of people with cushions, disease, which is, you know, drastically elevated cortisol, and the moon face, and the excessive visceral fat, and this sort of fear mongering around cortisol was particularly

“directed toward women, and this entered the health fitness space, because I think in an appropriate”

way, I'll just be very direct to you. I don't like, I know a longer tap dance around who said, you know, what, in a very appropriate way, that I appreciate Dr. Stacey Sims came on the podcast, and she said, listen, some women shouldn't train fasted, because they don't feel well when they train fasted, and their cortisol is too high and so forth. That captured a lot of people's experience, a lot of women in particular, but some men certainly were like, yes, oh my God, thank you,

thank you, thank you, thank you. But then the message got contorted, right, as it does, right? Yes. And then it became women shouldn't train fasted, and then we had a Lauren Klint so simple in this podcast, who's a, you know, trained as a PhD, she has background in nutrition, physiology, strength, training, coach, etc., and she said, no, listen, you can train fasted or not fasted as a woman or a man, it's a kind of your preference, but that we don't need to fear these cortisol spikes,

“and forgive me for going long here, but I think it is important that people hear this again,”

which is there's also this idea that deliberate cold exposure increases cortisol, but when you look at the data, it definitely increases the adrenaline. Yeah. And peripheral dopamine, and probably I'll go on record it, probably central dopamine, although we don't have as good evidence for that yet, but their evidence points to the fact that deliberate cold exposure lowers cortisol. So this then, you know, because, and again, I think Stacey appropriately said, a lot of women who

want to use cold shouldn't go as cold, but the message got contorted, and it became women shouldn't do deliberate cold exposure because of the cortisol increase. And so, part of the reason I'm going long here is I'm trying to correct the narrative on her behalf. She said, do what works for you, right? And that's what Lauren's saying, and I'm guessing that's what you'll say as well. But I just need to get that out there because the message has gotten totally pretzel twisted up, and cortisol is neither

good nor bad. You want to hide in the morning. You want it low at night, in general. It sounds

guest and the researchers are talking about is exactly there are times when I wake up in the morning, and I need to need something before I work out. And I do. But I often times do train fasted for one because I am practicing intermittent fasting again, but I do it. I'm not starving myself. And like I said, there's multiple reasons I do it. One reason is because it really did help me lose the belly fat, which is a visceral fat, which is like the worst kind of fat you can have.

And we can talk more about that. But the second reason is I love the cognitive benefits I have in

the morning with it. And it's the main reason I do it. And so there are many times what I do train fasted, but I am not out running 15 miles. I'm most of my, like I said, my sessions are about an hour long. And am I taking a little bit of a performance it with the high intensity probably, probably yes, but it's not much to matter for me. And you do burn a little bit more fat if you train fasted. I mean, that's known. You will, if it is a longer session, you will take an

“important performance enhancement hit. That is also known, right? So I think it really does come”

down to like, what is your goal? How do you feel? And then you kind of go with that. And I completely agree. Like there are times when, you know, I'm on my cycle. And I feel fine. And I'm

working out just fine. And there are times and I'm like, I don't feel good. Like I'm going to

take it easier. But I still train. I just, you listen to your body. And I, that's a pretty easy, I think, role of thumb. Sometimes people like to complicate things. You know, I don't, there's lots of reasons why I don't want to get into that. I have theories, but yeah, I have theories, but they're not important right now. No, it's not important. Yeah. So yeah, I do, I do train fasted. And it is, for me, it is, is helped me tremendously change my body composition. Like I said,

I'm in a different part of my life than perhaps a 30 year old woman is, right? So when I'm 30, I mean, like, I didn't have to train fasted. It was, it was, it was easy to keep, you know, the belly fat, the visceral fat, lower. Hormonal changes are do play a role in the way your body. So

estrogen plays a role in telling your body how to store fat. So subcutaneous fat would be the kind of

fat that you can just like pinch, right? The, the fat that we see, the visceral fat, that's that deep fat that's lining your organs. It's often belly fat, you know, and it's lining the intestines, the liver, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's almost like an endocrine organ. I mean, because it is secreting hormones. It's secreting inflammatory factors. It's metabolically active. It's constantly breaking down triglycerides. It's associated with double, the increased risk,

double the risk of early death. People that have high visceral fat have 44% of higher chance of having cancer, many different types of cancers. Oh, huge. It's huge. You know, and, and of course, insulin resistance is the number one problem with this role fat, right? And I'd love to talk about that. But, um, if you want, I mean, we can, we can do that. Yeah, it's, it's so, with the visceral fat, and like I said, you know, visceral fat is something, if you really directly want to measure it,

you do a dexus gain. But, you know, for the average person that isn't going to go out into a dexus gain, waste or conferences, a proxy is using a lot of studies. So women that have a waste or conference of 35 inches or above are considered to have a higher amount of visceral fat, men that have a waste or conference of 40 inches or above are considered to have a higher amount of

“visceral fat. It's also that belly fat. Like you can, you can, you just know, right?”

Interestingly, like 70% of women over the age of 50 have high visceral fat, 50% of men over the age of 52. You know, again, coming down to women go through menopause, estrogen plays an important role in telling the body, you know, to store the fat subtotaneously, rather than visceral ed around organs. And so, as women transition to premenopause, you know, that the years before menopause and menopause, the estrogen who goes down, and that does change the way the body stores fat.

And any woman that's going through either of those stages knows it. And it's also why you see often women over the age of 50 with more belly fat, right? I mean, that's something that I think it's hard to deny. But it's, it's one of the reasons why I kind of went back to practicing intermittent fasting because there's a, there's a couple of ways that you can really powerfully lose visceral fat. And one of them is doing aerobic exercise, high intensity, animal training,

also really powerfully can do it, but also being in a caloric deficit. And I think when you start

“to get the combination of both, that's what really worked for me. It's crazy how quickly you”

can gain it based on your diet as well. So, it is different from the subcutaneous fat. In many ways, I've mentioned it's to creating these inflammatory molecules, it's, you know, hormones, but it's also constantly breaking down triglycerides into free fatty acids. And the location of it is very dangerous because it's right surrounding the liver, right? It's this deep organ fat.

main lining free fatty acids to the liver. And visceral fat is very different from subcutaneous fat because it doesn't respond to insulin, like subcutaneous fat does. In other words, when you have

a meal, you need a carbohydrate meal, and you basically your body increases insulin to help

“take it up glucose into your liver, muscle, out of posterior, lipolusus shuts down, right?”

It's okay. No longer am I going to break down these fats? It's time to use this energy, right? Visceral fat doesn't respond to insulin, so it just keeps going, right? And these free fatty acids because they're going right to the liver, it's essentially antagonizing the insulin receptors. So it causes insulin receptors to become more resistant to insulin. And this is part of why people with high visceral fat, by the way, you can gain visceral fat without gaining a pound. And we can

talk about those studies. Like people, people are skinny, and can have high amounts of visceral fat. You've heard of like metabolically unhealthy, but lean individuals. Those people exist, and so you can have a high amount of visceral fat, but not really look like you do. So obviously, the insulin resistance is a problem for many reasons, but it also plays a role

in those energy crashes that you experience, right? And that's kind of like some of the first

signs of insulin resistance. I actually have to do with what you're feeling. So we talked about lithology, right? So you know, the inflammation that's being generated from these visceral fat constantly making these, you know, proinflammatory compounds are an, it's an energy sink, right? So you do constantly feel tired, but also because your cells are becoming insulin resistant, when you have a high glucose meal, and you're not responding, the body kind of overcompensates and produces more insulin.

So it's like, we got to get this blood glucose out of our system, right? It can cause a lot of damage if it sits around there. And so you make more insulin, and then what happens is you, your blood glucose goes way low, because it was like this overcompensation, right? And then you feel a crash, you feel like this

“crash, and that signals to the, you know, hypothalamus part of the brain. I need energy, right?”

So then you, you sort of crave because those cravings for those calorically energetic dense foods. What I'm talking about is like the experience of like, you know, insulin resistance, and what's interesting is that you can cause someone to gain visceral fat, and their brain can become insulin resistant. So we think a lot about insulin resistance in the muscle, the liver, your brain also can become insulin resistance quite quickly, actually. So insulin is very important in the brain

for a lot of reasons, as you know, but, you know, a couple of the things relative to what we're are relevant to what we're talking about would be one is it does act on the hypothalamus and help,

you know, tell it to basically stop eating, be satiated. Like I took a meal in, okay, like I'm

going to be satiated, but it also plays a role in energy storage and telling the body how to store the energy. And so when your brain becomes insulin resistant, it's not doing that. And so you're not being satiated, eat more, and you're storing the fat more viscerally. And there was a study that was published, actually quite recently, I covered this in a recent newsletter. It was a really interesting study because it was healthy young men and researchers put them on a

little bit of a calorically dense. So it was like they're eating 1,200 to 1,500 more calories a day, and it was high saturated fat, high sugar. So it was a processed foods, ultra processed foods,

“like, you know, ultimate, right? That's why extra calories. A lot of extra calories are five days.”

It is. But what happened was they did cause their brain to become insulin resistant, and they didn't gain weight, but they gained visceral fat, and they started gaining fat around their liver. And that's something that happens as well because visceral fat is thrown in liver. You're getting a lot of free fatty acids and then going right to the liver, so the liver has to store it, right? So you get this non alcoholic, you know, fatty fat, fatty liver. But and that happened after five days. I mean, without

any other wise young healthy. Yeah. But, you know, there were eating a lot of calories extra calories. Yeah, that's like an 1200. That's like a half of pizza extra above your maintenance calories when they were doing. There were eating lots of, you know, eating like saturated fat and refined sugar. So we eat those in French fries. Yeah. I mean, obviously if you're going to do the study, you want to kind of do it to a hot degree where you're going to see some change, right? So so maybe like

maybe it's not going to happen in five days. If you're, if you're only eating 500 more calories a day, but over time, you will be gaining visceral fat, right? So it's not going to be the same degree. It's something to be concerned about, it's something to think about and also because you can gain it and not really even know it, like, you know, without gaining a pound. And there are other things that cause it not just eating too many calories or diet composition. I mean, you mentioned cortisol.

I mean, chronic elevated cortisol makes you store the fat around, around, you know, visceral fat

for a couple of weeks. I think four hours, they're getting four hours of sleep and night, they can start gaining visceral fat. I mean, pretty rapidly with only like a pound getting a pound of weight. So again, it's like, not necessarily something that you're going to see on the scale, but it's happening, right? And it's affecting your short-term mood. I mean, how you feel, your energy, it's affecting, you know, the way you're eating, it's a vicious cycle because you start to eat more

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“gaining any total body weight, but gaining visceral fat. I think that's first time I've heard”

that and it's a vital message for people to hear because this visceral fat sounds like one of the major health hazards we need to worry about. You mentioned economically elevated cortisol sleep deprivation will increase visceral fat. Once again, I know I'm beating a drum here, almost a death, but having high cortisol early in the day and low cortisol in the evening is the definition of not chronically high cortisol. The definition of chronically high cortisol is somewhat elevated to

elevate cortisol in the morning, but especially in the hours before sleep. I actually have a theory that is not a stretch that one of the main reasons why it's so detrimental to our mental and physical health in the short and long term is because of the ways it's disrupts sleep. And so we can't tease those apart. We can't do a study where you spike cortisol late in the day. Even if you can fall asleep just fine after the end of a really stressful day,

the sleep is different. And people say, "Well, life has stress and I totally agree." I mean, Lord knows I've experienced life has stress, but getting that last hour of the day doing things to push down on cortisol, push down on stress lower heart rate, not eating, and that certainly that last hour before sleep, ideally three. I feel like that small change can make an outside as positive difference. That's interesting. The correlation between the high cortisol

affecting your sleep and maybe that's also like they're related. And so the sleep loss really does make you. We know, we know from you probably know who the researchers are that have done those studies on sleep loss and affecting appetite, right? I mean,

“everything gets just regular. I don't want to take us off course, but I think you might find it”

interesting that there's a beautiful study where they look measured metabolism during sleep.

They basically had people breathe into a tube during sleep. They had a mask on. And it turns out

that the brain cycles through all the different forms of metabolism during sleep. There's a phase of sleep where you're essentially running on sugar. There's like, it almost looks like somebody's ketogenic at one. Basically, the middle of the night when we should be at night, when you're sleeping, is kind of a test run of all the systems, but they get recalibrated. And it's so important. I actually think, you know, most of the negative effects about alcohol that people talk about. Yes,

it's a poison. It's a class one carcinogen. As classified by the World Health Organization, I think most of the negative effects of drinking are because of the negative effects of alcohol on sleep. I'm not telling people drinking the morning, but you know, it's so I think that if you get your sleep right, you're not 90% of the way there, but you're halfway there. Yeah. I really do believe that. And then getting your sleep right makes you do a bunch of other things. Right, you're

my more motivated to exercise for one. More motivated to exercise your food choices. I mean, an on and on. Yeah. The problem we're talking about sleep is so important is people will get sleep anxiety. So we tap dance around this. Like, we don't want people to stress it, learn how to fall asleep, learn how to fall back asleep. These no one gets it perfect. Yes, you'll survive. Like, it without one poor night sleep or an all night, you're not going to die.

Like, you know, just get good at it on average, right? That's what I'd say. Could you tell us what

lunch, skipping dinner? Because I know a number of people are sort of getting drawn back to

“intermittent fasting after a couple years of it getting beat up on. It's like not the best way to”

lose fat or it is. I think it's a terrific way to do the sorts of things that you're describing. And I'm learning today more about the positive things it can do for insulin sensitivity and so forth. If you're on a out of intermittent fasting, are you doing it by the clock? Are you doing it by feel? Was it look like? For me, it really does depend on the day and I really do try to stop eating

three hours before I go to bed. It doesn't always happen with family obligations, social obligations,

but it's the habit that's important, right? So intermittent fasting, it's more than just one intervention as I mentioned. It's a behavioral tool that you can use to limit your calorie intake with actually, without actually having to count all the calories, which some people like to do, some people don't, right? So it's a tool, but also it's really important for a metabolic switch. As you mentioned, insulin sensitivity, the metabolic switch is something that Dr. Mark Maths

in coined and I love it because I feel like, you know, thinking about intermittent fasting in that way makes it a little more clear as to the benefits of it. It depends on the meal you have and how much exercise you do, right? But on average, say 11, 12 hours to deplete your liver glycogen levels. And once that happens, you do start to burn fat and use fatty acids as fuel and make ketone bodies. So you go into ketogenesis, right? And that's a metabolic switch. Metabolic flexibility,

you're not, you're going from using carbohydrates as fuel to using fatty acids and making ketone

“bodies as fuel. And that's something that, you know, throughout human evolution was ingrained, right?”

Like we didn't always have access to Uber Eats and Instacar and you just add a swipe, you get food,

right? I mean, there were many times when, you know, people had to not eat because they couldn't forge their foods. Maybe the time of year or they couldn't hunt their food because they didn't get a win or whatever. I don't know. So this metabolic flexibility is something that's really ingrained in our DNA in a sense, right? I mean, one of the reasons I like to do that is the ketone production, and why is that, you know, ketones are really clean, they're clean, they're clean,

way to burn energy. So they generate less oxidative stress, less oxidative products, but they also are energetically favorable in that it takes less energy to use them to make energy than glucose does. So it takes more energy to use glucose as energy than it does ketones. But they're also a signaling molecule. So it's a way for the body, you know, to signal to other parts of the body. Like, hey, this is a stressful time. There's no food. I'm, you know, burn, I'm in ketosis. Let's make

you stronger, right? Because that's kind of what evolution wants. Like, if you're not able to

“find or eat food, you have to be stronger to be able to do it, right? And so that's kind of at the,”

I say core of this metabolic switch and why it's important. And I think that I really like Mark Mats and being the pioneer in this. And as a neuroscientist, really looking at the benefits in the brain as well, you know, these ketones, like beta hydroxybeater rate, are activating, you know, growth factors like brain drive, neurotrophic factor in the brain. As you know, it's very important for, you know, learning memory, you know, synapses formation and stuff. This is hugely important

for some neuroplasticity. So it's activating beneficial compounds like that. And again,

it's not going to happen if you're never going into this metabolic switch. And there's other

ways to get there, right? So you can limit your food, go into this ketosis, right, where you're basically depleting your liver glycogen, or you can exercise a lot, right? So your energy expenditure goes up. So there's different ways to get to this metabolic switch. It doesn't necessarily have to be an immunofasting. And I'm telling you this because I want to tell you why. I'm, I'm sort of back, back on the intermittent fasting. And by the way, it's not for everyone, like I said, I mean,

I think that you can find other ways to get this metabolic switch. And for me, intermittent fasting works. And so what I do typically is I will do most of the time, my workouts will be fast. It's not all the time. It does depend on how I feel. What time do you typically wake up? So I wake up, like, between six and seven. And if I didn't have a family, like, you know, getting my son ready, and I would probably work out right away. But I don't end up working

out until like 830. So I'm, you know, and I don't worry early. What time do you go to sleep if you don't learn me asking? I'm asleep. Like, I'm asleep by 10, but usually in bed at 9, takes an hour, just like, you know, hang an hour. Sure. Yeah. So, so, um, or 930 sometimes. But yeah, usually 10 o'clock's when I'm sleeping. That's my, in the bedtime. And so I do stop eating. I try to stop eating by 7 p.m.

maybe sometimes 12, if I'm doing a podcast, it'll be later. And I do like to be fasted in the

morning because the cognitive benefits is really what I'm interested in with that metabolic switch. And it does come down to ketones. And I know that Mark Maths has talked a lot about this. I had it in my podcast a couple of years ago, actually. I learned so much. But the ketones, like beta hydroxybiterate, are increasing GABA. They're like balancing the glutamate that, you know, excitatory neurotransmitter with the inhibitory one GABA. And I think the increasing GABA is what

helps me and what I love the most because it does help. I think quiet down some of the other, I don't know, chitter chatter in my brain and help me focus because it's like somehow the GABA's calming in a way. I don't know exactly what you could probably describe it better than I can. All I know is that I really like it. And so in the mornings, I like to be, you know, I like to be fasted. I like to be cognitively where it's when I get most of my productive work done. And I feel smarter. So I'm doing

“it. And that's why I typically like to shift my breakfast to later. Now, I do, I would say,”

some days I do only eat two meals where I am on, honestly, I'm skipping the quote on quote, breakfast. But some days I do have three meals. And, you know, oftentimes they're like different

size meals, right? And usually, if I do have three meals, the third one will be the in between

the first meal and the second meal will be like a very like a half or a three-fourths of a turkey burger or something. So it's mostly protein and it's not heavy. But so I would say I'm, you know, usually 11 to 7 probably is when I'm eating my meals most most days. Some days it's, you know, I'm fast for a shorter period of time. Some days I wake up in the morning because I did too early of like a, you know, I'd stopped eating like like four or five hours before bed.

And I'm like any to eat. And I get what I eat. And then I work out. And it's like that's, you know, you kind of just listen to what your body's doing. Actually Mark Madsen just published a study very, very recently showing that he did a, I think he was doing a five-two intermittent fasting protocol where it's like two days, you're getting pretty severe caloric restriction. Like you're eating one meal. But it's like 500 calories, you know, for that for the day. And it's twice,

two days, two days the other week, their five days are eating normal. And compared that to calorie, like eating, eating like a healthy diet. And they were somewhat calorie restricted, but not quite as much as the people that were doing the fasting. And they had the fasting group had massive cognitive benefits, like 20% improvement in a battery of tests that were done. He attributes that to the ketones and the effective ketones. He attributes it to the ketones. And like can you get that to some degree

with caloric restriction properly, especially the more severe caloric restriction you do,

“you can. If we're talking about weight loss, caloric restrictions key, right? You have to have that.”

If we're talking about the cardiovascular reset, like caloric restriction, if you're eating meals right before bed, you're not going to get that. Like that, those studies have been done. And I think, you know, Courtney Peterson was some of the one of the first ones to really show that effect on blood pressure, you know, like really significant. In fact, if you, if you do early time restricted eating and stop eating, you know, I don't know how early the day it was, maybe six

PM, maybe it was APM, but, you know, there was like a blood pressure drop that was like 10, you know, 10, I think was points or something. Millimeters of mercury. What is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, that's very significant. I was on it's on magnitude of what you see with like some

of the first line, you know, drugs that are used to treat hypertension. I would never say

for someone to do that, but I'm just saying it's significant. And that's not something that you typically see if you're eating, you know, fewer calories, but you're eating constantly throughout the day. So, I do think there are special benefits that can be had, but again, it's also a tool that people use. I use it as a tool as well. I don't like to count calories. Like, I don't, you know, some people do. And that's fine. Then, you know, that's, that's the way you can, you can do it.

But I like it for the metabolic switch as well. If I were an endurance athlete, running, you know, 10, 14 miles a day, I wouldn't have to do this. That would be my metabolic switch. And it's not

“that I'm not metabolically flexible. I mean, I do. I think you can just training itself, you know,”

does it to some degree help with metabolic flexibility, right? The ability to switch between burning glucose and carbohydrates and then burning, burn using fat, fat and fatty acids as your energy source. It's that I really, I want that, I want that real switch to be on. And I want to be on for a little bit of time. And then I want to turn it off by eating. You know, I'm not starving myself. And I think you can go too far with exercise and with fasting. The problems with fasting and

the people that are like, oh, fasting's terrible for you. I mean, it comes down to one. They're all about it's like the weight loss is not just due to intermittent fasting itself, it's due to calorie restriction. Guess what? They were right. They were right. Number two, they're afraid of losing muscle. And I think we have enough data now that if you're training, if you're doing resistance training,

more protein. But you could, you could just eat more protein within the window that you're eating

and be fine, right? So I think that's the other thing that people are worried about is muscle loss, including myself. And I train so much now. And it just works well for me. And I feel good. And it's this clean feeling. And you feel cognitively sharp and it works. And I think that the metabolic switch is something to not be scared of. As long as you're not, again, going to the extreme. Right? And if you don't want to train while you're fasting, don't train while you're fasting.

You don't have to. You know, I think there's a little bit of an added benefit that works for me in terms of burning fat, which is what I, you know, particularly visceral fat. And to me that

“that's, that's what works well. But you can, obviously, like if you're training hard and a lot”

and really fasting, maybe that's too much. Just too much of a stress. So you have to kind of figure it out for yourself. Yeah, I think the the known increase in adrenaline from being slightly fast, it is awesome for cognitive function. I think it allows people to ingest fewer stimulants in the form of caffeine. You know, you don't need as much caffeine when you're doing some fasting. I, well, you describe as similar to what I do although I noticed these days I'm waking up hungry

and hungrier. And I attribute that actually to my last bite of food, you know, come a little bit earlier in the day and further from sleep. And also that thermogenic effective eating raises core body temperature and, and you know, to fall asleep, you want your body temperature dropping. So it all starts to, you know, what I think is kind of is very exciting to me is that for a few years there, it seemed like there were just so many things, so many protocols, so many studies.

But when I think about cortisol high in the morning, low in the evening, bracketing the day that what works best for sleep, but what you're describing, certainly today you really addition to many other things, really clarified the relationship between gut and inflammation and brain and other tissues. Things start to fall into bins that it's, you know, like all of biology. So beautifully organized that it doesn't mean

long list of things for people to do. I love the idea that while it sounds like you're just saying, "Oh, if I wake up and I'm hungry, I eat." And if I'm not, and I think I can train faster,

I like to train faster, that might seem like an obvious thing to some, but I think it's so critical

because the mechanism that you're chasing in both cases is the same. You're trying to get great sleep, great great workouts, but you're not trying to optimize the workout to the point where, you know, you disrupt your sleep or you insist on doing something, like eating or fasting, whatever it is. So the final what works for you thing is, is so crucial because it's about feel that fits into a logic. And I have to say that's initially what drew me to your work,

because there's a logic, you're not just saying, "Okay, this study said this, so I'm going to do this." It fits into a broader logic that comes from your training. So I just, that's just a point of gratitude and I hope you'll frame in people's minds that, "Yes, do what you feel, do what works for you, but try and frame it in a certain logic." And that's actually what gives you flexibility

“over time. Like, oh, you're traveling, you have to eat a little later. Okay, the next morning,”

maybe train fasted, or vice versa. Yeah, it's about the habit, exactly. It's about the habit, and there are days when I just, like, I can't train fasted, or there are days by wake up, and I have to eat, exactly where you, you know, and there are days when I, nights when I, when I'm eating later, because of social obligations, and I don't freak out about it, because it's about the habit. I like the idea of one metabolic switch per day. You know, you said you could get it from exercise,

and I thought, you know, I can really imagine that in five years a concept of health that hopefully everyone understands out there is that find a way to generate the metabolic switch once per day. Maybe you fast and exercise, maybe you just exercise, maybe you just fast, because you can't exercise, because people's schedules are constrained, but the notion of the metabolic switch is being, here's where it fits in exactly the logic is you want the metabolic switch. You do, and it's not just,

you know, there's other components of this metabolic switch that we haven't even discussed, which is like when you're in that fasted state, when you're in the ketosis, like that's also repair mode for your body, right? So there's the fed state, the grow, anabolic, and of course,

“that we're all obsessed with anabolic now, because this associated with muscle growth, right?”

But there's also the repair and recovery state, right? And so you don't always want the growth

on, right? You want to repair damage, and repairing damage can be damaged to DNA, a lot of these genes are activated, you know, when you're in a nutrient-deperbit deprived state, right, when you're in that metabolic switch, and a toffogy, and that's another one that people, some, it's a buzzword, it's a buzzword now, but it is something that is activated. It's, first of all, we have basal amount of a toffogy going on at any point, right? Like that's happening, like you don't

have to fast- >> You don't have to fast- >> Yeah, exactly. >> Or be in a chloric deficit, which will also exacerbate it. >> Right. >> You do have fast-ed activated atopha g and certain tissues are

human data on that in terms of like fasting, exercise also activates it. We don't have a, a lot of

great quality human data, and that's where a lot of reasons one is the tissues that are most responsive to fasting induced atopha g are not blood cells. In fact, blood cells are pretty restricted in their response to fast-ed induced atopha g, but that's the easiest cell to access if you're going to measure atopha g in humans, right? Muscle biopsies have been done, that's, muscles also response, response up to fasting induced atopha g is responsive to exercise induced atopha g, by the way,

the exercise again, it's increasing energy expenditures, but at the end of the day, you're getting into that sort of ketosis, right, the state, the metabolic switch. So, there are studies showing that there's a signal there, but, you know, for some people it's not enough, well, it's not enough, we don't really know, and you can't go off the animal data. And, you know, I think to some

degree, it's going to be hard to go get a liver. Maybe we'll have some tools soon that we can

easily access a, you know, liver biopsy and that'd be great for many reasons, right, not just looking at atopha g, but I think that, to some degree, you kind of just have to know that, okay, atopha g is happening right now in our cells, like, so we know that it's activated by, like, fasting by exercise by these types of stress, and so, why wouldn't it be increased somewhat? And, and when I say atopha g, I'm talking about clearing out gunk that's built up in yourself,

you know, throughout the day, we're talking about pieces of DNA, fragments of DNA, we're talking about protein aggregates that didn't get, they're either properly, like, not properly folding, or they're not being degraded, right, all sorts of stuff, right, and it's important, this is a cleanup

“process, it's important. And so, again, that's another part of the metabolic switch that I think is,”

it's important to think about because we are really obsessed with anabolic, anabolic, is it anabolic? It's great, you do want to, you definitely want to grow muscle, right? You do, you do want to grow new brain cells and stuff too, but you also want to repair and you want to have recovery, and that's another, you know, it's like the yin and the yin, right, you kind of want both. So, I think that's important to think about as well. And fasting, intermittent fasting,

I do, I like the daily metabolic switch, it may not be for everyone, you know, I mean, like I said, it's not, I do think that you can find other ways to get their exercise being the big one. Some people do caloric restriction, some people don't need to. Caloric restriction is something that helps if you're trying to lose weight, right? It helps if you're trying to lose this raw fat. It's one of the main ways you can do it, intermittent fasting, caloric restriction,

exercise, aerobic exercise that helps lose this raw fat. But, I mean, obviously we don't always

want to be in a caloric deficit, but we always don't want to be constantly eating either. And that's

“why it comes down to, I think, the simple rule for people, like if they're going to do some sort of”

metabolic switch, some sort of intermittent fast, it would be like, okay, let's try to at least stop eating three hours before bed because then you're at least going to be extending that fast somewhat by three hours, right? So I think that's, and the plus you're getting that, the cardiovascular benefits that are really, this seemed to be important. And then not eating at night. So there's all these studies that have come out of Israel. I think it's Jacobets, Jacobets, and Freud,

they're two researchers. I mean, Sasha and Panda, I remember years ago, showed me one of the studies that was like, published in science, showing that if you have the same exact meal, same calorie intake, same composition, macronutrient composition in the morning, the afternoon, in the evening, the insulin response is different. Like, you're the most insulin sensitive early in the morning, as you start to go towards the evening, and particularly three hours before

your natural bedtime, your melatonin, your melatonin levels naturally rise, right? And as you know, you know, melatonin is important for the onset of sleep and, and preparing the body for sleep, but it's also preparing the other organs for rest and recovery, including the pancreas, which is making insulin. And so you're not making as much insulin when it's closer to your natural bedtime because of the melatonin levels that are rising. And so you don't want to be eating,

particularly carbohydrate-rich meal, but a meal, you're not going to be as insulin sensitive. In the last three hours before sleep. Yeah, when you're starting to get into that melatonin rising phase of, you know, of your cycle. Yeah, it's interesting. I think when people hear, okay, you're most insulin sensitive in the morning, that would be the time to eat your biggest meal, then people say, wait, but then I'm trying to fast people and I'm trying exercise and like,

how do I do this? I think that's where, for them, the confusion comes in and it, to me, it's very simple, just because your insulin sensitivity is highest for singing the morning,

“doesn't mean you have to eat right away. I mean, it just means avoid eating too close to bedtime,”

right? Sometimes during the day, and also if you exercise fasted or after a small snack, it's kind of interesting when Stacey Sims said, not everyone should exercise fasted. She said, especially a lot of women don't like to do that. She didn't say eat a meal. She said, like, have a scoop of way protein with some, I think she said, with like some almond milk in it, and you couldn't believe the response on the internet. It was like, vindication, right? And I get it.

something really important about the kind of sociology of what we do, which is when something validates people's experience, they love it. But it doesn't mean that the things that work for

“other people don't work. And I think that that's the part that gets lost. And so if a study shows”

that insulin sensitivity is highest in the morning, but you can only exercise first thing in the

morning. What do you do? You know, so you do the best you can. Right? I think it comes down to in fact, I meant to ask you earlier, and this is a good time to talk about this. You've described that if you are slightly sleep deprived, so not four hours per night or an all nighter, but if you've only slept five, we're let's say you're getting an hour or two less than your normal ration of sleep. There's some pretty significant inflammation that occurs. That's not

good. But I've heard you cover that exercising can actually offset some of that inflammation. This answer is an important and common question, which is, if I have to pick between sleep and exercise, what do I do? And it sounds like if it's one night poor sleep exercise, but you don't want to make it a habit. Do I have that right? Yeah. I mean, so this data, a lot of it actually comes from you can cause even acute insulin resistance after like a night of sleep deprivation and certainly

after two to three nights of sleep deprivation. And again, a lot of that's coming down to some of the

things we've already talked about. But exercise can help basically negate a lot of that. And I learned

that firsthand through experience when I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor. I'm when I was a new parent. Of course, you're not getting enough sleep. And so that's, I learned it before I actually dove into the science about it. I learned about it through my own data, where I was, you know, I wasn't exercising as much and particularly in the first month, really like you're kind of an cave as a new mom. You don't really, you're not really exercising much at all. Evolution wants the

baby to survive. And you're recovering, too. I mean, childbirth is a very, it's a very traumatic process on your body. And so I noticed that my glucose response was like, it was a pre-diabetic. And I was going on. And that's when I started looking into the literature and happened to be around

the same time when I was then starting up my, at the time I was doing spin classes. And then it was

very clear to me. It was like, I do these high-intensity-enabled training classes, even just twice a week. And it was like almost completely negating what I had seen previously of my, my glucose being, my fasting glucose being really high. And also my post-prandial glucose being higher than, than usual. And so I looked into the studies and there's now, you can, you can find many studies out there.

“And it really, I mean, obviously exercise them on the best thing you can do to improve insulin”

sensitivity and to also bring glucose into your cells, right? And so that's part of what you're talking about with all your more insulin sensitive during the morning, least during the evening. And I also mentioned that, but guess what? There's levers you can pull that like change the equation. And exercise is a big one, right? If you're, if you're exercising, you're becoming more insulin sensitive, you're increasing more glucose transporters on your muscle that's causing glucose to go in easier, right?

There's, so there's lots of ways around some of these rules that we hear about. But with the, with the sleep loss, it really is, it's, it's interesting because people, like, when they don't get sleep the last thing they want to do is work out. And obviously, like, you don't want to do, like, the hardest thing, especially if you're really, like, sleep deprived a lot. But it really does help negate the inflammation and the insulin

insensitivity that can happen after even just a single night of sleep, and there's studies out. They're showing that. And then there's also these longitudinal studies that have been done looking at, you know, people. So obviously, poor sleep is a problem, you know, in the United States. I mean, a lot of people are sleeping fewer than seven hours a night. And, um, but there's studies out that have looked at people that sleep either shorter. So fewer than seven hours a night,

or they're sleeping more than 10, right? So, and you don't want to be on either end of the spectrum.

“And usually, like, sleeping long, there's, like, other disease states associated with it, right?”

But, um, so people that are sleeping, you know, not getting enough sleep, they have a higher all cause mortality than people that are getting at least seven to nine hours of sleep. And the same for, like, more than 10, they're a higher all cause mortality than people getting between seven and nine. But if people exercise, if they're meeting the physical activity guidelines right now, which is 75 minutes of vigorous intensity exercise in 150 minutes a week of water intensity exercise.

Right. Well, because the guidelines are helpful, but they're just guidelines because, I mean, doing the sort of work out that you're doing, working up to doubles and triples and singles on compound lifts, and then doing cardio, like getting your heart rate elevated, and then doing addition of that, and then your high-key. I mean, that it's just, uh, I think the guidelines are a good jumping off-place for people to think about.

Well, we can talk about that because there's a new study that, kind of, throws,

within the guideline range that they basically, if they weren't getting enough sleep,

if they were getting fewer than seven hours of sleep per night, that they basically had the same mortality rate as people that were getting enough sleep. So, it's offsetting some of that unhealthy stuff to insulin resistance, you know, the inflammation that we know can lead to diseases in early mortality. So, find the time to exercise. Yes. But, of course, periods of time, like after a new child or new job or particularly stressful time, I don't know any human being.

I don't care how driven. Um, okay, there's probably, doggins and camhains being probably exceptions in a few layers. You know, um, I don't know, I can ride out in a few others. But, people who, everybody at L's, um,

seems to have periods of time where they need to just back off of it. I know I certainly do.

“I feel like I'm doing pretty well for myself, despite, you know, and I think that it's important”

that people not hold themselves to a standard that is going to make them sick or injured or miserable beyond. Yeah, you also want to continue to enjoy health promoting activities, right? I mean, you got to say, like, what's your goal? Like your goal is to be healthy to be happy. If you're taking it to this extreme where you're trying to just go to the extreme, like, go hard, go home, and it's, you're sacrificing your happiness, too. I mean, that's a problem,

right? Because that's part of the equation, happiness is part of that healthy equation. Health is a daily and lifelong thing, but sometimes it means taking a day off. I think that's what people don't say. Um, and I think it's in a time when perhaps a lot of people aren't exercising enough. So promoting that no-days off thing can be helpful, but for those that are already, you know, forward center of mass, you know, coming off the accelerator can be useful. Yeah. Well,

I also want to just mention because, you know, we talked about my, you know, I work out a lot and I sort of addicted to it, but like not everyone has the time and motivation to to go spend

“an hour block of time working out. And this is where I think that people can sigh a sigh of relief”

because there's now so much emerging data that I've been coming out, you know, over the last decade on these short bursts of physical activity that add up, they add up and people aren't really thinking about them, you know, counting towards adding up to their physical activity, you know, requirements for the for the week. And so there's these, there's a lot of studies now. There's on something called vigorous, intermittent lifestyle, physical activity, villa studies. Have you heard of those?

Are these the exercise snacks? They're unstructured. They're unstructured and not everyone likes to what actually snacks. I mean, I, I kind of like it, but the unstructured exercise, they're, they're, they're, they're the moments in your life where you're taking advantage of every day situations to get your heart rate up to move. And so that could be, I'm playing with my new puppy and I'm sprinting around with my new puppy. I'm, you know, chasing my grandkids around,

I'm playing tag or my child. I'm sprinting up the stairs to get to my office. I'm running to catch the bus. I'm moving, right? And so researchers and there have been several studies on this now, researchers use accelerometers, rather than just relying on these questionnaires, which are, as you know, you know, extremely unreliable. I mean, it's very hard for people to remember how much

exercise, you, I say, you're asking me about my exercise. I mean, there's always so much, you know,

that you can be accurate when you're trying to recall that. So these accelerometers are worn on people's wrists and they're, and they're measuring like fast movement, the movement, right? And so thousands and thousands and like hundreds of thousands of participants, there's a lot to data now showing that people that are doing these like short bursts at least a minute long, but up to three minutes, right? Whether getting their, they're moving, I'm saying you're getting their heart rate

“better, I'm not measuring the heart rate in these days. They're moving faster with intent, right?”

They're, they're jogging or they're, you know, they're not, of course, there's the cases where they're actually exercising, but the short bursts of it, they're doing the things that I just mentioned, and it's having outside the facts on health outcomes. So for example, individuals that do on the high end, so they're doing, you know, three minutes of this short burst of an unstructured type of exercise snack, and they do it three times a day, so it's a total of nine minutes a day,

okay? This type of activity, and it's considered more vigorous because you're the intent to move, right? That's more vigorous, even though they're not measuring heart rate. That's associated with a 40% reduction in all cause mortality, 40% reduction in cancer related mortality, a 50% reduction in cardiovascular related mortality. Wow. Nine minutes a day, and this is even in people that don't identify as exercises, so they're not the kind of people like you and I that go

intentionally set out time to go to the gym, the people that just, they're just take their, they're doing those things, right? They're playing with their grandkids or their kids, they're puppies or whatever. And so these moments, they add up, and I'm, I'm citing one study, but, you know,

women showing three and a half minutes a day. I mean, they're having pretty profound benefits on

“all cause mortality and cancer related mortality as well. And multiple studies now have shown this.”

I mean, this is like one study after another, after another, and it's undeniable that these short moments of, you know, getting physically active, active, do add up. And structure and exercise snacks can be part of that. Like maybe you don't have a puppy, maybe you don't have a kid yet, maybe you work from home, and you're not taking these, you know, maybe your situation's different than what I described, but you can take these moments to do exercise snacks. And that can be a

minute long, and it can be like there was their study showing that two studies, and I'll talk about one showing that getting up and doing 10 body weight squats. Every 45 minutes over a seven and a half hour work day is better at regulating blood glucose levels than a 30 minute walk.

Right? So you get up and you do 10 body weight squats. Pretty easy. I mean, it's also very good to

break up that sedentary time. So being sedentary means like you're not moving. That also is an independent risk factor. Even if you do exercise for things like cancer being a big one,

“although I would say if you're doing a lot of exercise, you're doing pretty good,”

but I just like to mention that as well. I would say being sedentary is a disease, actually. That's that's something I mean, people aren't thinking about it. But even in the absence of what Lane Norton calls energy toxicity, like even if somebody is at maintenance or below maintenance calories, if they're sedentary, that's that's problematic. We do have data for one measuring cardio respiratory fitness, which is a marker of cardiovascular health, being physically fit.

Right? Obviously, the gold standard of that would be measuring VO2 max, your maximal oxygen uptake during maximal exercise. A lot of studies do not actually directly measure VO2 max. They'll do, you know, maybe a sub-maximal treadmill test or they'll estimate it. Right? There's a calculation out there and you can do kind of what you're if you wear like an apple watch or some sort of fitness tracker, what they do is which is, you know, it's looking at the distance that you run and the

amount of time it takes, right? So like a 12 minute run would be an example. People do that. You run as fast as you can and maintain that pace for 12 minutes. You're not going all out, obviously. You see how far you go. Yeah. And then there's a calculation out there that's done to kind of estimate your VO2 max. And so some studies or a lot of studies are actually doing sort of an estimation of cardiovascular respiratory fitness. So cardiovascular respiratory fitness is really important.

I think for, you know, marking your health and longevity. And, you know, if you have a low cardiovascular respiratory fitness, most of the times you are not physically active, right? And there's studies showing that if you don't have any, you know, diagnosable diseases, so you're not insulin resistant, you don't have cardiovascular disease, you don't have cancer, all that stuff, right? You're not obese, but you have a low cardiovascular respiratory fitness. It is as bad or worse in terms of your

all cause mortality, you know, predicting mortality, then having cardiovascular disease or smoking or having hypertension or these things that we know that are really bad for health, right? So being sedentary, as I'm saying, it's a low cardiovascular respiratory fitness, I guess it's not exactly correct. It's a little bit, I'm stretching it a little bit, but cardiovascular arthritis is a marker

“of, I would say, fitness. And so that's why I think being sedentary isn't as a disease. And people”

with a low cardiovascular respiratory fitness, I mean, if you go anywhere above that, you know, from low to like low normal, that's associated with a two year increase in life expectancy. If you go from low to high normal, you know, that's like almost a three year increase in life expectancy. And if you go up to high, then you're talking about a five year increase in life expectancy compared to where you're at. But again, I'm not talking about your chin,

I'm talking about cardiovascular fitness. And it's, it's really important. Here's another reason why I think that it's really bad. So these, these studies were done, by the way, cardiovascular respiratory fitness is improved by a aerobic exercise in general. That's great. And then, you know, if you, if you add in high intensity, inability training in their mix that also really helps, because there are some people that don't respond necessarily to just doing

gross studies too. Yeah, about 40% of people don't respond. So mixing in the high intensity is good. If you're physically active in doing that, that's great. If you're doing these short bursts of physical activity, also good, because it's a little bit of a high intensity, you know, exercise, right, a minute running around chasing your, your grandkid or your puppy or your child. You know, that's, that's, that's, that's amazing. The stairs, that's amazing. I was

traveling, you know, the stairs. So you were sprinting up the stairs, if you're carrying a lot of luggage in the airport, like going up the stairs or down the stairs. It's wild when you go to the airport. I, I like to notice this. Nobody takes the stairs. Yeah. Down or up, like the escalators are there.

And I'm always like, oh, there's a great opportunity. You get some extra steps and some extra

work, but I realize that's me. But it's just, it's striking. And if you're in DC, ever,

And that's a workout, you know. And I'm always like, oh, free workout, like, you know,

I get it in my day. I mean, it sucks to arrive a little bit more sweaty than you would otherwise. But I just think, if this were an experiment, we were looking at mice and we were videotaping from above. I always think of myself, like, which mouse am I going to be? All the mice are going up the automatic elevator. It makes sense. And then why they would want to do that. But these opportunities for exercise are clearly there. I, I feel like this is also, I, I would be remiss if I didn't do

a quick shout out to Steve Magnus. Do you fall ever, see his content? I've interacted with them. Yeah. I've never met him, but people should, I've interacted with him on X. Yeah. People should,

“I think, give him a follow. He's a very accomplished runner in his past of running coach. I believe”

as well in a scientist. And I think, as the best take on sort of measuring VO2 Max, it's kind of

interesting. You know, he has a theory, which I think is strongly back that most measures of VO2 Max are not measures of VO2 Max at all. But one of the best measures of cardiovascular fitness is how fast can you run a mile? And he says, people are generally surprised how easy the easy stuff should feel, and how hard the hard stuff should feel. So I just want to credit Steve for saying that. So I try and keep that in mind around my cardio and do some, I do less of what you

do. I confess, some high-intensity integral training to body type stuff, and then some lot of walks, lot of hikes. Yeah. And I haven't formally measured my VO2 Max in a while, but I think he just nails it with that. Because I think people think the 30-minute jog on the treadmill where you get sweaty and you're like, "Oh, that's accomplishing what you want." But actually, there's a much easier path to better health, which is what you do, and more or less what Steve is describing as well.

Yeah. Yeah. Does that square with your experience? Yeah. I think so. I mean, I do, I do mix in quite a bit of probably more, more high-intensity, and I will training. But you know, I don't feel like if I felt like it was like, if I didn't feel good, I would, I would toggle

“down the pedal right. I wouldn't keep going on it. So I think you have to, again, just listen to your”

body, you know, you don't want to overdo things. And I mean, there are people out there that are really like endurance athletes that are, you know, like, that's not me. I'm a commited exerciseer, I'm not necessarily an athlete, but yeah. So that's different, I think, levels here, and Steve is obviously athlete. Anyway, I've learned from him around this topic. Yeah. It's been, it's been helpful. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors,

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to get early access to function. I want to ask you about creatine. I'm 50. I started taking weight training and running when I was like 16 maybe. Yeah. And I started taking creatine because back then,

“I was skinny. I wanted to put on muscle. I think creatine was sort of first discussed or released back”

then when I was maybe 18 or something like that, something like that, 18, 19. So I've been taking it a long, long time. Yeah. Five to ten grams. But the original protocol, which nobody does anymore, but I confess I still do it because I enjoy it was to take five grams three to five times per day. There was this loading phase. And you would mix it with a little bit of grape juice because the idea was you were supposed to spike your insulin and then you get more into the muscles. And then

needed to do a wash out every 20 weeks or so where you just stop taking it, you're an eight out of

“a bunch of water and then you reload. And I confess, I've continued to do this minus the grape juice,”

but occasionally I'll do the grape juice thing. I don't think there's any real merit to the loading phase. I mean, it's phase idea. But back then, and still now, I feel like creatine has maybe feel great. Stronger. I wasn't aware of the cognitive benefits. They weren't being studied back that. They weren't being studied back then. But what are your thoughts on why creatine suddenly has become this like ban or supplements? Like supplements like supplements in the year. We should

start our supplement of the year and then, right? For a while, I think vitamin D and Melatonin

came first. We'll have to figure out what year. So as we're then, I feel like creatine got supplemented

the year for 2026 as unless something else comes along. So creatine supplement of the year, 2026, even though it's been around for a long long time. What do you think happened? Well, so first, I want to talk about your loading phase. And like that was really for the studies that were being done, right? Because if you're taking five grams a day of creatine, it takes about three to four weeks for your, for your muscle creatine stores to become saturated.

And researchers aren't going to do a study or they wait that long. So the loading phase really was just-

“Well, so that's what inspired it. Yeah. It was, it's in this isolated bubble of in the experimental”

protocol, but like in the real world, you have three weeks. Or if you're like an athlete,

you hadn't, you know, taken the creatine, you don't have your creatine stores up and you have to

quickly rapidly. Got it. Like, I was just amazed at how quickly it worked. I might be a hyper responder, but I legitimately put on, I realized some of it was water, most of it was water. But some blur between probably four and eight pounds of water in the muscle mass. I don't want to call it lean mass because you know, it's water in the muscle. But I just was, I was like, oh my goodness, this is crazy, you know? And then people thought maybe it was a steroid. It's an steroid. Maybe it's

back for your kidneys. It turns out safe for your kidneys and most everyone. Pretty remarkable molecule. Yeah, I mean, obviously creatine is stored as creatine phosphate in our cells. We make, to some degree, between one to three grams of creatine a day, our liver, our brain also makes it. It's used to make energy. And so your muscles, if you're working out, you're really consuming a lot of energy, right? It's very energetically demanding. So having the creatine stores higher in

your muscle is beneficial because one, you're going to be able to increase your training volume. Right? So it's not like creatine is anabolic in this sense that protein or amino acids are, right? It's not like directly affecting muscle protein synthesis. It's just helping you train more, getting more reps and whatever it is, training, training, training volume is going up. And because your training volume is going up, then you're obviously putting more stress on your

muscles, which is going to lead to increased muscle protein synthesis. And obviously there's water probably as well. That said, you know, you ask me, you know, what happened? So I got interested in creatine back in 20, when I started basically weight training. And I've obviously

had heard about it forever. Never took it. And as I started to get into resistance training,

I was like, I better start taking this. This is, I'm in this world now and started doing some research and taking it. So I was taking the five grams a day because that's really what most of the studies show creatine model hydrate. That's the most well-researched form of creatine. And I was seeing five grams a day because I was interested in improving my training volume and getting the

“benefits of it. Right. And then I had Darren Kando on the podcast. That was in 2024. I think it was.”

And once I had started getting into the creatine research, the brain stuff started, it has been coming out over the past, you know, a few years. And that's, for me, become very interesting. I remember the first time I heard about it years ago. It was like, oh, it's helping improve content function and older, older, you know, people. Yeah, the phosphoric creatine system seems to be somewhat biased towards forebrain structures. You know, I mean, obviously it's in lots of brain

areas, but that there might be a heavier reliance on it for brain areas that are associated with strategic planning and, you know, working memory and, yeah, if you, if you were to sort of just map the, the sort of density of usage of the phosphoric creatine system, you'd see a frontal bias for sure. Okay. Yeah. Well, anyways, that's kind of where my interest in, you know, kind of dive in deeper anything that's helping the brain is interesting to me as I know it's he was well. And, and so I

learned a lot from this podcast I did with Darren Kando, you know, research is creating and collaborate with a lot of different researchers that are doing, you know, research on the brain and muscle and, you know, lots of the bone turns out it's beneficial to the bone as well. But the

of like the muscle, right? You're not just going to, if you take creatine, you don't work out,

you're not going to, you're not going to get any increase in lean mass, right? It's not going to

“do much of anything because you're not putting in the work. I think the same goes with the brain”

as well, where it's like, researchers started to find out that, well, you can't just take creatine and it's going to enhance cognitive function. It's in the background of stressing the brain, right? You're stressing your muscles by work out, same goes for the brain. It's like in the situations of stress, whether that's sleep deprivation, whether it's, you know, a traumatic brain injury. I mean, I would argue, you know, there's a lot of psychological stress, depression, constantly using

your brain, like you and I right now on this conversation, we're learning, we're thinking, I mean,

it is stressful on the brain, right? So, I mean, I am obviously speculating here and taking,

I'm extrapolating, right? I'm not saying that there's studies showing that, but it does seem as though that that's when creatine seems to shine in the brain. And you make a while your brain makes it, and it's true. Your brain does make, you know, again, it's like, between one to three grams or something. I'm not exactly sure how much, but it makes its own creatine. And it's kind of resistant to taking up the creatine that you're supplementing with, particularly because for one, the muscle is very

greedy. So, when you're getting to that five-gram range, muscles are really consuming, if you're working out in particular, right, your muscles are kind of consuming that, because that's, they're very

“greedy for it, right? And there have now been, I think, a handful of studies showing that when you”

start to get above that, there's a study out of Germany showing this and it's a small study. This needs to be replicated. Like, this is all new, you know, emerging data, but that study show that once you start to get to, you know, 10 grams, then if you look by MRI, you can start to see that creatine levels are increasing in certain brain regions and perhaps in the brain regions that you were talking about. And they're going higher than what you would get from just your brain,

normally making its own creatine. So, the 10 grams of creatine a day, which is now what my baseline is, is based off of that. But there's studies now showing that if you are in this sort of stressed state, your brain is stressed, like, for sleep deprivation, for example, your sleep deprived for 21 hours. And your brain's not working very good after not sleeping for 21 hours, right?

I mean, that's obviously when I have a, when I travel internationally, I never really sleep

good on an international flight. And so, I'm like, not, if you were to come find me after that fly, I'd be like, not working very good, right? You and everybody else. Right. Yeah. Well, some people can sleep great on the plane, but I'm not one of those people. So, um, there have now been at least one study showing that if you give someone it's like something like 0.35 grams per kilogram body weight of creatine, which comes out to a lot.

I mean, it's like 20, 25 depends on your body weight, right? Like 20, 25 grams, perhaps even more. I mean, I mean, I'm 100 kilograms. Yeah. So, it would be a lot. Yeah. So, for me, it's more like 20, 25 grams, right? But if you give individuals that high dose in that, you know, sleep deprivation, that they're cognitively, not only performing normal, but they're performing better than their baseline. And that, of course, generated a lot of interest. There have been studies coming out since

then showing that, okay, if you give older adults with mild cognitive impairment, perhaps mild, you know, early stage Alzheimer's disease. Again, 20 grams. You're giving them the 20 gram range of creatine. It's improving their cognitive function. Why is that? Well, creatine is important to make energy. And when your brain cells are stressed out, right? I mean, like energy, energetic demand goes up. And if you have more creatine, it's going to make things easier.

There's also some inflammation that's being generated in that stress state. And it seems as a creatine is also having both an indirect and direct effect on inflammatory processes as well.

“This is all early, early data. Like, like, more needs to be done. But I think that there's”

enough safety data out there now where it's like, well, it's really not harmful to take 10 grams a day. I take 10 grams a day every day. You spread it out. I do it in two doses. I mean, some people are very sensitive to a 10 gram dose where they might like get a GI irritation effect. It can give some people diarrhea, exactly. Yeah. So, the very scientific way, but I mean, that. So, I, I do spread it out. And I take it. I don't take it at night. I like to take my

mind in the morning. And I don't know, Andrew, this might be a placebo. I feel like I'm constantly in a stress. I'm constantly in a, my brain is under a lot of stress. I'm constantly learning, I'm reading papers. And like I said, I'm, I'm extrapolating here. This isn't sleep deprivation. That's obviously, I'm much more extreme type of stress. But I have noticed that taking my 10 grams going from 5 to 10 really does seem to affect my brain functioning like later in the

which is fine. Like I said, I am fine with placebo. In fact, as long as what I'm ingesting is not actually bad for you, placebo is fine with me. But it is working for me. When I travel, I do when I'm going to the east coast. I mean, I'm on the west coast. So, when I go

anywhere, and I have to give a talk early in the morning. And I never sleep good in a hotel. I,

I'm always sleep deprived. I mean, I, I don't know that a time that I haven't been traveling, and I'm going to start traveling with my pillow like you do because that's brilliant because that's like one of my, that's one of my problems. But there's many problems in hotel rooms that lead to me not sleeping as good, right? So, I take 20, sometimes 25 grams of creatine in those situations. And they're, it's like, you know, it's not all the time. But it seems to help me again.

And like I said, I'm okay with placebo, which is fine. But we do have some evidence that it might.

“And I think this is kind of where people are already interested in creatine. And so, when you start”

to go, well, maybe it's going to be beneficial for the brain. If it's going to improve cognitive

function, that's really something that people are interested in. Right. Now, again, I don't know that

it's like, if you're just some young, healthy person that gets all this, you're getting your sleeping well, you're exercising, everything's great. You know, and I'm mostly sleep well and exercise great. I'm extrapolating here. But like, you know, Alzheimer's disease on the extreme end, TBI, also on the extreme end. That's a real time aging, right? And there's some evidence that may be helpful for that as well. There's been some studies with children looking at creatine supplementation

after a TBI. And it seems to help with their recovery. I am probably experiencing brain aging. So I'm just kind of-- I'm going to interrupt there. I don't think so. I'm not trying to just be complimentary. You know, I paid close attention to the data. And it seems like in certain fields,

like math and physics, people tend to peak with their contributions early. There's a reason why

“the field's metal is only given to people. You know, like, I think it's 40 or younger. My dad's”

a physicist, so he can check me on this one. But biologists, at least the ones I know that took good care of themselves, they're known to make great discoveries be cognitively sharp, intellectually strong, well into their 70s and 80s. I mean, towards some weasel, co-recipe the Nobel Prize for brain plasticity and vision, he's still alive and he-- I think he's still runs. He's in his late 90s and he paints and he's sharp. So I just-- I made a point to only interrupt

here. People can check the data on the previous portions of the podcast. But in just say, I actually think that cognitively-- I'm using biologists as an example-- it's possible in aspects of life where you're building a base of data to pull from, which is what biology really is. It's just an example here that to get cognitively stronger and stronger with age. Right. Yeah, there's a theory. But I see you as that. And again, I'm not just saying it to be

complimentary, though it is a compliment. It seems like you're picking up steam. You're thinking about things. You're not forgetting things from way back when you're building on the concepts and knowledge from way back when. So I find it reassuring that biologists in particular seem to have this, you know, up into the right trajectory for cognition. It's interesting. My late mentor, Dr. Bruce Ames, was every bit of that. I mean, you know, he passed away a little over a year ago

when he's 96, but, you know, some of his most-- he claims some of his best work was done, you know, in his late '80s. Right. You don't see that in math or physics. Yeah. So that's interesting. And you know, I don't know exactly the difference. I mean, I don't how much learning goes into math and physics as you're-- like, I just don't know. But like with biology, and I mean, we're constantly learning new things and reading new papers. And then I think even just the novelty of learning new

things, I mean, that's brain-driven or terrific factor, right? Like, that's, like, you're increasing synaptic connections and neuroplasticity and you're keeping your brain younger in that way, too, right?

“So I think the learning process is super important, whether it's biology or whatever you're passionate”

about, right? Like, you learn new languages, what-- like, the learning process itself is something that is so important for brain-eaching as well. And yeah, so I would agree with you, but brain-eaching in general. Yeah, I'm obviously chronologically aging and there is some degree of aging going on on my brain. But, you know, so that's-- I think where the creatine crazes come from is the interest in-- and I've definitely played a role in some of this, you know, by, you know, talking, talking

about my experience and being super interested in it because it's like, it's felt good for me, and I've noticed this experience and this is completely anecdata again. But in addition with the small studies and they are small, like, I don't know if you've looked at them, but they're there-- you can-- Some of your numbers. Yeah, they're small and you can poke holes in them and you would be completely, you know, okay poking holes because there's small sample sizes. But it is kind of a consistent

trend line where we're seeing more studies come out and show the same thing, same thing, and it's like,

going to come out on it, and I feel great doing it. So, I mean, and even to the point where if I don't have my 10 grams and it's only five, like, I'll notice. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but again, it could be that, you know, placebo, no placebo thing where-- who knows? Who knows? But, you know, let's just say it is real, you know, for me, I gotta have-- I gotta have my 10 grams of creatine from my brain. You know, who knows? I may in five years be like, I was wrong. We'll see you in the data come out,

but I don't think so. I think-- I think we're going to have-- I think this is like the next a lot of people doing creatine research. It's the new thing. They're really-- because there's been

“a lot of work on exercise physiology and the safety data are there, so it's not like you have to”

get a lot of-- you know, the safety data is there. The safety data is-- I mean, it's the most well-studied, you know, one of the most well-studied supplements out there, like you said, you were taking it when you were 18, and it was just a good one. Yeah, and it's just been studying the, you know, for all the years that you've been taking it. So, I mean, if it was unsafe, like we really would know, and again, I don't want to get into all the data on the safety, but I think

that it's pretty solid, that it's-- now, of course, like if you're going to go like mainline 50 grams

a day, I mean, I don't know, that's a little much better. There's always-- yeah, there's always--

What do they do? When people have died dry scooping energy drinks, I mean, there's always a moron or two out there that are going to take things to the extreme and harm themselves doing something that no one else is dumb enough to do, but I think we look at the center of mass for things. You know, as we're talking about creatine, I won't talk about some other supplements, but it occurs to me that if there's some data, ideally from animal studies and humans,

and something is safe, I think the question nowadays, because of how broadly health and supplement and other kinds of information goes in the world, I think the question that everyone should ask

“themselves is, "Okay, do I want to be in the experimental or the control group?" That's how I think”

about it. So, like if there's a study about creatine or some new molecule, I'm going to ask you about magnesium in a moment, right? I look at the safety margins on magnesium. Okay, I'm comfortable with

those safety margins, so that should always be question number one, and then it's, "do I want to be

in the experimental or the control group?" And I think that these days, people who are against supplements or against something, they'll say, "Well, the fact isn't nearly as big as you get from exercise, totally, absolutely, but that's not really what we're talking about. People love this in the cannabis and alcohol thing, whenever I make a point about alcohol or cannabis, they'll say, "Well, alcohol is worse," like, "Yeah, like, and," you know, I mean, these are two separate entities. So,

I think that people should just ask themselves, "Are you comfortable with the more safety margins? And do you want to be in the experimental or the control group?" And then, of course, there's the

“"can I afford to be in the experimental group if I do something?" But those are really the only questions.”

There's no one saying that creatine's better than anything else, or worse than anything else. Right. But somehow, the messaging gets all messed up, and then all these news articles get generated about what creatine is, and it isn't, and I find it like kind of frustrating because that the issue is not, but they're not creatine is better than exercise and good sleep. Question is, do you want to be in the experimental or the control group and can you afford to be

in the experimental group? Right. I like that. I like that framework, especially if it's like, "Well, we know it's safe." Okay, so I can potentially be in the experimental group because that's

question number one gift to have that answer first, right? At least in my book. But yeah, I mean,

there's flaws with all sorts of studies and creatine studies included, right? And people make a list of claims about it, and you've got to tone it down a little bit. I mean, it's not like the best performance and answer ever. Right. But it seems pretty good at improving exercise volume recovery as well. I mean, that's also something that's been shown, and then helping with the stressed out brain. On the basis of our last conversation, some years ago, on this podcast,

I started taking Lovaza, which is, as you know, a prescription Omega 3, so very high concentration Omega 3 because I was getting it from, you know, standard sources. And I thought, "Well, I'm hitting 50 and, you know, my Omega 3, and I want Clino Omega 3. I don't want it to contaminate with Mercury and other things." So I'll take Omega 3s in the form of Lovaza. It's available to your generic form now, so it's pretty inexpensive. And I have to say my blood profiles were pretty good,

but they improved pretty dramatically when I started taking Lovaza. So I'm grateful to you for encouraging the Omega 3, you know, take the Omega 3 path. Have you ever had an Omega 3 index test done? No. To measure the... Oh, if it's on the function test, and then it would be normal range,

index, not the low, right? Well, obviously, for taking it, you're not going to be in the low. Yeah. Usually, it's around two grams a day to get you from Lovaza high. And I do think that's one of the low hanging fruits in terms of something powerful and having an outside effect on your health, that people can do that's not that much effort. It's not like an exercise and I'm actually as an effort. Or eating salmon. I don't like fish. Yeah, and a lot of people don't like fish,

and also there's now microplastic contamination in our seafood sources. There's the heavy metals, PCBs, contaminants. I mean, I still eat salmon, but like, you know, it's not like it used to be. So there are other, there are other cleaner ways to get your omega-3 levels higher. And omega-3

is very important for cardiovascular. It's one of the most important. I would say the most powerful

naturally occurring dietary compounds for suppressing inflammation and resolving inflammation would be better away of putting it, right? I mean, and that's, again, at the core of aging, and if you look at any sort of measure of aging, whether it's even these epigenetic aging clocks,

“they're very sensitive to inflammation. And that's why there's so many studies coming out now showing”

omega-3 can slow this biological aging, as measured by these epigenetic aging clocks. And that's even in randomized controlled trials showing this, that it's doing that. And that leads to functional outcomes as well. So like, even if you're only slowing the clock, let's say, by three months, you're still having outcomes like, where, for example, three months slowing the epigenetic aging clock by omega-3 only is going to get you like, you know, 16% lower pre-frailty. Or if you add

in vitamin D in resistance training, because the study showed a synergy between the three, then you're talking about like lowering the trans-7vasive cancer by 66%. Even though you're only getting 66. Yeah, even though you're all. Vitamin D resistance training in omega-3, and omega-3. Yeah, and this was, this was, the trial was actually out of Switzerland, I believe, and it looked at omega-3, vitamin D alone, or resistance training alone. And the only thing that

actually slowed the aging of the clocks was omega-3. Now, I'll say that with the caveat, okay. The baseline exercise in this Switzerland group, 80% of these people are physically active like doing exercise. So adding, you know, 30 minutes, three times a week of resistance training on top of that didn't slow the clock more, and I wouldn't expect it to be honest when you're already physically active, and that's your baseline. Clearly, they weren't eating enough about omega-3,

because that did slow the epigenetic aging clock. Other studies have shown if you're vitamin D deficient, severely vitamin D deficient, like African Americans, for example, who are obese or overweight, if they add in vitamin D in supplement with 4,000, I use a day for six weeks, they can actually

“slow their epigenetic, reverse or epigenetic aging as well. So I think, again, it's all like where you're”

starting from, but the point is that the omega-3 alone did slow the aging of these clocks, and you add in their resistance training and vitamin D, those alone didn't do it, but when you add it with the omega-3, there was synergy, so it kept going down. And when the three combined, it slow the epigenetic aging by like 3.8 months, but that translated to like 66% less likely to get invasive cancer, and then the pre-frailty was the omega-3 alone, and there was another marker,

I can't remember, I covered this in a newsletter a while back, but this isn't the first study to

show this with omega-3. Omega-3s are really, I'm went on this challenge, I'm sorry, Andrew, you got me on my mind, I'm excited because I take LaVaza, I take vitamin D, D3, I take a lot, I take 5 to 8,000 I use today, and I get sunlight. People actually ask me, this is just a quick window into the messaging around sunlight. Some people will say, if I take vitamin D, or I still need sunlight, and you know, a big part of my messaging is trying to tell me that sunlight does a bunch of other things,

but I take vitamin D at that level, I take the LaVaza, and of course I resistance training, and the LaVaza move, and actually increasing the vitamin D was on the basis of, yes, blood work, but also our prior conversation, I feel much better. Yeah, much better. I take about 5,000 I use a day as well, and I do get sunlight, and I agree with you, sunlight's important for sunlight's

“not, and vitamin D production is not the only thing that sunlight is doing, obviously, and you've”

talked in great depth about that. I'm going to go into the grave, I actually want a little window over my grave, it'll be a little more, but so I can get morning sunlight, I'm just kidding, folks, and what I'm in the ground, I'm in the ground. I think the Omega 3 literature has been greatly assisted by your messaging around it, because it got pretty confusing out there for a while. There was the usual pushback that comes after supplement to the year is released. It's a joke, folks,

is the, oh no, it's actually bad for us, you know, there's always a few of those, and then

of the spring. >> Right, randomized control trials showing an improved cardiovascular health,

“lowers the incidence of cardiovascular events, including heart attacks and strokes, right?”

These are the gold standard, we've got the observational data, we have now looking at the molecular events, we're like, you know, epigenetic aging, we know that it's really good at resolving inflammation, because you want your immune system to be active, but you don't want it to be overactive, you want it to be active, and then turn off, right? And so the Omega 3 fatty acids like DHA and EPA, which are in Levez, they're Levezah, are what, when they're metabolized, they're forming these

molecules, resolveens, protectens, these things are resolving inflammation, and so I think that it's just, it's one of the easiest ways that you can increase your anti-inflammatory response,

and exercise obviously being another very powerful one, but the Omega 3 is always easier to take a

supplement, and so like I have my parents taking it, you know, anyone that I care about, it's like, you know, easy, easy, done, you know, take your two grams a day, I say two grams a day because, you know, Levezah's prescribed it for grams a day, you know, so two grams is pretty on the conservative side, and that's really what's been shown by Dr. Bill Harris, and some of his colleagues that can basically, you can take someone from a low Omega 3 index of 4% up to a high Omega 3 index

of 8% by supplementing with about two grams a day. So, and by the way, there's all sorts of data on that front, with the Omega 3 index, and I think we talked about this last time, but, you know, five year increase-laptic expectancy if you're on the high end, talking about 90% reduction in

sudden cardiac deaths, brain weight and children, if pregnant women are taking it. Yeah, I mean,

it's important throughout the lifespan, it's, you know, from in need of a development, throughout childhood, all the way through adult life and into old age, you know, these Omega 3 fatty acids are, I'm talking about the resolving and inflammation, but they're also very important for their incorporated into our cell membranes, DHA, and to some degree EPA, and that has a very important role in the fluidity of our cell membranes, and this is important for, if you think

about our endothelial cells lining our, our bascular system, our arteries, you want them to be fluid and more flexible, right? That's very important for being able to respond to a stressful situation. In fact, the stiffening of our heart with age, you know, the, the, the collagen that surrounds our pericardium, or, that's running our, pericardium and our myocardium, like that's, that's, increases the risk of a heart attack, you know, a cardiovascular event, you want your cells to be more flexible,

“so that's what, you know, these Omega 3s are also doing, and that's why they're also really”

important for cardiovascular health in addition, and the brain as well, I mean, these, all of our transporters, all of our receptors, right, they're embedded in the cell membrane, and the fluidity of that membrane is important for the structure and function of these things, and that's why Omega 3 effects dopamine, serotonin, right? It's why it's affecting, you know, it's not the only reason, inflammation is also, but part of the reason is, is, is because it's, it's changing the

way or cell is like, you know, structurally composed, and if you think about trans fats, like, that's, they do the opposite, right? They stiffen the cell membranes, and that's why it's like, the worst thing you could do for your cardiovascular health is eat a bunch of trans fats. Smoking is another one, smoking is terrible for your cardiovascular health. Do people still eat trans fats? No. I feel like trans fats got executed in, when, when was it that trans fats got executed?

When it all became, I think it was 2018, when they're all like, yeah, they were sentenced to death. Yeah. No, the point is that we all know trans fats are bad for our heart, but we don't think about why, and they, they stiff, I mean, the researchers doing it, no, I mean, the stiffen, it's stiffening your cell, your endothelial cells. Well, donuts, right, isn't like, if you go get it donut, isn't it donut, have much, I don't know how much fried food.

There's probably some amount of trans fats that's like below the threshold of being, see, only bad food I miss. Yeah, the late night donut, I had so much margarine as a kid, my mom used to buy it by the tub. I remember it's like, she used to go to Costco and get, like, this big yellow tub of margarine and everything was cooked in it, and I mean, it was like, on our toast, and this was a battle in my home. Actually, I'm going to, I'm going to resurrect

some family battles of the butter, the butter margarine battle was a battle. Yeah, butter won. Yeah, it doesn't taste the same, but you know, that was, that was the craze. It was the loaf like the fat was bad, and butter was bad, and margarine was good, and it turns out, no, trans fats are really bad. But the point I was trying to make was to help contrast for people to understand, sometimes when I talk to self-lawidity, people are like, well, it's good that people,

“I mean, I think it's very important that people understand some of the seller and molecular”

underpinnings of protocols, because I strongly believe that understanding mechanism, even just a little bit, or striving to understand it embeds the information for people, makes it more likely

because life isn't perfect. Right. That's, I know that to be certain. I completely agree with you. I, it's certainly for me, but that, that is also my hope. I think that if people kind of understand some one of the why, it's, it's motivating to try to adopt the, the healthy habit,

“but also I think it helps them remember like why it's important, right? It's how the brain learns.”

It's, it's the, the secret is context, the way to remember something is context. People always say,

it's story. No, it's context, and anyway, you and I know that to be true from our, our background. If I may, I'd like to ask about magnesium. I'm very bullish on magnesium, in particular, magnesium three and eight before sleep. Firstly, by take AGZ, because I help them build it, it just has a bunch of things like magnesium, three and eight and saffron and tart cherry. The things that have either been shown or, or, you know, gradually, they're, they're amassing a research data to other people,

studies out there to support that it can facilitate either transition to sleep or sleep or, but magnesium three and eight and magnesium bis glycinate to me are interchangeable with respect to sleep. But magnesium three and eight, I'm aware there are some studies that

maybe some cognitive benefits. So magnesium obviously could be split into a number of things,

but maybe we just start there with three and eight bis glycinate. I have a feeling that you're aware of some additional differences between them, and I'd like to know what you prefer for sleep or

“for cognitive benefits, and then maybe we get into the other magnesium's. Yeah, I think so,”

if we, if we're comparing magnesium bis glycinate or magnesium glycinate, depending on how many molecules of glycine are attached to the magnesium, compared to magnesium L3 and H. The main difference here, and this is based on very limited amount of data, a lot of it, animal data, with respect to the magnesium three and H is that that form of magnesium is supposed to get into and cross the blood-brain barrier more readily and get into the brain better. And in the brain,

it's, you know, helping facilitate neurotransmission, et cetera, the right helping improve cognitive function. And so whereas magnesium glycinate or bis glycinate, you're having the magnesium attached to the glycine, glycine also is great to take for sleep. So I like to take magnesium bis glycinate or glycinate for sleep. And so that, I would say, if you're, if you're interested in more of the cognition aspect. Well, the studies, I think you're referring to the, the Gorsong

Luz data, you know, show some, in mice, some cognitive enhancement, or at least some offsetting of cognitive decline. Those are different, but related, obviously. In anticipation of today's discussion, I was able to find one study, seems okay. It's not a huge sample size, showing a positive report on sleep quality after magnesium L3 and A. So the studies are starting to show our, but there aren't a lot of studies on magnesium for specific outcomes in humans. And I think

it's because it hits like what 3000 plus pathways. A lot of pathways. Yeah. It's a co-factor for many enzymes. So if you're taking bis glycinate before sleep, are you taking it a half hour or six two minutes before sleep? I'm usually taking it. I would say like, a couple hours before, before bad. You know, sometimes I add a little bit more magnesium in the mix depends on the day. And if I exercise more, because you do sweatout magnesium. And so if you're pretty athletic, your requirements

can go up by even as much as 20%. But yeah, the magnesium L3, it's interesting. I very recently got interested in experimenting with it. You know, there's a little bit of human evidence as well that it improves cognition, not strong, but again, it's that, you know, we just don't have a lot of people researching it. And we have the animal data, the animal data is a little stronger. Don't have a lot of human data, but it seems to signal it might be important. It might help

with cognition, right? And so I kind of got interested in experimenting with the magnesium L3, which I haven't, it's a new thing for me. I've been doing magnesium glycinate for a while. I think the study actually looked at the mag team. Yes. I have no financial relationship to mag, you know, we want to be very clear. I just mentioned that because that's a common one out there. And as far as I know, I'll double check, but they weren't paid by mag team. But

I think the mag team did fund the study. Oh, they did. So yeah. Okay. All right. We'll put a link to it. Doesn't discredit it unless, unless there's some, you know, bad things going on, which I like to think not. I mean, you know, it's supposed to be done independently. I mean, when they pay for a group to, I mean, by law, they're supposed to blind the data and not bias the outcomes.

“I mean, that's, that's what they do. Yeah. Yeah. And I think to the most part, you're, for the most”

part, you're probably okay. But it is something to consider if there's a potential COI, right?

But yeah. So I don't know. So that was the first part of your question was the difference between

the glycinate and the three. And then, and then the, the concern that I might have, which might

right? And so our daily magnesium requirements, again, based on our gender and our physical

activity, it's, it's a range. It's a sliding scale. So, you know, women, 300, 350 milligrams a day, men, 350, 400 milligrams a day, really depending on how physically active you are. And this is just, you know, your daily requirements to have enough magnesium to run, you know, repairing DNA damage, to run, you need magnesium to make energy, to utilize energy, you need it for neurotransmitter. And like, there's so many different, you know, important functions in our body that require magnesium

torque to make vitamin, to convert vitamin D3 into the active steroid hormone. And this, this to me, is like, to some degree, vindicating, but also I'm super annoyed by it because, you know, we have all

“these different studies out there on vitamin D supplementation, and does it, is it important?”

And it means there's so many negative data out there. Well, it doesn't do what we thought, it's not doing anything, but half the US population doesn't get enough magnesium. And so those enzymes that are important for converting the D3 that you're taking into the active steroid hormone are not working properly. So anyways, I'm not going to go on that tangent, but I'm just saying magnesium is doing a lot of things. So if you are taking the magnesium 3 and a, and let's say,

it is getting, it's going into the blood, you know, more, sorry, the brain more readily, then the concern would be, well, the non-nuffet is around for, you know, DNA repair and other organs and stuff. And so you might want to get another source of magnesium. It's all theoretical, right? And like, that's not, I would, there's no data on that. So, just mostly because no one's looking at it, no one's investigating it. You know, a lot of incentive, it's funny when people

will always say, well, there's no incentive because the drug companies can't make a lot of money on it.

And I sometimes that's true, but I have to chuckle because the scientists, I will tell you folks, and like, I wish I could just paint this across the sky, but then I get accused of being what a chemtrail person or something. The reason there's no studies on BPC-157, the reason there's no, like, RCTs randomized control on different forms of magnesium and large sample sizes because we barely have enough money to fund the current research.

Like, I, I'm not trying to get, make this political, like, we just had a 1% increase in the NIH graduate, but like, there isn't an infinite amount of money to run studies. And so scientists are, if they already work on magnesium or it becomes interesting to them because it came up in a screen of pathways, people aren't, they're not a lot of scientists sitting around going, oh, like, maybe I should study, compare magnesium, mallet, business glycinate, three and eight in sleep.

In 2000 subjects, male, female, like pregnant and perimenopause, like, no, no, there's no money to do it. Like, so that's where I get back to, is it safe? Do you want to be in the experimental

“solar or the control group? Can you afford to be in the experimental or the control group?”

Yeah. I feel like that's, that's like, all we've got. And I'm only, I'm struggling out of, it's sort of, like, a laughter of pain because I get where people are coming from, but the drug companies are not, like, avoiding studying magnesium because there's no money to make. It's because, I don't know, what would that even look like? What end point? What disease? What, like, yeah, and yeah, forgive me for editing. Yeah, you're not going to cure cardiovascular disease or cancer

by taking a magnesium supplement. These, these, these nutraceuticals, these vitamins and minerals, they're, they're about prevention, really, and, and giving your body the right nutrients that it needs to do and function properly. You know, whether that is, you know, getting enough sleep, you know, when you're, when your stress, when your cortisol goes up, you know, chronically, you're depleting magnesium. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's a very, like, magnesium is being used

to deal with that stress, right? So, there's a reason that we need things like magnesium and, you know, vitamin D, it's just, it gets converted into steroid hormone changing 5% of our, you know, our genome. So, yeah, it's different. It's not like a pharmaceutical where you, you don't need this, you know, to function optimally, but it might, it's, it's the whole, like, okay, I'm sick. And now I need this, you know, or I'm, or I'm overweight, right? We got the GLP ones, right? I'm,

I'm fat, I'm obese, and I need to, you know, help fix that. And so, that's kind of a different paradigm.

“Specific end point type. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's super important for people to hear that.”

Oh, by the way, I should just say, for your, for your sake, and for the listeners,

I divide supplements into basically four categories, like, food replacement, like weight protein or

protein bar, or, you know, obviously, sort of general support, specific effects, and then experimental maybe. Yeah, yeah. And so I think what we're talking about here with magnesium is kind of combination, maybe helps to asleep some specific effects that you're aware of, like, required, and you're trying to top off. You're trying to make sure that you're covering a deficiency. Yes. Okay. Yes. You're trying

take that are just trying to make sure that you're not deficient anywhere? Or for specific reasons.

We've talked about a few along the way here, glutamine vitamin D, omega-3s, creatine. I take a multivitamin, and that is to cover my bases, because, you know, there's a lot of

“things in a multivitamin. You have to find it, obviously, a good quality one, but”

and anyone that tells you that multivitamin's are useless, they're wrong. I'm going to tell you that, they're wrong, because I think now we have pretty strong data. Three very large randomized controlled trials, part of the Cosmos trials. I've heard of these studies, and it's really, I think, pretty clear that in these studies, older adults, we're talking 65 years and older that are taking a multivitamin supplement for, you know, was it a year, I think it was? It could be too, but I think

it was a year, and it was, by the way, Centrum Silver, it was like your standard, you know,

anyone could afford to get it a Walmart type of vitamin. And after a year of taking this multivitamin, it globally reduced brain aging, by the way, 2.1 years, three trials, globally released, produced brain aging by 2.1 years, battery of tests that are done, right? And it's, you know, I'm just talking about general hair. And it also reduced episodic brain aging by 4.9 years. So that would be, you know, as people probably are already familiar with that listen to this podcast,

you know, episodic memory, that's the part of memory that's involved in, like, remembering events and people and, like, experiences am I right? I mean, it's part of, like, not as much just sequence of things. Yeah. And so, you know, that's a big effect for just a daily multivitamin, you know, and so, for that reason, you know, I mean, I've been taking it before these studies came out, but that my parents, you know, anyone that's older adult should be taking multivitamin. So that's

another one that I take. And I take it to cover my bases as well. And obviously not an older adult and who knows, it might not have the same effect on me, but, you know, it's one of those that it's, it's, it's not harmful. If I'm, you know, it's a little bit of an expensive urine fine, but I know,

“there are, it is covering some of my bases in terms of some of the micronutrients in it, right?”

The other ones that I take and besides the one that you mentioned, which is vitamin D, omega 3, I do creatine, magnesium. I do, I do magnesium glycine, I should look into the biz glycine, because I definitely would like another molecule of glycine, I like for my sleep. But I also sometimes take another form of magnesium, which is, it's like a mixture of magnesium malade and tari, I think, or the, and glycine is also in that, but sometimes I take that for sleep.

And then I take ubiquinol for mitochondrial health. You, like, the data on that. Obviously, you're taking it. There's stronger data, I think, on ubiquinone, which is the oxidized form, it's more stable. There's just, when I say stronger, I mean, more data. Do you take coins, I'm cutel. So, co, co, co, co, co-ten is ubiquinol. Okay. And so, and so, I'm taking the reduced form of it, which is ubiquinol, the, the more stable form would be ubiquinone. Are those trademark

names? Because I, I take coins, I'm cuten. Yeah, here's taking. I'm guessing if I took a close, you'll look at the bottle. I say, you, you, ubiquinone. It's ubiquinone. Yeah, ubiquinone. They ubiquinol is a little bit more bio-available, but yeah. So, I, I'm, I'm pretty convinced

that that helps with mitochondrial function. You know, it's not like, you could always have

more data, right? So, we'll just leave it at that. The other one I take is, now, I'm taking your, with an A in the form of, I'm taking mild up here by the way, I have nothing to do with these companies. But there's now, I've just been, over the years, increasingly, interested. So, you're a Lithin A is something that is formed from a type of polyphenol that's found in some

“fruits, like pomegranate being the main one, I think, and raspberries may also have some, I think,”

walnuts, also, but it's a lager tanon is the polyphenol. And these are lager tanons get metabolized by the gut microbiome and the metabolites that are formed. One of them is called the urolithin A. And so urolithin A is a compound that seems to stimulate the process of mitophagey, which is a very specific form of autophagey that's, that's only for mitochondria. And, you know, that's been shown in, there have been randomized control trials showing this in humans. It does stimulate

mitophagey blood cells as well as muscle biopsy, but that's an important cleanup process for, for how our mitochondria repair themselves. There's no repair enzymes, right? Like, they're, you know, part of that repair process is mitophagey, whether getting rid of selectively, you can get rid of parts of mitochondria that are damaged. So, it's really a rejuvenation. And some of this, the clinical data, I would say, is emerging, more needs to be done,

but it seems to, in some cases, improve endurance performance, which makes sense because

inflammation. So, it helps keep immune cells. It seems like it's helping keep immune cells

“quantum-quote younger. So, again, emerging data, but it's, I'm in that, I'm like, I'm the”

experiment group. It seems to be safe and I'm not taking too high of a dose. So, that's another one that I'm, that I'm supplementing with. The other one that I'm taking also is a very, a form of, I would say, I'm going to call it sulfur-fane, but it's not sulfur-fane. It's the precursor to sulfur-fane, glucoraffinin, because that's more stable. And so, I take something called avonocall, which, the reason I take that one is because there's, oh, it's 13 now, and you

say, just came out 13 studies using that form. And sulfur-fane is also one of those plant-fighto chemicals. It's formed. It's found in cruciferous vegetables. As you know, we've talked about this before. So, I'll try to leave, make it brief. But, so, glucoraffinin is in, in these cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli, broccoli sprouts are really, really great source of it. And when the plant is crushed, you know, like when you eat it, eat broccoli, chew it, whatever. The, and enzyme is

activated that converts glucoraffinin into sulfur-fane. The reason I take it is because I've been now convinced by, I would say, the limited number of human studies, clinical studies, but also the totality of events, looking at cruciferous vegetables in general, and then also animal data, that it's really important. It's probably the best naturally occurring dietary activator of a stress response pathway that is important for detoxification. And that, that pathway is the

NRF2 pathway. I'm sure you've heard of that pathway. So, sulfur-fane is a very, very powerful

activator of that pathway. And what I mean by pathways, that gene is turning on and turning off many, many other genes. What we know about it is that it's very important for activating the, the detoxification, genes are involved in detoxifying things that are harmful to us. And so, the classic studies that I've been done, some of them, most of them in China where air pollution is very high, is that if you take, you know, this broccoli's sprout sulfur-fane extract, you can start to

excrete compounds that are found in air pollution, like benzene, that are carcinogenic, right? And you can start to excrete it after 24 hours by like 60%. Great, what about plastics?

“So, that's my thoughts, my thing. That's why I'm taking in my whole family because the same enzymes”

that are activated by, by the, the sulfur-fane that detoxify benzene. So, basically, you're, you're detoxifying it. What I mean is you're basically making a water soluble. So, you can excrete it through urine. Okay. The same ones, that's exactly what, those enzymes due to PPA, they make it water soluble and help you excrete it through urine. There's no human data showing this yet. I want someone to do the study, but we do have animal evidence where, you know,

animals are given a high dose of PPA, and sulfur-fane, and it protects against the toxicity. I basically think that someone's going to show it, and it's going to be clear because the enzymes that are, you know, involved are activated by this, you know, by sulfur-fane. That's been

shown with benzene and aculane excretion, right? So, why wouldn't PPA never know?

And this is a logic. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, that's another reason why also it increases, it's been shown in human studies to very powerfully increase glutathione in both the plasma and the brain, and that's also through the anaerah-f2 pathways. It activates the powerful antioxidant pathway. It also deactivates phase 1 by a transformation enzymes. There's involved in turning a pro-carcinogen into a carcinogen. So, those are things like you're eating, you know,

you're grilling your meat at a high temperature and you're getting heterocyclic amines, right? I mean, these things can be harmful. But our body can deal with it. Yeah, we had a cancer doc on here recently, and I was scared to ask him the question because I didn't want the answer to that. I did want the answer, but, you know, the char on meat. Yeah. And he's like, it's pretty, pretty serious carcinogen. That's real. I mean, the occasional thing isn't going to be a problem. You'll be relieved to know,

and this is not a promotional, that the can that you're drinking out of. These are intentionally BPA, BPS, and PFS free. We've had, that we tested might be a PSM or the results. Yeah, because I know

“that you and I are both. I am wary of the BPAs and the rest. I think it's why old that 10 years ago,”

people like Charles Pollock, when we're saying don't handle receipts and, you know, and everyone like this is a really cookie. I actually back then, no one even heard what you're saying. It was such a niche thing. Then people were very, I think, disparaging of people saying, "People are everywhere receipts now." I think the microplastics and the BPA BPS PFAS concern is really taking hold more broadly. And I think that, you know, the tables have turned. Yeah. And really, obviously, you can't eliminate

them completely. It's their everywhere. Yeah. And they're everywhere. I mean, we're, we're, what would think I heard is the main? It's the main source of microplastics in the ocean, right? Because

shirt that I'm wearing. I mean, it's, it's got microplastics in it for sure. And, and so every time

you're washing your clothes, you're, all the microplastics are coming out and, and, and getting into the ocean, and also then when you put your clothes in the dryer, and if your dryer is ventilating anywhere in your house, the microplot, you're breathing those in the microplastics. They sell these

“traps. When I did the episode, microplastics, I found out that they're online, you can, I think”

costs, it's not, it's not cheap cheap, but it's like, concerning they last a while. I think there's somewhere with refill somewhere in the neighborhood of, I want to say something like $70, but it traps supposedly traps the microplastics in the wash and they're washing the washing machine. And in Europe, I think this is actually built in, or is it required in a number of countries. They're, they're way ahead of us. They're way ahead of us on a number of things. I mean, a few things that really,

they're far behind, I must say, with respect to health, but on, on many things, they are way ahead of us. Yeah, well, clearly with the Switzerland people in Switzerland being 80% of them being physically active, they're way ahead of us on that. I'm excited to share with you that Matina, the yearba Mati drink that I helped create is now available at Sprout's Market nationwide. Long time listeners of the Cuban and lab podcast know that yearba Mati is my preferred caffeine source.

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“kind of reasonable levels of what's actionable for you? Like how do you set that? I think it will”

help people kind of understand how you're approaching stuff? What's actionable in terms of improving what I'm interested in improving my health? Yeah. I mean, without picking any specific example, when you look at the literature and you see, let's say BPC-157. It's kind of a fun one. Because everyone's excited about this now, except the physicians who don't like working with peptides besides GOPs or other FDA-proof peptides, they're freaking out online. From them all the time.

Compounding pharmacies just got the green light that they're going to be able to do basically

whatever except sell, read a true tide, which is under patent. So, there are many, many animal studies on BPC-157 showing accelerated cartilage growth, nerve growth after injury and on and on and on and on and on and on, and angiogenesis. So there's some potential cancer risk there, right? But basically zero human data. There's one study, weak study, self-report. There's actually a clinical trial where they, I'm not making this up, folks, as BPC-NMS, very high doses for a for some sort of

bowel disease or bowel inflammation. And the study was like, I don't think the study was completed or something like that. Don't ask me why, no, I'm not making this up. But that's pretty much the only human data that I'm aware of. But tons of people injecting and swallowing BPC and saying, "Yeah, help me recover heal more quickly. How do you think about something like that?" That current

condition. First of all, if you're not doing it, you're not going to be doing this every day forever,

right? This is a short defined period of time where you're going to do rejects the idea.

“Oh, really? Okay. I know I know, I mean, I don't know what people do. I'm fortunate, I think,”

some people like to take it every day, but let's assume for, let's assume two months max a moment to work around the engineer through an injury. Yeah, for people that I know that I've experimented with, it's been like three months. And a period of time, and they did have improvements, and they could have been through placebo, which I will say is possible. But for me, it really comes down to, like, is it safe? Is it safe? Okay. If it's safe, you obviously have to get the good source,

because if it's all these pharmacies now, I mean, that's a problem, because we do know that that's a big area of, I would say, concern with any sort of nutraceutical sort of thing. And I would put this into that category, is that, you know, people are putting things in the products that are not necessarily what's supposed to be in there, and they're not really paying attention to quality, because it's not regulated, right? So, so if you can get a good source of it, and you're trust the source of it,

and you have maybe someone who is qualified to prescribe it to you, because there are, you know, natural paths and stuff like that, functional medicine practitioners, there are people that are

all the thing? I know, because I'm friends with some of them, and a lot of doctors are happy to prescribe peptides off, sort of off label, like Summer Ellen for purposes other than what it was FDA approved for. I mean, I'm not taking it, you know, as I mentioned earlier, but you've tried it. It very quickly spiked my PSA and nuked my REM sleep. It increased my deep sleep, so I was like, I'm not interested in those effects, and I do worry about tickling the growth hormone pathway

too much or too long because of, you know, hopefully I don't have any tumor sitting around, but if I do, I don't want to vascularize them or grow them. Right. Yeah, so for me, I mean,

I'm always more on the cautious side to be honest, and so for me, the safety thing has to be

checked first, and then at that point, if I can check the safety thing, then it's like, you said, I mean, I can't, I'll try it. Like, I mean, I'm doing, like, some of these supplements that like might appear for one, like the year or less an A, and it's not like tons and tons of data on it, but it seems to be safe, and, you know, I'm experimenting with it. I'm also experimenting with that other things, so it's hard to know what's working. Sure. Naked in my ribosides and other when I

take, I'm back on to the, what I take. Is that for a longevity effect? I mean, I take a sublingual NMN, no relationship to any company that sells NMN, at least the one I take is from, they hate it when I do this, but from renew by science, it's the cheapest version. That's not why I take, I just like the

powder put under my tongue. I like the energy effect. I will say this, and I've done the control

experiment on myself, and I family members who've done it, too. It makes my hair grow crazy fast, and my nails grow crazy fast. I know it's because if I stop that, that halts, those aren't really

“effects I'm looking for, and it worries me a little bit. Does what else is it making grow crazy fast?”

Again, I don't think I have a tumor, but what else is it, you know, if I have like a polyp or something, is it making that grow crazy fast? I don't know. I asked that question to Dr. Charles Brenner when I had a one podcast, because there was a study on NMN in mice that they happened, the mice had tumors, and then they, you know, gave them, I think they injected them with NMN, or maybe it was Oracle Vaj. I don't remember which way it was, but it accelerated

the growth of those rare type of pancreatic cancer cells. And so I was, you know, obviously energy, yes, cancer cells of energy, too, right? Brenner doesn't like NMN, and I will take NR, sometimes I do treat true NMN. Well, it doesn't, I mean, either way, so the same end point here, we're increasing NAD, right? So the question is then, okay, well, should I be worried about cancer, and he pointed me to some study out of Australia, where I think it was, maybe it might have

been nicotine amide, that basically prevented some kind of, it wasn't melanoma, but it was another type of skin cancer. And so it was like, okay, well, that seems sort of point here. I am experimenting with it. Why? First of all, I became interested in it because the effects on mitochondrial health, there is effects on fertility, you know, energy recovery when I started, you know, and then again, you can find a couple of studies where like, maybe, you know, you're not as insulin sensitive

than who knows. Like, it's not, and there's not enough data there, so I would say caution,

I'm cautiously experimenting with it, but I'm so far I love it, and I don't, again, you never know

what's placebo here. So I do take, and they don't pay me, I buy it. I do take true Nijan and R.

“That's what I take. NR, and on the data sheet, they include some human studies, I have a family”

member, I'll just say, my sister take it. She, like, loves it. She's convinced. Now, that could be placebo, right? But she is so convinced. She texts me about. I feel so much better. I have no idea. She has no idea if it's placebo, but Brenner is a very good scientist. I will say, he's a, you know, what we call in our business, you and me, a serious scientist. I just don't think any of that's going to make me have a direct effect on living longer. I don't know that it is. I don't know that it's

the, it's not one of my, like, if I had to like, you know, shrink down to my core supplements, like it wouldn't be in there. And, you know, there's many other things that are important, I think before. So, if you were budget-limited, it wouldn't get above the, above threshold. Like, if someone out there had, like, just like, a hundred rocks or two of the rocks to spend on supplements, they, which is a lot for a lot of people. I don't know that it's going to help you live longer either.

Now, it might help with your exercise recovery a bit, right? In my, in my help and prove my cultural function, I mean, maybe it's going to help with repleting some of the NAD stores. I mean, if you can improve mitochondrial health and, you know, you're improving things, like, on a small scale, right? So mitochondrial health is at the core of everything. So that's something to consider. But, yeah, I'm not convinced it's then. I'll be either, but I do take it. And it is something I'm

“experimenting with. I think it is, it seems to be safe. And there's a lot of emerging data that got”

caught my interest. But, um, Omega-3 is the top, right? Like, that's, that's, there's nothing, NAD, the nictin migratory site or Naman, if you can find a good source of it, that's not,

effects? Because I was able to find some good studies on sperm and egg quality on my, which

“are thought to be downstream of mitochondrial health. Right. That's true. That's the idea. If you”

can improve mitochondrial health fertility, which is why NR is now involved with fertility, it seems to be improving infertility. It's right. If you can improve mitochondrial health, then you're going to improve infertility, sperm health, right, egg health, right? Yeah, Al-Karnatine, a lot of the studies came out of my mentor's lab for the same. So he looked at the combination of Al-Karnatine and Alphalipoic acid, improving mitochondrial health. And came up with the supplement

that, it's called juvenile now, but it's Al-Karnatine with Alphalipoic acid. It's a pill. It's a supplement. Yeah. And, um, so yes, I have experimented with that. And, in fact, my husband takes it. But, I mean, I just can't take so many stuff. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So we have, yeah. But it is, you know, you can find evidence that it improves mitochondrial health. So, you know, it's just a matter of again. Like, what, what, what are you looking for? I, I feel like I'm doing

a lot of high-intensity interval training to, and I'm taking the urelyphane. That's a lot, you know, I'm doing a lot of stuff to optimize mitochondrial health. I mean, at some, at some point,

“you have to, like, not into everything there is. Sure. No, of course. Yeah. And then it's budget-limited, too.”

Maybe, you know, maybe I should have the Al-Karnatine in. Oh, no, it's possible, right? I started experimenting with it, but I take it in injectable form, really. It's going to shock some people. You can get away with taking much lower milligram count. Otherwise, you have to take a lot of it because a lot of it just isn't absorbed if you take it orally. And then I was told that if you take it orally, you also have to do something to offset the increase in, in TMAO. And that

worried me. So, I figured needles don't scare me. I'll just inject it. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, the TMAO thing. I mean, so, it depends on your gut bacteria, whether or not your metabolase in the L-Karnatine into TMAO. There's actually a lot of complexity involved in that whole thing, but you can get your TMAO measured. So, if you're supplementing with it, I mean, the same goes for coaling, you know, like if you're worried that coaling can be converted into something. Yeah, I'll take

alpha GPC before work out sometimes, or if I need to. If I ever need to focus late in the day, I don't want caffeine because it impedes my sleep, but I'll take alpha GPC because this is kind of a cool effect. Alpha GPC actually will improve your REM sleep. It's not a huge effect, but you'll notice you'll get more REM sleep. So, it's one of the few things I found that can increase energy late in the day. Do a workout, or work, if I have to work later into the day,

still sleep just fine and actually sleep better. What is work later into the day mean if you're like working until like eight and nine o'clock? Well, I do that often, but I don't like to work out after two PM because I like caffeine before I work out. Yeah. But I'll do some cardio in the afternoon or something, but if I really have to push push push or if I've traveled and I really need exercise and I want to get a six PM workout, but I also want to fall asleep at 10 30, I'll take some

alpha GPC. I used to take that, like, I don't know, it's been like 10 years, but it's interesting. I might try experimenting with that again. I'm always looking for things that I find a little bit safer, like I don't do the nicotine as you know. It is shocking how many young people are

taking nicotine. Oh, I know. Yeah. I've never tried it. First of all, it's highly addictive.

Forget the blood pressure in the vasocone. That's all bad. I think the big issue is that if I take it, I start getting this spasm in my throat when I don't take it and that's because of it's I have a friend who works on these pathways and it's because of the activation of the muscarina receptors. So, you start getting a ticking kind of clearing of your throat and then you take more nicotine if you'll find. So, I didn't want to become dependent on it. Yeah. And I don't like it.

I think it's a, I think it's a bad habit that a lot of people are going to be seeking to quit later. A lot of young people. Older people might benefit from it because of the cognitive enhancement, but that's a whole other story. Maybe the alpha GPC and the creatine, my knees in my throat, right?

“Yeah. Alpha GPC is very, is very helpful for if you need to really lock in for a few hours and do”

something physically or talking. I take 600 milligrams. You can take up to 900, but I do just fine on 600. So, I think it's taken in pure form and, you know, capsule. Any of them out there that come from a reputable ran is like going to work. What about, like, before a podcast or something like that, does that, does it have any effect? Or why? Yeah. Yeah. I don't put you into, you know, I mean, if you feel like you want to be heightened focus, but I rely on water caffeine electrolytes and

good sleep. There's this wild study. We don't want to take us to far off track here. But there's a study for out of wash you recently, really, really talented researcher. I want to bring him on this podcast. Does brain imaging, and he compared essentially the effects of

drugs for ADHD versus a good night's sleep. And basically, found that there's no focus enhancement

of at-erall, vivance, riddle-in type drugs. They mainly looked at riddle-in. All it's doing is increasing alertness to the level that you would get after a good night's sleep. It may be that these drugs

and enough, you make up the gap. And people with ADHD might just be having some serious sleep

defects. Right. So, you know, it speaks to this thing. Like, I don't know that there's a single drug that can actually increase cognition and focus. Most of them probably just get you in the plane of alertness that allows you to dial in your focus. Some people feel like that's BS. They take more to-off and all, but this is just another form of increasing alertness. Well, reducing anxiety,

“I think, things that are enzymatic, help with that as well. And I think it was talking about,”

I don't know if I was telling you or someone else before the podcast. One of the reasons why I also like that metabolic switch with the ketosis and the beta-hydroxybutyrate. And sometimes I'll take exogenous ketones too. Although, if you take them in a fasted state, it kind of shuts down

the lipolysis. But anyways, is because it increases GABA. The beta-hydroxybutyrate increases GABA. And

for me, it's beneficial because I am the phenotype where I can have other things going on in my mind that it's not anxiety, but it's more of that anxious phenotype if that makes sense. And so the increasing GABA really does help me with focus because it's quite in-down, I think. I actually think that a lot of people who are very intellectually engaged, which clearly are over many, many years and very physically active and healthy, there's a lot of capacity there. And unless

there's something to really absorb all that capacity, you can get multiple tracks going. And we sometimes think of that as anxiety or even some people will say it's ADHD. I don't necessarily think it's that, but it's an uncomfortable state to be. And so pleasureful to be where all ones resources, physical or cognitive are both are harnessed. It's a very pleasant state. Earlier, you were saying the GABA increased from the ketosis. I think more and more were just

realizing that people have different levels of excitatory jinn, inhibitory balance in the brain. And so some people like things that bring GABA up, some people like things that bring glutamate up, broadly speaking. And finding that sweet spot is where you go, oh, like a alert, but calm.

“Right. And that's what that's what we want. That's what it does for me, alert.”

Awesome. But calm. Great. And for me, I'm like, and I noticed that there was a few years ago, I really experimented with a ketogenic diet. I just can't do that type of diet. But I did experiment with it. And that was the one of the main things that I noticed is like, I'm alert, but calm. And it's like, I liked it. Well, that don't take nicotine because the reason people like nicotine is it's a stimulant that calms you down. So I do think that one of the reasons

it's so habit forming is because I know of nothing else that puts you in that plane of focus

of alert, but calm. That is reasonably low cost. That is legal. I've never done it in

Federmen or cocaine. So I wouldn't want to. And clearly, that's a path to destruction. So the reason so many young people are taking it is because it gets them right in that plane of alert, but calm, but it has all these negative effects that go with it. Yeah. And that's a why I have stayed away from X. I know I quite a lot of it. I've asked some young folks who ask me about nicotine, how many milligrams are you taking? They'll say nine milligrams. I'll say how many times per day.

They'll say eight times per day. I'm like, oh my god, like that's crazy. But they didn't start there. No, you have just quickly get the adapt. Yeah. So I, you know, I don't want to sound like that cramudge and then it's like all drank and all take nicotine and this kind of thing, but it's a slippery slope. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's there's other things that you can do that. Maybe it's not going to be as potent, but like. How did you PC? Alpha GPC for me, I like doing, I like my

my metabolic switch and my ketones and. Well, I'd be curious to hear how you feel on the Alpha GPC.

“I remember liking it. I don't know why. I think I stopped taking a piece of got pregnant. It's probably”

what it was and then it's good reason. It's one of those things where you just forget when you go back to the basics and then like the different experiments. Yeah. Before I came on here, I did put out a call for some questions to the world. Okay. Rapidfire Q and A from the land of X and Instagram. This is, these are the students of the class of your class. And that's the way I think about it. Actually, I wanted to ask about this. So I'm so grateful that this person asked about

natto kinase for improving blood lipid profiles. Is it something you're interested in or are they experimented with? It's not something that I've experimented with and I've been more interested in natto the natto kinase. I know some, I really would have to say I don't have enough data to really have an opinion on it. Okay. Well, I don't have enough data to have an opinion on it, but I take it anyway. A lot of questions about things we already talked about. So coal plunge, etc. But

exceptional number of questions about microplastics. And I know we touched into it. But on a scale of one to ten, ten being like you're really concerned. How concerned are you about microplastics for mental and physical health longevity? Just broadly speaking. I would say I am less concerned about

food because our body can detoxify at least some of the chemicals associated with them. The

microplastics themselves. I mean, I guess it's not, we don't really know what they're going to do long term, but I'm concerned enough to try to avoid, to sorry, limit my exposure to them as much as possible. So you don't drink out of plastic water bottles? I mean, I try not to as much as possible. I mean, you know, I definitely have to at some points, but I try not to. Yes. And when I do, I just realize it's the habit and you kind of have to let go. I mean, I know some people that like

don't drink. And like they're like they're like they're going to get their water from their food.

“They're for its while they're traveling. Pretty extreme. Yes. Yeah. But I think mental health is”

important. So I mean, it's like is the stress of avoiding the microplastics worse than the actual

little bit of microplastics you're being exposed to might be. TSA is going to hate me, but I lost a

bet two days ago to a member of our podcast team. He bet me we bet that I said one couldn't bring a mountain valley spring water bottle through security at the airport. And he said it, they you absolutely can. And I said, there's no way. So I made him a bet and I lost. He brought it through full of water full of water. You tell them it's for medical reasons. You don't have to state what they are. They open the cap. They take a sample out. They test it. So there's a time constraint and it's going

to create more jobs for TSA. Sorry. Sort of a joke, sort of not a joke TSA has been for, you know, yeah. She circums chances lately. And he showed up at the gate with it and it was like, here's your

“water. You absolutely can bring water through in glass vessels or whatever vessel, but they're”

going to test it and it helps if it's a commercial vessel. It's not like your own glass water bottle.

Can I pause for a minute because you mentioned a specific brand, which I also when I when I I don't make money for. Right. Same. I during when I'm traveling, that's that's the brand that I go to. And there are there was a study that came out showing that there's actually a larger volume of microplastics within this study from glass bottles versus plastic bottles, which was a very shocking finding. So there's more microplastic number coming from the glass bottles. It turns out

this was a study out of France. There was a study out of France and also in the US. It's the paint on the lids. You mentioned the lids and so it's the paint on the lid that's contaminating and getting contaminated in the bottling of the whole bottling of this, you know, water that is getting into the water. But I do want to mention that the size was shown to be larger from the glass bottles versus the plastic. So the microplastic size was larger. And as you probably know, larger microplastics are not

well absorbed through the gut epithelial cells. So when you're, you know, taking them in in the gut, they're coming out. They're being excreted through your your feces and less likely to be taken up into your gut and then get into your body. And that's actually well known. And so I'm actually more concerned about the size of microplastics. And it wasn't like the huge orders of magnitude difference between the the water from glass versus the plastic. It's still counterintuitive. You

think, wait, what? Why is it? So it's the paint that's on the lids. But anyways, I just want to mention that I still drink when I'm traveling. I still go for the glass, not the plastic because of the size of the microplastics. And knowing because the size was much bigger that it's very, I would say, more did it's going to come out on this, but I would be surprised if you're absorbing more of the larger particles because it's known that you absorb the smaller ones. Thank you for that.

And if you want, you can now take your glass bottle through security full seed oils, the dreaded seed oil debate. Where do you land on this? I try to avoid them mostly because one, if you're avoiding seed oils, you're going to avoid a lot of the process packaged foods that they come in,

“which I know are terrible for you, too because I think that cooking them or heating them, I mean,”

is more of my concern because they are, you know, polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are very prone to oxidation. And when you're heating something that's prone to oxidation, you're accelerating that whole process. I don't want to consume oxidized lipids. I've seen, I've looked into that literature and the last time I looked into it was I think 2024. At that time, I was pretty convinced that if you are heating and reheating oils like they do in fast food for sure, you're increasing inflammatory

markers that's been shown. And I think also when you're really having a higher level of, you know, Omega 6 is in stuff around, I'm not as concerned because I'm getting a lot of Omega 3, but it does also increase your vitamin E requirements as well because of the oxidation of these polyunsaturated fatty acids. So do I think it's like the worst ever? I mean, you can find all this data out there showing that, you know, if you replace, you know, saturated fat with some of these seed oils,

if like you had olive oil instead or avocado oil and say, what if you even better? I think

possibly, so if you're really trying to go for the optimum, I avoid them as much as I can for that

“reason, but I think there's a little bit more hype when it comes to the seed oil, but if that makes”

sense, you know, I'm kind of, that's my, that's my take. Like, sense to me, for what it's worth, I take to olive oil and small amounts of butter and that's because I also think seed oil is taste terrible. How come no one talks about that? But anyway, and olive oil and butter are delicious. It's been so long since I've actually like, I mean, I've had the seed oil, but yeah. Well, you know, and no one can convince me that they don't taste bad to me, so then the debate

just kind of falls away. How often are you doing the sauna nowadays and what is the top contour

of that protocol look like? So I've taken a little pause on the sauna right now, but typically

I'm doing, I was doing it like I would say five nights a week and I say nights because I was usually doing them in the night and it was mixed a mixture between either getting in the sauna or hot tub. So I like, like, getting in the hot tub head out under the stars. They're with my husband. It's like our time. So yeah, usually it's like 20 minutes and temperature-wise, you know, I don't go with that hot. I honestly, I'm like 180. Five minutes a week is great. I should,

I need to get back on a hot tub protocol. I do like the hot tub, especially. I don't know there's something about being outside and I think now there's just, there's evidence that the benefits are really like the same. It's the deliberate heat exposure, right? You're getting that through the hot tub or through the sauna. Creatine for kids, like young kids, like younger than 16, any data and/or ideas about this? Good or bad? Yeah, so there is data and the literature showing

that if you give younger children that are doing, like, for example, sports like soccer, it does seem to improve their agility and it seems to be safe. I do give my son

“to an half-grams creatine. So, a day. Cool. So that's how I feel. There's no better”

indication of how one feels and what they're willing to deliberately give their kids. I don't know where this stems from and we've got it. You all have this. Someone, as why did you single-handedly ruin bananas for this person? Yes. Did you ruin bananas? So, I used to put bananas in my smoothies and there's an end. There's an end-time that is produced in bananas that break down polyphenols, particularly ones that I found

in blueberries and the reason I was getting my smoothies was one for the greens but two for the blueberries because the polyphenols have been shown to improve the nutrition. Love blueberry. So, sorry, sorry, don't mix the blueberry with the bananas smoothie because it has been shown to decrease the polyphenols, which are important. Yeah. Well, the alcohol industry will come for me someday and the banana industry will come for you. And I think we're safe for a while.

Should we ignore studies that have less than X number of subjects? I think that's a really good question. Like, obviously it depends, but we're talking about human studies. Where's the line for small study versus large meaningful study for you? Obviously, how strongly it's powered, but how do you think about that? Well, I'll tell you when I was first looking at the son of literature, all the studies that are looking at were like, end of 10 or smaller. And it's really

the aggregate of those studies and then looking at like animal data and then you start to look at observational data and the totality of evidence and you put together this picture.

“I don't think you should ignore studies that are small. I think that it's part of the story.”

I think we're getting a little too caught up and it's got to be the randomized placebo-controlled trial. It's got to have lots of participants and I mean, that's great if we have that data,

but we don't always have that data and I don't know that we will always have that data with everything

that we're interested in understanding, right? So the way I look at it is if it's like just one study with an end of 10. Okay, interesting, like with the creatine, right? I mean, these studies have been small sample sizes. Now there's more than one, but at the end of the day, it's still very, I would say in this pilot study phase, right? We have just small studies. So I do not ignore them, but I also don't hedge on my bets on them either. I do know that there are a lot of people that were criticizing

me on my sauna. I mean, back in 2014, published an article on Tim Furious's blog, when on Joe Rogan's podcast and talked about the benefits of sauna and I had people that were going your studies, your sample size is your two small and now we've so much data that had come out since then really kind of validating everything and showing even more benefits. You kind of have to look at the totality of evidence and what is it, what endpoints are you looking at and how can you

gather data from different sources, whether it's clinical studies or observational studies or

confident in your statements. I'm very gratified to know that pretty much every other question,

“you addressed the answer to and root to where we are now in the podcast truly and I'll leave them”

up so you can see them later if you choose. Co-plunges, notwithstanding, vitamin D, exercise in all its contour, specificity, fasting, magnesium, lots of questions about supplements which we covered, creatine, lots of questions about inflammation, longevity and so I just have to say, first of all,

on behalf of everybody, thank you so much. This was really an incredible tutorial and so much of

it is actionable and as you are known for, it was incredibly thorough in terms of setting the context within mechanisms of what we know, what we still don't know and I also personally want to thank you because when you speak I learn and when you speak I also learn things that change my behavior and that's a whole other level. Since our last conversation, I can think of at least four and probably as many as it does and things that I do on a daily basis as a consequence of that

“conversation and just the gut inflammation, health, brain, body access, conversation that we had”

earlier, I'm going to listen to this again and take notes because there's just so much there and the metabolic flexibility thing as an input that can come from multiple sources just on and on.

So thank you for doing what you do. Thank you for being you for being first in and still going

and doing things with such rigor and really so much grace. It's just awesome. People love you. I certainly do and appreciate you and it's just it's a wonderful thing for me to have a colleague like you and you really set the standard. So thank you so much for coming here and doing this marathon and can't wait to do it again. Thank you so much Andrew. It's really been great. I learned so much from you as well and appreciate everything. Thank you. Thank you for joining

me for today's discussion with Dr. Rhonda Patrick. To learn more about her work, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and are enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review and you can now leave us

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