Why Dr. Rhonda Patrick Changed her Mind on Skipping Breakfast, Eating Bananas and More

all right Dr Ronda Patrick everyone changes their mind changes their perspective on things what are a few things in the world of Fitness Nutrition whatever that you've changed your mind on in maybe the last 5 to seven years there's been yeah there's been you know I would say a few things that I've changed my mind on like as new data has come out you know I mean that's what any scientist does you sort of reassess the data and you know with new data become new conclusions right um but there's also some things I kind of just I would say the spectrum of where I fall on has changed somewhat um probably one of the biggest things I've changed my mind on over the past few few years is um my stance on meal skipping skipping a meal and um somehow this has become synonymous with intermittent fasting like people when they think about intermittent fasting they think about skipping meal and it's not that's not intermittent fasting so to speak right I mean intermittent fasting is really there's different types of it and it has to do with like having a period of time without having food intake um but the when I say specifically meal skipping I think mostly it's skipping breakfast and I think that's actually what a lot of people do end up doing when they are quote unquote trying to practice intermittent fasting and so um why I've changed my mind I on I used to often skip breakfast myself and um I think as new data has come out and as I've talked to a lot of experts on muscle protein synthesis and like Stu Phillips for example Brad shenfeld I have I've come to this this um conclusion that you know not getting enough protein in that really important meal after you've been fasting all night you know we don't store amino acids we don't store them like we do we store glycogen glucose you know we store fat in you know you know atopus tissue triglycerides we don't store amino acids we need a constant source of it and we when we don't get amino acids um we start to experience muscle breakdown and so it's always a balance between muscle protein synthesis and breakdown right and there's two signals for muscle protein synthesis protein intake specifically has to do with essential amino acids like Lucine being a major one that s that signal muscle protein synthesis and then the other signal is mechanical stress right so just resistance training essentially right the the force is like mechanically like stressing your muscles right um so that first meal breakfast is so important because you're essentially at the point where you you need protein and so you get into this sort of catabolic um you know state if you're not getting protein at that point now somewhat if you're doing resistance training that can that can sort of help offset that a bit because you are getting that other signal right to help uh you know get the muscle protein synthesis going uh but I think that then again also just if you're skipping a meal that's an entire meal you're not going to have protein so are you going to make up for that protein and your other couple of meals that you're going to have I was not doing that I was not and I was of the opinion that you know I was getting enough protein and that's kind of another I think area I've changed my mind on as well but the meal skipping part I think is the big thing that was a big eye opener for me because um there there had been some studies where you know intermittent fasting had led to a little bit of you know muscle atrophy and this these were non people that were doing resistance training by the way there's other studies that have shown doing like intermittent fasting in combination with resistance training like I one in females comes off the top of my head I remember the study on that blunted some of that muscle atrophy effect in other words they could still you know Skip a meal but like they weren't going to get that atrophy as much so I think the meal skipping is one of the biggest things and and people go well is that time restricted eating do you not like time restricted eating no I do think Tim restricted eating is very important so time restricted eating being eating all your food within a certain time window and then having a certain window a period of time where you're not eating you're not digesting your your you not in that state and I I still think there's a lot of evidence that that that eating within a Time window is important um metabolically so we are very insulin sensitive earlier in the day as the day goes on and we get towards like when we're producing melatonin nighttime we become less insulin sensitive like black and white studies on that like people given the same exact calories the same exact macronutrients the same meals at different times in the day their insulin response their blood glucose levels much much better everything metabolically better during the day early morning versus evening same meal right so you're more insulin resistant later in the evening right so you don't want to be eating your meal at like 10:00 at night necessarily right but also you need a period of fasting to dig digest I mean sorry you need a period of fasting to repair you don't want to be digesting um because just like when you're when you sleep your brain you're not thinking we're not like firing a bunch of neurons and you know cognition it's not like happening you're resting your brain needs to rest like if you never rested if you never slept like you'd be a mess like you couldn't think well digestion is the same way when you're when you're digesting your food like all your organs are working like this isn't repair mode you're not in repair mode mod um so you need a period of time when you are not digesting and that is when repair for your DNA happening happens so like DNA repair is happening when you're in a fasted mode this mostly happens during sleep you're repairing the damage to your DNA this is when things like autophagy happen right like this clearing out other Gunk and stuff inside your cells so different repair processes happen during a fasted State and so I think that is important to have that still um so time restricted eating I still think is beneficial but I don't know people have like taken Tim restricted eating and said oh I'm going to skip a meal and then I going to you know I have my time window shorter of eating because I skip that meal I'm like extending My fasting part I don't think that's the right way to look at it I think that that is the wrong way to look at it because you're then skipping that whole protein bolus that you're going to get to make sure you're stimulating muscle protein synthesis and not becoming catabolic right and so I think that plus then maybe sometimes you're shifting your meals a little bit later and again um and even to sleep better like it's better to not eat like 3 hours or so before you actually going to bed because it's even if you have your last bite at like let's say 6 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. it's like 3 to 5 hours of like all the digestion all that stuff like so you don't even really start the fasting clock until like 3 to 5 hours after that last bite y so um I think that's one of the biggest areas where it's like I don't skip breakfast that's a a big one I think people have cut a lot of heat for that too cuz like I you know for so many years I mean I lost a lot of weight with intermittent fasting but as like time has gone on especially being lean I'm like well if I fast a lot then like there's nothing to really pull from so I'm probably right so for me it's become okay maybe two days a week of etrf and it's nothing extreme it's like where like if I'm going to fast maybe I'll skip dinner instead of skipping breakfast and like I've actually found that breakfast is probably one of the more important meals of the day because it's what you are literally breaking your fast with and it's your time to you know breakfast like a king lunch like a prince dinner like a popper has always kind of been My Philosophy anyway um so and it's like fasting being a little bit more of the anomaly and rather than the uh the rule you know being something that's like occasionally be like you know yeah it's a good day to do a 17 hour fast you know perfect but it's not going to be something to do every day and you said something important too like I do think you know a lot of people that do when you're when you're skipping meals it's not just intermittent fasting it's also you're reducing your calorie intake like that that's one un L entire caloric you know meal like that's gone right and people that are overweight people that are obese um they can really benefit a lot from caloric restriction you can lose a lot of weight especially the more fat Mass you have the less you're going to be losing muscle from that because you do like you said you have so much to pull from and you know so I think that it it's certainly like just it's easier for people to implement like when they they think of counting their calories it's just too much work but when they're like oh I'll just not eat they're essentially per they're performing caloric restriction like through another way right like it's just another way of getting less fewer calories but um and it is effective way to lose to lose weight but like you said when you start to get like a little bit leaner like let's say you're like that you're like that Mom that wants to lose that extra 10 to 20 pounds or something like you know there was and this was brought to my mind from Brad shenfield he pointed the study out to me um that you know up to 30% of the weight loss can come from muscle if you're not doing resistance training because people are just not getting their protein they're skipping meals they're not getting that other extra two two important signals they're not getting one of them and and so and then on top of that if they're not doing resistance training they're not getting any of them so their protein intakes not enough and they're not stressing their muscles to get you know to prevent the muscles from your your body is essentially like I need amino acids I'm going to pull from muscle mus your muscle is a reserve I said I said you don't store amino acids I guess technically like yeah your muscle is a reserve of amino acids but you don't want to pull from your muscle so it's not really like no it's a res Last Resort EXA it's like yeah it's like a survival mechanism so um yeah I think that you you brought some really important points there with respect to like you know it is it is a very effective weight loss strategy when done right um certainly people that are obese and overweight have a lot more that they can work with than people that are not quite um you know people that are just interested in you know oh longevity I want to like do time restricted eating well like you don't want to be skipping breakfast every every day like if you're already like normal weight like there's no reason to do that like you said early Tim restricted eating e or ETF time restricted feeding um is another way to do that where you're just essentially you're eating the same number of meals but you're doing it in a smaller window instead of just all day right like spreading them out and like not having a period of fasting where you're like repair mode like you want to be in repair mode like that's important yeah like I sort of have a standard of like my general rule is 1212 like I mean that's kind of just what I naturally fall into it's like I kind of just don't eat from like 7 to 7 like that's like pretty pretty easy for me to do almost daily and I don't really think about it I get up in the morning I usually train fasted just because I feel better that way and then it just so happens that my post-workout meal is also my breakfast and everything's hunky dory but uh okay so that's one what's another thing you've changed your mind on I have just launched my signature truffles with Thrive market so these are 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not too bad to begin with but then when you apply that 30% it's even better plus you get a free $60 gift whenever you sign up with Thrive Market as well so that link is down below in the top line of the description underne this video um well I think sort of piggybacking on that would be it's not necessarily changed my mind but um it's just because it's related we'll talk about this it's a little bit my my where I am on the Spectrum which is protein intake so the RDA for protein intake is about 1.8 gram per kilogram body weight right and I always thought that was enough I thought that was enough because you don't you know like I think people are meeting that you don't want too much protein because then you can start to get into um you know the the gf1 arm where if you're not physically active you're activating growth Pathways that could allow damaged cells to become cancerous form tumors things like that right um but until I like talked to Stu Phillips had him on my podcast you know he and others have have shown that like the tools that were used to come up with that RDA are like way out of date like everything you know it takes so long to get things updated like you make a rule and then new data comes in and then that rule just lingers for 10 years you're like why have we why are we still doing this thing that we know isn't right you know doesn't make sense anymore um well there's new tools um where essentially the protein losses were they were basically um at the time I think they were underestimated if I got that correctly so in other words they were underestimated whereas actually they're you're actually losing more amino acids and so you actually need to you need more protein to replenish those just those losses just normal steady state living and then you add on top of that working out where you're actually stressing your muscles then you need even more and so some of their Research indicates that 1 Point sorry um 0.8 not 1.8 I totally got that wrong 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight is the RDA not 1.8 please um make sure that's no so 0.8 gram per kilogram body weight is the RDA it's it's more like 1 six gram per kilogram body weight is is what's just needed to like not lose muscle mass um which is a lot higher than the RDA and then when you talk about training and stuff you can go maybe even a little bit above that up to like two grams per kilogram body weight if you're like some Elite level bodybuilder I mean maybe more I don't you know like then you're just like you're getting to like little bits right of um you know getting a little bit of more benefit out of it so I think that's another thing I've really changed my mind I've really been a lot more cognizant on my protein intake and like for like you know instead of having a smoothie for like a midday snack alone I'll have like you know some salmon or some sardines or like some source of protein oftentimes it ends up being fish but um like leftovers as as like my my snack so it's like okay cuz you know I do end up working out a lot even if I'm only doing like a quick 20 minute pit or something like I'm doing something each day and and so it's like getting getting that proteins become a lot more important and I think it is really important because muscle mass is it's hugely important as we age for Frailty um you know becomes a big a big risk for like falling breaking something and also just like once you get to that point it's kind of like I forgot who I think it was Brad shenfeld who came up with this analogy and I love it so he gets credit for it but it's kind of like a retirement fund right so like you want to put in what you can earlier in life to build that muscle mass because once once you reach a certain age like when you get to 50 it becomes harder to gain muscle mass and strength you can still pull that lever a bit um if you work at it but like it's not as easy to gain muscle mass and it's you're pulling from it a lot more and so you want to build that Reserve up before you get to that point so that you have more to work with right just like a retirement fund like you want to contribute because once you start to like get to the age where you can't work anymore you want to retire like that's your funds like you you you have what you have and then you're going to be pull pulling from it right um you know as a woman as well it's like bone mass is also into that whole Factor where you want to like you want to you want to buy in earlier you want to build your bone mass build your muscle mass because once you start to hit you're 50 and you get to 60 really then you know it just kind of gets worse and worse where you're you're going to be pulling from that so you want to really focus on muscle mass um because of this what what um I would say Stu Phillips is sort of coined as what's called like it's like the disability threshold so you know a lot of animal studies that have been done on this protein stuff and I I look I bought into this this as a scientist I was you know I did research in the Aging field for a long time very familiar with the researchers and all the studies out there doing studies on how low protein intake can extend lifespan and rodents um it can extend healthspan what's called healthspan so they're less likely to get cardiovascular disease and you know cancer and things like that but you have to realize that animals are in a sterile environment like these these they're not being exposed to influenza and you know and all this all the all the respiratory diseases and everything out there right um they're they're not it's not like a human who's like 70 or 80 where you go you got like something that gets you in the hospital and you're then you know bedridden for a couple of weeks you lose enormous amounts of muscle mess that you'll never gain back and I've seen it like personally from my own family member and I know a lot of people have seen this where it's like a family member's older they go in for a surgery or they go in for like again like they're in the hospital because they're like really sick and then they lose all this muscle mass and then they just can't really walk as well as they used to and it just it starts to go down this trajectory of exponential just down and that's really where like the more muscle mass you have to start you have to go and your Co you're convalescing for a couple of weeks you're not using your muscles if you have more to pull from and also it's easier to kind of gain back some of that strength too then you're in so much better shape and that's kind of for me where it was like you know some of these animal studies aren't really that relevant because of that like there's that aspect of like you know just being exposed to to to diseases that really get us in trouble and or even just a surgery something that where you're just you're not going to be moving around for a month and when you're like 75 80 years old like that's really impactful on on on like your quality of life and Al um on on just your future trajectory of Aging so I think um the protein intake then has become a little more important now again if you're not physically active I don't know that you need to be like consuming massive protein bars and whey protein shakes and all that like you need to like lose you know lose your weight and also just being Physically Active is important like you you need to incorporate those amino acids into muscle yeah absolutely if you're not then you are potentially activating growth Pathways like igf-1 that can allow damage cells to not die when they otherwise would I think I mean even I think Dr Don Layman I think had mentioned that I he estimates that about like 70 to 75% of it is the stimulus like get the stimulus first you know that's like first and more foremost obviously and he's coming out of a protein lab right so I mean he's definitely telling us that protein's important and uh you know these sentiments are definitely echoing things that he said but he said you know at the end of the day like first and foremost like if you don't have the stimulus and then same you look at the longevity research it's like the longevity research that does incorporate stimulus shows otherwise that protein is important whereas if you're not again looking at a rodent model study and you're looking at oh you know methionine is an issue and all this and that you're like okay yeah when there's no stimulus and when there's no like additional taxation on the body so I think there's context definitely needs to be had right not to mention these mice are largely like sedentary like if you if you put an exercise whe on them most most um the only exercise Wheels I've seen in in little animal cages in a lot of these um Labs is when they're doing exercise studies they don't usually have exercise Wills it's really unfortunate to be honest because if you do put an exercise wheel the mice they'll just naturally want to run and run like like they feel better yeah um so these mice are sedentary they're largely sedentary and you're just like of course if you take away all that protein it's going to it's it's just not the same it's just not the same you know so so you get a human who's Physically Active do they need to be protein restricting I don't think so I think that's probably counterproductive so um there's like mixed signals coming in from you know because you have this science out there going oh protein restriction improves longevity you you know least in rodents and here's all these mechanisms but then again it's like well these are like sedentary mice that are you know not being exposed to influenza yeah I mean it's like I don't know there's a lot of different factors here right same yeah all right next okay so um yeah another thing that I've changed my mind on and this is actually very very recent is it's kind of interesting but it's it's adding bananas to my smoothie well I did stop adding bananas a long time ago but like I've now really like now have to avoid it and um and know you're looking at me like please do tell this is interesting yeah yeah so so smoothies um there's actually one of the reasons I like to make smoothies well there's a couple of real important ones so I most of my smoothies I get greens so a big dose of like greens you know a lot of times it's kale ends up being kale and then a lot of berries like blueberries and blueberries have polyphenols in them they have flavonoids they have anthocyanins all of these things have been shown to improve blood flow this is in human studies berries giving people like even just berries Frozen extract of blueberries um it increases brain dve of neurotrophic factor actually these flavonoids brain Drive neurotropic factor is essential for growing new neurons um that's you know called neurogenesis that's very important for cognition it's important for staving off brain aging and um and so uh I always feel really good after doing the berries and so I love doing this my smoothies and so it used to be I would add a banana it kind of like I'd also get some potassium from that but also um just kind of make it a little creamier and stuff well it turns out bananas have an enzyme in it um called polyphenol oxidase as the name implies it actually degrades polyphenols so it's counter and this was a human St that came out recently adding bananas to the to the berry smoothies blueberries and stuff metabolites of polyphenols were significantly lower in in um plasma from people that had the smoothie that with the banana added versus not with the banana I know it was kind of like oh my goodness so this is like the one thing I'm trying to get the polyphenols like that's the whole goal of why I'm I'm you know partly part partly the goal of why I'm drinking the Smoothie is for those polyphenols like a high concentration of blueberries so um the other foods that are high in it are are collored greens and also um like charred and I used to add charred to my smoothies cuz Swiss Chard is like a great source of magnesium it's a great source of potassium of ludine like so I no longer add chard to my smoothies and then beets are also high so I don't add beets I never really added I I didn't really ever add beads to my smoothie in the first place but I did do bananas in chard interesting nothing none of the other foods that I've looked at have quantities that have been shown to even be relevant at all so we're talking like these foods are like exceedingly high and so like I said again you know the anthocyanins the polyphenols the flavonoids flavonoids is a type of polyphenol that are in for example berries blueberries strawberries these are they are beneficial they've been shown to be beneficial in a variety of you know human studies random control trials beneficial for cognition um for improving cardiovascular health for improving blood flow to the brain in both young and older individuals for increasing brain Drive neurotropic Factor um which of course exercise can do omega-3 can do other things but like this is you know this is something that you want from the berries and if you go to any smoothie place literally every smoothie place if you want to get a smoothie there's like a banana in it yeah and I think that that needs to change like that needs to be the banana needs to be taken out and if you want a creamy sort of consistency to your smoothie the avocado is the way to go because the avocado gives it to you it's poo levels that's the polyphenol oxidase NE negligible yeah um and it also has high in pottassium so then you're getting like what you wanted from the banana but and then it has less sugar yeah so I mean it's just win-win and it's got a little bit of fat so it makes some of the carotenoids in the Smoothie like ltin and zanthin um it increases their bioa bioavailability up to four-fold and these are things that are actually not just good good for Eye Health but they've been found to accumulate in the brain and they're they're associated with improved cognition so there have been like studies where supplementation with it improves cognition so that's cause and effect right but also there's been observational data people that have higher circulating levels of these what are called carotenoids they're lutein in zanthin they're really high in leafy greens Al um so adding again adding the avocado they're fat soluble so adding the avocado increases their bioavailability well people that have high circulating levels of them have higher crystallized intelligence like so when they're older so again and coming back to cognition as well so it's really um you know I think adding the avocado is a really good substitute for banana it might be a little bit more expensive maybe that's why smoothie places don't do it but I do think that it's something important to keep in mind because a lot of people that are getting smoothies now you still look look you go get a green smoothie it has a little bit of banana like you're still going to be getting magnesium you're going to be getting some lute tee zanthin you're going to be getting calcium you're going to be getting important micronutrients but if you have berries in there the polyphenols or if you're mixing a cacao smoothie with a banana people do that like the cocoa has high amount of flavonoids as well which again improve blood flow to the brain they increase brain Drive neurotropic factor that again should be aoid like do not add the banana to that because it degrades those polyphenols and then it's like I know it's like not having any so um that's another thing that I've really changed my mind on I've mentioned bdnf a lot so I did just come out with a free bdnf guide um people can learn a variety of protocols that can increase bdnf including what I just mentioned some of the the berry um drinks and the cocoa Doses and stuff as well as exercise protocols intensities and stuff um so I have a free guide you can find that at bdnf protocol.com for anyone interested in like learning more about protocols for bdnf and increasing it as well sweet yeah I'll link that down below as well so do do you happen to know if uh like does does like with chard for instance like does heating it possibly break down this enzyme because I mean I don't know a lot of people would eat like Swiss CH raw I mean maybe put it in a smoothie which would be practical for this conversation but like if I ever had it it was usually like sauteed or something with a little bit of you know olive oil or something I think it does uh it is AD heat sensitive enzyme as far as I remember um I don't know to what degree but I mean no one's cooking their banana the banana is the major smoothie Source no yeah no one's cooking the banana um the chard again yeah most people that are eating CH and it's it's it's it's only a problem if you're like cooking if you're eating your chard and then drinking your cocoa flavanol drink or you're eating your blueberry and you're trying to get the flavonol they're trying to get those just inhibiting the absorption it's not like a lasting it's degrading them so it's like essentially not it's like you have a big cup of blueberries that's high in polyphenols and then you mix in the banana and it just chops up it degrades the polyphenols as if they're not there yeah because the polyphenols I mean in essence they also act similarly to a Prebiotic they kind of are a Prebiotic so I'd imagine when you also degrade them you're not getting any of the gut Flora effect either short- chain fatty acid benefits or anything like that um not necessarily there's other components in berries like skin and stuff that are also fermented by the gut but a large part of the health benefits of berries are from polyphenols for sure so it's it's definitely like for me it was like you know and it really like it's just one study that just this is like a new very like five months ago it was so recent you know that it's like I don't there needs to be follow-up studies but I mean it was pretty compelling and it was humans too yeah yeah that's awesome it's just like I mean I don't know that it's awesome but know I mean because usually when you have these like kind of like almost esoteric seeming things like oh okay this enzyme you know people might sensationalize online but like this is actually out of a human study that's like it's not like saying like oh don't eat Apples because pectin going to make your hair fall you know no no it's not connecting the dots but I'll do I will say they didn't like so there have been studies looking at you know giving humans either like a big you know fresh Berry you know mix or freeze-dried blueberries like where the the polyphenol contents is very high and it improves X Y or Z so for example X being cognition right the study didn't look at the end points that were like functional like to say that oh if you give them the blueberries plus the banana the cognition benefits they usually get from the blueberries was gone it didn't show that it just showed the polyphenol levels so there's certain metabolites that are measured in plasma after drinking a high like for example Berry mix because there's a lot of polyphenols in berries and that you can measure that in your plasma those metabolites were like dramatically reduced dang So biomarkers speaking like look speaking about biomarkers yeah the biomarkers the polyphenols that you would normally see in plasma were like really really really low all right get your potassium from an Avocado then all right well uh aside from bdnf protools.com where can everyone find you so I'm on YouTube I have a YouTube channel called found my fitness where I have a podcast I do videos um I also am on Apple podcast on Spotify as well and I have a website FY fitness.com lots of topic articles with references and links to our episodes and stuff and then I'm on social media again found my fitness all one word is the name or you can just search Rhonda Patrick I'll come up as well perfect well Dr Patrick I'm super grateful thank you and as always keep it locked in I'll see you soon

Channel: Thomas DeLauer

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Keywords: dr. rhonda patrick, rhonda patrick, found my fitness, omega-3 index, dr rhonda patrick, dr. rhonda patrick fasting, dr. rhonda patrick smoothie, dr rhonda patrick omega 3, rhonda patrick sauna, rhonda patrick smoothie, rhonda patrick fasting, rhonda patrick supplements, rhonda patrick vitamin d, rhonda patrick magnesium, rhonda patrick intermittent fasting, rhonda patrick protein, rhonda patrick bananas, rhonda patrick interview, thomas delauer

Id: NcyH7XYAyoA

Length: 30min 40sec (1840 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 16 2023