The Peter Attia Drive - #53 - AMA #6： Fasting framework, vitamin supplementation, antioxidants, time management, problem-solving, and more

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00:04:12.560 Another month and another AMA. Welcome to AMA number six with me, your host, and my head of

00:04:17.820 research, Bob Kaplan. As a reminder, these are for subscribers only. And if you are a subscriber,

00:04:22.340 you'll be able to watch and listen to this full episode on our website. If you're listening to this

00:04:27.140 on a podcast player, you will hear a preview now, and then you'll have to go over to our site to hear

00:04:31.180 or watch the remainder. Based on the topics we cover in this AMA, I have a feeling this one will

00:04:36.120 be a fan favorite, which also ends in one of my favorite AMA moments as we have a special guest,

00:04:41.440 Silky Ears. In this episode, we talk about vitamins. Do you need to supplement them if you

00:04:46.360 eat a balanced diet? What's the deal with antioxidants? I go over my entire fasting framework,

00:04:51.600 how to break a fast, what breaks a fast, does caffeine or coffee constitute that? How do you optimize

00:04:57.280 it? What type of supplements should you be taking? I then go into some detail on time-restricted

00:05:01.440 feeding. What does it mean to do 16-8 versus 18-6, some of these things. And I talk about

00:05:07.980 how I use time-restricted feeding to prepare for a huge food day, such as Thanksgiving.

00:05:13.240 I also go into intermittent fasting, which I distinguish from time-restricted feeding as

00:05:16.560 periods of true fasting, sort of three days, five days, seven days, et cetera. I go into a bit of our

00:05:22.400 process of learning and the importance of using a framework, which anyone who knows me

00:05:27.080 personally knows, I'm pretty emphatic about. And of course, talk a little bit about some of the

00:05:31.160 podcasts that I like to listen to. And we close it out with a little cameo of Silky Ears.

00:05:39.240 Hey, Peter, long time reader here. First time caller. A long time first time. What do you think of the

00:05:44.780 assertion by many doctors and researchers that if you eat a balanced diet, i.e. low in processed foods,

00:05:52.100 high in fruits and vegetables, that supplementation is completely unnecessary.

00:05:56.560 And in fact, you're probably just peeing away most of the nutrients. Thoughts?

00:06:03.440 You know, it's tough because supplementation is such a broad concept that I don't know what we're

00:06:08.740 really referring to there. So for example, would taking vitamin A or vitamin C or vitamin E

00:06:15.900 be required under the circumstances you describe? Almost assuredly not.

00:06:21.040 It was A, E, D, and K. You're not necessarily peeing those out because they're fat soluble.

00:06:25.100 Yeah, those are fat soluble. So yeah. But it's hard to say that you don't require any

00:06:29.660 supplementation. I think that's a bit of an open question. In fact, we did a podcast

00:06:32.760 a while ago with Chris Masterjohn where we went super deep on the B vitamins. And in fact, the role

00:06:39.420 of B vitamins in people that have mutations in an enzyme that is responsible in part for the

00:06:45.540 methylation of these things. So I guess I'd have to take some issue with that. I understand that

00:06:50.480 that's a very, like, that's the cool kid approach today. I think people love to be cool today and

00:06:56.380 sort of say, well, supplementation is a scam and you don't need any supplements. And I understand

00:07:02.160 why people say that because the opposite end of that argument is equally nonsensical in my mind,

00:07:06.780 which is like, you need to take 2000 supplements a day and you need to supplement like biotin levels

00:07:13.980 and stuff like that. I think that's also sort of equally silly. So I guess, no, I would sort of 0.65

00:07:18.200 disagree with that. But I'd also put this in the context of we might be splitting hairs.

00:07:25.980 In other words, if you're really eating an awesome diet and you're exercising really well and you're

00:07:31.620 sleeping really well and you're getting lots of outdoor exposure to sunlight, making your own

00:07:36.120 vitamin D, et cetera, et cetera. What's the difference between you being on theoretically the most optimized

00:07:42.980 supplement regimen versus not? It might be so small that it's sort of like we're picking the

00:07:48.180 wrong thing to discuss. I think one thing too, to maybe differentiate is if you have a deficiency

00:07:54.080 versus super physiological doses is probably the one of the things so that I've never calculated

00:08:01.680 this. Maybe somebody has where they, you read these articles about super foods, all the foods that you

00:08:06.420 must include in your diet every day. And if you add all those up, you'd be the stay puff marshmallow

00:08:14.160 man. Nice ghostbusters reference right there. Score some points there. That being said, I do think

00:08:20.360 that super foods are super if they're providing something that you are deficient in, because then

00:08:26.440 you'll feel like, wow, this is life changing because I had some deficiency and now I've made it up.

00:08:33.100 Right. If you have zero vitamin C, you're in a bad place. If you have zero vitamin D, you're in a bad

00:08:39.500 place. Having vitamin C above the level upon which you can make enough proline to make enough collagen

00:08:46.780 to not get scurvy, not that helpful. That said, you know, look, there are some other interesting

00:08:51.280 applications here. I do think there's, I'd love to see some research done on mega dose intravenous

00:08:57.080 vitamin C for viral infections. There was some research that was done on this, I think in the

00:09:01.220 sixties. My recollection is it looked sort of interesting, but wasn't really followed through upon.

00:09:06.380 Obviously Linus Pauling, who himself is a two-time Nobel laureate, although I think one of them was

00:09:12.080 a Nobel peace prize and not to diminish the Nobel peace prize, but it sort of fits in a different

00:09:16.240 category. He was close on, uh, elucidating the structure of DNA too, right? With Crick and Watson,

00:09:20.220 he was either on their heels or right there. Yeah. But Pauling was a huge proponent of vitamin C

00:09:25.520 and he was given enormous reign to, to sort of propose this and put this forward in large part

00:09:32.380 because of his credentials. Though I think in, for the most part, people today view many of his

00:09:37.000 views with respect to hyper doses of vitamin C as sort of nonsensical. There's a book of letters by

00:09:43.000 Richard Feynman. Yeah. Back in the day, people used to write letters, you know, rather than, I guess,

00:09:48.720 email and tweets and things like that. And there's a letter from Linus Pauling to Richard Feynman.

00:09:55.080 And there's maybe, and then I think a Richard Feynman response, but Feynman was diagnosed with

00:09:59.180 esophageal cancer and Pauling was putting in his two cents and his words of encouragement and things

00:10:05.640 like that. But he talked about vitamin C and I think a couple other things. And it was almost

00:10:08.980 like organic foods and things like that, which was pretty interesting.

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The Peter Attia Drive - May 13, 2019

#53 - AMA #6： Fasting framework, vitamin supplementation, antioxidants, time management, problem-solving, and more

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