Joe Rogan Experience #2420 - Chris Masterjohn

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   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. 15:00 – 30:00

   Hmm. …

   1. CMChris Masterjohn15:00

      systemic effect in pre- like preventing the eczema that I would get in the winter.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:04

      Hmm.

   3. 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.

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:04

      Right.

   5. CMChris Masterjohn16:04

      You're just-

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:04

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

   7. 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.

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:36

      Okay.

   9. CMChris Masterjohn16:36

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

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:40

       (laughs)

   11. CMChris Masterjohn16:40

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

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:43

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

   13. CMChris Masterjohn16:45

       (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:45

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

   15. CMChris Masterjohn16:49

       Yeah.

   16. 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.

   17. CMChris Masterjohn17:11

       (laughs)

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:12

       Wh- what school of- are you in?

   19. 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.

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:21

       Hmm.

   21. 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.

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:48

       Yeah.

   23. 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."

   24. JRJoe Rogan18:27

       (laughs)

   25. CMChris Masterjohn18:28

       Um.

   26. JRJoe Rogan18:28

       (laughs)

   27. 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-

   28. JRJoe Rogan19:29

       How does, how does it do that?

   29. 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.

   30. JRJoe Rogan21:13

       Hm.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. CMChris Masterjohn30:00

      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-

   2. JRJoe Rogan31:36

      Mm-hmm.

   3. 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.

   4. JRJoe Rogan34:12

      Yeah.

   5. 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?

   6. JRJoe Rogan36:32

      (laughs) .

   7. 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?

   8. JRJoe Rogan36:44

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

   9. CMChris Masterjohn36:49

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

   10. JRJoe Rogan36:53

       Huh.

   11. 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-

   12. JRJoe Rogan38:30

       Wow.

   13. 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)

   14. JRJoe Rogan38:44

       Really?

   15. 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-

   16. JRJoe Rogan38:49

       Okay.

   17. 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.

4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   And you think it's…

   1. CMChris Masterjohn45:00

      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-

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:22

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

   3. CMChris Masterjohn45:25

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

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:27

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

   5. CMChris Masterjohn45:29

      Y-

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:29

      ... movement.

   7. CMChris Masterjohn45:30

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

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:34

      Skills.

   9. 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?

   10. JRJoe Rogan46:54

       Mm-hmm.

   11. 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-

   12. JRJoe Rogan48:52

       Mm. Mm.

   13. CMChris Masterjohn48:52

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

   14. JRJoe Rogan48:53

       Mm.

   15. 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-

   16. 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.

   17. CMChris Masterjohn49:31

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

   18. JRJoe Rogan49:34

       It was really-

   19. CMChris Masterjohn49:34

       ... was, was wall balls. And it wa- so it was like-

   20. JRJoe Rogan49:36

       It depends enti-

   21. CMChris Masterjohn49:37

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan49:37

       I think it depends entirely on who's teaching it.

   23. CMChris Masterjohn49:39

       Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

   24. JRJoe Rogan49:40

       But if you're doing windmills-

   25. CMChris Masterjohn49:41

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan49:41

       Windmills are-

   27. CMChris Masterjohn49:42

       Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan49:42

       ... kind of a form of rotation. There's a lot of ab exercises they do-

   29. CMChris Masterjohn49:46

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan49:46

       ... that are rotational.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   I think it's all…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      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?

   2. CMChris Masterjohn1:00:36

      I think it's all of those.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:37

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

   4. CMChris Masterjohn1:00:38

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:38

      Right? So it's not just...

   6. CMChris Masterjohn1:00:39

      Yeah.

   7. 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.

   8. 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-

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:01:11

      Right, right.

   10. 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.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:01:20

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

   12. 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, 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-

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:03:27

       What, what kind of food is it in?

   14. 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.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:05:17

       Can I ask you this?

   16. CMChris Masterjohn1:05:17

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:05:17

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

   18. 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.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:05:38

       So, how do we know-

   20. CMChris Masterjohn1:05:39

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:05:39

       ... that CoQ10 is in heart?

   22. 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.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:05:51

       And is it-

   24. CMChris Masterjohn1:05:51

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

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:05:52

       ... dependent upon-

   26. CMChris Masterjohn1:05:52

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:05:53

       I'm sorry. Go a-

   28. CMChris Masterjohn1:05:53

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

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:05:57

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

   30. CMChris Masterjohn1:06:02

       I-
6. 1:15:00 – 1:19:25

   (laughs) …

   1. CMChris Masterjohn1:15:00

      and they can also become imbalanced, so I think a lot of... Mitochondrial energy metabolism is the bo- the bottlenecks that people can have is kind of like, uh, jammed up traffic. And a lot of, lot of times you can megadose something and... The main problem of megadosing that for anyone would be, it would be imbalance of something else. But if you've got a blockage in that something else, now you've just got like a, a, like a train wreck happening in your mitochondria 'cause you're activating one pathway that's, that has to flow through the next one where you had your blockage and it's, you know, (fingers snapping) like that. So, you can go online, for example, and find communities where people are raving about high-dose thiamine and the RDA, the s- government recommended amount of thiamine to get is around like 1.3 milligrams. There's people out there who are like, "Oh, everyone should be taking 2,000 milligrams per day." Um, but I, you know, I, I saw one case where this happened before I, I knew the person, but they had fatigue so bad that they couldn't get off the couch and they, so she was rate- self-rating her energy at zero.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:16:03

      (laughs)

   3. CMChris Masterjohn1:16:03

      And a practitioner said, "Oh, you should really try this high-dose thiamine." So, s- she went on 1,100 milligrams a day. So, not 2,000, but, but big, right? And a lot of people get miracles out of this and they are vocal. They make communities on Facebook, and so people get the idea that everyone who tries it is benefiting from it. But, um, she... Her energy did improve a little bit, but she developed a new, completely new motor dysfunction problem, unsteady gait. It just kept getting worse the whole time she was taking the thiamine. Um, she had an existing problem with dizziness that got a lot worse. And a major issue for her was that she had to, to clear out the thiamine, but the mitochondrial testing that we did on her basically showed that like it explained it because it's, because she, you know, had a block in the pathways that would be most sensitive to megadosing that supplement. And so, you know, winding that back and re-nourishing those other pathways helped her. I do think that a lot of people, if they're gonna go into the wild, wild west of megadosing random supplements, should do their own testing of glucose, ketones, and lactate at home. A lot of people test their glucose. Not a lot of people test their lactate. But I'm 100% confident that that woman, had she... Had the practitioner said, "Try the thiamine and see what it does to your lactate, and if it goes down, it's good, and if it goes up, it's bad."

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:17:33

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CMChris Masterjohn1:17:33

      I think she would have stopped it after the first few days, and the new onset motor dysfunction never would have happened. And so maybe she wouldn't have done mitochondrial testing with me until months after that, but it wouldn't have been a big deal because she had this real-time indicator of mitochondrial dysfunction that she tested herself at home that showed her, "Oh, I'm trying this, you know, out of left field thing. Let's see, am I getting a stress signal out of it or am I getting the signal that my mitochondria are calming down or more happy with their function?" Which is really what lactate is telling you. And, you know, lac- lac- most people who do lactate testing do it in exercise, and what you see in exercise is when your body's under incredible amount of stress, you see lactate levels go up in the blood, um, you know, halfway through a pro basketball game. Lactate is through the roof, right? Well, you know, if I took, if I take thiamine and the next day it looks like I'm halfway through the basketball game when I wake up, that's a sign (laughs) that something is out of whack in my body, right? Um, so, but, you know, to go back to like if they, if the perspective was you might need more thiamine, so you should try adding some nutritional yeast to the dishes that you want to impart a cheesy flavor to, which is what nutritional yeast tastes like, 'cause nutritional yeast is really high in thiamine. Then that probably wouldn't have happened because the dose would have been a lot lower. She would have gradually gone, gone into it much more gradually. But also, whatever those blockages were would have the other nutrients assisting them, so the thiamine wouldn't be so out of balance. So, it's not just that you absorb it better or whatever, it's also just the food... Going food first really helps...... um, correct for errors that are a problem with your expertise. Um, Warren Buffett once said that a diversified portfolio is great protection against ignorance.

Episode duration: 2:19:26