Q&A #19: Rhonda’s Time-Restricted Eating Window—Inflammation & Longer Fasts

Happy New Year, everyone. Welcome back to our Crowdcast series. This is the number 19 so far and the first one of 2021, so I'm pretty excited to, to kick this off. For those of you that are new, I generally what I do is I scroll through the questions that were submitted and I look at the, of course, the top voted questions, but I also try to not be so repetitive in terms of answering questions that I've previously answered in, you know, other Crowdcasts before. I probably end up every 6 months or so repeating answers to some of the bigger questions that are more common. So I'll actually be doing that, doing one of those today. But I also go back to old Crowdcasts. So if I don't get to your question, This time around, there's a chance that I may go back also.

I go back to old Crowdcasts and get questions as well. Pro tip for those of you wanting to get your questions answered, submit them early. I really, my team and I really like to get the questions early, and we start going through them a few weeks before the Crowdcast, you know, is live. Also, this time around, I'm going to be answering a lot of rapid-fire questions. So typically what I do is I answer a couple of questions that are more of a deep dive. I go into more, more detail. But I also answer questions that are, you know, much, have much shorter answers. And so depending on the types of questions I get, this time around there were a lot of questions that were really short-answer questions. So we're gonna, we're gonna have a lot of variety. in this episode. So look forward to that.

And also, I also, I answer questions that are live in the chat, so I'll take moments and sort of scroll through the chat and see which questions, you know, are sort of relevant or I think are most people are interested in, and I will answer those as well. All right, so before we jump into the first question, just to remind everyone again that This is not medical advice. The questions that I'm answering are data that I'm presenting that I found in the literature, and maybe sometimes my opinion. So please do not take anything said in these in these Q and A's as medical advice. Always run everything by your physician and do make decisions with the care of your your primary care physician. Okay, so.

With that said, there have been quite a few questions regarding COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and potential autoimmune disorders and autoimmunity. So let's talk a little bit about, well, first of all, there has been evidence that COVID-19, there's been evidence that people that have had COVID-19, a small percentage of people, are showing autoantibodies. And there are some scientists that are hypothesizing that potentially some of what is called long-haul COVID, so people that are experiencing symptoms weeks and even months after, you know, being testing negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. So they've come down with COVID-19 and they've recovered, and yet they're still experiencing a plethora of symptoms ranging from arrhythmias and heart problems to gut and GI problems to nervous system problems.

So there's— and to breathing difficulties and chest tightness. I mean, there's a wide range of symptoms that people are experiencing. Even months after recovering from COVID-19. And so some scientists are testing right now. There, I know there are at least a couple of trials going on where people with this quote-unquote long-haul COVID are being tested for a variety of autoantibodies to see if potentially there is a role for this autoimmune sort of response in some of these long-haul COVID symptoms. So with that said, my point is that— so the question was about mRNA vaccines and COVID, and I wanted to make the point that we know that actually COVID-19, there have been some reports of autoantibodies in people with COVID-19.

We also know that people with COVID-19 are experiencing a heart, you know, biomarkers of heart damage, you know, months after being sick, as well as there's some other evidence again of other tissues like the gut and the nervous system also experiencing abnormalities. So, you know, while most people recover from COVID-19 and may not have this problem, there is certainly a subpopulation that is experiencing long-term effects. And because because this is a new disease, there's a big unknown in terms of how long are these symptoms going to last? Are they going to be lifelong? Are they going to resolve eventually? You know, so there's a lot of questions. So let's move on to the vaccine.

And I kind of wanted to preference the vaccine with that information because The point is that I think, you know, if we can find a way to establish herd immunity, it's very, very good because I don't think this is— I think that, you know, COVID-19 is not— it's something that I definitely do not want to get just because, you know, it's such a new illness and there are a lot of very strange long-term effects that are being identified. So let's talk a little bit about these vaccines. Both, you know, 2 of the major vaccines that are being used currently in the United States, as well as some other countries, are from Pfizer and Moderna. Most of you know these are mRNA vaccines. They've been shown in some preliminary clinical trials to be about 95% effective.

So, you know, they both require 2 doses of vaccine. These doses are separated by 4 weeks or thereabouts, and both doses are required for immunity. So in the clinical trials when these vaccines were being tested, some people got their first dose of the vaccine and then came down with COVID-19. In other words, you are still susceptible to being infected with COVID-19 after receiving the vaccine, and certainly if you haven't received both doses, you don't have full immunity. So that is something to keep in mind, although 95% efficacy is quite good. mRNA, basically these mRNA vaccines are, it's a new technology in terms of vaccines being used in humans. The technology's been around for a while and has been used in a variety of preclinical experiments.

It basically makes the instructions for the virus's spike protein, which is how the virus enters human cells. And the mRNA is actually synthetic. It's made in the lab. It's not extracted from actual virus. And it's delivered in a tiny sphere. It's an inert fatty acid material called a lipid nanoparticle. So this RNA nanoparticle is suspended in a saline solution, and then it's injected into the muscle tissue in the arm, in the upper arm. The mRNA then is taken up by specific immune cells, and basically the immune cells follow the instructions of that mRNA spike protein, and basically they act just as if they would if they had become infected with the virus.

And so basically, the immune system mounts a response against it, and you start to make antibodies, you start to make B cells, and T cells are activated. You start to get immune memory, which, you know, lays down the foundation for the immune system to defeat the SARS-CoV-2 virus if it ever, you know, encounters it. And the beauty of this is that the mRNA, it degrades or decays very rapidly. So, you know, after it's active, and then after about you know, 4 or 5 days, it's degraded and it's gone out of your system. So it's a really— I'm personally very excited about this technology. It's very different than using either live or attenuated viruses as vaccines.

And the CDC has recently released information that about 11.1 people per million have had an adverse reaction to the the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine, or the COVID-19 vaccine, mRNA vaccine. So that's really quite, quite, you know, your chances of having an adverse reaction are quite low, you know, but that's to be expected. People react differently to different medications. I mean, you can find a variety of people that have allergic reactions to NSAIDs or Benadryl or codeine. You know, there's there's it's there's people people have very different responses to medications. So of course, there will be some people that will potentially have an adverse reaction to a vaccine, just as people have adverse reactions to Benadryl over-the-counter Benadryl.

With with response with respect to let's talk a little bit about the the auto antibody. Response and what we know from previous vaccinations. What we know is that looking at the data, there have been a variety of meta-analyses done over several decades, and the percentage of people that come down with an autoimmune disease or disorder shortly after being vaccinated is 0.01% of vaccinations worldwide. So it's a very, very, very small percentage of people that have had, you know, such a severe reaction to come down with an autoantibody response. There have been some potential, you know, there have been studies that have potentially identified people that could be at risk for an autoimmune response to a vaccine.

These people are people that have already had autoimmune response to any type of vaccine before, people that are immunocompromised with autoimmune conditions, so people that have an autoimmune condition and are also immunosuppressed, patients with a history of an allergic reaction to any component found in the vaccine, and also patients that are prone to develop autoimmunity. So the, you know, this includes people with a family history of autoimmune disorders, a variety of different type of autoantibodies that have already been identified, or biomarkers of, you know, autoantibodies that have been identified in people. And there's a whole range of those as well. So those, that's what scientists in the literature have previously identified as potentially at-risk populations.

And even that's still you know, a question. And then there's also people that are, that carry, you know, very robust genetic risk factors for autoimmune disease. So those are potentially people that have been identified previously. Again, this is not with COVID-19 vaccine, but in the literature, looking at other vaccines, these are populations of people that scientists reviewing the literature have identified as potentially being at risk. There's also been some potential mechanisms proposed. It's still unclear why some people develop an autoimmune response to vaccinations. Again, very, very, very small percentage of people, but it's thought that inactive or inactive viral or even bacterial agents, attenuated living microorganisms in the vaccine may elicit that.

And of course, this is not the case with the COVID-19 vaccine. And in fact, some of the beneficial properties of mRNA vaccines include, one, its lack of persistence, so it's degraded quickly, as I mentioned. Two, it doesn't get integrated into the genome. Three, there is an absence of induction of autoantibodies that have been you know, in a variety of preclinical studies, it appears as though mRNA vaccines are not prone to eliciting an autoimmune response, which is really, really good. And then there's other benefits as well, including you can make them in large quantities and with high purity. So I personally am very excited about this new technology being used. I'm personally excited in general for mRNA vaccines to be used in the future as well.

But that is not to say that there is there's still like, there's not a, it's not a non-zero risk, right? Like with anything, um, to, you know, people, people react differently to anything. So, um, I'm personally excited about the mRNA vaccines and, uh, you know, for people that have a history of autoimmune disease in the family or maybe have autoimmune disease or, you know, any of those other factors, um, you know, talking to your, your primary care physician and, and sort of going through the, the risks and the, um, the benefits, you know, uh, as well as you know, which one, you know, outweighs the other. Certainly people that have had allergic reactions to any component that's in the new mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, that's something to discuss as well.

So I myself will get the vaccine whenever it becomes available to me. I don't have any risk factors that I know of, so I personally don't want COVID-19. I really don't want it. So that said, I also know a lot of— I have a lot I have a lot of friends that have already gotten the vaccine because they're healthcare professionals, and nobody's had an adverse reaction in my, you know, peer group, which is good. I've also had a lot of questions about, you know, pregnant women taking the mRNA vaccine, and I think that I cannot answer that question, of course. None of this is medical advice. There haven't been tests or clinical studies in pregnant women as of yet.

Personally, you know, if I were pregnant and I, you know, I avoided getting any vaccines during pregnancy, but I also was able to work from home and I am able to work from home. I'm not out, you know, being exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. And so, you know, my situation is very different. And perhaps, let's say, if I was working in a grocery store, if I was working as a healthcare professional where I was, you know, potentially being exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, I don't know. I don't know exactly what I would do. I think, you know, it's something good to discuss with your physician, but personally, I think I would, just be sort of a hermit and stay inside during my pregnancy and not be around anyone that would potentially be a vector for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. All right.

So the next question that was a little bit more of a deep dive question was relevant for people that are elite athletes, people that enjoy going for long, long runs and enjoyed so much that they're running 30 to 50 miles a week, perhaps, which is quite a bit of running. And the question really is, is there an upper limit to the health benefits of exercise? And in other words, are there diminishing returns after a certain threshold? And looking at the literature, there does appear to be a diminishing returns pattern at the very extreme elite athlete level. So, um, the CDC has guidelines and these guidelines for exercise, they recommend 75 minutes a week of vigorous exercise or 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise.

And, um, if you look at all-cause mortality associations, All-cause mortality decreases if you meet those guidelines, basically the CDC guidelines I just mentioned, compared to people that are sedentary or don't exercise at all. And more exercise beyond those CDC guidelines, there's very minimal effects on in terms of all-cause mortality. So all-cause mortality plateaus at around a 39% decrease. And so there's a 39% decrease in all-cause mortality when people exercise between 3 to 5 times more than the CDC guidelines. Outside of that, it sort of plateaus. And so, you know, it's not really shown that there's an additional benefit if you're going above that. There have been some even health, potential health problems associated with extreme excessive exercise.

Some of those health problems include myocardial fibrosis and scarring, potentially dangerous arrhythmias, and accelerated coronary atherosclerosis. Again, that's really at the very, very, very extreme level of exercise. And we're talking like 10 times the CDC recommendation. And people, it's basically unclear. So there was a large meta-analysis done that looked at all-cause mortality and people that are doing 10 times the amount of exercise of what the CDC recommends. And there was a slight increase in all-cause mortality, but it was not statistically significant. So it's unclear whether or not the study was underpowered or if it's just not really— if it's not really manifesting as an actual risk.

But I think that people that are exercising, you can sort of set the limit at, you know, below— like don't go over 9 times, you know, what the CDC recommends. So 9 times, you know, 75 minutes a week of vigorous exercise. I mean, that gives you a lot of room for exercise. Or 9 times 150 minutes of moderate exercise, right? So I think that's sort of a nice guideline for people that are really— love doing that sort of, you know, intense exercise for whatever reasons they're doing it for. But, you know, I think, I think, I think that's, that's pretty much the conclusion that I came to, our team came to looking at the literature is that, you know, I don't think it's super, super— I'm not going to emphasize don't exercise a lot because I just, I just don't take that stance.

And then there's a lot of benefits to exercise. But I do think that you can reach a threshold where, where you're getting diminishing returns. Okay, the next question was from Joanne, and Joanne asked about calcium supplementation for premenopausal women. Do the benefits outweigh the risks for women with a family history of kidney stones or osteoporosis? What does the research say? So while a family history of kidney stones does increase the risk of getting a kidney stone, It's actually been shown that from the American Neurological Association that basically there's no there's no lifestyle recommendations that they give unless you yourself actually have a kidney stone.

So there's not like if you've if there's a family history, there's not anything that's really been shown to be beneficial to do unless you yourself have actually had a kidney stone. And also those recommendations are very specific to the type of kidney stone a person gets. There have been, paradoxically, there have been prospective studies that have shown that low calcium intake actually increases the risk of calcium oxalate stones, which are probably about 70% of all kidney stones. And that's because urinary oxalate is more important than urinary calcium in terms of the formation of calcium oxalate stones. And in fact, calcium in the gut binds to oxalate and prevents it from being absorbed in the body.

So actually, it's it's actually better to have or take a calcium supplement if you're taking a calcium supplement to actually take it with a meal because it's going to prevent the the oxalates from being absorbed in that meal. There's there's been some associative studies, for example, the Nurse Health Study One. Um, showed that dietary calcium was associated with a decreased risk of kidney stones, uh, that supplemental calcium, when not taken with a meal, was associated with an increased risk of kidney stones. Again, it was only supplemental calcium when it was not taken with a meal. When supplemental calcium was taken with a meal, there was not an increased risk for calcium, uh, for, for, um, kidney stones.

Um, In fact, the increased risk of supplemental calcium, even without taking without a meal, was so small that sugar intake, salt intake, water intake, potassium intake were also important more important than calcium intake in terms of kidney stone risk. So it really just goes to show you that it's not a huge risk factor. It doesn't seem to be a huge risk factor in terms of. Kidney stones. There could potentially be you know other other problems. So you know, for example, calcium can very easily precipitate in in the presence of phosphorus and and can form you know a calcium precipitate in in the in the bloodstream, in the arteries. And you know calcium buildup, calcification in the artery buildup is is. A very negative thing for cardiovascular health.

So there is a, you know, a concern with respect to, in my opinion, cardiovascular health. And there have been studies that, you know, calcium is very, very important for bone health and also for a variety— it's a cofactor for, you know, hundreds of enzymes. And so it does get transported to important tissues. Transported to the bone and muscle and other tissues. And some of the proteins that do that are activated by vitamin K1 and to a lesser— sorry, vitamin K2 and to a lesser extent vitamin K1. And there have been some, you know, other prospective studies that have found that vitamin K2 from the diet is inversely associated with, you know, different coronary heart problems and supplemental vitamin K2 as well. So, making sure, you know, taking a vitamin K2 supplement.

In fact, there seems to be a threshold at around 50. There was nothing shown above 50 micrograms a day. There's no added benefit of taking more than 50 micrograms a day of vitamin K2 in any of those studies. Which is what I take a day for my vitamin K2. Vitamin D increases dietary calcium absorption by up to 40%. You know, so people that are that have adequate vitamin D levels, if they're taking a vitamin D supplement, which hopefully most people are that are not you know that most people are measuring their vitamin D levels and making sure they have adequate levels somewhere between 40 and 60 nanograms per milliliter.

Just keep in mind that you are absorbing more dietary calcium than you know than you otherwise would be if you were not sufficient in vitamin D. So the standard there there are standard recommendations for postmenopausal women to take to take calcium. I currently am not supplementing with calcium because I do get a lot of calcium in my diet from my leafy greens and also from some of my dairy, my cheese. Although I've cut back on that, and I am considering potentially a little bit of supplemental calcium in my in my diet. I'm sorry. Yeah, in my in in my my regimen, and probably something you know less than a thousand milligrams just because again I do get a lot from my diet. But for people that are not getting a lot of calcium from their diet, you know.

Taking taking a calcium supplement along with vitamin K2 and a meal as well may not be such a bad thing. And Lance is mentioning in the chat, I have heard vitamin K2 may help steer calcium to the bones instead of the arteries. Yes, that's exactly what I was saying. The proteins that are. Activated by vitamin K2, osteocalcin matrix, matrix glob protein is a big one. They are shuttling calcium out of the bloodstream and arteries and taking them to the bones where they're supposed to go. So it is it is one reason why I do like to take vitamin K2 sort of as insurance for for that reason. Okay, let's move on to the next question, which actually is a little bit more of a rapid-fire question, but I'll go ahead and address it now.

So the question was from Jonathan, and Jonathan wanted to know, my thoughts on supplementing with astaxanthin. And so astaxanthin is, it's a, it's a carotenoid that is present in foods that have more of an orangish-red pigment like salmon, krill. It occurs naturally in some algae, trout, lobster, shrimp to some degree as well. It's in a lot of variety of seafood. And so The question is if it's beneficial or not, and I have to say that looking at the literature there, it's just really preliminary. I mean, there's a few human trials, but they're just so preliminary that I don't think there is enough evidence to make any sort of conclusion on whether or not it's beneficial to supplement with astaxanthin. It's it's very you know it's also prone to to oxidation as well, although it is.

It is more protective against oxidation than, for example, polyunsaturated fatty acids. And, in fact, astaxanthin does help with oxidation in, for example, if you're eating fish or cooking fish, it does help with that. It's just not clear that there's a benefit with supplementing with it right now in addition to in addition to or in lieu of eating, you know, foods like salmon that have high levels of astaxanthin. So I think just more data is needed on that, in my opinion, so before I consider supplementing with it. So Katya asks about blue lights against seasonal depression and if there are any technical requirements for the lamp to use or whether or not Philips Hue lights are suitable.

The studies that looked at seasonal affective disorder and, you know, bright light have used, you know, bright blue light. Basically, the entrainment of the circadian rhythm requires bright blue light. And so, somewhere in the wavelength of 446 to 484 nanometers. Many of the studies, participants are standing 1 to 2 feet away from 10,000 lux of light for 30 minutes or 2,500 lux of light for 2 hours. And this happens first thing in the morning as soon as the participants wake up. So it's like, boom, first early light exposure. So for reference, on a cloudy day, you can have 1,500 lux, while on a bright day, you can have 100,000 lux. Um, Philips Hue light bulbs range from, um, 800 to 1,600 lumens, which is— that correlates to about 800 to 1,600 lux.

So Philips Hue don't seem to be within that range that's used in studies. So it does not seem like that would be a suitable light. So finding something that is, you know, for people that ideally I would say 10,000 lux because 30 minutes is a lot easier to do in front of that bright light rather than who has time to sit in front of that light for 2 hours, right? So the 10-minute, I mean, the 30 minutes at 10,000 lux seems like sort of like an ideal protocol in my opinion. Laura Carroll is asking in the chat what brand of vitamin K2 supplement I take. I'm taking Life Extension. I don't have any affiliation with them at all, so, but that's the brand that I take for my vitamin K2.

So the next question I'm going to address was submitted by G, and G asks, What are the acute effects of fasting, like 24 hours or more, on inflammation biomarkers, and is it meaningful? I couldn't find data on just one single 24-hour fast and inflammatory markers, but there's lots of data showing that, you know, shorter fasts are able to decrease biomarkers of inflammation. For example, 8 weeks of time-restricted eating for within an 8-hour window and then fasting for 16 hours in male athletes. So these are people that were, in addition to time-restricted eating, they were also exercising. That led to a 19% decrease in IL-6, an 8% decrease in TNF-alpha, 13% decrease in IL-1 beta. So, so they were great decreases in a variety of inflammatory biomarkers.

And they also were able to lose more body fat while increasing muscle mass and strength during the 8 weeks. But again, of course, they were, they were also doing resistance training in addition to time-restricted eating. And the control group was resistance training without time-restricted eating. So both groups were doing resistance training. There's also a lot of similar data with people who practice Ramadan. So during Ramadan, people fast from sunrise to sunset. And I don't particularly think that's the best way of doing time-restricted eating or fasting. But nonetheless, a lot of people do it for religious purposes. And So there's a variety of data looking at clinical endpoints in people that practice Ramadan.

And it's been shown that people that do practice this type of fasting have lower IL-6, have lower C-reactive protein, have lower homocysteine, have lower IL-1 beta, TNF-alpha. So it's been shown that inflammatory biomarkers actually can decrease within 16 hours of fasting. So there's really no reason to, but it's not clear, it's not just a one 16-hour fast, you know, it's not just a one time. Most of the studies have looked at this repetition, right? So you're doing this for 2 months, you know. So basically, if that's the case, then of course one would think 24 hours would also do the same. But it's unclear whether or not you need the repeated, you know, repeated fasts.

So doing it, you know, doing it for a number of weeks before you actually see the decrease in these inflammatory biomarkers. There's also studies showing that alternate-day fasting, so, you know, fasting for 24 hours every other day for 4 months in people that have metabolic syndrome, led to a significant decrease in C-reactive protein. Other studies have found that in people that— so basically, for every 1 standard deviation of increased fasting blood sugar levels was associated with an increase in C-reactive protein. So that's relevant because, you know, fasting does improve glucose metabolism and also helps with fasting blood glucose levels as well.

So the inverse of that would be, you know, people have— in fact, that's been shown that people that do time-restricted eating have lower, you know, levels of C-reactive protein as well. So I do think that it is meaningful Particularly, there's lots of studies with time-restricted eating. And, you know, so that's sort of one of the reasons that I like to do that on a daily basis as well. And in fact, we're going to hop into a little bit— we're going to hop into some more of that. I'll just— I'll do that right now. So there was a related question about Caroline asked why I stick to a 10-hour eating window and fasting for 14 hours rather than, for example, fasting for 16 hours and eating within an 8-hour window.

So I don't know when I answered that question, but it was probably during my early mommy days where my schedule was heavily dependent on my son. And so now I mostly eat within an 8-hour window. that's typically what I do. My life is much easier now that my son's like 3 and a half, almost 3 and a half. But in the early days, things are certainly crazy. So that was, you know, it really just depended on what was going on in my life at the time. And, you know, so another related question was also whether or not There are more benefits to doing a 24-hour longer fast versus doing the eating within 8 hours and fasting for 16 hours, the time-restricted eating on a daily basis.

Would it be more beneficial then to do a 24-hour fast or would it even be more beneficial to quarterly do a— so would it be beneficial to do a weekly 24-hour fast or do a quarterly 3-day fast? And this question, it's kind of— there's a lot of parts to it because, as we mentioned, with doing the time-restricted eating, eating within an 8-hour window, lots of studies showing benefits on lowering inflammatory biomarkers, particularly if this is done over a couple-of-month timeframe. And Adding, you know, adding that to— so making it— making that a 24-hour fast weekly. Well, I wouldn't stop doing the time-restricted eating just because you were doing a 24-hour weekly.

I think that would be something— I think the time-restricted eating is a lifestyle and it's an important lifestyle factor that should be adopted and is beneficial. The 24-hour fast, is there an added benefit to doing that? We don't know. You know, you're adding a little bit more of the fasting time, you know, to the equation, not much, about 8 hours more. Perhaps you may be, likely you are activating autophagy more robustly. In fact, it's unknown how much autophagy occur when Does any amount of autophagy start to occur? I don't know that we'll ever know the answer to that in humans because it all depends on the sensitivity of your biomarker. And, you know, to be able to detect autophagy in just one cell, well, what if it's only happening within one cell? You're never going to detect that.

But is it beneficial? Well, of course. What if it's happening in 10 cells? That's not going to be detectable, or 100 cells, you know. So at what point does it become detectable? Well, we know that 24 hours of fasting in humans, we start to see biomarkers of autophagy become detectable. Does that mean that at 16 hours you're not getting autophagy? I think it's extremely unlikely that autophagy is not occurring at 16 hours of fast. I think what's happening is we're not able to detect it because of the sensitivity of the biomarkers that we're using. It requires a certain threshold to be able to detect it, and that threshold appears to be 24 hours. So, you know, a 24-hour fast, you may be getting a little bit more robust of that autophagy effect, which I think is beneficial.

So could it be beneficial to do that? Yes. Should everyone do a 24-hour fast every week? I don't think so. I think there's also, you know, a variety of factors that are important for that as well. I mean, people that are, you know, metabolically healthy and lean, you know, particularly if you have a lot, you know, a very small percentage of body fat, you're active. You know, you're getting a lot of these benefits through other lifestyle modalities like exercise as well. You know, people that are very athletic, you know, you know, there you can induce autophagy from exercise, particularly in a fasted state. So, you know, which is what I do these days. I almost do all all my exercise in the fasted state now in the morning.

So, you know, there's there are other ways of achieving some of those benefits without having to do a weekly 24-hour fast. Now, what about this quarterly 3-day fast? You know, what's that about? Well, we know from data that Dr. Valter Longo has and his, you know, collaborators and others as well have done both preclinical and clinical data that have shown— so Valter identifies a prolonged fast different from an intermittent fast as basically something that's longer than 48 hours. So once you start to fast for 2 days and above that, you start to get into what's called a prolonged fast. And there appear to be specific benefits to a prolonged fast. And one of those benefits is that you start to get cell death, believe it or not.

And so as, you know, autophagy is occurring, clearing out damage within a cell, at a certain point, you know, you start to stress the cell. And this happens in particular with cells that are damaged, that have more damage and are unable to activate genetic pathways that are involved in stress resistance, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, autophagy, stem cell production, you know, all these sorts of pathways that are very beneficial. When a cell has acquired enough damage or is dysfunctional, for example, an autoimmune— no, a type of autoimmune cell, they are unable to activate those pathways. And therefore, as that stress becomes stronger, They actually end up dying.

And what Valter has quite nicely shown in preclinical studies is that a lot of cells end up dying as the fast gets more prolonged. And organs, the organs actually end up shrinking largely because, one, cells are dying within the organ, two, because cell size also does shrink. But then during the refeeding phase, you know, stem cell activation is increased. And so stem cells start to repopulate and replace which were those once damaged, dysfunctional, potentially autoimmune cells now are becoming replaced with young, healthy, new cells. And so there's this quote-unquote rejuvenation effect that's happening that's been shown quite nicely in preclinical studies. And there have been some preliminary very preliminary evidence that this may be occurring in humans as well.

So it does appear as though a quarterly 3-day fast is something to differentiate from a, for example, 24-hour fast, certainly something to differentiate from a time-restricted eating time window. And so that's, I think, Yeah. A very interesting point to make is that I don't necessarily think these 2 are equivalent, a weekly 24-hour fast or a 3-day quarterly fast. I think that people looking for that rejuvenation effect, you know, there is a potential benefit there to being able to clean out the garbage in a more— on a more profound way. So autophagy is cleaning out garbage within a cell. Within a cell, you may have pieces of DNA, protein fragments. You may have cellular— I mean, you may have just debris and stuff. And so autophagy is cleaning that out.

Mitochondria that are dysfunctional, you can get rid of them. That's important as well. But I mean, taking an entire cell and getting rid of it, the cell dies, and then activating stem cells to replace it with a new cell. I mean, that is amazing. And that is something that appears to be built in. You know, there are genetic programs that are activated and these stress signals appear to activate them. So I do think that is something very interesting. 3-day fasts, you know, they're not easy for everyone and certainly not everyone— it's something that should be done with, you know, under the guidance of a physician, having a physician help you, particularly people that are, you know, have other types of disorders.

And certainly something to be considered is someone's, you know, fat mass starting out. I mean, some people are very, very lean, and that's also something to really be considered. And I do think that I'm gonna go on to another related question as well, which was, I don't— I have the person's name that asked it, but since it's not right in front of me, I'll just summarize the question, which was: Is there a benefit to going doing a ketogenic diet to going into a fast? So particularly a prolonged fast. Is there is there any type of is there a benefit of being in ketosis before going into a fast? And I would say that it appears as though there may be a benefit because.

If you're already in ketosis, you're already producing ketone bodies like beta-hydroxybutyrate, which then are able to be used for energy and particularly energy in the brain. It helps if people can get into ketosis quicker when they're undergoing a fast because there is that that, that part when you're doing a prolonged fast, your blood glucose levels have gone down, but you haven't made enough ketone bodies yet to really feel energetic. And so you, you feel quite terrible. In fact, people that are— that can go into ketosis easier, and there are people that do it, a lot of people that have already done a lot of fasting periods, are able to go into ketosis quicker. People that do, you know, eat more of a ketogenic type diet also are able to go into ketosis easier.

There are people that are snackers and that are constantly eating throughout the day and never really go into ketosis. And so if, you know, those, those sorts of people that are like that and then try to do a fast, a more prolonged fast, they probably will have a more difficult time. And experience, you know, more, more hardships going into that fast. Okay, so let's go on to another question. Joshua asks, I've noticed that 30 minutes after being in an infrared sauna for roughly an hour, my blood glucose rises at least 20 units. Can you explain why this happens and if I should discontinue sauna use due to this big rise in blood glucose. So there have been meta-analysis, which are big studies that analyze multiple studies, and looking at the effect of heat therapy on blood glucose levels.

And it's been found that that heat therapy can increase blood glucose levels transiently if it's not done in a fasted state. So if you eat before going into the sauna or hot tub or whatever mode of heat therapy, it could transiently increase blood glucose levels. However, it does not increase fasted blood glucose levels. So this isn't like— and in fact, it's been shown that other studies have shown that people that do heat therapy have a decreased hemoglobin A1c, which is a biomarker, a long-term, you know, biomarker of blood glucose levels over the last 3 months. So heat therapy seems to actually have an improvement on overall blood glucose levels as biomarked by long-term, you know, blood glucose levels.

But if you are wearing a continuous glucose monitor and noticing that you may have a transient spike in blood glucose levels if you are not doing it fasted. I don't think it's a big race for concern. Again, it's transient. And it's also— there's a variety of potential factors that could lead to this, including dehydration leads to less blood volume and a higher concentration of blood sugar, glucagon, growth factor epinephrine. These things are you know, may temporarily increase blood glucose levels. Vasodilation can increase the blood flow and basically could, you know, sort of just throw things off. So I'm not sure that it's meaningful.

And again, the fact that long-term blood glucose levels, biomarkers of long-term blood glucose levels are decreased after people doing heat therapy really shows that really very likely is not something that is a cause for concern. Okay, so the next question is a question that I answer probably once every 6 months, and which is good because, you know, it's good to go back and see if there's any new data that have come out since I last revisited the topic, but it's certainly a very popular question. And so the question was from Hillary, and Hillary asked, I would love to know your thoughts on protein consumption. Some research— some researchers say you should eat it as a condiment. Other research seems to suggest larger consumption.

Um, I'm, I'm a 62-year-old fit woman and just want to stay strong for a long time. So yeah, this, this topic is so incredibly nuanced and, um, there's so many different parts to cover. There really seems to be. I mean, it's it's pretty clear now that lifestyle plays a very very important role in terms of outcomes associated with protein consumption. So there have been a variety of studies that have found that the more animal protein people consume, the higher the all cause mortality and. Very significantly, the higher the cancer-related mortality specifically that seems to really be affected. So there have been large meta-analyses looking at that data and have then looked at other lifestyle factors and have found if this is only true if a person has at least one unhealthy lifestyle factor.

And those unhealthy lifestyle factors were defined as obesity, sedentary smoking, excess alcohol consumption. If a person had none of those lifestyle factors, so if they were metabolically healthy and lean, if they were physically active, if they're not a smoker and they do not consume excess alcohol, and they did eat more animal protein. There was no difference in all-cause mortality and cancer mortality than someone who was a vegetarian. So it really does come down to lifestyle. And in fact, I think that if a person is a smoker or obese and not actively trying to lose weight or sedentary and never physically active, the data does seem to suggest you may be You may be healthier consuming less animal protein. That doesn't mean consuming less animal protein is the way to go.

It just means you know if you're not going to be health, if you're not going to try to have healthy a healthy lifestyle, then perhaps you might want to become more of a more get more of your protein from animals plant sources. People that are above that are older than 65 though. This there was there was an actual increase in all cause mortality if they consumed less animal protein and less protein, and that probably has to do with the fact that you know frailty increase increases. You know protein is important for maintaining lean muscle mass, particularly in combination with resistance exercise, and you know so so so above the age of 65, it seems as though it is more important to try to increase protein intake as well.

A lot of the unhealthy lifestyle component of the high animal protein also comes down to IGF-1, which is activated by branched-chain amino acids and some of these essential amino acids found in animal protein. And IGF-1 can be great. It's a double-edged sword, and it really does depend on your lifestyle. So IGF-1 is a very powerful growth factor, extremely important for growth and development. So in fact, there have been studies that have been done in infants and toddlers that have found that animal protein, meat specifically, animal protein is important for growing longer in terms of height.

And that is not something that can be So comparing, you know, infants that are given protein from animal and plant sources during that important stage of development, it appears as though animal protein helps a child grow taller, period. And, you know, IGF-1 is extremely important for growth during that period. So I definitely make it a point to try to give get my son to eat animal protein. So, there are certain roles and stages of development where IGF-1 plays an important role and growth and development is one. However, because it is an important growth signal, as you're getting older and certainly in combination with unhealthy lifestyle factors that are creating damage, so smoking, for example, example, being sedentary. Damage accumulates with life, right?

Every time we eat, we're creating reactive oxygen species through metabolism. Our immune system is constantly being activated. These things damage our cells and potentially our genome. And that can lead to what are called oncogenic mutations that could lead to cancer. We have programs in our body that are designed to kill a cell if that happens. But in the presence of large amounts of IGF-1, that program is overridden. So you end up having a potentially, you know, mutation— a potential mutation now is able to grow. Sorry, the cell with the potential mutation is able to grow and potentially make, you know, daughter cells that also have this mutation. And so you can get the beginning of You know, a tumor or cancer, you know, cancer formation.

So that is that is one of the problems with IGF-1. But IGF-1 is also very important for muscle growth, maintaining muscle mass. It's important for the growth of neurons. It gets into the brain. You know again where lifestyle comes into to to the equation because exercise itself has been shown to to to help IGF-1 get into muscle, to help it get into the brain where it does beneficial things. You want IGF-1 on your muscle, and in fact exercise itself increases. IGF-1 in muscle tissue. So, you know, the lifestyle I think is a really important factor as is age. Again, you know, during parts of development, it's very important to have IGF-1, you know, when you're going through, you know, growth in early development.

So, Ernest is saying he thinks that Dr. Longo mentioned having an IGF-1 test to determine whether or not you should eat less or more protein. I think it's really— that's— it's the levels, figuring out what the right optimal levels are is the question. And that hasn't really been teased out. I mean, it's— I think that's a difficult way to really be able to tell whether or not you should eat more or less protein. I do think, I mean, perhaps if you're really, if there's a certain level where you're, you know, extreme, like excessive levels, maybe that's some, you know, something that could help out. But until I could see data that really determines what the level, those levels should be, it's hard to know if that's the way to go.

I do think, again, that Lifestyle is just a really big factor with respect to animal protein consumption. The the other thing that I've really been keeping my my eye on and still you know like I eat meat, I eat animal protein, I eat fish and chicken and I eat red meat. And one of the things that I'm there's still a big unknown in my mind is the Neu5Gc, which we wrote a topic article on. So please check that out on our website on foundmyfitness.com/topics. You can find the— there's a topic article on Neu5Gc. And what you'll see is that there's— it's something to, you know, it's present in red meat and it seems to elicit an autoimmune sort of autoantibodies are found against it. And it's sort of unclear to me still whether or not it's a cause of concern.

I haven't been convinced either way yet, but I'm not ruling it out. So it is something that I'm continuing to keep my eye on for more data to figure out whether or not there is something to be concerned about. The next question was from Dimitri, and Dimitri says that he's genetically disposed to elevated LDL, and so he has high levels of LDL cholesterol. If he cuts down on his saturated fat intake from like red meat and cheese or dairy, that he can get his LDL down and He's fit, does exercise, sauna three times a week, does time-restricted eating, drinks the smoothie that I that I my smoothie and all you know basically wants to know if there's any strategies that I can share that I have done that have helped for me time-restricted eating and one thing that it really was a big factor in cutting my LDL down was I used to cook with coconut oil.

Several years ago, and that just made my LDL go through the roof. So I stopped doing that, and that made a huge difference. Also cutting down on dairy, so not not not eating as much dairy. That also is something that is makes a big difference for me. The other thing I'm experimenting with. And I don't have data yet, is gonna—I'm gonna be making yogurt with L. reuteri. L. reuteri is a certain type of probiotic bacteria, and some studies suggest that it can drop LDL very significantly. So I'm doing some experiments to see, and I will keep you guys up to date on that. I'm answering some of these rapid-fire questions here. Christina says that she's reading Dr. Dale Bredesen's latest book after watching our interview with him, our FoundMyFitness interview with him.

She says her daughter has 2 APOE4 alleles, and she's waiting to find out from 23andMe whether or not she has 1 or 2, that her 87-year-old mother has signs of cognitive impairment, and she's guessing that she has at least 1 APOE4 allele. for ALEL. Is it too late to reap any benefits from changes in diet, lifestyle, supplements, etc.? I honestly don't know. It's always easier to prevent, but I also don't think it's ever too late, particularly with, you know, helping with cognitive impairment. So some of the things that that we have done, you know, my husband's great-great-aunt is 96 now and she's got cognitive impairment. It's not Alzheimer's disease, but it's definitely maybe a mild, mild case, but it's— she's definitely got cognitive impairment.

And what we've done for her that's also helped So, fish oil, at least 3 grams of DHA, vitamin D, CoQ10. It's a purified CoQ10 supplement. And, it's been shown in clinical studies to improve memory in elderly individuals. It's been shown to improve blood flow to the brain, which probably helps with the memory improvements. Blueberry extract also has been shown to improve memory in elderly individuals. It's been shown to improve memory in younger individuals as well. So those are some of the things that really are the low-hanging fruit in terms of it's easier, particularly when you're talking about someone in their late 80s or early 90s. I mean, getting them to like do a ketogenic diet is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Maybe it is, maybe it is possible, and it's certainly been shown to help with people with Alzheimer's disease. And Dale has a whole, you know, protocol for that. But I'm not sure that's what I would call low-hanging fruit in terms of having the easiest compliance, particularly with someone who's elderly like that. And of course exercise would help. And again, like a physical trainer, having someone, you know, come and just even do some kind of like weights and resistance training, just the bare minimum. Again, not necessarily the lowest-hanging fruit, but I certainly do think that's important. And, if possible, could be something that could be added as well. Could you offer any advice on timing of sauna use? For example, is it better before or after exercise, on rest days, workout days?

Fasted or not fasted? Okay. So, we've already answered part of that question. Fasted seems to be better. What I— so, doing the sauna before a workout, sauna has been shown to exhaust your body. And, it has been shown to, if done before a workout, in fact, even if done within 24 hours before a workout, it can negate some of your performance. So in other words, you may not lift as many reps as you otherwise would have. You may not lift as heavy of weights as you otherwise would have. Um, because I mean, it's essentially mimicking moderate aerobic activity. So it does, um, it can affect performance.

Um, I like to do, I do my sauna after my, my, so I do, usually I'll do, um, some type of endurance, either my Peloton or if I go for a run or jump rope and lift some weights, and then I go into the sauna. And I do this all fasted in the morning. So, um, and I also like to do sauna on, on, on rest days as well. Um, so some days, like if I'm not, if I'm not doing a workout, um, then I'll do the sauna as well. So, and I do think, I do think there's benefits to, again, with the fasted, um, It's not it's not necessarily bad to do it not fasted. It's like like I'm like we just discussed earlier. There may be a transient rise in blood glucose, but it is transient, and over the long term, people have lower markers of blood blood glucose levels.

So that's kind of my that's kind of my jam, and that's what I think seems to be best. On a related question, Ricardo asks. Whether or not sauna use is okay for someone with arrhythmia. There are moderate contraindications for people with arrhythmias, heart arrhythmias, meaning it may be something that could be a concern. And, and so that really needs to be discussed with a healthcare physician. whether or not it's, it's actually safe for someone with arrhythmia to, to do the sauna. For my toddler, which brand of vitamin D supplements or drops do I use? I'm concerned about legitimacy and the vitamin D. Is the vitamin D in a multivitamin sufficient for your child? So right now I do give my son a multivitamin.

And that multivitamin has 500 IUs of vitamin D, which is, uh, in my opinion, enough vitamin D for his, um, for his weight. And also, he, he does spend time out in the sun without sunscreen, um, and we live in Southern California where UVB radiation does hit the atmosphere in the winter. Um, so I give my son Pure Nutrients by Pure Encapsulations. That's the multivitamin he gets. And they have age requirements in terms of how many, how many gummies to get, um, depending on the age. So another question was from Asad. He asked, um, whether or not sulforaphane in broccoli microgreens versus broccoli sprouts, whether or not if it was, you know, you could replace Broccoli sprouts with broccoli microgreens.

I would say that I am I am not sure there is much sulforaphane in broccoli microgreens, but they are broccoli microgreens are a great source of other micronutrients, so they are a great source of. potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, manganese, zinc, iron, calcium, sodium, copper. So they do have other vitamins and minerals that are beneficial. So Paige Phillips is asking a rapid-fire question in the chat. She says, do you have any correlative info on what can help with better deep-phase sleep when, you know, some more restorative and reparative sleep? A couple of things. Appear to be very important for that because slow-wave sleep happens early in the night. You know, pretty much all of it's happening before midnight. Sleep latency is really important.

In other words, going to bed at an early reasonable time is very important for improving your slow-wave sleep. And what seems to be One of the major regulators of that is light exposure on both ends, meaning bright light exposure first thing in the morning, extremely important because that sets your circadian clock or resets your circadian clock. And that resetting of your circadian clock is what tells your body when to start making melatonin. And to make it at an hour that will basically make you sleepy at a reasonable time when you're supposed to go to sleep. On the same side of that coin is also avoiding blue light, bright blue light at night. Because if your body is making the melatonin at the right hour, you don't want to stop it by having bright lights everywhere.

So get dimmers, get Philips Hue lights that you can make them red, you know, wear the blue-blocking glasses, whatever it is you have to do, whatever's easiest, whatever you're going to do, make a habit of doing, whatever's like— like I can't, like the glasses for me don't work. Like I just like, I just can't wear those around all the time. And it just doesn't, I've never been able to do that. So for me, I have to change my lighting And so that's really, I think, one of the major, major factors for sleep latency is the light exposure, getting that bright light exposure first thing in the morning.

So if you live in a place where you don't have a lot of windows or the windows aren't facing a place where there's lots of light coming in or you don't have— I mean, Going out on your— going out in your yard. If you don't have a yard, a balcony, drinking your coffee on the balcony. If you don't have any of those things, go for a walk first thing in the morning. Drink your coffee outside, you know, go for a run outside, or, you know, do something outside first thing in the morning. That will make a big difference in setting your circadian clock to the right time. So another rapid-fire question was from Jenna. Jenna asked, um, what my supplement routine was during pregnancy. Uh, are there parts I would change now based on more current research?

Um, I don't think there's anything I would change now, and really the best place to find that information is from my, um, aliquot mashup on pregnancy. So you guys should all have access to the, um, private podcast feed, um, that you can— you can, if you haven't already accessed that, go into your dashboard at foundmyfitness.com/dashboard and and make sure that you download that so that you can listen to the Aliquats, which are what we release on a weekly basis pretty much. And most of the time they're just short, you know, clips from interviews that I sort of curate a little bit and then give a little extra information about.

But, you know, every once in a while we also release, and we're actually working on some more of these at what are called mashups, which are like taken from all my Q&As and they're, you know, topic-based. So I have one on pregnancy and child development. That's really the best place to get all my pregnancy-related and stuff I did during my pregnancy. That's like the best place to get it. And so far I haven't seen anything that would change. And in fact, there's only information that validated some of what I did early in my pregnancy and even before I pregnancy when I was during conception, which was avoid caffeine. Now there's more evidence. At the time, I had found like very preliminary evidence that caffeine caused early spontaneous abortions.

And now that is really sort of— that's been confirmed now. Within this last year, it's been confirmed. So I think that there's even stronger evidence to avoid caffeine during pregnancy. Siddharth asks tactics to help manage early morning blood glucose levels. For me, he says that he can control the rest of the day with diet and exercise, but readings in the morning are high. Time-restricted eating was one of the, one of the best things I found to affect fasting blood glucose levels, where essentially, you know, eating within an 8-hour window and fasting for 16 hours seems to be really important for that, for me. JT asks whether or not epithelial-specific protein is still an issue and whether or not sulforaphane, the effects of sulforaphane on mTOR affects FOXO3.

Uh, so the short answer is no and no. So epithelial-specific protein was originally thought to maybe play a role in how much glucoraphanin is converted into sulforaphane. Um, Dr. Jed Fahey, who is the sulforaphane expert, does not seem to think that is a problem. Um, so I have sort of discarded that as a— even though there was a publication showing it may be a potential problem, I take Dr. Jed Fahey's word as the final. He seems to have data that does not suggest that's a big problem to worry about at all. Secondly, mTOR and FOXO3, those pathways, the effect on mTOR is not affecting FOXO3. So that's not something that I'm concerned about. Greg asks, what was my protocol for sauna use while breastfeeding?

I, again, go listen to the pregnancy and child development aliquot mashups, which you can find on your private podcast feed. I did not breastfeed— I mean, I did not use the sauna for the first about 8 months of breastfeeding when you're just full in, you know, your milk production is, is, is just going at full speed. Um, and then after about 9 months to a year of breastfeeding, I slowly was adding the sauna in for like a couple times a week or something like that. But I certainly didn't do it within the first 8 months. Stephanie asks, I'm currently shopping for a sauna. Can you elaborate further on why you chose to get a Hallmark 45 for a sauna versus other saunas? Does the fact the Hallmark have a vinyl floor concern you? So at the time, I had space limitations.

And so getting a 4-foot by 4-foot sauna that you could just plug in without having to get an electrician, you could just plug into a normal outlet, was very, you know, it was ideal for me. And so, so that's why I went with a Hallmark 44. I no longer have that sauna. I now have a Nordic sauna, which, which the Nordic sauna makes their own. They sold me the original Hallmark 44, but they also make their own saunas. And they made one that's very similar to that. So it's 4 foot by 4 foot, and it plugs into a normal outlet. But it also—they they used it with different types of wood, and it doesn't have the vinyl floor. So I wasn't really concerned about it with the Hallmark 44. I do like my sauna that I use now.

I don't you know have affiliation with with a Nordic sauna, but I do I do enjoy the sauna that I'm using now. So I do think that. Going with either of those is great. It all depends on what you're if you're wanting an outdoor sauna or you're wanting something indoor. I do think that regular saunas are have been have there's much more data to show health benefits in terms cardiovascular related benefits and brain benefits with traditional saunas versus the infrared saunas. Kate 33 asks about ester vitamin C ester, whether or not it it provides more immune support. I would say I have not seen any good data to suggest that ester C is any more efficacious or raises blood levels any higher than. Normal ascorbic acid.

So James asks, if I start taking 1 gram of resveratrol a day, how much fat and what kind of fat must I take with it to maximize absorption? Someone suggested organic peanut butter without seed oil. Personally, I want to avoid dairy. So interestingly, James, if you take a look at our resveratrol topic page under bioavailability, and you can go to the table of contents and click on that, We have a study that we cited that that was looking at bioavailability of resveratrol with food, and a moderate fat diet was the best. Not high; it was a moderate fat diet was better than high fat. So in other words, just eating a normal meal that it's not just you know having the fat, but having fat with protein and stuff as well seemed to be important for bioavailability.

You know, so you could you could essentially. put some of it in, in like a smoothie with avocado and kale, for example, and some, a little bit of blueberries or something. That's, you know, that's something that could be a possibility. Roman asks a rapid-fire question. Is there a place to sequence your DNA anonymously where they don't potentially sell or store your data? Anonymously, no, not that I'm aware of yet. Another rapid-fire question from Roman was, will I offer a pre-pregnancy regimen page for optimal epigenetic traits at conception for both men and women? No, not as of yet. I am not planning on doing that.

I do have a monthly hangout where once a month, the first Sunday of every month, people can ask, you know, they submit questions and, you know, they often have personal questions and we talk about things things like that in detail. And it's a discussion, it's a Google Hangout, so we, you know, we can— everyone can have a discussion with me so they can talk and I, you know, answer questions and things like that. That's probably the most— the closest thing I have to doing that sort of thing, you know. But that's a really elite, you know, special group of people. Not everyone does that. Monthly hangout, but if you are interested in looking into that, I do love my monthly hangouts. In fact, I just had someone join that's a very, very active on Crowdcast, and she came to our last hangout.

You can find out about that. You can actually even go, go down to the bottom of this Crowdcast page, and there's, there's a little button you can press to upgrade to that monthly hangout if you're interested in. But you can also just learn about more of the benefits on that by going to the premium page on foundmyfitness.com/premium and learn a little bit about those Hangouts as well. You can also ask questions here on Crowdcast. Sometimes I'll answer those, but the pregnancy mashup, childhood development mashup, I do also mention some things like that. So then another rapid-fire question was from— also had to do with the sauna— was from Max maximum. And he was asking about male fertility, whether or not heat's detrimental to male fertility for people that frequently use saunas.

And there was a follow-up question as well from someone that was interested about in this question because they're wanting to have more children but also have a sauna in their home and want to know if there's risks. So the effects of the sauna on fertility all seem to go down to the level of affecting motility of sperm, which it hasn't— it's not been shown to like affect, you know, the DNA of the sperm. It's not causing damage or anything like that, but the sperm swim slower. And so for people that already have fertility issues. Perhaps if they're trying to conceive, there's already a fertility issue, that could be one added variable that you would like to take out of the equation. The effects on sperm motility are transient.

So after men stop using the sauna, sperm motility goes back to normal. In other words, swim the sperms, you know, swimming faster again. Many, many people get pregnant, still, you know, conceive while using the sauna. Men are still able to conceive while using the sauna. It's not like you're not gonna— it's not a— please do not think that it is a type of contraception. It is not. You absolutely can get a woman pregnant while using the sauna. So that's pretty much what it all comes down to in terms of the effects of heat stress on the sauna. It's just transiently affecting sperm motility. The next question was about a certain type of bacteria.

So the question says that I mentioned that fermented Natto, they make there's bacteria that make spermidine in it, and there's certain types of study. There's certain studies showing Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. Lactis LKM512 was used. Basically, they were asking whether or not LKM512 whether or not that was the same strain as BB12. No, they're not the same strain, so I don't think they can be extrapolated. She says she has a 6-month-old baby and is still breastfeeding. I mentioned that I give my son fish oil, that I gave my son fish oil in his oatmeal when I was introducing solid foods, but she wanted to know what age I recommend, what age I gave my son fish oil in addition to what he was receiving from the breast milk.

So I was taking a lot of— so I was taking 3 grams a day of DHA while I was breastfeeding. So that was quite a bit. And so, you know, a lot of DHA was getting transmitted to my son through the breast milk. And so I wasn't as fastidious about getting him fish oil in his food. As I otherwise would have been if I wasn't taking such high doses of omega-3. Um, so I did try to, you know, now and then I was trying to, as much as I could, get him, get him some. I would open up my fish oil pills and put it in some of his foods. But what I started doing then when he was reaching toddler stage was giving him the Pure Nutrients DHA. From Pure Encapsulations, the, uh, the DHA gummies, which are really great. I really, I really love them. Um, they're great tasting.

They have xylitol in them, so they're like good for the teeth. And they're, they're very, very smooth and soft. And so it's like the, the— there's like almost no risk for, for choking, um, just based on the, the formulation of it. So I really, really like those as well. So Isa is asking a rapid-fire question in the chat. She says, what is your supplement routine in terms of timing? Do you take all of them at once, some in the morning, some in the evening? Uh, I, I nowadays what I'm doing is I am actually taking my— I'm splitting up my, my omega-3 dose and I'm doing a high dose of EPA in the morning And then I'm taking my DHA in the evening. There's some evidence that DHA also improves sleep quality. So I'm also taking my prostaglandin in the morning with food.

So I do most of my supplements after dinner, after I eat my last meal, with the exception of my EPA and prostaglandin, which I'm doing in the morning with breakfast. And Roman asks again, are you, are you still planning to post a pregnancy topic page? Right now we're not working on that. I, you know, it might, it might come along at some point, but I'm not sure when. All right, I think that wraps up this Crowdcast. Really enjoyed the questions. This one was a little different. I answered a lot more rapid-fire questions than I, than I normally do.

Again, for anyone that's looking to go in a little more detail and have more interaction, have more of a discussion, you should come try our monthly Google Hangout, which, which is a really another— it's another really great way to ask questions, but on a much more you know, in-depth way because we're having a discussion. So if you want to check that out, you can look into the— I think there's a button down here at the bottom right-hand— sorry, left-hand side of the screen that you can immediately upgrade. But you can also go to foundmyfitness.com/premium and And, uh, you can change to the, to the monthly Google Hangout, um, tier there as well. I wish everyone a great 2021.

Um, I'm looking forward to the next coming months, the vaccines rolling out, and eventually life getting a little more normal. Um, and I hope everyone does in the meantime stay safe and stay healthy and try to enjoy life as much as you can and do the little things, you know, like exercising and socializing with people, you know, within your bubble. Also getting, you know, having your Zoom hangouts with other people that you can't see that are perhaps far away and that you, you know, you can't see in person for the time being, it's important to maintain those social connection— connections as well. So until then, I look forward to our questions next month, and I'll see you guys soon. Bye. Bye.