Joe Rogan Experience #2420 - Chris Masterjohn

1. 0:00 – 2:43

   Thanksgiving food coma myth: turkey, tryptophan, and why overeating makes you sleepy

   1. CMChris Masterjohn0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music) Hi, Chris.

   3. CMChris Masterjohn0:12

      How are you? Good, how you doing?

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      Very nice to meet you.

   5. CMChris Masterjohn0:15

      Nice to meet you as well.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      I have enjoyed your content online for-

   7. CMChris Masterjohn0:18

      Thank you.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      ... a few years now.

   9. CMChris Masterjohn0:19

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:19

       So, uh, it's really solid stuff and I thought what better day than to bring Chris in, right after everybody fucked up their diet.

   11. CMChris Masterjohn0:25

       (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:25

       (laughs)

   13. CMChris Masterjohn0:25

       Yeah, that's right. Um, well, I just want to tell, uh, public health message that you did not get sleepy because the turkey was high in tryptophan.

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:34

       (laughs)

   15. CMChris Masterjohn0:35

       So we'll leave it at that.

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:35

       Yeah, that's weird. Isn't that a weird one?

   17. CMChris Masterjohn0:37

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JRJoe Rogan0:37

       That's a weird myth that's persisted for a long time.

   19. CMChris Masterjohn0:40

       It's... I mean, the weirdest thing is the origins of it. Apparently, it came from researchers in the... and not, I'm sorry, not researchers, journalists in the '80s who were trying to come up with a reason to explain why everyone was tired on Th- after Thanksgiving meal and, uh, they just looked as far as, "Oh, turkey has tryptophan which is an amino acid that the, is the precursor to melatonin which is a s- you know, you could call it a sleeping chemical, so like makes you get tired at night. That must be why." Um, but it turns out that A, turkey's not that high in tryptophan, like even whey protein is higher in, uh, tr- tryptophan than turkey is.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:18

       (laughs)

   21. CMChris Masterjohn1:18

       And then B, tryptophan doesn't make you tired. Um, yeah, I- I dare anyone to go out and have, uh, like a, just a slice of turkey for breakfast and see if it knocks you out. (laughs)

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:29

       (laughs) It's overeating.

   23. CMChris Masterjohn1:31

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:31

       It's like so obvious.

   25. CMChris Masterjohn1:32

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:33

       I mean, people are eating tons of stuffing, tons of sides. They're, they're eating so much food.

   27. CMChris Masterjohn1:38

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:38

       You're gorging. It's a gorging day.

   29. CMChris Masterjohn1:40

       Yeah. For sure.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:42

       Yeah. I mean, it's not good. (laughs)
2. 2:43 – 5:05

   Mitochondria as the root of health: sleep, energy restoration, and creatine as a ‘power grid’

   1. CMChris Masterjohn2:43

      Yeah. I, you know, and I think one, uh, so one thing that I think we should talk about today is I've been in nutrition research for 21 years and I'm, you know, I think the, the crowning thesis of my work so far is that we really wanna be thinking about mitochondrial function at the root of all health and disease, and so I think, uh, an interesting way to see sleep is it's like why do we have to sleep eight hours a night? And I, I think with dreaming, there's obviously other things going on there, but deep sleep, w- the, one of the primary things that's happening is you need to give your mitochondria a rest 'cause your mitochondria are what produce all the energy that you need for, uh, for producing everything in your body, for maintaining it, for repairing it, uh, and for distributing it properly and for keeping it going across the lifespan, and so your mitochondria are gonna essentially take a nap, take a rest. They don't go off 'cause you die, but they really turn down the volume of the work they're doing, but then you take your metabolic rate way lower than that and so you can build up the reserves of energy that you had used up the day before. Um, and so it's, you know, that, that can explain a lot of recent findings that are coming out as well because there was that recent study where they looked at sleep deprivation with creatine supplementation, and so they randomized people to either drink a placebo drink or drink 20 grams of creatine through the night and they kept them awake all night and they had them do brain puzzle quizzes. And when the subjects were getting the 20 grams of creatine, they did way better on the brain puzzles, but they also complained about being tired a lot less. And so the conclusion is creatine is somehow acutely preventing your brain from, uh, suffering during sleep deprivation. And the rationale there is, you know, m- mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell or the power plant that's producing the energy. Creatine is like the power grid and it distributes that energy throughout the cell. Um, and so if the purpose of sleep is to restore the energy that you used up, but then you intervene by putting creatine in there, now you can keep that energy going and you can go more hours before you need to get rest and restore that energy because you've increased your capacity to distribute it.

3. 5:05 – 7:43

   Creatine beyond muscles: brain injury recovery and whole-body roles

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:05

      Mm, that makes sense. Um, that, that is an interesting thing because it's fairly recent that people have talked about this, right?

   2. CMChris Masterjohn5:11

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan5:11

      I mean, used to be people only thought of creatine as being a muscle thing, uh, to, to, to help you recover and help you build larger muscles, but then over the last, uh, I would say year or two, I started hearing talking about cognitive function and maybe even more than a couple years, but about how it im- improves cognitive function. The sleep thing though is very recent, right?

   4. CMChris Masterjohn5:31

      Yeah, the sleep thing was, uh, in the last year.

   5. JRJoe Rogan5:34

      Okay.

   6. CMChris Masterjohn5:34

      There is some literature on traumatic brain injury where 20 grams of creatine for six months doubles the rate of healing.

   7. JRJoe Rogan5:42

      Whoa.

   8. CMChris Masterjohn5:43

      Um-

   9. JRJoe Rogan5:43

      That's incredible.

   10. CMChris Masterjohn5:44

       But it's, yeah, the, the, the field is in its infancy, but I, I think that... I actually almost a decade ago did a podcast on just creatine. I called it More Than A Performance Enhancer because there's... if you just look at where it's distributed in the body, almost every cell and every tissue has the creatine system, and so it really is this...And if you look at the literature, they'll say, well, it's more important in certain cells. Like, it's really important in your muscles because your muscles have this very polarized... Sometimes they're at rest, sometimes their energy demand is going through the roof. Um, and it's really important in, uh, like long cells. So for example, your retina is part of your central nervous system and it's this really long cell that's, uh, coming from the brain into the eye, and, uh, creatine helps move energy back and forth. But if, if you just look at where... instead of where is it most important, you're just like, where is it? It's like almost every cell in your body has creatine and it's helping distribute the energy that the mitochondria make throughout your whole body, and that includes pumping stomach acid, it includes, uh, s- sperm, uh, swimming up the vaginal canal. And so if you, if you just look at where it is, you would think that creatine would help a lot more than muscles. Um, and it just turns out that all you need to do is start studying it to start seeing those effects.

   11. JRJoe Rogan7:09

       Is there any studies on creatine improving of eyesight?

   12. CMChris Masterjohn7:13

       I'm not sure there... Not that I know of, but-

   13. JRJoe Rogan7:15

       'Cause that kind of makes sense, right?

   14. CMChris Masterjohn7:16

       Yeah. I- it makes complete sense. Like you would... Uh, when it comes down to it, your, your ability to produce energy is producing, maintaining and repairing everything in your body. So you would expect to see anything that does improve your energy metabolism improve literally everything. So it'd be kind of shocking if you had no effect on that. Um, but I'm not sure if, if there are good, uh, trials done that I haven't seen them.

4. 7:43 – 10:46

   Red light therapy, macular health supplements, and nutrient sources (lutein/zeaxanthin, egg yolks)

   1. JRJoe Rogan7:43

      Um, speaking of improving eyesight, uh, I started doing red light about, I guess about a year and a half, two years ago. Got a red light bed and, uh, completely stopped whatever macular degeneration I was going through and reversed some of it. So I don't have perfect vision, but my vision's better.

   2. CMChris Masterjohn8:02

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan8:02

      Like, it's, it's definitely better. And it's not just through the red light, it's also... Uh, it's gotta be some of the supplements that I'm taking. One of 'em, uh, I take, uh, a supplement from Pure Encapsulations, no affiliations with them, I just buy it. It's, uh, called Macular Support and, uh, let's see what it's got in there. It's got lutein and a few other supplements-

   4. CMChris Masterjohn8:23

      Oh, yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:23

      ... that have been known to-

   6. CMChris Masterjohn8:24

      Yeah, that'll do it. (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan8:25

      Is that it?

   8. CMChris Masterjohn8:26

      Well, yeah, I mean, so with the red light is very interesting. It... Whenever you think of red light, you wanna think of your mitochondria because the main thing that we know about red, near infrared and far infrared that they're doing is they're actually going straight into the mitochondrial engines that produce the energy and helping them produce more. And they're also ordering the water structure inside the mitochondria to make those engines, uh, produce energy more easily. And there was a study a few months ago that it's... It was just like a one-day study, but it showed that blasting people in the chest with red light improved their eyesight when it was measured the next day, and they covered their eyes to make sure that the red light didn't go into the eye. And, and-

   9. JRJoe Rogan9:11

      Whoa.

   10. CMChris Masterjohn9:11

       ... so the, the conclusion is, you know, it's not a clinical study, right? And it's not like a one-year, how does it... You know, does it really improve your eyesight over one year? We don't know. But it shows proof of principle that red light is doing something systemically that does not have to go to your eye that does improve your vision. And to me, that makes sense because your vision is gonna be improved by anything that acts directly in your eye to improve energy production. But you've got coordinated energy metabolism going on through your whole body, like your liver is doing tons of stuff to try to make your eyes healthy and make your brain healthy and, and so on. So it makes a lot of, a lot of sense. But that... So I, I don't doubt at all that the bed is, uh, part of that, but the lutein and zeaxanthin are well-known to accumulate in the macula where they have a very specific role in, uh, protecting against macular degeneration. And actually, the be- the best source of those is, um, egg yolks from chickens that are fed, um, anything that has them, but marigolds are super high in them.

   11. JRJoe Rogan10:18

       Hmm.

   12. CMChris Masterjohn10:18

       So if they feed the chickens marigolds, they get super high levels.

   13. JRJoe Rogan10:22

       Hmm.

   14. CMChris Masterjohn10:22

       And, um, the egg yolk has fat that helps them get absorbed. So in terms of... I mean, this, this is... You could take this with some eggs, but (laughs) ... Um, but, uh, yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan10:31

       (laughs) But I would... should feed my chickens marigolds.

   16. CMChris Masterjohn10:34

       Yeah. If you have-

   17. JRJoe Rogan10:35

       I have chickens.

   18. CMChris Masterjohn10:35

       If you have chickens and if you're... and if you're spending your money on a, on a lutein zeaxanthin supplement, you might as a... (laughs) you might be able to get a, uh... Maybe the marigolds are cheaper, so.

   19. JRJoe Rogan10:44

       Maybe I'll just double it up.

   20. CMChris Masterjohn10:46

       Yeah. (laughs)

5. 10:46 – 13:13

   Vitamin A conversion, antioxidants, and glutathione: ‘make it yourself’ vs specialty forms

   1. JRJoe Rogan10:46

      Um, so this is all the ingredients. Does this stuff make sense as something that would help, uh, support eyesight?

   2. CMChris Masterjohn10:53

      It does. I mean, the vi- the vitamin A is going to, uh... That's gonna depend on your genetics in terms of how good are you at converting beta-carotene into the, into the form of vitamin A that we need, which is most abundant in liver and egg yolks. Um, and-

   3. JRJoe Rogan11:10

      That's dependent on genetics.

   4. CMChris Masterjohn11:13

      It's... Yeah. So there's... You need, uh... Beta-carotene is this big, and if you chop it in half, you get vitamin A.

   5. JRJoe Rogan11:22

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CMChris Masterjohn11:22

      And so you have an enzyme in your digestive system that does that, but that enzyme is dependent on a lot of things going right. So you need to have good zinc status, good iron status, good thyroid status, and all kinds of-

   7. JRJoe Rogan11:35

      Rough days.

   8. CMChris Masterjohn11:35

      ... stuff like that. And actually, seed oils, uh, decrease the conversion. So if you've... If you take that with canola oil, you're gonna get less vitamin A out of it than if you take it with, you know, eggs and butter. Um, and then vitamin A activation is also dependent on mitochondrial function too. So I th... You know, but it makes sense. Vitamin A is great for your eye. Vitamin C is a great antioxidant. N-acetylcysteine, great antioxidant. The glutathione, uh, the cetrin stuff, I'm, I'm kind of... Um, I think it's...I think it's a little bit of a over- over-hyped, in terms of some- you know, another type of glutathione, I think, would have worked fine.

   9. JRJoe Rogan12:18

      What's the best glutathione?

   10. CMChris Masterjohn12:20

       Well, the best-

   11. JRJoe Rogan12:21

       Lipo- is it liposomal? Does it matter?

   12. CMChris Masterjohn12:22

       The best glutathione is the glutathione that you make yourself from protein that you eat. Um-

   13. JRJoe Rogan12:27

       Okay.

   14. CMChris Masterjohn12:27

       But if you're gonna supplement with glutathione, there- I don't- if you're talking about bang for the buck, I just think straight up glutathione is- is good. Um, and there are studies sh- suggesting that there's marginal absorption benefits for certain special types. You know, but then they charge three times as much for that type, and it's like, "Well, am I getting three times more glutathione out of it?" Not really. So, you know, some people swear by liposomal glutathione, and if some- you know, if you swear by it and it- if it does its thing for you, great. But-

   15. JRJoe Rogan12:58

       Do you think it's like 10% better?

   16. CMChris Masterjohn13:01

       Um, I think the jury is out on whether there might be 10, 20% better value for those things. So, if I'm- if I'm gonna take glutathione, I'm just gonna take glutathione.

   17. JRJoe Rogan13:12

       Got it. Okay.

   18. CMChris Masterjohn13:13

       Yeah.

6. 13:13 – 16:45

   Sunlight, vitamin D, and light substitutes: morning cues, tanning beds, and light boxes

   1. JRJoe Rogan13:13

      Um, is- that s- the- what you're saying about producing your own glutathione, that's the same thing as like vitamin D, right? It's way better when your body produces it.

   2. CMChris Masterjohn13:22

      Um-

   3. JRJoe Rogan13:23

      If it does.

   4. CMChris Masterjohn13:24

      I- yeah, I mean, I- I don't think there's anything wrong with getting vitamin D from food. But you don't w- the thing is, you do need sunlight, right? So, it's- it- you at least need to get 30- 30 minutes of sunshine in the morning, which is not gonna give you vitamin D. And then you need to get like 10 or 15 minutes of unprotected sunshine in the afternoon, um, to get y- you get vitamin D from that but you get other benefits from it as well. So, I- I wouldn't say that there- that it's necessarily better to get the vitamin D from the sun than from a vitamin D supplement, or from eating fish, or from eating cod liver oil. But you don't wanna- you don't wanna say, "Well, I don't need to go out- out in- in the sun. I'm just gonna take vitamin D." Then you're not gonna get the benefits of the sun because the sun gives you other benefits.

   5. JRJoe Rogan14:15

      Got it.

   6. CMChris Masterjohn14:15

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan14:16

      I- is there anything that you can do, say if you live in Seattle, and you're- in the winter it's just raining constantly, is there a tanning bed that gives you some of that?

   8. CMChris Masterjohn14:27

      Yeah. I- I do think that there is, um, there is some risk of tanning beds. I'm not 100% com- I- when I lived in New York, I would try to spend 40 minutes in the afternoon sunshine for three quarters of the year. And during the winter, the UV index just wasn't high enough, and I- I get eczema in the winter because I'm not getting enough sun. And so, I would use a tanning bed, not to get tan, but I'd use like two, three minutes at a time just because it just had a systemic effect in pre- like preventing the eczema that I would get in the winter.

   9. JRJoe Rogan15:04

      Hmm.

   10. CMChris Masterjohn15:04

       I think you have to be careful with it because there- there is some concern that it's- that people are just- if they're tanning to tan, they're- they're gonna wind up with, uh, too much damage to their skin. But what I would do is, um, for morning sunlight, I think, you can get like a lux meter app, and just- some people are- some people, they think that it's- there's no sun outside, but actually it's like 100 times or 1,000 times brighter than indoors and their eyes are adjusting, and so it's like cloudy or overcast, but it- there's still a lot of value in going outside. So, I would say if you use a lux meter and it's like under 10,000, you could get a, um, like a light therapy light at home to use to just like turn it on and not look straight into it, but kind of have it going into your eyes. Um, and then for vitamin D, uh, you could- you could do like tanning bed, but just try to really keep it minimal, like going f- going for two or three minutes, not like you're trying to tan.

   11. JRJoe Rogan16:04

       Right.

   12. CMChris Masterjohn16:04

       You're just-

   13. JRJoe Rogan16:04

       What I was getting at, is there a different kind of tanning bed that's maybe- imitates-

   14. CMChris Masterjohn16:08

       Oh, there are- yeah. So there are- there are, uh, different ratios of wavelengths. And the ones that have more UVB are the ones that are gonna give you more vitamin D. So, if you're act- if you're just going to a tanning bed place, you, um, probably the pe- the staff there, tell them that you want like mixed wavelength that gives you a mix of like surface tan and- and deep tan.

   15. JRJoe Rogan16:36

       Okay.

   16. CMChris Masterjohn16:36

       I think that's how they- 'cause they don't know the vitamin D science, so.

   17. JRJoe Rogan16:40

       (laughs)

   18. CMChris Masterjohn16:40

       Um, (laughs) I think that's how you have to get the- the bed that gives you more vitamin D. (laughs)

   19. JRJoe Rogan16:43

       You have to tell them, "I want a mix of surface and deep."

   20. CMChris Masterjohn16:45

       (laughs)

7. 16:45 – 23:35

   Methylene blue: when mitochondrial ‘detours’ help—and when they create chaos

   1. JRJoe Rogan16:45

      That's funny. Um, speaking of red light-

   2. CMChris Masterjohn16:49

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan16:49

      ... and speaking of, um, uh, therapy and- that- that helps your mitochondria, what is your thoughts on methylene blue? Methylene blue seems to be a very controversial supplement. Some people think it's amazing and it's a panacea for all that ails you, and other people are like, "What are we doing here? Why are you putting dye in your body?" Your piss is coming out blue. This is weird.

   4. CMChris Masterjohn17:11

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan17:12

      Wh- what school of- are you in?

   6. CMChris Masterjohn17:14

      Methylene blue is something that could do wonders for your mitochondria if you need it, and could really hurt you if you don't.

   7. JRJoe Rogan17:21

      Hmm.

   8. CMChris Masterjohn17:21

      And I think that there are- there are certainly a lot of people raving about it on the internet, and it's because there a- it's a mix of things. So there are people that are treating themselves for a problem in their mitochondria that they don't know that they have, and then they get an outsized voice 'cause they're the ones raving about how much it helped them, and so there's like selection. You know, if some- you don't get- if people didn't get a benefit or if they just felt a little worse, they don't go raving about it on the internet as much.

   9. JRJoe Rogan17:48

      Yeah.

   10. CMChris Masterjohn17:48

       So that's part of it. Uh, there is also a- part of it is that, when you get up to a dose of around 10 milligrams or so per day, um, for perspective, in clinical trials they'll- of Alzheimer's, they're using 200 milligrams, but you can buy like a 0.5 milligram on Amazon. Um, so a lot of people are using like 0.5 milligrams. But once you get up to 10 milligrams or so, you're getting some degree of pharmacological antidepressant effect because it's an MA- MAO oxidase- uh, monoamine oxidase inhibitor.And so, I do think that there are some people who are, they're like, "Oh, I feel so much better," and it's like, "Yeah, bro, you're taking an antidepressant."

   11. JRJoe Rogan18:27

       (laughs)

   12. CMChris Masterjohn18:28

       Um.

   13. JRJoe Rogan18:28

       (laughs)

   14. CMChris Masterjohn18:28

       So that's, that's part of it. But if you look at what it actually does, it is a very non-specific re-wirer of how your mitochondria produce energy. And if, you can think of it like, let's say there's a main road in the city and it's the best road, and that's why everyone's on it, but it's blocked, and then they set up detours, people are g- they're gonna help the traffic because that road is blocked. There's, you c- actually can't get through there, and so the side roads that would take you somewhere are actually better because they're not blocked, right? So in the context where you need the detours, the detours help you. But if the main road was not blocked and they start putting up detour signs and people start going out in the side roads, they're not gonna get to their destination faster. They're just getting tricked by the m- the mess, the chaos that was created by people putting up detour signs that they didn't need. So, methylene blue is something that goes into your mitochondria and sets up detour signs all over the place. And if-

   15. JRJoe Rogan19:29

       How does, how does it do that?

   16. CMChris Masterjohn19:30

       Um. So it, uh ... All right, so what your mitochondria do to produce energy is they extract, they, you know, you have a molecule like carbohydrate or an amino acid from the protein that you ate, or a fatty acid from the butter you were eating. You gotta break that apart. You gotta take out the energy, and you gotta synthesize ATP with it. The ATP is the general energy currency of the cell. So mitochondria produce usable energy from food in the form of ATP. When they do that, they have a bunch of different, uh, path, bunch of different pathways through which electrons flow, and methylene blue is able to grab those electrons and put them somewhere else. So it, they call it a redox cycler. So it's taking an electron here. It's shuttling it over there. It's taking an electron here, it's shuttling it over there, and so if you have this ver-, uh, let's say the normal way for your mitochondria to produce energy has a main road where the electrons just flow straight through. Methylene blue is coming in and is just, um, you know, taking that electron over here, it's throwing it in over there and so on. So if you've got a road that goes like this and you got a blockage right here, and methylene blue is just taking something out there and it's putting it over there, you actually wind up getting better energy with it. But if you don't have a blockage, you're just creating random chaos in the mitochondria. And they're, in animal experiments, what they've done is they've said, "Okay, let's give these animals inhibitors of their mitochondria at specific locations and see what methylene blue does." And if you don't have any inhibitors, and if the animal is genetically healthy, then you add methylene blue, they get less ATP.

   17. JRJoe Rogan21:13

       Hm.

   18. CMChris Masterjohn21:13

       So the, the mitochondria is less effective at converting food to usable energy. But if they do have an inhibitor, their ATP production goes down, you add methylene blue, it goes back up, right? So if, if there's a blockage to get around, methylene blue helps. So I think what's important if you really want to make sure that people are using methylene blue right is to, um, actually do mitochondrial testing that will tell you whether those specific blockages are there. I ran a biochemical optimization program, uh, awhile back, and one of the clients that I had in there, he tried methylene blue and he only got up to a half a milligram or a milligram, and his w- mood was worse. His fatigue was worse. He had more anxiety. Uh, a bunch of problems that, you know, I, the dose was too low to say it was doing a pharmacological, messing with his neurotransmitters, and so I think it was just making his mitochondrial function worse. And so the mitochondrial testing that we did on him showed that, you know, he was not a candidate for methylene blue, and he actually had, you know, some really weird, uh, like his mitochondria were best at using a specific amino acid cysteine and, uh, for energy. Eh, kind of weird and idiosyncratic, and in his case it was interesting because he had actually gravitated to a steak only carnivore diet, and he didn't feel like it fixed him, but he felt like it, you know, took the edge off. Like, he was 50% better on the steak only carnivore diet. And that's-

   19. JRJoe Rogan22:45

       50%'s a lot.

   20. CMChris Masterjohn22:46

       Well, it's a, it, yeah, it's a lot, right. But he wanted the other 50%. That's why-

   21. JRJoe Rogan22:49

       Oh.

   22. CMChris Masterjohn22:49

       ... he was coming to me. (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan22:50

       (laughs)

   24. CMChris Masterjohn22:50

       Yeah. So, um, so what was, you know ... And he, the, figuring this out didn't get him to 100% but it got him to kind, you know, to get days with 75% because, um, you know, because he could use strategic cysteine supplementation to mimic the benefit he was getting from the steak, uh, but he would be able to, you know, be still in the fasting state a- 'cause his workouts were better in the fasting state and things like that. Um, so, so figuring that out allowed him to, you know, get from 50% to 75%. But the methylene blue was, was putting him down at, uh, five percent-

   25. JRJoe Rogan23:24

       (laughs)

   26. CMChris Masterjohn23:25

       ... instead of 50, you know?

   27. JRJoe Rogan23:25

       Can I ask how old he was?

   28. CMChris Masterjohn23:27

       Uh, he wasn't that old. He was in, maybe 40? I, I forget exactly, but 40, give or take five years.

8. 23:35 – 26:49

   Aging as mitochondrial decline: the 1% per year model and controllable variability

   1. JRJoe Rogan23:35

      And is that an age dependent thing, like mitochondrial dysfunction? Is it more common in older people?

   2. CMChris Masterjohn23:40

      Uh, f- for sure. So what ... I mean, I would argue that mitochondrial dysfunction and aging are the same thing.

   3. JRJoe Rogan23:46

      Mm.

   4. CMChris Masterjohn23:46

      Um, and, you know, there's a bunch of theories of aging, but if you take them all, you can always ask the question why. There's like, the information theory of aging, like w- why is the information not, not being carried out correctly, or the oxidative stress theory of aging. Well, why are you making more oxidative stress? And I actually think th- I actually think it's m- way more simple than anyone is thinking about it. It's ... Mitochondrial energy production is producing everything in your body. It's repairing it, it's maintaining it, and it's putting it where it belongs.... that means that mitochondria produce the energy that they need to produce everything in the mitochondria (laughs) , right? And so if you have a little gap in your energy production, like let's say you get ... Uh, y- I think one way to think of aging is, well, I've just b- I've s- suffered through so many cumulative insults. Like, I got sick, uh, so many times. I got injured so many times. I had days where I didn't eat optimal nutrition so many times. And I think what all those things are, are doing is like, well, you know, you, that period of over-training that you did, your mitochondria were, were forced to help you p- give you the energy for, you know, that, the extra set of squats that you did. And they had a little bit left over for themselves, and they got, you know, a half a percent worse at producing energy. And so that sets up a vicious cycle, because now, now that they could not repair themselves as well, now they get a little bit worse, and what ... Get a little bit worse. And what you see, um, in the literature is that as people age, fr- starting a- at, around age 18 through age 70 to 80, you're losing your mitochondrial function an average rate of 1% per year. So by the time you're 70, you have half the energy that you started out with, that baseline. And that, I, I th- I think what explains that is, is just the vicious cycle of the mitochondria got ... They lost a quarter percent here, a quarter percent there, and they just started repairing themselves less effectively, because they're the engines fueling everything, including that. And so, but, you know, the good news is that age only explains 25% of mitochondrial function, so it's the average that's going down at 1% per year. The average person is half, producing half the energy at age 70 than they were at age 18. But the spread around that is huge. And with that, to me the way that I spin that is, that means that 75% of this isn't under your control.

   5. JRJoe Rogan26:16

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CMChris Masterjohn26:16

      You're gonna s- you're gonna go in a downward trend, but you're in control of whether, you know, you're way undershooting that trend or you're way overshooting it. What you wanna do is make your mitochondrial function as good as it can be at any given age so that that downward trend will, you know, it'll be a lot slower.

   7. JRJoe Rogan26:35

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CMChris Masterjohn26:35

      And you can get to age 70 and you're not docked 50%, you're just docked 10%. And I think that's what's happening when you see some of these 70-year-olds who, who, uh, you know, are more fit than a lot of 25 (laughs) -

   9. JRJoe Rogan26:48

      (laughs)

   10. CMChris Masterjohn26:48

       ... year olds, you know?

9. 26:49 – 34:13

   Five pillars for mitochondria: creatine, sunlight, nutrition, exercise, and individualized testing

   1. JRJoe Rogan26:49

      Yeah. Interesting. So what are the primary factors, uh, in regards to being able to maintain your function?

   2. CMChris Masterjohn26:56

      Uh, well, I think that everyone has idiosyncratic things, and I think mitochondrial testing is, is very important. But if I were to pick five things that just everyone should be doing for their mitochondria, a lot of it does look like health advice you might get somewhere else, but it, it actually is the best stuff, right? So we mentioned creatine, and I think creatine is really important because it's not in the mitochondria so much as it carries forth the mitochondrial energy to the rest of the cell, but that also feeds back in the repair functions for the mitochondria. And so I think creatine, optimizing your creatine status is super important, and I think that there ... Everyone who's not eating one or two pounds of meat per day should be, should probably be taking creatine. And you can think of it as, uh, if you're eating red meat and you're eating it rare, you can err on the side of one pound, and if you're eating ... And I, I would include as red meat salmon, which is like a reddish fish and is actually quite high in creatine. Um, if you're eating white meat, white fish and you're eating, uh, eating it well done, you wanna err on the side of two pounds, 'cause you, you're lose ... They don't have as much creatine, and you cook the creatine out of them, and you wind up with much lower dose.

   3. JRJoe Rogan28:13

      We should probably say salmon, you're talking about wild salmon versus farmed salmon, which has a dyed pink skin.

   4. CMChris Masterjohn28:20

      Um, well, it's not the red color. I think it's coincidence that it's, that it's ... I think the red color is coincidence. It's just a helpful way to think about it. But, um, and it probably is the case at least like, uh, every Atlantic, uh, farmed salmon that I've seen is w- you, you can tell that it's, uh, d- it's j- Well, if you look up in the database, it's way higher in fat, um, but you can tell by looking at it that it just doesn't have that lean, uh, look that wild salmon has. So I think creatine is a function of the lean tissue mass, and, um, i- and it might be the case that wild salmon are doing a lot more, uh, swimming (laughs) . Um, like maybe-

   5. JRJoe Rogan29:00

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CMChris Masterjohn29:00

      ... the wild environment is encouraging them to use their muscles in a way that increases their creatine synthesis. That wouldn't be surprise me, wouldn't surprise me. Um, I have tried to steel man the case of, could there be a vegan diet that would make you not need to supplement with creatine? And wh- the steel man that I've got for you is you'd have to be eating a half a kilogram of tofu and a half a kilogram of quinoa per day, um, and that's not typically what ...

   7. JRJoe Rogan29:25

      (exhales)

   8. CMChris Masterjohn29:25

      And that might rip a hole in your digestive system (laughs) -

   9. JRJoe Rogan29:27

      (laughs)

   10. CMChris Masterjohn29:27

       ... but that's f- but that's not typical-

   11. JRJoe Rogan29:28

       Boy, you just hurt my stomach just saying that.

   12. CMChris Masterjohn29:30

       (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan29:30

       (laughs)

   14. CMChris Masterjohn29:31

       Um, so I, I think that, um, I th- most vegans should probably just supplement with creatine (laughs) , could call it a day there. Um, so that's creatine. I th- we mentioned, uh, sunlight, s- so sunlight is, uh, when you wake up in the morning, I said before that your mitochondria have not gone to sleep literally, but they've really slowed down their ... It's like they're on a nap. And th- there's a transition when you wake up where the mitochondria have to say, "Oh, y- you've woken up. Now I need to, I need to wake up and I need to start producing more energy." Um, and sunlight going into your eyes, being translated into your brain, is the signal that actually tells your brain to organize that. And so-... what happens as a result of that is that signaling helps your mitochondria adapt and start producing everything and it actually helps them adjust. And if you don't have the morning sunlight, you are ... You're going to have your mornings full of suboptimal energy m- metabolism that is initiating that, that vicious cycle of aging. Is that's what I believe. Um, and then it's, and then it's also the case that the red and infrared light from the sun is very beneficial to the mitochondria. The best time to get that would be in the morning. Um, when you go out in the afternoon, you've got to deal with like, "Can I get two hours of this without getting burned?" But if you go out in the morning, you can stay out there for one or two hours and you can get a lot of red and infrared light without worrying about burning, uh, burning wavelengths. And then the, I think the beds and other devices at home are great, and where you wanna start thinking about that is, "I'm getting benefit from red and near-infrared light, but I'm getting m- more ... I know that I could get more benefit if I got more of it than I'm able to get through sunlight." So start ma- start getting those wavelengths with sunlight as your base, and then do whatever you want on top of that-

   15. JRJoe Rogan31:36

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CMChris Masterjohn31:36

       ... with whatever seems to be working well for you. Then nutrition would be number three, and nu- y- every nutrient is needed for everything in your body, but your mitochondria are u- are using all kinds of nutrients. And the, w- there's this idea that floats around in society that nutritional deficiencies are a thing of the past. But if you just look at surveys, 93% of Americans are getting less than they need of at least one nutrient, 30% have verifiable blood markers of at least one nutritional deficiency, and 6% have blood markers verifying more than one nutrient deficiency. And I think those are all underestimates, because when you're just looking at the official stats on like how much of each nutrient should you eat, there are w- there are a lot of people that have needs for way more, right? So I think those stats are grossly underestimating how many people need to get better nutrition. So I think everybody should be getting better nutrition. Um, and to kind of high level what that looks like, I think some good rules of, there's lots of ways to skin a cat, but some good rules of thumb are different people do better with more plants or more animals, but to, when you do eat animals, you should be eating them nose to tail. Uh, so at least try to work in liver, at least try to work in bone broth or s- you know, s- something like that. The closer to nose to tail you can eat your animals, the better. Do try to diversify across proteins because there's just different, uh, vitamin and mineral profiles in different, um, types of protein. Like, if you can eat shellfish, eat some shellfish. If you can eat fish, eat some fish. If you can eat dairy, eat some dairy. And the more you diversify across those proteins, the better. Most people don't eat enough protein. Good rule of thumb would be at least a third of your plate should be protein, but if it's, if you're talking like eggs and dairy products, you gotta double that because they just, the s- amount of space they occupy p- per, per, uh, unit of protein that they're giving you is, is, uh, you know, a third of your plate as eggs is not gonna give you enough protein. Um, and then I think try to eat as broadly as you can from different types of carbohydrates. If you have to leave out something, leave out grains. Try to eat whole, unprocessed foods. Um, and tr- try to eat most of your f- try to eat 80% of your foods cooked at home or prepped at home r- or whatever instead of eating out, um, and make sure your digestion is in good order. And those are kind of the, you know, the broad basis of nutrition.

   17. JRJoe Rogan34:12

       Yeah.

10. 34:13 – 50:08

    Exercise for longevity: why gymnasts and pole vaulters may outlive endurance athletes

    1. CMChris Masterjohn34:13

       Um, and, um, exercise is, is a very interesting one. Um, so if you ... Exercise is incredibly important to the signaling that produce mitochondria. But why is that? It's because you need mitochondria to produce energy for the exercise that you're doing. So I think a lot of people are too reductionist when they look at what type of exercise should you do for your mitochondria. If you try to do a study that says like, "I'm trying to get more mitochondria in my skeletal muscle. What's, what exercise gonna do it?" You're gonna do, you're gonna see endurance exercise outperforming other things. And that's because endurance activity requires more mitochondrial function in the muscle. Um, if you're doing like hypertrophy or strength training and you're doing short sets, your muscles burning a lot of glycogen, it's less dependent on its mitochondria, so you're not gonna see the mitochondrial function there. But that doesn't mean you're not improving mitochondrial function, because now all that really means is the liver is stepping up to assist the muscle. Like if, if you're doing s- sprinting, your muscles burning through tons of carbohydrates, making a lot of lactate, if that lactate's not being metabolized in the skeletal muscle, it's going to the liver to get converted back to glucose. So your liver, now you're training your liver's mitochondria when you're doing strength training or you're doing hypertrophy. Um, so I think the right way to look at it is just you should be exercising all the things that are functions that you need to keep, and that means endurance, it means strength, it means mobility, it means agility, it means balance, it means proprioception, it means being able to respond to your environment. I think to, you know, to some degree, like just playing a sport that has other people in it is important because if someone's throwing a frisbee and you need to react to that, you're training mitochondria in your brain that are able to energize the systems that provide your reaction time. And I think cognitive, um, you know, d- exercise for your brain (laughs) is things like me- m- working on your memory and on your, uh, creative synthesis and all, all those different aspects. And I, I do think that a lot of people are thinking about this when they're 25, they're like, "Well, I don't care if I can memorize a string of 25 numbers," but y- you're gonna care if you can't remember anything when you're 75, (laughs) you know?

    2. JRJoe Rogan36:32

       (laughs) .

    3. CMChris Masterjohn36:32

       So I, I think that we, we n- really need a broad, um-... thought about this. By- by the way, do you know what athletes live the longest from the pro- from the pros?

    4. JRJoe Rogan36:44

       (inhales deeply) Ooh, let me guess. Baseball?

    5. CMChris Masterjohn36:49

       S- it's- it's actually gymnasts and pole vaulters-

    6. JRJoe Rogan36:53

       Huh.

    7. CMChris Masterjohn36:54

       ... have, have eight years on the general population. Um, and if you, if you look at... There was a study that came out earlier this year and it tallied up all of the pro sports players from all of the countries who had the dates of their death published and who were n- who were notable enough to have been, uh, had an article published about them. And so they had many hundreds. I forgot the, I forget the exact sample size. But they were able to, um, uh, statistically adjust the d- the mortality rate to the general population from which the athlete came. So if, you know, if it was a Greek athlete, they were adjusted to the mortality rate of Greece when they, when they died. Um, like how... How, what you would expect to, after adjusting for location and age and so on. And in the male athletes, you had gymnasts and pole vaulters with eight years on the population and you've got cyclists who've... And of course you've got sumos, sumo wrestlers are 10 years below. (laughs) And you have a lot of sports like that have high injury rates that are... Especially a lot of stuff that has impacts to the hands, martial arts and things like that, where probably the sport itself and its impact on training your body's energy systems is positive, but just the injury rate is t- is taking you out, so you're, you're kind of like not... You're kind of in the middle, you're very close to the general population. Um, cyclists only have two years on the general population. And so what-

    8. JRJoe Rogan38:30

       Wow.

    9. CMChris Masterjohn38:31

       ... what I thought was interes- I think a few things are interesting about that. So first of all, there's a l- a lot of people in the longevity space are taking most of their information about how they should train for longevity from people who specialize in cycling. (laughs)

    10. JRJoe Rogan38:44

        Really?

    11. CMChris Masterjohn38:44

        And so... Well, I, yeah, I'm not gonna name names but there's, you know, a lot of, there's p- people out there-

    12. JRJoe Rogan38:49

        Okay.

    13. CMChris Masterjohn38:49

        ... who are, you know, that's where it's coming from. And I th- you know, it makes a lot of sense that cycling is, you know, it's good for cardiorespiratory fitness. There's a lot of data that having good cardiorespiratory fitness is a key factor for longevity. But when you look at a, a study where gymnasts and pole vaulters have six extra years on the cyclist and the cyclist only have two extra years on the general population, I'm like, "Huh, what..." You know? I- it's not all about the cardiorespiratory fitness. And so when I think about there's, it's, you know, it's an observational study, you can't prove cause and effect, but it just does make you think. And the way that I think about that is a few things. So first of all, the commonalities between gymnasts and pole vaulters, they're... It's definitely not height, 'cause gymnasts tend to be short and pole vaulters are tall, and so the height cancels out. Um, definitely they're fit. They do both have... It is interesting that they have, you know, cyclists have a good lower body and gymnasts and pole vaulters have a good upper body. So I do think that's interesting that it does make you, it does make you wonder (laughs) if you could skip leg day, but I don't know, I don't advocate skipping leg day but... (laughs) Um, but, uh, to me like what I think is actually going on here is, um, I, I think that functionality of movement throughout the whole body to facilitate, um, n- very, uh, to facilitate the kind of skills that they have, um, is, is training, is training if things that are getting left out when you just make sure that your heart and lungs are able to support your running or your cycling. And I think that some of those involve i- are probably related... I don't know what they're not dying of. So presumably they're getting less heart disease or like getting less cancer and they're getting less neurological disease because that's what people are dying of, right? Like the, in the average, if you get, uh, far enough t- for someone to analyze why you died, um, you know, there are like diabetes and hip fractures and things like that are, are hitting younger people. But in general if people are dying 'cause they got old, they're dying of heart disease first, cancer second and neurologic... Like they outlive those two things, you get this diverse spread of things that people die of and neurologic, diverse neurological diseases becomes pretty heavy. So I think cardiorespiratory fitness is probably the biggest thing in preventing heart disease. But cancer becomes very interesting because there was a s- there was a, a study in rodents that showed that stretching prevents tumor growth. And I thought this was wild. I first heard, uh, about this on one of Huberman's shows and so I looked up the study and I was like, "This is wild." Because I happen to know some other things about immune function. So one, uh, thing is that when, when in... T cells which are important both to prevent infections and are also important because they attack you during autoimmunity and they're also important because they kill cancer. For T cells to be activated, what they do is they don't have enough energy themselves so they push off the local environment and that pushing off creates, um, motor proteins inside that generate the energy to activate the T cell. And what cancers do is they modify their extracellular environment to compromise that because it's harder for the T cell to push off of it. Now I know another thing from Crohn's research which is that the best way to...... cure Crohn's disease besides some of the drugs that they're on is a liquid diet. And the recent research on how the liquid diet works is that it removes the pressure in the intestine that is pushing out and is causing inflammation to activate and attack the body, right? So I'm synthesizing these three things and I'm like, "This makes a lot of sense that the relative proportions and how stretched out and, like, what is the quality of your joint tissue and things like that probably has a lot of severely un- underappreciated, uh, causation in terms of cancer and autoimmune disease." So, I think it would be very interesting to see if actual, like, functional mechanical activity, like if you optimize for functional mechanical activity such that you can swing around from acrobat (laughs) , uh, from a trapeze and flip around in the air and swing on rings and push yourself up and stuff like that, does that pay forward into better immune function because your body is more properly structured? I can't prove that, but I think it's very interesting to think about for, for, for those two exercises. Um, and then it is very interesting to me that gymnasts and pole vaulters both spend a lot of time upside down. And they don't stay upside down for very long, but they just, they repeatedly are upside down quite a bit, right? And so, oh, this is ju- again, this is all just hypothesizing interesting ideas, right? So one interesting idea is that a, a vibration plate is the sedentary man's gymnastics. (laughs) And that, you know, turn- flipping upside down, um, is better at circulating body fluids than walking, and, like, a vibration plate is better than walking. But actually spending time upside, in the upside down state and flipping around is actually very good for circulating the fluids in your body. I don't, uh, you know, I can't prove any of this, but it's all very interesting to think about. But what I ke- what I kind of conclude from this is you don't want to get sucked into just optimizing VO2 max or something like that. You really want to... The lesson from the gymnasts is like, what are all the things that a gymnast can do that I can't do? And I should be able to approximate them in the best way (laughs) that I can. And I take that a little bit more, more literally. So I, I actually do, like, uh, I am trying to convert all my workouts into, like, "What's the gymnastic version of this?" Um-

    14. JRJoe Rogan45:22

        And you think it's because of flipping? Y- you don't think it's a-

    15. CMChris Masterjohn45:25

        Well, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just-

    16. JRJoe Rogan45:27

        ... co- Think about they're both involving coordination, explosive-

    17. CMChris Masterjohn45:29

        Y-

    18. JRJoe Rogan45:29

        ... movement.

    19. CMChris Masterjohn45:30

        Right, and I e- I think the, I think the-

    20. JRJoe Rogan45:34

        Skills.

    21. CMChris Masterjohn45:34

        Yes. So I think this, the skill training is, is big for spill off into neurological disease, because, uh, but I, I'm just trying to connect them to the three things. So I, like, like I, I, I'm not sure exactly what they have lower rates of death from. We need more studies to s- to see that. But the, um, but the body mechanics, I think, is a very interesting possible explanation of why they'd have lower rates of cancer. And the, what you just said, I think, is a great explanation of why they would have lower rates of neurological disease. And I think it's kind of like, you know, if you look at... I think another thing that people mistake in the longevity space is they spend too much time thinking about rever- like, reverse engineering, uh, 100 backwards. "What do I want to not have lost by that time?" And not enough time just being in peak function. 'Cause if you look at bone mass, for example, bone mass goes, uh, up until you're in your mid-20s, maybe 25 to 30. D- there's a little bit difference with men and women. But then it just goes down after that. And if you wanna have good bone mass when you're 75, the, like the most important asset you could possibly have is to have really good peak bone mass when you're 25, right?

    22. JRJoe Rogan46:54

        Mm-hmm.

    23. CMChris Masterjohn46:54

        So, I, I really think that, like, it's just like I said before. You might not think memorizing a string of 25 numbers is important at any age. But, you know, if, if you're gonna have really awesome peak memory, that gives you a lot of room to decline later on. Whereas if you're trying to reverse engineer, like, what you don't want to be able to not remember when you're 75, I think you're just setting the bar way too low, right? So if you're, if you're 20, you should be thinking about, like, "What are all the sports I can't do?" And not, you know, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with picking a sport, but, but I do think it's, uh, it would be good for everyone when they're young enough to do so to just try a different sport once a year. And maybe they don't love it and they don't fall in love with it, but maybe they learn something, like, "Oh, I didn't realize I couldn't do that." So for example, I did, uh, last year I did a little bit of BJJ and I did a little bit of boxing and I was like, "Oh damn, like, my feet don't move like they used to," (laughs) um, in boxing. And in, in B- in BJJ I was, I was getting a little dizzy doing forward and backward rolls, and I was like, "I don't spend enough..." This was before I started thinking about the gymnast being upside down. I was like, "I don't spend enough time being upside down." So I was like... So I bought some mats and then now I just, you know, I do f- I do one forward and backward roll every day no matter... I don't do BJJ right now, but I just do one (laughs) f- forward and backward roll ev- every day as part of my morning routine. Um, but I've also switched, like, I was like, "Why would I overhead press when I could try to do..." Um, I can do wall push-ups now. I'm, uh, I, My hope is by next year I'll be able to do handstand push-ups, but I've, I'm working on a handstand right now, so we'll see how that goes. But, um, I, I think just...... 'cause you can focus on one thing. You can really miss out that, like, "Oh, my favorite workout activities don't en-" I mean this is, how many people are doing all their favorite workout rotat- activities and forgetting that they don't have any rotation-

    24. JRJoe Rogan48:52

        Mm. Mm.

    25. CMChris Masterjohn48:52

        ... or they don't have any side bending? (laughs)

    26. JRJoe Rogan48:53

        Mm.

    27. CMChris Masterjohn48:54

        You know, like if, like if, if you would just, you just, like, try a different sport and be like, "Oh, what am, what did I not realize I wasn't able to do at all?" And f- and then pick that and put it in your workout. Um, you know, 'cause if you've got a great programmer, then maybe your workout is perfect. But I think most of us are, can, like, we gravitate towards some of the exercises that we think are good. And even if you, even if you think you're s- mixing it up, like CrossFit, CrossFit managed to, to eliminate rotation from everything. Like, the, like, every sport that involves throwing a ball involves rotation, right? It-

    28. JRJoe Rogan49:26

        Well, they, they do sometimes. They throw the ball sideways against a wall. There's, there's some rotation in some CrossFit.

    29. CMChris Masterjohn49:31

        Oh, maybe they worked it in. When I did CrossFit, the ball throwing we did-

    30. JRJoe Rogan49:34

        It was really-
11. 50:08 – 56:15

    Skill training and ‘don’t lose your gains’: new sports, coordination, and daily maintenance habits

    1. JRJoe Rogan50:08

       When we're talking about skills, we're talking about the neurological system and the cognitive system, eh, synergistically in a-

    2. CMChris Masterjohn50:16

       Yeah.

    3. JRJoe Rogan50:16

       ... dance. Um, when you talk about old people, and one o- one of the things that happens when, eh, cognitive function declines is you, you lose your ability to do puzzles. And one of the way to stave that off, they believe, is like, do crosswords, do a bunch of different things-

    4. CMChris Masterjohn50:32

       Yeah.

    5. JRJoe Rogan50:32

       ... your con- eh, chess. Do something that's actively making your mind fire and work. Wouldn't it just make sense that a skill versus just a, a workout, just bench-pressing and squats and stuff like that, but it's an actual skill where you're doing, like, Muay Thai, hitting pads, or even light sparring, that you're, you're thinking as a- as well as exercising, which is very different. 'Cause you're, you're con- you're, you're consciously aware of your opponent's movement. You're calculating it. You're, you're, you're trying to time things. There's a whole dance going on between your body and your mind that doesn't really exist in straight workouts.

    6. CMChris Masterjohn51:14

       Yeah, I-

    7. JRJoe Rogan51:14

       So that alone, I would think, would fight off a lot of the age-related decline in physical activity or physical function.

    8. CMChris Masterjohn51:23

       Yeah, I think there are... Y- you mentioned a couple things in there, so I think it's a separate thing to have a skill and to have strategy and to have reaction time. But I, but I think you definitely wanna be hitting all those bases, so I think it's, it's good to have a general checklist of what should you be exercising and see that it, like, takes strength and h- and break it down into the different planes, and then also take skill, strategy, reaction time, agility, quickness, balance, power, um, and you have to find a way to... You know, it's hard to work everything at once, but you gotta find a way to, um, maybe s- maybe you cycle through switching your focus, but you find, like, what is... If I, if I worked on really being able to jump rope without tripping my feet up last quarter, um, how am I gonna take that skill and not lose it? And y- so for, for me, for example, like, I really focused on jump roping when I realized how horrible I was at it when I was forced to do it in boxing. Um, and so I, I w- very intensively tried to get good at jump roping, and now I don't wanna work on it anymore, but I've just taken in, like, okay, I, every morning I have to do 50 uninterrupted jump ropes just in the course of my warm, warmup.

    9. JRJoe Rogan52:44

       Just to kinda keep whatever skills that you've developed.

    10. CMChris Masterjohn52:45

        Yeah, just to, just to make sure that, like, I'm not losing the basic capacity to do that f- that f- coordination.

    11. JRJoe Rogan52:52

        Yeah.

    12. CMChris Masterjohn52:53

        And if I start to, then I realize I have to work on it more.

    13. JRJoe Rogan52:56

        Mm. Yeah. Um, l- new things, I think, would enhance that even more maybe than things that you're very comfortable with and things you're very efficient at. Like, say if you're an athlete in whatever sport and you say, "You know, I'm going to try jujitsu," or, "I'm gonna try martial arts." Like, something completely new like that where you're working out, but you're really thinking, 'cause you've gotta, like, really concentrate. It's not like a natural movement to throw a side kick. You have to really concentrate on picking your knee up, twisting your body, and all that jazz.

    14. CMChris Masterjohn53:29

        (laughs)

    15. JRJoe Rogan53:29

        Like, I think stuff like that would, you know, just keep everything firing, no?

    16. CMChris Masterjohn53:36

        I think you w- yeah. I, I mean I think you should do a mix. Like, you always wanna be pushing yourself to a new, um, to new achievements, but then you als- I think you wanna structure things so that you don't lose the ones that you, that you did.

    17. JRJoe Rogan53:49

        Right.

    18. CMChris Masterjohn53:50

        Like, I, I think a lot of us go through life just making achievement and losing it, and we're like-

    19. JRJoe Rogan53:55

        Oh, yeah.

    20. CMChris Masterjohn53:55

        ... treading water and going nowhere. (laughs)

    21. JRJoe Rogan53:57

        I, when I really got into jujitsu, I stopped doing any kickboxing for a long time, and every now and then I would just hit the bag and just like, "Oh, I still can do it." But then, um, I started training Muay Thai again, and it was kinda shocking how long it took me to get, like, the flow back, the like bop bop whap, like where it really, like, comes off smooth. Everything seemed, like, a little labored, and it was just disheartening to like, "Oh, d- I don't really have these skills. Like, I have to, like, reacquire them."

    22. CMChris Masterjohn54:27

        (laughs)

    23. JRJoe Rogan54:27

        You know, I know how to do it.

    24. CMChris Masterjohn54:28

        Yeah.

    25. JRJoe Rogan54:28

        I've done it, but it's just like right now everything is a little... The pathways are filled with mud, you know what I mean? It's not clean. It's not nice and sharp.... everything is a little funky. And, you know, but if you wanna get good at Jujitsu, you don't have time for two hours of Muay Thai a day. You just don't. You know? So it's like you gotta pick your poison. You gotta pick what you like and what you don't like.

    26. CMChris Masterjohn54:49

        Yeah. Uh, well, I, I think y- you have to decide what your goal is and what-

    27. JRJoe Rogan54:55

        Right.

    28. CMChris Masterjohn54:55

        ... your metric is. Like, you could... y- there's no way that anyone is gonna be good at, like, seven, you know, gonna be elite level at any two sports or, like, great at- at- at any seven, right? So, I think you have to say, like, "D- okay, do I want to be really good at Muay Thai?" And that- and that's... y- you- you don't have to do that to have healthy aging.

    29. JRJoe Rogan55:16

        Right, right, right.

    30. CMChris Masterjohn55:16

        But there are things that you do at Muay Thai that you do have to be able to do to have healthy aging. So, if you're just thinking about it from the perspective of, "How do I know that I'm h- engaging in healthy aging?" I think you- you don't- you don't wanna say, like, "Oh, I need to be gr- I need to be as good as I ever was at Muay Thai." You just have to say, "Okay, like, what am- w- why am I bad at some of that? And is that something that I need in general?" And I think oftentimes by doing something like that, you can think about it and you can realize, "Oh, what I'm... what I really can't do is I'm not agile anymore," or, "I really can't, like, shift my weight quickly anymore," or, "I really can't... like, my reaction time is slow. Like, I- I just keep getting, uh, hit in the head because I don't move it." (laughs) You know? I- if you're realizing those things, then I think you gotta... you have to find some way to train those, because you need those for everything and it's just... it's easy to not challenge yourself in life and don't realize what you're losing. So you do have to challenge yourself with something you're not able to do to figure out what you're weak in.
12. 56:15 – 1:02:27

    Injuries, overtraining, and brain trauma: systemic energy costs and recovery strategies

    1. JRJoe Rogan56:15

       (smacks lips) One of the things I wanted to bring up you brought up earlier, um, you were talking about, uh, martial artists and perhaps, like, injuries, uh, accumulating over time, and you lose some of your function because of that, like you mentioned hands, uh, hand injuries. Um, is that something that people need to take into consideration that maybe they don't, that maybe just physical damage, like in terms of getting hit and, um, physical damage perhaps from over-training, um, physical damage, may have be- uh, c- certainly from cutting weight. You know, a lot of these guys cut weight and they're basically on death's door 24 hours before a fight, which is, I think, completely insane and the most avoidable, uh, damaging thing about martial arts competition. And yet it's ubiquitous. It's like e- uh, almost everyone does it.

    2. CMChris Masterjohn57:05

       Yeah. I- I- I mean, I think there is a degree of subjectivity to it. If your, you know, if your idea of what a life well lived is, is to win an event that might have you die in the next three years, then, you know, how are you gonna argue with that- that value, uh, that someone has adopted? But if- if you are thinking about it from the perspective of, "How do I stay healthy through... l- how do I live a long, healthy life?" then injury prevention has to be your number one consideration, not your number two. I think even if you were just trying to see- say, like, "How- how can I be the strongest I could be?" you would still need injury prevention to be number one. Because, you know, how many people take three months off from a lift that they're working on and wind up six months behind where they had been when they start again as a result of that injury? And where would they have been if they spent that six months getting stronger? And if you're gonna do that every two or three years, like, that's taking a lo- like, a huge toll off, um, even the skill that you could develop and- and your maximal capacity at that. But like I was saying at the beginning, I- I d- I really think that the simplest explanation for why mitochondrial function declines 1% per year and gets cut in half by age 70 is just this, like, when I was injured, my mitochondria were completely obsessed with healing from that injury, and a little bit came out of the account used to repair the home base.

    3. JRJoe Rogan58:42

       That's what I was getting at.

    4. CMChris Masterjohn58:42

       Yeah.

    5. JRJoe Rogan58:43

       Yeah. So, uh, for someone who's had, like a- like a- say, a martial artist who's had broken hands, broken ribs, knee surgery, shoulder surgery. A l- a lot of these guys have gone through a bunch of stuff like that, like so each one of those things is taking a small toll.

    6. CMChris Masterjohn58:57

       Yeah.

    7. JRJoe Rogan58:58

       Yeah.

    8. CMChris Masterjohn58:58

       Yeah, for sure.

    9. JRJoe Rogan58:58

       That's not something that people consider. You can- you think, "Oh, you recovered from that injury, now you're 100%." But you're 100% with the tax of having recovered from that injury.

    10. CMChris Masterjohn59:10

        (smacks lips) Yeah. And a l- and a lot of people aren't necessarily fully recovered from the injury, either. And-

    11. JRJoe Rogan59:14

        Oh, many, many aren't.

    12. CMChris Masterjohn59:15

        Yeah. (laughs)

    13. JRJoe Rogan59:16

        Yeah, many, many aren't.

    14. CMChris Masterjohn59:17

        I've... you know, I d- I talked to- to- to a guy once who was, um... (smacks lips) You know, he got injured in marathon running, and he- he thought he was recovered. I thought he wasn't recovered, and he was... thought he was... there was some kind of metabolic stuff wrong with him because he was getting sick all the time. And I'm like, "Bro, you didn't recover yet. Like, what are you doing going out-

    15. JRJoe Rogan59:38

        Yeah. (laughs)

    16. CMChris Masterjohn59:38

        ... and doing all that running?" Like... (laughs)

    17. JRJoe Rogan59:40

        What was the injury?

    18. CMChris Masterjohn59:41

        I don't remember the spec- I forgot the specific injury, but, uh, one of- one of the common running injuries.

    19. JRJoe Rogan59:48

        Yeah. One of the things that's really common in MMA, um, is someone getting knocked out and then getting knocked out again 'cause they come back too quickly. Uh, it happened recently in a big fight. Um, uh, and it's just... there's- there's a thing that happens with these guys where they just wanna get back in there and get a win, and a lot of times, they're like, "I'll be ready. I won't get hit again. I know what I did wrong. I'll- I'll be better this time." But they're more vulnerable now. Like, they can get knocked out. It... uh, is this just neurological damage? Is this- this just b- a function of the concussion, or do you think it's a function of the concussion, the recovery from it, and the diminishing capacity of the body because it had to recover from that traumatic injury?

    20. CMChris Masterjohn1:00:36

        I think it's all of those.

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:00:37

        It's the... but that, too.

    22. CMChris Masterjohn1:00:38

        Yeah.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:00:38

        Right? So it's not just...

    24. CMChris Masterjohn1:00:39

        Yeah.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:00:39

        ... the fact that you got knocked out and your brain is more vulnerable now. It's like, no, no, no, your body's more vulnerable. You're probably not as strong as you were. You're probably not recovering as quickly.

    26. CMChris Masterjohn1:00:48

        Yeah. I mean, the- the brain is... it's a small part of the body, but it's massively outsized in terms of the energy that it consumes. And so, think about if-... think about if you're, you know, if you're actually healing the ability for it to... Like, if it's just sucking even more disproportionate energy from the body. And just think about how much the rest of the body works to support the brain. Like, the liver is working all day long to-

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:01:11

        Right, right.

    28. CMChris Masterjohn1:01:11

        ... make the brain get enough energy. Um, so yeah. There's, there's no way that healing from a brain injury is not taking a toll systemically. That's impossible.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:01:20

        But to, uh, accelerate or enhance that, creatine you think would be a very good option?

    30. CMChris Masterjohn1:01:26

        Um, cre- I mean, creatine is one of the ones that's been demonstrated to do that. And it w- And it's been studied 20 grams a day. I don't think anyone really knows, like, do you need 20? Is 30 better? Could it have been done with five? But the most of the brain research is being done with doses around 20 grams. And there's ... The thought is that the, you know, the muscles are gonna take first dibs, and you need to have a high dose to get it to the brain. I- We don't ... There's a lot we don't know about that. But, you know, as a default, like, if I was healing from a traumatic brain injury, I would, I would take the creatine. And then I ... You know, I think when ... If you have something that's this serious, you do want to, like, know what your limiting bottlenecks are. So, I think actually doing mitochondrial testing is ... That's like ... One of the applications would be, like, "Oh, now it's really important that I have a six-month window where I need to maximize everything I can." And so, you know, d- testing to understand your unique needs I think would be, uh, would be,

13. 1:02:27 – 1:24:19

    Food-first, pharma-last: CoQ10 dosing, heart as a food source, and megadose cautionary tales

    1. CMChris Masterjohn1:02:27

       um, a way to supercharge that process when it's needed. And I think that there are ... And, you know, t- ... So, to, to take this back to, to, like, what can people do in general, I think methylene blue, you mentioned, is, is one of those ones where, like, I wouldn't even ta- p- ... I personally wouldn't even take it without testing showing that I need it. But CoQ10 is an interesting one, because CoQ10 is actually made in the body and it is found in food. And so, there ... You know, methylene blue was ... A lot of people emphasize that it was the first, um ... It w- it was the first drug. Uh, so it was like the first, uh, f- ... you know, example of, of pharma, basically. But before that, it was (laughs) actually patented as, uh, something that would turn your clothes blue, but wouldn't come out in the wash. That, that was (laughs) the ... was the patent on methylene blue (laughs) . Um, you know, whereas CoQ10, uh, you eat food, it's there. Your body makes it itself. And-

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:03:27

       What, what kind of food is it in?

    3. CMChris Masterjohn1:03:29

       Heart is the best, is the be- ... And so I was saying before, you should be eating nose to tail. Like, if you're gonna eat meat, you should be eating heart. Um, I, I ... Personally, most of my meat is actually a blend of, um ... It's like 60% ground beef and the rest of it is a blend of liver, heart, kidney. And there are some other ... Uh, mine is just liver, heart, and kidney. There are some other companies that I've seen, uh, recently come out with ones that include spleen and adrenals in very small percentages. Um, but that's ... I, I do strongly believe in a food first, pharma last approach. And that doesn't mean, like, I'm against pharma, but it means that even with supplements, like, if you can meet a need with food, you should meet the need with food. You should use supplements in a strategic sense, not as a replacement for a bad diet. And those supplements should ... You know, what you would do next is say, like, "Okay, I'm really having trouble, um, getting enough whatever nutrient. Maybe I'll supplement it to compensate for that." But I think you should go on down the line with, you know, other things that are like ... supplements of s- things that occur naturally in your body, that, uh, are, are of course safe to be in your body, 'cause they're always gonna be there. Maybe you can supplement with that to help, um, break a vicious cycle of aging or to stimulate, um, a virtuous cycle of healing that, um ... You know, the ... I would ... Once you're getting all your nutrients and you're trying to do that from food, I would ... I think that you could start playing around with that stuff. But even then ... So, CoQ10 is a great example. I would, I would try eating more heart before I would try supplementing with 400 milligrams a day of CoQ10, for example.

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:05:17

       Can I ask you this?

    5. CMChris Masterjohn1:05:17

       Yeah.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:05:17

       Does it matter if it's chicken heart, beef heart? Does ... Is there a, a superior?

    7. CMChris Masterjohn1:05:22

       Um, I don't think we have enough data to say that. So, CoQ10 is one of those things where the nutritional databases are not that ... I mean, you're not even gonna find it in USDA database, but there's published literature. But I have not seen all the different hearts compared.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:05:38

       So, how do we know-

    9. CMChris Masterjohn1:05:39

       Yeah.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:05:39

        ... that CoQ10 is in heart?

    11. CMChris Masterjohn1:05:41

        Well, wherever it's been measured in heart, it's there. So, like, the representative examples of heart that were used were, like, an order of magnitude higher in CoQ10 than anything else.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:05:51

        And is it-

    13. CMChris Masterjohn1:05:51

        But, I ... But there ... But we haven't s-

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:05:52

        ... dependent upon-

    15. CMChris Masterjohn1:05:52

        Yeah.

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:05:53

        I'm sorry. Go a-

    17. CMChris Masterjohn1:05:53

        Oh, I mean, j- we just haven't seen all of the different hearts compared to each other.

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:05:57

        Is it, uh, dependent upon how it's cooked, like whether it's rare, well done?

    19. CMChris Masterjohn1:06:02

        I-

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:06:02

        Is that-

    21. CMChris Masterjohn1:06:03

        I think you lose some during cooking, but you're ... but it's ... I forget how much, and I don't think it's all of it. So, it's ... I think it's ... You're alwa- ... I mean, you're always ... The more gently you cook your food, the better off you are in every conceivable case. It might not always taste the best. I mean, except for parasites.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:06:21

        Except for parasites, of course.

    23. CMChris Masterjohn1:06:23

        Um, uh, I mean, you don't need to make a steak well done to avoid parasites.

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:06:25

        Well, not st- not steak.

    25. CMChris Masterjohn1:06:27

        Yeah.

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:06:27

        But pork.

    27. CMChris Masterjohn1:06:28

        Right, right, yeah. I mean, you-

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:06:29

        Or other, other things, especially-

    29. CMChris Masterjohn1:06:30

        Right.

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:06:31

        ... some wild game.

Episode duration: 2:19:26