AMA #59: Inflammation: its impact on aging and disease risk, and how to identify, prevent, and reduce it

**Peter Attia** (0:10)
Hey, everyone, welcome to a sneak peek, Ask Me Anything or AMA episode of the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can access the AMA episodes in full, along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created. Or you can learn more now by going to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe. So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the Ask Me Anything episode.
Welcome to Ask Me Anything episode 59 I'm once again joined by my cohost, Nick Stenson. In today's episode, we cover a topic that we get asked about a lot, but have not really covered in much detail before. And that's the broad topic of inflammation.
Inflammation is a word, maybe a buzzword, and a topic that get thrown around so much. And there appears to be so much confusion about it that we thought it would make sense to gather every and all question you have posed on this topic and try to put together an episode that is all encompassing. So in this discussion, we of course define what inflammation is, the differences between acute and chronic inflammation, and how chronic inflammation is indeed connected to aging and age-related diseases. We speak about how inflammation is related specifically to obesity and metabolic health. And from there, we look at ways that folks can know if indeed they are suffering from chronic inflammation.
But we focus the majority of the conversation around what to do if you are experiencing chronic inflammation as determined by certain measures. We get into all facets of this, looking at food, inflammatory tests, elimination, diets, the role of exercise, sleep, and stress on inflammation, and even ask the question, are there any drugs or supplements that play a role here? If you're a subscriber and you want to watch the full video of this podcast, you can find it on the show notes page. And if you're not a subscriber, you can watch a sneak peek of the video on our YouTube page. So without further delay, I hope you enjoy AMA number 59

**Nick Stenson** (2:08)
Peter, welcome to another AMA, how you doing?

**Peter Attia** (2:15)
I'm doing especially good today, actually.

**Nick Stenson** (2:18)
Yeah, what's different about today than usual?

**Peter Attia** (2:21)
Just reflecting on 20 years almost since Napoleon Dynamite came out and just reflecting on what an important contribution that was to mankind.

**Nick Stenson** (2:32)
If you look back at what you learned in medical school compared to what Napoleon Dynamite taught you, which do you use more on a day-to-day basis?

**Peter Attia** (2:42)
It depends on the context, but in terms of referencing, probably Napoleon Dynamite.

**Nick Stenson** (2:48)
I wouldn't believe that.
Now, for today's AMA, we're talking about inflammation, and I'm trying to think it's been a bit since I watched Napoleon Dynamite. Does that get covered in Napoleon Dynamite?

**Peter Attia** (2:59)
I mean, I think Tina, the llama that he's got, is on a low FODMAP diet, if I recall, when he's slapping the food at her.
Also, I think the talons on those chickens were large, probably due to some of the inflammatory changes in the talons. I think indirectly there is a threat of inflammation and other very important ideas in Napoleon Dynamite.

**Nick Stenson** (3:25)
The Venn diagram of Napoleon Dynamite inflammation and what we're talking about today is quite big.

**Peter Attia** (3:30)
And I think you know this story. I've told it before, but Bob Montgomery, who is one of the legends in the field at transplant surgery, was the head of transplant surgery at Hopkins when I was there. And he was also a huge Napoleon Dynamite fan. So back in 2005, so this is like about a year after the movie came out, we still just couldn't get enough of it. This is back when you listen to CDs. So there was a Napoleon Dynamite CD soundtrack and it was great because it had like 45 tracks on it. So all the songs from the movies, but just as importantly, millions of little clips of funny actual sections of the movie. And surgeons often are listening to music in the OR, but we only listened to that CD.
So for an entire month, that CD never left the operating room and it was just on repeat. And God bless the nurses who didn't find it as funny as we did. That was like just probably a completely annoying thing, but we never stopped laughing at this thing. And I will say this, cause people often ask if I tell this story, did it compromise the outcomes? And I will say that there was a period of three days when we did 13 kidney transplants.