Transcription
Is there anything kind of like, I don't know, more fringe or speculative that you wouldn't like hang your hat on but you think is interesting or you use yourself?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, I also supplement. Okay, so let's now shift to my supplement. I take a lot more than five.
[laughter]
This is Should we Should we go there?
Sure.
Um, let's see the the biggest ones. So, I said the magnesium, I said multivitamin, vitamin D, omega-3, magnesium, and creatine, right?
Yeah.
And then from there, I also take ubiquinol.
Okay.
That would be the reduced form of CoQ10.
Which is notable cuz a lot of people will still buy CoQ10 thinking it's ubiquinol cuz when you Google it, it'll say that, but it doesn't mean that's what you're getting.
Right. It's It's more bioavailable. And um, I take that for mitochondrial health. And anyone that's on a statin should absolutely be taking ubiquinol because statins inhibit the mevalonate pathway, which not only is important for cholesterol production, HMG-CoA, you know, is inhibited and that's important for cholesterol production, but it's also inhibiting the pathway that is making CoQ10 in your body. So, very important, right? I don't take statins, but um, it's also been shown to be important for mitochondrial health and also some evidence with Parkinson's disease prevention as well. So, that's another reason I'm interested in it.
I think there's age-related decline in CoQ10 reduction to ubiquinol, too, that just like by the aging process and it might be wise and preventative to supplement with it.
It is because it is important for mitochondrial function. I don't want to like get into all the mechanisms, which I could. I love talking about, but it's like my grad school research there, but um, yeah, it's very important for mitochondrial health. We'll leave it at that. And which is insanely important for neurodegenerative disease risk, right? Declining mitochondria play a big role in increasing neurodegenerative disease risk.
Mhm.
The other supplements that I also take that I that are not as like like my top five, but I also think are very important. I take sulforaphane supplement, and I I say sulforaphane, but it's actually the precursor to sulforaphane called glucoraphanin along with the enzyme that converts glucoraphanin into sulforaphane cuz sulforaphane is so unstable. I take that. It's called Avmacol. It's one of It's one of the most evidence-based sulforaphane supplements out there. They have at least 12 publications on it. I don't have any affiliation with them, but there's a lot of scammy sulforaphane supplements out there. So, I take that because um, it's been shown It's one of them It's the most potent dietary activator of what's called the NRF2 pathway. Very important pathway for um inflammation, oxidation, and also detoxification. So, NRF2 is a master regulator of many, many different genes. It's called a transcription factor. But, it activates what's called phase two detoxification enzymes. So, this is something that gets [snorts] rid of any of these like toxins that we're exposed to. So, for example, plastic-associated chemicals like BPA, benzene that we're breathing in from air pollution, or wildfires, or God forbid smoking, you know. That is detoxified. That's been shown in human studies to literally like excretion goes up by 60% within 24 hours after supplementing with this glucoraphanin, which is a sulforaphane precursor. So, I [snorts] take that um for detoxification pathways and all the the benefits of activating NRF2 is also been shown in human studies to increase plasma glutathione and brain glutathione. That's the major antioxidant in the brain. So, brain aging, all those things are important. So, that's why I take that.
And then, I would say the one that I'm a little more experimental with of late is urolithin A. I had Previously, I I kind of like hung my hat up on it. I was like, "Ah, this is BS." So, urolithin A is something that's formed from a polyphenol precursor that is in pomegranate. And our gut microbiome can like digest this polyphenol from pomegranate and then form something called urolithin A. Urolithin A then is very beneficial for mitochondrial health. It activates a process called mitophagy. You may have heard of autophagy, which is the clearing away of gunk inside your cells, right? It's activated from fasting or intense exercise. Well, mitophagy is sort of a subset of autophagy and it's within the mitochondria. As we talked about, mitochondrial health is very important for brain health, it's important for muscular health. And our mitochondria accumulate damage over time. We don't have any like real repair processes like DNA repair. Like we have a mitochondrial genome, but there's no like DNA repair processes. The way our mitochondria repair themselves are by mitophagy is one of the ways. There's another way as well, but mitophagy is a big one. And so essentially damaged parts of mitochondria are cleared out, kind of like fissioned off, gone. Um, and then you have like a healthier mitochondria left. So, or in the case of a really damaged mitochondria, the whole mitochondria is cleared away. So, um, urolithin A has been shown to activate that that process very robustly, much like fasting can as well, very long fast. Um, and so, there've been some human studies looking at urolithin A supplementation and endurance performance. It seems to improve a variety of parameters of endurance performance. I supplemented with it years ago, didn't notice anything, but I wasn't really measuring anything at the time. And then I came across some like more recent evidence of these studies they were doing pomegranate juice, which is high in sugar, but like people were drinking 8 oz of pomegranate juice a day and exercising and they had like improved their VO2 max by like 17% more than just the exercise group alone without the pomegranate juice. And it's again down to the urolithin A production, which is kind of variable if you're just doing the pomegranate. So, that rekindled my interest in urolithin A and um, so I kind of want to experiment with that.
How long ago did you start it?
Um, 3 weeks.
Okay.
Yeah.
3 weeks ago.
So, so that's my new kind of thing that I've been experimenting with as well.