The Art of Manliness - #285： The Real Science of Nutrition and Supplements

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast if you work out

00:00:18.940 regularly you probably take some sort of supplement be a whey protein or creatine or

00:00:22.480 some sort of pre-workout but do the supplements you're taking actually work my guest today on

00:00:27.160 the show has spent his career studying the effects of what we put into our body and is the director

00:00:30.740 of the online encyclopedia of supplements and nutrition called examine.com his name is kamal

00:00:35.780 patel he's a researcher with an mph and mba from john hopkins university and is working on his phd

00:00:40.340 in nutrition today on the show kamal and i discuss why there's so much confusion when it comes to

00:00:45.200 supplements and nutrition for example he explains why one study can say cholesterol is bad for you

00:00:50.360 while another one says it's vital for health and then kamal breaks down how to read scientific studies

00:00:55.200 on nutrition so you can make informed decisions about your diet instead of relying on clickbait

00:01:00.120 headlines published by pseudo journalists we then get into which supplements actually work and which

00:01:05.140 ones are a waste of money and the kamal also shares his insights on the growing field of nootropics

00:01:09.600 and if there really are supplements that will make you smarter if you've been overwhelmed by the science

00:01:14.160 supplements nutrition this podcast will give you several tools to help you make better more informed

00:01:18.180 choices after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash examine

00:01:22.800 all right kamal patel welcome to the show it's my pleasure so you uh started a website and own a

00:01:42.900 website called examine.com that basically just simplifies and really digs in to the research out

00:01:50.200 there about nutrition supplements etc because it's super confusing uh to analyze these studies

00:01:58.660 figure out what they actually are saying so you can make good decisions so i i it's one of my go-to

00:02:03.580 sources whenever i'm thinking about should i try this supplement does it actually do anything or am i just

00:02:08.080 peeing it away uh whenever i take it uh but before we get in talking talking about examine.com

00:02:13.540 can you tell us a bit about your background um and why you decided to start examine.com

00:02:19.040 so i first became interested in nutrition sometime in the late 90s so it was when i was in college and

00:02:25.760 i was really skinny and basically i wanted to get bigger um and then the the first person i ever

00:02:31.880 talked to about weight lifting happened to be a power lifter who lived in the dorm in the room next

00:02:36.820 to me and he told me straight away that the most important thing was to learn how to cook

00:02:41.560 and to learn some basics about nutrition and not worry so much about micromanaging what you do at the

00:02:47.120 gym um so i i went straight to the literature right away uh which i was lucky to do rather than going

00:02:54.380 through what people usually go through um and then i gained some weight and i became sort of a wannabe

00:02:59.800 power lifter myself and then a few years later um i guess 10-15 years later um i got more interested

00:03:06.940 in the health aspects because uh you know like a lot of people i had some injuries and then

00:03:12.000 had a few surgeries and i stopped lifting weight so much uh and then when you got older your friends

00:03:16.860 and family have health issues and you become more interested in uh what it takes to feel better rather

00:03:22.340 than only looking better so i started working at a research institution that was doing the systematic

00:03:29.820 review for the 2010 vitamin d guidelines for the institute of medicine um so i i ended up reading a

00:03:36.320 bunch of vitamin d studies and getting familiar with how governments make guidelines for different

00:03:42.120 nutrients um and then right around that point examine.com had been founded two or three years prior

00:03:48.260 um sort of as an offshoot from a discussion on reddit when a couple people were talking about how there

00:03:53.480 wasn't a resource that uh was independent and did sort of systematic reviews for the public

00:03:58.420 so they needed somebody to run the website and i was around and i had an evidence-based

00:04:04.560 medicine background so i came on um and now a few years later i think we're most likely the biggest

00:04:10.860 source of nutrition research on the web yeah you are i mean pretty much anything and everything you

00:04:14.960 can think of when it comes to nutrition you can search for it and you'll find this is just wonderful

00:04:19.280 breakdown of the research that's out there but let's talk about you know there is so much confusion

00:04:25.020 out there about studies related to nutrition health right i mean if you're listening to the popular

00:04:29.980 media watching tv or reading the blogs there's it always seems like there's you know a study coming

00:04:35.160 out saying that x is bad for you and then a year later it's saying well x is actually good for you

00:04:40.840 um what's going on there why does it seem there's so much there's so much contradictory information out

00:04:46.860 there about nutrition so this is a really good question and it could probably be a podcast by itself

00:04:53.200 what a lot of people don't understand is that when you're doing research and then when you're

00:04:59.080 synthesizing that research into reviews and meta-analyses um it's a lot different than what

00:05:04.200 you see in the media and it's not because the media is biased although they sometimes are um and it's not

00:05:10.060 because journalists are ignorant uh because often nowadays either they they learn stuff themselves or they

00:05:15.720 have some science background um rather the reason why studies seem to conflict is that

00:05:21.140 the scientific method uh you know that's been carried on since newton and and before him

00:05:27.520 um involves making observations doing tests and then reiterating the process until you get closer to

00:05:34.400 the truth and nutrition is a lot more complex than a lot of topics because there's a lot of things we

00:05:40.480 don't understand about the body um we don't understand quite how the brain interacts with the gut we don't

00:05:45.740 understand quite what makes some people gain muscle and some people don't so there's just so many

00:05:50.580 things that are unknown and then when you do a clinical trial when you do a controlled study

00:05:55.740 you're purposely holding as many factors controlled as you can so that you can study one particular

00:06:02.420 thing which is like you know vitamin d and people with diabetes so when you control for all those

00:06:07.720 things it's good because then you can focus in on one factor and see if it works or not but it's also

00:06:12.380 bad because it doesn't apply as well to real life so then when you do another study in a slightly

00:06:17.580 different set of people and then you use a slightly different intervention um and then you introduce

00:06:22.380 some other methodological differences um and statistical differences as well then you end up

00:06:28.020 with different results um and then that's not to mention there's also ways that the research process is

00:06:34.740 kind of flawed uh because most studies that are published end up being studies that show some

00:06:40.060 difference between placebo and the intervention so if you if you do a study and there's no difference

00:06:45.320 you're less likely to get it published in a good journal so when you take into account all these

00:06:50.940 things then things end up looking really confusing because let's say saturated fat for example um

00:06:57.120 saturated fat was demonized for decades um and then slowly it's been not as demonized but then kind

00:07:03.400 of it's tipping the other way so some people end up eating um you know sticks of butter or basically

00:07:09.300 only meat because they want to only get saturated fat so that's not so great because uh everything

00:07:17.080 in moderation is also really not good advice you know take that in moderation as well but when you

00:07:23.320 when you don't look at both sides of an issue so the benefits and drawbacks of saturated fat then

00:07:28.060 you end up missing out that there are some safe and optimal doses for different nutrients so there's

00:07:34.040 always going to be studies that say that something's good for you followed up by studies that say it's bad

00:07:38.900 for you so you really have to go look at the actual paper to see and what aspect it's good for you or bad

00:07:44.160 for you and in which sorts of people it's good and bad right and i feel like also too uh in the popular

00:07:50.040 media not necessarily like science writers journalists but uh you know bloggers etc they'll just look at the

00:07:58.000 conclusion of a study and say well yeah this it says it has uh has beneficial aspects but again they don't

00:08:06.220 take into account other factors and so they'll see that conclusion that just like write this you know

00:08:11.400 this broad making this broad sweeping claim that oh yeah you need to do this because this one study

00:08:16.740 said that it can have beneficial factors but they didn't take into account the control or how narrow

00:08:21.940 refined um the experiment was yeah i can't blame people for doing that so before i went to school for

00:08:29.200 nutrition i used to do the same thing i would find an article on pubmed and say oh you know this isn't

00:08:35.480 true because uh you know a study showed that if you take bcaas then it does this but then

00:08:43.360 there's two levels of misinformation one is that when you read the abstract there is usually not a

00:08:50.260 standard of sort of scientific integrity for that for the abstract so they don't have to say what the

00:08:56.020 major limitations of the study are in the abstract they only get into that in the discussion and

00:09:00.720 oftentimes they even miss some of the the ones that they don't want to say and then the second thing is

00:09:05.820 there's all kinds of pitfalls with the abstract so um let's say you compare vitamin d to placebo

00:09:13.360 for muscle gain and then um in the abstract you read that vitamin d increased muscle gain as verified by

00:09:21.980 a dexa scan after eight weeks and then you show somebody the study and you say hey vitamin d helps

00:09:28.080 muscle gain so that all is technically true but if you read the actual paper sometimes what happens is

00:09:34.560 vitamin d increased muscle gain by like two percent and then placebo increased muscle gain by one percent

00:09:42.320 so vitamin d significantly increased muscle gain from the eight-week period back to baseline compared to

00:09:49.740 itself but compared to placebo it didn't significantly increase muscle gain because they both did so the

00:09:55.140 whole purpose of a placebo controlled trial is to compare against placebo but even you know 60 years

00:10:01.780 after evidence-based medicine really started getting going there are still studies with abstracts that

00:10:07.320 only talk about the intervention not comparison to placebo so that's the kind of thing that we look

00:10:12.700 at we try to make sure that people aren't duped by abstracts and by you know articles about the

00:10:17.540 abstracts right i feel like yeah the abstract can really lead you astray because a lot of times that's all

00:10:22.700 you have access to if you're just a layman right you can just see the abstract you can't actually

00:10:26.880 access the research or less you have to pay for it so you read the abstract you're like oh that says

00:10:31.620 that i'm going to go with that yep yeah um so let's say if someone wants to take a look at these studies

00:10:38.580 and actually examine them themselves um is there a sort of a mindset or sort of things that people

00:10:46.200 should look for as they're reading the study so they're not led astray by the abstract or a conclusion

00:10:53.340 um in the study yeah uh we have a short kind of study guide about studies on our website but

00:11:00.580 just to paraphrase some of the most important parts um most people who will look at a study

00:11:06.180 kind of understand what significant means um and it basically means that you know if you find that

00:11:13.040 again let's say vitamin d if you find that there's a significant difference between vitamin d and

00:11:17.320 placebo then um that means that there's a low chance that the results of the study were uh random

00:11:25.580 just due to chance and there's a higher probability that that difference between vitamin d and placebo is

00:11:31.400 real now the thing is that's usually about as deep as people get but what's really important to know

00:11:37.960 is that the significance is not the most important part of the study so um what's really important is

00:11:45.340 how sure are we of the results and that's not just to do with significance it's to do with a bunch of

00:11:51.960 other parts of the study so there's all these um study quality metrics uh that uh like the cochran

00:11:58.700 collaboration which which uh synthesizes studies and some other organizations use so when i used to work

00:12:04.460 at that research center some of the important things we would look at are not just what the result is

00:12:09.820 so vitamin d um increased muscle gain by two percent but rather what the confidence interval is how

00:12:16.660 confident are we and what are the upper and lower bounds of how confident we are so a confidence

00:12:21.300 interval for that might say this study showed that vitamin d increased muscle gain by two percent

00:12:27.600 but the upper and lower bounds is it could go up to four percent or it could go down to minus one

00:12:34.020 percent so you might think you know if the lower bound is minus one percent which means vitamin d

00:12:39.500 could actually decrease muscle gain by one percent what does that actually mean what it usually means is

00:12:45.820 that the study was in a small enough sample of people that were not very confident of the results

00:12:52.240 so if you did that study in 5 000 people rather than 30 then you would end up with a much narrower

00:12:58.820 confidence interval and you basically much be much more confident in your result

00:13:02.660 um and then other than the significance and the numbers themselves there's a bunch of other things

00:13:07.180 to look at so uh when you do a study then uh the you know so so-called gold standard is a randomized

00:13:14.740 controlled trial but uh nowadays people think in terms of uh meta-analyses and systematic reviews

00:13:22.360 of studies so there was a review about two years ago on vitamin d that was called an umbrella review

00:13:28.720 which is basically a meta-analysis of meta-analyses so there's been so many studies on vitamin d now

00:13:35.800 and then meta-analyses looking at one specific topic so you know like the the 20 different studies

00:13:41.860 on vitamin d and blood pressure all get pulled together and looked at quantitatively and that's

00:13:46.620 one meta-analysis meta-analysis so now there's so many of those meta-analyses that somebody went

00:13:51.600 and looked at all the meta-analyses and they said um this shows that there's actually not as much

00:13:58.100 certainty about vitamin d benefits as we might have thought so we might want to be more careful

00:14:02.060 about recommending it so there's all kinds of pros and cons to that um you know in my opinion when you

00:14:08.260 get so far away from the data itself uh doing a review of reviews then you lose some of the you know

00:14:15.880 forests for the trees vitamin d is a hormone precursor and it makes sense the mechanistics

00:14:22.320 make sense for a bunch of different outcomes so i think it doesn't really matter sometimes

00:14:27.200 what all the studies say but rather what the best studies say combined with whether it makes sense or

00:14:32.460 not so there's just a there's a lot of things to look at for the average person looking at a study

00:14:38.000 um and really you just have to read up and practice looking at studies and find out more and more

00:14:43.360 yeah and one thing that i've learned over the years doing you know writing content for the art

00:14:48.280 of manliness you know based on scientific research is also look at you know what's the group that

00:14:52.940 they're studying right for like for example testosterone like increasing your testosterone

00:14:57.360 well once they could say well if you do this one intervention you know it showed an increase in

00:15:03.520 testosterone levels but then you have to look at well who are they studying and oftentimes these like

00:15:07.480 you know great increase in testosterone levels were done on people who had just severely low

00:15:12.440 testosterone older men men with diabetes men who had some kind of health problem it didn't cover

00:15:18.480 like just relatively healthy guys who wanted to increase their testosterone like so you could do

00:15:22.880 those interventions you probably wouldn't see much of an increase so that's one thing i've had to like

00:15:26.520 catch myself as i was looking like who's actually being studied on this because the this this control

00:15:33.220 group or the study group um can have fantastic results but if we're a regular healthy relatively healthy

00:15:40.840 guy you're probably not going to see the same thing yeah it's funny you should mention that because uh

00:15:45.460 i just answered a question on our facebook page somebody asked about this article we posted so the the

00:15:51.620 study we posted showed that if you doubled your protein intake during a heavy calorie deficit then

00:15:58.220 you could lose a lot of fat and gain some muscle at the same time so um historically people have

00:16:04.760 thought you have to go on bulking and cutting cycles because you can't really do both at the same time

00:16:09.800 if you're in a calorie deficit you're not going to gain muscle if you're in excess of calories you're

00:16:14.020 not going to lose fat and then people started um periodizing their carbs around workouts or

00:16:19.580 you know other types of um almost intermittent fasting type things and then they found that you

00:16:24.900 maybe sort of could so in this study it showed a pretty significant uh lean mass increase after cutting

00:16:31.740 calories by 40 percent so we made sure to say that this was an overweight man um and then somebody asked

00:16:38.420 you know why do they keep doing these studies so there's all these studies done on overweight men

00:16:42.880 showing that you know you can do things such as gain muscle on a heavy calorie deficit um can you

00:16:48.300 explain why that even happens why are there all these studies out there and people lose sight of the fact

00:16:53.180 that studies aren't done for healthy lean athletic people you know the the problem in america or the

00:17:00.740 problem in australia or basically any country nowadays um that's losing the economy billions of dollars

00:17:06.920 and you know causing a lot of distress is not that people with four packs are not able to get six

00:17:12.500 packs it's that people who are overweight and obese are getting pre-diabetes and diabetes you know a lot

00:17:18.420 earlier than usual people basically have you know whacked hormones a lot earlier than usual so the problem

00:17:25.480 is with sick people and with two-thirds of people being overweight or obese you're going to end up with

00:17:30.680 nih funding on those people so that doesn't mean that you can't rely on those studies for people who

00:17:37.180 aren't sick or overweight or obese it just means that um there's a decent chance that it might not apply

00:17:43.400 the further you're away from that so if you're a competition ready bodybuilder you're not going to go in

00:17:49.100 a 40 percent calorie deficit and gain muscle because your body you know does would not survive if you kept

00:17:55.720 doing that um but for somebody who's a little bit overweight or even normal weight you you could gain

00:18:00.580 some muscle on a 40 percent calorie deficit but you really do have to look at the population in hand

00:18:04.800 and you have to look at who the study is funded by so you know there's been all kinds of studies we've

00:18:10.600 looked at where like for example uh when you look at fructose research um fruit sugar and also uh sugar

00:18:19.060 and high fructose corn syrup and you look at um beverages that contain sugar in general when you look at

00:18:25.180 randomized trials on them most likely if a trial is funded by the sugar industry then that trial will

00:18:32.300 show no difference between you know water and uh sugared beverages but if you look at nih funded

00:18:38.680 research it's more likely to show that um beverages with sugar are harmful so that applies to a bunch of

00:18:44.980 things including supplement companies um and the dairy industry and stuff like that so it's not that

00:18:49.760 dairy is bad it's not that meat's bad it's not that sugar is bad it's just that you can't be fully

00:18:54.200 sure that the research you're reading has an influence in some way and uh how should people

00:18:58.760 approach studies done on animals because a lot of the research on supplements um or in regards to

00:19:06.160 testosterone like it's done on mice like that's the control that's the experiment group um should you

00:19:11.100 take that with a grain of salt or is there anything you can actually glean from animal studies and

00:19:15.760 transfer that to human health so yeah it should be a grain of salt or more um but not totally disregarded

00:19:23.140 so the reason why animals are used is because you can control factors in animals a lot better

00:19:27.940 um animals have shorter lifespans and it's cheaper and easier than using humans so even

00:19:32.920 a study of let's say 30 people if you control their diet meaning you as the primary investigator

00:19:40.120 provides their food for them then you have to make sure to follow up to make sure they're eating

00:19:44.840 it um and then they have to have site visits so over the course of months that adds up to a ton of

00:19:50.700 money and usually those kind of studies cost at least one or two million dollars if you do a study

00:19:55.040 in mice or rats it's a lot cheaper and we do share a lot of physiology with rodents and with other

00:20:00.360 animals but there's a lot of downsides so even for very basic things rodents and other mammals are

00:20:06.660 different than humans so as one example vitamin c is one of the most studied um supplements because

00:20:13.860 it's one of our major exogenous antioxidants um the antioxidants we make in our body are things

00:20:19.220 like glutathione so vitamin c is important if you don't um get enough of it which can sometimes

00:20:25.580 happen on a low-carb diet if you don't pay attention to what you're eating or supplementing

00:20:28.840 um then you could sort of develop low-level symptoms of not healing well and you know not performing well

00:20:35.060 at the gym and a bunch of other things so humans cannot synthesize vitamin c but almost every other

00:20:42.260 animal can so in that very basic way we're different than rodents and other animals so at some point

00:20:48.100 about two million years ago we developed a genetic mutation so that we wouldn't produce vitamin c and

00:20:54.240 we don't know exactly why it could have provided a survival advantage in some way um plus maybe we

00:20:59.500 were eating more fruit around then or something but for various reasons we don't produce vitamin c and

00:21:03.980 every other animal does vitamin c is a major antioxidant uh that's water soluble so that's just one

00:21:12.060 easily identifiable difference between us and rodents and then there's all kinds of other

00:21:15.820 differences so metabolism uh rates are different and and ways to deal with stress are different uh

00:21:22.040 the organs are the same but often hormonal communication is different so yeah you have to be

00:21:27.040 very wary of when there was a rodent study done on vitamin or on testosterone applying that to humans

00:21:33.360 um even for example like uh phytoestrogen studies so we don't know exactly which dietary

00:21:40.340 phytoestrogens are important and not important for humans to watch out for so that applies to men or

00:21:46.600 women uh so for men trying to increase their testosterone in order to prevent a decline um we

00:21:53.080 don't know how much soy it takes we don't know how much of other plants it takes uh to sort of disrupt

00:21:59.000 our testosterone production because of constituents in them because animal studies often don't translate to

00:22:05.240 humans and actually the best way we know that is not through supplements but through cancer drugs

00:22:10.720 so um something like 70 percent of cancer drugs that work in rodents end up not working in humans

00:22:18.060 for a wide variety of reasons um and then on the flip side a lot of drugs that show that don't show

00:22:25.160 side effects in rodents end up showing side effects in humans so you can never be sure it's mostly like

00:22:31.020 observational cohort epidemiological evidence and humans can be used to generate hypotheses

00:22:37.300 um in my view rodent evidence should be used to generate hypotheses not to directly apply it to

00:22:44.320 somebody's life so they could read the studies on their own with some of those guidelines and again

00:22:48.280 we'll put a link to the site where you have that study guide where people can follow so they can do

00:22:53.820 their own research but they could also go to examine.com where this stuff has been synthesized

00:22:58.760 for you um so in your work with examine.com what do you think are the what are the biggest nutrition

00:23:06.080 myths or supplement myths that you see being pushed over and over again you get you keep getting

00:23:11.700 questions asked about it um are there any like that yeah so most of the most important myths are

00:23:18.660 blank is bad so carbs are bad fat is bad meat is bad you know i'd say those are the three main ones so

00:23:28.020 addressing them in order um carbs are obviously not bad um it's almost painfully obvious because some

00:23:35.000 of the observationally some of the longest lived cultures in the world eat a lot of carbs um our

00:23:41.520 bodies do not run badly on carbs uh there's no inherent reason why you would develop uh blood sugar

00:23:51.440 dysregulation and diabetes from eating carbs uh diabetes can be a conglomeration of different

00:23:57.100 things such as eating on healthy diet that includes a lot of carbs but um carbs are not evil and

00:24:04.800 similarly fat is not evil so you know there's pros and cons of each um you know the the body develops

00:24:11.280 adipose tissue in order to efficiently store extra calories if we couldn't efficiently store extra

00:24:16.960 calories then we would die you know there would be too much triglyceride in our blood uh we our

00:24:23.700 pancreas would end up getting overwhelmed so it's good to be able to dispose of calories and adipose

00:24:28.780 tissue if you don't you end up with things like diabetes and dysregulation of hormones so the excess

00:24:35.580 calories can be from fat or from sugar so um fat is very easy to over consume as is processed sugar

00:24:41.640 but things that contain carbs that are not processed are not easy to overeat so you can't actually eat

00:24:47.460 that much fruit um if it's not processed for example so you know if you try to eat like 10 bananas or 15

00:24:54.400 apples or something you have to really slog your way through that and those contain all carbs no fat

00:24:59.420 and it's really the water and the fiber that provides some satiety um similarly fat is not bad which i'm sure

00:25:06.200 99.9 of your podcast audience knows but fat is also not inherently good um you know uh isolated fat

00:25:13.840 does usually not contain many nutrients um it's easy to over consume fat so i worked for a bit at a

00:25:20.820 obesity clinic in boston and you know when working with patients then this isn't like random internet

00:25:27.340 reading and seeing what works for you when working with large swaths of patients there's a lot of people

00:25:32.360 who are overweight or obese who um have certain foods that they they can't get enough of and they

00:25:38.040 like binge eat at night so peanut butter chocolate um things with a lot of fat contain a lot of calories

00:25:44.080 you know as you know in a small amount of matter so um and then there's other things like uh it's

00:25:50.440 possible that you if you eat a junk food diet that also contains a lot of fat then there could be some

00:25:54.720 issues for your gut um and that doesn't mean that that sugar is clear to that either but there's just

00:25:59.900 pros and cons of both and then you know meat is bad or meat is good is also not true so uh there are

00:26:05.700 some reasons why meat could potentially not be optimal certain types of meat in large doses uh mostly

00:26:11.760 processed meats um and that could be because of uh carcinogens and uh meat that's either cooked very

00:26:20.660 well um almost burnt uh or meat that's been uh preserved or even eating a ton of meat that's not

00:26:28.140 been preserved uh for certain people could have issues like iron overload and people who have

00:26:32.900 um some susceptibility to that um or i've often wondered like for myself uh there's a lot of

00:26:40.180 things we don't know about the gut um and there's certain uh people who might have genetic differences

00:26:49.040 in the way that they handle iron or handle other things from meat um and there are bacteria that for

00:26:54.160 example could consume protein and amino acids so there's just a lot of things we don't know so i

00:26:59.260 think having a diet that's almost only meat and no carbohydrate um it could potentially have long-term

00:27:06.440 effects for certain people so i think a safe diet is just a normal diet you know it's anything that has

00:27:13.660 a lot of food that looks like plants or animals you know whether it's beef or chicken or fish

00:27:20.000 um or you know normal lettuce or kale or quinoa or whatever just as long as you're eating mostly

00:27:27.100 normal food then it usually works out so anytime you completely eliminate something and you force

00:27:32.520 your friends and family to do so as well then i'd say that's the biggest and most harmful myth so

00:27:37.220 you're not a fan of like the paleo diet or stuff like uh funny enough i kind of uh came through the

00:27:43.020 paleo sphere um i helped organize one of the first two or three paleo conferences but

00:27:48.960 what always got to me is that there's a lot of people who speak at those um who are well versed

00:27:54.740 and who are professors in different areas um and and you know it's a very interesting topic to see

00:28:02.020 how connected our diet is or should be to what people ate either 10 000 years ago 5 000 years ago

00:28:08.260 or 100 years ago but i think when people first get into the paleo diet then they look at it in terms of

00:28:15.660 specific rules you know i have to eat uh meats fruits and vegetables and i can't eat other stuff

00:28:21.320 i can't eat any added sugar um you know i can't eat uh legumes i can't eat potatoes or white rice

00:28:28.160 there aren't a lot of good reasons why white rice would be harmful if you eat it in normal amounts

00:28:33.760 um you know people in japan eat a moderate to low amount of white rice almost every day or in

00:28:39.780 certain asian countries and those are some of the longest living cultures in the world

00:28:44.280 white potatoes um when paleo sort of first got popular got demonized uh for a couple reasons one

00:28:51.840 is that they contain a decent amount of carbohydrate which is actually um somewhat of misconstruing the

00:28:59.620 nutrition facts because if you eat a whole potato it's got something like 25 grams of carbohydrate

00:29:04.280 but if you eat a whole potato you're going to get fairly full because it has a lot of water and fiber

00:29:08.540 as well um and for some reason some people are okay with sweet potatoes but not white potatoes even

00:29:12.960 though they both contain a similar amount of micronutrients uh so there's a lot of reasons why

00:29:18.240 those black and white rules you know don't really pertain but there are reasons why a paleo template

00:29:23.740 works well for a lot of people uh but i just think it's good to always take a step back and look in terms of

00:29:29.300 you know why am i implementing these rules instead of just what makes me feel good or feel bad

00:29:34.820 so someone's listening to say they want to lose weight um what's the key to that is there like a

00:29:40.240 macro makeup they should shoot for a calorie count they should shoot for um any any insight there yeah

00:29:47.520 so um i always advise two different paths so uh there was a time when i worked with a physician here

00:29:54.780 in san francisco who did a quantified self-tracking program with his patients um half the patients were

00:29:59.580 people with uh metabolic disorders or could develop them and half the patients were former addicts um

00:30:06.580 either drug addicts um smokers or people who are addicted to food so what i would say is um after a

00:30:15.660 session or two you would try to get to know the person and see you know what their mo was how they

00:30:20.780 acted if it was somebody who did really well with you know when they find out something they have to

00:30:27.000 learn everything about it and they uh when they work then they work very specifically with specific

00:30:32.840 habits like you know they wouldn't do good with working at home unless they used uh you know time

00:30:38.820 boxing like a pomodoro type thing where you work in 25 minutes and take five minutes off uh then for

00:30:44.380 those types of people fitting their diet into a calorie count is often a really great idea so you give

00:30:52.600 them 2000 or 2500 or 1800 calories a day and you say eat whatever you want but make sure to not fill

00:31:00.300 it with junk food you know have a mix of things then they often lose weight reliably and quickly

00:31:05.360 and then on the flip side there's people who you know like would never do that kind of thing

00:31:11.400 they work when they want to work they work while they watch tv um you know they work all weekend and

00:31:17.560 then do a netflix binge monday tuesday wednesday so for those people i'd say uh look at general

00:31:23.260 principles so what are the types of things that you eat too much of that you know aren't healthy

00:31:27.880 so it could be obvious things like chips or cookies or something or it could be something more sort of

00:31:33.860 insidious you know like i said before peanut butter um or you know some people just uh eat a bunch of

00:31:40.400 things that are healthy but they eat too much of them so uh like pho noodles uh are can be very

00:31:46.680 healthy but some people just eat a ton of that um and then they get overweight over time just by eating

00:31:52.300 a little too many calories every week um over the course of years so for those people i'd say write

00:31:57.960 down two or three things that seem to be important and then tick that off every day so like today i did

00:32:04.420 not binge on blank or today i only ate from 12 p.m to our yeah 12 p.m to 8 p.m and i didn't late night

00:32:12.800 binge and if you do that for a week and then you get used to it and you keep doing that then you'll

00:32:18.020 lose weight and there's actually a third group which i'd say is in the minority and be careful with this

00:32:22.520 um and i kind of fall into this so people who do well with extremes so um you know i like reading

00:32:29.700 everything about stuff that i want to know about uh kind of like the second group and that's

00:32:33.740 sort of why i i'm at examine but when i did my first ketogenic diet i think it was uh 1997 i was

00:32:41.860 just learning about nutrition um i read lyle mcdonald's ketogenic diet and i was like you know

00:32:46.480 i want to use this in my cutting cycle and i i did it and i did this successfully and then i was like oh

00:32:53.140 you know next time i want to do even more extreme version so i did a protein sparing modified fast so i

00:32:57.900 ate something like you know 700 calories a day uh so it was a slightly modified protein sparing

00:33:03.980 modified fast and and i cut really well and i got the leanest i've ever been but i would not recommend

00:33:10.260 that to 99.999 percent of people because the major thing you want to do is make something sustainable

00:33:16.460 for myself i knew that i could sustainably experiment with diets but for most people the

00:33:21.880 sustainability is not with experimentation it's with being healthy and losing weight making sure you

00:33:26.380 don't you know collapse on the street because you you didn't eat enough of a certain nutrient

00:33:29.980 so i'd say find where you are amongst those groups um and then go from there either calorie counting or

00:33:36.120 focusing on you know two or three major rules we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our

00:33:40.640 sponsors and now back to the show yeah i like how you take into account behavior because that's the

00:33:46.380 thing i think people overlook oftentimes and they try to work against their natural inclinations and

00:33:51.800 that's where they end up with that frustration where a diet fails um and so uh we talked about

00:33:58.860 losing weight what if you want to gain weight um any any insight there from your research yeah so

00:34:03.880 there's ways to tweak weight gain uh but the principles have almost always been the same so

00:34:09.360 uh what i find interesting is almost any country that you look at the sort of old-time strongmen

00:34:17.440 so whether it was you know western europe and the strong strongman slash wrestler type person or india

00:34:23.500 um the people would do feats of strength um and then it's sort of the same in east asia and other

00:34:28.960 parts of the world people would eat similar diets um no matter what the amount of meat was people would

00:34:36.120 often eat large amounts of uh whole foods basically so like in india there was somebody who would eat a lot

00:34:44.000 of the um i don't in our in our weird ending language i don't know how you would say it in english or hindi but

00:34:51.000 uh the the sort of uh wraps made out of either graham flour or wheat flour or whatever flour um and potatoes

00:34:59.540 and milk um and lentils and just eat a lot of that and eat and eat consistently so uh in in western europe

00:35:11.860 oftentimes people would eat a lot of potatoes and meat and milk and then in east asia there would be

00:35:19.320 a lot of rice and meat or wheat and meat depending on what region of east asia you're in so it was

00:35:26.100 always mostly the same getting in a lot of calories getting a minimum of protein and eating a lot

00:35:31.560 consistently and then if the person wanted to concentrate on physique they would do a cutting cycle

00:35:35.780 so nowadays since we know a bit more basically what we've done is um improve the cutting cycle a bit

00:35:42.740 and then less so improve the bulking part so uh you know if if you already know a lot about nutrition

00:35:50.920 then you probably know that one of one of the conceptually easiest ways to do the bulking is

00:35:56.240 sort of the martin burkhan intermittent fasting type thing and that's because if you're bulking freestyle

00:36:02.380 then i remember when i was trying to get ready for my first um physique competition which never

00:36:07.980 happened so i i bulked without thinking twice about things and just ate a lot of everything

00:36:14.240 um and i i ended up getting a dexa scan uh three times that year and i got to my highest body fat

00:36:20.180 percentage ever so i was strangely proud of that uh and then i ended up cutting really hard but the

00:36:26.060 harder you bulk the harder you have to cut and sometimes you bulk so hard that you'll never get back

00:36:31.500 down to six pack so um what we know now is that eating at all times of the day is probably not a

00:36:39.360 great thing not just for bulking but for health in general so um this is where sort of the the paleo

00:36:45.400 template helps because if you think in terms of food availability um unless you were rich a few hundred

00:36:52.520 years ago you would not eat all the time so uh i remember when i i first got on this paleo forum a few

00:36:59.440 years ago paleo hacks which i think is mostly defunct now then a lot of paleo people got mad at me

00:37:04.760 because i would ask questions like you know if you eat three eggs every morning the rest of your life

00:37:11.280 is that paleo uh because you know would paleo man have found three eggs every morning every day for

00:37:17.700 his whole life you know if he found a stash of eggs would he share that with his family or with his

00:37:23.300 village uh would there be times when because of animal migration there wouldn't be a lot of eggs

00:37:28.400 so you know that wasn't a comment about uh micronutrients or health it was rather is this

00:37:33.800 natural so i don't think it's unhealthy to eat three eggs every day but i do think that if you're

00:37:39.500 thinking in terms of you know a template a natural template it's not really a natural thing to even

00:37:44.860 eat the same thing every day usually because people would often eat different things uh because you

00:37:50.340 would have to try to actively find food and when you actively try to find food you have to

00:37:54.280 experiment with different foods and look in different places so um anyway back to your

00:37:59.580 original question of bulking so when you're trying to gain muscle then um a myth is that you have to

00:38:06.100 overdose on protein you don't protein is most important when you're cutting because when you're

00:38:11.560 cutting then your body's trying to you know what you're trying to do is not uh eat your own muscle

00:38:18.120 eat your own protein so that's when you have to eat a lot of protein when you're bulking

00:38:21.320 then you have an excess of carbs usually so you don't need as much protein um and then also when

00:38:27.800 you're bulking what you have to make sure to do is to not over train so uh this is kind of um

00:38:36.680 there's a wrinkle in this advice so for people who are experienced athletes then often you try to

00:38:42.860 train as much as you can given how much you fuel your body so that's great but for people who are

00:38:48.580 first getting into gaining muscle i think that's the wrong way to go about things because when you're

00:38:52.920 gaining muscle the first thing to watch out for is not hurting yourself so if you try to train as

00:38:57.320 much as fueling will let you then oftentimes your ligaments and tendons will be the bottleneck the

00:39:03.880 thing that cannot handle what the muscle is doing and then you get hurt and it's a lot harder to come

00:39:08.520 back from being hurt than it is to incrementally gain muscle so when you're bulking make sure to

00:39:13.680 sustainably bulk don't overdose on protein just because you heard other people say that

00:39:17.980 um and make sure to get enough calories every day and so it sounds like there uh you're you might be

00:39:22.980 kind of alluded to with that paleo stuff that maybe an intermittent fast and then eat most of your

00:39:27.020 calories later in the day might be a good idea uh there's a few different ways to look at that so

00:39:31.360 um so when i've worked with clients then uh there's some people who you know there's

00:39:39.640 people listening to the podcast there's a sort of archetype i've seen which is um people between 30

00:39:47.680 and 50 years old men between 30 and 50 years old who are not as athletic as they were before and

00:39:55.060 have an office job and are trying to figure out how long to keep the office job and might even be

00:40:00.760 trying to figure out a way to work more at home um or to work you know partially from home so in that

00:40:07.400 case i'd say the most important thing is to figure out when you're working out during your work

00:40:12.280 schedule um and then also when you go to bed and when you wake up so if you work out during the work

00:40:21.380 day then i'd say that's the most flexible because then you allow enough fuel um to work out and then to

00:40:29.560 refuel during lunch um eat a big lunch and then eat less as the day goes on so there are some circadian

00:40:37.080 rhythm reasons why eating a really huge dinner might not be as good as eating a really huge lunch

00:40:42.000 but um that really depends on the person some people are very um sensitive to this so if you

00:40:48.380 eat a big dinner and you don't eat much during the day then they could have worse sleep some people

00:40:54.780 um deal okay with that but basically uh the body responds well to seeing blue light during the day

00:41:04.000 um eating a lot during the day uh you know carbohydrate especially uh and seeing people

00:41:10.320 during the day so whether it's actual people seeing pictures of people um the the brain actually responds

00:41:16.760 really well to seeing babies um in terms of regulating your circadian rhythm so i'd say uh instead of

00:41:23.420 periodizing your meals uh depending on when is exactly optimal according to studies see what makes

00:41:29.620 you feel the best and what works the best with your work schedule um and then tweak it from there

00:41:34.640 okay so we've talked about nutrition let's talk about supplements um a lot of confusion out there

00:41:40.380 um can you tell us a bit about about the supplement industry and why there's so much like why there's so

00:41:45.960 many supplements in the first place claiming to do different things um and why some of these claims

00:41:51.940 are just crazy and insane you're like that's not that cannot be true can you tell us a bit about that

00:41:56.940 so the whole thing starts back in the early 90s so there was a time when the supplement industry

00:42:03.940 could have been highly regulated for better or for worse because you don't want supplements to be so

00:42:08.600 regulated that you can't buy supplements um but you don't want supplements to be so little regulated

00:42:14.560 that you have the current situation where companies can basically make whatever claim they want so in

00:42:19.240 the early 90s there was a chance that supplements could have been extremely regulated and then a couple

00:42:24.180 congressmen um who were basically um in the pockets of the supplement industry decided that this should

00:42:33.540 not happen and they should pass legislation to make sure it didn't happen so uh these congressmen

00:42:39.680 um one of whom was orrin hatch uh so he was from utah and and he was indirectly responsible for the

00:42:47.320 well-being of some supplement companies that were centered in utah um so him and another uh congressperson

00:42:54.520 passed or started this legislation to say the dietary supplement health and education act um and then

00:43:01.180 there was a lot of controversy about this act while it was being debated in congress there was actually

00:43:05.080 a video um if you if you're in on youtube and you look up mel gibson uh vitamin c then you'll see

00:43:12.960 this ad from like 93 or something that showed uh police sirens blaring and then they went to this

00:43:19.800 house and you know it's sort of this like guerrilla style video that's all shaky and you go in there

00:43:24.740 and somebody has a bottle of something and it looks like a drug bust and it turns out it's mel gibson

00:43:30.360 and mel gibson says hey you know i'm not there's no drugs here or something like that it's just vitamin c

00:43:36.780 um and then the ad closes with this message you know don't let them take away our vitamin c or

00:43:43.040 something so it's a straw man argument you know nobody was ever going to take away your vitamin c

00:43:48.740 just like you know nobody's going to take away your guns this is just a scare tactic from supplement

00:43:54.240 companies um to get away from the main issue which is we needed at least a little bit more regulation

00:44:00.240 because what dishe ended up doing is uh two things it made it so that the supplement manufacturer is

00:44:07.620 the one who's responsible for supplement safety before a supplement goes on the market and then

00:44:12.620 the fda is only quote unquote responsible after unsafe supplements have been found and there's been

00:44:19.340 you know enough public outcry so there's problems on both ends of that the manufacturer never has enough

00:44:24.740 money to do rigorous enough trials to show safety for a supplement and then fda never has enough

00:44:29.960 money to do post-market surveillance of a supplement so when you combine those things

00:44:34.560 it means that there's basically no holds barred wild west anything goes and there's not enough

00:44:40.640 tracking to show that supplements that are unsafe are actually unsafe and then to compound that

00:44:45.760 there's this warning uh the so-called quack miranda warning so the miranda warning is when you got

00:44:52.120 arrested uh you have a right not to say anything so it's basically you know now that you know go ahead

00:44:57.760 and say whatever you want and the quack miranda warning is the thing that you find on every

00:45:02.240 supplement bottle that um this product is not intended to treat disease or diagnose or whatever

00:45:08.000 um even though the supplement bottle can basically say that it treats cardiovascular disease or blood

00:45:13.480 sugar or testosterone um or anything so there's a lot of imbalance there we get false information from

00:45:23.180 the supplement label and from marketing and from fancy looking bar graphs and then we buy stuff and

00:45:29.360 then there's amazon reviews that you know are sometimes influenced by people who get the product

00:45:35.440 for free from the supplement manufacturer and then we use things and that and by that time it's too late

00:45:41.720 you know if there's one study that shows a lack of effect it gets drowned out by a bunch of other studies

00:45:46.860 that showed that there was some effect from you know a study design that was not optimal so there's

00:45:53.460 just a lot of things wrong and it's basically why we exist at examine.com right and with that lack of

00:45:59.080 regulation uh i mean it's possible for a supplement company to say x is in this supplement but there's

00:46:05.760 actually not that supplement in that supplement correct yeah so uh we covered one of those in our

00:46:11.320 research digest a few months ago um a type of bacteria probiotic uh bifidobacteria is one of

00:46:18.940 the biggest types of probiotics um along with um lactose species so um for the first time a research

00:46:27.020 group looked at uh some of the available bifidobacteria containing bottles and they found

00:46:33.000 that out of 17 that were tested only one actually contained the strains on the bottle the rest either

00:46:39.600 didn't contain some of the strains or contained some extra strains and that's not even talking

00:46:44.140 about whether it met the label claims like having 10 billion cfu's or having more or less so it's a

00:46:50.480 big problem not just for probiotics but for everything else uh like there's a researcher peter cohen who

00:46:55.980 um who lives in boston and does a lot of research uh with harvard medical school and some other

00:47:02.440 institutions looking at supplements and what's in the bottle and what isn't so sometimes it's not that

00:47:08.080 important so like uh for some random nutrient that doesn't have a lot of side effects at high dosages

00:47:13.980 it might not be important but for some herb if you take a lot of that herb over time then you could run

00:47:21.520 into trouble because um anything that can have a positive effect oftentimes can have a negative effect

00:47:27.360 so uh like when you look at some registries uh for example um liver side effects oftentimes the culprits

00:47:36.480 are like you know somebody took this random herb for six months and then their liver shut down and

00:47:42.620 it just kind of came out of nowhere and it's because the liver has to detox you know the reason why detox

00:47:48.520 diets don't work is that the liver is a really robust organ it doesn't need help um actually our body our

00:47:54.600 kidneys and liver and everything in general doesn't really really need help as long as you eat a normal

00:47:58.780 healthy diet but when you start introducing strange things into the body and you do it every day

00:48:04.340 that's where the liver runs into problems and that's also where other organs can run into problems

00:48:09.400 so given that you don't have to provide safety information you yourself have to do the research

00:48:15.000 so you know i never take a supplement every day if i can help it i only take a supplement if it's been

00:48:21.480 extremely well studied or if i'm experimenting with it to see if it makes me feel better i don't take a

00:48:27.080 you know a bucket list of supplements every day uh i stopped that about 10 years ago but before then

00:48:32.580 i would take everything that well-known websites said worked um and i would spend a lot of money

00:48:38.420 every month and then i just sort of had a realization one day i was like if it's not making me feel better

00:48:43.080 and it's not extensively shown to make people healthier then why am i wasting my money on it so

00:48:49.800 people have to make sure that they're not throwing their money away and they're not setting

00:48:54.140 themselves up to go to the icu and you know get in trouble when they're in their 60s or something

00:48:59.620 because their organs have been subject to weird herbs yeah we actually had a guy on the podcast

00:49:05.000 a while back ago he was a major league prospect and he was taking some muscle some supplement and

00:49:11.380 he actually experienced liver failure oh okay um and it just derailed baseball career uh really really

00:49:17.280 sad um so it's you know supplements about you know if you don't want to waste your money on

00:49:22.280 supplements are there supplements that people take regularly that actually aren't doing anything for

00:49:26.960 them yeah so um the two categories that usually don't do anything is uh testosterone boosters and

00:49:35.160 fat burners so um testosterone boosters you know you you personally know a lot about that and uh

00:49:42.740 and you know that ways to be healthy often boost testosterone without involving a supplement but the

00:49:49.380 the long and short of it is that a testosterone booster can do one of two things to make it seem

00:49:56.940 like it's working so it can either um boost libido which you might think would also mean it's boosting

00:50:06.140 testosterone but it isn't necessarily and the second thing is it can boost testosterone maybe for two or

00:50:12.040 three or four weeks and then go back to baseline or even lower but usually testosterone boosting

00:50:17.480 supplements don't boost testosterone and the intuitive way to think about this is that if there was a

00:50:23.160 testosterone booster that did reliably boost testosterone over the long run then why would

00:50:30.020 the testosterone pharmaceuticals do well at all because you know you have to go to the doctor

00:50:35.580 you know convince them basically to prescribe you testosterone if your testosterone is extremely low

00:50:40.940 uh go pick up the the medication instead of just ordering it on amazon so it's kind of the like the

00:50:47.540 argument people say you know there's a cure for cancer i'm sure of it it's just pharmaceutical

00:50:51.480 companies um are blocking it so that they make a lot of money there's a lot of things wrong with

00:50:56.240 pharmaceutical companies but that's not one of them so uh there is no magic testosterone boosting

00:51:01.020 supplement uh there are ones that could help things related to libido and stuff but there isn't anything

00:51:06.440 that super reliably works with fat burners um it's basically that the body doesn't like burning fat you

00:51:14.580 know fat is a useful way to dispose of extra energy um it's it's a way to feed your body during times of

00:51:20.560 famine even if that never happens in industrialized societies so to burn fat you have to work hard at

00:51:26.720 it um there are ways to somewhat support it sometimes like green tea and some people especially

00:51:33.240 overweight and obese people could support it in a very minor extent but 99 of fat burning supplements

00:51:40.240 don't work um and oftentimes those are based on animal studies or flawed human studies and then even

00:51:46.140 some of the major supplements that people take multivitamins probiotics fish oil um are are often

00:51:54.000 not working for them even if they work for other people so fish oil for some people could help you

00:52:00.600 know if you're older if you've had a heart attack um if you have some um markers of intermediate um

00:52:07.480 cardiovascular risk then it could help for a healthy person fish oil often does not help

00:52:12.500 uh for somebody with major depressive disorder it could help for somebody who's looking to just

00:52:17.540 make gains at the gym and read some random study it won't help a multivitamin for somebody who eats a

00:52:22.680 really crappy diet could help because they're not getting a lot of nutrients anyways for somebody

00:52:27.660 who's eating a pretty good diet it often won't help and uh for those high dose multivitamins that come

00:52:34.160 in either powder or a lot of pills that you have to take every day um i'd say skip those because

00:52:40.420 researchers find out new things basically every year about how high levels of certain nutrients

00:52:46.160 could be bad like folic acid was put enriched back into the diet so that pregnant women wouldn't give

00:52:51.860 birth to babies with neural tube defects which is great but folic acid in high levels is increasingly

00:52:58.240 linked to cancer so you know just because it's a water soluble vitamin doesn't mean that it couldn't

00:53:03.660 have a negative effect uh and then those uh vitamins often don't have optimal levels of uh minerals so

00:53:12.020 i'd say minerals are more important than vitamins often in terms of things people are deficient in

00:53:16.220 uh and if you take a multivitamin that has 50 of magnesium but it's in the magnesium oxide form

00:53:23.780 then that's not going to be absorbed really well it's absorbed at around 10 whereas magnesium

00:53:29.020 chelates are much much higher than that so rather than taking a multivitamin if you're eating a

00:53:33.540 decent diet uh log your diet for a few days let's say two weekdays and one weekend day for two or three

00:53:39.620 weeks see what nutrients you're low in and then supplement with those or look at foods that have

00:53:46.700 those and eat those don't just take a multivitamin because it seems like a good idea are there supplements

00:53:52.120 that work then um that that studies have shown over and over again like they actually have a benefit

00:53:56.500 without much downside yeah so there's some things that uh have no detriment so any benefit is going

00:54:04.160 to be good so nitrates so that this doesn't mean nitrate um producing supplements like arginine and

00:54:11.220 stuff like that uh this means dietary nitrates or if you're if you need to get it through a supplement

00:54:16.580 it would be like a beet powder or something but nitrates don't have detriment um and that's because

00:54:23.720 nitrates basically increase nitric oxide synthesis in our body and and that's controlled enough that

00:54:30.280 you can't overdose on beets and kale and stuff so um you know people used to think that you when you

00:54:37.120 ate leafy greens then it's uh healthy because of fiber or it's healthy because of some phytochemicals

00:54:43.600 because it's green or it's healthy because it decreases your calorie intake those might all be true

00:54:49.240 but possibly one of the biggest parts of the reason leafy greens are good is because

00:54:53.100 they increase nitrate levels um and nitric oxide levels in our body and they do so uh with the long

00:55:01.160 enough half-life that it's healthy so when you take a supplement it might only increase uh nitric oxide

00:55:06.960 for an hour or something but if you eat leafy greens twice during the day then that could increase

00:55:13.500 nitric oxide levels for a few hours during the day and when you accumulate that over the course of the

00:55:18.740 lifetime that means that you might get that you know vasodilation and your blood vessels for long

00:55:24.400 enough that that provides you some heart benefit um and then it just so happens that nitrates can be

00:55:30.480 helpful for exercise performance um and that's for both short-term and for endurance activity so

00:55:37.140 nitrates are kind of a no-brainer um a second pretty much no-brainer is creatine and that's because

00:55:42.780 creatine has the most research out of any supplement um that's related to performance

00:55:47.180 and creatine as an increasing amount of research for uh cognitive enhancement uh and then really

00:55:54.340 there's not that many others um protein is a supplement that for certain people i'd say is a

00:56:00.320 no-brainer so if you're an older person if you're at risk for falls um take protein because when you fall

00:56:08.060 and you break your hip uh that's a leading reason why older people um get sick or die and one way to

00:56:14.620 prevent the complications of that is getting a ton of protein um but i'd say that those supplements are

00:56:21.640 some of the only no-brainers everything else there's some degree of you know you have to think

00:56:26.320 about it first so you've done a lot of research in vitamin d um and you hear in the media like vitamin

00:56:31.260 d vitamin d it's like the cure-all for everything depression um metabolic diseases etc is that one of

00:56:39.120 those sort of things you have to put a little more thought into yeah it is um and the only reason is

00:56:43.280 this so in the general populace i'd say so this isn't people who listen to the podcast this is the

00:56:48.820 general populace who thinks a few times a year about their health but mostly reads articles on you know

00:56:54.900 cnn or huffington post um about some new supplement or diet so it's not that those studies are bad and it's

00:57:03.100 not that uh you know vitamin d doesn't help xyz condition it's that uh you have to think about

00:57:09.760 the nutrients that are missing from your life and from your diet and vitamin d is not a dietary

00:57:15.300 nutrient you know it's not that people you know 200 years ago and 10 000 years ago made sure to get

00:57:23.100 cod liver so that they could get enough vitamin d um and they didn't eat fortified or enriched foods to

00:57:29.920 get vitamin d what they did is they were outside so uh some people listen to the podcast will live

00:57:36.220 at a latitude where they get enough vitamin d outside um and it's actually not that hard if

00:57:41.560 basically you're white um especially if you're white enough to get a tan as soon as you spend half

00:57:48.200 an hour in the sun uh and then if you take vacations regularly in warm weather climates you can also get

00:57:53.860 enough vitamin d or if you take a multivitamin you can often get enough vitamin d but then there's two

00:57:59.220 other groups of people so when i first got my vitamin d tested um i had taken a multivitamin

00:58:04.980 almost every day for two or three years and my vitamin d ended up at around uh 18 or 19 which is

00:58:12.720 fairly low for somebody who's taken multivitamin and increasingly what people are seeing is that

00:58:17.140 there's not a extremely strong correlation between how much vitamin d you take in and uh what your levels

00:58:23.060 are it is a strong but not extremely strong correlation which means you can be like me and take it and

00:58:28.420 still not have high levels so i took more and i ended up normalizing my vitamin d but when you get

00:58:35.520 vitamin d through sun i'd say the correlation is quite a bit higher um of your sun exposure and what

00:58:42.900 your vitamin d levels end up being but let's say that because of where you live you cannot get enough

00:58:48.800 vitamin d and you're not good at regularly taking a supplement then you do have to make sure to get

00:58:54.160 tested for vitamin d um and your primary care providers should pay for it and most every case

00:59:00.700 if they don't pay for it then order the test yourself and get tested and if you end up in your

00:59:06.380 teens that's bad and make sure to take a vitamin d supplement of at least let's say a thousand ius

00:59:11.300 um if you're somewhere in your 20s then you might or might not need to supplement so people with darker

00:59:16.220 skin sometimes think you have to they have to supplement because um the vitamin d council said you

00:59:22.260 have to be above 30 so there's some wrinkles in that story so people who uh let's say uh there is

00:59:30.820 a study in african-american um adolescent uh girls that showed that most of the time when uh those girls

00:59:39.300 are lower in vitamin d it doesn't actually do anything bad um even though their intake might be low and

00:59:45.500 their vitamin d levels might be low in their serum and their blood uh they don't have lower bone mineral

00:59:50.720 density or risk of fracture so it varies a lot by genetics and genetics doesn't only depend on skin

00:59:56.860 color uh genetics could be similar between a lily white person and a darker person like myself

01:00:03.200 it's just hard to know so that's why you have to get tested you can't rely on your skin color you

01:00:08.300 can't rely on how much vitamin d you're taking you absolutely have to get tested but once you do get

01:00:13.400 tested if you're in your teens and you have some health issues then take vitamin d every day for two or

01:00:19.020 three months and there's a decent chance that you could show some actual benefit in terms of your

01:00:25.140 cognition how you feel depression uh your muscle gain or whatever because uh vitamin d is not a

01:00:30.660 nutrient like the other nutrients it's a it's a wide-reaching pre-hormone gotcha

01:00:35.300 so uh kamal lately in the past few years uh nootropics have become hot i mean there's just every it seems

01:00:43.920 like every week there's some nootropic company coming out so for those of you who aren't familiar

01:00:47.160 nootropics are supplements that claim to be able to increase cognition help you focus better um

01:00:54.780 have better memory it's basically like the limitless is that what the movie was called

01:00:59.120 right with the yeah the pill you take you just become like superhuman um is is there any credence

01:01:05.720 to nootropics that these nootropics companies are making or is it all just a bunch of flim flam

01:01:10.980 uh so first we should take a step back and look at what nootropics are so nootropics do have a

01:01:17.620 uh evidence theoretical basis um some types were and are used as medications in europe um there are

01:01:26.580 some that have been studied more than others originally there was a definition so a nootropics

01:01:31.860 had to be uh something that had certain effects on the brain basically in summary but it was always a

01:01:39.380 loose definition it's only gotten looser over time the current definition is not that uh dissimilar to

01:01:45.360 does something in the brain often with cognition so um i'd say the current definition is basically

01:01:52.320 something that does something in the brain often with cognition doesn't have many side effects is not

01:01:59.460 shown to be toxic in high amounts uh so in that definition a ton of things apply to nootropics not just

01:02:07.440 the um historically defined ones like the uh paracetam and other uh similarly named nootropics

01:02:16.620 so if we look at all the cognitive enhancers in general then it's virtually impossible to have a

01:02:24.720 go-to nootropic so your go-to muscle gain supplement might be creatine your go-to a broad-reaching

01:02:32.580 supplement for mood and other stuff might be vitamin d your go-to for like weird conditions

01:02:38.260 might be vitamin c um quick quick reason why is that uh like i said before um we have to consume

01:02:46.980 more vitamin c other animals can make theirs when a animal that makes vitamin c uh is subject to a lot

01:02:52.860 of physiological stress they make a ton of vitamin c like many many grams when humans are subject to a lot

01:02:58.840 of stress we eat less or we eat a lot of junk food and we don't get a lot of vitamin c so

01:03:04.400 counterproductive uh there hasn't been a lot of studies on this but most likely when we're under a

01:03:10.400 lot of stress we should get more vitamin c because when you're not under a lot of stress and you're

01:03:14.820 taking a lot of vitamin c then you get diarrhea but when you're under a lot of stress and you're taking

01:03:19.140 a lot of vitamin c you don't get diarrhea and it's because we use that vitamin c instead of having

01:03:23.320 a mess with our guts and getting pooped out or peed out rather so um so vitamin c is along with vitamin d

01:03:32.060 and creatine uh go-to supplements there is no go-to nootropic even the most well-studied cognition

01:03:38.300 enhancers work and far less than half of people and oftentimes like you said before the studies that

01:03:44.780 are done are on people who have some cognitive deficits uh are ill in some manner are older um i used

01:03:53.180 to work with this research center on aging and almost every study um done on a supplement is

01:04:00.020 done in older people when they show good results the only sort of supplement that shows uh broadly

01:04:06.640 good results and cognition um amongst younger and older people is blueberry um and that's not really

01:04:13.940 classified as a supplement even though you can take blueberry powder so i don't think nootropics are

01:04:19.060 bunk you know uh back in the day when i would experiment more i would cap my own nootropics you

01:04:26.040 know get a capping machine buy the bulk powder make my own uh because i'm crazy i would even placebo

01:04:32.400 control myself uh i would take a batch uh take another patch and make them sugar powder and capsules

01:04:39.420 or maltodextrin powder um and then see after two or three weeks what the effect was and then unmask

01:04:45.320 unblind myself uh most non-crazy people won't do that but that's really the only way to know if a

01:04:51.800 hyped nootropic is doing anything because uh you can take a supplement and i've had a placebo effect

01:04:59.060 myself when i took a generic medication and and only later found out that that generic medication

01:05:05.520 is actually not as helpful as the normal medication so in 99 of cases the generic does as well as the normal

01:05:12.800 medication but there can be very slight differences and the generic medication like um the configuration

01:05:19.320 of the molecules and the generic could make either greater side effects or less less efficacy than

01:05:25.600 medication only later did i find that i was probably overthinking things and and thought that the

01:05:31.180 medication provides some benefit because the longer i took it there wasn't any benefit anymore so i'd say

01:05:36.440 nootropics are the last thing you should look at you know look at diet look at sleep look at stress

01:05:41.600 first and then look at nootropics okay great advice well come on we we really dug deep in this podcast

01:05:47.460 but there's so much more we could talk about um where can people learn more about your work so um go

01:05:53.060 to examine.com send us a message i read every message if you want to um talk to me or look at stuff i

01:05:59.320 personally post i'm at facebook.com slash miranda july uh long and stupid story why that's my facebook

01:06:05.840 address but um you know i love talking to people interested in nutrition and health and lifestyle

01:06:11.040 uh and you know send us random studies we love it uh we like looking at new things we like looking at

01:06:18.800 even case studies um we're just a collection of people like you guys that like reading stuff so

01:06:25.900 um you know talk to us and we'll talk back awesome well kamal patel thank you so much for your time it's

01:06:31.380 been a pleasure yep and have a good day my guest today was kamal patel he's the head researcher at

01:06:36.360 examine.com if you want to find out about any sort of supplement that you have a question about whether

01:06:41.800 it's effective or not head over to examine.com uh search for it you're going to get a very detailed

01:06:47.940 analysis in plain language that'll tell you whether it works or not um all independently verified uh they

01:06:54.480 also have a lot of other great content just about nutrition and health in general so check that out as

01:06:58.400 well examine.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash examine where you find links to

01:07:03.980 resources where you can delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the

01:07:11.680 art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness

01:07:15.180 website at artofmanliness.com and if you could do me a favor uh if you have an extra minute please go

01:07:19.660 to surveypod.net to take a short survey about today's episode it would help the show out a lot and i

01:07:24.960 appreciate it again surveypod.net for a quick survey to help the show until next time this is brett mckay

01:07:30.460 telling you to stay manly

01:07:32.460 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#285： The Real Science of Nutrition and Supplements

Episode Stats

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript