#901 - Dr. Rhonda Patrick

[0] Five, four, three, two, one.

[1] Dr. Rhonda Patrick, hello.

[2] Hello.

[3] Welcome back.

[4] You got a big, fat book of notes over there.

[5] I do.

[6] It's like, intimidating.

[7] It's something I use, like, before I'm giving a talk or something like that, where I like to, something about writing, handwriting things, like, helps me remember.

[8] Oh, yeah.

[9] They've shown that.

[10] I do that before shows.

[11] If you looked at my notebook and you think, if you ever thought that I, like, actually wrote in my notebook, you'd think I'm a crazy person because I'm writing the same thing over and over again.

[12] Like, all work, no play makes Jack a whole boy.

[13] I just, like, before a set, what I do is I just write out the key things that I wanted to work on and I'll write them out over and over again.

[14] So, like, I'll have a hundred page notebook and it's like 100 pages of like half of it's the same stuff over and over again.

[15] Yeah, I'm kind of the same way.

[16] Like, I'll write out things like that are in more detail.

[17] and then like you said I'll like write just just like a cue you know yeah well like it's different when you're giving a talk at least like in academia like a PowerPoint talk you have a slide and the slide queues like a couple of minutes of talk so you right you've got like it helps you remember what you're going to talk about yeah that would help for comedy I bet that's probably a good idea I should have a slide show you know like that would actually be a really good idea for like particular points where you could show that you weren't lying like look this is a real thing you know right yeah you have like a reference there like there because there's a couple of things that i'm talking about in my new set where i have to i have to reassure people that i'm not making this up because it's so ridiculous you know and um like one of them was this woman who posed as a high school student she was a 25 year old police officer super attractive and she posed as a high school student and convinced a young boy to sell her marijuana and then arrested him so it was just an experiment No, it was a sting operation.

[18] Wow.

[19] And he was a regular kid.

[20] He was an honor roll kid.

[21] Oh my God.

[22] And now he's a felon.

[23] That's crazy.

[24] Yeah, there it is.

[25] Teen falls in love with undercover cop and marijuana sting gets arrested.

[26] Yeah.

[27] So this is one of them.

[28] I would love to be able to put that up and go see.

[29] See?

[30] Because you could, I guess you could just make stuff up if you wanted to, you know, have a...

[31] But isn't that what comedians do?

[32] They make stuff, I mean...

[33] You can.

[34] A lot.

[35] But if you made something up, like, hey, there was a story in the news and you just made it up that sounds great i guess who cares if it's funny you know people just come to laugh but yeah i guess you're right people like comedians usually make up personal stories yes but sometimes there's they say it's true and i'm like it's so outrageous is it really true like i don't know because it's just so funny you know like some of the stories that some of these comedians tell and i'm just like how can this be true they said it was true but it's like are they just is that part of comedy can you do that okay yeah definitely can't my friend doma rare has a really funny joke about that he goes uh he goes he's a true story goes hey how about you just make something up that's funny you know like it doesn't have to be true buddy right but but then they say it's true so it's kind of like messing with you because the whole time they're doing their bit you're like god damn it's that really true because that's fucking hilarious yeah sometimes it's true sometimes it's not I guess it depends depends on the person yeah I assume everything in your notebook is true well I hope so you know the other thing that helps me like so this this helps you know writing it down helps me but also there's the running like helps so actually this was very interesting because the study just came out not long ago showing that if you so if you run before you're going to learn something and you want to like let's say you want to like you know do something short term recall so you're going to go up on stage and say something you know say a skid or whatever and if you run right before that it improves the short term like memory so your short term recall if you run right before or whatever it is, you're quickly read over something and then you want to remember it.

[36] But if you are learning something and then you run after you learn it and then like the next day you want to remember it, so it's more of a longer term memory, it improves that.

[37] So it's like whether or not you're running before after you learn, it affects the short term versus long term memory.

[38] Wow.

[39] How did they work that out?

[40] That's bizarre.

[41] Well, it wasn't like they were testing for that.

[42] They just found it out through because they were just, you know, doing running before after they're probably looking at just to see how it affects short and long -term memory recall.

[43] And they were surprised to find out this was a study that was done.

[44] I can't remember where it was done.

[45] I know I tweeted about it not long ago because it was like within this last month that it came out.

[46] So, you know, it's like if you want to, if you want to, so like while I'm, you know, learning new material throughout the day, then I go for run in the evening and then the next day I'll be able to recall it better theoretically.

[47] Now I'm subject to the placebo effect because I know about this.

[48] I'm like, oh.

[49] Right.

[50] That's a problem.

[51] Yeah.

[52] I don't run normally, but I did a 5K on Monday.

[53] Like, I don't run at all.

[54] But a buddy of mine had a 5K race in Vegas, so I flew in for him.

[55] And my friend Cameron Haynes, and I ran it.

[56] And it was surprisingly hard.

[57] I was like, all the working out I do, but like, it's only three miles.

[58] It's like 3 .1 or something.

[59] Like, how hard is that?

[60] It's fucking hard.

[61] It's not easy.

[62] Yeah, no. So do you do any like aerobic?

[63] Yes.

[64] Yeah.

[65] Between kickboxing, jujitsu and I do elliptical machine a lot and I do a lot of yoga.

[66] I've been doing you.

[67] I'm trying to do yoga three times a week.

[68] I'm not always successful at getting in there.

[69] I got there last week three times a week.

[70] But I don't run.

[71] So I figured, but all that stuff I do, I'm like, I'll have, I'll be fine.

[72] Nope, not really.

[73] So you didn't train at all.

[74] You just kind of like on the fly, just did this 5K.

[75] Yeah.

[76] And I saw I saw you post something about this.

[77] And, um, Isn't, doesn't Cameron, isn't he like some kind of like crazy runner?

[78] Oh, he's a freak.

[79] Yeah.

[80] He's preparing right now for the Moab race, which is 235 or 234 miles, something crazy like that.

[81] And Jamie's a runner.

[82] So when Jamie shakes his head like that, you know, it's really gross.

[83] Yeah, that's incredible.

[84] Yeah, he's a nut.

[85] He did 205 last year.

[86] He did the Bigfoot 200, which is 205 miles.

[87] Plus, it has something insane, like 55 ,000 feet of elevation chain.

[88] over the course of the entire race because you're constantly going up and down and up and down and at some points in the race it's so steep and the terrain it's an outdoor race over Mount St. Helens and sometimes the terrain is so brutal that the top speed is two miles an hour.

[89] He's going to be like one of those like amazing super agers like like that's just very mentally sharp when he's in when he's older.

[90] Either that or he's not going to be able.

[91] That's been shown like it's been shown like if you part of being a superager Like being a super ageer means you're old, but you're physically fit.

[92] You're mentally sharp.

[93] And mentally sharp is really the key thing, you know, because we start losing brain mass at, like, the age of 20.

[94] And by the time, if you can actually make it to 100 years old, you lose, like, 20 % of your brain mass. So they found that one of the keys to, like, maintaining your brain mass is pushing past that comfortable zone physically.

[95] so like you know exercise wise and also um mentally just you know obviously like like learning new things and challenging yourself so you know so when you're working out you don't do this kind of like you know half -ass thing you have to push yourself you have to really push yourself and that seems to be key for becoming a superager that's crazy that it works with your brain why exercise i mean exercise has profound effects on your brain i mean specifically if you're looking at you know, aerobic, aerobic exercise, it's hard.

[96] Aerobic exercise, as you said, doing a 5K, running three miles.

[97] I mean, you do a lot of training, and yet that was still hard for you, you know, because doing that type of aerobic exercise is difficult.

[98] Studies have shown that even just like 20 to 30 minutes of aerobic exercise can, and healthy young men increase serum BDNF, so which is brain drive neurotrophic factor.

[99] this is a growth factor that is involved in growing new brain cells and in allowing the existing brain cells to survive.

[100] So, you know, talking about combating brain atrophy, you're talking about combating that the fact that your brain is atrophying starting at the age of 20.

[101] That's the way to do it.

[102] Your brain starts to atrophy at 20?

[103] At 20, you start to lose brain mess.

[104] Oh, my God, I'm doomed.

[105] I know.

[106] It's really frightening.

[107] 20?

[108] You start at 20.

[109] You start at 20.

[110] You're at 20.

[111] But I was so stupid at 20.

[112] I'm so much smarter than I was when I was 20.

[113] No, I agree.

[114] I agree.

[115] Even though I'm still stupid.

[116] I mean, it's not necessarily like brain mass and intelligence.

[117] I mean, I don't know if, you know, that, there's definitely a correlate, but, but like when you start losing mass in your hippocampus, I mean, that's memory, learning, you know, that part of the brain.

[118] But there's just so many studies showing that exercise, aerobic exercise.

[119] And also, you know, it doesn't have to be aerobic.

[120] You can do resistance training.

[121] That sort of stuff also affects the brain as well.

[122] But for me, like, I, I've been a runner since high school and track, I guess, a long time.

[123] And for me, you know, I've done like a few races.

[124] I've done a marathon.

[125] And I don't feel like marathons are my thing.

[126] Like I felt like that was just really rough, you know?

[127] Like it was, I mean, I'll run three miles and I will feel a challenge.

[128] Like if I, you know, push myself, I can do that.

[129] And that I feel like doing that a couple times, three times a week is plenty for me. But when I run, you know, for me, it's my, I entered this, like, like state of of like daydreaming sort of I get creative you know when I'm going on like a three mile run I'm just I start thinking about things if I have an important decision to make or something that's causing me some sort of anxiety I go for a run and I feel like I can address that issue better and what's interesting is that there have been studies that have shown that going for a run and specifically aerobic exercise, it activates the part of your brain involved in executive function, which helps you make decisions.

[130] It's kind of like that overarching part of your brain that helps with all the planning, long -term planning, and all that.

[131] And so I always, I do.

[132] I feel like if I go for a run, if something's bothering me, if I'm anxious, I always feel better 100 % of the time.

[133] Like there's not a single time that I go for a run and I'm like, damn, I feel worse.

[134] Why did I do that?

[135] You know, it's like, I feel, I feel, I feel.

[136] I feel like crap while I'm doing it I'm like oh this is awful well I feel like the human mind I mean this is all just theoretical in my own theories I think the human mind is designed to confront serious things like like predators and you know dangerous enemies and and we don't really get much of that in this life so when a person is dealing with stress I think the mind is preparing for some things that don't exist so even if you can work things out logically there still remains like this residual effect of all these human reward systems that are kind of in place from the time we really did have to have all those reactions in place to deal with, you know, dangerous invaders or, you know, horrible natural conditions, you know, whatever there would be that we hardly ever experience anymore.

[137] So like when I work out, if I have anything that's bothered me or troubling me. I think I get like a distorted perception of the danger of it or the physical reality.

[138] Like it could be something real simple.

[139] Like I have an issue at work that I have to deal with.

[140] Like maybe I have to make a decision or maybe, you know, I'm stressed about something.

[141] And I feel this.

[142] No matter how much I work it out logically, I still feel this physical, like residual issue.

[143] And that issue only seems to be resolved for me, because I don't run, with hitting the bag.

[144] For me, it's a punching bag, which is really hard to do.

[145] Like, when you do rounds, like kickboxing rounds on a bag, I have a timer, and I can set it for three to five minutes.

[146] Actually, it'll allow you set it all the way down to one, and then it has, like, intervals.

[147] So it gives me, like, 30 seconds, every 30 seconds, a buzzer will go off.

[148] And it has two lights.

[149] One light is yellow, and one light is blue.

[150] And so the yellow light, I kind of, I go at, like, 60, 70 percent, and then the blue light I spray.

[151] So it's like sprint, try to catch your breath.

[152] Sprint, try to catch your breath.

[153] And I do that for seven to eight rounds.

[154] And when I do that, I don't give a fuck about anything.

[155] After it's over, I'm like, who cares?

[156] Like, it's amazing what it does.

[157] Because, like, my mind still has all the same data.

[158] I still understand all, whatever it is.

[159] Like, it's whatever work -related nonsense.

[160] I still understand all the issues about it.

[161] And there's no new information.

[162] But now the information is coming into my brain.

[163] brain and it's going, oh, this isn't a foreign invader.

[164] These aren't Vikings that are coming over in a fucking boat with a dragon's head at the front of it, swinging swords.

[165] This is just some nonsense, whatever it is, you know, agent issue or manager issue, or tax issue, or whatever the fuck it is, that seems so physically daunting before the exercise, but then afterwards, when that aspect of the problem is alleviated, that stress, it's almost like my, our bodies are just like confused as to what these problems actually are.

[166] I'm like, I love, I love your, your interpretation of this because it's exactly, um, the way that I would like to talk about why we need this type of stress.

[167] I actually, just like you said, I actually think that from an evolutionary, like evolutionary perspective that we were meant to be stressed.

[168] We were meant, we were meant to be outside either hunting, tilling the land.

[169] for food, you know, to prepare food, out bombarded by UVB radiation, which is stressful.

[170] We were designed to, you know, have stress.

[171] And what I mean by design was we have genetic switches, which are supposed to be turned on.

[172] These genetic switches that are activated by stress are supposed to be turned on.

[173] And just like you said, we're in a really novel time now where we don't have to go outside.

[174] We don't have to till the land.

[175] We don't have to hunt for our food.

[176] We can sit on the couch on our butt all day and order delivery or go to the grocery store.

[177] And we don't have to eat foods with, you know, polyphenols or flavonoids or things that are also slightly stressful.

[178] You know, so this is kind of that concept of hormesis.

[179] But it's, I like the way you explained it because I really agree with you.

[180] I think that humans were meant to be stressed.

[181] Exercise is a form of that stress.

[182] And there's different, various different types of that stress.

[183] and I think that we were supposed to switch on those genetic switches, those genes that are helping us deal with stress.

[184] So like, you know, like you said, you have a problem, and I'm the same way with my run.

[185] I'll have some, something that's bothering me. I have to deal with whatever it is.

[186] I mean, in my mind, I blow it up.

[187] It may not even be that big of a deal.

[188] But I go for a run with no new information, with nothing new, you know, like I feel better.

[189] And I think that's partly because I'm switching on all these, you know, stress response pathways that help me deal with the stress better, these anti -inflammatory pathways, just all this really good, you know, these good genetic switches that are being switched on.

[190] So, I mean, it totally makes sense.

[191] I think this new time that we live in, I just don't necessarily think the body understands where the stress is coming from.

[192] I think, you know, your body's a physical organism and nature is an absolutely brutal thing.

[193] And it has been for us as well as for all these other animals forever.

[194] But now for us, it's not really that brutal anymore.

[195] And so all these mechanisms are in place to protect you, and they don't get served.

[196] And for me, martial arts has always been, like, the best one to deal with it.

[197] Although weightlifting is good, too.

[198] Like, a good kettlebell workout does it too.

[199] But, like, the big ones for me are jujitsu and kickboxing.

[200] Because jujitsu is really, really hard to do.

[201] And it's also your solving problems.

[202] So I think jiu -jitsu serves two purposes.

[203] It's incredibly grueling as far as like the sparring process of just rolling and, you know, and competing with each other.

[204] Even in a friendly role, like with a guy that I really like and we're laughing and we slap hands, you know, every time someone gets tapped out or whatever, it's so difficult.

[205] Like your body's taxed so hard and your mind is taxed because you're dealing with countering.

[206] You're dealing with setting up moves.

[207] You're dealing with, you're thinking several steps ahead, and then you're adjusting those thoughts based on whatever this person that you're sparring with is doing, too.

[208] So people get really, really addicted to jiu -jitsu for all the right reasons.

[209] And one of the things that I found is that jiu -jitsu people, like, for the most part, are way more mellow than most people would expect, like way more chill about stuff, like way less likely to respond to something in a dumb or an imbalanced way.

[210] because they whatever your body whatever these requirements are that we're addressing your body has all that in jujitsu but without the real real violence you know what i mean like the one's trying to kill you they're just trying to do this thing to you and you're trying to do that thing to them and those things mimic actual combat actual real life and death struggle in a friendly and it also it has this camaraderie built into it too because you've kind of understand that you're going through this incredibly intense thing together.

[211] And you also understand that it takes a unique person to go through that and get past all these psychological hurdles, all these physiological hurdles.

[212] And then you also are aware that this person understands like really clearly the kinship that you all share in having this experience together.

[213] That's really, that's really neat.

[214] I kind of relate.

[215] I mean, not to the same degree, like what you're describing is.

[216] on a whole other level, but I experience something similar when I'm out surfing.

[217] You know, it's, I'm getting the physical exercise, but I'm also like tackling these fears of these big waves and getting pulled under and drowning and getting tangled with my court.

[218] You know, there's like a million.

[219] And every time I do it, I always have that fear paddling out there.

[220] But I get out there, there's a group of surfers and we're all sitting out there.

[221] And there is a sort of, you know, friendship that we develop out there.

[222] there because we all love surfing and we've all like we know we know it's like oh here comes the wave we're you know helping each other like look there's one on the outside paddle out you know so it's kind of like completely like a different level from what you're describing with a jujitsu but still i kind of can relate a little bit you know i think you i don't know if it is a different level and a lot of jihitsu people surf as well i think there's like a similar attraction to it because also you're a monster dodger like you're out there in the monster soup Yeah, it's, it's, um, that's what that is.

[223] It's crazy that I still haven't, you know, you'd think that after doing it for so many years that I would get over that fear, but.

[224] Man, how can you?

[225] They are so, they are so powerful.

[226] Yeah, I mean, how can you get over that fear?

[227] My friend Shane Dorian is a big wave surfer, and he's been on the podcast before, and he's a big time bow hunter, too, and we talk all the time about this.

[228] And, you know, the way he describes it is just, it's so attractive.

[229] I want to try it, but there's not enough hours in the day for me. There's not, I'm, I get too addicted to things and it's just, and I have a fucking real fear of sharks.

[230] It's real.

[231] Sharks are scary.

[232] They're so, but they're real.

[233] They're out there.

[234] Oh, Jesus.

[235] What is this, Jamie?

[236] This is Shane Dorian's big wave.

[237] Oh my God.

[238] My hands are sweating, watching this.

[239] He is out of his fucking mind.

[240] Totally.

[241] He's a legit maniac.

[242] Wow.

[243] Like that is, what is?

[244] How high would you say that wave is?

[245] It's got to be 50 feet, right?

[246] Oh, yeah.

[247] It's in Hawaii.

[248] It's called Jaws is the name of the wave.

[249] Jaws.

[250] Oh, my God.

[251] Look at the size of that.

[252] That is so insane.

[253] That's so insane.

[254] I'm like losing my mind.

[255] Just when I see these guys big wave surfing like this, my heart starts racing.

[256] I'm so anxious right now watching this.

[257] Oh, my God.

[258] It's so insane.

[259] That's more than 50 feet, right?

[260] I would say.

[261] At the very peak of it?

[262] It does look like it's more than a 50 -foot face.

[263] Now, when it comes down, does it say there?

[264] the YouTube thing?

[265] No. When it comes down on you.

[266] I mean, it doesn't really crap.

[267] If that, if you got smushed, like if you fell and that came down on you, I mean, you're probably fucked, right?

[268] That's the fear, yeah.

[269] I mean, I mean, the biggest way of I've ever surfed is like overhead, you know, like over time and a half overhead, so not even double overhead.

[270] So, and that was like, I had a couple of scary moments where I was just tumbling during donuts and I couldn't find which way was ever.

[271] or down, you know, it was like, and I've had one time I was surfing out in this place, I'm in San Diego called Sunset Cliffs, and it's a reef break.

[272] And it's really hard to get out there, so you have to like time, you have to like jump out when the, you know, after the wave, you know, breaks and then you paddle out.

[273] And there's all these kelp beds.

[274] And I was surfing there this one time.

[275] And this was back when I was really dumb and didn't wear a leash because it was like, leashes, you know, I like to dance on my board and they get on my way.

[276] And so I didn't wear a leash.

[277] but um i i you know there's a big wave and i was writing it and i wiped out and i like got caught in the kelp oh shit and so it was like the scary you know you have this moment where you panic and that's really bad like panicking when you're like in the water because panic takes like your energy yeah and and i and i was because i'm i thought i was going to die i was going to suffocate in this kelp bed so i remember having nightmares yes i've had nightmares about it like that stuck with me that was like that was one of those um moments that you know sort of traumatizing in a way how long did it take to get out of the kelp i don't remember i don't remember because it was just i think the panics sort of i just lost track it seemed like forever to me like i don't know how long it actually took and of course i lost my board and i like swim in and wow i got cut up on the reef oh yeah reefs are brutal reefs are brutal yeah i actually stick to uh beach breaks now but i don't like you said i don't even get to surf that much anymore because i just don't have time so people that when they surf breaks that are over those reefs like you just can't wipe out if you wipe out you're going to go right into all that jagged shit right yeah it depends on where the reef is like like i was riding the wave in kind of in more so i was closer to where the reef was but yes you can it's it's it's dangerous the beginners should not ever go out on a reef and i've seen many beginners out there but it's yeah it's definitely more dangerous just feel all the scratches and cuts yeah pretty pretty pretty brutal do you have any shark encounters no um the only sharks i've actually actually actually i shouldn't say that's not that's not actually accurate i don't have any scary shark encounters um i i served for a long time in lojoya and there's a breeding ground there for um leopard sharks which are not to be confused with tiger sharks tiger sharks are definitely scary Leopard sharks are the ones that have, like, the spots on them, and they're really harmless.

[278] Oh, really?

[279] They're kind of like nurse sharks.

[280] Yeah.

[281] Oh, they don't eat?

[282] They're not like...

[283] They're like sand sharks.

[284] They're just...

[285] Swim around.

[286] Yeah.

[287] And they're really cool to look at.

[288] But I've never had...

[289] I've never actually known anyone that serves in Southern California that is, you know, with all the surfers that I've known, that has had an encounter in Southern California with a shark.

[290] I do know people that have encountered them in the Bay Area.

[291] Yeah, the Bay Area is a big breeding ground for a great white.

[292] I would never surf there.

[293] Really?

[294] No, I would never surf.

[295] Oh, I would never surf there.

[296] It's too scary?

[297] Yeah, the sharks.

[298] Look at you.

[299] You say, yeah, the sharks, but it's all connected.

[300] It's like, don't go outside.

[301] There's a bad neighborhood somewhere.

[302] Well, they can move around.

[303] I guess just in my head, I've sort of, like, convinced myself that they're not coming to San Diego.

[304] There's a video of a drone flying over Malibu where some guy takes a drone and he's flying over the Malbu surf and he's like the drone is like maybe a few hundred yards away from some surfers and you see a big fucking great white just swimming along just swimming along don't show me this video Jamie drone shark footage so here's these people they're all on this board they came on we're just southern california new big deal and when the drone keeps going further and further out, you see this fucking whopper shark that's not far away from these people.

[305] We'll find it here.

[306] Jamie will find it.

[307] There's one right there.

[308] Where is this?

[309] Oh, nothing.

[310] Just my own age.

[311] Oh, nothing.

[312] Just a shark right there.

[313] I've definitely served my elevator before.

[314] Look at that.

[315] Right there.

[316] What the fuck?

[317] Damn it, Joe.

[318] Don't show me this.

[319] You know, you're a smart woman.

[320] You understand.

[321] I do.

[322] It's monster soup.

[323] I try not to think about the shark.

[324] though well it's a good oh look there's two of them interesting look that surfer and two sharks no big deal guys yeah that's pretty scary yeah it's supposed to be scary just i don't know i know apparently catalina that whole area outside of catalina is a crazy shark fishing mecca where i have a friend of mine from texas and he traveled to catalina island and he said it is the most savage stretch of water in all of north America.

[325] He said it's just infested with Mako sharks.

[326] And they go out there to catch Mako sharks, which are delicious.

[327] Maco sharks are really, really good to eat too.

[328] They taste like swordfish.

[329] They taste amazing.

[330] Are they dangerous?

[331] Like, oh yeah, they'll fuck you up.

[332] They'll bite you.

[333] But the thing about sharks now, it's because of people are so silly, because of the awareness of shark fin soup, you know, because shark fin soup is, the practice of acquiring shark fins is really brutal and not sustainable at all.

[334] It's really horrific.

[335] And a lot of Asian fisheries engage in these unsustainable practices where they'll scoop up thousands and thousands of sharks, cut their fins off, and then throw them right back in the water.

[336] So they waste most of the shark in order to get the fins for sharkfish soup.

[337] And so because they're trying to raise awareness of this, now people are getting really upset at anyone who catches sharks, even if they catch sharks legally for food because sharks are not endangered and is what is any more a sense than tuna is endangered because tuna are in vastly diminished numbers than they were just a few decades ago if you talk to anyone who's a commercial fisherman or even a sport fisherman like these guys that run these charter boats they'll tell you like you used to catch way more tuna it used to be way more prevalent i think that was something they addressed in that gero dreams of sushi movie as well is that the commercial fishing is just brutalizing the tuna market but yet everybody still eats tuna and they don't think twice about it because this campaign against shark fin soup has made people like really upset at people that catch sharks to eat even people that eat meat it's like we're so simplistic in like our protesting and like people just have it in their head that i heard you're not supposed to eat sharks anymore like are you catching sharks you fucking asshole like like that is the one thing that you know I mean if you you want to talk about like fish that don't do no harm to human beings like sharks aren't on that list you know I mean this is this is a scary goddamn animal and if you could eat that I say kudos kudos to you aren't because sharks are higher up on the food chain don't they have higher mercury levels it's a good question because I know like swordfish like I would not eat swordfish really hell no no yeah there is like I wish I could remember the amount.

[338] It's something like 150 micrograms per like four ounces or something.

[339] So compare that to wild Atlantic salmon, which has like four micrograms.

[340] Whoa.

[341] Yeah, swordfish.

[342] So the ones that are really safe to eat that I know of are the wild Atlantic salmon, Wild Alaskan, sorry, not Atlantic.

[343] Wild Alaskan salmon, cod, let's see.

[344] White tuna is okay, but the albacore tuna has a little bit more mercury.

[345] I think it's like, you know, twice as much or something.

[346] But I'm a little thinking that, you know, shark would be high on the mercury level.

[347] That's interesting.

[348] I'd like to find that out.

[349] Because I know that people have had issues that eat a tremendous amount of sushi.

[350] People that eat sushi like every day, I know they have had issues with mercury in the past.

[351] I actually had an arsenic issue with sardines because sardines are bottom.

[352] dwellers and I used to eat sardines all the time I have like I love sardines yeah I love sardines too and if you eat canned sardines too much I got some blood work done and the doctor was like you have some significant amounts of arsenic in your system I'm like am I being poison he's like no not not that he goes it's not like someone's trying to kill you but it is like a dietary issue and then he asked me what I ate and I said you know we went through all my food he's like nothing else I go he goes what about seafood I go oh yeah I eat seafood oh yeah I eat a lot of sardines He was like, that's it.

[353] I didn't know sardines accumulated arsenic.

[354] Big time.

[355] I guess that makes sense.

[356] So I backed off.

[357] I didn't eat sardines at all for three months.

[358] Came back, the issue was completely resolved.

[359] You know what?

[360] Besides sweat, you sweat out a lot of these heavy metals like mercury, arsenic, garlic.

[361] Some of the beta macantans and garlic, they chelate, they bind and chelate mercury and help pull it and, like, excrete it out of your body through urine.

[362] So like whenever I make salmon or fish, which I actually do eat a lot of salmon, I probably eat it like two or three times a week.

[363] I always have fresh garlic with it.

[364] Oh, wow.

[365] That's amazing.

[366] And salmon is outstanding, too, because it's so high in essential fatty acids, right?

[367] It's really good for you.

[368] Exactly.

[369] Yeah, it's really high in the omega -3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA.

[370] And then it's got a modest amount of vitamin D. Whenever I'm sick, I eat giant cloves of garlic.

[371] I'll just break it down to a point where it makes me feel horrible.

[372] I'll have like a big glass of kombucha and I'll take like a lump of garlic and I'll break off like four or five cloves and I'll just take off the skin and chew those bitches down and chug it with kombucha and it's awful like sometimes it's painful.

[373] Yeah it's spicy like as it's going down like my system is like what in the fuck is this?

[374] Like I could feel it inside my body burning.

[375] I love it.

[376] I've done the same thing previously.

[377] I mean, I don't do that anymore.

[378] but yeah i mean garlic is very powerful anti -microbial compounds in it so i mean that you know makes perfect sense lots of the last time i did it i went i had to take a knee oh a knee yeah i'd go down on a knee really yeah like i didn't actually go down but what i did was i put both my arms on the counter and i went down like this like oh because it was just burning going down.

[379] I just was like, what, this is probably not even working.

[380] I'm just being retarded, you know.

[381] Getting back to some of those like pungent compounds that are in these, these, these plants, I mean, that kind of gets back to what we were talking about a minute ago with switching on those genetic switches that are meant to be switched on.

[382] They're meant we're supposed to eat these kinds of foods, garlic, you know, broccoli, cauliflower, you know, kale, these things that have that pungent mustard, you know, that pungent taste.

[383] I mean, these things are, you know, various different polyphenols and compounds.

[384] And one in particular I become obsessed with lately is sulfurphane.

[385] And that's present in most of the cruciferous family, like kale, broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, wasabi, bok choy, just, you know, that whole family of vegetables.

[386] Pretty much, I ate those vegetables a lot.

[387] But I become very obsessed with this compound And that is, it's actually, sulfurophane's not in the plant.

[388] It gets formed once you break the plant tissue, once it's like chewed or crushed or blended or whatever, chopped somehow.

[389] Because it's stored as a precursor.

[390] And then once the tissue gets, you know, chopped or whatever, then it forms sulfurophane.

[391] And that's part of its, you know, hormetic response.

[392] It's, it's plant response to try to like ward off insects or whatever thing.

[393] So that's, that's why it forms.

[394] But it actually, when we ingest it, it's really, really, really good for us.

[395] You know, so the sulfurphane in particular, which is actually really, really high in broccoli sprouts.

[396] Have you ever had broccoli sprouts?

[397] Yes, I have.

[398] Yeah.

[399] So broccoli sprouts actually contain like a hundred times more of it than mature broccoli.

[400] So it's like probably the best source of, of, of soul.

[401] sulfur fern, dietary source of sulfurane out there.

[402] I saw on your Instagram that you make shakes with that, right?

[403] I do.

[404] Yeah, I've become sort of convinced that it's very powerful anti -aging and also powerful neutralic in a way, I guess, I could say.

[405] And I can elaborate.

[406] But, you know, so I've been doing these shakes where you can, you can sprout.

[407] You can, you know, sprout your own sprouts at home for relatively cheap.

[408] You just buy some organic properties.

[409] You look like a weed dealer.

[410] That's what about everything said on my Instagram.

[411] 3 .5 pounds of broccoli spouts, wink, wink.

[412] That's what they're calling it, these kids.

[413] Believe it or not, though, if you freeze them, so I was actually, I'm freeze, so those bags are going in the freezer, when you freeze them, because when you freeze the plant, the tissue also gets, like, broken, it actually doubles, in some cases.

[414] You can up to double the amount of sulfurophane because it, like, has a longer time to form this so you can actually have a more concentrated i learned that the hard way but um what what hard way well i mean just because it's so pungent and powerful that if you make a shake with it and you're doing like at first i was doing fresh shakes and then we started freezing them and i was making shakes that were you know from previously frozen sprouts and it's like i needed like half the dose um you know to feel to feel the same thing or if i what do you feel um um Okay.

[415] So I guess I should probably, you know, it's kind of just like, like when you drink coffee, you know how you kind of just, you feel a little happy and good and you feel a little more alert, sort of like that.

[416] And it's, the thing is, is that it's been shown.

[417] So there have been clinical studies in humans.

[418] And this is very interesting because it's been shown, like if you give it, you give, you know, even just a small amount.

[419] I think it was like.

[420] between 7 to 30 milligrams of sulfur in a day to young adults with autism, it improved their autistic scores by like 34%.

[421] And autistic scores, they like, there's a, you know, a range of different, you know, tests that are done to like measure different various brain functions.

[422] But improve this and this autistic, you know, these autistic individuals by like 34%.

[423] The same was done in a pilot study for people with schizophrenia where, like, improved.

[424] their symptoms.

[425] So they're just, their brain functions better.

[426] Wow.

[427] Yeah.

[428] So, and this is like pretty, um, the results were so powerful that, you know, this was done at Johns Hopkins.

[429] The study is now being repeated, um, you know, because it's like, this is what is going on here.

[430] Like, how is this affecting the brain?

[431] And I think, you know, if you look at a lot of the animal studies, there's lots and lots of animal studies that have been done, uh, which are, you know, people aren't quite as be as effective as the antidepressant Prozac in alleviating depression and mice.

[432] And they do all these battery of tests where they like stress the mice out and making them depressed and social defeat and like they hang them by their tail.

[433] It's actually just kind of gnarly.

[434] But and then, you know, there's like, you know, a bunch of tests they do to see if they're depressed and you give them, you know, your placebo, you give them Prozac or you give them the broccoli sprout extract and it performed just as well.

[435] So it helps depression.

[436] it's been shown to help with neurodegenerative diseases, all sorts of things.

[437] But the point is I think that the reason it's actually affecting all these brain functions and why even, you know, someone like me may notice a small effect from eating them is because it has very profound effect on inflammation.

[438] And that is because, as I mentioned, it switches on one of those switches that was meant to be switched on, a pathway called NRF2 and our body that controls over two.

[439] 200 genes.

[440] And sulfurphane is the most potent, naturally occurring compound that we've discovered yet that activates this pathway.

[441] So it's no other plant compound, no other naturally occurring plant compound can activate this pathway as potent as sulfurane.

[442] And NRF2 is, I mean, it's been shown in multiple studies to be involved in delaying aging.

[443] And a lot of that happens through lowering tons of different, you know, inflammatory genes, activating anti -inflammatory genes, lowering oxidative stress, all these glutathione -related enzymes.

[444] It helps with detoxifying compounds that we're exposed to on a daily basis, like carcinogens and things.

[445] So I think that we're having a low level of this, like, inflammation stuff that we're constantly being exposed to, and it affects the brain.

[446] You know, so if you're, if you get a dose of this, you, you may notice a small effect.

[447] Now, with someone that has autism or schizophrenia, inflammation and oxidative stress have been shown in previous studies, multiple previous studies, to play a role in the ideology of those diseases.

[448] So I think that's how it may be affecting the brain.

[449] But it's not just affecting the brain.

[450] And probably one of the most well -known functions of sulfurophane is that it's like a very powerful cancer preventative compound.

[451] So it's, you know, it's been shown to prevent cancer.

[452] For example, men that had prostate cancer when they were given 60 milligrams of sulfurophane a day for, I think it was like a month.

[453] I don't remember exactly how long.

[454] But it lowered, it slowed the doubling rate of a tumor biomarker called prostate -specific antigen, PSA, which is what is usually measured when men have prostate cancer.

[455] You measure the progression of it because it has a doubling rate.

[456] It doubles every so often.

[457] But it slowed that doubling rate by 86 % which is pretty pretty profound of course there's lots and lots of associative studies that have shown cruciferous vegetables you know if you eat more of them you have a lower risk of bladder ovarian prostate kidney just all sorts of cancers but there's the clinical trials I think are what's really telling because they're you know you're giving someone this compound and it's lowering a tumor progressive progression marker by 86 % there's another study which is really interesting also.

[458] And this is kind of like really got me interested.

[459] I'm not sure if other people are interested in it.

[460] But, you know, we're exposed to compounds from like air pollution.

[461] So like living in Los Angeles, for example, is probably like definitely one of the places that you're going to be more exposed to the, to some of these airborne carcinogens.

[462] So benzene, one of them, aquiline.

[463] These things are in the air.

[464] We're breathing them in.

[465] We're, you know, we're getting to some degree we have it we have you know benzene in our system and it is a carcinogen it's been shown to cause cancer specifically linked to leukemia's smokers get a ton of it because it's in it's in cigarettes so cigarette smokers are like really loaded up with benzene but there was a study where people were given like 40 milligrams of the sulfurane in the form of a broccoli sprout drink a day for like a week and starting on day one of drinking this drink they excreted 61 % of the benzene like on day one 61 % of benzene was just coming out of their urine like as you measure in metabolites and I was like wow that is amazing like getting rid of some of that stuff you know I you know because I'm definitely want to get rid of the benzene and all that stuff that I'm being exposed to so that really got my attention too because it was just so significant and a profound of effect just after one day so that that was another sort of thing that got me really into it And then the aging stuff where, you know, it's been shown.

[466] So inflammation has been identified as a key ageer of aging.

[467] Taking sulfurane has been shown to lower inflammatory markers in people by like 20 % C -reactive protein, other inflammatory markers.

[468] Of course, there's like dozens of studies in animals that have been done.

[469] But I'm sort of, I think the human studies are more interesting to talk about.

[470] So definitely more relevant.

[471] And then also it's been shown to affect cardiovascular health.

[472] because of the inflammation, I think.

[473] So type 2 diabetics that were given some dose.

[474] I think it was something around 40 milligrams as well of sulfurphene.

[475] They were given this daily and for a month, for four weeks, and it lowered their triglycerides by 20%.

[476] It lowered their atherogenic index, which is like measuring, you know, the dangerous type of LDL, small dense LDLs or glycerized, looking at all these things.

[477] It lowered that by 50%.

[478] Improved their blood sugar by like almost 20%.

[479] so that's like I'm getting that my mouth I'm trying to get my mom on this I'm you know my mom she she definitely has got like high triglycerides you know thing you know so I'm really convinced and then there's been studies in animals that's just shown that it like delays aging so I'm convinced that I think it's one of those things like you get it in kale and I think that I've been getting a good dose of it I've been drinking kale smoothies pretty regularly since probably like 2010 And, yeah, probably about six or seven years.

[480] And I do feel like it's like help age, like help me age like a little better.

[481] I mean, it could be completely in my mind.

[482] But just because I know Cal is healthy.

[483] But I think that I've found something to take it to another level where I think that I'm pretty convinced that if I continue taking the sulfurophane, I think it will absolutely affect the way I age.

[484] And I think it'll affect my brain aging as well.

[485] I mean, it's been shown at least an animal study is to affect brain aging.

[486] traumatic brain injury.

[487] I mean if you administer it after traumatic brain injury it improves outcome improves like brain swelling and all that by like 50 % you know just all sorts of nons.

[488] It's just like I could go on it.

[489] I have a video I did like a 45 minute video where I'm literally just talking about this for 45 minutes and then I went on YouTube.

[490] It's on YouTube yeah and I did this this research took many months and it's like a 16 page article I wrote and I hope to get published I think I'm going to for publication because it's just it was a lot of work and I haven't seen anything in the literature as comprehensive covering every base like I just I tried to cover everything that was like a good study you know that was important and so so and then I flew out to Johns Hopkins recently I was invited to give a talk there and I met it just so happens the guy who discovered that first of all the guy who discovered sulfurophane is there but he's much older I didn't meet with I met with someone who trained with him, who discovered that broccoli sprouts are the best source of sulfurophane.

[491] So he made that discovery back in the 90s.

[492] And I interviewed him, and he just went on and on and on and talked about sulfurophane, like, in addition to, like, what I had already talked about on one of the videos I did.

[493] And he actually had some really interesting stuff to talk about in terms of, like, you know, you, so in order to get the sulfurophane, you have to, the plant has to be crushed or chopped.

[494] And that's because it has to an enzyme in it called myrosinase.

[495] And myrosinase is heat -sensitive.

[496] So when you steam your broccoli, when you boil your kale, when you saute your kale, any of that stuff, unfortunately, you're inactivating myrosinase.

[497] And so you're not getting as much sulfurane.

[498] You're getting dramatically less, I mean, dramatic, almost non -existent.

[499] The precursor, glucoraphanin, is still in that plant.

[500] So you're getting the precursor.

[501] And we do have some bacteria, some types of bifidobacteria in our gut that contain the myrosinase enzyme, highly variable from individual to individual.

[502] But so you can convert some of that to sulfurane.

[503] But what was interesting that he mentioned is you can actually sprinkle mustard powder, like mustard powder that you buy after you saute your kale or after you steam your vegetables or if you cook, if you apply heat to any of your cruciferous vegetables afterwards, you put the mustard powder on mustard powder it has active myrosanase in it and it's pretty the myrosanase in the mustard seed is more heat stable so so you can actually convert your you know precursor into the sulfurane by adding the mustard powder and I was like that is a really great like thing to know because now I'm like because I do cook a lot of I saute kale all the time I you know I steam my broccoli put some butter and salt pepper that's how I eat my broccoli So, they're useful.

[504] Sorry to interrupt, are there any compounds in kale that or broccoli or anything else that make them more bioavailable when you do cook them?

[505] Yeah, I mean, a lot of minerals and stuff in it, like magnesium, the calcium, those things become more bioavailable when you cook them.

[506] And so you would get that benefit plus if you just cooked it and then add the mustard.

[507] Right.

[508] But when the mustard seed powder, you have to make sure it's like, what I like to do is sprinkle a little bit on my hand.

[509] like lick it like it's got to give it has to have that bite if it doesn't have the bite it's like it's been degraded it's been on the shelf for too long it's been an amazon shelves for too long whatever you know so um yeah it has to have that like mustard bite to it could you just use regular mustard like i don't think so no mustard seed i think the mustard seed yeah uh so that so that was a very useful like you know because the sulfurophane it's really good joe i i really I'm trying to like you know get people to I think the more people that get the sulfur in their life I think they're going to be healthier I think it can help prevent cancer lower inflammation I'm just so many different good things so smokers for God's sake if you're a smoker they should be taking sulfur if they should be drinking those shakes I'm drinking like every day you know because they are getting so much benzene so two questions about this one where does someone get broccoli sprouts where would you get that well so The thing is, is that you can buy broccoli sprouts already sprouted at, like, whole foods or sprouts or whatever your local, you know, grocery store is.

[510] Most, most of grocery stores contain, I have broccoli sprouts.

[511] I've seen alfalfa sprouts.

[512] It's very rare that you find broccoli sprouts, isn't it?

[513] They're at whole foods.

[514] They're at sprouts.

[515] But the problem, here's the problem with buying sprouts.

[516] they're very prone to bacterial contamination the coli the longer they sit on the shelf and a lot of times when you're going to these grocery stores they're sitting on the shelf and so they're probably likely a little more contaminated with like E. coli than if you were to sprout them yourself and get them fresh so you can buy them but I think and they also charge like it's like five bucks for like a little like package of it you know it's like one shake right yeah it's a one shake whereas you can like spend 20 bucks and get like a pound of seeds and so how do you grow it um well there's lots of different methods you can you can use hemp like so previously we used to do these hemp um hemp bags where we just put you put the seeds in the bag and you add some water uh you basically just keep adding water to them and let it drip and they sprout within like four days then we started doing this jar method where now we have mation jars with a lid on top that has like little holes that are big enough for water to come out obviously but not for the seeds to come out and so you know you get these jars and you add water let it sit for like six hours and then dump it out and then you just after that you continually just add the water and dump it out and add the water and jump it out and kind of leave it tilted so that the water isn't just like you know the water isn't just like you know the water isn't just like you know tilt the water so you just want it wet is it?

[517] Is that what it is?

[518] Yeah.

[519] And it really just takes like four days and then you have sprouts.

[520] The only thing is you have, you do have to be, you know, clean.

[521] Like if your counter's all dirty and your hands are dirty and all the dishware you're using is dirty, then you're probably going to contaminate them.

[522] So you have to like be a little fastidious about the way you sprout these things, you know.

[523] But I think once you're aware of that, then it's okay.

[524] The other thing is, and this is something that I'm going to talk to the expert.

[525] His name's Dr. Jed Fahey.

[526] I, I recently interviewed him on my podcast, he mentioned something to me that like caught my interest.

[527] He said the seed itself, the broccoli seed itself has the enzyme.

[528] It has the precursor to sulfurophen.

[529] And if you break or crush the seed or chew the seed, then you're actually getting sulfurophane.

[530] So you can actually crush up the seed in like a coffee grinder or something.

[531] Oh, wow.

[532] And like take a shot of it.

[533] But the thing is, is there's been no research doing this method.

[534] So all these studies that I just talked about in humans, those were all done from like broccoli sprout powder extract from the sprouts.

[535] Powder extract.

[536] Is this something you could buy as a supplement?

[537] Great question.

[538] So, well, the powder extracts were mostly made by researchers.

[539] In fact, Jed has supplied a lot of different universities with the extract himself.

[540] But there are, so supplement -wise, that's the other thing that he really sort of illuminated for me because he's actually been measuring.

[541] there are certain supplements that are on the market and like if they actually have what they say they have um and so because myrosinase is so unstable it is hard to make a supplement with sulfurophane there is one supplement only one that i know of that actually has sulfurophan the actual active compound and that's called prostafane and that's only available in france um by the way i have no affiliation with any of these like supplement companies at all i'm just telling information it's only available in France.

[542] It's only available in France.

[543] And so, and that, so he actually tested that one.

[544] And people that were given prostafane, the bioavailability of the sulfurane was 70%.

[545] So 70 % of it ended up like in their bloodstream.

[546] There's another supplement called Avmicol.

[547] Avicol has glucoraffininin plus myrosinase in it.

[548] So it doesn't have the sulfurophane.

[549] It has the two compounds that can form sulfurophane, but has them together.

[550] That has been tested.

[551] And and that was about 40 % bioavailability.

[552] So about 40 % of it was you were actually getting sulfur -urfane, 40 % of the time.

[553] And that was also tested.

[554] There's another supplement, and that is available in the U .S., there's another supplement by Thorn called Cusera, I think.

[555] And Cusera only has the precursor, no enzyme.

[556] So you're totally relying on your gut bacteria.

[557] And some people, it's very variable.

[558] So that only had like a 10 % bioavailability.

[559] Um, other than that, those are the three supplements that he really, uh, could, and this is a study he just published recently that he got behind.

[560] I asked him about some, a few others because I'd actually been taking, there's another one called, um, Brockomax by Jaro.

[561] And he kind of was like, I asked him about it.

[562] And he was kind of like, hmm, it has some of what it says in there, but not all, you know, and, and the problem is is that these supplements, I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of the times like he was telling me like geez like seven out of ten times these supplements had like clover leaf in them when they're supposed to have like the cruciferous you know precursor glucoraph an so it's just like it's kind of disgusting how supplement companies are you know totally just putting all this clover leaf and whatever and there was a study that came out like a couple years ago on this like like 75 % of all these like herbal echinacea like all these you know compounds that are, you know, you know, marketed for whatever, don't actually even contain echinacea or whatever they say they contain.

[563] It's really kind of bad.

[564] Yeah, it's a giant issue.

[565] And if you're a company that sells that stuff, a lot of times you're not even, you're not even getting it directly from the source.

[566] You know, they're buying it from companies that supply it to them.

[567] And a lot of times these companies are in China and places where their regulations are not that strict.

[568] You can get just, I mean, we have to.

[569] I mean, we have.

[570] an issue with that when we first started making Alphabrain where we would get stuff tested.

[571] We'd get batches tested and the batches of different individual ingredients would have stuff in it that they weren't supposed to have in it just because they're mixing it all up in the same bins.

[572] Oh yeah, that's true.

[573] There's also that.

[574] Yeah, I mean, there's just, you got to find a reliable brand, you know, and I think, you know, Thorne, Thorne seems to be a pretty reliable one that It's, I've seen multiple different, you know, times where scientists are like, yeah, we've tested that.

[575] It's more expensive, but they seem to be pretty reliable.

[576] So it seems like the best method is to sprout your own broccoli sprouts, though.

[577] Yeah, I think that's the best method.

[578] And it seems like very cost effective, too, right?

[579] Exactly.

[580] It's cost effective.

[581] You don't have to, you know, have extra cash to buy all these expensive supplements because all the ones I just mentioned that actually are effective and have what they say, they're not cheap.

[582] So those bags that you had in that Instagram photo, is that all sprouts that you had made yourself?

[583] Yeah.

[584] How many mason jars did it take?

[585] That was six.

[586] Oh, wow.

[587] That's not that bad.

[588] Yeah.

[589] I mean, they get really dense, too.

[590] They fill up in it.

[591] Inside the jar?

[592] Yeah.

[593] I have, like, other pictures somewhere on there.

[594] They were there with the jars.

[595] But I'm thinking I might just do a quick sprouting video.

[596] Yeah.

[597] Do it.

[598] Like a five or six minute.

[599] I'm already going in my head about how I'm going to start sprouting.

[600] Awesome.

[601] And they're good.

[602] Like, you know, you don't.

[603] have to do I always sort of take it to the next level like I make my shake and it's like um but they're good on salads I mean you know you can sprinkle them on anything you know it's I really I really like them on salads quite a bit so that's amazing now uh there you go oh wow there we go yeah those the yeah so those are the mason jars that have holes already in them yeah yeah so you can actually buy the sprouting kit so these actually we found these are the old lids we were using.

[604] We actually found better lids that have even smaller holes because some of the seeds were getting out of this.

[605] But this came as a kit, a sprouting kit.

[606] You can buy on Amazon.

[607] It has like a little wooden thing to set the mason jars in.

[608] So they're like tilted and you can like, you know, drip the water out.

[609] They came with those lids.

[610] Wow.

[611] But then we did some experimentation and found other lids that are superior to those.

[612] But those are pretty good.

[613] How much maintenance is involved in making these?

[614] Like how often do you have to tend to these things?

[615] Oh, it's just like after the first initial, like, six -hour water, you know, where you let them sit.

[616] It's like twice a day in the morning and evening, dump water on them.

[617] But you have to do it every day.

[618] And how many days it take to grow that amount?

[619] That was about five days, I think, four or five days.

[620] So for a guy like me who goes away on weekends a lot, I'd have to make sure that I'm home for a stretch before I make something like that.

[621] So you could have Harvard.

[622] Actually, so here's the thing.

[623] The longer you're letting them sprout, so I was just trying to like maximize.

[624] I want more dense, you know, because I wanted to get my bang for my buck.

[625] But you can actually, you could have harvested those probably like early, like three days, three and a half days.

[626] Oh, wow.

[627] And actually, the longer you wait, the more you have to be careful with contamination too.

[628] So it's like it's better probably even to harvest them sooner, freeze them.

[629] So they're like, you know, no bacteria.

[630] You know, that way you're just safe.

[631] And you're just putting them in like zip block storage bags?

[632] Yeah.

[633] Do you ever vacuum seal things and freeze them?

[634] No, I should.

[635] I do that with meat.

[636] Yeah, it's a good idea.

[637] I mean, that would be a good idea to do.

[638] Wow, that's really intense stuff.

[639] The other question that I wanted to have to talk to you about was when you were saying schizophrenia and how sulfurane can prevent or somehow mitigate the effects of schizophrenia, do you think that there is a possible correlation between a lot of these mental health diseases and a lack of proper nutrition?

[640] Oh, absolutely.

[641] I think that a lack of proper nutrition is a huge component of a lot of mental diseases and psychological diseases in general.

[642] In fact, inflammation is now, it's really been identified as playing a causal role in depression.

[643] And that's something that, you know, so with the depression thing, it's here's, Here's kind of a funny story.

[644] I mean, it's not that funny.

[645] It's actually kind of eye -opening, but back in the, so the CDC has, like, estimated that about 11 % of Americans or some sort of antidepressant, 11%.

[646] Wow.

[647] It's a lot.

[648] So, here's the story behind that.

[649] That's so crazy.

[650] It is.

[651] And I know several people that are on them or have taken them or, you know, whatever.

[652] But the story behind that is kind of interesting because back, in like the early 70s, a lot of these clinical trials were being done on antidepressants with people that had depression.

[653] And at that time, people that had depression that were involved in these trials were people that were severely depressed and hospitalized.

[654] So they were so depressed that they had been hospitalized for depression.

[655] I don't know many people that have been hospitalized for depression nowadays.

[656] So they were hospitalized for depression.

[657] And then they were given either a placebo or antidepressant.

[658] And in multiple trials, you know, FDA had reviewed these trials.

[659] 70 % of the time, the antidepressant, so the antidepressant worked in 70 % of the patients compared to 30 % of the patients where placebo worked, right?

[660] 70 % is pretty good if you're comparing that to 30 % placebo.

[661] It's like, well, that's efficacious.

[662] That seems to work, right?

[663] What then happened after those trials were done, starting in the 70s and like 80s, is that the clinical diagnostic manual, it's called the DSM.

[664] At that time, it was the DSM2.

[665] They changed all their diagnosis, you know, markers and symptoms for depression.

[666] And they expanded it a great, great deal.

[667] And they then called depression major depressive disorder.

[668] So it became this sort of like broader, you know, disease, quote unquote, where it was like, it's not just these people that are severely hospitalized, it's people that are feeling depressed and anxious and sad or what, you know, it's just basically you're getting a bigger group of people, which is probably a great opportunity for a pharmaceutical company.

[669] But then when clinical trials were repeated on this new population of people, so these are clinical trials that were done from like the 80s all the way up until like the 2000, year 2000.

[670] When those were reviewed by the FDA, what was found was quite shocking, and that was that only 40 % of people were now responding to, like, antidepressants, SSRIs, other, you know, norapinephrine, reuptech inhibitors, whatever the standard of care is, compared to 30 % placebo.

[671] So now you're talking about only 10, they're performing only 10, this antidepressants performing only 10 % better than placebo.

[672] it's like okay something so clearly it's not that the antidepressants don't ever work it's just that we are now over prescribing them to people that you know or have this major depressive disorder and they're not working on people that weren't you know the the initial group of people that were like severely depressed and hospitalized you know so it's like okay that's that's a big problem because they're I mean they're prescribed like I mean I just like I can't even believe it you know I just have so many personal stories people I know you know that have gone you know going through some crisis some personal yeah breakup a divorce whatever and all of a sudden they're giving you some crazy drug and they're giving some crazy drug and they change the personality of the person and I'm just like please get off of this like you know it's not like and like it's not like they don't ever work it's just that you know I think once the clinical diagnostic you know book changed the whole, like, you know, procedure for diagnosing depression and became major depressive disorder, all of a sudden you're getting people that are now, like, having just, you know, whatever stressful event in their life that's making them a little depressed at the time, which everyone's probably experienced, are now being, you know, given this antidepressant when they don't really need it.

[673] And there are effects that are not good with taking some of these, you know, antidepressants.

[674] So, you know, there's a big effect on libido.

[675] Yeah, on libido.

[676] Yeah, I know a lot of people that have taken it where their sex drive just goes away.

[677] Yeah, there's actually a gene that a gene polymorphism, a variation in a gene that that is linked to that.

[678] So people that have it have even more severe effect where they really don't, they really have like sexual dysfunction in response to a. Yeah, it just shuts down.

[679] Yeah.

[680] Yeah.

[681] It doesn't happen to everyone quite as much, but there's a percentage of people that it really, really affects.

[682] And there's lots of other, you know, things.

[683] I mean, it's just, it's changing your brain chemistry.

[684] Right.

[685] And so.

[686] not exact.

[687] It's not an exact science.

[688] There's a lot of experimentation going on with it.

[689] I had a friend of mine who had gone to several doctors and they had prescribed a bunch of different things to him and he was severely depressed and eventually they gave up and he had to find a much better doctor that his care, his whatever his insurance package would not pay for.

[690] And once you found that doctor, then the doctor was just more knowledgeable about what, you know, potential different ones, I mean, I don't know how many different ones there are, but they got him on something that actually worked.

[691] He's off it now.

[692] It took him a while, and then, you know, he eventually got happy.

[693] And then, oddly enough, which is an interesting thing, is people always want to connect depression.

[694] They want to say depression is a disease.

[695] And they want to say it almost like, oh, you got herpes.

[696] Like, you know what I mean?

[697] It's like, well, you've got depression.

[698] Oh, well, you need medicine.

[699] And for him, the, one of the big factors in fixing, everything was his own success, his own personal success, and then he became more happy.

[700] And then his, the medication helped.

[701] He became more successful.

[702] And then as he became eventually really successful, he started to experience like a better quality of life.

[703] He was happier.

[704] He was more confident.

[705] And then he slowly weaned himself off.

[706] And now he has no need for them.

[707] To mean, that is so fascinating because, so we're not talking about necessarily a disease.

[708] Like he does not have cancer.

[709] It's not like they cured him of a disease.

[710] It was a blanket that was keeping him warm.

[711] It was something that was allowing him to bridge the gap between an unhealthy mental state and a healthy mental state.

[712] But a lot of that health had to do with his own life.

[713] He still eats like shit.

[714] I mean, he's not like the healthiest guy.

[715] He eats a lot of fucking candy, but he's really healthy now as far as like his mind.

[716] He's very happy.

[717] He's not lying.

[718] He's not faking it.

[719] So to me, it's always, I mean, when, you know, I've talked to friends that have had really good results with antidepressants.

[720] So I think there are some dark moments in people's lives where that can kind of get them out of that.

[721] But then part of me doesn't buy that that's the way to go.

[722] Because part of me is like, okay, well, did you exercise?

[723] No. Did you take like really healthy foods?

[724] No. Did you clean your life up?

[725] No. Did you, you know, like how, what happened here?

[726] And one of the things that a lot of these antidepressants do is they make you not feel bad about stuff, like, about anything.

[727] Like, I had a friend who was on Zoloft, and she said, like, she took it for a year, and she's like, I kind of lost a year of my life.

[728] Like, I didn't give a fuck about anything during that year.

[729] Like, anything can happen.

[730] It's kind of scary.

[731] Yeah, but that not giving a fuck, like, not feeling bad, you also, you don't feel great either.

[732] You don't feel like, God, it's a good time to be alive.

[733] Look at me. I'm healthy.

[734] I can move.

[735] All those thoughts don't sort of come in to play.

[736] It's like it dulls everything.

[737] It dulls the highs and it dulls the lows and it keeps the pain away.

[738] That's kind of interesting because believe it or not, that's actually a symptom of depression.

[739] I think it's called like Hedonia or something where someone's not like really responsive to anything.

[740] It's like you can't like you just can't like, you know, you can't like excite them or like make them super anxious either.

[741] They're just kind of like.

[742] you know so that's actually kind of interesting that she was experiencing that while on an antidepressant well the results vary pretty widely yeah I mean with the same drugs right yeah yeah now is that because of biodiversity like what what's causing that that like you could take something and you would have a totally different reaction and I could take something and you know it would just be perfect yeah I you know I honestly I don't think we actually know really why that is but what we do know is that there are, I mean, there are different, you know, we are different people and I've got different genes that are regulating how much serotonin I'm making, how much dopamine I'm making, how much I'm metabolizing it, how quickly I'm metabolizing it than you and other people.

[743] And so when you like, and this is, this absolutely does affect how some of these drugs are, you know, when they're taken, how, how they're, what their biological effect is.

[744] Now, you know, why, why, I don't know, You know, so it's, there's definitely like a genetic variation that, that affects just the way our neurotransmitters are being fired away and the way they're being metabolized.

[745] And so if you're, if you're adding a drug that's changing the way something's being metabolized already, then it's, you know, it's going to affect people differently.

[746] I think, I think that's one reason.

[747] But honestly, I don't know.

[748] Who knows?

[749] There's maybe like other, you know, life situations as well, other dietary situations, all these things probably play a role.

[750] You know, with the inflammation, I was talking about it actually playing a causal role.

[751] I mean, there have actually been studies where normal healthy people are injected with either a placebo, which is saline water, you know, salt water, or they're injected with something that our gut produces called endotoxin.

[752] Our gut produces it when our immune cells in our gut attack the bacteria in our gut, because endotoxin is actually a component of the bacterial cell membrane.

[753] And that is released upon inflammation.

[754] So when you're eating a terrible diet, lots of refined sugar, and that's actually been shown, you release endotoxin and it causes inflammatory response.

[755] So when people are injected with endotoxin or they're injected with pro -inflammatory cytokines like interferon gamma, which we also make in our body when we're inflamed, people start to, normal healthy people, start to experience feelings of depression.

[756] They start to feel depressed, anxious, social withdrawal.

[757] People with the placebo did not experience that.

[758] Also, they had elevated levels of other inflammatory biomarkers in their blood.

[759] So it really, like, and this is just, this is causal.

[760] I mean, we're talking about injecting inflammation.

[761] All of a sudden, they're experiencing these, like, depressive symptoms.

[762] It was actually people that were then given one of the omega -3 fatty acids EPA.

[763] They're given actually a pretty high dose of it.

[764] I think it was close to, like, two grams or something, completely alleviated any of those symptoms.

[765] so those people that were getting the inflammatory cytokine or the endotoxin and the EPA did not experience those symptoms.

[766] So it was really like inflammation, you know, driven, these symptoms that were not experienced in the placebo.

[767] So that's kind of, and there's been multiple studies showing this, not, you know, it's not just one study, there's multiple studies.

[768] Multiple studies, again, this is kind of like a new method people are using to explore how inflammation affects depression.

[769] It also has been shown the same sort of scenario where there's a placebo and they're injecting an inflammatory cytokine, dopamine levels lower in the brains of people that were injected with the pro -inflammatory cytokine, but not the saline water.

[770] And also the reward pathway in the brain is also decreased.

[771] So, you know, again, like I was mentioning, you're not that excitable, you know, you know, it's just kind of like, and that, and that was not, that did not happen in the placebo group.

[772] So this was not just an effect of being shot up with something, you know.

[773] So when scientists have looked at some of the mechanisms and explored, well, how is it that inflammation is affecting dopamine in the brain?

[774] How is it that it's, you know, affecting people's mood?

[775] It's thought now there's a variety of mechanisms.

[776] One is that, you know, these inflammatory cytokines, they actually cross the blood brain barrier.

[777] They get into the brain and they disrupt dopamine release.

[778] They disrupt serotonin release.

[779] They disrupt noraphenephrin release.

[780] You know, they're disrupting these neurotransmitters being released.

[781] The other thing is that there's been recently discovered that the lymphatic system is actually directly connected to the brain through the meninges.

[782] I mean, it was previously thought that that was like cut off.

[783] The brain was protected from the lymphatic system.

[784] But it turns out we were wrong.

[785] You know, everything that we learned in textbooks for years and years in our science classes was not accurate.

[786] Actually, our lymphatic system is connected.

[787] And what that means is that our immune system, the chemicals, the inflammatory cytokines were producing, you know, from our immune cells.

[788] are getting into the brain and disrupting, you know, neurotransmitter release and other things.

[789] So there's obviously a really strong connection to inflammation and depression that's shown to be causal.

[790] But when you think about it, it's like, well, what causes inflammation?

[791] Okay, well, we can talk about the sugar stuff because that's been shown.

[792] Eating a terrible diet does.

[793] But the other thing that causes it, and it's what you mentioned, that is a stressful event in someone's life, an emotional.

[794] event, you know, a breakup, a tragedy, work -related stress, social anxiety, whatever it is, anything that causes you to release cortisol, stress hormones, believe it or not, those things actually affect inflammation in your gut.

[795] So it's like a two -way street here.

[796] I think that previously you and I have talked about in other podcasts like how gut microbiome bacteria, you know, you can take microbiome bacteria from an anxious mouse and transplanted into a non -anxious mouse and make it anxious and vice versa, right?

[797] So there's like some sort of gut brain axis through something called the vagal nerve.

[798] Well, it goes both ways.

[799] You can go from the brain down to the gut.

[800] So it's been shown that like cortical releasing hormone, which is a stress hormone, you know, through the vagal nerve, when you release it, goes into the gut, it activates immune cells, which then activate other proteins in the gut that chew up, they're called proteases.

[801] They chew up the gut barrier.

[802] And then you start to release more inflammatory cells, which then, like, get in contact with bacteria, more inflammation, and then it goes back.

[803] It's like this feedback loop.

[804] So I think that's how stress also part of the mechanism, how a stressful event, any sort of breakup or tragedy, those sorts of things, also cause inflammation.

[805] They cause inflammation.

[806] In fact, this is a totally off topic, but that's one reason why people should never go and, like, get like, blood work.

[807] done like like a day or two after some kind of like traumatic event so if you get fired don't get your blood work don't yeah like do not get your blood work or break up or whatever yeah because it will like it will skew everything wow everything well that's that's so amazing and when you discuss this and when you lay all these facts out it makes it seem so irresponsible that 10 % of the people are on this drug 11 % excuse me are on this drug or a you know whatever a category of these drugs, instead of dealing with it, I mean, it seems like we're in a weird place when it comes to the holistic treatment of the human body.

[808] We're in a very weird place where we have all of this information now, but it doesn't seem like it's being applied when it comes to the average person who's suffering, the average person who's dealing with a disease or depression, which I guess you could call a disease.

[809] And it just seems so insane that with all we know that we're treating it only with this chemical pathway.

[810] We're only treating it with a pill, this pharmacy, you know, this pharmacological solution to this, which just seems so limited.

[811] It's upsetting.

[812] It's so upsetting.

[813] It's very upsetting.

[814] I am like, it's like a mission of mine.

[815] You know, I think, you know, I think that the problem is multifold.

[816] You know, One is that you have, you know, psychiatrists and they're trained a certain way and people, when their patients come in, they expect that they're going to come, they come in because they want a pill most of the time.

[817] They do.

[818] They come in because they don't want to deal with it and they want a pill.

[819] And so, you know, that's kind of a problem because they need, you know, people need to understand that these pills are not the magic bullet.

[820] I mean, I just told you only 40 % of people are responding to these antidepressants that are standard of care compared to 30 % that respond to placebo, a sugar pill.

[821] Right.

[822] Like, that is ridiculous, you know.

[823] So I think I would love if there was some way, you know, to get a physician, usually there's psychiatrists that people go to for these sorts of problems to, like, push someone to say, you have to go run, you know, you're going to run six miles a week.

[824] You're going to run.

[825] You're going to do that.

[826] That is going to help you.

[827] Right.

[828] Like, you know, it's, in fact, it's been shown.

[829] It's been shown in multiple studies that exercise helps improve depression.

[830] And one of the ways it does it, very interestingly, is that aerobic exercise specifically has been shown that whole serotonin pathway.

[831] We're talking about inflammation inhibiting release of serotonin.

[832] Well, guess what?

[833] Inflammation affects serotonin in another way.

[834] The precursor to serotonin, serotonin triptophan, when you have inflammation, so like I said, an emotional event causes inflammation.

[835] It doesn't have to be your sugar diet, okay?

[836] You know, inflammation can be caused by your cortisol release.

[837] when you have that inflammation, your body thinks that it needs to fight off something, but that's what it thinks.

[838] It's like, okay, this, I'm sick.

[839] I've got a foreign invader.

[840] I need to kill it.

[841] And so the tryptophan, which usually is being transported into the brain and make serotonin, which plays a role in how you feel, it plays a role in lots of brain functions, then gets diverted into another pathway because your body's like, wait a minute, I don't need to feel good, I need to live.

[842] I need to live.

[843] So the tryptophan gets converted into this whole other pathway called kineuronine, which helps with basically immune cells needed to, different immune cells needed to make different types of immune cells.

[844] So your body's like, okay, the triptophan is going to this other pathway.

[845] I need more immune cells, blah, blah, blah.

[846] But the problem is that the kine then gets converted into, so now what you have is you're depleting your brain of serotonin, boom, right there, right?

[847] That's the first thing.

[848] So if you're not sick, and if you have chronic inflammation, you're chronically stressed, So you're chronically eating a terrible diet, then you are going to constantly be diverting the serotonin, you know, the tryptophan into this other pathway.

[849] You're going to be depleting your brain of serotonin, right?

[850] So that's one thing.

[851] This is a twofold problem.

[852] Then that whole kineurin thing gets converted into something called quinoletic acid, which actually crosses over the blood brain barrier, becomes a neurotoxin and also has been shown to cause depression.

[853] So not only you're not getting serotonin, you're getting this gnarly shit in your brain that's not supposed to be there.

[854] And exercise, it's been shown, specifically aerobic exercise, causes your muscle to soak up the kineuron, actually another precursor to it, so that it can't form quinoletic acid.

[855] So it doesn't form the neurotoxin part.

[856] But, you know, exercise also caused you to make, it makes tryptophan go into your brain.

[857] You know, it alleviates some of the competition with branched amino acids like lucene and isylucine.

[858] So that's another way.

[859] It's doing a million things.

[860] Brain -derived neurotrophic factor.

[861] We talked about at the beginning of the podcast.

[862] That also plays a role in depression, helping prevent depression.

[863] So neurogenesis, all that stuff that helps.

[864] Growing new brain cells, making new connections, helps you deal with stress.

[865] That's why you make it when you stress your body.

[866] It seems like there could be some sort of a holistic approach, like a clinic, that looks at all of these factors, looks at all these factors and prescribes, instead of just prescribing a pill, prescribes a very specific diet and exercise routine and maybe even meditation.

[867] maybe even something that practices or enhances mindfulness or promotes mindfulness something that allows you to manage the way you're viewing and taking in scenarios and scenes and events in your life and then processing them in a more healthy manner it seems like all these things would be as effective or maybe more effective than just a pill i agree with you and i'm hopeful for the future i think that the more there's a lot of scientists that are studying this now.

[868] I mean, it's becoming very common to look in the scientific literature and see, you know, scientists researching inflammation and the role of inflammation and depression and the role of exercise and helping treat it and the role of other, you know, dietary lifestyle factors in causing and treating depression.

[869] So I think that, you know, I really am hopeful that in the near future that it, like you said, it's going to be a multi -pronged approach where it's not just a magic pill.

[870] And I'm not saying that's not also going to be included in some, you know, I'm just I think, I think the diet, lifestyle, meditation exercise, if we could just get that into like, you know, the clinical world and if people were motivated enough to realize this will really help them, like it really will, people will be so much happier.

[871] I really, I really think so.

[872] Some people just don't want to fucking exercise.

[873] It's weird.

[874] They would so much rather go to a doctor and get a pill.

[875] It's so strange.

[876] A lot of people.

[877] Well, it's this fear of discomfort.

[878] People have this extreme feeling in their mind when it comes to their associations with exercise.

[879] They want to avoid discomfort.

[880] They feel like any type of exercise is just like something to be avoided.

[881] That's not for me. Fuck that.

[882] I don't want to sweat.

[883] I don't want to strain.

[884] And a lot of times this association, that they have is about the beginnings of getting in shape.

[885] It's not about once you're actually fit.

[886] Because once you're actually fit, exercise is something you look forward to.

[887] It's an alleviation of stress.

[888] It feels great.

[889] Like, if I can't get a workout in, I look at my schedule.

[890] I go, oh, shit, I don't have any time for a workout, which means I'm not going to get that good feeling.

[891] And so instead of looking at it like, oh, I've got to go grunt and sweat, I'm thinking I'm not going to feel good.

[892] I'm not going to feel relaxed.

[893] I'm not going to feel carefree.

[894] and I'm not going to feel even appreciative, like my appreciation of things, and it gets enhanced greatly after exercise.

[895] I just feel better.

[896] I feel like I can take things in for what they are rather than, you know, whatever sensory data that I'm getting from any event is just one more distraction that gets in my way.

[897] And, you know, that's a lot of times how I look at things if I'm overstressed or if I'm working too much.

[898] Totally beautifully put, because that that's exactly like at least what's been shown from like neuroimaging studies is that exercise does.

[899] What you're talking about is that executive function.

[900] You're talking about feeling good without that sensory stuff, which is the amygdala, it's the emotional center.

[901] That's been shown to be decreased in activity after exercise, whereas the executive function is increased.

[902] So it's just, it's exactly in the right direction, right?

[903] So you're able to logically think about this more and you feel good.

[904] And it's like you're not that sensory response, that like gut, anxiety, you don't feel it as much.

[905] that part of your brain is actually quieter after exercise.

[906] Meditation does a similar thing.

[907] But if there was just a way to get this knowledge to, and for people to understand, people that are adverse to exercising, you know, if there was just some way, and I'm really trying to find a way, because there are many people that I care about in my life that are that way and that feel depressed and are on some sort of, you know, antidepressant, which doesn't really work for them still.

[908] And so I'm trying to find a way, like how, like I can tell them, I'm having this conversation with you and you get it because you experience it.

[909] You exercise.

[910] You, you know, you eat healthy.

[911] You experience these things.

[912] But for someone that's never experienced it, how do you communicate it to them?

[913] It's so hard for people to start anything new.

[914] It's, it's hard for people to start a pottery class that's not going to, you know, it's not going to be involved with any physical pain or any stress or any exhaustion.

[915] gin.

[916] There's not that feeling that you get when you're really tired.

[917] You know, the feeling that you get for me is particularly difficult doing boring stuff, like an elliptical machine.

[918] Like an elliptical machine to me, it's a great workout.

[919] It's awesome if I'm at a gym.

[920] Because if I go to a gym, like at a hotel and, you know, they have some bullshit weights, but they have an elliptical machine.

[921] I go, okay, if this thing has a high setting, I can get a real workout in this.

[922] But those times when you're tired and you don't want to do it.

[923] They're so fucking boring.

[924] It's just, shh, shh, shh, you'd have to listen to something.

[925] You have to watch something.

[926] Like, other stimuli has to come in in order to get you pumped up.

[927] But I know this because I've done it a thousand times.

[928] For someone who hasn't done it a thousand times, they get to that point.

[929] They're like, fuck this.

[930] I'm out of here.

[931] Oh, my God.

[932] Let me get a donut.

[933] You know, give me a coffee.

[934] I'm going to go outside and smoke a cigarette.

[935] Woo, I feel better.

[936] You know, and it's so hard to get past that because we have.

[937] have all these connections in our mind when it comes to comfort comfort and stress comfort and like our bodies for whatever reason uh most people their associations are to avoid anything that's uncomfortable but it's so illogical because when you look at comfort and you look at success and progress and eventual the feelings of of accomplishment and of getting past certain hurdles in terms of like how you feel about life.

[938] A lot of those are connected to discomfort.

[939] Like discomfort is your friend.

[940] It really is.

[941] Like discomfort and not being happy and content with certain situations in life or certain feelings in life.

[942] They're massive, massive motivators and they're amazing at facilitating change.

[943] And yet our instinct is to avoid those and just sit on the couch and watch some fucking reality show about dudes who make moonshine with our jaw open like it's with bizarre it is it's too much too much of that like stimuli where you don't have to do anything and you can still like get yeah get that sensory information you know the need to act like to need to actually go out there and act is is so strong it's such a it's such an important thing but yet we resist it many people I know you don't I don't but so many people do I but I feel the thing you know I I don't allow it to work, but I feel that, fuck this, I don't want to work out.

[944] I feel it all the time, almost every time before I work out.

[945] I have at least an inclination to blow it off.

[946] I don't ever embrace it, but it's there.

[947] It's there with everybody.

[948] Like, no one is, like, completely 100 % healthy and without any resistance.

[949] Yeah.

[950] I wonder if also that has, we were talking about this being a superager.

[951] I wonder if there is some association there, you know, we're looking at, we're looking at how it's important to push past that uncomfortableness, whether it's physical or mental, and that's linked to being a superager.

[952] But what if it's just like the ability to make yourself do that is important too, right?

[953] It's not just the act that you're doing.

[954] It's not just the strenuous exercise, which is obviously good.

[955] We know that it's good from science, but what if it's just being able to like push yourself?

[956] Like maybe some people don't have that ability for whatever reason or they just haven't tapped into it enough because they haven't really experienced.

[957] I think that's it.

[958] I think it's a learned thing, you know, because if I take time off, like, I got sick recently and I couldn't work out for like a week or, you know, six days or so.

[959] And the act of getting back into the gym, I think in a lot of ways we rely on momentum.

[960] We rely on the momentum of past experiences where you're just conditioned to do that.

[961] It's one of the things that you do.

[962] And for me, at least, when I get, when I get, when I get, like really disciplined and really, um, I get really consistent with my workouts.

[963] One of the things that I feel, I almost feel momentum.

[964] I feel like there's like a push behind me. Like, all right, we're, you know, like after I get out of the gym, I have a really good workout.

[965] I'm like, yeah, now I'm doing it.

[966] I'm doing it all the time now.

[967] And I'm looking forward to the next time.

[968] And it makes that resistance much weaker and it makes my motivation and my discipline much stronger.

[969] I think a lot of it is based on just the consistent.

[970] You know, it's one of the things that I talked about recently on the podcast.

[971] I said, you know, like blowing something off, it's not just not good, like blowing off an exercise that you planned is not just bad for you physically.

[972] It's also bad mentally because then that option is now available.

[973] The option to fuck off is available.

[974] And you did it before and you're probably going to do it again and you'll get mediocre results, not just in that aspect of your life, but maybe in all aspects of your life.

[975] because I think that option to fuck off when you embrace it, that is a pathway that you might choose when it comes to dealing with conflict in your personal life, dealing with business decisions, dealing with career decisions, like an uncomfortable decision that you might be faced with, maybe you need to make a change as far as like what your pathway is in life, but you don't do it.

[976] Instead, you fuck off.

[977] and that the inclination to fuck off, I think, that gathers momentum as well.

[978] The inclination to be disciplined, that comes with momentum too.

[979] And I think both things, like you take a path, the path of the healthy person or the path of the fuck off.

[980] Like, both of them are available and whichever path you embrace.

[981] Totally, totally.

[982] I mean, I think that the same thing goes with, like, lying, too.

[983] I mean, when you, I think it's very bad to lie.

[984] Like even if it's something that is really benign, like what they call a little tiny white.

[985] You look great.

[986] Yeah.

[987] That, you know, because then you start making these neural connections in your brain and you start to like get used to doing it like you were saying.

[988] And I think that it just kind of dawned on me as you were saying this that with the motivation and the momentum you were talking about, I think that's the same way.

[989] I think you're like building these neural pathways, these motivation pathways.

[990] And that's really important for that momentum.

[991] him to do it again and again you know there's been there was some studies a few of them that have been done where uh you can take a person and do that direct transcranial stimulation which i don't know much about but i remember these studies and like stimulate a certain part of the brain that's involved in motivation and you can motivate them to go to the gym so you motivated them to actually go work out so that's in one of those electrodes they put on a specific area the outside of your head and then it's like a little nine -volt batteries attached to it and it just zaps you little bit.

[992] Saps you a little bit and like activates a certain brain region and that that brain region it's activating specifically with this study I was talking about actually there's a couple of them were involved in motivation and that's probably with you and I we already have those pathways activated because we're constantly forcing ourselves to go I mean I feel the same way there are times I'm like God I don't want to go for a run like it's right but once you do it goddamn you feel great you feel great and you know what you accomplish something so it's not only like you're feeling great from all the neural mechanisms that are being activated and all the biochemistry that's going on.

[993] But you have accomplished something.

[994] You did.

[995] You pushed past something you didn't want to do and you feel good about doing that.

[996] After magnetic stimulation therapy, Wilmington woman finds motivation and energy.

[997] Yeah.

[998] There's a radio lab about this.

[999] A radio lab podcast.

[1000] It's called 9 volt nirvana.

[1001] And it's pretty good.

[1002] I like radio love it.

[1003] I love radio lab.

[1004] And it actually deals with, it's the first story, the opening story, is amazing.

[1005] Because it deals with this woman who went to this, like, sniper training simulation video, video thing that they do, where they put you in front, they give you, like, a fake gun, and they put you in front of a video screen, and a scenario plays out.

[1006] And then the scenario, there's, like, a terrorist attack, and you have to take out the bad guys.

[1007] And they did it with her, and she was, it's 20 minutes long, and she was terrible.

[1008] Like, she fucked it all up.

[1009] It was just, like, a disaster.

[1010] Like, she didn't respond correctly.

[1011] they put these electrodes what would you exactly call them one of those things it's electrodes so they put these on her brain in the or on the outside of her head in very specific areas and stimulated it and then recreated it and in the recreation she was 100 % effective she killed all the bad guys and she went through this 20 minute thing and when it was over when they told her that it was over she thought they were fucking with her because she thought it was only two minutes like time Yeah, like everything is incredible.

[1012] Oh, it's amazing.

[1013] The way she describes it is amazing.

[1014] It's amazing.

[1015] It's a little scary, too, just because, I mean, it's like, can you, like, program someone to do something?

[1016] There's another study that was published, like, two years ago.

[1017] Same thing, trans -cranial direct stimulation, and I, like, I'm so not an expert on any of this, but I just remember this study because it was trying to investigate what part of the brain's fault in consciousness, right?

[1018] And so she, so that the study was designed in such a way where she was reading a book.

[1019] And then they zapped her in a certain part of the brain.

[1020] And she stopped reading the book, this woman, and like just looked at them like a zombie.

[1021] Like no, nothing, no talk, no. And then they zapped her again.

[1022] And she started to reach.

[1023] She picked up right where she left off, had no recollection at all of doing that.

[1024] So this was like, you know, trying to figure out if this part of the brain is evolving consciousness.

[1025] Anyways, that was a little scary.

[1026] Well, that's, yeah, that is a real concern, right?

[1027] Because one of the things about this transcranial direct stimulation of radio lab podcast was that they talked about how many people are out there just fucking experimenting where there's a whole community online where people are talking about like experimenting with the voltages and experimenting with the placement.

[1028] Oh, my goodness.

[1029] One guy did something.

[1030] He lost a sense of taste and like, the bunch of, yeah.

[1031] So people are just buying these and like doing it?

[1032] Yes.

[1033] Oh, my gosh.

[1034] Yes, well, you can go, it's like you can go to fucking radio lab.

[1035] The consequences of a world where anyone with $20 in access to Radio Shack can make their own brain zapper.

[1036] Yeah, that is, is that from Radio Lab from their podcast?

[1037] Yeah, their podcast page.

[1038] Wow.

[1039] It's amazing because there's apparently this gigantic community of it.

[1040] Like, hold on a second.

[1041] Go back up there and make that larger again.

[1042] The last couple of years, T -D -T -C -S -D -D -C -Direct cranial stimulation has been all over the news.

[1043] researchers claim that juicing the brain with just two milliamps, think 9 volt battery, can help with everything from learning languages to quitting smoking to overcoming depression.

[1044] And so they brought it in a neuroscientist, Michael Weissend at Wright State Research Institute into the studio, tell them how it works.

[1045] Really interesting.

[1046] Very interesting.

[1047] You know, I feel like in terms of like treating depression or helping people get motivated to go to the gym, it may really have relevance.

[1048] Yeah.

[1049] But it also might be like slapping a supercharger on an old Chevy Nova and you blow the fucking engine on the thing, you know?

[1050] It's true.

[1051] It's true.

[1052] I mean, you don't really, you don't, we don't really know enough about what's going.

[1053] I certainly wouldn't be experimenting with that, like, right now.

[1054] Let's do it.

[1055] Are you doing it?

[1056] Yeah, fuck it.

[1057] I'm thinking about going to Radio Shack, radio shack, right after I get out of here.

[1058] Not really, but sort of.

[1059] I mean, it's just interesting.

[1060] It's amazing that we are really some sort of a system and you can juice that.

[1061] system like a little electricity here a little vitamin there you know a little uh broccoli sprouts here yeah it's like that's the weirdest thing about people and one of the weirdest things about people is how variable we are depending upon what we put inside of us and we don't think of it that way most of the time we think of ourselves as ourselves you know i'm sure you think of yourself as ronda patrick but ronda patrick relies on a bunch of fucking chemicals to be ronda patrick right i mean there's a lot of stuff going on in there it's not just it's not this one like this is a laptop you know i'm not adding shit to this thing like i can put programs in it and stuff but i mean this is the everything in there is kind of worked out you know there's a processor there's a motherboard it's all the all this junk is in place and the electricity plugs into the back and it's not really variable you know the the human body so fucking variable and pliable and malleable there's so many different things that you can do to make yourself better I got this conversation with a friend of mine who's not a physical fitness guy and he's kind of a nihilist and nihilist, I guess you would say?

[1062] I never say that word.

[1063] I just read it.

[1064] I think it's nihilist.

[1065] And he's, you know, he's a little bit of a curmudgeon and he's like, yeah, what's the point?

[1066] You know, like, really?

[1067] What is the point?

[1068] You're always doing all those martial arts and exercise.

[1069] I go, okay, if I could give you a pill and that pill would turn you essentially into a superperson.

[1070] Like, you can do shit that you can't do now.

[1071] You could lift weights, you can't lift, you can't lift, you could beat people up, you could do physical fitness fits, feats that, you know, you right now are totally insurmountable and outside the realm of possibility.

[1072] Would you take that pill?

[1073] So, so simple.

[1074] And he goes, no, I wouldn't.

[1075] I go, you wouldn't.

[1076] Okay.

[1077] If I could give you a pill that would prevent you from being a decaying old man and you could stay in the state you are right now, would you take that?

[1078] He's like, yeah, I probably would take that.

[1079] I go, well, that's how it feels like to me, motherfucker.

[1080] Like, that's how it feels like to me. Like, you're a decaying old man. You know, like, he's not much, I think he's a year older than me. But he looks like he's 50 years older than me. I mean, his body's all humped.

[1081] He's like, he's got a little punch.

[1082] He doesn't have any muscle tone.

[1083] And I'm like, dude, all of that is just physical fitness.

[1084] Like, you're not broken.

[1085] Like, there's nothing wrong with you.

[1086] But if you got on, like, a steady yoga routine and started doing some resistance training and started maybe swimming or something like that, A year from now, you would have a completely different body.

[1087] You know, and so talking to me, I'm like, I've done it my whole life.

[1088] So, like, stuff that I can do stuff that you don't think is possible.

[1089] And to me, it's like two times a week, three times a week I do that stuff.

[1090] Like, this is not, like, your body is like a race car that you can juice up yourself.

[1091] Like, you can add the fat tires.

[1092] You can add the improved suspension.

[1093] You can beef up the horsepower in the engine.

[1094] You could do all that yourself.

[1095] health.

[1096] Or you could just choose to have this shitty body that's always falling apart on you.

[1097] Right.

[1098] I mean, what you and I are both choosing to do is, you know, we're both kind of obsessed with nutrition and aging and being, you know, as optimal as we can in terms of our health.

[1099] But ultimately, what we are doing is delaying the aging process by switching on all these switches and like, you know, exercise and getting all the micronutrients and avoiding the refined sugar, which is causing inflammation and all that stuff and it's really because that stuff is part of the aging process and it accelerates the aging process where I don't think people that don't do this stuff realize that it's like it's not just about looking good it's about aging it's about like being older and being fit and being mentally sharp and not being degenerate and decrepit and how I mean how awful would that be to be like 60 which is young I mean, 60 is still young, and to be like, you know, broken.

[1100] Yeah, broken.

[1101] Which is really common.

[1102] It's super common.

[1103] Especially for sedentary people.

[1104] Exactly.

[1105] For sedentary people.

[1106] Most sedentary people are people that also choose to eat terrible diets.

[1107] So it's like not only are they sedentary, they're also eating crappy food and not getting all the nutrients they need.

[1108] So it's just like this mega explosion dynamite of just bad.

[1109] Yeah.

[1110] Increasing inflammation.

[1111] I think intelligent people, like my friend, he is a. intelligent and I think he connects vanity with those things and he thinks vanity is for fools and he thinks it's a it's a it's a trait that he finds reprehensible he just doesn't like it you know he sees people that are you know whatever maybe it's flashy clothes maybe it's you know the way they wear their hair whatever it is he thinks is preposterous he connects that with physical fitness I'm like man but it's your vehicle it's like how you get through this life and it's how you think it's it's it's so many different things that are all connected into one superorganism which is the life that you're you're living it's it's you know I think everybody knows now I mean it's not something we grew up knowing but everybody knows now about your gut biome this is a really huge factor in how you exist as an organism or as maybe even an organism is the wrong word because we're essentially the ecosystems, you know, and we're in charge, this weird consciousness that has all this resistance and has all this inclination towards comfort and fucking off and blowing things off is what is in charge of making all these things happen that keep this ecosystem healthy.

[1112] It's almost like if Earth itself had like a shitty manager, you know, if like there was a manager of a natural manager of Earth that was like, oh God, who cares if it rains, Oh, God.

[1113] You know, like, let's, you know, I'm going to stop growing things.

[1114] I don't give a shit anymore.

[1115] It's all stupid anyway.

[1116] I mean, it's literally like the, the, just blow it up.

[1117] Yeah, yeah.

[1118] Fuck, let's just kill all the life.

[1119] It's all going to die eventually.

[1120] I mean, the sun only lasts seven billion years.

[1121] You see, that is the perspective a lot of people take with aging, where it's like, well, you're going to die, you're going to age.

[1122] You can't stop aging.

[1123] And it's like, yes, you're right, but that's not the point.

[1124] The point is to age.

[1125] better like that's the point the point is to increase your health span you know and that is we know is possible like there's some there's some of these like centenarians and super centenarians i've seen that are like in you know over a hundred years old and they're like riding bikes and racing and it's like yeah they're old they're experiencing a very good quality of life yeah and they're experiencing a quality of life that these other people that don't exercise feel they physically feel their own body diminishing and they just feel it's inevitable it is what it is you're wasting your time you're out there running around but we're not because this experience right now it's not like no one's under the illusion you're going to live forever but you are enhancing the experience that you're currently involved in right now and you are alive you are alive you do experience this life but do you experience this life optimally is it is it as enjoyable as it can be and we all know that there's a spectrum for that enjoyability.

[1126] Like, we've all had times in our life where it's not been so great.

[1127] And then times in a life where everything came together.

[1128] Like, what a fucking great day.

[1129] Woo!

[1130] Like, make more of those.

[1131] Like, you can make more of those.

[1132] And then the whole thing's better.

[1133] And I think when that whole thing is better, it affects everybody you touch, everybody you surround you, everybody you come in contact with, and that in turn, I mean, it sounds so grandiose, but in turn can affect the entire race of human beings.

[1134] I agree.

[1135] Totally.

[1136] Totally agree.

[1137] And I love the way you put it about like the feeling good.

[1138] It's not just about, you know, staving off cancer.

[1139] You know, it's not just about what's going to happen 20, 30 years from now.

[1140] It's about now.

[1141] It's about not being depressed.

[1142] We know that.

[1143] You know, it's about feeling better.

[1144] It's about being smarter.

[1145] It's about having more executive function, having more long -term planning, less emotional amygdala, you know, anxiety.

[1146] That is like right here, right now.

[1147] That is happening.

[1148] So, you know, it's not just long -term effects, which you also are.

[1149] you know, also affecting, which is very good.

[1150] So it's like a win -win.

[1151] You're not just affecting the future.

[1152] You're affecting right now how you feel, how you perform, you know, it's, yeah, it's an important concept that I continue to try to get, you know, across to people.

[1153] And it also will optimize everything else you do, whether it's creative pursuits, whether it's relationships that you get into.

[1154] A lot of those things are predicated on how you feel as you enter them, how you feel when you participate in them and you can enhance that you can enhance that and I mean there's a weird thing that people do where they want to pretend they're not trying to do better you know I'm fine everything's great like it's not that's not true you're you're putting out effort it's a matter of you you have a mindset or you have a connection in your brain with putting out more effort and connecting that to discomfort and that connecting things to discomfort have you ever um uh Stephen Pressfield has a book called The War of Art. I've brought up in this podcast a million times.

[1155] I actually have a copy of it.

[1156] I'll give it to you afterwards because I bought like 50 copies of it.

[1157] I've not heard of it.

[1158] I hand it out to people.

[1159] It's great.

[1160] And he's been on this podcast before.

[1161] And his book is essentially mostly about the creative pursuit.

[1162] And it's about resistance that people feel when you know you should write or you know you should paint or whatever you should sculpt, whatever these things are that you pursue.

[1163] And that there's this thing that, comes up that tries to keep you from doing that.

[1164] This resistance.

[1165] And he's like, this is a battle that you will fight for the rest of your life.

[1166] But the key is to fight it.

[1167] Not to give in.

[1168] Don't give into that resistance.

[1169] Just to fight that resistance.

[1170] And in doing so, every day you do so, you have won the battle for that day.

[1171] And you will continue to fight that battle.

[1172] And if you continue to fight that battle with that same mindset, you will win.

[1173] And this is a guy that, like, up until the time he was 40 years old, he was basically a loser.

[1174] He wasn't doing well.

[1175] He was like a failed writer.

[1176] And then he kind of just figured it out and got his shit together and then wrote books about it.

[1177] And now he's like a really accomplished author.

[1178] And it's an amazing story.

[1179] And he's a really cool guy too.

[1180] I had him on for a podcast.

[1181] And, you know, in his enthusiasm and the way he approaches it in this book is like, it's very pragmatic.

[1182] Like you can see the steps and he lays it all out in a way that's very easy to digest.

[1183] Awesome.

[1184] Yeah.

[1185] I'd love to read it.

[1186] I mean, I, I, I, I, I think that's something that's a very important part of the human experience is pushing past that resistance to whatever.

[1187] And you're right.

[1188] Once you do it, you get better at it next time too.

[1189] I mean, it's still there, but you do get better at it next time.

[1190] There's also a problem, I think, that what it comes up when you and I are doing these podcasts where there's so much data, there is so much to take in.

[1191] I mean, we have done how many podcasts now, like six or seven?

[1192] This is the sixth one.

[1193] Yeah.

[1194] A lot.

[1195] And every one of them is three hours of like, what in the fuck?

[1196] How does she know all this?

[1197] And just notebooks.

[1198] Like when I put it up on Twitter, you know, that you're going to be here.

[1199] Everybody's like, get your notebook out.

[1200] I mean, that's like the number one response in the comments.

[1201] That's awesome.

[1202] Yeah.

[1203] There's a lot of stuff that I enjoy learning.

[1204] You know, and so it's something that I like to learn about things that can make me better or things that can make other people better mentally, physically.

[1205] help aging and all that so I like to share that with with people have you heard of this um we were talking about an aging pill and it kind of came into my mind when you were talking about giving your friend that if you could take a pill right could you know delay the way you age or make you live you know longer or better um have you heard of like nicotinamide ribicide or nicotinamide mononucleotide not at all not at all no oh wow it's like it's kind of like I guess it's maybe it's not made its way of the popular media as much as I thought, but it's definitely blown up in the science.

[1206] So there's, so nicotinamide ribicide and nicotinamide mononucleotide, they're like precursor forms to vitamin B3.

[1207] And in the body, they get converted into something called NAD.

[1208] And NAD is something that you absolutely have, your mitochondria, which make energy, have to have to make energy.

[1209] Like you can't oxidize fat, fatty acids.

[1210] You can't oxidize.

[1211] glucose.

[1212] You can't make energy from any of the food you eat without NAD because your mitochondria need it to make the energy.

[1213] So it's very important for your mitochondria to function to make energy.

[1214] But also, it's very important.

[1215] It's like the levels of NAD always rise like when you're fasting in between meals.

[1216] So like, you know, between breakfast and lunch or breakfast and dinner or whatever, your NAD levels go up like slowly after a meal and during the fasting state.

[1217] And also when you exercise.

[1218] So the levels of NAD will go up somewhat.

[1219] But so these are precursors to NAD, right?

[1220] I'm telling you this because this is kind of the the studies that have been done, all the mechanisms go back to this forming NAD.

[1221] NAD is something that decreases with age.

[1222] It's something that, you know, it's very important for aging.

[1223] Anytime you're inflamed, all the NAD gets sucked up into that inflammation because your energy to, you know, energy, it requires energy to like have your immune cells be activated and fighting off whatever they think they're fighting off, whether or not it's refined sugar or actual an infection.

[1224] But DNA damage sucks it up.

[1225] So it's like, you know, it's basically a limiting factor in a lot of ways.

[1226] So there's been all these studies over the past, I don't know, I'd say like six years probably now, five or six years, where various scientists have been feeding mice, you know, this nicotenomide ribicide or nicotentamide.

[1227] mononucleotide.

[1228] And they're finding that, you know, for example, if you feed them nicotanamide mononucleotide, it delays aging in their liver, in their bones, in their eyes, their muscle.

[1229] So it's basically like their tissues are aging better.

[1230] They have enhanced endurance.

[1231] They have better mitochondrial function.

[1232] And these are doses like human equivalent dose to like 24 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day, which could be a lot if you weigh a lot.

[1233] but showing that it improves mitochondrial function and nicotinamide ribicide, which gets converted into nicotinide mononucleotide, it's kind of confusing.

[1234] Anyways, lots of studies on that showing that if you give it to mice that have some sort of mitochondrial defect and their muscles all atrophying, it completely reverses that.

[1235] Their muscles are like they're making lots of mitochondria and improves muscle function and enhances performance.

[1236] Anyways, like you get the idea, like lots and lots of animal studies.

[1237] Recently, there's been a human clinical trial done.

[1238] with nicotinamide ribicide and that just to show that it's safe and that it actually does increase NAD levels in human blood which it does even even as low as a hundred milligrams dose a day and is this a supplement that people can buy so that so nicotinamide mononuclid is not um that's found in like broccoli broccoli is really high in it cucumbers are really high in it cabbage is high in edamame but nicotinide riboside, which gets converted into that, which eventually makes its way to NAD, it is a supplement.

[1239] So a few scientists, actually, some big -name scientists in the aging field, like Lenny Guarantee and a couple of others, have started a supplement company called Elysium.

[1240] Can you give me that pad?

[1241] I forgot to put a pad over here.

[1242] I got to write that down.

[1243] Thank you.

[1244] Yeah.

[1245] And so it's called Elysium.

[1246] And it has nicotinamide.

[1247] Elysium, like the Matt Damon movie?

[1248] Yeah.

[1249] E -L -Y -S -I -U -M.

[1250] Oh, look at this.

[1251] They have it.

[1252] So it has nicotinamide, and by the way, I know affiliation.

[1253] I don't have any affiliation with any supplement companies.

[1254] Is this a supplement company?

[1255] What is the company, Jamie?

[1256] I think it's a company called the company, the company is called Elysium, or is it the supplement?

[1257] The supplement is called Elysium.

[1258] And how do you spell the actual nicotidomide?

[1259] How do you say it?

[1260] Nicotinamide, N -I -C -N -I -N -T -I -N -M -I -D.

[1261] ribicide R -I -B -O -S -I -D -E Yeah, so it's interesting, it's also there's another company, I think Thorne makes one with it in it, but Thorne?

[1262] Yeah, Thorne.

[1263] The thing that's interesting about the Elysium, though, that I found, because I started looking into this, like I've met Lenny Guarantee, he's the guy who whose lab, the whole pathway that resveratrol axon was discovered that, you know, so So, NAD switches on this whole, like, genetic pathway that's, like, anti -aging, and it changes all these epigenetic factors, okay?

[1264] Without getting into all the details and, like, boring people to death, it's like, it's basically NAD levels rise.

[1265] It acts as a switch.

[1266] This rises NAD levels.

[1267] So this is a supplement that's rise in the NAD levels.

[1268] But what's interesting about the Elysium is that it has something in it called Terostilbin.

[1269] Terlilbin is found in blueberries.

[1270] Blueberries is probably one of the best sources of it.

[1271] But what is so interesting, I was trying to figure out, I'm like, why are they putting, I was trying to figure out why they're putting Terrell Stilbin with the nicotinamide ribicide.

[1272] Because nicotinamide ribicide is affecting NAD, it's affecting mitochondrial biogenesis.

[1273] So it's been shown to increase mitochondrial biogenesis.

[1274] Like I said, these mice, you know, were, um, we're performing like 42 % better at different endurance activities after being supplemented with this.

[1275] So.

[1276] That's insane.

[1277] Yeah.

[1278] It's, but they're giving a lot.

[1279] Like the like at 32, 24 to 32 milligrams per kilogram body weight would be the human equivalent dose.

[1280] So, you know, figure that out.

[1281] That's a lot.

[1282] That's probably like four grams a day or something like that, right?

[1283] For like a 160 or 80 pound person, something like that.

[1284] I don't know.

[1285] Anyways, the tarot still means interesting because, well, in and of itself, it's interesting because it's actually, it's chemically similar to resveratrol.

[1286] And, but it's four times more bioavailable than resveratrol.

[1287] and it actually has been compared side by side in mouse studies to different mouse studies that I've looked at cognitive function, and it's better at improving cognitive function in animals than resveratrol is largely because it's four times more bioavailable.

[1288] So anyways, I was like, well, I don't know if that's why they're doing it because that's not affecting the same pathway, but then I came across something really interesting, and that is Terosilbin actually has been shown, again, this is an animal study, to increase the type of bacteria in the gut that causes the conversion of certain compounds, allagitanins, which are found in berries and some nuts, but really high in pomegranate.

[1289] Elagitanins get converted into something called Eurylithin A by your gut bacteria, which is what Terosilbin is increasing that gut bacteria.

[1290] So Tara's tailbein is actually increasing the production of urolithin A from berries that are having this other compound.

[1291] Urolithin A, what that does is, this has been shown also in other studies, it causes mitophagy, or mitophagy, which is the clearing away of damaged mitochondria.

[1292] So you're basically clearing away damaged mitochondria, like they eat themselves, so phagy would be eating itself, kind of like autophagy or atopagy, as it's called, which is a cell, sort of a damaged mitochondria.

[1293] cell that gets cleared away and eats itself that happens a lot during a fasting state well this mitochondria is doing it specifically for mitochondria and this the reason why this is so cool and i'm going to try to like not bore you because i can go on and i just keep going don't worry about that um the reason this is so cool is because so you know mitochondria are very important for the way we age it's not just muscle function brain function they're providing energy for everything like period like your mitochondria decay you decay that's the way that's the way that's the way it is, like period.

[1294] So their mitochondria, as you're aging, they're decaying, they're getting damage and all this stuff.

[1295] Well, they have this whole repair system where you have lots of mitochondria inside one cell.

[1296] Let's say you have one damaged mitochondria and one healthy.

[1297] What they do is they fuse together, exchange all their content, and fizz back apart.

[1298] So they kind of like repair each other.

[1299] So you have a healthy one, a damaged one.

[1300] The healthy one kind of mixes with the unhealthy one.

[1301] And then you have two healthyish ones, right?

[1302] So this is happening constantly.

[1303] inside every cell.

[1304] If you look at a mitochondria, it's never like, you never see mitochondria by themselves.

[1305] They're always like a network.

[1306] Like they look like vermicelli spaghetti because they're constantly doing this.

[1307] Well, if you clear away the damaged ones and you increase mitochondrial biogenesis with a nicotomide ribicide.

[1308] So not only are you getting rid of the damaged pool, you're now creating new ones that are like brand new, healthy, young, brimming young mitochondria like you had when you're a young person, young child.

[1309] So now your pool that you're mixing with, it's like not mitochondrial biogenesis is good in and of itself because you're making new mitochondria.

[1310] But having damage ones still around can still dilute the pool out.

[1311] You know, it can still dilute it.

[1312] So if you clear out those damaged ones and you're making new ones, it's kind of like, boom, you're going to get like young, new mitochondria.

[1313] So I think that possibly is another reason why they combine those.

[1314] I mean, it's completely speculation.

[1315] I'm just, but anyways, you learned some cool shit about Terrell -Stompein and hierolithin A. Yeah, mitophagy is a very interesting thing.

[1316] You know, exercise to some degree can increase it.

[1317] Fasting does.

[1318] Why does fasting increase it?

[1319] When you're fasting, you try to, so NAD levels rise, you try to conserve some of your energy and the way you do that is by eating different organelles, eating the cell itself, which can then provide energy for other cells.

[1320] So usually what happens is fasting.

[1321] will selectively get rid of some of those damaged cells or damaged mitochondria.

[1322] So that happens during a fasting.

[1323] Does that make sense?

[1324] Yeah, it does.

[1325] It's interesting, though, that the body manages it so well that it goes after the damaged ones before it goes after the healthy ones.

[1326] Well, there's lots of, like, molecular mechanisms that have been, you know, figured out why that is.

[1327] And that's because the damaged one, their mitochondrial membrane potentials, like, different.

[1328] And it's just, it's all this complicated stuff, but it's like it all works out perfectly.

[1329] where it's like these enzymes that, like, targeted to, you know, to basically become, to undergo mitophagy.

[1330] It's like they recognize a certain one with a lower membrane potential, which happens to be more of a damaged mitochondria.

[1331] And it's just kind of like, it's kind of beautiful how it just all works out that way, you know?

[1332] God, what was I going to say?

[1333] I completely, like, was going to say something else I lost my train of thought there.

[1334] But, yeah, so anyways, the fact that you can, like, have new mitochondrial.

[1335] is like pretty, I mean, that's kind of like the big thing with aging and it's been that for a long time is like young new mitochondria.

[1336] I know you're probably aware of this study, but they injected old mice with the blood of young mice and they found that the old mice started behaving more lively and then they did the reverse.

[1337] They injected the young mice with the blood of old mice and the mice struggled and deteriorated.

[1338] and now there's some crazy new startup where for what was like eight grand they fill you up with the blood of young people yeah okay i'm glad you mentioned this because i've been reading about it recently actually i know peter teal the paypal yes he does that he's he's he's publicly talked about he's the guy that he's he's on trump's board now isn't he like i think so yeah but he's like one of the first people that trump hired which is fascinating that's so fascinating yeah um yeah he does he's talked about how he's like he gets blood injections okay so here's what has he said about it um i don't remember exactly what just that i don't think he said anything about whether it's doing anything right i think he's just showing up younger well no like he's got a snapchat filter on well here's the thing that was really interesting about this whole thing because i've been following this field for a while too because i find it very interesting for multiple reasons one it's like it could be applicable right i mean easily but there he is look at him looks young as fuck he's 90 years old he wants to inject himself with young people's blood, or is doing it.

[1339] Trump delegate and Gawker bankruptor.

[1340] Oh, yeah, he's the guy who, he financed Hulk Hogan's attack on Gawker because Gawker outed him as being, did they out him as gay or they attacked him?

[1341] And they got really shitty with him.

[1342] And, you know, he's a fucking billionaire.

[1343] So he went off.

[1344] And thank you for turning off your ad blocker.

[1345] Enjoy the Forbes ad light experience.

[1346] off.

[1347] Nick Denton files for personal bankruptcy.

[1348] Yeah, he went after that guy because of it.

[1349] Yeah.

[1350] So anyway, go back to the other article.

[1351] I want to change the articles there.

[1352] So what he's doing, given Thiel's obsession with warding off death, it comes as no surprise, the Silicon Valley billionaire is interested in at least one radical way of doing it, injecting himself with a young person's blood.

[1353] Wow.

[1354] Ink Magazine published part of a year old interview with Thiel.

[1355] in which the venture capitalist explains that he's interested in parabiosis.

[1356] That's what it's called.

[1357] Which includes the practice of getting transfusions of blood from a younger person as a means of improving health and potentially reversing aging.

[1358] I'm looking into this stuff.

[1359] I think it's really interesting.

[1360] It's unclear whether the 48 -year -old entrepreneur is currently receiving, guaranteed he is, reports that a Thiel Capital employee, actually the personal health director, He has a personal health director Personal health director to Peter Thiel That's hilarious That's what you do when you're a baller I'm going to get a personal health director This is the same company, Ambrosia LLC This is the one that we were talking about the other day Yeah Yeah interesting So this is actually happening It says Thiel spends $40 ,000 per quarter Per quarter To get an infusion of blood From an 18 year old based on research conducted at Stanford on extending the lives of mice.

[1361] So he's got one fucking 18 -year -old that he's vampiring.

[1362] One kid, he's giving him beats and broccoli sprouts and making him run up hills.

[1363] That's crazy.

[1364] Well, you would have to hope that kid's not doing meth.

[1365] You know, like, he's got this 18 -year -old kid.

[1366] He's probably measuring all these biomarkers in his blood.

[1367] I would imagine, yeah, because you would have to make sure.

[1368] I mean, that's so weird.

[1369] We're going to farm off young people.

[1370] And, wow, that is so crazy.

[1371] He's given six months.

[1372] million dollars to biomedical gerontologist gerontologist oh abry de gray that crazy fucker i had him on i had him on my podcast too yeah he's interesting but he drinks yes he booses like every night he was like three in strong at 11 in morning when i walked into his office yeah that's what i was saying when i was hanging out with him he's like well he he's basing all of he's putting all of his eggs in the basket of science he thinks that science and things like what Peter Thiel is doing is going to be able to mitigate all this stuff that he's doing but I'm like dude you're fucking boozing where it's like okay they can delay the aging but like you're stuck like now okay we can't make you like 18 but we can stop you from dying but you know so it's like that's possible so he's going to be stuck like not well he also does an exercise I found him to be perplexing I really enjoyed talking to him but I found him be quite perplexing because of the booze and because of the lack of exercise and his big fucking crazy Gandalf beard.

[1373] I'm like, what's going on with you, dude?

[1374] There's a lot going on here.

[1375] I'm like, there's a lot of, it's a lot of image here, you know?

[1376] Yeah, him and I disagreed on a lot of nutrition.

[1377] Oh, well, hold on a second.

[1378] Let me talk about that.

[1379] But some say that the pay to participate study with the potential to collect up to $4 .8 million from as many as 600 participant amounts to a scam.

[1380] What's certain is it's based on some intriguing, if inconclusive.

[1381] science, carmazian, a 32 -year -old Princeton graduate and competitive rower said he was inspired by studies on mice that research had sewn together with their veins conjoined in a procedure called parabiosis.

[1382] Okay, that's what we were talking about, that study, about mice.

[1383] So what did you guys disagree with?

[1384] Well, just the role that nutrition plays in aging.

[1385] He didn't think it was a big role.

[1386] No, he didn't think it was a big role.

[1387] It's because he's boozing.

[1388] So, yeah.

[1389] Boozing, he's not working out.

[1390] I mean, how can he ignore all the science on the, the positive of benefits of exercise and nutrition.

[1391] There's lots of studies showing that diet and lifestyle, you know, have a huge impact on aging.

[1392] Yeah.

[1393] You know, for, I mean, just one more thing about this paribiosis, though, because it's kind of, people were thinking that it was the young, there was something in the young blood that was present, the GDNF11 that it just said on the screen, that was actually.

[1394] GDNF11, what is that?

[1395] Right.

[1396] It's a growth factor 11.

[1397] Yeah.

[1398] So it was thought that this was what was responsible for rejuvenating tissues and growing new brain cells because that's what happened when you gave it to the older mice.

[1399] But then other studies started to come out, also out of Stanford, showing that, in fact, it may not be something that's in the young blood, but something that's in the old blood that's actually causing the aging.

[1400] Something called VCAM 1 that starts to, you start to make it as you're getting older, and it, like, causes inflammation in the brain and, like, starts messing up things.

[1401] So there was a recent study that It just came out and show that if you, like, make an antibody against that V -Cam one and prevent it from, like, doing its action, it's like, you can stop that from happening.

[1402] So, anyways, there's a lot to be figured out there.

[1403] Is there an antibody that they're currently working on?

[1404] They're trying to make some kind of something that you can take.

[1405] God damn solution to aging.

[1406] That's going to be weird.

[1407] It's going to be weird if you see, like, old people become young.

[1408] It's not going to be weird if people don't get any older.

[1409] It'll be kind of weird.

[1410] But, like, if I came, if I ran into you, like, 20 years.

[1411] years from now and like damn ronda you look exactly the same it would be cool but it wouldn't freak me out what would freak me out if arnold sworetsnager started looking like it was when he was 20 again like that would freak me out like if we start seeing the change in the process we start seeing things reverse right not just halt or slow down which we kind of have seen with like really healthy people you know like some people you know some people kind of defy aging at least to a certain extent like tom cruise is a perfect example i want to know what they're filling that dude up with you know who else i think who i was thinking that defied aging like famous wise kiana reeves i feel like that guys look the same for like a long time yeah and he's in his 50s now yeah he looks great yeah he looks great i think he smokes too what yeah yeah no yes yeah so that's that's just show you he's got some kind of like genetic there are there definitely are tom cruise 1983 2014 They're injecting him with some kind of young fluid.

[1412] You know what I'm saying?

[1413] I mean, look, he's got fucking ungodly sums of money.

[1414] And that's part of the issue.

[1415] You know, I mean, they've...

[1416] Yeah, you can definitely do things with money that...

[1417] I don't imagine.