Q&A with Dr. Jed Fahey on Sulforaphane, Moringa and Chemoprotection [An authoritative discussion!]

Welcome everyone. This is a special edition Crowd Cast Q&A with our guest, Dr. Jed Fahey, who has spent more than 20 years researching phytochemicals, isothiocyanates, and sulforaphane at Johns Hopkins. He's a friend of mine, and I am so excited to have him here today. He is a mentor as well. I've been reading his publications and following his research for many years now, and so, um, it's such a pleasure to have him here answering questions from all you guys. He retired a few months ago and has some interesting projects he's working on, but we can leave that for another podcast.

So today he's going to—he's going to answer questions that were submitted by the audience. The questions were voted on, and so Jed chose a variety of questions that were the top-voted questions, as well as questions that have come up frequently—um, popular questions and questions that are, you know, that he found interesting. And um, he rearranged the questions and kind of categorized them like health benefits, safety, sprouting, etc. So we're not going to follow the order that you see on the Crowdcast question screen, so just keep that in mind. But before we jump into the questions, Jed, maybe you can spend about 60 seconds or so just sort of giving people a brief intro, um, on your work and um, and go from there.

Good. Okay. Um, well, thank you, Rhonda, for for having me, and and uh, I have known you for a little while now, and I'm glad you called me a friend. I I certainly love your um uh FoundMyFitness, and I wish I had more time to follow you more closely, um, but that's coming because, as you mentioned, I retired. The 62nd version is uh, you know, I was born—oh, no—um, I I started—started out life as a plant physiologist and spent 15 years in the ag biotech industry. Then came to Hopkins in 1993, spent 27 years there, um, and got my doctorate while I was at Hopkins in nutritional biochemistry, working full-time. Also started a company called Brassica Protection Products, or BPP, while I was working there with my mentor, Paul Talalay, and his son, Tony. And um, then Paul and I backed away from that company so that we could do clinical trials with broccoli sprouts, which we uh, you know, developed. And uh, so we've done a lot of work with broccoli sprouts—uh, in fact, broccoli sprouts and sulforaphane have been our primary focus over the years, as well as moringa and a variety of other plant fight—you know, phytochemicals. Um, we've looked at effects on Helicobacter pylori infection and and on and on—autism more recently—all with collaborators, of course, because you don't do these things by yourself. Um, I retired in June, the end of June. I have an adjunct appointment at Hopkins still, but what I am doing is consulting now again for the company that we started, but just as a consultant, and I'm on the scientific advisory board uh for a couple of companies—Cooley—Cooley that makes moringa powder and Bright Seed, which is developing some interesting food products. Um, I I want to spend my retirement um, first of all, wearing the same shirt as I have—my wife looked at me this morning, she said, "You're wearing the same shirt you were the last two days." Well, yeah, wearing old flannel shirts is part of the joy of retiring to Maine. Um, but I I want to spend more time trying to help put in um a more accessible format uh some of the very technical stuff that we've been involved with, um, and uh, part of that is talking with uh your constituents, Rhonda, and uh doing the kind of thing we're doing right now. So I hope to do more of that and more—more writing um as time goes on. So we should—so that's that's the short—you know, that's the short story, and it took more than 60 seconds. I'm sorry.

Awesome, Chad. So glad to have you here. So we'll jump into the questions, um, starting with some of the the health benefits. The first question is, "What is the minimum daily dose of sulforaphane that has shown—that has been shown to provide health benefits? How much sulforaphane does a 200-gram serving of broccoli or broccoli sprouts contain?"

Yeah, so it's, you know, I I I have to preface the—these—my launching into the answer system—these questions by saying, yeah, I—you went through the the extensive and wonderful questions—many of them—as did I—uh, a number of days ago. Um, this is a kind of question that comes up all the time, and um, to those of you who are non-scientists, um, I tend to talk—all—we—we scientists, and certainly chemists and biochemists, tend to talk in micromoles. So if you look at any of our papers, we talk micromoles. I've—I will try to give you an answer that's translated into milligrams, but this is, of course, um uh complex and something that's still in play and is still being researched by many people. So it all depends on the amount of glucoraphanin, the precursor of sulforaphane, that is in broccoli or sprouts. I'm going to avoid a long diatribe on glucoraphanin and myrosinase and sulforaphane because I have the feeling that if you've listened to Rhonda at all or gone to our podcast—the podcast that she and I did together or some of her subsequent podcasts—most people know about the fact that glucoraphanin is a precursor found in the plants; myrosinase is an enzyme found in the plants and in your body—your microbiome—and they react, and they form sulforaphane. So I think that's—so interesting that we have the enzyme in our gut—meaning are meant to get the precursor to convert it into sulforaphane. We contain the enzyme in our gut. I I just love that.

Anyways, go ahead.

So absolutely. All of us do, and I mean that—however many hundred of you there are in this call—all have myrosinase-containing bacteria in your gut, unless you've just blasted yourself with antibiotics and had a, you know, an enema and just cleaned out your intestinal system, then maybe you don't have any. And we've done these sorts of experiments actually with um with real people. So there are two ways of doing this—of hydrolyzing the glucoraphanin that's present in broccoli—one is when you chew it, you release the enzyme from the broccoli tissue or broccoli sprouts or broccoli seeds, and the second way is from your microbiome. And if you take supplements, you're either getting just glucoraphanin, or there are now supplements with a combination of glucoraphanin and myrosinase, and there are very few, if any, good ones with just sulforaphane, and we'll get to that later. I I'm sure we have to. So the question was about the dose, and if you're um the best—the best advice that we can give—that I can give now is that all the clinical studies seem to be pointing towards a dose of something between about 50 and 100 micromoles of sulforaphane a day. Um, I discussed that a little bit in the sprouting PDF that Rhonda has just put out, but the question that was originally posted talks about 200 grams. So let's start with the question: a 200-gram serving of broccoli—that's a pretty lot for most people. I think that's a very healthy serving of broccoli—market-stage broccoli. However, for broccoli sprouts, that's a huge serving. Most people that I'm aware of, including myself, would not enjoy cramming down 200 grams of broccoli sprouts. Um, so I I'll just base a ballpark estimation on a hundred grams of either broccoli or sprouts, um, and based on the amount of glucoraphanin that's in them and our knowledge of conversion and yield, um, you might get about anywhere between four uh milligrams of glucoraphanin to 100—150 from 100 grams of broccoli, and that would yield about anywhere from about half of—half a milligram to something like 18 milligrams of sulforaphane—that's broccoli.

Why is there a huge range? There's a huge range because a) all of the broccoli is different—it's different based on the way it's treated in the store, the way it's grown, the genetics of the broccoli; and secondly, all of you are different, and your gut microbiomes are going to yield different amounts of sulforaphane. So um, there's a huge range, um, and with broccoli sprouts, 100 grams would give you somewhere between—I don't know—about a—about five milligrams and three—350—sorry—between about five or six milligrams and about 60 milligrams of sulforaphane. So there—these are just rough approximations. Cooking destroys myrosinase, so if you're cooking broccoli or broccoli sprouts, then you're just counting on the bacteria in your gut. Um, I mentioned the the person-to-person variation. There's no way, unfortunately, to know if you're a good converter. There's no way to know how much sulforaphane or glucoraphanin is in broccoli or broccoli sprouts because you have to get them tested in a lab, and there are no commercial labs that do these tests routinely. Um, so this is still a problem, um, and you know, you—I mentioned this in the PDF that Rhonda's posted, but unfortunately, you as a consumer are—you know, even if you spend say ten dollars on broccoli seeds and sprout them yourself, it would cost you a hundred and fifty dollars to send one sample of those broccoli seeds out to a commercial lab to get them tested to see if they're high glucoraphanin or not. So uh, as I, you know, I don't make the rules, I just abide by them or try to. But so unfortunately, as it stands now, it's very difficult to know what you're getting. So we just have to work—we just have to talk in in terms of rough—rough averages. And and when Paul Talalay and I did our first publication on broccoli sprouts, you know, our—our point was that a serving of say something like a couple of ounces—60 grams or so—of broccoli sprouts gave you as much glucoraphanin as um, you know, a quarter of a pound or a half a pound of market-stage broccoli. Um, and so these are all quantities. One final word and just that that the quantity of glucoraphanin and sulforaphane you get from broccoli sprouts from a couple of ounces, we think is a reasonable amount to put you in a zone where you're getting some protective effect, um, and so it's this roughly this level that most of the clinical studies have targeted because, god forbid your clinical studies should be positive and work, um, you want to be able to translate that to something people can eat. I think the answers to all the rest of my questions will be shorter, Rhonda, and you've been gracious not to—not to jump in and interrupt, but I hope that sort of addressed the question.

One of the questions that popped up um as you were talking about variation in the glucoraphanin content and broccoli seeds: do you have a preferred seed vendor for broccoli sprout seeds?

That's a good question. Um, so I don't buy broccoli seeds myself really anymore. So when we were doing experiments in the lab, we—we for a long time bought them from Johnny's Selected Seeds in Albion, Maine, and um, they—they were a source of organic broccoli seeds, and and we had tested some—when Paul Talalay first hired me in 1993, um, he had gotten some seeds from them, and we tested them, and they were high in glucoraphanin. We worked with—I worked with um a plant—a broccoli breeder who was a USDA scientist for many years, and we did a variety of crossing and and we're looking at the the potency of broccoli genotypes, and yeah, we developed some germplasm that was good—that was high in glucoraphanin. Um, more importantly, I guess I should say that the company that we founded um does uh breed and make their own broccoli seeds, and this is obviously a big venture, and they—they um test their seeds all the time. So the very practical answer is: when I want broccoli seeds, I ask them for some freebies, and they give them to me, and I ca—and I've grown my sprouts that way. Um, but it's very—they don't sell broccoli seeds, and um, there are, you know, many companies now that sell seeds for sprouting, but I don't—I'm not aware of any of them that certify the the level of glucoraphanin in those seeds. So again, it's difficult for the consumer to know what they're getting, um, and I I hope that we get to a place very soon where the expectation is driven by consumers, maybe, that, you know, a company that's going to sell seeds for sprouting characterizes the glucoraphanin level. That would be easy for them to do—it'd cost them 100—200 to do the test, right? They do it for fish oil when they characterize the EPA and DHA content.

One more related, Chad, question. Stephanie was asking, "What about adding ground mustard seed to cooked broccoli or a cooked cruciferous vegetable like Brussels sprouts, for example? Um, is there any effect on that—increasing the bio-availability of sulforaphane? And if so, you know, can you explain why?"

Yeah, yeah. So look—broccoli—so you talk—I'm sorry, I missed the the first part of the question—is with broccoli sprouts, right? The first part of the question was just cooked broccoli, and you know, which—which because, as you mentioned, cooking it kills the the enzyme myrosinase, and so you're essentially not getting much sulforaphane unless you have—depending on your gut bacteria that have the enzyme myrosinase. Um, adding mustard seed powder—yes. So the short answer is yes; that should—that should facilitate the the more rapid conversion of glucoraphanin in that cooked broccoli to sulforaphane. So in the event that you are a low converter, um, and if you wait for it to—sorry, we don't have the full body here—but if you wait for it to go all the way down to your large intestine—to your small—small and large intestines—and wait for those bacteria to act, you know, our best—our best knowledge of the range of conversion efficiencies that you as a person might do ranges from a few percent of what you ingest to up to maybe about 60 or 70 percent, and you don't know unless you test your urine, um, and and that—that changes from day to day; it changes from, you know, week to week, month to month. So yes, if you want to do the conversion before you—before you or as you're eating it—ground mustard seed—daikon—Japanese radish is good—moringa actually has a a lot of uh myrosinase—there—many cruciferous vegetables do—but you then sort of run into taste issues, and to me, a lot of it—all comes down to taste, you know, when we're talking about what we eat, what we supplement with. Um, so mustard seed has a very characteristic harsh, pungent taste, right? So does wasabi and horseradish, which are also really good sources of myrosinase, but you know, do you want to add that to broccoli cheese soup? And then you're—you're instead having, you know, broccoli horseradish soup. Um, I like—I like mustard seed on my—my cooked broccoli with butter. Um, I—the—the study Stephanie is probably referring to is one I shared a couple of years ago where it was a very small study—about 12—12 people were given a gram of mustard seed um put—put on top of their—I don't know—remember if they put on top of their broccoli—if they were just given the gram and then they ate the broccoli—either way, they increased the sulforaphane by like 45 percent. So um, we can move on to the next question, though. Okay. That—that's a reasonable way to—to—to deal with cooked—fed—cooked cruciferous vegetables.

Um, Rhonda, I I'd like to interrupt and and actually, while I'm interrupting myself, right, so—um, I I'd like to say I've—I saw a question um a couple of days ago on on the site um from Lucy, and she said um something to the effect of, "Does broccoli rob contain sulforaphane?" Um, and Lucy, that's a great question, if you're—if you're there today, and the answer is no, it doesn't. And broccoli rob is actually related to broccoli, but interestingly, it's not as closely related even as cauliflower or cabbage are to broccoli, and broccoli rob does not have a significant amount of glucoraphanin or sulforaphane. But this is—this is an opportunity for me to to stamp my foot down and say, "Look, a lot of people in the lay public, especially, are under the impression that all cruciferous vegetables have sulforaphane or glucoraphanin. They do not." So if you eat any cruciferous vegetables, you're getting isothiocyanates, which are all closely related to each other; they're all closely related to sulforaphane. But, for example, cabbage has essentially none—it's got other isothiocyanates that are good for you—many of them. Cauliflower has essentially none. Kale doesn't have glucoraphanin to any great extent, except, as I recall, there's one variety—Red Russian kale—that does have a substantial amount. So be careful thinking that all—well, all cruciferous vegetables are good for you—I think that's fair to say—but be careful assuming that all cruciferous vegetables contain sulforaphane because they don't.

That's a really important point. Is there a database or a reference that we can go to to see what cruciferous vegetables do have glucoraphanin—the precursor to sulforaphane—and what levels they contain?

Um, Theresa Johnson and I—the former student and friend of both of ours—wrote um a couple—I wrote up an encyclopedia chapter on glucosinolates, and um, I believe we talk about it in that. Um, certainly there are a number of references that I can give you, which reminds me—I, Rhonda, you know, you and I both are sort of famous for doing deep dives into the literature, and I'm happy to share with you offline later on any references that might be helpful to your listeners, and then I—I know you have places to post them—in ways to get them out to—to listeners.

Yeah, that would be great to get that reference. I'll talk to Theresa as well.

All right, excellent. Good. The next question was: "If I can't consume broccoli sprouts daily, how beneficial is it to consume them only after exposure to heavy air pollutants? As a firefighter, I am exposed to a lot of carcinogens during a fire, and I'm wondering if it's beneficial to only take them post-fire calls, and for how many days?"

Yep, another great question, and and uh, to the firefighter that asked that, uh, thank you for your service. Um, it's been a rough year for firefighters out west—that's for sure. Um, so my best guess is that taking them regularly or taking a supplement in order to prime your system and get your antioxidant and detoxification system ready for the regular assaults that you're laying on—on—on your—your body, um, it would probably be wise. Um, I I think this is a case where you should remember that you—you—if we're talking about carcinogens or toxins or or oxid—oxidant chemicals—you never really know when you're being attacked by those—those vicious chemicals, and I'm—I'm actually not exaggerating. I mean, there's—there are a lot of nasty chemicals in smoke from—certainly from home fires and even from uh wildfires. So there's, you know, if you look at the analogy to wearing seat belts, uh, you know, you—why you wear a seat belt, um, not because you plan on um getting in an accident, but—but it's—it's prophylactic, and I think you could make a similar argument: if you know you're regularly blasting your lungs and your body with the components of smoke, you can make an argument that priming your system to get that response uh maximally geared up would be a good thing. One thing we do know from our work in China with—with a study of air pollution and the effects of sulforaphane on that is that you don't fatigue—and this is fortunate—but you don't fatigue this—the biochemical response system. So we gave—for 12 weeks—we gave daily glucoraphanin and sulforaphane and monitored the upregulation of the—this protective response um and did not really see any fatiguing of the—of the—the response of that system. So short answer then is uh to the firefighter is: yeah, I think taking a supplement regularly would be—obviously, you're not going to make broccoli sprouts when you're out doing fire calls—but um, so probably supplements in your case would be a good—you know, good thing. I'm not a physician; I'm not prescribing them to you, but that's the way I feel about it.

Yeah, Chad, if I just could comment as well: your—your 12-week study was extremely relevant to not only firefighters, but, you know, people particularly on the West Coast—in California and, you know, Oregon—you know, people that are being exposed to wildfires that are breathing in acrolein, which is heavily in—in smoke, and benzene, but, you know, and—and your study showed that within 24 hours, benzene excretion was excreted by 60 percent, and acrolein—study was increased—actual acrolein excretion was increased by 20—about 23 percent. And um, so I guess also the question is: let's say, you know, the firefighter or whoever isn't going to take it daily, but, you know, even within a few days of knowing they're going uh on call or—or whatever, do you think that would even be beneficial? Because I mean, it literally wasn't within 24 hours—your study in China.

Yeah, yeah. So I do—I—I mean, these—these obviously there's some time lag between the time you ingest the glucoraphanin or sulforaphane and the time the enzymes are upregulated or respond. It's quite short, though, and and you know, even after a couple of hours, some of those enzymes are cranking up. Um, so the answer to your question is yes. And you know, the main—the main um sort of situation where I think um you might—you know, you might almost have to have it on board beforehand is some of the neuronal injury models, like when we talk about traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury. There is an absolutely pronounced effect of sulforaphane that we—we have seen in a variety of studies—we and others—when I say "we," I always mean "we and other people"—or maybe—maybe I wasn't even involved in that study um in this case—but we see an effect—obviously, if—if you have that sort of injury and you're looking for the the rapid um uh response of sulforaphane, um, it would be ideal to have had it on board your body beforehand. Um, but one of the things that appears evident is that with neuronal injury, even getting it right after the injury may have some value. So but with a fire—the fire analogy or the fire situation—absolutely. We showed that the response was upregulated quickly, and it was maintained, and as you say, detoxification of two out of the three major pollutants that we looked at happened to a—to a substantial degree. And I should mention this was work that my colleague Tom Kensler started a long time ago in China, and and we joined a work in the—I guess in about 2001. Um, and so we've been involved with it for many years now, and the final studies there are going to be published soon, I hope.

Amazing. Just amazing work. I love those studies, and the fact that the 12 weeks—there was no exhausting of the—the—the upregulation of these important detoxification enzymes—um, that's really profound—that that they were maintained within that whole 12 weeks—it wasn't like it was a short-term effect that went away. Um, also, it's—as we're going to discuss probably in—in a couple of minutes about um the—a lot of the pre-clinical studies on the effects of sulforaphane in Alzheimer's disease—there's been a just onslaught of new research that has shown air pollution is contributing to neurodegenerative diseases starting in early life. So there was a study in Mexico City where air pollution is terrible, and children—so they've been doing post-mortem um, you know, studies looking in the brain of—unfortunately—infants and children and young adolescents that have um that have died for whatever reason, and they have uh amyloid beta plaques in their brain as early as infancy and other, you know, pathological changes in the brain going on early—early in life, which is really unfortunate. So I think that the—the—the possibility of something like moringa or sulforaphane or broccoli sprouts, you know, to—to help with excreting these, you know, toxic compounds and even in other potential ways improving brain health is really exciting. So um, with that, I'll go on to the next—the next question, which was: "How long do the health benefits of broccoli sprouts last? Would consuming them every day be better than every other day or once a week?"

This is just—this is an easy question for me to answer, but it's—but it's, as with most everything else, it's shades of gray; it's not black and white. Um, we think that consumption every two or three days is fine because what you're doing is you're not—it's not like vitamin C where you're having a direct antioxidant effect and you use up the vitamin C and it's gone. Um, what you're doing is you're cranking up protective enzymes, and they last—enzymes or proteins—and you know, they do work in the body, and

Eventually, they wear out and break down and get catabolized and and turned into their component amino acids, and then they get remade. We know that the elevation of these enzymes lasts for at least hours and certainly, in most cases, days—a few days probably. Some benefits might be short-lived. Um, you know, if when you talk about habits though, people's habits, I think especially with diet and with supplements, uh, if you're taking supplements, it's better to just do it daily. If you're in the habit of eating broccoli sprouts, um, it's easier to say, okay, you know, I eat them today and I don't eat them tomorrow because I'm going to get bored eating the same thing every day, but um, yeah, every couple of days should be fine. I think two or three days. I know that the animal studies have shown that the NRF2 protective pathways activated for at least two days.

Have you looked at any clinical samples—a human, human samples—is it to see if it's similar?

Or yeah, that so what you were referring to clinical studies when you were referring to any hours to days? I'm referring to both, but but I mean we've looked, we've looked in in clinical studies also. I mean, part of the problem with clinical studies is that you have to pick sometimes unless you have someone in the hospital in a hospital or in an in-patient setting have an indwelling catheter of some kind in them and are constantly taking blood or having them deliver their urine to you—all of it on you know, for days on end, which most people don't like to do. They're very difficult studies to do. So when we do clinical studies in an effort to, you know, sort of have moderate inconvenience for the subject and and reduce the cost of it to a manageable level, we wind up picking times to take blood and to look at elevation of those enzymes, and frequently it's a day after dosing. Um, and so you know, we know that a day after taking sulforaphane, we see these enzymes elevated and um and and also I can't remember uh two or three days has been a time point that that we've looked at specifically, but um but others have, I think, in the clinic.

Yeah, cool. Um, there's someone asking in the chat, Krista Bluff, is there any research around toxic metals and increased detoxification with sulforaphane? So we mentioned some of these carcinogens, but has there been any evidence on males? Um, there's been some uh I'm I'm not I mean I'd have to go and dig those dig those papers out uh for you, Krista, um because I'm not I'm not uh intimately familiar with them, and we we haven't we didn't do them. Um, but since you mentioned, so the answer is yes, and uh I'll try to find you those those references. Um, but that brings up the question of pesticides and other toxins. You know, we we've talked about air pollutants and we've talked about a lot of disease states and protection against cancer and so on and so forth, but others a number of years ago especially have looked at things like paraquat toxicity um and uh there are a number of other pesticides I can't at the moment remember which ones they are. Right, people wrote known, I think, is one. Yeah, people have looked at the ability of sulforaphane to um detoxify them or to enhance the elimination of them. So and certainly we've done—my colleague Tom Kensler and and that whole team has—I mean, they started out in China in these China studies looking at aflatoxin, which um it's different than metals and it's different than pesticides, but it is a potent toxin and carcinogen that is actually present in peanuts and corn in the part of China where we were working and clearly, and this is this is sort of a model for the metal and the pesticide uh detoxification, clearly aflatoxin is converted to a derivative bound to compounds which allow it to be more readily excreted in the urine. So this is something that uh is this this is what we call detoxication or detoxification um and and indeed it's pretty widespread um because so this is probably involved in a subsequent question, but a lot of this is because of the up regulation of glutathione. Glutathione is the body's most um most predominant detoxification mechanism is present at very high levels in in things like the macula of the eye, the back of the eye um in the retina um and it is it's a tripeptide, meaning it's made up of only three amino acids, and it is a very potent antioxidant that is endogenous—it's part of your body—but what sulforaphane does is it cranks up the enzymes that are responsible for synthesizing or re-synthesizing glutathione, and so it makes more glutathione available, and once glutathione is sacrificed and oxidized, it remakes it. Um, and so that's I I mean it's a long way—oh my, quest—all my answers are long ways of answering simple questions, I guess, but that's a way of saying that's sort of where sulforaphane comes into that detoxification pathway, one of one of many ways, but it's the probably one of the most important ways.

Yeah, we are going to talk a little bit more about glutathione—another question—but I just want to ask you um is that is specifically the you know, there there has been clinical studies that it increase increases glutathione in the plasma and in the brain. I don't remember how far out those clinical studies went, but you as you were saying previously with the air pollution studies that you had been collaborated with um in your colleagues in China um the the the activation of the NRF2 system did not stop as long as you were continually taking the broccoli sprout extract, right? So the glutathione levels would keep going up if you were—it's not something that just goes away over time, right?

Well, they won't they won't keep going up to you know forever because I mean they'll still keep that continue, right?

Exactly. Yeah. So if you if you insult your body with a toxin that is detoxified by glutathione, um yes, there'll be a dip in glutathione levels. What actually happens is the reduced form of glutathione turns into the oxidized form, and then the reduced form glutathione is regenerated. So that cycling happens more efficiently, and indeed the levels—overall levels of glutathione—are somewhat elevated. Reading questions as they come in because maybe I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna—there's a cancer question—but um I'm gonna sort of rearrange these two because it's the next question is a glutathione related question, and then we'll kind of go back to the cancer one if that's okay. So the the next related question was um submitted says on the Kevin Rose podcast uh Rhonda Patrick mentioned that broccoli sprouts increase the production of glutathione in the brain, so I was wondering what your thoughts are on continuous supplementation. If taken long term, would the brain stop producing it naturally? Um, so for people for reference that aren't familiar, the the clinical study that I refer to on Kevin's podcast, the Kevin Rose show, was in 2018 and published in 2018, and they found that about 17.7 milligrams of sulforaphane per day for one week increased blood glutathione levels, and this correlated with an increased glutathione in certain brain regions. Um, and these weren't healthy people, so uh you know, as Judd mentioned, glutathione is one of the main body's major antioxidant system, so um I guess you kind of answered that already, but maybe you want to if there's any concluding thoughts you want to give.

Yeah, yeah, so I kind of did answer that um just now and and actually I think I was a co-author of that study you're referring to if it's the one by um Tom Sedleck.

That's right. Yeah, shame on me.

No, no, no, that's okay. I they did they did the heavy work uh on the study, I didn't, but but that so indeed with healthy people they they showed what you said, and uh so I think um there's the brain won't stop producing glutathione naturally, there's no question about that. Um, and glutathione production—what about during age—the aging process? It declines. It declines naturally with age, and in fact starting as early as in your 20s.

So Rhonda, you're in the downhill slope already.

Uh, I'm way down. I'm way down. So um you know, supplementing with sulforaphane I think uh apparently helps to restore glutathione back to normal or young healthy levels, and I think some animal studies um by that same group have shown the brain—I mean, that how how freaking cool is that? I mean, I've seen studies—I I was just I just—it was a small clinical study, you know, but I was just blown away that you you guys showed that it increased levels in the brain, so um I think it is pretty freaking cool and and and I think I think also the the the the study that you're referring to or or a related study by uh Sedlak and Saw and and others in radiology at Hopkins um showed that they also showed inp in people um they were able to show um to to localize that that enhanced um glutathione by functional MRI um or or uh yeah, so so I mean the imaging um just sort of—it's not icing on the cake, it's the future, and I mean I think we're gonna see—I hope we're gonna see a lot more functional MRI type studies where people say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see this and that in the blood, I see this and that in the urine, um you know, I see conversion, I see these whether it's drugs or phytochemicals, I see these effects in blood, but we don't really care that much about blood except as an index or a marker. What we care about is is it doing something in the brain or the muscles or you know whatever, and so these now with higher resolution MRI um people are able to show these changes, and it's it's it's pretty cool. If I had if I was reborn and rebranded as a scientist um I I'd want to be a microbiome specialist, but I'm way past that, but I think I'd also want to be a functional MRI person because that's going to be very cool as we go forward. All right, let's move on to the next question, which was related to cancer. The question was, are there any studies that that you know of that would suggest broccoli sprouts would be beneficial for a person who has already been diagnosed with cancer? If so, which cancers?

Yeah, um so I've got to repeat the admonition—caution here—I'm not a physician, I'm not your physician, and I don't give medical advice. I would in that instance I would certainly eat a vegetable based diet—a whole food vegetable based diet. There are certainly clinical studies suggesting that there may be cancer therapeutic effects, but those studies are all in progress, and I I don't think there's there is not scientific consensus that um sulforaphane is a cancer therapy or therapeutic. Certainly um so it will be irresponsible to suggest that. My bias is that I certainly think that it is valuable in a cancer preventive lifestyle—trying to prevent cancers from starting. So if you're diagnosed with cancer, especially if it's metastasized, it may actually not be wise to take sulforaphane or to supplement or to to go heavy on on broccoli. We just honestly we just don't know enough. We do know that up regulating NRF2 protects protects cells, and when you think about it, metastasized cancers—what's happening there? Those cells are growing faster than the rest of the cells around them—the rest of the rest of the body for that matter—if you're an adult, they're growing fast, they're producing the products of respiration and oxidation, their mitochondria are cranking away. So if you support their mitochondria and enhance their ability to enhance their ability to detoxify things including including perhaps cancer drugs, this may be a slippery slope. We we just don't know enough, and and there are some animal model studies in which NRF2 is is genetically upregulated or knocked out, and I think those studies—the results of those studies—suggest that caution is is advised in cases where people have been diagnosed with cancer. Hopefully a lot more to come on that from studies that are underway and in progress in various parts of the world. And just to add on as a comment, you know, speaking to prevention, I know there's been there's some of the pre-clinical evidence that really excited me was um there was a rat study, and I forget the group that published a study, but the rats were given sulforaphane—they were given it before they were given a chemical that causes bladder cancer—and the other group of rats were just given the chemical that causes bladder cancer, and the rats that were given the dose of the sulforaphane um did not develop bladder cancer, and one and if they did, the tumors were much much smaller in size. So again, a preventative, you know, just more evidence that the preventative approach um seems to be stronger. There's also been the clinical evidence um it seems as though and you're and you know better about this uh Judd about you know the the tissues that sulforaphane may accumulate in more you know the bladder, prostate, breast uh versus other tissues or lungs. You know, I don't even know if we know all the differences um but the prostate seems to be one that at least clinically there's been a few studies showing that sulforaphane—ranging in dose—and the higher the dose the more robust the effect, so 60 milligrams of sulforaphane a day was shown to slow the the biomarker prostate-specific antigen or PSA, which people with um you know early prostate cancer you know or risk of it or whatever have um and so slowing that by 86 is certainly you know a good thing.

Yeah, so so as a follow-up um shame on you—I think that first bladder cancer study you were talking about is also one that I was involved in. Beginning of the call I said I've been following your work because you're every study—so pretty much every study that I cite almost—Jed Fahey, Dr. Jennifer He is an author on, so I it's just you're so prolific I can't keep track of all your publications. Ted—mostly a minor player—so in this case a minor player—a group in New Zealand—Rex Monday and uh old old colleague actually—the the guy uh who with Paul Talalay they put sulforaphane on the map—Yueshen Zhang and I um did this did one of the one of the rat studies—I think maybe the one you're talking about um with bladder cancer—and absolutely this was uh this was benzoyl isothiocyanate as as I recall that we used her or or sinogram um alolized the thiocyanate um which come from radish or daikon um or mustard seed. So it's it's worth dwelling on this. When you think about what happens with sulforaphane, which most of you I don't know most of you don't uh I do probably too much to my detriment, but what happened—you ingest it, you take it—the body sees it, your cells of your body see it, they actually take it in very rapidly, they conjugate it with glutathione, they spit it back out—then where does it go? It goes from the blood to the urine—then where does the urine go? Unless you're on a Foley catheter and most of us that are reasonably healthy aren't uh um although I've had that fun experience before—so your bladder stores urine up—what's in that urine? Sulforaphane and its conjugates. Well, what is bladder cancer? Bladder cancer is the epithelial cells of the bladder—that most most of them—the tissue lining that bladder um muta you know a mutation forming and ultimately a tumor developing. So bladder cancer, we I still think is the ultimate target for isothiocyanates because you're bathing that tissue in these protective compounds essentially all the time. You know, you empty your bladder and immediately it starts filling back up again. Certainly the prostate cancer is is another example where mechanistically uh or I should say evidentiarily we have—there's evidence—the cause and effect is a little harder to see, but the bladder cancer model is just—it's just beautiful.

Rhonda, who's looking over your shoulder.

Oh, sorry, it's an unfair question because we can stop for another podcast. I I know you're not in your normal yeah kitchen spot.

I'm not. Um, so uh that was a great digression, Judd. Thank you so much um and thank you for all your contributions. Um, let's let's move on to the next question in this section, which is what are your thoughts if any on the potential on the potential benefits of sulforaphane or even other isothiocyanate activators of NRF2 for Alzheimer's disease? Um, there's been—just repeating—preclinical evidence that amyloid beta you know is decreased and that you know isothiocyanates and sulforaphane seem to have a positive effect on Alzheimer's disease.

Yeah, so this is a case where uh I I need to um give Dr. Patrick's listeners a a data dump of of papers—there's a huge amount of literature that you know would be fun to post links to—from animal models and and cell culture work. Let me start—actually I just found this or I just rediscovered this this morning—let me start by citing a clinical study and then go back to some of the um to some of the uh animal studies work. So as all of you know, animals—mostly rats and mice—are used to spare having to do some of these experiments on people, and so what usually happens—what frequently happens—maybe COVID-19 is going to be an exception—but what frequently happens is you have cell culture work—you have or in vitro work where you add chemicals to cultured human cells or animal cells in a petri plate—you get positive effect or not—then you move to trials where you like it or not sacrifice mice to the cause of science and use and if you're lucky enough and there's a rodent model of a disease um you get some results and then maybe you'll do a pre-clinical study to verify safety and then you'll go to a full-fledged clinical study to look at efficacy. So a lot of animal studies—I'll get back to a few citations—but there is one—now there's one posted clinical trial in China in um uh Zeixang University um and it will be looking at 160 160 subjects with early Alzheimer's, and they're going to be giving sulforaphane. It was posted for start date of sometime in May of 2020. I doubt that's happened because of COVID—most clinical trials are on pause. I do want to make—so you can find this on clinicaltrials.gov—that's a website that categorizes all of the US-approved clinical trials and many around the world. You can find it and read about it yourself. If you do that, be careful because you know I think this may well be a good and interesting study, but when you look at what they're giving—they're giving dietary supplement sulforaphane—and they say they're giving 2,550 milligrams once a day, and half of the people are getting placebo. Uh, I won't go into the math, but that amount is enough to kill a horse. Um, and so that's between 10 and 100—closer to a hundred—times what I would recommend giving to a person. So my only guess is that they're talking about the weight—2.5 grams or 2,500 milligrams—of a supplement tablet, and there's no information on this website that lets us know what they're actually giving patients or how much sulforaphane they'll actually be getting, but it uh you know it it may may well be a very interesting study, so we should keep our eyes on it. But to go back to the um to the animal work um with a former doctoral student, Anita Panjuani, we did a review a couple of years ago looking at actually all of the neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and Huntington's and the neurodevelopmental diseases like autism and looking at the evidence for sulforaphane and it's extensive, and you know things like HDAC inhibition—histone deacetylase—sorry—inhibition—enhancement of BDNF—brain-derived neurotrophic factor—um certainly uh reduction in amyloid beta and um the list the list really goes on and on—the things that other people have done—I have not been directly involved in that. Um, then there are a couple of reviews from even more recently from last year um which I'll I'll send to Rhonda um you know talking about for example uh sulforaphane protecting cultured neural cells from the toxicity of methylglyoxal, which is a precursor of AGEs or advanced glycation end products that are very clearly associated with Alzheimer's disease—models that show reduced neuronal cell death due to amyloid beta exposure due to activation of peroxisomes—these are things that that help detoxify—so they're very very long list and and just the reviews—the review articles—have pages and pages of evidence. So I will share some of that with Rhonda, but it's very encouraging. Um, ten years ago we were—Paul Talalay and I were invited to work with a group in the Netherlands that was going to be a big multi-center Alzheimer's prevention trial using sulforaphane—10 years ago—2011. Um, it was a multi-million dollar trial—funding never had—I don't know—funding started and stopped, but it never actually happened, and I'm not aware of other Western follow-up studies. As I say, I just found this study in China that is being conducted—I should say—by some researchers who have done some some good uh animal model work and and published a bit before—a lot before—so um I have high hopes for the China study, but we'll see. I'm definitely going to continue following that literature as well. I mean, I just keep seeing animal study after animal studies showing you know a positive effect on sulforaphane uh with sulforaphane on Alzheimer's disease. Um, so um let's move on to the next section—the sprouting logistics. The question is—many people ask this question in one form or another—can you clarify whether it's necessary to sprout broccoli seeds or if you can get sulforaphane by just blending and eating the seeds? You mentioned in the last episode with Dr. Fahey that you would try this. I'm curious why anyone would bother sprouting them if eating chopped up seeds works just as well.

Uh, yeah, it's a great question, and I noticed that question echoed a lot in your those that have been sent in by by um listeners. Um, you know, it's correct—you could get—you would get the highest levels of glucoraphanin from just eating broccoli seeds. Um, I think there's also a possibility of getting an overload of erucic acid, although you know people do supplement with omega-9 fatty acids, which is what a arusic acid is, um but they're certainly—we could have a whole—just maybe we should have a whole discussion of erucic acid—so you would get a lot of that. So broccoli seeds are about a third fat or oils, and they're very rich in erucic acid. Um, secondly, they taste awful. Um, some may disagree—some people may be less sensitive to them—but if you just grind up broccoli seeds and eat them, they don't taste they don't taste very good. And in fact, when Paul Talalay and I did our first publication on uh broccoli sprouts, we very consciously—I mean, we we knew that it was broccoli seeds which had the very highest levels of glucoraphanin, and they declined as you sprouted those seeds on a fresh weight basis until you know they plateaued for a couple of weeks—very low—and then they started to climb again when the broccoli plants started to make flowers and seeds. Um, and we very consciously decided to try to promote broccoli sprouts—first of all, because we knew that nobody ate broccoli seeds or sprouts at that time—second of all, because broccoli sprouts were green, and at least some people like the taste of sprouts and eat them regularly—not very many—but I don't know of any culture or group or reports of people that eat broccoli seeds regularly, and I know there are no clinical trials on the use of them. That said, the broccoli sprout—broccoli supplements—sulforaphane rich or glucoraphanin rich supplements are generally made—I know that Brassica Protection Products makes theirs from seeds—but when you think about that—you boil seeds—you leave the fat fraction behind—and you just get the water-soluble glucoraphanin and out—and then they they dry it down in various ways and and you have a very glucoraphanin rich supplement that doesn't have any fat in it. So um I know—short answer—you know, sure, you could eat broccoli seeds—you'd have to be careful of how much you ate and careful you didn't get too much erucic acid. Is is erucic acid um toxic? I mean, is it is it something that can have negative health effects? You know, I I'm really not at all the the an expert on erucic acid, but but certainly they're um it's been shown—I mean, I believe Lorenzo's oil is is is very rich in that—it's present in rapeseed oil um uh which certainly people uh people ate for uh many years—now they eat canola oil which has had the erucic acid removed—I mean, it's been associated with cardiac toxicities in some animal studies um but I I think the jury sort of is still out on the effects in

Humans, um, you know, can you—I think there's a chance you could get too much if you, if you really just started eating broccoli seeds, um, and I think sooner or later there'll be more studies done with them. Um, if you—there was a question earlier, uh, there's a question on the, on the your list of questions that was that actually itemized—I'm, I'm looking at that, I'm reading that now—that actually itemized the levels of erusic acid in broccoli seeds, sprouts or florets, sprouts and seeds, and they said that the levels are 0.8, 320, and 12,000 milligrams per 100 grams respectively. This is one of your listeners; I didn't—sorry, I didn't catch—two. So if you use those numbers as a guideline, um, they uh, again your listener suggests that, um, you would get a lot more erusic acid than is, is in the estimated, uh, or then this, and the, the consumption guidelines, um, and so you'd expect to exceed the calculated exposure limit for erusic acid. So I didn't dig into that and research, uh, their fa—your listeners' facts, but I'm assuming that they're correct, and yeah, I think you might get too much. Seems like the safe thing to do, at least in my opinion, would be to, to sprout and, um, because there's just more, more—there's been more evidence, and um, it would, it seems like it could be easy to take the wrong dose if you're grinding up seeds, and uh, so yeah, to sprout, to sprout or supplement. I mean, supplementing—supplementing—you have the added advantage of, um, you know, again a known quantity in, in the best of possible worlds. Yeah, you'll get a known quantity, and with lousy supplements you get less than a—no, you'll get less than that quantity that they say they have, um, because there's a, there are a lot of uh, snake oil salesmen selling crappy products out there. Yeah, and we'll get to that question in a minute.

So the next question is: Broccoli sprouts still the best way to get sulforaphane? How to maximize production in the sprouts? Freeze them? Steep them? Both? Let them sit after blending to allow myrosinase to react with the glucoraphanin. Um, yeah, so if you're home sprouting and you know what the glucoraphanin content of your seeds are, uh, that's great, but I've already warned you, you probably won't be able to know what the content is. Um, uh, it's very difficult to know. So if you're blending them up, you want to do that, you want to do that just before consuming them. Um, you can't blend up a concoction once a week and then put in the refrigerator and go in for a few gulps, you know, every now and then throughout the week. Um, excuse me. Um, if you, if you freeze them, um, that's fine. You can blend them and freeze them and then eat them immediately—eat that, that, that blend—date immediately after thawing. That's fine. Um, if you, you know, if you're intense—wait, wait—would you freeze the sprouts and then blend them immediately after and then consume them? Or, honestly, honestly, you could do either. I know you'll—the myrosinase will stay active, um, and start—it won't be reactive in the freezer, probably inactive, but it'll start working again when you, when you saw—when you saw that, that paste or whatever, whatever, you know, the concoction. Um, so you know, if you're intent on getting a specific—if you want to eat healthy and get some sulforaphane, then I think eating broccoli sprouts or smoothies made from them, or, or, um, you know, we've talked about some of the modes of delivery, is great. If you want to get a known dose of sulforaphane, um, then probably your best bet is to go to a high-quality supplement, um, but—and then there's the question of commercially grown sprouts, which we maybe can get into in another, in another sort of—this has to do with, um, cleanliness or sanitation of sprouts, but, um, so you know, there's, I think there's more chance of holding manufacturers accountable if you're taking a supplement, um, or there will be in the future, hopefully. If you're just, if you're buying seeds and making your own sprouts, unless you get them tested for glucoraphanin content, you're really not going to know, you're not going to know how active the salt—the myrosanes might be in those sprouts either. That said, I'm not trying to discourage anybody from doing it at all. I think it's a great idea, and it's cost-effective as well. For sure, people—some people can't afford supplements; it's very cost-effective, and if—I, I need to give a shout-out to my new friend, um, Doug Evans, who has this book that he just, he just wrote, and it's being translated in multiple languages, and it's, it's excellent. It's called the sp—it's called *The Sprout Book*, I think—got a blanking on the name of his book, but, um, he, you know, he advocates sprouts from a nutritional perspective, and he does—I think he has a chapter that talks about our work and that of others showing medicinal, uh, or preventive qualities of broccoli sprouts. He's very generous talking about our work, but his bottom line is it's cheap, it's, it's effective, it's highly nutritious. You get all the fiber, you know, you get the vegetable fiber if you eat the sprouts, which you don't get with supplements, um, and you know, you get vitamins and you get minerals and blah blah blah, but he makes a very good case, I think, for—and, and I think he—not to be disrespectful—but I think he lives on sprouts. I don't know if he eats anything but sprouts. So, so, but, but he has some good, he has some good methodology, and he talks about other kinds of sprouts, whereas in the guide that I, uh, helped put together for you, Rhonda, we, we just talked about broccoli sprouts. So yeah.

Um, a sort of related question is: people are sort of asking about the taste of broccoli sprouts. For example, you know, if you, if you do blend the sprouts together and drink it as I have done in the past, um, it's really not very pleasant tasting. I mean, it's got like a spicy taste. I like spicy, so, um, it's kind of got that wasabi kick, but, um, not a lot of people like that, and there are some, some parents that are trying to give sulforaphane or, and/or broccoli sprouts in some form or another to their children—autistic children—who seem to be very picky eaters most of the time. Um, is there any recommendations for like making it better tasting in a smoothie, something that's not gonna affect the bioavailability of sulforaphane? Yeah, so yeah, I think there are, and I think they come from our some of our clinical studies where we had to camouflage the taste or, you know, we had to, uh, incorporate broccoli sprouts, um, into something that was, uh, palatable for more people. Um, I, I saw the smoothie question, and my, my off-the-cuff response would be: hey, look at me, I come from a generation that didn't know smoothies were, um, were a food group, um, and you know, they weren't part of my staple diet. Most—a lot of people in the younger generations, I think, think smoothies are a man—a mandatory, uh, good food. Um, I do takes—I do eat—drink, uh, smoothies, uh, sometimes, and, um, it is a good, uh, it is—it presents a good option to incorporate the vegetable—broccoli sprouts—and to disguise it or camouflage it with some other tastes. Um, so a couple of ways to answer your question: when we, when we did our trials in China, we had to come up with disguising mechanisms, and first we used mango juice. This was a bunch of PhDs getting together and saying, "Oh, how does this taste? How does this taste?" And we picked mango juice. We were all Americans doing this test in America, and we're used to very sweet stuff in America. We took it to China, where they're not—where the, the palettes are not accustomed to such sweet tastes, and they didn't like it very much—our study subjects. So we then did some rather extensive studies with a flavor analysis company—sensory analysis company—in New Jersey. We actually published on this, and they helped us identify pineapple juice with a hint of lime juice in it, and you can even dilute it with—what we did with our next China study was to dilute it one to one with water, um, and it, and it turned out to be a really good disguiser of the taste or complimenter of the taste of broccoli sprouts, and it's sort of, it's—it takes your taste buds in your mind away from the taste, which a lot of people don't find very pleasant. In terms of the autism part of the question, um, in, in a number of the clinical trials we've done on autism, we, we of course had to use, um, we didn't give them broccoli sprouts; that would have been way too difficult. You're right, a lot of kids with autism—people with autism—have very, very rigid food preferences and sometimes very narrow. But what we did is give them supplements with a calibrated amount of sulforaphane, and then we gave each of the parents, um, just a five-dollar Amazon hand pill crusher, so they could crush the pill and add it to whatever the favorite food of that child was. In the case of the studies we did, um, so yeah, they wound up camouflaging both taste and texture. That's a good idea. Yeah, yeah.

Um, okay, so let's move on to the next question, and the question has to do with a recent study that, uh, claimed microwaving—cook—microwave—microwaving broccoli was able to increase levels of sulforaphane in the broccoli. Yeah, what are your thoughts on that study, Rhonda? I don't like being negative about other people's studies, but I don't like it. Um, so respectfully, um, you know, I think they said a number of things that were, that are misleading—maybe not, maybe not wrong, but, but they sort of get you down the wrong garden path to truth. Um, so first of all, when you harvest broccoli sprouts or broccoli, you—or a farmer—they don't have any sulforaphane in them. They don't have any free sulforaphane; it's all glucoraphanin, which is the precursor of sulforaphane. Myrosinase converts one to the other; happens when you start chewing it, happens in your gut. We've talked about that. Microwaving is merely a gentle method by which one cooks, and you can [Music] you can try to minimize denaturing or destruction of myrosinase with microwaving, and, and there's evidence that there's, you know, you may not completely wipe out the myrosinase if you don't get the internal temperature of the food product up above 70 or 80 degrees centigrade—Celsius. Microwaving also gives you minimal leakage of, uh, plant juice. So you know, when you steam the hell out of something or boil a vegetable, you know, most of the goodies come out in the wash; they come out in the pot liquor, right? So, so microwaving is useful there, but they state—don't have it in front of me—they state something like, like, "increase the levels of sulforaphane in broccoli." You do not increase the levels of either sulforaphane or glucoraphanin by a cooking method whatsoever. You may enhance it—you may—its destruction—you may—its loss or limit its loss, but the other thing is they have a couple of figures in that paper that, um, suggest—and you know, I should talk to the authors perhaps and take my beef to them—but they suggest that the controls have far less glucoraphanin in, um, in them than the treatments—the different microwave times—that can't, that can't be so. It's impossible. Um, I promise you that you don't create glucoraphanin out of whole cloth; you don't make—you don't magically create it. Um, so, so I'm not very—there's enough that worries me about that paper that I would sort of steer clear of it and just say, yeah, indeed, microwaving—if you're going to cook broccoli—microwaving is probably the best way to do it—minimal microwaving—make it nice and a little tender and soft, and, and minimize the leakage of, of compounds into the pot liquor, or else incorporate that into whatever you're eating, and that's the way I make broccoli: you know, rinse it, put it in a Corning dish, put in the microwave until it just gets a little less crunchy, and, and eat it, and there's basically nothing in the bottom, and I put lemon juice on it. Um, I do the same thing—I microwaved my broccoli, but I put mustard seed powder, and just, just a, an FYI for, for everyone viewing right now and/or listening, um, when that paper came out, the first thing I did was email Jen; I was like, uh, "What do you think of this paper?" What did I say? I forgot. Oh, you weren't—you were probably a less PC about it to me, but, um, thanks for your expert opinion on that. Um, I think that, that, that that could be—that is a misleading study.

The next—the last question in this section has to do with storing broccoli sprouts. So once they're grown in a big batch, um, if you grow them in a big batch—sorry—what's the best way to store them? In the freezer? The refrigerator? How long can they be frozen, or how long can they be refrigerated and still be potent? Um, good question. Um, you grow them—how do you harvest them? Harvesting is taking the jar—this jar has water, but this is one of my sprouting jars—you take this jar and you put it in the refrigerator. What does that do? It slows the growth rate of the sprouts down to a very, very slow crawl, so they don't, they don't increase in size very much. Um, I, I—you would leave them in the refrigerator—I'd leave them in the refrigerator for a short time—a few days—two or three days only—because after that time there's more and more risk that whatever bacteria are associated with those sprouts when you grow them are going to start to proliferate. They get sort of rank and gunge after, you know, certainly a week in the refrigerator, um, in my experience, and you've certainly seen that if you've bought sprouts in the grocery store; they get, um, you know, sometimes half of the, or three-quarters of the sprouts, and the sprout—the little tiny sprout part—of a supermarket are rank, and I wouldn't want to touch them. Um, they just spoil very quickly. If you're going to keep them for a long time and you make a large batch, by far the easiest way to, to preserve them, I think, is to just spread them out on a cookie tray or a, you know, a baking tin, put wax paper on it if you want, and quick-freeze them, and then when you quick-freeze them, you can bundle them and put them in a bag or a container, and, and then you can keep them for, you know, weeks or even months. Um, myrosinase will remain active. Um, I mean, we haven't done kill curves to see how many weeks of freezing broccoli sprouts in a home freezer will work, but home freezers do have a freeze-thaw or a defrost cycle, and that may actually allow the sprouts to keep on sort of thawing a little bit, and myrosinase may activate, and then you may sort of use it up—to be sort of, uh, the 30,000-foot view of what might happen there. So I wouldn't keep them for more than a month or two in the freezer, but yeah, really great, really great suggestions, Chad. Um, cool. So let's move on to some of the, the questions relating to the alternatives to broccoli sprouting. So the first question is: in previous discussions around sulforaphane and broccoli sprouts, moringa has come up—been mentioned to have similar benefits. This person says that their family has six moringa trees in Mexico, and they consume large handfuls of moringa leaves daily in their smoothie. Is there any research to indicate that the most bioavailable way to consume moringa—for example, the leaves, dried and powdered, frozen leaves, etc.? Yeah, um, I, I was glad to see that question, and I saw someone else made some comment about that picture of you, you and me and your podcast—you—one of us was holding a bag of, uh, moringa seeds, and they were, they were right; that's—we had been talking about it, um, as you put your coat on to leave. Um, that was—God, that was forever ago—three, three years ago? Four, four? Yeah, that was when I was pregnant but didn't tell anyone—no one knew I was pregnant with my son. Anyways, I, I remember learning of that when we met you in San Diego, um, and, um, so I, I was glad to see the question because, indeed, moringa leaf powder is sort of my go-to. I am on the scientific advisory board of Cooley—Cooley—which makes moringa leaf powder, so I've got a, I've got a free supply of moringa leaf powder from them, but, but it also means that I know a good bit now about the quality and the supply chain of dried moringa leaves. They're, you know, if you live in the tropics, they're ideal, um, because you can grow the trees anywhere. Uh, if you don't live in the tropics, fresh leaves are not nearly as good; they don't, they don't freeze and, and travel very—or they don't refrigerate and travel very well at all. So dried powdered leaves are great, which is why a number of companies have been able to make a business of selling dried powdered leaves in this country. We did a few papers—we've done a number of papers on moringa—we never had any funding for it, really, but, um, or not any to speak of, because this is not a tropical country, and the funding agencies aren't as interested in it. But one of the things we did is, is experimented with moringa teas and found that both hot and cold teas are, are, you know, are great, and it sort of modifies that sharp taste of the moringa leaf powder. In terms of efficacy, the isothiocyanate from moringa—it's called—it's called meringue-in, and there is a long scientific name, I won't bore you with—but in many assays it's even better than sulforaphane, and in others it's not as good, you know, it depends on the assay and, and so on. But because of that, I am very bullish about, uh, moringa's possibilities. Um, on the other hand, because it has not been nearly as heavily researched, you know, there's far less we can say about it from a clinical perspective. But—and the person who asked this question would appreciate this—it's been grown and eaten—moringa leaves have been grown and eaten for centuries—literally—by populations in the tropics around the world very safely. So the safety of moringa leaf powder or then moringa leaves is, is absolutely well documented. There aren't many clinical studies, uh, for specific indications, but they're coming because the interest has really grown in them. So I do use moringa leaf powder, make moringa tea all the time, and, um, um, I recommend it. I think there was—I copied down the, the, the, um, uh, question that was one of the questions that was asked about moringa, and that person said they've been cold-brewing one teaspoon of powder in one cup of water for 30 minutes to great effect. Um, "I feel amazing after taking it." Um, we are working—I should use that as a launching point—say, we are working on that, that sort of comment—"I feel amazing after taking it"—that's obviously an anecdote. I appreciate it, and I see it all the time. We're, we're trying with some clinical studies we're putting together now to, um, to better document those sorts of statements—you know, "I feel amazing, and I have way more energy"—are the ones I hear all the time. Um, so we're going to be trying to document those anecdotes, uh, that are attributed to both broccoli sprouts and supplements and moringa with some, some hard, hard evidence. Um, so anyway, yeah, they're safe to eat and good for you, and I'd encourage their use. But two, two comments, Jed. Um, one—just my own anecdote—I've been putting moringa powder from Cooley in my smoothies, and I also feel great, but I also feel great without the moringa powder in the smoothie. Um, so, but the interesting thing I have noticed with moringa powder—and this has been repeatable—I've been wearing a continuous glucose monitor for, oh, about three years now, and, um, the hardcore—hardcore—so hardcore, you have no idea. Yeah, but my, my typical smoothie is, is some—a little bit of kale and, uh, blueberries, avocado, and collagen powder, and adding the moringa powder in there—the moringa powder—the blueberries—it doesn't really raise my glucose levels much. The smoothie itself, without the moringa powder, you know, brings me to about postprandial glucose like 105, and the moringa powder consistently lowers that by, I don't know, seven to ten units. Don't have any idea what's going on mechanistically; I'm sure someone's going to study it, and there's been some interesting research on type 2 diabetes, and I don't want to go there because we have to get to safety, which is a really important chunk of this, um, Q&A, but I thought that was an interesting anecdote.

The second comment is: there was a live question—sorry. Um, go ahead. Absolutely. So you can't say something like that and not have me interrupt and say, um, yeah. So the biggest medical indication for moringa leaf powder is going to be—is, I think—diabetes, and that has—no, no, no—that is under active investigation—blood glucose control. No, no. We have a review that shows, uh, there were six—not all good studies at all—and they were all tiny—showing an effect of moringa—moringa leaves or wearing leaf powder. We can talk about that another time. I've even talked about it on a podcast—my N was, you know, actually probably real—very interesting. Now if all—if all 100 million of your viewers are wearing glucose—glucose monitors, we can put them together and have a study. Someone was asking in the chat, and a lot of people were asking to address this question: Dr. Greger from NutritionFacts.org, I guess allegedly mentioned something about not eating moringa leaves, and they didn't—he didn't say why; he didn't give any evidence at all. Do you have any idea why you would say that? That was a question that just popped up in the chat. So the only, the only answer I can give you would be nasty, and I, I refuse—I refuse—I refuse to pay. So yeah, I don't have—I don't—I don't have any idea why he might say that except for the fact maybe that the, the, the database—he doesn't have a clue. I don't know. So well, I, I just don't want to say anything, uh, he's, he's done a decent job of translating some of our work to, to, you know, in his podcast, but, um, uh, I, I don't know. Sorry, I have no idea either. So we, we can both look into it and get back to that listener maybe, but all right. The next question, which I'm sure a lot of people are waiting to hear the answer to—that I've seen this question many, many times—and the question is: what brands of sulforaphane supplements do you consider reliable?

Okay, the story there requires—again, I've given it to you—my disclosure: I started a company with, uh, my mentor and his son, and the company's still being run—Nebraska Protection Products—but—and they make broccoli—broccoli seed extracts that go into a variety of supplements. Um, I know that, and I also—based on my, you know, grandfatherly love of the company, which, um, you know, I'm trying to help do good things now that I've retired—um, I know that, um, the vendors or the supplement makers that they sell their stuff to, by and large, do a good job and make good products, and my lab, before I retired, has tested many of those products and found that, you know, if they say they have X milligrams of glucoraphanin in their product, yeah, they've got at least that in there, and so they're good supplements. As I mentioned, there are a lot of supplements that are pure crap that don't have what they say they have. Unfortunately, I'm—well, I'm not aware of, of any of those that are—well, I shouldn't say that—I am aware of some of them that are widely sold and, and probably people are taking, but I can—so I've commented on brands that I would know that I know and that I would trust on our website—www.humanprotectioncenter.org—they're in the FAQs of that website, and you know, specifically, and I can provide links, but they're easy to find. I know that Crucera, SGS by Thorne, is good—has what it says it has—Oncoplex, which is made by a company called Zymogen; AvmaCall, which is made by Nutramax; Swanson has a Vision Defense product that's decent; Orthomolecular has something called Mitocore; Max International has something called Max and Fuse, which is a drink, I believe—the, um, uh, yeah, it is. So I mean, these are, these are mostly gel caps, uh, tablet—gel—the first…

Two that I mentioned are gel caps; the AVMA call is a tablet. Uh, Vision Defense, I can't remember, but it's it's a supplement for eye health, so it's got other things in it. Um, so these are all good. I'm not endorsing them in the sense that, you know, I'm not associated with any of those companies, but I've I've talked to some of them, I've used some of their products, and clinical studies that we've published or that we're on, getting ready to publish. Um, I would stick with I would stick with a supplement that someone like me says decent things about, and I only say that because if you take some of the shoddy supplements, um, you you may wind up just making expensive urine; and and meaning, you know, you'll you'll spend 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 dollars for a bottle, and uh, yeah, you'll you'll you'll not get the benefits you you that that you hope for.

Just to follow up on that, I know of the supplements that you mentioned that Ave McCall has stabilized sulforaphane in it. Um, do any of the other supplements—are they just all glucoraphanin? No, it doesn't actually—that's not that's not correct. Right. Right. So, Ab McCall has glucoraphanin in it and it has myrosinase. Um, I think all of those companies are going to move towards adding myrosinase to their to their mixes, but I, of course, don't know that. Um, you know, I think they're all decent products, and and we've done trials with uh, and with Thorns Crucera, with Zymogens on complex, with Nutrimax, is that McCall? Some of the there are there are a lot of clinical stuff—a number of clinical studies that are going to be coming out or or are in press using Ab McCall with autism and schizophrenia. Um, but it's not to say that those are are the best supplements; they I think they're decent supplements, and they have active myrosinase. That's true. I think um, getting, you know, that we talked about this when we talked about dosing, but we probably didn't talk about it enough—your your listeners should know that um, you know, if you're counting on your guts myrasin—your intestinal tracts myrosinase—to do all of the conversion for a supplement, you're probably going to take a a higher level of glucoraphanin; and if you're if you're getting a product that has myrosinase in it, you don't need as much glucoraphanin because some of that conversion is theoretically going to happen.

Based on what you've provided in the supplement tablet, if you were supplementing with sulforaphane, and I know there were a number of questions about this with stabilized sulforaphane, so let me jump ahead to that. Like, Prostatitis Prostate has stabilized sulforaphane. Prostate is the only product that I know that reliably has that—what they say they have um, of sulforaphane—the amount they say they have, and it is stable. Um, but it's a um, it's a European product; it's a fringe product. Um, I think uh, I think it's fair to say that um, it's difficult—it's very difficult, in fact—to get it in this country, um, to buy it, um, and you know, because it is um, a European product, our F—it doesn't fall under the purview of our FDA. So, you know, you can say all the nasty stuff you want about our regulators and about our FDA, and there are plenty of negative things that have been said about them, but they do have some oversight capacity; and and although they don't do a good job of regulating based on the law that governs them, they don't do much in terms of regulating quality of dietary supplements. Um, at least they have um, they have some power over over the industry. So, um, you know, I wish there were there was more stabilized sulforaphane. Various people are working on it. Um, we've done some um, there's a there there's a company in England that has something that's uh, not a non-natural—a synthetic sulforaphane—that they've stabilized. We've actually done some experiments with that type of sulforaphane and found that there are some adverse side effects, so I certainly wouldn't recommend that.

So, yeah, it's a work in progress again; and and companies and universities are looking to ways to stabilize sulforaphane. It's a very unstable molecule inherently, which is one of the reasons why it does what it does in your body. So, um, it's difficult to deliver; it's difficult to stabilize, which is why the plant has, you know, focuses on storing glucoraphanin, and then it converts it when it needs it because, after all, it's a fight—it's a defensive plant chemical; and we um, when we take supplements, I think are well advised to take glucoraphanin and myrosinase unless and until someone does a better job of stabilizing sulforaphane itself. Great. Uh, thanks for all that really good advice and insight on the supplements. Um, we'll we'll post a list of those supplements um, in the in the show notes when we post it on the website, but I do want to move on to the safety question because the safety section uh, because it's pretty important section as well. The first question says it was submitted and said, "I watched this short video of Paul Saladino and Joe Rogan about eating veggies. It said that swimming in cold water has the same effect as eating sulforaphane. I think we need some expert opinion on this um, video." So, I'm just going to kind of I'm going to jump in here first on this and say, first of all, cold exposure has actually been shown to decrease the Nrf2 pathway in animal studies. Um, heat exposure, like from something like the sauna or even exercise, does increase the Nrf2 pathway, but not as—at least I don't think it does—so as robustly as sulforaphane; and similarly, sulforaphane can increase heat shock proteins, but heat increases heat shock proteins more robustly. In other words, there's a lot of common denominators between some of these, you know, what what I what we've talked about before as hormetic stressors, but they're possibly doing so in different tissues, and they're doing so at different levels; and honestly speaking of molecular pathways like Nrf2, it's, you know, while the discussion of Nrf2 or the effects of Nrf2 at the molecular level is very interesting and a fun part of the story, people can become very sidetracked; and I think that, you know, molecular biology is so complex, and if we're going to talk about it, we also have to zoom out. We can look at more concrete evidence—more real-world things—clinical endpoints, like uh, for example, sulforaphane can increase the the excretion of benzene by 60% after 24 hours, as we discussed. Um, it has effects on, you know, increasing glutathione and the plasma in the brain. Um, those sorts of, you know, positive therapeutic effects that have been seen in on people with autism; and it's also not clear that when we compare exercise to a phytochemical, whether or not we're even if we are activating similar genetic pathways such as Nrf2, it may be in very different tissues. Um, you know, the the activation levels could differ dramatically; and I really think I think saying something can break down to this intervention can magically replace this other intervention comes out, you know, it comes out when someone's trying to oversell a meat agenda.

With that said, Jed, do you have anything to say about cold shock being the same as or even sauna as being the same as taking sulforaphane? Yeah, I've got a ton. Um, let me speak even faster than before because I don't want us to run out of time without having a chance to weigh in on this. So, um, yeah, thank you, Rhonda. I did I you forced me to watch that that clip of uh, Saladino and Rogan. I would not have otherwise been watching it, but um, you know, my my reaction to it—I made a couple of notes on it—I don't swim in cold water. Many people don't and can't. I'd much rather eat good food—tasty food—then physically torture myself. I'm sure cold water immersion has benefits, but and it makes, as you said—you've said it very well—may coincidentally affect some biochemical pathways that sulforaphane does also, but I guarantee you that the multiplicity of effects of sulforaphane is not the same as as that. From a public health perspective, which is where I spent, you know, many years, um, and you may not like my saying this, Rhonda, because you're a fitness hacker—you wear a glucose monitor for, you know, three years in a row—but most of the world are not fitness hackers. Most of the world, you know, we're privileged here in this country, um, and we're not going to get into politics, but we are we have far more disposable income than the rest of the world. We're the richest country in the world, um, and we have gym memberships and saunas, and we can buy supplements, and we can get good food—you know, whole foods—and on and on and on. Um, we can take saunas, and we can dive into cold water baths, and we can, you know, go swimming. The rest of the world can't do that. Think about the tropics—where do you go to take a bracing cold water bath? Give me a freaking break. So, um, it's fine for people, you know, with disposable income, as we all everybody in this podcast, based on the fact that you have a computer, um, uh, we're very well off, but um, most of the topics—in a lot of the tropics—you know, net daily incomes a few dollars a day. They're lucky if they get water to drink, and don't talk about, you know, saunas and and hot water and cold water swims. So, the multiplicity of effects you touched—so end of that rant—but the the multiplicity of effects of sulforaphane that you mentioned are—I'm glad you brought up the fact that Nrf2 is not the only thing in the world. There's the anti-inflammatory effect of sulforaphane; there's a heat shock inducing effect; antibacterial effect; selective—there's an antivir—a direct antiviral effect; duh—what epic are we in now—the epoch of viral pandemics? Um, there are there are a number of very good papers showing an antiviral effect; there is immune boosting effect of sulforaphane; blood vessel dilation; cardiovascular disease and an ischemia reperfusion injury; ages advanced glycation end product detoxification; cell cycle arrest; apoptosis; neurodegeneration and neurodevelopmental protection, which we we touched on; promotion of mitochondrial function and integrity, so this is an energy play, and much more is being learned about that; brain health; cognition; stress resilience; it goes on and on and on, and the literature is robust, whereas it is not for either cold therapy or carnivorism. I I would like you mentioned, and then certainly in this clip they talked about the carnivore lifestyle. I actually made notes of a number of things I'd like to rebut or or comment on in terms of that part of the little clip I watched, if uh, if we have time for me to say a few things about it. I I'll let's let's talk a little bit about the the the effects that were that have been said by Saladino and others um, about sulforaphane being goitrogenic—in other words, having a negative effect on the thyroid. Um, I have some comments there, but can you go ahead and speak to that? Is sulforaphane—no, it's not—maybe not the verb in itself, but yeah, I said a certain isothiocyanate, if you want.

Yeah, so so it's it's not; and and nor are broccoli sprouts when eaten in moderation; nor are glucoraphanin-rich supplements. Mature broccoli—I mean, this is a this is a long story—but mature broccoli—broccoli produces different glucosinolates in different phases of its lifestyle, and market-stage broccoli—are heads of broccoli florets—do have things called indole glucosinolates. When they are acted on by myrosinase, they can form—they form unstable intermediates, and they can form compounds which can be toxic or goitrogenic and maybe even promote certain cancers depending upon if they're administered before or after a person gets exposed to the carcinogen. There's a lot of literature on cancer on based on animal studies on that, and I think the jury is still out on the beneficial effects of eating of those compounds, but the byproducts of indole glucosinolate metabolism are, among others, are things called indole-3-carbinol and diindolyl methane. It's really the subject, I think, for another uh, another discussion. Um, but in but I want to bring it back to broccoli sprouts and sulforaphane; and so we did this 12-week study in China that I told you about. Um, well, collaborators—I I'm not an author of this—co-author of this most recent study—but they took some of the they took the blood samples from this 12-week study where we gave them sulforaphane from broccoli sprouts and looked at indicators of thyroid thyroid status—hormone status—and autoimmune status and found absolutely no negative effects on thyroid function. So, that's three months of continuous ingestion of sulforaphane—that's definitely the longest effect—that's a study that's looked at thyroid-specific uh, effect—potential side effects—but this is the uh, first author's name is Chartoon Pecos, and it was 2019; and um, you know, this is this is someone whose specialty is thyroid uh, thyroid function. He's published uh, quite widely on it, and there was no effect. So, um, yeah.

Yeah, that was a great study. I mean, three months is a long time, and you certainly would think that after three months of taking continuous broccoli sprout extract every day, if there was going to be a negative effect on the thyroid, you would see it after three months. Um, moreover, that in 2018 there was a very long-term animal study in rats where there were two groups of rats—there were some rats that were that had hypothyroidism—drug-induced hypothyroidism—and then there was uh, an iodine-deficient group of rats; and they were they were given broccoli sprouts uh, freeze-dried or whatever, you know, broccoli sprout extract; and not only was there no harmful effect on the thyroid, even in iodine-deficient animals, um, in terms of their high thyroid homeostasis—so their TH—their their thyroid stimulating hormone—their T3, T4—were all the same in the animals—they're in the rats that had hypothyroidism—there was a beneficial effect from the broccoli sprouts in the thyroid gland—an antioxidant effect that was beneficial. So, to say that it's a goitrogen and gonna have negative effects on the on the thyroid—it's it's it's quite funny because you see this sort of echo chamber meme going around, particularly in groups that are anti-plant, um, and they just have it all wrong—a complete lack of understanding and and not even looking at actual good data. So, yeah. Well, you know, interestingly, this persists in the medical community too. So, in in one of our studies—the the autism study that we published in 2014—um, the there were questions from the IRB, which is made up of, among other things, physicians, um, about the potential for thyroid thyroid issues, and were we going to monitor thyroid chemistry; and and we did, and we had went through the same explanation sort of that I just did with you. Um, and so in that study—after the 12-week 12-week study with a follow-up um, or 16-week, I guess uh, I have to review my own papers—but um, daily consumption—this was with autistic kids—not perfectly uh, nor healthy subjects—but um, there were there were—we followed thyroid chemistry, and as I recall, there were a couple of times when thyroid function was flagged uh, and they wound up being in in placebos uh, those that are getting placebo. So, um, yeah, I mean, it's a concern that keeps on coming up, but with market-stage broccoli, it's it's a valid question to ask: Can you get too much market-sage broccoli? Perhaps. Yeah, yeah. But um, and there are areas where um, goiter is endemic, and those people eat a hell of a lot of cabbage. Um, right. There also are certain things like arsenic in the soils there, so the cabbage—right. Exactly. I mean, there's a lot of confounding factors, and cabbage is not broccoli sprouts. As you mentioned, there's hardly any glucoraphanin in cabbage. So, the the other question also was related to Saladino, and the question was: How do you respond to Paul Saladino's claims on um, Joe Rogan's podcast that the risks of sulforaphane outweigh the benefits? Okay, are we do we have from now till close till 11:30? Yeah, we've got we've got 14 minutes. Okay, so I have I made a short little list of nine points. Um, I don't want to go through them in detail, but let me let me just sort of tick them off, I guess. So, um, I think on multiple levels it's bad advice uh, to the the the carnivore lifestyle uh, is bad advice. Human beings didn't evolve as kind of as carnivores; we're omnivores—that means we eat a variety um, vegetable and and meat—um, and you know, this is this is a product of evolution. You can look at tooth and mouth and jaw structure and all sorts of other anatomical things; it's clear we didn't evolve to be carnivores. Um, and I think a self-anointed fitness uh, and or nutrition guru is not going to change the course of human evolution in uh, a generation; and you know, I call them sensationalist claims or not, but the bottom line is there is there's certain dogma—scientific dogma—and evolution uh, our evolution as human beings um, is something that they're not going to be able to rewrite. Um, so anyway, there's an abundance of p—so that this is I you and I agreed we weren't going to talk politics on this, but this is I feel like a politician—that was first point. Second point—there's uh, or number two—there's an abundance of peer-reviewed scientific literature showing diocesan fruits and vegetables and especially cruciferous vegetables are good. I'm not aware of credible long-term studies supporting carnivorous lifestyle uh, or the carnivore approach for humans. Three—the risks to eating everything um, and certainly for, you know, varieties—the spice of life—um, certainly uh, eating broccoli sprouts only to the exclusion of everything else would be terrible for you, so but that's not what anybody's advocating. Point four—studies of phytochemicals in isolation and in fight in food matrices and in limited combinations with other phytochemicals—vitamins, minerals, etc.—show almost without exception that yes, some things are frank toxins—think about nicotine—um, they're toxic at pretty much any level, and the toxicity goes up. Most most many phytochemicals—not most, but many phytochemicals—have a U-shaped effects curve—a hormesis or a hormetic effect—so spanning from no effect at very low concentrations to perhaps benefit or satisfying a requirement to harm or toxicity at the highest level. Um, you know, everything's toxic at some level—water is, sugar is, salt is, and sulforaphane is. Um, so I think the evidence is overwhelming though that that eating a lot of broccoli or broccoli sprouts is not is is not harmful for you. Um, there's we talked about the the extensive evidence of all sorts of pathways that are upregulated—protective pathways—um, it's thoroughly documented in the literature and the subject of many clinical studies—now good clinical studies and some bad ones. Number six—long-term consumption of sulforaphane-rich broccoli sprout beverages—we've talked about—have been shown not to have negative effects, including on thyroid function. Um, number seven—let me look at my notes—yeah, okay. Um, yeah, okay. Um, meat-only diets—think about it—do you get a lot of fiber from a meat-only diet? Duh, no. Um, what about fiber and colon cancer? Do you get a lot of vitamin C from a meat-only diet? No. Um, think about scurvy. Do you get too much iron on a meat-only diet and therefore more oxidative stress or at least unless you're unless you're uh, eating only grass-fed meats? Yeah. Are is a meat-only diet pro-inflammatory? Well, maybe so. There are a lot of negatives that I'm not the world's expert on; I'm not claiming to be, but I think on balance uh, they speak to extreme caution and endorsing that sort of lifestyle. Um, and then I just finally—one of your one of your members—one of your listeners—made a comment which I'd like to read, and I agree with it, and and it's it was Brad. Hi, Brad, if you're there, and you said, "Dr. Saladino made claims that are many claims that are not backed up by most of the scientific community or gold standard peer-reviewed studies. While someday some of his claims may be proven correct, he seems to have currently have very flimsy evidence. There are no long-lived cultures that live on a predominantly meat-based diet." Um, true. I think end of story. And we actually have time for some other questions, so that would be great. So, we could talk more about it, but I I think I think the point's been made by both you and me that this is not something that uh, people ought to flock to uh, in terms of this guy's this guy's advice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so we did talk about a little bit about uric acid already, and that because that was also a question with the with the safety, so I think there is like a rusic acid—yeah—brusic acid—yeah—excuse me—and there was a question about consuming too much—the upper limit uh, in terms of broccoli sprouts or supplements, maybe. So, I mean, in terms of an upper limit, yeah, we I think we touched we touched on it—I I think—and I think I said this in the in the sprouting PDF that I that we just did—I I I view food consumption as very much a matter of taste. I mean, you're not just choking down medicine, so people are going to limit their consumption of broccoli sprouts or market-stage broccoli, and I think as a from my observations, the practical limit is that people that do eat sprouts are not going to eat more than um, a couple of ounces—maybe three or four ounces at most—in a in a serving—in a meal—of broccoli sprouts. I'm not wild about the taste of them myself; I do eat them, um, but but uh, so I think there's an auto limitation to the sort of ceiling on that. Now, if if we knew that there was a variety of broccoli that was producing super extremely high glucoraphanin sprouts, you know, maybe we would want to talk about, okay, two ounces is plenty for a serving or in a day, but we're not at all there. So, in terms of eating, I think I think your body and your your taste buds and your your food preferences are gonna are gonna regulate that. I wish we could say the same thing about, you know, about sugar and uh, but unfortunately, the control mechanism seems to be a little bit bypassed there by uh, pure, you know, crystallized cane sugar, but um, beet sugar. Anyway, um, did that answer the question? I think yeah. Uh, Jed, this is I'm gonna go ahead and um, we're gonna wrap it up so we can have a little bit of a an outro here, and I just thank you so much for taking time to answer the questions uh, relating to broccoli sprouts and cruciferous vegetables—isothiocyanate—sulforaphane—really beneficial to me and to the community in general—for people—for members—for for the audience. Now, here, if you like this Q&A, I actually do one every month for Found My Fitness premium members. You can find out more about that at foundmyfitness.com/premium. Um, I also want to remind you guys—Jed had mentioned the 15-page sprouting guide that he helped put together. This guide covers how to safely sprout broccoli at home, the history of chemo protection, and practical tips to perfect your sprouting at home. You can find that at foundmyfitness.com/sprouting. It's fully illustrated; it's a great resource. Jed, for those that want to continue following your work, where can they find you today—as in on the website and perhaps on social media? Yeah, so today I might—you have the the the um, the the the handles—I'm on Twitter and um, not very regularly, and I don't answer questions very well, but um, I'll get better uh, now that I'm retired and theoretically have more time to do it. Um, so that's at @jedtasn. Um, and um, can you spell that? Yeah, so @jed—yeah, I think so. Um, so I I have not posted much, uh, but I will try to be more responsive to questions, and I'm you know, I'm sorry. Um, we have a website—the Chemo Protection Center—which is uh, www.chemoprotectioncenter.org—all one word—is it .com or .org? Sorry. .org. It's .org. Yeah. Um, and I have a personal website that I have not attended to in a long time because I've been working, and it just hasn't been the highest priority, but that's uh, jedfahy.com, I think. Um, and uh, yeah, and and if you contact Rhonda and say, you know, Jed hasn't been responsive, then she can email me, I suppose. Um, but my intent is to be much more responsive um, and I to keep these websites uh, to get these websites a bit more updated and user-friendly. I don't use Facebook, and I I really don't use LinkedIn very much either, although I'm there. All right, folks, so there you have it. You can find Jed on Twitter at @jedtasn, and you can find him on his website at chemoprotectioncenter.org or possibly...

Alternatively, jedfahy.com. Um, thanks so much, Jed, and everyone else.

And we'll talk to you next month. So thank you. Bye. Thank you. It's great being here.