#1054 - Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Rhonda Patrick (0:01)

My boy woke me up at like every hour. I'm hoping I don't have mommy brain.

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Boom, and we're live. The newly mommy, Dr. Rhonda Patrick. First of all, congratulations on making people.

Rhonda Patrick (0:12)

Thank you.

Joe Rogan (0:13)

You made your first person.

Rhonda Patrick (0:14)

Yeah, the cloning project was a success.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

We were talking before the show about what a strange biological shift happens in your mind.

And isn't it, it's amazing, isn't it? And not just your mind, right? Like your person.

Rhonda Patrick (0:26)

Absolutely. Yeah, it's completely amazing. And I had no idea that I would love being a mom so much. You know, I kind of waited till later in life to have a child.

And, you know, that was for a reason, because I was, you know, really driven and loved what I was doing and science. And I felt, you know, I didn't feel that calling to like, I've got to reproduce, I've got to reproduce. And then finally, I was like, well, if I don't reproduce now, I might not get a chance. So, you know, that sort of pressure kind of nudged me a little bit, I think.

But yeah, the whole process of getting pregnant and having this like, you know, person growing inside of me, just the whole thing was amazing. And then after having the baby, and he's like a person now, and he's four months old and developing this little personality, I'm like so amazed by how in love I am with him and how much I would do anything for him and how almost nothing really affects me as much, like stress of various things in life, you know. I just look at him and see him smile at me and do some little things that are uniquely him and the wonder and awe in his eyes, and it's just like gone. Like it's really amazing.

Joe Rogan (1:40)

Yeah, that's crazy. It changes your life. It changes who you are as a human being. And it changes it in a way that...

I have a lot of friends that are like, I don't want kids, I never wanted kids. I'm like, well, I kind of didn't really want kids either. You know, when I was 30, I was like, I don't want kids. But then once you have them, you realize like, oh, like, I was just sort of attached to this idea of living my life the way I was living it. And then I'm like, this is the way I like to live life. And then you have a kid, you're like, oh, no, I love this kid more than anything.

Like, so now my whole idea of what life is, it shifts into this new paradigm.

And also the thing, like, reproduce always weirds me out, because you're not, you're making people, you're not reproducing anything. You know, I mean, you're making people. That's a whole new person. You're not reproducing you.

Rhonda Patrick (2:34)

True. I mean, obviously, it is in a way, I mean, there's...

Joe Rogan (2:37)

It's definitely reproduction. It's the right way to say it.

Rhonda Patrick (2:39)

I mean, you're passing on a lot of the same variations and genes that you have. And you know, you're obviously, you know, there's similarities in the way they look to both you and your spouse. But yeah, it is a completely new person with a new personality.

But of course, all that is shaped a lot by your diet and exercise and all those things that you do, even, you know, aside from your actual genetics and passing on the sequence of DNA, like just, you know, things that you do in your lifestyle actually can affect, you know, the child's neurocognitive development and, you know, metabolism.

Joe Rogan (3:15)

Now, were you cognizant of that, or were you, obviously, you were very aware of that? But did you, what did you do to act on that, I should ask?

Rhonda Patrick (3:22)

Yeah, so, I mean, I did, I definitely became obsessed with trying to optimize everything I could, you know, because I'm a scientist and I can sort of sift through the literature, I think I, you can kind of get stuck in this loop where you want to, like, optimize everything and you can't have to, like, chill out a little bit. But you know, during pregnancy, I wanted to make sure, you know, all the micronutrients I was getting, you know, because they're so important for brain development, and like folate, magnesium, iron, you know, zinc, and then DHA, vitamin D, all these things were super important.

Actually with the DHA, I found out that taking, so DHA is the marine omega-3 fatty acid that's predominantly found in, like, microalgae for vegetarian sources, but in fish, fatty fish. Well, it turns out that the DHA that's in what's called phospholipid form, which is something that's found in the row of fish, so like fish eggs, it's also found in krill as well. And fish only have, like, a small percentage. So fish have DHA, like 1% of their DHA is in phospholipid form, whereas the row of the fish, anywhere between 40 to 70%, is in phospholipid form. And the thing that's really cool about this is that the phospholipid form, it's been shown when you take that orally, it stays, more of it ends up in a certain type of phospholipid form in the blood, that has been shown to get into the developing fetal brain ten times better than DHA in non-phospholipid form, free fatty acid form.