Anti-Aging Expert: Stop Touching Receipts Immediately! The Fast Way To Shrink Visceral Fat!

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

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

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

Can I get a bin bag?

This is made from recycled electronics.

What about this?

This is a problem also.

And this?

Ding, ding, ding! This is great.

I'm going to do utensils next.

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

What about a receipt?

That's bad. It's covered with BPA and Styrofoam. There was a study in adolescent boys that showed that it was associated with a 50% reduction in testosterone. And then this is one that people often miss. Oh, shit. The biomedical scientist and anti-aging doctor Rhonda Patrick is back. This time she's talking about health optimization, maintaining peak performance, and the environmental toxins disrupting your body.

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

So it's essentially being within 90% of your peak function. For example, muscle mass, bone density. That kind of peak peaks around 25 years old, and then they kind of steadily start to decline.

You're joking.

And the same goes for cognitive function.

So I'm on the way down.

Yeah, and I'm definitely on the way down. But we can do things in our life to help maintain that peak span. Like, if you exercise 5 hours a week, do some high-intensity interval training in there, and you can reverse heart aging by 20 years. And then sleep, very, very important for preventing your immune system from aging rapidly. And then another thing that you can do that's really important for brain aging And this is associated with a rapid decrease in Alzheimer's disease risk. But what I really want to talk about is intermittent fasting, Ozempic supplements, and being sedentary.

So I want to talk about all of that, but we've got to talk about this in my hands at the moment.

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

Double your risk? Double. Okay, so talk me through this. I want as much detail as possible. This is super interesting to me. My team give me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe, and some of you have told us, according to this, that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you, please you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button. If you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here, we're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double-check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure Every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of the Diary of a CEO, and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. Dr. Rhonda Patrick, I am fascinated by so many of the things that you talked about, and they're front of mind for me at the moment because I'm a 33-year-old man and I know from doing this podcast and looking at graphs like this one, which we'll talk about today, which I don't think most people have ever seen in their lives, that this is the age where things might start changing direction from here on over the next decade. And there's things I can do to set myself up now if I listen to your advice for the remaining decades of my life to be remarkably different. I'm playing with this in my hands at the moment. It's, for anyone that can't see, you should probably look at the screen right now. It's a yellow, blob of squidgy, slightly disgusting material. What is this? And why does this matter?

So this represents visceral fat. It's something that most people haven't heard of. Many people have heard of fat. They know fat is bad, but they don't realize there are different kinds of fat. There is visceral fat, and this is the kind of fat that you can't really pinch, adipose tissue kind of fat, right? I mean, if you opened up your body, you could pinch it because it's deep, deep within your body. It's often referred to as belly fat, and it's surrounding your organs, like your liver, your kidney, you know, your intestines. This is a very deep belly fat, and it's very different from subcutaneous fat. You can actually be, lean but have a high amount of visceral fat. We call these metabolically unhealthy people. So visceral fat, you mentioned you're 33. The average 33-year-old male has how much visceral fat?

According to the data, it says roughly 1.2 pounds at the age of 30. And then for a woman, 0.5 pounds of visceral fat at the age of 30. At 40, it's 1.7 pounds for a man and 0.7 pounds for a woman. At 50, 2.2 pounds for a man, 1 pound for a woman. And at 60, 2.7 pounds of visceral fat and 1.54 pounds for a woman, which is the highest risk for metabolic syndromes at that age. But I mean, all of them are pretty scary.

It is. And as you notice, the trend is as you get older, you have a higher risk of having more of it. 70% of women over the age of 50 have a high amount of visceral fat. 50% of men over the age of 50 have a high amount of visceral fat. This visceral fat, for one, it's going to double your risk of early mortality, full stop. That's, you know, it's gonna double your risk.

Double your risk.

Double, double. Visceral fat is, as I mentioned, different from the other kind of fat, the subcutaneous kind of fat, the adipose tissue kind of fat, in several ways. One is that it is metabolically active. It is secreting inflammatory cytokines cytokines. These are, you know, molecules that are signaling to the immune system, but they're also involved with damaging our cells. And for this reason, people with a high amount of visceral fat are 44% more likely to get metastatic cancer. That's cancer that's going to metastasize. Very dangerous types of cancer. They're also more likely— you mentioned metabolic syndrome. This is a big, big thing with visceral fat. This type of fat is constantly breaking down triglycerides into free fatty acids. It's constantly doing it.

What's triglycerides?

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

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

You want it to be stored in your liver as glycogen to be used as energy when you're fasting or when you're physically active or whenever you need it, right? Also in your muscle, same thing, stored as glycogen or stored in your adipose tissue. And so none of that happens because insulin, it's not able to basically, act on your organs. There's no signal. So nobody's getting the phone call, "Hey, time to take the glucose up." It's not happening, right? So the glucose sits around. So what happens is your body freaks out because it's not good to have glucose sitting around in your bloodstream for a while. It causes a lot of damage, right? And so what happens is your body makes even more insulin to try to overcompensate. Your body goes, "Oh, maybe that wasn't enough insulin," because the glucose isn't coming into the organs like the liver, like it's supposed to, so let me put some more out.

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

Right, exactly. It's taking it home, it's taking it back to the liver. And so what happens when you make more insulin, you're overcompensating in such a way that now glucose really does get taken up into these other organs like the liver, and so much so that it causes your blood glucose levels to go down and you're crashing. And all of a sudden, this is responsible for that people that eat a meal and they're kind of insulin resistant, they eat a meal and then all of a sudden, they're crashing an hour later. They're like, "Why do I have no energy? Why am I hungry?" Right, because after you crash, your blood glucose levels go down. That's what I mean by crashing, really far down, not normal levels, but like below that. And so then your body tries to overcompensate by going, "Oh, I'm hungry, I need to eat." And so you start to have these cravings for like energy-dense foods, foods. And that's part of this cycle of the beginnings of insulin resistance. And so when I'm talking about here with visceral fat, it causes insulin resistance. And that's essentially the take-home here. By, by its constantly metabolizing fatty acids, it's, it's stopping that taxi car from going and getting the glucose. It's, it's not happening. It's not responding. You're not picking up the driver, right? And so you become insulin resistant, and that has a lot of problems. One, it's going to affect your immediate energy levels, it's gonna affect the way you're feeling, and two, it's gonna make you more likely to become type 2 diabetic, 'cause eventually your body won't be able to produce enough insulin to bring the glucose in, and so then you become type 2 diabetic. So that is a big consequence of having this visceral fat, in addition to those inflammatory molecules that are being generated from this fat. It's just so metabolically active. And that inflammation that you're generating not only does things like raise your cancer risk by 44%, it also makes you tired. It gives you brain fog, lethargy. When your immune system is being activated by this inflammation, you're taking energy away from your brain. It's a lot of energy to activate your immune system. And so, yeah, so that energy is now going to the wrong place. It's not going to your brain.

So you won't feel cognitive, learns sharp and—

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

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

Right, you're tired and your brain isn't working. And part of that reason is because your activation of your immune system is sucking energy away from your brain. And the other reason is because the inflammation being generated gets into the brain and disrupts neurotransmitters and things like that. So you're— it's like a double whammy. You're not— your brain isn't working, working properly. And so there's a lot of people walking around constantly feeling tired, feeling lethargic, feeling brain fog, and they might have a high amount of visceral fat and not even know it.

So typically, looking at the data, I mean, most people have too much visceral fat.

Most people do have too much visceral fat, and Typically, a really high amount is, I would say, a proxy for it would be measuring your waist circumference. So like if women have a waist circumference of 35 inches or greater, that is a sign of too much visceral fat. If men have a waist circumference of 40 inches or more, that is a sign of too much visceral fat. Ideally, you would go and get what's called a DEXA scan. Now, this is not something that's routinely done, and it doesn't necessarily have to be done unless you're that person that really likes to go the extra mile and directly measure things.

Mm-hmm.

That would be another way to do it. You really wanna have below below 300, you know, grams of visceral fat. Ideally closer to zero, the better.

Me and my friend went and got a DEXA scan done, and the remarkable thing is I weigh a lot more than him and I'm much bigger than him. He's skinny, but after the DEXA scan, they said that he had too much visceral fat, which I thought— this— I thought you must be like big or obese to have visceral fat, but he's a skinny guy and the DEXA scan said too much visceral fat.

Yes, that's the thing. You know, I was involved in clinical research for many years when I was doing my postgraduate training, and we were looking at populations of people that were metabolically unhealthy, maybe overweight, obese in some cases. And you would have someone come in that they looked skinny, they looked like they were metabolically healthy because they weren't overweight, and yet all of their biomarker data was showing the opposite. Like, they looked on paper— if you would have shown me their metabolic data, I would go, oh, this is an overweight, obese person. So these are, these are lean but metabolically unhealthy healthy people, and a large percentage of that has to do with an increase in visceral fat. You won't even necessarily know that you're getting higher amounts of visceral fat. It's not necessarily going to be reflected on the scale. You know, you mentioned maybe a pound, maybe a little bit more. That's like daily fluctuation in some cases, right? Like, I mean, I don't know about you, but like, I, I can fluctuate a pound from day to day for sure. If you're talking about 500 grams or less, that's not going to be, you know, reflected on the scale either. You might be going, well, what, why visceral fat? What's causing visceral fat? You know, I mentioned age, that's a big one. Hormones is a big one. Women are very susceptible as they go through perimenopause and menopause because estrogen actually tells, helps tell the body how to store energy and it tells it to store energy and fat in adipose tissue, not viscerally. So when your estrogen starts to go down during perimenopause and then menopause, women really start to gain a lot of this belly fat. They gain a lot of the visceral fat. Testosterone also, it doesn't tell the body how to store the fat so much, it helps you burn visceral fat. So men are a little bit more protected when they're younger as well. But as they age, of course, testosterone goes down as well and that affects the visceral fat. But mostly it's our diet and our lifestyle that's really affecting visceral fat. It's kind of mind-blowing how quickly you can gain visceral fat. Sleep is a big one. When you miss sleep, that is something that can really, you can start to store, you can start to gain visceral fat very quickly. There was a study in healthy young men. These men were sleep restricted. Typically when sleep restriction studies are done, you're looking at 4 hours of sleep per night. So pretty severe. Not out of the ordinary. I did many of those, college, graduate school deadlines, definitely as a new parent. Unfortunately drags on for months. So these men were only sleeping 4 hours a night for 2 weeks, okay? These were healthy young men, college-age students, okay? Young. They gained 11% visceral fat after that 2 weeks, but not a pound on the scale, but they had 11% higher visceral fat after just, you know, 2 weeks of not getting enough sleep.

And they weighed the same?

Pretty much.

So it was the composition of their body that's shifting?

Yes. Also, the visceral fat, like I said, you're not gaining pounds and pounds and pounds of it necessarily. You know, you're gaining grams and grams, but like it's happening, and any amount that you're starting to gain is unhealthy, right? It's gonna start causing insulin resistance. It's gonna start, you know, causing fatty liver. That's another thing it does, 'cause it's around the liver. It basically, the liver doesn't know what to do with all the fat, so it starts to make and store it around the fat. And so you start to get this nonalcoholic fatty liver, which is happening now in like young people. So sleep is one. Another major, major, I would say, lever for gaining visceral fat is your diet quality and quantity. So if you start to be in a caloric excess constantly, you can start to gain visceral fat, and that's also been shown in studies. So there was a recent study that again was in healthy young men given about 1,200 extra calories a day, and it was mostly from ultra-processed foods, right? I mean, they're 1,200 calories, so like Big Mac and a Coke, Big Mac and fries, whatever, you know? So you're talking about almost like an extra meal a day and from processed foods, ultra-processed foods. For 5 days, they were given, you know, this extra caloric intake. After that 5 days, they started to gain visceral fat. They started to have signs of fatty liver after 5 days, and their brains became insulin resistant. And this is important. Yes.

How many calories were they having in excess?

1,200 to 1,500.

In excess?

More than what they were usually going to eat.

Yes.

Okay. Yes. So, you know, it's a lot of people are eating caloric excess, you know, daily. They're not exercising and there's no energy expenditure and they're eating more. And so they're in, you know, 1,200. Now this is the extreme end, right? I'm giving you an extreme end because that's what they do usually in studies like this because they want to get a significant result. But after 5 days, they were gaining visceral fat, their brains became insulin resistant. So insulin is also very important for the brain. The brain is telling the body how to store the fat and how to store energy. And when insulin's not able to get into the brain and have its action, then you start to not have the brain tell the body how to store. This energy and it ends up storing it viscerally. It's like this default.

Do you know, putting those two things together, the thing I've noticed that impacts my performance the most as it relates to articulation, cognitive performance, my ability to think, is those two things coming together. You talked about sleep and diet. It's when I eat late, close— it's when I eat close to sleep. If I do that a couple of nights in a row, I feel like my brain no longer works.

Yes, yeah. You know, obviously we all have to like live our lives and there's social things and it's fun to go out and have a dinner with your friends or an event, right? But it's not a good idea to eat a meal, a big meal, 3 hours before, fewer than 3 hours before bed. So you wanna stop eating 3 hours before bed. And 3 is really the magic number in multiple studies because when you eat a meal, it is activating your sympathetic nervous system. Right? That's the fight-or-flight response. That's not what you want active when you're about to go to bed. When you're activating the sympathetic nervous system right before you're going to bed, let's say you eat a meal within an hour of bedtime, you're digesting all that, it's— your sympathetic nervous system is active. And even if you're sleeping, it's not good sleep, it's fragmented sleep. And so it's disrupted sleep because you, you need to be in that parasympathetic part of, you know, the nervous system, that dominance needs to be parasympathetic, which is the rest, restore. It's called rest and digest, but I don't like digest because actually digesting is what activates the sympathetic nervous system. So it's like the recovery, right?

So should I stay up then for 3 hours? If I eat at midnight, should I stay up till 3:00 AM?

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

I've heard you talk about fiber.

Resistant starch does interestingly seem to help improve sleep. And so, you know, maybe some rice or a potato, a little bit of rice or potato.

Some fries or something.

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

Why?

It changes the composition of the fiber. And you can cook it, let it cool, and then heat it again if you like to eat it heated, as long as it went through a cooling part. Wow. And then you can eat it. But that's resistant starch. Resistant starch is also in green bananas, very beneficial for the gut, and also for, interestingly, for improving sleep. So things that are really moving the needle to make you gain visceral fat are being, basically being in a caloric excess, especially from refined, high-fat, high-sugar foods. And then not getting enough sleep moves the needle. Chronic stress is an amplifier of it. So if you're constantly having cortisol, that's kind of stopping the body from storing energy right, the right way, and it's going viscerally as well. I would say that amplifies, especially if it's like in the context of being in a caloric excess and not exercising. Alcohol's another one. If you drink, if you're excessively consuming alcohol, you're gonna store a lot of the energy that you're also consuming is gonna be stored visceral. I mean, you've seen the beer belly, right? I mean, that's like a thing. It's visceral fat. It's not beer, it's visceral fat. So alcohol's another one. In terms of losing visceral fat, I mean, the good news is, is that you can lose it quite easily and quite rapidly.

I was gonna say parents have a hard time because you were naming those things about like sleep and stress. And I was thinking, gosh, parents have like a, have it coming from them from all sides.

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

So insulin resistance, what is that? That is when your body no longer produces insulin?

No, no. Insulin resistance is when your body is no longer responding to insulin. So it's like, it's like you're waiting for the phone to ring and it's ringing, but you can't hear it, right? Like you're not getting the signal. And so your cells are not responding to the insulin that's made. Insulin is really helping your body bring— move the glucose out, right? Move it, move it out of your bloodstream where it can cause a lot of damage if it sits around.

And if you put too much pressure on the insulin system, then it kind of shuts down.

Eventually shuts down.

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

Too much glucose, refined glucose, can do that. Visceral fat is one of the, I would say, bigger causes of insulin— it's actually one of the major, major causes of insulin resistance because If you are physically active and eating a lot of glucose, that glucose is going to your muscles. Physical activity makes your muscles very responsive to glucose without needing insulin. The transporters that transport glucose are super, super responsive when you exercise. That's why physical activity, and this is what I was getting at with parents, is so important. The visceral fat is the really big, like, concern with diabetes. Insulin resistance. And this is the thing that, again, it's like people don't even know about it. A lot of people are thinking about glucose and, "Oh, I gotta watch my glucose," and that's all fine. I mean, yes, to some degree that's also playing a role, but it's the visceral fat that's the real underlying problem that's causing you to become insulin resistant. You mentioned parents have it like bad because they're stressed out and they don't get sleep. I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor when I became a new mother, I was appalled by my fasting blood glucose and by my postprandial blood glucose levels.

Never—

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

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

yeah, so what I mean is resistance training and lifting weights don't really move the needle in terms of helping you lose visceral fat. It does help you improve your metabolism, it does help with like glucose, you know, sensitivity and all that, like because your muscles are going to be more sensitive to take the glucose in. But if you want to lose visceral fat, you're going to have to do running, jogging, cycling, swimming, you wanna like get your heart rate up a little more. Why? It's energy expenditure. It plays a role in getting you to that caloric, more caloric deficit, and that's better. So that's one way. And the other thing is weight, any weight loss program. So intermittent fasting, caloric restriction, you know, even GLP-1 receptor agonists and all the classes of GLP-1, anything that is gonna make you lose weight, lose fat, visceral fat's one of the first to go. And in fact, people on these weight loss programs or even on exercise training program, visceral fat's the first fat to go. And so you can lose it quite quickly.

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

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

To fast?

To fast versus counting calories.

And how do you do that?

What's your— So I like to fast in the morning. And the reason I like to fast in the morning is for the exact reason you mentioned. And that is the ketosis, which I like to call the metabolic switch. You're not eating while you're sleeping, obviously. So if you're sleeping for 8, if you're in bed for 9 hours, 10 hours, you're not eating during that time. And it takes about 10 to 12 hours for your liver to deplete glycogen. Glucose that's been taken up by the liver is stored as glycogen so that you can then use it for energy later if you don't have energy coming in, right?

So the glycogen is like the petrol station. Yes. So it runs out of petrol.

Yeah, that's right. And so it takes—

It switches to diesel.

And it switches to diesel. And so after that switch, that metabolic switch, when you deplete that glycogen while you're sleeping or while you're not eating after about 12 hours, and by the way, this is all relative because it depends on the kind of foods you eat and how physically active you are. So if you eat a lot of high-carbohydrate refined sugar stuff, you might take even longer to deplete your glycogen you're putting a lot of input in there, you keep filling up the fuel tank, right? But if you're eating things that are more low-carb, you might deplete your glycogen sooner. So when you deplete your glycogen, you get into this metabolic switch because your body still needs energy, but there's no glucose around, right? So you start to switch to, you know, your fatty acids are mobilized, they come out of your adipose tissue. This is why people lose fat. They come out of the visceral fat. You start to use those fatty acids and burn them as energy, and as a product of that energy, you're making ketones. Ketosis. And the reason I like to do this in the morning is because then I can really get into that ketotic state where if I'm fasting— I do it typically, I fast for about 16 hours a day, and then I eat my meals within 8 hours a day. Typically, that's my— what I do. The reason I like to be in that metabolic switch state is many reasons, actually. One, the ketones themselves are providing my brain with energy very easily utilizable energy, but they're also acting as a signaling molecule to my brain going, "Hey, this is a stressful time. There's no food. You better be cognitively sharp. You gotta find that food. You gotta like know what you're doing," right? It's an evolutionary adaptation. Humans for thousands of years were going through this metabolic switch because we didn't have Instacart, we didn't have Postmates, we didn't have all Uber Eats, right? We had to find our food. We had to hunt our food. And we always didn't always do that, right? And so when I get into that metabolic switch state, I feel it. I feel more cognitively sharp and I feel less anxious, which is part of it because those ketones also help increase something called GABA. That's an inhibitory neurotransmitter. It's essentially, you can just think of it as like it helps you feel calmer. When I feel calmer, I'm more cognitively focused because it's like the background anxiety is down, right? It's like you can focus. And so I love being in that state in the morning because that's when I get my work done. I also like to be in that metabolic switch state, and this is why I like fasting in addition to, you know, the calorie, the fewer calories I'm consuming, right? Your body has to be in that fasted state to repair. If you're constantly in a fed state, fed states are important for anabolic growth. We need it to grow, right? But the repair state is also very important because with the growth comes damage. Damage comes along with that. And you want to repair that damage because damage will accelerate aging. And so I like to be and give my body enough time. I don't want to just wake up and eat where it's like, oh, I've only barely depleted my liver glycogen. I'm not even in that repair state very long, right? I want to extend it a little bit. And so I like to have that repair process active. And that it is active during— it's fasting activates it, but also you have some amount of active repair going on even when you're in a fed state. It's just heightened when you're fasted. So those are the reasons I like to be— I like intermittent fasting. I feel good when I do it. I also do a lot of training, not all of it. I do a lot of training fasted, cardiovascular, aerobic endurance exercise. So running, biking, that stuff I like to do fasted. I'm not going for a 10-mile run, I'm going for a 3-mile run, right? I mean, this is— so if I was going for a 10-mile run, I wouldn't be fasted, I would need some fuel. But there are studies, multiple studies showing that if you do aerobic endurance training, this kind of running, cycling, swimming type of training, you actually have better adaptations if you're fasted versus fed.

What does that mean?

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

If you're fasted.

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

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

This is my read of the literature and my thoughts on this from also having experts that have studied male versus female responses to exercise. First and foremost, how do you feel when you exercise fasted? If you feel terrible, that's a sign. I think listening into your body is the most important thing that you can do. There are times when I have to eat before I exercise, and I listen to my body. I That's it, I'm gonna eat. When it comes to women versus men and doing exercise fasted, it also depends on, are you, again, are you doing a 30-minute run? Are you doing a 2-hour run? If you're doing a 2-hour run, you need to fuel. That's a lot, that's a big stress. When it comes to a 30-minute run, you don't really necessarily need to. Now, the problem with women is that they're often, if you're in too much of a caloric deficit and you don't eat enough food within, you know, like afterwards, you're not refueling enough and you're doing very, very long, high-volume types of exercise, then you can basically disrupt your, you know, some of your hormones, your follicle-stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, and these things will make you become amenorrhoeic. So you basically stop ovulating and you stop getting your menstrual period.

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

Because your body's like, there's not enough food and energy around to sustain a, you know, a growing fetus.

Like there's no baby.

So it's not shutting down. So it's basically like, hey, we're not gonna allow you to have a baby, basically. So you stop ovulating, right? So you can't, you're not making those eggs.

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

First of all, it's not a common thing. This is like, this is something that happens in, you know, like athletes, elite athlete women that are not eating enough food. Like I did this to myself when I was in my early 20s and I was running, I was racing marathons and I was running 10 miles a day. 8 to 10 miles a day, 5 days a week, and then I was eating carrots and hummus. And, you know, I just, I wasn't fueling myself. And I did this to myself too. So how do you feel if you train fasted? Do you feel terrible? Don't do it. If you want to train somewhat fasted, go for the protein, you know, protein shake with a little bit of almond milk or something like that where you're not eating a full meal, but you're getting something. I do a lot of my training fasted, and that has helped me. You know, I'm 47 years old and perimenopause.

You're in phenomenal shape.

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

Speaking of studies done for women, I've heard you talk in the past about the Swan Study, which kind of relates to what you just said there, when relating to women and visceral fat. And they found that women experience an accelerated increase in visceral fat starting 2 years before their final menstrual period.

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

Again, what age would that be?

Average age of menopause is between 50, about 50, 52 for women. A lot of that— there's a lot of things that can affect your reproductive lifespan, your ovarian aging, I guess we can call it. And unfortunately, one of them is when you— the age you were when you got your menstrual period. So the younger you were, the younger you're going to be when you experience menopause. So also when your mother experienced menopause is very, very indicative of when you're going to experience it. But lifestyle and diet play a role too. Obesity accelerates ovarian aging, so you're more likely to go into menopause earlier with obesity. Also, these chemicals that we're exposed to, and we can talk about those as well, a lot of these endocrine disrupting chemicals affect the age of menopause as well and accelerate that. So some, in some cases, women go into menopause 2 years earlier than they would have otherwise.

And you're, so you're 47.

Mm-hmm, and a half.

And a half. And the data that I'm looking at here says when we think about perimenopause, it usually starts in mid-40s, which is the age range you're in. This is where the 8 to 10% annual visceral fat increase begins.

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

And for men, I was reading that testosterone and growth hormone typically peak in their late 20s. So I guess mine's peaked already. And starting at age 30, testosterone drops roughly 1% a year. Between the age of 25 and 65, men typically see a 200% increase in their visceral fat, even if their total weight stays the same. So, hmm. Is that linked to the testosterone decline? Is that what's going on there? What's causing it?

Yeah. I mean, it's— testosterone does— you burn— even if you're gaining visceral fat, it helps you burn it. It's also why some women that are in perimenopause wanna do testosterone, because it helps them burn the visceral fat. So it is linked to testosterone decline as well. But also as men are aging, they become more sedentary. They tend to eat a little bit, they're consuming more calories. Like all these things are hand in hand. So it's not just like a one punch, right? It's like multiple angles are kind of all compounding and coming together. Whereas you could get away with it a little bit easier when you're younger 'cause the testosterone is helping you burn it more. When you're declining, it doesn't work that same way. So even though you're gaining it, you're not burning it as quickly. So you start to have a net gain in it. If that makes sense.

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

Yeah, I think those are the main ones. Obviously avoiding excess alcohol consumption. And also stress. Stress.

Yeah, we talked, yeah.

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

Yeah, people don't talk enough about visceral fat, you know. They look at other markers.

No, well, most people just want to lose weight and look good. Yeah. Or yeah, they look at, you know, HbA1c, your long-term glucose, or they're looking at lipids. And visceral fat is just— it's insidious, right? It just starts increasing, increasing, increasing. You can't see it. You can't see until all of a sudden, belly, right? I mean, it's, it's bad, and it affects the way you feel. Daily.

On this point of testosterone, why is it the case that testosterone seems to be dropping amongst men? I think it said something like— I wrote it down. Yeah. Testosterone levels in men have dropped by up to 20% over the last two decades. Um, which is quite terrifying.

It is. So look, there's a lot of factors that can affect testosterone. I mentioned dietary factors. Refined sugar. Sleep is a big one. People aren't getting enough sleep. Lack of sleep drops testosterone. Micronutrients— not getting enough zinc, for example. Zinc's very important for testosterone synthesis. And magnesium— like, there's a— there's important nutrient components. But I think the big player here is actually environmental. I think that we are being bombarded with what are called endocrine disrupting chemicals. These are man-made chemicals. A lot of them are part of plastic. They're made to help plastic be more durable or more robust, or they're found— or they're water resistant. So there's probably 3 main endocrine disrupting chemicals that are found in our environment, mainly because they're in plastic, or they're in— they're also in things that are water resistant, oil resistant, fire-resistant, flame-retardant. BPA, bisphenol A, is one. Another one is phthalates, P-H, phthalates. And the last one would be PFAS. These are the forever chemicals. These are the three main, I would say, players in terms of disrupting endocrine function. Endocrine being hormones, sex hormones like testosterone, estrogen, but also thyroid hormone, very important for regulating our metabolism, for example.

Are they really causing a problem? Absolutely.

Really?

Absolutely. Because I'm looking at the picture you have there of PFA, PFAs? PFAS. PFAS. And it's got like a coat and shoes on there. You're telling me the clothes that I wear are having an impact on my hormones?

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

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

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

How do we know that they're dangerous?

Okay, well, I'll tell you how we know. Let's start with So the PFAS chemicals are ones that are really, they're more affecting the thyroid and they're affecting, I would say, ovarian aging. They seem to target the ovaries and accelerate the age that you're gonna get menopause. So you're gonna get it around 1 to 2 years earlier if you have a high amount of these forever chemicals. But there's been studies, a lot of studies looking at, let's start with BPA, okay, bisphenol A. That's a big one because you see a lot of marketing around BPA-free. This plastic water bottle's BPA-free. Well, it's BPA-free, but it has another chemical called BPS, which is very similar, if not worse, than BPA. So BPA is something that is found in a lot of water bottles. It's in those plastic water bottles. It lines the cups of paper cups, like these to-go coffee cups that you're getting at your favorite, you know, coffee place. Plastic is lining them, yes. Plastic lines them 'cause it's protecting it from the liquid, right? BPA has been linked to many different diseases, but really, really, it's an endocrine disruptor. So what it does is a couple of things. One, BPA acts as an estrogen mimetic. So it kind of mimics estrogen and it binds to the receptors that estrogen do to do its function. And so it sometimes binds to estrogen and either makes it seem like there's estrogen around or it blocks estrogen from working. So it depends on, depending on the dose and the concentration, so it can do both. But it also binds to androgen receptors that interact with testosterone, right? And so there have been studies that have found that men that have high amounts of BPA also have low amounts of testosterone. But there was also a study done in teens. This is when, you know, your sexual development is happening, right? Testosterone is very important during this part of your life, during puberty. Teens, adolescent boys that had the highest amount of BPA had 50% lower testosterone than men, than the boys, sorry, that had the lowest amount of BPA. The biggest one that's affecting testosterone is the phthalates. These phthalates, they are present in a lot of PVC piping, they're present in a lot of our food packaging, all those like thin, you go to the grocery store and you get a filet mignon steak and it's wrapped in plastic, poultry's— all that plastic wrapping and all the foods that we're eating has phthalates in them. They make it more flexible and stuff. And it's also found in our hair products, our cosmetic products, our creams. And it's also very lipid soluble. It likes fat. It is drawn to fat. So when you have plastic around fat, like cheese, you know, things like that, meat, it's getting into that meat, it's getting into that cheese, the phthalates. These disrupt our hormones in ways similar to BPA. So they're binding to the androgen receptor, but they're also going into the testes and disrupting the synthesis of testosterone. So there was a study in men that had the highest phthalate levels. Those men had 20% lower testosterone compared to men with higher levels. And this is, yeah, and this is like, it's affecting not only just the testosterone, but it's affecting sperm production. Quality, so the shape of the sperm wasn't good. It's affecting the number, so sperm count is down if there are higher BPA or higher phthalates, and also motility, the ability to swim. Pregnant women that get exposed to high levels of phthalates, and if they have, if they're carrying a male fetus, right, they're having a boy, what's been shown is it's also affecting sexual development. So these boys, they're getting something called hypospadias. It's where like the slit on the, on the, um, on the penis is like moved backwards, kind of closer to like what a woman would have. And they're getting undescended testicles. So one of their testicles is not descending, and that's associated with, you know, infertility, cancer, testicular cancer being the big one. This is happening at an alarming rate, like something like 20% of boys now have an undescended testicle. I mean, it's crazy.

Because their mother had high phthalates.

Well, it's— this is definitely something that is known in our environment to cause that. I don't know if that's the only cause, but it, in my opinion, is a very, very concerning cause that nobody is talking about and that should be addressed. And it's everywhere. We have these in all of our, all of our plastic wrappers that we— everything that we're eating. You know, you even getting your meat, you think it's, well, it's meat, it's, you know, but it's wrapped in plastic and the phthalates are getting into the food. So they're getting into our bodies. They're disrupting hormones. They're disrupting sexual development. They're disrupting our ovaries, estrogen, you know, ovarian aging, age of menopause. They're disrupting thyroids, the thyroid hormones. I mean, there's even studies now with women, pregnant women that have high levels of BPA they have, they're 6 times more likely to have a child with autism spectrum disorder compared to women with low levels of BPA. Again, BPA is disrupting the estrogen and androgen receptor, and this is very important because the androgen, you wanna have, it's disrupting aromatase as well, that enzyme that's involved in converting testosterone into estrogen. So believe it or not, when you're a boy developing in your mom's womb, estrogen plays a very important role in your brain and brain development and what's called masculinizing the male brain. You actually, it's kind of contradictory. You're like, oh, well, wouldn't testosterone do that? Well, actually estrogen is very important for masculinizing parts of the male brain. And so when you have aromatase being inhibited by bisphenol A, by this endocrine disrupting hormone that is so ubiquitous everywhere.

That is found in plastic bottles. Plastic bottles.

It's found in— yeah, it's found everywhere.

So what do you recommend?

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

Oh, so broccoli's like a cleanser.

It's like a cleanser. It's like we actually do have these, it's called phase 2 detoxification enzymes in our body. We have the ability to detox a lot of things. We just have to give our body the right input so that it can activate those pathways. I personally take a supplement of that sulforaphane because I want a concentrated amount of it. 'Cause I used to do broccoli sprouts. Broccoli sprouts have 100 times more sulforaphane than mature broccoli, but you have to sprout them and then there's contamination issues and it's just, you know, some people do it, it's great, but I used to do it, I don't anymore. I just take a supplement.

And that supplement's called?

The supplement I take is called Avimacol. It's by a company called Nutramax. I don't, you know, I'm not like affiliated with them, I like their supplement because one, they've got 12 published studies using it, clinical studies too, showing that it actually helps with autism. Children and adolescents with autism that take the sulforaphane supplement, they have improved symptoms because it's a detox. It helps, interestingly, people with autism are like 30 times less likely to excrete BPA. It's a weird thing going on here where BPA increases autism spectrum disorder, but then kids that have it are not able to detoxify it as well. Wow. Yeah, it's interesting. Again, I think that excretion is important, but avoiding the plastic as much as you can. Make it a habit. Don't freak out. I mean, obviously you can like make yourself crazy and stress is not good as we talked about. I see you like going, oh my gosh.

Yeah, no, I'm thinking about just how casual I am about these things though. And I could easily make small changes. Easily. Frankly, I could easily make big changes in the position I'm in. I could just say, I can say in my company, we no longer buy this kind of stuff. I could say in my kitchen, 'cause, you know, to my team or whatever, let's not buy this. Can we go look at my kitchen now?

Let's do it. Okay, let's go.

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

you're pulling— Black plastic.

What's wrong with the black plastic?

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, so the black stuff is out.

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

No comment, no comment. Mind your business. Okay, what else? What about this? This is made of paper.

Here's my little thing I do. See that waxy? There's a waxy This. The PFAS?

On the edge.

Yeah. Does it seem like it has a waxy substance to you? Yes. This is better than the black plastic. If you had to like, if there's like tears, this is better than black plastic.

Okay. And this?

Ding, ding, ding. This is great. This is the best thing that you can do. If you're gonna have food made for you or you wanna order takeout, have someone make it for you and deliver you in this.

And this is a bamboo lid.

Bamboo lid with Pyrex glass, right?

Okay. So this is what, this is good.

This is great.

So I need more of this.

You need more of this and get rid of all, I mean, this is already looking better. This is on the scale, at least it goes in cold. So here's the thing. Microplastics are also shedding into this. We didn't talk about microplastics. They're shedding into here. The chemicals, not as much in something like this, but they're still getting in. So this is a little bit better when it comes to like the tiers here. The hot food is the worst. This is a little bit better, but I still would get lettuce Because it's cold. Because it's cold.

So it's not seeping. Exactly. Okay, so I might be able to keep that then. What else do you notice here?

So I notice that I really like your glass sparkling waters. That's great because, you know, glass is less likely to have microplastic shedding, less likely to have the chemicals. There was a study that actually found, interestingly, there were more microplastics on the top, so the paint that's on these lids, Plastic polymers are used in that. And during the processing and bottling up of these things, they get into the water. And so believe it or not, glass bottled water has more microplastics than plastic bottle water. Okay, this is terrible, but I'm gonna tell you why I think this still is worse, okay? So this is got microplastics, but it also has BPA and phthalates. They're in this water. This was not always cold. It's, you know, it was in some warehouse, shipping container, who knows how it got here. It's been heated up, I'm sure several times. The problem is that there was a study showing that glass bottles have a higher amount of microplastics than plastic. And you might go, why is that? Because they're all coming off on this paint and getting in. When it comes to microplastics, size matter. I'm not as worried about it having more microplastics 'cause it would show that they were large microplastics. Your body doesn't absorb large ones very well. They come out through your feces. These, this has tons of what are called nanoplastics, very, very small particles that get into the gut and get into your bloodstream. So I still go for the glass water. So I would avoid drinking out of these as much as possible. So I like how you have these condiments in the glass. This is how my refrigerator looks as well. I'm very, very obsessive about anything that has acidity in it, like hot sauce and ketchup. It needs to be in glass because the acidity is leaching microplastics and BPA and phthalate chemicals into your condiments, and then you're putting that on your food and you're eating them. Again, this is ubiquitous, it's everywhere. Plastic is everywhere, the chemicals are everywhere, and you're not even thinking about the fact that your hot sauce and ketchup are also vehicles for delivering these microplastics and their associated chemicals into your body. So I really like these. Like this one, I would go for a glass mustard. Those are better, glass bottles. So this is plastic, same thing, it's acidic. I would say, you know, for the most part, the butter. Oh yeah, this is bad. Is this butter or cheese? Yeah, so this is a problem also. So if you look at this, it's that flexible plasticky stuff, right? It has phthalates in it.

What, this?

This? Oh, that's even worse. This is— Yeah, so this is the plastic that basically, you know, phthalates are in this and they're fat soluble and they're just leaching into this fatty cheese. Yes, they're leaching into the fatty cheese. So you can buy cheese that's like without this in just the container. That's a little bit better. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Like, I'm thinking of feta cheese, for example. Like some feta cheese comes in this plastic wrapper, but you can buy it with just the container, and at least it's not like close, like with juices, like just seeping into it, you know, getting the chemicals into it.

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

Yes, eggs are great.

There we go.

Eggs are great.

We found something. Okay, Rhonda, so spatulas and kitchen utensils. Are these good? Are these bad? What's the best?

Yeah, good question. These are great, right? There's no plastic here. No possibility of plastic leaking into your foods. You got your nice pasta spoon. These are silicone, I'm imagining. Yeah. In theory, the silicone should be okay. The problem is, is that there's a lot of silicone that actually still has— it's mixed with plastic too. So I go for the wood ones that are like this, like the wooden spatula. That's what I use. You, in theory, should be good. In practice, a lot of silicone that's been measured out there and tested does have plastic. So I would say if you want to really be careful, I would switch.

But most people at home probably have a plastic spatula. Is that accurate?

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

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

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

It's harder to cook with these though.

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

The other thing I want to talk to you about is this. The blender.

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

A receipt.

Yeah, don't touch it.

What do you mean don't touch it?

So receipts are—

Why are you touching it like that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

It does, yeah.

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

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

Okay, so I'm gonna just stay there and I'm gonna just grab— Oops. Okay, so this is now the coffee that I drink called Comptoir. Ah. They flash freeze it at the perfect moment and it's delivered frozen. So metal, and then this is an aluminium lid.

Right, so it shouldn't be lined with plastic, right?

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

Oh, I love it.

So you just drop— it's funny because they're a sponsor.

Oh.

It's a disclaimer, and I'm also an investor in this company. So no machines at all. Put it straight into the glass, pour the hot water in, that's it.

So it's like instead of instant— it's like instant coffee, but it's real coffee that's been frozen.

It's from some Stanford engineers who flash freeze it at the perfect moment to lock in the taste. And you can literally smell.

Mm, smells good.

Smells good, yeah.

Yeah, I'm so glad you're not putting it in a machine because that's— No.

No longer do that. Okay, so this is my supplement cupboard. It's a mess, but I've pulled out things that I'm personally interested in. Good, bad, indifferent?

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

What does it do, sorry?

So it's a very important antioxidant. That helps negate oxidation, which is causing brain aging. It's negating oxidation, which is aging yourself, right? People wanna supplement with it because they've heard about glutathione and how beneficial it is and how it's a great antioxidant. The problem is because our body makes it inside of our cells, inside of our cells, we don't have a transporter to get glutathione from the outside of our cells, like if we eat it and if it makes it through our digestion, which it really doesn't, into our cells. This kind of glutathione isn't gonna make it inside of your cells.

So this is just a waste of time?

It is. You're gonna wanna get something called liposomal glutathione. Liposomal glutathione has been shown to get inside because liposomes, it's essentially taking the glutathione molecule and encapsulating it in something that's gonna fuse with your cell. Liposomal products in general have a higher bioavailability for that reason.

So let me repeat that back to you so I've got it. So if it's liposomal, it's basically in a package which can get through into the cell. If it's not, this one is reduced and active, then it's never gonna get in the cells. It's a waste of time. It's just gonna be excreted.

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

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

Right, D3 is the form of vitamin D that you make when you're in the sun. That's the major way we make vitamin D is from sun exposure. There is a plant form of vitamin D called vitamin D2. It's found in things like mushrooms, for example. The problem is, is that there have been studies showing that vitamin D2, which is unfortunately what a lot of vegetarians take because they want a vegetarian form— vitamin D3 is also found in like sheepskin because the sheep are making it in their, you know, skin when they're exposed to sunlight. Vitamin D2 is not as effective as vitamin D3. If you are a vegetarian or a vegan, you're going to want to look for vitamin D3 from lichen. Lichen is that like green stuff that you can find on trees and stuff. That also makes vitamin D3, and so it's a, it's a much better option than getting the vitamin D2, which is what a lot of vegetarians do. So there's actually a study, recent study, showing that people that are vitamin D deficient, so they're not getting enough vitamin D3 because we don't go out in the sun anymore, they have accelerated aging. And if supplement— this is a very large study, by the way— they supplemented with vitamin D3, they slowed their, their biological aging by almost 2 years. That didn't happen in people that were not vitamin D deficient from the start. So it's not like a vitamin D3 supplement is going to do something miraculous if you already have enough vitamin D. The, the point is to avoid deficiency. And so, you know, someone like yourself that just probably doesn't go outside a lot, but also when you go outside, but you're not— you have darker skin, so melanin is a natural sunscreen. And so people with more melanin have to spend a lot more time in the sun. And so that is something to consider as well.

Well, I can always just take my multivitamin, right?

Multivitamin. I think I might have talked about one study last time we talked, last episode, where men and women that were older adults— they were 65 years and older— they took one Centrum Silver a day. And I'm not, you know, I'm not advocating for Centrum Silver, I'm just saying that was involved in this study. And after 3 years they had reversed their brain aging, global brain aging by 2.1 years, and they reversed their episodic brain aging by almost 5 years. So episodic memory is the kind of memory involved in remembering events and people and things like that. You know, as you get older, you know, that stuff doesn't come as quick, right? So it delayed that aging by 5 years. Well, the same study also just recently published, literally like a couple of weeks ago, So again, part of this large study, it's called the COSMO study, they looked at the multivitamin use and biological aging, epigenetic aging, and they found that the Centrum Silver multivitamin also slowed biological aging, epigenetic aging by a few months. And this was only after 2 years. And you might go, oh, a few months, but that was after 2 years. And that trial was 2 years long. So if you add 2 years and then you add another 2 years and then you add, and then you're talking about 20, talking about 30, talking about 50 years, that is slowing aging the entire time. It adds up, it's cumulative. And it's one of the easiest things that someone can do to basically, you know, make sure that they're aging better. There's things that are harder to do, but that to me is such a low-hanging fruit. It's easy.

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

If you look at the back at the supplement facts, there's a lot of vitamins and minerals, things like vitamin C, vitamin D3, vitamin E, vitamin K, niacin, the B vitamins, folate. You have things like selenium, the essential— there's essential elements. These are all things that we need to run everything in our body, all of our metabolism, our neurotransmitter synthesis, our immune system, you know, our liver. All these, these, these are cofactors that are really important for all those things. And you don't realize how important they are until time goes on and things start to fall apart. It's basically filling the gaps because we're supposed to get this, these things from our foods. We're supposed to be getting all these vitamins and minerals from our foods, from, from our water. And it's just not happening for many reasons. One, our soils are depleted. You know, the organophosphates like glyphosate is depleting our minerals. And so the foods that are being grown in the soil aren't getting their minerals that they're supposed to. And then the second problem is we're not eating the right foods because we're taking, we're eating takeout, we're eating foods that are not micronutrient dense, things like dark leafy greens. We're not eating the colors of the rainbow. And those are really important for vitamins and minerals.

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

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

Too much.

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

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

Were you iron deficient? No.

Okay. I was just sick one time and they said this would really help. So— This wasn't a scientist.

Yeah.

It was just a friend.

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

Women?

Women, premenopausal women are different because premenopausal women do lose a lot of iron. From menstruation when they're menstruating. And so I would say about 16% of menstruating women are iron deficient. And then if you add exercise on top of that, you know, a lot of endurance exercise, you can get lysis of your red blood cells. And so you do need iron for your red blood cells. If you're eating meat, if you're not a vegetarian, you know, maybe that would be a case if you're like a vegan or something, maybe some iron could come in, but you have to get your iron levels measured. You don't wanna be too high 'cause it does cause damage. But I would say that premenopausal women, iron is, especially around your cycle, is good. Postmenopausal women, once you hit menopause, you kind of shift to like what a man needs. You don't need the iron again. So it's very much just premenopausal women that need iron.

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

Yes, omega-3 fish oil, as we've talked about before. I mean, this is probably one of the best and easiest things that people can do to improve their health, improve the way they age. Omega-3 fatty acids, 90% of the US population is not getting enough of them, 80% globally. Everyone, nobody's getting enough omega-3 fatty acids, particularly from seafood. So the EPA and DHA from fish oil are probably the best forms. You know, we talked about studies. If you have a high omega-3 index, you have a 5-year increased life expectancy compared to low omega-3 index. If you're a smoker and you have a high omega-3 index, then you're gonna live as long as a non-smoker with a low omega-3 index, right? I mean, so the low omega-3 index is like, like smoking, basically, you know, you have a 66% lower chance of getting Alzheimer's disease with a high omega-3 index. And even more recently, there were studies showing that omega-3 slows epigenetic aging. And this is not just in deficiency, I guess because everyone's deficient, maybe that's why. But a study showed that omega-3 fish oil supplementation, this was a study out of Switzerland. These individuals are mostly active, 88% of them were already physically active at the start of the trial. And I mentioned that because the trial involved omega-3 it involved vitamin D, and it involved resistance training, or the combination of all three. And only the omega-3 was able to slow epigenetic aging, biological aging, because for one, they were already physically active, so adding resistance training on top of their baseline didn't do much, and they were vitamin D sufficient. So the omega-3 was able to slow epigenetic aging. The combination of all three slowed it by 4 months. This was just after 1 year. So slowed it by 4 months, And if you imagine that, it doesn't sound like a lot. Again, it's compounding, but also within that study, they looked at real-world outcomes. So that also correlated with, they had a 60% less likely chance of being pre-fail, pre-frail, so pre-frailty, right? They also were less likely to get cancer as well. So I mean, it's really kind of translating to these health outcomes that we think of. And all you need to do is supplement with about 1.6 to 2 grams a day of omega-3. To get a good omega-3 index. But I will mention one thing, Stephen, it's at room temperature. I don't think that's a great idea because fish oil is a polyunsaturated fatty acid, it is prone to oxidation. So you wanna put it in a low temperature environment. I keep all my, actually I keep all my fish oil frozen, frozen, and then when I'm ready to use it, I put it in the fridge. So like I have a store of it, I have a stock of it I buy, and then it's in the freezer, and then I put it in the fridge with the bottle that I'm using from. And freezing it does nothing. It's fine. So it's basically just keeping it really, really low oxidation.

So I need to put this in the fridge.

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

Which means it's more fresh and pure.

It's more— it's, yeah, it's less oxidized. You don't want to be consuming oxidized fat because that's also not good.

Okay, so what else jumps out to you here? We've got creatine.

I mean, yeah, creatine is like my new— I travel with it everywhere. You got microionized. Is this— this is—

I've got so many different types, right?

This is the one I take. Yeah, I take, I take the creatine monohydrate because it's the most well studied. And, you know, obviously for— I do a lot of training and workout training. I do a lot of resistance training and strength training, so I at least get 5 grams a day, which is what I always was doing in the past. I upped that to 10 grams a day as my baseline because I wanted to have benefits in my brain. Studies out of Germany show that once you get to the 10-gram mark, you're actually, your brain's able to take it up and it's increasing creatine in certain brain regions. That doesn't happen much at lower doses. And that's because your muscles are very greedy. The creatine in my brain, honestly, I've, for me, I mentioned this before, it's a game changer just on a daily basis. I feel like I don't have that afternoon slump. I'm in my mid-40s, my brain isn't as sharp as it was. Creatine has really helped me kind of get a little bit closer to where I used to be. And also when I'm sleep deprived, I go up even higher. Sometimes I do 20, 25 grams. And that is because studies have shown if you go up to a higher dose like that, depending on your weight, it's kind of a scale, that it helps you basically negate the negative effects on your brain from sleep deprivation, where not only are you cognitively functioning, You're functioning beyond what your even normal baseline was, which was kind of mind-blowing.

The question I had is around loading and how long it takes to feel the impact. Because when I first heard about creatine, I was 16 and my brother was bodybuilding, and they were told that you need to like load up on big loads of it, and then in like 2 weeks' time, your body would be saturated. What's the truth?

Right. So the reason that creatine loading was done was because there's a short window of time when researchers are doing a study, and they want their muscle stores to be saturated. They want their muscle stores to be saturated. And so you have to do 20-gram loading phase in order to saturate them after, you know, 3 or 4 days. If you are not about to compete, and if you haven't been using creatine, and you're not participating in this study, it takes about 4 weeks, 3 to 4 weeks of 5 grams a day consistently to saturate your muscle. So you don't have to do any loading phase. If you are supplementing with 5 grams a day and you've been doing it for a month, your muscle stores are saturated until you exercise and you get that 5 grams in again, they're saturated, right? So they keep, they're already, that 5 grams a day is keeping them saturated. And that's why I said your muscles are really hungry and greedy. They're wanting that 5 grams, they're wanting that 5 grams. And that's about what it takes daily to saturate them. However, if you're starting from ground zero where you've never taken creatine, it's gonna take 4 weeks to really get the effects.

To get the effects. Okay.

Otherwise, yeah, you'll have to get higher doses. They're not gonna be saturated after 5 grams.

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

That's a good, that's actually a really good point, yeah. It's about a month-long experiment, I would say, close to 4 weeks. I think some people can saturate it at 3 weeks, but it all depends, body size and all that. So 4 weeks is a good experiment time, and 5 grams is a good dose to start with. If 5 grams a day actually makes you more bloated and nauseous, cut that down to 2.5 and 2.5 grams so that you split the doses. If you split the doses, if you take it with food, particularly carbohydrates, it seems to help negate some of the bloating and nausea and negative effects people feel. And obviously, if you're not working out, creatine's not gonna grow your muscles. You have to put in the work, you have to put in the effort. What it's doing is it's helping your muscles grow and give you the energy to do more training volumes that they can grow bigger and also so that you can be stronger. If you are traveling and stressed and all those things, yes, creatine is good for the brain.

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

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

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

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

Yeah. Okay, so I've got one challenge for you. If you had to pick 5 supplements for me to take, assuming that I am male and female.

Okay.

Okay, so it's neither gender, and it can be things that are either currently in my cupboard or not. What's the top 5? And ideally give me them in order if you can, in order of importance.

Fish oil.

Number 1.

Number 1. Vitamin D, multivitamin. All 3 very, very strong evidence that you're going to slow aging, you're gonna improve your brain function, lower disease risk, live longer. And creatine's gonna be there.

So that's 1, 2, 3, 4.

And then the last one is magnesium. Magnesium would be, I mean, it might be number 4 and creatine number 5 actually.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah.

Are you sure? What is magnesium doing for me?

Magnesium is running, it's important for 300 different enzymes in your body. It's important to repair damage to your DNA that's being done all the time. It's being done from the iron that you're taking. It's being done from normal metabolism, normal immune activation. But when you're in a state where you have, you're, you know, not eating a good diet or you're not getting enough sleep, magnesium is really important to repair that damage. And that's why studies have shown that magnesium is really important for preventing cancer, and it also helps with sleep. It's really good for sleep, but more importantly, 50% of the population doesn't get enough magnesium, and I bet you're probably one of those people because most of us are. Do you eat a lot of darker leafy greens or almonds? You're supposed to be getting 400, about 350 to 400 milligrams a day. Are you physically active? Yeah, you're sweating magnesium out. Let's make it 6, 6 supplements. So there's a new supplement, urolithin A, that I'm, pretty excited about. The other thing I take that's really important is that I don't necessarily see here.

What's it called?

So, curcumin.

Well, those supplements you've mentioned, the first one, which I can't say, and the second one, curcumin, we have on the table in the studio. So let's go back into the studio and we'll pick up from there.

Steve, what are you doing?

Just making myself a delicious coffee. From the freezer?

What's that?

From the freezer. Have you not heard about Comptier? No. Oh my gosh. This is gonna change your life. Couple of months ago, the founder of this business called Matt sent a big shipment of this coffee to our office in London. What most people don't know is that the processing of coffee takes out a lot of the taste. So what they do is they flash freeze it at the optimal moment when it's most tasty. And they send you in the post, the coffee, in these little frozen ice cubes. Now Matt sent a big shipment to my office. I moved it to the kitchen. I said to the team, "Knock yourselves out." And then I saw so many messages in our Slack channel of people going, "Oh my God, what the hell is that? It's so delicious." All I have to do is pop it out in the morning using the little button on the back of this thing. I pour my hot water in and I mix it, and that is done. You can get $30 off your first order of Cometeer Coffee if you go to cometeer.com/steven. Try it and please, Instagram DM me, LinkedIn me, and let me know if you love it as much as I do. You know, every once in a while you come across a product that has such a huge impact on your life that you'd probably describe it as a game changer. And I would say for about 35 to 40% of my team, they would currently describe this product that I have in front of me called Ketone IQ, which you can get at ketone.com. As a game changer. But the reason I became a co-owner of this company and the reason why they now are a sponsor of this podcast is because one day when I came to work, there was a box of this stuff sat on my desk. I had no idea what it was. Lily in my team says that this company have been in touch. So I went upstairs, tried it, and quite frankly, the rest is history. In terms of my focus, my energy levels, how I feel, how I work, how productive I am, game changer. So if you wanna give it a try, visit ketone.com/stephen for 30% off. You'll also get a free gift with your second shipment. And now you can find Ketone IQ at Target stores across the United States, where your first shot is completely free of charge. Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself. I'm inviting 10,000 of you to come even deeper into the Diary of a CEO. Welcome to my inner circle. This is a brand new private community that I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible things that happen that you never shown. We have the briefs that are on my iPad when I'm recording the conversation. We have clips we've never released. We have behind-the-scenes conversations with the guests and also the episodes that we've never ever released, and so much more. In the Circle, you'll have direct access to me. You can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview, and the types of conversations you would love us to have. But remember, for now, we're only inviting the first 10,000 people people that join before it closes. So if you want to join our private closed community, head to the link in the description below or go to doaccircle.com. I will speak to you then.

So phytosomal curcumin is another one that I supplement with. And let's just start with curcumin in general. Curcumin is found in the turmeric plant. It's something that is able to pretty robustly and I would say consistently lower inflammation. And it's doing it in a different way that like an NSAID, like an ibuprofen would do it, right? And that is important because it's been shown if you take NSAIDs, right? So these nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, something like ibuprofen around exercise, it can blunt the adaptations because it's basically lowering inflammation and prostaglandins and things that are important to cause exercise adaptations. So curcumin doesn't— hasn't been shown to do that, but it has been shown to lower something called TNF-alpha, and that is a major inflammatory cytokine that is really, really powerfully accelerating aging. In fact, those epigenetic aging clocks that we talked about earlier, one of the most powerful drugs that's able to slow them are TNF-alpha inhibitors. Inhibitors. So these are drugs that people take to inhibit TNF-alpha. Certain people take them, like people with rheumatoid arthritis. They have a high level of inflammation. Their immune system's overactive. They're making a lot of it. Well, guess what? Those individuals taking TNF-alpha inhibitors are like— they have a 50% less likelihood of getting Alzheimer's disease than people—

50%?

Yes. So I like it because curcumin is one of the most— it is the most naturally occurring dietary compound that I've seen data showing that it lowers TNF-alpha. I haven't seen anything else that's naturally occurring that does it. This does it. It lowers it by quite a bit, by almost 5 picograms per milliliter. Phytosomal curcumin is— the reason I take phytosomal, it's kind of like a liposome, but it's phytosome. So it's essentially just making the ingredient get into the cells better. It's more bioavailable. Because curcumin is easily metabolized quickly by the liver. It's what's called a xenobiotic. It's not a compound that's a vitamin or a mineral or something that the body normally recognizes. It's seen as a drug, a foreign drug. Xenobiotic, right? And so the liver gets rid of it quickly. The phytosomal delivery of it kind of slows that whole process where it's not getting rid of so quickly. It's not being metabolized so readily. So that's why I take that. And also it's been shown to improve performance in people that are exercising. Again, because it's reducing inflammation. Inflammation can be dampening for performance.

And what else have we got here?

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

I've never heard about this before.

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

Which is associated with fasting.

Fasting activates autophagy, fasting activates mitophagy, which is, specifically just clearing out damaged mitochondria or pieces of damaged mitochondria. Autophagy is essentially you have a whole cell and within that cell you have a lot of different organelles, they're called. So mitochondria being one. And so autophagy kind of helps clear out all this stuff inside of the cell. Mitophagy is very specific to just the mitochondria within the cell. Those mitochondria get older. And they don't have a really good repair process, and so they accumulate damage. And as they get older, you're, you're not going to be making energy as well, you're not going to be using energy as well. It's going to affect all the cell function because energy is at the core of everything, right? So mitochondrial health is at the core of all health, basically. This compound very robustly induces mitophagy. And so, um, there have been, of course, many animal studies that were done preclinically before clinical studies were done. Animal studies were exciting. I mean, mice that were given, old mice that were given urolithin A were able to like rejuvenate, you know, tissues, but also 20% life extension was found in these mice given urolithin A. 20% is pretty big for a mouse study. All right, but we're not mice, so let's talk about humans and why I'm actually excited about it. For one, urolithin A and mitophagy was shown to be activated in humans taking it. So they took muscle biopsies biopsies and found that in fact mitophagy was activated. It's also recently been shown that this urolithin A is able to, to basically rejuvenate the immune system. So older adults were given 1,000 milligrams a day, and it, it basically— as we age, our immune system ages, our T cells aren't fighting off pathogens as well, and it increased the number of a very specific type of immune cell that decreases with age called CD8-positive T cells. Those were increased. That's very important because you're able to fight off infection better. And then it also increased a kind of immune cell that's able to kill cancer cells and also kill viruses and pathogens. It's called natural killer cells. So those cells increased as well with the urolithin A, and it also decreased markers of like senescence. So this is basically when a cell is still alive, but it's not functioning. It's basically like it's dead. But not only is it not dead and not functioning, it's secreting inflammatory cytokines, accelerating aging. I know, it's complicated. So the study showed that it was basically able to rejuvenate the immune system in older adults. Younger adults that have taken it— so there's been studies showing that untrained athletes supplementing with 1,000 milligrams a day were able to improve their VO2 max, um, 10% more than just exercise alone. So if they exercise and took urolithin A, their VO2 max went up 10% compared to the exercise alone group. Wow. If they were, yes, if they were trained athletes, it only went up 5% because trained athletes already are doing a lot, right? So you always get a bigger increase in VO2 max if you have an untrained athlete. Same with obese people. And on top of that, so again, energy, it's you're clearing out damaged mitochondria. If you combine it with exercise, exercise causes you to make new mitochondria. So the way I look at it, Stephen, is a rejuvenation of all your mitochondria within your cells, whether we're talking about your muscle cells or your immune cells. I think it's probably happening in the brain as well. So it's been shown to increase muscle strength in older adults. So their hamstring strength improved by like 10 to 12% after supplementing versus just exercise alone. I think it's a supplement that's important for aging because it's affecting mitochondria and pretty much everything relies on mitochondria.

Yeah. And you can buy this in a normal shop on the high street?

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

So glutamine is the last one. What is that?

Well, you've probably heard of glutamine as an amino acid, right? It's so much more. It's so much more. So glutamine is something that, it is an amino acid, but it gets converted into, and metabolized to many different things. So one, it can be an amino acid. Two, it can form something called glutamate, which is used by your cells for energy. Mitochondria love it. Or it can be converted into that neurotransmitter that we were talking about, right, glutamate. So it's really something that can be used for many things. I supplement with it because I came across some studies in the past couple of years where endurance athletes— so these are— I'm not an endurance athlete, but that endurance athletes are very prone to respiratory illness because they're really just going hard, right? And your immune system kind of takes a, it takes a tax on your immune system. Studies were showing that if those endurance athletes supplemented with glutamine, they didn't get sick as often. They were having fewer respiratory illnesses. And I remembered back to when I was a graduate student and I was doing research and I used glutamine. And I was doing glucose and glutamine and looking at immune cells and how I could make them active or what happens if I get rid of glucose glutamine, and I remembered how much they love glutamine. They consume it, they're using it for energy. And it started to make sense to me. And this was during a period of time where, you know, again, mid-40s, your immune system's not doing as well as it used to. I've had a young child that was bringing home all sorts of pathogens, and so I started supplementing with glutamine. And it could be placebo, but again, the sickness bouts my bouts were going down. I wasn't getting sick as often. The other thing it's good for is the gut, and that is because glutamine can be glu— uh, converted into something called alpha-ketoglutarate, which is an important energy compound that the gut uses. And so there are studies showing that it's beneficial for gut health. I think that's what a lot of people think about when they take glutamine, is their gut. I'm thinking about my immune system, but basically it's very easily used by the gut cells as energy, and that really helps the gut heal.

Okay, the other thing which I take almost daily— sometimes I give myself the weekend off depending on how things are going— but almost daily are these Ketone IQ shots, which I am affiliated with. I am an investor in the company. Ketone shots, exogenous ketone shots.

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

Beta-hydroxybutyrate.

BHB for short.

Does that just mean ketone?

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

What does that mean?

It means that it has both an immediate action, a fast action effect of having your ketones elevated, but it also has a tail end effect. So the 1,3-butandiol, if you take it, you have to wait for it to get to your liver. You have to— can I have one? Yes. Oh, perfect.

Okay.

Wow, this tastes better. So the other ketone, exogenous ketone, is the beta-hydroxybutyrate esterified to the 1,3-butyndiol, which just means it's gonna have a fast-acting effect, but also a long-term effect. So you'll get a little bit more elevation in your blood ketones from the one that has the beta-hydroxybutyrate esterified to the 1,3-butyndiol. That said—

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

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

This one I think costs a couple of dollars. And I have the Oxford one here as well, which I think is $30 a pot. A pop. So it's quite expensive. And I think the reason why this has been able to break into retail, especially across America, is just because it's more affordable for most people to be able to take—

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

That's a really interesting, important point.

It is.

That people don't talk about.

Yeah, it's important. And it's only going to last as long as the beta-hydroxybutyrate lasts in your, in your blood system. So, you know, maybe 3 hours max.

What I noticed was when I was trying to get into ketosis at the top of the year and I was doing exogenous ketone shots, I was struggling to get into ketosis. And so what I did is I stopped taking the ketone shots for a couple of days, just focused on my ketogenic diet. I got into ketosis, and then afterwards I started taking the ketone shots when I was doing podcasting, because just like you I noticed just such a radical, radical difference when I take exogenous ketones or when I'm in a natural sort of dietary ketosis. Radical difference. And as a podcaster, I've said this a million times before, but I'm going to say it again. Two times a week I do an A/B test of how my brain is working. I sit with someone who is an expert in what they do for sometimes 4 or 5 hours, and I look at them in their face and I have to ask questions and respond and understand big words and hope that my brain is connected to my mouth today. Day. And so I've done 600 or 700 of these A/B tests now, and one of the, the factors that correlates to good performance as an interviewer and a thinker or a speaker on stage is whether I'm in a ketosis state or not. And it's so profound. In fact, I've actually heard Joe Rogan say this. Joe Rogan said that the upside he gets from being in a ketogenic state is so evident for him as an interviewer that he's considered being in that state all the It's the same for me too.

I mean, as you know, I'm also doing the same thing, right? I have a podcast and I'm giving presentations and very, very much having to use my brain and be on. And it's really made a huge difference for me as well. And that is also why I like to fast, because I get the same effect when I'm fasted. And then I will take an exogenous ketone when I'm also fasted. And so I get into ketosis quicker as well. Because I'm already kind of there. I don't have other things inhibiting it. So it does help. And there's, again, pros and cons to doing it. You do want your body to be metabolically flexible. So I'm glad you did do the ketose, like the ketogenic diet, and let your body kind of do it and adapt, and then add the ketones on top of that. But they do help. They help with cognitive function for sure. I mean, I use them every single podcast I do, presentation I'm giving. It's, it's part of my routine.

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

Well, let's start with lifespan and work our way to peakspan to give people a frame of reference. I think most people are familiar with the word longevity, wanting to extend their lifespan, how many years they live, how long they live, right? But the problem with lifespan is, well, you could live longer, but you're going to have perhaps you have some diseases. So why do you want to live longer if you have Alzheimer's disease or cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes? I mean, the qual— your quality of life is not as good. And that's where this idea of healthspan came in, right? So healthspan is, well, let's increase the amount of time we live disease-free. And that's the new thing that everyone wants to increase and improve, their healthspan. I wanna live, I wanna increase my healthspan. So I wanna live longer and not have any diseases while I'm living that longer life. Well, there's this new concept now, very new, that was just published by some researchers out of Duke University, as well as, I think China, some university in China and another university, but I wanna give them credit. It's a preprint study and it came on my radar. I immediately loved it. And this is idea of peak span. Peak span says, hey, you know, healthspan is great, being disease-free is great, but you're still in a period of decline. You're still declining. Why not try to be as close to your peak span, which is essentially within 90% of your peak function for a certain measurement, whether we're talking about VO2 max, cardiorespiratory fitness, we're talking about, you know, any other function. And that's where this graph comes in. On the y-axis, we have our relative capacity.

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

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

What does relative capacity mean?

Capacity for cognitive function, for, you know, for your fertility, your potential, hormonal, yeah, your potential, yeah. And on the x-axis, we're talking about age, right? And so what you'll notice is that different capacities, different organ functions kind of peak at different rates. So we can talk about first, obviously, female reproductive really starts to peak at, you know, 25 or so, and then it just sharply declines until you hit 40, right? It's like bottomed out. So that's the reproductive female, right? Immune function. So let's find immune function here. That kind of peaks around 25 years old, and it also kind of declines, and it keeps declining.

It's quite scary.

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

You're joking.

No, I know.

So I'm on the way down.

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

Is that wisdom or is that—

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

I've gotta ask a question there. We were sat having dinner the other day, me and my team, and we were talking about the difference, 'cause we're all different ages. We've got someone in the team who's 45, 35, 30, and it was the other person at the table was 27. And we were all talking about, about the differences we've noticed in ourselves as we've aged. And they all said different things. So Leona in my team, who's just above the age of 40, was saying that she just like doesn't really give a fuck anymore in the same way that she used to care about people's opinions when she was 30. One of the things I said I noticed about myself was after I turned 30, I feel like I saw a step change in pattern recognition and like exactly what you've just described there, which is like crystallized knowledge. Because I sit here with experts all day, learn all this stuff from them. And then my ability to then like apply it in my life as an entrepreneur seems to be improving. And so the question I was really gonna ask you is, think about entrepreneurship. A lot of my audience are entrepreneurs in some capacity or aspire to be. I was wondering as you were saying that, like when is the best age? Because entrepreneurship is a lot about pattern recognition. It's problem in front of you. Okay, I've seen this before. I'm pulling on different reference points to arrive at a solution. So I was wondering here, because it looks like it peaks at like 45.

Yeah, 45. So if we look at it, it's peaking at 45. And that's also why a lot of biologists continue to do great work in their midlife as well. And that is something that I do feel like is better for me as well, you know, where I'm now able to pull on— I have so much of a database in the back of my head, you know, where it's like I've got all this knowledge and then it comes up and you can use it. And so it's interesting. You can talk about entrepreneurs, but you can— I mean, any any sort of career path, right? It would be beneficial to be able to do that. So the question is, then how do we get— here's peak span, you're going up, and what you wanna do is you wanna get and maintain about 90% of all these things that we were talking about peaking, right? Immune aging, it peaks at, you know, immune aging actually peaks around adolescence, I think. Musculoskeletal health, 2025. The fluid intelligence, 2025. You're having cardiorespiratory fitness, that's also 20 to 25. It peaks and then it goes down. The question is, how do you maintain your peak span, right? How do you get as close as you can? You're obviously not gonna be your 100%, but how do you not drop below 90% of that peak, right?

Is that possible?

Is it, first of all, is it possible? And I would say for some organs, no. Which organs are that? I don't think a reproductive, of life expectancy for a female, I don't think you're going to be having babies at 80 years old without actual medical intervention. That's a whole other conversation. So I think— but I do think there are ways that we can get really close to our peak for cardiorespiratory, for musculoskeletal, you know, for our intelligence, cognitive intelligence, as well as our immune system. And I think there are blanket Is it things that we could do that affect multiple systems, right? And there's also targeted things. So we were talking about fluid versus cognitive versus crystallized intelligence, right? Obviously crystallized intelligence, you know, it doesn't peak until mid-40s. The things that you can do to improve crystallized intelligence also improve your fluid intelligence. What are those things? One, exercise, number one thing. Aerobic exercise is increasing brain-derived neurotrophic factor, very important for both these aspects. It's also, you know, growing new neurons, making connections between the neurons, making your brain more plastic and adaptable so it adapts to the changing environment. Top thing that you can do. Another thing that you can do that's really important for brain aging is the omega-3. We talked about that. Really important for brain aging. But the other thing that you can do is what we're doing right now, engaging in novel cognitive, you know, experiences. It could be a discussion, it could be your work. If you are learning new things— novel is key here, novel— if you're learning new things, you are going to really help yourself improve both your fluid and crystallized intelligence.

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

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

Avoid the black plastics in my fridge.

Avoid black plastics in your fridge, yeah.

Because then my testosterone's gonna go down.

Testosterone's gonna go down, and that's gonna affect your ability to gain muscle mass, exactly. A lot of these healthy lifestyles that we're talking about are multi-system targeting, right? So you're targeting, but key would be strength training and resistance training, and it's gonna also affect your bones. So you're gonna wanna do these weight-bearing exercises that are multi-joint, the compound lifts, right? The deadlifts, cliffs, rose, things like that. Those are very important to help maintain that peak immune system. Sleep, very, very important for maintaining a healthy immune system and preventing your immune system from aging rapidly. So making sure you're prioritizing sleep. How are you going to do that, right? I mean, there's a lot of ways to— people, people, a lot of people have sleep problems, and they have sleep problems for different reasons, and there's ways to target them. But just realize thinking about it and prioritizing is important for your immune system and for your brain. Also, the exercise plays a role in your cardiorespiratory fitness, the brain, everything, muscle. So cardiorespiratory fitness is something that you— we talked about urolithin A helping improve it on top of exercise. So there's supplements and stuff that you add in as well. But this idea here is really that we can do things in our life that are healthy to help maintain that peak span, to get us not just free of disease, but like close to what we were peaking. And I do think it's possible. I mean, we talked last time I was here, we talked about that study. You exercise 5 hours a week, do some high-intensity interval training in there, and you can reverse heart aging by 20 years. That's incredible, right?

It's so crazy. And you're also saying that listening to the Diary of a CEO, obviously, is therefore good for?

Yeah, it's good for cognitive, your fluid intelligence and your crystallized intelligence. Intelligence. It's good for learning new things, right? I mean, that's—

so you would prescribe it?

Yeah, yeah, especially the episodes I'm on.

I say that as a joke, but actually it's a part of the conversation we had the other day at dinner was I don't think I'm gonna appreciate maybe until later in my life how much an unintended consequence of doing this as a job had on my cognition and my brain. And it's like not something that I would notice, you know, in the moment, but over time, you know, doing this 2 times a week for sometimes 8 hours a week, learning something new— being forced is a strong word— but having an obligation to learn something new for 8 hours a week for my entire adult life.

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

We've got to talk about AI in this conversation.

Oh my gosh.

Because I actually woke up this morning and I got a message. Look, I'll check with him that I can put this in before I say it out loud, before it's published. But I got a message from my chairman, Nicky, Nicky's an incredible man. He's, you know, 25 years bossing consulting group. He's seen it all. And he said to me that one of the things he's thinking a lot about at the moment is how across our, you know, businesses, but just generally in society, how AI is going to impact critical thinking and what that then might mean for our teams, our executives, etc. So this is a conversation I was having this morning with him. And it's also something I've noticed. There are certain people I interact with now where I do not feel at all like I'm dealing with their brain. I feel like I'm dealing with what came out the other end of a ChatGPT prompt. Yes. Good, bad, indifferent. Like, I don't, you know.

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

I think that's a big if, right?

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

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

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

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

That's incredible.

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

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

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

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

I've been thinking a lot about this. I've just come back from South by Southwest and every conversation was about Bloody Mary. I was there too. They were asking me a lot about AI. So before I went on stage, I was looking at some of the studies, and I concluded that at the moment we are in society, there's going to be a bit of a bifurcation of people. One group is going to do— take the path of least resistance with AI, which is they're going to defer their thinking to AI, which is, you know, one of the things I learned from people like you often is that if you don't use it, you lose it. And that part of their brain, whatever it is, will begin to atrophy to some extent. And I think there'll be another group of people who will— just like we go to the gym now because we have to, because our lives are so easy— they will go to like the mental gym, which means they will set aside time to intentionally solve difficult cognitive problems or challenges. And I've— I literally have said to some of my executives, we'll have a moment where we're talking on WhatsApp or Slack, and I'll literally say, let's try and solve this problem with our brains, because I believe that solving this problem with our brains will create a deeper understanding of the first principles of the problem, not the just surface level 1 1 2, but like, what is 1? What is a number? And this is the difference. Like, AI can give you the answer, but it's not gonna give you the foundation so that you can solve other problems in the future. Because if I never told you what the number 1 was, you would never in the future be able to use it yourself. All you'd know is 1 1 2. But there's foundations like, what are numbers? What is 1? What is 2? What is plus? That you need to understand to be able to do 1 2 3. And the study, one of the studies I looked at, which was— it's been heavily discussed, was from last year. I found staggering memory cost using generative AI. In this study, which I'll throw up on the screen, 83% of AI users were unable to remember the details of a passage of text that they had written with AI's assistance. EEG scans showed that brain connectivity was almost halved when individuals outsourced their thinking to AI compared to writing manually, which created cognitive debt. You get output faster, but you don't build the long-term neural hardware to understand the information or the knowledge.

So true. It's so true. You know, what's interesting about what you just said is the— when you're writing something, whether you're typing it or even— actually, the most— I think there's been some studies on this, handwriting something, something about handwriting it really ingrains it into your memory. And I have this process when I'm trying to— there's a lot of facts that I have to remember, you know, when I'm talking about them. And I have this process that I do, and the first one is the research, right? You research it and you find it, and then I type it in a Google Doc, and then I write it. And that process is really what gets it into my memory. All the, like, statistics and, you know, statistics are always harder because it's just a number, you know, versus, like, you under— like you're saying, you're understanding the fundamental nature of something that I'm interested in. That always helps. And so it's interesting that if you're, if you're writing something, if you're writing it, like, typing it or writing it handwriting— they're probably talking about typing it— even that really does help you remember something If you're just copying it and then trying to do some recall, it's not gonna, it's not gonna work. And then there's the whole other layer of that you were talking about, which is like you're not even using— the novelty isn't there. You're not like really into it and learning. And that's what it really takes to build that cognitive reserve, to improve the connections, to increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor, right? You need that novelty. So I do love AI, but I also know that I need to continue using my brain and I have my own protocols that I like and that I still do. I still write things down. I have a, you know, I have my little notebook and I want to, before I go on a podcast too, I like to go through and write stuff down that I've already typed that I've learned and things that I wanted to cover. It really, makes a difference in memory. So for people that are like you and I and learners and optimisers, keep— take that pointer because it really does work.

This was one of my favourite things with the iPad. Listen, I'm not the type of person that does a huge amount of writing on pen and paper, although I would do more because everything you've said has proven to be true for me. If I write something down, it's like I'm writing it directly into my brain. Right. But the iPad now allows you to split what you're reading in terms of a book book on one side and then a notepad on the other. So what I do when I read is I read the thing and then I try and write out the lesson on the other side of the page. So I'll say, the gut microbiome has 42 trillion bugs, and I'll go, the gut microbiome has 42 million bugs. Love it. I love it. And then I turn the page and I— I'm trying to do exactly what you said because I realized that a lot of stuff I learned doesn't land unless, right, I write it out myself.

It's something about the act of writing. And if you add the layer of like what I do, it takes time, you know, so you have to type it and then write, then it really sticks in your brain. Yeah. Like those are the ones when I've done, those are the ones that really have stuck if I've done them both. But I love that I don't use iPads ever and I still like read books, you know, like old books and when I have time to do 'em and I just have my notebook.

I think it shows though, you have an unbelievable ability to remember so many things.

But I still love AI. You know, I still, I think there's a lot of benefits and I think that, you know, scientists in general are using, AI is now their collaborator, right? Their pretty smart collaborator that has access to a lot of data and can analyze a lot of data quickly.

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

Well, I'm glad you asked this question. I think I've been thinking about this a lot. I did a podcast on the current exercise guidelines and I think they need to be updated. I think they're not good enough. And it's important for people to realize how these exercise guidelines were formulated and what they mean. So typically, you'll hear exercise guidelines, 150 to 300 minutes a week of moderate-intensity exercise is good for optimal health, or 75 minutes to 150 minutes a week of vigorous-intensity exercise, right? So they're basically a 2-to-1 ratio, right? Twice as many minutes for moderate intensity as vigorous intensity. What is defined as moderate versus vigorous? That's also important, 'cause it's different across different studies. In these guidelines, it's basically moderate intensity is you're walking, you're moving with intent, but not really, really fast. You're walking at maybe a fast pace, but you're not jogging and you're not running. That kind of activity would be considered moderate, Vigorous would be considered jogging, running, swimming, cycling. So the kind of activity where you're actually moving fast with intent. Why do we have this 2:1 ratio? Where did it come from? Well, it all came from energy expenditure. You burn twice as many calories if you're doing vigorous intensity exercise as you do if you're doing moderate intensity, right? So if you're walking 1 mile, you'll burn, X amount of calories. If you jog that mile, you'll burn twice as many calories. That's where these guidelines came from, the 2:1 ratio, right? Weight loss, energy expenditure. But that's not necessarily what's important for reducing cancer mortality, reducing cardiovascular-related mortality, reducing all-cause mortality, right? These guidelines use that data, this 2:1 ratio of energy expenditure, and then they looked at other studies and said, "Okay, how much exercise is required to reduce cardiovascular-related mortality or all-cause mortality?" And they kind of, like, connected the dots. By the way, these studies also were using questionnaires. They weren't actually measuring how active people were. A new study came out, and I did a journal club podcast on it because it was the study that I felt was so important that I wanted to break down all the components of the study with another scientist and talk about them because it's very important. So journal clubs, typically in science, you have them. In my career, it was, you know, sometimes it was once a week, other times it was once a month. And someone— you choose a study that's important and you break it down and you talk about the results and you talk about the methods and talk about what the findings mean. That's what a journal club is. And it's essentially you choose a journal and a publication within that journal and it's a club. You have different scientists that are talking about it. Why did this warrant a journal club? Because I think this study basically is strong enough data that it's implying we need to change our exercise guidelines, at least the messaging of them, at the very least. And I'll tell you why. Because I talked about these, you know, these guidelines, how they're formulated, they're using questionnaires, they're not measuring anything. Well, a new study came out Not only did it measure physical activity through these accelerometers, it was able to measure how active people were and the type of activity, whether it was— I mentioned moderate versus vigorous. They also measured light physical activity. That would be considered walking around your house, kind of doing that kind of light activity, not necessarily going for a walk or going for a run. And they looked at deaths from different causes of disease. They looked at deaths from all causes, so all-cause mortality. They looked at cancer-related deaths, they looked at cardiovascular-related deaths, they look at type 2 diabetes, they looked at heart attacks, right? And what was so profound was that what we found, what they found, and what we now know is that everything changes in terms of how important vigorous-intensity exercise is. It's so much more valuable than we thought. It's not 2 to 1. So if we're looking at all-cause mortality, you know, dying from all causes, cancer, respiratory, anything related that's non-accidental, for every 1 minute of vigorous-intensity exercise, you had to do 4 minutes of moderate intensity, and you had to do like 100 to 150 minutes of light exercise to get the same reduction in all-cause mortality. For every 1 minute? For every 1 minute of vigorous-intensity exercise. It gets better, okay? For every 1 minute of vigorous-intensity exercise to reduce your death from cardiovascular disease, you had to do 8 minutes of moderate intensity and 200 minutes of light exercise for every 1 minute of vigorous intensity exercise. It's huge. To reduce your type 2 diabetes risk, for every 1 minute of vigorous, you had to do 10 minutes of moderate intensity, or you had to do, again, you're in the 100— 150 minutes to 200 minutes of light exercise. To reduce your risk of dying from cancer, For every 1 minute of vigorous intensity exercise, you had to do 4 minutes, about 4 minutes of moderate intensity. And for light, it was like, it was almost not even happening. I mean, it was like 250, 300, like you had to just, a ton of minutes, unbelievable amount of minutes, okay? But the value of vigorous intensity exercise is so much more than this 2:1 ratio based on energy expenditure, based on burning calories that our guidelines were based on. It's time to rethink 'em. It's time to tell people, hey, if you're getting out and you're going for a run, it is worth way more than you think it is in terms of reducing your disease risk and your death from that disease, right? Also, what was really interesting about this study, and this goes back to this exercise snacks that we talked about before last episode, is that because there are people, participants were wearing these accelerometers on their wrist, they were able to measure All physical activity. Let's say you're— you have a new puppy and you're sprinting in the yard and playing with them for a minute or 2 minutes or 3 minutes or whatever. Not 30 minutes in the gym, right? Or not 30 minutes on the treadmill, but you're just a short burst. Or you're playing with your grandkids or your kids and you're playing tag, whatever. Those moments count. They really add up. And that is also a take-home from this study and other studies is that you can actually get massive benefits from the sprinting, the vigorous exercise, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes. Women that did 3.5 minutes of just this vigorous types of exercise per day lowered their cancer risk by 40%. Yes, 3.5 minutes a day. This was in women. Now there's bigger studies showing men and women that exercise 9 minutes a day, the short vigorous types of exercise, adding up, not 9 minutes altogether, but like a minute here, a minute there, a minute here, right? It adds up, 40% lower cancer-related mortality, 50% lower cardiovascular-related mortality. And that's another big take-home from this study that I really want people to know about because some people don't like spending 30 minutes or putting out, blocking out a 30-minute time or an hour-long time to go to the gym. They should. I mean, if they want their peak span, that's what you're gonna have to do. But if you're just wanting to avoid disease and be, you know, healthspan, you know, you can get that by doing these short moments of short bursts of physical activity. And those count. And some people are like, "Oh, thank God." Thank God I can do that because I hate going to the gym. I'll, you know, they just won't do it.

They won't do it. A lot of people as well are caught up with this 10,000 steps a day thing. Yes.

10,000 steps a day.

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

Yeah, I look, any exercise is better than none. I want to just get that on the table. Okay. That's important. I don't want to totally diss the 10,000 steps a day, but I think that we need to ditch it. I think we need to ditch 10,000 steps a day and say 10 minutes a day. 10 minutes a day of getting your heart rate up. You can do bodyweight squats, you can, you know, play tag with your kids or your grandkids. You can do shorter bursts of it, but it needs to be 10 minutes. And if you get to that 10 minutes a day, 50% lower cardiovascular-related mortality, 50% lower all-cause mortality, 40% lower cancer mortality. That is what you're going to get. 10,000 steps a day is not going to get you that. We just talked about it. It's not going to get you that, right? It's a different ratio. It's not 2:1 ratio.

I imagine there's people thinking, you used 3 terms there, vigorous, moderate, and light. We probably need to quite clearly define those definitions. Like, what is vigorous?

Right. Heart rate? Is it all— Vigorous intensity exercise can be heart rate, and it is heart rate in a lot of studies that are done. In terms of the exercise guidelines, they don't use heart rate. They're using movement. Like when I say accelerometer, I mean moving fast. So they're able to measure the acceleration of your movement. And so the way that they're talking about it in these exercise guideline studies is moving fast. Moving fast would be jogging, running, swimming, biking. You're moving. The stepper? Stepper would, with stepper, we'd be moving fast. Even weights are moving fast. That's part of it too. Weights, you're doing weights. Wait. Because they're on your wrist. And so if you're doing bicep curls or you're doing, you know, something with your wrists that are fast, it's part of that equation as well.

Heart rate isn't the thing they were measuring, but that's a consequence of moving fast. It is. It is. So you want to be thinking about getting your heart rate—

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

Yeah, probably just doing 6,000 or 7,000 just walking around the office.

So, but that's considered light exercise. So that's why I think we need to get rid of that. It's not enough. It's not enough. It's better than sitting because sitting is bad. Sitting is an independent risk factor for disease, for cancer in particular.

This was one of the most replayed moments last time I spoke to you, was people replayed the section where you talked about being sedentary. And how much of an issue that is for all of us. And it's really stayed with me to the fact— I don't know if this helps, but I've been using standing desks everywhere. Even when I travel around the world now, I've actually got a portable standing desk just to try and keep me up. Because as a podcast, I've sat in this chair for what? I've sat down for 6 hours today and it's 3:00 PM.

Right. Yeah. Kelly Starrett wrote a book, Deskbound, some years ago. And, you know, he really played a role in popularizing this idea. And I think in the public as well. Being sedentary is time you're, you're spent sitting, right? Time you spend sitting. It doesn't necessarily mean— I used to think about being sedentary as, oh, do you work out, yes or no? No, you're sedentary. Yes, no, you're not sedentary. That's not what sedentary is. Sedentary is time you're spending sitting. We've been sitting here quite, quite a few hours. We've been sedentary this whole time. So being sedentary and sitting Sitting is an independent risk factor, even if you're exercising, it's an independent risk factor for diseases. I mentioned cancer in particular, that seems to be the one that's more strongly correlated to being sedentary. But standing helps. If you're standing up or also getting up and doing exercise snacks. So you can get up every hour and like do some bodyweight squats, do some jumping jacks, do some high knees, get your heart rate up. That breaks up the sedentary time. So now it's only an hour of sedentary versus 8 hours, right? Or 6 hours, or however long you're sitting at your desk. It makes a difference. And those exercise snacks are easy to do. I have a standing desk. I don't use it enough. I still have it. I do do exercise snacks. And I like doing the exercise snacks because like literally if we were to get up and do bodyweight squats right now for 1 minute, like you're gonna feel better. You feel better after. The blood flow to your brain, it gives you a little pump. I love it. I love the pump. It's just 1 minute of it and you get a short pump to your brain and it makes you feel better. Exercise snacks are a really good way to break up sedentary time. They're also adding up. They count. As I just mentioned, they count towards your exercise goal, and they're vigorous. You're getting— you're moving fast, right? Vigorous exercise. You're getting your heart rate up.

Or I could just take a Zen Pack. I just get the pen out, jab, jab, jab, and it's all of this stuff disappears, right? I could do all of this stuff, or I can just Zen Pack it, right? Yeah. I mean, so— So many people are taking a Zen Pack. So interesting. And I— listen, I have to say, it's saving people's lives. Amazing. I've heard so many of my friends who are on Ozempic and taking the GLP-1 pens say that they've had profound benefits. Their knees are better, they can walk upstairs, they feel better.

Yeah, I mean, let's be real here. Being obese and overweight is one of the worst things you can do for your health, right? It's going to accelerate the aging process and it's going to increase the risk of every age-related disease— cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer. Your, you know, visceral fat's happening, you're insulin resistant, you know, it's all, it's all happening. It's going to affect your quality of life. It's harder to walk around, you're not as mobile, your joints are getting more stress on them, right? So it— anything that can help you lose that weight is going to be beneficial. And so these GLP-1— you're talking about Ozempic, that's the GLP-1 receptor agonist, right? They are very— they're life-changing for people that are obese. People that need to lose, you know, 40 pounds, 50 pounds, 30 pounds. It's not easy to lose that weight with diet and lifestyle. Yeah, well, let's talk about the buts. Let's talk about— so the benefits are obviously if they're going to lose that fat, the visceral fat, they're going to become insulin sensitive, they're going to reduce their risk for all those diseases. And that's what the data shows— cardiovascular disease risk goes down, cancer risk goes down, except for one type of cancer goes up, kidney cancer. But, you know, the Alzheimer's disease risk goes down. Anything that you're gonna— when you lose weight, those risks are going to go down. There are side effects, and there are things to consider when you're taking— I'm calling them GLP-1s because we have first generation, second generation, and now third generation. And they're affecting not only the GLP-1 receptor, but they're affecting glucagon, for example. They're affecting another peptide called GIP, G-I-P, So I'll just call them GLP-1s for short. Okay. Semaglutide, or Ozempic, is one of the first generations. We now have the second generation that's targeting two pathways. You can lose even more weight. Mounjaro would be something that people would relate to. That's one of the second generation ones. And I think that for people that are gonna start these drugs, first of all, they have to realize there's a good chance they're gonna have to be on them for the rest of their life. And that's something that you have to be willing to do. And I say that because many studies have shown now that individuals that do take these GLP-1s do lose a lot of weight, and it's very beneficial to lose that weight, but if they stop taking the GLP-1s, they gain the weight back. And oftentimes they gain all the weight back because your body's kind of trying to go back to that reset point, and their hunger comes back with a vengeance. And so part of what GLP-1 drugs are doing are they are basically, you know, they're making you feel satiated and not hungry. So they're affecting your satiety hormones so you don't feel hungry. They're also slowing gastric emptying so food stays around in your intestines longer. So you feel full when food is in your intestines, you don't feel hungry. So they're slowing that process and so people don't feel hungry. And so what ends up happening is in many ways it's mimicking calorie restriction and fasting, right? You're basically not eating as much food. So that's essentially, but it's doing it for you. It's not, you don't have to put in that, you don't have to feel hungry, you don't have to put in that work, and it's doing it for you, right? And so people are losing a lot of weight and they're losing it very rapidly. And I said you might have to be on it for the rest of your life. And what I mean by that is because a lot of studies show that majority of people do gain back their weight. Their appetite comes back, it comes back with a vengeance, and they regain the weight over a year. Or so. So that's one thing to consider. Are you willing to take it for the rest of your life?

There was a New York Times piece where they looked at a lady called Stacy Canterbury. She'd lost 50 pounds on one of the GLP-1s that you mentioned, reaching her peak goal weight. And after stopping the drug due to insurance issues, she regained 20 pounds back straight away in a month. Interestingly, she described the return of hunger not as a gradual increase but as a ferocious this animalistic urge to eat that was far more intense than before she ever started the medication. And the New York Times did a big piece about that because one of the things that I've come to learn is that there's no free lunch in life, no pun intended.

There's no free lunch. There's no free biological lunch. It's, it's true. Um, yeah, people's appetite— that's why I said it comes back with a vengeance, because it seems to be the case where your body's like, it hasn't been hungry, and it's like, wait a minute, I've been starving for so long, I need I need to eat, right? So it's kind of like, feed me. And that's obviously something to consider. So the question is, well, what happens if you're on these drugs long-term? And, you know, we've got these drugs, early versions of them have been around. They also help treat type 2 diabetes, right? That's part of like where they first came from. They've been around a while. We do have some data. Mostly the data is positive because people are losing a lot of weight and that is what's putting them at a high risk for these diseases. And so when you lose that weight, what ends up happening is your disease risk for all these diseases goes down, right? So it's hard to uncouple weight loss from what the drug's doing itself. But there are side effects in addition to that, right? Nausea, GI upset, all that stuff, maybe temporary. Some people, it kind of sticks around. Some other effects I think that people are a little more concerned about are the muscle loss and bone loss. That's a big one. And that is probably something coming from just rapid weight loss and not eating enough food and not resistance training. So when you're largely fasting throughout the day, if you're not getting enough protein, then your muscle's not gonna have amino acids to help, you know, basically keep growing. And not only keep growing, not use its own amino acid reserve for making protein, right? So you break down muscle. In fact, there's weight loss studies showing in any weight loss diet, you know, if you're not eating enough protein and you're not resistance training, up to 40% of your weight can come from muscle weight loss that you're losing. I should say lean mass, including muscle. So that's a little different, but it's, it's a big percent, right? And so you're talking about losing a lot of muscle as well, and that is something that happens with these drugs. If people are training, it really helps. If they're resistance training, it's really helping because that's a signal to your muscle to grow muscle. It's a mechanical force that helps you grow muscle, right? That's something to consider. Bone loss is another one. You can also lose bone from rapid, rapid weight loss. I don't know if there's an independent, like, GLP-1 receptors that are on bone doing something directly there. Yet to be uncovered, I think. We don't really know why bone loss occurs. It's thought maybe it's just the weight loss, but Like I said, maybe there's something that we don't understand yet. Kidney cancer is another one. It seems like there's an increased signal for kidney cancer. Don't know why that is. Needs to be studied. There's a black box warning on them for thyroid cancer increase. That's never really been shown in human studies. It all comes from animal data, but it's there nonetheless. Something to consider. And it's very early.

So I feel like we're gonna have a conversation in 5 years' time when there's more understood about these compounds?

Well, the thing that worries me is that, you know, okay, you have the person who's 300 pounds and like they have to get down. Like, that's really unhealthy, right? It's— that can really be a game changer for them. But now what we're seeing is Hollywood. We're seeing just, just your average moms. They're like, I want to lose 10 pounds, but I want it to be easy, right? They're 10 or 15 pounds, whatever. And they're going to these GLP-1s. And the question is, I don't know that we have data showing it's actually beneficial in that population because they're already pretty, pretty lean and they're just wanting to look a little bit better. We don't really know. We don't really know if it's beneficial. We know that losing weight is beneficial for sure. And that's what these drugs are doing. You're losing a lot of weight rapidly. The other thing is gallstones. You're getting the increased risk of gallstones, right? Some people's gallbladder has to be removed.

What about like anorexia and stuff like that? 'Cause I've got a couple of friends who are on the pen, and they have dropped weight at a speed that has blown my mind. And part of me is going, "Stop, stop, like stop here." You know, I'm thinking like, I'm thinking, "Gosh, does this just keep going down and down and down and down and down?" I don't, yeah.

I mean, I don't think it keeps going down and down and down and down generally. I think you kind of stay, you hit a certain point and stay.

If the dose remains the same.

If the dose remains the same. And I think that people that are already body kind of like at a certain healthy weight should taper down the dose too, right? Um, and that's also been shown to help at least with weight regain too. If you want to stop and get off it, you have a better chance of success if you taper down the dose and don't just full stop, you know, get off of it. Um, it seems like tapering down helps people at least slow the weight regain where it's not happening all of a sudden. Your body kind of adjusts. But I also want to mention, you know, there are other ways that you can lose weight, right? Intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is, so on the lowest dose of some of these drugs, like Ozempic, for example, if you're on the lowest dose, you can achieve a similar amount of weight loss from intermittent fasting as you do from that. And it's not, you know, if it's 5 to 10% body weight, not huge amount, but you know, for people that don't need to lose a huge amount, that's a good way to do it because you're going to get the metabolic switch, you're going to get the ketosis, you're not going to have to worry about the side effects, you don't have to worry about regaining the weight because guess what, you're going to adapt. Your body adapts, you get used to the fasting, becomes easier. So I think that, you know, it depends on the population that we're talking about here. Do I have concerns? Yes, I do, I have concerns. But do I also think some of these people that are obese and will never lose that weight, is— are they Are they getting a benefit from these drugs? Absolutely, I think they are. But it all comes down to the population who's using them. And right now it's become so popular in everyone. And there's so many people I don't think need to use it to lose their 10 pounds. It's ridiculous.

People take the path of least resistance, though, don't they? And it appears to be the path of least resistance for many. So we shall see, I guess. Rhonda, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you, I think, is a great one. It is, what is a purchase that you made that is less than $100 that improved your quality of life the most?

That was probably— okay, I have two. Um, I would say the Omega-3 Index test. That is measuring your omega-3 fatty acid levels. And you can get that at home, or you can order it online and get it at home, and you do a little you do like a little spot of blood, it's like a finger prick blood spot. And just knowing that you are not in that, you wanna be 8% range, 8% range is the 5-year increased life expectancy. It's the, you know, 66% lower dementia risk. I mean, it's really where you wanna be to be the healthiest. And you might be supplementing with an omega-3 supplement that's not really working and you won't know it unless you do, you take that test. And I think it's one of the, The easiest ones that I've done.

And how did that improve your quality of life? Or are you saying it helped you avoid a bad quality of life?

No, I think it's improving my quality of life 'cause it's slowing my aging. That's been shown with omega-3. It's absolutely slowing aging. I told you the omega-3 was the only supplement that was able to do that. Even in the context of people that were healthy and physically active. I mean, these Swiss people are healthy. I was like, if they did this study in the US, there's no way that 88% of them would be physically active. Chance, right? Yeah, so it's slowing the aging process, and that is exactly what I wanna do. It's gonna help with peak span, it's gonna help with, you know, health span, it's gonna help with lifespan as well. So, and it's affordable, less than $100. And the second one? The second one, I think the one that really did improve my quality was a continuous glucose monitor.

And I thought you were gonna say creatine. Okay, continuous glucose monitor. Oh, yes, yes, yes. No, no, no, you can't go back now.

It did, it did, because I realized how important sleep was for my metabolic health. I thought I was doing everything right for metabolic health. And it was knowing how not getting enough sleep was affecting my glucose. I never would've thought that, never would've known. And most people that get the continuous glucose monitors never think about that either. They think about the food they're eating, they don't think about sleep.

And when you get that continuous glucose monitor, what is it you're looking at to figure out their connection with sleep?

You can look at— first, you can look at your fasting blood glucose levels, and you can go online and for your age and gender and figure out what's a normal range.

So that's when you haven't eaten? Yes. Okay.

First thing in the morning when you have not eaten. That would be the easiest thing to look at.

Mm-hmm. And the second thing?

Yes, the second thing would be to look at after you eat a meal, 30 minutes to an hour later, making sure that you're clearing that glucose from your meal. And if you're not seeing that peak come down and clearing, there's something wrong. Ah, okay.

I might wear another one of those. It's been a while. And they're quite cheap. You can get it for like $20 on the internet. Dr. Rhonda, I think people are gonna want to continue to learn from you. So where should they go to learn more from you?

I have a podcast called Found My Fitness. It's on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, everywhere you listen to podcasts. That would be the best place. I have a website, foundmyfitness.com. I have a wonderful newsletter. Newsletter. Every week we put out something. We put out one on that PEAKS/BAN paper. We put out a newsletter on updating the exercise guidelines. I have a great team. We put out an email newsletter that's free every single week, and they're really good. They're really good in-depth emails. So you can find me there. I'm on social media, Rhonda Patrick, FoundMyFitness. That's all my— that's my, my handle, my website name, my podcast name.

I'll link it below for anyone as well that, um, would like to go check out that information. It'll all be in the description below. I highly recommend I mean, I don't really need to tell people how incredible you are. I think they've just observed that, so I shan't. I shall. You are incredible. Thank you. So thank you so much for doing this. I've learned so much, and I've done so many of these health conversations on this show, and it's almost at a point now where I'm wondering if there's much more that I've got to learn. But because I think you stay at the very cutting edge of the studies that are coming out, and you're so good at both articulating them in a simple way that someone like me can understand, even though I can't understand a lot of the literature as it comes out of these sort of scientific journals, Charles. I think that, you know, you're a person people do need to follow, um, because the world and the scientific understandings are always changing, and it's good to have someone who can distill that down for you in a way that is relevant, accessible, and scientifically rigorous. And that's exactly sort of the three terms that I think of when I think of you. So please do continue to do the work you're doing because it's teaching me so much, and by way of that, it's meaning that I can live a happier, healthier life, and I appreciate you for Ronda.

I really appreciate that. Thank you so much, Steven. I love coming and having discussions with you. They're fun.

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