#083 How Vitamin D, Omega-3s, & Exercise May Increase Longevity | Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Zone 2 Cardio Discussion

They're, you know, busy, or they have a habit, or there's, you know, other sorts of dysregulation, perhaps in satiety mechanisms.

"What are the low-hanging fruits that you can do right now to instantly reduce your risk of age-related disease? I'm Rhonda Patrick, and that's the topic of today's podcast. Originally recorded for the Institute for Functional Medicine, today's episode outlines a series of fundamental tactics you can start applying immediately. These straightforward strategies can have a powerful impact on nearly every tissue in the body. Enjoy this podcast episode previously recorded from the Institute for Functional Medicine's podcast, Pathways to Wellbeing. If you'd like more great tips, you can join my free email newsletter. If you have a question, consider joining my membership. We release great member-only series episodes, and I do Q&As every month. You can find those on my website at foundmyfitness.com. Welcome to the show, Dr. Patrick. Well, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here today and discuss all the very important topics that you just basically mentioned. Well, I think this is really exciting and there's a lot to unpack. So we'll just get right into it. And I thought it would be great for us to start with kind of a general contextual overview of how lifestyle changes can impact healthy aging, because I think it's so powerful that even bite-sized approachable lifestyle changes can potentially improve our health span and our wellbeing and even our cognitive and physical performance. So let's just dive right in. And in general, will you tell us some of your, your favorite go-to lifestyle-based longevity tips? Well, I think there's, you know, it's, it's important to consider low hanging fruit. So things that people, there's not a lot of resistance and barriers for people to start applying in their, in their daily lives. And I think when it comes to some of the easiest things that people can do, it usually comes down to, unfortunately, taking a pill. And so I know you might be going, what is she talking about? Well, you know, the micronutrient inadequacies, it's a widespread problem in the United States and other developed countries as well, where, you know, there's about 30 to 40 essential vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids that we have to get from our diet. And if we don't get them from our diet, we are going to be inadequate in them. And these essential micronutrients are doing very important things in our body from running our metabolism to making sure our enzymes, which are proteins inside of our cells that are basically doing all the work responsible for everything from pumping our blood to our immune function to neurotransmitter function. So basically everything, they require these, you know, micronutrients as cofactors. And, um, it's, it's definitely, I think safe to say that diet food first approach and getting, getting all your micronutrients from whole foods, eating diverse foods is paramount. However, um, many people it's for whatever reason, they will not do that. They're, you know, busy, or they have a habit, or there's, you know, other sorts of dysregulation, perhaps in satiety mechanisms. And, you know, so getting getting some micronutrients, like some of the important ones from a supplement, and these are, these are easy ones, vitamin D, vitamin D is an easy one. You know, that's something that we usually make in our skin from the sun. And about 70% of the U S population has inadequate vitamin D. And that's kind of defined as less than 30 nanograms per milliliter. If you're in the United States, if you're in Europe, you'd have to multiply that by 2.5. But 70% of the US population has levels below that. And there have been many different meta-analyses over the decades, dating back all the way to the 1960s, looking at vitamin D levels and all cause mortality. And it's, it's, you know, pretty clear that having levels above 30 is associated with a lower all cause mortality, all cause mortality. Other words, people are less likely to die from non-accidental causes of death, whether that's cardiovascular disease. Although I would say cardiovascular disease is probably the weakest with respect to vitamin D cancer, mortality is down respiratory diseases down. Those are two of the really big ones. Um, the big drivers with respect to lowering all cause mortality, but, um, so taking a vitamin D supplement is one of the easiest things to do. Why is widespread deficiency, you know, so common? Well, because we're inside in our cubicles and our offices at our, you know, with our technological advances, computers, everything, we don't spend as much time outside, you know, doing agriculture, doing, you know, the sort of outdoors kind of jobs that, you know, that were common a hundred years ago. So, so people are not making vitamin D from their skin. And on top of that, there are very, there are a variety of factors that actually, actually regulate whether or not we can make enough vitamin D in our skin and that, you know, from everything from age. So a 70 year old person makes 20, like literally 25% of what they made as their 20 year old self. So it's very inefficient as you get older skin color. So melanin, that pigment, that Thank you. 25% of what they made as their 20 year old self. So it's very inefficient as you get older skin color. So melanin, that pigment that basically acts as a natural sunscreen also is a, you know, filter for UVB radiation, which is actually what needs to basically penetrate through the skin to start vitamin D three synthesis in the skin. So because melanin is a, you know, is a natural sunscreen, sunscreen also does that. People wear a lot of sunscreen nowadays. So there's, there's many different reasons why people are not getting as much vitamin D in our modern day world. And vitamin D is one of the cheapest and easiest supplements to take. There have been studies that have basically tried to figure out like, how can you take a person who is deficient? So deficiency would be 20 nanograms per mill or less. And when you start to get less than 20 nanograms per milliliter, you start to go, you start to run the risk of, you know, bone problems and severe other types of severe problems, immune dysfunction, for example. people that are deficient and supplement with about 4,000 IUs per day can bring theirself up to a sufficient level closer, you know, above 30 nanograms per mil, perhaps even closer to 40. And 4,000 IUs per day is actually the tolerable upper intake set by the Institute of Medicine for vitamin D3. And I just want to mention, you know, vitamin D is unique among the vitamins because it's actually, it gets converted into a steroid hormone. So vitamin D3 goes to the liver. It's converted to another metabolite called 25-hydroxyvitamin D. That's the major circulating metabolite of vitamin D that's usually measured if you get a blood test. And then it goes to the kidneys where it's then converted into the steroid hormone. That's 125-hydroxy vitamin D. And what I mean by a steroid hormone, most people think about estrogen, testosterone, those are steroid hormones. Like imagine if 70% of the, you know, of men in the United States were deficient in testosterone, like they would be terrible. So, you know, vitamin D is, is basically very different because it basically can enter what's called the cell nucleus, the nucleus of a cell. And that is where all your DNA is. And it can basically recognize this little sequence of DNA. And it, it's, it basically, you know, binds to a receptor and, you know, you know, it binds to your DNA and turns genes on, activates them and turns other genes off and deactivates them in this like coordinated fashion. And these are genes that are important from everything from brain function."

Vitamin D Lamp Discussion

They're, you know, busy, or they have a habit, or there's, you know, other sorts of dysregulation, perhaps in satiety mechanisms.

"What are the low-hanging fruits that you can do right now to instantly reduce your risk of age-related disease? I'm Rhonda Patrick, and that's the topic of today's podcast. Originally recorded for the Institute for Functional Medicine, today's episode outlines a series of fundamental tactics you can start applying immediately. These straightforward strategies can have a powerful impact on nearly every tissue in the body. Enjoy this podcast episode previously recorded from the Institute for Functional Medicine's podcast, Pathways to Wellbeing. If you'd like more great tips, you can join my free email newsletter. If you have a question, consider joining my membership. We release great member-only series episodes, and I do Q&As every month. You can find those on my website at foundmyfitness.com. Welcome to the show, Dr. Patrick. Well, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here today and discuss all the very important topics that you just basically mentioned. Well, I think this is really exciting and there's a lot to unpack. So we'll just get right into it. And I thought it would be great for us to start with kind of a general contextual overview of how lifestyle changes can impact healthy aging, because I think it's so powerful that even bite-sized approachable lifestyle changes can potentially improve our health span and our wellbeing and even our cognitive and physical performance. So let's just dive right in. And in general, will you tell us some of your, your favorite go-to lifestyle-based longevity tips? Well, I think there's, you know, it's, it's important to consider low hanging fruit. So things that people, there's not a lot of resistance and barriers for people to start applying in their, in their daily lives. And I think when it comes to some of the easiest things that people can do, it usually comes down to, unfortunately, taking a pill. And so I know you might be going, what is she talking about? Well, you know, the micronutrient inadequacies, it's a widespread problem in the United States and other developed countries as well, where, you know, there's about 30 to 40 essential vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids that we have to get from our diet. And if we don't get them from our diet, we are going to be inadequate in them. And these essential micronutrients are doing very important things in our body from running our metabolism to making sure our enzymes, which are proteins inside of our cells that are basically doing all the work responsible for everything from pumping our blood to our immune function to neurotransmitter function. So basically everything, they require these, you know, micronutrients as cofactors. And, um, it's, it's definitely, I think safe to say that diet food first approach and getting, getting all your micronutrients from whole foods, eating diverse foods is paramount. However, um, many people it's for whatever reason, they will not do that. They're, you know, busy, or they have a habit, or there's, you know, other sorts of dysregulation, perhaps in satiety mechanisms. And, you know, so getting getting some micronutrients, like some of the important ones from a supplement, and these are, these are easy ones, vitamin D, vitamin D is an easy one. You know, that's something that we usually make in our skin from the sun. And about 70% of the U S population has inadequate vitamin D. And that's kind of defined as less than 30 nanograms per milliliter. If you're in the United States, if you're in Europe, you'd have to multiply that by 2.5. But 70% of the US population has levels below that. And there have been many different meta-analyses over the decades, dating back all the way to the 1960s, looking at vitamin D levels and all cause mortality. And it's, it's, you know, pretty clear that having levels above 30 is associated with a lower all cause mortality, all cause mortality. Other words, people are less likely to die from non-accidental causes of death, whether that's cardiovascular disease. Although I would say cardiovascular disease is probably the weakest with respect to vitamin D cancer, mortality is down respiratory diseases down. Those are two of the really big ones. Um, the big drivers with respect to lowering all cause mortality, but, um, so taking a vitamin D supplement is one of the easiest things to do. Why is widespread deficiency, you know, so common? Well, because we're inside in our cubicles and our offices at our, you know, with our technological advances, computers, everything, we don't spend as much time outside, you know, doing agriculture, doing, you know, the sort of outdoors kind of jobs that, you know, that were common a hundred years ago. So, so people are not making vitamin D from their skin. And on top of that, there are very, there are a variety of factors that actually, actually regulate whether or not we can make enough vitamin D in our skin and that, you know, from everything from age. So a 70 year old person makes 20, like literally 25% of what they made as their 20 year old self. So it's very inefficient as you get older skin color. So melanin, that pigment, that Thank you. 25% of what they made as their 20 year old self. So it's very inefficient as you get older skin color. So melanin, that pigment that basically acts as a natural sunscreen also is a, you know, filter for UVB radiation, which is actually what needs to basically penetrate through the skin to start vitamin D three synthesis in the skin. So because melanin is a, you know, is a natural sunscreen, sunscreen also does that. People wear a lot of sunscreen nowadays. So there's, there's many different reasons why people are not getting as much vitamin D in our modern day world. And vitamin D is one of the cheapest and easiest supplements to take. There have been studies that have basically tried to figure out like, how can you take a person who is deficient? So deficiency would be 20 nanograms per mill or less. And when you start to get less than 20 nanograms per milliliter, you start to go, you start to run the risk of, you know, bone problems and severe other types of severe problems, immune dysfunction, for example. people that are deficient and supplement with about 4,000 IUs per day can bring theirself up to a sufficient level closer, you know, above 30 nanograms per mil, perhaps even closer to 40. And 4,000 IUs per day is actually the tolerable upper intake set by the Institute of Medicine for vitamin D3. And I just want to mention, you know, vitamin D is unique among the vitamins because it's actually, it gets converted into a steroid hormone. So vitamin D3 goes to the liver. It's converted to another metabolite called 25-hydroxyvitamin D. That's the major circulating metabolite of vitamin D that's usually measured if you get a blood test. And then it goes to the kidneys where it's then converted into the steroid hormone. That's 125-hydroxy vitamin D. And what I mean by a steroid hormone, most people think about estrogen, testosterone, those are steroid hormones. Like imagine if 70% of the, you know, of men in the United States were deficient in testosterone, like they would be terrible. So, you know, vitamin D is, is basically very different because it basically can enter what's called the cell nucleus, the nucleus of a cell. And that is where all your DNA is. And it can basically recognize this little sequence of DNA. And it, it's, it basically, you know, binds to a receptor and, you know, you know, it binds to your DNA and turns genes on, activates them and turns other genes off and deactivates them in this like coordinated fashion. And these are genes that are important from everything from brain function."

Sauna: Cardiovascular

Another one that's pretty, I think common in, in the United States, at least for example, is magnesium. About 50% of the US population does not basically get adequate intake of magnesium.

"So serotonin is one it's important for the synthesis of serotonin in the brain to immune function. And it's, it's why vitamin D plays such a critical role in helping prevent respiratory diseases."

Magnesium Discussion

Another one that's pretty, I think common in, in the United States, at least for example, is magnesium. About 50% of the US population does not basically get adequate intake of magnesium.

"So serotonin is one it's important for the synthesis of serotonin in the brain to immune function. And it's, it's why vitamin D plays such a critical role in helping prevent respiratory diseases."

Vitamin D Lamp Discussion

Another one that's pretty, I think common in, in the United States, at least for example, is magnesium. About 50% of the US population does not basically get adequate intake of magnesium.

"So serotonin is one it's important for the synthesis of serotonin in the brain to immune function. And it's, it's why vitamin D plays such a critical role in helping prevent respiratory diseases."

Zone 2 Cardio Discussion

It's something that you want to try to do everything you can to prevent. Of course, there are things outside of our control.

"So serotonin is one it's important for the synthesis of serotonin in the brain to immune function. And it's, it's why vitamin D plays such a critical role in helping prevent respiratory diseases. And so low hanging fruit there, vitamin D, um, easy one. Another one that's pretty, I think common in, in the United States, at least for example, is magnesium. And magnesium is an essential mineral. About 50% of the US population does not basically get adequate intake of magnesium. And the RDA for adequate intake was set at around, I would say on average, it's a little different for males and females, but on average about 400 milligrams per day for an adult. And if you are a physically active adult, so let's say you exercise frequently, you are, you know, maybe using the sauna, you can excrete magnesium through sweat. And so physically active adults actually require anywhere between 10 to 20% more than the RDA. So you can imagine if people are already not even getting the RDA, the physically active people are even in worse shape in some respects. And magnesium is an essential cofactor. It's a mineral that is important for the function of over 300 different enzymes in our body. Everything from enzymes that are important for repairing damage to our DNA. So DNA damage is something that's happening every day. It's happening right now as we're having this conversation. It's not something that you can look in the mirror and see, but it is insidious with respect to basically it causes this low level type of damage that accumulates over time. And as we age, it can lead to dysfunctional cells. It can lead to potentially what are called oncogenic mutations that can lead to cancer. So repair enzymes do not work properly without magnesium. Also DNA synthesis. So we're making new cells. We're making new blood cells. We're making new immune cells. We're making new skin cells. Every time we make a new cell, we have to replicate all the DNA inside of those cells. And that requires enzymes called DNA polymerases. You basically need magnesium for those to work properly. So again, it's a very important process for our DNA and repairing the DNA and making sure it doesn't get mutations from the get-go with DNA replication. And it's probably why there's so many, there's a variety of studies that have found. These are observational studies. Of course, all the caveats that come with observational studies, like there's, you know, potentially other confounding factors, but, um, with that in mind, people with the highest magnesium levels have a 40% lower all cause mortality and a 50% lower cancer mortality compared to people with the lowest magnesium levels. Um, there's another study that, um, I think it was specific to pancreatic cancer. So for every 100 milligram decrease in magnesium intake, there was a 24% increase in pancreatic cancer incidents. So again, you know, sort of highlighting the important role magnesium plays, particularly with our DNA and, you know, with respect to making sure the integrity of our DNA, the genomic stability of our DNA is good. And that's very important for preventing cancer, which is an age-related disease. It's something that you want to try to do everything you can to prevent. Of course, there are things outside of our control. However, there are things that are in our control. And I think, you know, an easy thing would be magnesium. So why is widespread deficiency common? Magnesium is found at the center of a chlorophyll molecule. Chlorophyll is the molecule that gives plants their green color. So magnesium is high in dark leafy greens. Most people are not eating multiple servings of dark leafy greens daily. It's also pretty high in legumes. Almonds are another great source of magnesium. Oats are a great source of magnesium. So the bottom line is people aren't eating enough of their leafy greens. Supplemental magnesium is another possibility, but the dose of that needs to be considered because magnesium at higher doses can cause adverse effects like GI problems. So what I like to do is try to get my magnesium from dietary sources. Like this morning, I had a smoothie with some cooked kale. I had some chard in it. I had a couple of frozen strawberries and blueberries and avocado. So I was getting a magnesium dose with my breakfast, right? Which was scrambled eggs. So trying to find any way you can to get multiple servings of greens or almonds, oats are another great, great dietary source, but I also do a supplement of about 125 milligrams of magnesium and I do magnesium glycinate. Most of the magnesium supplements are with respect. I would say the one that's not very bioavailable is magnesium dioxide, but you can, you know, magnesium glycinate's a really good bioavailability, has very good bioavailability. So does magnesium malate or magnesium citrate. So with respect to supplementation with magnesium, it can be a way to kind of at least get you up to more of an RDA adequate level. Also when I sauna, when I'm physically active, I also drink electrolytes after that. And that's another, so you can have an electrolyte drink that replaces some of the lost sodium and magnesium, potassium, for example. So that's also another option when you're physically active. So that would be another example, low hanging fruit, you know, with respect to important micronutrients. There's another one, omega-3 we can get into, but I probably will speak a lot about that. So maybe I'll skip to the exercise as well. Maybe we can go into depth about those. But exercise is probably the biggest and most important thing, irrespective of anything else. I think being physically active, very clear, is the most important thing for healthy aging, for staving off dementia, for staving off cancer, for staving off cardiovascular disease, all the age-related diseases. It does require a little bit more effort. And I would love to dive more into specifics on that, but I do feel like I need to give you a chance to talk because I've already kind of gone on for a while. I would like to dive into the omega-3 and some exercise more as well, though, if you have any questions that you wanted to kind of ask me about that. Yeah, that's awesome. I just so appreciate you centering this on these low-hanging fruits that are so accessible, really approachable. And this is one of the ways that we can really support longevity is by optimizing our micronutrient status because of all of the relationships with all-cause mortality that you talked about, chronic infection, cardiovascular disease, cancer. So I think that that's a super important place to start. As we're on the topic of personalized functional nutrition, will you talk to us a little bit, and this will probably lead into a discussion on omega-3s, but first I'm hoping we can take some time and look at the food genetics relationship and talk about how that might play into healthy aging for any individual. Yeah, I think the, you know, so there are a variety of, we all have differences in our genes and, you know, they're, they're oftentimes just a change in one, what's called nucleotide, you know, a nucleotide change in the sequence of DNA. And it's often referred to as a single nucleotide polymorphism. So a snip, we call it for short, but it's kind of what's, you know, differentiating between why some people have brown eyes or blue eyes or blonde hair or red hair. But in addition to those phenotypes and characteristics, there's also a variety of snips in genes that are involved in metabolizing micronutrients like magnesium, vitamin D, omega-3, but in addition to micronutrients, macronutrients as well. So people are very different in the way they respond to foods. I think we, in general, when I say we, the scientific community is really in its infancy and understanding the interaction between our genes and our environment. And, you know, so there are things that we can, that there are certain, there are more, I think certain SNPs we know a little bit more about than others, but it's hard, you know, again, we're really at the infancy in understanding that interaction. It's a very complex interaction, but generally speaking, because I mentioned vitamin D that is, you know, one that is, there's a variety of very common, um, snips that people do not convert the vitamin D three into the 25 hydroxy vitamin D very well, or they do not convert the 25-hydroxyvitamin D into the steroid hormone very well. And I've actually seen blood work data from people that, friends even, that had to supplement with a much, much higher dose. So I mentioned 4,000 IUs being the tolerable upper intake that the RDA or sorry, that the Institute of Medicine set. Well, I've seen people have to take, you know, between 20 to 30,000 I use a day to even just get a normal, like 30 or 40 nanogram per milliliter blood concentration of 25 hydroxy vitamin D because they're there, they have a genetic polymorphism that makes them so inefficient at doing that. In fact, there's been what are called Mendelian randomization studies. And these are studies where people were scientists look at these SNPs, these genetic variations that are typically involved in nutrition. They're involved in the metabolism of some vitamin D or they're involved in some kind of environmental factor. And what scientists do is they say, look, we have all these people. We know some of these people are low in vitamin D because of a gene, not because they're not outside and physically active or not because they're not health, you know, conscientious and supplementing, but it's their genes. And so it's kind of a way of randomizing people in a very, you know, unbiased way that's random and just based on their genes, right. So, um, these Mendelian randomization studies have found that people with genetically low vitamin D levels, you know, have a higher all cause mortality. They're like, you know, 25, they've got like a 25% higher mortality from respiratory disease. So it's really kind of, I would say supporting and reinforcing the observational data showing that when you actually measure someone's low vitamin D levels, irrespective of their genetics, you see the same thing. So it's, again, the genetics, the interaction between our genes and our diet in its infancy. But really, I think the important thing here also is getting some blood work done. Like unless you go and measure your vitamin D levels, you're not going to know how deficient or if you're deficient or insufficient you are. You're not going to know how well a supplement is raising your levels. Like, is it even doing anything? So measuring vitamin D levels before and after are very important. And the same goes for omega-3. You know, there's omega-3 is, it's probably, I think one of the most important, you know, nutrients that is, it's really overlooked. People just don't even really think about it. So omega-3, there's three types of these fatty acids. There's the type that you can find in plant sources. So that's alpha linoleic acid, ALA. And then there's the EPA, which is eicosapentanoic acid, and then DHA. And those are the two marine sources that you'll find in fish, but also you can find them in microalgae, which is more of a plant-based source. There was a study that came out of Harvard, I think it was 2009, which identified the marine sources of omega-3 as basically one of the top six preventable causes of death. In other words, people are not eating enough seafood and fish. And because of that, it was calculated that about, I think it was something like 84,000 deaths per year were attributed to not getting enough EPA and DHA from the diet. And this was really comparable to people that were eating trans fats. Everybody knows trans fats are bad. You walk into any grocery store, it's zero trans fats on every packaging thing you can see. It's very much in the public awareness that trans fats are bad. Well, trans fats were responsible for the same number of deaths as not getting EPA and DHA. So it was responsible for 82,000 deaths per year. Before I kind of go deeper into that, I mean, it's kind of just, but that makes you think about it. It's like, oh, wow. So the, the, the same number of deaths were attributable to eating trans fats as not eating enough EPA and DHA from marine sources, you know, fish, for example. And it kind of really makes you think about things because you don't walk into a supermarket and nothing says, oh, this isn't seafood. This isn't getting your EPA and DHA. This is processed, you know, but yet everything tells you about trans fats. And it was, you know, just as important, important to get those, you know, omega-3 fatty acids from marine sources. Now I say marine sources because ALA, which is the common source of omega-3 found in plants like flax seeds, walnuts, for example, that is actually considered the essential fatty acid because we can convert ALA into EPA and DHA. And so, you know, all the government agencies that comes up with these RDAs and, you know, all those standards that are set, basically it goes down to, oh, well, because we can make EPA and DHA from ALA, that's going to be the one that we focus on. The problem with that is that the conversion of ALA into EPA and then subsequently DHA is, it's very inefficient and there's widespread genetic differences with respect to that conversion. So people, some people are great. They have a, they have a alteration in the desaturated gene that does the conversion of ALA into EPA and they do it quite well. Um, I would say the majority of people have another version that are not so great at it and to kind of add fuel to the fire, having too much of vegetable oils, um, omega-6 fatty acids, I don't want to demonize them so much because like you can get, you need linoleic acid. You need arachnidonic acid. It's part of your cell membrane. It's have important functions, getting them from whole food sources like walnuts, like nuts is great. But the vegetable oils are very, very concentrated in a lot of cooking. If you eat out, if you buy processed foods are usually cooked and processed with vegetable oils, that omega-6 when it's too high can compete with that enzyme that's required to convert ALA into EPA. And so you may be getting enough ALA, by the way, that's the other problem. People aren't even eating flaxseed and walnuts. They're not even getting enough AOLA. So there's so many layers to this. There's so many layers. But that conversion is very inefficient when there's a lot of omega-6. And on top of that, you know, I would say the one, the one saving grace there is that estrogen does dramatically increase that conversion. It makes it, well, I mean, I mean, it's 20, like up to 20% better. And so this is probably because DHA is so important for brain development. And when you, when a woman becomes pregnant, estrogen skyrockets, I mean, it's like a hundred times higher than what it normally is. It's, it's it's pretty, pretty apparent that, that nature has figured out a way to at least convert all that ALA is possible into EPA and DHA. Anyway, so that's where the genetics comes in, you know, there's, there's definitely a regulation there, but on top of that, I think the best way, you know, to get the EPA and DHA is from eating, you know, a dietary source and, and measuring what's called the omega-3 index. So the omega-3 index is measuring omega-3 fatty acid levels, the EPA and DHA, and there's other fatty acids as well, but in red blood cell membranes. And it's really important because most of the time when you go and get a omega-3 blood test, uh, the, the plasma phospholipids are measured, which is better than nothing. But you're really looking more at your dietary intake in the last week or two versus red blood cells, which are 120 days before they turn over. It's a long-term status of your omega-3, kind of like the difference between looking at fasting blood glucose and your HbA1c, right? Like fasting blood, you could have, you could have had, you know, you've been intermittent fasting for that day and your fasting blood glucose looks great, but is that a snapshot of what your daily like blood glucose levels always look like? Might not be right. So long-term status, omega-3 index. And there's been a variety of studies from, um, Bill Harris, Bill Harris, uh, he's the co-inventor of the omega, omega-3 fatty acid, um, test. I had him on my podcast about a year ago. I've actually joined the fatty acid research Institute, which is a nonprofit Institute studying a variety of, um, the roles of fatty acids in human health. I've joined as an associate researcher, and so I'm doing some studies on omega-3 and brain health. But Bill has published a variety of studies looking at omega-3 index and all-cause mortality, cardiovascular-related mortality. So I would say when you get the omega- um, most, most people in the United States have an omega-3 index of less than 5%. And, um, what, what Bill has shown from multiple studies is that people that have an omega-3 index of 8% have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to those that have an omega-3 index of 4%. So 4% versus 8%. There's also evidence that it's related to cardiovascular-related mortality as well. But also a very interesting piece of data that Bill published was looking at smokers. And everybody knows smoking is terrible for your health, what can you do to accelerate the aging process? Like smoking, right? Smoking, um, cigarettes, tobacco is, it's just, it's a, it's terrible. And, um, this was so interesting. The omega-3 in smokers that had a high omega-3 index. So they were smoking, but they were also eating a lot of fish, supplementing fish oil. They had an 8% omega three index. They had the same life expectancy as non-smokers with a low omega three index. In other words, smoking was like being deficient in omega three. I was just like, I was blown away by that. Like there's a beautiful graph in, in, in the paper. Um, forgot what journal was published in. Uh, it was a couple of years ago, but I mean, it's just kind of mind blowing. So omega-3 is, you know, there's so many different roles that it plays in the body to accumulate in cell membranes, um, plays an important role in, in the way transporters and receptors function because all those things are embedded in the cell membrane. And so, you know, for example, glucose transporters at the blood brain barrier are altered. They're, they're not functioning well when DHA is deficient and that can cause, you know, less glucose to get into the brain that obviously leads to many problems."

Electrolytes Discussion

Another one that's pretty, I think common in, in the United States, at least for example, is magnesium. About 50% of the US population does not basically get adequate intake of magnesium.

"So serotonin is one it's important for the synthesis of serotonin in the brain to immune function. And it's, it's why vitamin D plays such a critical role in helping prevent respiratory diseases. And so low hanging fruit there, vitamin D, um, easy one. Another one that's pretty, I think common in, in the United States, at least for example, is magnesium. And magnesium is an essential mineral. About 50% of the US population does not basically get adequate intake of magnesium. And the RDA for adequate intake was set at around, I would say on average, it's a little different for males and females, but on average about 400 milligrams per day for an adult. And if you are a physically active adult, so let's say you exercise frequently, you are, you know, maybe using the sauna, you can excrete magnesium through sweat. And so physically active adults actually require anywhere between 10 to 20% more than the RDA. So you can imagine if people are already not even getting the RDA, the physically active people are even in worse shape in some respects. And magnesium is an essential cofactor. It's a mineral that is important for the function of over 300 different enzymes in our body. Everything from enzymes that are important for repairing damage to our DNA. So DNA damage is something that's happening every day. It's happening right now as we're having this conversation. It's not something that you can look in the mirror and see, but it is insidious with respect to basically it causes this low level type of damage that accumulates over time. And as we age, it can lead to dysfunctional cells. It can lead to potentially what are called oncogenic mutations that can lead to cancer. So repair enzymes do not work properly without magnesium. Also DNA synthesis. So we're making new cells. We're making new blood cells. We're making new immune cells. We're making new skin cells. Every time we make a new cell, we have to replicate all the DNA inside of those cells. And that requires enzymes called DNA polymerases. You basically need magnesium for those to work properly. So again, it's a very important process for our DNA and repairing the DNA and making sure it doesn't get mutations from the get-go with DNA replication. And it's probably why there's so many, there's a variety of studies that have found. These are observational studies. Of course, all the caveats that come with observational studies, like there's, you know, potentially other confounding factors, but, um, with that in mind, people with the highest magnesium levels have a 40% lower all cause mortality and a 50% lower cancer mortality compared to people with the lowest magnesium levels. Um, there's another study that, um, I think it was specific to pancreatic cancer. So for every 100 milligram decrease in magnesium intake, there was a 24% increase in pancreatic cancer incidents. So again, you know, sort of highlighting the important role magnesium plays, particularly with our DNA and, you know, with respect to making sure the integrity of our DNA, the genomic stability of our DNA is good. And that's very important for preventing cancer, which is an age-related disease. It's something that you want to try to do everything you can to prevent. Of course, there are things outside of our control. However, there are things that are in our control. And I think, you know, an easy thing would be magnesium. So why is widespread deficiency common? Magnesium is found at the center of a chlorophyll molecule. Chlorophyll is the molecule that gives plants their green color. So magnesium is high in dark leafy greens. Most people are not eating multiple servings of dark leafy greens daily. It's also pretty high in legumes. Almonds are another great source of magnesium. Oats are a great source of magnesium. So the bottom line is people aren't eating enough of their leafy greens. Supplemental magnesium is another possibility, but the dose of that needs to be considered because magnesium at higher doses can cause adverse effects like GI problems. So what I like to do is try to get my magnesium from dietary sources. Like this morning, I had a smoothie with some cooked kale. I had some chard in it. I had a couple of frozen strawberries and blueberries and avocado. So I was getting a magnesium dose with my breakfast, right? Which was scrambled eggs. So trying to find any way you can to get multiple servings of greens or almonds, oats are another great, great dietary source, but I also do a supplement of about 125 milligrams of magnesium and I do magnesium glycinate. Most of the magnesium supplements are with respect. I would say the one that's not very bioavailable is magnesium dioxide, but you can, you know, magnesium glycinate's a really good bioavailability, has very good bioavailability. So does magnesium malate or magnesium citrate. So with respect to supplementation with magnesium, it can be a way to kind of at least get you up to more of an RDA adequate level. Also when I sauna, when I'm physically active, I also drink electrolytes after that. And that's another, so you can have an electrolyte drink that replaces some of the lost sodium and magnesium, potassium, for example. So that's also another option when you're physically active. So that would be another example, low hanging fruit, you know, with respect to important micronutrients. There's another one, omega-3 we can get into, but I probably will speak a lot about that. So maybe I'll skip to the exercise as well. Maybe we can go into depth about those. But exercise is probably the biggest and most important thing, irrespective of anything else. I think being physically active, very clear, is the most important thing for healthy aging, for staving off dementia, for staving off cancer, for staving off cardiovascular disease, all the age-related diseases. It does require a little bit more effort. And I would love to dive more into specifics on that, but I do feel like I need to give you a chance to talk because I've already kind of gone on for a while. I would like to dive into the omega-3 and some exercise more as well, though, if you have any questions that you wanted to kind of ask me about that. Yeah, that's awesome. I just so appreciate you centering this on these low-hanging fruits that are so accessible, really approachable. And this is one of the ways that we can really support longevity is by optimizing our micronutrient status because of all of the relationships with all-cause mortality that you talked about, chronic infection, cardiovascular disease, cancer. So I think that that's a super important place to start. As we're on the topic of personalized functional nutrition, will you talk to us a little bit, and this will probably lead into a discussion on omega-3s, but first I'm hoping we can take some time and look at the food genetics relationship and talk about how that might play into healthy aging for any individual. Yeah, I think the, you know, so there are a variety of, we all have differences in our genes and, you know, they're, they're oftentimes just a change in one, what's called nucleotide, you know, a nucleotide change in the sequence of DNA. And it's often referred to as a single nucleotide polymorphism. So a snip, we call it for short, but it's kind of what's, you know, differentiating between why some people have brown eyes or blue eyes or blonde hair or red hair. But in addition to those phenotypes and characteristics, there's also a variety of snips in genes that are involved in metabolizing micronutrients like magnesium, vitamin D, omega-3, but in addition to micronutrients, macronutrients as well. So people are very different in the way they respond to foods. I think we, in general, when I say we, the scientific community is really in its infancy and understanding the interaction between our genes and our environment. And, you know, so there are things that we can, that there are certain, there are more, I think certain SNPs we know a little bit more about than others, but it's hard, you know, again, we're really at the infancy in understanding that interaction. It's a very complex interaction, but generally speaking, because I mentioned vitamin D that is, you know, one that is, there's a variety of very common, um, snips that people do not convert the vitamin D three into the 25 hydroxy vitamin D very well, or they do not convert the 25-hydroxyvitamin D into the steroid hormone very well. And I've actually seen blood work data from people that, friends even, that had to supplement with a much, much higher dose. So I mentioned 4,000 IUs being the tolerable upper intake that the RDA or sorry, that the Institute of Medicine set. Well, I've seen people have to take, you know, between 20 to 30,000 I use a day to even just get a normal, like 30 or 40 nanogram per milliliter blood concentration of 25 hydroxy vitamin D because they're there, they have a genetic polymorphism that makes them so inefficient at doing that. In fact, there's been what are called Mendelian randomization studies. And these are studies where people were scientists look at these SNPs, these genetic variations that are typically involved in nutrition. They're involved in the metabolism of some vitamin D or they're involved in some kind of environmental factor. And what scientists do is they say, look, we have all these people. We know some of these people are low in vitamin D because of a gene, not because they're not outside and physically active or not because they're not health, you know, conscientious and supplementing, but it's their genes. And so it's kind of a way of randomizing people in a very, you know, unbiased way that's random and just based on their genes, right. So, um, these Mendelian randomization studies have found that people with genetically low vitamin D levels, you know, have a higher all cause mortality. They're like, you know, 25, they've got like a 25% higher mortality from respiratory disease. So it's really kind of, I would say supporting and reinforcing the observational data showing that when you actually measure someone's low vitamin D levels, irrespective of their genetics, you see the same thing. So it's, again, the genetics, the interaction between our genes and our diet in its infancy. But really, I think the important thing here also is getting some blood work done. Like unless you go and measure your vitamin D levels, you're not going to know how deficient or if you're deficient or insufficient you are. You're not going to know how well a supplement is raising your levels. Like, is it even doing anything? So measuring vitamin D levels before and after are very important. And the same goes for omega-3. You know, there's omega-3 is, it's probably, I think one of the most important, you know, nutrients that is, it's really overlooked. People just don't even really think about it. So omega-3, there's three types of these fatty acids. There's the type that you can find in plant sources. So that's alpha linoleic acid, ALA. And then there's the EPA, which is eicosapentanoic acid, and then DHA. And those are the two marine sources that you'll find in fish, but also you can find them in microalgae, which is more of a plant-based source. There was a study that came out of Harvard, I think it was 2009, which identified the marine sources of omega-3 as basically one of the top six preventable causes of death. In other words, people are not eating enough seafood and fish. And because of that, it was calculated that about, I think it was something like 84,000 deaths per year were attributed to not getting enough EPA and DHA from the diet. And this was really comparable to people that were eating trans fats. Everybody knows trans fats are bad. You walk into any grocery store, it's zero trans fats on every packaging thing you can see. It's very much in the public awareness that trans fats are bad. Well, trans fats were responsible for the same number of deaths as not getting EPA and DHA. So it was responsible for 82,000 deaths per year. Before I kind of go deeper into that, I mean, it's kind of just, but that makes you think about it. It's like, oh, wow. So the, the, the same number of deaths were attributable to eating trans fats as not eating enough EPA and DHA from marine sources, you know, fish, for example. And it kind of really makes you think about things because you don't walk into a supermarket and nothing says, oh, this isn't seafood. This isn't getting your EPA and DHA. This is processed, you know, but yet everything tells you about trans fats. And it was, you know, just as important, important to get those, you know, omega-3 fatty acids from marine sources. Now I say marine sources because ALA, which is the common source of omega-3 found in plants like flax seeds, walnuts, for example, that is actually considered the essential fatty acid because we can convert ALA into EPA and DHA. And so, you know, all the government agencies that comes up with these RDAs and, you know, all those standards that are set, basically it goes down to, oh, well, because we can make EPA and DHA from ALA, that's going to be the one that we focus on. The problem with that is that the conversion of ALA into EPA and then subsequently DHA is, it's very inefficient and there's widespread genetic differences with respect to that conversion. So people, some people are great. They have a, they have a alteration in the desaturated gene that does the conversion of ALA into EPA and they do it quite well. Um, I would say the majority of people have another version that are not so great at it and to kind of add fuel to the fire, having too much of vegetable oils, um, omega-6 fatty acids, I don't want to demonize them so much because like you can get, you need linoleic acid. You need arachnidonic acid. It's part of your cell membrane. It's have important functions, getting them from whole food sources like walnuts, like nuts is great. But the vegetable oils are very, very concentrated in a lot of cooking. If you eat out, if you buy processed foods are usually cooked and processed with vegetable oils, that omega-6 when it's too high can compete with that enzyme that's required to convert ALA into EPA. And so you may be getting enough ALA, by the way, that's the other problem. People aren't even eating flaxseed and walnuts. They're not even getting enough AOLA. So there's so many layers to this. There's so many layers. But that conversion is very inefficient when there's a lot of omega-6. And on top of that, you know, I would say the one, the one saving grace there is that estrogen does dramatically increase that conversion. It makes it, well, I mean, I mean, it's 20, like up to 20% better. And so this is probably because DHA is so important for brain development. And when you, when a woman becomes pregnant, estrogen skyrockets, I mean, it's like a hundred times higher than what it normally is. It's, it's it's pretty, pretty apparent that, that nature has figured out a way to at least convert all that ALA is possible into EPA and DHA. Anyway, so that's where the genetics comes in, you know, there's, there's definitely a regulation there, but on top of that, I think the best way, you know, to get the EPA and DHA is from eating, you know, a dietary source and, and measuring what's called the omega-3 index. So the omega-3 index is measuring omega-3 fatty acid levels, the EPA and DHA, and there's other fatty acids as well, but in red blood cell membranes. And it's really important because most of the time when you go and get a omega-3 blood test, uh, the, the plasma phospholipids are measured, which is better than nothing. But you're really looking more at your dietary intake in the last week or two versus red blood cells, which are 120 days before they turn over. It's a long-term status of your omega-3, kind of like the difference between looking at fasting blood glucose and your HbA1c, right? Like fasting blood, you could have, you could have had, you know, you've been intermittent fasting for that day and your fasting blood glucose looks great, but is that a snapshot of what your daily like blood glucose levels always look like? Might not be right. So long-term status, omega-3 index. And there's been a variety of studies from, um, Bill Harris, Bill Harris, uh, he's the co-inventor of the omega, omega-3 fatty acid, um, test. I had him on my podcast about a year ago. I've actually joined the fatty acid research Institute, which is a nonprofit Institute studying a variety of, um, the roles of fatty acids in human health. I've joined as an associate researcher, and so I'm doing some studies on omega-3 and brain health. But Bill has published a variety of studies looking at omega-3 index and all-cause mortality, cardiovascular-related mortality. So I would say when you get the omega- um, most, most people in the United States have an omega-3 index of less than 5%. And, um, what, what Bill has shown from multiple studies is that people that have an omega-3 index of 8% have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to those that have an omega-3 index of 4%. So 4% versus 8%. There's also evidence that it's related to cardiovascular-related mortality as well. But also a very interesting piece of data that Bill published was looking at smokers. And everybody knows smoking is terrible for your health, what can you do to accelerate the aging process? Like smoking, right? Smoking, um, cigarettes, tobacco is, it's just, it's a, it's terrible. And, um, this was so interesting. The omega-3 in smokers that had a high omega-3 index. So they were smoking, but they were also eating a lot of fish, supplementing fish oil. They had an 8% omega three index. They had the same life expectancy as non-smokers with a low omega three index. In other words, smoking was like being deficient in omega three. I was just like, I was blown away by that. Like there's a beautiful graph in, in, in the paper. Um, forgot what journal was published in. Uh, it was a couple of years ago, but I mean, it's just kind of mind blowing. So omega-3 is, you know, there's so many different roles that it plays in the body to accumulate in cell membranes, um, plays an important role in, in the way transporters and receptors function because all those things are embedded in the cell membrane. And so, you know, for example, glucose transporters at the blood brain barrier are altered. They're, they're not functioning well when DHA is deficient and that can cause, you know, less glucose to get into the brain that obviously leads to many problems."

Vitamin D Lamp Discussion

It does require a little bit more effort.

"So serotonin is one it's important for the synthesis of serotonin in the brain to immune function. And it's, it's why vitamin D plays such a critical role in helping prevent respiratory diseases. And so low hanging fruit there, vitamin D, um, easy one. Another one that's pretty, I think common in, in the United States, at least for example, is magnesium. And magnesium is an essential mineral. About 50% of the US population does not basically get adequate intake of magnesium. And the RDA for adequate intake was set at around, I would say on average, it's a little different for males and females, but on average about 400 milligrams per day for an adult. And if you are a physically active adult, so let's say you exercise frequently, you are, you know, maybe using the sauna, you can excrete magnesium through sweat. And so physically active adults actually require anywhere between 10 to 20% more than the RDA. So you can imagine if people are already not even getting the RDA, the physically active people are even in worse shape in some respects. And magnesium is an essential cofactor. It's a mineral that is important for the function of over 300 different enzymes in our body. Everything from enzymes that are important for repairing damage to our DNA. So DNA damage is something that's happening every day. It's happening right now as we're having this conversation. It's not something that you can look in the mirror and see, but it is insidious with respect to basically it causes this low level type of damage that accumulates over time. And as we age, it can lead to dysfunctional cells. It can lead to potentially what are called oncogenic mutations that can lead to cancer. So repair enzymes do not work properly without magnesium. Also DNA synthesis. So we're making new cells. We're making new blood cells. We're making new immune cells. We're making new skin cells. Every time we make a new cell, we have to replicate all the DNA inside of those cells. And that requires enzymes called DNA polymerases. You basically need magnesium for those to work properly. So again, it's a very important process for our DNA and repairing the DNA and making sure it doesn't get mutations from the get-go with DNA replication. And it's probably why there's so many, there's a variety of studies that have found. These are observational studies. Of course, all the caveats that come with observational studies, like there's, you know, potentially other confounding factors, but, um, with that in mind, people with the highest magnesium levels have a 40% lower all cause mortality and a 50% lower cancer mortality compared to people with the lowest magnesium levels. Um, there's another study that, um, I think it was specific to pancreatic cancer. So for every 100 milligram decrease in magnesium intake, there was a 24% increase in pancreatic cancer incidents. So again, you know, sort of highlighting the important role magnesium plays, particularly with our DNA and, you know, with respect to making sure the integrity of our DNA, the genomic stability of our DNA is good. And that's very important for preventing cancer, which is an age-related disease. It's something that you want to try to do everything you can to prevent. Of course, there are things outside of our control. However, there are things that are in our control. And I think, you know, an easy thing would be magnesium. So why is widespread deficiency common? Magnesium is found at the center of a chlorophyll molecule. Chlorophyll is the molecule that gives plants their green color. So magnesium is high in dark leafy greens. Most people are not eating multiple servings of dark leafy greens daily. It's also pretty high in legumes. Almonds are another great source of magnesium. Oats are a great source of magnesium. So the bottom line is people aren't eating enough of their leafy greens. Supplemental magnesium is another possibility, but the dose of that needs to be considered because magnesium at higher doses can cause adverse effects like GI problems. So what I like to do is try to get my magnesium from dietary sources. Like this morning, I had a smoothie with some cooked kale. I had some chard in it. I had a couple of frozen strawberries and blueberries and avocado. So I was getting a magnesium dose with my breakfast, right? Which was scrambled eggs. So trying to find any way you can to get multiple servings of greens or almonds, oats are another great, great dietary source, but I also do a supplement of about 125 milligrams of magnesium and I do magnesium glycinate. Most of the magnesium supplements are with respect. I would say the one that's not very bioavailable is magnesium dioxide, but you can, you know, magnesium glycinate's a really good bioavailability, has very good bioavailability. So does magnesium malate or magnesium citrate. So with respect to supplementation with magnesium, it can be a way to kind of at least get you up to more of an RDA adequate level. Also when I sauna, when I'm physically active, I also drink electrolytes after that. And that's another, so you can have an electrolyte drink that replaces some of the lost sodium and magnesium, potassium, for example. So that's also another option when you're physically active. So that would be another example, low hanging fruit, you know, with respect to important micronutrients. There's another one, omega-3 we can get into, but I probably will speak a lot about that. So maybe I'll skip to the exercise as well. Maybe we can go into depth about those. But exercise is probably the biggest and most important thing, irrespective of anything else. I think being physically active, very clear, is the most important thing for healthy aging, for staving off dementia, for staving off cancer, for staving off cardiovascular disease, all the age-related diseases. It does require a little bit more effort. And I would love to dive more into specifics on that, but I do feel like I need to give you a chance to talk because I've already kind of gone on for a while. I would like to dive into the omega-3 and some exercise more as well, though, if you have any questions that you wanted to kind of ask me about that. Yeah, that's awesome. I just so appreciate you centering this on these low-hanging fruits that are so accessible, really approachable. And this is one of the ways that we can really support longevity is by optimizing our micronutrient status because of all of the relationships with all-cause mortality that you talked about, chronic infection, cardiovascular disease, cancer. So I think that that's a super important place to start. As we're on the topic of personalized functional nutrition, will you talk to us a little bit, and this will probably lead into a discussion on omega-3s, but first I'm hoping we can take some time and look at the food genetics relationship and talk about how that might play into healthy aging for any individual. Yeah, I think the, you know, so there are a variety of, we all have differences in our genes and, you know, they're, they're oftentimes just a change in one, what's called nucleotide, you know, a nucleotide change in the sequence of DNA. And it's often referred to as a single nucleotide polymorphism. So a snip, we call it for short, but it's kind of what's, you know, differentiating between why some people have brown eyes or blue eyes or blonde hair or red hair. But in addition to those phenotypes and characteristics, there's also a variety of snips in genes that are involved in metabolizing micronutrients like magnesium, vitamin D, omega-3, but in addition to micronutrients, macronutrients as well. So people are very different in the way they respond to foods. I think we, in general, when I say we, the scientific community is really in its infancy and understanding the interaction between our genes and our environment. And, you know, so there are things that we can, that there are certain, there are more, I think certain SNPs we know a little bit more about than others, but it's hard, you know, again, we're really at the infancy in understanding that interaction. It's a very complex interaction, but generally speaking, because I mentioned vitamin D that is, you know, one that is, there's a variety of very common, um, snips that people do not convert the vitamin D three into the 25 hydroxy vitamin D very well, or they do not convert the 25-hydroxyvitamin D into the steroid hormone very well. And I've actually seen blood work data from people that, friends even, that had to supplement with a much, much higher dose. So I mentioned 4,000 IUs being the tolerable upper intake that the RDA or sorry, that the Institute of Medicine set. Well, I've seen people have to take, you know, between 20 to 30,000 I use a day to even just get a normal, like 30 or 40 nanogram per milliliter blood concentration of 25 hydroxy vitamin D because they're there, they have a genetic polymorphism that makes them so inefficient at doing that. In fact, there's been what are called Mendelian randomization studies. And these are studies where people were scientists look at these SNPs, these genetic variations that are typically involved in nutrition. They're involved in the metabolism of some vitamin D or they're involved in some kind of environmental factor. And what scientists do is they say, look, we have all these people. We know some of these people are low in vitamin D because of a gene, not because they're not outside and physically active or not because they're not health, you know, conscientious and supplementing, but it's their genes. And so it's kind of a way of randomizing people in a very, you know, unbiased way that's random and just based on their genes, right. So, um, these Mendelian randomization studies have found that people with genetically low vitamin D levels, you know, have a higher all cause mortality. They're like, you know, 25, they've got like a 25% higher mortality from respiratory disease. So it's really kind of, I would say supporting and reinforcing the observational data showing that when you actually measure someone's low vitamin D levels, irrespective of their genetics, you see the same thing. So it's, again, the genetics, the interaction between our genes and our diet in its infancy. But really, I think the important thing here also is getting some blood work done. Like unless you go and measure your vitamin D levels, you're not going to know how deficient or if you're deficient or insufficient you are. You're not going to know how well a supplement is raising your levels. Like, is it even doing anything? So measuring vitamin D levels before and after are very important. And the same goes for omega-3. You know, there's omega-3 is, it's probably, I think one of the most important, you know, nutrients that is, it's really overlooked. People just don't even really think about it. So omega-3, there's three types of these fatty acids. There's the type that you can find in plant sources. So that's alpha linoleic acid, ALA. And then there's the EPA, which is eicosapentanoic acid, and then DHA. And those are the two marine sources that you'll find in fish, but also you can find them in microalgae, which is more of a plant-based source. There was a study that came out of Harvard, I think it was 2009, which identified the marine sources of omega-3 as basically one of the top six preventable causes of death. In other words, people are not eating enough seafood and fish. And because of that, it was calculated that about, I think it was something like 84,000 deaths per year were attributed to not getting enough EPA and DHA from the diet. And this was really comparable to people that were eating trans fats. Everybody knows trans fats are bad. You walk into any grocery store, it's zero trans fats on every packaging thing you can see. It's very much in the public awareness that trans fats are bad. Well, trans fats were responsible for the same number of deaths as not getting EPA and DHA. So it was responsible for 82,000 deaths per year. Before I kind of go deeper into that, I mean, it's kind of just, but that makes you think about it. It's like, oh, wow. So the, the, the same number of deaths were attributable to eating trans fats as not eating enough EPA and DHA from marine sources, you know, fish, for example. And it kind of really makes you think about things because you don't walk into a supermarket and nothing says, oh, this isn't seafood. This isn't getting your EPA and DHA. This is processed, you know, but yet everything tells you about trans fats. And it was, you know, just as important, important to get those, you know, omega-3 fatty acids from marine sources. Now I say marine sources because ALA, which is the common source of omega-3 found in plants like flax seeds, walnuts, for example, that is actually considered the essential fatty acid because we can convert ALA into EPA and DHA. And so, you know, all the government agencies that comes up with these RDAs and, you know, all those standards that are set, basically it goes down to, oh, well, because we can make EPA and DHA from ALA, that's going to be the one that we focus on. The problem with that is that the conversion of ALA into EPA and then subsequently DHA is, it's very inefficient and there's widespread genetic differences with respect to that conversion. So people, some people are great. They have a, they have a alteration in the desaturated gene that does the conversion of ALA into EPA and they do it quite well. Um, I would say the majority of people have another version that are not so great at it and to kind of add fuel to the fire, having too much of vegetable oils, um, omega-6 fatty acids, I don't want to demonize them so much because like you can get, you need linoleic acid. You need arachnidonic acid. It's part of your cell membrane. It's have important functions, getting them from whole food sources like walnuts, like nuts is great. But the vegetable oils are very, very concentrated in a lot of cooking. If you eat out, if you buy processed foods are usually cooked and processed with vegetable oils, that omega-6 when it's too high can compete with that enzyme that's required to convert ALA into EPA. And so you may be getting enough ALA, by the way, that's the other problem. People aren't even eating flaxseed and walnuts. They're not even getting enough AOLA. So there's so many layers to this. There's so many layers. But that conversion is very inefficient when there's a lot of omega-6. And on top of that, you know, I would say the one, the one saving grace there is that estrogen does dramatically increase that conversion. It makes it, well, I mean, I mean, it's 20, like up to 20% better. And so this is probably because DHA is so important for brain development. And when you, when a woman becomes pregnant, estrogen skyrockets, I mean, it's like a hundred times higher than what it normally is. It's, it's it's pretty, pretty apparent that, that nature has figured out a way to at least convert all that ALA is possible into EPA and DHA. Anyway, so that's where the genetics comes in, you know, there's, there's definitely a regulation there, but on top of that, I think the best way, you know, to get the EPA and DHA is from eating, you know, a dietary source and, and measuring what's called the omega-3 index. So the omega-3 index is measuring omega-3 fatty acid levels, the EPA and DHA, and there's other fatty acids as well, but in red blood cell membranes. And it's really important because most of the time when you go and get a omega-3 blood test, uh, the, the plasma phospholipids are measured, which is better than nothing. But you're really looking more at your dietary intake in the last week or two versus red blood cells, which are 120 days before they turn over. It's a long-term status of your omega-3, kind of like the difference between looking at fasting blood glucose and your HbA1c, right? Like fasting blood, you could have, you could have had, you know, you've been intermittent fasting for that day and your fasting blood glucose looks great, but is that a snapshot of what your daily like blood glucose levels always look like? Might not be right. So long-term status, omega-3 index. And there's been a variety of studies from, um, Bill Harris, Bill Harris, uh, he's the co-inventor of the omega, omega-3 fatty acid, um, test. I had him on my podcast about a year ago. I've actually joined the fatty acid research Institute, which is a nonprofit Institute studying a variety of, um, the roles of fatty acids in human health. I've joined as an associate researcher, and so I'm doing some studies on omega-3 and brain health. But Bill has published a variety of studies looking at omega-3 index and all-cause mortality, cardiovascular-related mortality. So I would say when you get the omega- um, most, most people in the United States have an omega-3 index of less than 5%. And, um, what, what Bill has shown from multiple studies is that people that have an omega-3 index of 8% have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to those that have an omega-3 index of 4%. So 4% versus 8%. There's also evidence that it's related to cardiovascular-related mortality as well. But also a very interesting piece of data that Bill published was looking at smokers. And everybody knows smoking is terrible for your health, what can you do to accelerate the aging process? Like smoking, right? Smoking, um, cigarettes, tobacco is, it's just, it's a, it's terrible. And, um, this was so interesting. The omega-3 in smokers that had a high omega-3 index. So they were smoking, but they were also eating a lot of fish, supplementing fish oil. They had an 8% omega three index. They had the same life expectancy as non-smokers with a low omega three index. In other words, smoking was like being deficient in omega three. I was just like, I was blown away by that. Like there's a beautiful graph in, in, in the paper. Um, forgot what journal was published in. Uh, it was a couple of years ago, but I mean, it's just kind of mind blowing. So omega-3 is, you know, there's so many different roles that it plays in the body to accumulate in cell membranes, um, plays an important role in, in the way transporters and receptors function because all those things are embedded in the cell membrane. And so, you know, for example, glucose transporters at the blood brain barrier are altered. They're, they're not functioning well when DHA is deficient and that can cause, you know, less glucose to get into the brain that obviously leads to many problems."

Zone 2 Cardio Discussion

It makes it, well, I mean, I mean, it's 20, like up to 20% better.

"It's also the, the metabolites of EPA and DHA, they resolve inflammation in a very efficient and timely manner. These are the mericins, the protectants, you know, they're the SPMs, the resolvins. These are playing a very important role in inflammation. And I think there has been now enough evidence that inflammation, chronic low-level inflammation is a driver of the aging process itself. In other words, not just driving, you know, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia and cancer, which it does, but just the process of aging. And, and so, and so it's, it's, it's, it's affecting all those things. And, you know, inflammation is, is a term that's used, which is kind of like, it's the, the activation of the immune system is accelerating the aging process. And it's known as inflammation. There's neuro inflammation, neuro inflammation. And there's been like these seven pillars of aging, where you look at all these like physiological processes that are happening, like genomic instability is one, you know, protein misfolding is another. And there's also this like neuro inflammation. Um, the only thing that was really overlapping between brain aging and just aging itself was the, the inflammation. That was the most important thing that was accelerating, you know, everything in the brain and also aging, you know, in, in the body. So, um, having omega-3 is I think one of the easiest things that someone can do to improve their inflammatory process, to improve the structure and function of their transporters and receptors. And, um, I know you're going to ask me some research I'm most excited about. I'll give you a preview of that. I'm also excited about a new role of omega-3 in muscle mass and also sensitizing amino acids in skeletal muscle. So there's been some work from Chris McGlory, who I had on my podcast just yesterday. he's, he's actually shown that, that omega-3 is playing a role in disuse atrophy and through a mechanism where it's actually, it's not inflammatory. It's not the anti-inflammatory effect of omega-3. It's actually doing something anabolic. It's somehow affecting muscle protein synthesis. And he thinks it's actually sensitizing muscle to amino acids through some unknown mechanism they're trying to figure out. So I think, um, I'm, I'm pretty excited about that new research coming out. Muscle mass obviously is an important factor in aging as well. Um, but I do think that, you know, so, so when it comes to omega-3, what do you do? I mean, obviously, you know, if you can eat fatty fish, that's high in omega-3 salmon, mackerel, sardines, these are all pretty good sources of omega-3 that are also low in contaminants like mercury PCBs. By the way, there have been now studies that have come out showing that even though fish have, you know, these contaminants that the omega-3 fatty acids protect against them. And even during pregnancy. So there was this big push, you know, decades ago about pregnant women should avoid eating fish because of the mercury. I think that was a huge mistake, huge mistake. And I'm actually involved in a study looking at omega-, omega-3 index in cord blood and, uh, neuro neurodevelopmental outcomes. But, um, there, there's been a couple of studies, you know, one, one, I think big one was in 2015 American journal pediatric published that, that basically the omega-3 fatty acids, women eating fish, the omega-3 fatty acids protected against any neurotoxicity. And in fact, you know, those children had, you know, better neural outcomes than women that avoided fish. There's also been studies looking at omega-3, like fish intake and intelligence in, so, so fish intake during pregnancy and intelligence, you know, at one year, seven years of life, I forgot all the, you know, the follow-up times, but it was shown that, you know, omega-3 was correlated with improved intelligence if the mothers were eating fish and they were actually using mercury as a biomarker to basically validate their dietary recall because the women that were taking in more omega-3 had higher mercury."

Estrogen Metabolism Discussion

It makes it, well, I mean, I mean, it's 20, like up to 20% better.

"It's also the, the metabolites of EPA and DHA, they resolve inflammation in a very efficient and timely manner. These are the mericins, the protectants, you know, they're the SPMs, the resolvins. These are playing a very important role in inflammation. And I think there has been now enough evidence that inflammation, chronic low-level inflammation is a driver of the aging process itself. In other words, not just driving, you know, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia and cancer, which it does, but just the process of aging. And, and so, and so it's, it's, it's, it's affecting all those things. And, you know, inflammation is, is a term that's used, which is kind of like, it's the, the activation of the immune system is accelerating the aging process. And it's known as inflammation. There's neuro inflammation, neuro inflammation. And there's been like these seven pillars of aging, where you look at all these like physiological processes that are happening, like genomic instability is one, you know, protein misfolding is another. And there's also this like neuro inflammation. Um, the only thing that was really overlapping between brain aging and just aging itself was the, the inflammation. That was the most important thing that was accelerating, you know, everything in the brain and also aging, you know, in, in the body. So, um, having omega-3 is I think one of the easiest things that someone can do to improve their inflammatory process, to improve the structure and function of their transporters and receptors. And, um, I know you're going to ask me some research I'm most excited about. I'll give you a preview of that. I'm also excited about a new role of omega-3 in muscle mass and also sensitizing amino acids in skeletal muscle. So there's been some work from Chris McGlory, who I had on my podcast just yesterday. he's, he's actually shown that, that omega-3 is playing a role in disuse atrophy and through a mechanism where it's actually, it's not inflammatory. It's not the anti-inflammatory effect of omega-3. It's actually doing something anabolic. It's somehow affecting muscle protein synthesis. And he thinks it's actually sensitizing muscle to amino acids through some unknown mechanism they're trying to figure out. So I think, um, I'm, I'm pretty excited about that new research coming out. Muscle mass obviously is an important factor in aging as well. Um, but I do think that, you know, so, so when it comes to omega-3, what do you do? I mean, obviously, you know, if you can eat fatty fish, that's high in omega-3 salmon, mackerel, sardines, these are all pretty good sources of omega-3 that are also low in contaminants like mercury PCBs. By the way, there have been now studies that have come out showing that even though fish have, you know, these contaminants that the omega-3 fatty acids protect against them. And even during pregnancy. So there was this big push, you know, decades ago about pregnant women should avoid eating fish because of the mercury. I think that was a huge mistake, huge mistake. And I'm actually involved in a study looking at omega-, omega-3 index in cord blood and, uh, neuro neurodevelopmental outcomes. But, um, there, there's been a couple of studies, you know, one, one, I think big one was in 2015 American journal pediatric published that, that basically the omega-3 fatty acids, women eating fish, the omega-3 fatty acids protected against any neurotoxicity. And in fact, you know, those children had, you know, better neural outcomes than women that avoided fish. There's also been studies looking at omega-3, like fish intake and intelligence in, so, so fish intake during pregnancy and intelligence, you know, at one year, seven years of life, I forgot all the, you know, the follow-up times, but it was shown that, you know, omega-3 was correlated with improved intelligence if the mothers were eating fish and they were actually using mercury as a biomarker to basically validate their dietary recall because the women that were taking in more omega-3 had higher mercury."

Sauna: Heat Shock

Then there's the physical activity, right? That, that also, I mean, again, we humans used to be a lot more physically active when that was our life, right?

"There's, you know, the resveratrol is probably a very well-known one that's found in the Thank you. plants, um, sulforaphane being one in cruciferous plants that there's, you know, the, uh,..."

Hiit: Benefits

The other example is these plant phytochemicals. Sulforaphane being one in cruciferous plants.

"There's, you know, the resveratrol is probably a very well-known one that's found in the Thank you. plants, um, sulforaphane being one in cruciferous plants that there's, you know, the, uh,..."

Resistance Training Discussion

The other example is these plant phytochemicals. Sulforaphane being one in cruciferous plants.

"There's, you know, the resveratrol is probably a very well-known one that's found in the Thank you. plants, um, sulforaphane being one in cruciferous plants that there's, you know, the, uh,..."

Zone 2 Cardio: Benefits

If that's what you're doing and that's what you love doing, there's tons of studies showing that being, you know, physically active, particularly if you're going on a longer run and you're, you know, engaging...

"There's, you know, the resveratrol is probably a very well-known one that's found in the Thank you. plants, um, sulforaphane being one in cruciferous plants that there's, you know, the, uh, resveratrol is probably a very well-known one that's found in the skin of some fruits like grapes and blueberries, tarostilbene, another one found in the skin of blueberries. There's the, the turmeric, um, that, that, um, the curcumin found in that. And so these are all phytochemicals that also activate stress response genes. They also activate genes that are active from things like physical activity or heat stress, like heat shock proteins. So a lot of overlap between it's the intermittent stress can activate a whole host of these things. Some of these stress response genes are more active by different types of it. So like thermal stress more robustly activates heat shock proteins than eating some broccoli does. But sulforaphane does activate heat shock proteins. Sulforaphane is found in broccoli, broccoli sprouts. So you'll get a lot of overlap between them. but the bottom line is that our genes were meant to be pushed by intermittent types of stress. And we've lost that. We've lost that ability to push them. We're not, I'm not the ability, but we've, we've, we've stopped doing it. And I think that it's, it's had a detrimental effect on the way that were, our predisposition to age-related diseases as well, because you want to, you want to clean up stuff. You want to keep pushing the antioxidant, the anti-inflammatory, you know, the preventing the protein aggregation, the repairing the damaged DNA. Like that stuff is important because all that stuff is happening every day, just from normal metabolism, normal immune activation, normal going out in the sun and getting, you know, ionizing radiation. Like, and then you add on top of that modern day, you know, living air pollution, um, you know, chemicals were exposed to like, it's compounding and we have to turn those, those stress response genes on to not only age better, but to like just even age normally. So it's very important to engage in, you know, these intermittent types of stress, whether that's, you know, exercising, cardiovascular exercise, resistance training, going into hot tubs in the sauna, you know, not eating around the clock, you know, having periods of a break and also eating, eating phytochemicals from plants. I think these are, these are all very important. Well, I think, as you said, we all know exercise is important, but when we look to healthy aging and longevity, are there types of exercise we should be focusing on? I heard you mentioned resistance training, but there's so many options, resistance training and high intensity interval training and aerobic training. Where should we focus our efforts? It's a good question. And I think that, you know, with respect to people, like the people need to be physically active, like whatever it is they're going to do and do it regularly, routinely establish a routine is in my opinion, the most important thing. So, um, not concerning yourself so much with, Oh, I need to be doing this zone too, or I need to be doing high intensity interval training. Um, like what you need to do is do what you know you will do. Like that's the most important thing. But let's say you want to step up a level and you're already like, I'm committed. I, you know, absolutely like love the way I feel after I exercise, but I want to be doing the best things in, you know, and I'm trying to do everything I can to maximize every type of benefit for my brain and for my muscle and for my heart that I can. Right. Um, so is my, my, so I'll say this, um, there's, there's been these interesting studies that are called the vigorous intensity lifestyle, what visit vigorous intensity, lifestyle, physical activity. So VILPA. And, um, there's these, there's these large studies where people have worn like these accelerometers, you know, some sort of smart Fitbit or, or fill in the blank type of, you know, device that'll measure their movement. And, um, it's been, it's been shown from these studies. So the vigorous intensity, this is basically like, you know, not just walking. Okay. This is like, you're going, you're going to more of a, you know, maximum, like maximal heart rate or, um, close to it. So you're more like, you know, maybe 80, 80%, you know, estimated max heart rate and doing something for anywhere like one minute to three minutes, three times a day. Okay. So this is like the quote unquote exercise snacks. This is like, okay, I'm at my desk. I'm, I'm working at my computer. I'm going to get up and I'm going to do one minute of burpees, or I'm going to get up and I'm going to go sprint down the street and back, or I'm going to do a hill sprint, something that is so short, but intense. And then you just get back into whatever you're doing. So it's not so disruptive. You don't have to have a gym membership. You don't have to go, you know, and get in your car and drive somewhere. You don't have to like, think about it and carve out time in your day. You just do it. You just get up from your desk and you do it. So this is one minute to three minutes, three times a day have shown that people that do this again, this is measured by actual data, empirical data have anywhere between a 30 to 40% lower all cause mortality and cancer related mortality. The vigorous intensity is, is a little bit different than, you know, some people like to go for long runs. They like to go for long bite rides. They're, they're more of that, you know, moderate intensity type of exercise. And that's great too. If that's what you're doing and that's what you love doing, there's tons of studies showing that being, you know, physically active, particularly if you're going on a longer run and you're, you know, engaging in 150 minutes of that normal, moderate type of aerobic exercise per week that you're doing really good, right? So it's not that you have to go and do the vigorous intensity. Although I do think there are added benefits on top of that. And those largely have to do with the brain because when you are bigger, when you're going, when you start to reach, you know, above, when you're getting to the 80%, you know, maximum heart rate, uh, estimated maximum heart rate, and you start to get a high, um, you can't generate energy from the, you know, the oxygen that you breathe in quick enough. And so your mitochondria, which are the major source of energy generating organelles inside of your cells can't, they require oxygen to make ATP, which is the energy I'm talking about. So, um, so you can't get that oxygen quick enough for the mitochondria to do it. And so you're forced to make energy outside of the mitochondria and you make it by using, using up glucose. And so the glucose then gets metabolized into lactate and lactate is not a waste metabolite. Like it was widely believed for many years. Like it's just waste metabolite. It's not only a waste metabolite, it could potentially be harmful because it was thought to be, you know, causing muscle soreness complete and other not, not true nonsense, not true. Um, so, so lactate actually is a signaling molecule. It has been shown to activate brain neuro-derived neurotrophic factor at the blood brain barrier. It activates it. It also gets into other tissues, including the brain through this MCT transporter. And it's used for neurotransmitter synthesis, norepinephrine required, you know, uses lactate, serotonin, dopamine. It's used for of neurons. Um, it's used as a very efficient source of energy. So lactate can be used, um, to make, you know, energy it's converted, you know, um, inside the mitochondria and use this energy. And this is, this is in the brain. This is in other tissues as well, like the gut, like it's really important for the gut. So I think that, um, there's a, there's a role of high intensity interval training or high or vigorous types of exercise. I say high intensity interval training, because, um, it's hard to keep that level of, of activity up for, for more than an interval. I mean, it's, it's extremely, you're, you're, I mean, you're pushing it all the way and then you like taper down. Right. So, um, I do think the, the, the vigorous type of exercise has a special role in, I think, brain health as well. Um, but also I think cancer prevention is a big one too. I mean, aerobic exercise is very important for cancer prevention. And specifically, I think that there's some interesting mechanisms where the intensity of exercise actually also seems to be important. So, um, there's, there's a big, there's, there's a circulating, um, tumor cells. So these circulating tumor cells, most of the time are when someone has a primary, you know, tumor. So they basically have been diagnosed with cancer. And so at that point, the goal is, okay, well, how do we, you know, get rid of the cancer and prevent metastasis, right? We don't want the cancer to spread. Well, the circulating tumor cells escape the primary tumor site, they get into circulation, and then they go, they go elsewhere and then establish camp there, right this, the metastasis process, well, exercise itself, there's something called sheer force, the sheer force of blood flow going through the circulatory system itself kills these circulating tumor cells. And it does it because these, these tumor cells have these mechanoreceptors on the,. And, um, they're so sensitive to like movement. It's almost like a hurricane. It's like a hurricane King just coming through and just wiping it out. And, uh, so, so that there's been studies showing that, um, you know, that the people that have been diagnosed with either colon cancer or breast cancer, when they engage in intense, um, in, um, physical activity, aerobic exercise, they are less likely to have like, there's, they're circulating tumor cells drop down. They're less likely to have cancer recurrence. I mean, dramatically in some cases, you're like, you're talking like 40% and they're less likely to die from their cancer. So, um, cancer prevention, but also important role for, um, you know, cancer recurrence and cancer mortality for people that have already been diagnosed with cancer. I think that, um, the big thing here, uh, you know, there's been a lot of, oh, what, what type of extra should I do? I think you should probably just, you know, do what you can do what you're going to do. Um, probably good to do both. Like I do a lot of Tabatas. And so I, I go between my all outs and also like, you know, I'm in, I'm in like a zone three, sometimes a zone two, when I'm sort of tapering it down and like, before I'm about to go back all out again. And I do that 10 or 15 minutes a day, five days a week. And then I also like to do resistance training and that's another, you know, muscle mass and maintaining muscle mass. So important and, you know, building up that muscle reserve earlier in life, because, you know, you got to build it up, you got to build it up. And once you start to reach a certain age, it becomes very hard to gain muscle mass, although you can still gain strength. And so, you know, you, you have a harder time gaining that mass, but you're losing it. And so it's kind of like the more you start with, the losses aren't quite as big, right? So I think resistance training is very important for that as well. All those things are important. And I think that you have to find something that you can incorporate into your daily your daily routine and that you will, you will do, and, you know, you want your heart rate to get up. You want to sweat, you want to be tired. Like you want, like you want to feel tired afterwards. And I think exercise, um, whatever, whatever way you can do it, where you are at least getting your heart rate up and you are flush in the face and you are like, you know, when you're working out, you don't, you can't talk right. To some degree. I think that's good. And, um, there's been studies that have looked at, you know, I think exercise can forgive a lot of sins. And I'll say this, you know, I, during, um, when I was a young, you know, a new mother, my, my, my son was a newborn and all the way up and through the first year. I mean, there was, there was just so much disruption to my sleep that, and there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, like we all know how important sleep is for health, for brain function, for blood pressure, everything. Right. But when you are a young, I can only speak as a mother. Like I can't speak for being a father, but I think the father's sleep is also disrupted somewhat too. Mothers though, they're breastfeeding. There's no, you have to feed your baby. There's nothing you can do. And in a way, if you think about all the detrimental effects, it can be very discouraging. You're like, I'm doing terrible things to myself and there's nothing I can do about it. Well, I, um, I, I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor at the time and my blood glucose, my fasting blood glucose levels were just through the roof. And it was crazy. You know, I was eating the same diet and, and it wasn't until I got back into my, I was doing a lot of spin classes back then. And, um, it wasn't until I got like on, on the Peloton or the exercise bike doing high intensity interval training that all of a sudden it normalized my, my blood glucose levels, even with the interrupted sleep. And then I've went into the literature and found, you know, studies showing high intensity interval training can basically ameliorate the negative effects of sleep deprivation on blood glucose regulation. And, you know, so clearly scientific evidence of it. I had anecdotal evidence as well. But there's also was a pretty recent study looking at sleep and all cause mortality. There's lots of those out there. You'll find, of course, people with, you know, disrupted sleep, shorter, you know, much, much shorter sleep durations have a higher all cause mortality. However, this, this recent study also looked at physical activity and it was interesting because sleep, you know, quality and quantity again was associated. So lower quantity was associated with higher all cause mortality, but only in people that were not physically active. In other words, physical activity forgave the sleep disruption, the poor sleep. I think that if there's a message here, it is that the most important thing that you can do in your life is to sweat and get physically active. Like there's nothing that is going to be better for you. No, no aging drug, nothing. Nothing's going to be better than, than what exercise can do at the moment. And I think that's, that is, is the, is the main message that like, you just need to be like, if you care about aging, everything from skin is skin aging. Like there was a study showing that people that are physically active are 20 to 50% less likely to have collagen breakdown. And I mean, it was just amazing. Everything, brain health, cardiovascular health, you know, it's, it's just, it's, it's the most powerful, I would say longevity drug you're going to get in my opinion. Rhonda, I so admire your passion for this topic. And this conversation today has made me feel so excited to see you present at our annual international conference. I wanted to thank you so much for sharing these real practical takeaways, combined with the research briefs. We can't wait to see more. And we really look forward to seeing you in Orlando in June. I look forward to it as well. It's going to be a fun time. A big thank you to the Institute for Functional Medicine for inviting me to be a keynote speaker at their 2023 annual conference. For any of you interested in functional medicine, they have a great annual conference every year. You can learn more about what the Institute for functional medicine is on their website at ifm.org. And as always, make sure you are on my free email newsletter to get more valuable insights and tips. If you have a question you'd like me to answer, consider joining my membership. Not only do we release exclusive episodes for members, but I also host a monthly Q&A where many of our community members get their questions addressed directly. It's a fantastic community we've built together."

Resistance Training Discussion

So, um, there's, there's a big, there's, there's a circulating, um, tumor cells. We don't want the cancer to spread.

"There's, you know, the resveratrol is probably a very well-known one that's found in the Thank you. plants, um, sulforaphane being one in cruciferous plants that there's, you know, the, uh, resveratrol is probably a very well-known one that's found in the skin of some fruits like grapes and blueberries, tarostilbene, another one found in the skin of blueberries. There's the, the turmeric, um, that, that, um, the curcumin found in that. And so these are all phytochemicals that also activate stress response genes. They also activate genes that are active from things like physical activity or heat stress, like heat shock proteins. So a lot of overlap between it's the intermittent stress can activate a whole host of these things. Some of these stress response genes are more active by different types of it. So like thermal stress more robustly activates heat shock proteins than eating some broccoli does. But sulforaphane does activate heat shock proteins. Sulforaphane is found in broccoli, broccoli sprouts. So you'll get a lot of overlap between them. but the bottom line is that our genes were meant to be pushed by intermittent types of stress. And we've lost that. We've lost that ability to push them. We're not, I'm not the ability, but we've, we've, we've stopped doing it. And I think that it's, it's had a detrimental effect on the way that were, our predisposition to age-related diseases as well, because you want to, you want to clean up stuff. You want to keep pushing the antioxidant, the anti-inflammatory, you know, the preventing the protein aggregation, the repairing the damaged DNA. Like that stuff is important because all that stuff is happening every day, just from normal metabolism, normal immune activation, normal going out in the sun and getting, you know, ionizing radiation. Like, and then you add on top of that modern day, you know, living air pollution, um, you know, chemicals were exposed to like, it's compounding and we have to turn those, those stress response genes on to not only age better, but to like just even age normally. So it's very important to engage in, you know, these intermittent types of stress, whether that's, you know, exercising, cardiovascular exercise, resistance training, going into hot tubs in the sauna, you know, not eating around the clock, you know, having periods of a break and also eating, eating phytochemicals from plants. I think these are, these are all very important. Well, I think, as you said, we all know exercise is important, but when we look to healthy aging and longevity, are there types of exercise we should be focusing on? I heard you mentioned resistance training, but there's so many options, resistance training and high intensity interval training and aerobic training. Where should we focus our efforts? It's a good question. And I think that, you know, with respect to people, like the people need to be physically active, like whatever it is they're going to do and do it regularly, routinely establish a routine is in my opinion, the most important thing. So, um, not concerning yourself so much with, Oh, I need to be doing this zone too, or I need to be doing high intensity interval training. Um, like what you need to do is do what you know you will do. Like that's the most important thing. But let's say you want to step up a level and you're already like, I'm committed. I, you know, absolutely like love the way I feel after I exercise, but I want to be doing the best things in, you know, and I'm trying to do everything I can to maximize every type of benefit for my brain and for my muscle and for my heart that I can. Right. Um, so is my, my, so I'll say this, um, there's, there's been these interesting studies that are called the vigorous intensity lifestyle, what visit vigorous intensity, lifestyle, physical activity. So VILPA. And, um, there's these, there's these large studies where people have worn like these accelerometers, you know, some sort of smart Fitbit or, or fill in the blank type of, you know, device that'll measure their movement. And, um, it's been, it's been shown from these studies. So the vigorous intensity, this is basically like, you know, not just walking. Okay. This is like, you're going, you're going to more of a, you know, maximum, like maximal heart rate or, um, close to it. So you're more like, you know, maybe 80, 80%, you know, estimated max heart rate and doing something for anywhere like one minute to three minutes, three times a day. Okay. So this is like the quote unquote exercise snacks. This is like, okay, I'm at my desk. I'm, I'm working at my computer. I'm going to get up and I'm going to do one minute of burpees, or I'm going to get up and I'm going to go sprint down the street and back, or I'm going to do a hill sprint, something that is so short, but intense. And then you just get back into whatever you're doing. So it's not so disruptive. You don't have to have a gym membership. You don't have to go, you know, and get in your car and drive somewhere. You don't have to like, think about it and carve out time in your day. You just do it. You just get up from your desk and you do it. So this is one minute to three minutes, three times a day have shown that people that do this again, this is measured by actual data, empirical data have anywhere between a 30 to 40% lower all cause mortality and cancer related mortality. The vigorous intensity is, is a little bit different than, you know, some people like to go for long runs. They like to go for long bite rides. They're, they're more of that, you know, moderate intensity type of exercise. And that's great too. If that's what you're doing and that's what you love doing, there's tons of studies showing that being, you know, physically active, particularly if you're going on a longer run and you're, you know, engaging in 150 minutes of that normal, moderate type of aerobic exercise per week that you're doing really good, right? So it's not that you have to go and do the vigorous intensity. Although I do think there are added benefits on top of that. And those largely have to do with the brain because when you are bigger, when you're going, when you start to reach, you know, above, when you're getting to the 80%, you know, maximum heart rate, uh, estimated maximum heart rate, and you start to get a high, um, you can't generate energy from the, you know, the oxygen that you breathe in quick enough. And so your mitochondria, which are the major source of energy generating organelles inside of your cells can't, they require oxygen to make ATP, which is the energy I'm talking about. So, um, so you can't get that oxygen quick enough for the mitochondria to do it. And so you're forced to make energy outside of the mitochondria and you make it by using, using up glucose. And so the glucose then gets metabolized into lactate and lactate is not a waste metabolite. Like it was widely believed for many years. Like it's just waste metabolite. It's not only a waste metabolite, it could potentially be harmful because it was thought to be, you know, causing muscle soreness complete and other not, not true nonsense, not true. Um, so, so lactate actually is a signaling molecule. It has been shown to activate brain neuro-derived neurotrophic factor at the blood brain barrier. It activates it. It also gets into other tissues, including the brain through this MCT transporter. And it's used for neurotransmitter synthesis, norepinephrine required, you know, uses lactate, serotonin, dopamine. It's used for of neurons. Um, it's used as a very efficient source of energy. So lactate can be used, um, to make, you know, energy it's converted, you know, um, inside the mitochondria and use this energy. And this is, this is in the brain. This is in other tissues as well, like the gut, like it's really important for the gut. So I think that, um, there's a, there's a role of high intensity interval training or high or vigorous types of exercise. I say high intensity interval training, because, um, it's hard to keep that level of, of activity up for, for more than an interval. I mean, it's, it's extremely, you're, you're, I mean, you're pushing it all the way and then you like taper down. Right. So, um, I do think the, the, the vigorous type of exercise has a special role in, I think, brain health as well. Um, but also I think cancer prevention is a big one too. I mean, aerobic exercise is very important for cancer prevention. And specifically, I think that there's some interesting mechanisms where the intensity of exercise actually also seems to be important. So, um, there's, there's a big, there's, there's a circulating, um, tumor cells. So these circulating tumor cells, most of the time are when someone has a primary, you know, tumor. So they basically have been diagnosed with cancer. And so at that point, the goal is, okay, well, how do we, you know, get rid of the cancer and prevent metastasis, right? We don't want the cancer to spread. Well, the circulating tumor cells escape the primary tumor site, they get into circulation, and then they go, they go elsewhere and then establish camp there, right this, the metastasis process, well, exercise itself, there's something called sheer force, the sheer force of blood flow going through the circulatory system itself kills these circulating tumor cells. And it does it because these, these tumor cells have these mechanoreceptors on the,. And, um, they're so sensitive to like movement. It's almost like a hurricane. It's like a hurricane King just coming through and just wiping it out. And, uh, so, so that there's been studies showing that, um, you know, that the people that have been diagnosed with either colon cancer or breast cancer, when they engage in intense, um, in, um, physical activity, aerobic exercise, they are less likely to have like, there's, they're circulating tumor cells drop down. They're less likely to have cancer recurrence. I mean, dramatically in some cases, you're like, you're talking like 40% and they're less likely to die from their cancer. So, um, cancer prevention, but also important role for, um, you know, cancer recurrence and cancer mortality for people that have already been diagnosed with cancer. I think that, um, the big thing here, uh, you know, there's been a lot of, oh, what, what type of extra should I do? I think you should probably just, you know, do what you can do what you're going to do. Um, probably good to do both. Like I do a lot of Tabatas. And so I, I go between my all outs and also like, you know, I'm in, I'm in like a zone three, sometimes a zone two, when I'm sort of tapering it down and like, before I'm about to go back all out again. And I do that 10 or 15 minutes a day, five days a week. And then I also like to do resistance training and that's another, you know, muscle mass and maintaining muscle mass. So important and, you know, building up that muscle reserve earlier in life, because, you know, you got to build it up, you got to build it up. And once you start to reach a certain age, it becomes very hard to gain muscle mass, although you can still gain strength. And so, you know, you, you have a harder time gaining that mass, but you're losing it. And so it's kind of like the more you start with, the losses aren't quite as big, right? So I think resistance training is very important for that as well. All those things are important. And I think that you have to find something that you can incorporate into your daily your daily routine and that you will, you will do, and, you know, you want your heart rate to get up. You want to sweat, you want to be tired. Like you want, like you want to feel tired afterwards. And I think exercise, um, whatever, whatever way you can do it, where you are at least getting your heart rate up and you are flush in the face and you are like, you know, when you're working out, you don't, you can't talk right. To some degree. I think that's good. And, um, there's been studies that have looked at, you know, I think exercise can forgive a lot of sins. And I'll say this, you know, I, during, um, when I was a young, you know, a new mother, my, my, my son was a newborn and all the way up and through the first year. I mean, there was, there was just so much disruption to my sleep that, and there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, like we all know how important sleep is for health, for brain function, for blood pressure, everything. Right. But when you are a young, I can only speak as a mother. Like I can't speak for being a father, but I think the father's sleep is also disrupted somewhat too. Mothers though, they're breastfeeding. There's no, you have to feed your baby. There's nothing you can do. And in a way, if you think about all the detrimental effects, it can be very discouraging. You're like, I'm doing terrible things to myself and there's nothing I can do about it. Well, I, um, I, I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor at the time and my blood glucose, my fasting blood glucose levels were just through the roof. And it was crazy. You know, I was eating the same diet and, and it wasn't until I got back into my, I was doing a lot of spin classes back then. And, um, it wasn't until I got like on, on the Peloton or the exercise bike doing high intensity interval training that all of a sudden it normalized my, my blood glucose levels, even with the interrupted sleep. And then I've went into the literature and found, you know, studies showing high intensity interval training can basically ameliorate the negative effects of sleep deprivation on blood glucose regulation. And, you know, so clearly scientific evidence of it. I had anecdotal evidence as well. But there's also was a pretty recent study looking at sleep and all cause mortality. There's lots of those out there. You'll find, of course, people with, you know, disrupted sleep, shorter, you know, much, much shorter sleep durations have a higher all cause mortality. However, this, this recent study also looked at physical activity and it was interesting because sleep, you know, quality and quantity again was associated. So lower quantity was associated with higher all cause mortality, but only in people that were not physically active. In other words, physical activity forgave the sleep disruption, the poor sleep. I think that if there's a message here, it is that the most important thing that you can do in your life is to sweat and get physically active. Like there's nothing that is going to be better for you. No, no aging drug, nothing. Nothing's going to be better than, than what exercise can do at the moment. And I think that's, that is, is the, is the main message that like, you just need to be like, if you care about aging, everything from skin is skin aging. Like there was a study showing that people that are physically active are 20 to 50% less likely to have collagen breakdown. And I mean, it was just amazing. Everything, brain health, cardiovascular health, you know, it's, it's just, it's, it's the most powerful, I would say longevity drug you're going to get in my opinion. Rhonda, I so admire your passion for this topic. And this conversation today has made me feel so excited to see you present at our annual international conference. I wanted to thank you so much for sharing these real practical takeaways, combined with the research briefs. We can't wait to see more. And we really look forward to seeing you in Orlando in June. I look forward to it as well. It's going to be a fun time. A big thank you to the Institute for Functional Medicine for inviting me to be a keynote speaker at their 2023 annual conference. For any of you interested in functional medicine, they have a great annual conference every year. You can learn more about what the Institute for functional medicine is on their website at ifm.org. And as always, make sure you are on my free email newsletter to get more valuable insights and tips. If you have a question you'd like me to answer, consider joining my membership. Not only do we release exclusive episodes for members, but I also host a monthly Q&A where many of our community members get their questions addressed directly. It's a fantastic community we've built together."

Cgm Discussion

You want to sweat, you want to be tired. Like you want, like you want to feel tired afterwards.

"And I think that you have to find something that you can incorporate into your daily your daily routine and that you will, you will do, and, you know, you want your heart rate to get up. You want to sweat, you want to be tired."