Smoothie #2: Prebiotics, Phytochemicals, "Anti-Nutrients" & Hydrolyzed Collagen

Dr. Rhonda Patrick here. Many of you may have seen my first video on the micronutrient smoothie. When it comes to things like salads and indeed smoothies, diversity can be a good thing. That's why I'm here to bring you another version of my smoothie recipe. Varying the sources from which you get your micronutrients, plant hormetic compounds, and prebiotics allow you to provide balance and make sure that you're getting just a little bit of everything instead of way too much of one thing or another. There are a few staples that I return to such as kale. But enough of this chitter chatter, it's smoothie time! We're gonna get this thing started with 8 kale leaves. Next, we're gonna add in 2 rainbow chard leaves, 1 tomato, 1 large carrot, 2 celery stalks. 8 pieces of parsley. 1 apple.

2 cups of spinach. 1 lemon. 1 to 2 cups of blueberries. 1 avocado. A quarter cup of hydrolyzed collagen powder, which I will explain a little bit more about in a minute. 2 cups of water. Let that blender do what it does best. Okay, so there you have it. Smoothie recipe number 2. I could totally do a deep dive on the micronutrient train and tell you about how this smoothie is high in magnesium and how magnesium is a cofactor for over 300 different enzymes in the body and how magnesium is at the center of the chlorophyll molecule and how 45% of the population in the United States does not have an adequate intake of magnesium. Which is quite literally a problem of not eating enough greens because chlorophyll is what makes plants green.

I could also tell you about folate, which is also rich in greens, and how it's absolutely required for the chemical reactions that produce the nucleic acid thymine, and how in the absence of folate, uracil gets substituted for thymine, and how this causes strand breaks in our DNA not too dissimilar from being irradiated. And how this smoothie likely prevents you from having this particular deficiency. The list goes on and on for vitamins K1, vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene, which gets converted into vitamin A, calcium, potassium.

But since I've talked about many of these micronutrients in previous videos and podcasts, instead I'm gonna focus on some of the plant hormetic compounds, which I have not talked about previously, some useful prebiotics that are in this smoothie, Which help explain why I prefer to use a heavy-duty food processor or blender instead of a juicer, and also a novel ingredient that I have not discussed, hydrolyzed collagen powder. Before we get to the hydrolyzed collagen powder, let's discuss these plant hormetic compounds. There's quite a long list.

What differentiates micronutrients from plant hormetic compounds is plant hormetic compounds are actually biologically stressful on the cell, And they trigger cellular stress response pathways that are actually beneficial because the cell overresponds to the otherwise slightly toxic insult. This is quite different from micronutrients, which we must obtain from our diet in order to run the chemical metabolic processes that are necessary to sustain life. Consuming a diverse array of vegetables and fruits to obtain a diverse amount of micronutrients is pretty intuitive.

What may not be as intuitive is that these vegetables and fruits also have a multitude of plant hormetic compounds, which are slightly toxic to humans and therefore activate a variety of genetic pathways that help the body and the brain deal with stress better. These plant compounds end up having really, really beneficial effects, both in the short term and the long term. Many of these plant hormetic compounds are often referred to as polyphenols or flavonols. Isothiocyanates are one class of plant hormetic compounds of special interest. In this particular twist of my smoothie recipe, and in my previous smoothie recipe, the isothiocyanates were mainly from kale. But isothiocyanates are also found in a wide variety of cruciferous vegetables.

Broccoli sprouts are a very robust source of isothiocyanates. Isothiocyanates have been shown to have very potent anti-cancer properties. Specifically, they've been shown to inhibit a class of enzymes known as phase 1 biotransformation enzymes, which are responsible for converting a pro-carcinogen into their active carcinogenic state. Additionally, they've been shown to activate a class of enzymes known as phase 2 detoxification enzymes. Some of these enzymes include enzymes such as glutathione reductase and are responsible for decreasing damage to DNA and, and to cells in general By reducing the amount of inflammation and reactive oxygen species. Additionally, phase 2 detoxification enzymes inactivate pro-carcinogens and prevent them from becoming carcinogens.

Generally speaking, we want to have less of the phase 1 biotransformation enzymes and more of the phase 2 detoxification enzymes. For this reason, isothiocyanates have been shown to be very potent at preventing cancer initiation. both in animal studies and in human studies. The celery and parsley, which were not included in my last smoothie recipe, bring a couple of awesome plant hormetic compounds to the mix: luteolin and apigenin. Luteolin is a flavonoid that has been shown to decrease inflammation because it decreases the expression of genes that are involved in inflammation. In a study involving 66,940 women, Those women with the highest luteolin intake had a 34% decrease in cancer incidence compared to those women with the lowest luteolin intake.

Remember, inflammation can damage DNA by means of reactive nitrogen species and other reactive compounds that are produced by the immune system such as hypochlorite. It's important to keep inflammation at bay because damaging DNA serves as a very potent cancer initiator. Additionally, luteolin has been shown to slow cognitive decline in older mice. Older mice that were fed a diet high in luteolin had brains that cognitively functioned much like their young counterparts. The other plant hormetic compound present in parsley and in celery is apigenin, and is also a flavonoid. Apigenin has been shown to cause neural stem cells to form new neurons and also strengthen the connection between neurons, which is an important function for learning and memory.

While I'd settle for some of those positive brain benefits, apigenin has also been shown to kill cancer cells. Let's talk about the blueberries. While the parsley and the celery were not included in my last smoothie recipe, the blueberries were included, and blueberries are a cornucopia of plant hormetic compounds. Most people think the antioxidants in the blueberries are responsible for a lot of the beneficial effects. I think there may be something more to the blueberries that are really important. Anthocyanins are very high in blueberries and are a very important plant hormetic compound. Probably one of the studies that put blueberries on the map was the study where mice were genetically engineered to get Alzheimer's disease and were given blueberry extract.

The blueberry extract prevented these animals from getting the cognitive and behavioral deficits that normally occur in these mice that are genetically engineered to get Alzheimer's disease. The anthocyanins specifically recognize a little sequence of DNA known as an antioxidant response element. This little telltale sequence of DNA is present in certain genes. One particular gene, NRF2, is a master regulator of many genes involved in inflammation and also genes with antioxidant activity. Anthocyanins have been shown to potently activate NRF2. Blueberries contain another compound, pterostilbene, which is chemically related to resveratrol and has been shown to activate the gene PPAR-alpha. and has been shown to lower triglyceride and blood glucose levels in mice.

Pterostilbene has also been shown to be more potent than resveratrol in improving cognitive function in mice that have been genetically engineered to prematurely age. Moving on down the list of my smoothie ingredients, apples, which were also in my last smoothie recipe, contain a couple of pretty awesome plant hormetic compounds: ursolic acid and glucaric acid. Ursolic acid is a compound present in apple skin And has been shown to increase muscle mass by 10% and muscle strength by 30% in mice that were fed a diet containing 0.27% ursolic acid. The mechanism by which ursolic acid improves both muscle mass and strength is by inhibiting a gene called ATF4, which normally prevents protein synthesis in muscle. The second compound of interest in apples is glucaric acid.

Glucaric acid has been shown to inhibit the activity of an enzyme that's present in certain bacteria in our colon that are responsible for converting pro-carcinogens that we're exposed to from a variety of environmental and dietary factors into their active carcinogenic state. So glucaric acid prevents this from happening. Okay, let's take a step back for a minute and talk about why I like to use a really high-powered food processor such as a Blendtec or a Vitamix instead of a juicer. That reason is Fiber. When you use a juicer, you remove the fiber. Fiber, especially a diversity of fiber, is highly beneficial in its own right, and it's something that modern diets lack.

In fact, some estimates suggest that traditional hunter-gatherer societies got somewhere on the order of 10 times as much fiber as we get today. Many types of fiber are fermentable by the microorganisms that make up the gut microbiome. These fermentable fiber types are often called prebiotics because they feed the tiny little beneficial bacteria that reside in our gut. The best way to increase the microbial diversity in the gut is by eating a wide variety of fermentable fiber types. This can be accomplished by eating a diverse array of vegetables and fruits because they contain various different prebiotics that feed different types of microbial species. And that's precisely what we're doing when we're consuming the whole plant in this smoothie. But let's talk about a few specific examples.

Because of the berries and the apple skin present in this smoothie, we're getting a nice dose of the prebiotic pectin. Also in this smoothie, we're getting the prebiotic sulfoquinovos, which is present in green leafy vegetables. Both pectin and sulfoquinovos feed various different types of beneficial bacteria in the gut and thereby protect the gut, among other things. The vegetables in this smoothie are also good sources of non-fermentable types of fiber known as lignans and cellulose, which are present in all cell plant walls. And while they don't feed the gut bacteria, they do serve a beneficial purpose of helping food and waste move through the gut. The Mayo Clinic recommends men get at least 38 grams of fiber per day and women get at least 25 grams of fiber per day.

Which is quite a bit more than the 10 grams of fiber per day, which is what Americans are estimated to get, and is significantly less than what modern-day Tanzanian hunter-gatherer societies get, which is around 100 to 150 grams of fiber per day. Okay, moving on from the fiber, let's talk about something I started adding to my micronutrient smoothie that's sort of interesting: hydrolyzed collagen powder. I do this not for the essential amino acids like leucine, which is not very high in hydrolyzed collagen powder, But for the nonessential amino acids like glycine and proline, which are necessary to make collagen. Around 35% of collagen is made up of glycine. Proline together with hydroxyproline makes up around 25% of collagen.

Collagen makes up between 25 and 35% of the total protein in the body. It is abundant in ligaments, tendons, cartilage, skin, and is also found in blood vessels, muscle, the gut, and in dentin in the teeth. Our bodies are continually manufacturing new collagen to repair connective tissue lost to daily wear and tear. The first question is, what happens to the hydrolyzed collagen powder after it is ingested? This is a very important question, and one particular study that a colleague of mine introduced me to actually answers this question and is one reason why I started supplementing with hydrolyzed collagen powder.

The study used hydrolyzed collagen that was radiolabeled and fed to mice in order to answer the question of whether or not the collagen is degraded into its individual amino acids or whether or not it's actually absorbed intact. The answer is a little bit of both. The collagen was degraded into its individual amino acids and those were absorbed, but additionally, some of the collagen was absorbed fully intact and was shown to accumulate in cartilage over the long term, which in my book seems pretty promising. In addition to being used to make collagen, Proline can also be used to make energy by the mitochondria. Proline, which is very abundant in hydrolyzed collagen, can be converted into glutamate and alpha-ketoglutarate, and thus can be used by the mitochondria to produce ATP.

The reason this pathway exists is because during catabolic conditions, when glucose levels fall very low, proline is released from connective tissue and then is converted into alpha-ketoglutarate in order to make energy. Prolene may also have a special place in wound healing as well. 10 days after a wound occurs, proline levels at the site of the wound rise 50% higher than plasma levels, suggesting that proline may be actively transported to the site of the wound where it plays a role in wound healing. Finally, glycine, which is also very abundant in hydrolyzed collagen powder, also has some very interesting other aspects to it. Glycine has been shown to be an anti-inflammatory signaling molecule and also is found to be an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain.

Now, whether or not the glycine found in hydrolyzed collagen powder is doing any of these functions, I don't know, but I sure hope that future studies will elucidate this. Okay, besides talking about another spin on my micronutrient smoothie, this video has traversed near and far about a variety of fun topics, including plant hormetic compounds and how they affect health in various ways. We've talked about why fiber is beneficial and why I don't like to remove it by juicing. In addition, we've talked about hydrolyzed collagen powder, which is a new addition to my smoothie, which is also very interesting.

Now I'd like to turn my attention and talk about one final topic that's important to me, and that is whether or not one need be concerned about the supposed quote-unquote anti-nutrients that are present in raw vegetables such as kale. It's come to my attention that many people have undoing anxiety about consuming raw uncooked kale due to the supposed anti-nutrient content. One of the anti-nutrients that are present in kale that are often talked about are isothiocyanates, those beneficial plant hormetic compounds that I just talked about that have very potent anti-cancer properties. In fact, my smoothie recipe has been designed to maximize, not minimize, for the isothiocyanate content.

Isothiocyanates have been referred to as goitrogens because a small amount of them can compete for iodine transport into the thyroid gland. High levels of isothiocyanates from exposure to large quantities of cruciferous vegetables have not been shown to increase hypothyroidism unless accompanied by severe iodine deficiency, which is actually not very common. In fact, countless animal studies have shown that feeding animals large quantities of isothiocyanates do not cause hypothyroidism, and in fact inhibit cancer formation and prevent cancer initiation. Another one of the anti-nutrients that has gained a reputation is oxalate, which is present in higher quantities in spinach.

People on the anti-nutrient train have expressed a concern over the fact that oxalate from spinach may increase kidney stone risk, unless you boil the spinach to decrease the oxalate content. It's true, boiling does reduce the amount of soluble oxalate. This is the type of oxalate that can be absorbed by the human intestines and has been associated with kidney stone formation. However, it's been shown that both magnesium and calcium ions cause oxalate to become insoluble, Which is not able to be absorbed by the human intestines. Both magnesium and calcium ions have been shown to dramatically decrease the amount of oxalate absorption in healthy human volunteers down to less than 5%. It's one of the main reasons why I still consume raw spinach.

It's very high in magnesium and also has some calcium. The smoothie itself is very high in magnesium and calcium, which substantially reduces the amount of soluble oxalate that's produced. Okay, with that said, after drinking this micronutrient smoothie, or a similar version of it, several days a week for the past 5 or so years, there's been no kidney or thyroid irregularities that have shown up in any of my blood work. Obviously this is anecdotal, but coupled with the compelling animal studies, I feel relatively confident that the benefits of getting isothiocyanates far outweigh any of the potential theoretical risks that have not really been backed up by the literature. That's my take. Your mileage may vary. Dr. Rhonda Patrick, over and out. I'll catch you next time.