Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9Mj0Q9y084
my boy woke me up at like every hour I'm have mommy brain boom and we're live the newly mommy dr. Rhonda Patrick first of all congratulations on making people Thank You first person yeah the cloning project was a success we were talking before the show about what a strange biological shift happens in your mind and isn't it is it's amazing isn't it and not any just your mind right like your person absolutely yeah it's completely amazing I had no idea that I would love being a mom so much yeah you know I I kind of waited till later in life to have a child and you know that that was for a reason because I I you know really driven and and loved what I was doing in science and I felt you know I didn't feel that calling to like I've got to reproduce I've got to reproduce and then finally I was like well I would don't reproduce now I might not get a chance so you know I that sort of pressure kind of nudged me a little bit I think but you had the whole like process of getting pregnant and having this like you know person growing inside of me just the whole thing was amazing and then after having the baby and he's like a person now and he's four months old and developing this little personality I'm like so amazed by how in love I am with him and how like how much I would do anything for him and how almost nothing really affects me as much like stress of various things in life you know I just look at him and you know see him smile at me and do some little things that are like you know uniquely him and the wonder and awe in his eyes and it's just like gone like it's really amazing so yeah that's crazy it changes your life a change it changes who you are as a human being you know and it changes it in a way that you did you know I have a lot of friends that are like I don't want kids I never wanted kids like Wow I kind of didn't really want kids either you know when I was thirty like a lawyer I wanted kids but then once you have them you you realize like oh like I was just sort of attached to this idea of living my life the way I was living it and then I'm like this is the way I like to live life and then you have a kid you like oh no I love this more than anything like so now my whole idea of what life is yeah shifts into this new paradigms and
they're also the thing like reproduce always weirds me out because you're not you're making people you know reproducing anything you know I mean you're you're making people it's a whole new person you're not reproducing you true I mean you obviously it is it is in a way I mean there's it's definitely reproductions the right way I mean you're passing on a lot of the same you know variations in genes that you have and you know you're obviously you know they there's similarities in the way they look to both you and your spouse but yeah it is a completely new person with a new personality but of course all that is shaped a lot by your diet in exercise and all those things that you do even you know aside from your actual genetics and passing on the sequence of DNA like just you know things that you do in your lifestyle actually can affect you know the child's neuro cognitive development and you know met metabolism no were you cognizant of that were you obviously you're very aware of that but did you what did you do to act on that I should ask yeah so I mean I did I definitely became obsessed with trying to optimize everything I could you know because I'm a scientist and I can sort of sift through the literature I think I you can you can kind of get stuck in this loop or you want to like optimize everything you can't have to like chill out a little bit but you know during pregnancy I wanted to make sure you know all the micronutrients I was getting you know cuz they're so important for brain development and like folate magnesium iron you know zinc and then DHA vitamin D all these things were super important actually with the DHA I found out that taking so DHA is the marine omega-3 fatty acid that's predominately found in like microalgae for vegetarians horses but in fish fatty fish well it turns out that the DHA that's in what's called phospholipid form which is something that's found in the ROE of fish so like fish eggs mm-hmm it's also found in krill as well and fish only have like a small percentage so fish have eh-eh like 1% of their DHA is in phospholipid form whereas the row of the fish anywhere between 40 to 70% is in phospholipid form Wow and 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 the phospholipid phospholipid form in the blood that has been shown to get into the developing fetal brain ten times better than a DHA and non phospholipid form free fatty acid form so is this something that should be consumed like for regular people as well or for it's like primarily mothers so yeah for I think both but the fact that you you know gets taken up into the developing fetal brain ten times you know better was enough you know ammunition for me to be like I mean this is a Monroe you know right but but yeah so they're all have also been studies on preclinical studies on on taking DHA up in fossil performing in mice it's taken up better than non phospholipid and then there's been some clinical studies where they like radio label and follow it in humans and again it's taken up better in the brain by humans as well and actually what's really interesting is I just submitted a paper for publication on 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 susceptibilities who Alzheimer's disease and basically um a bunch of you know dementia type of problems well April before sort of helps increase that risk so I've you know turns out there's because there's different transport mechanisms to get DHA into the brain the phospholipid form appears to be better for April before and that's sort of my finding I'm not going to get all into the mechanism but that's hopefully fingers crossed going to be accepted for period from peer review with the next couple of months that's fascinating so will you eating salmon roe that's what you were saying you were getting your source from I was yeah I was I was eating salmon roe I was ordering it from a company that you know has a wild alaskan salmon roe and they you can buy it in bulk the company was called vital choice does it taste nasty um it tasted nasty during my first trimester I was like oh wait but you know it the texture people 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 things to use those to fish for trout really yeah yeah trout would eat salmon roe so we would fish for trout using salmon eggs well I mean the salmon eggs are like quite a bit larger right yeah the crab a larger there's other ones like I think it's the flying fish that are really small in you know the the phospholipid DHA and phospholipid form varies from species you know different types of fish and things like that but generally speaking there you know it's a good thing to eat and especially during pregnancy so how did you consume it I'm on of akkad o–'s I put it on top of avocados with some lemon juice and like like hot sauce like so okay just juiced it up kind of like a paleo jury yeah yeah it's like a lot of fat so avocados have like potassium every 101 saturated fat and vitamin E all the different forms you know so monounsaturated fat and saturated fat right they have a small amount of saturated fat probably a small amount yeah I know they're when I say they have like typically when I talk about foods I'll talk about what's you know what's concentrated so it's like really concentrated in 101 saturated fat mm-hmm so whereas like if you say you know butter or cheese and it's concentrated in saturated fat right right but typically you'll find mono or polyunsaturated fat in all different forms of fat just very varying amounts right and to some degree it's like will that even really significant it's such a small amount I don't know no I'm with how much of the salmon roe were you consuming it really depends like I started to really start to ramp my consumption in like the third trimester when brain development was like yeah so every day I was putting a big old tablespoon full on top of my avocado really third trimester was like I was like almost every day trying to consume it Wow but it was hard for me the first trimester I was I started to try a little bit and it made me a little nauseous like can read minds well if like it comes out he's like super brain you know everyone probably is super biased about their own children yeah but I'm like he's got great verbal skills and is super smart you're super smart like this and you're eating all these fish eggs these kids this kids set oh thank you I'll be
interesting talk to him he's gonna be four sitting right there what's funny is he was like early on when he was like six weeks old he was he went through a really short stage of he was making sounds that sounded like hello and so my mom would come over and she would in his face she would go hello hello and he would and we have a video of it like I could send it to you I'll send it to you he would go oh no and it like literally seems like he's saying it but clearly he's not I mean he's six weeks old you know but he was able to like sort of mimic the sound because I think it was easier for him since he was already sort of making those sounds so of course Dan and right and Dan and I were all super pumped were like he's gonna be a genius we're sending the video to all the family members you should really listen to what we say see that's a Larry of course you know it he's not really thing hello he's making noise he's making noise does it sound like it and there's this totally coincidental but well this is the difference between like a kid making a noise and a kid knowing what that noise means like when they're actually talking yeah like my young mom my seven-year-old well the seven-year-old she didn't really start talking in full sense until she was like a year and a half but my my nine-year-old like when she was like nine ten months old she was talking it was weird it's like she's really smart like she was talking like right away like and she stood up quicker too she's she was standing at like nine months old which I found pretty shocked yeah well like an unassisted standing you like that's when she wanted to stand Wow nine months old she was like getting her stand on and trying to take some steps and I was like this is crazy like she's just she's like that's how she is like as a little person – she's a little go-getter uh-huh yeah I often wonder all you know the the earlier the firstborns and the ones that are born earlier like if they get more attention to because it's not all your first time and then as more children come you know it's like yes your your spread a little more thin and you know I mean it's not necessarily the case but it's certainly something I've often wondered you know if we if I want to have another child
will I be able to do it you know it's because I really just wanted there's so much work that goes into you know not just you know the nutrition part and I was talking about you asked me about you know things during pregnancy and something I think people don't realize is that you know epigenetics which is basically the transference of its its heritable like you can transfer things that happened to you and your lifestyle without actually altering the sequence of DNA and you can do that by changing how much gene is activated or not activated and there's been studies lots and lots of study stays in animals showing this to be the case of 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 and obesity was actually looked at not in the mothers but the fathers and so sperm DNA was collected from four males that were obese and males that were lean and they there's a variety of different genes like hundreds of different genes that were looked at and about 300 different genes were different in how they were activated or not activated in the sperm DNA of the obese men and a lot of those genes had to do with cognition learning memory and metabolism so that's very interesting but what was super interesting was that these men they were morbidly obese or very obese they underwent bariatric surgery and their sperm DNA was then collected you know a couple of months after and then like close to a year after and as time went on their sperm DNA looked like the lean people so that so basically losing the weight just losing the weight had an effect on these genes that are involved in cognition and metabolism like I said you know lots of animal studies have shown obesity has a negative effect on like you know causing type 1 diabetes later in life and different you know cognitive disabilities and things like that so you know it is something like people that are wanting to conceive might might consider you know their you know their health before trying to procreate you know it's it's I'm not saying that you know you shouldn't procreate if you're not you know healthy but it's just something you know another thing to
think about and and also I think it's a motivating factor for people because sometimes you don't care as much about yourself I mean some people don't they're just kind of like but their child or their unborn child that's probably you know driver for for people to make a change like that would certainly hope it would be I mean you have this opportunity to really literally change the way your child develops and just by your discipline right just by whether or not you're taking care of your own body you can literally change the future of your child so because you're saying that these genes that are in this obese man sperm the way they're represented that's going to be passed on to the kid yeah versus the lean version of him Pat those genes we've passed on to the kid the kid literally will have a different starting point because I it's totally crazy yeah and I mean of course the the child itself can change things through epigenetics through their diet lifestyle but you're giving them a baseline here right I mean so it's it's it's definitely a very it's a growing field a lot of the research is done in in animals because it's really difficult to do that sort of these sorts of experiments in humans but I think that this is sort of a proof of principle it's at the very least looking at the the sperm DNA you know so it's it's something to consider and I've had like like friends of friends that have you know that are that are overweight or obese and wanting to like have children and so it's like I try to talk to him about that in a in a way that's not like condescending yeah you know some people some people do have a hard time they try to lose weight and you know this they have to find the right combination of things that works for them but but I do think that people would get more motivated if they're like wow I can you know affect my future child's risk for type 1 diabetes or for you know like how well what the right cue is how well they're performing on learning and memory test so and 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 I realized oh my god I set this kid up in a shitty way
because I'm lazy which is essentially what a lot of the problem is with people it's just that they don't have what whatever the mental you know people get angry if you say they're lazy because they don't die it freaking forget that word forget to take away the word lazy you're unmotivated let's say that but for whatever reason if you choose not to take care of your health and you see that transfer into your child's 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 and 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 like you're gonna be riddled with guilt totally I mean the thing is most people don't know about epigenetics and they don't know that they're that they're able to do that so the more the more people are educated I think the better the outcome will be but like you said the people that do know and then still do it it's like yeah the guilt I mean that's like unbelievable well it's like people who smoke when they have a kid you know that's that's so insane you see people that are pregnant smoking I was in forget what state it was in but we were outside this convenience store and there was a lady who was clearly pregnant and she clearly was smoking cigarettes and I was like [ __ ] man that's just I was Canada it was like this hurts my feelings just watching that just hurts my feelings doesn't it just make you sick yeah 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 are not caused by been associated with like ADHD and what's it called like like the movement just like a like a dyskinesia thing you know all sorts of problems so you know it's certainly like I having the knowledge you know and continuing to read throughout pregnancy 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 like that was you know like they're the benefits of breastfeeding are just amazing and and this is something that like my like my stepmother for example her generation also my my grandmother but they didn't know about this like so
they weren't it recommended to breastfeed you know back in like the 50s like it just wasn't you know the benefits weren't known but now we know like breastfeeding it's kind of amazing there are something there's something in in breast milk called human milk oligosaccharides have you heard of these hmm oh there's like 200 different of ala ghosts human milk oligosaccharides in breast milk in fact it's like the third most common factor in breast milk behind lactose and fat 200 different ones and they cannot be digested at all by like the the infant's digestive system it's like they Co evolved specifically to feed the microbiome in the gut oh these infants and their and they're specifically increasing the species of bacteria Bifidobacterium infantis is one really really important one but it's it's amazing that they're it's 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 and 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 those short chain fatty acids like lactate butyrate acetate things that we've heard of those act as what are called signalling molecules to basically determine what kind of immune cells you're going to make so a big one that they do is they they make T regulatory cells which are a kind of immune cells that prevents autoimmunity autoimmune responses so like children that are not that that are not breastfed they have they lack like four different species of I've got bacteria and they have like a 3-3 fold increased risk of allergies and you know autoimmune related diseases so it's like it's doing that and also it's like preventing pathogenic bacteria from from like taking residents there because 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 an time Creole activity so there's a lot of antimicrobial things in breast monk-like lauric acid which is also found in coconut oil but the the human milk oligosaccharides basically break down the biofilm so that the lauric acid can
work better so it's like you know and there's stem cells there's stem cells in breast milk mammary stem cells well like that blew my mind I think like spent like ten years since the discovery of that but like it's been so it's the studies have been mostly done in mice but they have measured humans you know have the same memory type of stem cells in their breast milk but in animals in preclinical studies it's been shown that those brought those breast stem cells they get digested they go into the bloodstream and they go to various organs they go to the kidney the liver the brain and they start to like in the pancreas they start to make like insulin producing cells like it's crazy so that's amazing that the only ten years ago they didn't know those yeah I know it's all happening so fast when it comes to knowledge of nutrition and the effect on the body and especially developers yeah well the breast milk thing is really what's interesting because once I like you know had my son and you immediately you know start breastfeeding like I had no idea it was gonna be so difficult like I thought it was just and maybe it's not difficult for everyone but I think it's difficult for a lot of women and a lot of women give up after like the first two weeks they give up because you know it's just for you know various reasons it's a she can be extremely frustrated your new parent you're getting no sleep and you know so like I my son had a little bit of a tongue tie where like the little thing on underneath his tongue kind of prevented a tongue from moving like as much as it's supposed to so like he when he opened his mouth and he'd latch on there was a little bit of problem so the first two weeks were really hard for me but that sort of resolved but I really had to try like my like dan and I were we were taking I was pumping some some milk and we were putting in a syringe with a little tube and like putting him on the breast you know because I didn't want to introduce the bottle so early so I mean and that was hard I I mean I was getting no sleep I mean I could totally see if you didn't know all the benefits of breastfeeding that I could I could see how new mother would would you know give up because it's extremely difficult so that's something you know that I completely
understand now like I think previously I was like how can anyone not breastfeed you know it's a but it really it's not it's not easy for everyone there's all sorts of problems that women have but there are actually breast milk banks that like so women can donate their breast milk and people you know can can buy the breast milk instead of getting formula of course there's all sorts of other problem that's like well are they getting enough vitamin D and omega-3 and what else are they taking you know there's so many different things that happen once you have children breast milk being impressed feeding I'm sure being one of them but the the lack of sleep thing which I think most people just really don't don't have any idea like what what is happening and then they also don't understand how difficult it is to watch a child and right now it's difficult wait till the kid starts walking they start walking around you have to follow them around you're literally like walking around with them everywhere they go I got don't put that your mouth don't touch that like that you'll get electrocuted it's like everywhere you go it's it's it's such a I don't want to say a project it's it's um it's just way more difficult and consuming then and also your protective instincts are ramped up so high like my friend Eddie had cats and rabbits he's talking about how much he loves his rabbits and he's like and I want dude just wait until you have your kid you're gonna want to kill those [ __ ] rabbits he's like no way man I love the cats I love the rabbits and as soon as you out of the kitty like [ __ ] you're right cats annoying goes my cat wakes up my kid I wanna kill [ __ ] it's true your protective mechanisms I know is you changes you so much and you know people that don't have children who complain about kids that are crying I used to I used to bother me if I was on a plane and babies were crying you know I feel like his baby won't shut up but now I'm like ah polar baby like literally it doesn't bother me like like someone could be a brick right next to me with a crying baby and I feel bad for the baby it doesn't bother me like this baby won't shut up it's like a different feel totally i i've started to experience that to some degree in
various ways as well where it's like you just the poor baby become a different person yeah yeah you do you really it's amazing yeah it's it's it's the best thing ever well i mean it creates so much empathy i mean it's just my whole perspective of what a person is is different my idea of a person used to be a static form like jamie's 35 what are you 35 34 like i would say god that's 34 year-old Jamie that's who he is I never thought Oh Jamie was a baby like Jamie used to be a four-year-old like Jamie went to preschool Jamie went to kindergarten I never even thought about it that way like oh there's Jamie hey what's up Jamie Jamie's always been Jamie you know that's like how I used to look at people now I look at everybody as a baby like oh that's a baby that became a grown man like that's how I look at everyone now it's so it's it's weird it's like a paradigm shift happened in my brain that is that's that's definitely weird it made me way more compassionate way way nicer to people just way I just I think I don't want anybody's life to fall apart anymore you used to like why I hope that guy gets hit by a truck you know now I'm like man I hope that little baby figures out why he's such an [ __ ] I would be interesting to kind of see the brain activation pathways that change like you know if you're talking about being more compassionate that's almost like I mean there's a certain type of meditation that's like the compassion meditation that people do that changes like certain parts of the brain be kind of interesting to see might like Dan thinks that I've gotten more creative you know cuz I make up all these like mommy games and mommy songs just like I never was really a super super creative person I'm more analytical you know I've got I definitely have some creativity but like he's kind of like I wonder if just like becoming a mommy like you just all of a sudden think I'm more creative you know I don't know I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff going on I mean your brain just gets activated like I I do stuff with my seven-year-old sometimes and half the time we're doing stuff I'm like I can't even believe you're real like I'm have these little conversations with her we're playing little games and you know
like we plays really stupid game it's so dumb you spin this thing and it's like it corresponds to different color acorns and you know and when and she wins and she jumps up she's like oh I beat you and she's like doing her little dance and she's like throwing her arms in the air and I'm like this is like half of me is laughing because she's funny but half of me is going this is so strange that you're a little person that I'm talking to right like you you were a baby and now you're this little seven year old playing this game with me it's like it's so odd I feel that way with my four month old I see little personality things already kind of creeping up and it's like it's amazing yeah I can only imagine like as he continues to develop that's why it's very I think it's very difficult for people that don't have children to sort of develop that same level of compassion it sounds like a cop-out it sounds like it sounds weird but I really do I think there's something there's actually something to be gained and as far as like everyone reproducing well obviously we have too many people that's not I don't know if that's the best thing and 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 I don't think you have to have children but I think for me it was it was very much there was a there was a giant learning experience along with there's a giant evolving experience along with just being a parent it was something happened to me yeah it's it's it's absolutely life-changing yeah it's I had no idea like I've always heard people say it's the best thing that happened to me and it truly is I mean it truly is the best thing and so you know I I'm I just I'm excited to continue to see how it changes me and it just unfortunately corresponds with a lot of financial stress with a lot of people time stress financial stress lack of sleep and sometimes I just don't appreciate it you know it's just you're so overwhelmed by the burden of just trying to get by that sometimes you can't appreciate this amazing moment that happened in front of you and it's you know it's hard it's hard to it's hard to have a good perspective and it's hard it's hard to like be able to see things from above
let's just sort of rise above and look at the big picture of this thing totally and that's for me something that really helps me that is is exercise sure and and I think that also you know I didn't have any postpartum depression at least I think I didn't I mean nothing causes that I think there's a variety of factors I mean so for one you know you're during pregnancy your estrogen levels like they like they go through the roof I mean it's like like 100 fold higher and hundred fold something like that like it's really high compared to your baseline and don't quote me I may be something something something like that like I've just ordered an orders of magnitude higher and estrogen has been shown to increase the expression of a gene called tryptophan hydroxylase – in the brain that produces serotonin from tryptophan so you're constantly making serotonin and constantly constantly constantly and then you know after you have the baby that goes away so it's kind of like a withdrawal so that's sort of one biochemical explanation but there are many others one I think their circadian rhythm is off you're not you're not getting enough light because you're like nesting you're like you like I don't think we left I mean I don't remember going outside for like two weeks maybe yeah yeah it was like you know especially with the difficult breastfeeding it part so it was like you're constantly inside you're not getting that bright light exposure your sleep is completely disrupted so your circadian rhythm which is you know extremely extremely important for for mood for the way you feel that is completely disrupted because you're you're waking up you know multiple times a night and and that's completely gone and and it's stressful it's like a completely new experience you have this like a very fragile baby you know that you're responsible for and so I think that combination of all these things really can can play a role in that and for me I really tried to make sure I was getting exercise as soon as I could you know so that is something because exercise for a variety of reasons one it's been shown to increase the production of serotonin by getting transport of tryptophan into the brain so branched chain amino acids which are
found in you know a variety of proteins they can out-compete tryptophan to get into the brain and 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 so you're not getting the precursor to make serotonin and so the exercise alleviates that that competition branched chain amino acids get taken up into your muscle where they're you know they're used to help build muscle which is good and the trip pan gets into the brain so you're making serotonin that's one – you're making you know endorphins beta endorphins help so that that's another thing and then the your your increasing the production of new neurons through serotonin and also through brain derived neurotrophic factor that also has been shown to help alleviate depression and prevent depression the actual neurogenesis the thing that helps you stay off brain ageing 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 their left part of their hippocampus doesn't like atrophy like people who do not exercise you know so that's like because the neurogenesis but that that's another reason you can visually see it atrophy the use some sort of an MRI yeah have you ever looked if you like Google like Alzheimer's disease brain like there's there's even images all over the place where they show like before and after and there's just like big holes in the brain I mean it's just like well it's a because someone was comparing it to a football player mmm was what's the job the guys named fell off the car the guy was Henry Chris Henry Chris Henry he was um I think he was only 28 right he was a young man who was an NFL football player and no one had any idea he had CTE this is like earlier understandably this is like seven years ago somewhere around there right um much less understanding about the the effects of CTE and he had some sort of an altercation with his girlfriend chased after her she was she jumped in a car and he didn't want her to leave so he jumped on top of the truck to try to hang on and fell off the truck and killed himself yeah so they do an autopsy on him and
they find out that he has a brain of a seven year old man with Alzheimer's whoa he's 28 sup 26 28 whatever he was he was young under 30 and super athlete just and they were stunned and they looked at his brain they're like well this is this is this doesn't even make sense and now they're finding that this is the case with so many football players who just you you when you went to see the UFC when you damn good to see the UFC and I talked to you afterwards we all went to dinner afterwards and you your eyes were as big as dinner plates and you were like this is so bad so many bad things are happening and then you started going into detail about the various things that are happening it was so fascinating to watch you a scientist watch people get head kicked and punched in the face and watch watch MMA tech plays yeah I mean it's 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 and you know they're there are there's definitely like if you look at the non you know fighting form so it's like martial arts where they're like it seems a lot more beautiful like cool like moves and stuff you know but like like the actual like getting your head bashed and stuff like that's crazy it's so crazy you know and I understand money is a big driving factor because they probably make a lot of money but you know what what what's it worth when you're not able to enjoy it when you're older and you just lose your brain it's not just money it's the excitement of it the way I describe it is it's high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences high level problem solving yeah that's what fighting is like you have a skill set I have a skill set like we're playing a game and the game is I want to try to hit you with my bones and you're trying to hit me with your bones and we're trying to figure out who's better at it and I know that you know what I know you you like if you get to a certain level like you say what are that's one of things that I love about jujitsu is that jujitsu sort of solves this but it does so without hitting each other jiu-jitsu is all grappling and there's obviously a lot of injuries that come from jiu-jitsu I think that's what I meant when I when I was using some
looks kind of cool yeah like the world you just to Championships just happened this past weekend I was watching some of the videos online and you watch these really high level guys going after it and it's it's amazing it is beautiful there too attacking and counter attacking and you just and 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 they know what to do and when to do they're trying to counter and they know and they're both black belts at a very high level so it's like you're you're you're examining this game and it doesn't have the same feeling when someone loses that an MMA fight has like I watched the UFC this past weekend and there's some brutal knockouts when you watch someone get Kayode and you see their their brain shut off and their legs stiffen up and they go flat I saw I saw someone get knocked out yeah I forgot who it was but it was like one of the last like most exciting fights and it was like he I mean it was it was crazy yeah for sure and and I think I we talked about this you know last time you know a couple years ago but the apoe4 gene I think really is something that would at least give some insight because I mean that's known that people that have at least one allele of those chip 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 you know when I was 20 fold more if they have yeah if they have two copies of it so they're like homozygous which is a lot less common one copy is more common that would be you know anywhere like a like a two to five fold but when you have two copies it can be it can be up 10 to 20 fold higher so that's something that's like you know with with 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 a TBI like I think that's something that athletes should consider and and and you probably would find ones that would say hey maybe I shouldn't do this you know especially you know with football players now quite a few football players who are aware of this I'm actually backing out of the NFL at a very young age they have headaches so there was a guy recently
was 24 years old just retired he's like I'm done yeah you know and he has a bright future apparently well let's look we got sidetracked so you were talking about exercise and the hippocampus oh yeah yeah so the the the benefits on exercise on the brain which I know that I constantly talk about this to you because it but it's just so you know it's so damn important it's so important so important and and it is it's one of those things that like it helps me with everything ways you know and and the brain aging is like it's like it's the long-term effect so it helps me with the short term which is like handling life and handling stress you were talking about how people have a hard time you know seeing things from a higher level and and it's so true you know because life is hard you know you have to like make it you have to survive and if you don't have a starting place starting if your baseline is is kind of like you don't have a lot to start with and it's you have to work all you know all the more work you have to put in so I think that you know getting distracted with trying to make money trying to like survive and try to let me know try to like live a good life and get married and have kids and all this it can be really stressful so you know I have of course my own stresses but I think that the exercise is the short the short-term effects I get from that you know are helping with clarity helping me with being able to kind of take a take a step back and not be so anxious and there's there's control trials showing this as well with with exercise you know I for the longest time have been a runner and running is like for me you know I love the the frame mind I'm in when I'm running like it's kind of like this reflective daydreaming which some people in some studies say well Jay Dreaming is not good because you're ruminating when you're daydreaming but I think the daydreaming that you do when you're like running is a lot different from like if you were I had you and I were having this conversation right now but I wasn't present oh right right so that's called rumination and that that's like that's a stressful kind of situation you know yeah well you're what you're not present because you're like worried this other thing you have to do right
but the the the daydreaming effect when I'm running is a little bit more of a reflective like it's a good it's like a cleansing for me yes when you run yeah yeah I saw that you've recently gotten into that which you know over the past year that literally blasts January I started because a friend of mine had a run-in in Vegas a 5k I jumped in it with zero running at all it was like guys is [ __ ] hard I was like I'm in shape I'll just go run but I never ran literally never now I run every week and it was hard for you right cuz yeah right hard but what's interesting is my cardio for everything else has gone through the roof its way because I'm running like brutal trails like really steep mountain trails and I'm doing the most ideas for miles the least I do is one mile sometimes I do too but it's it's essentially hill sprints okay so you're doing soon you're getting some high intensity in there you're sprinting it's very high intensity and it's all it's all like really extensive cardio it's like yeah heavy duty stuff right I've run it with my dog now dude that's awesome so what's interesting is for me after pregnancy like I couldn't wait to go out running and so I think it was four weeks and phobics before weeks postpartum I went out for a run I saw your Instagram post yeah okay so went out for a run I was super EXTREME us poly the only post I did because what I found out as I was running is I didn't feel so great like I felt like my bladder felt full even though it wasn't like and so I would stop in bathroom like when I run and then I was like okay and run again it still felt full and I was like this is not normal like this you know so so I went to my OBGYN talked to him and apparently your pelvic floor like changes after having a baby and that can like you know fall down and kind of hit your bladder a little and so it feels some women actually like pee urinate when they're running like I never had it like that well he looked at my pelvic floor it was like on a scale from zero to ten zero being the best you're a 1 and I'm like really because I feel like a 7 you know and so he was like well you probably shouldn't have started running so soon so don't do that why don't you start doing some low-impact exercise and start doing these like strength like strengthening
your pelvic floor with like cake like some core strings which I've been doing so I was like crap what am I gonna do like running I would just walk out the door and go you know run and that was like my escape so I started doing this this cycling class high-intensity interval cycling class which is it's an hour long and it's a spin class but it's not like the dance you spend so it's it's a spin class where you do hills and sprints and it's it's an hour long but you're mixing it with just aerobic and so you're you get these Sprint's and these hills and I really really really liked it for multiple reasons you know one is the group setting where I feel like the people around me I'm like they're still going at it you know so it's like motivating so I I keep going – there's something about that group that really like I push if I throw just me on that bike for an hour there's no way I would be pushing it like I do that like I am pushing it it's like amazing pushing it yeah I feel that way about yoga class same thing yeah I think everyone's eating off each other right right and then also having the instructor like there's a couple instructors that I really really like and you know because I like their style and they're kind of more like coaches than the kind of instructor that kind of makes you want to feel there's the instructor that's like they their cheerleader kind of want to make you feel good and then there's the instructor where they're like the coach where they're like they're trying to help you write better so I kind of designed city high intensity interval training and I've never really been into it that much like I was you know I would do some like jump squats and things like that like at home but this is the first time I'm like really a structured environment and really doing it so I started reading about it like morning – no because that's how I am if I do something I'm like well I'm gonna look into it and either it'll motivate me to like really keep it up and do it more or I'll be like now this isn't good you know so I started reading more and more about it and it's amazing the benefits of the high intensity so you were talking about how how like you're you're I think what you were describing was your aerobic capacity generous change
for the big one is kickboxing like the wind when I hit the bag it used to be that I would I would struggle to do a three minute round of high high intensity like hitting the bag kickboxing but now I can I get through it the bell goes off and I'm like really okay like the Bell just went off all right that's three minutes and then I'll have the 30-second rest by the term 30-second rest is up I'm fully recovered and I'm back in again I just it's I mean like I have more than double the endurance I used to have so so they're there what you're experiencing has been studied in clinical studies basically 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 so the capacity to do that right well as we age over the age of 25 once we hit 25 and we continue on our aerobic capacity decreases by 10 percent per decade so like 1 percent per year right so you're basically you know 25 you're 35 you're your vo2 max your is like 10 percent 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 and there was four foremen it pushes and there's you know recoveries in between and all that blah blah blah stuff they were able to improve and after eight weeks of doing 24 high-intensity classes improve their vo2 max by like 12% so you're basically adding a decade you know back how many weeks well they did it they did 24 classes of this in eight weeks Wow so what this interesting thing about that study was they were also testing whether or not like like doing it I think was like four weeks or something really like short just packing them all in they actually didn't increase the vo2 max as much because the recovery time was actually important it's actually changed the way I think about when it comes to training and my advice that I give to people for training because I used to think that it was adequate to just do the sports specific workouts like say if you wanted to get better at Jiu Jitsu just do your jujitsu if you want to get better kickboxing just do your kick boxing the cardio you get from that will
be enough I don't think that's the case anymore because I'm stunned at how much of an increase in car do that I've gotten from these hill sprints and now I realize like okay what you can do is that you can do it independently of that work and it doesn't really mess that work like say if I run in the morning and I get a good two-mile run I can still hit the bag at 3:00 in the afternoon but the difference will be is I like my legs will be tired from running but they're not the same muscles that I use when I kick box but what's it's it's similar in a lot of ways but with what's really changing for sure is that my aerobic capacity yeah it's just way bigger this is awesome just different that's actually a marker of aging aerobic capacity vo2 max I've never actually measured my own vo2 max I don't want to do it because now that I'm doing all this high-intensity work and I'm totally gonna stick with it like I love it um I definitely want to get back to the running and I've been sort of worried about I can only do so much as a new mom and working in a treadmill er now you know I love running outside like in nature whether it's in the beach or like in the hills rolling hills and stuff but you know for the longest time I lived in Tennessee and that the weather there is not great and so I did you treadmill running and so yeah I mean I've definitely I don't I don't have the same day dreaming like effect yeah I agree yeah that I do definitely I mean it's it's definitely good and I get a lot from it from a treadmill but there's something about in fact there was some interesting study that I don't know how long ago maybe a year ago or two that looked at people that exercise I think they went for like walks or something in nature versus like in the metropolitan area and the benefits there was 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 um so it's kind of interesting you know it is interesting I think we like to think of ourselves as being detached from what we experience just in terms of even just visually but III think that those things have an effect on like not just how you think like how you feel but who you are I mean I think we are we have some sort
of a symbiotic relationship with our environment and when your environment is cement and glass and concrete and rubber and all the things that we've created in cities that there's a doll feeling that you get from those things and then when you can go and see a green meadow and birds flying around and and the wind whistling through the leaves like you you just it does something to your body look does something not just your mind there's something going on like you you're you have like this feeling that I've ah this is medicine like this is I'm getting something out of this yeah absolutely I think that there's you know the the noise pollution the sound you know like the this cars and all that that's been shown to have a negative effect on people's like emotions and and and of course there's the environmental things you're breathing in pollution and that Nina has been shown to increase inflammatory biomarkers and all that but there's certainly I think the just going out into nature and you you feel better you do you definitely you definitely feel better it's not you know not it I live in the city and I live off of a busy place and thankfully we're going to be moving but that's something I'm considering where it's just like are you moving specifically for that reason no we're just in a small apartment right now and it's like I had a baby now yeah it was fun it was close to the beach and yeah you know it was it's fun like but just it's not something that they you know I could do with it with with a baby especially in such a small space and yeah there's motorcycles that go by and it's like it's crazy like the motorcycles exactly they're riding by and it's like it's yeah up to now so also like a yard that is good for a kid right exactly but it's hard it's hard in California you know I mean like we were saying you know it's not easy so there's things you yeah there's just all this stuff you have to consider when you're your priorities change no now that you when you have a child it's like you got to think of all the things schools and this and that neighbors and who are they're gonna be friends with him yeah like Oh before I forget I wanted to take tell people go to Chris crecer 'he's Instagrammers
excuse me Twitter page and there's an article on acetaminophen and women who are pregnant consuming see and the negative consequences it has free children see more evidence it says here that the exposure to acetaminophen may be a part of ADHD puzzle a Norwegian study pregnant women took acetaminophen for 29 days or more had a more than two-fold risk of having children with ADHD yeah Wow Tylenol I think I've seen I think I even tweeted something like this like a couple of years ago where this isn't the first study yeah we're in New York Times right now apparently and that's what people are prescribed right during pregnancy right scary [ __ ] there's I mean it's how many things we find out from like the 1960s were terribly detrimental to children and doctors were telling you this is way the way you should go I mean there's right yeah and and that's the you know with when I was pregnant there was there were certainly some things that I opted out of that were probably more standard of care you know so just because of concern and and not that I knew for a fact that something was going to happen but I had doubt and that was enough for me to sort of weigh you know the the benefits and the risks and I was like well you know so well there's even talk about vaccination protocols like not whether or not I mean I'm not an anti vaccination person I think vaccinations are important but I think that there's there's a lot of merit and the idea of that you shoot a kid up with 36 different shots when there are six weeks old or whatever where whatever age they start about I mean right out of the box they give a lot of doctors want to give your kid a series of shots and that there's some there'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 it you know I'm with you like I'm also not an anti boxer I think vaccines are important I'm going to vaccinate my son but and I won't I've already given I'm a little behind on the schedule I've given him one but so what you're saying is is true there is like even on the CDC website it says that you know some of these vaccines can cause fevers and epileptic seizures these seizures in in infants and but that
there's no long term consequence of that and and that's kind of like you know if you look if you look at the literature and and how the immune the immune system responds to some of these vaccines especially if you're giving like five at once I mean the the first round of vaccines that I'm supposed to do it was like it was like five different vaccines and so what I'm opting to do is actually do them in singles were you so that they really did yeah yeah because it's like why the immune response is you know kind of the thing that's scary and you don't really know how a child's immune systems going to react and there are studies I was particularly worried about it during pregnancy and that's when one of the things I opted out of was getting the Tdap vaccine which is they want to give it to you when your I forgot how many weeks pregnant thirty something I think and to protect basically pass on antibodies for whooping cough you know to the to the baby and so I opted out and I said I would do it post basically postpartum like one day postpartum because it takes about four weeks to transfer the antibodies in breast milk so I still was gonna you know get the vaccine but I was gonna do it after I had me and that and 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're when they have a really strong immune response so like a strong infection or you know who knows a vaccine the study didn't use vaccines but I'm sort of you know 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 were had autistic like behaviors it'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 like they're not supposed to have antibodies and against fetal brain proteins in their blood so there has definitely been some link with the immune system autoimmunity particularly during pregnancy and and to some risk now in terms of like the
the young baby you know I'm I'm I'm scared too and I do I do worry that you know my son's developing so great and like I don't want to do something wrong it's it's scary it really is and you know I definitely like I said I'm going to vaccinate my son and I have been doing singles and the you have to like it's a little more inconvenient because you have to go to the doctor like so many times to do it but the thing is is that when you're don't when you're not giving so many different vaccines at once the immune response isn't going to be as strong and there's a problem with this conversation and one of the problems with this conversation is as soon as you talk about vaccines you immediately get lumped into a bunch of [ __ ] crazy people that 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 are you it's it's it's almost it's a weird thing because you're talking about chemicals that you're injecting into a child right yeah but still people are very hesitant to to even look at that they're very they'll you want to automatically just go with whatever the doctor says when it comes to vaccines until but the real problem is until you look at like how much work has been done determining what the consequences are and how can you find out how can you even know no right you really can't unless you have to of the exact we are a bunch of copies you make a bunch of clones of a baby and you you expose them to the exact same environment that exact same epigenetics exact same environmental factors and then one of you and inject a bunch of chemicals into and one you don't I mean we know that vaccines are amazing they have prevented polio they have prevented a host of different diseases from becoming real issues and we know that people who don't vaccinate their kids they're the reason why measles are coming back the – there's real concerns absolutely I think vaccines are amazing I'm so happy they exist but 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 1960's are now prohibited like we know they're
dangerous for you yeah yeah I mean III completely 100% agree and I think that the there there are now it's a growing field at least in science where there are there are scientists that are trying to understand the the gene interaction the gene interaction with the immune system because it you know obviously almost everyone gets vaccinated right I mean and you don't have everyone walking around with all these and with autism and all these but there there is something that is you know going on and you know a lot of parents have noticed changes of course after the vaccinations and so there there is a new field of inquiry and I do know that's ongoing where scientists are beginning to now look at in addition to how the immune system is is reacting to some of these vaccines how specific genes you know regulating certain immune functions may differences in those genes called polymorphisms may you know predispose a child now how are you going to know that like without doing a DNA test before you do the vaccine I mean it's a risk like you said how do you know it's it definitely is a risk and that's that's what's the scary thing you know and it's it's like you know it's it's a it's a dilemma that I've been facing and and you know I I'm just currently the reason I even delayed I've only you know given my son to vaccines so far but just because I'm trying to like exhaustively read the literature as much as I can oh good for I'm glad you I'm glad that you're looking at it this way because it's it's something that there's a lot of pressure on people to not look at it that way you're like this just having this conversation Joe Rogan and Rhonda Patrick are anti-vaxxers that could be that that could be the title of some [ __ ] arc article that someone writes about this I mean I've seen it time and time again where someone will write a clickbait title do an article and then someone will just read that and go oh you're at anti-vaxxer of course you are you loser and then I get angry at you and throw some Twitter message your way that it's not representative of your actual thoughts on this at all this is a very complex very nuanced issue it is and I'd like like I said I do think people should vaccinate their children I do is when I'm agreeing onst topic that
we you know we don't we don't know what the answer to I mean I think that this guy I what was his name the thimerosal guy the doctor that got disbarred because he like falsified some data on time rows all the Mercurian causing autism yeah he like falsified some data was the story behind that that linked thimerosal which is the adjuvant that was that's found in a lot of vaccines in california they don't use that as far as I know as far as like it's not used anymore was that the needle measles mumps rubella MMR yeah yeah and so what did he do with what was I don't you know it's not like I haven't done a super super in-depth leg analysis of what he did to my understanding hold up here Journal retracts 1998 paper linking autism to vaccines a prominent British Medical Journal Tuesday retracted a 1998 research paper that set off a sharp decline of vaccinations in Britain after the papers lead author suggested that vaccines could cause autism the retraction blah blah blah reassessment there's lasted for years in the scientific methods and financial conflicts dr. Andrew Wakefield who contended that his research show that the combined measles mumps and rubella rubella how do you say it rubella rubella vaccine may be unsafe but the retraction may do little to tarnish dr. Wakefield's reputation among parents groups in the United States despite a wealth of scientific studies that have failed to find any link between vaccines and autism the parents fervently I love that word believe that their children's medical problems resulted from vaccines I know a lot of people that think their kids medical issues came from vaccines I know some of you yeah and I'm not one to tell them they're wrong and I don't know who's right or who's wrong but I know there's a massive amount of money to discourage any sort of talk and thinking and then no one wants you to think there's anything wrong with vaccines if vaccines can do no harm but you know millions of dollars been given out by the vaccine courts it's it's not like there's there's vaccine courts that that take care of cases where people have been damaged by vaccines it's not there's no look we were talking about this before the the podcast started that we're gonna discuss the the there's an
people very biologically so much that one person can eat a bridge my friend Brian his his mom if she eats a Brazil nut she will die I could eat a whole bowl of those boring [ __ ] nuts they don't do anything to me I think they're boring but they increase your selenium though that's good to have but I mean they don't do anything negative to me but his mom will eat them and she dies now that you can I believe that you can extrapolate that and you could look at all sorts of different things that you take into your body there are some people that are allergic to a host of different things that don't do a damn thing to me and there's kind of people be people that are going to have reactions to vaccines it's just it's a chemical there's going to be something that happens in your body so the idea that there's no link whatsoever to a chemical causing an adverse reaction that doesn't jive it doesn't make sense to say that it's impossible you could say it's extremely rare that makes more sense right but when they say there's no link when you say no link I have to go what's motivating this what's motivating you to say no link because the with when you're dealing with chemicals there is always going to be a small percentage of a chance that your body has an adverse reaction those chemicals and it's not just chemicals I mean this is these are these are you know live bacteria live bacteria and you're listening and immune response and immune response is very as well yeah you know dramatically I mean some people have autoimmune disease because their immune system gets so ramped up I mean you know some people have you know type 1 diabetes because their immune system is destroying their pancreatic beta islet cells that produce insulin people are different like you said and it's funny because when that when Jamie pulled it up my mind went to the same place where it's it's just it's the perfect example of how you know people respond differently to two different things and you know it's not it's not just a chemical but food and this is a big big field of inquiry is like the food because you've got people battling just like with the VAX or people that are anti-vaxxers versus people that want to vaccinate you've got people that are saying saturated fat is bad it's good
proteins bad no it's you've got you know all these camps of people that all you know are just basically like it's almost like a religion where they just they know what the best diet isn't everyone should do it and and the reality is is that it may not be the best diet for everyone you know and that's something that we all very yeah I mean that's something you know so so before the industrialized you know civilization occurred like occurred food was like the food you would eat was you know according to where you live geographically right because you weren't getting food from all parts of the world like you were basically we're at whatever you could grow in that part of the world is what you would eat right and so like people would eat carbohydrates or fat saturated fats or you know various foods you know different at different rates because they were you know that's what they had right and it's thought that you know over over time that humans adapted to the to the region and they adapted so that they could cross you know basically process that food better and at least that's the theory the reality is what doesn't matter how it happened we know that that it's true and people have different variations and genes that are involved in nutrition and also in everything else so regardless of whether or not that's you know how it actually occurred it it happens and I think one of the best examples of that is a study that was published in 2015 in Journal of cell from the Weizmann Institute 800 different people were given a continuous glucose monitor whether their blood glucose levels were measured every five minutes and these people were then they submitted samples for their for their DNA to be analyzed and then also their microbiome which is the bacteria that live in the gut and 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 and they measured people's glucose response to these various foods 800 different people and what was found was that the glucose response varied vastly according to a person's genetic and also microbiome makeup so people you would think well people are going to
have a high blood glucose response to white bread maybe maybe somewhat to the but there's fiber in there and that sort of changes the way you know the the glucose levels reached the blood but the reality was that some people had high blood glucose to the saturated fat which is sort of you know not people don't think about that so that this is this was sort of like one of the first proof of principle studies showing an 800 different people that people are different and they measured the various genes to show it and also their micro by the gut bacteria varied as well because that changes the way you're metabolizing foods so some of these genes like we know we know for example P P R alpha P P R gamma FTO apoe4 which is what I have all change the way your body metabolizes fats and also weight the way your body transports like fatty acids and cholesterol throughout the body and people with some of these polymorphisms in these genes if they eat a high you know saturated – low poly or monounsaturated fat ratio they can actually have more adverse effects they can have a higher blood glucose they can have higher LDL cholesterol they can have higher obesity risk higher type-2 diabetes risk you know so and that's like I said that's that's something that most people that were that would eat a high you know saturated fat diet wouldn't have and so I've actually been able to look at some of my genes because there's companies now that allow you to do that and so you know I know that I have an April before so that changes my my diet in a way so you know it because the April before not only predisposes you to Alzheimer's disease and also from adverse effects to TBI but it also affects the way cholesterol is transport in your body and it doesn't get recycled very well so I have more cholesterol circulating my body at any given point compared to my husband Dan who doesn't have an AP for a lil and we eat the exact same diet like my LDL will be like 20 points higher than his you know like this account is there a negative health effect of that so although it gets a little more complicated but so that the the LDL cholesterol by the way for a long time it's been it's been thought to be a predictor of heart disease because with nutrition and here's the thing with nutrition is is
that a lot of our studies are 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 or that right so it's a correlation it's not you're not you're not showing it's a causal factor right it's a correlation and it's notoriously like actually my my mentor for my postdoc dr. Bruce Ames he has this joke that now analogy but it's a joke that he tells it really illustrates this type of study epidemiology it's it's he says that people that are born in Miami are born Hispanic but they die Jewish so you're born Hispanic and if you don't know the culture rich cultural history of Miami where there's a lot of big Latino community people coming there from you know Cuba and various places but then old people go there to retire because they hate the cold and they want to like you know you know move and move to Florida so you just look at the data if you just look at the birth records and the death record you'd be like oh people are born Hispanic and they die Jewish Wow like right that is epidemiology that's like it's very funny it is and it's it's a great like analogy because it really does highlight the complexity of doing these types of studies there's all sorts of other factors that play a role if right I mean sure so so the thing is is that with nutrition in particular you have to look at not just the epidemiological study but you have to look at control randomized control trials where they use biomarkers as predictors of certain diseases you have to look at animal studies where mechanism is done to understand how things are working you know you have to look at the whole picture because if you just use these studies where oh you get a low protein diet it's you have a lower all cause mortality boom I'm gonna be a vegan well guess what lots of other things are complicated you know there's there's lots of other factors or the saturated fat one so you asked me does LDL like does that predict your heart disease risk well on a population level for a long time it can because LDL LDL is you know one thing that transports cholesterol and higher levels of it have been associated with a variety of
different heart disease risk factors but the thing is is that as you know as time has gone on and tools have got better and when we're able to like look more at mechanism scientists have now start to uncover oh there's multiple types of LDL it's not just one type there's different sizes of it that are circulating in the blood and one size is really good the large size the large buoyant size is really good because it's tool at delivering cholesterol to your cells and delivering fatty acids to your cells where you need it every time you make a new cell in your body guess what it needs cholesterol it needs fatty acids that's great but there's also smaller sizes that that that are more dense and basically they can't get recycled back to the liver there's a there's a basically a life cycle of the cholesterol it's made in the liver goes out in the bloodstream Mew donates all this stuff to your various cells and it goes back to the liver and it's you know it's sort of like recycled well if you can't recycle it then it stays in your bloodstream sort of indefinitely and then it can undergo inflammatory transformations there and all sorts of things you know bad things happen and so the longer you have something in your bloodstream if it's there for for like decades chances are some shit's gonna go wrong right is this a dietary issue or a hereditary issue in terms of like the size of the LDL so that I don't know how much is known about the hereditary aspect of it it's known that apoe4 can increase the risk of just having more LDL total yeah right but so what type of LDL it's not known just like regular total LDL not looking at the particle size now 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 and that's been shown in controlled randomized controlled trials we're like healthy men given almost like something that was like a soda you know they were they're given a big drink of just sugar sugar sugar a drink for three weeks every day and it completely increased their their inflammatory biomarkers for like a hundred percent but it also ramped up their small LDL particle size now let me stop right here because this is a really important point for people that think that drinking a
large glass of orange juice is different than drinking a glass of soda it's really not no it's not because you don't have the fiber crazy I mean that's crazy if you if you say that to most people they're like what are you talking about you're talking nonsense no if you have a 24 ounce glass of orange juice you're getting a giant dump of sugars in your system right and it's there's many people that think that that's a healthy thing to drink right and so and that's and 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 LDO it's known to increase that and in combination you have people that are drinking orange juice or even worse eating cookies and cake and drinking soda and bread all that's refined carbohydrate stuff now those two in combination together you've got that you've got the LDL and then what happens is with the refined sugar is inflammatory transformations happen and you get the small dents so this is why it's a problem when people try to look at diet in very simplistic ways right when people will 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 I mean this is this a very simplistic I said if people will often say yeah it vary it's it really truly is like I said it's you have to look at mechanism controlled trials you have to look at observational studies are also important you know we also have low controlled trials where people that are put on a high fat and low or find a carbohydrate diet for I don't know a month or so or something like that I don't remember the exact time had all like biomarkers lowered for heart disease risk is there something that people who can do to take on that diet like how do how do you do that if you want to go vegan is I know a lot of people like to be vegan but in order to get all those fats and and yeah 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 like ketogenic high-fat diet or a low carb high fat diet whatever diet they're doing first thing you should do is definitely measure these biomarkers
LDL particle size can be measured triglycerides inflammatory biomarkers like high sensitive c-reactive protein where would someone go to do that what's a good place to go true health Diagnostics I mean I don't you you can ask your your primary care doctor I know true health diagnostics is one that does like whole panel of really good ones including the small dense LDL particle size a growing number of physicians do measure LDL particle size wellness FX is something if you don't want your physician to know what your LDL is because you don't want them to like have some opinion about it wellness FX is a company that will also measure your LDL and particle size and a variety of other biomarkers as well now what you're saying about refined carbohydrates or refined sugars and LDL and small LDL or large LDL is this common knowledge amongst primary care providers I mean is this something your doctors going to understand are they going to try to put you on statins it's it is not ubiquitous it's not standard of care and it's not ubiquitous in in 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 an X number of them have to be done a lot of I don't know everything that goes into how regulations are made but it's a lot of it's a lot of clinical trials and a lot of things before any sort of you know regulations are changed so that's something that is not standard yet you can always print out papers and give them to your physician I interviewed a guy on my podcast he's a cardiologist I'm an MD the name is dr. Ronald Krause he's actually the guy who pioneered the test to measure small dense LDL particle size and he's really been a leader in the field for understanding the role of small dense LDL particles in cardiovascular disease risk and and how basically a person with high LDL total cholesterol may not actually be at risk for heart disease unless you look at the actual particle size and and things like this is what confound the literature because you can and this is what people often refer to as cherry-picking it's kind of
even when I hate when people say that because I think anyone could do that I feel like really the response that someone should say is look at the totality of the data look at the clinical trials look at the observational studies look at mechanism look at everything and get the picture like that's that's that's the way you should you know approach nutrition science so um you know he's really been a leader and looking at all that but I kind of didn't answer your question about the people that are vegan want to go you know eat more of a high fat low carb sort of diet or even a ketogenic diet right you know so that's that's something that they're vegans are interested in doing as well and you know I've never i personally because my apoE background and by the way that's kind of what motivated me to get I 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 were sorts of risk and I'm like there's there's absolutely things you can do in your diet and lifestyle to modify that disease risk and so that's something that I'm you know really interested in and people can actually you know you can measure your DNA but the DNA doesn't tell you everything you have to measure blood biomarkers like the blood biomarkers are really key to know if a diets working for you or not and 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 AP we for PPAR gamma those are like free reports they've they've tried a ketogenic diet and it was like awful for them their inflammatory biomarkers went up they're small dense LDL particle went up all this stuff that happen and then they'd use the tool and found out they had for example the PPA our alpha gene which is a gene that's key for the process of ketogenesis producing ketone bodies from you know from oxidizing fatty acids and and people that have a certain one don't do it very well and like the diet can be detrimental like it can it can do more harm that's critical because you know first of all I've been irresponsibly telling people to do that to like I said I think ketogenic diet I responded very well to it so I've been telling people to get on that record
least try it so for what is exactly the gene what is the issue so they're so PPAR alpha mmm-hmm it changes it's it's a gene that's involved in it's involved in fatty acid metabolism absorption of fatty acid it's also it's in the in the liver involved in producing ketone bodies from from the fatty acid so that specific gene is essential for the the process of ketogenesis during a fasted State and also if you're doing you know a ketogenic type of diet and so a certain there's certain variations in that gene that don't do it very well and so the high-fat diet what ends up happening is you're not you're not metabolizing the fatty acids and producing the ketone bodies quite as well and 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 nearly do you know so there's this varied response you can also have more inflammatory biomarkers for various reasons as well because you're not oxidizing the fatty acids in producing the keys and bodies as well so there's lots of things that change but like you know knowing the genes is one component I think I think that you have to measure the biomarkers first and 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 to want to measure hba1c which is your glycated hemoglobin which is a marker of sort of your long-term blood glucose levels actually should you have one test initially like a baseline test exactly that's really key do you think the origins of this is your ancestral origins like what your your ancestors diet consisted of low fat yeah that's what I was kind of getting at first and that's the theory at least right like we don't we can't prove that but but there are scientists looking at like different regions like people that live for example in northern Europe how they ate more fat and they're able to do that better and so there are scientists that are investigating that because it's interesting to know why why that is but yeah that's that's the thing that's it's and I think it really explains a lot like with the ketogenic diet there's
it's something that I've become really interested in recently because I've been you know following in the field and it appears you know as though there is a really there's something about it that is really important for the way your mitochondria age like it really seems to help your mitochondria age better and I think that there's you know there's multiple I talked to a a sort of an expert he's the president of the buck Institute for research on Aging and his name is Eric Burdon 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 healthy part of the life they were living they were living longer and they're living better and in and also their memory was like dramatically improved and when you say cyclic is there a specific range that you're saying yeah so that and this is the how these questions for him that I that I asked him about and the cyclic so it was every other week so one week they were ketogenic the next week they were just getting normal normal child diet and then ketogenic so they were cycling every other week and the reason for that is because for whatever reason animals when they just when you just give them food to eat like like ad libitum like whenever they want even if it's a ketogenic they'll just still keep eating like so just keep eating it like and and they can become it can become an obesogenic diet where they're where they become fat and it can actually decrease their lifespan even though it's ketogenic and I think that's partly because fatty acids in order to use them they have to get inside the mitochondria to be used and it has energy and if they don't get inside the mitochondria then they just get taken up into adipose tissue and stored as fat and fatty acids themselves will when the levels are high enough shut that transport system that does that off so it's like a negative regulator so if you just keep on bombarding the body with fat fat fat fat fat like non-stop without arrest then you start to like not be able to use those fatty acids because it inhibits the transport system it's called the Carnot old Palma toll transferase for those nerdy nerdy biologist geeks out there that that you know so anyways I
totally dragged right address there it's um yeah the cyclic energetic die so that that was something that extended their health ban and it's became very interested in that and so the thing that's super interesting and as I was talking to dr. purdon about this is that you know there's a couple of things one obviously you're not getting a lot of blood glucose hits all the time right when for the most part if you don't have a gene polymorphisms that are the way you process a trait of fact right so you're not your your your insulin response is not happening quite as often that's lowered and there's there's there's benefits with from that alone right but 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 you know berries and some some some other fruits you know so and my blood glucose levels have always been pretty pretty good like you know fasting blood glucose and all that with the exception of my lack of sleep recently and you know but so the question I wanted to know was like okay well what else is going on and it seems as though the production of the major circulating ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate really is having an anti-aging role and you know dr. Friedens work showed that it it's it's changing the expression of genes and it's like activating longevity genes and all this but the thing that's super super interesting to me is that the way it's metabolized by mitochondria is different than other energy sources and without getting too much into chemistry it's it's not in order to produce energy you have to use something called electron reducing quote equivalence and they can be in the form of nad NADH ratio or F ad to age and so it's not going through one of those pathways that generates more free radicals and more basically leaky electrons that can damage mitochondria it doesn't go through that pathway like other energy sources so it's like you end up net not not you know basically having lower lower inflammatory and lower oxidative damage to your mitochondria it also doesn't have what's called pro to prote anaphoric activity so it's almost like the way your body your mitochondria is metabolizing it is
better because metabolism you're constantly generating damage like damage constantly right now all the time it's you're just from normal metabolism and it seems as though there's something about that beta-hydroxybutyrate that's superior and it's it's it's definitely got me super interested in it and you know for like the longest time I was thinking well I'll get my beta hydroxy butyrate by doing time restricted eating right where I'm eating all my food within like 10 hours yeah and then I'm fasting for 14 hours and I'm you know depending on how I what your activity levels are and all that how quickly you deplete your liver liver glycogen you can start to make beta-hydroxybutyrate even within like seven hours if you're really active you know so I was like well I'm getting my beta hydroxy butyrate from the fasting part of the timer shit-eating right but I have become super interested in in this possible even because there's other reasons I don't need a ketogenic diet like to get all the micronutrients I like to get prebiotic fiber you know that's really good for the gut microbiome but then again I don't we don't know exactly how can you genic diets you've been affecting the microbiome so that's sort of still an open you know open field so I I'm sort of thinking can I do some sort of cyclic you know ketogenic diet and also for me because I have a belief or I do eat saturated fat but I eat it from like Whole Foods I don't like I used to do a lot of cooking with coconut oil which is high in saturated fat and I'm like what do I need to do that for like I don't really need to cook with coconut oil I can use avocado oil you know and so I changed that and my LDL just dropped 20 points from just that alone you know so it's like an end but L do overall not large versus small yeah my LDL overall the first time so my baseline I didn't measure small then so I don't know what my baseline was but I did measure the large so the large and like I said the large can transform into the small vents and so with with refined sugars with refined sugars that's what's know but like you mentioned genetics there may be something that we don't know what what is the mechanism for the transference of a law with the the sugar with the LDL
like what what causes it to become small dense I'm not sure we entirely understand that yeah just because you know there's a correlation there definitely a correlation in there has been showed in clinical studies to not just be correlation but causal where you give people refined sugar and they're a small vessel yeah so same diet same diet adding refined sugar you see a radical difference you measure they're small dense LDL before giving them the refined sugars same diet and then you measure after this the Kasota you know blasts of refined sugar for three weeks and they're small dense LDL particles going through the roof so that's causal because you're giving them something you're measuring it before and after effect and if there's anything that we can conclusively point to it's that refined sugar is absolutely bad for you there's no doubt about that right I think so I think that you know there's so many studies that have shown you know the inflammatory biomarkers go up you're a small dense LDL biomarkers go up there's correlation studies showing that people that you will find 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 their studies and men would like they give men 75 grams of refined sugar and their testosterone drops by 25% I mean it's changing a lot of things you know in the body and in a negative way well mine my testosterone doubled when I changed my diet when 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 doing everything exactly the same it's it was stunning and I felt different like I filled the difference feel the difference is my energy levels feel the difference cognitively the cognitive thing was a big thing and I attributed it to cutting out refined sugars and refined carbohydrates yeah I think that stuff's poison there's been studies showing it also affects your brain and negative way as well and people that eat refined sugar you know there's there's more brain atrophy I mean there's lots of correlations the 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 and you know those guys they'll use refined sugar just to like yeah to you know their increased transport you know glucose transported their muscles and are using it as an anabolic way to like get bigger muscle and I know guys who do that after they work out the candy yeah I'm and and it it's not like it's it's you can't compare like people that aren't working out like two hours a day or you know like that to normal people aspiration sedentary people weight lifters yea weightlifter people that are just ripping their body apart there I mean there's a lot of savages out there that are doing crazy powerlifting workouts and benching and squatting and I know a lot of guys who like to eat candy afterwards right ya know it's it's certainly you know I think that those people you know it they're they're not it's not it's not acting the same way different requirement that their body needs right terms of glucose right and and the thing is I mean still it's like the way I think about it is it's not really nutrient dense you know I like to like I'm like well there's lots of there's reasons yeah there's reason why I like to like take it if you want the sugar and you know eat an orange right or an apple or something like that or you should you know probably the better move than eating candy but I think they just want a ton of it and what is the what's the anabolic factor like if you were gonna eat candy or something like that has a bunch of refined sugar after like an intense workout what would be the anabolic factor well the glucose so the the workout causes glucose transporters that transport glucose to like go through the roof and so you start the Bluecoats from your bloodstream it's like sucked into the muscle and then in the muscle you know you're you're basically you can you can use that as a way to have insulin and it can be anabolic right where where whereas if you weren't doing that then the 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 that's at least my understanding that's in combination of
course with amino acids which are also important for the growth of the protein and muscle but that's my understanding of it I think so like in general though if someone could cut one thing out of their diet refined carbohydrates and refined sugars be a great way to go I think the one if you were to think about the one easiest thing that you could do that would have the biggest impact on your health and if you're talking about we're not talking about someone who's already paleo or someone like you right we're talking about like standard American person yes the one thing that they could do to have the biggest impact on their health I would say is to cut out refined sugar like that's that's probably the biggest thing you know the easiest thing I mean I don't know how easy it is that you know it can be a different very dick yeah and that's been shown dopamine levels you know can get activated and then also your gut biome correct your gut biome literally has an impact on what you desire right yeah it does so your your the the thing about your microbiome and your gut is that like you know the the the microbiome eats it's at the distal part of your gut so it's in the colon right the large intestine the and of the large intestine is where most of the trillions of bacteria are and those bacteria actually eat the fermentable fiber that we don't digest we don't we don't process and the fermentable fiber comes from a variety of plants from from plants and from seeds and nuts and you know legumes as well outs you know so there's different types of fermentable fiber that are found in different types of foods and they feed different species of bacteria well when you don't get enough of that fermentable fiber what ends up happening in fact it's been studies showing that like 75% of the microbiome population changes and like when when you don't get at all any fiber and what happens a couple of things one is those mic those bacterial 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 carbohydrate and so you actually start to break down your gut barrier just from that the 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 small intestine is where you absorb sugar protein fats they swim up there and guess what sugar they start so they start to like eat the sugar and they start to multiply and the thing about having bacteria in the small intestine where it's not supposed to be is that it causes the same response that that eating gluten causes where it basically those those it's called small bacteria intestinal overgrowth and what happens is that the tight junctions that make up the gut barrier start to open up and open up and that allows the inflammatory immune cells to be in contact with bacteria and of course immune cells go Oh bacteria and they start to like try to kill it because they think it's not supposed to be there it could be potentially harmful pathogenic bacteria and so they starts to set off an immune response inflammatory immune response and the more you have the more sugar you eat the more your this population of bacteria is flourishing so so that's like that's another thing that's that's um that's changing that but it's also the one of the reasons like I was saying you know with them and I've never actually tried a ketogenic diet but because you know for various reasons but I I'm not sure how much plants you eat like what like can you eat like a good amount of can you get likes it really depends on the individual you know you know on 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 he'll test the both of them you know X amount of minutes later and they have a radically different response between the two of them it's really interesting like his wife is much more resilient and he has much more of a difficult time getting back into ketosis it's really he's documented a lot of it on his his Instagram page but I think it speaks to what you were talking about before that it really depends on where your ancestors evolved and it really has there's different we very biologically so much right we do and and that's that that you know affects how we respond to these foods and all that you know but um anyways what was the other thing I
wanted to ask you about oh the NAD to remember the NAD I was talking about like the nad and NADH ratio and energy so this is something what does any do stand for again nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide and it's something it's something that um it's kind of in a way similar to ATP where it's like used as an energetic currency throughout the body for various things but it's actually like required to like for your metabolism like you need it to metabolize you know fatty acids and glucose and you know amino acids but you also you need it to repair damage you need it you know for a variety of other things that are happening and the thing is is that these energy levels in tissues that are very energetically demanding they deplete so for example if your immunes if you have chronic inflammation and your immune systems can't connect chronically being activated the nad levels are going to that it's kind of like triaging and so what happens is your metabolism suffers and it's been shown now that nad levels in like you know multiple tissues with age they deplete lots of preclinical studies have shown that you know plays a role in the aging process and if you for example take like a mouse that has progeria this Pro aging phenotype and then you give them the NAD it like can like basically kind of rescue that in a way and they like live a more normal health span and more normal lifespan so it's like and there's lots of studies showing that in various ways there's recently been a lot of interest in it because the nad there's a way to replenish it through supplemental form called nicotinamide right aside so nad is actually formed from vitamin b3 like nicotinic acid or nicotinamide or from tryptophan but nicotinamide right aside is another precursor that you can take in supplemental form and there's been you know studies over the past few years looking at how in animals it's been able to increase nad levels it's able to like basically improve physical performance cognitive performance it's able to you know make your tissues aged better or your organs aged better in animals so now there's like been preclinical trials that are sorry clinical trials that have been under undergoing one showing that you actually can take the supplemental form of nad to
my website and you can increase your nad levels just dependent manner so as I say that just came out recently and there's now there's now like 10 clinical trials that have been under that are undergoing right now looking at the role of supplemental nicotine Oh nicotine my right aside in dementia in obesity traumatic brain injuries another one and then some other type of metabolic dysfunction so that the these are currently you know being investigated in humans so the nad thing is another real big interest of mine I did buy the supplement but I'm not taking it right now cuz I'm breastfeeding and I'm just not sure how that mm-hm you know how that goes but you're asking me about the the IV stuff I think that's something that is now popular everywhere I've looked I've looked it up it's like it's becoming really popular but the thing is is that there's really no clinical evidence of it you know of like if you if you intravenously take nad like is that gonna have the same effect that you know taking nicotine my right beside does does it get into your cells so it's an open question but it seems it seems like people are getting results now obviously that's all anecdotal I've done anything IV view ever done like IV vitamin infusions no you know I haven't I haven't either I haven't done anything that's always a look at good what right I mean I don't want to sit there and have vitamins pumped into my veins for nothing I've had people I've had people tell me the like great things about doing the nad nad plus is what it's actually called but I've never actually I've never tried that and I think before I would do something like that I would probably try the nicotine my bribe aside which we know for the fact does increase you know nad levels and multiple tissues and it would be nice to have some of these clinics that are doing it like aggregate the data and publish it because no one's gonna fund this study like people aren't studying that you know so there's no way to really know if it's placebo or really you know because there's no data you know so it'd be kind of nice if like people would start to aggregate data on that but well do you know it's 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 one of the the studies that I've read pretty recently was about the amount of people that suffered ill health consequences that ate red meat five days per week versus people who didn't but what they didn't take into account was what the people ate with the red meat they drank soda whether what how did you get your form of red meat was it grass-fed beef was it bison or wild game or was it a burger from Wendy's with fries in a sugar bun and all the the [ __ ] that people eat along with the food and that you you literally and people would cite these things as being evidence that something is negative for you that red meat is negative for you but you're not taking into consideration all the things we're eating with that red meat so these studies that come out like that they're so they're they're really annoying because it's like you have to you easily talk to people about it you have to like sit down with them okay sit down okay this is a long process like to try to try to figure out what is the cause of these issues you're talking about a lifetime of abuse you're talking about like all sorts of different health consequences of a variety of different foods and you're attributing it all to one part of your diet and that's very difficult to do unless you you've isolated everything else and done a bunch of different studies where okay I ate nothing but fruits and vegetables and I really healthy and I read meat five days a week or I nothing but [ __ ] and fries and buns and pasta and I didn't eat red meat at all and now here's the results right you're making a really good point and that is the the combination of how these different foods are interacting in our bodies extremely important like we talked about the refined sugar and saturated fat combo well you know the the the red meat and even just you know protein like itself like you know essential amino acids that are coming from animal protein itself and how that is interacting with you know eating eating a terrible diet like refined sugar which is causing damage to our cells you know also exercise and this is something really the the protein exercise thing seems to be really key but 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 and it found like a lot of other studies that higher protein consumption higher meat protein consumption from meat was associated with a higher wall cause mortality and a higher cancer mortality but then when the data was sub analyzed and and and other unhealthy style factors were looked at so so if someone had one other unhealthy lifestyle factor being either obesity smoking excessive alcohol consumption or being sedentary then they had a higher they were had higher all cause mortality and higher cancer mortality if they ate meat but guess what if they had zero none of those other unhealthy lifestyle factors they didn't have they had the same all cause mortality and cancer related mortality that they're not eating meat eaters had so I think that really highlights the importance of other lifestyle factors other foods you know that's really important when we're when we're looking at these observational studies when you were talking about saturated fat and the negative consequence of eating refined sugar with saturated fat is there a negative corresponding negative consequence like if you had if you had negative or if 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 saturated or does refined sugar have less of an impact of eating so so the refined sugar is the LDL right it's an issue with yes fat yeah it I think yes so the LDL will go down if you're eating a vegan diet diet and even though you're still eating cookies or some whatever vegan stuff you know refined sugars probably like less dangerous to someone on a vegan diet is that yes I think so and and the thing the thing with that is is that if you look at but if you look at refined sugar also refined sugars associated with heart disease risk in fact it's like one of the there was a big big study like four hundred thousand different individuals looked at refined stroke people that had the highest refined sugar intake but again saturated fats a confounding factor there right had like a four times higher risk of getting a heart having a heart attack but it's perfect you Illustrated it
perfectly and that is and that's where I think a lot of these guidelines like the American Heart Association come from if you on a population level if you say to someone reduce your saturated fat intake you're gonna lower the LDL risk and it regardless of all the other stuff they're doing you know it probably will on a population level lower their heart disease risk but on an individual level like someone like you and I we don't need all that other stuff you know we were very health you know conscious and do all these things you and I if we stopped our saturated fat intake likely you know well for me I guess my genes are a little different but likely wouldn't have the same effect so 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 L where the heart disease risk goes down just like it does when with saturated fat in fact there have been studies where replacement foods have done even 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 so basically that's that's kind of a proof of principle there but I do think that it's it's it's an important point and it's something that the American Heart Association they're they're now starting to at least mentioned the small dense LDL particles so I think that moving in that direction is good because it means that possibly then you know over the next decade we're gonna start to see okay now we got a start it's not just the LDL I'm confused about something you just said you said if you replace saturated fat with refined sugar if you replace the saturated fat with refined sugar if you sorry refined carbohydrates which I usually think of as refined refined carbohydrates it does not so the idea is if saturated fat was so bad if you replaced if you took the saturated fat and replace it with a refined carbohydrate it would lower the risk of heart disease and it doesn't it doesn't lower the risk so so basically so it's not the saturated fat so saturated fat along with refined sugar that has some sort of a negative synergistic effect that's what that's what are 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 and the wedding was when 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 shouldn't say research I'm a dummy but the the people that I've read who have criticized this that are actually scientists and researchers they have a huge issue with that statement they think that this is just it's too simplistic it's it's not taking into account all the various nuances in genetics diet ancestry all all the different factors but people read that and it's sort of like this cookie cutter approach and then they parrot it out to everybody else yeah it's true I mean that's that's exactly what happens and and the same thing goes with with the protein and it being bad as well and there's all sorts of nuances in the combination of the protein with the with the bad diet and also the exercise which is one of the one of the things with the with the protein is that it increases igf-1 and igf-1 is a growth factor and it can allow cells that are damaged that should otherwise die not die and so it can allow pre cancer cells to form a tumor and that's we know that from mechanistic studies and you know that's that's kind of a big part of the the eating protein essential amino acid specifically or what does you do this and they're found in animal protein and that's sort of the big argument there but there's also this whole argument where if you are one exercising the igf-1 goes into your brain it's been shown across the blood-brain barrier it goes into your brain and also in your muscle where it grows new neurons in the brain and actually repairs damaged mutton damaged muscle tissue and helps grow muscle tissue which is also an predictor of all-cause mortality so you know the again the exercise comes in there and then also the fact that if you're eating a good diet and you're not 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 you know these damaged cells from well this refined trigger you're eating that can basically become cancerous cells so
that's kind of you know with that study the observational study that looked at people that were eating me if they didn't have any of those unhealthy lifestyle factors guess what they're all cause mortality and cancer mortality was the same as the vegetarians and I think that's kind of highlighting that that that issue you know I have a friend as a scientist who's talking to me about me and he goes meat was essentially amino acids protein and water he's like it's not gonna cause you cancer it's like this is not what the problem is because you you have some issues with the way it's cooked so for sure like things that are charred are not good for you there's carcinogens right and in the black and charred yeah I mean there's heterocyclic amines that can form when you cook meat at a really high temperature and those are carcinogens and but our body our bodies have genes that are able to inactivate those some bodies but some not people can do it to various levels there's certain polymorphisms and 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 and the people that don't do it quite as well probably shouldn't char their meat as much like you shouldn't eat it like every day like chard but but that's not the big issue isn't so much that as the the igf-1 which doesn't cause cancer but it allows cancer cells to grow see the difference it's like one is like oh you eat meat it causes cancer well no that's not necessarily true you 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 so one is like promoting where it's promoting the growth of cancer and the other ones saying it causes so it doesn't cause in that sense now in the carcinogen you know and if you're getting a ton of carcinogens and in plus there's some studies showing that eating cruciferous vegetables the isothiocyanates and people that have that gene polymorphism that don't detoxify the heterocyclic amines as well if they eat a diet high in cruciferous vegetables and they have isothiocyanates
it they also inactivate those those about Pro carcinogens and so it'll broccoli sprouts broccoli cauliflower cabbage broad jacked up the broccoli sprouts industry the last time you're on it's amazing I've had people emailing me that like they're either them themselves or their father or someone they're taking care of their prostate cancer biomarker the prostate stimulating Angela antigen has like gone down like twofold after doing the broccoli sprouts every day for X amount of time which is something I we talked about because it's clinical clinical trials have shown ides it's very powerful now when you when you look at animal protein and I'm including fish in this for this is there any benefit to a specific type like someone was telling me that red meat is better for you than chicken and I was like how do you know and they're like well with how it makes me feel I said okay well that doesn't seem to make much sense like what is but is there a difference I mean obviously there's a difference in the protein content like of some meats like wild game has much higher protein content than say domestic beef but when you think like fish like is there is our living animals all created equal that's the question well of course there's lots of differences I mean if you you know 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 but there's differences in in the micronutrient concentrations I mean omega-3 fatty acids are in fish are a lot of irons and in red meat so there's difference you know different zinc you know iron selenium omega-3 fatty acids all these different things are found in different concentrations and different types of meat and you know so for that reason it's kind of good to eat a diverse array of different types because you're getting you know 22% of all your enzymes in your body require micronutrient as a cofactor to work you know in the omega-3 fatty acids are important you know really important for the brain hugely important you know for the brain so I think that in that respect you know that there are obviously differences in terms of the different types of meat that you're eating right I mean right so so
yeah but um and then the ratio of the proteins are different I don't I don't know exactly how what what those differences are but you know there's that affects things as well so do you think like a healthy approach if someone does eat meat is 2d a little bit of everything like a little bit of salmon maybe a little bit of red meat a little bit of bison a little bit of chicken I I think that's the approach I like to take because I like to I like to look at things in terms of nutrient quality and why am i why am i eating this food oh I'm eating this food because I want this type of amino acid profile I want these micronutrients you know I want either this type of prebiotic fiber or not and you know so I kind of look at it as these like nutrient delivery vesicles that I'm like taking in and and that's that's the approach I like I you know I it's I'm a little biased because I've been doing a lot of research on micronutrients and so I you know I know how important they are and I've and I've studied even in people things like biomarkers of aging like DNA damage and seeing how they change with different micro nutrient intakes or different types of fiber intakes or you know things like that so so I you know for me I kind of I'm a little biased in that sense but um you know it's it's the approach that I like to take you know for example this is a really good story my mentor Bruce aim Bruce Ames who I talk about a lot he was the inventor of the Ames test which is a test that really cheap tests that you can do this to determine whether or not something to carcinogen in fact I'm sure the heterocyclic amines were determined from his tests because you can dump something on and he can base it basically can tell you like in a matter of minutes right so he's that was his like he he was um pioneered that back in like the late 70s early 80s and he was responsible for getting carcinogens out of hair dye women's hair dyes out of children's pajamas lots of lots of really big health impact studies what's in pajamas there was some kind of polyurethane ish thing I don't remember exactly it's not there anymore but it was in it was it was to prevent them from it was a flame retardant it was a flame retardant and it was it was completely a carcinogen and it was ending up in children's urine
and stuff they were measuring it yeah so anyways my point is is that he used to be this whole like cancer chemical carcinogen field and then one day like you know someone in his lab did an experiment where they like left full laid out of the sample and there was like massive amounts of DNA damage happening he's like what's going on here and they started to do this in in mice and found that like a low folate dialate diet caused damage to DNA the same as being irradiated by an x-ray machine the exact same and then he went into people and found you know there was like a really small ex-pilot experiment but similar the the cause DNA damage on people that had a low folate diet and 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 and that became his thing from the 80s on and kind of from an accident yeah from an accident doesn't that happen all the time in lab all the time it's what's best stuff it 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 he looked his assistant had ordered this media that you put on cells and he looked at the media try to figure out was in it and they saw it was a specific type of media that the assistant had ordered incorrectly that lacked folate and so this whole thing was all started from that and so incredible yeah so he published a seminal paper where literally he compared mice being irradiated under an x-ray machine to low folate and it was identical now would that be something that people should take into their diet of say if there are flight attendants or pilots because don't they isn't like flying like a form of radiation you do get some radiation that's similar to an x-ray right yeah I mean that's it the folate it's a different mechanism by how its preventing it basically folate is needed to make a actual precursor to DNA and without that precursor you don't make the DNA right and you incorporate a nucleotide from RNA into it and so you basically make a break in your DNA strand but but DNA damage is yeah is something that happens with with you know pilots and astronauts and things like that and have been measured yeah it's been measured and
there was a really weird study that came out recently that astronauts they had like exceptionally longer telomeres then yeah where it's like it was totally counterintuitive where DNA damage usually causes telomeres to get shorter and so like if you were to have asked me I would have predicted that if the astronauts would have had shorter telomeres definitely some weird stuff going on we don't understand you know but um and there's obviously a variety of other things you can do to protect yourself from that but I forgot why the whole point is that the micronutrients were important Bruce Ames has been my mentor and friend for many years and and I've sort of been in this field of study for a while and so it's it's it's it's how I think about food and 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 and 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 and what's a good source of folate leafy greens in fact my Bruce's mentor when he was a graduate student is the guy who identified he actually discovered Foley by identifying my sliding it from spinach so spinach yeah leafy greens are great source of folate but the leafy green 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 in the plants where we're sort of just scratching the surface on understanding them like what they're doing in our body is like one for example is lutein its president leafy greens kale is a really really great source of it lutein is like its found in the first of all it was known that new lutein is important for the rods and cones in your eye and so people like they'll take supplements with lutein to help with their vision but all this recent research over the last few years is found is like in large amounts in the brain like what is looting doing in the human brain well it turns out it's like there's been clinical studies now controlled trials like giving people looting and and and and it's it plays a role in in cognition like people have better learning and memory scores after taking lutein it's involved in and crystallized
intelligence which decreases with age you know so there's like there's things like that another one is this one that I'm really interested in now I'm actually supplementing it with pqq and that one is it's made by bacteria and bacteria in the soil so it's made by bacteria because it's important for it's a cofactor for enzymes for their metabolic enzymes to work well plants take it up from soil and then we take eat the plants and get in our diet and it's it's been shown now in like in a few studies lots and lots of preclinical studies that's been shown to like regulate mitochondrial function improve mitochondrial function clinical a couple of clinical trials now have been done looking at how it affects humans if you supplement with like 20 Meg's a day improves cognition it also improves markers of mitochondrial function lowers markers of inflammation well it turns out pqq has like 20,000 times the catalytic activity then something like ascorbic acid so it's really powerful antioxidant and what I mean by that is so ascorbic acid goes through cycles of vitamin C it's it's either oxidized or reduced and it can it when it when it when it does its antioxidant thing it becomes oxidized and they can do that four times where it goes it donates you know it donates this this hydrogen and you know help it helps you know basically combat reactive oxidative stress but then it gets oxidized again and it can do it again four times P Q cube does it 20,000 times like isn't that mind-blowing 20,000 times and it's really concentrated in breast milk so I'm actually taking it right now it's it's super interesting it seems like something everyone should stop them but I think maybe so yeah because you know I you know you never really know but I'm supplementing with it and and I certainly don'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 in humans as well so and like again you can you get it from plants but 20 milligrams a days when I'm taking because that's what the two different clinical trials have shown what's the
best plant source of it I don't know what the best I'm sure you could find that Google but because various berries plants take it up from the soil so probably things that are growing in the soil right that would be the best but yeah it's like it's found like five or six fold higher and higher levels that it is in our tissues and plants of course because the plants are the source of it but but yeah taking a supplemental form you'll be getting orders of magnitude more do you have a supplement company that you rely on the most I do so the thing with supplements is that there's they're really risky there'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 clover leaf and stuff so one of the supplement companies so and and there's a scientist friend of mine his name is dr. Jed Fahey he's like he's a guy who discovered that broccoli sprouts are the best source of sulforaphane he he measured a variety of supplements and he was looking specifically at like precursors to sulforaphane and he looked at a variety of different companies and one of the companies that was just really really really good and reliable was thorn thorn th o RN E and that's something I don't have any affiliation with him or anything but that I always they're my go-to brand whenever I'm looking for a supplement like I took I took their prenatal from throughout pregnancy actually I'm still taking the prenatal I'm breastfeeding I take their vitamin D and vitamin k2 I take pretty much a lot of my stuff comes from them and the pqq however that I've only been able to find from life-extension and I think life extensions pretty okay so far it's like I can tell but thorn is like my my favorite company so far just because I've got data from a scientist that I you know trust yeah it's it's a difficult issue and tainted supplements are a huge problem with athletes a lot of false positives or not even false positives a 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 and so like the vats that they used to mix up one supplement will the whatever was in residual traces of it will wind up in some other stuff Wow real issue I think there's um what you're referring to there a lot of supplement companies that have a stamp on it called NSF which is the National sanitary foundation I believe they go and they investigate where the the supplements manufactured and they look at the quality and they also I think even look at some some of the what's in the supplements if the if they contain what they're supposed to contain to some degree but I know they definitely look at the manufacturing place to see if things like that were you know things aren't being cleaned right and there's contamination and all that so supplements that have that stamp are probably a little more reliable than ones that don't but it's still not like a sure thing right so it's not like it's just because it has that stamp it's it's going to be the best I think a lot of people listen to this they're gonna probably have to listen three or four times and take notes and go over this and try to figure out if if they're gonna do something how to act a 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 and like monitoring their blood levels and trying to find a primary care doctor that will kind of understand what they're trying to do yeah I mean the the the primary care doctor thing finding one I certainly can't help with that because I mean that's the struggle that you and I have but you know in terms of taking taking your own health into your own hands and monitoring blood biomarkers I mean there's a there's a few that are really really key I think for anyone doing anything any type of experimentation that that they should do and we've we've talked about the more ready you know the the small dense LDL the total LDL you also want to measure triglycerides high sensitive c-reactive protein HP 1hp a1c which is the your marker of long-term fasting blood glucose but also there's another test that you can do that actually is a really comprehensive metabolic tests to
measure how your body's metabolizing carbohydrates fatty acids and amino acids it's called the organic acid test and Genova Diagnostics offers 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 you know it explains to you what's lacking in your diet and what you could benefit from and what you can seems like there's there's a big opening for some sort of a business like that yeah I mean I think some people are actually doing it like Genova Diagnostics I think is one they do sort of do that like though they'll tell you what's missing or like they'll help interpret your data and Genova diagnostics and is it a nationwide company a nationwide yeah but I don't know about worldwide so if you're in Europe yeah yeah yeah so but and I think there's other companies that are kind of you know like wellness effects kind of is doing that a little bit as well they give you a consult with someone after you get a variety of blood markers measured and you know that you try to help you figure out that as well and you know so it's it's certainly I think there's there are other people it's just a matter of finding a good one it's always the the catch right yeah it seems like with this kind of stuff for the average consumer the average person is listening to this it seems very daunting it's like boy there's so much to think about there's so I mean and a lot of times when people get inundated with that much data they sort of shut down right I can't do this this is too much and I really wish there was like a nationwide network of places like that so he could just go to sort of like you can go to you know a dentist it should be like a place where you go to to get this kind of comprehensive information about your die the effects on your body and what genes you have and yeah yeah yeah I mean the problem the problem is we're still figuring out all those nuances and so it you know even even getting the data having the person interpreted it's you know it's constantly evolving right and you would have to have someone who's
completely on top of it all the time so we'd have to be like sending them new literature yes like constantly yeah because we're we're constantly changing the way we think about a variety of things and it would seem like someone billionaire dude would look want to hire you up and have them like we'll 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 yeah monitor their blood give them young blood yeah some George Soros type character is that real that young blood thing because I know that's a real thing with mice but are they really doing that with people because I had heard that Peter Thiel had done it but then he says it's [ __ ] he's never done it oh really he did say was yes oh ok find that Jamie Peter Thiel denies ever getting injected with young blood okay good to know yeah it is there there I know the the clinical trials that were doing done at Stanford I don't know if they've been released yet [ __ ] no Peter Thiel's not harvesting the blood of the eye look how that picture of him with fangs okay it says stories of count of countess's bathing in virgin blood vampire Nobles sucking the juice out of the young have captured our attention for centuries when the story's coming out the tech billionaire Peter Thiel was interested in transfusing teen blood into his own body it sent silicon valley into a fever dream but but there is something yeah so there's a company that does this Oh is there I didn't know that there's a Northern California company a startup that does this that gives you young blood yeah see if you can find that so that is a real that para by OSIS is what it's called and there definitely is this anti-aging startup is charging thousands of dollars for teen blood look at this kid kids probably high on ecstasy right they're always giving up his blood so they take this young person's blood that says like plot points from the HBO so yeah it's really credible what says no he's saying I'm looking into power bi osa stuff okay which i think is really interesting this is where they were you see he probably is looking into it he just hasn't done it because he's probably waiting to see if someone starts growing a foot on your head
Jesse cazza Karma's in Karmazin parmesan agrees his startup ambrosia is charging about eight thousand dollars a pop wasn't expensive for blood transfusions from people under 25 he said at code conference on Wednesday ambrosia which buys its blood from blood banks now how's about a Hyundai buying its book so they must specify who that people are now when you got blood bank do they didn't even know like what the [ __ ] you've been doing with your body that's what my I'm wondering I mean it's I know they monitor for certain disease like diseases and stuff they're like well no but it's like all the other nuances all the other stuff I don't I don't sugar and candy right [ __ ] yeah that's right until the oh is that represented in your blood I mean there's certain biomarkers that you can that yeah you can absolutely measure and you can certainly look at telomere laying or tender length DNA damage things like that I just have a joke about Dick Cheney that Dick Cheney had an extra Secret Service agent that they put on this like super healthy diet and he couldn't figure it out and you know and he would have to run when everybody else did everything was just really there in case Dick had a heart attack they were gonna cut this guy open like a fish and pull his organs out thank you give dick his heart but this is I mean this is what you would want sort of you would want someone like okay I want your blood I'm gonna pay you for your blood but look cabbie drinking right no smoking no sugar no [ __ ] you'd have to monitor them like you would like someone like the surrogate moms fresh bright you'd have to that have to live with me it happens like no they're doing right well you know what you know what else this is and this will be up and coming it's not just fresh blood so you know for people listening they don't know transplanting blood from young animals and to old animals like rejuvenates their brain it makes them live longer rejuvenates all their organs so like they're healthier and conversely and conversely putting the old blood into young animals messes them up makes them aged basically it makes them for worse cognitively and all that he's got something he's gonna pull up here it's saying it they found it in one test that it might have worked but it hasn't been read
cated and these two paragraphs say that it might not even be true which one interesting says some aspects of aging the 2013 study found could be reversed when older mice get blood from younger ones but other researchers have haven't been able to replicate these results that benefits of power by OSIS and humans remains on yeah I remember that what happened was they didn't they couldn't replicate the mechanism and they thought it was this growth factor called G D and F and they're like oh that's not replicatable like that's not what's doing it and then this other study came out showing that you could transplant the old blood into the young and it would reverse the effects and so now scientists are going oh is it that the young blood is rejuvenating or is that the old blood is accelerating the aging right see the difference though so that's kind of like I think where it's possibly at now but I was going to just mention to you that microbiome that's heading there as well like there was a preliminary study that was published not long ago in kill fish where the the microbiome from young fish was transplanted in the old fish net like extended their lifespan but like 40% Wow you take the microbiome from a young person like my son brings it down yeah well it's funny because they think the mechanism has to do with immune system the memories telling you your microbiome makes these short chain fatty acids and it totally regulates your immune system it you know you it regulates the amount of you know a variety of different immune cells that you're making and so like hematopoiesis is one which is making new blood cells and there's been studies that have looked at the microbiome of like really healthy 90 year olds and they look like the microbiome looks like like a 30 year old even though these are 90 year old people so usually the microbiome is vastly different in older people but these healthy at 90 year olds obviously they're healthy if they make it to 90 it's not that's not an average age most people make it to their microbiomes looked like a like a 30 year old which is super interesting so it's a whole new I think we're gonna start to see like kind of like the power of iosys that's like the microbiome microbiome transplant that's it yeah I love
headlines how they break headlines down and just just get you to click on it well poops the easiest right now it's like you know and they're doing these these these capsules now or they're taking freezing right yeah and and it's like helping people with her IBS and yeah of course like I think the problem was like making sure it doesn't taste like [ __ ] when it's going down cause like the capsule just makes it with sugar and then you got other problems I know it's it's crazy what do you think about stevia like so the stevia there's it's it's a non-nutritive sweeteners so it's not like it's not like aspartame or saccharine or what's the other ones sucralose yeah which by the way those have all been shown to like screw up the microbiome yeah yeah they like change those by the way coke is what the president drinks 12 cans a day of white yes no wonder why's making [ __ ] decisions twelve sorry are you serious yeah so New York Times story they said that he drinks 12 cans of diet coke a day and watches as much as eight hours of television a day so he's he's literally like a test monkey that really true that's crazy it's really true see we can find that article 12 cans of dare it is Trump reportedly drinks 12 cans of Diet Coke it looks like you're losing and using an ad blocker what's the main the main sweetener in Diet Coke aspartame is it aspartame yeah Trump drinks 12 diet cokes per day what can that do to a person's body then they have a scientist thought we're [ __ ] I'll tell you what it does to the microbiome it like changes the composition so that you're like you're getting the kind of bacteria that are really good at harvesting the glucose from from like the small intestine area and it makes people like become obese like that's the soceity of studies and people like that they've shown that in people and then of course they've done causal studies and animals showing that but stevia is interesting because I've seen positive studies with that where it seems to like improve insulin sensitivity which is kind of weird I I personally am always I'll use stevia like if I'm like gonna let's make some hot cocoa with a hundred percent cocoa and I just tastes like ass and like I need some stiff
it's like otherwise you're just doing a shot of it like hot cocoa with no sugar yeah 100% cocoa where is this yeah cacao there's all sorts of benefits with that too but but yeah with this I don't really use a lot of stevia like my in-laws they they like to put it in their smoothies because I've gotten so used to my smoothies tasting Kaylee that I guess you know and and plus I don't eat any anything sweet so I don't really need it but they like to put it in their smoothies and right you know I don't I don't know if it has any we haven't really seen negative health consequences with the exception I think there was one study and rats where they gave him like exceptional amounts and it like changed the hormonal profile or something so I didn't consume any during pregnancy because I was worried about that but well don't be a rat study study but I think that's probably my choice if I were to sweeten something like my put in my coffee or something I'd put stevia Trump is grossly overweight yeah that's so the microbiome what's funny is that people taking diet coke are trying or trying to like improve they don't they don't you know they don't want the refined sugar they don't want to have the the constant insulin response and so they're drinking the diet coke it's kind of ironic that it's like it's like making the more be obese by changing the gut microbiome no is is it safe to drink just one can every now and again or is it something you sure one can every now and then it's okay you know it's not I mean it's not going to like completely not 12 cans a day or even one kanaday you're constantly going to certain your microbiome you're constantly going to keep shifting it in towards you no really one can a day probably yeah because it's the microbiome is yeah yeah the way tastes though diet coke do enjoy a diet coke I haven't had diet coke was like 2006 I had one yesterday in the hotel cracked it open really I really haven't had one since 2006 cold yeah I used to drink I'm I used to drink them when for lighting college and stuff to stay awake and study for exams and all that but if you're taking something like that should you take a corresponding like some sort of a probiotic to try to combat that I 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 are you know have a lot of that have live bacteria and a lot of them but you know in order for the probiotics to work you either have to constantly take them or there needs to be space in your gut for them to take residence in right so if you're like filling your body with all sorts of sugar or diet coke and all this then where where's the probiotic that you're taking in gonna attach right so it's kind of flow through and the flow through has benefits but you have to keep taking it you know for that for that to happen so the so really a healthy diets the way it's not you can't just counteract with supplementation healthy healthy diets the way we need you know the the fermentable fiber which is what helps grow helps the the commensal and good bacteria basically grow and thrive but probiotics helped me a lot like after I had some I had some gut issues from from stress with a graduates graduate school and so that definitely helped me and I don't I I take him once in awhile now like you know but I don't I don't take them every day like I did you know when I was like trying to like heal myself and and the one I was taking I think we've talked about was 450 billion it's called VSL number three but now there's another company called vis biome that it's like the guy who made this BSL number three is doing this visible make the same formulation I'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 but there's been clinical clinical studies with both of them showing effectiveness and so it's it's certainly an interesting field growing field and there happens in the clinical studies in humans were for example the one that's super interesting the brain the brain stuff the way it's affecting the brain is interesting and there's clinical studies there was one recent one I think I tweeted where there was like 10 randomized control trials they weren't really high quality but it's a start and it like improved measures of anxiety and people other studies have shown a grin demised control trial has been a couple others showing it improves depression scores and also in cognition so there's you
know again the immune system modulation of the immune system will affect the brain immune system definitely is connect 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 we're like you can make certain things that are like if you if you have certainty 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 so that it to the brain part we don't really understand all the mechanisms it's just fascinating field then I'm like trying to follow and keep up on you know but I mean the question is to do normal healthy people need to take probiotics all the time and I don't know the answer but I do think that we need to eat the right foods to to get our microbiome healthy and avoid things like you know what's it called aspartame yeah aspartame nutrasweet all that's the same stuff right that's nutrasweet aspartame yeah I think it is the blue packet yeah yeah now getting back to developing fetuses and an infant developing in the womb when you were talking about foods that caused inflammation and autoimmune diseases there's a correlation between those two correct so when you're eating inflammation causing foods refined carbohydrates refined sugars and you have baby and if you you have this inflammation in your body and you're having autoimmune reactions and this can trigger many autoimmune diseases that people have what is there has there been studies done trying 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 well studies have been done you know to establish causation in animals and looking at correlation there have been quarterly correlative studies in humans so 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 that cause inflammatory types of reactions like refined sugar they're just looking at obese mothers and usually someone who's obese
typically is not eating a healthy diet so I think that more times than not can say well they're probably eating a lot of refined carbohydrates and things like that but you know and and so that you know the correlation between that and looking at you know negative health consequences and offspring like type 1 diabetes even poor doing poorly on cognitive cognition tests and things like that that's been looked at 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 and then you know making the female Mouse obese and you know changing basically the way they're the offspring metabolism and their immune cells are reacting so things like that definitely have been shown in in animal studies but it's it's really almost impossible to show a causal study like that in humans mmm right so it's like you kind of have to like you've got these like you were showing with the icita meta fin and ADHD we risk like you're not gonna have a controlled trial where they're gonna give women acetaminophen during pregnancy and see if it causes ADHD like that's never gonna happen like you course not it's it's it's unethical right you know so then the next best thing would be to like then go to animal studies and show it you know the problem the problem with the animal studies and this is this is always the problem is you know you never know how much of it translates you know things things are different like the way they're they metabolism iced metabolize xenobiotics can be a little different than humans and so things like you know these these mice can be a little more susceptible to things like BPA in you know things that are that are damaging then then to humans which which can contain certain enzymes that some of these mice lack that can you know basically alter their metabolism and make it not so harmful so to speak um but but still I think it's it's it's good if you if you've got like the prospective studies and humans that's correlating and then you've got the mechanistic studies and animals it's a stronger it's a stronger argument than if you just looked at one or the other you know and there have been studies that show there's a correlation between my gut microbiome and children with
autism and Asperger's and several other diseases right yeah yeah there happened the gut microbiome seems to play a major role in there's definitely some changes with autistic children and in Asperger's like being on the autistic spectrum mm-hmm so and and that's something that's like I'm not sure it's entirely understood but there's a connection there there's a connection with with the gut microbiome and Parkinson's disease with multiple sclerosis I mean these are these are lots of studies are coming out showing these connection with brain you know problems not not just you know autoimmune type of diseases like multiple sclerosis but neurodegenerative diseases and just even behavioral diseases so you know there's it's a whole it's a it's a we're kind of just starting to scratch the surface of this field with the microbiome and even cancer like there's there's you know it's known that the the some of the short chain fatty acids that microbiome certain species make increase the production of something called natural natural killer T cells and there's been animal studies where you inject them with like human tumors and literally it can you know if you give these animals a big dose of probiotics which which helped 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 and then if you look at there's some preliminary human trials like for example humans that had colorectal cancer and they're given a high dose of probiotic like close to 400 billion probiotic products a day it like lowered their cancer recurrence of course they had the colon room surgically removed but you know still it's lowering their cancer recurrence and I think that's interesting along with knowing what we know about animal studies and natural killer T cells and all that so you know it's it's not just brain but it's also a lot of diseases you know cancer you know autoimmune diseases lots of things and gut is so important it really is it's them it's the major source of inflammation in the body it's the major source like people are so worried about taking this X thing exogenously from
some chemical and it's like yeah you should be worried about that but you should be worried about your gut health like really and probably one of the least understood yeah general public yeah I mean an even scientist like we're just now really diving into that and I think that I should say least aware right yeah exactly most people have no idea that it's even an issue now 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 it has a negative effect refined sugars have a negative effect on your microbiome certainly I mean there's I think there's lots of contributing factors to autism you know I published a paper on this with vitamin D deficiency being one I think that diet you know diet um a lot of other factors play a role paternal age actually plays a role I'm smoking it's also been shown like maternal smoking so no age apparently particularly for the father the father paternal age yeah yeah so that seems to and that's something that's a couple of studies that published I think even recently it's just kind of a big one came out that was confirming because most people think it's maternal right but it's maternal plays a role in down syndrome so but I'm not aware of maternal age being linked to autism although I wouldn't you know be surprised there's probably an interaction with all these things an interaction with you know the the quality of the DNA in a woman's egg or sperm or man sperm and the type of diet they have and whether they're taking you know acetaminophen or whatever fill-in-the-blank pharmaceutical or a diet of the father on the diet of the shoulder like you were talking about before with obese people yeah 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 some males male mice that were given a high-fat high-sugar diet most the time by the way when you see headlines and says high-fat diet causes blank high-fat diet in animal studies is always high-fat high-sugar
and they always always it's all it's almost always almost always high sucrose and high high fat but why don't they say that I don't I don't know because I guess you know they're they're they're so 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 under but it it really is a high fat is almost always so I always call it high inflammatory diet because the combination of the two but anyways they feel that if you feed male mice on this diet of high fat and high street gross they become obese and then they have offspring if you feed the feet their their offspring normal diet so not not the high fat so they just had a normal child right that was offspring female offspring don't become obese but they get type 1 diabetes so it's because and then what and what was found is that the see the obesity was changing genes that regulate pancreatic beta-cell insulin production in their sperm DNA and that was passed on to the offspring so that's kind of again looking at it it's also complex I know it is it's complex it's interesting I'm I certainly like I'm constantly trying to optimize you know everything I can to you know the best of my ability and things are always changing you know that's the thing with science and that's also the thing with you know following following someone or following a certain Dogma you know things change and you have to be able to like accept that things change the more data we have the more tools that we have at our disposable to how to you know to investigate things you know our paradigm shifts like saturated fat I mean that's it's a huge paradigm shift you know people in my parents generation like my dad and you just convinced that like saturated fat is like gonna kill you right you know and it's it's parodied by people every day and you know we've talked about this before I believe on the podcast you and I about that study the studies rather were the scientists were paid off by the sugar industry right and that's the sugar industry is probably one of the worst examples like it's not always the case you know like if you have someone funding your research that is involved in whatever you're investigating the sugar industry
is particularly bad but it's not always the case like I was involved in research with blueberries and the research was funded by the highbush blueberry council and so we did this placebo controlled trial where we were looking at you know there's a whole panel of scientists involved and I was just one of the scientist when 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 and there was a placebo group so enormous amount of work you know we had isolate blood from patients they were they were given this blueberry powder they were taking twice a day for eight weeks or placebo powder and then we had to know look at their DNA damage and 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 but what was really surprising to me was that it the placebo actually lowered DNA damage just as well if not better than the blueberry powder and the placebo powder had a little bit of refined sugar in it and some like coloring food coloring and stuff and so I was like what's going on here how is the sugar lowering DNA damage well it turns out I had looked at gene expression data as well all these genes that are that are involved in stress response and in hormesis the reason i was looking at that is because there are certain compounds in the blueberries that can have a hormetic response and i wanted to see if that was being activated well it wasn't really robustly being activated in the blueberries but in placebo some of these pathways the same pathways that like sulfur frame can activate really well to some degree was being activated because we think it was slightly stressful of course it was a very small amount of sugar and also the the dyes that were used or have been shown to cause a little bit of a hormetic response but you know we're gonna publish that day it's not like because the blueberry foundation funded this study you know you know it's the the data is still this data is the data we didn't you know change anything so it's not always the case and again
there's something very interesting here and like you said science always surprises you and always the things that you like it's something to predict it's completely the opposite and there's something always interesting there always you know it's like as humans we think we know biology and we're like oh this is going to be predicted to be that and all of a sudden it's complete opposite and you're like what's going every time you come on the podcast oh I'm reminded of the fact there's so much data is impossible to keep it on in in your head and especially for one person we dealing with all these different fields all these different different scientists working on all these different studies and it's almost impossible for one person to have all this data in their head yeah it is but it's interesting to me yeah oh it's fascinating it's unbelievably fascinating but it's one of the reasons why boiling something down to a clickbait title of an article is so in it's so enticing because it's like Oh tell me high fat diet kills demise [ __ ] that all right I'm dum dum going back a low fat vitamins give you cancer that's gonna make a headline yeah yeah when you think cellairis yeah you have to dig into him when you're like wait a minute yeah yeah the the sugar industry study was from the 1950s and 1960s yeah probably pretty difficult to have something that biased and and fraudulent today there was even another one that just came out recently like we talked about one last year but there was another one that came out another study I think it was published in like pas or PLoS ONE of those two showing that they they suppress data that that refined sugar played a role in cancer and in heart disease so so and this was the 70s I believe so there's more more than one you know study that have now linked them to basically holding back data from being published you know so they're there one that's definitely I would say pretty bad I had someone send me some review articles that were basically stating that refined sugar was not bad and the review articles were were funded by the sugar foundation and I was like oh this is the one I usually don't say this like I usually don't say like you know based on who funds the study like
just the conflicts of interest you know disclosures but this is the one time where it's like you know the sugar foundation they're just notoriously bad well it's also contrary to everything else that's been established right yeah when you understand it's like when you look at like I say all those things the mechanism and you look at the interaction between foods and how the bodies you know processing these things and you look at the observational data and controlled trials I mean you know how many things can you say you know no – I mean just you know just looking at one thing there you know that's not as strong but you know looking at all of it is the big picture there's just so much money and sugar so many things have sugar in them I mean what we've allowed to have done in this country is literally allowed this one thing this one substance to be in I mean what percentage of our food do you think has sugar in it well I mean if you go to a restaurant or you go to get some condiments food yeah I mean those things there's there's it's Lipton everywhere like Thai food you know it's like you go it's like oh this tastes sweet like sugar yeah it's got sugar in it you know so it's certainly but that's almost acceptable it's like I get what you're doing trying to make something taste delicious because you're an artist all right you're you're cooking a meal and this meal is not just nutritious it's also both supposed to be a delight to the senses right that I kind of get you know but what I don't get is that it's permeated our entire diet the the average American diet it's it's in everything it's in the drinks we drink it's in the foods we it's in the bread that you consume it's in the pasta it's in the spaghetti sauce it's in I mean it's in everything it's if you go down the aisle at a supermarket and just grab a random canned thing grab it turn it you're gonna read sugar it's just it's you're gonna see it much more often than you're not going to see it right stunning yeah I know that happened to me not long ago when I like sent Dan to the store to get some like some kind of like I was wanting some wisher sauce like for my steak for some reason I was like why having a nostalgic thing I was like wait a minute no I can't eat this is it sugar in it yeah yeah Worcestershire sauce
tastes like [ __ ] why is it have sugar because it take more tastes more like [ __ ] if it didn't it it for whatever you know it's something I like a girl and I had this craving for it and I've seen as a kid too maybe was like more common we were young I think so cuz it's really it's not as common anymore no you never even hear about it my kids don't even know what it is my kid loves Cholula it's probably got sugar in it right I don't know if that one does actually I think that's what everyone does my seven-year-old [ __ ] loves Cholula she puts in everything she put it in milk way to tell her stop doing that bro she's so gross she thinks it's hilarious she'll squirt it right at our tongue show to shake it right our tongues she loves it doesn't know sugar beautiful great yeah it's a mouth bad innit probably got some weird red dye it's probably not even really read probably Brown I think if people are going to eat sugar though the one thing they should do is eat it within a certain time window what's in there nothing sodium there goes water peppers salt vinegar and xantham that's like a gum oh yes Anthem gum spices huh doesn't seem that bad yeah I don't think his anthem gums that bad but some of the other emulsifiers have been shown to also disrupt time of course yeah bye okay that stuff those little yogurt things the kids drink I don't know but it sounds familiar like yogurt II thing that a kids would drink yeah probably so I'm sure it does taste sweet but it's got it supposedly got some sort of probiotic in it for kids do you do you like limit yeah there it is by Oh kids we take regular by okay they they take that stuff 100% probiotic 0% yogurt okay so it doesn't have any lactose but look what's in there does it have an ingredients thing more where's the sugar [ __ ] I mean like apple f ingredients like on every page you can represent probiotic come on what's in there what's in there you [ __ ] doesn't say does it say ingredients oh they're hiding it from you it's sweet man I'm telling you it's I have a hard time believing there's no sugar in there well the other thing with those probiotic supplemented things is that like the amount of probiotics in them are like minimal right like yeah I mean
my kid likes kimchi really the one that puts she's a freak sugar no she more like you grams and those little things you know Mike both my youngest kid are a combination of me it's it's very weird you know I there's traits like the the seven-year-old is way funnier she's hilarious really she's like purposely funny that's so cool but the nine-year-old is just psychotic she's like she'll she'll do things like we went to a resort once on vacation she does cheerleading and gymnastics she's really into gymnastics she did cartwheels a half-mile home we had a walk home I'll she did cartwheels the entire way back that's crazy psycho yeah she's straight up psycho she's really driven Oh easy she's got a six-pack she's not you're really driven yeah it's sad scene in a nine-year-old I'm like you're [ __ ] kid she's gonna be nut I'll show you I'll show you later Wow yeah it's it's disturbing yeah like I mean I'm like ripped like I would get dizzy she's everything it's not like she's like you know I can't Iraq's a great thing she just exercises constantly that early life exercise is important to you oh yeah yeah they do MMA they do karate martial arts one of them in did you Jitsu I'm trying did you expose them to like different like different things to see what they like yeah yeah I mean it seems like gymnastics is her big one they kids little girls love other things where other little girls are also being active you know some gymnastics is a good one because you know they were all doing their tumbling mm-hmm I did that one oh yeah I think it's really good for body control too and I was like talking to her like she likes jiu-jitsu and she likes gymnastics too and I said well they really help each other because your jiu-jitsu will benefit greatly from your body control that you get from gymnastics like the ability to move your body like do backflips and stands and it's just also just the the balance and right ability just the dexterity that you get I totally agree I started ice skating when I was really young two-and-a-half my mom was I start when it's two and a half yeah so I started ice when I was two and a
half and that also is like a lot of balance and were very you know similar to like ballet – were just graceful sort of things and it really I think helped me with a variety of other sports I did later you know surfing and my surfing was you know a lot more graceful dance like do you still serve I didn't haven't served since pre-pregnancy yeah I wouldn't worry about sharks your mommy I am I am gettin getting more concerned about sharks I forgot what those things the last thing there was something I am yeah I'm getting a lot more worried about the show did you see that video of the guy who was swimming he was underwater scuba diving and the shark came from behind him and bumped him in the head is enormous no but you showed me the surfer won and that freaked me out oh the one with go surfing yeah that's right next room there's so frig-in all it takes is I mean they're eating machines yeah it takes one look at this this guy's underwater check this out boom put that again it didn't is that a great white that thing's huge it hit him in the head I mean that thing easily yeah where is this somewhere you shouldn't go that's scary so do you do like snorkeling or anything terrified where you did this one cool thing where we were on the Big Island last year and they take you out to where the dolphins are they're like fine schools of dolphins and they when the dolphins are in the area they'll take you out on the boat they find out where the dolphins are this bottom and then you jump in the water and you snorkel with the dolphins yeah I was amazing today were they like friendly they come up to you don't give a [ __ ] about you that's so are there dolphins are like really smart yeah well they're they're wild dolphins they're not like SeaWorld yeah yeah yeah I care about you man I don't even know what you're saying I don't know what you're doing why you wearing a watch like can't have anything to do with you why you want to portray just avoid you but it's just it's a crazy feeling just to be in them literally the middle of the ocean miles from the water or miles from the shore rather and you're just looking down and you see the vastness of it all I think
it's in a lot of ways there's a reason why beach communities are kind of cool they're like peaceful they're very mellow I think part of it is cuz you're humbled by this gigantic body of water that's in your face every day I think it's it's akin to staring up at the stars there's just something something about the vastness of the ocean that's so undeniable you're your your insignificance in the greater scheme of things is so undeniable that I think it chills people out whereas I think cities make people like more like I gotta [ __ ] get over there as just cars room I would get out of my way [ __ ] it's like yeah you're you're too much of an important factor in your immediate world I 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 get her constantly constantly next what's next anything yeah and and being out in the water was the one place that I would put all that behind and I would chill you know and I felt really good just sitting on my board and having the water of course I wasn't thinking about the Sharks but just having the water you know on me and just sitting out there and watching the waves and you know it's certainly there is definitely a very chilling factor to it and and for sure humbling yeah oh my goodness like I still I'm like terrified like on a big day going out because the ocean is just really scary like I sided from the Sharks like waves are frickin scary it's the power of them from there oh yeah I've had him I mean I've had some scary it's kind of amazing I get back in after that but yeah but we're it's so powerful I mean you know we're just slamming you down you're doing donuts and you're like you know I can't even imagine and some of those crazy people that get they get dragged out on a boat all the way out and Thailand you're going yeah they get towed in and then they just jump on those waves that are 100 feet like might get sweaty hands when I watch videos of that because I know the power of the wave and I'm like they're insane how can it's a huge like just because some of them do you know end up in the whitewash and it's like how powerful that must be I'm friend I'm Shane Dorian world record holder champion type big wave surfer dudes and
I have seen some videos of him doing it it's just it's I don't understand he's lat he laughs about it when you bring it up it's just what he does but it's I've seen videos of him doing it what is this is this him yeah here it goes Jesus Christ jaws to look at like come on I go bow hunting with that dude when oh really yeah Hawaii went to lanai we bow honey look at this look how how big those waves are and he's right so he came up out of that that's so crazy if that came down on you you're dealing with what a million pounds of water yeah even the first date like I want to know how they like survived that stuff because they does come down on them well I just think the this is how he lives this is his life he loves it I mean I think he's been doing this for a long time it's just a natural part of life to him he lives on the Big Island this is insane that's a totally insane see this he's lapping – he's clapping in the middle of it it's like he's obviously having a great old time [ __ ] that for sure I mean I like surfing but I wouldn't do that yeah in the Sharks – I mean the big island like you always hear about people get bit by sharks especially tiger sharks is that where Bethany Hamilton the one the girl that like lost her arm was she in Hawaii yeah believe so I believe so yeah how about that the little kid loses her arm she's like well I got another one yeah it's crazy just shows you how awesome surfing was baby not for me I wouldn't be that awesome for me either and I haven't gone back out I mean I'm just I can only like I've got so much time in the day to like work out and yeah I need you're like I need to get the biggest bang for my buck yeah so you're about running now I'm actually haven't I haven't gone back running I'm planning on it like what are you doing for exercise I'm doing the high-intensity all those spin stuff so you got continued that Donnie mutts your son you said is five he's four months or mine yeah so yeah see how long's he gonna give yourself before you try to start running I think after the holidays I'm gonna do it yeah what about things like CrossFit or something like that well I only have so much time I don't I think that organized I like to spin and like I said it's not like you're dancey spin I try that in like that you do a
lot of weight lifting type hatre sorry I need to do more I have like I do it I don't have a gym membership anymore so I have like weights and I'll do it like you know at my place but I haven't been doing as much of the strength training as I should that's also extremely beneficial and you know bone density it's big yeah so identity also just muscle mass I mean like there's been studies showing that people that do strength training like they have a 23% lower all cause mortality and like a 30% lower cancer related mortality independent of any other like you know health factors like obesity and all that stuff so you know the muscle mass is another thing that's really important in fact there was also another interesting study showing that like people that had lake strength like their leg strength was correlated to like massive improvements in cognitive function legs where not arms but only the legs so they're you know did various various different exercises were done like hand grip strength and all that but it was leg strength specifically I don't know if it's like something blood flow something about your how strong your legs are is somehow somehow indicative of blood flow to the brain or so dudes who do squats are geniuses if you know anybody does a lot of squats go to them so I do I do air squats I'd like said body weights watching yeah I do those and like you know I got you the hindi style ones where you come up on the ball your foot do you kind of jump as well I know know burpees yeah do squats you you you essentially you start off like this and 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 and 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 and they're called what do they called Hindu squaddies this guy's gonna do it this one see how he's going up on his heels this is like part of it he dropped down your heels come up and then as you press up well he's not he's not dropping his heels as he comes up which I think is weird he's I think he's doing kind of a variation on Hindu squats because his heels are never coming down he's also wearing raised heel shoes which I don't agree with your
heels come all the way down when you come up yeah yeah once you go try it heels go all the way down see if you can find someone who's like but I just don't those shoes are not those aren't wise those shoes were invented those kind of shoes are 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 the foot was the way your foot is naturally supposed to absorb shock you know not you know I'm sure you know about all that when Nike sort of changed the no no no Nike literally changed the way people run they put this big fat heel on the back of your sneaker and people started running on the heel instead of running on the ball of the foot when you land on the ball your foot your foot is a natural shock absorber right and what they did was made people run with their heel first which they're not it's not yeah it's terrible for your knees it's terrible for a lot of things and people develop all sorts of issues the correlation with running long distances and knee problems cuz I'm sure yeah the I used to be a jump Roper I was a professional jump Roper when you're a professional jump Roper I was well we we got we were sponsored by like the American Heart Association we had like donations and stuff but yes I started jumping rope it was called the International rope skipping organization at that time I think it's called like the universal universal rope skipping organization now but I was I would compete so we'd go you know every year and compete with other teams from around the world I would travel to other you know places other parts of the US and set up do demonstrations in schools instead of teams anyways I was really good and I can still jump rope like I could do if you if you have next like Nixon I see you like jump like if you have a jump rope or if I remember to bring one like I'll bring one for you next time next time you got to do two things you got to try out the tank come here really will set you up with the isolation tank will do a sauna we should do a podcast oh that would be awesome we're gonna start doing that because we have the sauna here we're gonna do little podcasts the heat yeah the heat
with the recording equipment and stuff but see if it breaks I just I just like there's more new interesting stuff on the sauna like that I would love to talk to you about like new studies coming out and so next one next all right scheduled a couple months for now and then the jump rope yeah so jump rope but jumping on the balls of your feet that was the point I was I was gonna say if you did jumped on the heels it was awful it was like huh sound would be terrible but you look at a running shoe you think of an average running shoe the average running shoe has a lifted heel now people are understanding that this is negative and this is bad for you so you you see what are called zero drop shoes like the vibram that's okay those or minimalist shoes that's where I run in I run in either Vibrams I run in those I have some Merrill's that are running too and what they're essentially they have a wide toe box so your toes splay out and there's almost no padding this is very low I'm trying B to be rooms before it's just enough of a hard cover to keep you from getting cut from like rocks and stuff so the problem for me is I when I tried them out I was running on hard concrete it was like I was running around this lake because I lived in Oakland at the time and and so I didn't really like it were you running on the heels of your feet now your balls yeah yeah just spent too much it was too much because the concrete so but I think even that is okay if you build up to build up yeah but you but you develop your foot strength changes radically so maybe I'll get some again and try you got to go slow because Beach running is probably a lot easier – yeah I run the beach on those when I'm on vacation I'll run with minimal shoes but when you are doing it you have to build up to it because you can get plantar fasciitis where you you start really destroying okay very common so what do you mean like juice don't run as long distance or something take your time yeah they like the Vibrams they got in trouble because they were telling people that their shoes can prevent injury and and strengthen your feet which they can but it takes a long time so what what would happen is people would say oh I'm gonna use these shoes gonna prevent injury [ __ ] I'm injured because they would they your feet are
weak the idea is that your feet in regular shoes are essentially like in a cast this is what your feet are like you're you're relying on the structure of the shoe it's tightening up around your foot you have a nice fat cushion at the bottom of it and you're using minimal musculature of your toes and all the different you know fear you're not articulating everything as individual joints and pushing with all the muscles and so when you switch from thick fat running shoe to like a Vibram Fivefinger this is a there's definitely a DAP tation curve and yet you have to be careful with it I certainly think cuz when I did was doing it I was running long distances like I just I didn't ease into it at all either and I was doing on concrete my friend Neal Brennan got plantar fasciitis from running on a treadmill in with v brooms yeah Wow I think I was running and hit treadmills as well today I'd say that to him but yeah he just got too crazy with it he's kind of obsessive person he got into it he's like oh this is the thing I'm gonna do this I ran a few miles and he blew himself out like right away he'd [ __ ] up his face does that can you reverse that yes yeah it takes a while to heal though it's very painful I know quite a few people that have gotten plantar fasciitis and you know you get out of bed you could barely walk I think my mother-in-law had it yeah it's rough yeah it's rough so I luckily I've done martial arts my whole life sorry my feet my feet are pretty strong but I noticed a big difference between running with minimal minimalistic shoes I mean just my feet just feel stronger they just they feel different and they feel different when I'm walking around my archers raised up I've always had flat feet my arches have actually gotten higher and like my just the overall dexterity of my feet one place where I really feel it is in yoga I noticed a big difference in yoga I've just more foot strength I'm gonna try out the beams again I threw out my other ones but my feet are like bigger now after pregnancy so that's funny like it stretches your feet out maybe it's like you know what maybe it's akin to weight lifting right cuz you're thinking about it you have all this extra weight in your body you're carrying around your feet and your hips and right yeah yeah
you definitely have a lot of extra weight I mean yeah I mean where do you pound vest on your back and you did a lot of exercises with that forty pound best your bones are gonna get more dense right yeah I I would like to know I mean I know I know certainly my feet were bigger during pregnancy because of the swelling and stuff but but I'm four months out and my feet are definitely bigger are they longer wider their wider their wider you have more meat in your foot yeah they're whiter like I was shocked I couldn't like this pair of shoes that I'm supposed to fit didn't fit and it was I was like you know it was too narrow I bet that totally makes sense I mean think about how much weight did you gain you allowed to ask um I so I actually lost all the weight so I'm allowed that I've lost a lot most of it but I still you know there's there's a little more to me but um my god it's crazy it's amazing that we bounce back I gained probably more I get they say like 30 pounds I gained like close to 50 I know a woman again 80 but I was eating all healthy foods I started out very thin maybe and that so I was talking to my OBGYN about that and he was telling me that really because I didn't like look obese or anything it wasn't it was just I start when you start off with a starting point your body wants you to gain a certain amount of weight sure and so my body wanted me to gain 50 pounds and I had an 8 pound 10 ounce boy just think about 50 pounds on your back for nine months of course your feet are gonna get bigger they're gonna be stronger yeah it was you know there is an interesting study showing that v-max actually improved vo2 max improves after pregnancy sure make sense it's kind of like training and I have a booth or whatever here I have this thing it's called the company called outdoorsman's they make a pack that's designed to condition people for backpack hunting when you you go you carry everything you carry your entire camp on your back so you carry your you know sleeping bag of Jetboil one of those tanks that you cook on you carry all of your equipment you carry everything waiting for your food I mean you you could carry as much when you when you're wearing a backpack and
you're going in to camp you could carry as much as 70 80 pounds in the back so what they do this company called outdoorsman's they make a pack frame that has an Olympic plate bolt on the back of it we slide Olympic plates on it and you clamp them down so you have like a like literally an Olympic weight on your back you could put a 45 pound plate or a 90 pound plate and you do you hike to condition yourself so you have the right posture and you're building the right muscle is an exact exactly it's it's one of the best ways like weighted pack exercises is one of the best ways to prepare yourself for that it's really one of the only ways because you're dealing with many many miles of hiking yeah that's kind of cool because I've I've often like I haven't really ever done any like big camping like that you know I'm I'm always like go for a hike of the day come back go to the cabbie you know it's like it'd be kind of fun to do that like where you hiked many miles in and you you know take up a camp and yeah you know so but I thought like how am I gonna carry all that stuff it's grueling yeah I can a mat like there's no way I could do that much but well when some people do it if they're only gonna go for a few days they can get it down to as little as forty pounds you know some people are super minimalist like my friend Adam he does it for many stretches at a time and he'll do like 28 days in the bush by himself he lives in Australia no he's done it in Montana Tunis he did it and documented it all on his Instagram story but he's so extreme he cuts his toothbrush in half like he only has the cuts weight in so many different places that the handle of his toothbrush he cuts off so he's brushing his teeth with like the little big in the end part of a toothbrush which i think is just stupid like how much weight are you saving come on man's ridiculous give yourself a real toothbrushes psycho but 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 you have to kind of figure out how much water you need how much food you need most 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 and so then they have to have either a SteriPEN or some sort of filtration system to clean out the the water to make sure that they don't get you know yeah what's the longest amount of time that you've done like one of these campaigns well I've never done it where they did it like that where I carried my camp on my back and lived out there for the only time I've ever done it is with a group of guys and we've camped for a week in Montana but we brought everything in on canoes so we had all these supplies we brought them in on it's we got out we staked our tents and we had food with us just you know but I know a lot of guys do it and they don't bring much food they just try to live off the land they try to get successful quick with the hunting and then it's very that's crazy yeah but it's you had a challenge of it you know but the weight but the point being that weighted backs or an excellent cardiovascular exercise so being pregnant yeah make your feet stronger and increase your vision I did a lot of walking like 4 miles a day you know and I thought I was doing a great thing but there's this girl there's this woman in my spin class and she's like kicking ass and she's about to have this baby like any day and she's there biking away you know like jeez like I I look back at pictures of me and I'm like I can't believe I like bounce back from that cuz it's just like I'm just so enormous you know it's it's great it's just it's incredible the whole thing is important do you think I'm gonna do it again or you want it done I think I might be one and done um I don't know for sure but you know it's it's some time to think right I mean like I've got pressure like my my half-sister and like other people are like okay you got a way to here you gotta get paid again I'm like no you don't have to do anything crazy it's okay one kid I kind of I've kind of I'm kind of just so in love with him that I'm like I don't want to share my love you know but I know what Gavin kids like my kids are two years apart the youngest ones and when they hang out together it's just amazing you watch them hug each other and they play games together and you know there's like little sibling
rivalry so it's always going to be but but there's something magical about having a sibling you know I grew up with the sister is one year younger than me yeah brothers four years younger than me yeah it's I don't know it's just something to it but you know it's also something to have a one kid and giving them a lot of attention I don't mmm and being able to do other things too you know science so speaking of science tell people where they can listen to your podcast and contribute to your research because II you have you have you were saying you have what is the the page yeah there's a page and also we have a direct subscribership where people can if they want me to continue to do the podcast but put out you know articles so my podcast is on iTunes it's called family fitness but you can go to my website called found my fitness calm and there's now episode pages we have where I'm starting to now put a lot of information to and found my fitness on Instagram on Twitter and Facebook for souls yeah so here's the episodes and if you click on one there's like a summary and a train sometimes we're getting transcripts now so I'm going to put a lot more information there as well and so yet people are contributing money whatever they could they can do it one time or like a 1 5 $10 a month some people do more than that and it's it's really cool it really has been a lot of fun and I enjoy it like like it's just I love it well you're awesome at it and you're awesome at this – I mean it's ridiculous you haven't looked at notes once all the [ __ ] is off from the top of your head for people that are listening this she's not reading off of anything she's just rattling this off it's very humbling thank you so thanks for doing this and next time we'll do the tank do the sauna we'll try to do a podcast we're gonna hold you to that okay let's do it jump rope you've got to see that you'll get a jump rope we'll do it okay thank you so much thanks Rhonda Patrick ladies and gentlemen