Anti-Aging Expert: Stop Touching Receipts Immediately! The Fast Way To Shrink Visceral Fat

21:04Dr. Rhonda Patrick:If you drink, if you're excessively consuming alcohol, you're going to store a lot of the energy that you're also consuming is going to be stored visceral. I mean, you've seen the beer belly, right? I mean, that's like a thing. It's visceral fat. It's not beer. It's visceral fat. So alcohol is another one. In terms of losing visceral fat, I mean, the good news is, is that you can lose it quite easily and quite rapidly. I was going to say parents have a hard time because you're naming those things about like sleep and stress. and I was thinking, gosh, parents have it coming from all sides. They do.

21:37Dr. Rhonda Patrick:But see, this is where the good news comes in because part of the reason why sleep is causing you to gain more visceral, sleep loss is causing you to gain visceral fat is because it's causing your body to become insulin resistant. It's like this vicious cycle. Visceral fat causes insulin resistance. Insulin resistance causes more visceral fat, right? And that's why once you get into that cycle, it just spirals out of control, right? And you start to gain more and more and more. Sorry, insulin resistance, what is that? That is when your body no longer produces insulin? No, no. Insulin resistance is when your body is no longer responding to insulin.

22:15Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So it's like you're waiting for the phone to ring and it's ringing, but you can't hear it, right? Like you're not getting the signal. And so your cells are not responding to the insulin that's made. Insulin is really helping your body move the glucose out, right? Move it out of your bloodstream, where it can cause a lot of damage if it sits around. And if you put too much pressure on the insulin system, then it kind of shuts down? Eventually shuts down. And the thing that puts too much pressure is consuming too much glucose or too much activity? Too much glucose, refined glucose, can do that. Visceral fat is one of the, I would say, bigger causes of insulin.

22:55Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's actually one of the major, major causes of insulin resistance because if you are physically active and eating a lot of glucose, that glucose is going to your muscles. Physical activity makes your muscles very responsive to glucose without needing insulin. The transporters that transport glucose are super, super responsive when you exercise. That's why physical activity, and this is what I was getting at with parents, is so important. the visceral fat is the really big like concern with insulin resistance this is and this is the thing that again it's like people don't even know about it a lot of people are thinking about glucose and oh i gotta watch my glucose and that's all fine i mean yes to some degree that's also playing a role but it's it's it's the visceral fat that's the real underlying problem that's that's causing you to become insulin resistant you mentioned parents have it like bad because they're stressed out and they don't get sleep.

23:47Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor when I became a new mother. I was appalled by my fasting blood glucose and by my postprandial blood glucose levels. Never. Postprandial. Postprandial means after a meal. Okay. So your levels go obviously much higher after you eat a meal versus in the morning when you haven't had anything to eat. And my levels were so high, it was pre-diabetic. And I was just, I couldn't believe it. It's not like I'm eating, you know, drinking Cokes and eating terrible, right? But there was a period of time when I'm not as physically active, particularly in the first couple of months.

24:20Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's really, you know, that's the time when you're kind of just in this cave. I immediately was looking into the scientific literature and found that high-intensity interval training and exercise can help almost negate most of those poor effects of causing insulin resistance and causing your glucose regulation to not be normal. That's the good news for parents is that you should prioritize, new parents should prioritize exercise. And exercise does cause you to lose visceral fat. It's not just any type of exercise, really has to be aerobic. And the more vigorous, the better. So for people that don't know what that means, aerobic and vigorous.

24:56Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah. So what I mean is resistance training and lifting weights don't really move the needle in terms of helping you lose visceral fat. It does help you improve your metabolism. It does help with like glucose, you know sensitivity and all that like because your muscles are going to be more sensitive to take the glucose in but if you want to lose visceral fat you're going to have to do running jogging cycling swimming you want to like get your heart rate up a little more why it's energy expenditure it plays a role in getting you to that caloric more caloric deficit and that's better so that's one way and the other thing is weight any any weight loss program so intermittent fasting caloric restriction, you know, even GLP-1 receptor agonists and all the classes of GLP-1, anything that is going to make you lose weight, lose fat, visceral fat's one of the first to go.

25:46Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And in fact, people on these weight loss programs or even on exercise training program, visceral fat's the first fat to go. And so you can lose it quite quickly. So on this point of fasting, are you a fan of fasting to combat visceral fat? And also, So could you give me your thoughts on being in a ketogenic state as it relates to visceral fat? Yeah. People, when they think about intermittent fasting, they kind of think about, you know, one thing and they think about weight loss, right? But there's a lot going on here. And I like that you mentioned being in a ketogenic state because there's also a metabolic switch that happens.

26:23Dr. Rhonda Patrick:This metabolic switch from burning carbohydrates and glucose to burning fatty acids and getting in ketosis, right? That's a metabolic switch. And it's very important. There are two different things happening here. But intermittent fasting is essentially a good tool that people can use to reduce their calorie intake without having to count their calories. That's why I like it. You can lose weight by counting your calories and reducing your calorie intake. I personally think that's a lot of work. Some people love doing it, and that's great. I think whatever works for a person. But the way in which intermittent fasting helps people lose visceral fat is by reducing calorie intake.

27:00Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That's what I'm getting at. It's like a tool that some people like to use because I like it, for one, because I can not think, I just, I'll skip one meal, making sure I get enough nutrients in the meals that I eat and protein in the meals I eat. But I'll skip a meal and it gets me in a caloric deficit without having to think about and count everything. So it's easier on me. To fast. To fast versus counting calories. And how do you do that? So I like to fast in the morning. And the reason I like to fast in the morning is for the exact reason you mentioned. And that is the ketosis, which I like to call the metabolic switch.

27:36Dr. Rhonda Patrick:You're not eating while you're sleeping, obviously. So if you're sleeping for eight, if you're in bed for nine hours, 10 hours, you're not eating during that time. And it takes about 10 to 12 hours for your liver to deplete glycogen. Glucose that's been taken up by the liver is stored as glycogen so that you can then use it for energy later if you don't have energy coming in, right? So the glycogen is like the petrol station. Yes. So it runs out of petrol. That's right. And so it takes - And it switches to diesel. And it switches to diesel. And so after that switch, that metabolic switch, when you deplete that glycogen while you're sleeping or while you're not eating after about 12 hours, and by the way, this is all relative because it depends on the kind of foods you eat and how physically active you are.

28:20Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So if you eat a lot of high carbohydrate, refined sugar stuff, you might take even longer to deplete your glycogen because you're putting a lot of input in there. You keep filling up the fuel tank, right? But if you're eating things that are more low carb, you might deplete your glycogen sooner. So when you deplete your glycogen, you get into this metabolic switch because your body still needs energy, but there's no glucose around, right? So you start to switch to, you know, your fatty acids are immobilized. They come out of your adipose tissue. This is why people lose fat. They come out of the visceral fat.

28:50Dr. Rhonda Patrick:You start to use those fatty acids and burn them as energy. And as a product of that energy, you're making ketones, ketosis. And the reason I like to do this in the morning is because then I can really get into that ketotic state where if I'm fasting, I do it typically, I fast for about 16 hours a day, and then I eat my meals within eight hours a day. Typically, that's what I do. The reason I like to be in that metabolic switch state is many reasons, actually. One, the ketones themselves are providing my brain with energy, very easily utilizable energy, but they're also acting as a signaling molecule to my brain going, hey, this is a stressful time.

29:30Dr. Rhonda Patrick:There's no food. You better be cognitively sharp. You gotta find that food. You gotta like know what you're doing, right? It's an evolutionary adaptation. You know, humans for thousands of years were going through this metabolic switch because we didn't have Instacart. We didn't have Postmates. We didn't have Uber Eats, right? We had to find our food. We had to hunt our food. And we always didn't always do that, right? And so when I get into that metabolic switch state, I feel it. I feel more cognitively sharp. And I feel less anxious, which is part of it, because those ketones also help increase something called GABA.

30:04Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That's an inhibitory neurotransmitter. It's essentially, you can just think of it as, like, it helps you feel calmer. When I feel calmer, I'm more cognitively focused because it's like the background anxiety is down, right? It's like you can focus. And so I love being in that state in the morning because that's when I get my work done. I also like to be in that metabolic switch state. And this is why I like fasting in addition to, you know, the calorie, the fewer calories I'm consuming, right? Your body has to be in that fasted state to repair. If you're constantly in a fed state, fed states are important for anabolic growth.

30:37Dr. Rhonda Patrick:We need it to grow, right? But the repair state is also very important because with the growth comes damage. Damage comes along with that. And you want to repair that damage because damage will accelerate aging. And so I like to be and give my body enough time. I don't want to just wake up and eat where it's like, oh, I've only barely depleted my liver glycogen. I'm not even in that repair state very long, right? I want to extend it a little bit. And so I like to have that repair process active. And it is active during—fasting activates it, but also you have some amount of active repair going on even when you're in a fed state.

31:13Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's just heightened when you're fasted. So those are the reasons I like to be, I like intermittent fasting. I feel good when I do it. I also do a lot of training. Not all of it. I do a lot of training fasted, cardiovascular, aerobic endurance exercise, so running, biking, that stuff I like to do fasted. I'm not going for a 10-mile run. I'm going for a three-mile run, right? I mean, this is, so if I was going for a 10-mile run, I wouldn't be fasted. I would need some fuel. but there are studies, multiple studies showing that if you do aerobic endurance training, this kind of running, cycling, swimming type of training, you actually have better adaptations if you're fasted versus fed.

31:53What does that mean?

31:54Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So much of the benefit from exercise, right, aerobic exercise, when you're breathing in, you're, you're, you're, you're, right, you're working hard is from the working hard, but your body responds to that, right? Because the working hard is causing inflammation. It's causing oxidative damage. And your body is responding to that by going, oh, we got to get better at this stuff. So you have anti-inflammatory pathways activated. You have antioxidant pathways activated. Your body needs to burn fat. You need fuel. And so if you're fasted, you get better at burning the fat and oxidizing the fat. And you continue to do that throughout the day better as well.

32:28Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So you have what are called mitochondrial adaptations that are better. You make more mitochondria. Mitochondria are very important little tiny organelles inside of most of our cells that make energy. And they, you know, they're very important for everything. I mean, they're running our brains right now so we can talk, our heart, you know, so we can breathe, our lungs, everything, right? And so exercise does make you increase the amount of those new mitochondria that you make that are young and healthy. If you're fasted. Both, even if you're not. But if you're fasted, it's even better. This has been a big debate around whether this applies to both men and women.

33:05Should both men and women exercise fasted?

33:08Dr. Rhonda Patrick:This is my read of the literature and my thoughts on this from also having experts that have studied male versus female responses to exercise. First and foremost, how do you feel when you exercise fasted? If you feel terrible, that's a sign. I think listening to your body is the most important thing that you can do. There are times when I have to eat before I exercise. And I listen to my body. That's it. I'm going to eat. When it comes to women versus men and doing exercise fasted, it also depends on, again, are you doing a 30-minute run? Are you doing a two-hour run? If you're doing a two-hour run, you need to fuel.

33:47Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That's a lot. That's a big stress. When it comes to a 30-minute run, you don't really necessarily need to. Now, the problem with women is that they're often, if you're in too much of a caloric deficit and you don't eat enough food within, you know, like afterwards, you're not refueling enough and you're doing very very long high volume types of exercise then you can basically disrupt your you know some of your hormones your your follicle stimulating hormone luteinizing hormone these things will make you become amenorrhetic so you basically stop ovulating and you stop getting your menstrual period and what's the evolutionary reason for that what's going on because your body's like there's not enough food and energy around to sustain a you know, a growing fetus, like they're shutting down.

34:32Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So it's, so it's basically like, Hey, we're not going to allow you to have a baby basically. So you stop, you stop ovulating. Right. So you can't, you're not making, you're not making those eggs. Is this often the case with women who exercise a lot and no longer have their menstrual cycle? First of all, it's not a common thing. This is like, this is something that happens in, you know, like athletes, elite athlete women that are not eating enough food. Like, I did this to myself when I was in my early 20s, and I was running—I was racing marathons, and I was running 10 miles a day, you know, 8 to 10 miles a day, five days a week, and then I was eating carrots and hummus.

35:07Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And, you know, I just—I wasn't fueling myself. And I did this to myself, too. So how do you feel if you train fasted? Do you feel terrible? Don't do it. If you want to train somewhat fasted, go for the protein, you know, protein shake with a little bit of almond milk or something like that, where you're not eating a full meal, but you're getting something. So I do a lot of my training fasted and that has helped me, you know, I'm 47 years old and perimenopause. You're in phenomenal shape. Thank you. Thank you. But I did notice, of course, as, as I started to reach that perimenopause part of my life, that I had to be a little bit more aggressive and put a little bit more effort in to not get this fat right here on my belly because it started coming up and I didn't want it.

35:56Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I didn't, it wasn't, it wasn't an option for me. Speaking of studies done for women, I've heard you talk in the past about the SWAN study, which kind of relates to what you just said there, when relating to women in visceral fat, and they found that women experience an accelerated increase in visceral fat starting two years before their final menstrual period. Yeah, because that's when their estrogen is about, it's just, it's plummeting, right? You're just off a cliff because you're about to go into menopause. Again, what age would that be? Average age of menopause is between 50, about 50, 52 for women.

36:27Dr. Rhonda Patrick:A lot of that, there's a lot of things that can affect your reproductive lifespan, your ovarian aging, I guess we can call it. And unfortunately, one of them is when you, the age you were when you got your menstrual period. So the younger you were, the younger you're going to be when you experienced menopause. So also when your mother experienced menopause is very indicative of when you're going to experience it. But lifestyle and diet play a role too. Obesity accelerates ovarian aging. So you're more likely to go into menopause earlier with obesity. Also, these chemicals that we're exposed to, and we can talk about those as well, a lot of these endocrine disrupting chemicals affect the age of menopause as well and accelerate that.

37:12Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So in some cases, women go into menopause two years earlier than they would have otherwise. And you're 47. And a half. And a half. And the data that I'm looking at here says, when we think about perimenopause, it usually starts in mid-40s, which is the age range you're in. This is where the 8 % to 10 % annual visceral fat increase begins. It is. Annual? Yeah. I can tell you from people in my life that I've seen going through this, it's pretty sudden that you'll see someone in your life that's a woman that's going through perimenopause. and maybe hasn't had any other symptoms yet. So they haven't really seeked out any treatment.

37:51Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Now you can try to do some hormone replacement therapy as well to help with that. But they start to gain visceral fat and it shows up around the belly quite rapidly. And I noticed this in myself. It almost feels overnight, seriously. This is the only symptom that I noticed in myself where it was like all of a sudden my belly was like growing. and, you know, not super, super large, but enough where I was like, there's something wrong. It's not even necessarily reflected if you get hormone tests because mine all seem normal. The thing is, is that the estrogen, when it drops, that estrogen is so important for telling your body to store energy differently, not around the organs, but to make it around, you know, other parts of your body, like your thighs and your butt, right?

38:36Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Like your adipose tissue. And so when that estrogen goes down and declines, it's like, boom, it starts to go right to the belly. So that is why, for me, intermittent fasting has been really important. Like with any weight loss or calorie restriction protocol, you do need to make sure you're getting enough protein because that's important for muscle, right? Muscle growth and preventing atrophy of your muscle. And you need to also do resistance training. That also is a very important signal for muscle because the problem is some people calorie restrict and eat fewer meals. and then they're not getting enough protein and they're not training and they start to lose muscle in addition to fat.

39:15Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And you don't want to do that. You want to kind of just lose the visceral fat and keep the muscle, ideally keep gaining muscle. And for men, I was reading that testosterone and growth hormone typically peak in their late 20s. So I guess mine's peaked already. And starting at age 30, testosterone drops roughly 1 % a year. So between the age of 25 and 65, men typically see a 200 % increase in their visceral fat, even if their total weight stays the same.

39:42so is that linked to the testosterone decline is that what's going on there what's causing it

39:46Dr. Rhonda Patrick:yeah i mean it's it's testosterone does you burn even if you're gaining visceral fat it helps you burn it it's it's also why some women that are in perimenopause want to do testosterone because it helps them burn the visceral fat um so it is it is linked to testosterone decline as well but also as men are aging they're they become more sedentary they send they tend to eat a little bit They're consuming more calories. Like all these things are hand in hand. So it's like a, it's not just like a one punch, right? It's like multiple angles are kind of all compounding and coming together. Whereas you could get away with it a little bit easier when you're younger because the testosterone is helping you burn it more.

40:21When you're declining, it doesn't work that same way. So even though you're gaining it, you're not burning it as quickly.

40:26Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So you start to have a net gain in it, if that makes sense. So going back up to the top then, we were talking about things you can do to lower your visceral fat. and we talked a little bit about exercise, sleep, diet. Is there anything else in that category? Yeah, I think those are the main ones. Obviously avoiding excess alcohol consumption and also the stress. The stress, like trying to relaxation techniques buffer that stress. That's a big one. It's an amplifier. Yeah, people don't talk enough about visceral fat. You know, they look at other markers. No, well, most people just want to lose weight and look good.

41:03Yeah.

41:03Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Or, yeah, they look at, you know, HbA1c, your long-term glucose, or they're looking at lipids. And visceral fat is just, it's insidious, right? It just starts increasing, increasing, increasing. You can't see it. You can't see it until all of a sudden belly, right? I mean, it's bad. And it affects the way you feel daily. On this point of testosterone, why is it the case that testosterone seems to be dropping amongst men? I think it said something like, I wrote it down, yeah. Yeah, testosterone levels in men have dropped by up to 20 % over the last two decades, which is quite terrifying. It is.

41:41Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So look, there's a lot of factors that can affect testosterone. I mentioned dietary factors, refined sugar. Sleep is a big one. People aren't getting enough sleep. Lack of sleep drops testosterone. Micronutrients, not getting enough zinc, for example. Zinc is very important for testosterone synthesis and magnesium. Like there's important nutrient components. But I think the big player here is actually environmental. I think that we are being bombarded with what are called endocrine disrupting chemicals. These are man-made chemicals. A lot of them are part of plastic. They're made to help plastic be more durable or more robust or they're found or they're water resistant.

42:29Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So there's probably three main endocrine-disrupting chemicals that are found in our environment, mainly because they're in plastic or they're also in things that are water-resistant, oil-resistant, fire-resistant, flame-retardant. BPA, bisphenol A is one. Another one is phthalates, pH, phthalates. And the last one would be PFAS. These are the forever chemicals. these are the three main i would say players in terms of disrupting endocrine function endocrine being hormones sex hormones like testosterone estrogen but also thyroid hormone very important for regulating our metabolism for example are they really causing a problem absolutely really absolutely because i'm looking at the picture you have there of pfa pfas pfas pfas and it's got like a coat and shoes on there.

43:22You're telling me the clothes that I wear are having an impact on my hormones.

43:26Dr. Rhonda Patrick:They can, but I think it's less of a direct effect and more downstream. So the PFAS chemicals or the forever chemicals, they're used in things to make them oil resistant, stain resistant, water resistant. So the Teflon pans would be the biggest example. You remember those nonstick pans, they have Teflon that has PFAS on it. We're going to go into my kitchen in a second. So I'll take all of the viewers that are watching now into my kitchen. We'll have a stroller on my kitchen. You let me know if there's some things. Oh gosh, I hope you don't have Teplon. But I mean, my mom used it when I was growing up.

43:57Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I remember the nonstick pans. That stuff is coming off into your food. And so you're eating these PFAS. How do we know that they're dangerous? Okay, well, I'll tell you how we know. Like, let's start with, so the PFAS chemicals are ones that are really, they're more affecting the thyroid and they're affecting, I would say, ovarian aging. They seem to target the ovaries and accelerate the age that you're going to get menopause. So you're going to get it around one to two years earlier if you have a high amount of these forever chemicals. But there's been studies, a lot of studies looking at, let's start with BPA.

44:32Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Okay, bisphenol A. That's a big one because you see a lot of marketing around BPA-free. This plastic water bottle is BPA-free. Well, it's BPA-free, but it has another chemical called BPS, which is very similar, if not worse, than BPA. So BPA is something that's found in a lot of water bottles. It's in those plastic water bottles. It lines the cups of paper cups, like these to-go coffee cups that you're getting at your favorite, you know, coffee place. Plastic is lining them, yes. Plastic lines them because it's protecting it from the liquid, right? BPA has been linked to many different diseases, but really, really, it's an endocrine disruptor.

45:11Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So what it does is a couple of things. One, BPA acts as an estrogen mimetic. So it kind of mimics estrogen and it binds to the receptors that estrogen do to do its function. And so it sometimes binds to estrogen and either makes it seem like there's estrogen around or it blocks estrogen from working. So it depends on the dose and the concentration. So it can do both. But it also binds to androgen receptors that interact with testosterone, right? And so there have been studies that have found that men that have high amounts of BPA also have low amounts of testosterone. But there was also a study done in teens.

45:50Dr. Rhonda Patrick:This is when, you know, your sexual development is happening, right? Testosterone is very important during this part of your life, during puberty. Teens, adolescent boys that had the highest amount of BPA had 50 % lower testosterone than men—than the boys, sorry, that had the lowest amount of BPA. The biggest one that's affecting testosterone is the phthalates. These phthalates, they are present in a lot of PVC piping. They're present in a lot of our food packaging, all those like thin art. You go to the grocery store and you get a filet mignon steak and it's wrapped in plastic. Poultry is all that plastic wrapping and all the foods that we're eating has phthalates in them.

46:34Dr. Rhonda Patrick:They make it more flexible and stuff. and it's also found in our hair products, our cosmetic products, our creams. And it's also very lipid soluble. It likes fat. It is drawn to fat. So when you have plastic around fat, like cheese, you know, things like that, meat, it's getting into that meat. It's getting into that cheese, the phthalates. These disrupt our hormones in ways similar to BPA. So they're binding to the androgen receptor, but they're also going into the testes and disrupting the synthesis of testosterone. So there was a study in men that had the highest phthalate levels. Those men had 20 % lower testosterone compared to men with higher levels.

47:18Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And this is, yeah, and this is like, it's affecting not only just the testosterone, but it's affecting sperm quality. So the shape of the sperm wasn't good. It's affecting the number. So sperm count is down if they're higher BPA or higher phthalates. And also motility, the ability to swim. Pregnant women that get exposed to high levels of phthalates, and if they're carrying a male fetus, right, or they're having a boy, what's been shown is it's also affecting sexual development. So these boys, they're getting something called hypospadia. It's where like the slit on the penis is like moved backwards, kind of closer to like what a woman would have.

48:02Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And they're getting undescended testicles. So one of their testicles is not descending. And that's associated with, you know, infertility, cancer, testicular cancer being the big one. This is happening at an alarming rate. Like something like 20 % of boys now have an undescended testicle. I mean, it's crazy. Because their mother had high phthalates. Well, this is definitely something that is known in our environment to cause that. I don't know if that's the only cause, but it, in my opinion, is a very, very concerning cause that nobody is talking about and that should be addressed. And it's everywhere.

48:37Dr. Rhonda Patrick:We have these in all of our plastic wrappers, everything that we're eating. You're even getting your meat. You think, well, it's meat, but it's wrapped in plastic and the phthalates are getting into the food. So they're getting into our bodies. They're disrupting hormones. They're disrupting sexual development. They're disrupting our ovaries, estrogen, you know, ovarian aging, age of menopause. They're disrupting thyroids, the thyroid hormones. I mean, there's even studies now with women, pregnant women that have high levels of BPA. They have, they're six times more likely to have a child with autism spectrum disorder compared to women with low levels of BPA.

49:20Again, BPA is disrupting the estrogen and androgen receptor.

49:26Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And this is very important because the androgen, you want to have, it's disrupting aromatase as well, that enzyme that's involved in converting testosterone into estrogen. So believe it or not, when you're a boy developing in your mom's womb, estrogen plays a very important role in your brain and brain development and what's called masculinizing the male brain. You actually, it's kind of contradictory. You're like, oh, what wouldn't testosterone do that? Well, actually, estrogen is very important for masculizing parts of the male brain. And so when you have aromatase being inhibited by bisphenol A, by this endocrine disrupting hormone that is so ubiquitous everywhere.

50:07That is found in plastic bottles.

50:09Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Plastic bottles. It's found in, yeah, it's found everywhere. So what do you recommend? First of all, I think if you can eliminate and not drink out of plastic bottles as much as possible, if you do want to-go coffee, either drink it there in their mugs or bring your own to-go mug. Like I bring my, like, I have like a Yeti kind of to-go coffee mug that I'll bring into a Starbucks or wherever, a coffee bean, and I'll have them fill it up. Soup, cans, canned soup are lined with BPA. They're lined with plastic. and soup usually goes into the can hot. Sterile technique. I mean, they want to make sure it's...

50:45Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So you're getting... The soup has been classically shown in multiple studies to increase BPA levels by 1 ,000%. Crazy amounts. So don't eat canned soup as much as possible. I mean, obviously, this is about the habit, not the one-off. But, you know, try to avoid cans, drinking out of... Even soda cans, even like your favorite sparkling water cans. Don't make it a daily habit because they are lined with plastic. That's a source of BPA into your bodies. There are ways that you can excrete BPA. So the major way to get rid of it is through urine. It's excreted through your urine. But it has to become water-soluble first.

51:22Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's a fat-soluble compound. And so there are things that we can eat in our diet that will increase that excretion. Compounds in broccoli, broccoli sprouts being the big one, sulforaphane, activates a pathway that are enzymes involved in making BPA become water-soluble so they come out your urine. Oh, so broccoli's like a cleanser. It's like a cleanser. It's like we actually do have these—it's called phase 2 detoxification enzymes in our body. We have the ability to detox a lot of things. We just have to give our body the right, you know, input so that it can activate those pathways. I personally take a supplement of that sulforaphane because I want a concentrated amount of it because I used to do broccoli sprouts.

52:03Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Broccoli sprouts have 100 times more sulforaphane than mature broccoli. But you have to sprout them. And then there's contamination issues. And it's just, you know, some people do it. It's great. But I used to do it. I don't anymore. I just take a supplement. And that supplement's called? The supplement I take is called Avmacol. It's by a company called Nutrimax. I don't, you know, I'm not like affiliated with them. I like their supplement because, one, they've got 12 published studies using it. clinical studies too, showing that it actually helps with autism. Children and adolescents with autism that take the sulforaphane supplement, they have improved symptoms because it's a detox.

52:39Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It helps. Interestingly, people with autism are like 30 times less likely to excrete BPA. It's a weird thing going on here where BPA increases autism spectrum disorder, but then kids that have it are not able to detoxify it as well. Yeah, it's interesting. Again, And I think that excretion is important, but avoiding the plastic as much as you can. Make it a habit. Don't freak out. I mean, obviously, you can, like, make yourself crazy and stress is not good. As we talked about, I see you, like, going, oh, my gosh. Yeah, no, I'm thinking about just how casual I am about these things. And I could easily make small changes.

53:14Easily. Frankly, I could easily make big changes in the position I'm in. I could just say, I can say in my company, we no longer buy this kind of stuff. I could say in my kitchen, because, you know, to my team or whatever, let's not buy this. Can we go look in my kitchen now?

53:25Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Let's do it. Okay, let's go to my kitchen. Be right. You guys can come too. So we're going to go to my kitchen. If you're, listen, if you're listening on the dog walk, this might be a nice time to sit on a bench and look because you're about to go into my kitchen and we're going to look at real things that you might not even know in your kitchen are causing you some of these problems. Come with me. You know the little traditional SIM card that goes inside of our phones? They haven't changed at all since they were invented in the 90s. You have this physical piece of plastic that means you're locked into one carrier, one network, and the second you cross a border, that carrier can start charging you whatever they want.

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55:16You're no longer hoping your ad reaches the right person. Instead, you're defining exactly who sees it. And LinkedIn ads drives the highest B2B return on ad spend across all major ad networks. Give them a try at linkedin.com slash diary. And if you spend$250 on your first campaign, you'll get a$250 credit for your next one just by going to linkedin.com slash diary. Keep this to yourself. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, so the team have been here for the last couple of days. We've been getting lots of takeaways. So this is a higgledy-piggledy of everybody's food. What's wrong? Black plastic. What's wrong with the black plastic?

55:55Dr. Rhonda Patrick:We talked about plastic. It has BPA. It has phthalates. But it also typically is made from recycled electronics. And the problem here, Stephen, is recycled electronics have flame retardants in them because you don't want your electronics catching fire. And there have been a variety of studies now that have found that black plastic has a high amount of these flame retardants that are leaching into the food and getting into people's bodies that way. Not only do you not want to eat out of black plastic, you don't want hot food going in there, right? Because that's like the worst. Can I get a bin bag?

56:24I need a bin bag. Okay. Okay, so let's do that in the bin. What else? I'm going to take all of it out.

56:30Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Okay, this is the other thing that really reaches out, stands out to me because spicy foods, anything acidic that goes into plastic causes the chemicals to leach into it even more rapidly, kind of the same way the heat does. So heat, acidic foods, not good in plastic. So my spicy sauce, if it comes in a little plastic tub, it's going to leach in. Look, if it's the one-off, okay, but like not a habit. Yes, a big time leach in. You're eating BPA hot sauce. Okay. So the black stuff is out. It's going in hot. Yeah, this has phthalates and it had BPA. I mean, look, are you drinking this every day or is it the one-off?

57:12No comment. No comment. Mind your bits now. Okay, what else? What about this?

57:17Dr. Rhonda Patrick:This is made of paper. Here's my little thing I do. See that? Waxy? There's a waxy PFAS. On the edge? Yeah. Does it seem like it has a waxy substance to you? Yes. This is better than the black plastic. If there's tears, this is better than black plastic. Okay. And this? Ding, ding, ding. This is great. This is the best thing that you can do. If you're going to have food made for you or you want to order takeout, have someone make it for you and deliver you in this. And this is a bamboo lid. Bamboo lid with Pyrex glass, right? Okay. So this is good. This is great. So I need more of this. You need more of this and get rid of all.

57:57Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I mean, this is already looking better. This is on the scale, at least it goes in cold. So here's the thing. Microplastics are also shedding into this. We didn't talk about microplastics. They're shedding into here. The chemicals, not as much in something like this. but they're still getting in. So this is a little bit better when it comes to like the tears here. The hot food is the worst. This is a little bit better, but I still would get lettuce. Because it's cold. Because it's cold. So it's not seeping. Exactly. Okay, so I might be able to keep that then. What else do you notice here? So I noticed that I really like your glass sparkling waters.

58:30Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That's great because, you know, glass is less likely to have microplastic shedding, less likely to have the chemicals. There was a study that actually found, interestingly there were more microplastics in on the top so the paint that's on these lids plastic polymers are using that and during the processing and you know bottling up of these things they get into the the water and so believe it or not glass bottled water has more microplastics than plastic bottle water okay this is terrible but i'm going to tell you why i think this still is worse, okay? So this has got microplastics, but it also has BPA and phthalates.

59:11Dr. Rhonda Patrick:They're in this water. This is not always cold. It was in some warehouse, shipping container. Who knows how it got here? It's been heated up, I'm sure, several times. The problem is that there was a study showing that glass bottles have a higher amount of microplastics than plastic. And you might go, why is that? Because they're all coming off on this paint and getting in. When it comes to microplastics size matter. I'm not as worried about it having more microplastics because it would show that they were large microplastics. Your body doesn't absorb large ones very well. They come out through your feces.

59:42Dr. Rhonda Patrick:This has tons of what are called nanoplastics, very, very small particles that get into the gut and get into your bloodstream. So I still go for the glass water. So I would avoid drinking out of these as much as possible. So I like how you have these condiments in the glass. This is how my refrigerator looks as well. I'm very, very obsessive about anything that has acidity in it, like hot sauce and ketchup, it needs to be in glass because the acidity is leaching microplastics and BPA and phthalate chemicals into your condiments and then you're putting that on your food and you're eating them. Again, this is ubiquitous.

1:00:15Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's everywhere. Plastic is everywhere. The chemicals are everywhere. And you're not even thinking about the fact that your hot sauce and ketchup are also, you know, vehicles for delivering these microplastics and, you know, their associated chemicals into your body. So I This one, I would go for a glass mustard. Those are better. Glass bottle. So this is plastic. Same thing. It's acidic. I would say, you know, for the most part, the butter. Oh, yeah, this is bad. This is butter or cheese. Yeah, so this is a problem also. So if you look at this, it's that flexible plasticky stuff, right? It has phthalates in it.

1:00:51Dr. Rhonda Patrick:What, this? Oh, that's even worse. Yeah, so this is the plastic that basically, you know, phthalates are in this. And they're fat-soluble, and they're just leaching into this fatty cheese. They're leaching into the fatty cheese. So you can buy cheese that's, like, without this in just the container. That's a little bit better. You know what I mean? Like, I'm thinking of feta cheese, for example. Like, some feta cheese comes in this plastic wrapper, but you can buy it with just the container. And at least it's not, like, close, like, with juices, like, just seeping into it, you know, getting the chemicals into it.

1:01:25Ah, but this is fine, isn't it? Eggs?

1:01:29Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yes, eggs are great. There we go. Eggs are great. We found something. Okay, Rhonda, so spatulas and kitchen utensils. Are these good? Are these bad? What's the best? Yeah, good question. These are great, right? There's no plastic here, no possibility of plastic leaking into your foods. You've got your nice pasta spoon. These are silicon, I'm imagining. Yeah. In theory, the silicon should be okay. The problem is, is that there's a lot of silicone that actually still has, it's mixed with plastic too. So I go for the wood ones that are like this, like the wooden spatula. That's what I use. You, in theory, should be good.

1:02:10Dr. Rhonda Patrick:In practice, a lot of silicone that's been measured out there and tested does have plastic. So I would say if you want to really be careful, I would switch. But most people at home probably have a plastic spatula. Is that accurate? Most people at home have plastic spatula, and a lot of people also have black plastic spatulas, which, again, back to that black recycled electronics, flame retardants. These are cancer-causing chemicals in there, bromelated chemicals that are causing cancer. So, yeah, I would say that even shifting from the plastic to this is probably a step up, but I don't know that this is just pure silicone.

1:02:48Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I would guess that there's some plastic still in it. And so if you're heating it up, the plastic, it's getting into your food. Okay. what about um my my pans what about i've got my pans here great all clad this is what i use these are amazing no plastic lining no pfas no non-stick so most people's pans at home have a sort of a protective layer here that's non-stick so that they can cook their food and their food doesn't stick to the pans like scrambled eggs they're kind of a pain in the butt if they stick to everything that has the forever chemicals in them. And that is being heated up and is leaching into your food and you're eating it.

1:03:27Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So really what you want to avoid the most is Teflon, right? Anything that's nonstick. It's harder to cook with these though. It's so much harder, but you know what? You're healthier and that's what you have to imagine. The other thing I want to talk to you about is this. The blender. Ah, yes, the blender. This is one that people often miss. The problem is most blender tops here that's blending your stuff is plastic. And there are studies showing that when you have a lot of friction on plastic, that releases orders of magnitude more microplastics. And of course, there are associated chemicals are hitchhiking along there.

1:04:03Dr. Rhonda Patrick:There are companies that make a stainless steel version of the blender. And I highly recommend, if you're someone like myself, I like to do my kale blueberry smoothies, that you switch to the stainless steel. I did. I switched for my family because essentially the friction, you're drinking microplastics and chemicals. So that's bad. A receipt. Yeah, don't touch it. What do you mean don't touch it? So receipts are… Why are you touching it like that? covered with bpa i mean literally just covered that's how it prints it right this isn't like a printer this is printed it's a thermal paper and and the bpa is allowing the printing to happen and so they're covered with bisphenol a people that are handling receipts like cashiers that are handling receipts have really high levels of bpa particularly if they use like hand sanitizing lotion or any lotion any sort of cream makes the bpa again bpa is fat soluble these creams The hand sanitizers are carrying it inside your bloodstream about 100-fold higher than not having that.

1:05:09Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So first of all, you can opt to have a receipt emailed to you. If you need the receipt, I would do that. Or don't touch it. But also, if you're a cashier and you work in this industry, really, really please wear nitrile gloves. I mean, this is like your BPA levels. If you were to go get them measured, which you can. there are companies out there now that do measure BPA levels in urine, you will see that they are extremely, extremely high. So nitrile gloves will protect you from the BPA getting across your dermal barrier and getting to your bloodstream. Latex gloves do not. So make sure they're nitrile gloves.

1:05:46Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And for people that are not in the industry, try to avoid the receipts. I mean, it's a really big exposure to BPA that people aren't even realizing. I can tell by the way you're like grabbing the corner of it, like it's feces or something. Oh, it's terrible. And my son, like, you know, kids love paper. And of course, I don't want him touching it because we talked about that study in adolescent boys where they had high BPA levels. And that was associated with a 50 % reduction in testosterone. I mean, this is at a part of your life when testosterone is, you know, important for sexual development and development in general.

1:06:14Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So really, really, really important to remember receipts are a very big source of BPA that people are not thinking about, particularly people that are routinely handling these receipts. And the other thing I want to talk to you about is water. So here is one of my water filters. I also have a filter attached to the tap. What are your thoughts? So this is filtering water, but it's filtering it into plastic. And it's also got plastic filter. So I think that, you know, you're probably filtering away some other things, pathogens, gross other chemicals that might be in the water, but you're essentially reintroducing the plastic.

1:06:50Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So I don't know that that's necessarily the best way to get the filter. What you have over here is a reverse osmosis water filter. That is absolutely the ideal. Reverse osmosis water filters filter out microplastics, nanoplastics, BPA, phthalates, chemicals, all these things that we're talking about today. People can get a tabletop one. Kind of like this is tabletop, but it's a tabletop reverse osmosis water filter. These only filter out the bigger, larger plastic size, microplastic size. And then the last thing I want to mention, Stephen, because you do have a reverse osmosis water filter, is that it does filter out a lot of small particles, including essential trace elements and some essential minerals and stuff.

1:07:32Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So you want to make sure that you are taking a multivitamin mineral supplement and you can also get what's called little essential element drops that have things like phosphorus, manganese, iodine, some of these things that are being filtered out of your water and making sure you're reintroducing that to your water. Okay, so it takes some good stuff out too. It does, yeah. Okay. Is there anything else that maybe is either in my kitchen now or not in my kitchen that is a culprit of BPAs and PFALs? Yeah. Yeah, here's the first problem here. And then inside where the hot water is going through is there's plastic pieces.

1:08:07Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So the hot water is going through plastic to get to your little espresso, you know, cup here. These, I actually looked into this because at first I thought they were lined with plastic. They're not. My concern is mostly the water going through the system that's heating up. It's got plastic, you know, piping in there that it's going through. Okay, so I'm going to just stay here and I'm going to just grab.

1:08:31Okay, so this is now the coffee that I drink called Contour. They flash freeze it at the perfect moment and it's delivered frozen. So metal and then this is an aluminium lid.

1:08:41Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Right, so it shouldn't be lined with plastic, right? You go like this, press the little button on top and it goes straight into your glass. And then this comes out and that's the coffee. Oh, I love it. So you just drop, it's funny because they're a sponsor. So disclaimer, and I'm also an investor in this company. So no machines at all. Put it straight into the glass, pour the hot water, and that's it. So it's like instant coffee, but it's real coffee that's been frozen. It's from some Stanford engineers who flash freeze it at the perfect moment to lock in the taste. And you can literally smell.

1:09:14Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Smells good. Smells good, yeah. Yeah, I'm so glad you're not putting it in a machine. No, no longer do that. Okay, so this is my supplement cupboard. It's a mess, but I've pulled out things that I'm personally interested in. Good, bad, indifferent. The first one that jumped out at me when I was looking is reduced and active glutathione. This is something that I think people should be aware of. There's marketing involved here. Glutathione is a major antioxidant. We make it in our body. We make it in our brain. What does it do, sorry? So it's a very important antioxidant. It helps negate oxidation, which is causing brain aging.

1:09:49Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's negating oxidation, which is aging yourself, right? People want to supplement with it because they've heard about glutathione and how beneficial it is and how it's a great antioxidant. the problem is because our body makes it inside of our cells, inside of our cells, we don't have a transporter to get glutathione from the outside of our cells, like if we eat it and if it makes it through our digestion, which it really doesn't, into our cells. And so this kind of glutathione isn't going to make it inside of your cells. So this is just a waste of time. It is. You're going to want to get something called liposomal glutathione.

1:10:21Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Liposomal glutathione has been shown to get inside because liposomes, it's essentially taking the glutathione molecule and encapsulating it in something that's going to fuse with your cell. Liposomal products in general have a higher bioavailability for that reason. So let me repeat that back to you so I've got it. So if it's liposomal, it's basically in a packet which can get through into the cell. If it's not, this one is reduced and active, then it's never going to get in the cell, so it's a waste of time. It's just going to be excreted. Yeah, I would say that it's really not doing much and that if you're going to want to supplement with liposomal glutathione, that's what I have.

1:10:54What about this? Vitamin D3. I've always been confused because people say take vitamin D, but then this one says D3.

1:11:00Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Right. D3 is the form of vitamin D that you make when you're in the sun. That's the major way we make vitamin D is from sun exposure. There is a plant form of vitamin D called vitamin D2. It's found in things like mushrooms, for example. The problem is that there have been studies showing that vitamin D2, which is unfortunately what a lot of vegetarians take because they want a vegetarian form. Vitamin D3 is also found in sheepskin because the sheep are making it in their skin when they're exposed to sunlight. Vitamin D2 is not as effective as vitamin D3. If you are a vegetarian or a vegan, you're going to want to look for vitamin D3 from lichen.

1:11:39Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Lichen is that green stuff that you can find on trees and stuff. That also makes vitamin D3. And so it's a much better option than getting the vitamin D2, which is what a lot of vegetarians do. So There's actually a study, a recent study showing that people that are vitamin D deficient, so they're not getting enough vitamin D3 because we don't go out in the sun anymore. They have accelerated aging. And if they supplement, this is a very large study, by the way, if they supplemented with vitamin D3, they slowed their biological aging by almost two years. That didn't happen in people that were not vitamin D deficient from the start.

1:12:11Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So it's not like a vitamin D3 supplement is going to do something miraculous if you already have enough vitamin D. The point is to avoid deficiency. And so, you know, someone like yourself, that probably doesn't go outside a lot. But also, when you go outside, but you have darker skin. So melanin is a natural sunscreen. And so people with more melanin have to spend a lot more time in the sun. And so that is something to consider as well. Well, I can always just take my multivitamin. Right. Multivitamin. I think I might have talked about one study last time we talked, last episode, where men and women that were older adults, they were 65 years and older, They took one Centrum Silver a day, and I'm not advocating for Centrum Silver.

1:12:50Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I'm just saying that was involved in the study. And after three years, they had reversed their brain aging, global brain aging, by 2.1 years. And they reversed their episodic brain aging by almost five years. So episodic memory is the kind of memory involved in remembering events and people and things like that. As you get older, that stuff doesn't come as quick, right? So it delayed that aging by five years. Well, the same study also just recently published literally like a couple of weeks ago. Again, part of this large study, it's called the COSMOS study. They looked at the multivitamin use and biological aging, epigenetic aging.

1:13:29Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And they found that the Centrum Silver multivitamin also slowed biological aging, epigenetic aging by a few months. And this was only after two years. And you might go, oh, a few months. But that was after two years. And that trial was two years long. So if you add two years and then you add another two years and then you add, and then you're talking about 20, talking about 30, talking about 50 years, that is slowing aging the entire time. It adds up. It's cumulative. And it's one of the easiest things that someone can do to basically, you know, make sure that they're aging better. There's things that are harder to do, but that to me is such a low-hanging fruit.

1:14:03Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's easy. What is it about this? What is in here that's making a male multivitamin have such profound effects? If you look at the back at the supplement facts, there's a lot of vitamins and minerals, things like vitamin C, vitamin D3, vitamin E, vitamin K, niacin, the B vitamins, folate. You have things like selenium, the essential, those essential elements. These are all things that we need to run everything in our body. All of our metabolism, our neurotransmitter synthesis, our immune system, you know, our liver, all these, these are cofactors that are really important for all those things.

1:14:36Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And you don't realize how important they are until time goes on and things start to fall apart. It's basically filling the gaps because we're supposed to get these things from our foods. We're supposed to be getting all these vitamins and minerals from our foods, from our water. And it's just not happening for many reasons. One, our soils are depleted. You know, the organophosphates like glyphosate is depleting our minerals. And so the foods that are being grown in the soil aren't getting the minerals that they're supposed to. And then the second problem is we're not eating the right foods because we're eating takeout.

1:15:05Dr. Rhonda Patrick:We're eating foods that are not micronutrient dense, things like dark leafy greens. We're not eating the colors of the rainbow. And those are really important for vitamins and minerals. So I've got two questions there. Is there a multivitamin that I could take that is not good for me? Because when I go to the shops, there's so many different types these days. And I don't know which one's good, bad, or how to tell the difference. And so honestly, sometimes I just go based on the most expensive, because I assume the most expensive is the best quality. Yeah. So, you know, the problem with supplements is they're not regulated.

1:15:35Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I mean, not that I necessarily want them, but it is a problem because supplement companies can kind of put whatever they want in the supplements. They don't necessarily have the amount of active ingredient that they say, or they can either have too little or too much. And so that is the problem with - Too much. Yeah. So for example, some vitamin D3 supplements and some melatonin supplements have like, in some cases, like 1 ,000 to 10 ,000-fold more. And it was a really big problem with melatonin because melatonin is that hormone that you make to help you fall asleep, and there was excessive amounts in them.

1:16:11Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So it's not regulated, so you really don't know the amount you're getting. So I would say, number one, go to a trusted brand that is third-party testing. There's so much third-party testing now. Consumer Lab does it. You can look up what they've tested. But for a man, I would say the thing that's essential here is you don't want to get iron. You don't want supplemental iron. Well, someone told me to start drinking these iron drinks. Were you iron deficient? No. Okay. I was just sick one time and they said this would really help. This wasn't a scientist. Yeah. It was just a friend. Most men do not need to supplement with iron unless they have, you know, a problem with iron in their anemic, for example.

1:16:49Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Iron can be very bad. I mean, if you're supplementing with iron, it's very reactive, and it causes oxidative stress easily. It's called free iron. The free iron reacts with other things, with your DNA, your cells. And so most men do not need to supplement. In fact, even something called hemochromatosis, where you're basically, you have too much iron already, and if you have those genes, it's actually quite common, then you're really talking about iron overload. So you really do not need to supplement with iron. Women? Women, premenopausal women are different because premenopausal women do lose a lot of iron from menstruation when they're menstruating.

1:17:24Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And so I would say about 16 % of menstruating women are iron deficient. And then if you add exercise on top of that, you know, a lot of endurance exercise, you can get lysis of your red blood cells. And so you do need iron for your red blood cells. If you're eating meat, if you're not a vegetarian, you know, maybe that would be a case if you're like a vegan or something, maybe some iron could come in, but you have to get your iron levels measured. You don't want to be too high because it does cause damage. But I would say that premenopausal women, iron, especially around your cycle, is good. Postmenopausal women, once you hit menopause, you kind of shift to what a man needs.

1:17:58Dr. Rhonda Patrick:You don't need the iron again. So it's very much just premenopausal women that need iron. That's so funny. I've been drinking these. Omega-3? Does that look good? Yes. Omega-3 fish oil, as we've talked about before. I mean, this is probably one of the best and easiest things that people can do to improve their health, improve the way they age. Omega-3 fatty acids. 90 % of the U.S. population is not getting enough of them. 80 % globally, everyone, nobody's getting enough omega-3 fatty acids, particularly from seafood. So the EPA and DHA from fish oil are probably the best forms. You know, we talked about studies.

1:18:29Dr. Rhonda Patrick:If you have a high omega-3 index, you have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to low omega-3 index. If you're a smoker and you have a high omega-3 index, then you're going to live as long as a non-smoker with a low omega-3 index, right? I mean, so the low omega-3 index is like smoking. Basically, you have a 66 % lower chance of getting Alzheimer's disease with a high omega-3 index. And even more recently, there were studies showing that omega-3 slows epigenetic aging. And this is not just in deficiency, I guess because everyone's deficient. Maybe that's why. But a study showed that omega-3 fish oil supplementation, this was a study out of Switzerland.

1:19:06Dr. Rhonda Patrick:These individuals are mostly active. There were 88 % of them were already physically active at the start of the trial. And I mentioned that because the trial involved omega-3, it involved vitamin D, and it involved resistance training, or the combination of all three. And only the omega-3 was able to slow epigenetic aging, biological aging, because for one, they were already physically active. So adding resistance training on top of their baseline didn't do much. And they were vitamin D sufficient. So the omega-3 was able to slow epigenetic aging. The combination of all three slowed it by four months.

1:19:37Dr. Rhonda Patrick:This was just after one year. So slowed it by four months. And if you imagine that, it doesn't sound like a lot. Again, it's compounding. But also within that study, they looked at real-world outcomes. So that also correlated with they had a 60 % less likely chance of being pre-frail. So pre-frailty, right? They also were less likely to get cancer as well. So, I mean, it's really kind of translating to these health outcomes that we think of. And all you need to do is supplement with about 1.6 to 2 grams a day of omega-3 to get a good omega-3 index. But I will mention one thing, Stephen. It's at room temperature.

1:20:14Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I don't think that's a great idea because fish oil is a polyunsaturated fatty acid. It is prone to oxidation. So you want to put it in a low-temperature environment. Actually, I keep all my fish oil frozen. Frozen. And then when I'm ready to use it, I put it in the fridge. So, like, I have a store of it. I have a stock of it I buy. and then it's in the freezer and then I put it in the fridge with the bottle that I'm using from. And freezing it does nothing. It's fine. So it's basically just keeping it really, really low oxidation. So I need to put this in the fridge? You need to put it in the fridge and also make sure you're getting a quality brand, right?

1:20:45Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So you're going to third-party testing again. You want to have a total oxidation, ideally less than 10. And there are brands out there that do have an oxidation less than 10. Which means it's more fresh and pure. It's more, yeah, it's less oxidized. You don't want to be consuming oxidized fat because that's also not good. Okay. So what else jumps out to you here? We've got creatine. I mean... Yeah. Creatine is like my new... I travel with it everywhere. You got microionized. Is this... I've got so many different types of creatine. Right. This is the one I take. Yeah. I take the creatine monohydrate because it's the most well studied.

1:21:20Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And obviously, I do a lot of training and workout training. I do a lot of resistance training and strength training. So I at least get five grams a day, which is what I always was doing in the past. I upped that to 10 grams a day as my baseline because I wanted to have benefits in my brain. Studies out of Germany show that once you get to the 10 gram mark, you're actually, your brain's able to take it up and it's increasing creatine in certain brain regions. That doesn't happen much at lower doses. And that's because your muscles are very greedy. The creatine in my brain, honestly, I've, for me, I mentioned this before, it's a game changer just on a daily basis.

1:21:53Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I feel like I don't have that afternoon slump. I'm in my mid forties. My brain isn't as sharp as it was, creatine has really helped me kind of get a little bit closer to where I used to be. And also when I'm sleep deprived, I go up even higher. Sometimes I do 20, 25 grams. And that is because studies have shown if you go up to a higher dose like that, depending on your weight, it's kind of a scale that it helps you basically negate the negative effects on your brain from sleep deprivation, where not only are you cognitively functioning, you're functioning beyond what your even normal baseline was, which was kind of mind-blowing.

1:22:27The question I had is around loading and how long it takes to feel the impact. Because when I first heard about creatine, I was 16 and my brother was bodybuilding. And they were told that you need to like load up on big loads of it. And then in like two weeks time, your body would be saturated. What's the truth?

1:22:43Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Right. So the reason that creatine loading was done was because there's a short window of time when researchers are doing a study. And they want their muscle stores to be saturated. They want their muscle stores to be saturated. And so you have to do 20-gram loading phase in order to saturate them after three or four days. If you're not about to compete and if you haven't been using creatine and you're not participating in this study, it takes about four weeks, three to four weeks, of five grams a day consistently to saturate your muscle. So you don't have to do any loading phase. If you are supplementing with five grams a day and you've been doing it for a month, Your muscle stores are saturated.

1:23:24Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Until you exercise and you get that five grams in again, they're saturated, right? So they keep their already, that five grams a day is keeping them saturated. And that's why I said your muscles are really hungry and greedy. They're wanting that five grams. They're wanting that five grams. And that's about what it takes daily to saturate them. However, if you're starting from gram zero where you've never taken creatine, it's going to take four weeks to really get to sex. Otherwise, yeah, you'll have to get higher doses. They're not going to be saturated after five grams. So some people might have tried creatine for a week, not felt any effects and given up.

1:23:54Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That's a good, that's actually a really good point. Yeah. It's about a month long experiment, I would say, close to four weeks. I think some people can saturate it at three weeks, but it all depends, body size and all that. So four weeks is a good experiment time and five grams is a good dose to start with. If five grams a day actually makes you more bloated and nauseous, cut that down to two and a half and two and a half grams so that you split the doses. If you split the doses, if you take it with food, particularly carbohydrates, it seems to help negate some of the bloating and nausea and negative effects people feel.

1:24:23And obviously, if you're not working out, you know, creatine is not going to like grow your muscles.

1:24:28Dr. Rhonda Patrick:You have to put in the work. You have to put in the effort. It's what it's doing is it's helping your muscles, you know, grow and give you the energy to do more training volumes that they can grow bigger and also so that you can be stronger. If you are traveling and stressed and all those things, yes, creatine is good for the brain. I was seeing, I think it was James Smith did a video about different creatine percentages in the creatine products we drink or eat or consume. And he looked at creatine gummies and found that some of the creatine gummies don't even have any creatine in them at all.

1:24:59And it was quite shocking because you just assumed that if it says creatine, there's going to be creatine in there.

1:25:03Dr. Rhonda Patrick:This goes back to the whole problem where supplements are not regulated. And so you never really know what you're getting and you have to have third party testing and go to a quality brand gummies in general. So there was a study that was published not long ago. It was a consumer study that was done where people went and got a lot of different creatine gummies off the shelf and then measured how much creatine was in them. And essentially almost all of them had none. And I've talked to some supplement manufacturers, and basically their statement was it's really hard to get active ingredients in gummy in general, not even just creatine in general.

1:25:37Dr. Rhonda Patrick:But the other thing I did want to mention with creatine is that you do want to make sure it's NSF certified. That's a really important thing because there are contaminants that are even produced in the processing of creatine and creatine monohydrate. And so you want to make sure that you're not getting those contaminants, which can be harmful. And some of them are like lead, for example, but even some other compounds that are formed. And so you want NSF certification. and that's always what I look for when I'm buying a creatine supplement is NSF certification or any supplement. I really like to have all supplements NSF certified because that really means they've one looked at contaminants and two it's got that active ingredient in there and that's really what you want.

1:26:16And the NSF certification is just a little logo on the side of the top here that says NSF certified sports.

1:26:22Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That's it yeah and it's all on websites too if you buy online yeah. Okay so I've got one challenge for you. If you had to pick five supplements for me to take assuming that I am male and female. Okay. Okay, so it's neither gender. And it can be things that are either currently in my cupboard or not. What's the top five? And ideally give me them in order if you can, in order of importance. Fish oil. Number one. Number one. Vitamin D. Multivitamin. All three very, very strong evidence that you're going to slow aging. You're going to improve your brain function, lower disease risk, live longer. And creatine is going to be there.

1:27:06So that's one, two, three, four.

1:27:08Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And then the last one is magnesium. Magnesium would be, I mean, it might be number four and creatine number five, actually. Really? Yeah. You sure? What is magnesium doing for me? Magnesium is running, it's important for 300 different enzymes in your body. It's important to repair damage to your DNA that's being done all the time. It's being done from the iron that you're taking. It's being done from normal metabolism, normal immune activation. But when you're in a state where you're not eating a good diet or you're not getting enough sleep, magnesium is really important to repair that damage.

1:27:41And that's why studies have shown that magnesium is really important for preventing cancer.

1:27:46Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And it also helps with sleep. It's really good for sleep. But more importantly, 50 % of the population doesn't get enough magnesium. I bet you're probably one of those people because most of us are. Do you eat a lot of dark, leafy greens or almonds? You're supposed to be getting about 350 to 400 milligrams a day. Are you physically active? Yeah. You're sweating magnesium out. Let's make it six supplements. So there's a new supplement, urolithin A, that I'm pretty excited about. The other thing I take that's really important is that I don't necessarily see here. What's it called? So curcumin. Well, those supplements you've mentioned, the first one, which I can't say, and the second one, curcumin, we have on the table in the studio.

1:28:26So let's get back into the studio and we'll pick up from there. Steve, what are you doing? Just making myself a delicious coffee.

1:28:35Dr. Rhonda Patrick:From the freezer? From the freezer. Have you not heard about Conteer? No. Oh my gosh, this is going to change your life. A couple of months ago, the founder of this business called Matt sent a big shipment of this coffee to our office in London. What most people don't know is that the processing of coffee takes out a lot of the taste. So what they do is they flash freeze it at the optimal moment when it's most tasty. And they send you in the post, the coffee, in these little frozen ice cubes. Now, Matt sent a big shipment to my office. I moved it to the kitchen. I said to the team, knock yourselves out.

1:29:07And then I saw so many messages in our Slack channel of people going, oh my God, what the hell is that? It's so delicious. All I have to do is pop it out in the morning, using the little button on the back of this thing. I pour my hot water in and I mix it and that is done. You can get$30 off your first order of Cometeer coffee if you go to cometeer.com slash Stephen. Try it and please Instagram DM me, LinkedIn me and let me know if you love it as much as I do. You know every once in a while you come across a product that has such a huge impact on your life that you'd probably describe it as a game changer.

1:29:44And I would say for about 35 to 40 % of my team, they would currently describe this product that I have in front of me called Ketone IQ, which you can get at ketone.com as a game changer. But the reason I became a co-owner of this company and the reason why they now are a sponsor of this podcast is because one day when I came to work, there was a box of this stuff sat on my desk. I had no idea what it was. Lily and my team says that this company have been in touch. So I went upstairs, tried it, and quite frankly, the rest is history. In terms of my focus, my energy levels, how I feel, how I work, how productive I am, game changer.

1:30:20So if you want to give it a try, visit ketone.com slash Stephen for 30 % off. You'll also get a free gift with your second shipment. And now you can find Ketone IQ at Target stores across the United States, where your first shot is completely free of charge. Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself. I'm inviting 10 ,000 of you to come even deeper into the diary of a CEO. Welcome to my inner circle. This is a brand new private community that I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown. We have the briefs that are on my iPad when I'm recording the conversation.

1:30:54We have clips we've never released. We have behind the scenes conversations with the guests and also the episodes that we've never, ever released and so much more. In the circle, you'll have direct access to me. you can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview, and the types of conversations you would love us to have. But remember, for now, we're only inviting the first 10 ,000 people that join before it closes. So if you want to join our private closed community, head to the link in the description below or go to doaccircle.com. I will speak to you then.

1:31:29Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So phytosomal curcumin is another one that I supplement with. And let's just start with curcumin in general. Curcumin is found in a turmeric plant. It's something that is able to pretty robustly and I would say consistently lower inflammation. And it's doing it in a different way that like a NSAID, like an ibuprofen would do it, right? And that is important because it's been shown if you take NSAIDs, right? So these non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, something like ibuprofen, around exercise, it can blunt the adaptations because it's basically lowering inflammation and prostaglandins and things that are important to cause exercise adaptations.

1:32:14Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So curcumin hasn't been shown to do that, but it has been shown to lower something called TNF-alpha, and that is a major inflammatory cytokine that is really, really powerfully accelerating aging. In fact, those epigenetic aging clocks that we talked about earlier, one of the most powerful drugs that's able to slow them are TNF-alpha inhibitors. So these are drugs that people take to inhibit TNF-alpha. Certain people take them, like people with rheumatoid arthritis, they have a high level of inflammation, their immune system's overactive, they're making a lot of it. Well, guess what? Those individuals taking TNF-alpha inhibitors are like they have a 50 % less likelihood of getting Alzheimer's disease than people.

1:32:59Dr. Rhonda Patrick:50 %? Yes. So I like it because curcumin is one of the most, it is the most naturally occurring dietary compound that I've seen data showing that it lowers TNF alpha. I haven't seen anything else that's naturally occurring that does it. This does it. It lowers it by quite a bit, by almost five picograms per milliliter. Phytosomal curcumin is the reason I take phytosomal. It's kind of like a liposome, but it's phytosome. So it's essentially just making the ingredient get into the cells better. It's more bioavailable because curcumin is easily metabolized quickly by the liver. It's what's called a xenobiotic.

1:33:38Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's not a compound that's a vitamin or a mineral or something that the body normally recognized. It's seen as a drug, a foreign drug, xenobiotic, right? And so the liver gets rid of it quickly. The phytosomal delivery of it kind of slows that whole process, whereas it's not getting rid of so quickly. It's not being metabolized so readily. So that's why I take that. And also it's been shown to improve performance in people that are exercising. Again, because it's reducing inflammation. Inflammation can be dampening for performance. And what else have we got here? The other supplement that I really want to talk about is the urolithin A.

1:34:10Dr. Rhonda Patrick:and as I mentioned, this is a compound that's usually generated in the gut by the bacteria in your gut. It's something that we can get from our diet. So if we eat things like pomegranate, pomegranate has a type of polyphenol in it called elagitannins. I've never heard about this before. Okay, listen to this. This is like, you got to try this supplement. Eurylithin A, again, it's made from eating things like pomegranate. However, 50 % of the population doesn't have the right bacteria to make it. So you're kind of like a coin toss if you eat pomegranate. Am I going to be the person that can make urolithin A or am I not, right?

1:34:46Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So there was a company that did, out of Switzerland, a lot of these early studies were done in Switzerland, and they ended up making urolithin A and then testing, you know, doing clinical studies, doing animal studies first and then clinical studies to test, you know, what is urolithin A doing? So what is it? It is a compound that is able to basically get rid of damaged mitochondria. So it's called mitophagy. You've probably heard of autophagy, you know, clearing out all the gunk and the trash from your cells, making them rejuvenating them, right? Which is associated with fasting. Fasting activates autophagy.

1:35:21Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Fasting activates mitophagy, which is specifically just clearing out damaged mitochondria or pieces of damaged mitochondria. Autophagy is essentially you have a whole cell. And within that cell, you have a lot of different organelles, they're called. So mitochondria being one. And so autophagy kind of helps clear out all this stuff inside of the cell. Mitoophagy is very specific to just the mitochondria within the cell. Those mitochondria get older. And they don't have a really good repair process. And so they accumulate damage. And as they get older, you're not going to be making energy as well.

1:35:57Dr. Rhonda Patrick:You're not going to be using energy as well. It's going to affect all the cell function because energy is at the core of everything, right? So mitochondrial health is at the core of all health, basically. This compound very robustly induces mitophagy. And so there have been, of course, many animal studies that were done preclinically before clinical studies were done. Animal studies were exciting. I mean, mice that were given, old mice that were given urolithin A were able to rejuvenate tissues. but also 20 % life extension was found in these mice given urolithin A. 20 % is pretty big for a mouse study.

1:36:34Dr. Rhonda Patrick:All right, but we're not mice, so let's talk about humans and why I'm actually excited about it. For one, urolithin A and mitophagy was shown to be activated in humans taking it, so they took muscle biopsies and found that, in fact, mitophagy was activated. It's also recently been shown that this urolithin A is able to basically rejuvenate the immune system. So older adults were given 1 ,000 milligrams a day. And it basically, as we age, our immune system ages, our T cells aren't fighting off pathogens as well. And it increased the number of a very specific type of immune cell that decreases with age called CD8 positive T cells.

1:37:12Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Those were increased. That's very important because you're able to fight off infection better. And then it also increased a kind of immune cell that's able to kill cancer cells and also kill viruses and pathogens. It's called natural killer cells. So those cells increased as well with the urolithin A. And it also decreased markers of like senescence. So this is basically when a cell is still alive, but it's not functioning. It's basically like it's dead. But not only is it not dead and not functioning, it's secreting inflammatory cytokines, accelerating aging. I know, it's complicated. So the study showed that it was basically able to rejuvenate the immune system in older adults, younger adults that have taken it.

1:37:53Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So there's been studies showing that untrained athletes supplementing with 1 ,000 milligrams a day were able to improve their VO2 max 10 % more than just exercise alone. So if they exercised and took urolithin A, their VO2 max went up 10 % compared to the exercise alone group. Wow. Yes. If they were trained athletes, it only went up 5 % because trained athletes already are doing a lot, right? So you always get a bigger increase in BO2 max if you have an untrained athlete. Same with obese people. And on top of that, so again, energy. It's your clearing out damaged mitochondria. If you combine it with exercise, exercise causes you to make new mitochondria.

1:38:33Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So the way I look at it, Stephen, is a rejuvenation of all your mitochondria within your cells. Whether we're talking about your muscle cells or your immune cells, I think it's probably happening in the brain as well. So it's been trying to increase muscle strength in older adults. So their hamstring strength improved by like 10 to 12 % after supplementing versus just exercise alone. I think it's a supplement that's important for aging because it's affecting mitochondria and pretty much everything relies on mitochondria. And you can buy this in a normal shop on the high street? You cannot buy it in a normal shop.

1:39:04Dr. Rhonda Patrick:You can buy it online. It's not cheap, unfortunately. That's the other thing. So pomegranate itself is the next best thing for people. And there are studies showing that people that take pomegranate juice before they exercise and over the course of several weeks can actually increase their VO2 max by up to 17%. This is analysis of multiple studies showing that. So again, I think it's all coming down to the urolithin A. And it's a new supplement that I've been experimenting with. Again, the immune system effects. I think I'm not getting sick, but I'm doing the creatine. I'm doing the urolithin A, and I'm doing glutamine.

1:39:40So glutamine is the last one. What is that?

1:39:42Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Well, you've probably heard of glutamine as an amino acid, right? It's so much more. It's so much more. So glutamine is something that, it is an amino acid, but it gets converted into and metabolized to many different things. So one, it can be an amino acid. Two, it can form something called glutarate, which is used by your cells for energy. Mitochondria love it. or it can be converted into that neurotransmitter that we are talking about, right? Glutamate. So it's really something that can be used for many things. I supplement with it because I came across some studies in the past couple of years where endurance athletes, so these are, I'm not an endurance athlete, but endurance athletes are very prone to respiratory illness because they're really just going hard, right?

1:40:31Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And your immune system kind of takes a tax on your immune system. Studies were showing that if those endurance athletes supplemented with glutamine, they didn't get sick as often. They were having fewer respiratory illnesses. And I remembered back to when I was a graduate student and I was doing research and I used glutamine. And I was doing glucose and glutamine and looking at immune cells and how I could make them active or what happens if I get rid of glucose or glutamine. And I remembered how much they love glutamine. They consume it. They're using it for energy. And it started to make sense to me.

1:41:04Dr. Rhonda Patrick:and this was during a period of time where, you know, again, mid-40s, your immune system's not going, doing as well as it used to. I've got a, had a young child that was bringing home all sorts of pathogens. And so I started supplementing with glutamine and it could be placebo, but again, I, you know, the sickness bouts were going down. I wasn't getting sick as often. The other thing it's good for is the gut. And that is because glutamine can be converted into something called alpha-ketoglutarate, which is a important energy compound that the gut uses. And so there are studies showing that it's beneficial for gut health.

1:41:39Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I think that's what a lot of people think about when they take glutamine is their gut. I'm thinking about my immune system, but basically it's very easily used by the gut cells as energy. And that really helps the gut heal. Okay. The other thing which I take almost daily, sometimes I give myself the weekend off depending on how things are going. But almost daily are these ketone IQ shots, which I am affiliated with. I'm an investor in the company. Ketone shots, exogenous ketone shots. I take them also quite frequently, not daily. You know, so what are they doing? There's different forms of them.

1:42:13Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And why do I take them? And I think, let's talk about what I think people should realize if they are taking them. So, you know, it's essentially giving you that metabolic switch, right? It's getting your ketone levels up as if you were fasted. So you're elevating your beta-hydroxybutyrate levels. That's the major circulating ketone. Beta-hydroxybutyrate. BHB for short. Does that just mean ketone? It's a ketone. There are several ketones. Acetone is another ketone. But that beta-hydroxybutyrate is the major one, right? And that is a major ketone that's in your body when you're fasted. That's what you're making.

1:42:50Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And when you're taking these ketone IQs or other exogenous ketones is what you're going to get. So ketone IQ has got the precursor for the ketone. It's got 1 ,3-butanediol that in your liver gets converted into beta-hydroxybutyrate. I take a ketone that has 1 ,3-butanediol, but also it's esterified to the actual beta-hydroxybutyrate. What does that mean? It means that it has both an immediate action, a fast action effect of having your ketones elevated, but it also has a tail end effect. So the 1 ,3-butanediol, if you take it, you have to wait for it to get to your liver.

1:43:27Dr. Rhonda Patrick:you have to can i have one yes oh perfect okay wow those taste better so so the other ketone exogenous ketone is the beta hydroxybutyrate is terrified to the 1 ,3-butyene diol which just means it's going to have a fast acting effect but also a long-term effect so you'll get a little bit more elevation in your blood ketones from the one that has the beta-hydroxybutyrate esterified to the 1 ,3-butanediol. That said. The difference is, I think, from what I know, and I don't know a ton, is pricing. Yes. It's pricing, but also, again, concentration. So, I mean, you know, you're going to get a higher peak quicker, and you're going to get higher levels of it with the one that's the Oxford, you know, the Oxford ketone, I guess it's called.

1:44:19Dr. Rhonda Patrick:But the ketone IQ has 1 ,3-butanediol, which does get converted into beta-hydroxybutyrate. This one, I think, costs a couple of dollars. And I have the Oxford one here as well, which I think is$30 a pop. So it's quite expensive. It's quite expensive. The reason why this has been able to break into retail, especially across America, is just because it's more affordable for most people to be able to spend a couple of dollars. Right. The reason I take it is because I like the cognitive boost that I get from it. And I usually take it on occasions like this when I'm doing a show or I'm, you know, doing a presentation or I just, I'm doing a lot of heavy research and I just need to be on because I get a cognitive boost from it.

1:44:57Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And that cognitive boost does come down to what I was talking about with why I like to fast. It's mimicking that, right? I have that beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is increasing GABA, that inhibitory neurotransmitter that's silencing down some of the anxiety in the back of the brain or the chatter and just helping me focus. And also it increases brain-derived neurotrophic factors. So beta-hydroxybutyrate is a signaling molecule It's able to increase brain drive of neurotrophic factor in the brain. That helps with learning, memory, brain aging. It's also been shown to lower oxidation. So there's all sorts of reasons why I like to take it.

1:45:31Dr. Rhonda Patrick:For people that are fasting and they're wanting to burn fat, consider that if you take exogenous ketones, you stop burning your own fat because your body thinks it's now got all—it's got the ketones there, which is what the metabolism of fat is trying to do is produce ketones for energy and so it does shut down what's called lipolysis which is basically breaking down fat and so if you're doing fasting and you're doing it for reasons of fat loss if you take an exogenous ketone during that period of time it will transiently kind of shut down that process so keep that in mind it's one reason why i don't do it every day because i am looking for that effect for losing visceral fat in particular.

1:46:13That's a really interesting, important point.

1:46:15Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It is. That people don't talk about. Yeah, it's important. And it's only going to last as long as the beta-hydroxybutyrate lasts in your blood system. So, you know, maybe three hours max. What I noticed was when I was trying to get into ketosis at the top of the year and I was doing exogenous ketone shots, I was struggling to get into ketosis. And so what I did is I stopped taking the ketone shots for a couple of days, just focused on my ketogenic diet. I got into ketosis. And then afterwards, I started taking the ketone shots when I was doing podcasting. Because just like you, I noticed just such a radical, radical difference when I take exogenous ketones or when I'm in a natural sort of dietary ketosis.

1:46:53Radical difference. And as a podcaster, I've said this a million times before, but I'm going to say it again. Two times a week, I do an A-B test of how my brain is working. I sit with someone who is an expert in what they do for sometimes four or five hours. And I look at them in their face and have to ask questions and respond and understand big words and hope that my brain is connected to my mouth today. And so I've done 600 or 700 of these A-B tests now. And one of the factors that correlates to good performance as an interviewer and a thinker or a speaker on stage is whether I'm in a ketosis state or not.

1:47:26And it's so profound. I've actually heard Jerrogan say this. Jerrogan said that the upside he gets from being in a ketogenic state is so evident for him as an interviewer that he's considered being in that state all the time.

1:47:39Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's the same for me too. I mean, as you know, I'm also doing the same thing, right? I have a podcast and I'm giving presentations and very, very much having to use my brain and be on. And it's really made a huge difference for me as well. And that is also why I like to fast, because I get the same effect when I'm fasted. And then I will take an exogenous ketone when I'm also fasted. And so I get into ketosis quicker as well because I'm already kind of there. I don't have other things inhibiting it. So it does help. And there's, again, pros and cons to doing it. You do want your body to be metabolic flexible.

1:48:15Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So I'm glad you did do the ketogenic diet and let your body kind of do it and adapt and then add the ketones on top of that. But they do help. They help with cognitive function for sure. I mean, I use them every single podcast I do, presentation I'm giving. It's part of my routine. Let's talk about something different, which is something that I've never heard of before. It's a word that you started to make popular in the health and longevity community, which is this idea of peak span. I have this graph in front of me, which I'll throw up on the screen. It's fascinating. What the hell is peak span?

1:48:51I've heard of health span. I've even heard of lifespan, but I've never heard of peak span.

1:48:56Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Well, let's start with lifespan and work our way to peak span to give people a frame of reference. I think most people are familiar with the word longevity, wanting to extend their lifespan, how many years they live, how long they live, right? But the problem with lifespan is, well, you could live longer, but you're going to have perhaps you have some diseases. So why do you want to live longer if you have Alzheimer's disease or cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes? I mean, your quality of life is not as good. And that's where this idea of healthspan came in, right? So healthspan is, well, let's increase the amount of time we live disease-free.

1:49:32Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And that's the new thing that everyone wants to increase and improve, their healthspan. I want to live, I want to increase my healthspan. So I want to live longer and not have any diseases while I'm living that longer life. Well, there's this new concept now, very new, that was just published by some researchers out of Duke University, as well as, I think, China, some university in China, and another university. But I want to give them credit. It's a preprint study. It came on my radar. I immediately loved it. And this is idea of peak span. Peak span says, hey, you know, health span is great. Being disease-free is great, but you're still in a period of decline.

1:50:11Dr. Rhonda Patrick:You're still declining, why not try to be as close to your peak span, which is essentially within 90 % of your peak function for a certain measurement, whether we're talking about VO2 max, cardiorespiratory fitness, we're talking about, you know, any other function. And that's where this graph comes in. On the y-axis, we have our relative capacity. So if you're listening now, this is a good time to look at the screen because Rhonda's going to show us something. Okay. Your relative capacity, 100 being 100 % and zero being 0%. What does relative capacity mean? Your capacity for cognitive function, for, you know, for your fertility, your hormonal, yeah, your potential.

1:50:57Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah. And on the x-axis, we're talking about age, right? And so what you'll notice is that different capacities, different organ functions kind of peak at different rates. So we can talk about first, obviously, female reproductive really starts to peak at, you know, 25 or so. And then it just sharply declines until you hit 40, right? It's like bottomed out. So that's the reproductive female, right? Immune function. So let's find immune function here. That kind of peaks around 25 years old. And it also kind of declines and it keeps declining. It's quite scary. As you get to 80. And then we have muscular skeletal, right?

1:51:46Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So this is our peak strength, pink muscle mass, pink bone density. Those also peak around 25. And then they kind of steadily start to decline. And the same goes for cognitive function. We have two different kinds of cognitive function. We have fluid cognitive function, like processing speed. That is the kind of, I would say, cognitive function where you can answer a question without any prior knowledge. You know, so that peaks around 25. You're joking. No, I know. So I'm on the way down. You're on, I'm definitely on the way down. You're on the way down as well. So that would be the blue one here.

1:52:20Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Peaks around 25. And then we have the crystallized cognitive function. Crystallized cognitive function is interesting because it peaks around midlife. And the reason it peaks around 40, 45 is because it's the kind of intelligence that it's like the library where you have all these facts that you've accumulated over the years and you're able to use those facts to answer or solve a problem. Is that wisdom? It really just means that you have all these facts that you've learned over your life. Like for me, I've been a biologist since I was 20. So 27 years, I have so much that I've learned over that time.

1:52:59Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And so now I'm sitting here and I use that knowledge. I talked about glutamine and what I learned from graduate school. I'm using that knowledge, right? Mitophagy, I learned about that like forever ago and I've been following it. So you use all these facts and this data that you've learned in your life and you're able to solve problems. So fluid intelligence, I'm sorry, crystallized intelligence. I've got to ask a question. We were sat having dinner the other day, me and my team, and we were talking about the difference because we're all different ages. We've got someone in the team who's 45, 35, 30, and the other person at the table was 27.

1:53:29And we were all talking about the differences we've noticed in ourselves as we've aged. And they all said different things. So Leona and my team, who's just is above the age of 40, was saying that she just like doesn't really give a fuck anymore. In the same way that she used to care about people's opinions when she was 30. One of the things I said I noticed about myself was after I turned 30, I feel like I saw a step change in pattern recognition. and like exactly what you've just described there, which is like crystallized knowledge, because I sit here with experts all day, learn all this stuff from them.

1:53:57And then my ability to then like apply it in my life as an entrepreneur seems to be improving. And so the question I was really gonna ask you is think about entrepreneurship. A lot of my audience are entrepreneurs in some capacity or aspire to be. I was wondering, as you were saying that, like when is the best age? Because entrepreneurship is a lot about pattern recognition. It's problem in front of you. Okay, I've seen this before. I'm pulling on different reference points to arrive at a solution. So I was wondering here, because it looks like it peaks at like 45.

1:54:26Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah, 45. So if we look at it, it's peaking at 45. And that's also why a lot of biologists continue to do great work in their midlife as well. And that is something that I do feel like is better for me as well. You know, where I'm now able to pull on. So I have so much of a database in the back of my head, you know, where it's like I've got all this knowledge and then it comes up and you can use it. And so it's interesting. You can talk about entrepreneurs, but you can, I mean, any sort of career path, right? But it would be beneficial to be able to do that. So the question is, then how do we get, here's peak span.

1:54:59Dr. Rhonda Patrick:You're going up. And what you want to do is you want to get and maintain about 90 % of all these things that we're talking about peaking, right? Immune aging, it peaks at, you know, immune aging actually peaks around adolescence, I think. Muscle skeletal health, 2025. The fluid intelligence, 2025. 25. You're having cardiorespiratory fitness, that's also 20 to 25. It peaks, and then it goes down. The question is, how do you maintain your peak span, right? How do you get as close as you can, you're obviously not going to be your 100%, but how do you not drop below 90 % of that peak, right? Is that possible?

1:55:37Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Is it? First of all, is it possible? And I would say for some organs, no. Which organs are that? I don't think a reproductive life expectancy for a female, I don't think you're going to be having babies at 80 years old without actual medical intervention. That's a whole other conversation. So – but I do think there are ways that we can get really close to our peak for cardiorespiratory, for musculoskeletal, you know, for our intelligence, cognitive intelligence as well as our immune system. and I think there are blanket things that we could do that affect multiple systems, right? Like, and there's also targeted things.

1:56:15Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So, we were talking about fluid versus cognitive versus crystallized intelligence, right? Obviously, crystallized intelligence, you know, it doesn't peak until mid-40s. The things that you can do to improve crystallized intelligence also improve your fluid intelligence. What are those things? One exercise, number one thing, aerobic exercise is increasing brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Very important for both these aspects. It's also, you know, growing new neurons, making connections between the neurons, making your brain more plastic and adaptable so it adapts to the changing environment. Top thing that you can do.

1:56:49Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Another thing that you can do that's really important for brain aging is the omega-3. We talked about that. Really important for brain aging. But the other thing that you can do is what we're doing right now. Engaging in novel cognitive, you know, experiences. It could be a discussion. It could be your work. If you are learning new things, novel is key here, novel. If you're learning new things, you are going to really help yourself improve both your fluid and crystallized intelligence. And so - Is that because you're raising your potential, i.e. so you're falling from a higher place as you decline?

1:57:26Because I was thinking about this, like how much of this has got to do with making sure that I peak at a higher place.

1:57:32Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that maybe has something to do with it. But in addition, there's neurochemical things that are changing when you're learning new experiences. For one, you are increasing brain-derived neurotrophic factor and stuff as well, because novelty does that. You're also glutamate and you're having, you know, glutamate being activated as well. But yeah, I think the cognitive reserve is what you're talking about. And that is really important, right? Because you need to have that reserve if you're going to start pulling from it. And that also comes with muscle, muscle health, right?

1:58:03Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Muscle and bone. So those are peaking around the same times, 25 or so. Peak muscle mass generally occurs around the age of 25. There are things that you can do to keep close to that peak though, right? And that would be resistance training. Big, big, big one. Strength training. Strength goes down. This is something protein intake, right? Avoid the black plastics in my fridge. Avoid black plastics in your fridge. Because then my testosterone is going to go down. Testosterone is going to go down and that's going to affect your ability to gain muscle mass. Exactly. A lot of these healthy lifestyles that we're talking about are multi-system targeting, right?

1:58:38Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So you're targeting, but key would be strength training and resistance training. And it's going to also affect your bones. So you're going to want to do these weight-bearing exercises that are multi-joint, the compound lifts, right? The deadlifts, rows, things like that. Those are very important to help maintain that peak. Immune system. Sleep. Very, very important for maintaining a healthy immune system and preventing your immune system from aging rapidly. So making sure you're prioritizing sleep. How are you going to do that, right? I mean, there's a lot of ways to—people—a lot of people have sleep problems, and they have sleep problems for different reasons, and there's ways to target them.

1:59:16Dr. Rhonda Patrick:But just realize, thinking about it and prioritizing is important for your immune system and for your brain. Also, the exercise plays a role in your cardiorespiratory fitness, the brain, everything, muscle. So cardiorespiratory fitness is something that you, we talked about urolithin A helping improve it on top of exercise. So there's supplements and stuff that you add in as well. But this idea here is really that we can do things in our life that are healthy to help maintain that peak span, to get us not just free of disease, but like close to what we're peaking. And I do think it's possible.

1:59:48Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I mean, we talked last time I was here, we talked about that study. you exercise five hours a week do some high intensity interval training in there and you can reverse heart aging by 20 years that's incredible it's great i mean so crazy so and you're also saying that listening to the diary of a seo obviously is therefore good for yeah it's good for cognitive um your fluid intelligence and your your crystallized intelligence it's good for learning new things right i mean that's so you would prescribe it yeah yeah especially the episodes I'm on.

2:00:21I say that as a joke, but actually it's part of the conversation we had the other day at dinner was, I don't think I'm going to appreciate maybe until later in my life, how much an unintended consequence of doing this as a job had on my cognition and my brain. And it's like, not something that I would notice, you know, in the moment, but over time, you know, doing this two times a week for sometimes eight hours a week learning something new being forced is a strong word but having an obligation to learn something new eight hours a week for my entire adult life it's great i mean it's it's one of the best things that you can do for your brain that's

2:00:58Dr. Rhonda Patrick:learning a new language is associated with a rapid you know decrease in alzheimer's disease risk you're working your brain you're learning new things it's so important one of the worst things that someone can do is retire and just sit and watch TV, right? I mean, that's like the worst thing. You're rapidly going to decline and get dementia. We've got to talk about AI in this conversation. Oh my gosh. Because I actually woke up this morning and I got a message. Look, I'll check with him that I can put this in before I say it out loud, before it's published. But I got a message from my chairman, Nicky.

2:01:30Nicky's an incredible man. He's, you know, 25 years Boston Consulting Group. He's seen it all. and he said to me that one of the things he's thinking a lot about at the moment is how across our businesses but just generally in society how AI is going to impact critical thinking and what that then might mean for our teams, our executives, etc. So this is a conversation I was having this morning with him and it's also something I've noticed. There are certain people I interact with now where I do not feel at all like I'm dealing with their brain. I feel like I'm dealing with what came out the other end of a chat GBT prompt.

2:02:04Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yes. Good, bad, indifferent. Like, I don't, you know. Yeah, it's an interesting and important question, Stephen, because I've been thinking a lot about. And with AI, it's changing so much. And the question is, like, do you focus on, you know, the negative parts and the short-term parts? Do you focus on the potential benefits that could be great and grand? And I do think a lot of it is people are worried about things like, oh, AI is going to take all of our jobs. Oh, we're going to have brain rot because we don't use our brains anymore. And those are concerns to have. But there's also a lot of exciting things to think about.

2:02:39Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I also worry about the brain rot part where it's like, well, okay, these people aren't critically thinking for themselves. I've seen comment, I can spot AI a million miles away, a million miles away, right? And, you know, part of it is if AI is accurate and people are more easily accessing the accurate information and they're learning it, that's great. Like, that's what it's supposed to be there for, right? I think that's a big if, right? If, right. if. And it does have a lot to do with the version of AI you're using. It has a lot to do with the prompt. It has a lot to do with the question, how much, you know, reasoning it has to do.

2:03:19Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I mean, there's where it's still evolving. But I agree. It's kind of like the worry is, are we going to have a generation of people growing up that don't know how to critically think? You've heard about that London taxi driver test experiment. I think I've heard you talk about it before, actually. Yeah. I mean, well, they have these maps in their heads, right? And you have these taxi drivers in London that they don't use GPS. Like, they know everywhere to go. By the way, I was in London a couple of years ago. I love the taxi drivers there. They are so awesome. They are. They're just different.

2:03:53Dr. Rhonda Patrick:They're totally different than... For anyone that doesn't know, and I'm absolutely going to butcher this, to become a London taxi driver, you have to take a test for many, many years. You have to learn for many, many years. And you have to learn, like, every street across London, from the top of your head without using GPS. So yeah, when you get in a black cab in London, it's amazing. You can go, I kind of want to go to, and they go, got you. They know everywhere. They have maps in their brain. I mean, think about the cognitive reserve they have. Think about like all the things they learned and the spatial memory and all that.

2:04:25Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And do these guys ever get Alzheimer's disease? I don't know that they do. I mean, there's studies out there showing that these types of taxi drivers like do not get Alzheimer's disease. They have to learn 25 ,000 streets, and it's called the knowledge. And they have physically larger hippocampus centers in their brain, which is the memory center. And I like to extrapolate, if I may, and think that all this cognitive learning that I do daily and that you're doing by, like, talking to guests from all sorts of fields is also very, I mean, you're learning things. It's not just going, you're interested in things and you're learning them.

2:04:59Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And it really is also a type of brain exercise. And so I think that this is ultimately what we were getting to is basically, we're going to talk about AI because I know we got to get there, but is essentially like if you can engage in intellectual types of activities or anything that's going to exercise your brain, whether it's learning the map of London or it's learning about mitophagy, whatever it is, you know, it's really good to engage in that novel learning. It's really good for your brain. It's working your brain out. I've been thinking a lot about this. I've just come back from South by Southwest and every conversation was about bloody AI.

2:05:35I was there too. I really, they were asking me a lot about AI. So before I went on stage, I was looking at some of the studies and I concluded that at the moment we are in society, there's going to be a bit of a bifurcation of people. One group is going to take the path of least resistance with AI, which is they're going to defer their thinking to AI, which is, you know, one of the things I learned from people like you often is that if you don't use it, you lose it. And that part of their brain, whatever it is, will begin to atrophy to some extent. And I think there'll be another group of people who will, just like we go to the gym now, because we have to because our lives are so easy, they will go to like the mental gym, which means they will set aside time to intentionally solve difficult cognitive problems or challenges.

2:06:14And I literally have said to some of my executives, we'll have a moment where we're talking on WhatsApp or Slack. And I'll literally say, let's try and solve this problem with our brains. Because I believe that solving this problem with our brains will create a deeper understanding of the first principles of the problem. Not the just surface level one plus one equals two. But like, what is one? What is a number? And this is the difference. Like, AI can give you the answer, but it's not going to give you the foundation so that you can solve other problems in the future. because if I never told you what the number one was, you would never in the future be able to use it yourself.

2:06:48All you'd know is one plus one equals two. But there's foundations, like what are numbers? What is one? What is two? What is plus that you need to understand to be able to do one plus two equals three? And the study, one of the studies I looked at, which has been heavily discussed, was from last year. And it found staggering memory cost using generative AI. In the study, which I'll throw up on the screen, 83 % of AI users were unable to remember the details of a passage of text that they had written with AI's assistance. EEG scans showed that brain connectivity was almost halved when individuals outsourced their thinking to AI compared to writing manually, which created cognitive debt.

2:07:28You get output faster, but you don't build the long-term neural hardware to understand the information or the knowledge.

2:07:36Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So true. It's so true. You know, what's interesting about what you just said is the, when you're writing something, whether you're typing it, or even actually the most, I think there's been some studies on this, like handwriting something, something about handwriting it really ingrains it into your memory. And I have this process when I'm trying to, there's a lot of facts that I have to remember, you know, when I'm talking about them. And I have this process that I do. And the first one is the research, right? You research it and you find it. And then I type it in a Google Doc. And then I write it.

2:08:11Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And that process is really what gets it into my memory. All the like statistics and, you know, statistics are always harder because it's just a number, you know, versus like you're saying, you're understanding the fundamental nature of something that I'm interested in that always helps. And so it's interesting that if you're writing something, if you're writing it, like typing it or writing it, handwriting. They're probably talking about typing it. Even that really does help you remember something. If you're just copying it and then trying to do some recall, it's not gonna work. And then there's the whole other layer that you were talking about, which is like you're not even using, the novelty isn't there.

2:08:54You're not like really into it and learning.

2:08:57Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And that's what it really takes to build that cognitive reserve, to improve the connections, to increase brain-derived neurotrophic vector, right? You need that novelty. So I do love AI, but I also know that I need to continue using my brain, and I have my own protocols that I like and that I still do. I still write things down. I have my little notebook, and before I go on a podcast, too, I like to go through and write stuff down that I've already typed, that I've learned, and things I wanted to cover. it really makes a difference in memory. So for people that are like you and I and learners and optimizers, take that pointer because it really does work.

2:09:43This was one of my favorite things with the iPad. Listen, I'm not the type of person that does a huge amount of writing on pen and paper, although I would do more because everything you've said is proven to be true for me. If I write something down, it's like I'm writing it directly into my brain. But the iPad now allows you to split what you're reading in terms of a book on one side and then a notepad on the other. So what I do when I read is I read the thing and then I try and write out the lesson on the other side of the page. So I'll say, the gut microbiome has 42 trillion bugs. And I'll go, the gut microbiome has 42 million bugs.

2:10:15I love it.

2:10:15Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I love it. And then I turn the page and I, so I'm trying to do exactly what you said because I realized that a lot of stuff I learned doesn't land unless I write it out myself. It's something about the act of writing. And if you add the layer of like what I do, it takes time, you know, so you have to type it and then write, then it really sticks in your brain. Like those are the ones when I've done, those are the ones that really have stuck if I've done them both. But I love that. I don't use iPads ever. And I still like read books, you know, like old books. And when I have time to do them and I just have my notebook.

2:10:46I think it shows that you have an unbelievable ability to remember so many things.

2:10:51Dr. Rhonda Patrick:But I still love AI. You know, I still, I think there's a lot of benefits and I, and I think that, But, you know, scientists in general are using AI is now their collaborator, right? They're pretty smart collaborator that has access to a lot of data and can analyze a lot of data quickly. What are your thoughts on exercise and the current suggestions and recommendations around exercise? Well, I'm glad you asked this question. I think I've been thinking about this a lot. I did a podcast on the current exercise guidelines, and I think they need to be updated. I think they're not good enough. And it's important for people to realize how these exercise guidelines were formulated and what they mean.

2:11:31Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So typically, you'll hear exercise guidelines 150 to 300 minutes a week of moderate intensity exercise is good for optimal health, or 75 minutes to 150 minutes a week of vigorous intensity exercise, right? So they're basically a two-to-one ratio, right? Twice as many minutes for moderate intensity as vigorous intensity. What is defined as moderate versus vigorous? That's also important because it's different across different studies. In these guidelines, it's basically moderate intensity is you're walking. You're moving with intent, but not really, really fast. You're walking at maybe a fast pace, but you're not jogging and you're not running.

2:12:11Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That kind of activity would be considered moderate. Vigorous would be considered jogging, running, swimming, cycling. So the kind of activity where you're actually moving fast with intent. Why do we have this two-to-one ratio? Where did it come from? Well, it all came from energy expenditure. You burn twice as many calories if you're doing vigorous intensity exercise as you do if you're doing moderate intensity, right? So if you're walking one mile, you'll burn X amount of calories. If you jog that mile, you'll burn twice as many calories. That's where these guidelines came from, the two-to-one ratio, right?

2:12:47Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Weight loss, energy expenditure. But that's not necessarily what's important for reducing cancer mortality, reducing cardiovascular-related mortality, reducing all-cause mortality, right? These guidelines use that data, this 2 to 1 ratio of energy expenditure. And then they looked at other studies and said, okay, how much exercise is required to reduce cardiovascular-related mortality or all-cause mortality? And they kind of like connected the dots. By the way, these studies also were using questionnaires. They weren't actually measuring how active people were. A new study came out, and I did a journal club podcast on it because it was the study that I felt was so important that I wanted to break down all the components of the study with another scientist and talk about them because it's very important.

2:13:37Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So journal clubs, typically in science, you have them in my career. It was, you know, sometimes it was once a week. Other times it was once a month. And someone, you choose a study that's important, and you break it down, and you talk about the results, and you talk about the methods, and talk about what the findings mean. That's what a journal club is. And it's essentially you choose a journal and a publication within that journal, and it's a club. You have different scientists that are talking about it. Why did this warrant a journal club? Because I think this study basically is strong enough data that it's implying we need to change our exercise guidelines, at least the messaging of them, at the very least.

2:14:17Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And I'll tell you why. Because I talked about these guidelines, how they're formulated. They're using questionnaires. They're not measuring anything. Well, a new study came out. Not only did it measure physical activity through these accelerometers, it was able to measure how active people were and the type of activity, whether it was. I mentioned moderate versus vigorous. They also measured light physical activity. That would be considered walking around your house, kind of doing that kind of light activity, not necessarily going for a walk or going for a run. And they looked at deaths from different causes of disease.

2:14:51Dr. Rhonda Patrick:They looked at deaths from all causes. So all-cause mortality. They looked at cancer-related deaths. They looked at cardiovascular-related deaths. They looked at type 2 diabetes. They what was so profound was that what we found, what they found, and what we now know is that everything changes in terms of how important vigorous intensity exercise is. It's so much more valuable than we thought. It's not two to one. So if we're looking at all-cause mortality, you know, dying from all causes, cancer, respiratory, anything related that's non-accidental, for every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise, you had to do four minutes of moderate intensity, and you had to do like 100 to 150 minutes of light exercise to get the same reduction in all-cause mortality.

2:15:37For every one minute.

2:15:38Dr. Rhonda Patrick:For every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise. It gets better, okay? For every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise to reduce your death from cardiovascular disease, you had to do eight minutes of moderate intensity and 200 minutes of light exercise for every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise. It's huge. To reduce your type 2 diabetes risk, for every one minute of vigorous, you had to do 10 minutes of moderate intensity, or you had to do, again, you're in the 150 minutes to 200 minutes of light exercise. To reduce your risk of dying from cancer, for every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise, you had to do four minutes, about four minutes of moderate intensity.

2:16:22Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And for light, it was almost not even happening. I mean, it was like 250, 300. You had to just a ton of minutes, unbelievable amount of minutes, okay? But the value of vigorous intensity exercise is so much more than this two-to-one ratio based on energy expenditure, based on burning calories that our guidelines were based on. It's time to rethink them. It's time to tell people, hey, if you're getting out and you're going for a run, it is worth way more than you think it is in terms of reducing your disease risk and your death from that disease, right? Also, what was really interesting about this study, and this goes back to this exercise snacks that we talked about before last episode, is that because there were people or participants were wearing these accelerometers on their wrist, they were able to measure all physical activity.

2:17:14Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Let's say you have a new puppy and you're sprinting in the yard and playing with them for a minute or two minutes or three minutes or whatever, not 30 minutes in the gym, right? Or not 30 minutes on the treadmill, but you're just a short burst. or you're playing with your grandkids or your kids and you're playing tag, whatever. Those moments count. They really add up. And that is also a take-home from this study and other studies, is that you can actually get massive benefits from the sprinting, the vigorous exercise. One minute, two minutes, three minutes. Women that did three and a half minutes of just this vigorous types of exercise per day lowered their cancer risk by 40%.

2:17:49Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yes, three and a half minutes a day. This was in women. Now, there's bigger studies showing men and women that exercise nine minutes a day, the short, vigorous types of exercise, adding up not nine minutes altogether, but like a minute here, a minute there, a minute here, right? It adds up. 40 % lower cancer-related mortality, 50 % lower cardiovascular-related mortality. And that's another big take-home from this study that I really want people to know about because some people don't like spending 30 minutes or putting out, blocking out a 30-minute time or an hour-long time to go to the gym. They should.

2:18:21Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I mean, if they want their peak span, that's what you're going to have to do. But if you're just wanting to avoid disease and be in your health span, you know, you can get that by doing these short moments of short bursts of physical activity. And those count. And some people are like, oh, thank God. Thank God I can do that because I hate going to the gym. I'll, you know, they just won't do it. They won't do it. A lot of people as well are caught up with this 10 ,000 steps a day thing. Yes, 10 ,000 steps a day. What's that facial reaction? for people that can't see your face, she looked up into the corner like I personally offended her.

2:18:53Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah, look, any exercise is better than none. I wanna just get that on the table, okay? That's important. I don't wanna totally diss the 10 ,000 steps a day, but I think that we need to ditch it. I think we need to ditch 10 ,000 steps a day and say 10 minutes a day. 10 minutes a day of getting your heart rate up. You can do body weight squats. You can play tag with your kids or your grandkids. You can do shorter bursts of it, But it needs to be 10 minutes. And if you get to that 10 minutes a day, 50 % lower cardiovascular-related mortality, 50 % lower all-cause mortality, 40 % lower cancer mortality, that is what you're going to get.

2:19:30Dr. Rhonda Patrick:10 ,000 steps a day is not going to get you that. We just talked about it. It's not going to get you that, right? It's a different ratio. It's not two-to-one ratio. I imagine there's people thinking, you use three terms there, vigorous, moderate, and light. We probably need to quite clearly define those definitions. Like, what is vigorous? Right. Heart rate? Is it all? Vigorous intensity exercise can be heart rate, and it is heart rate in a lot of studies that are done. In terms of the exercise guidelines, they don't use heart rate. They're using movement. Like when I say accelerometer, I mean moving fast.

2:20:03Dr. Rhonda Patrick:So they're able to measure the acceleration of your movement. And so the way that they're talking about it in these exercise guideline studies is moving fast. Moving fast would be jogging, running, swimming, biking. You're moving. The stepper. Stepper would be moving fast. Even weights are moving fast. That's part of it too. Weights. You're doing weights. Wait. Because they're on your wrist. And so if you're doing bicep curls or you're doing something with your wrists that are fast, it's part of that equation as well. Heart rate isn't the thing they were measuring, but that's a consequence of moving fast.

2:20:40It is. It is. So you want to be thinking about getting your heart rate. If personally, when I think about it, and if I'm talking about it in the context of these exercise guidelines, I would say that heart vigorous would be probably considered 70 % or more of your max heart rate would be considered vigorous.

2:20:56Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Previously, when I'm talking about vigorous, I also talk about high-intensity interval training, and that's more like 80 % of your max heart rate or higher. Very important for improving VO2 max and cardiorespiratory fitness. but in these studies, heart rate is more like a 70 % your max heart rate or more because you can be jogging at that rate, right? Jogging or running, that's vigorous intensity exercise. If you're below that, if you're like 50 % your max heart rate, that's considered moderate intensity. And then maybe even lower than that if you're just sort of walking around the house. I mean, that's not even going out much at all.

2:21:35Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That's light, that's considered light. 10 ,000 steps would be probably considered, it depends because actually they're saying steps, which means could just be around the house. If you walk around your house, how long does it take to do 10 ,000 steps? Like an hour, hour and a half? Probably, yeah. Probably just doing 6 ,000 or 7 ,000 just walking around the office. So, but that's considered light exercise. So that's why I think we need to get rid of that. It's not enough. It's not enough. It's better than sitting because sitting is bad. sitting is an independent risk factor for disease, for cancer in particular.

2:22:10This was one of the most replayed moments last time I spoke to you, was people replayed the section where you talked about being sedentary and how much of an issue that is for all of us. And it's really stayed with me to the fact, I don't know if this helps, but I've been using standing desks everywhere. Even when I travel around the world now, I've actually got a portable standing desk just to try and keep me up. Because as a podcast, I've sat in this chair for what, I've sat down for six hours today and it's 3 p.m.

2:22:35Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Right. Yeah. Kelly Starrett wrote a book, Deskbound, some years ago. And, you know, he really played a role in popularizing this idea and I think in the public as well. Being sedentary is time you're spent sitting, right? Time you spend sitting. It doesn't necessarily mean, I used to think about being sedentary as, oh, do you work out? Yes or no? No, you're sedentary. Yes, no, you're not sedentary. That's not what sedentary is. Sedentary is time you're spending sitting. We've been sitting here quite a few hours. We've been sedentary this whole time. So being sedentary and sitting is an independent risk factor.

2:23:11Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Even if you're exercising, it's an independent risk factor for diseases. I mentioned cancer in particular. That seems to be the one that's more strongly correlated to being sedentary. But standing helps if you're standing up or also getting up and doing exercise snacks. So you can get up every hour and like do some bodyweight squats, do some jumping jacks, do some high knees, get your heart rate up. That breaks up the sedentary time. So now it's only an hour of sedentary versus eight hours, right? Or six hours, however long you're sitting at your desk. It makes a difference. And those exercise snacks are easy to do.

2:23:41Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I have a standing desk. I don't use it enough. I still have it. I do do exercise snacks. And I like doing the exercise snacks because like literally if we were to get up and do bodyweight squats right now for one minute, like you're going to feel better. You feel better after the blood flow to your brain. It gives you a little pump. I love it. I love the pump. It's just one minute of it and you get a short pump to your brain and it makes you feel better. So exercise snacks are a really good way to break up sedentary time. They're also adding up. They count. As I just mentioned, they count towards your exercise goal and they're vigorous.

2:24:16Dr. Rhonda Patrick:You're getting, you're moving fast, right? Vigorous exercise. You're getting your heart rate up. Or I could just take a Zenpec. I'll just get the pen out, jab, jab, jab. And it's all of this stuff disappears, right? I could do all of this stuff or I can just a Zenpec it, right? Yeah, I mean, so. So many people are taking a Zenpec. So interesting. And I, listen, I have to say, it's saving people's lives. Amazing. I've heard so many of my friends who are on a Zenpec and taking the GLP-1 pens say that they've had profound benefits. Their knees are better. They can walk upstairs. They feel better.

2:24:49Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yeah. I mean, let's be real here. Being obese and overweight is one of the worst things you can do for your health, right? It's going to accelerate the aging process, and it's going to increase the risk of every age-related disease, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, you know, visceral fats happening. You're insulin resistant. You know, it's all happening. It's going to affect your quality of life. It's harder to walk around. You're not as mobile. Your joints are getting more stress on them, right? So anything that can help you lose that weight is going to be beneficial. And so these GLP-1, you're talking about Ozembek, that's the GLP-1 receptor agonist, right?

2:25:26Dr. Rhonda Patrick:They are very, they're life-changing for people that are obese, people that need to lose, you know, 40 pounds, 50 pounds, 30 pounds. It's not easy to lose that weight with diet and lifestyle. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the buts. Let's talk about, so the benefits are obviously if they're going to lose that fat, the visceral fat, they're going to become insulin sensitive. They're going to reduce their risk for all those diseases. And that's what the data shows. Cardiovascular disease risk goes down. Cancer risk goes down. Except for one type of cancer goes up, kidney cancer. But, you know, the Alzheimer's disease risk goes down.

2:26:03Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Anything that you're going to, when you lose weight, those risks are going to go down. There are side effects, and there are things to consider when you're taking. I'm calling them GLP-1s because we have first generation, second generation, and now third generation. and they're affecting not only the GLP-1 receptor, but they're affecting glucagon, for example. They're affecting another peptide called GIP, G-I-P. So I'll just call them GLP-1s for short. Semiglutide or Zembic is one of the first generations. We now have the second generation that's targeting two pathways. You can lose even more weight.

2:26:35Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Manjaro would be something that people would relate to. That's one of the second generation ones. And I think that for people that are going to start these drugs, First of all, they have to realize there's a good chance they're going to have to be on them for the rest of their lives. And that's something that you have to be willing to do. And I say that because many studies have shown now that individuals that do take these GLP-1s do lose a lot of weight. And it's very beneficial to lose that weight. But if they stop taking the GLP-1s, they gain the weight back. and oftentimes they gain all the weight back because your body's kind of trying to go back to that reset point and their hunger comes back with a vengeance.

2:27:17Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And so part of what GLP-1 drugs are doing are they are basically, you know, they're making you feel satiated and not hungry. So they're affecting your satiety hormones so you don't feel hungry. They're also slowing gastric emptying so food stays around in your intestines longer so you feel full. When food is in your intestines, you don't feel hungry. So they're slowing that process. And so people don't feel hungry. And so what ends up happening is in many ways, it's mimicking calorie restriction and fasting, right? You're basically not eating as much food. So that's essentially, but it's doing it for you.

2:27:52Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's not, you don't have to put in that, you don't have to feel hungry. You don't have to put in that work and it's doing it for you, right? And so people are losing a lot of weight and they're losing it very rapidly. And I said, you might have to be on it for the rest of your life. And what I mean by that is because a lot of studies show that a majority of people do gain back their weight. Their appetite comes back. It comes back with a vengeance. And they regain the weight over a year or so. So that's one thing to consider. Are you willing to take it for the rest of your life? There was a New York Times piece where they looked at a lady called Stacey Canterbury.

2:28:27She'd lost 50 pounds on one of the GLP-1s that you mentioned, reaching her peak goal weight. And after stopping the drug due to insurance issues, she regained 20 pounds back straight away in a month. Interestingly, she described the return of hunger not as a gradual increase, but as a ferocious animalistic urge to eat that was far more intense than before she ever started the medication. And the New York Times did a big piece about that because one of the things I've come to learn is that there's no free lunch in life, no pun intended.

2:28:57Dr. Rhonda Patrick:There's no free lunch. There's no free biological lunch. It's true. Yeah, people's appetite, that's why I said it comes back with a vengeance because it seems to be the case where your body's like, it hasn't been hungry. And it's like, wait a minute, I've been starving for so long. I need to eat, right? So it's kind of like feed me. And that's obviously something to consider. So the question is, well, what happens if you're on these drugs long term? And, you know, we've got these drugs. Early versions of them have been around. They also help treat type 2 diabetes, right? That's part of like where they first came from.

2:29:29Dr. Rhonda Patrick:They've been around a while. We do have some data. Mostly the data is positive because people are losing a lot of weight, and that is what's putting them at a high risk for these diseases. And so when you lose that weight, what ends up happening is your disease risk for all these diseases goes down, right? So it's hard to uncouple weight loss from what the drug's doing itself. But there are side effects in addition to that, right? Nausea, GI upset, all that stuff may be temporary. Some people, it kind of sticks around. some other effects I think that are that people are a little more concerned about are the muscle loss and bone loss.

2:30:05Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That's a big one. And that is probably something coming from just rapid weight loss and not eating enough food and not resistance training. So when you're when you're largely fasting throughout the day, if you're not getting enough protein, then your muscles not going to have amino acids to help, you know, basically keep growing and not only keep growing, not use its own amino acid reserve for making protein, right? So you break down muscle. In fact, there's weight loss studies showing that in any weight loss diet, you know, if you're not eating enough protein and you're not resistance training, up to 40 % of your weight can come from muscle weight loss that you're losing.

2:30:41Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I should say lean mass, including muscle. So that's a little different, but it's, it's a big percent, right? And so you're talking about losing a lot of muscle as well. And that is something that happens with these drugs. If people are training, it's really helps. If the resistance training, it's really helping because that's a signal to your muscle to grow muscle. It's a mechanical force that helps you grow muscle, right? That's something to consider. Bone loss is another one. You can also lose bone from rapid weight loss. I don't know if there's an independent like GLP-1 receptors that are on bone doing something directly there yet to be uncovered, I think.

2:31:18Dr. Rhonda Patrick:We don't really know why bone loss occurs. It's thought maybe it's just the weight loss, but like I said, maybe there's something that we don't understand yet. Kidney cancer is another one. It seems like there's an increased signal for kidney cancer. Don't know why that is. Needs to be studied. There's a black box warning on them for thyroid cancer increase. That's never really been shown in human studies. It all comes from animal data, but it's there nonetheless. Something to consider. And it's very early. So I feel like we're going to have a conversation in five years time when there's more understood about these compounds?

2:31:53Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Well, the thing that worries me is that, you know, okay, you have the person who's 300 pounds and like they have to get down. Like, like that's really unhealthy, right? It's, that can really be a game changer for them. But now what we're seeing is Hollywood. We're seeing just, just your average moms. They're like, I want to lose 10 pounds, but I want it to be easy, right? They're 10 or 15 pounds, and they're going to these GLP-1s. And the question is, I don't know that we have data showing it's actually beneficial in that population because they're already pretty lean and they're just wanting to look a little bit better.

2:32:31Dr. Rhonda Patrick:We don't really know. We don't really know if it's beneficial. We know that losing weight is beneficial for sure. And that's what these drugs are doing. You're losing a lot of weight rapidly. The other thing is gallstones. You're getting the increased risk of gallstones, right? Some people's gallbladder has to be removed. What about like anorexia and stuff like that? Because I've got a couple of friends who are on the pen. And they have dropped weight at a speed that has blown my mind. And part of me is going, stop, stop, like stop here. You know, I'm thinking like, I'm thinking, gosh, does this just keep going down and down and down and down and down?

2:33:06Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I don't, yeah. I mean, I don't think it keeps going down and down and down and down generally. I think you kind of stay. You hit a certain point and stay. If the dose remains the same. If the dose remains the same. And I think that people that are already kind of like at a certain healthy weight should taper down the dose too, right? And that's also been shown to help at least with weight regain too. If you want to stop and get off it, you have a better chance of success if you taper down the dose and don't just full stop, you know, get off of it. It seems like tapering down helps people at least slow the weight regain where it's not happening all of a sudden.

2:33:40Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Your body kind of adjusts. But I also want to mention, you know, there are other ways that you can lose weight, right? Intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is—so on the lowest dose of some of these drugs, like Ozembic, for example, if you're on the lowest dose, you can achieve a similar amount of weight loss from intermittent fasting as you do from that. And it's not, you know, if it's 5 % to 10 % body weight, not huge amount, but, you know, for people that don't need to lose a huge amount, that's a good way to do it because you're going to get the metabolic switch. You're going to get the ketosis.

2:34:15Dr. Rhonda Patrick:You're not going to have to worry about the side effects. You don't have to worry about regaining the weight because guess what? You're going to adapt. Your body adapts. You get used to the fasting. It becomes easier. So I think that, you know, it depends on the population that we're talking about here. Do I have concerns? Yes, I do. I have concerns. But do I also think some of these people that are obese and never lose that weight, are they getting a benefit from these drugs? Absolutely, I think they are. But it all comes down to the population, who's using them. And right now, it's become so popular in everyone.

2:34:47Dr. Rhonda Patrick:And there's so many people I don't think need to use it to lose their 10 pounds. It's ridiculous. People take the path of least resistance, though, don't they? And it appears to be the path of least resistance for many. So we shall see, I guess. Rhonda, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you, I think, is a great one. It is, what is a purchase that you made that is less than$100 that improved your quality of life the most? That was probably, okay, I have two. I would say the omega-3 index test.

2:35:24Dr. Rhonda Patrick:That is measuring your omega-3 fatty acid levels. And you can get that at home? You can order it online and get it at home. And you do like a little spot of blood. It's like a finger prick blood spot. And just knowing that you're not in that you want to be 8 % range. 8 % range is the five-year increased life expectancy. It's the 66 % lower dementia risk. I mean, it's really where you want to be to be the healthiest. And you might be supplementing with an omega-3 supplement that's not really working. and you won't know it unless you do take that test. And I think it's one of the easiest ones that I've done.

2:36:03And how did that improve your quality of life?

2:36:05Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Were you saying it helped you avoid a bad quality of life? No, I think it's improving my quality of life because it's slowing my aging. That's been shown with omega-3. It's absolutely slowing aging. I told you the omega-3 was the only supplement that was able to do that. Even in the context of people that were healthy and physically active. I mean, these Swiss people are healthy. I was like, if they did this study in the US, There's no way 88 % of them would be physically active. Not a chance, right? Yeah. So it's slowing the aging process. And that is exactly what I want to do. It's going to help with peak span.

2:36:37Dr. Rhonda Patrick:It's going to help with health span. It's going to help with lifespan as well. So and it's affordable, less than$100. And the second one? The second one, I think the one that really did improve my quality was a continuous glucose monitor. And I thought you were going to say creatine. Okay, continuous glucose monitor. Oh, yes. No, no, no. You can't go back now. Yes, yes. Yeah, it did. It did because I realized how important sleep was for my metabolic health. I thought I was doing everything right for metabolic health. And it was knowing how not getting enough sleep was affecting my glucose. I never would have thought that.

2:37:11Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I never would have known. And most people that get the continuous glucose monitors never think about that either. They think about the food they're eating. They don't think about sleep. And when you get that continuous glucose monitor, what is it you're looking at to figure out the connection with sleep? You can look at first, you can look at your fasting blood glucose levels, and you can go online for your age and gender and figure out what's the normal range. So that's when you haven't eaten? Yes. Okay. First thing in the morning when you have not eaten. That would be the easiest thing to look at.

2:37:40And the second thing?

2:37:41Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Yes. The second thing would be to look at after you eat a meal 30 minutes to an hour later, making sure that you're clearing that glucose from your meal. And if you're not seeing that peak come down and clearing, there's something wrong. Okay, I might wear another one of those. It's been a while. And they're quite cheap. You can get it for like$20 on the internet. Dr. Runda, I think people are going to want to continue to learn from you. So where should they go to learn more from you? I have a podcast called Found My Fitness. It's on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, everywhere you listen to podcasts.

2:38:12That would be the best place.

2:38:15Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I have a website, foundmyfitness.com. I have a wonderful newsletter. Every week we put out something. We put out one on that peak span paper. We put out a newsletter on updating the exercise guidelines. I have a great team. We put out an email newsletter that's free every single week. And they're really good. They're really good in-depth emails. So you can find me there. I'm on social media. Rhonda Patrick, FoundMyFitness. That's all my, that's my handle, my website name, my podcast name. I'll link it below for anyone as well that would like to go check out that information. It will be in the description below.

2:38:45I highly recommend. I mean, I don't really need to tell people how incredible you are. I think they've just observed that. So I shan't. I shall. You are incredible.

2:38:54Dr. Rhonda Patrick:Thank you. So thank you so much for doing this. I've learned so much. And I've done so many health conversations on this show. And it's almost at a point now where I'm wondering if there's much more that I've got to learn. But because I think you stay at the very cutting edge of the studies that are coming out, and you're so good at both articulating them in a simple way that someone like me can understand, even though I can't understand a lot of the literature as it comes out of these sort of scientific journals. I think that, you know, you're a person people do need to follow. because the world and the scientific understandings are always changing.

2:39:24And it's good to have someone who can distill that down for you in a way that is relevant, accessible, and scientifically rigorous. And that's exactly sort of the three terms that I think of when I think of you. So please do continue to do the work you're doing because it's teaching me so much. And by way of that, it's meaning that I can live a happier, healthier life. And I appreciate you for that, Rhonda.

2:39:42Dr. Rhonda Patrick:I really appreciate that. Thank you so much, Stephen. I love coming and having discussions with you. Thank you.

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