#191 Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Diet Essentials For Healthy Living

The most important difference when you're looking for a magnesium supplement is to avoid what's called the inorganic forms... Like magnesium oxide or magnesium sulfate, like they're just not very bioavailable ... So magnesium citrate, magnesium malate, magnesium glycinate, magnesium taurate. These are all forms of magnesium that are relatively the same in terms of their bioavailability. I personally like taking magnesium glycinate.

People that use the sauna, for example, 2 to 3 times a week have a 24% lower all-cause mortality compared to people that only use it 1 time a week. But people that use it 4-7 times a week have a 40% lower all-cause mortality compared to people that only use it 1 time a week. So in other words, it seems like the minimal effective dose to get the most robust effect would be 4 times a week.

There are certain vegetables and fruits that are very thin-skinned that absorb [pesticides], so even if you wash the vegetable off, it's already been absorbed through the skin. And so, like, let's talk about an avocado versus a strawberry. Is it so important to eat organic for avocados? Not really. It's got a really thick skin. Strawberries on the other hand, have a very thin skin...

Blueberries are, yes, you're getting your vitamin C and you're getting some fermentable fiber for the gut, but they're also high in those phytochemicals, so they have polyphenols in them. And they have anthocyanins. They're like superpowers for the brain. So there's been so many studies that have been done, randomized controlled trials, either with freeze-dried blueberry extract or actually just blueberries, showing it improves cognition. It improves mood.

I don't cook with vegetable oil. I don't use vegetable oil at all. However, I'm going to be frank. Okay, when you look at the data, taking people that are eating a high saturated fat diet—so they're eating more like butter, you know, saturated fat, like coconut oil—and substituting that with vegetable oil, there's no effect in their cardiovascular disease risk, or they do better ... Maybe the vegetable isn't killing us as bad as we thought.

For every 100 milligram increase in magnesium intake, there's something like a 20% decrease in pancreatic cancer risk ... The higher the magnesium intake, the lower the cancer risk.

Studies have been done looking at people that go into a relatively hot sauna, so this would be a 163 ºF sauna, if they stay in for 30 minutes, they can raise their heat shock proteins about 50% over their baseline levels. And heat shock proteins have a lot of beneficial effects. So, they're involved with preventing proteins from aggregating and forming plaques in the brain and the vascular system. They also are very important for preventing muscle atrophy.

When you look at smokers with a high omega-3 index, they have the same life expectancy as non-smokers with a low omega-3 index. In other words, having a low... omega-3 index was like smoking.

Folate again, we have to get from our diet, and if we don't get enough folate, it actually causes damage to our DNA much more than eating a pesticide would.

If you are constantly pulling amino acids from your muscle, it's like pulling from your retirement fund early. Our muscle mass peak is probably, I would say, anywhere between 20 to 30-year-old ... After 30 as you get into 40, you start going down. You want to try to build up that muscle mass reservoir earlier in life, kind of like you do with your retirement fund...

There's been studies that have shown that giving older adults, like supplementing with something like 20 mgs, which is what like 3 kale leaves has, of lutein, it improves neural efficiency. So, basically, like your brain works better with less energy. There's been other studies in older adults where giving them lutein and zeaxanthin will improve crystallized intelligence...

Your body does convert ALA from plant sources of omega-3 into EPA and DHA, which is essentially what the final products that you need are, but everybody does it differently. And the conversion efficiency is about 5%.

So almost half of the US population, they get insufficient magnesium intake magnesium.

Fish oil supplements, generally speaking, if you're taking around 2 grams a day of a fish oil supplement, that is enough to raise someone from a 4% omega-3 index, which is the low end, to a 8% omega-3 index, which is the high end.

It turns out using new techniques that are more sensitive that in order to just prevent your body from pulling from your skeletal muscle to get amino acids, the minimum amount of protein you need to take in is actually 1.2. grams per kilogram body weight.

It was pretty clear that people that routinely exercised and routinely did the sauna had a better cardiorespiratory fitness than people that only routinely exercised. In other words, there was a benefit to do sauna on top of the exercise.