Q&A #1: Fasting and Autophagy—Plus Pregnancy and Postpartum Supplements

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining me today for this question and answer webinar. I am pretty excited. Went through the questions and a lot of really good questions here. Thank you all for upvoting them as well. What I'm going to do is I put together a document where I've looked at like, I'm gonna address a lot of the top upvoted questions. Also maybe just a few questions that I thought were interesting and that I knew the answer to. So, and then also I'll be taking some live questions as well. You guys can, in the chat, you guys can post some live questions as I'm discussing something. You might, something, a question may come up that you're wanting to ask. So that's kind of the format.

I went ahead and, you know, 'cause there were a lot of questions that had certain, like fasting or time-restricted eating or broccoli sprouts, sulforaphane. So I kinda went through and looked at the most upvoted questions for each of those topics and glumped them together so that I can talk about one topic, you know, for a short period of time, then move on to the next topic. So that's kind of how I'm gonna do it. And I'm gonna go ahead and start with one of the most top upvoted questions that is kind of— didn't— was kind of an off-topic thing. So I can quickly just address that, and then I'm gonna move on to the topic of fasting and time-restricted eating.

So the first question is from Ben Isabella, and Ben asks, after your recent post about salt and contaminated waters, what is your stance on sea salt? What brands would you still consider using? So what Ben is referring to is a tweet I tweeted out a couple of weeks ago on how pretty much all sea salt is contaminated with various compounds that are found from plastics, largely because plastics are polluting the oceans, and so some of these compounds are leaching out and getting into the water and also into the salt.

Sea salts were sampled from various regions around the world and nearly all samples were contaminated with some sort of various compounds that are found in plastic, which is really sad and also scary because we don't really know what effect, if any, these compounds may have on human health, particularly low-grade chronic exposure to them. So personally, I think the best route to go is to avoid sea salt and to get salt from the Himalayas, like pink Himalayan salt. I know there's a lot of health gurus out there that sort of talk about some benefits of Himalayan, pink Himalayan sea salt. I haven't really seen any science that there's some particularly robust health benefit to consuming that type of salt.

However, it does seem to be a little more pure in that it's coming from the Punjab region of Pakistan. So it is not coming from, as far as I know, coming from the sea. So that would be my recommendation. And let me see. Let me just make sure— got here. Okay. So I am going to go ahead and start with the fasting questions. Let me pull up my document here. Okay. So the first question that was the most upvoted question was from Willow, who actually had quite a few upvoted questions that I will be addressing. And it was— his question is regarding a restricted eating schedule. Mark Mattson at the NIH doesn't think that calorie-free beverages like coffee and tea effectively break a fasting period.

You and others have strongly suggested that your very first sip of plain tea or coffee ends your fast. How can this difference of opinion be resolved? Is there actual data? And sort of a comment on that question, Susan Somerville asks or states, some educators say that while fasting, you can still consume up to 500 calories per day. Is this true? Would this only apply to intermittent fasting for weight loss, not autophagy-induced fasting? And also she goes on to ask, how many days does it take to induce autophagy? I've encountered some contradicting information, just wanted your view on it. So these are really, really good questions.

And I just wanna start by saying that a couple of months ago I recorded, actually right before I had my son, I recorded a 2-hour-long podcast with Dr. Satchin Panda. It's a round 2 podcast where we address a variety of very common questions from the audience, including this question. So I'll go ahead and talk a little bit about what Sachin and I discussed in the podcast, which by the way, it's pretty solid gold podcast. You guys are really going to like it. 2 hours of just applicable material from everything to shift work to, you know, practical ways to implement time-restricted eating and, you know, taking medications, coffee, this and this, all these things that people commonly ask.

So speaking— addressing Willow's question directly about caffeine in general, or basically any sort of substance that does not have any calories but does activate, for example, the liver enzymes. It's activating hormonal responses, it's being digested, the intestines are activated, things like that. So the first thing I wanna say here is that when thinking about time-restricted eating, it's really important to understand that time-restricted eating, there is a large component of fasting to time-restricted eating because you are eating within a certain time window and then for a certain timeframe you are not eating, which means you're fasting.

So I think that the fasting part is what people sort of focus on, but you need to understand that time-restricted eating also has a very large circadian biology component to it. And circadian biology means, is basically, you know, every— humans are diurnal creatures, meaning we are active during the day, we sleep at night. So we, you know, this is correlated with periods of bright light when we're active and darkness when we're not active. And along with this activity comes a whole host of activity of metabolic enzymes and hormonal processes. And our metabolic enzymes are also on a 24-hour cycle. And they're in sync with the day, with the light and night or day-night cycle as well.

In addition to being in sync with the day and light cycle, with the light and night cycle, they're also in sync with when we eat. And just like the first bright light exposure when we wake up in the morning and we go outside or we open all the windows and we're exposed to the bright sunlight, That signals to our brain, to the suprachiasmatic nucleus region part of our brain, wake up, start of the day. This is the start of the day. Very similar, the first metabolic processes that happen also start the metabolic clocks in our cells that are not in our brain. So for example, in our liver and our intestines, our kidneys, our stomach, So these, all these metabolic enzymes also are activated when we have our first punch of metabolic activity.

Now, that metabolic activity can be, you can elicit it with something that does not contain calories. For example, caffeine. Caffeine contains, it's a compound that is metabolized by the liver, by various enzymes. It's also, when you're digesting it, your intestines are getting activated. So, so it— there is a component of things that are not caloric that do activate these metabolic enzymes in our tissues, in our, in our organs, and that can sort of start the, the, you know, the 24-hour cycle of metabolism. So with that said, you know, I wouldn't worry.

And as Sachin says, it's really like if If you have a much easier time eating within a time-restricted window, and that does not include caffeine, black coffee with no cream or tea, and that if you have to wake up in the morning and drink some coffee or tea and you wait until you eat, wait a couple hours until you eat your first bite, that it's probably okay. Ideally, in an ideal world, when we're talking about circadian biology, you would kind of do everything within the same window. So you would wake up and you would have your coffee and you would start that coffee. You'd say, okay, that's the start of my clock. I had my first sip of coffee at 8:00 PM, or sorry, 8:00 AM. So I'm gonna finish eating by 6:00 PM because I wanna be on a 10-hour time-restricted eating window. That's ideal.

That's the way I follow it. However, if you are, you can't really do that. Let's say you go to work really early and you're basically trying to delay when you eat breakfast because you also get off work at 5:00 PM. So you have a long workday and then you wanna go to the gym or you have kids to take care of, whatever it is that's going on in your life, you can't just, it's not easy for you to follow a really strict time-restricted eating schedule. So you have to delay when you start your first meal. but it's really hard for you to not have coffee. It's probably okay.

It's not, there's a difference between the fasting part and the circadian biology part, which I'm really trying to differentiate between the two, but when we're just talking about fasting, intermittent fasting or prolonged fasting, prolonged fasting being 4 days, 4 to 5 days, then obviously you can drink these non-caloric, if you're doing a water fast, these non-caloric beverages would be okay because you're not doing a time-restricted eating every day where you're trying to eat within a certain time window to optimize your metabolism, to optimize when your metabolic enzymes are active, when your fatty acid metabolizing enzymes are active or your glucose metabolizing enzymes. You're not worried about all of that. You're just trying to basically reset your body.

So that's a little bit different in terms of— I'm just looking at some of the live questions, if that makes any sense to you guys. So basically, it's the difference between Mark Mattson and Yeah. So there's a few main experts, Mark Mattson, Dr. Satchin Panda, Dr. Valter Longo, and Guido Kroemer. I've actually discussed and spoken with 3 of the 4 experts. I have yet to speak with Mark Mattson, but everyone has a sort of different angle because their research is focused on something different. So if you talk to Valter Longo, Mark Mattson, they're a little more focused on the fasting and what benefits fasting induce and how there's a hormetic response from fasting, how fasting induces autophagy, which is what Guido Kuorma focuses on, how it resets the immune system through autophagy and apoptosis, and that's what Valter Longo focuses on.

But also, Dr. Satchin Panda focuses a lot on circadian biology in the context of fasting, and that is time-restricted eating. So it's a little bit, just everyone sort of has their own take on it and different experts have their own take because they're sort of focused on certain parts of biology, It's kind of important to understand there's a little bit of a difference when you're focusing on a day-to-day, like an everyday time-restricted eating schedule when you're trying to just eat within a certain time and then fast within a certain time. So you're getting a lot of the benefits from fasting. Wouldn't be quite the same as a prolonged fast, but you're also, the goal is to eat your food when your metabolism is at its prime. So you wanna be most insulin sensitive.

You wanna metabolize those fatty acids and beta-oxidize them instead of storing them as fat as optimally as you can. You want those processes to be working. You want amino acid synthesis to be optimal. So you wanna kind of, when all those metabolic processes are occurring, you want them to be occurring at their prime and that's sort of what the focus of time-restricted eating would be. So basically, I know I'm sort of ranting on. I'm gonna continue on with the questions that relate to this and some of the live questions as well. But so some people are talking about consuming calories, like Suzanne Somerville asked about the 500 calories a day when you're doing a prolonged fast.

I think that there's a difference between doing a prolonged water fast and something, like the Valter Longo fasting-mimicking diet type of fast where he has done an excellent job showing very solid science that you can consume. And on his schedule or his protocol, it's a 5-day fast where the first day you have 1,000 calories and then days 2 through 5, you do about 700 or so calories and there's certain makeups of protein versus carbohydrate versus fat. I'm not gonna get all into that 'cause the questions weren't really on that, but he has shown that consuming with limited number of calories when you also limit the protein and the carbohydrate and fat to certain ratios, protein being key because protein has to be like less than 9% of what your total 700 calories are that day, can induce some similar benefits as a water fast, but not all.

So you're not gonna get For example, you're not gonna get the robust clearing away of immune cells, which we'll talk about in a minute. So, I guess I can talk about it now because Susan also asked about how long it takes to induce autophagy. So the thing with the autophagy, and if you haven't listened or watched my podcast with Dr. Guido Kroemer, he's actually one of the kings in the autophagy field. I would say that really, really worth watching. The first 20 minutes, 16 to 20 minutes are a little technical, but after that, we kinda get over that hump, and it really gets a lot more into application and understanding mechanisms and why these things are occurring the way they occur. So where was I? Oh yeah, so how long does it take to induce autophagy in humans is the real question.

A lot of studies have been done in animals, Mice have a really, really fast metabolism. For example, I mean, you can fast a mouse for 2 days, for 48 hours, and they can lose like 20% of their body weight. I mean, it's crazy, very, very different from humans. So we really have to be careful when we're translating animal studies to human studies, which is why, for example, Valter Longo's study with animals where he does a 2-day fast, water fast, clears away, you know, 60% of the immune system, that more translates to something that would be like a 4 to 5 day water fast in humans, not a 48 hour fast. So you really have to be careful when you're trying to like translate these studies.

So we don't— we think, and as far as Guido Kroemer says, we think that autophagy can start to occur even after about 16 hours, but it's a very, very low level of it. And the autophagy that's occurring Yeah. So autophagy is mostly clearing away things like damage, things that are within cells that are damaged, maybe some damaged proteins or aggregates or just toxic things that have built up. Those kind of get cleared away. The more robust the signal, meaning the more intense the fast or the longer the duration of the fast in our case, then you start to have more robust autophagy, which then sort of as you reach the threshold of autophagy, you start to get into apoptosis, which is dying of the cell.

So what ends up happening is that when you're fasting, for example, for 4 days, as you hit the 4 to 5 day mark, you start to— you've been having some autophagy occurring from day 1, 2, 3, but then you start to really stress these cells out. And so all these damaged cells, the cells that have damage, can't deal with the stress like normal healthy cells can. And so those damaged cells, they start to die by apoptosis. And so once they die, this is a signal to stem cells like, hey, wait a minute, I'm losing all these cells. So it activates the stem cells to come out of a sort of sleeping state that they're in called quiescence.

And they come out and they proliferate and they make more immune cells and replenish and repopulate your tissue, the immune system in this case we're talking about, with all brand new cells. So it's kind of a way of rejuvenating the cellular population. You're making new cells, you have new young mitochondria, so it's a really great way to sort of clear out the old and bring in brand new cells. Also, the refeeding phase is very important in that, so after the fast, you need something that's a strong IGF-1 activator, which would be dietary protein, in order to keep those stem cells going because it's the IGF-1 that's that signals to these stem cells to keep growing, keep proliferating, keep making new cells, make new stem cells. So breaking the fast is also very important.

Obviously, you don't wanna break your fast with a big steak 'cause you might, your stomach may not let you. Sort of ease into it. Typically, I find people tell me what works best for them is making a smoothie and adding some, a little bit of protein powder in the smoothie so you're getting that, You're getting those amino acids, particularly you want the leucine activates IGF-1, you want the essential amino acids, those activate IGF-1, which you kinda want for a few days after the fast so that you can keep those stem cells going. So that's really the gist of the autophagy and the apoptosis and the regenerating of the immune system. So some people here are asking about prolonged fasting, is it advisable to fight cancer?

This is something that I did talk about with Dr. Valter Longo in the first podcast I did with him. He has published a number of studies both looking at, for example, a 2-day water fast in patients with cancer. I can't remember off the top of my head what the type of cancer was, But these patients were undergoing standard of care therapy, meaning they were undergoing some sort of radiation and/or chemotherapy, and before they were going to undertake that standard of care, they underwent a 48-hour water fast. What this one study found that Valter was a part of was that there was no negative consequences of doing the 48-hour fast, and in fact, it seemed to sensitize cancer cells to death.

Similarly, he has been doing some work with the fasting-mimicking diet that I mentioned a minute ago on also sensitizing cancer cells to death before whatever standard of care treatment that's gonna occur. Now, does fasting in and of itself without another stressor, for example, radiation, chemo, these are very, very toxic stresses on our cells. Does fasting alone just kill the cancer cells? I don't know. We don't have evidence of that in humans. And of course, when it comes to cancer, things are always very, very tricky. It's a very complicated— things are so out of whack. So I would be very cautious on saying that fasting is gonna cure cancer. Does it seem like something to talk about with your physician, your oncologist? Absolutely, I think.

And there are studies that you can give your oncologist if you know someone with cancer or have a loved one or a friend with cancer. So the other questions that are relating to these fasting, Let me go back to my document 'cause there's quite a few regarding the time-restricted eating and fasting. Another question was from Terry Schaefer. Terry asks, I am trying to practice time-restricted feeding on a daily basis with at least a 12-hour fasting period. However, I want to take several supplements at bedtime, for example, calcium, magnesium, GABA, inositol, and melatonin. Since these are not water, I assume they are interfering with the fast. If so, any recommendations on how to get the positive sleep benefits of the supplements without compromising the fast?

It's great to see that everyone's so meticulous in thinking about time-restricted eating and trying to consume everything, including their supplements, within that window, which is typically what I try to do as well. However, if you sleep better by taking GABA and melatonin and calcium magnesium before bed, then you probably should take it before bed even if it's outside of your time window. Sleep is also very important and while you will, to some degree, be activating some metabolic processes, your gut is gonna metabolize these vitamins. I would stay away from ones that are fatty like fish oil, possibly inositol, things that are more lipid-based, then I would definitely try to put those in the time-restricted eating window.

But these other supplements like melatonin, GABA, they also are part of the circadian biology and they peak at night. So it's not like you're taking the melatonin at nighttime is actually when your melatonin levels rise anyway. And even not just melatonin, I know people are wondering about supplements. In fact, someone else asks, about certain medications. Let's see, who was this? Someone asked about a certain medication. I would say that any medications that you're told to take in the evening, you should take in the evening, period.

Like, you know, that's just— in fact, a lot of physicians prescribe medications temporally, meaning on a time scale, because believe it or not, xenobiotics, which medications are xenobiotics, or anything that's not made in the body, not like a vitamin or a mineral that's usually found in the body, but it's something foreign to the body, like curcumin's a xenobiotic, all drugs are xenobiotics. Well, xenobiotics are also on a circadian rhythm, meaning they're actually metabolized during different times of the day differently. And so some medications are actually much, much better absorbed later in the evening, and some medications are much better absorbed earlier in the day. And so Yeah.

So physicians will often prescribe, at least the medications that we know about, they'll prescribe them, you need to take them during certain periods of the day for a reason, and a lot of that science comes out of circadian biology research where it's found that certain enzymes are metabolizing these various xenobiotics better at different times of the day. So I would absolutely, if you have to take a medication in the evening, or even if you don't, it's better, it's easier for you to remember to take it or what, for whatever, whatever your reason is, it's your habit, you know, we get into these routines. I think it's, it's, it's okay.

You know, again, ideally, I always try to consume everything within the time-restricted window, but it's not like, it's not going to throw off, it's not going to throw things off. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't stress about, you know, consuming vitamins, minerals, medications, melatonins and things like that outside of the time-restricted window. Likewise, the herbal teas I've mentioned before, herbal teas also have xenobiotics in them. But again, it's not a huge deal. And a lot of the research that Satchin's done with humans where he's aggregating data from his app called My Circadian Clock, he asked people to kind of consume coffee and everything within a time-restricted window.

So a lot of the data is actually based on consuming those things within a window and we don't have a ton of data what happens when you consume caffeine outside of the time-restricted feeding window. Well, like I said, again, caffeine, one thing to keep in mind and we'll talk a little bit more about this when I talk about cortisol and caffeine, but caffeine actually disrupts the circadian rhythms. Caffeine is making you feel awake, so it's inhibiting adenosine receptors in your brain, and also it's increasing cortisol. So these things happen in the morning, are active in the morning. Well, these things, I mean, cortisol peaks when you first wake up.

So caffeine itself can also even change circadian biology independent of looking at how it's consumed or whether or not it's consumed within the time-restricted eating window. But again, like I said, if you're fasting, you're doing intermittent fasting, the black coffee is not a big deal, the caffeine's not a big deal. I'm just trying to make people think about time-restricted eating a little bit differently than intermittent fasting. I don't wanna use the two interchangeably because there are differences with respect to thinking about the circadian rhythm of metabolism.

And that's really sort of an important thing to think about in addition to the fasting period, which obviously occurs when you're eating within a certain time-restricted window because you're trying to eat when your enzymes are the best they can be, you end up fasting. So there's an intermittent fasting component to it that sort of comes along and is very beneficial, but there's kind of these 2 beneficial things happening at once with time-restricted eating. Whereas when you're just doing intermittent fasting, you know, it's, you're thinking about it a little differently. You're not really thinking about the circadian part, but actually intermittent fasting, if you were to do an intermittent fasting sort of daily, obviously you also would be eating within a time-restricted window.

So you would be, you know, doing both as well. So let's see, any more questions regarding, People are asking about supplements to take or avoid during extended water fasts. I personally haven't done an extended water fast yet. I was pretty much going to do one and then I got pregnant and that was off the plate and I'm breastfeeding now, so it's still off the plate. But I've heard from various people that have done water fasts, certain things have helped certain people. For one, Replenishing, getting enough salt, sodium seems to be really important for a lot of people and the amount of sodium people need to take really seems to vary from person to person as well. And I think I'll address, since I'm talking about this, I'll address the question about using the sauna.

So this is also related to fasting. During a water-only fast, could sauna use have the potential to preserve muscle tissue and promote more fat use, especially during the transition and early stages of ketosis. Obviously eliminating the risk of electrolyte imbalances and blood pressure complications wouldn't be beneficial or overly stressful. So to answer that question, I would say you pretty much nailed what I would wanna state first, and that is obviously listen to your body. So I've had a couple of people that have told me about their experiences of using the sauna during a 4 to 5, 5-day water fast. It was a 5-day water fast. And these people actually did it together. They both did the sauna. One person had a great experience. The other one had a terrible experience.

So using, you know, listen to your body when you're doing a water fast. Water fasts are very stressful. If you're gonna exercise or use a sauna, that is another added stress. So it can be very tiring for a person and it may make you get more hungry. And also obviously if you're sweating, you're gonna be sweating out electrolytes like sodium, magnesium. Particularly sodium and magnesium. So you'd want to probably replenish your body with those minerals. You can take, you know, so people have talked about taking a mineral complex and that's helped, supplementing with a mineral complex and also taking the salt and just doing a short sauna session, not something too extreme. is important. So yeah, in theory it could help maintain the muscle mass.

And in fact, the 2 people did do— the 2 people that I'm discussing did do a body composition before a baseline and after the 5-day water fast, and it appeared as though the one that did the sauna had kept on more muscle, but that's just an N of 1. So, you know, in theory, thinking about mechanisms, yeah, it seems as though the sauna may help, but we don't really have any data, empirical evidence to support that, but I would say that it seems very likely. However, again, it can be very stressful on a person. So really important when you're doing a water fast, take it easy, listen to your body. People are all talking about a question that Daisy posted here live, and Daisy is talking about the optimal time to do time-restricted eating. Is it during the day or during the night?

And this is a question that I'm actually, gonna be addressing right now with some of the shift work questions. So let me get to that in just a minute, but before I go there, I wanna finish off with some of this, what to consume during the fast. So I'm gonna butcher this name, Sakiko Ruterskiold, we'll just call him Sakiko, asks, Is having a glass of water with branched-chain amino acids before a workout enough if one fasts overnight and wants to skip breakfast but prefers morning workouts? Is having the BCAAs before the workout, or does that basically— is it counterproductive because you're not having a fasted workout? So let's see, counterproductive as cortisol levels are raised leading to increased likelihood of fat gain.

Is it better to fast and not have something more than BCAAs in the mornings before workouts? Well, I think this all depends on whether or not you're fasting or not. I've seen studies where taking protein intake within a 24-hour period of doing a workout is sufficient to increase mTOR activity in your muscle, to increase IGF-1 activity in your muscle, and therefore to increase muscle mass. So I know there's probably people that are, saying one's better than the other, and I'm really not an expert on that. In fact, I'll just sort of say I don't, I don't know. But like I said, I have seen studies that say even within a 24-hour period, they're all pretty similar. If there are studies people want to send me that shows otherwise, I'd be really interested in, in those studies.

You can message me on Patreon or reply to one of my newsletters. I generally see those emails. With respect to Daisy's question and also the shift work question, Which is, which was by Rachel. Rachel asked, what kind of lifestyle changes would you suggest for people who have shift work, which obviously disrupts circadian rhythms, as it can be hard to have consistent eating patterns and sleeping times? Would there be benefits to intermittent fasting and eating within a time window, even if it's in the late hours of the evening? Do shift workers accumulate more DNA damage? And if so, would doing something like prolonged fasting or time-restricted eating be beneficial?

So this is really sort of hand in hand with Daisy's question, and that is, when's the optimal time to practice time-restricted eating? The optimal time to practice time-restricted eating would be with the daylight schedule because that is when humans— that is when, you know, there is— even though food intake is what activates our metabolic enzymes and wakes them up, and that's, you know, the schedule that they're on, though the food intake also communicates with light, with the daylight, day-night cycle. So there is crosstalk between these 2 pathways. So the optimal time to do time-restricted eating for someone that is not a shift worker, for someone that can because their schedule permits, they have the flexibility, Is to eat within an earlier time window.

However, if you do not have that luxury of, you know, being able to eat earlier in the day for whatever reason, as I mentioned earlier, you know, you may, you may have the, you know, busy work schedule and then you want to work out afterwards. You don't— you can't work out before, or you have kids, or let's say your significant other gets off work later and you want to eat as a family. I mean, lots of reasons why people would eat their meals, their dinner later in the evening. If you cannot shift your last meal earlier, then it's much better to delay when you have your first meal and still eat within that time-restricted eating window. And so for people that are doing shift work, this is something that Satchin and I discuss in this upcoming podcast, which will be the next one I release.

He seems to think, and he's actually just gotten a really large grant to study this in firefighters who obviously are doing shift work. So that'll be really interesting to see what data he gets from that study. But so far from some of this, some of the data he's aggregated from his iPhone and Android app, he has seen that people that do work in later evenings, so people that are doing shift work, do have a benefit if they eat within a time-restricted eating window, preferably within 10 hours. So obviously, if you're a nurse or a firefighter or a policeman, whatever it is you're doing, or a warehouse stocker or something, if you're working nighttime hours, then it's really important to try as hard as you can to eat all your food within a 10-hour time window.

And that seems to really be beneficial for lowering damage that does seem to be accumulating at a higher rate in shift workers. Cancer incidence is much higher in shift workers. Type 2 diabetes is much higher, cardiovascular disease, and pretty much all age-related disease. Alzheimer's disease is higher in shift workers. There's a lot of drawbacks. But, you know, if you can practice a few of these things that we know do seem to benefit circadian biology, and one of those is time-restricted eating, that in and of itself may make a really big difference. In fact, Satchin's shown that eating within a time-restricted window does seem to lower DNA damage, at least in hair follicles.

So there does seem to be some preliminary evidence that eating within a time-restricted window does seem to be beneficial for lowering DNA damage as well. Okay, so let's see. That's a lot of the— and I think that John Loredi's question's also very relevant to this. He says, my— Johnny Loredi asks, my workday begins very early, around 5:00 to 6:00 AM, which causes my feeding window to be quite large as I eat dinner around 8:00 PM. I'm interested in implementing a time-restricted eating plan, but I wonder if I wait till 8:00 AM to consume my first non-water substance and eating until 8:00 PM, beneficial. So is it as beneficial as starting at 6:00 a.m. and ending at 6:00 p.m.?

Probably not a huge difference, and when you're talking about just a couple of hours, I would say probably not a huge difference at all. So the key would be for someone like Johnny is to wait to eat, and this goes for anyone who works early. If you could bring some sort of breakfast with you to work, That would be the— or just wait till lunch till you eat. That would be probably the most beneficial. And for people that wanna wait till lunch, obviously, if they wanna consume some caffeine or coffee or tea or something to help them make it to lunch, then that seems like that would also be beneficial as well. So I think that obviously waiting to eat and do it. If you can't eat till 8:00 PM, then at least, at the very least, wait till 8:00 AM to eat.

If you could wait till 10:00 AM and do a 10-hour, 10-hour is much more beneficial than 12-hour. 12 hours, the 12-hour time-restricted eating window is kinda like the maximum, okay, if you eat after that, then you're doing more harm. But if you really want some of the robust benefits, eating within the 10-hour window seems to be like, It seems to be the sweet spot. So if you can eat within a 10-hour window, that would be great. All right, so people are asking about my time-restricted eating during breastfeeding. I'm gonna address a little bit of pregnancy and breastfeeding later, but right now I'm doing, at the most, 12 hours. Sometimes I'll eat, I'm eating, I try to do within 10 hours, but sometimes, Yeah.

I make dinner and then my son wants to eat and I just can't get the food in my mouth until 11 or 11.5 hours towards the end of my time-restricted eating window. So I don't always get to eat within 10 hours, but I definitely do it within 12 hours no matter what. And when I'm up in the early hours of the morning and late night because I'm breastfeeding throughout the night, I do not snack. I do not eat anything even though I'm hungry. So I definitely keep the fasting throughout the night, very important. But I will talk a little bit more about that when I get to the pregnancy stuff. Let's see, so I'm gonna move on to the next topic, which is, oh wait, there's one more question, sorry. One more question that has to do with fasting and gut health, and this is by Lloyd. Hi.

So Lloyd asks, I read that starving gut bacteria by not consuming enough dietary fiber, this starvation invites the bacteria to eat the mucus, leaving us exposed and can cause inflammation and potentially trigger Crohn's disease. With that in mind, how does the gut bacteria fare during fasting? And this is something, great question, Lloyd. This is something that I've been trying to figure out and I've talked to some of the experts in both fasting and also the experts in the microbiome to try to address because we really don't have any evidence as to what does actually, we don't have empirical evidence as to what happens during a fast. Lloyd is right.

When you do not consume dietary fiber, the bacteria in your gut does start to break down the mucin, which is the gut barrier that protects separates the immune cells in your gut from the microbiome and you can start to then poke holes in the gut barrier and cause inflammation. Now whether or not a 4-day water or 5-day water fast does this, I don't know. It seems as though there's just so many benefits from the fasting that I can't imagine that any little bit of breakdown of the gut barrier that happens, which would be completely resolved when you start to feed it the fiber again and also maybe the key is to— Possibly even take a probiotic or something after, I don't know. So it's a great question.

I don't have a solid answer to you, but it's something I'm actively trying to find answers to, and I absolutely will discuss it when I feel like there's some solid evidence, or at least if someone in the field gives me some hint of evidence that there may be some probable evidence that I can at least talk about. But really, really good question. Okay, so I am gonna move on to the next topic now. Next topic is sulforaphane and broccoli sprouts, I believe. Let's see. Yeah, broccoli sprouts and sulforaphane. Okay, so the first question was by Todd Williams, and Todd talks about broccoli seeds, and this is actually a very, recurring theme people talk about. No need to sprout?

In your video with Dr. Jed Fahey, he mentions discovering that seeds have more sulforaphane than the sprouts due to an accident with the sprouts in his lab. Did you follow up on this? Does simply crushing and eating the seeds confer the same positive effects as eating the full sprouts? I ask because this is so much easier. I agree, it would be so much easier, uh, and I will say, so Like 100% of the studies that have been done with sulforaphane and broccoli sprout, they have been done with broccoli sprouts or sprout extract, broccoli sprout extract that, you know, looking at the effects of broccoli seeds on sulforaphane and whether or not it, you know, does X, Y, or Z. That is sort of still an unknown.

We do know that the broccoli seeds do increase sulforaphane, that has been shown by Dr. Fahey. So we do know that it does increase sulforaphane. What we don't know is if it has all the same benefits on heart disease, on cancer, on lowering inflammation and biomarkers of inflammation in people, and all the things that I've talked about previously in my video or that Dr. Fahey's talked about in the interview I did with him. But the sort of concern with the broccoli seeds is something that is quote unquote an anti-nutrient in them that is called aruic acid, and it's actually known to play a role in myocardial necrosis.

It impairs ox— So it plays a role in basically heart dysfunction, and it's known to inhibit oxidative phosphorylation, which is how your mitochondria generate energy, and your heart 100% rely on mitochondria because the heart actually is mostly undergoing using fatty acids for energy. Fatty acids can only be oxidized by mitochondria through this process of oxidative phosphorylation. Uruic acid actually is known to inhibit oxidative phosphorylation and therefore would inhibit the production of energy from mitochondria. But that's, of course, extremely large doses. And so the US Food and Drug Administration, they sort of set this tolerable upper level intake of arachidic acid at looking at canola oil, which represents about 50%.

Canola oil, I generally would stay away from for sure, but a lot of people consume canola oil, and about 50% of people's total daily intake of this vegetable oil, if you talk about, for example, a 60-kilogram adult, that would be like 30 grams of canola oil per day or 600 milligrams of arachidic acid. So they're basically saying, if you're consuming 600 milligrams a day of arachidic acid, which is like 4.2 grams a week, that would be considered like the upper intake tolerable intake of this antinutrient. So there were some studies done looking at the concentration of arachidic acid in broccoli sprouts, broccoli seeds, and broccoli florets, which we're not discussing today, but broccoli sprouts and broccoli seeds.

So broccoli sprouts contain about 90 milligrams per 28 grams of sprouts, 90 milligrams of arachidic acid per 28 grams of sprouts. Whereas broccoli seeds contain about 120 milligrams per gram of broccoli seeds. So it's basically, you know, I would say that, you know, we don't really know what the safe level of broccoli seeds are to consume. There's much more arubic acid in broccoli seeds than broccoli sprouts. If you're consuming less than a gram of seeds a day. So if you can try to get, so if half of that would be, half of 120 would be 60. So if you're consuming 500 milligrams of seeds, then you'd be getting more of the same dose of aruic acid that 28 grams of sprouts would have. That's the way I would look at it.

And again, it's really a big unknown because— We don't really know if consuming the seeds has all the same benefits. So I always, if you wanna be, if you're more taking a conservative approach and wanna be safe, go with the broccoli sprouts. However, if you're a little more of a risk-taker and you feel the fact that Dr. Fahey has shown that the broccoli seeds do increase sulforaphane in humans, then that's enough for you and you wanna consume less, 500 grams of the seeds a day, and I don't know how many seeds that is, I mean, maybe that's not even really feasible, then you may wanna try doing the seeds. Personally, I'm gonna do the sprouts, but I'm not sure that whether or not, if you soak the seeds overnight or not, that lowers, I haven't seen studies showing that. In theory, it might.

Maybe that's something I'll ask Jed and see if he's willing to do that or if he has done that. But I don't know. It should, but I haven't seen any empirical evidence that that is the case. There are other anti-nutrients that do get lowered when you soak the seeds. And I think it does. I think it does, but I don't know for sure. So I'll be a little cautious there. If people are asking about contaminating issues, Dan Patrick, who is my husband, just posted something nice about helping with contamination. So, you know, that's, it's always an issue and for us it seems as though buying seeds that have been treated, sterilized first and stuff seems to help.

Also very important that you're rinsing these seeds and not, you don't want them, I wouldn't put them where there's sunlight because sunlight creates heat and And heat creates more moisture. And so if you're rinsing out the seeds, then basically you can, you know, if they're sitting in a hot place or the sun's beating down on them, you may also be generating moisture droplets, and that moisture and heat bacteria love. And so bacteria can thrive in that sort of environment. You know, we've had some contamination issues, gotten, you know, had some GI distress and whatnot, but it's, you know, you sort of learn and and try to learn from your mistakes and try different, tweak different protocols. But take a look at what Dan's posting here in the chat. I think that is pretty helpful.

I'm gonna move on to the next question about broccoli sprouts and sulforaphane. And I think that I also addressed Chris's question or comment that he had on the seeds versus the sulforaphane. Let's see. Chris asks, given the interaction between the active components of sulforaphane— oh, okay. So Chris asks, given the interaction between the active components of sulforaphane in broccoli sprouts or seeds, would you suggest keeping other ingredients in a smoothie to a minimum so you end up with a higher concentration of the active ingredients in in your digestive system? Yes. All right, this is a great question. So a lot of people like to put broccoli sprouts in their smoothie because they taste so vile by themselves if you make a smoothie.

It's really important to realize that if you are, because the enzyme, the myrosinase enzyme has to be, has to come into close contact with the precursor of sulforaphane, glucoraphanin. And so when you blend up the broccoli sprouts, Uh-huh. Obviously, if you're chewing them or eating them on a salad, you're okay. But if you're making a smoothie, you're blending them. And when you blend them, the enzyme comes in contact with the precursor and it makes the sulforaphane almost instantaneously. However, if you take the broccoli sprouts and you add in some carrots and tomato and kale and chard and banana and all this other stuff, then what ends up happening is you're diluting out the enzyme's ability to immediately contact the glucoraphanin.

So what I would suggest doing, if you want to put your broccoli sprouts in a smoothie with other ingredients, I would take the broccoli sprouts, blend them up real quick, wait a minute or 2 or 3, and then add your other smoothie components in and then blend it up. That way you're allowing the myrosinase to come into contact with glucoraphanin and you're maximizing your sulforaphane production. So I see here there's a lot of chat going on about sprouting. I'm glad to see that Dan's jumping in 'cause Dan actually does all the sprouting for us, so he's sort of the expert. Let me go back to my questions here. So Nathan Milgram asks about aruic acid versus sulforaphane and my 3-day approach to sprouting. And wants me to expand on this.

So when does the trade-off become optimal and totally safe in terms of days sprouted versus uric acid content? How do you arrive at 3 days? Are the non-sprouted seeds that make up a certain percentage of the sprouting jar a concern? So to address that question, I would say that where I came from the 3-day, the 3-day cutoff for harvesting the sprouts is sort of twofold. One is there's a study published by Jed Fahey, early study published by Jed Fahey, where he measured the sulforaphane content every day after sprouting broccoli sprouts, and day 3 is the most concentrated sulforaphane, and after day 3, concentration starts to lower.

So the sprouts seem to be sort of at their highest sulforaphane content on day 3, And so that's the first reason I became interested in harvesting the sprouts on day 3. The second reason is because I noticed, me and Dan both, we noticed that there was much less contamination when we harvested it on day 3, because we weren't allowing the sprouts to sit around longer to be, you know, the bacteria to find, you know, a little niche and grow. So less, you know, there's less heat, less water condensation happening when you add 2 more days on. you're significantly increasing the chances that you may contaminate your sprouts. So I think the two of those are, to me, pretty ideal. If you can lower contamination and still maximize the sulforaphane, that would be the ideal time to consume them.

In terms of the unsprouted seeds, for the most part, they sprout to some degree. I mean, they're not, it's not like just, consuming the raw seeds. So it's not really a concern that I have myself. So, but I don't really have any evidence to go either way, but it doesn't really concern me personally. Let's see, more on the sulforaphane. Back to my questions here. So, um, again, another question from, uh, Nathan Milgram was, um, regarding the potential benefits of moringa, uh, and its isothiocyanates, um, and what the best way to consume it would be. Uh, would the powder kill the, the anti-cancerous benefits?

So, um, when I talked to Dr. Faye, he seemed to think that people that are like living in the Western world are better off consuming Broccoli sprouts because I mean they have a similar profile, isothiocyanate profile, a little different, but they also they have very similar endpoints where they're they're they're benefiting the same pathways, endpoint pathways, and they're activating the same pathways. So you're better off just just sprouting them because the moringa grows in you know parts of Asia and and it's you know to get it over here it's just you know you're it's it's it's it's a lot more difficult and you go into these health food stores and you do see these powders and there's just really no evidence that the does do have all the active components there.

So you're probably better off just sprouting broccoli sprouts, in my opinion. All right, so the next question. So those were pretty much the broccoli sprout questions. Let's see if there's any more in the live chat. I know Dan's been answering a lot of questions about the sprouting themselves, and other people have been chiming in as well. But, uh, is there— are there any more pressing issues on the broccoli sprouts or sulforaphane, uh, before I move on to the next topic that people can type in real quick? Do I freeze them after sprouting? Um, so I used to. So basically, uh, I used to freeze them after sprouting, and the freezing itself also can increase the sulforaphane. But, um, we, we just started consuming them, you know, after the 3-day sprouting protocol.

We just kind of instead of growing them in mass, mass bulk, we started just growing them by like 1 or 2 jars and just keeping them in the fridge and consuming them within a couple of days or within that week. So I kind of stopped freezing them. Also, they taste better. So I kind of prefer not to freeze them. If you do freeze them, beware that the sulforaphane content can also increase. And so you may, not need as much as you do with the fresh sprouts. So I don't do the 70 degrees Celsius temperature thing anymore. So I talked to Dr. Jed Fahey about that and he says it's really not necessary to do. So I kind of— that makes it a lot easier to not have to do that. I think what we will do is go ahead and put out a sprouting video.

I've been sort of holding off on that just to find the optimal protocol because there's so many little things that crop up, little problems you have to solve. And so I think we have a pretty nice protocol down. But so Dan and I will talk about putting out a protocol for that. And the question is, how long can the sprouts be frozen and still be potent? Great question. I don't know. Sulforaphane itself is not very stable. And so what ends up happening is when you freeze the sprouts, the freezing kind of breaks the plant tissue. And so the enzymatic reaction starts to occur upon freezing when you're— the enzymatic reaction of the conversion of glucoraphanin into sulforaphane. So my guess would be it's not like a long-term kind of storage thing.

And again, we don't have empirical evidence of this. It's something that I'm just sort of speculating on, but just based on the fact that we know sulforaphane's not very stable, I would say that it wouldn't be stable for a very, very long, you know, you don't wanna like store it for months and months and then use it. Do all cruciferous plants give off sulforaphane or just broccoli? Cruciferous plants in general do make sulforaphane. Broccoli and then broccoli sprouts are the most concentrated. In fact, broccoli sprouts have between 70 to 100 times more of the precursor to sulforaphane than broccoli, mature broccoli does.

But cabbage, cauliflower, all these watercress, all these plants in the cruciferous family all have glucoraphanin and myrosinase and the potential to make sulforaphane when you eat them. All right, so I'm gonna move on to the next topic. And the next topic is high-fat diets, ketogenic diets, ApoE's kind of thrown in there because it's related to fat metabolism as well. So I have another very highly upvoted question from Willow, who asks, what is your opinion of a ketogenic diet for general health as opposed to for managing epilepsy? Is there evidence in support of a ketogenic diet for cancer? or neurodegenerative diseases?

And I would say, based on my reading of the literature, I have seen that there seems to be pretty solid evidence for a ketogenic diet for improving neurological disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases. There seems to be some evidence for also benefiting neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. And that, I think, is pretty solid evidence. There's also some evidence that it may, the ketogenic diet, when you're making some of these ketone bodies, particularly beta-hydroxybutyrate, beta-hydroxybutyrate appears to be more than just something that is used as energy by the mitochondria. It's also, it appears to be something that is a signaling molecule which is regulating gene expression in an epigenetic kind of way.

This is work done by Eric Verdin and he just recently published a really high-profile study showing that a cyclic ketogenic diet starting in midlife in rodents, so in mice, so the mice were given a ketogenic diet every other week starting later in life, starting in midlife, there was a longevity benefit. So it actually seemed to increase the average lifespan of the animals as well as it seemed to prolong the maximal lifespan as well, if I remember correctly. I'm pretty excited. Eric Verdin is the president of the Buck Institute in Novato, California. He used to be at UCSF, but I'm gonna be having a discussion with him next month and we're gonna record an interview and podcast together and we're gonna talk all about his research. So that'll be pretty informative.

So there is some evidence, at least in animals, that the ketogenic diet, cyclic, when it's cyclic, seems to benefit aging tissues in rodents and this appears to be mediated largely through the production of beta-hydroxybutyrate. Because it is activating genes like FOXO3, which is a well-known gene involved in longevity. It's also a class 2 histone deacetylase inhibitor, so it's changing gene expression of like hundreds of genes, and a lot of these genes seem to be involved largely in mitochondrial function and in neuronal function, and that's how the— it seems to be the mitochondrial function is really important for the longevity benefit. Now, one thing to keep in mind is that mice don't really get cancer.

They can get leukemias and lymphomas, but they don't get solid cancers like humans get. They don't get breast cancer or prostate cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer. So whether or not the cancer incidence was reduced, it's a different— it's a harder question to ask in rodents. You have to use other tricky types. You have to inject solid tumors to sort of artificially make a mouse get a solid tumor like humans get, and that was not done. So there seems to be really good evidence that beta-hydroxybutyrate is a very powerful signaling molecule and that that's important for aging and mitochondrial function. And of course, ketone bodies themselves seem to benefit mitochondria because they make the mitochondria churn out less oxidative products that can damage them.

Now, so I would say that it's important to keep in mind that you can get beta-hydroxybutyrate from doing a time-restricted eating protocol. So at about, after about 11 hours, your body, you start to release fatty acids from adipose tissue, goes to the liver, undergoes beta oxidation, you start to make ketone bodies. So if you're doing a 10-hour time-restricted eating schedule and you're fasting for 14 hours, or if you're doing an even more strict time-restricted eating schedule like 8 or 9 hours, the benefit to that would be a higher concentration of beta-hydroxybutyrate 'cause you're gonna be fasting for more like 16 hours. you're gonna be getting that beta-hydroxybutyrate.

So you kind of, you're gonna get some of the benefits of the beta-hydroxybutyrate as well, which is kinda what I like to do. When it comes to cancer, it's a little more tricky. I know there's some enthusiasts out there. Seyfried is one. I'm very familiar with his work. I followed his work when I was a graduate student. However, found not a lot of it was reproducible in my hands, and so I kind of take everything with a grain of salt. When it comes to cancer, I think it's, I would be much, much more cautious about saying a ketogenic diet is something that would cure or kill cancer cells because first of all, there's conflicting evidence out there in all the animal studies.

There's animal studies showing ketogenic diet and ketone bodies themselves can benefit particularly certain types of brain cancer. However, there's other studies showing the same type of brain cancer is not benefited by ketogenic diet, and there's others, more recently a study came out showing that ketone bodies themselves are consumed by certain cancer types. And so cancer is a very heterogeneous disease. population of cells where you, from one cancer to the next, different, even the same cancer type, if we're talking, for example, liver cancer, mutations can be different from person to person and the metabolism of the cancers are totally different, even though it's all pancreatic cancer, but there's this type of pancreatic cancer and that type.

So there's lots and lots of heterogeneity within cancer cells. So I would say, The conflicting evidence, I don't understand exactly what it means. All I know is that there is conflicting evidence, and that's important to keep in mind that there is conflicting evidence when it comes to cancer and ketogenic diets. And the other thing to keep in mind is that cancer cells, everyone gets hung up on the fact that cancer cells predominantly use glucose for energy. But the thing to also keep in mind is that Cancer cells not only use glucose, they upregulate glutamine, they upregulate fatty acid metabolism. I mean, all the fatty acid enzymes are dramatically increased in cancer cells. Cancer cells don't just want energy. Cancer cells have one goal in mind and that goal is to make more cancer cells.

The only way they can make more cancer cells is by replicating. In order to replicate, they have to make new DNA, they have to make new lipids, they have to make new proteins, they have to make new cell membranes. So cancer cells like to use fatty acids and fat to make new cells because the fatty acids are used to make new cells. It's called macromolecular synthesis. And that's been shown by, it's just hundreds and hundreds of studies. The macromolecular synthesis is something that is really important to keep in mind. It's not just all about the glucose. They're upregulating everything. And the other thing to keep in mind with cancer is that What is good for a normal cell isn't always good for a cancer cell, and a really great illustration of that is folic acid.

Folic acid is the oxidized form of folate, and it's more stable, and folic acid has been shown to prevent DNA damage from occurring and double-stranded breaks, which actually have been shown to lead to cancer. That's part of the mechanism by which ionizing radiation causes cancer. It causes double-stranded breaks. Well, Dr. Bruce Ames has shown that folic acid deficiency and folate can do the same thing, and that if you give someone folic acid, that it can prevent that from happening. Well, however, cancer cells like folic acid a lot because folate is needed to make new DNA. That's the reason why it can cause strand breaks in your DNA. So you don't get enough of it, it causes you to misincorporate a base nucleotide, You're basically, you're not making your DNA properly.

It causes strand breaks and you can lead to mutations potentially causing cancer. Well, folate, folic acid in particular because it's more stable and absorbed, 100% of it is absorbed by the gut, is also really, really, cancer cells love it because they're making new DNA and what do they want? They want folic acid. So that's something to keep in mind with a high-fat diet, ketogenic diet, and treating cancer, I'd say that it's something that we need to be very cautious about, and really, when you hear enthusiasts, always take what they say with a grain of salt. Maybe there are particular types of cancer, particularly certain types of glioma cancers, that have a little bit more solid evidence that ketogenic diets may help. And again, also, everyone is different as well.

don't process fats as well as others, and they end up having more inflammation when they're eating a high-fat diet, and more inflammation may be a bad thing when you already have cancer. So there's a lot of variables to keep in mind when it comes to cancer. So I think that, like I said, with neurodegenerative diseases, neurological disorders, I would say I feel pretty confident there's really solid evidence that it's beneficial, a ketogenic diet would be beneficial. Traumatic brain injury, Also very solid evidence, but when it comes to cancer, conflicting evidence, I would be a lot more cautious. And it may just come down to multiple other things are interacting we don't quite understand yet, so I wouldn't personally tell someone to go do a ketogenic diet to help cure their cancer.

I don't think we're there yet, but I am following the literature and I'm definitely gonna be talking to some experts in the field. as well. The question talking about glutamine, someone, Stanley, says he read cancer feeds on glutamine and so supplementing with glutamine may not be good. Yes, cancer does feed on glutamine, which by the way, glutamine is used by the mitochondria, so the glutamine is doing a couple of things to the cancer cells. It's used by the mitochondria to make energy and it's also— used as a nitrogen source for amino acids and as a nitrogen source to make DNA. So glutamine's being used for everything cancer cells want, energy, new proteins, and new DNA. So cancer cells do love glutamine.

Now the glutamine, that said, it seems as those particular types of cancers in humans, like glutamine, and that is liver and cancers in the intestine like colon cancer. So, someone that doesn't have cancer, taking some glutamine powder, probably not a big deal, but someone that does have cancer, I would say definitely avoiding the glutamine would be important for sure. So, Lulu's asking about just reducing sugar intake to not feed the cancer. A lot of G2 feeds are with sugar-based mixtures. Yeah, I think that reducing sugar, refined sugar, is extremely important for someone that does have cancer and also for someone that doesn't have cancer. You should cut out the refined sugar no matter what because it can also lead to cancer through a variety of mechanisms.

But I think that that would be— you don't have to do a ketogenic diet to cut out refined sugar. I don't eat refined sugar and I don't do a ketogenic diet. I mean, I follow a little bit more of a paleo-ish type of diet, but I, you know, so cutting out the refined sugar is something I would say that there's pretty solid, that it seems pretty safe. That would be something safe to do, you know, for someone that does have cancer. So I'm gonna continue on with some of these fat questions and ketogenic-related questions. Let's see. So, you know, of course, there's some people that also asked about ketogenic diets and benefits and stuff. And there are, like I said, there are benefits. I talked about the beta-hydroxybutyrate seems to be one.

Obviously, again, you're lowering your blood sugar by not consuming carbohydrates. But again, depending on the type of ketogenic you're doing, ketogenic diet you're doing, Of course, micronutrient deficiencies or not getting a diverse array of micronutrients, not getting a diverse array of fiber and prebiotics, which are different types of fermentable fiber that are used by the gut microbiome. Most prebiotics, believe it or not, are actually found more in fruit than in vegetables, so people on a ketogenic diet really cut out the fruits And so that's something to keep in mind.

Looking at if you're doing a long-term ketogenic diet, longer than 6 months, it's probably good to look at your thyroid levels 'cause those have been shown to be affected in people that have done ketogenic, strict, very strict ketogenic diets of 6 months or longer. Now there's very certain variations of ketogenic diets out there that are a little less strict and seem to have a little bit more greens Maybe a little bit better in terms of the micronutrient profile and things like that. Okay, so Val asks, I know you've done research and have an interest in the effect of fat on the gut. Can you tell us what you know? Many people are eating diets high in coconut oil and olive oil for weight loss, but what effect might this have on our intestinal cells and our gut buddies?

So this is definitely an area of interest of mine. Science and colleagues of mine have shown that fat is definitely hard on the gut. So when you metabolize fat, you produce bile acids such as deoxycholic acid, and deoxycholic acid is very damaging to gut cells. It actually also can cause DNA damage in gut cells, which repeatedly eventually may— may lead to something like colon cancer, can, I'm not saying it will, but it's a very harsh bile acid that's very hard on our cells. And so you make that in order to digest the fat. So in the context of someone that's constantly eating a high-fat diet, how much of this deoxycholic acid are they making and what effect is it having on their intestinal cells and their gut cells?

We really don't know, particularly in humans, and even, I don't even think a lot of animal studies have looked specifically at a ketogenic diet. There have been studies on looking at a high-fat diet, which also still contain carbohydrates, so the mice aren't actually given a ketogenic diet, but we do know that the high-fat diet in mice does cause gut barrier permeabilization and causes endotoxin release. Endotoxin is a component of bacterial cell membranes that when the gut is permeabilized, immune cells kill some of the bacteria which are part of the microbiome because the gut barrier is broken down, usually separates them, and so the bacteria is releasing endotoxin when it's dying.

Endotoxin gets to our bloodstream, causes a really strong immune response and inflammation, things like that. So that is something to keep in mind. Now, whether or not there's some sort of adaptation that happens at the level of the gut where if you're starting to eat more and more and more fat and you're making deoxycholic acid, are you now able to deal with that stress better because you're upregulating other stress response pathways? I've seen one study that has shown that there may be a little hint of evidence of that, that that does occur, that there is some adaptation that occurs at the level of the gut, but it's just not a very well-done study and it was in mice.

So it's possible that someone that is doing a ketogenic diet, maybe they do adapt, and that seems like it would be the case because if we do look at some of these ketogenic studies done by Eric Verdin, they do have lower biomarkers and inflammation, and one would expect if their endotoxin was being released, increase inflammation. So it's very possible that there is some sort of adaptation that does occur at the level of the gut. However, what the effect is on the microbiome, that's something that still needs to be addressed. There have been studies that have looked at saturated fat versus polyunsaturated fat, particularly polyunsaturated fat that contains omega-3 fatty acids, and how those affect the microbiome.

Saturated fat that was that was composed of lard seemed to have a negative effect on the microbiome, and the omega-3 fatty acids seemed to have a positive effect, meaning they increased commensal bacteria, good bacteria, whereas the saturated fat did not and seemed to actually be a little more harmful to them. But, you know, we really don't know what effect the ketogenic diet has on the microbiome. That is yet to really be done. And so I would say at this point we don't really know. You know, a question I have is, do the ketone bodies that are generated get into the gut? Like, can they go from the bloodstream to the gut?

And then, you know, can they feed some of these, you know, ketone bodies or short-chain fatty acids, can they somehow feed like butyrate, can they feed the colon cells and/or bacteria, you know, in the gut? I don't know. Open question. But I'm— I hope, you know, after at least— I'm gonna definitely be proactive in talking to some of these experts that are doing the research in these fields and see if they know and are willing to like do the experiment because it's something that I think it's important to understand, especially with the popularity of ketogenic diets.

And with that said, for anyone that is going to do a ketogenic diet, really, really important to measure, to do a blood lipid panel because people really respond to fat differently and a variety of different gene polymorphisms are regulating that. So the only way you're really gonna know if a ketogenic diet is is good for you is to get some blood work done and to measure, you know, some biomarkers in your blood to see whether or not, you know, your lipids or triglycerides or things. Actually, I'm gonna talk about some tests real quick since that was a question and I'll get back to the fat stuff.

But because I'm talking about, you know, measuring blood lipid levels and things like that, Nathan Milgram asks, what is the best bang for your buck when it comes to a service that's providing simple blood blood statistics like hormone levels, vitamin, minerals, lipids. I would say one of the best ones out there is True Health Diagnostics. They have a really, really good cardiovascular panel where they measure lipids, lipoproteins. They include particle size. They do small dense particles, large buoyant particles. They measure biomarkers of oxidative stress. They measure biomarkers of inflammation. They also look at omega-3 level, fatty acid levels.

They do a metabolic panel like vitamin D, HbA1c, insulin, thyroid-stimulating hormone, and then if you wanna do an additional hormone test, if you're male or female, they'll measure a variety of different sex hormones as well. So I really, I like the True Health Diagnostics test 'cause it's pretty comprehensive and I like the fact that they look, when they're looking at the lipids, they do triglycerides and all that, but they look at the particle size of LDL, HDL, they're looking at these particle sizes because particle sizes are really important. We know that large, buoyant LDL is actually more beneficial and small, dense LDL is really, it's the most harmful one because it can't be recycled back to the liver and it sort of starts this inflammatory process in the blood vessels.

So I would say that for anyone doing a ketogenic diet, and that would be, something that hands down should be, you know, on your list to do is measure your blood lipids, lipid levels, measure inflammatory biomarkers, and make sure that things are all working okay because some people do well and some people do not do well on those types of diet. Someone's asking whether, Andrea's asking if alcohol consumption causes endotoxin release. Yes, alcohol consumption absolutely causes endotoxin release. It's one of the more robust things that can, quote unquote, poke a hole in your gut and cause endotoxin to be released. So definitely something to keep in mind. And so Oneed, or Oneed, is asking about elaborating on the cyclic ketogenic diet. Diet for Longevity.

I will elaborate on that when I speak with Dr. Eric Verdin next month because that is all his research, and so I'll get a lot more of the inside story when I have a discussion with him. So that will be coming up soon. I want to talk about a little bit more on this fat stuff, on some of the questions that were related to the fat had to do with APOE4, so I'm gonna quickly sort of jump into that. So there were 2 questions about APOE4. I mentioned that different gene polymorphisms can change the way we metabolize fat, the way we absorb fat, the way we can recycle lipoproteins is another thing that affects our lipoprotein status. And so one of those, probably one of the major gene polymorphisms is the APOE allele and APOE4.

Which is frequent in about 25% of the population worldwide, is probably the most well-known one that affects the recycling of lipoproteins. And in fact, the low-density lipoproteins do not recycle back to the liver very well. So what ends up happening is that people with 1 or 2 alleles, particularly 2, even 1 allele, have much higher levels of LDL, cholesterol and also higher levels of triglycerides, even on the same type of diet that someone that does not have this allele would have. So the 2 questions, one is related to Alzheimer's disease. Chelsea asks, I am interested in hearing your list of everything you can do to stave off Alzheimer's disease. I know that you have stated you have one APOE4 allele. What special precautions should a person take if they have this allele?

So I just wanna also kind of preface what I'm gonna say with the fact that I'm, finishing up a report on APOE, and it's gonna include all the different variations of APOE, you know, APOE2, 3, 4, and the diet-lifestyle interactions ranging from saturated fat to carbohydrate to alcohol, exercise, sleep, and how this affects disease risk, including Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular disease. So make sure, you know, if you've done a 23andMe, we're gonna have AncestryDNA on there soon as well. Make sure you run your report. You guys always get to run, you're the supporters, you get to run the reports for free anytime.

So make sure you check back because I'm continually updating that genetic tool and run your report because I will be adding this APOE one very soon and it's going to be a good one. I highly recommend you run your report. Again, so with that said, the Alzheimer's disease risk with one allele is twofold, with 2 alleles of APOE4 it can be up to tenfold. So there's a very, very strong genetic component with Alzheimer's disease that interacts with lifestyle. So some of the things that are really important with the APOE4 allele, the one that I really wanna mention first, because we know the mechanism, is sleep.

And the reason sleep is so important for APOE4 versus APOE3 is because You make ApoE4, you make it in the liver, and it has to do with your LDL and lipoproteins, and you're transporting cholesterol and fatty acids to tissues and all that. But you also make ApoE4 in astrocytes in your brain. And in astrocytes, they then do sort of the same thing, but they transport these things to neurons. They're transporting cholesterol and fatty acids and things like that to your neurons. Well, something else that the astrocytes are doing with ApoE4 that's APOE-related is they are binding to amyloid beta plaques that accumulate outside of your neurons, and they're clearing them out.

And what's been shown is that an astrocyte with APOE4 binds to amyloid beta plaques with 20-fold less affinity than an astrocyte with APOE3. And so what ends up happening is people with APOE4 cannot clear amyloid beta plaques out of their brain as effectively as someone that does not have an APOE4 allele. And so they end up getting these accumulations of these plaques outside of neurons, which then disrupts the synapses between neurons because the synapses are between the neurons and that's where these amyloid plaques are accumulating. So when it disrupts the synapse, you can lose the memory because the synapse is where the memory is formed. But also when you disrupt the synapse, neurons die when synapses are disrupted.

So it causes It causes you to lose memories and also causes you to lose neurons. And so you lose brain mass as well. And particularly happens in a certain part of the brain called the hippocampus. But so here's where the sleep comes in and why sleep is so important for APOE4 is because there's a whole other— there's 2 ways you can clear amyloid plaques from the brain. One is through this ApoE-mediated mechanism, which APOE4 does not do well at all. And if you have 2 versions 2 alleles of it, really, really, really, really bad. Like I said, there can be up to a 10-fold increased risk for Alzheimer's disease. So basically, the other way to clear away the amyloid beta plaques is through the glymphatic system, which is regulated by sleep.

So when you sleep, the fluid from your cerebral spinal fluid squirts up, it squirts up through these lymphatic vessels that are lining the blood-brain barrier, and it's called the glymphatic system, and it squirts the fluid and it clears out. It's basically like washing. Like, you ever see like the street washes that they do on the street when they're just washing away all this stuff? It's basically doing that in your brain. And so it's washing away all the amyloid plaque, all the other protein aggregates or dead cells, things that have died, things that have accumulated in between neurons in the extracellular space in between neurons in your brain. And so sleep is when that whole system is activated.

In fact, in mice, their brains swell like twofold during sleep because of the cleaning that's going on. And so when you don't get good sleep, that does not happen. And so for APOE4 individuals, they're almost pretty much relying mostly on the glymphatic system to clear away amyloid plaques. So sleep is really, really important for APOE4. Okay, so some other things that have been shown to be really important for APOE4 is exercise has been shown to lower the risk for Alzheimer's disease. We're talking about in APOE4 individuals. And also lower alcohol consumption has been shown to lower the risk of Alzheimer's disease in individuals with APOE4 as well. People with APOE4 that consume A high refined carbohydrate diet, that's been shown to impair learning and memory in APOE4 individuals.

So cutting out refined sugars is important. And also, it's been shown that a diet high in fish and omega-3 fatty acids have been important, have lowered the risk of Alzheimer's in APOE4. Fish oil has been shown to lower the risk, particularly in younger individuals. But if people start, older individuals supplementing with fish oil, the risk doesn't seemed to be lowered quite as well. But anyways, that's something that I'm going to get into later on. I'm actually getting ready to submit a paper on ApoE4 and Alzheimer's disease, and I can't talk about my secret yet, but I will soon. I promise you guys will be the first to know about it.

So those are the things that have been shown to really affect Alzheimer's disease outcome in ApoE4-positive individuals: exercise, sleep, eating a diet that's low in refined carbohydrates, and also eating a diet that's high in fish and omega-3 fatty acids, fish oil. So there's some other people out there that have mentioned Dale Bredesen. He is an MD. He has published a paper on 10 individuals. Some of them had APOE4, they all had Alzheimer's disease, and he gave them a very comprehensive diet and lifestyle regimen that included vitamin D and a variety of different micronutrient supplements, multivitamin, a diet that was high in wild fish. They did exercise, like, I don't know, 6 or 7 days a week, meditation. They had good sleep. They get fermented foods, focus on the gut microbiome.

And this seemed to like reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease in these— in this small cohort of 10 individuals. So very powerful studies showing that diet and lifestyle does affect, can affect and reverse disease symptoms in Alzheimer's disease. And he does have a book, I think it's called The End of Alzheimer's Disease, out there. And I do hope to speak with him. I'm waiting for my study to be accepted before I reach out to him because I wanna talk all about Alzheimer's disease and ApoE4. So that's that. The other question has to do with, I'm gonna rant on 'cause I think I only have 30 minutes on this Crowdcast. It has to do with ApoE4. and cardiovascular disease and a high-fat diet.

Jasper was asking about thoughts on individuals that are E3/E4 and their fat intake, if they should restrict the fat, particularly saturated fat. So here's my answer, and my report's gonna go into much more detail on this. There's a lot of conflicting evidence out there on this. I have seen studies that replacing a, carbohydrate diet, replacing a carbohydrate diet with monounsaturated fat seemed to increase LDL size in APOE3 individuals, and so it increased the good type of LDL in people that do not have APOE4, but it did the opposite in people that do have APOE4. So replacing a carbohydrate, more of a carbohydrate-based diet, with monounsaturated fat with people that have an ApoE4 seemed to increase the small dense particle size of LDL particles.

So in that one study, it seems as though people with ApoE4 seem to be better with a more carbohydrate diet, less fat, more carbohydrate type of diet. But there's a lot of other factors that may play a role in that. I think the best thing to do would be experiment yourself, do those blood panels, and see what works best for you. Particularly, make sure the panel is looking at particle size, because that's really key here. And so like I said, True Health Diagnostics is one, a really good service that does that.

Another study showed that basically people with ApoE4 that had a— on either a low-fat or a high-fat diet, if they supplemented with fish oil, with high dose, like 3.5 grams a day of DHA, they were able to lower their triglycerides as good as people on the same diet with no APOE4 allele. So showing that omega-3 fatty acids also appear to be very important for APOE4 carriers. But more to come on that on my report, so make sure that you check back and run that through. Yeah. So let's see. I've got 30 minutes left and I wanna get through these other questions. So the blood tests I already addressed. And one more thing I wanna mention with the test, this is not a blood test, it's actually a urine test, but it's actually one of the most comprehensive looking at metabolism in general.

So basically looking at how your body breaks down carbohydrates, proteins, fats, how it absorbs vitamins and minerals. And this test is done by Genova Diagnostics. And you can actually, your physician has to order the test for you, but it's actually a really cool test. And if it's something, if you're into all that testing sort of thing, then I would suggest doing the Genova Diagnostics test on metabolism. All right, I'm gonna move into the supplements, diet, smoothies, pregnancy diet. Quick question by Rhea. Are smoothies less nutritious if you drink them hours after you make them? I will say that oxidation does occur. So, you know, and oxidation does affect— it affects compounds, proteins, minerals, vitamins, things like that.

Obviously, to some degree, a lot of these smoothies have a lot of antioxidants in them as well. And so that would sort of counteract the oxidation. So, you know, depending on how long you're talking about, It's probably okay when you start to do it overnight, leave it in the fridge. You're probably getting a breakdown, a good amount of breakdown of some of the nutrients in those smoothies. Okay, so Bernice Diaz asks, I'm interested to know what supplements you take on a daily basis to supplement your diet. Also, what supplements did you take or add during your pregnancy? So for anyone that's interested in this like more in depth, you can listen or look at the transcript of the interview that Tim Ferriss did with me recently his podcast.

There's a transcript that talks about the supplements that I take and also my diet, what I eat, and my exercise routine and stuff like that. So I would suggest you check that out. I also posted a PDF of the transcript on Patreon as a Patreon post. So you guys should all have access to that as well if you wanna just download the PDF and take a look at it. So when I'm not pregnant, the supplements that I typically take are a multivitamin called One by a company called Pure Encapsulations. I take a vitamin D by Thorne. Typically, I'd like my vitamin D, I get between 2,000 and 4,000 IUs a day depending on the season and how much sun I get. So like in the winter months, I take probably closer to 4,000 IUs.

I like to have my blood levels between 40 to 60, usually somewhere around 50 nanograms per milliliter, and that's typically what I seem to hover around. with using this. So the multivitamin that I take has 2,000 IUs of vitamin D in it already. So depending on whether or not I feel like I need extra vitamin D, then I'll supplement more with the vitamin D supplement from Thorne. I take 4 pills of a Norwegian Pure 3 fish oil, high DHA. Norwegian Pure 3, N-Pure 3, should be, It's a very, very high-quality fish oil from Norway, and I've found to be, it's my new favorite fish oil, and I think it's going to be available in the United States and on Amazon. I'm getting it directly from the manufacturer, but it will be something that's available, I think, on Amazon very soon.

Before I was taking N-Pure 3, I was taking Nordic Naturals, but I found that the N-Pure 3 has lower oxidation than Nordic Naturals. So, but Nordic Naturals is still pretty good. I also take nicotinamide riboside by Thorne. This is my non-pregnant supplement regimen. And we'll talk about that in just a minute a little bit more. I take vitamin K2 by now. I usually cycle the K2 every other day or maybe just 3 times a week, 100 micrograms. And I take, I've just added to my supplements PQQ, 20 milligrams by Life Extension. What is that? And then I also, I used to take omega-3 phospholipids by Nordic Naturals, but I started just eating salmon roe instead. But if I wasn't eating the salmon roe, I would take the omega-3 phospholipids by Nordic Naturals.

So that's pretty much the supplements that I take when I'm not pregnant. I'll add in other various things once in a while like Meriva. I'll do some Meriva, which is curcumin phytosome by Thorne. or some other things, you know, lecithin, things like that, or phosphatidylcholine, some certain things I'll add in at various points. But that's my sort of core supplements that I take. During my pregnancy, I sort of eliminated everything that was not essential or not proven to be safe. I went with the cautious road for pregnancy. So I wasn't taking things like lion's mane, which is a tea I would drink, you know, when I'm not pregnant. So what I did take when I was pregnant, I took a prenatal vitamin by Thorne. I took the N-Pure 3 DHA fish oil. I took 5, about 5 of those per day, the high DHA one.

I took vitamin D. So my prenatal had 2,000 IUs. And then— No, my prenatal had 1,000. 1,000 IUs and then I supplemented with an extra 2,000. So I was taking a total of 3,000 IUs of vitamin D a day. And believe it or not, my vitamin D levels were just around 35 to 40 nanograms per milliliter. And let's see. So starting in my third trimester, I started supplementing with iron. I took iron bisglycinate by Thorne, 25 milligrams. Starting in the third trimester because I was, you know, my blood, red blood cell count was a little low and iron is so incredibly important starting in the third trimester for brain development.

And starting in my third trimester, I started taking VisBiome, the probiotic, which is the same formulation as VSL#3 because I found some evidence that mothers that started supplementing with, actually the studies were VSL#3, during their third trimester, there was a benefit to the baby's microbiome if the mother was breastfeeding them. So there was something that was being transferred through the breast milk to the baby that was beneficial to their gut that was happening in mothers that were supplementing with a BSL number 3 starting in the third trimester. I did not take any probiotics the first or second trimester. So that was my supplement. sort of my supplement regimen for pregnancy. For breastfeeding, I'm pretty much, I'm taking the prenatal. I'm still taking the prenatal by Thorne.

I'm taking 500, sorry, 5 pills of the high DHA by N-Pure 3, and I am taking 6,000 IUs of vitamin D a day. So I'm taking Thorne's 5,000 IU plus the 1,000 I get from my prenatal. And the reason for that is 'cause vitamin D is not very well transferred in breast milk. And in fact, studies have shown that mothers have to take around 6,000 IUs of vitamin D in order to transfer vitamin D in their breast milk. And that levels lower than that, the vitamin D was not transferred. Additionally, I'm also giving my son vitamin D drops, which are 400 IUs. Okay. And I'm also gonna start taking PQQ during my breastfeeding because PQQ is something that actually naturally accumulates in breast milk and it's been shown to improve cognition.

So I thought, well, it's naturally in my breast milk, why not sort of give myself a little extra boost? I also take vitamin K2 by NOW and I take that again probably like 3 times a week. Mostly for me because I'm taking so much vitamin D. In terms of my diet, Heidi asked everything about my pregnancy diet, wants to know what I was eating sort of during my pregnancy. I will just quickly go down this list. So basically I had no caffeine, absolutely no caffeine, no tea. I know doctors say you can have up to 300 milligrams a day, but for me, I decided that I didn't know if there was any subtle effects that caffeine is changing things. It increases cortisol. It's changing adenosine receptors. I didn't know if that was any subtle effect that was gonna happen during fetal brain development.

So I just kinda wanted to just cut it out 100%. So I cut it out 100%. No alcohol, obviously. No raw fish with the exception of salmon roe. So salmon roe, I had a lot of salmon roe, but the salmon roe was previously frozen, and if you freeze the salmon roe, then it kills off any potential parasites that may grow, and the parasites are what is the main concern with salmon roe. I actually ate a lot of salmon roe because the developing brain has been shown to take up omega-3, the omega-3 DHA in phospholipid form 10 times better than non-phospholipid form. And salmon roe is— fish only contains about 1% of their omega-3s are in phospholipid form, whereas roe, the roe of fish contain between 30 to 70% of their omega-3 fatty acids in phospholipid form.

So it's really an ideal form to get DHA in phospholipid form. So I was eating a lot of salmon roe. I used a Berkey water filter. I try not to consume any water out of plastic bottles with the exception of a couple times I was traveling. Plastic bottles contain BPA. BPA has a much, much more robust and strong effect on fetal develop— on the endocrine system of the fetus rather than adults. That has to do with the fact that we break down BPA into a metabolite that's not really chemically active pretty quickly. However, The BPA passes through the fetus, the placenta, and gets to the fetus before that happens, and so the effects are much stronger in a fetus. So I used a Berkey water filter.

I also wanted to filter out the fluoride, which has been shown to have negative effects on cognitive development also during fetal development as well. I ate wild Alaskan salmon 3 times a week. I also would eat grass-fed filet mignon steak 1 to 2 times a week, particularly to get the iron. I had chicken 2 to 3 times a week, and I would try to get calf liver. So I would do liver and onions. You know, liver— the liver had— it has a lot of micronutrients in it, vitamin K2 and other vitamin A and other things that are important as well. I always had salad or sautéed vegetables or steamed vegetables with every single dinner. So always— so it was like a piece of protein, either the fish or the steak or the chicken, and then the vegetables.

For lunch, I would usually have salads leftover with salmon. I had lots of fresh fruits depending on the season, always just lots and lots of fruits and veggies. I ate lots of nuts for snacks, avocados with salmon roe on them and nuts and fruits would be snacks. For breakfast, I would have, you know, I'd switch between Greek yogurt and fruit and nuts, or I'd have some muesli or whole oats with blueberries, or I'd have some eggs and sautéed kale. And fruits would always be my snacks. And I'd, you know, eat a ton of fruit. For exercise, I basically walked. So I ran, I did some jogging throughout my first trimester. And then starting in my second trimester, I started walking 3 to 4 miles a day. And I was doing that pretty much 6 to 7 days a week, all the way till the day I delivered.

And I would also do a little bit of like yoga type of stretches and a little bit of bodyweight squats. and some 10-pound weights for my arms. So I would do some resistance training as well, but I'd always make sure that I was able to, it wasn't too much for me. And then I really, with time-restricted eating, much more difficult to do, but I did seem to eat within a 12-hour window, which was fasting for 12 hours. I was most of the time I did that, not all the time, but most of the time I was able to do that. Just eat all my food within 12 hours. And with breastfeeding now, I'm doing 10 to 12, depending on if I get a chance to eat or not within my timeframe. So that's really my, that's the whole pregnancy thing. Let's see here. My screen froze up in terms of the live questions.

Okay, here we go. So, all right. I better keep going. I got 15 minutes left. So I wanna get through some of these other questions. I'm kinda just gonna rant on. So for people wanting to know about my diet, what I eat, you know, it's pretty close to what I ate during my pregnancy, honestly. So, and if, again, and this specifically James Everett Ward asked the question and he wanted me to summarize what I eat in a week. Really, it's very, very similar, although I probably, these days I'm not eating as much red meat as I was. I was particularly focused on the red meat during my third trimester as well because of the iron. But I pretty much eat a pretty similar diet as well. now. And in terms of exercise, when I'm not pregnant, I was a runner.

I'm right now actually, I started running a little bit, but decided that I need to let my pelvic floor muscles recover a little more and strengthen them a little more. So I've been doing, I recently started doing some high-intensity cycling spin classes where we, it's interval training, where it's a really high-intensity anaerobic workout for an hour. And I'm doing that like 3 times a week and it's a fantastic workout. I really, really enjoy it. And so, so I'm doing that 3 times a week and then I do some, you know, I lift some weights and I do some, some like yoga-ish ballet types of stretches which kind of like work different muscle groups. And that's kind of what I'm doing right now to get my aerobic and do my resistance training. I also do bodyweight squats.

And I do try to get some exercise like every day, even a little bit, even like 15 minutes of something. And also I go for walks. So I'm doing walks with my son. We're trying to go for some long walks, get him exposed to light and things like that as well. Since I talked about the nicotinamide riboside, I wanna quickly address the reason why I'm taking that since there were a couple of questions on it. Chris asks if I can expand on the nicotinamide riboside and its benefits, possible downsides. And Kevin Rose asked a question in the comment section. He asked, what are your thoughts on the supplement basis, BioLysium? Do we need to increase our NAD+? And I'm gonna address that question because I think it's an interesting one. I like it, and it's relevant to the nicotinamide riboside.

So NAD+ is actually something that— it's a very important cofactor. It's required for all of our metabolic enzymes. Our mitochondria need it. It just means that you need those enzymes to work properly. Your mitochondria produce NAD+. They need NAD+ to produce energy, whether or not you're making energy from glucose or fatty acids. You need NAD+ to do that from your mitochondria. And so your mitochondria need NAD to basically do their thing. So NAD is really important. If you don't have enough NAD around, your mitochondria suffer. NAD levels actually decrease with age. They decrease with damage. So anytime you have damage happening, like DNA damage happening, DNA damage gets repaired, but the repair machinery requires a huge amount of NAD in order to to be able to repair damage.

So NAD kind of gets sucked into the DNA repair machinery when that happens. Inflammation, to repair inflammation, NAD is required. So NAD, again, it's like another sink, you know? And so these, when you have all this damage occurring, it's sort of like a triage where it's like, well, the NAD is being used up for that because it's really important to repair damage. What ends up suffering is your metabolism. Your metabolism ends up suffering. So So NAD levels are really important for energy, you know, for that reason because you need it to make energy and when you have chronic inflammation or chronic damage happening, you can't make energy as well because the NAD is being triaged to repair these damaged processes, repair the damage that's happening.

So these repair processes are taking away the NAD from your mitochondria which then Basically, your energy levels can plummet. And I think that's part of the reason why there's some anecdotal evidence out there where people are taking IV NAD and like their energy levels are boosted. Well, it makes sense because NAD is required to make energy. And so, you know, for anyone that has any sort of low-level chronic inflammation or damage happening in the background, you know, that extra boost of NAD would— you'd notice it for sure. Yeah. So NAD+ also occurs with aging, obviously, because more inflammation and damage happens with age. But what's also interesting is that NAD+ levels rise in a fasted state.

So anytime you're fasting, your NAD+ levels, the concentration, the balance between NAD+ and something called NADH, which is what you make after you eat. So your mitochondria use the NAD+, you make the energy, and the NAD+ then gets converted to NADH. So you kinda toggle between NAD and NADH when you're in the fasted and fed state. When you're fasted, your NAD levels rise. Well, NAD levels rising activates some enzymes called sirtuins. The sirtuins are histone deacetylases that are known to regulate aging, and so they globally change gene expression and, you know, in a beneficial way. Rising NAD levels also activate autophagy. So there's, because histone deacetylases deacetylate proteins as well, protein acetylation inhibits autophagy.

So when you deacetylate something, you take away the acetylation that actually activates the autophagy process. So NAD, rising NAD levels which happen during a fast activates autophagy, makes sense. Fasting also activates autophagy. Nicotinamide riboside is something that actually does get converted into NAD, and studies have shown that supplementation with it can increase NAD levels up to 2.7-fold over baseline, and that was at the higher end, so 1,000 milligrams a day. So I'm personally not taking that much. That's a lot to take. So I do think the supplement Basis has nicotinamide riboside. It also has pterostilbene in it. Pterostilbene is kinda like resveratrol but a little more potent.

So it also does what— and it activates the same repertoire of enzymes that rising NAD levels activate. So you're kinda getting a double whammy there. So personally, I'm taking the supplement by Thorne called Niacell. But BASIS would be, in my opinion, gets the thumbs up because it has the nicotinamide riboside and the tyrosylamine together. So I've got just, you know, 7 minutes or so left. So I wanna quickly talk. Let me just see some of these questions here. My screen keeps freezing up. Someone's saying there's research that NAD does increase cancer. I have not seen that research, so I will be interested. Please send me those studies and I will look into it myself. And the vitamin I take from Thorne is called Niacell. All right, so other thing I wanna quickly get through.

So people were asking about vaccines and pregnancy. Real quick, I'm going to get to this. Both TC and Chris, I'm not going to read off your questions, but they have to do with whether or not there's any evidence for vaccines or if I'm going to vaccinate my child. I want to start off by saying that I am definitely not an anti-vaxxer. I think vaccines are important. We live longer because of vaccines. A lot of viruses like polio, measles, mumps, they've been eliminated, mostly eliminated because of vaccines. Vaccines are important because not only at the individual level are you reducing your risk, but you're also reducing the risk of it transmitting it to someone else.

And so this is kind of known as herd immunity, and herd immunity is really important in populations, and it's important for reducing various viruses at a population level. I will say that things are not so clear-cut when it comes to vaccines as well. So with respect to autism, there's been a lot of falsification of data from some researchers, particularly one that was linking the MMR vaccine to autism. But with that said, That's not to say that there isn't any evidence that vaccines don't play a role in neurological disorders. We do know that vaccines can elicit a strong immune response, and we know that during pregnancy, very strong autoimmune responses can be detrimental because it can cause the immune system to attack the fetus. developing fetal brain.

This has been shown a variety of times in different monkeys that have been elicited to have a strong autoimmune response from different adjuvants and things like that, that are pregnant, and how what ends up happening is they had their offspring end up having autism-like behaviors largely due to the autoimmune response, and that during pregnancy, that's— that very strong autoimmune response can cause antibodies to attack the fetal developing brain. And we do know that mothers of autistic children have like 5 times more, are 5 times more likely to have antibodies in their bloodstream against brain proteins, fetal brain proteins. And that's really not supposed to, you're not supposed to have antibodies in your bloodstream against brain proteins.

So there's something clearly going on with an autoimmune type of response. and autism, with mothers and autoimmune response and autism. So I personally avoided getting any vaccines during pregnancy. I didn't, you know, just because I didn't know how my immune system was gonna react. I didn't wanna take a risk. So, you know, I opted out of the flu vaccine, which I never get the flu anyway. So for me, it was like, I didn't feel, you know, like that was a very, hard for me to avoid getting the flu vaccine. I also opted out of getting the Tdap vaccine, diphtheria, measles, and pertussis, which is whooping cough. However, I did get the Tdap vaccine the day after, one day postpartum.

So after I delivered my son, I got the vaccine because there are studies showing it takes about a month, but you do confer immunity through breast milk if you are breastfeeding. Breastfeeding antibodies do transmit through breast milk to the infant. And so I opted to go that route instead of getting any vaccines during pregnancy. That was my personal take on it because just like I said, I wasn't sure. I think there's much stronger evidence that mother's autoimmune response during pregnancy can affect the outcome neurologically of the child. versus a child getting the vaccine. Now, with that said, vaccinating children, again, I don't think it's as clear-cut. I do think vaccines are important, but I will say this.

On the CDC website themselves, they have listed here vaccines that are given in multiple vaccines at once, for example, MMR, where you're giving 3-in-1 vaccine, There is scientific evidence that some of these vaccines with multiple vaccines in one have been shown to cause fevers and cause fever-related seizures in children. But they say that there's no long-term consequence. However, that's a neurological effect. I'm not sure that there isn't some sort of interaction we just don't know about. So I'm personally opting to do vaccines in singles. You can do that. You can give your child a measles by itself vaccine, a mumps vaccine by itself, and not have to do the measles, mumps, diphtheria, all those things, rubella, all at once. So that's personally what I'm going to do.

I'm probably going to also look through and see which ones are the main, main, main vaccines that I want to give my son and give those to him. I think we're about to run out of time. I just want to say that I really, really, really appreciate everyone joining. This is all being done because of the support from you guys. Thank you so much for your support. It's, you know, it's been really, really, really beneficial. What you can do if you like what I'm doing, please tell a friend about it and let them know that it's crowdfunded. You know, it's not just me. I also work with my husband. He's a co-founder and he's really doing a lot of