An Exercise Hack For A Better Brain, Why Your Vitamin D Might Not Be Working, Inexpensive Plaque Reduction & More! Solosode 497

In this episode of the Boundless Life podcast, an exercise hack for a better brain, why your vitamin D might not be working, inexpensive plaque reduction, and more. Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. Let's talk probiotics. If you've accepted bloat and cravings and a post-mill crash after eating as your new normal, then know that you can feel better. And here's the cheat code, the Just Thrive Gut Essentials Bundle. This pairs two clinically proven gut superstars, Just Thrive Probiotic and the digestive bitters that go along with those, kind of like turkey and cranberry, but without the bloating. Just Thrive Probiotic is the only probiotic clinically proven to arrive 100% alive in your gut. So those little critters can make a difference. You'll actually feel less bloat, better energy, and even clear skin. Then there's Digestive Bitters, which has 12 science-backed herbs in one tasteless capsule. That's a good thing, as the name implies. It would be bitter otherwise. That jumpstarts your digestion and supports GLP-1 production. That's pretty cool. So together, these work to help you digest food better and not go lay on the couch farting after you have a meal. There's even a 100% money-back guarantee, so you've got nothing to lose. Take the Just Thrive Feel Better Challenge today and save 20% off your first gut essentials bundle. Go to justthrivehealth.com slash Ben and save 20% with promo code Ben. That's justthrivehealth.com slash Ben and save 20% with promo code Ben. get a full product refund if you don't like it. No questions asked. Hey, you ever realize that you're on camera and you haven't looked in the mirror yet? I have hair today. I have big hair today. We're going Don King, Tina Turner. It's going to flip a little bit like a Pantene, Proveen shampoo commercial. This is me. This is my hair. I actually did just tweet because I had a picture of my hair and somebody asked me about my hair health tips and um that tweet wound up as like a mildly viral Instagram post I'll tell you what I said like this is literally what I wrote why such a full head of hair I won't deny that genetics play a big role especially if the maternal side of your family has good hair here's a fun fact for the day uh but lifestyle Hormones, blood flow, inflammation, immune signaling, stress, and toxin exposure play a pretty big role also. Here are a few of my hair health tips. All right, and this is what I wrote. I eat a low inflammation diet without much sugar, fried foods, and alcohol. Notice I didn't say sugar, seed oils, and alcohol. I think seed oils are often like vilified and thrown under the bandwagon. You can make a case that like higher amounts of omega-6 fatty acids from seed oils may actually have a cardioprotective anti-inflammatory effect. But the frying of said oils is a problem. Even when it comes to inflammation, oxidation, and hair health. I mitigate environmental toxin exposure by using air filters and water filters. So yes, I'm a little bubble boy. I modulate stress. I monitor DHT levels. That's dihydrotestosterone for those of you who wonder about that alphabet soup piece. And when it's up, it can cause hair loss, paradoxically causing the male who's got jacked up testosterone levels and a head as bald as a baby's butt. And then finally, I address autoimmune sensitivities by eating a personalized diet. When I say personalized diet, I literally mean. I've done food allergy testing and avoid food that cause an enhanced white blood cell reaction in my body. An example of that for me would be dairy. Dairy anything. I don't care if it's goat or cow or fermented or unfermented or unicorn or whatever. Just dairy, I don't do. I don't even know if you can milk a unicorn, but there you have it. I derma roll my scalp once per week and I rub C60 oil into it. There is zero evidence from long-term studies for this, but it's a super powerful antioxidant with a little bit of evidence for hair growth. C60 is just like a, well, it's an antioxidant. And there are companies like C60 Power and Wizard Sciences that sell C60 and you can get a liquid and just rub it into your scalp after you derma roll. Scandinavian Biolabs also has a hair serum that I have used in the past with similar results. But the idea is you kind of aggravate the scalp, introduce oxygen and blood flow with a little bit of derma rolling, or even just like combing it with a fine tooth comb and rubbing the scalp a little bit, and then you rub something in. Cheapest hack for this, believe it or not, is caffeine. Yes, you can take those used coffee grounds, rub them into your hair in the shower. Also, they double as a face scrub, and the caffeine can actually help with hair growth. I use a red light helmet for, actually, I'd say 10 minutes, but it stays on for like 12 minutes. the auto function on it does i don't know that any one red light helmet is any better than another the one i have let's grab it's right here why not mine looks like this it's called the eye restore uh i think um biolite has one um few couples have red light helmets but there's some evidence that photobiomodulation may help with blood flow and mitochondrial health in your noggin uh and then this one's kind of extreme, but I'm going to say it anyways. Once a year for the past four years, I've done microneedling with stem cells applied to my scalp. I have not even like sought this out. It's more like I'm at a doctor doing stem cells and they offer. They're like, hey, you want to do the microneedling and grimace in pain while we shove tiny needles into your head and then rub stem cells in there. But I've done it. I've done it four times in my life. Incidentally, almost once a year. I don't know how much of a difference that makes. I know for baldness, you know, bad and follicular transplants can help. But anyways, those are the main things that I do for hair growth. I'll link to that Instagram post in the show notes. I'm actually going to type that into myself right now to remember to do that. It's going to be at bengreenfieldlife.com slash 497 are the show notes. And then also listen to my podcast with Dr. Cameron Chestnut, My buddy Cameron, I'd actually be skiing with him this weekend. He and I have three rollicking episodes on hair growth, hair graying, whether it does actually work to transfer pubic hairs from your crotch to your head to enhance hair growth. A hint? Maybe. So anyways, that's the dealio with hair. But I'm not here to talk to you, hair, to talk to you about hair this whole time. Uh, this is one of those solo sewed in betweener episodes where I go through a few news flashes, occasionally answer listener Q and a, uh, I really couldn't come across any great questions this week. So if you do want to leave a question, uh, there's a handy dandy button to submit a question right there at then greenfieldlife.com slash four 97. And, uh, that being said, here are some of the more interesting takeaways for the day. Um, I know a lot of you wear a whoop or an aura or a step counter and you track your steps and you go for 10,000 or 12,000 or 15,000 or those of you with a walking treadmill who are overachievers, 20,000. Uh, but a recent cohort study in over 33,000 participants in the UK, uh, where not only were they walking, but they were walking in the rain, um, depressed, eating a sandwich. No, I'm just kidding. They looked at all these participants who were taking 8,000 or fewer daily steps, which defines the average person. And here's the interesting thing. They looked at risk of cardiovascular disease and risk of all-cause mortality. That's like dying from anything. And they found that people whose steps took place in longer bouts had lower cardiovascular risk. What does that mean? It means that if you, let's say you were going to accumulate an hour of walking on any given day and you had the option to do 12 five-minute walks or four 15-minute walks. Check my math. That's good. And you looked at your reduction in cardiovascular risk. It turns out that the longer bouts of stepping, I don't know why they don't say walking, but stepping, the longer abouts of stepping were associated with lower cardiovascular risk, meaning that if you walk for a longer period of time when you're going to walk, it's better even when the step count by the end of the day is all equal. I think this is possibly because, as many of you might have experienced, the longer that you walk, the slightly more taxing it becomes on your feet, on your ankles, on your bone density, on your heart rates, on your lungs. I think also if you are walking for a longer period of time, you're often doing it outdoors rather than say pacing back and forth to the water cooler. But ultimately the takeaway message is that it's not just about the total step count. It is about the volume of the walking time over which that step count accumulates. And if we want to pair this with other research on longevity and reduction in all-cause mortality, we also know that walking speed counts, meaning walking at a slightly faster rate than what your brain wants you to walk at is associated with longevity. So takeaway message is walk in longer bouts when you can and take your steps take your steps quickly Uh and if you from the UK you are not going walking You are going stepping apparently That the word of the day. So step accumulation patterns, I will link to that research. I don't know why you need to take a deeper dive into that. I just kind of explained it all, but in case you do, I'll link to that over in the show notes. So the next one was about how exercise could make you smarter, specifically by getting a surge of brain neuroplasticity because of the release of something called BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Now, all the way back to a book by, I believe his name is John Rady, his book Spark, which talked all about how exercise enhances your cognitive power. I think we've known about the benefits of exercise for the brain, but this paper specifically talks about lactate and BDNF being what are called key mediators of exercise-induced neuroplasticity. So here is what you need to know. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF, that's a critical protein that supports neuroplasticity, which is your brain's ability to form new connections and synapses and over time, new neurons. So BDNF is linked to better learning, better memory, better resilience against neurodegenerative disease. And there are certain things that increase it. Sauna increases it. Sunshine can increase it. And just like time in nature, interestingly, of course, doing new activities and learning new things can increase it. No surprise there. There are certain mushrooms like lion's mane and psilocybin, hooray, can increase it. But physical exercise, both acute bouts of physical exercise and chronic training have both been shown to increase BDNF levels. Now, the other term that you need to be familiar with for this particular paper is lactate. Lactate is a metabolic byproduct that builds up particularly during high-intensity exercise. Sometimes it's vilified as like what causes soreness. That is a notion that was dispelled long ago, but it does build up. As a matter of fact, when I used to have an exercise physiology lab, we would bring athletes or people who wanted to know good heart rate zones for exercise into the lab, and we would have them exercise at progressively more difficult intervals, either on a bike or a treadmill. I did do this test a few times on swimmers in a pool. And about every three to four minutes, you would take a lactate reading via a fingertip blood measurement, and you would assess at what point lactate began to accumulate faster than it was being cleared. And that would be called the lactic acid threshold. Basically, you're making lactic acid more quickly than you can buffer it. So the harder you exercise, of course, the higher your blood lactate might be. And interestingly, it turns out that lactate crosses the blood-brain barrier, which helps link muscle activity to neuroplasticity, namely higher blood lactate levels achieved through higher intensity exercise are associated with greater increases in circulating BDNF. So this paper, which I thought was super interesting, outlines a few mechanisms by which lactate might influence things like BDNF and thus neuroplasticity. We know that lactate can get taken up by the neurons and the astrocytes in your brain and be used as a fuel, right? A lot of people still call lactic acid the metabolic byproduct. I'm so sore. I have so much lactic acid. No, lactic acid can be used as a fuel by the brain. It can also be converted via something called the Cori cycle back into glucose to be used by the muscles. But lactate is a fuel, just like ketones or glucose are a fuel that can be used by the brain. Lactate can also enhance gene expression, what's called neural gene expression, related to plasticity. The way that that works is that lactate can influence your intracellular calcium and receptor activity and indirectly affect gene expression for genes related to neuroplasticity. And then there is also what's called pathway activation, meaning lactate can activate certain pathways that promote BDNF expression and release. We're talking specifically about what's called the SIRT1 pathway. You don't need to know too much of the nitty gritty details of this, but basically SIRT1 downstream from that is BDNF production. And so when that pathway gets jump-started by you exercising hard enough to get a little bit of a burn, the effect of that is a better brain. Let's talk about your noggin, about your brain, brain health. I know a lot of you struggle with it. I do sometimes, especially when I'm traveling, and brain fog or mental fatigue, even after a good night's sleep, is something that happens. We're talking forgetting names, details, why you walked into a room, struggling to focus on tasks that used to feel effortless, getting frustrated easily. That's a big one. Relying on coffee and energy drinks to just get through the day and those 18 different nootropics that you take. Worrying that your memory isn't as sharp as it once was. And a lot of these problems arrive when your brain-derived neurotrophic factor, that's BDNF, when your BDNF levels naturally decline with age. Plus when oxidative stress starts dampening and damaging your neurons. So over time, that weakens what's called synaptic plasticity. That's the foundation of memory and focus and learning. So what Level Up Health, one of my favorite companies that creates these amazing clinically-backed peptide and botanical formulations that you take orally has done, is they've created a process to boost BDNF, grow new neural connections, sprout them like miracle grow, and protect against cognitive decline. They have stuff in there to enhance blood flow, to strengthen memory, to improve learning, to protect neurons from oxidative stress, to stabilize. energy metabolism to slow brain aging, and they have peptides, like I mentioned in it. It's called Neuro Regenerate, and the peptides work to accelerate neurogenesis, improve resilience, and boost long-term cognitive performance. So they designed this to give you comprehensive support that your mind needs to stay sharp for life. Here's how to get this brand new formula, Neuro Regenerate. Go to leveluphhealth.com slash BGL. That's L-V-L-U-P, health.com forward slash B-G-L for a special discount on Level Up Helps' game-changing range of products. And again, this one's called Neuro Regenerate. Well, if you've tried all the health trends, but you're still feeling tired or foggy or off of your game, it might be time for gummies. Yes, gummies, what we all used to think were the sugary diabetes-inducing glycemic index-increasing gooey gobs of good but dangerous junk have been totally reinvented. Urolithin A is something that has been studied recently and is one of the new darlings of the mitochondrial health and anti-aging community. And the folks at Timeline have figured out how to deliver six times more urolithin A than a glass of pomegranate juice, inducing a massive amount of pomegranates, enough to give you carpal tunnel syndrome. And they've gotten them all in a gummy that's sugar-free, naturally sweetened with stevia, vegan, gluten-free, non-GMO, clean label project certified, NSF content certified, free of major allergens and artificial ingredients, and contains MitoPure, the only clinically proven form of urolithin A. One gummy is 250 milligrams, which means by chewing on four gummies, which I just put into my morning smoothie, you can increase muscle strength by 12%, boost muscle endurance by up to 17%, support faster recovery after exercise, and the benefits build as you use them, really kicking in after about eight weeks. I've been taking the strawberry-flavored gummies, which are kind of addicting, for, gosh, it's been like 20 weeks now, and I love them. Plus, it's nice that I can kind of like have a treat, but it's A, supporting my mitochondria, and B, super healthy. So you get 20% off of anything from Timeline. They've got soft gel capsules. They got powder as well with the mitopure. But just go to timeline.com slash Ben and use my code Ben20 at checkout to get 20% off today. That's timeline.com slash Ben. Use my code Ben20 at checkout to get 20% off today. so exercise induced bdnf and the lactate response to that are part of why physical activity can support cognitive health across your entire lifespan now this also means that zone two training is not enough because when you are exercising in zone two when you're aerobic when you're conversational you're burning predominantly fats as a fuel and fats typically are burnt via a process called beta oxidation, which produces a whole bunch of ATP slowly, but doesn't result in much lactic acid accumulation. Whereas when you're exercising at higher intensities using glucose as a fuel, we do see lactate as a pretty significant byproduct of that. Now, of course, as a dedicated neighborhood biohacker, I have to give you a couple of tips for just basically bleeding lactic acid out your eyeballs, or I should say your brain. And I do this using what's called blood flow restriction training, BFR training. You more or less, in very rough terminology, tourniquet your limbs. It's really not a tourniquet. It's more like an occlusion. But you would use BFR bands. You can buy them on Amazon. The super fancy ones that allow you to very precisely control the millimeters of mercury are called katsu bands. And so these go on the arms and or the legs. This is not recommended by most medical or health professionals or exercise scientists but I do the arms and legs at the same time because I a masochistic sucker for punishment And then you exercise and a whole bunch of lactic acid gets trapped in the muscle tissue you build it up And then when you remove those bands you get a massive spillage of lactic acid back into the body, including the brain from the appendages. And there have been studies that associate BFR training with higher levels of not only BDNF, but also what's called VEGF, vascular endothelial growth factor, both of which can increase blood flow, neuroplasticity, and gene expression in neural tissue. So BFR bands are one way to do it. You can pick those up for 50, 60 bucks on Amazon. You can find katsu bands for a little over a thousand dollars if you want the real fancy Japanese stuff. And then I actually have a machine that basically gives me what feels like the equivalent of about a three-hour run in 21 minutes. You might have seen this online. It's called the Vasper. The Vasper is not inexpensive. My setup, and I do this three times a week for 21 minutes, it's about the only cardio I do besides pickleball. The Vasper combines cold water that circulates through the cuffs that are tourniqueted around the arms and the legs with a full body exercise machine. And then, uh, the floor, the foot plates are copper. So you're grounded while you're using it. And then I have that next to what's called a live O2, which can take me from a hypoxic environment restricted in oxygen all the way up to a full blast of oxygen. So it's basically like I'm going up to the top of Mount Everest and back down while wearing this mask and exercising on the VASPR. I realized that is a lot. That's like a bio hacky thing. And that whole setup is not inexpensive, but basically a vasper next to a libo too is how I do my cardio. Uh, and it saves me a ton of time and it's super motivating and I'm in and I'm out. I did it this morning. I felt great. I have some podcast interviews with the guys who designed the vasper, but that is kind of like top of the totem pole for the lactic acid BDNF piece. So anyways, I will link to that study in the show notes. But yes, lactic acid and exercising at a slightly higher intensity, embracing the burn, so to speak, is good for the brain. The burn is good for the brain. All right. So next up, this is interesting. A new study on vitamin D. This is a randomized trial from the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, and it found that magnesium is a real key to keeping vitamin D levels in balance. Now, ever since I interviewed Carolyn Dean, which must have been like 12 years ago, she highlighted this holy trilogy of magnesium, vitamin K2, and vitamin D as being really good for heart health, being really good for proper vitamin D assimilation, and also a strategy that would limit the potential of vitamin D to possibly cause excess calcium to be pulled into the arteries. Well, what they looked at in this randomized clinical trial was the effect of magnesium intake on increasing vitamin D in people who were already deficient in vitamin D and, and this part's interesting, this isn't talked about as much, reducing levels of excess vitamin D in people who already had high amounts of vitamin D. And their findings do indeed suggest that magnesium helps keep vitamin D within a healthy range. And we know that vitamin D probably has a protective effect against colorectal cancer and possibly some other diseases. And we know that there are links between low vitamin D and several chronic diseases. Colorectal cancer is probably one of the big ones that has been seen in some studies. And magnesium helps to balance all of that out. Now, we do know that magnesium is somewhat deficient. Up to 80% of people don't consume enough magnesium in a day to meet the recommended dietary allowance, the RDA. So, what would that look like and what did they use in the study? Well, I looked into this. The title of the study is actually Magnesium Treatment Increases Gut Microbiome Synthesizing Vitamin D and Inhibiting Colorectal Cancer, a Double Blind Precision-Based randomized placebo-controlled trial. That's a mouthful, but here's what you need to know. Magnesium glycinate is what they used. G-L-Y-C-I-N-A-T-E. There are different forms of magnesium that are good for different things, but magnesium glycinate is what's called a chelated form of magnesium. It is magnesium bound to the amino acid glycine. Magnesium glycinate, glycinate. And that's often used in clinical studies and even in supplements because it is pretty bioavailable and it doesn't cause as much gastrointestinal side effects in many people compared to taking, let's say, the similar amount of magnesium citrates. Or if you really want to paint the back of the toilet seat, magnesium oxide. So the amount of magnesium glycinate that is typically used is 200 to 400 milligrams per day. So if you've got really high vitamin D or really low vitamin D and you're not using magnesium, then you should consider using it. And if you're already using magnesium and you're not using magnesium glycinate, you could probably benefit from throwing in a little bit of that 200 to 400 milligrams. You've probably seen me in ads on Instagram or whatever, but I use magnesium breakthrough. It's one that I like. I've been looking into this other form called magnesium threonate based on some recent studies I've seen on its effects on the brain. I mean, just to kind of start stacking that with the magnesium breakthrough, just because you never get enough magnesium. But anyways, vitamin D and magnesium interplay pretty well. They're kind of in balance together. So there you have it. All right. So the next one is kind of a cool, inexpensive hack. And it was one that I'd kind of forgotten about. And then our friends over at Green Med Info brought back up to the top of the fold, so to speak, the idea of pomegranate juice consumption. Ever since I had dinner with this super smart cat named Amite Eschatel at a health event, I knew that I had to get him on my podcast. He blew my mind talking about how he had figured out how to make groundbreaking ingredients transdermally available in skincare products. His company is called Young Goose. He's figured out how to take things like NAD plus precursors, spermidine, senolytics, these super advanced peptides, and incorporate them into a skin line product that makes anti-aging easy. Right in your bathroom counter, like the equivalent of a full wellness spa, and you do it all from your own home. I use their cleanser, their moisturizers, their serum. The full range of products is incredible. And if you want to experience the same transformative anti-aging power of these Young Goose products, nobody else is using the type of stuff that they're doing. It's incredible. You can check them out at YoungGoose.com. Just like it sounds, YoungGoose.com. Use code BEN10 at the checkout to enjoy 10% discount on your order. If you search for Young Goose on my website, too, you should check out the podcast that I record with them. I've got two if you want to really delve into the science. But for now, if you just want to try the products, check out younggoose.com. Pretty good discount code Ben10 at checkout for 10% discount on your order. All right. If you ever spent thousands or at least hundreds or a lot of money on supplements, programs, coaches, and you wind up with a garage full of half-used bottles and not much energy and the same stubborn gut staring back at you in the mirror, I get it. I've seen it. You're tired of cookie cutter meal plans that don't fit your life, tired of biohacks that sound cool, but do nothing for you or you don't know how to use them. So they collect cobwebs and you're tired of wondering if you're just like unfixable. That's why I created Triumph Coaching. This is not just another generic 12 week challenge. It's one on one coaching with me and my handpicked team custom built around your labs, your lifestyle and your goals until you actually hit them. No guesswork, no fluff, just results. If you're finally ready to stop wasting time and money and start living the boundless life you know is possible. Go to jointriumphcoaching.com right now and book your call. Spots are limited. Once they're gone, they're gone. jointriumphcoaching.com. Do it now. It was a study that appeared in clinical nutrition. Pomegranate juice consumption for three years by patients with carotid artery stenosis reduces common carotid, intima media thickness, blood pressure, and LDL oxidation. So, what does that mean? So, the researchers in this study, which took place in 2004, they took patients with severe carotid artery stenosis. That's 70 to 90% blockage. And yes, it wasn't a huge sample size. It was 19 patients. But that 70 to 90% blockage is going to vastly increase your risk for stroke. Now, they divided these 19 patients into a pomegranate consuming group and a control group. And then they followed the group for about three years. A few folks dropped off, but basically what the intervention they used was, was pretty basic and pretty easy to find. 50 ml of pomegranate juice about what you would see in like a small glass and, or maybe like, what was that coming out to? I think that comes out to about like two shot glasses worth. And so they then measured common carotid intima media thickness, which they did using ultrasound for arterial wall thickening and atherosclerosis. And they found significant reductions at 12 months, up to a 35% reduction. While the group that did not get the pomegranate juice actually progressed in their plaque accumulation the group that got the pomegranate juice reversed plaque accumulation Now that pretty impressive especially when you consider the fact that oxidized LDL the form of cholesterol that actually drive plaque formation, decreased in some cases by up to 90%. There was another enzyme, an enzyme that binds to HDL, right, which actively protects arteries from oxidative damage. That enzyme is called paroxynase. That increased by 83%, so that's good. Systolic blood pressure fell by over 20%, and total antioxidant status in the blood rose by 130% in the pomegranate juice-consuming group. Now, I'm not a doctor. I'm not giving out medical advice. I'm not telling anyone to stop a statin or a PCSK9 inhibitor or whatever you might be on for plaque. I am telling you it'd be a good idea to get yourself tested for plaque, especially if you have family history of cardiovascular disease. If you're a male over 40, I think it's a good idea to get what's called a CT angiography or a clearly scan to see if you have plaque because you can have really good lipid values and still have plaque accumulation. And consider the use of pomegranate juice. I mean, this is easy. I think probably, oh, I'm going to blank on the name of the little like round bottle. You can get a lot of grocery stores. I think it's just called Palm. That's a perfect example of pomegranate juice, right? You don't need like super sweet stuff. It's just the polyphenols, the tannins, the anthocyanins, the elegantannins, all of these reduce LDL oxidation. They'd increase that enzyme that clears lipid peroxides from the arterial wall. They also increase glutathione, your body's master antioxidant. And you find them in the pomegranate, which based on, and I may have called out as a total kook for saying this, the doctrine of signatures, the idea that when you cut open a pomegranate, it actually looks kind of like the ventricles and the atria in the heart. It does. Based on the doctrine of signatures, I think there's also a clue there that pomegranates could be good for your heart. Um, just hypothesizing here and sounding very unscientific, but, um, that's the thing. Uh, and there, there was a 2009 study. This, this study I just talked about is not an outlier. Uh, the American journal of cardiology found pomegranate juice slowed carotid intima media thickness progression in patients with high oxidative stress. And, uh, that was a totally separate study. so um you know yes you could isolate a lot of these good things from pomegranates the antioxidants and the polyphenols and just take like a supplement that has that stuff in it but you could also just drink pomegranate juice um and i think there's something to be said for that and uh after getting ready to record this podcast and looking over the research um i'm going to be adding a little bit of pomegranate juice to the fridge because why not i mean just pour a little over ice, sip it with dinner. It could be even an alternative to red wine or, I don't know, pour some in your red wine and make yourself a palm wine sangria, whatever. So good to know. All right. So when it comes to living longer, we can go from pomegranate juice to the super duper uber fancy stuff. So have you ever heard of heterochronic parabiosis? You're nodding. Of course you have. Everybody knows what that is. So, heterochronic parabiosis is basically transferring the plasma of a young mammal into an older mammal. And there are small extracellular vesicles found in the plasma of young mammals that can counteract aging at the molecular level, the mitochondrial level, the cellular level, and the physiological level in older mammals. Now, as I was preparing to go to Austin last month to actually get young screen human donor plasma infused into my body. I was reviewing this study on the plane and it came out last year. Small extracellular vesicles from young plasma reverse age-related functional declines by improving mitochondrial energy metabolism. So this was actually a paper about mice and I didn't get young plasma from young rodents. I got this stuff from a young 18 to 24-year-old human male donors. But in this paper, they isolated what are called small extracellular vesicles, very similar to something you may have heard of called exosomes, from the plasma of young mice. And they reversed multiple age-associated declines when they injected these into old mice. Now, what they found was an improvement in metabolic health. They found an improvement in cardiac function, in bone structure, in brain structure, and in reproductive methods or reproductive metrics. That would be like your sperm quality and your fertility. So that indicates like this young plasma is causing this broad systemic rejuvenation effect, not just like an isolated effect. Now, what's interesting is the aged mice who were treated with the young plasma displayed better learning, better memory, and better endurance in behavioral tests. So their cognitive and their physical performance went up. Now, the way that the paper describes that this happens is because of enhanced PGC1-alpha expression. PGC1-alpha is a master regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis and energy metabolism. Interestingly, something I already talked about, frequent surges of lactic acid from exercising hard on a regular basis also enhance PGC1-alpha expression. And so, that stimulation of mitochondrial function, because a degradation in mitochondrial health is such a root cause of so many chronic diseases and age-related diseases, is the key proposed mechanism via which this young plasma is having its effect. And the main component of that plasma that they think is really doing a lot of the work here are the exosomes. Now, interestingly, you see other studies that have looked at just giving exosomes. These are human studies have shown that the infusion of exosomes, meaning you literally go to like a medical clinic and they have these exosomes and they put them in an IV bag and they drip them into your body. And I've got a few podcasts on exosome therapy. You do see a very powerful effect on the mitochondria. However, young plasma also has a lot of other biologic components in it. It's got stem cells, it's got exosomes, it's got a variety of different peptides. And so I've done exosome therapy, I've done young plasma therapy. The difference I would say is that the young plasma, which I've done twice now, you feel like the light bulbs are just full on for weeks. And then the main thing I have experienced is like unparalleled muscle growth. Of all the things that I've done, it has been the most profound in terms of seeing almost immediate increases on scale weight with a decrease in body fat percentage. So anyways, the young plasma thing, people ask about it a lot. It's not the same as like having a blood boy or like stealing blood from someone. It's not without risk, right? Like this is another human's biologics going into your body via an IV. And some people are concerned about that. I understand. Um, and, uh, I am pretty willing to do it with these, with plasma from screened donors. Uh, and you can only do it in the U S and Texas, I believe. Um, I get it at Austin regenerative therapy and, um, that's just the clinic that I go to down in Texas. And the procedure involves taking out some old plasma and then putting some new plasma in. So it takes about a day or two to do it. So you're there for a few hours each day. All right. Well, I realized I went from pomegranate juice to plasma pretty quick there. But this podcast, of course, as I mentioned in the beginning, is just my opportunity to give you a few cool news flashes. And I love to hear your comments, your feedback, what you would like to see on this show. If you like me breathless on the treadmill, bounding on the Boundless Life podcast, or if you like me with the Q&A, more intimate solo sodes, anyways, or maybe you like them both, you can go to bengreenfieldlife.com slash 497, access the show notes, leave your questions, your comments, your feedback, I read them all, and leave this podcast a review wherever you're listening in, and have an incredible Boundless day. 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