What are the low hanging fruits that you can do right now to instantly reduce your risk of age-related disease, I'm Rhonda Patrick. And that's the topic of today's podcast originally recorded for the institute for functional medicine. Today's episode outlines is series of fundamental tactics. You can start applying immediately. These straightforward strategies can have a powerful impact on nearly every tissue in the body. Enjoy this podcast episode previously recorded from The Institute for functional medicines podcast.
Pathways to well-being if you'd like more great tips. You can join my free email newsletter. If you have a question consider joining my membership, we release great member only series episodes and I do q&a's every month. You can find those on my website. I'd found my fitness.com.
Welcome to the show. Dr. Patrick.
Well, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here today and discuss all the very important topics that you just basically mentioned.
Well, I think this is really exciting and there's a lot to unpack so we'll just get right into it. And I thought it would be great for us to start with kind of a general contextual overview of how lifestyle changes can impact healthy aging because I think it's so powerful that even bite-sized approachable lifestyle changes can potentially improve our health Span in our well-being and even our cognitive and physical performance. So let's just Dive Right In and in general we will you tell us some of your your
favorite go-to lifestyle based longevity tips
Well, I think there's
you know, it's important to consider low-hanging fruit. So things that people can there's not a lot of resistance and barriers for people to start applying in their in their daily lives. And I think when it comes to some of the easiest things that people can do it usually comes down to unfortunately taking a pill and so I know you might be going what is she talking about? Well, you know, I
The micronutrient inadequacies is is it's a widespread problem in the United States and other developed countries as well where you know, there's about 30 to 40 is Central vitamins minerals fatty acids amino acids that we have to get from our diet. And if we don't get them from our diet, we are going to be inadequate in them and these essential micronutrients micronutrients are doing very important things in our body from running our
To making sure our enzymes which are proteins inside of our cells that are basically doing all the work responsible for everything from pumping our blood to our immune function to neurotransmitter function. So basically everything they require these, you know micronutrients as cofactors and it's definitely I think safe to say that diet food first approach and getting getting all your micro nutrients from Whole Foods eating diverse Foods.
Is Paramount however many people it's it for whatever reason they will not do that. They're you know busy or they have a habit or there's you know other sorts of dysregulation perhaps in satiety mechanisms and you know, so getting getting some micronutrients like some of the important ones from a supplement and these are these are easy ones vitamin D vitamin D.
An easy one, you know, that's something that we usually make in our skin from the Sun and about 70 percent of the u.s. Population has inadequate vitamin D. And that's kind of defined as less than 30 nanograms per milliliter. If you're in the United States, if you're in Europe that would you'd have to multiply that by two point five. But seventy percent of the u.s. Population has levels below that and there have been many different meta analyses.
You know over the decades, you know dating back all the way to the 1960s looking at vitamin D levels and all-cause mortality and it's you know, pretty clear that having levels above 30 is associated with a lower all-cause mortality all-cause mortality other words people are less likely to die from non accidental causes of death, whether that's cardiovascular disease, although I would say cardiovascular disease is probably the weakest with respect to vitamin D cancer mortality is down respiratory diseases down. There's your two of the really big ones the big
a with respect to lowering all cause mortality but so taking a vitamin D supplement is one of the easiest things to do why is widespread deficiency, you know so common well because we're inside in our cubicles and our offices at our you know, technically with our technological advances computers everything we don't spend as much time outside, you know doing agriculture doing, you know, the sort of Outdoors kind of jobs that you know that were
R common hundred years ago. So so people are not making Vitamin D from their skin. And on top of that. There are very there are variety of factors that actually actually regulate whether or not we can make enough vitamin D in our skin and that, you know from everything from age. So a 70 year old person makes 20 like literally 25% of what they made as their 20 year old self. So it's very inefficient as you get older skin color. So melanin that pigment that basically acts as
Troll sunscreen also is a you know filter for UVB radiation, which is actually what needs to basically penetrate through the skin to start vitamin D3 synthesis in the skin. So because melanin is a you know is a natural sunscreen sunscreen also, does that people wear a lot of sunscreen nowadays? So there's many different reasons why people are not getting as much vitamin D in our modern day world and vitamin D is one of the
best and easiest supplements to take there have been studies that have basically try to figure out like how can you take a person who is deficient? So diff ition see would be 20 nanograms from Miller less and when you start to get less than 20 nanograms per milliliter you start to go you start to run the risk of you know, bone problems and severe other types of severe problems immune dysfunction, for example people that are deficient and supplement with about 4,000 I use per day.
Can bring their self up to a sufficient level closer, you know above 30 nanograms per mil, perhaps even closer to forty and four thousand I use per day is actually the tolerable upper intake set by The Institute of medicine for vitamin D3 and I just want to mention, you know, vitamin D is unique among the vitamins because it's actually it gets converted into a steroid hormone. So vitamin D3 goes
To the to the liver. It's converted to a another metabolite called 25 hydroxy vitamin D. That's the major circulating metabolites of vitamin D. That's usually measured if you get a blood test and then it goes to the kidneys where it's been converted into the steroid hormone. That's 125 hydroxy vitamin D and what I mean by a steroid hormone, most people think about estrogen testosterone. Those are steroid hormones, like imagine if 70% of a you know of men and United States were deficient in test.
Tyrone like they would be terrible. So, you know vitamin D is is basically very different because it basically can enter What's called the cell nucleus the nucleus of a cell and that is where all your DNA is and it can basically recognize this little sequence of DNA and it it's basically, you know binds to a receptor and you know, it binds to your DNA and turns genes on activates them and turns other genes off and deactivate them in this like coordinated fashion.
Fashion and these are genes that are important from everything from brain function. So serotonin is one. It's important for the synthesis of serotonin in the brain to immune function and its why vitamin D plays such a critical role in helping prevent respiratory diseases and so low hanging fruit their vitamin D easy one another one. That's pretty I think common in in the United States at least for example is magnesium and magnesium is
Essential essential mineral about 50 percent of the u.s. Population does not basically get adequate intake of magnesium and the RDA for adequate intake was set at around I would say on average. It's a little different for males and females but on average about 400 milligrams per day for an adult and if you are a physically active adult, so let's say you exercise frequently you are, you know, maybe
using the sauna you can excrete magnesium through sweat and so physically active adults actually require anywhere between 10 to 20 percent more than the RDA. So you can imagine if people are already not even getting the RDA the Physically Active people are even you know in worse shape in some respects and magnesium is an essential cofactor. It's a mineral that is important for the function of over.
Different enzymes in our body everything from enzymes that are important for repairing damage to our DNA. So DNA damage is something that's happening every day. It's happening right now as we're having this conversation. It's not something that you can look in the mirror and see but it is Insidious in respect with respect to basically it causes this low-level type of damage that accumulates over time and as we age it
can lead to dysfunctional cells it can lead to potentially what are called oncogenic mutations that can lead to cancer. So repair enzymes do not work properly without magnesium also DNA synthesis. So we're making new cells we making new blood cells are making new immune cells. We're making new skin cells every time we make a new cell. We have to replicate all the DNA inside of those cells and that requires enzymes called DNA polymerase has those are you basically need magnesium for those to work function.
Properly, you know. So again it's a very important process for our DNA and repairing the DNA and making sure it doesn't get mutations from the get-go with DNA replication and it's probably why there's so many there's a variety of studies that have found. These are observational studies, of course all the caveats that come with observational studies. Like there's you know, potentially other confounding factors, but with that in mind people with the highest magnesium levels have a 40% lower.
All cause mortality and a 50% lower cancer mortality compared to people with the lowest magnesium levels. There's another study that I think it was specific to pancreatic cancer. So for every 100 mg decrease in magnesium intake there was a 24% increase in pancreatic cancer incidents. So again, you know the sort of highlighting the important role magnesium plays particularly with our DNA and you know with respect to making sure the integrity
Of our DNA the genomic stability stability of our DNA is good and that's very important for preventing cancer, which is an age-related disease. It's something that you want to try to do everything. You can to prevent. Of course, there are things outside of our control. However, there are things that are in our control and I think you know an easy thing would be magnesium. So why is widespread deficiency common magnesium is found at the center of a chlorophyll molecule chlorophyll is the molecule that gives plants they're green.
Color so magnesium is high in dark leafy greens. Most people are not eating multiple servings of dark leafy greens daily. It's also pretty high in legumes almonds or another great source of magnesium oats or great source of magnesium. So the bottom line is people aren't eating enough of their leafy greens supplemental magnesium is another possibility but you know, the the dose of that is needs to be
Consider because magnesium at higher doses can cause adverse effects like GI problems. So what I like to do is try to get my magnesium from dietary sources like this morning. I had a smoothie with some cooked kale. I had some charred in it. I had Frozen a couple of frozen strawberries and blueberries and avocado. So I was getting a magnesium dose with my breakfast, right which was scrambled eggs. So, you know having trying to find any way you can to get multiple servings of
Greens or almonds, you know oats are another great great dietary source, but I also do a supplement of about 125 milligrams of magnesium and I do magnesium glycinate. Most of the Magnesium supplements are with respect. I would say the one that's not very bioavailable is magnesium dioxide, but you can you know, magnesium glycinate Tsar really good bioavailability has very good by a bioavailability. So does magnesium a later magnesium citrate so supple.
It with respect to supplementation with magnesium. It can be a way to kind of at least get you up to more of an RDA adequate level. Also when I saw Anna when I'm physically active I also drink electrolytes after that and that's another so you can have an electrolyte drink that replaces some of the law sodium and magnesium potassium for example, so that's also another option when you're also physically active so that would be another example low-hanging fruit, you know with respect to
Two important micronutrients. There's another one omega-3 we can get into but I probably will speak a lot about that. So maybe I'll I'll skip to the exercise as well. Maybe we can go into into depth about those but exercise is probably the biggest and most important thing irrespective it and anything else. I think being Physically Active very clear is the the most important thing for healthy Aging for staving off dementia for staving off cancer for staving off cardiovascular.
Use all the age-related diseases, you know, it does require a little bit more effort and I would love to dive more into specifics on that. But I do feel like I need to give you a chance to talk because I've already kind of gone on for a while. I would like to dive into the omega-3 and some exercise more as well though. If you have any questions that you wanted to kind of ask me about that.
Yeah, that's awesome. I just so appreciate you centering this on these low hanging fruits that are so accessible really approachable and
This is one of the ways that we can really support longevity is by optimizing our micro nutrient status because of all of the relationships with all-cause mortality that you talk about chronic infection cardiovascular disease cancer. So I think that that's a super important place to start as we're on the topic of personalized functional nutrition. Will you talk to us a little bit and this will probably lead into a discussion on Omega-3s, but first i'm
Hoping we can take some time and look at the food genetics relationship and talk about how that might play into healthy Aging for any individual.
Yeah, I think the you know, so
there there are a variety of we all have differences in our genes and you know, they're they're often times just as a change in one what's called nucleotide, you know a nucleotide change in the sequence of DNA and it's often referred to as a single nucleotide polymorphism. So a snip we call it for short but it's kind of what's you know differentiating between why some people have brown?
Eyes are blue,eyes are blue and hair red hair. But in addition to those phenotypes then characteristics, there's also a variety of snips in genes that are involved in metabolizing micronutrients like magnesium vitamin D Omega 3, but you know in addition to micronutrients and macronutrients as well. So people are very different in the way. They respond to Foods. I think we in general when I say we the scientific
Unity is really in its infancy and understanding the interaction between our genes and our environment and you know the so there are things that we can that there are certain. There are more I think certain Snips we know a little bit more about than others but it's hard, you know again, we're really at the infancy and understanding that interaction is a very complex interaction, but generally speaking because I mentioned vitamin D that is
one that is there's a variety of very common Snips that people do not convert the vitamin D3 into the 25 hydroxy vitamin D very well, or they do not convert the 25 hydroxy vitamin D into the steroid hormone very well, and I've actually seen blood work data from people that friends even that had to supplement with them much much higher do so I mentioned
My use being the tolerable upper intake that the RDA our side that the Institute of medicine said. Well, I've seen people have to take you know between 20 to 30,000 I use a day to even just get a normal like 30 or 40 nanograms per ml blood concentration of 25 hydroxy vitamin D because they're there they have a genetic polymorphism that makes them so inefficient at doing that in fact, there's been
What are called mendelian randomization studies and these are studies where people were scientists? Look at these Snips these genetic variations that are typically involved in nutrition. They're involved in the metabolism of some, you know, vitamin D or they're involved in in some kind of environmental factor and they and what scientists do is they say look we have all these people we know some of these people are
Low in vitamin D because of a gene not because they're not outside and physically active or not because they're not Health, you know conscientious it conscientious and supplementing but it's their genes and so it's kind of a way of randomizing people in a very, you know, unbiased way that's random and just based on their genes, right? So these mendelian randomization Studies have found that people with genetically low vitamin D levels.
You know, I have a higher all-cause mortality. They're like, you know 25, they've got like a 25% higher mortality from respiratory disease. So it's really kind of
I would say supporting and reinforcing the observational data showing that when you actually measure someone's low vitamin D levels irrespective of their genetics. You see the same thing. So it's again the genetics the interaction between our genes and our diet in its infancy. But really, I think the important thing here also is getting some blood work done like unless you go and measure your vitamin D levels. You're not going to know how to fish.
Or if you're deficient or insufficient, you are you're not going to know how well a supplement is raising your levels. Like is it even doing anything? So measuring vitamin D levels before and after very important and the same goes for omega-3, you know, there's omega-3 is it's probably I think one of the most important, you know nutrients that is it's really overlooked people. Just don't even really think about it. So Omega
The three there's three types of these fatty acids. There's the the type that you can find in plant sources. So that's Alpha linoleic acid a la and then there's the EPA which is Iko Iko see pentanoic acid and then DHA and those are the two Marine sources that you'll find in fish. But also you can find them in micro algae, which is more of a plant-based Source. There was a study that came out of Harvard. I think it was 2009 which identified
The Marine sources of Omega-3 as basically one of the top six preventable causes of death. In other words people are not eating enough seafood and fish and because of that it was it was calculated that about I think it was something like eighty four thousand deaths per year were attributed to not getting enough EPA and DHA from the diet and this was really comparable to people that were eating trans fats.
Buddy knows trans fats are bad. You walk into any grocery store. It's zero trans fats on every packaging thing. You can see it's very much in the public awareness that trans fats are bad will transfer its were responsible for the same number of deaths as not getting EPA and DHA. So it was responsible for 82 thousand deaths per year before I kind of go deeper into that. I mean it's kind of just but that makes you think about it. It's like, oh wow. So the the same number of deaths were attributable to
You eating trans fats as not eating enough EPA and DHA from Marine sources fish for example, and it kind of really makes you think about things because you don't walk into a supermarket and nothing says, oh this isn't Seafood. This isn't getting your EPA and DHA. This is processed as you know, but yet everything tells you about trans fats and it was just, you know, just as important important to get those, you know, omega-3 fatty acids from Marine sources. Now I say Marine sources because
A la which is the the common source of Omega-3 found in plants, like flax seeds walnuts. For example, that is actually considered the essential fatty acid because we can convert a la into EPA and DHA and so, you know, all the government agencies that comes up with these rdas and you know, all those standards that are set basically
It goes down to 0 well because we can make EPA and DHA from a l.a. That's going to be the one that we focus on the problem with that. Is that the conversion of a l.a. Into EPA and then subsequently DHA is it's a very inefficient and there's a widespread genetic differences with respect to that conversion. So people some people are great. They have a they have a alteration in the decide.
To raise Gene that does the conversion of a lan to EPA and they do it quite well, I would say the majority of people have another version that are not so great at it and to kind of add fuel to the fire having too much of vegetable oils omega-6 fatty acids. I don't want to demonize them so much because like you can get you need linoleic acid you need arachnid onic acid. It's part of your cell membrane. It's an important functions.
Getting them from whole food sources, like Walnut, like knots is great, you know, but the vegetable oils are very very concentrated than a lot of cooking. If you eat out if you buy processed foods are usually cooked and and processed with vegetable oils that omega-6 when it's too high can compete with that enzyme that's required to convert a la into EPA. And so you may be getting enough a l.a. By the way, that's the other problem people only be needing flaxseed and walnuts are not even getting enough aioli.
Yeah, so there's so many layers to this. There's so many layers, but that conversion is very inefficient when there's a lot of Omega 6 and on top of that, you know, I would say the one the one Saving Grace there is that estrogen does dramatically increase that conversion it makes it well. I mean, I mean, it's 20 like up to 20% better. And so this is probably because DHA is so important for brain development and when you when a woman becomes pregnant
Estrogen skyrockets, I mean it's like a hundred times higher than what it normally is. It's it's it's pretty pretty apparent that that nature has figured out a way to at least convert all that alaa is possible in to EPA and DHA anyway, so that's where the genetics comes in. You know, there's there's definitely a regulation there. But on top of that I think the best way, you know to get the EPA and DHA is from eating, you know, a dietary source and
And and measuring What's called the omega-3 index. So they mega mega three index is measuring omega-3 fatty acid levels the EPA and DHA another there's other fatty acids as well. But in red blood cell membranes and it's really important because most of the time when you go and get a omega-3 blood test the plasma phospholipids are measured which is better than Noth nothing, but you're really looking more at your dietary intake in the last week or two.
Versus red blood cells which are 120 days before they turn over. It's a long-term status of your omega-3 kind of like the difference between looking at fasting blood glucose and your hba1c right like fasting blood what you could have you could have had, you know, you've been intermittent fasting for that day and your fasting blood glucose looks great. But is that a snapshot of what your daily like blood glucose levels always look like might not be right. So long-term status omega-3 index and
There's been a variety of studies from Bill Harris Bill Harris. He's the co-inventor of the omega-3 fatty acid test. I had him on my podcast about a year ago. I've actually joined the fatty acid Research Institute, which is a non-profit Institute studying a variety of the roles of fatty acids in human health. I've joined as a associate researcher and so I'm doing some studies on omega-3 and brain health, but but Bill is published a
piety of studies looking at omega-3 index and all-cause mortality cardiovascular related mortality. So I would say when you get the omega-3 index measured most most people in the United States have in omega-3 index of less than 5% and what what bill has shown from multiple studies is that people that have an omega-3 index of 8% have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to those that have an omega-3 index of
Four percent so four percent versus eight percent. There's also evidence that it's you know, related to cardiovascular related mortality as well. But also a very interesting piece of data that bill published was looking at smokers and everybody knows smoking is terrible for your health. Like what's that? What's what can you do to accelerate the aging process like smoking right smoking cigarettes. Tobacco is just it's a terrible and this was so interesting.
Interesting the omega-3 in smokers that had a high omega-3 index so they were smoking but they were also eating a lot of fish supplementing with fish oil. They had an 8% omega-3 index. They had the same life expectancy as non-smokers with L Omega 3 and X. In other words smoking was like being deficient in omega-3. I was just like I was blown away by that like there's a beautiful graph in the paper. Forgot what Journal is published.
I was a couple years ago, but I mean, it's just kind of mind-blowing so omega-3 is there's so many different roles that it plays in the body to accumulates in cell membranes plays an important role in the way Transporters and receptors function because all those things are embedded in the cell membrane. And so, you know, for example glucose Transporters at the blood-brain barrier are altered their they're not functioning. Well when DHA is deficient and that can cause you know less glucose to get into the brain.
Then that obviously leads to many problems. It's also the metabolites of EPA and DHA resolve inflammation in a very efficient and timely manner. These are the Maris ins the protect ins, you know, they're there the spms the resolve ins. These are playing a very important role in inflammation and I think there has been now enough evidence that inflammation chronic low level inflammation is a driver of the
Process itself in other words not just driving, you know increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia cancer which it does but just the process of aging and and so and so it's affecting all those things and you know inflam aging is a term that's used which is kind of like it's the the activation of the immune system is accelerating the aging process and it's known as inflammation. There's neuroinflammation neuroinflammation.
Mission and there's been like these Seven Pillars of Aging where you look at all these like physiological processes that are happening like genomic instability is one, you know protein misfolding is another and there's also this in like neuroinflammation. The only thing that was really overlapping between brain aging and just aging itself was the inflammation that was the most important thing that was accelerating, you know, everything in the brain and also aging, you know,
In the body. So having omega-3 is I think one of the easiest things that someone can do to improve their inflammatory process to improve the structure and function of their Transporters and receptors. And I know you're going to ask me some research on most excited about I'll give you a preview of that. I'm also excited about a new role of Omega-3 in muscle mass and also sensitizing Amino.
Acids in skeletal muscle so there's been some work from Christmas Glory who I had on my podcast just yesterday. He's actually shown that it that omega-3 is playing a role in disuse atrophy and and through a mechanism where it's actually it's not inflammatory. It's not the, you know, anti-inflammatory effect of Omega-3. It's actually doing something anabolic. It's a kid somehow affecting muscle protein synthesis, and he thinks it's
Sensitizing muscle two amino acids through some unknown mechanism there trying to figure out so I think I'm pretty excited about that new research coming out muscle mass obviously is an important factor in aging as well. But I do think that you know, so when it comes to a mega three, what do you do? I mean, obviously, you know, if you can eat fatty fish that's high in omega-3 salmon mackerel sardines. These are all pretty good sources of Omega-3 that are also low in contaminants like
like Mercury pcbs, by the way, there have been now studies that have come out showing that even though fish have, you know, these contaminants that the omega-3 fatty acids protect against them and even during pregnancy. So there was this big push, you know decades ago about pregnant women should avoid eating fish because of the Mercury, I think that was a huge mistake huge mistake and I'm actually involved in a study looking at omega-3 index in
Blood and neurodevelopmental outcomes, but there's been a couple of studies, you know 11, I think big one was in 2015 American Journal pediatric published that that basically the omega-3 fatty acids women eating fish the omega-3 fatty acids protected against any neurotoxicity. And in fact, you know, this children had, you know, better neural outcomes than women that avoided fish. There's also been studies looking at omega-3 like fish.
Fish intake and intelligence in so and efficient take during pregnancy and intelligence, you know one year or seven years of life. I forgot all the you know, the follow-up times but it was shown that you know, a mega three was correlated with improved intelligence for the mothers were eating fish and they were actually using mercury as a biomarker to to basically validate their dietary recall because the women that were taking in more
More omega-3 had higher Mercury and guess what? The higher Mercury was correlated with higher intelligence in the children. Not because Mercury is improving intelligence, but because he omega-3 is and omega-3. You know, the Mercury doesn't doesn't even matter. If you have the omega-3 there. It's really protecting against any potential toxic effects of mercury. So I know that was a bit of a tangent but it's important because people are kind of scared of eating fish and you know, there are some fish that you should be scared of like
Swordfish, which is terribly high in mercury and not so high in omega-3 but things like salmon wild caught salmon is low in mercury high in omega-3 also supplement supplementing is is I think a really important option. So looking at the four percent omega-3 index comparing it to the 8% I mentioned the five-year increased life expectancy. I think that there's been some studies showing that 1.5 to 2 grams a day supplemental omega-3 can bring people from a 4% Omega 3 and x 2 in 8%
Dex now to keep in mind, you know, the FDA people are prescribed for grams a day of either Lovaza or the cepa which which is the purified EPA and and that's very safe. So, you know, this is this is a this is a omega-3 the way I like to think of it is it's got the new it's got the safety profile of a nutrient but
but it is pharmacologically active and you know in and so many people are not getting enough of it. I think something like eighty percent globally do not get enough EPA and DHA and like 95% of people in the US do not get enough. So very important in respect to the way we're aging, you know, I think it's important for cardiovascular health. I think it's important for brain health and throughout the lifespan from infancy to old age.
Important so that's sort of my should be L on omega-3. I think it's a very low hanging fruit an important thing that people can can take in.
Well, thank you for doing some nutritional myth-busting. I think you've made a compelling case that we should all be aware of our vitamin D status and our Omega index. I think our audience will not forgive me. If I don't dive into the supplement piece for just a minute. I saw debate raging on a functional medicine group yesterday about whether or not omega supplements are contaminated with things like pcbs to the same degree that the whole fish would be and if
We need to be concerned about environmental toxicity in supplements. I would just love to hear your perspective. Yeah, my
perspective again. Is it is
there are
it's nice to get a quality supplement. And I think there's a few things that are important one. I think triglyceride form. Yeah, Lavazza and a Lovaza and the cepa are in ethyl Ester form. Ethyl. Ester is not incorporated into cell membranes quite as readily
it's not as bioavailable. It absolutely has to be taken with food preferably with a higher fat meal but you know some people if their doctor prescribes it they're going to take it and that's compliance is an issue. So triglyceride form is more bioavailable. It does incorporate into cell membranes much better and I think that's important to I think oxidation status. So it so fish oil is a polyunsaturated fatty acid, so it is prone to oxidation. There are isolation.
Protocols that can be done that can minimize that that oxidation such as doing it under liquid nitrogen for example, and there are third-party testing sites that will test omega-3 oxidation status and they also test pcbs Mercury and everything. I think the best one that I use is called the international fish oil standards website it's ifos, and there's a ton of different brands on there. If you go to their products sheet you can click on
On the product and then they have batch numbers for all the different types of Omega-3 supplements that are out there and then you can then look at the raw data. You can look at their oxidation status. You can look at how high the Mercury and pcbs are all those things. I would say the most important thing is concentration of EPA and DHA triglyceride form and then, you know, perhaps the oxidation status. I don't I think because most of these fish oil supplements are purified there. They are run through a
Um, you are they're purifying away a lot of these, you know toxins and stuff that it's not as big of an issue the most important thing though is the omega-3 fatty acids protect against the the potential negative effects. Like I said in the developing fetus where there's so much more sensitive so much more sensitive to the Mercury the pcbs and everything. The omega-3 fatty acids are protecting and that's the study. I like to cite whenever I get that question about but what about but what about the toxins but what about the toxins? It's like
You know, here's the thing focus on what we need to be getting like what are we, you know, if you focus on the toxins the toxins like you're not going to get any omega-3. You're not going to be in getting enough of it, you know, and so and I think that is way more detrimental than any little amount of talk, you know Mercury or pcbs that are going to hitchhike in because the Omega threes are so good at lowering inflammation. And that's kind of one of the major things that you're worried about with those things. I mean,
It's to me it's kind of like a levels thing right where it's like. Yeah, but you're getting so much more of that other thing that's going to negate, you know, the potential negative effects of the pcbs and Mercury so ifos good good source lab doors and other one They Don't Really they kind of have a different they like rank things. And so most of the time they're sold out of the boat stopped top-ranked supplement, but you can go on ifos and find tons of other supplement Brands, you know, and regionally so like Canada if you live in Canada,
I'll find some better Canadian found in Canada or Europe or us. And so I think that go out there and find a supplement that makes you feel good. It's got a high level of EPA DHA. It's got you know, low oxidation, perhaps lower Mercury and you know and don'ts don't sweat the small
stuff.
Very practical advice to help us choose a supplement. I think with your insights and the resources that you've shared we have a good idea of what micronutrients we should focus on. So I'd like to shift our attention to exercise. I know you're interested in talking about that as well. Before we do that in your work you explore the benefits of certain types of stress that might include exercise or fasting or hot and cold therapies, and I thought it would be a good time to introduce this concept of hormesis, and I was hoping you could give us a
Little bit of a primer. What do you what are we talking about when we were referred to hormesis?
Yeah, it's a really, you know, it's a
term think it might have originated from some of the the plant phytochemicals. There was a book boy forgot the author of the book but it refers to exposure to a low level of something that a very very very high level could be, you know, I don't want to necessarily say toxic but toxic it could be bad for
Are you you're exposing yourself to an ass up? So for example exercise like everyone knows exercise is very beneficial. But if you were to just non-stop exercise 24 hours a day and keep doing that like you would collapse it would be bad. Right so so doing so exposing yourself to a little bit of stress. Basically, we have all these genes in our bodies that are activated in response to that stress, and these are antioxidant genes their genes involved in inflammation.
And so, you know anti-inflammatory genes are genes that are involved in clearing out damaged things. So this is a tapa G their genes in repairing DNA. So all these things get activated and the activation of these genes out shines the little bit of stress that you sort of applied to activate them. And so the net effect is beneficial and throughout, you know, throughout our human evolution. I guess we
have been exposed to these intermittent types of stress whether it is periods of food scarcity because we didn't have instacart couldn't just order our food and have it delivered to us. We had to go out and hunt it and you know find it gather buying berries and you know, vegetables and things and so food scarcity there were periods of times. We were fasting we were we were not getting food and that that activates a variety of stress response.
A lot of times either these are called stress response genes such as a tapa genes which are clearing out a lot of damage stuff within a cell inside of a cell and they're very robustly activated by fasting but they're also activated by other things like heat stress. So that's one form. Then there's the physical activity right that that also I mean again, we humans used to be a lot more physically active when that was our life, right and we had to go and hunt and gather and we worked in
The field agriculture farming. I mean just many much more stuff that we were doing by moving around that is another form of intermittent stress. Lots of stress response genes are activated when you when you you know engage in physical activity, you do activate inflammatory cytokines, il-6 being one of the big ones, but the response to il-6 is the anti inflammatory response. So il-10 gets activated and it's more powerful so it stays active for longer and so the net effect is anti-inflammatory.
I'm Tori from the little bit of inflammation that you've generated by exercising. The other example, is these plant phytochemicals. So these are compounds that are found in a variety of plants sulfur feign being one in cruciferous plans. There's you know, the Resveratrol is probably a very well-known one that's found in the skin of some fruits like grapes and blueberries. Pterostilbene another one found in the skin of blueberries. There's the the turmeric
Check that that the curcumin found in that and so these are all phytochemicals that also activate stress response genes. They also activate genes that are active from things like physical activity or heat stress like heat shock proteins. So a lot of overlap between it's the intermittent stress can activate a whole host of these things. Some of these stress response genes are more active by different types of it.
Like thermal stress more robustly activates heat shock proteins then eating some broccoli does but sulforaphane does activate heat shock proteins. So for fans down and broccoli broccoli Sprouts, so so you'll get a lot of overlap between them. But the bottom line is that our genes were meant to be pushed by intermittent types of stress and we've lost that we've lost that ability to push them. We're not I'm not the ability, but we stopped doing it.
And I think that it's had a detrimental effect on the way that were aging our predisposition to age-related diseases as well because you want to you want to clean up stuff you want to keep pushing the antioxidant the anti-inflammatory the you know, the preventing the protein aggregation the repairing the damaged DNA like that stuff is important because all that stuff is happening every day just from normal metabolism normal immune about activation normal going out in the sun and getting you know.
and icing radiation like and then you add on top of that modern day, you know living air pollution, you know chemicals were exposed to like it's compounding and we have to turn those those stress response genes on to not only age better but to like just even age normally so it's very important to engage in
You know these intermittent types of stress, whether that's you know, exercising cardiovascular exercise resistance training going into hot tubs in the sauna, you know, not eating round-the-clock, you know, having periods of a break-in also eating eating phytochemicals from Plants. I think these are these are all very
important.
Well, I think as you said we all know exercise is important, but when we look to healthy aging and Longevity are there types of exercise we should be focusing on I heard you mention resistance training, but there's so many options resistance training and high intensity interval training and aerobic training. Where should we focus our efforts?
It's a
good question. And I think that you know with respect to people like the people need to be physically active like whatever it is they're going to do and do it regularly routinely establish a routine is in my opinion the most important thing so not concerning yourself so much with oh I need to be doing this Zone to or I need to be doing high intensity interval training.
Like what you need to do is do what you know, you will do like that's the most important thing but let's say you want to step up a level and you're already like I'm committed. I you know absolutely light love the way I feel after I exercise but I want to be doing the best things in you know, and trying to do everything I can to maximize every type of benefit for my brain and for my muscle and for my heart that I can write so is my mom
My I'll say this there's there's been these interesting studies that are called the vigorous-intensity lifestyle what visit vigorous-intensity lifestyle physical activity? So Bill paw and there's these there's these large studies where people have worn like these accelerometers, you know, some sort of smart Fitbit or or fill-in-the-blank type of you know device that will measure their movement.
And it's been it's been shown from these studies of the vigorous intensity. This is basically like, you know, not just walking. Okay. This is like you're going you're going to more of a, you know, maximum like a maximal heart rate or close to it. So you're more like, you know, maybe eighty eighty percent, you know, estimated max heart rate and doing something for anywhere like one minute to three minutes three times a day.
Yeah, okay. So this is like the quote unquote exercise snacks. This is like, okay. I'm at my desk. I'm working at my computer. I'm going to get up and I'm going to do one minute of burpees or I'm going to get up and I'm going to go Sprint down the street in back or I'm going to do a hill Sprint something that is so short but intense and then you just get back into whatever you're doing. So it's not so disruptive. You don't have to have a gym membership. You don't have to go, you know and get in your car and drive somewhere. You don't have to like
Think about it and carve out time in your day. You just do it you just get up from your desk and you do it. So this is one minute to three minutes three times a day have shown that people that do this again. This is measured by actual data empirical data have anywhere between a 30 to 40 percent lower all-cause mortality and cancer related mortality. The vigorous intensity is is a little bit different than you know, some people like to go for long runs. They like to go for long bike rides. There. Are there more of
That you know moderate intensity type of exercise and that's great too if that's what you're doing. And that's what you love doing. There's tons of studies showing that being, you know, Physically Active particularly, if you're going on a longer run and your you know engaging in 150 minutes of that normal moderate type of aerobic exercise per week that you're doing really good, right? So it's not that you have to go and do the vigorous intensity. Although I do think there are
benefits on top of that and those largely have to do with the brain because when you are Vigor when you're going when you start to reach, you know above when you're getting to the 80% you know, maximum heart rate, aesthetic estimated maximum heart rate and you start to get a high you can't generate energy from the you know, the oxygen that you breathe in quick enough and so your mitochondria, which are the major
or source of energy generating organelles inside of your cells can't they require oxygen to make ATP which is the the energy I'm talking about. So so you can't get that oxygen quick enough for the mitochondria to do it. And so you're forced to make energy outside of the mitochondria and you make it by using using up glucose. And so the glucose then gets metabolized into lactate and lactate is not a waste metabolites like it.
Widely, believed for many years. Like it's just waste metabolites. Not only a waste metabolites. It could potentially be harmful because it was thought to be, you know, causing muscle soreness complete and other not not true nonsense not true. So so lactate actually is a signaling molecule. It has been shown to activate brain derived neurotrophic Factor at the blood-brain barrier. It activates it. It also gets into other tissues including the brain.
Through this MCT transporter and it's used for neurotransmitter synthesis norepinephrine required, you know uses lactate serotonin dopamine. It's used for energy instead of neurons and it's used is a very efficient source of energy. So lactate can be used to make, you know energy it converted, you know, inside the mitochondria and used as energy and this is this is in the brain. This is an other tissues as well like the gut liked it.
Really important for the gut. So I think that there's a there's a role of high intensity interval training or high are vigorous types of exercise. I say high intensity interval training because it's hard to keep that level of activity up for more than an interval. I mean, it's extremely your I mean you're pushing it all the way and then you like taper down right? So I do think the the vigorous type of exercise has a special role in I think brain health as well.
But also I think cancer prevention is the big one too. I mean aerobic exercise is very important for cancer prevention and specifically I think there's some interesting mechanisms where the intensity of exercise actually also seems to be important. So there's there's a big there's there's a circulating tumor cells. So these circulating tumor cells most the time are when someone has a primary, you know, too
So they basically have been diagnosed with cancer. And so at that point the goal is okay. Well, how do we you know get rid of the cancer and prevent metastasis? Right? We don't want the cancer to spread. Well, the circulating tumor cells escape the primary tumor site they get into circulation and then they go they go elsewhere and and then establish Camp there right? So this the metastasis process well exercise itself. There's something called Shear Force the sheer force of blood flow going.
Going through the circulatory system itself kills the circulating tumor cells and it does it because these tumor cells have these mechano receptors on their cell surface and they're so sensitive to like movement seems like a hurricane. It's like a her tank King just coming through and wiping it out. And so so that there's been studies showing that you know, the people that have been diagnosed with either colon cancer breast cancer when they engage in intense
And physical activity aerobic exercise. They are less likely to have like they're circulating tumor cells drop-down. They're less likely to have cancer recurrence. I mean dramatically in some cases, you're like you're talking like 40% and they're less likely to die from their cancer so cancer prevention but also important role for you know cancer recurrence and cancer mortality for people that have already been diagnosed with cancer. I think that the big
Thing here, you know, there's been a lot of oh, what type of extra should I do? I think you should probably just you know, do what you can do what you're going to do. Probably good to do both like I do a lot of tomatoes and so I go between my all out and also like, you know, I mean, I mean like a Zone 3 sometimes a Zone 2 when I'm sort of tapering it down and like before I'm about to go back all out again and I do that 10 or 15 minutes a day five days a week and then I also
Like to do resistance training and that's another you know, muscle mass and maintaining muscle mass so important and you know building up that muscle Reserve earlier in life because you know, you got to build it up. You got to build it up and once you start to reach a certain age, it becomes very hard to gain muscle mass. Although you can still gain strength. And so, you know, you have a harder time gaining that mass but you're losing it and so it's kind of like the more you start with the loss.
Asses aren't quite as big right. So I think resistance training is very important for that as well. All those things are important and I think that what you have to find something that you can incorporate into your daily routine and that you will you will do and you know, you want your heart rate to get up you want to sweat you want to be tired like you want like you want to feel tired afterwards and I think exercise whatever whatever way you can do it where you are at least getting your heart rate up.
And you are flush in the face and you are like, you know, when you're working out you don't you can't talk right to some degree. I think that's good and there's been studies that have looked at a know. I think exercise can forgive a lot of sins and I'll say this, you know, I during when I was a young, you know a new mother my son was a newborn and all the way up and through the first year. I mean there was there was just so much disruption to my sleep that
there's nothing you can do about it. I mean like we all know how important sleep is for health for brain function for blood pressure everything right, but when you're a young I can only speak as my mother like I can't speak for being a father. I think their fathers sleep is also disrupted somewhat to mothers though have to their breastfeeding. There's no there's no you have to feed your baby. There's nothing you can do and in a way if you think about all the detrimental effects, it can be very discouraging. You're like I am
Doing terrible things to myself and there's nothing I can do about it. Well, I I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor at the time and my blood glucose My fasting blood glucose levels were just through the roof and it was crazy. You know, I was eating the same diet and it wasn't until I got back into my I was doing a lot of spin classes back then and it wasn't until I got like on on the Peloton on the exercise bike doing high intensity interval training that all of a sudden it normalized my
Blood glucose levels even with the interrupted sleep and then I went into the literature and found, you know studies showing high intensity interval training can basically ameliorate the negative effects of sleep deprivation on blood blood glucose regulation and you know, so clearly scientific evidence of it. I had anecdotal evidence as well. But there's also was a pretty recent study looking at sleep and all-cause mortality. There's lots of those out there you'll find of course people with you know,
Disrupted sleep shorter, you know much much shorter sleep durations have a higher all-cause mortality. However, this this recent study also looked at physical activity and it was interesting because sleep, you know quality and quantity again was Associated so lower quantity was associate with higher all-cause mortality, but only in people that were not physically active in other words physical activity forgave the Sleep disruption the poor sleep.
I think that if there's a message here it is that the most important thing that you can do in your life is to sweat and get Physically Active. Like there's nothing that is going to be better for you know, no aging drug. Nothing. Nothing's going to be better than what exercise can do at the moment. And I think that's that is is the is the main message that like you just need to be like if you care about aging everything from skin is skin aging like there was a study showing that
People that are Physically Active are 20 to 50 percent less likely to have collagen breakdown and I mean it was just amazing everything brain health cardiovascular health, you know, it's just it's the most powerful I would say longevity drug. You're going to get in my opinion
Rhonda. I sell admire your passion for this topic and this conversation today has made me feel so excited to see you present at our annual International Conference.
I wanted to thank you so much for sharing these real practical takeaways combined with the research briefs. We can't wait to see more and we really look forward to seeing you in Orlando in June.
I look forward to it as well. It's going to be a fun time a big thank you to The Institute for functional medicine for inviting me to be a keynote speaker at their 2023 annual conference for any of you interested in functional medicine. They have a great annual conference every year. You can learn more about what the institute for functional medicine.
Is on their website at ifm dot-org and as always make sure you are on my free email newsletter to get more valuable insights and tips. If you have a question, you'd like me to answer consider joining my membership. Not only do we release exclusive episodes for members, but I also hosts a monthly Q&A where many of our community members get their questions address directly. It's a fantastic Community. We've built together find out more on my website at found my fitness.
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