The Longevity Playbook with Rhonda Patrick

How do you live longer and better? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly sit down with biomedical scientist Rhonda Patrick to explore healthspan, fad diets, and how to exercise for longevity.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forest, ocean research and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from explorers, scientists and conservation leaders whose work addresses research biodiversity and conservation challenges around the world. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, research and initiatives relating to environmental change. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:45Speaker 00

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• 1:14Speaker 01

  Gary, however long I thought I was gonna live, now I know I'm gonna live longer. Following this advice about health, physiology, what you eat, how to exercise, what it's gonna do to your brain.

• 1:23Speaker 00

  What supplements to take, what your diet should be, and none of that matters if you have kids.

• 1:29Gary O'Reilly?

  And inflammation is good for you.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Find out why, coming right up, StarTalk Special Edition. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Special Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and if it's special edition, it means I got in the house Gary Reilly. Hey Gary.

• 2:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey Neil.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Former soccer pro.

• 2:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Soccer announcer. And we, you're taking this, and the crowds cheer.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  I was just, you know, making them feel at home.

• 2:10Gary O'Reilly?

  That memory lane.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  He's just a little. He's the only guy that's used, in the room that's used to that.

• 2:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Maybe not so much applause, maybe abuse. If you wanna throw some abuse, I'll feel more comfortable.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  And we got Chuck Nice, the Lord of Nice.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  What's happening?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  All right, so Gary.

• 2:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  We're talking about living forever today.

• 2:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, do that.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't wanna do that.

• 2:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Spoiler, the show might take a while.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  Very nice, well done.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  So what do you have for us?

• 2:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, we've kinda talked about, as you've just alluded to, living forever, and we kinda hovered over it.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  I didn't just allude to it, I said it.

• 2:43Gary O'Reilly?

  No, I know, so we've kinda touched on that from time to time, and that means increasing your lifespan.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  First you gotta get a billion dollars, remember? That's rule one.

• 2:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  First you get a billion dollars, then you wanna live forever.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Funny how that works.

• 2:58Gary O'Reilly?

  So as you can spend it.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 3:01Gary O'Reilly?

  But there's a new kid in town.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 3:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Health span.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  Health span.

• 3:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes. So, today we're going to learn what will and will not stretch out your healthy years.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  I like that.

• 3:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Right, so I'm gonna leave it hanging just there, so Neil, if you would introduce our guest.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. We have Dr. Rhonda Patrick. Rhonda, welcome to StarTalk.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  So excited to be here.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Excellent, and you came in from where this morning?

• 3:27Speaker 03

  California.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  California, all right. You are a PhD biomedical scientist. What was your PhD topic or subject?

• 3:38Speaker 03

  Cancer metabolism.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  How cancer cells hijack our metabolism. They hijack everything.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, oh my gosh.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  Actually, too bad we're not made of cancer. We would live forever.

• 3:51Gary O'Reilly?

  That's a weird thought.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, or if we're some virus, or virus that just hijacks whatever and just keep going.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  I mean, it's true, these cancer cells can be immortal until they take down the host that is hosting them.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they can't be too effective, otherwise they kill their host.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Right, so they wanna keep you going.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  So they get, take, just.

• 4:13Speaker 00

  That's the kinda cancer I want.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  But if they're in a Petri dish, they'll just keep going and going and going.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  And that's something.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  So you are founder and CEO of Found My Fitness.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  Ooh. Yeah, it's a podcast, a YouTube channel, it's something I started in my postdoc, actually, when I was doing my postdoc with Dr. Bruce Ames on nutrition.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Where was that?

• 4:35Speaker 03

  UC Berkeley.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  UC Berkeley, okay.

• 4:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  And so that focuses on longevity, I love it, and let us guess the name of her podcast?

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Found My Fitness.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  And right now, you're a member of the Fatty Acid Research Institute?

• 4:54Speaker 00

  So am I. Oh no, I'm just the fatty part, I'm sorry.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  No, you're just the fatty ass part.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  I'm just the fatty ass. You beat me to it, damn it.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  And from what I've read, it reminds me of when NASA allocated money, it had an origins program, realizing that origins required a multidisciplinary approach. The origins of life, origins of planets, origins of stars, and it had a funding umbrella that brought people together, so there wasn't one spot.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  That's exactly right, so people from all different types of fields, whether it's cardiology, neurology, aging, come together and they research fatty acids because they're involved in all these biological processes. And so I'm involved in several different projects, involved in brain health, neurodegeneration, but also in aging, so, and there's other people that are looking at how fatty acids affect the heart, so it's, that's a great acknowledging, and really, it's wonderful to get.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  It was very successful, too, oh my gosh, a lot of research papers came out, and the collaborations between people that are otherwise stovepiped, there's whole new ways of thinking that I wouldn't have thought of, and you wouldn't have thought of, we get together and we have a new understanding.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Exactly, it takes the tunnel vision away.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  You know, it's, I think it's one of the best approaches to science in general.

• 6:08Gary O'Reilly?

  It's a group think.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, no, group think is not always a good thing. No, it's a.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  In this case, there's a group of people thinking.

• 6:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Thinking in a positive direction.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Thank you, group think is something else. So, we have so much we wanna get to here, diet, weight training, exercise, all of this, but let's just start out, what the hell is a fatty acid?

• 6:30Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, fatty acids are, you know, chains of carbon molecules.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Isn't everything at the end of the day?

• 6:38Speaker 03

  Right, it really is, and there's many different types of them, right? And I think some of the most important ones for what we're talking about today, health span, happen to be the omega-3 fatty acids.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  And you hear it all the time. That you have to get your omega-3 fatty acids, don't confuse them with omega-6, cuz it's totally different.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  It's twice as much. I'm just doing the math here, I'm sorry. Wait, so omega-3, we've all heard of this in fish oils and this sort of thing, is that correct?

• 7:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's three types of omega-3, two of them, DHA and EPA, are from marine sources, seafood, you know, like fish, fish oil would be another way to get them, and then there's the plant version, which is ALA. That is something that doesn't have as important of a role in terms of cardiovascular health and also brain health. And that's because the EPA and DHA from the marine sources of fatty acids are, they're found in all of our cell membranes, so they're really important for the way our cells are, the flexibility of them, so without them, our cells get stiffer, which you don't want, for example, in your cardiovascular system, in your vascular system in general, or in your brain.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  So the cell shell is like a fatty, like shell, right? Membrane, and that's why viruses are broken down by soap, right? They say wash your hand, cuz the soap breaks down the fat, and that's how it destroys the.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, like free fatty acids can act more like a detergent, too, but omega, the omega-3s are bound to a triglyceride backbone. So they're a little bit different, but yeah, that's like one way of thinking about it.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  But broadly, that's hence the effectiveness of soap.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Cuz it cuts fat.

• 8:19Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, does that mean that there's a particular challenge of vegetarians, non pescatarian vegetarians, who need access to this and they're not otherwise getting it by eating kale?

• 8:31Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, so a lot of.

• 8:33Gary O'Reilly?

  You're listening for kale, haven't you?

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Lots of vitamins in kale, magnesium, vitamin K, folate, yes, on and on, but yes, because a lot of vegetarians and vegans think ALA is a good substitute for EPA and DHA, which it is not, so ALA is found in plant foods like chia seeds, flax seeds, walnuts, all the foods that the vegans are eating.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  When I grew up, chia was that stuff you put in the thing and it would grow?

• 8:56Speaker 00

  It would grow.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Did you get a chia pad?

• 8:58Speaker 00

  And it always made an afro, and I'm like, come on.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  That's true, it was a green afro.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was a green afro.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  So.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  Never anything but an afro, even the sheep, they had a chia sheep, and it was just a sheep with an afro. I'm like.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  Well nowadays, if you go to any health food store, chia seeds are in your overnight oats, so you'll find them there.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 9:16Speaker 00

  So, quick, is it true you have to soak the chia seeds first, because I've been eating chia seeds forever, and am I eating them wrong?

• 9:21Speaker 03

  You don't have to soak them.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Thank God.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay. Health span, so live for however many years and extend that, plus XXX, but health span, when you say health span, it includes what in particular?

• 9:36Speaker 03

  It really, health span is different than lifespan, which is how many years you're gonna live until you die, right? Health span is really referring to being able to maintain your physical capacity, physical independence, and be free from diseases during those years that you are alive. So essentially, you wanna lower your risk from getting age-related diseases, cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, things are gonna lower the quality of your life. And honestly, that ends up giving you a couple of extra years as well, so it's like, it's not like, oh, you're not gonna live longer, you're gonna live a little bit longer as well, but you're also gonna live better.

• 10:11Gary O'Reilly?

  So that's mind and body, not just body?

• 10:13Speaker 03

  That's right, you're gonna have, you're gonna be free from dementia, neurodegenerative disease, Parkinson's disease, because you can have these diseases and keep living, but it's not a good quality of life for you or for your family and friends.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Right, yeah, your caretakers, cuz they suffer along with you.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  Probably more.

• 10:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, as a guy at the gym, I call him Old Man Dan, and I thought Old Man Dan was in his seventies. Old Man Dan is 83 years old, and he's at the gym every day.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Why you calling him Old Man Dan?

• 10:41Speaker 00

  Cuz he's 83.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Sorry, Dan. I don't know if he watches.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Okay, so that means there's a list of things that whose risk factors you want to reduce. So that when you die, you're not dying of anything.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  You're dying of old age.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Old age, old age. And I used to track. I used to read the obituaries.

• 11:06Gary O'Reilly?

  See if you were in there.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  It's a good day. I'm not there yet.

• 11:12Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm not there.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  And the New York Times, I forgot when this happened. Was it in the 90s? Where they would give the cause of death for everyone there. Whereas prior to that, if you were like over 70, you just died. You just, you were old and you died. I was not only intrigued, but heartened by this fact. That we're gonna find out why you died. It's not just old age and we don't know anything about it. So if all the reasons you might die are diminished or go away entirely, then you simply actually do die of old age.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  So let's take that and kind of reverse it. Let's say you actually die of something. What are like the most common somethings that you're going to die of?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  And, and I've had people run up to me and said, oh, the environment is terrible. More people dying of cancer than ever before. And I said, people are living longer than ever before. Now have the opportunity to die of cancer. There's a whole swath of people that would have died of heart attacks and other, and strokes and other things that we've kind of have a handle on. And so at some point in this conversation, I want you to address the ability of the public to grasp relevant statistics to your field.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a great point that you bring up, Neil. So to answer your question, Chuck, first, what are people mostly dying of? We have those statistics and the number one killer in the United States and most developed countries is cardiovascular disease, right?

• 12:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Heart disease.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Hamburgers.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, hamburgers and being sedentary. Smoking, by the way. Smoking is one of the worst things you can do for your cardiovascular health. Have you been to Europe?

• 12:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, I got back yesterday.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Anytime Chuck imitates a French person?

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Of course it is.

• 13:05Gary O'Reilly?

  We were in Portugal.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Very people don't know that we start their cigarettes first. They are delicious.

• 13:12Gary O'Reilly?

  We were in Portugal and the amount of cigarette ends all over the sidewalk was surprising. Cause I'm not used to seeing it here.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  It's true. My son didn't know what cigarettes were when, until we took him to Europe for the first time and then we had to explain everything to him. But yeah, so people do still smoke and it is.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Just to be clear, your son is nine, not thirty.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  No.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  You didn't hide him in a box.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  No, this was many years ago. He was like five or something, you know? But of course you have to explain it once they're, once they see it. But to get back to the cardiovascular disease, it is the number one killer and it's probably like the most important thing to focus on is cardiovascular health. And there's a lot of lifestyle factors that affect that, including one we've already been talking about, omega three. And then one that old man Dan, you refer to him, and exercise is another one. Cancer is another major cause of death, respiratory disease as well. And then we get into like the neurodegenerative diseases like dementia and Alzheimer's. And you're right, if you're not going to have a heart attack, you're going to live longer and then you're going to have that increased chance of getting something like dementia and Alzheimer's disease, right?

• 14:16Speaker 01

  So as those numbers rise, that's not an indication. I mean, it could be, but it's not necessarily an indication that the environment is going to shit. Right? I mean, it's just simply you are older and these ailments correlate with age.

• 14:30Speaker 03

  I think that's a contributor. I don't know that it's, I think they're both, they can both exist at the same time. But yes, people are getting older, therefore they're getting more of these like late age related diseases. And then also we do have environmental factors like obesity. Air pollution, by the way, is now a big thing with Alzheimer's disease. There's like several studies coming out showing that. So there are environmental factors that are playing a role in some of these age related diseases as well. Cancer, colon cancer is really, for younger people, is on the rise.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  And it's getting younger and younger.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  We're eating a lot of ultra-processed foods and, you know, processed meats and things that are really bad for the gut.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  Back to kale.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Right, fiber. Fiber is very important for the gut.

• 15:19Speaker 00

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• 16:19Gary O'Reilly?

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• 17:04Gary O'Reilly?

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• 17:28Speaker 00

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• 18:00Speaker 01

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• 18:31Speaker 01

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• 18:47Speaker 01

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• 19:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Let's go back to the exercise element of this sort of diet and exercise scenario. Is there a right way to be exercising? Is it the weight training resistant? Is it cardio or is that high intensity interval training? Is it anything else? Is there a good way? Are there tips and tricks to do it right? I mean, in a broad stroke rather than for individual.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  I haven't slipped something in there. So for me, just as a first cut of who and what I am and what I do, I eat for taste and I exercise for health. I don't eat for health. So, why are you going like that?

• 19:41Speaker 00

  I'm just saying, that might be a mistake.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  We'll get to that, actually. I think you and I are in agreement, Chuck.

• 19:50Speaker 00

  That might be a mistake, man.

• 19:52Speaker 03

  They put us together for a reason.

• 19:54Gary O'Reilly?

  There's a huddle taking place over there.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  But I, too, was an athlete, not professional, but I spent two hours a day in the gym.

• 20:02Gary O'Reilly?

  That's long enough.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  For like 10 years.

• 20:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  And five days a week. But I was doing that to perform in a particular sport.

• 20:12Speaker 00

  At a level.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Right. And...

• 20:14Speaker 03

  So that was your goal. Your goal was to perform.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Correct, correct. It wasn't, let me just get a big bicep, or let me just get a, let me measure my V on...

• 20:22Speaker 03

  VO2 max.

• 20:22Gary O'Reilly?

  VO2 max.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  VO2 max. I wasn't that. I just, can I do this better? So, is there a difference between just being fit and actually exercising towards some goal? Where your body performs as a coherent thing, rather than just posing at the beach?

• 20:39Speaker 03

  Great question. So, I would say first and foremost, the type of exercise that is the best is the one that you're gonna do consistently. I wanna get, I wanna get that...

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Good answer.

• 20:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Good point.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Important answer.

• 20:50Speaker 03

  Right out the gate, because some exercise is better than no exercise, period, right? And if you're gonna start a habit and drop it after three months because you just don't enjoy it, you know, then that's not the great, good exercise for you to do. That said, let's actually get into some of the nitty gritty of what you asked, which is like, is there a best type of exercise for your health span, for longevity, right? And I would say that in the last couple of years, really important science has come out. There was a study that was published a couple of years ago in Nature Communications. And it was a study where researchers...

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Nature Communications is a branch of the British journal Nature?

• 21:26Speaker 03

  It is.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Yes, okay.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Yes. You know, this study, researchers empirically measured exercise. They put like an accelerometer on people's wrists, rather than these questionnaires asking you, how often did you exercise in the last week? And you're like, damn, I don't even remember what I had for breakfast. Like, I don't know. So, you know, there's definitely, I would say, trade-offs to those questionnaires. They're important. We get a lot of observational data and associations, but, so they measured how active people are by these accelerometers. And what they found was that our exercise, physical activity guidelines underestimated the importance of vigorous intensity exercise. Vigorous intensity exercise being something that's gonna get you a little breathless, something that's like jogging, or obviously running, or biking, or swimming, or playing

• 22:11Speaker 03

  football, or soccer as we call it, tennis, whatever, right? So the exercise guidelines, basically, from now until, you know, forever ago, it was vigorous intensity exercise is, you can do tw- you can do half the amount and get the same benefits.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Same benefits.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  So it's like, okay, the activity guidelines say...

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Half the amount in time.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  150 minutes to 300 minutes a week is the best for moderate intensity exercise. That would be brisk walking, for example. Or you could do 75 minutes to 150 of that vigorous.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  But you're jogging.

• 22:39Speaker 03

  Or jogging, yeah. And it's like, you're cutting it in half. And this two to one ratio, where it came from was, you burned twice as many calories doing vigorous exercise than walking. But that doesn't tell you anything about cardiovascular disease, or cancer, or type 2 diabetes, or this, diseases that we're trying to avoid or delay, as we're talking about, right? And so this study actually measured that, looked at those disease-specific outcomes, right? So you were talking about your, your goal, that was, you know, performance. The, the goal in this study was not die from cancer, not die from cardiovascular disease, not have a heart attack, right? What the study found was that for every minute of vigorous intensity exercise, you had to do four minutes of moderate intensity, so briskly walking, or an hour of gentle

• 23:21Speaker 03

  walking, light walking, to get the same reduction in all-cause mortality. So all non-axonal causes of death. For every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise, you had to do almost eight minutes of moderate intensity, or an hour and a half of light walking to get the same reduction in cardiovascular-related mortality.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Hour and a half?

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Hour and a half for every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  That's insane.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  It's insane. It gets more insane.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  I'm changing my routine.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  It gets more insane, Chuck. Do you want me to go there?

• 23:46Speaker 00

  Please, I wanna...

• 23:47Speaker 01

  I'm changing my routine today.

• 23:48Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  Let's get as crazy as we can.

• 23:50Speaker 03

  Let's do it, okay. Type 2 diabetes, that's another, you know, it's, it's quality of life degrades, and also accelerates cardiovascular disease and everything else, cancer. For every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise, you had to do almost 10 minutes of moderate intensity, and you had to do two hours of light walking to get the same reduction in, risk reduction in getting type 2 diabetes.

• 24:10Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  And then lastly, cancer, nobody wants cancer. We've all had someone that we've known that have died of cancer. It's terrible. The treatments are not easy. You wanna avoid it and prevent it as much as you can.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  So for every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise, you had to do close to four minutes of moderate intensity, and you had to do almost two and a half hours of light walking. Two and a half hours.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  In order to...

• 24:32Speaker 03

  To get the same risk reduction in, in cancer-related mortality.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  So, to be able to measure it at that level means you had, like, boatloads of data...

• 24:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  To, to land there, right? So how was this study conducted?

• 24:45Speaker 03

  Yes, there were several thousand people in this study.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  Were all wearing accelerometers.

• 24:51Speaker 00

  And that's the deal.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  They were followed for about seven years.

• 24:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Whoa!

• 24:55Speaker 01

  There it is. There it is.

• 24:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, that's data lunch.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  That's really where...

• 24:58Speaker 03

  And I'm waiting for the exercise...

• 25:01Speaker 01

  And I'm saying, wait a minute. Every sentence...

• 25:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, why are we not talking about this more, is what I'm wondering.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  That you utter is...

• 25:08Gary O'Reilly?

  That's why you're here.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  It's more and more people have to be behind those data.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  Yes. So, it's huge, and it, and it goes on. And that is like, other studies, also in nature journals as well, were also looking at accelerometer data, following people, but this time they were looking at, so how do you get that exercise? I mentioned things like jogging, or playing football, or tennis, or whatever, right? But there's other ways to get exercise, right? There's sprinting around with your grandkids, or your kids, or your new puppy.

• 25:39Speaker 00

  Playing in the park, right.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  Taking, you know, the stairs up to work, rather than the elevator, and not only taking the stairs, maybe sprinting up them, right?

• 25:45Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  There are other ways, that, these are called vigorous intermittent lifestyle activity, or VILPA.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  So, I heard that, you know, kids in a schoolyard, if you had adults do exactly what the kids in the schoolyard were doing, they would collapse from exhaustion. And I go to a schoolyard, the kids are always running after each other.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 26:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  And then nobody's walking anywhere.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  No, they take off running everywhere.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Running everywhere. And so, you say, if you chase after your toddler...

• 26:14Speaker 03

  Playing tag, chasing after your new puppy, whatever.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Wait, how come adults don't play tag?

• 26:19Speaker 00

  Cause we already know we're it.

• 26:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so let me, let me spool it back a little bit. We're gonna do this...

• 26:26Speaker 01

  But did she finish, did you finish?

• 26:27Speaker 03

  Well, I almost finished. So, the, the, these are like, short bursts of like, one to two minutes of vigorous activity. You can also do the structured type, these are called exercise snacks, where you get up and you do, my favorite, burpees for a minute, or bodyweight squats, or jumping jacks, or high knees, or fill-in-the-blank, whatever your favorite is. These studies have found that people that do these one to two-minute bursts, like, remember, they're measuring it, of physical activity, if they do them, like, three minutes, three times a day, so about nine minutes a day.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  That's nothing.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  Exactly. It's associated with a 40% reduction in cancer-related mortality, 40% reduction in all-cause mortality, and a 50% reduction in cardiovascular-related mortality.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  So I'm right, I exercise for health, so then I eat whatever the hell I want?

• 27:12Gary O'Reilly?

  No. Yeah, but yet, no. You're loading the scale.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  Well, I think the point I'm trying to make is that your, your body doesn't care if you're going to the gym and doing your two hours.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  Although you, we can talk about getting a little bit more out of that. The point is, is that I don't think people are realizing that those little moments, that they're doing these brief spurts of vigorous activity, count. And you should do them. You should take the stairs, you should play tag with your kids and grandkids, you should chase your puppy around, you should play tag with your friends, whatever. Do your exercise, you know, high knees, exercise snacks. They matter, and you, and like Neil said, we have nine minutes, we have 10 minutes a day.

• 27:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  We can do that. So, to bring it back to...

• 27:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Tell the mother with three kids who's holding down two jobs.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  No, exactly.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  She's already doing her snacks.

• 27:56Speaker 03

  She's doing it, she's, she's doing the snacks.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  She's doing them.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:59Speaker 00

  Her life is the snacks.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  The life is, yeah.

• 28:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that is exactly the point. We don't, our health doesn't need to be another full-time job. We can get major benefits with little, like, I would say, 20% of the effort, 80% of the benefit.

• 28:13Speaker 00

  If I may, I'm just gonna, tell me if I'm wrong, cause if I am, that's fine. But it sounds to me like what you're saying is that if you are intentional and mindful about your activity, and you seek to do it in a vigorous fashion, where you're, it's in a pointed way, that you're gonna be a lot more healthy. Like, hey, I'm, you know what?

• 28:37Speaker 01

  I think the word there is intensity.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  Intensity, yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  So it's like, hey, I'm going to work, I'm not gonna take the elevator.

• 28:43Speaker 03

  Or the cab, I'm gonna...

• 28:44Speaker 00

  I'm not gonna make the cab. Or, you know, I'm, I'm going up the stairs to get something, you know? Oh, I'm gonna actually go up the stairs, I'm not going to, one, two, three, four. I will alight the stairs, you know?

• 28:59Speaker 01

  All right, so I have a, related to that, this is exercise to reduce risk of disease, but exercising to just simply lose weight, it seems like a different goal than anything you just described. So, I used to row, and so, I have a machine that measures everything about every stroke, there's an indicator there. If I have a gentle rowing stroke, and I just do it for an hour, I can drop 300 calories, 400 calories. If I do it vigorously, and do it for less time, I'm not gonna burn that many calories. I'll have more fat than I otherwise would, but I'll be healthier with regard to disease. Did I characterize what you just said correctly?

• 29:40Speaker 03

  I, in a way, yeah. So, so if you're exercising for weight loss, it is totally different. And that is something that...

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Just to be clear.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  You do have to bring in the food component there. In fact, it's hard to exercise your way out of obesity. Yeah, it, like you mentioned, it takes a lot of effort to burn calories.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  And that was why the guidelines were set up that way, because they were all based on burning calories, right?

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Right, right, that, that's where we're coming from.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  That's where we're coming from.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Right, not on, in terms of reducing health risks.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  Well, your body doesn't wanna burn calories.

• 30:15Speaker 00

  Your body doesn't wanna burn calories, because it's, it's like, hey, we need this.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  You know what Neil Armstrong said?

• 30:20Speaker 00

  We, we need this, for when we gotta run away, or when we gotta catch some food.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  You know what Neil Armstrong said?

• 30:25Speaker 00

  What?

• 30:25Speaker 01

  He said, anytime I have the urge to go out and exercise, I lay down on the couch until that urge goes away.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  That's funny.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  That's Neil Armstrong.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  That's very funny.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  That's our boy.

• 30:48Speaker 00

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• 32:20Gary O'Reilly?

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• 34:39Speaker 04

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• 34:49Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm in the perfect world. You can do the perfect kind of exercise that you've just outlaid.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  Everyone can do it.

• 35:01Gary O'Reilly?

  But not everybody has the physical components that work as well. So now you get the bogeyman of inflammation. If I'm dynamic and I'm exercising, all of a sudden I'm popping my joints, they're giving me so much pain and their grief. How do I now overcome? So that's going to limit the sort of work that I can do.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Your physiology has to be able to accommodate.

• 35:22Gary O'Reilly?

  But then, how do I bring that inflammation down? Is this now a food thing? Is there other ways in which I can do this? Or I just have to know my own body to be able to work within?

• 35:32Speaker 01

  And it's America, we call them boogeymen, not bogeymen, just so you know.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  I knew what he was saying. The important thing here to understand is that exercise is one of the best ways you can actually counter inflammation. Because what's happening is you're having, you're putting a known controlled amount of stress on your body and it's a very controlled amount, right? It's going to be three minutes or it's going to be 10 minutes, whatever it is. And what happens is you're actually causing inflammation. You're causing your body to produce inflammation. And, and what happens is like IL-6 is the big one that's released. So your immune cells are releasing cytokines. It's how they're signaling to each other, right? And so that inflammation signaling causes a anti-inflammatory response. So your body adapts.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  That's one of the great, that's, that's how all the beneficial effects happen from exercise. You're causing stress, your body's like, whoa, wait a minute, this is like hard, I gotta deal with this stress.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  This is communication.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  It's communication and adaptations. And one of the big adaptations from exercise is an anti-inflammatory response, greater than any NSAID you're going to take. By the way.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  NSAID, spell that out.

• 36:39Speaker 03

  Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Good.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  And, and there's even studies showing that people that take NSAIDs before they exercise, it blunts some of those adaptations.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Well, you've primed your body already. You need inflammation. So it's hijacking what your body would have otherwise done, and then your body isn't trained to do that.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  Right. It's already, it's your body, you need the inflammation from the exercise to have the beneficial response and it's blunting that inflammation before it can reach and signal to the cells, right?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  That's a good word.

• 37:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. But your question was how, if you're not physically capable, you start where you can. So vigorous for you is going to be different from the person that's totally untrained, never played football, never played soccer. I don't know, I'm looking, I'm looking at Chuck, I'm thinking you're wrong. I think he hangs out the gym with.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  He does a gym thing.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  But you start where you can, you walk up the stairs. And for someone else, that's going to be, they're going to be breathless from just walking up the stairs. And guess what? Your body will adapt. The next time you walk up the stairs, it'll be a little easier and the next time even more. And then you can get to that point.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  It's not a month later, it's got to be within some timeframe.

• 37:44Speaker 03

  I mean, everyone's different and if they have the joint pain, you kind of have to push past it a little bit. That's the thing. It's like, don't be so scared of the little bit inflammation that you have. Because the anti-inflammatory effect from exercise is so profound. And a lot of people with like arthritis start to realize that, like osteoarthritis.

• 38:01Speaker 00

  My grandmother, great-grandmother had arthritis and the doctor told her, oh, you have to start walking. And she said, it hurts to walk. And he said, yes, but if you continue to walk, it will hurt a lot less.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  All right, let's bring food into this conversation. But I loved hearing everything you just said, because I'm an exercise guy when I do exercise.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  Aren't we all? When we do.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  When I'm exercising, I'm awesome exercising.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  Can I bring in one really important study? It'll be really quick.

• 38:34Speaker 00

  Please do.

• 38:35Speaker 03

  To get to your point, Neil, about training the two hours, two hours a day.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Well, that was when I was competing.

• 38:42Speaker 03

  Right. And that was your goal. But I am mentioning, mentioning the exercise snacks because they're so powerful in terms of like, hey, health doesn't have to be another full-time job. But for those people that are really trying to optimize everything, there's a study that was done by Dr. Ben Levine out of UT Southwest in Dallas. He's one of the world-leading exercise cardiologists, which is phenomenal. And he wanted to ask the question, can I reverse heart aging in middle-aged adults? So as we age, our hearts get smaller and they get stiffer and that plays a role in cardiovascular disease, that number one killer we've been talking about.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  So he, what he did was he wanted to, you know, basically answer this interesting question. He took 50-year-olds, middle-aged, who were essentially sedentary, they didn't exercise, they didn't go to the gym.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  She's talking about us.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  But they didn't have any other diseases besides being sedentary. In other words, I didn't, I call that a disease, but they, they didn't have any other diseases.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Couch potato.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  They're couch potatoes. And he put them to do two groups. One was an intensive exercising protocol group and the other was a sham control, thought they were getting the treatment. So the sham control, they were doing like a bunch of yoga exercises. By the way, yoga's great. I'm not like dissing it, but that was the placebo group. The treatment group, they ended up going on a pretty intense exercise program. It ended up being five hours a week. Started out progressive, like you're mentioning, these people don't exercise, you can't just make them do five hours right away. So over the course of the first six months out of the two-year study, they were doing progressive training, eventually landing at they were doing five hours a week. Largely, they were doing about 30 minutes, three times a week of jogging, they were doing high-intensity interval training.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  So this is like short burst of maybe 20 seconds to a minute of like intense sprinting or something, or biking, and then, you know, having a recovery and doing that twice, twice, twice a week. And then some, some resistance training. And after the two years, what was phenomenal about this study was he looked at the structure of their heart and structurally it reversed in aging by 20 years.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  It got bigger and more flexible and in so much of a way that their hearts looked like 32-year-olds.

• 40:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Because your heart's a muscle and you're developing like you would.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  You have a little really heart.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  And what's great about that study is it's showing it's never too late.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  It sounds like exercise matters here, but there is no end of food, dare I say, fads. Every other YouTube channel is eat this, don't eat that. This will be better for your health or your brain or your eyes or your gut. What is anyone to believe?

• 41:16Speaker 00

  Also, right now, there's a huge trend specifically aimed at foods that lower inflammation.

• 41:25Speaker 03

  Right. Foods that lower inflammation. Food in general, by the way, causes inflammation. And that's just, there's something called the postprandial inflammatory response. Do you ever notice after you eat a large meal, you feel sleepy? It's actually linked to the post-inflammatory, I mean, the postprandial inflammatory response. Because eating a big meal in particular causes your gut to kind of open up and inflammatory things like endotoxin leak out.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  So this is a Thanksgiving problem?

• 41:53Speaker 03

  This is a Thanksgiving problem or an over, or too big of a meal problem, right? Any really big meal. And what happens is when that inflammation activates your immune system, it pulls energy away from everything else because your body's like, I'm, there's a pathogen. I gotta fight it off or I'm gonna die. So it gets the energy, which causes you to get sleepy in addition to the cytokines that are being made. Anyways, right? You ever notice when you're sick, you're really sleepy. Your immune system is taking all the energy. It takes energy to be activated, right? So a big meal causes inflammation, but you talked about diet type. There are different foods that can cause more inflammation. Those have been studied in a variety of studies as well. Ultra processed foods, so foods that are high in fat, high in refined or added sugar.

• 42:35Speaker 00

  Sugar.

• 42:35Speaker 03

  Number one thing that's gonna, you know, cause inflammation in the gut. Therefore, it gets into your system and therefore inflammation, right?

• 42:43Speaker 00

  So that cinnamon bun every morning for breakfast is not doing it for me, huh?

• 42:47Speaker 03

  Not doing it. Same with the ice cream or the gelato. I mean, those, those, those things cause inflammation.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  So I love me some ice cream. You're gonna say it causes inflammation and I will say, okay, so what?

• 42:59Speaker 03

  Then do your air squats right after you eat it.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  Because then, then you're gonna cause the glucose to go up into your muscle.

• 43:06Speaker 00

  Cause you're using that simple sugar that you just put in your body.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Just use it right away because sugar is available immediately.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  So you want me to?

• 43:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Burn it.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Burn it.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  That's right. And there are studies showing that.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Use it or lose it, or use it or it becomes your fat.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Right.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 43:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Does that put sugar as public enemy number one or have we moved on from that?

• 43:23Speaker 03

  I mean, I think there's a lot of, it's, that's a very oversimplified way of looking at it.

• 43:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, I agree.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, because, you know, if you're a professional football player, sugar, guess what? Again, it going, it's going into your muscle because you're training so much, right?

• 43:36Speaker 01

  And it's energy in the moment.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  You see the wide receivers in football, they have a big thing of goo on the sidelines that they just and it's just straight up sugar.

• 43:47Gary O'Reilly?

  It's a finale consumption, yeah.

• 43:50Speaker 03

  And it goes into the muscle. I mean, I've run a marathon. I know it's disgusting. I feel like they're pushing goo on you when you're like running, they're on the sidelines giving you goo.

• 43:58Gary O'Reilly?

  So we've been talking about eating for your body's wellbeing. We've talked about eating for longevity in tandem with your exercise strategies. Are there genius foods out there or is that just a complete myth?

• 44:11Speaker 03

  I don't know that there's genius foods. I think the way to think about it is there are, you need essential vitamins and minerals and fatty acids and amino acids from your diet to run everything in your body. From your heart beats and blood flow to your brain and neurotransmitter. They're essential micronutrients. There's about 40 of them. You have to get them from your diet because your body can't make them. And so if you think about it like that, you can think about what foods you should be eating because it's going to make sure that everything's running properly. So for example, leafy greens, we're talking about kale.

• 44:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 03

  Kale is really high in magnesium. Magnesium is required, magnesium is found at the center of a chlorophyll molecule. Chlorophyll gives plants the green colors. So what's going on here with magnesium is it's required for 300 different enzymatic processes in the body. One of them is to make and use energy. Another one is to repair damage to your DNA.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  Which is happening all the time. If you don't repair damage correctly over decades, eventually you could get a mutation in a certain part of a gene that's gonna lead to cancer. Well, magnesium's needed to do that. 50% of the US population doesn't get adequate levels because we're not eating leafy greens.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 45:21Speaker 03

  So that would be what I would consider a really important food to eat. When it comes to other foods, so leafy greens are also high in vitamin K. And 35% of the population doesn't get enough of that. That's important for blood clotting.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  I'm old enough to remember when vitamin K showed up on the scene. But I think it's always been around, but they realized it had some value. What is this precise utility in our bodies?

• 45:44Speaker 03

  It's a co-factor. So vitamin K is a co-factor for proteins that coagulate our blood. So you need it for blood coagulation.

• 45:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  When you get enough vitamin K, K1 is what's found in plants, vitamin K1. When you get enough of it, it stays around in circulation and then it helps shuttle calcium out of your bloodstream and bring it to your bones and muscles. And 35% of the population's not getting enough vitamin K.

• 46:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Which is then a cardio benefit.

• 46:09Speaker 03

  Which is a problem for heart health and cardiovascular health. So, you know, the thing is, is that again, if you eat your leafy greens, you're gonna be able to get those foods. Also in kale is something called lutein. Lutein.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  It's through your eyes, right?

• 46:22Speaker 03

  It's exactly, it's a carotenoid. A lot of people know the carotenoid, beta carotene. Well, lutein is another one, very important for the rods and cones in your eyes.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  If it's beta carotene, you get that in carrots, I guess.

• 46:34Speaker 03

  That's right. Essentially, it's, it's a double bonds that are basically able to neutralize singlet oxygen. So singlet oxygen's coming in from like the sunlight damages your eyes, age-related macular degeneration.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  Is the free radical and then that actually counteracts.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  Neutralizes it, exactly. And it's found in kale.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  And macular degeneration, I mean, that's, you know.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Quality of life. I mean, you don't wanna lose your vision. But here's the other interesting thing is now researchers have found it's accumulating in the brain, lutein, which is weird because I'm like, there's no singlet oxygen getting into the brain, as far as I know. But it's accumulating in the brain and there's even been randomized controlled trials showing that supplementing with lutein can improve cognition, processing speed.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  That's your brain thing.

• 47:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, so that's eating for brain health.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  Eating for brain health.

• 47:17Gary O'Reilly?

  And then taking the age of the brain in regression, yeah, downwards.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Well, so what about that, remember a few years back? Some study showed, wait a minute, don't remove all the cholesterol from your life.

• 47:30Speaker 00

  Right, I remember that.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Because the brain is made of cholesterol or something. Could you back us?

• 47:35Speaker 00

  What is the proper cholesterol? I don't think the jury is, I don't think, I don't think anybody's definitively told us. Because it went from, don't have eggs, just have the whites. Now you gotta have the yolk, that's where all the vitamins are. Don't have, you know, any cholesterol at all. Hey, wait a minute, all plants are made of cholesterol. Like, it's crazy.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  That's how fatty it is.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Not fatty, faddy. Could it be that a study comes out? And in science, a single study is not what is true. Cause it must be verified to affirm that. Cause one study could have flaws and things and, but does the press go to that one study? And then they say, here's the new truth. When the science is still not resolved, but they never report that it's not resolved. They just give the science study because it's science.

• 48:24Speaker 03

  It's sensational.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  It's sensational. So then another study comes and buffers that. So is that what's happening here? Or is there just people just losing their minds?

• 48:34Speaker 03

  I think all of the above.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  All of the above. There's a lot of nuance in science, as obviously you know, Neil. And that is even more so in the case of nutrition because it's so complicated. And there's so individualized variation in terms of how we respond to foods. But to get to your question on cholesterol, we know that dietary cholesterol that we're consuming, like from eggs, doesn't really affect the cholesterol production in our body. What affects the cholesterol production in our body is saturated fat. Saturated fat provides the, I guess, the template for our bodies to make cholesterol.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Wait a minute, I can't eat lard anymore?

• 49:12Gary O'Reilly?

  No.

• 49:12Speaker 03

  I mean, so, yeah, and then it gets all nuanced there.

• 49:16Speaker 00

  Forget lard, you know, you like your nice steak.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  But lard has no protein, so.

• 49:21Speaker 03

  It has no food matrix.

• 49:22Speaker 00

  No food matrix, yeah.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  There was, there was a phenomenal study by Dariush Mozaffarian. He's at Tufts University. He runs the Food is Medicine Institute. He did this great study.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Food is medicine.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  Food is medicine institute.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 49:33Speaker 03

  The kale, the vitamins, I mean, this is, these are things that are important for our metabolism to run everything, right? He did this study comparing different food sources of saturated fat. So he did cheese versus butter. Both really high in saturated fat.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  Both can raise LDL cholesterol, but.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  And I eat the two of those all the time. Now go on.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  The difference is the cheese has the food matrix. It has the calcium, the protein, it's got the food matrix. Butter is processed. It takes away the food matrix.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  It's got no protein.

• 50:03Speaker 03

  It's got no protein. It's just fat.

• 50:05Speaker 00

  Just fat.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  And so when he did this.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  It's tasty fat.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Cheese is always better than butter.

• 50:09Speaker 03

  It is, that's right, at least for cardiovascular health.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  So if you wanna do it, then you get the soft cheese and pretend it's butter.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  Well, that's, yeah, I've seen people do that.

• 50:17Gary O'Reilly?

  I try to sell the cheese is better than butter to your cardio.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 50:20Speaker 03

  It is.

• 50:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Try and sell that to your cardio.

• 50:22Speaker 03

  It's, there's, there's.

• 50:23Gary O'Reilly?

  But how much? Just a little bit or?

• 50:25Speaker 03

  No, no, no, significant, yeah.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Cheese is food.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  It's got the food matrix. And that is also an important point here is that when we try to isolate some of these compounds and we take them away from the food matrix, our body is processing it differently. Think about glucose and fructose. Fruit versus sugar sweetened fruit, you know, juice, for example.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  The fruit has the food matrix because it has fiber and it has also nutritional value. Whereas the just syrup, it's just the sugar.

• 50:53Speaker 03

  It's completely different glucose response and your gut sees it differently and your blood glucose response is elevated without the delayed sort of digestion of it.

• 51:02Speaker 00

  So it tells your brain stuff to do that it shouldn't be doing and all kinds of stuff, like in your gut.

• 51:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:08Gary O'Reilly?

  So what about for our brain age, our brain well-being? Because dementia has become something horrendous. That's touched so many people and everyone around that person.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Like cancer, everyone knows someone with dementia and with Alzheimer's.

• 51:19Gary O'Reilly?

  How about aging, the brain age? How do we, what do we do? And what is the noise that we should be avoiding?

• 51:27Speaker 03

  Well, I have two important points that I want to make here because first, bringing it to the food. Because we've been talking about food. And omega-3 fatty acids, since we talked about that as well. And particularly from the marine sources, fish, fatty fish, like salmon. There are studies showing from-

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Love me some salmon.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  Who doesn't? You know, it's, it's high omega-3, low mercury, low contaminants, right? It's one of the best sources of omega-3.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Right, because the mercury you can get that from the swordfish. So these other large fish, where they eat other fish, they eat other fish. Like the swordfish, which I'd love, but I, I haven't had it in 10 years, just for that reason.

• 51:59Gary O'Reilly?

  For the mercury?

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:01Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's one of the fish that I avoid, like, for that reason.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  For that reason, okay.

• 52:06Speaker 03

  For that reason, yeah. So you can actually measure omega-3 fatty acid levels, which is much better than the food questionnaire. How much fish do you eat? You know, I'm not, I'm not saying questionnaires aren't useful, I'm just, we're scientists here and we know that it's better, better to empirically measure something than to try to have a recall. Right, so you can measure omega-3 by something called-

• 52:23Speaker 01

  There's a famous quote, "No science achieves maturity until it has established a system of measurement."

• 52:29Speaker 03

  Nice, and it's so true.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:32Speaker 00

  And right after that, I said, "Nanny, nanny, poo poo."

• 52:35Speaker 03

  So omega-3, the omega-3 index is a way to do that. And we know that people with a high omega-3 index, that would be 8% or higher, have a, like, 60% reduction in dementia and Alzheimer's disease risk than people with a lower omega-3 index, which is 4%. And this was by, by Dr. Bill Harris, who runs the Fatty Acid Research Institute. It was done on a Framingham cohort, so a very large cohort of people.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  So he runs it and that you're a part of that institute?

• 52:58Speaker 03

  I am a part of that institute. I was not a part of this particular study, but that's, that's one study. There's also been some randomized controlled trials as well. So omega-3s are important.

• 53:08Speaker 00

  What is the frequency? Because that, that's important. The frequency.

• 53:11Speaker 03

  Great question, so I mentioned-

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Frequency of what?

• 53:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Of consumption?

• 53:14Speaker 03

  Yes, I mentioned-

• 53:15Speaker 00

  It's great that the omega-3 fatty acids are beneficial.

• 53:19Gary O'Reilly?

  You have it once a year, once a month?

• 53:20Speaker 00

  How much do I need and how often should I have it?

• 53:23Speaker 03

  Well, the question is, how do you get the 8% omega-3 index? Because that's what they measured. And I think people should be measuring. When you go to your physician, you should ask, "I would like an omega-3 index test." And that just means I want to measure my omega-3 levels in my red blood cells.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 53:38Speaker 03

  It's a long-term marker of omega-3 because it takes red blood cells about 120 days to turn over. So it's not just reflecting your salmon you had, you know, a couple of months ago. That said, how do you get from a low index to a high one? It takes about 1.6 to 2 grams of omega-3 per day for, for a couple of months to get there. Yes, so-

• 53:58Speaker 00

  And are supplements-

• 53:59Speaker 03

  Supplements?

• 54:00Speaker 00

  Do they work?

• 54:00Speaker 03

  They do, they do. This, so the study that I'm quoting is from people mostly taking a supplement to get to that point, a visual supplement.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  What I do, if, if there's a day where I eat really badly, that's the day I'll take a vitamin supplement, for example.

• 54:15Speaker 03

  You should get your omega-3 index test and see if that's enough. Because maybe it's not, and you want to have that 8% omega-3 index. Because that, that's the data we have.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  So if I take it as supplement, then I don't have to have the salmon if it's expensive that week.

• 54:31Speaker 03

  Or if you don't like salmon.

• 54:32Speaker 00

  If you don't like salmon. All right, one last question, I'm sorry, because, I mean, this is, I think, important. The supplement itself, is there a specificity attached to it? Should it be a specific type of oil? Or like, should it be like, somebody crushed up a salmon, put it in a blender, or krill, or what?

• 54:53Speaker 03

  That sounds like the food I gave my son when he was one, but yes.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  Your son must hate you.

• 55:01Speaker 03

  Blended salmon and blueberries.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  Blended salmon, boy!

• 55:04Speaker 01

  There needs to be a book of children who grew up with nutritionist doctors. Or parents who do experiments, right? That's got, that's a whole nother, nother.

• 55:14Speaker 00

  All right, go ahead.

• 55:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the type of omega-3 fish oil supplement matters to some degree. If it's in triglyceride form, it's more bioavailable.

• 55:23Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 55:24Speaker 03

  So you're going to absorb more of it versus what was called ethyl ester form.

• 55:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Bioavailable.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Bioavailable.

• 55:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, I like that, yeah.

• 55:31Speaker 00

  It means you use it.

• 55:32Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, I get it.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  All right, okay.

• 55:34Speaker 03

  Krill oil is in phospholipid form, but it's, it's less concentrated. And it's, there's just less studied, so I, you know, I, not my fave. But you can try, just do the test to measure how it's affecting you.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  Get the test is the deal.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  But you just reminded me, Chuck, Neil's question early on, which I went on a tangent and didn't actually answer, which is the vegetarians and vegans, they need to get their omega-3, they should, from microalgae oil rather than flax oil, which is what a lot of vegans go to. Because microalgae oil is the source, the fish are eating the microalgae. That's how they're getting their omega-3.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  That's how they're getting their fatty acids.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  Go to the source.

• 56:09Speaker 00

  Go to the source.

• 56:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Which aisle of the supermarket is that in?

• 56:13Speaker 01

  The algae aisle.

• 56:14Speaker 03

  The supplement.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  It's right next to the Goya. At Whole Foods, the algae aisle.

• 56:20Speaker 00

  The algae aisle.

• 56:21Speaker 03

  The thing is, you might have to take a lot to get that 1.5 or 2 grams, because they're little tiny capsules, and so you have to take more of them. But there's, I do want to mention one more thing, because you mentioned the brain age. And it, and it gets to the point of supplements. Because we've all heard the headlines, multivitamins are not only not effective, they might even harm you, they're just, they're expensive urine, right? I mean, this is-

• 56:45Speaker 00

  Basically.

• 56:45Speaker 03

  Basically.

• 56:46Speaker 00

  What you don't use, you pee out, and if you, if you want a fancy colored urine, take a multivitamin.

• 56:52Speaker 03

  I mean, that's still true, yeah. Some of the riboflavin you will pee out, because it's water soluble and you just can't absorb that much. However, I'm here to say with confidence, I think that is wrong. I think that is wrong, and why do I think that is wrong? There have been now three very large randomized controlled trials with over 20,000 adults, older adults, so 65 years and older. They're called the COSMOs studies.

• 57:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, you should like that.

• 57:19Speaker 03

  I mean, unfortunately Carl Sagan was not involved in this study. But it's easy to remember, because it was the cocoa supplement and multivitamin supplement. There's a lot of different components to these trials, but the point is-

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Carl Sagan would be proud.

• 57:33Speaker 03

  COSMOs trials, easy to remember. Three of them gave older adults a standard multivitamin. So this actually was Centrum Silver.

• 57:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 57:41Speaker 03

  It was like, it had the, it had the minerals, the vitamins, it had lutein, we were talking about that for the brain.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Silver is for the older, senior citizens.

• 57:48Speaker 03

  That's right, so 65 and older, they were given that multivitamin for three years. Or they were given a placebo, if they were in the placebo group, right? After the three years, they did a battery of tests to measure brain aging, since you mentioned that, Gary. And what was found was that after the three years, those in the multivitamin group had slowed and reversed their global brain aging by two years. And they reversed their, what's called episodic brain aging by almost five years. It was 4.9 years, just by taking a simple multivitamin.

• 58:18Speaker 00

  And, and the other ones were like, "When, when are we getting the pudding?"

• 58:22Speaker 03

  But I do want to mention, within that same study, the multivitamin had no effect on reducing cardiovascular events or cancer, which is fine. It affected the brain, and we care about different things. And I think that's important, because it's, there's nothing easier than to take a standard multivitamin every day for us, for our parents, people's grandparents. I mean, it's, it's one of the easiest things that you can do that appears to really affect the way your brain is aging. And certainly, like, I think the evidence is pretty strong. You're talking about totality of evidence, not just one study. And, and we're talking about the gold standard here. We're talking about placebo-controlled trials.

• 58:58Speaker 00

  It sounds to me like what you're saying, in a general sense, is that when we consider our health, we have to consider ourselves as regions and then kind of address the different regions that we are. So your brain, you address one way, your heart, cardiovascular, you address another way, your overall health, another way, aging, another way. But not, I'm saying that you have this, "I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5", but you have to be cognizant of all those things in order to, to, to get your health.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  You do have to be aware-

• 59:31Speaker 00

  If you want to optimize.

• 59:32Speaker 03

  You have to be aware of all those things, for sure. But I do think an easier framework to think about it is, you know, why is the multivitamin affecting the brain? It's filling nutrient gaps we're not getting from our diet. We're not eating the right foods. Why is omega-3 fish oil supplement helping? Because again, we're not eating enough salmon. So if you think about, to bring it back to your guys' question earlier, like, there's so many food fads, and is it the ketogenic diet? Is it the carnivore? Is it the Mediterranean? Like, how do I eat? A, a good way to think about it, which reduces, I think, the complexity, is you want to just-

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  At the noise level.

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, you avoid the ultra-processed and processed foods as much as possible. And what is it? You're going to eat whole foods. You're going to eat fish, vegetables, fruits. You're going to eat these foods that are important. And you can fill the gaps with some supplements.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  It should be a grocery store with that name.

• 1:00:17Gary O'Reilly?

  I know.

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  Food is medicine.

• 1:00:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Food is medicine.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  No, no, Whole Foods.

• 1:00:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Whole, just eat the whole.

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  Well, listen, there's something called the Alternative Healthy Eating Index. And this is a, a collaboration with Brigham's Women Hospital and then Fred Hutchinson University. And they collaborated into this study looking at the healthy, healthy alternative eating index. And essentially, it's what I just said, but it makes it more complicated. You got to eat five servings of fruit and vegetables a day. So one serving would be like half a cup of blueberries or one cup of greens. You got to eat, you got to eat whole grains. If you're a woman, 75 grams of whole grains a day. If you're a man, 90 grams of whole grains. Whole grains being oats, quinoa, farro, you know, whole grain bread, whatever, your favorite whole grains. You have to eat about two servings of the fatty fish, like salmon, a week.

• 1:01:07Speaker 03

  Limit your red meat intake to about 12 to 18 ounces per week. Sodium intake, less than 1,500 milligrams per day.

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  Yay.

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  No sugar sweetened beverages, no processed meats. And, and less than one drink of alcohol per day. But so this is the.

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  I failed miserably.

• 1:01:25Speaker 03

  But again, if you, if you hear that, it's kind of like, okay, I'm avoiding the ultra-processed foods. It's kind of, it simplifies things. And this, what the study found was if people, starting in midlife, in their 50s, adopted that eating index, and they were in the top 40% of it. So they were actually really following it, right? And they had other lifestyle factors that were healthy. So they were not obese, they didn't smoke, they did the exercise guidelines and physical activity, and again, the alcohol consumption was less than once a day. Women extended their life expectancy by 15 years.

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 1:01:58Speaker 03

  So they went from living, they went, they went from living like 80 something to 93, 86 or something to, or 80, whatever 15 years is, yeah. 80 to 90, 93. And men ended up going from 76 to 83 or something like that. Yeah. The point is, is that it was easy to extend their lifespan and health span by just following these healthy things that we're talking about. Exercise, eating the right diet, not being obese, you know, and then.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  So it's food.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  Food and exercise as medicine.

• 1:02:29Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  Food and exercise as medicine. Now, we got to land this plane. So can we do like a lightning round?

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Okay. Among these fads that are out there that have a lot of adherence, the people that only eat raw meat, what's up with that? The face said it all. Okay.

• 1:02:44Gary O'Reilly?

  That's the, that's the, the people, the dark nutrition who eat roadkill.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:49Gary O'Reilly?

  It was a hillbilly diet.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  The hillbilly diet.

• 1:02:51Speaker 03

  You're not going to get your magnesium and, and other important.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  Okay. So there's that, then there's the keto diet.

• 1:02:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Um, I did keto and I lost a lot of weight doing it.

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. Ketogenic diets can be great for weight loss.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  These are low carb, low sugar.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  They can be high, high fat, low.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  High fat, high protein.

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  Uh, moderate protein, because high protein will kick you out of keto. But yeah, high fat, moderate protein, low carbohydrate. Those diets can be great for some people. They can lower, you know, type 2 diabetes risk, lower blood glucose levels, you can lose weight, because it's, it's, your body is going, shifting from burning carbohydrates to burning fat, right? But you can also, some people respond poorly in terms of having high LDL responses and their lipids can go up and their triglycerides can go up. Not everyone responds that way. So it's again, you have, if you're going to do a diet like that, you should probably make sure you're measuring something.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  So keto is.

• 1:03:42Speaker 03

  It's hard to do.

• 1:03:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's not sustainable. You're not going to do that for the rest of your life. So you still got to kind of think like, okay, when I stop doing this, what is going to be my diet?

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Chuck, this is a lightning round?

• 1:03:54Speaker 00

  Oh, sorry.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  So keto is short for ketosis, right? Because that's where your body doesn't burn the, the sugars, it burns the, the fat.

• 1:04:03Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  You're in ketosis.

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  You can do that by also fasting and exercise can kick you into ketosis as well.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  Yes, because you take out all of the sugar out of your bloodstream and you've got, your body's left with nothing to do.

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  But burn fat.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  But burn fat. And that's, is that the same thing as the caveman diet? Because before we had crops and things.

• 1:04:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, caveman paleo diet would be more avoiding the ultra-processed foods. You're eating whole foods.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Okay. It's just weird because cavemen didn't live very long. So that's not my first.

• 1:04:27Speaker 03

  They're probably dying from influenza and whatever, you know, viruses.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  So based on everything we've just described, we learned recently that there's been an inversion of the food pyramid that so many people grew up with, where grains are at the bottom, you eat a lot of that, and you work your way up. It's a little misleading because fats and meats and things were at the top. The top of the pyramid is smaller than the bottom, but it sounds like that's the most important, the top of the pyramid. That's where the I is and our money, right? It's at the top of the pyramid. So I, I always thought it was ambiguous at best, how to natively interpret that. But everything you just described says the opposite of what an inversion of that pyramid would be, where our baseline would be all these fatty meats and at the top would be

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  grains.

• 1:05:16Speaker 03

  The focus on protein was like a big focus of like the new food pyramid, and it was encouraged for people to get more protein. Protein is important as you age, muscle, muscle mass, right? But if you look at nutrition surveys, most people are actually getting over 0.8 grams, which I think is good. You want to have about 1.2 grams per kilogram body weight, which is on average what people are getting. Yeah. So the thing is, is that if we're looking at data, we're looking at studies, we're looking at studies that have looked at reducing all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, we're looking at extending life expectancy and health span, that's where we're talking about lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and fiber, which are good for the gut, definitely need to get your protein sources, but not from only red meat.

• 1:06:01Speaker 03

  So, you know, getting it from fish and poultry, a little bit of red meat. And then when that, where the, where the fats come in, again, I think it's like, getting your fat from cheese is great because you're getting calcium, right? Which is also very important as you're aging. And protein. And protein. That's right. It has the food matrix. But maybe not so much butter and ghee and, and whatever all the other ones are that are really high in saturated fat and, and they're processed and remove the food matrix. Again, it's, I think we need to look at the data.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Gee is clarified butter, right? So it can, it can go to higher temperatures if you're going to cook with it.

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. But so can avocado oil.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Indian food.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  Avocado oil is a monounsaturated fat.

• 1:06:38Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:06:39Speaker 03

  And it's really, it's better. I cook with olive oil, because olive oil, getting back to these superfoods.

• 1:06:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:06:45Speaker 03

  Olive oil, not only, it, it doesn't have a high smoke point, but researchers at the Fatty Acid Institute have measured this, that even when you heat olive oil, the metabolites that are generated, they're not detrimental. And in fact, you're still getting the polyphenols because they're not all killed. And so.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  Because there's some other oils, you heat it and it begins to smoke at a lower temperature. And you killed all of the, the value that it had for you.

• 1:07:06Speaker 03

  You don't actually kill all the value. That's the thing, especially if it's extra virgin olive oil. So that's.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm saying in other oils.

• 1:07:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Yes. You would lose that.

• 1:07:15Speaker 03

  Yes, you would lose that. Right. So avocado oil and olive oil, I think are great oils to cook with. And again, that's, you can, you can find studies where they're measuring cardiovascular health, they're measuring HDL function, and they're giving people olive oil or a control and it's improving it. So, you know, let's, going off the data is the most important thing, I think. And, and, and not just one study.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Wait a minute, you want people to follow research data?

• 1:07:40Speaker 00

  And what I want to know is, do you have a brain worm? Because if you don't have a brain worm, I'm sorry, you probably don't know what you're talking about.

• 1:07:49Speaker 03

  I definitely hope I don't have a brain worm.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Okay. So the, so the takeaway here is research matters, randomized trials matter, replicability matters, this is all published, people such as yourself, follow the recommendations of peer-reviewed, published research.

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  I think that's, wait, I think that's called science. Oh my God.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  I call it evidence-based.

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  So where do we find you? Where do we find you?

• 1:08:23Speaker 03

  I am, my podcast, Found My Fitness.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Found My Fitness.

• 1:08:27Speaker 03

  On, on YouTube, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Wherever you get your fine packs.

• 1:08:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. My website, foundmyfitness.com. I have a great newsletter that's free that we, I publish every week, a new, you know, study that is interesting and also important and evidence-based as well.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  Rhonda, thanks for coming to StarTalk.

• 1:08:47Speaker 03

  My pleasure, Neil.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  All the way from California.

• 1:08:49Speaker 03

  All the way, I know.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  And always good to have you guys.

• 1:08:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, pleasure.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  The anatomy of StarTalk's special edition.

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  Yay.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Neil deGrasse Tyson here, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.

• 1:09:15Speaker 05

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• 1:09:45Speaker 06

  From the original Free Second Opinion studio, here's Hugh Joitz.

• 1:09:50Speaker 07

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