Joe Rogan Experience #1178 - Dr. Rhonda Patrick

1. 0:02 – 1:00

   New parent life: baby milestones, joy, and the “scientist brain” at home

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:02

      Have you been here since he had a kid?

   2. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick0:03

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:04

      Yeah. That's right.

   4. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick0:04

      I was here last, right, about four months after. I didn't sleep at all. It's amazing. I, like, was able to talk for ...

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:11

      And now your kid is how old?

   6. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick0:12

      13 months.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      Wow. Wait till they start talking.

   8. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick0:17

      He, oh, he says, I mean, he's, he's now, like, his new thing is he says, "All done. All done." So he'll say it, like, he'll say it before I change his diaper 'cause he doesn't want me to go through that, you know?

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:29

      (laughs)

   10. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick0:29

       He says, "All done. All done." (laughs) But he'll say it, like, he'll lay in his crib and say it, like, when he's ready to get out, you know, um, of bed early in the morning and I'm, like, waiting. I'm like, maybe he'll go back to sleep.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:38

       Now, b- being a scientist and having a child, are you, are you, like, cognizant of, like, every single factor that's taking place, like nutrition, all the input, emotional input, environment? Like, must be kind of mind-blowing.

   12. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick0:59

       And ex- mind-exhausting too.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:00

       Yeah.

2. 1:00 – 7:08

   Plastics, BPA exposure, and endocrine disruption risks (especially in pregnancy)

   1. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:00

      Yes, it is. I'll give you an example right now, like, 'cause we're traveling.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:03

      Right.

   3. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:04

      And, um, you know, I, I'm, I'm pretty ... This, the BPA, so plastic bottles, you know, I'm having to give him water and he's, like, obsessed. For whatever reason, he's obsessed with drinking ... I brought his, like, you know, n- nice cup, um, but he doesn't want to drink it out of his cup. He wants to drink it out of these plastic bottles 'cause it's novel and it's-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:23

      Right.

   5. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:23

      ... crinkly sound and anyways. You know, so I'm like, all I can think about is the BPA and, you know, B- am I, am I exposing him to too much and what's it doing? And ...

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:33

      And does that BPA, is it leech only when it gets hot? Is that how it works?

   7. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:36

      So, and that's another thing I was thinking about in my hotel today because (laughs) I was making a coffee with one of those, um, one of those paper cups that has the plastic lining.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:46

      Mm-hmm.

   9. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:46

      And like, I don't know what's in the plastic lining, BPA or some of the BPA alternatives which have also been shown to have-

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:52

       What does BPA stand for?

   11. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:53

       Uh, bisphenol A. So, um, y- to answer your question, there's been experiments done that have shown heat, so boiling, boiling water and putting it in plastic increases the BPA that leaches into the, the solution, into the w- the water by, like, 55 fold. So yes, definitely heating it up is, like, way worse. And so one of the things I'm always now thinking about is, you know, going to Starbucks, whatever, the plastic lining they're putting in those cups when you get your hot tea or your hot coffee, um, I don't know if there's BPA, but there's now studies that have come out, and these studies have been done in animals, that show like BPS and some of the other, um, BPA replacements also have negative consequences on endocrine system, on reproduction. In some, in some cases, they're passed on to multiple generations. Now, how much of that is actually translates to humans, it's unknown, um, but there have been studies at least with BPA that have shown that, you know, you give a person a s- a single dose of BPA and it disrupts, like, their insulin sensitivity. Um, it also plays a role in, like, um, um, causing problems with in vitro fertilization. So it's d- you know, disrupting hormones and things like that. So I was really cognizant about it during pregnancy because, you know, typically, um, we do detoxify, "detoxify" it, uh, quite well. Uh, the half-life is, like, uh, less than five hours and we excrete it through urine. It also comes out through sweat, by the way, which is really good. Um, but preg- but, you know, when you're pregnant, for whatever reason, the placenta, it, you know, you, you basically take the BPA, your body ... it's in your body and your, your liver will, you know, inactivate it to this, like, more benign compound. But when it crosses over to the placenta, it gets in, it gets activated again. And so it's like that's why the effects are much more, uh, robust always on, like, the developing fetus. And so I was really made sure I was, like, not drinking anything out of a plastic bottle or anything like that d- while I was pregnant just because, I mean, I don't know. (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan3:51

       Right.

   13. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick3:51

       At the end of the day, there's, there's a lot of studies that have been done in animals and just how much of that, you know, translate, how significant is it, it's really hard to say. Um, but it's certainly concern.

   14. JRJoe Rogan4:02

       And it's probably a compounding effect, right? With all the other environmental factors, pollution, particulates in the air-

   15. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick4:08

       Oh, yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan4:08

       ... chemicals, all the other jazz that we take into our body all the time.

   17. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick4:12

       Right. Yeah. And then the fact that actually aging bottles, like, as you, for whatever reason, as a bottle sits, like, if you keep using, for example, the study was done with baby bottles. If you keep using a baby bottle and putting liquid in, as the, the bottle aged, more BPA was leached out into the liquid. So for whatever re- I know, it's just-

   18. JRJoe Rogan4:31

       (exhales)

   19. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick4:31

       So it's another thing I'm thinking about with all, like, my son's stuff, it's like, everything's plastic and he's chewing on it. It's like, you know, at some point, you just can't, like ... (laughs) there's, you can't control everything, right?

   20. JRJoe Rogan4:41

       How many kids do you think you're gonna have?

   21. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick4:43

       Right now, um, one is, it's, it's, I am so satisfied. I'm full of so much joy and it's a lot of work. Um, and I'd, you know, he's 13 months, so I've, I've only had him a little bit over a year. So right now, I'm, I'm really happy with him being special. Um, I, I don't know. I think it's likely that maybe one, but I'm not gonna, like, you know, say for sure. It's, it's a lot of work.

   22. JRJoe Rogan5:07

       It's a lot of work.

   23. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick5:08

       Yeah. And, you know, it just, adding another, it's like, well, y- you know, you're gonna ... I've put a lot of energy and time, you know, I spent a lot of time with him doing lots of things and of course all the nutrition and all that. But, um, it's how do you do that with two? It's ...

   24. JRJoe Rogan5:24

       It's ver- it's very satisfying though watching them play with their siblings. It's really interesting. Like, my two youngest, my eight and my ten, like, watching them play together, it's, it's adorable watching them hold hands-

   25. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick5:35

       Mm-hmm.

   26. JRJoe Rogan5:35

       ... and do stuff together. It's really fun. Like, and they develop a very unique bond. They fight all the time over nothing. Like, "Give me that, it's mine. It's mine!" Like, and then all of a sudden be like-

   27. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick5:46

       (laughs)

   28. JRJoe Rogan5:46

       ... "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What happened?" You know, like, there's always, like, some blowup 'cause they have zero control of their emotions. Anything that goes wrong, (yells) "Bah!"It's just a floodgate. It's either on or it's off. And, but they're really good at apologizing too, which is really interesting. We've taught them how to do that, how to just say, "Look, everybody gets emotional. It's okay." Apologize and hug it out, and...

   29. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick6:08

       Yeah. I think it's also another thing that we're, is really important, is teaching your, your children how to be happy. Like-

   30. JRJoe Rogan6:14

       Mm-hmm.
3. 7:08 – 13:22

   City living, air pollution, and “invisible” hazards like particulates and brake dust

   1. JRJoe Rogan7:08

      Yeah, who knows? Who knows what's happening? Yeah, I mean, and what's, what's of major concern to me is living in, uh, major metropolitan areas with the constant pollution, and, uh, I was reading a study that was talking about living in any major metropolitan area like New York City can take many years off of your life. Just from living there, it will shorten your life.

   2. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick7:33

      Yeah, I've been reading multiple studies over the years about air pollution and, you know, there's, there's compounds in air pollution that are carcinogens like, you know, benzene, and there's also the particulate matter and how these, you know, how air pollution is, um, increasing the risk for stroke, heart attack, Alzheimer's disease, um, and this is, like, in dose-dependent manners and of course there's all sorts of confounding factors and you can never really show causality, although some animal studies have been showing causality. Um, it's, and, and some of these things are really bad in developing nations that don't have a lot of regulatory, um, reg- regulations on, um, for example, like automobile exhaust. And so some, some developing countries have, like, children coming down with, like, strokes and stuff, like early, like young.

   3. JRJoe Rogan8:17

      Mm.

   4. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick8:17

      Teenage. So, um, and it's been, this has, of course, you know, been linked to air pollution. Uh, so it's, it's definitely a concern, and then there's all sorts of studies talking about, um, you know, of course asthma, but, you know, happiness and, and, and brain function and all that, you know? So, and it's something, like, I live off of a busy, a road, and then there's noise pollution, which is another, I mean. So it, I, it's, like, something that I've been, like, really, really aware of and trying to, like, move out, away from, uh, busy, trafficky areas, um, par- particularly for my son, you know, because I'm just, I'm very concerned about the health risks.

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:56

      Yeah. I wonder also the, uh, the impact of just being in an urban environment and the fact that it's not really natural, and that maybe a person who's an adult could enjoy living in Manhattan and decide that they get a thrill out of living in the city. But for a baby to grow up around all that concrete and glass and all these sharp, hard edges and right angles, that it's maybe not conducive to healthy brain development, or that it's n- not like what your, what your body or your brain is naturally craving.

   6. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick9:28

      Right. There's been studies looking at, for example, like, people that exercise in a metropolitan area versus, like, out in, like, a park, nature, and the, you know, all sorts of measurements of, you know, depressive symptoms are, are measured after, and the ones that measured, or that did, uh, nature or run were far better, um, at, you know, basically feeling, feeling happier after, after their run than the people that did it in a metropolitan city.

   7. JRJoe Rogan9:53

      That makes sense.

   8. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick9:54

      You know?

   9. JRJoe Rogan9:54

      I mean, I'm thinking that's why people like Central Park in New York City. It just...

   10. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick9:58

       It's like an oasis.

   11. JRJoe Rogan9:59

       Yeah, you get something. I mean, it's really a great place. It's really quite big. One of the things about Central Park, when you're in it, you're like, "Wow, look." So this is weird that this is in the middle of the city, but it's a brilliant move to have this one area. I mean, you think about how much that real estate would be worth if they decided just to shove buildings in there. I mean, Manhattan is one of the most pricey real estate places on the planet Earth. And yet, in the middle of it, they have this big, open, public park area that anyone can just wander around, sit by a tree. It's really a, a very, very smart move.

   12. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick10:32

       Yeah, it is, it is nice.

   13. JRJoe Rogan10:34

       LA should have something like that.

   14. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick10:36

       Is the air pollution... Do you know if the air pollution, what it's like in Manhattan? I mean, they have public-

   15. JRJoe Rogan10:39

       It's terrible.

   16. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick10:39

       It's terrible in Manhattan too.

   17. JRJoe Rogan10:40

       Well, it's not-

   18. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick10:41

       Compared to LA?

   19. JRJoe Rogan10:42

       I think they're probably equally sucky. But the thing that is bothering me, um, is not just the air pollution in terms of, like, the exhaust fumes and the, the ex- exhaust and the smells, but also the brake dust. You know, when I, I first started paying attention to brake dust, and, um, I would always clean it off my wheels, but I would never think about it. Like, oh, there's dust that's on my wheels. I would think, oh, it's just dust on the wheels. And then someone was explaining to me, n- no, that's an environmental hazard that you're breathing in if you live in that environment. When you're around, you know, if you're on Broadway and cars are constantly hitting their brakes around you, there's a puff of that brake dust that is getting in the air with every pump of the brakes.

   20. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick11:24

       Wow.

   21. JRJoe Rogan11:24

       And you're just taking that disgusting stuff into your lungs.

   22. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick11:27

       Yeah, the particulate matter-

   23. JRJoe Rogan11:29

       Yeah.

   24. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick11:29

       ... the stuff that's really, uh, tiny and stuff.

   25. JRJoe Rogan11:31

       Yeah.

   26. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick11:31

       I mean, 'cause that's, like, mesothelioma, right? You're taking in the particulate matter from, like, asbestos.

   27. JRJoe Rogan11:36

       Mm-hmm.

   28. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick11:36

       So in the same... Y- you'd think there'd be similar mechanisms. Maybe not gonna lead to mesothelioma, but that there would be similar mechanisms at play that are, like, you know, damaging organs.

   29. JRJoe Rogan11:47

       Good to visit, not good to stay. That's what I think. I mean, my, I'm, I have no desire. I don't even like living here. I think there's too many people.

   30. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick11:56

       ... yeah, it's... I definitely don't like driving here. Like, it's, uh, like, it's, it's really bad. (laughs)
4. 13:22 – 17:07

   Why the carnivore diet took off—and what people may actually be responding to

   1. GUGuest13:22

      Now, before the podcast started, you were telling me that you wrote a 30-page paper on the carnivore diet.

   2. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick13:31

      It's not a paper.

   3. GUGuest13:32

      Well-

   4. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick13:32

      It's... I definitely spent a lot of time-

   5. GUGuest13:34

      You wrote 30 pages.

   6. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick13:35

      I th- thought about it for a long time.

   7. GUGuest13:37

      Yeah.

   8. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick13:37

      And yes, there's 30 pages of thoughts and references.

   9. GUGuest13:40

      Were you stunned that this became... I mean, this is a very recent thing-

   10. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick13:45

       Yeah.

   11. GUGuest13:45

       ... that people are just eating meat.

   12. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick13:47

       Well, at, at first, um, when I was... When... I think Dan told me about it, like, a couple years ago, even, like, and, and I thought, "There's no way."

   13. GUGuest13:56

       (laughs)

   14. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick13:56

       I was like... I just ignored it. (laughs) I was like-

   15. GUGuest13:59

       What crazy people.

   16. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick14:00

       ... "I don't have time for that," (laughs) you know?

   17. GUGuest14:01

       Right.

   18. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick14:02

       So yeah, I definitely, um, dismissed it when I f- when I first heard about it. But it's definitely been something that has, you know, gained a lot of traction-

   19. GUGuest14:15

       Yeah.

   20. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick14:15

       ... you know, since.

   21. GUGuest14:16

       Does it disturb you that it's gained traction?

   22. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick14:18

       Well, I definitely have concerns. Um, you know, I think that the, the most important question really is what is attracting someone to try such a very restrictive diet, you know, that potentially could be dangerous without published evidence or any sort of long-term studies and things like that. So, I think that the first question really is, well, why are people doing this? And so, looking on the internet and trying to, like, read about people's anecdotes, um, it seems as though a lot of people are drawn to it because they have some sort of autoimmune problem, and, uh, so they try this diet, and it improves their autoimmune symptoms. And I see... That seems to be a real common theme-

   23. GUGuest15:04

       Mm-hmm.

   24. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick15:04

       ... um, in... at least if you, if you look in the blogospheres and stuff like that. Um, so that's, I think, kind of a good place to start, where it's like, "Well, you know, what are people doing this for?" And then, uh, so that's, that's kind of an important question. And, um, so, so further reading about this diet is sort of, sort of think about, "Well, okay, well, what's going o-"... (sighs) It's really important when you have, like, something that leads to a, an effect to understand the mechanism because the mechanism is, you know, what's leading to, to this effect. And so, if you can do something that's potentially not so dangerous, um, or risky, then understanding the mechanism will help you because then you can find other ways to do it, right? And so, um, if you look at, at, uh, published studies on people that eat low-carb, high-protein diets, um, what's pretty common is that there, i- there's changes that happen in a variety of different endocrine factors, um, like, you know, your less insulin that's changing your satiety and hunger hormones, leptin and ghrelin. And people become more satiated, and they actually eat less, and this has been shown, um, in, in multiple studies. So, people actually eat less when they're having a higher protein diet, which makes sense too because protein is more satiating, uh, as well. (clicks tongue) Um, and also, there's also been studies on what's called food habituation, uh, where basically... So, habituation is when you're constantly exposed to the same stimulus, you sort of have a decreased response to that stimulus. Where there's been intervention trials where people are given the same food every single day, both non-obese and obese people, versus people that are given the same food once a week. And the people that are given the same food every single day, they st- they start to eat less calories. So, they start to eat less, um, naturally start to caloric-restrict themselves. Um, so, I mean, and that's... It's kinda like a, a dietary monotony sort of thing. So, I think there... And, you know, if you read, and the people out there on the blogs talking about this diet, they say, uh, like, "I'm eating less. I only eat twice a day. I'm fasting." You know, so that's... People are talking about that as well.

   25. GUGuest17:07

       Mm-hmm.

5. 17:07 – 19:38

   Fasting and caloric restriction as a powerful confounder for autoimmunity and “reset” effects

   1. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick17:07

      So, I think there's published evidence to kind of explain that, and also, there's, you know, people saying, "Yeah, I eat less." So, that's p- an important point, um, because one thing that's really known to affect autoimmunity is caloric restriction and fasting. Like, it's probably one of the most well-known, um, technologies that you can intervene and have improvements in autoimmune disease. So, um, some of that has to do with the fact that you can sort of reset your immune system. There have been animal studies and human studies, a lot of this done by Dr. Valter Longo at USC. Uh, he's done some prolonged fasting, um, in animals. And also, there's been sort of, like, a fasting-mimicking diet done in humans, which kind of... A, a very low-calorie diet that sort of s- is meant to mimic fast. Um, and those have shown that, um, you basically kind of-... cross over because fasting is a type of stress, you cross over into this, like, stronger stress response, where you're not only, like, cleaning away all the gunk inside the cells. People talk about autophagy a lot when they're talking about fasting. You clean away things like damaged, you know, pieces of DNA, protein aggregates, things like that. Um, mitochondria that are damaged get cleared out. But you also sort of start to clear away entire cells through a process called apoptosis. And in animal studies, what's been shown is that if you do, for example, a 72-hour fast, you can clear away about 30% of the immune system and that... and, and, and re- replenish it with, like, brand new healthy immune cells. And literally, like, organs shrink when, during the fasting, and then they, like, re-expand because you're activating stem cells and you're, you're, you know, basically replenishing all your damaged old cells with new ones. Uh, well, Valter has shown in, in these animal studies also autoimmune, um, uh, cells tend to be selectively killed off and replaced with non-autoimmune cells. So he's also done a clinical study, a pilot clinical study, with people with multiple sclerosis doing this fasting-mimicking diet for one month ... sorry, for one week, and, um, their sy- their symptoms improved. Also, a ketogenic diet was done side-by-side, and the ketogenic diet also improved symptoms of autoimmunity. So those both were done in humans. So I think that, um, you know, understanding that, you know, some of these mechanisms that are at play and that fasting itself and caloric restriction both have been shown to improve autoimmunity, you may be tapping into something there by eating less. That's one possibility. Um, in addition, there's been stu- clinical studies in humans where ... that were done, um, they were m- basically

6. 19:38 – 26:34

   Microbiome mechanics: rapid diet-driven shifts, putrefactive bacteria, and colon cancer concerns

   1. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick19:38

      fasted for 24 hours every other day for 15 days, so they had, like, a total of seven days of fasting. Um, and these were also people with multiple sclerosis, and there's m- profound changes in the microbiome that started happening, and this was in, in line with basically, um, having, you know, a lot of antiinflammatory cytokines, uh, basically producing immune cells that are really important for preventing autoimmunity called T regulatory cells or things like that. So that's another really important thing to consider is, you know, the microbiome, because the microbiome has been linked to autoimmunity in multiple, multiple studies. I mean, it's been linked to arthritis. It's been linked to multiple sclerosis. It's been linked to other diseases like Parkinson's, which is not really autoimmune, but ... Um, and the point of this is that, you know, again, understanding mechanism and realizing, you know, there's other p- potential factors that could be leading to an effect, right? It's, it's actually, um, the, the changes in the microbiome are really important, because there's actually been a few animal studies which have led to phase one, phase two, and phase three clinical trials that have been done in humans. So, um, humans with multiple sclerosis were treated with minocycline, an antibiotic, and there have been ... Basically, the antibiotic was shown to improve symptoms of multiple sclerosis, and because there, there's good bacteria and bad bacteria that have been linked to autoimmunity, and getting rid of, getting rid of bacteria, you know, the bad bacteria is gonna probably lead to improvements. And that's what was shown first in animal studies and then in human trials. So humans, um, taking ... with multiple sclerosis, taking minocycline for two years. So basically, they had improvements. It delayed the onset, um, uh, progression of, of the disease, but then after two years, the- those improvements went away, probably because you're wiping out the microbiome, and eventually, you're also getting rid of the ba- the good bacteria, and so th- things are gonna catch up, right? So you're not just ... You may be getting rid of some of the pathogenic bad bacteria with the antibiotics, but eventually, like, you're also getting rid of good stuff. So long term, you know, you're, you may not have those same improvements, and that, and that's very interesting, and I think it's a really important point to understand, um, with, with something like, you know, changes very ... profound changes in the microbiome. When it comes to someone just eating meat, um, y- so one thing to keep in mind with, with the microbiome is that basically, uh, ch- bacteria really are good at adapting to their environment. That's why antibiotic resistance is such a, a big deal. And when you ... There's been human intervention studies. When you take a human that goes from a high-fiber diet to a low-fiber, high-protein, uh, or, uh, vice versa, you get changes in their gut microbiome that happen within 24 hours. So within an hour, you actually start to have doubling of populations of bacteria, and within 24 to 48 hours, you actually start to lose other ... so basically, other bacteria start to die off. And this is at the species level. It's really hard to change the phyla. The phyla is more linked to long-term dietary patterns. Eventually, you can change phyla as well, but, um, it's been shown that people that go from a, um, a more high-fiber to a high-protein diet, they'd have changes in their microbiome, and these changes are a lot of the f- microbiome, you know, bacteria that are fermenting, um, a var- a variety of fermentable fibers start to leave, and you actually start to get bacteria cropping up that ferment amino acids. So, um, the amino acids, amino acids, simple sugars, fats, those are mostly absorbed in the small intestine, but some of them make their way into the large intestine, and there's a whole, you know, um, group of bacteria called the putri- putrefactive bacteria, and they ferment amino acids. Um, and some of these species of, of putrefactive bacteria have been linked to colon cancer. Uh, they're much higher in colon cancer patients. Animal studies have shown, you know, causal links where they can basically regressively cause a, a polyp to, to form a, a c- you know, tumor, um, and that's because these bacteria are making things called putrescine and cadaverine, which are damaging. They're genotoxic agents that damage the DNA inside your colon cells. And so, um, people that are typically eating, like, a omnivore type of diet where they're eating protein and they're also eating fermentable fiber, if they're eating the fermentable fiber that's facilitating the growth of lactic acid-producing bacteria, th-... it, that limits the growth of putrefactive. Be- so if you're, if you're, you know, bifidobacteria, lactobacillus, S. mutans, S. thermophilus, those strains of bacteria are lactic acid-producing bacteria, which you'd be getting if you're, I mean, you, you'd be facilitating the growth of if you're eating plants, fermentable, with fermentable fiber. You're gonna limit the growth of putrefactive because they can't grow with lactic acid. So it's not like, you know, you h- it's not a huge, huge concern, but the question is, what happens when you're only eating amino aci- when you're only getting amino acids?

   2. JRJoe Rogan24:29

      Right.

   3. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick24:30

      You know, so is there a long-term... So if you're, if you're, if you're killing off potentially some of this, um, pathogenic bacteria, and you're having this effect w- a positive effect, what i- what's gonna happen long-term? It's not known. I mean, this diet, I mean, hasn't really been studied at that level.

   4. JRJoe Rogan24:45

      There have been a few people that have, have anecdotal stories about l- doing it for 10, 20 years that are online, but it's very difficult to track, you know. I mean, it's, it's ... that you, you have to take them at their word for it. They've eaten nothing but meat for 20 years and they feel amazing.

   5. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick25:00

      Hmm.

   6. JRJoe Rogan25:00

      But there's not very many of 'em. There's a, you know-

   7. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick25:03

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan25:03

      ... there's a- well, there may be more out there, but it's in terms of like what I've come across, articles, um, you know, uh, just, uh, social media profiles, people have talked about the positive benefits of it. It seems to me that most people that are talking about the positive benefits are talking about it within a one and two-year window. That's, that's what we're really dealing with a lot of. Um, Sean Baker, Dr. Sean Baker, who is probably the leading proponent of it, or one of the poster boys of it, along with Jordan Peterson and his daughter, Michaela ... uh, Jordan Peterson and his daughter, Michaela, uh, they're different in that they were dealing with severe autoimmune issues. Uh, his daughter's had two joints replaced b- before she was 18. She had her h- uh, well, she had her ankle replaced before she was 18, and I think she had her hip replaced shortly after that. And, um, Jordan has had some pretty severe autoimmune issues and depression. Within, w- with both of them, those things were cleared up. But as you've talked about multiple times before on this show, depression has been linked to disorders in the gut biome.

   9. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick26:06

      Right.

   10. JRJoe Rogan26:06

       And this is something that you feel like may be contributing to this. As long as, as well as both of them also got very lean.

   11. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick26:13

       Right.

   12. JRJoe Rogan26:13

       Jordan lost a ton of weight. He's back to the weight that he was when he was 25 years old. And I've eaten with him, and the guy eats. He eats a lot, but it's a lot of meat. Just like, he'll eat like a 30-ounce steak, you know, which is just crazy. It's a crazy n- amount of meat. But, um, I don't know how many times he's doing that a day. I don't know, you know.

7. 26:34 – 44:01

   “No data” problem and nutrition confounding: why anecdotes mislead and epidemiology is messy

   1. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick26:34

      Yeah. Yeah, I think, uh, you know, going back to the, the, the point, it's like there are other ... I mean, understanding the mechanism's important, and there's a lot of potential conte- confounding factors, right? And that, with any anecdotal data, is extremely important to consider. I mean-

   2. JRJoe Rogan26:50

      Right.

   3. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick26:51

      ... people can't even n- nutr- you know, scientists, nutritionists, just people can't even agree on the best diet, because a lot of these epidemiological and observational studies, which don't establish causation, have an enormous amount of confounding factors. And it is fricking, it's so hard to, like, control for that.

   4. JRJoe Rogan27:10

      Hmm.

   5. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick27:10

      I mean, just as a perfect example, we've talked about this before on the podcast, but you know, the vegetarian versus people that eat meat. One of the m- really large studies that was done, and, and, and Dr. Valter Longo was part of that study, looked, you know, at all-cause mortality and cancer mortality, and it was lower in vegetarians. But they decided to take the meat-eaters and say, "Okay, what about within this group, the people that are s- healthy meat-eaters or people that are, you know, not, you know, not unhealthy." So they're not obese, they're not sedentary, they're not smoking, they're not alco- uh, not excessively drinking alcohol. Those people, when they took out that con- those confounding factors, the meat-eaters had the same mortality as the vegetarians-

   6. JRJoe Rogan27:48

      Yeah.

   7. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick27:48

      ... and the same cancer. So confounding factors are so important, and that, with anything with anecdotal, you have people that are exercising like crazy. Exercise has also been shown to change microbiome, independent of diet, um, in a positive way, where you're actually producing more of the, the bacteria that are, um, producing things like lactic acid. So, and fasting does the same thing. And so you have people that are fasting, so you know, it's not like you can't do other things if you're on that type of diet to, to sort of help with the microbiome. But I think, again, if there is a way you can do, you know, if, if there's a way that you can get these benefits without having to do something so hyper-restrictive, and we'll talk about, I mean, I have concerns for that. We can definitely get into that. But, um, then, you know, why not try that? And you know, the thing with like, for example, doing like a prolonged fast, you know, once, once a quarter, once every couple of months, depending on how severe your, your issues are, I mean, there's, there's been benefits shown with that, like in aging. Like, you know, so people that have been put on this fasting-mimicking diet, they have improved biomarkers of aging. Um, they increased their lean muscle mass. I mean, so like I said, in animal studies, and you can't directly translate the animal studies to humans, because rodents have a really fast metabolism, and if you fast them for 48 hours, they lose 20% of their body weight, where humans only lose like one or 2%. I mean, that's, like clearly, you know, yeah. So-

   8. JRJoe Rogan29:10

      That's crazy.

   9. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick29:10

      Yeah. So you can't, I mean, it's obviously, you can't completely translate-

   10. JRJoe Rogan29:14

       Right.

   11. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick29:14

       ... everything that's done in a fasting rodent to humans. But there are definitely ... organs are shrinking and then literally regrowing after the fast is over. Like, it's like this rejuvenation process, you know? Where your, and it seems as though selectively damaged cells are killed. In fact, this whole, like there, there's a whole, um ... uh, Dr. Valter l- Longo's showing, um, that cancer cells are really, really susceptible to dying when they're, when you do like a, a prolonged fast, or even a fasting-mimicking diet. And he's, he's, he's shown this in animal studies, and he's done a couple of clinical studies, uh, where, where patients with cancer were treated with standard of care. But before their standard of care treatment, they were fasted for up to 72 hours, and what happens, um, what he's shown in animal studies happens is that, because the fasting is a type of stress, all your healthy cells increase all these stress response pathways. They make more heat shock proteins. They're increasing antioxidant production pathways, antiinflammatory. They're doing all this really good stuff in response. Cancer cells can't do that. They're like screwed up, and so they can't activate those stress response pathways, so it ends up killing them. So what you end up happening- happe- ha- hap- happening is that when you're given another-... genotoxic stress, like chemo or radiation, your healthy cells become more resistant to the damaging effects of the radiation and the cancer cells become more sensitized to the death. And so what he's shown in, in his pilot studies in humans is that basically, um, the humans that were tr- that were, uh, that were treated with the standard of care, I think it was chemo, and also fasted, they had less, uh, neutropenia, which is the loss of, like, neutrophils, which is the side effect because you're losing normal healthy cells. They had less of that happening, uh, less myelosuppression. Um, so, I mean, anyways, it... The point is that, I think, if you can find a way to get positive benefits, you know, without having to do something so risky and potentially dangerous and unstudied, um, you know, in a, I mean, unstudied in a really scientific way.

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:10

       Yeah.

   13. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick31:10

       You know, controlling for contr- confounding factors and all sorts of long-term. I mean, just all of that is really important. Then-

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:15

       Well, this just comprehensive breakdown that you just did is something that's really lacking from a lot of the discussion of this carnivore diet. And from the proponents of it, uh, uh, it's almost like a lot of them are going into it blindfolded. They're like, "Look, uh, it seems to be working, so I'm just going to stick with it." But th- uh, l- again, when you're talking about most people's cases, you're talking about one year, maybe two years, sometimes even less, where they're having these benefits. And as you're saying, it's entirely possible that they're setting themselves up for some potential long-term damage.

   15. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick31:51

       It is. Um, it is, it's definitely possible. And again, at the end of the day, there's no data. There's no data, so you can't say for sure. Right?

   16. JRJoe Rogan32:00

       Right.

   17. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick32:00

       There's no data. But I have concerns and we can talk about those concerns, for sure. I would like to. But, you know, e- the thing is understanding mechanism, like you said, going in blindly. I mean, you have a hypothesis and it's like, okay, your hypothesis is all plants are bad. Right?

   18. JRJoe Rogan32:16

       Yeah, that's what I keep hearing. Yeah.

   19. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick32:17

       And it's like, well, that's a hypothesis, but what about all the other things that are potentially happening while you're doing this diet?

   20. JRJoe Rogan32:22

       And more, and-

   21. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick32:23

       You're eating less, you're fasting more, your microbiome's changing, like dramatically changing, and those things all have been known. Multiple studies have shown humans and animals, mechanistic detail, to have benefits on autoimmunity, on aging in general, on brain function. I mean, all sorts of things. You know, so it's... Mechanism is so important. You have to realize, I mean, that- that's the whole basis of science. Understanding how the world works around you, understanding how your body works, mechanisms.

   22. JRJoe Rogan32:50

       Right.

   23. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick32:51

       Like, you have hypothesis and y- it's very... And I understand, it's like someone experiences something positive, it's like, "Well, this must be..."

   24. JRJoe Rogan32:58

       Right.

   25. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick32:58

       "This is it. This is the end-"

   26. JRJoe Rogan32:59

       Yes.

   27. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick32:59

       "... all, be all." And, but you also (laughs) have to realize the shit's complicated. (laughs)

   28. JRJoe Rogan33:05

       Yeah. (laughs)

   29. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick33:05

       You gotta understand the mechanism.

   30. JRJoe Rogan33:07

       Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
8. 44:01 – 1:06:28

   Carnivore diet risk analysis: micronutrient gaps, RDAs, and long-term “silent” damage

   1. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick44:01

      My potential concerns with carnivore diet.

   2. JRJoe Rogan44:02

      Yes.

   3. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick44:03

      Um, you know, I think, and I'm sure, I mean, I know this, I've seen it all over the blogospheres, you know, the- the- the micronutrients and, you know, they don't really matter.

   4. JRJoe Rogan44:13

      Mm-hmm.

   5. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick44:13

      They're... The RDAs weren't set for carnivores and all this, all this stuff that I've- I've read. But I think to start out, like understanding, you know, micronutrients are essential, about 30 vitamins and minerals that are really important. They- they do run our metabolism, they are involved in making neurotransmitters, they're involved in, you know, pulling calcium out of our arteries and bringing it to our bones. They're involved in all sorts of things and, uh, people, when they hear the word metabolism, they always just think about, you know, food you eat.

   6. JRJoe Rogan44:39

      Fat.

   7. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick44:39

      Yeah. (laughs) And it's like, metabolism refers to a lot of things and there's about 22, um, sorry, there's... 22% of all your enzymes in your body require a micronutrient to function. Um, and this is repairing damage from DNA, all sorts of things. Really important. Um, and- and so there's about 30 of them that are essential. You have to get them from your diet because you don't make them in your body, and if you don't get them from your diet, it can lead to h- you know, health problems and death actually. So- so that's- that's kind of, you know, what micronutrients are. RDAs, so recommended dietary allowance. Um, those have been set, a variety of different studies are used, so there's randomized controlled trials, non-randomized controlled trials. There's depletion repletion studies. There's balance studies looking at how much, how long, how much of a micronutrient it takes before you start excreting it. Um, there's cross sectional studies and there's case studies, and this is a collaboration between the United States and Canada and some European, uh, countries as well. So, a lot of experiments are done to f- to figure out, um, the recommended dietary allowance. The first thing that's done is the- the estimated average, um, recom- the S-E-A-R, the estimated average rec-, um, intake. So, um, that is done by basically looking at any population and going, okay, how much of this micronutrient do we need so that 50% of the population has adequate levels? The other 50% will be deficient. So, like there's a bell curve and so it's like literally in the middle of the bell curve, and then the RDA is set from that two standard deviations above, and it's supposed to make, you know, about 97.5% of the population gets enough. So, that's how the- the RDA is set. For each micronutrient it's different. The- the experiments are done are different to look at them. So, there's a few concerns, of course, with an all meat diet with particular micronutrients because, you know, micronutrients, there's a lot of, you know, certain micronutrients that are concentrated in meat and there's a lot that are concentrated in plants, and you can find some of the ones that are more concentrated in meat in plants most, in most cases. Um, but it's much better to get it from the meat. And in plants there's, it's much more concentrated, you know, and you can find it in some amounts in meat, but it's much, you know, it's a lot easier to get it from plants. So, uh, one of the, of course, the micronutrients that's a concern is the vitamin C, of course, right?

   8. JRJoe Rogan47:01

      Right.

   9. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick47:01

      That's- that's the one that everyone talks about. So, vitamin C is a really important cofactor, um, for... What that means, a cofactor just means that it binds to an enzyme and helps it work. It's important for making collagen, it's important for converting dopamine into norepinephrine, which is important for that, you know, fight or flight response. Um, it plays a role in- in, uh, making carnitine, which is important for using fatty acids for me- you know, for energy. Um, and then it's of- of course an antioxidant. It also plays a really important role in- in neutrophils. So, neutrophils are, uh, a type of immune cell. When they're activated, when you have any sort of bacterial exposure, um, virus, uh, things that could even come from the gut, you know, like LPS we get from bacter- dead bacteria that are dying in the gut. Um, neutrophils get activated and they soak up vitamin C because they release a bunch of hydrogen peroxide, which damages the neutrophil itself. And so the vitamin C sort of prevents that from happening. Uh, it plays a- a really important role in, um, cell- cell integrity and things like that. So, the- the, um... There's a variety of ways vitamin C is transported into the cell, and I see, uh, reading on the internet a little bit of misunderstanding. Um, people following the carnivore diet seem to think that because they're not getting any... uh, their glucose levels are low, that they're getting more vitamin C in, so-

   10. JRJoe Rogan48:24

       Yeah.

   11. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick48:25

       So, vitamin C, um, also called ascorbic acid, uh...... goes between two different states. Ascorbic acid is the reduced form, which is the antioxidant form. It, it, it goes also into an oxidized form, so it's kinda going back and forth. It goes through about four cycles of that. The oxidized form, it's called dehydroascorbic acid, and there's two ways that you transport vitamin C. Uh, you absorb it through the gut. The epithelial cells is transported into a variety of tissues in the body. Ascorbic acid goes through sodium-dependent vitamin C transporters. Those are not dependent on glucose. There's no competition for glucose. They ... that's, that's how vitamin C gets into the, the cell. Uh, and most cells actually transport vitamin C in, in that form, with the exception of red blood cells, which don't have that transporter. They use another transporter called glucose transporters, or GLUT, and that one does ... Glucose does compete. Uh, interestingly, dehydroascorbic acid binds much better. Uh, it's m- actually tightly more bi- binds to the transporter than, um, glucose, but in conditions like, um, hyperglycemia, like type 1 or type 2 diabetics, they actually don't get vitamin C in the red blood cells and it leads to, like, vascular problems and stuff like that. So, so, um, it's an interesting hypothesis that maybe if you're having, you know, less of a, um, your, you know, blood glucose levels are really bottomed out, maybe there ... maybe that there's some salvage pathway you're able to help get vitamin C and the oxidized form is going in some other cells that it usually doesn't go in or whatever, something like that. It's an interesting hypothesis, which is there's no data on, right? Um, but the experiments that were done to choose the RDA for vitamin C were done, um, the, the more recent RDA, so that it changed back in, like, 2000, after 2000 or 2001 or something. It's about 90 milligrams a day for men and, uh, 75 for women. They were, they were depletion/repletion studies. So, uh, men were, were given about less than five milligrams a day of vitamin C diet- m- m- with their diet, and this was about a six-month st- study. They were in a metabolic ward. And, um, it was determined that, uh, it was kind of unsafe to keep, to keep going, so, so basically they started the repletion, where, um, they started giving, uh, the p- these men vitamin C at different doses. And, uh, vitamin C follows, like, a sigmoidal S-curve, so once you kinda deplete someone of their vitamin C, when you give them, for example, 30 milligrams, it isn't really enough to kinda go real h- it doesn't really raise plasma levels much. You have to get up to, like, 100. Once you get up to, like, 100, then you actually start to excrete vitamin C, but before that, you're just ... your body's holding on to everything. You're not excreting anything. 200 milligrams was, um, maximum bioavailability, and then after that, um, you start to, like, decrease bioavailability and you're excreting a lot of vitamin C. So the, the new ... So the scientist that published this paper, Mark Levine at the NIH, um, recommended that the RDA be set at 200 milligrams, but it was set at 90, which is literally right before you start to excrete, which was 100 milligrams. That data, along with the neutrophil data, there was some neutrophil data that was looked at, um, you know, how much vitamin C was i- important to ... because neutrophils sop it up to prevent that hydrogen peroxide-induced damage, and so that's kind of how the RDA was set. Um, now the question is, in any ... with any RDA, like, you know, the m- the important thing to consider is, well, the RDAs are set to prevent acute disease, but what about promoting optimal health? You know, like, that's really important. Like, how much of these micronutrients do you need throughout a lifespan to, to, you know, to maintain optimal health and age well? So this is something that's really important because a lot of enzymes that require micronutrient for preventing short-term disease, something that can kill you, like there's also enzymes that n- are required to prevent, you know, things that are associated with aging, like DNA damage. So if there's only so much of a micronutrient around, which where is it gonna go? Is it gonna go where the, you know ... Is it gonna prevent DNA damage, which doesn't make a difference until five or six decades later, or is it gonna make sure you live on to pass (laughs) on your genes and, you know, reproduce and ... So, um, my former postdoctoral mentor, Dr. Bruce Ames, sort of pr- proposed this whole, and he pur- um, has published a, a couple of foundational papers, um, supporting this idea, which is he calls triage theory, so he's saying that basically he thinks actually a lot of RDAs are too low and that, you know, optimal RDAs will account for p- you know, how much is needed for these long-term functions. So that's really important to consider. With the vitamin C, um, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's really, uh, a small amount that's needed to, to, to be used as a cofactor for, you know, an enzyme for, you know, collagen production. You actually don't need that much. And say it was done ... Like, studies were done years a- years ago that, um, established, like, 10 milligrams of vitamin C was enough to prevent scurvy, um, which can happen when you're ... basically you don't have enough vitamin C for, for collagen production. And, um, and even that's kind of questionable because back at the time when those studies were done, it was before really good analytical assays were available, so, you know, the assay that was done to measure, um, various things were ... it was lots of things could confound, so it's, it's ... It may even be less. May be more, may be less. It's kinda unknown. So, um, you know, that, that, that is something to consider as well as the fact that basically there's a lot of biological variation with, um, vitamin C requirements, and this has been shown, uh, in other animals that also require vitamin C, like guinea pigs. So, like, if you take 100 guinea pigs, and this is, you know, this was published back in the, like, '60s or '70s. Um, like, there was, like, tenfold variation in how much each of them required, vitamin C they required even though they were given, like-

   12. JRJoe Rogan54:12

       Wow.

   13. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick54:13

       Yeah. So-

   14. JRJoe Rogan54:14

       Tenfold?

   15. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick54:14

       Tenfold, even. Yeah, so there's, like, huge variation in the half-life of vitamin C and in their transporters and, like, s- you know. So this has been shown in rodents as well. Rodents make vitamin C in their liver, but the same thing's been shown. And s- actually back when the s- the European sailors were getting scurvy and dying of it, only about 50%, only about half of those sailors got-... scurvy. The other 50% didn't have any symptoms.

   16. JRJoe Rogan54:37

       Now, how are these-

   17. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick54:38

       Presumably-

   18. JRJoe Rogan54:38

       ... carnivore diet guys not getting scurvy?

   19. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick54:40

       Well, that's what, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying that, you know, for one, i- it doesn't take much.

   20. JRJoe Rogan54:45

       Right.

   21. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick54:46

       Right?

   22. JRJoe Rogan54:46

       And they're getting some of it from meat?

   23. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick54:48

       Yeah. Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan54:48

       Yeah.

   25. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick54:48

       So, so the thing, um, you know, if it... it's, it doesn't take much to, to maintain the enzymatic fac- uh, function, um, of some of the, some of the enzymes involved in making collagen and that ... you know, so it doesn't take much for that. But the question is about what about, you know-

   26. JRJoe Rogan55:05

       All the host auto-

   27. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick55:06

       All the factors. Yeah, and the neutrophils-

   28. JRJoe Rogan55:08

       Mm-hmm.

   29. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick55:08

       ... and, um, you know, your body stores, like, orders of magnitude more vitamin C than, than, than it needs for that, for the, for its function as a cofactor. And it's like, you know, why does it do that? Is it just because maybe during scar- food scarcity you want- it wants to make sure it has enough? Or is there a- you know, the antioxidant functions and other functions really important or other unknown functions? So I think the vitamin C, you know, y- they're certainly, you know, getting enough to prevent scurvy, and there could be biological variation in that as well, right?

   30. JRJoe Rogan55:37

       Right.
9. 1:06:28 – 1:14:07

   Plants as beneficial stressors: phytochemicals, hormesis, and sulforaphane evidence

   1. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:06:28

      Really nasty farts. (laughs) Um, but, you know, it... Like th- So that's another reason. And then the other po- the other important thing are the phytochemicals, the, the... there's these, you know, polyphenols, flavanols, flavonoid, all these things that are present in plant. The humans were... we evolved eating. We evolved eating them.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:06:46

      Right.

   3. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:06:46

      You know? So, so the, the... It's... During... Throughout human evolution, you know, humans were-... stressed on ver- many levels. One, they went through moments of food scarcity, where the fasting came in. I mean, that's important, right?

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:07:00

      Right.

   5. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:07:00

      Now, we don't have that. W- we can get food all the time, anytime, right? So, so that was an important, um, uh, stress that humans have evolved with. Exercise, aerobic exercise, right? That's another thing. I mean, you had to, you had to move to get food and run from predators. I mean, so we, we evolved exercising. Now, you can p- so many people don't do that. We also evolved eating plants and meat. I mean, we're omnivores. So we have these, basically, all these pathways that are activated when we eat plants, and s- from certain compounds in plants, in- insect antifeedants. They're, they're, they're in plants, and when humans eat them, they basically activate a variety of really, really important stress response pathways. A lot of these pathways get activated by exercise and fasting as well, so there is a lot of overlap between them. But I see a lot of people, you know, on the, on this carnivore diet, talking about how they're so bad for you. And if they would take the time to actually read studies, like human studies, where people are given a lot of these insect antifeedant compounds, things like isothiocyanates, like sulforaphane, um, you know, curcumin, uh, resveratrol, anthocyanins, I mean, there's tons and tons of them. You know, they would see that there's beneficial effects that happen, and there's a lot of mechanism for why that is, you know? So, I mean, the sulforaphane is one that I like to talk about, and there are, there is tons and tons of human intervention data, where people are given either cruciferous vegetables or they're given broccoli sprout... Broccoli sprouts are a really great source. Cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, uh, cabbage, fermented cabbage, um, Brussels sprouts, you know, all that stuff. So broccoli sprouts have, like, 10... anywhere between 10 and 100 times more. A lot of that work was done by Dr. Jed Fahey, a friend of mine. He's at Johns Hopkins, very great scientist, does a lot of research on sulforaphane. But, um, you know, if you look at intervention trials, we were talking about air pollution, like, there's an intervention trial, there's more than one, showing, in humans, showing that if you give humans broccoli sprout extract for seven days, they start to excrete benzene and acrolein. Benzene is in air pollution. 60% on day one, like, they start excreting it in their urine, like, just getting rid of that, and that's largely because sulforaphane activates, um, a, a variety of enzymes. One called phase two detoxification enzymes, which are important for getting rid of, uh, potentially harmful compounds. It inactivates phase one biotransformation enzymes, which are enzymes that are able to, like, take a pro-carcinogen and turn it into a carcinogen. So, um, you know, there's intervention trials in humans that it's... you know, men that were given broccoli sprout extr- extract, uh, lowered their, their, their biomarker for prostate cancer, um, by, by, like 86%, or lowered the doubling rate of it by 86%. You know, so this is, like, this is important. There are studies showing that humans given... for example, two different studies showing that humans given 300 grams of Brussels sprouts a day, one, they increase a really important antioxidant in their plasma called glutathione, um, by, like, 1.4-fold, and they decreased oxidative DNA damage in their blood cells. DNA damage, like we were just talking about, they decreased it, um, like, by 30% or something like that. Two separate studies, Brussels sprouts. And I, like, I see people, like, you know, um, talking about the carnivore diet and how sulforaphane increases DNA damage, and they, like, reference this in vitro study where they dump sulforaphane on cultured cells in a dish. (laughs) It's like, you know what else is gonna do that shit? Heterocyclic amines from the cooked meat you're eating. Like-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:10:35

      (laughs)

   7. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:10:35

      ... you know, so, so if you dump something at a, you know, high enough concentration, yeah, it's gonna fuck it up.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:10:41

      Yeah.

   9. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:10:41

      You know? But we're talking about humans ingesting it. If you were to exercise nonstop and not rest, it would be toxic. If you were to fast and not stop, it would be toxic. Like, you know, so, so, so, so how some of these pathways are working is that they... the dose that they're given... you know, eating, it's, it's almost impossible to, to eat the kind of dose that it would take to, to cause severe damage. And then you know what? You would get sick. You would know. You'd be like, "Wait a minute." Like-

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:11:07

       Right.

   11. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:11:08

       ... so, so I mean, I think that using that as an excuse is really, um... first of all, they should read the studies, and there's so many more studies. Pe- it's, it's been shown recently to increase glutathione in the brain. Human intervention studies, humans that were given sulforaphane extract increase it in their plasma and in their brain. Glutathione is one of the major antioxidants in the brain. It plays a major role in traumatic brain injury, brain aging. I mean, this is important. Like, this is a possible therapeutic intervention. It's been shown in randomized placebo-controlled trials to improve autistic symptoms in adolescents. Open-label tr- trials, it's been shown to improve autism in children, autistics symptoms in children. I mean, there's just study after study after study, and I'm just talking about the human ones, and there's more. There's also lots of animal studies where they're feeding them mega doses and, and there's, like, positive benefits. Um, there's been studies, you know, feeding, feeding humans large doses, like, something equivalent to, like, 70 or 100 grams of broccoli sprouts, which have a lot more sulforaphane than, like, Brussels sprouts do. Um, and there was no toxic side effects in liver or thyroid. That's one concern people do have. If you have hypothyroid, sulforaphane can compete with iodine for transport into the thyroid. I don't think that's usually an issue. It certainly doesn't seem to be an issue in healthy people, but, um, you know, iodine is found in seafood. I mean, you know, it... there's, there are sources of iodine you can eat. So maybe someone with hypothyroid might wanna make sure they're not eating, like, tons... like, you're not, like... you know, kale smoothie after kale smoothie after kale smoothie. Like make... you know, make sure-

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:12:33

       Right, right.

   13. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:12:34

       ... you know, just... if you're having your Brussels sprouts with your, with your elk meat or whatever, you know, I, I don't think it's a problem. (laughs) Um, so, you know, it... I do get a little... I see, I see, like, you mentioned Dr. Shawn Baker. He's... like, he put out a video about... like, he mentioned me by names, talking about how I only talk about in vitro data, and I'm like, "Dude, go watch my video or my interview with the expert at Johns Hopkins." We're talking about human studies.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:12:57

       Right.

   15. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:12:58

       The in vitro data is coming from what? The, the opposite, that it... that, you know, that, that damaging effects. It's in vitro.Don't bring it on a culture cell.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:13:05

       Well, there's, there's two things going on. There's one, there's a real cursory examination of data, where they've ... and then there's confirmation bias. And it's the combination of the two of those things. They find one thing that sort of kinda vaguely supports what they want it to support, and then they run with it and they talk about it as if they're experts.

   17. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:13:22

       Very dangerous.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:13:22

       Yes. And this is one of the reasons why I'm so happy that you're talking about this, see, 'cause you can give people a real comprehensive understanding of all the different things at play. And one of the things that I get from you when I talk to you about nutrition is, it's mind-boggling how many different factors are going on simultaneously in the human body when it comes to nutrition, absorption, when it ... uh, you know, in the v- various stages of the body and, and how it can vary with, with different people. I mean, there's so much going on.

   19. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:13:56

       Right. Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:13:57

       So when someone just starts talking about vegetables are toxic, like, oh, Jesus Christ. (laughs)

   21. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:14:02

       (laughs) Like, have you read any of the study ... Have you ... Just go look at the scientific data. Like, you know-

10. 1:14:07 – 1:15:33

    Ideology, placebo/nocebo, and dopamine genetics: why diet tribes form and persist

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:14:07

       But they want it to be toxic. This is what's crazy. It's, this is an ideology that's akin to veganism. It's really ... It's a, it's, uh, just another side of the same mindset. It's almost like a religious mindset.

    2. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:14:21

       (laughs)

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:14:21

       They, they ... there's this #meet-

    4. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:14:22

       You said it, not me. (laughs)

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:14:23

       I did say it. Look, I'm a fucking meat eater.

    6. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:14:26

       Yeah, I know you are. (laughs)

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:14:26

       Like, you can't, you can't a- accuse me of being anti-meat. But I, I side ... I eat m- more vegetables, I think, than I eat meat. I certainly ... It's certainly, like, right up there. And I'm not giving them up. I think that's stupid.

    8. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:14:42

       Yeah.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:14:43

       I just d- it doesn't make any sense to me. And I like them.

    10. RPDr. Rhonda Patrick1:14:46

        Right.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:14:46

        Like, there's this, there's this weird push, and th- you know, if you look under #meatheals, there's all these people, you know, telling these stories about how they lost all this weight and they did all this this, bah, bah, bah, and their health benefits and da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. But they only want it to be because of the consumption of meat only. They think that it's because of the singular aspect of their diet and the fact that they've eliminated everything else, but they're not ... They don't do any studying of elimination diets. They don't do any study of the prolonged benefits of fasting and all these different things that you're talking about, which I think are v- they're ... These are all factors in this really complicated thing that's going on that most likely has something to do with their gut biome and their immune system.

Episode duration: 2:47:43