Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Micronutrients for Health & Longevity

When I exercise, literally, what I'm thinking about is my brain, and I'm like, this is the best long longevity drug there is. This is it, right here, Rhonda ... If you don't exercise, you're missing that essential dose.

People that had an omega-3 index of 4% or lower—so, close to what the standard American is but a little bit lower—they had a 5 year decreased life expectancy compared to people that had an 8% omega-3 index.

For the most part, taking 1000 IUs of vitamin D will raise blood levels by around 5 ng/mL.

There have been studies looking at people that are deficient in vitamin D. In this case, it was African Americans that were given a 4000 IU/day vitamin D supplement to bring them back to sufficient levels ... It reversed their epigenetic aging by, like, 3 years.

We evolved to intermittently challenge ourselves. And before we had Instacart where you could basically just get your food delivered to you, before the Industrial Revolution occurred, we were out hunting ... We had to be physically fit. You couldn't catch your prey if you were a sedentary slob ... Physical activity was a part of everyday life.

There was a study a few years back that showed adding 1 gram of mustard seed powder, ground mustard seed powder, which also contains the myrosinase enzyme, to your cooked broccoli increases the sulforaphane by four-fold.

70% of the US population has inadequate vitamin D levels.

Back to the why for fish oil: I personally think it is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory things, dietary/lifestyle things, that we can get easily... that is going to powerfully modulate the way you think, the way you feel, and the way you age.

The standard American diet has an omega-3 index of 5%. Japan, by contrast, has an omega-3 index of around 10-11%—big difference there. And they also have about a 5 year increased life expectancy compared to people in the US.

Cardiorespiratory fitness is improved in people that do exercise and sauna compared to exercise alone or sauna alone. So, for those healthy, fit people out there already exercising, there's a synergistic effect by also adding a sauna into that routine.

There's evidence that eating things like... sulforaphane or broccoli or broccoli sprouts, which have up to 100 times more sulforaphane than broccoli, are activating glutathione in the brain. There's human evidence of that. I mean, that's amazing.

These omega-3 fatty acids are polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are extremely prone to oxidation. So, please keep your fish oil in the refrigerator.

Krill oil supplements are so low-dose. Like, I mean, good luck getting 2 grams of omega-3 from krill oil. And also, krill oil supplements are notoriously rancid.

It is extremely hard to get like hypercalcemia, which would be the major concern with really high levels of vitamin D3 supplementation. I mean, we're talking, like, hundreds of thousands of IU a day for a long time.

We have repair enzymes in our body called DNA repair enzymes; they require magnesium. Magnesium is a cofactor for them ... A cofactor means enzymes need it to function properly. And so, without that cofactor, they're not doing it properly.

There's studies showing that sauna use is associated with a much lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease ... People that use it for 4-7 times a week have greater than a 60% reduction in dementia and Alzheimer's disease risk.

About 40% of the US population doesn't get enough magnesium.