Joe Rogan Experience #568 — Dr. Rhonda Patrick Transcript

Transcript

0:00 the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day the day before. E, is that what it is? Not mixed martial arts. I've seen probably clips or sport you know he he watches he knows everything about and uh he's not a big science guy so i try I've been to basketball games. Yes. So when you said something was moving inside of you, do you mean like you were emotionally

4:41 Yeah. Stop calculating the amount of damage that was going on to these people's brains. Irreversible damage. Right. Yes. you know, boxing, I don't think they can kick and you know so so it seems like there was a lot of other stuff going on that was very You've come from another planet and landed in the world of MMA for a day. Well, there is a thing called kickboxing.

7:35 me and stuff but i really i didn't know exactly what it was and muay thai is pretty wild actually That's so crazy. Are you like completely cultural norms that you're completely unaware of well a lot of sports things definitely the cover you know she's leaving him she started like who the fuck is she who's he who are they know some stuff's going down basically well the choking though it's not as dangerous i mean it's

10:52 up and you try to take the guy down. And then the person who they're trying to take down gets the But it's enough of an issue where it's starting to scare the shit out of me. you know because choking you, you know, you can because then that they're, because they're choking their opponent, now their opponent's motor control gets, you know, affected.

13:21 Well, they're glial cells, but astrocytes are a specific type of glial cells. They're really important. They do a lot of things for the brain, and they make up This is this oxidative phosphorylation mechanism that I've talked about before. yeah i don't think the you know the blows to the head you know people's heads are moving but fascinating, you know, I've been reading a lot about it. And, you know, these fighters,

16:36 So, um, I started reading about this, like what's going on. reactive oxygen species which i've talked about before which are released you know every every form a protective membrane around the brain and those cells start to die reactive oxygen species going to cause mutation and give me cancer. stranded breaks in dna it's just like you're damaging the DNA,

19:20 and then astrocytes, which like, you know, of his swollen edema head, and it's just unbelievable. So they're like, oh my God, the blood-brain barrier has been compromised. So they migrate up and they start trying to like plug up the hole so they're like oh my god this you know the blood-brain barrier has been compromised so they migrate up and they start trying to plug up the

20:59 That's just unbelievable, honestly. and when they start dying a dead cell you know in addition to the the microglia the immune system in And, you know, what happens even within like hours of an injury like that is you start to get accumulation of something called amyloid beta plaques in the brain. So, you know, traumatic brain injury and Alzheimer's, they have a lot in common

23:21 accumulate in the brain. So, amyloid beta plaques to accumulate in the brain. So amyloid beta plaques is one of the glucose metabolism and neurons and that they've you know looked at these plaques that are in the brains and they've they've even shown these microglia cells in the brain where now um you've got something like inside your neuron your brain to function. But what happens is, you know, traumatic brain injury and also just normal brain aging.

26:35 that's part of the reason. So two neurons, when you learn something, you form a synapse, You know, these people are losing a lot of cells, glial cells and neurons in their brain, And that's something that's that's really they found both of these things very prominently in in brains of people that have undergone TBI. that are, you know, going to make the cell die. But the cancer cells found a way to overcome that

29:39 saying no don't die yet don't die yet there's enough of that protein there to sort of balance within hours. So, like, the more injury that's happening, the more this is occurring. So, it's They all have these amyloid beta plaques that have accumulated in the brain. because when you're dealing with the very exact same right situation but brought on by trauma

32:33 because now you can't have energy. Well, things that are, you know, normal function don't get it so your metabolism is And then there's a noticeable dimness to the way they look, the way they talk. uh traumatic injuries they compound over years and they cause pugilistic dementia they cause of changes. Like, there's got to be an advantage. Polymorphisms aren't mutations in the sense where,

36:37 you have a dramatic, you know, increase in possibly getting breast cancer. need it and bringing it back to the gets to your cells that need it and of apo e3 which is good because apo e3 is like it's considered the normal one like but 25 percent So people that are fighters or NFL players, people that are any sort of trauma to the brain, And we're talking 25% of the population has this.

40:30 beta screws that up. But you can repair that damage by having like what's called neurite you have tbi when you have an injury the the brain actually increases apoey because it's like oh i cut off essentially god yeah so was that misinformed what she did um so i'm unfortunately tenfold and it could have just been a little error in the method so you know it's not like

43:35 And I found out that I actually have one allele of APOE4. So, and it's so funny because it's with your environment that that's going to shift you either into getting it or not um in what way bind to the A-beta plaque as well. And so it can't remove it. So you're talking about people that are the brain when you sleep. um in terms of the glymphatic system i don't i think that you know that seems to be a unique

46:54 You know, this is a new, Right? It's, you know, well, there's... the human brain's very complicated, and there's lots of little, you know, people that are doing research, they're looking at just little tiny aspect of this and this little... I mean, it's like they're accelerating their aging process in general. and start causing neuroinflammation. So, it's really like, they've even shown like if you

50:06 in your body, in your gut, you know, in the peripheral part of your body can affect your I'm sorry. do have a lot of inflammation in their gut and um you know having inflammation in your gut what's that gets into the brain literally stops serotonin from being released from the brain by activating the E2 series. Right. I got it. so probiotics are doing things like generating lactic acid which are does a lot of things one

54:17 it kill you so they're there and they're ready to you know fight off anything that's you know And it causes the same sort of cycle that I was talking about in the brain. Yeah, sugar does fuel bad bacteria in the gut. pathogenic bacteria which also break down the gut like that's what they do also um a lot of energy have a good diet i'm getting my micronutrients i'm not eating a bunch of sugary crap you know

57:44 And people that are obese or type 2 diabetic, they're in a constant repair state. you know all sorts of vitamins and minerals and vitamin d and fiber has some polyphenols it has What we find is that one publication that was done on lean people, lean people like immediately, in people that are healthy and i use lean as a marker for healthy i mean it's not entirely accurate but

1:00:52 decreased Alzheimer's, decreased damage in the brain going on. You know, glutathione is just also one of the early damaging events that happens just with normal brain aging, which is happening expressed, you're making more of it. So, that's a good thing. As we age, we decrease the expression. It's a regulated process. and it fuses with the lipid bilayer of the cell

1:04:27 and what is uh 400 milligrams like what is that like in a physical form like what would you see Right. But here's the thing. You can have it in pill form with liposome. that's using glutathione to do its thing so that's also important happening what they found was that if they put glutathione they actually because So I was wondering, well, so the thing,

1:08:33 of the scalp go under and get in but whether or not that can be done in humans i don't know like able to prevent like 70 of the cell death by giving that topical glutathione um so uh that was how costly is it's just not economically feasible in my mind right the the holding it under the The distribution method? Have there been studies on that Interesting.

1:11:51 Yeah. it has antioxidant activity itself aside from glutathione but it also increases the expression of all the glutathione wrong what do you usually say surcumin oh no i think it's curcumin i've just read it and tried it has antioxidant activity itself so it's like you know know, it's just like a triple whammy. mineral it's something foreign to the body you know polyphenols egcgs from green tea all these

1:14:49 It's detoxifying, whatever. high dose um it prevents you know the whole inflammatory response the edema intracranial the plaques form which happens within hours in after injury then you're talking about you know I haven't done a lot of reading on this, you know, to see what's out there in literature. But so don't take too much of it but yeah i haven't seen too much of it like i you know when i did

1:18:26 new neurons. a pretty high dose. And what they found was that it increased the proliferation of them by like, It's not just a great thing for people that have had an injury. It's a great thing for just normal the subventricular zone um this this study was really came out like less than two months ago large dose so like if you're taking like what what do you recommend as a dose like a thousand

1:21:27 Have dementia Joking around And flies But they did get smarter. So, but let's see, what was the other? And it's like, why is this sense of smell such a good predictor of you know And so, that's why also it's a predictor of Alzheimer's because you're literally losing the ability. understand why and this whole understanding the neural stem cells being having to replace it like

1:25:33 brain goes to the muscle and it stimulates stem cell proliferation and it does it in the and all that stuff decreases, we can't do it as well. differentiation factor and you know inject it into old mice and it would have the same effect neural stem cell uh capacity to make more of them can be you Yep. You know, that having one of those alleles, you're talking about a tenfold increased risk of screwing up your brain.

1:29:10 for that to happen because you're talking about possibly changing the lives of like you know 25 what we were talking about with denny and our friend right that that that is typical of you know and jumped on the back of the truck and fell. i mean this is a guy who had not expressed any issues as far as like there's a bunch of different does it say he had about his brain issue?

1:31:37 Yes. things like a good chunk of your life right and and and i did see one um press release or some some article that was like 74 out of 76 or something like nfl players or something somewhat that's impulsive behavior i mean that's like not that's not a normal thing you don't just like before they ever got any brain damage whatsoever they're impulsive people that's what led them to

1:34:04 not weighing out all the possible, you know know events that can occur and what's more likely to happen or not impulsivity. You know, serotonin is one of the things that happens, I've talked about this But I do know that it does play a very important role in that when you take away the serotonin, disinhibition occurs, which means disinhibition means now usually you're having inhibitory signals happen that say, okay, you know, you can't just go out and, you know, do something

1:36:05 crazy and committed suicide. And then there was a pro wrestler, and I don't know his name, but he did a murder-suicide. You inhibit the release of serotonin. can't do this like so you know i think it's very damaging in the respects of changing the behavior of these people, too, where they just become even more, you know, impulsive and aggressive. they become more adverse to harming others even at the expense of saving other more people

1:39:27 It seems that serotonin, if that really is what's going on, brain and doing it constantly you know because when you're constantly doing it then there's ssris are termed antidepressants because people who are on depressants they take these regulates He was like really angry like fuck everybody fuck this guy and like he would just say horrible things about people

1:41:57 Almost like they feel like that people, other people being happy is somehow taking something regulating their human neurochemistry yeah no there is a very complex interaction going on So epigenetics is changing the expression of their genes without actually altering the DNA nucleotide sequence, receptors you don't have as many and so the body is constantly it's like in a stressed state and

1:44:55 you know synthesis genes or their receptors and so they're already kind of vulnerable they're place and not up here where it needs to be. And then you add stressful environment. your brain either at the level of neurotransmitters or receptors or whatever they've shown that another so another thing that happens when you're uh cuddled when you're young um and they do a lot

1:47:27 like some epigenetic changes are happening where now they're not making as much so now they grow up for that vasopressin in their brain and they mate for life, were in monogamous relationships, that were married, had successful relationships versus i think it was happening at the level of the receptor yes they were making more of the receptors Yeah, they do.

1:50:38 in the context of biology um means that we we take a a piece of dna like a gene that does something but you're you're right there's always the variability the yeah the uh chaotic factor as much sex as bonobos for sure but bonobos have so much sex that they don't use them in captivity could give those coins and get fruit with it so the first thing they did was give the coins to

1:53:02 Well, it's prostitution is genetic. and licked and all that they grow up with more estrogen receptors in their brain and they become that cuddling they have increased epigenetically increased the expression of estrogen receptors in I think there's definitely a correlation between growing up in poverty, growing up without having that family there that love nurturing supportive

1:56:06 think that it should be uh extrapolated and sort of you know apply to humans and in hopes that we being raised in a family where let's say you know you know, you're from a single-parent family and your mom's working hard. diet's a really important one that you can change, you know, the whole ballgame, basically, going on, I think that trying to control what you can is really important. So, getting a good diet,

1:58:59 They don't really taste like candy. things that keeps coming up on my message board guys wanted to folks wanted to uh question you They're both an important part of the brain. take a bunch of, you know, mercury. ethanol backbone which is not recognized very well by pancreatic lipases in our small intestine I know Nordic Naturals is one. can be easily absorbed by the small intestine, for one.

2:02:36 bioavailability from getting epa and dha in phospholipid form from krill oil versus getting And it's pretty awesome because that DHA lyophosphatidylcholine can transport DHA into the brain. much dha your brain conserves dha very very well um the half-life of dha is like anywhere between brain aging, with, you know, inflammation in general, anything going on in the body,

2:05:29 depression, whether I'm looking at impulsive behavior or, you know, other types of brain And the reason it does that is because it has a unique structure elect the singlet oxygen in it it captures it and it stops it from damaging know you're exposing it to oxidative damage and so the fact that nordic naturals does all that that stuff you're that's you know you're exposing it to oxidative

2:07:55 So it's, you know, it's doing some good stuff. take for vision? Yes. where it turns on a lot of good good genes in the body um but really if we're talking about the idha It's more of a, sorry, not a specific thing to the eye. So having the lutein and zeaxanthin, that's part of the, I think about this, I make a smoothie every morning, which has a lot of kale in it and other greens,

2:11:11 know detoxifying enzymes like glutathione and other reactive oxygen species scavengers and ones that people always take a couple jobs echinacea when you're sick i've done it and never like homeopathic remedies once you're already sick. Right. Like, I remember, I don't remember who gave it to me, And they're like, no, no, no. took it but it was like little tiny little cap like sugar things inside of it and i could tell

2:14:36 Alpha lipoic acid is another way to increase glutathione. aging and how did they administer it was it intravenous you know i don't remember i don't should be taken on an empty stomach how many people i'm sorry go ahead yeah no it's just which Okay, liposomal glutathione. Right. what kind of proteins i think you know i think that it's you know joe it's been so long i can't

2:17:30 I need all those micronutrients. And I want to make sure I get that. That's most important. making sure you're eliminating the inflammation at the source of it, night oh there's a big well nitrates aren't used for um curing no they're in they're in celery So, nitrosamines, they like interact with your DNA and then when the cell replicates, like amines. So, they react with that and can form nitrosamine. So, that's not a good thing.

2:20:01 Which get into your system. there's enough antioxidant around like vitamin c or other antioxidants because nitrites because don't form those as readily because it's forming the nitric oxide instead especially because form the nitrosamines and you can ingest them so cured bacon with with chemicals, that's what's bad for you. I'm not a big fan of eating nitrites daily or even weekly.

2:22:28 And nitrates can form nitrites. Nitrates are what's in plants. it's so uber complicated i've seen this switched um all over the place on the internet actually so illness and prevent certain you know certain damage and free radicals and all the areas that could be problematic in our world and our diets. Focus on that more than focus on what you're eliminating from your diet. Because it's just, first of all, if you focus on what you're eliminating from your diet, then you're not going to be getting all the good stuff that you need.

2:25:06 And then in the meantime, you're getting distracted from the important thing is not getting nourished, they're getting what they need, that they activate and they, your body has lot of time to sit there and read through all the scientific studies and figure out what's going on Yes. about studies that were published two months ago in the context of traumatic brain injury and some of these neural stem cells.

2:28:11 understanding how nutrition interacts with genes, how diet interacts with genes, how, and I, I respect them. I think that they do, to some degree, you know, they train hard, with the mice the the showing that the the neurons are actually it's stimulating the stem cell growth like i think that's also very important making sure the public people that you know understanding how to prevent disease understanding what you need to to optimally optimally you know perform

2:31:07 I don't know how much time I think that relatively speaking to the rest of their training, I would say it's not much. And then I went into, you know, aging research and then cancer. eat or what they should supplement i know that you were saying that one of the companies that Omega-3, they measure EPA and DHA, and they also measure the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, which is also important.

2:34:28 Like that's really important. breakdown of your diet of your here's your profile this is what you're missing this is What do I do to make sure that I can give myself the best chance of not getting Alzheimer's because you know when you have it it's i feel bad for all my family members you know but i won't talked about some things that are you know, I talked about some things that are, you know, possible

2:37:31 i'd like to see all those types of uh athletic commissions adopted where it's like you know 10, 15-fold increased risk. And not only increased risk, it's an earlier onset. It changes the onset actually has been shown to to give people short-term memory loss. related to also traumatic brain injury, where they found, for example, that patients that levels were much less likely to die like in the hospital so um that sort of sparked my interest

2:41:11 quite significant. So, I started reading just a little bit more. I haven't done a ton of reading all sorts of neuroinflammatory cycles that happen i don't know exactly how i And it's kind of a confusing mechanism, but long-term potentiation is when you have, so during learning, the learning process, when you're learning something new, you form, you've got a synapse that's forming between the neurons.

2:43:41 ones and the cb1 receptor seems to somehow get rid of those inhibitory ones. And the CB1 receptor seems to somehow get rid of those When you talk to anyone on the street, they've heard that. your your ability to have that long-term into the guise of medicine. This is a crop, and we have to look at it as this is a commodity. effects because they've looked at so many different things. The reduction of interocular

2:46:43 It's a really good plan yeah that's um revenue when the statistics here's where it gets really crazy decrease in violent crime decrease in duir you drive down you have drug dealers all over the place. you know alcohol it does it does a lot of damage alcohol does damage to your gut i mean you're damage and apoe4 can't when you have that apoe4 it impairs the ability to grow new like i said

2:49:58 they give me a glass of wine and even though there's some benefits with polyphenols and the wine resveratrol and wine i know that i can't repair that damage as efficiently so it's it's like it changes it interaction between genes and environment come into play. But it's interesting that, you know, we going to start to see people given cannabinoids and, you know, I don't know if they're trying

2:52:33 It's on my mind now that I, you know, especially that I know I have this APOE4 allele, And it's just, it's doing so much more. And when it gets in the brain, it makes serotonin. not only is tryptophan not being made into serotonin in the brain so you're talking about another way that you know exercise is protecting the brain in fact in these are way more complex but then some people so when they made the mice exercise um the depressive symptoms went away that neurotoxicity

2:56:29 we got to talk about cryotherapy okay this is something that i've started getting into recently pretty stoked about it and um which means i'm gonna have to step up my game and get some more