In this episode, Dr. Rhonda Patrick talks about her journey to becoming a mom. She talks about the process of getting pregnant with her first child, and how it changed her perspective on motherhood. She also discusses the importance of nutrition and exercise in pregnancy and how they can impact a child's brain development. Dr. Patrick is a pediatric neurologist, pediatric infectious disease physician, and pediatric neuroscientist. She is also the author of the book, "Pregnancy and Infant Brain" and is a regular contributor to the New York Times Bestselling series, "How to Have a Healthy Baby: A Guide to Pregnancy and Pregnancy- Related Brain Problems." She is a wife, mother, and scientist. She's also the wife of a pediatrician and pediatrician, and she's a mother of a 4-month-old son, who was born in 2016. She's a scientist, wife, and wife. She has been married to her husband for over 20 years and they have 2 grown children, who is also a physician and a father of 1-year old son, and 2-month old daughter. She lives with her husband and 3-year-old daughter, who she met at a sperm donor, and they live with her in New York City. . Dr. Rachael and her husband is a fellow pediatrician in the Bay Area. We talk about what it's like to be a mom, and what it was like to have a baby, and the challenges that come with a new baby. , and how important it is to have kids. and a healthy diet, and exercise and how she s a healthy, active lifestyle to prepare for parenthood, and so much more! Thank you for listening to this episode of Mommy Brain. I hope you enjoy this episode! I really appreciate your support and I really do appreciate it. xoxo, Amy and Caitlyn. Thank you so much, Caitlyn and Amy. - Caitlyn - Thank you, Caitie and Amy, for being patient and supporting this podcast, and for sharing this podcast with the world! and for being kind and supporting us in this podcast. Thanks so much Caitlyn, for listening and supporting the podcast, please leave some love and support us in any amount you can manage it, please be kind, please give us some love, please support us with your support, and thank you.
00:00:28.000I had no idea that I would love being a mom so much.
00:00:32.000You know, I kind of waited till later in life to have a child.
00:00:37.000And, you know, that was for a reason, because I was, you know, really driven and loved what I was doing in science.
00:00:44.000And I felt, you know, I didn't feel that calling to like, I've got to reproduce, I've got to reproduce.
00:00:49.000And then finally, I was like, well, if I don't reproduce now, I might not get a chance.
00:00:52.000So, you know, I that sort of pressure, you Kind of nudged me a little bit, I think.
00:00:59.000But yeah, the whole process of getting pregnant and having this person growing inside of me, the whole thing was amazing.
00:01:08.000And then after having the baby and he's like a person now and he's four months old and developing this little personality...
00:01:15.000I'm so amazed by how in love I am with him and how much I would do anything for him.
00:01:23.000Almost nothing really affects me as much, like stress of various things in life.
00:01:29.000I just look at him and see him smile at me and do some little things that are uniquely him and the wonder and awe in his eyes and it's just gone.
00:03:03.000Aside from your actual genetics and passing on the sequence of DNA, things that you do in your lifestyle actually can affect the child's neurocognitive development and metabolism.
00:03:17.000Obviously, you were very aware of that, but what did you do to act on that, I should ask?
00:03:23.000I definitely became obsessed with trying to optimize everything I could.
00:03:29.000Because I'm a scientist and I can sort of sift through the literature, I think you can kind of get stuck in this loop where you want to optimize everything and you kind of have to chill out a little bit.
00:03:39.000But during pregnancy, I wanted to make sure all the micronutrients I was getting, because they're so important for brain development, and folate, magnesium, iron, You know, zinc, and then DHA, vitamin D, all these things were super important.
00:03:55.000Actually, with the DHA, I found out that taking...
00:04:00.000So DHA is the marine omega-3 fatty acid that's predominantly found in, like, microalgae for vegetarian sources, but in fish, fatty fish.
00:04:09.000Well, it turns out that the DHA that's in what's called phospholipid form, Which is something that's found in the row of fish.
00:04:24.000And fish only have like a small percentage.
00:04:26.000So fish have DHA, like 1% of their DHA is in phospholipid form, whereas the row of the fish Anywhere between 40 to 70% is in phospholipid form.
00:04:35.000And the thing that's really cool about this is that the phospholipid form, it's been shown when you take that orally, it stays, more of it ends up in a certain type of phospholipid form in the blood that has been shown to get into the developing fetal brain 10 times better than a DHA and non-phospholipid form,
00:05:05.000But the fact that, you know, it gets taken up into the developing fetal brain ten times, you know, better was enough, you know, ammunition for me to be like, I'm eating the salmon roe, you know?
00:05:16.000But, yeah, so there have also been studies on, preclinical studies on, on, Taking DHA up in phospholipid form in mice, it's taken up better than non-phospholipid.
00:05:28.000And then there's been some clinical studies where they like radiolabel and follow it in humans.
00:05:32.000And again, it's taken up better in the brain by humans as well.
00:05:37.000And actually, what's really interesting is I just submitted a paper for publication.
00:05:42.000On Alzheimer's disease and a certain variation in a gene called APOE4, which I think you and I talked a lot about traumatic brain injury and susceptibility to Alzheimer's disease and basically a bunch of dementia type of problems.
00:05:58.000Well, APOE4 sort of helps increase that risk.
00:06:02.000So it turns out because there's different transport mechanisms to get DHA into the brain, the phospholipid form appears to be better for ApoE4, and that's sort of my finding.
00:06:14.000I'm not going to get all into the mechanism, but that's hopefully, fingers crossed, going to be accepted from peer review within the next couple of months.
00:06:46.000But, you know, the texture, a lot of people don't like, like Dan doesn't like the texture because like the salmon roe is like bigger, the fish eggs are bigger and so it can kind of pop and like, you get like little fish oil.
00:06:57.000We used to use those to fish for trout.
00:08:25.000Like, I started to really start to ramp up my consumption in, like, the third trimester when brain development was, like, really gearing up.
00:09:18.000What's funny is he was like early on when he was like six weeks old, he went through a really short stage of He was making sounds that sounded like, hello.
00:09:28.000And so my mom would come over and she would, in his face, she would go, hello, hello.
00:10:14.000Like my young mom, my seven year old, the seven year old, she didn't really start talking in full sense until she was like a year and a half.
00:10:23.000But my, my nine year old, like when she was like nine, 10 months old, she was talking.
00:11:43.000Like, you can transfer things that happen to you in your lifestyle without actually altering the sequence of DNA, and you can do that by changing how much a gene is activated or not activated.
00:11:54.000And there's been studies, lots and lots of studies in animals showing this to be the case.
00:11:59.000Of course, that's animals and how much of that actually translates to humans, but there was a really interesting study A couple years ago, I think it was like 2015 that was published, that looked at the effect of obesity.
00:12:11.000And obesity was actually looked at not in the mothers, but the fathers.
00:12:16.000And so sperm DNA was collected from males that were obese and males that were lean.
00:14:02.000Just by whether or not you're taking care of your own body.
00:14:04.000You can literally change the future of your child.
00:14:06.000Because you're saying that these genes that are in this obese man's sperm, the way they're represented, that's going to be passed on to the kid.
00:14:39.000A lot of the research is done in animals because it's really difficult to do these sorts of experiments in humans, but I think that this is sort of a proof of principle, at the very least, looking at the sperm DNA. It's something to consider.
00:14:56.000I've had friends of friends that are overweight or obese and wanting to have children.
00:15:04.000I try to talk to them about that in a way that's not condescending.
00:15:13.000They have to find the right combination of things that works for them.
00:15:17.000But I do think that people would get more motivated if they're like, wow, I can affect my future child's risk for type 1 diabetes or for what their IQ is, how well they're performing on learning and memory tests.
00:15:31.000And also avoid the horrific guilt that you would feel if you didn't do that and you started to see these things manifesting in your child.
00:15:39.000And you realize, oh my god, I set this kid up in a shitty way because I'm lazy.
00:15:43.000Which is essentially what a lot of the problem is with people.
00:15:46.000It's just they don't have whatever the mental, you know, and people get angry if you say they're lazy because they don't diet.
00:15:58.000But for whatever reason, if you choose not to take care of your health, and you see that transfer into your child, and you know that you're unhappy with your existence, you know you're unhappy with your physical body, and you refuse to do or, for whatever reason, don't do enough,
00:16:14.000and then you see these same problems manifesting in your own baby, and you realize, like, oh my god, I started this kid off in a shitty way.
00:16:21.000Like, you're gonna be riddled with guilt.
00:17:02.000Yeah, that's like, you know, and there's all sorts of, you know, studies that have shown, you know, of course, smoking during pregnancy causes, or not causes, but have been associated with like ADHD and what's it called?
00:17:16.000Like the movement, just like a dyskinesia thing, you know, all sorts of problems.
00:17:22.000So it's certainly, like I, having the knowledge, you know, and continuing to read throughout pregnancy and then once, you know, having the baby, like one thing that I knew that I really, really wanted to do was I wanted to breastfeed.
00:17:34.000Like that was, you know, The benefits of breastfeeding are just amazing.
00:17:40.000And this is something that my stepmother, for example, her generation, also my grandmother, they didn't know about this.
00:17:49.000So they weren't recommended to breastfeed back in the 50s.
00:18:21.000And they cannot be digested at all by the infant's digestive system.
00:18:26.000It's like they co-evolved specifically to feed the microbiome in the gut of these infants.
00:18:32.000And they're specifically increasing the species of bacteria Bifidobacteria infantis is one, really, really important one.
00:18:40.000But it's amazing that they're, it's really, that's the only purpose that they serve is to feed and, you know, basically populate the infant gut with this beneficial bacteria.
00:18:51.000And, you know, this bacteria has been shown to, one, set up the immune system because they digest these oligosaccharides and they produce other molecules called short-chain fatty acids.
00:19:01.000Those short-chain fatty acids like lactate Butyrate, acetate, things that you've heard of, those act as what are called signaling molecules to basically determine what kind of immune cells you're going to make.
00:19:13.000So a big one that they do is they make T-regulatory cells, which are a kind of immune cells that prevents autoimmunity, autoimmune responses.
00:19:21.000So like children that are not breastfed, they lack like four different species of I've got bacteria and they have like a threefold increased risk of allergies and, you know, autoimmune related diseases.
00:19:38.000And also it's like preventing pathogenic bacteria from from like taking residence there.
00:19:44.000Because these human milk oligosaccharides, not only are they feeding the beneficial bacteria, well, recently, it's been found that They, like, break down biofilms that bacteria create to, like, you know, basically escape antimicrobial activity.
00:19:59.000So there's a lot of antimicrobial things in breast milk, like lauric acid, which is also found in coconut oil.
00:20:04.000But the human milk oligosaccharides basically break down the biofilms so that the lauric acid can work better.
00:20:10.000So it's like, you know, and there's stem cells.
00:20:12.000There's stem cells in breast milk, mammary stem cells.
00:20:18.000I think it's been 10 years since the discovery of that.
00:20:23.000The studies have been mostly done in mice, but they have measured, humans have the same mammary type of stem cells in their breast milk.
00:20:31.000But in animals, in preclinical studies, it's been shown that those breast stem cells, they get digested, they go into the bloodstream, and they go to various organs.
00:20:40.000They go to the kidney, the liver, the brain, and they start to, in the pancreas, they start to make insulin-producing cells.
00:21:53.000Some milk and we were putting it in a syringe with a little tube and putting it on the breast because I didn't want to introduce the bottle so early.
00:22:04.000I could totally see, if you didn't know all the benefits of breastfeeding, that I could see how new mothers would give up because it's extremely difficult.
00:22:16.000So that's something that I completely understand.
00:22:21.000I think previously I was like, How can anyone not breastfeed?
00:22:25.000But really, it's not easy for everyone.
00:22:27.000There's all sorts of problems that women have.
00:22:29.000But there are actually breast milk banks so women can donate their breast milk and people can buy the breast milk instead of getting formula.
00:22:40.000Of course, there's all sorts of other problems.
00:22:41.000It's like, well, are they getting enough vitamin D and omega-3 and what else are they taking?
00:22:47.000There's so many different things that happen once you have children.
00:22:51.000Breastfeeding, I'm sure, being one of them.
00:22:54.000But the lack of sleep thing, which I think most people just really don't have any idea, like, what is happening.
00:23:01.000And then they also don't understand how difficult it is to watch a child.
00:25:27.000I don't want anybody's life to fall apart anymore.
00:25:32.000I used to be like, I hope that guy gets hit by a truck.
00:25:35.000Now I'm like, man, I hope that little baby figures out why he's such an asshole.
00:25:39.000It would be interesting to kind of see the brain activation pathways that change.
00:25:45.000If you're talking about being more compassionate, that's almost like, I mean, there's a certain type of meditation that's like compassion meditation that people do that changes certain parts of the brain.
00:26:08.000I definitely have some creativity, but he's kind of like, I wonder if just becoming a mommy, you just all of a sudden become more creative.
00:26:35.000So you spin this thing and it's like it corresponds to different color acorns and, you know, and when she wins and she jumps up, she's like, oh, I beat you.
00:26:45.000And she's like doing her little dance and she's like throwing her arms in the air.
00:26:49.000And I'm like, this is like half of me is laughing because she's funny.
00:26:52.000But half of me is going, this is so strange that you're a little person that I'm talking to.
00:27:26.000There's actually something to be gained.
00:27:28.000And as far as like everyone reproducing, well, obviously we have too many people.
00:27:31.000So that's not, I don't know if that's the best thing.
00:27:33.000And I certainly think that you could be a fully formed, healthy, wonderful person who contributes an amazing thing to the world if you don't have children.
00:27:42.000I don't think you have to have children.
00:27:44.000But I think for me, it was very much, there was a giant learning experience along with It was a giant evolving experience along with just being a parent.
00:29:17.000Something like that, like just orders and orders of magnitude higher.
00:29:22.000And estrogen has been shown to increase the expression of a gene called tryptophan hydroxylase 2 in the brain that produces serotonin from tryptophan.
00:29:32.000So you're constantly making serotonin, constantly, constantly, constantly.
00:29:37.000And then, you know, after you have the baby, that goes away.
00:30:09.000So your circadian rhythm, which is, you know, extremely, extremely important for mood, for the way you feel, that is completely disrupted because you're waking up, you know, multiple times a night and that's completely gone.
00:30:27.000It's like a completely new experience.
00:30:30.000You have this very fragile baby that you're responsible for.
00:30:34.000And so I think that combination of all these things really can play a role in that.
00:30:40.000And for me, I really tried to make sure I was getting exercise as soon as I could.
00:30:47.000You know, so that is something because exercise for a variety of reasons.
00:30:50.000One, it's been shown to increase the production of serotonin by getting transport of tryptophan into the brain.
00:30:57.000So branched chain amino acids, which are found in, you know, a variety of proteins.
00:31:03.000They can out-compete tryptophan to get into the brain.
00:31:06.000And so if you're not exercising, you're constantly getting the branched-chain amino acids in the brain, which are serving other important roles, but you're not getting that tryptophan.
00:31:14.000So you're not getting the precursor to make serotonin.
00:31:17.000And so the exercise alleviates that competition.
00:31:20.000Branched-chain amino acids get taken up into your muscle where they're used to help build muscle, which is good.
00:31:25.000And the tryptophan gets into the brain.
00:31:35.000And then you're increasing the production of new neurons through serotonin, also through brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
00:31:43.000That also has been shown to help alleviate depression and prevent depression.
00:31:47.000The actual neurogenesis, the thing that helps you stave off brain aging, which, by the way, there's been like There was, like, 14 clinical trials that have been analyzed looking at humans that undergo, like, aerobic exercise and how they have, like,
00:32:02.000their left part of their hippocampus doesn't, like, atrophy, like, people who do not exercise, you know?
00:32:08.000So that's, like, because of the neurogenesis.
00:32:16.000Have you ever looked, if you Google Alzheimer's disease brain, there's images all over the place where they show before and after, and there's just big holes in the brain.
00:33:26.000And they looked at his brain, and they're like, well, this doesn't even make sense.
00:33:30.000And now they're finding that this is the case with so many football players.
00:33:34.000You, when you went to see the UFC... When you and Dan went to see the UFC and I talked to you afterwards, we all went to dinner afterwards, and your eyes were as big as dinner plates and you were like, this is so bad!
00:33:49.000And then you started going into detail about the various things that were happening.
00:33:54.000It was so fascinating to watch you, a scientist, watch people get head kicked and punched in the face and watch MMA take place.
00:34:05.000Yeah, I mean, it's kind of crazy to think about how people, like, as a profession, go and get, like, they're getting TBI, like, constantly getting their head bashed in.
00:34:15.000And, you know, there's definitely, like, if you look at the non, you know, fighting forms of martial arts where they're, like, it seems a lot more beautiful, like, cool moves and stuff.
00:34:28.000But the actual getting your head bashed and stuff, that's crazy!
00:35:10.000Like, if you get to a certain level, like, say, that's one of the things that I love about jiu-jitsu, is that jiu-jitsu sort of solves this, but it does so without hitting each other.
00:35:38.000They're attacking and counterattacking, and you just...
00:35:40.000And me, in my mind, I'm thinking of the countless hours of dedication and focus it's required to reach this level of proficiency, where they're just...
00:35:49.000They know what to do and when to do it.
00:35:52.000They're trying to counter, and they're both black belts at a very high level.
00:35:55.000So it's like you're examining this game, and it doesn't have...
00:36:02.000The same feeling when someone loses that an MMA fight has.
00:36:05.000Like I watched the UFC this past weekend and there's some brutal knockouts.
00:36:09.000When you watch someone get KO'd, and you see their brain shut off, and their legs stiffen up, and they go flat.
00:36:26.000And I think we talked about this last time, a couple years ago, but the ApoE4 gene, I think, really is something that would...
00:36:35.000At least give some insight because, I mean, it's known that people that have at least one allele of that gene, they can, you know, have really, really bad consequence if they get TBI. I mean, we're talking 10 to 20 fold more risk for CTE, for other,
00:36:51.000you know, if they have two copies of it, so they're like homozygous, which is a lot less common.
00:36:59.000That would be, you know, anywhere like a two to five fold.
00:37:05.000When you have two copies, it can be up 10 to 20 fold higher.
00:37:09.000So that's something that's like, you know, with the MMA or the UFC kind of fighting, I mean, or football or boxing or, you know, fill in the blank sports that, you know, is very, has a high risk for TBI. Like,
00:37:25.000I think that's something that athletes should consider.
00:37:29.000And you probably would find ones that would say, hey, maybe I shouldn't do this, you know.
00:37:58.000So the benefits of exercise on the brain, which I know that I constantly talk about this to you, but it's just so, you know, it's so damn important.
00:38:10.000And it is, it's one of those things that, like, it helps me with everything, you know, and the brain aging is like, it's like, It's the long term effect.
00:38:19.000So it helps me with the short term, which is like handling life and handling stress.
00:38:23.000You were talking about how people have a hard time, you know, seeing things from a higher level.
00:38:26.000And it's so true, you know, because...
00:38:34.000And if you don't have a starting place, if your baseline is kind of like you don't have a lot to start with, you have to work all the more work you have to put in.
00:38:45.000So I think that getting distracted with trying to make money, trying to survive and try to live a good life and get married and have kids and all this, it can be really stressful.
00:38:55.000So I have, of course, my own stresses.
00:38:58.000But I think that the exercises, the short-term effects I get from that, you know, are helping with clarity, helping me with being able to kind of take a step back and not be so anxious.
00:39:11.000And there's controlled trials showing this as well with exercise.
00:39:15.000You know, I, for the longest time, have been a runner.
00:39:22.000I love the frame of mind I'm in when I'm running.
00:39:25.000It's kind of like this reflective daydreaming, which some people in some studies say, well, daydreaming is not good because you're ruminating when you're daydreaming.
00:39:35.000But I think the daydreaming that you do when you're running is a lot different from if you and I were having this conversation right now, but I wasn't present.
00:39:43.000So that's called rumination, and that's a stressful kind of daydreaming.
00:41:53.000So he was like, well, you probably shouldn't have started running so soon, so don't do that.
00:41:57.000Why don't you start doing some low-impact exercise and start strengthening up your pelvic floor with kegels and some core strength, which I've been doing.
00:42:06.000So I was like, crap, what am I going to do?
00:42:09.000I would just walk out the door and go run, and that was my escape.
00:42:14.000So I started doing this cycling class, high-intensity interval cycling class, which is an hour-long, and it's a spin class, but it's not like the dancey spin.
00:42:25.000So it's a spin class where you do hills and sprints, and it's an hour-long, but you're mixing it with just aerobic, and so you get these sprints and these hills, and I really, really, really like it for multiple reasons.
00:42:39.000One is the group setting, where I feel like The people around me, I'm like, they're still going at it, you know?
00:42:46.000So it's like motivating, so I keep going too.
00:42:48.000There's something about that group that really, like, I push.
00:42:51.000If it were just me on that bike for an hour, there's no way I would be pushing it like I do.
00:43:08.000There's a couple instructors that I really, really like because they like their style and they're kind of more like coaches than the kind of instructor that kind of makes you want to feel.
00:43:16.000There's the instructor that's like, Their cheerleader kind of want to make you feel good, and then there's the instructor where they're like a coach, where they're trying to help you get better.
00:43:26.000So I got into this high-intensity interval training, and I've never really been into it that much.
00:43:44.000If I do something, I'm like, well, I want to look into it, and either it'll motivate me to, like, really keep it up and do it more, or I'll be like, nah, this isn't good.
00:43:51.000You know, so I started reading more and more about it, and it's amazing, the benefits of the high intensity.
00:43:57.000So you were talking about how, like, your, I think what you were describing was your aerobic capacity changed.
00:44:03.000Yeah, it's changed for, the big one is kickboxing, like when I hit the bag.
00:44:07.000It used to be that I would struggle to do a three-minute round of high-intensity, like hitting the bag, kickboxing.
00:44:16.000But now I get through it, the bell goes off, and I'm like, really?
00:44:23.000And then I'll have the 30-second rest.
00:44:24.000By the time 30-second rest is up, I'm fully recovered, and I'm back in again.
00:44:29.000I mean, I have more than double the endurance I used to have.
00:44:33.000So what you're experiencing has been studied in clinical studies.
00:44:38.000Basically, this aerobic capacity, also people call it VO2 max, which is basically the ability of your lungs and your blood and your heart to carry oxygen to your muscles or places that are, you know, during that intense push.
00:45:05.000So you're basically, you know, 25, you're 35, your VO2 max is like 10% less than you were when you were 25. Well, it turns out, doing these high-intensity interval classes, doing 24 of them, which in this study, it was like they were 40 minutes long,
00:45:20.000and there was four four-minute pushes, and then there's, you know, recoveries in between and all that blah blah blah stuff.
00:45:26.000They were able to improve, after eight weeks of doing 24 high-intensity classes, improve their VO2 max by like 12%.
00:45:34.000So you're basically adding a decade, you know, back.
00:45:42.000So the interesting thing about that study was they were also testing whether or not doing it, I think it was like four weeks or something, really short, just packing them all in.
00:45:53.000That actually didn't increase the VO2 max as much because the recovery time was actually important.
00:45:57.000It's actually changed the way I think about when it comes to training and my advice that I give to people for training.
00:46:02.000Because I used to think that it was adequate to just do the sport-specific workouts.
00:46:07.000Like, say, if you wanted to get better at jujitsu...
00:47:52.000In fact, there was some interesting study that...
00:47:54.000I don't know how long ago, maybe a year ago or two...
00:47:57.000That looked at people that exercise...
00:47:59.000I think they went for walks or something...
00:48:01.000In nature versus in the metropolitan area...
00:48:04.000And the benefits, there was more benefits in going for the walks in nature in terms of like, you know, psychological benefits, but also some of the variety of like biomarkers that were measured.
00:48:16.000So it's kind of interesting, you know?
00:48:19.000I think we like to think of ourselves as being detached from what we experience just in terms of even just visually.
00:48:26.000But I think that those things have an effect on like, not just how you think, like how you feel, but who you are.
00:48:34.000I mean, I think we have some sort of a symbiotic relationship with our environment.
00:48:39.000And when your environment is cement and glass and concrete and rubber and all the things that we've created in cities, there's a dull feeling that you get from those things.
00:48:49.000And then you can go and see a green meadow and birds flying around and the wind whistling through the leaves.
00:49:10.000I think that there's, you know, the noise pollution, the sound, you know, like, the scars and all that, that's been shown to have a negative effect on people's, like, emotions.
00:49:20.000And, you know, of course, there's the environmental things you're breathing and pollution, and that, you know, has been shown to increase inflammatory biomarkers and all that.
00:49:55.000Yeah, it was close to the beach and, you know, it's fun, but it's not something that I could do with a baby, especially in such a small space.
00:50:07.000There's motorcycles that go by and it's like...
00:50:28.000Like we were saying, you know, it's not easy.
00:50:30.000So there's things, there's just all this stuff you have to consider when your priorities change.
00:50:35.000Now that you, when you have a child, it's like you got to think of all the things, schools and this and that and neighbors and who are they going to be friends with?
00:50:43.000Before I forget, I want to tell people, go to Chris Kresser's Twitter page, and there's an article on acetaminophen and women who are pregnant consuming acetaminophen and the negative consequences it has for your children.
00:51:31.000How many things we find out from the 1960s were terribly detrimental to children and doctors were telling you this is the way you should go.
00:51:41.000When I was pregnant, there were certainly some things that I opted out of that Yeah.
00:52:16.000But I think that there's a lot of merit in the idea that you shoot a kid up with 36 different shots when they're six weeks old or whatever age they start them at.
00:52:26.000I mean, right out of the box, a lot of doctors want to give your kid a series of shots.
00:52:35.000There's some concern that the actual consequences of all these different vaccines being put into your child's body very early, and a large number of them, have some sort of negative consequences.
00:53:01.000Even on the CDC website, it says that some of these vaccines can cause fevers and epileptic seizures in infants, but that there's no long-term consequence of that.
00:53:16.000And that's kind of like, you know, if you look at the literature...
00:53:21.000And how the immune system responds to some of these vaccines, especially if you're giving like five at once.
00:53:28.000I mean, the first round of vaccines that I'm supposed to do, it was like five different vaccines.
00:53:34.000And so what I'm opting to do is actually do them in singles.
00:53:52.000I was particularly worried about it during pregnancy, and that's one of the things I opted out of was getting the Tdap vaccine, which is they want to give it to you when you're, I forgot how many weeks pregnant, 30-something, I think.
00:54:07.000And to protect, basically pass on antibodies for whooping cough, you know, to the baby.
00:54:12.000And so I opted out and I said I would do it basically postpartum, like one day postpartum, because it takes about four weeks to transfer the antibodies in breast milk.
00:54:20.000So I still was going to, you know, get the vaccine, but I was going to do it after I had the baby.
00:54:24.000And the reason I made that decision is because there have been multiple studies now in non-human primates that have looked, and these studies came out of UC Davis, looked at pregnant female monkeys when they have a really strong immune response,
00:54:42.000so like a strong infection or, you know, who knows, a vaccine.
00:54:45.000The study didn't use vaccines, but I'm sort of drawing a parallel here, where it's just the immune response, having a very strong immune response, there was an autoimmune response that ended up having antibodies that attacked the developing brain, and the monkeys that were born from those mothers had autistic-like behaviors.
00:55:02.000It's been shown in humans that mothers of autistic children are five times more likely to have antibodies floating around in their blood against fetal brain proteins.
00:55:10.000Like, they're not supposed to have antibodies against fetal brain proteins in their blood.
00:55:14.000So there's definitely been some link with the immune system, autoimmunity, particularly during pregnancy and an autism risk.
00:55:24.000Now, in terms of like the young baby, you know, I'm scared too.
00:55:29.000And I do worry that My son's developing so great and I don't want to do something wrong.
00:55:39.000Like I said, I'm going to vaccinate my son and I have been doing singles.
00:55:44.000It's a little more inconvenient because you have to go to the doctor so many times to do it.
00:55:48.000But the thing is, is that when you're not giving so many different vaccines at once, the immune response isn't going to be as strong.
00:55:56.000And there's a problem with this conversation.
00:55:58.000And one of the problems with this conversation is as soon as you talk about vaccines, you immediately get lumped into a bunch of fucking crazy people.
00:56:05.000I think that vaccines are some sort of a conspiracy and the government's trying to make money from you and you're an anti-vaxxer and they immediately box you in and start getting angry at you.
00:56:15.000It's a weird thing because you're talking about chemicals that you're injecting into a child, right?
00:56:47.000Two of the exact, you have a bunch of copies, you make a bunch of clones of a baby, and you expose them to the exact same environment, exact same epigenetics, exact same environmental factors, and then one of you inject a bunch of chemicals into, and one you don't.
00:57:02.000I mean, we know that vaccines are amazing.
00:57:20.000But I also think that we have to be very careful with just jumping into things, just like we were talking before about things that they did as standard care during the 1960s are now prohibited.
00:57:30.000Like, we know they're dangerous for you.
00:57:32.000Yeah, I mean, I completely 100% agree.
00:57:35.000And I think that there are now, it's a growing field, at least in science, where there are scientists that are trying to understand the gene interaction, the gene interaction with the immune system.
00:57:47.000Because, you know, obviously, almost everyone gets vaccinated, right?
00:57:52.000I mean, and you don't have everyone walking around with all these, with autism and all these things.
00:57:57.000There is something that is, you know, going on and, you know, a lot of parents have noticed changes, of course, after the vaccinations.
00:58:04.000And so there is a new field of inquiry, I do know, that's ongoing where scientists are beginning to now look at, in addition to how the immune system is reacting to some of these vaccines, how specific genes, you know,
00:58:20.000regulating certain immune functions may, differences in those genes called polymorphisms may, you know, Predispose a child.
00:58:29.000Now, how are you going to know that without doing a DNA test before you do the vaccine?
00:58:36.000And that's what's the scary thing, you know?
00:58:40.000And it's like, you know, it's a dilemma that I've been facing.
00:58:44.000And, you know, I'm currently the reason I even delayed, I've only, you know, given my son two vaccines so far, but just because I'm trying to, like, exhaustively read the literature as much as I can.
00:58:57.000I'm glad that you're looking at it this way because it's something that there's a lot of pressure on people to not look at it that way.
00:59:04.000Just having this conversation, Joe Rogan and Rhonda Patrick are anti-vaxxers.
00:59:08.000That could be the title of some bullshit article that someone writes about this.
00:59:13.000And I've seen it time and time again where someone will write a clickbait title to an article and then someone will just read that and go, oh, you're an anti-vaxxer?
00:59:39.000And my children have been all vaccinated.
00:59:41.000But I agree, it's a nuanced topic that we don't know the answer to.
00:59:48.000I mean, I think that this guy, what was his name, the thymorosal guy, the doctor that got disbarred because he falsified some data on thymorosal, the mercury, causing autism.
01:00:56.000There's lasted for years in the scientific methods and financial conflicts.
01:01:01.000Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who contended that his research showed that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine may be unsafe, but the retraction may do little to tarnish Dr. Wakefield's reputation among parents groups in the United States.
01:01:32.000I know a lot of people that think their kids' medical issues came from vaccines.
01:03:13.000Because when you're dealing with chemicals, there's always going to be a small percentage of a chance that your body has an adverse reaction to those chemicals.
01:03:27.000Live bacteria, and you're listening in immune response, and immune responses vary as well, you know, dramatically.
01:03:33.000I mean, some people have autoimmune diseases because their immune system gets so ramped up.
01:03:37.000You know, some people have, you know, type 1 diabetes because their immune system is destroying their pancreatic beta-ilis cells that produce insulin.
01:03:46.000And it's funny because when Jamie pulled that up, my mind went to the same place where it's just, it's the perfect example of how, you know, people respond differently to different things.
01:04:02.000And this is a big, big field of inquiry, is like the food, because you've got people battling just like with the people that are anti-vaxxers versus people that want to vaccinate.
01:04:12.000You've got people that are saying saturated fat is bad.
01:04:34.000Yeah, I mean, that's something, you know, so before the industrialized, you know, civilization occurred, like, occurred...
01:04:42.000Food was like the food you would eat was, you know, according to where you live geographically, right?
01:04:47.000Because you weren't getting food from all parts of the world.
01:04:50.000Like you were basically whatever you could grow in that part of the world is what you would eat, right?
01:04:54.000And so like people would eat carbohydrates or saturated fats or, you know, various foods, you know, different at different rates because they were, you know, that's what they had, right?
01:05:04.000And it's thought that, you know, Over time, humans adapted to the region, and they adapted so that they could basically process that food better.
01:05:17.000The reality is, it doesn't matter how it happened.
01:05:20.000We know that it's true, and people have different variations in genes that are involved in nutrition and also in everything else.
01:05:26.000So, regardless of whether or not that's, you know, how it actually occurred, it happens.
01:05:32.000And I think one of the best examples of that is a study that was published in 2015 in Journal of Cell from the Weissman Institute.
01:05:39.000800 different people were given a continuous glucose monitor where their blood glucose levels were measured every five minutes.
01:05:46.000And these people were then, they submitted samples for their DNA to be analyzed and also their microbiome, which is the bacteria that live in the gut.
01:05:55.000And so scientists then gave these groups of people various food types, either refined carbohydrate, like white bread, complex carbohydrates, like, you know, like a banana, and then saturated fat, like cheese.
01:06:10.000And they measured people's glucose response to these various foods.
01:06:16.000And what was found was that the glucose response varied vastly according to a person's genetic and also microbiome makeup.
01:06:25.000So you would think, well, people are going to have a high blood glucose response to white bread, maybe somewhat to the banana, but there's fiber in there and that sort of changes the way the glucose levels reach the blood.
01:06:37.000But the reality was that some people had high blood glucose to the saturated fat, which is sort of People don't think about that.
01:06:45.000So this was sort of like one of the first proof of principle studies showing in 800 different people that people are different.
01:06:53.000And they measured the various genes to show it and also their gut bacteria varied as well because that changes the way you're metabolizing foods.
01:07:00.000So some of these genes, like we know, for example, PPR alpha, PPR gamma, FTO, ApoE4, which is what I have.
01:07:10.000All change the way your body metabolizes fats and also the way your body transports, like fatty acids and cholesterol throughout the body.
01:07:20.000And people with some of these polymorphisms in these genes, if they eat a high saturated to low poly or monounsaturated fat ratio, they can actually have more adverse effects.
01:07:58.000So, you know, because the ApoE4 not only predisposes you to Alzheimer's disease and also from adverse effects to TBI, but it also affects the way cholesterol is transporting your body and it doesn't get recycled very well.
01:08:13.000So I have more cholesterol circulating in my body at any given point compared to my husband, Dan, who doesn't have an APOE4 allele and we eat the exact same diet.
01:08:24.000Like, my LDL will be like 20 points higher than his, you know, like...
01:08:29.000Is there a negative health effect to that?
01:08:32.000So, well, it gets a little more complicated, but...
01:08:36.000So the LDL cholesterol, by the way, for a long time it's been thought to be a predictor of heart disease.
01:08:46.000Because with nutrition, and here's the thing with nutrition, is that a lot of our studies are what's called observational studies where we look at this population and we look at a disease risk and we say, oh, this person eats that and they have a higher risk of that or a lower risk of that,
01:09:08.000And it's notoriously like, actually, my mentor from my postdoc, Dr. Bruce Sames, he has this joke, the analogy, but it's a joke that he tells that really illustrates this type of study, epidemiology.
01:09:21.000He says that people that are born in Miami are born Hispanic, but they die Jewish.
01:09:27.000And if you don't know the rich cultural history of Miami, where there's a lot of big Latino community, people come there from Cuba and various places.
01:09:35.000But then old people go there to retire because they hate the cold and they want to move to Florida.
01:09:54.000And it's a great analogy because it really does highlight the complexity of doing these types of studies.
01:10:00.000There's all sorts of other factors that play a role.
01:10:03.000So the thing is that with nutrition in particular, You have to look at not just the epidemiological study, but you have to look at randomized controlled trials where they use biomarkers as predictors of certain diseases.
01:10:17.000You have to look at animal studies where mechanism is done to understand how things are working.
01:10:22.000You have to look at the whole picture.
01:11:14.000The large size, the large buoyant size is really good because it's delivering cholesterol to your cells and delivering fatty acids to your cells where you need it.
01:11:21.000Every time you make a new cell in your body, guess what?
01:11:26.000But there's also smaller sizes that are more dense and basically they can't get recycled back to the liver.
01:11:35.000There's basically a life cycle of the cholesterol.
01:11:38.000It's made in the liver, goes out in the bloodstream, donates all this stuff to your various cells and it goes back to the liver and it's sort of like recycled.
01:11:46.000Well, if you can't recycle it, then it stays in your bloodstream sort of indefinitely.
01:11:50.000And then it can undergo inflammatory transformations there and all sorts of things, you know, bad things happen.
01:11:55.000And so the longer you have something in your bloodstream, if it's there for like decades, chances are some shit's going to go wrong, right?
01:12:03.000And is this a dietary issue or a hereditary issue in terms of like the size of the LDL? So I don't know how much is known about the hereditary aspect of it.
01:12:14.000It's known that ApoE4 can increase the risk of just having more LDL total there, right?
01:12:21.000But what type of LDL? It's not known, just like regular total LDL, not looking at the particle size.
01:12:27.000Now, the particle size, what we do know is there's a big nutrition factor that regulates that, and the nutrition factor that regulates that is refined sugar.
01:12:36.000And that's been shown in controlled, randomized controlled trials, where like healthy men given almost like something that was like a soda, you know, they were given a big drink of just sugar, sugary drink for three weeks every day.
01:12:50.000And it completely increased their inflammatory biomarkers by like 100%.
01:12:54.000But it also ramped up their small LDL particle size.
01:12:58.000Let me stop right here, because this is a really important point.
01:13:02.000For people that think that drinking a large glass of orange juice is different than drinking a glass of soda, it's really not.
01:13:10.000No, it's not, because you don't have the fiber.
01:13:30.000And that's what complicates all these studies is that you then have people eating, for example, saturated fat, which is known to increase the large LDL. The healthy LDL. It's known to increase that.
01:13:42.000And in combination, you have people that are drinking orange juice or even worse, eating cookies and cake and drinking soda and bread, all that refined carbohydrate stuff.
01:13:51.000Now, those two in combination together, you've got the LDL, and then what happens is with the refined sugar is inflammatory transformations happen, and you get the small dance.
01:14:01.000So this is why it's a problem when people try to look at diet in very simplistic ways, right?
01:14:06.000When people try to say, if you eat saturated fat, and if you eat cholesterol, you're going to have high cholesterol in your body, and you're going to have heart attacks, you're going to have a stroke.
01:14:16.000I mean, this is a very simplistic thing that people will often say.
01:14:20.000Yeah, it really truly is, like I said, you have to look at mechanism, controlled trials, you have to look at observational studies are also important.
01:14:30.000You know, we also have controlled trials where people that are put on a high fat and low refined carbohydrate diet for, I don't know, a month or something like that, I don't remember the exact time, had all biomarkers lowered for heart disease risk.
01:14:44.000Is there something that people can do to take on that diet?
01:14:47.000How do you do that if you want to go vegan?
01:14:50.000Because I know a lot of people like to be vegan, but in order to get all those fats, especially low carbohydrate, Well, so I think that, first of all, for anyone doing any diet, like whether it's a vegan diet or a ketogenic high-fat diet or a low-carb high-fat diet,
01:15:10.000whatever diet they're doing, first thing you should do is definitely measure these biomarkers.
01:15:16.000LDL particle size can be measured, triglycerides, inflammatory biomarkers like high-sensitivity reactive protein.
01:15:26.000I mean, you can ask your primary care doctor.
01:15:30.000I know True Health Diagnostics is one that does, like, a whole panel of really good ones, including the small, dense LDL particle size.
01:15:38.000A growing number of physicians do measure LDL particle size.
01:15:43.000Wellness FX is something if you don't want...
01:15:45.000Your physician to know what your LDL is because you don't want them to like have some opinion about it.
01:15:50.000Wellness FX is a company that will also measure your LDL and particle size and a variety of other biomarkers as well.
01:15:58.000Now what you're saying about refined carbohydrates or refined sugars and LDL and small LDL and large LDL, is this common knowledge amongst primary care providers?
01:16:10.000I mean is this something your doctor is going to understand or are they going to try to put you on statins?
01:16:17.000It's not standard of care and it's not ubiquitous in the medical profession yet because it's just within the past decade been starting to, scientists and researchers have been starting to uncover these mechanisms and it usually takes a long time To translate this knowledge because now large-scale clinical trials have to be done and X number of them have to be done.
01:16:41.000I don't know everything that goes into how regulations are made, but it's a lot of clinical trials and a lot of things before any sort of regulations are changed.
01:16:51.000So that's something that is not standard yet.
01:16:54.000You can always print out papers Give them to your physician.
01:17:00.000He's a cardiologist, an MD. His name is Dr. Ronald Krause.
01:17:04.000He's actually the guy who pioneered the test to measure small, dense LDL particle size.
01:17:10.000And he's really been a leader in the field for understanding the role of small, dense LDL particles in cardiovascular disease risk and how basically a person with high...
01:17:21.000High LDL, total cholesterol, may not actually be at risk for heart disease unless you look at the actual particle size.
01:17:28.000And things like this is what confound the literature.
01:17:31.000And this is what people often refer to as cherry picking.
01:18:12.000I personally, because of my APOE... Background.
01:18:18.000And by the way, that's kind of what motivated me to get.
01:18:19.000I got super into this field called nutrigenomics, the interaction between genes and diet, because I found out I had this allele and I knew there was sorts of risk.
01:18:27.000And I'm like, there's absolutely things you can do in your diet and your lifestyle to modify that disease risk.
01:18:32.000And so that's something that I'm, you know, really interested in.
01:18:36.000And people can actually, you can measure your DNA, but the DNA doesn't tell you everything.
01:18:42.000Like the blood biomarkers are really key to know if a diet's working for you or not.
01:18:46.000And if it's not working for you, like I've had people emailing me, they've used, I have a genetic tool that people can use, and if they want to look at ApoE4, PPR, Gamma, those are like free reports.
01:18:55.000They've tried a ketogenic diet and it was like awful for them.
01:18:58.000Their inflammatory biomarkers went up, their small dense LDL particle went up, all this stuff bad happened.
01:19:04.000And then they'd use the tool and found out they had, for example, the PPAR-alpha gene, which is a gene that's key for the process of ketogenesis, producing ketone bodies from oxidizing fatty acids.
01:19:16.000And people that have a certain one don't do it very well, and the diet can be detrimental.
01:19:35.000So for what is exactly the gene, what is the issue?
01:19:39.000So PPAR-alpha, it changes, it's a gene that's involved in, it's involved in fatty acid metabolism, absorption of fatty acids.
01:19:48.000It's also, it's in the liver, involved in producing ketone bodies from the fatty acid.
01:19:54.000So that specific gene is essential for the process of ketogenesis during a fasted state and also if you're doing, you know, a ketogenic type of diet.
01:20:03.000And so there's certain variations in that gene that don't do it very well.
01:20:08.000And so the high-fat diet, what ends up happening is you're not metabolizing the fatty acids and producing the ketone bodies quite as well.
01:20:14.000And so you end up having more free fatty acids floating around in your bloodstream, which can antagonize insulin receptor and make you more insulin insensitive, which is exactly the opposite of what Ketogenic diets usually do.
01:20:25.000You know, so there's this varied response.
01:20:27.000You can also have more inflammatory biomarkers for various reasons as well, because you're not oxidizing the fatty acids and producing the ketone bodies as well.
01:20:35.000So there's lots of things that change.
01:20:37.000But like, you know, knowing the genes is one component.
01:20:40.000I think that you have to measure the biomarkers first.
01:20:43.000And once you, if you're doing something like a ketogenic diet, for example, then you would measure All your lipid particle sizes, your triglycerides, inflammatory biomarkers, you want to measure HbA1c, which is your glycated hemoglobin, which is a marker of sort of your long-term blood glucose levels.
01:21:00.000So should you have one test initially, like a baseline test before you enter into the diet and then have a second one?
01:21:06.000Do you think that the origins of this is your ancestral origins, like what your ancestors' diet consisted of, low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet?
01:21:15.000That's what I was kind of getting at first.
01:21:16.000I mean, that's the theory, at least, right?
01:21:17.000We can't prove that, but there are scientists looking at different regions, like people that live, for example, in Northern Europe, how they eat more fat, and they're able to do that better.
01:21:27.000So there are scientists that are investigating that, because it's interesting to know why that is.
01:21:36.000With the ketogenic diet, it's something that I've become really interested in recently, because I've been, you know, following the field and it appears, you know, as though there's something about it that is really important for the way your mitochondria age.
01:21:54.000Like, it really seems to help your mitochondria age better.
01:21:57.000And I think that there's, you know, there's multiple...
01:22:02.000He's the president of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.
01:22:06.000And his name is Eric Burden, and he just recently published a really big paper showing that in animals, cyclic ketogenic diets could extend their health span, so they are basically a healthy part of their life.
01:22:18.000They were living longer, and they were living better, and also their memory was, like, dramatically improved.
01:22:24.000And when you say cyclic, is there a specific range that you're cycling?
01:22:37.000So one week they were ketogenic, the next week they were just getting normal chow diet and then ketogenic.
01:22:41.000So they were cycling every other week.
01:22:43.000And the reason for that is because for whatever reason, animals, when you just give them food to eat, like ad libtum, like whenever they want, even if it's ketogenic, they'll just keep eating.
01:22:56.000They'll just keep eating it and it can become an obesogenic diet where they become fat and it can actually decrease their lifespan, even though it's ketogenic.
01:23:06.000And I think that's partly because fatty acids, in order to use them, they have to get inside the mitochondria to be used.
01:23:29.000So if you just keep on bombarding the body with fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, like nonstop without a rest, then you start to like not be able to use those fatty acids because it inhibits the transport system.
01:23:40.000It's called the carnitil pomatol transferase.
01:23:43.000For those nerdy biologist geeks out there.
01:23:55.000So that was something that extended their health span and I became very interested in that.
01:23:59.000And so the thing that's super interesting, and as I was talking to Dr. Verdun about this, is that, you know, there's a couple of things.
01:24:06.000One, obviously, you're not getting a lot of blood glucose hits all the time, right?
01:24:11.000For the most part, if you don't have gene polymorphisms that are changing the way you process saturated fat, right?
01:24:16.000So your insulin response is not happening quite as often, that's lowered, and there's benefits from that alone, right?
01:24:24.000But for someone like me that doesn't eat refined sugar, doesn't eat any refined carbohydrates, I mean, all of my carbohydrates come from leafy greens or vegetables and berries and some other fruits.
01:24:37.000And my blood glucose levels have always been pretty good, like fasting blood glucose and all that, with the exception of my lack of sleep recently.
01:24:47.000So the question I wanted to know was like, okay, well, what else is going on?
01:24:51.000And it seems as though the production of the major circulating ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate really is having an anti-aging role.
01:25:00.000And, you know, Dr. Verdin's work showed that it's changing the expression of genes and it's like activating longevity genes and all this.
01:25:08.000But the thing that's super, super interesting to me is that the way it's metabolized by mitochondria is different than other energy sources.
01:25:16.000And without getting too much into chemistry, in order to produce energy, you have to use something called electron-reducing equivalence, and they can be in the form of NADH ratio or FAD2H. It's not going through one of those pathways that generates more free radicals and more basically leaky electrons that can damage mitochondria.
01:25:40.000It doesn't go through that pathway like other energy sources.
01:25:43.000So it's like you end up not basically having lower inflammatory and lower oxidative damage to your mitochondria.
01:25:52.000It also doesn't have what's called protonophoric activity.
01:25:55.000So it's almost like the way your mitochondria is metabolizing it is better.
01:26:01.000Because metabolism, you're constantly generating damage, like damage constantly right now all the time.
01:26:08.000And it seems as though there's something about that beta-hydroxybutyrate that's superior.
01:26:13.000And it's definitely got me super interested in it.
01:26:17.000And for the longest time, I was thinking, well, I'll get my beta-hydroxybutyrate by doing time-restricted eating.
01:26:25.000Right, where I'm eating all my food within, like, 10 hours, and then I'm fasting for 14 hours, and I'm, you know, depending on what your activity levels are and all that, how quickly you deplete your liver glycogen, you can start to make beta-hydroxybutyrate even within, like, 7 hours if you're really active.
01:26:41.000You know, so I was like, well, I'm getting my beta-hydroxybutyrate from the fasting part of the time-restricted eating, right?
01:28:12.000Definitely a correlation, and it has been showed in clinical studies to not just be correlation, but causal, where you give people refined sugar and they're a small density.
01:28:21.000Same diet, adding refined sugar, you see a radical difference.
01:28:25.000You measure their small, dense LDL before, giving them the refined sugar, same diet, and then you measure after the soda blast of refined sugar for three weeks and their small, dense LDL particles going through the roof.
01:28:36.000So that's causal because you're giving them something, you're measuring it before and after effect.
01:28:40.000And if there's anything that we can conclusively point to, it's that refined sugar is absolutely bad for you.
01:28:50.000I think that, you know, there's so many studies that have shown, you know, the inflammatory biomarkers go up, your small dense LDL biomarkers go up.
01:28:57.000There's correlation studies showing that people that eat refined sugar have like telomeres, which are a biomarker for aging that look 10 years older, you know, even though people, they're the same chronological age as other people that don't eat the refined sugar.
01:29:09.000There's studies in men where they give men 75 grams of refined sugar and their testosterone drops by 25%.
01:29:15.000I mean, it's changing a lot of things in the body in a negative way.
01:29:20.000Well, my testosterone doubled when I changed my diet.
01:29:24.000When I cut out the pasta, when I cut out the bread, and I started eating more saturated fat, more protein, and I went to the ketogenic diet, literally it doubled.
01:29:59.000The one thing I will say is that, you know, there are people that are super physically active and they're, like, working out two hours a day.
01:31:17.000Like if you were going to eat candy or something that has a bunch of refined sugar after an intense workout, what would be the anabolic factor?
01:31:26.000It causes glucose transporters that transport glucose to, like, go through the roof.
01:31:31.000And so you start, the glucose from your bloodstream gets, like, sucked into the muscle.
01:31:34.000And then in the muscle, you know, you're basically, you can use that as a way to have insulin and it can be anabolic, right?
01:31:43.000Whereas if you weren't doing that, then the glucose is in your bloodstream and it can, all sorts of small, dense LDL particles can start to form because the inflammatory transformations that happen and things like that.
01:31:55.000That's in combination, of course, with amino acids, which are also important for the growth of the protein muscle.
01:32:01.000But that's my understanding of it, I think.
01:32:05.000So, like, in general, though, if someone could cut one thing out of their diet, refined carbohydrates and refined sugars would be a great way to go.
01:32:16.000I think the one, if you were to think about...
01:32:18.000The one easiest thing that you could do that would have the biggest impact on your health.
01:32:57.000The thing about your microbiome and your gut is that the microbiome eats It's at the distal part of your gut, so it's in the colon, right?
01:33:07.000The large intestine, the very end of the large intestine is where most of the trillions of bacteria are.
01:33:12.000And those bacteria actually eat the fermentable fiber that we don't digest, we don't process.
01:33:19.000And the fermentable fiber comes from a variety of plants.
01:33:23.000From plants and from seeds and nuts and legumes as well, oats.
01:33:31.000So there's different types of fermentable fiber that are found in different types of foods and they feed different species of bacteria.
01:33:39.000When you don't get enough of that fermentable fiber, what ends up happening, in fact, there's been studies showing that 75% of the microbiome population changes when you don't get at all any fiber.
01:33:53.000One is those bacteria species, they start to eat The carbohydrate that's lining your gut called mucin, which is what makes up the gut barrier that separates the immune cells in your gut from the bacteria, they start to eat it because it's a carbohydrate.
01:34:06.000And so you actually start to break down your gut barrier just from that.
01:34:09.000The second thing that happens is what you mentioned is that a lot of the pathogenic bacteria will swim up to the small intestine where they're usually not supposed to be.
01:34:16.000Small intestine is where you absorb sugar, protein, fats.
01:34:24.000So they start to like eat the sugar and they start to multiply.
01:34:28.000And the thing about having bacteria in the small intestine where it's not supposed to be is that it causes the same response that eating gluten causes.
01:34:37.000Where it basically, it's called small bacteria intestinal overgrowth.
01:34:42.000And what happens is that the tight junctions that make up the gut barrier start to open up and open up.
01:34:48.000And that allows the inflammatory immune cells to be in contact with bacteria.
01:34:53.000And of course, the immune cells go, oh, bacteria, and they start to try to kill it because they think it's not supposed to be there.
01:34:58.000It could be potentially harmful pathogenic bacteria.
01:35:01.000And so that starts to set off an immune response, inflammatory immune response.
01:35:05.000And the more sugar you eat, the more this population of bacteria is flourishing.
01:35:11.000So that's another thing that's changing that.
01:35:17.000One of the reasons, like I was saying, and I've never actually tried a ketogenic diet for various reasons, but I'm not sure how much plants you eat.
01:35:35.000On a very small scale, Rob Wolf and his wife have done some pretty interesting tests where they'll both eat the same thing and they'll both test themselves.
01:35:43.000He'll test the both of them X amount of minutes later and they have a radically different response between the two of them.
01:36:36.000It's kind of, in a way, similar to ATP, where it's used as an energetic currency throughout the body for various things, but it's actually required for your metabolism.
01:36:49.000You need it to metabolize fatty acids and glucose and amino acids, but you also need it to repair damage.
01:36:59.000You need it for a variety of other things that are happening.
01:37:04.000And the thing is, is that these NAD levels, in tissues that are very energetically demanding, they deplete.
01:37:12.000So, for example, if you have chronic inflammation and your immune system is chronically being activated, the NAD levels are going to that, and it's kind of like triaging.
01:37:21.000And so what happens is your metabolism suffers.
01:37:23.000And it's been shown now that NAD levels in multiple tissues With age, they deplete.
01:37:31.000Lots of preclinical studies have shown that it plays a role in the aging process.
01:37:36.000And if you, for example, take a mouse that has progeria, this pro-aging phenotype, and then you give them the NAD, it can basically kind of rescue that in a way, and they live a more normal health span and more normal lifespan.
01:37:49.000And there's lots of studies showing that in various ways.
01:38:09.000But nicotinamide riboside is another precursor that you can take in supplemental form.
01:38:14.000And there's been, you know, studies over the past few years looking at how in animals it's been able to increase NAD levels.
01:38:21.000It's able to, like, basically improve physical performance, cognitive performance.
01:38:25.000It's able to, you know, make your tissues age better, your organs age better in animals.
01:38:31.000So now there's been preclinical trials that have been undergoing, one showing that you actually can take the supplemental form of NAD, nicotinamide riboside, and you can increase your NAD levels in a dose-dependent manner.
01:38:46.000This is a study that just came out recently.
01:38:51.000There's now like 10 clinical trials that are undergoing right now looking at the role of supplemental nicotinamide riboside in dementia, in obesity, traumatic brain injuries, another one, and then some other type of metabolic dysfunction.
01:39:08.000So these are currently being investigated in humans.
01:39:12.000So the NAD thing is another real big interest of mine.
01:39:15.000I did buy the supplement, but I'm not taking it right now because I'm breastfeeding and I'm just not sure how that goes.
01:39:22.000But you were asking me about the IV stuff.
01:39:25.000I think that's something that is now popular everywhere.
01:40:18.000And I think before I would do something like that, I would probably try the nicotinamide riboside, which we know for a fact does increase NAD levels in multiple tissues.
01:40:29.000It would be nice to have some of these clinics that are doing it, like, aggregate the data and publish it because no one's going to fund this study.
01:40:36.000Like, people aren't studying that, you know?
01:40:38.000So there's no way to really know if it's placebo or really, you know, because there's no data.
01:40:45.000So it'd be kind of nice if, like, people would start to aggregate data on that, but...
01:40:51.000Well, you know, it's really interesting when it comes to data, when it comes to diet, because, you know, the whole throw the baby out with the bathwater thing.
01:41:01.000One of the studies that I read pretty recently was about the amount of people that suffered ill health consequences that ate red meat five days per week.
01:41:12.000Versus people who didn't but what they didn't take into account was what the people ate with the red meat.
01:41:24.000Or was it a burger from Wendy's with fries and a sugar bun and all the bullshit that people eat along with the food and that you literally And people would cite these things as being evidence that something is negative for you, that red meat is negative for you.
01:41:40.000But you're not taking into consideration all the things that were eaten with that red meat.
01:41:44.000So these studies that come out like that, they're really annoying.
01:41:48.000Because it's like you have to talk to people about it and you have to sit down with them.
01:41:55.000This is a long process to try to figure out what is the cause of these issues.
01:42:04.000You're talking about a lifetime of abuse.
01:42:06.000You're talking about all sorts of different health consequences of a variety of different foods, and you're attributing it all to one part of your diet.
01:42:13.000And that's very difficult to do unless you've isolated everything else and done a bunch of different studies where, okay, I ate nothing but fruits and vegetables and I ate really healthy and I ate red meat five days a week.
01:42:24.000Or I ate nothing but shit and fries and buns and pasta and I didn't eat red meat.
01:42:44.000Like, we talked about the refined sugar and saturated fat combo.
01:42:47.000Well, you know, the red meat and even just, you know, protein itself, like, you know, essential amino acids that are coming from animal protein itself, And how that is interacting with, you know, eating a terrible diet like refined sugar, which is causing damage to our cells,
01:43:04.000And this is something really, the protein exercise thing seems to be really key.
01:43:11.000But there was a recent study that was published that was the largest study, observational study done so far, looking at protein intake and all-cause mortality and cancer mortality.
01:43:22.000And it found Like a lot of other studies, that higher protein consumption from meat was associated with a higher all-cause mortality and a higher cancer mortality.
01:43:34.000But then when the data was subanalyzed and other unhealthy style factors were looked at, so if someone had...
01:43:42.000One other unhealthy lifestyle factor being either obesity, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, or being sedentary, then they had a higher all-cause mortality and a higher cancer mortality if they eat meat.
01:43:55.000If they had zero, none of those other unhealthy lifestyle factors, they had the same all-cause mortality and cancer-related mortality that the non-meat eaters had.
01:44:06.000So I think that really highlights the importance of other lifestyle factors, other foods, you know, that's really important when we're looking at these observational studies.
01:44:16.000When you were talking about saturated fat and the negative consequences of eating refined sugar with saturated fat, is there a negative, a corresponding negative consequence?
01:44:30.000If you had a diet that didn't have any saturated fat in it, but you ate refined sugar, like say if you eat a vegan diet, does refined sugar have less of an impact?
01:44:50.000So the LDL will go down if you're eating a vegan diet, and even though you're still eating cookies or some whatever vegan stuff, you know...
01:44:59.000So refined sugar is probably, like, less dangerous to someone on a vegan diet?
01:45:04.000And the thing with that is that if you look at refined sugar, also refined sugar is associated with heart disease risk.
01:45:12.000In fact, there was a big, big study, like 400,000 different individuals looked at people that had the highest refined sugar intake, but again, saturated fat's a confounding factor there.
01:45:30.000And that's where I think a lot of these guidelines like the American Heart Association come from.
01:45:33.000If you, on a population level, if you say to someone, reduce your saturated fat intake, You're going to lower the LDL risk.
01:45:41.000And regardless of all the other stuff they're doing, it probably will, on a population level, lower their heart disease risk.
01:45:48.000But on an individual level, like someone like you and I, we don't need all that other stuff.
01:45:53.000We're very health conscious and do all these things.
01:45:56.000You and I, if we stopped our saturated fat intake, likely, well, for me, I guess my genes are a little different, but...
01:46:03.000It likely wouldn't have the same effect.
01:46:05.000So if you were to take that same population of people and say, okay, eat your saturated fat, but take out the refined sugar, we may see the same thing where the heart disease risk goes down just like it does with saturated fat.
01:46:19.000In fact, there have been studies where replacement foods have looked at replacement foods for saturated fat, and if you replace saturated fat with refined sugar, it does not lower the risk of heart disease.
01:46:32.000So, basically, that's kind of a proof of principle there.
01:46:35.000But I do think that it's an important point, and it's something that the American Heart Association, they're now starting to at least mention the small, dense LDL particles.
01:46:46.000So I think that moving in that direction is good, because it means that possibly then, you know, over the next decade, we're going to start to see, okay, now we got to start, it's not just the LDL. I'm confused about something you just said.
01:46:58.000You said if you replace saturated fat with refined sugar?
01:47:02.000If you replace the saturated fat with refined sugar...
01:47:05.000Sorry, refined carbohydrates, which I usually think of as refined sugar.
01:47:09.000But refined carbohydrates, it does not...
01:47:12.000So the idea is if saturated fat was so bad, if you took the saturated fat and replaced it with a refined carbohydrate, it would lower the risk of heart disease.
01:47:27.000It's the saturated fat along with refined sugar that has some sort of a negative synergistic effect.
01:47:33.000That's what the data in aggregation, looking at the clinical trials, looking at the mechanism, looking at the observational studies, and understanding the interaction of all these foods together.
01:47:43.000When the American Heart Association puts out sort of a blanket statement like that, a lot of people take it as fact, and then what my research has shown, my reading rather, I shouldn't say research, I'm a dummy, but the people that I've read who have criticized this,
01:47:58.000they're actually scientists and researchers, they have a huge issue with that statement.
01:48:02.000They think that this is just, it's too simplistic.
01:48:05.000It's not taking into account all the various nuances in genetics, diet, ancestry, all the different factors.
01:48:11.000But people read that and it's sort of like this cookie-cutter approach and then they parrot it out to everybody else.
01:48:20.000And the same thing goes with the protein and it being bad as well.
01:48:25.000And there's all sorts of nuances in the combination of the protein with the bad diet and also the exercise, which is one of the things with the protein is that it increases IGF-1.
01:48:35.000And IGF-1 is a growth factor and it can allow...
01:48:38.000Cells that are damaged that should otherwise die, not die.
01:48:41.000And so it can allow precancerous cells to form a tumor.
01:48:44.000And we know that from mechanistic studies.
01:48:46.000And that's kind of a big part of the eating protein, essential amino acids specifically, what do this.
01:48:56.000And that's sort of the big argument there.
01:48:58.000But there's also this whole argument where if you are, one, exercising, the IGF-1 goes into your brain.
01:49:04.000It's been shown across the blood-brain barrier.
01:49:06.000It goes into your brain and also in your muscle where it grows new neurons in the brain and actually repairs damaged muscle tissue.
01:49:13.000And helps grow muscle tissue, which is also a predictor of all-cause mortality.
01:49:17.000So again, the exercise comes in there, and then also the fact that if you're eating a good diet and you're not causing as much damage to happen in the first place, then those growth factors being there aren't as big of a deal because you don't have all these damaged cells from all this refined sugar you're eating that can basically become cancerous cells.
01:49:36.000So that's kind of You know, with that study, the observational study that looked at people that were eating meat, if they didn't have any of those unhealthy lifestyle factors, guess what?
01:49:45.000Their all-cause mortality and cancer mortality was the same as the vegetarians.
01:49:48.000And I think that's kind of highlighting that issue, you know?
01:49:52.000Well, I have a friend who's a scientist who was talking to me about meat.
01:49:54.000He goes, meat is essentially amino acids, protein, and water.
01:49:58.000He's like, it's not going to cause you cancer.
01:50:00.000It's like, this is not what the problem is.
01:50:01.000He goes, you have some issues with the way it's cooked.
01:50:05.000For sure, things that are charred are not good for you.
01:50:26.000There's certain polymorphisms in genes that basically some people can detoxify it really well, and they're called detoxification enzymes, and some people don't do it quite as well.
01:50:35.000And the people that don't do it quite as well probably shouldn't char their meat as much.
01:50:39.000You shouldn't eat it every day charred.
01:50:42.000But the big issue isn't so much that as the IGF-1, which doesn't cause cancer, but it allows cancer cells to grow.
01:50:51.000It's like, one is like, oh, you eat meat, it causes cancer.
01:50:54.000Well, no, that's not necessarily true.
01:50:56.000You eat a lot of meat, and you don't exercise, and you keep having IGF-1 around, and you have all these other damaged cells because you're eating all this other crap which is causing damage, then you're allowing the IGF-1, you know, to allow those damaged cells to grow.
01:51:08.000So one is like a promoting, where it's promoting the growth of cancer, and the other one's saying it causes.
01:51:15.000Now, if you're getting a ton of carcinogens, and plus there's studies showing that eating cruciferous vegetables, the isothiocyanates, in people that have that gene polymorphism that don't detoxify the heterocyclic amines as well,
01:51:32.000if they eat a diet high in cruciferous vegetables and they have isothiocyanates, they also inactivate those pro-carcinogens.
01:51:52.000I've had people emailing me that they're either them themselves or their father or someone they're taking care of.
01:51:58.000Their prostate cancer biomarker, the prostate stimulating antigen, has gone down two-fold after doing the broccoli sprouts every day for X amount of time.
01:52:14.000Now, when you look at animal protein, and I'm including fish in this for this, is there any benefit to a specific type?
01:52:23.000Like, someone was telling me that red meat is better for you than chicken.
01:52:27.000And I was like, well, how do you know?
01:52:28.000And they're like, well, how it makes me feel.
01:52:31.000I said, okay, well, that doesn't seem to make much sense.
01:52:33.000Like, what is, but is there a difference?
01:52:36.000I mean, obviously, there's a difference in the protein content, like of some meats, like wild game has a much higher protein content than, say, domestic beef.
01:52:44.000But when you think, like, fish, like, is there, is, are living animals all created equal?
01:52:51.000Well, of course there's lots of differences.
01:52:53.000I mean, the protein, the amino acid makeup are different, and I'm not an expert on that, so I can't tell you all the differences there.
01:52:59.000But there's differences in the micronutrient concentrations.
01:53:03.000I mean, omega-3 fatty acids are in fish, a lot of irons in red meat.
01:53:07.000So there's different zinc, iron, selenium, omega-3 fatty acids, all these different things are found in different concentrations and different types of meat.
01:53:16.000And so for that reason, it's kind of good to eat a diverse...
01:54:40.000And I've studied even in people things like biomarkers of aging, like DNA damage, and seeing how they change with different micronutrient intakes or different types of fiber intakes or, you know, things like that.
01:54:55.000I'm a little biased in that sense, but, you know, it's the approach that I like to take.
01:54:59.000You know, for example, this is a really good story.
01:55:02.000My mentor, Bruce Ames, who I talk about a lot, he was the inventor of the Ames test, which is a test, a really cheap test that you can do to determine whether or not something's a carcinogen.
01:55:11.000In fact, I'm sure the heterocyclic amines were determined from his test because you can dump something on and it basically can tell you, like, in a matter of minutes, right?
01:55:51.000Yeah, so anyways, my point is that he used to be in this whole cancer, chemical, carcinogen field.
01:55:59.000And then one day, someone in his lab did an experiment where they left folate out of the sample, and there was massive amounts of DNA damage happening.
01:56:22.000And then he went into people and found, you know, there was like a really small pilot experiment, but similar that caused DNA damage on people that had a low folate diet.
01:56:31.000And he said that one experiment right there changed the whole course of his field of study, where he all of a sudden went into nutrition and micronutrients.
01:56:38.000And that became his thing from the 80s on.
01:56:46.000It was funny because the guy in his lab was like calling, he was trying to figure out what is going on here and then he looked, his assistant had ordered this media that you put on cells and he looked at the media, tried to figure out what was in it and they saw it was a specific type of media that the assistant had ordered incorrectly that lacked folate.
01:57:04.000And so this whole thing was all started from that.
01:57:09.000So he published that seminal paper where literally he compared mice being irradiated under an x-ray machine to low folate and it was identical.
01:57:18.000Now, would that be something that people should take into their diet of, say, if they are flight attendants or pilots?
01:57:24.000Because isn't flying a form of radiation?
01:57:29.000You do get some radiation that's similar to an x-ray, right?
01:57:32.000Yeah, I mean, the folate, it's a different mechanism by how it's preventing...
01:57:37.000Basically, folate is needed to make an actual precursor to DNA. And without that precursor, you don't make the DNA right, and you incorporate a nucleotide from RNA into it.
01:57:48.000And so you basically make a break in your DNA strand.
01:57:52.000But DNA damage is something that happens with pilots and astronauts and things like that.
01:58:47.000It doesn't mean it's the best way, but it's the way that I've convinced myself so far with the tools that I have available to me that that's how I like to eat.
01:58:57.000And again, anyone that's doing any sort of diet should always measure biomarkers and things like that to know if it's working for them.
01:59:06.000In fact, Bruce's mentor when he was a graduate student is the guy who identified.
01:59:10.000He actually discovered folate by isolating it from spinach.
01:59:15.000So spinach, yeah, leafy greens are a great source of folate.
01:59:20.000But the leafy greens, like the other thing that gets me on this, and I know I talked about this last time, was like other compounds that are in the plants.
01:59:26.000We're sort of just scratching the surface on understanding them.
01:59:29.000Like what they're doing in our bodies.
02:00:13.000Another one is this one that I'm really interested in now.
02:00:16.000I'm actually supplementing it with PQQ. And that one is, it's made by bacteria and bacteria in the soil.
02:00:23.000So it's made by bacteria because it's important for, it's a cofactor for enzymes, for their metabolic enzymes to work.
02:00:30.000Well, plants take it up from soil and then we eat the plants and get in our diet.
02:00:35.000And it's been shown now in a few studies, lots and lots of preclinical studies, it's been shown to regulate mitochondrial function, improve mitochondrial function.
02:00:44.000A couple of clinical trials now have been done looking at how it affects humans if you supplement with like 20 mg a day, improves cognition, it also improves markers of mitochondrial function, lowers markers of inflammation.
02:00:57.000Well, it turns out PQQ has like 20,000 times the It's more catalytic activity than something like ascorbic acid.
02:01:07.000So it's a really powerful antioxidant.
02:01:09.000And what I mean by that is, so ascorbic acid goes through cycles of vitamin C. It's either oxidized or reduced.
02:01:17.000And when it does its antioxidant thing, it becomes oxidized.
02:01:21.000And it can do that four times where it goes, it donates this hydrogen and it helps basically combat oxidative stress.
02:01:31.000But then it gets oxidized again, and it can do it again four times.
02:02:03.000Don't notice anything because like sometimes those those sorts of changes are really hard to measure and especially you have to wait until I mean who knows like later on in life but it I think it may be something that's important that maybe has beneficial effects in humans as well so and like again you can you get it from plants but 20 milligrams a day is what I'm taking because that's what the two different clinical trials have shown.
02:02:42.000But yeah, it's found like five or six-fold higher in higher levels than it is in our tissues and plants, of course, because the plants are the source of it.
02:02:50.000But yeah, taking a supplemental form, you'll be getting orders of magnitude more.
02:02:55.000Do you have a supplement company that you rely on the most?
02:03:00.000So the thing with supplements is that they're really risky.
02:03:04.000There's lots of studies that have been published showing that a lot of supplements don't contain what they say they contain, or they contain a fraction of it, and they got a bunch of other filler, like cloverleaf and stuff.
02:03:19.000He's a guy who discovered that broccoli sprouts are the best source of sulforaphane.
02:03:25.000He measured a variety of supplements, and he was looking specifically at precursors to sulforaphane, and he looked at a variety of different companies.
02:03:34.000And one of the companies that was just really, really, really good and reliable was Thorne.
02:03:40.000Thorn, T-H-O-R-N-E. I don't have any affiliation with them or anything.
02:03:45.000They're my go-to brand whenever I'm looking for a supplement.
02:03:48.000I took their prenatal from throughout pregnancy.
02:03:52.000Actually, I'm still taking the prenatal while I'm breastfeeding.
02:03:54.000I take their vitamin D and vitamin K2. Pretty much a lot of my stuff comes from them.
02:04:02.000The PQQ, however, that is I've only been able to find from Life Extension.
02:04:07.000And I think Life Extension is pretty okay, so far as I can tell.
02:04:11.000But Thorne is like my favorite company so far, just because I've got data from a scientist that I trust.
02:04:21.000Yeah, it's a difficult issue and tainted supplements are a huge problem with athletes.
02:04:27.000A lot of false positives or not even false positives.
02:04:29.000A lot of athletes will take supplements like if they go to like some just generic vitamin store, you know, whatever, name the name, and they pick up some sort of a creatine or muscle enhancer or this or that and a lot of them are tainted with steroids or they're used in the same labs or created rather in the same labs and they don't clean the bins.
02:04:48.000And so like the vats that they use to mix up one supplement, whatever was in residual traces of it will wind up in some other stuff.
02:04:59.000I think there's what you were referring to there.
02:05:02.000A lot of supplement companies that have a stamp on it called NSF, which is the National Sanitary Foundation, I believe.
02:05:08.000They go and they investigate where the supplement's manufactured, and they look at the quality, and they also, I think, even look at what's in the supplements, if they contain what they're supposed to contain to some degree.
02:05:22.000But I know they definitely look at the manufacturing place to see if things like that were...
02:05:27.000Things aren't being cleaned right and there's contamination and all that.
02:05:30.000So supplements that have that stamp are probably a little more reliable than ones that don't, but it's still not a sure thing.
02:05:38.000Just because it has that stamp, it's going to be the best supplement.
02:05:42.000I think a lot of people listening to this, they're going to probably have to listen three or four times and take notes and go over this and try to figure out if they're going to do something, how to act.
02:05:50.000A lot of people have a hard time digesting all this data and trying to figure out what is the best way to proceed in terms of investigating their own health.
02:06:00.000Like monitoring their blood levels and trying to find a primary care doctor that will kind of understand what they're trying to do.
02:06:08.000I mean, the primary care doctor thing, finding one, I certainly can't help with that because, I mean, that's a struggle that you and I have.
02:06:15.000But, you know, in terms of taking your own health into your own hands and monitoring blood biomarkers, I mean, there's a few...
02:06:23.000That are really, really key, I think, for anyone doing any type of experimentation that they should do.
02:06:29.000And we've talked about them already, you know, the small dense LDL, the total LDL. You also want to measure triglycerides, high sensitivity of C-reactive protein, HbA1c, which is your marker of long-term fasting blood glucose.
02:06:43.000But also there's another test that you can do that actually is a really comprehensive metabolic test to measure how your body is metabolizing carbohydrates, fatty acids, and amino acids.
02:06:54.000It's called the Organic Acid Test and Genova Diagnostics.
02:06:59.000Offers it and unfortunately you do have to get your primary care physician to prescribe or to like order that because that's not something that's that's Available to people but it seems like there's room for a company to do this like a one-stop shop company that sort of analyzes your health and prescribes to you,
02:07:18.000you know Explains to you what's lacking in your diet and what you could benefit from and what you can It seems like there's a there's a big opening for some sort of a business like that Yeah, I mean, I think some people are actually doing it.
02:07:29.000Like, Genova Diagnostics, I think, is one.
02:07:49.000And I think there's other companies that are kind of, you know, like WellnessFX kind of is doing that a little bit as well.
02:07:54.000They give you a consult with someone after you get a variety of blood markers measured and, you know, that try to help you figure out that as well.
02:08:02.000And, you know, so it's certainly, I think, and other people.
02:08:06.000It's just a matter of finding a good one.
02:08:11.000Yeah, it seems like with this kind of stuff, for the average consumer, the average person that's listening to this, it seems very daunting.
02:08:17.000It's like, boy, there's so much to think about.
02:08:20.000And a lot of times when people get inundated with that much data, they sort of shut down.
02:08:27.000And I really wish there was like a nationwide network of places like this where you could just go to.
02:08:35.000Sort of like you can go to, you know, a dentist.
02:08:37.000It should be like a place where you could go to to get this kind of comprehensive information about your diet and the effects on your body and what genes you have.
02:08:57.000And you would have to have someone who's completely on top of it all the time.
02:09:00.000So we'd have to be sending them new literature constantly.
02:09:04.000Yeah, because we're constantly changing the way we think about a variety of things.
02:09:08.000It would seem like some billionaire dude would want to hire you up and have you watch over them all the time and monitor their blood and try to figure out what they're doing wrong and prescribe things to them.
02:09:19.000Yeah, monitor their blood, give them young blood.
02:09:22.000Yeah, some George Soros type character.
02:11:00.000Because he's probably waiting to see if someone starts growing a foot on their head.
02:11:04.000Jazzy Karmazin agrees his startup Ambrosia is charging about $8,000 a pop for blood transfusions from people under 25. He said at Code Conference on Wednesday, Ambrosia,
02:11:19.000which buys its blood from blood banks, now has about a hundred...
02:11:32.000I mean, I know they monitor for certain diseases and stuff that are well-known, but it's like all the other nuances, all the other stuff, I don't...
02:11:43.000And small dance LDL. Is that represented in your blood?
02:11:47.000I mean, there's certain biomarkers that, yeah, you can absolutely measure.
02:11:51.000And you can certainly look at telomere length, DNA damage, things like that.
02:11:55.000I used to have a joke about Dick Cheney, that Dick Cheney had an extra secret service agent that they put on this super healthy diet and he couldn't figure it out.
02:12:03.000You know, he would have to run when everybody else did everything.
02:12:06.000He was just really there in case Dick had a heart attack.
02:12:08.000They were going to cut this guy open like a fish and pull his organs out.
02:13:13.000The 2013 study found could be reversed when older mice get blood from younger ones, but other researchers haven't been able to replicate these results, and the benefits of parabiosis in humans remains unclear.
02:13:50.000So that's kind of like I think where it's possibly at now.
02:13:55.000But I was going to just mention to you that microbiome that's heading there as well.
02:13:59.000There was a preliminary study that was published not long ago in Killfish where the microbiome from young fish was transplanted in the old fish and it extended their lifespan by like 40%.
02:14:10.000So you take the microbiome from a young person.
02:15:24.000Yeah, and it's like helping people with their IBS. Of course, I think the problem was making sure it doesn't taste like shit when it's going down because the capsule can open up.
02:15:33.000You just mix it with sugar and then you've got other problems.
02:15:37.000A spoonful of sugar makes the poop go down.
02:16:51.000I'll tell you what it does to the microbiome.
02:16:53.000It changes the composition so that you're getting the kind of bacteria that are really good at harvesting the glucose from the small intestine area and it makes people become obese.
02:17:04.000Like, that's the associative studies in people.
02:17:07.000And then, of course, they've done causal studies in animals showing that.
02:17:09.000But stevia is interesting because I've seen positive studies with that where it seems to, like, improve insulin sensitivity, which is kind of weird.
02:17:47.000They like to put it in their smoothies because I've gotten so used to my smoothies tasting cayley that I guess, you know, and plus I don't eat anything sweet so I don't really need it.
02:17:57.000But they like to put it in their smoothies and, you know, I don't know if it has any.
02:18:03.000We haven't really seen negative health consequences with the exception, I think there was one study in rats where they gave them like exceptional amounts and it like changed the The hormonal profile or something.
02:18:13.000So I didn't consume any during pregnancy because I was worried about that.
02:19:23.000I really haven't had one since 2006. It's cold.
02:19:26.000I used to drink them in college and stuff to stay awake and study for exams and all that.
02:19:35.000But if you're taking something like that, should you take a corresponding, like some sort of a probiotic to try to combat that?
02:19:43.000I mean, the problem with that is, you know, the probiotics, which, by the way, there's all sorts of interesting studies that have shown effectiveness of certain probiotics that have live bacteria in a lot of them.
02:19:56.000But, you know, in order for the probiotics to work...
02:20:00.000You either have to constantly take them, or there needs to be space in your gut for them to take residence in.
02:20:05.000So if you're filling your body with all sorts of sugar or Diet Coke and all this, then where's the probiotic that you're taking in going to attach?
02:21:00.0003, but now there's another company called VisBiome that is like the guy who made VSL No.
02:21:05.0003 is doing this VisBiome, make the same formulation.
02:21:08.000I've tried it out as well, but it's like a little cheaper, and I don't have any affiliation with either of those companies.
02:21:13.000But there's been clinical studies with both of them showing effectiveness.
02:21:17.000And so it's certainly an interesting...
02:21:22.000Field, growing field, and there have been some clinical studies in humans where, for example, the one that's super interesting, the brain stuff, the way it's affecting the brain is interesting, and there's clinical studies.
02:21:32.000There was one recent one, I think I tweeted, where there was like 10 randomized controlled trials.
02:21:37.000They weren't really high quality, but it's a start, and it improved measures of anxiety in people.
02:21:43.000Other studies have shown, randomized controlled trials have been a couple others showing it improves depression scores and also cognition.
02:21:50.000So there's, you know, again, the immune system, modulation of the immune system will affect the brain.
02:21:55.000Immune system definitely is, you know, basically inflammatory factors and things like that can cross over to the blood-brain barrier and get in the brain and disrupt neurotransmitter Production and all sorts of stuff, but also the gut-brain access, the bagel nerve,
02:22:11.000where, like, you can make certain things that are, like, if you have certain bacteria in the gut that are making, for example, GABA, that can, like, stimulate the nerve in an inhibitory way that, like, calms and does something calming to the brain part.
02:22:25.000We don't really understand all the mechanisms.
02:22:27.000It's just a fascinating field that I'm, like...
02:22:53.000Now, getting back to developing fetuses and infant developing in the womb, when you were talking about...
02:23:04.000Foods that cause inflammation and autoimmune diseases.
02:23:09.000There's a correlation between those two, correct?
02:23:11.000So when you're eating inflammation-causing foods, refined carbohydrates, refined sugars, and you have a baby, and you have this inflammation in your body, and you're having autoimmune reactions, and this can trigger many autoimmune diseases that people have.
02:23:34.000Trying to understand what happens when you consume a lot of pro-inflammatory foods, foods that cause inflammation, and what kind of a reaction that has to the developing child.
02:23:45.000Well, studies have been done, you know, to establish causation in animals.
02:23:51.000And looking at correlation, there have been correlative studies in humans.
02:23:55.000So, for example, most of the time, though, people, the correlative studies aren't looking at whether or not they're consuming the quote-unquote inflammatory foods.
02:24:02.000Foods that cause inflammatory types of reactions like refined sugar, they're just looking at obese mothers.
02:24:06.000And usually someone who's obese typically is not eating a healthy diet.
02:24:11.000So I think that more times than not can say, well, they're probably eating a lot of refined carbohydrates and things like that.
02:24:17.000And so the correlation between that and looking at negative health consequences in offspring like type 1 diabetes, even doing poorly on cognition tests and things like that, that's been looked at.
02:24:31.000In animal studies, there have been studies that have shown, you know, causally that you can do that by feeding a mouse a high-fat, high-sugar diet.
02:24:39.000And then, you know, making the female mouse obese and, you know, changing basically the way their offspring metabolism and their immune cells are reacting.
02:24:47.000So things like that definitely have been shown in animal studies.
02:24:50.000But it's really almost impossible to show a causal study like that in humans.
02:25:03.000You're not going to have a controlled trial where they're going to give women acetaminophen during pregnancy and see if it causes ADHD. That's never going to happen.
02:25:14.000So then the next best thing would be to then go to animal studies and show it.
02:25:18.000The problem with the animal studies, and this is always the problem, is you never know how much of it translates.
02:25:25.000Things are different, like the way the livers of mice metabolize xenobiotics can be a little different than humans, and so these mice can be a little more susceptible to things like BPA and things that are damaging.
02:26:02.000It's a stronger argument than if you just looked at one or the other.
02:26:07.000And there have been studies that show there's a correlation between gut microbiome and children with autism and Asperger's and several other diseases, right?
02:26:42.000I mean, these are lots of studies that are coming out showing these connections with brain problems, not just autoimmune type of diseases like multiple sclerosis, but neurodegenerative diseases and just even behavioral diseases.
02:26:57.000So, you know, we're kind of just starting to scratch the surface of this field with the microbiome and even cancer.
02:27:04.000Like, it's known that some of the short-chain fatty acids that microbiome certain species make increase the production of something called natural killer T cells.
02:27:16.000And there's been animal studies where you inject them with, like, human tumors and literally it can...
02:27:22.000You know, if you give these animals a big dose of probiotics, which help create the species that make these, short-chain fatty acids that make T regulatory cells, they can kill cancer cells almost as good as the chemo control that they're giving these animals.
02:27:36.000And then if you look at, there's some preliminary human trials, like for example, humans that had colorectal cancer, I think that's...
02:27:58.000Interesting, along with knowing what we know about animal studies and natural killer T cells and all that.
02:28:03.000So, you know, it's not just brain, but it's also a lot of diseases.
02:28:07.000Cancer, you know, autoimmune diseases, lots of things.
02:28:38.000Most people have no idea that it's even an issue.
02:28:40.000Now, when you consider the fact that the rise in children on the spectrum corresponds with the rise of refined carbohydrates and refined sugars in our diet, do you think that there's some sort of a connection there?
02:29:34.000But I'm not aware of maternal age being linked to autism, although I wouldn't, you know, be surprised...
02:29:42.000There's probably an interaction with all these things, an interaction with the quality of the DNA in a woman's egg or man's sperm and the type of diet they have and whether they're taking acetaminophen or whatever, fill in the blank,
02:30:04.000Yeah, and what's interesting with that, now in that diet, I mean, that study that was totally a pilot experiment just looking at how it altered gene expression, but if you look in the animal studies, paternal diet, so males, male mice that were given a high-fat, high-sugar diet, most of the time, by the way,
02:30:19.000when you see headlines and it says high-fat diet causes blank, high-fat diet in animal studies is always high-fat, high-sugar.
02:30:27.000It's almost always, almost always high-sucrose and high-fat.
02:30:36.000Because I guess, you know, they're so drastically changing the fat composition that they just kind of always say the high fat and the interaction between these two things just really is now starting to be understood.
02:30:53.000So I always call it high inflammatory diet because it's a combination of the two.
02:30:57.000But anyways, if you feed male mice this diet of high fat and high sucrose, they become obese, and then they have offspring.
02:31:05.000If you feed their offspring, normal diet, so not the high fat, so they just fed a normal child diet, those female offspring don't become obese, but they get type 1 diabetes.
02:31:17.000So it's because, and what was found is that the obesity was changing genes that regulate pancreatic beta cell insulin production in their sperm DNA, and that was passed on to the offspring.
02:31:31.000So that's kind of, again, looking at the...
02:32:20.000I mean, it's parroted by people every day.
02:32:22.000And, you know, we've talked about this before, I believe, on the podcast, you and I, about that study, the studies, rather, where the scientists were paid off by the sugar industry.
02:32:47.000I was involved in research with blueberries.
02:32:50.000And the research was funded by the High Bush Blueberry Council.
02:32:54.000And so we did this placebo-controlled trial where we were looking at...
02:32:58.000You know, there's a whole panel of scientists involved, and I was just one of the scientists involved.
02:33:02.000And I was looking specifically at DNA damage and, you know, how blueberries modulated that DNA damage, which can lead to aging and cancer and stem cell dysfunction, all sorts of things.
02:33:16.000You know, we had to isolate blood from patients.
02:33:17.000They were given this blueberry powder.
02:33:20.000They were taking twice a day for eight weeks or placebo powder.
02:33:23.000And then we had to, you know, look at their DNA damage.
02:33:27.000And what my work found was that, to my surprise, so blueberries lowered DNA damage, which is what I thought, because they have a variety of compounds in them that are known to be antioxidants.
02:33:38.000But what was really surprising to me was that the placebo actually lowered DNA damage just as well, if not better, than the blueberry powder.
02:33:47.000And the placebo powder had a little bit of refined sugar in it.
02:33:51.000And some like coloring, food coloring and stuff.
02:33:55.000And so I was like, oh my God, what's going on here?
02:34:00.000Well, it turns out I had looked at gene expression data as well.
02:34:03.000All these genes that are involved in stress response and in hormesis.
02:34:08.000The reason I was looking at that is because there are certain compounds in the blueberries that can have a hormetic response.
02:34:13.000And I wanted to see if that was being activated.
02:34:16.000Well, it wasn't really robustly being activated in the blueberries, but in placebo, some of these pathways, the same pathways that like sulforaphane can activate really well, to some degree was being activated because we think it was slightly stressful.
02:34:28.000Of course, it was a very small amount of sugar and also the dyes that were used have been shown to cause a little bit of a hormetic response.
02:34:35.000But, you know, we're going to publish that data.
02:34:37.000It's not like because the Blueberry Foundation funded this study, you know, The data is the data.
02:35:12.000Every time you come on the podcast, though, I'm reminded of the fact there's so much data.
02:35:15.000It is impossible to keep it all in your head, especially for one person.
02:35:20.000When you're dealing with all these different fields, all these different scientists working on all these different studies, it's almost impossible for one person to have all this data in their head.
02:36:00.000The sugar industry study was from the 1950s or 1960s.
02:36:04.000It would probably be pretty difficult to have something that biased and fraudulent today.
02:36:08.000There was even another one that just came out recently.
02:36:11.000We talked about one last year, but there was another one that came out, another study.
02:36:15.000I think it was published in PNAS or PLOS, one of those two, showing that they suppressed data that refined sugar played a role in cancer and in heart disease.
02:37:11.000It's like, when you look at, like I said, all those things, the mechanism and...
02:37:14.000You look at the interaction between foods and how the body's, you know, processing these things, and you look at the observational data and controlled trials.
02:37:22.000I mean, you know, how many things can you say, you know, no to?
02:37:27.000I mean, just looking at one thing there, you know, that's not as strong.
02:37:33.000But, you know, looking at all of it is the big picture.
02:43:23.000She likes jujitsu and she likes gymnastics, too.
02:43:26.000And I said, well, they really help each other because your jujitsu will benefit greatly from your body control that you get from gymnastics.
02:43:33.000Like the ability to move your body, like do backflips and do handstands.
02:43:38.000It's also just the balance and the dexterity that you get.
02:45:07.000We did this one cool thing where we were on the Big Island last year, and they take you out to where the dolphins are.
02:45:14.000They, like, find schools of dolphins, and when the dolphins are in the area, they'll take you out on the boat, they find out where the dolphins are, they spot them, and then you jump in the water and you snorkel with the dolphins.
02:45:47.000But it's just, it's a crazy feeling just to be in literally the middle of the ocean, miles from the water, or miles from the shore, rather.
02:45:54.000And you're just looking down and you see the vastness of it all.
02:46:35.000It's like you're too much of an important factor in your immediate world.
02:46:42.000I think that's why I was really drawn to surfing in the first place is because I'm a really go-go-go-go kind of go-getter Constantly, constantly, what's next?
02:46:51.000And being out in the water was the one place that I would put all that behind and I would chill.
02:46:59.000And I felt really good just sitting on my board and having the water.
02:47:03.000Of course, I wasn't thinking about the sharks, but just having the water on me and just sitting out there and watching the waves.
02:50:59.000There's been studies showing that people that do strength training, they have a 23% lower all-cause mortality and a 30% lower cancer-related mortality, independent of any other health factors like obesity and all that stuff.
02:51:13.000So the muscle mass is another thing that's really important.
02:51:18.000In fact, there was also another interesting study showing that people that had leg strength, their leg strength was correlated to massive improvements in cognitive function.
02:51:31.000So various different exercises were done, like hand grip strength and all that, but it was leg strength specifically.
02:51:38.000I don't know if it's like something, blood flow, something about how strong your legs are is somehow indicative of blood flow to the brain.
02:52:05.000Hindu squats, you start off like this.
02:52:13.000And then as you go down, your heels come up off the ground like this and then your hand touches the floor and then you come up.
02:52:22.000And what it really does is it works the quadriceps really well around the knees and a lot of people find it to be an excellent stability exercise.
02:52:30.000And they're called, what are they called?
02:52:57.000Once you go up, my heels go all the way down.
02:52:59.000See if you can find someone who's like, I just don't, those shoes are not, those aren't wise.
02:53:04.000Those shoes were invented, those kind of shoes, those are running shoes that are invented back when Nike came up with them where you land on the heel instead of landing on the ball of the foot, which is the way your foot is naturally supposed to absorb shock.
02:53:17.000I'm sure you know about all that, where Nike sort of changed the gait.
02:56:20.000When I'm on vacation I'll run with minimal shoes.
02:56:23.000But when you are doing it you have to build up to it because you can get plantar fasciitis where you start really destroying the bottom of your feet.
02:56:36.000Yeah, like the Vibrams, they got in trouble because they were telling people that their shoes can prevent injury and strengthen your feet, which they can, but it takes a long time.
02:56:47.000So what would happen is people would say, oh, I'm going to use these shoes, it's going to prevent injury.
02:59:10.000If you have a 40-pound vest on your back and you did a lot of exercises with that 40-pound vest, your bones are going to get more dense, right?
02:59:19.000I mean, I know certainly my feet were bigger during pregnancy because of the swelling and stuff, but I'm four months out and my feet are definitely bigger.
03:01:13.000I mean, when you're wearing a backpack and you're going in to camp, you could carry as much as 70, 80 pounds on your back.
03:01:22.000So what they do, this company called Outdoorsman's, they make a pack frame that has an Olympic plate bolt on the back of it where you slide Olympic plates on it and you clamp them down.
03:01:32.000So you have literally an Olympic weight on your back.
03:01:36.000You could put a 45-pound plate or a 90-pound plate and you do hike to condition yourself.
03:01:41.000So that you have the right posture and you're building the right muscles.
03:02:58.000Give yourself a real toothbrush, you psycho.
03:03:01.000But these people really concentrate on, you know, making things as minimal as possible, bringing as little gear as possible, and just getting all dialed in.
03:03:11.000You have to kind of figure out how much water you need, how much food you need.
03:03:14.000Most of the time they map out, they'll use like Google Earth and map out where the natural springs are and try to figure out how much water they have to bring with them and how much they can get from these sources.
03:03:26.000And so then they have to have either a SteriPen Or some sort of filtration system to clean out the water to make sure that they don't get...
03:05:52.000And being able to do other things, too, like science.
03:05:55.000So speaking of science, tell people where they can listen to your podcast and contribute to your research because you have you have you were saying you have what is the Yeah, there's a Patreon and also we have a direct subscribership where people can,
03:06:12.000if they want me to continue to do the podcast, put out, you know, articles.
03:06:21.000But you can go to my website called FoundMyFitness.com and there's now episode pages we have where I'm starting to now put a lot of information.
03:06:30.000And foundmyfitness on Instagram, foundmyfitness on Twitter.