YouSaid · the spoken record

Sam Kass

lines on the record: 141
first: 2025-07-23
most recent: 2025-07-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think if you can take it fasted, that's great. Some people find it kind of as hard on their stomach. And so they like to take it with food. And that's really the only reason to take it with food is because they get like upset stomach. Like it's like, you know, GI problem. So that would be, again, the only really, real reason that you would have to really take it with food.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, some people do. I think doing the five gram doses is like. Pretty easy on the gut. Most people don't have a big problem with the five grams. It's when they go above that.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Traveling for work related purposes, I will take 15 to 20 grams depending on how much I need. In that case, I will do 210 gram doses. For me, I can tolerate that. I don't have any GI problems with it”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there's a lot of other marketing out there that talks about other types of creatine, but that's really the gold standard. And I had Dr. Darren Cando on my podcast. He's a creatine researcher at the University of Regina in Canada. And we talked all about this, and he really convinced me. Creatine monohydrate is the way to go. I asked him about every type of creatine under the sun. The way I take it is in five gram doses. And so I do five grams first thing in the morning, and then I'll do my workout. And then I do another five grams about 11 a.m. And that's my 10 grams that I get. When I'm traveling, I do have these sachets that, again, Thorn makes, by the way, no affiliation. I'm in there. There's like probably a million other, you know, I like thorn because their creatine is NSF certified. And so it's free of contaminants. I really like that. So again, find your own favorite brand, but I like this brand and I like they have sachets, which are five gram sachets. And so I will have my 10 grams for the day. Or again,”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With respect to all the studies, I don't remember if they were in one sitting. A lot of studies are. If they do like a 20 gram, it will be in one sitting. What I do is different. I do five gram doses. So creatine monohydrate is the form I take. It's the absolute tried and true. It's the gold standard.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, without that And even that, sometimes the caffeine isn't enough. Like, if you're really jet lagged, you know, it's just, especially if you're going across time zone.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I travel and I don't have it, it's noticeable. So I'm hooked on the 10 grams a day if it's placebo, I don't care. It works, right? On top of that, what I've also been doing ever since that study came out with a 21 hours of sleep deprivation. I take about 20 grams of creatine when I'm traveling and I have to give a talk or I'm doing a podcast, particularly because oftentimes I'm traveling either to Central Time or to Eastern time and I'm giving a talk early in the morning, which is like 6 a.m. my time. I got to be like on my game. So I take the 20 grams and I kid you not. It's like you get this brain boost, but without like the caffeine. It's hard to explain.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really intriguing to me, as well as some of the other studies where older adults are given 20 grams of creatine and improve their cognition. We now have the first pilot study in Alzheimer's disease where, again, 20 grams were given to a very small number of people with Alzheimer's disease. It also improved cognition. It turns out that when you start to go above the five grams and you get into more the 10 grams range, then some of that creatine is getting into the brain versus being all consumed by the muscle, right? I personally use creatine now. I do 10 grams a day every day. And what I have noticed, and this could be totally placebo, but I'll tell you when I don't do my 10 grams a day, what I have noticed is that the afternoon sleepiness kind of slump I get is completely gone if I take my 10 grams a day. 10 grams, I don't get afternoon sleepiness. I miss it. I get it. So it's not like a stored up kind of thing. It's like, no, if I miss it that day, it's noticeable.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because your muscle is a very, very greedy when it comes to creatine. So that five grams that you're taking, I used to take five grams a day until about last April or March or something like that. So the five grams a day is what's been shown in countless studies, and that's probably why you take it. I took it because it was countless studies showing five grams a day was like the dose. That was the dose that you needed to get the muscle benefits. All these brain benefits now coming out seem to be at higher doses. And you mentioned one that was 25 grams, I mean 20 to 25 grams, which is kind of a crazy study where they did about 21 hours of sleep deprivation, essentially. They were barely sleeping at all. And giving them the 25 grams, the creatine, 20 to 25 grams, depending on their weight, seemed to not only negate the negative effects of sleep deprivation on their cognition, but it also improved their cognition beyond what their baseline normal cognition is when they were sleeping. And that's what was.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Turns out creatine is something that our liver makes a little bit, I think like maybe one to two grams a day. It's also something that's found in dietary sources, particularly animal products. So it's high in meat, poultry, fish, dairy, not so much in vegetables. So vegans and vegetarians actually end up, they can have lower creatine if they're not supplementing with it because they're not eating animal products, right? Well, it turns out that it seems as though if you're supplementing and eating a high meat diet, you're getting a good amount of creatine. Five grams seems to be about the point at which your muscles get saturated, at least over the course of like a month or so. So if you've been using creatine for a month or two, your muscle stores are saturated and five grams a day is kind of what's consumed by the muscle on a daily basis to kind of maintain that. I would argue that you might want to go above that to get the brain benefits. And here's why.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Obviously, if you're increasing your workload, you're going to have increased muscle mass and muscle strength because you're increasing your workload. It doesn't work like protein in the sense that you can increase muscle mass because it's anabolic. You need to put the work in. So creatine by itself isn't going to make your muscles grow. It's going to make you work harder. It's going to be easier for you to work harder. And so you end up increasing your exercise volume, which then has adaptations on your muscle, right? And that's why a lot of people like it, because for one, they want their muscles to grow bigger and stronger. And two, some people like to use it during competitions or something because they want to be able to increase that exercise volume as well. It's also really good for the explosive power type of exercise, again, because you're getting that quick mobilization of producing energy. And I'm just glossing over decades of research and a lot of specifics here because I want to get to the brain.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's funny, as you mentioned, it's one of those supplements that have been, it was like in the Jimbro world forever and still people associated with that. But yet it's been one of the supplements that's actually stuck, right? It's worked and there's been countless studies showing its effectiveness, particularly with respect to increasing exercise volume. So in other words, what creatine is it's essentially it's stored in our muscles as something called phospha creatine. When you take a creatine exogenously, it's stored in our muscles as phosphocreatine and then used for energy. It's a way to make energy quicker, right? And so the more of it you have stored, the quicker you can sort of make that energy. And so what it's been shown to do is really help with increasing exercise volume. In other words, you can do one to two more reps per set or sets, you know, you can do an extra set or whatever it is you're doing, right? And that leads to”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It doesn't uh huh, and in fact, I think it helps with DOMs to lay it on set muscle soreness. And so sometimes actually I do use it actually after a really like hard squat workout.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, just did it like a couple days ago when I had a headache and I didn't know why. That's the thing that I go to still. I mean, there's some cases where it won't work, like where it's just like, I don't know, this is like a really bad headache. I don't usually get headaches, but if I don't sleep well or something, something going on or my cycle, I'll get a headache and I use it. I use four more, which is a phytosomal curcumin, which increases the bioavailability of the curcumin. I use the thorn brand just because I think the brand is reliable, no affiliation with them, but it works for me. It really does. So it's, I think, 500 milligrams of curcumin per capsule, I believe. And so I do four. So I'm getting two grams. I do still use it.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good point. You have to, yeah. There's been studies that have shown you do lower motility. For sure, the motility rates lowered and that those changes are reversed after six weeks of abstaining. So it is reversible. Also don't use it as a contraception method either because I know some people that have tried that. It doesn't work. You can still get pregnant. Not so smart.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“104 is hot, and I actually do, I both, I do a hot tub and I do sauna. I like to do hot tub at night. It does seem to help with my sleep, but sometimes I'll do the sauna in the day and I'll do it after a workout and it sort of extends my workout. I particularly like doing them after a workout like in the winter when it's cold. And if I work out outside. So that's kind of how I use the sauna. I was doing hot tubs for a while like every night. I don't do that in the summer because it's just hot. And so I don't like, I actually shift more to doing cold exposure more in the summer, which is kind of funny. It's pretty much the only time I do it in the summer. Such a was. I like doing the heat a lot in the winter.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think 190 is great. Yeah, 190's great. And I, so you asked about me and how I use the sauna. Now I should also mention that hot tubs are good as well. And in fact, the study just came out a few weeks ago showing that hot tubs have comparable effects on blood pressure regulation, all these parameters that are looked at with sauna use as well. And a lot of people ask that question. Oh, what about a hot tub or a hot bath? And I think not everyone has access to Asuna. Not everyone has access to a hot tub, but a lot of people have access to a hot bath. And I think if you can get a sort of pool thermometer and keep the temperature of your bath 104 degrees Fahrenheit, which is what all the studies use, you have to keep adding hot water. That's fine. But you want to stay in there.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so that was something that I don't know that anyone talks about. I've done really, really hot saunas before. I personally don't like it. I get headaches actually. So, you know, your head is in there and you have to think about that. Your head is getting heated up. And so I don't know that it's necessarily good to go in a 212 degree Fahrenheit sauna for your head. Now, I don't want to say that was certainty because there could be all kinds of confounding factors, but it's something to keep in mind. And why do you have to go above 190? 190 is hot as hell. That's good enough. You don't have to go above that.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go hard or go home, right? And so people think that they need to go in a 200 degree sauna. And if they go in a 200 degree sauna, it's going to be better than going in a 175 degree Fahrenheit sauna, right? Apparently not the case. So in that study, again, you saw a protective effect of people that use the sauna. And I think it was also dose dependent, but I can't recall. There was a protective effect, but only if they used saunas that were less than 190 degrees Fahrenheit. People that started going into the 190 degrees to 200 degrees Fahrenheit range actually had an increased risk.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“2020 ish, I don't remember the exact year, but it was not out of Finland, I believe it was a Polish study. And that study looked at sauna use and dementia risk. There was very interesting results there. So they sort of looked at people that are using saunas, but they also sort of categorize them based on the amount of heat. So how hot their saunas got. So in the finished studies out of Finland, majority of the people are using the sauna at around equivalent of 174 degrees Fahrenheit. That's about what the average temperature of pretty much any of those studies that you cited, that's about the average temperature that they're using them. And they're in there for about 20 minutes. Now this other study looked at a wide range of different temperatures, that temperature versus like the really, really high extreme end. So people that were doing like 200 degrees Fahrenheit or more. And this is something that you can see nowadays. Like there's this sort of, you know, go all in.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, there's a lot of animal studies that have shown this as well. For example, you can take a mouse and sort of give it Alzheimer's disease in a similar way. And if they have a lot of active heat shock protein genes, then they're not getting the Alzheimer's disease. It delays it, right? So I remember reading this study and it was like one of the things I was thinking about was, of course, the heat shock proteins are activated upon the sauna use that you would probably see a lower incidence of Alzheimer's disease and even dementia. There's other things as well. Cardiovascular health is really improved with the sauna, so sauna sort of mimics moderate intensity exercise. And so if you're having improved cardiovascular health, that means more blood flow to the brain, lots of things are happening, right? The one thing I do want to mention, Tim, and this is this study was, I think it came out in...”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they can only move their nose to feed in this little petri dish with E. coli bacteria, which is what they eat. And so I was doing these experiments, and then I would overact basically when you do a genetic manipulation and you can make them overexpress heat shock proteins, which are something that are robustly activated upon heat stress, as the name implies. And sauna has been shown to activate heat shock proteins. 163 degree Fahrenheit sauna for around 30 minutes, you can activate your heat shock proteins by 50% more than baseline. So when I would add heat shock proteins that would be activated in these worms, it would prevent this from happening. These protein aggregates don't happen. And that's because one of the things that heat shock proteins do is they help repair damaged proteins that are misfolded and prevent them from aggregating. And so you want to have more active heat shock proteins if you're wanting to prevent Alzheimer's.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, those numbers are accurate, by the way. They're spot on. And there is a dose dependence there, which kind of strengthens the data, right? So people that are using this on a more frequently are having a more robust effect. You mentioned 24% lower all cause mortality and then 40% if they're doing two to three times a week versus four to seven times a week, they're having a 40% lower alse mortality. And the dementia risk is also extremely interesting to me. And this goes back, Tim, to like some of the earliest experiments that I did as a sort of budding young biologist at the Salk Institute where I was working with these little nematode C elegan worms and injecting human amyloid beta-42 into these worms and essentially injecting it into their muscle. So that they become basically the amyloid beta-42 aggregates.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On my mom's side. So I'm very, very tuned in to neurodegenerative disease and wanting to prevent it and do what I can. And I do think that vigorous intensity exercise is part of that equation because I want to get that lactate, which is so beneficial for brain health”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Usually happens as you get in older age. So the lactate is again a product of that vigorous intensity exercise. It's increasing norepinephrine in the brain, serotonin. It's a signaling molecule. It's basically your muscle's way of communicating with the brain, hey, I'm really working hard. This is a stressful time. Let's respond to that stress. Your brain is also working hard during exercise and particularly vigorous intensity exercise. It's stressful in the brain. Anybody that's done it knows that resistance training also increases lactate and resistance training is very stressful on the brain. And so it's like this response to that stress. Your brain is now being communicated from the muscles by lactate, which is the communicator and saying, hey, make all this good stuff so that we can like not die. That's essentially the adaptations that are happening. So that's why I like to also incorporate vigorous intensity exercise into my program because I am also prone to neurodegenerative disease. I have Parkinson's disease on my dad's side. I have Alzheimer's disease.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Minutes later, and it's back to baseline. I mean, it's quick, it gets consumed. One of the major organs that consumes it is the brain. This has been shown in human studies. Not only is lactate very much like beta-hydroxybutyrate, our favorite ketone that we've been talking about, because it's a energetically favorable source of energy. Lactate is used by neurons to make energy, just like beta-hydroxybutyrate is very similar. It's energetically favorable. All that stuff is happening, same stuff. So you're using the lactate, glucose is being spared, you're making glutathione. Lactate is also a signaling molecule. So in the brain, it's activating brain-drive neurotrophic factor, which is important for growing new neurons in the brain, which has been shown in human studies. So there have been human studies that have done exercise for even just one year and shown that you can increase the growth of the hippocampus by like one to two percent after that year of training versus losing one to two percent of the hippocampus.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I mean is like you're not using oxygen to make energy, you're just using glucose, you actually make something called lactate as a byproduct. And lactate is what's essential for the brain health. So there have now been a variety of studies. This was pioneered by Dr. George Brooks at UC Berkeley decades ago. So many studies have now shown this now. It's no longer a hypothesis, but it used to be called the lactate shuttle hypothesis, where when you start to do this vigorous intensity exercise, you get your lactate levels higher than baseline. Baseline, you're usually about 0.9 millimolar or so lactate. You start to go above that and well beyond. You're getting 7, 10 millimolar, 15 millimolar, right? The lactate gets into your bloodstream and it's used by other tissues. So it goes back into the muscle. It's used for energy. It gets into the brain. It gets into the heart, liver. Quickly. It happens within 20 minutes. You can do a hit workout, see your lactate go up to 15 millimolar, measure it 20.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You do get two birds with one stone, and that's why I do like the vigorous intensity exercise because when you're kind of shifting into working out harder when you're getting that bigger intensity exercise, you are shifting to somewhat to anaerobic metabolism. So you're working so hard that you can't get oxygen to your muscles fast enough to use mitochondria for the mitochondria to then make energy. And so your body goes, I need energy quick right now. There's not enough oxygen here. And so you start to use glucose outside of the mitochondria as energy. And that's called glycolysis. And you're not just only doing glycolysis, by the way. I mean, even if you're doing an all-out sprint, you're still somewhat using your mitochondria. It's not like a black or white thing, right? It's there sort of gray here. But the reality is that when you're not going intense, you're not doing anaerobic exercise. And so what happens is when you're doing that sort of getting in that anaerobic state.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Less aging. So their hearts looked more like 30 year olds than 50 year olds, which is pretty incredible. It's amazing. And I think it's also like, well, you think 50, it's too late to start exercising. Well, it's not too late. I mean, you can be in your 90s and get benefits, you know? So I think that's another really important take home with that story is that, you know, you can reverse your aging of your heart by 20 years if you really put in the effort. Five hours a week is about what I do. I have five or six hours a week. It's a lot of work. I didn't always do that, but I've decided as I started to get into my mid-40s. I'm going to spend less time podcasting and more time exercising because this is my health.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And at some point, they were doing two Norwegian 4x4s a week, and then they went down to just doing one a week. But, you know, over the course of two years, they were getting a lot of exercise, about five hours a week. And essentially, at the end of those two years, the structure of their heart, so the stiffness of it and the, you know, shrinking of it was reversed. So their hearts grew and they became more flexible. And it was reversed.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because that's hard for them, right? Yeah, totally. So it's all tailored to the individual. And so some people get really intimidated where they're like, oh, I just, there's no way I could ever do that. Well, actually, these people did do it. And they started out doing Norwegian 4x4, but they also did a variety of other exercises, including moderate intensity and some more vigorous intensity exercise, as well as some resistance training. And the control group was just this yoga flexible training sort of stuff that people were doing. By the end of the two years, these people were working out about five hours a week.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, just like you don't want your blood vessels to be stiff. So, what do you want to do was see if you could change the structure and the trajectory of these aging hearts. And so he put them on a two-year training program, which involved the Norwegian 4x4, by the way. And when you start someone out that's, you know, not physically active and you want them to do the Norwegian 4x4, when you have them doing their interval, their four minute interval, and this speaks to you as well or anyone, you don't have to necessarily go as hard as you can the whole four minutes. You just have to be working hard that year.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Affect the aging of their heart. So as we age, our hearts typically shrink in size and they get stiffer. And that affects not only our cardio-respiratory fitness and our ability to exercise. And, you know, I mentioned our cardio respiratory fitness goes down with age, but it affects our cardiovascular disease risk as well. The reason our hearts get stiffer, by the way, does come down to a lot of glucose. So the more glucose stimulation, more glucose is around in your vascular system through a chemical reaction forms advanced lactation end products. So this glycation essentially stiffens the collagen that surrounds your myocardium and your pericardium. And so you get like this stiffer heart that can't respond to stress well. So you want your heart to be very plastic and malleable and flexible, right? You don't want it to be stiff.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Goes into why randomized control trials are important because you can establish more causation from an intervention. And this study was done by Ben Levine out of UT Southwest in Dallas. And it's really, to me, it's just a seminal groundbreaking study that isn't talked about enough. He's, by the way, he's just a phenomenal cardiovascular exercise physiologist. I mean, he trained with like the biggest giants out there. And what he did was he took him and his lap took 50 year olds that were sedentary. So they're middle age, 50 years old, sedentary but otherwise healthy. So you didn't have any other diseases besides being sedentary, which I think is a disease, but they didn't have any other diseases like cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes or hypertension, right? So there were otherwise healthy, just not active. And he wanted to see if he could put these guys on a pretty long two-year training protocol, how that”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, so that is why we turn to randomized controlled trials. And I will say this is where the heart aging comes in and also this type of training.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, there's absolutely a possibility for some sort of confounding factors in any sort of observational study, including the ones I'm discussing, because yes, they're going in and measuring their cardio respiratory fitness, which is better than a lot of observational studies that you're going off a questionnaire, right? That's already sort of one, at least a one-up over other observational data. But, you know, at the end of the day, you may have someone that has undiagnosed cancer or some kind of undiagnosed disease because diseases are, I mean, they're supposed to be disease-free or if they have a disease, it's like known, right? And so everything's corrected for. But there's always the possibility that, you know, some people have some disease and that's why they can't exercise very well because they're diseased, right? And it's the disease that's causing them to have a higher mortality rate than the lower cardio respiratory fitness is. There are studies always try to account for diet and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, you can never really establish causation.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Recovery. But that Norwegian 4x4, where you're doing as hard as you can for four minutes and maintain that intensity for the four minutes, and then you recover for three minutes. You do that four times. That's been shown to be one of the best ways to improve EO2 max. But you can also do one minute on, one minute off, which I've also done. So you do that 10 times. It's more like a 20 minute workout. That's also been shown to improve O2 Max, but also even doing something like 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, like a Tabata. Again, has been shown. I do all of these, by the way. And I do variations of them depending on the week. Most of my exercise is high intensity interval training, CrossFit training, which incorporates, you know, it's more dynamic. So it's including strength training stuff, but it's like more high intensity. And then I do a couple of runs. I do like, you know, two 30 minute runs a week, sometimes three. And that's more of my zone two stuff.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do a lot of so my training is three days a week I do some sort of CrossFit training that involves high intensity interval training with it as well and the high intensity interval training will either be on a rowing machine or it'll be on a stationary bike or a salt bike or it'll be like a skier like those skiers or jumping rope and I also do longer intervals so I'll do the Norwegian 4x4 So that's where I do on a stationary bike or I'll do it on the rowing machine actually as well. I do four minutes of as hard as I can go and maintain for that entire four minutes. So this is obviously not an all-out 30 second sprint. This is, I'm just working hard as hard as I can and maintain that for four minutes and then you recover for three minutes and then you do it four times. I'm thinking of a variation I do sometimes with my husband. I recover for four minutes because we're switching on the rower. So I sometimes do a little bit longer.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically, transport oxygen to tissues faster. And that's an adaptation that happens when you're training at a harder intensity.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, unless they actually add in high intensity interval training And that's where I kind of get into this. I think people should be doing vigorous intensity exercise. That's the type of exercise where you're unable to talk, right? So you can't have a conversation because you're going harder. Your heart rate is about 80, 85%. It's above 80% max heart rate. That type of exercise has been shown to improve VO2 max, especially if you're doing sort of what's called high intensity interval training. As you know, you've talked about this a lot as well. You're sort of these intervals of going more vigorous intensity exercise and then you have recovery periods where your heart rate goes down. So there's been a variety of different protocols out there that have been shown to improve the VO2 max if you do them. Generally speaking, what's happening is you're putting a stronger stress on your cardiovascular system. So on your muscular system, even on your brain. So the adaptations are greater. One of those adaptations is increasing your stroke volume. So being able to like.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The standard guidelines of physical activity, which are about two and a half hours a week of moderate intensity physical activity. People that do that for two months, 40% of those people still can't improve their VO2 max.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just out of breath. Everything is a maximal effort, and you don't want to be there. So you want to like start from a higher up point so that when you're going down, that cliff is much further away. And that's where the training comes in because you want to sort of, you want to find a training program that's going to improve that cardio respiratory fitness. And that's where you talked about zone two training. And that's the kind of what I would call moderate intensity exercise. So you're able to sort of the talk test. I like the talk test because heart rate is so dependent on the person's fitness level. But let's just say on average, generally people are not at like 75 or 80% max heart rate. They're kind of below that on average. Now, some people may actually be above that, but the talk test is great because you can have a conversation, you're breathy, you don't want to have a conversation, but you can. So we know that people that are doing that moderate intensity type of training, if they do...”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or cardiovascular disease, or smokers, for example. So, in other words, being sedentary is a disease. And we need to think about it as a disease. And we should be trying to train to improve our VO2 max. And that is something that should be in our minds. And I say this because like just having this conversation that you and I are having right now, it takes about 11 milliliters of oxygen per minute per kilogram body weight just to have this conversation. Now just sit still and just breathe. It takes about three milliliters of oxygen per minute per kilogram body weight. And that's important because as we're aging, we're sort of heading towards this cliff of VO2 max. Our VO2 max goes down as we age, just naturally. Even if you're training and doing everything, it goes down. And once you get to that cliff, everything becomes a maximal effort, like talking you're out of breath, you know, carrying groceries to your car from the store.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And people might be going, what is VO2 max? It's essentially a cardiorespiratory fitness. It's calculated by VO2 max, which is essentially the maximal amount of oxygen you can take up during maximal exercise. And so fascinating about that is it's a really important predictor of longevity. So there have now been enough studies that have come out looking at cardio respiratory fitness in the sense of VO2 max and how people with a higher cardio respiratory fitness have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to people with a low cardio respiratory fitness. In fact, if you have a low cardiac respiratory fitness and you go anywhere above that, like from low to low normal, it's associated with the two-year increased life expectancy. And people with a low cardio respiratory fitness actually have higher all-cause mortality that's comparable or worse than people with known diseases like type 2 diabetes.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think people are concerned with gallstones. So when you don't eat for a period of a long period of time, then you're not stimulating the gallbladder and the gallstone risk increases, which is what I think is the big concern with the long, long fasts. But I mean, if you're doing something like that once a year, I don't know if it's that big of a deal.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, exactly. Yeah. So I think for the cream, if you're trying to do 16.8, if someone is trying to do 16.8 on a daily basis and it's a non-negotiable for having an earlier feeding window because social just everything compliance wise isn't going to work and you have to do it later which means you have to wake up and still be fasting in the morning right then you either like have to love black coffee learn to love it or try maybe mct powder, MCT oil because then you're not getting the amino acids in there to activate the MTOR but you can do like a small maybe like a tablespoon of it and so you'll maybe just get a little bit of depression of autophagy but not much that would be my recommendation”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll say this in this kind of goes into what you mentioned about the fasting mimicking diet, and perhaps even adding cream, we can talk about that as well. I do think, I mean, the fasting mimicking diet, you're not going to get the same amount of autophagy that you would get if you did a five-day fast water fast because it's just impossible. You're getting some protein, you're getting some amino acids. That's activating MTOR that shuts down autophagy. You're getting energy, ATP. There's a ratio called the ATP to AMP ratio, which you want it to be low to activate something called AMP kinase for autophagy to happen. And so when you're eating, when you're eating heavy cream or eating whatever, fill in the blank, any type of calories, you're changing that ratio. And so that AMP kinase is not getting activated as robustly. Now, the amount of inactivation of those pathways, which then will inactivate a topography, depends on how much you're feeding, right? How many calories that you're eating, how much of that?”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. It gets misclassified as lean body mass. And so you look at this lean body mass and all you think about is muscle. Well, it turns out muscle is a small part of that. There's a lot of other stuff that's going into that lean body mass. So yeah, it's a pretty big undertaking, a 14-day fast.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Damage cells not only is autophagy getting activated and you're cleaning out damage within a cell, but cells that are so damaged that autophagy can't even fix them. They actually undergo death, cell death. And so you end up getting a lot of cells that die. And then what happens is during the refeeding phase, and this is key, the refeeding phase is the growth phase. And this is when you regrow organs. It's when your muscle mass comes back. You can go back. get your muscle mass gains back. And so having that refeeding phase is really important and getting the right nutrients like protein, for example, is key for that refeeding phase. But you also lose fat during that fast and you're losing visceral fat. And you had brought this up last night when we were talking, and it was, I did some reading on it because it was like, oh, I made perfect sense because your organs are shrinking. You're losing a lot of cells in your organs. You're also losing some of the visceral fat that surrounds the organs.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up to 10 pounds of like water rate. It's just crazy. You lose that and your organs shrink. And this is something that's been also shown in animal studies and also by Dr. Valter Longo many years ago. He's shown in animal studies, prolonged type of fasting actually causes organs to shrink.”
2025-07-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #819: Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. — Protocols for Fasting, Lowering Dementia Risk, Reversing Heart Aging, Using Sauna for Longevity (Hotter is Not Better), and a Few Supplements That Might Actually Matter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT