Surprising sauna benefits, micronutrients and performance, and more…

Mike Matthews: [00:00:00] Hey, it’s Mike. And this podcast is brought to you by legion, my line of naturally sweetened and flavored workout supplements. Now, as you probably know, I’m really not a fan of the supplement industry. I’ve wasted thousands and thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that Basically do nothing and I’ve always had trouble finding products actually worth buying and especially as I’ve gotten more and more educated as to what actually works and what doesn’t and eventually after complaining a lot, I decided to do something about it and start making my own supplements.

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Hey, this is Mike Matthews from muscleforlife. com and welcome to my podcast. In this episode, I’m going to be interviewing Dr. Rhonda Patrick who has a PhD in biomedical science from the University of Tennessee. She’s done extensive research on aging, cancer, and nutrition. And in this episode, we’re going to be talking about some interesting research related to saunas.

I actually get asked about it fairly often. If they’re good, if they’re [00:04:00] bad, when you should use them, how, how often you should use them and so forth. And she has done some interesting research on this and also. We’re going to be talking on the flip side of a clean eating, which I talked about in the previous podcast and why, yes, it’s important to eat nutritious foods.

But when we’re talking body composition, how many calories you eat is more important and where those calories come from in terms of protein, carbs, and fat is more important than the specific foods that you’re eating. And in this podcast with Dr. Patrick, we’re going to be talking a bit more about the different nutrients that your body needs and why they are important.

Just to balance out because some people mistook what I was talking about and thought that I was just saying you can eat junk and whatever, and who cares about micronutrients and that’s not the case. So we’re going to be talking about that and a bit of, and a few other things as well.

So I hope you enjoy the podcast and I apologize for the poor quality of my audio. I’m not sure what happened. And I, it looks like Skype somehow switched from my good [00:05:00] microphone. to my webcam microphone, and I didn’t realize it when I made the call. It does that sometimes, so I’m going to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Alright, enjoy the podcast. Alright, so thanks Ranga for being here. I appreciate you taking the time. 

Rhonda Patrick: Oh, my pleasure. 

Mike Matthews: So the first thing I thought we should talk about, because I thought it’s pretty interesting, is how, and you were saying you’ve done some research on this the benefits of going in the sauna raising your body temperature.

I get asked about this, but often people ask if they should or shouldn’t go in the sauna after working out, and I haven’t really looked into it, so I was just like I know it’s not gonna hurt anything, so sure, why not? But apparently there are actually quite a few benefits. 

Rhonda Patrick: I think that, for the most part, some cultures, particularly in Finland and Russia, the sauna has been a large part of their culture, people don’t really know the science behind why they like to go into the sauna, but they know they like to go into the sauna and that it does something beneficial for them, they just didn’t, know how to pinpoint [00:06:00] exactly what that was.

And I actually have been doing quite a bit of research, not, my primary focus of research, I’m not doing any experiments, but I’ve been, reading the literature and reading a bunch of different papers that have been published on the various benefits of the sauna. Let me start by saying, what is, what are the benefits of using the sauna or to put it in another context.

term. What are the benefits of what I call hyperthermic conditioning? So hyperthermia is, the opposite of hypo means elevating your core body temperature. And so there’s actually quite a bit of benefits that can be reaped from elevating your core body temperature. And if you’ve ever gotten in the sauna, You’ll notice that if you sit in a hot sauna for 30 or 40 minutes, what will start to happen after about, 15 minutes or so of being in an already hot sauna is that you’ll notice your heart rate starts to, to increase and a lot of the same sort of cardiovascular mechanisms kick into play as if you were doing cardiovascular [00:07:00] exercise.

So it’s I noticed, this straight off when I started using the sauna is that I, after sitting in there for about, 15 minutes. It was like I was running, I felt the same effects in terms of the sweat rate, in terms of the heart rate increasing, and so I started to get really interested in what was going on in my body and that’s what instigated me to do this research probably about four years ago I started doing it.

I started doing research on this. And lo and behold, there’s a huge literature on, heat acclimation and the various mechanisms biological mechanisms that come into play in terms of elevating your core body temperature and how certain adaptations can occur when you repeatedly elevate your core body temperature such that, Once again, when you elevate your core body temperature, such as, endurance training or even heavy lifting, weight lifting can do that as well.

If you’re really pushing it you’re elevating your core body temperature, and so those mechanisms, kick on, and so you start to get these benefits. And so in terms of the endurance benefits, there’s what happens is you have, when you’re, when you use [00:08:00] this sauna regularly, you train your body to when the core body temperature gets elevated, what happens is you have increased blood flow to your heart, to your muscle tissue, to your skin.

And in terms of, to your muscle tissue, what happens when you have increased blood flow? You’re going to have, more nutrients being delivered, more esterified fatty acids and glucose and oxygen going to your muscles. And that’s great because for people that are endurance athletes they often hit a wall at a certain point and they start to rely on their local muscle glycogen stores.

And this, what this does is when you’re heat adapted, when you hyperthermically condition yourself by using something like the sauna, you actually have increased leverage of these different nutrients there, and that way you rely less on those local glycogen stores and so your endurance training is better and also the cardiovascular mechanisms kick into play, so you basically have, like I said you, your body starts to, for the same given workload, Is it 

Mike Matthews: stimulating adrenaline and noradrenaline production?

Is that what you’re feeling? That’s what it feels like. 

Rhonda Patrick: It activates the sympathetic nervous system, so you actually are increasing [00:09:00] norepinephrine nor, or, also known as noradrenaline. And so yeah, noradrenaline, it’s interesting because noradrenaline also is involved in cooling down the body, which is why I think you actually activated in the sauna, because your body’s trying to cool itself at the same time, right?

Yeah, but that also has different benefits on the brain, which I’ll probably talk about in a minute. And then there’s, you start to sweat at a lower core body temperature and you sweat for a longer time. It’s basically cools your core body temperature because you’re sweating longer.

Those sort of things help with endurance. But in terms of, muscles. You ask, can lose fat, right? And, yeah, I’ll give you an indirect answer to that. And that is that, yes, you can lose fat, and that’s by increasing lean muscle mass. There’s a three really interesting mechanisms that heat stress is able to increase lean muscle mass.

And when you increase lean muscle mass, what does that mean? Sure. You’re losing body fat, right? Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: Your body’s gonna burn more energy which, obviously, it depends on how you’re eating. If you’re gonna You can have plenty of muscle and you can [00:10:00] be pretty overweight if you can eat enough food to do it.

But it becomes harder. It’s much easier to be, to stay lean, the more muscle you have. Yes, definitely. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, I mean there’s, and we can go, you can go on and on for, a bunch of different mechanisms by what that occurs. But the bottom line is that, hyperthermic conditioning through using the sauna What it does is when you’re in the sauna one mechanism by which it increases lean muscle mass is by increasing the production of growth hormone.

So heat stress can increase the production of growth hormone by, as much, ranging anywhere from two fold to 16 fold, depending on, the frequency and how hot the sauna is and how long you stay in there. For the most part, the 16 fold is quite excessive. And in fact I’ve pointed But, most people that stay in the sauna for about 20 or 30 minutes can increase their growth hormone levels by two fold over baseline.

And those, that lasts for about two hours. The role of growth hormone in preventing degradation of [00:11:00] muscle proteins is pretty well known. Yeah. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Strongly, I guess it’s anabolic properties are argued, but it’s definitely an anti catabolic. No question.

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, no question. Exactly. And the growth hormone increases IGF one in muscle tissue specifically. 

And IGF one, I’ve done a lot of research on IGF one. IGF one activates this whole signaling pathway, specifically you were talking about in your muscle tissue. That activates a KT, which then activates mTOR, which is a.

critical pathway to for protein synthesis. In that sense, growth hormone can be anabolic, by increasing protein synthesis. But I think like you mentioned, in humans, how robust that effect is questionable. Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: anecdotally speaking, like if you look to the bodybuilding world, where they’re messing with all kinds of crazy drugs, it’s a known thing that like, If you, that growth hormone will, it takes on, it increases anabolism when it’s in the presence of high dosages of testosterone as well, but if you were [00:12:00] just to take if you’re just to, straight inject a growth hormone every day you wouldn’t probably notice much of an increase, or you wouldn’t notice nearly as much of an anabolic boost as you would with just shooting tests.

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, so regardless, 

Mike Matthews: as you said, if you’re like, if you are using it, if you’re net protein synthesis is really what determines it. You’re synthesizing so many proteins, then you’re so many. So you have a breakdown rate. So if you can help either side of that equation, you in the end come out, with more.

Yeah. protein synthesis. 

Rhonda Patrick: Exactly. And that’s the bottom line. The bottom line is if you’re decreasing the amount of proteins you’re degrading in your muscle tissue, then you’re having a net increase. And so that’s cool. Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: We see that, there’s research on carbohydrate intake and how it relates to muscle growth over time.

And from what I’ve read and I’ve experienced it myself and now I’m just working with a lot of people when you’re eating the more carbs you’re eating, the higher your insulin levels are just at any given point. Yeah. Absolutely. Because you got to fit them in somehow during the day, and while insulin is not anabolic, it does have that anti catabolic property.

Rhonda Patrick: [00:13:00] Exactly. Basically, the 

Mike Matthews: more carbs you eat, the more muscle you build over time, basically. 

Rhonda Patrick: As long as you’re sensitive to insulin, you don’t want to eat a bunch of carbs and become insulin resistant because then it’s not going to work. Yeah. And really, a really interesting thing about the heat stress and particularly the sauna studies this, there’s a few studies on this where they’ve shown that what happens is that you, if you go in the sauna, it actually increases the expression of glucose transporters in your muscle tissue, specifically GLUT4.

And it’s, in mice, it’s sensitized. Diabetic, type 2 diabetic mice to insulin because they increased the expression of glucose transporters and they, therefore, became sensitive to insulin, took up the glucose into their muscle cells, and they actually produced 32 percent less insulin.

So I think that the sauna in general So you’re 

Mike Matthews: like your post workout sauna and then you eat your food. 

Rhonda Patrick: Exactly. I think it’s a, it’s just a really interesting tool that I think people I hope start, experimenting with themselves and also I hope that more research will be [00:14:00] done in this area.

Yeah. Because there’s just so many interesting benefits to heat stress in your body and this is really like How 

Mike Matthews: does a sauna compare to a sauna? steam room. In experience, the steam room is unbearable. I have a steam room in the condo where I live and I’ll go into it sometimes, but it gets so hot I actually almost feel like my body is panicking after 10 minutes.

Rhonda Patrick: So that’s a great question. See, the steam room, one of the main differences between going into having a dry sauna and going into the steam room is that, steam is like wet and it’s contacting your skin. Yeah. When your skin is burning, it becomes unbearable. You can’t stay in for as long of a time as you can in something like a dry sauna, where it’s not burning your skin.

I think the idea is, heat stress, whether it’s doing, a steam room for a, amount of time, or the sauna. Most of the studies were done using the sauna. What happens is it activates. A variety of mechanisms in your body, which I call the heat stress response mechanisms.

And what this does is it, now, the next [00:15:00] thing I was going to talk about was heat shock proteins. So it, growth hormone, heat shock proteins, this increase in glucose transporters, all these things are mechanisms that kick into play when your body is has a little bit of heat stress.

And Regardless of whether or not it’s the sauna or, a jacuzzi, I don’t know if the effects will be as robust, but I do think to some degree, if you’re heat stressing your body, those mechanisms are going to kick into play and you will reap some of the benefits. 

Mike Matthews: But if you want to stay, yeah, for the sake of just being able to be in there longer and then just being more in line with the research of the dry sauna.

Rhonda Patrick: Exactly. And how 

Mike Matthews: long, like if people were like, okay, I’ll, would it, would 15 minutes be enough? 20 minutes? 

Rhonda Patrick: Look, you have to use your judgment. So if you just killed it, lifting weights or went for a really long run and then you go and stay in the sauna for an hour, you’re going to look ridiculous.

You can’t do that, 

Mike Matthews: I would have to take breaks probably even 10 or 15 minutes. I have to go out and at least cool off for a minute. 

Rhonda Patrick: Exactly. Yeah. If you kill it in the gym and then do a 20 minutes, heat stress. We’re talking about 20 minutes of it already being hot, not [00:16:00] waiting for it to warm up, but I think that’s something that’s a significant heat stress after you’ve already heat stressed yourself.

So exercising is also heat stress. So that’s the whole point I’m trying to make is that, we’re talking about reaping some of these benefits that exercise gives you through elevating core body temperature, what, heat stressing by using the sauna, and also conditioning your body to this heat stress so that when you exercise, You’re more adapted to it and you have these heat stress response mechanisms that are able to cope with it.

So it’s 

Mike Matthews: Or I guess you could go later, like you don’t have to go to the gym for it if you have access to one at home. Yeah. 

Rhonda Patrick: Exactly, like I used to, when I was in grad school, I lived across the street from a YMCA, and I would go to the sauna just to go to the sauna, and I’d stay in for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on, if I didn’t work out beforehand, then I would stay much longer, and I’d bring a bunch of water, and sometimes I’d go out and cool off for five minutes, because it’s pretty intense, and you really have to be careful, you can’t, You can’t just go in there.

First of all, you’ve got to stay hydrated. That’s probably one of the number one risks. And drinking alcohol [00:17:00] is like The best way you can assure you will injure yourself, drinking alcohol before you go in the sauna or while you’re in the sauna. That’s like the number one cause of death that’s been associated with sauna is people 

Mike Matthews: Just the dehydration aspect of it.

Rhonda Patrick: Yes, dehydration and also, the alcohol change. It just, there’s a bunch of things that can happen. Coagulation, things change, alcohol does a lot of things, and heat stress on top of that. When you have stress plus stress, it’s not good. But it’s really interesting because they also, there’s these heat shock proteins that get activated when you’re heat stressed.

And these HSPs are, like, so awesome because not only can they prevent protein degradation, different mechanisms, but very similar to what, the way IGF 1 does it. But they can also, they’ve also been associated with longevity so you can in worms and flies, they’ve heat shocked them.

And it extends their lifespan. And this was something that I had done some research on before I went to graduate school. So I had been familiar with the literature. And I became really interested in it. I started looking up if there’s anything in humans, Yeah. that could, [00:18:00] show that this could apply.

And What I found was really interesting is that humans that have a polymorphism in their heat shock, one of their heat shock protein 70 genes that is associated with increased expression of it. Okay, so pretend, it does the same thing that heat does. So increasing the expression of it is associated with like longevity in humans.

So I think that’s really interesting that, you have this heat shock protein, which is essentially a hormetic response. So hormesis. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this, but 

Mike Matthews: I’ve heard the word, but I couldn’t hear the 

Rhonda Patrick: definition. Alright, so let me just explain this really briefly, because I think it’s a very interesting concept that most people are not familiar with, and that is hormesis is just referring to a small amount of stress.

When I say small amount, what I mean is not additive stress. So small, like exercise is stress, heat is stress things like EGCGs and green tea, polyphenols, these things are all slightly toxic to the body and they add a little bit of stress. And what happens when you stress the body like that is that all these genes, you increase the expression of all these genes [00:19:00] that we have in our body that are called stress response genes.

Whether they’re anti oxidant genes, anti detoxification genes, or heat shock protein genes. These genes are activated to help you deal with stress. And when you activate them, it’s really healthy because you start to, reap all these benefits that you get by having higher antioxidant activity, by having the expression of these genes that help proteins fold properly, like heat shock proteins, and so it’s actually a really cool response mechanism. And that’s what hormesis basically is. It’s Applying a small amount of stress or something that’s a little bit toxic, like polyphenols and these things to activate your body’s own stress response mechanisms. So it’s a little different than taking something like vitamin C or E, which are also antioxidants.

But see our bodies have genes that are antioxidant genes that do the same thing that these antioxidants do and so much more. Yeah. Which makes 

Mike Matthews: sense and like why you see a lot of the benefits of exercise that you can, Exactly. Just exercise alone gives you a ton of benefits that you could, if you compare [00:20:00] benefits to dietary changes or even intermittent fasting type benefits and things, then you could get a lot of the same stuff just from exercising alone.

Rhonda Patrick: Intermittent fasting is also a type of hormetic stress. That makes 

Mike Matthews: sense. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, I see. So now you understand the mechanism. It’s basically an activation of stress response genes. And they’ve shown this, in a variety of different organisms. It’s, I think it’s really cool. And with the HSPs are really cool also because they’ve been shown to prevent muscle atrophy.

And there’s been a lot of studies doing this in mice and rats. Where they’ll like, they’ll heat shock them for 30 minutes, and they’ll do this a couple times a week. And then they like, put a little cast on the mouse like this, around the soleus muscle, around the calf. And so that the mouse can’t use this muscle, and they’ll do it for 7 days.

And then what happens is when they take the cast off, the mice start to exercise and move around. And there’s a huge burst of oxidative stress. And which obviously degrades proteins. And so what happens is that it’s really, it takes longer for [00:21:00] mice that are, that are immobilized to rebuild their muscle after being forced to be immobilized for a certain time period.

So what they found was that when they heat shocked these mice, when they, what’s called whole body hyperthermia, it’s essentially the same thing as a human sitting in the sauna, but they put this little mouse in a chamber that’s like heated, yeah. And they found that it like dramatically reduce the degradation of the soleus muscle proteins.

And it was, it corresponded to an increase in heat shock proteins. And also they were able to regrow their muscle like 32 percent faster than the mice that didn’t have the heat shock. So I thought this was very relevant to, basically preventing atrophy and being able to, regrow your muscle.

without having all that oxidative stress, because what happens is you’re increasing the expression of your heat shock proteins. When you sit in the sauna just under nor normal temperatures, you’ll have a higher expression of that heat shock protein because you’ve induced these adaptations.

But when you exercise later and elevate your core body temperature, those HSPs, they’re primed either primed and [00:22:00] they boost the expression. And so you have basically you’re having more of this endogenous antioxidant activity in your own body that’s happening just because you’ve induced these physiological adaptations from heat stress in your body.

So it’s really cool. 

Mike Matthews: That’s awesome. And do you think that then it would be better to separate if you could, if you have your, there’s obviously some some heat stress from the exercise. And then if later maybe this is just irrelevant. It doesn’t really matter either way, if then later you go, your body has come, five hours later, whatever you go into the sauna and you do it over again, do you think that would over time be more effective than working out and then going straight in, which is just continuing what you started with the workout or really just total time is what matters.

Rhonda Patrick: I don’t know. That’s a good question. I think it might, in some instances, they’ve shown that like exercise and heat stress together can synergize. And 

Mike Matthews: obviously it comes with it to some degree, although a lot of us it depends how you train. When I’m doing, when I’m lifting, I’m in an air conditioned gym.

Yeah, my temperature, my core [00:23:00] temperature is raising, but I’m not I focus more on heavy weight lifting, so my rest times are longer, I’m not going I’m not doing circuits, I’m not jumping, I’m not doing crossfit, I’m like doing some heavy weight lifting, sitting around for two minutes, . 

Rhonda Patrick: I think it all depends on people’s personal routines. And people will start to self experiment and see what works best for them. I, I don’t know if there’s a magic bullet one answer where it’s like this is the best for everyone. Probably not. Probably not. It usually varies, yes. But the point is that using the sauna in general, most, most people think about using the sauna as a term, for muscle relaxation or toxins, sweating out toxins. And to be honest, I haven’t, there’s some literature on that, but really not a lot of scientific evidence. I think a lot of it’s been people just making it.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, 

Rhonda Patrick: it’s it makes sense, but honestly, there’s not a lot of science showing that it does. You detox all these heavy metals. There’s been some recent literature showing like bisphenol A, you seem to sweat out, which is cool because bisphenol A is not a great [00:24:00] thing to have in your system.

Yeah. But, it’s nice to have some science behind why the sauna is beneficial because like I said, it’s been a cultural thing for, for decades. People have been using it. They just, they don’t know why, I 

Mike Matthews: guess sauna use goes back millennia, really, right?

Going back into the, even Greek times where they’d sit around in the baths and, their version of the sauna. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, people cling to and, aggregate around things that are beneficial and they don’t necessarily have to understand why they’re beneficial. Yeah. They just know it, and eventually science catches up and we figure out why.

But, it’s interesting that you see some of these cultural traditions. 

Mike Matthews: Traditions, yeah. Traditions, yeah. 

Rhonda Patrick: And you find out, 

Mike Matthews: There’s a, Eastern medicine. There’s a lot of that where science kind of catches up and find some things don’t work so well, but some things work great and finally figure out why.

Rhonda Patrick: Something else very interesting about this heat stress is the benefits on the brain. And I think people are starting to, the benefits on the brain in terms of exercise, like people are starting to become more informed and aware of how exercise can benefit the brain. And a lot of those [00:25:00] benefits actually have to do with elevating the core body temperature.

It’s, in part of this article that I wrote, I talk about some of these benefits on the brain. I personally experienced, when I was doing some experimentation with the sauna some very potent antidepressant benefits. And I started to look and investigate the biological mechanisms for this.

And I, it was really interesting because the sauna increases the expression some, Very interesting neuro, brain chemicals. For one, I mentioned norepinephrine. Norepinephrine is important for focus and attention. People with ADHD have problems with making, norepinephrine.

Or neural adrenaline, the same thing. Yeah I, that’s really interesting that, it helps with focus and attention. Also, what’s really interesting is this effect on brain derived neurotrophic factor, which is also something that exercise induces. And brain derived neurotrophic factor increases the growth of new brain cells, so it’s like important for neurogenesis, which is cool.

But it also has been shown to Ameliorate some of those [00:26:00] effects of like trauma and stress and so it has this like anti anxiety and anxiety type of effect. Yeah, which I mean, I guess 

Mike Matthews: that’s one of those anecdotal things that people whenever you talk to somebody that’s into the sauna, that’s usually the first thing to mention is that it helps them relax helps them just feel better.

Whatever, forget about the events of the day or whatever. 

Rhonda Patrick: The funny thing is it doesn’t help you relax while you’re in there because heat is stressful. And if you’re sitting in a sauna Yeah, you 

Mike Matthews: feel good 

Rhonda Patrick: after. Yeah, you do it right, you’re like I talk about this mechanism. It’s painful. It’s almost like just like when you work it out really hard.

It’s like it’s dysphoric when you’re doing it, but the afterward feeling is very euphoric. And I explained this mechanism and it’s really interesting because most people are familiar with like endorphins, right? That’s like pretty common, I think, word. To the general public, it’s oh yeah, endorphins, they make you feel good.

So endorphins bind to something called, it’s part of your body’s natural opioid system, and they bind to something called the mu opioid receptor, which is the same like receptor [00:27:00] that things like morphine target, and it’s, it’s this feel good neurochemical that also has anti, pain effects.

So it’s it alleviates pain. But what’s really interesting is that there’s also something called dynorphin, which is also part of the body’s natural opioid system. And it is responsible. It’s that dysphoric feeling and it binds to a receptor called kappa opioid. And when you’re exercising really hard, when you’re working out or when you’re in this, severe heat or when you’re eating something spicy, that’s what you’re dysphoric feeling.

That’s what you’re feeling. And here’s the interesting thing. When you produce that dynorphin. And it binds to its receptor in your brain. What happens is these new opioid receptors, which actually bind to endorphins, they get upregulated. What that means is you make more of them, and they become sensitized to endorphins.

So what happens is the more pain you experience, The better the euphoric feeling is because you’re making more of those receptors to bind endorphin and the receptors become sensitized. So it’s like you don’t even need to, [00:28:00] 

Mike Matthews: it’s a 

Rhonda Patrick: payoff. And I think, like you said, anecdotally, if you think about it, like when you have a really good workout and then when you’re, when you feel that pain of a really good workout, the benefits afterwards, that, that high, you feel that endorphin high is much better.

Yes. Endorphins are also antidepressants. So I think that’s part of the reason why this hyperthermic conditioning through using the sauna can have antidepressant effects. And actually, dynorphin modulates the body temperature, much like norepinephrine does. If you inject dynorphin into a rat brain, it cools the body temperature.

So I think part of the reason why You express dynorphin when you’re working out really hard or when you’re in the sauna is because your body’s trying to cool itself down. So it’s all, it all makes sense. There’s all these mechanisms that explain it. It’s just a matter of people getting it out to the public and people understanding that there really is some science behind using heat stress to have a variety of different benefits on not only endurance, but on, lean muscle mass and as well as on, the benefits on the brain.[00:29:00] 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s awesome. And I guess, I guess the increased blood flow would also just improve recovery, I would assume, right? Like muscle recovery is repairing the damage or I 

Rhonda Patrick: would think as well. It’s something I know 

Mike Matthews: like just I don’t I’ve never seen any research on it, but it’s one of those things It’s also just known in the world of weightlifting body like if you let’s say you train your legs very hard They’re sore.

Obviously the muscles are damaged which doesn’t always relate necessary to the it’s not directly correlated to soreness But they just go together and then if you’re doing You know, if you do some light cardio over the next couple days, you’ll find these recover quite a bit faster You And that soreness goes away quite a bit quicker, and you can train your legs again just really from the increased blood flow.

Rhonda Patrick: Absolutely. See, that makes sense, and bringing things like nutrients, things like that to your muscles. Yeah, and taking waste 

Mike Matthews: away. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, the, like the anti inflammatory, pro inflammatory, all these things are important for wound healing. You need, they need to get to where they need to be, and having increased blood flow.

Absolutely helps with that. So yeah, I [00:30:00] would agree with you on that for sure. So yeah, this, it’s really exciting. This hyperthermic conditioning, I call it because it’s really, you’re conditioning your body to heat stress. Yeah, that’s awesome. 

Mike Matthews: And most gyms these days, if it’s I go to an LA fitness, that type of, or it’s just your standard type of gym club, they most have a sauna that everyone can go use.

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, that’s awesome. I’m really glad to hear that. Like my gym here and I go to a gym in Emeryville. In the Bay Area, and they have a steam room, and I tried it, and I hated it, because Sucks, right? Yeah, it’s smell, it’s the mildew, when you’re like, water, 

yeah. 

Rhonda Patrick: You need to keep those things immaculate, and I’ll just be honest with you, not a lot of gyms are really good at that.

I just, I’m not using Asana right now, and I really miss it. Really miss it. I’m probably gonna change gyms soon. But, it’s because I had so many positive benefits from it. I noticed that I would have, running PRs when I was using the sauna frequently, where it was just like my endurance.

I definitely noticed a difference, in my personal time. Yeah. And also, 

Mike Matthews: [00:31:00] have you looked into the infrared saunas at all? Do you know any? I’ve only heard. I don’t know if they have anything special. I just heard about it. I haven’t 

Rhonda Patrick: seen any studies directly comparing, infrared, far infrared, infrared versus dry sauna on the specific benefits that I’m, that I’ve pointed out in my article in terms of endurance, muscle mass, and length on the brain.

But, it’s something that I’m looking into to see. There’s not a lot of research in general. The reality is that in our, in our times money dictates, dictates a lot. Absolutely. And you can’t patent a sauna. So the volume of research on the benefits of the sauna is not even anything in comparison to like cancer drugs.

Yeah. You know what I mean? So I’m hoping that, this, I can help instigate more research on the use, the benefits of the sauna. But really this, it’s just, it was hard for me to find, honestly, it wasn’t. Yeah. Yeah, it wasn’t readily available at my fingertips. It, the reality is infrared does, obviously elevates core body temperature.

Now, exactly the specific differences between doing like a dry sauna and that, and I can’t tell you. [00:32:00] Yeah, I’ve only 

Mike Matthews: heard things, but I’ve never been able to find any good research on it. So I just chalked it up to who knows. 

Rhonda Patrick: Some people like to make, Claims that are unsubstantiated.

Yeah, about like 

Mike Matthews: tissue healing and stuff. Yeah, maybe. 

Rhonda Patrick: Until I see some science, I can say something makes sense, but I can’t say definitively, yes, it’s better, yeah, absolutely. But I’ve been getting that question a lot, so I am going to try to see if I can find any research that, shows any differences between the two, but I just don’t know yet.

Mike Matthews: Okay, cool. Let me know if you find something I’m interested in. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, we’ll do. Because I think you can get, 

Mike Matthews: Even for a pretty good price, you can get, even for your home like a one person, they can get set up not just even infrared, but I think even just a dry sauna, one person, it’s not even that expensive if you have the space for it, put it in your garage or something.

Rhonda Patrick: Actually my in laws, my husband’s parents, they have, they actually have an infrared sauna in their garage. Oh, cool. It’s a two person one. Okay. And I think it cost them like a couple of thousand dollars. 

Yeah. 

Rhonda Patrick: But yeah, and you can get one person saunas or you can get dry saunas, infrared.

You can, there’s a variety of companies that [00:33:00] sell them. If you have space for it, yeah. I had space for it, 

Mike Matthews: yeah, if I had a house, if I had a house, I’d do it. I’d put it in the garage. Yeah. All right. 

Rhonda Patrick: Same for me, if I had a house, I’d be on that, yeah, so cool.

Mike Matthews: All right. So let’s now switch over to the subject of micronutrients and how they relate to performance. And it’s timely because the last podcast that I recorded and I just recently wrote an article on it, something I just talk about a lot was on the subject of clean eating, right? And in the bodybuilding world, of course, clean eating is, a lot of people equate that to like, You’re just eating lean protein and vegetables all day long.

Maybe like you’re gonna eat tilapia and asparagus seven times a day or something like that. Or, or you’re just very restricted. It’s 

Rhonda Patrick: not pretty bad. Yeah, it’s some of the 

Mike Matthews: diets that people go through, I don’t know how they do it. And, I’ve Basically, like my position on it has always been there are a ton of vitamins and minerals, essential type of nutrients your body needs for all different types of things.

You need to give your body that and, getting all those from food is hard enough. Even [00:34:00] if you stick to organic fruits and vegetables, which, there is some research out there showing, I think I’ve seen with different berries and stuff where like certain organic fruits and vegetables do have more nutrients in them.

And it’s not that bad. The unorganic are gonna kill you or something like that, but you can get more nutrients, out of certain organic fruits and vegetables. And, but you have to be like pretty You have to micromanage your diet a lot more than people would probably want to make sure they get everything they need just from food alone.

Which is why of course I recommend, a good multivitamin on top of whatever it is that you’re eating, but at the same time. Eating clean, a lot of people, they don’t understand that. It doesn’t mean that you’re automatically gonna get in shape. It doesn’t mean that you’re automatically going to lose fat.

Or build muscle because, there’s energy balance where you could eat, if you eat, if you’re burning 2, 200 calories a day worth of energy and you ate 2, 500 calories a day of the cleanest possible foods, you’re going to gain weight slowly. But surely it’s gonna happen. And then on the flip side of that, of course, is now if it [00:35:00] fits your macros crowd where if you’re familiar with that in the bodybuilding world, it’s like, it’s a thing these days where it’s like this great revelation that you could eat Doritos and pop tarts every day and still lose weight.

With no thought. Yeah, with no thought as to, nutrients that your body needs, it’s just macros, macros, macros, like I, gotta hit that. I have I have 100 carbs left and 50 fat, so I’m gonna eat this pint of ice cream or something stupid like that, right? 

Rhonda Patrick: Interesting. No, I wasn’t familiar with that.

Mike Matthews: There’s like pop tarts in particular for some reason are really popular with them. Like the, or it gets the ultimate post workout. I’ll have people email me like, should I eat a box of pop tarts after my workouts? And why what do you so yeah, I know this is an area that you’re very well educated in and I’m very curious what do you think are the big correlations between the foods you eat and actually how well you can perform?

And then I guess also for me [00:36:00] personally I definitely notice a difference in how I feel when I’m eating healthy foods as, I haven’t really, I’ve been eating, focusing on eating healthy foods for so long, I honestly don’t even remember what it’s like to eat a bunch of junk food, but if I think back, I can still remember.

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. The I’ve done a lot of the focus. A lot of my research and my postdoctoral research has been on the role of micronutrients like which are about, since 40 or so essential. vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids that you need to provide basically. And these things Through your diet, like the things that your body can’t just Yes.

Something that your body is not making, you need to provide them through your diet. And the reality is that the majority of the U. S. population does not provide them in their diet. And it’s really difficult to to get a broad spectrum of vitamins and minerals and essential fatty acids, just through your diet every single day, and I eat a very comprehensive, I try to get as many micronutrients, nutrients as I can for my diet, but the reality is that I also supplement in addition to that because [00:37:00] I just, I know that I’m not getting all of it.

In terms of, I think most people are familiar with you need, you need a lot of vitamins and minerals and micronutrients for health reasons, for longevity to age better, but I don’t think people realize that, yes, these things are also important for your performance.

You’ve got, your body is made up of proteins, and I’m not talking about the proteins you eat. I’m talking about you have genes in your body. Genes make proteins, enzymes in your body, and these proteins are what are doing everything that they’re doing. They’re There’s proteins in your mitochondria that are important for metabolism.

There’s proteins in your kidney cells that are important for detoxification. There’s proteins in your liver, proteins in your heart. This is your body, that’s, this is how you are alive. And there’s, now these proteins need They 

Mike Matthews: regulate a whole bunch of things. physiological processes.

Exactly. 

Rhonda Patrick: That’s exactly what they’re doing, ranging from your brain to your heart function to, the detoxification to your freaking metabolism. So it’s, and these proteins, they require what’s called cofactors [00:38:00] and these cofactors are minerals and their vitamins, magnesium, zinc, copper, iron.

These are all co factors, B vitamins. These are all co factors for proteins and enzymes in your body. Vitamin B. Vitamin D is something that, I’ve done extensive research on and it’s a, it gets converted into a steroid hormone that regulates the expression of over 900 different genes in your body.

We’re talking about 900 different physiological processes in your body that depend on enough vitamin D presence. 

Mike Matthews: Out of what, like 25, 000 or something, right? It’s only 

Rhonda Patrick: 24 of your human genome. It’s crazy, and 70 percent of the US population doesn’t meet the requirements for adequate levels of vitamin D, which is considered to be 30 nanograms per milliliter.

In serum levels of 25 hydroxy vitamin D, which is actually the precursor to the hormone, but it’s what people measure. It’s a stable form of vitamin D, so if you’re not getting enough vitamin D and you don’t think your performance is being, affected by that, just [00:39:00] think of it. So you’re saying that out of 900 different genes this steroid hormone regulates, you don’t think one of them is important for your performance.

Really? That seems far fetched. So that, that’s just something to think about. We’re talking about, I can’t even talk about 900 different genes. Do I have to say any more about vitamin D? Another one that’s really widespread to 

Mike Matthews: figure out, I take 10, 000 IUs a day, probably more than I need, whatever, don’t care, but.

I think probably for the average person, like if you want to be safe, maybe 3, 4, 000 a day would probably just be a good baseline. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, I personally take 4, 000 IUs a day and my levels are about 53 nanograms per milliliter. I recommend getting your levels tested. It’s such a cheap test. Anyone that has health insurance, your health insurance pays for it.

Yeah. But if you don’t have health insurance, it’s less than 50 bucks. I’ve seen them for 25 years. I should just 

Mike Matthews: go get tested. I know I’m higher than I need to be. I know, to reach toxicity, I think you have to take 50, 000 IUs a day for 2 months or something like that. So I’m not worried about that, but.

Rhonda Patrick: They’ve [00:40:00] shown you can have toxicity by, it depends on body weight, first of all. But 10, 000 IUs a day can show some toxicity in terms of hypercalcemia. This is the, my main concern with vitamin D. So obviously if you’re lean the toxicity levels, you can reach them at a lower because it’s fat soluble.

Yeah. So it doesn’t 

Mike Matthews: get sucked up by body fat. 

Rhonda Patrick: It doesn’t get, it’s getting, if it’s, if you’re, if you have a lot more body fat, then it’s not being released into your bloodstream as readily. So it’s less bioavailable. But the problem is that if you have too much vitamin D you can absorb.

So vitamin D helps you absorb calcium and you can absorb like you’re basically become very efficient at absorbing calcium, but which means you have higher levels of calcium in your bloodstream. Now, if you’re doing this for years, it’s just going to be the 

Mike Matthews: case also with. Someone like me eating a lot of protein.

 Doesn’t, I think a scoop away. Protein is like 50 percent of the RDI of calcium alone. 

Rhonda Patrick: Wow. Yeah. So see that. So maybe, someone like you, I’m 

Mike Matthews: going down to 5000. You’ve convinced me 

Rhonda Patrick: because here’s the thing. If you have too much calcium in your blood over time, you get calcification of [00:41:00] arteries, vascular system, which can cause neurodegenerative disease, heart disease.

So yeah. You don’t want a bunch of calcium in your bloodstream. And, if you look at some of the they’ve done longevity studies, and there’s a couple of perspective studies they’ve done where they’ve looked at vitamin D levels, serum vitamin D levels, and all cause mortality, and what they find is that those with the lowest all cause, or sorry, the lowest levels of vitamin D, are the most likely to die early, so they have all 

Mike Matthews: kinds of diseases and stuff.

Rhonda Patrick: All kinds, a wide spread of diseases. But also what’s interesting is that it’s a U shaped curve. Those with the highest levels of vitamin D were also most likely to die from all causes. And I think that’s because of the people that are taking way, way too much vitamin D. Are getting calcification in their arteries.

And so what they found is that people that had levels between milliliter, which I call the vitamin D sweet spot had the lowest all cause mortality. And I think it’s because you really, you don’t want too much vitamin D, yeah, you don’t want too 

Mike Matthews: much of any, 

Rhonda Patrick: yeah, too much. 

Mike Matthews: Drink too much water and you die.

Rhonda Patrick: Anyway, so [00:42:00] getting your levels tested is a good thing. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s good advice. And I’m going down to 5, 000. 

Rhonda Patrick: Nice. Okay. This gets back to I live in 

Mike Matthews: Florida. If I live in Sunmore, I’m just always inside typing on a computer. So even take it? You’re in Florida. I’m like, no, I’m actually in an office.

I could be in Siberia. There’s no difference. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, me too. I’m in California and it’s but see, the thing is, first of all, I’m a woman, which means I’m like concerned about skin aging. So when I do go out in the sun, I am slathered up in sunscreen. Like I wear sunscreen every day when I go out.

And I’m only outside All 

Mike Matthews: the chemicals? All the bad stuff in that shit? 

Rhonda Patrick: Oh titanium dioxide is what I use. It’s not 

Mike Matthews: Oh, G Geron. 

Rhonda Patrick: I don’t do my, I do make my own skin cream, but I do not make my own sunscreen. Oh, 

Mike Matthews: okay. Actually, I read an article on that. I had done some research. There are some interesting natural solutions to, because some of the stuff you buy in the stores, yeah. Okay, fine. Yeah. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, titanium dioxide is a mineral and it really, all it does is reflect the light. Yeah. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: That was recommended if you were going to make your own. It was like, I don’t remember now, it was a while ago, it was titanium dioxide and I think it was there was like coconut oil [00:43:00] also helped a little bit and a couple other things you can mix together and make your own.

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. So anyways, but I’m with you. I never go, I’m always at my computer or in the lab, it’s even though I’m in California, I’m not out in the sun. And even if you do live in a sun, a place where you get sunshine. It also depends on the latitude. Yeah, you have to And how much 

Mike Matthews: skin you have exposed and for how long.

Rhonda Patrick: Exactly. If you have melanin, which is a natural sunscreen, there’s a variety of factors that regulate, how much vitamin D you can make. Definitely. So It’s just, it’s easy to supplement now your body, making it in your skin is more efficient. You actually do absorb more, a hundred percent of it as opposed to 60%.

Yeah. 

Rhonda Patrick: But still, supplementing, you’re still, you’re able to get your levels up to an adequate status. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: I guess the same thing goes right for the various vitamins and minerals where some vitamins and minerals in their natural forms are better absorbed by the body probably because of cofactors like, like vitamin C and bioflavonoids, whereas other synthetic vitamins like folic acid Tends to work better than the natural form.

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, folic acid is definitely an [00:44:00] example, one that seems to be really efficient. I like to get, I try to get as many vitamins and minerals from my diet as I can. Yeah, me too. Yeah, one way I do that is by I have a Vitamix. And 

every 

Rhonda Patrick: morning I do I do kale, spinach, chard, two carrots, a tomato, avocado frozen berries, an apple, almond milk, and then I’ll do a banana too for like consistency.

But, and every single morning I make 64 ounces of it. I get 32 and my husband gets 32. And so then I have a huge I’ve got a broad, range of color, colors and different micronutrients that are present in those vegetables. For example magnesium is at the center of a chlorophyll molecule.

So that means any plant, chlorophyll is what gives plants their green color. Sure. So any plant that’s green is going to be high in magnesium. Kales, zinc, all those dark green leafy vegetables, they have a lot of magnesium in them. Vitamin K is part of the phosphorus source of plants, so green plants have vitamin K.[00:45:00] 

Vitamin K is really important. Which is, yeah, another one, 

Mike Matthews: like D, where it’s you look at the research coming in probably the last decade on K, that a lot of people are like, yeah, to meet the RDI is fine, but there are benefits to going above it. 

Rhonda Patrick: So some of our research is that what happens is most, most people, there’s different proteins in your body that are required, to function for short term survival like clotting.

You need to have your clotting working properly. If you don’t have your clotting working properly, which vitamin K is important for, you’re going to hemorrhage out and bleed out. You could, you can die of a hemorrhage. Internal, that’s something that you need to have working. So any proteins that, vitamin K is a cofactor for a lot of clotting factors.

So any vitamin K you get from your diet is going to go to those proteins because your body knows that it needs it to survive. However, There’s other proteins in your body, which are essential to prevent calcification of your arteries. And matrix GLAW protein is one good example. It requires vitamin K2, but the thing is that, preventing calcification of your arteries is a long term [00:46:00] health consequence.

It’s not something that you’re going to worry about until you’re in your fifth, decade, fifth or sixth decade of life. So your body says, you know what, I only get so much vitamin K a day. Where am I going to put it? I’m going to give it to those proteins that I need. to not bleed out. And and that makes sense.

So what happens is, if you’re, even though you’re getting vitamin K, you may not be getting enough vitamin K because And 

Mike Matthews: what’s even I guess it’s K is, if, where it’s a little bit harder to get in terms of a diet, right? I know K, like you said, DART, but isn’t that one that 

Rhonda Patrick: So K1, vitamin K1 is found in, in, in green plants and K1 gets converted into K2 in the liver, and K2 is what’s important for those proteins I was talking about that are for bone health.

Mike Matthews: For bone health. It’s also related to bone health, 

Rhonda Patrick: right? Exactly, also related to bone health, exactly, and the thing is that you can get like fermented, some fermented foods have K2, I think nato is like a Japanese, oh yeah, I’ve heard 

Mike Matthews: of that. Yeah, 

Rhonda Patrick: I bet it’s [00:47:00] really. Getting vitamin K2 is not easy.

Yeah. Very source. Yeah. But eating a lot of green, dark green vegetables, you will get K1, K1 gets converted into K2. You can also, get, take a nato supplement, they have these K2 supplements that you can take. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Or you could supplement with K1, 

Rhonda Patrick: exactly. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Cool. So what would you say for what are a couple of micronutrients that are directly going to impact performance, whether it be endurance or, 

Weightlifting? We talked a little bit about vitamin D and that it affects all kinds of things. 

Rhonda Patrick: So I think one, one micronutrient that would directly relate to performance is magnesium.

And the reason for that is so magnesium is an essential cofactor for repair enzymes DNA repair enzymes. And this is important for your mitochondria. It’s important to prevent cancer, but we’re not talking about cancer, we’re talking about performance. Yeah. Mitochondria. Because of all the 

Mike Matthews: mutations, like if you have mutations that occur like in the wrong.

Places and you’re screwed. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, and that’s a different topic. Yeah. [00:48:00] Yeah. No, I know. I 

Mike Matthews: know. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, but in terms of like performance They’ve shown that like high intensity training when you’re lifting weights, you know when you’re doing this high intensity training What happens is you increase the biogenesis of new mitochondria in your muscle cells?

And in order to increase the biogenesis of new mitochondria your mitochondria has its own genome and it has to replicate its DNA and these DNA enzymes that replicate the DNA require magnesium as a cofactor. So really, While you’re working out to make more mitochondria, which is the reason why you’re making more mitochondria are what’s producing ATP.

So as you’re working out, you’re breathing in more oxygen. Oxygen then gets coupled to metabolism. Things like when you eat glucose, it gets converted into pyruvate, goes into the mitochondria, and is used through the Krebs cycle to make energy. It’s coupled, this energy is coupled to Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: mitochondria are like the little energy generators in the cell 

Rhonda Patrick: space, right?

Yeah. So this is all happening when you’re working out, And magnesium is important [00:49:00] to actually make new mitochondria, which are important for your performance. In addition to that, when you’re working out the mitochondria, because your mitochondria are working harder during a workout, the mitochondria are the source, a big source of oxidative stress, meaning they, they’re leaking out, free oxygen radicals.

They’re leaking out all kinds of oxid, oxidative products, which damage. Not only your mitochondria, but the damage of the proteins. And Magnesium is required to repair that, that damage to the mitochondrial genome. To make sure that your mitochondria And that would be 

Mike Matthews: muscle damage as well, obviously.

Rhonda Patrick: Exactly. To the, yeah, to the fibers themselves. It directly correlates to your muscle damage. The amount of, mitochondria are in your muscle cells. And they’re really important for muscle function, so they’re important to build muscle, they’re important to prepare muscle, and these things all require magnesium.

And 56 percent of the U. S. population is not getting adequate levels of magnesium, and athletes are particularly susceptible to low magnesium because it’s also something that you do sweat out. [00:50:00] I think that’s one micronutrient that directly relates to performance that most people don’t realize and most people don’t realize that they’re actually not getting enough of.

And what are 

Mike Matthews: some good sources of magnesium, like where you mentioned dark green veggies. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, the, yes, the good dietary sources, now this is this is another layer of complication that scientists are complicated, it’s, and that’s because magnesium is bound, it’s a lot of minerals, magnesium, zinc these things are bound to something called phytates.

Which is part of the Which I block, 

Mike Matthews: they block absorption or am I the Yes, 

Rhonda Patrick: yeah, you’re got, you pretty much got it. So phytates, we can’t absorb phytates. We can’t digest them. And things that, things that have phy or have the minerals complex to the phytates, we don’t absorb them as well because we can’t digest the phytates.

And so there’s the minerals and complex with it. Boom, there goes the minerals. 

But 

Rhonda Patrick: the thing is that things like oats or rice, these things are really high in, in magnesium and zinc. But they have a really high Almonds! Almonds 

Mike Matthews: have a bit too, Israel. 

Rhonda Patrick: Almonds have good yeah, I [00:51:00] like almonds for magnesium as well.

Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: I’m all about almond butter. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yes, me too. Almond butter, almond milk and just raw almonds, in general. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I like rice milk as well just because it’s easy carbs and, I do like a smoothie after I work out and use rice milk. It’s 25 grams carbs per cup. 

Rhonda Patrick: Oh, cool.

Yeah, I usually use almond milk. I haven’t looked into what’s 

Mike Matthews: Almond milk’s great because there’s just not much in terms of calories. It gives you some taste and you don’t have to, it just adds maybe, what, 20 calories per cup or something. 

Rhonda Patrick: Ah, I see. So you’re looking for more of the balance between calories and some micronutrients.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. We got, when, especially when you’re working with certain numbers, you’re like, alright, how do I want to spend, it’s like a bank account, like, how do I want to spend these, Spend these calories. 

Rhonda Patrick: But yeah, I think those, I think the magnesium the almonds and the greens are my favorite way to get the magnesium.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Rhonda Patrick: But Oh, spinach 

Mike Matthews: too, right? Spinach, because obviously that’s one of the greens, but that’s like a commonly eaten, and it has a lot. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, spinach and kale, Swiss chard, all those green leafy vegetables. Definitely and B vitamins are also really important for performance.

And I know most people aren’t deficient in B [00:52:00] vitamins, but the thing is that sometimes you can have polymorphisms, I think a large percentage of Canadians have a polymorphism in the methyl tetrahydrofolate reductase gene, which prevents your body from using B vitamins as a source of methylation, which is a really important epigenetic regulator in your body, and actually, it’s, what happens is these people with this mutation have high homocysteine levels, which is bad, but, B vitamins are also good.

cofactors for mitochondria to work properly. Getting your B vitamins is good. I personally take a B complex also the way as you age, your body can’t use B vitamins as efficiently and you actually require more of them. So it’s, there’s so many complications, essentially, you may not be deficient in B vitamins, but it doesn’t hurt to make sure you’re getting Yeah, they’re water 

Mike Matthews: soluble, so you’ll just pee out the excess, right?

You 

Rhonda Patrick: do. It’s water soluble, so you do pee out the excess. But the idea is thinking about micronutrients. If you think about your body as a system and, you’ve got all these different enzymes and proteins in your [00:53:00] body that are important for performance, they’re important for longevity then you start to think about micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals in a different way because you’re thinking about, these things are important.

They’re cofactors for these proteins and enzymes in your body. And if you don’t give them their cofactors they’re not working optimally. 

Mike Matthews: And that’s 

Rhonda Patrick: the 

Mike Matthews: key is often like luckily they don’t realize, sure, you can go in and you can work at your gym and work out. And if you’re, maybe your diet isn’t that great, but if you at least are getting enough protein and you’re eating a bare minimum of fats that your body needs to do what it needs to do in terms of.

Cellular health and whatever like, yeah, sure. You can make progress, but optimal is really the word and also, in the long term health where that’s you, that’s not like you said, it’s not at the top of most people’s minds, but it will be, when you’re 50 and if you’re having serious health problems, it will be at the top of your mind.

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. Let me tell you, let me tell you, there is nothing better. Then cancer prevention and you know the best way you can do that is by as by providing yourself [00:54:00] with all the micronutrients You need for these repair systems in your body to work properly. You don’t you know Want to get you don’t want to get cancer is ultimately not something that we generally think about what as we’re younger But yeah as we start to get into the fifth decade, it’s something you will think about and you just don’t want it You know, it’s just not something you want 

Mike Matthews: Totally.

Yeah, I think it’s unfortunate. There was a recent, it comes around, it seems to come around every couple of years. There’s this big sensationalist headline about how multivitamins don’t work or multivitamins kill people or whatever. And which then it, I, of course it was that, was it the select study one that just came out recently?

And I got emailed a hundred thousand times about it. And those types of things. Or any, if you look at the research of what they were basing that on, you start really digging into it, and you, and then it becomes, it’s really just a joke. And it’s almost I just wonder, it just seems so biased, it seems like there’s such an agenda with things like that, because you can find, and I’ve actually, I have a little copy paste file of all kinds of replies, and I’ve, [00:55:00] for, you can find, I think I have, I don’t know.

Rhonda Patrick: Have you seen my rebuttal to that campaign? My video? 

Mike Matthews: No, I didn’t know you had one. Oh, 

Rhonda Patrick: goodness. I did a, this is, this, I did a rebuttal to the, this whole multivitamins are not only useless, but they’re bad. And it’s on my, my YouTube 

Mike Matthews: channel. I’ll link it in this I’m gonna make a blog post for this.

I’ll link that video too, just so people can watch it. 

Rhonda Patrick: I basically ripped them a new one. I analyzed. I personally read over 30 studies that were involved in that, and I identified a variety of common methodological errors in the study, and I point them out. Sticker and bullshit 

Mike Matthews: complying oh, did you take your multivitamin over the phone?

Yeah, sure. How do you feel? Oh, I feel like shit. Okay, good. 

Rhonda Patrick: Exactly. If you’re giving someone a vitamin or mineral supplement and you’re trying to look at an end point to see if anything changes, you have to measure something like a biochemical biomarker in the blood. Yes. Oh, yeah. Is it even 

Mike Matthews: elevating?

Is it even doing anything? Or does it just know it? 

Rhonda Patrick: Are you giving them an adequate dose? If you’re still not [00:56:00] elevating their levels to above, above what’s considered adequate, then how can you say it has an effect? It’s that you designed a crap, your multivitamin didn’t have a high enough dose of these vitamins and minerals.

Yeah. And also with the Which is very 

Mike Matthews: common. You go look at that is the supplement game. It’s ironic say that because I have a line of supplements. But the supplement game is to underdose the shit out of everything and be as exaggerated as possible. Marketing is possible.

And that applies to really every kind of supplement that’s out there. But with multivitamins, that’s the standard thing is over, overplay the value of the vitamins and minerals. Yes, they’re valuable, but I mean like some of these companies, they just, they really are grasping at straws, the kind of claims they make.

And then anything else that’s added is the, Just include so little of something that is just not even going to do anything, but refer to research, showing all these great benefits if you had 20 times the dosage. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, some of these multivitamins, they require you to take six pills to get what they have on the back of, they don’t provide this much.[00:57:00] 

And it’s who’s going to take six pills of just a multivitamin a day? I take a lot of vitamins. But I get a multivitamin that is pretty, it’s a one a day where it’s like it’s got pretty adequate levels of various vitamins and minerals. Yeah, I do it two a 

Mike Matthews: day. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, because it’s like, I’m already taking, fish oil, omega 3s, a B complex, vitamin D.

Yes, spirulina, I 

Mike Matthews: like spirulina. 

Rhonda Patrick: Oh, do you? Yeah, spirulina is a good source of microalgae oil. But yeah check out my rebuttal to the multivitamin. I’ll check 

Mike Matthews: it out, I’ll link it too, I’ll link it in the blog post. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, it’s it’s pretty good. I also educate people on why if they have cancer, for example, you shouldn’t take high doses of folic acid because folic acid, folate in your body is required to make one of your DNA nucleotides called thymine.

And cancer cells are rapidly proliferating and they need to make new DNA to make new cells. So you’re basically just 

Mike Matthews: feeding. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, you’re feeding. It’s like fuel to the fire. In fact, it’s methamethotrexate is a folic acid inhibitor. And so it’s a very [00:58:00] potent chemotherapeutic agent. So it’s you don’t give someone cancer, who has cancer, high doses of folic acid, because you’re going to accelerate the cancer growth.

But the converse is true. If you have people that are healthy, that don’t have adequate levels of folic acid, or, folate, because what happens is that you need folate to make thiamine. If you don’t have enough of it, you’ll start to get breaks in your DNA, which will cause DNA damage, which will cause mutations.

Mike Matthews: Now that can back up down that cancer. 

Rhonda Patrick: So it’s you can get cancer if you don’t have enough of it, or if you have cancer you shouldn’t be taking, high doses of it. Basically, I feel like they did a really terrible job at educating the public, and so I tried to set things straight.

Yeah, that’s great. I’m going to 

Mike Matthews: check it out. I’ll link it as well. And, because that’s I look at taking multivitamin as a, I guess kind of an insurance policy just for the future. If I were to deplete my, if I were to become, noticeably deficient in vitamins and minerals, I definitely would feel that, in performance for sure.

But then, it’s also, I think there, at least this is my experience just working with various people, [00:59:00] especially people that go from eating a lot of junk food, which more of the problem You have chemical additives and things, but then you also have for instance, if you’re eating a lot of sugar.

Sucrose is not as evil as you like, it’s not oh, eat sugar and then you get fat and die. More of the problem is that if you’re eating a lot of sugar in your diet, a lot of those foods are not going to have nutrition, because what type of foods have a lot of added sugar? Just crap.

When people switch from eating like that, to eating nutritious foods in all cases. I get emails all the time where people are amazed at how much better they feel, how much better their workouts are. And that’s what they’re feeling. It’s from the micronutrients. I 

Rhonda Patrick: agree. And here, the thing is it’s, I feel like a lot, a huge part of the health and fitness and, community, probably the majority of it, it focuses on.

macronutrients, what you should not be eating, what, don’t eat sugar, don’t eat these processed foods, make sure you eat lots of protein. Or even just 

Mike Matthews: ridiculous things like don’t eat potatoes [01:00:00] because they’re starchy carbs. Potatoes are the most nutrient dense foods you can eat. Potatoes are awesome.

What are you talking about? 

Rhonda Patrick: The thing is that people don’t focus on these micronutrients that you’re not getting. And it’s like you said, these are important for, a wide variety of physiological processes in your body and, your mitochondria are the center, they’re the center stage of all things.

Everything in your body needs ATP to work. Every single thing in your body. And, vitamins and minerals, there’s so many different vitamins and minerals that are required for mitochondrial function. Bottom line. If you want to work out better, if you want your performance better, You know, make sure you’re getting your micronutrients.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I totally agree. I know 

Rhonda Patrick: you’re already, you guys are already focused on the protein. Obviously, you need protein. Yeah. Someone, I don’t think I need to talk about that. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah, in the competitive world of bodybuilding, I know that the, that whole little trend right now of eating crappy food and getting lean or whatever yeah, that works for getting to a certain point.

Short 

Rhonda Patrick: term too. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Short term as well. It’s short 

Rhonda Patrick: term thinking. It is 

Mike Matthews: totally. It’s immediate [01:01:00] gratification. It’s Oh, I can eat this Ben and Jerry’s and this Klondike bar tonight because it fits my macro. It’s yeah. Okay. Keep on doing that for a year and let’s see how your body’s doing. Which, I guess you can counterbalance some of the unhealthy things.

Like I always try to. I don’t my version of junk food is like going to a restaurant and just ordering the foods I want to eat. Like I don’t do junk food. I don’t, I’m not into like fast food or anything, so it’s not even really junk food. But if somebody does want to, okay, if you want to go eat some ice cream once a week, there’s nothing wrong with that.

You’re not going to mess up your health, especially if. You have your routine in of where the vast majority of your calories come from healthy, nutrient dense sources. And, if you’re exercising, and you’re exercising, and you’re doing so much for your body, it can deal with a little bit of crap here and there.

A 

Rhonda Patrick: little bit of crap here and there is good. It’s a hormetic response also. It goes back to that hormesis where you eat a little bit of crap, a little bit toxic, a little bit of stress, activate stress response. You know 

Mike Matthews: what I’ve actually noticed from people I always had [01:02:00] that where I would just every now and then I’ll go it’s usually once a week I’ll go and I’ll eat, my dinner’s going to include a dessert.

And eat a dessert, it’s probably going to be a pretty big dessert. So it’s going to be like a lot of sugar. Or, every once in a while I’ll go. I haven’t done it recently, but there’s go get a five guys burger or something like that. But by doing that, it’s never really bothered me.

Like I can go do that and then, feel fine. And it’s, I don’t feel any different. But I’ve spoken to people that have gone really strict, like no sugar for extended periods of time, for months where they didn’t touch anything that would be considered a dirty or not good food.

And then when they do go have it again, it like wrecks them. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. I think a lot of that also has to do with your gut microbia because when you change your diet extensively like that, where you’re eating, vegetable or meats and you have different, my oda and, bacteria that are in your gut.

And then when you start to eat something else, you’re got Your gut’s not used to digesting it. It’s not, so it’s it literally causes inflammation, at the level [01:03:00] of your gut. 

Yeah. 

Rhonda Patrick: It’s that’s the first place, the food you eat, the first thing it sees is your gut, right?

Think some of that has to do with the level of your gut. 

Mike Matthews: That would make sense, yeah, for sure. 

Rhonda Patrick: But yeah, I’m not, I haven’t done a lot of reading on this eating 

Mike Matthews: Just Google if it fits your macros and then you can 

Rhonda Patrick: be aware of 

Mike Matthews: it. 

Rhonda Patrick: I’m not sure I agree with it all, but I don’t really know what they’re stating yet to say I don’t.

It’s 

Mike Matthews: a basic, basically what it is. It’s flexible dieting. It’s okay you want to lose fat. Cool. That means that we’re going to look at how much energy you’re burning, and we’re going to put you in a slight calorie deficit let’s say a 20 percent deficit. Therefore, that is going to equal x cal x, x number of calories a day.

We’re going to break that down into 40 percent of those calories are going to come from protein, 40 percent are going to come from carbs, and 20 percent are going to come from fats. There you go. So let’s say, let’s just randomly say it’s 150 protein, 150 carb, and 40 fat, let’s just say grams per day.

There, and then you just, you go figure out what those foods are. Where do you want to get, you want to get those [01:04:00] carbs from Pringles? Go for it. You want to get that fat from ice cream? Go for it. You want to get some of your protein from ice cream? Go for it. So it’s that’s the concept.

And yeah, 

Rhonda Patrick: I don’t know if I agree with that. I think you’re going to be, and you’re going to end up deficient in a lot of micronutrients. Definitely. 

Mike Matthews: No question. Absolutely. So the piece of what they were they initially if somebody comes from the camp of it’s almost like the cult of community where they think that you can’t ever oh, you want to lose some fat?

You better never eat ice cream ever because if you do it’s gonna mess a lot like, you know There’s a lot of bad information out there in terms of you know That losing fat or building muscle is all about what foods you eat Not how much like it they it’s it they come from that camp to wait a minute.

Are you serious? Like I can 

Rhonda Patrick: it’s about getting your body your but your metabolism getting it as a fat

If you have any questions, [01:05:00] please feel free to reach out to me, and I’ll be happy to help you. To me, it comes down to absolutely making all these things work the best they can work. And in order to do that, you need to give them the fuel they need to do it. 

Mike Matthews: Definitely. Yeah. And the metabolic, I guess metabolic adaptation would be the word where whether, that’s where you want your, I guess technically you want your metabolism to be running as inefficiently as possible, meaning you want it to burn as much energy as possible in the fitness world.

’cause you wanna be able to eat like ideally. For most people that are working out, they would be able to eat a lot of food every day and stay lean. Whereas I guess an efficient metabolism would be the opposite, right? It’d be like the metabolism that could keep you alive on the smallest amount of energy possible.

Because you can slow your metabolism down quite a bit if you just, systematically reduce your calories over time. You could go from, and I’ve run into this, it goes both ways where There was a guy he came, I’ve been [01:06:00] working with him, he was at like 210 pounds, give or take.

He was eating like 1300 calories a day, working out 5 times in 5 days a week, lifting weights. That’s nothing. 1, 300 calories a day? I was like, what are you doing, dude? So we had him slowly increase his calories over the course of two months because he had been stuck at that 1, 300 for so long, to where he got up to being able to eat 2, 700 a day and he was two pounds lighter in the end.

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. I, when I, when you said inefficient and efficiency, like in, in science, the way we think about it, I guess maybe it’s a little different than what the fitness community is. 

Mike Matthews: I’m probably saying it wrong. I don’t know. I’m just throwing it out. 

Rhonda Patrick: For us, I’ve done a lot of, I did six years of research on mitochondria, and so when I say efficiently, what I mean is so people that are, when your mitochondria are inefficient, this is in people that are like metabolically deficient.

They’re not responsive. They’re usually overweight, obese, like metabolic 

Mike Matthews: syndrome type 

Rhonda Patrick: stuff. Yeah. So what happens is their mitochondria, even though they have a bunch of energy and they keep eating and keep giving their mitochondria more and more energy, their mitochondria cannot use that [01:07:00] energy.

And that’s what we call inefficient. So when I say efficient, what I mean is you can keep giving it substrates, keep giving it glucose, protein, and it’s just, boom, it’s using it so that’s I like that 

Mike Matthews: better then that’s what I want, that’s good. 

Yeah. 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah.

Yeah. But, sometimes these terms get popularized and they’re switched a little bit. Totally. But in science, when we say an efficient mitochondria, what we mean is, your mitochondria burn some shit, we’re talking about. So 

Mike Matthews: cool. Okay, great. This was awesome.

This is very informative. I think I think everyone’s going to really like what we went over because well, like I said, it’s just very, it’s a hot topic right now. The song stuff is great. I want to start, like I said, the steam room is it’s tougher, but I’m going to start, I’m going to start doing it some more.

Yeah, stuff is awesome just because it’s something that I constantly am harping on. Because I just, I don’t like the whole, eat junk and get shredded and you’ll have, and also it’s pushed a lot and you have a lot of these guys that are popular on social media networks like Instagram or whatever that are also on drugs and they don’t talk about that.

You have guys on anabolics, you have [01:08:00] guys on cutting drugs and stuff, that, yeah, they’re getting shredded and they’re, posting their meals of, like, all this shit that they’re eating. And, yeah, and in some cases, the drugs that When you take, when you are, know what you’re doing with drugs, it’s not safe, but if you’re doing it right, you almost can’t out eat your body like you need to eat 6, 000 calories a day just to not lose weight.

If you’re a big muscular guy, it’s outrageous with some of these guys do that it’s pushed a lot by that crowd to where it’s, the people don’t realize like what is actually going on behind the scenes, 

Rhonda Patrick: right? No, of course. Yeah. And then, so then cleaning 

Mike Matthews: Gets demonized or eating healthy foods gets demonized a little bit.

It’s this thing of the past and now, the new thing is like, all you gotta do is hit macros. 

Rhonda Patrick: I think, instead of thinking about it like clean eating, what does that mean? I know. That’s a big, broad, sweeping term. You got to think about, it’s like you want to get your micronutrients, which is, bottom line.

And if you’re going to, get your micronutrients, then you’re going to have to get them from, I guess from a lot of clean [01:09:00] sources, but. Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: foods that would be typically, considered clean. But that, here’s the good thing about it though, is when you start looking at it that way, and you start looking at, okay, here, I need to get this, here are the micronutrients.

The key, the essential vitamins and minerals and fatty acids, things that I need. What kind of foods can I get those from? And you start looking at that list and it’s a lot of, there’s a lot of great stuff in there. It’s not like a three, three foods that you have to eat every day. 

Rhonda Patrick: No it’s just eating a, in some cases like the Mediterranean diet and sense where you’re just getting, a lot of healthy fats, healthy proteins and vegetables and, yeah it’s all really interesting and the hyperthermic conditioning is a new fitness hack that I’m really, excited that, is out in the public now and I hope to see people using it. And I’d love to hear, anecdotes from, people’s personal experiences with it as well.

Yeah, me too. Yeah. So if I, if people are interested in listening to me, I also have a podcast. Yeah, I was going to say, now 

Mike Matthews: how do people find you? 

Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. So I foundmyfitness. com. That’s awesome. I’m on iTunes so you can find my podcast. It would really help me, if you like what I have to say and you want to help me spread my word.

It [01:10:00] would help if you give me an iTunes review that helps to spread, yeah, I forget to ask that 

too. Yeah, me too. 

Rhonda Patrick: Me too. Yes. First what you need to do is you need to give Mike, a review and then you need to go ahead and give found my fitness a review muscle for life. I guess it’s your iTunes, right?

Yeah, exactly. I’ll also, 

Mike Matthews: I’ll link to all your stuff in the blog post too, but just so people listening know where 

Rhonda Patrick: to get it. Great. Yeah. And also if you want to go to found in my fitness. com and you can sign up for my newsletter and that’s where you’ll get my articles and my reference references.

And also you can, if you’d like to like me on Facebook, I really only have I don’t know. 1, 300 fan, like Facebook fans. So found my fitness, Facebook board slash found my fitness. If you want to listen to some of my stuff, I’m saying on Facebook as well. 

Mike Matthews: Cool. 

Rhonda Patrick: Awesome. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, definitely. All right.

Thanks a lot for taking the time and I’d love to have you on again sometime. It’s nice to speak to someone that knows what they’re talking about. 

Rhonda Patrick: Oh, I try. Those that I don’t know. Yeah, my pleasure. It was fun, Mike. Cool. Look forward to keeping in touch. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, sure thing.

Rhonda Patrick: All right. Take [01:11:00] care. 

Mike Matthews: Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www dot muscle for life. com where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written.

I release a new one almost every day. I release four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at musclefullife. com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.