The Heart of Longevity with Dr. Rhonda Patrick

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Speaker 1: This episode of Next Question is brought to you by coco Via, the leader in cocoflavinyl supplements. Cocoa flavanols are naturally occurring compounds found in cocoa beans that have been studied for supporting healthy blood flow, contributing to hortelth brain function, and overall longevity. Coco Via delivers a precise, clinically studied five hundred milligram dose of cocoa flavanols in every survey. Cocovia supplements are bapped by over thirty years of research and are designed to help you live healthier, longer. Learn more at cocova dot com and use the code KCM twenty twenty six or twenty percent off at checkout. Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric, and this is Next Question. Everywhere you look, everyone is talking about longevity, and the focus on living longer and staying healthy is not just the purview of Silicon Valley Bros. Sporting whoop watches. Now everyone wants to better understand not only how they live longer, but how they live better. I know that's something at sixty eight I'm very interested in. So I'm so excited to chat with doctor Ronda Patrick, an expert on longevity and aging well Her evidence based insights are the basis of her popular wellness platform, found my Fitness, and there are so many things I'm excited to talk to her about. Doctor Ronda Patrick, Great to see you. How are you.

00:01:36
Speaker 2: Great to see you as well?

00:01:38
Speaker 3: I was just telling you off camera about how last time I saw you, you were crushing it at pickleball Way to Go.

00:01:45
Speaker 1: So hopefully I am an example of healthy aging, but I want to learn more and that's why I'm so excited to talk to you. You have a PhD in biomedical science, so you're not only a wellness influencer and pot cast host, You're a researcher, Ronda, with decades of experience investigating aging. And I'm curious, how did you get into the business of aging? How did this topic really capture your imagination?

00:02:14
Speaker 2: Oh?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, who isn't interested in aging, especially as we're aging, right? I mean, everyone I know is interested in aging. But I was actually obsessed with aging back in my twenties, and it happened when I joined a lab at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in the Juya California, and the lab was a lab that was researching aging, and they were using these little nematode worms called C.

00:02:37
Speaker 2: Elegance.

00:02:38
Speaker 3: Their genome had been sequenced decades ago, so you know, all the genes were known, and it turns out, you know, there's a lot of what are called homologous genes in these worms that you know, shared with humans. So for example, they have an insulin receptor. They have this whole insulin signaling pathway. And I mentioned that pathway because that's the pathway I.

00:02:58
Speaker 2: Was manipulating in these worms.

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Speaker 3: And if you can, you imagine a young twenty year old looking at these seligan worms, and they're really a great model for aging because their life expectancy is only fourteen days, so you can do a lot of manipulations and turnovers quick, right unlike a human like eighty years, Like that's too long to wait to do an experiment. So you can do a lot of genetic manipulation with these worms and see how that affects their life span and how it affects their vitality their health. And as I was doing these experiments where I would just decrease insulin signaling, so you're imagine like decreased insulin response for us that you know, we all can relate to eating less refined sugar. Glucose is what causes an insulin response will in the worms. If you genetically do that and turn it down, it extends their life's expectancy from fourteen days to thirty days.

00:03:50
Speaker 2: So you're you're talking like one hundred percent right.

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Speaker 3: And not only that, they were youthful throughout their life. So typically these worms, you put them on a little petri dish. They're eating equal A bacteria. You're looking at them under a microscope because they're only half a millimeter in size. And as they start to age, they start to move slower. They don't really feed as you know well, and they're just very slow. But when you damp in that insulin signaling, they're useful. They move around. It's like they're you know, two days old, you know, all the way up until late in life. And that to me was this moment where it was like, Wow, I have this gene, I have an insulin receptor if I you know, if this is happening in this worm, how does that relate to me? And that's kind of when I became obsessed with with aging was during my time there doing research with these little worms.

00:04:42
Speaker 1: Which is fascinating and of course leads me to ask how much of this is in your genes, like the whole nature versus nurture argument, and how much of aging is really in our control? You were able to manipulate that gene in that worm, but not all of us or the science hasn't gotten to a point yet where we can manipulate many of the genes that are responsible for the aging process. So I guess the question is, if that's the case, Ronda, how much control do we really have over our own aging process?

00:05:22
Speaker 3: We have a tremendous amount of control, actually, so I think the last I checked, the statistics were about eighty percent of your diet and lifestyle choices really play a role and regulate like the way you age versus about twenty percent of genetics. And when I talk about like the way you age, you know, I'm not talking about life expectancy, so how long you live, So the number of years that you live, you know, the number of years from when you're born to when you die, right, like, that's your life expectancy. I'm talking about the quality of your life. So that really does depend on your lifestyle. Diet, exercise, avoiding smoking, avoiding excess alcohol consumption, not being obese, you know, being physically active. All those things are really important in controlling how healthy you know you're aging. And we can talk about what healthy aging is in a minute, but I think when it comes to genetics, there are certain genes that do regulate your life expectancy and how well you can handle the stress of aging. And so you know, people that live to be one hundred years old or older, like, you're not going to get that if it's not in your genes, Like you can have the healthiest life ever, and you're not going to live to be one hundred even with that like completely healthy lifestyle. So there is a genetic potential you know that you have, and I think the reality is is that most of us are not reaching that genetic potential because of our lifestyle not being good enough, right, And so that's kind of I don't know if that answers your question, but.

00:06:58
Speaker 1: Yes, no, I think when you say eighty percent has to do with your lifestyle and twenty percent your your genes. But you're right, you know, sometimes you see people smoking and living to be one hundred and two, and then you see people who never smoked my like my late husband who died of colorectal cancer at forty two. So it makes you wonder. I guess it's both your genetic makeup and then how those genes interact with your lifestyle choices.

00:07:32
Speaker 3: Right, right, there's a big interaction between genetics and lifestyle. And you know, if there is like a family history of cancer or cardiovascular disease, or you know, any of these really age related diseases that we sort of get later in life, that's really important to know because that's when you have to realize, Look, it's really really important for me to dial in my lifestyle, you know, my diet, what I'm eating. Cancer screenings for ex ample, particularly in the case of people that have a genetic you know, or a family history of breast cancer or cold and cancer, the kinds of cancers that we do have great screenings for. Right, So yeah, very important to like, it's important to know what your your family history is and what your if your genetics are. Like, there are you know, third party testing sites now that you can go and get a lot of genes measured and know if you have some of these genetic risk factors for colorectal cancer or for breast cancer, for example.

00:08:28
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to you about sort of our impressions of what it means to age, because it feels like perhaps baby boomers not wanting to get old. I am a baby boomer myself, but our concept of aging has really changed. Sixty may not be the new thirty, but sixty today doesn't feel like sixty felt when our parents were that age. And I'm curious how and why you think our views on aging have changed so much much?

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it's so true.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I'm, you know, forty seven, and I feel like, you know thirty right Like there's it's definitely like every it seems like we've all shifted back a decade or more. And so when we think about aging, oftentimes we think about chronological age. I just told you my age, right like this, this number of years. We're counting the years since we were born until we die, and that is our life span. And that's classically how we thought about aging for a long time. But as science has progressed and we started to have new biomarkers and ways of measuring health, we started to realize, oh, people can age at very different rates depending on how healthy or not healthy they are. So that number that sort of signifies, you know, how long you've been alive, doesn't actually mean that much in terms of how you're aging. So we have this new term now, which is our you know, health span versus our life span, right, and our health span is really talking about the quality of our life. Right, So we want to be healthy, we want to be physically functioning independent, and have disease if it happens at all, happen at the very very end of our life rather than the last fifteen to twenty years of our life.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 3: So I think now aging is just it's it's really different because it's not just that number, it's actually just how well you're taking care of yourself. And so healthy aging is something that we have a lot of control of, and that's something that comes down to that eighty percent, right, Like, yes, there are people that hit the genetic jackpot and they can smoke and drink and live to be one hundred and ten because they have genes that help them deal with a lot of stress. But most of us don't have that.

00:10:54
Speaker 1: Right.

00:10:54
Speaker 3: It's kind of an out you're an outlier. If you're able to do that. You know this health this concept healthy aging. Now you know, we know what that means, and what it means is we want to be physically independent. We want to be able to play with our grandchildren. We want to be able to carry groceries. We want to be able to do all the things that are important to us, whether that's dancing or pickleball or tennis or whatever it is. You want to be able to do that in the later decades of your life. And you can do that right there, are there. You can absolutely do that. So having that independence, compressing that disease, you know, morbidity into the very very end. So this is cardiovascuar disease, cancer, metabolic disease. You know, also being sedentary, that's a disease, neurodegenerate disease like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, Like you don't want those to You don't want to get those in your sixties. Like if they happen, you want them to happen at the very very end of your life. So you know, that is healthy aging in a sense.

00:11:53
Speaker 1: From a clinical standpoint. What really moves the needle on extending a healthy lifespan is it mostly about lowering our risk as you mentioned, of major diseases as much as possible.

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Speaker 3: Yes, it is about lowering those disease risks that I just mentioned, so very very important. Part of it also maintaining your cognitive reserve and your muscle reserve. So if you do get sick, you want to you want to be able to handle it well. Right, So if you're cognitively functioning well, if you have you know, muscle mass like these things are very important, that's also part of it. But really what moves the needle clinically, I would say first and foremost is physical activity exercise, and there are two components to that. There's the aerobic exercise and then there's the resistance training. There though, that itself moves the disease risk for all those diseases in the right direction. So it's going to delay all those diseases, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, metabolic disease, all that is going to happen. And why is that important? So why do you need both? Well, aerobic exercise is really working your cardio respiratory system, and we now can measure we have biomarkers of our cardio respiratory fitness. This is called VO two max. It's the maximum amount of oxygen that you can take up during physical activity. It's one of the most important biomarkers of healthy aging and longevity. In fact, people with like the highest cardio respiratory fitness have a five year increased life expectancy compared to people with the lowest. And so you're talking about a really big difference here. How do you improve that? While you engage in aerobic exercise, whether that's jogging, cycling, rowing, those are great things to do. If you can't jog, you really want to mix in some kind of If you're a walker, you really want to mix in some interval walking there. What I mean by that is you want to get your heart rate up. You don't just want it to be like a the kind of exercise that you can hold a conversation while doing it right. You want to mix in that high intensity interval training. So for some people that's getting on a peloton bike and really going after it hard. You know, twenty seconds on hard and then twenty seconds off or a minute on. So there's a lot of different ways you can do that. Not everyone is to that point yet you know, some people if they are just you know, getting they're new to physical activity. You can walk, but even studies have shown if you walk and then you pick up the pace really fast for like a short period and then go back to your slower walking, even that has much more benefits in terms of improving metabolic health, cardio respiratory fitness. So that's really one component to exercise, and the other is muscle mass.

00:14:41
Speaker 2: Like you want to be.

00:14:42
Speaker 3: Engaging in resistance training. The guys have already figured that out. They've been interested in the muscle, you know, for more esthetic reasons for a long time. Women have sort of been i would say more the cardio junkies. Like in my experience, you see women sort of shy away from resistance training and strength training in that they don't want to.

00:15:02
Speaker 1: Bulk up, right, they don't want to bulge, and that doesn't happen.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't. It's hard to bulk up. It's really hard to bulk up.

00:15:09
Speaker 3: So women should be engaging in I would say the minimum for anyone would be about sixty minutes a week. And why is that important? Because if you think about contributing to your retirement fund, you start at an early age. Right when you retire, you don't want to just rely on social Security, Like that's going to be really a hard, hard to live a life, right, So you're contributing to your retirement fund that way, once you retire, you're going to be pulling from that fund. You have to think of your health the same way you have to think of your muscle mass. You need to contribute to that muscle mass retirement fund because once you start to reach fifty sixty years old, you start to lose muscle mass at a much higher rate. And you know you can counter it as much as you can with resistance training, but you're going to lose more than you did when you were forty or thirty, and so you want to have more reserve there. That way, when you're losing, when it's being taken from you, you had more to start with, right, so you want to engage in that resistance training. We know that cyclopenia, which is the age related loss and muscle mass. We know that people that are experiencing that have a sixty percent higher mortality risk all cause mortality risk that's pretty high. They're also twice as likely to have a serious fall or fracture which totally degrades your quality of life. Right, So resistance training, when I say that, I don't mean just doing single joint exercises like bicep curls or tric of kickbacks, the stuff that makes you look toned and nice. Although that's great, you want to be doing multi joint exercises. You want to be doing things that are working multiple joints at once. So what I'm talking about here is more compound lifts. Rowing is a good one, you can do dead lips is a good one, Squats, so these are all really important to improve muscle mass function but also in density. So you're getting a lot, a lot of bang for your buck there. And that's why I like, do you know talking about the compound lifts?

00:17:06
Speaker 1: So when you say how many minutes of that a week should you be doing?

00:17:10
Speaker 3: Minimum sixty's that's doable, right. I mean, it doesn't have to be all at once. It can be ten minutes one day, ten minutes, you know, it could be ten minutes six days a week. It could be twenty minutes, twenty it doesn't. We now know that the exercise doesn't have to be all in one bout. It can be you know, the shorter bouts of exercise because they add up. And there's now multiple studies showing this same goes for the aerobic Guess what, There's all these studies now coming out showing that the short bursts of more you know, vigorous exercise where you're getting that heart right up. Maybe you're sprinting around the yard with your dog or your new puppy, or your grandkids, or the things that you don't really think of as exercise.

00:17:47
Speaker 2: You're not counting it. They count, they count, and they add up. They're additive. So engage in those sorts of activities because they really are important for your health.

00:17:57
Speaker 1: My doctor told me to work out or to raise my heart rate above one hundred for thirty minutes, three times a week. Does that sound right to you?

00:18:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, depending on your age.

00:18:11
Speaker 3: I think ultimately what your doctor is saying is like, you want to get your heart rate up to a vigorous intensity zone.

00:18:18
Speaker 2: And what that means for most.

00:18:20
Speaker 3: People is you're about eighty percent your max heart rate right or more. And that is really a lot of people can relate to that. If they don't have a wearable device, if they're not measuring their heart rate.

00:18:33
Speaker 2: The talk tests.

00:18:34
Speaker 3: So you want to be able to not be able to have a conversation while you're working out, and that's the way to know that you're actually getting into that zone that you're talking about, and it is. It is, And I think if we talk about exercise intensity, or maybe we can talk about it now, it's probably one of the most important points that I could make is that getting into that vigorous intensity exercise that could be jogging, a you know, like there's cycling, there's a lot of ways to do that, but getting to that point where you're really getting your heart rate up to that like for years saying one hundred beats per minute, but getting you know, for me, it's it's more than that. But you want to get to that point where you're about seventy five to eighty percent of what your maximum heart rate is. That's really important. And there's some new studies that have come out that have really taken I mean this whole the exercise guidelines right that we know about these exercise guidelines which say, hey, you want to do one hundred and fifty to three hundred minutes a week of aerobic exercise moderate intensity or seventy five minutes to one hundred and fifty minutes of high intensity. So it's kind of like this one to two ratio, right, The idea is, well, if you're doing a moderate intensity when I mean moderate, you know, it's more of a like all faster walking pace instead of a jogging pace. Right, jogging would be the higher intensity. This new study just came out, it was published in Nature Communications, and it really turned that whole idea on this on the head. So basically this one to two ratio out the door. So essentially that was all based on energy expenditure, so how many calories that you burn, so you burn twice as many calories when you're doing a more vigorous intensity exercise versus moderate, but no health outcomes were looked at. Cardiovascular disease, all cause mortality, cancer, metabolic disease, those weren't actually looked at. They're kind of just these estimations that are based on questionnaires people talking about how frequently the exercise, trying to remember back and then looking at the outcomes. Well, new data has come out actually empirically measuring that. So people were wearing these accelerometers where they can measure how fast they're moving and it turns out when you actually measure empirically people's physical activity and you look at health outcomes those were looked at, it turns out vigorous intensity for every one minute a vigorous intensity exercise think jogging right or you know, sprinting to play with your puppy, you your grand grandkid, for every one minute of that, you had to do four minutes of modern intensity exercise to get the same effect on reducing all cause mortality. You had to do eight minutes of modern intensity exercise for every one minute of vigorous to get the same effect on reducing cardiovascular related mortality. And you had to do ten minutes of modern intensity exercise for every one minute of vigorous to reduce the risk of having type two diabetes. So I mean, it's just enormous change and very efficient if you are going to be able to get that heart rate up and really move a little bit faster. And I know, I'm sorry I went on a long tangent, but I think it's now that's okay point. It sounds like I need to do more vigorous exercise. Can you come to New York and be my personal trainer? There's so many great trainers and you know programs out there for people, but it really is important to get that heart rate up. And like I said, you're talking about I mean anywhere between like four to ten times. You're getting more out of that one minute if you're just if you just push a little harder, right. And I know we were talking about clinical end points here and what really moves, what really moves the needle, and I went on a tangent with exercise because it really is the most important thing. There are other factors, you know, diet, eating a healthy diet, avoiding the ultra process foods, like we were talking about, you know, making sure that you are avoiding obesity overweight, like if you are losing weight, like that's a really important thing to do because obesity takes seven years off your life expectancy in extreme cases fourteen years off, so very important to you know, lose weight, try to stay at a healthy body weight. That's if you can stay out healthy body of weight, you're fifty percent there.

00:23:02
Speaker 1: Truly, I want to talk more about sort of food and nutrition, but I wanted to ask you about heart health. Is a healthy heart the key randa to healthy aging.

00:23:16
Speaker 3: It's a huge component of it, and I would argue that yes, it probably is the key. I mean, if you think about your heart and vascular health, your heart is pumping blood to all the organs in your body, including your brain. And what is in the blood, well, the blood is, you know, the blood is. This vascular system is a delivery system, right, You're delivering oxygen, You're delivering glucose, fatty acids. This is substrates to make energy. You're delivering vitamins, minerals, amino acids for proteins to be made. I mean, you are delivering everything you need to have energy to feel good and to age better. And so you to have a very healthy functioning heart and vascular system to be able to do that. And you know, I know I'm like belaboring the point here when I keep talking about exercise, but it's never too late to improve your heart health. And I think that's an important point to make because some people may be listening to this and they may be fifty years old, and they may be sixty years old, and they may think, wow, I've not engaged in exercise, I haven't really taken care of myself.

00:24:29
Speaker 2: It's too late, and I'm already at this age, it's not true.

00:24:33
Speaker 3: There's actually a study that was done by a doctor ben Levine out of ut Southwest in Dallas, Texas where he took fifty year olds who had never really engaged in that kind of physical active structured physical activity. But they didn't have any other diseases otherwise, So they didn't have cardiovascar disease or Typewo diabetes or any of these other diseases yet, but they hadn't really been physically active, and he put them on a two year exercise protocol and then wanted to look at how that affected their heart.

00:25:04
Speaker 2: So as as we age, our heart.

00:25:07
Speaker 3: Shrinks and it stiffens, and that plays a role in cardiovascular disease. So a shrinking heart and a stiffening heart, you don't want that. Stiffening of the heart is very bad. So exercise is one of the best things that you can do to counter that.

00:25:22
Speaker 1: Right.

00:25:23
Speaker 3: So these healthy fifty year olds I say healthy, they were sedentary and I would argue that's not healthy. But anyways, they didn't have these other diseases. They engage in this two year exercise protocol, which was pretty intense. It was a progressive workup, so that means, you know, first six months, they started off slow. By the time they got to the six months, they were engaging about five hours of physical activity per week, which is quite a lot. That's on the high end for most people. And their exercise was a lot of aerobic exercise. They also did about, you know, at least sixty minutes of the resistance training, but they were doing a large portion of what we were talking about, which getting their heart right up. They were doing more of this type of exercise where they really couldn't have a conversation while they were exercising. It was vigorous intensity and so they were jogging. They were doing this high intensity interval training, and by the end of the two years, compared to the control group, which was like stretching, types of exercise, exercises, yoga, things like that, they had reversed the aging of their heart by twenty years. I say reversed because their hearts looked like thirty year olds compared to fifty year olds. So they started off looking like fifty year olds and they ended after the two years looking like thirty year olds in terms of the structural changes in their hearts. So they were able to grow their heart in size and get rid of this stiffening of their heart. Okay, so that is phenomenal. And so the exercise is really important for vascular health and heart health, which ultimately is regulating everything. It's regulating cardiovascular disease that's the number one killer in the United States and most developed countries to be honest, but it's also regulating brain health because you need blood to get to your brain, you need oxygen, you need glucose, you need all of these goodies to be delivered to your brain. And if your heart isn't functioning and if your vascular system is all clogged up with plaque, then you're not going to be able to get that blood flow correctly to the brain. Actually, there's there's some studies that have shown that, you know, the breakdown of the blood brain barrier is one of the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease in dementia, and that happens decades before any clinical symptoms. And why do I mention the breakdown of the blood brain barrier because it all comes down to vascular health. Our blood brain barrier is made up of these tiny little vessels, and these tiny little vessels need oxygen they need to get these nutrients, and they're so they're like the size of a hair follicle, you know, like you thinking about your hair follicle and hair. They're super super tiny. And so the only way they're going to get that oxygen and the nutrients is if the blood is pumping harder and you have to engage in physical activity to do that. And when you don't, those tiny blood vessels start to fall off and that breaks down your blood brain barrier. And so we're talking about, you know, problems with neurodegender disease on top of the cardiovascular disease. Right, So it's like a twofold punch here. Nobody wants to get Alzheimer's disease. That's a terrible disease for yourself but also your family. So yes, to answer your question in a very long winded way, heart health really is at the key to it's really at the heart of at the heart of healthy aging.

00:28:38
Speaker 1: What happens when you don't take care of your heart.

00:28:40
Speaker 3: So what happens when you don't take care of your heart is you start to get a lot of heart related problems. Right, So you're going to start to have high blood pressure, you're going to start to get coordinary artery disease, chronic heart failure, there's a lot of different you know, cardiovascular disease, right, you get athloscrosis, Like, these sorts of things are going to start to happen and ultimately will degrade the quality of your life and end up in your early death. Right, And so the question is what do you do to prevent that from happening?

00:29:15
Speaker 2: Right?

00:29:15
Speaker 3: And we already talked about exercise being one of the most important things that you can do.

00:29:20
Speaker 1: Right.

00:29:21
Speaker 2: There's also a lot of screenings that I think can be done, things that you can sort of take action instead of just waiting and waiting and waiting until all of a sudden, you're fifty sixty, sixty years old, and then all of a sudden, like your doctor comes to you and says, hey, we got to get you on this drug because your cholesterol is so high, and if you don't, you're likely going to have a heart attack in the next five years.

00:29:42
Speaker 1: Right.

00:29:43
Speaker 2: You want to avoid that scenario. So there are things that you can do, you know, preventatively to I would say, be more proactive to.

00:29:52
Speaker 1: Catch these things early. Right, Right, what kind of screening should everyone do like starting at what age?

00:30:00
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean, I would say I would argue that you know, you can start screening things in your twenties, and there's no reason you should not do that, particularly if you have a family history. But you may not even know about your family history, and so it's really important to start early. You can monitor your own blood pressure at home, get a blood pressure cuff, Like you want your blood pressure to be below one twenty over eighty. Like, I would say, that's that's pretty standard. And we know that twenty percent of young adults have hypertension, and so I mean, and then when you get into the older adults, it's like it's much higher. Right, you're talking about like half the population. So blood pressure screening you want to get. When I say cholesterol, I'm going to be more specific here because that's a very generic term. You want to get something measured called APO B. It's APO lipoprotein B, and that is a protein that is present in LDL cholesterol. LDL cholesterol is the type of cholesterol that can get lodged into your arteries, and that happens when ApoB That protein sort of gets obstructed and it gets lodged into your arteries and that is the start of an athoscrootic plaque. So you want to get your ApoB measured because that measures the actual particle number of LDL particles, and you want that number, I would argue to be below sixty, but especially if you have a family history of cardiovascular disease. There's no you know, history of cardiovascular disease. Some people will say eighty, you know, is being below eighty is okay, But like really, if you really are just your obsessive you know, getting that number below sixty is important. We can talk about ways to do that, but that's another really important biomarker to measure for cardiovascular health as well. And then you also want to you also want to look at your metabolic markers because that plays a very important role in cardiovascular health, believe it or not. When you have chronic elevations in blood glucose, so I mean, obviously this is the case for people on the extreme man with type two diabetes, when they're where they're just not regulating their blood sugar as you know as well. But these elevations and blood glucose cause a reaction to happen inside your body called glycation.

00:32:25
Speaker 2: And when this happens.

00:32:27
Speaker 3: It happens inside your vascular system, and it happens on the myocardium and the perycardium that surround your heart. The collagen that makes that up gets glycated and that causes the stiffening of the heart that I was talking about with age. So you don't you want to avoid that, and so you want to get your blood glucose levels monitored and measured routinely. And the way to do that would be the HbA one C marker. It's more of a long term marker of your blood glucose levels. You definitely want to have that below five fiveo point five percent.

00:33:01
Speaker 2: I would say even below five percent.

00:33:03
Speaker 3: If you're engaging in routine physical activity, you're gonna you're gonna probably be good because that does cause glucose to be taken up into muscles. And that's why exercise helps prevent this stiffening of the heart, because that glucose isn't sitting around in your vascular system. So I would argue that you want to monitor that as well. You can go a little deeper and you know monitor you know, fasting blood glucose, you can monitor, you can do an oral glucose tolerance test. I mean, if you're really on the metabolically unhealthy side, you want to get your body composition measured, so very important. I talked about, you know, OBEs overweight, So going just a little bit deeper into that, you know, you want to make sure that you don't have what's called visceral fat. This is the kind of fat that is lining your organs. Now you can get that measured directly, or you can just get you you know, typically the waste circumference, your your BMI and your waste circumference can kind of give you a gauge and like how much visceral fat you have. Ultimately, visceral fat is that deep fat that's lining your organs. Oftentimes you'll see it around the abdominal area outwardly, that kind of fat increases the risk of cardiovaster disease, metabolic disease, and cancer. So that type of fat is it's not it's not inactive. It's actually it's actually secreting bad things in your body, like inflammatory side of kinds that are causing you know, aging, accelerating aging, and so you want to so that would be another thing to I would say monitor as well. Those are some of the most easy and important things to monitor starting early obviously, like going into your you know, fourth, fifth, sixth decade, definitely something you want to be doing and and you know, stay on top of it. Don't wait for your your primary care physician to do it for you, like do ask for it. You know, monitors some of these things at home, like the blood pressure, and be proactive about it, talk to your physician about it.

00:35:05
Speaker 1: And when you talk about visceral fat, I know that you can also be what we call tophi thin on the outside fat on the inside. So it doesn't necessarily mean being overweight. Is can't you have sort of a lot of fat around your organs and still be visually thin.

00:35:24
Speaker 2: To some degree.

00:35:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, those are those are people that we that are they look lean, but they're metabolically unhealthy. And I wouldn't say they are more of the outlier, but again it does come down to their metabolic health and their visceral fat. And the best way to reduce visceral fat is one exercise. That's one of the best ways that you can reduce the visceral fat. And also like cutting cutting out on the refined processed foods, that's another way to really cut down on the visceral fat. So yeah, something important to keep in mind and monitor because it is the most dangerous type of fat.

00:36:06
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about diet because I think I'm going to go exercise as soon as I'm finished with this conversation at a vigorous rate, because I feel like I don't do that enough. This episode of Next Question is brought to you by Cocoa Via the Leader and cocoa flavinyl supplements. Cocoa flavanols are naturally occurring compounds found in cocoa beans, but don't go reaching for a chocolate bar thinking you'll get the benefits. Most cocoa producers remove these beneficial compounds during traditional manufacturing processes, but cocoa via delivers cocoa flavinyls and a precise clinically studied serving. Research shows that five hundred milligrams of cocoa flavinyls support healthy blood flow, which is essential for her health, brain function, and exercise capacity, key contributors to longevity and aging well, and the very things that we're talking about in this episode of Next Question. Cocovia supplements are back by over thirty years of research and are designed to help you live healthier longer. To learn more, visit cocovia dot com and use the code KCM twenty twenty six for twenty percent off at checkout. Doctor Rohnda Patrick, I know that you've spent a lot of your career studying the effects of key micronutrients on the human aging process. So first of all, what are micro nutrients exactly, Rhonda, and what impact do they have on your overall health?

00:37:51
Speaker 3: Micronutrients unlike macronutrients we always talk about macronutrients fat carbohydrates, protein nutrients are It's about thirty or forty escentral vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, and amino acids that we have to get from our diet because our body cannot make them and we need them to stay alive and to age healthy. So these are really important vitamins and minerals and fatty acids and mini acids that we have to get from our diet, which means we have to be eating a good quality diet to get them. And if we are not eating a good quality diet, then we are going to be insufficient and deficient in some of these micronutrients. And they do play a role in how we age. So I did my postdoc with doctor Bruce Aims, the late doctor Bruce Ams, who is the pioneer in this field. He also pioneered the Aims carcinogicity test, you know, which it was an amazing breakthrough back in the eighties and determining whether or not something was a carcinogen in our environment. He was responsible for getting flame retardans out of children's pajamas, things that cause cancer.

00:39:05
Speaker 2: That we didn't know of back then.

00:39:06
Speaker 3: So then you got into diet because he realized that not having some of these micronutrients were also causing cancer, and he thought, well, I got to get into this because this is very important. So micronutrients, I'll talk about a few of the important ones that why say they're important because they're widespread in terms of insufficiency and because they are very and they have a very important role in.

00:39:30
Speaker 2: The way we age. I'll just put it that way.

00:39:32
Speaker 3: So for one, I would say a really important one is magnesium. Magnesium is at least sixty percent of the US population doesn't get enough magnesium in their diet. Magnesium is at the center of a chlorophyll molecule. Chlorophyll gives plants their green color. So magnesium is high in dark leafy greens. What does that mean? Most people are not eating their dark leafy greens right, So why is magnesium important? Why does that matter? Magnesium is an essential cofactor for over three hundred different biological processes inside of your body, and everything from making energy, using energy and making energy to repairing your DNA after damage has happened so that you don't get a mutation that can cause cancer. What happens is and this was from my mentor. My mentor proposed this. It's called the triage theory, where your body has strategically found a way to ration these micronutrients when you're in a insufficient state, to make sure the biological processes that are important for short term survival get their share before the ones that are important for long term surviv will do. So I'll give you an example with magnesium, you needed to make energy. Well, if you can't make energy, you won't die. You won't You'll die like immediately.

00:40:54
Speaker 2: Right.

00:40:54
Speaker 3: This isn't an age related disease that's going to crop up in eighties.

00:40:58
Speaker 2: You know, this is something that you need right now.

00:41:01
Speaker 3: Cancer, on the other hand, isn't something that's going to happen right now. That's going to take five to six decades before it rears its ugly head. And so, you know, repairing damage to DNA, while it's important, it's not important for right now survival. It's important for fifty years from now. Right right Magnesium is required for repairing damage to DNA. DNA damage is happening every second. It's happening right now as we're talking. Every time we eat food. You know, our metabolism causes something called reactive auction species or oxidation.

00:41:34
Speaker 2: You probably heard that damage is our DNA.

00:41:37
Speaker 3: Sometimes it happens in an area that's not really important, and sometimes it happens in an area that may lead to cancer. But you want to repair that damage, and so you want to make sure you have enough magnesium to do that.

00:41:48
Speaker 2: So that's magnesium.

00:41:49
Speaker 1: Wait, can I show a question should I be? Should I be taking or should people not? Just me? This isn't all about me. Should people be taking magnesium supplements if they're not ain't enough leafy green vegetables?

00:42:02
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I do think people should be, and that is because it is hard to meet magnesium requirements. So for women you need to get about three hundred and fifty miligrams a day of magnesium. For men, you need about, you know, four hundred and fifty. So three hundred to three hundred and fifty is more of the range for women. Four hundred to four to fifty is the range for men. If you're physically active, those demands go up even higher because you actually lose magnesium magnesium through sweat. So to get that you do have to eat a lot of leafy greens. Nuts like almonds are high and magnesium oats are high in magnesium. But you have to be eating, you know, a pretty balanced diet and you really have to calculate how much of those that you need to get that.

00:42:45
Speaker 2: It's always good insurance to take magnesium.

00:42:47
Speaker 3: And the only side effect with magnesium is if you take a really high dose, that has a laxative effect. Some people like that, but you know, not everyone does. And so you know, if you're taking like one hundred and fifty to two hundred milligrams a day, that's getting you about halfway to your requirement, right and you should be able to meet that other fifty percent with your salad and you know your your almonds and some oats, right, So I think that magnesium is important. The best type of magnesium to take are the organic salts. So you want to take for example, magnesium malleate, magnesium citrate, magnesium tarnate, or magnesium glycinate.

00:43:25
Speaker 2: Those are all more bioavailable than the old magnesium oxide that people used to take that's not very bioavailable. So that's the best form to take.

00:43:35
Speaker 3: And again, if you're doing one hundred and fifty milligrams two hundred milligrams a day, you can even go up, especially if you're physically active and you're sweating a lot.

00:43:43
Speaker 2: If you're doing the sauna, for example.

00:43:45
Speaker 3: On top of that, you need to go up ten to twenty percent because you do lose a lot of magnesium through sweat.

00:43:51
Speaker 1: Wow, I'm going to have to write all this down and make it available for people because I'm going to forget the names of all these tests and all these supplements, and what if out omega three fatty acids. You know, fish oil supplements. You're a big fan of those two, aren't you.

00:44:07
Speaker 2: I am. I'm a huge fan of that fish oil. You know.

00:44:11
Speaker 3: I'm an associate researcher at the Fatty Acid Research Institute where I've you know, I'm doing research on the role of omega threes and brain health and you know, cardiovascular health. So omega three fatty acids, you know, there's three types. There's EPA and DHA those are found in marine sources like fish, and then there's a LA alphaalin olic acid that's the plant source, found in things like walnuts or flax seeds or chia seeds. The most important thing is the EPA and DHA. Ala gets converted into those and that's why you know, some people get you know, use ala, but I would say that the most important is EPA and DHA. And in fact, there was a study out of Harvard back in two thousand and nine that identified not eating enough seafood was one of the top six preventable causes of death, up there with not having diabetes, not having cardiovasca disease, not smoking, right, these things that we've been talking about, Well, not eating seafood was in the top six.

00:45:14
Speaker 2: Why is that, You know, people.

00:45:16
Speaker 3: Don't think about they don't think about the how what they're not getting in their diet is affecting the way they age and is affecting their disease risk.

00:45:24
Speaker 2: But it really is.

00:45:25
Speaker 3: It's not just all about avoiding things, avoiding smoking, avoiding alcohol. It's also about what do we need, what do we need to run our body right? So, Amega three fatty acids are hugely important and in fact now been a variety of studies out of Bill Harris's group. He's the founder of the Fatty Acid Research Institute that have shown you can actually quantify people's Omega three fatty acid levels. It's called an Omega three index. You can measure how much EPA and dha is in their red blood cell membranes. It's a long term marker of your Omega three status. People that have a high level would be eight percent or higher of their Omega three index have a five year increased life expectancy compared to people with a low Omega three index that would be four percent or lower. They are ninety percent less likely to die from sudden cardiac death than people with a low Omega three index. And even furthermore, if you take these people with a high Omega three index versus low Omega three index and then you look at their smoking status, this is going to blow your mind.

00:46:34
Speaker 2: Katie.

00:46:35
Speaker 3: Smokers with a high omega three index have the same life expectancy as non smokers with a low omega three index. So in other words, smoking was like not having enough omega three in terms of their life expectancy exactly the same. So, really omega threes are important for heart health. I say that because smoking is terrible. Everyone thinks about cancer and lung cancer or smoking. One of the worst things that you can do for your heart is smoke, So smoking is really bad for cardiovascular health. Well, omega threes are really important for cardiovascular health as well, for a variety of reasons. One, the inflammation process. Inflammation plays a role in atherosclerosis atheroscrotic cardiovascular disease, and omega threes are constantly resolving that inflammation so it never spirals out of control. And if you have a lifelong habit of consuming omega threes through fish and or supplementation, then you are really dampening that inflammation process.

00:47:34
Speaker 2: That's number one.

00:47:35
Speaker 3: Number two, Omega three fatty acids are incorporated into your cell membranes and they play a role including all the endothelial cells lining your vascular system, and it plays a role on how flexible those membranes are, and you want them to be flexible. You don't want them stiff. Think about transfats. We all know transfats will give you a heart attack and no time. Well, transfats do the opposite. They stiffen the cell membranes, and so lega threes are doing the opposite right, they're making inflexible. So omega threes are really important for cardiovascular health. I just mentioned the five year increased life expectancy, and that's not just cardiovascular health, it's also brain health. There's also studies showing that, you know, people that are supplementing with omega threes have a much lower risk of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. So it's very important to get omega threes supplementation. It comes down to you, like whether or not you're going to eat enough seafood. Are you Eating salmon would be a good one because salmon is high in omega threes and salmon is low in some contaminants like mercury. So eating salmon three times a week is a great start. But I would go a step further and say you should get an omega three index test, and that is something that again, it's the omega three fatty acid levels measured in your red blood cell membranes. You can ask your physician about it and that you want to be in an eight percent range.

00:48:56
Speaker 2: How do you get to that range?

00:48:58
Speaker 3: There's studies that have shown these are clinical studies and people people that have the low omega three index of four percent that supplemented with anywhere between one point five to two grams of omega three per day could go from a four percent up to the eight percent high level in just three months, So easy to do. Two grams a day's safe level if you think about you know people that are prescribed high dose LOVESA or vesipa. These are the purified forms of omega three that doctors will prescribe to patients for high trechlystrides and cardiovascular health. They're prescribed four grams a day, so it's much higher than two. So two grams a day is really a safe level for most people to take.

00:49:42
Speaker 1: Do most doctors know all this? Are they telling patients this? Are they giving these tests? Are they suggesting these supplements? Because I don't think a lot of doctors do.

00:49:56
Speaker 3: Unfortunately currently no I would say, you know, and I do and I say this not trying to put down physicians. I have respect. I know it's a lot of work, and I have many friends that are physicians. But unfortunately, as physicians go through medical school and their training, they maybe have one, you know, class on nutrition, and it's very, very brief. They're not educated in a way such that they're looking at prevention. They're not looking at how diet and lifestyle and things like micronutrients affect cardiovaster disease and Alzheimer's disease and cancer. They of course know that a healthy diet is important and exercise, and it's kind of like that common knowledge, but like being trained, there's a lot of evidence out here. This is evidence based stuff that I'm talking about. You know, this isn't This isn't stuff that's you know, I'm just pulling out of nowhere. So you know, the problem is is that their physicians are not trained in it, and then once they graduate from medical school and begin you know, their residency and practicing, they're too busy to keep up with all the information and research that's being published.

00:51:03
Speaker 2: Right, So there's a big problem.

00:51:04
Speaker 3: I do think nowadays with the younger generation of medical students, they are listening to podcasts. We now have evidence based podcasts out there, right, we have there are there are it's easier to get this information from a reliable source.

00:51:23
Speaker 2: And so I do have hope that that's going to change.

00:51:26
Speaker 3: And then of course with AI, I feel like, you know, that's got to change, right, So it is. It is something right now that people have to be proactive about. They have to take it on themselves. You really have to educate yourselves and be proactive about it. And I think that if you are, your physician's going.

00:51:43
Speaker 2: To be ecstatic.

00:51:43
Speaker 3: They're going to be like, great, yes, tell me more about this, Like I want to, let's work together. But it's not something that you can just go to your doctor and you know, expect them to tell you everything.

00:51:55
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you one more question about supplements, and then about diet and then about stress. For supplements, do you recommend a multi vitamin? Is that a good idea?

00:52:06
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:52:07
Speaker 3: I love this question, Katie, because I think you know over it was like twelve years ago I put out this video. It was one of the first, you know, my first YouTube videos, and it was there was a study that came out to you know, twelve years ago, it was called enough Is Enough. Multi vitamins are not only you know, useless, they're harmful. And it was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, and it was basically saying that multi vitamins are useless and potentially harmful. And I, as a scientist, you know, studying micronutrients and all these vitamins and minerals, went through every study and just took it apart and talked about why this was bad science. And ultimately it came down to the fact that nothing was measured in blood. You know, nutrition is different than drugs. Like you with the drug you have a randomized control trial, you don't have to measure or anything because no one has the drug in their blood at the start of the trial. We all have different levels of nutrients, and we have genes that regulate how much we absorb them and all these things. That's you have to always measure your filling the blank nutrient, whether it's vitamin D or Omega three or whatever it is that you're giving someone before and after a trial. Fast forward now ten years and we have three large randomized controlled trials that have come out the part of the COSMO studies, and these studies have given multivitamins to older adults.

00:53:29
Speaker 2: So these age sixty five and older.

00:53:32
Speaker 3: And they've given them these multivitamins for I can't remember it was a year or two years, but after you know, getting the multi vitamin versus a placebo for that period of time, it had a very massive effect on reducing brain aging. So in fact, people that got the multi vitamin reduce their brain aging by about two years. And on top of that, they reduce their episodic brain aging. Episodic memory is the kind of memory that you're remembering experiences, you're remembering you know, people and things like that, the kind of memory that goes with age. Right as you get older, you stop, you start not remembering that stuff very well. Well, their episodic aging was basically reversed by five years five years from a multi vitamin. And when I say a multi vitamin, I mean your standard run in the mill. It was centrum silver. It was it was like an affordable this is not your bougie you know thing. This is something that you can go to Walmart and get. So now I just I feel I feel like vindicated in a way, you know where it's like great. Now we have these three large, randomized controlled trials. It's what all the doctors talk about being the gold standard showing that just taking a multi vitamin really does improve cognitive aging and brain aging. I think everyone should be on it. I think you know, get your parents', grandparents, us, everyone. There's no reason plus your you know, what happens is you're getting that insurance. You're getting those micronutrients that you're not getting from your diet. So it's a really just an insurance pill in a way.

00:55:09
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily negate the need for some of the other micronutrients we talked about about no omega three fatty acids or magnesium and some of the other things that you think are important.

00:55:23
Speaker 3: I'm glad you brought that up, Katie, because you know, just from a you know, production standpoint, like magnesium, it's it's got a very high molecular weight. You can't cram enough magnesium into a multivitamin, get enough magnesium. In fact, most multivitamins don't even have magnesium, and if they do, it's it's a negligible amount. Because of that reason, same with the omega three fatty acids. Fish oil like have you seen fish oil pills.

00:55:48
Speaker 2: They're big. You can't you can't get enough. You can't get two grams of fish oil in a multi vitamin. It's not going to happen. I wish it would, but it is just it's physically impossible. So yeah, it doesn't.

00:55:58
Speaker 3: The multivitamin is on of that and it you know, it has to do with There are a few supplements that I think give you the biggest bang for your buck. Okay, multi vitamin easy to do again. It's the brain aging, it's insurance for some of the trace elements and things as well as selenium. You're getting some of that in your multi vitamin. You're getting lutine, xoxanthin. These are things that are important for your eye. It you know, delays macular degeneration. It's also important for the brain. And then your fish oil pills. So I say fish oil. There are people that are vegetarians and they can take what are called micro algae. I would I would say that the flaxed oil is not going to cut it because it's very inefficient to convert that ala into the really important forms that we're talking about here. So fish oil or microalgae oil, the key is like you want to get about one point five to two grams of those omega threes from those pills. The magnesium again, I mean you can go anywhere between one fifty milligrams a day up to you know, three hundred or more four hundred. So it all depends on on your physical activity and your lifestyle.

00:57:04
Speaker 2: And then vitamin D is the last one.

00:57:05
Speaker 1: That's yeah, we didn't mention vitamin D and I know that is important. I am on vitamin D supplements right now. Why is that so important in the aging process?

00:57:17
Speaker 3: So, vitamin D is important because it's actually so much more than a vitamin. Vitamin D three gets converted into a steroid hormone. What that means, So it's essentially converted into a hormone that is regulating five percent more than five percent of your protein encoding human genome. It's turning on genes, it's turning off genes in a coordinated way. It's activating genes that are involved in fighting off viral infections. It's activating genes that are involved in neurotransmitter synthesis. It's activating longevity genes like CLOTHO involved in preventing neurodegenerate disease. You know, it's it's really really important because it's not just a vitamins. It's ultimately regulating our genome. It's hugely important. Think of steroid hormones, right, estrogen, testosterone, these these are doing similar things. They're activating many genes. Vitamin D does the same thing. And why is this so important because vitamin D three typically you get vitamin D three from UVB radiation from sun exposure, right, and that is all fine and dandy back you know one hundred years ago when we were outdoors all the time and not sitting inside our office and archepical and you know, working inside all the time. Most people are not outside all the time. And even if you are outside, it really depends on the time of year. So you have to be in a time of year where UVB radiation is reaching the atmosphere. So, depending on where you live in the world, many months out of the year no UVB rays or reaching the atmosphere, which is great for skin aging, but terrible for vitamin D three because you're not going to be making any of it. It also depends on your melanin content and sunscreen they do the same thing. So sunscreen blocks the burning rays. It also blocks the ability to make you make vitamin D three well melanin, which is that pigmentation, that dark pigmentation that protects people that live in equatorial regions. You know, whether we're talking about Africa or South America or Southeast Asia. You know, people typically have darker skin color because they're living in a more equatorial region, which protects it's a natural sunscreen. Well, turns out there have been studies, like there's one out of the University of Chicago that people that move and migrate from their home country to another country, for example Chicago or Sweden or some northern latitude where UVB rays aren't as abundant certain times of the year. It turns out that, for example, African Americans have to stay in the sun six to ten times longer than a Caucasian to make the same amount of vitamin D three. This was in Chicago. So you know, sunscreen and melanin also player role blocking that. Why am I talking about this because about seventy percent of the US population has insufficient levels of vitamin D.

01:00:24
Speaker 2: Seventy percent.

01:00:25
Speaker 3: That's a lot of people that are walking around without enough vitamin D. And like I mentioned it's regulating so much, and how regulating so much?

01:00:34
Speaker 1: How much do you need ronda to take a day of.

01:00:36
Speaker 2: That great question.

01:00:38
Speaker 3: So there have been studies that have investigated that and have found that people that are Let's talk about what.

01:00:43
Speaker 2: Insufficient and sufficient is.

01:00:45
Speaker 3: First, So vitamin D deficiency, which is like severe when you're talking about deficiency, that's levels that are below.

01:00:55
Speaker 2: Twenty nanograms per millileter. If you were insufficient, that is twenty one to twenty nine. So basically below thirty nanograms per milli leader is insufficient. To be sufficient, you want to be above that. You want to be above thirty nanograms per milli leader. I say the sweet spot is about forty to sixty nanograms per mili leader, So how do you get there?

01:01:19
Speaker 3: There have been studies that have found people that are deficient in vitamin D if they supplement with about four thousand I use a vitamin D per day, they can go from a deficient level to a sufficient level. Whether about forty nanograms per milli leader and four thousand I use a day is the safe upper tolerable intake that's been sort of you know, the Institute of Medicine has claimed that is a safe level to take, so really shouldn't be any problems with that. And in fact, there was a study that was done in African Americans that were overweight or ob so I didn't mention overweight and obesity also causes people to have low levels of vitamin D Because vitamin D three is a fat soluble vitamin. It's stored in your fat, it has to be released into the blood stream.

01:02:08
Speaker 2: It goes to the.

01:02:10
Speaker 3: Liver and then to the kidneys, and in the kidneys is where it's converted into the act of hormone. Well, when you're fat, the more fat you have, the less bioavailable that vitamin D three is to be released into the bloodstream, about fifty percent less bioavailable actually, so people that are obese or overweight. And then you add on top of that, like that natural sunscreen, the melanin, which is what many African Americans have. You're talking about a disaster for vitamin D deficiency if you're not supplementing.

01:02:37
Speaker 2: And so.

01:02:39
Speaker 3: There was a study that measured what's called their epigenetic age before and after the four thousand IUS supplementation, and after supplementing four thousand ius, they were going from a deficient to a sufficient state, they reversed to their epigenetic age by about two years. So vitamin D deficiency can accelerate the biological aging process again because it's regulating you know, over one thousand genes, over a thousand genes, and so it makes sense that if you're deficient or insufficient, you're going to be accelerating the aging process. So if you can get to a sufficient status, then you're going to be able to kind of reverse some of that aging. And it is possible to reverse some of the aging things, especially if you're coming from a starting point of being unhealthy.

01:03:24
Speaker 1: Got it. Okay, we only have a couple of minutes left, so let me just touch really quickly on diet. You say to avoid ultra process foods, So that's things that have a lot of chemicals that are in boxes and bags and you know, aren't kind of farmed a table if you will. What are other things that people should be doing for a healthy or for their health span if you will, when it comes to diet, Rhanda.

01:03:52
Speaker 3: When it comes to diet, I really think the best, first and foremost principle that people should have in their minds is what do I need to fuel my body in a healthy way. And what you're going to come to the conclusion is I'm going to need protein. I'm gonna need some healthy fats. I'm gonna need vitamins and minerals. And how am I going to get that? Well, you're gonna have to eat a diet that is high in vegetables and fruits. Those are the vitamins and the minerals. You're gonna want healthy lean meats. You're gonna want things like fish and fish, sorry, fish and chicken, and you know, lean red meat occasionally as well. I say healthy lean, because a lot of saturated fat can increase that APOBE number that we were talking about, particularly in people that are susceptible to high ApoB or have a family history of cardiovascua disease. So really more of like a Mediterranean ish type of diet. Sometimes I call it paleoish as well, because you're really the paleo diet is avoiding a lot of the packaged and processed foods.

01:04:55
Speaker 2: Those foods take away.

01:04:57
Speaker 3: All the fiber, they take away, all the protein, they take away, all the vitamins and minerals, and all you're getting is salty, savory sweet things that taste good and activate the dopamine pathway and your brain rewarding pathways in your brain and making you were more addicted to eating more of them, so and they're not satiating, so you eat more, right, So I think I think the key here is you want to eat a diet that has a lot of fiber, that is high.

01:05:21
Speaker 2: In protein and vitamins and minerals.

01:05:23
Speaker 3: And that really does come down to mostly that balanced diet that your grandma told you about. You know, you hear about it. It's more of a Mediterranean like diet, right right. The fiber is important for the gut, it's important for satiety, it's you know, the protein's important for muscle mass, and the vitamins and minerals are important for all these little biological aging processes that we talked about. So I think I think that's an easy rule, is just you know what do I need and that you go from there and what do I do this?

01:05:51
Speaker 1: What don't alture process foods? As you mentioned? And finally in the last minute, let's talk about the role of stress on longevity. How do you feel, I mean, I'm I am one of those people. I think I thrive in stressful situations. But when do you know you're under too much stress and how do you mitigate that to make sure it's not impacting you physiologically?

01:06:18
Speaker 3: Right, So there's that chronic type of stress that you're talking about, which is you know, psychological stress, emotional, financial, you know.

01:06:25
Speaker 2: Work related.

01:06:26
Speaker 3: Like that type of like chronic stress that you're having every day is the bad kind of stress that does accelerate. It causes inflammation, It causes oxidative stress, and this is sort of insidiously damaging everything in your body and accelerating the aging process.

01:06:41
Speaker 2: Right.

01:06:42
Speaker 3: So, for example, caregivers of some disease, like someone with a disease like Alzheimer's disease, they are under a lot of stress, and there are studies that have measured their biological age and it looks much older. They're they're experiencing what's called age acceleration. Even though they're chronologically younger, it seems like they're older because all the stress. There are studies that have shown there are other types of stress that are good types of stress that can help you mitigate the effects of bad stress, and that is called you stress. And these types of stress are things that we've been talking out throughout this episode, right exercises the big one. Another one would be like sauna for example, polyphenols from you know, fruits is another one. These are types of stress that are short bursts of stress that we're exposing our body to. It's not this long chronic stress. And what happens is, for example, with exercise, it's a short burst of stress. It's stressful on the body. But what happens is your body goes, oh, I'm experiencing this type of stress. I need to adapt and so it activates all these stress responds, genes, anti inflammatory, antioxidant, stem cell production, all these things get activated and it helps you not only deal with the stress of that exercise or that short term stressor that you're posing yourself to. It's activated for a long period of time. So all the other chronic type of stress that's in your life, you're dealing with it better. And that's also been done for example, with these that caregiver study I'm talking about, it was shown in the individuals that were care for caring for a person with Alzheimer's disease, if they were engaging in physical activity and exercise, their biological age still looked younger even though they were under that stressful situation compared to the caregivers that were not exercising. So it buffers that stress by activating all the stress response pathways.

01:08:35
Speaker 2: That our body. Our bodies are able to handle stress. We just have to we have to activate them.

01:08:39
Speaker 3: We were meant to eat polyphenols and vegetables and fruits, and we were meant to exercise and move around.

01:08:45
Speaker 2: That's a good type of stress. And if you're not engaging in that stress, you're not flipping that genetic switch that's supposed to be switched on, and so you're not going to age as well. And so you want to flip on that switch.

01:08:55
Speaker 3: You want to activate in that good type of stress so that you can deal with the chronic stress of just aging and life, because life is stressful, for no doubt about it.

01:09:04
Speaker 1: Well, I have learned so much in this conversation, doctor Ronda Patrick. I have so much work to do, so many supplements to buy, so many things to think about, so much exercise that I really need to focus on. I can't thank you enough for really all this incredibly helpful advice and information. Thank you so much.

01:09:30
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Katie. It was really a pleasure talking to you.

01:09:34
Speaker 3: I love your curiosity and your genuine interest and passion, and thank you for all you do in your journalism and getting the important word out there to people to stay healthy and to be proactive about their health.

01:09:45
Speaker 1: Honestly, you're such a wealth of information. I'm going to make sure I spread it far and wide. So thank you, so so much.

01:09:52
Speaker 2: Thank you, Katie. It was a pleasure.

01:09:59
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Everyone. If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call, go to the description in the podcast app or visit us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This episode of Next Question is brought to you by coco Via, the leader in cocoa flavinyl supplements. Cocoaflavanyls are naturally occurring compounds found in cocoa beans, but don't go reach it for a chocolate bar thinking you'll get the benefits. Most cocoa producers remove these beneficial compounds during traditional manufacturing processes, but cocoa Via delivers cocoaflavinyls and of precise clinically studied serving. Research shows that five hundred milligrams of cocoaflavinyls support healthy blood flow, which is essential for heart health, brain function, and exercise capacity, key contributors to longevity and aging well and the very things that we are talking about in this episode of Next Question. Cocoa Via supplements are backed by over thirty years of research and are designed to help you live healthier, longer. To learn more, visit cocovia dot com and use the code KCM twenty twenty six for twenty percent off at checkout