How Food Order and Movement Support Mental Clarity

Chris Williamson: What happens when people get brain fog? Like, what is brain fog? I know what it feels like, but like, what's going on?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, so brain fog, or as I like to call it, a reduction in mental clarity.

Chris Williamson: That's such a doctor way of reducing, like—

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I've just heard too many like people say like brain fog, brain fog, like, and it's just, I got like this, like I was telling you, I got this knee-jerk reaction to like—

Chris Williamson: You've got brain fog ick.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I do. When people like say brain fog, I'm like, oh no, what are they gonna say? You know? But yes, it is a thing. So it's, you know, when, when you have a reduction in mental clarity, it feels like this brain fog. And, you know, there, I personally think it all comes down to food. I think it really comes down to food.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And I mean, when you're sick, you have brain fog, but we can talk about how it overlaps with that. So I think there's really 2 big— it all has to do with meals and eating. So the first thing I think that's highly involved in this reduction in mental clarity or brain fog, as people like to call it, is what's called the postprandial glucose response. So, that means blood glucose levels going up after a meal. And what happens is this, if you have a really high postprandial glucose response, you're eating a high glycemic index food, something that's definitely like a refined carbohydrate, for example, that'll really smash you.

Chris Williamson: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: You're going to get this really sharp peak in glucose, and then like a drop, or a sugar crash, as people like to call it.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And so, it's really hard for your brain to be functioning properly with that postprandial glucose response, and that's partly why you'll hear a lot of anecdotes, and myself included, people that have tried a ketogenic diet, or I used to always like to do podcasts in a fasted state, because you're not getting that postprandial glucose response is one thing. It really sort of—

Chris Williamson: Evens it out.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Evens it out. Not everyone responds well to a ketogenic diet, and I certainly don't think it's easy to continue on forever. So, there are other things. Obviously, avoiding refined carbohydrates is an easy no-brainer, right? There's nothing in there anyways. What do you need from there? Nothing. No micronutrients, no protein, right? Like, you're not getting any from that.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So, that would be one thing to avoid, because that'll make sure you're not going super, super high, but you can still have it from a meal, and some of the things that you can do to mitigate that, one would be exercise snacks. So this is like doing a really short burst of intense, like vigorous exercise, 80% max heart rate, for like 1 to 3 minutes, and you do it 30 minutes up to an hour, either before or after a meal.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So you kind of do it within this hour before or after a meal, and what happens is that vigorous-intensity exercise, while you're shooting your heart rate up, and it's hard to do, you're increasing lactate, and it doesn't take much, it gets soaked up by the muscle, and this is then causing transporters, glucose transporters, to come up to the muscle, and it's opening the gates, basically, so that when you eat that meal, the glucose goes into your muscle, it's more anabolic, you want it to go there, and you're not getting that huge rise and then drop with the postprandial glucose response. So, that would be the one thing, exercise snacks.

Chris Williamson: Yep.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Lots of studies out there, especially with people with type 2 diabetes who have a problem maintaining their blood glucose levels.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: The second thing would be food order, like the order you eat your macronutrients.

Chris Williamson: On the plate?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Kind of. So, I would say about 10 minutes, it can be on the plate depending on how slow you eat. So, if food order, there's been studies, again, largely in people with type 2 diabetes who have issues regulating their blood glucose, if you eat protein or fat 10 to 30 minutes before carbohydrates, it can very much blunt and slow the postprandial glucose response. So, if you have, like, let's say you eat a can of sardines before you're going to go to a restaurant, you're going to eat out, you're presumably going to eat more terribly than you would if you're cooking at home, right? Or you do a little protein shake 20 minutes before you're going to go go to a restaurant or whatever.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And that'll, or before, like even just if you're gonna do a podcast and you need mental clarity, you wanna make sure that, let's say, just eat the protein and not have the carbohydrates, right? So what that does is, I mean, it's doing essentially like increasing insulin so that when you do have that glucose, it's going.

Chris Williamson: It's prepped.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It's prepped.

Chris Williamson: I mean, if you were going out for dinner, presumably something else you could do is try and have the starter be steak tartare, tuna tartare, oysters, something like that, just be like, can we just wait an extra 10 minutes on mains? Like, however long you think that we need, just give us another 10. And then you've encapsulated it within the entire meal. I guess as long as everybody else is on board with that.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Otherwise, someone's had a bunch of bread and they're just, they want their whatever main course to come out. See, that they should, that's like the worst thing is having the bread on the table first, right?

Chris Williamson: It's so good.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It is good. But like, eat the steak tartare first and then go for the bread, right? You'll, you'll, you'll slow the glucose response.

Chris Williamson: There's a place in Austin called Dean's Italian. It's just down the street from you.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Ah. You should go.

Chris Williamson: You should go. Dean's Italian.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, I'm looking for restaurant recommendations, please.

Chris Williamson: I'll send you some after this.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Send me some more.

Chris Williamson: Yeah. So Dean's, Three Forks, and there's somewhere else that I went the other evening that was phenomenal. But Dean's and Three Forks are the 2 steak restaurants I go to the most.

Chris Williamson: But Dean's do this, they call it a bread crown. So it's like a, literally looks like a little crown that comes out kind of about, that size, and there's a pot of whipped butter in the middle of this thing, and it's glazed on top. It's got like a salt glaze. This thing is like crack. It's so good. And it's, it's just there. You arrive, you sit down, you've got the drinks or whatever, and then this thing arrives and you just can't— it's impossible to not eat.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah.

Chris Williamson: So yeah, almost getting, is there something that we can do with this like pre-appetizer appetizer to come after the appetizers around about 15 minutes, if that's okay? Because Dr. Rhonda said so.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, so food order is something legitimately that's been studied, empirical data showing it does blunt the glucose, postprandial glucose response. And so, that is another thing that can really, I think, affect mental clarity or brain fog. So, just like I said, the protein or fat, like an avocado, sometimes I'll have an avocado, and that kind of just delays the emptying of your stomach into your intestines, and it kind of slows it even keel rather than real high spike and then lower.

Chris Williamson: Presumably as well, prioritizing the foods during an eating window, even if you do the protein shake at home and then go out for dinner afterward, prioritizing that and skewing that toward protein is just going to cause you to eat less of the carbs.

Chris Williamson: If there is dessert at the end, you're gonna think, ugh, I'm like not as bothered because I've just put more in me that's been skewed and discriminated in the direction of what should be prioritizing anyway.

Chris Williamson: Absolutely.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So you get more, satiety plays a role. I mean, if you're eating something before, like protein, you're just not going to eat as much. You're not going to eat as much. But that kind of leads into the second, that's not the only part of the meal or food or eating that I think plays a role in this reduction in mental clarity and brain fog. The other thing is the postprandial inflammatory response. So eating a meal causes inflammation. It happens in everyone, every meal. There's no avoiding it. To some degree, it happens.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: But you can minimize how much of an inflammatory response you're having. So, people eating a very high sugar and high fat meal, it really, that's the real, those are the 2 real big movers of it.

Chris Williamson: Hmm.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: But even if you're just doing a ton of fat without fiber or protein, fat is harsh on the gut, and so, what ends up happening is your gut epithelial cells, there's things holding 'em together, tight junctions, they open up, and they let little pieces of bacteria, so our microbiome, I mean, we got trillions.

Chris Williamson: Is this leaky gut?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: That's exactly what it is. It's intestinal permeability, and it allows pieces of bacteria to get into your bloodstream. Look, I'll say, for every, like, bro science term I've got, you've got the specific term that comes out of medicine. Is it brain fog?

Chris Williamson: It's a reduction in mental clarity. Is it leaky gut? It's the wall lining of the intestine has opened up to—

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, intestinal permeability, or leaky gut, as it's called. That's what you're doing. So, meals cause that to happen transiently. Some people have, like, a very big problem with leaky gut, but—so, transiently, you're letting bacteria get into your bloodstream, and this is what happens is, it's pieces of bacteria. They're called endotoxin or lipopolysaccharide, the same thing, but they're getting into your circulation because they're opening up, right? Getting from the gut. They're not supposed to be there. They're not supposed to be there, right, and your immune system gets activated. So, your immune system's like, it knows those pieces of the bacterial membrane. It recognizes it.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: That's how it recognizes a bacterial pathogen. And so, it gets activated, and what ends up happening there is, one, your immune system's activated. Okay, that requires a ton of energy. So, energy is shunted away from your brain, and it goes to the immune system because your body goes, triages it, goes, I need to survive. There's a bacteria, there's a bacterial invader in my system right now. I'm going to take all my energy, and I'm going to make sure that I get rid of this invader so I don't die. Right? So, that's, that's the first thing that's happening in terms of, like, energy's being diverted from the brain, from neurotransmission, from thinking, everything, and it's going to the immune system to activate it. Okay?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And it doesn't, you know, happen for that long of a period, but it, it's happening after a meal. The second thing that's happening is that your immune system itself is creating cytokines that are activating other immune cells. That's how they like talk to each other. And these things can essentially be somnogenic, so they can make you sleepy. So, when you're sick, what happens when you're sick? You have no energy, right? Because all the energy's going to your immune system.

Chris Williamson: Cytokine response.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And you're sleepy.

Chris Williamson: Yep.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So, that's exactly what's happening after a meal. What's happening when you're sick, to a smaller degree, is happening after a meal, the postprandial inflammatory response.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And then, the other thing that's happening is those cytokines also are crossing into your brain and disrupting neurotransmission, disrupting connections. We now know that the blood-brain barrier does not keep immune molecules out. They get in there, and they're wreaking havoc. So, it's another reason why you don't want to have a lot of inflammation. But, so then the question is, okay, what do I do, right? So, that's the question. How do I not get such a big postprandial inflammatory response? And, it's also, again, why a lot of people, myself included, always feel more mentally clear when I'm fasted, right? But, I'm like, oh, I don't want to lose the protein. I mean, the muscle mass, so I need to get some food.

Chris Williamson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: The question is, what do you do?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: One, obviously avoid the sugar, high sugar, high fat. Okay, that's clear. 2, smaller meals have less of a postprandial inflammatory response. So, the bigger the meal, the bigger the response.

Chris Williamson: Spike, and then—

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Spike, and then down. Yeah, but it's like, now we're talking, you're getting both. You're getting the glucose, and you're getting the inflammatory response. That's another thing. So, actually, smaller meals does help that. So, if you need mental clarity and stuff, don't have a big meal. And the other thing that actually makes an effect on that is, believe it or not, we're going full circle, omega-3. Omega-3 has been shown in clinical studies to blunt the postprandial inflammatory response.

Chris Williamson: With the meal or at any point throughout the day?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So, that's why I take my omega-3s throughout the day with meals, and it's doing it to some degree both, to some degree both.

Chris Williamson: There's something systemic, but there's also something acute.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Exactly. There's something systemic, the inflammation process, but there's something acute in the gut that it's also playing a role in preventing lipopolysaccharide from getting into circulation.

Chris Williamson: Is this dose-dependent? If I have 1 gram with each meal, you say 2 grams of triglycerides, responsibly sourced, blah, blah, blah, from a Norwegian guy that's doing it like this with fish, can I have 1 gram with each meal? Would that be sufficient?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I think the studies, and I can't remember, I think it was like they were lower dose, like 500 milligrams. I think it wasn't even that high.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So I typically do the 1 gram with each meal. I think that's a safe—

Chris Williamson: It's a nice way to remember to do it throughout the day.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: But yeah, it's a nice way. And that's so, so I like to do, the reason I like to have omega-3s throughout the day is for one, that reason, blunting the postprandial inflammatory response. 2, I want these specialized resolving molecules that they produce when you metabolize them in my blood, constant resolving inflammation.

Chris Williamson: It's working. Very interesting.