#750 - Dr Rhonda Patrick - The Most Important Daily Habits For Health & Longevity

Half the country doesn't get enough magnesium ... What happens when you're not getting enough magnesium? Well, nothing as far as you know. You look in the mirror, and you're fine ... It's insidious. It's just it's occurring a little bit each day, and as decades build up, you're not going to be repairing damage to your DNA—and DNA damage is a major major cause of oncogenic mutations. These are mutations that lead to cancer...

Exercise, and particularly vigorous exercise, is one of the best ways that you can get a cognitive enhancement ... It's just undeniable that getting your heart rate up, getting your heart rate up and blood flow up and sweating, is going to make you smarter and feel better. It's going to make you both.

And they gave older adults, so these were people that were 65 and older... And the evidence was clear that just giving them a multivitamin improved cognition, and it slowed braid aging. It was estimated to slow brain aging by about 2 years.

If you eat protein or fat 10 to 30 minutes before carbohydrates, it can very much blunt and slow the postprandial glucose response.

There are studies showing that if you don't get enough sleep, you can have a higher all-cause mortality than someone who gets enough sleep—unless you're physically active. Physical activity blunts some of those negative effects of not getting enough sleep. So, you're tired, you should go get at it.

People that have a low omega-3 index, so that would be 4% or less, and then comparing it to people that had a high omega-3 index, so that would be 8% or higher, so people that have the high omega-3 index had a 5-year increased life expectancy compared to people with the low.

So, in the morning, if you think about it, what's the longest period you go without having amino acids? Well, it's when you're sleeping. So breakfast is actually really important. It's important to get protein, amino acids, in that first meal because if you extend that fasting period by skipping breakfast, your body is going to... pull amino acids out of your muscle, and so that can cause muscle atrophy.

Multiple studies showing this ... This is across the lifespan ... It's clear: Blueberries make you smarter, and they make you feel better, at least they make me feel better.

There's been randomized controlled trials looking at giving 8 mg of lutein... and something like 23 mg of zeaxanthin to older adults, and it improves neural efficiency. So this is the ability to, basically, your neurons can function with less energy.

There's been studies actually with pregnant women. If you give pregnant women about 500 mg of choline per day, their children score better on intelligence tests.

I don't know that anything matters as much if you are putting in that effort to exercise ... Studies that have looked at all-cause mortality in people that don't sleep as much, like they're getting 6 hours or less, they have a higher all-cause mortality... but only in people that are not physically active ... Exercise can negate the bad effects of lack of sleep on all-cause mortality.

There is a dose-dependent effect with frequency and duration in the sauna. So, in other words, the more frequent the sauna use, the more robust of the effect ... All-cause mortality is 40% lower in people that use the sauna 4-7 times a week ... Versus people that use it 2-3 times a week, they have a 24% lower all-cause mortality.

I think that, exercising when you're tired, you should be motivated and know that you're actually you're going to feel better. You're going to be less tired after, like you really are.

The other one would be, for cognition, would be lutein, which I mentioned earlier. It's in egg yolks, not very concentrated. It's in kale, very highly concentrated in kale—almost 24 milligrams in 3 kale leaves.

When your neurons use lactate, they spare glucose—they don't need glucose because they're using it lactate for energy. And what happens is called the glucose sparing effect, and what that means is glucose can be used for other things ... It makes a precursor for glutathione, which is the major antioxidant in the brain.

I do something every day, so sometimes I'll do like a 10-minute Tabata where I get on there and I just go hard for 10 minutes. Most of the time, I'll do a 45-second on/15-second off, so a three to one ratio. I really like that one....

Muscle mass peak around 20 to 30, and then after that you start to lose about 8% per decade until you get to 70—it's 12 percent per decade. But strength decreases are even greater than that.

[Stu Phillips] showed that untrained men could gain just as much muscle mass and strength lifting lighter weights as men gain lifting heavy weights as long as they put in the effort. So, the volume and effort has to be high.

When you're doing a vigorous type of exercise, you are increasing brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF—and that is responsible for growing new neurons in the hippocampus; it's responsible for neuroplasticity.

Blueberries are at the top of the list for that, for improving cognitive function. Low-hanging fruit. How easy is it to eat a cup of blueberries a day?

Norepinephrine release is one of the most consistent physiological responses. You can get that from 20 seconds at, like, 40 °F water or 2 minutes at 49 or 50 °F water will release norepinephrine 2-fold over baseline. Or you can be crazy and stay in, like, 50 Fº water for an hour—who does that—and you'll get a five-fold increase.

There's been studies that have been done looking at people that are actually meeting the requirements for aerobic exercise per week, so it's like 2 and a half hours a week, and even if they're meeting those doing moderate-intensity exercise, there's like 40% of those people will not improve their VO2 max.

When you are sitting at your desk for a period of hours, you are sedentary—and being sedentary itself is an independent risk factor for disease like cancer.

But then when he looked at people that smoked but had a high omega-3 index... they had the same life expectancy as people with low omega-3 but didn't smoke. So, in other words, having a low omega-3 index was like smoking with respect to all-cause mortality.

The biggest problem with smoking is heart disease ... Smoking, in a dose-dependent manner, will increase your risk for lung cancer. So in other words, the more cigarettes you smoke, the higher the risk of cancer. But it's not a linear increase with respect to cardiovascular disease and heart attack risk. You can just have a little bit of cigarettes and your heart disease risk skyrockets.

There's been studies done where people with a low omega-3 index, so the standard American, basically, 4%, if you give them about 2 grams a day of omega-3, they can raise their omega-3 index from 4% to 8%.

I do think that wild Alaskan salmon is one of the best sources of omega-3 because that is a fish that has a very low level of contaminants, like Mercury, PCBs, per gram or per ounce...

You want to stop eating about 8 hours before you go to bed, if possible.

If you're feeding a cow bunch of corn... they're going to have a higher omega-6 profile ... Versus, if you're going to give plants, they're going to eat plants, they're going to have a better omega-3 to omega-6 profile ... Pasture-raised is going to have a higher omega-3 profile than the conventional meat.

There's been observational studies correlating plasma levels of lutein and zeaxanthin with certain cognitive scores ... Older adults that have lutein and zeaxanthin higher levels have more crystallized intelligence. So, that's the ability to use all the information you learned over a lifetime.

Omega-3 has been shown in clinical studies to blunt the post-prandial inflammatory response.

There's observational data showing that people that do exercise or people that exercise and sauna... The people that do exercise and sauna have a higher VO2 max compared to people that only exercise.

We're most insulin sensitive in the morning, least insulin sensitive in the evening, right? So, you know, your blood glucose levels will go much higher with the same carbohydrate intake in the evening versus the morning.