Anti-Aging Expert on How Missing This Vitamin Is As Bad As Smoking, and What You Should Know About Creatine!

**Rhonda Patrick** (0:00)
Why do people not know that vitamin D deficiency can increase dementia risk by 80%? Why do people not know that having a lack of this mineral is affecting their long-term risk of cancer? Why do people not know that having a low omega-3 index is as bad for you in terms of mortality as smoking? And as a scientist, I've seen firsthand that 70% of the way you're aging is actually due to your lifestyle. And all these things are so easy to do. So, for example, as we age, certain areas of the brain, which is involved in learning and memory, starts to shrink by about 1% to 2% per year. The good news is, studies show that people being part of an exercise protocol, not only did they not have their hippocampus shrink, it actually grew by 1% to 2%. And there's more. There are other things that don't even require as much effort as exercise, like supplements. And it's been shown study after study that if you take someone and you sleep deprive them for 21 hours and give them 25 to 30 grams of creatine, not only does it negate the cognitive deficits of sleep deprivation, it makes people function better than if they were well rested. And then there's magnesium. There have been studies showing that people with the highest magnesium levels have a 40% lower all-cause mortality and over 300 different enzymes in their body need it to help with short-term survival. And yet 50% of the population in the United States does not have adequate levels of magnesium. And there's still more. There's saunas, red light therapy, ketogenic diets, blueberries, electrolytes, and we can talk about all of them.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:23)
Please.

**Rhonda Patrick** (1:24)
Okay, so I've found when you go into this sauna, something happens. That's incredible. So.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:31)
Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning in to the show week after week. It means the world to all of us. And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about the show. Thank you.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick, you strike me as a fairly obsessed person. What is it you're obsessed about and why are you obsessed about it? Because I can see from speaking to you previously how passionate you are about the subjects we're going to talk about today. And so I was wondering what it is about these subjects that is driving you and what you're trying to accomplish.

**Rhonda Patrick** (2:41)
I've learned through my experience. So I have a PhD in Biomedical Science. I've done research on aging, on cancer, on metabolism, nutrition, neuroscience, a lot of different fields, very cross-disciplinary. And I've realized over the decades of doing research that there are many different small changes that can be made that have a really big impact on our health and what's called our health span. So this is essentially being disease-free throughout our life, being healthy, feeling good. And I'm sort of obsessed with trying to optimize that and find a protocol to optimize it and then share that information with the world. And it's funny because we live in a time now where we've got access to so much information, overwhelming amount of information. But the reality is, is that simple, important tools that people can do in their life right now to drastically improve the way they age are still not known to the general population. And so my mission is to get that knowledge to people so that they can make these simple changes and live healthier and feel better.

**Steven Bartlett** (3:50)
And what will be the impact on their lives if they understand that information and start to implement that information on a real sort of specific practical, in a real specific practical sense?

**Rhonda Patrick** (4:01)
Well, there are things that people are deficient in, for example, that they could simply take a supplement, vitamin D is a good example, that could affect their disease risk, their dementia risk. I mean, so you're talking about quality of life improvement right now and also later. So it affects mood, it affects depression, and it affects your neurodegenerative disease risk, like dementia and Alzheimer's disease. So there are low-hanging fruits, things that are simple, that you can just basically fill these gaps. And then there are things that are also a little more effortful, and this is where exercise comes in, where you put in this effort and it just, if you could pill up what exercise does in a pill, I mean, it would be the biggest blockbuster miracle drug out there. I mean, it'd blow a Zimbique out of the water. It'd be, I mean, just no comparison. So I think that, again, it's these little things that you can do that is going to help with depression, help with mood right now, make you feel better right now, give you more energy, help you be more focused, help you be more motivated, but also affect your long-term disease, Rick, so that when you're older in life, you're not demented and that affects you, it affects your family. So I think it's just an important, it's so important because there are easy things that can be done that people just don't know about.