DOCTOR REVEALS 4 Essential Foods YOU NEED To Eat To LIVE LONGER |Dr. Rhonda Patrick & Lewis Howes

we used to think again the brain was separate from the body and the immune system and all that didn't affect the brain turns out that was all wrong absolutely wrong welcome everyone back to the school of greatness podcast I'm super excited about this we have dr. rendre Patrick in the house who is a published scientist health educator based in San Diego she's also a PhD in biomedical science someone who has done extensive research on aging cancer nutrition and so many other things about optimizing your health so I'm so excited that you're here Rhonda thank you for taking the time oh I'm excited to be here too I'm glad we finally made this I know he made it happen I've been begging you to come on for years we did a pandemic to get you to go first so make it happen we never come you never leave anywhere from San Diego you're just obsessed in the research all day teaching the world about how to be healthier and so we finally made it happen we'll have to make it happen in person in the future as well but I'm so excited about this because I feel like people need you and your information more than ever right now obviously you've been sharing a ton of great content over on your podcast and we are in a moment of a lot of high anxiety a lot of high stress and routine disruption you know my girlfriend who lives with me she had plans she had dreams and those plans and dreams went on hold just like most of the world so what does that do to your body and immune system first when you have this routine disruption anxiety at an all-time high stress on a little time high uncertainty at an all-time high how do we combat it and what does that do to our immune system with all of that combined that's a huge question that particular question hasn't been really empirically studied but what I can tell you is there have been there there's a lot of you know evidence and in fact a growing body of evidence that psychological stress itself which is what I think you're referring to I mean the the fear of the unknown not knowing what you know this this co-ed 19 illness he's gonna do whether you're gonna catch the virus all those things whether you're gonna get your job your job you're gonna you know keep your job but your housing I mean so many stress you know stresses associated with it with this pandemic we do know that you know psychological stress has a pretty profound effect on the immune system and it's known to depressed immune function on the one hand but also to cause inflammation on the other hands kind of like this weird how is it doing both at the same time sort of deal and it's funny I often in biology you'll find a lot of systems like that where on the one hand something will increase inflammation but on the other hand its suppressing the immune system and you might think well inflammation is active immune system right so it's it's one of those it's just there's so many interconnected systems and you know one thing is doing you know one one gene can activate one thing and then activate another and happens to be the opposite so but cortisol itself does does increase with psychological stress and we know that cortisol does depress the immune system so anytime we have stress anxiety overwhelm a fight-or-flight mentality emotionally psychologically it transforms into the body weakening its immune system yes yes people are you're more likely to probably succumb to a pathogen and I think anybody I remember I've gotten the flu twice like maybe I've had it more I just remember twice in my life really once was during finals week in college and it was like I was taking like all the like hard you know I was taking on graduate classes and everything at once and it was like I had this Spanish final and my Spanish teacher was like if you missed the final you're getting an F and I had an A in the class so I came in to that final that day and I was I had a fever and I literally vomited like in in the classroom and all the protests on the day of the final I vomited like I was like so sick with your classmates around you or no way you're just like okay I'm here I don't want to fail but I'm gonna do whatever it takes I went right to the trash can and threw up no way so my teacher sent me home you know that was like something I remember that time I had the flu and the other time I had it was right after I had my son I was getting no sleep and sleep is also really important for immune function and so I got the flu then but anyways I think what my might the point of my my story was that I think people have their own anecdotes where they're like they remember getting sick when they had this stressful thing happening you know that sort of thing so stress definitely can depress the immune system yeah for sure and so that's that's definitely and then you know there there's all sorts of other things that affect immune function as well diet lifestyle genetics you think there's do you think there's a way to defend ourselves against all disease and viruses do you think it's possible if we have the purest mind and psychological well-being we eat the perfect foods we have 9 hours of sleep every night we have the perfect environment is it possible to just the immune system say nope anything that comes in through them the body or the skin like I'm we're just gonna reject it because we have defended ourselves so well I think the only way you're gonna do that is if you never expose yourself to a pathogen somehow by living in a bubble so no I don't think that that you can you know fight off every single pathogen ever you know like that's this just it's not it's not possible and that mostly has to do with you know when when you're exposed to new pathogens things that your body has never seen before that you know there's no there's there's there's really two arms to your immune system there's the innate and immune response which is what happens when you encounter any pathogen it's sort of this generalized response where you're basically you know trying to try to fight it off and that happens through a variety of mechanisms involving mostly what are called myeloid cells mass four pages neutrophils these are cells that are like neutrophils for example in Crete produce hydrogen peroxide they produce hyper chloride which is like bleach you know they're producing these things inside of your inside of your body to fight off pathogens they create you have your body produces bleach or beliefs type material hyper cry hyper chloride it does yeah hydrogen peroxide as well so so is this your immune system develops this or is this like your cells is this bullet what are your neutrophils are producing it it's it's a neutrophil it's a type of immune cell okay your various types of immune cells you have myeloid cells and you have lymphoid cells most people are familiar with lymphoid cells which are being t-cells you've probably heard of those right and that those also could be involved somewhat in the adaptive immune response I'm sorry in the innate but mostly they're involved in what's called the adaptive immune response and that's the immune response most people are aware of that don't you know study biology that's the response where your b-cells basically form what are called like the memory cells and they produce antibodies which can then recognize specific regions of a virus and you know protect you from that from that virus protect you protect you from the virus entering your cells so you know if you don't have but if you've never been exposed to that virus then you're not gonna have that antibody right you're not going to have that adaptive immune system hasn't been activated and so you don't have protection against it so we'll rely on the innate one only oh so we actually want to be exposed to viruses and other bad I guess bugs we want to be exposed to some degree but not full-on attack so that our body can build up antibodies that remain you said yeah I think that that's a an accurate statement I think you know that the it was thought for a long time that you know all pathogens were bad all microbes were bad and we wanted to have you know this clean hygiene you know you wanted to on all the time ever touch anything with your hands all the time yeah and now and you know as and this is how this is how science is the more tools you have the more you can investigate investigate questions and more answers from from doing experiments so as time goes on you're sort of you know your ideas change and knowledge changes right and that's that's science science is the changing of it so you know we know that microbes now we've got the microbiome we've got the skin microbiome the gut microbiome you know with the the bacteria that are on our skin the bacteria that on our gut also have important roles in helping us I mean helping our immune system in fact in fact actually there's been many studies showing now that early life exposure to dirt you know or even like pet dander you know growing up with like a dog can help protect against asthma and even other types of autoimmune or yeah autoimmune diseases and it's really important in the first year of life so like when my son was born I was like taking him out in the dirt you know trying to get him all you know dirty instead of you know instead of like years ago like you know my grandparents generation it was like oh you never want to go in the dirt you know because it's dirty and you can get sick and you know so you know obviously we've learned a lot more since then but even gut microbiome the gut like the composition of what's in your gut plays a major role in actually regulating your immune cells and particularly so what happens is you know bacteria in our gut will will ferment certain types of fermentable carbohydrates that we eat so these are carbohydrates that we don't digest and they tend to be in plants and fruits and there's many examples of it like you can find pectin or inulin or beta glucans you know there's lots of different types that are found in a variety of plants and these bacteria will ferment and the these basically this types of fiber and they will produce a variety of different compounds almost like a little drug factories in our gut and these compounds some of them some of them are called short chain fatty acids because they're little tiny fatty acids they get really get released into the bloodstream and they regulate they basically send signals it's like the signalling molecule that tells our T cells to make more of this type and one of the types of T cells it makes is a type called regulatory T cells and regulatory T cells play a very important role in preventing your immune system from attacking its own tissue thinking its own tissue is foreign so obviously it plays a very important role in autoimmune disease so how do we get more of these T cells that are good well that's well you know I think one one thing to keep in mind would be what what regulates the gut microbiome one of the major things that regulates the gut microbiome is what I just said eating a diverse or array of fermentable fiber because example what's what's a diverse array so you have blueberries you have you know you have nuts mushrooms you have some you know dark leafy greens these have different types of or you know you've got onions and garlic those have a different type of fermentable fiber there's that should be differentiated from non fermentable fiber which would be cellulose leggins well just like what broccoli has fermentable fibers but yeah most of like most of the bulk of fiber in plants is non is is non fermentable so what that's doing is basically just helping move stuff through the intestines right pushing it out the fiber that's important the fibers pulling it down and cleaning it out letting it out right and that's also important but but the fermentable fiber the stuff that's that can be eaten by this bacteria in our gut like that is the good stuff that's really allowing the bacteria to make short chain fatty-acids what are the top three to five key foods simplifying for myself these foods that can really develop that yeah what are you different so the thing is different foods have different types and different types feed different types of bacteria so if you want you don't like from when for example some people want to hear oh well I can supplement with inulin I can get an in Ulan powder inulin is a type of fermentable fiber you can find it you can find it in a variety of plants I think onions for example but you know if you only eat in Ulan then you're gonna be you're gonna be basically feeding a certain certain types of bacteria that that use inulin or tightness you know that's a variety is what you're looking for that helps with the diversity you know because these bacteria are playing different roles so you know there's I have been under the assumption that eating the same thing every day is good it's like eating a clean like a little bit of chicken lots of veggies and eating it pretty much every meal is the right way to go in terms of like my health nutrients in terms of like body composition how I want to look and feel is that something that I should be going away from and diversifying what I eat every day well it sounds like you just said you said vegetables that's like that's a lot embeddable there's a lot of types of vegetables right so it's kind of nice look I'm just as guilty like for convenience I'm busy like I know my husband gets tired of it but I'm like the same it's so much easier to have the same thing no because I find anything that's healthiest and easiest to make and you know there's days where let's say you know I'm not I'm not working all day then I can I can be more creative and I have more time but generally speaking it's easier to kind of stick to the same thing but if you if you were going to let's say you came up with a new company a product that was a meal that you had to have the same meal every day for lunch and dinner and snack and this would be the the thing that you could sell to people what would be included in that meal that you were like you know what if you have if you don't have the all the variety and time to make these foods all day but you could do this three times a day you're setting yourself up for a really good immune system and good get back to you back to the same meal three times a day or yes I would say basically Omega I would I would get salmon I would get wild Alaskan salmon and that's because salmon is one of the best sources of the marine omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA which are extremely important for health and particularly brain health but even cardiovascular health I mean just there's just been so much emerging evidence showing that the omega-3 fatty acids are really important for brain health and for okay Lisa well that would be my protein and it's also Lois and Mercury there's there's like four micrograms of mercury sorry two micrograms of mercury / 4 ounces cooked so that's really low in mercury cooked or raw fish well actually cooking it even lowers the Merck mercury bioavailability even more so definitely and raw you don't want to like I think there's too much concern with parasites and yeah I would say cook Amir okay number two number two I would say I have to you in effect I always feel like I'm depriving myself and I'm kind of quoting my mentor here a little bit if I don't have dark leafy greens with a meal literally like every meal I like to have dark leafy greens and I would say kale because I would also like to have my soul for fame and so for a fain it plays an important role in so many and there's just so many so much evidence that sulforaphane I think may be important for longevity but so that would be my greens kale and yeah I'd like maybe sauteed sauteed would be good because I can't really eat raw kale unless so hard which which I actually do I drink my smoothie I have blueberries so maybe I would add the the avocado I'd have an avocado and some blueberries a little a little cup of blueberries and that's it for your meal yeah that would be my that would be mine you'd have wild Alaskan salmon dark leafy greens sauteed scale you'd have blueberries and some avocado and avocado if you ate those four things every day multiple times a day that if that's what you could only eat you feel like it would set you up for good amount of success I do I do yes well there's a lot of so in kale kale is probably one of the best sources of lutein and zeaxanthin which are what are called carotenoids and carotenoids you're probably familiar with or your people listening or watching this are probably familiar with Bay carotene that's like the probably most famous that's like the poster child for carotenoids beta-carotene is a carotenoid it has antioxidant activity itself but it also can be converted into vitamin A lutein and zeaxanthin are really interesting because they accumulate in two regions in the rods and cones and the eye and there they've been shown to play an important role in preventing age-related macular degeneration mm-hmm but they've also really been shown to play an important role in in the brain and there's this accumulating evidence that this stuff is accumulating in the brain and it really hasn't been known why and the reason I say that is because leading zeaxanthin because of their molecular structure they're really good at basically sequestering singlet singlet oxygen and and and that plays a role like damaging the eye so like when you're out sun exposed to sun and you know cataracts and things like that so that that plays a role and you're basically I I am quote-unquote right but in the brain there's no white so why is this stuff accumulating in the brain and there's just been quite a few studies over the past five years ago maybe last seven years correlating it with cognitive function and improved cognitive function and delayed brain aging so I and and there's like studies correlating plasma levels of lutein and zeaxanthin with you know improved cognitive function there's been randomized controlled trial supplementing with lutein and zeaxanthin improving cognitive function in elderly adults it's always nice to have a randomized controlled trial because that really helps establish causation when you have you know these studies looking at associations at the end of the day it's an association and you never know it could be some other factor right playing you're older but so the lutein zeaxanthin and kale you've got you've got some fiber a little bit of fermentable fiber you've got the sulfur fame which has been shown to increased it's been shown and in human studies to increase glutathione in plasma and also in the brain which is amazing glutathione is one of the major antioxidant systems in the body particularly in the brain and I know we were kind of chatting before before we got started about your former life as a I didn't realize even existed was this which arena football you called it and it sounds like that TBI could be a big thing yeah hits in the head that's for sure right well glutathione is one of the major antioxidants in the brain it plays a very important role particularly with any injury in the brain so I'm so furthering increases glutathione it increases the the enzymes that make glutathione and use it and subsequently increases glutathione levels I saw some maybe it was another doctor I'm trying to figure out who said this that there was some research actually potentially saying that kale is not good for you that it had some negative side effects as well I don't know if you've seen that research or if that's just something there's no research I've seen on that I've heard it but it's just it's one of those things where people like to talk about potential anti-nutrients and one of the what they're calling an anti nutrient is actually sulforaphane because it can compete with iodine for transport into the thyroid and but there's been studies so for human studies where they've loaded up with sulforaphane and there's been no effect on thyroid function those were short-term like a week long studies there have been long-term studies on animals that I've actually that actually have hypothyroidism they were given so for fame and believe it or not actually they were giving broccoli sprouts extract which is one of the better those are amazing thing yes so broccoli sprouts have like a hundred times more sulfur a frame than mature broccoli well anyways refreshing broccoli sprouts on top of the kale or the avocado broccoli sprouts actually would if I could add more I would absolutely put the broccoli sprouts in there yes okay but the but my point was that the animals that had hypothyroidism it didn't make their hyperthyroidism any worse at all in fact it helped the antioxidant status of their thyroid and improved some functions Wow so I think that doesn't mean you know people with hypothyroidism shouldn't be you know weary are concerned about consuming too much sulforaphane particularly if they're not getting iodine most people aren't iodine deficient it's it's like in salt you know most people are eating foods that I already have salt and I'm now you know iodine iodine deficiency not is not a big thing particular United States but so I would I would say that that that the statements by some people that are kind of more into the the camp of donate any plants bright aren't really research on it yeah there's not there may be you might find one study with one case report with a female who had some crazy disease or something and she was juicing like you know unjust ungodly amounts of kale every day where it's like I mean okay like maybe there maybe you can create a situation sure sure you know it's not about research backing it though yeah but yeah so I'm curious about this you have some great points here I love your five foods that we should be eating for every meal now as a I'm a 37 year old man but I've got the I like to think curiosity and imagination of a seven-year-old but I also have the palate of a seven-year-old and I don't like blueberries I don't I don't like avocado I'm the pickiest eater I'm probably a pickier than your your child and I want to ask you for the picky eaters of the world who don't eat berries and don't like avocado or aren't creative enough to go that far and they're limited in their creative thinking in terms of foods is it better to just have the supplementation the vitamins and supplements that are the exact same nutrients and just take the supplements and vitamins as opposed to the actual food itself or is the organic fresh-caught food always better than the fish oil or the blueberry vitamin yes so I think that that there's huge differences when you're talking about eating a food versus taking a supplement and I do think for example a multivitamin supplement is I take it every day and I think it's great insurance to make sure because you know there are 40 essential micronutrients which are vitamins minerals and essential fatty acids and amino acids we have to get from our diet and they're important for not only helping us you know not dye for example you know scurvy but also for long-term function for a the way we age perfect preventing insidious damage but there's also a variety of these compounds we don't know about you know there's the fermentable fibers that are feeding that gut microbial in which are making all these chemicals like little drug factories in our gut that are regulating the immune system we've got polyphenols like blueberries have been shown you know to in multiple clinical studies that's been shown to increase blood flow to the brain and improve cognitive function and memory in both young adolescents and older adults so and this was this was due thought to be due to the anthocyanins and blueberries and you know so there's you know food has so many component probably so many things we haven't even discovered yet you know so many compounds that were just you know there's this new new compound that was discovered in dark leafy greens called sulfa sulfonyl clinic quinolone or something which is now been shown to like to have one a specific purpose of feeding the gut microbiome kind of like the fermentable fiber so it's one of those things where you know food has so much to it and there's so many there's so many parts to the story it's not just about getting the vitamin right it's not just about getting that one mineral so and I will say that in mine when I was a postdoc with dr. Bruce Ames at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute there was a variety of clinical studies that I was a part of where they my colleagues had designed this this nutrient-dense bar that had a variety of vitamins and minerals it also had DHA which is one of the marine omega-3 fatty acids found in fish and it also had fiber a fiber matrix and there was a variety of studies that we were doing in obese and lean individuals and it was like the ultimate food bar was like everything you need and it was like though you know it was like the micronutrient bar where you were giving the micronutrients but you were delivering them with a with the food matrix like fiber right yes and and so there's all these benefits that were found from this from this bar that were particularly benefits found in people that were overweight or obese that we didn't ask them to change their diet they were eating their same diet but you give them this bar on top of that and you would have improvements you have improvements and an inflammation in like you know HDL cholesterol which is the good type of cholesterol you'd have all these improvements but if you took away the food matrix if you took away that food matrix and just had the bar without the fiber and just the micronutrients some of those benefits would go away major fiber by itself the benefits would go away it was the whole package was everything together that was important so you know with that said I do think there is a place for supplementation and you know particularly with fish oil I think fish oil is one of those supplements that I everyday I take it and I think that there's just mounting evidence that it's beneficial I mean high dose it has to be in the right dose for some people and it's Amin it's been shown to really lower triglycerides for example but again there's conflicting studies and a lot of times when you look at these clinical trials it all has to do with dose it has to do with were they taking a statin for example which can sort of mass some of the benefits you know there's all sorts of things that are complication it's complicates everything and then you get all this data and you're like wait a minute but yesterday was not good for you today they know right how are you supposed to know and there's so much information out there about Medical News about health news nutrition news supplement news how do you know what to trust when there's just so much news out there about what's working and what's not working I mean it's hard to know it's it's art I have to it's hard for me to kind of sort through it you know then you add the list this layer of genetics that's also complicating particularly with the randomized control trials like there's genes that people have where they actually need a higher dose of fish oil to have benefits which is super interesting there's also genes where people that get omega-3 from the plant source because there's a plant form offal and lick acid ala that from chia seeds or flax seeds or walnuts they don't convert that ala into the EPA and DHA very well and those epa and DHA are ultimately what a regular everything that's important for health so again you know you have the genetics that comes into and this is also the case for studies on saturated fat you know the genetics plays a role in that as well so there's all sorts of there's so many factors when when when designing a clinical trial and I think I think the burden is on the researchers the researchers have to come to a consensus right and realize but then but then a decade later they may come to a new consensus with the research where it's like we thought I'd only fee greens were healthy but now it's actually killing you right it's like I don't not that it's gonna happen but I'm just saying it seems like over decades what scientists and researchers think sometimes is accurate we find later evidence that it may not be a hundred percent true that that is true if that is true but I think I think when you have overwhelming evidence in multiple fields in multiple areas so you have the epidemiological evidence you have the associative studies you have the randomized controlled trials whether you know you start and give someone something and then you measure an endpoint about testing right and then you have the mechanistic studies where you start to look at how it's happening and you do these animal studies you know that together combine the whole the whole you know comprehensive literature I would say is is what really strengthens yeah the matrix of studies right when everything starts to come and point to that direction I asked so many questions this this one just came to my mind really quick as I you know I live in Los Angeles I'm from Ohio so being from oh how you grew up eating meat and cheese and milk I remember I lived in a dorm I went to in eighth grade I went to a private school boarding school and I lived in a dorm with a bunch of other kids at middle school and I actually had a milk dispenser a five gallon whole milk dispenser and I would drink that every three days by myself five gallons within three days because I thought milk was good you're supposed to drink it all day long you know you drink it before sleep everything I have a question about being in LA now growing up in Ohio which is all about meeting potatoes now being now LA it's all about being vegan and everything is around everything is around either keto or veganism or paleo or vegan it's like you're you're good you're bad you're right you're wrong there's documentaries that are coming out all the time about veganism all that stuff if you had to calculate with your wealth of information and knowledge who would be healthier the person who is vegan eating the best foods all day or the meat-eater eating the best healthiest foods all day who do you think would have a healthy me the meat-eater also would be including planting vegetables as well but too sensitive or yes they're eating meat but they're also eating all the other good foods or someone who's eating all the other good foods excluding meat we're taking out all the processed foods in both camps right both camps you know on help Whole Foods healthy one is having meat every day a portion of meat and one is not having me who is a healthier happier human being that lives longer well I can tell you I don't know but we can talk about what the evidence has shown and I think probably the strongest evidence to date most of this evidence is unfortunately epidemiological because you're never gonna get a randomized controlled trial that's 50 years long you know I mean you're just you know kind of that's not gonna happen too expensive and people won't follow the same diet for that long right so you wouldn't you won't ever have a longevity study that's a randomized controlled but looking at the epidemiological studies for a long time you'd have study after study coming out showing Oh any vegetarians have a lower what's called all cause mortality than non vegetarians or the nante ability animal meat all cause mortality means basically dying from all types of diseases that are non accidental diabetes cancer yeah exactly heart disease so no vegetarians sorry lots of studies have shown that but it's the problem with epidemiological studies is there's what are called confounding factors so you have people that are also you have people that are sedentary you have people that exercise you have people that smoke you have you know some what about all those other things how do those come into play right and so there have now been studies large large studies that have looked at confounding factors and I found yes vegetarians do have lower all cause mortality particularly cancer related mortality than people who eat meat but when you take all the unhealthy lifestyle factors away so people that are not obese don't smoke that are physically active and that don't consume excessive alcohol if they eat meat they have the same mortality rate as a vegetarian mmm but if you take the meat eater and you add one of those in like obesity then they're gonna have a higher sorry yeah a higher mortality rate than the registry so basically meat has a different amino acid profile and part of that amino acid profile can activate a hormone a very important hormone but it's got sort of it's like a double-edge sword home--at hormone it's called igf-1 insulin-like one and this hormone is an important hormone like during development it helps you grow I mean it's needed to grow people that have genetic you know polymorphisms in in genes that affect that pathway and have less of it have stunted growth so it's important for growth it's important for muscle repair like you wanna you want igf-1 in your muscles to help repair muscles after you know after you after you injure them or after you exercise right that's the type of injury here but can't you get that from supplementation from protein or supplements as well so this is the this is the bottom line is that the igf-1 which is activated by essential amino acids you know you've got like leucine for example methionine it also is important for in the brain for growing a new neurons I'm just telling you the importance of it because the problem with igf-1 is that as we age and we accumulate damage within ourselves and we and this happens to everyone and you have a cell that let's say a cell gets enough damage it hasn't that could potentially become a cancer-causing mutation the igf-1 that's around which happened which is around a lot more in meat-eaters it allows a damaged cell to overcome signals in our body that will usually kill it and say oh this is got damaged if we don't kill it it could become cancer igf-1 goes no no no grow keep growing and so I just throw hormone it's a growth hormone our students actually what it is yeah and in fact cause so to grow any cancer or any disease it's gonna allow things to grow more yeah so that's that's kind of part of the problem is that why is obese or smoked or you know doing things that are you know excess excess causing excess damage then that could put you at risk right because I've heard stories and seen cases of people that were eating meat got some type of cancer whether it be early form cancer or some stage of cancer went complete vegetarian vegan and it stopped growing I've heard stories of that I don't know if that's 100% accurate or if there's other factors that played into that without chemo without those types of things is that possible well I've certainly you know I've certainly heard anecdotal stories about as well and there's been animal studies showing that and when you when you when you take an animal and let's say you inject it with a human cancer cell to form a tumor and then you give that animal a high protein high protein versus low protein diet then the low protein diet you know blunts the cancer growth whereas the high one but that doesn't mean that eating meat causes cancer it doesn't mean that it means if you already have cancer it's an accelerated potentially and potentially yeah I you know I think that the the the the key here also is exercise exercise you know helps take that igf-1 and move it into the brain and move it into muscle cells where it's doing good stuff you want igf-1 in your brain igf-1 is important to grow new neurons which I mean as we age you know neurodegenerative disease is a big risk and you wanna you want to you know grow new neurons and old age it also allows existing neurons to survive so exercise increases igf-1 in the brain it also helps increase it in muscle tissue as well so I think that's one of the reasons why you look at the meat-eaters and the ones that are physically active not obese basically if you don't have these unhealthy lifestyle factors then it I think that eating meat is healthy and and honestly I think that a vegetarian you really like you have to do a lot of work to make sure that you're getting all the right nutrients there's there's risk factors for deficiencies in zinc which is found in you know in meat products respecters for deficiencies in obviously b12 and other things you know just making sure you're getting the right profile so you definitely want to make sure your and I don't know what all the combinations are you know like yeah sure sure on the beans and the right all right the proteins what would be if you were a meat-eater but you said you know what I want to cut out certain types of me I want to be a more conscious meat-eater if that's a thing and I want to be a healthier meat eater and I only want to choose like one to three different types of meat we've got wild Alaskan caught salmon as one piece of meat what would be the other two that you would add if these were the only meats eager to eat because you try to minimize your consumption of meat what would be the other two types of meat that you think would be beneficial for your health and brain memory well I would I would say based on interesting studies that have been done looking at what is called epigenetic age epigenetic age is probably one of the grump I would say it's the fastest growing biomarkers for what's called biological age and at versus chronological age so people can be biologically younger or biologically older than their chronological age right I came up 37 but I could be 17 right like yeah my internal health I would say genetics would probably play a bigger role management lifestyle I don't think very left so and put you back that far but yes or I can look like I'm 45 55 if I was smoking all day drinking all day eating right in Crabbie's there's lots of there's lots of lifestyle factors that can make have an older biological age and those are the things we just mentioned obesity a sedentary smoking excess alcohol consumption but there's also been studies looking at dietary patterns and there you know supplement intake as well and what epigenetic age is is basically it looks at what are called methylation patterns methylation are methods like a basically a carbon with three hydrogen atoms and there what they're doing is they're basically sitting on top of your DNA and changing the way genes are turned on and turned off and what's really interesting is that this methylation pattern this work has been done was really pioneered by dr. Steve Horvath at UCLA and he he basically showed that he could look at these he could take some DNA and look at the methylation pattern and with like 96% accuracy he could predict your age plus or minus like it's super accurate and then he's developed a bunch of other clocks these epigenetic aging clocks that can be more accurately predict biological age and so what he's found is that there's an association with lower biological epigenetic age when you're eating fish or poultry which I found very interesting I know this was a very long-winded question birds and fish so based on that you know I kind of for a while I was like well what's the real benefit of poultry I might you know I why not get more red meat and have more iron and you know so um so the poll that that that study kind of made me think about it oh well that's because red meat wasn't associated with with a lower epigenetic age well so I so I thought that was really interesting though would you say would you say eating red meat is making us older no I don't think there's evidence of that I do I will say that the red meat studies are extremely nuanced because lots of times stuff is glump together with processed meat like you know the the lunch meats and the bacon and the sausage and the process meat there the layer of complication on that and that is that it has nitrites in it nitrites are preservatives the problem is that they can also form nitrosamine in the body which are potential carcinogens they can cause us DNA damage and and do all sorts of terrible things so a lot of red meat studies are really there's a lot of new ones there with with that and in fact in all with a lot of the red meat studies there's been this there's been a lot of studies looking at red meat consumption and type 2 diabetes risk and it's weird because there's an increased risk with red meat consumption study after study after so once in a while I'll get it like a vegan that'll throw me a question and they'll send me some links and I'm like wow there's something to this like I didn't realize that you know so I'll look into it and I guess you know how you kind of learn things from really you know good questions and from people that send you links to studies sure and so and so my team and I were looking into this and we finally after reading just you know dozens of studies there was one consistent theme within all the studies showing that red meat consumption increases type two diabetes risk and that was BMI it only did it in people with a high BMI for the most part body mass index is that BMI and BMI is not a great I mean like someone that has a lot of muscle you know can be categorized as high BMI see it's not a great it's not a great indicator but generally speaking if you're obese got a higher BMI so poultry and fish would be the things that are the best meats to eat from based on what I'm hearing you say from your mentor and from the research so far will be half I would I would say yeah I mean so far only picking two meats it's efficient and poultry right I hate to say it I don't you know I don't really know but right I found those studies interesting okay I would say I would say that I don't I still not convinced that red meat is bad unless you're obese or you know you're overweight and you're eating red meat and you got to work on losing you got a like you know work on the losing weight how old is your child right now two and a half two and a half yes as a mom and a scientist and researcher what are the healthy foods out there that people in the the mass population think as healthy that you will never want your child to eat oh I think there's all sorts of processed toddler foods you'll find out there and I've experimented with a couple on myself I wear a continuous glucose monitor just to see how my body responds to various foods in terms of increasing blood glucose levels so it's called postprandial blood glucose and I'm also interested in my fasting blood glucose levels how different lifestyle factors affect that and I should mention this that basically we were talking all about these studies with eating meat and vegetarians and you know there's also a huge layer of complication with genetics believe it or not there are genes that people have that eating a high protein diet makes them actually gain weight and have poor lipids and there are genes that people have that eating a high protein diet makes them a lose weight the complete opposite so you need to know your genetics first really before the diet you eat the genetics may tell you the why of some of the conflicting research and this goes for fats as well there are genes people that eat saturated fat they can have an increased glucose response versus most most the time what increases your postprandial glucose response is actually carbohydrate it's particularly for mine carbohydrates but but there are in there are situations that that that's not true there was this beautiful study published back in 2015 and the penis in the Journal of cell metabolism it was done at the Weizmann Institute in Israel and I love this study because they put continuous glucose monitors like I'm wearing now on 800 people they gave these people variety of different types of foods you know they gave them high fat they gave them high refined carbohydrate like white bread they gave them complex carbohydrate like a banana prevented their glucose response to a variety of foods and what was so enlightening and illuminating about this study was that everyone had different responses to these foods um and it was they also then did genetic testing on these people and they measured microbiome and also physical activity and it turns out all those things play a role in their blood glucose response their genetics their microbiome composition how much they exercise so you know I think and then sleep also but that wasn't it those are other studies but the point is that you know we're sitting there talking about people's response to for example red meat and I think that as moving forward you know this field of this interaction between genes and diets called nutrigenomics I think that field is growing and more clinical studies will start to include it the problem is it's more expensive any time you have to add another clinical test particularly if it involves you know getting a sample of DNA although these days now you can get them from saliva and so it shouldn't be as difficult but there's these there's these foods that are organic almond butter little snacks and all this and so I was trying this stuff and it I mean just tiny little thing raised my blood glucose levels like just unbelievably high like as if I'd eaten like two meals no way no and so yeah it was insane some of these stuff that just just just had some added a little bit of added sugar a little you know so it's just really I would stay away from all those foods that are packaged like you know the I see like children eating these squeezy foods and stuff and I've never I've never given my son that I know that it's a lot of work making food of course a lot of work but there's new there's like companies out there now that'll like you know send you like already you like made you know great organic real food exactly there's what what are like five foods that you think are hurting us on a daily basis like in terms of just like sugar or bread rice like what would you say the fives that we should never be eating unless I would say I mean I don't know if I can categorize it two fives I would say that probably the biggest thing to avoid is refined carbohydrates refined carbohydrates are really you know like what are they where do we see refined carbohydrates the most is that cereals is that bread yes cereals breads most of the time I mean not all breads have had them but like you know a lot of the the white breads and stuff white flour like in pizza you know you know cookies cakes oh all that pretzels like the things the the refine the refined carbohydrates there's really just no nutritional value I mean the whole point of food is you know to provide your body with with the nutrients it needs to to you know to not only be healthy now but to also aged healthy and I think that people get really focused a lot on macro nutrients like protein carbohydrate fat and and they don't realize that all these micronutrients that I mentioned there's 40 that you have to get from your diet you know like those are important these things are there what are called cofactors for enzymes that are running your metabolism enzymes that are producing neurotransmitters in your brain so your brain can function and you know if you don't get enough like magnesium you know magnesium is found at the center of a chlorophyll molecule chlorophyll is what give plants their green color yeah so magnesium is very high in dark leafy greens almost almost half the country in the United States doesn't get enough magnesium from their food there's been you know large nutritional surveys and stuff that have shown that year after year and the problem with magnesium is like you know you need it to make energy you need it to make and use energy but you also needed to repair damaged DNA damage and so you can imagine what happens if you're short in that in that essential mineral your body might actually triage the mineral to the short term thing energy making energy if you can't make energy you're gonna die so of course your body's gonna say any magnesium might have it's gonna go to that essential process DNA repair like that's that's something that only matters in your fifth sixth seventh decade of life cancer crops up right so who cares if that's not you know a hundred percent optimally working this whole this whole idea of sort of triaging micronutrients is called triage theory it was put forth by my mentor dr. Bruce Ames and he published a couple of papers with supporting evidence of that theory but the theory is basically and again there's there's some supporting evidence with a couple of micronutrients that basically these essential you know vitamins and minerals if you're shorten them their triage to systems based on binding constants for example some minerals will bind tighter to some enzymes versus other ones and so the ones that are biting tighter are the enzymes that are important for short-term health to prevent you from dying basically mmm versus long-term health things like repairing damaged DNA which doesn't matter right now you can't see DNA damage you know it's not something but it's happening it's happening all the time so I think micronutrients are really important and the food that you're gonna find Mike renewed for them in our whole foods you're gonna find them in plants you're gonna find them in meats meats are a great source of micronutrient meats are also a great source organize lot of people yeah organ me it's like liver that would be probably the stuff that I know it's just it's it's really an acquired taste I recently found there's a there's a company that I found will make ground me with a certain percentage of liver and kidney and so it tastes better another one if I make it if I put it like in a you know if I make like a chili or something like I'm getting you know some of the organ meats which is kind of fun as well gosh I remember when I went to my first time I went to Mexico City is early 2008 I was wearing a full arm cast so I'm already six for Gringo's white guy in the middle of Mexico I'm a foot taller than everyone in Mexico City I'm wearing this cast because I had surgery on my wrist I broke my wrist they did a bone graft from my hip to my wrist playing arena football so I got injured and I went to Mexico City I stayed in a $7 a day hostel right near the center of Mexico City and I said to myself you know what I have the palate of a seven year old but I'm gonna be an adventuress on this trip I'm gonna try things I'm gonna expand my horizons and I'm just gonna say yes to foods and there was one point I went to a Lucha Libre match a luchador match which is like the wrestling of Mexico right where they wear masks and they wrestle and outside of this wrestling match I went to watch as a fan I went outside and there was all these uh Street carts of food outside of this match and I said you know what give me everything to this one guy and he started saying I was like what is this this this and he was saying all these things it and I heard him say cortisone which is heart and I was like oh that's the heart and then one was a tongue and one was the liver and this and this and I said throw it all in there and so he made me a taco with all of it and it's probably because it was street meat it wasn't that healthy I was sick for the next three days but I'm always weary of that stuff so they she did organic clean meats when you okay so you're kind of reminding me I went to Japan a couple of years ago and same deal like it went my husband I went to this sushi plays and and and the the the chef there was no English and there was just stuff on the menu and we just got it and apparently it was like tongue and all sorts of and this is I think it was raw I think it was um no it was slightly cooked oh yeah it was slightly cooked but there was another sushi place we went to and if you don't speak Japanese you get the the one for all its sushi menu oh yeah and so we went there and so we you know of course didn't speak Japanese and so we got whatever they gave us and it like had turtle or something and I was just so sad because turtle anyways okay so the foods the foods were here we should not be eating cereal breads pizzas cookies cakes anything with refined carbs for fine sugars no no that's probably the biggest thing to cut out I think cutting that out if people could cut that out you know the sweet and sugar sweetened beverages what are the what are the things that are super healthy marketed wise I mean basalt beyond cereals breads and pizza which they say they try to make them sound healthy but the things that might seem healthier that we shouldn't be eating are there certain fruits and vegetables or other things that may be like you know what these actually hurt the body then that helped them well I see I think I haven't seen any research showing that fruits and vegetables hurt the body but I there are fruits you know I've been wearing my goes continuous glucose monitor there are fruits that I can tell you for sure raise my postprandial blood glucose levels insanely high and still leave me hungry and unsatiated and that would be grapes really grapes are like they're so there was this one time we were chives traveling and my son was like I don't know he it was like he was less than one and I was trying to get him a fruit cup with you had some cantaloupe you know some cuz he was still eating he was eating solid solid foods at that point but grapes are a choking hazard and so like the grapes I go no no let me get it I was like eating the grapes out of the you know out of a little fruit cup real quick because I didn't want him to like you know have the even potential of grabbing them and my blood glucose levels just rose so high I mean I did it was insane so and I tested it again and same thing tested it again same thing so I would see does it have to do with DNA your DNA or would it be different for someone else's DNA or do you think it just has to has to do with the the sugar the ratio of sugar to fiber so one of the things that's really consistent with lowering the postprandial glucose response is fiber more fiber and and that was actually shown in that study that I mentioned that wasteman Institute study with 800 people one thing that was consistent throughout that was that high fiber did slow the glucose response but so if you had a little bit if you had like some almond butter by itself the glucose levels would shoot up but if you had almond butter with I don't know some fiber actually what's really interesting is that you bring up another important point an interesting point almond butter typically doesn't have a lot of sugar unless it's added sugar I mean so I so I yeah and you can you could have a little bit in there and it actually won't really raise your blood glucose levels particularly because protein also seems to to blunt some of that but what's interesting is there's been some studies and I've tested this myself if I eat like protein or fiber and you eat it like ten minutes before you are going to eat let's say some grapes or in someone else's case like you who's maybe eating a cookie or something right yeah the whole time so it actually lowers the the blood glucose levels it lowers the post prainha blood glucose levels the protein this has been shown in a couple studies in people with type 2 diabetes so if I eat a cake for dinner by itself my glucose levels are gonna go up if I have meat fiber and then ten minutes later have a little bit of gelato or a little bit of tiramisu or something you know yeah it's better than itself that probably is why I mean humans probably noticed that's why dessert comes after the meal right just dessert for breakfast lunch and dinner growing up you know okay this is fascinating so no grapes yeah so for you're talking about the so called healthy foods you know I think you know I think that there's some people also can have a big you know a bowl of oatmeal with a bunch of you know stuff in it and they may have a higher blood glucose response that also really I think does depend a lot on people's exercise routines like I've noticed in myself that if I if I go out for a run I blow of volt Mel doesn't really affect me as much as if I don't you know so you talk we're talking about health in general here we're talking about the brain and food connection right now in the world it seems like mental health and depression is a hot topic it's something people a lot of people are talking about they're having mental health challenges depression challenges and I'm sure there's many factors to this social media comparison bad foods a lack of exercise a lack of sleep anxiety up all night environments lack of purpose lack of there's a lot of social factors probably that tie into a mental health challenges how important is food by itself and relating to minimizing depression social anxiety and mental health I think food is extremely important because it's directly linked to obesity and obesity itself causes low-grade inflammation and foods that are really high particularly when you combine a high saturated fat with a high refined sugar so let's say you're eating your you're drinking your glass of milk with your cookie like that's the because you're getting the saturated fat and the sugar and and that's been shown to cause a very high what's called postprandial inflammatory response we've been talking about postprandial glucose response which is after you eat so postprandial there's a inflammatory response it also occurs after after eating and inflammation itself has been shown to inflammatory molecules cross the blood-brain barrier and they they have they play a role in in basically depressing dopamine signaling and serotonin and all sorts of you know affecting neurotransmitters and brain function and there's been studies directly showing that if you inject a person with an inflammatory cytokine it causes depressive symptoms versus really acted with saline yes so the more inflammation we have in the body it increases depression exactly inflammation we used to think again the brain was separate from the body and you know the immune system and and all that didn't it didn't you know affect the brain turns out that was all wrong absolutely wrong and these inflammatory mediators do get into the brain and they get into the brain and they change you know they're changing the the firing of certain neurotransmitters and things like that they're also activating the resident immune cells in the brain called microglia astrocytes microglia a type of aster site and you know that that also is linked to to depression and so we we put out a little short video on this on an animated video actually on depression inflammation and depression and talked about a lot of the studies because it's something I don't think people realize that the food you eat and not only the food you eat your lifestyle you know being obese and overweight being sedentary being sedentary you know exercise is one of the best anti-inflammatory medicines you can get period and it also happens to be one of the you know best lifestyle remedies for depression as well and I mean randomized control trials showing that all sorts of evidence so is this any type of exercise or you a hit training out cardio at 30 minutes 60 minutes what's your opinion well there's been there's been studies looking at you know I would say the large body of evidence seems to show aerobic exercise is is really important with with respect to depression and and that is because aerobic exercise leads to increases in what's called brain-derived neurotropic factor BDNF has it's called it's basically a growth factor that's produced you can after just 20 minutes of a moderate intensity workout you can increase your level you can find levels increase by like up to 30 percent in plasma it crosses into the brain and in the brain it does a lot of things not only does it it do what i gf1 does it actually grows new neurons it helps you grow new neurons and it helps your neurons survive so plays important role in preventing brain aging but something else very unique that it does it plays are rolling what's called neuroplasticity the neuroplasticity is like your brain's ability to adapt to stressful conditions you know I mean this is what children can do pretty pretty good as you get older and neuroplasticity goes down as does everything but it played neuroplasticity is important for for being able to cope with stress like the stress of a pandemic for example you know more neuroplasticity helps with those stressful divorce people are going through you know are losing your job lots of lots of stressful things but but but neuroplasticity helps the brain cope with that and brain-derived neurotrophic factor helps increase neuroplasticity which decreases with age so um again aerobic exercise was important but you know there's been studies linking strength training to lower depression rates as well yeah any type of exercise will help exactly I do but I really think that aerobic there is that there is a place for aerobic with respect to the BDNF the brain tribe nurture I always tell people that every day I try to put myself through some type of physical pain that makes me feel discomfort whether that's sweating for 10 minutes or a two hour workout or playing basketball hiking whatever I try to put my mind or something oh my gosh I don't want to do this but by putting myself through paint controlled pain it sets me up to be more under control when there is chaos and pain right I think that's the the key we should get to is like controlled pain healthy pain so that you're not out of control when there is chaos and pain in the world what you're describing scientists often refer to as hormesis and that is basically a little bit of stress on the body like exercise basically because our body tries to maintain homie what's called homeostasis a little bit of stress will cause our body to respond to that stress with a lot of anti stress anti-inflammatory antioxidant growing new brain cells any all these beneficial things Wow a little bit of stress gives you a lot of good stuff right interesting whereas low-grade chronic stress all the time it doesn't do anything you're not getting that you're not getting that power kick yeah this is power this is amazing I'm gonna say something that I hope I don't offend anyone when I say it that I am all about self-love self-care loving yourself for who you are accepting yourself for where you're at in your life physically emotionally environment financially all that the more I hear you talk about this the quote-unquote self-love movement of accept who you are and accept where you're at with your body and what you eat and it's okay to eat whatever you want just love yourself for who you are is that self-love mentality that specific type of mentality killing people and hurting them if they aren't willing to adapt eight no it's not okay to continue to eat whatever you want all the time and just love yourself and accept yourself for who you are you have to make sure you arm your body and your mind and your health with the nutrients the tools the exercise in order to decrease depression and increase happiness I think that there's the you know absolutely if you're going to just eat what you want and accept being obese that you will you'll be causing yourself more harm and both physically and mentally and and and that also probably affects your loved ones as well you you know that care about you or perhaps that you're interacting with and you're in a terrible mood and so you know when your neighbours happy you're happy right you know so I think that there's there's part of this movement I don't think there's a fine balance between you don't want to have your expectations so high that you could never be happy yeah I'm never gonna look like her frigid someone's always skinnier than me and I'm never gonna have blue eyes I'm never I'm never you know so if I'm always like well only people with blue eyes or the prettiest like then I'll never be happy so like that's an unreasonable expectation right in my mind so I mean there are things where you know like I'm never gonna be a billionaire and if that if that's all I wanted in life to be happy I'll never be happy so there are things I think that you can there's a certain balance between I mean you want your expectations behind it in a way you want to always aim for what you you know aim aim for the stars in a way and and try to like work hard to get there so what I'm trying to say is I think that self-love movement came from somewhere right I think there was there was something to that right but I think it's sort of spiral out of control and and what what's happened now is you're saying we'll accept things that I don't want to change because you can change that you can lose weight you can eat different foods and get different decisions people that are eating refined sugar people that are drinking these sugar sweetened beverages you know and there's there's a lot of people maybe not so many people listening to the podcast or watching it but there are people that do and you know there's been studies that have shown refined sugar acts on the reward pathway in the brain dopamine pathway in a very similar manner to controlled substances drugs like nicotine yes methamphetamine not to the same degree but they're acting on the same systems and they're it increases a feel-good hormone for the moment but then it makes you decline afterwards in crash it does and and you know I think the important point to realize with that is that when you take that away when you stop what happens is there is a withdrawal and and it's it's been shown at least with for example with nicotine studies that your dopamine is getting constantly fired fired fired and so your what's called dopamine receptors which basically dopamine acts on to make you feel good dose start to decrease because your neurons are going oh well I have so much of this around I don't need so many of the receptors so when you take away that thing that's causing the dopamine all the time to go away you have let fewer receptors and now you don't feel as much I mean it's just really bad you're not doing any amount of dopamine right but it's been shown that that sort of normalizes within three months and three months is a long time but it's actually not that long I've caught it off cutting out the sugar you mean this has been shown with nicotine I'm just dropping out you touch me I'm drawing a parallel saying look it's not going to be easy the first month it's so hard it's so the first month it may not be easy the second month but it's going to get easier and it's not only is it gonna get easier you're going to be happier your body's gonna regulate itself the hormones are gonna regulate right things are gonna self-regulation yeah things start to get back to normal exactly it's very challenging but it's necessary to get healthier and happier right it is I don't think people realize that you know depression it's not it's not just a genetic disorder it's not just something that can't be fixed ever you know in some cases you know there there are you know there are definitely genetic cases of depression and I'm not saying that that's not the case but can you hear the true food and nutrition and exercise well there have been studies that have shown that exercise can be a treatment for depression there have been studies that shown changing someone's diet can also improve depression presip scores and particularly the two combined two which is even more robust which makes sense you know so there's something for people to realize people that are maybe a not so healthy diet people that are overweight you know overweight definitely obese and if they if they do have depression that there there there very well could be a link between you know between the the diet the lifestyle the obesity you know you know fat cells itself they also increase they they produce inflammatory cytokines so independent of the whole eating the diet and the postprandial inflammatory response just having fact like particularly visceral fat like remind your organs and stuff like this stuff this stuff is causing low grade information and you know that low-grade inflammation is what it means that you're basically activating your immune cells a little bit all the time and activated immune cells require a ton of energy so you're taking energy away from your brain from defending itself yeah from from just just having you know having a great day from I mean energy it's like a steak exactly just having energy it's a sink low-grade inflammation I mean you were telling me this you know we were chatting a little bit earlier about how you were eating this terrible diet back when you were doing your arena football and you were always tired always tired low-grade inflammation it's an energy sink because it requires so much energy to activate your immune cells and there's only so much energy it's like a triage right it's triaging they're somewhere else and it takes you away from your mission from your vision of your life from your career from your energy with your family your friends yeah you have to help energy I mean it takes motivation to want to go to the gym it takes motivation also to wanna to like do stuff or to talk to people to you know is there a genetic thing that or DNA thing that holds someone back from losing that way if they've tried for years or is this still you know they're just lacking the discipline what is that there's absolutely many genes that regulate obesity and and and my like I'll just tell you my mother-in-law she is also little she's not yet you're not obese she's you know has in the past had an overweight problem and has tried I mean she is the kind of person that tries and goes all in and she has tried every diet just everything and just nothing seemed to work so I mean how does someone like that if they've tried try try and it's just like you know what I'm beating myself the diets I'm trying the exercise is not working what do they need to shift well I thought you asked about genetics and they it there is a really important role of for genetics as well but I think that in order to know that you're gonna have to you're gonna have to measure biomarkers in your blood so you're gonna have to measure lipids like your LDL cholesterol different particle sizes of those cholesterol inflammatory biomarkers like high sensitivity reactive protein your triglycerides your hba1c which is a long-term measure of your long term blood glucose levels measure those things and also you can get a genetic test there's a variety of genetic testing services out there 23andme ancestry DNA I do have a genetic report that basically we look exclusively or looking at genes that are affecting basically interacting with diet so people that are eating a high protein diet some people with a certain snip which is a one change in one nucleotide of DNA in the gene basically can gain more weight and the opposite issues like I mentioned or eating the ratio of saturated fat to polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats or saturated fats found in foods like dairy read me fatty cuts of red meat polyunsaturated fats found in fish mono and saturated fat is found in olive oil olives you know nuts so these things like they're even the ratio of those things can affect depending on someone's genetics their ability to gain or lose weight but can you and and more so looking people there's some people have it where they eat a high carbohydrate diet and they gain more weight so is there any way is there II so it's not as simple as what I'm hear you say has just eat less calories a day and you should lose weight not always if you suppress the calorie intake you're gonna burn more and eventually you gonna burn you know I think that's the one thing that's pretty tried-and-true is that your caloric restriction most of the time people will you know lose weight lose weight got okay but you know the question is how sustainable is that you know so you maybe maybe what you would need to do you know the other thing is that a lot of times obesity there's there's a dysregulation in hormones bones like insulin leptin is another big one yeah you have to reset those hormones in order to like have a normal biology and sometimes resetting those hormones takes a reset that's kind of a strong stressor like like a long fast mm-hmm a long fast you know where you're basically you're basically resetting those things and and that's what did it for my mother-in-law so that was my long still get along get along fast reset a couple of them so she did now by the way you know when I say a long fast typically intermittent fasting is is anything less than 48 hours a longer fast would be longer than 48 hours three plus days yeah I know she did the first time she did a three day she started out by doing sort of a caloric restriction low calorie diet it's kind of get her into it and then she did a three day fast where she didn't eat anything a little bit of salt she would take a little bit of salt and drink some water and then she did four days and she did this like you know separated by like a month and that reset her metabolism and all of a sudden she started losing weight you know and this is also been the case for a few a few other friends of mine particularly one I was morbidly obese and he lost like a hundred and eighty pounds oh my gosh I wanna I wanna really respectful of your time because I could ask you seventy-eight more questions right now but I would love to do a whole nother episode if you're down in the future on fasting the power fasting is what to do is fasting anti-aging longevity I'd love to do another episode of you're down in the future so maybe if people and I know you've got tons of resources on this that people can go listen to in your podcast you know your YouTube channel and everywhere but maybe if enough people bombard you and say come back on Lewis's show we can do another episode and six months or something zona be respectfully real-time but I asking something I want to talk about because I do in a minute fasting and this is and I want I listen to some of your own episodes on your show about it which is super powerful so people need to go listen to that the one question I want to finish with before I ask you the final two questions ask everyone is the main vitamins and supplements you feel like every human being should be taking every single day like what are the sub and say you take and you recommend for us if we could take three to five every day whether eating great food or bad food what would you recommend so I will say of course that I'm not giving medical advice I'm not a medical doctor I will tell you that there are a few supplements that that I think are important and I think the evidence shows are important and then I take every day the first is vitamin D and you know vitamin D actually it gets converted into a steroid hormone so it's a hormone not just a vitamin it's a hormone and it regulates like five percent of the protein encoding human genome that's a lot five genes five percent of all your genes vitamin D vitamin D Wow right it's a lot is there is there can you overdose on vitamin D well here's the thing with vitamin D and the reason I and the reason I think it's so important because you can make it from the Sun and you have exposure to UVB radiation you make vitamin d3 in your skin but you need the UVB radiation to do that and UVB radiation certain times of the year in certain parts of the of the world you know northern latitudes doesn't reach the atmosphere you know five to six months out of the year long time you know maybe five months I don't know fall winter you know and so people in northern latitudes the way they're adapted to that is they tip they typically have fair skin because melanin which is pigment it helps you give gives your skin pigment and pigment protects you from the burning rays of the Sun it protects you from getting skin cancer from you know basically people people that are living close to the equators and southern regions so you have like in South South Asia South India Africa they have more Brazil exactly they have more melanin right they have darker skin which is great when you're close to the equator and you're in the Sun all the time right because you can make vitamin D but when you take a person with darker skin pigmentation and you move them as now we're a global country right people people live from all over the world in the United States they live in a place in like Minnesota or Washington State or New York you know they're gonna be severely vitamin D deficient Wow they're not getting that UVB radiation all those exchange students from Brazil going to Wisconsin make sure you got your vitamin D so here's the thing 70% of the entire United States population everyone included has what's called insufficient vitamin D levels so not just people with our skin everyone and that's because we stay indoors now we've got our computers we've got you know offices we're not out farming like we used to and we wear sunscreen when we are out sunscreen blocks UVB radiation to protect us from the burning rays design so the bottom line is most people aren't getting enough vitamin D and you asked can you take too much vitamin D well vitamin D is a fat-soluble it is stored in fat there have been upper limits so the national nutrition board of the Institute of Medicine set the tolerable upper intake at 4000 IU's a day but there's been studies showing that 10,000 i used today still has no toxicity effects and that's even long term for seven several years some people do require a higher vitamin d dose particularly people that are more deficient the only way you're gonna know is to get a blood test getting a blood test is really important yeah blood levels between forty to sixty nanograms per milliliter are ideal according to all cause mortality studies and things like that but um okay i think that also people have snips by the way snips meaning genes that regulate vitamin D production so I've had now five friends of mine that have snips they found out from using our genetic report because they were supplementing with five 7,000 IU's of vitamin D a day and they were still deficient and clear out goodness and so people I know it's one of those things and you wouldn't n see it's important to get a blood test you would never know you're taking let's say you're taking your your 5,000 IU's a day supplement and you never get a blood test you're gonna think you're fine so blood test is really important really important you can order them at home you know people don't want to go to the doctor tomorrow right should we should we be I mean with the with the times that there are right now staying inside is killing us then even though we're supposed to stay inside and stay safe so you're opening a whole can of worms because I I think that you know look there's no evidence direct yeah evidence yet that vitamin D helps prevent or treat Coppa 19-0 evidence of that but what I will say is that there is mounting evidence that severe cases of Coppa 19 people that are nice to use on ventilators people would have severe cases 98 percent of the severe cases people are vitamin D deficient oh my gosh and in multiple studies in Philippines Indonesia New Orleans where as you get like 4% of people with severe cases are vitamin D sufficient multiple studies have been showing this and there's a really important mechanistic link here first of all we know from genetic studies people that are genetically low in vitamin D because of like some of those snips I mentioned if you look at those snips itself and look at people that have those snips we know they're genetically prone to low levels of vitamin D and the only thing you look at is their genetics they have a higher death rate from respiratory tract infections than people without those snips I love these studies because it's called it's called Mendelian randomization the reason I love it is because there's all sorts of studies showing that low vitamin D levels also increases the risk of XY and Z sure low vitamin D levels means you're out in the Sun last or maybe you're less physically active you know so there's always confounding factors but when you just take the gene and you group that person based on their gene only not on their vitamin D levels and it's a way of randomizing them in a way because there's no way that there's all these confounding factors with the genetics right yeah though there's also randomized control trials there's 25 different randomized control trials that we're all and analyzed together showing that vitamin D supplementation decreases respiratory tract infections by 50% and people that are deficient and by 10% and people that already have sufficient levels but still take a supplement all right that's not Koba 19 again yeah not that this needs to be tested this is just good health practice to have vitamin D it is I personally think that there is a strong possibility and this is a hypothesis that vitamin D levels may play a role in the severity of Kovan 19 not it's not gonna stop you from getting Koba 19 I think it may play a role in the severity of it and meaning how your body responds to it how long you how long it takes you to heal how how severe of a case you have is it like a mild case of the cold or a flu mild flu or is it something that's going to take you into the ICU Wow I think that's a hypothesis that needs to be tested but based on some of the evidence I talked about and based on the fact that it what's really known is that you know vitamin D is important for immune function in so many respects because of the G you know it there's vitamin D receptors on many different immune cells and it plays a role and important role in many different immune functions but in addition to that the way this the SARS Cove 2 virus which is the virus that causes Koba 19 illness the way it gets into a cell is through a receptor called the ACE 2 receptor the ACE 2 receptor ace 2 receptor also regulates a lot of things regulates blood pressure fluid retention you know kidney function it turns out that when the virus binds to that receptor and gets into the cell it what it's what called down regulates that receptor we talked about that before with dopamine down regulates it means it makes fewer it takes that receptor and pulls it inside and so there's fewer of those receptors on the cell surface to do its job and this was shown with stars one Stars Cove one there which caused the original SARS outbreak back in 2003 and that that was shown to increase disease severity having less of a stew believe it or not the the way that this thing gets into this into the cells the ACE 2 is the very thing that's needed to prevent serious lung injury there's there's tons of animal studies showing that lung injury itself requires a stew but a stew gets decreased because lung injury decreases it's one of the ways that causes acute respiratory distress syndrome ARDS acute lung injury so having a stew protects you and what is vitamin D G well animal studies have shown rodent studies have shown if you give an animal vitamin D and cause acute lung injury the ace two levels go up and it protects them from the acute lung injury ace two levels don't go up to animals that were given vitamin D but didn't have a lung injury so in other words the longer injury itself causes ace 2 to go down but the vitamin do you made it go back up so what vitamin D is doing is maintaining homeostasis vitamin D is not a drug it's not going to just increase ace 2 . and you know someone that doesn't have lower levels at least according to rodent studies so the bottom line here is I think that emerging evidence suggests there is possibly a role for vitamin D in modulating severity I know there are randomized control trials that are underway to test this it's currently still a hypothesis but I do think it is very most people are getting insufficient vitamin D and particularly now now it's probably even worse for more risk people with darker skin people with obesity it's also because fat soluble vitamin D is less bioavailable so anyways my point is that I think vitamin D is important to take and certainly people can talk to their health practitioners about it yeah in general and particularly now oil is another one I'll not ramble on as long fish was another one yeah and a multivitamin I think I think those are like basic important ones and fish oil I think there's there's a variety of brands out there you want to get a high quality one fish oil is very prone to oxidation you want to you want to get a higher quality you want to keep it in refrigerator and there's there sites out there like lab door that of third-party tested oxidant you know different oxidative markers as well brand so you can look at those sites to find a good sure okay this is fascinating and I love listening to your show found my fitness people can listen to it on iTunes Apple Spotify all the places also found my fitness comm you have a premium section for more where you do at QA coaching type of answering questions for people right I do yeah so we found my fitness all one word yeah iTunes also on YouTube and I do have a premium where I don't do ads or sponsors but I do have a you know we are we're a premium subscription where people can they get sort of perks by supporting us she's one of those perks is a monthly qai dues they submit questions it's live but if you don't want to live you also get access to it on YouTube and also a private pod casts some incredible stuff on your podcast I love listening to and diving in on your research so everyone should go listen there if you want again if you want to convince Rhonda to come back on at some point in the future whether it's this year next year to talk about you know since I have the biological age of a 7 year old with the curiosity Minds you want to hear from my perspective on fasting anti-aging longevity then make sure to tag tag her on Instagram and Twitter in all those places when you're listening to this she she maybe will come back on in the future where else can we follow you your where do you hang out the most on social media I Twitter Instagram found my fitness all one word and I'm also on Facebook and YouTube YouTube is is is my youtube channel found my fitness amazing that's amazing this is a the final couple questions that I asked everyone at the end of my interviews this is called the 3 truths so I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical question that you're as old as you want to be you've figured out the longevity code you're 300 years old you're 120 however old you want to be but eventually you got to turn the lights off and go to the next place after you you leave this earth you got to go at some point and you've gotten to achieve every dream that you have Rhonda you have changed the world you've cured cancer whatever it is the dreams are you've done it you've grown up you've seen your family grow up and have an amazing life and for whatever reason all of your work materials your research your findings your podcast videos they all have to go with you to the next place so no one has accessed it anymore over your content any of your research it's all gone for whatever reason hypothetical question and you could share 3 things you know to be true with the world before you go and these would be the only three things that people to have remember you by and three lessons you would share with the world three important things they should deal what would you say your three truths oh wow I would say I would definitely there there's a low-hanging fruit to be happy and and that low hanging fruit is accomplished through making sure your body has the right micronutrients and exercise I think that there's a low-hanging fruit the low-hanging fruit is is the main thing I would I would probably the common theme the low-hanging fruit to living longer also is is basically through just just you know look trying to trying to find and get the right micro nutrients from your food and when you do that you end up eating healthier like because there's no micronutrients and we're fine to foods so you know that's going to help your body I think help your body be healthier as well and then I think lastly I would say to just enjoy the things that you love doing I mean being happy is it's so important you know to take time enjoy those things sure I love it back to the basics I love it before I ask the final question on technology Rhonda for just being an incredible source of helpful wisdom and knowledge in a time and in a place where there's so much noise you bring peace clarity found research and you do it with such grace and wisdom and joy and happiness so I'm just technology for constantly showing up every day being a mom being a wife taking care of yourself being a human guinea pig so that that we can all learn how to become happier healthier as well and I just really appreciate all the work you do for all of us it's really helpful so I thank you for that my final question for you is what is your definition of greatness my definition of greatness oh I think my definition of greatness is honesty I think that that is the most important honesty just pure honesty period period I love it yeah dr. Rhonda Packard thank you so much for taking the time my pre get it very grateful thank you thank you for all the flattering words to us it was it was really fun chatting with you thank you so much for watching this interview with dr. Rhonda Patrick if you enjoyed it make sure to LIKE this click the subscribe button and leave a comment and also if you want more great health tips check out this video right here has led to increase of homicides and violence and suicides around the world and we've gotten higher on these refined Omega 6s and low on omega-3s

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 1,056,052

Keywords: dr. rhonda patrick, dr. rhonda patrick joe rogan, dr. rhonda patrick fasting, Lewis howes, lewis howes interview, school of greatness, health interview, health, nutrition facts, nutrition, how to live longer, foods that kill you, inspiration, motivation, self help, self development, self imrpovement, personal development, health theory, age in reverse, foods you need to eat, healthy foods, how to lose weight, dr. rhonda patrick overweight people, fix your gut, healthy gut, food

Id: az_Ollv8Nj4

Length: 93min 52sec (5632 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 15 2020