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Is the Free Radical Theory of Aging Wrong? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and there's Jerry, and we're all looking
0:16
Speaker 1: vibrant and healthy and just so alive and sexy. And
0:20
Speaker 1: that makes the stuff you should know. Jerry's coat is shining,
0:24
Speaker 1: it is. She's got that high pro glow, high pro glow.
0:29
Speaker 1: Do you remember that? I do? Uh? And you know
0:32
Speaker 1: we give our dogs the um this salmon juice that
0:37
Speaker 1: comes in a squirt bottle. Whoa, it's like, you know,
0:41
Speaker 1: like salmon skin oil, and that makes their coat shiny
0:45
Speaker 1: and it smells like salmon skin, which I love. That's cool. Uh.
0:49
Speaker 1: You me straight up cooks salmon with the skin on
0:52
Speaker 1: for momo, Like that's what she has has cooked food
0:55
Speaker 1: for dinners. Yeah, I mean I love salmon skin. It's
0:59
Speaker 1: the best thing ever. It's so good. I just love
1:02
Speaker 1: love um like raw salmon. Chuck, I like that too,
1:06
Speaker 1: Like it's smoked too. Sure, sure what else? Injectable salmon?
1:11
Speaker 1: Stick it in my neck? You go. You end up
1:15
Speaker 1: with kind of like a requiem for a dream thing
1:17
Speaker 1: going on. That's right. Uh, But you know this all
1:22
Speaker 1: dovetails and antioxidants. I think it does because I think
1:24
Speaker 1: if you eat a lot of raw salmon, especially good stuff,
1:28
Speaker 1: you know, nothing grown in a toxic sewage dump, you're
1:32
Speaker 1: gonna live a really, really long time. And we've known
1:36
Speaker 1: it for a very long time that if you eat
1:38
Speaker 1: healthy food, you're probably going to age a lot better
1:44
Speaker 1: or a lot more. You're going to stay a lot
1:46
Speaker 1: healthier as you age than say you would if you
1:49
Speaker 1: just ate chunk for the whole time. It seems like
1:50
Speaker 1: a no brainer. But along the way, a lot of
1:53
Speaker 1: people have stopped to ask exactly why that might be. UM,
1:57
Speaker 1: and we should say shout out to our book UM,
2:00
Speaker 1: which has an entire chapter, chapter eight, on aging. It's
2:04
Speaker 1: called Aging Colon Do We Gotta? And it's a pretty
2:07
Speaker 1: good one if I do say so. I think the
2:10
Speaker 1: first line of that chapter says, avoid sewer salmon. That's
2:15
Speaker 1: precisely right. I mean, that's just some of the best
2:17
Speaker 1: advice anyone could ever give anybody. It's a T shirt.
2:20
Speaker 1: So UM. A lot of people, like I was saying,
2:23
Speaker 1: have stopped and asked, like why, why, you know, why
2:25
Speaker 1: would food help you? And obviously we need food for fuel,
2:28
Speaker 1: But it turns out that, especially in the nineties, a
2:32
Speaker 1: lot of food kind of hit the scene. Well, the
2:34
Speaker 1: food was already there, but they were promoted a different
2:38
Speaker 1: way thanks to some some recent findings that decided that
2:43
Speaker 1: food that are high in antioxidants um would help you
2:47
Speaker 1: age a lot better, possibly prolong your life, and prevent
2:53
Speaker 1: certain kinds of age related diseases, everything from cancer to
2:56
Speaker 1: neuro degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, just from meeting the foods
3:01
Speaker 1: you ate, and it all seemed to have something to
3:04
Speaker 1: do with those antioxidants, and that concept took off like
3:07
Speaker 1: our rocket, and it's still around today. Actually. Yeah, and
3:11
Speaker 1: this is when listeners are saying, oh God, are Josh
3:15
Speaker 1: and Chuck gonna tell us now that science says antioxidants
3:18
Speaker 1: aren't good too? And we well, let's just hang on
3:23
Speaker 1: to that. You'll find out by the end of the episode. Yeah,
3:25
Speaker 1: that's the people to stick around. That's the big reveal.
3:28
Speaker 1: Let's give him some mcguffin's chuck. Uh. Yeah. Well, the
3:32
Speaker 1: point of the whole intro here, though, is that it
3:34
Speaker 1: was a big marketing blitz. Everything from blueberries to kale.
3:38
Speaker 1: I mean, good lord, we had kale rammed down our throat,
3:41
Speaker 1: like figuratively and literally for the past decade plus, um vitamins,
3:47
Speaker 1: multi vitamins, vitamin E, vitamin C, beta caroteen, just all
3:51
Speaker 1: of these superfoods, green tea of course, which we talked about.
3:56
Speaker 1: And we're not saying these things aren't good for you.
3:58
Speaker 1: These are all great, great things to eat, um, but
4:01
Speaker 1: they were being touted as being high in antioxidants and
4:05
Speaker 1: it will help you age and it will help you
4:08
Speaker 1: combat something that everyone just heard the words free radicals
4:12
Speaker 1: and and consumer said, well, I don't like the sound
4:15
Speaker 1: of those. Yeah, exact, let's let's let's kill them even
4:18
Speaker 1: though we don't understand them. Someone literally shoved kale down
4:23
Speaker 1: your throat once. Yeah, you've never gone to that restaurant.
4:28
Speaker 1: No kale shove kaloe me crazy? That explains a lot, yea,
4:33
Speaker 1: it's I mean, kale's fine, but kale chips. Don't eat
4:36
Speaker 1: more than like ten of them or you'll get sick
4:37
Speaker 1: to your stomach. Yeah, what mean? So um, the you
4:41
Speaker 1: hit upon this whole point. It's it's not so much
4:44
Speaker 1: that antioxidants are good for you, it's that free radicals
4:47
Speaker 1: are bad for you. That was the premise of this
4:49
Speaker 1: whole thing in the nineties. And this idea of free
4:53
Speaker 1: radicals is rooted in some really deep science and and
4:57
Speaker 1: had a lot of scientific backing for really long time.
5:01
Speaker 1: And I guess to kind of to get a little
5:04
Speaker 1: bit of this out there, like science way overshot itself.
5:11
Speaker 1: There was a really good, sensible hypothesis, and the scientific
5:14
Speaker 1: community ran with it, and then they started doing studies.
5:17
Speaker 1: And it wasn't entirely just the scientific community. Um, it
5:21
Speaker 1: was largely those same marketers who were making money off
5:24
Speaker 1: these super foods, you know that they could slap a
5:27
Speaker 1: label on there. Now. It just got overhyped before before
5:30
Speaker 1: the data was fully in. And my for my money though,
5:35
Speaker 1: like once the data started coming in, it got even
5:38
Speaker 1: more interesting. But let's just go back to the beginning
5:41
Speaker 1: of all this, because like I was saying, free radicals
5:43
Speaker 1: formed the basis for this whole thing, And there's this
5:46
Speaker 1: whole idea that it's called the free radical theory of aging.
5:50
Speaker 1: And it turns out that the guy who came up
5:52
Speaker 1: with this was an m d. But he became and
5:55
Speaker 1: he became interested in all of this when he was
5:58
Speaker 1: a biochemist working for Shell Oil, developing things like pesticide strips.
6:03
Speaker 1: The no pest strip, very famous kind of pesticide strip
6:07
Speaker 1: of the United States, was developed by this guy named
6:10
Speaker 1: Dr denhim harmon Um back in the fifties. And also
6:14
Speaker 1: in the fifties he came up with that free radical
6:17
Speaker 1: theory of aging. Yeah, so he was working at Shell
6:20
Speaker 1: and one of the things that he was doing at
6:22
Speaker 1: the time was working on chemical additives. That would you know,
6:27
Speaker 1: they found out that sulfur and phosphorus were getting spoiled.
6:31
Speaker 1: These compounds were breaking down in the oil and they
6:34
Speaker 1: were really degrading over time because of free radical chain reactions.
6:40
Speaker 1: And they learned back then, and this is pretty amazing
6:43
Speaker 1: for the midnighteteen fifties, uh, that there was something called
6:47
Speaker 1: uh free radicals, these reactive particles that would take electrons
6:51
Speaker 1: from other atoms, and then those atoms would then say, well,
6:54
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I'm on, I'm out of whack. Now
6:56
Speaker 1: I want to steal some electrons to get back in
6:59
Speaker 1: balance again. So it started this chain reaction where each
7:02
Speaker 1: neighbor was getting their electrons stolen, and then the case
7:05
Speaker 1: of oil, this sulfur and phosphorus would just continue to
7:08
Speaker 1: break down until it was just gross. It was basically worthless.
7:13
Speaker 1: So he's studying this stuff. He reads an article in
7:16
Speaker 1: the Ladies Home Journal called Tomorrow you May be Younger,
7:21
Speaker 1: and he was like, wait a minute, and he was like,
7:24
Speaker 1: I'm studying these free radicals. It's breaking down oil. We
7:28
Speaker 1: have cells in our body. Uh. We know that that
7:31
Speaker 1: the atomic bomb and X rays and all that kind
7:34
Speaker 1: of radiation really increases the free radicals in your body.
7:38
Speaker 1: And you should see somebody after an atomic bomb. And
7:41
Speaker 1: he put two and two together and he was like,
7:43
Speaker 1: this is it. This is why we're aging. It's all
7:45
Speaker 1: because these free radicals. Yeah, that the damage that they
7:48
Speaker 1: do builds up over time, and once you reach a
7:52
Speaker 1: certain point, that's your expiration date. But then along the way,
7:56
Speaker 1: your systems start breaking down before the first cat astrophic
8:00
Speaker 1: one fails completely, say like your heart giving out, and
8:03
Speaker 1: that is aging. Everything from you know, loose saggy skin,
8:08
Speaker 1: to um a build up of plaque in your in
8:11
Speaker 1: your arteries, or your hardening of your arteries. That all
8:15
Speaker 1: of this is an accumulation of the damage done by
8:17
Speaker 1: these free radicals, which are again just simply a particle
8:20
Speaker 1: that has an unpaired electron. So it can take someone
8:23
Speaker 1: else's electron or can donate that electron. But either way,
8:26
Speaker 1: it makes things that are normally stable, like the lining
8:30
Speaker 1: of cells that gives cells their structure, unstable, and bad
8:34
Speaker 1: things can happen to that. So doctor dr um Harmon
8:39
Speaker 1: basically figured out that he had he had stumbled upon
8:43
Speaker 1: the reason that we age and die, and when you
8:48
Speaker 1: do something like that, you can take steps to mitigate it.
8:51
Speaker 1: And this kicked off at the very beginning, the free
8:55
Speaker 1: radical theory of aging. That took a few decades for
8:58
Speaker 1: people to pick up on it, though, and like an
9:00
Speaker 1: immediate thing that took off. Huh yeah, he was like,
9:03
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get so rich on this right. Eventually he
9:06
Speaker 1: kept checking his watch. Uh so, maybe we should go
9:10
Speaker 1: do a little biology class primer for everyone to make
9:13
Speaker 1: it a little more understandable. It's really kind of simple stuff.
9:16
Speaker 1: But if you remember back in biology class, you probably
9:19
Speaker 1: remember learning about the Crebs cycle capital K R, E, B,
9:24
Speaker 1: S and S salbot. Geez. Here we go cellular respiration.
9:30
Speaker 1: And the whole thing with respiration in the cells is
9:33
Speaker 1: the whole point is to turn glucose into energy. And
9:37
Speaker 1: that's pretty easy. We all understand that. Uh, we turn
9:41
Speaker 1: that sugar into working energy for the body. It's our
9:43
Speaker 1: metabolism at work, and this CREB cycle is that metabolic
9:48
Speaker 1: process of doing so, of turning those glucose molecules into
9:52
Speaker 1: something called a DNA scene triphosphate a t P, which
9:56
Speaker 1: is like the fuel for the cells. Um. The thing
9:59
Speaker 1: is is during this CRIB cycle, one of the one
10:02
Speaker 1: of the by products or one of the products of it,
10:05
Speaker 1: I guess, is free radicals, which is put a pin
10:08
Speaker 1: in that because that's important. Your body when it under
10:12
Speaker 1: undertakes its most important process, which is cellular respiration, UM,
10:18
Speaker 1: it produces free radicals. Right. The problem is, UM, while
10:22
Speaker 1: some of these free radicals are put to use UM,
10:25
Speaker 1: others just kind of get away. They escape and they
10:29
Speaker 1: start wandering around the body. And when they get away
10:33
Speaker 1: and they're outside of the context that they're they're I
10:37
Speaker 1: guess meant to be used for, that's when they start
10:39
Speaker 1: to do some real damage. Yeah, that's when they go
10:43
Speaker 1: to other molecules like oxygen and say, hey, let me
10:47
Speaker 1: in oxygen. An oxygen is like sure, you know, I'm
10:50
Speaker 1: down to party, And all of a sudden you have
10:53
Speaker 1: an oxygen molecule that has an extra electron that's unpaired.
10:57
Speaker 1: It's called the superoxide. That's it's like it would be awesome. Yeah,
11:02
Speaker 1: like superoxide sounds like a positive word, but it's not.
11:04
Speaker 1: It's like it would get your clothes just so so white,
11:08
Speaker 1: you know, that's right. Uh, And there are other superoxides.
11:11
Speaker 1: Hydrogen peroxide is one, and these are all collectively known
11:15
Speaker 1: as reactive oxygen species because they're they're reacting, they're destabilized,
11:21
Speaker 1: and like we said before, there they want to be
11:24
Speaker 1: whole again and they want to be stable, so they
11:26
Speaker 1: just start robbing electrons from their neighbor, and again you
11:29
Speaker 1: have the same chain reaction, and that's basically free radicals
11:33
Speaker 1: at work in the body, right, and so like just
11:35
Speaker 1: to kind of put this, uh, give a human face
11:39
Speaker 1: to this whole thing, if you have a reactive oxygen species,
11:44
Speaker 1: they respond indiscriminately to whatever cell they come up against.
11:48
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter to them. There's not one particular type
11:50
Speaker 1: that that they like to take um electrons from or
11:54
Speaker 1: donate electrons to. They'll destabilize whatever. And so if they
11:58
Speaker 1: come across something like fatty acid molecule that helps create
12:03
Speaker 1: structure for a cell um over time, if it sets
12:07
Speaker 1: off a chain reaction. It can weaken that cell, and
12:10
Speaker 1: when the cell wall is weak, the permeability is affected,
12:14
Speaker 1: which means that all sorts of functions within the cell
12:17
Speaker 1: can be impacted. In the cell can not only no
12:20
Speaker 1: longer function and maybe decay and die, but it might
12:23
Speaker 1: also produce some bad jams before it dies and screw
12:27
Speaker 1: things up. So the proteins that it's meant to do
12:29
Speaker 1: are still kind of trying to carry out their function,
12:31
Speaker 1: but they're not doing it correctly, and so maybe they misfold,
12:34
Speaker 1: and then you've got a whole other set of problems
12:36
Speaker 1: on your hands. It's just a it's a it's not
12:38
Speaker 1: good when a free radical, especially a reactive oxygen species,
12:42
Speaker 1: gets loose. The problem is is they get loose like constantly,
12:47
Speaker 1: there's a constant barrage of free radicals going through your body.
12:52
Speaker 1: And Chuck it has to say after researching this, During
12:54
Speaker 1: researching this, I now can can feel them. I can
12:57
Speaker 1: hear them reacting throughout my body. And I didn't sleep
13:02
Speaker 1: at all last night and I probably will never sleep again.
13:05
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's uh, I think we should take
13:07
Speaker 1: a break. I'm gonna calm you down a little bit.
13:10
Speaker 1: That was a nice primer, and I need to plug
13:13
Speaker 1: in my laptop, so it's a perfect time to take
13:15
Speaker 1: a bauz learn stuff with Joshua. Alright, so we're back
13:49
Speaker 1: and Chuck. I am ashamed that we did not give
13:51
Speaker 1: a huge shout out to Dave Ruse for helping us
13:54
Speaker 1: out with this one fine example of the Rusee work,
13:59
Speaker 1: because I mean, he did a great job. Um didn't
14:02
Speaker 1: even so I could understand it. There was only one
14:06
Speaker 1: part that I needed to go to a kids science website,
14:10
Speaker 1: and it was for the Creb cycle. And I didn't
14:12
Speaker 1: learn anything that I didn't already know. Uh from that data.
14:17
Speaker 1: Did you remember the crib cycle from elementary school and
14:20
Speaker 1: high school? Yeah? I didn't learn much about it, but
14:23
Speaker 1: I'm always reminded of um The Adventures of Pete and
14:26
Speaker 1: Pete because there was a company that had crib in
14:30
Speaker 1: the name, and it always, for some reason, I always
14:33
Speaker 1: associate the creb cycle with Pete and Pete. And it
14:37
Speaker 1: would not be elementary school, though probably high school. No,
14:40
Speaker 1: I don't know. I could see it in late elementaries. Yeah, middle,
14:43
Speaker 1: let's go with middle. I didn't go to middle school, though.
14:47
Speaker 1: You skipped right over boy genius no, we just didn't
14:50
Speaker 1: have it. Then. It was one through seven, eight through
14:52
Speaker 1: twelve until oh yeah, you went to that experimental school.
14:56
Speaker 1: But experimental, they just they introduced middle school kind of
14:59
Speaker 1: in the middle of my high school. So yeah, I
15:01
Speaker 1: have to say, though, when you put together all of
15:03
Speaker 1: your anecdotes from school, it sounds a lot like an
15:06
Speaker 1: experimental school that you went to. They just didn't tell
15:09
Speaker 1: you that. I think I had said this before. The
15:12
Speaker 1: result of that was I was the My class was
15:15
Speaker 1: the youngest class in the school in the eighth, ninth,
15:17
Speaker 1: and tenth grade. There was nobody below us because they
15:20
Speaker 1: kept peeling off grades to go to the middle school
15:23
Speaker 1: right behind us. Oh that's that's interesting. Wow. So they
15:27
Speaker 1: really carved out the middle there. Huh. Literally, they carved
15:30
Speaker 1: out middle school and finally, by the time I was
15:33
Speaker 1: a junior, there was a sophomore class behind me, and
15:35
Speaker 1: we beat them up so hard. Yeah, I'll bet, because
15:38
Speaker 1: you were all really just a class of super warrior
15:41
Speaker 1: sleeper assassin. Yeah, super bullies, and we just couldn't wait
15:45
Speaker 1: to beat up kids younger than us. Not true, that's
15:48
Speaker 1: a very serious thing. By the way, of course, I've
15:51
Speaker 1: never beat anybody you're talking like a guy who grew
15:53
Speaker 1: up in the eighties, not a person of the ties. Chuck,
15:57
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh, oh, we're at antioxidants. This is where
16:02
Speaker 1: antioxidants come into play. The wonder thing. Yeah, because it
16:06
Speaker 1: would make sense that if your body is producing billions
16:09
Speaker 1: and billions of free radicals every second that are getting
16:12
Speaker 1: loose and wreaking havoc, it would have some way to
16:14
Speaker 1: alleviate this. And as you just said, antioxidants, yeah, like
16:19
Speaker 1: the body has these. The body produces these on their own.
16:23
Speaker 1: You don't have to eat I mean, blueberries are great.
16:25
Speaker 1: You should eat blueberries and kale, but you don't have
16:27
Speaker 1: to eat that stuff to get them. They just supply
16:30
Speaker 1: you with extra We produced two main ones, uric acid
16:34
Speaker 1: and glutath ione, and they don't actually wipe out free radicals,
16:39
Speaker 1: but they neutralize free radicals. Because earlier you said you
16:42
Speaker 1: can uh, you can take and you can actually give
16:45
Speaker 1: an electron. And that's what these antioxidants do is they
16:48
Speaker 1: they walk up and they're like, hey, hey, hey man,
16:51
Speaker 1: chill out. You don't need to go stealing electrons. Have
16:54
Speaker 1: one of mine. It's like a hippie putting a daisy
16:57
Speaker 1: in the barrel of a rifle held by national guards,
17:01
Speaker 1: you know, totally so, so that would be oxidative. The
17:06
Speaker 1: other thing, taking an unpared electron, that's reductive. So the
17:09
Speaker 1: whole process, that whole concept of a free radical being
17:13
Speaker 1: able to do that is called redox, reductive oxidative. If
17:18
Speaker 1: it just you know, if you want to like score
17:20
Speaker 1: some points at your next biochem party, throw redox out there.
17:26
Speaker 1: By the way, that refu made was very ironic now
17:29
Speaker 1: that they think about it, which the hippie one, because
17:32
Speaker 1: the hippie would not want to neutralize the free radical.
17:35
Speaker 1: They are free radicals. Oh man, melted the membrane. I'm
17:41
Speaker 1: like that. I feel like the guy on the poster
17:44
Speaker 1: that says stoned again, you know what I mean, just
17:47
Speaker 1: melted under the table. Uh So, like I said, vitamin's good, superfoods,
17:54
Speaker 1: all these things can really help out our own antioxidant
17:59
Speaker 1: production in our body and help protect you know, every
18:03
Speaker 1: all these proteins and lipids and DNA and RNA basically
18:07
Speaker 1: putting those daisies and all those rifles as fast as
18:10
Speaker 1: they can, right exactly. So it is a good thing.
18:13
Speaker 1: It is beneficial when you eat those blueberries or eat
18:16
Speaker 1: or ing a pure cocoa. Um. However you ingest it,
18:21
Speaker 1: uh like it does have that effect because you're introducing
18:24
Speaker 1: these antioxidants to your body, and there are health benefits
18:27
Speaker 1: to it. The thing is is you can eat blueberries
18:31
Speaker 1: till you yourself are blue, like the poor girl from UM.
18:36
Speaker 1: We just watched that. Yeah, it's which one the new
18:39
Speaker 1: one or the old one? No, Like a few days ago,
18:41
Speaker 1: we introduced my daughter to the Gene Wilder version, and
18:44
Speaker 1: I gotta say he's great, but the movie is not
18:46
Speaker 1: very good. Oh really, I really, I don't know, man,
18:50
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take heap for this, but it's kind of
18:51
Speaker 1: a garbage movie except for Gene Wilder. I don't wow.
18:56
Speaker 1: Go when was the last time you saw it? Like
18:58
Speaker 1: within the last year too? You know you might like it.
19:02
Speaker 1: I'm not yuking your um. I just I didn't. I
19:04
Speaker 1: thought it did not age well. I appreciate you not
19:06
Speaker 1: yucky my um. Thank you. I have to say I've
19:09
Speaker 1: actually somewhat come around on the remake. The first time
19:13
Speaker 1: I saw it, I broke the TV. I thought was
19:16
Speaker 1: so disappointed with it. But it's um, it actually has
19:19
Speaker 1: somehow gotten slightly better. I'm not sure it changed somehow
19:23
Speaker 1: or I did. I'm I'm assuming it changed. I'll have
19:26
Speaker 1: to check it out. Yeah, I just don't hold me
19:28
Speaker 1: to it if you don't like it, because I will
19:30
Speaker 1: not be at all surprised. But anyway, you can eat
19:33
Speaker 1: blueberries till you become uh bianca blueberry I think, yeah,
19:39
Speaker 1: one of those two um, and you're probably not going
19:43
Speaker 1: to neutralize all those free radicals in your body. And
19:46
Speaker 1: so when an imbalance occurs between the number of free
19:51
Speaker 1: radicals floating around causing havoc and the number of um
19:55
Speaker 1: of antioccidents coming in and neutralizing them, you have what's
20:01
Speaker 1: called oxidative stress And again this is what Dr Harmon
20:05
Speaker 1: hypothesized was the basis for aging, that over time, all
20:09
Speaker 1: this oxidative stress um is no longer able to be repaired.
20:13
Speaker 1: There's just too many, too much damage to your systems
20:16
Speaker 1: over time, and then slowly but surely, the clock starts
20:19
Speaker 1: to wind down and you fall over in the middle
20:21
Speaker 1: of the grocery store, ironically buying blueberries. Yeah. So Harmon
20:27
Speaker 1: publishes a paper in nineteen fifty six called aging a
20:30
Speaker 1: colon a theory based on free radical and radiation chemistry.
20:35
Speaker 1: And this is where he kind of lays it all
20:37
Speaker 1: out there and this this idea that he that he
20:39
Speaker 1: hit upon, and he said, you know what we gotta do.
20:42
Speaker 1: We gotta ingest more of these antioxidants. He said, I've
20:45
Speaker 1: done some studies on some mice. He said, they got
20:49
Speaker 1: a little moderate dose of antioxidants and they live longer.
20:52
Speaker 1: So that proves everything right. And it didn't, you know,
20:55
Speaker 1: it was nineteen fifty six. It wasn't like I think
20:57
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier. It wasn't didn't make the biggest spl
21:00
Speaker 1: ash at first. It actually took weirdly. It kind of
21:03
Speaker 1: took decades. Are not weirdly. I guess it sort of
21:06
Speaker 1: makes sense. When the electron microscope or the electron scanner
21:10
Speaker 1: was introduced in the eighties, they could actually see this
21:13
Speaker 1: stuff happening and they said, wait a minute, these free
21:15
Speaker 1: radicals are stealing electrons. They're bad, and these antioxidants are
21:20
Speaker 1: sticking daisies in their rifles and that's good. And so
21:24
Speaker 1: it got a little more traction. And then in the
21:26
Speaker 1: nineties they did a very big study that said, hey,
21:30
Speaker 1: if you're eating, if you're not eating a bunch of
21:32
Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables and you're not getting those vitamin C
21:36
Speaker 1: and E, you have a higher risk of getting cancer,
21:39
Speaker 1: memory loss, bone breakage, sagging skin, like just aging in
21:42
Speaker 1: all the wrong ways exactly. And so the implication was, well,
21:47
Speaker 1: then take as much vitamin C and vitamin ese you
21:49
Speaker 1: can possibly back into your And as a matter of fact,
21:54
Speaker 1: Dr Harmon Um, who seems to have been a pretty
21:56
Speaker 1: good guy from all accounts that I came across, Yeah,
21:59
Speaker 1: he took a lot of vitamin C and E every day.
22:02
Speaker 1: I mean hundreds of hundreds of times the recommended daily allowance,
22:06
Speaker 1: which in and of itself is kind of in an
22:09
Speaker 1: issue worth discussing um in its own thing. But um,
22:13
Speaker 1: he also jogged two miles a day, which, as we'll see,
22:16
Speaker 1: is very important. UM. And he lived at age and
22:19
Speaker 1: apparently he said, uh, at some point it's important that
22:23
Speaker 1: you accept if you're that you're going to die. We're
22:26
Speaker 1: all going to die, but if you work at it
22:28
Speaker 1: a little bit, you might just make it to a hundred.
22:30
Speaker 1: And he came awfully close. So a lot of people
22:33
Speaker 1: made a lot of UM, a lot of hey about
22:35
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, he took a lot of
22:37
Speaker 1: vitamin C and E every day and he's still you know,
22:40
Speaker 1: he almost made it to a hundred UM and he
22:42
Speaker 1: was he was very much alive. I mean this was
22:45
Speaker 1: he died in two thousand fourteen. So when this really
22:48
Speaker 1: finally hit in the nineties and everybody was like, this
22:53
Speaker 1: is it. This is absolutely we have aging figured out
22:56
Speaker 1: and we now know what to do with it or
22:58
Speaker 1: do about it. Um, he would around to be kind
23:01
Speaker 1: of fetted. And he was, I believe, nominated for the
23:04
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize six times. He never won, but just being
23:08
Speaker 1: nominated once, I mean I would love that. I'm not
23:12
Speaker 1: saying that anybody should go out and do that necessarily,
23:15
Speaker 1: but if you if you did, I would just think
23:18
Speaker 1: it was great. Six times. I can't even imagine. Well,
23:21
Speaker 1: I think after if they ever created a Nobel Prize
23:23
Speaker 1: for podcasting, we'll get it, after Roman Mars, and after
23:30
Speaker 1: Karen and Georgia, and after Ira Glass and after Terry Gross.
23:35
Speaker 1: Terry Gross of course and wait, wait, don't tell me
23:37
Speaker 1: all of NPR will get There's right, then Georgia and Karen,
23:41
Speaker 1: then Roman Mars, then Mark Maron, then Jesse Thorne, then us.
23:46
Speaker 1: I could see stuff they don't want you to know
23:48
Speaker 1: slipping in there ahead of us, and our own college. Yeah,
23:51
Speaker 1: I'll cut them. We got a long line ahead of us, Chuck,
23:55
Speaker 1: Let's just keep doing our thing and see what happens. Okay, Oh,
23:58
Speaker 1: that's right. So in the nineties it was such a
24:01
Speaker 1: big deal. In the early nineties, the National Institute on
24:04
Speaker 1: Aging in the U. S d A got together and
24:06
Speaker 1: they said, Hey, you know what people love is USA
24:10
Speaker 1: today style UM food rating scale graphics. So let's let's
24:16
Speaker 1: put one of those together. We'll call it the Oxygen
24:19
Speaker 1: radical Absorbance Capacity. No one's gonna know what the OREK is.
24:23
Speaker 1: At least at least they stopped short of calling it oracle.
24:26
Speaker 1: I give them credit. Yeah, that's true. They didn't go
24:29
Speaker 1: look for an Ellen and e UM like life enabler
24:32
Speaker 1: or something. Uh. And then they you know, they put
24:36
Speaker 1: this out and it was basically kind of everything we
24:39
Speaker 1: saw at a marketing It was. It was the blueberries
24:42
Speaker 1: and the kale and the cocoa and all that stuff.
24:44
Speaker 1: And and you know, like we said, marketing, they love
24:47
Speaker 1: that stuff because that means they can sell things two
24:50
Speaker 1: people packaged foods as healthy. Yeah, and like this thing
24:54
Speaker 1: actually just said like here's how great coco is. But
24:57
Speaker 1: it's great cocoa is red wine rose trials even better,
25:01
Speaker 1: and so like, it was very helpful, especially at the
25:04
Speaker 1: time because people were you know, into into health food
25:08
Speaker 1: for years before that. The eighties was a huge, huge
25:11
Speaker 1: boon for health food and this seems like the um
25:17
Speaker 1: just the predictable, uh legacy of that, you know, Like
25:21
Speaker 1: now now we've got even greater science and we can
25:24
Speaker 1: tell you what foods are even better at prolonging your
25:27
Speaker 1: life than you know, just your stupid brand muffin that
25:31
Speaker 1: helps you poop. Go back to the eighties of Caveman Lawyer.
25:34
Speaker 1: You know, this is like real science where we're saying
25:37
Speaker 1: this food is a superfood and here's how much of
25:39
Speaker 1: a superfood it is. That's what the orc did. Yeah,
25:43
Speaker 1: but at some point I think someone stopped and said, well, listen,
25:47
Speaker 1: we need to think about this a little bit more.
25:49
Speaker 1: And that's what I love about science, Like something that
25:52
Speaker 1: seemed really settled, it wasn't good enough for somebody at
25:56
Speaker 1: some point, you know, and they said, let's start poking
25:59
Speaker 1: around on this again, because we really still don't understand
26:02
Speaker 1: it fully, because if your body is producing free radicals,
26:08
Speaker 1: like the body doesn't usually just produce something that is
26:11
Speaker 1: so damaging that it's literally killing it's its cells. So
26:15
Speaker 1: let's kind of poke around and see what the deal
26:17
Speaker 1: is with with these free radicals. And and yeah, I
26:21
Speaker 1: guess some the logical answer is, well, God decreed it
26:26
Speaker 1: that way, so this is why we that's the logical answer. Sure,
26:29
Speaker 1: just you just run out of of something like you
26:32
Speaker 1: just stop at some point. Um. But like you said,
26:36
Speaker 1: some people said, no, no, no, there's gotta be there's
26:38
Speaker 1: gotta be some some other thing going on here. It's
26:42
Speaker 1: and it turns out it's astounding how close humans can
26:45
Speaker 1: come to a mark and then just completely misinterpreted, you
26:49
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. And that seems like something that
26:52
Speaker 1: happened here not completely misinterpreted, because there's plenty of stuff
26:56
Speaker 1: that Dr Harmon supposed or that was the base is
27:00
Speaker 1: of his supposition. That's still true. But I mean, I
27:05
Speaker 1: guess I haven't quite put my finger on what's riveting
27:08
Speaker 1: about this. But it's still to this day, Like I've
27:10
Speaker 1: known about this for years and it's still this day.
27:12
Speaker 1: I just find it so interesting. But the upshot was
27:15
Speaker 1: when people started looking into um free radicals, so that
27:21
Speaker 1: antioxidants neutralizing free radicals that's pretty set, like there's not
27:25
Speaker 1: a lot of question about that, but just put a
27:29
Speaker 1: pin in that for later. Um. But free radicals themselves
27:33
Speaker 1: were portrayed as this villa like that's it, that's what's
27:36
Speaker 1: killing you. These are the villains in all of our lives.
27:39
Speaker 1: They're the reason for aging, they're the reason for disease.
27:42
Speaker 1: They're the reasons you will die. Are free radicals. And
27:45
Speaker 1: somebody somewhere along the way said, well, let me take
27:47
Speaker 1: another look at them, and they found ah, wait a minute,
27:49
Speaker 1: these are actually super useful in a lot of different ways.
27:53
Speaker 1: And what the the change in paradigm that came from
27:58
Speaker 1: all of this is that free radicals, Uh, depending on
28:02
Speaker 1: the context where they are, the time that they exist,
28:05
Speaker 1: like their lifespan a bunch of different factors, they're either
28:09
Speaker 1: very destructive or the body can't exist or move forward
28:13
Speaker 1: without them. Yeah, and a lot of these benefits, um,
28:17
Speaker 1: I mean, they they're all kinds of benefits, but a
28:19
Speaker 1: lot of them are based around the immune system. UM.
28:23
Speaker 1: Like hydrogen peroxide. It's a free radical and it um,
28:28
Speaker 1: you know, some immune cells need a little help from
28:31
Speaker 1: hydrogen peroxide to help destroy these pathogens coming to our body. Um,
28:36
Speaker 1: some of the other I think UH, and well, hydrogen
28:39
Speaker 1: peroxide Again, it can also signal molecules that draw immune
28:43
Speaker 1: cells to the side of an injury. So we're talking
28:46
Speaker 1: like if you're a smoker or something, it can be
28:49
Speaker 1: it can actually help attract immune cells to help stave
28:54
Speaker 1: off UH cell damage because of that smoking. It's a
28:57
Speaker 1: big It can be a signal er, right. UM. Hydrogen
29:01
Speaker 1: peroxides also again it's a free radical. That's actually why
29:04
Speaker 1: they say they no longer recommend using it to debride
29:07
Speaker 1: wounds or clean a wound, or swish it around in
29:10
Speaker 1: your mouth. It actually it's a free radical that will
29:13
Speaker 1: damage whatever cells it comes in contact with. You don't
29:16
Speaker 1: want to use hydrogen peroxide. UM. But the thyroid gland
29:20
Speaker 1: produces it. It's part of producing thyroid hormone, like it
29:24
Speaker 1: it needs. It's part of that process, just like it's
29:26
Speaker 1: part of the crib cycle to produce energy. UM. I
29:29
Speaker 1: saw another one. I didn't see the name in the
29:31
Speaker 1: in the study, but UM, there was a free radical
29:35
Speaker 1: that was linked to stronger contractions of cells in the
29:38
Speaker 1: cardiac tissue, so it gave you a stronger heartbeat. They
29:42
Speaker 1: figured out that when they removed this the heart beat still,
29:45
Speaker 1: but it wasn't less, it wasn't as forceful or strong
29:47
Speaker 1: a contraction. Um, there's just a bunch of different things
29:51
Speaker 1: that different free radicals do in the body. Like they
29:54
Speaker 1: clearly have a defined role depending on the context. Yeah,
29:58
Speaker 1: and the other thing we'll take a break here in
30:01
Speaker 1: a second. But the other thing we should mention too
30:02
Speaker 1: is the exercise paradox, which is, you know, we know
30:05
Speaker 1: exercise is really good for you, but we also learned
30:08
Speaker 1: that exercise really increases your free radical levels. So that
30:13
Speaker 1: was just another sort of uh notch or chink in
30:17
Speaker 1: the armor. I guess where they were like, well, wait
30:20
Speaker 1: a minute, if you're doing something really good for your
30:21
Speaker 1: body is producing these extra free radicals, they got to
30:23
Speaker 1: be good for something. So that's why, you know, people
30:27
Speaker 1: looked into it and learned all of these benefits. So
30:30
Speaker 1: I think we'll take a break now and we will
30:32
Speaker 1: uh come back with some pretty interesting evidence on why
30:36
Speaker 1: they might have had it all backwards. Alrighty, so evidence
31:14
Speaker 1: that it was backwards. Um, they started doing some studies.
31:18
Speaker 1: They started engineering organisms with really really high levels of
31:22
Speaker 1: free radicals or antioxidants and just sort of looking at
31:25
Speaker 1: what happened in terms of lifespan. And of course they thought, well, listen,
31:29
Speaker 1: if you've got a lot of free radicals, you're gonna
31:32
Speaker 1: you're gonna die a lot younger. It's gonna be yeah,
31:36
Speaker 1: it's gonna be really bad. And if you if you
31:38
Speaker 1: have really high antioxident levels, we're going to engineer all this,
31:41
Speaker 1: bioengineer it. You're gonna live a lot longer. And they
31:44
Speaker 1: found the opposite was true, which was it like shook
31:47
Speaker 1: the medical community to its very core. Yeah. So there
31:51
Speaker 1: was a type of round worm that was genetically engineered
31:54
Speaker 1: to produce lots of superoxides, way more than your average roundworm.
31:59
Speaker 1: And you would expect, since superoxides are a reactive oxygen species,
32:03
Speaker 1: one of the most damaging types of free radicals, that
32:06
Speaker 1: those round worms would just basically be born, you know,
32:09
Speaker 1: shout why why was I born? And then die and
32:12
Speaker 1: that would basically be the lifespan of it. And that's
32:15
Speaker 1: not what happened at all. As a matter of fact,
32:18
Speaker 1: not only did they live, um, they didn't die prematurely.
32:22
Speaker 1: They actually lived longer than round worms that hadn't been
32:26
Speaker 1: tinkered with genetically longer more free radicals longer lifespan in
32:31
Speaker 1: this round worm and that definitely got their bow tie
32:35
Speaker 1: spinning in the lab. Uh yeah. And they also said,
32:40
Speaker 1: well what about the other ones that were pumped full
32:42
Speaker 1: of antioxidants? They died faster, and they're like, what is
32:47
Speaker 1: going on? Like if someone switching out our worms here?
32:50
Speaker 1: And they all looked at the one guy who didn't
32:52
Speaker 1: refuse to wear a bow tie. He's like, why is
32:55
Speaker 1: everyone looking at me? I like my neckties. I like
32:58
Speaker 1: my clip on necktie. Just fine. They entuate my genitalia.
33:02
Speaker 1: What don't you remember there's a line from State in
33:05
Speaker 1: Maine where this doctor wearing a bow tie, Oh my
33:08
Speaker 1: gosh says, never trust the person of the bow tie
33:12
Speaker 1: because the tie is meant to accentuate your genitalor. I
33:15
Speaker 1: don't remember that line. I love that movie. Yeah, yeah,
33:17
Speaker 1: it was there. My favorite part of that movie is
33:22
Speaker 1: when Alec Bald went this out on the date with
33:26
Speaker 1: Julius Stiles and drunk and crashes his car and then
33:30
Speaker 1: he just gets out of the car and kind of
33:32
Speaker 1: wanders off and goes so that happened. That movie was great.
33:36
Speaker 1: He's got that great last line to He's like, well
33:39
Speaker 1: beats working. Yeah, beats working. That was a great movie,
33:42
Speaker 1: maybe the best movie about the thimb industry. Um. All right,
33:47
Speaker 1: so they said round worms are one thing we need
33:50
Speaker 1: to look at mice. So they bioengineered eighteen different strains
33:55
Speaker 1: of mice. Again, some with really high levels of antioxidants,
33:58
Speaker 1: others very low levels. They tracked these, they published. This
34:02
Speaker 1: is over like an eight year period, and one of
34:05
Speaker 1: the scientists that was talking about the results was like
34:07
Speaker 1: he even cursed. He said, I watched those gd lifespan curves.
34:12
Speaker 1: There was not an inch of difference between them. And
34:14
Speaker 1: basically it was there was just no no difference in lifespan.
34:17
Speaker 1: He couldn't find any No, there was Like this guy
34:21
Speaker 1: worked for eight years breeding just different strains genetic strains
34:26
Speaker 1: of mice and there was no difference. So like all
34:29
Speaker 1: this data starts coming in. That one was two thousand
34:31
Speaker 1: and eight to two thousand or two thousand one to
34:33
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. I think, um, and this data starts
34:36
Speaker 1: to accumulate there like did you hear about the round worms? Yeah?
34:39
Speaker 1: Did you hear about the eighteen strains of mice? And
34:41
Speaker 1: he said, yeah, it's crazy. That guy cursed and like
34:44
Speaker 1: as the stuff started compiled. People were like, this doesn't
34:47
Speaker 1: make any sense whatsoever. I guess someone else throughout the
34:50
Speaker 1: naked role matt mole rat. The naked mole rat too,
34:55
Speaker 1: which apparently produces way more naturally produces way more free
34:59
Speaker 1: radicals than your average rat or mice mouse. I'm sorry, um,
35:04
Speaker 1: And they typically have a lifespan that's about eight times
35:07
Speaker 1: longer in the wild than wild mouse does, which again
35:11
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. So all this stuff starts coming in,
35:15
Speaker 1: and then finally people are like, well, wait a minute,
35:17
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who are taking lots of
35:20
Speaker 1: antioxidants supplements right now, because I don't think we really
35:24
Speaker 1: kind of like highlighted this um yet, Like in in
35:29
Speaker 1: conjunction with those superfoods in the U. S d A
35:32
Speaker 1: promoting its oric chart supplements blue up, especially supplements that
35:40
Speaker 1: were proven antioxidants. People said, if you if you get
35:44
Speaker 1: a lot of vitamin C from blueberries, what if I
35:48
Speaker 1: just took like fistfuls of of like isolated vitamin C.
35:52
Speaker 1: If I just took tons of vitamin C itself and
35:54
Speaker 1: just got rid of the blueberries, And a lot a
35:57
Speaker 1: lot of Americans were doing that, taking a lot of
36:00
Speaker 1: supplements that were full of antioxidants, and now all of
36:03
Speaker 1: a sudden, people are like, uh, maybe we should look
36:06
Speaker 1: at how humans are doing with all of this. And
36:09
Speaker 1: that's when that's when it got kind of scary all
36:12
Speaker 1: of a sudden. Actually, yeah, I mean, like you said,
36:14
Speaker 1: they had this robust population so they could do these
36:17
Speaker 1: long term human clinical trials, and all these studies started
36:21
Speaker 1: pouring in that said, people who were taking all these
36:23
Speaker 1: multi vitamins are not living longer than the placebo group,
36:27
Speaker 1: and sometimes even have a greater chance of dying from
36:31
Speaker 1: things like cancer or heart disease and these things that
36:34
Speaker 1: they're supposed to be protecting against by taking all these
36:37
Speaker 1: multi vitamins. Yeah, the exact opposite of what everybody thought, right.
36:42
Speaker 1: But here's the catch they found out is when they
36:44
Speaker 1: started to dig a little deeper. In fact, they did
36:47
Speaker 1: one study in eighteen thousand men and women. Uh, they
36:51
Speaker 1: they found out that it was way worse in people
36:55
Speaker 1: that already had something going on, like more lung cancer,
36:59
Speaker 1: seven teen percent more deaths in a group that was
37:03
Speaker 1: given beta carotene and retinal compared with people who didn't
37:06
Speaker 1: get them. But when they looked they found out that,
37:09
Speaker 1: oh but some of these people, like the highest rates
37:11
Speaker 1: were among people who were smokers or who had been
37:14
Speaker 1: exposed to asbestos, and they were like, wait a minute.
37:17
Speaker 1: In fact, they even called off a study in Finland
37:20
Speaker 1: because there were so many people getting uh. In the
37:22
Speaker 1: antioxidant group, a lot of these people were smokers. They
37:26
Speaker 1: were getting diagnosed with lung cancer. So they's like, we
37:28
Speaker 1: got to cancel this thing and really see what's going
37:31
Speaker 1: on here. Yeah, and it wasn't. It doesn't from what
37:33
Speaker 1: I can tell, it wasn't. Just like they were like, Okay,
37:35
Speaker 1: we don't know what's going on, so we need to
37:37
Speaker 1: take a breather until we figure it out. I get
37:39
Speaker 1: the impression that they were scared that they were actually
37:41
Speaker 1: giving people lung cancer by giving high doses of beta
37:45
Speaker 1: carotene to these smokers totally UH, and that they had
37:48
Speaker 1: to cancel the study as a result, and that that
37:50
Speaker 1: happened in more than more than just one place. Particularly,
37:53
Speaker 1: it seemed like combining high doses of beta carotene, a
37:57
Speaker 1: very potent antioxidant that's found naturally in the like carrots um,
38:02
Speaker 1: with people who smoke, an environmental toxin that produces lots
38:07
Speaker 1: and lots of free radicals, especially in the lungs, was
38:12
Speaker 1: actually seeming to cause lung cancer trigger lung cancer in people.
38:17
Speaker 1: So it was a really scary, eye opening, mind boggling
38:23
Speaker 1: moment or not moment, but it's just course of years
38:26
Speaker 1: over the I guess probably the course of a decade
38:28
Speaker 1: when this stuff really started to come back. Um, that
38:31
Speaker 1: really made people rethink whether we should be taking antioccident
38:35
Speaker 1: supplements or not. Yeah, and rethink in a big way,
38:38
Speaker 1: like and we should point out like not every single
38:41
Speaker 1: study had a result that was this bad, but at
38:44
Speaker 1: the best they were inconclusive. So a lot of these
38:48
Speaker 1: journals had to walk back a lot of stuff. In
38:51
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, the Journal of American Medical Association said,
38:55
Speaker 1: you know, we did the sixty eight clinical trials, and
38:57
Speaker 1: antioccident supplements do not reduce risk of death. I'm sorry,
39:01
Speaker 1: we've been saying that for a while. The American Diabetes Association,
39:05
Speaker 1: American Heart Association now say you don't even take these
39:09
Speaker 1: supplements unless the doctor says, like you have a vitamin
39:12
Speaker 1: deficiency and you need to and you need this one
39:14
Speaker 1: specific supplement, not a bunch of them. And that rac
39:19
Speaker 1: the poor Oracle can that website that that you would
39:23
Speaker 1: say today graphic just got taken down altogether. Yeah, and
39:26
Speaker 1: they deleted the data with it too, um, which I
39:30
Speaker 1: personally take issue with. Yeah, I agree, but that just
39:34
Speaker 1: kind of goes to show you And that's two thousand
39:36
Speaker 1: and eleven that happened, But that goes to show you
39:38
Speaker 1: just how sweeping the backlash was to hang onto the
39:41
Speaker 1: data though, like parking on a MySpace page or something. Sure, sure,
39:46
Speaker 1: so yeah, you know, justin Timberlake was a big investor
39:49
Speaker 1: in the second round of my Space. I don't think
39:51
Speaker 1: it went anywhere though. Was there a second round? They
39:54
Speaker 1: tried to make a second round but it didn't work recently,
39:58
Speaker 1: I want to say, within the last seven eight years,
40:02
Speaker 1: and um, I feel like he sunk like a hundred
40:05
Speaker 1: million dollars or some crazy amount into that to try
40:08
Speaker 1: to try to like kick started again, and it just
40:11
Speaker 1: did not happen. The people had spoken, you know what
40:14
Speaker 1: I mean. But there was a huge, huge backlash to antioxidants.
40:18
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, and this is really important and
40:20
Speaker 1: I will go over it again in a second, but
40:22
Speaker 1: I just really want to point this out. What they
40:25
Speaker 1: focused on, what seemed to be the problem was not
40:28
Speaker 1: antioxidants themselves. Was not eating a diet rich in antioxidant foods,
40:33
Speaker 1: a very colorful diet filled with all the different kinds
40:36
Speaker 1: of nutrients that you get from that stuff. That doesn't
40:40
Speaker 1: seem to be the issue, which is why I don't
40:42
Speaker 1: understand why the USDA took down that site. What seemed
40:45
Speaker 1: to be the issue was taking enormous amounts on a
40:49
Speaker 1: daily basis of antioxidants supplements isolated derived supplements that were
40:55
Speaker 1: high doses of antioxidants. But even still, we haven't quite
40:59
Speaker 1: reached the point where we understand why that might be
41:02
Speaker 1: the case. And finally we kind of get to that
41:04
Speaker 1: because it's totally counterintuitive why we're taking more antioxidants to
41:09
Speaker 1: balance out oxidative stress in your body actually make you
41:12
Speaker 1: likely or do die from the very stuff that you're
41:15
Speaker 1: taking supplements to prevent. Why chuck, Yeah, Well, I mean
41:19
Speaker 1: it seems like, you know, we mentioned earlier that free
41:21
Speaker 1: radicals can really help out the immune system in a
41:24
Speaker 1: lot of ways, and that's kind of what they landed on,
41:27
Speaker 1: is that free radicals may not be the cause of
41:30
Speaker 1: this oxidative damage, but might be the result of it.
41:33
Speaker 1: So if you're a smoker or if you get that
41:36
Speaker 1: asbesos exposure, your body is going to produce these free
41:39
Speaker 1: radicals to signal, like we mentioned earlier, like hey, something's wrong.
41:43
Speaker 1: You need to come down here and start, you know,
41:45
Speaker 1: get to work, bring your little repair kit down here.
41:48
Speaker 1: And if you're taking all this these massive levels of antioxidants,
41:52
Speaker 1: it's gonna mute or muffle those the work of those
41:56
Speaker 1: free radicals. And that's why it explains the fact that
42:00
Speaker 1: people that had issues, like if you were a smoker
42:02
Speaker 1: already or that asbestos exposure and you were taking all
42:05
Speaker 1: these things, it was it was kind of suppressing your
42:08
Speaker 1: immuno response, right. Um, It's almost like you were taking
42:14
Speaker 1: such a high dose of these antioxidants that they came
42:16
Speaker 1: in and were telling your body we got this, even
42:19
Speaker 1: though it didn't really have it, which allowed like a
42:21
Speaker 1: tumor to say run rampant were it allowed for these
42:24
Speaker 1: processes of like your your arteries um clogging or hardening
42:29
Speaker 1: to take place because your body thought it was covered.
42:32
Speaker 1: That's the current theory. And again we don't want to
42:34
Speaker 1: get ahead of ourselves. If we learned any lesson from
42:37
Speaker 1: the initial round of this, it's that we need to
42:40
Speaker 1: just kind of take it all as it comes and
42:42
Speaker 1: try to figure it out. But that seems to be
42:44
Speaker 1: the current understanding is that it's sent It dampens the
42:49
Speaker 1: signals that free radical send to the immune system, which
42:52
Speaker 1: actually allows disease to take place. It makes sense, you know,
42:56
Speaker 1: It's like it's almost like, you know, the the immune
42:58
Speaker 1: system needs to be out a little out of whack
43:00
Speaker 1: to know, it needs to wake up and get to work.
43:03
Speaker 1: You know. So if it's not getting out of whack
43:06
Speaker 1: because antioxidants are just keeping that those electrons you know,
43:11
Speaker 1: all locked in place, or you know, at least an
43:13
Speaker 1: even trade going on, then your immune system isn't gonna
43:16
Speaker 1: know what to do. It explains the round worms, It
43:18
Speaker 1: explains the uh, the exercise paradox. It all kind of
43:23
Speaker 1: dovetailed very nicely. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and
43:26
Speaker 1: I mean it also makes sense so like, um, when
43:29
Speaker 1: you use radiation therapy, you're actually creating purposely free radicals
43:33
Speaker 1: that are targeting a tumor, a tumor, so that those
43:36
Speaker 1: free radicals go in and break up the tumor cell
43:39
Speaker 1: and destroy the cells that make up the tumor, I
43:40
Speaker 1: should say. Um, And that actually kind of jibes with
43:44
Speaker 1: something a concept called hormesis which I heard about, um
43:47
Speaker 1: from a guy that you and I have been um
43:49
Speaker 1: watching videos from, named doctor Mark Hyman. And um, he's
43:54
Speaker 1: like a functional medicine doctor, which is basically like just
43:58
Speaker 1: kind of used the whole body together and his food
44:01
Speaker 1: is medicine kind of thing into that. Yeah, she would
44:05
Speaker 1: love that guy all. But he's very down to earth
44:07
Speaker 1: and and pretty pretty interesting. But um, there's this concept
44:11
Speaker 1: called hormesis that he talks about. It's not his concept,
44:14
Speaker 1: but he he kind of punches it up a lot,
44:16
Speaker 1: but he Um. Hormesis is the idea that you stress
44:19
Speaker 1: your body slightly so that when it repairs itself, it
44:24
Speaker 1: actually makes itself slightly stronger, which that seems to be
44:27
Speaker 1: the basis of free radicals and exercise. That whole exercise
44:30
Speaker 1: paradox that when you exercise, you're actually stressing your body
44:34
Speaker 1: so that when your body goes into repair itself, you
44:38
Speaker 1: are better off than you were before. Like you can
44:40
Speaker 1: you have a higher vo to max or v O
44:43
Speaker 1: max um you have your muscles are stronger because they've
44:46
Speaker 1: been repaired stronger than they were when you tore them
44:49
Speaker 1: through exercise. That's why you have a down day between
44:51
Speaker 1: if you're like a big weightlifter, like I remember when
44:54
Speaker 1: I was a kid, Like I never lifted weights, but
44:56
Speaker 1: dudes would try to get me to and they would
44:58
Speaker 1: talk about weightlifting a lot, and they be like, Yeah,
45:00
Speaker 1: I mean, you gotta have that down day. You got
45:02
Speaker 1: to let those muscles repair, you know exactly. That's why
45:04
Speaker 1: you also want to protein after you um you exercise,
45:08
Speaker 1: so that you your body has a supply of stuff
45:10
Speaker 1: to rebuild those muscles with and make them stronger. But
45:13
Speaker 1: there's this whole idea that free radicals play the roles
45:16
Speaker 1: in all these different things, from hormesis like exercise, to
45:20
Speaker 1: um signaling to actually being part of the immune response
45:24
Speaker 1: that messes up cells like that we don't want, like
45:26
Speaker 1: tumor cells, and so if we suppress them with high
45:29
Speaker 1: doses of antioxidant supplements, it interferes with our bodies natural
45:33
Speaker 1: ability to do that rather than helping the body, where
45:36
Speaker 1: we actually seem to have been hindering it with antioxidant supplements. Yeah,
45:40
Speaker 1: and it's kind of interesting. I think, like, even though
45:45
Speaker 1: even though the doctor wasn't right on the money, I
45:48
Speaker 1: think in the end it did a lot of good
45:50
Speaker 1: because I think where we landed and where we are
45:53
Speaker 1: now is you shouldn't necessarily believe anyone when they say
45:57
Speaker 1: they figured out the one thing without aging and dying,
46:01
Speaker 1: and that it is a lot of different things going
46:04
Speaker 1: on in your body over a long period of time,
46:08
Speaker 1: and you can't say, this is it. I figured out
46:10
Speaker 1: the one single thing that's going to keep you young
46:12
Speaker 1: for more years and let you live longer. Yeah, there
46:15
Speaker 1: is no, there's no fountain of youth. No, no, that's
46:18
Speaker 1: the problem yet. But um, but it does seem like
46:21
Speaker 1: oxidative stress does play a role in it. But it's
46:23
Speaker 1: certainly not. There's it's just two. It's way more complicated,
46:26
Speaker 1: and that was wishful thinking to think otherwise. But it
46:29
Speaker 1: seems like where medicine is landed now is you know,
46:32
Speaker 1: it still makes sense to reduce your exposure to things
46:35
Speaker 1: that that cause oxidative stress, like cigarette smoke or asbestos
46:40
Speaker 1: or you know, all sorts of environmental toxins, and then
46:43
Speaker 1: to supplement your body's ability to take on free radicals
46:46
Speaker 1: by eating very healthy um plant based although not entirely
46:51
Speaker 1: plant um diet. Uh that's full of antioxidants, because that
46:55
Speaker 1: seems to be true, But it seems like extracting those
46:59
Speaker 1: antioxidants take some out of context that when you eat
47:01
Speaker 1: them with food, there's a bunch of other nutrients they
47:04
Speaker 1: interact with. That seems to actually that's where the health
47:07
Speaker 1: benefits come from. It's from food. We haven't figured out
47:09
Speaker 1: how to replicate that, and just extracting the antioxidants didn't
47:13
Speaker 1: do it. So eat a lot of colorful plants and
47:17
Speaker 1: you will probably be a little healthier than you would
47:21
Speaker 1: have otherwise when you age. Yeah, and if you really
47:24
Speaker 1: want bang for your buck, eat them raw. Yeah, there
47:27
Speaker 1: you go. It depends on the plant. Like I like
47:31
Speaker 1: to roast. I like to roast that cauliflower and broccoli. Yeah,
47:35
Speaker 1: tastes so good. But if you can munch on some
47:37
Speaker 1: raw edgies, that's really, really, really good for your body.
47:40
Speaker 1: But I think there are some processes like blanching that
47:43
Speaker 1: just lightly kind of cook something that unlock a lot
47:45
Speaker 1: of those nutrients that otherwise we just pass right through
47:48
Speaker 1: your your pooper. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I don't
47:51
Speaker 1: think raw is entirely the way. I'm sorry raw people,
47:56
Speaker 1: But anyway, you got anything else, I've got nothing else. Uh. Well,
48:02
Speaker 1: since Chuck said that, it's time everybody for a listener,
48:04
Speaker 1: ma'am uh. This is from the housing discrimination episode that
48:11
Speaker 1: was a good one, if I may say so. Hey, guys,
48:14
Speaker 1: Chuck was talking about locking in um property tax or
48:18
Speaker 1: saying you don't have to pay property tax anymore. And
48:21
Speaker 1: while that's a good idea, this is basically what California
48:23
Speaker 1: did when it enacted Prop thirteen in night. And while
48:28
Speaker 1: the originally stated goal of stopping displays displacement of older
48:32
Speaker 1: homeowners was a good one, it's unintended negative consequences are huge. Um.
48:36
Speaker 1: Here in California, your property taxes are essentially frozen when
48:40
Speaker 1: you buy a property, but the law also allows you
48:43
Speaker 1: to pass your tax basis to your children or grandchildren,
48:47
Speaker 1: and the result is massive inequity. A very common situation
48:50
Speaker 1: here in San Francisco is two households next door to
48:53
Speaker 1: each other, uh similar homes, similar age, and similar financial means,
48:58
Speaker 1: one of whom pays ten times what the other does
49:00
Speaker 1: in property taxes while consuming the city services those taxes
49:04
Speaker 1: pay for equally. It's a regressive tax that benefits the
49:08
Speaker 1: half of the people who are lucky enough to inherit property,
49:10
Speaker 1: while further burdening those trying to buy in like written control.
49:14
Speaker 1: It's a good idea but flawed in practice because the
49:17
Speaker 1: people who have it are not necessarily the people who
49:19
Speaker 1: need it. PS. You should mention The Color of Law
49:23
Speaker 1: by Richard Rothstein, probably one of the best books ever
49:26
Speaker 1: written on housing discrimination. And oh, I don't have that
49:31
Speaker 1: person's uh name. I feel bad now, probably Richard Rothstein
49:37
Speaker 1: writing anonymously. I guess it's just anonymous. Sorry about that.
49:42
Speaker 1: That was That was a good one. I'm interesting because
49:44
Speaker 1: I guarantee that the kind of thing where somebody else
49:46
Speaker 1: all right and be like no, no, no, that last
49:48
Speaker 1: writer had it wrong. Here's the real deal on that.
49:51
Speaker 1: Who knows. I'm I'm interested to see. I had not
49:54
Speaker 1: heard of that before. Yeah, I mean, Emily and I
49:56
Speaker 1: sort of lightly debated that the email. Um, actually I've
50:01
Speaker 1: got it here. It's from Eric. Oh, thanks m cal Berkeley.
50:05
Speaker 1: So here that's what he's talking about. But yeah, we
50:08
Speaker 1: kind of debated that a little bit. I guess I
50:12
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm not sure I feel about it, so
50:13
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna run my mouth very wise chuck very wise. Um, well,
50:18
Speaker 1: thanks again, Eric, that was a very interesting email. And
50:20
Speaker 1: if you want to be like Eric and get in
50:22
Speaker 1: touch with us about something that we possibly had overlooked.
50:26
Speaker 1: We want to hear about it. You can send it
50:28
Speaker 1: to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you
50:35
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50:40
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