#750 - Dr Rhonda Patrick - The Most Important Daily Habits For Health & Longevity

26:46And there's actually been studies done in older adults, this is a big problem. Older adults are, they're not as sensitive to amino acids. It's called anabolic resistance. So with the same protein intake, they won't build as much muscle if they're 65 versus when they were 30. So granddad needs to be cooking twice as many steaks. He needs twice as many steaks. And there's been studies looking at the actual RDA I have older adults get 0 .8 grams per kilogram body weight, and then the other group gets 1 .2 grams per kilogram body weight. The group that got 1 .2 has much higher muscle mass gains and actually prevents the atrophy that is happening just with age.

27:23Okay, so getting back to the time restricted eating thing. How should someone incorporate this into their lifestyle? Well, what it sounds like you're saying is have a high protein meal at some point early in the day. But if you're also saying that it's important for us to have a period of rest and digest, so that it's digest, rest and repair can actually happen, how should people think about doing that, especially given the fact that, sorry, later in the day, instant sensitivity is skewed, anyone that did carb night, a carb back loading 15 years ago because they read a bodybuilding .com forum like me knows that.

28:05So you've kind of got this, oh, it's good to eat some things later in the day. There's this skew down that way, but there's also, we can't miss breakfast. So it's like, that just sounds like eating all day to me. When do we, when do we stop? Right. Yeah, sir. I went off on a tangent there, but yes, so the the the time I should eat eating, okay, there's a couple good ways to think about about it. You want to stop eating about about three hours before you get a bed, if possible, okay? That's last bit of food in mouth. Yes, yes, because you're gonna add another five, so last bit of food in mouth doesn't mean, I'm now in a fast and state, you gotta calculate five hours after that.

28:41It takes about five hours to digest, okay? So after the five hours after you're last bit of food in mouth, now you're in a fast and state, right? So that's gonna be when you're sleeping most likely. You don't have to skip a meal. You can eat your food within an eight -hour period and fast for 16 hours without having to skip a meal, most of the time. Unless, I guess unless you're an entertainer and your meals do come later, then, but still, you can still like, everything's just shifted over. And yes, you'll be less insolent sensitive later in the day, but you can like do some air squats for two minutes.

29:18Like, you could, there are things you can do to improve insolent sensitivity and also to improve glucose those blood glucose levels later in the evening if you're having a meal and we can talk more about that later. But anyway, so there are things you can do. I think that the way to think about it is the easy way is to stop eating about three hours before bed. That's a really easy. And also your sleep improves. Because when you're digesting, if you eat right before you get a bed, your body's like awake. It's like awake, right? It's like digesting and using energy. It's not. Well, even beyond what's happening physiologically, just the sense of being full.

29:50So I was a club promoter for 15 years, which meant that we would work from, we'd set the club up at 9 p .m. and we'd finish it two in the morning and I'd get back in the food that I'd prepped that morning, the day before's morning, would be there waiting for me. Ah, well, you know, haven't eaten in six hours, seven hours, something like that. Okay, so I'll get in and I'll eat. But just the discomfort of having a lot of food in you, like even that sucks, right? You know, the other thing is with the thinking about it, I think a lot of people got all like, like, you know, it's dizzy over the fact that like if you looked at the time -insured defeating and the weight loss, a lot of the weight loss was due to caloric restriction because people were just actually eating less, they were skipping meals.

30:34And it's like, yeah, so a lot of weight loss, I mean, when it comes to weight loss, like calories in calories out matter, like energy balance, right? So that's important. I think that's where a lot of people were like, oh, time -insured eating doesn't matter because it's all about caloric restriction. And it's like, well, yeah, if you're looking at what endpoint are you looking at? Are you trying to lose weight than your caloric restriction? Like you should be not eating that. Yes, however you want. Right. And most people that are like obese, even overweight, they can actually, they can actually fast and not lose as much muscle.

31:02Like some people will go on a fast or do, you know, limit their, they'll skip meals basically. And they can lose like up to 30 % of their weight will come from muscle. So you know, crazy, crazy, unless you do resistance training or resistance trainings. Which will mitigate that. Which will mitigate that. only if you're having sufficient protein outside of that intermittent fasting window? Not necessarily. That will help you gain more, but like mitigating the atrophy. Because you got the stimulus. You got the stimulus. Okay. What would you suggest as a good selection of breakfast that people could have that kind of meet the criteria that you're talking about here?

31:42What would be some of the things? Right, eggs would be like for, depending on your body weight, you know, know, if you're a dude, you're probably going to have like five eggs. Graveled eggs are great. You've got, I mean, it's got the protein and eggs are really high. They have like a lutein and colean in them. I mean, colean is important for brain function. Lutein, it's much higher in greens like kale, but there's some in at least pasture -raised eggs from the farm, you know, the non -conventional eggs or whatever they're called. Those are terrible. But - What is that just to interject that? What is that to know about eggs?

32:14How do you select your eggs? Past your raised because you want them to eat like grass and stuff, the chickens, because they're getting like, lutein from the greens and lutein is really important for brain function and eye function. I would love to talk about that more when we talk about cognitive function because it actually, there's like, well, there's not enough lutein in an egg to substitute what's done in clinical studies, but there is in kale. So, but still it's good to get a source of it. protein for breakfast because it's, you know, it's just, it's very nutrient dense with the colon as well.

32:50Coling is really high in egg yolk. Bacon and eggs, steak and eggs. Yeah. I mean, like whatever your jam is like for the protein bacon and eggs, it's steak and eggs, you know, I like to also have some smoked salmon and eggs. So like my omega three is. What about the people who are training first thing in the morning? Let's say they've got to get to work. They're part of the, you know, they're the 6am CrossFit Clouds. they're not going to be a 430 doing the scrambled eggs so that they can digest it in time to go do fun. They're going to probably do a protein shake, like way protein. So you would still, even for the people that are up early and then go to your own train, it's such a high priority that you would still suggest consuming some protein prior to working out.

33:31It's hard to get 1 .6 and then like, you know, so Stuart Phillips likes to use his analogy all of a given credit for it, like where you're squeezing the last drops out of the cloth. like for people that are like really trying to gain muscle mass, like it's like a really their thing, you can go like up to like two, you're getting like two grams per kilogram body weight. And so I mean, there are some people that like, so if you're really trying to like gain that muscle, you do pretty much one gram per pound. You do, yeah, you do need, unless, you know, unless you're just gonna eat like, you know, a lunch and dinner and lots and lots of protein, but it's really not that it's hard to get that much protein.

34:04We had this, like rule at uni, which was no one flukes one gram per pound of body weight. No one accidentally goes through their day and looks back at the macros of eating and goes, I hit 180 grams of protein without thinking. Like, it has to be conscious. There's no casual diet, unless you went to an all -you -can -eat buffet. And even if you do that, it seems like the upper bound for protein absorption within one meal is kind of like 50 grams in any case. Or less, yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah. So, you're like, okay, well, Well done, you managed to get through four steaks there, but how much of that is actually going to be used by your body.

34:39So yeah, that's an interesting one. I've found it fascinating kind of observing this. Intimate and fasting too. We still need to do this, but we need to integrate it, but we need to front load the protein earlier in the day and also to just alleviate the protein dead that your 1 .6 per kilo of body weight needs to hit by the end of the day. Yeah, I think that it makes sense when you just think about it like if you're skipping a meal You're gonna be losing muscle mass like especially if you're not doing any resistance training And that's like okay, well, then I probably shouldn't be skipping a meal But I I can still do time -assured to eating you know by just stopping my meals before three hours before bed And then you know you're gonna get a period of fasting really you just want that repair mode You know you want that repair mode and and there's been clinical studies that have looked at other endpoints besides weight loss and it does make a difference that there's improvements in things like blood pressure, for example, things like that.

35:35But I don't know that you're going to get the repair, like there's animal studies mechanistically looking at that. You're not, I don't know that we're going to get that in human data on that. It's going to be hard to do. Not impossible, but it's definitely going to cost money to get a clinical trial doing that sort of work. Talk to me about the rest of your framework for approaching nutrition and making decisions about food. I like I said I really like to make decisions about you know so I did my post doctoral research with Dr. Bruce Ames and he's sort of a legend and he's 96 now and that but you know we he he specialized for some towards the end mid to end of his career on micronutrients right these are important minerals and vitamins and amino acids and fatty acids that you need to get from your diet to run your metabolism and when I say your metabolism I don't just mean fat burning I mean in DNA repair, I mean, you know, making energy, I mean, making dopamine and serotonin and everything, right?

36:33So a lot of minerals or cofactors for the enzymes that are doing that. In other words, if you don't get those minerals, then the enzymes aren't going to be working optimally. And so, you know, things aren't going to be working optimally. And if you're talking about things like repair, what happens is you get this insidious damage. A magnesium is a perfect example. half the country doesn't get enough magnesium, which is about 320 milligrams for women and 420 for men. And so what happens when you're not getting enough magnesium? Well, nothing as far as you know, you look in the mirror and you're fine, right?

37:04You're not like, oh, damage is happening. You know, you can't see it on a daily basis. If you could, it would be so much more apparent to us. But it's insidious. It's just occurring a little bit each day. And as decades build up, you're not going to be repairing damage to your DNA. And DNA damage is a major cause of oncogenic mutations, these are mutations that lead to cancer. So then you get into your fifth, sixth, seventh, heck of a life, and you've got pancreatic cancer or you've got fill -in -the -blank cancer. And there are, of course, studies associating magnesium intake with cancer and studies looking at DNA repair as well.

37:39So the way I like to think about nutrition is what do I need to get for my diet that is essential for me to be functioning optimally, for me to prevent the damage that can can lead to neurodegenerative disease, to cancer. That's a kind of the way. And then also, what do I need to get in terms of my macronutrients? Proteins are really important. I need to think about how much protein to get, right? Because atrophy happens. You start to peak muscle mass, 20 to 30s, I guess. And then as you get into your 40s, you start to lose a lot more, like 8 % per decade. And then you get into your 70s. It goes up to 12.

38:18Yeah. So that's how I like to think about it, where it's like, OK, I need to get magnesium, I need to get omega -3, I need to get vitamin K, I need to get, so what foods are rich in those? And a lot of minerals and some vitamins, it's spread out amongst different food groups. So vegetables, particularly gleefy greens, are really high in magnesium, they're high in calcium, they're high in vitamin K, they're high in folate. Like, we need folate. This is like amazing to talk about this experiment that my mentor did back in like, it was like the 80s. But essentially like he took, he took animals and gave them a folate deficient diet in one group.

39:01And then the other group, he irradiated the mice like ionizing radiation, like the stuff that gives you cancer, okay? And he looked at double -stranded breaks to your DNA and that's like the start of DNA damage that can lead to cancer. right? Ionizing radiation causes double -stranded bricks in your DNA. And he compared the two groups and they were identical. So not having folate in your diet was like being ionized, getting ionizing radiation. Or you can get yourself ionized as much as you want as long as you eat spinach. I mean, no, because it's going to do the same thing as not eating spinach.

39:34But the point is that people know to avoid going in a machine that's going to be ionic, right? But they don't think about do I need folate? So it's like that, again, it's that what do I need to avoid mentality? Which isn't, it's not that you shouldn't think about, like you do need to think about things to avoid. But we need, I think the priority and the focus first is what do I need to get from my diet? That's so interesting. The tend toward demonization of certain food groups and awareness and concern about this is poisoning you, this is bad for you, this is something that you need to avoid. absolutely, but if you just avoid a ton of stuff, you still haven't got what you actually need.

40:12Exactly. And if you focus on what you actually need, guess what you avoid, ton of stuff. And I also think it sort of has to do with this. It's this learned helplessness mentality where it's like someone else's fault, they're poisoning me. It's like, you know what I mean rather than what am I not taking an initiative to know that I need to get into my body? Yep. Right? Worse is they're poisoning me. It's the pesticides. It's the this. It's the that. It's the and They are kind of to some degree, but how worried are you about oxalates in leafy greens? Yeah, so oxalates mostly high in spinach not kale and you know if you're juicing spinach every day and you have like kidney problems, that's probably a bad idea.

40:56So oxalates You know if you're if you're cooking the spinach that that basically causes enzymes to degrade these oxalates. And it's not as much of a problem. But I think there's been, again, a demonization of it. It's like this anti -nutrient. It's like, oh, this is a reason I shouldn't eat leafy greens because they're oxalates. And it's going to make any stone. And the reality is, oxalates are, you only absorb so much, particularly if there's magnesium present. And there's so much magnesium in these greens That's mostly not the problem. And the problem with oxalates, again, you'll get like that one case study with the woman with failed kidney syndrome that was juicing every day for like years.

41:37And it's like, don't give me that example. Like that, you know, unless you're a power user of spinach. It's it's really spinach. And some people have been saying. I love spinach. It's so good though. Spinach is good. I love spinach too. I spinach salads are not going to like don't it's not you're getting good stuff from spinach. It's really high in magnesium. It's really high. Fully it was first isolated from my mentor's mentor, Peter Mitchell, from spinach. He discovered that vitamin. He discovered it from any isolated from spinach. It's really high in spinach. Okay. So leafy greens. Important.

42:10Yes. Okay. Then you want to get B vitamins. I get full. It is a B vitamin, but getting B vitamins, zinc also, you want to get iron. These are also important micronutrients, minerals. that's where you get the meat, right? So red meat for the iron and protein, B vitamins, it's got zinc as well, poultry is another option, right? So these are good sources of protein and other micronutrients that you're not gonna get as much from plants. What are you thinking about when it comes to sourcing and choosing your meats? Yeah, so there's been some studies that have compared like grass fed cows versus, like meat from grass -fed cows versus like conventionally raised cows.

42:58And I would say the biggest difference is, at least from the data that's been published, is for one, the omega -3 and omega -6 fatty acid profile. So which makes sense? If you're feeding a cow a bunch of corn, and I think they also have like, it's like corn oil, like pellets, and you know, it's like, they're gonna have a higher omega -6 profile, right? They're gonna have more omega -6 because that's corn. versus if you're gonna give them like plants, they're gonna eat plants, they're gonna have a better omega -3 to omega -6 profile, and so, and that's exactly what you'll find. So like, even though meat isn't like the best source of omega -3, if you get, if you're eating, you know, ground beef or a steak from a cow that was, you know, pasture raised, it's gonna have a higher omega -3 profile than the conventional meat.

43:46And there's some argument to be made for that. It's like, well, then there's also things like, well, what you have to think about, like what food are they given food that's doused in glyphosate? Like I don't know, like what's, how the corn crop is like that's how they're growing lots of corn, right? So, you know, you can sort of obsess over everything. You have to, I think you have to sort of choose your battles. Otherwise, you can just go insane. So do you have to eat pastures to meat? I don't know that you do. If you can, it's better. Not everyone can afford. I like food is so expensive now, too.

44:28At the end of the day, our bodies can handle a lot of damage. They really can. But that is only if you give them the things they need to repair that damage and be able to be more optimally functional. So that's kind of my take on the, you know, pastures versus conventional. I personally do get pastures. I prefer it. Also the hormones. If they're not, I think generally speaking, they go hand in hand. They give hormones and antibiotics to cows and stuff. And it's like, oh, do I want a bunch of antibiotics in my meat that I'm eating? Right? Like, that's another thing to consider. What do people mean when they talk about prioritizing energy balance?

45:06I hear this. I have no idea what they're talking about. I mean, I think ultimately their calories in calories out kind of thing. Like, you know, if you're consuming like a ton of calories and you're not physically active, like that's, you're going to start storing more fat. Like it's, you know, just simple math. Yeah. So that's, I would say the easiest way to think about it is really just calories in calories that really does matter. Like it really does. Like you're gonna, you know, so you don't want to just eat tons and tons of food. Like you don't want to eat about bag of potato chips, like after you do your peloton.

45:44Yeah, and I guess going back to one of the reasons why intermittent fasting was so popular was that it's, you don't really need to be as obsessive with your my fitness power. If you only have a six hour eating window because for lots of people it's tough to get over surplus us during just six hours, as long as you're eating whole foods, mostly blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's what it comes down to. I think exactly that is that if the, the, the, the, the, the, the caloric are restricting naturally when they're doing intermittent fasting, right? And so that's why it was, it all comes down to calories and calories out.

46:19That's what caloric restriction is. You're restricting, you're not eating as many calories and you end up, you know, losing weight. But if you eat whole foods, and I really do think like the paleo movement back in when, I mean, it was like 15, 20 years, I don't even know how long ago it was. But they were on something. I think that's a really good way to eat because you're not just only eating meat, you're not just only eating plants, you're getting the broad spectrum of micronutrients. And there's other things in plants that are like vital chemicals that are beneficial as well, right? So it's not just getting the micronutrients, it's also getting these other chemicals that are doing beneficial things in us that we know, for sure, from randomized controlled trials or doing beneficial things.

47:01So that's another added reason to kind of have more diverse whole foods type of diet. We'll get back to talking to Rondra in one minute, but first I need to tell you about my mentors. You might have heard me say that I took my testosterone from 495 to a thousand in six, and two of the supplements I used throughout that were Fadodia regressedus and Toncat Ali. I first heard Andrew Huberman talk about the really impressive effect that these have on testosterone, but the problem is most supplements don't actually contain what they say. Mementus make the only NSF certified Fidojirogrestis and Tonkata Ali in the world, meaning that even Olympians can use it because of that is the level of testing that these products are put through.

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48:10What are the most important things to consider when it comes to improving cognitive function? A lot of people want better focus, they want to be more productive, they want to improve with that mood, they want to do all of those things. Like, what are the big movers when we think cognitive function? So there's what I like to think of as there's definitely big movers. There's things that require effort and there's like lower hanging fruit, right? So this is things that like you could take a supplement perhaps. And I would say the big movers are the ones that of course are going to require more effort.

48:43Like that's always how it is, right? And it's pretty clear now, I don't think I think it's pretty scientific consensus that exercise and particularly vigorous exercise is one of the best ways that you can get a cognitive enhancement. You know, memory, executive function, processing speed. So there have been studies that have been done in older adults, in middle -aged adults, in children, like across the lifespan. And it's just undeniable that getting your heart rate up, you know, getting your heart up and blood flow up and sweating is going to make you smarter and feel better. It's going to make you both.

49:22So, like there was, there was even one study that was done in older adults, and this was like a classic study that I just remember I talked about it for years, but other studies have like repeated it since then, but it was like 2011 or 2012, published in PNAS, and this, this researchers took these older adults and they put them on a year -long intervention exercise program. There was a lot of more vigorous intensity, so they're getting up to about 80 % max heart rate, 75, 80 % max heart rate. For one year, they did this intervention. After that year, they had a 2 % increase in their hippocampal volume.

49:59So hippocampus is a part of your brain that's highly involved in learning and memory. They increased it by like 2%. People in that age group blues between 1 % to 2 % of their hippocampal volume per year. They essentially counter that loss, that act of you, that they're age -related, experiencing each year. Part of the reason that happens is when you're doing a vigorous type of exercise, you are increasing brain -driven or tributyptophector BDNF. That is responsible for growing neurons in the hippocampus. It's responsible for neuroplasticity. So that's the ability of your brain to adapt and change to the changing environment, which is what older adults don't do very well.

50:41Your brain's much more plastic when it's younger. You can adapt to things. That's why it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. That's where it comes from. BDNF plays a role in that. You want more BDNF. An exercise, and particularly vigorous exercise. If you're working your muscles so hard that they can't get oxygen to them fast enough, and that's why I say vigorous. then they're forced to basically make energy without oxygen and that happens by just using glucose. And then you make lactate as a byproduct. And lactate is what is signaling and increasing that BDNAF. And lactate's really, I mean, you can measure it.

51:16There's, you know, things that that you can buy and measure it. But I don't think you need to. I think you can just measure your heart rate. And if you're getting, if you're doing a vigorous intensity exercise, 10 minutes, that's all it took was 10 minutes to have improvements in cognition, I could use a function, processing speed. So even just a 10 minute workout. And like I did one before, I came here. Like that's my thing, I do. I want to be on top of my game. So you just can do a 10 minute workout. It could be high intensity interval training where you're shifting between periods of vigorous exercise and then kind of resting a little bit.

51:48And then so you do these intervals. Or it could just be like, I'm gonna do a 20 minute run and then I'm gonna go, you know, I'm gonna do it. So exercise. Exercise is the number one. I would say big mover, as you said. It's also the most requires the most effort. The other things, and this is where I kind of like I'm smiling because there was very recently a new study, one out of three, very large randomized placebo control trials where they're giving one group a placebo and another group a multivitamin. Okay, this is a multivitamin, which is the micronutrients I've been talking about. magnesium, B vitamins, folate, vitamin K, it's just stuff people aren't getting enough of.

52:29They're not getting enough from their diets. And they gave older adults, so these were people that were 65 and older. And there was three different trials of this study. It was called the Cosmotrial, and there was about 5 ,000 participants in total. And the evidence was clear that just giving them a multivitamin improved cognition. and it slowed braid aging, which was, it was estimated to slow braid aging by about two years. And this is like, it's so, it's funny because 10 years ago, I was like doing, I was out there podcast talking, you know, talking on podcast about huge studies that were coming out saying, enough is enough, multivitamins are a waste of money, don't buy them.

53:11And they were saying the exact opposite and they were terrible studies and I like tore them apart. But here we are, 10 years later complete opposite. Full circle, what's the easiest thing you can do? Like does that mean a young person can take a multivitamin? It's going to immediately make them, you know, probably not. At 20 units, insurance. Yeah, it's something that you can start now and certainly older adults, it made a difference. So that's one. Another one is, again, I mentioned that there's other, these phytochemicals in plants that are beneficial. They're in vegetables and they're in fruits.

53:43So blueberries, blueberry very extract or even the equivalent of one cup of blueberries. This has been done. The equivalent of one cup of blueberries improves cognition, executive function. It improves memory, also processing speed. So that's something like if you're fast reaction time, I guess it's more relevant for maybe someone who's athletic. But find motor coordination and things like that. Multiple studies showing this. I mean, there's been meta -analysis showing it. This is across the lifespan. There's been studies in kids. There's been studies in middle -aged adults, and there's been studies in older adults, and it's clear.

54:23Blueberries make you smarter, and they make you feel better, at least they make me feel better. Blueberries are the king of fruits. I think, I mean, it's between blueberries, raspberries, and pineapple, I think, for like the top spot in my world of fruits. Blueberries. Yeah. No, blueberries are, so they have something in them called anthocyanins, and it's what gives the blueberries their pigmentation raspberries have them too. Blueberries have very concentrated them in them. They also have, so anthocyanins are a type of polyphenol. They're actually a flavonoid. They're a type of polyphenol. Polyphenols are a sort of wide class of phytochemicals.

54:58And phytochemicals, there's a lot of them, a lot of different types of them. And they really are beneficial in humans. And like I said, there's randomized control trials comparing giving this to a placebo. And if it was bad for you, then it would be clear, right? It's good for you. So blueberries are at the top of the list for that for improving cognitive function, low hanging fruit. How easy is it to eat a cup of blueberries a day? I eat two. It's literally hard to not eat a cup of blueberries a day. It's hard not to, yeah. So that would be another one. I think another one on my list would be similar to that would be cocoa polyphenols.

55:32So like from like dark chocolate, they have another type of polyphenol called catechins. And the best one, so there have been studies, lots of studies on this, and it's mixed on this. So some studies have shown benefits. They increase blood flow to the brain. They increase, you know, vascular flow. So you can get an immediate effect where, you know, if you increase blood flow to the brain, which is what exercise does, right? But we're talking low hanging fruits, easy to do, take a pill. That would be something to do. It is, it's improved cognition, executive function. And there's a type called cocovia.

56:05And I have no affiliation with them. But they've published their, they have studies published with their proprietary blend, which is again, one of the highest concentrated, I would say, cocoa flavonols out there, the Catechins, consumer labs tested them. And I've seen, I've seen the data at, it's very clear, they're very high in, they just out -compete all the other brands out there, and they also have the lowest contaminants. So they're really a good, but expensive way to get those cocoa flavonols, which are really good. And then the other one would be, for cognition, would be lutein, which I mentioned earlier.

56:42It's in egg yolks, not very concentrated. It's in kale, very highly concentrated in kale, almost 24 milligrams in three kale leaves. And I say three kale leaves because that's what I put in my smoothie. So I've calculated it. But so there's 24 milligrams of lutein. So lutein is a type of carotenoid, like beta -carotene, like lycopene and tomatoes. You've heard of those things before. or willoutine is in that same category. It is a carotenoid. It accumulates in the rods in the cones of your eye. It protects against singlet oxygen from blue light, like this light looking at. And also the sunshine when you go outside.

57:16That damages our eyes. It causes macular degeneration. And so lutein and zizanthin is another carotenoid. They're in greens and they protect against that. But they also accumulate in the brain. And there have been a variety of studies. So there's been observational studies correlating plasma levels of lutein and zz -anthin with certain cognitive scores. So like crystallized intelligence older adults that have lutein and zz -anthin higher levels have more crystallized intelligence. So that's the ability to use all the information you learned over a lifetime and like use it. There's been randomized controlled trials looking at giving 8 milligrams of lutein.

57:56Now I said 24 is in three kale. So they give 8 milligrams of lutein and and something like 23 milligrams of zezanthin to older adults, and it improves neural efficiency. So this is the ability to basically, your neurons can function with less energy, which is nice. So that obviously improves cognitive function, because it's a very energy demanding process. So, so, Lutine, is another one. I know it's an EG. Collin, yeah. Collinurgic's generally very important for brain function. It is. Yeah, it's an important, it's important for brain. And there's been studies actually with pregnant women. If you give pregnant women about 500 milligrams of colon per day, their children score better on intelligence tests.

58:48Yes. So I learned about this. Of course, when I was pregnant, and I was like, well, I was actually before I was pregnant, but I was like like figuring out what I'm gonna do, what do I need? And that's why I ate so many eggs during pregnancy because they also supplemented. And now you've got like mastermind babies. I do. Yeah, wow. But so, Colleen's also important, yeah, for sure brain function. But that comes down to again, trying to get everything you need from your food. And then Omega -3, there's been so many randomized control trials on Omega -3's improving cognition, especially when there, it has to be two grams or more.

59:21That's where you'll get the mixed data if it's like, oh, we gave him 500 milligrams, it wasn't enough. So the studies that were consistently showing improvements in cognitive function or at least two grams a day of the omega -3. So that's my sort of, I think, low hanging fruit for cognitive function, things you can do. Is that the same strategy for battling neurodegeneration over time as well, the things that improve cognitive function now? It's just the same, it's one and the same. It's very similar because I mentioned brain drive neurotrophic factor, BDNF. That plays a huge role in battling neurodegenerative disease risk.

59:57A lot of the anthocyanins, the catechins that are in things like blueberries and chocolate, dark chocolate, especially when you concentrate the pattern down. Those are, they have anti -inflammatory properties, they have antioxidant properties, and they're increasing blood flow to the brain as well. So they're getting more oxygen to the brain, they're getting more nutrients to the brain, all those things play a role in both short term health, but also long term brain health as well. So it's both for sure. They're very much connected. What happens when people get brain fog? What is brain fog? I know what it feels like, but what's going on?

1:00:35Yeah, so brain fog, or as I like to call it, a reduction in mental clarity. It's such a docked away of region. I've just heard too many people say brain fog, brain fog. I got this new jerk reaction to the... You've got brain fog, Ike. When people say brain fog, I go, no, what are you gonna say? But yes, it is a thing. So when you have a reduction in a mental clarity, it feels like this brain fog. And I personally think it all comes down to food. I think it really comes down to food. Now, I mean, when you're sick, you have brain fog, but we can talk about how it overlaps with that. So I think there's really two big, it all has to do with meals and eating.

1:01:21So the first thing I think that's highly involved in this reduction in mental clarity or brain fog is people like to call it, it's what's called the post -pran deal glucose response. So that means blood glucose levels going up after a meal. And what happens is this, if you have a really high post -pran deal glucose response, So you're eating a high glycemic index food, something that's definitely like a refined carbohydrate, for example, that'll really smash you. You're going to get this really sharp peak in glucose and then like a drop and or a sugar crash as people like to call it. And so it's really hard for your brain to be functioning properly with that post -prandial glucose response.

1:02:05And that's partly why you'll hear a lot of anecdotes and myself included, people that have tried a ketogenic diet or I used to always like to do podcasts in a fast and state because you're not getting that post -prangial glucose response is one thing. It really sort of it's evens it out. Not everyone responds well to a ketogenic diet and I certainly don't think it's easy to continue on forever. So there are other things. Obviously avoiding refined carbohydrates is an easy no -brainer, right? There's nothing in there anyways. What do you need from there? Nothing. No micronutrients, no protein, right?

1:02:44Like you're not getting any from that. So that would be one thing to avoid because that'll make sure you're not going super, super high, but you can still have it from a meal. And some of the things that you can do to mitigate that, one would be exercise snacks. So this is like doing a really short burst of intense, like vigorous exercise, 80 % max heart rate for like one to three minutes. and you do it 30 minutes or up 30 minutes up to an hour, either before, after a meal. So you kind of do it within this hour, before or after a meal. And what happens is that vigorous intensity exercise while you're shooting your heart rate up, you know, and it's hard to do, you're increasing lactate and it doesn't take much.

1:03:26You get soaked up by the muscle and this is then causing glucose transporters to come up to the muscle and opening the gates, It's basically so that when you eat that meal, the glucose goes into your muscle. It's more anabolic. You want it to go there and it's not you're not getting that like huge rise and then drop in the post with the post -prandial glucose response. So that would be the one thing. Exercise snacks. Lots of studies out there, especially with people who type to diabetes, have a problem you know, maintaining their blood glucose levels. The second thing would be food order. Like the order you eat your macronutrients.

1:04:02On the plate. Kind of. So I would say about 10 minutes. It can be on the plate depending on how slow you eat. So if food order, there's been studies, again, largely in people with type 2 diabetes who are issues regulating their blood glucose. If you eat protein or fat, 10 to 30 minutes before carbohydrates, rates. It can very much blunt and slow the post -prano glucose response. So if you have like, let's say you eat a can of sardines before you're going to go to a restaurant, you're going to eat out, you're presumably going to eat more terribly than you would if you're cooking at home, right?

1:04:43Or you do a little protein shake 20 minutes before you're going to go to a restaurant or whatever. And that'll or before like even just if you're going to do a podcast and you need a bunch of mental clarity, you want to make sure that let's say just eat the protein and not have the carbohydrates, right? So what that does is it's, I mean, it's doing essentially like increasing insulin so that when you do have that glucose, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's If you were, if you were going out for dinner, presumably something else you could do is try and have the starter be steak tartar, tuna tartar, oysters, something like that.

1:05:18And just be like, can we just wait an extra 10 minutes on mains? Like however long you think that we need, just give us another 10. And then you've encapsulated it within the entire meal. I guess as long as everybody else is on board with that, otherwise someone's had a bunch of bread and then just they want whatever main course to come out. See that, they should, that's like the worst thing is having the bread on the table first, right? It's so good. It is good, but like you just take tartar first and then go for the bread. right? You'll slow the glucose response. There's a place in Austin called Dean's Italian.

1:05:51It's just down the street from you. Ah. You should go. You should go. Dean's Italian. Yeah, I know. I'm looking for restaurant recommendations. Please send me some more. I'll send you some more. Dean's three forks and the somewhere else that I went the other evening that was phenomenal. But Dean's and three forks, the two steak restaurants I go to the most. But Dean's do this. They call it a bread crown. So it's like, it literally looks like a little crown that comes out kind of about that size and there's a pot of whip butter in the middle of this thing and it's glazed on top. It's got like a salt glaze.

1:06:24This thing is like crack. It's so good and it's just there. You arrive, you sit down, you've got the drink, so whatever and then this thing arrives and you just can't, it's impossible to not eat. So yeah, almost getting, is there something that we can do with this like pre -appetizer, to come after the appetizers around about 15 minutes if that's okay, because Dr. Rondis said so. Yeah, so food order, you know, is something legitimately that's been studied in paracordata showing it does blunt the glucose, post -prinial glucose response. And so that is another thing that can really, I think, affect mental clarity or brain fog.

1:07:01So, just like I said, like the protein or fat, like an avocado, sometimes I'll have an avocado. And that kind of just delays the emptying of your stomach -interred testons and it kind of slows it even keel rather than real high spike in the lower. In other news, this episode is brought to you by AG1. Nutrition doesn't have to be complicated, it just has to work. And that's why I've used AG1 every single day for over three years now. AG1 is literally the best in the world at providing you with a scientifically back blend of ingredients that helps to fuel your body. You might have heard Tim Ferris and Joe Rogan and Peter Atia and Andrew Huberman and myself, talk about this product, and that's because it is the best daily foundational nutrition supplement on the planet.

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1:08:10That's drinkag1 .com slash wisdom. Presumably as well prioritizing the foods during an eating window even if you do the protein shake at home and then go out for dinner afterward. Prioritizing that and skewing that toward protein is just going to cause you to eat less of the carbs. If there is dessert at the end, you're going to think, look, I'm not as bothered because I've just put more in me that's been skewed and discriminated in the direction of what you should be prioritizing anyway. Absolutely. You get more, it's satiety plays a role in me. I think you're eating something before like protein.

1:08:44You're just not going to eat as much. You're not going to eat as much. But that kind of leads into the second, that's not the only part of the meal or food or eating that I think plays a role in this reduction in mental clarity and brain fog. The other thing is the post -prandial inflammatory response. So eating a meal causes inflammation. It happens in everyone, every meal. There's no avoiding it. Like, to some degree, it happens. But you can minimize how much of an inflammatory response you're having. So people eating a very high sugar and high fat meal, it really, that's the real, those are the two real big movers of it.

1:09:22But even if you're just doing a ton of fat without fiber or protein, fat is harsh on the gut. And so what ends up happening is your gut epithelial cells, there's things holding them together, tight junctions, they open up, and they let little pieces of bacteria, so our microbiome, I mean we got trillions of them. Dr. Justin Trilic. Dr. Justin Trilic. Dr. Justin Trilic. Dr. Justin Trilic. Dr. Justin Trilic. Dr. Justin Trilic. Dr. Justin Trilic. Dr. Justin Trilic. Dr.

1:09:47Justin Trilic. that comes out of medicine. It brainfights a reduction in mental clarity. Is it leaky gut? It's the wall lining of the intestine has opened up to a... Yeah, intestinal permeability or leaky gut, as it's called. That's what you're doing. So, meals cause that to happen transiently. Some people have a very big problem with leaky gut, but so, transiently, you're letting bacteria get into your bloodstream. And this is what happens. It's pieces of bacteria, they're called endotoxin, or life of polysaccharide, the same thing. But they're getting into your circulation because they're opening up right getting from the gut and not supposed to be there right and your immune system gets activated So your immune system is like it knows those pieces of the bacterial membrane It recognizes it.

1:10:30That's how it you know recognizes a bacterial in pathogen and so it gets activated and What ends up happening? There's one your immune system is activated. Okay. That requires a ton of energy So energy is shunted away from your brain and it goes to the immune system because your body goes triage it goes, I need to survive. There's a bacteria, there's a bacterial invader in my system right now. I'm going to take all my energy and I'm going to make sure that I get rid of this invader so I don't die, right? So that's the first thing that's happening in terms of like, energy is being diverted from the brain, from neurotransmission, from thinking everything, and it's going to immune system to activate it.

1:11:06Okay, and it doesn't happen for that long or a period, but it's happening after a meal. The second thing that's happening is that your immune system itself is creating cytokines that are activating other immune cells. That's how they like talk to each other. And these things are, there essentially can be some nigenic, so they can make you sleepy. So when you're sick, what happens when you're sick, you're, you have no energy, right? Because all the energy is going on your immune system. And you're sleepy. So that's exactly what's happening after a meal. What's happening when you're sick to a smaller degree is happening after a meal, the post -pranial inflammatory response.

1:11:43And then the other thing that's happening is those cytokines also are crossing into your brain and disrupting neuro transmission and disrupting connections. We now know that the blood brain barrier does not keep immune molecules out. They get in there and they're wreaking havoc. So it's another reason why you don't want to have inflammatory inflammation. So then the question is, what do I do? So that's the question. How do I not get such a big post -pranial inflammatory response? And it's also again why a lot of people myself included always feel like more mentally clear when I'm fasted, right?

1:12:15But I'm like, I don't want to lose a protein. I mean the muscle mass. I need to get some food. But the question is what do you do? One, obviously avoid the sugar high sugar high fat. Okay, that's clear. Two, smaller meals have less of a post -prinial inflammatory response. So the bigger the meal, the bigger the response. Spike. spike and then down. Yeah, but it's like, we're now we're talking, you're getting both. You're getting the glucose and you're getting the inflammatory response. Yep. That's another thing. So actually, like smaller meals does help that. So like if you need mental clarity and stuff, like don't have a big meal.

1:12:48And the other thing that actually makes an effect on that is believe it or not, we're going full circle, omega three. Omega three has been shown in clinical studies to plant the post and post -prangial inflammatory response. with the meal or at any point throughout the day. So that's why I take my omega -3s throughout the day with meals. And it's doing it... It's some to re -both. It's some to re -both. There's something systemic, but there's also something acute. Exactly. There's something systemic, the inflammation process, but there's something acute in the gut that it's also playing a role in preventing the life of polysaccharide from getting the circulation.

1:13:20Is this dose dependent? If I have one gram with each meal, you say two grams of triglycerides, responsibly sauce, blah, blah, blah, from a Norwegian guy that's doing it like this with fish. Can I have one gram with each meal? Would that be sufficient? I think the studies, and I can't remember. I think it was like, they were lower dose, like 500 milligrams. I think it wasn't even that high. So I typically do the one gram with each meal. I think that's a safe. It's a nice way to remember to do it. But yeah, it's a nice way. And so I like to do the reason I like to have omega -3s throughout the day is for one that reason.

1:13:54Blunting the post -prangial inflammatory response to, I want these like specialized resolving, like, these specializing molecules that they produce, like, when you're metabolizing in my blood constant, resolving inflammation. It's working. Very interesting. Yeah, so throughout my 20s, I said I was a club promoter. And I thought I had depression or like acute depression that would come on every so often, like, intermittently throughout the year. I think looking back, it was just low mood and burnout. I think that's what was going on. But the way that it would manifest for me is I wouldn't get out of bed.

1:14:25I wouldn't want to go to work and see people. and I was in charge of this company, so I could do whatever I wanted and no one could tell me otherwise. But one of the things that I would do is I would order pizza or high sugar foods and sweets and stuff like that. And it would come for eat, right? Like a company, and that would be something I'd do. But I'd notice, especially if you have a big dominoes in front of you and you've got some sweet stuff to have after that, the sense that you get in your body, especially if you haven't been outside, if you've basically not moved, because you're feeling a little bit miserable and the curtains are drawn and you've just laid in bed and the Uber driver or whatever's coming you've taken the food off him.

1:15:02The inflammation like the throbbing that you feel in your body, it's almost like your heartbeat feels like or your blood pressure feels like it's gone up and then almost all of the time after that and I think this is very common for people that deal with the low mood. If they do comfort eat like that, they'll then fall asleep so shortly after that and then that dysregulation of your sleep pattern also makes you feel even more like shit. And then you come out of this sleep, your emotions are all over the place. You've still got tons of like either blood sugar rushing around you or you don't know, you've got digestive discomfort because you've just eaten all of this food.

1:15:33And yeah, just seeing that as like a little petri dish, microcosm for what happens, the least amount of movement possible, like you've gone from bed to door back to bed and that's it. Nothing in terms of any kind of stimulation already in low mood and then you go to sleep, the most sedentary of all of the positions. Yeah, you can feel that inflammation, that cytokine response, and your thoughts, again, super, super muddy, which also feeds back into that low mood. It's a vicious cycle, right? Exactly. No, and you mentioned, it's funny how you mentioned, people get, when you get sleepy after a meal, it's like that's the cytokines that are some it's a post -inflammatory response.

1:16:18And again, it happens with the bigger meal, too. You'll notice the bigger the meal, if you overeat, the sleepy you are, right? And so it's more of an inflammatory response. So now you can think about it as, oh, I'm not sleepy. It's, oh, I've got some inflammation going on after that meal. Interesting. What about improving mood? What do people get wrong when thinking about that? I mean, so improving mood is, we were talking about exercise and that would be the most effortful way that you can improve mood and there's studies that have compared it to like running to essentially to standard SSRI treatments, which are pretty classic antidepressant that are used, and it's performed as good as an SSRI with added health benefits of course, right?

1:17:04So, but you said something interesting when you were talking about when you were feeling depressed, in that was that you couldn't even get a bet, right? So, it's clear that exercise will help mitigate depression. It'll improve your mood. Very clear. But not everyone is going to go for a run. Not everyone that is depressed will get on peloton or fill in the blank type of exercise. There are some people that it's hard to get out of bed. So, what could be a non -pharmacological treatment to help improve mood? right? And I think that this is what is super exciting and this comes into to heat, deliberate heat exposure in sauna.

1:17:45And it's something I personally experienced firsthand when I was in graduate school. I was extremely stressed out, which can manifest with depression, anxiety, right? Like you, those are all come connected. And this was like 2009. I started using the sauna every day before I would go into the lab. and I all of a sudden was, you know, handling my failed experiments better. I was like, handling the stress for my advisor and just all the things they had to do. So much better. I mean, it was so noticeable that I initially went, oh my gosh, there's something going on here like I need to figure this out.

1:18:21And so that's what initially even got me interested in the sauna was the effect on my mood. And at the time I like, I've published on this sense, I published on this back in 2022, but I had come up with some theories about there's lots of reasons why. I had come up with a theory on it affecting the opioid system or natural endogenous opioid system. So when you get in the sauna or when you're under, you know, deliberate heat exposure, say a hot bath, something similar, you release endorphins. And that's the feel good opioid that when you're running, you know, same thing. But you also release something that's the opposite of that.

1:19:01It's called dynorphin. And that is the opioid that's responsible for that discomfort feeling, that dysphoric feeling. Like it's hot. This is miserable. I hate it. Why am I doing this myself? Exactly. And that's when you're running. What happens during physical activity as well. And so what it does, it actually cools down your core body temperature or something. And And that's why it's like a natural response. And, but when you release that discomfort feeling, there's a feedback loop. It actually tell, you actually make more receptors and you make a more sensitive to the feel good and dwarf ends so that you feel better later.

1:19:35And so now there's been some scientific research first from Charles Raison back in, I think it was like 2016, he had done a study where people were, they basically like, it was a type of sauna, more like an infrared sauna. I was elevating their corbide temperature to about feverish state like a 101 .3 and there was a sham control which was the placebo. They were getting hot enough to think they were getting the treatment but it wasn't raising them. It wasn't giving them a fever. And so that was done just one time and this was in people with major depressive disorder, like this legit depression.

1:20:10And the people that got the act of sauna treatment had an antidepressant effect that lasted six weeks after one time. Right? No way. Yeah, one time. So now, Dr. Ashley Mason at UCSF, she's running the Oshar Center, which is they do a lot of non -pharmacological treatments for a lot of stuff. And I've been lucky enough to collaborate with her on some of these studies, where she now, right now, has a paper in press, which I'm sorry, in peer review. But she basically trained with Chuck Rayzon and carried on the torch and now has done either four treatments or eight treatments in some people and looked and these are people again with depression and did a battery of scores you know that these people do when they're measuring depression and it's just off the charts unreal like so damn exciting like I can't tell you how exciting it is that people that got this on a treatment I mean they I think it's something like the Hamilton score where you need like a three or four point change for it to be significant and these people are changing like 16 points.

1:21:16And SSRI's I think are only two or three. I don't know what they are, but it's not loads. All I can say is she's doing an infrared zone on hers is it's a head out infrared zone. So it's like it's like a dome. I've seen those people look so funny. And yes, but they're in there for a very long time. Have you considered that it's just them overcoming the discomfort of looking so stupid while being in one of those tents that has your head sticking out the top. There's probably so many mechanisms that play. You know, but, you know, there's some argument to be made for head out. You know, we could get into that.

1:21:52But like, I do think that inflammation, so sauna does what exercise is doing and to some degree, with respect to, you know, causing both acute inflammation, but having a strong anti -inflammatory response. But then I think the opioids could be in the way. There's so many things. It's not known what's happening. Exercise, get hot if you can get hot while you exercise probably also. You can do both, but getting hot, like some people like again, getting into a sauna is like getting into a spa. It's a lot easier to go from your bed into this other little chamber where you're just lying down. There's no effort.

1:22:23There's no effort. The heat's doing it for you. The heat's doing it for you. We'll get back to talking to Ron during one minute, but first I need to tell you about element. Stop having coffee first thing in the morning. You're a denocene system that caffeine acts on. isn't even active for the first 90 minutes of the day, but your adrenal system is and salt act on your adrenal system. Each grabingo stick contains a science -backed electrolyte ratio, sodium potassium and magnesium with no sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients, or any other junk that helps to regulate your appetite, curb cravings, and improve your brain function.

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1:23:24What about people who are at standardly acceptable mood? But I really wanna kind of elevate the way that I feel throughout the day. I just don't feel that sort of excited or fired up about there. Obviously there's like what are your relationships like? What's the job that you do? Do you have meaning and purpose in your life? That's all of those sorts of things. But are there any interventions from a physiological perspective where you think this is something that you should prioritize? Right. So I think that it comes down to obviously like doing an exercise snack, we talked about exercise, just doing like a two -minute, you know, high knees or squats or something.

1:24:01It makes a difference. It really does. You're getting that oxygen to your brain, you're getting more nutrients and BDNF plays a role in depression, so that stuff, I think, immediately improves mood. But there's also, you know, so what neurotransmitters are involved in mood or, you know, mood. Yeah, what is mood when we talk about it? Well, I mean, it's complicated. Like, I don't even know that we can define it exactly, right? I mean, there's, you have things like serotonin, it's involved in mood, motivation, you have to be in a good mood to be motivated, right? They're really hand in hand, same with dopamine, norpinephrine is another one that's involved, focus attention mood, things like that.

1:24:39They're all sort of involved in the mood, motivation, that sort of pathways. So there's like a, there are behaviors that you can engage in to sort of optimized for those neurotransmitters. So neurotransmitter optimization is sort of like trying to engage in behaviors that can optimize for those neurotransmitters. So one, high intensity exercise, does it? It's been shown. Serotonin goes up. It goes up because again, your lactate is increasing the serotonin, but it also goes up because branched chain amino acids, which you're getting when you're eating protein, they compete with triptophane. Triptophan is a precursor.

1:25:18It has to get into the brain and they compete for transport into the brain with those branch chanameedo acids. And triptophan is a precursor for serotonin. So if you're eating a bunch protein, which have branch chanameedo acids like lucine, isolucine, things that are building muscle basically, and you're not exercising, then your triptophan can be out competed. And there's been studies doing this. They've given people a big like shake, like a protein shake essentially. That does not have any, it has no triptophant in it. So they're essentially just dosing them with branch chanemino acids, and their triptophant levels fall by like 90 % in the brain, and subsequently their serotonin levels plummet, and people get in a terrible mood.

1:26:02Their long term planning shuts down, so serotonin plays a role in impulse control, like being able to like control your impulses and not engage in behaviors that are just very impulsive. And so that goes down. And it's just normal people that are drinking this shake of branch, you know, immunoassets. So what makes the branch, you know, aminoassets go into muscle exercise? So if you wanna do that, then you're gonna get more triptophane in the brain to make serotonin. What is the adaptive justification of the adaptive mechanism for this? Is it that if human was doing relatively high intensity extended exercise that would often be some sort of pursuit hunting type thing.

1:26:43Therefore, you need a natural painkiller to encourage said human to keep chasing said will the beast because if they feel better, they will keep chasing it, which means they're more likely to catch it, which means they won't starve and die. That sounds like a great explanation. Yeah, I mean, we used to move around like you said. It doesn't necessarily have to be high intensity. It could be just lifting weights too. It causes branch chanemino acids to be taking up to muscle, but you're moving. So there's a, I think there could be an evolutionary reason why. There is. In my world, there is an evolutionary reason for absolutely everything, not because it's the only thing I've got any expertise in.

1:27:20But yeah, that's interesting to think about. I wrote this like 10 years ago when I was still suffering with low mood and stuff like that. If you gave me the choice between a good night's sleep of nine hours or a hard training session of one hour. My mood reset before and after training is greater than before and after sleep. I found more bleed from pre -to -post sleep than pre -to -post training. And it's so ruthless that if you are suffering with low mood or if you're in a period of high stress or whatever it is, one of the things that you go to first is sleep, even though in my experience the higher ROI thing is the thing that's hardest to do when your mood's the lowest because your motivation to do difficult things is also when it's lowest.

1:28:03Totally, absolutely. It's funny that you mentioned the sleep thing too, because I do think sleep is important, but nowadays I'm like, it's exercise. I don't know that anything matters as much if you are putting in that effort to exercise. And that could be shown in data. If you look at studies that have looked at all cause mortality and people that don't sleep as much, like they're getting six hours or less, they have a higher all cause mortality than people that are not safe. but only in people that are not physically active. So people that are physically active and sleep, terribly, had the same all -cause mortality as people that were, you know, slept fine without.

1:28:43So, in other words, exercise can negate the bad effects of lack of sleep on all -cause mortality. And I also, glucose response goes up with lack of sleep. Like you're basically gonna have a higher post -prangial glucose response to food. You're gonna have a higher fasting blood glucose level when you don't get enough sleep. Well, you're also going to select four foods that are more salty, more sweet. I mean, I found this as well that I, for the first time in my entire life, when I had a stable sleep and wake pattern, was COVID. That was the first time that I'd ever gone to bed as an adult, the same time, most nights out of two weeks.

1:29:24Because I was always running our events, you know, which would mean I'd be up until two, three, five in the morning, caching up a till, driving back from one of the club nights in a different city, doing something like that. And I remember thinking, I always thought that I had low mood and was a bad sleeper. And I just realized I was doing shift work. The shift work is considered, I think the World Health Organization literally considered shift work a health risk. So this is firefighters, this is nurses, this is anybody that's got an irregular pattern. And I thought that was me. I was like, oh, this is, it was so formative and such a foundation to the way that my lifestyle and the texture of my mind existed.

1:30:10I didn't, I couldn't imagine what life would be like different. And then COVID comes in and obviously nightclubs immediately all get shut down. And I guess I guess I'll try this going to bed at 11 o 'clock every night thing. and then Mood started to just like linearly get better throughout all of 2020. And yeah, that was wild. To see that case study of someone who basically had no theory of mind for what it would be like to not be like that, to then actually get stable sleep and wake was crazy. It was a really big change. Yeah, that's it. It really is like you said, the shift work, I mean, I'm so respectful for people that are doing it.

1:30:45And Sachin Pant has actually done work with like firefighters and stuff and shown that if the shift workers do time restricted feeding and eating, like if they're doing that while they're doing their shift work, they actually do have better, at least like metabolic outcomes and stuff, like, or not by outcomes, but biomarkers. So there is somewhat, so it helps because, they're obviously their body is completely out of cycle and whack, but if they can at least keep that food intake clock on the right path and right clock, It does make a difference. So they're not eating all around the clock basically.

1:31:20Presumably if they were also doing training, if they were exercising, that would help to mitigate. I think the exercise would be the most important thing that they could do. And firefighters, I mean, they do have to be physically fit, right? I mean, I think that's part of like the requirement. So, uh... Five Fighters basically like being a halfway house into the Armed Forces. Like a lot of my friends that are there, that you know, they have PT, they have yard time, they have kit inspections, they have all this sort of stuff. I don't know whether it's the same, I don't think it's the same for people that are accident and emergency nurses and doctors and stuff like that.

1:31:59I don't know if it's the same for the police, I guess if you're part of a SWAT team and stuff that would be very heavily prioritized. But I don't know if the, you know, the classic Bobby on the beat with a big gut and I'm thinking British here. and like one of the silly hats that are British police officers wear. I don't know whether they're put through the same kind of fitness. I suppose their job sometimes is less physically demanding than a firefighter's, but then if you're chasing some scally down an alleyway and chasing after some person that's just committed a crime, you need to be pretty fit for that.

1:32:29But yeah, super, super interesting. When we're talking about cold and heat exposure, do you have something that you've spent an awful lot of time thinking about? But what's the best way to utilize cold and heat routine throughout a week? Like what's just the simplest way to do an evidence -based, cold and heat protocol? I think one of the best ways would be, so most people should be training, right? They should be doing some sort of resistance training or endurance training, vigorous exercise. is doing the heat after that, I think, would be one of the best, because you're extending your workout to some degree.

1:33:11So there's been studies looking at the on the endurance side, like if your intervention studies that have taken people that have done exercise on a stationary bike, or they've done the same exercise in the stationary bike and then done 15 minutes of a hot sauna, like right after that. And with basically no break. With no break, they just go into the sauna after. And then VO2 max was measured. So VO2 max is like your best way to measure cardiovascular stiffness, right? So maximum amount of oxygen you're taking in a maximal, you know, exercise. So the, their VO2 max was better in people that did that exercise, the stationary bike plus the sauna versus just the stationary bike, right?

1:33:50And that is a lot because sauna to some degrees mimicking moderate intensity cardiovascular exercise. You know, it's doing a lot of the same things, a lot of the same physiological responses is happening. So I would say doing the sauna right after the workout, but also there's a new say that came out showing people that did resistance training and then got into a sauna had like better muscle gains. And it just makes your workout more of whatever you did. It makes sure, you know, but I think some of that has to do with the heat shock proteins too. And also, yeah, there's been studies showing that if you increase blood flow, Like if you do resistance training, it used to be like this thing, we're like, oh, don't do any endurance training.

1:34:32Like at the same day that you're doing resistance training, because you're going to blunt your gains or something. I don't remember what it was exactly was called, but that's kind of been put to rest. It's not true. So to, well, I guess there's always extreme. There's always outlier. I should say ways you could do it. But generally speaking, like getting some blood flow to your muscles after you've done training actually improves hypertrophy, right? because you're getting some growth factors and things there and immune cells things that are like playing a role in the hypertrophy. Is there a window post training that you need to get into the heat within?

1:35:06Not necessarily, no. Within the same day? No, I think you should do it. If you, okay, you asked me about the optimal protocol. I would say optimally, it would be after training. It doesn't have to be because also heat plays a role in sleep. So, some people choose to do their heat at night, like a couple hours before they're gonna go to bed. You can go, I actually have been kind of obsessive about this of late and I do both. So I do, again, the sauna after I workout and then I do the jacuzzi at night with my husband, which is another form of heat stress. You're in, you know, 104 degree Fahrenheit water.

1:35:43You can be in there for 20 minutes and get similar responses in terms of biomarkers as a sauna. So I do think if you're only gonna do one, you can kind of choose. Like, do you have a hard time sleeping? Do you want to, or do you want to kind of extend your workout? And now, I don't know that you have to do it. Like, I think there's also been observational data. By the way, the study with the cyclist and the sauna that was an untrained people. So you might go, oh, what about train people? New gains. Yeah. But then there's observational data showing that people that do exercise or people that exercise and sauna.

1:36:16So this is all sorts of people. This is, these are people that are exercising. These aren't newbies, right? the people that do exercise in sauna have a higher VO2 max compared to people that only exercise. So there's evidence I think that that kind of makes it a little stronger that it's not just a newbie gain, right? Like that it's probably something going. And I think it's because it's mimicking cardiovascular exercise. So do you have to do it after a workout? No, you don't have to. But I do think it's I personally like to do it after a workout. It's like I've already got my heart rate up, you know, it's, it's so it's really just like extending, extending my workout something to something.

1:36:52So the two windows that seem to be at least interesting to use would be two hours ish, finishing two hours before bed. I say that, yeah, because some people take longer to cool down. Yeah, I mean, I do. Exactly. So, yeah, two hours like to get out before, you know, like because then you don't want to be like trying to go to sleep, then you'll have the opposite effect right or too hot, you can't fall asleep. and then post workout. To post workout and a couple of hours before sleep. What temperature, how long per week, what else? Yeah, so temperature, duration, frequency, like how many times. So there's all sorts of studies coming out of Finland where Sonna's are ubiquitous and everyone's using one looking at Sonna use and all cause mortality, cardiovascular rate of mortality, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, all those things, right?

1:37:42And what's clear is that there is a dose -dependent effect with frequency and duration in the sauna. So in other words, the more frequent the sauna use, the more robust of the effect. So I'll give you an example. All cosm mortality is 40 % lower in people that use the sauna four to seven times a week. So four times would be minimum, right? Versus people that use it two to three times a week, they have a 24 % lower all cosm mortality, right? So the bare minimum would be two if you want something. This is compared to people who use it one time a week. But if you want the most robust effects, the bare minimum would be four up to seven, right every day.

1:38:20So that would be frequency. Now temperature and duration, most of those studies in Finland, the average temperature in the publications is about 174, 175 degree Fahrenheit. And the duration in that sauna is also important. So if people only stayed in for 11 minutes, they weren't getting a very robust effect. They had to stay in for at least 20 minutes. So 20 minutes at 174 degree Fahrenheit, four times a week, is the recipe for, I would say, the best effects for cardiovascular brain, all -cause mortality? What about if you increase temperature and reduce duration? Yeah, so this question, usually I get at the opposite because people are interested in infrared zonas and infrared zonas go only to like one 45 degree Fahrenheit.

1:39:12They kind of heat you up a little differently. The ambient air is not as high. It's like, you know, electrons that are like moving your molecules in your body up. But until in that case, you would want to stay in a much longer duration. And that's what's used in like Ashley Mason study. But the opposite, so like, Like if you're going to, you know, what, 180 or how hot are we talking about? Mine was 230 today. Okay, so, um, heat is, so heat is a stress risk. It's a stress on the body, right? And you have this stress response to the heat, right? So your body makes heat shock proteins, for example.

1:39:48You get dark thoughts. You get dark thoughts, yeah, exactly. And then, and then you get out and you feel great. But, um, you also get chatty in there. So it's important to keep in mind that you don't want to go too extreme on heat because it is a stress. Just like you don't want to exercise all day, like you need recovery, right? You don't want to fast forever, like you need food. These things are stressed. They're stressors on the body and our body has a stress response to them. So this is kind of like hormesis. We talk about hormesis a lot, right? Heat is the same thing. heat can permeabilize the blood brain barrier when you start to go to extreme temperature.

1:40:31I'm not melting my brain. I'm concerned that that two -thirty is too high. So there was one study that came that was published, it was kind of recent -ish and it wasn't from Dr. Yari Lalkinins group who was the main researcher who does a lot of studies out of Finland looking at, you know, sauna use and dementia, for example, he found sauna use associated with like a 66 % reduction in Alzheimer's disease in dementia if they're using it four to seven times a week. Well another study came out and this was in, gosh, it was quite a few. I don't know, it was two or five thousand adults. It was a lot.

1:41:08Or maybe it was more actually. Well anyways, they looked at temperature and they looked at duration and they looked at Alzheimer's disease risk. and it was clear that if you use the sauna, you had a lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. But there was a subset of group when people were using it at 200 degrees Fahrenheit or more. That had the opposite effect. Well, so you shaped COVID to temperature. I think so. I don't talk about, I don't want people to get freaked out because it's like, but not everyone's doing 200. I think there's the extreme, there's always this extreme push where I'm gonna go hard.

1:41:44And if you're that personality type, You're going to be that person that goes all the way because that's what you do on everything you do. On the dial up, yeah, yeah. So I do think with sauna though, it's important to keep in mind that it is a pretty strong stress on the body, particularly if you're not head out, right? But if you're getting your head in there and warming it up to 230 degrees. Yeah. This plunge thing is really, really intense. I mean, there's a couple of things when you think about like, where's the thermometer actually located? Right. Is it the highest point? It's at the top, unless you're stood on your tiptoes on the bench, you're not actually going to get your head to that point.

1:42:19The difference between this one that I've got is two benches and the lower benches, way cooler. Half is hard as sitting on the upper bench, and the upper bench isn't at the all the way at the top. If you're at the other side to where the rock heater thing is, if you're over there, then it's easier and if you're at the front, then it's a bit hard. You can kind of mitigate within that, I suppose. was one consideration, like four times a week can be quite intrusive for somebody to get that heat exposure, especially if they don't, even if you do have a sauna at home, it's still pretty intrusive, like I'm going to go back and forth to the thing and preheat it and all the rest of the stuff.

1:42:54Is there a, or if you were to do 20 minutes in at 180, 190, something like that to make sure that it's 174, and then take a little break and then go back in, is that a way that you could maybe get away with doing three times a week or two times a week and still try and capture some of those really good gains. I don't know that that data is there to make that statement, but I do know that there have been studies looking at going repeatedly and taking a few minutes break and going back into the sauna and what is clear is that you do get big major boost in growth hormone. Is this a thing that 16 X increased?

1:43:31Yes. Tell us that. Yes, so what they were doing is they were going, so they're going, I don't remember how many times, but it was quite full times 30 minutes break. Yeah, with break something like that. Yeah, so it's been years since I've talked about that study, but yeah, so that could give 16 -fold increase in growth hormone, which it's transient. It doesn't last forever, but also growth hormones involved with sleep and deep sleep. It's another reason why doing that, like timing your sauna around bedtime could be highly beneficial for a lot of people. like a lot of people really do benefit. So I personally, like I said, I kinda do both.

1:44:08I do the hot tub, which is 104 degrees, and I'm in there for like 30 minutes. But the difference being that it's 144 degrees of liquid touching your skin. Exactly, you know. And there's been studies that I've looked at. So there's heat shock proteins that are activated in the sauna, and they're also activated in the hot tub, and brain -driven or trophic factor, which is from exercise, also is activated when you get in the hot tub. So, and the sauna. So it's like, when you start to see the biomarkers that are similar between the different heat modalities, you kind of go, well, at the end of the day, is your heart rate going up in the hot tub?

1:44:42Yes, it's like, I've done the sauna for like, you're just, you're just, you're just, I like, I know how I feel. I feel the exact same way in the sauna. I like the sauna better because I'm less likely to cheat. Like, I will cheat in the hot tub. I will get my arms out. Like, you have to have your shoulders down for 20 minutes. So you have to really like. I saw you on Twitter get into a, you got in trouble with big steam, like the steam room versus sauna versus jacuzzi thing. I think there's a lot of people that are like evangelists for the sauna being the only way to get hot. And I think that you'd mentioned there's quite a lot of different ways that you can get hot.

1:45:18There's a lot of different ways you can get hot. And I think, I mean, I've done a lot of steam showers again. You're getting your heart rate up. you're getting, you're increasing your cardiac output, you're getting blood flow increases, you're sweating. Like all these things are happening. It's the heat shock response. You're, you know, there's a lot of ways, what is it that a lot of rooms do? A lot of roads to roam, right? I mean, it's not. Woulda, if somebody doesn't have access to, easy access to a sauna or it doesn't have one in the house, what about just running a hot bath and then continuing to like, I mean, how much is a thermometer that you put in the bath?

1:45:56It's probably $5, maybe $10 or something. Throw that in, get it at what temperature and stay in for 20 minutes? Exactly. I do this a lot when I'm traveling, by the way. Like I do the... The portable sauna. I do, I do it. But so what I like to recommend is like, so go and get one of those pool thermometers, right? I mean, they're like you said, they're like anywhere between five to 15 dollars. Little floaty ones. Little floaty ones. You put that in your bathtub and you get it up to 104, set your timer for 20 minutes, make sure your shoulders are down, like submerged below. And if the temperature starts to go down, just add some more hot water.

1:46:32And that's it, most people have a bathtub. And so I like that it can be accessible because that's another thing I get a lot of, oh well, I don't have a sauna. I have a liqueur position. Yeah, you know, and yeah, there's a lot of gyms, but this isn't Finland, like we're, you know, everyone has a sauna, you know, so. So I do realize that there's a limitation on the sonas and you might go well then why do I need it? You know like I said so there's the VO2 max, you know that you're getting you're getting even better than just exercise Now there's people out there that are endurance athletes like they're I don't know do they need it like for VO2 max?

1:47:07Probably not but it also helps with the disused atrophy muscle atrophy and those studies have been done So they've done studies where they do like this you they immobilize a limb and people for like a period of weeks and they did local heating in one study, but there's been a lot of animal studies doing sort of whole body heating. And it'll prevent disuse atrophy by like 40%. I snapped my Achilles three years ago, full detachment, plane cricket, and it was 13 days from when that happened until when I got my surgery. So I'm waiting for, I wanted a very particular surgeon in the UK to come and do it.

1:47:46One of the guys that had been highly recommended it to me, which meant I had to wait a little bit longer. 13 days of not stepping on my right leg and it was gone. It was so alarming to look down and see, especially because you've got the other leg to fucking compare it to. So you're laid in the bath or whatever, looking down and thinking, like, this is wild. It's so crazy. And obviously you see people that are in wheelchairs who maybe don't use their lower limbs all that much and they've got very thin legs. And yeah, it was what it was crazy to see that in 13 days. Well, you were young when this happened.

1:48:23And so you can recover. You can bounce back quite quickly. But people that are older, like they go and they get influenza and they're like convolessing for like weeks, right? They're not moving. They're not using their muscles. They can't recover. Like they'll never get back to that pre -stay. And this is where I think the heat comes in and also omega -3s. So I know it's like - Dino omega -3s. It's like, I can't, like, like, there's like, there's like a few low -hanging fruit, right? This episode is brought to you by omega -3s. But it's been shown to cut disuse atrophy by like 50%. So, and this, but this is something that's not gonna happen, like, you have to preload it.

1:49:03So you have to, the omega -3s accumulate in the muscle membranes and it takes about four weeks for that to happen. So you have to plan ahead or just be the person that's already taking him that way it's already there, right? And so then you're ready. Talk to me about cold. We've got hot cold exposure. Yeah, so deliberate cold exposure is another type of hormotic stress. And there's some overlap, but there's different. Like you can increase heat shock proteins from cold exposure. Heat shock, these stress response pathways, there's a lot of overlap where you can like, because it's just it's an adaptation, right?

1:49:41We were meant to move. We were meant to be hot. We were meant to be cold. We were meant to get plant phytochemicals. Our bodies respond and we activate all these really beneficial genetic pathways. They all overlap. Some do it better than others. HCI proteins are more robustly activated by heat, but cold also activates them. Just an interesting thing to think about. Cold exposure, one of the most robust physiological responses to cold exposure would be norup and effort release. And we were talking earlier about mood and like neurotransmitter optimization things to do like behaviors you can engage in and timing of those behaviors around things that are perhaps going to require a better mood or more motivation or something like that, right?

1:50:26So, North and Eiffron does play a role in motivation and mood and those things and like I gotten the cold shower before I came here and I usually do that before like a talk or you know something like that as well. But so norepinephrine release is one of the most consistent physiological responses. You can get that from 20 seconds at like 40 degree Fahrenheit water or two minutes, excuse me, two minutes at 49 or 50 degree Fahrenheit water will release norepinephrine, norepinephrine twofold over baseline. Or you can be crazy in staying in like 50 degree water for an hour or who does that? And you'll get a fivefold increase.

1:51:06So why would you want no more up and effort? Well, it is a neurotransmitter. It does play a role in focus, attention. It regulates mood. It helps with anxiety, all those things are important. So it's kind of, I personally like to time it around things like cold exposure. Also sort of benefits with respect to mitochondrial biogenesis. You can get in cold plunge and stay in there for 15 minutes and increase mitochondrial biogenesis markers and muscle tissue. So that's the growth of new mitochondria. In your muscle tissue, that's great. Mitochondria are producing more energy, so it's associated with less muscle atrophy.

1:51:42It's associated, but you can get that from a high -intensity workout too. So you don't have to necessarily do the cold. When should you do the cold? So I can tell you when not to do it, when not to do it would be after a strength training or resistance training workout. How long through endo? So that's the good question. So I've come up with my own sort of window on this and I can tell you the rationale behind that. But so here's the thing, there's been a couple of studies and it's actually not all consistent. The first study that came out that was like the big, made the big deal. It was like, I don't know, 2015 or so when it came out or something like that.

1:52:18And the study did, it was a cold ice bath and it was five minutes after a strength training workout. where the men went in and put their leg or something like that in the ice bath for 15 minutes. And this was right after the workout, okay? Or the depressive recovery where they were actually on a stationary bike. So the control group wasn't just sitting around, they were actually, in my opinion, increasing hypertrophy by movement, okay. So that's clear. I think that's a flaw of this study. And so the people that did the ice bath right after their resistance training work at Howard Still had hypertrophy, but they had less than the control group.

1:52:56And so that was like, oh, it's blunting gains. And so I was like back then I was trying to dive into it. Legs or legs? I don't remember. Right. I was just wondering because it would be interesting if they compared the leg. Yeah, other leg. Yeah. I don't remember. It's been so long since I've read that study. But so when you're doing exercise, when you're doing resistance training, you're obviously causing an inflammatory response, right? That's part of the stress. And there's a counter to that. There's a very potent anti -inflammatory response. And with the resistance training, you're actually damaging muscle, right?

1:53:32You're damaging the muscle. It's like a mechanical force activating all sorts of pathways. Well, it turns out that immune cells have to get to that muscle and that plays a role in hypertrophy. But like this whole response, if you look at like some of the cytokines and IGF1 that's involved in signaling and all that. It happens like it peaks like an hour after resistant training. And then after that it kind of goes back down. And so the question is when you're getting in the cold you're causing basal restriction. So noruponephron I mentioned is a neurotransmitter. It's also a hormone. It's made in the periphery as well.

1:54:07And it's involved in basal constriction, which is the opposite of what he does, basal dilation. And so when you're basal constricting, you're cutting off the roads to get to your muscle, right? Like the growth factors, the immune cells, all those things can't get there, right? You're stopping that. I think this is what's happening. And so, you know, it's like, well, what if I just wait like an hour or two, would I be safe possibly, or maybe just, you know, do it at a few hours, like five hours? What's the rule you use, five? So I personally don't do as much cold exposure as I should do because I talk about it.

1:54:44I do it a lot more in the summer when it's hot. But when I do do it, most of the time it's before something, I know it's ridiculous, but it's the truth. Or I'll do it in the morning. So I personally don't like to time it right after my heat exposure, mostly because blood pressure changes for me that are just freaky that I don't like. It's wild. Doing contrast therapy is very, very weird. It is. Yeah. I mean, some people like that, right? I enjoy it, but it's like a dizzy feeling. It's a dizzy and I've had like even more extreme where it was like vertigo and I had like it was. I've had to sit on the side and just.

1:55:24Yeah, exactly. Stay at the floor and hope that it goes away. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not too fond of that feeling. So I like to separate them, you know, a little bit. But although I think if I wait like five to ten minutes after I get out of the sauna and just kind of at room temperature, just chill out for a minute, let my heart rate come down, then I get in the cold, I don't have that response. So like waiting a little bit. So I think the rule of thumb for cold exposure is I think that neurotransmitter optimization, like when do you want to use it to get that norup and effort and hit? Because it does help with focus and tension.

1:55:58It helps with mood, anxiety. And so like, you know, if you want to like if you wake up in the morning first thing and do it, that's a great way to start the day I like to wake up and get on my peloton or do my workout But also just timing it around things like I said I did a cold char before I came here From at home. I'll get into the cold plunge before something that you know is gonna cause me more anxiety or just I need more focus and attention So you mentioned 20 seconds at 40 degrees is enough for the norrapin effron But what about if we're looking for the full cascade? We're gonna capture as much as we can most that is realistic for people to do how long, how frequently, how cold per week.

1:56:40So we talked about the Norepinephrine and we talked a little bit about mitochondrial biogenesis, the growth of new mitochondria in skeletal muscle and that was 15 minutes at 50 degrees, which if you can get to the three minute, three and a half minute mark at 50 degrees, you can get to 50. The rest of it's fine. Yeah, but there's another benefit we didn't talk about which is actually making more mitochondria on your adipose tissue. And that's an adaptation that is a response to cold exposure because when you have more mitochondria in your fat, you're basically making, it's basically you're making more energy, burn more energy, but you also release heat as a byproduct.

1:57:15And so it's an adaptation. The more you use the cold, the it's called browning of fat. And the reason for that is because when you look at a fat droplet under a microscope and there's more mitochondria and it looks brown compared to white. So that's also something that happens and most of the studies looking at browning of fat and humans have not been done in getting into cold water. They've been done in like humans walking around at 50 degree Fahrenheit or putting on a cold suit. That's 50 degree Fahrenheit. I know it's like one of those things you like walk around with the air. Yeah. And and so again for those I mean it's it's it's anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour you you start to get that.

1:57:55So 15 minutes, I think is a good marker for a session, for the whole shebang, right? Like not just the norapennepheren, but the mitochondrial benefits, if you're also looking for browning of the fat and the muscle. At what temperature? And so that would be like 50 degrees, 49 degrees Fahrenheit. If you're, if you can, and which is, I mean, that's cold. Some people go, that's pretty miserable. I mean, what used to, again, And it's so funny, like the bro version of me and my friends that do this in Austin, if we go to Kuyya where I've said that you should go if you're coming through, it's two, twenty in the sauna, it's 37 degrees in the ice bath and we're doing twenty and three, three times, like, but it seems like dialing that back in terms of intensity and increasing it in terms of frequency and duration is where we're actually going to maybe not not even capture more gains, but reduce some of the negative effects of us going health all other on.

1:59:00Yeah, I mean, you're going to think about like, you know, the fact that you are stressing your body, right? Like, you want the stress to be good and great enough and robust enough, but you don't like, there's a window, right? Like, you don't want to like go outside that window where it's like, damage. Yeah, but we're all one rep max piled on everything. So all of the bros that go and do it go well look like when I went into the gym going to failure or doing drop sets or You know pushing myself until I want to throw up That worked that has to be the universal rule for all modalities of stimulus therefore I'll just do the so on it till I like want to pass out and they'll crawl out and that's got to be the best How long are you do you stay in there 230?

1:59:43And you get down do you keep going down? So each step up and down. It depends on whether my house mates there and we also watch stuff, so we'll put a speaker in there and watch a little bit of an interview or YouTube or whatever. Usually about 15 to 20 minutes is my real upper bound for that 2 .31. That's a lot for that hot. It was rough. It burns the inside of your nose. Like if you try and breathe in through your nose, it hurts my nostrils to do that. Anyway, 15 minutes, 50 degrees, not done within five hours of hypertrophy training. Let's just say it to be safe. Right. Also probably not done within a couple of hours of going to sleep because that's maybe going to cause some complications when it comes to getting your body cold temperature right?

2:00:28You talking about cold? Yes. No, I think it can help with sleep too, actually. Okay, so both hot and cold can... Both hot and cold can help with sleep. Because if you go hot, then it's going to bounce back and pull you into cold. Yeah, your body does go like if you notice when you get out of the sauna like doesn't take it I don't know how it varies on each person, but after a little bit of time all of a sudden you're really cold Right, you're like yeah, so I don't know that it you know I think people even do like hot and I've done this hot and cold and it does really help with seapetring both as well Okay, but it's also kind of a exhausting thing with your with your body which makes sense right?

2:01:05I went to this place in Toronto called other ship. You heard of this? It sounds yes, yeah, yeah. So they're called similar to Kuyya in Austin. Other ship do classes for heat and cold. So they've got this 90 person sauna, which is like a colosseum. And it's this raked sort of seating and benches. And it's huge. This sauna thing at the front looks like a massive barbecue grill for the biggest party that you've ever seen. And then they have coaches that guide you through the cold exposure as well. So there's kind of like PTs stood at the end of each of the cold tubs. and they say, what do you want me to get out of the session today?

2:01:41And they'll take you through different modalities. One of the ones that they did with us, which I really loved, was 30 seconds in, 30 seconds out, three rounds of the cold. And while you were in there, you were moving both arms and legs and doing a little bit of toning, like vocal, like toning stuff. And that was wild. I'd never done that before. We tend to just get in, sit in for two to three minutes, and get out, go back in the sauna. But that was really interesting. The effect of doing that was pretty cool. Yeah, doing a workout in there, because again, you're, it's like making your workout harder, right?

2:02:18It's like, because they're both sort of, to some degree doing, like, at least physiological response is kind of similar with respect to cardiovascular exercise. Well, there's also something about, if you don't have an agitator in the cold tub, everyone's done this. Everyone knows that you get in and you sit and you're like, oh, I'm just gonna wait for the film of warm water to kind of get around me. and if I really, really don't move, it'll be less painful. But doing this is just, it's so miserable. It's like so miserable. Frequency, 15 minutes, 50 degrees. How often? I don't know that there's an established frequency like there is with the sauna, right?

2:02:51This isn't, like there's not large observational studies looking at people that are cold plengy, but I will tell you, so I talked to Dr. Locke and about this, I said, what percentage of people in Finland, because the sauna studies are coming out of them? Yeah, like, are doing, are, because a lot of people will just, they'll do, they have like these public sound as it's called. And the community will get in there and then they go in like in the winter time, they just go into the Baltic and jump in and it's cold. And I've been there. I've experienced it. I've seen it. So he was saying about 10 % of people, I was actually thought it was going to be more than that.

2:03:27But it's not about 10 % of people are doing, are going, doing contrast therapy. So they're going from hot to cold. So then you go, oh, well, because I wanted to know, I was like, are some of these benefits like from the contrast and there's not a lot of research on it, you know? So the question is, like, I don't think that you can give a frequency like with absolute confidence. Four to seven times per week. Exactly. Yeah, so it's more of a, okay, well, are you looking for these browning of fat? Is that because it'll go away when you stop doing it. So you have to keep it up. And the more you do it, it is kind of dose dependent.

2:04:01So what are you trying to? I told you that I don't do enough cold exposure once it's the summer. What would you try and do? Yeah, I mean, so I feel great. I feel great this morning when I was doing my cold shower, right? Like I like to use it for that like mood booster. Cute, so it's an acute performance enhancer that neurotransmitter optimization thing. That's why I like to use it. And every time I do it, I'm like, why don't I do this more? I know why because I'm doing the hit and the muscles and then I'm the mom and like a podcast and that, you know, so it's like that's, it's almost like, I think it's almost easier to just, at least if it's winter to just get into the cold shower because it's like less of like something about the cold plunge, you gotta like lift the lid.

2:04:44Lift the lid, you gotta lift the lid, you gotta think about it, you're like, oh, it's cold plunge and I gotta get past that three, three and a half minute mark where, you know, you're burning and then you're not burning. So, um, I think, I think that I just, like, would like to start using it on a more of a daily basis for the way it makes me feel. And that's why I like it mostly. It seems to me based on what you're saying here that although there is definitely a place for cold exposure and deliberate cold exposure has some effect that you don't capture with the sauna, if you were to make a pie chart of what's happening with heat and cold, a lot of it is coming from heat and only a little bit of it is coming from cold.

2:05:20Yeah, when we're talking about a lot of these health outcomes with respect to cardiovascular you have ascar disease and dementia and all -cause mortality. All it is, it's all, but you know, again, the hot is mimicking modern intensity exercise. So yeah, that makes sense. The cold, I really just, it all comes back again to that, it makes you feel so good. You're getting that nowhere but never. It does brown your fat and like, look, browning a fat is a therapeutic target for many researchers that have been researching this now and for, you know, over a decade where it's being looked at to help as a treatment for type 2 diabetes because you do improve metabolic health like from browning effect.

2:05:58But compare that to like exercise, diet, which you're eating, I don't know that it matters. I don't know that the cold even compares. Like I don't even know that we should be talking about the metabolic benefits of it when you're when there's like so much more bang for your buck from that sprinkling on the top of the icing on the top of the cake. Yeah, exactly. And it's like, okay, I'm making more mitochondria in my muscles, but I want to be doing hit and vigorous exercise for all the other benefits. And guess what? I get mitochondrial biogenesis from that, like pretty robustly. Is that with the browning of the fat?

2:06:30Is that wrists in and clavicle in? Is that one of the cues that I've heard about this? Have you seen this stuff? No, I don't know. That's interesting. So there'll be people screaming at us in the comments. But when I was other ship, one I've been to Kooja, one I've been with Heberman. There's something to do with the wrist area kind of up to the bottom of the palm and something about the clavicle as well, being an area which is particularly susceptible to benefiting from cold exposure for this brown adipose tissue thing. I heard this story that sounded true, which was during World War II, the Germans were trying to work out why their fighter pilots were dying so quickly when they were ejecting over the British Channel, let's say that they'd run out of fuel or they'd been shot down or that the engine had failed for some reason or another and the pilots were ejecting and they were finding them dying very shortly after the plane had gone down.

2:07:31So they had a lot of prisoners in one form or another that they were able to do these tests on and what they found was that if the life jackets lifted the clavicle up out of the water, the survival time went through the roof. So there's something very important about this area of the body being under the water. And that is the converse reason, apparently, which is why your clavicle should be under when you're doing deliberate cold exposure. That's interesting. I know there's a, you know, when you're, when you get into cold water, particularly if you're not adapted, like you're not deliberately doing it, there's a cold chalk response, right?

2:08:10And so I wonder, you know, and some of that plays a role in like people actually having, you know, dying from, from getting in really cold water. I don't, I wonder if there's a connection there between the cold chalk response and... Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because less of them's under the water. When it comes to exercise, what is your framework for designing an exercise routine? Well, so for me, I personally get very motivated when I understand how things work and look at data and see outcomes and I think, okay, well, I need to get my routine around this, whatever is the data. And so I have been pretty convinced that I've always been like a runner.

2:08:52I've always been endurance, more of an endurance jockey. I'm not an athlete. I've done one marathon of my entire life. I'm not out there clocking those kinds of miles, but I do enjoy going for runs and I enjoy that sort of endurance exercise. So for me, that was always what I might go to, less focusing on resistance training, as we've talked about, hugely important for muscle mass. But the question is, well, how hard do I need to go on the endurance? So does it need to be more of a vigorous exercise workout or moderate intensity, lower intensity, is anything better than nothing? Yes. I think at the end of the day, like the most important thing is habit.

2:09:34Like what are you going to consistently do? Right? Like you're going to consistently do some sort of physical activity and it needs to be that. Like whatever it is that you will do. Otherwise, like you can talk about what's the best, but if you won't do it, it doesn't matter, right? So I try to get a lot of vigorous intensity exercise in, so that would be 80 % max heart rate. And the reason for that is because I've been pretty convinced that if you are not an athlete doing more than 10 hours a week or 10 or more, right, of, you know, endurance training. So if you're not that person, I think that it's more beneficial, the data suggests it's more beneficial to engage the majority of the time in more vigorous intensity exercise versus what's zone two training, right?

2:10:25So like a lower intensity or I guess it's more moderate intensity, the talk test kind of exercise right where you're breathy, but you can still have a conversation, which I do like doing those as well, particularly when I'm having a conversation with someone on a run. It's nice. I enjoy it. But I do also go harder. I do a lot of high intensity interval training and I think that there's evidence for that. If you are going harder and you're getting that heart rate up to 80 % max heart rate, you're increasing that lactate and we've talked about this. That in itself is beneficial. It's beneficial for the brain and I think that's one reason I'm particularly motivated because I'm very interested in brain health.

2:11:08So lactate's been shown, lactate is consumed by the brain during physical activity. This has been shown in humans and it fuels basically, the normal function while you're exercising. So your brain is working harder while you're exercising just like your heart and your muscles. Your brain is working harder too. And lactate is feeling that and you're basically increasing nor epinephrine and serotonin from that lactate. So lactate itself is actually, it can be used as an energy source, a very utilized energy source, much like beta hydroxybutyrate, which is a ketone body that you make when you're either fasting or on a ketogenic diet.

2:11:43It's very similar. And so lactate increases is those neurotransmitters. It also increases that brain drive neurotrophic factor, which is beneficial for growing new neurons. It's beneficial for neuroplasticity, for basically making you feel better, making you smarter, staving off neurodegenerative disease. There's, you want BDNF, like that's what you want. And so, and again, this is all evidence -based studies that have been shown in human, showing that the higher intensity, the more intense the work at, the more vigorous, the more lactate and lactate is signaling to increase that. It's the way that your muscles communicate with other organs.

2:12:15It's increasing lactate and lactate is going to other, it's being shuttle to other organs and it's signaling to them to do these beneficial things. It's called the lactate shuttle. It's also being shuttle back into your muscle and doing things like increasing glucose update. We talked about that as well. The lactate itself is only going to come when you're cranking up the intensity. When you're working hard enough that you can't get enough oxygen to your muscles to basically produce energy. So that's sort of the I'm actually trying to make more lactate. And the lactate increase doesn't last long.

2:12:50It's pretty transient, like 20 minutes or so. You'll be back to your baseline after a pretty intense workout. So there's data not only showing that it's beneficial for the brain and be brain -dravine or triphic factor and these neurotransmitters that's talking about, but also lactate itself is used by neurons. So the lactate that's going into your brain, It's transported across the blood -brain bear. It's used by neurons as an energy source. And in fact, our neurons prefer lactate. So our astrocytes, which is a supporting cell in our brain, they make a lot of lactate because they actually are what's called glycolytic.

2:13:25They use glucose without their mitochondria as energy. And they shuttle the lactate out and neurons take it up. And so neurons like to use lactate because they use, they can use lactate as an energy source without using as much energy as they do with glucose. So it takes more energy to use glucose to make energy than it does lactate, that makes sense. It's so funny, you know, even when you were in school, people would learn about their lactate threshold and they'd know that that was the reason that your muscles burn when you're doing cross country running in your 13 years old or whatever. And it's almost like the enemy in some ways.

2:14:00It's the thing that hurts. I don't want it. I don't like that. And now you're telling me that it might actually be super useful. Super. It's definitely the thing that you want. It's hugely beneficial for the brain. Again, it's also beneficial for the blood brain barrier. It's increasing vegeph, which is a growth factor that helps you grow new blood vessels and repair blood vessels at your blood brain barriers so it doesn't break down, which happens with age. It is. I was talking about the neurons using it, there's evidence that when so when your neurons use lactate, they spare glucose. They don't need glucose because they're using it, lactate for energy, right?

2:14:40And what happens is called the glucose sparing effect. And what that means is glucose can be used for other things. And what it's used for is producing, it makes a precursor for glutathione, which is the major antioxidant in the brain. And so there's actually, there's research out there looking at giving people lactate infusions that have TBI. What does that feel like? Well, it's like sodium lactate. So it feels like, you know, saline, but yeah. So people that have a TBI, traumatic brain injury, they have a mass of like injury in their brain, right? And they need glutathione. It's a very potent antioxidant.

2:15:20But their glucose is being used up to make energy. I mean, it's not there's nothing there to make the glutathione. And so there's these studies that have shown that the sodium lactate infusions has a beneficial effect with TBI because it, again, I think this is the mechanism that's happening. One of many is it's helping with the glucose sparing. So glucose is used to make more antioxidant in your brain. So that on top of it's also making BDNF, brain -friotic and naturopic factor. Okay. So I think that there'll be a lot of people listening who fall into one of two camps. Almost everyone listening will be training in some way or another, right?

2:15:52This is an audience of Jack people. But one will skew toward the bodybuilding style training. It'll probably be a three to five day split, like pushpull legs or maybe a body part split or something like that. And those people will likely be trying to hit, you know, the six to ten thousand steps per day. So they'll be focused very much on the resistance training. There'll be another camp of people who are like heavy on the zone too. They'll be the runners, they'll be the cyclists, maybe there'll be some hybrid training people that are in there, but even the hybrid training guys are going to just be doing like either camp on a camp 2.

2:16:28What you're saying is that there is third camp, which is this high intensity vigorous exercise and that that may be the most important one of all. So I think that if we're talking about the camp with Zone 2, and if we're talking about athletes more, I mean these are people that are clocking a lot of miles. Right? Just normal people. Oh, okay. So these are like committed exercises doing maybe, you know, for the two to four hours a week of exercise. They'll do a park run and they'll like, you know, they'll keep on top of that run throughout the week or whatever. Yeah, I think that if that's, so again, going back to like, if that's what they're going to do, running is beneficial.

2:17:05Like, you're also going to get a lot of benefits from just doing Zoom 2, right? Like, if, but, you know, there's, I think that if you can step it up to being a little bit more vigorous, if you can still do that and habitually do it, incorporate some high intensity and well training in there as well, I do think it's very beneficial. And, you know, it's also beneficial for the VO2 max improvements. Like, there's been studies that have been done looking at people that are actually meeting the requirements for aerobic exercise per week. So it's like two and a half hours a week. And even if they're reading those like doing moderate intensity exercise, there's like 40 % of those people will not improve their VO2 max, like they're called non -responders.

2:17:48It's not really know why they don't respond, but it's thought because improvements in your cardio respiratory fitness as measured by VO2 max, it's an adaptation. And in order to have that adaptation, like a stronger stressor will produce a little bit more of a robust adaptation. And so there are studies that have identified like people that don't respond. If they then engage in more high intensity training, they can get those VO2 max improvement. That's 40 % of people that would be doing your zone 2 plus resistance training style stuff that doesn't pick up. I mean, Petra Tier told me that VO2 max is the single most important metric when looking at someone's longevity.

2:18:32How much truth do you think's in that? I think that's absolutely. He's right. I think VO2 max is one of the single. The thing I love about it is that it's something that you can measure. It's a biomarker. I think it's one of the most important things, absolutely. There's some evidence that doing this vigorous exercise is important, but it has to be like a longer interval type of exercise. So at least one minute, that would be the minimum, but better if you can get to four minutes. So there's something called the Norwegian 4x4 protocol. And that's four minutes at the highest intensity that you can maintain for the entire four minutes, followed by three minute recovery of light, light exercise.

2:19:13I mean, you want your heart rate to come down so that you could do it again four times. So the Norwegian... It sounds miserable. Yes. Absolutely miserable. The Norwegian 4x4 and You know there's there was a study and I like I like this is one of the studies that inspired me and this is this was a study out of UT Southwest Dallas and The study took 50 year olds that were Healthy but they were not physically active so they didn't have like type 2 diabetes and all that but they weren't active. There was a detrained. Exactly. They're detrained. And they put them on a pretty intensive training protocol for two years.

2:19:54Okay, two years. It was a two -year intervention. And it was a progressive protocol. So obviously when you have an untrained person, you don't just write out the bat in Norwegian 4x4 day one. No, that's not going to happen. So it took them six months to kind of work up their training, right? Their endurance. And by the time they got to their six -month mark, They were doing about four hours a week of what's called maximal intensity exercise. So this is vigorous. This is... Four hours a week of maximal intensity. Yeah. Wow. So they were doing... So they were basically doing... It's high as you can maintain vigorous intensity workout for 30 minutes, basically.

2:20:40So they're doing these 30 minute workouts. So you're doing like 75 80 % max heart rate for 30 minutes. Okay, so they're doing that eight times a week. Yeah, I mean, so no, they're also doing they're doing other things as well. So they're doing it's not when I say four hours a week, they're exercising for our so they're also doing they were doing four hours of this region. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, they were doing exercise four hours a week. Okay, but they were doing a majority of that was maximal intensity exercise. So a lot of that was doing like 30 minute sessions of this. And I think they were probably doing like one and a half to two hours of that.

2:21:13And then they were also doing some strength training. And then they were doing the Norwegian 4x4. So there was kind of a nice sort of balanced. And then the control group was doing this sort of, I say strength training, but it was more, I guess, body weight, you know, kind of stuff. The control group was doing that. So it was a type of sort of body weight training, but it wasn't high intensity. Like it wasn't like the crossfit kind of stuff that you could do. It was more like a lower stretching kind of stuff, maybe yoga -ish kind of thing. And so after two years, these people like the cardiac structure, so as we age, our heart gets smaller and it gets stiffer.

2:21:53And this happens, it's like part of aging. That results in a lot of things. So cardiovascular disease risk goes up, but also like your exercise performance and capacity goes down. So, after that two years of doing this pretty vigorous intensity exercise protocol, the 50 -year -olds, they reversed their cardiac structure aging by 20 years. So, their hearts were looking more like 30 -year -old hearts versus 50 -year -old hearts. And this is after two years of doing this. And to me, it was so motivating to go, wow, these 50 -year -olds can do this. Like, these were untrained people who don't usually work out.

2:22:30And by the end of this two years, I mean, they were like get an ad it. And so I've kind of stepped up my game a bit. Also, I've got a coach coming and I'm working with two days a week and to do, I'm doing a lot of resistance training, but like kind of interval as well. So I'm getting the high heart rate and that interval training. So funny to see Peter, Tier and yourself kind of converge on this new, not as if it's new, but it was definitely something that I wasn't hearing about four years ago. I wasn't hearing people talk about this. Everything was zone two. It was, you know, like, go slow to go fast or whatever the tagline is.

2:23:09And one of the problems with zone two is that you need quite a high duration, like by design, because, you know, 45 minutes or an hour multiple times per week, which is actually difficult. So lots of benefits of improving VO2 max. what are, take us through the Norwegian 4x4 again, and then what else is in there? If there was a protocol or a number of protocols you were gonna design, here's a program that you can take away today into your gym and do that will help to improve your VO2 max. What would you tell people? I would say the Norwegian 4x4 is by far the best, and you're gonna get the, for the people that are really determined and committed, that would be it.

2:23:50That would be the four minutes of the exercise intensity as hard as you can go and maintain it for the entire four minutes. So obviously - Just dig into that. What do you mean? It's hard as you can go and maintain it. What does that mean? It means you don't want to go all out, like 95 % of your max heart rate, because then you can only last for a minute. And so then you're going to go down. You're going to slow down. So what it means is you want to go, for some people, it might be like 75 % max heart rate. right? Some people might be 80 percent. But you want to go as hard as you can for the four minutes without like really slowing down.

2:24:31So you kind of have to pace yourself a little bit, but you don't want to go too slow, right? Like you definitely can't be talking. Like you should not be able to talk for sure when you're doing it. So it's hard enough that you just absolutely can't talk. But it's not all that. So four minutes. And then three minutes of totally light. Like you're going all the way. This is like, you know, you're like back to like zone one if you want to call it something. If your heart can come down. If your heart can come down. Yeah. And you do that for three minutes because you want to give your, you want to recover so that you can do it again.

2:25:01And it, and you repeat it. It's a four, it's a four time protocol. So you do it once and then repeat it three times or you just call it the four by four. I think that's probably one of the, the best protocols to improve VO2 max. Now, Dr. Martin Gabala, I've had him on my podcast. He's a real expert on these high intensity and well training protocols. He does a lot of research on it at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. And he also says, you know, there's evidence that a one -minute protocol. So like just even doing like an interval, like one -minute interval, and then doing that, like, you know, a few times, also can improve VO2 max.

2:25:37So that's a little easier and also it's easier. Like I like, I do one -minute intervals. I'm trying to now incorporate the 4x4 into my routine, which is coaches help with that. I imagine it's a motivation thing, which is probably one of the biggest hurdles to get over that just if you've got any program in front of you that isn't the Norwegian 4x4 for the day, you go, ah, maybe it's back in biceps. Maybe I'll just go for a little jog. It's like Maniana, Maniana, Maniana. Yeah, it is. But again, like I said, you do have to do you try to make it consistent. So Frequency per week. Well, the Norwegian 4x4 would be like one time a week.

2:26:18Oh, okay. And that's that's the hard day. That's less. That's the hard day. It is. Okay. Yeah. Is there any benefit to going twice per week? Probably. Yeah. But it's been so much better. But these 50 year olds. Yeah, these 50 year olds did it one time a week for two years and they reversed their cardiac structure aging by 20 years. Of course, they were also doing other vigorous intensity exercise. It wasn't the torturous Norwegian 4x4. If Norwegian 4x4 is gold standard at the moment for improving VO2 max, what would be some examples of other vigorous exercise workouts? What else is in that bucket?

2:27:02Well, people can do what they enjoy doing. So you can go for a run like I often and go for a run and I'm doing 75, 80 % my max heart rate. Usually it's like a 20 minute run that I do that. So like is intense as you can maintain for 20 minutes. That's what you wanna do. You wanna kinda get that. You get a feeling for that. So if you like runs because there's a lot of benefits to running your own nature, I guess some people do it on treadmill. I'm not so big on treadmill. It's like I'll do them like when I go to a gym or something traveling, but I like running out in nature. I think there's just, there's lots of benefits to doing that.

2:27:38Some people like to get on their bike and cycle. So like you can just go on your bike and do a 20 to 30 minute, 75, 80 % max heart rate cycle, right? So what we're aiming for here is 75 to 80 % max heart rate for around about 20 minute exposure. You can or you can do, you could do like a high intensity interval training. So, so high intensity interval training would be, you're going to, you're going to go more than 80, 80 % right? you might go, you're gonna do like more of like a sub maximal, perhaps, perhaps even a maximal interval so you can go up to 90, 95 % max heart rate. So that would be, I mean, obviously you can only maintain that for like so long, right?

2:28:17Some people might be 30 second pushes or like a tabata style thing. I do a lot of tabatas as well. Oftentimes, I like to do something every day, most days of the week and it's funny, I kind of adopted this routine when I was kind of I'm trying to do a little bit like Joe Robyn's Sober October, but it was like every day October, I was trying to work out every day. And I noticed, I was like, I could do this. I'm doing it for like one month. And I don't, it wasn't going as hard as like the, this guy's doing the Sober October, they were like competition. It was like they were just, but like if you do something every day, so sometimes I'll do like a 10 minute Tabata where I get on there and I just go hard for 10 minutes.

2:28:58It's 20, you know, it's, Most of the time I'll do a 45 second on 15 second off. So it's a 3 to 1 ratio. I really like that one, but sometimes I'll do 20 second on 10 take it off. So it's like, I do both. But like even just 10 minutes. Again, I time it around like I got, I'm gonna go do work. I want to feel motivated. I want to feel better. I want to be more focused on all my game. And I just get on there for the bike for 10 minutes and do it. You know, there's studies out there, these sort of exercise snacks. Now 10 minutes is longer than an exercise snack. But there's studies out there where people are wearing these like wearable devices, right?

2:29:33And so you can track their heart rate and you can track how how the heart rate's going up And so there's a large large studies. They're called the vigorous intensity lifestyle activity and Most people are taking advantage of everyday life like they have stairs every day to work They sprint up them. They don't walk up them. They sprint. They get their heart rate up to like 75 % max heart rate 80 % max heart rate They're getting intense. And people that do this anywhere between one to three minutes a day, I mean, these guys have like a 50 % lower cancer -related mortality, cardiovascular -related mortality.

2:30:09And this was even true for people that identified themselves as non -exercisers. So they aren't, these are people that are not going to the gym or doing other like tennis or whatever. They don't have leisure time, physical activity. So the benefits were also in people that identified as non -exercisers. So my point is that the vigorous intensity, these like even short bursts of it just consistently like every day a little bit like they do add up. There's additive effects and they make a difference. So that's also I think really something that's very encouraging because some people, oh I gotta go and work out for 30 minutes.

2:30:43It's like you need that motivation right? Like some people don't have that motivation and so it's a lot easier to just get up and do something for two minutes. It's hard, but you can do it and you can do it at your house. What, apart from running up and done stairs, what are some other ways that people can incorporate exercise snacks to take advantage of this? Bodyweight squats are a great one. So you're just doing your squats and you do it for a minute and then rest for whatever 15 seconds and then do another minute. I mean, those are hard and they get your heart rate up. So you can do that for like three minutes.

2:31:18That's a really good one and then you're going to be really sore if you're not used to it. but then there's the high knees. So you do high knees. I mean, you could do chair squats, you could do plank, the, the, the, burpees, those burpees. So you do like the plank thing and then you come up and jump. And like those are all, I think really great examples of just like easy ways to do exercise snacks, like even at your desk. And just even breaking up, we're talking about improving cognition, improving mood, breaking up your work day with those. Like it makes a difference on your mood, on your cognition, like it helps.

2:31:52You're getting blood flow immediately to your brain. So, yeah, you were talking, you were telling me about the need for people to break up the sedentary time that there's some very specific risks that people can encounter if they're too sedentary for too long to frequently. What's happening there? Yeah, it's interesting. So, I never identified myself as sedentary because I've always done something, like running or jumping rope or something, like going to the gym, something that we're physically active. So it's like, oh, I'm in the physically active group. I'm not sedentary. Well, it turns out being sedentary is like what we've been for the past couple of hours.

2:32:29We've been sitting here. That is sedentary. So even when you're even if you go to the gym or you go for runs, when you are sitting at your desk for a period of hours, you are sedentary. And sedentary, being sedentary itself is an independent risk factor for disease like cancer. So now do I think the marathon runner that also has a, you know, desk job where they sit at their desk for eight hours is going to come down with cancer probably not because they're really putting a lot of effort in and they're physically active. But I certainly am not the athlete and I am a committed exerciseer, right?

2:33:09So I'm putting in anywhere between two to five hours of exercise in a week, depending on the week. So for me, I spent a lot of time sitting. I spent a lot of time sitting. And so that, to me, was like a big thing. Oh, that's an independent risk factor for breast cancer, which a woman's breast cancer risk and just lifetime risk is one in eight. It's incredibly high. And of course there's lifestyle factors that can sort of increase or decrease that. And just sedentaryism is a independent risk factor for that. So again, it's really, and so easy. So I have started incorporating exercise snacks. I'll get up and I'll start doing some body weight squats.

2:33:51I think that's my go -to. I also like doing burpees. I've been doing some burpees and high knees. I'll do every hour. I think there are a couple of hours. I've also been starting to time them around my meals. So that's another thing. I think being aware of the post -pranial glucose response and how it affects my cognitive function, my mood, and also just knowing that it's healthier. And it's so easy to do. Like just do like two or three minutes of... Pre -food? You can do it pre -your -post -food both. Trying to do burpees post -food might be difficult. You can do it up to like an hour after. Right, okay.

2:34:29So one of the things that Dr. Stumigel, number one back pain specialist on the planet taught me about forever ago and then Mark Bell also popularized this 10 minute walk, 50 minute walk post eating because insulin sensitivity because of helping to read just glucose levels within the blood. Also the muscles of the hips and the arms cross across the stomachs actually helps with digestion of food a little bit as well. Like if you had a really big meal and all you want to do is lie down, actually probably one of the best things that you can do to make yourself feel better is maybe go for a walk. What would you say here?

2:35:07We've got the post -meal walking crowd and the post -meal burpees crowd. Like, is there something that you're missing from one of those? Are you happy with either? Well, I don't know about the whole arms movement, aiding and digestion thing, all that. I do know that the more vigorous intensity when you're actually going to start feeling that burn, right? When you start to get up to that, okay, I'm making some lactate. That's what's actually increasing the transporters, glucose transporters, they're called glute four. They're in your muscle and they have to like move their way up to the top and lactate is what signals them to do that.

2:35:43So when I'm just thinking about the glucose and improving blood glucose levels, vigorous is better. You're actually chasing that burn. Chasing the burn. And there's been studies that have compared walkers to interval walkers. So these are people that are just walking versus the walk. Pick up the pace while they're walking, walk slower, pick up the pace while they're walking. Now they're not running, but they're just interval walking. And it's been shown that interval walking improves a variety of metabolic parameters more than just walking. And again, it makes sense because when you're picking up the pace, you're working harder, you're making lactate, and that's one of the big signals for these glucose transporers to come up to the top of the muscle and let the glucose in.

2:36:29So I do think from mechanistic understanding that and also data showing walking versus interval walking. Interval walking is better. When you can pick up the pace, when you can go a little bit more intense, it's better. All right, what about becoming muscleed for longevity? So that's what I'm working on. You probably don't... I'm not all jacked up, but that's been my new goal. particularly of late, but for the past year, I've become more aware of it. I've spent more time focusing on it. I now have a coach who's great and coming to work with me to focus on that because I feel, I'll tell you when it really hit me.

2:37:07I had someone on the podcast, Dr. Mark Madson, and I have admired his work for years. He's like the intermittent fasting king. I've known him as research since he was in my 20s. He's also done a lot of work on Hormesis, And I've just, I followed his work for so much of my scientific career. So it was very cool to have him on the podcast and talk to him. And we were talking all about everything under the sun with respect to fasting and hormises. And we started talking about training. And he has been a track runner forever, big, big endurance athlete, mountain biking, everything. And he told me, he said, you know, the one thing that I really regret in my life is that I didn't spend more time building muscle mass because he had an accident.

2:38:01He had a mountain biking accident and, you know, basically couldn't walk around and use his muscles for quite a period of time. And he said it really hit him hard. And so that was my first kind of like, oh, wow, like that's like, I'm always focused on endurance. I never thought I really needed to focus much on muscle. I'm not a bro. Like, I didn't have that incentive to like, you know, build the muscle. And I knew it was important, but I didn't really... I didn't dive in deep enough and convince myself that it was as important. So that was the first sort of eye opener for me. And then I had Stuart Phillips on, who does a lot of research on resistance training.

2:38:42He's the one that like, I helped it, you know, identify that. the RDA for protein intake is likely too low. And he has a really good way of explaining muscle mass and what's called the disability threshold, which is what I think everyone that has an older parent or grandparent has seen in action, where they get older and they experience that take where they're out for whatever, a couple of weeks, and then all of a sudden, of course, they can't gain their muscle back. And then it happens again, and then again, and then all of a sudden it just downhill and they can't walk They can you know and the trajectory just plummets and you know, it's just not good.

2:39:23So in order to sort of you know not help let that disability threshold be so devastating you really have to build up your muscle mass earlier in life It actually it's never too late, but if you can do it earlier in life, it's better. So So training wise, I used to just do, I mean really it was like 30 minutes a week or so of resistance training, you know, where I'm just doing dumbbells or something. And now I'm doing two hours a week, maybe a little bit more. So that is a new focus and I'm working with the coach because I've noticed I do, I'm much more likely to injure myself when I'm just like doing it myself and I don't really know what I'm doing and I'm following like a Peloton class or something.

2:40:07So now I'm working with the coach who's really great. And I just I'm I was so sore just after the first training session. I was like, I thought I was fit, you know, and here I am like just little tendons and muscle like I just didn't even know we're there. So now I'm really trying to get I think minimum like two hours a week of some sort of resistance training where I'm working a lot of my muscles, not just, you know, my biceps or my triceps. So if investing in muscle mass is like contributing to a retirement fund that you can then withdraw from in late life, what is the age where it starts to become more difficult and then after what age is it basically impossible to gain muscle mass?

2:40:48So there's muscle mass and there's muscle strength. And I, everything that I know, I've learned from the experts like Dr. Stewart Phillips, like Dr. Brad Show and Phil and reading their work and their publications. So, you know, muscle mass peak around 20 to 30 and then after that you start to lose about 8 % per decade until you get to 70, it's 12 % per decade. But strength decreases are even greater than that. So, you know, we talk a lot about muscle mass and that's important, but strength is important, right? Like, you want to be able to get up and out of a chair. It makes a difference on your quality of life, like being able to be independent and function independently.

2:41:31And so that's where there's hope, especially, because so we're talking about muscle mass gains. Well, it's like, so what happens when you reach the age of 50? You're not, your antibiotic resistance is starting to kick in, right? You're not being as sensitive to the protein intake. You really have to rely more on the mechanical force, you know, of stimulating muscle protein synthesis as the form of increasing muscle mass and hypertrophy. So is there a time when you won't gain any muscle? I think you'll continue to gain it. It just won't be as much, right? You're really battling atrophy at that point too.

2:42:05So the more you can contribute earlier, the more you'll have to pull from. But I do think the strength, the gains in strength are what is really good because at least there's studies showing an older adult, even ones that haven't really worked out much. if they start a resistance training program, they can counter the atrophy losses, and they can gain, they can like regain strength, like years that they've lost. So you can really gain, your strength gains can be really good even in old age. And I think that's important. Yeah, that's obviously one of the things that people might be thinking, I'm 42, like does that mean that it's too late basically for me to start gaining muscle or gaining strength, or is it, am I lost cause at this age?

2:42:49No. No, not at all. No, not 42. I mean, it's going to get more challenging when you're 72. But even then, you're going to gain strength. I mean, there's studies showing that for sure. You know, muscle mass gains won't be as good, but you will be countering that atrophy. You know, it's not like it's not beneficial. Do people need to lift heavy? Well, that's the golden question that first two Phillips, he showed that years ago. that people, he did an untrained people first. So he showed that untrained men could gain just as much muscle mass and strength, lifting lighter weights as the men gained lifting heavy weights as long as they put in the effort.

2:43:38So the volume and effort has to be high. So you have to, like, you'll probably do a longer duration. It'll be more, you'll be doing, you know, more, more effort, but you can gain as much muscle mass and strength if you're doing lighter weights as long as you're putting in that effort. And then Brad Schoenfeld came in after because he was like, ah, stew, that was, that was untrained men. Come on. Any then did it and trained men and lo and behold, guess what? Same data, same results. So the train men also could gain as much muscle mass and strength by just lifting lower doing lower weights as long as the effort is that's the key effort, right?

2:44:14You have to put in enough you have to be fatigued. You know who doctor Mike is retail is No, I don't professor of exercise science at Lehman College probably I think the best guy for evidence -based hyper -treffy training on the internet at all at the moment. I had him on the show last week. And he's just so... I would... you really, really need to connect with him because the guy's so phenomenal. He's also jacked out of his mind, right? So he walks the talk. But he came on and he was explaining about the typical sort of bro science rep range, which was eight to 14, any more than fourteen and it's completely pointless.

2:44:56His rule or at least what the evidence seems to show is that anything over six and below 30, as long as when you finish, you are looking at one to two, one to three RIR reps in reserve. So that's what you're talking about here. His Brad Shonefeld is one of the guys that he respects the most in the industry as well. And the point is that you can get yourself to 28. And if you're like, I could do three more maybe. That's good. Now, one of the disadvantages that you have of doing that is obviously your session length is going to be longer, but one of the advantages that you have is the injury risk is going to be lower.

2:45:35So I think, I mean, that was fascinating to me as someone who's spent his entire life like allergic to going over 16 reps. No, no, no, that's just cardio. Like that's just, you know, that's just lame. That was really interesting. A couple of the other things that he taught me that I thought were fascinating. He's a huge proponent of tempo. So it seems like the tempo of the movement is super crucial. The entire duration of the rep should not be less than two seconds. So you could get away with one second up and one second down. But it's very important to control the eccentric portion of the movement.

2:46:09Most of the muscle growth comes in eccentric portion of the movement. The long stretch that you get at the very end range of the movement as well seems to be particularly where muscle growth is discriminated toward. So what you want to try and do is do exercises which incorporate that stretch. For instance, if you see people that do wide grip lat pull downs, you get to this position and you're like, well, my lat's aren't actually all that stretched. Whereas if you go a little bit more narrow, you go overhand pull ups or one of his favorites, which is this like a single arm wrap around a lat pull across.

2:46:43So if you imagine that you've got a cable machine over there and you're actually getting into this really super stretch position and you're pulling right background and you're feeling that, that. But yeah, for him, the key things that I took away from that was one to three reps and reserve. Tempo seems to be just a great way again to reduce down the load because you could still get to three reps and reserve on 10 reps, but because you've been doing tempo, it's so much harder. So again, you have all of these different things that you can use to manipulate the difficulty and the amount of reps that you need to go through.

2:47:17And just a little pause at extension in whatever it is. The bottom of the squat is going to mean, again, that you don't need to use quite so much weight. It's going to put you into that the muscle stretched position, which is where most of the hypertrophy occurs. And just I think a two count down on whatever it is that you're doing just seems to be the smartest way to do it. It's going to reduce injury risk. It's going to mean you don't need to use as much weight. It's going to maximize that time and attention that we're talking about. And And it's going to mean that if you do do a little pause at the bottom and then get it back up, it's fine.

2:47:47So that's now for me, all of my training, my entire training protocol is built around that type of tempo, rapparange, and loading with the stretch at the bottom. So it was so simple, it was great to hear. Really, really good. That's a really great, I mean, easy to follow kind of protocol, I mean, for sure. And I do remember Dr. Bradshaw was talking about some of the same things with the eccentric and stretching of it and all that, like being really important for hypertrophy. And of course, my new coach who knows everything, she's like on top of all of it. Pointing out, you're telling me. What about training when you're tired?

2:48:20A lot of the time people don't get as much sleep as they want, are there a little bit more stressed or whatever, they think, I'm tired, should I train? Yes. If I train, I make myself more tired, that might be dangerous or whatever. What do you think? Well, yeah, absolutely. That's the time where you should train most. I mean, we were kind of talking about this, right? So, you know, there's studies showing that if you don't get enough sleep, you can have a higher all -cause mortality than someone who gets enough sleep unless you're physically active. Physical activity blunts some of those negative effects of not getting enough sleep.

2:48:55So you're tired. You should go get at it. And also, guess what happens? You don't feel more tired. You feel like, especially if you're going to go do like a hit, workout, you feel invigorated. You feel better. You're increasing blood flow to the brain. That's what you need, right? You're lowering inflammation. Inflamations what's making you tired. Inflamations what's giving you that tired feeling. And so, exercise is the counter to that, right? Exercise is one of the most robust ways you can have an anti -inflammatory response. Because your body is naturally, you know, there's one thing, I mean, we talked about taking omega -3s.

2:49:28I mean, there's ways to reduce inflammation by taking certain phytochemicals or omega -3s. But exercise is forcing your body to use all of its genetic pathways to counter that inflammation. And it does it for a long time. It's not just as quick as you metabolize it, how long is it in your blood? What's the half -life of the compound deal? This is like days after, right? So the little bit of stress that you're putting on your body, that anti -inflammatory effect is so much greater that it counters the stresses of life of everything. I'm a tapalism of just, you know, thinking and breathing. So I think that exercising when you're tired, you should be motivated and know that you're actually, you're going to feel better.

2:50:13It's going to, you're going to, you're going to be less tired after, like you really are. Especially if you don't go for like a five hour run. I mean, like, let's, like, you know, like, there's not a bound. Yeah. Well, I suppose as well, you know, one of the things when you're tired, your injury risk does go up your ability to do fine control, motor movement and stuff like that. So if you're going to go and get that session, but you've only had five hours sleep because the kids woke up at 4 a .m. This morning and it's been a nightmare or you just got back from a flight or whatever like Don't try and max out today, right?

2:50:42It's not it's not 3. R. M. Deadlift day. It's I go in and I try and work hard, but not kill myself day Right, you either I mean if it's you know, it's always easier to like I like I said if you could just do like a hit session That's great. Or just do, you know, do a high intensity sort of body weight exercise workout, right? You do some pushups, you do some pull ups and then some squats or whatever, you know, or lift lighter. Like you were saying where you're not gonna. The other thing is, like the story that you tell yourself about being the sort of person that maybe didn't have an ideal night sleep but still went and got after it.

2:51:18And this is totally separate to the physiological effect. Yeah, I suppose the endorphins of the actual session will help with this. but I overcame a difficult thing today. That story that you tell yourself is so powerful and it helps to reinforce this positive self -image of being someone who happens to life, as opposed to life happens to them. Yeah, I mean, this is something that I think about a lot as a parent. The little wins are such confidence boosters. It doesn't have to be the big thing that you're going for, but just a little win. I win and I did 10 minute workout. It's a little win, good.

2:51:57Fuck you, world. Yeah. It makes a difference. I think you said it beautifully. It's a confidence booster. Those things do, I think they add up and make a big difference. What else haven't we said about exercises? Is there anything else looking in there that people need to be aware of? I think the big thing was covered with respect to vigorous intensity, really focusing on getting that vigorous intensity every week, focusing on the VO2 max training, knowing the brain benefits, and then any kind of resistance training obviously is important. This is the really, I think, big main things. What would be, if someone isn't going to go and get their lactate tested or do a VO2 max test with the mask on and all of this stuff, what is a rough benchmark that people can use to check?

2:52:46I am making progress. This awful Norwegian 4x4 torture device that I've been doing every Sunday for the last six months has Helped like what right what can people do the like home version of the test? Yeah, so obviously a lot of people use their Apple watch which does measure VO2 max But I would say if you want an evidence -based way to measure VO2 max and the reason why the Apple watch isn't necessarily accurate is because so so the the thing that's really been shown to to be a good way of estimating B .O .2 max is what's called the 12 -minute run test or 12 -minute walk test depending on your fitness level right but you need to have access to like a flat either track or something some sort of you know thing that's that's that's flat right you could also I mean no it's got to be distance so if you can somehow yeah clock that in on your your watch as well as your own a bike, I think the best thing would be a track field or something like that.

2:53:48And what you do is you, in 12 minutes, you run as fast as you can and maintain that pace for 12 minutes. And then you have to have that distance measured, right? So that distance is measured. And then there's this calculation that is done considering the distance that you're whatever you've run and everything. And that turns out your VO2 max. And that's kind of what the Apple Watch uses, but the Apple Watch doesn't know when you're like running hills and stuff. So it's kind of because that takes it into account. So if you're running hills and stuff, it's more challenging. You're not going to go as far, right?

2:54:26And so that's kind of where I go, oh, well, the Apple Watch is only so good. So. I wonder whether I'd be interested to know if there's people who can cheat this test in some way. Let's say that one person builds a video to Max. What I'm thinking with this Norwegian 4x4, I probably do need to start doing it. Airbike to me seems to be the best thing that I could think of. It's the easiest machine for me to get my heart rate very high on. It's both arms and legs. It's stationary. There's no picking it up, putting it down, resetting it. And it also means that during those three minutes, you can kind of just push away like this.

2:55:02But I would imagine that the person who does running intervals for their Norwegian 4x4 will develop a number of efficiencies that are disproportionately advantageous for this 12 -minute run test, right? My, oh, as someone does it in the pool, right? Someone just swimming intervals, four minutes, three minutes, whatever. How much that will cross over? So there's definitely going to be ways like high rocks, hybrid training, this whole thing at the moment is a huge, huge burgeoning. It's basically filled the hole that CrossFit used to have, I think. And I think a lot of people are going to have that, but I wonder how many people have disproportionately good 12 minute run tests that may actually overclock the VO2 max because of their efficiency that they've developed from using running as their modality for building that VO2 max.

2:55:51Right, no, I mean, it's a good point, I think, for sure. Most of the Norwegian 4x4 protocols are down on a stationary bike, most of the time. That's the king. Dr. Ronda Patrick, ladies and gentlemen, Ronda, it's been really great to meet you. I love your work. I love the fact that you've just got this broad evidence base that you can tap into and teach us mere mortals about what's going on in the world of fitness and such. You've got this bdnfprotocols .com thing, which is a free guide that people can take in order to maximize different ways to get bdnf. What's in that? It's a bunch of protocols that have been evidence -based that are, you know, had to increase bdnf, exercise protocols, sauna protocols, polyphenols.

2:56:37So we're talking about blueberry things like that. And then I kind of have my protocol in their intro. We used to be like, well, this is what I do. But yeah, so it's I think some people want to know, well, how much, you know, how hard do I go to get my BDNA from a run or a work out? Or what do I need to do? So there's there's it's like kind of evidence -based protocols on different things, different lifestyle factors and behaviors you can engage in to improve it. Oh, yeah. Where else should people go? They want to keep up to date with your work? YouTube channel. And it's called Found My Fitness.

2:57:04I have podcasts. I interview experts. Sometimes I do stand -alone videos where I talk about the science of something diving into magnesium next. I also have one on vigorous exercise and then on podcast, Apple Podcasts. Spotify, then my website, foundmyfitness .com. That's where you can find me. Sign up for my newsletter, but I would go to the BDNF protocols to get all the good protocols on improving brain health basically. Oh yeah, thank you, Ronda. Thank you so much. It's been fun.