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Aug. 25, 2021 - The Joe Rogan Experience

03:03:08

Joe Rogan Experience #1701 - Rhonda Patrick

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joe rogan

45:24

rhonda patrick

02:14:29

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00:03

jamie vernon

00:56

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		The Joe Rogan Experience.
		Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
		Alright, we're up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What's happening, Rhonda?
unidentified		Hey.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Very good to see you.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Good to see you.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's been a year.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It has been.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's been quite a while.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you were just telling me that you're 13 days into keto.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I am.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How you feeling?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's start off with, well, why did I even want to do keto?
		Why now?
		I mean, like, this has been, how many years?
		It's been trendy.
		It's been, like, lots of benefits.
		And it's like, why did I start trying it out now?
		Well, I've noticed that when I am in a fasted state, so when I'm in ketosis, when I'm, you know, burning fatty acids and making keto bodies and using them as energy, I'm like on top of my mental game.
		So I've been doing, like when I have any sort of like podcast interviews I'm doing or whatever, you know, I'm always trying to do them fast.
		Like I'm fasted right now.
		And so I thought to myself, is this something that could be mimicked by a ketogenic diet?
		It's very noticeable for me.
		Where I can stay focused.
		I have more endurance.
		So I don't crap out a couple hours.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		More mental endurance.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Mental endurance.
		Sorry, yeah.
		More mental endurance.
		So I decided to try it out.
		And I recently had a neuroscientist on the podcast, Dr. Mark Matston.
		Have you heard of him?
unidentified		No.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		He's legendary.
		I mean, he's probably one of the most cited neuroscientists.
		But he's most well known for his intermittent fasting studies, like the 5-2 intermittent fasting stuff came out of his lab.
		He's also sort of the father of hormesis and like why, you know, humans sort of adapted to be in a stressful environment and how, you know, all these stress response pathways that happen, you know, as a response to that are beneficial.
		But anyways, so he was talking about when you're in a fasted state, when you haven't eaten, how your nervous system has sort of evolved to become more focused, more alert.
		And that's adaptive because if you can't find food, you have to be alert in order to eat or else you'll die.
		So he's talking about, like, one of the main things that happens is this metabolic switch, is what he calls.
		So you do switch from burning glucose, you know, as a source of energy, to basically, you know, fatty acids are immobilized from your adipose tissue and go to your liver, and you start to, like, oxidize them and use them from energy, and then you make something called ketone bodies as a byproduct.
		Beta-hydroxybutyrate, acetoacetate, And most people think about these, well, this is an alternative source of energy.
		It crosses the blood-brain barrier.
		It, you know, is easily used by, you know, neurons and other cells as well.
		But it's actually an energetically favorable source of energy.
		So it actually requires energy to use glucose as energy.
		To make energy from glucose requires energy.
		But beta-hydroxybutyrate That doesn't happen.
		It goes into the mitochondrion and it's used without that energy requirement.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Can you explain how that works?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You use energy to use glucose?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So glucose gets broken down into something called pyruvate.
		So it takes energy to do that.
		And then pyruvate has to be transported into the mitochondria through an active transport mechanism.
		And that requires energy to do that.
		Once pyruvate gets into the mitochondria, it's then used through what's called the TCA cycle to make energy.
		So beta-hydroxybutyrate gets converted into acetyl-CoA, and beta-hydroxybutyrate can just go in without this active transport mechanism.
		So you're not requiring that energy to transport it in.
		Does that make sense?
		So you're making energy, but you're not using as much energy to make that energy.
		So that's kind of like what most people are thinking about is this sort of metabolic switch that happens.
		And you can imagine most people never do that.
		I typically...
		I do a lot of time-restricted eating where I'll eat my food anywhere between 8 to 10 hours, and then I'm fasting anywhere between like 14 to 16 hours a day.
		And in order to actually go into this metabolic switch, you have to deplete all of your glycogen levels in your liver and muscle.
		And that usually takes anywhere between 13 to 36 hours, depending on the person's carbohydrate intake, on their physical activity.
		And so, you know, most people never get that metabolic switch.
		Most people are just constantly burning using glucose.
		And then when you're doing that, any fat that you're taking in gets stored as triglycerides and anipose tissue.
		So they're always in this, like, fat storage space.
		Instead of a fat-burning state, right?
		And so, because most people are eating three meals a day and plus snacks, you just, you never get there.
		So with the, you know, anywhere between 14 to 16 hours, that's what I typically was doing.
		I'd noticed that, like, I was really mentally sharp.
		And so as I extended that out a little bit, it was, like, really clear to me that, like, not eating...
		It was good for my brain in terms of I felt smarter.
		I felt like I could focus more.
		It was noticeable, like a nootropic effect, right?
		One of the other things that's probably less well known about beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is one of the major circulating ketones you do make when you're in ketosis, is that it is actually a signaling molecule.
		And this was shown by Dr. Eric Verdin.
		He runs the Buck Institute for Aging in Novato, California.
		Back when he was at UCSF, that beta-hydroxybutyrate activates many different genes, one of them including brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF, which I know we've talked about before on the podcast.
		But that's something that is critical for, you know, forming new synapses and for learning in memory.
		I mean, there's all sorts of things that it does.
		But beta-hydroxybutyrate's activating that.
		Like, it's not just something that's being used as energy.
		Like, it's changing gene expression.
		So that got me really interested.
		It's like, wow, this is something that, like, could be possibly also activating BDNF. Maybe that's partly why.
		I mean, it's a hypothesis, but, you know, it seems like something that people could test and seems kind of, you know, it makes sense, right?
		And so that was something that I was like, wow, what if I could do...
		So I asked Dr. Madsen, I was like, what...
		There's lots of differences between being in a fasted-induced ketosis and a ketogenic diet.
		But there's also a lot of similarities.
		And the similarities are, one, you're making lots of beta-hydroxybutyrate.
		If you do the ketogenic diet right, we can talk about that.
		But...
		And so I was like, wow, maybe...
		And then the other thing that overlaps between the two is that you produce a lot of GABA. GABA is the neurotransmitter that's typically more of an inhibitory type of neurotransmitter.
		I'm sure Dr. Dom D'Agostino has talked about this.
		I think I even remember him talking about it before.
		That GABA is increased on both, you know, ketogenic diet and when you're in like a fasting-induced ketosis.
		And GABA is...
		You know, it kind of has an anxiolytic effect, so, like, helps calm you a little bit, but also seems to affect, and this is what, you know, some researchers think the reason why a ketogenic diet is so beneficial for, like, drug-resistant epilepsy is through GABA, because it quiets down the neurons that have been excited through glutamate.
		So, like, right now, we're, like, having an intellectual discussion, and we're, like, engaged, intellectually engaged, and so glutamate's being fired, right?
		It can do a lot of damage.
		Having this constant electrical activity, very stimulating, you need something...
		If you didn't have GABA, you'd fry your brain without it, with too much glutamate.
		So it can cause something called excitotoxicity.
		And so GABA kind of counters that.
		So anyways, some of the things that I'm noticing now that I've been on day 12 or 13, for one, It's been incredibly hard.
		I've been measuring my beta-hydroxybutyrate levels daily, sometimes more than once a day, of course.
		To be in mild ketosis, legitimately mild ketosis, I think you want to be somewhere between 0.9 and 1.2.
		That's mild to moderate.
	I can't tell you how difficult it's been for me to first get to that point.
	It took several days and it's like, I think people, probably like 90 to 98% of people that think they're doing a ketogenic diet, they're not.
	Really?
	I think so, yes.
	Because it's not just enough to do carb restriction.
	And, like, you need a lot of fat.
	Like, you need, especially in the beginning, like, if your body, like me.
	So I've always, you know, for the most part, my diet has been what you would call paleo-ish.
	You know, I would, you know, like, I would have my protein and vegetables.
	And I, generally speaking, avoid, like, the refined stuff.
	Refined carbohydrates, refined sugars, right?
	But I do eat vegetables, which are carbohydrates.
	And I also eat some fruits.
	Um...
	And so my body's used to, like, metabolizing the glucose and doing that whole pathway, you know, we were talking about, like, from carbohydrates.
	And the fat that I'm getting mostly probably is being stored, honestly, as triglycerides.
	But it takes a while for your body to switch to that.
	And I was surprised how long, because I thought, well, I don't need all that refined stuff, so it should be easy.
	It's just a little...
	Like, it has been a huge challenge.
	And you read about all these foods that are like, okay, vegetables that are keto friendly, you know, like cauliflower, or Brussels sprouts, or a little bit of spinach, or like, I will eat like just a little bit of sauteed spinach, and it'll take me for I will be in like 1.2 millimolar, and it'll take me down to like, 0.7.
	So it'll kick me out, just a little bit of something.
	And if I'm not eating enough fat, I can't even get...
	So I finally was able to...
	Now I'm doing butter in my coffee, and I'm just trying to get olive oil on everything, and MCT oil on my coffee, and just lots and lots of fat.
	When I started doing that, I was able to get up to 2.2 millimolar, which is good ketosis.
	And then, like, I came here.
	Traveling is really hard.
	I ordered some, like, I had a steak, and then it was some kind of cauliflower mash with, like, cheese and bacon.
	And that kicked me down to, like, 0.4.
	Like, I was so upset.
	So it's just the cauliflower?
	Just the carbohydrate and the lack of not having as much oil, I think.
	So, like, I have the protein.
	So you can convert.
	So the thing, like, there are what's called glucogenic amino acids.
	And...
	Those can be converted into glucose.
	Your body has a way.
	You need glucose.
	Like, you can't, like, your red blood cells don't have mitochondria.
	The only source of energy they can use is from glucose.
	Your brain, you know, your astrocytes and their supporting cells in your brain are mostly glycolytic.
	They mostly use glucose.
	You need glucose.
	So your body has mechanisms to make it, you know.
	You can make it from these gluconeogenic amino acids, which are in protein.
	Or you can make it from glycerol, which is like the background of a triglyceride.
	Once you become adapted, and this is something that I know Dr. D'Agostino has talked about a lot, where he's got more of a modified ketogenic diet.
	He's been in it for years.
	He's done a ketogenic diet for years.
	He can eat something that's a lot more...
	You can have the protein and the keto-friendly carbohydrates, like the leafy greens that are not super carb.
	And it won't kick him out.
	Yeah, because he's adapted.
	You know, you read all these recipes, like, I'm going online, I'm trying to do keto recipes and all this, and it's like, none of them work.
	None of them work.
	All the stuff that you, like, find in the store that says keto on it, totally not.
	Totally not.
	Really?
	Oh, yeah, because they have too much carbohydrates and not enough fat.
	And then they do this thing with this net carb, the net carb, you know, fiber.
	I'm telling you, like, if people were to measure...
	Their blood levels of beta-hydroxybutyrate, they would know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What is the best way to do that?
		Is it the best way to do it through ketone strips?
		Is it the best way to do it through a breathalyzer type deal?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I personally always think blood is the best.
		I'm not an expert.
		I haven't actually done a deep dive on all the different methods.
		Personally, if you're measuring glucose, for example, blood is more accurate than interstitial fluid area.
		So I like to use this precision extra That you can get.
		And you can get these ketone strips.
		And they're actually a lot cheaper than they were a few years ago.
		They used to be really expensive.
		And I just do that.
		And I think that's the way I prefer.
		I mean, maybe there's some accuracy in some of the other ones, but I don't really know, honestly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there any benefit to using exogenous ketones?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So, I'll tell you what I think the benefit is.
		It's probably not something you're going to expect.
		So, I've tried exogenous ketones many times, beta-hydroxybutyrate ester.
		The salts are, like, the salts, like, I'm sure, like, Dr. Dagenstein has talked about that as well.
		Like, they don't really, they don't work as well.
		Like, in terms of, like, actually raising you up to a millimole level in terms of...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So what is the difference in the actual name of the, like, the supplements?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, the salts would be...
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Salts would be, like, a salty powder thing that you, like, add.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		And the ketone ester will be a liquid.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It'll be a liquid.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So the liquid is more effective than the salts?
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Salts are not very effective at all?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Not very much at all.
		And plus, they, like, can give you GI distress and stuff.
		And a lot of them have a lot of either sodium or calcium, depending on what it's complex to.
		But...
		So, one of the things that's interesting about the beta-hydroxybutyrate exogenous ketone esters, and I've tried a few different brands, they all work pretty well.
		They'll raise you up.
		For example, if you drink the whole serving, most of them are like 30 mils.
		They can take you from zero to 3.3 millimolar.
		Ketosis that I haven't been able to achieve yet from 12 or 13 days of a ketogenic diet.
		You can experience some of the effects, but it also has the effect of lowering your blood glucose at the same time.
		And it's like, this is something that researchers are actually looking into, like, oh, this could potentially help people that can't regulate their blood sugar levels, you know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And this is only through exogenous ketones, esters?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		The exogenous ketone esters, yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it lowers your blood glucose dramatically.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		But the problem with that is, They're very short-lived.
		They're very transient.
		So every time I've done it, they wear off two hours max.
		Two hours max.
		The problem is your blood glucose is also dramatically lower.
		And if you don't eat, if you don't replenish that, you can crash hard.
		You can crash hard.
		Because you have no beta-hydroxybutyrate around as the energy source.
		Now, whereas you're in ketosis, actual ketosis, your blood sugar levels are lower, but you're making beta-hydroxybutyrate, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Would there be a benefit to do that, like say if you were going to do something that was like mentally taxing, if you're going to take a test or something like that, would there be a benefit in taking exogenous ketones?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So I have, I used to kind of use them that way.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		But again, if you don't, it's short-lived.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Would you take it with some sort of glucose?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I used to take it with carbohydrates, yeah.
		Like fruits or something?
		Like oatmeal or fruit, exactly.
		But even that, like, you know, your blood glucose will peak and then two hours later it's going to go back down.
		So you still, you need to like keep that source going.
		So, and I noticed that like several times.
		It was like, oh, this is good for a very, really the peak of it was like an hour.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And is there, when you take these ketone esters, is there a number of them, like is there an amount you can take in a day, the amount of times you can take it in a day?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Can you only do it once?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		People, I mean, some of these companies that make them claim you can do it more than once a day.
		I know people that do it.
		Personally, I think the benefit of the ketone ester is, and I'll tell you what I've used it for.
		I tried the mental stuff.
		But so getting someone who you think will benefit from ketosis, from a ketogenic diet, Getting them to do it, like, this diet is hard.
		It is hard.
		It's hard.
		I can't, like, emphasize it, like, actually doing it.
		Like, I'm telling you, I think people think they're doing it, and they're not.
		What they're doing is just a low, low, low-carb diet.
		It's different.
		Anyways, so, like, convincing someone to do it is difficult.
		Like, very difficult.
		And so, if you give them the exogenous ketone ester...
		They can experience, oh, I would feel this way.
		I would feel this way more often if I could, you know, first of all, initially do the ketogenic diet.
		So I did this with my mom.
		So my mom has two types of motor dysfunction tremors.
		She has essential tremor, which is the kind of tremor where, like, you know, you kind of just shake, like, when you're doing something or grabbing, like, you know, some spoon or whatever.
		And then she has orthostatic tremor, which is like tremors where if she stands still, her legs shake really fast.
		So she can walk fine, but if she's standing, it's really hard.
		So she has to not stand.
		She has to sit or walk or move.
		And with all the research on the effects of ketogenic diets on epilepsy, and then there's also some data, and Dr. Mattson talked about this with me because he actually worked with the late Richard Beach on this, who was, like, the guy who invented the ketone ester.
		They're showing that it helps with, like, Parkinson's disease in animal models, Alzheimer's disease.
		Like, and that's, you know, something that's a little different than motor dysfunction.
		But so I was, you know, I wanted to give her this ketone ester to say, look, the ketogenic diet may be beneficial for you.
		Let's see.
		And it absolutely helped mostly with her essential tremor, but she noticed a little bit of an effect with orthostatic nerve.
		Now, of course, there's always the placebo.
		You can't placebo this.
		It tastes like shit.
		Like, you can't.
		Like, I mean, maybe you could, but it's hard to come up with the placebo.
		I mean, people drinking this are like, okay, I'm kidding.
		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I've tasted it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's rough.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, it's kind of like...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Gasoline.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		There's always that, right?
		Yeah.
		So she's done this enough times.
		It also helped with her migraines.
		And there's a body of literature out there where it helps.
		Ketogenic diet's been shown to help with migraines, both prevention and treatment.
		And then there's one study showing ketone ester can help with migraines as well.
		I mean, they're not the best done.
		Again, there's no placebo and all that, so you have to take it with a grain of salt.
		But she's now been on the ketogenic diet with me.
		And she's having the darndest time getting into ketosis, too.
		She's not doing the butter and the coffee and all the fat.
		I'm just really trying to get as much fat as I can.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How is she doing it?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, she's been eating the same meals, and she's a person that was like, refined carbs!
unidentified		Woohoo!
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I mean, she's someone that I've had to work hard on to get her to stop drinking sugar-sweetened beverages.
		She thinks it fixes her migraine.
		Coca-Cola?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She would say it fixes her migraines?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it does.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Does it?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		According to her, I mean...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there any reason why it would do that?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Maybe some caffeine.
		The caffeine's been shown to help.
		Also, potentially, if she's having...
		If glucose is having a hard time getting into her brain and being used by her neurons, maybe that...
		You know, huge sugar rush from the Coke is going to help.
		All the more reason, like, there's been, you know, there's been evidence, both animal and some early clinical evidence, that basically you can take someone with, like, early dementia.
		And one of the earliest signs, actually, of both Alzheimer's disease and Alzheimer's, I'm not so sure if it's also dementia, but definitely Alzheimer's disease is impaired glucose, like brain use of glucose.
		Like people, like their neurons and stuff are not using glucose well.
		And so like naturally, of course, beta-hydroxybutyrate would be an alternative to that, you know?
		So anyways, what was I getting at?
		Oh, yeah.
		Basically...
		There could be some effect with the glucose rush for her headache thing.
		But, again, the exogenous ketones worked.
		They did.
		And so I've given it to her, and she's been wanting to do the ketogenic diet.
		And I think it just finally took me doing it to get her to start it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Does she live in the same neighborhood as you?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		No.
		No, she's close.
		I mean, she's in the same city.
		She comes and helps out with, like, my son.
		So she's at my house, like, three or four days a week.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you can help show her what foods to eat?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What are you trying to get her to eat, like, specifically?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, right now, we've been...
		I've been so busy, and so I've been, like, doing the...
		What's the least amount of work?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Bacon.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Bacon.
		I've got a bunch of bacon in my purse right now because I've got to catch a flight after this and I'm fasted.
		I'm like, I've got to eat something before I get on the plane.
		Anyways.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What about beef tallow?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you ever just scoop out beef tallow?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Not yet.
		Not yet.
		So what I've been doing just these past 12 or 13 days is what I thought was going to really get me in ketosis and be a ketogenic diet, which was protein, avocado, olive oil drizzled all over it, some of the high-fat, low-carb nuts like pecans and macadamia nuts.
		And then I thought, oh, you know me, like, micronutrients, I need the magnesium, I need...
		So avocados are great, they're giving a lot of stuff like potassium, but the magnesium, which I'm now supplementing with, is something that's been hard to get without my leafy greens.
		And my leafy greens have been, like, kicking me out of ketosis.
		So I have to...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Even if you, like, drench them in butter and...
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I drenched it in butter and olive oil.
		The spinach, when you cook it down, it's a lot more carb, actually, when it's cooked.
		Really?
		Yeah, because haven't you ever sautéed spinach?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, but I never thought it would be more carb.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because you're eating more of it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		If you're eating a spinach salad, you would stop.
		You're like, oh, this is a big old bowl, too much.
		But you eat that sautéed spinach, and it's like a little piece.
unidentified		It was like a little portion.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		How much spinach was in there?
		I don't know.
		So, of course, everything that I was like, yes, I can do my leafy greens.
		I think I will be able to eventually, but not initially.
		Not initially, for sure.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you have to supplement.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I am.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Anything else?
		Selenium?
		Is there any other things that you're supplementing with?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Even selenium and meat and stuff.
		I mean, I get it.
		My multivitamin has all that stuff anyways, but I usually don't have to take extra magnesium because I usually get so much from eating dark leafy greens.
		And so that's like the main one that I've added.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you're eating meat pretty much every day?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, every day.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		What kind of meat?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like ribeyes?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Ribeyes.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I had ribeye.
unidentified		Yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Last night I had a ribeye.
		A stupid cauliflower hash.
		It was like a keto place.
		I ordered it from my postmates to my hotel and They have a keto place?
		It's called Keto Kitchen.
		Oh, but it's not keto.
		It kicked me down from 2.1 to like.4.
		I was so upset.
		And then I did bounce back somewhat.
		I was one millimolar this morning, which was good.
		But still, I was pissed.
		Yeah, so the cauliflower hash.
		First world problems.
unidentified		Yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's hard to get up to 2.2.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it a matter of doing it for long periods of time where your body becomes fat adapted and understands it and gets accustomed to it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is that what it is?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think so.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there an actual mechanism that's causing this process to be more robust over time?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		That's a great question that I don't know and I've been wanting to know the answer to.
		What's the actual mechanism?
		And, you know, all I can come up with is, like, you know, it is, you know, you're getting your liver to, like, it's always easy.
		It's just easier to, like, use that glucose.
		You know, so, like, getting the liver to, like, oxidize the fatty acids and then make the ketones on top of that.
		Great question.
		Maybe Dom Dacostino knows.
		Maybe I'll figure it out.
		I don't know.
		But there's something, like, it's real.
		Like, it's real and...
		I think maybe, you know, there's probably some individual variation there, too.
		I mean, there's lots of genes regulating these things.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When you're getting your mother to take the ketone esters and, you know, there is that issue that you were talking about.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, glucose drop.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So how do you mitigate that with your mom?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, she usually will, like, get some orange juice and, like, eat some oatmeal with fruit in it.
		And that's, you know, she's, like, increasing her carb intake, basically.
		But still, you know...
		For someone like me, even a little bit of carbs that I eat with the vegetables and stuff, it's just, I will crash.
		I will crash hard.
		I started doing this whole, okay, fasting in the morning, I've noticed I'm more mentally on my game, and then it was like, okay, well, maybe I could just try the ketogenic diet.
		Getting the micronutrient intake has been very important to me, and then, of course, I was pregnant and then I breastfed.
		I did an extended breastfeeding and all this time I didn't want to do any restrictive diets really.
		And then the pandemic hit and it was just like all this excuses.
		But I finally got the motivation once it was very noticeable.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I know you exercise a lot.
		Do you notice a difference in your energy levels with keto?
		Because I found when I tried it that at least the initial part of it was very difficult to work out hard.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I did not work out hard.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I haven't actually worked out really hard for 13 days.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because you're giving your body a chance to adapt?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Mostly because I've been so damn busy, but I just haven't been...
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I actually probably should have been working out more because you can actually kick yourself into ketosis by doing that because you deplete your glycogen stores.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there any specific type of workout that's better for that?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Aerobic, definitely.
		But on the flip side of that, if you're doing strength training, you remember we talked about the glucogenic amino acids?
		So gluconeogenesis refers to the process of your body making glucose without having to have a carbohydrate source.
		Your body can make it from these specific certain amino acids.
		There's quite a few of them.
		And also from the glycerol backbone of triglycerides.
		You have three fatty acids on a glycerol background.
		When you sort of break that up, that backbone can also do that.
		So strength training can cause you to take amino acids up into muscle.
		And some of those glucogenic amino acids are like some of the branch chain amino acids that you're taking up into muscle.
		So you're basically, if you're strength training, I don't know if this has been shown.
		It's like, you know, a theoretical speculation.
		But like, in theory, you should be taking up some of those amino acids and not converting as much because that's another thing, too much protein.
		Without the fat, it could potentially kick you out.
		I'm probably also experiencing that.
		I've got to eat.
		All I'm eating is avocados.
		I have avocados in my bag.
		I travel with them.
		What else can you do besides all the oil in the coffee?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What do they do when they check you at the airport and they find all this food in your bag?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		They didn't do anything.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What's wrong with this lady?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She's got bacon and avocados in her bag.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a good thing because, I mean, it's really like...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, everything's carbs at the airport.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's all carbs and I didn't eat anything on the flight.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It was like, you know...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The difficult aspect of it is the gluconeogenesis, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So if you just eat meat, your body's going to eventually convert that to glucose and that'll kick you out.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you have to have meat with lots of fat.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		And that's the thing that I'm learning is that, I mean, at least initially, like I said, you know, there's there are people out there that have been doing this for a long time.
		And they like, I'm sure they're like, they're much more of an expert, they can tell you exactly what you got to eat.
		And when you can switch over to more of that.
		But like, I'm learning about this.
		And I'm going, holy shit, like, I thought I could just eat some meat and restrict my carbs.
		And like, I'd be in ketosis and Dom D'Agostino, he would travel with oysters and olive oil.
		So I have sardines in olive oil, and they're like my favorite because they're really high in omega-3.
		There's like almost a thousand, there's like 800 or something milligrams of EPA and almost like 500 or something.
		There's literally like a ton of omega-3 in my sardines.
		And they're in olive oil.
		The olive oil tastes a little fishy, but I also have a little chili in it.
		So it's like a spicy.
		So I've got like four or five of those I brought with me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did I tell you that I used to eat those every day?
		And then I got my blood work done.
		I had a level of arsenic that was a little disturbing.
		And the doctor started asking me questions, like, what's your diet like?
		We go over there, he goes, is there any, do you eat any canned fish?
		And I said, yeah, I eat sardines, like, every day.
		He goes, that's it.
		He goes, cut that out, let's try it again in a couple of months.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		And?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it was gone.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It was, specifically it was arsenic?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, arsenic.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Really?
		No.
		So, that's interesting because...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're dirty little fish.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're dirty little fish at the bottom of the sea.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I'm gonna have to do another, I've done an arsenic test before, um...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How long ago?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It was like maybe two and a half years ago.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're eating these every day now?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I was not eating these every day when I did this test.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But you are now.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I am now.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So I gotta do it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They contain a lot of heavy metals apparently.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Oh my gosh, that's crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Pollution?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Oh no.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, this is just my experience.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		What am I going to eat, Joe?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe there's cans you can get where they get it from better sources.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This was quite a few years ago.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't remember what source I was getting it from.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Because they're so tiny little fish.
		You'd think they'd have lower levels of that stuff.
		They're at the bottom.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're at the bottom.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		They have lower mercury, much lower than like a bigger fish.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I guess it's not the same with arsenic.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		I mean, again, it could have just been the source I was getting from.
		Maybe other sources have no arsenic.
		I mean, they're a really well-traveled fish, right?
		They're available in a lot of different parts of the world, I believe.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm glad I wasn't eating them every day while I was breastfeeding either because I didn't want to transfer that to my breast milk.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But there are warnings where people say you shouldn't, particularly like freshwater fish.
		I was reading about this guy.
		No, I was listening to a podcast about this guy who got mercury poisoning and he was a...
		A freshwater angler, and he would compete in a lot of fishing tournaments, and he ate fish, like, pretty much every day.
		Like, freshwater fish.
		And he developed mercury poisoning.
		Like, pretty severe mercury poisoning.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you definitely can get mercury poisoning from eating certain fish.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Dangers of eating anchovies.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I was eating sardines, but...
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Different thing.
		But let's...
		A couple of friends...
unidentified		I got some parasite...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's a different thing.
unidentified		Yucky.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		That's a whole other concern.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Associated with eating sushi.
		The ingest of anchovies infected with parasites.
		Oh, great.
		Fun, fun, fun.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Sushi is like, raw fish is also higher in mercury.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		When you cook the mercury, the levels go down.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I've heard that, that raw fish is very high in it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Higher in it, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		People that eat a lot of sushi, they can get mercury issues, right?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And is it salt water versus fresh water?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I didn't know about that.
		What I know about is the size of the fish.
		So the worst thing you can do is eat swordfish.
		But as you go down, there's certain fish, like salmon sardines, are really low in mercury salmon sardines.
		Some anchovies as well, but other issues.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So the bigger fish.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, because they eat smaller fish and it accumulates.
		Yeah, so it's accumulating in their fat.
		So I always try to eat fish that are lower.
		They're high in the omega-3 index.
		Wild Alaskan salmon is my favorite.
		It's a fatty fish.
		It's also great for the ketogenic diet because it's a fatty fish.
		it's high in the omega-3 levels and lower in like, you know, things like mercury and stuff like that.
		And so, you know, another way, obviously, to get the omega-3s, which I'm like super big on, and there's actually a couple of really cool studies you might be interested in that just came out on longevity, but is to take like a fish oil supplement.
		Of course, it's not sustainable like for the entire world we're taking fish oil.
		Like, you know, so there's other, we got to figure out other ways, you know, to like get these omega-3s.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That argument is always odd to me because, you know, yeah, the entire world, it's unsustainable, but is it available to you right now?
		Yes.
		So, like, what are you doing?
		Like, I don't understand those arguments because, like, you can't convince the whole world to do certain things.
		Now, if the whole world started taking omega supplements and then it became a real issue with, you know, supply and demand, but they're not.
		So like I get so confused when people want everything to be sustainable to the whole world.
		Like when I've told people like, I think that eating wild game is healthier, they'll go, yeah, but that's not sustainable for the whole world.
		The whole world's not doing a lot of things.
		The whole world's not exercising.
		Listen, I'm just talking about what's available for you currently as a human being listening to this.
		Is it available for 8 billion people?
		No, it is not.
		But guess what?
		You're not going to motivate 8 billion people to do anything anyway.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's funny you mention that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The conversation is bananas to me because people always want to use it as an excuse to not do something healthy.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		True.
		Did you know about, you mentioned the wild game, and like, if we could go back to Omega 3, I'd love to, but like, there have, so there, I've looked at some studies.
		So when the pandemic hit, I like bought a bunch of like, you know, wild elk and like, claim to be wild, you know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's definitely not.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, It's all from New Zealand, most of it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Is it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was buying that, and then I was buying, like, pasture-raised, this and that, of course.
		And so we looked into, like, the differences of, like, you know, looking at, like, vitamin and mineral profiles and, you know, the omega-3 fatty acid profiles and the fat and the macronut protein and all that.
		And, like, elk, for example, wild, like, wild elk, like, wild game, like, you're getting.
		It's interesting.
		It does have, like, higher concentrations of some, like, minerals and micronutrients, like zinc.
		Like, so you're getting, like, a much higher level of some of those things.
		It has higher levels of omega-3, like, ALA and some of the omega-3 fatty acids compared to, certainly compared to conventional.
		But anyways, yeah, I mean, in a way, if you define healthier as more micronutrient-packed, it is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's healthier, yeah.
		It's also, it just looks healthier.
		If you look at it, like the other day I cooked a piece of beef, and then I cooked a bunch of elk, and my family was, you know, we're eating both, and we're looking at the elk versus the beef.
		The elk, it's so dark.
		It's so dark and rich, and it just...
		You can't eat as much.
		You get full quicker.
		Your body gets satisfied by it quicker.
		But it's also just that whatever is causing it to be so dark, it's quite evident when you look at that one of them is more attractive to you.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if it's as simple as the stuff that you buy at the supermarket just oxidizing out in the air.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's just the diet, because if you get grass-fed meat, it's a darker meat.
		Grass-fed beef is quite a bit darker.
		Grass-fed, grass-finished beef is much darker and has much less fat, and it tastes much more like game.
		Some people do not like the taste of grass-fed meat because it actually tastes like meat.
		When you're getting grain-fed cows, which is what most people love, you get that juicy, like really fatty meat.
		That's a dying animal.
		That's an animal that, you know, if you just let it eat like that, it would just tip over and have a fucking heart attack.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, they've compared.
		You're right.
		It is like the conventional fattier as well.
		And before 2017, like that's, for a long time, I was like, the main reason I was avoiding conventional meat was because, you know, these, I don't know what you call them, these farmers, the ones that are growing, like having the cows all packed in and they're, you know, factory farming.
		They were feeding them antibiotics, not because they had an infection, but because it made them bigger, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's why they fed them antibiotics?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So the FDA in 2017, you didn't know about this?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I thought it was as a reaction to the issues that they were having by eating corn.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm sure some factory farmers were doing it for that.
		But by and large, there was a huge effect.
		If you gave a cattle or one of these animals antibiotics, it made them grow bigger.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I wonder why.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		I honestly don't know.
		But it was like causing antibiotic resistance was going through the roof because it was leaking into...
		All the water supplies.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That is so scary to me.
		Antibiotic resistance is so scary to me because I know several friends that have had MRSA infections and they are absolutely terrifying.
		Because when you do get MRSA, like friends that have had staph infections and it got really bad, the doctors tell you, like, this is touch and go.
		Like, you have to be in the hospital on an IV drip of antibiotics for...
		I had a friend who was in there for weeks and he is a...
		Young, healthy, black belt in jujitsu.
		He got a MRSA infection on his knee.
		They had to cut his knee open like a fish, like pull it to the side to drain it and like to constantly clean it.
		It was horrific.
		He almost died and he was in his 20s and he really healthy, really active, elite athlete.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, MRSA will take anyone down.
		I agree.
		That's scary.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that's a direct result of antibiotics.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The use of antibiotics has created this strain of really potent staph.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		And believe it or not, a lot of it was coming from this agricultural use of it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		And so the FDA shut that down.
		They said in 2017, because of antibiotic resistance, if you're a factory farmer, whatever, you can't give your animal staph.
		Antibiotics.
		Unless it's prescribed by a veterinarian and they have an infection that you're trying.
		Now, you might find people still doing it.
		You can find veterinarians that'll give you anything, right?
		But they put the kibosh on that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So these animals, they were feeding them just to get them bigger, and it was causing strains of antibiotic-resistant staph or whatever it is?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Bacteria?
unidentified		Yep.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so that's one good thing that since 2017, which isn't that long ago.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How was that making the jump to people?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it was just, it was getting into the water supplies.
		You know, I think it was just causing these strains to become resistant.
		And then the strains come to people.
		I mean, you know, so imagine the amount of antibiotics to, like, just nationwide in the United States alone.
		Like, how many they're using on all these.
		And it was like chickens.
		They were doing it for all these animals.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And they're only doing it to make them big.
		That is wild.
		And do we know why it makes them big?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't remember.
		I think I looked into this years ago when I was into that whole thing.
		I think there is a mechanism that's known, but I don't remember exactly what it is.
		It probably has to do with microbiome composition.
		Certain bacteria probably go away, and other ones are making you get the energy, because you can harvest energy better from certain bacteria in your gut.
		So it probably has to do something with that, but I just don't remember the exact.
		It's crazy though, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's the scariest to me because I've had really healthy friends get taken down by it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you find out that the doctor says, hey, we don't know exactly if you're going to live.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's crazy.
		So, like, I had a great uncle that, you know, just died of a staph infection.
		Like, he went in for, you know, some kind of type 2 diabetes complication, like kidney or something, and got a staph infection while he was in there, and that's what ultimately took him down.
		It's a scary thing.
		It is.
		There was a Nature paper published, like, literally right around, it was like a year and a half ago, and it was, like, titled something like, Some Medieval Treatment to, you know, Antibiotic Resistance or something.
		And it was like all these components used in like chimchurri sauce, you know, where it's like garlic and basil and parsley.
		And, you know, a lot of these plants do have antimicrobial activity.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, you talked about it, the issue that you had with staph that you actually fixed with using garlic on the actual infection.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		This is a total anecdote, and I had never tested staph.
		The actual abscess to know if it was actually MRSA. But my anecdote goes as this.
		I came down with an abscess.
		And the first time I had it, the first one was like, on my butt.
		And that had to be like, they'd like removed it.
		And there was like, like, a couple of inch hole, like it was like necrotic, like it was bad.
		And so that healed.
		But it's already been on my skin, you know, it travels around.
		And so then I got it, like, in my pelvic region.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is that what happens?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's just once it's in your skin?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, we've got all this stuff, yeah.
		Once you get one, like, even if it's not MRSA, whatever, you know, the staph, you know, staph caucasorarius, whatever it's called.
		Yeah, it's all on your skin.
		And I think it also depends a lot on, like, your immune system fighting it off and I got this in grad school.
		I was under a tremendous amount of stress.
		I was so stressed out.
		I wasn't sleeping because I was just working, working, working, and stress big time.
		I was getting sick a lot more often.
		It was just a bad IBS, bad part.
		Anyways, so then I got another abscess in a different region.
		It was closer to my pelvic region.
		They gave me some antibiotics orally and then also some of the stuff called like Muprocin, a topical antibiotic.
		And, you know, it would go away and then come back.
		And it did this.
		I got antibiotics again.
		I did this like twice.
		And at that point, I was like, what the hell?
		Like, this isn't working.
		And I started looking into the literature on, okay, is there like a combination of things I can do to potentially help impact this, right?
		And so, you know, you can find all sorts of things.
		There's all sorts of compounds in various herbs and essential oils and things like that.
		And so after doing a lot of reading, I'd come up with some of the major ones were garlic.
		Garlic was both topical and oral.
		I was also taking, like, oral vitamin C, like, once an hour to kind of help boost my immune system.
		I don't know, you know, whether or not that did anything, but that was part of my, you know, protocol.
		And then on topical, I put garlic.
		So I would open up one of those garlic pills.
		And then I did tea tree oil.
		That was a big one that was showing to have an effect, particularly on MRSA. And so I was putting tea tree oil.
		And then I was also taking grapefruit seed extract orally because that was shown to have an effect.
		And I was taking EGCG. Which is, like, from green tea.
		It also was shown to have, like, these are all, you know, studies in vitro showing it has an effect on MRSA. You know, grain of salt.
		It's like, okay, in vitro, you put it on it, it's like, it kills it with a dose of X. Can you explain in vitro to people that it's just cell culture?
		Yeah, so you basically put something in cells that are in a Petri dish, you know?
		So it's hard to extrapolate Something like that to a human.
		But I was desperate.
		And I was taking this stuff, like the oral stuff, like the garlic and the grapefruit seed extract, and I was taking it every one to two hours.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there any benefit to taking fresh garlic versus taking it in a pill form?
		Or even using it as, like you were saying, you took the capsules.
		Would there be benefit in taking actual, real garlic?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, the garlic, real garlic is great, too.
		Once this thing went away for good, I was like, oh, garlic is the bomb.
		So I would eat garlic any time I would feel any sort of sick or anything like that.
		But the oil is highly concentrated.
		You know what I mean?
		You're like smashing down all the oils from the garlic.
		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So a capsule?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It was a capsule with oil, garlic oil.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, okay.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's not powder.
		Yeah, garlic oil.
		No, it's not powder.
		Yeah, it was garlic oil that I was doing at the time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you'd cut open the capsule and just put it on the abscess?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I would cut it open and I would put it on topically and it didn't smell good, along with the tea tree oil.
		But I was determined.
		I was like, I'm going to try this.
		I kind of am that way.
		When I try something, I'm like, I'm going to try it.
		I'm going to really give it a shot.
		I'm going to do it.
		So I was like, yeah, I stink, whatever.
		Deal with it.
		And it worked.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How long did it take to clear up?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It was really quick.
		I mean, I think my memory was something like two days.
		For me to notice, like two days, it was like it pussed out.
		So, like, the abscess, like, it, like, pussed out and, like, literally within, like, two days, I think.
		Something like that, where it just, you know, instead of just being this abscess that's not coming to a head and hurts and...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I started getting a patch of folliculitis from jujitsu, which a lot of times people associate with staph.
		When you see those little red bumps like where your hair follicle was on my leg.
		And I got pretty sketched out by it because I've had staph in the past.
		But I killed it with topical spray.
		There's Defense Soap, which is a company that makes products specifically designed to prevent fungus infections for grapplers.
		Ringworm and help prevent staph infection.
		All their stuff has tea tree oil, eucalyptus oil.
		It's all very healthy.
		And they make a spray for specific issues like that when you have a topical irritation and something that's on the surface of your skin.
		I managed to kill it, but I was nervous, because I've had staff twice, and I was like, oh, fuck, here it comes.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right, and you know it could be serious.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It really could.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But I jumped on it quick, and within a few days, it was gone.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I've gotten folliculitis once.
		I had when I was in grad school.
		I was trying out that Indian threading of your eyebrows or whatever.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Have you heard of this?
		No.
		Instead of plucking them with a tweezer, I've got these Italian eyebrows and they're thick.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How big do they get?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Um, it's been a while.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you go to uni?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		No, no, I don't get the uni part, but it's like, it's like down on my eyelid.
		So, um, uh, anyway, so yeah, I was in grad school and there was like an, uh, a woman from India.
		Um, she was in my lab and, um, she was like, This is the best thing.
		It's so much better than plucking them and whatever.
		She convinced me to try it, right?
		So I went to some place and they do this thread and they get the hair and do this thing where they put it around the hair for hair and pull it out.
		And it's supposed to be...
		I don't know what all that is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How's that better than plucking?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're plucking...
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		They get it at the root more and they get...
		I don't know.
		Whatever.
		I got fucked I got folliculitis.
		And it was like, I had a rash on my eyebrows.
		Like, it was awful.
		And of course, me and my teacher oil, like, especially at the time, after I was like, after I had like had that, you know, staph infection, whatever it was, go away.
		It was like, teacher oil, anything, any bump, zit, whatever, teacher oil.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Now I'm actually, to be honest, and it did help, by the way, but...
		There's these studies coming out with tea tree oil, like, causing, you know, like changing hormones and like estrogen mimicking.
		And so now I'm kind of like, oh, not too much tea tree oil.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Estrogen mimicking meaning it'll elevate your estrogen?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Like mimicking the biological action of estrogen.
		Oh, boy.
		Have you heard of some of these guys getting gynomastica?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		What's it called?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Gynomastica.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, gynomastica.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They get man boobs.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think there's some evidence linking crazy tea tree oil use to that, too.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How much teacher all of these guys use it?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't know, but this stuff, I mean, it gets into your system, too, you know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So maybe, like, they're rubbing it all over their body?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't know what they're doing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Fucking hippies.
		They ruin everything.
		Even good things.
unidentified		Yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So I've sort of...
		Now it's like, okay, the tea tree oil comes out.
		Like, if there's some little bump, it's like, okay, I get tea tree oil, but I'm not like...
		I'm like crazy about it now.
unidentified		Got it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Makes sense.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So, you know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I think gyno masca, though, is like pretty extreme.
		I think when guys get it, it's usually...
		If it's not from some sort of strange hormone imbalance, it's usually from using steroids.
		Because they use steroids and they take so much testosterone that their body expresses...
		I don't think it's just estrogen.
		It's something else, too.
		There was actually...
		I was watching a video on it.
		It is horrific when they remove it.
		Oh my god.
		It looks like the little thing from Alien that comes bursting out of your chest.
		I thought it would just be fluid.
		It's not fluid.
		It's a mass.
		It's a big, thick, meaty mass.
		And there's videos of guys getting their gynomastica removed.
		It's basically, like, there's a whole culture on YouTube of, like, these steroid guys, you know, that, like, show all the damage that they've done to their body through steroids, and one of them is guys that have had their boobs cut open to take out this gynomastica, and it's just these big, pulpy-looking...
		Pull it up, Jamie.
		Trying not to.
		How dare you?
		You need to see it.
		Because it's crazy.
		Because people need to see it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Is it fat?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		It's some kind of breast tissue.
		But it's breast tissue like a boob.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I've seen them before.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		They look like it, for sure.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There was a guy who fought in the UFC way back in the day who had it.
		And he had it bad.
		And then he got it removed and then he looked normal after it.
		But I mean, he had like boobs.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		That's the only one I could find with the thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but that is nothing.
		That's just holes.
		If you could show a video of them, see that stuff on the right-hand corner?
		That's it.
		That's what it looks like.
unidentified		Ooh.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, click on that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, that's what it looks like.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It does look like fat.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's like these giant glands.
		Yeah, right there.
		Gynomastica, huge glands.
		That fell in the middle.
		Oh, look at that.
		I mean, these are huge things that they're pulling out of these guys' boobs.
		Yeah.
		It's not just estrogen that's causing this.
		It's something else.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		And I don't think, by the way, I don't think tea tree oil is the only thing causing it either, to be clear.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, especially something like that.
		I'm pretty sure that is, unless it's like coming from some strange, you know, weird hormonal imbalance, just a natural irregularity of the body, it's coming from steroids.
		It's very common with guys who've done a lot of steroids.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They have to do a lot, though.
		You know, you get crazy and then these things grow.
		They are boobs.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they definitely are.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Lavender oil is another one that's been shown to have the hormone-disrupting effects.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That makes sense because that's like associated with ladies.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like ladies putting the lavender oil on, right?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		All I know is I've...
		Well, lavender, I mean, it kind of has this calming effect, you know, like aromatherapy, you know, you breathe it in and it's...
		Do you ever do put lavender oil in the sauna when you're in there?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I do do eucalyptus, though.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's like helps you breathe, but there's the lavender...
unidentified		Does it help?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, it seems like it, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I have become absolutely obsessed with sauna use over the last, I guess it started because of you, and then over the last, through the pandemic, the last year and a half or so, I'm in every day.
		Every single day.
		It's very rare that I take a day off.
		I mean, I have to be wrecked to take a day off of sauna use.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Damn, you're getting all the benefits.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Even when I come home at night, like last night I had a show and I'm out with all these fucking weirdos with no masks on.
		So I'm like, as soon as I got home, I cooked myself.
		I cooked myself like 15-20 minutes at 185 degrees and just deep breaths.
		There's that paper that I sent you about COVID-19 and the therapeutic intervention of using sauna and this idea that When your body heats up like that, you're trying to kill off a virus when you're sick.
		If you're sick with a viral infection and your body gets a fever, your body's trying to kill that.
		And this idea, this paper is exploring the use of sauna to intervene, to stop it from ever infecting your body, both through your nasal passages, through your airway, and also just through the actual heating of the body.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right, yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		There's a fever response that is induced when you have an infection, and part of that is to help fight off the pathogen as well.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because the pathogen can only exist in a certain temperature range, right?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Partly, yeah.
		I mean, there's multiple mechanisms.
		It also activates heat shock proteins, and heat shock proteins have a role in your immune system response and how your immune system responds.
		So it plays a role, particularly in innate immunity.
		Which is the kind of immunity that is important when you first see a pathogen that you've never seen before.
		This isn't like an antibody type of response.
		It's like killing of it, you know, before that.
		But there's interesting evidence, I'm sure we've talked about this, coming out of Dr. Jari Lalkonen's lab in Finland.
		This was a few years ago, where he looked at sauna use and, like, incidence of pneumonia.
		And people that like, so in Finland, saunas are ubiquitous.
		You know, most people have one at their house.
		Most people use it at least once, you know, at least once a week.
		But then you have people that are using it like two to three or four to seven.
		And so he always kind of stratifies the data based on like frequency of use.
		And he found that people that use the sauna four to seven times a week were 40% less likely to get pneumonia.
		And this was after like correcting for all sorts of like other lung diseases and other health factors and Exercise and all that stuff.
		At the end of the day, it's a correlative study, right?
		But I thought that was interesting because there's also all these other studies that have been done in the 80s looking at the effects of the sauna on the lung function and helping with a variety of factors of lung function.
		It's interesting.
		There's probably lots of things going on as well.
		And as I just gave you, my paper today was published with my co-author, Teresa Johnson, in the journal Experimental Gerontology.
		We argue...
		that if the title is sauna use as a lifestyle to increase health span, which basically refers to the disease free part of your life.
		So in other words, you know, like you as you age, you become more susceptible to things like, you know, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, respiratory problems, all that stuff.
		And so we argue that sauna use should be up there with things like exercise and good sleep and good diet, you know, things that are known to improve your quality of life.
		There's just tons of evidence, things that we've talked about before, but, you know, talking about the cardiovascular disease improvements, how sauna...
		One of the things I'm most excited about, like I've been getting my mom in the sauna...
		And she's been sedentary, you know, like, her whole life, basically.
		She's overweight, and, like, there's no getting her on a Peloton.
		There's no getting her to go for a jog.
		Like, it's just not going to happen.
		Maybe once, but, like, it's just not going to happen.
		And so I'm trying to get her in the sauna because I'm trying to improve her health some way, right?
		And It's a lot easier for people, at least I've noticed with my mom, who views it as a spa treatment.
		She goes in there and puts some cold water on the hot rocks, and it's kind of like a steam room.
		She feels like it's a spa.
		But she's also getting the sauna-mimicking moderate cardiovascular exercise.
		That's what it does, and we talk all about that in the paper.
		But, you know, so people that are, like, sedentary and have been sedentary their whole life, and also people that are disabled.
		Like, there are some people that can't go for a run.
		There are people that can't even get on a Peloton.
		Like, they're disabled, and they can't do aerobic exercise.
		Like, this, to me, is, like...
		A no-brainer.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		A no-brainer.
		I mean, granted, there are some contraindications, like certain, if you have certain, particularly certain heart disease risks, that could be a contraindication, meaning you shouldn't do it.
		But by and large, it improves a lot of cardiovascular things.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Can you mitigate those risks by having a slightly lower temperature, like instead of going to 185, maybe going to 160 or something like that, where it's a more mild form of heat?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		I don't know.
		I know that like, to me, that would make sense.
		And this was, you have to like discuss this with your physician.
		But like, for example, people that have like arrhythmias, there could be a very mild contraindication with arrhythmias.
		And so the question is, you know, Would a lower temperature, like 165, which is what I've been doing for my mom, like mostly because she's not adapted to the heat at all.
		And so like, you have to adapt before you can like do 20 minutes at 185. You know, like it takes takes a while for people that aren't used to even raising their core body temperature when they're exercising, you know.
		So again, it's mimicking a lot of the physiological aspects, including that core body temperature going up, you know, the blood flow changes going to your skin and sweating, heart rate, you know, your heart rate gets elevated while you're in the sauna, and then blood pressure goes down after.
		Like, these things have been compared head to head.
		So it does mimic moderate aerobic activity.
		And it's, like, the only way that I'm able to get my mom in there.
		And then there's, like, the brain benefits, you know.
		People that are depressed, like my mom actually has, she's been diagnosed with major depressive disorder.
		And you look at, she's got a variety of SNPs.
		There are certain SNPs that she has that are consistent, like in the serotonin transporter and things like that.
		You can look and see there's evidence that she has things that have been linked to major depressive disorder.
		And also she's had a lifetime of being inactive.
		And there's a lot of environmental factors at play, you know, like drinking Cokes, like refined sugar, you know, I mean, that's inflammation.
		But there's been some evidence from Dr. Charles Rezon.
		He was the first to show that like a single what they called whole body hyperthermia, which is basically they were using this really expensive device to elevate people's core body temperature to like 101 degrees Fahrenheit.
		I mean, they were doing a fever.
		I mean, they were getting hot.
		And they had a sham control.
		People that were, they were elevating their core body temperature a little bit, so they thought they were getting the treatment, but they weren't.
		So it was- How were they elevating the core body temperature?
		It's called the heckle device.
		It's like this crazy thing that's kind of infrared-ish, where it's doing it through what an infrared sauna would do, basically.
		And so they did this in the people that were in the sham control group, which is kind of like the placebo in a way.
		And so 70% of those people in that group actually thought they were getting the treatment.
		So it was a wonderful placebo.
		Because with anything depression, placebo effect is a very real thing.
		And people know they're getting a treatment.
		They're going to feel better.
		Like, yeah, this works, you know?
		So it's important to have that control.
		And they showed just one, like, one exposure to this.
		There was a huge antidepressant effect that lasted six weeks.
unidentified		What?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		One?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		One session.
		And the mechanism for this is completely unknown.
		We talk, like, Teresa and I talk a little bit about this in our recent publication.
		But...
		It's also a topic page on my website.
		It's Asana.
		We have a 20-something page article that is a lot of this on the website.
		But part of it could be there's a million things.
		So here's the thing.
		So Dr. Ashley Mason, she is at UCSF, and she specializes in non-pharmacological treatments for depression or sleep or And she actually trained with Dr. Charles Rezon, and she sort of carried on the torch.
		And I'm collaborating with her now, which is really cool, on a clinical trial where she's basically taken...
		Forget that device.
		It's like $50,000.
		It's like all this FDA tape to get it and use it.
		So she's found a way to basically...
		Get an infrared sauna where people are laying in this like tent with their head out.
		And they're in there for a long time.
		And they're measuring their rectal temperature and making sure they get up to like 101. And it's like a silicone probe.
		It's really easy to, you know, it's not like uncomfortable.
		But these people are getting hot.
		They're getting so hot that, like, you know, technicians are having to, like, cool them down with wet towels, you know, and, like, while they're in this thing.
		Because they have to be in to that degree where they're getting, like, a fever.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So they're cooling their head?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is that what they're doing?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		They're cooling their head.
unidentified		Mm-hmm.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		But she's done a proof of principle study on people that are not depressed that shows that it's, like, not dangerous, basically.
		It's not dangerous.
		People will do it.
		And that's kind of, like, you have to, like, show that before you can, like, go on to the next step and use it as a potential clinical treatment for depression.
		So now the study that she's going to be starting any day, which I'm collaborating with her on, is she's going to be recruiting clinically depressed patients or participants and giving them this treatment.
		And it's going to be a dose escalation.
		In other words, she's going to try to do it at least eight weeks.
		I mentioned the first one was one time.
		So once a week for eight weeks.
		So they're going to be, you know, see if they can even do this, like if they can handle it, right?
		And she's going to combine it with cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, because that's a known treatment to help with depression.
		And you can't start any study without giving like a treatment that's known to work because it's like unethical.
		But what I'm excited about is the biomarkers that we're going to measure, like, you know, brain drive neurotrophic factor.
		That's been shown to play a role in depression.
		And it's one of the major things, like exercise increases it, and there's been studies showing hot baths increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF. So, you know, it's like, well, let's see if the sauna's doing that.
		Like, that would be one potential mechanism.
		And then there's a variety of other, we'll mention, heat shock proteins.
		They've been shown to play a role in mood and animal studies, and a variety of inflammatory biomarkers.
		Because what was interesting about that pilot study by Dr. Charles Rezon was that he found the people that had the most robust antidepressant effect had higher levels of something called IL-6.
		IL-6 is a cytokine.
		It's kind of often referred to as like a Janus cytokine because it's like both pro and anti-inflammatory.
		It has like both effects.
		It's something that is, you know, elevated when you exercise.
		And, you know, there's a robust anti-inflammatory response in some cases, like IL-10 and things that are anti-inflammatory.
		Anyways, he found people that had the highest levels of IL-6 tend to have the most robust effects of the sauna.
		So, a variety of interesting things.
		Super exciting because, like, you know, like, if this could be a potential treatment, getting people – and, like, I know you and I have talked about this, like, probably a million times, but, like, getting depressed people to go exercise – Like, it's not easy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Like, they don't have that motivation.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I've experienced that many times.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So, like, imagine if you could just put them in a sauna.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it would have a similar effect.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		In theory, we don't know yet.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you know...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What do you think your body temperature is getting to if you're at like what I do, which is like 185 degrees for 20-25 minutes?
		It gets rough, especially at 25 minutes.
		The last five minutes are really hard.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so I asked Dr. Mason about this because she's like gone around into different like banyas and stuff in San Francisco and like had her friends like trying to like get the rectal thermometer and see like, do this or do that.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		The problem is like, you know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		People don't trust you at a sauna with a rectal thermometer.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're like, hey.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I definitely agree with that.
		But she said she couldn't get There was nothing out there as intense as that.
		As intense as what they're doing?
		No, as intense as what you're saying.
		It's kind of what I do.
		So I do like 185, like 15 to 20 minutes, depending on if I exercise.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You've done it at Laird Hamilton's house, right?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Not yet.
		We've been planning and planning and planning.
		I've done it at Rick Rubin's.
		But his sauna was like 200 and something.
		And then he had this ice bath outside of the sauna.
		And we were doing back and forth.
		And...
		Like, that's the closest thing you're going to get to a psychedelic experience without doing psychedelics, in my opinion.
		It's, like, crazy!
		It changes your, I mean, have you done that before?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Back and forth, yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, like, intent.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		You did?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I have an ice bath.
		I have an ice bath right next to the sauna.
		I do it every day.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		What do you think?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It makes your whole head dizzy.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It does.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You go shaking back and forth.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It does.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		One thing I found is I can't stay in the ice bath as long after I've gotten out of the sauna, which is really odd because I almost feel like I'm going to pass out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When I get to three minutes in the ice bath after 20 plus minutes in the sauna, my vision is shaky.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so here's my anecdotal story.
		So I was doing...
		I mean, I was scared of ice baths for a long time, like for months because of this.
		So back in the winter, before we had a cold plunge, we were using the pool because the pool was cold.
		It was like, you know, 50 degrees.
		Yeah, you know, which is...
unidentified		Cold.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's cold.
		It's not ice bath cold.
		That's insane, but it's cold.
		So this time, I was in the jacuzzi.
		I was in the jacuzzi for like 20 minutes, maybe 30. I was getting my heat stress on, right?
		And then I went into the pool.
		I had my Simon and Garfield on.
		I was singing.
		I was trying to stay in there.
		It was cold.
		And I was burning.
		It was burning.
		But I was in there for just not more than five minutes.
		And all of a sudden, I started to get really blinky and dizzy.
		And I was like, ooh, I don't feel good.
		So I got out of the pool.
		And I got some kind of vertigo or something.
		I couldn't stand.
		I had to go down to the pool.
		I felt like I was dying.
		Like I had to go down low to the ground.
		And Dan was assuring me, it's okay.
		It's okay.
		And this lasted a couple of minutes.
		I mean, I was terrified.
		I was really terrified.
		I guess it was kind of a vertigo.
		I didn't know what was up or down.
		I couldn't stand because it was like...
		And I felt like my blood pressure maybe was really low.
		I don't know what caused that.
		I don't know if I had gotten cold water in my ear.
		You can read some anecdotal stories about cold water swimmers that wear some kind of earplugs because it can give them vertigo.
		I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They develop like bone matter in there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you know that?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		No.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like surfer's ear?
		Yeah, a lot of them have to get operations on it.
		It's crazy.
		Yeah, there's something that happens to the inner ear.
		Like, find out if you can find what that is.
		It's called surfer's ear.
		A friend of mine got it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Does that affect the balance and stuff?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Does that give you vertigo?
unidentified		I think so.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm not sure.
		I've never surfed.
		But I know that there's some sort of like bony thing.
		Oh, here we go.
		Surfer's ear is a condition where the bone of the ear canal develops multiple bony growths called exostosis.
		Over time, this can eventually cause a partial or complete blockage of the ear canal.
		The condition is primarily caused by prolonged exposure to cold water or wind.
		Interesting.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So, like, you see those little weird bony growths in the inside of the ear.
		It's almost like your fucking skull's trying to protect you.
		Oh, that is so nasty.
		Inside of ears are so gross.
		I got a little...
		A thing I bought on Amazon, it's a camera that's attached to an ear cleaner, and you have an app on your phone, and you can actually stick this thing in your ear, and you can see the inside of your ear.
		It's wild.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's wild.
		I wore earplugs on the plane yesterday, and when I took them out, I was disgusted by the earplugs.
		I don't know if I want to see more in there, you know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you can clean it out, though.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know.
		I've got really small ear canals, and I, like, get problems with that.
		And also, like, earplugs hurt me because my ear canals are so small I have to, like, get the, like, baby ones or, like, I need to try to get the custom-made ones because, like, I can't wear that.
		Like, it hurts.
		Like, I can't sleep with them because it hurts.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I wore ear guards all throughout my years doing jiu-jitsu.
		Pretty much every time I trained.
		I have very little cauliflower.
		I have like a tiny couple of little pieces.
		But I have friends whose ears are fucking mangled.
		And they love it because it makes them look like a badass.
		It's a jiu-jitsu thing.
		And wrestlers.
		It's a wrestler thing too.
		It's almost like a badge of honor to have really fucked up ears.
		But I have friends that can't...
		AirPods, like Apple ones, they don't fit in there.
		They can't even go in.
		Their ear hole's so small.
		I'm like, what can you really hear with those goofy-ass mangled ears?
		Because if you take your ears and you just go like this, and then you talk, and then I'm folding my ear, and then go like that and open it, it's very different between what it sounds like, like this, and what it sounds like, like this.
		So they're like, their whole life is like, the reason why your ear's shaped like that is so that you can kind of capture sound, right?
		It's good.
		It makes your ear work better.
		Their ear is constantly clogged.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		On the flip side of that, they're probably less likely to get the noise-induced hearing damage that happens with old age.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		But they can't hear anyway, so then, you know.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Do you know if any of those guys have tried out the jaw conduction headphones that don't go in your ear?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Where do they go?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		They go around your head, sort of.
		They just don't go in.
		You've probably seen them, but you may have never tried it.
unidentified		I've never tried it.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		It's a very strange feeling when you test it out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You use those?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		That one CES thing, I tried it out there just because it was new at then.
		It was like 2017. Did you like it?
		It was weird.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you hear music, like, clearly?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		It just vibrates on your bones instead of into your ear.
		It vibrates on your bone and gets into your head, which is like, you know, if you're in the shower, you do exactly what you were just doing.
		You can still hear the rain hitting your skull, it's just your hearing, or the water, I'm sorry, it's just different.
		But I'm way curious onto someone who has that ear problem, if this creates a better experience, or if it's just like, yeah, I can hear it now, finally.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The smart guys get it operated on.
		You really should drain it right away.
		But I know quite a few friends who've had their ears operated on, where they literally fillet your ear and then they cut out all the calcified blood, which is what it is, right?
		It's like blood pools up in the tissue of your ear and it becomes calcified.
		Wow.
		And then they have to cut that out.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Now I'm learning new things.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You didn't know about cauliflower ear?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Not really, no, I didn't.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Show her photos of cauliflower ear.
		Just what it looks like.
		Just cauliflower ear.
		Because it's nasty.
		80% of my friends from Jiu Jitsu have it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		That's crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they all have it.
		That's what it looks like.
		Look at those ears.
		Look at his ears.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		That's Khabib Nurmagomedov.
		One of the greatest, if not the greatest of all time.
		Randy Couture.
		His ears are mangled.
		Look at his ears.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		That's so disgusting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's all hard.
		That's like a rock, too.
		The thing about that is it's calcium.
		So the inside of it is...
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		How can you hear anything with that ear?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You don't hear much.
		You don't hear much.
		Yeah.
		Yeah.
		Look at that one.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Is there balance off or anything like that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't think so because it's not really an inner ear issue, but the outer ear is just horrific.
		It's pretty gross.
		And so what you should do, what a lot of guys do is they'll get a syringe and right after it happens, like literally I've seen guys do this at the gym where they have a buddy stick a syringe in their ear and suck the pus and blood out like at the gym.
		You know, they just have this thing and pull it.
		Like see if you can find a video of a guy.
		Yeah.
		Because it's amazing how much fluid comes out of a cauliflower ear.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		This is like the Fear Factor Joe coming out here.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So this guy's doing it to himself.
		So he's pulled out that much blood.
		Okay.
		And so he's pulling this.
		So he sticks it in there.
		And once you get it in there, you really should go low.
		He's going high, but you really should go low so you get all of it in there.
		And then see how it sucks it out and drains it?
		Now look at all the blood that's in his syringe.
		That is all stuff that would have calcified.
		So most guys like it.
		Because it's like, let everybody know, oh, he's been training.
		Look, his ears is badass.
unidentified		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think it's dumb.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		That's crazy.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Totally.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I only have a couple.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I have a little bit of it here and some other spots where it calcified, but it's very small.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Good thing you were wearing those ear protectors.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they're annoying.
		They get in the way.
		Like these things, they're under your chin, they're on your ears, but it just keeps your ears from getting fucked up.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		I mean, it's annoying to wear a helmet when you're like riding a bike, but it's protecting your head.
		I mean, you know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So what happens to me is I can go in the ice bath and I thought I went in the ice bath once for 20 minutes, and I thought I had fucked myself up.
		I thought I broke something.
		Because I went in afterwards, and I was at the three minute mark, my visual field was shaky.
		Almost like I was really drunk.
		And I was like, this is not good.
		Let me get out of here.
		But I realized that that's actually just coming from the sauna.
		So going from the sauna to the ice bath is very shocking.
		It's probably good for you overall, but it does this weird thing where everything feels shaky and back and forth and weird.
		But if I just go straight in there, it doesn't do that.
		I can just go straight in there and then I'm fine.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So you took the words out of my mouth.
		So that was like, I was trying to get to the bottom of this.
		I had been in the jacuzzi for almost 30 minutes, and I was heat-stressing myself.
		But I was still terrified to get any cold, because it was so scary.
		So I didn't do any cold at all.
		And now, what I do is, I just do, if I'm going to do the cold, like I did a seven-day challenge recently, where I just get in.
		Dan does this thing like he gets in we keep it like 49 degrees Fahrenheit and he gets in for like 12 minutes I mean he's just in there like he loves it He does it like first thing in the morning.
		Sometimes he does it before bed, helps him sleep.
		I'm like in there like one minute and I'm like, because I'm just not adapted.
		You know, like I'm not adapted and I don't have as much brown adipose tissue, you know, which, you know, is a good thing.
		But you lose it pretty quick.
		Like Dan didn't do it for a while and he like, it was harder for him to stay in for that long.
		But, you know, when you are going, and this is something like, I've talked to Yari Laukunen about this.
		You know, going from the hot to the cold, so in the hot you have vasodilation happening, right?
		So you're relaxing your blood vessels, blood flow is increased.
		When you go into the cold, vasoconstriction happens.
		Like, it's the opposite.
		So you're going from, like, dilation to constriction, dilation to constriction.
		And, like, you know, a lot of what regulates that is, you know, norepinephrine, which is a hormone and also a neurotransmitter, depending on if you're releasing it, you know.
		Um, if it's being released in the plasma versus in the brain, but part of what it does is cause vasoconstriction.
		And it's, you know, there's just not enough research that has been done on going from the hot to the cold and certainly not going back and forth.
		But in Finland, you know, like at least 10% of the population there of the people that are using saunas do that.
		Like they do it frequently.
		Not everyone does it, but like a good percentage of people do it.
		You know, like they have gone over to Finland and done it.
		Um, But, you know, so there's just not a lot of evidence.
		And, you know, on the one hand, like, you can feel really good, but, like, there's an amount of stress that, I mean, maybe it's just something from going from the hot to the cold and regulates your blood pressure, right?
		I mean, I don't know.
		So now I don't do the cold after my sauna because of that.
		I've just been scared.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I do it, but I just do it for a minute.
		That's how I do it.
		I did it for three minutes yesterday.
		That was a long one for me.
		Generally, no, two days ago.
		Yesterday I did a minute.
		I'd like a minute.
		A minute is what I like because I get so hot in there.
		And a minute cools me off and I get a little weirded out, but not crazy.
		But when I did three minutes the other day, at the third minute, I don't like the way I feel.
		I just feel like, I gotta get out of here.
		It just feels like, I don't know if I'm gonna black out.
		Which sounds crazy.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		No, totally.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But when I did 20 minutes, I did 20 minutes at 33 degrees.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Without any hot?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No hot.
		Never felt like I was going to black out.
		It was just really cold.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		That's interesting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		My visual field was completely stable.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		You didn't have that blinky stuff.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		None of it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But then coming out of the sauna, it's super shaky.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I had the blinky stuff.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I had that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's like I'm drunk.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Totally.
		In my case, it was pretty severe.
		I felt like I was dying, and it was very scary.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, mine was a little weird, too.
		The first time I did three minutes after the sauna, I was thinking, I think I broke myself when I did 20 minutes.
		I was like, maybe I really fucked myself up.
		Maybe that's not good.
		But then I realized, no, what it was is I did 20 minutes after a workout, but I wasn't that heated up.
		Like, I'm pretty sure that workout was just a weightlifting workout, which is not that bad.
		You know, I sweat a little bit, but I don't, it's not like, the real ones are like kickboxing workouts.
		When I do a kick, like I'll do 10 rounds on the bag.
		And then when I'm done, I'm drenched with sweat.
		I mean, just my t-shirt is completely soaked.
		My underwear is soaked.
		My shorts are soaked.
		I'm really heated up.
		And then I'll go in the cold.
		It's rough.
		But if I go in there just right now, like if I just sunk in there right now, my visual field would be fine.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But coming out of the sauna, it's a weird shock.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if it's good for you.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		There needs to be research on it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a problem.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		You know, it is.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		And so hopefully...
andy stumpf ▲ ● ▼		But everybody tells you you should do it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right?
		They're like, oh yeah, you go back and forth from sauna to cold, sauna to cold.
		But I think they're doing like 10 minutes and then a minute, 10 minutes.
		I'm an extremist, right?
		So I'm doing 25 minutes and I'm at 190 degrees sometimes.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		That's intense.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a lot.
		So I'm really hot when I get out where I'm like really barely hanging on.
		And then I go plunge right into 33 degrees.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, here's the thing.
		Right after the sauna, so one of the things that the sauna does is it lowers blood pressure.
		So while you're doing it, your heart rate's elevated and your blood pressure goes up while you're doing it.
		Same thing with exercise, but after.
		Like, pretty immediate after.
		Blood pressure goes down.
		And this is like one of the reasons why it's so cardioprotective among others is that it really helps regulate blood pressure.
		But if you think about it, if your blood pressure is already dipped down below baseline, you know, studies showing that's what happens with the sauna, then you get into something that's vasoconstricting.
		Right?
		I mean, like, it's got to be like a crash in blood pressure.
		I mean, that is something I was thinking, and, you know, it's just we need evidence to show that.
		We don't know what it is, but something's going on, and it's interesting that you've had the same effect that I did somewhat.
		Mine was definitely scary.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Mine was a little scary.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I was like, because I'm by myself.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because I like to work out by myself and while I'm doing this all by myself, I'm like, hey, don't die, stupid.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a dumb way to die.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, totally.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But one minute is great.
		One minute feels really good.
		Because one minute's easy.
		I have no weirdness to the visual field.
		I do one minute, I get out and then I get back in the sauna.
		And the sauna at 190 degrees or whatever it is, it feels like nothing.
		Like nothing.
		It feels great and it feels really relaxing.
		It feels nice.
		And then I start to sweat again and then I get out.
		I don't do too many...
		I don't go...
		I've done it a couple of times, but I like just one.
		I just like sauna, ice bath, and then sauna until I heat up again, and then back to normal.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		That sounds a little more doable.
		Yeah, reasonable.
		Exactly.
		I personally like doing the cold without anything.
		And for me, like, one minute, and I feel good.
		I feel good after, could be the norepinephrine, it's been shown to go two-fold over.
		I mean, I know a lot of people do it, like Dan does it, like, he really is into it, like, big time, like, just doing it alone.
		And it's, like, helps him feel good, helps his mood.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think it's addictive.
		I think there's like a weird feeling, like a state change.
		Because I feel that with the sauna as well.
		I feel like when I get in, I'm like, oh, I get my fix.
		I feel that when I climb in there.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, you make endorphins.
		You're dumping out endorphins in the sauna.
		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's also like I used to listen to a lot of books on tape in the sauna, but now primarily I do just nothing.
		And it gives me like a time to think, like just a reset time to think and just relax.
		And I'm enjoying that a lot.
		I'm just enjoying the just the opportunity to do nothing.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And just sit and think.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		That's that's what I sometimes I'll do a podcast because I never ever ever get to listen to anything if I don't but the majority of time for me I sit and like it's like my time it's like my my time to like reflect you know sometimes I'll even like rehearse things like a presentation or something and like I've done that for a long time I've done that since grad school listen to sets like comedy sets that I've done because it'll help me like tune in for the next one like I was doing that a lot In
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		the middle of the pandemic, because I wasn't doing much stand-up, and then I would have to do a show.
		And so I would have to listen to old shows and sort of re-remember my material and get the beats and the rhythm.
		You don't want to just go on stage completely cold.
		You can look at your material.
		That helps a little bit.
		But I felt the best way is actually listening to a few sets, not even just one, but two or three.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		That's gotta be, I mean, you're so experienced now doing that, but like, I, like listening to myself, I used to do, I don't do it anymore.
		I mean, time, you know, everyone's excuse, but, you know, when I go on a podcast, like when I, you know, this is my 10th time on this podcast.
unidentified		Is it really?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It's my 10th.
		So I would go back and listen to, this was back when I was first coming on, I'd listen to it.
		Oh, it was so hard.
		It was so hard.
		But you learn about the mistakes, things you could do better.
		It's really a way to improve in this aspect, your public speaking, and the way you communicate certain things and how you shouldn't communicate them maybe.
		Not talking over someone.
		That's a big one for me.
		Unless you sit down and listen to yourself, it's not the same.
		You're just not going to know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's why I make people wear earphones.
		I suggest earphones.
		You don't realize what it sounds like when you're talking over each other in a recording the way you do when you have earphones on.
		If you have earphones on, you hear it exactly how people are going to hear it recorded.
		But if you don't have earphones on, it just sounds like a normal conversation and people talk over each other all the time.
		But you don't know how annoying it is to the person listening unless you have earphones on.
		Because then your volume is the exact same volume as mine.
		So if you're talking at a certain volume and I start talking too, it's just noise.
		Whereas if you're over there and I don't have earphones on and you're talking, it's like your voice is lower and my voice is higher.
		I feel like, well, people can hear me better.
		No, they can't.
		You're talking over that person.
		It sounds like shit.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Such a good point.
		And I probably should start doing that when I interview other people.
		It's important.
		You're absolutely right.
		I can't tell when I don't have the earphones on and I get excited about something and it's like, let me just talk!
		And yeah, hearing it at this level, you do.
		You notice it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The worst is if you have more than one guest.
		So if I have two guests and they don't have headphones on, it's just madness.
		Madness.
		I used to do these Fight Companion podcasts, and there was four of us.
		And I would do them.
		Sometimes guys didn't want to wear headphones.
		And it was just a talk-over thing.
		They'd just talk over each other.
		I'd be like, okay, we have to have headphones.
		You have to, because you have to realize how bad this sounds.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Totally.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So what else have you discovered?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What new information about the sauna or what some new revelations?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I think mostly the new stuff is the mood, like the actual evidence on depression.
		But it really, this review article is just a very comprehensive, you can't, like people don't write review articles that are really comprehensive in a field anymore because like there's no money, you know, no grant money in doing that.
		It's like a lot of work.
		And so you can't find a good review article that just covers everything, you know, like in a certain field, like with the sauna.
		Like, there's review articles on the sauna and cardiovascular health, a lot of that, but this goes into the all-cause mortality, you know, the cardiovascular benefits.
		It goes into the brain benefits and some mechanisms like, you know, the effects on the opioid system.
		It goes into all these different mechanisms like heat shock proteins and, you know, how you – there's lots of cool figures in there too and how you can basically become heat adapted and some of that has to do with you make heat shock proteins at a lower temperature.
		You know, it goes into like what special populations should – Be cautious when they go into the sauna and how long and what temperature and all that you get these benefits that are found in the literature.
		It's just a really comprehensive body of literature, I think.
		And so I'm just pretty excited about that.
		It's also open access to public, so it's not paywalled.
		So people can access this article.
		They can also go to my website where I have the topic page on it, which is It's written a little...
		This is a little different.
		It's a little more scientific and we go into a little bit greater detail and it has wonderful figures.
		But that's...
		I think that's basically the gist of it.
		It's not necessarily something new so much as like Very comprehensive and covering, oh, the muscle mass effects.
		Like there's studies on sauna, you know, helping preserve muscle mass and how that we talk, we argue how that has effects for, you know, age-related sarcopenia.
		And so, and that has to do with heat shock proteins as well.
		So we just go into all of that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I've noticed a benefit to my cardio.
		I've noticed it in doing it on a regular basis that I just seem to have more gas when I'm working out.
		I really think that there's got to be a connection because what I'm doing is I'm doing it after workouts.
		Like today I did a kickboxing workout and then after the workout I do the rounds in the bag and then I sit in the sauna for 25 minutes.
		And it's just...
		It does seem like it's more work.
		My heart is pounding, right?
		I get in there, my heart's pounding.
		I'm soaked with sweat.
		And then your heart continues to beat high because you're in this really extreme heat environment.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		You know, there are studies showing that if you combine exercise with the sauna, you have even more improvement in your cardiorespiratory fitness than if you exercise alone, which cardiorespiratory fitness is like, you know, it's a big indicator of your physical fitness and it's also an indicator of your overall health.
		So, there's additive effects happening with, you know, doing aerobic exercise plus doing the sauna.
		I also think there's, you know, potentially additive effects for weight training and doing the sauna as well, where you're basically, you know, you're not only, like, with weight training, you're increasing your muscle mass, right?
		There's a growth of muscle hypertrophies happening.
		But with the sauna, it's really good when you're not doing that work to basically increase your muscle mass.
		It's preventing it from degrading, which is like a balance.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, there's a time after weight training where you should not get in the ice bath, right?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		So we just actually released a 23-page article on cold exposure on our website, and it covers all this.
		It covers things that we've been talking about, like norepinephrine, but it also covers this exercise training controversy, which I know you know I've talked about in the past, but Yeah.
		More of this needs to be worked out, but it seems as though doing an ice bath immediately after strength training, resistance training workout, blunts some of the hypertrophy effects.
		And when I say media, it's like five, ten minutes.
		I personally think, and this is a theory, it's a hypothesis, this hasn't been shown, but because the cold Really blunts inflammation and it causes vasoconstriction.
		Your immune molecules aren't traveling to the site like muscle as much as they would be.
		So it's basically dampening inflammation.
		Part of the resistance training causes an inflammatory response.
		And this inflammatory response, including activation of macrophages, which are a type of immune cell, Is important for the increase in what's called IGF-1.
		It's a growth factor that you make in your muscle in response to exercise.
		It's important for, you know, protein synthesis and hypertrophy.
		And so if you look at graphs of like the kinetics of IGF-1, it peaks.
		After about an hour, after resistance training, and then, you know, starts to go back and normalize.
		And so I personally think that if you do cold exposure within that hour after your resistance training, you might be blunting that inflammatory effect that's important for IGF-1.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Whereas the sauna would actually benefit you.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the sauna doesn't do that.
		The sauna doesn't...
		The sauna actually, like exercise, it actually increases inflammation.
		And, you know, in this paper, we argue that, like, there's a hormetic effect.
		In other words, like, a little bit of stress is beneficial because then you have this anti-inflammatory effect.
		It happens with exercise.
		And some preliminary evidence, not like super big studies, suggests that also happens with sauna.
		So, you know, it's a different thing that's happening in terms of cold versus a sauna.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So should you say if you train weights in the morning, should you wait until the afternoon to do an ice bath if you were going to do it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or should you do it on different days just to be safer?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		To be honest, we don't have any evidence to know for sure.
		I personally think that if you're waiting until later, like several hours later, you're already getting, you know, you're Anti-inflammatory effect has already been activated through the inflammation induced by exercise.
		You know, so I can't see why doing the cold would then blunt that because you've already gone through it, you know?
		But without actual data, it's hard to know, right?
		It would be a hypothesis.
		I would think that it would be okay, to be honest.
		So, I mean, that's...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, through your discussions on this podcast and through many other discussions that have come out of that, I think there's been a giant rush, a giant change in the way people think of sauna and how many more people are using sauna.
		I can't tell you how many of my friends who never had any interest in using sauna before are now like complete sauna junkies.
		It's really interesting.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's awesome.
		I mean, like I said, I think...
		That paper, I think it's improving healthspan.
		And I think it's not just people that don't exercise.
		I think it's like you're getting a benefit if you also exercise, if you're already physically active, like an additive benefit.
		So that makes me happy.
		Plus, I also think there's lots of effects on mood.
		And, you know, but I also wish everyone could take the fish oil pill that we...
		We talked about like, you know, if everyone took it, then we might have a crisis with the...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're not going to take it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're never going to get everyone to take it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever had your omega-3 index measured?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I have, yes.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Do you know the difference between what the omega-3 index is versus like just measuring your omega-3?
		So omega-3 index specifically refers to measuring your omega-3 in red blood cells versus what most companies will do.
		They'll look at like plasma phospholipid.
		And the omega-3 index is important because it's a long-term marker for blood glucose.
		Your red blood cells, you accumulate it in the cell membrane, and your red blood cells take 28 days before they turn over.
		And so whereas if you were to have some sardines or whatever, and then go get your omega-3 levels measured...
		It could be, it could skew the data such that like, oh, I've got great omega-3 levels, you know, because plasma phospholipids are kind of like the short term, like they're really responsive to your diet.
		Whereas the actual, it's kind of like HbA1c, long term marker for blood glucose levels versus just measuring your blood glucose levels like, well, you could have just eaten, that's why they're high and So like your HbA1c is like that long-term marker.
		So omega-3 index is kind of like that.
		Dr. Bill Harris, and he had a collaborator, I forget his name, but they kind of co-invented this back in, gosh, early 2000s or something.
		But he argues that The omega-3 index is, like, predictive for cardiovascular disease, like, as much, if not better than, like, cholesterol.
		And he's had a couple of interesting studies that came out on mortality and looking at the omega-3 index.
		So, like, there's one study that he did was published last April, so a few months ago, and it was, like, 17 different studies included, and he looked at the omega-3 index.
		And he found that people that had an omega-3 index above 7% versus on the low end, which was less than 4%, they were 17% likely to die prematurely of all causes, including accidents.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Like, that's weird, right?
		It wasn't just, like, age-related diseases.
		It was all premature death causes.
		Like, omega-3 is, like, making people not, like, take some kind of risk.
		I don't know.
		Anyways, I found that fascinating.
		That was the first study.
		Okay, so you're 17% likely.
		So if you're in that high group versus low, so higher than 7% versus less than 4, you're also 21% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease.
		So that was the first study that was interesting.
		And the premature all-cause thing was what got me.
		I was like, they're less likely to get in some kind of crazy accident that causes them to die.
		So as you and I know, omega-3 affects the brain.
		But the other study he just published last June or something, and it was a Framingham study.
		Which is also a huge cohort.
		And he looked at the omega-3 index and he found, again, people in the high end, like greater than 7%.
		They had a life expectancy that was five years longer than people in the lower range, less than 4%.
		And this was like after adjusting for all kinds of factors.
		Now, remember, most people, they do these dietary questionnaires when they're looking at omega-3, like, how much fish do you eat?
		Do you take supplements?
		Like, They're measuring something.
		Like, this is measured in your blood.
		This is a long-term marker.
		Like, this is real data, right?
		So five-year increase in life expectancy, like, that's huge compared to people, like, you know, on the low end of the range.
		And in fact, in Japan, you know what the average omega-3 index of people in the United States is?
		Like, 5%.
		So you had to be slightly more than that, 7%, greater than 7% to have the longevity benefits.
		In Japan, their average is like 10% or more, omega-3.
		And mine was 11.7%.
		Because I take massive, I take, you know, four grams a day of fish oil, two grams of EPA, two grams of DHA. But anyways, you know, Japan has a five-year life expectancy increase over people in the United States where you're talking an average omega-3 index of 5% versus like 10. Interesting, right?
		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there a plant-based version of omega-3s that's good?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there is.
		There's a microalgae.
		So good point.
		Like the plant omega-3, like alpha linoleic acid, ALA, is like in flaxseed and walnuts and I don't know, something else.
		Soybeans.
		But you have to convert it into EPA and DHA. And it's like that conversion is not very good.
		It varies a lot from person to person.
		And some of these benefits, like getting an omega-3 index of greater than 7%, you're never going to get that from ALA. Never?
		No.
		No.
		No way.
		But you can take microalgae, and microalgae actually is the source of DHA and EPA in fish.
		Like the fish eat that, and it concentrates in their fat and stuff.
		But it's still like the microalgae pills are not very concentrated compared to fish oil.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What if you get pure microalgae?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You can get some of that stuff where you mix it in water.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you get like the spoonfuls.
		Yeah, you can take a lot more.
		That would be the way to go.
		That would definitely be the way to go.
		Get the stuff that you can mix in whatever, or just take it like medicine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It has to be refrigerated.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it definitely has to be refrigerated.
		There's lots of oxidation that's possible from polyunsaturated fatty acids, which EPA and DHA are.
		But a lot of the therapeutic studies, like they've done randomized controlled trials showing that you can drop cardiovascular death by 25% if you give people with a various range of heart diseases You know, four grams of a purified form of EPA. It's called VASIPA. It's a prescription strength.
		Say it again?
		VASIPA. V-A-S-C EPA. And it is a high EPA. It's a purified EPA. And you can get it prescribed from your doctor if your triglycerides are over a certain level.
		I don't know what that level is, but it's something that's like a prescription strength, which I actually want to get my mom taking.
		But...
		So what I'm getting at is the therapeutic effects for many of these cardiovascular-related diseases happen at a high dose, where taking a microalgae, like I don't know how many spoonfuls, like how many tablespoons or whatever you're going to have to take, but probably quite a bit.
		That stuff's so nasty, too.
		I've never tried...
		I've tried like the Carlson's one like a long time ago.
		I used to take that.
		But, you know, that was fish oil, not microalgae oil, so I've never tried that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I've tried Carlson's fish oil.
		I've had that, the spoonful of stuff.
		Carlson's has like a bunch of different flavors too.
		They have like an orange flavor and a lemon flavor that's supposed to...
		Make it taste a little better, but I'm always a little reluctant because I'm like, what is that lemon flavor?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Masking, right?
		Because when you eat rancid fish oil, you know it tastes like gross.
		It tastes disgusting and smells gross.
		There's a website called the International Fish Oil Standards, IFSO, and they sort of like, they rank, I mean not rank, they They analyze data from lots and lots of different companies that make fish oil.
		And they give you all this data based on concentration of EPA and DHA that's actually in the supplement.
		What's called total oxidation levels, TOTOX, and that's important.
		You want less than 10. It has the mercury levels, like PCBs.
		So they have lots of data.
		And you can scroll through their website and look at each product sheet.
		And you have to kind of do it often because they update this every so often.
		I've put together like I've gone through them all and made an excel sheet on like all the different brands and like again like the concentration and the the total oxidation and the mercury and all that and just I'm actually just getting ready to post a like screenshot video of me doing that like on YouTube showing people and like what I think some of the top brands are I have no affiliation it's just me helping people try to analyze this data because they've said it like a million times on social media and people still What
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		is the specific brand you use?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I use one that's not available.
		A friend of mine in Norway makes it.
		It's called N-Pure 3. It's not commercially available.
		He sends it to me.
		He hasn't scaled it.
		He's so big on not Compromising the total oxidation and all that.
		Sometimes when you scale things up, things get compromised.
		He is trying to figure that out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So he doesn't sell it commercially?
unidentified		No.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I think he might in Norway, maybe.
		I think he does do it in Norway.
		But the pandemic shuts stuff down, so I'm not sure if he's back up or not.
		But he sends it to me.
		like the highest quality fish oil I've ever, like, I could get you some if you want to try it, but it's really good.
		So they have high EPA and he has high DHA.
		And so I take the high EPA, I take two grams in the morning, and then I take the two grams of DHA in the evening.
		So I separate them.
		I don't know if it's necessary to separate them.
		There was some, like, you know, evidence conflicting in the literature, like, oh, maybe DHA, like, if you take it at the same time, can compete with the EPA or, you know, something like that.
		It's not really known.
		I'm not sure if that's the case at all.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What is the sources for the fish?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, what fish?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		He uses herring and I think a mixture of another one as well.
		But his like contaminant level is like bottom out.
		Like things of like arsenic, mercury, all that stuff is like really low.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now when we were kids, cod liver oil was something that people always recommended.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there any science to that?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, cod liver oil is, you know, the micronutrient it's most high in is vitamin A. It also has vitamin D and it has omega-3.
		I personally don't take cod liver oil because I think that omega-3s are, like, I think they have a huge...
		Anti-aging effect.
		And this is not like, look, this isn't been shown, okay?
		It's just not how I, it's like my opinion, okay?
		It's my opinion.
		So I'm trying to get high enough doses.
		If I were to take that from cod, I would overdose on vitamin A. Like I would, it would be like toxic.
		Because vitamin A, like you, there's an upper limit.
		So I couldn't get that from cod liver oil.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What about in addition to?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there a benefit in taking it in addition?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		If you want to get your vitamin A and vitamin D through cod liver oil, you could.
		I don't think it's bad for you.
		Like, you know what I mean?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it's a way to get vitamin D other than the sun.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It is, but you can also take a vitamin D supplement.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But are you getting it in the same sort of, like, when you're saying you're getting vitamin D, like, are you getting, like, 5,000 IUs?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		That's the thing.
		With the cod liver oil, I don't think the vitamin A concentration in every way always gets in the way for me.
		Where it's like, if I want to take 4,000 to 5,000 IUs of vitamin D, I'd be ODing on the vitamin A. I'd be, like, toxic.
unidentified		Got it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So I just can't...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you're better off taking a vitamin D supplement in addition...
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		In my opinion, yes, because I think having vitamin D levels between 40 and 60 nanograms per mil Is optimal.
		And for me to get that for myself, I have to take 4,000 to 5,000.
		Well, depending on how much sun exposure.
		Sometimes in the summer I can go with less, but it really depends on the season.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was one of the initial factors that they found with people that were in the ICU with COVID, that a large percentage of them were deficient in vitamin D. Right.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I mean, so the COVID, you know, there are lifestyle factors, I think, that are important for And possibly, you know, helping with severity.
		And I think vitamin D is one.
		The problem is, like, you know, doing a clinical trial with someone that already has COVID, and then like trying to give them vitamin D, like, you're not going to fix the severity of COVID, like with...
		going to the hospital for COVID.
unidentified		Right.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Like you're not.
		Like, you know, there's been a couple of studies that's like, oh, if you give them an active form, so you have vitamin D3 gets converted into something called 25-hydroxyvitamin D in the liver, and then the liver converts it into the active steroid hormone, which is 125-hydroxyvitamin D.
		So you can give them something that makes it so their liver doesn't And there's been a couple of studies showing it helps with people that have already had COVID.
		But again, there's a large actual clinical study that's ongoing right now being done by Dr. Joanne Manson.
		She's looking at prophylactic vitamin D and, you know, like severity, incidence of COVID and all that.
		And so, you know, but omega-3s also.
		So Bill Harris, Dr. Bill Harris, he just published a pilot study on the omega-3 index and COVID death.
		And of course, this was a small, small pilot.
		So it was like 100 people.
		And, you know, people with the highest omega-3 index, again, it was in that 7% range.
		And this was not statistically significant.
		It was because there was a small sample size, but there was like a 75% reduction in COVID mortality.
		No telling.
		I wouldn't at all tell anyone, I mean, to take omega-3 to prevent COVID or to not die from it.
		It would be ridiculous.
		I mean, vaccines are probably the best way to prevent yourself from both getting and having a severe COVID. We could talk about it in a minute if you want.
		I'd like to.
		But the omega-3 thing is really interesting because there was an in silico study That show DHA, one of the main marine omega-3 fatty acids, keeps the spike protein.
		So there's a receptor binding domain on the spike protein.
		And that receptor binding domain swings around.
		It goes from open to closed, open to closed.
		And there's like, you know, a few of them on a spike protein, like three or something.
		And when they're closed, like this, they can't bind to the ACE-T receptor.
		So they can't even latch on.
		And there was an interesting study showing that DHA was able to keep it in the closed conformation.
		So this was in silico.
		Again, grain of salt because it's in silico.
		You can't say anything.
		But I was like, oh, that's interesting.
		Again, for me, I'm an omega-3 enthusiast in a way.
		I do think there's a huge effect on resolving inflammation, not just But after your immune system's been activated, there's the protectants, the resolvins, the specialized pro-resolving mediators, the SPMs.
		These things are resolving the inflammation so that your immune system doesn't go crazy and become in this hyper-inflammatory.
		I think this potentially could be how it's affecting longevity.
		I think that inflammation is a major source of driving the aging process.
		And there's been studies that have looked at, for example, people that are centenarians, that live to be 100. People that are elderly, so like 80s.
		People that are semi-supercentenarians are like 105. And then the supercentenarians, 110. And they've looked at a variety of biomarkers, telomere length, immunosenescence, you know, glucose, HbA1c, cholesterol, blah, blah, blah, like the whole thing, right?
		Tons of them.
		And the only thing that could predict a person going to each stage to living To be either then a centenarian and then later a semi-supercentenarian and then later a supercentenarian was decreasing inflammation.
		Like none of the other things predicted each, you know, going to the next stage.
		So that, to me, is very interesting as well.
		The inflammation was like a huge predictor of not only like living the longest, but also cognitive function as well.
		It was like the biggest predictor of cognitive function.
		So, you know, again, it's like...
		The omega-3s, to me, I'm convinced that the data is not quite there yet to actually solidly demonstrate that, like, high levels of omega.
		Like, we're talking above 7% omega-3 index.
		And I don't know exactly what it takes to get there.
		Like I said, I have an 11.7 and I take four grams of fish oil all day and I eat sardines and I, you know, eat salmon.
		So, you know, it's kind of, I'm like the Japanese cohort.
		So I don't know what it takes to get above seven.
		But I think that some of the work coming out of Bill Harris's lab is, you know, pretty...
		Interesting and I think laying the foundation for, wait, maybe omega-3s, like a therapeutic type of dose.
		You know, maybe there's, again, I'm taking an experimental dose.
		Like what I'm doing is experimental.
		Like that's not, like this isn't something...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there any perceived downsides to such high doses?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So I asked Dr. Harris about that.
		He flew out for a podcast, like, last week.
		And this guy, by the way, he started the whole omega-3 thing, like, back in, like, the eight.
		He started studying it after the whole, you know, the Icelandic, Greenland, Inuits and their, like, lower cardiovascular disease.
		And so this, like, he was, like, pioneering on the effects of omega-3, particularly in heart health.
		But so he's been studying it for decades.
		And so I asked him, like, you know, is there, like, what's the negative effects?
		Like, he was giving people 25 grams of omega-3 back in the 80s.
unidentified		Whoa.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		And, like, doing, like, metabolic ward studies.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They must have smelled like fish.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		He said they were giving him three salmon steaks and a big, like, I forgot how much, but, like, It totaled 25 grams, but salmon oil, pure salmon oil.
		Wow.
		He was 25 grams total.
		Like, they were just getting massive doses.
		So you'd think if anyone knows about negative effects with high dose, it would be him.
		And he thinks that, you know...
		So in that particular study, there was one patient, like one participant that had...
		Like the bleeding thing.
		Out of?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		One out of?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I don't remember.
		I don't remember.
		The podcast is coming out in a couple of weeks, if you want to listen to it, but I don't remember.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Small study.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Small study, exactly.
		But he's gone on since then.
		So part of the concern, and we talked all about this bleeding thing, and he really doesn't think it's that big of a concern, to be honest.
		And he talked about how You know, in Japan, like, they're basically like, they have less than, like, where their omega-3 index is high.
		They're not, like, bleeding as much during surgery or some stuff.
		I don't know.
		He was giving some evidence of that.
		But it does, the omega-3s do affect your leukotrienes and prostaglandins and things that do affect, you know, like, platelet aggregation and stuff.
		But, like, Maybe it could be bad if you have some kind of disorder or you're taking some kind of crazy blood thinning medication.
		He argues that's really not even that much of a concern.
		The other concern is that people that already have a cardiovascular problem, there's been a small increase in arrhythmias in some of these people and it's not known why.
		And in fact, if you look at, for example, AFib, the end result of AFib that's bad is stroke.
		And omega-3s have been shown to reduce stroke incidence.
		So it's like, well, if it was, like, really causing AFib or doing something bad, then, like, you should see an increased stroke incidence or, like, no effect.
		But no, it decreases stroke incidence.
		But it's not fun having AFib.
		And, again, this is super, like, preliminary.
		It's not really known.
		It's like we got to, like, repeat that.
		So, you know, it could be that taking very, very high doses.
		In the studies that that was found, they were taking 4 grams of pure EPA. So it could be maybe there's something to super high doses we don't know about.
		But I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Especially over prolonged periods of time, maybe.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		And these were people with heart conditions as well.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		And yeah, so this was like, these studies were five years.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This is so fascinating to me that as long as people have been studying nutrition, as long as people have been studying the human body, that there's still so much speculation as to what you should take and when you should take it and how much.
		And people like you who study it constantly are still learning new things all the time.
		Almost every time you come in here, you're like, okay, so there's a new study, and then you're telling me about this and you're telling me about that.
		And it's really kind of wild when you think about the average person That I would venture to say, I don't know what percentage of the average population even takes vitamins.
		What would you estimate?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		There was a study back in 2015 that looked at this.
		It was, gosh, I forgot.
		I forgot exactly what the percentage was.
		It wasn't very high.
		And the percentage of people that did actually take supplements were the least likely to have vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, of sure.
		Big surprise.
		My friend's doctor literally told him the other day, That you don't need to take vitamins.
		Just eat a balanced diet and you're fine.
		Vitamins are nonsense.
		I go, you need a better doctor.
		Because that doctor doesn't know jack shit.
		That is such a crazy thing to say when there is so much data on the actual tangible benefits of vitamin supplementation.
		There's so much evidence.
		There's so much work being done on it.
		And for a guy who I know is an orthopedic surgeon, they're probably like, how much time do they spend on nutrition in medical school?
		And the guy's in his 60s, so it was probably, you know, he was doing this shit in the 80s.
		Like, what the fuck does he know?
		And why is he saying this?
		This is such a crazy, irresponsible thing to say to a person.
		What my doctor said, like, and I'm looking at this guy, I'm like, get a better doctor.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or get a doctor that concentrates on that and go to him when you're dealing with like ankle surgery or something.
		But don't go to him.
		He's a technician.
		You know, he's not a nutrition scientist.
		It's just like they're completely different fields of study and they're so comprehensive.
		That's what's crazy about it.
		Like every time I talk to you, you don't even have any notes in front of you and just rattling off this shit and it's like it's constant and it never ends.
		There's constantly new studies, there's constantly new benefits that are unearthed.
		It's like, it's so hard to keep abreast of all this stuff.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		And not to mention the fact that doing clinical trials in nutrition...
		So a lot of physicians, they're used to the gold standard, the randomized placebo-controlled trial.
		And it is a gold standard.
		It's the best thing you can do to see if a treatment is working, right?
		Or if X comes out of...
		Or if Y comes out of X or whichever way it is.
		But the problem with nutrition is that everyone has some level of this...
		Nutrient X in their body from their diet.
		And so you get these studies that there's no quantification of anything.
		There's questionnaires like, how much did you eat?
		How much vegetables do you eat per week?
		And it's like, oh, I eat X amount.
		And then it's like you actually measure something like a biomarker like You know, beta carotene or, you know, something, and you realize, oh, they eat a lot more vegetables than they thought, or they eat a lot less because it's a biomarker, right?
		So you have these questionnaires or, you know, the clinical studies are being done poorly.
		Not only is it hard to keep up with the data, you have crappy data with salacious headlines like, oh, vitamins do nothing.
		But, you know, the reality is the study is like, okay, we never measured anything.
		We didn't measure, you know, vitamin D, which you can make from the sun, and everyone has different levels at the start of the study.
		And we gave them a supplement where it's like, you know, 400 IUs, where it doesn't even raise your blood levels, anything.
		And then we looked at this endpoint, X, like cancer incidents.
		We didn't measure anything after.
		And it's like, you know, like, that's a terrible study.
unidentified		Right.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		You know, but makes the headlines and, you know, there are some healthcare practitioners that read those and then they get this idea that, well, they do nothing because I read that study they did, you know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		And in some cases they're randomized placebo-controlled studies where they are giving a placebo and they are randomizing it and they're doing all that, but they're not measuring the blood levels.
		They're not measuring anything.
		So, you know, there's all sorts of problems with that.
		And I think they're...
		It's hard to do.
		It's hard to solve.
		Clinical trials in nutrition need to be designed better.
		They do.
		You need to quantify everything.
		You need to quantify these nutrients.
		Drugs, people don't have that to start with.
		You don't have to quantify anything.
		You just give them the pill.
		Yeah, it's going to raise their levels because they don't have any of it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It also just seems like just staying on top of all the research is so time consuming.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Totally.
		Yeah, absolutely.
		I mean, there's no doubt.
		I can't even stay on top of it.
		And now that I'm a mother, it's even more difficult, you know.
		But, you know, there's all my notes.
		And I have flashcards, too.
		I mean, I was preparing to come on here.
		And, you know, there's certain things that I... There's numbers and things like that.
		If you can know that amount, it helps, you know.
		So...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There's just so much data.
		There's so much information.
		And then if you think about like to have your immune system in check, to have your body functioning in check, to have your muscle repairing correctly, to have all these factors and to have all your nutrient levels balanced and adjusted accordingly and to make sure that you're getting All your needs as far as your essential fatty acids and your vitamins and your nutrients and your minerals and all these different things.
		It's so complex.
		There's so much going on and so few people are on top of it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I mean, so...
		It's kind of an arrogant thing to say, oh, you don't need to take a vitamin because all you've got to do is eat a balanced diet.
		That's pretty arrogant, in my opinion.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In mine as well.
		I know how little most people know about it.
		That's...
		I know so little about it, and I try to pay attention to it as much as possible.
		And when I talk to someone like you, I'm aware of how little I really know.
		And it's so complex, and it's so changing and evolving, and there's always new information that's being released.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and I'm also aware of how little I know every time something new comes out.
		Like, there's a question, and I'm like diving into it.
		I'm like, oh, I didn't know any of this.
		So, you know, there's always information coming out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Just overall health is so important, and yet there's so little consideration given to it by most people.
		And it's one of the most confusing things about human beings.
		Like, when people are sick, the thing that they want more than anything is to be healthy.
		Like, oh my god, I wish I was healthy.
		But then, once they get healthy, they go back to the same eating habits, the same sedentary lifestyle, drinking alcohol, cigarettes, all the same shit that got them in the mess in the first place, and they don't change much about their nutrition, they don't change much about their exercise habits, when it has such a massive effect On the quality of your life, the longevity of your ability to exercise.
		I'm 54 now, and I really haven't lost any ability to exercise rigorously, to do it the same way.
		One of the things I did is I completed that Israeli protocol for hyperbaric chambers where you did 90 days.
		I did 60 sessions of 90 minutes over 90 days.
		Lengthen your telomeres that's appropriate to or approximate to a 20-year decrease in your biological age.
		I did that.
		I just did it.
		I just finished it.
		And I feel great.
		I don't know what it did.
		I mean, I didn't really measure my telomeres and I probably should now, but there's definitely something that happens.
		When you do something like that.
		But who the fuck has time for that?
		Who's going to do that?
		How many people are going to be committed to going to some stupid place and lying in a metal chamber for 90 days?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		You're an outlier, that's for sure.
		I think there's some thoughts that it helps increase blood vessels and growth.
		There's all sorts of things going on.
		I know there's probably studies that actually have proposed mechanisms.
		I just don't know about them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm definitely an outlier in what I practice and that I'm dedicated to it.
		But it's also because I don't like being sick.
		I haven't been sick in 11 years.
		Plus, it's been at least 11 years.
		But it's because of actions, because of things I do.
		And I just don't understand people that don't want to be healthier, and I really wish it was more accessible.
		I really wish it was much more common to get comprehensive blood work, and much more common to get nutritional counseling, and much more common for people to be rigorously exercising, to do it on a regular basis, and to realize that when your body is more resilient, When your body's fit, when your cardiovascular shape is higher, you're just better off.
		You're better off.
		You can think better.
		You're healthier.
		You recover from things better.
		Like, everything works better.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And now, I think now, more than ever, Being healthy is even more important.
		Getting to a healthy weight.
		Trying to not have these comorbidities like high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.
		There's a huge lifestyle factor involved in obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure.
		There's definitely things that can be done, you know, that help with that, you know, that help when we were talking about sauna and exercise.
		And, you know, there's even like, you know, other ketogenic diet does help with like weight loss, but there's other strategies for that as well.
		And having the vitamin D, having enough vitamin D and omega-3s, like, you know, to me, it seems like, yeah, it should be beneficial.
		Everyone should want.
		It should be like super motivated, you know, to do that.
		But it's always hard to get people to do it.
		As you mentioned, it's like extremely difficult.
		So, even with my mom, and I constantly am imparting her with information.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Isn't it strange, though, that humans are so reluctant to do things that would benefit them?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's so weird.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't think they believe it, or they might just, you know, it's just too much work.
unidentified		It's too hard.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's too much work, and what little benefit?
		You know, is it worth it?
		Like, I think that's the kind of stuff, like, there's lots of excuses.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		But, you know— But long term, clearly, there's a lot of benefit.
		It's just you have to put it—it's like you're building a mountain with a layer of paint at a time.
		Right.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Yeah.
		You have to put in the effort.
		I mean, for sure.
		And I do think even with, you know, COVID-19, there's obviously data showing that, you know, people that are obese or have a comorbidity, they're more likely to have a severe form of it.
		And it's like twice as much in some cases, you know, it's not like, you know, something like a vaccine would do.
		But it definitely plays a role.
		And, you know, it should be a motivating factor.
		But, you know, since we're on this topic, can we talk a little bit about vaccines?
		Because it's something I have seen a lot of misinformation, like, on everywhere.
		Facebook, on, you know, different news media outlets.
		And I think there's really, like, some main ones that I just feel are...
		Causing harm.
		And so there's really eight of them.
		We don't need to talk about all of them.
		But I think the eight really are that, you know, SARS-CoV-2 is not that bad.
		COVID-19 is not that bad.
		And, you know, vaccines basically don't prevent transmission.
		Spike protein from vaccines are cytotoxic.
		Therefore, they're really bad.
		That vaccines are going to cause something called antibody-dependent enhancement.
		Which is going to make you have a more severe disease.
		There's the vaccines are going to cause infertility.
		There's the vaccines are going to cause a more virulent strain or variant.
		And then there's one more that alternatives to vaccines exist right now that are just as good.
		And I think that there's a few of those that are really, I mean, just like blatantly, they're wrong.
		All of them, I think.
		But I mean, you know, there's some that are more important than others.
		And I think that I would like to talk about them.
		You know, I think first and foremost, there's like two groups of people, mostly.
		One thinks COVID-19 is bad, wants the vaccine, and the other one that thinks it's not that bad and that the vaccines may be harmful.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you think the vaccines are harmful to anyone?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you know anyone that's had bad reactions to vaccines?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I personally, interestingly, the only, I know a lot of people that have gotten vaccinated, and the only person that I know that had something was like, she had a headache for like a week and a half, and then it went away.
		Oh no, another person I knew had nausea for a couple of weeks.
		They were nauseous more frequently, but it went away.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you think you would feel differently if you knew someone that had a stroke?
		Or someone who's had heart attacks?
		Perhaps young people that have?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well...
		It's hard to say.
		So, you know, people react differently, obviously.
		When you're giving, you know, more than 169 million people are vaccinated, right?
		I mean, that's half our adult population is vaccinated, fully vaccinated with COVID-19.
		And it's not zero risk.
		Some people are going to have an adverse reaction.
		And they do.
		It's a big world out there.
		If you were to give 169 million people a peanut or a shellfish, some people are going to have very adverse reactions.
		Some people are going to die.
		It's a big world.
		But with the stroke or the heart attack, you have to...
		So if you're trying to compare, for example, Let's say, you know, you're looking at actual COVID-19 deaths and from heart attacks and strokes, and you're looking at the vaccine adverse events reporting site VAERS, right?
		And that as well.
		You know, you have to realize that basically in the United States, in 2017, there was a publication in the Journal of Circulation.
		Someone dies from cardiovascular disease every 30 seconds in the United States.
		Every 30 seconds.
		Most of those people are above the age of 50, and certainly most are above 65. But every 30 seconds, someone's dying from cardiovascular disease.
		Every 40 seconds, someone in the United States has a stroke.
		Every four minutes, they die from a stroke.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But this is also very, very rare in young people, particularly young, healthy people.
		But one thing that has occurred in young, healthy people that have been vaccinated is myocarditis.
		And some people have had blood clots, like quite a few blood clots.
		And there's speculation, right?
		The Salk Institute released that paper about the spike protein causing some sort of deterioration of the blood vessels.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Did you read that?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I've been looking at a lot of the spike protein and...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's from COVID-19.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're discussing it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		They're talking about from...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		From the actual disease itself.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		So, you know, first of all, like, they're...
		You're either going to get infected with SARS-CoV-2.
		Most people are going to be eventually.
		We're all going to be exposed to it.
		So you're either going to be vaccinated when you're exposed to it or not.
		And people are dying from heart attacks and blood clots.
		And even people are getting myocarditis like 100 full times more than vaccines.
		The myocarditis link from the mRNA, specifically the mRNA vaccines, is real.
		And I think the last I saw it was like 50 per million, which is still rare.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's happened to two people that I know.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So, up until then, and actually now that you asked me, I forgot.
		I had someone who's a supporter.
		I talked about vaccines in one of my Q&As I do, and they went and got it, and they were younger and ended up having some kind of myocarditis.
		So, I do know someone that had it.
		I don't know them, but they emailed me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, what happens if you have that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And like, how do you recover from that?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		But you realize it's happening to young people.
		So myocarditis is caused by two things.
		One, by inflammation.
		Two, by a direct viral infection.
		And it's more common in adolescents and young people.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it's an enlargement of the heart?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's inflammation of the heart can lead to that, yeah.
		But it's happening in young athletes with COVID-19, like, and it's happening, like, more frequently than people that are getting vaccinated.
		So it's still like, well, if the person that got vaccinated, look, it is a risk, but it's still pretty rare, and it also is treatable.
		In most cases, they treat it, like, within a few days, and it's isolated.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why do you think that people, like, there are people that are completely asymptomatic when they get COVID, or if they do get it, it's very mild.
		Do you think that's because they have a lower viral load that they've been infected with?
		Or do you think it's their immune system that fights it off?
		Like, what do you think is happening?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It could be any and all of those things, a combination of them.
		And, you know, but so like, even if you think, you know, if you're looking at just like the most extreme part of like the deaths, right?
		You know, you've got like over 624,000 deaths in COVID-19.
		Most of those deaths are happening in people over the age of 50. And if you look at like...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Most of them have four plus comorbidity factors, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that the average...
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if it's 4 plus for average.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I think the comorbidities increase, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let's find out what the number of comorbidities are in terms of the deaths.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It used to be 2.6, but I think they raised it to 4. I think so.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I might be wrong, but I know it was at least 2.6.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		So then there's the argument, well, I'm healthy.
		I don't have comorbidities, right?
		I mean, so what should I do?
		Like, should I, you know, get vaccinated or should I be exposed to the virus?
		And I think there's a lot of evidence and there's multiple lines of evidence.
		One, you know, There are people with mild symptoms that are getting post-acute COVID syndrome.
		They're getting this, what people call long-haul COVID. And the majority of people...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What do you think that is?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What is long-haul COVID? I don't know what it is.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I think it depends on the symptoms.
		I think there could be a variety of causes for it.
		You know, so there are people...
		And most of it, this is happening in teenagers to like 50. Most of the people that are older are not getting this long-haul COVID. It's like happening in people that are mostly not being hospitalized.
unidentified		Yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		People that don't get hospitalized originally, like, they have mostly, like, pretty mild symptoms, in some cases even asymptomatic.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		You know, there was a study published in The Lancet, like, last year, showing there was a seven-fold increase in stroke incidents in people under 50 in the United States compared to the year before that, before the pandemic start.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that is probably because of the spike protein that causes this deterioration of the blood vessels and blood clots.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is that what it is from the virus?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know what it is.
		I mean, there's lots of things.
		Viral infections themselves can cause hypercoagulation.
		They can cause blood clots.
		That's known from other viruses.
		Without the spike protein.
		Without the spike protein.
		Okay.
		I feel like I haven't got to address everything, but let's talk about the spike protein.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		I think this four point is where I would find this information.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		I hope that's the spike protein.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there was an average of 4.0 additional conditions or causes of death for data on deaths involving COVID-19 by time period, jurisdiction, and other health conditions.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		So it says only 5% that COVID was the only cause.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So for only 5% of the COVID deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So out of those 600,000 people that died, only 5% died just from COVID-19.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, so you have people that are, COVID-19 is going to make their comorbidities worse, and that could be the same for a vaccine.
		It could be the same for anything, right?
		I mean, so like something that's going to activate the immune system.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but the concern is what vaccines, the negative effects, what people are worried about, I think, is young people that are healthy that have negative effects, like that have had strokes or that have had thrombosis or myocarditis and those issues, right?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, again, if you look at the data, you know, young people are also experiencing those things at a higher rate.
		And are those all the people with the comorbidities?
		Like, I don't know.
		You know, like, I'm not sure.
		But it seems as though no matter which way you look at it, like, it is worse to be exposed to that virus.
		And like, how do you know that person that had that myocarditis wouldn't have had it x-fold worse with COVID-19?
		Because it's been shown to happen in young, healthy athletes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Has it been shown in large numbers?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		More so than the vaccines?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is that what you're saying?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I'm saying that myocarditis from the vaccines is happening in younger people at a higher rate than from the vaccines.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do we have accurate data, do you think, about how many myocarditis instances we have from the vaccine?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, you could argue there's an under-reporting.
		I think people, so anyone can submit data to the VAERS, and I think when it comes to someone who's younger, they're more likely.
		I mean, so healthcare professionals have to submit to the VAERS if there's, like, something that's life-threatening, which myocarditis could be.
		Or if it's a death or something that's like, you know, changes their daily functions, like congenital effects.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They have to submit it?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But how do they know that myocarditis is caused by the vaccine?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		They don't.
		But if the person had gotten vaccinated, and by the way, there's no time constraint.
		It's not like, oh, if they've only been vaccinated within two months.
		They're supposed to submit to VAERS if someone was vaccinated.
		They're supposed to?
		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there encouragement or discouragement to submit to VAERS? I don't know.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		But I mean, you know, if you again, even just looking at the deaths in every age group, even like, you know, people that are in my age group, 40 to 49, you know, there's 20,000 deaths that have been linked to the confirmed COVID-19 cases.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Whereas, you know, in VAERS, it's 200. And even if you triple that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		For people with comorbidities, obviously, it's a real issue.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I don't know if that's always the case, but yes, definitely with people with comorbidities.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because according to this, what we pulled up, it's 5% that are dying just of the COVID. 95% have an average of four comorbidities.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Well, if that's true for all ages, then yes, people with comorbidities are more likely to die.
		But also younger people, like I said, they're more likely to get, you know, these long haul symptoms where I've known so many people, you know, that they've gotten like their loss of smell or taste has been like several months.
		And there's now studies showing that, you know, if you, there was a huge study out of the biobank, UK biobank data, where right before the pandemic started, MRIs were done, brain scans on like, almost 1000 people was like over 800. And then the pandemic hit.
		People got COVID, some people didn't, whatever.
		So they brought the same cohort of people back in for a brain scan.
		And, you know, basically they corrected for people.
		So they had people that they compared people that were the same age, same gender, same sex.
		And then they also timed between scans.
		And they found that both mild and severe COVID-19 cases caused a Right.
		Right.
		But people that had mild cases that didn't go to the hospital had it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How many people did they study with this?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It was over 800.
		Yeah.
		I mean, you know, it's – you need more data to confirm.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But I mean – Were these people – did they stratify it by age?
unidentified		Did they have it by health?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Age, gender, ethnicity, health, I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did they have comorbidities?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did they factor that in?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		They had people that age the same age, you know, as people didn't get COVID, they didn't have it.
		I mean, you know, this is several months.
		This is just months after.
		I don't know about the health.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did they monitor their nutrition or find out what kind of supplements they were on or not?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if any of that data was in it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that data would be a factor at all?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't know because I know people that supplement that exercise that have had were diagnosed with they had a mild case and they were diagnosed with POTS you know post postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome where their heart was racing like tachycardia was racing just uncontrollably they were dizzy couldn't had no energy I mean this was months and they finally got diagnosed and it's like a lot of people coming out with this but you know Do you know anybody that had COVID and got
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		through it with almost no symptoms at all and was very mild?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, no symptoms at all.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		But the people that I do know, most of them had some kind of weird taste issue or smell thing for weeks and weeks.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You don't know anybody that didn't have that?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		No.
		I don't, because most of the people I know that had it lost their smell.
		I know people are out there that don't have any symptoms at all.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think it was something like 40% were completely asymptomatic, right?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, there was a study in Israel, kind of going back to the stroke thing, that found...
		This was published in...
		What was it?
		Maybe April 2020 or something?
		Maybe July.
		I don't know.
		It was still 2020. But they looked at patients that were coming in for stroke, and these were younger than 50. And like 30% of them had had COVID, didn't know it because they were asymptomatic and they were younger people.
		So it's like you'd think, well, if they had four comorbidities, they had COVID, they'd know it, right?
		So they were coming in for stroke.
		And they had no idea they had COVID until they were tested.
		Because they had a stroke.
		Exactly.
		Interesting.
		So getting back to like, you know, so there's reasons that I personally think that people that are younger and healthy should get vaccinated.
		And for one is because...
		For most people, the vaccines are safe.
		And I mean, we just have data to show that, you know, we have hundreds of millions of people that have had the vaccines we're getting in the United States that have been vaccinated worldwide.
		The second, you know, it's just hundreds of millions of people.
		But also the fact that...
		You know, some of this stuff where you're talking about spike protein and you're worried about spike protein.
		So this is important because the spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a different spike protein than what's in the vaccine.
		So when the vaccines were made, these are ones in the U.S. So this is both mRNA vaccines, the Pfizer-BioNTech and then the Moderna as well as Johnson& Johnson.
		The protein itself is locked in a conformation.
		It's called pre-fusion, which is kind of like closed together.
		And typically what happens when viruses like interact with our cell membrane, they elongate.
		It's called post-fusion, a post-fusion viral complex, and changes structure.
		And so the actual, both the mRNA vaccines and Johnson & Johnson locked the spike protein in the prefusion confirmation.
		They inserted two proline amino acids and kept it locked.
		It's a different protein.
		It's a different structure.
		It can't open up.
		We don't know.
		Like there's no evidence that these studies that have, one that you're talking about, the Salk Institute, the other ones that they have injected spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus into tracheas of hamsters and also mice.
		There's been some in vitro studies showing the spike protein is harmful in those studies.
		And it's binding to the ACE2 receptor.
		And once it binds, it can undergo fusion and endocytosis.
		But we don't know if the spike protein from these mRNA vaccines are doing that.
		If you're going to make that claim, it's a different spike protein.
		You can't make that claim with no evidence.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So what do you think is happening to the people that are getting myocarditis or strokes or thrombosis or blood clots from the vaccine?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So here's the thing.
		I think the other part of that is that people are concerned that the mRNA vaccines don't stay in the deltoid tissue and they're somehow getting into circulation and causing havoc, you know.
		Here's the thing.
		These mRNA vaccines, they're basically encased in this lipid nanoparticle and there's some other things in there with it.
		But generally speaking, when they're injected into the muscle tissue, the lipid nanoparticle has a half-life of a few hours.
		A few hours.
		Long enough to protect the mRNA from degrading.
		The mRNA, again, the half-life is, you know, anywhere between some 72 hours or maybe like a little longer.
		And the spike protein itself that's made in your cells speaks after 24 hours and then it goes away after 48. The concern from people that the spike protein from the mRNA vaccines or even just the whole mRNA vaccine itself, the whole lipid nanoparticle with the mRNAs, like going to other tissues, comes from studies that were done from Pfizer.
		And it was kind of leaked out, and these studies were called biodistribution studies.
		And they injected in—they did rats and they did mice.
		And the rats, they injected 50 micrograms of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
		So humans, we get 30 micrograms per injection.
		They gave the rat 50. So, you know, how big is a rat?
		You know, they're getting almost twice as much as a big human's getting.
		If you look at the rat equivalent dose, 50 micrograms is 10 times the rat equivalent dose.
		They were doing that intentionally for safety and to see what happens when you give 10 times, like, a high dose.
		And what...
		What was found is that you could see they radiolabeled the lipid nanoparticle.
		And you could see some radiolabeled parts in other organs.
		Like, you know, you'd see it in the spleen, the liver, you know, the bone marrow, a little bit of other organs.
		But again, this is 10 times the dose.
		And this was a radiolabeled lipid nanoparticle.
		And typically, you know, when you inject something into like your muscle, you've got lymphatic system.
		Lymph is like surrounding it.
		Lots of immune cells are there.
		And so what ends up happening is you have like dendritic cells immediately when something foreign, like this lipid nanoparticle, they chew it up into pieces.
		And through phagocytosis, it's like, you know, it gets taken to, you know, liver and stuff for like metabolic purposes, right?
		So we don't even know what that was, not to mention the fact that it was, you know, 10 times the dose.
		How is it going to get into the circulation that's weird?
		There have been some earlier studies on mRNA vaccines that have shown when you directly inject it, like if you do it like intravenously, it goes to the liver.
		The mRNA vaccine goes to the liver and your liver tries to get rid of it.
		The same bio-distribution study also injected mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech into mice.
		But this time they did the animal equivalent dose, which was two micrograms.
		And there was a little bit found in the liver 24 hours later, but it was gone by 48. Nothing.
		And there was no other organs that at least that they showed.
		I mean, presumably if they were showing up in other organs, they would show that, but like in the animal study.
		So that's one piece of evidence.
		The other one I've seen going around is like there was a small study, 13 people, and they were looking at the antibody response to vaccines.
		And within these 13 people, they used a test called the Samoa, S-I-M-O-A, to measure spike protein and the S1 subunit of the spike protein.
		And they found that three out of 13 people had, they could detect spike protein, and 11 out of 13, they could detect some of the S1 subunit.
		But it turns out, like, this test, the Samoa, is really good for looking at, like, IgG, you know, antibodies.
		But when it comes to actual spike protein, it's 25% false positivity rate.
		So another study showed this.
		You could take people pre-pandemic, run this test on them, and they'd show, like, they had spike protein.
		25% of the time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it's just a bad test?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's an inaccurate test for spike protein, definitely for spike protein, but also for the S1 subunit.
		So I don't think you can make a claim that because you have 11 out of 13 people showing this, using this test, that's the only study that's shown that.
		That, to me, is like, you can't make any claim from that.
		There's no way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So what do you think is happening to people that are having bad responses to the vaccine?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like when young people are having myocarditis or heart failure, when they're having strokes, what do you think is happening?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, it depends also on the vaccine itself.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So what we know about the mRNA vaccines is that they are the ones that are associated with myocarditis.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But isn't the Johnson& Johnson's also associated with blood clots?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's different.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I'm saying myocarditis.
unidentified		Oh, okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Just myocarditis.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So these are mRNA vaccines, and they do elicit a pretty strong immune response, and that's why they've been so effective.
		I guess I should say the efficacy, if you're looking at clinical trials, in terms of preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to Johnson& Johnson initially.
		But Johnson& Johnson uses an adenoviral vaccine.
		So this is the first time adenoviral vaccines have been used, you know, widespread.
		Like they've been used in clinical studies dating back to like the 90s or 80s or something like that.
		But I was looking at some of those research studies, and there seems to be a link between blood clots, thrombosis, and the adenoviral vectors back then, back in those studies.
		And I don't think they're understanding.
		It's still kind of rare.
		I mean, it's still rare.
		And again, you know, COVID is causing blood clots in people, even people that are healthy, you know, like people that are getting a stroke.
		So, you know, I don't know what it is, but it's still pretty rare with the adenoviral vaccines and the thrombocytopenia and things like that.
		The myocarditis, again, still pretty rare, and that's with the mRNA vaccines.
		Inflammation is playing a role in that, and why that is, I don't know.
		Younger people, children and adolescents are more prone to myocarditis from viral infections.
		It probably has something to do with their immune system being so much better, and when you activate it, maybe sometimes in some people...
		You know, there's too much of it going on.
		I don't know.
		I don't think this is linked.
		I don't think that you're going to find, you know, the spike protein from the mRNA vaccines are like floating around in your vascular system and like going to your heart and like finding on...
		Well, I mean, in theory, yeah, it is.
		But, you know, again, like, the spike proteins from the mRNA vaccines are different from SARS-CoV-2.
		We talked about that, pre-fusion, right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do we know if those spike proteins that are different, do they have the same effect on the body, or is it a minimal effect?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, what is...
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, we know that the...
		So this work was done by Jason McClellan.
		He's actually in Austin.
		He's at the University of Austin.
		He's the one that basically did this two-point mutation and kept the spike protein in the prefusion complex.
		And this was work that he had done previously with RSV, respiratory synsexual virus, is what every kid gets, right?
		And if you want to hear about a vaccine tragedy story, that's the poster child.
		There were clinical studies done back in the 1960s on RSV vaccines.
		And I don't remember the number of people in the actual study of infants and toddlers, but 80% of the infants and toddlers that got the vaccine and then were naturally exposed to the virus got hospitalized and a couple died, versus 5% of the infants that did not get the vaccine and were exposed.
		So the vaccine, we know now from what was happening in that sense, was that the vaccine was causing something called antibody-dependent enhancement.
		And what that is, there's two ways that it can happen, but one of the things, and it's induced by vaccines, one of the things that can happen is it can make viruses come into your cells, like, better.
		So you, like, more viral particles, you get infected.
		The other way is, and this is what was happening with RSV, is it basically causes your immune system to become, like, more...
		More dangerous and active and be more harmful after you're exposed to the virus where the vaccine is supposed to be protecting you from.
		And for a long time, and I know I think Jason was involved in figuring this out, Dr. McLellan, that it's the post-fusion antibodies that you make from a vaccine that can cause that.
		Because the post-fusion, remember there's two confirmations of the – a lot of times these viral proteins do that, including the spike.
		The post-fusion ones are not as – they're not as good at actually protecting you from the actual virus, but they like – they kind of in some cases can even mask it or like, you know, become harmful.
		Anyways, they know now that the post-fusion antibodies play a big role in antibody-dependent enhancement.
		And those are not antibodies that are being made in All the vaccines in the United States.
		AstraZeneca didn't do this, 2-proline mutation change, but the vaccines that we're using in the United States are.
		And so the antibody-dependent enhancement theory that's going to happen, that people that are vaccinated, they're all going to be really sick.
		They're going to be sicker than people that just get the virus.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I haven't heard that.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's like a big one.
		That misinformation.
		It's misinformation that's like, you know, so for one, you'd be seeing the hospitals fill up with vaccine people and not unvaccinated, which is what we see.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But in Israel, they are filling up with vaccinated people.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, in Israel, it's mostly not vaccinated people that are filling the hospitals.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't think that's true right now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I was reading something today about that, that the majority of the people that are hospitalized in Israel were vaccinated, and they're attributing that to the higher rate of vaccinations in Israel, and that the idea that these vaccines have a waning life of effectiveness So that after, you know, six to seven months or however many months it is, that they're not as effective and then you're seeing people get sicker.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And that's been shown in Israel.
		Israel showed this.
		They had a breakthrough study that was published in New England Journal of Medicine.
		They showed that basically...
		You could take healthcare workers that were vaccinated and measure their antibody level, neutralizing antibody levels, like, a week before they became infected.
		Or, like, you'd look at their antibody levels a week before they came down with a breakthrough infection.
		And it predicted the breakthrough infection.
		In other words, people with lower neutralizing antibodies were more likely to get this breakthrough infection.
		And then another study was published by Miles Davenport Group, It was published in Nature Medicine, where he did some kind of modeling and found you had to have six times more neutralizing antibodies to protect from actually getting infection than from, like, you know, being hospitalized as well.
		And the Pfizer vaccine, so there was a huge study that came out of the Mayo Clinic, and this was, like, recent.
		It was, like, multi-states.
		25,000 people and one, I think, there were 25,000 people that were vaccinated.
		And they looked at whether, oh, and 25,000 people that were unvaccinated.
		And it was looking at, you know, effectiveness.
		Effectivity of the vaccine.
		So in other words, protecting you from actually getting the infection and then like protecting from severity, so hospitalizations.
		And so this is with the Delta variant because everything's changed now with Delta variant, right?
		I mean, like these vaccines were much more effective at preventing infections with the Alpha variant being dominant, which was the dominant one before July.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How do they know when you get infected if you have a Delta variant?
		Because the friends that I've had that have gotten sick with COVID, particularly ones that have already been vaccinated that got sick afterwards, they didn't test for what variant.
		They just tested whether or not they're positive.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I mean, some places aren't doing that, but you'd have to do a PCR test.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		All of my friends.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		All of my friends that tested positive after they've been vaccinated.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I think now, because the Delta variant is so much more transmissible, it's taken over.
		They just assume that it's a Delta variant.
		Exactly.
		They just assume because it's pretty much taken over.
		But with that study, they showed the Pfizer vaccine went from being 80% to 95% effective at preventing infections to 42%.
		So there's a drop in that.
		The Moderna vaccine was actually much better.
		It dropped down to 77% effective.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The side effects of the Moderna were a little stronger as well, right?
		Because the Moderna conferred more of the spike protein and it made your body more resilient to the virus, but it also gave you harsher side effects.
		Is that the case?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So I don't know if the Moderna, I mean, I don't know why that would be, other than that, like maybe eliciting a stronger immune response.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		The Moderna vaccine has three times the amount of mRNA in it than Pfizer.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Three times.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		About so, yeah.
		About three times.
		But, like, getting back to that, you know, with the transmission and looking at, you know, overall transmission, like, even aside from something called onward transmission, there's two types of transmission.
		Like, the vaccines are protecting...
		People from getting this virus because there's still some effectiveness of them.
		They are.
		It's reduced, but like when you have, you know, it's still, you know, 40% of the people that have the Pfizer X amount of months later, again, neutralizing antibodies probably play a role in that, you know, if you have more, if you're younger.
		So there's all sorts of studies showing that older people make less neutralizing antibodies with vaccines.
		And also time.
		Of course, they wane over time.
		But there's lots of studies showing that people in the hospitals are older, of course, the ones getting the breakthrough infections.
		And so these vaccines are still preventing overall transmission.
		They're preventing overall transmission.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, if people are getting sick while they're vaccinated, and if the vaccinated people can still spread the virus, how are they preventing?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So there's overall transmission.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The reducing?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Are you saying they're reducing transmission?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I'm saying it's still, for the overall transmission, yes, it's reducing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so it's not preventing.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Sorry, no, it is not preventing.
		It is reducing overall transmission.
		There's also onward transmission and that's where a lot of this new stuff has come with Delta where there's been some, you know, the CDC put out some data and then there was a study, a big study out of the UK where they measured peak viral levels in vaccinated people and compared it to unvaccinated.
		And peak viral levels were the same in terms of, you know, how much virus they were shedding.
		But The virus basically, you know, it's replicating for a number of days and you're shedding for a number of days.
		It's not just peak.
		It's not just the first, you know, few days.
		It continues on.
		And so a Singapore study looked at that.
		They looked at, this was, you know, not a huge study, but this was with the Delta variant.
		And they saw that while the initial levels of virus were the same in both vaccinated and unvaccinated, vaccinated people cleared it quicker.
		They cleared it faster.
		So they weren't shedding for as long of a time, which would also suggest that if you were to take a random sampling of the population, not people that are going in and seeking health care, in which case people that are going in and seeking health care, they're like getting their peak viral infection, right?
		There's a REACT study.
		It's a real-time study that's going on in the UK where they get all this data real time.
		They also found if you take a random sampling of people...
		Vaccinated people have less viral, this is with Delta, they have less viral load than unvaccinated, which is what you expect if vaccinated people are clearing it quicker.
		So there is even some evidence to suggest that even with Delta variant, vaccinated people are somewhat still even affecting onward transmission as well.
		In other words, you know, preventing the transmission through just your infectiousness, making other people sick.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But if there's these issues that you were talking about with people that even have very mild cases, that they're developing these problems with brain matter and all these different issues, these are still happening to people who are vaccinated who get COVID, right?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But this is one of the main reasons why it's a good idea to get vaccinated.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wasn't that what you were saying?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's a reason.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		To prevent infection, but if...
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It's a reason on the individual level.
		It's like, okay, well, do you want to be exposed to the virus without being vaccinated?
		Or do you want to be exposed to being vaccinated?
		And maybe not even get it.
		It's a gamble, right?
		I mean, you're going to be exposed.
		So either you're going to be vaccinated and not get it, or you might get it with Delta.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or you can be unvaccinated and not get it, too.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		That's not going to be the case for like, unless you're a hermit and never, you know, it's eventually going to.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I've been exposed to it many times and I haven't gotten it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		You don't have any antibodies against any?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, I never got any bodies.
		I did have a higher level of monocytes.
		I got tested, my blood tested and showed that I had gotten over some sort of a viral infection.
		I'd beaten it off.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		It sounds like you're either an outlier or maybe you did have it and it just hasn't been detected yet.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, there was a couple of days where everybody around me got it and a couple of days of my workouts felt really shitty.
		And I just took it real easy.
		And I continued the same stuff that I always do in terms of my protocol, like with the sauna and all the other stuff that I do and vitamins and supplementation.
		And my whole family got it.
		I never got it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, obviously there's people that are going to get this that are going to have hardly anything and maybe not even know it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's happening.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But I got my antibodies tested and had all those things done.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		I got tested every day for COVID. I have no idea.
		I mean, you know, go for the nucleocapsid protein.
		Get that tested because that would be more, I think, indicative.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that is a blood test?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		You can get that from Quest, I believe.
		It's either Quest or LabCorp.
		I think it's Quest.
		It's nucleocapsid.
		But I mean, even aside from that, you know, like...
		If you have something that can, like, you know, you don't want the hospitals to fill, the ICUs to fill up.
		Of course.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, of course.
		Here's another question.
		If the effectiveness wanes of the vaccine over six months or however much time it is, And you need a booster.
		Do we have any information or any data as to what the effects of the booster is?
		If we have the information about the second dose of the mRNA vaccine being more difficult for some people to tolerate, they have more difficult side effects.
		Do we have any data about what a third shot is going to be like or possibly a fourth or ongoing?
		And is there a point in time where it's going to be detrimental to your health to continue getting booster shots?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I have no idea.
		I have no idea.
		I don't think there's data.
		Is that the road that we're getting on?
		I think in my opinion, and again, I should have said this earlier, I am not an infectious disease expert.
		This is my opinion.
		I know you're interested in my opinion.
		It is my opinion that elderly people and maybe those people with the four comorbidities or two or whatever it is, any comorbidities probably, those people are, what we're seeing in hospitals right now, most of them are people that are immunocompromised or older.
		And they might benefit because they have a lot to lose if they get COVID. They have a lot to lose.
		They have their life, potentially, right?
		So there may be an argument for people to get a booster.
		At that age.
		I'm not sure there's an argument for people like myself to get a booster.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, but what about in 10 months?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What about in a year?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Or even in a year.
		At some point, the vaccine, well, I don't know.
		It depends.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there a lot of I don't know going on here with this stuff?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		For the boosters?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		For all of it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, for the original data, we've got the original clinical trial with 75,000 people with both mRNA vaccines.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, but it lasted for like four months, right?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		There's phase one, phase two, phase three.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, but initially the thought was you are never going to get COVID if you've been vaccinated and you're not going to spread it.
		I mean, this is what Fauci had constantly espoused.
		This was the thing that they were saying.
		Now they've changed it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yes, because we have a new variant.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it only because of the new variant, or is it because of the waning of the original vaccine's effectiveness?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Maybe both.
		Probably both, to be honest.
		I do think that there's a lot of evidence to suggest that neutralizing antibody levels can predict whether or not you get the SARS-CoV-2 infection.
		In fact, if you look and compare at people that have had natural immunity to people that have just been fully vaccinated, they're pretty equal in terms of as likely to get a breakthrough infection or reinfection.
		But if you take a person that has natural immunity and then they get a vaccine, they have something that is referred to as hybrid immunity and they're like 2.3 times, three, four times less likely to get it.
		They're like superhuman in a way.
		Having natural immunity plus the vaccine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But also people that have had natural infections and then have the vaccine have a much higher likelihood of getting an adverse side effect.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Do they?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		A good friend of mine who's an elite athlete got infected with COVID. It was nothing.
		He breezed through it.
		And then he got vaccinated and he was wrecked for 11 days.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I personally don't, and this is probably controversial, but I don't, I think, you know, an individual has to decide and, you know, the CDC is saying people that have had natural immunity should get vaccinated, but I don't see any reason why they have to.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		To be honest, unless they're just terrified and don't want to get it and maybe they have that four times comorbidity or something like that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In all fairness, he's the only one that I know that had an adverse side effect that was also vaccinated and had COVID. All the other friends that I've had that were vaccinated after they had COVID had no problems.
		But he had a bad one.
		He had massive fluid buildup in his body.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Again, it's not zero risk.
		People are having adverse effects, but there's so many hundreds of millions of people that have had it.
		We know about myocarditis from mRNA vaccines.
		We know about that because of the VAERS data.
		We know about the blood clotting from the adenoviral vector vaccines, including Johnson& Johnson.
		I mean, AstraZeneca is not used here, but You know, this is stuff like we know about these side effects.
		They're still rare.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What do you think about prophylactic use of certain medications?
		Like the big and the most controversial one is Ivermectin, of course.
		They use it in Argentina with critical care workers and they use it prophylactically and they had a very high success rate with using it prophylactically.
		And there's some real controversy because there's no real studies.
		There was something that just came out recently out of India and India's use of ivermectin, but there's not something that there's like real rock-hard data that you can show that points to the effectiveness of it.
		But you have like the frontline critical COVID care workers who, you know, like Pierre Corey, Dr. Pierre Corey, who's promoting the use of ivermectin and many other people that also have shown they've had good use of it.
		But it's very controversial, right?
		Like a lot of people don't even want to prescribe it.
		A lot of doctors, they don't even want to hear about it.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So I have done a lot of sort of trying to read the, like, I don't have the anecdotal evidence that Dr. Pierre Corey has in treating frontline COVID patients.
		I don't have any of that anecdotal evidence, none of it.
		So all I can do is look at data and data that's, you know, either preprint or data that actually has been peer reviewed and published.
		And what I see, and I mostly see that a lot of people doing this on websites.
		They're, like, aggregating all this data and putting it together.
		But there's, like, some major, major problems with the way they're showing the data.
		That is, like, it's a big concern.
		The one is that, you know, people are using different, obviously, doses, but there are different co-interventions with both the treatment group and the control group.
		So you have people getting ivermectin, or you have people getting ivermectin and azithromycin, or you have people getting ivermectin and doxycycline, or you have people getting ivermectin, you know, azithromycin, they're getting, like, anticoagulants in some cases, they're getting vitamin C, they're getting the kitchen sink, okay?
		And then you have the control groups.
		Very considerably.
		They're getting, you know, maybe in some cases, in the best case, a placebo, or they're getting, you know, the standard of care treatment, or they're getting hydroxychloroquine, or they're getting hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin.
		Okay?
		So you have a bunch of different treatments and co-treatments happening with each group.
		And you have people aggregating all those together.
		And that's just part A. Part B is you have different endpoints being measured.
		You have like time till negative real-time PCR. So like basically viral clearance, right?
		When you get negative.
		You have people looking at hospitalizations.
		You have people looking at mortality.
		You have people looking at, what's another one?
		Okay, the prophylactic endpoints.
		And then people just like aggregating stuff together.
		Oh, there's an improvement.
		And they're aggregating all these studies together.
		And then the other problem is that you have, and it's kind of something you alluded to, is that you have small, small sample sizes in such case that the incidence of something is going to be so small because the sample population is so small.
		So I'll give you an example.
		Like, you have 50 people in one group and you have 64 in another group.
		And two out of the 50 people were hospitalized in the control group, but zero were hospitalized in the ivermectin group.
		That is such a low incidence of events that you can't be certain.
		But they take that and aggregate it with all this stuff.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And then it becomes- Massive lack of studies.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Not only that, and I think this is what's putting people off.
		You said doctors and stuff.
		There is a huge overstatement for whatever reason.
		Maybe it's because people have anecdotal...
		Maybe they're treating patients like, I know this works.
		Maybe they're passionate about it because of that.
		Or maybe there's also people that are pretty much just not wanting...
		They think vaccines are harmful and they want to find something else they can champion.
		So I think...
		They're doing harm to the ivermectin world by sensationalizing it and making it like this miracle thing.
		Because it is doing harm.
		And I had a knee-jerk reaction at first.
		It was like, oh, no, I know this is like, you can't say something's 99% effective.
		Like, no clinical trial known to human history has ever shown something 99% effective.
		Right?
		So that was like a red flag.
		But, you know, so there's a couple of things here.
		There's therapeutic treatment with ivermectin.
		And then there's prophylactic, right?
		Taking it if you know you've been exposed, in which case I think is a little more reasonable than like, I'm going to take it instead of a vaccine, in which case there is no evidence that ivermectin is going to protect you from getting it like a vaccine or prevent you from being hospitalized by vaccine.
		There's certainly, I don't even know if there's any evidence on Delta variant.
		This is a different variant.
unidentified		This is different.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		We don't even know, what is ivermectin doing now?
		We've had to change the whole gang with vaccines.
		So that's another issue, but My opinion is that when I look at all the data, I see like, you know, you'll see like, again, it's like all over the place.
		They're using this and that.
		But just forget all that.
		And, you know, it seems to me like there's huge variation in, you know, things like mortality.
		Which makes sense.
		I would think something like this would be more effective if you give it earlier on and you're preventing from, you know, severe hospitalization or something like that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think that's the idea behind it, along with monoclonal antibodies, which are now Regeneron.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Now Regeneron's not even working as well against the Delta.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So these treatments...
unidentified		Really?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		But here's the thing that I noticed that was consistent with ivermectin.
		It did seem to be, in almost every clinical trial, it seemed to shorten the time to a negative PCR rate.
		In other words, Help clear the virus.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But there's really just a lack of studies.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Really a lack of solid studies.
		And a problem of just, like, piling it all on and making these grandiose statements.
		And to be honest, the prophylactic data, like, there was one study that got me excited.
		It was in, like, 600 healthcare workers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In Argentina?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		No, this was the one in Egypt.
		Oh, okay.
		And that one got withdrawn because there was a falsification of data.
		They were enrolling patients.
		Patients had died, and they were enrolling them after they had died.
		It's like, okay, that was not right.
		So I do think, it is my opinion, I've known people, not knowing them personally, my family has friends That were taking ivermectin that was prescribed by a doctor.
		By the way, taking animal-grade ivermectin is a huge...
		Like, that could be bad because the dose is way off.
		Way, way off.
		And people are doing that and they're getting harmed.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's a strange thing, isn't it?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		They did it with hydroxychloroquine, too.
		People were doing that.
		They were taking fish cleaner.
		Yeah, exactly.
		They were doing that.
		But, again, I know people that were anti-vax and they were taking ivermectin and they ended up in the ICU. They ended up in the ICU from ivermectin?
		No, with COVID. They got COVID and then it was like bad.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And they were taking animal grade?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		No, they were taking ivermectin.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		They had gotten ivermectin.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Were they taking the...
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I mean, so, you know, there's the dose and, you know, but, you know, here's also, it is a safe drug.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, most of the times that it's used with our whole safety history is one to two days.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		So that's what it's prescribed for, for all those things.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		For river blindness and things along those lines.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		And scabies.
		Yeah.
		So it's like, what effect does having it once a week have for multiple weeks?
		I don't know.
		I don't know, honestly.
		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We don't know.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		We don't.
		I personally think people should get vaccinated.
		I think it's safe.
		I think people should make that decision based on information.
		I hope they choose to.
		I'm not telling someone to do something, but I hope they choose to.
		It is the safest way to protect yourself from this and also to help us get our society back to normal and also help not overwhelm ICUs because you don't want to get in a car accident or have a heart attack if the ICU is full.
		It's bad, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We are at three hours.
		Unfortunately, I've got a tight day today.
		I've got to bail out of here.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		There you have it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there anything else?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you have any final thoughts on this?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I've got a lot of thoughts on it.
		But I think we talked about some good.
		We didn't talk about the fertility, but there's many studies that have come out showing it doesn't affect fertility.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What do you think about pregnant women getting it?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Well, there have been studies, large studies that have now been done with pregnant women getting it.
		And, you know, I think it's bad to get SARS-CoV-2 if you're pregnant.
		So I think a woman has to make the decision whether or not they're going to be exposed to it if they're working a job and have to be out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you think there's any additional concerns about getting vaccinated while you're pregnant?
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		I think the data so far has suggested it seems to be okay, particularly when you compare it to getting SARS-CoV-2 while pregnant.
		And that's pretty much the bottom line.
		I am always, with pregnancy, in me, it's always kind of like the most conservative you could ever do.
		And so that's my nature.
		And again, I have that luxury because I don't have to go out and talk to people.
		I can stay home and work.
		And not interact with anyone.
		If I were a grocery store worker, someone that's in the service industry or someone that's going to be exposed, I wouldn't want to get the SARS-CoV-2.
		I wouldn't.
		And there's been studies that it is harmful during pregnancy.
		So, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a wrap.
		Rhonda, you're awesome.
		Thank you very much.
		Let everybody know where they can get a hold of your podcast, find you on social media, all that good stuff.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, my podcast is on Spotify.
		It's on Apple Podcasts.
		Found My Fitness, all one word is the name.
		I'm also on social media with all that stuff.
		And my website, I have a JRE page.
		It's called foundmyfitness.com forward slash JRE. It has timelines and notes to every podcast we did with references to a lot of the stuff talked about.
		For all other nine of them and soon to be this one as well.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's an insane amount of work to do all that.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		But it's nice to have references.
		People want to dive deeper.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's amazing to have references.
		So thank you very much for doing that because that's really cool of you.
		And look at all those times we've talked.
		Wow, way back to 4.59.
		That's crazy.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		That is crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's always a pleasure.
		Thank you so much for being here.
		I always appreciate your perspective and your information and all your research and everything.
rhonda patrick ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Joe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much.

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