Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Diet Essentials For Healthy Living

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/f12085a5297ed66b

I did my postdoc training in nutrition and specifically looking at micronutrients. So these are about forty or so essential vitamins and minerals.
And these micronutrients are running
Our metabolism, they're running everything, our neurotransmitters that we're producing, so our cognition, just absolutely everything that is going on in our bodies. So
When you think about
the micronutrients that you need.
in your diet, it makes it a little bit easier to think about what you should be eating.
Welcome to the Knowledge Project, a podcast about mastering the best of what other people have already figured out, so you can apply their insights to your life.
I'm your host, Shane Parish.
If you're listening to this, you're missing out. If you'd like access to the podcast before everyone else, special episodes just for you, hand edited transcripts, or you just want to support the show you love, join at fs.blog slash membership. Check out the show notes for a link.
Today my guest is Rhonda Patrick, a research scientist with expertise in the areas of aging, cancer, and nutrition.
I first came across her work years ago and a friend of mine sent me this mammoth article she posted online
On the benefits of Asana.
In fact, this is the reason I started Dasana.
Our main focus in this conversation is lifestyle habits that reduce biological aging, improve health span, and improve our cognition.
We cover a framework for approaching nutrition and decisions about food.
as well as a deep dive into vitamin D, sun, sunscreen, and hot exposure.
It's time.
to listen and learn.
Oh
Today's episode is brought to you by Aidsleep.
Aid Sleep's podcover is redefining sleep, leveraging both data and technology to improve health.
The podcover will improve your sleep by automatically adjusting your bed's temperature based on your individual needs.
The cover can be added to any bed like a fitted sheet and allows you or your partner to cool or warm your side of the bed as low as 55 degrees if you're crazy and up to 110 degrees if you're also crazy.
I use innate sleep every night. I find this thing is amazing.
Not only at
adjusting temperature. Some nights, you know, you're just cold and you want to warm up. And some nights you're really warm and you want to cool down.
It's remarkable how consistently
awesome my sleep is and how much the eight sleep affects that.
You can go to eightsleep.com slash Farnham Street and get two hundred dollars off plus free shipping on the podcast by Aidsleep.
That's aidsleep dot com slash Farnum Street.
Some of my favorite brands are on Shopify, including Gymshark, Alberts, Outway Socks, and Arrowpress.
Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. It doesn't matter if you just have an idea or already operate a multi-million dollar company. Shopify is there to help you grow every step of the way because businesses that grow grow with Shopify.
What I love about Shopify is that it's like you have a multi billion dollar tech team working just for you from day one. If you're just starting, this means you can go from idea to store in a few minutes, but it also means if you're an existing company, you can save money and time.
If you've ever checked out from a store and thought that was so easy, chances are it was Shop Bay, which is the internet's best converting checkout.
Up to thirty six percent better compared to
other leading commerce platforms.
Go to Shopify dot com slash Shane now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in.
When I was thinking about where to start, I think the best place to start is to give people practical frameworks for approaching
topics that we come across every day. So
Why don't we start with a practical framework for approaching
nutrition and decisions about the food that we consume. I
You know, I kind of have my own framework for approaching nutrition in
And it it has a lot to do with, you know, I I did my postdoc training in nutrition.
and um in specifically looking at micronutrients. So these are
About forty or so essential vitamins and minerals.
that fatty acids also and amino acids that we have to get from our diet.
Those are in a variety of foods.
And different foods have different levels and quantities of them.
And these micronutrients are running
Our metabolism, they're running everything. Our neurotransmitters that we're producing, so our cognition, just absolutely everything.
that is going on in our bodies. So it's important to get them because if we don't get them, we can have
deficiencies or insufficiencies, which is quite worse because
insufficiencies are kind of something that
You don't notice every day.
But there's like insidious types of damage just happening each and every day.
And
It accumulates over time and plays a role in age related diseases like cancer and neurodegenerative disease. So
These um micronutrients are things like
you know, calcium, magnesium, vitamin K
Vitamin D, which I'm sure we'll talk about is actually something you can
mostly get from the sun.
Omega three
And so when you think about
the micronutrients that you need.
in your diet, it makes it a little bit easier to think about what you should be eating.
Well, let's start with like some of the most common
deficiencies in micronutrients. We have uh magnesium, so a
Almost half of the US population
they get insufficient magnesium intake.
Magnesium is
It's at the center of a chlorophyll molecule, so chlorophyll makes plant gives plants their green color.
So it's really easy to think about foods you should eat to get magnesium. You should be eating greens.
particularly dark leafy greens.
Well, greens are also very high in vitamin K.
And um vitamin K one, there's two forms. Vitamin K one
Vitamin K one is essential for all your blood clotting processes. So you like in order to like have your blood clotting, which is important, you know, if you have a cut or
something, you know, an injury, you want that clotting to happen so that you don't have like a hemorrhage, right?
So vitamin K is also h you know high in leafy greens.
You can also get calcium as well.
From greens. So that's really an easy way to kinda think about greens.
The other way the other thing is omega threes, right? So omega threes are very high in
fatty fish. So this would be wild Alaskan salmon or cod or mackerel, sardines, like these are good forms of fish that have the marine types of omega 3. So that would be DHA and EPA.
Those are very important for a lot of functions, including brain health and cardiovascular health.
And a lot of work has been done by Bill Harris and his group at the Fatty Acid Research Institute.
And um they have they look at omega the omega three index, which is a way you can actually quantify your omega three levels. And that's really good to be able to quantify something.
Because if you don't quantify it, you don't really know if you are getting enough of it, right?
So the omega three index is they're they're characterizing it from red blood cells, which is
different than a lot of other ways of measuring omega three, like for example, plasma omega-3, which is basically
kind of reflective of your dietary intake the last week or so, the red blood cell or the omega-3 index is more of a long-term status. So it's like 120 days for a red blood cell to turnover. So the omega-3 index is a good marker of your omega-3 status.
People that have a high omega three index, and that would be
Eight percent or more.
Have a five year increase life expectancy.
compared to people with a lower omega three index, which is more like four percent.
Now, people in the United States on average have about
an uh omega three index of about five percent.
And you compare that to, for example
countries like Japan, where they eat a lot of seafood.
their omega three index is around ten percent.
There's been tons of studies looking at omega three index and life expectancy. And there's been also like data where they stratif stratisfy like
looking at, you know, for example, and this I like talking about this because I think it really puts in perspective
The framework of nutrition and thinking about instead of focusing on what to avoid
Focusing on what you need because
If you focus on what you need, then it's obvious what you don't need, right? There's no nutritional value in processed foods. You're not getting micronutrients. You're getting calories. You're not getting protein. You're not getting things that you need.
So um
Smoking is something that everyone knows is bad. You should avoid smoking, right? It's
you know, heart disease, cancer
you're gonna have a decreased life expectancy.
emphysema, all kinds of problems, right?
What Bill Harris' group had done has they looked at life expectancy of smokers and non-smokers, and then they
categorized their omega three index.
And
If you look at this data.
It's it's just mind blowing. So obviously non smokers
That have a high omega three index.
of eight percent or more have the highest life expectancy.
And um the lowest life expectancy is smokers with a low omega three index.
So there's like that's the worst of the worst.
But when you look at smokers with a high omega three index.
They have the they have the same life expectancy as non smokers with a low omega three index.
In other words.
having low omega three or having a low and omega three index was like smoking. And
When I say you look the life expectancy, if you look at the graph in the publication
the curves like overlay perfectly. It's kind of freakish, where you're like, Whoa, like the people that are smoking, but they're getting a lot of omega three.
have the same like life expectancy of these people that don't smoke but have
Very low omega three.
And that's kind of like I I like talking about that because I feel like it puts it in perspective for people because like I said, no one's really thinking about
I'm not eating my fish today. I'm not supplementing with an omega-3 supplement.
to get that om those omega threes, you know, but people are thinking about oh I shouldn't smoke.
Because it's bad, right?
So again, it goes back to that framework of
Thinking about what you need.
And and and starting there.
Um, as opposed to like just like okay, what should I avoid?
Because when you think about what should I avoid
Then you're not like people aren't thinking about magnesium. They're not thinking about, you know, the vitamin K. They're not thinking about omega three.
And by the way, magnesium, you know, I said about half the half the population in the United States doesn't get enough.
They're not eating enough greens and unfortunately there's not a great test for magnesium because our body stores magnesium in our bones. And so anytime we're not getting enough in our diet,
our body pulls it out of our bones to like
Because we need it, it's so important. You need it to make energy.
Like without magnesium, you can't make energy. So nothing's gonna function.
You also it it's needed to repair damage. Like every time you have
You know, like right now, you and I were we're having a conversation.
you know, we're n you know, neurotransmitters are firing, we're thinking about things like that's causing damage. Metabolism, all that stuff causes damage on a daily basis, but our body repair that damage.
But magnesium is a co factor for these enzymes. These are proteins that are doing everything for that to function properly.
And so if you don't get enough of that magnesium to do that, what happens is you don't repair that
damage properly, and that can increase the risk of getting a mutation that can lead to cancer.
You know, it's been found that for example
For every one hundred
You know, milligram.
Increase in magnesium intake.
there's something like a 20% decrease in pancreatic cancer risk. And there's been lots of studies like this looking at magnesium intake and cancer risk. And so the higher the magnesium intake, the lower the cancer risk.
So again, it's one of those things where it's you can't look in the mirror and go
as you're brushing your teeth, oh, I don't have enough magnesium today, right? Like nothing's like showing you that.
But it's happening, that damage is insidious.
And I mentioned you pull it out of your bone, like it's pulled out of your bones. And that's another thing.
it leads to osteoporosis over time. So
Remembering to eat your leafy greens.
is getting your magnesium. So you so women need about, I'd say about three hundred and twenty milligrams a day. Adult women need about three hundred and twenty milligrams a day of magnesium. Men need around four hundred and twenty milligrams a day.
You know, this can change based on your physical activity level as well. So like if you're physically active, if you're sweating, you sweat out magnesium, you also use it up for energy. So you might actually require anywhere between 10% to 20% more.
Then that level so it
what's called the recommended daily allowance in the United States. So, you know, again, and people aren't even meeting that.
So there's lots of reasons to invest in
you know, these micronutrients and to think about the foods that you need to eat.
I have so many questions. One is
Is there a difference between
consuming magnesium and omega three through food like leafy greens or fish.
And supplementation.
Yes, let's start with magnesium. So magnesium, if you're consuming it in the form of leafy greens.
Um, it is it is bound to a it's like the fiber matrix. It's called phytate.
And that does decrease the bioavailability of it.
You can do raw, but also cooking them.
will increase the bioavailability of minerals like magnesium.
And it is good. You wanna kind of get a variety of things. You wanna have some raw veggies, but you also wanna have
Cooked.
And um when you cook it, it it does actually increase the bioavailability of not just magnesium, other minerals as well that are bound to that.
that fiber matrix that um which has phytate there.
Supplementation's also kind of tricky with respect to magnesium because
You don't really absorb more, I mean, it's about a hundred, I would say anywhere between a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty milligrams per dose.
Like once you get above that, you're not really absorbing more, you're just kind of causing more.
GI distress and it it's a little bit of like a laxative effect. So some people actually use it specifically for that reason. So they do higher doses.
generally speaking, if you are supplementing with magnesium
You wanna make sure you're going at a lower dose because you're not really gonna absorb more and it's just gonna cause like gut issues.
If you want to supplement with more than just 150, you have to spread your doses out.
you know, take it earlier with the meal and then take it later in the day.
As well.
The other thing is that when you're getting it from food, it is packaged in with other minerals and there are
There's some
argument to be made that having, for example,
There's like
You know, twice as much calcium as magnesium.
in in a lot of the foods. And so you're getting this two to one ratio.
And so um, you know, there's a there's a kind of a reason for that. I I wouldn't say that it's been
heavily studied, but it's thought that you kinda wanna keep that ratio
correct, like two to one calcium to magnesium ratio. So if you're just like supplementing with lots of magnesium and let's say you don't get enough, maybe you don't eat dairy or maybe you're a lactose intolerant or you know, maybe you're just not getting enough calcium, you can kind of have mineral imbalances as well.
And then there's the form that you're gonna supplement with, right? So there's a lot of different magnesium
supplements out there.
The most important difference when you're looking for a magnesium supplement.

is to avoid the what's called the inorganic forms. And this isn't like organic pesticide. What we're talking about is so like o magnesium oxide or magnesium sulfate. Like they're just not very bioavailable. Like you're not gonna absorb as much from those.
But if you get like the organic form, so this would be something that has like
An organic molecule, so magnesium citrate, magnesium malate, magnesium glycinate, magnesium torate.
These are all forms of magnesium that are
relatively the same in terms of their bioavailability.
I personally like taking magnesium glycinate.
Because
Glycinate is like a form of glycine.
which is a inhibitory neurotransmitter. And so I like getting a little bit extra glycine. There's like there's some science behind um
you know, glycine perhaps being beneficial and supplementing with it. Just I think that's the main thing with respect to magnesium.
supplementation is is that
the forms do kind of matter.
And the dose.
And what about the omega threes? Is it can I just go to the store if I'm not gonna eat a lot of fish and and buy an omega three supplement and
Or is fish the primary way that we actually get bioavailability from this? Yeah, that's also a great question. It it really does obviously depend on
Um quite a few factors. So with respect to the seafood and fish.
the type of fish does matter, right? So like you need like there's some
Fish like that's just not
That fatty.
The omega three's EPA and DHA are the marine forms of the omega three.
And those are the ones I was talking about with the omega-3 index and life expectancy. Those are the forms that have been used in randomized controlled trials with supplementation that have
decreased
cardiovascular events by like
twenty five percent compared to compl placebo. Those are the ones that that are important.
They're they're only in the really oily fatty fish.
So one of the best forms is salmon.
And wild salmon has higher levels than
Farmed.
For example, wild Alaskan salmon's probably one of the best
salmons to to consume for omega three.
Um, it also has Astosanthin. It's what gives the fish that pink color.
If you are eating
Quite a lot of fish.
you'd have to really get an omega three index test to know for sure.
how much you require.
But you know, I would say probably like at least, you know, you're eating it four times a week.
Something like that.
Which most people do do not do.
In Japan they do, and their omega three index is very high. Like I don't even know if many Japanese supplement they're just they eat seafood like every day.
The other thing to consider is well
what type of fish. So we talked about oily and fatty fish, but also you wanna look at
um contaminants like larger fish.
have things like PCBs and mercury because they're eating smaller fish. So it those things accumulate in their fat.
So like you don't want to eat swordfish, for example. It's just their the mercury in swordfish is just through the roof, right?
So it's really like the trade off there.
isn't very good.
So again, that's where salmon comes into the picture because it's very low in mercury. It's high in omega three smaller fish, so sardines would be another one. Again, there's a lot of data out there that you can look up.
Like USDA has all this like contamination mercury.
um levels versus omega-3. So that stuff is easy for people to find.
I would say by and large the easiest way to get a high omega three index
And these studies have been done, randomized controlled trials, people given
supplement supplement forms omega three is definitely to supplement. And
Fish oil supplements.
Generally speaking, if you're taking around two grams a day.
of a fish oil supplement, that is enough to raise someone from a four percent omega three index, which is the low end.
to a eight percent omega three index, which is the high end.
You obviously want to make sure you're getting
Enough of the EPA and DHA, those two important omega threes.
And you wanna make sure you're not getting
a high contaminant level like mercury PCBs, but the other thing to keep in mind is you'd want a low oxidation level.
So omega-3 fatty acids are prone to oxidation just because their molecular structure.
It's a polyunsaturated fatty acid. And so
the way people, uh companies and are manufacturing this fish oil.
Matters.
So um some good third party testing sites to look at.
I would say um consumer lab is one that's really
They're they go and just go to grocery stores and where people are generally going and buying their supplements and they just
measure and test all this stuff.
And there's some really affordable brands.
that have decent
Omega three levels, DHA and EPA levels, and low oxidation, low contaminant levels. And consumer lab, you know
test all those. So that would be a good site to go to to find
a good omega three supplement.
Another one is the International Fish Oil Standards site, IFOS.
Those are for the data nerds, to be honest, because there's like a lot more data there. And if you're like into this stuff and you want to like,
Really dig'cause they just give you
everything, like all the data like you could imagine.
Um, that's a great site for people that are sort of nerd wanna nerd out on that. But for some people they're like, I just want to know my grocery store, what do I get? Then Consumer Lab's a great option.
it it's like it's broken down in a way that like a child could even understand. It's okay, this is the one I wanna buy.
I is there a difference between
wild and
uh non wild I guess or captive or factory farm whatever you want to call it farmed fish.
In terms of the nutrient density that we're pulling out of them.
You know, there is a difference. I mean the the wild salmon they're out they're in the ocean and they're eating
Fish and like
you know, crustaceans and all the things that they're supposed to eat. Like that's what they eat, right?
In the f the farmed salmon, I you know, if correct I I I'm pretty sure there's
There's some there's some feeding of stuff that's like not even I mean, we're talking like corn and stuff too.
Yeah, if you were to look at the fish.
uh before in the factories before they
Inject it with astosanthin.
The they they look albino because they're lack because they don't eat all the right things. So they're not naturally pink.
I said inject, but I'm not sure, maybe they actually f
just give it ac acid and they eat it. I forgot, but they're they're they're giving it exogenous ac acanthon so that it
does have the pink color.
The Omega Three content was also higher in the wild.
Salmon.
So again to your question, yes.
There is a difference between the farmed salmon and the
Wild salmon.
But you know
Sometimes when you're out at a restaurant, like you're not gonna get they're not gonna get the wild salmon. Is it the is it the end of the world? In my opinion, no. Like I said, choose your battles. I still think you still are getting omega threes. You're still getting DHA and EPA.
It's not like it's terrible, but I do think it's
Preferable.
If you are getting
The wild chairman.
And
You mentioned
Organic.
Is there a difference between organic and inorganic, I guess, uh but inorganic in the sense of being non organic produce?
Why would we choose one over another and what difference does it make from a composition or bio
availability point of view. So pesticides um are obviously something that are are used now in agriculture because we're
you know, these farms are huge and we're growing mass quantities of foods and so
They're spraying things that'll ward off insects, so insecticides or pesticides as are known, and also fungicides and other things to prevent fungus and
Anything that's gonna destroy the crop, right?
A lot of these
types of pesticides are
obviously damaging to the insects.
But um to humans the question is well, are they damaging to humans?
You know, there there were a lot, especially things like rote known parquat, these were used
For a long time, and those are those are chemicals that actually cause
We use them scientists use them. I've used it myself in the lab.
to induce Parkinson like symptoms in animals because it disrupts your mitochondria, which are
The they're little organelles inside of almost all of your cells.
And that are producing energy.
Super important and in
Parkinson's disease.
the mitochondri mitochondria and your neurons kind of become dysfunctional. And you can do you can cause this by just giving them this this pesticide, paraquat, or rotentone.
I remember this is f it's funny, I remember the first time I I was learning about this in
you know, this was actually even before I was in graduate school, but also in graduate school
I was like, Oh, I'm putting this stuff.
Yeah, you know, to to give it to a to a mouse to study, you know, Parkinson's or to induce a Parkinson like human sort of
model of Parkinson's
And this was like put on our produce and I was like that was like
really kind of upsetting to think about.
There's been studies even on the newer types of pesticides that are used on produce.
You know, there've been studies that have shown there
Probably not good to have.
on a daily basis because of that insidious damage that they're causing. And I get, you know, people are probably thinking of like glyce glyphosate, right? Roundup is a big one as well.
When it comes to
Those pesticides that are used.
There are so there are certain vegetables and fruits that are very thin skinned that absorb it. So even if you wash the vegetable off, it's already been absorbed through the skin.
And so like let's talk about an avocado versus a strawberry, right? Like
Like is it so important to eat organic avocados? Not really.
It's got a really thick skin.
Strawberries, on the other hand,
have a very thin skin and you know, and so that that would be something that you want to choose organic.
I would say that yes, organic would be the best choice. If you can't always afford organic, then choose. Okay, bananas. Is that as so important? Probably not. Avocados, probably not.
Oranges, probably not. Apples, yes. Right. Thin skin. And there's like again, there's like lists out there that like will list the things that are like, okay, if you're going to
not do organic here's the one here's the vegetables and fruits that are
The safest to not.
I I love the I mean the dirty dozen list, but it's actually more practical to remember the thickness of the skin as sort of like the barrier, the membrane between pesticides and you. How do you wash your produce? And and like and I say this having seen, I think last night on Instagram, you know, some uh guy
putting baking soda and vinegar and like soaking it for twenty minutes and like
Is that how we wash produce? Like how do you wash produce to like get stuff off of it? What do you do? I just use water. I just use water and wash it because I do buorganic as well.
So you're thinking about pesticides, you're like, Oh, well, I don't want to get Parkinson's disease or cancer, right? It's causing damage.
But so my mentor, Bruce Ames, um, he's you know
Now ninety six years old.
I don't know how many years ago it was. It it must have been back in the eighties.
He had done some experiments.
with
uh hematologist from his lab.
And they're looking at what happens if you don't get enough folate. So that's what another one of those essential micronutrients that you have to get from your diet. Guess what?
Leafy greens are one of the best sorts of foliate. So leafy greens are are just they're
They're packed with certain micronutrients, but they don't have a lot of protein, right? So folate.
Again, we have to get from our diet. And if we don't get enough folate,
It actually causes damage to our DNA much more than eating a pesticide would.
Because folate is required to make new DNA.
You know, we're constantly making new cells in our body. And if you don't have that folate, the precursor make one of the nucleotides of DNA.
isn't going to be there. And so your body substitutes something else in there that's from RNA that's not supposed to be there and it causes DNA damage. And he had done these studies where it was like he took animals, put them on a low folate diet, similar to what some people in the United States get.
And then he took the other group of animals and he he irradiated them with ionizing radiation. Okay. This is like
Yeah, you're gonna wanna avoid this, right?
And
The folate deficiency was like ionizing radiation. It did the exact same thing. It caused double strand breaks in DNA.
Exactly like
the ionizing radiation. So not getting that important micronutrient from your leafy greens, folate.
was like being i getting ionizing radiation.
So again, back to that theme that we started with.
Thinking about what you need is so important. And we're sitting here talking about pesticides. Oh, we should avoid them.
Yes, but guess what's worse?
If you don't eat the greens, you're not gonna get enough folate.
Fully so important. It's it's
You know, it's it's in every processed food. They put the oxidized form of it, folic acid.
It's kinda one of those things where it's like oh it's a it it's it's a it's another form of of folate and um it is
more more stable, which is why it's used um in processed foods rather than folate, but uh it's it is
Not the exact same as folate.
It's preferable if you're gonna get the folate from your diet.
From leafy greens.
Yeah, let's come back to sort of the framework for approaching this. And so we've talked about micronutrients a little bit. Let's talk about macro.
So I mean, so I'm sitting here talking about all these micronutrients and it it was like vegetables was a big thing we're talking about, right? But we also hit on omega threes and that was fish.
Protein is
You know, amino acids are something that we need to get from our diet every day.
Much like
We store glucose as glycogen in our liver and our muscles. We store fat, like tr triglycerides, right? Adipose tissue.
We don't really store amino acids, although our muscle
Skeletal muscle is kind of a reservoir for them.
And during periods of fasting or low protein intake
We pull from our muscle.
to get amino acids because they're essential to survive.
And what does that mean? That means you're pulling important
protein from your muscle and that does cause muscle atrophy.
So you want to avoid that, right?
And so in order to help
Avoid that.
all these, you know, regulatory committees had come up with
Let's figure out how much protein people need to take in every single day to avoid those losses, right?
And so studies were done many, many years ago, and that number
came up to be zero point eight grams of protein.
per kilogram of body weight.
Is what
was the recommended daily allowance for
protein intake.
Fast forward decades, you know, you've got all this new science and new technology that's come out and new ways of measuring things and
You know, any scientist will tell you that
your data is only as sensitive as the tools that you're using, okay?
Data from experts like Doctor Stuart Phillips and others.
They started to
you know, look into
how you measure protein losses and amino acid losses. And and and turns out that those studies that were done decades ago
Well
using tools that were oh they were basically underestimating
The losses of amino acids.
It turns out using new techniques that are more sensitive,
That in order to just prevent
your body from like pulling from, you know, your sk your your skeletal muscle to get amino acids.
The minimum amount of protein you need to take in is actually one point two.
Grams.
per kilogram body weight, which is higher than the 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight, right?
And they also did some studies looking at well, what if you're physically active, right? You're
you're causing damage to your muscle, you're using a lot of energy, I mean lots of things going on.
Um that number goes up to one point six.
grams of protein per kilogram body weight.
This was a big eye opener for me a couple of years ago when I talked to to Dr. Phillips.
and started looking and reading his research because I always thought people were getting enough protein.
And turns out
a lot of people are not getting enough protein.
Because they are not
getting that at least that one point two grams per kilogram.
you know, body weight, bare minimum.
That I think
is you have to think about okay, well where do I get my protein? Meat is off animal meat's probably one of the best sources because essential amino acids are very highly concentrated in poultry and meat and fish.
Um if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, you just have to really work really hard and
supplement with protein powders and stuff to kind of
Get that.
Amino acid.
Composition up.
Is is all sort of like
Animal protein the same, like is a I I imagine you need a
the complete set of sort of amino acids for it to be the most bio available in your body. I don't know what I'm talking about here, obviously.
Uh, but is there like a big difference between steak and chicken and and sort of other sources of protein that we typically think of? There are differences with respect to their their micronutrient profiles.
Steak has a lot more iron, for example.
You know, you there's a lot of zinc in like
Shellfish, like oysters. So with respect to just the essential amino acids, you know, like getting them from those any of those sources.
is pretty good with respect to like
protein, you will find that
They'll like per
ounce of food that you're eating, maybe there's like a little bit more in like denser in meat.
than fish or something like that. But
There, there are subtle differences between them, but also just in the whole micronutrient profile itself. But with respect to the essential amino acids, like if you're really trying to hit that.
one point two to one point six grams a day.
per per I mean one point six grams per kilogram body weight. That's very important. That's that's a lot of protein. It's a lot of protein. It is it actually is really a lot of protein, especially for people that are physically active. Why is that so important? Well like
If you are c
Constantly pulling
Amino acids from your muscle.
It's like pulling from your retirement fund early.
Right? Like because our our muscle ma mass peak.
is probably, I would say anywhere between twenty to thirty years old is when we're like peak muscle mass.
After thirty
As you get into forty
You start
Going down.
You wanna try to build up
that muscle mass reservoir earlier in life, kind of like you do what your retirement fund, right? Like you want to build it up.
Because you're gonna be pulling from it no matter what. Even if you're working out later in life, you're still gonna be pulling from it because
you just lose more muscle mass and strength as you age. It's just part of the aging process. And so the more, the more you can kind of counter that with resistance training, with making sure you're getting enough protein.
then the better off you're gonna be.
If if you didn't do it earlier in life, it's never too late.
Like that's something also to like keep in mind. Like don't give up. Like, oh, I'm already fifty. It's too late for me. No, because like you can you can get gains in muscle mass and really actually
great gains in strength, particularly with resistance training.
Uh, protein intake is one easy thing. Like a lot of people, like elder like our parents, like not everyone's exercising, right? They're not doing resistance training. And so get that protein intake becomes even more important.
At that.
that point. And something also that you might find interesting, Shane, is that we're talking about omega threes.
So there's some work uh from Chris McGlory
he had basically done some research that have found
Omega high dose omega threes could
prevent disuse atrophy. So like when people are older
They're not using their muscles a lot.
And when you're not using your muscles a lot and you're certainly not getting enough protein, you start to atrophy even more, right?
But if there was like if he gave him a high dose omega three, so this was like
four grams a day, four to five grams a day.
It totally prevented disuse atrophy.
they did the study in younger adults and younger females, but it was like fifty percent less.
He's d he's done some other studies and mechanism and looking into it and he thinks that what's happening is
Omega threes are sensitizing your skeletal muscle to amino acids. In other words, it's
You're you're you're getting more amino acids into the mu you're getting more bang for your buck. So more amino acids.
uh are getting in
when you have the omega threes there because
Yeah, omega 3s are really important for the the skeletal muscle like membrane and stuff. And so it might be easier just to get the nutrients in.
I wanna like start using this in in a in a practical way, right? Like so if I
Or to make a smoothie in the morning.
What is the best thing to put in my body?
at the start of the day after having slept, which means I've been fasting
What is like the most incredible smoothie you can think of that would just be full of health benefits for the day?
So it would have like omega three, it would have protein powder, it would have like leafy like walk me through this. What do you do you do this? I do smoothie. It does it doesn't have omega three, but I'll walk you through my my my smoothie that I do. I I probably about four to five days a week have
Have the smoothie.
Typically the smoothie is about
I don't know, four or so kale leaves.
And that's usually my green source that I use.
And so I'm getting the magnesium, I'm getting
the vitamin K, I'm getting the folate.
But I'm also getting something in there called Lutine.
And zeaxanthin, which is these are carotenoids, much like beta carotene or astosanthin, like we were talking about, is another one.
That accumulates in the eye, rods and cones of the eye, so it helps prevent macular degeneration, but it accumulates in the brain as well. And it's so interesting because.
There's been studies that have shown that
giving older adults like supplementing with something like twenty mix, which is what like three K leaves has of lutein.
Um it improves neural efficiency.
So so basically like your brain
Works better.
With less energy.
There's been other studies in older adults where giving them lutein and zanthin will improve
Crystallize intelligence. So that's basically as you get older, it's the ability to still kind of use all the information that you've learned throughout your life.
And like still use it.
Um, so so that's the kale. It also has fiber, right? It's fiber is great for your gut.
I also add an avocado.
And the avocado
also increases the bioavailability of those carotenoids, the lutein and zeanthin.
By leg.
Up to sixfold.
Anywhere between like three to sixfold.
you're getting more of the lute and diazanthin. You're basically making them more bioavailable by adding the avocado. Also, it's a great source of mono unsaturated fat. Avocados are high in potassium.
Something like ninety six percent of the
US population doesn't get enough potassium.
And then I add a ton of frozen blueberries.
Um and blueberries are yes, you're getting your vitamin C.
and you're getting some fermentable fiber for the gut, but they're also high in those phytochemicals. So they have
polyphenols in them.
And they have um anthecyanins.
They're like superpowers for the brain.
So there's been so many studies that have been done randomized controlled trials either with freeze dried blueberry extract or actually just.
Blueberries.
showing it improves cognition
Yeah, it improves mood.
When I was a postdoc, I did some studies in people we were looking at freeze dried blueberry powder. I was looking at DNA damage in their blood cells.
So markers of those double stranded breaks I talked about, like if you don't get enough folate, it causes double stranded breaks.
People that are people that are eating terrible diets and that are, you know, overweight and obese.
have more double stranded breaks in their their blood cells. So that's something that I've
uh measured.
we were getting a population of people that were overweight and obese and then giving them this free dried blues blueberry extract.
And over the course of four or eight weeks, it lowered their DNA damage.
Personally, it's like I I what I notice is like the mood enhancer.
It's like I get that blueberry and it's like Whoa.
I used to add bananas to my s my my my smoothie years and years ago.
It's not that bananas are bad for you.
But they have this enzyme in'em called polyphenol oxidase.
PPO
Well, as the name implies it's
it breaks down polyphenols, which is what you want from the blueberries, to get the benefits in the brain and the benefits. Yeah, exactly. There was a very, very recent study in twenty twenty three that came out.
And this was a controlled trial.
Where people were given a smoothie with blueberries.
either with and without the banana. And then metabolites of polyphenols were measured in their in their urine and blood.
And if they had the banana, their polyphenol levels were just plummeted.
Like they weren't getting him from the blueberries.
And this is I'll tell you what's enraging about it.
Is anywhere you go.
Like if you want to buy a smoothie when you're out.
And about.
Everything has a b has a banana in it.
And you know, like I'm
a parent and so I like, you know, I'm out and about and I have my my kid with me and it's like I want to get him a smoothie.
And it has blueberries in it. And I'm like, but it also has a banana. And I'm like, but you know, there's been studies on children as well. And giving children blueberries improves their their cognition. So they they perform better on like tests.
You know, it's not just good for adults, it's like throughout the lifespan. And so now I have to like tell them, okay, don't put the banana
But like everywhere you go, there's a banana in the smoothie. So that's interesting. I'm gonna give you my smoothie recipe after and you can crate it, but I'm gonna switch out the banana starting tomorrow. Okay so we have kale leaves, avocado, frozen blueberries.
And Prote protein powder. So um Protein powder. Especially if I'm doing it like you said, first thing in the morning when I'm in if sometimes I'll have my smoothie in the afternoon.
In which case, like if I didn't work out and I've already gotten my protein, like I won't put the protein powder. But these days I'm mostly always putting them, to be honest. I'm like doing something every day. And so and I just it's hard to get the protein requirement for me. So I usually do
Um some whey protein.
And then I also add a little bit of hydrolyzed collagen powder as well.
If you're getting the protein, you probably don't need the hydrolyzed collagen powder, but there I personally there's studies showing that um randomized controlled trials showing that it improves like skin elasticity.
And you know, things that I'm also interested in addition.
uh and with respect to skin, I mean there's all sorts of studies also showing it helps with joint health and this and that.
And then the other thing I add is I do a little bit of Moringa powder.
So Moringa
It's high in some micronutrients. Like it has things like zinc and iron and
Magnesium.
But it also has
something in it that is called um
Mring.
And it is a phytochemical.
that is very similar to sulfurophane.
which is found in like broccoli, broccoli sprouts. It's really high in broccoli sprouts.
And it activates genetic pathways in our body, the same ones that sulfurophane activates.
that have been shown to increase antioxidants in the brain, like glutathione, that have been shown to lower DNA damage in our cells, all sorts of benefits.
But the other thing that it does, and I've noticed this, so I used to wear a continuous glucose monitor like for years.
It blunts the postprandial glucose rise from a smoothie when I put
Moringa powder in it.
And so I put that in my smoothie as well. Now that's a little spicy tasting, I would say
If you're like in one of those moods where you don't want the like
Like not so great tasting smoothie.
You know, you can
skip the Moringa or go go for a smaller amount, but I do like a big heaping tablespoon of it.
Does like a liquid and Oh, and then I add some water. Yeah. Water, okay. To kinda mix it up.
That's pretty cool. I'm gonna give you my smoothie. You can give me a grade on this. And keep in mind, I'm a parent.
uh of two boys who devour food. So we came up with this and I've never told anybody the the exact recipe before, but here here's basically what it is.
And we call it the Tom Brady.
It's got protein powder in it. It's got A G one.
It's got walnuts.
It's got blueberries, yogurt.
Almond milk, but like real almond milk, no other additives or anything.
Banana, chia seeds, and hemp seeds.
Yeah, so you're going for the the the the the kind of omega three that's in those plant sources like walnuts and chia seeds, um, is
A LA.
And um
We were talking a lot about the EPA and DHA, which are from the marine sources.
A LA, I mean now walnuts are great. There's like studies showing like if you eat a handful of walnuts a day, you're
You know, you have lower cancer risk and cardiovascular disease risk, they're clearly good for you.
they're not the same as the EP and DHA. So don't substitute I'll tell you
You can so your body does convert ALA.
from plant sources of omega three into
E PA and DHA, which is essentially what your the final products that you need are.
But everybody does it differently.
And the conversion efficiency is about five percent.
Okay.
When they're making when they're high in estrogen, that can go up, really. They can go up much higher.
And um I think that's because
because during pregnancy and and child development in utero.
the the DHA is so important that your body makes sure you're just
turning all that ALA into that.
Eat that DHA.
'Cause when you're pregnant, your estrogen level go goes, it's like a hundred fold higher. It's like super high.
If there are people that are relying on just plant sources of omega three, that is a mistake. And if you do an omega three index test and there's
You know, Omega Quant is probably one of the best
places to do that. Um
then
You'll figure you'll figure that out really quick. Okay. Well yeah, well, this is great, right? So like what would we supplement here? We we'd take out the bananas and because they're counteracting the blueberries, we'd add avocado. That's a lot of fat in there. What else would we like
Take out or add or or switch.
What would you say? So you're you're doing the A G greens as your source of green?
Uh I'm doing that as sort of like the base vitamin'cause they have a daily multivitamin and I just count that as their daily multivitamin. That's their daily multivitamin. Okay. But what w did you add any greens in there? I didn't
No, there's no green. So that would be that would be something
Like add some sneak some kayaves in. Oh my god, if they saw that they wouldn't drink it. No, don't let them see. Or do they do they have to make it to be part of it. So I put kay leaves in in my son's um or even romaine lettuce.
Here's the other thing. So there's really not a lot of foods.
That can go into a smoothie.
that would degrade the polyphenols'cause they're high in that enzyme, polyphenol oxidase, but the ones that are
R
Bananas.
and beets and anything in that family. So like chard.
I used to put chard in my smoothie, like like Swiss chard, you know, like they're so it's so good. And look, these are great foods to eat. Like just don't put'em in your smoothie with blueberries. Just not with blueberries. Exactly. Um so I I mean I used to put chard in my smoothie and
Like this this like changed my world. I was like, This is unbelievable. I can't, you know, thankfully I stopped doing the banana and my smoothie quite a in fact, I just kinda just got lazy and it was like, Okay, Kale, I just need like a base of like greens. You know what I mean? Thankfully, like years ago. So
even though this study just kind of came out.
last year I've I've been ahead of you. I wish I I knew that. They're gonna blame me for their poor test results now. They're gonna be that's like you know, you sent us to school with blueberries and bananas, Dad, like
What were you thinking? Are they are they physically active? Cardior respiratory fitness is another thing that's like it correlates with academic performance. Like the better fit the child is.
Like th they score better on a lot of academic tests as well.
Okay. I wanna get to fitness in a second. I wanna cover uh sort of grass fed and then heat and cold exposure, and then we can we can dive into fitness. Grass fed, non-grass fed, is there a difference? I see this everywhere between grass fed butter, non-grass fed butter, grass fed beef, non-gras fed beef.
Is there a difference from a consumer point of view in terms of what I'm ingesting? There there's slight differences. There are definitely. Um, so we were just talking about the omega three profile. So I would say one of the biggest differences is the omega three and then
The Omega Six.
profile in
Let's talk about meat, like grass fed.
You know, cows that are grass fed versus
Not.
So what I mean by that is like they're getting that plant source of omega th A L A, that that plant source of omega three.
They're getting if they're they're eating like
Grass.
Right. They're getting it from from the plants that they're eating.
And they're also
not getting as much of what would be a type of food that is higher in omega six.
So this would be like if they're g being fed corn, for example, or corn, you know, oil ish processed kind of like pellets or wh whatever. You know, if you're eating, you know, for example, ground beef from a just conventional cow.
then you're gonna have a lot more of the omega six and less of the omega three.
I never thought about this before, but like you just said, like we're not supposed to eat processed foods, but then we're eating animals that are eating processed foods.
Yeah. Again, this goes back to my take on nutrition and how to and thinking about the framework of how to eat. First and foremost, I think the most important thing is how do I get these important
vitamins and minerals and fatty acids and amino acids like protein.
How do I get all those, right?
Okay, I'm getting I'm getting an idea of how I should be eating. Then comes the next layer.
Do I need to have organic or
you know, is a little bit of pesticides okay. Do I need to eat grass fed? Or, you know, because at the end of the day
Fo's expensive.
Yeah, totally. And way more expensive now than years ago. Exactly. It's it's it's even worse now. And so I do think it is
better.
If you can't afford it, you can yeah, don't worry about it. If if you if you if not, like the the most important thing is
What if you're eating conventional meat and you're getting a little bit higher omega six? Well, if you're supplementing with fish oil every day, who cares? You're getting that getting the omega three is what is most important. It's and people are so focused on, oh, but the omega six is so high when your body actually needs omega six. So if you're getting it from like,
you know, dietary sources
Versus like
oils, processed cooking oils and stuff. And even that
Look, I don't cook with
Vegetable oil. I don't use vegetable oil at all.
However, I'm gonna be frank, okay? When you look at the data.
Taking people.
better eating like a high saturated fat diet, so they're eating more like butter.
uh, you know, saturated fat like coconut and substituting that with vegetable oil.
There's no effect in their cardiovascular disease risk.
Or they do better.
You can look at this two ways. You can say, Oh
Well, if it's the same saturated fat versus vegetable oil, then clearly saturated fat's not as bad as we thought it was.
That's true.
But the second way you can look at it is oh
They substituted the saturated fat with the vegetable oil and it wasn't any worse.
So maybe the vegetable oil isn't killing us as bad as we thought.
And this is the one thing I like to point out because
I still don't use them because
when I think about it from like my mechanistic
brain point of view, it's like, well, vegetable oil is very high in polyunsaturated fat. Like we talked about omega threes being a type of a poly they're prone to oxidation. And when you add heat into the picture,
Boom, that's like tons of oxidation.
Perhaps in those studies where they're substituting saturated fat for vegetable, were they putting vegetable oil on salads or were they
Frying it, deep frying and g you know, like consuming oxidized lipids. Like we don't really know.
It's still better you're still better off avoiding
The vegetable oil, particularly for cooking.
Like
in anything that's with heat, you know?
And then I mean, obviously processed foods have tons of vegetable oil, but that have been cooked at a high heat when you go out to eat. I mean, like those restaurants are using vegetable oil. It's cheaper. They're probably reusing it, which is even more oxidized, right? I mean, these are things like you don't want to think about or you'll just never go out. I mean, like you have to like
Enjoy life, right? Practical. Yeah, like let's not like you can't obsess over everything or like you become like a maniac.
One thing we can all afford is vitamin D and we're all sort of lacking in that.
W walk me through sort of um
How we can get that, the difference between sunlight
And
supplementation
As well as the effect of sunscreen on our absorption of
uh vitamin D and
Is sunscreen actually killing us more than just being in the sun?
So vitamin D
Food is not a great source of it. Like you can find like it's it it is fortified in some fatty foods, unfortunately.
It's fortified with the wrong form. It's fortified with D two rather than D three, which is what we make in
our skin from the sun.
The primary source of it is, as you mentioned, it's from the sun and specifically it's UV B radiation from the sun. That is really important because UVB radiation only occurs during certain times of the year.
In regions where you're more
Northern
So for example in Canada, your
not making vitamin D a good, you know, four or five months out of the year.
It's very it's very challenging to make a lot of vitamin D from being out in the sun.
Summertime, you know, different. Lots of UB UVB radiation, right?
So you need to be in the sun and you need to be at a certain time of year, depending on where you live, it all there's lots of things.
You mentioned sunscreen as well. There's a lot of factors that are that are involved in
you know, the ability to produce vitamin D three in the skin from the UVB radiation. And that has to do with sunscreen. So anything that blocks out UVB radiation.
Is gonna block out.
the ability to make vitamin D. Um, melanin, the the pigmentation that is like a sunscreen, it's natural sunscreen in people that some people have like
In some regions of the world that are s certainly more equatorial.
That is also a natural sunscreen. It blocks out UV B radiation, which is why your body responds when you're in the sun, your body tan, because it's like, oh, next time I'm in the sun, I need to protect myself. It's a it's an adaptation. The other thing that regulates the production of vitamin D three from the sun is age.
The older you get, the worse the the
less I would say efficient your body is at making vitamin D three from the sun. So for example, a seventy year old makes like four times less than their twenty year old former self.
bioavailability of vitamin D three is important as well. And that's regulated by body mass and weight. So so you make vitamin D three in your skin, but it gets released into your bloodstream.
then it's converted into another form that is actually not
A vitamin, it's a steroid hormone.
So vitamin D is actually much more important. It's not
just a vitamin. It's actually a hormone that our body needs. So but so basically the more body fat you have,
the less bu bioavailable vitamin D three is. And so you actually need more.
Vitamin D three.
the more body we the more body fat that you have.
So this hormone
Is
It's extremely important because
It is regulating about five percent of the human genome, the protein encoding human genome.
So it's a lot it's doing a lot of things. And you can imagine. So what it does, there's actually little sequence inside of our
our DNA.
And
You know, it's it's a little repeat sequence that vitamin D
recognizes and it like this whole complex of vitamin D in a receptor goes down and binds that little
sequence of DNA and it turns on a gene.
Or it turns off a gene and it does it in a very coordinated manner.
And when you don't have enough vitamin D,
that stuff all goes wrong and and so lots of things can can happen.
because of sunscreen, because of our modern day
lifestyles where inside technology we're on our computers, less uh less farming, less agricultural work out in the sun.
Majority of people are not getting enough vitamin D.
three. And so um something around seventy percent of the US population.
is insufficient in vitamin D3. So that that is defined as having blood levels of vitamin D less than 30 nanograms per milliliter. And then a another percentage of the population is deficient. So they'd be less than 20 nanograms per milliliter.
But we've been told like not to go outside. We've been told to, you know
layer up the sunscreen. We've been I mean, are these things getting in the way of vitamin D? Are they helping us? What

How do we make sense of all this? Let's not like let's get be clear. Like you you if you have
You know, fair skin.
And you're going out in the sun a lot, then you can increase your risk for
DNA damage and you know, skin cancer f is one. Like for example
Australia.
Australia's like w like there the mel melanoma cancer is like through the roof in in Australia and melanoma is like the worst type of skin cancer to get.
you know, there's a lot of fair skinned people living there and Australia's very close to the equator.
You know, there's there's definitely many months out of the year where you're just lots and lots of UVB radiation.
But um people that were sort of native to that region had darker
um skin. They had more melanin and so
the solution to people that are more fair skinned living in Australia is actually sunscreen and hat and
um and a vitamin D three supplement.
Yeah, the the the question is where do you find the balance, right? Like how much sun exposure is enough and do I need to supplement and do I have to wear sunscreen? And I think that all depends on a variety of factors. It isn't like a one size fits all. It's like, okay, well, where do you live? Do you live
You know, in Southern California, like where I do, do you live in Australia?
Uh do you live in Canada?
Those are those are all factors to keep in mind. And then just measuring vitamin D levels. Where am I at? Then then you can go, okay, well, clearly I don't wear sunscreen. I don't go out in the sun a lot because I'm indoor work. I'm I work inside a lot.
So, you know, even without the sunscreen, I'm still not
you know, getting enough vitamin D three. So you have to kind of measure something.
So is there a difference like if I go out and buy a vitamin D three supplement
Uh, is there a difference between that and the sun? And then do I want to take that with anything
I notice I think Athletic Greens includes vitamin K with that. Is that for the bioavailability? No, it's not for the bioavailability, but let's let's let's
address your questions because they're really great questions. Um differences between sun exposure
and supplemental form. Again, um
vitamin D three supplemental form, which is which is key.
So the differences between vitamin D three from the sun versus supplemental, yes, there's differences. So like
let's let's say you're um you're like in like
Sub Sahara Africa, where you're like just so close to the equator and you're just, you know, you can make vitamin D th, you know, three from the sun and you're out in the sun. Let's say you're like a a bushman or something out there all the time.
There's been studies that have measured the levels of people that are like aboriginal to these equ equatorial regions like Bushmen and subsaharan Africa. And their natural vitamin D levels are something like anywhere between eighty to a hundred nanograms per mil, but they don't really go above that.
And the reason is because your body
senses like the vitamin D levels and
when you're still being exposed to the sun.
instead of converting it into like vitamin D three, it like
converted into this other metabolite. So it's like it's like okay, we're we're putting the the brakes on this. We're not gonna do any more.
If you're taking a supplement and you don't measure anything, like you can
Let's say you're taking like an insane number, like
There's there's upper limits that have been sort of
identified as the safe amount to supplement with.
vitamin D three every day. So like the Institute of Medicine in the United States has set that as four thousand IUs a day.
That doesn't mean you can't go above that. That's just the
the safe upper limit where you're not gonna have any toxicity effects.
But like let's say you're taking like a hundred thousand IUs a day, like way over four thousand, right? I mean
those natural mechanisms aren't gonna kick in in the skin.
that like they do when the when you're you're being exposed to a lot of UB radiation and your your body's like, Oh, I have enough vitamin D three, so I'm gonna, you know, stop.
So um you can over supplement with vitamin D three. It is fat soluble and it can be toxic.
it's challenging to do. Like you would have to take something like
hundred thousand I use, you know, or something a day for like a year.
And the biggest effect is um vitamin D three can you can make your calcium more bioavailable.
So we're talking about bioavailability of other minerals. Um, calcium is much more bioavailable in the presence of vitamin D. So you absorb about forty percent more calcium from your diet.
If you have adequate levels of vitamin D.
One concern is well, if I have a lot of vitamin D and I'm taking calcium,
then maybe I'm gonna get hypercalcemia, right? Too much calcium in the bloodstream.
There are studies that have shown it's in it's exceedingly high doses that you have to do for a long time to get that.
But um that is the concern with
with taking too much vitamin D three is that you're gonna get
too much calcium in your blood, which can have acute
toxicity effects, but also long term effects with calcification of, you know, your arteries and your vascular system, because calcium can form a precipitate really easy.
That's that's the concern. And then you mentioned
your your athletic greens. So they put vitamin K two in there.
Which is so I mentioned vitamin K one, which is found in leafy greens, and it's invol involved in blood coagulation, so clotting.
Which when you take in your greens, you make you're getting the vitamin K.
One, it goes to the liver and it activates all those coagulation proteins, blood for blood clotting.
When you get enough of that from the Greens, it
It stays in circulation and it does exactly what vitamin K two does.
which is activates proteins that are involved in shuttling calcium out of your vascular system and bringing it to your bones, bringing it to your muscle, where you want calcium to be.
Not in your vascular system where it can form a precipitate and then a plaque.
But I want to mention one other thing because you did say bioavailability and it's related and it has to do with magnesium.
We're talking about it's a co-factor for enzymes like DNA repair. I didn't talk about a really important one. It's it's actually a co factor for both enzymes that.
Convert vitamin D three.
into the
circulating form of vitamin D that we go and we measure. It's called twenty five hydroxyvitamin D, and then eventually into the active steroid hormone.
And so there's been studies showing that people that
don't get enough magnesium.
Even if they're getting enough vitamin D, even if they're supplementing with it.
they won't convert it into the steroid hormone. It's a hormone that we need.
I as I mentioned, half of the US population
doesn't get enough magnesium. So if you're not getting that magnesium
Th that's a problem.
So something like Athlet Greens does have magnesium in it, I think. But also if you're doing greens, right, that's like a really good source of magnesium as well. So you wanna make sure you have your magnesium.
covered especially for the vitamin D as well because they work together. You need them both.
Let's switch gears and talk about uh a framework for approaching
Uh, deliberate heat and possibly deliberate cold exposure.
Deliberate heat exposure, and when we say deliberate heat, it's it's really, you know, you're you're going into a hot environment, right? So you're
You're gonna do something like a hot sauna.
A steam room, a hot bath, something that is
I dare the ambient
temperature of the room is elevated or the the water and your body is like
you know, submerged in the water, right?
what is that doing? Well that is actually
kicking on a physiological response that is in in many ways
very similar to moderate intensity aerobic exercise because
When you are when you're exposed to the this deliberate heat exposure, when you're exposed to the ambient, you know, increases in temperature.
Your
Elevating your core body temperature.
Which is what's happening with physical activity. Your heart rate increases, your plasma flow increases.
Um, your stroke volume increases all these things that are happening during physical exercise.
are happening during this deliberate heat exposure. And so there's like
there's like a a a somewhat of a I would say mimicking effect of moderate intensity aerobic exercise. And there's actually been studies that have compared that head to head. So they've looked at
being on a stationary cycle, doing, you know, not not anything crazy, but like 120 watts.
And then comparing that to sitting in a sauna for twenty minutes, doing each of those for twenty minutes. And they were
comparable in terms of
heart rate elevation during the physity or during the heat exposure, um, the changes in blood pressure during the activity, and then the improvements after. So
Blood pressure improved after the stationary cycling, blood pressure improved after the deliberate heat exposure.
heart rate resting heart rate improved after the
stationary cycling and resting heart rate improved after the deliberate heat exposure. Certainly it's important for people that are disabled, people that can't go for a run or a jog or even get on a bike. But it's also important for the population, I think, of people that
Won't
get on a bike or go for a run, or they would rather just feel like they're sitting in a spa.
And um in and at the very least, or maybe people that are just so adv adverse, there are people that are so adverse to cardiovascular exercise.
that if you can just get them into
A sauna and we can talk about parameters.
in a minute, but like if you can get them into something that's sort of at least mimicking
the moderate intensity cardiovascular exercise and they're getting those
Those adaptations, those cardiovascular adaptations.
that they would get with at least a little mild to moderate intensity exercise.
that's gonna be beneficial in in the long run as well.
And then it's also beneficial for people that are physically active.
You might go, Well, why is that?
So being physic, like being
aerobically active, doing aerobic exercise. One of the the ben best benefits is it improves what's called cardiorespiratory fitness. And that's probably one of the I would say one of the best
biomarkers of longevity, like like concrete things that you can measure. It's measured by by measuring something call two max. It's the maximum amount of oxygen you can take in during maximal exercise.
cardiovascular exercise improves that, particularly if you're doing a high intensity
um, exercise training, things that are like high intensity interval training, for example, is one of the best ways to improve it.
Especially if you're doing longer intervals of like at least a minute.
So there's been two types of studies, observational data looking at people that just routinely exercise or people that routinely exercise and do the sauna.
And then they they measured these, you know, there was measurements of cardiore respiratory fitness. And it was pretty clear that people that
routinely exercised and routinely did the sauna.
had a better cardior respiratory fitness than people that only routinely exercise. In other words, there was a benefit to do sauna on top of the exercise, right?
And then there's been intervention studies.
Where it's like, okay, we're gonna take people
Give'em an exercise workout.
Uh, I think it was the stationary bike.
And then right after that exercise workout, they're either gonna just do passive recovery or they're gonna go into a sauna and recover for 15 minutes.
I forgot how many weeks it was, something like on the order of four weeks or something like that.
they measure cardiore respiratory fitness and a variety of other biomarkers like lipids like LDL, total cholesterol, blood pressure, things like that.
While there was improvements obviously with exercises.
The ones that did exercise plus the sauna.
had an even greater improvement in their cardiore respiratory fitness. So their VOTMX was improved even more than exercise alone. They also had greater improvements in blood pressure and greater improvements in their lipid numbers and things like that. So there was every reason to
add uh deliberate heat exposure on top of exercise as well.
You're the reason I have a sauna. I think I first came across your work and you had this like seventy page
a website on the benefits of a sauna. And I remember like skimming the first like three pages of it going, I really need a sauna. And so you're the reason I have a sauna. But when we say doing the sauna.
Like w what what does that mean in terms of
Temperature.
In terms of duration, is a hot tub the same as the sauna?
Talk to me about that. So a lot of the studies that have been done on sauna.
have come out of Finland, where they're using Finnish, which are
generally speaking it w it it would be what I would call like
It's it's a regular sauna where you have like an electric heater with some rocks that are hot.
Um, in in Finland they often use water and they pour it on the hot rocks and so there's a humidity aspect there, any bet anywhere between ten to twenty percent her humidity.
So a lot of the observational studies and intervention studies showing like I just mentioned one about
VH max improvements, blood pressure improvements.
They're they're done in Finland and a lot of those parameters used, generally speaking, are
you know, regular saunas of about 175 degrees Fahrenheit and 10 to 20 percent humidity.
The average time spent in this sauna.
is about twenty minutes for the for the benefits to really be
I would say that robust.
And and then that there's frequency, right? So like how often do you do it? And so there've been a variety of studies that have looked at
All cause mortality, so di so so you know dying early from all causes that are non-accidental.
And then looking at cardiovascular related mortality mortality, like dying from a heart attack, for example. And
people that are more more frequently using the sauna, that's a dose dependent effect. So people that use the sauna, for example, two to three times a week.
have a twenty four percent lower all cause mortality compared to people that only use it one time a week.
But people that use it four to seven times a week have a forty percent lower all cause mortality compared to people that only use it one time a week. So in other words, it seems like the minimal effective dose to get the most robust effect would be four times a week. And the same goes for other
parameters. So cardiovascular dying from, you know
cardiovascular related mortality.
It's fifty percent lower peop in people that use this on a
four to seven times a week compared to one time a week. Whereas if you're only doing it two to three times a week, it's something like 27% lower. And when I said duration in the sauna, it's really important. So those studies were also done looking at, okay, let's say people are only staying in the sauna for 11 minutes versus like greater than 19 minutes. So like twenty minutes, right?
um, they didn't have that robust fifty percent reduction in all sorry, in cardiovascular related mortality if they only stayed in for eleven minutes. It was much less. It was a little bit like it was improved, but it was not fifty percent.
The temperature and the duration and the frequency, those are three parameters that are important with respect.
to to using, you know, a regular hot sauna.
And when I say I I the reason I say regular hot sauna is because another type of sauna that's very popular are infrared saunas.
And infrared saunas.
do not get as hot. So they're not warming the ambient air around you.
They're working through another mechanism and they're sort of like moving molecules inside your body around and and sort of heating you up in a different way.
And you do sweat a lot and you do get your you can get your core body temperature elevated, particularly if you stay in quite a long time.
You do have to
to keep in mind that you can't take those parameters and go, I'm gonna stay in a hundred and forty five degree
infrared sauna for only twenty minutes.
because that's what those finish studies have shown because they're completely different.
If you're just staying in for twenty minutes, like the same amount of time in each.
you're not going to get those blood pressure improvements from an infrared sauna, which makes sense. It's not as hot, right? You're not it takes longer to elevate that core body to get your heart rate elevated. And anyone that's done like I've done a lot of infrared sauna and I've done a lot of regular hot sauna.
And
You know, I know and also wearing a heart rate monitor, right? You can wear like
your Fitbit or your Whoop or whatever in into the sauna.
And you'll you'll know when your heart rate starts to get elevated. And it's not gonna be after twenty minutes in an infrared zona.
For me, I have to stay in
Like
Forty five like I'd say sixty minutes is more like the duration that I would have to stay in to start to get more
elevations in my heart rate.
Um, again, that's that mimicking of the moder intensity exercise.
But there's also biomarkers that have been measured. So for example
Um, we haven't gone he gone into this yet, but heat shock proteins, these are one of the adaptations that happen when your body is
forced um to increase its core body temperature, whether that's through physical activity, which is making you hot and making you sweat, or if it's deliberate heat exposure. And studies have been done looking at people that go into a relatively hot sauna. So this would be 163 degree Fahrenheit sauna.
If they stay in for 30 minutes, they can raise their heat chuck proteins about 50% over their baseline levels.
And heat shock proteins
have a lot of beneficial effects. So they they're involved with preventing proteins from aggregating and forming plaques in the brain, in the vascular system.
They also are very important for preventing muscle atrophy. And there've now been studies that have been done showing that just even locally heating
You know, so the studies that have been done have been like they're called immobilization studies where they're sort of mimicking an injury or
an event like let's say you go and like an older person goes into the hospital, they have the flu, whatever. They're they're basically
immobilized for a period of weeks. And so they're not using their muscles. And their muscles were atrophying at a rapid
Right.
Studies have been done where if you if you apply even just local heat.
That you can cut that disuse atrophy by as much as forty percent.
So heat shock proteins are a good biomarker for heat stress.
So is increased heart rate. We talked about like you're getting up to one ten, one twenty, you can get up to one twenty beads per minute.
I'm sitting in the hot sauna and that's really an indication that your core body temperature is being elevated. Your your body's doing that work.
And you can elevate your heat shot proteins by
being submerged from the shoulders down for about 20 minutes in about a hundred and four degree Fahrenheit water, which is a standard hot tub level.
I do think there are
comparable effects with respect to the modality of heat exposure, whether we're talking about a hot sauna or a hot bath, perhaps an infrared sauna, again
the duration, the parameters will change. The parameters will change, but I do think that you can find
comparable effects. There are personal preferences at play. Like I
I like both hot tub and hot sauna. I find that I cheat more with a hot tub. Like I'm like more prone to put my arms out when I get really hot. When I'm in this sauna, like there's nowhere to go. Right. Like, like if I if I'm getting hot, then I have to get out and then I'm like, oh, I'm giving up. Like mentally, I'm like, no, I'm not gonna give up.
But if I'm in the hot tub, I don't feel like I'm giving up when I'm just like getting my arms out.
There's an immune benefit too, like your immune system, isn't there? There is. Yeah. So there was, um, there have been some observational data st studies as well looking at like pneumonia risk. It's
I think it was something like forty percent lower in people that use the sauna four to seven times a week and
There have been a lot of really early studies on um again, these are coming out of Finland where there's humidity. So
You know, there's steam involved as well.
You're you're you're working your cardiovascular system, I mean the lungs are affected and
I don't know all the the mechanisms and I don't know that they've all been worked out.
But there is some sort of benefit on the lugs and also just the immune system as well. It seems like immune changes happen as well.
And it's funny, I do get into the sauna when I'm feeling
a little under the weather, or even if I am
sick it because I find it's easier than getting on my Peloton
I d I get in there and I'll do the steam and I feel so much better. I feel so much better. It's like uh there's my my grandmother or grandfather used to tell me like sweat it out.
And there's almost like something true to that when you are feeling sick. Absolutely. So when you're sick, you get a fever and the fever response, your your core body temperature is elevated and heat shock proteins are activated. And heat shock proteins do play a role in what is called the in in the innate immune response.
So that's the immune response that you have when you've never seen a virus or a bacterial pathogen before. It's that like
It's not the antibody response. It's that like, okay, let's fire away and get so heat shock proteins do play a role in that. And um, when you are getting in the sauna, when you're doing some form of deliberate heat exposure, you are elevating your core body temperature. And so the fever response is a very important part of
our immune's way, our immune system's way of um dealing with the pathogen, right? It's important. Like we we get a fever for a reason.
The reason I actually got into the sauna way back in like two thousand nine had nothing to do with
cardiovascular effects or you know, even the effects on on muscle mass. But um
It was the effects on my mood.
And that was, you know, I was very stressed out in graduate school and this was like two thousand nine.
And I was using the sauna.
every morning before I would go into the lab and do my experiments, that would often fail is very stressful.
And um I started to notice quite quickly that I was able to handle that stress a lot better. I was just I was like I wasn't getting so depressed after and so like down and anxious and
Um, and that's when I was like something is going on here. Like it was very noticeable for me.
And so then I started to look into the literature and come up with my own sort of theories, which um
I connecting the dots where I I actually did publish on this back in twenty twenty two. It's in my huge review article on the sauna.
It's called How Sauna.
Persona use can increase health span.
And I think it has to do with when you get into the sauna, again, you're mimicking a lot of the same effects that cardiovascular exercise. And so you're you're releasing a lot of endorphins as well. Those are the feel good opioids that were released in our brain. But what's really interesting is that also
the opposite of endorphin is called dinorphin. So it's also an o an opioid that we release in our body.
And um
It's it's that it's that opioid that's uh involved in like the discomfort feeling.
So like when you're working out, when you're getting hot, you're like you're feeling uncomfortable.
your body's making dinorphine.
And dinorphin is um part of what it does is it
cools down your body. So it's playing a role in it's like, okay, you're you're getting you're elevating your core body temperature. And so the adaptive response is okay, we need to cool down somewhat.
Dinorphon plays a role in that.
But it also is what's responsible for that uncomfortable feeling when you're like, Oh, I'm so hot, I wanna get out.
When you release dinorphin, you have a response, a feedback loop in your brain where dinorphin causes your body to make.
more receptors to the feel good and dwarphin. And it sensitizes the r those receptors. And it makes sense if you think about it, right? When your body's not feeling good and you're getting that uncomfortable feeling, it wants to make sure that it's gonna
counter that with feeling good. Yeah. The next time you make endorphins
from a hug from your child or a a joke you laugh at, whatever.
you're gonna feel even better because you're gonna be more sensitive.
to though to those endorphins.
From those it's called mu opioid receptors, and that's what you make when you increase endorphin. Anyways, but now there's lots more research coming out. So work from tr Dr. Charles Raison and now um his protege, Dr. Ashley Mason.
It's it's a type of sauna that's like a it's like a bed and it's a chamber with the head out and so your whole body is in it.
They are elevating your core body temperature to about one oh one point three degrees Fahrenheit. So you're getting a fever. Yeah. They're inducing a feverish response. Now, many people have to be into the in this sauna and it it's an infrared it gets up to about 145 ish or something like that. And they're in there for like
sixty minutes. Any fifty minutes to sixty minutes. And they're getting
They're getting a feverish response, so it's not it's a the it's a very intense procedure.
And but they induced this feverish response one oh one point three Fahrenheit just one time in people with like major depressive disorder.
And um
they or they did a sham control where they made them feel like they were getting hot, but it like wasn't hot enough. And the people that got the active treatment had an antidepressant effect that lasted like six weeks after it was like enormous and crazy. Placebo group didn't get it at all.
It's amazing what our body can do to heal itself when you know we're not sort of always injecting it with stuff too. There's all these other ways to go about healing it. It's almost like it knows what it's doing sometimes. It does. I I agree with I mean it's it's it's so exciting to potentially have a non pharmacological treatment for depression because
It's undeniable that
doing aerobic exercise, like they've compared running to classical antidepressants like SSRI, so serotonin and um reptile inhibitors, right? The the in terms of the antidepressant effects, it's like the same. Only the running has all the other benefits, right? There's people that are really severely depressed that like just can't even get out of bed.
Yeah. Like they're not gonna go for a run and
It's true. There are people that will not get out of bed.
But will they get into a sauna?
Yeah. I mean it's it's a lot easier. And so it really opens up doors that are just
It's just so exciting.
super promising as we age too for the aging population. A lot of people who don't want to exercise when they get a lot older or they you know the aches and pains and maybe it's a low intensity way to do that. I can say for myself during COVID was probably the
you know, one of the most stressful periods of my life and the sauna like
You know
I think it saved my life a lot, you know what I mean? Like it I was using the sauna five, six times a week
And it was just sort of like A, it was mentally grounding. It was something I look forward to as a great ritual.
But it sort of kept me out of trouble for some reason. And I could never explain it. And I'm an N of one and you know, I'm not super scientific and all that, but I was like.
This is working. This is keeping me like happy and going and motivated and
I gotta keep doing more of this because uh yeah, it was really crazy.
I wanna talk about exercise. Uh maybe we'll do that in part two, because I don't think we're gonna do it justice here in the next ten minutes, but maybe we can end with sort of the top
Three
uh interventions you can think of from a diet perspective, and then the top three interventions you can think of from a behavioral perspective that would have the biggest bang on people's lives.
diet wise, like the top three
Things that people can think about.
would be to make sure
they're getting enough of their marine source of omega three. So supplementing with two grams of
a pretty decent quality fish brand, yeah, fish oil brand.
per day. And that's so e it's like low hanging fruit.
And then I would say vitamin D three.
Most people, uh four thousand I use is a pretty safe bet.
And and that you're you know, I think that at the very least doing four thousand IUs a day of vitamin D three. As you mentioned, it's like the cheapest supplement. It's something like a penny a pill. It's like
the most affordable thing.
Um
You know, to do it.
And then um
Making sure
you're eating your greens and getting your protein. So like the magni thinking about the magnesium and then the the 1.2 grams.
per kilogram body weight a day.

Like the biggest bang for your buck, I think.
And then with respect to behavioral
exercise and particularly doing a good amount of high intensity exercise, and we didn't get so much into it, but it really is one of the most important things that you can do. I mean, there's studies showing that people just doing
one to three minutes of like getting their heart rate up to eighty percent max heart rate for like one to one to three minutes.
you know, three times a week.
is associated with like a 50% reduction in all cause mortality and cancer related mortality. So it's easy to do. Like you can do that, right? You can just get up and do
three minutes, you know, like it's not it's not that challenging.
Also, I mean
Resistance training.
and muscle mass super important. Like you need to be
You need to be building that muscle mass and maintaining it because frailty
Um, you know, you get to a point when you start to get older and all of a sudden you have an event where you're you got the influenza, whatever, and then you start to you're not working out, you lose so much muscle. And you get a couple of those stacked on over the a couple of years.
And then all of a sudden you can't walk.
Your mobility goes down and then it's just
the curve just drops, right?
So um resistance training is extremely important. And if you're doing those two things, you're probably gonna be, you know, maintaining a healthy body weight because
at the end of the day, calories in, calories out doesn't matter, right? So if you're doing the the exercise and the resistance training
Um and you're kind of focusing on like getting the
the proper micronutrients from your veggies and protein intake, you're probably not gonna be eating all the the junk.
But then on top on the the last thing I would say, um, behavioral wise, I would I would add I would add sauna in or deliberate heat exposure. I think I think that's huge for um
A lot of reasons, you know, for the cardiovascular reasons there's there's
Mental health effects, as we talked about. There's also other brain effects, um, dementia risk is lower as well. And then muscle atrophy, you can do the deliberate
heat exposure to help prevent muscle atrophy as well. So I think those are the three behavioral
Changes. And by the way
Exercise can forgive a lot of sins, including lack of sleep.
That's why I I start with that and and and I I don't make the sleep the most important. I actually think it's exercise.
We're gonna have to have you on for part two,'cause I really want to dive into both resistance training and cardiovascular exercise with you. But this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for your time.
Well, I look forward to a round two, Shane, and thank you for all the great questions. It's been a lot of fun.
Wow, what a fun conversation that was with Dr. Ronda Patrick. And I just want to go through some of my
Takeaways and notes from this one.
Uh you know
I think the big overarching message that we
got across today is that
A lot of people focus on the micro.
And if you notice Ronna kept bringing it back to the macro. And I don't mean in terms of nutrients. I mean in terms of what we focus on. We're we're overly focused on these little minute things because they're really within our control and we want to feel uh like we're doing something when in reality there's these big things that we're not focused on that nobody's really arguing.
about. So you might argue whether seed oil is bad for you. I think it is
uh or not. But at the end of the day, you know, are we getting the right
uh magnesium, are we getting folate? Are we getting omega three's
How are we positioning ourselves? And this is how I think about food personally. It's the this is one of the reasons I'm exploring this with with
Doctor Ronda Patrick and you know some other guests is
The food that you put into your body is sort of a lead domino for a whole bunch of other things. It affects your mood, it affects your energy, it affects how you handle stress, it affects how you handle your emotions. It really dictates a lot of what comes downstream. And so paying attention to the food in your body is a really good way
to take control of your life. It's a really small thing you can do to put yourself on easy mode every day. We didn't get into talking about sugars, we didn't talk about oils too much. I really wanted to get into that.
Also really wanted to get into exercise routines and talk about that.
Uh, but I think we'll try to do that in the next episode. We'll definitely do a part two of this.
Um
I did take away sort of like, you know, uh grass fed was better. If you can afford it, if not, don't stress over it. Same as organic. If you can afford it, great. If you can't
Don't stress over it. And again, uh if you had to pick and choose, I loved her heuristic for using thin and s thick.
skin as the way to pick and choose. If you're sort of like, oh, I want to do some organic and and not all
Uh, I liked her approach to sort of washing veggies. It's very practical and pragmatic.
You know, it doesn't have to be sort of the uh Instagram that you see of the vinegar and the baking soda and the water and soaking it for fifteen minutes.
I liked uh the very end when we talked about sort of like here are three behavioral interventions that you can do that really make a difference. Uh and here are three sort of supplement dietary things. And again, they were fish oil.
uh vitamin D three, greens and protein
And then high intensity exercise.
um resistance training and sauna, which I really like. Um in part because I'm biased. I have a sauna.
And I think that that makes a big difference. It made a big difference for me during Covid. Uh, I think it's made a big difference for other people um that I've talked to. And one thing we didn't talk about was sleep. And I know a friend of mine, Andrew Wriginson
has one and he says it really, really drives his sleep. I don't know if it helps me sleep. Sometimes I get in there and I I nap, to be honest with you.
I like
Talking about this smoothie, and if you remember, she had a smoothie recipe and it was sort of like four kale leaves, avocado.
frozen blueberries, which she actually went out of the way to say a ton of frozen blueberries, protein powder, collagen powder, and there was that meringa powder water.
And then we talked about my smoothie, the one that I make with the kids, and how I was unintentionally adding bananas and blueberries together and sort of undoing the amazing effect of blueberries.
And uh I'm gonna switch. I'm gonna try to switch it out and see what the kids think, or even if they notice, switch out the banana, put in avocado.
uh but again in mine we call it the Tom Brady. It was protein, AG one, walnuts, blueberries, yogurt, almond milk. Uh I'm gonna switch out the banana, chia seeds, and ham seeds if you want to
uh hemp seeds are a really good sort of um source of extra calories and fat for
uh for the kids if you are trying to get them to eat more, which you know, I have one kid who eats a lot and one kid who doesn't eat a lot.
Um so I'm always trying to get more nutrient dense food into both of them.
Uh what else do we talk about? We sort of talked about the sun and sunscreen and and so circumstantial there's not a lot to take away from that.
uh other than, you know, when you're out in the sun, be careful about what your your sort of
um putting on your skin and also um be careful about how much sun you are getting. You don't want to get sunburned. And yeah, I just uh really thank you guys for listening. And if you have any questions or follow ups
Just send me an email, Shane at
FS.blog and what I'll do is I'll sort of like create a little sheet and
We can make a
Questions for follow up for round two. We're definitely gonna do this again.
I really appreciate you taking the time to listen and learn with me. As you can see, this is my journey and uh I'm learning along with you, so I really appreciate it.
Thanks and learning with us. For a complete list of episodes, show notes, transcripts, and more, go to fs.blog slash podcast or just Google the Knowledge Project.
The Fernham Street blog is also where you can learn more about my new book, Clear Thinking.
turning ordinary moments into extraordinary results.
It's a transformative guide that hands you the tools to master your fate.
Sharpen your decision making.
and set yourself up for unparallel success.
Learn more at fs dot blog slash clear.
Until next time.