Re-Air: Missing Micronutrients, Necessary Supplements & The Science Behind Why They Work | Dr. Rhonda Patrick

This week we’re revisiting an episode from last year with Dr. Rhonda Patrick, Ph. D. in biomedical science, expert in nutritional biochemistry and aging, and founder of FoundMyFitness. She takes us through the cutting-edge science behind living longer, feeling sharper, and preventing disease with evidence-based lifestyle changes. In this powerful conversation, Dr. Patrick uncovers the hidden nutrient deficiencies that may be driving depression and anxiety, and how your daily habits could be quietly accelerating inflammation, cognitive decline, and chronic illness. Learn why creatine may be the brain-boosting supplement you’re missing, the 2-minute “exercise snack” can rewire your brain and boost metabolic health, how running may outperform antidepressants for mood regulation, why living near a golf course might increase your toxic exposure and how alcohol affects women’s brains more severely than men’s. She also breaks down how much protein you really need (especially for vegans), coffee’s health benefits and how to brew it for maximum antioxidants, the role of nutrigenomics in disease prevention and personalized nutrition. If you’re curious about longevity science, biohacking, or how to boost your brain and body without overhauling your life, this Dr. Rhonda Patrick interview is packed with practical, science-backed tools to upgrade your healthspan and feel better starting today. Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/mayimbialik%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Iain Bialik.

• 0:05Jonathan Cohen?

  And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 0:06Mayim Bialik?

  And welcome to our Breakdown. Today, we're going to revisit an episode with Dr. Rhonda Patrick. She's a doctor of biomedical science and expert in nutritional biochemistry and aging, and the founder of Found My Fitness. She's going to take us through the cutting-edge science behind living longer while also feeling sharper and preventing disease.

• 0:27Jonathan Cohen?

  There is so much information in this episode, but one of the things that she helps us understand is creatine, one of the most researched supplements out there. Is it the brain-boosting supplement that you're missing? She also covers the two-minute exercise hack and how that can rewire your brain and boost your metabolic health.

• 0:48Mayim Bialik?

  Also, how much protein do you actually need? Dr. Rhonda is going to break it all down. So many science-backed tools to help you upgrade your health span. Check us out on Substack, bialikbreakdown.substack.com. And now, we hope you enjoy taking a look back at our episode with Dr. Rhonda Patrick.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  Break it down.

• 1:06Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:07Mayim Bialik?

  We're excited to talk to you about all of the things. There's so much health information, there's so much health misinformation out there. I wonder if you can tell us, as we get started, what's your particular mission? Like, why do you do what you do, and what is it?

• 1:22Speaker 03

  So, my mission is to age the best way that I can. You know, basically, delay aging as much as possible, delay age-related disease as much as possible, and using science to understand how to do that, evidence-based research, and to share that with people that I love, my family, my friends, and the world. Because, I mean, why wouldn't I want everyone to age better and be happier and healthier? And so, my mission is kind of twofold, right? Personal, I want to, you know, age better, but I also want people to understand how they can age better.

• 1:55Mayim Bialik?

  What do you think people are getting wrong about our understanding of the aging process?

• 2:01Speaker 03

  I think, understanding that the way we age isn't just about genetics. I think a lot of people think that genetics play a big role, and genetics does play somewhat of a role, but it's a small role. I mean, it plays a more of a role in whether or not you're going to live to be 115. And when I say "age better," I don't mean I want to live to be 100. Like, that'd be cool, but what I mean is, I want to be healthy and active when I'm 70, 80, you know, 85, maybe 90 years old. So, genetics doesn't play as big of a role in the way you're aging with respect to your health span and your disease risk as much. It does play somewhat of a role, but your diet and your lifestyle play a really big role in that.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  And I think something that people aren't really understanding is, it's not just about macronutrients, our fat intake and our carbohydrate intake and our protein intake, right? We're so focused on that, right? It's a big focus on nutrition. It's also about the things that are called micronutrients that we're not getting from our diet. And that, I think, is a big, for me, I think people are just ignoring that and overlooking it, and it's so, so important.

• 3:12Mayim Bialik?

  I think a lot of people sort of go through life like, I'm gonna eat the things that my parents feed me, then I'm gonna eat the things that I find at college, and like, maybe I'll be someone who works out, but maybe I won't be. And then, at some point, you try to look your best for your wedding, and you have children, and then, at some point, your skin starts sagging, your hearing goes and your vision goes, and then you get sick and die. I think for a lot of people, that feels like the trajectory. Where am I getting it wrong? Because that's what it feels like to me.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  Well, you're right. It's basically like, I think people aren't thinking about, when they think about disease risk, they think about like, what's happening right now, right? Like, so, I talked about micronutrients, and these are, you know, 30 to 40 essential vitamins and minerals that we have to get from our diet. We can't make them, we need to get them. And when you think about a deficiency in one of them, for example, you know, vitamin C comes to mind, because this is when people think about scurvy, right? You don't look in the mirror and say, "Well, I don't have scurvy, therefore, I'm getting enough vitamin C."

• 4:16Mayim Bialik?

  That's exactly what I do, actually.

• 4:19Speaker 03

  Right?

• 4:19Mayim Bialik?

  I'm like, every morning, I'm like, "Scurvy? No, good."

• 4:23Speaker 03

  But what you don't realize is, is that, well, there's subclinical deficiencies. In fact, like, 40% of people aren't getting enough vitamin C, believe it or not, and the requirements aren't even that high. And so, what happens is, wound healing is not as well. So, you're not gonna like, your wounds aren't going to heal as good. Your immune system isn't going to be quite up to snuff, so you're going to be getting sick more. You know, so, things like that collagen production is going to affect your blood vessels. They're going to be stiffer and weaker. And that sort of insidious type of damage accumulates with age and leads to age-related diseases. So, you're exactly right. And I gave vitamin C, but that's not the best example, because there's-

• 4:56Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, give us another one.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's examples where people are not, I mean, 90% of people aren't getting enough choline from their diet.

• 5:04Mayim Bialik?

  What's choline?

• 5:05Speaker 03

  Choline is a really important nutrient that is abundant in egg yolk. It's abundant in egg yolk. It's also in vegetables. You have to eat, you need soybeans or chickpeas as well, but you have to eat a lot of them, or you have to supplement. And choline, the reason it's so important, and I said 90% of the population's not getting an adequate intake of it, the reason for that is because they're not really eating enough eggs or, you know, the vegetables that have choline in it. And choline is, first of all, it's a precursor for acetylcholine, which is an important neurotransmitter. It's also important to make phosphatidylcholine, which is important for all our cells, including neurons and neurotransmission.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  But, maybe even more important, it's, it plays a very important role in what's called this methyl metabolism in our body, and methylation, you hear a lot about that. Well, I'll just save going into the weeds for another episode, but essentially, what happens is, something called homocysteine in our body doesn't get reconverted into methionine. And so, we end up having high homocysteine. You may have heard of this. High homocysteine dramatically increases atherosclerosis risk, cardiovascular disease risk, also dementia and Alzheimer's disease. And that's just if you have a little bit less choline than you're supposed to have. This isn't like a clinical deficiency. When you start to have a clinical deficiency, you start to get fatty liver, non-alcoholic fatty liver.

• 6:27Speaker 03

  So, 90% of people are walking around, and they probably have high homocysteine, and it's not something that's routinely measured. You go to your physician and you get like, you know, a standard test. They're not measuring for homocysteine, usually. You have to like, ask for it, or you have to have a really good doctor that's looking into that. And it's really important, because it does biomark your cardiovascular disease risk and your Alzheimer's disease risk. And there's a simple solution. You can, you know, eat your eggs. About three eggs a day is enough to get women, women to their choline.

• 6:59Mayim Bialik?

  There's a shortage, you know?

• 7:00Speaker 03

  There's a shortage in eggs?

• 7:01Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  Or you can supplement, is the other option as well. So, phosphatidylcholine from lethocin is another option. So, choline is very important also for, you know, the way our brain is functioning, and brain development even. In fact, there's been studies showing that pregnant women, there was a randomized controlled trial showing pregnant women, even those meeting the RDA, which is around five, they were giving a little over that, so about 500 milligrams a day. They, their children did good, but when they doubled that to about 900 a day, those women had children that had dramatically better IQ tests, they scored better on cognitive function. So, choline, it plays a very important role in brain development and brain function as well. And that's just one example.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  There's also, another one that's very common is vitamin E, believe it or not. And you might be going, "Vitamin E."

• 7:50Mayim Bialik?

  It's the one you put on scars, to make scars go away.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  Right. Vitamin E, that's like, you know, why is, seriously, like, 87% of the population's not getting enough vitamin E from their diet? If you consider supplementation, 60% is not getting enough. So, even after supplementation, people are not getting enough vitamin E.

• 8:09Mayim Bialik?

  What's with vitamin E?

• 8:10Speaker 03

  So, there's different forms of vitamin E. There's the tocotrienols and the tocopherols. We're just going to focus on one, and that is the essential one that you need, that's alpha tocopherol. That's the main form of vitamin E. And why do you need vitamin E? Well, if you don't get vitamin E, what ends up happening is a disease that's acute, and that's the kind of stuff you're talking about. You don't really see every day, so you don't really, you think you're fine until you keep going along, and then all of a sudden, boom, you have it, you have, you know, atherosclerosis or whatever. So, with vitamin E, the disease is, you get, it's called hemolytic anemia. So, your red blood cells start to just burst because of oxidative stress. Vitamin E is a very potent antioxidant. It's found in, it's able to go, it's fat soluble, so it's able to go into the membranes

• 8:54Speaker 03

  of cells and do its antioxidant thing. But, most people are not walking around with that severe form. Some people are, but the subclinical deficiency of it is, you end up, you end up having oxidized LDL cholesterol.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  A lot of people have heard of LDL cholesterol. Oh, that increases my cardiovascular disease risk. But what people don't understand is the oxidized form of it is really bad. And so a lot of people are walking around with oxidized LDL because they're not meeting their vitamin E requirement. And what that does is it essentially tells your immune system, inflammation, inflammation, immune system comes and tries to attack the oxidized LDL. And then you have a formation of a foam cell. So you're getting the beginnings of atherosclerosis, essentially.

• 9:39Mayim Bialik?

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• 10:22Mayim Bialik?

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• 11:05Mayim Bialik?

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• 12:15Mayim Bialik?

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• 13:42Mayim Bialik?

  Give your hair and skin the upgrade they deserve so you can feel confident and refreshed.

• 13:48Mayim Bialik?

  What's the kind of metaphor for the human body, right? Meaning, there are so many different components, and there's so many different chemical reactions. And it's not until you sort of look at this level or visit a functional medicine doctor where they literally will show you the pathways, right? Of any particular cell process and show you like, oh, you're having this problem, it's because you're not converting this thing, right? And I think a lot of women are maybe diving into this in hormone conversations. They're finally learning about kind of the precursors and all these things. Can you give us a general framework of how we should be looking at and thinking about the human body as, you know, kind of a mechanistic conglomeration?

• 14:31Speaker 03

  Gosh, if I could just pull up this one figure. If you Google biochemical pathways, you look at image, there's like this image of, it's overwhelming how many pathways are in this image. And it's true. I mean, it's just thousands and thousands of reactions going on. And these reactions require not only energy, we think about getting energy in the form of glucose or fatty acids, they require these vitamins and minerals as cofactors to do things so that they're able to do them. And so, you know, if you don't have those cofactors, it's like you have this orchestra ready to play, but there's no conductor there, like telling you like how to play or when to, this, you know, instrument's going to play that piece and this one's going to play that, right?

• 15:15Speaker 03

  So it's kind of all out of sync. And with the micronutrients, I mean, it's so easy to forget about them because we're so focused on, oh, I shouldn't eat processed foods. Oh, I'm so worried about my glucose spiking. How much protein did I get today? And, you know, protein is important. But if you think about food, looking at your plate and going, okay, what is in this food? Okay, I talked about, you know, eggs having choline. And then, you know, broccoli, soybeans, chickpeas also having choline. Vitamin E, why aren't people getting vitamin E? Well, the main source of it is nuts and seeds, and people aren't eating nuts and seeds. It's just not part of our diet anymore. And if you're not eating nuts and seeds, you're not going to be getting enough vitamin E. And so what do you have to do?

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Okay, well, eat an ounce or two of almonds. You eat an ounce of almonds, that's like 25 almonds or so. That's half of the RDA, half right there. So you're, you know, you're good. Then you can get the rest from maybe a multivitamin supplement. Vitamin K is another one. I mean, this one is also 50% of the population even after supplementation.

• 16:17Mayim Bialik?

  What is vitamin K?

• 16:18Speaker 03

  Vitamin K. Vitamin K is interesting because it's actually required by plants to undergo photosynthesis. So plants are a really good source of vitamin K. And there's two types of vitamin K, K1 and K2. The plant source is the vitamin K1, it's called phylloquinone. And that is the actual form of vitamin K that is required, that you need. Vitamin K2 is found in some fermented foods. Natto, like fermented soybeans, are a really good source of it. You can also find it in some dairy as well. But vitamin K2 isn't as essential because vitamin K1 can do all the functions that K2 does. And the reason people aren't meeting their vitamin K requirements is because they're not eating enough greens, they're not eating enough plants.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  And vitamin K is a cofactor. I was talking about a cofactor, you know, it's required for an enzyme to work properly. And it does three really important functions. One, it goes to the liver and it regulates blood clotting, so coagulation. And that's the most essential one. When your vitamin K is really, really low, you have blood clotting problems, where you're not able to clot. Very, very important. Number two, it also activates proteins that are not in your liver, but they're sort of in the periphery, that shuttle calcium out of your blood vessels and bring it to your muscle and your bones. And that's really important because calcium precipitates easily, very easily. And so you want to get the calcium out of your vascular system and bring them to other tissues that where it's required and needed.

• 17:46Speaker 03

  That's number two. And number three, it also activates another protein called osteocalcin, which is important for rebuilding your bone and making sure bone mineral density doesn't drop too low. And so vitamin K does all those things. And if you think about it back to this, I keep going back to this, you know, this image that you gave of yourself going through life and like not realizing anything's wrong until you have the heart attack or whatever, you know, something happens. And it's so true because we think about these vitamins and minerals, it's like, well, if something isn't going wrong, then I must be fine, right? Oh, my blood's clotting, I've got enough vitamin K. Well, this is something that was proposed by my mentor, Dr. Bruce Ames, and he basically

• 18:26Speaker 03

  proposed that these vitamins and minerals are essentially longevity vitamins. They're not just required for the short-term prevention of death, which is essentially what all the RDAs are established for. RDAs are established for, okay, what happens? Oh, there's this disease that causes death. Let's go a little, couple standard deviations above that, and that's the RDA, right? Well, what he proposes, actually, there's all these other functions of these vitamins and minerals that are involved in this insidious type of damage that accumulates over time, year after year, decade after decade. You don't see it, you don't look in the mirror, I mean, your gums aren't bleeding and falling off like scurvy, right? You can't see the oxidation of your LDL, you can't see that-

• 19:03Mayim Bialik?

  You flatter me.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  Right? And you're not visually seeing it, so it's not happening, therefore, it's not happening, right? But it is happening silently and insidiously. And so what happens when you're with the vitamin K? Well, if you, you know, year after year, keep not getting enough vitamin K, you're going to have calcium buildup in your arteries. That's a known thing that is involved in atherosclerosis, right?

• 19:27Mayim Bialik?

  I'm going to ask a really simple question. What's wrong with just getting old and dying?

• 19:33Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, essentially.

• 19:34Mayim Bialik?

  You know what I mean?

• 19:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:35Mayim Bialik?

  Like, I'm being really honest. Like, you look amazing, and I'm sure you'll look amazing till you're 95. But for many of us, it's kind of like, I'm gonna do the best I can. Like, I think a lot of us feel like, I'm balancing so many things. Like, I'm juggling kids, and this, that, and like, now I'm supposed to deal with my mental health, and I barely have time to exercise, and now am I doing the right kind of exercise? And I think a lot of us feel like, yeah, how do you fit it all in? Like, I criticize a lot of the people that Jonathan wants me to listen to, because I'm like, I don't wanna like, spend my whole day trying to live forever. I wanna live my life. Where is that balance, and what is the goal?

• 20:08Jonathan Cohen?

  Let me take this one, and then I'm gonna pass it back to you. What frustrates me the most is that there are preventable things that we're getting sick with, and the system has not been designed to have preventative health or well-being, which is my frustration. It's like, you hear this, oh, I should be getting these basic micronutrients, and then I would avoid a lot of these problems that are building up slowly over time. And then you go to your regular GP, and they're like, you don't have a chronic condition that I can fix right now, so you're fine and in the clear as you continue towards this cliff.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I agree with you on that, but I also think to sort of speak to your question directly, you know, the low-hanging fruit, and this is, you know, I'm talking about getting your foods from diet, and there's other, there's magnesium, there's so many other of these that are important as well. But multivitamins and supplementation are the low-hanging fruit, because they have been shown to help fill the gaps in many of those places. And that is something that, you try your best, you eat as healthy as you can, but you try to fill the gaps as well. And this is something that's been shown with, for example, a multivitamin. So multivitamins, oh, I remember 10 years ago, all the rage. Multivitamins are not only useless, they're harmful.

• 21:20Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  Enough is enough, was the name of the article. And now here we are, 10 years later, full circle, three large randomized controlled trials later, where we're really testing supplementation against a placebo. And we now know that even just supplementing with a standard, cheap Centrum Silver, run-of-the-mill multivitamin that's affordable, prevents cognitive aging. In fact, older adults that took it for a couple of years, it reversed their episodic aging of their brain by five years, and they're, basically, their cognitive aging by three years. So their improvements in executive function, learning, memory, episodic memory, I mean, as simple as a Centrum Silver a day. And I, by the way, I have no affiliation with them, but the point is, is that, you

• 22:04Speaker 03

  know, there is a low-hanging fruit, and yes, you should try to get as much as you can from your diet, but it is really hard. And as you mentioned, you're juggling all these things, so what can I do? Well, I mean, the easiest thing is take a supplement, right? Like, that's one. You mentioned exercise. I mean, that's another one we should definitely get into. But, I mean, before even going into that, because there's also, I think, simple solutions there, you know, it's not just about living forever. You know, it's about feeling good, it's about being independent, it's about not making your kids rely, having your kids to like, take care of you, you don't wanna be the burden, right? Like, you're not independent, you can't walk on your own, you can't feed yourself. Like, this is the quality of life. We want a better quality of life, we want to be happy, right?

• 22:48Speaker 03

  Nutrition also plays a role in our mental health as well. You know, so this is all feeding into the way we live, and how happy we are, and also just how you are, you know, you mentioned, I got kids, I gotta do this and that, and like, it's the same thing, like, you're overwhelmed and you're stressed, but like, if you have the right, you know, components that you're feeding your body and your brain, all those things do get easier, and the stress is less, and then you're happier. And like, who doesn't want that, right?

• 23:15Mayim Bialik?

  Can you talk a little bit about the connection? You know, we're so used to kind of siloing different aspects of our health, right? And there's been so much emphasis, and it was the impetus for us, you know, starting this podcast, right, to talk about mental health and mental well-being, and it's a huge conversation. Can you discuss the intersectionality between getting the right nutrients and how that impacts our mental health?

• 23:41Speaker 03

  Absolutely. You know, so, mental health is this kind of broad term that, you know, encompasses a lot of things, but for this discussion, we'll talk about it as, you know, mood, improved mood, less depressive symptoms.

• 23:54Mayim Bialik?

  Depression, anxiety.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Right, depression, anxiety. So, and there's a lot of different lifestyle factors that do affect this. I think first and foremost, it's important to establish the role that chronic inflammation plays in depression, chronic depressive symptoms, anxiety. And this has actually been shown in multiple, multiple observational studies, right? High inflammation, increased risk of depressive disorders, you know, major depressive disorder and other ones as well. And you might go, well, at the end of the day, there's a lot of other things going on here, how do we know it's the inflammation, right? So there've been some studies that have actually tested that directly, and they've injected something called lipopolysaccharide, which is essentially the cell membrane of a bacterial cell wall, and we make a lot of it in our gut, and it gets into our bloodstream, it's inflammation.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  And so, basically, it generates inflammation, an inflammatory response. If you inject LPS, that, you know, in generating inflammatory response in people, they get depressive symptoms. If you inject a placebo-controlled saline solution, they do not. And even moreover, if you give people a omega-3 supplement, like EPA, that is blunting that inflammation, the depressive symptoms don't happen.

• 25:04Mayim Bialik?

  So as much as you wanna wring your hands about, it's my mom, it's my alcoholic boyfriend, it's my kids making me crazy, guess what? There are actually things going on chemically in your body that we have control over that can change the degree to which those depressive symptoms impact or damage your functioning.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  Well, there's no doubt all of those things that you mentioned do cause inflammation.

• 25:31Mayim Bialik?

  Sure.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  You know, there's cortisol, it's been shown that cortisol actually releases LPS. You're actually dumping that very stuff that people were injected with into your bloodstream. So all the psychological stress, all that psychological, social stress, financial stress, all of that causes inflammation. And so, it's definitely, if you can do other things that can help blunt that inflammation, obviously, you only have so much control over what other people are doing, right? I mean, that's out of your control sometimes, I mean, you can only control so much. But I do think that if you can, if you can really elicit this anti-inflammatory response with your diet and lifestyle, and I think, you know, when I say diet, I should also mention that obesity is another, you know, thing that causes inflammation, and that's

• 26:17Speaker 03

  also associated with depression. But the omega-3 fatty acids are something that I think are really important, because it's not only important for mental health, but also overall, you're, the way you're aging. And it is a low-hanging fruit, you know, so people can take a omega-3 supplement, either fish oil supplement or microalgae oil. You wanna make sure you're getting not the plant source, the alpha-linoleic acid, because it's just, it's not getting converted into the stuff that you really want, the DHA and EPA very good. And so, you wanna get a high-quality fish oil supplement, and again, there's studies showing it does help with depression, but now, it's only gonna do it to some degree. I think the bigger lever to pull here would be physical activity.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  And again, that's another thing you mentioned, well, there's time, right? Well, who has time to go and do a, you know, two-hour run every day, or whatever? I mean, I don't. So, there's other ways that you can actually be more efficient about the way you exercise, high-intensity interval training being one. And that is something that has been shown to increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Now, that is something that is very important with depression, because it plays a role in neuroplasticity, something I'm sure you know more about than I do. And that really, essentially, is allowing our brain to adapt and change to a changing environment. And that's something that people with depression, and when you're really stressed out, like, your brain isn't doing that correctly.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  It's not plastic enough, it's not able to adapt to the changing environment. And so what happens when you can't adapt is, you feel depressed, right? You feel anxious, I can't deal with this, there's so much going on, it's like, you know. So, so brain-derived neurotrophic factor is key for that very thing, that neuroplasticity. And you can actually increase that dramatically with a six-minute workout. Six minutes? Who has six minutes? We all do. Yes, we all do. And so I think that's important to keep in mind. Now, you have to have the motivation to do that, right? And that's a whole other factor, and some people are really, I mean, there are some people that are really clinically depressed, right? And that's a whole other sort of ballgame here. But if we're just talking about like, the stress of life, which we all experience, I

• 28:28Speaker 03

  think that, I mean, before I came on this podcast, what did I do? I did a, you know, 20-minute high-intensity workout. Oftentimes, I'll do 10 minutes. Sometimes I'll do exercise snacks, you know, these are, so these are very interesting, because it's essentially...

• 28:43Speaker 03

  Two to three minutes of vigorous intensity exercise. So you're getting your heart rate above, you know, 75% max heart rate. You can do burpees, you can do, you know, air squats, you can do high knees, whatever. You get up from your desk and you do it for a couple of minutes. You get your heart rate up high. And they're actually hard. Try it. I, you know, like, we could get up into a break now, but like, essentially, what's been shown, there's these large studies that have measured, not the structured type that I'm talking about, there's unstructured type, where you're using everyday life scenarios to get your heart rate up, right? I don't take the elevator, I take the stairs. Not only do I take the stairs, I go briskly up the stairs, right? You kind of use, I don't, you know, I'm walking to my office. I'm not taking the car because I live, you know, four blocks

• 29:28Speaker 03

  away. So I'm going to walk there and I'm going to walk briskly, like that type of scenario. And there have been these large studies that are called the vigorous intermittent lifestyle activity studies, VILPA for short. And so people have worn these accelerometers on their wrist, which essentially measure their heart rate. And scientists have been able to measure when their heart rates are spiking and how long that spike lasted. And these studies have found that just anywhere between, like, starting at two minutes, doing two minutes of vigorous intensity exercise to three minutes, and then doing that like, two to, you know, anywhere between two to six times a day. The more you're doing it, so if you're doing that like, six times a day, studies have found that you have like, a 50% lower cardiovascular related mortality, a 50% lower cancer related mortality, and you're going to

• 30:12Speaker 03

  feel better. And these are in people that don't identify as exercisers. And those benefits were even if it was like, three times a day. So they were doing two minutes, three times a day. They had like, a 30% reduction in cardiovascular related mortality. That's really significant, you know? And I think that everyone has time to get up and do something for two minutes, three times a day. It's really not that hard. And it's, and makes you feel good. Like, I do exercise snacks when I'm sitting and working, because I need like, a pump to my brain. You're getting oxygen flow, you're, you're bringing oxygen to your brain, nutrients are being delivered to your brain. So it's doing something that's beneficial for your mental health as well. You know, and there have been studies that have actually compared classic, you know, standard SSRI treatments to, to actually running.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  And running performs as good, if not even better in some studies, than classical, you know, antidepressant treatment. And, and that's not to say that those don't work for people, but a lot of people, they don't work for, a lot of people, they don't work for, particularly people that have a high inflammation. In fact, there's a study that was really interesting that found people that aren't responding to the SSRIs typically have high biomarkers of inflammation, so C-reactive protein. But back to the running, I mean, here you have something that's, you know, at our disposable, I mean, you don't need a gym membership to run. I mean, you just go outside and do it. It's free, right? Something that we can do, it's, the only side effects are going to be reduced Alzheimer's disease risk, reduced cardiovascular disease risk, you're going to have a longer life, you're going to be, you're going

• 31:40Speaker 03

  to be more functional, right? Everything's beneficial, right? I mean, and it's helping with the depression as good as the pill you'd be taking with all the other negative side effects.

• 31:50Jonathan Cohen?

  And some people who can't run, for whatever reason, whether it's soreness, they can't go very far, like, just getting your heart rate up in whatever capacity you can, maybe like, a brisk walk to sort of, that leads to a slow jog, that leads to your running, it sounds like consistency, and just getting your heart rate up is the key.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  Getting your heart rate up is the key. There's stationary cycling as well. There's, there's a lot of ways to do that, right? And you have to find the way that you like, that you enjoy. I mean, I think that's the most important. You know, I would say briskly walking is, you'd have to do a lot of it. So you're trading volume for intensity, right? But, I mean, if that's what you love to do, and you don't mind doing more of it, then perhaps that's something that you should be doing. But, you know, then there's the other, you know, flip, flip of the coin, and it's like, okay, let's do something intense and short. And that's what I like. I like to be efficient. And I like to, the harder you work, it's actually more beneficial for your brain. The BDNF, like, you have to make something called lactate. And that only happens when you're really working hard, your muscles are working hard.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  You have to get up past that, like, 75% max heart rate range. And, and that's when you start to get the lactate. And it's the lactate that's signaling to your brain, I'm stressed, this is a stressful situation I'm in. And so it's like, an adaptation, your brain starts to make brain derived neurotrophic factor. Because when you're working out, it's not just your muscles that are working hard, your heart that's working hard, your lungs, your brain is also working hard when you're exercising. So it's this, you know, the lactate that you're generating from the exercise is like, this signaling molecule to the rest of your body. I like to think about it that way, because I can make my lactate up, right? That's, that's, that's, that's one way I like to think about it.

• 33:28Mayim Bialik?

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• 34:13Mayim Bialik?

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• 34:57Mayim Bialik?

  code Miam. It's completely risk free with a 30 day money back guarantee. Check the link in today's episode description to get started. One of the things that strikes me in all of the avenues that you talk about, whether it's nutrition, or like, macro versus micronutrients, or whether it's exercise, it seems like, it seems like you have an in to a secret that is kept from most people. And what that is, is that, you know, the, the cure for what ails us, either physically or psychologically, is a lot more in our control than we've been taught to believe. And in many cases, the most efficient way

• 35:40Mayim Bialik?

  for the medical system, as it is now, to treat us, is to give us a pill, and send us on our way, right? Or give us a diagnosis and say, here's the pill you take, and when you have side effects from that, when you have side effects from that, take this other pill. I mean, that you just have to watch, you know, any late night television, to see the number of drugs they're trying to give you to cure the thing from the pill, from the pill, from the pill. But what you're saying is, there's a not very well kept secret, meaning it's open knowledge, right? That we have the key to many aspects of our mental health, our physical health, our longevity. It doesn't have to be something that's just for people who go to fancy functional medicine

• 36:22Mayim Bialik?

  doctors, or people who are given, you know, SSRIs and anti-anxiety meds, and told, this is what's going to cure you.

• 36:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. I think that's, it's really, it's, that's kind of part of my big message that I want to get across, is that, look, there are simple solutions out there that will improve the way you feel right now, and the way you feel later, 10 years later, 20 years later. And it's so, it's so easy, you know? I mean, a vitamin D supplement, omega 3, making sure you're getting magnesium, exercise snacks at the very least, you know, exercise. But, you know, polypharmacy is a big issue, as you mentioned. I mean, people, the old, the average older adult is on like, six or something medications. I mean, it's outrageous. It's outrageous. And, and the reality is, is that, like, there are things that they can do that may not, you

• 37:14Speaker 03

  know, you, there's, there's things that you can do that require a lot more effort, that you could really do the, go the whole shebang, right? But we're talking about just little, low hanging fruit things that people can do right now to pluck that fruit off the tree, and improve their lives, improve the way they feel, improve the way they're aging. And that's, and I think that's the most important thing.

• 37:32Mayim Bialik?

  So how do you pick? I think that's sort of my question. I mean, I'm on like, a Huberman diet. I take like, 20 million pills a day. I take literally three full handfuls of pills. Like, that's my life. What do people choose? And I know you have kind of a, a select amount, that if people wanted to sort of like, hone in, I'd like to know, what are your top three? And then what are your top five? Meaning, three, and then two more?

• 37:57Speaker 03

  So I think, you know, the top three supplements, and again, the reason the supplements are important is to really fill a nutritional gap. But not only nutritional gap, just our micronutrient gap. And I'd say, like, the top of that list would be vitamin D. And that's really important, because it's not something that you're going to get from your diet. Less than 10% of vitamin D that we get in our bodies comes from our diet, right? We're making it from UVB radiation from the sun. And the problem is, is that 70% of us are not making enough, because we're not going in the sun. Well, that's problem number one. We're not going in the sun anymore, like we used to. We're inside.

• 38:34Mayim Bialik?

  It gives you cancer. I don't want to go.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  It gives, yeah, there's, there's skin cancer, right? I mean, so when you are in the sun, you have sunscreen, right? You're blocking out the very thing that can make vitamin D. There's a simple solution, that solution is a vitamin D supplement. Why is it my top of the list? Because vitamin D is actually a hormone. It's a steroid hormone. It is controlling over 5% of our protein encoding human genome. And essentially, what that means is it's getting into the nucleus of your cell, where all your DNA is, binding DNA, turning genes on, turning them off, in the way they're supposed to be. I mentioned that orchestra, you know, analogy, you know, a few minutes ago. It's essentially like, if all your genes are not being turned on and off at the right moment, then things are out of whack. Like, you don't want all your neurotransmitters on when you're sleeping at night, right? Like, you want them on in the day, when you're awake and alert. So there's a lot

• 39:21Speaker 03

  of, you know, coordination there. And vitamin D plays a role in that. And so, you know, not being, not having enough vitamin D, isn't just not having enough vitamin, it's not having a hormone, right? That's controlling a lot in our bodies. And so the solution is, and there's all these studies that have shown, it accelerates the way you age, dementia risk goes up, all this stuff, right? So the solution is a vitamin D supplement, which really is one of the cheapest supplements you can buy. It's like, 10 cents a pill for a vitamin D supplement. I mean, back 10 years ago, when I was saying this, it was one cent a pill. So it is going up in price. But, so, most people want to have blood levels around 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter, that's the sweet spot. But really, you just want to be above 30 nanograms per mil. And if you're like, below 20, then

• 40:06Speaker 03

  you're deficient. Like, that's- Pretty bad. So typically around 2,000 to 4,000 IU's a day, depending on the season, can get you to that good range. You have to get a blood test. That would be the top, the top supplement. The next one would be an omega-3 supplement. And I think, you know, 80 to 90% of the US population is not meeting the omega-3 requirements in terms of EPA and DHA. That's about 250mg a day. And the reason they're not meeting those requirements is because, one, they're not eating, they're not eating fish. And if they're vegetarian, they're not supplementing with the right things like microalgae oil. So the EPA and DHA are hugely important for, I mean, brain function, mental health, you

• 40:50Speaker 03

  know, cognitive aging, but cardiovascular health as well. And there's been a lot of work by my colleague, Dr. Bill Harris, showing that people that have a high omega-3 index, so you can measure that in red blood cells. If you have a high omega-3 index of 8%, you have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to people with a low omega-3 index of 4%. People in the US have an average of about 5%. So they're about on the low range. Five-year increased life expectancy. Now, the thing that's really mind-blowing, this is from the Framingham cohort, and what was really mind-blowing about this study was that Bill and his colleagues then sort of took that data and said, okay, let's look at smokers versus non-smokers with the omega-3 index. And what they found was that having

• 41:31Speaker 03

  a low omega-3 index was like smoking in terms of mortality risk. Yeah. So people with a low omega-3 index but did not smoke had the same mortality risk as smokers with a high omega-3 index. I mean, when I say same, I mean, if you were to look at this paper, at the graph of their, their life expectancy, they're perfectly overlaid.

• 41:51Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  Perfectly overlaid. And so all the smokers out there are like, yes, I'm gonna take omega-3. But like, that's not the point I'm making here, right?

• 41:58Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 41:58Speaker 03

  The point I'm making here is that not getting that, those important nutrients I talked about-

• 42:03Mayim Bialik?

  Is as deleterious.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  As smoking.

• 42:05Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 42:06Speaker 03

  Right. And, and everyone knows to avoid smoking, but nobody's thinking about avoiding omega-3. You know, there was a study out of Harvard, and I always talk about this study, it was like, published and so forever ago, like 2010 or something. And it was, it identified omega, not getting the marine sources of omega-3, so DHA and EPA, as one of the top six preventable causes of death.

• 42:24Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  Up there with hypertension, type 2 diabetes, smoking, there you go. And, and, you know, consuming trans fats were up there. But, you know, so, so no one's thinking about not getting enough omega-3. And again, there's a solution. Not everyone's gonna be eating fish. There are fish oil supplements, omega-3, you know, high-quality supplements out there, but there's also algae oil as well.

• 42:45Mayim Bialik?

  There, that's the vegan alternative.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  Right. I have a free guide that I put together on how to choose that. It's called, it's basically like, all the top, you know, omega-3 supplements that are not oxidized and have the right amount of concentration of the stuff that's in there that they should. People can find that at FMMfomega3diet.com. But essentially, you can go and analyze all the data yourself. You can go to these third-party testing sites, like the International Fish Oil Standards site, which is what we did. They have tons and tons of data on there, and you can kind of go through it and look for the quality supplements that have a low oxidation and a high concentration. And so I think that's essentially, like, I've got like, eight or so that I've listed that are really good quality for both vegan and, you know, people that are taking fish oil as well.

• 43:27Jonathan Cohen?

  This is a little bit in the weeds, but what's happening in the oxidation? Like, people are like, a supplement is a supplement, but clearly not.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  So polyunsaturated fatty acid, which is what omega-3s are, it's also what omega-6s are, is, I mean, they, they oxidize at lightning speed. I mean, it's, you, so, in fact, that's one of the reasons why you need so much vitamin E. The more, the more polyunsaturated fatty acid you take in, the more your vitamin E requirement goes up as well. But when you eat oxidized fat, it's, it's, it's, it's basically like generating an inflammatory signal in your body. It's, is what it's doing. It's, it's an inflammatory signal, because it's not right. It's like a oxidite, your, your immune system recognizes it as like a foreign object. So it activates inflammation. So you want to avoid, if you can, you know, eating and consuming oxidized fat. And so that's what, with fish oil, you have to be

• 44:18Speaker 03

  very fastidious about the way you isolate it and stuff. And so-

• 44:21Jonathan Cohen?

  So it's in the manufacturing process?

• 44:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, manufacturing. But also, when you get it, you should store it in the refrigerator. If you buy it in bulk, I store mine in the freezer. Doesn't harm it at all. It's actually great. So you store it in the freezer, and then when I'm ready to get in my new, my new bottle, I thaw it out and take it. Because, because cold stops oxidation, right? That's, that's essentially what's happening. So that would be number two. And then I would say the third supplement that's at the top of my list would, it's a, it's a race between a multivitamin and magnesium. And so I think I'll defer to the multivitamin on this one, because it is covering the vitamin K base, the vitamin E base, the calcium, the vitamin C, all those other ones that are also, you know, important. So I think that would be my top three.

• 45:07Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 45:08Speaker 03

  And then the top five, after the multivitamin, would be magnesium.

• 45:12Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  And that is also something that half the US population is not getting enough of. It's, essentially, it's at the center of a chlorophyll molecule. So anything, anything green is high in magnesium. People aren't eating their greens. We've already established that with vitamin K. They're not eating their greens, right?

• 45:27Mayim Bialik?

  What happens when you're deficient in magnesium?

• 45:29Speaker 03

  Well, it depends on what kind of deficiency we're talking about. If you're severely deficient, you start to get muscle spasms. Like, that's one of the, you know, I would say, more like clinical symptoms. But when, when you're just kind of suboptimal, like half the US population is, when you're just not getting that RDA requirement, which for women is about 320mg a day, for men it's 420. If you're physically active, that requirement goes up even more because you're sweating and losing magnesium, but you're sweat. But for those people, I mean, maybe you're getting some muscle, muscle cramps. If that's something that's happening, then you really probably should be taking in more magnesium. But insidious damage, that insidious damage is happening. Magnesium is a cofactor for many important

• 46:11Speaker 03

  enzymes, 300 different enzymes. DNA repair is one of them. And if you can't repair damage to your DNA, then you increase the risk of getting cancer. And so what happens is, DNA damage isn't a problem for five years, it's not a problem for 10 years, it's not a problem for 15, or 20, or 30. It starts to become a problem 40, 50, 60 years later, right? Then cancer rears its ugly head. And so it's not something that you're really gonna pay attention to until it's too late. And so magnesium is, it's, and there are studies, I've looked at this, of people that take, you know, for every 100mg decrease in magnesium intake, they have a 24% increased pancreatic cancer risk. And then people

• 46:54Speaker 03

  with the highest quartile of magnesium have a 50% lower cancer-related mortality compared to people in the lowest. Yeah, 50%. And then there's studies showing supplementation is beneficial as well. And with respect to the supplementation, I tend to think you really should try to get as much magnesium from your diet as you can, because leafy greens are so good. And there's so many different micronutrients that are in them that you're, you're getting, like the vitamin K, and the calcium, and the vitamin C. But if you are gonna supplement, then you want to probably take smaller doses of it. Can it, it can be an irritant on the gut. So you don't want to take a big bolus of magnesium. It can cause like, muscle spasm, like, your, your muscles and your, your intestinal system to kind of spasm, and can cause diarrhea, and things like that. So you want to take

• 47:39Speaker 03

  lower doses, maybe like, 150mg, 300mg doses. And you want to take a salt form, so, so I would say magnesium malate, magnesium citrate are good forms, but also magnesium glycinate, which is what I take, is a good form.

• 47:53Mayim Bialik?

  People like these for sleep, also magnesium.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:56Mayim Bialik?

  Like, this is one of these things.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  For sleep as well, and stress. I mean, when you're stressed, your body pulls on magnesium as well.

• 48:02Jonathan Cohen?

  There are so many different forms of magnesium. How do you decide what to prioritize? Do you take all of them? Like, how, how do people approach it?

• 48:09Speaker 03

  I like the magnesium glycinate, because you're also getting glycine in there, glycinate. So magnesium is bound with glycine. It's very bioavailable, which is what you want. And it does sort of help with calmness. Glycine's like an inhibitory neurotransmitter, right? So I take it before bed as well. And it could be the placebo effect, which is a very valid, real thing, and I love it. But, you know, it does seem to help with sleep as well.

• 48:35Jonathan Cohen?

  And are you missing, if you're not taking the other ones? Like, how, do we need all of them? Or, or does glycinate work?

• 48:41Speaker 03

  Glycinate works. If you're taking magnesium threonate, that's kind of a brain-specific form of magnesium. And I would say, in that regard, then you definitely want to make sure you're getting other forms of magnesium for the DNA repair aspect that I was talking about. Also, magnesium is important for bone health. Like, 60% of magnesium stored in bone. And it, you know, it's one of those things that, if you're, if you're having inadequate levels of magnesium, as 50% of the US population, your body will pull from your bones, because it has to really maintain very tight levels of magnesium in the plasma. Very important. And so you'll pull from your bones, and by the time you're older, you know, an older adult, you've lost half your magnesium stores, which affects your bone

• 49:23Speaker 03

  mineral density and bone health, right? So those things all sort of converge together as well. So, yeah, I mean, I think magnesium threonate, which is something people do like for their brain, they're taking, it's like a, it's, it's, there's some evidence showing that it can cross the blood-brain barrier better, and get into the brain better, and therefore, it has beneficial effects in the brain, like, energy production, and it seems to be, you know, important for preventing perhaps cognitive decline as well. So if you're taking that form, I would say that you want to make sure you're also getting enough magnesium for the DNA repair and other enzymes as well, that are not in the brain. Number five, choline.

• 50:04Speaker 03

  Because it's, it's, I used to supplement with it more and I think I'm gonna bring it back after like, kinda diving into it recently again. Because it really, it really is important for brain health, you know, for preventing the oxidized, I mean not oxidized, that's vitamin E, for preventing the homocysteine. The homocysteine is really important. I mean, that's another thing that a lot of people aren't measuring. So I think that would be my number five.

• 50:28Jonathan Cohen?

  Where does vitamin E fall in? Cause of the importance?

• 50:32Speaker 03

  The vitamin E, RDA, is in the-

• 50:34Jonathan Cohen?

  Multivitamin.

• 50:35Speaker 03

  Multivitamin.

• 50:36Jonathan Cohen?

  Okay.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  And I do eat a lot of almonds. Like I'm, that's my, that's my go-to, like, it's not time for dinner yet, but I've, you know, it's been many hours. It's almonds, raw almonds.

• 50:48Mayim Bialik?

  Not to get too in the weeds here in our own way. You mentioned nuts and seeds. So I'm a vegan person. He's a vegan-friendly health nut biohacker. We eat so many nuts and seeds. Like, I'm a walnut person. I prefer walnuts, but we put cashews in our smoothies. I'm trying to get all branches of the vitamins through all the different nuts.

• 51:09Jonathan Cohen?

  But it's work. It's like if you're on the go, it's, it's like you have to pack-

• 51:13Mayim Bialik?

  It's definitely work. You know, I have a question. I have a question as someone who happens to be vegan, but I think it's a question that everybody wants to have your answer on. What's up with protein? Like, are we getting too much? Which is what many of us have been told. Like chill out, don't worry. Like you're getting protein. There's protein in pasta. There's protein in rice and don't freak out. Then we went through a phase of like Jonathan eating his body weight in protein twice a day. There was a huge emphasis, especially among, I heard it among like men of like, all the protein, all the meat, also add creatine, like eat collagen, like be a hunk of protein. What's the story with protein and what is

• 51:56Mayim Bialik?

  the perspective for women versus men? Is it a similar conversation? I need to know.

• 52:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, yeah, no, it's funny. There's been, you know, in the aging field, which is where I'm sort of in, it's also been this thing where for the longest time, well, you don't want too much protein because that's gonna accelerate aging. It's gonna increase cancer risk. And, and this is largely done in animal studies, like rodents. And so, and there's lots of mechanism work there. And so, you know, you're kind of thinking, oh, well, protein's aging you. That's because it's activating growth pathways and that's involved in cancer. And, you know, so you wanna, you wanna kinda dial back on the protein.

• 52:33Mayim Bialik?

  This is also animal-based protein, correct? A lot of these studies were animal-based protein because most countries that, you know, get enough protein are actually not getting it from animal sources.

• 52:43Speaker 03

  Yes, so-

• 52:44Mayim Bialik?

  Except the United States.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Animal-based protein has a high concentration of essential amino acids, particularly leucine. And that is the sort of switch for some of these growth pathways, like the mTOR pathway, but also IGF-1. These are both two pathways that are sort of involved in the aging process. So yes, to some degree, that was kind of like animal, animal protein. And then there's like all this human data that was observational data that came out that was looking at all cause mortality, cancer-related mortality. And it looked like, oh, if you ate protein from plants, you had to lower all cause mortality. You would lower cancer-related mortality compared to the meat eaters. Well, it turns out like after then adjusting and looking at all these

• 53:26Speaker 03

  other healthy, healthier, unhealthy lifestyle factors, the meat eaters, if they had no unhealthy lifestyle factors, so they weren't overweight, they weren't sedentary, they weren't excessively drinking or smoking.

• 53:38Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 53:38Speaker 03

  They had the same mortality as the vegan.

• 53:40Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 53:40Speaker 03

  So what it comes down to, and when you asked me, what about protein? So look, protein is essential, right? We need protein to make proteins in our body. Everything, everything that we're doing, everything that's going on in our bodies is from proteins and proteins require amino acids to be made. Our muscle also requires protein as well. And that's probably what most people are thinking about when they think about protein. They think about their muscle. And the RDA for protein is 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight. And that is probably where you're hearing a lot of people say, we're not getting enough protein. And the reason for that is because when that RDA was set, gosh, how many decades ago? I don't remember. Quite a few.

• 54:21Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 54:22Speaker 03

  When that was set, the studies that were done-

• 54:24Mayim Bialik?

  It has to be close to a century ago.

• 54:26Speaker 03

  I mean, no, I think it was like, oh gosh, was it the-

• 54:30Mayim Bialik?

  30s, 40s?

• 54:31Speaker 03

  I think, yeah. Um, I think. I don't know. Well, someone can look that up.

• 54:36Mayim Bialik?

  Yes, go ahead.

• 54:37Speaker 03

  But, but the point is, is that the studies that were done to, basically the way that RDA was determined was, okay, how many, I mean, how much amino acids can we lose in a day? And without going into a negative balance, right? Because we don't actually store amino acids like we store triglycerides. We store fat in the form of triglycerides or we store glucose in the form of glycogen, right? We don't store amino acids. Well, our muscles actually are the biggest storage of them, right? But you don't wanna be breaking down your muscle tissue to get amino acids. And so that was determined based off-

• 55:10Mayim Bialik?

  1941.

• 55:10Speaker 03

  1941, alright. 1941.

• 55:13Mayim Bialik?

  Cause in the middle of World War II, they were like, let's work on this.

• 55:16Speaker 03

  So basically, the studies that were done were to determine whether or not that was, you know, enough, how much protein you needed to take in to prevent like, basically your body from, from losing more protein. And it turns out that the studies were kind of flawed and the guesses were sort of overestimated. And so more studies have been done recently with newer technologies that have determined, actually it's more like 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram body weight is what we actually need.

• 55:46Mayim Bialik?

  That's more.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  It's more than 0.8, right?

• 55:48Mayim Bialik?

  Yes.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  And so that's kind of like the, I would say, the minimal amount of protein. And depending on how active you are, those requirements go up. If you are physically active-

• 55:58Mayim Bialik?

  Don't eat the dog's protein. He's leaning into his, he's like, I'm already not getting enough today.

• 56:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's where it goes up. If you're getting, if you're physically active, you wanna get about between 1.2 to 1.6. It's more like 1.6 grams per kilogram body weight of protein. And that's largely based on studies looking at gaining muscle mass and strength as well. So they've been randomized controlled trials, giving people either 1.2, 1.6 kilograms per kilogram body weight of protein, and then looking at muscle mass gains and muscle strength gains. And giving them more protein, along with working out, exercising, it seems like the 1.6 is better. So-

• 56:37Mayim Bialik?

  And also, I just wanna reiterate, when you say protein because of the society we live in, I automatically think of like meat, meat, meat, meat. And I think of all the things that are in meat that a lot of people don't want. But you're not just talking about meat. You're talking about for people who wanna eat fish, it could be fish. And there are other ways to get protein. And like, there are protein powders and things. So it doesn't just have, cause like, the notion of like eating meat five times a day, right? Like, doesn't sound attractive for many reasons, right? But that's not the only way that we're talking about getting protein.

• 57:06Speaker 03

  No, absolutely not. And yeah, and that's another sort of, I would say, shift in the, the way like of thinking in terms of protein. It used to be like, oh, you have to get all this protein from like, you know, a meat source or an animal source of protein. And, you know, vegans and vegetarians, oh, they're just so protein deficient. Well, it turns out, you know, people that are, that are paying attention and eating multiple different types of protein and/or supplementing can actually gain as much muscle from the same amount of protein as people that are doing, eating meat. And, and so that's, and that, again, that was a big change, a pretty recent, actually, I would say.

• 57:43Jonathan Cohen?

  The caveat to that is, you can't really get it from vegetables and beans alone. You need some form of tofu, tempeh, protein powder. It's very difficult to only get that level of protein from vegetables and legumes.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  Well, you have to, you have to, like, there's different types of plants that are-

• 58:04Mayim Bialik?

  It's grains.

• 58:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, quinoa.

• 58:06Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Speaker 03

  You know, there's different types of plants that have different amino acid compositions.

• 58:11Mayim Bialik?

  But I don't rely on vegetables for my protein. Not at all.

• 58:14Speaker 03

  Beans, quinoa.

• 58:15Mayim Bialik?

  It's gotta be, it's gotta be beans, nuts. It's gotta be things like that. And yeah, there's some in like rice and pasta and things like that. But no, it doesn't come from, from vegetables. But the fact is, as we talk about, it's very carb-heavy. Like, my protein intake is so carb-heavy. Like, you know, my friend Denise, who helped me kind of completely become vegan, she was like, when she became vegan, she gained 20 pounds in like two months because she was eating nuts and seeds all day. And she's like, I'm so healthy. And she looked down, she was like, what just happened? So yeah, the, the notion is like, depending on where this protein source is coming, it can be very high in fat. It can be very high in carbs. So it's definitely a balance.

• 58:54Jonathan Cohen?

  I think the other conversation that's happening alongside the protein conversation is, should everyone be on creatine?

• 59:01Speaker 03

  I know, right? I mean, like

• 59:03Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, you sprinkled it all around the room.

• 59:05Speaker 03

  I mean, I did. I was, I was, I dosed up today because I wanted my brain to be working. But yeah.

• 59:11Mayim Bialik?

  What is creatine? Tell us what creatine is.

• 59:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, so creatine, you probably think of creatine, you think of the bodybuilder muscle guy.

• 59:18Mayim Bialik?

  Hundred percent. It's in a big, white, plastic tub, whatever it is.

• 59:21Speaker 03

  Right, and then I always think about the water rate I'm gonna gain, like that, like those are the images that I think about when I think of creatine. Well, creatine is, it's really important for energy production. And I don't want to get like too much into that mechanism, but essentially what you need to know is that it is important for energy production. And so

• 59:40Mayim Bialik?

  But is it a thing that's in our body already?

• 59:42Speaker 03

  It is something that's in our, it's in our muscles. It's in our body, yes. It's in our, we make it in our brain, we make it in our muscles. Sorry, we make it in our liver, we make it in our brain, not in our muscles. Our muscles take it up from, from what's made in our liver. Our muscles are what crave it the most, right? Especially because we're, when we're working out and working our muscles, then the creatine's really coming from either what we're making in our liver to our muscles or from what we're supplementing. So we're not, essentially creatine is, especially vegan, vegans are not getting enough of it because creatine is found in muscle meat. So people that are eating meat are getting a dietary source of creatine.

• 1:00:17Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:00:18Speaker 03

  But vegans and vegetarians are not getting that creatine.

• 1:00:21Mayim Bialik?

  So it's vegan to take it? It's an organic compound?

• 1:00:23Speaker 03

  Yes. It's synthesized.

• 1:00:25Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:00:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're not, it's not like being isolated from like cow muscle.

• 1:00:28Mayim Bialik?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:00:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. But, so what is it doing? You know, it's, it's really, so the muscles are really greedy and your muscles take it up because it, it's, you know, helps with energy production, right? But aside from that, other organs in the body also need it, like the brain. And that's why the brain also makes its own creatine pool. And when you get like a higher amount of creatine, if you dose, if you're taking a higher amount of creatine, whatever your muscles don't take up, your muscles get the first pick because they're very, very greedy. Then creatine's left over to kind of get into the brain. And so people that are taking about five grams of creatine a day, which is what I used to take, it's enough for your muscles. That's pretty much what your muscles are happy with. And when I say your muscles, like why do your muscles want it? It's not necessarily gonna bulk you up. It's not like protein.

• 1:01:13Speaker 03

  It doesn't, creatine doesn't increase muscle protein synthesis. You're not gonna, you know, get bigger muscles unless you work out. What it does do is helps you work out harder because you, you have, like you're able to basically get more energy and more power. So the volume of your workouts are, are better.

• 1:01:30Mayim Bialik?

  Now it feels like you're giving me a steroid.

• 1:01:32Speaker 03

  But it's not. It's not a steroid.

• 1:01:33Mayim Bialik?

  Am I gonna be like grunting?

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  It's all, it's all the effort, right? Yeah. I, I definitely was grunting yesterday morning. I had my strength rating, not to

• 1:01:40Mayim Bialik?

  So you said that you used to take five milligrams?

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  Five grams.

• 1:01:43Mayim Bialik?

  Sorry, five grams.

• 1:01:44Speaker 03

  I used to take five grams because I wanted it for my, my workouts.

• 1:01:47Mayim Bialik?

  And now you take

• 1:01:48Speaker 03

  And now I take 10.

• 1:01:49Mayim Bialik?

  Every day, all the time, no matter what?

• 1:01:51Speaker 03

  Every day, all the time, no matter what. Um, I, baseline is 10. And I do that because of the brain effects. So there's been studies now coming out that it improves cognitive function. It might be important for brain aging. Depression is another one that's coming out. Again, energy production in the brain, very important, but you have to get above that five grams to like have spillover, right, to the brain. But there's an even bigger, you know, I would say, dose that I take on days when I don't sleep well. So if I'm traveling, I'm jet lagged, I'm in like the other part of the country and I have to give a talk at like 8:00 AM, which is, you know, 5:00 AM, my, my biological time. And those sorts of scenarios, I actually take 15 to 20 grams.

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  And it's amazing what it does to me.

• 1:02:38Mayim Bialik?

  No, it's like speed.

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  It's like, without the speed. It's like speed without the speed. You're like, it's like caffeine without the caffeine, where

• 1:02:44Mayim Bialik?

  Can you abuse it?

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  Um, I mean, I wouldn't take much more than that. So it's not like addictive. It doesn't, I don't feel like, I don't wake up in the morning.

• 1:02:52Mayim Bialik?

  Yes, but you know what is addictive? Being alert and like on target, like.

• 1:02:57Speaker 03

  In the context, it, it only really works in the context of a background deprivation, stress, something stressful, like sleep deprivation.

• 1:03:05Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  Um, and this has been shown

• 1:03:06Mayim Bialik?

  Life.

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, right?

• 1:03:09Mayim Bialik?

  Well, no, but I'm, you know, I'm kind of curious, like, yeah.

• 1:03:12Speaker 03

  It's been shown in studies and so what it's, what, I guess, you know, the question is, okay, well, how much stress in your life? A lot of us do have a lot of stress. So I do think it makes, and it does make a difference, right? But it helps, it helps, you don't need as much sleep even. So this has been shown in studies. And in fact, one of my vegan friends was like, she messaged me back, she's like, this is, I don't need as much sleep and I have all this energy, what's going on? And I'm like, well, you weren't getting any dietary creatine because, you know, you don't eat any meat and you weren't supplementing with it. So you were only relying, and you work out. I'm like, you're only relying on what your liver can make, which is not that much. So it really kind of changed your life.

• 1:03:50Mayim Bialik?

  She was Bruce Banner, now she's Hulk.

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  What happens is creatine, I'm, I'm talking about the, the role it plays in energy production, but it also plays another role, interestingly. It plays a role in that whole methylation process as well, that we think about folate, choline, and creatine does it too. So creatine can also help turn homocysteine back into methionine. It can help with gene expression. So methylations are like carbon, carbon with three hydrogens, they can basically change the way our genes are activated. You need methylation groups to have that happen and creatine helps with that. So I think when you free up creatine, when it's like, okay, the muscles aren't using every last bit of it, because now you're giving it an exogenous source through supplementation, then other things can happen, right? Other things like the methylation process can happen, right?

• 1:04:37Speaker 03

  So changing the way genes are activated in the brain. But in the context of stress, stress requires a lot of energy. It depletes your creatine. And so in that background, giving your body the extra creatine will give you more energy because that energy that you would have had otherwise was taken because the stress is very energy consuming.

• 1:04:56Mayim Bialik?

  Well, also, I'm, I'm thinking just in terms of the creatine conversation, how many of those things diagnostically would earn you a prescription for an SSRI, right? I can't sleep, I don't have energy, which means I'm not working out. So then you're not generating any positive feel-good chemicals, right?

• 1:05:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:05:12Mayim Bialik?

  You're not gonna feel good about yourself. You don't have the kind of like oomph to get up and go. Many doctors would see that and be like, you're, for me, you know, you're a woman of a certain age, like take an SSRI and you'll feel better, right?

• 1:05:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:05:26Mayim Bialik?

  And how many people are disappointed by that because there's other biochemical things going on that we don't even know about?

• 1:05:31Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:05:32Mayim Bialik?

  It's fascinating. Jonathan had a list of rapid fire things and I just want to mention that the first three items are this: alcohol, coffee, golf course. Go.

• 1:05:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, don't, don't, don't, don't live on a golf course and sip your, and sip your wine. Yeah. No, there was, there's a really interesting study that came out recently that living near a golf course dramatically increases the risk of Parkinson's disease because golf courses are notoriously sprayed with Roundup, glyphosate. I mean, they're, I mean, that's like, you look at a golf course, like I don't know that I can find a weed, like at any golf course I've ever, you know, been to. So the pesticide exposure is, I would say, the most classical way of inducing Parkinson's like symptoms in animals. I mean, that's like what researchers do to induce Parkinson's is they give like paraquat, ropine, right?

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  These things cause mitochondrial toxicity, your mitochondria are the energy producing organelles in your cells. They cause it in the, in the dopaminergic neurons, in the substantia nigra, right? Part of the brain. So what's, what the prevailing theory with the golf course is that these pesticides are getting into the water source and people that live near the golf course are drinking water that has this, you know, pesticides in it, Roundup, glyphosate, whatever they're using.

• 1:06:57Jonathan Cohen?

  So golfers don't have to be terrified necessarily, like if you're spending a lot of time on golf courses versus living next to it?

• 1:07:04Speaker 03

  No, exactly. That's a great question. I mean, unless they're like spraying, like you're inhaling it, like, I mean, if they're spraying the course, I, I run sometimes along a golf course and there are times when they're spraying and I'm like trying to get ahead of the spraying machine thing. And I'm like, I just have to like figure out when they're spraying and not run on those days.

• 1:07:19Mayim Bialik?

  Well, I think the issue also is not so much like, don't live on a golf course. The issue is a larger one, that the things that give us so much luxury, joy and pleasure, like having a weed-free garden, which is something that's very important, we now know things and The Future of Food and Food, Inc. are two wonderful documentaries that I highly recommend that discuss in particular Roundup and Monsanto. And, you know, these used to be things that were on the fringes of conversations and people used to kind of roll their eyes and say like, that's ridiculous, you're worried about hippie things. But what we know now is that the things that, that give us a lot of conveniences do come with a very high price. And once that information is out there, we are so grateful to people like you for spreading

• 1:08:02Mayim Bialik?

  this information because it's not something we can ignore. If you're living somewhere where pesticides are being sprayed and if there are no weeds, which is a naturally occurring thing to have when there's grass, chances are there's, there's a downside to that luxury, as it were.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  And, and you know, these pesticides and a lot of other forever chemicals, these things are contaminating our water sources, our soil, like, I mean, it's, it's ending up in the sludge that's, that's give, you know, in the, in the conventional farming that's used, not organic, but it's actually ended up in organic farming too. But it's like, we're, we're, everything's contaminated. We got microplastics, we got the forever chemicals, we have, you know, now this, the, the Roundup and the pesticides. Water filters do help. I mean, they help filter out a lot of these chemicals and like small, small particles and stuff. But, but yeah, it's, it's a big problem, like how, I, the damage is done already. So like now it's like, okay, do we keep doing more damage? Can we somehow stop that damage? At what point is enough enough, right? I mean, at what point can we say, okay?

• 1:09:03Mayim Bialik?

  Are you sure you want to live to 115?

• 1:09:04Speaker 03

  I mean, you know, it's, the microplastics and the forever chemicals, that's the thing that also gets me, right? I mean, it's in everything. It's in, it's in our fruits and vegetables. You think you're eating healthy and then you're like, oh, everything's coated in forever chemicals now because it's in our soil.

• 1:09:19Jonathan Cohen?

  We did an episode on this and then the doctor we had on was like, oh yeah, it's in the ocean and in the rainwater, so it's in the air.

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's in the air, it's in, I mean, it's everywhere. So you need air filter, water filter, right? Um, yeah, so that's the, the golf course.

• 1:09:34Jonathan Cohen?

  New product idea, we live in a bubble, it's filtered. Be totally safe. The other conversation that's happening a lot is about alcohol. It feels like the tide has turned on alcohol. It used to be a little bit is good. It used to be red wine is good. Now, none of it is good.

• 1:09:52Mayim Bialik?

  Well, you know, alcohol is a toxin.

• 1:09:55Speaker 03

  It is. I mean, I think a lot of the studies that have been sort of reanalyzed that came out claiming that, oh, moderation. Actually, not only is it not harmful, it's beneficial compared to not drinking alcohol.

• 1:10:09Mayim Bialik?

  Especially for women. Let's market it to women. It's delicious.

• 1:10:12Speaker 03

  Which is actually the worst. Women are actually, women are most susceptible to the damage related to alcohol. Yeah. We could talk about that in a minute, but like.

• 1:10:20Mayim Bialik?

  We're also most susceptible to the damage created when I don't drink alcohol.

• 1:10:25Speaker 03

  That's hilarious and so true. But yeah, so.

• 1:10:29Mayim Bialik?

  If you don't want me sober all the time, I'll tear shit down.

• 1:10:33Speaker 03

  All those, all those studies were actually like comparing non-drinkers to people that are doing moderate alcohol consumption. It turns out there was this whole sick user bias where the non-drinkers were like former drinkers. And so they were comparing them to people that had done so much damage that they had quit drinking, right? And this was not just one study, this is many studies. And so now it's kind of like, oh, I don't know that we can use that data, right? I mean.

• 1:11:00Mayim Bialik?

  Well, it's cumulative, so yeah.

• 1:11:02Speaker 03

  Right. And so, and there's just, there's a big spectrum here. And I think at the end of the day, my biggest concern, particularly for women, is breast cancer risk. Because alcohol, one of the, I would say, one of the biggest risk factors for alcohol consumption is increasing cancer risk. And, and when you think about a person, when your lifetime risk for, you know, esophageal cancer, which is one that alcohol increases. And I'm like, I don't know, our lifetime risk is one in 500. It's not that big, right? Like, so a little modest half a percent increase isn't really concerning to me. But what is concerning is my lifetime risk of one in eight for breast cancer. Like, every woman has a one in eight lifetime risk of getting breast cancer. That's pretty low. I mean, you get in a crowd, in a room with eight women,

• 1:11:48Speaker 03

  one of those women in that room will be diagnosed with breast cancer, right? There's a lot of lifestyle factors that can affect that risk. So obesity can increase the risk. Alcohol definitely increases the risk. Smoking increases the risk as well. And then there's, you know, some other things as well, but those are the main ones. Alcohol really has a dose-dependent effect. And, and there's no amount, even light drinking increases the risk.

• 1:12:10Mayim Bialik?

  What is alcohol doing?

• 1:12:12Speaker 03

  Oh, gosh. I mean, it's getting metabolized into toxic things that are, that are causing cell death, that are damaging DNA. They're damaging, that's what's essentially causing the, the cancer, right? You're damaging your DNA. And that's what it's doing. It's, it's creating these aldehydes and things that are reacting with your DNA. It's, it's bad, you know? It's, it's a toxin. Yeah, it does kind of lower your inhibitions and, you know, maybe affecting serotonin and stuff like that. And it can, and be fun to do once in a while, but like, it's certainly not something that you want to do every day, for sure. And that was like the, the message, you know, years ago.

• 1:12:48Mayim Bialik?

  Glass of wine a day.

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's good. I mean, glass of wine a day for a woman is very bad, very bad, because breast cancer risk.

• 1:12:56Mayim Bialik?

  I don't know that I've heard that. And it's so funny because it's such a huge marketing, you know, like, is it wine o'clock? Like, how many dish towels do you see sold?

• 1:13:04Speaker 03

  No, and it's the women. And women are actually more susceptible to the toxic metabolites because we have a lower body mass. So we actually, that's why it takes less alcohol for us to feel the effects.

• 1:13:14Mayim Bialik?

  Sorry, I'm just thinking about like, we're also like more susceptible to like the marketing. And the marketing is so geared at that. I'm thinking about the, what was it? The, the skinny cigarettes marketing of my childhood. It was like, this is the sexy cigarette for you. And I feel like in so many ways, that's what wine has become, right? It's this culture of like, oh, here's a little wine charm set. Like, everything's like wine goodies, right?

• 1:13:36Speaker 03

  I, I do feel like it's changing somewhat. I mean, you see a lot of these like, you know, mocktails. I mean, they're really showing up everywhere now.

• 1:13:44Jonathan Cohen?

  There's a huge industry of, of non-alcoholic fancy drinks.

• 1:13:48Speaker 03

  Whenever there's money to be made, that explodes, right? Like, there are people like, oh, this is like, this is, this is a great business, which is good. But cancer is my, my main concern with alcohol consumption is, is the breast cancer risk. Now, if you have like a family history, then it's like, you know, I don't have a family history.

• 1:14:04Mayim Bialik?

  Or if you're a Bracca or Ashkenazi Jew.

• 1:14:06Speaker 03

  If you're Ashkenazi Jew, yeah, for sure.

• 1:14:08Mayim Bialik?

  We should not be drinking.

• 1:14:09Speaker 03

  That's like, yeah, breast cancer, I mean, that's a big one, right? We're doing, doing the mammograms every year.

• 1:14:15Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:14:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:14:16Jonathan Cohen?

  Talk to us about coffee.

• 1:14:18Speaker 03

  Coffee, I know. I mean, should you drink it? Should you not drink it? Everyone drinks it, right? Who doesn't drink coffee?

• 1:14:24Mayim Bialik?

  I don't drink coffee.

• 1:14:25Jonathan Cohen?

  It's probably the, well, you drink a little bit of tea through your boba, but probably not enough caffeine.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh. Do you know how much microplastic is in boba?

• 1:14:33Mayim Bialik?

  I know, he always tells me.

• 1:14:35Jonathan Cohen?

  Thank you.

• 1:14:35Mayim Bialik?

  There was a girl on Instagram and her stomach was full of boba. It was like all, just like a big plastic mess.

• 1:14:41Speaker 03

  It's the top, those things are plastic, they're plastic.

• 1:14:44Mayim Bialik?

  Honey, it's the only fun thing left. It's the only fun thing.

• 1:14:48Jonathan Cohen?

  You're just putting Lego pieces.

• 1:14:50Speaker 03

  Eat it with fiber, eat it with fiber. Fiber like stops the absorption of microplastics. Yeah. It stops the absorption of microplastics.

• 1:14:56Mayim Bialik?

  Put chia seeds in my boba?

• 1:14:57Speaker 03

  Yes, that's right. Chia seeds in the boba, yeah.

• 1:15:00Jonathan Cohen?

  The benefits of coffee, I want to sort of reconcile that. I drink a good amount of coffee.

• 1:15:05Mayim Bialik?

  He gets weird if he drinks too much and he gets weird if he drinks too little.

• 1:15:07Jonathan Cohen?

  That is correct.

• 1:15:08Speaker 03

  Add some L-theanine.

• 1:15:10Jonathan Cohen?

  So I've tried that, but Dr. Amen is like, no caffeine is good for your brain. It restricts blood flow. He's like totally against caffeine. Help me reconcile the difference.

• 1:15:20Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh, really?

• 1:15:21Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:22Speaker 03

  That's so interesting because, okay, so let's, let's, we'll get to the brain in a minute. But yeah, coffee, I did a deep dive on it and it's, it's got so many health benefits that are undeniable, undeniable. I mean, the polyphenol content in coffee is extremely high.

• 1:15:38Mayim Bialik?

  And we're talking about coffee itself, not if you add a shit ton of sugar and milk and whipped cream.

• 1:15:43Jonathan Cohen?

  I drink my coffee black.

• 1:15:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, the additive stuff negates everything, forget that.

• 1:15:47Mayim Bialik?

  Right, because a lot of people are like, I go to Starbucks, it's great.

• 1:15:49Speaker 03

  No, it's the coffee itself.

• 1:15:51Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 1:15:51Speaker 03

  Polyphenols, like the chlorogenic acids are really, really powerful polyphenols that are doing anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, they're very beneficial. And so there have been studies showing that people that drink coffee, one to three cups a day, have a lower all-cause mortality, so like 30% lower than people who don't drink coffee. And, and there's been a lot of studies now looking at like biological aging. So, you know, they're looking at these like epigenetic signatures, these methylation groups that change with age. And you can look at these groups and like, you can determine someone's age based on that like characterization of it. And it's delaying biological aging by like one year. So, pretty, pretty, yeah, that's pretty, it's pretty profound with, when you're talking about at least that type of,

• 1:16:34Speaker 03

  you know, data set, when you're looking at like biological aging. It's been associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk, type 2 diabetes. I mean, just everything, everything. And when it comes to dementia and Alzheimer's disease, I should, I should caveat that decaffeinated coffee is also beneficial, again, because of the polyphenols. Like, it's not the caffeine unless we're talking about the brain. So the dementia risk and Alzheimer's disease risk seems to be dependent on having caffeine there. Decaf didn't have that effect. So I don't know why someone would think that the, the caffeine causing vasoconstriction, the amount of vasoconstriction is not that high. And there's also a, I think, maybe the polyphenols are countering that,

• 1:17:17Speaker 03

  but you'd think the decaf coffee would have the same effect. It doesn't.

• 1:17:20Jonathan Cohen?

  It doesn't.

• 1:17:21Speaker 03

  Caffeine is required for, which is, you know, it's so interesting, and I was thinking about this, is that nicotine, which is all the rage, and I would stay away from that, but is kind of structurally.

• 1:17:31Mayim Bialik?

  I'm sorry, it's all the rage?

• 1:17:32Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, people are like.

• 1:17:34Jonathan Cohen?

  She doesn't go on the internet, she doesn't know.

• 1:17:35Mayim Bialik?

  Also, the Dr. Amen study was people who drink like six cups or more a day. It was like high, high volumes of coffee.

• 1:17:41Speaker 03

  Okay, let me explain this, okay. So here, here's what it comes down to. People that drink like eight cup, eight cups or more a day have an increased risk.

• 1:17:49Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:17:50Speaker 03

  But it was only at eight cups or more, when they were doing one, two, three, four cups, they had a 50% lower risk. So, there's something about the excessive. Yeah, like eight cups of coffee, like, I don't know who's doing that, but like.

• 1:18:04Jonathan Cohen?

  That's a lot.

• 1:18:04Mayim Bialik?

  No, and that's going to disrupt sleep, it's gonna, yeah, you're gonna be a wreck.

• 1:18:08Speaker 03

  Exactly, you're gonna disrupt sleep, which is a dementia risk. Yeah, so, but it's also the brewing, the way you brew it that matters. So filtering it, filters out these dioterpines, which increase LDL cholesterol. So that's also important because you can, you can, you can increase your LDL cholesterol, especially if you're adding like cream to your coffee, you know, 30, 30 units, like just from.

• 1:18:27Mayim Bialik?

  Wait, you were talking about nicotine, nicotine's all the rage?

• 1:18:30Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, so what I was getting at was that nicotine, nicotine is used as a nootropic. People are like using these. You know, little mints or the zen, like the zen bags and stuff. I've never tried it, but Nicorette, like the gum for a nootropic effect. It improves their cognitive performance. You focus, you're like in the zone, you're productive. I'm terrified that I'll love it, so I'm definitely not trying it.

• 1:18:51Mayim Bialik?

  That's delightful.

• 1:18:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:52Mayim Bialik?

  It's a great drug.

• 1:18:54Jonathan Cohen?

  And some people claim that it has anti-Alzheimer's.

• 1:18:56Speaker 03

  Exactly, that's what I was getting at. So there are a few studies looking at nicotine. And nicotine also causes vasoconstriction, though.

• 1:19:02Mayim Bialik?

  Yep.

• 1:19:03Speaker 03

  But it's doing it like, I would say, there's a little bit of similarity between nicotine and caffeine, very like structurally.

• 1:19:10Mayim Bialik?

  Both diuretics, right?

• 1:19:12Speaker 03

  Uh, is nicotine a diuretic?

• 1:19:13Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, because they used to recommend it for digestion.

• 1:19:15Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:16Speaker 03

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:19:17Mayim Bialik?

  Get it?

• 1:19:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. But I think there's some overlap.

• 1:19:20Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:20Speaker 03

  The fact of the matter that the coffee required the caffeine to be protective against Parkinson's. They're, yeah, they're both, it's like they're both doing something similar where there is a protective effect against neurodegenerative diseases for whatever reason. There's all kinds of speculation.

• 1:19:34Mayim Bialik?

  So just don't smoke it? Put it in your gum?

• 1:19:37Speaker 03

  I don't know, no, no, I don't think that's good.

• 1:19:38Mayim Bialik?

  No.

• 1:19:38Speaker 03

  No, because it does, it's, it causes cardiovascular disease, hypertension. It's constricting your, your blood vessels.

• 1:19:44Mayim Bialik?

  Got it. So that's just the, that's not a mechanism of the smoke, that's the nicotine.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's not, and that's not a mechanism of caffeine. Caffeine's not doing that. It's nicotine. But people are doing it because they want to like be productive. They want to like be smarter. It's a, it's a.

• 1:19:56Mayim Bialik?

  Can't they just microdose like all the guys in Silicon Valley?

• 1:19:59Speaker 03

  I, that's what, that, yeah, if you're gonna do it, definitely microdose. But people are not, people are like, I've had people come up to me after talks and they're like, oh, I take, I take, you know, I go through like six of these a day. And I'm like, six of these, like?

• 1:20:11Jonathan Cohen?

  Closing the loop on coffee, though, just on the, um, on, on the decaf. I've heard that that's washed with chemicals when you do a decaf. And so you should avoid decaf because of the chemical process.

• 1:20:23Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, so it depends on what decaf, you know, coffee you're buying. So, yes, it is kind of like a paint thinner like-ish.

• 1:20:33Mayim Bialik?

  What?

• 1:20:33Speaker 03

  Method that's used to decaffeinate coffee. However, by the time, you know, whatever's ending up in your cup of coffee is so insignificant. I don't know. All these studies on all the benefits of decaf, people are drinking just decaf coffee. Like, they're not buying, there's other methods, like you can use the Swiss water method or the carbon dioxide method.

• 1:20:53Mayim Bialik?

  Don't tell him, he'll start doing it.

• 1:20:54Speaker 03

  But, no, I mean, I mean, I buy that because like, you know, you kind of obsess over the little things, but I think at the end of the day, you have to choose your battles. I don't think that's a battle to choose. I think that all these studies are showing people drinking decaf coffee have so many benefits.

• 1:21:06Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:07Speaker 03

  And most of them are just drinking.

• 1:21:08Jonathan Cohen?

  Tell, tell me your coffee protocol. Your, your, what, what filter system are you using? What, what are you doing?

• 1:21:14Speaker 03

  I have the, I like the, the pour-over and the Chemex filter, which is a, the, not the bleached one, but it's like the, you know, the brown paper filter one.

• 1:21:23Jonathan Cohen?

  Are there coatings of microplastic in those? That's what I use and I'm wondering.

• 1:21:27Speaker 03

  Not supposed to be, but I'm sure a study will come out in a month or two saying yes, because that seems to be where we're going.

• 1:21:33Jonathan Cohen?

  The ceramic filter clogs, though, and it's very hard. And then you spend like 25 minutes making your.

• 1:21:38Mayim Bialik?

  Do you want to die or don't you?

• 1:21:40Speaker 03

  That's the best way. I also do instant coffee, which has benefits as well.

• 1:21:43Jonathan Cohen?

  Interesting.

• 1:21:44Speaker 03

  And so, but yeah, but like, like I said.

• 1:21:47Mayim Bialik?

  Couldn't picture you a Folgers girl, but okay.

• 1:21:49Speaker 03

  I mean, not Folgers, but like, you know, sometimes I'm like, I just don't have time and I'm traveling or whatever, I'll do, and instant has some of the same benefits.

• 1:21:55Mayim Bialik?

  I've had one can for 20 years in the freezer because I use it when I make my honey cake.

• 1:21:58Speaker 03

  There's, there's a, there's a brand like Haggen's Instant Coffee, which is pretty good.

• 1:22:04Jonathan Cohen?

  What's the difference between instant coffee benefit and like pour-over benefit?

• 1:22:08Speaker 03

  So the instant coffee, you're getting a lot of the same polyphenols. And with the pour-over, what you're doing is you're filtering out those di- di-terpenes, which can raise LDL. But the amount in instant is so small that it's really not a big factor. Yeah.

• 1:22:22Mayim Bialik?

  So with everything that we've talked about, and especially as we've gotten pretty detailed with coffee, what's the, what's the most, you know, kind of unusual thing you've tried for your own health?

• 1:22:35Speaker 03

  The most unusual thing that I've tried?

• 1:22:38Mayim Bialik?

  What would we consider unusual?

• 1:22:39Jonathan Cohen?

  You don't have to limit it to one, we're fascinated.

• 1:22:41Speaker 03

  I mean, you know, I, I don't know that there's such an unusual thing. I mean, I've broccoli sprouts, I was, I was like doing a lot of broccoli sprouts.

• 1:22:49Mayim Bialik?

  Were you doing them?

• 1:22:50Speaker 03

  I was, I was doing, I mean.

• 1:22:51Mayim Bialik?

  You eating them?

• 1:22:52Speaker 03

  Bags and I was like, like so much broccoli sprouts.

• 1:22:55Jonathan Cohen?

  You're off that now or?

• 1:22:56Speaker 03

  No, I, now I supplement.

• 1:22:57Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:58Speaker 03

  But I was like.

• 1:22:58Mayim Bialik?

  But you were just eating them raw?

• 1:22:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:59Mayim Bialik?

  Bags of broccoli sprouts.

• 1:23:00Speaker 03

  I was making smoothies with them. It was disgusting. And I was like drinking them.

• 1:23:05Jonathan Cohen?

  And you're just more efficient to, to supplement?

• 1:23:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Now I'm, it's less work. I mean, it was cheap, like growing, growing your own sprouts is much cheaper than supplementing. Supplementing is expensive. But it was, it is cheaper and, and, you know, I was doing this when I really couldn't afford supplementing. And I was making smoothies with them, but I was getting a nootropic effect too, like I was feeling something in my brain. But I think that's probably one of the weirder things that I've done that, you know, I've done like exogenous ketones and all that stuff, but like everyone does that. I don't think people.

• 1:23:34Mayim Bialik?

  What's an exogenous ketone?

• 1:23:36Jonathan Cohen?

  This whole episode is my experiences, trends on the internet for the first time.

• 1:23:39Mayim Bialik?

  What's exogenous ketone? I mean, I know what the words mean and I could draw a ketone.

• 1:23:44Jonathan Cohen?

  It's all those jars in the cupboard, in the corner that we never go to.

• 1:23:48Mayim Bialik?

  Which cupboard?

• 1:23:48Jonathan Cohen?

  In, in the, in the kitchen that you never look in.

• 1:23:51Mayim Bialik?

  I was saying which cupboard, because half of the kitchen is all these things that you tell him about. What's exogenous ketones?

• 1:23:58Speaker 03

  So exogenous ketones, so ketones are something that our bodies make when we're using fatty acids for energy. So it could be during a fast or if we're on a ketogenic diet or we're exercising really hard, right? And haven't had enough calories. And so you make something called ketones, the major circulating one is beta-hydroxybutyrate. And beta-hydroxybutyrate is interesting, not because it's a source of energy, so it can be used as a source of energy and that's really cool. Why it's interesting is because it's a signaling molecule. So it's like, it's acting like lactate in that it's increasing brain-derived neurotrophic factor. It's like, it's a way of increasing, it's like a stress response, because your body's like, oh, I'm in this ketosis, I need to activate all these other beneficial genes that are involved in dealing with stress, right?

• 1:24:43Speaker 03

  So exogenous ketones are a way of taking that supplementally, exogenously, right? And so there have been, you know, a variety of different types of this on the market. And I've, you know, people, people like taking beta-hydroxybutyrate because it does help with focus and attention. It seems to really kind of get you into that. I mean, maybe it's something like the nicotine, I don't know, I've never done the nicotine, but it does kind of like help you hone in and kind of like focus and be more alert and just like on your game a little bit better.

• 1:25:13Jonathan Cohen?

  Are you on it now or off it now?

• 1:25:14Speaker 03

  I just ordered some, actually. It's funny you're asking. I haven't done exogenous ketones in years and.

• 1:25:20Mayim Bialik?

  I don't know how you've gotten anything done. I'm amazed you can have a B A T.

• 1:25:23Speaker 03

  I, I, I've just worked really hard.

• 1:25:26Jonathan Cohen?

  But what, what drew you back to them?

• 1:25:29Speaker 03

  What drew me back to them was a conversation I had with a friend whose mother is kind of dealing with mild Alzheimer's disease. And I was kind of, and he was asking me about ketosis and I was kind of getting back into that world that I had, you know, kind of was in a few years ago. And so I started kind of like researching it again. And I was like, gosh, this is like so beneficial. I personally don't like being on a ketogenic diet. There's so many plants I like to eat and it just kicks me out of ketosis and, but I do think there's benefits and maybe I can cycle it in, but, you know, so I, I've done ketogenic diet. I really loved the way I felt when I was on it. Never had that energy crash in the middle of the day, you know, like that mid-afternoon

• 1:26:13Speaker 03

  energy crash where you're like, some people go for their Diet Coke, some people go for their nicotine or whatever. I'm just drinking like blueberry smoothies because that polyphenols help me, or I'll do my exercise snacks. But the exogenous ketones are kind of a, a nice compromise for me because I can get some of those ketones for like three hours or so without having to like the work of like doing nutritional ketosis, which is hard work. Now, also, I do practice time-restricted eating. So when you're in a fasted state for, you know, 16 hours, you're really, it depends on the person.

• 1:26:49Mayim Bialik?

  When do you stop eating?

• 1:26:50Speaker 03

  Well, it depends on what's going on. Like I have a family and.

• 1:26:53Mayim Bialik?

  Do you have children?

• 1:26:54Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:26:55Mayim Bialik?

  How old are the humans?

• 1:26:56Speaker 03

  My son is seven. Well, he'll be eight in a couple of months, so almost eight.

• 1:27:00Mayim Bialik?

  So when, okay, but like on an average day, like I'm trying to think which 16 hours, like if you were to stop eating at seven.

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's usually I have dinner at six. So I'll be done before seven.

• 1:27:10Mayim Bialik?

  And then no snacky poo?

• 1:27:11Speaker 03

  No snacks, no late, no late time eating. That's a no-no. That's not really good at all. Actually, that disrupts your sleep.

• 1:27:17Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:17Speaker 03

  Big time. You don't want to be digesting while you're sleeping.

• 1:27:20Mayim Bialik?

  Says you.

• 1:27:20Speaker 03

  Right? So, yeah, um, you, you start, basically.

• 1:27:26Mayim Bialik?

  That would be like seven to noon? Am I doing the math right?

• 1:27:28Speaker 03

  Something like that, yeah.

• 1:27:29Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, so you don't have breakfast.

• 1:27:30Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 1:27:31Mayim Bialik?

  What I was raised was the most important meal of the day, but that's why.

• 1:27:34Speaker 03

  I don't always do.

• 1:27:35Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:27:36Speaker 03

  16 hours. Some, I mean, most, I would say most times I'm, I'm more like, I, I was saying 16 because that's like.

• 1:27:41Mayim Bialik?

  Are you about to brag that you don't eat a midnight snack, lady? That's not that impressive.

• 1:27:44Speaker 03

  No, no, I, I think what I'm saying is, I think you're kind of misunderstood when I was talking about 16, it wasn't necessarily me. I do eat breakfast after my workout. My breakfast is usually like 10, 10:30.

• 1:27:54Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, got it.

• 1:27:55Speaker 03

  But.

• 1:27:56Mayim Bialik?

  When I hear like fasting, like I get really scared. That sounds like kind of reasonable.

• 1:28:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:28:00Mayim Bialik?

  Meaning like, eat at an early time, like don't have, don't have three snacks before bed. No wine, no midnight snack.

• 1:28:09Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:28:09Mayim Bialik?

  And then wake up, get your kid to school, do a workout, then start the party.

• 1:28:15Speaker 03

  I mean, it depends on the type of workout. Sometimes I have to have like a banana or something before the workout.

• 1:28:19Mayim Bialik?

  Right, okay, that makes sense.

• 1:28:20Jonathan Cohen?

  So when are you using ketones? Are you using them in the morning while in a fasted state or using them in the afternoon? Like, because you're supposed to use them without food, is that accurate?

• 1:28:27Speaker 03

  Um, you don't have to use them without food.

• 1:28:29Jonathan Cohen?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:28:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it, it raises your, your ketone levels. Now, if you use them without food, you'll, if you're extending your fast, you'll probably get a bump even more. But, um, yeah, I haven't, I just ordered them again when I was experimenting with them. I was doing both. Uh, I, either way was good for me. I mean, even like being in a fed state, taking the ketones, it only lasted like.

• 1:28:51Mayim Bialik?

  A fed state?

• 1:28:55Mayim Bialik?

  Here's Dr. Vagin of Fed State.

• 1:28:59Jonathan Cohen?

  So you would use them in the afternoon and that would give you a bit of a bump as well? I haven't tried that yet.

• 1:29:04Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah, and that's essentially what I ordered them for, to be honest. I was like, I'm not, because I don't drink coffee in the afternoon.

• 1:29:10Jonathan Cohen?

  But you have been drinking beet powder, which I got very excited about when I saw, because I have.

• 1:29:17Mayim Bialik?

  Name a powder he's not excited about.

• 1:29:20Jonathan Cohen?

  Tell us a little bit about beetroot powder.

• 1:29:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I have been drinking beetroot powder and.

• 1:29:25Mayim Bialik?

  Is that like from the beet?

• 1:29:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's the extract.

• 1:29:27Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:28Speaker 03

  So, so beets are really high in nitrates.

• 1:29:31Mayim Bialik?

  Sugar, that's all I think of.

• 1:29:32Speaker 03

  They, they are high in sugar.

• 1:29:33Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:34Speaker 03

  I'm getting extract that's like low sugar.

• 1:29:36Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 1:29:36Speaker 03

  But beets are also, besides sugar, high in nitrates.

• 1:29:40Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:41Speaker 03

  And nitrates are found in a lot of different plants, but beets have a lot of them. And when you eat them, nitrates get converted into nitric oxide.

• 1:29:50Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:29:51Speaker 03

  Which is vasodilator, which increases blood flow. And there have been a host of studies looking at this, like humans taking beetroot extract. It increases blood flow to the brain. It increases blood flow to the muscle, muscles as well. People like endurance athletes like to use it before their endurance run or whatever. It increases blood flow to the brain and that's been showed to improve cognition, activate parts of the brain. That's involved in like whatever task that you're doing, kind of helps activate that machinery.

• 1:30:17Mayim Bialik?

  So you just put it in a smoothie?

• 1:30:19Speaker 03

  So what I do is I just put like a big heaping scoop in water and I just take a shot of it. It doesn't taste really great.

• 1:30:25Mayim Bialik?

  Sure.

• 1:30:25Speaker 03

  But the other thing that.

• 1:30:26Mayim Bialik?

  Nothing you eat tastes great.

• 1:30:29Speaker 03

  Well, I'm sure the high sugar one probably tastes good, but I don't get the high sugar one.

• 1:30:33Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 1:30:33Speaker 03

  And, and so I take that and it gives me a little pump, like, like a little, almost kind of like what a, you know, little Peloton, 10 minute Peloton would do, where I get that like.

• 1:30:43Mayim Bialik?

  Kill you? That's what it would do to me. It would kill me. Wait, I'm going to ask a question that I don't think any fancy doctor has ever asked you. What does your son eat?

• 1:30:52Speaker 03

  He's such a picky eater.

• 1:30:54Mayim Bialik?

  Does he eat chicken fingers?

• 1:30:55Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:30:56Mayim Bialik?

  Does he eat pizza?

• 1:30:57Speaker 03

  He likes pizza.

• 1:30:58Mayim Bialik?

  How about a hot dog? Just tushy since now it's.

• 1:31:01Speaker 03

  You know, the vegetables that I can get him to eat are spinach in his smoothie.

• 1:31:05Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, that's good.

• 1:31:06Speaker 03

  Carrots.

• 1:31:06Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 1:31:06Speaker 03

  He likes carrots.

• 1:31:07Mayim Bialik?

  He's in a smoothie phase.

• 1:31:09Speaker 03

  He likes smoothies.

• 1:31:09Mayim Bialik?

  My kids used to do smoothies and now I can't, I don't know what happened. Okay, but go ahead.

• 1:31:13Speaker 03

  Well, he's in a smoothie phase.

• 1:31:15Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, good.

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  So I put the spinach in the smoothie.

• 1:31:16Mayim Bialik?

  Enjoy it.

• 1:31:17Speaker 03

  But, you know, we're working on like a little bit of broccoli, like let's just eat this one, you know, broccoli floret.

• 1:31:22Mayim Bialik?

  But does he like meat, fish? Will he eat fish?

• 1:31:24Speaker 03

  He likes meat. He used to eat fish, not anymore. I don't know what's happened.

• 1:31:28Mayim Bialik?

  Deep fry it, then he'll eat it.

• 1:31:29Speaker 03

  Fry it, right.

• 1:31:31Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, what else? What snacks do you let him have?

• 1:31:35Speaker 03

  I mean, gosh, now.

• 1:31:36Mayim Bialik?

  Does he eat yogurt in a squeasy pouch?

• 1:31:38Speaker 03

  No, he does eat yogurt and granola.

• 1:31:40Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 1:31:40Speaker 03

  Like the, that low sugar granola.

• 1:31:42Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:42Speaker 03

  It's called a bear or something, whatever. Yogurt and granola.

• 1:31:45Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 1:31:46Speaker 03

  He does eat sun chips. That's like his favorite snack, which what am I going to do?

• 1:31:50Mayim Bialik?

  So good.

• 1:31:51Speaker 03

  I know. I loved those two. You know, he eats like the typical snacks that kids will eat.

• 1:31:56Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, so like when you send him to school, would people know that this is Dr. Rhonda Patrick's kid?

• 1:32:01Speaker 03

  Funny story. He does read the nutrition facts on things and, and he'll, he'll point out to his friends.

• 1:32:07Jonathan Cohen?

  I love it.

• 1:32:07Speaker 03

  About the sugar and he's like, you shouldn't eat that because it's going to kill you.

• 1:32:10Mayim Bialik?

  Punch in the face is what he's going to get.

• 1:32:11Speaker 03

  Well, what's funny was one of his friends was like, nah, I like candy. But another friend of his, Annie was like telling his friends not to drink out of plastic bottles because of the microplastics.

• 1:32:21Mayim Bialik?

  No, your child is a riot.

• 1:32:23Speaker 03

  But he did get one friend, one of his friends, the mother was telling me that he basically doesn't want plastic bottles anymore. She like had to stop. He, he like came home one day was like, you know, no, I can't drink out of plastic bottles because it's bad for you. And sugar, sugar's bad for you. I don't want all this sugar.

• 1:32:40Mayim Bialik?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:32:41Speaker 03

  And so I guess he was drinking like.

• 1:32:42Mayim Bialik?

  You're going to get punched in the face next.

• 1:32:43Speaker 03

  Or something, yeah.

• 1:32:44Jonathan Cohen?

  He's the littlest influencer. He's recruiting.

• 1:32:47Speaker 03

  He is, he does, you know, he tells me, do podcasts on Coke and why it's bad for you. Don't drink soda, but he does, he's still a picky eater.

• 1:32:54Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:55Speaker 03

  His favorite food is bacon. And I'm like, oh, great.

• 1:32:58Mayim Bialik?

  I just sent my oldest to college. He just finished his first year in college. And that's what I was most curious about, like, how is he going to eat? Like, once he's out of my, you know, purview, and I remember we had, we had foreign exchange students staying with us. And at the end of the two weeks that they were staying with us, the head of their program, we had like a going away party and she said, you sent the most interesting lunches with these children. Because it was like raw vegetables, you know, cut up and like, here's a little bean salad. And every other kid had like a sandwich or like a schnitzel. And I was like, here's your bell pepper color of the day. Anyway, yes, they will all rebel in their own way, I'm afraid, but yeah.

• 1:33:38Jonathan Cohen?

  What do you want people to remember, take away as they're exploring their health journey? Trying to balance it all, trying to get the misinformation that's online. We recently actually just heard that like a third of health information online is potentially inaccurate on TikTok, so.

• 1:33:58Speaker 03

  Oh, on TikTok?

• 1:33:58Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:59Speaker 03

  Well, on a lot of probably platforms, yeah, there is, there is, I mean, there's lots of stuff out there that's not accurate, right?

• 1:34:08Speaker 03

  I, I think the main takeaway that I want people to realize is

• 1:34:14Speaker 03

  they should be thinking about the way they're eating, they should be thinking about food, about like, instead of what should I avoid? They should be thinking about what do I need? And I think that makes it so much easier because when you start to realize all these vitamins and minerals you need, essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, then you start to realize, okay, I need to eat my leafy greens. I need to eat, you know, my carrots for the beta carotene. I need to eat my seeds for the, and nuts for the vitamin E. You start to, you start to coordinate like each food, choline, I got my eggs, you know, or my soybeans if you're vegan or chickpea, right? You start to coordinate like what foods are high in each, you know, nutrient, protein, I need my protein. Okay, well, where am I going to get my protein?

• 1:34:56Speaker 03

  But when you think about your meals like that, there's no room, you'll be full. There's no room for sun chips. There's no room for like the processed food stuff, right? Because you've already gotten full of what you actually need to fuel your body, to fuel everything. And I think that's a really good way to think about eating and nobody ever thinks about it that way. It's always avoid glucose, avoid processed foods, saturate as fat, fat is bad, whatever. It's always this avoidance, like what not to eat. But like, what about thinking about what we actually should be eating? What do we need? And that makes it so much easier because you won't eat the other stuff. You don't need it, you know? So that's one thing. Two, I do think it's important to supplement to feel, fill your micronutrient gaps. I think it's a low hanging fruit. It makes a difference in the way you age and the way you feel.

• 1:35:40Speaker 03

  And it's, it's, it's super easy to do. It does make a difference. I think that's another one to take away. And the third one is, I think, exercise is the most important thing you can do for mental health and physical health and for your health span, improving the way you age, you know, is exercise. Nothing's better than that.

• 1:35:59Mayim Bialik?

  I also want to direct people to, you have a cognitive enhancement blueprint at B D N F protocols.com. You have, as we mentioned, the Omega 3 supplementation guide. That's F M F Omega 3 guide.com. And also how to train according to the experts, which is something we didn't get to get into a lot. But that is at how to train guide.com. Tell people where they can find everything else about you.

• 1:36:24Speaker 03

  Well, thank you. Yeah, those three guys are wonderful. Start, I've got a podcast. I'm on all platforms. It's called Found My Fitness. You can look my name up, Dr. Rhonda Patrick. I'm on social media. I'm on X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, all of it. You can find me again, Found My Fitness is my handle. Or you can just look up Dr. Rhonda Patrick and you'll find me as well. And then I have a website where you can find me as well and that's foundmyfitness.com.

• 1:36:50Mayim Bialik?

  Good brain, Dick.

• 1:36:51Jonathan Cohen?

  Amazing.

• 1:36:51Mayim Bialik?

  Thank you so much. Really so much fun to get to talk to you.

• 1:36:54Speaker 03

  Thanks so much.

• 1:36:58Jonathan Cohen?

  Okay, what I was, what I'm taking away here is that my coffee consumption is actually okay. I was worried that I was overdoing it for a while.

• 1:37:07Mayim Bialik?

  Everyone was worried. Everyone listening to this episode was like, what's Jonathan going to do about his coffee?

• 1:37:12Jonathan Cohen?

  What I have noticed though is that it's, I feel like it's impacting my voice a little bit. I heard that singers don't consume coffee because it impacts their vocal cords.

• 1:37:22Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, it does.

• 1:37:23Jonathan Cohen?

  What does it do to the vocal cords?

• 1:37:24Mayim Bialik?

  Um.

• 1:37:26Jonathan Cohen?

  I mean, I'm basically singing while talking. This is what I try to do for everyone.

• 1:37:29Mayim Bialik?

  I only hear singing when you open your, when you open your mouth.

• 1:37:32Jonathan Cohen?

  That's with my intent, that's my intention.

• 1:37:35Mayim Bialik?

  It's a, well, it, so coffee is dehydrating. I know that and it is a diuretic, as we talked about. It dehydrates the vocal cords. One of the things that, that happens, you know, when you have a weak voice or losing your voice is actually that you're dehydrated, just like water. So yeah, anything that's a diuretic, soda, those are things that make the body, you know, kind of lose water. Coffee contributes to acid reflux, which can irritate the vocal cords. And that is something that might happen in, in shorter time. And a lot of people may not realize that they're having acid reflux because it may not feel like acid reflux, like on the commercials.

• 1:38:17Mayim Bialik?

  But one of the symptoms is an irritation of vocal cords because it's literally coming back up.

• 1:38:23Jonathan Cohen?

  That I don't feel, maybe, yeah, I don't think that's my thing. But interesting to know, and like so many of these other micronutrients that we're talking about, there's a cause and effect that we're not really aware of. And what I love about these types of conversations and the work that she does, as well as so many others in the space and some of that we've, some that we've had on, it's looking at, oh, wait a second. That health issue that you're having may be related to something way upstream.

• 1:38:54Mayim Bialik?

  Fascinating.

• 1:38:55Jonathan Cohen?

  I've caught myself in some podcasts being like clearing my throat and like having it catchy. And I'm like, oh, I wonder if my coffee consumption beforehand had an impact? Should I be adding water to the mix?

• 1:39:06Mayim Bialik?

  No, no.

• 1:39:07Jonathan Cohen?

  Meaning not in the coffee, but beforehand?

• 1:39:10Mayim Bialik?

  I think that it doesn't, it's not like that. It's not like I drink my coffee, my cord just get affected. It's more about the whole body.

• 1:39:17Jonathan Cohen?

  Overall.

• 1:39:17Mayim Bialik?

  You know, a lot of people usually, we can talk about it here. We talk about everything. A lot of people use coffee to poop. So when you poop, you're losing water, like that's, it's a diuretic.

• 1:39:26Jonathan Cohen?

  But you're not suggesting not to poop because that would be very bad for you.

• 1:39:28Mayim Bialik?

  No, but same thing with cigarette smoke. It's going to be a diuretic. That's going to irritate your vocal cords in a way that caffeine will not.

• 1:39:36Jonathan Cohen?

  But she was saying two, like, the other thing that is, I think, important to differentiate is two to three to four cups is not necessarily like a cup like this that we're holding up. Like three of these are, that's not a cup. Most coffees are like 12 to 16 ounces.

• 1:39:56Mayim Bialik?

  Well, most of that's milk and whipped cream.

• 1:39:58Jonathan Cohen?

  No, but I'm saying just if you're having, if you're going to get like a black coffee.

• 1:40:02Mayim Bialik?

  I can't even have that kind of dairy, but that's, if I were drinking coffee, that's what I would want. I would make it taste like so much like caramel and I'd want so much, I'd be like double whipped cream. I'll pay an extra $2.

• 1:40:15Jonathan Cohen?

  That's why they don't let you in Starbucks.

• 1:40:17Mayim Bialik?

  That's why I don't drink coffee. That's what I would do to it.

• 1:40:19Jonathan Cohen?

  Did you ever drink coffee?

• 1:40:20Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, like in my, you know, in my coffee house days, like in the, you know, early 90s.

• 1:40:27Jonathan Cohen?

  With your French hat.

• 1:40:29Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I mean, I graduated high school in 93. It was like the height of like, you know, Seattle culture, grunge culture.

• 1:40:36Jonathan Cohen?

  You're wearing your Doc Martens and your plaid shirt around your waist with your dark makeup?

• 1:40:41Mayim Bialik?

  Yes. It was definitely, um, it was definitely an era of hanging out at coffee shops.

• 1:40:47Jonathan Cohen?

  And what would you do? You would just like sip it, not really drink it? Or did you like it at that?

• 1:40:52Mayim Bialik?

  Even at that time, I think I was eating dairy, but it never occurred to me. My parents would drink coffee and my mom would put a lot of like milk in it. Like I knew how to, someone once said to me, it's not a normal thing. I knew how to make each of my parents' favorite iced coffee. Like that was a thing, like in the afternoon in the summer. I would be like, okay, he wants this much milk, so it's this color and she wants this one. It was like preparing their martini, but it was their iced coffee. So I, I had tasted it and it just tasted like sugar. So I drank it black, but like it never tasted great. I never really felt the effect. But I know that if I drink too much caffeine, I just get shaky and jittery. Also, when I speak, you animate like you're my stage mom and I think it's an act of devotion. But a lot of times I'll be talking to you and it's like we're on Dance Moms.

• 1:41:39Mayim Bialik?

  I'm your favorite dance child.

• 1:41:41Jonathan Cohen?

  What do I do?

• 1:41:42Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, well, say a sentence and I'll show you what you do.

• 1:41:44Jonathan Cohen?

  So when you were drinking.

• 1:41:48Mayim Bialik?

  It's, I think we're enmeshed and are you codependent would be an episode that Jonathan should review.

• 1:41:53Jonathan Cohen?

  Interesting. I don't have a good listening face.

• 1:41:57Mayim Bialik?

  You did very well today. You were very engaged with, um, with Dr. Rhonda. You clearly have been up on all of these topics. One of the things that I, um, appreciated that echoed another episode of ours that people liked a lot. Dr. William Lee, the way that he helps you design your eating really reminded me of the way that Dr. Patrick talks about it. The notion of what if instead of being like, what's available or like what's convenient? You were like, I need to plan meals that check these boxes off so that I'm getting all the proper categories of nutrients in food. How do I plan my meal? And then low and behold, there wouldn't be a lot of room for, you know, kind of the, the filler that a lot of us want because it tastes so good.

• 1:42:41Jonathan Cohen?

  I was taking notes during this podcast like I do sometimes and

• 1:42:47Jonathan Cohen?

  what I was kind of shocked about, and this is not even a, you know, detailed list fully. 90% of people are missing this. 87% of people are deficient in this. 50 to 60% don't have enough of this. Like there's an epidemic of pre-clinical health issues that are happening, that are just waiting below the surface.

• 1:43:10Mayim Bialik?

  Well, I mean, in many cases they're not below the surface. The general, like the message that I got is we're not generally eating an appropriate amount of different nutrients. We're not living in an environment, both like literally the environment in terms of sun exposure and all these things. And also the sort of social environment to support the systems that our body naturally is made, you know, to operate with. So when we think about, you know, what, what the human experience was like a thousand years ago. What it was like 10,000 years ago and what it was like 100,000 years ago, right? We're in a very different state of nature right now and the things that have changed in our culture and in our way of living,

• 1:43:53Mayim Bialik?

  they're cumulative and they are cumulatively deleterious in many cases. Also, people used to live until they were 30, maybe 40. So what is it?

• 1:44:01Jonathan Cohen?

  We've been out of that for a little bit now.

• 1:44:04Mayim Bialik?

  We've been out of that for a little bit, but if you look at the length of time that Homo sapiens sapiens have existed, it's, it's not, I mean, I know it's not as important to you to think about those people, but you know, there, there was a lot of time when, you know, people were, and granted they were likely deficient in things. And we know that from a lot of the really interesting, you know, physical anthropology studies and things like that. But, um, but, but yeah, in the sort of state that we're living in now, you know, it's been, it's been a rough go. It's really been a rough go and it's been a rough century in many ways. And there have been so many advances. But as, as we talked about, a lot of those advances have turned out to be, you know, not necessarily in our best interest, right? Microwave and plastic to heat things up is very, very efficient and it's a fast way to do things.

• 1:44:48Mayim Bialik?

  But we now know that like, if we can use glass, we really should be, right? Like for real.

• 1:44:54Jonathan Cohen?

  There's also a lot of positive and very practical steps that people can take. Like it's not that difficult to get a multivitamin. It's not cost prohibitive. Getting the right multivitamin, making sure that you have a fish oil, um, just how.

• 1:45:09Mayim Bialik?

  Or an algae oil.

• 1:45:10Jonathan Cohen?

  Or an algae oil. Just how impactful that can be as an antioxidant, uh, to help us repair some of that oxidative stress that's coming into our body. Um, because we're getting exposed all the time. And the other thing I thought was really interesting is the idea of an anti-inflammatory response. We talk about it physically here, but also emotionally, like there's a parallel. Meaning you can't eliminate all the stress that you're going to experience, both on a physical level and on a psychological level. So how on a psychological level do we use some of the tools that we talk about on this podcast? Framing, regulation, knowing what's in our control, what isn't.

• 1:45:52Jonathan Cohen?

  And then also how do we make sure that on a physiological level, we're getting the support we need? So that when the stress does arise, our body's able to metabolize it. Talk a little bit more about the mind-body connection that was unpacked here.

• 1:46:05Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah. I mean, that's like, it's something I feel like I've heard before, but the way that she talked about it made so much sense to me. And I just couldn't help but thinking like all the things that we go to the doctor for. And they don't know to look for these things, or there's not money to look for these things, or there's not time for look for these things. So I really appreciate, you know, her kind of like filling us in on like, here are some things you can try before you have to try, fill in the blank, right? Before you are put on a medication that you actually may not need. And I don't want to say that people shouldn't go on antidepressants. Like if you need an antidepressant, by all means, if you want to go on an antidepressant. But what if what you're dealing with is actually inflammation? And you've been given a diagnosis that's constitutional, right?

• 1:46:46Mayim Bialik?

  Your body doesn't produce enough serotonin, right? Like that's a very different story. And, you know, then you're dealing with like side effects of those medications. Or you just end up on an SSRI and you're like, I'm just going to be on this forever. When maybe what's going on is like, A, some of the foods you're eating may be causing inflammation, like gut-brain connection. You may be like having a brain on fire is what I call it. Or what if some supplements could fill in some of those gaps to help reduce inflammation? Which is a normal thing that happens, like there's inflammation, but like, what if you just don't have enough stuff? Like what if you're literally going on a diagnosis that might not even be appropriate for what you're experiencing?

• 1:47:27Jonathan Cohen?

  You may be going to the doctor thinking that you have depression with all the clinical symptoms of depression. But really what might be happening is you may not have enough fish oils, you may not have enough vitamin E in order to have an anti-inflammatory response. So your body is having a physiological response. And sure, you could go back and do psychotherapy and we're a big proponents of therapy here to understand your patterns.

• 1:47:52Mayim Bialik?

  No, but you might just need a supplement of some stuff that you can get at the supermarket.

• 1:47:56Jonathan Cohen?

  You may have had a nutrient deficiency, a micronutrient deficiency that is preventing your body from being able to regulate itself.

• 1:48:04Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and I'm really, you know, grateful for, for people like Dr. Rhonda and, um, you know, and the Hubermans and the Atias and Dr. Lee. Like the people who are bringing this more into our consciousness, because there is more of it that's in our control, you know? And it can be very disempowering, you know, to be put on a medication and think that there's something wrong with you when there actually may be more to the story. So we're, again, we're not advocating for people throwing out your SSRIs, but also finding out more information or trying things in addition to what you're doing. Because maybe it's not just about you're not meditating right, you're not exercising enough, you're not, you know, in a job that brings you the ultimate joy that it could.

• 1:48:43Jonathan Cohen?

  It's top-down, bottom-up. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. But if we had to summarize, it's top-down, bottom-up, right? Top-down being let's analyze how you think, what your thought processes, how you're making meaning of the world, what your past history is, your emotional complexity, your upbringing, bottom-up. Do you have the basic physiological building blocks? And that's actually a nice parallel, you know, on the podcast, we talk a lot about emotional health. We look at extrasensory ability. We explore the edges of what's possible, where science and spirituality meet. And then we have a podcast like this because we're all in physical form. We have these bodies. We can't have spiritual experience without still being alive in the vessels that we have come here in.

• 1:49:28Jonathan Cohen?

  And so how do we take care of these bodies that we have in order to continue the human experience that we're all having? Bottom-up, how do we, how do we make sure that we're getting what we need?

• 1:49:38Mayim Bialik?

  One of the articles that, um, she published with Dr. Ames, who she mentioned, was an article about vitamin D hormone regulation and serotonin synthesis. And the high rates of autism in boys and a differential distribution of vitamin D and serotonin in boys that might account for the increased diagnosis in autism for boys. Very interesting paper. So she does so much like deep, deep, um, work, but we're so grateful that, um, that she talked to us about all of these things. And also some fun stuff today. So, um, yeah, check out her website, check out, um, yeah, especially those guides that she talked about. They're really, really cool.

• 1:50:16Jonathan Cohen?

  Mayim, if people don't know what Substack is, tell them what Substack is.

• 1:50:22Mayim Bialik?

  Well, Substack is a, a platform that, um, our podcast exists on, where we have, um, uh, more, more in-depth conversations in many cases about the things that we talk about on the podcast. And Substack is also a place where we can communicate directly with our breakers and also share content that we've never shared anywhere else, that we've been kind of saving up to share with a more select audience of people that we know want that, uh, content. And so it exists over on Substack.

• 1:50:53Jonathan Cohen?

  That is very well explained. A lot of people ask, what is Substack? It is a platform. They have an app, they have a website, you create an account, you join and you follow us there.

• 1:51:03Mayim Bialik?

  And not look at what you don't want. And yeah.

• 1:51:05Jonathan Cohen?

  There's a lot of things on Substack, but you can follow us, the podcast, the breakdown community, the breaker community. We have exclusive content there, never before released, not seen anywhere else. Mayim and I do lives. If you love what you're hearing here, please come over, join us. Considered becoming a paid member, but there's also a free membership.

• 1:51:25Mayim Bialik?

  And also, um, I've gotten back to writing. So I do writing that is on Mayim B. Alex Breakdown, um, Substack. And Jonathan does writing on his Substack page, which is Jonathan Cohen. I do have a Substack, but I write from the Mayim B. Alex Breakdown podcast. So you can also see writing, which is usually, um, things elaborating on things we've talked about here. And also just general writing that otherwise I'd be blogging about or submitting to other publications. We now have a place where all of that lives. So head on over.

• 1:51:51Jonathan Cohen?

  The larger takeaway is Google Substack. Put it into Google, go to substack.com, search for Mayim B. Alex Breakdown and follow us there. We are so excited to continue to build the breakdown community.

• 1:52:03Mayim Bialik?

  We'll see you over there and from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.