The Diary of a CEOAnti-Aging Expert: This Reverses Gray Hair & This Myth Is Costing You Your Health!
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,060 words- 0:00 – 3:36
Intro
- MPDr. Martin Picard
This is incontrovertible evidence that graying of hair is reversible and it can be pretty fast.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wow.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And there's more. So we all walk around with our biological history encoded in your hair. Like for example, if you have marijuana six months ago, it's gonna be in your hair.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I need to get a haircut. [laughs] Joking.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs] So my research lab had the idea that if we could find what was happening in this person's life when this young hair become old, then we could understand the mechanism of the aging process.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So what is the secret to anti-aging?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
It's the proper allocation of energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Can you, can you ex- how, what's the simplest way you can explain that to me?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So first, energy is real, and it's the difference between feeling like you can change the world or feeling completely drained. And a lot of people live on that end of the spectrum, and it's because there's a finite energy budget with a hierarchy of energy needs in the body. For example, we did an experiment because we wanted to know how much energy does it cost to worry about the future, to ruminate about yesterday. And we found that the stress hormone increased energy expenditure by 60%, right? So it needs to steal energy from some of the things that keep you young. So it's not the stress that burns us down, it's the response to stress. And the third piece is this, energy is in your mitochondria, and there's about 5,000 trillion mitochondria in your body, and so they made our bodies possible, and they can change how you feel.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Well, I read that studies on brains of dead people have found that those with greater sense of purpose have more efficient mitochondria.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yes. We are really in service of the mitochondria. They allow us to be alive.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay. I've got so many questions for you based on what people wanted to know, like how patients with ME, chronic fatigue or long COVID safely rehabilitate their mitochondria. What I consume, how does that impact the efficiency of the energy? If red light therapy impacts mitochondria, and is there anything I can do to have more energy available? But before that, I've heard you say that most diseases or disorders can be explained by understanding energy resistance.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. We think there's increased energy resistance in cancer, in Alzheimer's. Like fundamentally, diabetes is a disease of energy resistance.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So is there anything I can do?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
There is. So you can start by...
- SBSteven Bartlett
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 want to hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of The Diary of a CEO, and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. [upbeat music] Dr. Martin Picard, what is it that you believe, know, or understand that most people out there don't believe, know, or understand?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs] We are energy. We literally are the energy that's flowing through the body.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And, and that sounds a little woo if you don't have context, and that's, I think, uh, something that we're just starting to have the right scientific framework to, to understand, to understand ourselves from first principles as energetic processes.
- 3:36 – 4:35
Why Everyone Is Talking About Energy Right Now
- SBSteven Bartlett
In a nutshell, what is it that people are looking for when they listen to this subject of energy?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. I think pe- people wanna understand what is energy and w- how can I have more energy?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I can relate to that because sometimes, you know, if I look through my life, sometimes I wake up and I feel amazing, and I really have, in my view, done the same thing, but then sometimes I wake up and I don't feel amazing.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it feels kind of like roulette, like this would a sort of opaque mystery of how do I wake up on, in, with more days in a row and feel amazing-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... like I can take on the world.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then there's also some friends that I have who are suffering with different things, whether it's chronic illness or long COVID or whatever, who repeatedly wake up and feel low energy-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... for years, you know, at a time.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. That's a really tough place to be when you wake up repeatedly and, and you don't feel like you have the capacity, the energy to be in the world. It's, it's a really tough
- 4:35 – 5:51
Why I Dedicated My Life to Studying Mitochondria
- MPDr. Martin Picard
place to be.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And, and who are you, and why did you commit your life to this subject?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
I'm a regular guy who with, you know, lived experiences, who, who's gone through some tough things that have taught me lessons and have gone through wonderful things that have made me feel like life is really special and precious. And then I became a, a scientist, and as I learned the tools of science, I started to see, and I discovered mitochondria [laughs] . I thought this is an approach to start to bridge what's true about the human experience that y- we know from first experience empirically, and we know to be real not because, you know, some white coat-wearing doctor or scientist, you know, said, "Yes, energy is real. It's in your mitochondria." [laughs] We know it to be real from first experience, right? Because we, we feel it, and then what science is telling us about how things work in our bodies, right, and about health and, and disease and where diseases come from. So I had these questions, so I became a scientist to bridge those domains of, of existence, [laughs] the, the science and the experience. Um, so I've led a, a research group at Columbia University for 10 years, uh, and founded an institute, uh, to really build the systems and technologies to, to help people grow, heal, and, and,
- 5:51 – 8:46
The Fascination With Mitochondria—and What a PhD in Them Really Means
- MPDr. Martin Picard
and transform.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You have a PhD in mitochondria.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yep. My PhD was in mitochondrial biology of aging.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I mean, there's a, a, an image here in front of me. Some people will just be listening, so we'll try and explain it for them. But there's an image here of a video. I'll play the video on screen now, and it kind of looks like a, looks a little bit like an alien But I, I, I read that this video was quite formative for you. What is that video and why was that a formative moment in your career?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
I took this video in England, uh, in Newcastle upon Tyne in the north of England, uh, with my Geordie friends at the medical school there. I was a graduate student and went there for kind of an exchange, and this is the first time I saw mitochondria moving. I saw, like, the inner life of our cells. And when I saw this, something struck me as like, "Oh my God." [laughs] I'm able to see this, right? And to see living mitochondria because of the mitochondria inside of me.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
It's the energy that's flowing through my mitochondria in my eye, right, that's allowing me to perceive to see this. Mitochondria made multicellular life possible. They made our bodies possible. And, and we might just be a vehicle for mitochondria to kind of propagate and keep on living. So when I saw this, it's like, this is mitochondria looking at mitochondria.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And then I was starting to understand that mitochondria do more than just transforming energy. What they're known for is they take the food you eat, and then they take the oxygen that you breathe in, and then those two things, the food, the oxygen, converge inside the mitochondria, and then something really special happens. The electrons that are stuck on food, that were stuck together in a green leaf somewhere, right, photosynthesis, what your mitochondria do is they, they kind of unpack this, and they rip off the electrons one by one, and then they flow them like a little electrical circuit. And that happens in, like, the five thousand trillion mitochondria that are in your body. And then when the electrons flow, they need to flow towards something, just like in an electrical circuit. Electrons flow from one pole of the battery to the negative-- to, to the other pole of the battery. Uh, and that circuit is closed in the mitochondria. So the, the electrons from the food you eat flow towards oxygen that you breathe, and then it becomes water. And, and it's that vital flow of energy, electrons flowing towards oxygen, that allows us to be alive. And, uh, mitochondria do this, and then as they do this, they transform energy from food biochemistry into electricity and into signals and into heat. And the reason the body is warm is because the mitochondria, as they transform and flow electrons like a little energetic circuit, they release heat. So the, the source of heat, right, that makes us warm, when you shake someone's hand, you feel their warmth, you're feeling the warmth of their mitochondria.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So is there a mitochondria in every single cell in my body?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
There's on average a thousand mitochondria per cell.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Per cell?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
There's a thousand mito-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So how many is there in my body?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
About five thousand
- 8:46 – 10:03
How Understanding Energy Can Help You Feel Better Every Day
- MPDr. Martin Picard
trillion.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Who should care-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... about the mitochondria, and why should they care about it?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm. Anyone who cares about their energy, right? About having enough energy to do what they really care about.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Uh, we all care about different things. We're, we're all gifted and talented for different things. Uh, everyone has this, you know, unique, authentic self that wants to come out. [laughs] The only way for this to come out and the only way for a person to flourish is through energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
If there's no energy flowing through your body, you're dead, right? And if the energy doesn't flow efficiently, right, and smoothly through you as an organism, then life feels hard. Like y-you're not at your best. You feel tired, uh, and, and you feel like, you know, maybe it's not worth it. You know, when you're sick and your immune system is, like, draining all of your energy, it's really hard to be optimistic.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And it's hard to be a good person, and it's hard to be a good dad, uh, and it's hard to wanna do good for the world if you're struggling with energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you know what it is? So many of us think that that just is what it is and that we can do nothing about that.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You know, we, we breathe in, we eat food, and then how we feel is kind of roulette.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
There's this certain, I think, feeling a lot of us have that we can't really control that much.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- 10:03 – 14:26
Where You Should Start If You Want More Energy
- SBSteven Bartlett
Where do we need to start to understand-- 'Cause the outcome I want from this conversation is I wanna live my life with more energy to do the things that I wanna do, and I imagine the people that are listening also feel the same way. So where does one have to start?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
I, I'd like to understand the basics and then move to the actionable stuff, like things I can do-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... so that I live my life full of energy.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. So there, there are three things that are really foundational-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay
- MPDr. Martin Picard
... to how energy works in the human body. One is that you are the energy that's flowing through this body.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I am the energy that's flowing through my body.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So I'm not my body.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
You're not your body.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay. I'm the energy flowing through it.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
You, Steven.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
This expression now that I'm getting to experience-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- MPDr. Martin Picard
... thank you. [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- MPDr. Martin Picard
This expression is an expression of the flow of energy. If there was no energy flowing through your body, through your heart, through your brain, like, you wouldn't be, right? You'd be a cadaver, and we'd say Steven is gone, you know?
- SBSteven Bartlett
A dead body.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. You'd be a dead body. The difference between a dead body, a cadaver, and a living, thinking, feeling, conscious person who cares is the flow of energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
You, you get so indoctrinated in this worldview that the only thing that's real is the physical stuff. And, you know, the nucle- the, the, the genes that you, that you got from your parents and the body, the physical body, and that's the real stuff. What you can't see with your eyes, not real.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Right? I think that's a reframe that's kind of a, a bigger picture mindset shift [laughs] that, uh, we need to... and, and scientists struggle with. So number one is you are the energy that flows and transforms, uh, through this body. Number two is there's a fixed energy budget, right? All of us have a fairly fixed energy budget to deal with. And, and for example, if you wanna have more energy to do more podcasts, to write more articles, to, uh, you know, be more creative, the solution is not eating more because there's this fixed energy budget, and if you overload the system, you feed it too much food, especially too much sugar, it's really hard on the system. And then the system, like an, an electrical system, you jack up the voltage, right? And then the system starts to overheat. Uh, so inflammation is this, this overheating. There's too much energy in the system and, uh, or the cells are, are burning too much energy, and they need to kind of- Tell other cells. That's, th-those signals we call infla-inflammation cytokines.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So there's a fixed energy budget that you have to deal with, and over time, the organism does a lot of, of, uh, finessing and a-adapting to kind of try to preserve this energy budget.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that's somewhat linked to stress, I guess, which is-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah
- 14:26 – 16:42
Why Mitochondria Are the Foundation of Your Health
- SBSteven Bartlett
So what has, um, mitochondria got to do with all of this?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mitochondria are basically little resistors, right? And, and they are what allows the flow of energy through the system.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Have you got a picture of... Okay, here we go.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay, so this is a, an image of a mitochondria.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
A mitochondrion. O-N is a singular.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And mitochondria is plural.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. So this is a mitochondrion, and there's about 1,000 of these in each of your cells.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And there's about 5 trillion cells in your body, uh, that have a nucleus and that have these beautiful mitochondria. And what you see here, these little wings, these are called cristae. And the cristae is where the food you eat end up and where the oxygen you breathe end up as well. So this is where the electrons are flowing. There's like little electrical circuits here. And as the electrons are flowing, the mitochondria become charged like little batteries. So effectively, a mitochondrion like this has all of these sites of oxygen consumption and, and food consumption, and then that gets transformed, uh, into a little charged battery. And once the battery is charged, uh, the mitochondria can use that charge to make ATP, adenosine triphosphate, which is kind of the, the cellular energy currency. If a cell wants to contract, right, a muscle cell wants to contract in the gym, it needs ATP. So it calls upon the mitochondria, says, "I need ATP," and then the mitochondria gets to work, uh, and then flows, uh, electrons, consumes some food, burns some oxygen. That's why you get out of breath, right? So when you get out of breath is because the mitochondria are using the oxygen and calling for more oxygen. What we've been discovering is that mitochondria do a lot more than just making ATP.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
They use their, their energized state to produce signals, to receive information, and then to produce signals.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, so they're talking to each other.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
They're talking to each other.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what are they saying?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
They're, they're a wh- it's a whole collective, and, and they're talking to each other, kind of monitoring what's happening not only inside the cell, but outside the cell. So on the surface of mitochondria all along, there are little receptors for all sorts of signals that tells this mitochondrion, "Is there enough energy? Is there... Are we running out of energy? Is there a stress hormone here? Should we be getting ready for, you know, something dangerous?" Uh, so mitochondria are like, like a little distributed brain, right? So they're like the intracellular brain.
- 16:42 – 19:04
How Mitochondria Made Complex Human Life Possible
- SBSteven Bartlett
Am I right in thinking that they used to be bacteria?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
They are. Yeah, they did. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What, what is that story?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
'Cause I, I think someone said that to me before on the show, that our mitochondria are actually bacteria that from prehistoric times or something.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So the story is about 1.5 billion years ago, uh, that there was two different types of bacteria. One type was able to use oxygen to transform energy, right? So it could fuel on oxygen and, and other food substrates. The other type could not. It was anaerobic, and the anaerobic bacterium was probably a little bigger, and it had like a, a few more genes. Um, and it could only ferment its food and kind of fermenting the food, spitting out, you know, like lactate or, uh, like yeast does. And what happened is the big one either engulfed the small one, right, or maybe the small one kind of infiltrated, colonized the big one.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And the story goes, uh, that this basically gave a whole bunch more energy to the big cell. That's one perspective. And then with more energy, what can you do? You can de- evolve more complexity. The version I, I favor based on the evidence we have is that when mitochondria came in, and then they, they... There was this new structure, this symbiotic relationship. Mitochondria basically gave the ability of the cell to perceive the environment in a different way and to compute information in a different way. So maybe the, the, the coming of, of mitochondria into this big cell made the big cell social. Because before this event, most of the ev-evidence says that cells were asocial. They were little bacteria foraging for e- for, for themselves and, you know, kind of operating from a very selfish Uh, perspective. Just trying to replicate, you know, just trying to survive. When mitochondria came in, it, like, gave those cells a different view on life, and they're like, "Ooh, we could work together. How about you become a, a cell that gets energy," right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
"And I become a cell that, uh, moves," right? "So then you're the gut, and I'm gonna be the muscle." And, and then, then together those two cells can do a lot more, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
And fast-forward a couple billion years, and here we are.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Here we are, yeah. And, and that led to, you know, bodies with organs. You know, the liver feeds the rest of the body. The heart keeps things flowing. The brain kinda computes and, and plans. Uh, so that's division of labor. It's, uh... And it started with the mitochondria.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You, you
- 19:04 – 20:36
What Insulin Resistance Reveals About Your Body's Energy System
- SBSteven Bartlett
talked about energy resistance. I've heard you say that most diseases or disorders can be explained by understanding energy resistance. Give me a disease that's linked to energy resistance.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
The clearest is w- what we call insulin resistance, or diabetes, right? Diabetes affects millions in the world. Fundamentally, diabetes is a disease of energy resistance. Uh, so if the resistance is too high-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Because you have, um, too much energy pushed onto the system.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Sugar. Too much sugar.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
T-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Glucose.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah, exactly. Or if the mitochondria are impaired, right, and they can't flow energy, then the, the, the, the energy is kinda stuck. It faces greater constraints. It's like it wants to go in that direction, but then there's a barrier and then another barrier, another barrier. It's like water flowing, right, nice and, and s- and, and, and smooth, and then there's, like, a dam, right? And if the dam has zero, um, openings, right, then the, the, the water accumulates, and then there's high pressure. And then at some point, the, the water accumulates and ends up flooding the, the landscape and then damaging things. So it's a bit of like the, the same thing. If now you open flood gates on the dam, right, then, then you can use that energy to make electricity, for example. You use the, the movement of the water to transform this into electricity. That's basically what the mitochondria do. Uh, and if you move and you're physically active, now the flow of energy through the mitochondria can transform into work, right? Then to speed, then to, uh, movement, right? Then to lifting.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is
- 20:36 – 23:17
How Mitochondria Influence Cancer Risk
- SBSteven Bartlett
this linked to cancer at all?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because it sounds... I mean, I don't know much about cancer-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... but cells dividing out of, um, control-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... seemingly randomly.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. I think that there's a very good chance, uh, if you look at the biology of cancer and what scientists call the hallmarks of cancer, there's, like, a, a 10-item flywheel of these are the core features of, of cancer. Uh, all of those features have some relationship, some very direct, with increased energy resistance, right? So if energy can't flow smoothly and a cell, uh, is, you know, burning too much energy and, and it doesn't flow energy through the mitochondria, which is what cancer cells do. Cancer cells ditch their mitochondria, and they revert back to this ancestral, you know, cell that didn't have mitochondria. It was anaerobic. It was pitting out lactate. And we don't really know why cells do this. It's called the Warburg effect. And the Warburg effect is when a cell, in the presence of oxygen, right? If it wanted, it could use oxygen, flow electrons through mitochondria, and transform energy, and, and live a nice social life, uh, like every cell in, in this social collective does in the body. Uh, what cancer cells do is they say, "I'm not gonna use my mitochondria, even if there's oxygen, even if my mitochondria can respire." And by doing this, it seems like cancer cells revert back to this ancestral cell, right, that, that just cares about itself.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The antisocial cell.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. Then the, the, the organism will, and the tumor will try to make more blood vessels around it, right? It's called angiogenesis. So it's, like, the, the cancer cell trying to decrease energy resistance. It says, "Bring me more oxygen."
- SBSteven Bartlett
So it's kind of like there's this sort of alien all of a sudden that decides it no longer wants to work with the rest of the organism, and that it's gonna be selfish and demand more and more resources for itself.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it multiplies-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... itself-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... with equally selfish little aliens.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then the body responds by listening to it and giving it more resources. Is that what you're saying?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why do the blood vessels surround the cancer?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. It's like it's the cancer calling for, you know, more energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. So energy resistance is the product of two things, is how much energy is being demanded, right? Like, uh, how much power is being deployed in, in the, in the tumor, for example, or in the working muscle. Uh, and then how much energy is... can flow through the system. That's like the equivalent of current in an electrical system. So if there's a lot of demand, right, a lot of power is being generated or a lot of activity is happening, like in a cancer cell, but there's not enough flow to, to pro- to, to support that activity, then that increases resistance.
- 23:17 – 24:43
What Really Causes the Warburg Effect?
- SBSteven Bartlett
So is there any understanding as to how those kind of cancers are caused? Like, what, what causes that moment where, you know, you talked about the Warburg effect.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What causes that?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
The cancer community used to think that the main driver for cancer was genetic mutations, but there's an emerging perspective that changes in metabolism, changes in the way electrons flow through, through this energetic circuitry through the mitochondria, can actually drive the, uh, uh, instance of a, of a new cancer cell. And then when a, a cell becomes cancerous, ditches its mi- its mitochondria, it goes back to this selfish state, and then it makes more of itself.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it tries not to die.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Explain that part to me, 'cause I was reading about how cancer cells try and evade death.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. The best way to think about this, I think, is as a, a social collective, right? Every cell in this organism, uh, cares about the same thing, which is pres- preserving the, the life and, and the health of the whole being.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Right? So every cell in, in this body is in a social contract with every other cell, right? A, a cancer cell basically, uh, gets out of this agreement and says, "No, no, no, I'm gonna fare for myself. I'm gonna take all the energy I can, uh, and I'm gonna make more of myself," and it g- it goes into, you know, bacterial mode. That happens, um, sometimes because of mutations, and it seems like there, there are other- Causes of this, like for example, hyperglycemia
- SBSteven Bartlett
What's that?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
High
- 24:43 – 26:10
Why Diabetes Raises Your Risk of Cancer
- MPDr. Martin Picard
blood glucose.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Right? Uh, diabetes is a major risk factor for developing cancer. Why is that? I don't think there, there are good explanations out there based on, like, the molecular framework of, of disease and, you know, the, the genetic, uh, mutation perspective. Um, if you look at cancer from an, an energetic perspective and, uh, it's, I think, likely that the increase in blood glucose increases the pressure, right? There's more electrons that are being pushed onto those cells or to those mitochondria, and when you push too much energy on a system that doesn't need energy, it's like you're trying to shove, you know, a lot of, of water through a very small pipe.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Something goes wrong.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah, something goes wrong. Some- something can break. Uh, so the, the resistance is, uh, if you push a lot of energy into a very small, you know, container or into a, a channel that can't support that, then the, the... What happens kind of physically is an increase in, in the resistance to the flow, uh, and then that can lead to the cell trying to protect itself. Uh, that's what insulin resistance is in diabetes, right? Insulin resistance is a protection mechanism. There's too much glucose being pushed onto the cell, right? And so that causes this excess, you know, energy coming in. The cell says, "Oh, you know, too much," uh, and it damages the mitochondria, this excess resistance, because there's too much heat produced, reactive oxygen species, oxidative stress.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was thinking about
- 26:10 – 31:04
The Real Reason Smoking Causes Cancer
- SBSteven Bartlett
smoking and how smoking also is carcinogenic. It's cancer causing.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And through the lens of the mitochondria, how could something like smoking be ca- cancer causing?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. It's clear that in s- uh, cigarette smoke, there are carcinogens. There are molecules that can damage the genome and cause mutations. Uh, it... There's a strong link between lung cancer and smoking, but for all of the other cancers, th- there's much less of a, a clear connection between exposure and cancer, right? The cancers that, that affect and, and kill most people, uh, we don't really know, you know, why they come, when they come, uh, and it's clear that there's kind of a long history. And, uh, the, the science behind, you know, connecting metabolism and cancer shows that obesity and, uh, high blood glucose and diabetes especially, which causes very high, you know, excursion, uh, very high spikes in, in blood glucose, those things are damaging to our cells. And what the energy resistance principle says is that biology processes energy in terms of resistance, and it makes that kind of computation. How much energy is flowing now? And then how much, how much energy demand and how much energy pressure am I exposed to? And if there's an imbalance, then that, uh, causes damage.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Rather than being innocent bystanders, mitochondria are hijacked by cancer. The tumor reprograms them to stop acting like the body's protective energy factories and starts using them as a manufacturing plant to build more cancer cells. Because of this, targeting mitochondrial metabolism has become a major promising frontier in developing new cancer therapies.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It hijacks the mi- the mitochondria and uses them to produce more cancer cells.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So a normal cell, uh, is driven, its behavior, it's driven by the mitochondria. It's like mitochondria are in the driver's seat, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mitochondria can basically call the shots. If, is the cell to live and divide, right? Or is the cell to contract and remain this kind of cell? Or if it's a stem cell, is it to divide or remain a stem cell? Uh, or is it to die, right? And cells have to make these decisions all the time, and cell suicide for the greater good is something that happens all the time in our bodies, and that's why and how we get rid of, of most cancer cells, right? As far as we understand, you have a cell that kind of defects from the social collective, and then the organism has the wisdom to say, "Okay, this is no longer ours. Let's get rid of it," right? Because it could become cancer, and most of the time that works well. Uh, but what cancer cells can do is say, "Okay, I'm..." They, they ditch their mitochondria, and then they start to use them for their own growth, uh, and by ditching their mitochondria, they basically immunize themselves against the death that mitochondria could, could trigger. So mitochondria have a veto on cell life or death, and cancer somehow is able to kind of get away from that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it's weird, it's weird to think about because, yeah, the things that are cause cancer or that have a correlation to cancer are things like, you know, as you said, like having too much of this stuff here, too much sugar.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
The white stuff, yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
High blood glucose levels, et cetera, are linked to cancer.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And one would wonder why eating sugar in excess is gonna increase my probability of cancer, but obviously it points to the fact that it must be doing something to my energy systems which are causing some kind of malfunction somewhere.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. And what the energy resistance principle allows us to understand is why that is and what's really happening. If you overload your body with excess energy, the body has to deal with this, and in a simple electrical system circuit, if you jacked up, you know, the voltage and the system is, is too weak to take this, then resistance goes through the roof. The transistors start to melt, and then the system, you know, gets, gets damaged.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Uh, the, the same thing happens, you know, in the body. If you overload the system with too much energy, too many electrons, right? Very direct parallel with the electrical circuit. There are electrons stuck here on these little glucose molecules. If you ingest this, now it increases the voltage in the body, and then if the mitochondria can't keep up and because they're, they're not flowing energy because you're sedentary, you're, you're not moving, um, then that increases the resistance, right? And then the-
- SBSteven Bartlett
And they might die or malfunction.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Correct. Or s- things get damaged, right? The, the clear connection here is too much energy increase energy resistance, so then the electrons that normally flow smoothly in your metabolism, right, from the food to your mitochondria- Then that whole circuit becomes more resistive. And if, if you're an electron and you're trying to go through the, the metabolic pathways looking for oxygen in a mitochondrion, but then, uh, uh, at every, at every point in this cascade you face resistance, there is more chance that that electron kind of jets out and, and then becomes oxidative stress.
- 31:04 – 39:57
Why Hair Turns Gray—and Whether It Can Be Reversed
- SBSteven Bartlett
Well, then what's, what's going on with aging? I've got two women in front of me, and they have two different colors of hair. Now, let's just pretend for argument's sake and for the sake of this, uh, explanation that this is someone's hair that's gone gray because of stress. Um, and this is what she used to look like or he used to look like in terms of the color of their hair. What I found really interesting, 'cause it kind of speaks to lots of things that are going on t- going on in the body, is you're saying you can actually reverse gray hair without dyeing it. And, uh, if so, what does that tell us about what gray hair is, but more broadly, about stress, energy, mitochondria, and everything in between?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. Uh, what we discovered is that hair graying is reversible. And, and that was surprising because what I've learned and what most people learn is that when you age, it's kind of this linear progressive decline and, and there's kind of nothing you can do about it. Uh, but it turns out that if you look on most people's head, um, [laughs] you can see things like this. This is obviously, you know, this was dyed and all of the hairs were, were white and then all the hairs are, are, are dark. And if you take a hair like this, uh, the tip here, right, was inside the body long time ago. This is almost like if you looked at tree rings.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Right? If you take a tree and you cut it in cross-section, you see like the rings, and then you can say, "Ooh, this ring was, uh, 30 years ago," right? "And this ring is today." Uh, so you can use that to kind of map the history of what happened in the environment of, of the tree. You can do the same thing. We all walk around with biological history crystallized in, in this hair, and that's why if you want to know if someone had a, a drug, for example, like a month ago or six months ago or like two years ago, depending how long the hair is, you can actually use the hair and all along would be, you know, the chemical signature of what you took. So you can find marijuana in, in the hair, you know, here, but not here. So if you, if you have marijuana six months ago, it's gonna be in your hair, and you're gonna walk around, uh, with that trace, that physical trace in, in your body.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I need to get a haircut.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm joking. [laughs]
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And the idea was if we could find hairs on someone's head that the tip was, uh, dark, right? And then when you look closer to the body, it becomes white, right? And you would say the hair was young, it was young, it was young, it was young, and then boom, it became old, right? It lo- it lost color. Hair graying is a, a, a classic hallmark of aging. Um, then we thought then you would know something, that something was happening in this hair follicle, in this person's body, right, that made this young hair become old. And then maybe we could understand the mechanisms of the aging process. So this became kind of an interesting scenario. And through doing this, we found people started to send us hair samples in Ziploc bags, you know, over the mail. Uh, and we were looking for two colored hairs. A, a single hair that has two colors, kind of like this. Uh, and we found hairs that, uh, you know, head hair, beard hair, pubic hairs that showed the signature. The hair was dark, and then it became white, or the hair was white, and it became dark again.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So we had physical evidence from like multiple people that showed white hairs can go back to being dark. And this contradicted this idea that, you know, aging is this linear progressive process that we're kind of doomed to experience without any flexibility. I was one of the participants in that study. I ended up finding five hairs that had this pattern. And when we looked at when the reversal happened, we found that the rever- reversal happened when I went on vacation. And I would go back in those days on annual, uh, cycling, uh, training camps. So I would go for a week, yeah, where all you do is you bike, you eat, you sleep. Uh, energy started to move very differently in my body during that, that time. Um, and then when we looked at the hair and we analyzed the, the composition, the molecular composition, that's what scientists do. You can take a hair like this, snip the pieces, the white segment, the dark segment. It's all the same genome, right? Every hair has the same genome, the same genetic material, same food, uh, same physical activity, same everything. Why some hairs are like this or like that, uh, was an opportunity to understand the dynamics, the plasticity, like how life can go from being young to old or old back to young. Uh, and what we found was that the main signal was a mitochondrial signal. And in the white hair, I thought there's gonna be less color, right, obviously, but also probably less mitochondria, less, you know, some other things. We found that the white hairs have more mitochondria, and there was an upregulation of-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh
- MPDr. Martin Picard
... the body, the, the hair follicle where the hair was becoming old wasn't kind of letting go of things. It was doing more.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So that means during that period of time, you were more stressed and using more energy?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
When cells become old, instead of just dying, right, they struggle. And when a cell has damage in the DNA or the mitochondria not working properly or for some reason they accumulate damage, they become old, the cell struggles to make more mitochondria. And it, it tries to kind of compensate and then ends up wasting a lot of energy in the process.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So on that hair, what you looked at, that was gray, let's call it. Um, it had more mitochondria because it was struggling. And why was it struggling?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
It looks like stress hormones can, you know, make a cell struggle, for example.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Cortisol.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Cortisol, yes. If you're a cell, right, and your perspective on the world is pretty simple [laughs] . Uh- Uh, you don't have, you know, the senses that, you know, we, we enjoy, but you do nevertheless, you know, sense the environment. If cortisol comes and you get the signal, uh, it means there's something out there in the environment that's dangerous, right? You should be preparing for having to fight or to flight or there, there, there's something out there that's dangerous. Our cells evolved to interpret cortisol in that way. Um, so we did an experiment in the dish. We wanted to know how much energy does it cost to worry about the future, right? Or how much energy does it cost to ruminate about yesterday?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
The thing you didn't do or the mistake you made at work or [laughs] that conversation that went sideways, you know, with your partner. Uh, how much energy does that cost to be thinking about this, to be, you know, engaging your stress system, to be releasing cortisol? Uh, so two students in the lab, Gabriel and Natalia, did that experiment. They put-- You put cells in a dish. You give them the equivalent of cortisol. How much energy is it gonna cost for these cells to prepare? There's nothing damaging to the cortisol itself, but the cortisol is a signal that there might be something dangerous outside, right? That's like when you're sitting down, you get an email, you're like, "Oh, I might lose my job," right? Or, "I might not get this contract." And then you, you have this whole stress response. Your heart starts to beat faster. How much energy does that cost? Uh, so in cells in a dish, we can isolate that question really well. We found that the stress hormone increased energy expenditure, the cost of life, by sixty percent.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So when I'm stressed, I'm using sixty percent more energy theoretically.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
I don't know about you, but cells in a dish [laughs] .
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So the, the beauty about, like, bodies and, you know, with the mind and, you know-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yes
- MPDr. Martin Picard
... this complex organism, they're buffering systems, right? So you might-- I don't think your energy expenditure increases by sixty percent if you're stressed out, but it increases somewhat.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is that graph there?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So there are two graphs here. Uh, the top one is the color of the hair, of a single hair from a, a young Asian woman who was part of the study. And what we see here, this is called a hair pigmentation pattern, the HPP, that we, we developed in the lab to understand quantitatively, bring science to this, to hair graying and, and reversal. And so what you see here is this hair was dark, and then it became white for two centimeters, and then boom, completely regained color. Actually, it regained... It was darker here than it, than it used to be, right? And then stayed dark afterwards. So this is a hair that we received, uh, in the mail as we were starting to, to collect, uh, two colored hairs. Um, and then when we, when we saw this, we, we had found from a few different people white hairs that had regained color. We'd never seen a hair like this. That's dark, white, and then dark, right? So I remember holding this hair. I was like, "Oh my God." [laughs] This is in the same hair. This was incontrovertible evidence that graying of hair is reversible, and it can be pretty, pretty fast. Like, this transition here is just a few weeks. This is about one week. And so this white hair, completely white, regained color in just about a week. Um, so then we developed an instrument which was a, a simple sheet. On the Y-axis, the vertical is most stressful thing that ever happened to you, no stress
- 39:57 – 42:47
What Cortisol Is Really Doing to Your Cells
- MPDr. Martin Picard
at all, ten and zero. And then the X-axis, the horizontal, was-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Time
- MPDr. Martin Picard
... time, yes. On the far right is now, right? This is now, this is a year ago. And then we labeled all the months, and then we asked people, and we asked this, uh, lady, "Put a dot on the graph that was the most stressful time in the past year." But anyone can do the exercise. Past year, most stressful time. Okay, maybe last March. And then you put a dot right in March, number ten. And then least stressful part, uh, zero. And then put other, like, meaningful things that happened that were challenging. So people put dots, you know, along the, this last year, then connect the dots, right? The red graph is her dots connected.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it correlates perfectly to her hair going gray.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Correct. And what happened to her life, she said she finished her PhD thesis and she was jobless, but she was fine. She was happy to be done with her studies and then broke up with her boyfriend.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, damn, and her hair went gray.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. Broke up with her boyfriend. She didn't know what was happening with her life. She had to travel to Europe. There was some family drama. Uh, she said, "These were the la- the most stressful two months of my life."
- SBSteven Bartlett
There's a killer question here, which is if that remains chronic, does that hair follicle go gray forever?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I.e., if I go through an, a, a stressful period for two to three weeks and my hair goes a bit gray, as long as I get out of that stressful period as quick as possible, does that hair then return to, to black or dark?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you see what I'm saying here?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yes. It seems like... And we ran some, like, fancy mathematical model to understand why this would be possible [laughs] , why it could happen, like, now for this hair and then be reversible. But we know, you know, very well if you have a full head of gray hair and you're seventy years old, you're not gonna regain your color.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So there seems to-- What the model, the mathematical model suggested is that there's a window of opportunity, right, where our hair slowly accumulates damage, becomes more and more probably energetically inefficient, right? So there's more and more energy resistance, and then there's a barrier. And then when the, the hair hits that threshold, now it loses color.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's done.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. But then if something changes in the body, right, you go on a vacation or you start to do intermittent fasting and then there's more energy available for your dark hair, now it can be reversed, right? Because you can go back up against that threshold. But then eventually, this hair is gonna go gray again. And then if you're way, way down, like this hair turned gray ten years ago, and you go back up, you're too far away from threshold to regain color.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So it suggests some threshold model that there's a window of opportunity for some-something as binary as hair color. It's black or it's white, right? So there's kind of a window of opportunity there where-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Where you can reverse gray hair.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yes. Yes.
- 42:47 – 45:20
Does a More Resilient Mind Save Cellular Energy?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I, I do wanna come back to this hair thing, but it did make me think 'cause you, you added a layer of nuance there, which is about the mind.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like, if I go through my life l- um, with a more resilient mind, and you get that bad email and you go [gasps] , and I get the bad email and I go, "Fuck it, who cares?"
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Am I therefore gonna be a way more productive person throughout those 24 hours because my mitochondria are using less energy because there's less cortisol?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. Based on what we know, I think that's likely correct. So it's not the stress that burns us down. It's the response to stress. And nothing is free in biology. And for your heart to beat a little faster, if you mount a response to that email, right, you're burning energy in your heart.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And then you're tensing your, you know, your, your shoulder. That's burning energy. Now your brain is going into, like, rumination mode and then this thing and then, then it makes you think about your childhood and this, and, like, and then the anx- the anxiety, the... And then you start to sweat. Like, everything costs energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So the chain of events is I get the email. It's a very bad email, says, "You're fired, Steven, from The Diary of a CEO. We found a different host."
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, I look at the email. That goes into my psychology, my mind. I then have a story I tell myself about what that email means for me, my future, my children, whatever, which then causes a physiological response of, like, chemicals like cortisol-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... um, which goes into my cells, my mitochondria, which then have to work a little bit harder or use more energy.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Which is ultimately then gonna mean that I'm more tired because I have a finite amount of energy per day.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is that, is that sequence of events-- I, I ask about that sequence because it offers me an opportunity to intervene at some point.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yes. Yes. That's a-
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Right when you think about it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Just like, don't open the laptop. [laughs]
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Or, like, get a little bit better with bad news.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah, or, you know, learn to be less reactive, right? Or learn to, to feel and, and, um, you know, sit with-- be aware of that reaction 'cause the key solution to kind of sh- to, to cutting that sequence of event that ends up draining you is to become aware of it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, become aware of it. Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Right? Uh, so you can kind of interrupt this. And people, uh, who study contemplative practices and, and meditation and, you know, mindfulness approaches, uh, I think many of them think this is kind of the key, right? The, the, the awareness, the somatic awareness or interoception. So if you feel into your, your bodily's responses, you become free of, do I mount a response? Is that needed now or not?
- SBSteven Bartlett
There's different types of stress, right? There, there's, like, the acute
- 45:20 – 45:54
Acute vs. Chronic Stress: Why the Difference Matters
- SBSteven Bartlett
stress, which is just, you get the email, you feel a little bit of a spike, but five minutes later, you're fine.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then there's the more chronic type of stress where you're waking up every day with the same feeling of stress-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... deep inside you for many, many days in a row, many weeks in a row.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, I hear that acute stress isn't all that bad, and it's very normal-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and useful. But it's this chronic stress that can cause a lot of damage.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah, and I think that brings us back to the concept of how is energy flowing through the body? And if it flows with not enough resistance, you can't survive, but if there's too much resistance, then you, you get drained.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How
- 45:54 – 48:18
Understanding Resistance—and Why It Drains Your Energy
- SBSteven Bartlett
do I think about this resistance thing? 'Cause I'm really struggling with, like, understanding it.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Uh, maybe one good example to, to frame this is exercise.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Right? When you start to exercise, there's increased resistance in your muscle, right? Your muscles are contracting, so there's a physical resistance there, but there's also energy resistance. So the, the energy is trying to flow through the muscle, and then there's... You have mitochondria. If you have just a few mitochondria, and the muscles are contracting really hard, like you're running, you're sprinting, right? You're doing interval training. Um, now the mitochondria don't have the capacity to flow as much energy as the muscle is asking. Right? So that imbalance of demand to flow capacity. Now, the, the product of this, the demand divided by flow capacity, is resistance.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So if you demand a lot of your muscle because of your, your, your sprint, uh, but you don't have a lot of mitochondria, right, it's gonna feel terrible. Uh, and then because the resistance creeps up, and then your muscle, you know, becomes really hot, and then eventually there's inflammation, uh, and then it, it burns, and, and then it's uncomfortable. Uh, but then-- So that's, like, an acute bout of, of energy resistance. What happens with exercise is once you recover, right, the benefits of exercise don't happen during the exercise. They happen after, during the recovery. So if you recover, now your, your-- the muscles are relaxing and you're resting. Eventually, you go, you know, for... You go to sleep. Uh, it's the-- And during the decrease in the resistance, now the cell says, "Next time this happens, I better be ready." Like, this was really uncomfortable. There was too much energy shoved into a system that couldn't take it, right? So I need-- Next-- I'm gonna make more mitochondria. So that, that's what happens if you go from being a sedentary couch potato, right, to training for a marathon. You can double the amount of mitochondria you have in your muscles.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And that's the system feeling the, the rise in resistance, like, "I don't have the capacity to flow that much energy," and then, uh, adapting for this for the next time and say, "Next time, I'm gonna be ready. Let's make more mitochondria." So that's probably what-- where the benefits of exercise come from, this spike in... A-and, and why stress is, is not a bad thing intrinsically, right? If you have a spike of stress, it stimulates the proce- the, the, the... It stimulates the body to put in place things that, in the long run, makes you more efficient, decreases your resistance. Then you can go through life with, with less resistance.
- 48:18 – 51:43
What Happens Inside Your Body When the First Gray Hair Appears?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Coming back to this gray hair thing. So if, if we consider gray hair, my hair going gray, to be the last domino that fell, so, like, the symptom-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yep
- SBSteven Bartlett
... then what is, what are the... what, what is the first domino?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And can you walk me through the sequence of events? Because one would assume that if I understand that sequence of events, I can also understand how to then reverse it.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How to kinda take-- I've got a couple of gray hairs now, and I actually anecdotally do think, weirdly, now you've said this, that I have, like, gray hair flare-ups. Where I'll go th- I'll, you know, go through a couple of weeks or months of doing something and I look in the mirror and be like, "What? I have 12 now?" I'm being generous there. There's more like 25.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
I have, I have 25 now? In terms of those dominoes, the symptom is gray hair.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is the first domino that f- that falls, and what is the sequence of events that leads to the gray hair-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in the follicle?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So there's a finite energy budget.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And then what the organism does is it allocates energy in different places, like a business, right? You have this budget. Do I put more energy here? Do I put, you know, more resources here? If so, I need to take resources away from here, right? So as stress happens in your life, it pulls energy away from some of the things that keep you young, right? So there's, uh, there's a kind of a hierarchy of energy needs in the body. Not everything can be prioritized the same way. You know Maslow's hierarchy of human needs?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah? So Maslow's insight was, uh-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh my God, I just freaked out. My hand reached down and I just felt someone's head.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
It was just... [laughs] I was like-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Acute stress response.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. [laughs] I just got, yeah, caught us off lead. Sorry. Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. So there's, there's a hierarchy of energy needs in the body that's works similarly to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Maslow said, uh, for a human being to be fully realized, first you need to have safety and food and shelter secured, right? Once you have this and you feel this is kind of covered in your life, then you can start to think about building relationships with other people, right? Loving relationships. Once you have this settled, now you can start to think about building your skills, right? Like becoming really good at something. Uh, and then once you have this covered, now you can devote energy to the more frivolous things like spirituality, what you call self-actualization, and kind of becoming your best self, flourishing. Uh, so he saw this very much as a this is, this needs to be covered. Uh, and when things get really hard and there are constraints on your life, the first thing to go is the top of the pyramid, right? Your meditation practice or [laughs] long-term type, like I'm gonna be a better person. No, like I need to make sure we can put food on the table next week, right? Um, so this hierarchy of, of human needs, I think aligns with hierarchy of, uh, of energy needs in the body. And as far as the importance of hair color goes, it's pretty low on the hierarchy. So as the body gets older and you have more and more cells in the body that start to, uh, be less efficient, right? Their mitochondria are working a little, you know, less efficiently and, uh, and then there, there's more inflammation in the body that's costing energy and, uh, there's more worries about, you know, professional obligations, and all of these things kind of stack up and steal energy away from the things that are there. We call them growth, maintenance, and repair. These are like the anti-aging processes in, in the body, and those need energy, but they're not as important as, you know, facing the stressor that you think is life-threatening now.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So if
- 51:43 – 53:37
The Real Secret to Healthy Aging
- SBSteven Bartlett
there's a lion chasing me, my body's gonna commit all the, the energy I have to getting away from this lion, and it might say, "Listen, Steven, we're not gonna repair the skin next to your eyes. You're gonna get a couple more wrinkles, and we're not gonna make your... We're not gonna commit energy to making sure your follicles in your hair produce black pigment or whatever."
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Exactly.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So I would then look aged. I would look old.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Older. But that's because all of my energy's been going to something else which my body considered to be a high priority.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Correct.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Which also brings me to, I guess, the famous-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh, what we always talk about with presidents.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because presidents go into office often with dark hair.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And they come out with gray hair, and usually one does not age that quickly in eight years. We see the same in the Premier League with football managers.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
They walk in on that first day. They look very sprightly and energetic, and two years later they have, have gray hair, bags under their eyes, wrinkles, and they look like they've aged 10 years.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So you're telling me actually that the, the real secret to anti-aging, if there was one, is this.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Is the proper allocation of energy. So if you don't waste energy stressing out about the future and the past [laughs] and you can spend more time in the moment not being overly reactive to things, which, uh, is kind of a, a lifelong effort, then more of that precious energy can go towards anti-aging.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Can I also pull more energy in the top? Like, can I just... I- if I get more energy, does that mean that there's less likelihood that we're gonna run out of energy when it comes to my h- hair follicles being black or gray?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. The thing is, it doesn't look like we have the flexibility. Like if you wanna have more energy and you wanna age more slowly, uh, eating more does, is not gonna give you more energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So is there anything I can do to have more energy available?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Uh, you, you can become more efficient.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I can become more efficient, but I can't put more in.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
No.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm. And how does one
- 53:37 – 55:34
How to Make Your Body More Energy Efficient
- SBSteven Bartlett
become more efficient then? Uh, you know, you said about stress. Okay, I'm gonna live a less stressed life.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. It seems like, uh, there's a few things that we know makes organism more efficient. One is exercising.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Right? Because when you exercise, again, you're increasing energy resistance, uncomfortable. Potentially you're damaging things, right? Because you're, you're, uh, increasing what we call dissipative losses, right? Uh, oxidative stress and all sorts of things happen during the, the, during the exercise. But then when you recover, now the body's like, "Next time this happens, I'm gonna be ready." And the process of getting ready to, to go through a high resistance, you know, gym session, is that you make more mitochondria, right? Your muscles get bigger and stronger, and your heart becomes more efficient, and your arteries, you know, become more... become softer, and you develop, you know, the, the confidence that you can do this well. Um, and then it becomes rewarding. You, you know, it becomes enjoyable. So all of these things, now that you're off the gym session-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- MPDr. Martin Picard
... right? You spent an hour in the gym telling the body, "This is what we're gonna do in the future," and then the body's like, "Okay, I'm gonna get ready." If there's a fixed energy budget, the only way really to, to get ready for this is to become more efficient. So by having more mitochondria, by having a more fluid, um, and kind of flexible cardiovascular system and, uh, by putting in place all of these changes, decreasing inflammation, right? All of these things make ener- more energy available. It decreases the energetic cost of doing the activity, and then there's more energy available for anti-aging, growth, maintenance and repair, vitality. So I suspect that's why you burn more energy when you exercise, but you feel like you have more and you don't actually have more. The feeling that you have more energy is simply energy's flowing more smoothly through this thing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's more efficient. I've got more mitochondria.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay. What, what else?
- 55:34 – 1:01:02
How Food Changes the Way Your Cells Produce Energy
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about food? You know, I've got, uh, I've got coffee here, I've got some alcohol here, I've got the sugar. What I consume, how does that impact the efficiency of the energy through, flowing through my body?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. Great question. Uh, alcohol. What we know about alcohol is that, m- as we talked about earlier, nothing is free in biology, right? So if you put something in the body that shouldn't be there, effectively a toxin like ethanol, which is what's in there, uh, it's gonna cost energy to get rid of it. So there are detoxification systems in your liver, uh, primarily, that takes alcohol, breaks down the molecule, and then you can pee it out, right? Or metabolize it for energy even. Uh, so there's a bunch of, of energy in ethanol, but when you take alcohol, it doesn't give you more energy. If anything, the next day you feel like shit because what happens is you, you waste energy degrading the alcohol, right? And, and even though it's a net plus, you're putting calories in the machine, in the body, uh, but, uh, what ends up happening is you burn energy getting rid of it. So there's a, a, a cool study where they brought people in, they gave them a bunch of alcohol, [laughs] they're, you know, effectually, effectively drunk, and then they measured how much energy are they burning. And you can do those kind of studies. We, we've done those studies in the lab. In a small room, you put a human being, and then you just measure how much energy does it cost for them to stay alive, right? And you ask them to not do too much in the smaller room. They're just sitting down reading a book. Um, and then, then you can ask them, "Okay, now drink this alcohol." And then you measure. You look. You-- minute by minute, they drink the alcohol, and then you start to see, ooh, it climbs up. So the alcohol, even though you feel relaxed, inside, under the hood, the body's like burning energy to get rid of the alcohol. And other toxins probably work the same way. You know, pesticides or kind of the things we eat that we shouldn't be eating. The reason why those things might be bad for our health may be because they, they steal energy away from, you know, a growing body, for example. Uh, there's good data in, uh, South America. Children who are exposed to more pathogens, right? There, there's no sanitation. They walk barefoot. They, they eat stuff, you know, that's not clean and, um, they have more pathogens, uh, in their gut, right? There, there's more, uh, virus and bacteria and parasites. Uh, it costs energy to fight those things off. That's why you feel like shit when you're burning-- uh, when, when you're fighting a flu, for example, right? Your immune system, your immune cells are like, "Whoa," you know, virus like COVID or, you know, any, you know, seasonal flu virus. The immune system goes into overdrive to kill this virus and get rid of it, and then that, the immune system steals energy away from the brain, from, from your mind, [laughs] and then you feel like, oh, everything is so difficult. You just wanna be in bed over covers. You feel cold, which is strategy to basically save energy. So all of the-- what's called sickness behavior, right? All of those features of your behavior. You become asocial, right? Your skin is more sensitive, so you avoid moving. Uh, it's like all of those features can be understood as energy conservation strategies. Stressors, alcohol, parasites all kind of have this increase the, the cost of living. Uh, and then because there's a cap on your energy budget, uh, then that energy needs to be coming from somewhere else.
- SBSteven Bartlett
A- and if you're in those states for long periods of time, you're in a chronic state of, um, I guess like energetic distraction is the way I'd think about it.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
That's, that's a cool way to think about it. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was thinking about it, I was thinking about it like if you, you ha- uh, my body has an army of 10 soldiers, and usually those 10 soldiers are like at work doing the things that I need to do to survive and grow and flourish.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then when I have one of these, I don't know, uh, some sort of toxic substance comes into my body, you're basically saying that four of those soldiers have to be reassigned to go deal with this invader, and so now I only have six-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that are focused on everything I need to flourish, which is why I probably feel shit-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... sometimes.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah, exactly.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, and what if, if there's only six working on my, you know, fundamental requirements to flourish, then some of those things are gonna have to give way, and I might end up with gray hair, and I might end up with wrinkles, or maybe my brain won't function the same, maybe-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... a disease.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You know, my immune system won't be taken care of in the same way.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. Immune system won't be there clearing the cancer cells, for example. Um, and the repair processes that happen all the time in the brain, right? Clearing out proteins that you don't need, uh, repairing dama- DNA that's get- gotten damaged or making new mitochondria. All of these processes happen like every day. Every day you go through a little phase of getting rid of the things that don't work too well to make more of the things that work well, like mitochondria. Quality control, it's called. Right? So there's this quality control cycle. Old mitochondria that, that don't work too, too well anymore, they get degraded. It's called mitophagy. Autophagy is self-eating. Mitophagy is self-eating of the mitochondria. So when a cell, for example, is, is hungry, if you pull energy away from the cell, the cell goes into a mode like, "Oh, shit. [laughs] I might run out of energy. I need to be really efficient here."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
"So let's get rid of those mitochondria that aren't really contributing their share, uh, and then I'll have just the best functioning mitochondria." And then when food comes back on board, the cell makes more of the better ones.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It made me think of-
- 1:01:02 – 1:05:32
What the Energy Crisis in Your Cells Means for Alzheimer's Disease
- SBSteven Bartlett
Alzheimer's and dementia, weirdly, because I don't really know a huge amount about Alzheimer's and dementia, but I know that something clearly goes wrong in the body that produces these plaques.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And, and, you know, you often hear that there's lots of things we consume or do that increase our probability of getting Alzheimer's and dementia.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So is that at all linked to the same sort of, like, energy distraction?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yes. It's been long believed that the plaque, right, that you heard about, uh, amyloid plaques and, uh, tau tangles, and there's kind of this idea that the brain accumulates proteins, and it's those proteins that cause Alzheimer's. I think that's what most people have heard and what most people believe because it came from, you know, white coat-wearing scientists and university professors [laughs] . Um, that is not the truth, and what is more true is, and, and, and let me just say why it's not the truth. You can have people in their 60s, in their 70s, in their 80s, zero protein deposits in the brain. We can image this now pretty well with neuroimaging. You can have people zero protein deposit in the brain, and they have full-blown Alzheimer's and dementia. And you have the other extreme, people with loads of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, completely normal cognition. So th- those extremes really tell us this hypothesis, this amyloid, you know, protein, uh, aggregates in the brain as a driver of dementia and neurodegeneration is not correct. Uh, what we know happens energetically in the brain is that initially in the early stages of Alzheimer's, there's kind of an increase in energy demand in the, there's specific brain regions that tend to be more affected in some people, not all, not all people tend to have those protein deposits. Those regions cart, start to burn more energy. This is early phase, right? And then at this point, probably this is the brain trying to cope, right? It's like something's not working great, but it's working harder, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like, like with the gray hair.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah, exactly. And then over time, the, those brain regions become hypometabolic, and then that's when you start to have symptoms. So-
- SBSteven Bartlett
What does that mean?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
That's, that's when people start to have memory issues and, uh-
- SBSteven Bartlett
You said hypometabolic.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Hypometabolic, yes. This is hypermetabolic is kind of this energy distraction you were talking about. Like, there's more energy being burned here. Normal metabolic is, you know, you use 100 units of energy for the brain in this, let's say this brain region. 100 units of energy is what this brain region needs to just sustain normal healthy functions. Uh, if there's a problem with the mitochondria or if there's a problem with, you know, the cell communicating with the synapses, right? Cells talk to each other through these things called synapses. Uh, if there's a problem now, the, the, that part of the brain is gonna need to do more work to compensate. Uh, and then we know something happens with neurodegeneration and Alzheimer's is inflammation, neuroinflammation. That basically means there are some cells in the brain that are trying to heal the brain, and part of that healing process is kind of a stress response locally, and then that stress response leads to the secretion of a little proteins we call cytokines. And then it's basically those cells saying, "Something's wrong. [laughs] We need to fix this." So that costs energy. So you have those cells that get activated. They, they secrete those proteins to say, "Please help," you know, "The, we need to reestablish homeostasis. We need to reestablish normal healthy balance." But that process of reestablishing, of healing costs energy. Just like when you post-exercise, your muscle invests energy to, to become stronger. So in that kind of early phase, hypermetab- metabolism is when you spend more energy. Hyper, uh, function, uh, some people have called it. And then eventually it seems like those brain regions get tired out, and then the, they become hypometabolic, so they burn less energy. So if you look in the brain of someone with Alzheimer's, there are these regions that are, that burn less energy, and energy is so central to everything, including cognition, right? In order to have an idea and to be conscious of that idea, you need to burn energy. So the, the brain kind of burning less energy in later stages kind of reflects this lack of function. You know, the, the, it's difficult to remember, you know, old memories. It's, it's remembered. It's difficult to, to make associations. It becomes difficult to plan in the future, um, and to regulate your emotions and, you know, a lot of people with, uh, dementia end up having kind of mood issues and become really depressed, and it-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is this, is this why they call
- 1:05:32 – 1:12:07
Is Dementia Really "Type 3 Diabetes"?
- SBSteven Bartlett
it type 3 diabetes?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
'Cause I've just heard that phrase quite a lot recently.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. And so my hunch is that Alzheimer's and dementia more generally is a disorder of energy, and specifically it's a disorder of, you know, increased energy resistance. So there's type 3 diabetes comes from the fact that when the brain gets sick, right, and symptoms of dementia start to appear, like loss of memory and mood and depression and that constellation of symptoms, when you look in the brain, it's burning less energy. But it's also harder for glucose to get inside the brain.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's less efficient at-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
It's, so there's, yes, a, a, a loss of efficiency, but an increased resistance, right? Or a decrease in conductance for energy, for glucose, for example, to get inside the brain to be processed and, and be used.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And why might that be?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Because you're pushing too much glucose on the system.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, okay.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
If you load up the system all the time with, with glucose, with sugar in the blood and glycemia is high, you have diabetes perhaps, this is all the time like pressure pushing energy onto the s- the system that's, like, really delicate. And it's not like jacking the, the voltage on your lamp that eventually, you know, is gonna catch fire. Uh, we are a slow-burning fire, right? Like, the inside of our, our cells, you have the electrons flowing, and when there are sparks flying, it damages the mitochondria. It damages this, damages that, and that increases... That's what aging is. Aging, the, the most basic [laughs] mechanism of aging- Including brain aging that leads to Alzheimer's is the accumulation of little damage, little mutations, little defects, little, uh, imperfections. And as the imperfections accumulate, the system becomes less efficient. Insulin resistance basically, and diabetes refers to the fact that muscles, but also the brain can-- h- has the capacity to say, "I, I can't anymore." Like glucose, too much for me, too much resistance, too much, you know, damage that I, that I'm exposed to. So if you're a muscle cell and you wanna protect yourself against this excess energy pressure, right from the glucose, from the, from the electrons, uh, you can become insensitive or resistant to insulin.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So then you s- you take the, the receptors that are sitting on top of the surface of the cell, you, you pull those out, right? So then the cell no longer is sensitive to insulin. So then the body's like, "Whoa," like, "glucose is way high." What you-- a normal healthy body releases insulin, floods the blood, insulin goes to the surface of, uh, of your muscles and then says, "Take in the glucose because there's too much glucose in the blood. It's-- we're gonna damage the brain, we're gonna damage the eyes, we're gonna damage the nerves. So muscle, please take in the glucose." But when the muscle is overwhelmed and the mitochondria are starting to be, uh, you know, at capacity, uh, in terms of how much energy they can, uh, resist and, and, and flow, then they shut down the valves, right? So the muscle cells become insulin resistant and then glucose intolerant, and that protects the mitochondria in the muscle cells. Uh, but then gluc- blood glucose, uh, starts to increase. So the next step in this cascade is, well, if there's too much energy and circulation, too much sugar, too much fat, what, what can we do with this? And that's where fat stores, you know, uh, adiposity, uh, comes in. So obesity is a protection mechanism against excess energy resistance.
- SBSteven Bartlett
One way to think about this hypothesis that dementia, Alzheimer's, is linked to an overflow of g- glucose, let's say, is to look at other civilizations or, um, I don't know, tribes, the Hadza tribe in Africa who don't have a lot of glucose. Do they still get Alzheimer's and dementia?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
I don't know the, the literature on this, uh, but it's clear that people who... If you, if we look at what makes you more likely to have Alzheimer's, uh, what makes you less likely to have Alzheimer's, all the things that make you more likely to have Alzheimer's contribute to increasing this energy resistance, right? Too much sugar in the blood, diabetes, physical inactivity, right? If you don't move, energy doesn't flow through your mitochondria, so it just stacks up, accumulates. And, and the things that protects the brain, protects you against Alzheimer's and dementia, are things that let energy flow. Physical activity, uh, not eating too much, especially not eating too much sugar. Uh, and, and then ketones. There's new, you know, data now showing that ketones can, uh, you know, enter the brain and be metabolized more easily and can even kind of improve cognition. And the ketogenic diet, which I know you've tried, uh, many people report more energy on the ketogenic diet. It's not because you eat more calories, it's because those, uh, electrons that are stuck on ketones instead of being stuck on glucose can flow more, more easily. And th- those ketones are made by mitochondria in your liver. This is a really beautiful story of this, the sociality of mitochondria in the organism. The liver mitochondria is where ketones are made. If you eat like fat, right, avocados and oil and, and meat and, uh, butter and, uh, those fat molecules and go in the liver, and then the mitochondria in the liver take those fat, transform them into ketones, and then put the ketones into the blood. The kidneys also do a little bit of this. And then the ketones go to the brain, and then they feed the mitochondria in the brain. So you have mitochondria in the liver talking and feeding mitochondria in the brain. And the path for a ketone to go from blood to mitochondria is much shorter in terms of number of enzymes, number of resistors, if you wanna think about it energetically, uh, than for glucose. That path is very long. The ketone path is much shorter.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I just wanna make sure on that point that I don't misunderstand because, you know, it sound-- it could have sounded like you're saying that too much energy might cause Alzheimer's, but actually you're saying-- you're not saying... 'Cause I think of ketones as energy, and I, I'm, I'm chugging, you know, ketones all the time.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I don't wanna flood my brain with energy so that, you know, malfunctions, gets Alzheimer's.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
It's, it-- For some reason, it's really hard to overwhelm the brain and-
- SBSteven Bartlett
With ketones
- MPDr. Martin Picard
... and-- With, with ketones or overwhelm the body if you eat fat. Like, it's, it's very easy to feel like I'm full. [chuckles] I've had-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah
- MPDr. Martin Picard
... you know, a good enough meal. If you bring sugar into the picture and you mix sugar and fat, now things like taste so good and there's like an extra reward and a lot of people eat for different reasons, not just because they're hungry. [chuckles]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
That's because it's so rewarding to eat something fatty and sugary, uh, especially the, the sugar part. Then you, you lose regulation, and that's why I think the GLP-1 drugs are, are so powerful because they, they address the problem where it starts. Like how much food are you putting into the system?
- 1:12:07 – 1:13:54
Why Some Communities Avoid Dementia—and What This Means for Alzheimer's Risk
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. Uh, I did look at the stats there on the tribes in Africa, and it says, "When researchers study indigenous groups, such as the Hadza hunter-gatherer tribe in Tanzania or rural agrarian populations like the Yoruba, they find that Alzheimer's and vascular dementia are exceptionally rare."
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Which again, means that it points to Western diets.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm. Western diet, Western-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Lifestyles
- MPDr. Martin Picard
... uh, behavior. You know, these people move all the time, um, and they don't eat too much. Um, most of them don't need to kind of rely on their fat capacitor. [chuckles] They don't have excess energy to just store away. And for, for some people, there's congenital leanness, right? Like you're, you're born lean and you're gonna-- like you can't put on fat. If you eat too much, the, the high sugar or high fat just accumulates in the blood, and then it, it, it gets lodged in ectopic ways. So in the-- it g- it gets lodged in the muscle or in the liver or in the brain. Um, and, and then that causes damage because of, you know, this like excess energy pressure, and then the system overheats.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Skinny fat.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Skinny fat, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that stores it near around your liver and stuff.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Exactly.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What, what's that called, that fat inside you?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Visceral.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Visceral fat.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. And the visceral fat-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm
- MPDr. Martin Picard
... is linked to increased inflammation, and it's linked to a bunch of diseases, but this is just a symptom. Like, the increased fat, and I think the reason why obesity in general, we say obesity is bad, is because obesity reflects a deeper state, a more important state with the- which is this increased energy resistance. Like, there's too much energy in the system, and the system can't flow it. Like, the mitochondria can't keep up, so to protect themselves, they store that and store that away and, and then, uh, then, then you become obese.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If you're gonna
- 1:13:54 – 1:15:56
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- SBSteven Bartlett
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- 1:15:56 – 1:17:27
How to Eat for Optimal Energy and Health
- SBSteven Bartlett
on this point of food then, fasting, autophagy, all these words that I've heard.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If you were giving me advice on everything you know about how to create a body that is very, very efficient in how I deal with the energy that I have, w- what advice would you give me as it relates to eating?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Develop that awareness of what your body needs. So when I think about how I eat, I don't think about, you know, my weight or my body. I think about, how am I feeling, and do I need more food, right? Am I, like, depleted, or, uh, am I tired and exhausted because there's too much food on board and my organism is, like, struggling to keep up with this excess, like, friction or excess, you know, energy pressure and on my brain, on my, on my mitochondria. So I think about it from the perspective of my mitochondria. Uh, what do my mitochondria need? Uh, and in general, it's much harder to, uh, you know, deplete the mitochondria, like not eating too much. So i- if you're thinking about, okay, there's this food there. Do I snack? Do I not snack? Uh, generally eating too much, there, there are clear consequences to this. Like, it increases the resistance or the friction in, in your mitochondria. Not eating enough is typically innocuous for most people. And that's-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because we, we have stores, don't we, of glycogen, and we have stores of glucose in our body, in our muscles anyway. So if we were running low, then our, our body can go get some fat, metabolize it.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Exactly. Make ketones.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Make ketones.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. Yeah, the, most people have enough energy on board, right, in the form of fat, some glycogen in your muscles and your liver, uh, to live at least a month.
- 1:17:27 – 1:20:46
Why We Overeat Even When We're Not Hungry
- SBSteven Bartlett
The, I mean, I'm, I'm a big, big fan of survival documentaries.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And one of the most remarkable things you see in survival documentaries, I'm even thinking about some that I've watched, is people can survive for seemingly months without eating anything.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, they can't survive long without water.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But they can survive for months without eating anything, um, because their body will start to kind of go into its reserves-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and break down muscle and all these other things.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. Yeah, the record is, the world record for not eating is over 300 days.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wow.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Irish man. Um, [laughs] and he lost, I forget the exact numbers, 250 pounds, 300 pounds.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What does this say about hunger? B- And also, what does it say about this society we live in where we have, some people have, like, five meals a... Some people basically just eat from morning till night, you know?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. I, I think a, a lot of us eat not because we're hungry. I think a lot of us as have learned to eat y- to, to subserve some other need, and eating is quite rewarding. It taps into the same systems, you know, as gambling and, um, kind of connecting with other human beings. So we know some people eat emotionally, right? When they're stressed out, they, they, they eat more. And, um, so I think hunger is, is something to be skeptical of because there are many pathways that I think kind of converge on hunger. Like, if you feel sad, you feel, like, bored, um, hunger will kind of get you out of boredom because of the salt, because of the, especially if you had salty, sugary things around. Uh, it's a rewarding thing that will get you out of uncomfortable, other uncomfortable sensations. I think most of us overeat. Uh, that's, um, a good general assumption to make. You're probably overeating [laughs] .
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm. I think I probably am.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Um, it's harder to overeat if you restrict your eating window, right? And, and that works really well for some people. Um, like eating, for example, a very severe kind of w- window would be 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m Right? So you eat for four hours and you kind of put this around dinner time so you can be social with your partner or something like that. Uh, that tends to work well for a lot of people who have been in the habit of overeating. Um, and my dad, you know, still thinks to, to this day, he's 69 now, um, that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That's what he learned when he was a kid, and he wants to believe that this is true. I don't think it's true for most people, and especially if you're in your 60s, 70s, right? Like the me- metabolism changes, and if you're always eating, you-- the body never goes into this state of, "I must be efficient," right? And then if you go into that state of, "I must be efficient," you accumulate poorly functioning mitochondria, and then there's more friction, you know, in, in your whole body. There's more inflammation, which is a signal of that energy friction or resistance, and then you don't feel as good, right? You don't feel you have as much energy. So many people who go from eating three meals a day, plus or minus snacks, to like intermittent fasting, they just say, "I'm gonna eat whatever I want, how- however much I want, but just in those four hours or six hours," most of those people, uh, have a lot more energy. They experience, right, that they have more energy. It's not because there's more energy in their body. If anything, they're putting fewer calories in the body. But the way energy flows now, it flows more efficiently, and we don't perceive the amount of energy. We perceive the flow energy or the transformation of energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I was
- 1:20:46 – 1:22:43
Is Breakfast Really the Most Important Meal of the Day?
- SBSteven Bartlett
just reading there that it says that this idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day came from an advertising campaign-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Oh
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that was designed to sell cereal and bacon.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, before the Industrial Revolution, breakfast wasn't a heavily scrutinized meal.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
People often just ate whatever was left over from the night before, or they ate a quick, heavy meal before going out to do physical farm labor. But as people moved into cities and took sedentary office jobs, those heavy, greasy breakfasts started causing widespread inge- ingestion. Ingestion? Enter Harvey Kellogg's.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yes, that Kellogg's. He ran a famous health sanitarium and believed that a clean, light, grain-based diet would cure ingestion and improve overall health. He co-invented cornflakes, and he and other cereal pioneers pushed the narrative that a healthy cold cereal breakfast was essential for a productive day, and your dad bought it hook, line, and sinker.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yep. I mean, a lot of people did.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Everybody did.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And, and I did until recently, until I started to, like, feel into this. I would have this big cer- bowl of cereals. That's how I grew up as well. And then I would feel like this low, like this, um, you know, low energy. And I think now I understand why, 'cause I was overloading my system with way too much kind of rapidly available sugary energy that I didn't need. Uh, and then the body needs to find a way to ha- handle this. Either you get fat, which I can't do, so then it goes kinda to my brain and then makes me feel lousy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So on this point then, just to close off on this diet question, if I wanna feel really, really optimal on a given day, I probably do want a smaller eating window, and I probably wanna eat just what I need, and I wanna not overeat.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I don't wanna under eat, but I don't wanna overeat.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
If you under eat, you're gonna pick it up tomorrow.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'll pick it up tomorrow anyway, so I'll be fine tomorrow.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But the worst thing is overeating today, which is gonna impact my performance today.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Correct. And
- 1:22:43 – 1:30:58
How to Stop Scattered Energy From Running Your Life
- MPDr. Martin Picard
food is one thing that influences where energy goes in the body, how it flows. Um, and, and just maybe to close the loop on that example, like when you're sick and you're fighting an infection.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
I had a, a beautiful opportunity to understand-- not just under- understand, to experience this one day. It was New Year's Eve, uh, 31st in the evening, and I started to feel like a little scratchy throat. I'm like, "Oh, I think I'm getting sick." So I, I go to, you know, the, the evening dinner. I didn't cough or anything. I don't, I don't think I was contagious, but I just could feel, right, like something was, was coming up. I felt terrible. I was-- I had started to have like full-blown flu symptoms. Went home early at like 10, 9 PM, um, and then I went to bed. It was a horrible night. Hor-- I felt even... I was in pain, and then my... I had like massive fever. I took a bath, a warm bath, to help my fever kind of, you know, go up so that it could fight the... High fever stimulates your immune cells and weakens the virus, so it's, uh, it's, it's usually a good thing. Um, and then uh, next day, I was out, and I was so depressed. And I was like, "I should write about this. I'm writing a book on, on energy [laughs] and energy constraints and, like, the, the, the vision partitioning of energy in, in the body." I was like, "I should write about this. This is so interesting." My immune system is in full-blown defense mode, and it's not like I, I was like, I could feel my heart. I'm wearing this aura. My heart rate was like 110 at, at, at rest instead of being like 60, you know, normally. So there's all of this energy flowing through. It's like, wow. Like my metabolic rate objectively is higher. We know this is true from, from, you know, good studies on that, that when you're fighting something, you burn more energy. Um, yet I'm feeling completely drained, right? So it's not like the amount of energy that's flowing through that I should feel more energetic. The-- my immune system in that moment, uh, was draining all my energy. Drain-- sucking away my energy from, you know, from my, from my mind, from my brain perhaps. Um, and I remember thinking it wouldn't be a whole lot of energy if I just pulled my laptop, like prop myself on the bed, and then start to write what I'm experiencing in the moment, right? Like the, uh... But I couldn't muster the strength. It's like, "What the, what the fuck?" Like, why would I care? [laughs] I couldn't care, right? And this is the stuff I care about on a daily basis. But in that state of my energy being disrupted, I couldn't care about this. And then I started to think about work and about, you know, the, the lab and about, uh, you know, family things. I was like, "Whoa, it's-- my whole life feels so different."
- SBSteven Bartlett
I don't care about anything.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah, I don't care about anything. I just, I'm just trying to fucking survive. [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's so interesting 'cause I can relate so much.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. I mean, but e- everyone has been through like a difficult... Like you, when you're really sick
- SBSteven Bartlett
Or when you're really stressed.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
Or just anything that's all-consuming like that.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Exactly. That's like Maslow's pyramid, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
The, the top is squished, and you're like survival and-
- SBSteven Bartlett
You're like, "Where, where did I go?"
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Where's, where's... Yeah, I remember. Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. So I was still me, right? I was still Martin, but I, I, I felt completely different. The quality of my, of my mind, the quality of, of my intention was, like, completely different. I was just trying to survive. I didn't care about anything else. So that episode went on for, like, two days or so. Through day number three, I was able to take my computer and, like, start to feel again the purpose. But it was so interesting that just the... what, what it felt like when I was able to write about it [laughs] and really feel into it. It felt like I was diffused energy. Like the light, for example, right, is a form of energy. You can have a laser, and the difference between a laser and a, uh, an incandescent light bulb, like an old style filament light bulb, is not the amount of energy. Is the, the way the energy is patterned. And in a laser, you have every photon that are kind of in phase with one another.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And then there's a coherence to it, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And it's the coherence that gives a laser its power. Uh, it's not the total amount of energy. The same amount of energy, if you put in an incandescent light bulb, now it's the same energy, but it's diffused, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Every photon is doing its own thing. They're all going in all over the place. And then if you wanna look at how far can these photons go, right? How far can my mind go [laughs] caring about things? The diffused energy doesn't go very far. Uh, but the, the laser can go super far. So my mind had become like a diffused incandescent light bulb.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh, I... The two things came to mind when you said that. The first is, w- in my previous company, because we were a startup, fast growing, we had cash flow issues. Cash, making sure we had enough money coming in from our clients, whatever, to pay our staff was always a problem. For anyone that doesn't know, um, when a business is growing quickly, it's usually spending more today than it's receiving f- in. So even if you're, you're growing from like one million to six million to 12 million to 25 million or whatever, as we did, you'll... you still have a cash flow problem. And there would be times when we're nearing the end of the month, and months, months in a row, and I had the same cash flow stress. I couldn't pay the team.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
They, they always got paid. They never knew. We always figured it out. But what I'd notice is in those moments of really, really high stress, sometimes, not always, but there were periods where I lost motivation.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what I meant by that is I literally, as a 23, 24-year-old c- like CEO of all these hundreds of people, some of them old- double my age, [lip smack] I'd basically hide at home. And what I mean by hide at home is like, I didn't have the... I lost purpose for this fucking business.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like I, I'd wake up for... It might last a week or two weeks, and I just didn't have the purpose, the quote motivation-
- 1:30:58 – 1:39:52
How High Performers Filter Signal From Noise
- SBSteven Bartlett
to play a clip. It's a clip of Kevin O'Leary talking about this idea of signal and noise. Uh, and he's referencing his experiences with, um, Steve Jobs, who he used to work with, and also Elon Musk.
- SPSpeaker
Look how wildly successful he was, but here's why. There's a concept that he understood that very few people focused on back then in the early '90s of signal-to-noise ratio. What was so brilliant about Jobs th- that I tell every CEO now, and I don't care if you're an S&P 500 CEO or you're just starting a business His vision of signal was the top three to five things you have to get done in the next 18 hours. Not your vision for the business next week or next month or next year, just the next 18 hours you're awake. You're going to get those three things or those five things done that you have deemed critical for your mission. They must get done today. Anything that stops you from doing that is the noise. So the s- signal-to-noise ratio to be successful for Steve Jobs was 80/20. 80 signal, 20 noise. And I knew that to be true with him because he would email me at 2:30 in the morning, expect me to get back to him, because back then we didn't have texts, it was all email. He was right. He was right. And the only other person that I've seen that has a higher ratio than that is Elon Musk. He has no noise. He does not deal with noise. He is 100% signal, 24 seconds of, you know, every cycle. I mean, the guy is just 60 seconds of every minute, 60 minutes of every hour. The 18 hours he's awake, it's all signal. And look what he's achieved.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And so I can really sort of summarize this for my audience, signal is the most urgent thing you should be focused on right now, and noise is basically everything else.
- SPSpeaker
No, the goals you set for the, the, the wa- the w- that you are awake. If you're gonna be awake 18 hours-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... and you've determined that there's three things you have to get done, you're gonna get those done. No matter what it takes, you're gonna get those done, and you're not gonna let anything distract you from those three to five things. If you're a CEO and you achieve that, and you can get those done with 80% of your time based on that, you're extraordinarily successful.
- SBSteven Bartlett
In that clip, he's basically saying that the most successful entrepreneurs in the world are remarkably good at focusing on the signal. He said that from his time working with Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs would be 80% signal, i.e., he wakes up in the morning and he knows exactly what we need to work on. And I watched these interviews with Jony Ive. I'll actually also play the Jony Ive's interview because I send this around to everybody, so I'm gonna play it, where Jony Ive talks about how remarkably focused Steve Jobs was.
- SPSpeaker
Th- this sounds really simplistic, but it still shocks me how few people actually practice this. Um, and it's a struggle to practice, but is, is this issue of focus. Um, Steve was the m- remarkably focused person I've ever met in my life. And, um, and the thing with focus is it's not sort of like this thing you aspire to or you dec- you decide on Monday, "You know what? I'm gonna be focused." [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
It is a every minute, a, "Why are we talking about this? This is what we're working on." You can achieve so much when you truly focus. And one of the things that Steve would say, um, because I think he was concerned that I wasn't, [laughs] um, he would say, um, "How many things have you said no to?" And I would, honestly, I, I would have these sacrificial things because I, I mean, I'm, I wanted to be very honest about it, and so I'd say, "Well, I s- I said no to this and no to that." And, um, he-- but he, he knew [laughs] that I wasn't vaguely interested in doing those things anyway. Um, so there was no real sacrifice. What, what focus means is saying no to something that you, with every bone in your body, you think is a phenomenal idea and you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you're focusing on something else.
- SBSteven Bartlett
There's something in giving your entire being a focus to something, maybe it's in the context switching or whatever it is, that means your probability of being successful at that particular thing-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... drastically, drastically increases.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Solving hard problems is hard.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But these great, great founders, they, they solve them because they're sh- they're focusing every available unit of energy on the thing.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm. Yes. I think the reason this is, is because of a physical principle about energy, which is called resonance, right? If you walk through life with such clarity of mind, right, like this is what the truth is. This is where we're going, right? Then, and you live and you breathe that. You become like a resonator. You hold this energy pattern, and it comes out not just in, in your actions and your emails. It comes out in the way you speak, and it comes out in the, the things you turn attention to, right? It turns out in your tone of voice, in the care that you, you know, look at people with. It comes out in every facet of you, right? So you become the emblematic leader, I guess, uh, for, for that thing that you're 100% into. What this does is that it's picked up by other people, right? Maybe this gets like vibes. [laughs] You have that vibe. You have like the founder's vibe, right? Or like the entrepreneur's vibe. I think this is real, and this is the energy that's flowing through your mitochondria somehow becoming coherent and, you know, aligned, and it feels meaningful. It feels purposeful, and then you live like that. And then other people around you that resonate with it, right? Like people are drawn to a, a, a, a pure signal. Like if you have that sp- specific signal, it's like a, a music, like a symphony, right? Like when it sounds, when it's on tune, then people that wanna come on board, like they feel this, and then it gets amplified.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's so funny 'cause we were talking there about Steve Jobs being often cited as a prime example of someone who was really intensely focused with his e- with, with his energy, and what you've just described sounds almost perfectly like what people said about him when they described him as having a reality distortion field.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You've probably heard this term. Um, the reality distortion field, they called it his RDF, was a term coined by Apple software engineer Bud Tribble in 1981 to describe Steve Jobs' uncanny, almost hypnotic ability to convince everyone around him to believe practically anything. And people who worked closely with Jobs described the RDF, the re- reality distortion field- As a confounding mix of intense charisma, unyielding willpower, and sheer persistence in a certain direction-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... which pulled you with him.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm. That's an energetic quality. And in physics, if you have something that's, it has a, a really strong energy, then it can entrain other things. If the, the source resonator is strong enough, people will come in resonance, and then it looks spooky. It looks like, whoa, this thing, you know, synchronicity or this, you know, this thing happened and somehow, you know, he was able to mobilize this, this donor and, you know, fundraising is, like, easier than it should be. And so then, like, all of these things snowball because you hold that, you know, that, that vibe. [laughs] You hold that energy. It amplifies.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I mean, exactly that. So I was just reading this quote from someone that used to work with Steve Jobs. Um, and he said that it would cause two things. It would be like he was casting spells on you, but he was also bending time and physics.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
They said Apple engineer Andy Hertzfeld recalled that if you told Steve Jobs a task would take six months, he would look you in the eye and say, "You can do it in two weeks."
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because of the sheer force of his conviction, engineers would often actually end up doing it in two weeks, completely rewriting their own understanding of what was possible. And even Bill Gates famously remarked on Jobs' charisma, saying, "I was like a minor wizard because he was casting spells, and I would see people mesmerized, so much so that I was so jealous." Gates noted that even when Jobs was lying or wrong, he had everybody completely hooked.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm. What's clear to make some- like, something like this happen is you need to, um, feel that there's something compelling. Like, you need to feel something's important, and again, that's not a rational thing. Like, you need to feel it in yourself. Um, and then you need to kind of bring that energy into focus and bring attention to it, right? And then, then that's where ideas start to come. You build a structure around it to, to sustain that flow.
- 1:39:52 – 1:41:54
How Energy Resistance Shows Up in Parenting
- MPDr. Martin Picard
that's what amazing people do. Uh, they're able to, you know, see something, hold that vision so strongly, and then mobilize others, right? And then new things become, uh, possible. I think that's what great leaders do. And I, I now approach, you know, other human beings and, you know, my, my son, like my, my six-year-old son, Noah. I see him as, yes, a little boy and, yes, a lot of energy and, yes, you know, some, some challenges [laughs] that come with this, but he's this beautiful little energy pattern, right? He's this energy flowing through this little child's body. But my role as a parent is to provide just around the right amount of resistance, right? The right amount of constraints. If I don't provide any constraint, I say, "Do whatever you want, have whatever you want, uh, you know, any time," then, like, that's not good for development. Kids need to feel, you know, some boundaries, and so those are like resistance, right? Little constraints. But if every minute, like me putting constraint, "No, you can't do this. No, you can't do that," then it damages the system. It traumatizes the system.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's not gonna grow in any direction.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah, exactly. So the, the art really of parenting, and I think the art of, of leadership, is providing the right structure, right, so that the energy has some constraints. You, like, there's a challenge. There needs to be a challenge for the team to meet, right? Challenge is like a barrier. It's like a little resistor. Of course, there are challenges. You're, like, it's difficult to get there, and if it's not difficult, then everywhere, everyone's bored. If it's like, "Yeah, we're gonna do the same thing as we did last year, and then next year we do the same thing," that's not the same kind of energy as, "We need to double this year, and then we need to double the, the, you know, the year after." This kind of goal or challenge is a form of constraint, something you'd have to work through. I think that's why the human mind is naturally drawn to challenges, like what's the next challenge? Why go down deep in the ocean to discover new creatures? Why go in the Amazon trying to discover new species of little bugs? Why go into space? Like, this is all curiosity driven. It's like the mind wanting to have something to hit against, 'cause if there's nothing to hit against, if there's no resistance, then it's, there's no purpose.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was
- 1:41:54 – 1:42:35
Why Meaningful Goals Become Magnets for Your Energy
- SBSteven Bartlett
thinking about worthwhile goals as actually being magnets for energy. You think about going to the moon. The moon pulled energy towards it, so we found ourselves to the moon. And actually, if you bring that down into your own life as, like, a leader of a company, you go, "Okay, if I set a worthwhile goal, I'm gonna pull people-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... energy-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... towards it."
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And if I have an unworth- worthwhile goal, energy won't be attracted. So maybe a worthwhile goal is actually philosophically a magnet for energy.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah, I think so. And people are energetic processes. So my, my six-year-old son is this beautiful movement of energy. My goal is to nurture it, right? And not just with food [laughs] and physically, but to nurture his curiosity, uh, and his transformation.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Linked
- 1:42:35 – 1:46:22
Does Having a Purpose Improve Mitochondrial Function?
- SBSteven Bartlett
to this, I read that studies on brains of dead people have found that those with a greater sense of purpose have more efficient mito- mitochondria.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
This is a beautiful study and it was run in Chicago. Every year, people would come to the hospital and then fill out questionnaires and meet with a, a therapist and neuropsychologist, and they would ask them questions and test their memory and their cognition. And then every year they would report how much purpose they felt like they had, how much sense of connection with other human beings or with something greater than themselves, how optimistic they were about the future, right? And some people are, like, more optimistic, happy, and, and, and purposeful than, than others, but there's always kind of fluctuations, right? Like, we go through fluctuations. We go through life. No matter how lucky you are, life always ends up being challenging in, in some ways. So we asked how people felt, how much purpose people experienced before they died. Is that related to the mitochondria in their brain? And the only way you can ask this question is to look at the brain after the person died, right? So then you have how the person felt, right, before they... How much purpose they experienced, and then you look at the mitochondria. After they die
- SBSteven Bartlett
Where?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
In, in the, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. So that little part of the brain that's involved in, you know, uh, active reasoning and executive function. And the mitochondria in the people who felt more purpose had a greater energy transformation capacity.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What does that mean in simple terms?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
The resistance was lower. This could mean, uh, that if you feel more life purpose, the mitochondria in your brain can flow energy more easily.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Or it could mean the inverse of that.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Well, it could mean that having mitochondria in your brain that can flow energy more easily just changes how you see life.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Makes you feel more purposeful.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah, exactly.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Or it could mean that purpose itself is creating more efficient mitochondria.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Exactly. People have done studies in animals, and we've done some of those studies, where you can basically change the state of mind of a mouse by, like, stressing it out chronically, and then you make it feel defeated and, like, a really stressful life. And you ask, does this change the mitochondria in the brain, right? Can the experience of stress change the mitochondria in the brain? Hundred percent. That happens. Now you can say, okay, now let's change the mitochondria in the brain. You can, like, open up the brain, inject a little something that either boosts the mitochondria or inhibit, inactivate the mitochondria, increase r- or decrease resistance. And then you ask, does this change how the animal appears to feel? How do the animals behave in terms of anxiety or social interactions with other animals, sociality or dominance? Hundred percent. So the, the, the best science shows it goes both ways. So how you feel can change the mitochondria. The mitochondria can change probably how you feel.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And so, and again, we're theorizing here. If I don't have purpose in my life, it's gonna change the mitochondria. And then if it, if my mitochondria becomes more inefficient-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... then what? What will I notice as the next symptom?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah, probably fatigue is the first thing that kind of starts to pop up. You feel drained. You don't feel you have, you know, enough energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Burnout?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Probably feels like burnout, and you start to lose enthusiasm for, you know, for the future. Uh, you become more pessimistic. So there's kind of a constellation of things we call depression or, you know, burnout, or we put labels on these things. But really every person starts to experience life as less enjoyable, less purposeful, less meaningful, um, regardless of the, the diagnostic title we put on it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Which is interesting 'cause I've in, I've interviewed a few people that are experts on the subject of depression and also addiction, frankly.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And one of the things that I remember Johann Hari saying to me, who wrote a book called Lost Connections, is that in some cultures, the cure that they apply for depressive symptoms is giving someone purpose in their life.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's so powerful. M- my hunch is that most of what we call depression is a loss of coherence. And
- 1:46:22 – 1:51:07
What Being Judged Does to Your Body's Energy System
- MPDr. Martin Picard
when we're isolated, uh, we did a study recently to look at the energetics of mental stress. When you feel like you're being pulled aside and judged and... Right? What does that do energetically to the body? And, and there's this protein marker in the blood that reflects energy friction, energy resistance, right? If the mitochondria can't flow energy smoothly, this protein gets made, and then it's in kind of a blood biomarker. It's elevated in cancer, where we think there's increased energy resistance. It's elevated in Alzheimer's, where we think there's increased energy resistance in the brain. It's elevated in diabetes, where there's increased energy resistance with the insulin resistance. It's elevated in all sorts of pathologies, hypertension and heart disease, and it's a marker that the organism energetically is not doing well. There's... It's not efficient, right? That's almost a marker of inefficiency. We did this study where you bring people in, we put an intravenous line so we can measure the blood markers, uh, and then we tell them, "Okay, just relax. Everything's fine. You're doing great." And then they, they sit down, they relax for 30 minutes. Cortisol goes down, heart rate goes down, blood pressure goes down. And then our lovely study coordinator, Catherine, walked into the room and then looked at the participants and, "Now you're gonna be judged. You're gonna have to deliver a speech, and here's the situation. You were in a shopping mall. You were... You know, you grabbed this, this scarf. You put it on just to try, but then the security guard caught you, and then they're accusing you of shoplifting. So now you're in court. You need to defend yourself in front of the s- the, the judge, and you need to tell the judge what should happen to the security guard. Should he lose his job or..." And then we tell them, "You have two minutes to prepare your three-minute defense in front of the judge." Most people start to feel the, the anxiety, and then we, we monitor heart rate at the same time and blood pressure, and, and then we draw blood. And so you can see everyone's physiology wasting energy, right? The energetic cost of stress. [laughs] You see this on the monitor on the other side, you know, in the control room. And then we put a camera in front of them that mocks, you know, video re- records them. And then we have a white coat-wearing old white man who stands six feet in front of them, looks at them straight in the eyes, say, "Start talking." And then they have to, uh, look into, into the camera, and they do their, their defense, and they know someone's looking at them. And what we saw was that this energy stress marker goes up just with mental stress. You're not doing exercise. You're n- not doing anything strenuous. You're just going through this phase of, "What's gonna happen to me, to my ego, to, to my sense of self?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
So what's the downstream consequence of this thing, this stress chemical being in your body?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. So that protein is called GDF15.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Growth differentiation factor 15. The name doesn't matter. But that energetic stress marker, you're asking the right question. What does it do? And what does it matter? And it turns out this protein goes to the brain.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And that protein can be made by any organ in the body except one, the brain. What is it doing? It's very useful to know where, where's the receptor, right? 'Cause you need to have, for signaling and biology to happen, you need a signal, and you need a, a receptor, a sensor, right? Uh, where's the receptor for this protein, do you think? Only in one organ in the body.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is it in here?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
It's right in here. [laughs] Yeah, so in the brainstem. The, the brainstem is where kind of the, the- ... basic survival systems of the body, uh, are, and there's a region in the brainstem called the area postrema. Doesn't matter. It's, it's known as the vomiting and nausea center for the brain.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wait, so if something happens, I'm extremely stressed, the, the world is judging me, this protein goes into my blood, and then it goes up into my brainstem and it docks in there.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Correct.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then what happens?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And then turns out the brain interpret this as there's something running out of energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
There's something running out of energy. Okay.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Something in the body is not right. There's something running out of energy w- and then the brain makes two decisions, very similar to when you're sick. That protein, GDF15, is called a cytokine. It's the same thing that immune cells produce when they're activated during an infection.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay, so your body thinks you're sick.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then what?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And then does two things. Save energy, conserve energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So you lose motivation.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yes. Lose motivation.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Feel depressed.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Feel depressed.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Can't go to the gym.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yes. Doesn't feel worth it. We know th- this specifically from animal studies. If you inject animals with GDF15, they hunch in a ball and they don't do anything, right? They go into this sickness behavior. That's number one. Number two, the brain says something's running out of energy. First, let's conserve energy, number one, but two, let's mobilize energy, right? Let's put glucose into the blood. Let's put fat into the blood because there might be cells out there that are, you know, running out of energy and we need to rescue them.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Are you gonna get f-
- 1:51:07 – 1:51:30
Why Stress Causes Visceral Fat Gain
- SBSteven Bartlett
belly fat?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Visceral fat, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, you're gonna get belly fat from this.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. When stress hormones are up, right, and you're increasing blood glucose, increasing, uh, blood lipids, if the rest of the body doesn't need it, which is what kind of happens, uh, during a stress response like this, that fat gets lodged where it shouldn't, uh, called, uh, ectopic fat, and that's what belly fat is.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay, so let's go a bit further. This is happening.
- 1:51:30 – 1:53:03
What Happens When Chronic Stress Turns Into Disease?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, if this is chronic, I guess it's gonna lead at some point to disease.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm. What the best studies show on this is when you have high level of this energetic stress marker, this protein, you're more likely, if you follow people, the studies were done where you take the blood, you measure this protein. Some people have very high levels, some people have very low levels, uh, and then you f- wait 14 years. This is actually a study from the UK called the UK Biobank. So if you measure the protein, energetic stress cytokine, and you ask what happens to people with high GDF15 versus people with low GDF15? Turns out people with high GDF15 are more likely to develop mental illness.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Bipolar disease, depression, schizophrenia. People with high GDF15 are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, hypertension. People with high GDF15 are more likely to be dead. At this point, we don't know if it makes a difference if it's from mental stress, if it's from physical stress, if it's from an organ struggling, right, that's sick and trying to, to heal itself. High energy stress, high energy resistance in the body based on this marker is called a prognostic indicator. It's an indicator that something bad might happen. And, uh, and, and people with high GDF15 also, they don't like to take the stairs. They don't like to walk for pleasure. They don't like to go out to the gym. They don't like to go out with friends. Um-
- SBSteven Bartlett
They don't like to exercise or-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Correct. Yeah, 'cause it, it... If you're getting the signal, like when you're sick, right? If GDF15 is made somewhere in your body, it goes to your brain, you're getting the signal, you're running out of energy.
- 1:53:03 – 1:56:28
How to Reduce GDF-15—and Why It Matters
- SBSteven Bartlett
So I guess the, the question everyone's asking as they're listening to this now is how do I prevent GDF15 or whatever it's called, this stress cytokine thing that goes and docks in my brain?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How do I prevent it from floating around in my blood so often?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Good question. Taking the time to feel [laughs] . Meditation.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Meditation. My bloody fiancé was right.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Uh, what we know is there's some initial evidence that GDF15 increases throughout the day, right? Uh, so the purpose of sleep then might be to reduce energy resistance, right? Like what we were talking about earlier, it's not about having, like finding this one optimal level of resistance and sticking there. It's about this movement of increasing resistance and then decreasing resistance, and increasing resistance, decreasing resistance. Kind of this movement of life.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I guess all the other things we talked about earlier as it relates to lifestyle factors, like keeping away from these sort of extreme stresses, eating way too much, starving oneself, oxidative stress. None of the solutions here are rocket science, are they?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you know what I mean?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like if we just look back in time of how we used to live a l- you know, a little bit more human out in nature with people, with friends, off screens.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Eating stuff that grows in the ground or has legs and runs. A lot of that is pretty, like a pretty simple playbook for, like, how to live a good life.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And to not be so bloody stressed out all the time.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
I think part of it is, yes, living a life that is more aligned with the way we evolved, right? Which is connecting to other human beings and not eating too much and, um, I think that's one piece and, but that's, like everyone knows this [laughs] .
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Why aren't we doing it? And I think part of the reason is because we, we have this kind of misconception of ourselves as a molecular machine, right? And it's like you need to maintain your car. If I'm like a, a machine, if I'm like a car, then I'm just gonna put more fuel in and I should feel better, and then you do it, then you, you eat more, and then you don't feel better, and that's, I think, extremely disempowering. People want to be empowered, and people want to have knowledge, but they want to know what to do so they can be their best version of themselves, so they can flourish.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So you know what's interesting? Before you arrived, I, I did something I've never done before. I went through all of the interviews you've done, and I looked at all the comments because I wanted to understand the people that have listened to you frequently, what, what, what, what is it they feel like they would love to ask you or what they haven't gotten from other interviews? One of the most popular comments, which was seen roughly 10% of time, was the audience asking about supplements, and the question that they had is that they know you personally lean on lifestyle interventions, but the biohacking community is very interested in compounds like methylene blue, urotheline A, and N- NAD+ boosters. In your opinion, what does the sort of clinical data or clinical consensus actually say about these supplements? Are they a shortcut? Are they a Band-Aid? Are they useful?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
I think they're shortcuts to To some states, I lean away from them because I think once we start to think that there's a magic pill to solve a complex issue, to solve, you know, the way that you're feeling becomes like the, "Oh, there's a magic pill for this," and then you don't need to bring awareness to what you are.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But can I do both? [laughs]
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs] I think so. In, in some cases, I don't really know how methylene blue does everything it's supposed to be doing. What, uh, biologically, methylene blue seems to be able to give electrons to the mitochondria.
- 1:56:28 – 2:00:23
Can Supplements Actually Improve Mitochondrial Health?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So maybe there's something there that methylene blue can kind of relieve energy resistance in the mitochondria. NAD+ is probably the best supported, uh, intervention to reduce inflammation. Also, it's an electron carrier, so it take electrons from food and then gives them to the electron transport chain, so the mitochondria can flow those electrons with low resistance. So if you're depleted of NAD, there's-- that's gonna cause increased resistance for electrons to flow through, yeah, the, this metabolic circuit.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So NAD+ seems to calm things down a little bit in terms of energy processing and if-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. And most people are not deficient of NAD+, so giving more to the system might not help, but for, for reasons I don't really understand, it seems like it helps some people, and it, it makes people, uh, feel more energetic. So-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is, is that in pill form? Like, how do people take NAD+? 'Cause I know there were some, like, drips one time that some guy gave me.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yes. I think there, there's, uh, oral supplements that are, uh, precursors to NAD. If you eat NAD directly, it doesn't-- the bioavailability it's called, it doesn't get into, you know, your cells very well. You can inject, infuse IV intravenously, uh, NAD+ directly, and then that, that gets to your cells better. Um, that's not a, uh, an approved or kind of recommended medical intervention, but I've seen people with mitochondrial disease, you know, saying that it helps them and, and normal healthy people as well who feel more energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about this urolithin A?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Urolithin A is a, a new compound that seems to stimulate the degradation of bad mitochondria. So we talked about autophagy, mitophagy earlier. So a cell that has 1,000 mitochondria, there are always some that are getting a little old, and then eventually they're degraded, especially if you fast, right? If the cell is a little starved, it's gonna degrade the ones that are least functional, and there's kind of a whole selection process that happens inside the cell to know which mitochondria are bad, which ones are good. But the bad mitochondria get targeted, and then they get degraded if you're fasting or if you're pushing the system, like during exercise. What uro-urolithin A seems to do is to kind of accelerate this process, right? So it accelerates the degradation of the bad mitochondria, the mitophagy, so that the cell has to make more of the good ones.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm looking at some of the studies here, and it says the cl-clinical evidence for urolithin A has rapidly expanded over the last few years, transitioning from a compelling animal data study to highly rigorous placebo-controlled human clinical trials. And overwhelmingly, the human research confirms that urolithin A targets mitochondrial dysfunction and systemic inflammation, with one study in 2022 in the Jama Network Open study journal, um, where they took adults aged 65 to 90 and gave one of them placebo, one of the groups placebo, and the other urolithin A for four months. And at the end of that, they found that the group that were given urolithin A showed statistically significant improvements in muscle endurance and a reduction in biomarkers of mitochondrial inefficiency.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I should be on urolithin A then.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Everyone should.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you take any of that?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs] I don't.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You don't take any supplements?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
I don't. I'm skeptical of this. You know, there, there's always kind of a new supplement that does amazing things, especially if it cures mitochondrial dysfunction. Mitochondria have dozens of functions.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
And, uh, so the term mitochondrial dysfunction is, I think, a little misleading. Like, there was a lot of hype about NAD. There was a lot of hype about coenzyme Q, CoQ10. Uh, there was a lot of hype about all sorts of things, anti-inflammatory, you know, berries and antioxidants was a big thing like 10, 20 years ago. Turned out not to, to be so useful. Uh, actually impairs normal adaptation and signaling if you eat too many an-antioxidants. Um, so urolithin A feels like the next fad. Uh, maybe it's real. Uh, I think the science is fairly compelling, but I'm... I, I trust the, the wisdom of my body and my mitochondria more than I trust the, the pharma company that's trying to, to make and sell this.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what does that mean
- 2:00:23 – 2:02:22
How to Trust the Wisdom of Your Body
- SBSteven Bartlett
in, in practical terms, trusting the wisdom of your body? Like, what does that mean for you?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Uh, it means, um, recognizing that I am the, the energy that's flowing through this thing, and this thing is nature. Like, we are a piece of nature. Something that's true across the animal kingdom and the, the living kingdom is things heal. And we don't think about this in biomedicine. We think about diseases. We study, you know, when things go wrong, and we try to understand the molecular, you know, features of diseases. There's not really a science of the healing process. But the basis of health, it's clear. You need to heal continuously. Heal, you know, repair the DNA that's damaged. Repair the mitochondria that are getting old. You get rid of them, you make new ones. Like preserving the wholeness of the system. To heal means to become whole again.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is that contingent on me being in a natural environment for my nature to heal? Because if you think about me and you sat in here now, we're sat in a, like a dark bunker basically with no sunlight.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs] Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And listen, most of us live in such a dark bunker with very little sunlight.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So we then have to take vitamin D.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So because we live outside of our true nature, I'm wondering if actually we do need to take some supplements 'cause-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... we're not gonna heal.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
We are gonna heal.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Even, but if I sit in here all day, I'm not gonna get vitamin D, and then that's gonna cause problems.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yes. So we're not in the optimal environment. When you're in that kind of environment, so I think there... And, and there's good research showing if you put a plant in a hospital room, patients recover faster. There's been studies looking at, like, windows with natural light, then you see nature, if you're in a hospital, for example. People recover better. And there is good data on, like, nature exposure. Is it, like- The more better oxygen, you know, a little tiny bit more oxygen if you're in a forest. Is it like the phytochemicals, the things that are produced by the, by the plants? Like we don't really know what it is. Is it just seeing green? Seeing something that hears, that sounds, and looks like what you evolved to be around? So we don't really know, but we know exposure to nature kind of helps calm the body and somehow improve recovery. [paper rustles]
- 2:02:22 – 2:03:26
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- SBSteven Bartlett
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- 2:03:26 – 2:05:12
Can Red Light Therapy Really Support Your Mitochondria?
- SBSteven Bartlett
also wanted to know about from you, which was even more discussed, was about red light therapy.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Red light therapy as a support for your mitochondria?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Interestingly, red light therapy is a pretty big thing now. There are hundreds of different devices, helmets, a hairbrush [laughs] , band.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I think, I think I've got one here, actually. I think this is... This, this is a red light th-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Therapy hairbrush?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Therapy hairbrush.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[laughs] Yeah. Uh, someone was just telling me their dad, uh, is part of a study now, he puts a helmet with red light, you know, every day because he has, like, pre-dementia. By doing this, the idea is, uh, light is energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Right? Energy is not a thing, but it's the potential for change. It's the capacity to change something. Red light like this, especially the red, the infrared that you don't see with your eye, can penetrate tissue. It can go through your hair, through your skull, and then into your brain, and then there it seems to do something and change metabolism. So how is it doing this? The best hypothesis we have is that for light to do something in biology, there needs to be something biology that resonates with it, right? That can, uh, offer the right amount of resistance, right? To the photons, the red light photons hit, and then there's transformation of energy. That receptor, the antenna, the cellular antenna for red light seems to be mitochondria. So there's something in the mitochondria where the electrons flow and then boom, they meet with oxygen to become metabolic water. Uh, that is called cytochrome c oxidase.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm gonna try and say this in layman's terms. If, if I take red light and I put it on my skin, it doesn't even need to touch my skin. I can put it just close to my skin.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The red light is going into the mitochondria of my cell, and it's helping the mitochondria to become more efficient.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
That's the idea.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So I should
- 2:05:12 – 2:10:33
What You Need to Know Before Trying Red Light Therapy
- SBSteven Bartlett
wake up every day and do bloody red light then.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
If you're deficient in that, in that way, that might be good. Uh, that might also offset, you know, the, the natural order that your body has, has created.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, what, what do you mean by that? You think it might be-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
I think that in, in general, that's why I kind of veer away from supplements because the organism is this beautiful dynamic equilibrium of like everything, you know, energetically dancing with each other, where you have the mitochondria to transform energy and then, you know, genes are expressed and then this other cell is doing this, this cell is doing this, and there's this beautiful balance. And, uh, when the system is out of balance, now there's signals like inflammation, right? Signals of this imbalance, uh, at an energetic level, and then that turns into molecular level, and then the system tries to come back into balance, right? And-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wow. I never realized this, that too much red light can be bad for you.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
I don't know if there are studies that show too much red light is bad for you, but there's... Like phototoxicity is a thing, and there... You can buy a whole bed [laughs] of like really intense light. And I think if you stay too long in those, that's probably not good. There's a, a very compelling study that was published last year, uh, on blood glucose regulation, and I know you've talked about blood glucose on other episodes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
How much glucose in the blood is really important because it causes this like energy resistance, energy friction in all of your cells, especially the brain perhaps. So when you eat a bunch of sugar or you eat a meal with carbohydrates, blood glucose typically spikes. If you get stressed out, just psychological stress will increase blood glucose. So those glucose spikes can increase energy resistance and then start to cause damage, accelerate aging, and so on.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So the... what the body does in the normal healthy organism is able to regulate blood glucose. So if you eat a big meal, there's amount enough insulin that's released, and then the glucose can come into cells, into the muscles, and, and to the fat and, and then you preserve, you know, what's called normal glycemia, normal blood glucose. It turns out if you shine a red light on the back of people as they ingest a big bunch of glucose, [laughs] the spike in glucose is not as high. And what they did in that study that was interesting is they measured mitochondrial metabolism through the mouth. You can measure oxygen coming in and CO2 coming out, which is coming from mitochondria. So you can measure the, the, the energy metabolism, which is really the mitochondrial metabolism as people are doing this. And what they found is that people who had red light on their back, their metabolism was actually, uh, a little higher. So the electrons, the flow of energy was increased with the red light and, and they think that might be why the glucose didn't spike as much because the electrons that came into the blood were able to flow through the mitochondria. Um, so this points to some regulation of energy regulation in inside the mitochondria that I don't fully understand, but I think there, there's something promising here, and it certainly supports, you know, the idea that energy modalities outside of your cells- Uh, you know, light or electromagnetic fields, other human beings that are, you know, you energy, energetic process is affecting my metabolism all the time. [laughs] We respond to each other energetically, metabolically. Uh, I think it, it supports that idea that you're an energetic process, and you're influenced by other forms of energy, even if you don't see it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm really, um, stunned by this idea that there is such thing as getting too much red light and that that can have harm for your cells because there is-- I'll be honest, you know, there's been a couple of times where I just put that thing on and maybe, like, read a book for a long time-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... like, an hour or two.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Did you ever feel adverse effects from this?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I never felt a-averse effects. However, looking at some of the studies, it seems to suggest that red light therapy follows a bell curve model.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
They found in this one particular study I was reading about in two thousand and nine that low to moderate doses of light perfectly stimulate the mitochondria to produce ATP and a healthy small burst of ROS, reactive oxygen species, to trigger cellular repair. However, this particular study also showed that when the dose is pushed too high, the light creates massive amounts of reactive oxidative species, and this excess oxidative stress overwhelms the cell's antioxidant defenses, completely shutting down mitochondrial respiration and in-in-inducing cellular apoptosis, cell death, instead of healing.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm. Yep. Th-this bell-shaped relationship is something we see in many domains of biology and physiology, same as, like, workout, exercising. Like, most people know if you do a workout that's, like, half an hour, an hour, or two hours, if you're an athlete and you're, like, really well-conditioned, it's fine. And then you recover for, you know, twenty-three hours after your one-hour workout, and that's great. It actually makes you more efficient. It gives you the idea, the impression you have more energy, which is really e-energy flowing more efficiently. But if you work out for eight hours-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah
- MPDr. Martin Picard
... that's not good, right? So the-- too much, you, you crash. Not enough, you're not at your optimal. So there's where is the optimal state? And biology and the whole mind-body unit has kind of worked out through evolution and through your life and development to find this sweet spot.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If you know how to listen to it.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that's, that's easier said than done.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yes. If you can live in alignment, and that-
- SBSteven Bartlett
There's a lot of noise out there.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
There is. You know, for the same reason
- 2:10:33 – 2:27:11
How to Listen to What Your Energy Is Telling You
- MPDr. Martin Picard
you closed your eyes earlier when I asked you to kind of feel inside, this is a good analogy for, I think, what it means to kind of listen to our energy. And maybe we could do a little exercise if you're interested.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Sure.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. So we'll do a, a little exercise. Uh, you can close your eyes if you want.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Everyone at home also close your eyes unless you are driving.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. And we'll use the breath. So you can start by just feeling your body. You can feel kind of gravity pulling your body down into the chair. Then we'll take a little breath in and then breath out and then all the way down and then hold your breath with empty lungs. And then hold there for as long as you can. And just pay attention to the sensations that are emerging in your body, whether it's in your belly, in your chest, in your neck, in your head. And the longer you wait, the more intense those sensations are. You can hold for as long as you want. And when you can't, then just take a, take a breath. Deep breath. What does that feel like?
- SBSteven Bartlett
It felt-- I felt lots of vibrations.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Uh-huh.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Sort of like waves. I felt like kind of like waves going across my body. But I-- It was almost like I could feel the energy moving through my body.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's kind of how it felt. I suddenly was very apparent, clear of my heartbeat. I could feel everything-
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in a way that I can't typically feel everything.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. Any kind of negative feeling or any sensation that was uncomfortable?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I mean, it-- Near the end when I couldn't, when I hadn't breathed in a while, it was a bit uncomfortable.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. What did that feel like?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like, like I was starving for oxygen, like I was starving for air.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. You know, running out of air and, like, drowning is one of the most horrible, like, a-aversive experience that I think we evolve to dislike, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
So what, what, what was happening there in our bodies as we were doing this is oxygen is being consumed by mitochondria continuously, right? Every millisecond, ch-ch-ch-ch, mitochondria consume oxygen, and now you're not bringing oxygen through your breath. And then they produce CO2, carbon dioxide, right? So mitochondria are burning the oxygen little bit by little bit, and then they're producing carbon dioxide, CO2. And we evolved to feel those signals very, very sensitively.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So that's the pressure that I felt.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
That buildup.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Well, I think that... Yes. So the subjective experience, right, what you described there is an experience of energy starting to stall. 'Cause if there's no oxygen in your mitochondria, the electron's like, "Uh, where do I go?" And then there's, like, extreme level of resistance.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Like, the most extreme case of energy resistance, I think that most people will be familiar with, is, like, a heart attack.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
My dad had a heart attack a few years ago, and he woke up during the night with this terrible contraction, like a pressure in, in the chest, and he said it was, like, four hundred pounds, like, pressure on his chest. Terrible pain. Worst pain he's ever had. What, what's happening? Like, where, where, what is that pain? The source of that pain really is blood flow can no longer bring oxygen to mitochondria in the heart.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, so the mitochondria are, like, panicking.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- 2:27:11 – 2:28:11
The Best Exercise Routine for Healthier Mitochondria
- SBSteven Bartlett
which we talked about earlier, if someone wants to maximize mitochondrial biogenesis, what is the sweet spot for training? Is it strictly zone two cardio or high intensity interval training or resistance training or something else? Is there like an optimal type of training?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. I think the key principle here is anything that will make you breathe harder-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah
- MPDr. Martin Picard
... means that your mitochondria are working harder.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay, but you don't want to do it too long.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
If you're not trained, right, like you're a regular guy, I'm not trained now. I, I, I, I run for like 20 minutes every other day. That's my, you know, routine. That's what I, I have enough time to do, and I feel like it moves energy through my body in the right way [laughs] .
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
But if I go and I try to run a marathon, I'm gonna injure myself. You know, I'm gonna hurt myself. So that would be too much for me. And so y- I think that comes back to the point of like feeling into your energy. We call this mitoception, right? Feeling into your mitochondria and what's sustainable. So I think there's a, an individualized, you know, stance that we need to take towards this.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And the last question
- 2:28:11 – 2:30:14
Which Blood Tests Can Reveal Your Mitochondrial Health?
- SBSteven Bartlett
from the audience was, "Right now, mitochondrial health feels a bit invisible. Are there any accessible, reliable tests like ATP blood tests or specific biomarkers that a normal person can use to accurately measure their mitochondrial function?"
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Working on it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You're working on it?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Yeah. So our team is working on it. Uh, and so we're building, uh, a platform, a technology platform that would allow people to tune into their mitochondria, to mitocept, right? So do-- you feel your energy through your mitochondria, uh, and then you can make better decisions. Like ketogenic diet, is this helping you? Is this not helping you?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Uh, this new relationship, is this sucking away your energy or [laughs] is this giving you energy? This new job, this new, you know, direction in life. Um, there's so much. I mean, all of the important decisions we make really, you know, we make with how we feel. Like you wake up in the morning and either you feel great and you can change things, or you wake up and, and you don't want to be here. Uh, that's an experience. And before you get there, you know, on the dark side, there's all of these decision points that, that we face and the power of discernment, right? And what we talked about like with Steve Jobs, like this is the way and, uh, and then you, you know, you feel strong about this. Discerning what's right for you, what's not right for you, what's the right direction, is it the right time or not, those are decisions we make, you know, with our guts. And there are many people who, who swear that this is the only way they make decisions, and if they make decisions rationally, that ends up biting them in the butt.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Because I, I think the, this thing and this energetic system is the most sensitive instrument that we have to know whether the content of our lives is aligned with who we are as individuals. And that requires that we feel into this movement and into our sensations and into, um, the experiences we have. So that's the, the barometer that really guides us through life, like a GPS, an energetic GPS.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Dr. Martin, we have a
- 2:30:14 – 2:35:43
The Personal Loss That Changed Everything
- SBSteven Bartlett
closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question that has been left for you is: What is the most difficult thing you ever overcame, and how did it make you the person you are today?
- MPDr. Martin Picard
[sighs] So I just felt my energy change.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm. I saw it change.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
I felt like this sinking feeling. About a year ago, um, my fiancée and I were expecting a baby, [sighs] and we were about three months into the pregnancy, and it was great. We were excited. Um, we were calling this new life, "New life" [laughs] . And we talked, you know, affectionately about it, and we said like, you know, "When new life comes this," and we both have a, a child and, um, and she was in Canada. She came back and then, uh, and that evening in, in bed, she had this like crazy pain that started and, uh, and we were both super scared. There was a bit of bleeding and then, and then contractions started to come really fast. Not supposed to happen at three months. Um, and then I was like, "Oh, maybe this is just like a bump in the road and, and you know, things are gonna be fine." Um, so we ended up having a miscarriage, and Nirosha didn't want to go to the hospital, so we did this at home, and it was terrible. It was really, really sad, really, you know, gut-wrenching. So we were both devastated when, you know, new life left us and, and then I had this moment of like, "Why me?" Like, "Why the fuck this has happened to me?" Like, I'm, I think I'm a good person. I'm doing my best to bring good in the world. I try to be a good partner, a good, um, you know, leader. I try to... Yeah. Why is this happening to me? So this was like this victim, you know, mentality mindset, and I've learned through my 40 or so years that I think a, a useful stance to take in life is to assume that there's something to learn from everything you go through.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
I don't know this for sure. It's not a, a scientific fact. It's more of a, uh, of an experience turned into kind of a way of, of living, more of a belief. So I was like, "But how could there be something to learn from something so terrible?" Um, and I, I had to sit with this, and two days later, after the baby had gone and Nirosha and I had sat in the shower and cried, and the smell was horrible and just it was death. Like, death was around us, around me, and I felt angry and I felt sad. Um, and I just sat down and, and wrote. I, I just-- And that's my way now of letting things flow. Different people have different ways. And then, and I was writing about my experience and why now and, and I ask, "What is there to learn from this?" And a very clear answer came up: slowing down. [sighs] And that hit really hard because throughout my whole life, I've moved pretty quickly through life. I had a very short, you know, PhD, and then I became a professor very quickly and, um, and grew a team and, um, and, like, moving fast is kind of something that's like a personality trait that I, I do. And, uh, and I think sometimes it's served me. It's allowed me to do some things that would not have been possible otherwise. But at other times, I think it's hurt me, and it's like this drive, this inner drive of, like, things must happen now, must move fast. I think it's hurt other people around and has impaired my ability to be an effective leader because I then maybe I lacked sens-sensitivity to other people who don't move at my pace. [chuckles] Uh, so slowing down really kind of, um, hit home. Things were, like, clear. It was like looking at a canvas, and there was more contrast.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MPDr. Martin Picard
Like, the things that really mattered were, like, sharper, right? And all of this other shit, like these obligations and these things that I had said yes to or like, you know, the contrast was so much sharper. Um, and this lesson, I, I took this as a lesson. Slowing down, I think has allowed me to be a better listener, to be a better, you know, more compassionate father and, uh, scientist. Uh, I think it's changed me, and I don't know that I would have learned that lesson in another way. We are the, this energetic process that's shaped by the sum of our experiences and the people we meet. Like, I'll never be the same after today from having sat with you at this table and you opening the door not just to scientific inquiry, but to human experience. Um, yeah, the-- We, we change all the time. We transform, and what shapes us is those kind of energetic interactions and, um, yeah, everything we go through.
Episode duration: 2:38:37
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Transcript of episode 6xlmaorRY0w
