Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Why your sleep adds hidden visceral fat

1. 0:00 – 2:45

   Intro

   1. SPSpeaker0:00

      We are being bombarded with disrupting chemicals. A lot of them, they're in our products.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:05

      Okay, let's go to my kitchen. Come with me. So this is my fridge.

   3. SPSpeaker0:09

      So the first thing I notice is this, 'cause that's, like, the worst.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett0:11

      Can I get a bin bag? [packaging rustling]

   5. SPSpeaker0:14

      This is made from recycled electronics.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett0:17

      What about this?

   7. SPSpeaker0:18

      This is a problem also.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett0:21

      And this?

   9. SPSpeaker0:22

      Ding, ding, ding. This is great.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett0:23

       I'm gonna do utensils next.

   11. SPSpeaker0:24

       Heating it up, the plastic is getting into your food.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett0:27

       What about a receipt?

   13. SPSpeaker0:28

       That's bad. It's covered with BPA, and a study in adolescent boys showed that it was associated with a fifty percent reduction in testosterone. And then this is one that people often miss.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett0:39

       Oh, [beep] .

   15. SPSpeaker0:40

       The biomedical scientist and anti-aging doctor Rhonda Patrick is back. This time she's talking about health optimization, maintaining peak performance- And the environmental toxins disrupting your body.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett0:50

       Dr. Rhonda Patrick, let's talk about something that I've never heard of before, peakspan. What the hell is peakspan?

   17. SPSpeaker0:56

       So it's essentially being within ninety percent of your peak function. For example, muscle mass, bone density, that kind of peaks around twenty-five years old, and then they kind of steadily start to decline.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett1:08

       You're joking.

   19. SPSpeaker1:08

       And the same goes for cognitive function.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett1:10

       So I'm on the way down.

   21. SPSpeaker1:11

       Yeah. And I'm definitely on the way down, but we can do things in our life to help maintain that peakspan. Like if you exercise five hours a week, do some high intensity interval training in there, and you can reverse heart aging by twenty years. And then sleep, very, very important for preventing your immune system from aging rapidly. And then another thing that you can do that's really important for brain aging is... And this is associated with a rapid decrease in Alzheimer's disease risk. But what I really wanna talk about is intermittent fasting, Ozempic, supplements, and being sedentary.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett1:39

       So don't wanna talk about all of that, but we've gotta talk about this in my hands at the moment.

   23. SPSpeaker1:43

       So if you have this, it's going to double your risk of early mortality.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett1:46

       Double your risk?

   25. SPSpeaker1:47

       Yes. Double. Double.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett1:48

       Okay. So talk me through this. I want as much detail as possible. This is super interesting to me. My team give me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe, and some of you have told us, according to this, that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button, if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double-check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you wanna hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of The Diary of CEO, and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. [upbeat music]

2. 2:45 – 14:23

   Why Visceral Fat Is More Dangerous Than You Think

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:45

      Dr. Rhonda Patrick, I am fascinated by so many of the things that you talked about, and they're front of mind for me at the moment because I'm a thirty-three-year-old man, and I know from doing this podcast and looking at graphs like this one, which we'll talk about today, which I don't think most people have ever seen in their lives, that this is the age where things might start changing direction from here on over the next decade. And there's things I can do to set myself up now, if I listen to your advice, for the remaining decades of my life to be remarkably different. I'm playing with this in my hands at the moment. It's, for anyone that can't see, you should probably look at the screen right now. It's a yellow blob of squidgy, slightly disgusting material. What is this, and why does this matter?

   2. SPSpeaker3:33

      So this represents visceral fat. It's something that most people haven't heard of. Many people have heard of fat. They know fat is bad, but they don't realize there are different kinds of fat.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett3:45

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SPSpeaker3:46

      There is visceral fat, and this is the kind of fat that you can't really pinch. Adipose tissue kind of fat, right? I mean, if you opened up your body, you could pinch it because it's deep, deep within your body. It's often referred to as belly fat.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett4:01

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SPSpeaker4:01

      And it's, it's surrounding your organs, like your liver, your kidney, you know, your intestines. This is a very deep belly fat, and it's very different from subcutaneous fat. You can actually be lean but have a high amount of visceral fat. We call these metabolically unhealthy people. So visceral fat, you mentioned you're thirty-three. The average thirty-three-year-old male has how much visceral fat?

   7. SBSteven Bartlett4:28

      According to the data, it says roughly one point two pounds at the age of thirty, and then for a woman, point five pounds of visceral fat at the age of thirty. At forty, it's one point seven pounds for a man and point seven pounds for a woman. At fifty, two point two pounds for a man, one pound for a woman, and at sixty, two point seven pounds of visceral fat and one point five... four pounds for a woman, which is the highest risk for metabolic syndromes at that age. But I mean, all of them are pretty scary.

   8. SPSpeaker4:58

      It is. And as you notice, the trend is as you get older, you have a higher risk of having more of it. Seventy percent of women over the age of fifty have a high amount of visceral fat. Fifty percent of men over the age of fifty have a high amount of visceral fat. This visceral fat, for one, it's going to double your risk of early mortality. Full stop. That's, that's, you know... It's, it's gonna double your risk.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett5:18

      Double your risk?

   10. SPSpeaker5:19

       Yes. Double. Double. Visceral fat is, as I mentioned, different from the other kind of fat, the subcutaneous kind of fat, the adipose tissue kind of fat, in several ways. One is that it is metabolically active. It is secreting inflammatory cytokines. These are, you know, molecules that are signaling to the immune system, but they're also involved with damaging our cells. And for this reason, people with a high amount of visceral fat are forty-four percent more likely to get metastatic cancer. That's cancer that's going to metastasize. Very dangerous types of cancer. They're also more likely... You mentioned metabolic syndrome. This is a big, big thing with visceral fatThis type of fat is constantly breaking down triglycerides into free fatty acids. It's constantly doing it.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett6:12

       What's triglycerides?

   12. SPSpeaker6:13

       Triglycerides are, are how your body is able to store fatty acids and fat and use them for later, you know, energy, right? So they're constantly breaking them down and using them. They're using these, these fatty acids. But typically what happens in your body when you eat a meal, you have your glucose le- levels go up, right? Your blood sugar elevates, your glucose levels go up, and that signals to the pancreas in your body to make insulin. Insulin is this hormone that plays a role in many things. One of it is to tell different parts of the body to take glucse- glucose up, like your liver, your muscle, your adipose tissue. Well, the problem is, is this visceral fat is constantly making those free fatty acids, and so those fatty acids, it doesn't, it doesn't respond... This, this, we call it... It's not really an organ, but this type of fat doesn't respond to insulin. So whereas the subcutaneous fat will stop breaking down fat and using fat as energy, it says, "Okay, look, I have energy here. I gotta do something with this energy. Let me, let me store it for later use," right? Well, that, that doesn't happen with visceral fat. What happens is it just keeps going, keeps going, keeps going. What happens is when your visceral fat is metabolically active like that, it is basically making it where insulin can't work its job. And so what happens is that glucose can't go into your liver. It stays in your blood system.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett7:37

       And you really want it to be stored in your liver, right?

   14. SPSpeaker7:38

       You want it to be stored in your liver as glycogen to be used as energy when you're fasting or when you're, you know, physically active or whene- whenever you need it, right? Also in your muscle, same thing, stored as glycogen or stored in your adipose tissue.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett7:50

       Mm-hmm.

   16. SPSpeaker7:50

       Um, and so, and so none of that happens because insulin, it's not able to, to basically act on your, your, your organs. It's... There's no signal. So no- nobody's getting the phone call, "Hey, time to take the glucose up." It's not happening, right? So the glucose sits around. So what happens is your body freaks out because it's not good to have glucose sitting around in your bloodstream for a while. It causes a lot of damage, right?

   17. SBSteven Bartlett8:13

       Mm-hmm.

   18. SPSpeaker8:13

       And so what happens is your body makes even more insulin to try to overcompensate. Your body goes, "Oh, maybe that wasn't enough insulin because, you know, the glucose isn't coming into the organs like the liver like it's supposed to, so let me put some more out."

   19. SBSteven Bartlett8:27

       And for anyone that doesn't know, insulin is kind of like the taxi driver that goes and picks up the glucose and takes it home to the-

   20. SPSpeaker8:31

       Right

   21. SBSteven Bartlett8:32

       ... to the liver.

   22. SPSpeaker8:32

       Exactly. It's taking it home. It's taking it back to the liver. And so what happens when you make more insulin, you're overcompensating in such a way that now glucose really does get taken up into these other organs like the liver, and it... so much so that it causes your blood glucose levels to go down and, and you're crashing. And all of a sudden, this is responsible for that, you know, people that eat a meal and they're kind of insulin resistant, they eat a meal and then all of a sudden they're crashing an hour later. We're like, "Why am I... Why do I have no energy? Why am I hungry," right? Because when you're... after you crash, your, your blood glucose levels go down. That's what I mean by crashing. Um, really far, far down, not, not normal levels, but like below that.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett9:16

       Mm-hmm.

   24. SPSpeaker9:16

       And so then your body sh- tries to overcompensate by going, "Oh, I'm hungry. I need to eat," and so you start to have these cravings for like energy dense foods and that's part of this cycle of the beginnings of insulin resistance. And so when I'm talking about here with visceral fat, it causes insulin resistance and that's essentially the take home here. By, by it's constantly metabolizing fatty acids, it's, it's stopping that taxi car from going and getting the glucose. It's, it's not happening. It's not responding. You're not picking up the driver, right? And so you become insulin resistant, and that has a lot of problems. One, it's gonna affect your immediate energy levels. It's gonna affect the way you're feeling, and two, it's gonna make you more likely to become Type 2 diabetic, 'cause eventually your body will- won't be able to produce enough insulin to bring the glucose in, and so then you become Type 2 diabetic. So that is a big consequence of having this visceral fat in addition to those inflammatory molecules that are being generated from this fat. It's just so metabolically active, and that inflammation that you're generating not only does things like raise your cancer risk by 44%, it also makes you tired. It gives you brain fog, lethargy. When your immune system is being activated by this inflammation, you're taking energy away from your brain. It ca- it's a lot of energy to activate your immune system. And so-

   25. SBSteven Bartlett10:38

       It's like, oh, this is-

   26. SPSpeaker10:39

       Yeah. So that energy is now going to the wrong place. It's not going to your brain.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett10:43

       So you can feel... you won't feel cognitively as sharp and-

   28. SPSpeaker10:46

       Absolutely won't. Just think about when you're, when you're... when you have an infection. Your immune system's very active. You're fighting off a pathogen, right? Do you feel like you're tired or do you feel like you're cogniti- cognitively at your peak?

   29. SBSteven Bartlett10:57

       Uh, yeah. I'm like... I'm, I'm out of, out of action for several days usually.

   30. SPSpeaker11:00

       Right. You're tired and your brain isn't working, and part of that reason is because your activation of your immune system is sucking energy away from your brain.
3. 14:23 – 20:17

   What Happens to Your Body When You Don’t Sleep Enough

   1. SPSpeaker14:23

      It's kind of mind-blowing how quickly you can gain visceral fat. Like, uh, there was... Sleep is a big one. When you're-- when you miss sleep, that is something that can really... You can start to store. You can start to gain visceral fat very quickly. Um, there was a study in healthy young men. These men were sleep restricted. Typically, when sleep restriction studies are done, you're, you're looking at four hours of sleep per night, so pretty severe. Not out of the ordinary. I did many of those college graduate school deadlines. Definitely as a new parent, I mean, it's unfortunately drags on for months. So these men were only sleeping four hours a night for two weeks, okay? These were healthy young men, college-aged students, okay? Young. They gained eleven percent visceral fat after that two weeks, but not a pound on the scale. But they had eleven percent higher visceral fat after just, you know, two weeks of not getting enough sleep.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett15:15

      And they weighed the same?

   3. SPSpeaker15:17

      Pretty much.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett15:17

      So the... It was the composition of their body that's shifting.

   5. SPSpeaker15:20

      Yes. Also, the visceral fat, like, like I said, you're not gaining pounds and pounds and pounds of it necessarily. You know, you're, you're gaining grams and grams, but like, it's happening and, and any amount that you're starting to gain is unhealthy, right? It's gonna start causing insulin resistance. It's gonna start, you know, causing fatty liver. That's another thing it does because it's around the liver. It basically, the liver doesn't know what to do with all the fat, so it starts to make and store it around the fat. And so you start to get this non-alcoholic fatty liver, which is happening now in like young people. So sleep is one. Another major, major, I would say, lever for gaining visceral fat is your diet quality and quantity. So if you start to be in a caloric excess constantly, you can start to gain visceral fat, and that's also been shown in studies. So there was a recent study that, again, was in healthy young men given about twelve hundred extra calories a day, and it was mostly from ultra-processed foods, right? I mean, they're twelve hundred calories, so like Big Mac and a Coke.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett16:19

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SPSpeaker16:19

      Big Mac and fries, whatever, you know? So you're, you're talking about a- almost like an extra meal a day and from processed foods, ultra-processed foods. For five days, they were given, you know, this extra caloric intake. After that five days, they started to gain visceral fat. They started to have signs of fatty liver after five days, and their brains became insulin resistant, and this is important. Yes. You [chuckles] ...

   8. SBSteven Bartlett16:44

      So how many calories were they having in excess?

   9. SPSpeaker16:46

      Twelve hundred to fifteen hundred.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett16:47

       In excess?

   11. SPSpeaker16:49

       More than what they were usually going to eat, yes.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett16:52

       Okay.

   13. SPSpeaker16:53

       Yes. So, you know, it's... A lot of people are eating caloric excess, you know, daily. They're not, they're not exercising, and there's no energy expenditure, and they're eating more, and so they're in, in, you know, twelve hundred. Now, this is the extreme end, right? I'm giving you an extreme end 'cause that's what they do usually in, in studies like this because they wanna get a significant result. But after five days, they, they were gaining visceral fat. Their brains became insulin resistant. So insulin is also very important for the brain. The brain is telling the body how to store the fat and how to store energy, and when the-- and when insulin's not able to, to get into the brain and have its action, then you start to not have the brain tell the body how to store this energy, and it ends up storing it viscerally. It's like this default.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett17:39

       Do you know, putting those two things together, the thing I've noticed that impacts my performance the most as it relates to articulation, cognitive performance, my ability to think, is those two things coming together. You talked about sleep and diet. It's when I ha- I eat late.

   15. SPSpeaker17:54

       Mm.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett17:55

       Close... It's when I eat close to sleep. If I do that a couple of nights in a row, I feel like my brain no longer works.

   17. SPSpeaker18:01

       Yes. Yeah. You know, obviously we all have to like live our lives and there's social things, and it's fun to go out and have a dinner with your friends or an event, right? But it's not a good idea to eat a meal, a big meal, three a- be- three hours before l- fewer than three hours before bed. So you wanna stop eating three hours before bed, and three is really the magic number in multiple studies because when you eat a meal, it is activating your sympathetic nervous systemRight? That's the fight or flight response. That's not what you want active when you're about to go to bed. When you're activating the sympathetic nervous system right before you're going to bed, let's say you eat a meal within an hour of bedtime, you're digesting all that, it's... Your sympathetic nervous system's active. And even if you're sleeping, it's not good sleep. It's fragmented sleep. And so it's disrupted sleep because you, you need to be in that parasympathetic part of, you know, the nervous system. That dominance needs to be parasympathetic, which is the res- rest, restore. It's called rest and digest, but I don't like digest because actually digesting [chuckles] is what activates the sympathetic nervous system. So it's like the recovery, right?

   18. SBSteven Bartlett19:11

       So should I stay up then for three hours? If I, if I eat-

   19. SPSpeaker19:14

       No

   20. SBSteven Bartlett19:14

       ... at midnight, should I stay up till 3:00 AM?

   21. SPSpeaker19:17

       No, no. You should just go to bed. But don't do it on a daily basis, right? I mean, the, the key is the habit, you know, the habit. And so if you need to eat something before bed, you should do something that's light. Maybe a protein shake with some almond milk, you know, something that's not super heavy.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett19:34

       I've heard you talk about fiber.

   23. SPSpeaker19:36

       S- resistant starch does i- interestingly seem to help improve sleep. And so, you know, maybe some rice or a potato.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett19:44

       Mm.

   25. SPSpeaker19:45

       A little bit of rice or a potato.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett19:46

       Some fries or something.

   27. SPSpeaker19:47

       [laughs] Maybe not a fried potato. Baked, baked potato, and then cool it 'cause then it's resistant starch, right? 'Cause then it's good for your, your gut microbiome.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett19:55

       Why?

   29. SPSpeaker19:56

       It changes the composition of the fiber.

   30. SBSteven Bartlett19:59

       Mm.
4. 20:17 – 21:48

   The Hidden Habits Quietly Increasing Your Visceral Fat

   1. SPSpeaker20:17

      really moving the needle to, to make you gain visceral fat are being in... Basically being in a caloric ex- excess, especially from refined, high fat, high sugar foods, and then not getting enough sleep, move the needle. Chronic stress is an amplifier of it.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett20:33

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SPSpeaker20:33

      So if you're constantly having cortisol, that's kind of stopping the body from storing energy right, the right way, and it's going viscerally as well. I would say that amplifies, especially if it's, like, in the context of being in a caloric excess and not exercising. Alcohol's another one. If you drink... If you're excessively consuming alcohol, you're gonna store a lot of the energy that you're also consuming is gonna be stored viscerally. I mean, you've seen the beer b- belly, right? I mean, that's like a thing. It's visceral fat. It's, it's not beer. [laughs]

   4. SBSteven Bartlett21:00

      Mm-hmm.

   5. SPSpeaker21:00

      It's visceral fat. So alcohol's another one. In terms of losing visceral fat, I mean, the good news is, is that you can lose it quite easily and quite rapidly.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett21:11

      I was gonna say parents have a hard time because you're naming those things about, like, sleep and stress and-

   7. SPSpeaker21:16

      Yes

   8. SBSteven Bartlett21:16

      ... and I was thinking, gosh, parents have like a... h- have it coming from the, from all sides.

   9. SPSpeaker21:20

      They do. Um, the... But see, this is where the good news comes in because, you know, part of the reason why sleep is causing you to gain more visceral... sleep loss is causing you to gain visceral fat is because it's causing your body to become insulin resistant. It's like this vicious cycle. Visceral fat causes insulin resistance. Insulin, insulin resistance causes more visceral fat, right? And becomes this... And that's why once you get into that cycle, it just spirals outta control, right? And you start to gain more and more

5. 21:48 – 25:41

   How to Reverse Insulin Resistance Before It Gets Worse

   1. SPSpeaker21:48

      and more.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett21:48

      Sorry. Insulin resistance, what is that? That is when your body no longer produces insulin, or?

   3. SPSpeaker21:54

      No, no. Insulin resistance is when your body is no longer responding to insulin. So it's like, it's like you're waiting for the phone to ring, and it's ringing, but you can't hear it, right?

   4. SBSteven Bartlett22:05

      Right.

   5. SPSpeaker22:05

      Like, you, you're not getting the signal. And so your, your cells are not responding to the insulin that's made. Insulin is really helping your body bring... move the glucose out, right? Move it, move it outta your bloodstream where it can cause a lot of damage if it sits around.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett22:21

      And if you put too much press- pressure on the insulin system, then it kinda shuts down.

   7. SPSpeaker22:25

      Eventually shuts down. Mm-hmm.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett22:26

      And the thing that puts too much pressure is consuming too much glucose or too much activity?

   9. SPSpeaker22:32

      Too much glucose, refined glucose can do that. Visceral fat is one of the, I would say, bigger causes of insulin res- it's actually one of the major, major causes of insulin resistance because if you are physically active and eating a lot of glucose, that glucose is going to your muscles. Physical activity makes your muscles very responsive to glucose without needing insulin. Your... The transporters that transport glucose are super, super responsive when you exercise. That's why physical activity, and this is what I was getting at with parents, is so important. The visceral fat is the really big, like, concern with insulin resistance. This is... And this is the thing that, again, it's like people don't even know about it. A lot of people are thinking about glucose and, "Oh, I gotta watch my glucose," and that's all fine. I mean, yes, to some degree that's also playing a role. But it's, it's, it's the visceral fat that's the real underlying problem that's, that's causing you to become insulin resistant. You mentioned parents have it, like, bad because they're stressed out and they don't get sleep. I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor when I became a new mother. I was appalled by my fasting blood glucose and by my postprandial blood glucose levels. Never-

   10. SBSteven Bartlett23:41

       Postprandial?

   11. SPSpeaker23:42

       Postprandial means after a meal.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett23:44

       Okay.

   13. SPSpeaker23:44

       So your levels go obviously much higher after you eat a meal versus in the morning when you haven't had anything to eat.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett23:49

       Mm-hmm.

   15. SPSpeaker23:49

       And my levels were, were so high it was pre-diabetic, and, and I was just... I couldn't believe it. And it's not like I'm eating, you know, drinking Cokes and eating terrible, right? But there was a period of time when I'm not as physically active, particularly in the first couple of months. It's really, you know, that's the time when you're kind of just in this cave. I immediately was looking into the scientific literature and found that high intensity interval training and exercise can help almost negate most of the, those poor effects of causing insulin resistance and causing your glucose regulation to not be normal. That's the good news for parents, is that you should priorit- new parents should prioritize exercise. And exercise does... cause you to lose visceral fat. It's not just any type of exercise. Really has to be aerobic, and the more vigorous, the better.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett24:38

       So for people that don't know what that means, aerobic and vigorous.

   17. SPSpeaker24:41

       Yeah. So what I mean is resistance training and lifting weights don't really move the needle in terms of helping you lose visceral fat. It does help you improve your metabolism, it does help with, like, glucose, you know, sensitivity and all that, like, 'cause your muscles are gonna be more sensitive to take the glucose in. But if you wanna lose visceral fat, you're gonna have to do running, jogging, cycling, swimming. You wanna, like, get your heart rate up a little more.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett25:06

       Why?

   19. SPSpeaker25:07

       It's energy expenditure. It plays a role in getting you to that caloric, more caloric deficit, and that's better. So that's one way, and the other thing is weight... Any, any weight loss program, so intermittent fasting, caloric restriction, you know, even GLP-1 receptor agonists and all the classes of GLP-1. Anything that is gonna make you lose weight, lose fat, visceral fat's one of the first to go, and in fact, people on, on these, these weight loss programs or even on exercise training program, visceral fat's the first fat to go. And, and so you can lose it quite, quite quickly.

6. 25:41 – 30:08

   Intermittent Fasting: What Actually Happens Inside Your Body

   1. SBSteven Bartlett25:41

      So on this point of fasting, are you a fan of fasting to combat visceral fat? And also, could you give me your thoughts on being in a ketogenic state as it relates to visceral fat?

   2. SPSpeaker25:51

      Yeah. People when they think about intermittent fasting, they kind of think about, you know, one thing, and they think about weight loss, right? But there's a lot going on here, and I like, I like that you mentioned being in a ketogenic state because there's also a metabolic switch that happens. This metabolic switch from burning carbohydrates and glucose to burning fatty acids and getting in ketosis, right? That's a metabolic switch, and it's very important. There are two different things happening here. But intermittent fasting is essentially a good tool that people can use to reduce their calorie intake without having to count their calories. That's why I like it. You can, you can lose weight by counting your calories and reducing your calorie intake. I personally think that's a lot of work. Some people love doing it, and that's great. I think whatever works for a person. But the w-way in which intermittent fasting helps people lose visceral fat is by reducing calorie intake. That's what I'm getting at. It's like a tool that some people like to use because... I like it, for one, because I can not think. I just... I'll skip one meal, making sure I get enough nutrients in the, in the meals that I eat and protein in the meals I eat. But I'll skip a meal, and it gets me in a caloric deficit without having to think about and count everything. So it's easier on me.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett27:05

      To fast?

   4. SPSpeaker27:06

      To fast versus counting calories. Yes.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett27:08

      And how, how do you do that? What's your-

   6. SPSpeaker27:10

      So I like to fast in the morning, and the reason I like to fast in the morning is for the exact reason you mentioned, and that is the ketosis, which I like to call the metabolic switch. You're not eating while you're sleeping, obviously. So if you're sleeping for eight, if you're in bed for nine hours, 10 hours, you're not eating during that time. And it takes about 10 to 12 hours for your liver to deplete glycogen. Glucose that's been taken up by the liver is stored as glycogen, so that you can then use it for energy later if you don't have energy coming in, right?

   7. SBSteven Bartlett27:42

      So the glycogen is like the, the petrol station.

   8. SPSpeaker27:44

      Yes.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett27:45

      So it runs out of petrol.

   10. SPSpeaker27:46

       Yeah. That's right. And, and so, um, it takes-

   11. SBSteven Bartlett27:49

       It switches to diesel.

   12. SPSpeaker27:49

       And it switches to diesel. And so after that switch, that metabolic switch, when you deplete that glycogen while you're sleeping or while you're not, you know, not eating after about 12 hours... And by the way, this is all relative because it depends on the kind of m- foods you eat and how physically active you are. So if you eat a lot of high carbohydrate, refined sugar stuff, you might take even longer to deplete your glycogen 'cause you're, you're putting a lot of input in there. You keep filling up the, the fuel tank, right?

   13. SBSteven Bartlett28:15

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SPSpeaker28:15

       But if you're eating things that are more low carb, you might deplete your glycogen sooner. So when you deplete your glycogen, you get into this metabolic switch because your body still needs energy, but there's no nothing, no glucose around, right? So you start to switch to, you know... Your fatty acids are mobilized. They come out of your adipose tissue. This is why people lose fat. They come out of the visceral fat. You, you start to use those fatty acids and burn them as energy, and as a product of that energy, you're making ketones, ketosis. And the reason I like to do this in the morning is because then I can really get into that ketotic state, where if I'm fasting... I do it typically, I fast for about 16 hours a day, and then I eat my meals within eight hours of a day. Typically, that's my-- what I do. The reason I like to be in that metabolic switch state is many reasons actually. One, the ketones themselves are providing my brain with energy, very e-easily utilizable energy, but they're also acting as a signaling molecule to my brain going, "Hey, this is a stressful time. There's no food. You better be cognitively sharp. You gotta find that food. You gotta, like, know what you're doing," right? It's an evolutionary ad-adaptation. You know, humans for thousands of years were going through this metabolic switch because we didn't have Instacart, we didn't have Postmates, we didn't have all Uber Eats, right? We had to find our food. We had to hunt our food. And we always-- didn't always do that, right? And so when I get into that metabolic switch state, I feel it. I feel more cognitively sharp, and I feel less anxious, which is part of it because those ketones also help increase something called GABA. That's an inhibitory neurotransmitter. It's essentially, you can just think of it as like it helps you feel calmer. When I feel calmer, I'm more cognitively focused because it's like the background anxiety is down, right? It-it's like you can focus. And so I love being in that state in the morning because that's when I get my work done.

7. 30:08 – 31:04

   Why Your Body Repairs Itself When You Stop Eating

   1. SPSpeaker30:08

      I also like to be in that metabolic switch state, and this is why I like fasting in addition to w- you know, the calorie... the fewer calories I'm consuming, right? Your body has to be in that fasted state to repair. If you're constantly in a fed state, fed states are important for anabolic growth. We need it to grow, right? But the repair state is also very important because with the growth comes damage.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett30:29

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SPSpeaker30:29

      Damage comes along with thatAnd you want to repair that damage because damage will accelerate aging. And so I like to be and give my body enough time. I don't want to just wake up and eat where it's like, oh, I've only barely depleted my liver glycogen. I'm not even in that repair state very long, right? I want to extend it a little bit. And so I like to have that repair process active. And that it is active during f- it's-- fasting activates it, but also you have some amount of active repair going on even when you're in a fed state. It's just heightened when you're fasted. So those are the reasons I like to be... I like intermittent fasting.

8. 31:04 – 35:43

   Fasted Training: Does It Burn More Fat or Backfire?

   1. SPSpeaker31:04

      I feel good when I do it. I also do a lot of training, not all of it. I do a lot of training fasted. Cardiovascular, aerobic endurance exercise or running, biking, that stuff I like to do fasted. I'm not going for a ten-mile run. I'm going for a three-mile run, right? I mean, this is... So if I was going for a ten-mile run, I wouldn't be fasted. I would need some fuel. But there are studies me- multiple studies showing that if you do aerobic endurance training, this kind of running, cycling, swimming type of training, you actually have better adaptations if you're fasted versus fed.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett31:37

      What does that mean?

   3. SPSpeaker31:39

      So much of the benefit from exercise, right, aerobic exercise, when you're breathing in, you're, you're, you're, you're, [panting] yeah, right, you're working hard, is from the working hard, but your body responds to that, right? Because the working hard is causing inflammation, it's causing oxidative damage, and your body is responding to that by going, "Oh, we got to get better at this stuff." So you have anti-inflammatory pathways activated, you have antioxidant pathways activated. Your body needs to burn fat, you need fuel. And so if you're fasted, you get better at burning the fat and oxidizing the fat, and you continue to do that throughout the day better as well. So you have what are called mitochondrial adaptations that are better. You make more mitochondria. Mitochondria are very important little tiny organelles inside of most of our cells that make energy. And they, you know, they're very important for everything. I mean, they're running our brains right now, so we can talk, our heart, you know, so we can breathe, our lungs, everything, right? And so exercise does make you increase the amount of those new mitochondria that you make that are young and healthy. But-

   4. SBSteven Bartlett32:41

      If you're fasted.

   5. SPSpeaker32:42

      Both. Even if you're not. But if you're fasted, it's even better.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett32:46

      This has been a big debate around whether this applies to both men and women.

   7. SPSpeaker32:50

      Mm.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett32:50

      Should both men and women exercise fasted?

   9. SPSpeaker32:53

      This is my read of the literature and my thoughts on this from also having experts that have studied male versus female responses to exercise. First and foremost, how do you feel when you exercise fasted? If you feel terrible, that's a sign. I think listening into your body is the most important thing that you can do. There are times when I have to eat before I exercise, and I listen to my body. I-- That's it. I'm, I'm gonna eat. When it comes to women versus men and doing exercise fasted, it also depends on are you... Again, are you doing a thirty-minute run? Are you doing a two-hour run? If you're doing a two-hour run, you need to fuel. That's a lot. That's a big stress. W-when it comes to a thirty-minute run, you don't really necessarily need to. Now, the problem with women is that they're often-- If you're in too much of a caloric deficit and you don't eat enough food within, you know, like afterwards, you're not refueling enough and you're doing very, very long, high volume types of exercise, then you can basically disrupt your, you know, some of your hormones, your, your follicle-stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone. These things will make you become amenorrheic. So you basically stop ovulating and you stop getting your menstrual period. That-

   10. SBSteven Bartlett34:06

       And what's the evolutionary reason for that? What's going on there?

   11. SPSpeaker34:08

       Uh, because your body's like there's not enough food and energy around to sustain a, a ba- you know, a growing fetus, like a, the growing baby.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett34:16

       So it's not shutting down.

   13. SPSpeaker34:17

       So it's, so it's basically like, "Hey, we're not gonna allow you to have a baby," basically. So you stop, you stop ovulating, right? So you can't... You're not making, you're not making those eggs.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett34:26

       Is this often the case with women who exercise a lot and, and no longer have their menstrual cycle?

   15. SPSpeaker34:30

       First of all, this is not a common thing. This is like, this is something that happens in, you know, like athletes, elite athlete women that are not eating enough food. Like, I, I did this to myself when I was in my early twenties and I was running-- I was racing marathons, and I was running ten miles a day, you know, eight to ten miles a day, five days a week, and then I was eating carrots and hummus. And, you know, I just, I wasn't fueling myself, and I did, I did this to myself too. So how do you feel if you train fasted? Do you feel terrible? Don't do it. If you want to train somewhat fasted, go for the protein, you know, protein shake with a little bit of almond milk or something like that, where you're not eating a full meal, but you're getting something. So I do a lot of my training fasted, and that has helped me. You know, I'm forty-seven years old and perimenopause.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett35:21

       You're, you're in phenomenal shape.

   17. SPSpeaker35:22

       Thank you. Thank you. Um, but I did notice, of course, as, as I started to reach that perimenopause part of my life, that I had to be a little bit more aggressive and put a little bit more effort in to not get this fat right here on my belly because it started coming up and I didn't want it. I didn't-- It wasn't, it wasn't an option for me.

9. 35:43 – 42:14

   Why Belly Fat Spikes During Perimenopause—and What Helps

   1. SBSteven Bartlett35:43

      Speaking of, uh, studies done for women, you-- I've heard you talk in the past about the SWAN study, which kind of relates to what you just said there, um, when relating to women and visceral fat, and they found that women experience an accelerated increase in visceral fat starting two years before their final menstrual period.

   2. SPSpeaker35:58

      Yeah, 'cause that's when their estrogen is about... It's just-- it's plummeting, right? You're just going off a cliff because you're, you're about to go into menopause.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett36:05

      Again, what age would that be?

   4. SPSpeaker36:06

      Average age of menopause is between fifty, about fifty, fifty-two for women. A lot of that-- There's a lot of things that can affect your reproductive lifespan, your ovarian aging, I guess we can call it. And unfortunately, one of them is when you-- the age you were when you got your menstrual period. So f-- the younger you were, the younger you're gonna be when you experience menopause. So also when your mother experienced menopause is very, very indicative of when you're going to experience it. ButLifestyle and diet play a role too. Obesity accelerates ovarian aging, so you're more likely to go into menopause earlier with obesity. Also, these chemicals that we're exposed to, and we can talk about those as well, a lot of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals affect the age of menopause as well and, and accelerate that. So some-- in some cases, women go into menopause two years earlier than they would have otherwise.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett37:01

      And you're, so you're forty-seven.

   6. SPSpeaker37:03

      Mm-hmm. And a half.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett37:04

      And a half. And the, the data that I'm looking at here says when we think about perimenopause, it usually starts in mid-forties-

   8. SPSpeaker37:10

      Mm-hmm

   9. SBSteven Bartlett37:10

      ... which is the age range you're in. This is where the eight to ten percent annual visceral fat increase begins.

   10. SPSpeaker37:16

       It is. And, and I know-

   11. SBSteven Bartlett37:18

       Annual?

   12. SPSpeaker37:19

       Yeah. I can tell you from people in my life that I've seen going through this, it's pretty sudden that you'll see someone in your life that's a woman that's going through mari-peri-perimenopause and maybe hasn't had any other symptoms yet, so they haven't really seeked out any treatment. Now you can, you can try to do some hormone replacement therapy as well to help with that. But they start to gain visceral fat, and it shows up around the belly quite rapidly. And I noticed this in myself, and it almost feels overnight. Seriously. This is the only symptom that I noticed in myself where it was like all of a sudden my belly was, like, growing and, um, you know, not super, super large, but enough where I was like, "There's something wrong." It's not even necessarily reflected if you get hormone tests because mine all seem normal. The thing is, is that the estrogen when it drops, that estrogen is so important for telling your body to store energy differently, not around the organs, but to make it around, you know, other parts of your body, like your, your thighs and your butt, right? Like your adipose tissue. And so when that estrogen goes down and declines, it's like boom, it starts to go right to the belly. So that is why for me, intermittent fasting has been really important. Like with any weight loss or calorie restriction protocol, you do need to make sure you're getting enough protein because that's important for muscle, right? Muscle growth and preventing atrophy of your muscle, and you need to also do resistance training. That also is a very important signal for muscle because the problem is some people calorie restrict and eat fewer meals, and then they're not getting enough protein and they're not training, and they start to lose muscle in addition to fat, and you don't want to do that. You want to kind of just lose the visceral fat and keep the muscle. Ideally, keep gaining muscle.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett39:05

       And for men, I was reading that testosterone and growth hormone typically peak in their late twenties, so I guess mine's peaked already. Um, and starting at age thirty, testosterone drop-drops roughly one percent a year. So between the age of twenty-five and sixty-five, men typically see a two hundred percent increase in their visceral fat, even if their total weight stays the same. So hmm, is that linked to the testosterone decline? Is that what's going on there? What's causing it?

   14. SPSpeaker39:31

       Yeah. I mean, it's, it... Testosterone does... You burn... Even if you're gaining visceral fat, it helps you burn it. It's, it's also why some women that are in perimenopause wanna do testosterone because it helps them burn the visceral fat.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett39:42

       Mm-hmm.

   16. SPSpeaker39:43

       Um, so it is, it is linked to testosterone decline as well. But also, as men are aging, they're-- they become more sedentary. They send-- They tend to eat a little bit-- They're consuming more calorie. Like, all these things are hand in hand. So it's like a... It's not just like a one punch, right? It's like multiple angles are kind of all compounding and coming together. Whereas you could get away with it a little bit easier when you're younger 'cause the testosterone is helping you burn it more.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett40:04

       Mm-hmm.

   18. SPSpeaker40:05

       When you're declining, it doesn't, it doesn't work that same way. So even though you're gaining it, you're not burning it as quickly, so you start to have a net gain in it, uh, if that makes sense.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett40:15

       So going back up to the top then, we were talking about things you can do to lower your visceral fat, and we talked a little bit about exercise, sleep, diet. Is there anything else in that category?

   20. SPSpeaker40:24

       Yeah. I think those are the main ones. Obviously, avoiding excess alcohol consumption.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett40:28

       Yep.

   22. SPSpeaker40:29

       And also-

   23. SBSteven Bartlett40:30

       Stress

   24. SPSpeaker40:31

       ... the stress.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett40:31

       Yeah. We talked... Yeah.

   26. SPSpeaker40:31

       The stress. Like, you know, trying to, to... Relaxation techniques buffer that stress. That's a big one. It's an amplifier.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett40:40

       Yeah, people don't talk enough about visceral fat. You know? They-

   28. SPSpeaker40:44

       No

   29. SBSteven Bartlett40:44

       ... look at other markers.

   30. SPSpeaker40:45

       No. Well, most people just wanna lose weight and look good.
10. 42:14 – 49:56

    3 Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals You’re Exposed to Daily

    1. SPSpeaker42:14

       So there's probably three main endocrine-disrupting chemicals that are found in our environment, mainly because they're in plastic or they're in... They're also in things that are water-resistant, oil-resistant, fire-resistant, flame-retardant. BPA, bisphenol A is one. Another one is phthalates, P-H, phthalates, and the last one would be PFAS. These are the forever chemicals. These are the three mainI would say players in terms of disrupting endocrine function, endocrine being hormones, sex hormones like testosterone, estrogen, but also thyroid hormone, very important for regulating our metabolism, for example.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett42:54

       Are they really causing a problem?

    3. SPSpeaker42:57

       Absolutely.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett42:58

       Really? Like-

    5. SPSpeaker42:58

       Absolutely

    6. SBSteven Bartlett42:59

       ... 'cause I'm looking at the picture you have there of PFA... PFAs?

    7. SPSpeaker43:03

       PFAS.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett43:04

       PFAS, and it's got like a coat and shoes on there. You're telling me my... the clothes that I wear are having an impact on my hormones?

    9. SPSpeaker43:10

       They can, but I think it's, it's, it's less of a direct effect and more downstream. So the, the, the PFAS chemicals or the forever chemicals, they're used in things to make them oil-resistant, stain-resistant, water-resistant, so the Teflon pans would be the biggest example. You remember those non-stick pans? They have Teflon. That has PFAS on it.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett43:32

        We're gonna go into my kitchen in a second, so I'll take all of the viewers that are watching now into my kitchen. We'll have a stroll around my kitchen. You let me know if there's some things.

    11. SPSpeaker43:38

        Oh, gosh, I hope you don't have Teflon, but, I mean, my mom used it when I was, you know, growing up. I remember the non-stick pans. That stuff is coming off into your food, and so you're eating the, these PFAS.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett43:48

        How do we know that they're dangerous?

    13. SPSpeaker43:50

        Okay. Well, I'll tell you how we know.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett43:52

        Hmm.

    15. SPSpeaker43:52

        Like, let's, let's start with... So the PFAS chemicals are ones that are really... They're more affecting the thyroid, and they're affecting, I would say, ovarian aging. They seem to target the ovaries and accelerate the age that you're gonna get menopause, so you're gonna s- get it around two... one to two years earlier if you have a high amount of these forever chemicals. But there's been studies, a lot of studies looking at... Let's start with BPA, okay? Bisphenol A. That's a big one because you see a lot of marketing around BPA-free. "This plastic water bottle is BPA-free." Well, it's BPA-free, but it has another chemical called BPS which is very similar, if not worse, than BPA. So BPA is something that is found in a lot of water bottles. It's in those plastic water bottles. It lines the cups of, uh, paper cups, like these to-go coffee cups that you're getting at your favorite, you know, s- coffee place. Plastic is lining them, yes. Plastic lines them 'cause it's protecting it from the liquid, right? BPA has been linked to a many different diseases, but really, really it's an endocrine disruptor. So what it does is a couple of things. One, BPA acts as an estrogen mimetic, so it kind of mimics estrogen and it binds to the receptors that estrogen do to do its function. And so it sometimes binds to estrogen and either m- makes it seem like there's estrogen around or it blocks estrogen from working, so it's... it, it depends on the dose and the concentration, so it can do both. But it also binds to androgen receptors that interact with testosterone, right? And so there have been studies that have found that men that have high amounts of BPA also have low amounts of testosterone. But there was also a study done in teens. This is when, you know, your sexual development is happening, right? Testosterone is very important during this part of, of your life, during puberty. Teens, alis- adolescent boys that had h- the highest amount of BPA had 50% lower testosterone than men... than the boys, sorry, that had the lowest amount of BPA. The biggest one that's affecting testosterone is the phthalates. These phthalates, they are present in a lot of PVC piping. They're present in a lot of our food packaging, all those, like, thin ar... You go to the, you know, the... to the grocery store and you get a filet mignon steak and it's wrapped in plastic. Poultry's... All that plastic wrapping in all the foods that we're eating has phthalates in them that make it more flexible and stuff. And it's also found in our hair products, our cosmetic products, our creams, and it's also very lipid soluble. It likes fat. It is drawn to fat, so when you have plastic around fat, like cheese, you know, things like that, meat, it's getting into that meat. It's getting into that cheese, the phthalates. These disrupt our hormones in ways similar to BPA, so they're binding to the androgen receptor, but they're also going into the testes and disrupting the synthesis of testosterone. So there was a study in men that had the highest phthalate levels. Those men had 20% lower testosterone-

    16. SBSteven Bartlett47:01

        Wow

    17. SPSpeaker47:01

        ... compared to men with higher levels. And, and this is-

    18. SBSteven Bartlett47:04

        Damn

    19. SPSpeaker47:04

        ... yeah, and this is, like... It's affecting not only just the testosterone, but it's affecting sperm quality, so the shape of the sperm wasn't good. It's affecting the number, so sperm count is down if they're higher BPA or higher phthalates. And also, um, motility, the abai- the ability to swim. Pregnant women that get exposed to high levels of phthalates, and if they have... if they're carrying a, a male fetus, right, they ha- they're having a boy, what's been shown is it's also affecting sexual development. So these boys, they're getting something called hypospadia. That's where, like, the s- the slit on the uri- on the, um, on the penis is, like, moved backwards, kind of closer to, like, what a, a woman would have, and they're getting undescended testicles. So one of their testicles is not descending, and that's associated with f- you know, infertility, cancer, testicular cancer being the big one. This is happening at a alarming rate. Like, something like 20% of boys now have an undescended testicle. I mean, it's crazy.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett48:05

        Because their mother had high phthalates?

    21. SPSpeaker48:07

        Well, it's... this is definitely something that is known in our environment to cause that. I don't know if that's the only cause, but it, uh, in my opinion, is a very, very concerning cause that nobody is talking about and that should be addressed, and it's everywhere. We have these in all of our, all of our plastic wrappers that we... everything that we're eating, you know? You ev- you even getting your meat. Your... You think it's, "Well, it's meat," it's, you know... But it's wrapped in plastic, and the phthalates are getting into the food. So it... They're getting into our bodies. They're disrupting hormones. They're disrupting sexual development. They're disrupting our ovaries, estrogen, you know, ovarian aging, age of menopause. They're disrupting thyroids, the thyroid hormones. I mean, there's, there's even studies now with women, pregnant women that have high levels of BPA-They have-- They're six times more likely to have a child with autism spectrum disorder compared to women with low levels of BPA. Again, BPA is disrupting the estrogen and androgen receptor, and this is very important because the androgen re-- you, you wanna have-- it's, it's disrupting aromatase as well, that enzyme that's involved in converting testosterone into estrogen. So believe it or not, when you're a boy developing in your mom's womb, estrogen plays a very important role in your brain and brain development in what's called masculinizing the male brain. You actually-- It's kind of contradictory. You're like, "Oh, well, wouldn't testosterone do that?" Well, actually, estrogen is very important for masculinizing parts of the male brain. And so when you have aromatase being inhibited by bisphenol A, by this endocrine-disrupting hormone that is so ubiquitous everywhere-

    22. SBSteven Bartlett49:52

        That is found in plastic bottles.

    23. SPSpeaker49:53

        Plastic bottles. It's f- it's found in... Yeah,

11. 49:56 – 57:43

    How to Actually Avoid Toxins in Everyday Life

    1. SPSpeaker49:56

       it's found everywhere.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett49:57

       So what, what do you recommend?

    3. SPSpeaker49:59

       First of all, I think if you can, uh, eliminate and not drink out of plastic bottles as much as possible. If you do want k- to-go coffee, either drink it there in their mugs or bring your own to-go mug. Like, I bring my, like-- I have, like, a Yeti kind of to-go coffee mug that I'll bring into a Starbucks or wherever, Coffee Bean, and I'll have them fill it up. Soup cans, canned soup are lined with BPA. They're lined with plastic, and soup usually goes into the can hot. Sterile technique. I mean, they're-- they wanna make sure it's... So you're getting a-- This soup has been classically shown in multiple studies to m- to increase BPA levels by 1,000%. Crazy amounts. So don't eat canned soup as much as possible. I mean, obviously, this is about the habit, not the one-off, but, but, you know, try to avoid cans, drinking out of even soda cans, even, like, your, your favorite sparkling water cans. Don't make it a daily habit because they are lined with plastic. That's a source of BPA into your bodies. There are ways that you can excrete BPA. So the major way to get rid of it is through urine. It's excreted through your urine, but it has to become water-soluble first. It's a fat-soluble compound. And so there are things that we can eat in our diet that'll increase that excretion. Compounds in broccoli, broccoli sprouts being the big one, sulforaphane, activates a pathway th-that are enzymes involved in making BPA become water-soluble, so they come out your urine.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett51:26

       Oh, so broccoli's like a cleanser.

    5. SPSpeaker51:28

       It's like a cleanser. It's like we, we actually do have these... It's called phase two detoxification enzymes in our body. We have the ability to detox a lot of things.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett51:37

       Mm-hmm.

    7. SPSpeaker51:37

       We just have to give our body the right, you know, input so that it can activate those pathways. I personally take a supplement of that sulforaphane because I want a concentrated amount of it 'cause I used to do broccoli sprouts. Broccoli sprouts have 100 times more sulforaphane than mature broccoli, but you have to sprout them, and then there's contamination issues, and it's just, you know. Some people do it, it's great, but I used to do it. I don't anymore. I just take a supplement.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett51:59

       And that supplement's called?

    9. SPSpeaker52:00

       The supplement I take has-- is called Avmacol. It's by a company called Nutramax. I don't, um, you know, I'm not, like, affiliated with them. I like their supplement because, one, they've got 12 published studies using it, clinical studies too, showing that it actually helps with, um, autism. Children, children and adolescents with autism that take the sulforaphane supplement, they have improved symptoms. Because it's a detox, it helps... Interestingly, people with autism are, like, 30 times less likely to excrete BPA. It's a weird thing going on here where BPA increases autism spectrum disorder, but then kids that have it are not able to detoxify it as well.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett52:38

        Wow.

    11. SPSpeaker52:39

        Yeah. It's interesting. Again, I think that excretion is important, but avoiding, avoiding the plastic as much as you can. Make it a habit. Don't freak out. I mean, obviously, you can, like, make yourself crazy, and stress is not good, as we talked about. [chuckles] I see you, like, going, "Oh, my God." [laughs]

    12. SBSteven Bartlett52:53

        Yeah, no, I'm thinking about, uh, just how casual I am about these things, and I could, I could easily make small changes.

    13. SPSpeaker52:58

        Easily.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett52:59

        I, I could-- Frankly, I could easily make big changes in the position I'm in. I could just say, I can say at my company, "We no longer buy this kind of stuff." I could say in my kitchen, h- 'cause, you know, to my team or whatever, "Let's not buy this." I, uh... Can we go look in my kitchen now?

    15. SPSpeaker53:10

        Let's do it.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett53:11

        Okay.

    17. SPSpeaker53:11

        Let's go.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett53:11

        Let's go to my kitchen. Be right... Uh, no, you guys can come, too. So we're gonna go to my kitchen. If you're-- Listen, if you're listening on the dog walk, this might be a nice time to sit on a bench and look because you're about to go into my kitchen, and we're gonna look at real things that you might not even know in your kitchen are causing you some of these problems. Come with me. [paper flips] You know the little traditional SIM card that goes inside of our phones? They haven't changed at all since they were invented in the '90s. You have this physical piece of plastic that means you're locked into one carrier, one network, and the second you cross a border, that carrier can start charging you whatever they want. But there are alternatives, and today's sponsor, Saily, is one of them. It's an eSIM app that gives you a safe and secure data connection in over 200 destinations. All of their eSIMs have built-in cybersecurity, which is great if you're traveling for work and looking at confidential material. I've been using Saily whenever I travel because the connection is always reliable, and it saves me a ton of roaming fees. It also means I don't have to deal with all of the faff that surrounds sorting out a SIM everywhere I go. If you wanna give it a try, download the Saily app from the App Store now and scan the QR code on screen. And if you want 15% off your first purchase, use my code DOAC when you get to checkout. That's DOAC for 15% off. Keep that to yourself. [paper flips] I've spent the last decade building and investing in companies, and so often the conversation around marketing budgets follows the exact same pattern. The budget gets approved, but then the results don't come back, and most of the time, the creative pitch and the offer is fine. The problem lies with the audience. Ads reach people who will never buy or refer, nor do they have the power to sign off anything at all, and this is why so much budget gets wasted. LinkedIn Ads, who are sponsor of this podcast, lets you reach them specifically by job title, seniority, company size, industry, the skills that they have, and much more. You're no longer hoping your ad reaches the right person. Instead, you're defining exactly who sees it. And LinkedIn Ads drives the highest B2B return on ad spend across all major ad networks. Give them a try at linkedin.com/diary. And if you spend $250 on your first campaign, you'll get a $250 credit for your next one just by going to linkedin.com/diary. Keep this to yourself. Terms and conditions apply. [paper flips] Okay, so the team have been here for the last couple of days. We've been getting lots of takeaways, and so this is a higgledy-piggledy of everybody's food. What's wrong? You've got, you're pulling out-

    19. SPSpeaker55:37

        Black plastic.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett55:38

        What's wrong with the black plastic?

    21. SPSpeaker55:40

        Um, we talked about plastic. It has BPA, it has phthalates, but it also typically is made from recycled electronics, and the problem here, Steven, is recycled electronics have flame retardants in them because you don't want your electronics catching fire, and there have been a variety of studies now that have found that black plastic has a high amount of these flame retardants that are leaching into the food and getting into people's bodies that way. Not only do you not wanna eat out of black plastic, you don't want hot food going in there, right? 'Cause that's, like, the worst.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett56:07

        Can I get a bin bag? I need a bin bag. Okay. Okay, so let's throw that in the bin. What else? I'm gonna take all of it out.

    23. SPSpeaker56:14

        Okay. This is the other thing that really reaches out [laughs] , stands out to me because spicy foods, anything acidic that goes into plastic causes the chemicals to leach into it even more rapidly, kind of the same way the heat does. So heat, acidic foods, not good in plastic.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett56:33

        So my spicy sauce, if it comes in a little plastic tub, it's gonna leach in.

    25. SPSpeaker56:37

        Look, if it's the one-off, okay, but, like, not a habit. Yes, it big time leach in. It... You're, you're, you're eating BPA hot sauce.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett56:46

        Okay. So the black stuff is out, and I'm-

    27. SPSpeaker56:49

        This is going in hot. Yeah, this has phthalates and it had BPA. I mean, look, are you drinking this every day or is it the one-off?

    28. SBSteven Bartlett56:56

        No comment. No comment. Mind your business. Okay. What else? What about this?

    29. SPSpeaker57:02

        Um-

    30. SBSteven Bartlett57:02

        This is made of paper.
12. 57:43 – 59:40

    Are Microplastics Leaking Into Your Food Right Now?

    1. SPSpeaker57:43

       This is, on the scale, at least it goes in cold. So here's the thing. Microplastics are also shedding into this. We didn't talk about microplastics.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett57:50

       Mm.

    3. SPSpeaker57:51

       They're shedding into here. The chemicals, not as much in something like this, but they're still getting in. So this is a little bit better when it comes to, like, the, the tiers here. The hot food is the worst. This is a little bit better, but I still would get lettuce.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett58:05

       Because it's cold.

    5. SPSpeaker58:06

       Because it's cold.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett58:07

       So it's not seeping.

    7. SPSpeaker58:08

       Exactly.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett58:08

       Okay, so I might be able to keep that then. What else do you notice here? What-

    9. SPSpeaker58:11

       So I notice that I really like your glass sparkling waters. That's great because, you know, glass is, is less likely to have microplastic shedding, less likely to have the chemicals.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett58:22

        Mm.

    11. SPSpeaker58:22

        There was a study that actually found, interestingly, there were more microplastics in, on the top, so the paint that's on these lids. Plastic polymers are used in that. And during the processing and, you know, bottling up of these things, they get into the, the, the water. And so believe it or not, glass bottled water has more microplastics than plastic bottled water. Okay, this is terrible. The... But I'm gonna tell you why I think this still is worse, okay? So this is, got microplastics, but it also has BPA and phthalates. They're in this water. This was not always cold. It's, you know-

    12. SBSteven Bartlett58:59

        Mm

    13. SPSpeaker58:59

        ... it was in some warehouse shipping container. Who knows how it got here. It's been heated up, I'm sure, several times. The problem is is that there was a study showing that glass bottles have a higher amount of microplastics than, than plastic, and you might go, "Why is that?" Because they're all coming off on this paint and getting in. When it comes to microplastics, size matter. I'm not as worried about it having more microplastics 'cause it would show that they were large microplastics. Your body doesn't absorb large ones very well. They come out through your feces. These, this has tons of what are called nanoplastics, very, very small particles that get into the gut and get into your bloodstream.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett59:34

        Mm-hmm.

    15. SPSpeaker59:34

        So I still go for the glass water. So I would adj- avoid drinking out of these as much as possible.

13. 59:40 – 1:01:18

    The Safest Way to Store Condiments (Most People Get This Wrong)

    1. SPSpeaker59:40

       So I like how you have these condiments in the glass. This is how my refrigerator looks as well. I'm very, very obsessive about anything that has acidity in it, like hot sauce and ketchup. It needs to be in glass because the acidity is leaching microplastics and BPA and phthalate chemicals into your condiments, and then you're putting that on your food and you're eating them. Again, this is ubiquitous. It's everywhere. Plastic is everywhere. The chemicals are everywhere. And you're not even thinking about the fact that your hot sauce and ketchup are also, you know, vehicles for delivering these microplastics and, you know, their associated chemicals into your body. So I really like these. Like, this one, I would go for a glass mustard. Those, those are better.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:18

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SPSpeaker1:00:18

       Glass bottles. So this is plastic, same thing. It's acidic. I would say, um, you know, for the most part... Or the butter. Oh, yeah, this is bad. Is this butter? Or cheese. Yeah, so this is a problem also. So if you look at this, um, it's that flexible plasticky stuff, right? It has phthalates in it.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:35

       What, this? This?

    5. SPSpeaker1:00:36

       Oh, that's even worse. This is [laughs] ... Yeah, so this is the plastic that basically, you know, phthalates are in this, and they're fat-soluble, and they are just leaching into this fatty cheese. They're leaching into the fatty cheese. So you can buy cheese that's, like, without this, in just the container that's a little bit better.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:56

       Mm-hmm.

    7. SPSpeaker1:00:56

       You know what I mean? Like, like, I'm thinking of feta cheese, for example. Like, s- some feta cheese comes in this plastic wrapper, but you can buy it with just the container, and at least it's not, like, close, like, with l- juices, like, just seeping into it, you know, getting the chemicals into it.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:10

       Ah, but this is fine, isn't it? Eggs?

    9. SPSpeaker1:01:13

       Yes. Eggs are great.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:15

        There we go.

    11. SPSpeaker1:01:15

        Eggs are great.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:16

        We found something.

14. 1:01:18 – 1:03:25

    Which Kitchen Utensils Are Secretly Harming You?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:19

       Okay, Rhonda, so spatulas and kitchen utensils, are, are these good? Are these bad? What's, what's the best?

    2. SPSpeaker1:01:25

       Yeah, good question. These are great, right? There's no plastic here, no possibility of plastic leaking into your foods. You've got your nice pasta spoon. These are silicon I'm imagining.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:36

       Yeah.

    4. SPSpeaker1:01:37

       Um, in theory-The silicone should be okay. Um, the problem is, is that there's a lot of silicone that actually still has... It's mixed with plastic, too. So I go for the wood ones that are like this, like the wooden spatula. That's what I use. You, in theory, should be good. In practice, a lot of silicone that's been measured out there and tested does have plastic. So I would say if you wanna really be careful, I would switch.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:06

       But most people at home probably have a plastic spatula.

    6. SPSpeaker1:02:10

       Mm.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:10

       Is that accurate?

    8. SPSpeaker1:02:10

       Most people at home have plastic spatula, and a lot of people also have black plastic spatulas, which again, back to that black recycled electronics, flame retardants. These are cancer-causing chemicals in there, brominated chemicals that are causing cancer. So yeah, I would say that even shifting from the plastic to this is probably a step up, but I don't know that this is just pure silicone. I, I, I, I would guess that there's some plastic still in it. And so if you're heating it up, the plastic, it's getting into your food.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:38

       Okay. What about, um, my, my pans? What about... I've got my pans here.

    10. SPSpeaker1:02:45

        Great. All-Clad, this is what I use. These are amazing. No plastic lining, no PFAS, no nonstick. So most people's pans at home have a sort of a protective layer here that's nonstick so that they can cook their food and their food doesn't stick to the pans. Like, scrambled eggs are kind of a pain in the butt if they stick to everything. That has the forever chemicals in them, and that is being heated up and is leaching into your food and you're eating it. So really what you wanna avoid the most is, uh, Teflon, right? Anything that's nonstick.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:18

        It's harder to cook with these, though.

    12. SPSpeaker1:03:19

        It's so much harder, but you know what? You're healthier, and that's what you have to imagine.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:23

        The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is this,

15. 1:03:25 – 1:09:05

    Why Your Blender Might Be Contaminating Your Food

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:26

       the blender.

    2. SPSpeaker1:03:28

       Ah, yes, the blender. This is one that people often miss. The problem is most blender tops here that's blending your stuff is plastic, and there are studies showing that when you have a lot of friction on plastic, that releases orders of magnitude more microplastics, and of course, their associated chemicals are hitchhiking along there. There are companies that make a stainless steel version of the blender, and I highly recommend if you're someone like myself, I like to do my kale blueberry smoothies, that you switch to the stainless steel. I did. I switched for my family, um, because essentially the friction, you're drinking microplastics and chemicals. So that's bad.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:10

       A receipt.

    4. SPSpeaker1:04:11

       Yeah, don't touch it. [laughs]

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:12

       What do, what do you mean don't touch it?

    6. SPSpeaker1:04:13

       Um, so receipts are-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:15

       Why are you touching it like that?

    8. SPSpeaker1:04:17

       ... covered with BPA. I mean, literally just covered. That's how it prints it, right? This isn't like a printer. This is printed for... It's a thermal paper and, and the BPA is allowing the printing to happen, and so they're covered with bisphenol A. People that are handling receipts, like cashiers that are handling receipts, have really high levels of BPA, um, particularly if they use, like, hand sanitizing lotion or any lotion. Any sort of cream makes the BPA... Again, BPA is fat soluble. These creams, um, the hand sanitizers are carrying it inside to your- inside your bloodstream about 100 fold higher than not having that. So first of all, you can opt to have an e- receipt emailed to you. If you need the receipt, I would do that, or, you know, don't touch it. But also, if you work in the cash- if you're a cashier and you work in this industry, really, really please wear nitrile gloves. I mean, this is like... Your, your BPA levels, if you were to go get them measured, which you can, there are companies out there now that do measure BPA levels in urine, you will see that they are extremely, extremely high. So, um, nitrile gloves will protect you from, from the BPA getting across your, your dermal barrier and getting to your bloodstream. Uh, latex gloves do not. So make sure they're nitrile gloves. And then for people that are not in the industry, try to avoid the receipts. I mean, it's a really big exposure to BPA that people aren't even realizing.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:37

       I can tell by the way you're, like, grabbing the corner of it like it's feces or something.

    10. SPSpeaker1:05:40

        Oh, it's terrible. And my son, like, you know, kids love paper, and of course I don't want him touching it because we talked about that study in adolescent boys where they had high BPA levels, and that was associated with a 50% reduction in testosterone. I mean, this is at a part of your life when testosterone is, you know, important for sexual development and development in general. So really, really, really important to remember. Receipts are a very big source of BPA that people are not thinking about, particularly people that are routinely handling these receipts.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:09

        And, um, the other thing I wanted to talk you, to you about is water. So here is one of my water filters. I also have a filter attached to the tap. What are your thoughts?

    12. SPSpeaker1:06:20

        So this is filtering water, but it's filtering it into plastic, and it's also got plastic filter.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:25

        Mm-hmm.

    14. SPSpeaker1:06:26

        So I think that, you know, you're probably filtering away some other things, pathogens, gross other chemicals that might be in the water, but you're essentially reintroducing the plastic. So I don't know that that's necessarily the best way to get the filter. What you have over here is a reverse osmosis water filter. That is absolutely the ideal. Reverse osmosis water filters filter out microplastics, nanoplastics, BPA, phthalates, chemicals, all these things that we're talking about today. People can get a tabletop one, kinda like this is tabletop, but it's a tabletop reverse osmosis water filter. These only filter out the bigger, larger plastic size, m- microplastic size. And then the last thing I wanna mention, Steven, because you do have a reverse osmosis water filter, is that it does filter out a lot of small particles, including essential, you know, trace elements and some essential, like, minerals and stuff. So you wanna make sure that you are taking a multivitamin mineral supplement, and you can also get what's called little essential, um, element drops that have things like phosphorus, manganese, iodine, some of these things that are being filtered out of your water, and making sure you're reintroducing that to your water.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:33

        Ah, okay. So it takes some good stuff out, too.

    16. SPSpeaker1:07:35

        It does, yeah.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:36

        Okay. Is there anything else that maybe is n- either in my kitchen now or not in my kitchen that is a culprit of BPAs and PFAS and-

    18. SPSpeaker1:07:45

        Here's the first problem here. And then inside where the hot water's going through is there's plastic pieces. So the hot water's going through plastic to get to your little espresso, you know, cup here. These, I actually looked into this 'cause at first I thought they were lined with plastic. They're not. My concern is mostly the water going through the system that's heating up. It's go- it's got plastic, you know, piping in there that it's going through.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:10

        Okay. So I'm gonna ... Just stay there and I'm gonna just grab ... Oops. Okay. So this is now the coffee that I drink called Comté.

    20. SPSpeaker1:08:19

        Huh.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:20

        Um, they flash freeze it at the perfect moment, and it's delivered frozen. So metal-

    22. SPSpeaker1:08:23

        Metal

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:23

        ... and then this is an aluminum lid.

    24. SPSpeaker1:08:26

        Right. So this shouldn't be lined with plastic, right?

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:28

        You go like this, press the little button on top, and it goes straight into your glass, and then this comes out, and that's the coffee.

    26. SPSpeaker1:08:37

        Oh, I love it.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:38

        So you just drop, dr- It's funny 'cause they're a sponsor. [laughs]

    28. SPSpeaker1:08:41

        Oh. [laughs]

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:42

        So disclaimer, and I'm also an investor in this company. So, um, no, no machines at all. Put it straight into-

    30. SPSpeaker1:08:47

        Yeah
16. 1:09:05 – 1:12:19

    Inside Steve’s Supplement Stack: What He Actually Uses

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:05

       Okay. So this is my supplement cupboard. It's a, it's a mess, but I've pulled out things that I, that I'm personally interested in. Good, bad, indifferent.

    2. SPSpeaker1:09:12

       The first one that jumped out at me when I was looking is reduced and active glutathione. This is something that, um, I think people should be aware of. There's marketing involved here. Glutathione is in a major ... It's a major antioxidant. We make it in our body. We make it in our brain.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:27

       What does it do? Sorry.

    4. SPSpeaker1:09:28

       So it's a very important antioxidant. It helps negate oxidation, which is causing brain aging. It's, it's negating oxidation, which is aging yourself, right?

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:36

       Mm-hmm.

    6. SPSpeaker1:09:37

       People wanna supplement with it because they've heard about glutathione and how beneficial it is and how it's a great antioxidant. The problem is because our body makes it inside of our cells, inside of our cells, we don't have a transporter to get glutathione from the outside of our cells, like if we eat it and if it makes it through our digestion, which it really doesn't, into our cells. And so this kind of glutathione isn't gonna make it inside of your cells.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:00

       So this is just a waste of time.

    8. SPSpeaker1:10:01

       It, it is. You're gonna wanna get something called liposomal glutathione. Liposomal glutathione has been shown to get inside because liposomes, it's essentially taking the glutathione molecule and encapsulating it in something that's gonna fuse-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:14

       Into

    10. SPSpeaker1:10:14

        ... with your cell. Liposomal products in general have a higher bioavailability for that reason.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:21

        So let me repeat that back to you so I've got it. So if it's liposomal, it's basically in a packet which can get through into the cell.

    12. SPSpeaker1:10:26

        Mm-hmm.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:26

        If it's not, this one is, um, reduced and active, then it's never gonna get in the cell, so it's a waste of time. It's just gonna be excreted.

    14. SPSpeaker1:10:32

        Yeah. I would say that it's really not doing much, and that if ... You're gonna want to supplement with liposomal glutathione. That's what I have.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:38

        What about this vitamin D3? I've always been confused because people say take vitamin D, but then this one says D3.

    16. SPSpeaker1:10:45

        Right. D3 is the form of vitamin D that you make when you're in the sun. That's the major way we make vitamin D is from sun exposure. There is a plant form of vitamin D called vitamin D2. It's found in things like mushrooms, for example. The problem is, is that there have been studies showing that vitamin D2, which is unfortunately what a lot of vegetarians take because they want a vegetarian form, vitamin D3 is also found in like sheep skin because the sheep are making it in their, you know, skin when they're exposed to sunlight. Um, vitamin D2 is not as effective as vitamin D3. If you are a vegetarian or a vegan, you're gonna wanna look for vitamin D3 from lichen. Lichen is that like green stuff that you can find on trees and stuff. That also makes vitamin D3, and so it's a, it's a much better option than getting the vitamin D2, which is what a lot of vegetarians do. So there's actually an, a study, recent study showing that people that are vitamin D deficient, so they're not getting enough vitamin D3 because we don't go out in the sun anymore, they have accelerated aging, and if they supplement ... This is a very large study, by the way. If they supplemented with vitamin D3, they slowed their, their biological aging by almost two years. That didn't happen in people that were not vitamin D deficient from the start. So it's not like a vitamin D3 supplement's gonna do something miraculous if you already have enough vitamin D. The, the point is to evo- avoid deficiency. And so, you know, someone like yourself that does, probably doesn't go outside a lot, but also ... Well, you go outside, but you're not ... You have darker skin, so melanin is a natural sunscreen. And so people with more melanin have to spend a lot more time in the sun, and so that is something to consider as well.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:18

        Well, I can always just take

17. 1:12:19 – 1:13:07

    Do Multivitamins Really Extend Your Life?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:19

       my multivitamin.

    2. SPSpeaker1:12:20

       Right. Multivitamin. I think I might have talked about one study last time we talked, last episode, where men and women that were older adults, they were 65 years and older, they took one Centrum Silver a day. And I'm not, you know, I'm not advocating for Centrum Silver. I'm just saying that was involved in the study. And, um, after three years, they had reversed their brain aging, global brain aging by 2.1 years, and they reversed their episodic brain aging by almost five years. So episodic memory is the kind of memory involved in remembering events and people and things like that. You know, as you get older, you know, that stuff doesn't come as quick, right? So it delayed that aging by five years. Well, the same study also, um, just recently published literally like a couple of weeks ago, again, part of this

18. 1:13:07 – 1:14:58

    Are Men’s Multivitamins Worth It—or Misleading?

    1. SPSpeaker1:13:07

       large study, it's called the COSMOS study, they looked at the multivitamin use and biological aging, epigenetic aging, and they found that the Centrum Silver multivitamin also slowed biological aging, epigenetic aging by a few months, and this was only after two years. And you might go, "Oh, a few months," but that was after two years, and that, that trial was two years long. So if you add two, two years and then you add another two years and then you add ... And then you're talking about 20, you're talking about 30, you're talking about 50 years, that is slowing aging the entire time. It adds up. It's cumulative. And it's one of the easiest things that someone can do to basically, you know, make sure that they're aging better. There's things that are harder to do, but that to me is such a low-hanging fruit. It's easy.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:48

       What is it about this? What is in here that's making a, a male multivitamin have such profound effects?

    3. SPSpeaker1:13:53

       If you look at the back at the n- the supplement facts, there's a lot of vitamins and minerals, things like vitamin C, vitamin D3, vitamin E, vitamin K, niacin, the B vitamins, folate. You have things like selenium, the essential, those essential elements. These are all things that we need to run-Everything in our body, all of our metabolism, our neurotransmitter synthesis, our immune system, you know, our, our liver, all these, these, these are co-factors that are really important for all those things. And you don't realize how important they are until time goes on and things start to fall apart. It's basically filling the gaps, because we're supposed to get this, these things from our foods. We're supposed to be getting all these vitamins and minerals from our foods, from, from our water, and it's just not happening for many reasons. One, our soils are depleted. You know, the organophosphates like glyphosate-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:40

       Mm

    5. SPSpeaker1:14:40

       ... is depleting our minerals. And so the foods that are being grown in this soil aren't getting the minerals that they're supposed to. And then the second problem is we're not eating the right foods because we're taking... We're eating takeout. We're eating foods that are not micronutrient dense, things like dark leafy greens. We're not eating the colors of the rainbow, and those are really important for vitamins and minerals.

19. 1:14:58 – 1:20:46

    How to Tell If Your Multivitamin Is Actually Good

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:58

       So I've got two questions there. Is there a multivitamin that I could take that is not good for me? Because when I go to the shops, there's so many different types these days, and I don't know which one's good, bad, or how to tell the difference. And so honestly, sometimes I just go based on the most expensive because I assume the most expensive is the best quality.

    2. SPSpeaker1:15:15

       Yeah. So, you know, the problem with supplements is they're not regulated. I mean, not that I necessarily want them, but it is a problem because supplement companies can kind of put whatever they want in the supplements. They don't necessarily have the amount of ax-active ingredient that they say, or they can either have too little or too much. And so that is the problem with-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:35

       Too much?

    4. SPSpeaker1:15:36

       Yeah. So for example, some vitamin D3 supplements and some, um, melatonin supplements have like so- in some cases, like, 1,000 to 10,000 fold more. And it was a really big problem with melatonin because melatonin is that hormone that you make to help you fall asleep, and there was excessive amounts in them. So it's not regulated so that you really don't know the amount you're getting. So I would say if number one, go to a trust-trusted brand that is third-party testing. There's so much third-party testing now. Consumer Lab does it. You can, you know, look up what they've tested. But for a man, I would say the thing that's essential here is you don't wanna get iron. You don't want supplemental iron.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:17

       Well, someone told me to start drinking these iron drinks.

    6. SPSpeaker1:16:19

       Were you iron deficient?

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:21

       No.

    8. SPSpeaker1:16:21

       Okay.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:21

       I was just sick one time, and they said this would really help.

    10. SPSpeaker1:16:24

        So-

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:25

        This wasn't a scientist.

    12. SPSpeaker1:16:26

        Yeah

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:26

        It was just a friend.

    14. SPSpeaker1:16:26

        Most men do not need to supplement with iron unless they have, you know, a problem with iron and they're anemic, for example. Iron can be very bad. I mean, if you're supplementing with iron, it's very reactive, and it causes, uh, oxidative stress easily. It's called free iron. The free iron reacts with other things, with your DNA, your cells. And so most men do not need to supp- In fact, even, you know, something called a he- hemochromatosis, where they're... You're basically... You have too much iron already, and you... If you have those genes, it's actually quite common, then you're really talking about iron overload. So you really do not need to supplement with iron.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:01

        Women?

    16. SPSpeaker1:17:02

        Women, premenopausal women are different because premenopausal women do lose a lot of iron from menstruation when they're menstruating. And so I would say about 16% of, of menstruating women are iron deficient. And then if you add exercise on top of that, you know, a lot of endurance exercise, you can get lysis of your red blood cells. And so you do need iron for your red blood cells. If you're eating meat, if you're not a vegetarian, you know, maybe that would be a case if you're like a vegan or something, maybe some iron would come in. But you have to get your iron levels measured. You don't want to be too high because it is... It does cause damage.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:33

        Damn.

    18. SPSpeaker1:17:33

        But I would say that premenopausal women, iron is, especially around your cycle, is good. Post-menopausal women, once you hit menopause, it... You kind of shift to like what a man needs. You don't need the iron again. So it's very... It's very much just premenopausal women that need iron.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:47

        That's so funny. I've been drinking these. Omega-3, does that mean good?

    20. SPSpeaker1:17:50

        Yes. Omega-3 fish oil, as we've talked about before, I mean, this is probably one of the best and easiest things that people can do to improve their health, improve the way they age. Um, omega-3 fatty acids, 90% of the US population is not getting enough of them, 80% globally. Everyone, nobody's getting enough omega-3 fatty acids, particularly from seafood. So f- the EPA and DHA from fish oil are probably the best forms. You know, we talked about studies. If you have a high omega-3 index, you have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to low omega-3 index. If you're a smoker and you have a high omega-3 index, then you're gonna live as long as a non-smoker with a low omega-3 index, right? I mean, so the low omega-3 index is like smoking. Basically, you know, you have a 66% lower chance of getting Alzheimer's disease with a high omega-3 index, and even more recently there were studies showing that omega-3 slows epigenetic aging. Um, and this is, this is not just a in deficiency, I guess because everyone's deficient, maybe that's why. But, um, a study showed that omega-3 fish oil supplementation, this was a study out of Switzerland. These individuals are mostly active. They're 88% of them were already physically active at the start of the trial, and I mention that because the trial involved omega-3, it involved vitamin D, and it involved resistance training or the combination of all three. And only the omega-3 was able to slow epigenetic aging, biological aging, because for one, they were already physically active, so adding resistance training on top of their baseline didn't do much, and they were vitamin D sufficient. So the omega-3 was able to slow epigenetic aging. The combination of all three slowed it by four months. This was just after one year. So slowed it by four months, and if you imagine that, uh, it doesn't sound like a lot. Again, it's compounding, but also within that study they looked at real world outcomes. So that also correlated with they had a 60% less likely chance of being prefail, uh, pre-frail, so pre-frailty, right? Um, they also were less likely to get cancer as well. So I mean, it's really kind of translating to these health outcomes that we think of, and all you need to do is supplement with about 1.6 to two grams a day of omega-3 to get a good omega-3 index. But I will mention one thing, Steven. It's at room temperature. I don't think that's a great idea, um, because fish oil is a polyunsaturated fatty acid. It is prone to oxidation, so you wanna put it in a low temperature environment. I keep all my... Actually, I keep all my fish oil frozen. Frozen, and then when I'm ready to use it, I put it in the fridgeSo like I have a store of it, I have a stock of it I buy, and then it's in the freezer, and then I put it in the fridge with the, the bottle that I'm using from, and it's ... If freezing it does nothing, it's fine. It ... So it's basically just keeping it really, really low oxidation.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:26

        So I need to put this in the fridge.

    22. SPSpeaker1:20:27

        You need to put it in the fridge, and also make sure you're getting a quality brand, right? So you're gonna third-party testing again. You wanna have a total oxidation ideally less than 10, and there are brands out there that do have a, a oxidation less than 10.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:40

        Which means it's more fresh and pure.

    24. SPSpeaker1:20:41

        It's more f- it's ... Yeah, it's less oxidized. You don't wanna be consuming oxidized fat, 'cause that's also not

20. 1:20:46 – 1:31:13

    Creatine: The Supplement That Does More Than Build Muscle

    1. SPSpeaker1:20:46

       good.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:47

       Okay. So what else h- jumps-

    3. SPSpeaker1:20:49

       I mean-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:49

       ... out to you here? We've got creatine. I mean ...

    5. SPSpeaker1:20:52

       Yeah. Creatine is like my new I travel with it everywhere. You got micro ionized. Is this ... This is-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:57

       I've got so many different types of creatine.

    7. SPSpeaker1:20:58

       Right. This is the one I take. Yeah. I take, I take the creatine monohydrate 'cause it's the most well-studied.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:04

       Mm-hmm.

    9. SPSpeaker1:21:05

       And, you know, obviously for ... I do a lot of training and workout train- you know, I do a lot of resistance training and strength training, so I at least get five grams a day, which is what I always was doing in the past. I upped that to 10 grams a day as my baseline, because I wanted to have benefits in my brain. Studies out of Germany show that once you get to the 10 gram mark, you're actually, your brain's able to take it up, and it's increasing creatine in certain brain regions. That doesn't happen much at lower doses, and that's because your muscles are very greedy. The creatine in my brain, honestly, I've ... For me, I mentioned this before, it's a game changer just on a daily basis. I feel like I don't have that afternoon slump. I'm in my mid-40s. My brain isn't as sharp as it was. Creatine has really helped me kinda get a little bit closer to where I used to be. And also when I'm sleep derot- deprived, I go up even higher. Sometimes I do 20, 25 grams, and that is because studies have shown if you go up to a higher dose like that, depending on your weight, it's kind of a scale, um, that it helps you basically negate the negative effects on your brain from sleep deprivation, where not only are you cognitively functioning, you're functioning beyond what your even normal baseline was, which was kinda mind-blowing.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:12

        The question I had is around loading and how long it takes to feel the impact. Because when I first heard about creatine, I was 16 and my brother was bodybuilding, and they were told that you need to like load up on big loads of it, and then in like two weeks time your body would be saturated. What's the truth?

    11. SPSpeaker1:22:28

        Right. So the reason that creatine loading was done was because there, there, it, there's a short window of time when researchers are doing a study.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:36

        Mm-hmm.

    13. SPSpeaker1:22:37

        And they want their muscle stores to be saturated. They want their s- their muscle stores to be saturated. And so you have to do 20 gram loading phase in order to saturate them after, you know, three or four days.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:49

        Mm-hmm.

    15. SPSpeaker1:22:49

        If you're not about to compete and if you haven't been using creatine and you're not participating in the study, it takes about four week, three to four weeks of five grams a day consistently to saturate your muscle. So you don't have to do any loading phase. If you are supplementing with five grams a day and you've been doing it for a month, your muscle stores are saturated. Until you exercise and you get that five grams in again, they're saturated, right? So they ke- they're, they're already ... That five grams a day is keeping them saturated. And that's why I said your muscles are really hungry and greedy. They're wanting that five grams. They're wanting that five grams, and that's about what it takes daily to saturate them. However, if you're starting from ground zero where you've never taken creatine, it's gonna take four weeks to really get effects.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:30

        To get the effects.

    17. SPSpeaker1:23:30

        Mm-hmm.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:30

        Okay. So some-

    19. SPSpeaker1:23:31

        Otherwise, yeah, you'll have to get higher doses. They're not gonna be saturated after five grams.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:34

        So some people might have s- tried creatine a, for a week and not felt any effects and given up.

    21. SPSpeaker1:23:39

        That's a good ... That's actually a really good point. Yeah. It's about a month-long experiment, I would say, close to four weeks. I think some people can saturate it at three weeks, but it all depends, body size and all that. So four weeks is a good experiment time, and five grams is a good dose to start with. If five grams a day actually help makes you more bloated and nauseous, cut that down to two and a half and two and a half grams-

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:59

        Mm

    23. SPSpeaker1:24:00

        ... so that the ... You split the doses. If you split the doses, if you take it with food, particularly carbohydrates, it seems to help negate some of the bloating, and nausea, and negative effects people feel. And obviously, if you're not working out, y- you know, creatine's not gonna like grow your muscles. You have to put in the work. You have to put in the effort. It's ... What it's doing is it's helping your muscles, you know, grow and give you the energy to, to do more training volumes so that they can grow bigger and also so that you can be stronger. If you are traveling, and stressed, and all those things, yes, creatine is good for the brain.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:29

        I, I was seeing ... I think it was James Smith did a video about different creatine percentages in the creatine products we drink and, um, or eat or consume, and he looked at creatine gummies and found that some of the creatine gummies don't even have any creatine in them at all. And it was quite shocking because you would just assume that if it says creatine, there's gonna be creatine in there.

    25. SPSpeaker1:24:48

        This goes back to the whole problem where supplements are not regulated, and so you never really know what you're getting, and you have to have third-party testing and go to a quality brand. Gummies in general ... So there was a study that was published not long ago. It was a consumer study that was done where people went and got a lot of different creatine gummies off the shelf and then measured how much creatine was in them, and essentially almost all of them had none. And I've talked to some supplement manufacturers, and their, basically their statement was, "It's really hard to get active ingredients in gummy." G- in general, not even just creatine, in general. But the other thing I did wanna mention with creatine is that you do wanna make sure it's NSF certified. That's a really important thing because there are contaminants that are even produced in the processing of creatine and creatine monohydrate. And so you wanna make sure that you're not getting those contaminants, which can be harmful, and some of them are like lead, for example, but even some other compounds that are formed. And so you want NSF certification, and that's always what I look for when I'm buying a creatine supplement, is NSF certification, or any supplement. I really like to have all supplements NSF certified 'cause that really means they've, one, looked at contaminants and, two, it's got that active ingredient in there, and that's really what you want.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:01

        And the NSF certification is just a little logo on the side of the tub here that says NSF Certified Sports.

    27. SPSpeaker1:26:07

        That's it.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:07

        Yeah.

    29. SPSpeaker1:26:07

        Yeah. And it's all on websites too if you buy online. Yeah.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:10

        Okay. So I've got one challenge for you. If you had to pick five supplements for me to take, assuming that I am-Male and female
21. 1:31:13 – 1:33:49

    Curcumin: The Anti-Inflammatory Compound Backed by Science

    1. SPSpeaker1:31:14

       So phytosomal curcumin is another one that I supplement with. And let's just start with curcumin in general. Curcumin is found in the turmeric plant. It's something that is able to pretty ro-robustly and I would say consistently lower inflammation, and it's doing it in a different way that like a NSAID or like an ibuprofen would do it, right? And that is important because it's been shown if you take NSAIDs, right? So these non-steroidal, uh, anti-inflammatory drugs, something like ibuprofen, around exercise, it can blunt the adaptations because it's basically lowering inflammation and, and prostaglandins and things that are important to cause exercise adaptations. So curcumin doesn't... hasn't been shown to do that, but it has been shown to lower something called TNF alpha, and that is a major inflammatory cytokine that is really, really powerfully accelerating aging. In fact, those epigenetic aging clocks that we talked about earlier, one of the most powerful drugs that's able to slow them... are TNF alpha inhibitors. So these are drugs that people take to inhibit TNF alpha. Certain people take them, like people with rheumatoid arthritis. They have a high level of inflammation. Their immune system's overactive.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:32:32

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SPSpeaker1:32:33

       They're making a lot of it. Well, guess what? Those individuals taking TNF alpha inhibitors are... Like, they have a 50% less likelihood of getting Alzheimer's disease than people not taking it.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:32:43

       A 50%?

    5. SPSpeaker1:32:44

       Mm-hmm. Yes. So I like it because curcumin is one of the most... It is the na- most naturally occurring dietary compound that I've seen data showing that it lowers TNF alpha. I haven't seen anything else that's naturally occurring that does it. This does it. It lowers it by quite a bit, by almost five picograms per milliliter. Phytosomal curcumin is... The reason I take phytosomal, it's kind of like a liposome, but it's phytosome. So it's essentially just making the ingredient get into the cells better. It's more bioavailable.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:33:16

       Mm.

    7. SPSpeaker1:33:17

       Because curcumin is easily metabolized quickly by the liver. It's a... It's what's called a xenobiotic. It's not a compound that's a vitamin or a mineral or something that the body, body normally recognize. It's seen as a drug, a foreign drug.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:33:29

       Oh.

    9. SPSpeaker1:33:29

       Xenobiotic, right? And so the liver gets rid of it quickly. The phytosomal delivery of it kind of slows that whole process.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:33:36

        Okay.

    11. SPSpeaker1:33:36

        Where it's, it's not getting rid, it's not getting rid of so quickly. It's not being metabolized so readily. So that's why I take that, and also it's been shown to improve performance in people that are exercising. Again, because it's reducing inflammation, inflammation can be dampening for

22. 1:33:49 – 1:41:35

    The Molecule That Could Help Your Cells Stay Younger

    1. SPSpeaker1:33:49

       performance.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:33:49

       And what else have we got here?

    3. SPSpeaker1:33:51

       The other supplement that I really wanna talk about is the urolithin A. And as I mentioned, this is a compound that's usually generated in the gut by the bacteria in your gut. It's something that we can get from our diet. So if we eat things like pomegranate, pomegranate has a type of polyphenol in it called ellagitannins.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:34:11

       I've never heard about this before.

    5. SPSpeaker1:34:12

       Okay, listen to this. This is, this is like you gotta try this supplement. Urolithin A, again, it's made from eating things like pomegranate. However, 50% of the population doesn't have the right bacteria to make it. So you're kind of like a toi- a coin toss if you eat pomegranate. Am I gonna be the person that can make urolithin A or am I not, right? So there's a company that did, out of Switzerland, these study... A lot of these early studies were done in Switzerland. And they ended up making urolithin A and then testing, you know, doing clinical studies, doing animal studies first and then clinical studies to test, you know, what is urolithin A doing. So what is it? It is a compound that is able to basically get rid of damaged mitochondria. So it's called mitophagy. You've probably heard of autophagy, you know, getting... clearing out your... all the gunk and the trash from your cells, making them rejuvenate- rejuvenating them, right?

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:02

       Which is associated with fasting.

    7. SPSpeaker1:35:03

       Fasting activates autophagy. Fasting activates mitophagy, which is specifically just clearing out damaged mitochondria or pieces of da- damaged mitochondria. Autophagy is essentially you have a whole cell.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:35:16

       Mm-hmm.

    9. SPSpeaker1:35:16

       And within that cell, you have a lot of different organelles, they're called. So mitochondria being one. And so autophagy kind of helps clear out all the stuff inside of the cell. Mitophagy is very specific to just the mitochondria within the cell. Those mitochondria get older, and they don't have a really good repair process, and so they accumulate damage. And as they get older, you're, you're not gonna be making energy as well, you're not gonna be using energy as well. It's gonna affect all the cell function because energy is at the core of everything, right? So mitochondrial health is at the core of all health basically. This compound very robustly induces mitophagy. And so, um, there have been, of course, many animal studies that were done pre-clinically before clinical studies were done. Animal studies were exciting. I mean, mice that were given... old mice that were given urolithin A were able to like rejuvenate, you know, tissues. But also 20% life extension was found in these mice given urolithin A. 20% is pretty big for a mouse, mouse study. All right. But we're not mice, so let's talk about humans and why I'm actually excited about it. For one, urolithin A and mitophagy was shown to be activated in humans taking it. So they took muscle biopsies and found that in, in fact mitophagy was activated. It's also recently been shown that this urolithin A is able to, to basically rejuvenate the immune system. So older adults were given 1,000 milligrams a day, and it, it basically... As we age, our immune system ages, our T cells aren't fighting off pathogens as well, and it increased the number of a very specific type of immune cell that decreases with age called CD8 positive T cells. Those were increased. That's very important because you're able to fight off infection better. And then it also increased a kind of immune cell that's able to kill cancer cells and also kill viruses and pathogens. It's called natural, natural killer cells. Um, so those cells increased as well with the urolithin A. And it also decreased markers of like senescence. So this is basically when a cell is still alive but it's not functioning. It's basically like it's dead. But not only is it not dead and not functioning, it's secreting inflammatory cytokines, accelerating aging. I know, it's complicated. So the study showed that it was basically able to re- rejuvenate the immune system in older adults. Younger adults that have taken it... So there's been studies showing that untrained athletes supplementing with 1,000 milligrams a day were able to improve their VO2 max, um, 10% more than just exercise alone. So if they exercise and took urolithin A, their VO2 max went up 10% compared to the exercise alone group.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:37:55

        Wow.

    11. SPSpeaker1:37:55

        If they were... Yes. If they were trained athletes, it only went up 5% because trained athletes already are doing a lot, right? So you always get a bigger increase in VO2 max if you have an untrained athlete. Same with obese people. And on top of that, so again, energy. It's your-Clearing out damaged mitochondria. If you combine it with exercise, exercise causes you to make new mitochondria. So the way I look at it, Steven, is a rejuvenation of all your mitochondria within your cells, whether we're talking about your muscle cells or your immune cells. I think it's probably happening in the brain as well. So it's been shown to increase muscle strength in older adults, so their hamstring strength improved by like ten to 12% after supplement- supplementing versus just exercise alone. I think it's a supplement that's important for aging because it's affecting mitochondria, and pretty much everything relies on mitochondria.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:38:44

        You can buy this in a normal shop on the high street?

    13. SPSpeaker1:38:47

        You cannot buy it in a n- normal shop. You can buy it online. It's not cheap, unfortunately. Uh, that's the other thing. So pomegranate itself is the next best thing for people, and there are studies showing that people that take pomegranate juice before they exercise, they can over, over the course of several weeks can actually increase their VO2 max by up to 17%. This is analysis of multiple studies showing that. So again, I think it's all coming down to the urolithin A and it's a new supplement that I'm... I've been experimenting with. Again, the immune system effects, I think I'm not getting sick, but I'm doing the creatine, I'm doing the urolithin A, and I'm doing glutamine.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:39:24

        So glutamine is the last one. What, what is that?

    15. SPSpeaker1:39:27

        Well, you've probably heard of glutamine as an amino acid, right? It's so much more. It's so much more. So glutamine is something that it is an amino acid, but it gets converted into and metabolized to many different things. So one, it can be an amino acid. Two, it can form something called glutarate, which is used by your cells for energy. Mitochondria love it. Or it can be converted into that neurotransmitter that we were talking about, right? Glutamate. So it's really something that can be used for many things. I supplement with it because I came across some studies in the past couple of years where endurance athletes... So these are... I'm not an endurance athlete. But endurance athletes are very prone to respiratory illness because they're really just going hard, right? And their im-- it... Your immune system kind of takes a, takes, it takes a tax on your immune system. Studies were showing that if those endurance ath- athletes supplemented with glutamine, they didn't get sick as often. They were having fewer respiratory illnesses. And I remembered back to when I was a graduate student and I was doing research and I used glutamine, and I was doing glucose and glutamine and looking at immune cells and how I could make them active, or what happens if I get rid of glucose or glutamine, and I remembered how much they love glutamine. They consume it. They're using it for energy.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:40:46

        Mm-hmm.

    17. SPSpeaker1:40:47

        And it started to make sense to me. And this was during a period of time where, you know, again, mid-forties, your immune system's not going... doing as well as it used to. I've got a... had a young child that was bringing home all sorts of pathogens, and so I started supplementing with glutamine. And it could be placebo, but again, I... You know, the sickness bouts were going down. I wasn't getting sick as often. The other thing it's good for is the gut, and that is because glutamine can be glu- uh, converted into something called alpha-ketoglutarate, which is a important energy compound that the gut uses. And so there are studies showing that it's beneficial for gut health, and I think that's what a lot of people think about when they take glutamine, is their gut. I'm thinking about my immune system. But basically it's very easily used by the gut cells as energy, and that really helps the gut heal.

23. 1:41:35 – 1:48:18

    Exogenous Ketones: Shortcut to Energy

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:41:35

       Okay. The other thing which I take almost daily, sometimes I give myself a weekend off, depending on how things are going, but almost daily are these Ketone-IQ shots, which I am affiliated with. I, um, I'm an investor in the company. Ketone shots. Exogenous ketone shots.

    2. SPSpeaker1:41:50

       I take them also quite frequently. Not daily. Um, you know, so what are they doing? There's different forms of them. And why do I take them? And I think let's talk about what I think people should realize if they are taking them. So, you know, they're... It's an... It's, it's essentially giving you that metabolic switch, right? It's getting, getting your ketone levels up as if you were fasted. So you're, you're elevating your beta-hydroxybutyrate levels. That's the major circu- circulating ketone.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:16

       Beta-hydroxybutyrate.

    4. SPSpeaker1:42:17

       BHB for short.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:19

       Does that just mean ketone?

    6. SPSpeaker1:42:20

       It's a ketone. It's-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:21

       Okay

    8. SPSpeaker1:42:21

       ... there are several ketones. Ac- acetone is another ketone, but that beta-hydroxybutyrate is the major one, right? So... And, and that is a major ketone that's in, in your body when you're fasted. That's what you're making. And when you're taking these Ketone-IQs or other exogenous ketones, is what you're gonna get. So Ketone-IQ is got the precursor for the ketone. It's got 1,3-butanediol. That in your liver gets converted into beta-hydroxybutyrate. I take a ketone that has 1,3-butanediol, but also it's esterified to the actual beta-hydroxybutyrate.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:42:55

       What does that mean?

    10. SPSpeaker1:42:56

        It means that it has both an immediate action, a fast action effect of having your ketones elevated, but it also has a tail end effect. So the 1,3-butanediol, if you take it, you have to wait for it to get to your liver. [gulps] [sighs] You have to... Can I have one? [laughs]

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:14

        Yes.

    12. SPSpeaker1:43:14

        I have to wait. [laughs] Oh, perfect. Okay. Wow, those taste better.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:22

        Mm.

    14. SPSpeaker1:43:22

        So, so the other ketone, exogenous ketone is the beta-hydroxybutyfura- rate esterified to the 1,3-butanediol, which just means it's gonna have a fast acting effect, but also a long-term effect. So you'll, you'll get a little bit more elevation in your blood ketones-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:38

        Mm-hmm

    16. SPSpeaker1:43:38

        ... from, from the one that has the beta-hydroxybutyrate esterified to the 1,3-butanediol. That said-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:43

        The difference is, I think from what I know, and I don't know a ton, is pricing.

    18. SPSpeaker1:43:47

        Yes.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:43:48

        So-

    20. SPSpeaker1:43:48

        It, it's pricing, but also again, y- concentration. So I mean, you know, you're gonna get, you're gonna get a higher peak quicker and you're gonna get higher levels of it with the one that's, uh, the, the Oxford, you know, the Oxford Ketone I guess it's called. But the Ketone-IQ has 1,3-butanediol which does get converted into beta-hydroxybutyrate.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:08

        This one I think costs, costs a couple of dollars, and I have the Oxford one here as well, which I think is $30 a popSo it's quite expensive. And I think-

    22. SPSpeaker1:44:15

        It's quite expensive

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:44:16

        ... the reason why this has been able to break into retail, especially across America, is just because it's more affordable for most people to be able to take... spend a couple of dollars.

    24. SPSpeaker1:44:24

        Right. The reason I take it is because I like the cognitive boost that I get from it, and I usually take it on occasions like this when I'm doing a show or I'm, you know, doing a presentation or I just... I'm doing a lot of heavy research and I just need to be on because I get a cognitive boost from it. And that cognitive boost does come down to what I was talking about with why I like to fast. It's mimicking that, right? I have that beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is increasing GABA, the inhibitory neurotransmitter that's silencing down some of the anxiety in the back of the brain or the chatter and just helping me focus, and also it increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor. So beta-hydroxybutyrate is a signaling molecule. It's able to increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor in the brain that helps with learning, memory, brain aging. It's also been shown to lower oxidation. So there's all sorts of reasons why I like to take it. For people that are fasting and they're wanting to burn fat, consider that if you take exogenous ketones, you stop, you stop burning your own fat because your body thinks it's now got all... it's got the ketones there, which is what the metabolism of fat is trying to do, is produce ketones for energy. And so it does shut down what's called lipolysis, which is basically breaking down fat. And so if you're doing fasting and you're doing it for reasons of fat loss, if you take an exogenous ketone during that period of time, it will transiently kind of shut down that process. So keep that in mind. It's one reason why I don't do it every day because-

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:45:53

        Mm-hmm

    26. SPSpeaker1:45:53

        ... I am looking for that effect for losing visceral fat in particular. But it's-

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:45:57

        That's a really interesting, important point-

    28. SPSpeaker1:45:59

        It is

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:46:00

        ... that people don't talk about.

    30. SPSpeaker1:46:01

        Yeah. It's important, and it's only gonna last as long as the beta-hydroxybutyrate lasts in your, in your blood system, so, you know, maybe three hours max.
24. 1:48:18 – 1:55:09

    What Is “Peakspan” and Why Should You Care?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:48:18

       Let's talk about something different, which is something that I've never heard of before. Um, it's a word that you've started to make popular in the health and longevity community, which is this idea of peak span. I have this graph in front of me, which I'll throw up on the screen. It's fascinating. What the hell is peak span? I've heard of health span. I've even heard of lifespan, but I've never heard of peak span.

    2. SPSpeaker1:48:41

       Well, let's start with lifespan-

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:48:43

       Mm

    4. SPSpeaker1:48:43

       ... and work our way to peak span to give people a frame of reference. I think most people are familiar with the word longevity-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:48:49

       Mm

    6. SPSpeaker1:48:49

       ... wanting to extend their lifespan, how many years they live, how long they live, right? But the problem with lifespan is, well, you could live longer, but you're gonna have perh- perhaps you have some diseases. So why do you wanna live longer if you have Alzheimer's disease or cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes? I mean, the qual- your quality of life is not as good, and that's where this idea of healthspan came in, right? So healthspan is, well, let's increase the amount of time we live disease-free.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:49:17

       Mm.

    8. SPSpeaker1:49:17

       And that's the new thing that everyone wants to increase and improve their healthspan. I wanna live... I wanna increase my healthspan, so I wanna live longer and not have any diseases while I'm living that, that longer life. Well, there's this new concept now, very new, that was just published by some researchers out of Duke University as well as I think, um, the China, y- y- some ch- some university in China and another university, but I wanna give them credit. They just p- it's a preprint study, and it came out on my radar. I immediately loved it, and it's this idea of peak span. Peak span says, hey, you know, healthspan is great, being disease-free is great, but you're still in a period of decline. You're still declining. Why not try to be as close to your peak span, which is essentially within 90% of your peak function for a certain measurement, whether we're talking about VO2 max, cardiorespiratory fitness, we're talking about, you know, any, any other function, and that's where this graph comes in. On the Y-axis, we have our relative capacity.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:21

       So if you're listening now, this is a good time to look at the screen because, uh, Rhonda's gonna show us something. Okay

    10. SPSpeaker1:50:27

        Your relative capacity, 100 being 100% and zero being 0%.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:31

        What does relative capacity mean?

    12. SPSpeaker1:50:32

        Your capacity for cognitive function for, you know, for your fertility-

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:39

        Your potential

    14. SPSpeaker1:50:40

        ... your hor- hormonal... Yeah, your potential.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:50:42

        Mm-hmm.

    16. SPSpeaker1:50:42

        Yeah. And on the X-axis, we're talking about age, right? And so what you'll notice is that different capacities, different organ functions kind of peak at different rates. So we can talk about first, obviously female reproductive really starts to peak at, you know, 25 or so, and then it just sharply declines until you hit 40, right? And it's like bot- bottomed out. So that's the reproductive female, right?

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:51:12

        Mm-hmm.

    18. SPSpeaker1:51:12

        Immune function, so let's find immune function here. That kind of peaks around 25 years old, and it also kind of declines, and it keeps declining-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:51:25

        It's quite scary

    20. SPSpeaker1:51:26

        ... as you get to 80. And then we have muscular skeletal, right? So this is our peak strength, peak but muscle mass, peak bone density. Those also peak around 25, and then they kind of steadily start to decline. And the same goes for cognitive function. We have two different kinds of cognitive function. We have fluid cognitive function, like processing speed. That is the kind of, I would say, cognitive function where you can answer a question without any pri- prior knowledge.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:51:53

        Mm-hmm.

    22. SPSpeaker1:51:54

        You know?

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:51:54

        Mm-hmm.

    24. SPSpeaker1:51:54

        That... So that peaks around 25.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:51:56

        You're joking.

    26. SPSpeaker1:51:57

        No, I know.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:51:58

        So I'm on the way down.

    28. SPSpeaker1:51:59

        You're on... I- I'm definitely on the way down. You're on the way down as well, so that would be the blue one here, peaks around 25. And then we have the crystallized cognitive function. Crystallized cognitive function is interesting because it peaks around midlife, and the reason it peaks around 40, 45 is because it's the kind of intelligence that it's like the library, where you have all these facts that you've accumulated over the years, and you're able to use those facts to answer or solve a problem, right?

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:52:29

        Is that wisdom or is that-

    30. SPSpeaker1:52:30

        It really just means that you have all these facts that you've learned over your life. Like for me, you know, I've been a biologist for since I was, you know, 20, so 27 years. I have so much that I've learned over that time, and so now I'm sitting here, and I use that knowledge. I talked about glutamine and what I learned from graduate school. I'm using that knowledge, right? Mitophagy, I learned about that, like, forever ago, and I've been following it. So you use all this, these facts and this data that you've learned in your life, and you're able to solve problems. So fluid intelligenc- I'm sorry, crystallized intelligence.
25. 1:55:09 – 2:01:01

    How to Extend Your Peak Years (Not Just Your Lifespan)

    1. SPSpeaker1:55:09

       how do you maintain your peakspan, right? How do you get as close as you can? You're obviously not gonna be your 100%, but how do you not drop below 90% of that peak, right?

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:21

       Is that possible?

    3. SPSpeaker1:55:22

       Is it... First of all, is it possible? And I would say for some organs, no. Which organs are that? I don't think a reproductive life expectancy for a female, I don't think you're gonna be having babies at 80 years old, um, without actual medical intervention. [chuckles]

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:55:37

       Mm.

    5. SPSpeaker1:55:37

       That's a whole other conversation. So I th- but I do think there are ways that we can get really close to our peak for cardiorespiratory, for musculoskeletal, you know, for our, our intelligence, cognitive intelligence, as well as our immune system, and I think there are blanket things that we could do that affect multiple systems, right? Like, and there's also targeted things. So we were talking about fluid versus cogni- v- versus crystallized intelligence, right? Obviously, crystallized intelligence, you know, it doesn't peak until mid-40s. You... The things that you can do to improve crystallized intelligence also improve your fluid intelligence. What are those things? One, exercise. Number one thing. Aerobic exercise is increasing brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Very important for both these aspects. It's also, you know, growing new neurons, making connections between the neurons, making your brain more plastic and adaptable, so it adapts to the changing environment.Top thing that you can do. Another thing that you can do that's really important for brain aging is the omega-3. We talked about that. Really important for brain aging. But the other thing that you can do is what we're doing right now, engaging in novel cognitive, you know, experiences. It could be a discussion. It could be your work. If you are learning new things... Novel is key here, novel. If you are learning new things, you are going to really help yourself improve both your fluid and crystallized intelligence. And so-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:57:03

       Is that because you're raising your potential, i.e., so you're falling from a higher place as you decline? Because I was thinking about this, like, how much of this has got to do with making sure that I, I peak at a higher place?

    7. SPSpeaker1:57:17

       Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that maybe has something to do with it, but in addition, there's neurochemical things that are changing when you're learning new experiences. For one, you are increasing brain-derived neurotrophic factor and stuff as well because novelty does that. You're also d- glutamate and you're ha- you're having, you know, glutamate being activated as well. But, um, yeah, I think the cognitive reserve is what you're talking about, and that is really important, right? Because y- you need to, you need to have that reserve if you're gonna start pulling from it, and that also comes with muscle, muscle health, right? Muscle and bone. So those are peaking around the same time as 25 or so. Peak muscle mass generally occurs around the age of 25. There are things that you can do to keep close to that peak though, right? And that would be resistance training. Big, big, big one. Strength training. Strength goes down. This is something... Protein intake, right?

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:58:08

       Avoid the black plastics in my fridge.

    9. SPSpeaker1:58:10

       Avoid black plastics in your fridge, yeah.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:58:12

        Because then my testosterone's gonna go down.

    11. SPSpeaker1:58:13

        Testosterone's gonna go down, and that's gonna affect your ability to gain muscle mass. Exactly. A lo- a lot of these healthy lifestyles that we're talking about are multi-system targeting, right? So you're targeting... But i- key would be strength training and resistance training, and it's gonna also affect your bones. So you're gonna wanna do these weightbearing exercises that are multi-joint, the compound lifts, right? The deadlifts, rows, things like that. Th- those are very important to help maintain that peak. Immune system. Sleep, very, very important for maintaining a healthy immune system and preventing your immune system from aging rapidly. So making sure you're prioritizing sleep. How are you gonna do that, right? I mean, there's a lot of ways to... People, people... A lot of people have sleep problems, and they have sleep problems for different reasons, and there's way to ta- ways to target them. But just realize thinking about it and prioritizing is important for your immune system and for your brain. Also, the exercise plays a role in your cardiorespiratory fitness, the brain, everything, muscle. So cardiorespiratory fitness is something that you c- we talked about urolithin A helping improve it on top of exercise, so there's supplements and stuff that you add in as well. But this idea here is really that we can do things in our life that are healthy to help maintain that peakspan, to get us not just free of disease, but, like, close to what we were peaking. And I do think it's possible. I mean, we talked... Last time I was here, we talked about that study. You exercise five hours a week, do some high intensity interval training in there, and you can reverse heart aging by 20 years. That's incredible.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:43

        It's cra-

    13. SPSpeaker1:59:43

        Right?

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:43

        And you... So crazy.

    15. SPSpeaker1:59:46

        So-

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:46

        And you're also saying that listening to The Diary of a CEO obviously is therefore good for-

    17. SPSpeaker1:59:50

        [laughs] Right. It's good for cognitive, um, your fluid intelligence and your, your crystallized intelligence. It's good for learning new things, right? I mean, that's-

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:59:59

        So you would prescribe it?

    19. SPSpeaker2:00:00

        Yeah.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett2:00:00

        You know?

    21. SPSpeaker2:00:00

        Yeah. Especially the episodes I'm on. [laughs]

    22. SBSteven Bartlett2:00:03

        [laughs] No, uh, i- I say that as a joke, but actually it's a part of the conversation we had the other day at dinner was, I don't think I'm gonna appreciate maybe until later in my life how much an unintended consequence of doing this as a job had on my cognition and my brain. A- and it's, like, not something that I would notice, you know, in the moment, but over time, you know, doing this two times a week for sometimes eight hours a week, learning something new, being... Forced is a strong word, but having an obligation to learn something new f- eight hours a week for my entire adult life.

    23. SPSpeaker2:00:37

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's great. I mean, it's, it, it's one of the best things that you can do for your brain. That's why learning a lu- new language is associated-

    24. SBSteven Bartlett2:00:45

        Mm-hmm

    25. SPSpeaker2:00:45

        ... with a rapid, you know, decrease in Alzheimer's disease risk. You're working your brain. You're learning new things. It's so impo- one of the worst things that someone can do is retire and just sit and watch TV, right? I mean, that's, like, the worst thing. You're gonna... You're rapidly gonna decline and get dementia.

26. 2:01:01 – 2:10:54

    How AI Could Be Rewiring Your Ability to Think

    1. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:01

       We've gotta talk about AI in this conversation.

    2. SPSpeaker2:01:03

       Oh my gosh.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:04

       Because I actually woke up this morning and I got a message. Look, I'll check with him that I can put this in before I say it out loud, before, um, it's published. But I got a message from my chairman, Nicky. Um, Nicky's an incredible man. He's, you know, 25 years Boston Consulting Group. He's seen it all. Um, and he said to me that one of the things he's thinking a lot about at the moment is how across our, you know, businesses, but just generally in society, how AI is gonna impact critical thinking and what that then-

    4. SPSpeaker2:01:32

       Mm-hmm

    5. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:32

       ... might mean for our teams, our executives, et cetera. So this is a conversation I was having this morning with him, and it's also something I've noticed. There are some people I interact with now where I, I do not feel at all like I'm dealing with their brain. I feel like I'm dealing with what came out the other end of a ChatGPT prompt.

    6. SPSpeaker2:01:49

       Hmm. Yes.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett2:01:49

       Good, bad, indifferent. Like, I don't, you know...

    8. SPSpeaker2:01:51

       Yeah. It's, it's an interesting and important question, Steven, because I've been thinking a lot about f- what... With AI, it's changing so much, and the question is, like, do you focus on, you know, the negative parts and the short-term parts? Do you focus on the potential benefits that could be great and grand? And I do, I do think a lot of it is people are worried about things like, "Oh, AI's gonna take all of our jobs. Oh, we're gonna have brain rot because we don't use our brains anymore." And, and those are concerns to have, but there's also a lot of exciting things to think about. I also worry about the, the brain rot part, where it's like, well, okay, these people aren't critically thinking for themselves. I've seen comment... I can, I can spot AI a million miles away. A million miles away, right? And, and, you know, part of it is if AI is accurate and they're-And people are eas-- more easily accessing the in-- accurate, accurate information and they're learning it, that's great. Like, that's what it's supposed to be there for, right? Like-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett2:02:50

       I think that's a big if, right?

    10. SPSpeaker2:02:52

        If, right. If. And, and it does have a lot to do with the version of AI you're using. It has a lot to do with the prompt. It has a lot to do with the question, how much, you know, reasoning it has to do. I mean, there's... We're-- It's still evolving, but I agree. It's kind of like the worry is are, are, are we gonna have a generation of, of people growing up that don't know how to critically think?

    11. SBSteven Bartlett2:03:16

        You've heard about that London taxi driver test experiment. I think I've heard you talk about it before, actually.

    12. SPSpeaker2:03:21

        Yeah. I mean, well, they have these maps in their heads, right? I mean, you have these taxi drivers in London that, um, they don't use GPS. Like, they know everywhere to go. By the way, I was in London a couple of years ago. I love the taxi drivers there. They are so awesome.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett2:03:36

        They are.

    14. SPSpeaker2:03:36

        Like, they are just different. They're totally different than-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett2:03:40

        For anyone that doesn't know, and I'm absolutely gonna butcher this, to become a London taxi driver, you have to take a test for many, many years. You have to learn for many, many years, and you have to learn, like, every street across London from the top of your head without using GPS. So-

    16. SPSpeaker2:03:54

        That's incredible.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett2:03:55

        So yeah, when you get in a black cab in London, it's amazing. You can go, "I kinda wanna go to..." And they go, "Got ya."

    18. SPSpeaker2:03:59

        They know everywhere.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett2:03:59

        [laughs] Yeah.

    20. SPSpeaker2:04:00

        They have maps in their brain. I mean, think about the cognitive reserve they have. Think about the, like, all the things they learned and what, and the spatial memory and all that. And, um, do these, do these guys ever get Alzheimer's disease? I don't know that they do. I mean, there's studies out there showing that these, these ty-ty-types of, um, taxi drivers, like, do not get Alzheimer's disease.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett2:04:20

        They have to learn 25,000 streets, and it's called The Knowledge. And they have physically larger hippocampus centers in their brain, which is the memory center.

    22. SPSpeaker2:04:29

        And I like to extrapolate, if I may, and think that all this cognitive learning that I do daily and that you're doing by, like, talking to guests from all sorts of fields is also very-- I mean, you're learning things. It's not just going... You're, you're interested in things, and you're learning them, and it really is also a type of brain exercise. And so I think that this is ultimately what we're getting to is basically, we're gonna talk about AI because I know we gotta get there, but is essentially, like, if you can engage in intellectual types of activities or anything that's gonna exercise your brain, whether it's learning the map of London or it's learning about mitophagy, whatever it is, you know, it's really good to engage in that novel learning. It's really good for your brain. It's working your brain out.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett2:05:15

        I've been thinking a lot about this. I've just come back from South by Southwest, and every conversation was about bloody AI.

    24. SPSpeaker2:05:19

        I was there too.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett2:05:19

        I really... Uh, they were asking me a lot about AI, so before I went on stage, I was looking at some of the studies, and I concluded that at the moment we are in society, there's gonna be a bit of a bifurcation of people. One group is gonna do-- take the path of least resistance with AI, which is they're gonna defer their thinking to AI, which is, you know, one of the things I learned from people like you often is that if you don't use it, you lose it. And that part of their brain, whatever it is, will begin to atrophy to some extent. And I think there'll be another group of people who will, just like we go to the gym now because we have to 'cause our lives are so easy, they will go to, like, the mental gym, which means they will set aside time to intentionally solve difficult cognitive problems or, or challenges. And I've-- I literally have said to some of my executives, we'll have a moment where we're talking on WhatsApp or Slack, and I'll literally say, "Let's try and solve this problem with our brains." Because I believe that solving this problem with our brains will create a deeper understanding of the first principles of the problem, not the just surface level one plus one equals two, but, like, what is one?

    26. SPSpeaker2:06:19

        Mm-hmm.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett2:06:19

        What is a number? And this is the difference. Like, I-AI can give you the answer, but it's not gonna give you the foundation so that you can solve other problems in the future. Because if I never told you what the number one was, you would never in the future be able to use it yourself. All you'd know is one plus one equals two. But there's foundations, like what are numbers? What is one? What is two? What is plus? That you need to understand to be able to do one plus two equals three. Um, and the study, one of the studies I looked at, which was, it's been heavily discussed, was from last year, [lip smack] and it found staggering memory cost using generative AI. In this study, which I'll throw up on the screen, 83% of AI users were unable to remember the details of a passage of text that they had written with AI's assistance. EEG scans showed that brain connectivity was almost halved when individuals outsourced their thinking to AI compared to writing manually, which created cognitive debt. You get output faster, but you don't build the long-term neural hardware to understand the information or the knowledge.

    28. SPSpeaker2:07:21

        So true. It's so true. You know, what's interesting about what you just said is the, when you're writing something, whether you're typing it or even actually the most, I think there's been some studies on this, like handwriting something.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett2:07:35

        Mm-hmm.

    30. SPSpeaker2:07:35

        Something about handwriting it really ingrains it into your memory. And I have this process when I'm trying to... There's a lot of facts that I have to remember, you know, when I'm talking about them, and I have this process that I do, and the first one is the research, right?
27. 2:10:54 – 2:21:55

    Why Current Exercise Guidelines Might Be Failing You

    1. SBSteven Bartlett2:10:54

       What are your thoughts on exercise and the current suggestions and recommendations around exercise?

    2. SPSpeaker2:10:59

       Well, I'm, I'm glad you asked this question. I think I've been thinking about this a lot. I did a podcast on the current exercise guidelines, and I think they need to be updated. I think they're, they're not good enough. And, and it-it's important for people to realize how these extra-exercise guidelines were formulated and what they mean. So typically, you'll hear exercise guidelines, hundred and fifty to three hundred minutes a week of moderate intensity exercise is good for optimal health or seventy-five minutes to a hundred and fifty minutes a week of vigorous intensity exercise, right? So they're basically a two-to-one ratio, right? Twice as many minutes for, for moderate intensity as vigorous intensity. What is defined as moderate versus vigorous? That's also important because it's different across different studies. In these guidelines, it's basically moderate intensity is you're walking, you're moving with intent, but not really, really fast. You're walking, you're walking at maybe a fast pace, but you're not jogging and you're not running. That kind of activity would be considered moderate. Vigorous would be considered jogging, running, swimming, cycling. So the t- the ki- the kind of activity where you're actually moving fast with intent. Why do we have this two-to-one ratio? Where did it come from? Well, it all came from energy expenditure. You burn twice as many calories if you're doing vigorous intensity exercise as you do if you're doing moderate intensity, right? So if you're walking one mile, you'll burn X amount of calories. If you jog that mile, you'll burn twice as many calories. That's where these guidelines came from, the two-to-one ratio, right? Weight loss, energy expenditure. But that's not necessarily what's important for reducing cancer mortality, reducing cardiovascular-related mortality, reducing all-cause mortality, right? These guidelines use that data, this two-to-one ratio of energy expenditure, and then they looked at other studies and said, "Okay, how much exercise is required to reduce cardiovascular-related mortality or all-cause mortality?" And they kind of like connected the dots. By the way, these studies also were using f- um, questionnaires. They weren't actually measuring how active people were. A new study came out, and I did a, a journal club podcast on it because it is a study that I felt was so important that we wanted-- I wanted to break down all the components of the study with, um, another scientist and talk about them because it's very important. So journal clubs, typically in science, you have them. In my career, it was, you know, sometimes it was once a week, other times it was once a month. And, and someone... You choose a study that's important, and you break it down, and you talk about the results, and you talk about the methods, and you talk about what the findings mean. Jour- that's what a journal club is, and it's essentially you choose a j- a journal and a publication within that journal, and it's a, it's a club. You have different scientists that are talking about it.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett2:13:47

       Why did this warrant a journal club?

    4. SPSpeaker2:13:49

       Because I think this study basically is sh- is strong enough data that it's implying we need to change our exercise guidelines, at least the messaging of them is w- at the very least. And I'll tell you why. Because I talked about these, you know, these guidelines, how they're formulated. They're using questionnaires. They're not measuring anything. Well, a new study came out. Not only did it measure physical activity through these accelerometers, it was able to measure how active people were and the type of activity, whether it was... I s- I mentioned moderate versus vigorous. They also me- they also measured light physical activity. That would be considered walking around your house, kind of doing that kind of light activity, not necessarily going for a walk or going for a run. And they looked at deaths from different causes of disease. They looked at deaths from all causes, so all-cause mortality. They looked at cancer-related deaths. They looked at cardiovascular-related m- deaths. They looked at type 2 diabetes. They looked at heart attacks, right? And what was so profound was that what we found, what they found, and what we now know is that everything changes in terms of how important vigorous intensity exercise is.It's so much more valuable than we thought. It's not two to one. So if we're looking at all-cause mortality, you know, dying from all causes, cancer, respiratory, anything related that's non-accidental, for every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise, you had to do four minutes of moderate intensity, and you had to do like 100 to 150 minutes of light exercise to get the same reduction in all-cause mortality.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett2:15:21

       For every one minute?

    6. SPSpeaker2:15:23

       For every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise. It gets better, okay? For every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise to reduce your death from cardiovascular disease, you had to do eight minutes of moderate intensity and 200 minutes of light exercise for every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise. It's huge. To reduce your type 2 diabetes risk, for every one minute of vigorous, you had to do 10 minutes of moderate intensity, or you had to do, again, you're in the one hund- 150 minutes to 200 minutes of light exercise. To reduce your risk of dying from cancer, for every one minute of vigorous intensity exercise, you had to do four minutes, about four minutes of moderate intensity. And for light, it was like... I, it was almost not even, not even, not even happening. I mean, it was like 250, 300, like you had to just... A ton of minutes. Unbelievable amount of minutes, okay? The, the value of vigorous intensity exercise is so much more than this two-to-one ratio based on energy expenditure, based on burning calories, that our guidelines were based on. It's time to rethink them. It's time to tell people, "Hey, if you're getting out and you're going for a run, it is worth way more than you think it is in terms of reducing your disease risk and your death from that disease," right? Also, what was really interesting about this study, and this goes back to this exercise snacks that we talked about before last episode, is that because there were people or participants were wearing these accelerometers on their wrist, they were able, they were able to measure all physical activity. Let's say you're, you have a new puppy and you're sprinting in the yard and playing with them for a minute or two minutes or three minutes or whatever, not 30 minutes in the gym, right? Or not 30 minutes on the treadmill, but you're just a short burst, or you're playing with your grandkids or your kids and you're playing tag, whatever. Those moments count. They really add up, and that is also a take-home from this study and other studies, is that you can actually get massive benefits from the sprinting, the vigorous exercise, one minute, two minutes, three minutes. Women that did three and a half minutes of just this vigorous types of exercise per day lowered their cancer risk by 40%. Yes, three and a half minutes a day. This was in women. Now, there's bigger studies showing men and women that exercise nine minutes a day, the short, vigorous types of exercise, adding up not nine minutes altogether, but like a minute here, a minute there, a minute here, right? It adds up. Forty percent lower cancer-related mortality, 50% lower cardiovascular-related mortality, and that's another big take-home from this study that I really want people to know about because some people don't like spending 30 minutes or putting out, blocking out a 30-minute time or an hour-long time to go to the gym. They should. I mean, if they want their peakspan, that's what you're gonna have to do. But if you're just wanting to avoid disease and be, be, you know, healthspan, you know, you can get that by doing these short moments of short bursts of physical activity, and those count. And some people are like, "Oh, thank God. Thank God I can do that because I hate going to the gym." I'll... You know, they just won't do it. They won't do it.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett2:18:28

       A lot of people as well are caught up with this 10,000 steps a day thing.

    8. SPSpeaker2:18:31

       Yes, 10,000 steps a day.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett2:18:33

       What's that facial reaction for people that can't see your face? She looked up into the corner like I personally offended her.

    10. SPSpeaker2:18:38

        Yeah, I... Look, any exercise is better than none. I wanna just get that on the table, okay? That's important. I don't wanna totally diss the 10,000 steps a day.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett2:18:47

        Okay. [laughs]

    12. SPSpeaker2:18:47

        But I think that we need to ditch it. I think we need to ditch 10,000 steps a day and say 10 minutes a day. 10 minutes a day of getting your heart rate up. You can, you can, you can do body weight squats. You can s- you know, play tag with your kids or your grandkids. You can do shorter bursts of it, but it needs to be 10 minutes, and if you get to that 10 minutes a day, 50% lower cardiovascular-related mortality, 50% lower all-cause mortality, 40% lower cancer mortality. That is what you're going to get. 10,000 steps a day is not gonna get you that. We just talked about it. It's not gonna get you that, right? It's a different ratio. It's not two to one ratio.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett2:19:23

        I imagine there's people thinking, you used three terms there, vigorous, moderate, and light. We probably need to quite clearly define w- those definitions. Like, what is vigorous?

    14. SPSpeaker2:19:31

        Right.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett2:19:31

        Heart rate? Is it all-

    16. SPSpeaker2:19:33

        Vigorous intensity exercise can be heart rate, and it is heart rate in a lot of studies that are done. In terms of the exercise guidelines, they don't use heart rate. They're using movement. Like when I say accelerometer, I mean moving fast.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett2:19:48

        Mm-hmm.

    18. SPSpeaker2:19:48

        So they're able to measure the acceleration of your movement. And so the way that they're talking about it in these, in these exercise guideline studies is moving fast. Moving fast would be jogging, running, swimming, biking. You're moving. Even-

    19. SBSteven Bartlett2:20:04

        The stepper?

    20. SPSpeaker2:20:05

        Stepper would... With stepper we'd be moving fast. Even, even weights are moving fast. That's part of it, too. Weights. You're doing, you're doing weights.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett2:20:11

        Weight.

    22. SPSpeaker2:20:12

        'Cause you're, 'cause they're on your wrist, and so if you're l- if you're doing bicep curls or you're doing, you know, something with your, with your wrists that are fast, it's part of that, it's part of that equation as well.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett2:20:22

        Heart rate isn't the thing they were measuring, but that's a consequence of moving fast typically.

    24. SPSpeaker2:20:25

        It is. It is.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett2:20:26

        So you wanna be thinking about getting your heart rate-

    26. SPSpeaker2:20:27

        If... Personally, when I think about it, and i- if I'm talking about it in the context of these exercise guidelines, I would say that heart... Vigorous would be probably considered 70% or more of your max heart rate would be considered vigorous. Previously in my... When I'm talking about vigorous, I also talk about high intensity interval training, and that's more like 80% of your max heart rate or higher. Very important for improving VO2 max and cardiorespiratory fitness. But in these studies, heart rate was pr- is more like a 70% your max heart rate or more, 'cause that's... You, you can be jogging at that rate, right? Jogging or running, that's big, that's vigorous intensity exercise. If you're below that, if you're like, you know, 50% of your max heart rate, that's considered moderate intensity. And then, you know, maybe even lower than that if you're just sort of-You know, walking around the house, I mean, that's not even going out much at all. That's light. That's considered light. 10,000 steps would be probably considered... It depends because actually they're saying steps, which means could just be around the house.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett2:21:29

        Okay.

    28. SPSpeaker2:21:29

        If you walk around your house, how long does it take to do 10,000 steps? Like an hour? Hour and a half?

    29. SBSteven Bartlett2:21:36

        Probably, yeah. Probably just doing 6,000 or 7,000 just walking around the office.

    30. SPSpeaker2:21:39

        So but that's considered light exercise.
28. 2:21:55 – 2:24:07

    Why Sitting Too Much Is More Dangerous Than You Realize

    1. SBSteven Bartlett2:21:55

       was one of the most replayed moments last time I spoke to you was people replayed the section where you talked about being sedentary and how much of an issue that is for all of us. And it's really stayed with me to the, to the fact-- I don't know if this helps, but I've been using standing desks everywhere. Even when I travel around the world now, I've actually got a portable standing desk just to try and keep me up. 'Cause as a podcast, I s- I've sat in this chair for what? I've sat down for six hours today, and it, it's 3:00 p.m.

    2. SPSpeaker2:22:20

       Right. Yeah. Uh, Kelly Starrett wrote a book, "Deskbound," some years ago, and, you know, he really played a role in popularizing this, this idea and I think in the public, um, as well. Being sedentary is time you're, you're spent sitting, right? Time you spend sitting. It doesn't necessarily mean... I used to think about being sedentary as, oh, do you work out? Yes or no? No, you're sedentary. Yes. No, you're not sedentary. That's not what sedentary is. Sedentary is m- time you're spending sitting. We've been sitting here quite a, quite a few hours. We've been sedentary this whole time. So being sedentary and sitting is an independent risk factor. Even if you're exercising, it's an independent risk, risk factor for diseases. I mentioned cancer in particular. That seems, seems to be the one that's more strongly correlated to being sedentary. But standing, standing helps. If you're standing up or also getting up and doing exercise snacks, so you can get up every hour and like do some bodyweight squats, do some jumping jacks, do some high knees, get your heart rate up, that breaks up the sedentary time. So now it's only an hour of sedentary versus eight hours, right? Or six hours, or however long you're sitting at your desk. It makes a difference. And those exercise snacks are easy to do. I have a standing desk. I don't use it enough. [chuckles] I, I still have it. I do do exercise snacks, and I like doing the exercise snacks because, like, literally, if we were to get up and do bodyweight squats right now for one minute, like, you're gonna feel better. You feel better after. The blood flow to your brain, it gives you a little pump. I love it. I love the pump. It's l- it's just one minute of it, and you get a short pump to your brain, and it makes you feel better. So exercise snacks are a really good way to break up sedentary time. They're also adding up. They count. As I just mentioned, they count towards your exercise goal, and they're vigorous. You're, you're, you're getting... You're moving fast, right? Vigorous exercise. You're getting your heart rate up.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett2:24:06

       Or

29. 2:24:07 – 2:31:29

    GLP-1 Drugs: Miracle Weight Loss or Hidden Risks?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett2:24:07

       I could just take Ozempic.

    2. SPSpeaker2:24:08

       [chuckles]

    3. SBSteven Bartlett2:24:09

       I just get the pen out, jab, jab, jab, and it's, uh, all of this stuff disappears, right?

    4. SPSpeaker2:24:14

       Ozempic.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett2:24:14

       I could do all of this stuff, or I can just Ozempic it, right?

    6. SPSpeaker2:24:16

       Yeah. I mean, so-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett2:24:17

       So many people are taking Ozempic. So interesting. And I... Listen, I have to say, it's saving people's lives. Amazing. I've heard so many of my friends who are on Ozempic and taking the GLP-1 pens say that they've had profound benefits. Their knees are better. They can walk upstairs. They feel better.

    8. SPSpeaker2:24:34

       Yeah. I mean, let's be real here. Being obese and overweight is one of the worst things you can do for your health, right? It's going to accelerate the aging process, and it's gonna increase the risk of every age-related disease, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer. You know, visceral fat's happening. You're insulin resistant. You know, it's all, it's all happening. It's gonna affect your quality of life. It's harder to walk around. You're not as mobile. Your joints are getting more stress on them, right? So it-- anything that can help you lose that weight is going to be beneficial. And so these GLP-1, you're talking about Ozempic, that's the GLP-1 receptor agonist, right? They are very... They're life-changing for people that are obese, people that need to lose, you know, 40 pounds, 50 pounds, 30 pounds. It's not easy to lose that weight-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett2:25:23

       But-

    10. SPSpeaker2:25:23

        ... with diet and lifestyle. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the buts. Let's talk about... So the benefits are obviously if they're gonna lose that fat, the visceral fat, they're going to become insulin sensitive. They're gonna reduce their risk for all those diseases, and that's what the data shows. Cardiovascular disease risk goes down, cancer risk goes down, um, except for one type of cancer goes up, kidney cancer. But, you know, the Alzheimer's disease risk goes down. Anything that you're gonna-- when you lose weight, those risks are gonna go down. There are side effects, and there are things to consider when you're taking... I'm calling them GLP-1s because we have first generation, sec- second generation, and now third generation, and they're affecting not only the GLP-1 receptor, but they're affecting glucagon, for example. They're affecting another peptide called GIP, G-I-P. So I'll just call them GLP-1s for short.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett2:26:11

        Okay.

    12. SPSpeaker2:26:12

        Um, semaglutide or Ozempic is the fir- one of the first generations. We now have the second generation that's targeting two pathways. You can lose even more weight. Mounjaro would be something that people would relate to. That's the s- one of the second generation ones. And I think that for people that are gonna start these, these drugs, first of all, they have to realize there's a good chance they're gonna have to be on them for the rest of their lives, and that's something that you have to be willing to do. And I say that because many studies have shown now that individuals that do take these GLP-1s do lose a lot of weight, and it's very beneficial to lose that weight. But if they stop taking the GLP-1s, they gain the weight back and, and often, oftentimes they gain all the weight back because your body's kind of trying to go back to that reset point, and their hunger comes back with a vengeance. And so part of what GLP-1 drugs are doing are they are basically, you know, they're, they're, they're making you feel satiated and not hungry, so they're affecting your satiety hormones so you don't feel hungry. They're also slowing gastric emptying, so food stays around in your intestines longer, so you feel full. When food is in your intestines, you don't feel hungry.So they're slowing that process, and so people don't feel hungry. And so what ends up happening is in many ways, it's mimicking calorie restriction and fasting, right? You're basically not eating as much food. So that's essentially... But it's doing it for you. It's not-- You don't have to put in that. You don't have to feel hungry. You don't have to put in that work and, and it's doing it for you, right? And so people are losing a lot of weight, and they're losing it very rapidly. And I said you might have to be on it for the rest of your life, and what I, what I mean by that is because m- a lot of studies show that a majority of people do gain back their weight. Their appetite comes back, it comes back with a vengeance, and they, they regain the weight over, over a year or so. So that's one thing to consider. Are you willing to take it for the rest of your life?

    13. SBSteven Bartlett2:28:07

        There was a, a New York Times piece where they looked at a lady called Stacy Canterbury. She'd lost fifty pounds on one of the GLP-1s that you mentioned, reaching her peak goal weight. And after stopping the drug due to insurance issues, she regained twenty pounds back straight away in a month. Interestingly, she described the return of hunger not as a gradual increase, but as a ferocious, animalistic urge to eat that was far more intense than before she ever started the medication. And The New York Times did a big piece about that because one of the things that I've come to learn is that there's no free lunch in life, no pun intended.

    14. SPSpeaker2:28:42

        There's no free lunch. There's no free biological lunch. It's, it's true. Um, yeah, people's appetite, that's why I said, comes back with a vengeance because it seems to be the case where your body's like, it hasn't been hungry, and it's like, "Wait a minute. I've been starving for so long. I need to eat," right? So it's kinda like, "Feed me." And that's, that's o-obviously something to consider. So the question is, well, what happens if you're on these drugs long term? And, you know, we've got these drugs... Early, early versions of them have been around. They, they also help treat type two diabetes, right? That's part of like they-- wh-where they first came from. They've been around a while. We do have some data. Mostly the data is positive because people are losing a lot of weight, and that is what's putting them at a high risk for these diseases. And so when you lose that weight, it... what ends up happening is your disease risk for all these diseases goes down, right? So it's hard to uncouple weight loss from w-what the drug's doing itself. But there are side effects in addition to that, right? Nausea, GI upset, all that stuff. Maybe temporary. Some people, it kinda sticks around. Some other effects I think that are, are-- that people are a little more concerned about are the, um, muscle loss and bone loss. That's a big one. And that is probably something coming from just rapid weight loss and, and not eating enough food and not resistance training. So when you're, when you're largely fasting throughout the day, if you're not getting enough protein, then your muscle's not gonna have amino acids to help, you know, basically keep growing. And not only keep growing, not use its own amino acid reserve for-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett2:30:12

        Mm-hmm

    16. SPSpeaker2:30:12

        ... making protein, right? So you break down muscle. In fact, there's weight loss studies showing that in any weight loss diet, you know, if you're not eating enough protein and you're not resistance training, up to forty percent of your weight can come from muscle-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett2:30:24

        Oh, wow

    18. SPSpeaker2:30:24

        ... weight loss that you're losing. I should say lean mass, including muscle, so that's a little different. But it's, it's a big percent, right? And so you're talking about losing a lot of muscle as well, and that is something that happens with these drugs. If people are training, it's really helps. If they're resistance training, it's really helping because that's a signal to, to your muscle to grow muscle. It's a mechanical force that helps you grow muscle, right? That's something to consider. Bone loss is another one. You can also lose bone from rapid, rapid weight loss. I don't know if there's an independent, like GLP-1 receptors that are on bone doing something directly there. Yet to be uncovered, I think. We don't really know why bone loss occurs. It's thought maybe it's just the weight loss, but like I said, maybe there's something that we don't understand yet. Kidney cancer is another one. It seems like there's an increased signal for kidney cancer. Don't know why that is. Needs to be studied. There's a black box warning on them for thyroid cancer increase. That's never really been shown in human studies. It all comes from animal data, but it's there nonetheless. Something to consider, right?

Episode duration: 2:39:49