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March 10, 2016 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:03:43
Joe Rogan Experience #773 - Dr. Rhonda Patrick
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joe rogan
45:52
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rhonda patrick
02:15:56
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joe rogan
Look at him.
unidentified
Poor fucker.
joe rogan
He's overworked.
unidentified
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience.
During my day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!
joe rogan
By request of Dr. Rhonda Patrick.
You wanted to have that music, so there you go.
Now, that's how we do it.
I appreciate it.
How about that?
Because of you, we'll do it from here on out.
rhonda patrick
Music's kind of like, you know, there's something about it that just makes you feel good.
It gets a little dopamine or something.
joe rogan
A little something.
rhonda patrick
Something.
joe rogan
Has there ever been a study on what exactly music does to the mind?
Like an inspirational song when you're on a treadmill that makes you keep going?
rhonda patrick
Doesn't it though?
unidentified
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
Oh man, it makes all the difference for me.
unidentified
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
All the difference.
I don't know.
I don't know if they've done that exact study, but I'm sure there's been studies that have been done looking at how music affects the brain.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
I just don't know.
joe rogan
Yeah.
There's something going on.
It's 100%, right?
I mean, a song, it has to work with you.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
What if it's a song, what's your song, like Flashdance?
rhonda patrick
That's good.
I really like jamming out to the Stones.
I really like the Rolling Stones.
Yeah.
And I also like it when it's like, you know, maybe some ACDC, like, I need some motivation to push past that.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what I listened to in the cryogenic chamber.
I listened to Back in Black.
Because it just seems like a good song for that.
rhonda patrick
Dude, this morning, after I did a workout, I did a cold shower.
Um, and I was, like, singing in the cold shower because it was so cold.
But it was, like, me singing, and I was like, yeah, I know what happened after, and my brain loves it.
unidentified
Woo!
Yeah, yeah!
rhonda patrick
And, like, Dan was, like, trying to record it for, not, like, video, but, like, audio.
He was, like, trying to record it for Snapchat, but he failed miserably.
And, um, but I stayed in for five minutes, and the singing was like, yeah, it helped me push past that.
This is cold as fuck!
joe rogan
So you did it just for the norepinephrine?
Did I say that right?
rhonda patrick
Yes, you did.
joe rogan
Thank you.
rhonda patrick
I did.
I did that, plus I tried doing high-intensity workouts, so I was trying to sprint faster than I usually do.
So I like to do a lot of aerobic.
I do aerobic, and I like to mix it up with some resistance training for different reasons.
joe rogan
In the same day?
rhonda patrick
I usually do mix it up, but not always.
It depends.
It depends.
Sometimes I'll start off with a run, and I don't do long, long runs.
It's like two miles.
Enough to get some brain-derived neurotrophic factor growing, which is a growth factor that helps you grow new neurons.
That's been shown to happen with...
It's more of an aerobic type of exercise.
But then the high-intensity interval training, like sprinting, or I'll do body weight squats, or I'll do push-ups, or these backward types of push-ups, whatever is going to get me doing that high-intensity sort of thing where you're actually producing lactate because your body is using glucose Since you can't get oxygen to your muscles quick enough for how quick you're applying force and putting this energetic demand,
you use glucose and you don't use it inside the mitochondria, meaning you don't need oxygen.
So you do it without oxygen and you make lactate as a byproduct.
Well, lactate's been shown to increase dramatically.
Lactate uptake into the brain increases dramatically.
that type of exercise.
And it's lactate that's fueling norepinephrine release.
So like you're making more lactate to make more norepinephrine in your brain.
So and norepinephrine is, it has an immediate effect of making the connections between your neurons stronger so that you remember things better.
So that you learn better and you remember better.
It's called long term gentiation.
So I was like, I need my brain to work today.
I'm gonna do that stuff.
Yeah.
Whereas the aerobic type of exercise has more of a long term effect because you're making more neurons.
But those those neurons take two weeks to mature.
So like the aerobic training that I did, Those effects will come two weeks from now when I have more neurons.
So the immediate effect of the lactate and making more neoprenephrine is happening right now because right now the connections between my neurons are stronger.
Plus it also makes you feel good.
joe rogan
That's crazy that there's a physical effect.
There's a physical effect of your brain actually functioning better.
There's a direct mechanism involved in your brain functioning better because of exercise.
rhonda patrick
I have been so obsessed with this lately.
I know that we've talked about this before.
People probably get sick of me talking about it.
This concept of stressing your body.
Most people think exercise is good because the exercise itself is good.
No, the exercise itself is not good.
It's actually very stressful on your body.
What's good is the stress response.
We've got a hardwired genetic program that is conserved in plants, insects, bacteria.
You know, primates, humans, we all have this response to stress.
And that response is to try to survive.
I need to stay alive, pass on my genes.
Obviously, the stress response is much stronger when you're younger or earlier in life because your body knows you're not old enough to reproduce for whatever hormones and things like that that are not being produced.
So the stress response, which is like exercise causes stress, thermal stress, like heat, cold.
And then there's all these like compounds in plants that are...
Stressful to us that can induce this.
But it's almost like the brain is preparing for the next time it's going to encounter stress.
It's like, okay, this is war.
I got to gather up the troops.
I got to get this army.
We got to assemble this army because that stress is going to happen again.
I got to be ready for war.
So it kind of makes sense that you're going to have a very profound and positive effect in your brain and also in other parts of the body.
You know, the exercise itself...
It's funny because a lot of people do it to lose weight or mostly to lose weight or become sexually attractive, muscle mass, which has other very important physiological effects.
But people do it because they want to look good.
And honestly, there are a lot of people that say, well, exercise doesn't really play an important role in losing weight.
It's nutrition.
You know what?
They're right.
But exercise has a very important role, and that role is nutrition.
To cause your body stress so that you activate all these really good and awesome genes that are helping you deal with stress.
And guess what?
Stress is happening right now.
Every time you breathe in oxygen, you're making stress.
You're generating byproducts that are very dangerous.
So exercise is good.
joe rogan
It's definitely good.
I just get freaked out when people that are really smart don't get into exercise.
And I just, I always feel like that's just, they have a blind spot.
You know, there's a blind spot where they don't want to discipline themselves to actually do the work.
They just find it troublesome.
Or maybe they connect it with jocks or people that were assholes when they were in school.
You know, sometimes there's that connection.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, they probably don't realize the anti-anxiety effects they have.
I really also do it because I've got some kind of hyperactive stress hypothalamus pituitary axis where I'm prone to be like, What?
There's a tiger?
There's a lion?
I'm like, you know, it's always kind of like, I'm ready.
I'm ready to fight.
You know, something's coming to get me.
Sometimes when I'm really stressed, I'll get night terrors.
So, like, I'll wake up screaming.
unidentified
Whoa.
rhonda patrick
I scare the crap out of Dan.
joe rogan
Jesus, really?
rhonda patrick
Not...
It used to be a lot, like, when I was in graduate school and I was really, really stressed.
I would wake up and I'd scream.
I thought there was, like, someone coming to get me.
And...
There was times where I actually injured myself, too.
I flew across the room because I thought there was someone coming to get me.
joe rogan
More than once?
rhonda patrick
Oh, yeah.
I hurt my wrist.
I hurt some tendon back here.
I broke a mirror.
joe rogan
Jesus.
This is like once a month, once a week?
rhonda patrick
Well, nowadays, it's almost non-existent.
I would say it happens once every...
Maybe four months.
But there was a time not too long ago, like three years ago, where I was doing it At least a couple times a week, once a week for sure.
joe rogan
That's so weird.
I've always associated people that are really paranoid about fear, about danger rather, with intelligence.
Because it's like, if you actually pay attention to the world around you, you realize how vulnerable you are.
And how many random things can happen, random accidents, bizarre occurrences, run into the wrong people, the wrong place at the wrong time.
And we're so easily damaged.
rhonda patrick
I'll take that as a compliment, but I actually do.
I think there's definitely something...
It's kind of an OCD loop sometimes, and I'll get that.
And it's so bad.
You just get going.
I think I even talked about it on the podcast before.
There was a time when I was scared to drive.
And even now, I drive, but I feel most comfortable driving in a place that I'm very familiar with.
But if I start to let my brain think about it, it's like, driving's scary.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, it should be.
If you look around at all these people that are texting, too, so few people are giving 100% of their attention to the road these days.
There's so much going on.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, self-driving cars.
I'm actually looking forward to that.
joe rogan
Well, they have them now.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, I mean, well, they're not ubiquitous.
They're not, you know, people aren't using them.
joe rogan
Well, my friend Matt has one, and no, he drives with it.
It's the new Tesla.
You press two buttons on it, and it literally drives on the highway.
On the highway?
unidentified
Yep.
joe rogan
He sits back.
He doesn't even put his fucking hands on the wheel.
He's like, it's the craziest shit you've ever seen in your life.
Tom Papa.
Tom Papa has it, too.
rhonda patrick
I thought it was just the new Teslas were only allowing to let you park.
I didn't realize you could actually drive on the highway.
joe rogan
The newest versions of them drive on the highway.
I have two friends that have them.
I guess there's a navigation button.
You punch in the information, and then you press it twice.
And this sucker will drive you to where you need to go.
rhonda patrick
That's pretty cool.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It doesn't work on shitty old roads, though.
Like, Tom Papa was talking about Laurel Canyon, because Laurel Canyon's got kind of like...
It goes by computer sensors that are detecting the lines based on the cameras that the car has.
So the car has these external cameras, they see the lines, and then they adjust accordingly.
But when the lines are really wonky, like, if you've gone over Laurel Canyon, I don't think I have.
It's really shitty.
The road's kind of bumpy, a lot of potholes, and the lines are really blurry.
They're worn out.
rhonda patrick
I've been on roads like that.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm sure you have.
But on a really good road, it works great.
rhonda patrick
It just drives.
Dude, I can't wait.
I'm in.
Sign me up.
But I want everyone else to be in because I'm actually afraid of everyone else.
Even coming into L.A., driving to L.A., I don't know.
People here are crazy drivers.
I saw people swerving, just constantly swerving.
I don't know if people are just really aggressive because there's so many people and you have to.
I don't know.
joe rogan
But I've noticed it.
Well, there was a study.
There's an episode of Radiolab about this.
They did a study on volume of people in cities and what effect the volume of people has on how many syllables per minute they say and how many steps per minute they take.
And there's a direct correlation worldwide between higher populations and like you can literally guess if you if you set up a camera on a street and you Record all the people walking by and you get a good number of people and you calculate how fast they're walking and then you record them talking.
Just from those two pieces of data, you can tell how many people are in the city.
rhonda patrick
Let's see if I can guess.
So if there's more people in the city, do you walk faster and talk less?
joe rogan
No, you walk faster and you talk faster.
rhonda patrick
Oh, you talk faster.
joe rogan
You talk faster and you walk faster.
Both of those things.
But there's a direct correlation.
rhonda patrick
So they're looking at the speed of how you talk, not how frequent you talk.
joe rogan
Exactly.
rhonda patrick
Okay.
joe rogan
Exactly.
How fast you talk, how quickly you walk.
rhonda patrick
Because I feel like the faster you walk, the more you're like, I gotta go, go, go, go, go, the less likely you're gonna stop and talk to someone.
Do you know what I mean?
So it's kind of like...
joe rogan
But it's just like, you know, hey man, I gotta go.
Where are you going?
Dude, we've got to fucking go downtown.
There's a lot of shit going on.
See ya.
Bye.
Whereas if you go to the middle of rural Tennessee, well, hello.
What's your name?
Dr. Rhonda.
Well, very nice to meet you, Dr. Rhonda.
What kind of doctor are you?
rhonda patrick
I guess that could be why there's sort of a stereotype that people in the South are a little friendlier.
Maybe that's why.
There's less people.
They have more time.
I know I get in this loop where it's like...
I'm so busy.
I know you're super busy where it's just like, dude, I don't have time.
I gotta go.
joe rogan
I'm trying to get out of that.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, I think it's a good balance.
You need a balance.
You need that drive, that motivation.
It's good to like, you're obviously doing something productive that's contributing to society.
You feel like you're fulfilling something.
But also then...
Dude, life just goes.
Yeah.
joe rogan
It goes quick.
rhonda patrick
Quick.
joe rogan
It goes quick and, you know, I'm almost 50. I'm 48. I'll be 49 in August.
And then, like, this is like, my body works great now, but for how long?
You know?
Nobody's body works great at 70. It just doesn't.
They're all shitty.
Everybody's like holding their back and their fucking knees hurt when you hit 80. Who's an athlete at 80?
Who's doing cartwheels at 80 and doing 20 chin-ups in a row?
It's just not happening.
rhonda patrick
I used to surf with a guy back when I was in college.
He was a surgeon.
He was a doctor.
We called him Doc.
And he was pushing 90. I don't remember, like, 88, 89. We rounded up and it was like, he's 90. But he was out there surfing, catching waves.
Now, I'm sure he wasn't competing.
But I do think that the more physically fit you are...
And the more, you know, throughout your life and the better you eat, these things are all going to affect the way you age.
They're all going to affect, you know, how much pain you're in, you know, all that stuff.
And obviously losing muscle mass is a big thing.
You know, starting at 40, humans start to lose like 0.5 to 1% or something like that of muscle mass per year.
Just without doing anything.
joe rogan
That makes sense.
Yeah, I think that that's probably one of the more difficult things to gain as you get older.
So if you can maintain it, you're way better off.
Because if you're out of shape your whole life and then all of a sudden you're pushing 60 and you're like, you know what?
I need to get to the gym.
Well, it's so hard to make gains.
It's so hard to do anything.
Any sort of real resistance training on a regular basis, and you're going to be so sore.
It's going to be so hard to build a base.
This is going to be a much more difficult route.
rhonda patrick
It's difficult now.
And you know that resistance training...
It's something...
I don't know a lot about this, but it's a topic that I'm interested in, you know, because I'm convinced that maintaining muscle mass is very important as you age.
And specifically, I think that the type 2 type of muscle fibers that you do get when you're doing more resistance training, those are the kind of fast twitch.
I think those actually...
You play a role in stability, being able to quickly lose your balance, which is important as you start to get older and you become more frail.
Falling down and breaking your hip, that can take you out.
That's a big problem.
joe rogan
That's another thing that bone density gets increased by muscle resistance training, weight training, squats, deadlifts, things along those lines.
That has a pretty profound effect on bone density.
rhonda patrick
There's a hormone that's actually released, I think, from muscle tissue called irisin that is released when you're doing resistance training and possibly also during aerobic.
I'm not sure, but it plays a role in helping maintain your bone density as well as osteocalcin.
Osteocalcin is released.
Osteocalcin then gets into your bloodstream.
It pulls calcium out of your bloodstream and brings it back to the bone.
The thing is that most of the calcium that we store in our body is in our bone or teeth and bones and muscle.
But calcium plays a very important role in the bloodstream as well.
So anytime we're not getting enough calcium, and I think something like 38% of the U.S. population doesn't get enough calcium.
So there's a huge percentage of the population that doesn't get enough calcium.
Whenever you don't get enough, your body actually pulls it out of the bone and brings it to the bloodstream so that it can play an important role in endothelial cells and making sure they don't get too stiff.
joe rogan
That's where osteoporosis comes from?
rhonda patrick
Yeah, because as you age, if you imagine a lifetime of chronic, you know, calcium, quote-unquote, inadequacy, so you're never getting enough of the calcium every day, eventually that's going to start to build up and you're going to keep pulling it out of your bone, you're going to keep pulling it out of bone.
You know, there's a couple of things that regulate that.
That's one.
Just, you know, obviously just not getting enough calcium so you keep pulling it out of your bone.
And the other thing is not getting enough of the—so doing the types of exercises that you need to do to, you know, make sure you're releasing these hormones that are bringing calcium to the bone, that are, you know, doing that.
And also certain dietary factors can play a role in that.
So making sure that you're getting enough vitamin K— Vitamin K1 is found in green plants.
It plays a role in blood coagulation.
When you have enough of it for that blood coagulation, then some vitamin K stays around the bloodstream and activates osteocalcium and other genes that are able to pull the calcium to the bone.
Vitamin K2 never really goes to the liver, and that's something that's found in...
Fermented sort of bacteria make it.
So, like, you can find vitamin K2 in the Western diet, like cheeses, blue cheeses, fermented cheeses have a higher amount.
There's some in organ meat, like liver, but natto, fermented soybeans are the highest.
joe rogan
Fermented soybeans?
Natto?
rhonda patrick
Is that what it's called?
If you're comparing cheese or even organ meat to natto, looking at K2 levels, there's no comparison.
Natto's got a huge amount.
joe rogan
I've never even heard of that stuff.
rhonda patrick
It's pretty big in the health community.
It's also high in something else called spermidine, which is able to clear away damaged cells in your body.
And it's through a process called autophagy.
So we're always getting damaged cells.
And anytime we have a cell that's damaged, damaged cells occur just from normal metabolism.
But as our telomeres start to get shorter, The telomeres always take the hit.
So telomeres are those tiny caps on the end of your chromosomes.
And they always are sacrificing themselves because they don't want your DNA to get the damage.
Because if your DNA gets the damage, it could lead to cancer.
So they take the hit.
And as they start to get shorter, it accelerates their shortening because they already get shorter each year.
Then what happens is the cell becomes what's called senescent.
And what that means is a cell just sits around in your bloodstream or in your kidney or in your liver, whatever organ we're talking about, and it's not really alive, so it's not metabolic, but it doesn't go away.
It's not dead.
So what it does, it just sits there and it starts to secrete pro-inflammatory cytokines, which then activate nearby immune cells to fire away nasty chemicals and damage more cells.
So what happens is you start to damage nearby cells.
You can think about, have you ever noticed when you get a gray hair?
So gray hair, you'll get senescent melanocytes, which are the cells that produce the pigment.
You'll get one that's senescent, so it's just kind of sitting there, and it causes a hair follicle or hair to become gray.
And then all the other hair cells around nearby, you always get them near each other.
And part of that has to do with the fact that the senescent melanocyte in this case, which is in the hair follicle, is secreting all this nasty stuff that then damages other nearby hair cells.
joe rogan
Wow, that's fascinating.
rhonda patrick
Oh, so anyways, back to the spermidine.
The spermidine actually clears away.
It activates this whole genetic system we have in our body called autophagy, which is like self-eating.
So we start to eat the cell and clear it away.
And recently, within the last month, A study came out where scientists actually engineered mice using CRISPR technology to clear away every time they had a senescent cell.
You and I are getting senescent cells right now.
Like, right now.
Sorry, Jamie.
It's happening.
It's happening all the time.
But these researchers did this brilliant experiment where they designed...
They were like, okay, a senescent cell has a certain marker on it.
And so they then said, okay, when this marker gets expressed...
I want you to have these immune cells go and clear it away and eat it.
And so every time there was a senescent cell, the immune system cleared it out and the mice ended up living 30% longer than their normal lifespan.
Pretty cool.
So autophagy it's called.
It's pretty cool.
And there are other things that actually increase it.
Resveratrol.
Resveratrol from...
It's one of those plant compounds that's...
This has been a recent obsession of mine.
But plants make natural insecticides.
And for millions of years, plants have been figuring out a way to ward off insects and fungus.
Because they also want to stay alive.
Just like we do.
And...
They don't actually make enough of these chemicals to kill the insect.
It's kind of like just go away.
So they often affect their nervous system and just kind of make them go away.
But what's really cool is that these compounds in plants, and there are so many different ones, actually have a hormetic effect on us.
So that hormetic effect being in small doses, it activates our whole stress response pathway like exercise does.
Resveratrol is actually made in grape skins and also blueberries make to a much less degree, but it's made to ward off fungus.
Resveratrol has been shown at least in a high dose, like 1,000 milligrams a day, to clear away.
It actually activates this whole genetic pathway that gets activated when you're fasting.
Fasting is another type of hormetic stress.
So when you're fasting, you cause damaged cells to clear away.
You also basically start to turn on all these genes that help you deal with stress because your body's like, oh my god, I can't.
I don't have food.
I need to deal with this.
So you activate all these really good You know, genetic pathways where you're making more antioxidants, you're making more anti-inflammatories, you're making more brain cells, you're preparing just everything good.
So resveratrol kind of is thought of like a mimetic of fasting in a way because it activates like one of these pathways that gets activated and it changes gene expression.
I've been very skeptical of the resveratrol literature for quite some time.
Back in 2003 or so, when it first came into the aging world, I was very skeptical of it.
Mostly because a lot of the studies that have been done in animals, where they feed animals resveratrol, they feed them such large amounts that are just not relevant to humans.
So I was like, well, so what?
But the more I've been reading about it recently, the more I've become a little more convinced that there actually may be something to...
To this resveratrol.
It's activating this pathway called SIRT1, which is globally changing gene expression.
It's epigenetics.
It's activating all these good things and deactivating bad things.
And so it's really interesting.
There was a study that was published not long ago, a couple years ago, that was done in monkeys, where monkeys were given a high sugar diet and high sugar plus high fat, which is a bad combo.
and they gave them resveratrol you know either gave them resveratrol or didn't and the monkeys that did not get resveratrol um their arteries were like really stiffed that caused their arteries to stiff by like 40 but the resveratrol resveratrol completely like negated that so i was like wow maybe i should start looking into the resveratrol again because it's a little it's a little interesting but um there's so many other plants
There's a book that was written by an Indian scientist called Plant Antifedants.
And it's a very dry...
I mean, it's a textbook.
So it's not something people read.
It's a textbook, really.
But what he does in this book, there's over 900 different chemical compounds in a variety of plants.
He's a plant specialist, so that's his specialty.
And he categorizes over 900 of these compounds where these compounds are potentially going to induce a hormetic response.
And so I know several scientists are actually using some of these compounds that are at least listed in this book to study their effects in mice and eventually in humans.
But some of them, like plumagen, plumagens and black walnuts.
It actually causes a slight stress in our brain and it has been shown in mice to protect against ischemic stroke because it activates all these good things.
It protects against ischemic stroke.
There's another one called galantamine, which is in snowdrop flowers.
Galantamine is also stressful in the brain.
Like I said, these plant compounds are designed to target insect nervous systems, so it's no surprise they're affecting the nervous system of mammals.
In fact, in this case, humans as well.
Galantamine increases acetylcholine production in the brain, and acetylcholine plays a role in learning and memory and It's actually given to Alzheimer's patients, galantamine, to help them remember things, to help them to improve their memory.
But it's just one of those natural insecticides.
joe rogan
Acetylcholine is a nootropic.
A lot of people take acetylcholine just from memory.
rhonda patrick
Well, the thing I like about getting it from...
Getting it from a hormetic type of response versus, let's say someone designed a drug to activate the acetylcholine receptor, is that you always have these biological feedback mechanisms.
When you start to activate a receptor in the brain...
So pharmacologically, your brain knows.
Your brain's like, oh, I'm getting a lot of this stuff that I don't usually get a lot of.
I'm going to stop making as much of the receptor.
The receptor is what's necessary to have the physiological response.
So your brain's like, oh, I'm just going to stop making as much of this receptor.
But then what happens is if you don't give it that signal, if you don't take that drug, then you've got less of that receptor.
And so you're going to have massive withdrawal.
It's going to be crazy because now whatever acetylcholine you do make, it's not going to have much of an effect because there's less of that receptor there to actually bind to it.
Whereas when you have something like galantamine, something that's a hormetic inducer, what's happening is you're not actually...
anything to acetylcholine neurons or to the receptor or anything directly, it's slightly toxic and part of the way your brain deals with the type of stress that it induces is it goes, "Oh, this is the kind of stress I need to make.
I need acetylcholine for this." For whatever reason, whatever, you know, these plants are doing different things.
For whatever reason, the galantamine is like the one that says, "Okay, acetylcholine." So your body, it's a response to something kind of like triggering it, you know?
And so you're not going to have that feedback mechanism where it's like...
joe rogan
So if you take it in a pharmacological form, a pharmaceutical form...
rhonda patrick
Yeah, I'm just saying a lot of, you know, I mean, the classic example would be opioids, right?
Opioid painkillers.
So when you're taking an opioid painkiller, what's happening is there's a couple of different opioid receptors in the brain.
And the opioid painkiller is kind of like a morphine derivative, which is sort of like endorphin.
It binds to something called the mu opioid receptor, which is what endorphins bind to.
Endorphins make you feel good.
That's also part of the reason why you exercise, why you're wanting that endorphin release.
What happens when you start to make a drug, like morphine derivative type of drug, that goes and directly activates that receptor, binds to it, is that receptor, the mu opioid receptor, you start to make less of it.
And that's been shown.
When you give morphine drugs, you down-regulate, you make less of the receptors.
So now what happens is when you don't have that opioid drug, you know, let's say you had, you know, this much receptor.
You start taking the drug, right?
And now your receptor's going down here, right?
And so now if you don't have the drug, you're down here, and so any endorphin you make isn't going to do much.
You're like, oh man, I need more of that.
And, you know, so you keep having just to get back up to baseline, just to get back up to normal, which is why you can have addiction.
Addiction can be very common with those types of painkillers because of the effect on the mu opioid receptor.
So that's, you know, that's one of the problems.
And interestingly enough, there's another type of opioid receptor called the kappa opioid receptor, I think I've discussed with you before on one of the podcasts because kappa opioid receptor is sort of the opposite of the mu opioid receptor because it actually, when you make something in your body called dynorphin, it's responsible for a dysphoric feeling.
Whereas mu opioids, euphoric, you feel good.
Dysphoric feeling is the kappa opioid.
You make dynorphin because it cools your body.
So when you're hot, when you're, when you exercise, when you elevate your core body, when you sweat, that's a good sign.
When you're sweating, you're making dynorphin.
When you sit in the sauna, you're making dynorphin.
And, you know, when you're working out hard enough that you're sweating, you're physically uncomfortable, right?
You're like, damn, it sucks.
You feel uncomfortable.
And the same goes when you're sitting in a hot sauna and you're sweating and you're getting really hot.
Man, you're just like this.
You feel dysphoric.
Like, that's...
What's happening is dynorphin is binding to the kappa opioid receptor.
Well, the really cool thing about this whole pathway, again, coming back to feedback, biology is so smart.
It always, like, figures out a way.
When you start to activate that kappa opioid receptor, your body's like, whoa, I'm getting a lot of this bad stuff.
I need to, like, make more of these good receptors because I got too much of this dysphoric.
So it actually causes...
It causes your body to make more mu-opioid receptors and it makes them sensitive.
So then the next time you release endorphin, you know, your workout, boom, it feels even better and it lasts, you know.
So that's part of the reason why I know that there's certain drugs that are used to treat opioid addiction, activate the capoide receptor pathway, exercise.
Some people use sauna.
I don't think they understand the mechanism.
But anything that's going to help you with dynorphin, because people that are taking opioids, opioid painkillers, their new opioid receptors are already like down, down, down.
You want it back up.
And dynorphin activating that capoide receptor will do that.
It's been shown in multiple studies, you know, so kind of went on a little rant there, but it's...
joe rogan
There's a few things I wanted to ask you.
I didn't want to stop you.
The first one, go back to resveratrol and black walnuts and all these different things.
Do these things work synergistically or do they cancel each other out or is there any problems in combining them?
rhonda patrick
Yeah, great.
That's just like, you know, so the question is, Synergistically would mean, can you then combine two things and have an even more powerful response?
Well, the thing is, is that because these compounds are targeting different pathways, you're going to have some overlap, which will have a synergistic effect, but you're also going to have a diverse...
There's going to be diversity.
So, you know, you're going to have the plumagenin and the black walnuts, the galantamine...
And then you get your apigenin from celery.
You know, apigenin causes your brain to make more neural neurons, neural stem cells.
You get the resveratrol, which is like clearing away damaged cells.
It's also anti-inflammatory.
And then you go and eat your kale and broccoli.
That makes something called isothiocyanates.
Isothiocyanates are very potent anti-cancer.
So, they actually change genes.
We have genes in our body that are able to convert a pro-carcinogen into a carcinogen.
Isothiocinates stop that from happening.
And we also have genes in our body that can deactivate anything that could potentially become a carcinogen.
We're exposed to all sorts of stuff every day.
So activating those genes is super awesome.
In fact, it's been shown in mice.
If you give mice a really high dose of isothiocinates and then you inoculate them, you inject them with tumor cells, They will not form tumors, whereas the mice that are injected...
Yes.
And there's another study that was done in humans and men.
Men that took around...
They ate 250 grams of broccoli or Brussels sprouts.
So isothiocinates are in the cruciferous family of vegetables.
So kale, broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, bok choy...
joe rogan
Cauliflower?
rhonda patrick
Cauliflower.
Yeah, all that stuff.
Brassica.
Those are all...
They all have isothiocinates in them.
Actually, the isothiocyanates are stored in something in the plant called glycosinolates.
And in order to release the isothiocyanates, the plants have an enzyme called myrosinase, which we have a little bit of it, a little bit in our saliva, a little bit in our gut bacteria, but not much.
And myrosinase is heat sensitive.
So when you heat your You're cruciferous.
You're inactivating about 50% of it.
And it's still good to cook vegetables.
I mean, it's good to get both.
But the raw kale that you put in your smoothie or the raw broccoli you're eating, the raw broccoli sprouts have seven times more.
Because they're a young plant.
Young, again, comes back to that when you're younger, the stress response is more potent because nature wants you to survive.
So broccoli sprouts, isothiocinates are made to ward off, you know, creatures from eating them.
So the younger the plant is, the more they make of it.
And so broccoli sprouts, I used to actually sprout them.
Have you ever tried broccoli sprouts before?
joe rogan
I have, yeah.
rhonda patrick
They're pretty pungent.
joe rogan
I've never made them, though.
rhonda patrick
It's really easy.
Like, you can order some seeds on Amazon.
And then get like this, like this mesh bag.
And you put the seeds in and then you wet the bag and you just keep wetting it every day.
And after about five days, you'll have broccoli sprouts.
So really good on salads.
Not so good in smoothie.
I used to put them in my smoothie.
And it's like, it makes me want to barf like it's so gross.
I mean, it's really good for you, but it's just like, it's so bitter.
But then again, you know, when I was doing, I've gone through so many different, I'd make different smoothies all the time.
joe rogan
My smoothies are disgusting.
If you ever ate my smoothies, you'd probably barf.
rhonda patrick
You have no idea.
I have done, like, broccoli sprouts, mustard greens, garlic.
And then, you know, carrots and other stuff.
But that right there, like the...
Have you ever tried mustard greens?
joe rogan
I have had mustard greens.
I've never tried it in a smoothie.
rhonda patrick
It's burnt.
It'll be like...
You'll think you're drinking hot chili peppers.
joe rogan
Well, I put giant chunks of ginger and four cloves of garlic, four large cloves of garlic.
unidentified
Four?
joe rogan
Four.
rhonda patrick
Dude, that is crazy.
So garlic.
All right.
Let's finish the isothiocinates, but that...
Okay.
It all has to do with these hormetic...
joe rogan
I'll hold that in the back of my mind.
I still have another question on top of that.
unidentified
Keep going.
joe rogan
Go, go, go.
rhonda patrick
Dude, this is my recent obsession, is these plant insecticides.
I really think, we don't even know what's in these plants, but these isothiocyanates, men that ate 250 grams of it, they actually, in their urine, there's a biomarker of a compound that inactivates Like a certain carcinogen, a potential carcinogen, and they increase that by 10%, meaning that they're doing good stuff, basically.
The isothiocinates are really good for the brain, too.
A type of isothiocinate is sulforaphane, which is in the broccoli sprouts.
It's been shown to help with autism.
It induces a stress response in the brain, and your brain does all this good stuff.
And then there's like apigenin in the celery.
There's garlic, the allicine.
Allicine is in garlic and allicine is...
In order to activate allicine, you have to chop or blend or chew garlic.
Allicine itself is not sensitive to heat, but if you don't chop up the garlic, the enzymes in the garlic, allicinases, won't get activated and won't release the allicin.
joe rogan
So if you try to swallow a whole clove...
Is that what you mean?
rhonda patrick
If you swallow a whole clove, or some people cook with whole cloves, they don't chop them.
So if you're cooking with garlic, chop the garlic and let it sit for like 5 to 10 minutes before putting it in the heat.
unidentified
Really?
Yes.
joe rogan
Like you let it sit out, like on a cutting board?
rhonda patrick
Exactly.
Because you'll harvest the most allicin from it.
Allicin's another one of these natural plant insecticides.
joe rogan
So it accentuates as time goes on?
rhonda patrick
So it just takes a little while for the enzyme to release it.
So it takes a few minutes, the enzyme releases it.
joe rogan
Even though this plant was picked maybe a week ago or a month ago or whatever the hell it is?
rhonda patrick
Well, you have to break the walls of the garlic for the allicinase to get released.
joe rogan
But more of it releases over time.
That seems so strange.
rhonda patrick
No, it's not that more of it releases.
It's just that you have to give it time for the enzymes to get activated and release it.
It doesn't take that long.
I mean, honestly, if you were to wait like five minutes, you'd be fine probably.
But I'm just on the cautious side.
I like to wait like five or ten minutes.
But yeah, if you just chop the garlic and immediately, the enzymes have to get activated and then they chop it up and then the allusins release.
So that takes a couple of minutes.
joe rogan
It just seems odd to me that there's a process once it's been picked and it's sitting there.
It's obviously not alive anymore.
You know, it's sitting in like a little bowl.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, but the enzyme's not active until you break.
The garlic's been picked, but it's in like a clove thing, right?
You have to open it out.
You have to get it out of the clove and cut the cell wall to activate these enzymes.
joe rogan
When I don't feel good, I chew a whole clove of garlic, too.
rhonda patrick
I used to do that.
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's supposed to be good for you, right?
rhonda patrick
It is.
It's antimicrobial.
They have very, very potent antimicrobial activities.
It kills a wide variety of bacteria.
joe rogan
Well, you talked about that MRSA case that you had, and I relay that to everybody because my friend Denny had a really bad case of MRSA. And I told him about your situation.
He had it actually after you had been on the podcast the last time.
And I told him his photo is insane.
He's got a photo that I put on my Instagram page of his knee.
I mean, his knee got, within a couple of days, it went from being mildly infected, like what's going on, to he was in the hospital for weeks.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
Massive intravenous antibiotics, the whole deal.
rhonda patrick
It was awful.
joe rogan
I told them about what you had done with grapeseed extract.
Was that what it was?
rhonda patrick
First of all, I should probably clarify.
I'm not exactly sure it was MRSA because it wasn't actually cultured.
I assume it was because it came back like three times.
joe rogan
Staff, one way or another.
rhonda patrick
It was staff, yeah.
I was taking garlic pills like every hour.
Grapefruit seed extract every hour.
Is that good enough?
joe rogan
Is the garlic extract getting from a pill?
rhonda patrick
So...
The question is, there's aged garlic, and then there's just regular garlic peels, and then there's fresh garlic.
It all depends.
So some of the garlic that is aged has allicin in it, but it doesn't have other mercapitans in it.
There's other mercapitans that are doing other things.
joe rogan
What is mercapitans?
rhonda patrick
Mercapitans, it's another byproduct of these plant insecticides.
And mercapitans are...
First, they bind mercury very well.
So they will bind mercury and help you excrete it.
So they bind mercury that's in your system and you excrete it.
And they also do something in your brain so that they can actually cross over the blood-brain barrier, get into your brain.
And they're potent antioxidant in the cell membrane, which is...
It's kind of technical, but it's hard to find antioxidants that are in the cell membrane itself.
Most of the time, they're soluble in the cell.
So it's actually very good for your brain.
So I was taking the garlic oil.
Garlic oil would have...
It should have both, both of those.
And I was also rubbing it on my sore topically.
So I was rubbing it on there and taking an orally grapefruit seed extract.
I was taking ginkgo biloba because that was also shown to kill different staphylococcus strains and vitamin C. And I was taking this stuff like every hour.
joe rogan
Wow.
Every hour.
Just overloading your system.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, like garlic was, it was like massive garlic.
But the garlic itself, you know, it's antimicrobial, but also there was a study that was recently published.
Men that had like atherosclerosis, they were given 2.4 grams of garlic.
And it actually slowed the accumulation of plaques in their arteries by like 80% because allicin is a very potent anti-inflammatory and it helps the endothelial cells, helps reduce inflammation in the endothelial cells.
It's good.
It's really good.
It just goes on and on.
I don't even know.
There's so many different compounds.
But these are just ones we know of.
They're doing really, really positive and potent things.
Curcumin is one that I've been obsessed with.
We need to talk about that later.
joe rogan
I take a lot of curcumin.
I take that every day.
rhonda patrick
I have been obsessed with a certain form of it, this formulation of it.
So I know we've talked about this before on the podcast, but curcumin, there's a couple of problems with the bioavailability of it.
First is that your stomach acid and your intestines, it can't get past that very well.
So it doesn't actually get absorbed.
And whatever does get absorbed, it's immediately cleared because your body's like, toxic, no, go away.
So taking curcumin, which is in turmeric, It's in the turmeric plant.
That is...
You can be taking it but not getting a lot.
It's not doing a lot.
So there's this new formulation.
I don't know how new it is.
It's new to my mind.
It's new to Rhonda.
Where they take the curcumin and it's put in a phytosome.
Which is sort of like a liposome.
But it's a little different.
So liposomes contain a chemical compound like...
In the middle of it.
So they have like a phospholipid kind of complex that contains the compound and it's supposed to increase bioavailability because it gets past the intestinal system and also it can just fuse with your cell membrane and just deliver the contents to the cell.
So it can bypass transporters and all this other stuff.
Phytosomes are very similar.
They also have this phospholipid complex.
In this case, they use phosphatidylcholine.
But it also disperses the compound throughout and supposedly it's supposed to be more bioavailable.
I don't know if that's really true, but I have been reading some published studies using this certain formulation of curcumin in a phytosome, which is phosphatidylcholine.
And the formulation has got a patent name.
It's called Meriva.
But, you know, if there is curcumin in a liposome, it's probably working the same way.
I just doubt that dispersing the molecules within the actual liposome makes that big of a difference.
It's more about getting past—so what this does is it gets you past the absorption issue, and it also gets past—because it fuses with the cells— Quickly, it gets past some of the other, you know, getting rid of it quickly issue.
But I've been taking it, like I've been taking at least a gram a day, gram a day of it.
And what got me really hooked on it was a couple of studies that came out, clinical studies that were done Well, first, there was one that showed people that were running downhill, some sort of running downhill that caused delayed onset muscle soreness to happen.
So whatever it was about the running downhill.
joe rogan
It's pounding deceleration.
rhonda patrick
Is that what it is?
joe rogan
Running downhill is rough.
It's actually easier to run uphill on your body sometimes than running downhill is.
rhonda patrick
I don't know about your brain, though.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Your brain's like, oh.
rhonda patrick
Your brain's like, no, I'm done.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
But it was shown to reduce the delayed onset muscle soreness by like twofold, taking one gram twice a day.
joe rogan
Isn't that kind of subjective, though, when you say, like, reducing soreness?
It's so hard to gauge.
rhonda patrick
It is.
Absolutely.
That absolutely is subjective.
And same with the other...
There's another publication where people were given...
There's a more quantified publication, but that was done in people that had, like, osteoarthritis.
Arthritis.
They were given one gram...
I think it was just one gram a day, not two grams.
I think it was one gram a day.
And it actually reduced their inflammatory markers by like 68%.
It reduced their symptoms, of course.
But also, it increased their mobility.
So they checked their mobility, increased their mobility by like fourfold.
So they were actually moving more.
The reason may be because of the anti-inflammation properties.
Curcumin is very...
Very potent, anti-inflammatory.
Way more, you know, it acts very different than like typical anti-inflammatories do.
But there was a study done in mice where mice were given like a very high dose of not this formulation, just regular curcumin.
They're given like 100 milligrams per kilogram body weight, which is like insane.
It's like eight.
8 grams for a 180-pound meal, which is a lot.
I mean, it's a lot of curcumin.
joe rogan
What does that look like in your hand?
rhonda patrick
A big pile, probably.
joe rogan
Yeah, like a cue ball.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, I mean, I did see, because I was kind of concerned about toxicity, I did see one study that was done on people that had cancer.
They were given 8 grams of curcumin a day for 3 weeks, and there was no side effects.
I don't know.
It's a lot.
It's a lot.
I personally think the phosphatidylcholine complex is a better approach.
joe rogan
And there's only one proprietary formulation of that?
rhonda patrick
I think there's a Mareva and there's another one someone recently shared with me, Longevidia.
joe rogan
So would you recommend the standardized stuff that you get at a regular vitamin store or no?
rhonda patrick
I actually think the phosphatidylcholine complex is superior.
Because of the bioavailability issues and because it is, you know, fusing with your cell membrane and getting just the biology all makes sense.
Plus, there's actual studies showing that it works.
And, you know, there was another study.
So this mouse study where they gave them eight grams, what the whole point of the study was, was they injured the mice.
They, like, they did some sort of force.
joe rogan
It's so fucked up.
rhonda patrick
They put force.
It was so messed up.
You have no idea how many mice I've killed, like, in my...
My scientific career.
I don't do it anymore.
I killed hundreds of mice in graduate school.
joe rogan
Don't say this online.
The vegans will come.
rhonda patrick
It's for medicine.
I would harvest that.
unidentified
They don't care.
joe rogan
You're a speciesist.
rhonda patrick
It was so awful, Joe.
The awful part about this is like...
So I used to go and kill mice to get their organs.
So I would get their livers, which is one reason why I have a hard time cooking liver, because I'm like, oh, that's rough.
Oh, rodent liver.
Oh, no.
Because the consistency is like the same as beef liver.
I get their livers and thymus and spleens.
But what the sad part was is that I'd gas them, so I'd CO2 them.
And as I was doing this every day, it was like, fine, give me some mice.
I'm going to gas them.
I didn't care.
I mean, I was one of those, I don't know what you call it.
joe rogan
Monsters?
rhonda patrick
Here's the scary thing.
First of all, when I first started doing it, it was really hard.
And I felt really, really bad.
Like, tears.
Like, I was sad.
I was like, I can't do this.
You're not going to get your PhD.
I'm like, okay, I'll do it.
I'll do it.
unidentified
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
So, it was hard for me at first.
I totally got used to it, where it was like nothing.
Like, I didn't even think twice.
I mean, I had to take a handful of them, put them in the little box, and I'd gas them.
I mean, it was...
I know.
joe rogan
That's so fucked up.
rhonda patrick
It is!
But, and here's the other, like, scary part, is that then I would have long periods of time I'm a very empathetic person, though, people.
I really am.
I'd have long periods of time when I didn't kill the mice, and then I'd have to go back there so months would go by, and then I'd have to go back and do it.
And all of a sudden, I was like, I can't do this.
And I couldn't watch them.
They'd start like...
Breathing, you know, and trying to gasp for air, and I just felt awful.
And so I'm just glad I don't do that anymore.
I moved on to humans.
joe rogan
I take their blood.
You take their blood.
But it's better for them that way.
rhonda patrick
It's better.
joe rogan
Yeah, you're helping them.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, so, you know, the mouse stuff, man, there was...
You, like, when you have to do something, and, you know, I was medical science.
I was doing cancer research.
I wasn't just, like, doing it for fun.
But it was definitely...
It's a strange feeling to feel that desensitized, sensitized.
I'm like, whoa, wait.
I've been doing this for four years.
Why am I all of a sudden caring about this again?
joe rogan
You just took a little break.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, because I was doing other experiments that didn't require that I had to kill mice and get their liver.
joe rogan
So would you recommend taking regular curcumin that you get from a regular vitamin store?
Do you think there's some benefit in it?
rhonda patrick
Yeah, absolutely.
joe rogan
But it's just not as much.
rhonda patrick
You're just not going to get as much because, first of all, you're not going to absorb as much of it.
And second of all, you're going to clear it away quickly.
joe rogan
Is there a better formula of resveratrol?
I know resveratrol, supposedly there's some of it in wine, which they were trying to correlate with the positive health benefits of drinking a glass of wine a day.
But as far as I understand, it's a small amount.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, so a five-ounce glass of wine has about two milligrams of resveratrol, which, if you're talking—oh, the study I talked about on monkeys, they were given, like, 480 milligrams.
unidentified
Oh.
rhonda patrick
That's, you know, you're not going to, like— Yeah, for a monkey.
Yeah, for a monkey.
And you're not going to, like—so you're not going to, like, have that same effect.
And like I said, the 1,000 milligrams was for the clearing away—the autophagy, clearing away damaged cells.
But, you know, these are little chemicals—these are— Chemical compounds that are triggering something in our body and whether it's two milligrams or 400 milligrams, it's doing a little bit of something.
And so, you know, I wouldn't just throw my nose up.
I mean, you're not going to like live 30% longer because of it, because you drink wine, you know, but it's still, you're still getting some, you know?
joe rogan
Right.
So there's something to that.
rhonda patrick
There is.
joe rogan
There is something, but it's not- What does Bart Kreischer say he was drinking?
A box of wine.
He drank a box of wine at night, which they think is like eight bottles.
rhonda patrick
How did he not die of alcohol?
Some people have a variation in their gene where they're able to actually convert the alcohol to acetone and acetate, which is ketone.
So they actually get benefits from...
It's really interesting.
joe rogan
Really?
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
joe rogan
Whoa.
rhonda patrick
Don't tell that to Bert.
joe rogan
He'll use it as an excuse to keep drinking.
rhonda patrick
Well, clearly he's got something if he can drink that much wine and not...
joe rogan
Yeah.
When he was telling it to us, he was chalking it off like it was no big deal.
And we're all like, wait, what?
What the fuck?
Like a whole box?
Like even Brian was like a box.
rhonda patrick
Even Brian?
That's bad.
joe rogan
Yeah.
A box of wine?
Like a box of wine is for like a large family gathering.
unidentified
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
Alcohol in high doses like that, it's not good.
You're going to start killing neurons.
It's not good.
You shouldn't do the binge where you're taking so much of it.
But having a five-ounce glass of wine with two milligrams of resveratrol may not be as bad.
joe rogan
And there's probably some health benefit as well to this, the mood-altering shift of the relaxing of having a glass of wine.
I've always felt like that's something that we shouldn't really look past.
Having a drink relaxes you.
And just whatever negative impact that alcohol has on your liver or the toxicity, isn't it kind of balanced out, at least in low doses, by the positive benefit that you get from...
It being a social lubricant, relaxing you, things along those lines?
rhonda patrick
It makes sense to me.
I mean, there are so many different conflicting studies out there with alcohol.
It's good for you.
It's bad.
It's good.
And I think it has a lot to do with genetics and just binge or what else you're eating and just all these other things.
But yeah, if someone drinks a glass of wine, let's say they're wound up all the time.
It's like...
We were talking about this before the podcast, but they're always like, the lion's coming to get me!
You know, it's like, you know, the lion's coming to get me.
I gotta run.
I gotta fight off this beast.
I mean, that's the stress response, right?
You're activating your sympathetic nervous system.
Which is good if you're actually out in Africa and there's a lion.
But if you're not, having that active all the time is actually...
It prevents some of the feedback loops that happen in your brain.
So when you have chronic stress like that, then you start to keep making...
Usually when you make stress hormone, your body's like, oh, I made this, that's enough.
It shuts it off.
So that goes away.
So you no longer shut it off and it just keeps going.
And that can cause you to either be super anxious, where you're like lions there all the time, or the opposite end of the spectrum where you're like totally...
You just don't care about anything...
Uh, you know, and, and you can be like depressed where it's like nothing excites you, you know, you just, you're indifferent.
So having a glass of wine, if that like chills you out and like, you're not so, you know, I, I think that seems like, you know, okay.
If you're having a glass of wine to, to chill out and, Yeah, it seems like chilling out is good.
But exercise would probably be a better way to do it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Is there any benefit to stressing your body through alcohol?
Like as you were talking about these pesticides that plants produce, they stress your body, you have this response from exercise, things along those lines.
When I was young, I was really dumb, I thought that smoking cigarettes might have a good effect on your lungs because it's like lifting weight through your lungs because your lungs would be like, oh, I've got to process this stuff and it would make your lungs stronger.
Wasn't that, I think that was like what doctors believed.
Really?
Yeah, well at one point in time, I mean, I know that it was in that movie, The Aviator, the Leonardo DiCaprio movie.
rhonda patrick
I've seen that.
That's good.
joe rogan
No, no, no, that's not the one I'm thinking about.
I'm thinking of the one where he was a...
No, no.
No, where he played the asshole that ran the FBI, the guy who wore dresses.
unidentified
Oh, Hoover.
joe rogan
Yeah, J. Edgar Hoover.
When he played J. Edgar Hoover when he was young, Leonardo DiCaprio in this scene was with his mom, and his mom was telling him, you know, that you're frail, you should listen to the doctor and smoke cigarettes.
Like, that was the thing that they used to, doctors used to prescribe cigarettes to people to, like, increase their vitality.
rhonda patrick
Well, I don't know about, I mean, I don't know what their explanation was, but nicotine, yeah.
Nicotine, I don't want to interrupt, but there is one thing that absolutely does happen from smoking cigarettes that does benefit A certain population of people.
Because when you put nicotine in your body, it totally normalizes something called sensory gating, which is what your brain does.
Sensory gating is your brain filtering out all this other information that's happening all the time.
Like, Jamie's sitting over there.
He's doing God knows what.
But I don't care.
I'm not paying attention because I'm talking to you.
There's noises out here.
There's smells.
So it's like your brain is able to focus in and not...
Keep all these inputs coming at once.
Well, there are people that have problems in sensory gating.
It's genetically related.
It's also there's certain dietary factors that can play a role where they cannot do that.
And so they're getting all this input all the time from everywhere.
So if they walk into a room with a bunch of people, they flip out.
It's like because they can hear all the conversation.
It's all coming in at once.
And so it's like sensory overload.
joe rogan
So a cigarette can negate that?
rhonda patrick
Nicotine negates it for 15 minutes, which is why some people probably are chronically smoking because after 15 minutes, man, they got to get that hit again or, you know, it's coming.
A lot of people that are schizophrenic have a sensory gating issue.
And so a lot of schizophrenics actually, I think, I'm...
This is me totally just throwing this out there.
I think that's likely why a lot of schizophrenics are chain smokers.
Because they're self-medicating.
joe rogan
That makes sense.
rhonda patrick
But I don't know.
I'm just...
That's my two cents.
joe rogan
We were talking about nicotine, though.
You're not talking about the actual act of smoking a cigarette.
rhonda patrick
No, I'm talking about nicotine.
joe rogan
Because you could take that in other forms.
rhonda patrick
Right.
joe rogan
And nicotine is prescribed...
Isn't it prescribed to certain heart patients?
Like, it doesn't have some sort of a benefit?
rhonda patrick
I don't know.
joe rogan
On heart function?
rhonda patrick
I don't know.
joe rogan
I feel like it does.
I feel like there's some sort of a medicinal benefit to nicotine itself, obviously not in a cigarette form.
See if you can find that.
Health benefits of nicotine.
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
joe rogan
But my dumb idea was that it was like it would stress out your lungs, it would make your lungs stronger.
rhonda patrick
Definitely stress them out.
joe rogan
Yeah, but is there any benefit like that with alcohol?
Like is there any, like stressing out your body from drinking, is there any robustness that would be a side effect of that?
rhonda patrick
So here's the thing.
With Anything that's hormetic.
So anything that is, the dose is very important.
You know, when you have something that is stressful on the body.
If you were to run all the time, all day, every day, and you didn't recover, you'd die.
If you were to sit in the sauna or cold, so if you were to take two kilograms of bok choy, you'd have some problems.
It's too much.
The things that are hormetic...
joe rogan
Two kilograms of bok choy would fuck you up?
rhonda patrick
There's a woman...
joe rogan
It's like four pounds of bok choy?
rhonda patrick
Do you know how much two kilograms is?
That's a lot of bok choy.
joe rogan
Yeah, what does that look like?
rhonda patrick
A lot.
unidentified
A lot.
joe rogan
Well, a kilogram is 1.2 pounds?
Is that what it is?
rhonda patrick
I don't know, Jamie?
Google?
joe rogan
I think it's 1.2 pounds.
rhonda patrick
It sounds familiar.
joe rogan
So, 2 kilograms?
rhonda patrick
2 kilograms.
unidentified
It says it's about a box.
A box?
joe rogan
Size of a whole box.
A box of what?
unidentified
Like a big box.
joe rogan
Yeah, but that's not a real measurement.
I don't know what a box of box joys looks like.
That doesn't make any sense.
But what is a kilogram?
A kilogram is 1.2 pounds, right?
Or 2.2 pounds?
rhonda patrick
Yeah, is it 2.2?
joe rogan
Yeah, 2.2 pounds.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, it's 2.2.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
2.2 pounds per...
So, 4 kilograms.
8 point...
What is that?
8.89 pounds of bok choy?
What is...
Just Google that.
rhonda patrick
What does that look like?
joe rogan
Yeah, Google 4 kilograms of...
Just kilograms to pounds.
4 kilograms to pounds.
People in Europe are like, you fucking idiot!
You don't even know the metric system!
You don't even know what the rest of the world uses!
unidentified
You know what?
rhonda patrick
This is my response, is that...
We have Google for things like that.
joe rogan
8.8, yeah.
rhonda patrick
8.8.
joe rogan
It wasn't hard to get, even with my stupid brain.
So, that will kill you?
rhonda patrick
No, it won't kill you, but it might give you goiter.
joe rogan
Goiter?
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
Like, because...
What is goiter?
It could basically cause hypothyroid.
joe rogan
Whoa.
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
unidentified
Really?
rhonda patrick
Yes.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
rhonda patrick
Well...
The thing about the isothiocyanates, which are in bok choy, is that they're anti-cancer.
They're good.
When you're eating your kale, and I'm talking two kilograms again, that's a lot.
joe rogan
Massive amount.
rhonda patrick
It's massive.
Nobody in their right mind would ever eat that much kale or broccoli or whatever, bok choy a day.
But if you did, the thing is that isothiocyanates can compete with iodine transport into the thyroid.
And so if all you're eating all day, every day is bok choy, guess what?
Your iodine is not going to be getting into your thyroid.
And so you can have some thyroid problems.
joe rogan
It's just overwhelming.
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
And this is with anything hormetic.
I am going to answer your question.
But the point that I'm trying to make is that a lot of these compounds that are hormetic, fasting, exercise, doing cold stress, heat stress, these plant insecticides, the key is the dose.
So you don't want to have a huge, huge dose of it.
And with the plants, it's really hard to get a huge dose.
But with exercise, I'm not sure that running 50 miles is actually that good.
That's pretty stressful.
It's not good for you.
You get the point.
With alcohol, it has been shown that in small doses, it can have a slight hormetic effect.
joe rogan
Like a shot?
rhonda patrick
In small doses.
Well, it depends.
I don't know if these studies have been done in humans yet.
joe rogan
Like Irish coffee?
rhonda patrick
Probably like a small glass of wine.
There is a slightly hormetic effect.
Now, keep in mind, there are other things that can regulate that.
People are different.
We all have different genes.
And so, for example, I cannot recover from a large dose of alcohol Like Dan can, because I have a certain variation in a gene that does not repair damage to neurons very well.
So there are other things to keep in mind, but yes, that has been shown in small doses, at least in animal models, like flies, worms, that small doses of alcohol can actually have a hormetic effect.
To actually define a chemical compound as hormetic, In science, the definition is there's a U-shaped curve.
So when you have just enough of it, you get a positive effect.
But when you go over that threshold, you start to have a negative effect.
And that's what stress...
When we're talking about good stress, we're not talking about exercising all day every day.
We're talking about exercising, pushing past and getting some of that Well, that's a huge issue with martial artists, with the fighters, because they always feel like if they do more, they will have more endurance, and they'll be able to perform better inside the octagon.
joe rogan
Or inside the ring or whatever, wrestling mat, whatever they're competing on.
And it becomes a real issue with people because overtraining is a giant factor in preparation.
Because they get to the point where their body can't recover from the work that it's done.
And their mind and their mental toughness and their discipline has actually ruined them.
Because they've gone too far.
They start getting chronic injuries.
It's a big issue.
rhonda patrick
Right.
joe rogan
You know, so there's that tipping point.
We have to realize, like, what is the right amount of work and the right amount of recovery?
Versus people who, they feel like, well, if you just push yourself further, your body will respond.
There's a lot of people that have had that attitude.
That if you can just, it'll be hard, you might feel overtrained in the beginning, but your body will compensate.
Your body will eventually upregulate and get ready for this increased workload that you've been demanding on it.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, prepare for war.
Well, I mean, there's some truth to that, you know, you do want to push yourself and your body will, you will have a strong stress response, but you have to recover.
You can't, you can't, you can't, if you, the dose is very important.
So if you push yourself beyond, it's just like, you're not going to have a recovery period, like you're not going to be able to.
joe rogan
Isn't it important then to build your base over a long period of time then?
Because you would build your endurance slowly, where you slowly increase the base, you make sure that your recovery is consistent, and then just keep doing it and monitoring it over a long period of time.
Then, once you have a very high base, then really ramp it up and then go through a long-term training camp.
rhonda patrick
That makes sense.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Nobody does that, though.
rhonda patrick
That makes sense.
Logically, that makes sense.
And even for some of these plant compounds, too, like in that resveratrol study and the monkeys, the first year those monkeys were actually given a smaller dose.
They were given 80 milligrams for the first year, and then the second year they were given 480 milligrams.
Very interesting.
And back to your resveratrol, I don't...
I don't know.
There's so many brands out there that are just utter crap.
They have filler and you think you're getting echinacea, but you're not.
You're getting some kind of magnesium steroid or something.
I'm interested in the resveratrol.
I'm interested in a lot of these other plant compounds.
It's one of the reasons why I like to eat a wide variety of plants.
Celery, parsley.
Oh, there's stuff in apple peels and in green tomatoes, so ursolic acids in apple skin and tomatadine in green tomatoes.
They actually inhibit a gene in your skeletal muscle called ATF4. That gene actually prevents protein synthesis from happening, so it stops your muscle cells from making proteins.
So inhibiting that means more protein synthesis.
And that's been shown in mice, like if they're given really high dose, like 0.27% rosalic acid and 0.05% tomatidine, they can increase their muscle growth by 30% over what they would do if they didn't have it.
joe rogan
That's insane.
unidentified
30%.
rhonda patrick
But they are giving them a huge dose.
joe rogan
Still, that's amazing.
rhonda patrick
It's amazing.
joe rogan
30% is like...
Steroids can't do that.
rhonda patrick
Well, these are now out in the market as...
Nutraceuticals, I guess you call them.
joe rogan
Muscle builders.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, they're all into it.
But you can eat.
I like to eat apples.
I like to make...
Actually, I don't make it.
I buy it already made.
But it's tomatillo sauce.
Have you ever tried that?
joe rogan
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
It's really good on eggs.
I put them on eggs and...
Every time I'm eating it, I'm like, ah, muscles.
Muscles.
joe rogan
How bizarre.
Is resveratrol something you should take with food?
Empty stomach?
How should you take that?
rhonda patrick
I don't, you know, because I've been so skeptical of the field for so long, I've not supplemented with it.
I mean, I did for a little while.
I'm looking back into it just because now I'm interested.
Now I'm very interested.
There's also someone pointed out to me because I did a post on this and they said that resveratrol Resveratrol was shown to negate some of the high-intensity interval training gains or something.
I didn't read the study.
I don't know exactly what that means.
Resveratrol has been shown to actually cause mitochondrial biogenesis and shift muscle fibers to type 1, which are more endurance.
The thing is that resveratrol is not like an antioxidant.
It's not like taking vitamin E. The difference between taking an antioxidant or even taking, like, ibuprofen.
Like, these studies have been done where they've shown that taking, like, ibuprofen or taking supplemental vitamin E, you know, after a workout or while you're working out can blunt some of the positive benefits from it.
And the reason is because when you exercise, you are, you know, you're causing stress.
Like we talked about, you're causing inflammation, you're causing, you know, reactive oxygen species to And this is very important for the stress response.
That's why you have a positive effect.
But if you're taking something like vitamin E, vitamin E actually, it's like a sponge.
It goes around and stops.
It's like, oh, here's a reactive oxygen species or an inflammatory, and it just stops it.
It socks it up.
And NSAIDs, they stop the inflammatory mediators from being produced.
Resveratrol, curcumin, you know, these plant insecticides, they don't work that way.
They actually are stressful themselves, and so they activate, you know, these anti-inflammatory genes, antioxidant genes, all this good stuff.
So it's very different, you know, than taking an antioxidant or an anti-inflammatory.
Those NSAIDs are...
They're not really good news, in my opinion.
They've been shown to increase heart attack and stroke risk.
What has been shown?
NSAIDs.
joe rogan
NSAIDs?
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
There's an FDA warning label on every ibuprofen bottle that you can buy in the market.
It's that bad for you?
joe rogan
Well, it's non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, right?
That's what ibuprofen is?
rhonda patrick
Ibuprofen, yeah.
The thing with some of these, it depends on the type of NSAID, but with ibuprofen and other ones, so ibuprofen targets, the way it's an anti-inflammatory is it targets one of these enzymes called COX-2.
COX-2 makes leukotrenes and thromboxanes, which cause platelets to aggregate.
They also cause inflammation.
It makes this other chemical that's involved in pain.
So when you stop that enzyme from doing that, then you're going to have less inflammation.
Inflammation causes pain, right?
So you're going to have a pain-relieving effect.
The problem is, is that when you inhibit, again, we get back to biology and feedback loops and, you know, our biology, we've, even though this enzyme COX-2 causes inflammation, it's also...
And anti-inflammatory at the same time.
COX-2 also is important for making sure platelets don't aggregate too much.
So at the same time it's doing something that's making them aggregate, it's also like, okay, let's keep this in check.
Let's make sure it doesn't go overboard.
And it also makes something else that's important for relaxing the smooth muscle cells in your blood vessels.
And also it releases nitric oxide.
So when you block that enzyme, you're blocking the inflammation, blocking pain, but then the smooth muscle cells become stiff and you make less nitrogen oxide, which is important to relax blood vessels.
And that can be bad if you are stiffening your vessels a lot and you have plaques.
The plaques can then, you know, kind of...
joe rogan
I have a friend who takes that shit every morning.
He runs a lot and he takes it every morning.
And he'll take it before he runs.
So he probably...
rhonda patrick
Oh, that's not...
First of all, I'll send you the study where it blunted the gains from exercise.
Like, it really is...
joe rogan
I'm talking to you, Cameron Haynes.
Get off that shit.
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
I mean, women...
So there was like eight different clinical trials that were done.
And this is what made the FDA put a warning label on all ibuprofen bottles is because chronic use increased the risk of stroke and heart attack twofold.
And there was a study that was published a few months ago that was done in animals that showed the mechanism.
So it showed exactly what was wrong with inhibiting COX-2.
I've been very concerned because I know that like almost every female that I know takes it like once a month.
They'll take it.
joe rogan
Once a month is still an issue?
rhonda patrick
If you're chronically taking it every month, you're taking it for a week, one week out of every month, and you're taking it every month.
joe rogan
So really it should be reserved for a pretty significant injury where you're in real pain and you need...
unidentified
Yes.
rhonda patrick
In my opinion, look, I don't know, maybe taking it one week out of the...
I don't...
Chronic use, and this was done in, you know, there's eight different clinical studies.
Chronic use, to me, chronic use is taking it every month.
joe rogan
So once a month would be, I mean...
So if you get so drunk that you're fucked up and you're hungover and wrecked once a month, that's chronic use then?
rhonda patrick
People take that for a hangover?
joe rogan
Yeah.
No, if you're getting wrecked, if you're drinking a lot of alcohol once a month, would you consider that chronic use?
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
joe rogan
Once a month?
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
joe rogan
See, most people wouldn't.
Most people think chronic use is like every weekend.
rhonda patrick
No.
joe rogan
So once a month is enough that you don't have enough time to recover from the damage, is that what you're saying?
rhonda patrick
I think that once a month, if you're going overboard like that, to me, I don't really have any evidence that once a month.
In fact, I know there have been some studies that have to look into that.
I would think that going out and binge drinking once a month is probably not the best thing.
You know, you can handle it more when you're younger, but especially as you get older, our capacities to handle that type of stress are decreased.
joe rogan
Right.
rhonda patrick
You know, so to me, especially as you're getting older, you're probably not, you're probably doing more damage by doing that.
joe rogan
What I was getting at, would you be as concerned with someone taking ibuprofen once a month as you would be someone binge drinking once a month?
rhonda patrick
I'm concerned about ibuprofen, but I don't know.
I don't know, actually.
joe rogan
I've never heard anybody talk about negative effects of ibuprofen.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, ibuprofen, the selective COX-2 inhibitors are even worse, which are, I don't know the brand names for them.
Ibuprofen targets COX-2, but it also targets COX-1.
So it's not as bad as the selective COX-2-only inhibitors.
But this was big news.
It's like, you know, the fact that even the...
The FDA even finally was like, wait a minute, something's going on here.
We gotta at least put a warning label on these ibuprofen bottles.
joe rogan
And when did they start doing that?
rhonda patrick
Probably like eight months ago, seven or eight months ago.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
That's very recent when you consider the amount of time that people have been taking ibuprofen.
rhonda patrick
Yes.
And I've been very concerned about my mom.
I actually got my mom this Mariva.
joe rogan
Here it is.
FDA drug study.
Wow.
This July.
Strengthens warning that non-aspirin, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory can cause heart attacks or strokes.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
You're so used to saying things like NSAIDs.
Most people are like, what the fuck?
rhonda patrick
Sorry.
Thanks for reminding me.
joe rogan
No worries.
The US Food and Drug Administration is strengthening existing label warnings that non-aspirin, non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs increase the chance of heart attack or stroke.
Wow.
Based on our comprehensive review of safety information, we are requiring updates to drug labels of all prescription non-steroidal anti-inflammatory.
Now, that says prescription.
rhonda patrick
Oh, that says prescription.
joe rogan
But ibuprofen is ibuprofen.
So if you take a regular pill that has 200 milligrams, you buy a prescription that's 800 milligrams.
I always take four.
So four is 800 anyway.
So if you take four Advil's, it's the same as a prescription non-steroidal anti-inflammatory.
If I ever take it, which I rarely do, I always just...
I'm a dummy.
I always just go for the full dose.
rhonda patrick
Dude, I've been...
So I got my mom.
It seems to be a big problem for women because, like I said, they take it for menstrual pain.
So they're prone to rely on that.
And every woman I know...
Relies on it.
It's like, you know what?
A little bit of pain is okay.
I haven't taken ibuprofen, with the exception of if there's some surgery or something where I'm required to take it.
But I haven't taken it in...
Six years.
Like, I avoid it.
And I just deal with pain, you know, menstrual pain.
And other pain, I just don't...
It's not that big of a deal.
You start to get used to it.
But I got my mom this Mariva, this curcumin phosphatidylcholine complex.
And I told her, I was like, take four of these a day, which is two grams.
She's got arthritis and all sorts of chronic pain.
And I have to...
It's hard for her.
I'm trying to, like, get her on the right diet and all that.
But...
Compliance is an issue, but if she starts to notice some changes with something easy, then it's like, oh, I do see this kind of working, you know, so that's kind of my goal.
But she said it's been helping with her pain, and also she's more mobile and stuff.
joe rogan
Just from the curcumin.
rhonda patrick
I'm actually like, I'm thinking the, it's the, so there was a study, did I talk about this study that was done that compared it to ibuprofen?
So this clinical study that compared people that took the Meriva, curcumin, in the phosphatidylcholine complex.
They took two grams a day, and it was comparable, the anti-pain relief was comparable to 800 milligrams of ibuprofen or 1,000 milligrams of acetaminophen.
Acetaminophen can be bad for the liver.
It can cause liver toxicity.
That's pretty awesome that it was comparable.
Yes.
joe rogan
And comparable as far as the results through subjective...
Um...
How did they measure it?
rhonda patrick
I don't remember.
joe rogan
Was it inflammatory markers or was it like a subjective?
rhonda patrick
I don't think so.
Other ones have measured inflammatory markers with that curcumin phosphatidylcholine, but I don't think this particular study did.
I think it was subjective, but they didn't know what they were getting.
It was like double-blind controlled, so they were getting something.
joe rogan
So it's just a matter of them on a 1 to 10, how much relief did you get, that kind of thing?
rhonda patrick
I don't know.
I have to look back at the study.
I don't remember.
It's most likely subjective, though.
joe rogan
I have a hard time believing you don't remember anything.
You have so much shit stored up in your brain.
rhonda patrick
I do.
joe rogan
It comes flying out.
Where do you have room for friends' names and birthdays and stuff?
Is it even in there?
rhonda patrick
Google Calendar.
joe rogan
The other question that I wanted to make sure that I asked you, because we talked about this through email, was I know that you've done a lot of work on the benefits of sauna and the heat shock proteins from sauna, and I was asking you, because I recently, not recently, but over the last year, I really got heavily into hot yoga, and I'm like, I wonder if that's what's going on here, because I leave these classes, and I swear to God, a fucking asteroid could hit my car, and I'd be like, well, I guess I don't have a car anymore.
Sat Nam, Namaste.
You get so chilled out from doing that.
There's something going on that's akin to some sort of a drug response.
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
I think I talked about this before.
Because when you're hot, when you're doing hot yoga, you're releasing dynorphin.
The reason you release dynorphin is because it cools the body.
And your body's like...
When you're heating the body, your body tries to cool itself.
When you're cooling the body, the body tries to heat itself, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
So this is what's happening.
When you're doing the hot yoga, you're making dynorphin.
Dynorphin, so while you're doing it, it's kind of like physically uncomfortable.
You're holding these poses and you're like, ah, you know, it's hot.
But when you get out, because of the whole effect on the mu opioid receptor, you have more of them.
That endorphin that you released or that endorphin you're going to release an hour later when you see your kids or whatever good thing happens, man, it's going to be like awesome.
It's going to feel really good.
joe rogan
No, it's incredible.
unidentified
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
It's incredible.
That's what got me into the sauna in the first place when I was in graduate school.
Me waking up once a week and screaming and flying across the room.
joe rogan
Punching mirrors and shit.
rhonda patrick
I mean, I literally broke a mirror with my butt.
joe rogan
Wow.
rhonda patrick
And I was injured.
Dude, I was injured for like- Wait a minute.
joe rogan
Where was the mirror?
rhonda patrick
It was, like, one of those mirrors that you, like, buy at Target, and it's, like, you can, like, a full-body mirror to see.
joe rogan
Oh, so you jumped out of the bed and, like, threw yourself at it?
rhonda patrick
Well, we had it, like, against the wall, but it, like, wasn't hung on the wall, so it was, like, leaning, you know, because cheap and whatever, just busy.
unidentified
Whatever.
rhonda patrick
It's serving a function.
I can see myself.
So I, like, it was kind of close to the bed, so I, like, flew off the bed and, like, hit the mirror, like, with my butt and broke it.
And I was injured for, like...
It was like two months.
I couldn't run.
I couldn't do...
I couldn't do squats.
I couldn't...
I was like...
joe rogan
Did you get cut from the mirror?
Is that what you're saying?
By injury?
rhonda patrick
No.
I like...
Muscle.
Something.
Tendon.
I don't know.
Dude, I don't know.
I have no idea what I did.
joe rogan
All from sleep.
rhonda patrick
All from anxiety, yes.
joe rogan
Wow, that's so crazy.
rhonda patrick
But you can see why, like, when I discovered the sauna, I was like, wow, this is...
Because I would go...
I would go to the sauna.
I lived across the street from the YMCA. And so the YMCA has a sauna.
And I would wake up in the morning and I'd go work out or do the sauna, both, you know?
So I'd go and I'd sit in the sauna for like 30 to 45 minutes.
I mean, I was pushing it.
I was so miserable.
It was hot.
I mean, there were times where I would like stay in there for 45 minutes, I'm not recommending people do this.
I'm just telling you what I've experienced.
And I'd get out for five minutes, and then I'd go back in.
So I was like, I just pushed it.
And I would go into the lab, and it didn't matter who was stressing me out, who was telling me what to do what, or if my experiments were failing.
And I was like, oh my god, six months of work down the drain!
I didn't care.
I was like, oh, okay.
I'll have to start over.
I'll have to rethink this.
That's when I looked, and I was like...
Something's going on.
unidentified
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
Something's going on.
I gotta figure it out.
I want to know.
And that's when I started going into the brain effects on the sauna.
Everyone always focuses on the detoxification and all that.
I was like, dude, something's happening in my brain.
I don't know why I'm saying dude all the time.
It's like a nervous thing.
joe rogan
Dude, do you not usually do that?
rhonda patrick
Not really.
Not all the time.
I'll say dude, but not like...
joe rogan
You're over-duding today?
rhonda patrick
I'm over-duding.
joe rogan
You're wired.
You're fired up.
So do you think that a similar effect is happening when you're doing hot yoga, even though it's not as hot as the sauna?
It's 90 minutes at 104 degrees and you're doing physical activity.
You're straining.
rhonda patrick
Anything that's causing you to sweat...
It's going to cause you to release dynorphin because you're overheating, right?
That's the way your sweat is supposed to help you cool.
So you're also releasing dynorphin.
There hasn't been a study on hot yoga.
I get this question a lot.
There hasn't been a study on steam rooms.
There's been a couple of studies on hot baths or jacuzzis, but not looking at the brain, looking at other things.
Personally, if you just think about the mechanisms, I think that it's very likely, if you're pushing yourself to sweat, if you feel uncomfortable, then you're doing the right thing.
You're releasing dynorphin, you're getting the heat shock proteins, you're getting all that good stuff.
joe rogan
It makes sense.
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it is very addicting.
It's also part of the reason why exercise can become addicting.
People always attribute it to the endorphin release.
I actually think it has a lot to do also with the dynorphin.
The pain you experience, the discomfort you experience is very important because you're actually then having that hormetic...
You can almost think of it as a hormetic response because the discomfort is what's causing you to make more of the new opioid receptors that you're more sensitive to the endorphin and you're more sensitive to that feel good stuff.
joe rogan
It's funny because that's one of the main things that people try to avoid in life is discomfort.
That is probably if you looked at, especially lazy people, you looked at the primary thing they're trying to avoid.
They're trying to avoid discomfort.
rhonda patrick
Yep.
Like this morning, I woke up and I was like, I have to go to the gym.
I have to go and I have to like, I got to like push it.
And I was running, I was doing sprinting on the treadmill.
Usually I usually sprint like the last end of my run, but I was just sprinting and I was like, as I was doing it, I was like, oh, this sucks.
This sucks, but I have to do it because my brain is going to help me, the dynorphin and also the norepinephrine.
The norepinephrine, which you release when you exercise.
You release a lot of it in the cold.
I took a cold shower too.
Cold shower was pretty good as well.
Because the cold also...
You release norepinephrine when you're exposed to cold because norepinephrine causes vasodilation.
And so when you have vasodilation, you actually are losing less heat.
joe rogan
I always take cold showers after hot yoga.
It's amazing in the winter because in the winter, the water's actually cold because the water here is not really that cold because it's California.
If it gets cold out, it's like 50.
But when it's 50, the water is actually cold.
So like after hot yoga, you get in there, it's really uncomfortable.
It's hard to breathe.
But when I lived in Boston, there was a guy named Bob Caffarella that I used to do Taekwondo with.
This guy in the middle of January would take cold showers and he'd say that it's good for the spirit.
And he was like the only guy that would do it.
Everybody would just stand there and watch and Bob's gonna go in the shower and he would go in the shower by himself and obviously by himself.
We're going in the shower with him.
But this guy would take these cold showers, and I couldn't imagine why anybody would put themselves through something like that.
But I guess he kind of knew, even back then, there was some sort of a benefit to standing in that freezing cold water, not just mentally, as far as your discipline and your self-control, to be able to stand there and force yourself to do something like that, to have that sort of autonomy over your body like that, but also because there's all these different releases, these powerful Endorphin releases that you're getting from that.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, it feels good.
It feels really good.
joe rogan
Is there any danger in going from say hot yoga class to cryotherapy?
rhonda patrick
I Would love to know the answer to that.
So I've I've recently experienced I've gone from a really hot sauna like Crazy hot.
I mean, it was like 180 degrees Fahrenheit.
joe rogan
180?
rhonda patrick
Yeah, I had to wear one of those hats.
It was crazy hot, like the hottest I've ever experienced.
So I went, and I was with an acquaintance of mine, and then I went directly into an ice bath, and I did four rounds of this.
Whoa.
And it, like, the experience itself was amazing.
Like, I felt really, really good.
Really good.
joe rogan
After it's over.
rhonda patrick
Euphoric.
And during.
Really?
Well, once you go in the ice bath and you go back into the sauna, like, and you're in a 180 degree Fahrenheit sauna, it actually feels like room temperature.
And it's kind of like, whoa.
There's something kind of just cool about it.
Like, you just, you feel really, really good.
There were points when I started to get a little lightheaded and spinny.
joe rogan
You did that with your hand.
rhonda patrick
You know, where I was kind of spinny and maybe low blood pressure, low blood glucose.
I don't know.
Something like that.
But...
I'm really wanting to know, and I have to look into the literature.
You know, I just recently put out a report and a podcast on cryotherapy and the benefits of cold.
But I really was hoping to find more on going from hot to cold.
Because mostly, one, I felt so good.
And the other thing it did is it reset my circadian rhythm completely.
I went to bed at like 9.30 and I slept like a baby.
joe rogan
How do you think it did that?
rhonda patrick
I don't know.
I think that there's something...
I don't know if it was the hot cold or just the cold.
So I did this around 6 o'clock.
So it was like right before bedtime.
But cold does...
There is a regulation of when your body starts to cool itself and it cools itself right before sleep.
Melatonin plays a role in that.
When you make melatonin, it actually starts to cool the body a little bit as well.
I really don't know, Joe.
I was trying to figure it out.
People aren't doing studies on it, but it was very real, and I experienced it.
joe rogan
And is there a difference between doing cold before you go to bed and doing a sauna before you go to bed, as far as the results?
rhonda patrick
Doing the sauna sometimes can actually immediately keep you up, but also it affects REM sleep, and that's been shown in piglets as well.
And Dan swears he would have all sorts of lucid dreams.
I don't really remember that aspect of it, but it does seem to affect sleep.
joe rogan
So lucid dreams from, like, the heat shock proteins?
The sauna.
rhonda patrick
Probably not.
Maybe something else going on in the brain.
You also do release norepinephrine from heat.
Anything that's...
When you're, like, stressing your body, when you're doing your workout good enough, like any sort of stress.
Also, stimulation, like novelty, releases norepinephrine.
And that, you know...
Maybe acetylcholine is being released.
I don't know.
joe rogan
Acetylcholine, it does have some sort of a positive effect on dreaming.
rhonda patrick
Right.
Yeah.
joe rogan
A lot of people report really intense lucid dreams from taking a lot of different nootropics, but particularly choline.
rhonda patrick
Someone was telling me about galantamine because I was talking about it before and someone was like, oh, this causes lucid dreams.
I wouldn't have known that.
But there's some aspect to it.
joe rogan
I've heard that from 5-HTP as well.
5-HTP may be beneficial to lucid dreaming.
rhonda patrick
That's strange because serotonin in the brain takes you out of REM sleep.
joe rogan
Serotonin does.
rhonda patrick
Takes you out.
joe rogan
So if you were going to take 5-HTP, you should take it in the morning then.
rhonda patrick
I don't know what the whole half-life and all that.
I mean, 5-HTP has to then get into your brain and then be converted to serotonin.
I don't know.
joe rogan
So it might actually be good to take it at night and then by the morning rolls around, it's done converting it?
unidentified
I don't know.
joe rogan
I don't know.
Okay.
Sorry.
What would it take to do some sort of a study, like the study that has been done on the sauna for something like hot yoga?
How would you do that?
rhonda patrick
Let's see.
It depends on what you want to measure.
So I think if you want to look at heat shock proteins, you could look at them in blood cells.
So you could measure them in blood cells.
You could measure norepinephrine.
There's actually a biomarker of norepinephrine that is called salivary alpha amylase, and it's released in saliva.
That would be a marker.
If you're pushing your workout hard enough, you'll release more of that alpha amylase.
So more norepinephrine.
So you can measure that.
And then HSPs.
So you just have to have volunteers and then sauna.
Then you have to have a lab.
People that are going to take the blood.
You have to have physicians involved.
And then you have to have people that are going to...
Isolate and look at the protein.
Maybe even looking at gene expression would be cheaper.
I'm doing something similar but not with sauna.
I've been involved in a clinical trial with blueberries.
Actually, another one of those plant hormetic compounds, there's another one in blueberries called anthocyanins, which is really, really...
joe rogan
And blueberries contain a small amount of resveratrol, you were saying?
rhonda patrick
Yeah, they contain about 10% of what a grape skin has.
So...
The blueberries, what's really good in blueberries is called anthocyanins.
And anthocyanins are produced as a response.
You know, they're a plant insecticide.
They actually, like, they bind to a certain gene.
The anthocyanin itself recognizes, like, a little sequence of DNA and binds to this gene and, like, turns it on.
And this gene is called NRF2, and it's like a master regulator of all these, like, really good DNA repair enzymes.
Antioxidant enzymes, anti-inflammatory, all these good things.
And so I've been involved in a clinical trial for the past two years, maybe two and a half years now, where my colleagues and I, we've been looking, we've been taking blood from people that are, they're obese, their BMI is about 28 or above.
They're obese, they're insulin- 28 is obese?
Well, they also measure...
No, I mean, BMI is...
30 is actually obese.
We moved the BMI down to 28 because it was like we weren't getting enough people.
30 is technically considered obese.
joe rogan
Wow.
rhonda patrick
A lot of obese people then.
joe rogan
A lot of people are 30, right?
rhonda patrick
You have to consider BMI is not a really good measure of obesity because people that are very muscular and short may also have a high BMI. So you have to also look at waist circumference and other factors, which they are doing.
But but there are a lot of obese people.
There are there are a lot of obese people.
And we're looking at a certain percentage of them that are right on the border of becoming type two diabetics.
So they're insulin resistant.
So their body is not responding to insulin, but they're not type two diabetic clinically yet.
And so we're we're getting we're recruiting these people and we've gotten 50 of them and half of them are getting a.
A freeze-dried blueberry powder that's equivalent to two cups of blueberries.
And it's got lots of anthocyanins and all this other stuff that's in the blueberries.
And the other half is getting a placebo drink, which is blue looking, and they put sugar in it, which is...
But you can't give someone a placebo and not taste like blueberry.
joe rogan
Right.
Is there any benefit to eating actual blueberries versus the freeze-dried powder?
unidentified
Of course.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, you're getting the fiber.
You know, you're getting...
Probably that's the main thing, the fiber.
And who knows what other compounds it may be not...
Maybe destroyed somewhat by the freeze-dry.
I don't really know.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what I would be confused about.
I've always been confused about that.
When you see various freeze-dried, you know, anything.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Or any sort of dried, powdered, anything.
I always wonder, like, how much of that are you actually getting?
Like, how much of the actual benefit is lost in this turning into a pill?
rhonda patrick
Yeah, so there's definitely some things that are lost.
But the specific things that I'm interested in, like the anthocyanins, are there.
But so what I've been looking at, there's other people that I'm working with that are looking at, you know, markers of inflammation, glucose response, like all the metabolic parameters.
I'm specifically looking at people's damage to their DNA. So like we get white blood cells and they're frozen down and then I look at the DNA and the white blood cells and see how much damage there is.
I do it at baseline, so before they start the blueberry powders.
And these people have a lot of damage because they're obese.
Obesity accelerates damage to DNA. Damage to DNA causes all sorts of problems, but eventually it leads to cancer.
And people that are obese have a two-fold increased risk of multiple cancers.
joe rogan
There's this ridiculous article that I read where it's talking about the positive benefits of being overweight where people are trying to justify being overweight and they were Talking about there's a certain illnesses that people recover from better if they're they're overweight and they were there's very few very strange examples they were using to try to justify being overweight and And the article was also partially in response
to quote-unquote fat shaming.
And I'm like, boy, this is just such a weird justification.
It's so bizarre that your very biology, the thing that gets you through life, that people are so intent on receiving mouth pleasure.
Which is all it is.
I mean, that's what you're doing.
You're shoveling food in your mouth.
You're getting mouth pleasure, and then you're getting the response, the physical response to whatever sugars or anything that your body and your gut bacteria are craving.
But so much into it that you're broadcasting it in the form of this really misleading article that was just designed to make you feel better for being overweight and to justify these choices that you've made, which are terrible, Terrible choices.
There's no benefit whatsoever to being overweight, right?
rhonda patrick
No.
I mean, being overweight is linked to increased risk for cardiovascular disease, increased risk for type 2 diabetes, increased risk for cancer, increased risk of stroke.
It's increased risk of Alzheimer's disease.
So, I mean, having an increased risk for all those age-related diseases is not good.
joe rogan
There's a bunch of dumb articles written about the positive benefits of being overweight.
rhonda patrick
I haven't seen those.
joe rogan
See if you can find some of that, Jamie.
It's just people that are fat that are just trying to use confirmation bias and lock into whatever small, weird statistic might exist in regards to maybe they get over a cold better or something.
It's really dumb.
rhonda patrick
Actually, obesity starts to cause immunosenescence and problems with your immune system because people that are overweight or obese, they have a lot more inflammation in their body and inflammation takes a lot of energy.
joe rogan
Here it is.
Five surprising health benefits of being overweight.
Being overweight carries a reduced risk of rheumatoid arthritis.
It's because your joints are all greased up.
rhonda patrick
I'd like to see the references on that.
joe rogan
Being overweight means you're less likely to develop dementia.
Being overweight can make a stronger immune system.
Yeah, see, that's one of the things that I had read.
Like, what?
rhonda patrick
No, these are not true.
unidentified
Hold on.
joe rogan
Is it possible to be fit, healthy, and fat?
To be fatstafarian?
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
What does that mean?
Fatstafian?
What is that word?
To protect your body from possible harm, rendering potential problems harmless even before incursion.
To explain on a slightly more plain level, the cytologists are proposing that your extra bulk works like a blubbery barrier.
Indeed, the big man Danny Ross, who was stabbed...
Oh, that's different.
That's someone who was stabbed.
Someone who fell 20 feet.
And Lawrence Bell, who's like, blah, blah, blah, are portly poster boys for the defensive qualities of flat.
But that's ridiculous.
That's like wearing armor.
You're talking about someone like...
Yeah, physically.
If you're that...
Stop moving that around, please.
Physically, if you have all this extra fat in your body and something hits you...
Yeah, you've got like a wall between you, your actual organs and your bones and this, you know, this impact.
That's so stupid though.
Being overweight is linked to increased longevity and recovery time.
What?
rhonda patrick
No.
No, it's not.
joe rogan
Scroll down, Jamie.
unidentified
It's not.
joe rogan
It's actually the opposite.
Is it okay to fat shame overweight men?
Make that larger, please.
Kit notes that fat tissue as well as hormones it releases improves bodily defense mechanisms by providing vital energy reserves and anti-inflammatory agents.
As a result, despite overweight individuals being more susceptible to serious health issues to begin with, they are less likely to die from them than those who are underweight or even with healthy BMIs.
Heart disease, for example, is four times more likely to claim the life of somebody with a healthy BMI than an individual considered overweight.
rhonda patrick
It is.
It's absolutely obvious.
Is this The Onion?
Is this a farce?
joe rogan
No, no.
What is the website?
The Telegraph?
Okay, scroll down a little further.
Being overweight can mean you're better in the bedroom.
Oh, shut the fuck up.
This is a fat guy.
Fat guy wrote this.
Hormones found in abdominal fat allow men to last longer in the bedroom.
unidentified
Bullshit.
rhonda patrick
I'd like to see the references for any of these statements because actually it's quite the opposite.
Being overweight, being obese, it's associated with seven years off your lifespan.
Extremely obese is 14 years off your lifespan.
Obesity is the number one risk factor for heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
It also is associated with massive inflammation.
What's this?
joe rogan
The Journal of Sexual Medicine, Insight on Pathogenesis of Lifelong Premature Ejaculation, Inverse Relationship Between Lifelong Premature Ejaculation and Obesity.
Yeah, but you know what?
That's because obese guys aren't getting laid, and they probably jerk off so much they can last forever.
This is a stupid study.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, this is an association.
joe rogan
Premature ejaculation has to do with anxiety.
There's a lot of factors involved in premature ejaculation.
And what exactly is premature?
I mean, it's a completely relative and subjective term because if you come and you enjoyed it, it was perfectly timed.
It's not premature.
I mean, it's just like you didn't hold on.
I mean, the whole idea of holding on as long is a cultural construct.
Holding on as long as you can.
I mean, that's just...
We've decided that that's a good thing.
I mean, obviously, for a mutually beneficial, pleasurable experience for your partner, yeah, it probably lasts longer than...
You know, that's what a woman would like, but...
But it's not premature.
The end goal is to try to breed, try to procreate, right?
If you get it in there, and as long as you get it in there, it's not premature.
Like, biologically speaking?
rhonda patrick
It sounds like it's pretty subjective, their definition of premature.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, what does that mean?
The idea that you can connect all those things and say that there's some sort of a positive benefit to being found, that's clickbait bullshit.
That's what that is.
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
There's very strong evidence of everything, the opposite of what you just read.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
Like, I just don't even, I really just don't even know where they...
That came from maybe some crappy associative studies that were done.
But I mean the large body of the literature shows the opposite.
joe rogan
But isn't that confusing when you see things like that?
Like in the telegraph that probably got read by a million plus people or more worldwide, probably even more than that.
rhonda patrick
That's irritating.
joe rogan
It's crazy.
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
joe rogan
But those are the kind of articles that people would use to justify their poor life choices.
And this same kind of thing, not that article in particular, is what I'd read about when someone was talking about fat shaming.
I'm like, come on, man.
There's no such thing as...
Fat shaming, look, it's rude to be mean to people.
Yeah, it's rude to point at someone and laugh because they're fat.
But to suggest that someone being overweight is bad for their health is not fat shaming.
It's just fact.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, and it's also you're trying to help someone.
You want to say, look, we know mechanism, we know there's been studies that show that being overweight causes inflammation.
Your immune system's constantly being active, and that crosses into the brain and causes depression, it causes anxiety, it causes learning and memory problems.
So you may not be working, and that's been shown, you may not be working at your optimum.
You know, being overweight.
You could feel better, you know?
So, it's kind of ridiculous, I think.
I agree with you, and, you know, I have friends that are overweight, and I've always been the person that I feel like I'm lecturing, you know, because it's always, I'm always like, and all these benefits, and I rattle off all this stuff and all this information, and then there's a certain point, it's like, this person probably gets defensive, and Doesn't want to hear it, but I care about them.
And that's actually part of the reason I started making videos and doing what I do with How My Fitness, actually.
Because I was constantly doing this to friends and family members, people I cared about, where it was like, at least if you put something out there, like if you put a video out there or an article or a podcast or something, they don't feel like you're targeting them.
So then you can just go, oh yeah, I talked about that.
You should go check it out.
And you know what?
It does.
It seems because people would get less defensive.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, it seems to me that there's a certain amount of information just won't get through some people's wall.
Like, they have a wall.
This is what I like to do.
I like to eat cake.
That's it.
And then, you know, like, hey, cake has sugar and sugar is bad and being obese is bad and cancer and blood pressure.
Sorry, that's not getting in.
I'm going home.
I'll have some fucking cake.
It's got a rule.
Like that mouth pleasure that they get from shoving that cake in.
They just can't wait.
And then the craving.
You know, we had talked quite a bit about gut bacteria because of your experience with probiotics and also your experience with antibiotics from recovering from staph infection and how devastating it was to your immune system.
I started going down the rabbit hole with gut bacteria after that because I found it so fascinating how long it took you to recover and how common that experience is from large doses of antibiotics, how devastating it is to the immune system, to overall health, wellness, the way you feel, the way your mood, so many different effects.
One of the things that I found When I was eating a lot of bread and pasta is that I would have a good meal.
Like say I would have like chicken with maybe some vegetables or something like that a nice big healthy meal and I would still be hungry afterwards for sugar.
I would like my body I was stuffed like I ate like a half a chicken I'll eat a half a chicken and my body was like we need a cookie.
I need a cookie.
unidentified
Come on, man.
joe rogan
Give me a cookie.
Like, I need some ice cream.
There was some gut bacteria craving.
And that's what it seemed like.
It seemed like some bizarre craving.
It wasn't a craving like I needed more calories.
rhonda patrick
Were you eating these?
Would you typically eat something with refined sugar?
joe rogan
Yes.
rhonda patrick
Oh, okay.
Well, yeah.
This is an interesting effect.
Sorry if I cut you off.
unidentified
That's okay.
rhonda patrick
Something that does happen when you eat...
like something not a piece of fruit which has the fiber matrix and all these polyphenols by the way polyphenols are plant insecticides it's all we were talking about has all this other good stuff when you take the refined sugar away from that um what happens is when your your gut So your gut digests it, and refined sugar usually is like a glucose...
It's 50% glucose and 50% fructose, and that's sucrose, and that's what's in table sugars, what's in a lot of refined sugars.
What happens is that...
When you cleave the sucrose to the glucose and the fructose, the fructose itself doesn't get absorbed by all the cells.
It only gets metabolized in the liver.
And it does something that's called ATP trapping.
So what it does is it traps ATP, which is the source of energy, and it does this because it's trying to do this whole other complicated enzymatic reaction.
Blah, blah, blah, right?
But what it does is trap the ATP and this sends a signal through the vagal nerve to your brain.
I don't have energy.
And so you don't get satiated.
And so when you eat refined sugars...
This is independent from the gut bacteria craving stuff you're talking about.
I'm not exactly sure how all that works, but what I'm talking about is real.
It's ATP trapping, and it's something that is known to be a cause of why you can eat a bunch of fructose and refined sugar.
And not be satiated.
And so you have to eat more because your body, your brain thinks you haven't been fed because the ATP has been trapped.
It's called ATP trapping.
That's one possibility that could be, could have been happening.
It's really, it's also why a lot of people that eat a lot of refined sugars with sucrose or high fructose corn syrup is the worst when they eat that.
joe rogan
Why is high fructose corn syrup the worst?
rhonda patrick
Because then, so when your gut, so the way your gut, okay, let's just, let's compare table sugar, sucrose, to high fructose corn syrup.
Both are bad.
But when you compare the two, because sucrose is got, it's got glucose, I mean, it's got glucose and fructose.
High fructose corn syrup does too, it has more fructose.
But the thing is, is that when the sucrose sees your gut, your gut has something in it called sucrases, which it takes, basically it's, It's slower to cleave and digest the sugar, so it's not like a big bolus that your gut sees.
So it's not as irritating on the gut, because first the sucrases have to cleave the sucrose, and so all this stuff is happening.
Whereas when you get the high-fructose corn syrup, that doesn't happen.
It's a big bolus, and it literally causes a breakdown in your gut barrier.
It's like irritant.
It's an irritant.
The same thing can happen if you take too much of...
I mean, there's lots of other things that happen, but if you take too much like magnesium or something, people can get gut irritation.
It's a big bolus on the gut and it's irritant.
And that's what high fructose corn syrup does.
And there's also then the whole ATP trapping thing is like exponential with high fructose corn syrup.
So there's more fructose.
joe rogan
It's compounded.
There's a bunch of different factors.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, there's a bunch of different factors.
Of course, the fructose is very different in fruit because the matrix, the fiber, it's digested differently.
It's completely different than taking...
Table sugar or high fructose corn syrup.
joe rogan
Who's the monster that extracted that stuff?
rhonda patrick
It's so bad.
joe rogan
When was that done?
When did they figure out how to do that?
I mean, they used to do cane sugar, right?
rhonda patrick
Was it World War II? I don't know.
I don't know.
I know there's people that are super into all that stuff, but yeah, it's cheaper.
That's why.
It's cheaper and it's hidden.
It's in everything.
You go out and go to a Chili's and think you're going to eat healthy.
You order a salad and there's like 60 grams of sugar in their Waldorf salad because it's all in the dressing.
High fructose corn syrup.
joe rogan
That's insane.
Okay, here it is the 1970 was first introduced to food and beverage industry of high fructose corn syrup Was first introduced to the food and beverage industry in the 1970s.
That's amazing that that stuff from 1970 until today So in the last 40 plus years has become a massive part of our diets the average this was published in It was like the health organization somewhere in the UK, whatever they call that.
rhonda patrick
There was some health organization in the UK that did a press release and said that the average five-year-old consumes 50 grams of sugar a day.
joe rogan
Oh my God.
rhonda patrick
Sorry.
Yeah, 50 grams.
Is it 50 grams a day or is it 50 grams a year?
Yeah, no, 50 grams a day.
It's 50 grams a day, which was their weight.
Okay, now I'm remembering.
Yeah, it would be awesome.
It was 50 grams a day, which was the average of their entire body weight of a five-year-old.
joe rogan
A year.
rhonda patrick
A year.
joe rogan
So if you have a bag of sugar the size of a five-year-old, that five-year-old will eat that in a year.
rhonda patrick
Exactly.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
rhonda patrick
And I did some calculations.
It comes out to like a pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks, which has like 64 grams of sugar.
It's crazy.
joe rogan
Oh, God.
Everything.
There's a particular type of gut bacteria that craves sugar and that thrives on sugar, though, isn't there?
rhonda patrick
You know, yeast are thriving on sugar, but they're not gut bacteria.
joe rogan
There was like a documentary, an online thing that I watched on the various documentary on different gut bacterias that attracted to...
rhonda patrick
Maybe this is...
I know that...
So your gut bacteria, what they eat is fiber.
And they're mostly in your colon.
And so when you eat a fiber-deficient diet, proteins, lipids, sugars are all absorbed in the upper intestine.
But your bacteria in your gut starve.
Wow.
And so low fiber diet can cause massive gut barrier breakdown.
It's actually the most, in terms of magnitude, the most potent thing that regulates gut health is fiber.
joe rogan
So is that like irritable bowel syndrome, things along those lines?
rhonda patrick
Well, that can happen, but you don't have to have irritable bowel syndrome to have your gut barrier breaking down.
You know, you can have a low level of inflammation, not know it.
But there are certain types of bacteria that can thrive in the condition.
Now, maybe let's say you have a low fiber diet, meaning you're eating a lot of refined sugar.
So it's kind of like the same, right?
You're eating a bunch of refined sugar in place of plants and fiber-rich foods.
There's a certain type of bacteria that can thrive on low fiber, and it's a type of bacteria that I don't know the name of, but they have little flagella, things that move, you know?
Little spermazole.
Yeah, exactly, like that.
And so they'll swim up.
So your bacteria are supposed to be in the colon, the very, very end of your intestines, right?
You're not supposed to have a bunch of bacteria in your small intestine.
Well, they'll swim up to the small intestine because that's where the food, that's where the proteins and the sugars and the lipids are all getting absorbed.
They'll swim up there.
And this is often referred to as bacterial overgrowth.
Small intestine bacterial overgrowth is what the technical term is.
Bacterial overgrowth is actually when your bacteria are starting to grow in your small intestine.
And what happens is when you have bacteria in your small intestine, it releases something called zonulin.
And this work has all been done by Alicio Fasano.
I think he's at Massachusetts Children's Hospital.
He discovered this.
So he's a rock star for figuring this stuff out.
So when you have this intestinal overgrowth, you release something called zonulin.
And zonulin is also what's released when gluten, when your body sees gluten.
Zonulin, it literally, like you have the gut barrier and there's like these junctions with the barrier.
It opens up the junctions, the tight junctions.
And in people that don't have like celiac or they don't have a really, really poor gut health, they close.
It's like a transient.
It's like open, close, open, close.
And so when they open, your inflammatory cells can see the bacteria that's there.
Usually the barrier separates them because what do immune cells do when they see bacteria?
Fire away!
War!
So the small intestinal bacterial overgrowth does that, and so does gluten.
Gluten also causes onulin to be released.
So that would cause bloating and inflammation, things like that.
joe rogan
Wow.
God, it's so crazy how much your diet actually affects your overall health and how few people really consider it when they're thinking about what they're eating and the consequences of what they're eating.
rhonda patrick
And your brain.
joe rogan
They just eat what tastes good.
And your brain.
rhonda patrick
Your brain health.
Having low inflammation is key for your brain.
joe rogan
All these different factors that are playing on inside your body, like all this stuff.
rhonda patrick
I know.
Yeah, I know.
I'm eating a diet that's high in fiber.
That's one of the reasons why I actually, I eat a lot of wide diversity because there's lots of different types of fiber.
There's, you know, fiber is not just like one nutrient.
You know, people always tweet at me.
Oh, can I take pectin?
Can I, can I take inulin?
And, you know, which is a type of fiber.
And it's like, well, yeah, you can.
But, you know, these different types of bacteria, there's so many different types of bacteria and they're, they're, We're eating different types of fiber, and we don't even know all what each of them are eating.
We know the best thing we can do right now is to get a broad spectrum.
In plants, there's fiber that are called ligands and cellulose.
In fruits, there's pectins like apple.
Citrus peel have pectins.
Beta-glucans are in mushrooms or in oats.
Resistant starch is in legumes, beans.
There's inulin, which is in plants and also like onions, artichokes, garlic, and all these different types of fiber feeding different types of bacteria.
And the best thing you want is like a diverse bacterial set.
So feeding them all different types of fiber is good.
Plus you're getting all the plant hormetic compounds, And then you're getting all the micronutrients.
Magnesium, vitamin K, folate.
These are things that people are deficient in.
So I try to do that, and then I eat meat.
joe rogan
I think there was a...
Now that I'm thinking about it, I think it was kind of like an infomercial.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
That Candida video.
Yes, that's exactly what it is.
unidentified
It seems like it was at the end they were selling a product, but I don't think I made it that far enough.
joe rogan
35 minutes.
Yeah, it was really long and it was disturbing.
You know, you're talking about Candida growth in your stomach and how your gut is responding to all this sugar by this massive production of, or massive, here it is.
rhonda patrick
So that's what happens, right?
joe rogan
Sugar, the cause of candida.
Candida cause of cancer.
And sugar has been shown, right, to accelerate cancer growth?
rhonda patrick
Yes.
In fact, there was a study that was just published recently where it caused breast cancer cells to grow like four times faster.
joe rogan
Whoa!
Four times faster from sugar?
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
Refined sugar.
joe rogan
My wife's mom, she's a lovely lady, but she loves sugar.
She puts sugar in everything.
She makes kale salad and you eat it like you're eating candy.
Everything is sugar.
It's like from her era, that's what they did.
They put sugar in their cornflakes.
Everybody put sugar in everything.
And they felt like it just made things taste good.
Like you're eating healthy food and it's got a little sugar on it.
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
Remember that?
rhonda patrick
Yes.
joe rogan
You know, and it's just, it's so disturbing that people grow up thinking that this is a way to eat.
And it just, nobody told them.
Nobody warned them.
And, you know, she's in her 60s now, and that's just how it goes.
rhonda patrick
Wants to be autonomous.
It's hard to...
joe rogan
God, it's just fucking...
rhonda patrick
It's hard to tell people.
Yeah, I've got loved ones that I care about that are also addicted to sugar and I try hard.
It is hard, especially the older you get when you're stuck in your ways, your brain's not as able to kind of...
joe rogan
Change as easily, you know, so also you don't have a lot of willpower some people are just not good at like saying okay This is what I'm not doing this anymore, you know like this I'm done doing that boom, you know, I mean I don't know how other people's brains work So I don't I don't know what the pull is But I know for me when when I try to quit something like I'm gonna quit sugar Boy that fucking first week or so is hard because the pull it's like there's this desire to cheat go come on man Man,
one cookie's not going to fuck anything up.
It's not going to be that big of a deal.
There's this pull to have sugar.
And when I kicked sugar for...
I've done it twice now, but the first time I did it, one of the most disturbing things was the headaches.
Two or three days in, I was getting these headaches.
I was like, oh my God, I'm getting sugar detox headaches.
That's what it was.
It had to be.
It was the only thing that was different.
I was eating all the same normal things, but I wasn't taking any sugar.
Anything that had sugar, I wouldn't take it.
And I was getting headaches.
And most people...
If you don't have a rock-solid, determined mentality for this type of stuff, it's really hard.
If you're wishy-washy on your diet, well, I'm just going to try to eat healthy.
My friends have told me that before, they try to lose weight.
What are you doing?
I'm just going to try to eat healthier.
You ain't going to do shit.
You're not going to do shit.
Like, you have to have, like, a rigid set of rules.
You can't say, I'm just going to eat healthy.
Because then you'll decide you're eating healthy.
Ah, fucking cupcake's not going to hurt anybody.
And then you'll eat that cupcake.
And that'll kill all your hard work.
rhonda patrick
I had no idea that you were eating refined sugar, like...
This whole time I thought you're always like vegetables, meat, foods.
joe rogan
Yeah, I would occasionally dive in.
I mean, it wasn't like a real problem, but it was enough that...
See, if you eat protein bars, like the ones that Jamie was eating over there, what does that have in it?
I love those goddamn things.
These things are great.
They taste awesome.
They're called Pro Bars.
I first found out about these suckers when I went hunting.
Oh, come on.
Is that real?
This fucker has 21 grams of sugar in it.
This is crazy.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, it's everywhere.
It's hidden everywhere.
joe rogan
That is goddamn crazy.
This is 21 grams.
You're only supposed to have 25 in a day.
rhonda patrick
Yep, exactly.
joe rogan
The whole day.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, according to World Health.
joe rogan
So this one yummy bar...
rhonda patrick
That's it.
That's your added sugar for the day.
joe rogan
I eat two or three of those in a setting.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, that's way too much.
joe rogan
After I worked out, I would eat two of those.
If I was in the morning, if I was headed over here and I didn't have time to eat, I'd throw two of those down and a kombucha.
So the kombucha's got ten.
unidentified
Kombucha has.
rhonda patrick
10?
joe rogan
Yeah, for a grape.
Grape kombucha has 10. Plain has 5. So I prefer plain, but sometimes the grape was all I had left.
So I throw down a grape.
That's 10. I throw down two of those.
That's 41 or 42. Jesus Christ.
I mean, 52 grams of sugar on the way over here.
Which is twice what you're supposed to have in a day.
And then I might have a piece of cake.
I might eat real healthy and say, I'm eating real healthy.
And someone, ooh, you want some apple pie?
Fuck yeah.
Do you want ice cream on it?
Why not?
And then what's that?
That's probably another 30, 40, 50, 60, 70. So you're winding up with 100 plus grams of sugar in a day.
rhonda patrick
Right.
Yeah, and this stuff is causing inflammation in your gut.
At least with you, you were still getting some of the good stuff, though.
It's not like you were eating a fiber-deficient diet.
joe rogan
Yeah, no, I was eating healthy on top of that.
rhonda patrick
Which is better than most people that are eating that stuff.
joe rogan
Fucking 21?
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
joe rogan
This is just crazy.
rhonda patrick
It's crazy.
joe rogan
This is crazy.
There's a thing called a Lara bar.
You ever heard?
L-A-R-A? They're so yummy.
They're so good, but it makes it look like you're eating something healthy.
It's like the wrapping is earth-toned.
It's like, ooh, I'm doing yoga in a bar.
rhonda patrick
I'm out hiking.
Most of those bars are really candy bars.
They're candy.
It's candy.
I think Quest Nutrition is probably like, if I were to say that there's anyone that makes a bar that's like...
Not a candy bar.
Quest has some decent ones.
joe rogan
Well, Primal Kitchens has a really good one.
It's a nut bar with dark chocolate and has a tiny amount of honey in it.
It's less than four grams.
I'm pretty sure less than four grams of sugar per bar, but it's mostly almonds and dark chocolate, like a little bit of honey.
Those are really good.
It's not sweet at all.
I like those.
And a lot of times I'll eat meat bars.
There's some bars.
What are the ones we have back there?
unidentified
Meat.
joe rogan
Yeah.
What are those ones we have in the back, Jamie?
What are those things called?
unidentified
Bison bars.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, not just the ones that we sell at Onnit, but those other ones that I bought.
I bought some other ones.
That are really good.
But even some of those have fucking sugar in them.
It's just amazing how sneaky they are with that goddamn sugar.
rhonda patrick
It's in condiments.
It's in hot sauces.
joe rogan
Yeah, these things right here.
So these fuckers.
So I got these goddamn things.
These paleo simplified.
I'm like, oh, got a paleo bar.
Paleo doesn't have any sugar in it.
Bullshit.
It's got a lot of goddamn sugar in it.
All these fucking things at 15 or 19 or...
Yeah.
Yeah, this one has 20. Jesus Christ.
rhonda patrick
The lab that I was doing my postdoc in, I've talked about this before, they designed a bar intentionally to try and fill micronutrient gaps in people that are obese.
So it has vitamin D in it, it has magnesium, vitamin K, it has DHA, omega-3, it has all these good micronutrients in it.
And then they try to put some dark chocolate so that it doesn't taste like crap.
Sprinkle a little bit.
There's very little sugar in it.
But, you know, people don't like them because they don't taste good.
joe rogan
This little fucker has 22. Crazy.
You shouldn't eat that stuff.
This little tiny thing.
rhonda patrick
Imagine how many people are eating this stuff.
joe rogan
This is fucking sugar!
These fucks!
rhonda patrick
I think the best thing you can do is eat whole foods.
You can eat vegetables.
You know, fruits are not that bad.
You can eat a pear, an apple.
You can eat berries, strawberries.
All these things.
They have a variety of different good polyphenols.
These plant insecticides.
They've got fiber.
They've got some micronutrients.
And they taste good.
joe rogan
Like a peach, a really good peach.
Oh my god, they're delicious.
And it's something that we've gotten so...
We've just gotten so used to it.
We take it for granted.
You know, if you had a dessert and it tasted like a delicious peach, you'd be like, ooh, this is a wonderful dessert.
But because it's a peach, you're like, ah, it's good for you.
It's almost like we want that bad for you rush.
It's like we're naughty on top of the fact that we're eating something.
We're getting the mouth pleasure from it, and we're also getting the naughtiness.
Like, ooh, the cake.
Ooh, chocolate cake.
rhonda patrick
How much of that is a learned response as well, you know?
I mean, my my postdoc advisor, Bruce Ames, he's 87 years old, going on 88.
And I've been to many different dinner parties at his house and he's American and his wife is Italian.
So she immigrated here from Italy.
But every single time I go to a dinner party, the dessert is always fresh fruit.
I mean, it's just super normal.
It's always some sort of fresh fruit, metally she'll cut up, and sometimes she'll put a little bit of some alcohol or something on there, like amaretto.
But it's always fresh fruit.
They've been doing this for 50 years.
That's been their dessert.
Fresh fruit.
joe rogan
It's not as good, though.
What's the problem?
unidentified
It is good!
joe rogan
Chocolate cake is better, for sure.
rhonda patrick
Dark chocolate's good.
Dark chocolate has a lot of good stuff in it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
You know, so the dark chocolate's one I think that people that are really craving that can feel good because there's EGCG in dark chocolate, which is what's in green tea.
EGCG is one of those normal plant compounds that are doing a hormetic response.
It's been shown to cause brain cells to grow.
It's anti-cancer.
It kills cancer cells.
It also is really good for your skin.
It prevents your skin collagenase from being broken down.
joe rogan
And it has a really high rating of antioxidants, right?
rhonda patrick
Well, that's what I'm talking about.
People get confused.
Antioxidants.
There are antioxidants in fruits and vegetables.
But in dark chocolate, the antioxidants are the hormetic compounds that are causing your antioxidant genes to be expressed.
joe rogan
It's a big difference.
rhonda patrick
And there's no comparison.
You need a certain amount of vitamin E, which is antioxidant.
You need a certain amount of vitamin C, which is an antioxidant and a cofactor.
You need it to make collagen.
But in just the antioxidant form, it pales in comparison to glutathione-related enzymes we have.
Superoxide dismutase, all these like systems that we have in our body that are designed to prevent, you know, these things called oxidation, oxidative stress from happening.
So when you're taking, in fact, some people, they have a, so we have this gene that can use glutathione in our body, takes the glutathione that we make in our body, and it puts it to like prevent damage from happening to our cells.
There are people that have a more active version of this, that if they take vitamin E supplemental, it actually does them harm.
joe rogan
Really?
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
Because what happens is the body goes, oh, I've got this vitamin E. It's doing that job.
And so the enzyme doesn't get active.
When you have the stress there, the enzyme's not active.
There's a certain gene polymorphism.
In the GSTP1 gene.
joe rogan
So how would someone find that out?
Do they have to do a 23andMe?
rhonda patrick
23andMe is a genetic test that tests for a variety of these polymorphisms.
And they give a report that's kind of...
They don't tell you about that gene.
You have to like...
I don't know if Promethease does.
Promethease is a tool that costs $5.
I've talked about it before in your podcast.
You can run your 23andMe data through it, and it tells you all these polymorphisms, what you have and what they mean.
But I also have a tool that's out today, actually.
Really?
It's the beta version of it, so it's basic functionality.
But that gene's on there.
The GSTP1, glutathione one, is on there.
So this tool that I've got out is free.
So people can use it for free.
And I'm going to add, you know, a bunch more genes to it.
But right now there's a basic set of genes that are interesting.
Genes that are involved in, you know, making vitamin D. Can you convert the vitamin D3 you're taking into the steroid hormone or the vitamin D3 you get from the sun?
Some people have a polymorphism where they don't do that as well.
joe rogan
There it is right there.
rhonda patrick
There it is.
joe rogan
Rhonda's genetic report.
rhonda patrick
Foundmyfitness.com forward slash genetics.
joe rogan
It's amazing to me that every time you come on the podcast, there's new shit that I have to remember.
And it seems like you're constantly learning things.
That's what's crazy is that you've been studying this for so long, but it's just you're at the tip of the iceberg.
It seems like there's no end to this.
rhonda patrick
There's no end.
We need CRISPR so that I can keep learning.
It's like infinite amount.
joe rogan
I mean, I... Well, explain CRISPR for people who don't know what that means.
It's a relatively new method of altering genetics.
rhonda patrick
I'm going to give the thousand-high-mile summary of it, where it's basically a way to go and fix a gene that may be, like, let's say you've got some gene that you can't repair, you know...
The alcohol-induced damage as well, which also increases the risk for traumatic brain injury by like tenfold.
It's bad.
So you say, I don't want that ApoE4 gene because it's going to lead to Alzheimer's disease.
It's going to make my traumatic brain injury lead to Alzheimer's disease.
It also does other things.
Well, CRISPR is a technology that can...
Go and recognize the gene you want.
So it recognizes just a small sequence of DNA that you put on it.
So you put this little sequence of DNA because you know what the sequence of the gene is.
And it recognizes its complementary pair.
And it goes in and it cuts it out.
And it replaces it with what you actually put there, which is the right version of it.
So it can go, cut out a bad thing, and put the right thing in.
So it's a way of going...
Instead of...
Gene engineering up until CRISPR, the way it was done was basically you would put a gene in and it would just go anywhere and it wouldn't replace the bad one necessarily.
So this is kind of like a whole new field.
It's like...
So anyways.
joe rogan
Yeah, and there's a Radiolab podcast on that as well.
It's spelled C-R-I-S-P-R, right?
Right.
And if you're interested, listen to that Radiolab podcast because it's amazing and it's also interviews of people who discovered it.
rhonda patrick
Right, Jennifer Dudna at UC Berkeley.
Yeah, I listen to some of that.
It's good.
I think they do a really good job explaining it to people so that they can understand.
joe rogan
I want to talk for a little bit about the cryotherapy because this is something that I emailed you when there was a disturbing article that was sort of poo-pooing the benefits of cryotherapy.
And the article was, I thought it was really poorly done, poorly researched.
And it was also, they studied really subjective things like how sore you felt after exercise and whether or not it benefited from that.
But there are real positive benefits of cryotherapy that are measurable.
rhonda patrick
Yes, and that have been measured.
Well, first of all, that article that you're referring to from that, whatever website it was, but the article was...
joe rogan
Well, Steve Novella is a guy, and I think what he did is he rushed to put this article out because that woman died in Las Vegas.
From cryotherapy.
And it was a really tragic incident.
She was by herself.
There's two different types of cryotherapy, one of the things we should point out.
First of all, I don't have any vested interest in cryotherapy.
I don't own any of it.
I don't make any money from it.
Nothing.
I enjoy the benefits of it.
And I use it.
But this woman who did it, she did the type, there's two kinds.
One of them, it goes from the neck down.
So you stand in this booth, your head is above breathing in normal oxygen, but below you is liquid nitrogen.
You can't breathe that stuff in.
That's why your head is not under.
If you do breathe that stuff in, you don't have any oxygen, you'll black out, and that's what happened to her.
She did it by herself, it was poorly set up, and apparently she was quite short.
So her head was kind of below the limit where you're supposed to be.
So she was breathing in the liquid nitrogen and she fell asleep and blacked out.
rhonda patrick
Oh, she went to one of those types?
I thought she was in like the full-on.
joe rogan
No, no, no.
The full-on ones are much rarer.
And what the full-on ones do is they super cool the air with the nitrogen.
So the air itself is pumped in really cold.
rhonda patrick
That's what I did.
joe rogan
Yes, that's what you did.
And that's what we're going to do today, too, if you have the time.
rhonda patrick
I loved it.
joe rogan
I loved it.
That one, you can breathe in.
It's just fucking unbelievably cold.
Okay, so the one that she did, she set it up by herself, which you're never supposed to do.
You're always supposed to have supervision.
So it wasn't whether or not...
I mean, she's the only person I've ever heard of that's died from this, and it's a horrible tragedy.
rhonda patrick
Was she committing suicide?
unidentified
No, no, no.
joe rogan
She was just working there.
And sometimes women will, they'll put their face under it because they want the effects of a cryofacial.
Because cryofacial has been shown to improve collagen and tightens your skin up.
rhonda patrick
Well, cryotherapy actually prevents, it inhibits enzymes that break down collagen called collagenases.
And that's actually part of the reason it helps with arthritis.
Because collagenases break down collagen and they break down like Yeah, women love it when they get their face done, apparently.
joe rogan
Or vain men, too.
Or any men.
You don't have to be vain to want collagen.
But the point being, that article came out and all these people were saying, oh, see, I told you cryotherapy was bullshit.
I'm like, oh, my God, what a piss-poor article.
And it was all talking about soreness.
And one of the things that he said that really drove me crazy was you'd get just as much benefit from a cool-down and a stretch after a workout.
I'm like...
Tell that to these fucking people that I see that go there all the time that do it twice a day because they have severe arthritis and it's the only thing that's given them any form of freedom of movement of their hands.
I know a bunch of people that go there that have had some really debilitating arthritis and this has given them relief where nothing else is giving it to them other than pretty severe pharmaceutical drugs or ibuprofen at high levels or what you were talking about.
There's a lady that goes to my thing, but she was raving about how she can finally stretch her hands out.
Her hands had been locked in this position for years.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, it has.
I mean, the cold itself is a hormetic stressor that is activating a variety of anti-inflammatory pathways, antioxidant pathways, you know, and it's also, last time I think on the podcast we talked about it increases norepinephrine.
Well, norepinephrine itself, so cryotherapy and cold water immersion are two forms of, you know, cold exposure.
Cryotherapy, just two minutes at like a minus 180 Fahrenheit can increase norepinephrine twofold.
That's, you know, twofold over what you were before you went in.
And norepinephrine, in addition to the brain benefits we were talking about, how it makes you feel good, how it helps with learning, it also is a very prone anti-inflammatory.
So it inhibits the production of TNF-alpha, which is So it's kind of like in arthritis, TNF-alpha is kind of like going haywire.
You're making too much TNF-alpha.
And what happens is TNF-alpha is a signaling molecule to your immune cells that says, hey, there's an infection here.
Because that's normally what happens when you release TNF-alpha is because there's some bacteria or something that you need to kill.
And so your immune cells, all they see is the signal.
They don't know what's causing it.
unidentified
it.
rhonda patrick
They don't know that it's because your gut cells and your immune cells in your gut are seeing bacteria because of your poor diet or whatever.
And so that's getting into the bloodstream and causing chronic inflammation.
It doesn't know that.
All it knows is that this means there's a threat.
And so they start to increase the production of your immune cells make hypochlorite, which is like bleach.
So you're making bleach in your body to kill things.
And that's happening That's going to cause some tissue damage.
It's going to cause pain.
They also make hydrogen peroxide.
You make that and your immune cells will make that.
So cryotherapy inhibits the signaling molecule so that your immune cells quiet down because now they're not seeing that signal that says, come on, hey, fire up, fire up.
It's not there.
So that's a good thing to inhibit TNF-alpha.
And like I said, with the collagenases as well.
But there are so many.
I just spent two weeks just researching and reading.
I've been doing some cold exposures, you know, like cold shower and also jumping in the ocean, ice bath.
And I really liked the cryotherapy that I did last time we were here.
And, you know, so I've been very interested in it, like understanding why you feel so good.
And so I did some reading on it.
And there's so many different positive hormetic benefits from doing cryotherapy.
So you have, you know, the anti-inflammatory We're good to go.
You could be taking all the liposomal glutathione you want.
It's not going to matter if you don't have the enzymes active to use it.
So you could take liposomal glutathione and that's great.
You make glutathione inside of your cells.
We can't make as much of it as we get older.
But if you take it and you don't have the enzymes that use it to actually do the good stuff active, then it doesn't matter.
So cryotherapy was shown to activate two different glutathione-related enzymes, which is pretty awesome.
joe rogan
So it would enhance your body's ability to absorb glutathione?
rhonda patrick
No, it doesn't enhance your body's ability to absorb it.
It enhances your body's ability to use it.
joe rogan
So if you're taking it, liposomal glutathione, and then you're using cryotherapy, it would enhance it?
rhonda patrick
So what I'm saying is that the liposomal glutathione that you take, all that does is increase glutathione inside of your cells.
Glutathione inside of your cells does nothing without enzymes that use it to basically sequester damaging inflammatory things.
joe rogan
And the cryotherapy increases...
rhonda patrick
Activates the enzymes that use it.
So it's like, great, I have all this glutathione sitting around in my cells that I've been taking...
And I also now have the enzymes that use it to do good stuff now are being turned on.
But what was very interesting is that it took like multiple sessions before those got active.
Like 10 to 20. 10 in one, at least 10. And then the other study was 20. And was it consecutively?
10 days in a row.
Yeah, 10 days in a row.
But the first day I didn't do it.
So that was also very interesting.
joe rogan
So it's almost like your body's saying, okay, this crazy fuck is going to do this all the time.
rhonda patrick
It's an adaptive response.
Yeah, your body's preparing for war.
It's stressful.
It's a stressful response.
The other thing that's really cool that we didn't talk about last time on the podcast is the thermogenic effect.
When you release norepinephrine.
I keep going back to that because it's like you can't refute that.
Steve Novella, no one.
No debunker, no skeptic, no I don't care who you are.
It's consistent in every type of cold exposure.
Period.
It's consensus.
You release norepinephrine.
joe rogan
Well, there always seems to be some sort of a rationalization with a lot of the debunking, like whether it's the benefits of exercise, whether it's the benefits of cryotherapy.
It's almost like a rationalization for not doing it.
It's like you're looking for an excuse to not do it and not really very objective.
rhonda patrick
Yes.
joe rogan
That was what was disturbing about us.
This is like you're poo-pooing something that's offering people great...
rhonda patrick
Yeah, it was clear.
I mean, especially after the two weeks of research.
I mean, I think there's a kind of mentality when you're...
Sometimes people like to think I'm a debunker and I'm not.
I am intentionally like...
Because if you get in this mentality of always debunking something...
It's like this spiral and you can't see the good.
You can't keep an open mind to get past what's in your box that you know.
And that's very dangerous.
joe rogan
It's an intellectual blind spot.
rhonda patrick
It is.
And there are a lot of scientists that I know that are very smart, extremely smart, but they are in that loop where it's like just they have to debunk and criticize.
And it's like, you know, at some point, huge discoveries are made by like...
Connecting the dots and like getting past that like I mean you have to be critical being critical is very important But you also like I think there's a certain threshold where you just start to like, you know, you get to this like spiral But was also was infuriating about this is the data is out there.
joe rogan
This is not like it's not there's no data It's like he made a cursory examination of the evidence and And what he chose to focus on was so subjective.
He focused on a study that tested muscle soreness post-exercise with cryotherapy.
rhonda patrick
Well, actually, the study that he referred to was a meta-analysis, and it was subjective, but it actually came to the conclusion that there were benefits.
However, it said more studies need to be done because there wasn't large enough sample sizes and the quality of data was poor because there were not double-blinded placebo-controlled clinical trials.
And I have to say to you, what he recited in that article, there was a positive effect of the cryo.
But the problem is that because they...
Follow it up with, oh, well, it's poor quality, basically poor science.
The reality is, is that you can't do a double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial with cryotherapy.
Like, you're going to be cold, and you're going to be put in this chamber where there's, like, cold, or you're not, and you're going to know if you're not as cold.
You know, so anyways, I thought that was ridiculous.
I was just like, whatever, I'm in Oregon.
I'm going to read about...
Because I know, I've experienced that there's definitely something going on.
And one of the things that happens is the norepinephrine.
And when you release that norepinephrine, it activates a pathway inside of your cells that basically causes your energy metabolism to ramp up because you're trying to generate heat.
Basically, your body is saying, I don't want to die.
I need to make heat.
And so a couple of ways it can do that.
One, it can shiver.
And shivering is when your muscles start to contract.
And that...
It requires energy for your muscles to twitch.
It's not very thermodynamically favorable, so it's not a good way to generate heat, but you generate heat because you have to ramp up to twitch.
But then what happens after you've been exposed, and actually this happened to me because we did the cryo twice.
The first time I did it, I was shivering.
The entire time I was shivering.
It was really crazy because I've never shivered like that in my life.
But the second time I went in, I did not shiver.
And after reading about it, what happens is your body quickly adapts.
So you adapt, and what happens is non-shivering thermogenesis.
So the norepinephrine causes your mitochondria, which are the energy-producing little organelles inside of your cells.
Well, it causes them in your adipose tissue to get activated.
And it does this by increasing the expression of a gene called UCP1, which basically...
It freaks your mitochondria out because your mitochondria are kind of like batteries.
They're charged.
They have a negative charge on the inside and a positive charge on the outside.
Well, UCP1 totally uncouples that so that there's no more charge.
And that charge is very important because when that charge is there, your body knows, okay, I've been making energy because the way you make the charge is by making energy.
So when the charge goes away, your body's like, oh my God, I've got no energy.
So it just starts to ramp up fat metabolism.
So it does that, and you start to make more mitochondria.
So you're making more mitochondria in your fat cells, and this is often called brown fat.
So you can actually, the reason it's called brown fat is because when you look at a fat cell under the microscope, if it has more mitochondria, then it looks brown.
So you actually start to burn fat, and you have this thermogenic, because you're burning fat, it's creating heat as a byproduct, so you're warming your body, but it has this nice side effect of burning fat, which people like.
And the more you expose yourself to the cold, the more you're browning your fat, the more you're increasing those mitochondria in your fat, which means the next time you're in the cold, you can tolerate it longer.
So people that have been exposing themselves to cold, like yourself, when you're doing the cryo, you know, often, you actually can tolerate the colder for longer periods of time because you have more mitochondria in your fat cells.
And this allows you to then generate more heat.
So and this has been shown in people, people that have been exposed to cold that they've been shown to increase their their brown adipose tissue by like 38% if they're exposed to 10 days of 50 degree air, like outside air, just regular air.
joe rogan
That's it?
50 degrees is all it takes?
rhonda patrick
All day, 10 days.
unidentified
Wow.
rhonda patrick
So like six hours a day out in New York in the, I don't know, pre-winter, fall, I don't know, something like that, being out there for six hours for 10 days in a row.
Men were able to increase their brown adipose tissue by like 38% or something like that.
joe rogan
That's why people from the East Coast or from the Northeast that move to California and then they go back during the winter, they go, oh, my blood got too thin.
Well, there really is like a physical factor of your body not being accustomed to dealing with cold blood.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, you adapt.
You adapt.
And that's what brown adipose tissue...
And that's really how cold got really popularized because people wanted to use it as a hack to lose weight.
So they were like, oh, if I do these cold showers, I use it for the brain benefits because I notice I feel really good and also more focused.
So I like that.
And a lot of people I've talked to have felt the same way.
But then I think the other part of this article...
Was the effects of it blunting some of the strength training.
And, you know, I talk about this in this report that I wrote or in the podcast that I released on, and it's so complicated.
I had to, like, sit there and literally just read for, like, two weeks to try to figure it out because, you know, the problem is that exercise is a hormetic stress.
Cold is a hormetic stress.
So exercise itself, you need some of the inflammation.
You need the bad stuff to get the good stuff.
That's how it works.
joe rogan
Right.
rhonda patrick
But the inflammation that's happening happens while you're exercising and up to one hour after.
One hour after, that's when the whole hormetic response kicks in.
And this has been shown in multiple studies.
One hour seems to be when the anti-inflammatory response kicks in.
So you've generated the inflammation and then now you've got the anti-inflammatory effects.
If you do a cold exposure within that hour after exercising, it's possible you may blunt some of the inflammatory effects that the exercise is inducing because the cold is activating anti-inflammatory genes too early.
Now, I don't know that for certain, but I do know that there was one study that showed strength training if you did cryotherapy immediately after.
It was actually cold water immersion, which is not the same as the cryo chamber, that it blunted some of the anabolic signaling.
And so there was like some of the muscle mass was not gained.
But, you know, there's other studies that have been done that have shown, for some reason, all the endurance guys, they always wait an hour.
It's kind of weird.
So what I'm wondering is if people that are doing this research, like, Sit down, take a step back.
You know, people are always in this, I gotta publish, I gotta publish, you know.
There's a real big publish or perish mentality in science where it's like, your bread and butter depends on you publishing.
And so you're just constantly trying to get that data out there.
But you really, I think...
Things are so complicated.
Just sit down, take a look at everything that's out there and start to go, wait a minute.
There's lots of little details that need to be considered to design this trial correctly.
So I'm hoping that, at least for those people doing strength training, that they'll do one where they actually wait until an hour.
Because there's been other studies where that strength training in combination with cryotherapy done much later, even the next day, there were actually benefits, performance benefits.
Like they were able to do more of those leg curl things.
I don't know what they're called.
joe rogan
Leg extensions?
rhonda patrick
Yes, leg extensions, those.
You know, so, you know, I don't really know what's going on, but what I do know is that it seems as though it's very likely that doing the cryotherapy, like, immediately after...
And now, then again, if you're talking about someone that's doing, like, there's been studies that have been published showing that people that are doing two bouts of exercise, so they're, like, riding a bike and then they're waiting, whatever, 30 minutes, and then they go and...
Run or something.
If they do cold water immersion in between those, they actually have performance enhancements.
You know, if they wait...
Sorry, if they do it between two bouts of exercise.
Some of that's due to the fact that the cold water...
It seems to improve heart rate variability.
It's actually been shown to improve it by like two to threefold.
So heart rate variability is the change in oscillation between heartbeats.
And it's also people...
People judge the heart recovery from a workout.
So as soon as you're done with an intense workout, the ability of your heart rate to lower immediately within minutes, that's like a marker of heart rate variability.
And it's supposed to be good because your heart's able to deal with these stressful changes, you know, because when you're making cortisol or something, your heart starts racing more or some of these other stress hormones.
So it's been shown to improve that and being able to have your heart rate slower right after a workout and then you're immediately going to do a workout again, you could imagine there would be an performance enhancement with So, there's also a difference in the physiological response between cold water immersion and cryotherapy, right?
Well, it depends.
There are differences in the ability for those two different modalities to extract heat from the body.
If we're talking about submerging ourselves in cold water up to our shoulders, Water or ice is much better at extracting heat from the body than air.
But surface area also plays a role in the temperature change.
So if you're sitting in cold water that's 57 degrees, that's not as cold as going into a minus 180 or whatever cryo chamber.
But you can also sit in the cold water for a lot longer.
joe rogan
Yeah, most guys do it for 15 minutes.
rhonda patrick
I think that there has been a study that compared the norepinephrine release.
20 seconds at 40-degree water up to the shoulders is comparable to two minutes at minus standard something 180, minus 180 Fahrenheit.
joe rogan
For norepinephrine.
rhonda patrick
For norepinephrine.
But a lot of the effects are mediated from norepinephrine.
But listen, 20 seconds at 40-degree versus two minutes.
So imagine staying in the water for five minutes.
And this has been shown.
So if you have someone that stays in water, 57 degree water, for an hour, they increase their norepinephrine by fivefold instead of twofold.
So you have a more robust response.
So it could be good, but it could be bad.
If you're talking about doing it right after a strength training session and jump into cold water for five minutes, that could have some very potent anti-inflammatory effects.
joe rogan
So the best way to handle it would be to wait at least an hour.
rhonda patrick
I think.
Yeah.
joe rogan
That makes sense.
What about anti-inflammatory markers in the blood?
rhonda patrick
So there have been studies that have shown that cryotherapy lowers C-reactive protein, which would be an inflammatory marker, and then the glutathione-related enzymes going up, and also superoxide dismutase, that would be a marker for inflammation because there's also decreased inflammation when you have more of those.
So cryotherapy does.
And then also there's been measurements of TNF-alpha going down, like I said.
Also another Marker that macrophages release, macrophage, inhibitory protein or something.
Some inflammatory molecule that's made.
There's less of it when cold water...
I can't remember if it was cold water immersion or cryotherapy, but it's cold exposure.
And that was mediated through norepinephrine.
Norepinephrine mediates a lot of stuff.
It's mediating the brain effects.
It's mediating the thermogenesis.
It's anti-inflammatory.
It's anti-pain.
People get injected with norepinephrine in their spine to alleviate pain.
Yes, because it's anti-inflammatory.
joe rogan
Wow.
Jesus.
rhonda patrick
There's probably other things going on as well.
joe rogan
So, just science.
Just the hard science.
There's plenty of evidence that there's benefits to cryotherapy.
rhonda patrick
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
There's plenty of evidence.
unidentified
So why would anybody write an article like that?
rhonda patrick
Like I said, there's the bad article that was the anabolic blunting effects, which was done immediately after exercise, which made a huge splash because it's like, whoa, your gains.
And then you have the hardcore, very skeptical people that are like, well...
The quality of data, you know, well, the thing is, is that there's a large body of data.
And sometimes if you can't have a double-blinded placebo-controlled trial, then you have to look at mechanism.
You have to look at animal studies combined with human studies.
You have to understand what's going on.
You can't refute the norepinephrine.
We know that norepinephrine is doing all these things, you know.
So I think you just have to be very comprehensive, especially when there's the argument that there's no placebo-controlled trials or It's too subjective.
But there's lots of ways that it's not subjective.
And this has been measured in people.
People have measured C-reactive protein.
They've measured these enzyme activities.
They've measured these inflammatory molecules in people, also in animals.
When I say that there are absolutely health benefits from doing cold exposure for your brain, anti-inflammatory, for thermogenesis.
This is actually a target.
I know a lot of researchers that are working on this.
They're trying to find a way to pharmacologically brown fat because it increases fat burning and weight loss.
joe rogan
So with a pill?
rhonda patrick
Of course.
People always try to do that with a pill.
I prefer the cold exposure, but other things do it.
Fish oil was shown to recently do that to increase brown adipose tissue.
joe rogan
Just fish oil and plant-based omega-6 and 3s?
rhonda patrick
No, no, no.
So the fish oil, it was two grams of EPA and one gram of DHA. And it increased fat burning by like 27% or something during exercise.
And then at resting, it increased it by something in the teens, 17 or 13%.
And that was just at rest, fat burning.
And the way it was shown, the way it did it was by increasing UCP-1.
and uncoupling the mitochondria and causing, you're basically causing your fat to make more mitochondria and browning the fat.
Super cool.
I've been taking high doses official, but yeah, to answer your question that the plant version, and this is always a problem with the, I get this question a lot from people that are vegan or vegetarian, you know, they're like, well, I get my omega-3 from the plant version, alpha-linolenic acid.
And actually there's a lot of important things to consider.
One is that alpha-linolenic acid is poorly converted.
All these are long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Alpha-linolenic acid is 18. EPA is 20. Eicosapentaenoic acid, which is found in fish.
And then DHA is 22. So basically, your body will take the alpha-linolenic, which is in plants, flaxseeds, Walnuts.
And it will start adding carbons on to make the other ones because you need the other ones.
30% of your brain is made of DHA. I mean, DHA is very important.
But the thing is, is that men actually only convert about 8% of alpha-linolenic acid into EPA and only 4% into DHA. Not very much.
Now, estrogen actually can increase the gene that converts those because...
Women are the ones that are, you know, carrying the child and DHA is very important for the developing brain.
Very, very important.
So it makes sense that nature would make a way to be able to do that with the plant version.
But the thing is, is that there's been a study that showed that people that take preformed ALA, alpha linoleic acid, have to take 33.5 times more than preformed DHA or EPA to get the same amount of DHA and EPA in the brain.
It's a lot.
There's a lot.
So there are ways around...
There are vegan or vegetarian-friendly sources, which would be microalgae oil.
I personally think that vegans and vegetarians should take microalgae oil.
If I was a vegan, which I can't ever see myself becoming one, but I would absolutely take that.
joe rogan
Why do you not see yourself ever becoming one?
rhonda patrick
Because there are important micronutrients in meat that are important for a variety of physiological functions including the brain, red blood cells.
You can supplement with some stuff but I haven't convinced myself not to eat meat.
joe rogan
So I think with vegans, what they're trying to do is come up with sort of an ethical workaround.
They're trying to figure out how can you be healthy and live a vegan diet, and is it healthy enough?
And most of them, at least the hardcore proselytizing ones, seem to think yes, and they want everybody else to do it too.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, there are a lot of benefits.
There are a lot of positive factors to eating a more vegan-like diet.
All the fiber you're getting.
I do know there are some vegans that eat a lot of processed junk.
Not everyone that's vegan is healthy, but not everyone that's omnivore is healthy.
joe rogan
Right.
rhonda patrick
But the ones that are eating healthy, they're getting a wide, broad spectrum of plants.
They're getting different fibers.
They're getting the good micronutrients in plants, the magnesium, the vitamin K, the folate, vitamin C. And they're getting all the hormetic compounds in the plants.
So those are really good things.
But the problem is...
Um, is that they're, they're more nutritionally deficient in things that most people in the Western world are not because the problem with the, like the United States in general isn't that we eat enough meat here.
Most people, unless you're vegan or vegetarian, people are eating enough meat.
The problem is people aren't eating enough of their greens.
And so I usually focus on micronutrients that are found in greens because that's what people are not getting enough of.
But there are important micronutrients that are in meat, um, That vegans and vegetarians are more subject to being deficient in.
joe rogan
Like?
rhonda patrick
B12. So B12 and iron are two really important ones.
Both of these are very...
So B12 is very important for...
The production of neurotransmitters and myelin in the brain.
Both iron and B12 are.
Most people think of iron as being important for your blood cells, and it is.
It's bound to something called heme, which is a protein inside hemoglobin that's important for transporting oxygen to your tissues because you need oxygen to make energy.
So, but the other thing that Iron's doing is it's also important for making myelin in the brain.
Myelin is what surrounds the axons of your neurons and it allows them to communicate quickly.
It allows electrical signals to It signals to be transported quickly.
So that's important.
And then it makes neurotransmitters.
Like you need iron to make serotonin in your brain.
And it's one of the reasons why during pregnancy, iron is very...
Like if you have iron deficiency during pregnancy, it can cause abnormal brain structure.
It can cause like birth defects because it shapes the structure and the wiring of the brain.
So that's, you know, obviously here...
In the United States, we have supplements, we have access to supplements, and you can take a sublingual B12. It's a little bit of a different world than it is somewhere in a developing country.
joe rogan
But B12, it's animal-based, so how are they getting plant-based B12? Is there a plant that has B12 in it in large numbers?
rhonda patrick
So B12 is actually made by certain strains of bacteria.
And the reason it's high in meat is because it gets, you know, animals are predators and so it gets concentrated in their muscle.
It gets concentrated in animal tissue.
joe rogan
But what about animals that are herbivores?
I mean, does it still exist in them even if they're not predators?
unidentified
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
Because they're eating a variety of things that have the bacteria.
Like there's certain strains of mushrooms that have it.
If you're a vegan or a vegetarian and you're just eating those mushrooms, you'd have to eat an enormous amount to get the RDA. But it's more concentrated in animal meat, which are constantly eating it.
So it gets concentrated in their tissues because B12 is required as a cofactor for a lot of enzymes in multiple organs, including their muscles.
You know, every time they're eating whatever has the B12 on it, they're concentrating it.
So there are certain types of bacteria that make B12, but I don't think vegans or vegetarians can just get it from that.
joe rogan
They have to eat a lot of it, like one of those crazy— So the argument that a vegan can get enough B12 from just a standard vegan diet without supplementing, you don't buy that?
rhonda patrick
No, I don't.
So there was a study that was done in Tanzania.
So there's a few researchers, UCLA actually is where, I think one of them just retired, but there was some researchers at UCLA that were studying the effects of B12 and iron deficiency hormones.
On cognition, on, you know, learning, cognition, behavior.
And there was a bunch of studies that were associative studies, like that crappy, premature ejaculation, obesity, where it's like, you know, these two things are associated, but we don't know if it's causing.
And so there was an association with low B12, low iron, and poor IQ, lower IQ, poor cognition, poor behavior, and But there was no real causal, you know, role identified.
And so there's a couple of researchers at UCLA that did two different clinical trials, where there was 12 different schools in Tanzania that were selected.
And these clinical trials lasted two years, and there was two of them.
The first trial was 575 kids or around 600 and the other one was like 370 something so closer to 400.
So total we're talking a total of about a thousand children school children like these were elementary school children.
And the typical thing they eat in Tanzania is it's like a porridge.
I forgot the name of it but it's a porridge and it has vegetables.
It has beans and it has corn and that's their standard porridge.
And so the trial was designed where these school kids, they were given a snack every single day for two years.
Either the porridge, or they got the porridge with a glass of milk, or they got the porridge with meat.
And every three to six months, there were arithmetic and reading tests done.
So they were looking, trying to measure, you know, cognitive performance.
They measured physical performance and muscle mass.
And what the results were of this study was that the porridge with the meat, so the school children that were eating the meat with the porridge, scored better on math arithmetic.
They scored better on reading tests.
They had more muscle mass and they grew more than the other school children that did not get the meat.
And they also, so that's all quantitative, they also performed They were more likely to exhibit leadership qualities out in the playground.
That's a little more subjective, but still interesting.
So the bottom line here is that, you know, obviously in Tanzania, they're not supplementing, they're not, you know, taking B12 iron.
They're also, there's also essential amino acids that are present in meat, which our bodies can't make, you know, which are found in some, you can find some plant sources of it, like quinoa or hemp seed has it, but they're not supplementing with that stuff over in Tanzania.
So if you don't have access to those things and you're just eating vegetables and beans and corn, then you will have nutritional deficiencies and other things.
Now, the question is, if those children were given a B12 supplement or iron, would that have made a difference?
Probably.
Probably would have.
I mean, there's been studies in the United States that have been done on school children that have been deficient in certain micronutrients, and they were given a multivitamin and an omega-3 supplement, fish oil.
And only the ones that were deficient to begin with improved, like, did better on reading and arithmetic tests.
So there's definitely, you know, an argument to be made there.
But I think...
I think for vegetarians, we live in a very different time.
Obviously, there's protein powders and quinoa and hemp seed and B12 sublingual.
joe rogan
And what are they getting B12 from if it's a vegan-based B12? I don't...
rhonda patrick
Oh, is that like...
joe rogan
Is it possible?
rhonda patrick
I thought it was just like methylcobalamin.
So I don't think that there's...
It's not me.
joe rogan
It's just synthetic B12. Okay, so how are they synthesizing it?
rhonda patrick
I don't know.
You're going beyond my knowledge base there.
joe rogan
Okay, but so it is possible to get both iron and B12 from...
rhonda patrick
Yeah, so B12 is...
I mean, a lot of vegetarians supplement with B12. I mean, they know.
And sublingual is important because there's also gene polymorphisms that affect the way your gut absorbs B12. So people have to bypass that.
You can put it under your tongue.
joe rogan
So sublingual is the optimal way to take it.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, I think for anyone.
joe rogan
So if someone's a vegan, what are the supplements they should take?
You think B12, iron, what else?
rhonda patrick
Well, with iron, it's kind of tricky, I just want to mention, because, you know, iron, a lot of vegans think that they can get their iron from their diet, because iron's also found in beans.
It's in plants, it's in spinach, but the way it's bound, it's bound in something called phytate, which we cannot digest.
And so the bioavailability of iron is 1.8 times less in plant form than in meat.
Meat, it's bound to something called heme, which gives blood cells their red color, which is why red meat has more of it.
But people that are vegetarian, that think they're getting enough iron, I really think they should get their levels measured.
So women lose a lot of iron during menstruation.
So the RDA for iron for men is 8 milligrams a day, for women it's 18.
So already on top of that, if you're a vegetarian or vegan, multiplying by 1.8 is already important if you're just getting it from food.
Because the bioavailability of the iron is almost twofold less than from meat.
So that's one thing to consider.
And the other thing is also athletes.
So when you're like an endurance athlete, you actually – hemolysis occurs, red blood cells, lice.
When you're doing, like, very intense endurance training.
And so you lose iron there, too, because you're losing red blood cells.
Iron's tricky because you don't want too much of it.
It's like, if you're supplementing, like, it's not...
There's no guesswork here.
There's no guesswork with iron.
Having...
So having too much...
When you take too much free...
Supplemental iron, it can cause free iron inside your cells, and that is dynamite.
It reacts with enzymes in your body, and it screws up energy production.
It causes lots of damage.
It's really, really bad.
It's really bad to get too much iron.
joe rogan
So this is supplemental iron, not iron from actual food-based sources?
rhonda patrick
No, it's tightly regulated.
But when you start to do supplemental iron, yeah.
So I think that...
And then there's gene poly...
Some people, like Dan has one.
I've seen lots of people's DNA where they have...
There's a variation in a gene that can lead to too much iron overload.
It's called hemochromatosis.
And it is very common.
And if you have one of those genes and you're taking supplemental iron, you have even more free irons.
It's very bad.
Very bad.
So I think that people should definitely...
And I don't know what all the blood levels.
There's different markers that you can measure.
Your physician will know.
But getting iron levels measured is important if you're going to start supplementing.
joe rogan
And when you do supplement with iron, is it important to take it with food, with fats?
What is the absorption?
When is it optimum?
rhonda patrick
Vitamin C dramatically increases the absorption of non-heme iron.
So iron that's not found in meat.
So even actually people, vegetarians that are eating a bunch of beans, legumes, first of all, they need to eat 1.8 times more than they would have meat.
But they also, if they eat it with citrus fruit or have some berries or broccoli is high in vitamin C, have it with your beans.
That would make a difference in increasing the bioavailability of the iron.
So that would be important.
joe rogan
That's a fascinating aspect of food supplement or supplementation is eating it with the right foods and making sure that you, you know, some things you don't want to eat with any food at all and some things you want to have on a full stomach.
rhonda patrick
Or you want fat like the fat soluble vitamins, carotenoids, even vitamin D. The vitamins that are soluble in fat are the bioavailability is increased when you take it with fat.
And so that would be another one, actually.
A lot of vegetarians probably think they're getting enough vitamin A because beta carotene, which is in plants, can be converted into vitamin A. Vitamin A is actually...
It actually becomes a hormone, and it works much like vitamin D. Not quite the same, but it does change.
It activates genes, turns genes off, does all this stuff.
So it's very important for immune function, for your eye, for vision.
But the bioavailability of beta-carotene is very low.
We don't absorb it very well.
Fat increases that bioavailability, so taking it with fat because they are fat-soluble.
The carotenoids, beta-carotene is fat-soluble.
And also, there are gene polymorphisms that People have.
So they don't convert beta carotene into vitamin A very well.
Like my brother-in-law has one where he doesn't at all very well.
So he has to actually get vitamin A from an animal source.
Or you can get retinal acetate.
I don't know.
I think it's synthetic.
But that's something that some vegetarians may consider.
Not all of them, but some.
Just considering whether or not they have that gene polymorphism.
I think the main ones are iron, B12... Omega-3.
And vitamin D, you know, 70% of the population doesn't get enough vitamin D. But vegetarians often think they're getting enough vitamin D because you make it from the sun.
But, you know, the problem is that so many factors regulate that because...
So UVB radiation has to hit your skin to make it.
And so if you're wearing sunscreen or you have a lot of melanin, so if you've got like dark pigmentation that blocks it out, latitude where you live, so UVB rays don't hit the atmosphere at certain times of the year in certain regions.
So you're only three or four months out of the year can make vitamin D from the sun.
And then age.
As you get older, a 70-year-old makes only 25% of the vitamin D that they made when they were 20 years old.
unidentified
Wow.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, so all these factors play a role.
And there is a vitamin, I know I was talking to Rich Roll about this, because vitamin D supplements, D3. The plant form is D2. It's made by mushrooms.
Mushrooms also make vitamin D when they're exposed to sun.
The plant form doesn't get converted into the hormone very well.
And also, there's been two recent studies that have shown that D2 may actually inhibit D3's function in muscle.
So it actually has negative effects in muscle tissue, taking too much D2. Yeah, so D3 is the best supplement form.
And most of the D3 on the markets from...
Lanolin, which is like secreted from sheep skin or something.
unidentified
I don't know.
rhonda patrick
I don't think that's vegan friendly, but there is a type of algae, lichen, that makes vitamin D. Lichen's an algae?
I don't know what it is.
joe rogan
It's like a white plant.
rhonda patrick
Is it?
joe rogan
It's a weird, funky stuff that grows in Alaska.
unidentified
Oh, it's a fungus?
rhonda patrick
Okay.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's like a moss almost.
Pull that up.
Lichen.
Yeah, it's something that I know caribou eat a lot of.
Black-tailed deer.
It's like a white, tasteless sort of a grass that they exist on.
Not a grass, but almost like a...
It's weird.
It's a weird plant.
Here, let me show you.
That's what it looks like.
What is that, Jess?
rhonda patrick
Oh, that is kind of weird looking.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's weird stuff.
Yeah, you find it all over the place on Prince Edward Island in Alaska was the first place I came in contact with it.
And I was like, what is this?
rhonda patrick
Yeah, this is definitely not algae.
joe rogan
Black-tailed deer, eat a lot of some kind of a plant.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, it's a plant that...
joe rogan
So you can get D3 from that?
rhonda patrick
Yeah, there's a company that makes D3 from that.
joe rogan
So there are vegan-friendly sources of it.
So if they do want to eat vegan, it is possible to get a fully balanced diet.
rhonda patrick
And then the protein would be the other thing, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
rhonda patrick
Because the essential amino acids are...
Typically found in animal protein.
So those are like leucine, isoleucine, tryptophan, phenylalanine.
I don't know.
There's nine of them.
joe rogan
They just exist in really low doses in most plant-based proteins.
Is that what the problem is?
rhonda patrick
No.
Yeah.
Very, very, very low doses.
But you can get some that have higher doses like hemp seed and then quinoa.
joe rogan
So those are the only two?
rhonda patrick
I'm sure there's more.
There's only two I know of.
joe rogan
So they have really a full amino acid profile.
rhonda patrick
Right.
And they have the essential ones that you need.
And keep in mind, the essential proteins, the branched chain amino acids, that's what's actually taken up into muscle cells.
And there's been studies that have been done just doing plant protein without the essential amino acids.
You can't gain muscle mass after doing strength training.
Like you can if you take in...
The essential amino acids because you need those to be taken up into muscle to build proteins.
joe rogan
Well, there's some of the weird vegan arguments that they repeat almost as if it's fact, but that's not.
And one of them is that saturated fats and that saturated fats are somehow or another bad for you.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, so that's a very confusing literature, I think.
Saturated fats in and of themselves aren't necessarily bad, unless you have...
There are certain gene polymorphisms in...
So PPR alpha, PPR gamma, FTO genes.
If you have a gene polymorphism in one of these three genes...
Because when you eat saturated fat, it needs to be metabolized, transported to the right place.
You don't want it just sitting around as fatty acids in your bloodstream.
Well, those genes that I just mentioned, they play a role in doing that.
Some people don't activate them very well.
And so if they have a high saturated fat and a low poly or monounsaturated fat intake, they can actually have increased type 2 diabetes.
They can have poor glucose response because fatty acids are sitting around in their bloodstream and antagonizing the insulin receptor, doing all sorts of things.
But if they have a higher polyunsaturated fat, which is found in fish or nuts or monounsaturated fat, so avocados, nuts, olive oil, if they have a higher ratio of those, then it activates those genes more.
And so they don't actually have those negative effects.
So that's one thing.
But that's the smaller thing.
The real problem with saturated fat is actually sugar.
The problem is that saturated fat increases the production of LDL cholesterol, which isn't necessarily bad, unless you have massive inflammation from eating refined carbohydrates, and specifically from eating sucrose or fructose corn syrup.
And this has been shown actually a colleague of mine, Ron Krause.
He's a brilliant cardio cardiologist.
And he's actually one of the guys that he discovered a test to measure what really the bad part of cholesterol, which isn't just LDL.
It's actually a small, dense particle.
And that small, dense particles formed only when you have the saturated fat plus the high fructose corn syrup or the refined sugar because it's causing inflammation.
So I did a podcast with him.
It's a little technical.
But like my mother-in-law, she watched the video and she had done a lipid panel where her physician had measured her LDL particle, measured particle size, measured triglycerides, all these things and wanted to get her on statins because she had really high cholesterol.
Turns out, I knew why she had high cholesterol.
She has high cholesterol because she has gene polymorphism in the ApoE4, which prevents cholesterol from being recycled.
So that's why she has high cholesterol.
So she watched this video and she learned all about the particle size and that it's the small dense ones that are really an indicator of cardiovascular disease.
And her small dense were like, she had none.
It was all the good kind.
LDL cholesterol is important because anytime you make a new cell, you need cholesterol.
Cholesterol is made of cell membranes.
Every time you're making a new kidney or liver cell, you need cholesterol.
When you have damage, when you hit yourself or you're doing your workout and your muscles get a little damaged, you need cholesterol there to repair that damage.
So you need it.
If you don't have it, you're in trouble.
But anyways, the point is that the saturated fat, that's why there's so much confusion.
It's because, one, gene polymorphisms.
Two, People are now starting to tease apart that it's actually the combination of eating refined carbohydrates and saturated fat.
If you just have the saturated fat and you're eating vegetables and good things as well, then you're not going to have all that inflammation.
You're not going to make small, dense LDL particles.
I talked about this with you last time.
That's what makes the small, dense LDL's inflammation.
So when you have the small, dense, because a certain protein gets obscured, it causes it to stick to the walls of your blood vessels very easy.
So that's kind of the danger, because then you start to accumulate a plaque there.
joe rogan
So this totally makes sense when you talk about the amount of heart disease that exists in people that have this typical American diet, which is high in saturated fat, but also high in high fructose corn syrup, processed sugars.
rhonda patrick
And low in vegetables, yeah.
I mean, here's the thing, and this is the problem with all those studies, those studies that are correlations, is that you're looking at Yes, they're eating meat.
Yes, they're eating saturated fat.
But they're also not eating vegetables.
They're also eating cake and crackers and chips and hamburger buns and all that stuff.
joe rogan
Sedentary lifestyle.
rhonda patrick
Sedentary lifestyle, all those things.
So, you know, these studies, like, you have to really take it with a grain of salt, and especially for healthy omnivores.
You know, like I said, there are vegetarians that are unhealthy, that eat a bunch of processed.
There's also very healthy vegetarians and vegans out there.
Well, there's a lot of unhealthy omnivores.
I mean, if you were to go to, like, the ZMV, where, like, someplace everyone has to go and, like, take a survey, how many of them eat meat?
Well, probably like 95% of them are going to eat meat.
And then you ask them, what's their vegetable intake?
How many refined carbohydrates do you take in?
They're all going to be not eating vegetables and they're going to be eating their cake and chips and their hot dog buns.
joe rogan
So to blame it all on...
To blame it all on saturated fats is wrong.
rhonda patrick
It is.
Some people can have a problem when they have too high of a saturated fat intake, even if they're eating other healthy stuff.
Like I said, because the gene that's activated that helps metabolize the fat, break it up, transports it to where it goes, isn't getting turned on well.
Well, those genes get turned on by polyunsaturated fatty acids.
And so if you eat a ratio, if you're eating saturated fat, which is dairy, you know, some pork, I don't know, red meat, mostly, like, if you get a lean cut, it's not even actually that high in saturated fat compared to dairy or cheese or butter.
joe rogan
There's just so much misinformation.
So many people spout out this misinformation as fact, too.
It's just so frustrating to communicate with people about it.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, it is frustrating.
The other thing is that people actually will notice there's a problem if they're eating a lot of saturated fat and they have one of those polymorphisms.
They start to gain weight.
They start to have bad lipid profile.
They start to, and they're like, they know, like, well, I've been doing this.
I measure.
I know.
It's bad.
Well, they don't realize it's possibly because they have one of those gene polymorphisms.
If they increase their polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat, it may actually not be a problem.
joe rogan
And cholesterol in and of itself is not a bad thing.
No.
rhonda patrick
No.
Cholesterol, you need cholesterol.
You need it.
You need it, like I said.
joe rogan
You need your own body's production of it.
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
But you also need to take some in.
rhonda patrick
Yes.
Exactly.
Well, taking in dietary cholesterol doesn't even raise your body's cholesterol.
Saturated fat will raise your body's cholesterol.
Dietary cholesterol from eggs, it's like nothing.
It doesn't do anything.
joe rogan
Did you see that, Michael Shermer?
rhonda patrick
Ron Krauss showed that.
Taking in dietary cholesterol doesn't even move the dial for your body's cholesterol production.
joe rogan
It's so funny because so many people think it does.
rhonda patrick
You know what really moves it?
Stress.
Stress dramatically increases cholesterol production.
You know why?
Because when you're stressed, your body starts to make cholesterol.
It makes BLDL lipoproteins, which have cholesterol in them, because it sops up...
It sops up what's called endotoxin, which is released when you're stressed or inflamed.
And you want to sop it up because it can cause lots of damage.
So you start to make cholesterol.
And what ends up happening is when you're inflamed, your body will turn off the production.
It basically starts making something called malonyl-CoA, which is important to make these very low-dense particle lipoproteins I was talking about.
But what it also does is it inhibits your body from being able to metabolize fat with the exception of medium-chain triglycerides because it inhibits the transporter.
There's a transporter on mitochondria called CPT that is inhibited when your body's inflamed because it's making that malonyl-CoA.
And when that transporter is inhibited, you're polyunsaturated, you're saturated, all like 99% of the dietary fat you take in is not getting used.
So it gets stored or it's like you have fatty acids in your bloodstream and can raise triglycerides and things.
So it can be really bad.
But MCTs bypass that.
MCTs don't need that transporter.
joe rogan
We just blew through three hours again.
rhonda patrick
Yeah, that's awesome.
joe rogan
Blew through it.
Feels like it was 20 minutes.
It's crazy.
rhonda patrick
It really is crazy.
joe rogan
Yeah.
These are ridiculous conversations.
Thank you very much.
You're awesome.
rhonda patrick
Dude, thanks, Joe.
joe rogan
As always, I'm going to have to go over this 50 times with a notebook to try to get half of it.
FoundMyFitness.com.
FoundMyFitness on Twitter.
What else?
rhonda patrick
Yeah, the genetic tool I've got.
People can check that out.
FoundMyFitness.com forward slash genetics.
And then I've got a podcast on iTunes.
I did the cryotherapy.
I talk all about that.
joe rogan
And how do they get to that?
What is it?
rhonda patrick
On iTunes?
joe rogan
What's it called?
rhonda patrick
Found My Fitness.
joe rogan
Oh, that's good.
rhonda patrick
Found My Fitness.
joe rogan
One brand.
rhonda patrick
Yeah.
joe rogan
Thank you so much.
You're awesome.
I can't say enough.
rhonda patrick
Thanks, Joe.
joe rogan
These are the best conversations.
I look forward to them, and I'm really, really appreciative that you do these.
Thank you so much.
Bye, everybody.
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