Welcome back to Brave New World the evening standards podcast on all things science medicine and the future of humanity. I'm your host evgeny level Dev in in this series. We'll be taking a look at the latest developments in Neuroscience longevity sleep and much more join me as I engaged and thought-provoking conversations with some of the brightest minds of
our time Rhonda Patrick is a biomedical researcher and health educator from California. She's the founder of found my fitness a collection of resources, including a podcast and YouTube channel on which Rhonda discusses topics such as aging mitochondria cancer neuroscience and nutrition. She earned a bachelor's degree in Biochemistry at UC San Diego followed by a PhD in biomedical science from University of
Tennessee she trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute with dr. Bruce Ames and he has investigated the effects of micronutrient inadequacies on metabolism inflammation DNA damage and aging she's also studied whether supplementation can reverse the damage and as will discover on today's podcast is something of a human guinea pig.
If that's your jam check out my previous episodes with Brian Johnson The Vineyard Taylor and Ben Greenfield. Rhonda has also investigated the role of vitamin D in brain function behavior and other physiological functions in February of 2014. She published a paper on how Vitamin D regulates serotonin synthesis and how this relates to autism one of her more controversial propositions. She has appeared on Joe Rogan podcast and authored articles.
Those for the wellness and Lifestyle brand whoop Rhonda. It's fantastic to have you on the podcast today. Could you share a bit about your journey? And what has brought you where you are. Now, I have a PhD in biomedical science. I did a chemistry undergrad at UCSD areas of California San Diego and I was a chemistry major and at the time I was doing a lot of internships at alumina now is like a huge genomic platform at the time. It's just sort of a startup.
And it was kind of interesting but I started to get really bored with just synthesizing compounds and making things like chemistry-wise. I felt very detached from like biology. And so after I graduated I went to work at the Salk Institute for biological sciences in La Jolla and I went into a lab that was doing research on aging and they were using these little nematode worms or called C elegans and the whole genome has been worked out from these little
And it's funny because there's a lot of conservation of genes between humans and these tiny little softer mm worms that you have to look at using a microscope to even see them and yet they share a lot of jeans like the insulin signaling pathway. They share genes that are involved in like the stress response. Like I said, there is conservation between the genes now these worms are eating E.coli bacteria. So doing a lot of diet research is hard to translate in my opinion, but I'll tell you this the thing.
That got me really interested was, you know doing experiments with my own hands where I would manipulate a genetic pathway like the insulin signaling pathway. We you turn it down essentially in a worm and it's essentially like turning down igf-1 which we have, you know, we have an idea of using receptor. We have igf-1 and also insulin right and so when you turn those two Pathways down quite a bit in these worms you extend their lifespan by like a hundred percent so they go from living 15 days on average to
Days on average and not only do they live longer their youthful and healthy like you can see them as the worms normally age. They like it slower. They can't move around as well kind of like we do as we age and they don't feed his good and you can just see it but these worms when you decrease their insulin signaling and their igf-1 signaling they are youthful and it's very obvious and that's when you're like, wow, this is not because I have jeans like this, right?
Right. And so you kind of want to like try to find a way to translate that to humans, like what can humans do to decrease those signaling Pathways, but that's really kind of where I got interested in the biological sciences rather than the chemistry is that Google you go you interested in longevity and living healthier. It is actually it's I would say it's the first Spark of it because it was so obvious that the worms were healthier when you decrease those genetic Pathways and
I was like, wow, like that's what if we could do that to humans where we're out surfing no problem when we're 95 years old. How cool would that be right and then I started to get interested in health. I went on to do my PhD and Metabolism in cancer biology and I did research at st. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which is the number one pediatric hospital for cancer in the world. And that was a great experience and at that time that's when I became interested in nutrition just through my own interest in being healthy.
And so I started to get into the research and wanting to know who I was going to do a postdoc with and so I went into the lab of dr. Bruce Ames who is notorious for micronutrients vitamins and minerals and how they play a role in the way we age so just low-hanging fruit things that we can do very easily to improve the way we age and so that's where I got really into nutrition from then on it was like a combination of understanding the molecular biology the cell biology the
chemistry and then nutrition and how everything affects the way we feel the way we age and that's really my interest. So there's a big personal interest but also it's been a scientific curiosity since again those experiments where it's like I could make these worms live twice as long and be twice as healthy.
I've always been intrigued by the impact of nutritional well-being and Rhonda articulates this connection so
effectively, I think there's a couple of categories here where there's again,
What I like to call the low hanging fruit things that are not high effort, but do yield pretty good rewards that's a good stuff and then it is and then there's the effortful things which really give you the big bang for your buck like exercise and you can see vigorous exercise but the low-hanging fruits and and there's a lot of Statistics I know in the United States, but I know in places like the UK there's a lot of similar statistics. If not even somewhat worse, for example with micro nutrients like vitamin D.
So I do think food and what you're eating is important and I know a lot of people they like to focus on what to avoid. What should I not eat like refined carbohydrates refined sugars. I mean, that's just there's no real nutrition in these processed foods that are calorically dense and micro nutrient poor. You're just adding on calories that are going to cause inflammation, you know, for example, their studies would healthy young men drink.
Went up for you know, like a well bounds like soda, you know sugar and their inflammatory biomarkers increased by 100% with in like 24 hours and that is substantial because inflammation were talking about here is not isolated to the immune system immune cells are creating a lot of these inflammatory cytokines, but those are then signaling to our brain and they play a role in depression. They play a role in what people call brain fog
and much.
Was long-term
brains exactly and much worse. That's just short term. They play a major role in brain aging and neurodegenerative disease risk, like Alzheimer's disease risk, for example, because inflammation breaks down the blood-brain barrier so you can look at it through the lens of okay. What should I avoid? Naughty which I get that. But I also think if you try to look through the lens of what do I need to fuel my body, then you end up avoiding the refined carbohydrates because
There's no vitamins and minerals or anything like, you know proteins like you're not getting the nutrients that you need. And so if you look at it through the lens up, okay, I need to get some micronutrients like magnesia. Where's magnesium found? Well magnesium's found at the center of a chlorophyll molecule. Core Phil give plants are green color. So I need to eat greens, right? I need greens. And what's going to come along with greens other micronutrients, you're going to get vitamin K that's important for blood coagulation.
Blood clotting you're going to get full late that's important to make new DNA every time you make a new cell you need folate. It's a precursor to make a DNA nucleotide. And if you don't get it, you can get double-stranded breaks in your DNA that lead to cancer and my mentor Bruce Ames showed this they show that actually you could take a mouse for example and depleted of its folate and then you can take another group of - or a mouse and then irradiated with ionizing.
Asian and look at their DNA and that what's called DNA damage double-stranded breaks in your DNA. It's one of the major precursors to mutations that could be oncogenic or cancer-causing. It's it was the same so not having folate was like sitting under an ionizing radiation machine. So and when you think about it like that micronutrients are important, they're important and so getting leafy greens, you're gonna get a lot of important micronutrients half the country in the US doesn't get
enough magnesium because they're not eating their greens and then protein, you know, we need to get protein and that's important for building muscle mass for maintaining muscle mass. And I think now a lot of research coming out from the last decade or so has shown that the RDA for protein intake in the US which is currently 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight is too low and there's been a variety of researchers like, dr. Stuart Phillips and other
Is that have shown that when those original tests were done to look for how much protein intake you need to basically replace your amino acid losses throughout the day those losses were underestimated because they were using nitrogen balance studies which are law. I mean, there's a lot of technical problems and so as new technology comes out and we understand things you kind of have to update right and so it's now recommended at least by a lot of the experts in the field. The RDA hasn't been updated yet that you get at least
One point two grams per kilogram body weight of protein and you want that to be healthy sources of protein, you know, lean meats, like poultry fish maybe some lean red meat getting those sources of meat or
good. I spoke to somebody cold-cocked little dolly lambing who does lot of research on mtor and protein amino acids and and in our All the Rage with very high intake of protein, they actually declined faster and that quicker than the ones that were.
In the middle as you say 1.2 sounds about
right. In fact, I used to think less protein is the way to go because in in rodent studies that is how you improve the way you age and it was until I really started to talk to The Experts like Brad schoenfeld and Stuart Phillips who really talked about in humans What's called the disability threshold. And so what happens in mice is there in a very sterile environment? Okay, they're not being exposed to influenza to
Ovid to all these different respiratory illnesses and things that are going to make them end up in a hospital where they're immobilized for a period of weeks. Right? And then as you add those on and stack them on what happens is when you get older particularly when you're starting your 60s 70s, you know, you're battling sarcopenia. So you're losing more muscle mass your also what's happening is what's called anabolic resistance. So your body your muscle cells become less responsive to Amino.
It's in terms of muscle protein synthesis to build new muscle and so you really have to have resistance training in there to help with that and even that you're still not as sensitive as when you were younger. So you have everything working against you and when you go into one of these crises where your immobilized because you're sick, then you're losing a massive amount of muscle mass and you never gain it back ever it. When you're younger you bounce back that does not happen when you get older when that happens again it goes
Goes down even further and eventually what happens is you reach What's called the disability threshold, which is where you are not able to function independently very well with abundance of diet Trends out there like paleo and keto what should we truly prioritize and a nutrition? Yeah. I think a Whole Foods diet something more like a paleo diet really is one of the best ways to eat. That's the way I try to eat and really what it is is you're getting all the
Beneficial micronutrients from greens and you're getting polyphenols and phytochemicals from fruits and you're getting the protein from the meats and you're avoiding the refined processing packaged foods, which again are just calorically dense there satiating our reward Pathways, right? I mean, there's now a lot of evidence coming out of like, for example, dr. Kevin Halls lab where the process foods themself. They've got all these compounds and chemicals in them that are actually
Ali harmful for gut for satiety for you start to Crave. I mean if you think about it, it's a hyper palatable food. It's so either salty or sweet whatever whatever kind of packaged food were talking about and it's hitting those reward Pathways it dopamine
what kind of things should people look out for if they're looking at the
ingredients. I mean, there's a variety of a guar gums and hydrogenated oils and there's these additives that are in them.
The color ones, you know, some of those have been shown to be linked to like ADHD former colleague of mine was studying some of the additives and increases oxidative damage in mitochondria, you know, these things are actively harmful as well. So avoiding the processed foods I think is a great way to eat, you know, but something closer to a Mediterranean diet Whole Foods diet paleo diet, I you just can't go wrong. Really I think it's just a really easy way to think about it and to get all your
it's getting those magnesium the vitamin K the folate you're going to get calcium from it. And these are things people aren't getting enough of and they are running our metabolism magnesium runs over 300 enzymes in her body everything to making and utilizing energy. So actually every time you make energy you need magnesium. It's so important and it has to cut US population doesn't get enough of it. There are low-hanging fruit supplements to take omega-3s are really there's a lot of studies that have been done by dr. Bill Harris he
Is also a Pioneer in this omega-3 index which are referring to which measures the omega-3 levels in your red blood cell membranes and it's more of a long-term marker of your Omega 3 status and lower Omega 3 and X would be like four percent or less and then you compare it to a high omega-3 index of 8% or more and there's a five-year increase life expectancy people that have this higher omega-3 index. There's been randomized controlled trials showing its really good for cardiovascular health can lower the risk of for example
Ample heart attack stroke, it's good for the brain. I mean dhaa makes up a large component of the cell membranes in the brain as well. So it's one of those things where you know, it's easy enough to get omega-3. If you like eating fish you can eat wild Alaskan salmon is a great source because it's low in other contaminants like Mercury pcbs for example, but you can also take a supplement and that's probably one of the easiest way to get from Al omega-3 index of 4 percent up to
8 Omega 3 and X of 8% and generally speaking. You can take around 2 grams a day of Omega-3 to get to that eight percent range and finding a good quality supplement depends a lot in my opinion on third-party testing. I like to look at that data because then you can see how much DHA and EPA which are the important Omega-3s from Marine sources that are in there. You can see contaminants. There is the international fish oil standards.
Nerds ifos. And if you go to that website, that's a very Global website. So they test a variety of brands from all around the world and in Europe, they even do fish oil in like pets they like test but it's everything fish oil and that's really a good resource for an international audience because again, they test brands from all around the world the other side. I like to use is consumerlab and they do a lot of brands in the US like
The Shelf kind of brands in the US that are affordable and it's funny people think you have to buy this really expensive fish oil supplement to get the best quality and that's not necessarily always the case. Where do you go to
bronze that you trust for
supplements? I really like metagenic 60 Mechanics for fish oil and the one I like the most is the liquid form because it's the most concentrated in DHA and EPA and you can get a lot of it in like a tablespoon. In fact, you can get your to G.
And just 1 tablespoon. So it's kind of like an easy one and done way to get fish oil. You can manage to just drink it right it's a guy has a little bit of a like a lemon flavor. So it's not too bad. And I also like the fact that it's in triglyceride form. So triglyceride form versus what's called ethyl Ester triglyceride form is much more bioavailable and you don't necessarily have to take it with food. If you are taking an ethyl Ester form of fish oil. So in the United States, we have a
A couple of prescription form Omega-3s that doctors prescribe for people with high cholesterol high triglycerides cardiovascular disease risk factors, for example, because it's considered a drug that helps improve cardiovascular health that Levin has Lavazza
think you get in UK as well about this one and it's in ethyl Ester form. It's a purified form. So it is regulated by every, you know, it least in the US by FDA so it is more pure but
it's not very bioavailable. So you have to take it with preferably even a higher fat meal for it to be absorbed vitamin D deficiency is a significant issue especially here in the UK. I was Keen to us Grand about how it promotes longevity. Yeah vitamin D is it's a little bit misleading because it's actually a steroid hormone vitamin D gets converted into a steroid hormone. It's not just a vitamin and when you think
About it like that. You know, what is it? What is vitamin D as a steroid hormone do it actually goes into the cell nucleus where all your DNA is and it directly interacts with DNA inside the nucleus of every cell and there's a little sequence that it recognizes in our genes. It's called a vitamin D response element and it's a very specific sequence of DNA that the vitamin D hormone.
When it's complex to the receptor and this whole complex, I won't get into goes in and it activates her turns genes on or it does the opposite and it kind of Silence has certain genes and it does it in a very ordinated Manner and so, you know, our genes are supposed to be activated at certain times and repressed a certain times and the point is that you know, seventy percent of the u.s. Population has insufficient vitamin D and I would imagine something like the UK.
Very similar and the reason for that is because you make vitamin D3 upon UVB radiation from the Sun and it's not just the sun. It's UVB radiation. And so there's only certain times of the year where the UVB rays are reaching the atmosphere depending on where you live. You
couldn't you couldn't just get much of a just for your face, right?
Yeah there needs to be more surface area exposed to it and it has to be the right time of year. And if you have a lot of melanin, which is
Is a natural sunscreen people with darker skin from you know Asia or parts of Africa or it's a genetic adaptation that has enabled people to live closer to the Equator without being exposed to the harmful burning rays of the sun. They're less likely to get skin cancer because they have natural sunscreen. It's very beneficial for people living in more equatorial regions to have darker skin color because it does protect you from the burning rays of the sun. Whereas people in more Northern latitudes.
Have lighter skin because they need to make more vitamin D. They need to be able to get as much as they can because there's not as much sun exposure, you know throughout the year, right? And so they need to be more efficient at getting and making Vitamin D from UVB radiation. So there's a lot of factors that regulate that and also age as you get older you make four times less vitamin D3 and your skin as you would when you were younger body fat plays a role because vitamin D3 is fat soluble. Once you make it in the skin, it gets released into the bloodstream it goes
To the liver and gets converted into 25 hydroxy vitamin D, which is this what most people measure when they get a blood test and then it goes to the kidneys and converted to the act of steroid hormone. But if you have more body fat, it's up to 50% less bioavailable to even get into your bloodstream. So you actually end up with deficiency. I believe it was one of the major causes of bad cases of Cogan ride during yes vitamin D has been linked vitamin D because I mentioned it's regulating genes it regulates. So many genes involved in the
In system and also its involved in the specific receptor that the star scope to viruses be interacting with that H2 receptor and so vitamin D plays two roles with respect to the Search scope to virus because it's not only affecting the immune system. It's also affecting the H2 receptor itself. And so people that were vitamin D deficient had more severe covid-19 for example, and I think you'll find mixed.
Eddie's on that but I think by and large it was beneficial to have more vitamin d sufficiency than deficiency. It's playing a lot of important roles. So it affects obviously bone homeostasis and bone health, right? I mean, it's important for absorbing calcium as well. But it also affects a lot of Pathways involved in the brain as well. So in my postdoc I had identified they were vitamin D response elements in genes that convert tryptophan into serotonin in the
Rain, so it's called tryptophan hydroxylase to and so if you don't have enough vitamin D, then you can't convert the amino acid tryptophan into serotonin in the brain serotonin is important for mood. It's important for executive function. It's important for impulse control. So people that don't have enough serotonin. They have a lot of problems with long-term planning and controlling their impulses. And if you look there's some studies. I know we were
talking about translating animal studies to humans. There have been some animal studies in rodents where they make these mice deficient in the vitamin D receptor. So it's essentially like not having vitamin D and the mice age normally until about 4 months of age and then as they get four months they start to rapidly like it's almost like a progeria. So an accelerated aging model where they just rapidly start to age and they lose their hair and their skin gets all wrinkled and their organs start to
Function and it's like if you look at this picture of these my sometimes I showed in the presentation you're like, wow, this is not so it regulates five percent of the protein encoding Human Genome so we could spend the next hour talking about all the genes that vitamin D regulates. Its that many it's over 1,000 genes, you know, everything from brain function to immune function. He plays a role in again bone health muscle function pretty much every every organ that you can think of vitamin D is doing something in that.
That organ it's so important. So it's a really easy solution to correct vitamin D deficiency. And that would be a vitamin D supplement. It's one of the most cheap supplements out there and the best way to know is to get a blood test and it's important to get one right because it can be toxic. It's Mindy. Yes. It's if it's if you don't want right you don't want too much. It's fat soluble. The biggest concern is you start to absorb too much of your dietary calcium, especially if
Taking a supplement along with it calcium supplement along with it. Then you could get what's hypercalcemia which is like high calcium in your vascular system, which is not good, you know, there's all sorts of problems cardiovascular problems, but that's rare. It's very rare. You have to really be taking a very high amount of vitamin D to do that for a long time.
And that's why vitamin K2 comes in
right in theory. There's not a lot of empirical evidence to show that so getting a blood test. You want to get a blood test. You want to be somewhere between 40 to 60 Ng.
Per milliliter. If you're in the UK multiply that by two point five for the correct units and you can take a vitamin D supplement to get there most of the time going from let's say 20 nanograms per milliliter 240. You would need a like 4,000 IU's a day generally speaking. You can raise your blood levels between 5 to 10 nanograms per ml by 1000 IU's a day. So most people taking 4,000 IU's a day and that's the upper tolerable limit that's considered safe some
Have to go higher than that and I again because we have a lot of different genes that people have that are different that regulate vitamin D metabolism. Now, we'll talk about K2 vitamin K2. So there's K1 and K2. I mentioned vitamin K1 is very abundant in leafy greens and vitamin K1 is very important for it goes to the liver and it activates genes involved in blood clotting very important. If you don't get enough vitamin K1 you can you pump yourself or something.
I'm like you can have internal bleeding. So vitamin K once very important. Yes vitamin K2 is structurally similar to vitamin K1. So vitamin K1 is phyla quinone K2 is menaquinone. But instead of going to the liver it kind of stays in your circulation and what it does is it activates proteins in your body that are involved in shuttling calcium out of your circulatory system and bringing it to your bones bringing it to your muscle. So that's where
Want calcium to go calcium is important for bone health to born for muscle. You don't want to sit in your circulation because calcium can interact with phosphorus very easily. Yeah, that's what a precipitate
does what I was referring to and did you say there's not enough empirical evidence for that?
Oh, there's not I think this is why because when you get enough vitamin K1, when you get enough when you're if you're eating a lot of leafy greens, once you have enough activation of those blood clotting proteins the vitamin K1 stays in
Elation it does the same thing the K2 does. Okay. So if you are getting enough K1 and you're getting a lot, let's say you eat a lot of greens. You eat salads you have you know roasted you do sautéed veggies you do smoothies with greens. You're like me and you're getting a lot of it. Then the K2 becomes less important because and this has been shown in human studies that vitamin K1 will stay in circulation. As I mentioned. They're very similar structurally. The only reason why vitamin K1 doesn't shuttle calcium.
Of the circulation and bring it to bones and to muscle is because most of the time it's going right to your liver to activate coagulation proteins. But once that's done, then they access K1 stays in circulation does the same thing as K2 times but with respect to k 2 it's always good as an insurance. I used to take it now II because I get so many greens now. I don't feel as compelled that I need to as much sometimes I'll do like I'll do a K2 supplement like once or twice a week rather than daily.
Again, because I'm getting a lot of the vitamin K1, but it's like an insurance right? So you take the K2 to make sure the excess calcium that you're absorbing goes to the bones and to the muscles
maintaining adequate. Micro nutrient levels can be a challenge. How do you sure you're covering all bases?
It's nice to cover all the bases. I think especially when it's not really particularly harmful. So there are some micronutrient tests that people can order that measure a variety of micro nutrients including vitamin.
Hey, but, you know a multivitamin is a nice way to also cover many of the basis. The simplest way to go is the multivitamin the vitamin D the magnesium and the omega-3. I think those are the the most important and then you can add K2. Also, I guess, you know, especially people aren't eating a lot of greens. Then you can add K2 with that. So that would be like the five important ones. I mean you can find reasons to take a million more supplements, right? But those are the real. Yeah. Those are the real I would say the low-hanging fruit Beyond.
Diet what lifestyle factors should we consider for Optimal Health and aging gracefully, there's nothing comparable to what exercise can do especially vigorous intensity exercise in particular. Honestly anything that you're going to do that you can form a habit. So let's say, you know, there's no way you're going to do any sort of high intensity interval training then, you know, find something that you will do and make a habit out of it and you want to do it regularly you want to
These be getting your heart rate up enough where you're sweating and you know uncomfortable right? So I I'll caveat that with like you have to find what you will do and form a habit doing that's important. It is to have
it does same with with diets with fasting. If you can't keep it up. There's no point of doing it and same with exercise. It has to be something he can make it habit open. Enjoy. My understanding is that as one ages? It's important to consider three.
Actors in exercise the vigorous exercise which is the so-called VO2 max, which is the cardiovascular and I believe is now considered one of the biggest predictors of all-cause mortality and then of course, it's the resistance or strength training which is important for bone density and muscle as one ages unbalance, which I guess is also really important to do to keep on two feet as as one gets older. Am I right in thinking that
I would say that doing the aerobic exercise is particularly with vigorous intensity mixed in there and the resistance training. If you're doing resistance training, you're going to be improving your strength, which also does help with functional outcomes, especially if you're doing the multi-joint types of resistance training with the balance. But yeah, and then I would say balances like lessor of all of them like doing the other ones are really important, but the vigorous intensity exercise.
As you mentioned VO2 max is it's a big driver of improving vo2max. And that is your cardiorespiratory Fitness is what it's called. Mostly because cardiovascular disease is the main cause of mortality in most developed countries, right? That's like the biggest driver of what people are dying from. So if you can make improvements to that you're really going to have improvements in all-cause mortality because that's the biggest driver of all-cause mortality and so vigorous intensity exercise, you know, you might go. Well, what does that mean?
And it is sort of a sliding scale depending on your Fitness level so you could say well it's 80% at least 80% of your estimated maximum heart rate. But if you're really really fit person that's not necessarily true. You might it might be much more like you might because 80% your max heart rate, you might be able to still have a breathy conversation. And so I think it's a really good to think about perceived exertion to think about the talk test. So like vigorous intensity exercise means you cannot
Not have a conversation like you're going hard enough that you can't even have a breathy conversation. If you're having a breathy conversation, that would be more of a moderate intensity exercise, you know, people that even engage in what are like a lot of these committees come up with these requirements that you should do 150 minutes a week of aerobic exercise, like moderate-intensity Zone to type of training and even people that do that for months. There's about 40 percent of them. They won't see improvements in there be
To Max until they start adding in the high intensity interval training and its really it comes down to the stress that you're putting on the cardiovascular system stroke volume is really important for this at these adaptations the more intense the stress the bigger the adaptation and so it just might be that you need a little bit more of a push to get that vo2max adaptation, right the Improvement in your cardiorespiratory Fitness. And so it's really good to add in some of that high intensity interval training and
there are studies out there showing that people still like if if someone is not fit at all their this let's say they're they don't exercise and they start to do anything and they improve their VO2 Matt. They basically can go from below normal to a normal for their age group and gender vo2max. They get like a 2.1 year increase in life expectancy. And then if they go below normal to high normal, which is where about half the population is they can get about a three-year increase in life expectancy.
See and then if they go into more an athlete level they're getting like a five-year increase in life expectancy. And there was a study that was done that calculated for every one unit increase in VO2 max that a person gets that one unit translates to 45-day increase in life expectancy. And so as you start to add up the unit's you're adding up the days and then eventually the years right? And so it is an important biomarker of longevity the kind of suggests that there's no limit to
to the life expectancy improvements of improving vo2max being sedentary is a disease. And so if you don't want to get type 2 diabetes, you know things to do if you don't want to get cardiovascular disease, you don't want to be sedentary. You don't want that disease either because it is just as bad as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It really is
fasting has gained a lot of attention lately. I was Keen to find out what Rhonda thoughts were on intermittent
fasting.
Yeah, there are a lot different types of intermittent fasting as you said, there's people that might eat one meal a day or there's people that skip meals and there's people that do more time restricted eating or time-shifted feeding and and those people are trying to consume their their meals within a certain time when I know and have a certain period of rest. I think that there's been an evolution over time with respect to research in this field. And I think what it comes down to is that endpoints that were looking at is important, right? So
People that are overweight and obese and they're trying to lose weight and intermittent fasting is a very viable and manageable way for them to lose weight and it's easier than counting calories. But what ends up happening is that a lot of times people doing intermittent fasting are eating fewer calories and they are losing weight. That is obviously beneficial for people that are overweight that are obese and trying to to get to a more healthier weight and so oftentimes skipping meals does make sense.
Caveat being that if you're someone more already at a normal weight and you're trying to extend your period of your fasting window and you do that by skipping breakfast, for example, well breakfast is one of the most important ways that we get our protein after a very long fast overnight when we're sleeping and you know, we don't store amino acids like we store glycogen stored glucose as glycogen. We store fatty acids as triglycerides.
Amino acids are there in our muscle, but you don't want to pull them out of muscle because that's how you're going to cause atrophy. Right? So your muscle does serve as a Reservoir in times of need and after a whole night of sleeping and not eating your body does need amino acid you need amino acids to make proteins in your body and proteins are what are doing everything. They're running our metabolism. They're running everything right? So, I think it's important to do.
Do time restricted eating essentially what I mean by that is this is work that has come out of dr. Sachin pandas lab and others showing the benefits of eating your food within a circadian window and then having that repair and Rejuvenation period is important because I like the way dr. Panda explains it, you know, he's explained it on my podcast before several times where just like when you're sleeping your brain is not thinking and that is when all the
Happens during sleep. If you didn't have that sleep it would be a mess. You wouldn't be able to think straight. You wouldn't have repair you to be accumulating a lot of damage, right? Well similarly when you are not digesting that is when you are repair mode. So things like etapa G. Yes. Well, you're repairing cyber damage DNA repair all these things require, you know that you're not in a digested mode. And so you have to think about it like when you
Take your last bite of food. You still are going to be digesting that food and everything's going to happen for another five hours. So that's going to dip into your sleep time. And so it is stopping your last meal at least three hours before bed means that essentially two hours into your sleep. Then you're going to have to start to be in repair mode. And I think that's a good way to think about it because you want to be repair mode. You want your organs to repair if you're eating and you're eating all night and you're eating right before bed.
You're not going to have as much of that repair mode time. I think a good rule of thumb is stop eating three hours before bed
will really great recommendation on the thank you and they deserve anything else you you'd add to what you said
already like, you know, there's a lot of benefits from deliberate heat exposure from using like a sauna and their studies showing. For example, if you combine the sauna with cardiovascular exercise that you can improve vo2max more than just exercise alone. These have been intervention study.
He's as well as observational data. The sauna is mimicking moderate-intensity cardiovascular exercise. It's beneficial for muscle mass. So it's been shown to help Stave off muscle atrophy. So we're talking about disuse atrophy when someone is immobilized and they lose muscle mass because they're not working their muscles. There's been studies showing that even just local heat therapy prevents the atrophy of muscles by as much as 40% and that's been shown to be depend on heat shock proteins, which are
It's very robustly by heat. So there's a lot of reasons to also engage in deliberate heat exposure whether it's a sauna regular traditional hot sauna like they happen in Finland or Russia, which would you know be more of an even though electric heater sauna, there's also hot baths. You tried the Russian Banya. I have not I've done the finish one and and I did not do the Russian Banya, but it's more
intense. It's more intense because of the Steep. It's a mixture of steam and heat which
makes it
It really really hard, right it makes it it doesn't he get much. Do you know how much premeditated what percent humidity do you
think it goes to about 50 50 60 percent and the heat is about 90 Celsius. So I'm a bullet plus you get beaten with a birch
branches right
to stimulate the circulation and then you jump into ice. This is like rebirth. It's quite an extraordinary experience. You must try
it. I like to do my sauna sessions.
After my workout to like his that's in both cases. So it's been shown that the vo2max Improvement and those studies people did the sauna right after they were doing their aerobic training. And then also there's been studies showing that there's biomarkers of muscle hypertrophy that are improved and people that do resistance training and then go into the sauna and so I like to do my sauna after I do my training but there's also some reason that people like to do it before bedtime like a couple hours before bedtime because it does improve
sleep
after learning about the benefits of sona's from Rhonda. I wanted to explore this further. I spoke to Tamsin Louis a medical doctor former GB triathlete and the founder of the wellness service. Well, Jeff 30, I asked Tamsin about the difference between traditional sauna and an infrared sauna and which one she might prioritize between the two a lot of the research has shown that heating the body and that's what's traditional song is
Probably
better than infrared saunas, although there are different benefits traditional saunas heat up the body in that heating process you get a release of many different chemicals, like noradrenaline adrenaline and then hormones like growth hormone and repair molecules in the brain like bdnf that actually help the brain connectivity and plasticity and repair process and growth. Hormone is very good for many different reasons. So when we think about traditional saunas,
They do heat up the body very effectively depending on the temperatures so you can stay in this or anything from 10 to 20 minutes traditional heat sauna get hot get uncomfortable in an infrared sauna will get in much more gradual increase in your core body temperature. You can stain it a lot longer. We're getting much more gradual sweat. I have to say that sweat is whether to toxification to use that word because people know it and they understand it that is when you're getting the clearance of certain heavy metals and pollutants were all exposed to
It's in our city lives. It's a quite effective way of excreting sort of waste products and byproducts of our daily lives. I have to say as well with infrared sauna, you're getting a benefit on your mitochondria. So your mitochondria these energy batteries. They are charged up by different wavelengths of light, right? So infrared saunas have different wavelengths of light and they penetrate the tissues and that can cause a charging after the mitochondria and then you feel better you function.
Better so many benefits of infrared sauna over traditional I would do both personally. Is there anything people should watch out for if they're trying to choose infrared sauna in particular? I think quality and is important as being many people that have talked about the EMF exposure. I really like to get into that bandwagon because the CMS everywhere and we can't walk around playing wearing it for hats yet, but I do think we should be mindful.
That there is EMF exposure in any electric driven device and the more expensive more reputable infrared saunas on the market concentrate and focus on reducing their ear less exposure, like the one that I have access to and I think you just well which is sunlight and they very good quality. So I think quality matters at home. I have the sunlight and dome which is the one that you like as I don't I live in London, so I don't have a huge amount of space.
Although I did have a full big with some lighting when I lived in the country during the pandemic. So I do that mainly three times a week. I have to say that infrared sauna practice, especially the more high-end infrared saunas. The quality ones really have a benefit on the skin. They stimulate collagen production. Obviously, you're getting a blood flow effect to the skin, which is feeding the nourishing the skin, but then you're also getting the Dual benefit of the Rays of infrared and red light that stimulate collagen production. So,
People noticed that their skin clothes they have a reduction in wrinkles. And that's it. It's a nice sort of a dense Asana practice when that happens to find out what constitutes optimal use of the Sona I asked Rhonda how often we should be using it
people that use this out of 47 times a week have a 40% lower all-cause mortality figures that lower cardiovascular rate of mortality than people using it one time a week. He is the expert researcher doing a lot of the saint research because Finland
is is there's so being on saunas there run the you've made navigating this intricate information so accessible and I'm sure everyone listening has learned so much about what we can do to lead healthier and longer lives. Oh, well, thank you so much. I'm Jenny nice to talk with you and if people want to follow me and my podcast, I'm bound my Fitness on all the social media platforms my website and I have a podcast out there. And so that's where I met some great people.
Thank you Rhonda for sharing your insights with us today. It's been a pleasure speaking to you.
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