Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D.: the performance and longevity paradox of IGF-1, ketogenic diets and genetics, the health benefits of sauna, NAD+, and more

**Peter Attia** (0:04)
Hey, everyone, welcome to The Peter Attia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Attia.
The Drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions I've gathered along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world. And this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics at peterattiamd.com.
Welcome to The Peter Attia Drive. In this episode, which I know is long anticipated, I spoke with Dr. Rhonda Patrick from Found My Fitness.
I suspect many of you listening to this know everything about Rhonda and have been fans of her for a really long period of time on the off chance there's anybody listening who doesn't know who Rhonda is. I suspect by the end of this discussion, you will also become a huge fan of hers and her podcast, which is exceptional. So I've known Rhonda for quite a while. And despite the fact that we both consider San Diego home, we've just been busy enough that we just haven't had a chance to sit down together in quite a while. So this discussion was kind of long overdue.
And it was sort of funny because as soon as Rhonda walked in, we just jumped right into a really interesting discussion. And then 10 minutes in, I thought, you know, we should probably start recording because this is interesting stuff. And so we did. And similarly, when the discussion finally ended, we sat around for another 20 minutes talking about a bunch of stuff that I found myself thinking, God, I wish we were still recording this because it's super interesting. So that's just basically to say, I suspect Rhonda and I will speak again at some point soon. So don't worry if all of your questions weren't answered here. The other thing about this podcast that was a ton of fun was that in the days leading up to it, she and I had emailed each other a few times back and forth some ideas of things we would talk about. And in the end, neither of us really had any notes sitting in front of us. We just sort of sat there and shot from the hip and didn't follow a script or anything like that and didn't even get to half the things that in our emails we had suggested we would talk about.
That said, all the stuff that we talked about is stuff that I think Rhonda brings a great deal of expertise to. So I don't recall the order, but I know that we certainly touched on IGF and the growth hormone, what I consider a little bit of a paradox, which is on the one hand, we have some evidence to suggest that elevated levels of IGF are bad and that fasting may act in part by reducing those levels. But at the other end of the discussion, you have some confounding and conflicting data around that. We also got into a great discussion about the PPAR enzyme, so PPAR alpha, PPAR gamma. One of the things that Rhonda does incredibly well on her podcast, and I would encourage those of you who find this episode interesting, who aren't familiar with her work, to go back and actually watch some of her stuff. Rhonda doesn't put out a lot of podcasts, but the reason for that is the amount of work she puts into them is enormous. So when she puts out a podcast on video, there's explanations, definitions and stuff scrolling across the screen. So it's unlike me, who's incredibly lazy and can't even stand to listen to a podcast after I record it, Rhonda is methodical in her ability to make that easier for the viewer. So you'll learn a lot about this stuff if you think we're going too quickly over it by probably going back to Rhonda's site.
We talk a lot about the possible genetic explanations for why some people do and don't respond particularly well to ketogenic diets. And of course, you can think of that in two ways. There's respond as far as the ability to make ketones, but then there's also these patients that I described seeing where you put them on a ketogenic diet and everything seems to go wrong, at least biochemically wrong. So that's a very interesting discussion.
In many ways, I think my favorite part of this discussion was the way it started, which was the first question I asked Rhonda, which was a random question, I think led to some interesting back and forth between us, which was effectively, what do you believe today that you didn't believe before and vice versa? And I always find that to be one of the most interesting ways to dive into a discussion with someone who's buried knee deep into science. Because if you're really thinking about science, you have to understand, of course, that virtually all facts have a half life and our knowledge is constantly evolving. In many ways, that's what makes the field so difficult to stay on top of, but at the same time so interesting. And so to me, one of the marks of a very thoughtful person is someone whose beliefs are flexible and who's willing to acknowledge that something that they believed was once true or not true can be flipped. And so I think Rhonda and I share that and I think it was actually really fun to see where her beliefs have changed over time. So with that said, I think the show notes for this particular episode are going to be very helpful and you can find those at peterattiamd.com forward slash podcast.