#907 - Dr Rhonda Patrick - How Microplastics Are Ruining Your Health

28:20Yeah. So the most, I would say, common places, One is drinking out of bottled water, like bottled plastic bottles, right? Like a lot of people drink out of plastic bottles. That would be a big source. Tap water, that's unfiltered. So tap water, again, also has microplastics. Unfortunately, our oceans are contaminated, so microplastics are also found in a lot of fish. And particularly, they accumulate in the digestive tract of fish. So if you're eating shellfish or clams or oysters or anything where you're eating the whole digestive track or sardine whole, whole sardine, then you're going to be getting microplastics.

29:03Heat is a big, big one. Okay, I would say that is one of the main you know culprits when you're combining that with plastic. So a lot of you're to go coffees that you're drinking from Starbucks or Starbucks, anything. Like that is going, that is It's a huge one because you're, you know, there's been studies looking at BPA leaching into liquid when it's, when heat like boiling water is applied, it increases, increases the leaching by 55 times, which is huge. It also increases microplastic, you know, breakdown, right? Because you're breaking down the plastic itself. You're only getting more, you're making the plastic smaller, which allows it to be permeating through the gut more effectively.

29:43Exactly. Exactly. I can't tell you how many to go coffees I've had in my life. Another big source now, this is new coming out. There's been a couple of studies that have come out on this, is tea bags, because you're adding hot water to tea, and the tea bags themselves are made of either polypropylene, they're made of nylon, or they're made of interestingly cellulose, which you would think wouldn't have in microplastics. but I think they must be a mixture of stuff in there. And this new study came out really just a couple of months ago, showing that you can get anywhere between millions to billions of microplastic particles per milliliter.

30:28I mean, per milliliter. How many, how much is that compared with the normal sort of, that's a lot of those? It's a lot. It's a whole lot. What I'm getting at is, because, you know, I think what's happening is the heat is breaking the plastic down. These tea bags are made of plastic. And so, you know, consuming these tea bags, again, when you're getting to go tea, it's like, I now, I'm like, all I can think about is like, I'm consuming a plastic tea. But you have to remember, there's a lot of studies, at least with green tea, showing that green tea has huge benefits for cognition. It delays dementia.

31:07It might even offset the microplastics if you're out to consume it. Yeah, so I mean, clearly people are drinking tea out of probably tea bags. So it's not like, at least with green tea, it seems like there's some benefits. So those are some of the major sources. And then there's also, it's in our salt. And then air, right? So that's another one if you're living in a polluted place. If you're again, you know. Internally venting your drier. Dryer ventilation in your house. That's another major source. And then another one would be also to consider would be black plastic. So I know you're like, what?

31:43This is kind of some new data coming out. Black plastic is often made from recycled electronics. And I mean bits of plastic that are black. I mean black utensils like your black spatula or black plastic, you know, forks and knives or your black plastic lid on a coffee. to go coffee cup. Black sushi, the bottom of a sushi container, bottom of a like a rotisserie chicken. If you've ever bought a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, that black, right? Black plastic. It's often made from recycled electronics and it'll recycle electronics. Often have chemicals in them that are added to prevent fires from starting like they don't have electronics starting fires.

32:28So they add these brominated flame returnants, which are carcinogenic. They are not supposed to be in food. You don't suck on your electronic. You're not supposed to go on your mouth, right? So these black plastics have very high levels of carcinogens that are normally not even found in regular plastics that were in things that we're consuming. And there was a study out of the University of Plymouth that found black utensils, black toys for babies, they're putting in their mouth, They contain between 30 to 40 times the safe limit of these brominated flame retardants and other carcinogens and endocrine disruptors in them than and then then safe So that's another sort of and think about it if you're buying like a rotisserie chicken or like you get it to go Fuh or whatever soup and it's in like a black container You got the heat.

33:22That's the added factor on top of that, right? So that's another major source. What about Dumbledore? Yes. Yes. So again, we mentioned the phthalates, right? Which are in personal hygiene products. And that's something I do want to mention because you might think, oh, I'm looking at the ingredient list and there's no phthalate on there. But there's two different chemicals that are very, very sneaky because they mean their phthalates. And they're in a lot of personal hygiene products. One is fragrance. If the word fragrance is in the ingredient list, that means they're stallates and parfum, not perfume, but parfum.

34:02That is another chemical that means they're stallates. So you really want to look for stallate -free personal hygiene products. Again, very important, especially for people that are considering conceiving because those are the chemicals that are associated with the sexual, you know, disrupting sexual development and boys. And then the other one is receipts. And this is a really big one. Because maybe not for you and I, right? Receipts are, they're a thermal paper, and so essentially they're coded with BPA, because there's a thermal reaction that happens when heat is applied to the BPA. It prints text on the receipt without actual ink.

34:45So that's how it works. And if you ever see like a white coating on the receipt, like that's BPA. So the BPA in like plastics, at least it's kind of contained in a plastic matrix. like this is just it's purposefully liberated. Yes exactly. It's like free for all on the receipt and So there's studies looking at people that handle a lot of receipts Like when I was in the airport stuff Yeah, I was in the airport on coming coming here and you know I The guy that was like handling the receipt is like you want the receipt I'm like no and I saw him take it out and put it in the trash and like I thought about there's this huge line of people You're doing that 500 times a day.

35:25Exactly, and I looked at the guy and I was like, I was like, hey dude, you know, I just wanna tell you that these receipts are lined with endocrine disruptors that disrupt hormones. And he goes, you mean? Wish somebody had recorded this. Oh my God, this lady is going through the app. I met this lady earlier on today. She started ranting and raving about the receipts. She said it's sort of covered in this magic dust that's killing me or something like that. I couldn't help it. I felt like I couldn't not say something, right? And he looks at me and goes, you mean like testosterone. I was like, yes, testosterone.

35:58It's been, it's been correlating with a decrease in testosterone. I was like, you need to wear nitroglobs. So bottom line is BPA. It's line on the receipts. Nitroglobs can stop people from absorbing it. So people that are like, you know, basically any kind of cashier, anyone that's handling a receipt multiple times a day highly recommend they wear nitroglobs. latex doesn't do that. Also, if you wear cream or hand sanitizer, it's been shown to increase the dermal absorption of BPA by 100 fold. Fuck off.

36:35So people are like, I don't want to get my hands on the thing. I don't want to get COVID or whatever. 100x. 100x absorption. Think about how many times these reg... I've seen them do it, you know, and then they touch the receipt. So I think this is like something that's not really talked about and here I am worried about my like one -time exposure So you know for people out there it's like yeah, you can opt for a career of working in target or something like that So the first time that I ever learned about receipts You won't know who this is but oh in Shroyer who is Alex Jones is sort of second in command I went for dinner with him when I first moved to Austin like forever ago him and a bunch of other people There's a couple of girls at the table with us as well I'm just standing down in Austin.

37:16And the receipt came out and I was like, oh, this, I'm sort of new here. I'll get the mail. There'd be like, nice. It'd be nice things for me to do. So I did it. And as I'm going to get the receipt out, one of the girls that sat around the table, like, hits my hand away. I'm like, what? She's like, what are you doing? As if I was about to walk out into open traffic. I'm like, I was gonna take the receipt and I was gonna put the tip on. She's like, are you crazy? You're gonna touch that? I'm like, so it kind of does show So the fringe insight from three years ago, some of that stuff ends up being a bullseye and sort of percolates around.

37:51Now I'm not saying that all of it is, but some of the stuff ends up being legit. Right, it is. It's definitely legit and it is a concern, particularly for people that are handling them daily multiple times a day. And I don't know that I've really, I've seen a couple people wearing gloves at cash registers, like. They've got special ones that are like finger things. We see those. I've seen those. an individual. So maybe just the sort of your first two fingers and your thumb or something rather than having the West swatty gloves all day. Right. And I imagine that's fine. I mean, significant. Well, you get through latex as well.

38:21It gets through latex. Yeah. BPA is like, it's that soluble and stuff. We can talk about ways to get rid of it. But like, you know, what about final final thing? I guess on sources, you mentioned clothing going through the dryer. I don't know what this t -shirts made of. It looks a little bit shiny. Maybe there's some polyester in it. I know that the brand of pants that I tried, I shit you not 15 different types of pants until I settled on these are bamboo cotton. But I'm like, is that, what about the Alastair Liner around the top, what about the way that this is stitched across those probably and dermal absorption in an area that I really don't want that to be too much of it?

39:01How much are we getting leached in from the thick the clothes that we wear? Yeah, that's a great question. So again, it's not the BPA and those chemicals. Most of the time you might have like forever chemicals and some of that as well, right? Like, especially if it's like a, not maybe not the underwear, but like a coat or something that's anything that's waterproof for oil. Vortexy type thing. Yeah. But I guess you, I suppose the one advantage of outerwear being higher in forever chemicals is that by virtue of it being outerwear, there's usually some layers in between you and it. Right. Right.

39:34When it comes to undergarments or even just like our shirts and clothing, the dermal absorption is not the major swarth from clothing. It's not the major way that like BPA and these chemicals are getting into our system. With that said, if you're sweating, if you're working out, if there's a lot of friction, like sweat, heat that opens pores, right? And so you can increase some absorption somewhat. There's no real data on this. which is just me thinking about mechanism, right? I guess as well, one of the weird quirks of Jim kit, especially the sort of Jim kit where people sweat, is that it's polyester sort of fitted t -shirts, leggings, things like that that people are then moving friction, which is gonna liberate something.

40:23You're sweating that heat, there's water, paulzer open, larger aperture for whatever it is to get in. Exactly. So I mean, I still like... We're not panicking. Yeah, you can go... You have to choose your battles, right? You have to choose your battles. I do think that, yeah, maybe some people can wear cotton, athletic wear. There's not a ton of it out there. Like, it has to be 100 % natural fiber. So you mentioned bamboo. That would be a natural fiber cotton. I'm not even betting as well. Yeah. Stuff like that. Betting as well. Exactly. If you're like sweating in your bed and also just like your breathing, like your face is right there, every night.

40:59I mean, so if you can get like 100 % bamboo sheets, they're like really soft as well. So I mean, that would be, I mean, again, you can start to go down the rabbit hole. Believe me, I've been there. But I think for most 99 % of the people like focusing on like the major culprits will keep you sane. Before we continue sleep, isn't just about how long you rest, but how well your body stays in its optimal temperature range throughout the night. And this is where eight sleep comes in. Just add their brand new Pod4 Ultra to your mattress like a fitted sheet and it automatically cools down or warms up each side of your bed up to 20 degrees.

41:34It's got integrated sensors that track your sleep time, sleep phases, your HRV, your snoring, and your heart rate with 99 % accuracy. It'll even start cooling or heating your bed for you an hour before bedtime. This is why 8 sleep has been clinically proven to increase total sleep by up to one hour every night. Best of all, the good of 30 night sleep trial. So sleep on it. For a full month, if you don't like it, they'll give you your money back and they ship internationally. If you have any respect at all for Dr. Ronda Patrick, she uses one, too. So don't just take the word of an idiot, take the word of a doctor.

42:07Right now, you can get $350 off the pod for ultra by going to the link in the description below or heading to 8sleep .com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom. A checkout that's e -i -g -t sleep .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. I check out the one elephant in the room when we're talking about this which is and obviously everybody including me is now thinking Okay, where are the places I've got plastic in my life? Well, I've switched all of my tupperware out from plastic to glass How I use glass water bottles are used like an aquatru reverse osmosis thing that's good that goes into a glass caravan.

42:40I'm using like it's like a yet equal blah blah blah but the food that we eat even the best quality steaks. Unless you're going to the farmer's market and he's chopped it off the cow and put it in wax paper, it's wrapped in plastic. I work with peed monties and make amazing beef. My favorite beef in the world is the tastiest stuff. It arrives to me wrapped in plastic. So, have you got any idea when it comes to packaging, packaging of vegetables, even the organic double washed spinach that's in one of those big tray things with the plastic across the top and it's all around the sides. How big of a deal is that?

43:21Yes, exactly. I've gone down that rabbit hole, so I'm glad you brought it up. When it comes to meats and stuff, I mean, exactly, unless, and even if you're out hunting it, you've got a lot of meat, you're going to store it in your freezer and you're going to vacuum seal it and it's going to be a plastic vacuum seal back, right? It's unavoidable. The reality is that if you can, the more the plastic breaks down over time. So time, oxygen, heat, these are all a factor in the breakdown of plastics into our food and also the chemicals associated with them. So if the plastic is only on your meat for a short period of time or it's in the freezer, at least it's a little more stable.

44:08as opposed to if you've got a bottle of Evion in Dubai that's been transported via truck two or three or four different journeys and it's been hot and it's been cool again, then it's been hot and then it's been cool again, then finally gets into a fridge and you go, ah, it's been in the fridge, it's cold. Exactly. You go. Exactly. What about the rest of the supply chain? Bingo, exactly. So, I mean, this is the way I think about it. You know, when it comes to like the vegetables and all that stuff, the same goes. I mean, like, when I get my vegetables, I rinse them off, because you do, you can rinse off some of this stuff that's not quite absorbed.

44:41But you know, you don't want to put it in a plastic bag and stored in your refrigerator if you can. Like, I just put like a paper towel down and put the vegetables on top of that. If you're, if you're getting like, I buy blueberries, they come in a plastic container. Like, what are you going to do? You rinse off the blueberries. You kind of hope for the best. It's not like the blueberries have been in that plastic container for years, right? Obviously blueberries. Kind of being in that for that long, or it'll also be dead. Right. So, so, so you have to have some peace of mind and realize, okay, we do You live in a plastic world.

45:08At the end of the day, it does come down to the breakdowns of this plastic. So, the things that you want to avoid are like you said, the bottled water, the heat touching the plastic. You want to get a reverse osmosis filter. So reverse osmosis, you mentioned aquatrude. That's a great countertop one. Yeah, I have a lot of friends that use that because it's a countertop. You could use. I'm actually in the process of getting an in -home, like full system. You know, you're using greenfield for that? No. You know, his dad makes one of the most advanced water in home water things. Oh, no, I didn't know that.

45:43Yeah, it's like actually absolutely like father, like son, biohacker, my brother. Oh, I wonder if I said the company, I can't remember, I have to look at my phone, but the company that I was going with are, they store the water, the water stored in stainless steel instead of plastic, like jugs. Oh, so you're getting it delivered? You're not getting it in the traditional. No, no, no, no, no, what I mean is like, like the, so the housing, the tubes, and then like, you know, they have, there's like the storage containers that are like part of this system. Okay, right. I don't know exactly how. So they're remapping the whole house to have no plastic in the pipes?

46:14Um, no. No, no, no, just the filtration that's, well, actually, I mean, in a way, it's just that what's coming through my showers, what's going to come through. Because the filtration's going to be close to the last point. Exactly. Exactly. Understood. What Ben will be listening, so I'm sure he'll tell me whether or not. Well, the one thing to consider with reverse osmosis filtration is it does. So the great thing about reverse osmosis is it filters out not only microplastics, but it filters out nanoplastics. It filters out really, really tiny, tiny particles and chemicals, including trace elements and minerals.

46:49Mineral things that we need. What's your favorite remineralization and protocol presuming that you use some sort of reverse osmosis system. So that's what I was looking into. And there are some systems that will re -mineralize the water after it's been filtered. So you don't have to think about it. Or add something back, which is kind of annoying. However, you can add something back, particularly if you've already got a system in use and you haven't done that. Most people, the most realistic solution that people will get will be some sort of tabletop type solution, right? And re -plumbing their entire house.

47:29So there's a variety of drops that you can add to your water that are in like a glass container that will re -mineralize the, you're talking like magnesium, potassium, you know, lithium, magnesium, just a lot of the trace elements that are changing out. Do you have any brands that you like, do you know? Well, I haven't gotten any of those, but there's also a mineral supplement you can take. And I do know of a good one from Pure encapsulations. It's called mineral 50 or Pure 50. and there's one within without iron, depending on a lot of men don't want iron. And it really is essentially all the minerals that are filtered out of water from reverse osmosis.

48:06And it's just one like tablet that you take a day. Yeah, I was a partner with Aquatru. I think there's still maybe you can try for the people that are listening. You can maybe try NW25 as a code. I'm not in commission, but I was a partner with Aquatru for ages. They also make air doctor. I'm not sure. So, so, Eddoctor is a carbon and there's two types of filter for your house, again, just a standalone unit that does it. It's called Ideal Living as the Company. They also did this. I didn't realize you may have looked into this atomizers. You know, you put essential oils into them. The process that that goes through also pushes a ton of stuff that you don't want into the atmosphere.

48:49I mean, Yankee candles and candles and stuff like that. Also liberating a ton of stuff that you don't really want. I remember OGs of the channel will remember that where we very, very first started this podcast in my house in Newcastle, the I had a candle obsession for a while. And the ceiling of this room had accumulated so much such that it looked like it was moldy. It was a really nice house, really nicely decorated room. and we got shit on the internet for six months more than six months, like a full year before I had to pay decorators to come in just to paint the ceiling so the people on the internet would shut up.

49:27My point being I was I went through like a candle a month or something and I was like oh that's on the seat that's in my lungs like not good. Right yeah I this is I'm this is I'm glad you brought that up so obviously there's air filters like a high quality HEPA filter which is a great one that does filter out the microplastics. You know, vacuuming also can disturb and bring microplastics in the air. Some vacuums have hepophilters on them as well, but a lot of things to consider, but you mention air quality and air pollution and chemicals that are in it. And that's another, so the other area is, can you get rid of any of these chemicals like BPA?

50:10How do you excrete them or some of the things that you're breathing in, right? So that's the next question. I actually think before we get into how you get them out of you, can you just do a run through of best tactics for avoidance? Like super simple, this is what we know. I know it's going to be imperfect. I know that everybody with health anxiety is just the heart rate, you know, 20 % higher than it should be. What's the 80 -20 on avoiding plastics in consumption? I do. I think there's imperfect avoidance, right? You're not going to avoid it 100%. But I think that I would say the top things to consider and try to implement in your life would be one, get a high quality reverse osmosis filter, whether it's countertop or whole house system.

50:56That's first and foremost. Number two, avoid drinking as much as possible out of plastic bottles. Also cans are lined with plastic lining as well. So consider that as well. Number three, avoid heating plastic. So really, like the to -go coffee mugs is a big one. Bring your own mug like this here. I bring them when I travel and I ask them to, can you put my latte in this mug and they do it? I just had an idea there, so I've become addicted to where you are, but I've become addicted to Dutch Bros Coffee and I kind of need to tell the internet about it. It's phenomenal. I wonder if there is a way I was watching them make it, because when you go through the drive -thru, you can actually see the process of them going through it.

51:43A lot of the time when they make an iced coffee and iced latte, they're pouring it between almost what looks like a cocktail, yours, shaker, the steel thing, pouring it between that and pouring it between your cup. I haven't done this yet, but one of the things that I thought about because the cup is typically filled with the ice, then they pour the hot liquid over the ice and that's what cools it. I was like, huh, if I said, rather than you pouring it from the steel thing into the plastic, could I just get you to do two steel things side by side. Put the ice in that one, cool it down, and then pop it into the plastic thing for me.

52:17Obviously, the gold standard would be to take your own cup. But if you would say that you don't have that, I also have to assume that iced drinks are going to be better, even if you get a splash of hot hitting the cup that you can't get them to do some fancy cocktail trick with, it's going to cool it down more quickly so it's not going to liberate for as long as to as small. Exactly. And if you think about it, if you're getting an iced cup of fill in the blank, you know, that's plastic, the beverage isn't in that cup for that long, right? So the breakdown, it's like, it's not really happening.

52:50As opposed to you waiting for 20 minutes to become a consumable temperature. Yeah. Or as opposed to like bottled water, like you said, it's like, how long has it been in there and the heat? It's been in how many trucks has it been on and warehouses has it, you know, gone through before it's been in that refrigerator that you think is cold. So, you know, and I do want to mention another thing with coffee, but I'll get back to the imperfect avoidance. So we've got reverse osmosis, nut drinking tap water. Second up is avoiding bottled water. Third one is avoiding heating plastic, which would include Tupperware, reheating meals, meal prep companies, stuff like that.

53:25I'm going to guess. Yes, yeah, all that because that's, you know, they're putting a lot of stuff in plastic, right? And then I did mention like canned soup is really bad because it's in a can that's lined with BPA and the soup goes in hot. It goes in hot. Oh, when they fill it? Yeah, so there have been studies that have compared people that get canned soup to like soup made in glass. And it increases like your an area BPA by a thousand percent, which is insanely high. Do you know what the inside of tetrapax are like? Those sort of more cotton things, do you know what I mean? By tetrapax? I don't know.

54:03It's an epit... I'll tell you this. And this is what I want is going to get back to. Probably fucking BPA. There's something called polylactic acid that you can line. I think you can line cans with it. I know you can line to go coffee mugs. Like some, I know blue bottle coffee lines it with polylactic acid rather than like BPA plastic. So polylactic acid, why not replace the plastic line? That's not liberated in the same way that's not that would impact us. It's an organic. It's not plastic. Polylactic acid. It's like an organic compound. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, you just have to make sure that, you know, with anything, sometimes companies will mix a little plastic in there and you never really know, right?

54:45Like that's always... The supply chain if you're plastic, let alone your food. But let's just assume that everyone's like, you know, credible and yeah, doing the right thing. Yeah. polylactic acid. I don't know why Starbucks and all these companies can't, everything should be lined with it because it's healthy. I'm going to look into that for Nutronic. Okay, so what's next up after this soup heating stuff? I mean, dear God, please just replace all of your Tupperware with glass. Exactly. And also your utensils, don't use spatula that are made of plastic. What? What is fine? Yeah, wood. You know, also teflon, like cans and stuff coating, like you want to have stainless steel, or you want to do cast iron, or ceramic, right?

55:34Like you don't want things that are coated, because like you just never know what's in that coating. I saw a comparison image on Twitter of one of those, the non -stick pans, but one of those that's, you've used for two and a half years and it's got loads of scratches in it, And that causes all hell to break loose and be liberated into the food. Absolutely. I mean, think about the scratches. That stuff is going somewhere. Where's it going? It's going into your food. It's going into you. It's going into you. So that's another... Heat is a really big one. And also microwave popcorn. So the inside of bags, the inside of the bags of microwave popcorn are lined with forever chemicals.

56:11Forever chemicals are called that PFAS because it takes our body like two to five years to get rid of them. And they are carcinogens. They're terrible. And so, and they're heating it up, right? The popcorn's heating up. So popcorn, popcorn bags is another one. But I think, you know, in terms of that, and then, you know, with respect to like the foods, obviously like if you can like shrimp, eating whole sardines, anything like microplastics are in the digestive track of those foods. So like limiting, you just don't want to eat shrimp like every day. What are, um, what are capsules, double zero zero capsules for supplements?

56:54What's that made of? What are those? You know, like a capsule, like a magnesium sterile, like any type of creating capsule or something where it's inner, it's capsulated as opposed to just raw tablet. Is that what it is? Is it gelatin typically? It's usually not plastic. I was just looking at it and thinking, I bet that someone somewhere has realized that we can make it 50 % cheaper if we use Some sort of but it's typically going to be like a gelatin thing. Usually a high quality supplement would be Yeah, I haven't I haven't seen the plastic ones, but I don't you know, I don't go around to the well That's the first place that I've identified that doesn't have plastics in so far So I can breathe a sigh of relief around all of the tablets that I take every day.

57:32I think if you're doing those things though that's like the the majority of Trying to to decrease your throat. That's right, outside, from the dry. Right, and then have a healthy filter in your house. What you'd like to use. I mean, you can use like, like, there's a lot of different, there's like high, high quality medical grade ones that are a little more expensive, which are great. But for people that are just like, like, say they live in a condo or like they have a small flat or something, you know, even getting like a honey well, hepifilter, like for each room, they're really not that expensive.

58:00And they do filter out a lot of particular matter that you're, you know, breathing in, including microplastics. So, I mean, that's a pretty, I think, feasible option for... Good start on an endlessly comprehensive list. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Momentus. Ronda just mentioned that microplastics accumulate in the brain 10 to 20 times faster than at other organs, which is a terrifying statistic, which is why optimizing your brain health is more important than ever. One of the best science -backed tools for that is Omega -3s. They support cognition, reduce information, and improve your heart health, making them essential for your well -being.

58:36They literally are one of the most important supplements I take every single day. And with Mementus, you know that you are getting the highest quality omega -3s on the market. Mementus are literally unparalleled when it comes to rigorous third -party testing, what you read on the label, swat in the product, and absolutely nothing else. Omega's are a massive part of my brain body and sleep stack, which has a big impact on my cognition, my strength, my recovery. And best of all, there's a 30 -day money back guarantee, T so you can buy it and try it for 29 days. If you don't like it, let's give you your money back and they ship internationally and you can get 20 % off everything by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentus .com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom.

59:15A checkout that's L -I -V -E M -O -M -E -N -T -O -U -S .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. Okay, so if we've got that's how to avoid them. This is where they come from. How possible is it for our bodies to actually get rid of them? what are the ways that we can speed this up? Actually, first question, is it possible to test? Can I go and work out how many microplastics are in my body? That's a good question. So I've had people emailing me about test they're developing for measuring microplastics in circulation. You have to remember, once it gets into circulation, like that's when it's going to other organs, right?

59:51I haven't seen any validated test on actual microplastics yet, but there are tests on the chemicals associated with them. So like BPA, Thalates, Forever Chemicals. And the test that I use is from vibrant wellness. They have a really great toxin panel test. Total toxin. Yep, and so they do everything like all those chemicals and others, they do like microtoxins, they do heavy metals. And I don't know how many affiliation with them, but I think they've got a great test. The same one that my doctor, Gabrielle Lyne, it's the same one that her team suggested and it came back and everything was fucking red.

1:00:28So yeah, I can vouch for the fact that it's accurate. Right. So that would be, you know, the testing wise. Now, again, with microplastics, I think we're gonna start to see a lot of tests come out now that this is... Brian Johnson is trying to develop one. He was tweeting about it recently. I mean, he was tweeting about a lot of things at the moment, but he was tweeting about some microplastics tests. Interesting. Yeah, there's a variety of companies, and I'm sure vibrant wellness is probably gonna add that to their list as well. Okay, so that's how we find out. How can I get rid of them? I got too many microplastics in my body.

1:01:02How do I get rid of them? Yeah, so microplastics, we kind of talked about a little bit getting rid of them and that really the main source is excretion through feces and that happens with dietary fiber. So if you are eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, that does increase the chances that microplastics are going to move their way out through feces. Is that only microplastics that you're consuming along with it or is it able to pull microplastics like detoxify them from your body. I think it's in general to be honest, because if you think about fiber, what does it do? It moves stuff through your body.

1:01:37It doesn't necessarily have to be something that you just ate, right? Like it could be something that you had hours before. So if you're getting fiber daily fiber, right? Like thinking about getting your total daily fiber, I think that's something that is important because it's moving it out of your body so you can't absorb it through both ways. like the ways of just moving it through, but also with the type of fiber that's found in things like berries and apples. So these are pectins, like inulin, all this type of fermentable fiber, green bananas, resistance starch, like that stuff makes viscous gel -like substance in your gut, which encapsulates microplastics that you're not absorbing them.

1:02:16So really, I think it's just like more important to focus on the daily fiber intake versus with a meal. So is that the biggest mover, daily fiber intake, do you think? I do, and this is all animal data. Like, this is all new. There's no real human data yet on that area in terms of like excreting it through feces and absorption and intestinal absorption. But I do think like it makes sense. Like, why wouldn't it translate, right? So that's something that I think is important. Oh, the other thing this just came out. This is interesting. Also animal data. So forever chemicals, I mentioned forever chemicals.

1:02:51Those take two to five years to excrete to get rid of I say excrete to detox if I get out of your body They stay in your body forever. That's why they're called forever chemicals unlike bisfinal a which is It has it's in your in your body for like up to four or five hours You know any from two to five hours. This is just really kind of daily excretion and it's excreted through urine But there's studies showing that the they're called Beta glue cans and they're in oats and they're in mushrooms, but the study used oats. The beta -glucans, which is by the way a fermentable type of fiber, they actually caused excretion of the forever chemicals, PFAS and animals, which is something that doesn't happen.

1:03:34So they increased the excretion through, it's this whole mechanism that affects like your liver, your bile acid, and liver, and cholesterol, and all the psych confusing to explain, but essentially that's been shown to increase the excretion of forever chemicals. So I've actually been adding a lot of oats. In fact, I had some oatmeal this morning because I'm like, oh my gosh, this isn't incredible. The reason why I also think it's happening in humans is because there was a human study not with oats, but it was, it's a drug that's used to lower cholesterol and it does the exact same thing that oats, the beta, the beta, glucose and oats do.

1:04:14It was shown to clear forever chemicals in people. So I'm like, oh, okay, add the dots here. What about sauna? Sauna, so I'm talking about excreting things through urine or FECs, right? So bisphenol A and a lot of these plastic chemicals, the primary root of excretion is through urine. And there is a way I think that we can excrete them. Sauna, you're excreting mostly is through sweat. And there are a lot of toxins that we're exposed to that we do excrete through sweat. a lot of those are heavy metals. So for example, cadmium and aluminum, so aluminum is associated with Alzheimer's disease, they are more readily extruded through sweat than through urine.

1:04:56And so when you get in the sauna, you really, you can, you can excrete a little bit of BPA. It does, it does come out through sweat as well. However, the majority of excretion chemicals that are being excreted through sweat are things like some heavy metals, and things like that. So that is important for excretion of a lot of compounds that are detrimental to health, but when it comes to BPA, for example, or Thalates, so the way... So these compounds are... they're fat soluble, and in order for us to get rid of them, we have to make them water soluble. And there's an enzyme that does that. And that enzyme is activated by a system in our body called the NRF2 system.

1:05:39It's a system that's a major transcription factor that basically turns on a lot of genes, turns off a lot of genes. So what it does is it activates something called the phase to detoxification enzymes. These detox a lot of harmful compounds in our body. The major dietary activator of this system is a compound called sulfuricane, which is something that you can produce when you eat to cruciferous vegetables like broccoli. Broccoli is a good source. Actually the younger plant broccoli sprouts have a hundred times more of the precursor to make sulfur, called glucoraphonin. So you basically, the sulfur of end compound is made when the plant is like broken.

1:06:28So when you bite it, chew it, right? That's when you start to make the sulfur of end. So broccoli sprouts have a really, really high concentration of that precursor. There have been a variety of studies that have looked at sulfuricane and giving it to humans, and it activating this system and causing the excretion of harmful compounds that we breathe in. So there have been studies in China where air pollution is terrible and people are breathing in, for example, benzene. Okay. Benzene is a known carcinogen. It's also in addition to air pollution, it's found in cigarette smoke. any plant burning material fires, right?

1:07:03So this is very relevant to people like in Southern California and Los Angeles where there's a lot of wildfires and the air quality is very bad. There's benzene in the air. Okay, benzene is a percentage. So there have been studies in China more than one study showing that consuming sulfuricane about it's like 40, about 40 micromoles of sulfuricane causes the excretion of benzene to increase within 24 hours by 60%. So this is really big. You can't supplement sulfurifine. You can, and I do supplement with it. So I take a supplement called Avmacall, and that supplement has been used in a lot of different clinical studies because it's very, it's a, it's a, they've got a very reliable source of glucoraphidate and the enzyme.

1:07:48Myrosanase is very unstable. It's sensitive to heat. So if you heat broccoli up really hot, you're actually like degrading a lot of the sulfur thing that you're gonna. So someone's eating broccoli raw would be optimal? Optimal or just lightly cooked. Like lightly cooked. So this company has been very delicate with how they've - Yeah, they've got, so I take two of their advanced, advanced Avamakal, which has about, gosh, it's like 68 micro -moles or something per tablet. it. And so it only, so actually taking one tablet of that was equivalent to the study on benzene excretion. So I take two tablets a day and the reason I do that is because I also want to increase glutathione, which is a antioxidant, a very powerful antioxidant in our body.

1:08:36There have been clinical studies showing that people taking sulfuricane increase their glutathione levels in their plasma and also in their brain. So in the brain, I mean, it's hugely important for cognitive function, for brain aging, everything like that. So I take anywhere between two to four ab macaws a day because that's, and by the way, I have no affiliation with them. Their stabilization process is really great. It's in a tablet form versus like a capsule. So capsules are cheaper to make, but they retain water and water degrades the myrocynase enzyme. So a lot of things through this minefield is basically impossible, isn't it?

1:09:14There's a lot to consider, but when it comes back to the sulfur, fain and BPA, there's not direct evidence, human evidence, that it's causing the excretion. I think it's doing it because one, there's an animal study showing that if you give animals sulfur, fain and then give them a toxic level of BPA, it doesn't induce toxicity. Two, sulfur, fain activates these very enzymes that cause BPA to become water soluble and excrete it. That's known. Three, we have all this data, human clinical data showing that sulfurophane causes the excretion of other harmful compounds that also have to be converted to be water soluble like benzene and acroline, for example.

1:09:56So I think there's a lot of evidence suggesting that sulfurophane would help with excretion of BPA. You touched on something there. I don't know whether you've got any advice or you'd feel comfortable, but a lot of people will have been directly impacted by the Pfizer LA or indirectly just by it's happened around them. They've been more stressed and they've been breathing in this air, which presumably is still probably going to be in the local ecology. Is there anything, how worried do you think that people should be about what's been liberated into the air? And if you were someone that's been worried, is there a particular protocol or some things that you would consider over the next few weeks and months to try and just help yourself get back to a good place of health?

1:10:35I do, and I have several friends that have been impacted by the LA fires, and I've kind of talked to them about some of this stuff. So, first, I've avoiding going outside or wearing a mask if you're like, they're in the thick of it, right? When it's like really bad air quality. But having a hepophilter inside, one, and two, the sulfurer fans. So I've now told several friends that they should be taking avocals. Again, I don't have any affiliation with them. There's multiple clinical studies using their formulation, very reliable. And so, taking anywhere between two to four a day to increase the excretion of a lot of these harmful compounds that are in the air.

1:11:23Now, that's not going to cause you like the microplastics that you're breathing in. you're not going to, sulfurian isn't going to help with that. It's going to help with the chemical aspects of it. The microplastics themselves, like, because plastics are burning and lots of stuff, particularly matters in the air. That's where you get the hepa filters. That's important to help with the breathing in that air, right? So... I hope that we haven't caused too much health anxiety for people with that. I'm aware that there's a number of vectors everybody can get worried about. How much is, oh my god, I got them.

1:11:52Not even the The food I need to be worried about is what it's wrapped in. I had this story, a funny story from a friend that was telling me about, he goes to a farmer's market and he wants to get raw milk and the raw milk's in glass bottles and it's got a cap on it. You know, there's no point in any plastic anywhere near it. And he asked the farmer about how they get the milk from the cows. And there's an automatic pumping machine which runs it through plastic pipes. He's like, that's warm milk going through a plastic pipe. even the most psychedelic progressive farmers market in the world, where you think, you know, this is basically, you might as well have sort of pumped the cow into a steel bucket and poured it into this, it's like, yeah, some plastic pipes were in between.

1:12:30I can add to that story that's gonna freak you out even more. So, no one's worried enough. We're talking about forever chemicals, right, and how humans don't excrete them for like years. Well, it turns out these forever chemicals are because they're in our water source, right? again, wastewater plants aren't treating for them, so they're concentrating in things like sludge that's used on a lot of non -organic farms, but the non -organic farms are a very close proximity to organic farms. What's a non -organic farm? Well, I just mean they're not organic, right? They're not. Oh, right, okay, okay.

1:13:04So organic farms are not technically supposed to use sludge, right? So which includes like wastewater as fertilizer. No, it's the wastewater and the sludge knows that this is the boundary of the actually. Exactly. It gets into the soil and it leaches here, right? And so it's actually contaminated a lot of organic farms as well. And there was a consumer report study a couple of years ago that went and sampled a lot of dairy products off of shelves, like grass milk, the organic grass milk, and just a lot of different varieties of milk. Why were they targeting milk? Well, it turns out forever chemicals, cows do excrete them.

1:13:44Unlike humans, cows excrete them through their milk. So when you are eating yogurt or milk or cheese, butter, I mean, these are all things where you're like, you have to consider, are there forever chemicals in my dairy product? Because this consumer report found that lots of products, including the organic ones, had much, much higher levels of PFAS than are considered safe. Obviously, this is your sort of one of your many new pet research obsessions. How big of a deal across the entire repertoire of things that people need to be worried about? How highly do you rank the plastics, microplastics, endocrine disruptors?

1:14:31I do rank them highly. lately, I think the highest would be exercising consistently, five days a week, not being overweight, obese, trying to eat a more Whole Foods diet. But that includes, it's up there after those things. Because I do think there's insidious damage that's happening, we are accumulating them in our organs. We're starting to now unpack that this is actually affecting human health. And there are a few high level things that we can do to minimize our exposure that we've discussed. Focusing on those few high level things, the water filters, you know, trying to not heat the plastic, trying to like minimize the single use plastics that you're using.

1:15:16It's not going to be, you know, 100%, but minimize it as much as you can. You're doing a lot if you can do that, right? I do think that like you don't want to become a manic person about it because chronic stress is bad for you. So that's like, you have to kind of like draw the line and live your life. Like I've kind of done that myself where it's like, okay, like I'm not, it's imperfect, but I'm going to do what I can. And I know that that's going to have a good impact, especially if I'm exercising and I'm eating healthy and I'm trying to do all the other things that are like the most important, getting my micronutrients, like doing those things, you know, at the end of the day, it's going to be okay.

1:15:53Okay. You said you were doing some research into ultra -process foods as well. I've been learning about this grass, GRAS, loophole thing. Is this the pebble at the top of the avalanche that sort of wrecked the American food system? Is that why there's a big issue? No. This one, it's our good. I know. It can be confusing. So you're talking about generally recognized as safe grass. And that's, you mentioned loop hole, but let's take a step back before the loop hole. There was just grass. There was the generally recognized as safe. And this has been around since like the early 1900s. And it's essentially things can go into the food, our food supply that are generally recognized as safe.

1:16:41So it was meant to be, you know, for things like vinegar or salt, right? Like not these chemicals that we have to have a lot of testing and FDA has to look at all this testing. Well, I'm generally recognized as safe. Back then was something you did have to submit to the FDA for review. And then FDA would look over whatever data you gave them if you're a manufacturing company and they'd say, okay, it looks like it's safe. The loophole It came about out and I think it was like the late 1990s, like 1997. And that was like, that basically said, okay, you manufacturers no longer have to submit anything to the FDA for review.

1:17:22They can just review it internally and decide whether or not it's safe. So it kind of gave, and there's a lot of controversy over this. There's a lot of, you know, you give a lot of freedom to manufacturers who obviously have a conflict of interest because they want to sell their products and they can kind of decide whether or not something is generally recognized as safe. With respect to the ultra -process foods in general, there's processed foods and then there's ultra -process foods, right? What's the difference? So processed foods, typically, this is minimal processing. This is something like making oats.

1:18:01Something where you want to increase the bioavailability of nutrients, which oats increases the bioavailability of some of the minerals and stuff, or chopping and freezing fruits and vegetables, like frozen fruits and vegetables that you can buy in the food. Every food has some form of processing in it, unless you're eating it actually raw from the ground. Exactly. So it's very minimal, right? The ultra processing, ultra -process foods, or UPFs, as there are some times you'll see them called UPS. These are foods that have a lot of steps of processing. And typically, the purpose of these foods is convenience.

1:18:41It's taste, improving taste, improving texture and flavor, improving appearance, colors, shelf life exactly. So what ends up happening, These types of foods end up having a lot of calories. There are a lot of added sugar. They have a lot of chemicals that may make it taste really good, texture really good. They'll have additives that will extend the shelf life and they'll have a lot of colors. So you can find them in candies, cereals, a lot of junk food, cookies, chips, crackers, already flavored yogurts, protein bars. I mean, there's a lot of there's a lot of package types of foods like this is you know fast foods already prepared meals that you buy Long list of ingredients.

1:19:31You know, there's over 10 ,000 chemicals that's in our food system in the United States 10 ,000 chemicals that are in our foods like that's a lot of chemicals They're not all coming in through grass. I mean these are chemicals like a lot of the for example the the food coloring So you mentioned earlier in the podcast red number three red number 40 yellow number five number Number six, blue number one. Like these food colorings have been around for a long time in our foods. And just recently, now the FDA has banned red number three from our foods in the United States because it's a carcinogen, it's a known carcinogen.

1:20:07And you know, this is, I think they have like two years or so to actually manufacturers have two years to get it off the shelf. So until like 20, 27 or something like that. But you know, these food colorings are not only known carcinogens, they also known mutagens. So those are things that damage DNA. It's a precursor for something to become a carcinogen. They also, there's a lot of human data that it affects the brain. These colors affect the brain. They cause an exacerbate hyperactivity, impulse control. So, and it... A robust the evidence on this. I would say there's varying... It appears...

1:20:47A lot of the studies are done in children and adolescents. And there's lots of data out there. Oftentimes the randomized control trials that are done give all of the colors, so it's not just like one, but they give all of the colors. And children seem to have varying sensitivities to them. So there's individual variation. But it's pretty robust that a large subset of children and adolescents are affected by these. And if you think about by these colors that are in and all the foods that are targeted to children and adolescents. A quick aside, what if I told you the only way to be successful in life is to wake up and eat a bowl of wheaties?

1:21:25Well, I would never tell you that. But starting a day with element, that is the real breakfast of champions. And that's why I've started every morning with element for the last three years. Each grahamngostic contains a science -backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium with no sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients or any other junk. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle, cramps, and fatigue while optimizing brain health, regulating appetite, and curbing cravings. You might not need muscle -eat, you might not need more caffeine, you might just be dehydrated, and proper hydration isn't just about drinking sufficient water, it's about having enough electrolytes to allow your body to properly absorb those fluids, which is why it's used by everyone.

1:22:08Dr. Mike Isritel, Olympic athletes, Dr. Andrew Hubeman, and FBI sniper teams. Also, there are no questions asked, refund policy. So if you don't like it for any reason, they'll give you your money back. You don't even need to return the box, because that's how confident they are that you love it. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt .com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt .com slash modern wisdom.

1:22:43So we made a capsule version of Neutonic and we got rid of the caffeine in the Althenean, we added in some Bacopa money area in Ginkgo, below, but I realized this, but colored capsules were around in the 90s. It's like, ha, capsules, the most boring thing in the world. What can we do to make them a little bit more visually exciting to them in sort of a marketing material? Also create a little bit of an expectation effect in there as well. Why don't we use colored capsules? That'd be great. So we'll pills, red pill. If we make a red pill, people are going to think that the jokes write themselves, matrix, we did this matrix theme.

1:23:18And with that, on the lawn shoot, and Harry, the guy that runs the ops for Nutonic came up and he was like, mate, got some good news and got some bad news about the capsules. It's like, what's up? They look great. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. They colored with red 40. And I was like, right, you're telling me that the productivity, focus product that we've tried to design has something that's been linked to ADHD and children. It's literally encased in ADHD causing it color. Yeah, and there's a butt, but we've got these vegan capsules. Okay, it's interesting. Let me have a look. He gets them out and I was like, that's brown.

1:23:56That's brown. That's brown color. What we have here on set is this beautiful, bright red thing, because red 40 turns things bright red. So we had to get custom beetroot colored capsules. That was the way that we got around it, because I wasn't prepared to do the brown one, I wasn't prepared to do the red 41, so we ended up having to get, we've got some absurd number of empty, beetroot -colored capsules waiting to be filled for the next, however long that we keep on selling these things. But that was what we had to jump through in order to be able to sort of skirt around trying to avoid red 40, even in just the coloring of a capsule.

1:24:30It was crazy. Precisely. I mean, there are ways around it, right? Like beetroot, spinach, turmeric, like these can color things. And you can find a lot of healthier, quote unquote, healthier. There's still processed foods. Let me talk about that. Get more into that in a minute. But, you know, there are at least, you're not having chemicals that are known carcinogens that are known to disrupt cognitive function to be, you know, to exacerbate and play a role in impulsive control, impulsive control and impulsivity and like not being able to focus and pay attention, right? Trans fats were in there too, weren't they?

1:25:04This is incredible. This is incredible because trans fats were actually added through the original grass, generally recognized as safe. They were added in the early 1900s, it was some like 1911. They were added to our fruit supply. And remember, trans fats, there was a big push for trans fats dating, I mean, certainly back into like the 1950s was like when it really started to become sort of popular. But even before that, they were added to our food supply because they were thought to be the quote unquote healthier alternative because they didn't raise, they weren't saturated fat and therefore didn't raise LDL cholesterol.

1:25:46But the problem is, is that so trans fats, they're fatty acid chains that have double bonds between the carbons. Okay saturated fat doesn't have any double bonds. And this is really important because it changes the structure of the fat when it's incorporated into our cells. So we eat fat and it's broken down into fatty acids. These fatty acids get taken up into new cells that we make in our body. All of our cells that we're making that are new, red blood cells, neurons. The cells that are lining our blood vessels and our arteries, their endothelial cells. The reason this is important because fatty acids that are taken up into those cells are making up the membrane.

1:26:30Okay, so a cell, if you think about like a cell as a circle, has this membrane and the membrane is like movable, it's flexible. So and you want that to be flexible because that's how we transport nutrients into the cell. There's transporters, there's receptors that bind to hormones, they bind to neurotransmitters. The cell needs to be flexible for those things to happen to be correct. It affects the function of the cell. So when you have trans fats, saturated fat is like a single bond, same with unsaturated fat, single bond. It's bendable. It's bendable. It's like able to bend and move, right?

1:27:07Trans fats have these double bonds and make it really stiff. Like it doesn't move. It's a very stiff structure. So when they get incorporated into our cell membranes, it stiffens our cells. It totally changes like the flexibility of it. And when that happens in the the the thelio cells that line our blood vessels and our arteries, it causes them to become stiff. So our blood vessels can't dilate as well, like vasodilation, right? It causes cardiovascular disease, it affects hypertension. It's hugely, hugely bad for the heart. And you know, this is something that it took. So the FDA, I think it was like in 2006, they started to go, maybe not so good.

1:27:51And finally in 2015, they were like, okay, we're gonna take this out. This is no longer allowed in the food supply. You know, but we gotta give, we gotta give manufacturers some time to get it off the shelves. So finally in 2018, it was off the shelves. We're talking a hundred years, over a hundred years that this stuff was in our food supply. causes cardiovascular disease. It doesn't take that much time to figure out, yes, cardiovascular disease takes decades to develop, but does it take 10 decades to figure that out? No, you know, so that was like, the trans threats is like the the the golden example of, you know, how things get into the food that are thought to be safe and it takes how many decades before we realize, oh, they're actually responsible for a lot of deaths.

1:28:39While that was still in food in 2017. Yeah, it is. It is. And the trans fats, thankfully they're out of our food now, but there's other chemicals. I mentioned there's 10 ,000 chemicals in foods. So the ultra processed foods, another one that's really a big one is nitrites. So nitrites are in... Not nitrites. Okay, glad you mentioned that. Let's discuss. So... Right, brilliant. Nitrites are found in processed meats, right? So they're a preservative. They're found in bacon, in ham, lunch meats, hot dogs, like things like that, right? They can be converted, when we digest them, and they can be converted in or got to nitrosamines.

1:29:22And these are carcinogens, and this is why processed meats has been classified sort of as a carcinogen because there's bacon. Bacon with, yeah. Especially when you're cooking at like a high temperature, you can convert it to the nitrous amines as well. So nitrites, baking with nitrites can be unhealthy because of the nitrous amines. Now do you know if your bacon's got nitrites in it? Well, there's a lot of labels out there on bacon that says it's uncured, so they usually cure it with nitrites. Okay, so uncured bacon would be nitrite -free. Well, so here's the question, and it comes back to nitrites.

1:29:59often times the bacon. Is this the BPA BPS thing all over again? Not necessarily. Not necessarily. I think there's a silver lining. The nitrates are something that's found in plants. They're in vegetables, they're in greens, they're all over in nature. They can also be converted into nitrites and then ultimately nitrousamines. However, vitamin C prevents the conversion. So vitamin C is also found in plants, a package together. So that's why when you eat a lot of plants or like beets have a lot of nitrates, you know, beetroot juice extract is high in nitrates, but it's also high in vitamin C. Okay.

1:30:44And when you have the vitamin C there, it converts the nitrates into nitric oxide. So if I have a baroque while I have my bacon. Exactly. That's okay. A lot of vitamin C while you're taking your bacon in. So the conversion, it basically shifts it towards nitric oxide, which is actually good for your blood vessels. It's a vasodilator, right? There are a lot of bacon that will say, say, no, no, I tried, but they'll have like celery powder. I don't know how much vitamin C is in celery powder extract. My buy would assume not that much. But make sure you're like eating some pomegranate with your bacon or something high in vitamin C.

1:31:18That helps the conversion. So there's, yeah. What about the concerns with added sugar? Exactly. Yeah. So we're talking about there's a lot of chemicals in foods and you know, there's it's 10 ,000 chemicals so you can figure out how many of those may be detrimental to health. I would say one of the biggest problem with ultra -process foods is the added sugar and when we say added sugar, we mean not sugar like if you're eating an apple, right? It's got like natural sugar and in that that's bound to a fiber matrix. We're talking about adding table sugar like sucrose glucose and fructose, 50 % mixture of each into it.

1:31:58Foods have tons and tons of added sugar, older process, we have tons and tons of added sugar, and that's part of the hyper -palitability of them, right? It's what's make them taste good. A lot, there's a lot of downstream problems with the added sugar, right? On the brain, on overeating, so there was actually a really good study that was published a couple of years ago out of the NIH from Kevin Hall's lab. And he took the same group of people and gave them either an ultra -process foods diet or a whole foods diet. And he gave the same group, the same diet, so like the same people had each diet with a washout period and then they measured a bunch of things, right?

1:32:39So you're not looking at a lot of individual variability here, right? It's called a crossover trial design. So he gave these, so what happened is these two groups, so the whole foods versus the ultra process, right? Same number of calories in the food, same number of, same amount of sodium, same amount of energy density, there were not similar amounts of added sugar. So the ultra processed foods had like 50 % more added sugar. fiber was the same, but only because they gave the ultra -process food group drinks with metamuse soul or something, right? Like they had to give them fiber because essentially processed foods have no fiber, right?

1:33:20And then protein was mostly similar. There was a little bit more in the whole foods group than the ultra -process foods group. But the study basically gave these people, like again, equivalent amounts of like calories and stuff. And so the total sugars were the same. So the fruits and stuff had sugar, but it was the added sugar that was different, right? He gave these people these meals that they came into like a Metabolic war to eat, you know, and they and they were basically given 60 minutes to eat their meal So they could eat as much as they wanted or as little as they wanted So they didn't like make them eat a certain amount the point was to see if they were gonna over consume over eat right Turns out when they were eating the ultra -process foods people on average ate 500 calories more than eating the Whole Foods diet.

1:34:10So this was 500 calories more per week. And so they ended up gaining two pounds more on, they actually gained two pounds if they're eating ultra -process foods and they lost two pounds if they're eating Whole Foods. And this was from their baseline. Yeah. From their baseline. Yeah. And this was for the two week that the trial happened. So if you think about that's a pound per week, they were gaining. That's four pounds a month. So four times 12 is 48. That's 48 pounds a year. It couldn't have been 500 calories a week if they gained a pound. Sorry, it was 500 calories per two weeks. Yes. Yeah. That's that also can't be right.

1:34:46500 calories per meal. Sorry. Yes. They were eating 500 calories more per meal. Yes. But they were gaining two pounds more per two or one pound per week. Yes, so it was a 3 ,500 surplus per week. Yes, exactly. Because it was 500 per meal. So, so they were eating, you know, overeating, and the question is why were they overeating, right? And there's probably a lot of reasons for that. You know, one is they weren't having, they weren't being satiated. So, reply, added sugar basically disrupts hormones. It disrupts the hormones that are involved in satiation, like leptin, um, grellins, a hunger and mohormone.

1:35:22So like those things were being disrupted in those individuals and you know The question is is like if you're eating a refined sugar diet if you're eating a lot of ultra processed foods You're probably eating more of the foods right? Why is that? Well, you're not being satiated for one two Even though there was less protein in the ultra processed foods It seemed as though people were eating more Almost to get their protein needs. Oh, that's so interesting Yeah, have you heard of the protein leverage hypothesis? No. It was, Stephen Simpson, I think was one of the main scientists involved in this hypothesis.

1:36:02And essentially, what it is is that your body needs a certain amount of protein per day to maintain physiological functions. And so, so, his hypothesized that no matter what, if you're eating foods that were low protein you're going to overeat because you had to like maintain this amount of protein that your body really needs, right? And so him and his colleagues have done some randomized controlled trials sort of proving this hypothesis where it's like you can give people lower protein, same, you know everything else, but they will over consume if they have the lower protein just to kind of like get up to that protein need.

1:36:40So that's another possibility. Again, if you're eating a lot of ultra -process foods, they're low in protein, protein is satiating for one, right? That's also something to consider. But it does seem as though like, there's like, it's interesting there might be this protein leverage hypothesis that might be partly explaining some of this as well, because it's like your body's wanting to meet the protein needs for just maintaining a lot of different physiological functions that require protein. How much good research has been done? That study sounds pretty impressive, but is primarily the mechanism that I think most people come to agree on when it comes to ultra -process foods hyper -palatable calorie dance, easier to eat more and per bite tends to be more caloric, so it's easier to gain weight, but multiple different ways that it's easier to gain weight.

1:37:30When it comes to the ultra -process foods, what's in them, how they affect us, outside of the palatability and the calorie density, what else is going on that seems to be evidence -based that's something that we should be concerned about? Yeah, well I think that part of it is that people are consuming more of it because they're not satiated, right? It's disrupting the hormones which I mentioned. So that is the one thing to consider direct. Is that the biggest mover in all of this? For weight gain, I would say it is because weight gain really comes down to eating more calories. and calories and calories out makes makes a big difference.

1:38:09But there's other factors at play here that I think really come down to the added sugar, right? So, added sugar affects so many different things in the body, everything from hormone production to cognition. So, hormones, testosterone. I know you're interested in testosterone. There was a pretty classic study that was done that showed that men and this was a huge age range and you know, we're talking young men that were like 17 all the way up to like older adults. So young adults, middle age adults, older adults, if they consumed 75 grams of added sugar. So that would be like a medium sized donut and the Coke.

1:38:50Okay. Not out of this. Like people do that all the time. 75 grams sounds like so much. But when you put it in terms of a donut and a Coke, that's it. It's not. Right. There's a lot of Americans eating a standard American diet and eating donuts with coke or donuts with coffee and a bunch of added sugar in their coffee, right? So it actually is something that I would say is pretty practical in terms of what people are consuming. And we can actually talk about what people are consuming in terms of added sugar, but 75 grams of added sugar. And this caused a 25 % decrease in their circulating testosterone within a two hour range.

1:39:27So it's obviously transient. But nonetheless, 25 % less. That's significant. You're chipping away at that grazing throughout the day. Exactly. And imagine if people are eating, I mean, if their whole diet is nothing but ultra -process foods, right? So you're talking, you know, in that study with Kevin Hall, they actually calculated how much it cost to have the whole foods diet versus the ultra -process food diet. it, and it was $45 more a week for the whole foods diet. So that's significant. It adds up over like a month, right? So we're talking about $180 a month. That's expensive to be healthy.

1:40:07For a lot of people, that makes a difference. And so it's like economically, people are economically incentivized to eat ultra processed foods because they're cheaper. There's also this is Cali means his whole thing and Danny Harries as well about whatever the food stamp system is called oh right Snap yes, snap the the sorts of foods that tend to be available on Snap right trying to eat in a more healthy manner on that is Very difficult right more difficult. So what you mentioned there about what are Americans eating? typically what are they putting in their bodies? I mean, it's ultra -process foods.

1:40:48So the refined sugar, or I'm calling it refined sugar, is really added sugar also, kind of interchangeably. But ultimately, people are eating 13 % of their daily caloric intake is coming from added sugar. That's a lot of 2000 calorie a day if you just consider that like on average. That's a lot of coming from sugar. In fact, guidelines, so the guidelines for the strictest guidelines suggest no more than 5 % of your total daily calorie intake coming from added sugar. So that would be like no more than 25 grams a day. 5 % people are eating 13 % of their total calorie intake from added sugar. So added sugar is also affecting probably what's happening also is there's a mechanism there.

1:41:36It's hyper -palatable. It tastes good. You know, people want things that taste good, but there's an addictive aspect there as well and that's been shown in certainly a lot of animal studies but also some human data as well. So there's been studies showing that if people eat added sugar, it activates dopamine reward pathways in the brain and the striatum more than like eating fat, for example. So there was a sort of the compared fat versus added sugar. And so it's activating these dopamine reward pathways. animal studies have found that it's activating dopamine reward pathways much like addictive drugs do, but to a much milder degree of course.

1:42:16So what I'm saying is that you can have addictive drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine, nicotine. Well, it will activate these dopamine reward pathways in parts of the brain. Sugar activates them too to a much milder degree of course, but you know, in animal studies, they'll keep going back for the sugar like this addictive thing, right? Now, So again, you got to take the animal studies to the grain of salt because we are not rodents. But there is human evidence that these pathways are being activated in our brain with added sugar. And there's also evidence that if you look at people that are obese, the obesity genetic diet is largely consists of a lot of added sugar.

1:42:53Well, people that are obese have a lower density of dopamine two receptors, D2 receptors, really indicative of something called tolerance. So what happens if you keep activating the dopamine reward pathway is that your body as a adaptive response a feedback to it goes I don't need so many dopamine receptor because I had a lot of that signal coming in right But what ends up happening is when you have fewer of those receptors Then the little bit of dopamine that you have you're not feeling it as much. It's you need more and more right and And so, you know, you kind of connect the dots here, and I would say certainly we need more evidence in the human arena on the, you know, potential addictive properties of added sugar.

1:43:37However, what we do have is a lot of animal evidence and, you know, some human evidence. And I think it really indicates that there is, it's affecting reward pathways. It's affecting our dopamine system. And that's, you know, unhealthy. How legitimate are the links to cancer when it comes to ultra -process foods in sugar? I, you know, there's a lot of ways to get there. So I'll give you, you know, obviously when you talk to a scientist like the most robust evidence is, well, we need a randomized control trial. We need a proof causation, right? Well, you're never going to get that because it takes decades for cancer to, you know, where it's ugly head.

1:44:16And that's like too expensive of trial. But the evidence that we do have, you know, for one, people that are obese tend to eat more added sugar. I mean, that's a fact. The obese people are eating added sugar. As a propulsion. Yes, yeah, exactly. Because they'll eat more of everything. They're eating more ultra -process foods, which are higher in added sugar, don't have a fiber matrix. So you know, the way sugar is metabolized when it's packaged in with fruit is very different than added sugar in ultra -process foods, which has no fiber matrix. And so what happens when it has a fiber matrix is it slows the metabolism of it.

1:45:00It really slows it down. It's not this big bowl -less. For one, your gut isn't seeing a big bowl -less of it, which causes, you know, it actually causes intestinal permeability and that causes inflammatory molecules to leach into your bloodstream, inflammation is a major driver of aging cancer, causes damage to DNA, so all those things happen, right? And there have been studies that have shown that men, young men that consume, it's like 20 ounces of sugar sweetened beverage a day for three weeks, okay? Is it healthy young men? They're consuming like a big like Coke, right? Something like that.

1:45:40After three weeks, their inflammatory biomarkers go up like a hundred percent, like a hundred percent. So that's causing inflammation and healthy, just healthy young men. Again, inflammation is something that is involved in driving cancer. We know that obesity is very intimately linked to cancers. There's like 13 different cancers that obesity is known to play a role in. And there's just a lot of evidence that lifestyle factors like eating ultra -process foods, like being overweight, obese, like these are factors that can dramatically reduce cancer incidents if they are reduced. If you reduce your ultra -process foods, if you reduce your added sugar and lose weight, like these are things that are known.

1:46:26So I do think that it's pretty strong link. And again, it's multiple ways that it's happening. It's not just like, you know, there's through the obesity, right? Mechanism, but it's also causing, you know, there's the insulin sensitivity and insulin production and just all sorts of things that are that are at play here. I think it's important to separate out the obesity side from what else is going on. Because lots of people that listen to the podcast will probably have a good indication of, What was my body weight on? And I probably go to the gym and I do all the rest of the stuff. What else is happening?

1:47:03How else can I motivate myself to pick the healthy option, even if I know that my waistline isn't going to be the determining factor for this? I'm not, obesity isn't that much of a risk for me. So what is it that could be happening? So I think it's interesting to sort of break it apart like that. I guess another area that I'm particularly interested in is brain health and energy levels when it comes to the impact of the ultra -process foods, the added sugar, stuff like that. And that's probably one of the biggest areas that it also has an impact on. So if you're eating a lot of added sugar, then you can have higher than...

1:47:40You can basically be on the high end of the normal range for blood glucose levels. So you're within the normal range, but on the higher end. So you're not diabetic. So you might think, oh, I don't have diabetes in fun. I'm still within the normal range. But there are studies showing that people on the high end of the normal range have increased atrophy in the hippocampus part of their brain that's involved in learning and memory, and they have higher atrophy in the amygdala part of their brain that's involved in emotional regulation compared to people on the lower end of the normal range. So that's an association study, right?

1:48:16There's also... So that's angry and forgetful. Right. But again, it's association study. There's also other studies showing that higher blood glucose levels are associated with increased like 54 % risk, increased risk for vascular dementia. So glucose, what it's doing when you have a constant intake of glucose and that glucose, let's say you're not exercising enough to have that glucose get disposed into your muscle, which is really where you want it, right? you want it to go gets taken up into your muscle. Exercise really helps with that. So when you exercise, you cause a lot of glucose transporters to come up to your muscle, which opens up the gates to allow glucose in.

1:49:00You want it to go to your muscle instead of your adipose tissue. If that doesn't happen, if you're not exercising enough, the glucose will stay around in your bloodstream. And what happens is, yes, there's an insulin response and all that metabolic stuff, but there's also something that happens that's called the malar to reaction. And it's where glucose reacts with lipids, it reacts with DNA in your body, it reacts with proteins and damages them. And when it reacts with proteins like for example collagen lining your pericardium surrounding your heart, your myocardium surrounding your heart, lining your blood vessels, it causes the collagen to become stiff.

1:49:39It changes the properties of the protein. It makes some stiff kind of like trans fats. That's actually a really good analogy. I didn't think about that, but it's really kind of a similar thing. It causes your blood vessels to become stiff. It causes the tissue surrounding your heart to become stiff. And that plays a major role in the stiffening of the heart with age, which affects cardiovascular disease risk. So you're talking about just an accumulation of these, this malered reaction, what happens is it forms something called advanced glycation end products and that's what is basically stiffening the proteins like collagen, which are around forever.

1:50:17Your collagen surrounding your heart and it's there and you know you don't want to make it stiffer, right? So that's something to consider as well as the fact that it is affecting cognition and the brain as well. So we talked about brain aging. It causes inflammation. So for example, I mentioned the study of men that consumed the the sort of 20 ounce sugar sweetened beverage and they had 100 % increase in their inflammatory markers after three weeks. Well inflammation essentially is, those molecules are getting into the brain, crossing over the blood brain barrier and they're getting into the brain.

1:50:54It was thought for a long time that inflammatory molecules don't cross the blood brain barrier, but that years ago was debunked. We now know a lot of cytokines and inflammatory things are crossing the blood brain barrier. And when they get into the brain, they are doing a variety of things. For one, they're affecting mood immediately. And we know that for a fact, we know causally. You can take a healthy person and inject them with lipopolysaccharide, which is something that's, it's found in our gut. It's a component of bacterial membranes. We have a lot of bacteria in our gut, it makes up our microbiome.

1:51:27When you have leaky gut and intestinal permeability, lipopolysaccharide gets into your circulation. Refine sugar does do that. You can inject normal healthy people with lipopolysaccharide or placebo, which is saline, and it causes massive inflammation. Like what I just talked about with a sugar -swing beverage. And those people then end up getting depressive symptoms. So it plays a role in their mood. But if you blunt that inflammatory response with something like EPA, which is a component of Omega -3, it's one of the We also know that when you have a high inflammatory state, which I just gave a lot of evidence for in terms of added sugar, it changes the metabolism of tryptophan.

1:52:15Tryptophan is an essential amino acid. We get from our diet. It's in proteins. It's a precursor for serotonin. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that's involved in cognition, executive function. It's involved in mood. what inflammation does is it causes trip to fan instead of being converted into serotonin, it causes it to be converted into something called kineurning, which is involved in inflammation. It's basically your body, your body is going, oh, I'm inflamed. I've got a pathogen. Okay, there's no pathogen. It's actually just added sugar, too much added sugar, right? Constantly. And so your body thinks it's a pathogen and so it's trying to then make anything it can to activate immune cells to take care of the pathogen, right?

1:52:58But the problem is, is that it's not a pathogen. So, chineurinine helps with that whole activating the immune system. But also, what it does is, as it's metabolized, it can form something called quinolytic acid, which is a neurotoxin, and it's also associated with depression. So, you're talking about inflammation now affecting, you know, key metabolic processes that are important for cognition, executive function mood and dampening those processes, right? So you're you're you can immediately have an effect on cognition. I mean, you get like a quick sugar high, but boy, does that go away pretty quick, right?

1:53:36I mean, it's like you immediately start to feel like that sort of. If you wanted to reliably make your mental performance bad, having a donut and a coke an hour before you were supposed to do something important is probably a pretty good way to do it. Exactly. It's almost like when you're sick how you feel, right? You feel foggy, brain foggy because you're inflammation, your immune system's activated. You've mentioned a couple of times today about leaky gut permeability at a high level. What can people do? I've heard the words, I kind of understand what it means. It's kind of in the name. What can people do to rebuild the gut and make it less leaky?

1:54:12Well, you know, leaky gut is kind of the common word, the real, it's intestinal permeability. And essentially what it is is you have tight junctions that are holding your endothelial cells that line your intestine together and they sort of open up and allow, basically they allow these LPS and cytokines and stuff to go into your circulation and cause inflammation. Essentially, there's a variety of factors that can increase intestinal permeability. Obviously, there's genetic factors that play as well. People have celiac, I mean, that's a big problem. And Crohn's disease, inflammatory bowel disease, all those things are sort of chronic issues that do cause intestinal permeability.

1:54:49But generally speaking, an obesity genetic diet, so the worst thing you can do is have a diet high in a lot of fats, particularly saturated fat combined with refined sugar. So think like ice cream, right? Like anything that's really high in saturated fat plus refined sugar can cause intestinal permeability. Obesity itself can play a role in that as well. Being shrinking is another one. Chronic stress, psychological stress, anything like relationship stress, financial stress, emotional stress, work related stress itself, releasing stress hormones causes intestinal permeability. There have been studies on that.

1:55:26They took people that were about to give a presentation when you're stressed. In fact, if they would have measured mine before the podcast, they'd be like, oh, she's got intestinal permeability. He got the corticotropin releasing hormone, but stress also does it. But so really again, it comes down to fiber plays an important role in preventing intestinal permeability for a couple of reasons. One, 70 % of the energy used by your gut is called butyrate. Butyrate is made from bacteria in your gut by fermenting that fermentable type of fiber I was talking about. So things that are high in pectins, that's a type of fermentable fiber that be berries or apples with the skin on it, or inulin, so onions, asparagus, or the mushrooms, so the beta, the beta glucans, mushrooms, oats, basically eating a lot of fermentable fiber increases butarate production really helps keep your gut healthy and prevent intestinal permeability.

1:56:26But I think the main thing really is you want to, you want to make sure eating whole foods. So fruits, vegetables, lean meats, poultry, fish, like a whole foods diet, ultra -processed food diet increases intestinal permeability. And then you also want to make sure that you're getting that fermentable fiber as well, right, because you want to give yourself the butyray production. So those are, I think, some of the major drivers of preventing intestinal permeability. Lots of people are going to be hearing about this and have been eating processed foods forever. Everyone has an idea in the back of their mind that when you're faced with the apple and a twinkie that the apple is going to be that of you, but you know, some people have been moving through different levels of wealth.

1:57:15Some people have been moving through different levels of convenience. Some people are sort of really understanding their health journey. Other people are on the road so much that they have sort of these limitations, no one's going to be militant about it all of the time. Inevitably, you're going to go to a sports match and like, what are you going to do? This is like, you're not taking, you haven't pre -cooked your rice and beef and taken it in with you. So, what are the best ways to mitigate the impact of ultra -process foods given sort of a typical way that people are going to exist in the world?

1:57:46How much can it be offset? that? I mean, I think I think to answer your question is like, you're it kind of goes back to the imperfect avoidance, right? Like, you're going to do what you can. And most of the time when you're at home in an environment where you can eat whole foods, do some meal prep on weekends, you know, do what you can to kind of make it more convenient for you to have whole foods, you're going to you're going to do that. And then when you're traveling or you're going out to have fun at a stadium or whatever, you're going to live your life can have fun and like have have the ultra -possessed foods, right?

1:58:16Because if you're 80 % of the time doing it the right way, you're really doing good. I think exercise to really answer your question is it's the it's the forgiver of all. Most of our sins basically. So, you know, if you are exercising and it is a part of your personal hygiene, you do it every, you're doing it almost every day to some degree. You are mitigating, so the added sugar component, right? You're getting glucose and bring it into your muscle, your improving cognition in so many different ways, exercise plays a role in improving cognition, not only in the short term, but in the long term.

1:58:57Exercise also increases butarate producing bacteria independent of diet. So exercise is actually a stress on the body, on the brain, on the gut. And it actually very, very transently causes intestinal permeability. But as an adaptation, like exercise does, adaptations, it does cardiovascular adaptations, your brain adapts, everything's adapting. Your gut actually increases the production of butyrate producing bacteria so that the next time you exercise, guess what? You have more butyrate around to like really help the, your gut be more robust. So I think that there's like, you could just come up with like every explanation why exercise is going to be beneficial for x, y, or z unhealthy thing that you do.

1:59:43And it's going to be like, okay, at the end of the day, I am getting that exercise. I'm doing, I'm really doing a good job. Is there a particular type of exercise here? I'm going to guess that you're going to tell me it's high intensity again. Well, I mean, I think it depends on what you're looking for, right? I mean, so if you're looking to build muscle mass and strength and increase testosterone around more, we're gonna talk about compound lifts, right? Like doing multi -joint compound types of exercises like squats and deadlifts and you know rows and overhead presses shoulder presses on and on.

2:00:16Like that's gonna help you robustly increase your muscle mass, increase your muscle strength, function and testosterone. Like those are things that are known to affect all those things. So, So if we're talking about improving cognition in the short term, you want a quick pump. Let's say you want to remember something. Then we're talking a high intensity interval training session short. You don't want to, because you can do an hour long workout and you're just drained after it. But there's studies showing that even a 10 minute workout will boost cognition and memory recall. Actually, there was an interesting study where doing 30 minutes of, it wasn't necessarily high -high intensity, but you know, you're like 70 % your max heart rate, so you're moderate, getting to the high level, doing that.

2:01:08So, learning something and then doing the 30 -minute cycling workout and then having a test after like on your memory recall, it boosts memory recall. So if you really, like, it's a little hack, I use it all the time I used it today. Like, I go through some of my material, do my workout. In my case, I only had 10 minutes, so I did a 10 minute high intensity workout. My favorite is the back -to -back tubata, as I do 16 intervals. But that's something I use to boost cognition in the short term. But there's just so much data out there on aerobic exercise, high intensity exercise, improving cognition, increasing the number of brain cells in the brain.

2:01:49There was one study, I think I mentioned it last time on the podcast, this was an older adults, they did aerobic exercise for a year, they increased their hippocampus by like 2%. Usually they're atroping, okay? They increased the size of it by 2%. Amazing. So I do think like, yes, if you're someone who likes to like, you know, gain muscle, yeah, exactly. You want to, you want to gain muscle. Great. Their resistance training is good for the brain too, and there are studies on that as well. But if you want to really have brain benefits and really, you want to have your cardio respiratory fitness improved, you have to add in some aerobic exercise in there.

2:02:29The most time efficient way to do it would be hit because let's say you're like, I'm not going to go run 10 miles a week, like I'm going to be lifting weights. I only have so much time in the day, right? That's where the high intensity interval training comes in because it's very time efficient, right? Not only that, when you're getting into that high intensity, vigorous exercise type of workout, that's when you're making a metabolite called lactate. We've talked about this. When your body's working so hard that it has to use glucose without using it through the mitochondria, basically it's like you don't need oxygen.

2:03:04You can't get oxygen to your mitochondria quick enough to use glucose and so you're making energy without the mitochondria. and that makes lactate as a byproduct. Turns out it's not a byproduct. It's an active metabolite. That's amazing. And it's getting into the brain. It's been shown to increase brain drive neurotrophic factor, that's a very important neurotrophic factor that can improve short -term memory, long -term memory. It staves off brain aging. It makes you feel better. It's involved with neuroplasticity, being able to adapt to changing. I mean, it just goes on and on. You want this stuff, right?

2:03:39And so lactase out there, it's a signaling molecule telling your brain to make it. It's an adaptation because your brain is working hard while you're working out. And so your body's making more. All of the bros that just want to do sets of eight to 14 are going to sign up to Barry's boot camp. I'm going to have them going to be sweaty. I'm going to have to do all of this work. But you convinced me last year and I've been doing the Norwegian fall by fall as much as I can remember and as much as I can tolerate since then. And that's a really good workout for cardio respiratory fitness, right? improving your VO2 max, which is really important for longevity, right?

2:04:12That's a big longevity marker. I mean, if you just think about like sitting here talking, having this conversation, it requires a amount of oxygen to like breathe in and be able to utilize, right? As we get older, like even that becomes hard. So you really want to have a high level. You want to like build it up as much as you can because you're going to be pulling on it and going down as you age, right? Things like walking to your car. Have you ever seen like an older person out of breath just by like walking to their car, right? So you, VO2 max, Norwegian 4x4. So this is four minutes, like the maximal intensity that you can sustain for that four minutes, this is sustainable intensity.

2:04:47And then you have a three minute recovery, total light exercise, and then you go back at it again and you do that four times. The salt bike, after a year of testing, I've come to believe that the salt bike is the best place to do it. It's, it's actually, it assaults you, like it's so hard. I'm not, it's, it's, it's, The reason I say a salt bike is that with this, what you need is to be able to go very slowly, very easily. So you don't want something you need to strap into or strap out of. So a rowing machine is kind of a little bit ungainly when you've then got to go slow. The same, I guess the ski you can pick up and put down quite easily.

2:05:21But running on a true form, it's speeding up, slowing down in that way is just so difficult. And doing it on a static bike, a carol bike or something else, fantastic. But you do have to work a little bit harder, because it's just a lower half of your body. Right. So my preference is bike. Carole bike great. Assault bike kind of easier to be harder, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. But yeah, I've tried it. I agree. I think the bike, well, actually think the bike is harder. When I do the rower, I, on my three minutes off, I actually just end up like not really doing anything because I switch off with my husband and he'll be on.

2:05:58So it's like I actually get four minutes off sometimes. But yeah, but it also it does improve cognition the brain. That's another you know, there's some some research on that as well Where like at least if you're you're being time efficient and it doesn't have to be the Norwegian 4x4 like Like something you could do a minute on a minute off do that 10 times or you could do tabatas right 20 seconds on 10 seconds off All of these protocols Have been shown to improve B .O .2 max they've been shown to improve cognition Also, like mitochondrial function. So, yeah, in Norwegian 4x4, you're going to get a little bit more of a boost because it is a longer interval.

2:06:33But you have to do something that you are going to consistently do, right? I've found the 4x4 to be quite easy to stick to. It's definitely miserable because 4 minutes is a very long time. It's a high intensity. But there's a bit of me when I'm doing 20 on 10 off to batter, unless it's a really demanding movement that just think, I can't, I'm not, I can't work hard enough, I can't sprint fast enough in this 22nd period, and I can't recover enough in the 10 seconds to, that cadence for me, maybe it's just a psychological thing, that cadence doesn't quite seem to work in the same way. I get it, you know, so I, when I'm really time strapped, I do my tabata, which is a 10 -minute one, and I agree, it's, I typically crank up the resistance and stand while I'm doing because I really have to get my heart rate up.

2:07:22I don't find that 10 seconds is enough recovery, so my performance goes down on subsequent intervals, for sure. But I do find when I do a 20 minute hit workout, so I have 20 seconds on 20 seconds off, and then I have a little bit of time in between my, you know, sessions. Right. So I find that my performance goes up because I have a little bit more recovery time. And I really do like that 20 minute, I mean, 20 second on 20 second off, 20 minute workout, is kind of like a go -to if it's like. The sweet spot. It is because, you know, like you said, it's like the 10 second recovery is really, it's just not enough and I do notice that my next, you know, five intervals are not as hard.

2:07:59Yeah, sucking on water, trying to get it to go through. What are you working on next? What else have you got in terms of a research area? What are you going to be focused on for the rest of the year? I'm looking into creatine and it's effects on the brain and I mean obviously muscle but like non I would say popular effects. It's a very interesting, there's a lot of interesting data out there on creatine and also how it affects the methylation pathway. So a lot of people are sort of obsessed with this. It's methylation is used in your body for a lot of different biological systems and a a lot of people think of methylfolate.

2:08:39Well, I need my methylfolate because I have an MTHFR where I'm not making methyl groups as much. And this and that. Well, actually, our body makes creatine. And, you know, that's something that we do make. But it requires a ton of methylation to do so. So if you give yourself exogenous creatine, it frees up the methylation because your body has the creatine now and it doesn't have to keep making as much. And so I'm very interested in the effects of creatinines. Talked about that. Very cool. Tim, Ferris has been practicing trialing 10 to 15 plus grams a day to see what that does from a cognitive health perspective.

2:09:19It's an interesting. Yeah, there's some interesting data on there, like 10 grams a day. I take five, but there's also studies on their studies that have come out on five grams a day for cardiovascular health improvements. So, again, I'm actually getting having a researcher on my podcast and I'll see about a couple weeks who does, you know, create teen research and knows all about that. The other thing I'm doing, I'm very interested in, is exercise and cancer, both prevention and treatment. So there's now a lot of clinical research on using exercise as an adjunct treatment to cancer and how effective it is in improving cancer survival and improving, you know, the basically lowering the cancer recurrence risk, right?

2:10:01So like, it coming back and also improving like a whole host of like side effects of chemo, like your mood, nausea, like, guess what? When you exercise along with the chemo, people think that I don't have energy to do it, but it turns out they actually feel better. They're surprised to those of us that exercise. It's not that much of a surprise. I mean, exercise is, you know, there's studies out there now that have compared exercise to a classical SSRIs, right? And they're as good, if not better, at treating depression. Did you see what the top rated category of exercise movement was in one of those studies?

2:10:38It was dancing with music. Oh, no, I didn't see that. Yeah, so I think it was, it came out at the same time, but it wasn't the same one. But yes, when you compared it, and they then ranked all of the different modes of exercise, I think one of the things, especially to do with dancing that you have is this sort of inherently prosocial intimate collaborative partner -based thing that's going on, which is probably doing all sorts of stuff that's oxytocin that's serotonin as well Fass -oppressin like there'll be a ton of things going on. Right. That must have been an observational study There's actually been randomized control trials comparing a lot of a lot of them are running they do running for the exercise or biking but like in that sense it's like you're really comparing the two, right?

2:11:24And in that sense. But yeah, there's so many things going on, right? You're getting the endorphins, you're getting... you're getting the cannabinoids or now the one that you're making with exercise that affect your mood. You're getting serotonin, oxytocin as well. All the good things. Rhonda, you're great. I really appreciate you. I love getting to speak to you. So, creating, exercising cancer, we need to talk about toxic mold and microtoxins. We can do that next time that you come on. But why should people go? Keep up to date with all of the things. Have you got any more PDFs going out? I do, yeah.

2:11:56So I've got a podcast, right? I'm on all the places, Spotify and YouTube and Apple Podcasts. But I also have a website as well, foundmyfitness .com. My podcast is called Found My Fitness. And I've got some free reports out there. I've got a new one on, it's called How to Train According to the Experts. and you can find that at how to trainguide .com. And it's essentially like all the experts I've had on my podcast that are in exercise physiology. So it's how to train to improve VO2 max and includes protocols, how to train to improve muscle mass, muscle strength, how to improve body composition.

2:12:31So there's all the protocols that you need and sort of a lot of like science explanations as well. How to trainguide .com. I've got BDNF protocols, so that can be found. I downloaded that one straight after our episode last year. What can people get the BDNF one? BDNF protocols .com, and that's a lot of protocols for improving brain health and cognition, basically, if you want some exercise protocols or polyphenol protocols that are out there that are shown to increase cognition and improve cognition. That's another one as well. Oh, when I have another one that you might be interested in, it's the omega -3, how to choose an omega -3 supplement.

2:13:04And it's basically got a list of eight or 10 different supplements that are quality low oxidation and like how to choose a supplement, and that's at omega3guide .com, so that's another one. I can, people can go and PDF themselves up. Ronda, I really appreciate you. Thank you. I appreciate it too, Chris. Thanks so much. Thank you very much for tuning in. Your brain may have exploded with all of the facts and studies that Ronda's just dropped, but let me explode your brain even more with three hours, the Andrew Cuban, right here. Come on. Watch it.