Hey everyone, welcome to our Crowdcast number 39Q and A. 39. Unbelievable. Okay, so for those of you that are new the way this works, I sort of just go through a lot of the questions that were submitted. I choose top voted questions, questions I haven't covered before. And I'm increasingly trying to mix in a lot of sessions where I do many rapid fire questions that way more people can get their questions answered. Some of the questions that are top voted will be, you know, deep dives and sometimes I'll spend a few minutes talking about them. So I would say this Q and A, we're gonna, we're gonna do quite a few rapid fire questions. So it's gonna be, we'll have a couple at the beginning, a couple of, a little bit more in depth answers. And then as I go on throughout this Q and A is going to be a lot of rapid fire questions which I can answer either in a couple of sentences or even, maybe even a word or a couple of words. So they're pretty quick answers generally speaking. And sometimes I'll decide something's going to be a rapid fire question if I've already covered it in a previous crowdcast. So instead of going into great detail, I might just sum it up in a sentence or two as well. Throughout the Q and A, I look and check in the chat and I try to answer questions, mostly questions that are relevant to what I'm talking about. Although I know you guys like to just fire away any questions you can. And so sometimes if I, if I know an answer off the, off the top of my head and I see you guys posting it in the chat, I'll go ahead and address that as well. And then of course you guys can listen to this Q and A episode again. We release it within this coming week, so about, you know, no longer than a week after the live Q and A. So you guys can listen to it on your private podcast feed where we post our aliquots. You can listen to it on your dashboard. If you haven't gotten your private, private podcast feed yet, go to your [email protected] dashboard and make sure you do that again. You can also just listen to it there or you can watch the replay, we send out the replay YouTube video and we have timestamps as well with like the chapters. So whatever the topic I'm addressing in that Q and A. So that's also helpful. So I'll go ahead and get started with one of the top voted questions and it's a question I think that a lot of people are interested in my thoughts, you know, my, my opinions. By the way, a lot of times these Q and A's, I am, I am doing literature reviews, but I'm also using my prior knowledge from literature reviews that I've done previously and giving my own opinions as well. So please do not take this as medical advice. You know, this is, this is definitely just Rhonda's opinion and sort of Rhonda like giving you guys what the current scientific state is on a certain topic. So you know, anything that you're going to do or any lifestyle change you're going to make, make sure you run it by your physician. All right, so top voted question was in your opinion, what are the top five ways, diets, supplements that you can do to reduce inflammation? And I think that you can address this question by thinking about things that you can cut out of your diet or your lifestyle or things that you can add. And so I'm going to address both of those in most cases. Probably counter to what a lot of people talk about. People always talk about cutting out, cutting out, cutting out. And I think there's a big problem with not getting the right things. And I think by, there's an association there with when you actually start to get the right things, you naturally cut things out, right. So because there's not room to do everything right. But one of the top cutting out things would be the most intuitive and obvious and you probably all know the answer and that is cutting out refined sugar. But I'll just to highlight that point that people that are healthy, so not overweight, not no sedentary, these are just about 29 healthy, normal, healthy young men were given 20 ounces of a sugar sweetened beverage to drink. So like a Coke, right. For three weeks. And the men experienced 60 to 100% increase in a biomarker of inflammation called C reactive protein. Many of you have heard of it, crp. C reactive protein is probably one of the most standard biomarkers of inflammation that's used 60% to 100% increase after three weeks. That is enormous. You know, higher than normal C reactive protein levels are associated with, you know, long term disease risk, cardiovascular disease risk, cancer disease risk, Alzheimer's disease risk. It's also known to like play a role in depression. So we're talking about affecting mood, behavior. So there's really, you know, every reason to not take in added sugar when you know, like, you know, you gotta live once in a while, right. But like that's probably the main thing and it's one of the main things that I try to have family members do, you know, is cut out the refined sugar. It also, in that study, the healthy young men had a pretty big jump in their small dense LDL particle number, which as we've talked about many times in this Q and A, the small dense LDL particles are really the most atherogenic. So they're the ones that are playing the biggest role in causing atherosclerosis and increasing cardiovascular disease risk in general. So they didn't have to eat any saturated fat to do it either. All they had to do was drink a bunch of soda. Right. I mean, so it's something that really makes you think about how terrible drinking sugar sweetened beverages are. And it's pretty ubiquitous in, I would say in the United States at least. The next obvious, to me, a pretty obvious lifestyle factor would be adding a relatively robust dose of omega 3 fatty acids. You know, so the questions about inflammation, you know, chronic low grade inflammation, is it promotes many of the hallmarks of aging. And you know, there's a, there's a term called inflammaging. And inflammaging is, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's not just your immune system being activated because of a pathogen, right? It's just chronic activation of the immune system. Like I said, sugar sweetened beverages is doing it. And there's other, other things that we're exposed to on a daily basis from our environment that are also leading to chronic inflammation. And so the resolution of that inflammation is really where Omega 3 shines. And so, for example, there's something called specialized Pro Resolving Mediators, SPM for short. And there's four different families of SPMs that have been identified. So there's the resolvins, the lipoxins, the protectins, and the myricins. And these SPMs basically are resolving inflammation through a variety of different mechanisms. It's just unbelievable the effect they can have on lowering the overall inflammatory burden. Even when you want your immune system to be active, when you're exposed to a pathogen, you don't want your immune system to be hyperactive. And, um, you know, that, that, that's kind of a problem is that when your body is posed with a threat, your immune system responds, but oftentimes the innate immune system. So this is the part of the immune system that's not making antibodies, it's just firing away a lot of different, what are called cytokines. And these cytokines are signaling to other immune cells. To come and you know, engulf and basically get rid of pathogens, whether that's a virus or a bacteria. And so, you know, there's a lot of collateral damage with that. And so this, the specialized, you know, the specialized pro resolving mediators, the SPMs are just so important for resolving that inflammation. And so there was actually a clinical trial that with healthy people where omega 3 fatty acid supplementation for basically 24 hours. After 24 hours of supplementation there was a huge boost in these SPMs in people's blood. And 2, 4, 6, 24 hours later, like, I mean it was like, it was pretty, pretty robust. And so what you're, what you're seeing here is that biomarkers of resolving inflammation are really, they're occurring even just two hours after, after taking Omega 3 and they're lasting for up to 24 hours. So there's sort of a long tail effect. There's a lot of clinical studies that have shown omega 3 supplementation can lower biomarkers of inflammation but also can lower biomarkers of disease risk. Right? Cardiovascular disease risk being a big one. I mean it's prescribed to people with cardiovascular risk factors like high triglycerides, for example. So I think that's another major point of low hanging fruit. Things that can be easily done to mitigate inflammation. And it's, it's, it's, you know, the, there, there's been studies showing that low omega 3 intake is responsible for, you know, almost as many deaths a year as eating trans fats. Actually it was more, a little bit more than that, you know, so basically just not Getting enough Omega 3 is causing a lot of problems. And that's where I was talking about there's the taking away and then there's the adding to your, to your diet and it's, you know, the taking away. Obviously refined sugar is a big one and, but the not getting the important stuff is also a big one. So I would say to anywhere 2 to 4 grams of omega 3 seems to be a real good sweet spot. Probably I tend to be more on the high end and sometimes I go from 4 to 6 grams. But I'm obviously not telling you to do that. I'm just telling you that's what I do. I think that we're going to start to have an exponential increase in data coming from Omega 3 and people are going to start, it's going to start to really show that literally taking a Pretty quality Omega 3 supplement is a low hanging fruit for basically improving the way we age by keeping inflammation in Track and inflammation is a major, plays a major role in accelerating aging. So I see people in the chat like Colleen asking about what about Omega 6 overload? And, and this is a question that is often asked is you know, what about the omega 3 to omega 6 ratio? And you know you see a lot of people especially in like the anti plant communities focusing on that because it, it sort of is a subtle way of basically proving their hypothesis that you know, plants are bad because you can get Omega 6 from plants. And it's just, there's just no evidence at all that, that, that that's the, the problem is not getting the Omega 3. And when you take the Omega 3, the Omega 6 really doesn't matter. You actually need quite a bit of Omega 6. Omega 6 plays a huge role in your, all your cell membranes and the fluidity of them not getting any Omega 6 is actually bad. So I don't like to focus on that as much. I think like what can you do? You can avoid vegetable oils and why do I say that? Because like heating the Omega 6 is really where it becomes an issue. Getting Omega 6 from nuts or whole foods is like there's just no evidence that that's, that's an issue. I mean obviously there's people that have allergies and stuff but like there's just no evidence. So I don't, I just don't think that's a real major point of concern. So the next obvious, I would say out of my top I'd like five or six lists I have here would be exercise. Big, big, big one. And this has a lot to do with the hormetic effect and hormesis, you know, and this will kind of bleed into the next factor that I think also is really important for lowering inflammation. But you know, exercise causes the release of pro inflammatory cytokines like IL6. And what your body does to respond to that is it has a massive release of an anti inflammatory cytokine called IL10. Now IL6 is, you know, I just talked about like inflammation and there's chronic inflammation and you can have chronically elevated levels of IL6 and you're not going to have an anti inflammatory response to that because it's this sort of low grade chronic inflammation. It's not enough. It's not this huge burst of inflammation that you get from something like exercise where your body is responding to that with an anti inflammatory response. It's just little low grade inflammation. And so IL6, it's sometimes referred to as a Janus cytokine because it can be good, it can be bad, right? It can be good. If you're talking about IL6 being elevated in response to exercise or in response to sauna because sauna does the same thing. But we also know that that IL6 that's elevated in response to exercise and sauna both have been shown to come with a counter response of IL10 which is anti inflammatory and the counter response is even greater. So you're basically having a net anti inflammatory effect. Right? So exercise is one of the big ways that people can modulate their inflammatory burden and then kind of to just transition to the next factor. That would also be heat stress from the sauna or a hot bath or a steam shower or you know, doing things like bikram yoga, yoga routinely again, the aisle 6 and aisle 10, same effect with the, with the sauna. It, you know, and we've talked about sauna mimicking, you know, moderate cardiovascular exercise in many ways. And so that's, that's one of the ways it does it. But there's also evidence showing that C reactive protein, as we talked about, you know, elevated C reactive protein is associated with the development of atherosclerosis, arterial, you know, like arterial compliance problems. Arterial compliance means the ability of your arteries to expand and contract with changing pressure. And you want your arteries to be able to do that. If your arteries can't do that, you know, that can lead to a stroke, it can lead to all sorts of problems. And so C reactive proteins associated, you know, high elevated C reactive protein is associated with loss of your arteries being able to do that. And there's, there's studies showing that the sauna reduces blood levels of C reactive protein. There's also associative studies. So like over, you know that the one of the big Finland studies where there was more than 2,000 people sauna bathing, basically lowered C re was associated with lower C reactive protein in a dose dependent manner. So the more frequent the sauna use, the lower the C reactive protein. IL10 also very potent and anti inflammatory. There's a study, a small study involving just 22 healthy male athletes and non athletes and they received two 15 minute sauna sessions at about, it was hot, it was like 208 degrees Fahrenheit. And this was separated by, so the two 15 minute sessions at 208 degrees were separated by a 5 minute cooling period. And after that their IL10 levels like really dramatically increased. There's also heat shock proteins increasing as well. But you get the point. Sauna also is a way to lower the Inflammatory burden. And I think that there's, it's, it's so beneficial for cardiovascular health, for, for brain health as we're going to talk about later. I also think for bone health, for skin and joint health as well through collagen synthesis with, you know, with the increases in growth hormone. So we have cutting out refined sugar, we have adding Omega 3, exercise, sauna, and then another one I think is important is sulforaphane. Sulforaphane is something that is found in broccoli sprouts. For people that are on more of a budget, it's probably the cheapest and most economical way to get sulforaphane is to grow your own sprouts. You can go for the store bought ones in a pinch. But the risk is twofold. One, they may be on the shelf too long and there may be bacterial contamination at that point. And two is that they're on the shelf too long and the sulforaphane level is just not as concentrated as it would be if you were to eat the sprouts right after growing them when the sulforaphane is much high, much higher. So sulforaphane has been shown, so there's been animal studies showing that it can basically inhibit the activation of a powerful inflammatory pathway called NF kappa B. But also it affects other. There's other studies showing in humans that healthy people that took about 14 grams of cruciferous vegetables per kilogram body weight per day, they decrease their circulating levels of IL6 by 20%. So again, it's that low grade, it's the bad IL6. So it's the IL6 that's that chronic associated with that chronic low grade inflammation. 20%. That's a pretty significant drop. It's actually pretty impressive. But it's also quite a bit of cruciferous vegetables these people were eating. There was another study that showed that a broccoli sprout powder extract containing about, I would say close to anywhere between 30 to 40 mgs of sulforaphane. That's an amount that if you were actually eating fresh broccoli sprouts, you could eat about 100 grams of the sprouts and get about 40 mgs of sulforaphane. So that study showed that TNF alpha, which is a very powerful cytokine involved in aging and cardiovascular disease, all sorts of problems, Alzheimer's disease, it lowered that inflammatory marker by 11%. It lowered C reactive protein by 16%. And so that's also pretty robust. And then there's associative studies in humans. Showing that basically the top 20% of people that basically the top 20% of consumers of cruciferous vegetables, again, cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, you know, collard greens. These are, these are vegetables that contain sulforaphane. So the top 20% of consumers of those types of vegetables had on average lower, a 25% lower aisle 6 and 13% lower TNF alpha compared to the bottom 20% consumers of cruciferous vegetables. So I do think that consuming the cruciferous vegetables and you know, through broccoli sprouts would be the best way. Moringa powder could be another way to do it. And then there's also supplements and there's a question, there's a rapid fire question later about what I think about different types of sulforaphane supplements that I'll get to. But so that's, so that's the other one. Time restricted eating is another one. So time restricted eating. There was a study showing that after 12 months of time restricted eating, body mass and fat mass were lower compared to people that had a normal diet. But inflammatory biomarkers, so IL6, IL1 beta, TNF alpha, which I just mentioned, were significantly lower and improved after doing time restricted eating for 12 months, like a full year. There's other like cholesterol improved, LDL was lowered, HDL went up, fasting glucose was approved. So there's a lot of different biomarkers that were improved. Time restricted eating, really there's a lot of ways to do it, but I think the main and easiest way to think about it is basically you want to stop eating like minimum three hours before you go to bed. And that usually ends up being like eating all your food probably within like a 10 hour window. Some people do 8 hours as well. But like basically you have, you want to have a period of rest, a period of your body has to not be digesting in order to go into repair mode. And if you, if you're not going to have that, you know, repair mode, then you're basically, I mean if you're not gonna have that not digesting mode, you're basically not gonna go into repair. And that's kind of a problem because you need to, you need to be repairing, you know, all sorts of damage that's accumulating throughout the day. KRD is asking in the chat about sauna and high temperature causing immune responses and like histamine release. I don't know about histamine release specifically, but like I said, it does, it does, it is causing an immune response and that's how it's having a powerful anti inflammatory response because IL6 is being activated much like what exercise is doing. So you know, maybe there's been studies looking at like exercise is much more well studied than sauna. So perhaps someone's looked at exercise and histamine release and I'd say because there's so much overlap between sauna and exercise it's possible if you find that exercise does it could but I'm not aware of any literature looking at actual histamine release. But yes, sauna does activate the immune system. That's part of the hormetic response and how it has beneficial effects and a powerful anti inflammatory response. Dave is asking in the chat about addressing a question about APOE4 and beneficial things for people with APOE4 to cut out or to add. I know I've gone over this in a previous crowdcast before, it's been a while. But if you want to go ahead and submit that question we can address it next time but you'll have to submit it for the next, the next Q and A. Okay. And then I would say the last factor again I have a little bit more than five. Let's see what did I have cut out? Refined sugar, high omega 3 exercise, sauna, sulforaphane. So I have seven TRE and, and the other one that could also does also affect inflammation. I would say this would be my lower like, like do the others before this but cold exposure also does reduce inflammation and the reason I say the others is because, because of all the other health benefits associated with doing time restricted eating and sauna and sulforaphane, omega 3 it's just, it's not just inflammation right? Like there's, there's so many different important and beneficial things going on with these, with, with these various lifestyle factors and supplements but cold exposure is another one a lot easier to do now when it's really hot. In fact I probably will be getting in my cold plunge today. It's been super, super hot in Southern California. Norepinephrine, which is one of the major, most repeatable, most robust responses to cold exposure actually reduces inflammation. I don't know that a lot of people know that but you know, depending on the temperature of the water and the duration that you're in it like you can have up to a five fold increase in circulating norepinephrine levels. So they can really go up and really just 20 seconds at like 50 degree Fahrenheit can boost norepinephrine twofold. So you don't have to stay in for 20 minutes. Right? I mean, you know, obviously you can start to build up some adaptation. So the more. And I've noticed this with myself, so, for example, when I'm routinely doing my cold plunge, I absolutely, it's not as painful. I can stay in there longer, you know, but when I. The minute I stopped doing it for even like a couple of weeks, I have to start from the beginning, like, adapting again. So part of the adaptation has to do with, you know, you're increasing the number of mitochondria in your adipose tissue. This is called browning your fat. And so, you know, the more mitochondria you have in your adipose tissue, the more, the easier it is to generate energy and heat as a byproduct. So you kind of feel warmer and so it's easier for you to kind of tolerate the cold. So norepinephrine does inhibit TNF alpha. So that's one of the ways it lowers inflammation, but it also decreases other sort of nasty chemicals that our immune cells are secreting, like macrophage inflammatory protein 1 alpha. And so, you know, like when you're. And by the way, that macrophage inflammatory protein I just mentioned plays a major role in arthritis and people that have arthritic pain. That's a target. And so it's probably why there's been quite a few studies looking at cold exposure from, you know, the cold water immersion and also from cryotherapy and how it seems to help people with arthritis because it's likely affecting the macrophage inflammatory protein 1. I haven't seen anyone directly measure that. I'm sort of connecting the dots. Norepinephrine is known to be increased by both doing cryotherapy and doing cold water immersion. And norepinephrine is known to lower macrophage protein or inflammatory protein 1 alpha. But no one's directly tested in people with arthritis doing cold exposure and then measure their actual levels, which that would be a good study to do, but it just hasn't been done. So those are my top seven. I know you asked for five, but I think that those are the top ones that I would. That I think are the biggest bang for your buck and also have other health benefits as well. It's not just inflammation. So. So that's kind of my. That's kind of my list. I see that someone was asking about brown fat. Why? So Richard says, does the browning of fat reverse when you. When you stopped it for a while? Good question. I. It seems like it must you know, it must to some degree. I'd have to look in this literature and see if anyone's actually directly tested that. But I can just tell you from experience, and I'm not the, like, talk to anyone that does cold plunge and then take some time off and then gets back in. Like, they're gonna tell you, like, it's hard to get, like you. You get used to it. You adopt and it's like, okay, I can do this, I can stay longer. And then you stop for like a couple of weeks and then it's like, what? So, yeah, it seems as though something must be happening. You know, like adip. Adipocytes do turn over. And so maybe that has something to do with it. It's like, you know, at a certain rate, you're just not. You're not keeping up with the turnover rate. That's kind of a speculation, I would say, off the top of my head. The next question was submitted by Matthew, and Matthew asked if I can summarize the foods and supplements that have been proven to be beneficial for the gut. And I. Or the gut microbiome. But I sort of extended that to just the gut itself because the gut is more than just the microbiome. I mean, there's different cell types in the gut and the health of those cell types are also very important. So Matthew had listed off some foods and supplements, but I'm going to go ahead and go through. So kefir, that's fermented yogurt. There's been human studies showing that kefir is beneficial for the gut microbiome and can increase butyrate producing bacteria. Can increase or. Sorry, can. It's also been shown to lower biomarkers of inflammation as well. Kombucha, another one, has been shown to benefit the gut microbiome. Sauerkraut is another one. Sauerkraut, kimchi. So the fermented foods, that's the theme here. Kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, these are all fermented foods. So fermented foods have probiotics in them. But some of these fermented foods, like the sauerkraut and kimchi also have pre prebiotics in them. Right. So they have fermentable types of fiber. So they're kind of like a double dose. Right? You're getting the probiotics and you're getting some of the fermentable fibers as well. That's allowing your own microbiome to then generate beneficial compounds for the gut. There's the foods that are also high in the prebiotics. And I would say the majority. One of the major compounds that's really beneficial for the gut that's produced by the gut microbiome by several different bacterial types of species in the gut is butyrate. And the reason for that is because butyrate is a, it's a short chain fatty acid. And I'm going to get into organic acids in a minute. And it's very similar to butyrate, actually, but the butyrate is a short chain fatty acid and it's a source of energy. It's the major, major source of energy by many different colon cells. And so it's so good to have bacteria in your gut. Making butyrate for your gut like that is going to help your gut out tremendously. Foods that have prebiotics that can form and have been shown to form butyrate or increase butyrate producing bacteria in the gut include beta glucans. So beta glucans are found in oats and they're found in mushrooms, pectins. So pectins are. So what I'm talking, beta glucans. This is a, this is called a, this is a prebiotics, a type of fermentable fiber found in oats, found in mushrooms, pectins, another type of fermentable fiber found in fruits like berries. It's found in blueberries, raspberries, strawberries. It's also found in citrus fruit and specifically really, really highly concentrated in like the peel, which no one really eats, but just FYI. So there's gums. Gums are another type of fermentable fiber. They're found in a lot of seeds. So different types of seeds, pumpkin seeds, for example, gums are found in that. Inulin is another type of prebiotic that is found in onions, garlic, artichokes, they're all really high in inulin. And then there's resistant starch, another type of prebiotic or fermentable fiber, and that is found in a variety of legumes. So you'll, you'll find resistant starch in some beans, but green bananas are a great source of it or cooked and then cooled. Potatoes are probably a lot of people's favorite source because a lot of people like potatoes. So basically you just cook and then the, the potatoes have to be cooled. So all of those food types increase butyrate producing bacteria in the gut, which means more butyrate for your gut cells, which means drastically improved gut health. And all those different types of probiotics I mentioned are affecting different species of bacteria. And it's really good to have that diversity. And so it's one argument for food diversity, right, is that a lot of people aren't thinking about like the prebiotics like I did, you know, like, I sort of know this. So I'll think about, oh, yeah, I want to get my, I want to get some beta glucan. So I'm going to eat some oatmeal today or mushroom, I'm going to do some sauteed mushrooms. Right. But just having a more diverse type of diet, you're automatically just going to be getting all those different types of prebiotics and you're going to be benefiting your gut microbiome and your gut for that reason. So that's, that's another. Those are, those are all foods that are beneficial for the gut. Now, going back to the organic acids, so I mentioned butyrate. Butyrate is a short chain fatty acid. It's, it's, it gets into your gut cells and it's definitely the preferred source of energy for your gut. But organic acids are also short chain fatty acids and they act like butyrate. They are a source of energy for the gut. So organic acids that you may be familiar with that you can also find in foods would be, for example, malic acid, malic acid. And then there's. So the acid form of it. And then, you know, there's a, there, there's a homeostatic reaction that's happening inside your body where you have, you know, acids is basically just donating a proton to the substrate. And so malate, which you may have seen in like supplements, you may, a lot of times you'll find malate is sort of as a chelator. So you'll find, let's see, what magnesium, for example, you'll find magnesium supplements are, you know, often bound with because mal. Magnesium has a positive charge. So the malate kind of buffers. It's like going, you know, it's buffering the positive magnesium. And so you'll find magnesium malate. Well, malate also kind of when you eat it, it gets interconverted into malic acid. Okay, so malic acid is very, I would say the fruits that it's highest in would be green apples. So malic acid is kind of like that tart flavor that you'll get with fruits. So if you have a tart blueberry, like blueberries have malic acid in them, particularly when they're a little more on the tart side. Any tart apple. So Anyone that has their own apple tree at home, like, you'll probably notice that a lot of apples are a lot more tart than you buy at the grocery store. But green apples, of course, are also tart, tart. So green apples are high in malic acid. And you'll find again, different berries will be high in it as well. Malic acid is good for the gut for that same reason. It gets into mitochondria inside your gut cells and is a very, you know, energetically favorable source of energy. Another one would be lactic acid. So lactate, lactic acid. Right. So that's obviously something that would be in fermented foods as well. So like yogurt, yogurt has lactic acid. You know, kombucha, sauerkraut, all those things have lactic acid because the probiotics themselves make lactic acid. So eating yogurt, eating the fermented foods is another way to get lactic acid. And I'm just sort of giving you a mechanism here. Lactic acid is a short chain fatty acid. It can be used as a source of energy. But also lactic acid can change the ph in the residential area of your gut. So where, like the distal part where the colon is, right. That's where a lot of your, most of your microbiome bacteria reside. When lactic acid is there, and it's made by bacteria in the gut as well. Right. It basically the ph is such that there's quite a few pathogenic type of bacteria that just can't survive in that atmosphere. With lactic acid, the ph change that lactic acid makes. And so it's beneficial in that respect as well. Citric acid or citrate is another one. Again, you take in the citrate, that's also something that's chelated with something like magnesium or another minerals you'll find like zinc. So citric acid obviously found in a lot of citrus fruits. Pretty much all the citrus fruits have citric acid. Lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit. So those are all the organic acids. Those are also really beneficial for the gut, whether it's, you know, beneficial for the gut cells themselves. But also like in the case of lactic acid, it's also changing the ph of the environment as well. Leisha is saying sauerkraut often causes me discomfort from bloating. Does this go away if I continue to eat it regularly? I think that dose also plays a role. So like eating a very small portion of sauerkraut can be beneficial. But when you start to like you know, like you will. Part of the bloating is the microbiome responding. Right. They are fermenting the prebiotics and stuff. And so that's in the sauerkraut. And so a lot of a big bolus of that can cause the bloating and stuff. So I would try cutting the dose down dramatically and just really just a tiny little portion of it is, is beneficial. Like you don't need to go crazy and eat a ton of it. And also eating the sauerkraut with other foods to kind of like dilute it out a little bit. So it's not like this just huge bolus just hitting your microbiome. And that's the only thing hitting it I think also may help a little bit. Apple cider vinegar does also have some of these organic acids I've been talking about. So Jodi's asking in the chat. So I think that also is another one that would be beneficial. And there's been some evidence that people with, I don't remember if it was IBD or ibs. So irritable bowel disorder, Irritable bowel syndrome. Were taking apple cider vinegar and they did improve symptoms of their gut disorder. Then let's see what are the last items here? Okay. The last ones would be. So probiotics. And there's another question about probiotics that we'll get into a little in a minute. But I think that, yes, so there are some probiotics that are beneficial, like visbiome sachets, which have 450 billion probiotics in them. And you know, those can be beneficial, particularly for people that have a gut problem, you know, whether or not someone with a healthy microbiome. So I kind of stopped supplementing with it. Like, I just don't like my gut's pretty healthy. I haven't had any antibiotics in a really long time. I do a lot of all the foods, all the prebiotic foods I was talking about, I drink kombucha like almost every day. I do kefir almost every day. Like I'm getting. I just like there's not any real need for me to take the bizbiome, so. But a lot of people do need to take. They do have gut issues and visbiome really does help them. Glutamine is another one that's interesting. And I don't take glutamine, but I did when I was having a lot of stress related gut issues when I was in grad school. Glutamine is also a very Energetic. It's like, it's not an organic acid. But I'm just kind of drawing a parallel hill, parallel here because like butyrate, like mal, you know, malic acid and lactic acid, it gets into mitochondria. It's very, it's a very easily used source of energy. And so it, it just makes it easier on your gut. It doesn't have to work as hard to get energy. And that for someone that's having like IBS or IBD or Crohn's, you know, or fill in the blank, gut disorder makes a difference. It makes a difference in symptoms as well. The caveat here is glutamine because it's such a good energy source. When I say good energy source, it's just, it's just like you bypass a lot of the things that glucose has to go through to like make it used by the mitochondria, which all require energy to get there. So glutamine is like big time favored by cancer cells. And so I think anyone that has a gut polyp, you know, a colon polyp, you know, any type of precancerous polyp in their gut, certainly if they have colon cancer or even liver cancer as well, it's very, it can be a dangerous thing because glutamine is like fuel for the fire, for cancer. It is definitely fuel for the fire. That doesn't mean that short term people with. So I would say that, you know, people like myself that are. Don't have gut issues, I don't take glutamine for that reason. But people that do have gut issues and they're in the, they're in the trenches, right? You know, they're fighting the battle, they're trying to put out fires, they're trying to get to a healthier point, you know, that glutamine can help. And so it's one of those things that it's like a temporary sort of thing as you're taking all the little steps to get, you know, improved gut health. Glutamine could be one of those things to try. But again, the caution, knowing that glutamine, it's not something, you know, while it is beneficial for the gut, again, it's one of those, well, how do I know that I got cancer? I mean, most of us don't, but like, you know what I mean? So you could do a grail test. And in fact, I'm going to be looking into. Maybe someone can submit a question about grail G R A I L It's like A universal. It basically can detect if you have any type of cancer, blood cancer, solid tumor, and it's really kind of accurate. So I'm in the process of actually getting. I'm going to invite the guy who actually discovered it. He used to run the National Cancer Institute, but I don't know the price. I haven't looked into it, but I'm thinking about, like, doing it yearly. So if it's affordable, I don't like it might be crazy. So I don't know. But anyways, you know that that would be an option. It's like, okay, well, I know that I don't have cancer. I did my grail test. Or I know that I'm likely don't have it, so I can take the glutamine like that. That would be like the safest thing to do. I didn't do that. But, like, you know, again, I was younger, you know, I was having the gut issues and the glutamine did help me when I was taking it. Adriana says, I did the grail test and I listened to the guy. So Rick Klausner, he's only been like one podcast and he's. He's actually the head of the new Altos Lab in San Diego, which is the. They have the ambitious goal of curing or reversing aging, and they've recruited Steve Horvath, Morgan Levine, Juan Carlos Belmonte, just all the rock stars in the aging field. And so I want to get him on the podcast, but I'm wondering if you heard him or maybe someone else. But that's cool that you've done it. Yeah, it's definitely. It's not 100% like you're gonna. There's, there's, as Adriana is mentioning in the chat, it's not 100%. It sounds like you guys are interested in it, so that's good to know. Maybe I should get him on the podcast. Try to get him on sooner than later. But I know that Peter Diamandis does talk about it a lot. Peter is a big fan. He. Peter did not invent grail. Let's just clarify that. He's just a enthusiast. You know, he likes it. He likes the test and talks about it. So. Okay, we'll move on to the next question, which was submitted by Christian. And this question has to do with. Boy, these questions I'm going through. I'm a little more long winded than I thought, so I'm hoping I'm going to get to all the rapid fire questions. We'll see if I don't. I'll start with that next time. So Christian asks, can you list all the supplements that blunt the effects of exercise, please? I'm aware of vitamin C and resveratrol having this effect, but I worry about other anti inflammatory supplements like curcumin, for example. So to start this section, it's important to understand that we throw out the word antioxidant all the time. Right? Antioxidant, antioxidant. There are different types of antioxidants. There are direct antioxidants and indirect antioxidants. So direct antioxidants. So what is an antioxidant? Right. An antioxidant is something that generally is lowering the oxidative burden either within a cell or in circulation. Right. So that's kind of generally speaking what an antioxidant is, something that's lowering the oxidative burden. Well, direct antioxidants will bind and they'll directly bind to a free radical like an oxygen with an extra electron. Okay. This is like, you know, or a hydrogen peroxide, for example. They'll, they will bind to that and sequester it so that that reactive electron isn't going to interact with your DNA or it's not going to. Because electrons, like when you have electrons that aren't bound up, if you remember chemistry and physics, if they're not paired with another one, they are highly reactive. And so when you have a superoxide anion, which, so that's an oxygen with an extra, so an oxygen molecule that has an extra electron on it that's not paired, that can bind to your DNA and like cause DNA damage. It can bind to the proteins in your body and like cause aggregation and cause them to be nonfunctional. Um, it can bind to the lipids. So it can bind to your cell membrane and cause your cell membrane fluidity to be messed up so that nutrients aren't transport transported into your cell properly, or neurotransmitters aren't able to bind to their receptors correctly. Right. So these, the oxidative burden, like the, it's bad, right? Like you don't want these reactive, you know, electrons, you know, or even in the case of hydrogen peroxide, you don't want them to be reacting with your body. And so direct antioxidants include things like vitamin E. Alpha tocopherol is a big one. There's different types, there's different, there's seven different types of vitamin E or vitamin C. Right? So your vitamin C can bind directly to one of these electrons Sequester it, right? So it donates a hydrogen and. And basically, there you go. It pairs with the hydrogen, so it basically neutralizes it. That's what direct antioxidants do. Indirect antioxidants are compounds that activate your body's genetic pathways that can make things that will sequester these reactive oxygen radicals and things like that. So, for example, glutathione, you know, you can, you can take something that will activate glutathione genes, right? And then you're making, your body's making more glutathione. And the glutathione then sequesters the, you know, the problem, right? There's a bigger problem with supplemental, high dose supplemental direct antioxidants in combination with exercise, basically, because exercise is inducing a big oxidative burst that's part of the hormetic effect, right? That's your IL6. Your IL6 is getting boosted. You're getting a huge burst of, you know, free radicals because you're pushing your mitochondria to the limits. You're energetically pushing them. And your mitochondria are making. There's electrons that leak out from it all the time, constantly, every second, every day. Right now it's happening in all of us when you're exercising. It's a big burst of it. The difference between the everyday, all the time little. It's the chronic little bit electrons that are being leaked out that don't get the hormetic antioxidant response. The exercise, because it's a big burst of it. Your body, it's like a signal. Your body's like, whoa, I better do something about this. This is not good. And so the big reactive burst that happens with exercise is, activates, you know, NRF2 pathways. It activates these genetic pathways that are increasing glutathione. And then. But it's not happening, like, right away, right? Like there's a delay. So when you take the supplemental antioxidants, well, okay, you got to digest it. And that takes a little bit of time, you know, but like, you know, it's basically, you know, pretty quick in your system, the direct antioxidant, whereas the hormetic effect, it's a little different. And so let's talk about resveratrol. So resveratrol. There was one study that was 250mg of resveratrol, and it blunted the effects of cycling and crossfit training on blood pressure, blood cholesterol, and maximal oxygen uptake compared to exercise alone. However, A similar study found that twice that dose, so 500 milligrams, actually improved markers of exercise. So it increased mitochondrial density, muscle fibers and maximal oxygen consumption after both resistance and aerobic training. And so I thought about this for a while and I don't know for sure because there's just not enough evidence. There's not enough data. But I think, think because resveratrol mostly can be an indirect antioxidant, especially at a higher dose, it's basically activating your endogenous antioxidant pathways. At a lower dose, it actually can directly sequester oxygen, like radicals and stuff. And so maybe it's dose dependent, but you know, it's just, you never really know. So it's one of those things where like, well, maybe I should just be safe and take resveratrol on a rest day or something. And so that's the case with resveratrol right now. Vitamin C, there's varying results. So supplemental vitamin C. There's been meta analysis looking at supplemental vitamin C doses between 200 milligrams and one gram per day. And there's so eight different studies looked at and there's really no effect on adaptations in response to exercise training. So if you're in that dose between 200 milligrams and 1 gram, then likely it's pretty safe. So like there was, to be honest, there's even been a few studies looking at a higher dose and it's actually decreased markers of muscle damage, reduced muscle soreness after exercise. So the vitamin C, where it starts to become a problem is when it's combined with vitamin E. Supplemental vitamin E, that's where you're gonna run into problems. And I don't know if it's because it's the vitamin E or it's actually just the combination because both of them are antioxidants that you're getting this like superpower where it's really good at sequestering three active oxygen species that are generated from the exercise burst. Right. You know, because you'll find in the literature also if you look at vitamin E itself, it's inconsistent studies too, where it's like, oh, sometimes it's beneficial for athletic performance, sometimes it's inhibiting adaptations. So it's one of. I personally don't take nothing above RDA. What's in it, like a multivitamin. So, you know, 24 to 30 IUs a day of vitamin E in is, you know, as far as I would go, like the whole 400 I use, like, that's Insane. That's like a huge amount of vitamin E and I don't think that's beneficial. Particularly because most vitamin E supplements out there are alpha tocopherol. And alpha tocopherol unfortunately inhibits your body's production of an important form of vitamin E called gamma tocopherol, which serves a really different function than alpha tocopherol. Gamma tocopherol is like anti inflammatory and so the concern with too much alpha tocopherol is you're going to then increase inflammation because you're like completely depleting your body of the gamma tocopherol. So I don't think it's really good to to high dose vitamin E. Now talking about some of these other indirect. So curcumin for example. Curcumin doesn't directly bind to free radicals and sequester them. Curcumin is, it's activating other genetic pathways that are anti inflammatory. And there's a systematic review that actually found curcumin supplementation reduced inflammation and reduce muscle pain resulting from exercise training, particularly reduced. And there's multiple studies looking at this delayed onset muscle soreness. So the doms curcumin really seems to help with that. So I don't know that curcumin is something to be worried about. Honestly my biggest concern would be the combined vitamin C vitamin E supplement together. That's kind of the bottom line because there's really a lot of inconsistencies in the literature. I'm looking through the chat, I see a lot of you are very interested in the Grail. That's great to hear. I will be pursuing that and we'll be talking about that more. The next question was a question I just kind of wanted to briefly, I just wanted to briefly cover because I think it's important to kind of know the difference between caloric restriction and time restricted eating and intermittent fasting. And the question says states, I understand that intermittent fasting has been shown to be more beneficial than caloric restriction. This question. Okay, yeah, so I understand that intermittent fasting has been shown to be more beneficial than caloric restriction. I am confused about the definition of caloric restriction. If I try to manage my total calories to maintain my weight, is that the same thing? In one sense that could be considered caloric restriction, but maybe it doesn't match the scientific definition. Should I stop counting calories and just focus on finding the right fasting schedule? This is a good question because what is caloric restriction really referring to in the scientific literature? Most of the time. It's referring to eating fewer calories than you otherwise would if you were not trying to diet or something. Right. So in many studies that ends up being 20 to 30% fewer calories. That doesn't mean you have to do 20 to 30% fewer calories. Caloric restriction really just means you are restricting the number of calories that you are taking in compared to what you normally would take in. That's caloric restriction. Intermittent fasting has oftentimes there's a lot of overlap with caloric restriction because people that practice intermittent fasting tend to skip meals. And when you skip a meal, guess what? You're eating fewer calories. You don't have to skip meals to do intermittent fasting. And intermittent fasting, from a strictly scientific point does not require you skip calories at all. Intermittent fasting is really talking about periods of not eating and having that period again of no digestion and having that period of repair. And so I think because it's easier for people, they just go, oh, I'm going to skip breakfast and then I have a longer fasting period, or I'm going to skip dinner and then I'll have my longer fasting period. I don't know that's necessarily the best thing to do, particularly for people that are not trying to lose weight and fat mass. Because when you skip a meal, you skip your protein intake. And as we've talked about with Dr. Stuart Phillips, skipping protein intake can be detrimental for muscle protein synthesis and muscle mass, which is hugely important for aging and for physical health. Right. So you can basically practice intermittent fasting by doing what's called time restricted eating and saying, I'm just going to eat three meals, but instead of eating them from 6am to, you know, 8pm in 14 hours or whatever, I'm going to eat them from, you know, 6:00am to well, maybe let's go a little later, 8:00am or 10:00am, you know, and then you're going to stop at 5 or something, right? So, so you're still eating your food, but you're also fasting. Now if you are really trying to lose weight doing the caloric restriction, you can still calorically restrict without skipping a meal too. Right. So cut out the other excess, cut out the snacks, cut out the stuff that's not your chicken, your lean red meat or your fish. Right? Cut that stuff out. So James asked a question. He says, how is aging defined now? I think in the past, DNA damage was thought to be the primary cause of aging. And at least Dr. Sinclair says it's epigenetic noise. Are there currently other competing theories or is it pretty much. Is everyone pretty much behind the ladder, meaning epigenetic noise? I would say right now, from my conversations with some of the giants in the aging field, the predominant theory, it's not epigenetic noise. It's not. So damage and the accumulation of damage. Let's get this, let's be clear. It plays a role in aging. Like, it's gonna, it's going to exacerbate aging no matter what, because, you know, the accumulation of damage does increase. The hallmarks of aging and hallmarks of aging mechanistically are accelerating the aging. Now, is that the cause of aging? I don't know that that is the cause. The underlying only thing, like, in other words, if you were to eliminate all the damage, if you would not age, like, I just don't think that's my thought. And I think some. One of a big time leading theory out there that's now kind of taking a big lead is that aging itself is a program, much like development is a program. So during development, there's this program where we have changes in hormones and, you know, secreted factors and things that are basically coordinated so that we are growing within a certain range you know, each year throughout development. Right? And it's a program, right? This is something that's happening, it's under a genetic control. You know, it's something that's happening in most humans that don't have a mutation. So why is that becoming pretty much a leading theory? A lot of that has to do with some of the work with the, you know, discovery that the transcription factors, the Yamanaka factors that are able to revert already adult, completely differentiated cells back into an embryonic like state. In other words, they're becoming an embryonic stem cell which has no cell fate, right? So during development, you know, what's happening is stem cells, there's genes that are being turned on and genes that are being turned off in a very coordinated manner. It's like, you know, like these transcription factors are like the conductors of an orchestra, right? And they're, they're telling the orchestra when their music. Well, transcription factors are turning on genes and turning off genes in a very coordinated way. And that has an effect of telling a stem cell to become a neuron or to become a muscle cell or, you know, to, you know, it's, it's, it's telling it what type of cell type to become and to travel there and do its thing, right? So these Yamanaka Factors. There are four transcription factors, and they're really now so O S K M. So Oct4, the Sox, KLM and MYC. These are master regulators of many, many, many different genes. And because what's being shown from Juan Carlos Belmonte and from others, and now this is a big interest in Altos Labs, which I mentioned, Rick Closner a minute ago, you can take those Yamanaka factors. And, and. And so, you know, what Shinya Yamanaka discovered and won the Nobel Prize for in, what was it, 2006 or something, was that he could. Basically, he could reverse aging to the ultimate level. Right? He could take an old cell and make it its youngest possible. Like, well, young estate, right? An embryonic stem cell, like, that's as young as you get. And what happened is everything was wiped out in that cell. All the damage, all the protein aggregates, all the epigenetic factors there. Everything wiped out. Start over, right? Because what's been shown is those Yamanaka factors can now take an old cell and not make it an embryonic cell, keep it. Keep its identity, keep it a skin cell, keep it a liver cell, but wipe out all the damage, wipe out the epigenetics and make it just a young liver cell. That's pretty amazing. And that's really kind of, I think, making a lot of scientists think that aging is. There's a develop, there is a. Like, Developed, like development, there is a program. And the program has to do with the coordination of many different genes, and these master regulator transcription factors are part of that process. And so I think that's the major theory that is kind of in. At least in circles that I've been talking to. That's predominant. Predominant. So James is saying, if aging is a program, why would there be a plan after typical childbearing ages? Well, we don't. I mean, we don't really know, like, how when the program's activated and. Or deactivated. Right. I mean, like, there's. There's so many things that we don't really know, like what's happening after, you know, and then men and women differently. Right? So men can keep, you know, making sperm and having babies, but, you know, it's the women that basically lose their ability to have children. But, yeah, no, there's. It's a good question that I don't know we have the answer to, but I think that there's. There's definitely something to this developmental sort of aging like, program that we just need to investigate more. So Marilyn says on the recent Huberman attia podcast stating the significant risk of osteoporosis has on females got my attention. Despite serious strength Cardio Training for 43 years, I have osteoporosis at 65. Wondering what you would recommend. So obvious. The obvious ones that I've seen in literature to, you know, improve bone health would be the low hanging fruit, vitamin D, calcium and then K2 supplementation. So you know, vitamin D increases calcium absorption by like 40 to 60%. And so those three things combined obviously do impact bone health in addition to exercise, as you mentioned in your question. But the other thing that it has me really thinking, and this is totally a theory of mine that I think should be explored, but it has me thinking that the sauna may actually quite robustly improve bone health and have an effect on lowering osteoporosis. So growth hormone is, it's basically, you know, it's beneficial because it increases bone metabolism and it improves bone geometry which occurs with it. There's a substantial also increase in bone remodeling with growth hormone. Certainly that could be beneficial for late menopause postmenopausal women that have decreased bone turnover and they have impaired osteoblastic function. So osteoblasts are what are helping you make, you know, making, making more bone versus osteoclast, which are breaking it down. And so you want to have, you want to tip it in the osteoblast, you know, favorite. And so growth hormone, like I said, it affects all those things. And the sauna can really, really, really robustly increase like more than exercise can do it. And exercise is known to increase growth hormone as well. But the growth hormone effects from the sauna really do vary with temperature and duration. So for example, two 20 minute sauna sessions at 176 degrees Fahrenheit or 80 degrees Celsius. So two 20 minute sessions, 176 Fahrenheit separated by a 30 minute cooling period. So you wait 30 minutes before you go back in the sauna again and do another 20 minutes. Elevated growth hormone levels two fold over baseline. Two 15 minute sauna sessions at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, so quite hot, separated by a 30 minute cooling period, raised growth hormone levels fivefold. And then to go even further on the extreme, and this isn't something I'm at all advocating, but I just want you to understand the concept with respect to temperature, sauna temperature and dose and duration. So, so basically two one hour sauna sessions at 176 degrees Fahrenheit, dry heat so, and this is extreme. Like an hour at 176 is hard. And it's not like people probably have to really be heat adapted to be able to do that. I've done it before, but. So two one hour sauna sessions separated, separated by a cooling period as well. Elevated growth hormone levels 16 fold. So what I guess the bottom line I'm getting to here is Marilyn's asking about osteoporosis and bone health. And I'm telling her something that I think it's my opinion, 100% my opinion. I'm connecting dots. I think there's huge potential for sauna on affecting bone health that has not been explored through the growth hormone modulating aspects of the sauna. And then there was a question from Merrily, which I'm not going to answer this time. It was, it has to do with menopause topic and wanting to know a little bit more about hormone replacement therapy and stuff like that. So, so we can go through, we can, we can get, I know there was a bunch, there was a few women that wanted to hear about that. So I will, I have covered a little bit of this topic in the past Q and A's, but we can go through and do a recent kind of literature review and see, see what the latest is on menopause. And then I should tell you guys that next Q and A, we are going to go really deep on rapamycin. And you know, there's rapamycin's like all the rage for aging. And so I just really wanted to be, you know, I've, I've, I've covered rapamycin a little bit and I'm, I'm educated to a certain degree. But we, I mean, I just did like a 15 page. Like we, you know, my team and I put together 15 pages and we did a real, real deep dive covering everything. And so I'm going to go through that with you guys because I think it's important to kind of get an unbiased review of the literature. So I will provide that next time. We are going to spend quite a bit of time. I'm doing, doing the rapamycin and then I've really got 10 minutes left and I've got quite a few rapid fires. I'm going to go ahead and start firing away at them. Whatever I do not finish this episode, I will finish next month. Okay. Christy says I got a prescription for Lavazza. I heard that, you know, lavazza is ethyl ester and it's 70%, you know, or it's 30. Basically there's like 30% less absorption or something like that anyways versus triglyceride form. Basically I just want to let so ethyl ester forms, which is what the prescription forms of Omega 3 like Labaza or Vascepa are, they can be absorbed but they have to be taken with food. You have to take them with food. If you don't take them with food, you are getting a fraction of the omega 3. So there is some credence to that statement about triglyceride form being better than athyl ester. Yes, you can even take, you can take triglyceride and not have to take it with food and still absorb it. That is not the case with athyl ester. You absolutely have to take it with food. I do think Lavazza is still a really good option. It's very highly purified and if you can get a prescription and your healthcare will pay for it, you can get this really, really high quality supplement for like $20 a bottle. And I think that's great. So that's the bottom line. Matthew says, I understand caffeine has been shown to cause miscarriages and affect sperm quality. Is this dose or frequency dependent? Is it best to eliminate all caffeine, even smaller amounts from products like cocovia? Yes, it is dose and frequency dependent. Doses like found in coffee or even black tea are something to cut out. Cocovia is not even something like close to what you would find in coffee. And I wouldn't worry so much about cocovia or even like green tea would have like a much smaller amount of caffeine. Christie says could a cooling suit provide benefits as a cold the same benefits as a cold plunge? So there are actually many studies that have looked at the increase in thermogenesis and the increase in what we call brown adipose tissue. Right. Brown fat that have been done using cooling suits. So sounds like a winner to me. Chase says, do you have any suggestions on finding primary care physicians that are likely to be helpful in personally evaluating health needs? Like running lipitest, being up to date on interventions? I would say like the best that I've seen with respect to healthcare physicians would be ones that are integrative medicine or in particular really functional medicine. They really seem to include a lot of the nutrition and best biomarker tests and stuff like that. David says, hi Rhonda, if you couldn't exercise for five days, such as after an injury, would you eat less protein since you don't need to turn on mtor or would you Eat more protein to prevent muscle loss or would you do a longo five day fasting mimicking diet, which, which would be a low protein diet by the way. If I was an otherwise healthy person, I would, and I was injured and not exercising, I would eat more protein because I would want to activate the aspects of muscle protein synthesis that I am, that I am losing by not doing resistance training. So I would actually. And I would also get in the sauna. Sauna would help prevent muscle mass loss. Andre says. Hi Rhonda. I got interested in sauna heat shock proteins through your work. I was wondering about other ways to mimic sauna effects besides hot baths. I regularly spend time in Sardinia which has abnormally high number of centenarians. It gets hot in the summer. I often see old folks on the beach there periodically plunging into the cold ish water. Could this contribute to their longevity? I mean besides diet, genetics, et cetera seems somewhat analogous to the sauna cold plunge. I would, I don't know if that would contribute to their longevity, but I would say that there are, in addition to sauna, there are other ways to get heat stress. Hot baths, steam showers, hot yoga. And yes, being outside in humid hot weather is giving you heat stress as well. So I mean, you know, like you can, you can sort of draw some, some parallels there. Leonie says, are silicone baking dishes and food storage products safe? Generally the silicone, the storage products are safe. They're not like being you're not using them at an elevated temperature. Generally speaking, like I wouldn't use silicone products if you're going to heat them at temperatures above like 430 degrees Fahrenheit or 428 degrees Fahrenheit. Because when you start to get above that temperature, silicone, the properties of it, they can start, it can start to melt and leach into the food. So it's really kind of just being cognizant of the temperature you're going to be using the silicone baking products at. Kevin says Thorn just came out with what looks like a quality greens supplement. I know you have some concern with athletic greens, wondering if Thorn product is something you would consider taking. So my concern had to do with spirulina and it being contaminated with microcystin A, which is like a liver toxin. A lot of spirulina have it. Someone reached out to athletic greens, they wouldn't give any data. I had someone on my team reach out to Thorn and they said that their contamination is, is, is like they have like no microcystin A. So unless they're lying, I don't know. It seems like they've measured it and it doesn't seem to be an issue. Barbara says, hi Rhonda. I wear an OURA ring too, which shows, seriously shows that I have seriously insufficient REM sleep. You know, obviously we've talked about OURA ring being inaccurate, particularly for ram. Actually, they've like, they've, they've, that's like the one thing they, they've really kind of messed up quite often. But anyways, Barbara's wanting to know about, you know, anything, anything that can help with REM sleep. I would say the two main things that I know off the top of my head, alcohol can affect rem, lower rem, but on the flip side of that, sauna increases REM sleep, at least in piglets. So Sakira, she's having problems finding a good high quality DHA supplement to take while she is breastfeeding. She's been looking at the International Fish Oil Standards website and having a really hard time finding a DHA high DHA supplement less that has a total oxidation rate less than 6. I right here will tell you a few of them that I found that are high DHA with less than 6 total oxidation. That would be C licious AMB well incorporated Cytometrix Aqua Omega high DHA San Omega GmbH Europe and C A N P R E V Canprev there. That's found in Canada. So The San Omega GmbH is the one that's in Europe, so the rest of them are in the us. All right, I got four minutes left. Cynthia says I'm still curious to know if the hydrolyzation process specifically for collagen. I've read that MSG is created by combining sodium with glutamic acid. I have seen zero evidence like this. Not, they're not, there's not like high sodium at all in like they're not as far as I know, doing sodium plus glutamic acid in hydrolyzed collagen powder. In fact, if you've had any foods with msg, you will be so thirsty after not eating that food. You will not feel that way after taking supplemental hydrolyzed collagen powder. Alex asked, is consuming protein powder versus meat, does it have the same effect on kidney, ldl, gout or acidity? No, it does not. And most of the LDL increases from meat are from the fatty part which contains saturated fat. TJ wants to know. Hi Rana, do you have any opinion of whether whole body vibration is a good method of exercise? As touted by Dave Asprey. No, no, it's not even comparable at all to exercise. I mean, there's some evidence that this whole body vibration can potentially help reduce back pain, maybe can help improve strength or balance, but it's in no way, I would say, comparable to exercise at all. Tim asks, hi, Rhonda. Please comment on bioavailability of probiotics. We eat billions of microbes. How can they make it to the gut? Microbiome, Halloween, the colon. Yeah. Not many of them make it to the colon. And that is why vizbiome sort of shines compared to all the other probiotics out there, because it's 450 billion in a sachet versus, like, these pills that you take that have maybe 10 billion. Some of them have 1 billion. I mean, it's ridiculous. So I would say that, no, it's not comparable at all. Okay. James asks, what are the latest treatments for cancer? I found this video interesting. I have a friend that had cancer when she was 29 and had to get chemo, and they gave her a 40% chance of getting leukemia sometime in the future. So I would say one of the most powerful tools. And actually getting Rick Closner on the podcast, because he's an expert in car T as well as holy grail of the grail. I would say that CAR T therapy is like the most. Its latest and most promising cancer treatment. Right now, it's specifically being used for blood cancer. So what car T is people's blood cells are taken out and they're genetically modified. So their things are, like, edited and stuff, so that basically your immune cells will be able to go and specifically recognize antigens on cancer cells. And they go and they kill the cancer cells. So, you know, it's a type of gene therapy. So they're genetically modified and then they are transplanted back into the recipient. And then again, your cancer cells are like, essentially going. And they're really able to get and attack the cancer. The problem is it's highly, highly, highly expensive. It's still a kind of. So it's not. I mean, unless someone's not responding to traditional leukemia or lymphoma treatments, they're not going to be eligible for CAR T. It's still, still in. You know, in clinical investigation, for example, there's been some new evidence that it now can possibly be used for solid tumors. Again, through gene editing and gene engineering techniques, scientists can basically take these immune cells and modify them in the way that they can then go to a liver. Go to the liver and attack the cancer at the liver or go to the bone and attack cancer in the bone or they go to the pancreas. Right. So you get the point. So I think CAR T is the biggest, I think, and most exciting tool that is the future for cancer treatment. And eventually the cost will be brought down. As these technologies are built upon and we get better at them, they become more affordable. That's the one I'm most excited about. David asked about the sweetener allulose and he linked to a study showing that allulose increases advanced glycation end products or ages for sure. Advanced glycation end products are typically formed from like fructose and glucose to a lesser extent. But like it's, it's really, they're really, they're involved in aging. They, they cross link proteins, you know, similar to what reactive oxygen species are doing. They react with DNA, they react with proteins, they react with lipids. Advanced glycation end products do that as well. They cross link things. They're cross linking DNA and proteins and lipids. They're bad, they cause problems, they accelerate aging. So I was a bit surprised to see that allulose was doing it more than fructose. So I did find that a bit concerning. I don't like seek out things with allulose. My choice right now is monk fruit. When I'm going to use something, you know, like I need to, if I'm going to bake something or, you know, need some sweetener or something. But yeah, I think it's something to keep an eye on for sure. Cameron, let's see if I can answer a couple more of these really quickly. Cameron says, what do you think of David Sinclair's tally health biological age test? There's no data like I don't, it's just like there's like a wait list thing you can sign up for. I don't know anything about it. I haven't talked to him about it. I don't know. Well, we can, we can continue. As you know, there's progress with it and more information. Marina asks about antioxidants and sperm DNA damage. Like what does the science say? And in fact she's worried about too much antioxidants. And I would say that there's actually been data showing both like not getting enough vitamin, vitamin C or E and zinc and stuff from causes sperm morphology problems and motility problems and stuff. So not getting enough would be a problem. I think getting it from foods is ideal. Multivitamin is obviously a good insurance. It's not going to have super, super high levels. But I think the point is you want to also activate your endogenous antioxidant systems. And that's where taking too much of these antioxidants can hinder. Right? Because if you're never, if you're not getting enough hormetic effect because you're sequestering any of the reactive oxygen species from activating your genetic pathways, then that could be a problem as well. So I would say I wouldn't go and high dose a bunch of antioxidants, but taking a multivitamin is good. And getting foods that are rich in vitamin C and getting the vitamin E from your nuts, lots of nuts are really high in vitamin E as well. It would be a good thing. Tetelin says, I recently heard there's potential for oxidation when fish oil pills come in contact with stomach acids, leading to an increase in inflammation. Do you know of any research on this or potential validity? It sounds to me like crap, to be honest, because like, you look at all the studies of people, clinical studies of people supplementing with fish oil, or you look at all the animal studies where they're given fish oil and it lowers inflammation. So sounds like someone trying to create a problem to make themselves sound like an expert to me. Troy says. Updates on any biological age tests you have used? Yes. Update would be I have the Elysium's index test and I will be doing it within the next couple of weeks. I've talked to Morgan Levine, who is really, I would say her and Steve are the absolute experts on epigenetic aging tests. And she really, even though she no longer is advising for Elysium, she, she really gets behind the index test saying that they. And she was involved also in like reducing all the statistical background noise that like a lot of these tests on the market have. And so I at this point really seem. I really trust the index test and that's the one I'm using. James says since the experiment, using three or four Yamanaka factors to cause some regeneration of a mouse optic nerve. I was wondering if only nerve cells are coaxed into regenerate or if you can do other things, other tissues like bone, skin, cartilage, blood vessels. I think that absolutely all of these things are applicable. And in fact, that's what's been shown in some of the preclinical studies from Juan Carlos Ipuizisa. I always skip his middle name because it's hard to pronounce. Belmonte's lab, who's now at Altos Labs, he's shown that these Yamanaka factors can regenerate other tissues as well. So again it's exciting stuff. Alina says, what are your thoughts on platelet rich plasma therapy for hair loss? I would say that I've never really heard of that being something that's going to work for hair loss. But I'll tell you what, eventually will gene editing and gene engineering and gene therapy probably one day will be something that's going to be used to treat hair loss. Kevin says how many sauna bathing sessions per Week does Dr. Jari Laukonen's data on sauna use suggest is best? I understand 4 to 7 range is best but what is the sweet spot in that range? So if you're wanting the minimal effective dose for the most robust effects. Four. Right. A sweet spot would be five, you know, so doing it five days a week. But minimal effective dose would be four, I would say four times a week. Kenny wants to know about moringa powder and 1 teaspoon being a good dose versus 1 tablespoon because 1 tablespoon was giving him issues. And I think 1 teaspoon is plenty, honestly. And Josh wants to know about GABA taking GABA supplements directly. I'll tell you that GABA supplements, there's I would say more evidence showing that GABA does not cross the blood brain barrier. So if you take a GABA supplement it is not crossing the blood brain barrier perhaps, I mean probably a placebo effect but perhaps there could be an effect of supplemental GABA on the gut nerve cells. And there are. You do produce GABA in the gut and gaba, the vagal nerve is a, it's a, it's a two way communication street where the gut nerve cells can communicate with the brain. And I think probably having more GABA in the gut again GABA is made in the gut endogenously could stimulate the brain cells to kind of calm. It's more, it's kind of setting sending us a calming signal. So you may affect GABA in the brain that way? Possible, possibly. Some probiotics have been shown to do it like raminosis. The ramanosis bacteria have been shown to increase gaba. And yeah, I mean, you know, I don't, it seems to be kind of like I wouldn't go overdosing on the gaba. Honestly. Things like L Theanine are also very calming. Ashwagandha as well, that, that also could be something. But I just kind of wanted to mention the GABA really not crossing the blood brain barrier. Marina asks hi Rhonda I'm looking for a sulforaphane supplement and wondering if you can comment comment on the quality of thorns Cresera or versus Brock Elite I yeah Thorns Crew Sera has a high concentration of glucoraphanin, the precursor to sulforaphane. And that's been tested by. I know Jed Fahey's tested it in his lab before and but the problem is it really does depend on your gut microbiome to convert the glucoraphanin into sulforaphane. And it's very. There's a lot of inter individual variation right with that. If you're wanting an actual sulforaphane supplement that has stabilized sulforaphane in it, the ones that that I think are the most solid would be Avmocol Prostophane or Brock. And Broq is kind of the prostophane that's now available in the U.S. i used to get Prostophane. It's still easy. It's easy. I mean you can still do it. You have to with going through certain websites will allow you to ship things from Europe. But now I've just shifted to Brock because pretty clear that they are prostophane in in the US they were able to license it and get it over here. So that would be my choice. And last question, Laura says, what are your thoughts on using the supplement Feistin for or for senescent cells? I covered this in a couple of previous Q and A's. There's some animal evidence that sort of make it interesting, but there's just no real evidence that it does anything in humans or will do anything in humans. So it's kind of one of those things. Well, you could kind of try it. I mean, you know, it may or may not really be doing anything. I'm choosing not to supplement with it because I'm not sure that it's like, you know, I kind of kind of choose my battles and find the supplements that I think are going to be the most effective. And because there's just no clinical evidence on that yet, I just don't find it's not in my arsenal. So that's it for today, you guys. I got through all the rapid fire. I know I was talking fast. I'm very glad. Lisa says in the chat, why Brock? It's Bro Q. Sorry, I hope I didn't say that wrong. It's Bro Q over Avocal because Brock is a higher concentration of sulfur sulforaphane per pill and so I just have to take fewer pills But I'll tell you the trade off there. Prostophane and Brock. So prostophane switched. They used to be tablets like Brock and there's. I know some of the scientists that have been working on stabilizing sulforaphane for quite a long time that used to be in Jed Fahey's lab and they've told me that the stability of sulforaphane they've tested it is more stable in tablet form versus capsule form. Okay. Most, pretty much all of the studies that I know of using prostophane, published studies were done when prostophane was a tablet. They switched over to a capsule. I don't know when. I don't know why. Probably it's easier, it's probably cheaper to do it that way. But they're now a capsule and so is Braque. So there is the potential there that there that you'll find that Avocal will be stable shelf stable for a much longer time than Brock or Prostophan. But I don't know for sure it's a possibility. It's just, you know, it's a speculation. We don't know. But I do like the fact that Brock has, it has more sulforaphane per pill and so that's why I use the Brock. Thank you guys so much for all your support and for all your wonderful questions and for attending these live. I mean it's so fun to have you guys here. It really pumps me up if we didn't get to your question. We're gonna also, I'm gonna have a team member try to go back and document from the crowdcast whose questions I have not gotten to and so that we can try to in some way shape or form reach out to you guys. If anything send a study or a one sentence something or you know, or cover it, you know, so in some way or form. Because I do, I do want to make sure that you guys all feel like you're getting value and that your questions are being answered. So, so, so that'll be something that we're going to be doing in the future. And if you guys love these Q and A's, if you like, if you like the aliquots and everything, our Science Digest tell a friend, you know, tell a friend to come and try it out for free. You can, they can do the trial for free. So they can. We have foundmyfitness.com trial or they can just come right in and join the membership as well. So thank you guys again. I will see you guys next month. Make sure you submit your questions for the next Q and A. I look forward to talking and chatting with you guys soon. So bye, you guys have a nice weekend. And I'm actually going to be getting in the cold plunge. I've got some family coming over in 15 minutes. I'm going to jump in there before they get here because I am sweating. I'm so hot. All right, bye, you all. Talk to you soon.