Foundmyfitness

In this short episode, Dr. Patrick discusses some of the compelling science including observational studies, randomized controlled trials, and human mechanistic studies that suggests exercise is a powerful tool for preventing or managing the symptoms of depression and mental illness. Moreover, she talks about the specific types of exercise and exercise parameters that evidence suggests might be the most helpful for depression. This podcast started its life as a video, so make sure to check out the full video or the references and episode notes on the episode page.   If you’re interested in learning more, you can read the full show notes here: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/exercise-depression Join over 300,000 people and get the latest distilled information on depression straight to your inbox weekly: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/newsletter Become a FoundMyFitness premium member to get access to exclusive episodes, emails, live Q+A’s with Rhonda and more: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/crowdsponsor

Elissa Epel Elissa Epel, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco where she serves as the director of the Aging, Metabolism, and Emotions Center. Her research centers on the mechanisms of healthy aging and the associations between stress, telomere length, addiction, eating, and metabolic health. In this episode, we dive deep into the world of telomeres, the length of which is one of the useful biomarkers scientists have for getting a sense of the differences between how individuals or groups of individuals age. Telomere shortening is both a cause and a symptom of aging and plays key roles in not only how long we live, but in how well. Lifestyle factors such as poor nutrition and smoking can accelerate telomere shortening by generating oxidative stress and inflammation.   If you’re interested in learning more, you can read the full show notes here: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/elissa-epel Join over 300,000 people and get the latest distilled

Matthew Walker Matthew Walker, Ph.D., is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and serves as the Director of the Center for Human Sleep Science.  Walker's research examines the impact of sleep on human health and disease. One area of interest focuses on identifying "vulnerability windows" during a person's life that make them more susceptible to amyloid-beta deposition from loss of slow wave sleep and, subsequently, Alzheimer's disease later in life. Dr. Walker earned his undergraduate degree in neuroscience from the University of Nottingham, UK, and his Ph.D. in neurophysiology from the Medical Research Council, London, UK. He is the author of the New York Times best-selling book Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams.   If you’re interested in learning more, you can read the full show notes here: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/matthew-walker Join over 300,000 people and get the latest distilled information on sleep for enhanced learni

This episode features a Q&A session with Dr. Rhonda Patrick. The questions were sourced from social media followers of both FoundMyFitness and also Zero Fasting Tracker, a convenient mobile app used widely in the fasting community for logging. In this 45-minute podcast, Dr. Patrick answers some of the most popular questions related to fasting, including: What effects coffee, supplements, and amino acids have on fasting Whether one method of fasting is more beneficial than others What effect the consumption of exogenous ketones have on fasting Whether it is good to exercise while fasting The ideal way to break a fast How fasting affects muscle mass How fasting plays a role in the growth-longevity tradeoff   If you’re interested in learning more, you can read the full show notes here: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/zero-fasting-qa Join over 300,000 people and get the latest distilled information straight to your inbox weekly: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/newsletter Become a FoundMyFitness premi

Dale E. Bredesen Dale E. Bredesen, M.D., is a professor of neurology at the Easton Laboratories for Neurodegenerative Disease Research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Bredesen's laboratory focuses on identifying and understanding basic mechanisms underlying the neurodegenerative process and the translation of this knowledge into effective treatments for Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions. He has collaborated on the publication of more than 220 academic research papers.   If you’re interested in learning more, you can read the full show notes here: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/dale-bredesen Join over 300,000 people and get the latest distilled information on alzheimer's disease straight to your inbox weekly: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/newsletter Become a FoundMyFitness premium member to get access to exclusive episodes, emails, live Q+A’s with Rhonda and more: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/crowdsponsor

Dr. Valter Longo Dr. Longo is the current director of the longevity institute at the University of Southern California and also director of the Oncology and Longevity Program at the Institute of Molecular Oncology Foundation in Milan, Italy. Dr. Longo’s research focuses understanding the biological mechanisms that regulate the aging process, the role of fasting and diet in longevity and healthspan in humans as well as metabolic fasting therapies for the treatment of human diseases. In this episode, we discuss... What two seminal studies on chronic caloric restriction in primates from the 80s teach us about caloric restriction as a preventer of age-related disease, and how the effects of caloric restriction may actually be stronger when the diet that is being restricted is an unhealthy one – similar, in some ways, to the typical western diet. How certain macronutrients influence the insulin/IGF-1/growth hormone axis interact to modulate aging in many cell types. How mice and humans who have growth hormone re

Charles Raison Charles Raison, M.D. is a professor at the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Founding Director of the Center for Compassion Studies in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona. Dr. Raison’s research focuses on inflammation and the development of depression in response to illness and stress. He also examines the physical and behavioral effects of compassion training on the brain, inflammatory processes, and behavior as well as the effect of heat stress as a potentially therapeutic intervention major depressive disorder. In this episode, you'll discover: How depression as a disease may be subdivided based on whether or not there is involvement of chronic inflammation and how this could influence how it should be treated. The changes in functional brain connectivity that are associated with the high inflammation subtype of depression. The physiological similarities a sauna, hot bath, steam shower, and hot yoga have with whole-body

Eric M. Verdin Eric M. Verdin, M.D. is the fifth president and chief executive officer of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and is a professor of Medicine at UCSF. Dr. Verdin's laboratory focuses on the role of epigenetic regulators in the aging process, the role of metabolism and diet in aging and on the chronic diseases of aging, including Alzheimer’s, proteins that play a central role in linking caloric restriction to increased healthspan, and more recently a topic near and dear to many of you, ketogenesis. He's held faculty positions at the University of Brussels, the NIH and the Picower Institute for Medical Research.  In this episode, you'll discover: The effects of a low protein, cyclic ketogenic diet beginning in midlife (12 months of age) in male mice. The result? Increased healthspan and improved memory. Dr. Verdin explains how the cyclic ketogenic diet decreased insulin, IGF-1, and mTOR signaling and decreased fatty acid synthesis, and increased PPAR-alpha (which promotes beta-oxidation and

Dr. Satchin Panda Dr. Satchidananda (Satchin) Panda is a professor in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. We talk about dealing with shift work, black coffee when fasting, and some of the distinctions between Satchin's approach to time-restricted eating which is influenced by his deep background in circadian biology and more conventional protocols like 16:8 that many people are familiar with. In addition to these important and very practical how-to tidbits, we dive into lots of interesting new territory as well, including... How human anecdote and animal evidence suggests time-restricted feeding may be especially useful for gut-related issues, including inflammatory bowel disease and acid reflux. The fascinating way Dr. Panda is using human anecdote from his trial to ask new scientific questions he wouldn't think to ask and then going back to animal data to figure it out and how this unique approach forms a sort of closed loop pattern: animal → human feedback → bac

Dr. Guido Kroemer Dr. Guido Kroemer is a professor at the University of Paris Descartes and an expert in immunology, cancer biology, aging, and autophagy. He is one of the most highly cited authors in the field of cell biology and was the most highly cited cell biologist for the period between 2007 and 2013. Especially notable among his contributions: he was the first to discover that the permeabilization of mitochondrial membranes is a concrete step towards apoptotic cell death. In this episode, you’ll discover:  00:09:09 - How the 3 main signals that activate autophagy all involve nutrient sensing. 00:20:55 - The role of different types of fasting and nutrient deprivation in autophagy. 00:24:35 - How different types of exercise can induce autophagy. 00:36:29 - How a specific type of autophagy called mitophagy keeps mitochondria healthy. 00:33:07 - How autophagy has been shown to slow cellular aging. 00:39:38 - How autophagy prevents neurodegenerative diseases by clearing away protein aggregates. 00:48:29 -

Jari Laukkanen This podcast features Jari Laukkanen, M.D., Ph.D., a cardiologist and scientist at the Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio. Dr. Laukkanen has been conducting long-term trials looking at the health effects of sauna use in a population of over 2,000 middle-aged men in Finland.  In this episode, you’ll discover:  00:00:37 - The association between sauna use and fatal cardiovascular outcomes. 00:00:37 - The inverse association between cardiovascular-related deaths and all-cause deaths. 00:02:00 - How men that used the sauna 2-3 times per week had a 27% lower cardiovascular-related mortality than men that used the sauna 1 time per week. 00:02:15 - How men that used the sauna 4-7 times per week had a 50% lower cardiovascular-related mortality than men that used the sauna one time per week. 00:02:50 - The confounding factors Dr. Laukkanen and his colleagues had to adjust for, such as physical exercise, cholesterol, obesity, smoking, alcohol consump

Dr. Judith Campisi is a professor of biogerentology at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and a co-editor in chief of the Aging Journal. As an expert on cellular senescence, the discussion involves a lot of talk about aging and cancer, where senescence plays a very important fundamental role. What are some of the strategies we might use in the future to prevent senescent cells? What causes them in the first place?  In this episode, you’ll discover:  Why diseases of aging, despite occurring in vary diverse tissue types, all begin to crop up simultaneously after 50 or 60 years of life. What the fundamental molecular processes of aging are and what some of the on-going research and general thoughts are surrounding these processes. What senescence is and the evolutionary biology explanation for why we have the mechanism of cellular senescence in the first place. The infiltration of immune cells into our tissues that occurs as a function of aging and the role of damaged or senescent cells in attracting thes

Dr. Gordon Lithgow of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging tells us about worms! This unassuming scientific model has a lot of important advantages for science: they can be frozen and subsequently thawed and retain viability, they are extremely well understood down to the precise number of cells in their body and the wiring of their nervous system, known as the connectome. Additionally, they have a short lifespan and are cheap to work with. Why would that be advantageous, you may ask? This is where Dr. Lithgow's work on the Caenorhabditis Intervention Testing Program comes in. Short-lived organisms give Dr. Lithgow and his colleagues the opportunity to see how their biology responds to compounds in different contexts and to do so cheaply and rapidly. Think a vitamin, pharmaceutical or one of any number of other compounds may have a broad effect on longevity? Try it on Caenorhabditis first! Taking this approach allows the broad screening of compounds that might not otherwise get its chance in the limelight

If you're anything like me, having the facts straight can sometimes help you to push through the tough part of building new habits or breaking old bad ones. This podcast talks about the realities about what the science says surrounding the consumption of refined sugar. Some of the facts may surprise you! We talk about the relationship of consumption of refined sugar with... mortality and aging brain function, memory, and neuroinflammation the development of cancer and expression of oncogenes sex hormones ... and, of special relevance, if you're hoping to cut out a soda habit, the real addictive properties of refined sugar consumption that mirror that of more well-known drugs of abuse.   If you’re interested in learning more, you can read the full show notes here: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/refined-sugar Join over 300,000 people and get the latest distilled information straight to your inbox weekly: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/newsletter Become a FoundMyFitness premium member to get access to

Today we try to answer or at least explore a big question in the world of health: does saturated fat cause heart disease? This is not an unreasonable concern given the fact that there have been several associative studies that have found a link between saturated fat and heart disease, which is, no doubt, a fat that we find abundantly in the typical American diet since it is richly found in staples like fatty beef, pork, butter, cheese, and other dairy products. And if you're in the United States and you're not at least a little concerned about heart disease, you may be asleep at the wheel since it's currently our leading cause of death. Studies mentioned in this episode: Association of dietary, circulating, and supplement fatty acids with coronary risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Visceral adiposity and metabolic syndrome after very high–fat and low-fat isocaloric diets: a randomized controlled trial. Low to moderate sugar-sweetened beverage consumption impairs glucose and lipid metabolism and pro

Does meat consumption cause cancer? Or, put another way… does avoiding meat help prevent cancer? If you aren't already savvy to the topic, this may sound more absurd than it should. Here's why: there have been many, many, many correlative studies that have found that higher meat consumption is associated with a significantly higher risk of cancer and cancer mortality. Some of the publications mentioned in this podcast: Association of Animal and Plant Protein Intake With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality Effect of aerobic exercise on insulin, insulin-like growth factor-1 and insulin-like growth factor binding protein-3 in overweight and obese postmenopausal women Prospective study of colorectal cancer risk in men and plasma levels of insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-I and IGF-binding protein-3 Polymorphic variants of insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) receptor and phosphoinositide 3-kinase genes affect IGF-I plasma levels and human longevity: cues for an evolutionarily conserved mechanism of life span

The World Health Organization estimates that more than 350 million individuals of all ages have depression and approximately one-third of all patients with depression fail to respond to conventional antidepressant therapies like SSRI’s. The good news is that today, perhaps more than ever, good science is starting to illuminate some of the underlying biological mechanisms surrounding the development of depression. This new understanding may soon help the clinical world develop new approaches to treatment that may be vastly more effective and for a greater number of people than the traditional approaches. Publications mentioned: Antidepressants versus placebo in major depression: an overview Inflammation: Depression Fans the Flames and Feasts on the Heat Association of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein with de novo major depression. Sex Differences in Depressive and Socioemotional Responses to an Inflammatory Challenge: Implications for Sex Differences in Depression Dopaminergic Mechanisms of Redu

Dr. Roland R. Griffiths Dr. Roland R. Griffiths is a clinical pharmacologist at Johns Hopkins and has been researching mood-altering compounds for over 40 years. As an unusually prolific scientist, having published over 360-times, he's also responsible for having started the psilocybin research program at Johns Hopkins nearly 2 decades ago. In this podcast, you'll discover:  00:01:03 - the broader story of Dr. Griffiths 40 years of mood-altering drug research, including what got him started and how taking up a meditation practice ultimately influenced the eventual focuses of his research. 00:02:22 - the effect psilocybin has had in clinical trials in eliciting so-called mystical experiences that can act as a long-term catalyst for meaningful spiritual change and is amenable to being reproduced and clinically studied in a prospective manner. 00:03:45 - what distinguishes psilocybin from other drugs, particularly when reflecting backward on the experience months afterward. 00:05:11 - the process by which Dr. G

Dr. Jed Fahey is a multi-decade veteran of isothiocyanate research and is the director of the Cullman Chemoprotection Center at Johns Hopkins University.   In this episode, you'll discover: 00:00:00 - the early history of sulforaphane research, including key initial discoveries. 00:00:37 - the serendipitous unfolding of events that lead to the converging of the research on the NRF2 stress response pathway with the sulforaphane-related research going on at the same institute Johns Hopkins. 00:05:06 - why cruciferous vegetables bother to create isothiocyanates in the first place. 00:07:26 - the involvement of the heat shock proteins, in addition to the increased activity of Nrf2, as an additional cellular response mechanism that's been observed in association with sulforaphane. 00:08:11 - how sulforaphane affects a diverse array of biochemical processes from glutathione synthesis to elimination of reactive oxygen species and detoxification of harmful compounds, including carcinogens. 00:15:01 - whether or not

This podcast is about one of the most important biological pathways you could possibly take the time to learn about: the NRF2 pathway. The most potent naturally-occurring inducer of this pathway, a plant compound known as sulforaphane, may be one of the most potent health-enhancing compounds at our disposal and yet... no one is keeping it out of your hands! No $1,000 per pill markup is keeping it out of your hands -- it’s available to anyone willing to take the little bit of time it takes each week to produce broccoli sprouts. Here are a few of the more salient points surrounding sulforaphane that are discussed in this podcast... Profound changes in lipid biomarkers, reducing heart disease risk by as much as 50% in humans. Massive reductions in cancer risk in humans and also highly effective as a cancer intervention, particularly prostate and breast but also many others. Steep reductions in inflammation in humans. Shown in mice to be as effective as prozac as an anti-depressant. Steep behavioral changes in h