Q&A #3: Cancer, Fasting, & Probiotics—Plus PQQ, CoQ10, & Brain Energy

Hello everyone. Can everyone hear me all right? Cool. So I'm going to go ahead and get started on the top voted, upvoted questions. And some of the, some of the top voted questions that are a little redundant from like previous Crowdcasts, I'm not going to spend too much time on, but I will send people back to those those webinars. So I'll get started. So the first question was asked by Chris Dunham, and the question is, in your interview with autophagy expert Dr. Guido Kroemer, he said he eats one meal a day in the late afternoon or evening. Professor Tim Spector says skipping breakfast is good for you, quoting 6 randomized controlled trials.

Professor Longo says that fasting for more than 12 hours leads to increased risk of gallstones and that skipping breakfast leads to increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Who's right? Wow, that was a very involved question. So to start off, I just want to say that a lot of the randomized controlled trials that have to do with skipping breakfast have not controlled for time-restricted eating. In other words, when people are— when in randomized controlled trials, when they're given breakfast and they have the 3 meals, the 3 meals are a set time. And so what ends up happening is that you're basically getting a longer fasting period, which is good.

In observational studies where skipping breakfast You know, has been shown to be negative, then you're basically getting people that are eating later in the evening. So observational studies are not controlled trials. So typically what ends up happening is when people, for the most part, that are not intentionally trying to do a time-restricted eating or an intermittent fasting type of protocol, just a regular old person that ends up skipping breakfast, their sort of meal pattern gets shifted later in the evening. And so they end up eating in the later evening hours.

And so it ends up being more of, you know, they're eating at a time when their metabolism's sort of quieting down, so they're less insulin sensitive, their fatty acid metabolism isn't, you know, working as well, and they're not gonna be fasting for as long of a period. Also, you know, having the gut process food, you know, during sleep and everything isn't ideal, so your gut also needs to rest. So there's a lot of variables that have not been controlled for when it comes to looking at whether or not skipping breakfast is bad or good for you. So ultimately, to directly address that question, you'd have to look at a trial that directly compares eating within a certain time period. So keeping that constant, for example, let's say you're going to eat within a 9-hour time window.

Is that 9-hour time window going to be starting with breakfast, or is it going to be— meaning starting earlier in the day, breakfast sort of synonymous for earlier in the day— or is it going to be starting with lunch or later in the day? So that's kind of something that we don't really know. So that's definitely something that I would say we don't have any empirical evidence for. Now, what we do know is that definitely— I'm looking, sorry, I'm looking in the chat here and I'm seeing some people can hear me just fine, some people can't. Is the consensus you can hear me? Okay, perfect. So basically, we don't really know if the skipping breakfast, you can't uncouple that from the time-restricted eating, if that makes sense.

So that's definitely, I think that's a sort of confounding factor with a lot of these studies. Now, we do know that circadian rhythm and circadian rhythm, there's the circadian rhythm that's activated by light, so light exposure, and that happens in the brain, in the suprachiasmatic nucleus region of the brain. But there's also circadian rhythm that's activated by food intake, and that's a lot of such. Dr. Satchin Panda's work has shown that, and that activates circadian rhythm for our metabolic processes. There is to some degree a coupling of these 2, meaning that it is good to eat earlier in the day when your eyes, when you first see light, that circadian rhythm to some degree is coupled to your metabolism. Whether or not there's a significant difference.

So if you're someone that's, for example, Dr. Guido Kroemer, who's eating like one meal later in the day, is there a big difference between doing that and let's say doing your time-restricted eating window first thing in the morning at 6 AM and finishing within a 9-hour window? I don't know. We really don't know if there's really a significant difference. I've had conversations with doctors, Satchin Panda. He seems to suggest that there may not be a huge, huge difference. So, you know, it's hard to say because we don't have empirical evidence, but I think that whatever works best for your lifestyle, you know, whatever you can do to make sure you're eating within a shorter time window, and I'll address the gallstone and Disease risk studies in a minute, but whatever you can do to, you know, eat within that 8, 9, 10, 11-hour time window, whatever's gonna make you more compliant is the best.

So if you're someone that, you know, has a 9-to-5 job and you like to go to the gym right after work and there's just no way you can, you know, stop eating at 5 PM because, you know, then when are you gonna eat dinner? Like, so— You know, that sort of thing where you have to keep in mind your schedule. I think that basically, you know, that's important. So I wouldn't worry too much about, well, I should, you know, eat all my meals within this early, early time window. I think the real important thing is just restricting them within a time window. So now with respect to the increased gallstones and with a longer fasting period, So that is something that is a little confusing, and I kind of wish Walter would have addressed this a little more in detail.

Basically, being obese or overweight increases your risk for gallstones. Now, losing a significant, a significant amount of weight within a very short time window also increases the risk for gallstones, particularly if someone is starts out at a baseline of being obese or overweight. Essentially what ends up happening is during a fasting window when you start to really metabolize your fatty acids, so you start to immobilize fatty acids from adipose tissue and your liver starts to process them and beta oxidation and all this. In order to process the fatty acids, you have to produce bile acids. And so what ends up happening is you have, um, you basically— your liver releases more cholesterol into the bile, and this can increase the risk for gallstones.

However, this is more of a problem with very, very prolonged fasting. So I'm a little, um, confused as to why Valter would talk about it, uh, in a TRE or a time-restricted eating with respect to time-restricted eating and not prolonged fasting, because it becomes more of a risk when someone's doing like a 5, 6, 7, 10-day fast, particularly with someone that starts off at a baseline of obese. The studies that— well, Valter actually doesn't even reference any studies in his book. I took a look at it and there was actually no references, which is surprising. I looked up the references. They're quite old, a couple from the mid-'80s and '90s. Again, those references had to do with people that had a high body weight.

So the people that were starting out obese and then lost a bunch of weight in a short time period had increased risk for gallstones. So, um, I, I think that, you know, that I'm particularly— I'm not particularly worried about increased risk of gallstones if I do a 9— if I eat within a 9-hour time window on a daily basis. I don't think that the evidence suggests that is something to be worried about. I do think that people that are overweight or obese, now they might have a particular reason to be a little more concerned about increased gallstone risk because they already are at a higher risk for it. And again, if you lose a bunch of weight in a short time period, you're not doing a time-restricted eating protocol.

You know, people do end up shedding fat, but it's not as quickly as someone that were doing, like, for example, a 5-day water fast or a 7-day water fast. Like, you really start to lose more fat that way, and you're obviously going into ketosis and you're metabolizing fatty acids and more cholesterol gets released into bile. And so that would slightly increase the risk. But overall, I would say that is not something that I'm particularly worried about. for those reasons. So, um, alright, everyone, everyone can hear me alright? Great. So I hope that answered the question with the gallstones.

The increased risk of cardiovascular disease, I just haven't even seen that, and I talked to Satchin Panda about that and he says that's— he just doesn't have— there's no evidence that he's found that there's an increased risk of cardiovascular disease for fasting less than 12— doing a time-restricted eating window less than 12 hours. So, you know, I, I'm a little disappointed about that and, you know, that message kind of being confused a little, but, you know, it is what it is. So, so hopefully that kind of sheds some light in terms of— I see people putting in the chat here talking about supplements and things outside of the eating window.

I I've talked about this before in the first Crowdcast webinar I did, and also Satchin and I talked about this in the second pod— round 2 podcast that we did. Basically, it's— Satchin thinks it's ideal to kind of consume everything within the time window, but he says not— it's not a huge concern, you know, if you're consuming some supplements outside of the time window or, you know, herbal teas and things like that. I really, you know— It's probably not a make-or-break deal. So, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't be too worried about that sort of thing. Okay. So I'm going to move on to the next question.

And so the next upvoted question was Kevin Rose had Dr. Valter Longo on his podcast discussing the longevity diet, which sounds like actually it actually contradicts a fair amount of new diet science and studies about healthy fats. especially meat, paleo, and such. So if all these experts can't agree, how should we know what to do, basically? And that question was submitted by Jay. And also there's some comments here about IGF-1 and that being sort of the main mediator as to why too much meat is not healthy. So I will say that I have addressed this question before in previous Crowdcast webinars. And also I have a couple of audio podcasts out there that talk about this meat consumption and also saturated fat.

So you should listen to those 'cause they're only like 15 minutes long and they're pretty informative. Basically, I think that Valter's approach is to look at a very, very large body of evidence, including observational studies, which obviously can never pinpoint causation because they're essentially correlation studies, but they are done in humans. He wants to look at molecular mechanisms. So looking, turning to more animals, animal studies, preclinical studies where animals are fed various diets and certain endpoints are looked at. He wants to look at, you know, pathways that are known to regulate longevity. And then, you know, just looking at the populations that are very long-lived.

So populations that are likely to be a centenarian, what their diet consists of, because, you know, that's something that's obviously, you've got more long-term evidence that whatever they're doing sort of works. So I think that's a very good approach. And, you know, but there's always caveats. So with, with that approach, you know, Valter's— Valter has come to the conclusion that a diet that is mostly plant-based with some, some animal protein, particularly fish, I think he really advocates cutting out red meat altogether. Is probably the healthiest diet. And it's certainly what a lot of the long-lived populations eat. And so that's, you know, his take-home.

Some of the newer diets out there like the paleo diet and ketogenic diet, and I think those are the 2 main ones, you know, there's not a lot of long-term evidence so that we don't have long-term evidence that those diets are necessarily great for longevity. We do have some clinical randomized controlled clinical trials with endpoints that are biomarkers for health starting to crop up now showing that eating a diet that's low in refined carbohydrates and even a diet that's higher in fat in some instances does seems to have, you know, positive effects on biomarkers of health. But that's not, you know, there's no long-term evidence that these diets are really safe and are great for longevity. Also, there's a lot of the caveats have to do with the details.

So when you're talking about a on a population level, then I think Walter's diet really probably I would say is the best fit for longevity. And what I mean by that is on a population level, I'm just talking about just everyone, people that are sedentary, people that are overweight, obese, people that are smokers, people that are, you know, drinking excessive alcohol, you know, not just your CrossFitters and people that are fitness, you know, fitness-oriented and things like that, but everyone. I think that if you're just, if you're kind of, kind of one-size-fits-all diet, trying to just apply something that you can just say, okay, let's simplify everything If you wanna live longer and healthier and keep the body fat off and have good biomarkers for longevity, then you should probably eat a mostly plant-based diet and with some fish.

I think that's probably safe. However, when you start to come to people probably like a lot of us that are not sedentary, that are not overweight or obese for the most part, or that are not— you have someone that is overweight or obese and is really trying to lose that weight, that's, you know, actively trying to do something about it, not smoking, you know, so basically pretty much a healthy overall lifestyle, then the question becomes, well, does eating more meat— is it really as bad? And the reason that's a question is because the meat consumption, there are multiple Studies showing that the one of the main reasons the meat consumption is bad is because the IGF-1 activation.

IGF-1 is is a growth factor that allows damaged cells to keep living when they otherwise would die, and so that's a really really high risk for cancer. So you know that becomes an issue when someone is sedentary because exercise actually causes IGF-1 to be taken up into muscle. and into the brain where actually those are tissues you want IGF-1. Muscle really needs IGF-1 to build more muscle, to maintain muscle mass, to repair damaged muscle. These are all also risk factors for longevity. I mean, sarcopenia, decreased muscle mass, frailty, all these things are some things that occur with age, and IGF-1 in the muscle can counter that. Also in the brain, IGF-1's been shown to help existing neurons survive and also help grow new neurons, neurogenesis.

So again, it's one of those things where, okay, if you're talking about a certain subset of people that have a healthier lifestyle, maybe eating a little more protein is okay. Now this kind of goes to another question someone was asking, well, how much protein should we take and is there a way we can monitor it? And I don't have an answer to that. I think everyone's lifestyle is a little different. Work out to a different degree than, for example, Joe Rogan. I do a lot of, you know, high-intensity interval training, and I do some cardio, a little bit of resistance training. But, you know, someone like Joe Rogan's probably doing a lot more resistance training than I'm doing and probably, you know, wanting a lot more IGF-1 in, in muscle tissue, you know.

So I think each person kind of varies in their, in their protein intake and how much they they want and how much they need, and you know what that balance is for optimizing your your muscle growth and and maintaining muscle mass versus making sure you don't have too much IGF-1 around. It's a it's an open question. You can measure plasma plasma IGF-1 levels, so that would be be a possible way to monitor you know protein intake. But we're kind of far from establishing what the cutoff is and It's certainly not something that's routinely measured. You can get it measured by certain companies. For example, I think WellnessFX will do it for you or Life Extension. And then with the ketogenic diet, I think this kind of goes into another question that someone asked about polymorphisms.

That regulate saturated fat. And, you know, basically the ketogenic diet's a lot of new science. There's a lot of interest in it and people that are experimenting with it. And I think that, you know, Valter is right in saying that we don't have any evidence to know that long-term that it's a diet for longevity. And he's absolutely right. We haven't— in humans, we have zero evidence to suggest that long-term it's It's actually a good diet for longevity. So I think people that are following that diet are sort of taking a risk in that respect. But if a person is following a more experimental diet where newer science is coming out showing maybe short-term biomarkers for health are optimized, then I think that on an individual level, a person should absolutely measure a lot of biomarkers.

For example, you should do a whole lipid panel. So you should measure LDL, small dense LDL, triglycerides, HDL, total LDL cholesterol, your glycated hemoglobin, C-reactive, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein. Definitely look at kidney function, BUN levels, yes. You wanna look at thyroid function. I mean, just, so you wanna do sort of a very comprehensive panel. And that would be something to really, be very vigilant about if you are trying an experimental diet like that, for sure. And also, if you have gene polymorphisms that say saturated fat intake, a high ratio of saturated fat intake may have negative health consequences, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the end-all be-all, meaning you should always measure blood biomarkers in addition to the genetic data because there's lots of genes that regulate saturated fat, how you metabolize saturated fat, how you metabolize polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat.

And just because you have one of these risk factors doesn't mean that it's going to have a functional consequence because there's redundancy with a lot of genes, and so other genes may compensate for that. So that's something to keep in mind. But with that said, if you do have some of these genes and you are measuring biomarkers, the thing to keep in mind is it doesn't necessarily mean you have to avoid all saturated fat. Most of the studies are with respect to some of these genes regulating saturated fat just indicate that you need to have a higher ratio of mono and polyunsaturated fat to saturated fat, meaning you should eat more avocados, nuts, salmon, olive olive oil, and less butter, coconut oil, fatty cuts of meat like pork, dairy.

So you want to have a lower you know, a lower proportion of the saturated fat and a higher proportion of the, of the mono and polyunsaturated fat. So that's essentially what a lot of those studies were saying. But again, measuring blood biomarkers are essential and also will help you understand, you know, what the diet you are doing and how that's affecting your health. So, um, that's also something to keep in mind. Now with respect here to, um, people are putting in here, uh, Dr. Eric Verdin talking about carbohydrate Carbohydrate intake inversely correlated to longevity. That study, the thing to keep in mind is that study did not differentiate refined carbohydrates from vegetables and fruits and starches, whole foods basically.

You know, so everything that we know about refined carbohydrates, we you know there there's not one study that I've seen where people taking in refined carbohydrates have a positive. You know, there's a there's there's no positive impact on. biomarkers of health and/or even observational studies looking at longevity itself. So I would say that study is not necessarily a great study to cite with respect to why you should do a ketogenic diet because I think a lot of people agree whether we're talking about people that are vegetarian or paleo or keto. I think most people agree that cutting out refined carbohydrates, refined sugars, is a healthy thing to do. For the most part, people agree on that.

So I would say that study is sort of not— you can't really cite that to say, well, you know, cutting out carbohydrates is associated with longevity. Well, you know, they didn't distinguish between refined carbohydrates, so it's a little misleading in that respect. Now, with respect to the question having to do with On my latest podcast, this was from Matt Lerner. On the latest podcast, Dr. Eric Verdin says that a ketogenic diet increases longevity in mice and there's no evidence that it increases longevity in human studies except for that study I just mentioned which you can't really say, you can't really cite as a ketogenic diet increasing longevity in humans. But in mice, he showed that it increased longevity. Whereas Valter Longo says that no, in mouse studies, it decreases lifespan.

Who's right? Please help. Now, so let me shed some light on this. And I recently, by the way, I had a round 2 podcast with Dr. Valter Longo and we discussed this discrepancy as well. So basically doing animal studies, the animal studies with the ketogenic diet are a little tricky. So when mice are fed a ketogenic diet, but they're not given a calorie cap, they will just sort of eat nonstop. Like, they just constantly are eating ad lib— it's called ad libitum. So there's no time-restricted eating. They just— they're constantly sort of eating for whatever reason. It's kind of weird. Um, and so they end up getting obese, and it's kind of an obesogenic diet. So what ends up happening is that, uh, you have to kind of do a calorie cap.

When you're doing these animal studies with a ketogenic diet, in addition to that, limiting the protein intake to less than 10% was also really key. And of course, protein intake is also associated with longevity, as I mentioned through the IGF-1 mTOR pathway. So in the in the in initial animal studies, researchers were doing with a ketogenic diet. They were not. Capping the calories, and so it ended up being a sort of pro-aging and pro-obesogenic lifespan. Those are the studies that Valter is citing when he was talking about it actually decreasing lifespan.

Now, with the most recent studies out of UC Davis and also from the Buck Institute, from Dr. Eric Verdin's lab, both of those institutes, they, they, they did the calorie cap with the ketogenic diet, and in Dr. Verdin's In's case, he also limited the protein intake. So again, you know, people that are doing a ketogenic diet really really have to be careful and to make sure they're like doing it correctly and make sure that it's like good for them. So you know, the only way to do that is to measure blood biomarkers, look at your gene polymorphisms, and and make sure you're not like. eating tons and tons and tons of protein. To some degree, you wanna limit the protein intake as well.

So, but even with that said, we still don't have long-term evidence that a ketogenic diet is a longevity diet in humans. I would say that evidence is lacking. And it is a good point. Doesn't necessarily mean that it's not going to be a longevity diet. It just means that that it is risky to start doing that diet. You may be ahead of the curve. You may be ahead of the curve in that respect where it's like it's gonna turn out to actually be good for longevity in most humans. And again, you can do a ketogenic diet without having to like eat a bunch of saturated fat.

So eating fats that are high in mono and polyunsaturated fats, so having a diet that consists mostly of avocado, Salmon, nuts, olive oil, you know, that— and olives, that, you know, those are high-fat food sources that aren't necessarily, you know, set high in saturated fat. So you also may, you know, there's also a lot of benefits from eating a lot of those foods have other benefits. For example, the omega-3 fatty acids in salmon also have a lot of benefits as well. And then there's polyphenols in olives and olive oils, and there's a bunch of polyphenols in nuts. And so there's, you know, there's lots of other goodies that are found in those foods as well.

So, so that would be, um, that would be like my thoughts on, on, on that whole, you know, you know, area, the whole ketogenic, paleo, vegan sort of thing. Um, the FTO SNPs are what I'm referring to, and also the PPAR-alpha and gamma, uh, particularly the PPAR-alpha SNP. If people are homozygous in that, um, really have a hard time not only processing saturated fatty acids but actually producing ketone bodies from fatty acids. So the whole process of ketogenesis, making ketone bodies, is regulated by that gene. And so it can become actually dangerous for people that are particularly homozygous, but even have one allele for that SNP, the PPAR-alpha.

And again, my genetic tool tests for that, and you guys should all be able to run your— if you have 23andMe data, soon we're gonna have Ancestry data on there as well. should be able to run and see if you have those SNPs. So hopefully that made sense. People are asking how long, Michael's asking how long after starting keto should you do your first blood test to capture the effects? I would say that you always wanna do a baseline test. So before starting any new experimental diet, you wanna get a full panel lipid, if you're really being comprehensive, all the lipid, the insulin sensitivity, the inflammation biomarkers, Thyroid would be great, kidney function, liver function, you know, just the whole panel starting at baseline.

And then I would say that doing it, um, 1 month and then 3 months after starting the experimental diet, you know, would be, um, something that would— that would be optimal. Uh, and, you know, some of these blood tests can become a little pricey, particularly because not all health insurance covers like every you know, all these various biomarkers that, you know, would be good to measure. But you know what? It's worth it. And, you know, a couple hundred dollars, I think it's really worth to know if you're experimenting with your diet. It really is your health. So it's important to quantify it and to make sure that it's good for you and you're not just, you know, do it because some guru says it's good, you know.

People do respond very differently to different diets and different drugs and different lifestyles and things like that. So that's basically— I think I covered that information pretty comprehensively. Just looking at some of the questions in the chat. Anything else that's really Jumping out. Okay. All right. So I'm going to— would love to hear your thoughts on resetting circadian rhythm using fasting to combat jet lag when traveling. Yeah. So that's a very interesting topic. That's something that Dr. Satchin Panda has talked a little bit about and is interested in studying a little bit more in more detail.

But a couple of things that really appear to be important when you're traveling into a different time zone, the 2 things that really seem to be important for sort of resetting your circadian rhythm, the most, most, most important thing is upon arrival in the new time zone, like immediately, particularly if you're arriving during the day, immediately having the bright light exposure. So even though you're super, super tired, go out outside and stay outside for 30 minutes to an hour and just make sure you're getting that bright light exposure because the bright light exposure is what initially starts the clock.

And so that helps sort of reset even though your body is like, you know, it thinks it's supposed to go to sleep and usually you're supposed to be making melatonin and all that happening, the bright light will start to reset that circadian rhythm. And then the time-restricted eating, Yeah. So, you know, it's kind of a tricky one because depending on when you're arriving, so if you're arriving in the morning hours, again, you wanna then start your meal, start that clock. But if you're arriving in the evening time, then, you know, it's a whole different thing because you wanna make the melatonin and you wanna definitely fast, not eat. And, you know, that's certainly Yeah.

I think it needs to be studied more, but the best thing I can say is if you're arriving in the daytime to get that bright light exposure. Glycine, someone was talking about glycine. I know there was another question about that and supplementing with glycine before bed, I think for helping sort of— glycine is a sort of inhibitory neurotransmitter, acts as an inhibitory neurotransmitter. and much like GABA, and so it sort of helps people calm down, wind down. Interestingly, there have been some studies showing that glycine— this is— these studies were done in lower organisms.

Glycine actually can extend lifespan of lower organisms in much the same way that restricting methionine, which is one of the essential amino acids, that can increase IGF-1 and sort of has an mTOR and sort of has a negative effect on lifespan. It's sort of the same way. And so some researchers are starting to look at whether or not glycine can be a pro-longevity compound. Really very little evidence right now and certainly no clinical evidence of that. However, it's an active area of interest for some aging researchers, and I certainly think it's interesting. Do I think it's like a bad thing to supplement with glycine? At this point, I don't think it is bad. Um, all right, so I'm gonna go, go back to some of these questions.

Okay, quickly, uh, John Gregory asks, you mentioned that you cycle vitamin K2. Can you share your approach on, um, the science behind that? So basically, um, I cycle— so I— the reason I— there, there's no real empirical evidence that one should cycle vitamin K2 supplementation. In fact, the supplementation on vitamin K2 in clinical studies is sort of scant. I mean, there's just a few studies out there on vitamin K2 supplementation. The reason I do it is just because we don't have a lot of evidence on vitamin K2 supplementation and because I don't feel that the foods that are high in vitamin K2 aren't foods that, you know, from an evolutionary perspective aren't something that I would've been eating— humans wouldn't have been eating every single day like organ meat, some of these fermented foods.

So I don't— I don't feel that I really need to be supplementing with— with vitamin K2 every day. I also like to streamline what I'm supplementing to like the real— the stuff that I take every day are like the real things that I really feel are— are of, you know, the most importance. Uh-huh. The whole reason why I take vitamin K2 is kind of an insurance because I wanna make sure that my calcium that I'm absorbing is going to the bones and going to my muscle where I want it and not precipitating with phosphorus in my blood vessels to form plaques. So it's kind of an insurance.

When I say insurance, because they— the reason I say that is because vitamin K1, which is found in dark leafy greens, vitamin K1 usually goes to the liver and is important for the process of clotting blood, coagulation, which is extremely important to make sure you don't hemorrhage out when you bump yourself or injure yourself. And also, it's important for repairing anytime you have injury, things like that. However, when you have— when you're getting an abundance of vitamin K1, for example, in my case, I eat a lot of dark leafy greens. I have smoothies. I eat them raw. I eat them cooked with— I always have dark leafy greens with almost every single anything I have on my plate. I make sure I have a serving of dark leafy greens. So I'm getting a lot of vitamin K1.

Evidence has shown that when there's enough vitamin K1, it goes to the liver, and once there's enough of it, it stays in the bloodstream. It doesn't continually just go to the liver. And in the bloodstream, it does the same thing as vitamin K2 does. And what I mean by that is it activates proteins that are involved in shuttling calcium out of the blood vessels into the bones and muscles. So, I feel that I'm getting a lot of vitamin K1 and, um, and, and for that reason, I don't particularly need so much vitamin K2. However, um, I do like to have that insurance and I do, you know, because I, I do supplement with vitamin D and my vitamin D levels are, um, pretty adequate. I hover around 50 nanograms per milliliter of— You know, my blood levels.

I do— that means I absorb about 40% more calcium and phosphorus than someone who is vitamin D deficient would. Uh, so I wanna make sure that calcium again is going the right place. So really, that's, that's my whole rationale behind that. It's not like there's a lot of, um, clinical evidence for cycling vitamin K2. Okay. So then, uh, the next top voted question I already answered, I think, the keto, the polymorphism. Hopefully that answered Josh F.'s question on ruling out keto or not. Okay, so the next upvoted question is from Jim S., and it's— the question is, experts disagree on many things. One second something is great, the next it's a death sentence.

What are the 3 to 5 most compelling things related to improving health and longevity that you strongly believe in that others might not? For example, using the sauna. And then there are some comments there about the protocol for the sauna and things like that. Take a sip of water. So I would say that— so the 3 to 5 things that I you know, I think are good for longevity that other people may not think are great. I would say that for one thing, that doesn't necessarily mean they're the 3 to 5 things that are the best. So if we're talking about things that most people do agree on, I would say most people agree cutting out refined sugar, refined carbohydrates is great for longevity. Most people agree that, you know, exercise and not being sedentary is good for longevity.

Most people agree that high vegetable intake is great. So those things are all obvious ones, but things that I think are also good for longevity that most people don't necessarily consider, I would definitely say the sauna, using the sauna 4 times a week would be probably have the highest, would have the most robust effect. So we know that from studies out of Finland that using the sauna 4 to 7 times a week is associated with like a 50% lower cardiovascular disease risk, a 66% lower Alzheimer's, a 60% lower dementia risk. So those are, you know, those are really, you know, age-related diseases, and certainly cardiovascular disease is one of the top killers in the United States and also in a lot of other countries as well.

The sauna mimics cardiovascular exercise in a lot of respects, but we also know that in addition, you know, in addition to that, it's improving blood vessel pliability. So blood vessel function, it's improving, you know, just the way that your blood vessels are working in general. It's also allowing your heart to do less work because there's increased plasma volume. And, you know, basically your blood is flowing to organs a lot easier, which means that your heart has to do less work to pump it to get it to your different organs, including the brain.

And also heat shock proteins are another really pro-longevity factor that have been shown in multiple studies, including human studies, humans that have a polymorphism that make them have more heat shock proteins are more likely to be a centenarian. We know that from, from studies, human studies that have looked at heat shock proteins in muscle biopsies, that sitting in the sauna for— in a 163-degree Fahrenheit sauna for about 30 minutes can increase heat shock proteins by about 50%, and that, that lasts for 2 days. Uh-huh. So you don't have to do the sauna for 2 days and that heat shock increase in heat shock proteins will be sustained for 48 hours, um, which is also really, really nice.

So, um, the studies out of Finland that I cited, that the temperature was about 174 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes, at least 20 minutes. So that was, that was sort of like the minimum temperature and the minimum time was about 20 minutes. To have the robust effect, the 50% lower cardiovascular disease, was a 40% lower all-cause mortality, 66% lower Alzheimer's disease-related mortality. So I think that the 4 times is the most robust. 2 to 3 times also had an effect. It wasn't quite as robust. For example, instead of a 50% lower cardiovascular disease-related mortality, it was a 24%. lower risk. So not quite as robust, but still you're getting an effect. But if you really want that pro-longevity, I would say the 4 times a week is the minimum dose at 174 degrees for about 20 minutes.

That would be— and at that degree, you're getting the— you're going to get the heat shock protein effect as well. So that would be one. The second thing I would say would be that maybe most people aren't talking about are the broccoli sprouts. I think sulforaphane is an up-and-coming longevity compound. Lots and lots of clinical evidence that it, you know, it decreases cancer incidence, decreases cancer recurrence, increases a variety of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory pathways in humans. It lowers risk factors and biomarkers for, you know, oxidized LDL and cardiovascular disease-related uh, markers, good for brain function. I mean, just a whole, whole list of benefits. So I, I'd say that that's another one that most, most, um, probably pro-longevity people are not talking about.

And then the third, I would say, for example, I would say time-restricted eating. And I think that's kind of becoming more popular to talk about, at least in this, in the, in the intermittent fasting respect. People are talking about that being a pro-longevity. I would say for sure time-restricted eating within a at least no longer than an 11-hour time window, preferably like 10 hours. And then I would say the other one is high-intensity interval training. It's one that I've become increasingly interested in. And, you know, VO2 max is a biomarker for aging. We know that— so VO2 max is the ability of your body to take in oxygen during exercise and then transport that oxygen to various tissues. VO2 max decreases by 10% per decade.

And high-intensity interval training, in fact, there's been multiple, multiple studies showing that is one of the most efficient ways to increase VO2 max. Aerobic exercise absolutely does it as well. But when I say efficient, what I mean is, for example, studies have shown that doing just 24 sessions of a high-intensity interval training protocol, 45-minute protocol where you're having like 4 1-minute high-intensity pushes, you know, separated by, by, um, you know, active recovery, recovery, and you have a warm-up and a cool-down period and all that. After 24 sessions, people's VO2 max increased by 12%. And that's like literally turning you back a decade. in terms of aging.

So I'd say that that is another probably up-and-coming, I'd say, practice for pro-longevity that I don't hear a lot of people talking about just yet, but I do think that it's going to be something that may play a role. Also, it's been shown in clinical studies in humans to increase mitochondrial biogenesis, the growth of new mitochondria in cells. Um, up to like 70%. And I mean, that's amazing because you're talking about, you know, essentially replacing damaged, old, dysfunctional mitochondria with young, healthy, new mitochondria. And mitochondria are how you're making energy. So that's— you're going to have, you know, more better energy, more efficient energy production.

And also you're going to be less likely to leak out damaging byproducts, which are, you know, constantly being made by your mitochondria, reactive oxygen species, free oxygen radicals. These things are damaging a variety of things in your cell including DNA, including mitochondria. So young mitochondria leak out less of these damaging byproducts than old mitochondria. So if you take like for example a 20-year-old and compare them to an 80-year-old and you look at You look at their their mitochondrial efficiency, a 20-year-old will have less you know damaging byproducts being leaked out than than an 80-year-old. So replacing your old damaged mitochondria is also a good thing. Again, high intensity interval training.

So I think those are the three things I would say most people are not talking about. They're not necessarily end all be all, but they're they're three things I'd say that you know are compelling, and I strongly think they're gonna that are. gonna make their way into the longevity arena very soon. In terms of how many high-intensity interval sessions per week, I would say 3. In fact, the study that I talked about— so this is Bill asking— the study that I talked about with the 24 sessions, that was over an 8-week period. And interestingly, that study also looked at people that did— were doing, um, more high-intensity training within that time period. So they were doing like 4 or 5 high-intensity interval sessions. There was actually a threshold.

So after, um, doing it 3 times a week, uh, people that started doing it 4, 5 times a week, there was diminishing returns. So their VO2 max did increase, but it was like an 8% increase as opposed to like a 12%. which really suggests that your body needs to recover. So, um, I would say that, you know, probably even 2 to 3 times a week would be optimal, um, you know, for the high-intensity interval training. Uh, you definitely don't want to be doing that like, you know, 4 or 5 times a week. Okay. Uh, let's move on to the next. Um, yeah, and then in terms of what, what, what is a high-intensity interval training? I mean, there's lots of things you can do. Essentially, you're just trying to go You know, over, over 80% of your maximal oxygen intake.

A lot of times what people, what, you know, people do to do that is like a sprint, you know, a sprint, a hill sprint. I do mine on stationary bikes, sprinting, and also I do hill sprinting. Swimming, you can do it with swimming, burpees, all these things. You can do lots of, you know, lots of things you can do. for a high-intensity interval training. It doesn't necessarily have to be just the biking. All right. Yes, you can do it on StairMaster. So let's see, the next question has to do— was asked by Stan and has to do with the reishi mushrooms and also Also the ashwagandha. I don't even know how to pronounce that. I'm sorry that I completely like don't know how to pronounce it, but what are my thoughts on those things?

And so what I will say is that I think there's a lot more compelling evidence for mushroom extract like reishi, lion's mane, particularly because there have been double-blinded randomized trials randomized controlled trials in humans that have shown it improves. I would say the most compelling evidence is that it— that a lot of these extracts improve immunity and immune function. There are some randomized controlled trials showing that, for example, reishi improves fatigue as well. But if your immune system is working better, that's going to also have an effect on energy because a dysfunctional immune system is very energy-consuming. And so a lot of energy sort of gets triaged into that, trying to boost your immune function, and that leaves less energy for other things.

And so you end up feeling fatigued easier. So those things are sort of coupled and they go together. But one of the main reasons for that is because mushrooms have beta-glucans and beta-glucans, they're a great source of beta-glucans and the beta-glucans are a very, very good substrate for microbiome gut bacteria in the microbiome. They're referred to as a prebiotic, and what we know about a lot of these prebiotics is that once they are metabolized by various species of bacteria in the gut, they end up producing short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, propionate, acetate, lactate, and these short-chain fatty acids then act as signaling molecules to regulate immune cell function. And basically, there are a variety of different immune cells are being made.

For one, more T regulatory cells are produced, which are very important for preventing autoimmune diseases. Natural killer T cells are being produced, which are very important for fighting off viruses, fighting off bacterial infections, and killing cancer cells. In general, just T-cell functions improved, and so your overall improved immunity. So I'm personally a fan of the reishi and lion's mane and cordyceps and a variety of other mushroom species. Personally, I've been making tea with them from Four Sigmatic. I don't have any affiliation with them. I just, I like their product and they have their extraction techniques really good. So that's kind of what I use.

With respect to the ashwagandha, I would say my biggest criticism with that is that the limited amount of randomized controlled trials that have been done have nearly all been funded by the same supplement company that makes the ashwagandha. this supplement. So that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. I mean, I certainly hope that wouldn't corrupt the science. However, it is definitely something to keep in mind. There are, you know, there are some, some double-blinded randomized controlled trials showing that it improves anxiety. I would, I would say the strongest evidence is that it helps with anxiety compared to placebo, but even that was like only a 20% increase improvement in anxiety. Also, another one that's pretty strong with that is the reduction in cortisol.

However, if you compare taking that supplement to bright light exposure for like an hour a day, the bright light exposure is much more robust at lowering cortisol. So it's not something I particularly supplement with. I don't, you know, I don't know if it's something that I think is like core, core kind of supplement that people should take. The, the studies on longevity and stuff are really, really weak and they're all in vitro. And I, I mean, I, I wouldn't even consider that actually a longevity compound at this point. But, you know, certain people may find, you know, that if they, if they have like high anxiety, um, it may, it may, may help them. Um, so that's kind of my thoughts on that.

I haven't read the recent study from Life Extension about ashwagandha, but I do know that I generally like Life Extension. Their magazines, I think it's really good. However, they do make a lot of claims in there for their supplements that they're selling. based off of in vitro and preclinical studies. So I would definitely take a look at the reference for whatever is being cited and make sure it's not, you know, something that was done in a Petri dish, or if it's only been done in animals, then, I mean, doing animal studies is definitely a step up of the Petri dish, but I would say that to be careful about that. I have not seen any in vivo studies showing that ashwagandha is, similar to caloric restriction unless we're talking about an in vitro study.

But if you do know of an in vivo study done in animals, please send it to me via Patreon message or email [email protected] and I will take a look at it. Okay, so next question. What did you avoid during pregnancy that's common practice? What protocol are you following for vaccinations? for my— for your child. So basically, I think this— what this question by Marco is asking is, what did I basically avoid doing that most— that it's kind of standard of care says it's okay to do? So it's— this isn't necessarily like my entire pregnancy protocol. I did talk a lot about my diet and my exercise routine during pregnancy in the very first Crowdcast webinar I did. So please go back and Take a look at that if you want to learn more about that.

But specifically, what I avoided during pregnancy that most physicians say is okay to do and/or not only say is okay to do but recommend, I avoided caffeine, full stop. Caffeine has been shown to increase the risk of miscarriage. That's particularly important during the first trimester. I avoided it throughout my pregnancy just because I wasn't sure, you know, how caffeine changes the way, you know, brain development occurs. I know that caffeine blocks adenosine receptors, and I don't know if there's any effect, you know, even subtle effect on brain development. There may or may not be. There's just— there's no real evidence that, you know, we know of.

But it may be one of those like subtle things where your child's a little more hyperactive or a little more, you know, I just, there's no telling. So I just chose to avoid it. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to, but certainly during the first trimester and also during conception, people that are trying to conceive, because there is now even increasing evidence that caffeine increases the risk of early miscarriage and caffeine intake by both males and females. So it affects sperm motility and things like that as well. The other thing that I avoided during pregnancy that it was advocated to me was vaccinations. So I avoided both the flu vaccine and I avoided the Tdap vaccine, which were both against my OB-GYN's recommendations.

The reason behind me avoiding those things was because of the evidence out there that activated immune— overactivated immune systems during pregnancy have been shown to increase the risk of autism because in some cases with the right genetic background, an overactive immune system from the mother can cause immune cells to cross over the blood-brain barrier and get into the developing brain and sort of attack Proteins that are involved in brain development, and this has been shown in non-human primates mechanistically. That's been shown also— mothers of autistic children are 5 times more likely to have circulating antibodies in their blood against fetal brain proteins, which suggests that they had an immune response against a brain protein during pregnancy. which is very odd.

You should not have antibodies against brain proteins in blood plasma. So because of those studies, I decided I didn't wanna take the risk. I don't necessarily know how my immune system's gonna react to a vaccine. Vaccines, essentially what they're doing is they're activating your immune system. It doesn't mean that's going to have any negative effect at all, But again, people's immune systems respond differently and there's a variety of different genetic factors that regulate a person's immune response, environmental factors, the combination of the two. And so I just didn't want to take any risks. I personally decided that with the flu, you know, I never get the flu, but, you know, just being very, very precautious with that. if you're pregnant during flu season.

Also, I decided with the Tdap that I was going to get the vaccine immediately after postpartum. So I actually got the vaccine the next day after I had my son because I was going to breastfeed. And there's evidence that mothers transmit antibodies through the breast milk, and that is how they can confer immunity to their child. So I decided that I would give antibodies against the Tdap vaccine to my son via breastfeeding. And also, I made sure that everyone that was gonna have contact with my son in the first month— it takes 4 weeks to confer all the antibodies to— via breastfeeding, so keep that in mind. So that's a month. So anyone that was gonna have contact with my son, my husband, my— Uh-huh.

My mom, my parents, my siblings, my in-laws, like anyone that was gonna have contact, I required that they had the Tdap vaccine a month before that, that I was gonna have the due date. So the last thing I avoided was any medication, like any acetaminophen, which is recommended to be okay. There's just increasing evidence now that acetaminophen increases the risks of a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders. So, so I avoided any, anything like that, period. So those are the 3, I would say 3 things that I avoided during my pregnancy that are pretty common practice. Just looking in the chat here. It takes a while. Like sometimes my chat doesn't like reset. Okay. I'm going to move on to the next main question, which was— Swami asks, have I resumed drinking coffee? Yes.

So I resumed drinking coffee when my son was 3 months old. Okay. Again, I was very strict about this. It does not— like, I don't think that, you know, a person necessarily has to follow that protocol. You know, a very, very small amount of caffeine makes its way into the breast milk, like 0.something percent. However, newborns are very, very, very slow metabolizers of caffeine. And so even though a very small percentage makes it into the newborn system, it gets metabolized so slowly that it's equivalent to a higher percentage making it into their system. And because I avoided it throughout pregnancy, you know, I was a little more vigilant about avoiding it during those first 3 months because the, you know, there was— my son just wasn't used to the caffeine at all.

And so I avoided it for the first 3 months and then I just— I added it back after he was 3 months because at 3 months they start to metabolize caffeine a lot better, a lot more quickly. So that was what I did. I don't necessarily think that you have to. I think that it's probably okay to have your cup of coffee after you deliver. And I'll tell you what, it's extremely difficult with a lack of sleep. It really helps to have the caffeine. It actually worked for me to keep avoiding it because I was sleeping at random. Like when, when my son would sleep, I would sleep. And so I ended up napping a lot during the day.

And if, if I were to have had, had caffeine, it would have been a lot harder for me to take naps because I'm the kind of person that just, I can't drink, drink a cup of coffee and then just like take a nap. So it actually worked well for me to avoid it during the first, um, the first 3 months. Um, but I would say that is not, that is something that was, you know, A personal choice, and I, I don't think that necessarily, like, drinking coffee, you know, is, is a bad thing, um, after, after delivery. And again, I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing that after the first trimester. I'm not sure it's necessarily bad either. Like I said, I was just being over— like, Mm-hmm. Extra cautious, and there I, I may have just, like, made myself suffer for no reason, which is quite possible.

But, you know, Um, okay, anyways, I gotta move on to the next question. Huh, I didn't see this question. So, so this question was by Monica and it has to do with books. There's so many different sources of information out there. You know, there's PubMed websites, podcasts, YouTube videos. Other than the medical literature, which is definitely difficult for a non-scientist to go through, would you have a list of must-read books that anyone interested in health longevity nutrigenomics can pick up and read? Any favorites? Yeah. So I would say that I I like the Sonnenbergs, the the good gut. Sachin has a new book that's going to be coming out in June, which I'm super excited about. And that's, you know, I've already skimmed through a sort of a pre-release of that.

And I would say that definitely is a favorite of mine and something that I would strongly recommend to people. In fact, probably one of the top books I would strongly recommend. There's another book on micronutrients that also I recommend. And what I'll do is I'll just put a little bulleted list in the summary of this when I send out a patron message that I also recommend as well. And hopefully that— hopefully the YouTube videos that I put out there help people break down some of the information, 'cause we put a lot of definitions. And in fact, if you go to the website now, we have definitions and summary and a timeline, and a lot of the episodes now have a transcript, so people can sort of sift through that information and hopefully learn more from it. Okay.

Jennifer's asking how I read through the current scientific literature considering some studies are retracted or are not duplicated. Typically what I do is when I'm— when I am sifting through the literature, obviously a retracted study, I mean, I certainly wouldn't even consider, but The way I look at the science is very similar to Valter's approach, with the exception of I sometimes don't always look at the centenarian studies. But what I do is I look at observational studies, I look at randomized controlled trials, and then I look at mechanisms. And I understand like molecular pathways that we know regulate, you know, various, a variety of health endpoints, including longevity.

And with that whole body of evidence, I mean, looking at those 3 things is how I sort of then view a study, you know? So I don't just look at one randomized controlled trial and think, okay, this is the end-all be-all. This is like, you know, scientific consensus is ultimately, you know, repeated randomized controlled trials with, you know, we get repeated findings. So you're basically having something that is consistent and replicable. And then in addition to that, sometimes you don't always have a large number of randomized controlled trials because they're the most expensive studies to fund. You may have a couple of randomized controlled trials, and then you have a large body of observational studies, and then you have a few animal studies and mechanistic studies.

And I think that the combination of all those really strengthens an argument, and that's sort of the way I approach it. Okay. Someone quickly, Robin Maisel, is asking about using a UVB lamp. to produce vitamin D3 in addition to supplementing. I personally don't use that. I live in Southern California where UVB rays hit the atmosphere most of the time of the year. I'm very fortunate in that respect, but not everyone is. And so, and the other thing is that UVB radiation, while it's necessary, while it is important to make Mm-hmm. Vitamin D, it also, you know, repeated exposure of it can potentially cause DNA damage and also lead to skin aging. And so I, you know, I'm always, most of the time wearing sunscreen on my face and neck when I'm— when I go outside.

But I do like to leave some places open like, you know, and get at least, you know, 15 to 20 minutes of that, of sun exposure a day. to make vitamin D in the skin as well. But I personally do not use that, use the UVB lamps. All right, next question I'm gonna really just not, I'm just gonna touch on 'cause I talked about this a lot in the last Crowdcast webinar, and that has to do with the usefulness of nicotinamide riboside. And I think that, nicotinamide riboside is up and coming, possibly an up and coming longevity compound. What it is is a precursor to make NAD+. NAD+ levels, NAD+ is very important for enzymes that are involved in repairing damaged DNA. It's also very important for energy production and mitochondrial function.

It's important to activate enzymes that are histone deacetylases like sirtuins, so it's involved in longevity. So NAD has a variety of very important functions in the cell that are all related to longevity. And NAD levels are regulated largely by the amount of fasting that a person does. So fasting in and of itself just even between meals, NAD levels rise. And also taking in like nicotinamide can increase NAD levels, you know, B vitamins. So again, fasting and then the amount of physical activity a person, you know, is also doing.

So, you know, in combination with that, so a person who's really physically active and also, you know, doing practicing like time-restricted eating and doing an intermittent fasting protocol will probably have a lot higher NAD levels than someone who is sedentary and/or not doing time-restricted eating. But in addition to that, nicotinamide riboside is another possible way of increasing NAD levels. Newer clinical evidence has shown that it— that taking in a variety of doses of it can increase NAD levels, and a dose dose-dependent effect. Again, go back and listen to my last Crowdcast webinar 'cause I talked about this in detail. I do personally think there's potential for this, but we still need more evidence.

We certainly don't have any long-term evidence that it is gonna be beneficial or not. So it's one of those sort of up-and-coming possible up-and-coming longevity compounds, but I think more evidence really needs to be— needs to— we need more evidence before we can say for sure. NAD, rising NAD levels also does increase autophagy, but if you remember from Dr. Guido Kroemer's podcast, it's not just NAD that does that. You need sort of a variety of different things, including increasing NAD levels, decreasing mTOR, and decreasing IGF-1. Those are also important for activating autophagy as well. In terms of safety, Matt Lerner's asking if I think that nicotinamide riboside supplementation is safe.

I think that there's been 2 now, 2 clinical studies looking at safety, phase 1 trials, phase 1 usually is looking at safety. And so far, there doesn't seem to be any adverse effects. However, those safety trials have been looking at sort of, you know, short-term acute effects. We have no long-term evidence, you know, for example, 10 years of supplementing with nicotinamide riboside, like what does that do? We don't know, you know, but that's always the question. You know, that's always the question with new compounds that we're supplementing with. And, you know, is there, are they safe to take? So I would say that that's definitely— it's something that I'm kind of experimenting with, not so much while I'm still breastfeeding, but I was sort of doing it before.

And I think I probably will continue to experiment with it a little bit after I'm done breastfeeding. Okay, next upvoted question has to do with cancer and reminding people about— so Brian Neal asks, please remind us a summary of the immediate, most powerful steps we should take upon getting a cancer diagnosis and what traditional medicine protocols should we be wary of? That may in fact possibly do harm. Okay, so before I, before I even like answer this question, I would, I will say that this is definitely not medical advice. And like, I will just give some information on, on, you know, what my thoughts are in answering this question. I would say that Anyone that's diagnosed with cancer should absolutely consult their oncologist.

And, you know, with any information they get from anyone and anywhere, definitely consult your oncologist. So that's sort of my disclaimer. This is absolutely not medical advice. Personally, what I would do if I was diagnosed or someone that in my family or my, you know, someone that I really care about was diagnosed with cancer. I would say some of the top lifestyle interventions I would particularly follow or suggest to my loved ones would be, of course, under the guidance of the oncologist, would be the, first and foremost, the fasting and fasting-mimicking diet, which has been shown now, not only preclinical studies, lots and lots of preclinical studies, meaning animal studies, that it can sensitize cancer cells to death and not only sensitize cancer cells to death, but increase the robust and stress response pathways of normal cells, which has relevance particularly for any standard of care treatment like radiation or any types of chemotherapy drug.

which is very toxic to not only cancer cells but to normal cells. So when you're able to increase stress response pathways of normal cells, they're able to take on a toxic— more toxic dose of stress from, for example, radiation or chemo. And in fact, that's been shown by Dr. Valter Longo and colleagues that he has shown in a couple of studies, one with a just water fast, 2-day water fast, 2 to 3-day water fast and also one with the fasting-mimicking diet, that it was safe for people that were undergoing chemotherapy to do and also it— there was less of the side effect of neutropenia, which is a common side effect, myelosuppression, which basically means that there's a decreased number in in the white blood cells and also red blood cells and platelets.

And the reason that happens is because the chemo kills off those blood cells in addition to potentially killing cancer cells. That was less likely to occur in people that did a 72-hour fast before doing the chemo because we think, based off of mechanistic studies in animals, because of the increased stress response pathways in the blood cells. So those cells were increased, had increased antioxidant pathways, anti-inflammatory pathways, things that are preventing, basically preventing them from being stressed, like from chemotherapy. So that would be one thing that I would definitely be, you know, probably do myself. The other thing, would be definitely optimizing my microbiome, my gut health.

Multiple preclinical studies have shown that the microbiome plays a huge, huge role in regulating the immune system. I talked about that for just a brief second when I was talking about beta-glucans and mushroom extract and how that regulates the immune— immunity. Well, There's been studies, preclinical studies in animals, where animals were given, for example, large doses of probiotics, and then they were injected with cancer cells, and the tumors were formed, and in fact, the probiotics were almost just as effective as the standard of care chemo treatment in terms of killing and shrinking the tumor, because these animals were, completely changing their immune cell profile.

They were making lots and lots of natural killer T cells and also cytotoxic T lymphocytes, which are 2 very, very important immune cells that play a role in killing cancer. There's been very, very, very little evidence looking at the effects of probiotic supplementation in cancer patients. I know of one study in patients that had colorectal cancer. I think that if the cancer is in the gut, it's probably even more relevant to optimize the gut microbiome. There was one study where people were taking, like, I think about 300 billion probiotics a day, people that had colorectal cancer. Uh-huh. And it reduced their, um, their colorectal cancer recurrence, uh, likely because again, they're making more of these cytotoxic T lymphocytes and natural killer T cells.

So, um, I would definitely— I would personally probably, uh, be supplementing with a very strong probiotic, probably even multiple times a day, something like VisBiome or VSL#3, which are essentially the same, um, have the same, um, composition of bacteria and also the same quantity. They were made by the same physician. The other thing I would definitely be doing would be to take in a lot of broccoli sprouts. I would be making broccoli sprout smoothies. Lots of evidence showing, you know, that broccoli sprout— broccoli— the sulforaphane, the active component in broccoli sprouts, can reduce cancer recurrence, can prevent cancer, can kill cancer cells, sensitize them to death.

It can do a lot of the same things that fasting can do in the sense where it sensitizes cancer cells to death, and at the same time, it also increases the stress resistance in normal cells. So that's another thing that I would definitely optimize doing. And the other thing I would optimize doing is for sure exercise. And I would definitely ramp up the exercise. And that's because Lots and lots of preclinical studies and also human studies have shown that exercise really can shrink tumor cells because what exercise does is again similar to what fasting does, similar to what sulforaphane does. It sensitizes cancer cells to death because there's an acute production of reactive oxygen species, which cancer cells can't deal with very well because they're already really, really messed up.

And so that, that causes them to die. That's one of the main mechanisms by which chemo drugs kill them. But at the same time, the exercise increases anti-inflammatory antioxidant pathways in normal cells, which it's doing. And that's one of the ways that exercise is so beneficial long-term for longevity is because it's kind of ramping up these stress-resistant pathways. So it's really good for normal cells and not so good for cancer cells. So that's another thing I would do. I would also avoid, I would probably go on a more plant-based diet because of the IGF-1.

Essential amino acids, which are more abundantly found in animal protein, can very powerfully activate IGF-1, and IGF-1 does not cause cancer, But for someone that already has a tumor, it can absolutely allow cancer cells to survive. It can allow them to survive in the face of another stress-inducing factor like chemo or radiation or exercise or sulforaphane or fasting, exercise, all those things. So all those things that I mentioned that I would do essentially sensitize cancer cells to death. Well, when you have enough IGF-1 around those cancer cells, even though they normally would be sensitized to death, IGF-1 does not allow them to die. So that's, I would definitely avoid taking in meat and animal products.

The other thing I would avoid sort of on a similar note would be supplemental antioxidants like vitamin E, and vitamin C because they also can bind and sequester reactive oxygen species that are produced during exercise or fasting or chemo or any of those things and prevent them from sensitizing cancer cells to death. So you kinda want that burst of reactive oxygen species to kill cancer cells. And this has been shown now in preclinical studies in mice that were given, for example, vitamin E or N-acetylcysteine, both of which are supplemental antioxidants, and then they were treated with a dose of chemo, the animals that were given the supplemental antioxidants, the tumor cells did not die and the tumor even grew.

So sort of a concern there with respect to taking a supplemental antioxidant. I would say that that is very different from the vitamin C, the supplemental vitamin C, of course these antioxidants are also like very high dose. So taking like the RDA of vitamin E, which is like 24 to 30 IUs a day, is not gonna do what taking 400 IUs a day of vitamin E does. So taking the 24 to 30 IUs a day is not enough to bind and sequester reactive oxygen species that are generated during exercise or fasting or even from a standard of care treatment. But 400 IUs of vitamin E is definitely enough to do that.

Also, intravenous vitamin C is very different from supplemental vitamin C, largely because of the dose that you can actually get in— the concentration of vitamin C you can get into your bloodstream by doing it intravenously is very different from supplemental. And when you get a really large dose of vitamin C in the bloodstream, which you can't do from supplemental, there's lots of feedback and regulatory pathways that do not allow the bioavailability of it orally. Only so much you can get into your bloodstream that way, whereas when you take it intravenously, you can bypass that. What ends up happening is that the vitamin C, it goes between being oxidized and reduced.

And so what ends up happening is the oxidized form actually is what can help kill cancer cells because hydrogen peroxide sort of produced in small doses, kind of like in a similar way that even fasting or sulforaphane or exercise induce a little bit of stress reactive oxygen species. The intravenous vitamin C does something very similar, which again sensitizes cancer cells to death and also increases stress response pathways in normal cells. And so there's now been not only preclinical studies, but there have been a handful of clinical studies from Mark Levine's lab out of the NIH showing that people that are doing standard of care along with intravenous vitamin C have better outcomes. than people just doing standard of care.

The other thing that I would avoid that is very, very common practice for people with cancer is any type of opioid. Hands down, I would say I would avoid all op— and this is a really hard, tricky one because I've never had cancer, of course, and so I don't know what I— what it's like. I don't know what the pain is like. But I do know that morphine and any sort of opioid derivative dramatically increases cancer metastasis. And so essentially taking a morphine, taking some sort of painkiller like that is in my mind would be giving up and saying, okay, well, I just, you know, at a certain point, you know, someone may wanna do that. But for me, I would definitely avoid, if I was trying to fight it, I would definitely avoid any morphine.

Personally, I would be taking Meriva, the phospholipid phytosomal curcumin. I'd probably be taking like, you know, just boatloads of that a day. It's been shown in a couple of clinical studies one to be equivalent to 800 milligrams of ibuprofen in terms of pain relief, and another study showed it equivalent to 1,000 milligrams of acetaminophen. I've personally taken it for headaches and menstrual cramps, and it absolutely helps with the pain. So, I would opt for that. But, you know, the cancer pain, I'm sure, is completely, or, you know, orders of magnitude different type of pain and I'm sure it's not that easy to avoid, but I would absolutely avoid taking the morphine for that reason. I say morphine, but opioid derivative, oxycodone and things like that.

So I think that's sort of it for the cancer. And again, this is definitely not medical advice, it's just some of my thoughts. I wouldn't jump onto the ketogenic diet bandwagon just yet because cancer is so complicated and there are lots of conflicting studies out there. In some instances, the ketogenic diet has shown to be beneficial for certain types of cancer, particularly a lot of that work's coming out of Thomas Seyfried's lab. I'd be very, very cautious of some of those studies which are very, He uses a particular mouse model of cancer for brain cancer that he sort of generated, and it seems to be very responsive to the ketogenic diet. However, other animal studies coming out of other labs have shown that ketogenic diet cannot— not only not be beneficial, but can be harmful.

There are certain types of cancer, believe it or not, that actually metabolize beta-hydroxybutyrate and use it as fuel, energy fuel. And in addition to that, it's also really important to keep in mind that cancer cells love fatty acids because fatty acids are used to build new cancer cells. Fatty acids are really important to build new cells. And so fatty acid metabolism is ramped up in a lot of cancer cells because It's increasing what's called the biomass, the molecular biomass of making new cells. So that is also something to keep in mind. So in the case for a ketogenic diet, I would say that it's very risky, and in fact, for someone that wants to do ketosis, fasting may be a more, or the fasting-mimicking diet may be a more conservative way to do that.

So, okay, so that's my thoughts on that. And, you know, so like I see someone here talking about— Pat's talking about Thomas Seyfried and Dom D'Agostino's work. And I'm very familiar with all those studies. In fact, during my graduate study, doing my graduate research, I was really following Tom Seyfried's work for a long time.

And, but then I started to do a lot of experiments myself and things were sort of not, they were, I was getting conflicting evidence in terms of, you know, he was, what he was stating as, you know, mitochondrial dysfunction and all that, actually the mitochondria are working just fine in a lot of tumor samples and— It was very confusing and it turns out that it's not all black and white and there's lots of different types of cancer and it's a very hetero— even within a certain type of cancer, for example, looking at just pancreatic cancer, for example, even that, there's different types of pancreatic cancers and different metabolisms and different genetic mutations and all sorts of different things that lead to different types of pancreatic cancer.

So there's lots of heterogeneity there, and so I certainly would be careful with just going on a high-fat diet. I would say that could be extremely risky depending on the type of cancer a person has. The other thing that is also— that I would also research quite heavily would be standard-of-care treatment. And what I mean by that is, for example, like chemotherapy. I would look in the— look at the type of cancer. I would research the type of cancer that I had and how effective chemo is to treat that type of cancer. There's a lot of cancers that are very responsive to chemo, particularly leukemias and lymphomas. They're very responsive to chemo because they're blood cancers and chemotherapy is, you know, the way that it's transported to the tumor is through the blood. bloodstream.

So if you have a cancer in the bloodstream, it's gonna— the chemo is going to be more effective at killing those cancer cells just based on a location. It can actually get there and kill the cancer. However, the majority of cancers that adults do get happen to be solid tumors: prostate cancer, breast cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer. These cancers are solid tumors, and they occur very far from the bloodstream. And in fact, a lot of tumors go what's called hypoxic, meaning they find a way to survive without even the blood being able to get to them. And so for that reason, the chemo is not very effective in some instances.

at delivering the chemo drug to the cancer cell because it doesn't— it never actually can even make its way there just because the cancer has grown so far from blood vessels, and so you can't even actually get the drug there. So I would definitely do some research on that and talk to the doctor about all that as well. Michael's asking about CBD oil or THC if available. I think that also seems to be an up-and-coming potential modality for cancer treatment as well. I know less about that, but I do know that there seems to be some growing evidence that suggests that it may also be another potential, not only for actually being able to modulate the immune system in such a way that it's able to help kill cancer cells, but also potentially for an alternative to pain as well.

So that also is definitely something to keep in mind. All right, I think I've talked a lot about that. It was definitely a big one. I'm gonna move on to the next question, and that is for mitochondria, my thoughts on PQQ and CoQ10 supplementation. I will say that I did talk about PQQ in, I believe it was the first Crowdcast I did, possibly the second, but I think one of the two I talked a little more in detail on the PQQ. And so if you wanna learn a little bit more about that, I would go back and definitely listen to that podcast. But essentially PQQ is made by bacteria and So bacteria in the soil make it, and it's a cofactor for mitochondrial function. It's basically for a lot of metabolic enzymes, not mitochondria. It's a cofactor for metabolic enzymes for bacteria.

And bacteria in the soil make it, plants take up the bacteria, and then humans eat plants, and so we actually, humans have a natural source of PQQ from our diet, is just a variety of plants that we eat. which end up having PQQ in them because of the bacteria from the soil that they're grown in. So it is actually, that's how it actually enters the human diet. Well, it's really an interesting compound. It's got a lot of very unusual catalytic activity. And what I mean by that is I talked a little bit about vitamin C, which cycles between being oxidized and reduced. Uh-huh. In the reduced form, that's how it serves as an antioxidant. Well, PQQ— so vitamin C has about 4 catalytic cycles of doing that.

So if you take in— for every 1 molecule of vitamin C that you're taking in, it go— it— you can— it can have antioxidant activity, so it sequesters some oxygen radicals and then, you know, prevents them from damaging your DNA, and then it's oxidized. It becomes reduced again. It does this the second time and then a third time and then a fourth time. And after the fourth time, vitamin C is done. So it has 4 catalytic cycles. PQQ has 20,000 catalytic cycles. So it goes through, it can be, goes through its oxidized and reduced form 20,000 times. So it's like, it's insane in terms of its catalytic activity. So that is extremely interesting.

So, you know, and it seems to really be important for mitochondrial function, metabolic, you know, I think the origins of the metabolic enzymes being from bacteria or sort of like, you know, translate to like some of these metabolic enzymes in the mitochondria. And so it seems to have lots of benefits, a lot of preclinical studies showing mitochondrial function. There is one clinical study in humans showing that humans that supplement with 20 milligrams, 20 milligrams a day seems to be the minimal effective dose that I've seen so far in humans. Anything less than that doesn't really have an effect, but so it's the 20 milligrams that's really important. That was shown to have increased biomarkers of mitochondrial function in humans, mitochondrial activation.

Also, it's been shown to improve cognitive function and blood flow to the brain in humans as well. Again, 20 milligrams was the, was the key dose there. The other thing that's very interesting is that it's really highly concentrated in breast milk. For whatever reason, nature kind of wants it that way. So it is something that I am currently supplementing with and will continue to supplement with. I do think that because it's something that we normally get in our diet and it is, it does, there is some clinical evidence, I think that there, and just knowing mechanistically The evidence as well as the animal studies, all this evidence together I think suggests that PQQ may be a pro-longevity compound.

As far as CoQ10 goes, ubiquinol, ubiquinone, the important thing to distinguish there is that ubiquinone is the oxidized form, ubiquinol is the reduced form, and ubiquinol is the way to go in terms of supplementation if you're buying a supplement. ubiquinol is the way to go because it is superior to ubiquinone. I mean, you basically would have to take 3 times more ubiquinone to get the equivalent amount of CoQ10 that you would from ubiquinol from a supplement. So I tip— I personally am— I actually also take ubiquinol. I use Pure Encapsulations. They have 100 milligrams and 200 milligrams. So 200 milligram, is extremely expensive. And I think that's more of a therapeutic dose for someone that's, for example, taking statin, taking or has taken statins because statins deplete CoQ10.

That is something that, for example, I got for my father to take because he was on statins for many years. Also, so the 100 milligrams would be something that is a more, I think, a dose for someone that is just sort of, you know, trying to optimize for mitochondrial function and energy. I personally have been taking— I've been taking the 200 because I had bought some for my dad, and so I just kind of bought it in bulk. And interestingly, this could be totally placebo, but I definitely have noticed a boost in my energy with the supplementation with that. So those are my thoughts on those. those 2 compounds, the CoQ10 and the ubiquinol. Again, I think that, you know, we need of course more and more evidence, more long-term evidence. I personally am supplementing with them.

In terms of what I— I saw someone asking about getting off statins. Yeah. I certainly think that someone who wants to try to get off statins, many people that are on statins have a gene polymorphism that predisposes them to really high cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, which then in turn can predispose them to having high small dense LDL cholesterol. Personally, I think that for a person trying to get off statins, I've had now multiple people tell me that what's helped them improve their total LDL and in particular their small dense LDL cholesterol numbers are doing a fasting-mimicking diet once a month. Once a month or even just once every couple of months. I've now had, let's see, 3 people I think talking to me about that.

So it's possible that that may be a potential way to normalize cholesterol in addition to even probably lowering saturated fat intake and certainly cutting out refined carbohydrates as well. Yeah, once a month fasting-mimicking diet for 5 days is what I'm referring to, Matt. Okay, so I'm looking just quickly. I've got about 20 minutes left. Just making sure I'm trying to answer some of these real-time questions as well. Someone's asking about the supplement brands that I like, and I personally like Thorne and Pure Encapsulations are my 2 top favorite. In addition to those 2, I will also use Life Extension. For example, I take Life Extension's PQQ, and I will also once in a while use Jarrow.

For example, I'll sometimes use their Meriva, although of late I've been using Thorne's Meriva, but Thorn is a little more pricey. Unfortunately, but they just, they seem to really be a very reliable source of supplements. I'm not sure about NOW Vitamins. I think maybe they may be okay at best. And then let's see. I talked about the gallstones already. Hopefully you guys, that was the take-home. You guys understood that. The next question has to do with lithium. What I think about lithium. Lithium is definitely found in varying degrees in water, drinking water, and also in soil. And it's also been shown in lower organisms to promote longevity, although that evidence was like in worms and it's extremely weak evidence because it's just like one study.

There's been some studies looking at people that were taking lithium and no, it was the drinking water that had lithium in it. and that it was associated with living longer. But in fact, if you looked at those studies, the dose of lithium did not exceed what's actually just found normally from getting it from food because of the soil. So who knows what's going on there? But with that said, I do think there is definite potential that lithium may be involved in longevity. I do think that there's a lot more evidence in terms of lithium for optimizing brain function. And I think that, for example, treatment of bipolar disorder and things like that, there's a lot more clinical evidence that seems to help with that.

So I think for now, I think that just, we need a lot more evidence before I can really say that, yeah, lithium's a longevity compound, but I do think there's definitely, definite potential there. Uh, okay, Bill's asking about, um, optimizing for refeeding after a prolonged 5-day water fast. Um, so, so also he asked, during the fast, could branched-chain amino acids each morning and/or during a resistance workout prevent or reduce muscle loss? Okay, so the first part of the question, a prolonged 5-day water fast or a fasting-mimicking diet fast, one of the big benefits from those prolonged fasts that we have now seen in multiple preclinical studies and also from a little bit of clinical evidence from Dr. Valter Longo's work is that it basically causes organs to shrink and then regrow.

And the reason it does that is because it's literally causing cells to die and then replacing those dead cells with new young cells by activating stem cells. So I mean, like, how cool is that, that you can literally— and Valter has shown this in multiple studies— literally animals' organs shrink And then and then grow after. So they shrink during the fast, and then during the refeeding phase they grow. And it's like that's so it's so amazing. And what he's shown on a mechanistic level is the reason this happens is because cells end up dying through apoptosis, and then stem cells get activated during the fast, and then during the refeeding phase the stem cells are grow and proliferate and make more stem cells and make more.

cells of whatever organ we're talking about, whether it's the liver or the kidney or the brain even. So the refeeding phase, Valter has mentioned the really important thing for that refeeding phase is actually activation of IGF-1, and that's because the IGF-1 plays a key, key role in the stem cell proliferation, and that's essentially what you want If you're gonna— if you're killing off cells and you're activating the stem cells, you want those stem cells to stay active and you want them to proliferate and make new cells. And the way to do that is to keep their IGF-1 active. So we know that what activates IGF-1 is essential amino acids. So basically, you know, optimizing during the refeeding phase, you know, for essential amino acids would be something that would— Yeah.

And I talked to Valter about this in the round 2 podcast that him and I recorded, which will be— I'll be releasing sometime in the next month or so. So that would be, you know, obviously animal protein is the best source, but, you know, it's something to keep in mind is after someone's doing a 5-day water fast, particularly more so than even doing the fasting-mimicking diet, Yeah. Your gut hasn't seen food for 5 days if you're doing the water fast only. So sometimes just eating a big bolus of meat can be really harsh on the gut. So something— taking in some liquid form of food may be ideal. So if you wanna optimize for those essential amino acids, maybe even a little bit of protein powder in a smoothie may help or some bone broth or soup broth.

Um, just as the first meal to kinda transition. And then maybe something like some salmon, something that's not so fatty, um, because— well, salmon is fatty, but not as much as, for example, like a piece of red meat. Um, because sometimes the fat can really irritate the gut as well. So, so it's kinda like a balance between like making sure that you're, you're transitioning, you know, your gut isn't gonna be like— you're not gonna have any irritation, uh, or feel sick. But also at the same time, you wanna optimize for the IGF-1. The question is how long, and Valter doesn't really know this, that's something that he's actively wanting to look at. Do you wanna optimize for your IGF-1 24, 48, 72, 96 hours after the fast? It's really not known.

I think that probably to be safe, the longer you go, doing it like a 4-day or 5-day, Probably that would be safe. I would say the safest to make sure you're really getting that stem cell activation. So that would be the refeeding optimization. In terms of taking the branched-chain amino acids during a fast, that sort of negates the point of the fast because the fat during the part of the reason you're fasting is to decrease the mTOR and IGF-1 pathways and We know that branched-chain amino acids activate mTOR. So that would be something that I would say would be less ideal.

And interestingly, one of Valter's newer studies that was a clinical study done in humans on the fasting-mimicking diet, she showed that 5-day fasting-mimicking diet actually caused people to have increased lean muscle mass. So it actually did— those people did not lose muscle mass during that 5-day fasting-mimicking diet. So I would say that is strong evidence that you're not gonna be losing your muscle mass. And the other thing to keep in mind, as I mentioned, during the fasting phase, your organs are shrinking because you are killing off cells, particularly damaged cells. This is happening in all your tissues, but then you refeed. During the refeeding phase, you gain them back. So even the muscle, you know, muscle is also an organ.

So you're you're basically going to decrease, you know, the, the organ size during that fast, but then during the refeeding phase, you're replenishing, you know, the cells that you lost with new healthy young cells. So, um, so that's also something to keep in mind. Uh, personally, I, I see people asking about, um, um, uh, exercising during a fast to optimize— to basically prevent muscle loss and Also doing that, using the sauna, you know, during the fast to prevent muscle loss as well. I think that you need to really like fasting, particularly a water fast, is you know a very strong stress on the body. So you really have to listen to your body and be very cautious.

And if you're someone you know that's prone to like hypoglycemia and all that, certainly you know you should do any sort of fast under a physician's care. And the fasting mimicking diet is probably a lot. safer to do than a water fast. I've had a lot of feedback from a lot of different people that have done various types of exercise and used the sauna during the water fast or even during the fasting-mimicking diet and really the take-home that I've gotten is it really depends on the person. It varies from person to person. Some people, they really love it and some people, it was just too much. It was too intense. So I think that I just really would exercise caution and listen to yourself. Maybe start slowly. how you do, do a little bit of experimentation, and see if that's best for you.

All right, so the next question is, what are my recommendations for nutrition for a newborn? Well, personally, I think a newborn, definitely breastfeeding, trying to do breast Breastfeeding is like the most ideal for sure. Um, you know, definitely with the first— for the first 6 months, I'd say like exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months, then starting to introduce solid foods after, uh, after 6 months. I talked a lot about breastfeeding and the benefits of breast— breastfeeding on the last Joe Rogan Experience I was a guest on. We talked about it actually right off the bat. So like the first— like part of the podcast was like all about breastfeeding. So many benefits to it, you know, including actually transmitting mammary breast stem cells to the infant.

So there's actually stem cells in breast milk that get transferred to the infant. And interestingly, it's been shown— so it's been shown that that happens in humans. And then animal studies have shown that the stem cells from the breast milk make their way to various organs, including the brain, where they're involved in making new brain cells during brain development. Breast milk has a variety of different human milk oligosaccharides, which are just— have so many benefits in terms of setting up the infant gut microbiome and regulating the developing immune system and setting up the immune system as well in a positive way. Also, the antibodies that are transmitted during breastfeeding from the mom.

So anything that the mom's exposed to and making antibodies against, that's transmitted to the infant. So just the immune system is much more robust, and you're setting up the infant with a much better immune system as well. Okay, but with that said, introducing the solid foods, I think you just, at 6 months, like this is something I'm starting to do now and people can kind of follow me on Instagram to see what I'm doing. But just make sure, I'm trying to do like the best food. So I'm starting out in the foods that are obviously not gonna cause allergies. So avoiding like dairy, eggs, peanuts right now, although I may expose them to small amounts of peanut oil. early on 'cause that's now— now there's evidence showing that exposure early on helps prevent allergies later.

And gluten, I'm avoiding those for the most part. I'm trying to introduce, you know, the leafy greens and the broccoli and the cruciferous and actually meat, red meat, and also salmon. Although fish allergies is also common, I am gonna try to do salmon. But just being very scientific and methodical about it's important. So when you introduce it, you know, just do us— just do like 1 tablespoon first. You know, make sure that you do it earlier in the day. Make sure there's no allergic reactions. So you wanna just do 1 food and do that for like 5 days before you introduce the next food. Also keep in mind that someone can develop allergies after the first few exposures. So you may think that the— Yeah.

that your child's not allergic to something, but then upon subsequent exposures, they can develop an allergy. So it's also something to keep in mind. Just be very, very cautious about that. Also, it's been shown that the children that are prone to allergies, that exposing them to soil and dirt, the bacteria in dirt, can, during their first year of life, can prevent food allergies, can prevent asthma, can prevent a lot of allergies in general. So that's something also to keep in mind. Take your child outside, let 'em sit in the grass, let 'em sit in the sand, or let 'em sit in the garden, and just try to, even just a few minutes a day can really help prevent your child from getting allergies. Okay, quickly, we've got just a few minutes.

Regarding time-restricted feeding, can you speak on the pros and cons of strictly water? Consuming things like adaptogens outside of the feeding window. I already mentioned this, so I think that it's really not that big of a deal. And then I'd also mention the sauna protocol, that 174 degrees Fahrenheit at least for 20 minutes. And then this person, Ghazi, is talking about 2 sessions of it separated by a cold exposure. That was based on optimizing for increased growth hormone. So, but, you know, you don't necessarily need to have 2 back-to-back sessions at all. Just doing one 20-minute session a day, and like I mentioned, 4 times a week would be the most— have the most robust effect on in terms of longevity. Um, let's see, next question. That my my thoughts on dairy.

Um, I I you know a lot of a lot of people there's the dairy. I mean. It's high in saturated fat and it's, it's, you know, a great source of calcium. But, you know, there's a lot of people that are lactose intolerant, and also some people aren't necessarily lactose intolerant, but they develop allergies to proteins that are in dairy, and that can lead to various autoimmune responses such as eczema, allergies, things like that. Personally, I you know I don't I don't really I've actually cut out dairy and you know I think that you know getting calcium calcium you can get from green dark leafy greens it's a great source but the really thing that's important is not being vitamin deficient because when you have adequate levels of vitamin D you you absorb 40% more calcium so you don't need all that dairy because you Your absorb— it's so much more bioavailable.

The calcium is so much more bioavailable when you have adequate levels of vitamin D. In addition to that, getting enough vitamin K1 and vitamin K2 as an insurance because any of the calcium that you do get, you are getting shuttling into the right place. I do think kefir is great. It's a great source of probiotics. yogurt as well. I personally have cut out dairy because my husband is allergic to milk proteins. And so just to make sure that my son doesn't have any kind of allergic responses while I'm breastfeeding, I have cut it out. But I was eating yogurt and some kefir and stuff in the past. But so right now I'm just, I'm not consuming anything. But if anything, if there's a type of dairy to consume, that's great. I would say that kefir and some probiotic yogurt is great. Um, less than 1 minute left. I just want to say that really, I'm going to keep on doing these Crowdcasts and trying to— I really did try to get to a lot of these questions.