February 1, 2016
Rich Roll Podcast: Dr. Rhonda Patrick
Sponsors: Plantpower Way
Other Rhonda Patrick podcast episodes:
- Dr. Pierre Capel on the Power of the Mind & Science of Wim Hof
- The Ice Man, Wim Hof
- Buffering the effects of stress with meditation
- The Sonnenburgs on How the Gut Microbiota Interacts With Our Bodies
Recommendations:
- Eat lots of fiber from a variety of foods
- VSL#3 for priobiotics
- Nordic Naturals for Fish oil (EPA/DHA) and other supplements
- Get enough sleep and get light exposure for at least 1-2 hours in the morning
- Meditate: Start by trying our 10-day program with Headspace
- Get your Vitamin D levels tested and supplement as needed to get between 40-60 nanograms/ml
- Don’t think that Ketogenic (or any other) diets are a cure-all
- Try out 23andme if curious about your genetics, partner the results with Promthease to see what they mean
- And with Rhonda’s tool in development to see how they impact your body’s ability to metabolize various nutrients
Aging
- Humans with a certain gene polymorphism that make it active have up to a 3x better chance of living to 100
- St. Jude’s (Memphis TN): Pioneered treatments for Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia for children- 95% go to remission, 90% cures (remission for at least 10 years)
- Rhonda has worked on multiple trials on age related biomarkers and nutrition, as well as powdered blueberry
- Could blueberry help reduce oxidate stress and eventual damage to DNA
- Many lifestyle diseases and aging are related to inflammation
- Inflammation: Consequence of your immune system being active
- Japanese aging study: In every category of age, the only thing correlated with aging was inflammation
- Once active, you release “chemical weapons” called inflammatory cytokines that damage cells/DNA/etc. in your body
- This is a useful system to attack infection or repair damage, so some acute inflammation is helpful
- BUT, chronic inflammation is what is problematic, “burns your engine out”
- Major source of inflammation in the body is in the gut by the food that you eat
- Telomeres are biomarkers of aging, they shorten as you age
- More a lack of good food, than eating bad foods
- Tons of immune cells and bacteria in your gut that are separated by a Mucin gut barrier
- This mucin barrier can be broken down by your good gut bacteria if they don’t have enough fiber to eat leading to Leaky Gut and inflammation
- Inflammation because without the Mucin barrier, immune cells see all this bacteria and go on the attack
- The right kind of food is FIBER and we don’t eat enough of it
- Really insidious, as people don’t feel it strongly. They may feel constipated a little, but don’t realize the magnitude of the effect over the years and accelerating your aging
- Fiber is at the top of the food pyramid for me, and you want a variety of it
- Different fiber creates different beneficial effects on the body
- Sonnenburgs at Stanford run a lab on gut microbiome
- Hunter gatherers in Africa can eat 200 grams of fiber a day vs. 10-15grams for Americans
- We should be focusing on eating our Fiber, ouch more so than Protein
- Robynne Chutkan: The Microbiome Solution
- Probiotics are great, but not as effective as you think
- Better to focus on PREbiotics such as fiber that help the good bacteria you have to thrive
- Antibiotics are a big problem is disrupting gut health
- Tons of immune cells and bacteria in your gut that are separated by a Mucin gut barrier
- VSL#3: Rhonda’s recommended probiotic, much higher dose (450 billion probiotics per packet) of live bacteria, over 25 studies supporting its value (including prevention of weight gain when on a high fat or high sugar diet)
- Most probiotics don’t have enough and the cultures might be dead
- Buy the Sachets of VSL#3 as they have the highest dose
- Rhonda saw benefits of VSL#3 by testing before/after with uBiome
- Can eat it straight, mix is water, yogurt, etc.
- Pills are ok, but need 8 pills to = 1 sachet
- Daily habits to reduce inflammation:
- Gut health and more fiber (enough veggies, nuts, seeds, etc.)
- Cause acute inflammation via exercise that boosts your natural anti-inflammatory abilities
- Circumin: Found in turmeric
- Potential anti-inflammatory by stressing us, that turns on anti-infl. Genes and inhibits the bad ones
- Tumeric is a source of circumin, and has tumerone that has been shown to increase neural stem cells in the brain
- Can experience pain relief similar to Ibuprofen
- Other anti-inflammatories work by binding away free radicals which is good, but you lose the bodies good response to them of anti-inflammatory signals
- Too much anti-oxidants can be problematic, but depends on the “dose” of exercise
- Could negate some of the muscle growth from resistance training or benefits on insulin sensitivity
- If you have really pushed yourself beyond normal limits (e.g. your first marathon, professional level athletes) and your body would struggle to recover, this is where anti-oxidants would be helpful
- Fish-oil: EPA, DHA found in fatty fish, microalgae/phytoplankton
- Help reduce e2 series prostaglandins which are inflammatory cytokines
- Nordic Naturals brand, as these oils can go rancid and your need high quality supplements
- Sleep/Improve your Circadian rhythm by using early bright light exposure to help regulate your system
- 1-2 hours of bright light is enough to set your clock correctly (minimally effective dose)
- Bright light/10k lux for 7 hours reduced cortisol (stress hormone) levels by 25% the next day
- Cortisol causes stress and inflammation, ability to lose weight, gain muscle, mood, learning, etc.
- Bright lights/Blue Lights are available to give you this if you can’t have sun exposure
- Meditation: Great way to negate a lot of the negative effects of stress
- There is good stress (exercise, personal growth) and bad stress
- Bad stress: ruminations where you constantly fixate on issues
- Can lead to increase corticotrophin/cortisol levels
- People can have their own types of meditative acts such as surfing/relaxing, yoga exercise, etc. that might not be “meditation” which is still helpful, but not exactly the same
- Meditation can change the expression of anti-inflammatory genes in blood cells (and inhibit pro-inflammatory genes)
- “The hardest thing to do, is to do nothing”
- Try the Headspace app to get started with guided meditation
- Spending 20 minutes of meditation can make you more productive/focused in a way that on net, you get more done that more than compensates for the time spent meditating
- Even started with 5 or 10 minutes is a good place to start
- Telomeres: Tiny caps on the end of each chromosome (than contain all our DNA) that protect them from damage like a shield
- As the telomeres get damaged they get shorter
- Every time a cell divides and replicates the DNA, the Telomere DNA gets replicated, but gets slightly shorter each time it is copied by a tiny amount (like a Xerox)
- Over the decades it gets so short then the cell dies or the cell goes into “senescent” – it is confused, not alive/dead, but is releases pro-inflammatory cytokines that damage nearby cells and push those cells to get senescent
- This is accelerated by inflammation
- The field is where microbiome research was 5 years ago
- Elizabeth Blackburn study on telomerase (an enzyme which can help repair telomeres by lengthening it)
- However, most cells except stem cells have a gene for telomerase, but it is silenced
- The reason is if a cell is damaged that can lead to cancer try want to activate telomerase to make itself immortal
- EG: you could help anti-aging, but at the risk of turning on cancer
- Need a way to only turn on telomerase in healthy cells ONLY and thus prevent aging (in theory as an ultimate goal)
- There are some things like TA-65 are made of Straggualis Root, that have shown in couple studies can increase telomere length in 40% in people
- In animals shown to reverse signs of aging in aged organs
- Remaining question is the cancer issue
- The real gold is in prevention of telomere shortening, rather than trying to regrow them (g. by exercising, vitamin D, etc.)
- Vitamin D: Gets converted into a steroid hormone in the body which regulates about 5% of the human genome
- Thus it is a big role is all sorts of biologic functions
- 70% of the US population has inadequate levels of vitamin D
- People with levels b/w 40-60 nanograms/ml have the lowest risk of all-cause mortality
- Too much can be dangerous too
- Easy to get a blood test done to see your levels
- Northern latitude levels don’t get enough UVB radiation for 6 months a year to make Vitamin D
- Also, older people are less able to convert sunlight into vitamin D
- More melanin/sunscreen/etc. blocks UVB and thus you ability to convert to vitamin D
- Body fat stores Vitamin D and allows less to be released into the blood stream
- Some common gene polymorphisms affect people’s ability to convert Vitamin D into the right hormone
- Supplementation: Firstly, try to get as much as you can from real food
- Vitamin D
- DHA/EPA:
- Microalgae source can be better to avoid spoiled/oxidated fish oil (also can have a mercury risk)
- Nordic Naturals: Rhonda’s recommendation, no affiliation with them (or VSL#3)
- Activated Vitamin B complex
- Genetic Testing:
- Testing from 23andme, just doubled the price to for their new health report
- Promethease: $5 tool that takes your 23andme data to give you a report for what the results might mean
- Rhonda is building her own genetic tool:
- Beta: web tool that interprets your 23andme to see what gene polymorphisms (30-40genes) that could inform your lifestyle to help compensate (free)
- Athletic performance vs. Long Term health/Longevity
- Some overlap, but not always compatible
- There is often a tradeoff in getting a boost that might hurt you in the long term (steroids being the obvious example)
- There is an idea that you can train your way out of bad diet, but that doesn’t really work as you get older you find that out
- A lot of focus on taking a lot of protein, but we don’t need that much for us on average, it’s insane, especially when combining with refined/crappy carbs that are inflammatory
- Protein activated the IG-1 pathway in cells to overrides the body’s ability to kill a cell that might be cancerous WHILE your are damaging your cells from the inflammation created by bad carbs
- In this context, protein is correlated with increased cancer risk- they love protein to help them grown (via IGF-1 and building blocks ot make new cancer cells)
- However, as we age (over 65) we begin to lose .5-1% of muscle mass per year and it is hard to maintain it
- Study showed that lower dietary protein intake after 55 years was correlated with all-cause mortality/frailty
- Once you’re 70/80 you’re probably past your risk for cancer anyway
- The internet is full of BS/lack of nuance about health such as:
- Ketogenic diets has been blown way out of proportion- not a cure all and very complex
- Need to consider the types of fats, the proteins with the fats, the micronutrients
- Over-response to fat not being totally evil, but doesn’t make it good for you
- Many people have gene polymorphisms that can become insulin resistance/diabetic from saturated fats
- “eat your butter” is not entirely healthy for everyone
- There are benefits to ketosis, but it’s just not that simple
- We don’t know what the long term effects of ketosis and ketones on the bodies
- Especially in a click-bait internet world
- Rhonda has to avoid engaging and spending all day every day arguing about this
- Ketogenic diets has been blown way out of proportion- not a cure all and very complex
