Biochemist Reveals The Proven Habits To REVERSE Sleep Deprivation & Reduce Cancer Risk | Dr. Rhonda Patrick

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Hey everyone, I'm so excited that you're here today. We have an inspiring guest, Dr.
Rhonda Patrick, who has been on before, but it's been a few years. And I wanted to really get clarity because she has so much research.
She does so much great content that I wanted to try to simplify some of the things that are happening right now in the health and fitness space. There's so many different opinions.
And I like to get the best expert with the best research that can help us optimize the different parts of our life where we're struggling in all areas of life. And in this episode, she really shares some surprising things, especially the surprising connection between resistance training, lactate production, and brain health, which I want you to pay attention to when we get into it.
Also, how to time your workouts and meals for optimal glucose regulation and cognitive performance. And she talks about one main supplement that I thought I was applying to my nutritional intake on a daily basis, but I'm not doing it enough.
And she talks about the critical role of omega-3 fatty acids in longevity and why supplementation matters. I always go back and forth on supplementation.
Is this actually mattering? Is this making a difference? She talks about the power of it and why you need to be paying attention to it and which supplements matter for you. That and so much more.
I'm so excited that you're here today. I'm grateful for you.
If you're enjoying this, make sure to click the follow button over on Apple or Spotify, leave us a review and share this with one friend that you think this could be helpful for. If you've got a friend in mind who's trying to optimize their health, send them a link to this audio episode, share with them and ask them to share with you their biggest takeaway.
Without further ado, let's dive into this with Dr. Rhonda Patrick.
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Learn more at discover.com slash credit card. Welcome back, everyone in the School of Greatness.
Very excited about our guests. We have the inspiring Dr.
Rhonda Patrick in the house. So good to see you.
Thank you for being here. First first time in person on the show but second time on the show right that's right great to be here i'm so excited you're here i've been a fan of your content for a long time you've been serving humanity to help people improve their life by giving them the exact scientific peer-reviewed protocols and continually updating and optimizing these protocols over time for many years.
Your podcast, your YouTube channel, your guides, your newsletter, they all add a lot of value to so many people. So I'm grateful that you're here.
And there was something that we were talking about before we jumped on camera, which was around sleep. And I have a statistic, a couple stats that I saw online about sleep, and I want to you reflect and share on this because you have so many different levels of expertise around sleep, nutrition, supplements, food, training, and really optimizing the body.
But at this season of your life, I think we were talking about beforehand sleep is something that people need to think about and their ability to work out and to physically build muscle and strength and aerobic exercise. But I saw a survey, a WebMD survey, found that an average American sleeps 5.7 hours a night.
I'm not sure how accurate that is, but 5.7 hours a night. And I also saw the National Institutes of Health says that six or seven hours of sleep is not enough and can lead to chronic sleep deprivation.
Now I'm curious, simple question, how many hours of sleep a night do you think humans actually do need to function at a high level? And if we don't sleep that much, what does that mean? This like sleep sleep, like chronic sleep deprivation. Like what does that actually do to the body if we don't sleep enough? Well, so the first question is how much sleep do people need? And it's, it's a little bit of, there's a general answer because, and I say this because believe it or not, there are something called chronotypes where people actually, there's genes that affect how much sleep they actually need.
And most people, okay, most people need seven to nine hours of sleep a night. However, I will caveat that with that, you know, those outlier people that have certain genes that make them not require quite as much.
And they can actually function quite well with less than seven hours. That's the exception, not the rule.
They can function with less, but is it optimizing their body and their mind with less? It's really interesting because it has to do with their circadian rhythm. So this 24-hour clock that our body is on, all of our cells are on, our metabolism, our neurotransmitter production, our hormone production.
And when that circadian rhythm is disrupted, things kind of go haywire. And so their circadian rhythm, it's like a fundamental difference where it's just a little different.
And so because of that, they can actually be healthier and healthy with less less sleep and it's i don't know so much about that exception so i don't want to focus on that is there like one percent of the population i don't know what percent it's not a lot but it does exist and i just want to acknowledge its existence um because you know there are people will hear this seven to nine hours and then there's that whatever one to three percent of people that will yell and scream about how they don't need that. Yeah, yeah.
I can function on five hours, and I'm good. Yeah, but how, maybe you can function now, but can you function in 20, 30 years? That's a good question.
And that would affect your body later because you sleep-deprived now. Well, if you think about sleep, I mean, it's definitely, you know, a time of rejuvenation, of repair.
So all of our repair processes are happening when we're sleeping, whether that's repairing damage to our DNA to prevent us from getting cancer-causing mutations, so they're oncogenic mutations, whether we're repairing our brain, so we're cleaning out a lot of gunk that builds up in our brain throughout the day. These are things that are like little pieces of protein fragments and aggregates.
And so when we sleep, it's like we clean that all out. It's a process called the glymphatic system that gets activated and it literally squirts this lymphatic fluid throughout our brain, kind of like a wash, like a cleansing.
And it physically forces it out through the lymphatic system. And it's very important for preventing the buildup of protein aggregates like amyloid beta, which is involved in Alzheimer's disease.
And it's why sleep is so inherently connected to neurodegenerative disease because it is a repair time, right? Lots of things going on with the brain, but also your metabolism and blood pressure. Your blood pressure resets.
Everything's resetting during sleep. Digestion shuts down so that you can do all this repair stuff.
So if you think about like your body as a kind of like a phone. So, your body is a phone and if you don't recharge your phone at night, right? It dies.
It dies. It's not going to run properly.
It's going to eventually die and you won't be able to use it. So, it's kind of like the same thing.
You have to recharge your battery when you're sleeping and that's kind of what you do. And that includes everything from brain function to immune cell function, your immune system is also replenished, to metabolism.
And this is something that I don't think a lot of people think of. Most people, when they think of being sleep deprived, they think of brain fog.
I'm like, I'm not functioning properly. I'm not thinking like, you know, my sharpest.
But I don't know that most people are thinking of type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome.

And this is something I know I certainly wasn't thinking about it until I became a new mother

and was wearing a continuous glucose monitor.

So that's something that you can attach to either your arm or I put it on my abdominal area, and it continually measures your blood glucose levels. And of course, when you become a new parent, you're sleep deprived.
You're not sleeping. Yeah, especially a mother when you're waking up nursing your child three times a night, I mean, you're getting very fragmented sleep.
And I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor, and it was very eye-opening what was happening to my blood glucose regulation. I mean, it was completely shot.
What was happening? So my levels were looking like pre-diabetic. And this is like, I was still eating healthy, right? I was eating my healthy foods, my vegetables and my salmon and- Blueberries.
Blueberries. Yeah.
I wasn't as physically active as my usual because, you know, especially, you know, the first month after having a baby, but, um, I'll get to some good news in a minute, but that was, you know, to me, it was just like, it was so crazy to see like my fasting blood glucose levels so incredibly high, uh, without changing my diet really. And, um, you know, I was still sort of physically active.
I was going for walks, but I wasn't doing my usual, like a run. I eventually started doing HIIT.
So the point here is that actually even just getting one to three hours less sleep per night for three nights in a row. I mean, think how common is it to get one hour less of sleep a night for three nights in a row? So common, so common.
It happens to me all the time, all the time. And there's been studies that have looked at, well, what does happen to normal, quote unquote, healthy people that haven't been diagnosed with any sort of metabolic disease? What happens is after three nights of getting one to three hours less sleep per night is that their body isn't disposing of glucose properly, so their blood glucose levels stay elevated.
On top of that insulin, they're not making enough insulin to lower the blood glucose levels, and so you get this double whammy, almost looking like insulin resistant or pre-diabetic if you were to just look at the hard numbers. And again, this is just from not getting enough sleep for three nights in a row.
And it's not even like full-on sleep restriction where you're taking away four or five hours of their sleep. It's just one to three hours less.
And so it really has profound effects on metabolism. And this sort of accumulates.
So there's a cumulative effect. It's called sleep debt, right? So when you're getting less and less sleep each night, it's like you build up the sleep debt.
Can you pay off the sleep debt ever? So the good news is, is that believe it or not, at least with respect to the metabolic effects and also the cognitive effects, is that exercise can help negate a lot of that. And that's what I also learned with my own personal experience.
Yeah. And you have a quota on this that I saw online that said, even one hour of sleep less per night for three nights can disrupt how your body processes sugar and lead to mild insulin resistance.
But some good news here, HIIT can almost reverse it. So can you go with less sleep, but then train hard and reverse the negative effects? So according to research, yes.
And according to my own anecdotal data, yes. And there's reasons why.
So when you're doing high intensity interval training, so this is where you're going, you know, you're doing intervals that are hard. So you're going above what you normally would do if you're just going for a jog.
You're going like 80, 85% of your max heart rate. And you're doing it for a period of time that's an interval.
And then you kind of have a recovery period where you're going lighter, right? So you're doing a lot of, you know, vigorous intensity exercise where it's like during that interval, you can't talk because you're working out too hard. So that's the real test here.
What happens when you're working out really hard like that is that you're pushing your energy system to utilize glucose only. And what happens is you utilize glucose only and you make a metabolite called lactate and everyone thought lactate this metabolite you're making when you're going hard is this you know waste product byproduct it's not useful turns out very very wrong lactate itself is not only used by other tissues so when you're making lactate your muscles are making lactate because they're using glucose.
The reason they're using glucose is because your body can't get oxygen to your muscle quick enough to use oxygen as energy, basically, and make it through something using the mitochondria. So basically, you're making this lactate and using glucose instead, right? And the lactate then gets shuttled into the brain, it gets shuttled into the heart, into the liver.
And it's not only used as a very energetically favorable source of energy, it's also called what's called a signaling molecule. It's the way your muscle communicates with other parts of the body, including going back into the muscle.
And so what lactate does is it signals to the cells, hey, make more of this or make less of this. And what it does to the muscle is the muscle's going, I'm consuming a lot of glucose here because that's the only energy I can use.
I need to make a way to get more of it. And so lactate actually signals to your muscle to make transporters for glucose, more of them come up.
So transporters for glucose are kind of sitting below the surface of the muscle. They're not really letting glucose in all the time.
But when lactate comes around, they wake up, they go to the surface of the muscle, and they just allow a lot more glucose to come in. Where are they getting that glucose from? Well, the glucose is from your food or from gluconeogenesis, the process of making glucose from other materials like glycerol, for example, or amino acids.
But is it pulling it from like visceral fat or more from the food that you just intake? Usually it's from the food or glycogen, stored as glycogen. Okay.
But the point is that those glucose transporters that come up to the muscle stay there for like 48 hours. And so your body becomes very, all the glucose that you're eating for the next two days is getting taken up into your muscle very effectively and efficiently.
And so the net effect is, you know, this high intensity interval training is getting that glucose out of your bloodstream and bringing it to your muscle where you want it. And so if you go back to the sleep story, you know, and there's multiple studies showing this, that people that even do high intensity level training before they're sleep deprived, or they do it after they're sleep deprived, it doesn't matter if you're doing within a 48 hour window or so of being, getting less sleep, what's happening is your glucose regulation resets, right? Because you're, you're, you're causing that stress on your muscle to make more of those transporters.
And so glucose or glucose gets taken in better. And then it also affects insulin signaling as well.
So there's a lot of other ways that it's happening. So if I'm going to, if I know I'm going to get less sleep tonight, is it useful to say, let me do a hard, high intensity interval training workout six hours before or in the morning and really push myself kind of hard for these 30 to 45 minutes, knowing I'm going to get less sleep and I'm going to need to be on the next day.
Like I've got a lot of meetings and I'm running around and I'm traveling and I'm going to be, you know, jet lagged. What will that do for your mind or your body the next day? So those studies have been done and with respect to the metabolism, yes.
Doing it before, for sure, it's going to affect. Now, if you're talking about cognition and brain function, I would say, unfortunately, you're gonna wanna do it the next day after you've been sleep deprived before your meeting.
So you wake up sleep deprived. You should go do it then? Right then.
Really? Yeah, right then. But you're already exhausted you're like where am I going I forgot my keys I gotta go back I'm like wake up I'm gonna sleep right now but do you have 10 minutes because that's what's been shown 10 minutes of high intensity interval training can improve blood flow to the brain it improves memory it improves cognition and it only took 10 minutes to do it so maybe not the the 30 minutes, but 10 minutes.
Not like a CrossFit style. Not like a full-on, like the hardest thing that you usually do when you're on your game, but like 10 minutes, right? Go on 10 minutes, get on a Peloton or a bike or whatever, and you do a 10-minute whatever your program is, and it will, I do it all the time.
I do it all the time. Because you're sleep deprived all the time.
Well, like if I'm like going to Florida, I live in California and I have to give a talk at like eight in the morning, which is like five in the morning, my time. And I'm already sleep deprived from the travel.
Right. I will absolutely get up and do a hit first thing in the morning before the talk, even though it's already pretty darn early for me.
And you're tired and I'm tired. And that's the last thing I want to do.
But like, I'm like 10 minutes. Really? Like, I'll sit and drink coffee for 10 minutes.
What's going to be better? Right? Coffee sounds better. I get the coffee before the exercise.
That coffee sounds pretty good when you're tired. So how long will that positive effect last for? If you do, you're sleep deprived the night before.
You wake up, you got a lot going on, but you're tired.

You got to wake up and get started. You do a 10, 15 minute HIIT style workout.
How long will that make you feel awake or feel sharp and clear? Like how long will that last for? It probably depends on a lot of factors, other factors too. I will say this.
you mentioned you mentioned doing the hit, like, like the day before, like before you're going to go, you know, you're going to be sleep deprived, right? And then you're going to, you're exhausting yourself. Then you're exhausted.
But, but you know what you're in a way. So I'm talking about, like, I talked about doing it right before whatever, whatever your meeting or your podcast or whatever it is you have to be on, on point.
Right. Um, mostly because like really like you do, it's like the peak.
But I will say this. Yes, if you do it before, you still get brain benefits because again, coming back to lactate.
So lactate, it all comes down to, in order to make lactate, you have to work hard. You have to be going 85% of your max heart rate, doing that 10, 20, 30 minutes.
The more you do it, it's a dose-dependent effect. That lactate goes into the brain.
In fact, the brain is one of the biggest consumers of it, and it increases something in the brain called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF. This is something that will help you.
something that increases the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus it increases the connections between neurons right so you're actually gonna help with memory long-term memory short-term memory as well and it also improves something called neuroplasticity so that is the ability of your brain to adapt to a changing environment, right? And that's very important. As we age, our brain becomes, quote unquote, less plastic, less adaptable.
We're not able to change. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, right? You've heard that.
It's kind of like that, like your brain is less adaptable. Well, neuroplasticity is something that you want to maintain it with age, and brain-derived neurotropic factor regulates that.
So because you're getting that brain-derived neurotropic factor, and there have been a variety of studies that have really shown that you do increase it from a particularly vigorous exercise. Again, the lactate's key.
So going back to your question, I do want to sort of caveat what I originally said with, yes, it is going to improve brain function doing it before as well. But if you're wanting that like immediate blood flow effect where you just, you feel it like really, um, doing it right before is, is better.
Yeah. Kind of better.
And how long do you think that would last? Like if you're, you L.A. to Florida one day, you sleep four or five hours a night, you got to wake up early, you work out, you got your speech, like, how, could you go till dinner pretty sharp? Or is it really going to last for like three hours? That's sharpness before it starts to fade.
Right. Yeah.
You see what I'm saying? Like, all right, I did this HIIT workout, now I can go another 24-hour sleep deprived and still be on. No, I don't, not for the brain.
For the glucose stuff, it lasts. It lasts a couple of days.
The body, but not the brain. Not the brain.
No, yeah, it does, you do need, at least like you're gonna start to feel tired, right? And you might actually need like a little- Nap or something. A little nap, yep.
Speaking of naps, how important are naps? Are they helpful or hurtful for a human in their circadian rhythm, in their sleep process? So I talked to Dr. Sachin Panda about...

He's talked about naps a lot and he's a circadian biologist and really an expert.

And he really does think that naps are useful, particularly when you are sleep deprived.

And so if you can nap, great.

I'm not really a napper.

Thank you. particularly when you are sleep deprived right and and so if you can nap great I'm not really a napper like it's it's hard for me to nap like even when I'm tired I'm not sure why but it's just who I am and so and I'm not saying I never do nap but it is kind of I think especially if I'm like amped up on I know I have to do something like you know then I'm like it's hard to shut down right wind it back up and yeah so I always go to the exercise like I'll I will just go to the gym even though I'm tired well I go to the gym not for long sometimes it's like 15 minutes um you know and and it does it helps me it really helps a lot and try to go to bed a little earlier that night maybe if you can try to go to bed earlier exactly that's exactly what you can't, like if you're like a conference thing where it's like multiple nights where you're staying up late, you go, you know, leave as early as you can.
But again, that's where the exercise comes in. Like it really does.
Like even just doing it in your hotel. Like I have this go-to routine I do in my hotel room.
It's kind of like a version of what CrossFitters call the Cindy workout. So I'll do 10 push-ups and then I do 10 VFs, which are kind of like a version of a setup.
And then I do like 15 bodyweight squats and I do it over and over and over for like 10-15 minutes. With a rest or no? No rest? No rest.
You just keep going? I do like 10 minutes. Non-stop? Yeah.
I go from one to the next to the next. I mean, I'll like to catch my breath for a minute, but like the recovery is very short, maybe 20 seconds, 30, you know, like it's not's not like you're keeping your heart rate up the whole time i keep my heart rate up the whole time and usually like in many cases i only do 10 minutes like if it's like a a hotel room workout where i just need to do something quick and like get it but it really works really this indie workout yeah are you ready to level up your business into it quickbooks has got your back.
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Will that generate lactate also? Yeah, absolutely. And where do you feel that? You can measure it, but like heart rate is a good way.
Like if you're, if you're getting up to like 85%, so I wear my Apple watch, right. And if you're, if you're getting up to like, you know, 85% of your max heart rate, 80, 85%, you're most likely going to be making lactate.
You're creating it. Yeah.
What does it, what does it feel like to have lactate in the body? Burns. It burns.
Does it burn like in the muscle group or more in the lungs? I feel it in the muscle group when I'm doing, when I'm doing things like body weight squats or biking or pushups. Yeah.
I mean, you feel it. It feels heavy.
It feels like it hurts. It's painful.
I mean, even, yeah, you know, doing body weight squats are great. There's a study that came out, I don't know, it was like six months ago or something, that showed doing 10 body weight squats every 45 minutes throughout like an eight hour-ish workday was better for glucose regulation, so this is your blood sugar regulation, than a 30 minute walk.
And I timed myself, it took me 27 seconds to do 10 body weight squats. So these are like exercise snacks, right? These are things that you do.
It's a great way to break up your sedentary time. So when you're sitting in your office for hours at a time, you're sedentary.
And it's interesting because there's been a lot of research that have come out over the past few years showing that being sedentary, I always used to think of being sedentary as like, you're not physically active. And sometimes I still use that word, you're sedentary.
It's true. When you're sedentary, you're not physically active.
And that's typically when you're doing a study and you're categorizing someone in a group, right? But you can be sedentary and still be physically active. So like I do a lot of sitting when I'm at my computer, when I'm researching something, reading studies, you know, I'm at my computer or I'm doing a podcast, I'm sitting, I sit for multiple hours, right? That is sedentary time.
And that has been shown to be an independent risk factor for certain cancers, meaning independent of your physical activity even, which is interesting because it's like, it makes you think, wow, exercise, now getting up and doing, you know, a two minute, three minute, like, you know, you do some high knees,

or you do some burpees, or some squats, or something where you're getting that physical

activity, and you just do it for a couple of minutes, and you break up your workday.

It's, it's, what's really interesting is there's been studies showing that you, so people, there's

exercise snacks in a structured way, like I just said, right, where you're like, okay, I set a

timer, every, you know, 45 minutes, I'm going to get up and do 10 bodyweight squats, okay, that's

I'm going to get up and do 10 body weight squats. Okay.
That's a structured exercise snack. Well, some people have unstructured

exercise snacks. So let's say they work on the fourth floor of an office building.

And they walk the stairs.

They sprint the stairs. They sprint the stairs.
They get their heart rate up, right?

Yeah. So, so there's been large studies.
Sprinting. Yeah.
Yeah. Not just taking walking the stairs.
They get their heart rate up, right? Let's go. Yeah.
So there's been large studies.

Interesting. Sprinting.

Yeah. Yeah.

Not just taking walking the stairs.

No.

It's still good to walk the stairs too, right?

Okay. I should...
Okay. Let me define sprint because if we're talking about a coach sprint,

no, they're not doing what a coach sprint would be. What I mean is they're going fast.

Yeah.

Okay.

They're running.

Yeah.

They're running up the stairs.

Right. They're going faster than just walking.
Yeah. They're not sprinting in the coach sense of the word thank you for pointing that out because people might be like well you're crazy they're not sprinting no way and you're right they're running as fast they can up this is there as fast as they can up the stairs and their heart rate's getting pretty high and this is this has been measured because there's been large studies that have put accelerometers on people they they measure their heart rate.
And they found that people that do anywhere from between two to six minutes of this sort of unstructured type of vigorous exercise, they have a 40% lower cancer-related mortality, 40% lower all-cause mortality, so dying from all causes, 50% lower cardiovascular-related mortality. This is incredible because this was even in people that identified themselves as non-exercisers.
In other words, they don't go to the gym. They don't take that extra time.
They just do this. This is how they exercise.
They incorporate this lifestyle. It's called vigorous intermittent lifestyle activity, physical activity, VILPA.
And it's, it's, it's kind of eyeopening that even just doing two to six minutes. Now, when I gave you those statistics, that was the six minute, that was the upper end.
So the six minutes a day, but six minutes a day, who doesn't have six minutes a day? I mean, why does it seem like when sometimes I hear people say, Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to try this once every two hours or set an alarm every hour at my desk and I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna do 10 pushups, right? Or 20 sit-ups or whatever it might be, or 10 air squats. And yeah, it seems so easy to do it for 60 seconds, five times a day, right? Five minutes, 60 seconds, five times a day.
Why is it that so few people do it consistently? They might try it for a day or two, but then they just stop to do five minutes, 60 seconds, five times a day. Why does it seem so hard for people to be consistent with this style of movement? Yeah.
I think it's a good question. And it comes down to, you know, like maybe, Maybe maybe it disrupts their flow too much they're in the middle of something working and so you bring up a good point and that is you really do you have to find something that you will do consistently it's very very important and you know because exercise is it has to be part of your personal hygiene every day, right? Like brushing your teeth.
Yes. Like you, it's not an add-on.
You don't add it on. You do it.
And I've sort of adopted this. You know, I've recently really just focused a lot on resistance training, on doing a lot of high intensity interval training, also getting my aerobic exercise.
And it's a priority for for me when did it become a priority for you well I've always been sort of a aerobic exercise like a runner you know so I've always had that aerobic exercise part of my life you know I've always been physically active but never lifting huh but lifting lifting has been I've I would say i started making it a priority about a year and a half maybe a year and a half ago but like maybe like a year ago and then really about nine months ago getting really serious about it and that happened when i started getting a coach that helped me personally or like you know going to a gym like a's a community where you have this, like, you know, accountability as well. When did you feel like though, you needed to get into resistance training? Because you've been studying, you know, the body health for a long time.
I mean, you're the expert in this. And it took you to your mid forties to say, oh, I'm actually gonna lift weights and do resistance and get into this.
Why did you resist getting into resistance training sooner? So I think what really motivated me to kind of prioritize it more was when I started to speak to some of these experts in muscle physiology, muscle protein synthesis, in sarcopenia, which is age-related muscle loss. And knowing as I was getting into my 40s, you know, that, like, it's getting real now, right? I mean, you can't just get away with it now.
Yeah, it seems like it's unfortunate, but there is, you know, I don't know that that i was like it was for me it was kind of like well i do a lot of you know running and really covering that like aerobic exercise is the most important because it's it's going to help with cardiovascular disease yeah brain health and heart health and and cancer and um and and so and then you know and then part of me it oh, I don't want to bulk up. There's always this like background fear of like getting too bulky and shoulders.
I don't know. Yeah.
Big biceps. And, and so, but of course, like, well, you just don't lift as hard or heavy or whatever.
Like there's, you know, there's slow it down once you get big. Yeah.
You're not getting a big overnight. Yeah.
Right. So, um, but, but getting into the science with the experts, experts like Stu Phillips Brad Schoenfeld these are some some of the leading experts in this in this field that really kind of brought it home for me which is you know as you're aging and I also just seen it I've seen it with family members and I'm sure all of us have where you know the the family members that don't really focus on functional training or resistance training or, you know, maintaining, building, maintaining muscle, you know, as they start to get older and they have a hospital event or a surgery...
It's hard. ...and then, you know, they lose so much muscle mass the two to three weeks, four weeks, like, month after the event.
Shrink. Yes.
And then it happens again, right? And they don't ever gain it back. You don't gain it back as well when you're older, right? And so just seeing that with family members and like understanding the science behind it where it's like, wow, then you start to reach this like what's called disability threshold where there's a point of no return and you really lose your physical independence.
Like you just, your walking gait is so much slower. Like everything is just harder, right? And so I realized that I had to really focus on, like I had to catch up even, right? I had to catch up too.
And so I got a coach. She's a great coach.
She's, you know, I do a lot of CrossFit training, which I love. I think CrossFit's a great, it's got a great mixture of resistance training, but also high intensity animal training, both things which I think are really important based on all the science that I've read and experts that I've interviewed in the fields.
And so I think that was the real thing that got me. But weren't you learning about this, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago as well, like seeing the resistance training and building muscles helpful for longevity and helpful for recovery and all these different things as well? Yeah.
You know, to a, so I'll give you, this is going to take us to another area a little bit. You know, I have, my core background research was really aging research.
Yes. And, you know, 20 years ago, I was in an aging lab.
And I remember 20 years ago, you know, at the time, you know, even at that time, you know, amino acid restriction and protein restriction, like not consuming a lot of protein, was really

starting to take off with that field in terms of improving longevity, right?

And a lot of this was from animal studies.

So you get these animal studies where you restrict dietary protein and they live longer.

Restrict protein.

Yeah.

Less protein. Interesting.
Yes. Huh.
But I'm hearing different now though, right? Right, right. So you were hearing this 20 years ago as an anti-aging researcher.
And it only continued. It started 20 years ago.
It was kind of like, you know, the start of it. And then it continued on throughout, you know, and it's still a thing in the aging...
Really? A lot of aging researchers think that...so there's a variety of lines of evidence that convinced, I'd say, these people that are in the longevity world that you should limit your protein intake to be healthier. One is a lot of animal studies where they've done these protein restrictions and their cardiovascular system's better.
They don't get as much cancer. Their life expectancy is extended, right? And so there's like a lot of reasons for these animal studies.
I'll say though, then I had Dr. Stu Phillips on and he really brought up a lot of good points with that research, which is you have these mice in a sterile environment.
They're not getting influenza. They're not getting, you know, any respiratory illness, not getting COVID.
They're not in the wild. They're not in the wild.
They're not, you know, so they're not, they're basically just eating all day. They're kind of sedentary and they're eating, but they're not like, yeah, they're not being exposed to these.
They're not, they're not like hitting these catabolic crises that humans do that we just talked about, right? Where you're in the hospital and then you're not moving around because you've been sick for a couple of weeks or you have a surgery and that keeps happening and you lose all this muscle mass and you really start to go down, right? And it's a really good point because it's absolutely true. On top of that, you know, it's also these mice are not very physically active.
And so if you're eating protein and you are physically active, the protein is going to your muscle and it's building muscle, right? It's not activating all these pathways in the body that are known to help cancer cells grow like the IGF-1 or mTOR pathway. mTOR is getting activated, but it's doing it in the muscle where you want it.
And so, you know, I was a little bit indoctrinated in that field. Of like less protein.
Of like less protein, yeah. Less muscle.
Yeah, I mean, it wasn't necessarily less muscle, but it kind of like the less protein, like the, you know, it was not as important. Really? And then there's a lot of observational data.
So this is data in humans where you look at a correlation between what they eat and what an outcome is. So people that are eating like 20% of their calories are coming from protein, particularly animal-based protein.
You know, there was like one study that came out and it was like they have a, you know, they're four-fold higher cancer mortality. You know, there's 75% higher all-cause mortality compared to people eating a lower protein diet.
But yet again, it's a correlation, not causation. And in fact, some of the same authors of that study went on to publish another one, finding a similar thing, but then they looked at healthy lifestyle and unhealthy lifestyle factors.
And what was found was that actually people that were eating a lot of protein, animal-based protein, that had no unhealthy lifestyle factors, so they were physically active, they were not obese, they weren't smoking, consuming drinking or whatever. Consuming excess alcohol.
They actually had the same life expectancy or the same all-cause mortality as people that were eating the lower protein or the plant-based protein. So again, it comes down to, I think there's a lot of important factors involved in that protein story.
Why protein, restricting protein isn't necessarily what I think, I don't think it's the way to go. So like maybe if you're a really obese person that's smoking and you're not going to be physically active, even then I don't know that you want to go too far on protein restriction because protein is one of the major signals for building muscle, right? Protein synthesis in your muscle.
The other one is physical activity and mechanical force. In fact, that's the major one.
That's the one we should all be focusing on.

But if you're doing a lot of physical activity and you're not eating protein, what's going to happen? It's hard to repair. It's hard to repair that damage that you're causing and tearing.
You're tearing your muscles. Right.
So you do need, you have higher protein requirements. And I also just now think that a lot of that aging research is, I think it's all in the lens of, okay, are we talking about a very obese person that needs to lose weight? Well, they can do with less protein and less calories and less fat and less everything, right? You know, let's lose the weight.
But, like, are we talking about physically active people that are healthy? You know, the protein isn't, I don't think that restricting the protein is going to make them healthier in fact athletes elite athletes are consuming way more protein than than the majority of us and they actually have the longest life expectancy these athletes are living like up to five years longer elite athletes like olympians and stuff o, Olympic athletes, they're living up to like five

years longer than the average population, like the average person. Yeah.
Yeah. Elite athletes,

they have a much like up to like 40 to 50% lower cancer incidence. Like they're, they're doing good.

And these are again at the elite level, you know, so. That's good to know.
Part of me was worried,

like if you're training too hard, does that make you die younger? You know, it's like,

if you've been training so hard since you're like, whatever, 12 or 15 and you're going for 20 years for that elite level, but I guess you're really optimizing your body too for performance. Your body's very adaptable.
And so the thing is, I'm sure there's the outliers that that is true. But if you again, look at studies that are published, looking at generally like, you at generally average population of ...
There's a French Olympian athlete study, and then there's another Olympian athlete study that looks at multiple different Olympic athletes from around the world. And then just looking at some of the studies, looking at people that have an elite level of cardiorespiratory fitness, right?

So that would be your ability to take in oxygen during maximal exercise as measured by VO2 max. There's studies showing that people that are in the elite level, so these are the elite athletes, like they're in like the top 2.3% of VO2 max, have an 80% reduction in all-cause mortality compared to people at the low end, like the people with low VO2 max, 80%.
And what's even more mind-blowing is that, first of all, the elite people, so people that are like, again, these are the athletes, if you compare them to people that are like me, like, hi, I have a high VO2 max for my age, I'm not elite, like they still still had a 20 lower all-cause mortality then so it seems like there's no limit right you keep going up but the people with the low vo2 max those people had a mortality that was comparable or worse to people that were smokers had hypertension diabetes come on i know it's because being sedentary, like not being physically active, is a disease. It is a disease.
I think it should be talked about as being a disease because it has the same mortality risk as people that are not, I mean, people that have diseases that we identify as disease, right? Like hypertension. Sure.
What do you consider as sedentary? What is a sedentary lifestyle? Good question. Typically, I mean, what I'm talking about is the context of studies.
And so typically what would be defined as a sedentary lifestyle is someone that has no leisure time, physical activity, so they don't play tennis or pickleball or soccer or basketball or baseball or any type of leisure type of you know hockey whatever fill in the blank kickball kickball handball yeah so um or you know they don't go to the gym they don't run so they don't identify themselves as taking time to engage in some type of physical exercise they get up they go take a to take a shower, they walk to get food, whatever, but they go to their school or they go to their office, but that's it. That's it.
And that would be considered sedentary. They're getting like maybe a thousand steps a day, 2000 steps a day maybe, what is that like? Yeah, I mean, it depends on if, you know, maybe they are walking, if they walk their dog more, they're getting more steps, you know.
I mean, I think that's better than nothing. It's not a brisk walk.
It's not like a speed walk. But most of the time, people walking their dogs are not doing brisk walks.
Yeah, they're stopping. Yeah, yeah.
So probably I would say that, I wonder if scientists actually ask them, do you walk your dog? I don't know. That might be sedentary i would i would call it sedentary right because it's not a brisk it's not an intense activity right and i do think i think that 10 000 steps should be replaced with like the 10 minute of like vigorous exercise like more like a day what do you need a day 10 minutes of vigorous exercise that's what i think not 10 000 steps not 10 000 steps really yes,000 steps.
Really? Yes. Because it comes down to like, you can walk slow.
Right. And it also takes, you know, long, it takes a long time.
It takes like hours. Yeah.
Like an hour and a half or something like it's not, you know, and I just told you that, you know, 10 body weight squats every, every 45 minutes for an eight hour, you know, work week is better at glucose regulation than 30 minute walk. Right.
So I do think that, um, the, the 10, 10, 10, 10, 10,000 steps a day should be replaced with 10 minutes of vigorous exercise. I personally feel that way.
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Talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. But like the sedentary aspect, you know, we're talking about being sedentary.
There was a classic study that was Dr. Ben Levine.
He was on my podcast. He's really the leader in how the heart adapts to stress, whether it's exercise or space or whatever.

He's like a juggernaut in the exercise physiology world.

And his mentors had done a study when he was a young boy where they took these like 10 guys and measured, you know, their cardiorespiratory fitness and a variety of cardiovascular endpoints.

And then they put them under bed rest for three weeks. So you're talking about what's being sedentary.
At the extreme level of being sedentary, we're talking these guys were in bed for three weeks. They used a catheter to go to the bathroom.
No way. That would drive me nuts.
No, totally. But there are people that volunteered to do this.
They must have got paid a lot of money for that. I don't know.
That's... I don't know.
I agree with you. Three weeks.
Three weeks. You couldn't even get up to go to the bathroom.
Couldn't even get up to go to the bathroom. This is the extreme.
They wanted to really understand what full sedentarism did. What happened? Oh, so their cardiorespiratory fitness was just...
It went... It was just shot to the ground.
I mean, it was terrible after three weeks. But here's the real kicker.
So Ben Levine was a young boy when this was done. This was done by his mentors, okay? You know, fast forward 30 years, okay? They found these same 10 guys.
They found these same 10 guys, okay? Now here's Ben. Ben, this is Ben's being involved in this study.
They get these same guys, and they measure, what, 30 years, because they have all their data from before the bed rest, right? They measure what 30 years of aging does on their cardiovascular system. And do you want to know what is insane? 30 years of aging was not worse than what three weeks of bed rest did.
Oh my gosh. That's crazy.
It was not worse than three weeks of bed rest in terms of their cardiorespiratory fitness, which I personally think is one of the best markers for longevity that we can measure, VO2 max. Everyone's- How often are you studying that? I've actually never tested my VO2 max.
So I- How often do you test it? Good question. Okay, so embarrassingly, I do an estimator for it.
I have, so how do you measure vo2 max okay so if you put the mask on you have to go into a lab you have to really precisely measure it you get a lab and you can google but you're doing whatever right yeah i do my apple watch but also there's something called the 12 minute run test which is a good way to do it it's actually a little better than the apple watch i think so what you'd have to do is because your Apple watch is measuring. So I do a lot of running, but I do a lot of trail running and trail running is like hills.
Okay. And you run slower when you're on hill running on a hill.
Right. And so your true VO2 max, you want to have a flat surface where you're running.
So you have to find like a track field and you want to run as fast as you can maintain for that 12 minutes. So it has to be a sustainable 12 minute speed.
You don't want to go too fast, but you don't want to go too slow. Right.
So it has to be like a sustainable speed that you're really pushing hard, but you're able to sustain that for for 12 minutes and you do that 12 minute run test on a flat flat track. So you do it on a track now also right? Yeah yeah you just have to have measure your distance so measure your distance that you ran and the time and then there's an equation you can plug it into it's called the Cooper test and that'll give you pretty much that's what your Apple watch is doing.
Yeah.

Or your whatever device that's measuring VO2 max is doing something similar.

But again, if you're just using like I use my Apple watch and I look at it, I'm like, oh, but it's like I'm running all these hills. It's not really like true.

Right.

You need a flat.

So it could be a flat treadmill or like a track.

And what do you get?

We get the distance, the time and then what?

That's all you need. You need to know the distance and your time and then i'll tell you an equation and the equation tells you your vo2 max yeah there's like an equation i don't remember based on your height and weight or is this like um no so you're so so it's not no it's not no then you can like compare what your vo2 max is based on your height and your your gender and your weight and all that like age and all that stuff right you'll know where you're category you'll know where you rank right now like i'm supposed to be here but i'm top 10 right yeah exactly but um and one of the best ways to improve vo2 max is high intensity animal training so there's been those studies done really even people that are doing so what's the what do we about physical activity requirements? We hear two and a half hours of moderate intensity exercise a week, right? That would be, you know, the kind of exercise where you can, the talk test.
So you can talk, you can have a, sort of have a conversation, but you're breathy. Yes.
Right. You should be doing how much HIIT training a week? Well, so this is where you can't talk.
Right. Well, that, so that- How many minutes a week? It all depends, right? So people that are doing two and a half hours of this moderate intensity, about 40% of those people still can't improve their VO2 max until they add in high intensity, right? Now, the question is, well, how much? How much do you want to improve, right? I mean, obviously, you don't want to burn out, like all your exercises hit, like it's a bit much, a bit much right but you know if you're doing some of the best ways to do it would be like a longer interval so like a one minute interval of like going harder or there's the Norwegian 4x4 this is one of the best ways to improve your VO2 max in that is where you go four minutes at an intensity that's pretty high that you can maintain and sustain for that entire four minutes.
Usually it's about 85% max heart rate. So you're going pretty hard for the entire four minutes, as hard as you can maintain for the entire four minutes.
And then you rest for three minutes. Rest as in low intensity, very low.
You want your heart rate to come down. And then you do it repeat.
So you do it four times. And that is one of the best ways to improve your cardiorespiratory fitness.
And in fact, that same guy, researcher, Dr. Ben Levine, that I talked about with the Dallas, it's called the Dallas bed rest study.
It's just phenomenal. Interesting.
Well, he, in my opinion, has done an even more interesting study where he took 50-year-olds, so he and his colleagues, his lab, they took 50-year-olds that were sedentary. So no, they weren't physically active, but they hadn't been identified with any other disease besides sedentarism, which I think is a disease.
They hadn't been identified with type 2 diabetes or hypertension or anything else. So they were, quote unquote, what they would call healthy, right? But they didn't work out.
They didn't work out. So I wouldn't call them healthy, but this is what you...
They were disease-less.

They were disease-free. No, but they were sedentary.
So I wouldn't say that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, but they took them and they put them on a two-year,

pretty intense exercise intervention protocol. Okay.

They probably transformed.

Unbelievable.

They didn't even look like the same person.

Okay. So they went from not exercising to five to six hours of physical activity a week a large portion of that they were doing what's called maximal maximal um maximal sustainable intensity so you're you're doing it's a lot of vigorous exercise you're like 80 max heart rate 75 80 max heart rate and then they were doing the norwegian four by four a week.
And they didn't start them out with this right out the gate. It was like the first six months was like progressive.
Right. And after the two years, okay.
So as we age, our hearts get smaller and stiffer. Okay.
Smaller and stiffer as we age. And that affects not only our exercise capacity, but it affects our cardiovascular disease risk, our heart attack risk, hypertension risk, right? All of these things are connected.
So after those two years of, you know, five to six hours of physical, pretty good physical exercise every single week, their hearts looked 20 years younger in terms of structure. Holy cow.
Their structure. 20 years younger.
So they were 50. And if you look just at the structure of the heart, their hearts look like 30-year-olds.
Wow. Incredible.
And it's really, I think, a very motivating piece of evidence that's like, it's never too late, right? It's never too late. 50.
They're doing this at 50, so it's never too late. But also just look what exercise can do.
Wow.

Right? And that's like, for me, I like to understand. I get this like dopamine.
I'm like, oh, yes, like this is what I can do. I'm on it, you know? And it's like that's, it helps me adopt a type of, you know, protocol where I'm doing, you know, my exercise and I'm motivated.
And that was definitely part of it too. Sure.
What's been the biggest thing that you've noticed kind of going all in on this high intensity interval training, uh, VO2 max, you know, optimization over the last year, year and a half. What's the big thing you've seen in yourself personally? Um, certainly I would say I'm stronger and my VO2 max has improved my running.
I'm faster. And even the strength training has helped with that.
And so there's been like, like I've definitely been like lifting a lot more and that's carried over to my cardiovascular performance as well. Why is that? Um, I don't know.
I think my legs are stronger, you know, I think is a big part of it. I also am using more upper body too.
When I run, like I feel like, especially on like Hills or something, it helps me like go up the hill. Um, also I'm going to be honest, lifting is hard.
Like, you know, I'm doing it's, it mentally. Very hard.
And it's... And physically too.
And physically too, but mentally. Like, I'm doing, I do a lot of barbell work.
I'm doing front squats where I clean. And, you know, it's scary.
It's mental, like, there's never a time when I'm not down there. And I always do progressive loading, right? So I actually have, I've not injured myself when I work with a coach but but I'm I'm scared I'm scared focus you have to focus really pay attention and I I feel like it's made the mental toughness I've gotten from weight training has carried over to other areas like when I'm running and it's like going fast is hard and so it's it's you know we're doing work like work things that I'm procrastinating it comes it becomes a little easier it really does carry over really does carry over and so I think about that too now when I'm like gosh I like I don't want to do this like but I know it's going to make me stronger and it's going to help me in other areas right how has How has it helped you as a parent? Well, the same goes for that as well.
I mean, for one, I feel, you know, happier because exercise affects mood. And that also helps, like with sleepless nights and stuff, it helps.
But, you know, you have to, there's a lot of struggles as being a parent, right? You're caring for this other person. You want the best for them.
You don't want to intervene too much. You want them to learn.
I mean, there's like a million things that you're, like the stress, right? The stress that ages us. I mean, I feel like I aged like 20 years after I became a mom.
But it was like, oh, yeah, for sure. Not not just the sleep like not like the lack of sleep

but just the stress of like the worry the worry of everything you know and stress is accelerates aging on like a molecular level like you know there's lots of like I could go into the details on it where it's just not good um but I do like the exercise is a big it it makes me mentally more happy, stronger.

Yeah.

And yeah, I just think it's a big part of mental health for sure. And buffering, countering those negative effects that stress does have because there's lots of things that are out of your control and you have to find a way to buffer that.
And exercise is one of those ways that does buffer it for sure.

Something I wanted to talk about, which you mentioned earlier,

from lack of sleep to also high-intensity exercise or resistance training.

And a lot of the talk that's been in the health world

or just in the atmosphere lately has been about glucose spikes.

When you lose sleep, what happens to your glucose spikes, I guess, in the body? And also when you're high-intensity training, what happens to your glucose levels? Yeah, so it depends on what a person is referring to when an average person is saying glucose spike. Probably they're talking about postprandial, maybe like after a meal.
And so when you are training, those spikes are not going to be as high because, again, it goes down to what I already talked about. As soon as you get glucose into your body, it's shuttled into your muscle because for 48 hours, those glucose transporters, they're called GLUT4 transporters, they are ready.
They're like this, just like this big open sink that's taking it in, taking it in. And anyone can wear a continuous glucose monitor and see that, right? That happens.
Now, you know, I would say the bigger concern isn't necessarily the spikes if you clear it pretty quickly. The bigger concern is the long-term glucose where it's just constantly around because this goes back to the heart stiffening with age I talked about.
So what happens is that when you have glucose that's continually around, let's say you're sedentary, you just never exercise. So your muscles aren't that responsive to the glucose.
It might be taken up into your adipose tissue instead. And of course, you're going to gain more fat that way, but also might just sit around longer.
And so what happens when glucose sits around in your vascular system is it reacts with... It forms something called advanced glycation end products or AGES, and they do AGES, so it's easy to remember.
And these react with DNA, proteins, collagen in our body. And what they do, it's called...
The chemical reaction is called the Maillard reaction. And it cross-links collagen and stuff together.
When it's collagen, collagen is there forever, right? So collagen is lining our blood vessels, it's lining our myocardium, our pericardium, right? And when that collagen gets cross-linked, it gets stiff. It gets stiff.
When it gets cross-linked in our vascular system, it gets stiff. That causes hypertension.
It causes what's called vascular compliance to go down. And so you're basically stiffening your heart through glucose.
And the way around that- Is that with sedentary, with being sedentary or with having too much sugar consistently? Yeah, it's really... Okay, being sedentary is really what's facilitating it in people.
So diabetics have the worst of the worst because they have a hard time regulating their blood sugar. So they have the most advanced glycation end products and the most problems with this issue.
Does that mean when they eat processed or sugary foods, they have a high glucose spike, and then if they don't move, they can't process it better? Is that what it is? They're not disposing of the glucose correctly, right? And that consistently every day over the years. Every day adds up.
It's cumulative, right? Exactly. So when you have a person that, let's say, is very physically active and they go eat a Twinkie, they're going to get a little bit of glucose spike.
It's not going to be like the sedentary person that eats the Twinkie, right? Because again, it's going right into their muscle. It's like this pipeline, right, to the muscle.
So exercise is really helping a lot with that. And it's not like, if you're getting the spike, you know, everyone's kind of spikes after a meal.
But like, if you do that, in fact, there's been studies showing that like doing those exercise snacks we were talking about, if you time them around meals, most of the studies have been done with people that have metabolic syndrome or type 2 diabetes. And they get these people to do like 30 minutes of exercise like before a meal, anywhere between like an hour or so before a meal or after a meal.
And it really dramatically improves their glucose disposal. So they're not getting that big spike.
Before and after. You can do the exercise before or after, either, either or.
It doesn't have to be both. But yeah, so timing it around a meal also really, and again, it's the vigorous exercise that's the best.
You always hear about, oh, you should go for a walk after a meal. Actually, the bodyweight squats or something that's really going to get heart rate high, higher, it's the lactate you want to generate because that's what's causing the glucose transporters to basically become, you know, able to take the glucose in.
So that's where the vigorous comes in. After a meal.
So you enjoy a meal a lot with friends. You know you're going to eat poorly.
You're having a celebration. You're eating desserts.
You're having all the fats, all the things. When should you do this vigorous workout? Like right after you finish or like 30 minutes after? You could do it 30 minutes like I was in you know I was in Mallorca Spain this last summer it was a dream and I don't know about you but like anytime in Europe like gelato is just like everywhere and I've got like three times a day I've got like a kid it's like yeah I mean like and how can I not so of course so I was absolutely on the street doing air squats I was doing body squats.
You're eating a squatting right at the same time. After the gelato.
But like, yes, I do stuff like that. Where it's like, we were also walking a lot, but I did the body.
Like if it was like, I'm going to eat something that I never eat, that's just really high in sugar. I'm going to get that.
I'm going to do something. How long are you doing it for? Are you doing like 10 minutes right then? Or are you doing like two minutes? I mean, yeah, I was just doing like a couple of 20 air squats right and then i was continuing walking so i was still getting that but you know if if if you if it was someone that like i wasn't like on a vacation but like yeah if you want to stop and do like five minutes of like body weight squats it's not it's hard you you do five yeah it's non-stop just five minutes yeah i mean you rest like for seconds.
Still. But it's hard.
How much benefit would that actually give you? Let's say you have a bucket of ice cream. You know, you eat and then you have, not a bucket, but I mean like three scoops of ice cream.
You know, you have a lot of ice cream after you eat, big meal, you know, you're having cheese, you're having the breads, you're having everything. Then you got your ice cream.
I mean, it's like a glucose spike, right? How much can just five minutes of air squats actually? It's going to help a little, but that's a situation where you want to make sure you have gotten your 20 or 30 minute exercise in. Or even if you did it earlier in the day, right? But add the extra five minutes on top of that.
It'll really help. It does.
Meal timing, like around the meal time. A little extra helps.
But yeah, that's the case where if you're already physically active and you're doing, you do that extra. I like to do mine in the morning.
It's just how I like. Even though I perform better performance wise, if I go for a run in the afternoon, I'll be like faster.
Yeah. I still like the pump I get in the morning.
It feels good to get a complete also.

It does.

It feels good to get a complete.

You get tired later in the day sometimes.

It does.

Yeah.

And then also I was talking about mental toughness.

Like when I lift in the morning and I do those like hard squats and stuff, other things are

easier.

I can do anything today.

Let's go.

But it's true.

I mean, it's not anything.

Yeah, it's still hard.

But like it is a little easier. It really is.
Yes. Like I for sure know it.
It's true. I mean, it's not anything.
Yeah, it's still hard, but like it is a little easier. It really is.
Like I for sure know it. It's easier.
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Quince.com slash Lewis. As one of the leading anti-aging experts in the world, you've been studying this for a long time, right? 20 plus years you've been studying anti-aging, right? Well, I did my first aging experiments 20 years ago.
20 years ago. That was when I was just, you know, starting my scientific career.
But you've been doing this for two decades of anti-aging studying, right? You've been diving deep into this research. As someone who's been studying this for two decades plus, what has been the biggest shock for you in the last few years around how to live longer and anti-aging that you thought 20 years ago this is the way but actually you're starting to wake up and see new research or studies or personal uh strategies that you're like oh that's not the way this is actually the Well, the answer to that, my real answer to that

is kind of like more hardcore science,

and I don't know if you want that or not,

but it actually has to do with like, 20 years ago,

I thought aging was caused by an accumulation of damage

that we're just getting over time.

So damage just in general to our DNA,

to our proteins, to our mitochondria,

you know, and you have these hallmarks of aging

and you have to go and fix each our proteins, to our mitochondria.

You know, and you have these hallmarks of aging and you have to go and fix each hallmark, like a surgeon. And it's like you have to fix your genomic instability and you have to fix your mitochondria and you have to fix everything, right? Now I think aging is a program.
Fast forward 20 years. I think aging is a program.
and it's something that is in our DNA at the level of our epigenome, so our epigenetics. These are things that are sort of kind of on top of our DNA that turn our genes on and activate them or turn them off and deactivate them.
And it comes down to this concept of Dr. Steve Horvath's biological aging clocks.
You've heard of these? The biological aging clocks. Like chronological aging versus biological aging.
Right. How do you test that? They do.
There's a variety of tests. Blood work? Is that what it is? There's a blood work test.
They're called methyl groups. Essentially, they're just carbon with three hydrogens.
And there's a pattern of them on our DNA, there's a pattern of them. And this pattern, I think, is the aging program.
I'm following the leading scientists, but this is now my belief 20 years later, that there is a program of aging, and it's these patterns of these methyl groups on our DNA that change with time that makes us age. And the reason I think that is because if you think about reproduction, so if you think about like a sperm and an egg, I mean, these aren't young cells.
In the best case scenario, I mean, you got like a 20 year old, but like, you know, a lot of people are reproducing at 30 and 40, right? So these are older cells. I mean, they're still older, even at 20.
They're older. They come together.
They recombine. Their epigenome completely resets and they make a young organism with no sign of aging.
Isn't that interesting? No sign of aging. How's that possible? The epigenome resets, completely resets, and there's no sign of aging.
It's kind of fascinating, isn't it? It's very fascinating. So how do we reset it within ourselves? That's the question.
And so now there've been over the last, I would say, oh gosh, five to seven years. There's been, so, okay, let me take it even a step further back.
Okay. Back in 2006, Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese scientist, won the Nobel Prize for discovering four different genes that are very specific type of genes.
They're called transcription factors because they can regulate a lot of different genes in our body. He discovered that if he took four of these transcription factors and took any cell from the body, any old cell from an 80-year-old woman, skin cell, and he put these four transcription factor genes on them, on that old 80-year-old cell, he could revert it into an embryonic stem cell.
Come on. With no sign of aging, right? It's an embryonic stem cell that now can form any cell in the body.
This is a, it's called induced pluripotent stem cell. So it resets the epigenome completely.
The cell loses its identity. It doesn't know it's a skin cell anymore.
It's an embryonic stem cell. But it can now form any type of cell, right? And so, that is also evidence that resetting the epigenome, at least to the very extreme case, right, all the way to the embryonic stem cell state is a way of reprogramming the cell into a very youthful state.
And there's some more lines of evidence. Cloning is another one.
So you take a nucleus from like an old cell, put it in a young cytoplasm of an egg, and the epigenome is reset and you have a young organism, right? So there's other lines of evidence of this. But in the last five-ish years, there's been some research that have been done by a variety of scientists where they've taken those Yamanaka factors, they're called, the four transcription factors, and they've given them to mice, older mice.
They don't want to make all the mice cells become stem cells, right? They don't want the cell to lose its identity. It'll just be like a blob, right? Right.
It's just, you know? Almost like a big tumor cell or something. Right.
What they want is to reset that epigenome in a way to make it, to return it to a more youthful state. Wow.
And so they've been able to sort of pulse it on. You just kind of like, you got to find the right timing, the right timing.
And so they're making progress with this. And there's been some studies that have shown, you know, you kind of, it's called partial cellular reprogramming.
So they're not doing the full on reprogram, but they're partially doing it. And it does rejuvenate a lot of aspects of aging in these rodents.
There's a lot of hurdles to overcome. And I know that this was the answer you were looking for, but I'm super excited about it.
It's very interesting. I think that we are very likely going to through...I think there's this process of epigenetic reprogramming and Altos Labs.
They're doing phenomenal research. They have a lot of the top scientists, Dr.
Steve Horvath, Dr. Morgan Levine.
I've had both of them on my podcast. They're both really good.
I mean, Dr. Steve Horvath is the one who, he's the pioneer of the Horvath clocks, the epigenetic clocks that can identify this biological age, this molecular age that really identifies like how old you are versus your chronological age.
But I do think that if they can figure out some of these hurdles, that we might have a tune-up where we go and get rejuvenated like what reverse o'clock 10 years overnight or something right exactly or more really yeah come on no far away are we from this i don't you know i don't i could say a couple decades i could see for sure like because things are really growing things are growing gene engineering, you know, there's, there's a lot of exponential growth in some of this synthetic biology world where they're, they're, you know, doing all this gene engineering and it's like, they're just really kind of like, it's kind of phenomenal. Are you testing any of this stuff on yourself? Are you doing any stem cell injections or like going to these labs and trying these things? Or are you just researching and noticing? I am very cautious when it comes to some of that stuff.
Um, so, but it's not that I don't think some of it works. Also, I just, you know, I'm a little bit of a scaredy cat, but I stick with the exercise.
I'm just researching food, exercise, sleep. Yeah.
And so, and so those are the big things. And I, you know, to kind of maybe go back to your question, I would say that, you know, I, I used to think that, you know, limiting protein was probably like, Oh, you're better off being more plant-based.
Like now I don't, I think exercise is the King. I think exercise is the longevity drug that if you could pill it up, we'd all be taking it.
We all should be taking it. And I think that the protein is important for fueling our muscles, for improving muscle mass and for repair as well.
And so that would be a bigger thing. And also like intermittent fasting as well.
I still try and I still think that it's important to do a type of it, time-restricted eating. Because even on your speech that you had with Dr.
Valtolongo, he was saying people thought it was 16 hours, now it's actually more 12-hour time-restricted, is that right? I don't know if that's the new research. Yeah, I don't know exactly what endpoints that he was talking about, but I think the way I sort of think about it is you want to have a fasting period while you're sleeping because if the repair processes that we were talking about to kind of go back to the start of this podcast is that we were talking about, you know, your DNA is repaired when you're sleeping.
You're cleaning out stuff inside of your cells, pieces of DNA that from, you know, cells dividing that have just kind of fragmented off or gunk, you know, cell, just pieces of the cell. Like there's all this gunk in our cells and that process is cleared out.
When you sleep. When you sleep.
Yeah. However, if you had just ate a meal before you hit the pillow, your digestion, all that stuff, that goes on for like five hours.
There's a lot of stuff happening. Man, it's so good to eat late at night.
That shunts energy away from, the energy ships from repair. It's still in digestive mode.
Oh, man. So repair mode needs to be fasted.
So when should you stop eating before you go to sleep? Like how much time should you have before you go to sleep? I think typically it's like three hours or what a lot of the experts like Dr. Satya and Panda have sort of come to the conclusion.
Because if you think about, if you finished eating three hours before you go to sleep, then for the first two hours, you're going to be finishing up the digestion process, right? And then the rest of the time, it's repair mode, right? It's repair mode. So you want to give your body repair mode.
And that's where I... Is that no like treats, not even a little snack, a couple of nuts? I mean, that's not going to be as big as a meal, right? Like let's be real I'm some people really take it seriously like they don't want to take a vitamin or anything like like don't worry about your water or whatever my vitamins like close to bed you know so but but yeah you don't want a full-on meal yeah I mean now of course there's there's times when I've been so obsessive about it where I then I go to bed hungry and I'm cold because I'm metabolism well.
And then I don't sleep well. Exactly.
I wake up cold all night and I'm like, well, maybe I should have had a little something to eat because that. But isn't it good to sleep cold? Isn't that like dark room, cold? It's a different kind of cold.
When your bones cold. It's your bones cold.
Yeah. It's not like you can put the blanket on and feel like, yeah, it's like that cold that you can't, you just can't fit.
Another blanket won't help me. Yeah.
So that's, so yeah, I will say that I've decided I'm not, I'm not going to be so obsessive about it, but like with the fasting thing too, it's, what's interesting is I do think that a lot you know there's the problem that people could come across is where they they're skipping so many meals that they're not getting enough protein right and then are they working out to making make sure they're at least getting that aspect of increasing you know getting that muscle protein synthesis because so if you are going to be doing some intermittent fasting and there's an argument to be made to kind of like do a little once in a while sort of just clean out right where you kind of stress your body a little bit and do that but i feel like i mean that's what exercise does and in fact exercise activates vigorous exercise activates a lot of those same repair processes like autophagy that's one of the things that's happening when you're not eating right Right. It also happens when you're sleeping and not eating.
Right. So again, it comes back to exercise forgives a lot of sins.
Not all of them, but I mean- Really? A lot of them. It really does.
I mean, food plays a big part of it. What would you say would be a few foods that you would recommend to help with optimal sleep? With optimal sleep.
Like what, what three to five foods should we be eating to support us in sleeping better? And what should we remove to help us sleep better? So there's a lot, there's, there's been some studies and this isn't, you know, I don't remember the details like in great detail, basically. There have been studies that I've looked at, at like if you eat a high carbohydrate meal for dinner versus a high fat meal versus high protein and i don't remember all the details all i remember is that one would improve deep sleep but the other would improve rem and so it was with this kind of mixed bag where it's like okay well if i am going to am going to do the higher carbohydrate meal, then at least I'm going to get one of those other ones.
I don't know. I forgot which one it is.
It's been a few years since I read those studies. But like, if you're looking at like the macronutrient level, I would say that it seems as though different types of foods are affecting different stages of sleep.
That's interesting. It is interesting.
And it also is, sorry to all the people out there that want to say it's the one or the other, I'm just going to tell you what the data says is that it's like I don't remember which one improved the deep sleep and which one because honestly I don't know that, you know, yeah eating your meal right before bed also kind of disrupts your sleep and I think that might be even more important than like what you're eating, as well as getting that physical activity earlier in the day makes a difference. And then the other thing that I think is even more important than the food is heat stress.
It's like doing a hot tub or a sauna. That, if you do that pretty close to bedtime, like not necessarily right before bed, but like maybe a couple of hours before bed, it really seems to improve sleep.
Really? Yeah. And there's a lot of potential reasons for that, but, um, you know, like growth hormone being one, you know, and also like it increases the, what are called somnogenic cytokines.
So when you, when you get in a hot tub or sauna, you're actually increasing some inflammatory markers that are also called somnogenic cytokines because they induce sleep. And so there's a reason.
Now, you want to be able to cool off. You were talking about being cool.
You don't want to, like, get in the sauna and then get right into bed, and you're sweating in bed, and then you can't go to sleep. But usually if you take, like like a shower, a cooler shower after that, you know, or some people like to get in their cold plunge, but you don't have a cold plunge and just do a shower.
Cold shower. Yeah.
And then it really does. In fact, my husband is religious about it every night.
He has to do, he does the hot tub. And then cold? And then cold, cold plunge.
And then. He sleeps like a baby? Sleeps like a baby.
Like I don't have as much trouble falling asleep. He's more of a night person.
I can go to bed at 9, obviously at 9.30, no problem. So the cold doesn't keep him awake? No, it doesn't.
No, I know a lot of people use the cold to kind of get that like norepinephrine burst where you wake up in the morning and you get that hit and you feel good and you start um no i'm sure while he's in it but it's like it maybe the combination with the heat does something sure but he doesn't just do the cold yeah it's hot and cold it's hot and all right i'm tired but he does the hot for a while and then gets into the cold probably he doesn't want to he doesn't want to like be sweating sure yeah yeah Yeah. Now, if you could create an optimal day protocol, let's just say you have all things perfect in life and you can wake up, go to sleep at a certain time, eat what you want, train the way you want, do hot, do cold.
You have a perfect day all the time in the world. How would you set up your perfect day protocol with sleep, food, and workouts? Perfect for, like, being healthy.
For, yeah, optimal human protocol for longevity, for optimal strength currently. Like, what would that perfect day look like for you? What would you eat? When would up yeah how would you train would you do any like heat cold you know any of that stuff did you do a oxygen chamber all the time like anything you could do okay so what i would do is wake up when i would naturally wake up yeah i typically naturally wake up around 7 and no alarm though just wake up actually i don't yeah i mean the only time i use an alarm is if i have to wake up around 7 a.m.
No alarm though, just wake up naturally. I don't, yeah.
I mean, the only time I use an alarm is if I have to wake up before 7, like I'm doing a sunrise hike or something, or I'm in another time zone or something and I have to use it. But I would wake up naturally, which is usually around 7 a.m.
I personally like to have coffee. So I, I have my coffee and then sometimes I'll do like a little bit of like maybe a protein shake or I'll have some like egg or something like very light that's protein and then I'll go outside because I want that early morning light exposure to reset my circadian rhythm so that I again fall asleep at the right time and it's really that light exposure early in the morning is very important for that resetting of the circadian rhythm I would go outside and I work out I work out outside actually almost all the time really I work out outside I do my lifting outside so I would go out and I would do my sort of CrossFit training protocol, which I love.
And so this was, it's like an hour long workout and I do some resistance training depending on the day. Maybe I'll do some squats, some deadlifts, mix it in with a workout, maybe some rowing in there, burpees, a little pushups.
You know,, I'm getting the best of both worlds. I'm getting the HIIT and the resistance training.
I do that for an hour. And then I would probably have the sauna already on and it would be about 175.
I don't like to go too high these days, like about 175, especially after a workout.

And I go in the sauna and I would either listen to some music or maybe a podcast that I'm

interested in listening to, or maybe read a book or read a science study.

And so I'd be in there for about 20 to 30 minutes, depending on how I'm feeling.

And sometimes I'll put some water on the rocks to get steam. I like the steam as well.
So I do that. Then I'll get out and then I'll have my bigger protein meal.
So I'll have- So a little bit of food before the workout, then more after. I like a little bit because especially if you're going a little bit harder and you're doing some high intensity i find that it helps me not get so dizzy yeah um you can see more energy yeah so so so i mentioned like i'll have like a protein shake sometimes i'll also have like a half an apple like i'll cut half something like i like a little bit of something um and then after that i'll have my meal like i'll have a frittata egg frittata that has broccoli in it i'll have a big serving of it And then I'll have that, I'll have my meal.
Like I'll have a frittata, egg frittata that has broccoli in it. I'll have a big serving of it.
And then I'll have some, I like my Yerba Mate tea. So I don't drink too much coffee.
I certainly don't. I usually only have one cup in the morning.
Sometimes I'll have two. But most of the time I go to the Yerba Mate hot tea, loose leaf tea.
And I'll make that after I have my meal and then I like to sit down and do some science, read some science, like what's the latest. I get into all that.
You know, cognitive stimulation is very important, right? It's very important to keep the mind sharp and cognitive stimulation is also very important for brain-derived neurotrophic factor we're talking

about exercise increasing it will cognitive stimulation does as well novelty learning something new all those things are important so having a podcast like the school of greatness where you're constantly you know learning new things it's very good for the brain so i so i like to do that while i'm drinking my yerba monte tea and then the afternoon um i will get hungry again and I will have two homemade turkey burgers. I'm really getting big on the protein.
But then I also have some kale and blueberries in a shake together. And that also really kind of gives me a brain boost.
I don't know what it is. I think it's the polyphenols and the blueberries.
But I'm not alone in that. Like other people talk about it where it's like, instead of having the caffeine that mid afternoon, I get the blueberries and there's studies showing that it improves cognition and memory across the lifespan.
Young, young children, adolescents, older age, boom. So I do that.
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Cocovia has been shown that. So it's a type of cacao powder that has very, very similar polyphenols.
Cocovia? Yeah. That's the brand name I use.
And because their powder has been shown in clinical studies to improve blood flow to the brain, to improve cognition and memory in older adults. And also blood pressure.
It's been trying to improve blood pressure. In fact, I've gotten my mom and people in my family to use it and have improvements in their blood pressure as well.
Really? Yeah. So it's like a cocoa powder.
It's a cocoa powder that's unflavored. You can put it.
I don't usually put it in my smoothie. You could.
I usually put it in. I usually drink like a, especially in the wintertime, I do like a, like a cocoa.
So I'll put cocovia with some water and then I'll mix in a little bit of like monk fruit or stevia and I'll just drink that. There you go.
So. Just water, blend it in and mix it in.
Right. Okay.
Yeah. Cool.
You don't want to put milk or dairy in there because it blunts the polyphenol. It binds up the polyphenols and then you're not going to get the same effect.
So if you going to if you like milk or no almond milk's fine if you like creaminess almond milk would work but you don't want like dairy interesting okay but so that so that forgive you okay so you're telling me that i'm telling you like my perfect day that i you know can do right um so turkey burgers and then um you know then i would say on the ideal day, then I like to go out and do just a couple mile run. And like, this is about, I would say, three o'clock in the afternoon.
Usually I do it when my son's at soccer. It's like, what else am I going to do? But I'll jog around the trail.
And this is like, I love it. I feel when I get that second exercise thing in and it's not like a long, you know, it it's 20 minutes or whatever.
I'm doing like a 5K. It's not like a long, and I'm not going hard.
Jog, fast jog. Yeah, it's like a zone two type of, I can like, you know, have a breathy conversation.
I'll do some intervals. I'll run a little faster.
So I will kind of do a little bit of intervals in there sometimes. But I like to get that, Like, those are the best days when I get that second hit of exercise in.
That's cool. About 3 o'clock.
And then it's time to... Let's see.
Did I do any supplements in the morning? No. I usually do my supplements.
Sometimes I'll take an omega-3 in the morning as well. These days I've been only doing it at night.
So then I get to dinner time and dinner I like to have some nice protein and then I like to have either roasted vegetables or a salad. So I like to get some more vegetables in there and salad.
Also sometimes I'll have an orange or an apple or something for dessert and I know people or a mosquito fruit. I think fruit's great.
Um, I just don't eat nonstop fruit. So I'll have that as well.
And then I'll get my, this is when I get my supplements. So I do a lot of, I do a lot of vitamins.
So I do about two grams of omega-3. Usually it's about two to one ratio EPA DHA and then I do let's see so the omega-3 then do vitamin D so I take around a total around 4,000 I use a vitamin D a day so I get like 2,000 in a vitamin D supplement plus 2,000 in my in my multivitamin so I take a multitamin as well.
And then I take magnesium glycinate. And then I take another product called Magnesiome, which is like a powder I put in my water that I take all my vitamins with.
And it's got like a mixture of some other magnesium, organic magnesium salts as well. And then I take alpha lipoic acid.
Are you wanting all the perfect stuff? Okay. Alpha lipoic acid, which has been shown to blunt the advanced glycation end products.
So it's been shown to lower those in clinical studies. In fact, people with type 2 diabetes, it's been shown to improve their ages.
So I take that. And then I take binfotamin, another vitamin that's been shown to help with advanced glycation end products.
That's an important aspect that I'm focused on. And that's just a fat-soluble vitamin B1.
Take that. And then I take lutein, deaxanthin for my eyes.
I take CoQ10. And then I take, I'm probably gonna miss something.
I take sulforaphane. Sulforaphane helps detoxify a lot of terrible things that we're exposed to, like plastic chemicals like BPA, but also air pollution factors as well.
It activates a very powerful detoxification system in our body, so I take that. And then ...
Where do you think you'd be without taking supplements? You think you'd still be as healthy and optimal as you are, or is it just more of a psychological boost for you? No, no. I mean, so look, I'll tell you the omega-3 one's critical.
So there's studies that have now shown that having a low omega-3 index is like smoking. Come on.
Really? Wow. It's like smoking.
So omega-3 levels as measured by the omega-3 index. So this is like measuring it in your red blood cells.
It's

a long-term marker of omega-3. It's a beautiful study that was done by Dr.
Bill Harris. It was a Framingham cohort published a few years ago.
And he looked at people's omega-3 levels, high or low. High would be 8%.
Low would be 4%. He's the pioneer of the omega-3 index.
and basically people that were non-smokers but had a low omega-3 index had the same life expectancy as smokers with a high omega-3 index. Wow.
I mean, if you look at their life expectancy curve, they're overlaid. I mean, it's like, I wish I could pull up the figure.
It's mind-blowing. And the only way you can get omega-3, is that from fish? So, no.
Yes. Seafood is the major, that's what's going to drive your omega-3 index.
It needs to be EPA, DHA. That's from the marine sources.
ALA, the plant source of omega-3, can be converted into those two other omega-3 fatty acids, but very, very inefficiently. And so, really really you need to get the marine source.
For people that are vegetarians or vegans, microalgae is the source of microalgae oil. You have to take a lot of it.
But studies have found that people with 4% omega-3 index, that's low. Actually, people in the US, the average omega-3 index is like 5%.
If you take two grams of omega-3, so supplemental omega-3 per day for, was it like three months or so, or three or four months, then you can go from a 4% low omega-3 index to a 8% high omega-3 index. And people that have an 8% omega-3 index have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to the people with low.
Come on, really? If you think about Japan, Japan, they have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to the U.S. on average.
A lot of fish in their diet. Their omega-3 index is 10%.
Ours is 5%. So their average omega-3 index is 10%.
Our average here in the U.S. is 5%.
And that's just connected to fish. It's connected to fish intake, right.
Wow. But you can't eat too much fish because of mercury, right? Yeah, I mean, it depends on the type of fish you're eating too, right? So the best types of fish to eat would be salmon, mackerel, sardines.
These are high omega-3 but low mercury fish. Wow.
And there's actually even studies showing that the omega-3 fatty acids protect against the mercury to some degree. You don't want to eat swordfish already.
Swordfish is very high. Okay.
Like that's a very real thing. If you can get like really high mercury levels, then it can be bad.
Okay. But if you're eating, like I eat salmon like three times a week, you know, maybe four sometimes.
Wow. I eat salmon a lot.
But I also take my omega-3 supplements. So it came back to that question is, do you think you could get away from all the supplements? I mean, I do think that there's a few that are really important, omega-3 and vitamin D, you know, you can make it from the sun.
It gets converted into a steroid hormone, very, very important, very important. It's a steroid hormone regulating 5% of the human genome.
So without it, lots of stuff's going wrong. But there's a lot of things that regulate whether or not you can make vitamin D, where you live, how much melanin you have in your skin.
That's a natural sunscreen. If you wear sunscreen or if you have a lot of protective clothing, as you get older, you're four times less efficient at making it.
So lots of things, right? So that's where the supplement does help. So I don't, you know, I would say no, I would want those couple of supplements.
Do you have a list on your site anywhere of all the supplements you take? I don't have a list on my site. I do talk about it on my membership.
about it on my, on my membership. I have a lot of Q and A's I do once a month.
Gotcha. I, I, I'm thinking about something like, you know, having some kind of maybe list because other people have lists of the supplements.
Everyone's got the list, right? I'm not necessarily right. Really? I want your list then.
That's what I want. Yeah.
But my list changes a lot. That's the thing.
It's like what you took two years ago is different than this year. It is.
It changes a lot. Like sometimes I...
You need a rolling list, you know? You need an updateable list. What do I...
Like is this really... Like I used to take NAD like, you know, precursors.
If you could only take three supplements a day and you're only allowed three right now, what would you take consistently? I would take omega-3, vitamin D, and sulforaphane. Okay.
To simplify it for people. If they're like, I can't take these 30 supplements and I don't know what, you know, which brands are good, which ones are not good.
But I would definitely make sure I'm getting my magnesium for my food because I left that one out. So magnesium.
I left that one. Well, if I only had three.
Right, right. But then you'd be focusing on the magnesium-based foods.
I would be getting my leafy greens and my nuts, like almonds, are very high in magnesium.

Right.

Because I want to make sure I'm getting, you know, meeting the R day.

Okay.

Top five supplements.

What if you could only get five supplements a day?

What would those top five be?

Okay.

Omega-3.

Yep.

Vitamin D.

Yep.

Sulforaphane.

Magnesium.

And the multivitamin.

Okay.

That seems more reasonable. That's the top five.
What is sulforaphane? Yeah. Sulforaphane is a compound that is made from a precursor that is found in certain types of cruciferous vegetables.
So these are broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, those types of vegetables. It's really...the precursor is called glucoraphanin.
And when you break the plant, like by chewing it or you break the plant wall, the glucoraphanin comes in contact with an enzyme called myrosinase that breaks it down into a compound called sulforaphane. Okay.
So sulforaphane is really high in broccoli sprouts. In fact, it's a hundred times higher than mature broccoli.
Wow. Sprouting broccoli is another option.
Broccoli sprouts is another option. I prefer to just take a supplement that you have to find a good one.
So there's a couple of good ones, Avmacol and prostaphanes and Brock. They're all sort of, those are like the high quality sulforaphane supplements.
But sulforaphane activates a pathway in your body called NRF2 that's major, major activator of a lot of different genes in our body that get rid of toxic compounds like carcinogens. So like if you're eating, let's say you're eating bacon, you can be exposed to something called heterocyclic amines, which can cause cancer.
Well, activating NRF2 through sulforaphane can stop your body from getting those terrible heterocyclic amines, right? So it's very good at detoxifying carcinogens, but also other factors like air pollution, benzene that you breathe in. I'm concerned with plastic chemicals like BPA, BPS.
I think it's very good at detoxifying that because it does the same. It activates pathways that are able to take BPA and make it water soluble because you excrete a lot of BPA through your urine.
So that's why I think sulfur appearance is very important. Amazing.
Was this, I don't know if I interrupted you for your perfect day, but that would be the, would there be anything else? Yeah. So I take my supplements and then, um, sometimes I also like to do a little hot tub at night as well.
And, and so that would be like the end of the day would be hot tub, relaxing outside under the stars with some relaxing music conversation with my husband and, then um bedtime sounds like a good day yeah that's my idea like cold exposure wasn't in there i add i mix it up sometimes in the summer i like to do it when it's really hot or like there's like a big event and it helps me with anxiety but but but my my major jam these days is just exercise like getting out there and like getting at a day, it'd be great for you. It is.
Those are my best days when I get two in. Wow.
Yeah. This is amazing.
I'm so glad that you came back on the show. I want to tell people what they can get your stuff because you've got a lot of great reports, podcasts, everything.
So if people aren't following you yet, we're going to have all this linked up but the is it more audio that you want to send people to or the youtube is where you focus on more for your podcast because you have an amazing resource that i want people to get well you know i like both i think i think youtube yeah okay cool but they can listen on audio as well but youtube is kind of where you put more focus right now yeah yeah okay we is. We'll link up to YouTube, it's FoundMyFitness, Dr.
Rhonda Patrick's show over there. Make sure you guys subscribe, make sure you listen to it, watch it, it's amazing content.
You only put it out once in a while when you've really done research on a subject where you go deep on something. It's important to be watching, listening, and subscribe to it when it comes out because it's all great stuff and this stuff is evolving you know the research the science seems like it's evolving so you're getting the latest stuff you're implementing it and then you're sharing it with everyone right right and that's kind of like the idea why like my exercise journey where i've come up with this with how to train guide right how to train it's like, that's from my journey of interviewing the experts and then saying, I got to put this together into a more protocols based guide.
Right. And I've got a few of those where.
I saw the, I saw the how to train one and it can go. It's a free guide.
It's a free guide. Yeah.
How to train.com. How to train.com.
Oh, sorry. How to train guide.com.
How to train guide.com. You've've got a few other guides as well but that one is really like i watched it and breaks down everything from every muscle group on how to do exactly what you need to do to optimize it right right from all the training from aerobic to lifting to hit all that stuff based on the experts based on the science um the other one you have is uh it's the omega-3 one too i have I have an Omega three, Omega three guides, FMF Omega three guide.
Okay. So if you want to learn the best supplements, it's, it's, it's about how to find the best Omega three supplement, like what matters.
And then I have like, I list eight different brands that are quality based on low oxidation status is big. That's like a really important one.
And concentration of actually, there's so many supplements that don't even have the concentration of what you think is in there. Wow.
In there. And so that's like a guide on choosing the best omega-3 supplement.
Okay, perfect. So we'll have that one linked up.
FMFomega3guide.com. And then you've got one more protocol for improving cognitive memory, which is huge.
Yeah. It's the BDNFprotocols.com.
That's the BDNF Protocols Guide. It talks about the easy hit exercises that have been shown to increase BDNF, as well as other things like polyphenols and how much, and other dietary factors that have been shown to improve and increase BDNF.
It's why I do the Cocovia. It's why I do the blueberries.
Interesting. Because those increase BDNF.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of blueberries, like the taste and the flavor. So the cocovia powder, I'm going to try that for sure.
Try it. I try it out.
Like I actually feel like you can feel a like a pick me up from it. Really? Oh yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. I mean, there's a little bit of caffeine in cocoa, right? But I don't think that's it.
Interesting. Because it's the blood flow.
I'm almost certain. It increases blood flow to the brain.
And is it about the same amount as a cup of blueberries or something? Or that would give you the... The amount is...
It's a scoop. And I think it's in the protocols guide.
But if you buy the Cocoa Via... By the way, I have no affiliation with them.
You buy... I buy the powder.
They have capsules as well. I buy the powder and I do a scoop of the powder.
There's something about it being in hot liquid that kind of just goes to the brain. You know what I mean? Plus it has that like coffee.
It's like, oh, it feels like coffee effect. But I do one scoop.
In hot water. In hot water and I mix it up with the frother.
Okay. It's like a little hot chocolate.
It is. It is.
You have to add a little stubby or something to it. To make it sweeter.
It's bitter. Otherwise, you're going to be chugging it because it doesn't taste good.
Yeah, it's like, okay. Very bitter.
So we can get all these protocols there. We'll link it up as well and I'm assuming they're on your website as well, correct? Foundmyfitness.com or? Foundmyfitness.com.
All the guides aren't there. They're kind of like separate.
Yeah, so like they're separate pages. We'll link them up.
We'll link them up for people. You're on social media as well, everywhere, FoundMyFitness.
What's your main social media space right now? Or is it mostly on YouTube? Are you on Instagram? Yeah, I'm on YouTube. I also have a Clip channel where we do release something every day.
There you go. On YouTube? Definitely every week yeah I found my fitness clips but the main channel is where we release our long interview expert series and I'm on X found my fitness Rhonda Patrick and then I'm on Instagram also as Rhonda Patrick.
I'm also on TikTok, although not as popular. We post, but not quite as popular on TikTok yet.
There's a lot to compete with there. There's a lot.
There's a lot. You should get on there, though.
I think it'd be good. I have someone post your content there for sure.
A couple of final questions for you. Before I ask Rhonda, I want to acknowledge you for the 20 years of consistency and saying, and also constantly researching and questioning your current beliefs or your previous beliefs and saying, how can I improve these beliefs? How can I not hold onto these? If there's something new, I'm willing to try that and share that with people as well.
And I think that's really important that you're willing to do that so I want to acknowledge you for constantly being in this mission to serve humanity to help people learn this information learn easier because it does seem so confusing there's so much content out there teaching stuff and you know I feel like I have so many different leading experts on and I'm still confused sometimes. So I appreciate you for breaking down like an optimal day and explaining it step by step and also trying to simplify some of these things because it can seem so overwhelming.
And a lot of people don't have your brain. So I appreciate you creating guides for people.
Like here's the step by step approach. And I'm just grateful that you are alive today because we need people like you to help us be better.
So I'm grateful that you're constantly diving the research and helping people. So thank you for what you do and for being here and for sharing this on my show.
It means a lot. It's been four years, so I'm glad you're back.
And I want to acknowledge you for implementing this in your life. life you seem like you're I told you when I saw you a few weeks ago and today I was like man you look really healthy really fit strong like younger so you're applying this to yourself and I'm glad you're implementing it because sometimes there's experts that teach but they don't do it themselves so I'm grateful you're doing it for yourself and seeing the benefits it seems like it's really working so congrats on everything thank you so much Lewis very very kind words I'm very appreciative to have the opportunity to come and chat with you and I appreciate everything that you said it's very nice of course and I yeah I'd love to come back anytime and chat with you again for sure we'll make it happen happen for sure.
I think I asked you this question.

I have two final questions.

I think I asked you this before,

but I'm curious if it's going to be a different answer.

It's called the three truths.

So imagine a hypothetical scenario.

You get to live as long as you want,

but it's your last day on earth.

And you get to live as long as you want,

100, 200, whatever you want,

but eventually you got to die. You get to accomplish everything you want in this life.
All your dreams come true. But for whatever reason, you can't take, you have to take all of your work with you.
So everything you've created in this life, you got to take it somewhere else. Whether you die, it's just got to erase or it's just not here for the world.
So this conversation is gone. All your content you've made in your podcast, gone.
Books, it's all gone. Hypothetical.
But on the last day, you get to leave behind three truths. And this is all we would have of your content.
Three lessons. What would those three truths be for you? For all of my content.
Okay, not for like life. Just from like the only three things you can leave behind these lessons what would those three things be um i would say exercise get out there and and and make it a part of your personal hygiene i think that exercise it not only makes us healthier and improves the way we age i think it makes us better humans.
I think it makes us kinder. It makes us happier.
It makes us, you know, just better people. And I think that affects the world.
Yes. So if we could get everyone to, like, do, you know, five hours of exercise a week where they're doing, like, one hour a day during the work week, I really think that people would be nicer to each other.
So that would be number one.

I think number two would be social connections with the people that you love and to foster them and cherish them. We didn't talk about that today and the role that plays in aging, which is something, it does play a big role in aging.
In fact, all the super agers seem to have this, you know, social connections as a very big, you know, not being lonely, like losing all your friends and not having that social connection is devastating on, on the body and the brain. And it does age you faster.
But also, again, it comes down to that, like, connectedness, like, like connecting with people. It's just, it's, it's so good.
It's so, I don't't I don't yet I don't know that it's better than or worse than like vitamin D right like it's it's so important um and I didn't talk about that in my perfect day but it actually is a part of my big day because I have a family and I spend a lot of time with my family yeah um so that would be number two And I think number three would be that I think there's a lot of potential people are missing in terms of their optimizing their health, their own health and their own lifespan and life expectancy and healthspan. And it all comes down to shifting a focus on what you need.
What are the things that you need to run your body? So we need essential vitamins and minerals. If you don't get vitamin C, eventually you could die, right? So magnesium, like these are 30 to 40 essential minerals and vitamins.
We need these fatty acids. We need amino acids.
Like shift your thinking to what you need to fuel your body and everything else will fall into place instead of focusing on what you need,

avoiding refined carbohydrates. Well, if you think about what you need to eat, that's not going to be in the equation.
So it already goes away. Right.
And I think it's a simplified way of thinking about health, especially nutrition. Yeah.
Okay. Um, so exercise daily, social, and focus on what food and vitamins you need.
Yeah. The food and the vitamins that you need to run your body.
Right. To optimize it.
Yeah. That's beautiful.
I love those truths. Simple.
Final question. What's your definition of greatness? Oh, I know that's a hard one.

So I think for me, my definition of greatness is really trying to push past my mental barriers, things that hold me back, things I'm afraid of, my fears.

And to avoid thinking and seeing, to try to see less of the negative and more of the positive, seeing less of the problems and more of the solutions. I think that for me greatness is really pushing past the fears and negativity, I think.
If I get past that, things are really great. I think last time I talked about honesty as my greatness, and I think that's definitely still part of my greatness.
But yeah, I think just getting past the hard, hard stuff is greatness. So whether it's in my social relationships, you know, or like being a parent, being a wife, being a daughter, or being a podcaster, or being a scientist, you know, in every part of what makes me who I am, there are things that hold me back.
There are things I'm scared of. And there are things that I can identify a lot of problems in without seeing the solutions.
And I think that those are not greatness. I think that's holding me back from greatness.
Sure, sure. Ron, I appreciate it.
Thank you for being here. Thanks so much.
Thank you so much. It's powerful.
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