How Supplements May Support Brain Health With Age

Tim Ferriss: Why don't we just begin with the personal because I think that's the most universal. And all of my friends of my vintage um or younger, no one's getting younger, so they're all contending with aging parents and what to do with them, how to help them. Can you speak to just some of the circumstances with your parents and what you have used as interventions that have seemed to have an effect?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Both of my parents are taking a multivitamin. And you might go, well, multivitamin really, what's that going to do? And I'll tell you, we've come full circle. You know, 10 years ago, there was a huge splash that was made in the media. Big article came out and it was called enough is enough. Multivitamins are not only useless, they may be harmful. And it was a study that looked at a variety of different studies. It's called a meta-analysis that basically said, well, you know, all these vitamins that you're taking are useless and in some cases they can be harmful because they can allow cancer to to grow faster. And I sort of debunked that, you know, 10 years ago. But over the course of those 10 years, and as you mentioned in the intro here, you know, science is always changing and revisions are made. We learn new things. And in that 10-year frame, three different randomized controlled trials have come out. And randomized controlled trials are really key because you are comparing, you know, this intervention which in this case was a multivitamin to a placebo because people taking anything are obviously going to want a positive effect and many people do anticipate that and they can actually change their biology. Placebo is a real thing.

Tim Ferriss: Mhm.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So three trials came out looking at the effect of multivitamins on cognition. And I'm talking the multivitamin that was used was the standard run-of-the-mill. It was Centrum Silver.

Tim Ferriss: Centrum. I knew it was going to be Centrum. Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It was the vitamin that you would go that's the one vitamin that's not going to have any effect. It's like the you know, but actually it turns out it's got over 40 essential nutrients in it and it's also got some other nonvitamins. So things that are like polyphenols like lutein, zeaxanthin. These are actually really important for eye health but also the brain.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And these three randomized controlled trials were two years long. And what they showed was that taking a multivitamin for two years had pretty enormous effects on cognitive aging. These were in older adults. These were adults were 65 years of age or older. That's where my parents are. And after 2 years of taking the multivitamin, they had improved cognition on a battery of different tests. That equated to like reducing global cognitive aging by about 2 years. And on top of that, they reduced their episodic aging by five years, almost five years. It was 4.8 years. Episodic memory is the kind of memory that's involved in remembering events, things that that happen in your life. And so that's a big effect. 5 years of reduced episodic brain aging, episodic memory, brain aging.

Tim Ferriss: Mhm.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And so I think that anyone that's concerned about their parents, one of the easiest things that you can do in terms of improving cognition, now I should mention these were older adults, yes, but they weren't older adults with neurodegenerative disease. So these these were older adults that were otherwise didn't have any sort of neurodegenerative disease. That's also important because once you get to a pathological state, you you kind of have to do more things to help improve cognition than just a multivitamin.

Tim Ferriss: Mhm.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: That's what I have my mom and my dad on a multivitamin. That's the easiest thing. Vitamin D is also another no-brainer. I mean, 70% of the US population has insufficient levels of vitamin D. Older adults are even higher than that. So, you know, almost the majority of all older adults are vitamin D deficient. I mean, most people aren't going outside. And even if they are going outside, they're either wearing sunscreen or just the fact that they're older affects their their skin's ability to make vitamin D3 from the sun, from UVB radiation from the sun. And so there's much less efficient at it. In fact, a 70-year-old makes about four times less vitamin D than their former 20-year-old self. So vitamin D supplement is a low hanging fruit. It's super easy to bring someone up to level.

Tim Ferriss: If you just had to give a couple of bullets on the things that you feel confident in having your mom and dad continue doing or taking, let's start with the supplements cuz like you said, it's sort of a lowhanging fruit in a sense from a behavioral change perspective, right? What do you have them doing?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I guess I'll kind of zoom out and talk about, you know, I think you listened to a podcast I did with Dr. Mark Matson many several years ago and I mentioned that my dad was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2017 and that's an important context to consider like what sort of supplements I'm giving my dad and also the fact that you have to think about compliance like what were your parents I do have a parent that'll take a lot of vitamins

Tim Ferriss: actually do

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: or a few vitamins right so with my dad knowing his disease with Parkinson's disease multivitamin was in there because that's already like so important just to cover a lot of bases you're getting a lot of different you know vitamins and minerals And then it was omega-3. And in fact, it was a high DHA. And he's getting about two grams a day. And there's a lot of evidence that omega-3 can help with dopamineergic transmission, can help with a lot of brain function, particularly as it relates to Parkinson's disease as well as Alzheimer's disease. So that was the second supplements that he's, you know, taking. And then the last one that I could really get him to take was ubiquinol, which is a reduced form of CoQ10. Now, co-enzyme Q10 is actually something that we have inside of our cells and it's involved in mitochondrial health. So, having a depleted CoQ10 can lead to mitochondrial toxicity. And so, taking CoQ10, there's actually been some early studies with even Parkinson's disease patients showing that supplementing with CoQ10 can be beneficial. And he's actually taken those supplements for for many, many years now. And very I would say surprisingly but also I'm thankful that his Parkinson's disease has progressed very very slowly. So it's been 9 years you know almost 10 years and he's really essentially had this Parkinson's disease limited to one tremor in his hand.

Tim Ferriss: So that's great and that's all I can say is

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: yeah it's great news. It's great news and you never really know at the end of the day what is the reason for that. But he's convinced, I'm convinced, his doctor's convinced that he should keep doing what he's doing and that it seems to be beneficial.

Tim Ferriss: Mhm.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: My dad is one of those guys that doesn't like to take a lot of pills. If he would take more, I would give him more.

Tim Ferriss: If he were willing to take more, what would you give him?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I would also give him sulforaphane.

Tim Ferriss: Mhm.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Definitely tried, but he doesn't want to take more pills. So sulforaphane is it's a compound that is formed when you eat cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower for example and it's formed from something inside of it called glucoraphanin. When you break the plant tissue when you bite it or you know chop it up or whatever it forms sulforaphane sulforaphane is not necessarily in the plant itself. It just gets formed when you break the plant tissue. That's a technical thing. So I'm just going to talk about sulforaphane and call it sulforaphane as if it's part of you know the plant but it's not. Just so you know.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Sulforaphane, like I said, it's something that's formed in these cruciferous vegetables. Broccoli sprouts, the young young sprout of broccoli actually is the best source of it. It has 100 times more of that active precursor glucoraphanin than mature broccoli. So that's the best dietary source of it.

Tim Ferriss: Are you growing your own broccoli sprouts or are you doing off the shelf now?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I'm off the shelf now. I used to. I used to. It's work. It's not that much work, but it is work. But you also like you have to be very fastidious about not having it contaminated and that's where the real work comes in. But I like it because there are people that can't afford the supplement and this gives them another another way to to basically get it. Yeah. For cheap. So the reason I really like sulforaphane and why I want both my parents on it and my mom has been taking it, we can talk about that in a minute, is because it is the most potent dietary activator of this system that we have called NRF2, which is this major system. It's a basically a transcription factor that activates a lot of different genes inside of our body. And it activates genes that are involved in stress. It activates a lot of what are called stress response genes. And these are the kind of things that are activated when you're doing stressful things like exercise or you know if you're fasting.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So you really want this pathway to be active

Tim Ferriss: because a little bit of stress right it's like chronic overdose of stress bad but little doses of stress has this I guess what would you call it hormetic effect.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Exactly.

Tim Ferriss: Right. Am I getting that right? Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. You nailed it. So essentially we're talking about what is sometimes called eustress or good stress. It's these small doses of stress where, you know, your body's responding to that stress by activating all these beneficial pathways that deal with stress. Whether we're talking about antioxidant pathways, anti-inflammatory pathways, pathways involved in clearing out damage, you know, damaged stuff from your cells like autophagy, just all sorts of beneficial stuff, right? Those pathways are activated for a longer period of time than the acute stress that you're giving it. So in this case the sulforaphane is a little bit of an acute stress like polyphenols in general are.

Tim Ferriss: Mhm.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: The amount of time that you're ingesting that polyphenol is very small and digesting in. The reality is is that it's activating these stress response pathways that last you know on the orders of like 24 to 48 hours sometimes longer. So you're having this beneficial effect that's overall beneficial from that little bit of stress. And so sulforaphane activates NRF2 and one of the main pathways that it's activating is increasing glutathione production. And it's been shown in a couple different human studies that it increases glutathione in both plasma but also in the brain.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah,

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: glutathione is the major antioxidant that we have in our body and it's very important in the brain. super important for not only preventing brain aging but also for dealing with dysfunction in the case of acute injury like traumatic brain injury or in the case of Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease which are other types of injury on the brain glutathione plays a big role there and so I obviously would want my dad to be taking sulforaphane and there's a supplement out there that I use that has been used in many like 12 or so different studies and so it's you know It's been shown to be beneficial across the board and that is something that I do give my mom. Now, the reason I gave it to my mom, well, I was kind of hoping my mom interestingly has two other types of sort of brain dysfunction um problems, but they're not neurodegenerative in the sense of Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease are it's kind of like a something going wrong in the brain and it it affects her motor control. So, she has tremors. She has essential tremor and she has orthostatic tremor. And I have secretly wanted the increase in glutathione to affect those tremors. But when I gave the sulforaphane to my mom, because I knew the placebo effect, I did tell her that we were using it to detoxify these chemicals that are associated with plastic like BPA because that's also been something that I'm I'm using sulforaphane for because that NRF2 pathway does activate what are called phase 2 detoxification enzymes. And it's been shown to detoxify. Even if you're living in like a city like New York or LA where there's a lot of air pollution, it's been shown to detoxify benzene. Within 24 hours, people start excreting 60% more benzene from their body. Now, benzene is something that is found in air pollution. It's also in cigarettes.

Tim Ferriss: Yes. Don't drink your own urine if you're taking sulforaphane is what you're saying.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Definitely don't do that. But also, if you're living in a polluted place, I tell all my friends in LA, I'm like, "You have to be taking sulforaphane. It's a non-negotiable, right?" So I told her to take the sulforaphane because I wanted her to detoxify BPA because she does eat a lot of processed foods and stuff which are found in plastic. Anyway, so she started taking it and she came back to me and told me that it was helping her tremors and that she wanted more.

Tim Ferriss: How long did that take?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Not long. It was actually I think within a week or so, maybe maybe two. It was very quick.