Q&A #5: How to Improve Sleep—and What Nutrition Matters During Pregnancy?

Hi everyone. I am super excited to be doing this Q&A. Thanks for all the great questions you guys submitted. This Crowdcast event lasts approximately 2 hours. Actually, it's more precisely 2 hours. They cut me off after 2 hours. So I'm going to go ahead and get started. For those of you that have attended before, typically The way this works is I'm gonna just go through and answer questions that were submitted, and, and I answer ones that I think are the most interesting or that I think most people are interested in hearing, or questions that I have not answered a million times before. I also take some questions live in the chat stream, so be sure to ask any questions that are relevant to a topic that I'm discussing, you know, during this discussion.

So I apologize ahead of time for the loud buzzing noise in the background if you can hear it. It's, it's an air conditioning running, so hopefully it won't be too disruptive. I'm gonna go ahead and start with one of the, what I think is the most important questions that I have not addressed, and also was, happened to be one of the most upvoted questions, and it was by Jim. And Jim asked, what practices and supplements do you believe are most important to enhance the quality and depth of sleep? So I'm going to go through and basically rattle off the things that I think are the most important. And unfortunately, they're not the easiest to implement, meaning you have to sometimes put in a little work as opposed to just take, you know, popping a pill.

But, you know, it seems as though that's usually give— those sort of things where you have to put in more work usually give you the best outcome anyway. So here is my list of the top things I think can improve the quality and depth of sleep based off of research and also based off of personal experience. So first, the first thing on the list is early bright light exposure. And I mean, you know, at least 10,000 lux of light. So, so going outside, or if you're a shift worker, or, you know, you can't go outside for whatever reason, having a 10,000 lux light, and being exposed to that for, I would say, an hour, 30 minutes, 30 minutes minimum. But the point of that is to start your, your circadian clock to reset it like this is boom, this is the morning time.

That bright light exposure, really bright light exposure, is important for that. And that sets your whole— that sets your clock, which then basically gives your circadian rhythm an anchor to know when to start. And in which case then, as the day progresses, then your body will know when it is time to wind down and start to produce melatonin. And when you're basically supposed to rest. But that bright light exposure is key, and not enough people discuss that. So I would say that was probably on the top of the list. Another one that's pretty obvious is avoiding blue light exposure. I would say, at the very least after sunset, and there's a few ways you can do that.

The way I think is the best, it's a little more costly, but not that much more costly, is, is investing in some Philips Hue lights. And the Philips Hue lights basically, um, can be programmed. You can program them from your iPhone or from your Android phone, and they change. Um, there's different colors you can program. So there's blue light, and then there's red light, which has very, very, very little blue light. And so you can program the red light to come on during, you know, whatever your sunset time is. So mine are programmed to come on at 5 o'clock. So, um, I basically— there's no more bright light in the house, you know, after 5 o'clock. It's all red lights. And that has made a really big difference.

The other way is to get like these blue light blocking goggles, but I find the compliance isn't as high. And it really, it's just, I think it's well worth the investment in getting some Philips Hue lamps throughout the house. And I have them in the bathroom, I mean everywhere. And one thing to point out is that toddlers, babies and toddlers are much more sensitive to blue light than adults. So I noticed, for example, when I'm traveling and like I bring my son with me in a hotel or we're visiting family and they don't have the Philips Hue lights, so they are, you know, they have lights on in the evening time when you're eating dinner. My son is, his bedtime shifts later and it's very, very irritating and frustrating. So Philips Hue is really, I think it's a must for parents as well. Yeah.

The other thing that I recently invested in is a chili pad. So, I think that cold is also a very, very important regulator of sleep. This has been published in a few studies now. One I discussed with Dr. Matthew Walker in our recent podcast where basically people were given a wetsuit to wear where cold water was run through the wetsuit and it enhanced their deep sleep and also improve their quality of sleep and duration. There's another similar study that showed something that also enhanced the deep— the depth of their sleep and also quality. So I invested in a chili pad. It was like, I don't know, around $1,000 or so for a king-size bed. It's a pad you put on top of the bed, series of tubes in it that run water through it. You can regulate the temperature.

You can make it warmer or colder. The first week or so, I had to really play with the temperature. I had it way too cold at first. It's not, you're not supposed to be cold. You're supposed to be comfortable. But eventually I found the right temperature for me. And it is, it has really improved my quality of sleep. And I have fewer wakings in the middle of the night. So my restfulness is dramatically improved. And that has been consistent now for multiple months. It's done the same for my husband. So, I really recommend people that are having trouble with sleep invest in something like a ChiliPad. I think that it's a really good investment. Sharon was asking, for the 10,000 lux light, do you need to have your eyes open? Yes, that is, your eyes need to be open.

Melanopsin needs to be activated in your eye. That's part of one of the mechanisms involved in sensing blue light. So that's really important that your eyes are open for that hour. Okay, some of the other things that are pretty obvious, and maybe, maybe even not so obvious, but blackout curtains, a dark room, even a little bit of light that comes through. There's been studies that have shown that it, it disrupts sleep and also is associated with a decreased or, you know, mood, basically mood problems. So people, people are more depressed when they're exposed to even just a little bit of light while they sleep. So I really highly recommend blackout curtains. I have them in our, you know, in my son's room, in our room, and they make a really, really big difference. So that's another thing.

No screen time 2 hours before bed. And not because of the blue light that screens can emit. You can obviously get apps and stuff on your computer. But I'm talking about things that are going to emotionally arouse you, things like your emails, social media, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all that stuff. Don't do it 2 hours before bed. That stuff does affect your sleep. It affects sleep onset, the latency, you know, basically how long it takes you to fall asleep. And also it can— and those things can activate your mind in a way that even when you fall asleep, you can wake up and start thinking about things. And it's very disruptive. So I really recommend not having any screen time. So what I've been doing pretty recently is I ordered a bunch— I subscribed to a bunch of science magazines.

So I get like Science News, Scientific American, and I read those. I basically Uh, you know, we've got red lights, so I'm not, I'm not getting all the blue light, and I'm not getting the, the screen time and the emotional arousal and all that stuff. And it makes it— it's very calming and relaxing and does actually make a really big difference. I highly recommend people try to— trying to do that. Um, I'm just trying to scroll down on my comments. Oops. Because I'm not seeing this stuff live. But so another, another thing that I would say has been shown to improve sleep quality, at least in a couple of small trials by my friend Dr. Satchin Panda at the Salk, is time-restricted eating. Basically, you want to stop eating 3 hours before bed.

And that, you know, there's tons of benefits for that aside from the quality, but it also improves sleep quality, which makes sense in a way because digestion and all these things that are happening in some way, it seems like it would disrupt sleep in— I don't know all the mechanisms, but it does seem to really work. So avoid eating 3 hours before bed. Another thing that I would say is more important for people older than 50 However, some people that may— that have pretty disrupted sleep schedules may also try this, and that is a melatonin supplement that is no more than 300 micrograms or 0.3 milligrams, which is far, far less than most of the standard melatonin supplements you will find that are, you know, that's available to consumers.

There was a study published by MIT a few years back showing that in elderly individuals, well, not necessarily elderly, but people over 50 that were given a melatonin supplement, they gave them a 300-microgram melatonin supplement, which is 0.3 milligrams, or they gave them higher doses and measured their sleep quality and also a variety of other subjective feelings to mood and well-being and all that. And Only the 300 micrograms was effective at basically preventing waking, so improving the quality of sleep because people woke up fewer times in the middle of the night. So it improved that, but it also was not associated with grogginess the next day or with depressed mood, which the other melatonin supplements were. So you can find like a 300-microgram supplement.

You know, there's— Life Extension makes one. I know of off the top of my head. Um, there may be a few others as well, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't go with a really, really high dose of melatonin. Uh, the reason I say 50 years old and older is because, um, as, as people age, their melatonin, their— the levels of melatonin produced by their pineal gland decreases. So for example, um, a 15 to 35-year-old person on average makes around 100 picomoles per milliliter of melatonin. That drops when someone hits 35 to 50 to about 80 picomoles. Once they hit 50, it drops to about 50 picomoles. So about half of what it was when you're in your 20s. So, so people, you know, there's some thoughts in the field that, you know, people older than 50 may benefit from a— Small dose melatonin supplement.

You do not have to take a really large dose. And then the other thing is, recently, this is a recent study that was published and I sort of connected the dots. So I had a conversation with Matt Walker off camera about it a few weeks ago. There was a study published that showed 20 to 30 minutes of just being outside in a natural environment. So, you know, like that could be a beach, it could be a park, you know, a place with a lot of trees, a hiking trail, you know, any— out in the ocean, and not something that is urban environment, not like, you know, surrounded by a bunch of urban things. Doing that 3 times a week, you know, so at least 3 times a week, 20 to 30 minutes a day, lowered cortisol levels, um, by like 10%.

And it lowered cortisol levels in a diurnal fashion, meaning when cortisol is supposed to be its lowest, it was even lower. And that's really important for sleep. And this is kind of what I talked to Matt Walker about because I wanted him to test this. Because cortisol is on a circadian rhythm, and in such a way that right before bed, so during the evening time, cortisol is at its lowest. And that's because when cortisol is its highest is in the early, early morning. And part of the reason it's high is because it wakes you up. Cortisol prevents you from going to sleep. It's one of the reasons why stress, things that can be emotionally arousing, can. Inhibit your sleep because cortisol also.

Well, just doing these nature walks 2 to 3 times a week, at least 3 times a week, I think, sorry, 3 times a week, 20 to 30 minutes a day, lowered it by 10% at night. Meaning I think that would absolutely improve sleep because you're getting much lower cortisol levels and that you know, during a time when they're supposed to be low. So I really think that if you have any opportunities to spend time, if you live close to a trail or a park, I mean, and this was, by the way, the study showed that physical activity had nothing to do with it. So it didn't matter if people engaged in physical activity while they were in the natural environment or not. It was just being in the natural environment that lowered cortisol.

So If you can, if you can, you know, if you live close to a park and you can get out for 30 minutes before work, you know, and that you get your bright light exposure, you're, you know, all those things kind of, you're, you're killing, you know, 2 birds with one stone sort of deal. So, um, so that's, that's something that I really think, and I've started to do as well. Um, I don't— Kevin's saying something about my video being very small. It's weird because I didn't touch anything. So maybe you touched something, Kevin. I'm not sure. Can other people tell me if my video is really small besides Kevin? I'm going to move on to the next question. Oh, the video did get small for other people. People are saying there's no video. Can you? Is there? But there's audio. Am I back now?

All right, that's very strange. All right, so my video is back on, but you guys did hear me. Throughout. Okay, great. Jet lag tips. I think that— so I had a couple people in the chat asking about jet lag tips. Basically, I think some of these things hold true. Bright light exposure, like if you're landing in a place where it's still light out, getting that bright light exposure is very important. Um, and I think also food intake. So like the timing of your meals is also really important. So, um, you may consider, you know, doing basically doing, doing a— if you're about to go to sleep, doing some fasting, you know. So instead of like eating right before you're going to go to sleep, it can kind of screw up your circadian rhythms as well. Is my video on? Hmm. Sorry about this.

I'm not exactly sure what's, what's going on, but I'm going to go on to the next question because I have a lot of questions to cover. So the next question, um, we're asked by quite a few people. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because I have addressed this question before in the past. And then the question is, whether or not infrared saunas are as good as traditional saunas. And how long do you need to stay in the saunas to activate heat shock proteins? What's the optimal duration? So before I answer the question whether or not I think infrared saunas are as good, let me say that for a variety of the health benefits that I have discussed based on research from Friends of mine like Dr. Jari Laukkanen and others showing that sauna use lowers risk of many types of cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, all-cause mortality.

Basically, the minimum amount of time duration spent in the sauna and the temperature of the sauna was typically 174 degrees Fahrenheit. And a minimum duration of about 20 minutes, you needed to get some of these effects. So if you do it 2 to 3 times a week, you know, this is kind of like possibly this is, you know, you're likely to get some of the benefits that are published showing that 2 to 3 times a week doing 20 minutes a day at 174 degrees lowers cardiovascular disease risk by 27%. It lowers all-cause mortality by 24%. Wow. If you shift that to 4 to 6 times a week, it lowers cardiovascular disease risk by 50%, mortality risk by 40%, it lowers Alzheimer's disease risk by 60%. So the more frequent, the more robust the effects.

But those effects required a duration of 20 minutes each sauna session in a sauna that was pretty hot, 174 degrees Fahrenheit. Other studies have shown in healthy men and women to activate heat shock proteins Uh, men and women need to spend 30 minutes in about 163 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, that's a little bit lower than 174, so could you get 100— could you do 20 minutes at 174 and activate heat shock proteins? Probably likely, um, particularly since you're getting all these health benefits, you know. So infrared saunas unfortunately do not get, at least to my knowledge, most of them don't go above 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay.

Personally, I've, you know, when I've done infrared saunas, I've had to stay in them for at least an hour to get any sort of mimic any sort of effects that I feel when I'm in a traditional sauna. So I think it's possible. You just may have to spend a lot more time in there to, you know, to get some of those benefits. You're gonna, you're gonna— infrared saunas are really good at making you sweat through like a variety of different mechanisms. And, you know, you're getting some benefits from the sweat as well. For example, you can sweat arsenic 15 times more, 15 times better than it comes out of urine. So basically arsenic is excreted either through sweat glands or through urine, and it's actually excreted through sweat much, much better. So that's a, that's one, one positive benefit.

But personally, I think that traditional Finnish saunas are better. You can buy them at places like Costco. I mean, Costco sells the— I think it's something Heaven Saunas. They sell like a traditional Finnish one that you can do the steam. It's a little more expensive than an infrared sauna, but not much more. So another way, like I've recently been taking hot baths because I'm in a position now where I don't have my own sauna and I'm not using a gym with a sauna. So Um, I'm doing hot baths and, um, you know, my heart rate goes up and, you know, whether or not you can— I can't determine whether or not, like, how long I need to stay in there because there's no real published— there's been one study showing that a hot bath has some of the same hormonal effects as a hot sauna.

For example, growth hormone increases. So there's, there's definitely some, um, over— there's some, there's some published literature showing that there's overlap in some of these pathways that are being activated by a hot bath versus a sauna. But personally, I think the sauna is my favorite, and I'm looking forward to getting one soon. So I'll look and see. Almost Heaven Sauna, that's it. Cold shock proteins do get activated by heat, and heat shock proteins also get activated by cold. They're basically both generalized stress response proteins. So they're activated by sulforaphane, they're activated by fasting, they're activated by a variety of plant polyphenols like curcumin.

So these things, you know, they're more robustly— heat shock proteins are the most robustly activated by heat, but other things can activate them because they're basically pathways that are responding to a good type of stress. Okay. So I'm going to move on to the next question. This is also relevant to sleep. Alma asked about a— in a recent interview with Dr. Matthew Walker on sleep, he mentions there are particular types, identifying a person's optimal time for sleeping, if they're a morning lark or night owl or in between. He also states it's genetically determined and that there are specific genes that correlate to each chronotype. And how can someone test or find out what theirs is? And will I incorporate them into my circadian genetics report?

So the answer is yes, they are going to be incorporated. In fact, we've been working on them just the last couple of weeks. So they will be added. They will be in the next update that we, that we do. But for your knowledge, some of the major ones involved 2 genes. One's called PER1, P-E-R-1, and PER2, P-E-R-2. They're period circadian regulator 1 and 2, and they're basically regulating the circadian clock, sleep-wake cycle. They, they regulate hormone secretion like cortisol. and body temperature. And these things all play a role in sleep, when you're gonna go to sleep, sleep onset, you know, all that stuff, when you can wake up. And so, um, those will be in our next genetic report. They are tested by 23andMe, and I believe some of them are by also by AncestryDNA.

I think right now, personally, I like 23andMe a little bit better than AncestryDNA, but it's only marginally better, so As long as my sound's on, I'm just going to keep going. I'm not sure what the deal is with the video. I can talk, talk about that, you know, with people at Crowdcast later. It might be that my connection's poor and so the video is cutting out, but It's most important that you can hear me, so I'm going to move on to the next question. And there were a lot of different iterations of this question, so and I'm I'm not going to go into it too much because I have discussed this previously, but I will address it since so many people did ask about it. So Ken and others asked about. Yeah.

My thoughts on metformin, um, and maybe an NAD enhancer, which I'll talk about in a minute, for extending one's healthy lifespan. So, uh, metformin, I've been following that work for some time. It's been very interesting. You know, it's a diabetes drug that's used to control blood glucose levels. It restores insulin sensitivity. It reduces the amount of glucose that the intestines and stomach absorb. But when it became most interesting was a few years back, a British study involving around 78,000 individuals was published showing that diabetics who took metformin had a— actually lived longer than healthy or non-diabetic age-matched controls. So like healthy, meaning just they weren't diabetic.

So, you know, that, that I wouldn't necessarily call that a definition of healthy, but they're just not diabetic. So that was extremely interesting because type 2 diabetics are supposed to die earlier than non-type 2 diabetics. I always am a little skeptical of pharmaceutical drugs because there's possibilities of a lot of feedback loops happening. There's a lot of interactions between many biological pathways, many, many that we have not we don't even know are interacting in a certain way. And some of this stuff doesn't become uncovered until the right experiment is done. And sometimes we don't even do the right experiment. So I've always been that, that's always sort of been my, you know, feelings on taking something that, you know, activates a certain pathway or does a certain thing.

A recent, very recent in the last few months, randomized placebo double-blind controlled trial on metformin was published showing that metformin inhibits mitochondrial adaptations that occur and basically inhibits mitochondrial adaptations and improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness, aerobic exercise training in older adults. It also diminished whole-body sensitivity— sorry, whole-body insulin sensitivity after aerobic exercise. And it did not diminish, you know, improvements in HbA1c, fasting insulin, 24-hour mean glucose, fat mass. So there are things that it didn't, you know, that were still okay.

But the fact that it did blunt some of these positive effects from exercise like the mitochondrial adaptations, cardiorespiratory fitness improvements, and the whole body insulin sensitivity is sort of a red flag in my opinion that we're not understanding everything that metformin's doing, particularly maybe in people that don't have type 2 diabetes, people that are healthy, maybe people that already have low blood glucose levels 'cause they're eating a diet that does not consist of refined carbohydrates and sort of limiting some of their really high glucose fruits and stuff. So I'm still a little hesitant on the metformin stuff. and continue to follow the literature. I may be missing out or not, so I'm not exactly sure, but those are my thoughts on metformin. The NAD stuff.

So this is something that kind of relates to the next question as well. I didn't answer them both at the same time. Nadia asked to please update everyone on my supplement regimen, like what I'm supplementing with. Okay. So I have stripped everything down to essentials, uh, and those bare essentials include a multivitamin. I like Pure Encapsulations, um, multi— they're called— their multivitamin's called One. A vitamin D supplement, which, um, I take either from Thorne or Pure Encapsulations. I sort of go between the two depending on what's available. Okay. And I take around 4,000 IUs a day. And then I take an omega-3 supplement. So I take the Norwegian Pure 3 High DHA, and I'm also adding their High EPA to my supplement program. I take around 3 grams total.

So that ends up being around 6 pills. And I think I'm going to start like switching the days I do the EPA and DHA. And then I take vitamin K2. So I take— darn, I don't remember the dose off the top of my head, but I can put it— I can send it out in the summary. So I take a vitamin K2 and then sometimes I take a Meriva, the phytosomal curcumin supplement by Thorne. I take that a couple times a week. It helps with my delayed onset muscle soreness that I've— that I get, uh, in my quads. So, so I take that.

The reason I stripped down my, um, my supplements to not include things like nicotinamide riboside, NMN, resveratrol, uh, PQQ, feistin, which I'll talk about in a little bit, all these things, is because there had been a series of studies that— so I interviewed a variety of experts in the NAD area. None of these interviews have gone live yet, but I have had the conversations and I've done a lot of background research reading about the field in order to have these conversations. So I had one with Dr. David Sinclair and I had one with his postdoctoral advisor, Dr. Leonard Guaranty, who Um, he's the— he's one of the founders of the Elysium, uh, which makes Basis, the Basis supplement, which has the nicotinamide riboside and pterostilbene in it.

Uh, the reason I kind of stripped down everything I was taking is because, for one, um, all the positive benefits in animal studies for nicotinamide riboside were at a dose of 400 milligrams per kilogram body weight. Which comes out to around something like 35 kilograms, or sorry, 35 milligrams per kilogram body weight in humans. So it's a lot. I mean, it's just an astronomic intake. The most recent double-blinded placebo-controlled trial in human amount you'd have with nicotinamide riboside was 1,000 milligrams, which is still, I mean, if you're talking about like a man, Yeah. You would have to take like 2,500 milligrams.

The 1,000 milligrams, while it was good at raising NAD blood levels, there were no significant effects on any other parameters including all the heart-related parameters, including endurance, all the things that have been found in animal studies. Again, and this— I mentioned this in both interviews you guys will listen to when they go live and watch when they go live. I mentioned it to both— to David and Lenny that basically I noticed that 100% of all the animal studies published, they all use that same dose. It's always 400 milligrams per kilogram body weight. And there must be a reason for that. And I think the reason came— was uncovered recently by another paper published by David Rabowitz or something.

I can't pronounce his name, but basically he published a flow— basically followed, you know, these, flux of NAD when given a variety of NAD-boosting supplements. And at certain doses below 400 milligrams per kilogram body weight in animals, there was just no effect. It wasn't even getting into muscle. It wasn't getting to the right tissues. So one of the best ways I know to increase NAD is actually fasting and exercise. Fasting and exercise are like 2 of the best ways that your NAD levels rise. So, that would be my— that's my sort of time-restricted eating. Your NAD levels rise in between meals. So, the longer you're fasting, the more robust that effect is.

So, my plan is to do a lot more reading on— oh, and I should also mention very recently a study was published, animal study on NMN, nicotinamide mononucleotide, which gets converted into nicotinamide riboside. So they're in the same pathway. Again, those animal studies, same thing, 400 milligrams per kilogram body weight. But a very alarming animal study came out recently that it accelerated cancer growth. And so I just got a little scared and decided that until I understand more, that I am not going to supplement. I will address the exercising while fasting and all those questions as well. So PQQ is— it seems pretty benign and I really, I was taking it even while breastfeeding as well 'cause it's very, it's highly expressed in breast milk.

I'm just, basically I'm just doing more research and so I will update everyone on the next Crowdcast on my supplement routine. Um, after I've done a thorough search and been very comprehensive, um, in terms of all that. I think the best time to take a multi is probably in the morning because of all the B vitamins and stuff. But someone in Canada saying one isn't available. Thorn makes another one called, um, 2 A day. A day. 2 a day. I like that multi as well, 2 a day. Um, all right, so some of these questions that were asked in the chat, actually they're questions that I'm going to address, so I'm just going to go ahead and move on.

Uh, let's see, Anita asked me about some of the best blood biomarkers that I would test biannually, and when you're just in good health and don't have symptoms. Uh-huh. So, I'm not gonna go too much into detail like rattling these off, but they will be, um, when I post the, the summary. So, some of them like inflammation, high, high sensitivity C-reactive protein, um, the lipoprotein phospholipase A2, myeloperoxidase, homocysteine, uh, F2-isoprostanes, fibrinogenin, um, some of the lipids, I like total cholesterol, HDL-C, Your LDL-C, triglycerides, the particle number for HDL, LDL, small LDL particle size, small dense LDL particle, ApoB, Lp particle, and then omega-3, omega-6 fatty acids.

And then some of the autoimmune ones, there's a True Health Diagnostics has a pretty good panel that you can look at and see. They've got ones like they do C CCP antibody. They do some, some other ones like ESR and rheumatoid factor, and then a variety of antinuclear antibodies that they sort of list off. So you can check that out on the autoimmune panel for True Health Diagnostics. All right, so the next few questions. So I have people that are asking me about Basically pregnancy and breastfeeding diets. So I'm going to go into that just a little bit, and I'm going to shift gears and go into diets for like people that are older than 50. Just so I kind of COVID cover the whole spectrum here.

There's quite a few people asking, and for people that aren't mothers to be, I mean, people you know husbands of potential mothers to be. I mean, this information I think is useful to to everyone, even if you're not female. Kevin's asking, why have you stopped the others like resveratrol, PQQ? Only because I just want to do a more comprehensive literature search. With resveratrol, there was one study showing that there were— that it inhibited some of the— some exercise-induced enhancements, but another study showed the opposite. So I'm trying to get to the bottom of everything. And so the P— I would say the PQQ and resveratrol would be the things that I'm gonna pick up the quickest probably. So, but the nicotinamide riboside stuff, I'm really— the cancer study got me really like that.

I messaged some of the top people in the field and they didn't really give me a very satisfying answer. So I'm gonna have to like dig into it myself and— Until I do that, I've just stopped taking it. All right. So the baby stuff real quick. Alma and Ryan and others asked if I could provide more details on my own health protocol for a developing baby, both zero and also early infant, as well as my nutritional intake during breastfeeding. So I will say that, and people were asking also if I plan on putting out any information. And yes. So right now, actually, I'm going to be next week filming a video on the importance of breastfeeding.

I have a very comprehensive video I'm putting out on that because I think it's really important for women to understand all the benefits they may not know about. And I think that if they do understand them, they may be more likely to try harder because it can be very challenging for first-time mothers the first couple of weeks. Yeah. Yes. So that's coming. Pregnancy diet, I've talked about this before so I'm not gonna go into too much detail. For anyone, the Crowdcasts that I've done before are— you can log into Crowdcast and you can view the other Crowdcast videos and there's also summaries that I put out on Patreon if you look at the Patreon post and I did cover this pregnancy one in a previous Crowdcast. Basically, during pregnancy, it's not the time to do any sort of restrictive diets.

Same with breastfeeding. No restrictive diets, no keto diet. I wouldn't do— I wouldn't— no vegetarian, vegan diets. Like, this is not the time to do that. Like, you need to have a very well-balanced diet— protein, healthy fats, and micronutrients. And so I— my diet was 3 times a week, 3 to 3, even sometimes 4 times a week, and Chicken. I was getting you know pasture-raised chicken and eating a lot of chicken. Also, grass-fed beef. So I was eating grass-fed you know steaks and also liver from from grass-fed animals as well. Liver is a very good source of a lot of micronutrients, particularly like choline as well. Choline. I ate a ton of eggs during my pregnancy and also breastfeeding, and I supplemented with it while with. Breastfeeding. Very important for brain health.

And there was a randomized controlled study showing that it improves intelligence. And the same thing was shown with fish oil. I took 2 grams a day while I was pregnant, and then I bumped that up to 3 grams a day while I was breastfeeding. Sometimes I think I bumped it up to 3 grams. Sorry, I bumped up to 3 grams in my third trimester. So I was taking High DHA. I was taking Norwegian Pure 3 and Pure 3 DHA. I was taking 6 pills, which is about 3 grams. And that's much higher than what any— if you were to buy a standard fish oil supplement, you may get like a gram. But I think it's very important. I'm going to put together a video on this right after the breastfeeding one. So I'll go into much more detail on that.

I'll save you guys all that right now because some of you may not be that interested in it. But the bottom line is, is that I think it is very important to take a fish oil supplement, high dose, both during pregnancy, particularly during the third trimester, during lactation, and postpartum. I think it plays a role in preventing postpartum depression and during lactation as well. So, I mean, it's just, it's really, really important in my opinion. It's one of the most important things. So that was the other thing I did. I also was eating salmon roe. Uh, you may not want to do that because of the, the fact that salmon roe is raw. Um, I was not concerned because it's frozen and parasites are froze— are killed off, should be mostly killed off when it's frozen.

Um, you know, but I think the fish oil is, is the most important thing above, above all else for sure. Um, I also was eating a lot of vegetables, a lot of folate, a lot of leafy greens. Okay. I was eating sautéed spinach, sautéed kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, salads. I was eating carrots, tomatoes, lots of nuts and seeds, olive oil, butter, avocados. And during my pregnancy, I also added some oats. Oats, and I would have oats with walnuts and berries. So, I was doing a very diverse diet. during pregnancy and also lactation. No restrictive diets. Vitamin D supplement as well. I was taking a multivit— I was taking a prenatal vitamin by Thorne, and I continued the prenatal all throughout lactation. Vitamin D supplement.

Vitamin D for pregnancy, I limited my upper intake to 3,000— 3,000 IUs. And then during lactation, I went really high because vitamin D, which is why you're supposed to give your infant vitamin D drops. But there was a study showing, published a randomized study showing that women given, lactating mothers given 6,400, so 6,400 IUs of vitamin D a day, they were able to significantly increase vitamin D that's transmitted in their breast milk enough that actually it was enough to give their newborn infants sufficient level and their infants, not just newborn infants, sufficient levels of vitamin D. I did that. I was taking pretty— I was taking about 7,000 IUs of vitamin D during lactation, but I also gave my son vitamin D drops as well.

So, I was only giving him 400 IUs, so 400 IUs of vitamin D drops. With the lactation, it's important to realize, one, you need more calories, about 500 calories more if you're more physically active. Again, the diverse diet and the prenatal supplement, but also things like iodine. You need your— iodine is really important for brain growth. brain development. And during lactation, a mother needs around close to 300 micrograms a day. And that's not— you're not gonna get all that from the prenatal. The prenatal will give you some of that, but you need to also get it from your diet. A good source of iodine, um, for me was eating my salmon. Salmon's really high in iodine, uh, but it's also in, in dairy as well. So, um, make sure you're getting your iodine.

Um, again, I don't I don't recommend vegetarian through for lactation or pregnancy. B12 is very importantly, it's transmitted through breast milk and women that are vegetarians can be deficient in B12 and it can lead to neurological problems with infants. The other thing to keep in mind as well is that after about between 4 and 6 months, a newborn's iron depleted and so they have to get a supplemental source of iron. which around that time is when solid foods are introduced. So, you know, doing exclusive breast— if you're exclusive breastfeeding after that, you have to remember that they're not getting iron, and iron's very important for brain development as well. So that's, you know, good sources of iron, you know, of course meat. So I was giving my son poultry.

I was grounding up poultry and— 'Cause that was mixed with blueberries or avocado. That was, he seemed to like that, or mixing with butternut squash. I also think that meat is really, there's randomized controlled trials showing that in early development, when you introduce animal protein, is really important in terms of length. There was a random study showing that taught, you know, babies and toddlers given protein, dairy protein, dairy protein made them grow wider. So it added fat mass, but not length. So in order to grow taller, they needed animal protein.

So again, it's not a time if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, it's not a time to do that for your developing, you know, to impart that sort of thing onto your developing baby or In my opinion, at least research suggests that wouldn't be ideal as well. So Alma is asking about giving salmon roe to the baby when they're able to eat their solid foods. I did that and it was okay, but I have a friend that did it and their baby had an allergic reaction. So, you know, you might want to just, you know, proceed cautiously when it comes to that sort of thing. It's sort of a personal decision. I think that's about— okay, a couple of other things. Onto the next topic with exclusive breast milk feeding. Vitamin K1, which is found in leafy greens and stuff, important for blood clotting and breast milk.

And that's why it's important to get the vitamin K1 shot if you're gonna be exclusively breastfeeding because it's not transmitted in breast milk. So my son got the vitamin K1 shot and I think that's important to get. I also avoided caffeine during pregnancy and also during the first 3 months. Okay. Okay. My rationale for during pregnancy, one is that the take is associated with an increase in spontaneous miscarriages, particularly early on. But also, I just, you know, it affects the brain. It inhibits adenosine receptors. I didn't know what sort of, if there was a little subtle effect that possibly was happening, you know, in utero. So I decided just to avoid it. Altogether, and newborns metabolize caffeine very, very slowly.

Even though caffeine—not a lot of it—it's not like a whole lot of it—is transmitted to breast milk. It is—it is transmitted through breast milk. So it is, you know, and—and when they're newborns, it's particularly—it's metabolized quite slow. So it can be—it can affect basically their sleep patterns and their irritability and all that. So I avoided it. Plus, it helped me sleep when the baby sleep because I wasn't—I didn't have any caffeine in my system. I could just easily go to sleep. Because the first three months you really need, particularly the first month, you really need to do that. Another thing was that I wanted to just quickly hit was the when I was talking about the baby toddler food, in my opinion. So what I've done with my son is focus on high fat avocados, grass-fed butter.

Um, you know, base bacon— I mean, high fat, high protein. And then, you know, getting him the greens and stuff and like some fruits. So like, I definitely am trying to get him a diverse diet, and protein are really important during these early, early stages for brain development and growth. Um, and then of course, you know, an easy way to get a lot of micronutrients from plants and stuff is a smoothie. So it's a really easy way to kind of like, you can mix it in with some blueberries and banana. It's like, it's an easy way to cover all the bases if you, you know, if it's like difficult for you to get them to eat all these, you know, other greens and stuff. So that's kind of what my take has been.

Okay, so I'm gonna move on to, The next question— oh, and also a relative— a related question to this whole baby stuff was from Jeradog who asked about vitamins for kids. And I think that— so for me, supplementing my son with DHA and vitamin D is the most important. So either, you know, getting— basically just opening up the fish oil capsules, the high DHA fish oil capsules I take, and putting it in like his oatmeal. And then the vitamin D drops, and then as they maybe get a little bit older, you can try a multi as well. But DHA is really, really important. DHA and vitamin D is is really important. So someone's asking. I don't see the name about smoothies. Andrew, I think it says.

Andrew is asking about smoothies and if I worry about all the oxidation of food from it being blended and also the glycemic index. And so I'm not worried really about the oxidation. A lot of the— there's a lot of polyphenols and vitamins in there that like are blunting that effect, particularly if you're drinking it right away. Glycemic index. So I have been wearing a continuous glucose monitor for the past— since since last November, so quite a, quite a while now. And I've done a variety of experiments with food, and I found that fruit definitely raises my blood glucose levels, and it doesn't matter if it's blended or not. I've made different iterations of my smoothie to optimize those, and so now the only fruit I put in there are lemons. I'm making a smoothie.

My smoothie now is Romaine lettuce, celery, cucumber, a lemon, avocado, ginger, mint, and a little bit of kale, and then some ice and water. And I blend it up, and that's, that's my new smoothie. Does not raise my blood glucose. Like, it doesn't— it hardly makes a dent. The other smoothie that I would— my previous go-to smoothie was kale, a ton of kale, and, uh, blueberries and an avocado. And I found that the blueberry— and I add the blueberries because the kale just tasted so gross. Um, but now I'm just taking my— I'm eating my kale sautéed and adding mustard powder to it. Um, Sharon's asking if I take DHA. I take DHA supplements every day. And while I was nursing, well, while nursing particularly, um, very very important to take supplements.

Okay, um, I'm gonna move on to the next question, which was from Bra— I'm sorry, I'm gonna totally butcher this name because I don't know how to pronounce it, but Bra— Brooks, Braux, Braux maybe, who is 60 years plus and wants to know what sort of lifestyle factors I would do since mostly I seem to— he thinks I seem to focus more on people that are younger. And he lifts weights, eats a Mediterranean diet, vegetables that are in season, no meat. Salmon 3 times a week, sprouts, does the sauna, yoga. A lot of those things sound good. I would say cardiovascular exercise, weight training are really important, sauna, vitamin D, and omega-3 fatty acids.

But I would also say that I would— studies have shown that all-cause mortality increases in people that are 65 and above that eat less protein, specifically animal protein. And, you know, it's sort of the opposite of what's found in people that are younger. So people that are younger, all-cause mortality is decreased when you— when they eat less protein, animal protein. The opposite is true for people that are 65 and older. And part of that may be because, you know, frailty, muscle mass— muscle mass becomes very important for preventing frailty in particularly an older age. So I'm not sure that the Valter Longo diet, the eating salmon 3 times a week as the only source of animal protein, is the best for a 65+ individual. I would, I would argue for myself, I probably would be eating meat.

I would probably be eating every day and doing my weight training and cardio training and all that. I certainly wouldn't be sedentary. Okay, so I'm going to move on to the next question, which is from Gina. This is a very quick question. Gina asks about people that have polymorphisms that reduces their phosphatidylcholine and if they follow a vegetarian diet. So choline is a really— a good source of choline is eggs. I mentioned I take— I ate tons and tons of eggs during my pregnancy and while breastfeeding, and particularly because I knew choline was so important for brain development, and that was like the best source. So people that are vegetarians, or I guess vegans, don't eat eggs.

Some other okay sources include some of the brass family, so Brussels sprouts, broccoli, lentils, and chickpeas. Those were— those are— those are your best bets for choline if you're a vegetarian or vegan to increase your choline intake. Okay, so we're gonna get to some of the questions about exercise and fasting that people had. Olga. Olga asks if one can exercise during a Prolon fast, which is a 5-day fasting-mimicking diet. It's a very restricted calorie diet with a very restricted macronutrient composition. And, and then the second part of Olga's question was what I think about Fistin fistin to combat senescence, and so we'll talk a little bit about that. So first of all, exercise while doing a prolonged fast—you know, like a multi-day fast.

Some people anecdotally have told me that like they like it; others hate it. There was a—I think it's a very personal thing. If you're doing a very severely calorically restricted diet, you may really want to be cautious about that. Very recent randomized placebo-controlled study came out that showed people that were doing for 2 days, they were on a very severely restricted caloric restricted diet. They didn't know it because it was a sort of a placebo, I'm sure, although they probably felt hungry. And it was a crossover trial. So there, each each group experienced both either the severely caloric restricted diet or not, and and then they exercised during that time.

And it was found that the exercise during the severely restricted, you know, caloric diet basically blunted cognitive control. It decreased mood. So people basically didn't— they didn't perform very well cognitively if they exercise while in a calorically deprived state, which isn't too surprising. So if you really need to be on game, I think that you might want to just take it easy during your your fasting, your prolonged fast. Um, that doesn't mean you can't like walk and stuff, but you may not want to do your regular exercise routine.

Now when it comes to like exercising while fasted in the morning, like, like for example, if you do time-restricted eating like I do and you're, you see you're coming out of a 16-hour fast and you want to like, you know, go for not too crazy of a run, you don't want to do something too strenuous. You're not, you're not doing like a like long endurance run or 5K or something like that. Um, but maybe you're gonna do— I've shown that basically exercise while fasted, um, is better to— is better for allowing mitochondrial adaptations to occur. Um, it's better at these adaptations occurring even when you're not fasted. And some of these adaptations include burning fat Throughout the day, so those effects were blunted when people ate before exercise.

Now, one caveat is that most of these studies people ate a carbohydrate-rich diet. So the question is, well, what if you're eating a more like you have like an avocado and some nuts? Like, does that blunt the effects? I don't know, but I tend to think it might still somewhat. Because you're providing your body with fat to burn rather than your body undergoing what's called lipolysis. So you're releasing, you're basically cleaving and releasing fatty acids from adipose tissue and using that as energy. Because you're now providing the source of fat, that process isn't happening. And that's part of the, one of the adaptations is lipolysis happening throughout the day as well. But I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. Uh-huh.

So, the other thing has to do with this interesting compound that I'm— I am going to definitely do some more digging in the literature about, but unfortunately, I haven't really found much human data on the topic, and it's fisetin. I don't know how to say it. Fisetin. I probably should look at— look how to say it. F-I-S-E-T-I-N. So, that has been shown in animal studies to combat cellular senescence. And, for people that don't know what senescence is, it's just when you're basically— your cells have reached a certain lifespan where they basically no longer are metabolically productive and active. They sort of enter a state of retirement, so to speak, in that they're basically not really doing much. They're a little bit metabolically active.

Mostly what they're doing is secreting pro-inflammatory cytokines and things that affect nearby cells, and they start to sort of accelerate the aging process of nearby cells. You should listen to the podcast I did with Dr. Judy Campisi, who's like one of the experts on cellular senescence. So the study showed that giving this compound, which is found in strawberry— it's found in a lot of plant pigments like strawberries, for example, persimmons, a lot of different fruits with pigmentation. And so an animal study showed that giving chronically a high, like a pretty high dose in their food, 500 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day, was able to basically get rid of or reduce senescent cells in multiple tissues in mice that have a progeria phenotype.

So they age quickly and they accumulate more senescent cells. And then acutely, actually a lower dose of this compound was given at 100 milligrams per kilogram body weight. And that was also shown to slow senescence. And that was acutely given for 5 days. So I would say, The human equivalent dose for the acute treatment is is about eight milligrams per kilogram body weight. So for like a 130 pound woman, that's about 477 milligrams, which is doable. I mean, it's not like out of this world, but I would still like to see more human. I would like to see more data in general, and certainly like to see some sort of data. But it seems very interesting. So it's definitely on my list of things. Search more in depth to potentially supplement with.

Okay, I'm trying to look at some of these chat questions. They— my chat's loading very slow. Um, okay, I guess I'll just move on to the next question. Okay, the next question's from Nadia who asks about whether or not I'm taking Npure 3's DHA supplement, and if I was not pregnant or lactating or elderly, is A better choice to take EPA, or do I aim for a current ratio of EPA to DHA? So I did just tell everyone that I do take. I still take N Pure Three's DHA supplement, and I'm I have I am now adding the EPA the high EPA supplement as well. Now there was it's unclear about the ratio. There was a series of studies that were published some years ago.

Quite some years ago, actually, a 2 to 1 ratio of EPA to DHA was important for enhancements in mood, like basically depression specifically, in that in that if you didn't have a 2 to 1 ratio, that some of the improvements in depression from omega-3 supplementation were blunted. It's really not understood why, if there's some sort of weird thing going on there. But personally, I think what I'm— and again, when I update everyone next time on my supplement routine, once I get everything squared away in my head, I think what I'm going to do is probably alternate. But I'm not exactly— I'm not, I'm not entirely 100% sure on that yet. So I'll let you guys know. But for now, I'm still taking the DHA. I do think the EPA is really important though, because For a few reasons.

One, there was a very, very large randomized controlled trial published. I mean, just multi— I mean, many, many countries, many, many thousands of people. And it showed that taking an EPA, specifically pure EPA supplement, reduced cardiovascular, like heart attack, by like 25%. It was very, very, very, very high. So I thought that was extremely interesting. And also just knowing the effects that EPA has on inflammation. Is also very powerful because inflammation is a key contributor to many pathologies. Um, I have another omega-3 thing, but I— it's like down on my list a little further, so I apologize for kind of jumping back to topics, but, but I will get back to omega-3 again. Um, this is another question. I will get to the krill oil. Um, I don't take krill oil.

I have not found a krill oil supplement that seems reliable. It doesn't smell like just terrible. So I choose to get my omega-3 phospholipids from salmon roe. And those of you who've been following me for a while, I've been publishing— I mean, I published a paper on phosphatidylcholine, DHA, which is found in salmon roe. And I talk all about salmon roe in my publication. I've been posting pictures on Instagram for years and years. I've been a big fan for quite some time. Uh, Ernest, you— if you must have missed, Ernest is asking about my thoughts on infrared saunas. I addressed that in the very first 10 minutes of this Crowdcast Q&A, so you'll have to listen back when, when I, when I send the, the video out.

But I basically, I don't, I wouldn't say I have any new thoughts other than I still think that traditional Finnish saunas are better. And that if you have an infrared sauna, that you have to sit in it for a lot longer than 20 minutes. You have to, and for me, I have to sit into it and sit in it for over an hour. Okay. So the next question, um, is from Jonathan and he's confused about electrolytes. He's an athlete that sweats a lot every day. And because he's an athlete who sweats a tremendous amount, by the way, sauna also makes you sweat a tremendous amount. So he's asking about whether or not electrolyte supplements are important because there's all this literature saying that people eat too much salt, and so you're already getting enough anyway.

So okay, so he's asking should we be cutting? He asked should we be cutting back on salt? And I would say that there's now been multiple studies that have been published showing that the salt blood pressure risk is very much regulated by genetics. So high salt intake can affect certain people with certain SNPs, and they have— if people have these certain SNPs, a high salt intake can dramatically increase their blood pressure and their cardiovascular disease risk. It's not in everyone. So, so I would say that there's a very individual personalized effect there with sodium intake. Also, I think that a lot of the problem with the sodium intake is that people aren't getting enough potassium. The sodium-potassium balance is very important.

So what ends up happening is if you're taking in lots and lots and lots of sodium, but you're not getting things like avocados and your dark leafy greens and your pistachio nuts and all these things that are high in potassium, then that balance becomes disrupted. And the more sodium you take in, you know, the more disrupted it can become. So in a way, I think people need to be eating more, more foods that are rich in potassium. And that is a very important thing. And I think that's not addressed enough. Additionally, extreme athletes can actually require— they actually require Up to 20%, 10 to 20% more magnesium than RDA. So for a male, RDA is around 400 milligrams of potassium, of magnesium, which already people aren't even getting enough of.

So an electrolyte supplement can be, I think, can be important for people that are, that are sweating a lot, that are doing the sauna like 4 times a week and also exercising. Personally, I like the the one that's noon N U U N. It's like they use stevia instead of sugar because a lot of electrolyte supplements are just full of sugar and stuff. But eating your leafy greens and and nuts and stuff, and a good diet also is a great way to get a lot of those electrolytes. Okay, we're doing good on time. I still have fifty minutes. Kevin posted in the chat. Thanks for mentioning this, Kevin. I've got a video on salmon roe stacks that are— it's basically, it's just a video on how to make these snacks that I eat, which is seaweed, which by the way is also a great source of iodine.

Seaweed, lemon, avocado, and salmon roe, and it is just so good. Okay. Okay, I'm gonna move on to the next question. I'm really trying to just get through a lot of these questions. I'm doing pretty good here. Amy wants to know about shift work, and basically, so for example, someone working 6 PM to 6 AM, discuss certain practices that can be done to help negate some of the detrimental effects of shift work. So I would say first, upon waking, very similar to what we talked about with improving sleep, bright light exposure, at least 10,000 lux of light. And that's, you know, within, for an hour upon waking. Oh, excuse me. So depending on when you wake up, whether or not it's light outside or not, it's very important to go out and get that bright light exposure.

And if it's not, light out, you need that 10,000 lux light, which you can, which you can buy on Amazon. It's really important to set that clock and that's what does it. Time-restricted eating is just, I would say, like just absolutely crucial for shift workers. So eating your food within a restricted time window, very important. And what that optimal time window is, is not known. But at the very least, I mean, absolutely, like very least within 11 hours. So you don't want to be eating your food, you know, after 11 hours. And so that's a really important thing to do. I would say also limiting, definitely no refined carbohydrates or refined sugars. So none of that refined crap, like that stuff's going to elevate your blood glucose. And that's a big, big problem for shift workers.

I would even go as far as to say now, after wearing my continuous glucose monitor, I would go as far as to say even probably limit your fruit intake to periods that you're doing like you're exercising, which you absolutely should be exercising. Like absolutely, it's very important to exercise for shift workers, for everyone, shift workers in particular. Um, and, and limit it to, to maybe lower glycemic fruits, you know, things like berries. Berries do the best. Don't eat grapes, oranges, um, even, even, you know, apples and stuff, uh, can, can, can really raise the glucose levels. Um, a sauna.

I say the sauna is— cardiovascular disease is rampant among shift workers, and the sauna is one of the really One of the easiest ways to that's at least you know associated with reduced all cause mortality. Sorry, cardiovascular related mortality and all cause mortality. But there's also been a few intervention trials showing that it improves things like blood pressure. It improves your your arteries and the ability for them to contract and expand. Sorry, to expand. And contract upon stress. So this is called arterial compliance, like that improves that as well. So I would say that doing the sauna at least 3 times a week would be important for shift workers. Blue light blocking glasses 3 hours before bedtime. You know, I know that's probably not the easiest to do for shift workers.

I'm not even sure if you're allowed to, but you know, if you wear glasses, you can get, you can get the, the You can get the blue light blocking stuff like the orange lenses and stuff. Um, so that would be something to consider. And then, uh, absolutely don't eat 3 hours before bed. I'd say those are some of the important restrictions for day shifters, in my opinion. So Mike's asking about firefighters and They're developing cancer. Um, and I, I haven't— shift work in general, I know shift work is associated with increased cancer incidence. Like nurses, for example, have a much higher incidence of breast cancer. Breast cancer because a lot of nurses are, are female. But, um, I hadn't read any studies about firefighters, but I'm not surprised at all.

I mean, the disrupted circadian rhythm, um, makes people susceptible to diseases, including, you know, cancer, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes. All of it is rampant in shift workers, way higher. All those things are way higher in shift workers. So it's not surprising that firefighters also. So, um, I would say that this sort of thing, all this stuff applies to, you know, firefighters as well. Oh. Keeping cancer levels down, I mean, I think that a lot of the things that I've been talking about apply to, I mean, general health are also applying to lowering cancer incidence, doing time-restricted eating. You know, like women, for example, there's a study published by an acquaintance of mine that I interviewed, Dr. Ruth Patterson at UCSD.

She showed that women that had previously had breast cancer, if they did time-restricted eating after they were diagnosed, after they basically were treated, you know, for their breast cancer, if they ate all of their food within 11 hours, they basically lowered their breast cancer recurrence rate by 40%. So I think that blood sugar levels being elevated and all that stuff, inflammation, all these things play into cancer incidence. And those things, you know, can be affected dramatically just by time-restricted eating, improving sleep. So one of the things that I learned from my continuous glucose monitor over the last few months is that sleep actually had one of the most profound effects even more, it was surprising to me, even more than like, you know, eating a big smoothie with fruit.

Basically, there was a period of time when my son was teething and was waking up multiple times in the middle of the night, and I was, and I had very fragmented sleep, almost like when he was, you know, much, much younger. If I had been wearing a continuous glucose monitor then, I probably would have like lost it because it would have been pretty bad. But So I, you know, I was up for like an hour or two, you know, just in the middle of the night, and my fasting blood glucose levels were up about 15 to 20 units higher, even though I was eating the same foods. My postprandial blood glucose levels were up about 15 to 20 units higher, again, even though I was eating the same exact food. Exercise helped a little bit, but it didn't take me back to my baseline. So sleep, very important.

And so people that are doing shift work, Um, doing those things that we talked about in the beginning of this podcast applies to shift workers. I mean, it applies to anyone that's trying to optimize their sleep. The workers have to be a lot more fastidious about things like, you know, the, um, blocking out the, the light, you know, so getting these blackout curtains and all that stuff. But it's, it's very important. Okay, I'm gonna move on to the next question. So Peggy, and this kind of, I just basically kind of answered this question. Peggy's asking, what are the best ways to reduce insulin resistance? And I would say exercise at least 4 times a week, time-restricted eating.

If you're doing it, I would say time-restricted eating to like a 9, 10-hour window, so you're fasting, 15, 14, 15 hours a night. Optimizing sleep, very important for insulin resistance and blood glucose regulation. Avoiding refined carbohydrates, refined sugars, and possibly limiting some of the fruit intake. But absolutely cutting out all refined— no refined sugars, you know, cakes, cookies, sodas, fruit juices, all that stuff. Just Not eating it, and then exercise. And exercise has been shown to reverse insulin resistance. Someone asked about the krill oil on the chat. I already said so.

Kayla's asked about the EPA and DHA being a really small amount in krill oil, and much smaller than what I usually take, and that because it's more bioavailable, is it okay to just take a krill oil supplement? And my I think that in addition to krill oil, you need, I think, um, to take a larger dose of fish oil. And, and there was a— so this, this recent vitamin D and, um, omega-3 study, and a few people were asking about omega-3 and vitamin D and optimal levels and stuff, so I'll just kind of address that now. The VITAL study, the randomized controlled trial that involves more than 25,000 people that were assigned to either get vitamin D or omega-3 or both. The vitamin D was 2,000 IUs a day.

And so not quite 4,000, which is what I would, I would say most people, if you're, if you're a person that's deficient, 1,000 IUs a day raises blood levels approximately 5 nanograms per mL. So that 2,000 IUs may approximately raise it, you know, 10 nanograms per mL. But for someone that's severely deficient, raising it 10 nanograms per mL may not do much. Um, so there's that. Uh, the omega-3 was 1 gram and it was a supplement. This study made a lot of negative press because the primary outcomes of the trial were not did not have positive data. So the primary outcome was looking at all types of cardiovascular-related deaths, so stroke and heart attacks, and looking at them combined. There was really no significant effect when looking at omega— the effect of omega-3 on those combined.

But when you looked at them separate, so heart attack only or stroke only, people that took the omega-3 supplement had a 28% reduction in heart attack risk compared to people, and people that took the omega-3 and had a low fish intake had a 40% decrease in heart attacks compared to placebo, and that was significant. It just, it wasn't the primary outcome, and part of the problem with clinical trials, when you're designing the trial before you know anything, you have to come out with come up with these outcomes that you're going to measure. And it's really, it's really difficult to predict what you're, what the data is going to show you. And in this case, if you don't meet the criteria you originally laid out in your trial, then it's a negative.

You're getting a negative effect, negative data. And it's just really, I just hate it. I hate the whole thing because you end up getting all this positive data, but it's not talked about. Because the primary outcome was negative. So, so I think 40% reduction in people with low fish intake is very significant, and that was just with a gram of omega-3 a day and a couple of years. I believe the vitamin D was a little more complicated. Oh, by the way, the omega-3 effect in African Americans—the heart's the reduced heart attack risk was African Americans. And, you know, African Americans are actually just— they, they eat probably one of the worst diets, um, in the country. You know, they're eating diets that are very processed and, um, definitely not high in omega-3 and stuff.

Vitamin D, the, uh, the effects— there was no effect on— if you looked at like cancer incidence, total cancer incidence, no significant effect. It was trending Uh-huh. But it was not— it didn't reach statistical significance. But when the researchers looked at the people that had been taking the vitamin D supplement for at least 2 years, and they— the 2,000 IU for at least 2 years, they found that they actually had a significant 25% reduction in cancer death. So there's definitely— there seems— there's definitely an effect on cancer with the vitamin D supplementation if they were taking it for 2 years consistently. At least for cancer death.

Again, one of those things, there's all sorts of things you can look at, you know, and you really, at the start of a trial, don't know what you're gonna find. So you're kind of, it's kind of a shot in the dark to determine what to look at. But the other part of this question that people had were, what are the optimal levels of vitamin D? And do those optimal levels change according to an individual? I have not seen meta-analyses that have been published over the past like 4 decades showing that optimal levels in terms of lower all-cause mortality tend to be between 40 and 60 nanograms per milliliter.

I haven't seen any data showing that an optimal level for a person is different from person to person, but I have seen data that people's requirements are different because there are different SNPs that regulate how your body converts vitamin D3 into 25-hydroxy vitamin D and into 1,25-hydroxy vitamin D. Now, some people with certain SNPs, and we give information on these SNPs in our genetic report, some people with those SNPs actually have to take a higher dose to elevate their blood levels to the same level that someone taking a smaller dose would do. Um, that's why doing a blood test is important for, um, vitamin D. All right, uh, someone was asking about migraines, but I missed that. And the ideal vitamin D level is 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter.

Very important because if you're in— that's the unit used in the United States, but if you're in another European country, uh, or even possibly Canada, I think they measure it, so you have to convert it to a different, um, unit. But 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter. Another question was from Gina about, is it detrimental? It's about timing of protein intake and strength training. And Gina wants to know, would it be detrimental to not eat protein after strength training and go straight into an overnight restricted fast if you had higher protein levels, you know, a few hours before strength training. So basically it's all about timing your protein intake to when you're doing your resistance training, your strength training.

And there— that this was sort of an old idea that you had to immediately take in protein in like an hour of training to get the benefits of muscle hypertrophy. Meta-analyses now have shown that timing of protein intake Around strength training does not matter as long as you take in the protein. You're taking in the protein within the 24-hour period, you're going to get the adaptations according to meta-analyses. So, uh, in that case, I would not worry so much about, about, you know, about that, the timing of the protein. Am I— James wants to know if I'm gonna watch Game of Thrones tonight. Hell yeah, I'm gonna watch it. I gotta— it's the last episode. Okay, um, James wants to know if Sachin has any more updates on coffee breaking a fast or not. So I'm not aware of any new data.

I talked about this. There's a clip you can watch on the Found My Fitness FMF clip channel where I answered this question in detail. And my answer to this question was, and I don't want to spend too much time on it, it considered the circadian component and it considered the fasting component and weight loss and all sorts of things that there are to consider. In my opinion, you know, people doing obviously doing longer fasts, they drink caffeine, black coffee is okay and it's fine. They lose weight. Even people doing intermittent fasting, they drink black coffee and lose weight. But there's a circadian component to time-restricted eating. Meaning, it's not just about weight loss. It's also about eating when your metabolism is optimal. Caffeine disrupts circadian rhythm.

I mean, it delays circadian rhythm by a couple of hours, or maybe it wasn't quite a couple. Maybe it was just one hour. I talk about it in that bit, in that clip, the FMF clip. But personally, I like to include my coffee in my time-restricted eating window. I personally find that I seem to get better results, but I think that if that's not possible and you, because of like your schedule, you know, having the black coffee, if you— that's— make absolutely no cream in it, of course. But, you know, I would say that I wouldn't worry too much about it, but personally, I think it's better. to include in the time window. Okay, let's see what's another question. Charles asks what the best approach for dealing with autoimmune diseases like Parkinson's disease is.

So first of all, Parkinson's disease is not really an autoimmune disease. I think that there's been some very recent evidence that there's been a gut link, and there's certainly an immune component to it that's not understood. But I wouldn't call Parkinson's disease an autoimmune disease. You'll be happy to know, Charles, that I just did— I filmed a podcast not long ago with an expert on Parkinson's disease at USC, who basically, she's a clinician who also does research, and she She treats Parkinson's patients with exercise. And I would say that one of the most compelling arguments for moderate to intense physical exercise, and I say moderate to intense, meaning you're at least, you know, at your 60% maximum heart rate. I mean, you're sweating, you're red in the face.

This isn't walking your dog kind of exercise. I mean, this is getting on your— getting into your spin class. This is, you know, running on treadmill or going for a run. I mean, this is moderate to intense physical activity is the only thing pharmaceutical-wise, diet lifestyle-wise, the only thing that's been shown to delay the progression of Parkinson's disease. And it's really, really important. Currently, all the drugs that are used to treat Parkinson's treat symptoms. So levodopa, carbidopa, these things can in the short term, over the course of, you know, a couple of years, improve tremors. They can improve some of the symptoms, but they just, it does not delay progression of Parkinson's disease.

And when you're talking about delaying the progression of Parkinson's disease, you are talking about having— going from someone having a tremor in their hand or maybe in 2 hands to literally not being able to dress themselves, to not being able to walk, to not be able to feed themselves. I mean, it's a huge difference in quality of life. So this podcast is a very important podcast that will be coming. out. We've got a lot of podcasts coming out before that. But it— I would say that if you know anyone with Parkinson's disease, that forcing them to exercise, having a personal trainer— we talk all about exercise and why it's important to have a trainer and someone pushing you past your comfort zone and all that, and why that's all really, really important for Parkinson's disease.

But I'll leave it at that because— That that interview is is going to be coming out. One in my opinion. So let me just look at the chat here. How long do you have to take a cold shower for the benefits of BDNF? I don't know any. I don't know anything about BDNF being increased by cold showers, nor epinephrine decreased. BDNF is increased by exercise at least thirty minutes. Aerobic specifically aerobic exercise. I have yet to see strength training increasing BDNF plasma levels, which by the way, BDNF crosses the blood-brain barrier. But exercise is one of the best ways to increase BDNF. Someone's asking about broccoli sprouts and what's the latest issues and best methods. And the latest is I haven't been sprouting because busy mom, basically.

It's kind of an excuse, but I don't have any updates on the best method other than you want to avoid— you don't want too much sunlight and heat because it can create condensation that creates— that can create bacterial growth, and that can be a problem. Someone was asking in one of these questions that they drink smoothie and the smoothie includes broccoli sprouts and that they get a stomachache and they want to know what could be— I wanted to know, you know, what could be causing the stomachache. And I think it could be— it could be that first of all, raw Brussels sprouts. I'm not, I'm not sure about that, but it could be the broccoli sprouts.

What your broccoli sprouts is, Kayla, but if it's store-bought, I've had— I have definitely had severe stomachaches from store-bought broccoli sprouts, also from homegrown ones that were contaminated. So that's kind of a— it's a very finicky process, I know, and it sounds like it could be the problem with the stomachache. So you also could just cut down the dose too as well. The person's name for the Parkinson's disease is Giselle Petzinger. All right, I'm gonna move on to the next question. So Steven asked about a low-carb, high-fat diet and healthy lifestyle overall.

Basically, Steven's been doing a high— low-carb, high-fat has gotten a mixture of blood results, some good, so low triglycerides, high HDL, low glucose, no signs of insulin resistance, and bad data, high LDL cholesterol, high LDL particle number, and he thinks that's a pretty common result for a low-carb, high-fat diet, and should there be any concern? Personally, I would like to not have a high LDL particle number. There are, and this is also related to another person's question, let me just tell these both at the same time. Kayla, so talking about their family has been eating a low-carb diet, low-carb medium-fat diet and feel great, but they all have SNPs that are possibly related to negative effects with the high saturated high saturated, low mono to polyunsaturated fat diet.

And, um, I would say, Stephen, first of all, you might want to look at the types of fat. So a lot of people doing a low carb, high fat diet, for whatever reason, they tend to do the fats that are dairy, you know, butter, pork, just all those types of saturated fat. And there are a variety of genes that affect the way your body processes saturated fat versus unsaturated, mono and polysaturated fat. And some people do better lipid-wise with a higher ratio of mono and polyunsaturated fat. And when I say that, I don't mean the bad types of polyunsaturated fat like canola oil, any seed oils like that. Forget the seed oils. I'm talking about avocados, nuts, olives, whole even olive oil on your salads, fish like salmon, fatty fish.

So eating those things and then like that's you can you can do a a low carb high fat diet and not have tons and tons of dairy and and tons of saturated fat. Like you can you can do it. sort of more balanced and try that. I think it'll likely give a better LDL particle number compared to, you know, someone that's doing a lot of fat from saturated fat. Olga says no audio. Are you guys not getting my audio? You have audio? Harlan has audio. Okay. Yeah, please let me know. Okay. Maybe something happened with Olga. All right. Let's see. All right, I'm gonna move on to the next question if no one has any questions about the high-fat, low-carb diet.

And by the way, for anyone that has run their genetic report through FoundMyFitness, you'll see that we have focused on a variety of SNPs that are involved in metabolism and the way your body metabolizes proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and there are a lot of different ones that can affect— can affect, you know, the way your body's metabolizing things in both a negative and positive way. And I think that for anyone, you can't— you know, like Harlan was asking about his family and how they feel great doing this diet. And I think that you need to measure things as well. Like even though you have these SNPs, there's lots— Lots of different SNPs regulating things. And, you know, genomic field is that we don't understand all these interactions. And so, you know, really good.

And I look at the— I think reading all the information on the SNPs is really important. Probably. And we can help people understand, but without getting and measuring things, without quantitative data, You don't really know anything like this. You know, so you I wouldn't just go off of information from the SNPs. Like you also need to do some blood tests. And I mentioned at the beginning of this crowdcast a variety of lipids that I that I think are good to measure twice a year. And if you're someone experimenting with a low carb high fat diet, it's even more more recently. So do a baseline panel and then measure it again after your.

You know, on a month to 2 or 3 months on your experimental diet, but make sure you have a baseline as well because you have to know how your diet's affecting a variety of biomarkers. Sherry, I talked about ways to reduce insulin resistance in this Crowdcast just a few minutes ago. And so you can check that out when I— you can listen to it again when I release the video. So I just addressed that question. Let's see, another question was from Rob, and Rob wants to know if supplementing with probiotics could be doing more harm, and he linked to a study that was published in Cell Metabolism earlier last year, and which basically showed that people that were given animals that were also given a probiotic supplement, uh, they recut— their recovery time to recover the biodiversity of their gut microbiome was slower than people that did not have a probiotic supplement and was slower than people that had fecal transplant, which was the best.

So people that had a fecal transplant recovered in just like 2 or 3 days from the antibiotic treatment. This is a study that I have been planning on digging into. I've got a medical student now looking into this. given me, given me some, some other studies and stuff. So I have mixed feelings about it because on one hand, other studies, clinical studies published that has shown treatment with high-dose probiotics like VisBiome, which used to be marketed under the VSL3 name. VSL3 changed their formulation somewhat. The formulation is now under VisBiome, but there are studies published showing that it, taking the VisBiome, um, reduces the chance of getting C. diff. Um, it, it decreases the chances of, uh, rehospitalization for treatment with antibiotics or whatever.

I mean, disease that they were being treated for in the beginning. Uh, so there were feelings about that. I really wanna— I have to dig into this study a little more, so I don't have a concrete answer because there's a lot of little details I kind of have to like try to figure out. Maybe there's something to it, you know, the doses of the probiotics, the strains, the things like that. So I'm not sure about it, and so I am going to look into— we are doing a Yeah. I'm putting together, we'll probably have a series of microbiome videos and that will be addressed in the video. So like, again, my medical student right now is working on that and then I plan on digging into it after I get some info from him. He's kinda doing a cursory search for me.

But believe me, as soon as I saw that study published, when it published, I bookmarked it and I was like, this is— I'm gonna tackle this. This is something I need to get into. So it's gonna be addressed. Let's see. Fecal transplant, Sharon, is when you take a sample of feces, or in this case, they took a sample of a person's feces before they were treated with antibiotics, and they transplanted it into their colon. the colon with the original bacteria that were present before the antibiotic treatment. In some cases, I mean, not in some cases, in all cases, this was done, it was a study where they were specifically looking to see the effects of probiotics and fecal transplants after antibiotic treatment.

So, they had the, they basically were able to get samples from a person before they were treated with antibiotics. That's not something that's routinely done. So typically, in severe cases, for example, C. diff, which is antibiotic-associated, when a person undergoes— gets C. diff, one of the extreme treatments because I don't— it's not a standard of treatment. So a person has to get C. diff and then it keeps recurring, which it often does. They can then be treated with the fecal transplant and oftentimes they get it from another person that has— Allegedly has a healthy microbiome. So yeah, it's totally gross. Okay, um, let's see. I'm looking for another question. Let me pull up this.

Someone was asking about, so this was asked by Chris, and he wanted to know if there's any studies showing that lowering homocysteine. Using folate or creatine, bone broth, or other supplements lowers risk for heart disease and Alzheimer's disease, or is just lowering the homocysteine biomarker? So I would say that I have not seen any studies showing using specifically those things— folate, creatine, etc.— our heart disease or Alzheimer's disease risk. Right now, I've only seen pretty solid evidence that there is an association between higher homocysteine levels, higher cardiovascular disease. There has been a study showing that lowering homocysteine in people that already have Alzheimer's disease was able to improve— improve hippocampal volume, I believe.

That was in— if you go and look at the video with Dr. Dale Bredesen that I did, We have a figure on there about about that. So it does seem promising that there's a causal, but I have not seen any evidence causal evidence people supplementing with folate or creatine and things like that, and it lowering these are hours left often. I'm sorry, I'm turning to the chat now. Amy wants to know if we can talk more about postprandial glucose levels and the best time to eat. So I can tell you from my experience with experiments that I have been doing with my continuous glucose monitor that foods I eat are critical for blood glucose levels. And if I— my typical diet is like, it's like some, some source of meat or fish and, and veggies.

And sometimes those veggies are sautéed and sometimes they're salad. My blood glucose levels don't go above— they don't get into the hundreds. So I stay in the 90s postprandial. If I eat out, If I if I go and I eat something which I think should not raise my blood glucose too much, um, because it'll raise it. You know, sometimes it can raise it to 120 or 30, and I think that's because people put crap in your food to make it taste better. And so, uh, I've noticed that to be a problem. Additives and stuff like adding a little sugar. I've noticed. Um, I took a bite of an Epic bar that I got for my son to try. It was lamb and it had some dried nuts in it. And I took literally 2 baby bites. I mean, baby bites. And it raised my blood glucose levels to 170.

I don't like— I can't even tell you like how much food I need to eat to raise my blood glucose levels to 170. I was like freaking out. I couldn't— it was blowing my mind. Now I'm not worried about my, my toddler having higher blood glucose. This is the growth time, you know. I'm not— that's the kind of— he needs that kind of stuff. But I was— it was just mind-blowing that a couple of dried, you know, pecans did that. And I literally didn't eat the whole thing. I mean, it was like the whole bar said it had 8 grams of sugar in it. I just— there's something— there's just like no fiber or something. The level it raised my blood glucose levels to was great, was crazy. So, so I find again, just fruits will, you know, cantaloupe, apple, all that stuff.

I will, depending on the fruit, I can raise it, you know, above 120, 130 in some cases if I, if I, if I, you know, eat a lot of fruit. So if you really wanted to keep low postprandial levels, I would say the biggest thing is just you're gonna just eat veggies and, and your meats and some fats like nuts and avocados and stuff like that. It really doesn't raise my blood glucose levels at all. The other thing is exercise. Kombucha. So I The only drink that the only kombucha that I can drink that doesn't significantly raise my blood glucose levels is it's that something aid health aid ginger lemon. It has a total four grams of sugar in it, but for whatever reason, it doesn't it raises my blood glucose levels, but not. More than like, and it's very transient, so it resolves pretty quickly.

So I would say that was about 110, maybe the highest. It all depends on where I was at before the kombucha, but that's— it does raise my levels. The other thing is exercise big time helps, and interestingly During exercise, I bottom out. I go into ketosis. And this is on my runs. This happens. And this also happens in my spin class, my high-intensity interval spin class, which is an hour long. And immediately, my blood glucose levels go up. In fact, they even can go up higher than before I started my class. And I think that's because gluconeogenesis kicks in. My— I basically start to make glucose because my body decides that I need glucose to be higher since I'm exercising. And, um— Yeah. And so it's interesting because I wouldn't have known that without a continuous glucose monitor.

If I would have just measured, done a finger prick, measured it before and after exercise, I would have thought, gee, exercise raises my blood glucose. That's crazy. I wouldn't have seen all the data points showing continuously it going down, down, down, down, just bottoming out and then going back up. It's a nice curve. So thought— so Andrew's asking thoughts on Daily 16 to 20 hour fasts if this would have a negative effect on metabolic health long term. I personally aim to do time restricted eating and fast around 15 to 16 hours. So I eat my food, try to eat my food within eight to nine hours a day. I don't see that having any negative effects on on metabolism that I can think of or that I. know of. Now, 20 hours is a little more extreme.

I'm not sure that— that is something a little more extreme, eating all your food with— eating all your food in 4 hours and then fasting 20 hours every day. That might be a little stressful. I'm not sure I would do that personally. And Mo's asking about whether or not that would have a negative— fasting would have more of a negative effect on women. Yeah, extreme fasting can cause amenorrhea. So it basically can prevent women from ovulating and going through their cycles and stuff. And so I would say that that is certainly something that that, you know, now in a way, interesting, that kind of is, animal studies have shown that if you can, if you cause amenorrhea by like being calorically deprived, you can actually extend reproductive lifespan or shift it to a later age.

But, you know, I'm not sure I've seen a lot of human data on that. Harlan's asking about gallstones and whether or not Valter Longo said something about in his book. He did say something about gallstones in his book without any references. I think people that are maybe more likely or predisposed to create, you may, you know, doing a longer fast like a multi-day fast may be something that could But I haven't seen any data on, you know, time-restricted eating kind of thing causing that. Kevin's saying that he's been doing 20-hour daily fasts. I'll be interested to know how that is, how that's going. There was a clinical, a short clinical trial published time-restricted eating, people that were, that were restricted to 6 hours a day.

So they ate all their food within 6 hours a day, but that was a short period of time, like a month or 2. And there were positive effects on that, and, uh, positive effects with doing that sort of fast, but that wasn't like a long-term study. And it was, uh, so they were fasting for 18 hours a day, not 20, but that was, that was pretty close to, to doing the 20-hour Um, any— Marilyn wants to know suggestions for obtaining a continuous glucose monitor. Yeah, you gotta like convince your doctor. Um, it's not easy to do. Yeah, it's, it's definitely not easy to do. Um, Asking about impact, a 16:8 TRE schedule and impact on cortisol in women. And what about longer fasts and sleep impact on cortisol and sleep? I don't, you know, I honestly don't know.

I think that there's been data both ways that, you know, fasting can in some I've had a lot of anecdotal data from people telling me that when they do like a prolonged fast, they can't sleep at all. They have so much energy. And then I've had other people say they sleep better. And so I think that you can make an argument and find data to support that argument either way. I mean, I just, I just, I think there may be something to it as well. Uh, Kenneth is asking about going from a cold water pool, about 47 degrees Fahrenheit, and hot sauna, 190 degrees, and then back to cold, and then hot and cold, um, and if it's safe. And I would say that I've been wanting to see data on this for like years.

I've talked to researchers that are friends of mine that have been— that are doing research and try to get them to study it. And we just— I think that there's been some— there's been like a case report published where someone that was— had some sort of arterial plaque and went from going from extreme cold to extreme hot to cold to hot. somehow dislodge the plaque because when you go into the cold, your blood vessels constrict. When you go into heat, they can— they expand, they dilate. And so you're going from constrict— vasoconstriction to vasocontraction, and it— and you're doing that, um, back and forth.

And for most people, it shouldn't be a problem, but for some people with like an existing— some kind of pre-existing crazy condition with arterial plaque, It can— it dislodged the arterial plaque and basically caused a stroke, blood clot and stroke. So is— there could be evidence for concern, but it's not. I mean, people in Finland are doing this. I mean, like a lot of people in Finland are going in from the hot sauna to jumping into an icy cold lake. It's very, very common practice there. And most people are, are not, you know, it's not causing them to get strokes and stuff. I haven't addressed, Jill, I haven't addressed the question on migraines. I think if that's something people want me to address, I can do that next time.

I need to dig into the literature a little bit more rather than just off the top of my head. saying stuff because I think that that requires a little bit more thought. Let's see, Kim wants to know about the bioavailability of combining turmeric essential oil for aromatic turmerone with the thorn curcumin phytosome. I don't know. So I don't personally know about the oil of turmeric and whether or not the essential oil has the aromatic turmerone in it. I personally, I've been using, I've been adding turmeric to my coffee with MCT powder and stuff in it to get the aromatic turmerone. So I've been basically doing that or even blending it up in my smoothie. But I'm not sure about the essential oil. I'm sorry, I don't know anything about the essential oil, whether or not it has— a lot of these essential oils and stuff you buy unfortunately are not— don't contain the stuff you think they contain. It's a published— it's been published. It's a big problem.