Dr. Rhonda Patrick and Joe Rogan debate how exercise—like Rogan’s kickboxing or her near-drowning kelp incident—boosts memory via BDNF while modern life lacks evolutionary stressors, linking stress responses to mental resilience. They expose antidepressants’ shrinking 10% efficacy over placebos due to DSM-2’s expanded depression criteria and explore gut-brain inflammation cycles, where cortisol diverts serotonin/dopamine into immune pathways but omega-3s (EPA) and aerobic workouts restore balance. Patrick counters Aubrey de Grey’s skepticism on nutrition, citing parabiosis studies revealing VCAM1’s role in aging and 4.6-year telomere shortening from sugary drinks, while Rogan shares stem cell therapy breakthroughs like Flowgraft’s amniotic fluid treatments. The episode dismantles saturated fat myths, tracing sugar industry corruption to the 2015 trans-fat ban delay, and champions time-restricted eating (9–12 hours) for metabolic health, warning shift workers face double cancer risk from disrupted circadian rhythms. [Automatically generated summary]
If you looked at my notebook, and if you ever thought that I actually wrote in my notebook, you'd think I'm a crazy person, because I'm writing the same thing over and over again.
I just like before a set what I do is I just write out the key things that I wanted to work on and I'll write them out over and over again so like I'll have a hundred page notebook and it's like a hundred pages of like half of it's the same stuff over and over again.
I'll write out things that are in more detail, and then, like you said, I'll write just a cue.
It's different when you're giving a talk, at least in academia, like a PowerPoint talk, you have a slide, and the slide cues a couple of minutes of talk.
It helps you remember what you're going to talk about.
Because there's a couple of things that I'm talking about in my new set where I have to reassure people that I'm not making this up because it's so ridiculous.
Like, one of them was this woman who posed as a high school student.
She was a 25-year-old police officer, super attractive, and she posed as a high school student and convinced a young boy to sell her marijuana and then arrested him.
So this helps, writing it down helps me, but also there's the running thing.
Running helps.
Actually, this was very interesting because a study just came out not long ago showing that if you run before, you're going to learn something.
Let's say you want to do something short-term recall.
So you're going to go up on stage and say something, say a skit or whatever.
And if you run right before that, it improves the short-term memory.
So your short-term recall, if you run right before whatever it is, you quickly read over something and then you want to remember it.
But if you are learning something and then you run after you learn it and then the next day you want to remember it, so it's more of a longer-term memory, it improves that.
So it's like whether or not you're running before or after you learn, it affects the short-term versus long-term memory.
They just found it out through, because they were just, you know, doing running before or after.
They're probably looking at just to see how it affects short and long-term memory recall.
And they were surprised to find out this was a study that was done.
I can't remember where it was done.
I know I tweeted about it not long ago, because it was like within this last month that it came out.
So while I'm learning new material throughout the day, then I go for a run in the evening, and then the next day I'll be able to recall it better, theoretically.
Now I'm subject to the placebo effect because I know about this.
They found that one of the keys to maintaining your brain mass is pushing past That comfortable zone physically so like you know exercise wise and also Mentally just you know, obviously like like learning new things and challenging yourself So,
you know, so when you're working out you don't do this kind of like You know half-ass thing right push yourself you have to really push yourself and that seems to be key for Becoming a super ager.
I mean, exercise has profound effects on your brain.
I mean, specifically, if you're looking at aerobic exercise, it's hard.
Aerobic exercise, as you said, doing a 5K, running three miles, I mean, you do a lot of training, and yet that was still hard for you, you know, because doing that type of aerobic exercise is difficult.
Studies have shown that even just like 20 to 30 minutes of aerobic exercise can, in healthy young men, increase serum BDNF, which is brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
This is a growth factor that is involved in growing new brain cells and in allowing the existing brain cells to survive.
So, you know, talking about combating brain atrophy, you're talking about combating the fact that your brain is atrophying starting at the age of 20. That's the way to do it.
I mean, it's not necessarily like brain mass and intelligence.
I mean, I don't know if, you know, that...
There's definitely a courtlet, but when you start losing mass in your hippocampus, that's memory, learning, that part of the brain.
But there's just so many studies showing that exercise, aerobic exercise.
And also, it doesn't have to be aerobic.
You can do resistance training.
That sort of stuff also affects the brain as well.
But for me, I've been a runner since...
I've been on high school track, I guess.
A long time.
And for me, I've done a few races, I've done a marathon, and I don't feel like...
Marathons are my thing.
I felt like that was just really rough.
I'll run three miles and I will feel challenged.
If I push myself, I can do that.
I feel like doing that a couple times, three times a week is plenty for me.
But when I run, for me, I enter this state of daydreaming.
I get creative.
When I'm going on a three-mile run, I start thinking about things.
An important decision to make or something that's causing me some sort of anxiety, I go for a run and I feel like I can address that issue better.
And what's interesting is that there have been studies that have shown that going for a run, and specifically aerobic exercise, it activates the part of your brain involved in executive function, which helps you make decisions, you know, it's It's kind of like that overarching part of your brain that helps with all the planning, long-term planning and all that.
I do.
I feel like if I go for a run, if something's bothering me, if I'm anxious, I always feel better, 100% of the time.
There's not a single time that I go for a run and I'm like, damn, I feel worse.
I mean, this is all just theoretical and my own theories.
I think the human mind is designed to confront serious things like predators and dangerous enemies.
And we don't really get much of that in this life.
So when...
A person is dealing with stress.
I think the mind is preparing for some things that don't exist.
So even if you can work things out logically, there still remains this residual effect of all these human reward systems that are kind of in place from the time we really did have to have all those reactions in place to deal with dangerous invaders or horrible Natural conditions, you know, whatever they would be that we hardly ever experience anymore.
So like when I work out, if I have anything that's bothering me or troubling me, I think I get like a distorted perception of the danger of it or the physical reality.
Like it could be something real simple like I have An issue at work that I have to deal with like maybe I have to make a decision or maybe you know I'm stressed about something and I feel this no matter how much I work it out logically I still feel this physical like residual issue and that issue only seems to be resolved for me because I don't run with hitting the bag like for me It's a punching bag like it's which is really hard to do like when you when you do rounds like kickboxing rounds on a bag I have a
timer, and I can set it for three to five minutes.
Actually, it'll allow you to set it all the way down to one, and then it has, like, intervals.
So it gives me, like, 30 seconds.
Every 30 seconds, a buzzer will go off.
And it has two lights.
One light is yellow, and one light is blue.
And so the yellow light, I kind of...
I go at like 60-70% and then the blue light, I sprint.
So it's like sprint, try to catch your breath, sprint, try to catch your breath, and I do that for seven to eight rounds.
And when I do that, I don't give a fuck about anything.
After it's over, I'm like, who cares?
It's amazing what it does.
Because my mind still has all the same data.
I still understand whatever it is, whatever work-related nonsense.
I still understand all the issues about it.
And there's no new information.
But now the information is coming into my brain and it's going, oh, this isn't a foreign invader.
These aren't Vikings that are coming over in a fucking boat with a dragon's head at the front of it, swinging swords.
This is just some nonsense.
Whatever it is, you know, agent issue or manager issue or tax issue or whatever the fuck it is that seems so physically daunting before the exercise, but then afterwards when that aspect of the problem is alleviated, that stress, it's almost like our bodies are just like confused as to what these problems actually are.
I love your interpretation of this because it's exactly the way that I would like to talk about why we need this type of stress.
Just like you said, I actually think that from an evolutionary perspective that we were...
Meant to be stressed.
We were meant to be outside, either hunting, tilling the land to prepare food, out bombarded by UVB radiation, which is stressful.
We were designed to have stress.
And what I mean by designed was we have genetic switches, which are supposed to be turned on.
These genetic switches that are activated by stress are supposed to be turned on.
And just like you said, we're in a really novel time now where we don't have to go outside.
We don't have to till the land.
We don't have to hunt for our food.
We can sit on the couch on our butt all day and order delivery or go to the grocery store.
And we don't have to eat foods with polyphenols or flavonoids or things that are also slightly stressful.
So this is kind of that concept of hormesis.
But I like the way you explained it because I really agree with you.
I think that humans were meant to be stressed.
Exercise is a form of that stress, and there's various different types of that stress.
And I think that we were supposed to switch on those genetic switches, those genes that are...
Helping us deal with stress.
So like you said, you have a problem, and I'm the same way with my run.
I'll have something that's bothering me.
I have to deal with whatever it is.
I mean, in my mind, I blow it up.
It may not even be that big of a deal.
But I go for a run.
With no new information, with nothing new, you know, like, I feel better.
And I think that's partly because I'm switching on all these, you know, stress response pathways that help me deal with the stress better, these anti-inflammatory pathways, just all this really good, you know, these good genetic switches that are being switched on.
I think this new time that we live in, I just don't necessarily think the body understands where the stress is coming from.
I think, you know, your body's a physical organism and nature is an absolutely brutal thing.
And it has been for us as well as for all these other animals forever.
But now for us, it's not really that brutal anymore.
And so all these mechanisms are in place to protect you and they don't get served.
And for me...
Martial arts has always been the best one to deal with.
Weightlifting is good too.
A good kettlebell workout does it too.
But the big ones for me are jujitsu and kickboxing.
Because jujitsu is really, really hard to do.
And it's also you're solving problems.
So I think jujitsu serves two purposes.
It's incredibly grueling as far as the sparring process of just rolling and competing with each other, even in a friendly role, like with a guy that I really like and we're laughing and we slap hands every time someone gets tapped out or whatever.
It's so difficult.
Your body's taxed.
So hard and your mind is taxed because you're dealing with countering you're dealing with Setting up moves you're dealing with your thinking several steps ahead and then you're you're adjusting those thoughts Based on whatever this person that you're sparring with is doing too.
So people get really really addicted to jujitsu for all the right reasons and one of the things that I found is Jujitsu people, for the most part, are way more mellow than most people would expect.
Way more chill about stuff.
Way less likely to respond to something in a dumb or an imbalanced way.
Because whatever your body, whatever these requirements are that we're addressing, your body has all that in Jujitsu.
But without the real...
Real violence, you know what I mean?
Like, no one's trying to kill you.
They're just trying to do this thing to you, and you're trying to do that thing to them.
And those things mimic actual combat, actual real life and death struggle in a friendly...
And also, it has this camaraderie built into it, too.
Because you kind of understand that you're going through this incredibly intense thing together, And you also understand that it takes a unique person to go through that and get past all these psychological hurdles, all these physiological hurdles.
And then you also are aware that this person understands like really clearly the kinship that you all share in having this experience together.
I mean, not to the same degree, like what you're describing on a whole other level, but I experience something similar when I'm out surfing.
I'm getting the physical exercise, but I'm also tackling these fears of these big waves and Getting pulled under and drowning and getting tangled with my cord.
There's like a million.
And every time I do it, I always have that fear paddling out there.
But I get out there.
There's a group of surfers.
And we're all sitting out there.
And there is a sort of friendship that we develop out there.
Because we all love surfing.
And we know it's like, oh, here comes the wave.
We're helping each other.
Like, look, there's one on the outside.
Paddle out.
So it's kind of like...
Completely different level from what you're describing with jiu-jitsu, but still, I kind of can relate a little bit.
My friend Shane Dorian is a big wave surfer, and he's been on the podcast before, and he's a big-time bowhunter, too, and we talk all the time about this.
I mean, the biggest way I've ever surfed is like, Overhead, you know, like over time and a half overhead, so not even double overhead.
And that was like, I had a couple of scary moments where I was just tumbling during donuts and I couldn't find which way was up or down.
I've had one time, I was surfing out in this place in San Diego called Sunset Cliffs, and it's a reef break.
And it's really hard to get out there, so you have to time, you have to jump out after the wave breaks, and then you paddle out.
And there's all these kelp beds.
And I was surfing there this one time, and this was back when I was really dumb and didn't wear a leash because I was like, leashes, you know, I like to dance on my board and they get in my way, and so I didn't wear a leash.
But I, you know, there was a big wave and I was riding it and I wiped out and I like got caught in the kelp.
But I've never actually known anyone that surfs in Southern California with all the surfers that I've known that has had an encounter in Southern California with a shark.
I do know people that have encountered them in the Bay Area.
There's a video of a drone flying over Malibu where some guy takes a drone and he's flying over the Malibu surf and he's like, the drone is like maybe a few hundred yards away from some surfers and you see a big fucking great white just swimming along.
Apparently Catalina, that whole area outside of Catalina, is a crazy shark fishing mecca.
Where I have a friend of mine from Texas, and he traveled to Catalina Island, and he said, it is the most savage stretch of water in all of North America.
But the thing about sharks now, it's because people are so silly, because of the awareness of shark fin soup, you know, because shark fin soup is, the practice of acquiring shark fins is really brutal and not sustainable at all.
It's really horrific.
and a lot of Asian fisheries engage in these unsustainable practices where they'll scoop up thousands and thousands of sharks, cut their fins off, and then throw them right back in the water.
So they waste most of the shark in order to get the fins for shark fish soup.
And so because they're trying to raise awareness of this, now people are getting really upset at anyone who catches sharks, even if they catch sharks legally for food, because sharks are not endangered and is in any more sense than tuna is endangered.
Because tuna are in vastly diminished numbers than they were just a few decades ago.
If you talk to anyone who's a commercial fisherman or even a sport fisherman like these guys that run these charter boats, they'll tell you like you used to catch way more tuna.
It used to be way more prevalent.
I think that was something they addressed in that Jiro Dreams of Sushi movie as well, is that the commercial fishing is just brutalizing the tuna market.
But yet everybody still eats tuna, and they don't think twice about it.
Because this campaign against shark fin soup has made people really upset at people that catch sharks to eat.
Even people that eat meat.
We're so simplistic in our protesting and people just have it in their head that I heard you're not supposed to eat sharks anymore.
Are you catching sharks, you fucking asshole?
That is the one thing.
If you want to talk about fish that do no harm to human beings, sharks aren't on that list.
This is a scary goddamn animal and if you could eat that, I say kudos.
Besides sweat, you sweat out a lot of these heavy metals like mercury, arsenic.
Some of the beta-mecaptans in garlic, they chelate, they bind and chelate mercury and help pull it and excrete it out of your body through urine.
So whenever I make salmon or fish, which I actually do eat a lot of salmon, I probably eat it like two or three times a week, I always have fresh garlic with it.
I'll just break it down to the point where it makes me feel horrible.
I'll have like a big glass of kombucha and I'll take like a lump of garlic and I'll break off like four or five cloves and I'll just take off the skin and chew those bitches down and chug it with kombucha.
Getting back to some of those pungent compounds that are in these plants, I mean, that kind of gets back to what we were talking about a minute ago with switching on those genetic switches that are...
Meant to be switched on.
We're supposed to eat these kinds of foods, garlic, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, these things that have that pungent mustard, that pungent taste.
These things are...
You know, various different polyphenols and compounds.
And one in particular I've become obsessed with lately is sulforaphane.
And that's present in most of the cruciferous family, like kale, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, wasabi, bok choy, just, you know, that whole family of vegetables.
Pretty much, I eat those vegetables a lot.
But I've become very obsessed with this compound that is...
It's actually...
Sulforaphane's not in the plant.
It gets...
Formed once you break the plant tissue once it's like chewed or crushed or blended or whatever chopped somehow, because it's stored as a precursor.
And then once the tissue gets, you know, chopped or whatever, then it forms sulforaphane.
And that's part of its, you know, It's plant response to try to ward off insects or whatever thing.
So that's why it forms.
But it actually, when we ingest it, it's really, really, really good for us.
So the sulforaphane in particular, which is actually really, really high in broccoli sprouts.
Believe it or not, though, if you freeze them, so those bags are going in the freezer, when you freeze them, because when you freeze the plant, the tissue also gets broken, it actually doubles in some cases.
You can up to double the amount of sulforaphane because it has a longer time to form this.
Well, I mean, just because it's so pungent and powerful that if you make a shake with it and you're doing...
Like, at first I was doing fresh shakes, and then we started freezing them, and I was making shakes that were, you know, from previously frozen sprouts, and it's like I needed, like, half the dose, you know, to feel the same thing.
Um, okay, so I guess I should probably, you know, it's kind of just like, like when you drink coffee, you know how you kind of just you feel a little happy and good, and you feel a little more alert.
Sort of like that.
And the thing is, is that it's been shown.
So there have been clinical studies in humans.
And this is very interesting because it's been shown, like if you give it, you give, you know, even just a small amount.
I think it was like between 7 to 30 milligrams of sulforaphane a day to young adults with autism.
Yeah.
It improved their autistic scores by like 34%.
And autistic scores, there's a range of different tests that are done to measure different various brain functions.
But it improved this in these autistic individuals by like 34%.
The same was done in a pilot study for people with schizophrenia where it improved their symptoms.
So, and this is like pretty, the results were so powerful that, you know, this was done at Johns Hopkins.
The study is now being repeated, you know, because it's like, this is what is going on here.
Like, how is this affecting the brain?
And I think, you know, if you look at a lot of the animal studies, there's lots and lots of animal studies that have been done, which are, you know, people aren't quite as convinced because it's like, well, how much of this relates to humans, but it's been shown to Be as effective as the antidepressant Prozac in alleviating depression in mice.
And they do all these battery of tests where they stress the mice out and make them depressed and social defeat.
And they hang them by their tail.
It's actually just kind of gnarly.
And then there's a bunch of tests they do to see if they're depressed.
You give them, you know, your placebo, you give them Prozac, or you give them the broccoli sprout extract, and it performed just as well.
So it helps with depression.
It's been shown to help with neurodegenerative diseases, all sorts of things.
But the point is, I think that the reason it's actually affecting all these brain functions, and why even, you know, someone like me may notice a small effect from brain Eating them is because it has very profound effect on inflammation.
And that is because, as I mentioned, it switches on one of those switches that was meant to be switched on, a pathway called NRF2 in our body that controls over 200 genes.
And sulforaphane is the most potent, naturally occurring compound that we've discovered yet that activates this pathway.
So it's no other plant compound, no other naturally occurring plant compound Can activate this pathway as potent as sulforaphane.
And NRF2 is, I mean, it's been shown in multiple studies to be involved in delaying aging.
And a lot of that happens through lowering tons of different, you know, inflammatory genes, activating anti-inflammatory genes, lowering oxidative stress, all these glutathione-related enzymes.
It helps with detoxifying compounds that we're exposed to on a daily basis, like Carcinogens and things.
So I think that we're having a low level of this like inflammation stuff that we're constantly being exposed to and it affects the brain.
So if you get a dose of this, you may notice a small effect.
Now with someone that has autism or schizophrenia, inflammation and oxidative stress have been shown in previous studies, multiple previous studies to To play a role in the etiology of those diseases.
So I think that's how it may be affecting the brain.
But it's not just affecting the brain.
And probably one of the most well-known functions of sulforaphane is that it's a very powerful cancer-preventative compound.
So it's been shown to prevent cancer.
For example, men that had prostate cancer, when they were given 60 milligrams of sulforaphane, A day for, I think it was like a month.
I don't remember exactly how long.
But it lowered, it slowed the doubling rate of a tumor biomarker called prostate-specific antigen, PSA, which is what is usually measured when men have prostate cancer.
You measure the progression of it because it has a doubling rate.
It doubles every so often.
But it slowed that doubling rate by 86%, which is pretty profound.
Of course, there's lots and lots of associative studies that have shown cruciferous vegetables, you know, If you eat more of them, you have lower risk of bladder, ovarian, prostate, kidney, just all sorts of cancers.
But the clinical trials, I think, are what's really telling because you're giving someone this compound and it's lowering a tumor progression marker by 86%.
There's another study which is really interesting also, and this is kind of like...
It really got me interested.
I'm not sure if other people are interested in it.
But we're exposed to compounds from air pollution.
So living in Los Angeles, for example, is probably definitely one of the places that you're going to be more exposed to some of these airborne carcinogens.
So benzene is one of them, aquiline.
These things are in the air.
We're breathing them in.
To some degree, we have benzene in our system.
And it is a carcinogen.
It's been shown to Cause cancer specifically linked to leukemias.
Smokers get a ton of it because it's in cigarettes.
So cigarette smokers are like really loaded up with benzene.
But there was a study where people were given like 40 milligrams of the sulforaphane in the form of a broccoli sprout drink a day for like a week.
And starting on day one of drinking this drink, They excreted 61% of the benzene on day one.
61% of benzene was just coming out of their urine, as you measure in metabolites.
And I was like, wow, that is amazing.
Getting rid of some of that stuff, because I definitely want to get rid of the benzene and all that stuff that I'm being exposed to.
So that really got my attention too, because it was just so significant and a profound effect just after one day.
Um, so that, that was another sort of thing that got me really into it.
And then the aging stuff where, you know, it's been shown.
Um, so inflammation has been identified as a key ager of aging.
Taking sulforaphane has been shown to lower inflammatory markers in people, um, by like 20% C-reactive protein, other inflammatory markers.
Of course, there's like dozens of studies in animals that have been done, but I'm sort of, I think the human studies are more interesting to talk about.
So definitely more relevant.
And then also it's been shown to affect cardiovascular health because of the inflammation, I think.
So type 2 diabetics that were given some dose, I think it was something around 40 milligrams as well of sulforaphane, they were given this daily and for a month, for four weeks, and it lowered their triglycerides by 20%.
It lowered their atherogenic index, which is like measuring, you know, The dangerous type of LDL, small dense LDLs, or glycerides, looking at all these things, it lowered that by 50%.
Improved their blood sugar by almost 20%.
I'm trying to get my mom on this.
My mom, she definitely has got high triglycerides.
I'm really convinced, and then there's been studies in animals that's just shown that it delays aging.
I think it's one of those things, you get it in kale, and I think that I've been getting a good dose of it.
I've been drinking kale smoothies pretty regularly since probably like 2010. Yeah, probably about six or seven years.
And I do feel like it's like helped...
I think that I've found something to take it to another level where I think that I'm pretty convinced that if I continue taking the sulforaphane, I think it will absolutely affect the way I age.
And I think it will affect my brain aging as well.
I mean, it's been shown, at least in animal studies, to affect brain aging, traumatic brain injury.
I mean, if you administer it after traumatic brain injury, it improves outcome It improves brain swelling and all that by 50%.
Just all sorts of nons.
I have a video.
I did a 45-minute video where I'm literally just talking about this for 45 minutes.
Is it on YouTube?
It's on YouTube, yeah.
This research took many months.
It's a 16-page article I wrote.
And I hope to get published.
I think I'm going to submit it for publication because it's just it was a lot of work.
And I haven't seen anything in the literature as comprehensive covering every base.
Like I just I tried to cover everything that was like a good study, you know, that was important.
And so so and then I flew out to Johns Hopkins recently, I was invited to give a talk there.
And I met, it just so happens, the guy who discovered that, first of all, the guy who discovered sulforaphane is there, but he's much older.
I met with someone who trained with him, who discovered that broccoli sprouts are the best source of sulforaphane.
So he made that discovery back in the 90s.
And I interviewed him and he just went on and on and on and talked about sulforaphane, like in addition to like what I had already talked about on one of the videos I did.
And he actually had some really interesting stuff to talk about in terms of like, you know, you, so in order to get the sulforaphane, you have to, the plant has to be crushed or chopped.
And that's because it has an enzyme in it called myrosinase.
And myrosinase is heat sensitive.
So when you steam your broccoli, when you boil your kale, when you saute your kale, any of that stuff, unfortunately, you're inactivating myrostanase.
And so you're not getting as much sulforaphane.
You're getting dramatically less, almost non-existent.
The precursor, glucoraphanin, is still in that plant.
So you're getting the precursor.
And we do have some bacteria, some types of bifidobacteria in our gut that contain the myrosinase enzyme, highly variable from individual to individual.
So you can convert some of that to sulforaphane.
But what was interesting that he mentioned is you can actually sprinkle mustard powder, like mustard powder, You buy after you saute your kale or after you steam your vegetables or...
If you cook, if you apply heat to any of your cruciferous vegetables afterwards, you put the mustard powder on, it has active myrosinase in it and it's pretty...
The myrosinase in the mustard seed is more heat-stable.
So you can actually convert your precursor into the sulforaphane by adding the mustard powder.
And I was like, that is a really great thing to know.
Because now I'm like...
Because I do cook a lot of...
I saute kale all the time.
I steam my broccoli, put some butter and salt and pepper.
Previously, we used to do these hemp bags where you put the seeds in the bag and you add some water.
You basically just keep adding water to them and let it drip and they sprout within four days.
Then we started doing this jar method where now we have mason jars with a lid on top that has little holes that are big enough for water to come out, obviously, but not for the seeds to come out.
And so, you know, you get these jars and you add water, let it sit for like six hours and then dump it out.
And then you just, after that, you continually just add the water and dump it out and add the water and dump it out and kind of leave it tilted so that the water isn't just like, you don't want, you know, the water just sitting in there so that it's like...
And it really just takes like four days and then you have sprouts.
The only thing is you do have to be clean.
If your counter's all dirty and your hands are dirty and all the dishware you're using is dirty, then you're probably going to contaminate them.
You have to be a little fastidious about the way you sprout these things.
But I think once you're aware of that, then it's okay.
The other thing is, and this is something that I'm going to talk to the expert.
His name's Dr. Jed Fahey.
I recently interviewed him on my podcast.
He mentioned something to me that caught my interest.
He said the seed itself, the broccoli seed itself, has the enzyme, it has the precursor to sulforaphane, and if you If you break or crush the seed, or chew the seed, then you're actually getting sulforaphane.
So you can actually crush up the seed in a coffee grinder or something, and take a shot of it.
But the thing is, is there's been no research doing this method.
So all these studies that I just talked about in humans, those were all done from broccoli sprout powder extract, from the sprouts.
And people that were given prostaphane, the bioavailability of the sulfur-urphane was 70%.
So 70% of it ended up like in their bloodstream.
There's another supplement called Avmacol.
Avamacol has glucoraphanin plus myrosinase in it.
So it doesn't have the sulforaphane.
It has the two compounds that can form sulforaphane, but it has them together.
That has been tested and that was about 40% bioavailability.
So about 40% of it was you were actually getting sulforaphane 40% of the time.
And that was also tested.
There's another supplement and that is available in the U.S. There's another supplement By Thorne, called Crucera, I think.
And Crucera only has the precursor, no enzyme.
So you're totally relying on your gut bacteria.
And some people, it's very variable.
So that only had like a 10% bioavailability.
Other than that, those are the three supplements that he really could...
And this is a study he just published recently that he got behind.
I asked him about a few others because I'd actually been taking...
There's another one called Broccomax by Jaro.
And he kind of was like...
I asked him about it and he was kind of like...
It has some of what it says in there, but not all, you know, and the problem is, is that these supplements, I mean, there's a lot of a lot of the times like he was telling me like, geez, like seven out of 10 times these supplements had like cloverleaf in them, when they're supposed to have like, the cruciferous, you know, precursor glucoraphanin.
So it's just like, it's kind of disgusting, how supplement companies How supplement companies are totally just putting all this cloverleaf and whatever.
And there was a study that came out a couple years ago on this.
75% of all these herbal echinacea, all these compounds that are marketed for whatever, don't actually even contain echinacea or whatever they say they contain.
You can get just – I mean we had an issue with that when we first started making AlphaBrain where we would get stuff tested.
We'd get batches tested and the batches of different individual ingredients would have stuff in it that they weren't supposed to have in it just because they're mixing it all up in the same bins.
You don't have to have extra cash to buy all these expensive supplements, because all the ones I just mentioned that actually are effective and have what they say, they're not cheap.
The other question that I wanted to have to talk to you about was when you were saying schizophrenia and how sulforaphane can prevent or somehow mitigate the effects of schizophrenia, do you think that there's a possible correlation between a lot of these mental health diseases and a lack of proper nutrition?
And I know several people that are on them or have taken them or, you know, whatever.
But the story behind that is kind of interesting because...
Back in the early 70s, a lot of these clinical trials were being done on antidepressants with people that had depression.
And at that time, people that had depression that were involved in these trials were people that were severely depressed and hospitalized.
So they were so depressed that they had been hospitalized for depression.
I don't know many people that have been hospitalized for depression nowadays.
So they were hospitalized for depression.
And then they were given either a placebo or antidepressant.
And in multiple trials, you know, FDA had reviewed these trials.
70% of the time, the antidepressant...
So the antidepressant worked in 70% of the patients compared to 30% of the patients where placebo worked, right?
70% is pretty good if you're comparing that to 30% placebo.
It's like, well, that's efficacious.
That seems to work, right?
What then happened after those trials were done, starting in the 70s and like 80s, is that the clinical diagnostic manual, it's called the DSM, at that time it was the DSM-2, they changed all their diagnosis, you know, markers and symptoms for depression, and they expanded it a great, great deal.
And they then called depression major depressive disorder.
So it became this sort of like broader, you know, disease, quote unquote, where it was like, it's not just these people that are severely hospitalized, it's people that are feeling depressed and anxious and sad or what, you know, it's just basically, you're getting a bigger group of people, which is probably a great opportunity for a pharmaceutical company.
But then when clinical trials were repeated on this new population of people, so these are clinical trials that were done from like the 80s all the way up until like the 2000, year 2000.
When those were reviewed by the FDA, what was found was quite shocking.
And that was that only 40% of people were now responding to like antidepressants, SSRIs, other, you know, norepinephrine, reuptake inhibitors, whatever the standard of care is compared to 30% placebo.
So So now you're talking about antidepressants performing only 10% better than placebo.
It's like, okay.
So clearly, it's not that the antidepressants don't ever work.
It's just that we are now overprescribing them to people that, you know, have this major depressive disorder.
And they're not working on people that weren't, you know, the initial group of people that were, like, severely depressed and hospitalized.
You know, so it's like, okay, that's a big problem.
Because they're, I mean, they're prescribed like, I mean, I just...
Like, I can't even believe it.
You know, I just have so many personal stories, people I know, you know, that have gone, you know, going through some crisis, some personal...
All of a sudden they're giving you some crazy drug and they change the personality of the person and I'm just like, please get off of this.
Yeah.
And like I said, it's not like they don't ever work.
It's just that I think once the clinical diagnostic book changed the whole procedure for diagnosing depression and became a major depressive disorder, All of a sudden you're getting people that are now having just whatever stressful event in their life that's making them a little depressed at the time, which everyone's probably experienced, are now being given this antidepressant when they don't really need it.
And there are effects that are not good with taking some of these antidepressants.
There's a lot of experimentation going on with it.
I had a friend of mine who had gone to several doctors, and they had prescribed a bunch of different things to him, and he was severely depressed, and eventually they gave up.
And he had to find a much better doctor that his care, whatever his insurance package, would not pay for.
And once he found that doctor, then the doctor was just more knowledgeable about what potential Different ones.
I mean, I don't know how many different ones there are, but they got him on something that actually worked.
He's off it now.
It took him a while, and then, you know, he eventually got happy.
And then, oddly enough, which is an interesting thing, people always want to connect depression.
They want to say depression is a disease.
And they want to say it almost like, oh, you got herpes.
You know what I mean?
It's like, well, you've got depression.
Oh, well, you need medicine.
And for him, one of the big factors in fixing everything was his own success, his own personal success, and then he became more happy, and then his The medication helped.
He became more successful.
And then as he became eventually really successful, he started to experience a better quality of life.
He was happier.
He was more confident.
And then he slowly weaned himself off.
And now he has no need for them.
To me, that is so fascinating.
So we're not talking about necessarily a disease.
He does not have cancer.
It's not like they cured him of a disease.
It was a blanket that was keeping him warm.
It was something that was allowing him to bridge the gap between an unhealthy mental state and a healthy mental state.
But a lot of that health had to do with his own life.
He still eats like shit.
I mean, he's not the healthiest guy.
He eats a lot of fucking candy.
But he's really healthy now, as far as his mind.
He's very happy.
He's not lying.
He's not faking it.
So to me, it's always...
I've talked to friends that have had really good results with antidepressants.
So I think there are some dark moments in people's lives where that can kind of get them out of that.
But then part of me doesn't buy that that's the way to go.
Because part of me is like, okay, well, did you exercise?
No.
Did you take really healthy foods?
No.
Did you clean your life up?
No.
What happened here?
And one of the things that A lot of these antidepressants do, is they make you not feel bad about stuff.
Like, about anything.
Like, I had a friend who was on Zoloft, and she said, like, she took it for a year.
And she's like, I kind of lost a year of my life.
Like, I didn't give a fuck about anything during that year.
You know, I honestly, I don't think we actually know really why that is.
But what we do know is that there are, I mean, there are different, you know, we are different people and I've got different genes that are regulating how much serotonin I'm making, how much dopamine I'm making, how much...
I'm metabolizing it, how quickly I'm metabolizing it, than you and other people.
And this absolutely does affect how some of these drugs are, when they're taken, what their biological effect is.
I don't know.
There's definitely a genetic variation that affects just the way our neurotransmitters are being fired away and the way they're I'm
I was talking about it actually playing a causal role.
I mean, there have actually been studies where normal healthy people are injected with either a placebo, which is saline water, you know, salt water, or they're injected with something that our gut produces called endotoxin.
Our gut produces it when our immune cells in our gut attack patients.
The bacteria in our gut because endotoxin is actually a component of the bacterial cell membrane and that is released upon inflammation.
So when you're eating a terrible diet, lots of refined sugar, and that's actually been shown.
You release endotoxin and it causes inflammatory response.
So when people are injected with endotoxin or they're injected with pro-inflammatory cytokines like interferon gamma, which we also make in our body when we're inflamed, normal healthy people start to experience feelings of depression.
They start to feel depressed, anxious, social withdrawal.
People with the placebo did not experience that.
Also, they had elevated levels of other inflammatory biomarkers in their blood.
So it really like, and this is just, this is causal.
I mean, we're talking about injecting inflammation, all of a sudden they're experiencing these like depressive symptoms.
It was actually people that were then given one of the omega-3 fatty acids, EPA. They're given actually a pretty high dose of it.
I think it was close to like two grams or something, completely alleviated any of those symptoms.
So those people that were getting the inflammatory cytokine or the endotoxin and the EPA did not experience those symptoms.
So it was really like inflammation, you know, driven.
These symptoms that were not experienced in the placebo.
And there's been multiple studies showing this.
It's not just one study, there's multiple studies.
Multiple studies, again, this is kind of like a new method people are using to explore how inflammation affects depression.
It also has been shown the same sort of scenario where there's a placebo and they're injecting an inflammatory cytokine.
Dopamine levels lower in the brains of people that were injected with the pro-inflammatory cytokine, but not the saline water.
And also the reward pathway in the brain is also decreased.
So, you know, again, like I was mentioning, you're not that excitable.
You know, it's just kind of like...
And that did not happen in the placebo group.
So this was not just an effect of being shot up with something, you know.
So...
When scientists have looked at some of the mechanisms and explored, well, how is it that inflammation is affecting dopamine in the brain?
How is it that it's affecting people's mood?
It's thought now there's a variety of mechanisms.
One is that these inflammatory cytokines, they actually cross the blood-brain barrier.
They get into the brain and they disrupt dopamine.
Dopamine release.
They disrupt serotonin release.
They disrupt norepinephrine release.
You know, they're disrupting these neurotransmitters being released.
The other thing is that there's been recently discovered that the lymphatic system is actually directly connected to the brain through the meninges.
I mean, it was previously thought that that was like cut off.
The brain was protected from the lymphatic system.
But it turns out we were wrong.
You know, everything that we learned in textbooks for years and years in our science classes was not accurate.
Actually, our lymphatic system is connected.
And what that means is that our immune system, the chemicals, the inflammatory cytokines we're producing from our immune cells are getting into the brain and disrupting neurotransmitter release and other things.
There's obviously a really strong connection to inflammation and depression that's shown to be causal.
But when you think about it, it's like, well, what causes inflammation?
Okay, well, we can talk about the sugar stuff because that's been shown.
Eating a terrible diet does.
But the other thing that causes it, and it's what you mentioned, that is a stressful event in someone's life.
An emotional event, a breakup, a tragedy, work-related stress, social anxiety, whatever it is...
Anything that causes you to release cortisol, stress hormones, believe it or not, those things actually affect inflammation in your gut.
So it's like a two-way street here.
I think that previously you and I have talked about in other podcasts, like how gut microbiome bacteria...
You know, you can take microbiome bacteria from an anxious mouse and transplant it into a non-anxious mouse and make it anxious and vice versa, right?
So there's like some sort of gut-brain axis through something called the vagal nerve.
Well, it goes both ways.
You can go from the brain down to the gut.
So it's been shown that, like, It's a corticoreleasing hormone, which is a stress hormone.
Through the vagal nerve, when you release it, it goes into the gut.
It activates immune cells, which then activate other proteins in the gut that chew up.
They're called proteases.
They chew up the gut barrier.
And then you start to release more inflammatory cells, which then get in contact with bacteria, more inflammation, and then it goes back.
It's like this feedback loop.
So I think that's how stress also, part of the mechanism, how a stressful event, any sort of breakup or tragedy, those sorts of things, also cause inflammation.
They cause inflammation.
In fact, this is totally off topic, but that's one reason why people should never go and get blood work done a day or two after some kind of traumatic event.
And when you discuss this and when you lay all these facts out, it makes it seem so irresponsible that 10% of the people are on this drug...
11%.
11%, excuse me, are on this drug or whatever, a category of these drugs.
Instead of dealing with it...
I mean, it seems like...
We're in a weird place when it comes to the holistic treatment of the human body.
We're in a very weird place where we have all of this information now, but it doesn't seem like it's being applied when it comes to the average person who's suffering.
The average person who's dealing with a disease or depression, which I guess you could call a disease.
And it just seems so insane that with all we know, that we're treating it only with this chemical pathway.
We're only treating it with a pill, this pharmacological solution to this, which just seems so limited.
One is that you have psychiatrists and they're trained a certain way and people, when their patients come in, they expect that they're going to come...
They come in because they want a pill most of the time.
They do.
They come in because they don't want to deal with it and they want a pill.
And so that's kind of a problem because people need to understand that these pills are not the magic bullet.
I think I would love if there was some way to get a physician, usually they're psychiatrists that people go to for these sorts of problems, to push someone to say, you have to go run.
You're going to run six miles a week.
You're going to do that.
That is going to help you.
In fact, it's been shown.
It's been shown in multiple studies that exercise helps improve depression.
And one of the ways it does it, very interestingly, is that aerobic exercise specifically has been shown that whole serotonin pathway.
We're talking about inflammation inhibiting release of serotonin.
Well, guess what?
Inflammation affects serotonin in another way.
The precursor to serotonin and tryptophan, when you have inflammation, so like I said, an emotional event causes inflammation.
It doesn't have to be your sugar diet, okay?
Inflammation can be caused by your cortisol release.
When you have that inflammation...
Your body thinks that it needs to fight off something, but that's what it thinks.
It's like, okay, this, I'm sick.
I've got a foreign invader.
I need to kill it.
And so the tryptophan, which usually is being transported in the brain to make serotonin, which plays a role in how you feel.
It plays a role in lots of brain functions.
Then gets diverted into another pathway because your body's like, wait a minute, I don't need to feel good.
I need to survive.
I need to live.
So the tryptophan gets converted into this whole other pathway called kynurinine, which helps with basically immune cells needed to, different immune cells needed to make different types of immune cells.
So your body's like, okay, the tryptophan is going to this other pathway.
I need more immune cells, blah, blah, blah.
But the problem is that the kynurenine then gets converted into...
So now what you have is you're depleting your brain of serotonin.
Boom.
Right there.
Right?
That's the first thing.
So if you're not sick, and if you have chronic inflammation, you're chronically stressed, you're chronically eating a terrible diet, then you are going to constantly be diverting the serotonin, you know, the tryptophan, into this other pathway.
You're going to be depleting your brain of serotonin.
So that's one thing.
This is a two-fold problem.
Then that whole kynurenine thing gets converted into something called quinolytic acid, which actually crosses over the blood-brain barrier, becomes a neurotoxin, and also has been shown to cause depression.
So not only are you not getting serotonin, you're getting this gnarly shit in your brain that's not supposed to be there.
Exercise, it's been shown, specifically aerobic exercise, causes your muscle to soak up the kynurinine, actually another precursor to it, so that it can't form quinolytic acid.
So it doesn't form the neurotoxin part.
But exercise also makes tryptophan go into your brain.
You know, it alleviates some of the competition with branched-chain amino acids like leucine and isoleucine.
So that's another way.
It's doing a million things.
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor, we talked about at the beginning of the podcast.
That also plays a role in depression, helping prevent depression.
So neurogenesis, all that stuff that helps.
Growing new brain cells, making new connections, helps.
It seems like there could be some sort of a holistic approach like a clinic that looks at all of these factors, looks at all these factors and prescribes, instead of just prescribing a pill, prescribes a very specific diet and exercise routine and maybe even meditation, maybe even something that practices or enhances mindfulness or promotes mindfulness.
Something that allows you to manage the way you're viewing and taking in scenarios and scenes and events in your life and then processing them in a more healthy manner.
It seems like all these things would be as effective or maybe more effective than just a pill.
I think that the more, there's a lot of scientists that are studying this now.
I mean, it's becoming very common to look in the scientific literature and see, you know, scientists researching inflammation and the role of inflammation and depression and the role of exercise and helping treat it and the role of other, you I think the
diet, lifestyle, meditation, exercise, if we could just...
Get that into the clinical world and if people were motivated enough to realize this will really help them.
They would so much rather go to a doctor and get a pill.
It's so strange.
Well, it's this fear of discomfort.
People have this extreme feeling in their mind when it comes to their associations with exercise.
They want to avoid discomfort.
They feel like Any type of exercise is just like something to be avoided.
That's not for me.
Fuck that.
I don't want to sweat.
I don't want to strain.
And a lot of times this association that they have is about the beginnings of getting in shape.
It's not about once you're actually fit.
Because once you're actually fit, exercise is something you look forward to.
It's an alleviation of stress.
It feels great.
Like, if I can't get a workout in, I look at my schedule, I go, ah, shit, I don't have any time for a workout.
Which means I'm not gonna get that good feeling.
And so instead of looking at it like, oh, I've gotta go grunt and sweat, I'm thinking I'm not gonna feel good.
I'm not gonna feel relaxed.
I'm not gonna feel carefree.
And I'm not gonna feel even appreciative, like my appreciation of things.
It gets enhanced greatly after exercise.
I just feel better.
I feel like I can take things in for what they are rather than whatever sensory data that I'm getting from any event is just one more distraction that gets in my way.
That's a lot of times how I look at things if I'm overstressed or if I'm working too much.
Because that's exactly like at least what's been shown from like neuroimaging studies is that exercise does.
What you're talking about is the executive function.
You're talking about feeling good without that sensory stuff, which is the amygdala.
It's the emotional center.
That's been shown to be decreased in activity after exercise, whereas the executive function is increased.
So it's exactly in the right direction, right?
So you're able to logically think about this more and you feel good and it's like you're not that sensory response, that gut anxiety.
You don't feel it as much.
That part of your brain is actually quieter after exercise.
Meditation does a similar thing.
But if there was just a way...
To get this knowledge for people to understand, people that are averse to exercising.
If there was just some way, and I'm really trying to find a way because there are many people that I care about in my life that are that way and that feel depressed and are on some sort of antidepressant, which doesn't really work for them still.
I'm having this conversation with you and you get it because you experience it.
You exercise.
You eat healthy.
You experience these things.
But for someone that's never experienced it, How do you communicate it to them?
It's not going to be involved with any physical pain or any stress or any exhaustion.
There's not that feeling that you get when you're really tired.
The feeling that you get, for me, is particularly difficult doing boring stuff, like an elliptical machine.
An elliptical machine, to me, It's a great workout.
It's awesome if I'm at a gym.
Because if I go to a gym, like at a hotel, and they have some bullshit weights, but they have an elliptical machine, I go, okay, if this thing has a high setting, I can get a real workout in this.
But those times when you're tired and you don't want to do it, they're so fucking boring.
It's just...
You'd have to listen to something.
You have to watch something.
Other stimuli has to come in in order to get you pumped up.
But I know this because I've done it a thousand times.
For someone who hasn't done it a thousand times, they get to that point like, fuck this.
I'm out of here.
Oh my God.
Let me get a donut.
Give me a coffee.
I'm gonna go outside and smoke a cigarette.
I feel better, you know, and it's so hard to get past that because we have all these connections in our mind when it comes to comfort Comfort and stress comfort and like our bodies for whatever reason Most people their associations are to avoid anything that's uncomfortable,
but it's so illogical because when you look at Comfort and you look at success and progress and then eventual the feelings of Accomplishment and of getting past certain hurdles and in terms of like how you feel about life A lot of those are connected to discomfort like discomfort is your friend.
It really is like discomfort and Not being happy and content with certain situations in life or certain feelings in life.
They're massive Massive motivators and they're amazing at facilitating change and yet our instinct is to avoid those and just sit on the couch and watch some fucking reality show about dudes who make moonshine with our jaw open.
It's too much of that stimuli where you don't have to do anything and you can still get yeah get that sensory information you know the need to act like to need to actually go out there and act is is so strong it's such a it's such an important thing but yet we resist it many people i know you don't i don't but so many people do i but i feel the thing you know i don't i don't allow it to work but i feel that fuck this i don't want to work out i feel I feel it all the time, almost every time before I work out.
I have at least an inclination to blow it off.
I don't ever embrace it, but it's there.
It's there with everybody.
No one is completely 100% healthy and without any resistance.
You know, we're looking at how it's important to push past that uncomfortableness, whether it's physical or mental, and that's linked to being a superager.
But what if it's just like...
The ability to make yourself do that is important, too, right?
It's not just the act that you're doing.
It's not just the strenuous exercise, which is obviously good.
We know that it's good from science.
But what if it's just being able to, like, push yourself?
Like, maybe some people don't have that ability for whatever reason or they just...
Haven't tapped into it enough because they haven't really experienced it.
I think it's a learned thing, you know, because if I take time off, like I got sick recently and I couldn't work out for like a week or, you know, six days or so.
And the act of getting back into the gym, I think in a lot of ways we rely on momentum.
We rely on the momentum of past experiences where you're just conditioned to do that.
It's one of the things that you do.
For me at least, when I get really disciplined and I get really consistent with my workouts, one of the things that I feel, I almost feel momentum.
I feel like there's a push behind me.
After I get out of the gym, I have a really good workout.
I'm like, yeah, now I'm doing it.
I'm doing it all the time now and I'm looking forward to the next time.
It makes that resistance much weaker and it makes my motivation and my discipline much stronger.
I think a lot of it is based on just the consistency You know, it's one of the things that I talked about recently on the podcast I said, you know, like blowing something off It's not just not good like blowing off an exercise that you planned is not just bad for you physically It's also bad mentally because then that option is now available the option to fuck off is available and And you did it before,
and you're probably going to do it again, and you'll get mediocre results, not just in that aspect of your life, but maybe in all aspects of your life.
Because I think that option to fuck off when you embrace it, that is a pathway that you might choose when it comes to dealing with conflict in your personal life, dealing with business decisions.
Dealing with career decisions, like an uncomfortable decision that you might be faced with.
Maybe you need to make a change as far as what your pathway is in life, but you don't do it.
Instead, you fuck off.
And the inclination to fuck off, I think, that gathers momentum as well.
The inclination to be disciplined...
That comes with momentum, too.
And I think both things.
Like, you take a path.
The path of the healthy person or the path of the fuck-off.
Like, both of them are available in whichever path you embrace.
I think it's very bad to lie, even if it's something that is really benign, like what they call a little tiny white leg.
You look great!
Because then you start making these neural connections in your brain, and you start to get used to doing it, like you were saying.
And I think that it just kind of dawned on me as you were saying this, that That with the motivation and the momentum you were talking about, I think that's the same way.
I think you're building these neural pathways, these motivation pathways, and that's really important for that momentum to do it again and again.
There was some studies, a few of them, that have been done where you can take a person and do that direct transcranial stimulation, which I don't know much about, but I remember these studies, and stimulate a certain part of the brain that's involved in motivation, and you can motivate them to go to the gym.
So that's in one of those electrodes that they put on a specific area of the outside of your head, and then it's like a little 9-volt battery is attached to it, and it just zaps you a little bit?
It zaps you a little bit and activates a certain brain region.
And that brain region it's activating, specifically with this study I was talking about, actually there's a couple of them, were involved in motivation.
And that's probably, with you and I, we already have those pathways activated because we're constantly Forcing ourself to go.
I mean, I feel the same way.
There are times I'm like, God, I don't want to go for a run.
So it's not only like you're feeling great from all the neural mechanisms that are being activated and all the biochemistry that's going on, but you have accomplished something.
You did.
You pushed past something you didn't want to do, and you feel good about doing that.
After magnetic stimulation therapy Wilmington woman finds motivation and energy Yeah, there's a radio lab about this a radio lab podcast is called nine volt nirvana and They're pretty good.
I love radio lab and it actually deals with it's the first story the opening story is amazing because it deals with this woman who went to this like sniper training simulation video and video thing that they do where they they put you in front they give you like a fake gun and they put you in front of a video screen and a scenario plays out and then the scenario there's like a terrorist attack you have to take out the bad guys and they did it with her and she was it's 20 minutes long and she was terrible like she fucked
it all up it was just like a disaster like she didn't respond correctly then They put these electrodes.
What would you exactly call them?
One of those things?
Electrodes.
It's electrodes.
So they put these on her brain or on the outside of her head in very specific areas and stimulated it and then recreated it.
And in the recreation, she was 100% effective.
She killed all the bad guys and she went through this 20 minute thing and when it was over, when they told her that it was over, she thought they were fucking with her because she thought it was only two minutes.
Just because, I mean, it's like, can you, like, program someone to do something?
There's another study that was published, like, two years ago.
Same thing, trans...
I'm so not an expert on any of this, but I just remember this study because it was trying to investigate what part of the brain's fault in consciousness, right?
And so the study was designed in such a way where she was reading a book and then they zapped her in a certain part of the brain and she stopped reading the book, this woman, And like, just looked at them like a zombie, like no, nothing, no talk, no, and then they zapped her again.
And she started, she picked up right where she left off, had no recollection at all of doing that.
So this was like, you know, trying to figure out if this part of the brain is involved in consciousness.
Because one of the things about this transcranial direct stimulation radio lab podcast was that they talked about how many people are out there just fucking experimenting, where there's a whole community online where people are talking about experimenting with the voltages and experimenting with the placement.
It's amazing because there's apparently this gigantic community of it.
Hold on a second.
Go back up there and make that larger again.
The last couple years, TDCS, direct cranial stimulation, has been all over the news.
Researchers claim that juicing the brain with just 2 milliamps, think 9-volt battery, can help with everything from learning languages to quitting smoking to overcoming depression.
And so they brought in a neuroscientist, Michael Wysand, at Wright State Research Institute into the studio to tell them how it works.
That's the weirdest thing about people and one of the weirdest things about people is how variable we are depending upon what we put inside of us.
And we don't think of it that way most of the time.
We think of ourselves as ourselves.
You know, I'm sure you think of yourself as Rhonda Patrick.
But Rhonda Patrick relies on a bunch of fucking chemicals to be Rhonda Patrick, right?
I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on in there.
It's not just, it's not this one, like, this is a laptop.
You know, I'm not adding shit to this thing.
Like, I could put programs in it and stuff, but I mean, this is the, everything in there is kind of worked out.
You know, there's a processor, there's a motherboard, it's all the, all this junk is in place, and the electricity plugs into the back, and it's not really variable.
You know, the human body is so fucking variable and pliable and malleable.
There's so many different things that you can do to make yourself better.
I got this conversation with a friend of mine who's not a physical fitness guy and he's kind of a nihilist and nihilist, I guess you would say.
And he's, you know, he's a little bit of a curmudgeon and he's like, yeah, what's the point?
You know, like, really, what is the point?
You're always doing all those martial arts and exercise.
I go, okay.
If I could give you a pill, and that pill would turn you essentially into a super person.
Like, you can do shit that you can't do now.
You could lift weights you can't lift.
You could beat people up.
You could do physical fitness feats that, you know, right now are totally insurmountable and outside the realm of possibility.
Would you take that pill?
So simple.
And he goes, no, I wouldn't.
I go, you wouldn't.
Okay.
If I could give you a pill that would prevent you from being a decaying old man, and you could stay in the state you are right now, would you take that?
He's like, yeah, I probably would take that.
I go, well, that's how it feels like to me, motherfucker.
That's how it feels to me.
You're a decaying old man.
I think he's a year older than me.
But he looks like he's 50 years older than me.
I mean, his body's all humped.
He's got a little punch.
He doesn't have any muscle tone.
And I'm like, dude, all of that is just physical fitness.
You're not broken.
There's nothing wrong with you.
But if you got on a steady yoga routine and started doing some resistance training and started maybe swimming or something like that, a year from now, you would have a completely different body.
Talking to me, I'm like, I've done it my whole life.
I can do stuff that you don't think is possible.
To me, it's like two times a week.
Three times a week I do that stuff.
Your body is like a race car that you can juice up yourself.
You can add the fat tires.
You can add the improved suspension.
You can beef up the horsepower in the engine.
You can do all that yourself.
Or you can just choose to have this shitty body that's always falling apart on you.
I mean, what you and I are both choosing to do is, you know, we're both kind of obsessed with nutrition and aging and being, you know, as optimal as we can in terms of our health.
But ultimately, what we are doing is delaying the aging process by switching on all these switches and like, you know, exercise and getting all the micronutrients and avoiding the refined sugar, which is causing inflammation and all that stuff.
And it's really...
Because that stuff is part of the aging process and it accelerates the aging process.
I don't think people that...
Don't do this stuff.
Realize that.
It's not just about looking good.
It's about aging.
It's about being older and being fit and being mentally sharp and not being degenerate and decrepit.
I think intelligent people, like my friend, he is intelligent, and I think he connects vanity with those things.
And he thinks vanity is for fools.
And he thinks it's a trait that he finds reprehensible.
He just doesn't like it.
He sees people that are...
You know, whatever.
Maybe it's flashy clothes.
Maybe it's, you know, the way they wear their hair.
Whatever it is that he thinks is preposterous.
He connects that with physical fitness.
I'm like, man, but it's your vehicle.
It's like how you get through this life and it's how you think.
It's so many different things that are all connected into one superorganism, which is the life that you're living.
It's, you know...
I think everybody knows now, I mean, it's not something we grew up knowing, but everybody knows now about your gut biome.
This is a really huge factor in how you exist as an organism.
Or as, maybe even an organism is the wrong word, because we're essentially ecosystems.
You know, and we're in charge.
This weird consciousness that has all this resistance and has all this inclination towards comfort and fucking off and blowing things off is what is in charge of making all these things happen that keep this ecosystem healthy.
It's almost like if earth itself had like a shitty manager, you know If like there was a manager of our a natural manager of earth that was like oh God who cares if it rains?
Oh God, you know like let's let you know.
I'm gonna stop growing things.
I don't give a shit anymore It's all stupid anyway.
I mean, it's literally like the the just blow it up.
You see, that is the perspective a lot of people take with aging, where it's like, well, you're going to die, you're going to age, you can't stop aging.
And it's like, yes, you're right, but that's not the point.
The point is to age better.
Like, that's the point.
The point is to increase your health span.
And that is, we know, is possible.
There's some of these, like, centenarians and supercentenarians I've seen that are, like, over 100 years old, and they're, like, riding bikes and racing.
And they're experiencing a quality of life that these other people that don't exercise feel, they physically feel their own body diminishing, and they just feel it's inevitable.
It is what it is.
You're wasting your time.
You're out there running around.
But we're not, because this experience right now, it's not like, no one's under the illusion that you're going to live forever.
You are enhancing the experience that you're currently involved in right now.
And you are alive.
You are alive.
You do experience this life.
But do you experience this life optimally?
Is it as enjoyable as it can be?
And we all know that there's a spectrum for that enjoyability.
We've all had times in our life where it's not been so great.
And then times in our life where everything came together like, what a fucking great day!
Woo!
Make more of those.
You can make more of those.
And then the whole thing's better.
And I think when that whole thing is better, it affects everybody you touch, everybody that's around you, everybody you come in contact with, and that in turn, I mean, it sounds so grandiose, but in turn can affect the entire race of human beings.
And his book is essentially mostly about the creative pursuit.
And it's about resistance that people feel when you know you should write or you know you should paint or whatever you should sculpt, whatever these things are that you pursue.
And that there's this thing that comes up that tries to keep you from doing that.
This resistance.
And he's like, this is a battle that you will fight for the rest of your life.
But the key is to fight it.
Not to give in.
Don't give in to that resistance.
Just to fight that resistance.
And in doing so, every day you do so, you have won the battle for that day.
And you will continue to fight that battle.
And if you continue to fight that battle with that same mindset, you will win.
And this is a guy that up until the time he was 40 years old, he was basically a loser.
He wasn't doing well.
He was like a failed writer.
And then he kind of just figured it out and got his shit together and then wrote books about it.
And now he's like a really accomplished author.
And it's an amazing story.
And he's a really cool guy, too.
I had him on for a podcast.
And, you know, in his enthusiasm and the way he approaches it in this book is like it's very pragmatic.
Like you can see the steps and he lays it all out in a way that's very easy to digest.
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that I enjoy learning, you know, and so it's something that I like to learn about things that can make me better, things that can make other people better mentally, physically, and Help aging and all that.
So I like to share that with people.
Have you heard of this...
We were talking about an aging pill and it kind of came into my mind when you were talking about giving your friend that...
If you could take a pill that could delay the way you age or make you live longer or better.
Have you heard of nicotinamide riboside or nicotinamide mononucleotide?
Maybe it's not made its way into the popular media as much as I thought, but it's definitely blown up in the science.
So nicotinamide riboside and nicotinamide mononucleotide, they're like precursor forms to vitamin B3. And in the body, they get converted into something called NAD. And NAD is something that your mitochondria, which make energy, have to have to make energy.
You can't oxidize fatty acids.
You can't oxidize glucose.
You can't make energy from any of the foods you eat without NAD because your mitochondria need it to make the energy.
So it's very important for your mitochondria to function to make energy.
But also...
It's very important.
The levels of NAD always rise when you're fasting in between meals.
Between breakfast and lunch or breakfast and dinner or whatever, your NAD levels go up slowly after a meal and during the fasting state and also when you exercise.
So the levels of NAD will go up somewhat.
So these are precursors to NAD, right?
I'm telling you this because the studies that have been done, all the mechanisms go back to this forming NAD. NAD is something that decreases with age.
It's very important for aging.
Anytime you're inflamed, all the NAD gets sucked up into that inflammation because it requires energy to have your immune cells be activated and fighting off whatever they think they're fighting off, whether or not it's refined sugar or actual infection.
DNA damage sucks it up.
So it's like, you know, it's basically a limiting factor in a lot of ways.
So there's been all these studies over the past, I don't know, I'd say like six years probably now, five or six years, where various scientists have been feeding mice and This nicotinamide riboside or nicotinamide mononucleotide.
And they're finding that, for example, if you feed them nicotinamide mononucleotide, it delays aging in their liver, in their bones, in their eyes, their muscle.
So it's basically like their tissues are aging better.
They have enhanced endurance.
They have better mitochondrial function.
And these are doses like human equivalent dose to like 24 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day, which could be a lot if you weigh a lot.
But showing that it improves mitochondrial function and nicotinamide riboside, which gets converted into nicotinamide mononucleotide.
It's kind of confusing.
And it's just anyways, lots of studies on that showing that it like if you give it to mice that have some sort of mitochondrial defect and their muscles all atrophying, it completely reverses that.
Their muscles are making lots of mitochondria and improves muscle function and enhances performance.
Anyways, you get the idea.
Lots and lots of animal studies.
Recently, there's been a human clinical trial done with nicotinamide riboside, just to show that it's safe and that it actually does increase NAD levels in human blood, which it does, even as low as a 100 milligrams dose a day.
Like, 24 to 32 milligrams per kilogram body weight would be the human equivalent dose.
So, you know, figure that out.
That's a lot.
That's probably like four grams a day or something like that, right?
For like a 160 or 80 pound person.
Something like that.
I don't know.
Anyways, the tarot still means interesting because, well, in and of itself it's interesting because it's actually, it's chemically similar to resveratrol.
But it's four times more bioavailable than resveratrol.
And it actually has been compared side by side in mouse studies to different mouse studies that have looked at cognitive function.
And it's better at improving cognitive function in animals than resveratrol is, largely because it's four times more bioavailable.
So anyways, I was like, well, I don't know if that's why they're doing it, because that's not affecting the same pathway.
But then I came across something really interesting, and that is pterostilbene actually has been shown, again, this is an animal study, to increase the type of bacteria in the gut.
That causes the conversion of certain compounds, allagitanins, which are found in berries and some nuts, but really high in pomegranate.
Allagitanins get converted into something called urolithin A by your gut bacteria, which is what pterostilbene is increasing, that gut bacteria.
So pterostilbene is actually increasing the production of urolithin A from berries that are having this other compound.
Urolithin A, what that does is, this has been shown also in other studies, it causes mitophagy or mitophagy, which is the clearing away of damaged mitochondria.
So you're basically clearing away damaged mitochondria like they eat themselves.
So phagy would be eating itself, kind of like autophagy or autophagy as it's called.
Which is a cell, sort of a damaged cell that gets cleared away.
It eats itself.
That happens a lot during a fasting state.
Well, this mitophagy is doing it specifically for mitochondria.
And the reason why this is so cool...
And I'm going to try to not bore you because I can go on.
The reason this is so cool is because mitochondria are very important for the way we age.
It's not just muscle function, brain function.
They're providing energy for everything.
Period.
Your mitochondria decay, you decay.
That's the way it is.
Period.
So their mitochondria, as you're aging, they're decaying, they're getting damaged and all this stuff.
Well, they have this whole repair system where you have lots of mitochondria inside one cell.
Let's say you have one damaged mitochondria and one healthy.
What they do is they fuse together, exchange all their content, and fizz back apart.
So they kind of like repair each other.
So you have a healthy one, a damaged one.
The healthy one kind of, you know, mixes with the unhealthy one.
And then you have two healthy-ish ones, right?
So...
This is happening constantly inside every cell.
If you look at a mitochondria, you never see mitochondria by themselves.
They're always like a network.
They look like vermicelli spaghetti because they're constantly doing this.
Well, if you clear away the damaged ones and you increase mitochondrial biogenesis with a nicotinamide riboside, So not only are you getting rid of the damaged pool, you're now creating new ones that are like brand new, healthy, young, brimming, young mitochondria like you had when you were a young person, young child.
So now your pool that you're mixing with, it's like not...
Mitochondrial biogenesis is good in and of itself because you're making new mitochondria.
But having damaged ones still around can still dilute the pool out.
It can still dilute it.
So if you get...
When you clear out those damaged ones and you're making new ones, it's kind of like, boom!
You're going to get, like, young, new mitochondria.
So I think that possibly is another reason why they combine those.
I mean, it's completely speculation.
I'm just...
But anyways, you learned some cool shit about terostalpene and herolithin A. Yeah, mitophagy is a very interesting thing.
You know, exercise to some degree can increase it.
When you're fasting, you try to conserve some of your energy, and the way you do that is by eating different organelles, eating the cell itself, which can then provide energy for other cells.
So usually what happens is fasting will selectively get rid of some of those damaged cells or damaged mitochondria.
Well, there's lots of molecular mechanisms that have been figured out why that is, and that's because the damaged one, their mitochondrial membrane potential is different.
And it's just it's all this complicated stuff, but it's like it all works out perfectly where it's like these these these enzymes that like targeted to to to, you know, to basically become to undergo mitophagy.
It's like they recognize a certain one with a lower membrane potential, which happens to be more of a damaged mitochondria.
And it's just kind of like it's kind of beautiful how it just all works out that way.
You know, what was I going to say?
I completely like was going to say I lost my my train of thought there.
But...
Yeah, so anyways, the fact that you can like have new mitochondria is like pretty...
I mean, that's kind of like the big thing with aging.
It's been that for a long time is like young new mitochondria.
I know you're probably aware of this study, but they injected old mice with the blood of young mice and they found that the old mice started behaving more lively and then they did the reverse.
They injected the young mice with the blood of old mice and the mice struggled and...
And deteriorated.
And now there's some crazy new startup where for, what was it, like eight grand, they'd fill you up with the blood of young people.
Well, here's the thing that was really interesting about this whole thing, because I've been following this field for a while, too, because I find it very interesting for multiple reasons.
He wants to inject himself with young people's blood or is doing it.
Trump delegate and Gawker bankruptor.
Oh, yeah, he's the guy who he he financed Hulk Hogan's attack on Gawker because Gawker outed him as being did they out him as gay or they attacked him and they they got really shitty with him and you know, he's a fucking billionaire.
So he went off and Thank you for turning off your ad blocker.
Enjoy the Forbes ad light experience.
Fuck off.
Nick Denton files for personal bankruptcy.
Yeah, he went after that guy because of it.
Yeah.
So anyway, go back to the other article.
I changed articles there.
So what he's doing, given Thiel's obsession with warding off death, it comes as no surprise a Silicon Valley billionaire is interested in at least one radical way of doing it, injecting himself with a young person's blood.
Wow.
Inc.
Magazine published part of a year-old interview with Thiel in which the venture capitalist explains that he's interested in parabiosis.
It's unclear whether the 48-year-old entrepreneur is currently receiving, guaranteed he is, Reports that a Thiel Capital employee, actually the personal health director, he has a personal health director.
Personal health director to Peter Thiel.
That's hilarious.
That's what you do when you're a baller.
I'm going to get a personal health director.
unidentified
It's the same company, Ambrosia LLC. This is the one that we were talking about the other day?
I really enjoyed talking to him, but I found him to be quite perplexing because of the booze and because of the lack of exercise and his big fucking crazy Gandalf beard.
What's certain is that it's based on some intriguing, if inconclusive, science.
Karmazian, a 32-year-old Princeton graduate and competitive rower, said he was inspired by studies on mice that researchers had sewn together with their veins conjoined in a procedure called parabiosis.
Okay, that's what we were talking about, that study about mice.
It's a growth factor 11. So it was thought that this was what was responsible for rejuvenating tissues and growing new brain cells because that's what happened when you gave it to the older mice.
But then other studies started to come out, also out of Stanford, showing that, in fact, it may not be something that's in the young blood, but something that's in the old blood.
That's actually causing the aging.
Something called VCAM1 that starts to make it as you're getting older and it causes inflammation in the brain and starts messing up things.
So there was a recent study that just came out and showed that if you make an antibody against that VCAM1 and prevent it from doing its action, you can stop that from happening.
So anyways, there's a lot to be figured out there.
It's going to be weird if you see old people become young.
It's not going to be weird if people don't get any older.
It'll be kind of weird, but if I ran into you 20 years from now, I'm like, Damn, Rhonda, you look exactly the same.
It would be cool, but it wouldn't freak me out.
What would freak me out if Arnold Schwarzenegger started looking like he was when he was 20 again.
That would freak me out.
If we start seeing the change in the process, we start seeing things reverse, not just halt or slow down, which we kind of have seen with really healthy people, like some people.
You know, some people kind of defy aging, at least to a certain extent.
Like, Tom Cruise is a perfect example.
I want to know what they're filling that dude up with.
Well, you know, one of the things that they think is...
What is that picture up above?
What's that one with the shirt-off one up there?
Is that him working out up there?
See, that shows aging.
It's the one on the right.
Like, he's got substantially less tone to his muscles, but that could just be he's been busy.
It says the Maverick days are over.
Hold on.
Go back.
What does that say?
Is it from 1986 to right on the set yesterday?
So, yeah.
That's also...
There's not that much of a variability there.
That could easily be just he hasn't been working out as hard.
I mean, when you're on a movie set, you're working 15, 16 hours a day sometimes, especially these gigantic big budget blockbusters where you're involved in these crazy stunts and all that stuff.
I had a rotator cuff tear, bicep tendon tear, and labrum tear in my shoulder.
And it was most likely it had been dislocated before, and I didn't know.
Which is just the side effects of years of doing difficult stuff with your body, especially jujitsu.
Because jujitsu is all about joint manipulations and joint locks and chokes and grappling.
And there's a lot of damage that your body goes through.
Everybody I know that does jujitsu at a certain point in time either has to get some form of surgery or has some pretty significant injuries that they have to work around.
So I... Went to a doctor that was like, well, you probably have to get surgery.
If not now, sometime really soon.
Because every time I'd work out, it would get really sore and I'd have to ice it afterwards.
I get these shots and they're doing them from...
They're extracting the stem cells from women's placenta.
And they take the stem cells and then they...
Shoot him into the area where you have the injury and the results are fucking freakish.
You heal like Wolverine.
I mean, it's really bizarre.
And now this same shoulder that I had, you know, like a real problem with where I was worried about needing surgery.
I do 90-pound presses with kettlebells with one shoulder, and I have no pain.
No pain, no discomfort.
It's not bothering me at all.
And it's unbelievable how much strength and function that the shoulder has now.
I didn't realize they were doing that with placental stem cells.
Placental stem cells are like...
Kind of like a goldmine because they possess a type of stem cell called multipotent stem cell, which is able to form multiple different types of cartilage, cells that form bone, even cells that form neurons.
So they're able to form lots of different types of cells.
Um, and usually placenta are just like thrown away.
So people who are listening, it's in the, my doctor's name is Dr. Roddy McGee and he's in Las Vegas and the company is, um, I don't have it listed here.
Well, it's just like it's got a lot of the same things as bone broth.
Bone broth is probably actually even better because it has more stuff.
But it's been shown like in animal studies, if you take the hydrolyzed collagen powder and like radiolabel it so you can follow where it goes in an animal, it goes right to like the cartilage and the joints and ligaments.
I used it.
It has helped me heal injured wrists.
Obviously, my injuries are way, way less magnitude than something that you're experiencing in your shoulder.
She had bladder cancer, and they created a completely new bladder from her skin cells in a laboratory environment and then replaced her damaged bladder.
I had only heard about the clinical study that they did with eye cells, where some woman had some sort of blindness, and they were able to use skin cells from her own skin, coax them into becoming retinal cells.
But bladder is really cool, too.
So there's lots and lots of animal studies, but every once in a while there's a new clinical study where they're just kind of piloting doing this and seeing the safety in humans.
It's going to be very bizarre when we get past a healthy human state.
That's what I'm really, not just concerned, not concerned about rather, but curious about.
Like, curious is not even a strong enough word, but I feel like within our lifetimes, maybe it's 50 years or whatever it's going to be, they're going to be able to engineer a human body to perform I'm sure you're aware of myostatin inhibitors and the benefits that they've shown.
The accidental ones that they've done with whippets and cows, but now they've started to do it on purpose for mice.
The mice are living longer.
They're super mice.
They are way more muscular.
I think they're like two to three times more muscular than the average mouse.
They look freakish when they kill them.
When they kill them and they skin them and they show the body of the mouse with the muscle structure in comparison to the body of a natural mouse.
It's like, what in the fuck are you doing here?
This is like the Hulk.
It's like you're making a tiny thing and you're putting all this extra muscle on it and for whatever reason it's living longer.
But some of those images, click on those images, Jamie, because some of those images, you could see they had the, like, go down there with the mice carcasses right there.
You can see the difference in the size.
No, that's not it.
That's not necessarily it.
I think it's actually the one where you, maybe it's that.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Well, there's plenty to look at.
But, yeah, there it is.
You can see, like, the difference in the muscle size from the average mouse, which is on the left, versus the myostatin mouse.
They're called myostatin knockout mouse.
But look at where they're standing there.
That one mouse just looks like a giant-ass powerlifter mouse.
These are strange times when it comes to this science.
These goddamn supplement companies that do that, that's really gross.
One of the things they do is they pay someone to get in really great shape.
So someone gets in really great shape.
Like, they'll give them steroids, they'll pump them up, and then they pay them to get fat.
So they pay them to stop working out, they get fat, and then they change the way the lighting is.
Like one of the things that you could see when you're dealing with fraudulent companies is These shirt off pics before and after what a transformation is like in the the good picture They're tan and the lighting is really good for accentuating muscle You know the shape of the muscles and the shadows and everything they look ripped and then the other one They're like pasty and white and they pay these guys to get fat a friend of mine They paid him to do it Yeah.
These things right here.
Like, that guy on the right, the after, is the fucking before.
And the guy on the left, the before, is...
They paid that guy to stop working out and give fat.
And our friend Chris Bell and Mark Bell, who were in Bigger, Stronger, Faster, they know a lot more about that than we do.
And there's a picture of him right above that.
If you haven't seen that documentary, I highly recommend it, Bigger, Stronger, Faster, which talks about the supplement industry and the use of steroids and all these different things.
Yeah, I think we should just focus on ways we can actually, yeah, science and ways we know, like we can increase muscle mass, you know, obviously, you know, weightlifting and...
I don't mean to beat up on Aubrey de Grey, but when you brought up the science of nutrition and the factors, you know, the positive benefits of it, what was his reaction?
I can't remember what episode, but it's been a year and a half at least, I would say.
I can't remember his exact reaction.
I mean, you can tell if you listen to the podcast.
I talk a lot about...
We talk a lot about CRISPR and stem cell and a lot of these possible therapies that are being used that can potentially extend lifespan.
But...
There's a point in the podcast where nutrition comes up and you can tell it gets a little awkward between the two of us because we kind of have different viewpoints and I'm sort of not trying to be rude because...
But, you know, the point that I think, you know, it's one thing to say that and another thing to kind of disregard nutrition altogether, you know, because that's just stupid.
Nutrition plays a role in the way you age.
And so I think that should be, you know, it shouldn't be something that people should completely disregard and not even not think about, but when they talk publicly, talk it down.
Like, that's fine if you want to focus on technologies.
And I agree with that.
I mean, I'm all about, you know, all these gene therapy technologies and CRISPR and, you know, induced pluripotent stem cells.
And I'm a huge, huge fan of all that.
But I don't think that being a fan of that and being excited about what the science, you know, and what new technologies are going to be able to bring us should, you know, make us talk about, like, kind of poop on nutrition.
And well, if you're boozing all the time like he is, that guy boozes every day.
I talked to him.
We were drunk as fuck in New York.
I went to that, what is it, 2045 conference?
There's a conference in New York where all of these nutty people who think you're going to be able to download your brain into a supercomputer in the year 2045, like this extended life conference.
And a lot of it was run by this Russian billionaire that I talked to, which he was a very odd character.
But he was building a robot that they were not satisfied with the results of this robot.
So they never unearthed it.
They never unveiled it, rather.
But all these people, this 2045 conference in New York, were all like this gathering of these super geeks that are all, in various ways, trying to extend life.
And Aubrey de Grey was there as well.
And I met him at the bar, and we just got fucking hammered.
I don't, you know, he was an interesting guy, and I enjoyed talking to him, but I don't want to talk bad about him, but I was very shocked when I walked into his office at literally, like, 11 in the morning, and he had already downed two beers, and he was on his third.
Like eating within a certain time period that correlates...
Corresponds to the day.
It has really profound effects on muscle mass.
Without...
Any other factors without having to exercise or anything, that's something that's extremely interesting.
But this time-restricted eating, it's very important for health and metabolism.
It's also something I've been obsessed with since probably early summer.
I've been doing it, just really fanatically making sure that I'm eating within no more than a 12-hour period.
I try to do 10 hours.
So like when you wake up in the morning, you have a cup of coffee or you eat, even a cup of black coffee, the first thing you put into your system that's not water starts all these metabolic enzymes, starts them in your liver, your gut, starts these enzymes.
And those enzymes are on a clock because humans are diurnal creatures where we're meant to be awake and working and active and thinking during the day and we sleep at night, which is different from nocturnal creatures like some rodents and other animals that are, you know, sleep during the day and active during night.
So because we are active during the day, we're diurnal, all of our metabolism enzymes and all these things are active during the day.
And things that activate them are light, light exposure, and also food intake.
And xenobiotic is also something.
So anything that gets metabolized by your system, by your liver, whatever, Activates these enzymes.
And once they're activated, they're on this 12-hour clock where it's like, okay, so you're metabolizing glucose, fatty acids, all these things, well, if you're eating within that 12-hour clock.
But when you go beyond that 12-hour clock, that's when things start to go really wrong because your metabolism enzymes start to shut down and you're not doing things properly, so you're not insulin responsive.
Even fatty acids and things like that, just metabolism in general is not working as well after 12 hours.
And so that's kind of a big eye-opener.
I know there was...
A lot of people think they eat a 12-hour time period.
Like if you were to survey them, like, oh yeah, I don't eat more than 12 hours.
But there's actually a study done by a friend of mine who's an expert in this field.
He's at the Salk Institute.
His name is Sachin Panda.
Very good scientist.
I interviewed him on my podcast and he's, you know, done a lot of research on this topic.
And he did a human study where he had like this app where people logged their, they took pictures of the food that they ate.
And it like, you know, sent it to some database they had and it had a timestamp on it so they could, you know, see when the clock, when their first cup of coffee or whatever was in the morning and then when they were eating at night.
Turned out most people were actually eating on a 15-hour clock.
So they were having their cup of coffee, you know, at 8, 7 in the morning and they were, you know, they were eating at like 9, 10, 10 o'clock.
Yeah, so they were eating much later.
Yeah.
The thing is, is that, like, when you do that, you start to gain more fat, you start to become more insulin insensitive, and you start to, like, your muscle starts to waste.
So if you're eating that, if you're feeding the mice that, and you let them eat whenever they want so they can eat...
They're nocturnal, but I'm just going to call it day, and their day is actually night.
Just know that that's true.
If they're eating during the day and night...
They gain tons of weight, become fat, become type 2 diabetic, fatty liver.
I mean, they're just a mess.
They're breaking down earlier than they should.
But if you eat normal, so if you're eating a healthy diet that's not high fat, high sugar, you're not necessarily going to gain more fat.
You don't become type 2 diabetic and all that if you're not eating all the crap.
So you're probably just going to be okay.
But if you take that same mouse who's eating a healthy diet and you make it eat within a time-restricted window of at least 12 hours, actually the best was 9 to 10, They gain way more muscle mass.
This is on a normal diet, just way more muscle mass.
And if they ate within a nine hour window, they had like a really improved endurance.
That's something I've noticed in myself.
If I eat within a nine hour window and I go for a run the next morning, my endurance is like very noticeably improved, like extremely noticeably improved.
Like, literally, these mice were gaining more muscle mass just not by doing anything, but eating within this time-restricted window.
And the thing that was also very interesting about this was that...
You could cheat a couple of days a week.
Let's say weekends when you have social events and you're out drinking or whatever.
You can cheat two nights and still have the same benefits.
At least in mice.
We don't know if that's the same for humans.
Sachin is trying to aggregate some data with humans.
He actually has an ongoing trial that anyone can sign up for.
It's called My Circadian Clock.
And it's also an app on the phone that basically all you do is sign a consent form, take pictures of your food, and allow certain fitness data for them to collect.
And so they're doing this clinical study with humans from data that they're aggregating, which is kind of cool.
It's hard to do with social events and stuff if you have like something late and you kind of have to fast early in the morning all the way up and so you can do it later.
Well, see, the thing is, and this is kind of what I was talking with Sachin about, is that if you're fasting itself, the fasting itself is having a positive effect on all these enzymes.
We don't have actual empirical data on that saying, okay, well, you know, and that's something that Satya would like to look at in humans because it's like a big question.
If you are just fasting, in theory, it's not.
You're starting all those clocks.
Caffeine starts the clocks.
That's known.
But then again, you know, like I said, fasting changes your metabolism in a way, too, that makes it better.
So, if you get up and you're at, you know, if you're up at eight o'clock in the morning or seven o'clock in the morning, whatever it is, you almost have to eat dinner like at five.
Because also there's people that like to go to the gym after work.
And so there's more time.
It's like...
You've got to race this clock.
I've got to eat.
So really, if you can start the clock later, if that's possible, for people that are working like that, that don't have flexible hours, then it would be better to start the clock later.
And there's a lot of human data on this, just looking at the associations between people that eat within an 11-hour period and fast for 13 hours.
For example, women that do that, that have already had breast cancer, they reduce their breast cancer risk Wow.
Yeah, because it causes insulin sensitivity.
It lowers IGF-1 levels.
It lowers all these hormones and things that are known to promote cancer growth.
It's really a powerful thing and improves metabolism.
Really improves metabolism.
And that's something that a couple of scientists that I've talked to that are at UCSD are looking at and actively seeing.
It seems to be really important.
Now, obviously, people doing shift work, like nurses, are kind of, I mean, that's the problem.
Shift workers, they're also much more likely to be type 2 diabetic.
Wow.
Because you're eating like when you're at night.
Your metabolism is all screwed up.
Not only are you like when you're eating after the 12 hour clock, are you not as insulin sensitive and so your blood glucose levels are higher.
Also, you're confusing your clock.
So kind of like it says, okay, I'm restarting now because it's late.
I'm getting my first signal in.
It's been after 12 hours and it confuses it.
So then when you go to sleep, say you eat at 2 in the morning, you go to sleep and you wake up the next morning and you have your meal, it's already going to have started that clock a while ago.
So you won't be as insulin sensitive because the earlier in the day, the more insulin sensitive you are.
So you know what I mean?
So you're kind of like confusing the clock.
It's like this...
A very complicated but I think important mechanism and system for people to understand.
And time-restricted eating, I have really implemented that because I think that's something that also will affect the aging process.
I've talked to people at conferences I've given a talk at that have come up to me afterwards and they're talking about how they've been on a ketogenic diet for two years and how they've reversed their type 2 diabetes.
It's been great.
But still, their fasting blood glucose levels were still on the high end, even though they're no longer type 2 diabetic, which is really good.
And they started doing the time-restricted eating where they were eating within a 9-hour window, and it completely resolved it.
Completely resolved it.
And I've actually had multiple people tell me that.
Yeah, so what's nice for you is you actually have a studio and people come to your studio.
So right now I'm going around to institutes and if I'm at a place where I'm giving a talk and I'm like, there's great scientists there, I'm going to ask people to interview you.
So saturated fat increases LDL cholesterol, LDL lipoproteins, which carry cholesterol and fatty acids.
We always call it cholesterol.
It's a transporter of cholesterol, but it also transports fatty acids and other things.
But the thing is, the LDL It's very, very important because every time you make a new cell in your body, which is happening constantly, you're always making new immune cells, you're making new kidney cells, you're making new liver cells.
I mean, it's happening all the time.
Anytime you make a new cell, you need LDL there to transport cholesterol.
and fatty acids because cell membrane, the cell itself, the membrane is made of it.
It has fatty acids and cholesterol and phospholipids and other things.
So you need that cholesterol.
When you damage a cell and you're repairing that damage, cholesterol needs to be there.
So, I mean, you really, really need LDL cholesterol is, It's very important for that reason.
So if people don't consume saturated fats or they lower their radically lower the saturated fat in their diet, how does their body produce new cell membranes?
Well, it was demonized in a very corrupt way, which is the recent New York Times article that was released, which is a mind blower, which...
It detailed how the sugar industry had bribed scientists to release data blaming saturated fat for heart disease and obesity and all these issues when it was in fact sugar that was causing all that.
So they were literally rigging the system and paying scientists and it was a horrible article because That propaganda and these lies that they spread, I believe it was in the 50s?
Here it is.
How the sugar industry shifted the blame to fat.
And it's, if you get a chance and you want to feel sick at what can be done with money, watch or read that.
Because it's just, it's awful.
It is really awful.
And it was an internal sugar industry document that was discovered by a researcher at the University of California in San Francisco, and it was published, it said Monday when this was out.
I believe it was a couple of months ago.
But it was amazing.
It suggested that five decades of research into the role of nutrition and heart disease, including many of today's dietary recommendations, may have been largely shaped by the sugar industry and propaganda and money.
They spent money to literally bribe scientists to release false data.
They paid three Harvard scientists the equivalent of $50,000 in today's dollars to publish a 1967 review of research on sugar, fat, and heart disease.
The studies used in the review were handpicked by the Sugar Group in the article, which was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, minimized the link between sugar and heart health, And cast aspirations on the role of saturated fat.
Even though the influence peddling revealed in documents dates back to nearly 50 years, more recent reports show that the food industry has continued to influence nutrition science.
There were such negative consequences from this, from the demonization of saturated fat, because people then...
Obviously started eating more refined, like for breakfast in the morning, instead of having eggs, you're having like cereal.
But the real problem was the trans fats, because trans fats can have similar, but they're hydrogenated fats, which, you know, you take like a monosaturated fat and hydrogenate it, and you can have similar properties as a saturated fat, like butter, how it's solid, and then, you know, melts at a higher temperature.
But these trans fats...
I mean, I remember my mom had a big tub of margarine.
Like I said, you take these fats up into your new cells, right?
Because that's part of what fatty acids and cholesterol...
That's part of what you're doing with them in your body.
The trans fats get taken up and the whole structure of it's screwed up.
So when this happens in the endothelial cells lining your blood vessels, it makes them real stiff.
Real stiff.
And like, I mean, it just like screws it up.
So trans fats are like...
We have known about the fact that trans fats are playing a causal role in heart disease for like decades.
And the FDA finally, in 2015, okay, finally banned them from the U.S. and gave...
All the companies that are still putting them in their processed foods and a lot of fast foods companies use like Crisco because it's cheaper.
Three years to get it off the market.
So we have until 2018. Jesus Christ, three years to get rid of poison.
And that's after already like decades of knowing.
It's like, you know, that this is like, it's like so bad.
So, so bad for you.
Anyways, that's one of the major repercussions.
Then, obviously, people became scared of saturated fat.
The thing with the sugar, and this is kind of what you were initially hinting at, is that there have been a lot of studies that weren't corrupt by the sugar.
These were the early studies, but there have been studies that have linked saturated fat intake to heart disease.
And a lot of those studies were also because people were eating, in addition to saturated fat, they didn't correct for, like, refined sugar intake, which is really what the problem is.
And that has now been shown in multiple studies.
And this came down to actually being able to have new technology available that was able to then...
You know, LDL is not, there's not just one LDL, you know, cholesterol.
And the body comes in all sizes.
And the type that we were talking about, the good type, is the large, buoyant type.
And that's what saturated fat increases.
There's also, it gets processed into smaller parts that are small, dense LDL. And that's what gets, basically, it can't get recycled back to the liver.
So it stays around the bloodstream and undergoes inflammatory transformations and sticks in the blood vessels.
It causes all this problem, right?
That's what refined sugar increases, and that's been shown in clinical studies.
So healthy young men that were given 20 ounces of soda a day for three weeks, totally healthy young men increased their small, dense LDL particles, massively increased their small, dense LDL particles, and also increased their inflammatory markers, C-reactive protein, by almost 100%, which is crazy.
We're talking about like, you know, the refined sugar is what can make saturated fat dangerous when you combine the two because the LDL gets processed into the small dance and it's refined sugar that does that.
So small, dense LDL versus LDL. Yeah, and so the thing is, is that even now, it's not standard of care to measure all the particle sizes.
It's like, we've known about this for at least a decade now.
So Ron Krause, he's the guy who actually pioneered this assay and figured out how to measure them, the small, dense LDL. It's called the ion mobility assay.
I know Quest Labs does it, but you can also ask your physician.
You can ask your physician to measure the particle size.
But the thing is, is that because it's not something that's standard of care, when you go in to measure your LDL cholesterol and it's above a certain number, physicians are like freaking out and like you should get on statins.
But the reality is that you need to look at the small dense LDL.
Well, that's what I was saying with the trans fat.
I mean, the knowledge was there.
Like, I was talking to my, like, 88-year-old mentor, Bruce Ames, and he was like, I remember back in the 80s, oh, we stayed away from that and never gave margarine to my children.
I'm like, well, you're a scientist.
Like, my mom wasn't, you know?
Like, he's known about this for, like, when I was, like, five.
I don't know what it takes to, you know, maybe these regulatory committees, there's probably a lot more than I know that goes into, like, figuring out, like, how you make these regulations.
Yeah, and it's not even, like, you can go, like, people go to the supermarket and they'll say no trans fats on their food and all that, but when they go to fast food or they go to some, like, restaurant where they're using Crisco, they're not even going to know they're getting it.