what was it that they ate that day that
impacted how they slept that night? And
we found that higher intakes of fiber
were associated with more deep sleep,
higher intakes of saturated fat, less
deep sleep, and then more refined
carbohydrates, simple sugars, more
arousals. You're not getting deep
slowwave sleep, REN sleep as much as you
would otherwise. Welcome to the Huberman
Lab podcast, where we discuss science
and science-based tools for everyday
life.
I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor
of neurobiology and opthalmology at
Stanford School of Medicine. My guest
today is Dr. Marie Pierre Strange, a
professor of nutritional medicine at the
Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia
University School of Medicine. Today we
discuss how you eat impacts your sleep
and how you sleep impacts what you eat
as well as how your body utilizes food
depending on how you slept. Now we've
talked about food and we've talked about
sleep many times before on this podcast.
But Dr. St. On's work is unique because
she runs one of the few laboratories in
the world to look at the birectional
relationship between sleep and food. For
instance, you'll learn how even modest
sleep deprivation increases hunger but
differently in men and women. In men, it
happens to increase the hormones that
drive the desire to eat. Whereas in
women, it reduces naturally made
peptides such as GLP, which suppress
hunger. Today's discussion gets into the
specific actionable items that you can
do to improve your sleep, and the way
that your body handles food and hunger.
We talk about the role of sleep in
regulating blood sugar, cortisol levels,
overall metabolism, and cardioabolic
health. Now, because Dr. St. Oja's
research focuses on sleep and nutrition,
but she's also spent a significant
amount of time studying how specific
nutrients impact overall health and not
just sleep. We also talk about that. I'm
certain that you'll come away from
today's episode with a lot of new
information you haven't heard elsewhere,
as well as with the intention to make
small or perhaps even large changes in
behavior and nutritional choices that
the science tell us can significantly
improve your sleep, your metabolism, and
overall health. Before we begin, I'd
like to emphasize that this podcast is
separate from my teaching and research
roles at Stanford. It is however part of
my desire and effort to bring zero cost
to consumer information about science
and science related tools to the general
public. In keeping with that theme,
today's episode does include sponsors.
And now for my discussion with Dr. Marie
Pierre St. Dr. Marie Pierre St. welcome.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> Sleep impacts how and what we eat and
how and what we eat impacts sleep.
That's a different perspective than I
think most people take. I think most
people are familiar, however, with not
getting the best night's sleep, maybe
feeling like their impulsivity to eat
quote unquote bad foods is a little
higher, and then also hopefully familiar
with having a great night's sleep and
feeling like we're just kind of in
control in a different way. Maybe you
could just kind of share for us what's
really going on beneath that experience
and when subtle or not so subtle chronic
sleep loss. So not an allnighter
necessarily but you know 45 minutes less
here 90 minutes less there etc etc how
that plays out in terms of our nutrition
and then we'll go in from the nutrition
side to sleep.
>> Sure. So there's a couple of questions
that you have in there actually about
the extent of sleep loss and how that
influences your food intake, what we see
in the general population versus what we
do in a lab to address causality. So let
me start with you know the
population-based studies right. So when
I started being interested in in sleep
it was coming from an obesity angle. My
PhD is in nutrition. I trained as a
postoc in uh body composition obesity
research and we were getting a lot of
information from population based
studies that people who sleep too little
have a higher body mass index than
people who get adequate amount of sleep.
Then it became there is a higher
prevalence of people with obesity in
this short sleep uh group.
Then studies evaluating changes over
time seeing that people who don't sleep
enough tend to gain more weight. There
was a famous uh nurses health study that
I really like to site uh when I give
talks that was published in 2006
where uh they tracked nurses over 14
years and those nurses that reported
sleeping five six hours had much higher
rate of weight gain over that 14 15 year
period than the nurses who had reported
sleeping seven or eight hours per night.
So those are observations that we get
from largecale population studies,
cohorts,
but you know what they what those
studies tell us is that things are
happening at a point in time or may
influence something that's happening
over time but not necessarily that one
causes the other. Right? So I started uh
my work in this field trying to uncover
whether sleeping too little actually
causes weight gain. And so in my opinion
because I was coming from a lab where I
trained in the measurement of energy
balance. So how much energ how much
energy you eat versus how much energy
you burn like well if sleep leads to
obesity leads to weight gain it has to
impact this energy balance
regulation. So it's either that we eat
more than we should or that we exercise
less we burn less or we eat more or
maybe it's a combination of the two.
Let's try this out and and see. So my
first uh my first study, my first NIH
grant, the big RO1s, you know, was to
look at exactly at this. So we had
people who had adequate sleep and we
brought them in the lab and we asked
them in a crossover design. So half of
the participants started out sleeping
adequately. So they we gave them a
9-hour time in bed opportunity or we
asked them to sleep too little. So, they
had a 4-hour time in bed opportunity,
very short, but we did this for five
nights.
And then we took all sorts of
measurements in a controlled feeding
condition. So, for the first three days,
we told we had our participants eat the
exact same thing regardless of how much
time in bed they slept they got at
night. And then we measured appetite
regulating hormones. We did neuroiming
uh to really get at isolating the impact
of sleep duration on appetite regulating
hormones and and um neuronal responses
to foods. And then on the last day we
let them self- select their food intake
and we measured that in the lab. From
that study we showed that in men
specifically
uh we saw an increase in ghrein in
response to short sleep. So this hormone
that triggers food intake in women we
saw a reduction in GLP-1 interestingly
enough glucagon like peptide one. So the
satiety hormone was reduced as a result
of short sleep in women. And then when
uh we measured their food intake in the
lab, they ate 300 calories more in the
short sleep condition than they when
they got their regular adequate sleep of
at least 7 and 1/2 hours, a little more
than that uh per night. Then uh you were
asking about you know brain responses.
Uh we looked at neuronal responses to
food stimuli. We found upregulation in
uh reward centers of the brain in the
context of sleep restriction compared to
the context of adequate sleep. So
altogether really building a case that
when you don't sleep enough at night,
you have both physiological
signals to eat more for men or not stop
eating in women that lead to greater
food intake. that's also uh could be
impacted by just pleasurable centers
that are activated to a greater extent
as a result of uh insufficient sleep.
>> Amazing this sex specific split in the
data if I have it correctly that when
men are sleepd deprived so getting four
hours per night
>> the signals that drive a pettitive
desire to eat are higher in women it's
more that the break uh on eating on
satiety is reduced.
>> Exactly. Okay. As far as I know, the GLP
pathways are not um divergent by by sex,
but of course I'm not deeply versed in
that literature. Is there any evidence
that GLPs are functioning different in
men and women like circadian wise or
anything like that or this just this was
just a fertuitous outcome or I should
say uh incidental outcome?
>> This was an incidental outcome. We
really didn't know what to expect. We
didn't really know at all that we'd see
sex differences. Mhm.
>> Because there had been prior studies and
prior studies had shown that ghrein was
increased as a result of sleep
restriction. They also showed that
leptin was reduced as a result of sleep
restriction. And when we got our data,
if we analyzed our data with all of our
participants together
>> and there was no effect.
>> Mhm.
>> And that was surprising. And people
would say, "Don't you know? Don't you
know sleep restriction
increases grein?" Like, well, I guess I
don't know because in our study it
doesn't. But then we saw these sex
specific differences. Then it made sense
then that in the full sample when we had
an equal number of men and women we saw
no effect on ghrein because there was no
effect in women but there was an effect
in men which was reproducing what others
had found because all the prior studies
had been done in men only.
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Whenever I'm sleepd deprived, so four or
five hours of sleep I consider sleep
deprived. I used to pull allnighters
years ago. Now I avoid them at all
costs. But whenever I have that
experience, I feel like my whole body to
some extent is in a low level of pain.
It's like kind of like central ache like
you just and and I wonder a extent to
which people eat to overcome like to
kind of quell the the pain of sleep
deprivation. Maybe people react
differently to sleep deprivation. Maybe
their subjective experience of it is is
very different. But what do you think is
happening in that uh in that short
relatively short amount of sleep that's
missing? What is getting reset? Is it
neural? Is it endocrine? It's obviously
all those things, but what do you think
is the the switch that allows people to
enter a a day in a in a much more
healthy fashion or or a sick essentially
in a slightly sick fashion? In our
study, it was actually a 50% reduction
in sleep because when they had 9 hours
sleep opportunity, they slept around 7
and 1/2 and when they had the they were
all people who we had screened to sleep
at least seven measured by ectography.
So, and on average they get 7 and 1/2.
And in the sleep restricted condition,
they got on average about 3 hours and 50
minutes.
>> So, it's like staying up late working on
a deadline then trying to catch an early
flight. Yeah,
>> it's pretty brutal.
>> It's pretty brutal. And that was
maintained, you know, they had five
nights of that. So that
>> five nights of that. Were they coming
unglued mentally, too? That I think I
would feel terrible after that kind of
stretch
>> that the end they were done. Like there
was no way anyone would want to keep
keep coming for that. But they were in
the lab. They were under supervision the
whole time. We didn't let them go out on
their own. Uh so they were well
supervised. Make sure that nothing uh
nothing would happen to them.
>> No naps.
>> No naps. No. No. Uh but so what happens
is I think there's some subconscious
need to to eat more when you're
sleepdeprived. There's also you know
there's a thermic effect of of food,
right? So it gives you a jolt of energy
to eat something. People know that you
eat it wakes you up in a way. You know,
neuronal signaling that that enhances uh
pleasurable and reward centers of the
brain where you know when also fatigue
sits in and now it's like do you really
want to have this conversation with
yourself about what to choose at the
buffet table? you know, there's fatigue
>> and uh and others have shown also that
sleepiness tends to correlate with all
of this that there's these triggers for
more pleasurable food consumption with
um with sleep restriction and it's been
reproduced. There's been so many studies
uh and they all you know agree to to the
extent of overeating you know a meta
analysis showed 250 to 400 calories of
overeating which might not sound like
much but when you start layering that in
day after day and you think you know
3500 excess calories more or less for a
pound of body weight and then you start
when people accumulate that over time
>> if they're in a night shift condition or
new parents or
>> tending to a sick relative were just
final exams like it it's a real thing.
>> It's a real thing. Uh Neymar Kovven in
uh 2022 published a paper where uh they
had sleep restriction about 5 hours per
night versus 7 and 1 half hours per
night for two weeks and participants
gained half a kilo in a twoe period. So
you do nothing and you just you know
sleep less and gain gain almost a pound
in two weeks. It strikes me that, you
know, for a long time in the stress
research, the idea was when people are
stressed, they reach for kind of quote
unquote comfort foods, carbohydrate, and
typically starch fat, starched fat,
sugar combination foods to comfort them.
And and the the just so story was always
that uh okay, well, you know, cortisol's
main role is to deploy glucose, and so
people are doing this as a way to bring
excess energy and and it all kind of
fits together. What is the relationship
between these forms of sleep deprivation
that you work on and stress? Is it
really a way of of I'm not saying just
inducing stress because I think sleep is
its own thing, but it's stressful
>> just to be less than adequately rested
independent of the things coming at you
in life,
>> right? Is what you're studying stress.
>> So if you're thinking about
physiological stress measured by
cortisol levels in that study actually
cortisol wasn't changed
>> in the short sleep.
>> In the short sleep. Tell me more about
that. I'm fascinated by circadian
rhythms and cortisol. So what does what
does that what does that mean?
>> There was no difference between the two
conditions. The adequate sleep or short
sleep on cortisol levels
>> for 5 days of sleep restriction at
basically 4 hours a night.
>> So cortisol is still peaking in the in
the morning, still dropping in the
evening.
>> Yeah.
>> Wow. That's very surprising to me.
>> I don't know. I don't know if it's the
context of you know being in a lab where
everything's safe taken care of for
them. there is nothing outside to
aggravate
>> this. So I don't know maybe when you're
in the context of sleep restriction but
also dealing with your daily life
>> you needing to take care of your kids
needing to get to work needing to do all
the activities of daily living maybe
then that becomes you know the the added
stressful. So the message is if you
suffer less than adequate sleep, get
someone to take care of everything else.
You better be in a spa. Exactly.
Exactly. No, I and I'm not challenging
the result. I just find it really
interesting. I would have thought that
basil cortisol levels would would go
ary.
>> Well, in that study also, we didn't see
any effect on glucose or insulin.
Nothing. Nothing. The curves were
superimposable.
while
>> they were eating the exact same food at
the exact same time, exact same
quantity. The only thing we changed was
the amount of sleep opportunity they got
at night. So to me, this means that it's
a combination of different things that
causes the metabolic abnormalities that
we notice in free living populations.
People aren't isolated. They're not in a
box where they're not sleeping enough
and they're choosing to eat higher fat,
higher sugar, higher salt, poor diet
that then triggers a worsening and may
be compounded by the lack of sleep, even
worsening of of those cardioabolic
outcomes because we did a follow-up
study to this uh this severe sleep
restriction study. So the reason why we
did that was because exactly for this
reason because we did not find any
adverse impact on glucose or insulin or
lipid profile. And we're like so what is
it then? Why is it that in population
based studies we find that people who
sleep too little have higher risk of
cardiovascular disease, higher risk of
hypertension, higher blood pressure,
higher uh risk of type two diabetes. So,
because we had seen that food choices
were different, that they ate a diet
that was higher in calories, higher uh
in fat and saturated fat, we thought
maybe if you're in a free living
situation,
that's when you start to see those
cardio metabolic outcomes because it's
compounded by maybe uh more sedentary
behavior and
alterations in in uh food choices and
and diet. So the follow-up study then
was to recruit good sleepers, people who
sleep at least seven hours per night,
verified by ectography, who answer on
questionnaires that their sleep quality
is good. And then to take these people
and say, "Okay, now you're either going
to continue your excellent sleep or
you're going to now go to bed an hour
and a half later." So that you get an
hour and a half reduction in sleep.
Because when we screen people to sleep
at least seven hours per night, they
sleep about seven and a half. And
reducing by an hour and a half gets to 6
hours, which is short sleep,
insufficient
on average what people who don't get
enough sleep get.
>> They're missing a full sleep cycle.
>> Yeah, pretty much. and uh and they can
sustain that for prolonged periods
because that's what people report in in
population based studies. And now when
we did that, we saw that insulin
resistance was increased after 6 weeks
of sleep restriction compared to
adequate sleep. We saw insulin
sensitivity was reduced. It was worse
actually in post-menopausal women
compared to premenopausal women. We saw
blood pressure uh was increased. Uh so
those cardio metatabolic outcomes were
adversely impacted in free living mild
sustained sleep restriction for 6 weeks.
6 weeks was something else also. It was
it was tough.
>> I can only imagine. Wow. Okay. Because
my mind always goes to all right. Well,
we wake up in the morning because of an
increase in cortisol. That's circadian.
It's not related to sleep per se. It
just kind of overlaps with the end of
the night's sleep. If that's independent
of sleep and cortisol drives glucose
release, we know this.
>> At least in the first study you
described, glucose levels weren't
altered. You said it was isocaloric, so
people were it's not like they're eating
more. No,
>> they're the the hormones that are
driving the desire to eat more are
elevated.
>> The didn't let them eat more,
>> but you didn't let them. I think that's
a a key thing that you you pointed out
before, but I think we want to
underscore. And then of course the GLP
uh levels in women being reduced. It's
not that then they were able to eat as
we say ad libidum and then they happen
to eat more but they gained weight. So
what's kind of the action end of things
that causes them to gain weight if
they're basically in an isocchloric
diet? And I have a I have a I have an
idea what it might be but I'm curious
what the answer is.
>> Yes. I think they're they're more
sedentary
>> during the day. Less spontaneous
activity.
>> Right. less spontaneous activity because
we also did a study to look at energy
expenditure that's really difficult
actually to measure in my opinion energy
expenditure there's multiple components
to energy expenditure
uh but we did a study where this was a
small study we enrolled only women for
that and we have a metabolic chamber at
Colombia that we were able to use for
this uh so this small room in which we
keep people and we measure minuteby at
oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide
production. And we were able to show
that energy expenditure is actually
increased in the context of sleep
restriction in the metabolic chamber
because it's more costly energetically
to remain awake than to fall asleep. So
energy expenditure when participants
were awake was identical in both
conditions regardless of how much sleep
they got the night before.
>> So it's fidgeting movement because we've
talked before in this podcast about the
non-ex exercise induced thermogenesis.
It's a big number. I mean you people who
fidget a lot bounce their knee a lot. I
mean sometimes these people are burning
1500 calories more per day and everyone
goes oh my god how could that possibly
be? But I mean that's a lot. That's at
the extreme. But it is kind of
interesting to observe people out in the
world and you sometimes see that people
who are very very lean, very let's just
say thin and lean nowadays, who knows
because of the GLPS etc. But they tend
to have a lot of spontaneous movement.
They tend to stand up quickly. They tend
to walk quickly. Well, you're from New
York, so everyone there walks faster
than out here. But it's a real thing,
you know, whereas some people like me
are kind of more middle of the curve,
but you know, I sit a bit more still
unless I'm very caffeinated. These
things add up over time in ways that I
think most people underestimate.
>> Yeah. So for us it was about 5% of
energy
>> increased, but it it and it ended up
being about 90 calories, nowhere close
to the 300 calories that uh
>> more of intake they got over over a day
in the prior study. So it's still an
imbalance towards a positive energy
balance when we do the math but there is
an increase in um in energy expenditure
again in the confines of a metabolic
chamber which you know for most people
is equivalent of the size of their
bathroom. Right.
>> Right. You have like a bed, a table and
a sink, a toilet. That's it. So you
can't can't do much in there.
>> But you can do studies quote unquote out
in the wild with um acttometry or what?
Yeah,
excuse me. Yeah.
>> Yes.
>> A little while ago, I saw a study that
said that if you are one night sleepd
deprived, like you get one or two hours
less uh sleep than normally you would
get to feel rested that it's actually
advantageous to exercise because it
offsets some of the um increase in
inflammation.
>> But then if you're going multiple nights
that way, exercising on a regular basis
when sleep deprived, it just sets up a
um susceptibility to illness,
susceptibility to injury and so forth.
How much of what you observe in the
under the conditions of sleep
deprivation do you think are downstream
or upstream of this thing that we just
call inflammation? like is this just
like a bodywide response and there are a
bunch of things that have gone ary and
and so like a bunch of systems are
disregulated or can we pinpoint okay
when you're sleepd deprived
this is what this is what's happening
because I think if if women knew that
their GLPs were down
>> when they're down on sleep so that they
should expect that they would feel less
satiety if men knew that their ghrein
levels were elevated when they're down
on sleep that they're going to feel hung
hungrier I mean we have pretty big
prefrontal cortex most people anyway and
we can intervene simply on the basis of
knowledge. I think that's what's
empowering and I think about this
sometimes too when I'm when I'm thinking
about you know my my diet at times right
I'm like I do I really want to eat this
or is it because I really didn't sleep
last night right so you can you can make
you can ask yourself these questions
take a pause and say okay do I really
want you know dessert or is it just that
I'm tired and you know I should just I'm
fine I don't need it Mhm.
>> So if you if you step back and think
that maybe part of it is because you
didn't sleep well the night before, then
you can make your appropriate choices,
right? Say, "Okay, I probably don't need
the the extra calories right now." Or or
maybe you say, "You know what? I had a
really bad night last night and those
extra calories, I don't really care
because they're going to make me feel
good and I need some pickme up." But you
know
>> that's that's all the choices to make
right you know because mood comes into
comes into play as well. So
>> well ultimately that brings us to the
the other direction of the equation
right how does what we eat impact our
sleep. This is something that I think
most people have heard about in the
context of try not to eat too close to
bedtime.
>> Um this is an active debate in many
households actually. Some people seem to
be fine eating close to bedtime and
sleeping and even if they track their
sleep. Other people it really disrupts
their sleep. I'm interested in both the
timing of food intake relative to sleep
but also the content of the food and how
it impacts sleep. What's known about
that either from your work or from other
work? When we started this conversation,
I was telling you about these population
based studies, you know, cross-sectional
data where two things happen at the same
time and you, you know, you you don't
really know causality, they happen at
the same time. And I think early on uh
in this field we started thinking about
sleep as the promoter of food intake or
as a sleepcausing
changes in diet exercise but didn't
really think that maybe it's the other
way around or maybe the other way around
is just as plausible.
So I started thinking about that and
said well what what if we took the other
approach? What if we looked at diet and
examined how diet influenced future
sleep?
And my first paper in this field was
using data from the multi-ethnic study
of atheroscerosis. It's actually kind of
hard to find good cohorts that have good
nutrition data, good sleep data, and
data over over years. Right? So MESA
multi-thnics of study of atherosclerosis
is one of those great cohorts that we
have in here in the US that has all of
the above. So I paired up with a
colleague of mine, Susan Redline in
Boston and uh she's a principal
investigator on their sleep ancillary
study and we asked the question of diet
quality and its impact on sleep
duration, insomnia symptoms and we found
that having a diet that more closely
aligns with the Mediterranean diet was
associated with better uh probability of
having adequate sleep and reduced um
insomnia symptoms in this cohort. So
then it launched a whole field of study
really to to keep looking at this and
we've looked at this in different
studies and different cohorts actually
uh earlier this year we published data
from the women's health initiative
another large large cohort with good
diet data and and sleep information. We
took a really really nice approach in
this uh longitudinal analysis. I don't
know. Usually when we do longitunal
studies, we exclude people who have the
condition at baseline, right? So if
you're trying to see this factor at
baseline, how does it influence
hypertension 10 years later, you usually
exclude people who have hypertension at
baseline? Because you want to see the
development of hypertension. In this
case, we're looking at insomnia
symptoms. But insomnia is one of those
conditions that's not necessarily
static. It resolves, right? So you can
have insomnia and then a few years later
not have insomnia
or you can not have insomnia now and
develop insomnia. So what we did is we
broke our down our participants into two
groups. the people who had no insomnia
at baseline and at three years followup
participants who had insomnia at
baseline but not at 3 years followup. So
they were in the healthful sleep
improving sleep and then the other group
was all those women who had insomnia at
baseline and at 3 years and no insomnia
at baseline but insomnia at 3 years. So
they were the persistent insomnia
progressing towards poor sleep group.
And we found that the women who had a
diet that was more closely aligned to
the Mediterranean diet. But we also
looked at uh an American type of diet
profile called the DASH diet. The
dietary approaches to stop hypertension.
Women who had a dietary profile closer
to those two types of diets, healthful
diets were less likely to have
hypertension uh insomnia at three years.
And the DASH diet is what?
>> Dietary approaches to stop hypert
hypertension was developed to uh reduce
prevent hypertension, reduce blood
pressure in people by increasing intakes
of fruits and vegetables, nuts and
seeds, consuming low-fat dairy, more
plant-based types of uh diet and and can
be has been tested in a low salt or
regular salt profile.
>> How did those work out? I'm just
curious. Do you recall if the low salt
high salt um condition
>> there is salt sensitivity so there are
some people who are very sensitive to
salt and so having a reduced salt diet
will really improve their blood pressure
>> others not so much but the DASH diet
regardless of its salt content did
better than the equivalent non-dash
>> which would be your average you know
American diet whatever that is yeah
higher in saturated fat and sugars
>> which seems to be changing now because
of the GLPS I I feel Like that's, you
know, uh maybe that's a skewed
perspective, but I feel like the the
typical American diet is it might not be
changing so much in content, but in
volume it seems like people are eating
less. Certainly the snack food
companies, from what I understand, are
struggling. Alcohol companies, that's a
different issue, but there certainly
have uh sales are way way down,
>> but it just seems like people's
appetites are down.
>> Well, GLP1s will do that, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. And we were talking about this the
other day here. uh how many Americans
have tried a GLP? The estimates are
anywhere from like one in seven. Some
people say it's it's more
>> which is pretty incredible.
>> Yeah, it's pretty high.
>> But this is interesting. So how people
eat impacts their sleep, I'm sure the
listeners and I also am thinking okay
but people who are eating a
Mediterranean diet, right? olive oils,
fish, you know, fruits, vegetables, they
are probably more apt to walk more,
exercise more, socialize more, all the
how do you separate out the variables in
a study like that?
>> Uh well, so in population based studies,
we adjust for a bunch of coariants,
right? We have all these questionnaires
that uh that are given out to people
asking them about their race,
occupation, sociodemographic
stat, socioeconomic status, and then we
adjust. We adjust for um different
illnesses that they may have,
depression,
physical activity level. Um so we try to
take all this in into consideration.
Obviously we there's always unmeasured
factors that you can't control for
social interactions like you um you
mentioned. It's usually not captured
very well. It's not something that we uh
we can adjust for. But one thing that we
did in my lab uh going back to that
original study was to look at uh how
diet influenced sleep at night in the
participants in our inpatient study. So
we took the 9-hour time in bed
opportunity phase only that one. In the
4-hour time in bed opportunity
participants were very efficient. There
was not much variability in sleep
duration in that phase. They slept as
much as they could in that 4-hour
opportunity, but in the nine hours,
there was variability there. Some people
got more or less. So, we wanted to see
if food intake was related to their
sleep at night. That study, we had
polynography assessments of sleep every
single night. Like I mentioned, we had
uh control diet initially and then we
let them self- select their food
intakes. So we took a very systematic
approach to evaluating how diet could
influence sleep in that study. We said
first of all,
was the diet that they chose different
than the diet that we gave them? First
step, right? It was. So they ate almost
450 calories more. They ate 33% more
saturated fat.
uh little less protein I believe a
little more carbohydrates not much but
it it was different
>> so like okay so so there's difference
between the diets okay now
>> was their sleep at night different when
they were eating the diet that we fed
them compared to what they self-
selected
and it they it was different it wasn't
different in terms of duration but it
was different in time it took them to
fall asleep which was
over 70% longer to fall asleep when they
self- selected their diet and their
slowwave sleep. So deep sleep was
shorter. I think it was about 23 20%
shorter uh when they self- selected
their diet compared to what we had given
them.
>> Was timing of food intake impacted?
Because when I think of what impacts
what reduces um slowwave deep sleep,
it's eating too close to bedtime. Mhm.
So
we did not take that into consideration
in that study. We didn't uh we didn't
look at that. We had their their food
intake profile and didn't specifically
look in that phase when's when was their
last eating period. But it could have
been different than in the controlled
feeding condition because in the
controlled feeding condition they had
set meals at specific times. But they
all went to bed at 10 p.m. Then the
other question was, okay, what was it
that they ate that day that impacted how
they slept that night? And we found that
higher intakes of fiber were associated
with more deep sleep,
higher intakes of saturated fat, less
deep sleep, and then more refined
carbohydrates, simple sugars, more
arousals. So when we talk about arousals
in the context of polyynography, it
doesn't necessarily mean full-on waking
up or awakening, it really means going
from a deeper to lighter stage of sleep.
So you may still be asleep throughout
the night, but you're not getting deep
slow wave sleep, REN sleep as much as
you would uh otherwise.
>> Do you create a buffer between your last
bite of food and the time you go to
sleep? You personally?
>> Me personally, yes.
>> Is it an hour, two hours, three hours?
>> I personally like to eat my last meal at
least three hours before going to bed.
And I know there's variability there.
Different people have different uh
tolerance. You mentioned right before
that uh
>> you know some people may be later
chronotypes, but what we know is that
eating earlier
is better overall for cardio metabolic
health. Eating earlier is better. Me
personally, I feel I feel better by
eating earlier. If I eat too close to
bedtime, I
I get hot.
>> Right. Yeah. It's it's a thermic
effective food thermic effective. We
want to be cooling off when we go to
sleep.
>> Exactly. Exactly.
>> I'd like to take a quick break and
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co-enzyme Q10 with your first AG1
subscription. There seems to be
something asymmetric about sleep
requirements in my experience, and I
don't think I'm alone in this, whereby
if I go to bed at 1000 p.m., I get into
bed at 9:30, fall asleep at 10:00, I
need about 6 and 1 half, maybe 7 hours
to feel completely rested. That's how
long I'll sleep. Wake up without an
alarm, feeling great.
If I go to bed at midnight, I find I
could sleep till 9 and still not feel
completely rested. So, there's some
weird sleep inertia stuff going on
there, etc. The old adage is every hour
before midnight is worth two after. But
is there any real data to support that
or is this just all subjective and
conjecture?
>> I'm not sure there's data to support
that. I haven't seen anything. But what
I can say from what you're saying is
that if you usually go to bed at 9:30,
10:00, and then all of a sudden you go
to bed at midnight, now you're kind of
out of line with your personal circadian
system, right? And it's always harder to
to get a good night's sleep if you're
not going with your internal clock or
your internal circadian
>> preference. Um, this is what happens
with shift workers, right? for example,
they they they're not sleeping at night.
They're trying to sleep during the day.
They're trying to sleep during the day
where their melatonin is low or it
should be when it's high. So, they're
fighting their circadian system. So,
yes, they should they should be getting
seven hours, but they're not getting
seven hours because their body is not
designed to be sleeping during the
daytime hours. Plus, then you have, you
know, everything else, right? Right. The
light, the
>> lights, the noise, the kids, the
whatever life that that happens during
the daytime when everybody else is awake
and you're trying to sleep.
>> Yeah. The only thing I can think of
that's an advantage to being nocturnal
is the quiet.
>> I used to sometimes shift to a nocturnal
schedule during holidays in graduate
school when everyone would go home
because I lived my my parents lived
relatively close to where I went to
graduate school. So, I could afford to
just just go home for Christmas, right?
Just that day
>> or a couple of days. and everyone else
had to travel, so I could invert my
schedule. It just kind of drifted that
way.
>> Yeah,
>> I promise that's the only advantage of
going to bed at 4:00 a.m. and uh
sleeping until, you know, 3:00 p.m. At
least for typical people, it you your
brain gets into a kind of weird space
when you're inverted from the rest of
the world.
>> Well, the things you do when you're a
grad student, I would be the opposite,
right? I'd wake up at 4:00 a.m. and then
study because I felt like all of the
hours of studying before the sun rose
were like extras.
>> Interesting.
>> Extra time for me.
>> It was definitely extra. But you felt
like you were extra sharp at those
hours.
>> Extra sharp. I could study and then you
know I got that time done and then you
know breakfast but then I crash later in
the afternoon.
>> Yeah, that's the problem. The one 2 PM
crash. Um has your work explored napping
at all? I'm a believer in naps and
non-sleep deep breaths, yoga nidra type
things, meditation. Do naps factor into
this diet, nutrition, hunger equation.
>> So, we haven't done research on napping
per se. For me, there there's a lot
going on with napping. I don't think we
have very good data to be able to say
what's appropriate about napping. What
we do know is that you don't want to nap
too close to bedtime because you want to
build sleep pressure throughout the day.
And if you're dissipating the sleep
pressure, the sleep need too close to
bedtime, then you're not going to be
able to fall asleep when time comes to
go to bed at your usual hour. And then,
you know, you get into this vicious
cycle and it's it's not helpful. But,
you know, there are some studies that
say, well, what should you do if you
can't sleep enough at night? and you're
feeling tired, you know, should you
sleep? Should recommendations are that
you should make it a short nap, 30
minutes, no more than an hour, early
enough in the day if possible, so that
you can have sufficient time to rebuild
that sleep pressure to be able to fall
back asleep well when time comes. But
then there's also this this whole
question about what's an app for, right?
Like why are you sleepy? Of course, if
you if you've pulled an alada, it's easy
to to know. But if if you had sufficient
sleep or sufficient opportunity for
sleep at night and you're waking up and
you're not feeling refreshed, you're not
feeling like you had good quality sleep
and then you're not able to maintain
alertness throughout the day and you
need a nap.
I think it's you should check to see
like what's going on at night like why
are you not getting that good good
enough sleep? I'm chuckling because my
posttock advisor sparked this huge
debate. It was a big lab and uh we had a
couple of people in lab who like to nap
at their desk. These were people that
could just like put their head down and
nap at their desk in the afternoon. He'd
walk in, they'd be napping and then they
wake up and keep working. Everyone
everyone was working very hard. and he
had this theory uh that if you're
napping it's because you're sleepd
deprived that like napping is unhealthy
you know and it it sparked a big debate
and people because it we're a bunch of
nerds people bring data in like no you
know at the sleep lab at Stanford says
that naps can be healthy and I think it
what you just described summarizes I
think that the takeaway I'm a believer
in the short nap but but I'm one of
these people that can sleep anywhere
anytime which may be reflective of sleep
deprivation
>> maybe yeah
>> do Do you find that like when you're
going to design a study or when you're
going to like really work like this 4:00
a.m. time that it's a time of calm or
are you like a laz are you do you feel
like your mind is moving fast or you're
kind of in this like flow zone or
whatever you want to call it?
>> I'm very focused.
>> Mhm.
>> Uh very efficient.
So I try to be really attentive at my
task. I try to take take breaks once in
a while, but uh most of the time it's uh
it's very efficient. Get to the task and
get it done.
>> Earlier you were talking about biking
into work. You strike me as somebody I
always think of people who I'm always
impressed by colleagues like this that
their life is kind of like a step
function. They wake up and it's like
they're into the day and then it's down,
right? Yeah. Interesting. I think some
of us are more like this.
>> But I think it's important to have a
little bit of both though. I think it's
important to have downtime,
you know, speed time, uh
>> to to not just be go go go go go like
you were asking about uh my personal,
you know, uh actions and at one point I
was running a lot for exercise and uh I
felt like my whole life was just running
all the time.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Run to get my kids to
school. run to work, get work done, run
to then run for fun. Run, run, run. And
then I thought, okay, I kind of need to
>> I think I need a breather. And so I
started incorporating yoga into my uh my
exercise routine. I think that's I think
that's good. Actually, when I was a grad
student, I thought yoga was stressful
because I couldn't stand in those poses.
>> Exactly.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> But I think yoga evolved. I think the
yoga I do now, it's not as static
>> as the yoga I was doing when I was a
grad student. I think it evolved to be a
little more active than uh than back
then. I see the benefit to having, you
know, the
>> both types of uh exercise.
>> Thanks for being willing to explore
that. you know the I'm not an Ayurvedic
practitioner but the Ayurvedic folks
they'll talk about people like more fire
more more earth where you know and and I
think it's just a different lens in
nomenclature on there's a kind of array
of phenotypes but when we talk about
this thing sleep it becomes very
prescriptive right it's like we all need
6 to 8 hours I mean actually from what
you're saying today six sounds like
insufficient is what I'm hearing I'm
probably a little sleepd deprived is
what I'm kind of hearing
>> so you know a colleague of mine just
published a paper in nature about the
biological clocks and aging in different
organs. And the sweet spot really was 6
and 1 half to about 7 and 1 half 8 hours
for optimal aging. Once you get to below
that, it's basically you shaped, right?
So too much of one thing is not good.
Too too little is is not good. You want
to be in the sweet spot. Most most
organs for optimal aging was in the 6
and 1 half to 7.8. And it differed a
little bit by men and women depending on
which organs he was looking at. Uh a
little longer for women. Um some of the
curves were different where you know
some are more pronounced u shapes in in
men than women and different organs. So
>> uh very interesting paper
>> came out last week or two weeks ago.
I'll
>> have to check it out. Um what other uh
sex differences uh are known to exist in
sleep requirements, sleep dynamics that
from your work or from other work? This
is not something we've really covered on
the podcast.
>> No.
>> No. I mean, well, not in in any
sufficient amount of detail.
>> Yeah.
>> So, women tend to sleep a little longer
than men across lifespan. Although, you
know, if you ask women about their
sleep, they don't rate their sleep as
very good. Um, more women than men
report having difficulties with sleep.
Insomnia for example, insomnia symptoms.
More women than men say they have
difficulty falling asleep, difficulty
maintaining sleep uh across the adult
lifespan.
>> Why do you think that is?
>> There could be some physiological
effects, right? Some hormonal effects.
Women uh don't sleep the same across a
menstrual cycle. Uh there's discomfort
at different times. Uh and then there's
different responsibilities, different
social roles that come into play uh that
may influence women differently than
men. But you know, we were working on a
on a review paper actually about
hypertension and and sleep and sex
differences. And you know, women are
more sensitive to the impact of poor
sleep on different metabolic outcomes
than men. So for blood pressure at lower
sleep apnea for example at lower
thresholds of sleep apnnea their blood
pressure would be higher uh than men. So
I think that there needs to be for sure
a lot more research in this area to be
able to uncover you know these these
differences and then you know knowing
that there are these differences to
start probing uh women about their
sleep. Last year we published um a
scientific statement for the American
Heart Association about
multi-dimensional sleep health and we
concluded by uh recommending clinicians
that they actually ask their patients
about sleep and not ask a question a
targeted question just ask their
patients how's your sleep because if you
start asking about oh how much sleep do
you usually get at night then you tell
the person that the only thing that
matters is how many hours of sleep you
got at night That's not all sleep is
about, right? Sleep is not just about
the number of hours that you got, but
it's also about the regularity, the
quality, your satisfaction with it. Your
there's nighttime experiences, there's
daytime experiences from sleep. When you
wake up from sleep, are you feeling
refreshed? Are you feeling like you had
are you satisfied with how the sleep you
got the night before? During the day,
are you staying alert? are you vigilant
during the daytime hours uh from your
past sleep experience? So having this
open-ended question maybe maybe
clinicians uh won't have time for for a
for the answer but you know allows the
their patient to actually tell them
what's bothering them about their sleep.
>> Then you can get something like you know
my my spouse keeps kicking me because
I'm snoring too loud. Then oh well maybe
we should test you for sleep apnnea.
Does apnea always include snoring?
>> Yes.
>> So, are there some people who don't
snore who have apnea?
>> I don't think so. You stop breathing and
then there's this gasping
sound that people make when they uh they
awaken from that or they get aroused
from from this breathing interruption.
>> I feel like so many people have apnea
and don't realize it. Not because I'm
sneaking into their rooms at night and
listening to if they snore, but it is
just remarkable how many people I speak
to who say, "Yeah, I found out I had
apnea because I saw that I was snoring
because they started monitoring their
sleep." And there's generally a snoring
index on these. Or now there are free
apps that can just record you while you
sleep.
>> So, I know a lot of people are I don't
mouth tape when I sleep, but I did I do
uh sometimes use one of these nose
strips that kind of pulls the nostrils
out a bit. That certainly it's reduced
the amount of snoring for me
>> that would reduce the amount of snoring
but the sleep apnea is from the throat
right so this closure in the throat that
that obstructs the trachea and that's
what then prompts the awakening and
breathing and then the sound that comes
from there actually weight loss is
typically like the first line treatment
if someone has excess weight to start
losing weight that might help with the
uh with sleep apnnea then there's sepat
which yes people don't like but if they
are at a lower weight where the apnea is
milder the pressure may be not as uh not
as high so that might be helpful for
comfort have a colleague of mine who
does uh sleep apnnea surgeries so
implantables are also
>> if people think they might have apnea is
it just get a cap pop that thing on is
that the best line of of entry
>> I I think they should uh they should get
tested.
>> How do we how does one do that? Cuz
that's the problem.
>> If you're suspecting that you may have
sleep apnnea because you've been told
that you snore because you wake up and
you're not feeling refreshed and you're
feeling sleepy during the day. I think
you should talk to your doctor about
this. And definitely we have
polyenography is the first line, you
know, is what we use to detect um sleep
apnnea. But there's inhome sleep testing
that can be done. So you don't have to
stay overnight in a lab for for uh to
get tested for this and uh and your
doctor can prescribe that test very
easily.
>> How come we can't just go buy a CPAP on
Amazon?
>> Because you need to have the the the
pressure
determined for you, right? So you need
to know what kind of pressure to apply
and you know how to set it up. Uh it's
not as as simple as just
>> All right, fair. You need it. It needs
to have the proper settings and someone
needs to tell you which setting to use
because then that's where you run into
the trouble of having the wrong settings
and and not being effective.
>> Yeah. I just know from having done this
podcast long a while that like if people
think, okay, I got to go to my doctor. I
got to find out or convince them that I
have apnea. Then they have to like write
me a script for a CPAP. Then I got to
buy a CPAP, which I'm guessing is not
cheap.
>> I'm not sure.
>> I I don't think they're very
inexpensive. They the price might have
come down. and I got to sleep with this
thing on my face like looking like Darth
Vader so I don't sound like Darth Vader.
>> I just think very few people are going
to do it. So somebody out there should
like come up with an at home solution to
this. Something like apnea seems
important enough to daytime wakefulness,
cognitive function, longevity, metabolic
like it wicks out to so many things that
I feel like it
>> it deserves it deserves like a public
health messaging.
>> Yeah. If you use it well and you feel
better during the day, that's a that's
reinforcing, right? To keep using it
>> and and get treated for it.
>> Let's talk about food and nutrients.
You've done a substantial amount of work
here in this area, and I have a bunch of
questions, but first I want to talk
about kefir.
>> Yeah.
>> I love Bulgarian full fat plain yogurt,
but it's right next to the kefir.
>> Uhhuh.
>> And I'm always like, do I get the kefir?
Well, I don't know. I love the Bulgarian
full fat plain yogurt, so I haven't
tried the kefir yet. What's special
about kefir and why why did you study
kefir?
>> Kefir we we studied because it was a
fermented dairy product uh probiotics we
figured you know maybe it will improve
uh cholesterol synthesis based on its
impact on short- chain fatty acids. So
that was the the subject of my master's
thesis
for that study uh that was when I was at
McGill. We recruited men that had mildly
elevated cholesterol levels. We gave
them two cups per day versus just
regular milk for a month.
>> So two cups like two mugs like this.
>> Two cups like the measuring cup.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
>> Um like 500 mls.
>> Okay.
>> And uh and we measured their the amount
of cholesterol they they produced at
baseline endpoint in both phases and
there was no effect. It was a null
study. It was one of those. It was hard
to get published.
>> Kept at it and and we got it published.
But yeah,
>> so these fermented yogurts and things,
they don't do anything for for
cholesterol levels.
>> At least in our study in this population
at this level with this comparison
>> didn't have any effect.
>> What's your general thought about uh low
sugar fermented foods? I don't know if
kefir uh qualifies as low sugar, but
based on Justin Sonnenberg's work at
Stanford and others, I've been I've been
really bullish on this idea of
>> sauerkraut, kimchi,
uh full fat Bulgarian yogurt. Fermented
foods are are interesting.
>> Yeah.
>> Are you a proponent in general?
>> I'm a proponent. Yeah, absolutely. I
think it's important to feed your gut. I
think that uh the gut microbiome is uh
getting a lot of attention for all sorts
of, you know, uh health benefits.
So I think that that's something that's
uh that's is important. So also it's
important to also consider that you know
for that study right our main outcome
was cholesterol synthesis but there's so
many other things we could have looked
at that we didn't look at right and
maybe it didn't have any impact for
cholesterol synthesis but maybe
glycemic control might be better or for
gut inflammation it would be better but
you know You pick your outcomes, right?
You study something.
>> This is the challenge of doing
controlled science. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of
the opposite end of the like X what used
to be called Twitter science where like
people just like report anecdotes but
>> actually anecdotes of that sort of
become very powerful now in the public
health space for better or worse like
people you know because
>> I we can look at any study and say well
that's a very artificial circumstance.
You say, "Well, intentionally, because
we're trying to isolate variables like
people get frustrated." Oh, that's an
observational study. Well, I'm going to
continue to eat low sugar fermented
foods every day. I I I do think in a
study like the one you described.
Occasionally, there's just there's, let
me state this differently. Historically
in science, there have been a lot of
interesting discoveries that have come
from researchers designing a study to
look at one thing and then kind of
noticing, oh, like all the subjects feel
better or sleep better, their skin, they
they're reporting things that then lead
to another
>> another line line of inquiry. But you
moved on from kefir. Tell me about this
um this paper. I was intrigued by this
when I looked over your CV.
uh a weight loss diet that includes a
coffee beverage enriched in let me try
this menolosaccharides.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. Long word leads to a greater loss
of atapose fat tissue than placebo
beverage in overweight men.
>> Yep.
>> Tell me about this study and what these
men oligosaccharides are. And if
somebody wants to lose weight, should
they be including this in their coffee?
>> So this was industry sponsored research
that I did. um they wanted to replicate
a study that had been done in a
different country because they wanted to
replicate the findings. So we did this
study uh it was basically a placeboc
controlled study. We got we were
provided um coffee manual
oligosaccharides. So these are extracted
from spent coffee grounds. So it was
basically satchets right? So a white
packet one had the cap coffee
manualsaccharides the other one didn't.
We gave it to our study participants. We
measured their body composition. We
found an effect on body composition in
men, not in women.
>> And so that was the end of that product.
>> Really? They wouldn't market it just
because it only had an effect in men.
>> Yeah.
>> I assure you there are many men who
would love to drink a coffee drink and
lose more weight as a consequence.
>> It's not going to be our market, you
know.
>> But do we know what the ingredients
were?
>> It was manualsaccharides
extracted. Yeah. So it was just uh
basically uh a product that was tasted
like coffee, strong coffee, but it
didn't have the caffeine or anything
like that. It just had this this
manualaccharide that was extracted from
coffee.
>> So this substance comes from coffee
ordinarily,
>> but coffee is very low low calorie on
it,
>> but it's from the spent ground. So you
no one really consumes this really
because you know when you brew your
coffee you're
>> not getting it. No.
>> Can you buy it? Can people get it?
>> I don't think so.
>> So
what what do you First of all, how much
weight did they lose relative to the
>> It was statistically significant. Yeah.
>> Okay. I was intrigued by it because I
thought there there's something that I
mean you studied it's interesting. You
studied kefir metolosaccharides from
coffee. Yeah. Now I'm going to ask you
about ginger.
>> Well, when I was a graduate student, I
was interested in functional foods.
>> And I was interested in those foods that
provide health benefits beyond their
nutritional value.
>> Right? So kefir is a fermented dairy
product. It would we were studying it
for its a functional benefit on
cholesterol synthesis. That's not a uh
that's not a function of dairy, right?
Dairy is you consume it for bone health,
right? So it's basically when we talk
about different claims that foods have,
you know, there's those structure
function claims like consuming dairy
contains calcium that's good for your
bones and then there's um functional
claims. Those functional claims or
health claims we call them that say okay
well health claim there's a health claim
for oats for example, right? So
consuming fiber from oats uh reduces
cholesterol levels. That's been
demonstrated.
>> Yes. So that's that's a health claim.
That's an approved health claim. That's
why you see the hearts on some boxes of
cereal, but that's different than fiber
is good for maintaining regularity,
right? So anyways, I was interested in
in functional foods for health benefits
beyond their their nutritional content.
And so uh we we studied kefir for I
studied kefir for my master's degree and
then for my PhD studied uh mediumchain
triglycerides
um and then um ginger that was uh that
was something that I that I uh offered
to a grad student at Colombia. It was
interesting because uh the McCormick
company
had an advertisement in uh one of the
nutrition journals and they were going
to donate um spices for research. I was
like, "Okay." They had a list of
different herbs and spices that they
were going to donate for research. And I
had a grad student and I said, "Take a
look at this list, come back to me, say
if there's something in there that we
should test in the lab based on the
things that I do, don't come to me with
something that's, you know, that I don't
study." But and then he did some
research and he came back and he said,
"I think we should study ginger." I'm
like, "Okay, to do what?" like I think
you know for energy expenditure
looking at thermic effect of food it's
like okay so so we did this study I had
some some funds that I could use for him
to do that and uh
>> what did the study look like
>> a study where we looked at the thermic
effect of food
>> like so people ate ginger root spicing
their food
>> we dissolved ginger powder in warm water
>> and so that was one beverage and then uh
in the crossover again crossover design
so the next time when they came it It
was just hot water.
>> And how many times a day are they
drinking it?
>> This was a one time one time uh
consumption period. And we looked at the
thermic effect of food over a 6-hour
period. So again, they're they're under
this um we call it a metabolic hood,
right? So a little bubble and we measure
their uh oxygen consumption, carbon
dioxide production for I think it was
four or five hours
>> and it's significantly elevated.
>> Mhm.
>> With ginger.
>> With ginger.
>> Yeah.
>> Wow. So we think through the capsain
receptor there's an increase in the
thermic effect of food. So yeah, so I
was interested to see are there little
things that we could do, little changes
we can make to our diet to boost energy
expenditure relative to intake, you
know, just to tip the scale because many
adults over the course of their life
lifetime gain weight. And it's not a big
imbalance in calories on a daily basis
that leads to
10 pounds of weight gain over 10, 15
years, right? Now again the GLPs are
coming in and adjusting but yeah I'm
very interested also in foods that have
impact beyond their you know known
>> known roles. I mean the the problem is
in this area in the functional foods
area not the problems with your work but
the is that there are a lot of wild
claims that go unchecked like oh you
know walnuts are shaped like a brain and
therefore they're good for your brain or
you know which is they have certain
things in them which are brain
beneficial but it's not related to the
shape of the food so you get there's a
that area I feel of nutrition has been
um marginalized on the basis of the kind
of like quackery associ with it. But of
course there are interesting things in
different foods. I I do think that the
>> the Sonnenberg and colleagues work on
low sugar fermented foods has been very
informative for lowering the
inflammatome even more than fiber. I
mean actually in that study this is kind
of the like even Justin will kind of
downplay this a little bit. He's a
colleague so I can say in the fiber
group when they compared to low sugar
fermented foods and then they measured
the inflammatome they did a crossover
design. Within the fiber group, there
was a fair number of people who their
inflammation went way way up when they
consumed more fiber.
>> But in the low sugar fermented group or
when they were in that group, it was it
was uh always on average reduced.
>> Some people who increase their fiber
intake, their inflamm decreases. For a
lot of people, it increases, which is
not to say that fiber is bad, but I
think now we're starting to think about
like different types of fibers.
>> I was going to ask.
>> Yeah, they didn't control for that. They
just said increase the number of
servings each day. And and I know a lot
of people don't like to eat fibrous
foods because they don't feel good after
they eat them. It's like it's not that
they don't taste good. And I think
there's this whole like histamine story
that needs exploration. I I think food
and the healthy foods needs better
parsing.
>> Yeah.
>> In in my opinion.
>> Yeah. I I mean there was also
habituation. You don't go from consuming
six grams of fiber per day to 25.
>> They ramped them up. But but I have to
say they ramped them up pretty high.
Like even the low sugar fermented foods,
I think they got them up to like four
servings per day. It's a lot of kimchi.
You're not familiar with it. Like it can
be a little hard on the gut.
>> Yeah.
>> I actually take an enzyme. I think it's
called DAO.
>> Very inexpensive little it's like a tiny
tiny pill that uh that for digesting
histamines
>> because I noticed after I had whey
protein or I had broccoli or I would I
would get kind of sleepy. I was like
what is this? and a a a colleague at
Stanford, Sean Mackey, who's our head of
our pain center, said that he had gut
pain at one point, he's a pain doctor,
directs the pain center, and he figured
out by elimination and trial and error
that it was onions and other histamine
containing foods. He avoids histamine
containing foods. I'm not about to give
up the things I just described. Onions I
can do without, but so I think that
there's a there is foods have real
effect. M. So kefir, these men
olosaccharides, I have to confess I'm a
little disappointed cuz like here it
looks like it has like a cool effect,
but they didn't they didn't want now
can't get them. I'm not going to eat
coffee grounds. I'd like to take a quick
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to get up to 27% off in your work or in
your observation or in your curiosity.
What other foods are kind of intriguing
to you? Someone had a really um great
question for me at the obesity society
meeting a couple of years ago. I was
showing data that we had just obtained
in the lab that showed that if you eat
foods later in the day, your fat
oxidation is reduced. So this is a study
that we're doing. We had uh participants
on a controlled diet and they started
eating 1 hour after waking up and they
had a 10-hour eating window or they
started eating 5 hours after waking up.
So 4-hour delay relative to the other
condition. Again, same thing for a
10-hour window, 10-hour window. We gave
our participants the exact same foods,
same foods, same quantity, same timing
between meals. And this was done in a
metabolic chamber.
And the meals, especially the meals
later in the day that were consumed late
relative to the earlier version of those
meals led to less fat oxidation.
and someone in the audience stood up and
said, "So, would you then recommend that
people eat mediumchain triglycerides
in their evening meal as opposed to, you
know, a a different type of of fat?" And
my eyes just went like this because, you
know, my the my time studying medium
chain triglycerides was, you know, 15 to
20 years ago. I was like, "Wow, this
person knows my that work that I've done
and now is applying it to this work that
I'm doing currently." And I thought that
was fascinating. And I think that, you
know, timing of intake of different
foods and how it influences metabolism
is something that's uh that's
fascinating to me.
>> I confess I'm a like first bite of food
around 11:00 a.m. person. I'm trying to
eat breakfast these days and then kind
of shift things earlier. All it's really
done is added a meal because I I take my
last bite of food usually around 8:00
PM. I just can't seem to get much
earlier.
But
I and many other people have wondered
whether it's best to eat more towards
early day or whether or not it's just
overall caloric load. You're saying that
>> it does indeed make a difference.
>> It makes a difference. Yeah.
>> You want to shift most of your caloric
intake to the first like twothirds of
your waking day
>> roughly.
>> Mhm. Yeah.
>> As opposed to the last 2/3. Yes.
>> Yeah. So, in that study, 1 hour after
waking up. So, let's say basically 8:00
a.m. to 6 p.m. is our eating window.
>> I mean, this is a 10-hour eating window.
It's short. It's not, you know, typical.
So, it could be 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
>> That seems pretty
>> That's reasonable. Yeah. Versus 12:00
p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
>> The New York schedule.
>> Yeah. The New York schedule.
>> Yeah. Well, I I sort of chuckle because
when I go to New York, like it's like if
you go to dinner at 5:36, you're kind of
alone in the restaurant.
>> Depends on time of year.
>> Early bird special.
>> Yeah, it depends on time of year. And in
California, it's it's kind of in it's
the early shifted.
>> Yes.
>> But that's just more reflective of
culture. I think in Europe they they eat
very late often. Depends on where. I I I
was saying before we we started I was on
a fullbrite uh program last year in in
Spain and uh I would joke with my with
my colleagues there because they eat
very late and even the children eat very
late and I was like okay well
>> you feed me then you feed the children
>> right
>> then you have your dinner because they
could have dinner at 10 11 p.m. and the
children 8 900 p.m. And I'm like,
>> can't be good. If you uh my dad's from
Argentina, if you go to a restaurant in
Buenos Cyrus at 9:00 p.m., you're not
going to see many people at 11:00 p.m.
You'll see people in their 70s and 80s
and they're up early the next day. They
nap in the afternoon.
>> Yeah.
>> I don't know how healthy they are as a
country on average, but haven't looked
at the data, but very very late shifted
culture.
>> Well, there's been studies in Spain that
have looked at timing of eating and
their impact on weight management. I'm
thinking of work by Marta Garullet where
she showed that in her um weight loss
program the participants who have lunch
so their big bigger meal is is lunch who
have their lunch earlier in the day have
better weight loss than those who have
their lunch later in the day. So you
know even in those cultures where they
have they tend to eat late they still
find that eating earlier is tends to be
better for you. I was very very relieved
when um Alan Aragon who's a I consider
one of the best public educators on the
topic of protein and nutrition body
recomposition he's formerly trained in
this reassured me that you know nowadays
there's a lot of interest in getting
like protein ration it's probably
overdone a little bit but people are
striving to get more high quality
protein but that
except in rare circumstances where
people are really trying to optimize
every bit of muscle protein synthesis
95% of the effect of getting enough
protein can be accomplished by having
like two meals.
>> Mhm.
>> Maybe a little snack that you don't and
it can be evenly distributed or unevenly
distributed. You know, I think a lot of
people are feeling this protein pressure
and like, oh, I got to eat another meal
late in the day or I have to force
myself to eat breakfast in order to get
their protein ration. But it turns out
>> the whole notion that you could only
assimilate like 30 grams per meal is
totally false. turns out can assimilate
up to 100 gram. Now there are conditions
that set that up like exercise etc. But
I find that very liberating like you
could have breakfast and an early dinner
>> with a snack in the middle. You could
miss breakfast, have lunch and an early
dinner. What I'm hearing from you,
however, is that you really want to
avoid the the big even or just late
dinner. You just don't want to eat too
close to bedtime.
>> Correct.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> What about these MCTs, medium chain
triglycerides? These were very popular
in the health and kind of biohacking
space a few years ago. The
>> um the whole bulletproof coffee notion,
MCTs, butter coffee, and that's more or
less faded away. I don't see a lot of
people
>> putting oil in their coffee these days
or coconut. What are some of the known
benefits of MCTs? Where do you find them
and what what brought you to them as a
research topic?
>> This was a topic for my uh PhD
dissertation. So my PI got a grant
looking at the medium chain
triglycerides. He had done prior work on
this. Uh but what we did was use
purified MCT oil. So this is only uh
liquid oil that contains 8 carbon and 10
carbon chain fatty acids. Those are not
very common in our general food source.
So it was purified extracted oil that we
then gave our participants. We had
created this functional oil um that
contained flax seed oil also to be able
to get some more some omega-3 fatty
acids in there. Uh we had added plant
steriles because that was a big um big
focus of my lab uh at McGill. Plant
steriles for cholesterol reduction and
uh reduced uh risk of cardiovascular
disease.
And uh but the idea was to evaluate the
impact on energy expenditure because the
way we process mediumchain triglycerides
is different than how we process
longchain triglycerides. So the
12 14 16 and up uh carbon chains. So the
medium chain triglycerides they travel
directly to the liver they get
metabolized. we burn them off more
readily than the longchain triglycerides
that travel across in peripheral
circulation get deposited in atapost
tissue and a sort. And so what we did
what we found we did two separate
studies in men and women in both men and
women there was an increase in thermic
effect of food. So you burned slightly
more calories from the meal that
contained medium chain triglycerides
compared to the meal that contained your
standard fat. for my PhD. The first
study we did, we did in women and we
were trying to match the saturated fat
content of the diets because uh
mediumchain fatty acids are by default
saturated. They're
80 10. So I said, okay, we're going to
try to compare that to a uh a saturated
fat matched control comparison. And we
used beef tallow.
Uh it was a lot of beef tallow. Uh
participants were not happy with that
diet.
>> Eat it. Eat it direct like spoonfuls of
>> beef. We put it on to mashed potatoes.
You know, when you're when you're doing
studies like this where you're trying to
control the diet and you want to isolate
one aspect of it, right? We gave real
foods. half of the total fat of the diet
came from the the medium chain
containing versus and the beef tallow.
So it's like 20% of your fat from
>> one of the two. So you have to pour it
mask it somehow and
>> MCT. There's also this issue about
laxative effect of MCT oil that that
>> we had a few participants who initially
felt a lot of gargling
>> when like just gargling from their
stomach uh from from consuming MCT cuz
it was a lot early on it resolved. So
after a few days it was fine. It was a
one week one month I mean four week
study. So
>> after a few days no one dropped out for
>> you know any GI issues.
>> Okay. That's reassuring. Yeah. So, beef
tallow it was initially
uh beef tallow because it has a lot of
saturated fat is solid at room
temperature. So, as soon as your food
started to get a little colder, it would
kind of gel on your plate.
>> Yeah. That's sort of like if you bring
French fries home from a restaurant,
they use tallow and then you like put in
the fridge cuz you thought you wanted
them as leftovers and the next day
they're sort of like in this like stuck
to bottom of container configuration.
Yeah. It's not very appetizing.
>> Not appealing. No, there's like it's
white all underneath.
>> Yeah. It almost always goes into the
trash.
>> A couple of women felt it gave them a
headache.
>> Just the smell of it, you know.
>> So with the MCTs big significant
increase in thermic effect of food
>> that was statistically signing. Yeah. It
was about 45 to 50 60 calories.
>> Oh, I thought you were going to say
percent increase. Oh,
>> no. So, it's it's a small change, but it
was if you're going to use this versus
that,
>> you're getting a little boost here. If
you repeat this a few times in a day,
because when we measured the thermic
effect of food, we measured it only
after over one meal, but repeated over
three meals per day over a certain
period of time. We did find changes in
body composition, improvements in um in
weight status with medium chain
triglyceride consumption,
>> lean mass to to fat mass. Interesting.
>> And then we did follow-up study of a
weight loss study with medium chain
triglyceride. This time around it was
just purified MCT oil, not added with
other types versus olive oil, uh, which
is much more acceptable and found
greater weight loss with MCT.
>> Based on what you're saying, it's
reasonable if somebody wants to improve
weight loss. I'm hearing a sort of a
constellation of things. shift your meal
timing to in the first twothirds or so
of your day, which sounds like it will
also improve sleep, which will also
improve uh
>> appetite and food regul satiety and
hunger signals. What is it like a
tablespoon or two of MCT per day? Is
that kind of what this looks like for
the typical person?
>> Yeah, about that.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> In place of some other oil, not in
addition.
>> Not in addition. Correct.
>> Okay. Some ginger.
>> Yeah.
>> Are they additive? Are they synergistic?
I think they could probably be additive
because I think that the impact is
through different mechanisms. Obviously,
no one's tested that. Um, you know, it's
interesting you bring it up this way
because it makes me think of um David
Jenkins and the portfolio diet. It
actually made the New York Times uh I
think last in December.
The portfolio diet uh was a diet he
designed for maximal cholesterol
reduction. So, it was initially designed
to have uh four specific foods. So, it
was high in soy protein, nuts, plant
steriles, and soluble fiber.
>> Yeah, it's going to be a tough one to
get past most of the American public.
I'll tell you, as a as a public health
educator, I don't care if it comes out
in the New York Times, the Wall Street
Journal, the New Yorker, and everything
in between. People hear soy.
>> Yeah.
>> Nuts they like but easy to overeat. Mhm.
>> They hear plant steroids and like
they're they're they're someplace else.
>> This diet was went on a head-to-head
comparison with lipid lowering
>> agent, right? Like a statin.
>> Yeah. Yeah. They had the same
>> uh cholesterol reduction as a statin.
>> As a statin. Yeah. The portfolio.
>> Interesting name. People are definitely
>> unhealthy in this country. And if if
they can lower blood lipids
>> Yeah. They've expanded it to u to be
more flexible. So it's not just soy
protein now. It also includes legumes.
They've added monounsaturated fats. So
olive oil. You know, when I look at a
diet like the portfolio diet, which you
just I only know what you just told me
about it. Or I think about the the
current food uh
uh suggestions by by the FDA which are
you know we could call it kind of um it
emphasizes um unprocessed and minim
minimally processed food. So I think
that's a step in the right direction.
Certainly, we look at these. The issue
that always comes up for me is I think,
okay, in a more plant-based um
grainheavy nut diet, it's very easy for
people to overeat calories based on this
whole like amino acid protein foraging
hypothesis. This idea that we eat until
we get enough of the amino acids we
want. Like a like a an a chicken breast
or something and a couple eggs or or or
four eggs or something is very
satiating. M
>> whereas we can eat a lot of grains and
nuts before we kind of go okay that's
enough. There seems to be this issue
like how do how do you ensure
cardometabolic health
>> while quelling hunger
>> and we can't have people walking around
hungry all the time and the GLP's help
with that
>> and it does get down to sort of like do
you include animal-based foods or not
often.
>> So how do you think just from a public
health perspective that we can reconcile
this because clearly the highly
processed food diet is not going to
work. the standard American diet that I
think that is fading away. But now
there's this kind of polarization of
like are we going to go mostly plants,
grains, nuts, and I think low saturated
fat, blood lipids improving, or are we
going to think like, you know, more
protein satiety? Do you see where I'm
getting at here? Like I feel like this
this is the contour of things.
>> Yeah. Well, I I think that there's
there's no reason to pit one another
against the other, right? So like this
oneonone, but what's important is that
also having a diet that's more
plant-based, has higher volume, that's
filling. It's hard to eat a lot of food.
So if your food volume is high but does
not provide as much calories, you'll get
that satiety from the food volume. And
then you take you put in some some nuts
helps to prolong the satiety because
then you get some protein, some
healthful fats. And so I think that's
important. I'm not saying animal
products are bad. I think they're
they're important for a diet. I think
they're important for health. It's just
a matter of uh portion size and making
sure that uh there's not overemphasis on
animal products over plant-based
products because we know that
plant-based products are so much
healthier in terms of heart health, uh
reduction of type two diabetes, cancer
risk, and other u metabolic diseases.
>> Yeah. Well, I'm right there with you. I
love fruits and vegetables. I'm a huge
fan of uh I do eat meat half Argentine.
I mean, you know, but and chicken and
I'm not a big fan of fish. I keep
working on this, but um can't seem to
quite get there, but but I I don't eat
them in excess.
>> Mhm.
>> The things that I feel are very very
easy for people to overeat are starch
fat or starch, sugar, fat combinations.
>> It's just like it the brain and gut
respond with signals that scream more.
You just It's very hard for people to do
like a slice of pizza. I I love pizza.
It can be done, but it's just very hard
for people to do. It's like it it the
the stop signals just are all pushed
down and the go signals are are all go.
>> So reducing white foods as much as
possible is what foods.
>> Yeah. So the white flour, white rice,
white pasta, white, you know, things are
>> not as colorful. You know, if you're
eating a slice of bread and it just
dissolves in your mouth, it's not so
good.
>> This is more of a editorial reflection
again, but it's also I was looking at
the history of nutrition in this
country. Oh, you're Canadian by birth,
right? I detected that. And I don't know
what the the sort of traditional fair is
in Canada, but if you look at the
history of food in the United States,
it's never been particularly healthy.
The foods that we consider like American
foods, hamburgers, hot dogs, French
fries, corn dogs, fried chicken, donuts.
Like, we've never been healthy about
food. People probably just moved a lot,
ate less, smoked a lot more, which is an
appetite suppressant, but gives you
cancer, kills you. We've never been that
healthy with respect to food. Maybe food
volume was more in check, but if you
look at traditional food in,
you know, in Europe, probably in I mean,
in Canada, what what sort of the are the
foods nourishing and healthy? I think
we're sort of in this like delusion that
like we were once healthy about food in
this country, we were never healthy
about food. The food was always pretty
weak in terms of nutritional status
except for fruits, vegetables, and some
animal products.
>> Yeah, I think portion size has a lot to
do with it too. So, I know um moving
from Canada to US, you know, the go to a
restaurant, the portion sizes are so
big. Uh it would never have occurred to
me to take home doggy bag for at a
restaurant ever. And then here it's like
kind of have to or else you know you're
throwing away half your plate or unless
you're finishing the whole thing. So
portion size I think is a big one. And
also the foods are different in a way.
We were talking about yogurt.
So there are two things when I moved to
the US. The first thing the dietician at
my work told me was do not buy bagged
bread.
I like okay what does that mean? Don't
buy bagged bread. Like I that's what I
always do. No, she says, "You go to the
grocery store, you go to the bakery
section, they'll cut it up for you. You
ask what you want. Don't buy bad bread."
Like, "Okay, I'm not gonna buy bad
bread." So, apparently, she was talking
about like too many additives, too, too
much sugar, whatever.
>> Okay. We're talking about like the bread
that just melts in your mouth. So, and
then the other thing was uh yogurt. I
used I eat yogurt quite a bit. And then
the yogurt in the here in the US tasted
sweeter to me. the same thing, the same
yogurt,
Canada here, the same name, the same
everything.
It was sweeter. And I didn't know why,
but then it occurred to me that, you
know, foods are formulated in different
ways in different countries to appeal to
the population of that country. So
yogurt was one where it's a little less
sweet in Canada than in US and it was
less sweet even than in in Europe than
Canada and US. So there's things like
that that don't necessarily help.
>> Yeah. Yeah. We we love our um sugars and
fats in the United States and and I
think we paid a substantial health debt
as a consequence. I mean, now again, I
don't have the numbers on this, but with
Redat True Tide and the other GLPS, I've
never tried them, but a lot of people
are finding it much easier, if not easy,
to lose weight that they just couldn't
before. They just could not control
their appetite
>> and they're just not as interested in
these foods. There's this argument that
maybe they're not as interested as in
everything in life. And that's a
important question that needs to be
resolved.
>> But I do think that think that things
are changing. I think we're finding a
lot more, you know, for example, the
yogurt, right? there was a lot more
plain yogurt options than there were,
>> you know, when I first moved to the US.
So, there's, you know,
>> things are changing. It's been there's
been a lot of resistance. And I think
that the the resistance has been um
sociological in the sense that um you
know, there's been a resistance to
people being healthy. There really has.
You know, there's this idea that like if
you're eating clean, you have an eating
disorder. I did an episode about eating
disorders. I talked to a lot of experts
and this including the group at Colombia
Med that works on eating disorders. You
know, the frequency of anorexia, the
most deadly psychiatric illness of all
the psychiatric illnesses, hadn't
realized that is not increasing as a
function of social media or magazines or
anything. It's been very steady for
maybe hundreds of years. This is a real
neurological issue. There's obviously
social pressures and things like that.
But what I discovered in in like talking
to experts like uh Joanna Steinberg at
um at Colombia and others is that you
know like there is this so that was
about anorexia but what I'm about to say
is separate. There's this notion that if
you're going to be thoughtful about what
you eat you know or maybe you're not
going to eat too late or you're going to
skip dessert or until a few years ago
like if you're not going to drink
alcohol like there's something wrong
with you like that that you're being
restrictive somehow. I think again it's
kind of like the parallels to uh Europe
are kind of interesting that or the the
contrast to Europe are interesting where
there's a lot of social convention built
up around food that was healthy and I
think in the United States the social
conventions built up around food and
alcohol were pretty unhealthy. It was
like everyone does this like everyone
eats hot dogs at the game like and hot
dogs at a baseball game are a great
thing. It's like nothing is as American
as that except maybe apple pie, right?
But there's this when people start
making choices in in the direction of
their health, it was and to some extent
it still is a there's this quieter
undercurrent of well like are you being
restrictive? Like are you really going
to live like that? But then you look at
the the health outcomes and culturally
until a few years ago it was considered
very not okay to say that obesity was a
health risk.
>> And now the open discussion about
obesity and metabolic health as as like
a real health risk. I think now we're
kind of like in the actual discussion
that for a long time it was like
speaking of which and um kind of things
outside the box. There's a paper on your
CV that I could not help but ask about.
Snack chips fried in corn oil alleviate
>> cardiovascular risk factors when
substituted for lowfat and highfat
snacks. Yep.
>> What?
>> Mhm.
>> What?
>> Yes.
>> Tell me the data. I believe you. I'm
just like this is wild. This was funded
by Fritoite. At that time they had
changed the oil that they were using to
fry their corn chips. So this was
Doritos, Fritos, Cheetos, and just
Titos. All the all the
>> all the U. And so they had changed to
corn oil. They're like this is an oil
that's higher in polyunsaturated fats
than what we usually have.
>> What were they using before?
>> I'm not sure. I forget.
>> But it wasn't tallow.
>> I don't think so. like does it make a
difference? Is it going to improve
health if people choose those
snacks compared to other snacks? So, we
had three arms in that study. Uh each
person went through each of the three
arms. It was for 25 days. The question
was, okay, let's say you have a choice
for a snack today and you're going to go
to the vending machine and you have your
option. Do you eat a lowfat high
carbohydrate snack, a highfat,
high more highsaturated snack or those
chips? So, you just pick one and that's
that. So, I think we gave it was two
snacks a day for for 25 days. It was a
rotation. So, they had four Yeah, they
had four different uh chips. So, it was
two one day, two the next day like that
for 25 days. And then the controls and
yeah the the better lipid profile was
the one with was the one from the the
corn chips. They had the better lipid.
Yeah. And they had less uh lipoprotein
little a which is another you know
factor card metabolic risk factor.
>> Data or data
>> data or data. Well, I know that in the
head-to-head comparison of seed oils, of
which corn is, right, with saturated
fat, this is where kind of the
contention starts to
erupt, where there are many studies now,
I think, showing that when you
substitute saturated fat with seed oils
that cardabolic risk factors go down.
And this is true, right? Well, I by the
way, I'm just going to say I I I avoid
seed oils actively cuz I like olive oil
and butter.
>> Mhm.
>> Mostly olive oil. I avoid seed oils. I
don't like the way they taste. I love
olive oil.
>> Okay.
>> And there's some health effects of olive
oil and I eat small amounts of butter
and
>> I So, I just like duck the whole
controversy, right? And you have to make
sure you're getting real olive oil, but
that can be done. When you look at the
studies that compare saturated fat to
seed oils, you do see uh better outcomes
for seed oils. But then there's this
crowd that comes in and says, but that's
on a backdrop of reasonably high
carbohydrate intake. When you start
replacing some of those carbohydrates
with lower carbohydrate diet, increasing
protein intake, so not keto, but kind of
like lowerish starch and sugar, then
maybe that balances out. Okay. But the
big contention seems to be around the
processing of these seed oils. This idea
that when especially when you make
things like chips that when you take
fats and you combine them with
carbohydrate and you heat them up a lot
that you create factors that are not
good for the body. What is the evidence
for or against that?
>> Well, so different oils have different
smoke points, right? So each oil should
be used for its appropriate usage,
right? So cooking uh process. So I think
that's that's where you know people
think that they should be using one type
of oil for everything that they do but
some oil like you wouldn't put flax seed
oil for example and and heat it up to
very high uh temperature.
>> Are you a fan of flax seed oil?
>> I'm a fan of every liquid oil. I use I
have no no uh personal
>> you seem very healthy restriction on the
>> on the types of oils. I think that you
know oils are that remain liquid at room
temperature that should be your your
your barometer for what's better to use.
I'm also not saying that people should
avoid butter like the plague, right? So
all in moderation is is okay. Is there
any reason to
I just can't find the argument for why
anyone would replace olive oil with a
seed oil.
Olive oil has a lower smoke point than
uh than other seed oils. So peanut oil,
for example, has a higher smoke point.
So you can fry in peanut oil. You
wouldn't fry anything in olive oil.
>> I wouldn't eat anything fried.
>> Well,
>> yeah.
>> So that's that's a different question,
you know. So depending on how you want
to use your oil and you know, also some
people find, you know, olive oil and
baked goods might impart stronger taste.
So depending on the type. So some of
them are more flavorful, right? And so
they're more fragile, let's say, and
they'll impart flavors to different uh
different foods where they're not
supposed to be.
>> So you you're not seed oil averse, nor
are you pro-se
>> personally?
>> Yeah.
>> No,
>> cuz I think that the um the seed oil
debate has been very contaminated by the
issues that I mentioned before, but also
because many many processed foods
contain seed oil. they're much less
expensive than using, you know,
grass-fed butter or or olive oil or even
just ordinary butter. So,
>> it's important to be
nutrition facts literate. So, when
you're talking about uh processed foods,
so as much as possible, cooking at home,
but that's something that a lot of
people don't really know how to do, feel
they don't have the time for,
>> people aren't going to start doing that.
>> I'll tell you, they're not going to
start doing that. I wish they would, but
they they're not going to. the grocery
store to to look at the nutrition facts
panel and being like, "Okay, what's in
here? What's in there?" And comparing
products to one another, right? And and
also what's more important for your own
health,
>> right? What's relevant for my health may
not be what's relevant for your health.
You know, some people are we're talking
about salt sensitivity. Some people are
very salt sensitive. Some people are
very active and need to replace salt and
so salt is not an issue for them. But so
being able to know uh where to what to
pay attention to because otherwise it
just gets overwhelming.
>> You mentioned uh the study was p paid
for by a company and earlier you
mentioned companies. I think this is an
important issue that we've never really
direct um directly addressed on this
podcast. I mean anytime I've covered a
paper in a sometimes I do these solo
episodes. I'll get back to them soon. I
used to do a lot more of them. But I
would always look like are there
financial conflicts of interest?
What's the difference between a company
funding a study and a financial conflict
of interest if any? Like like to me a
financial conflict of interest is if the
investigators, the scientists running
the study um have stakes and you know
they have shares in the company or
they're being paid to do the study
obviously. But when a company funds
research on like this uh the snack chips
study that you did,
>> I think everyone would like to assume
that they don't have any you're not
feeling any there's no explicit nor
implicit pressure for a particular
outcome,
>> right?
>> Could you like how did how does this
stuff come about? So, I'm glad you're
asking that question because that's
something that people often have this
knee-jerk reaction to industry sponsored
studies and there I know there are
people who are very very vocal against
industry uh sponsored research but as
scientists we do research we do research
to the best of our abilities and we
provide we draft the research question
you get the data you analyze it you
publish it some of the studies that I
haven't been able to publish have been
funded by industry that have had null
results.
>> Null.
>> Null results. So, so we did a we did a
study. It was sponsored by industry. We
didn't find any significant effect of
the test product compared to the
control.
>> And you can't publish it.
>> We wrote the paper. We wrote the report.
We provided it to our sponsor
just out of uh you know courtesy. So
this is the paper. We're going to submit
it for publication.
Do what you need to do. So they've given
you the green light to submit. So the
companies aren't short circuiting this.
>> No, never. That's in the contract,
right? Your
>> right to publish because otherwise why'
you do research? There's no point doing
research if you're not going to be able
to publish your research.
>> So
basically, it's courtesy to show that
the paper that you're going to be
submitting for publication. That one
paper that I'm referring to, I must have
tried five different journals.
But the findings are not exciting.
They're showing that there's no effect
on our outcomes. And it got rejected,
rejected, rejected, rejected. And I'm
pretty persistent.
I ran out of steam. So if I run out of
steam, I can imagine so many other
people, other scientists who have no
results have run out of steam much
quicker than me.
>> So that's a no result issue. It's not
necessarily unique to industry funded
studies. No,
>> that's not unique. Yeah. So, industry
sponsored studies, you know, I often
also say there we get um NIH reports of
scientific misconduct. So, reports of
scientific misconduct condonducts can be
found from NIH sponsored studies where
they find that the principal
investigator falsified data that have
been published in a specific paper.
So to me, if you're not going to if
you're not an honest scientist,
obviously I don't think it matters who's
sponsoring your research because the NIH
finds misconduct,
>> right? I mean, doing science for any
other reason than trying to find real
answers is just insane. Like I mean,
these people are who do this are like
legitimately sick, right? You know, like
Yeah,
>> it's a lot of work.
>> Yeah. I mean I mean well do they really
think they discovered something if they
made it it's like it's like it doesn't
it's not it doesn't it doesn't it
doesn't compute well it never ends well
and you know we could spend hours
talking about the cases these things
always it always comes out in the wash
>> so I'm hearing that negative outcomes
are hard to publish
>> when you take on funding from a company
to to address a particular question
about a product that they sell you it
sounds to me I'm trying to I want to be
careful I'm not like leading the witness
here
that you don't feel any pressure.
Like why are they why are they funding
studies? I mean companies are selfish
and they should be. They have
shareholders and they need to um some of
them are public companies and so the
shareholders are the public and so why
are they funding research? I mean plenty
of people eat chips. Yeah.
>> Why are they funding research?
>> They wanted to know if it had a health
benefit
>> so they could market a health benefit.
probably market a health benefit at some
point. That could be. And then if they
don't find a health benefit, maybe they
could switch it to something else,
right? I don't know.
>> I'm very uh sympathetic to the reality
that there isn't a lot of research
funding coming through NIH and NSF these
days, but but always it's been, you
know, uh it's been low. I know because I
sat on study sections which
>> dole out grants. uh got grants, but it's
very very very competitive. Are you
taking money from companies to do this
work because it's a it's a great way to
fund studies. Like in other words, I if
if NIH had more money to study
nutrition,
>> I could imagine a world where you would
just take money from NIH to do it. Like
you wouldn't need the money from because
the budgets are better from NIH funding
than from uh from industry funding for
nutrition research.
But
>> if you if you could get an NIH grant,
that's that's the ultimate goal, right?
Or USDA or other governmental grant.
>> That's the goal.
>> But sometimes also there's specific
foods, specific products that would be
kind of hard to study without industry
support because you need to get access
to this specific food
>> or product. Well, I don't know what the
status of it is right now, but um my
fairly frequent um kind of check-in on
what the at least stated goals of the
now being revised NIH are include um
creating a forum
>> even some incentive for publishing
negative results or null results I
should say.
>> You know, Jay Bacharia who's been on
this podcast has put that out publicly.
We need to we need those results.
They're important. they steer people
away from certain things that need to be
steered away from. And also uh it seems
at least from the whole food pyramid
revision etc that there seems to be more
and more interest in nutrition
>> as a research topic and something to
really understand. So obviously it's
really important.
>> I mean people are eating every day.
>> Yeah.
>> Um they're making these choices. So
there should be more federal funding for
these things and then there's no chance
of bias.
>> Right.
>> Right. Yeah. I think that people assume
that if if industry funded a study that
um especially on food
>> that like something's not to be trusted
in there.
>> I don't know why for food in particular,
right? So if you think about it,
>> food and drugs, food and drug companies,
>> but drug companies, they do research on
their own products all
>> most of the R&D for drug companies is
definitely done inhouse. That's also
part of the scary part about it. We
don't see the null results. I actually
would prefer if it took on a different
shape. I don't know exactly what it
would look like. I mean, drug, we don't
see a lot of the negative outcomes that
might exist. So, I I don't think there's
>> probably they just die out before they
make it to next step. And
>> yeah, I think outright scientific fraud,
people making stuff up is pretty rare.
>> Very rare.
>> But I do think there's a lot of
questions about people because of the
incentives to need to publish to as you
described it's hard to publish no
results. We will never know and this is
when you run a lab is you know you want
to create a culture where graduate
students and postocs feel very
comfortable saying there's nothing here
right
>> because the stuff that didn't work out
>> you always you know it's just a question
that you always have like what what
stuff do we never hear about
>> because the negative results like they
say well that mouse was sick or this you
know there's a lot of the brain is a
crazy
>> thing that's you need to teach the
students well right you have a student
who comes to you and says
Hey, this this is lower. This is better
than this. And you look at you look at
the numbers and you say, well, it's 25
versus 27 and the standard deviation is
10. Like, no, 25 is the same as 27,
right? So, you have to make sure you you
teach well to know that,
>> you know, even numerically different
effects may not be statistically
significantly different. And that's just
part of the you know the curve right.
>> Yeah. The ideal situation is when the
student or postto doesn't believe their
own results. They're like it's not
really and then you have to convince
them actually you have something
interesting. That's a good situation.
That's a good situation.
>> That's a good situation. And then
eventually they're like oh okay you know
that's the ideal situation. But I think
this whole field of nutrition is is is
contentious uh for some of the right
reasons. It's so very important. And I
think it's contentious also for a lot of
unfortunate and unnecessary reasons
among the students and postocs and
general public when you interact what
what are people most interested in with
respect to nutrition like when people
ask you is it like what should I eat
what shouldn't I eat like what what do
what what's coming like what are your
antenna picking up when when you're out
there
>> I think what should I eat or you know or
have you heard about XYZ fad that's also
One, have you heard that whatever
product cures everything in the world?
>> No, I haven't heard that.
>> Peptides or is it like very peptide
right now? Peptides are really big.
>> It's always something else. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
>> So, it's it's it's very specific to a
product.
>> Yeah. Often very specific to a product.
Yeah.
>> You won't be held responsible for your
answer. But um do you supplement your
diet with with minerals like magnesium
or anything like that or you just
completely careful food choices?
>> I prefer careful food choices. I think
it's more pleasurable to eat a complete
food uh diet. That said, I think that
there are some people who may need to
supplement their diets, but I think
people should strive to to get their
nutrients from uh from whole foods.
>> Fiber recommendations are really
growing. I I looked into this and many
many people's doctors are now telling
them you should take uh a little bit of
celium husk. I always thought, by the
way, celium husk was like the husks like
you had like they're like you're going
to eat like the seed husks. It's
actually ground into a powder or
something like that. Yeah,
>> I'm still afraid to take it, but uh I
should take a little bit of it. But
doctors now are prescribing um
supplemental fiber
>> in a pretty high rate from what I
understand.
>> Oh, that's interesting.
>> Yeah, people don't want to eat their
fruits and vegetables,
>> but there brings so much more, right?
So, yes, there's fiber in fruits and
vegetables, but there's also all sorts
of polyphenols, right? all sorts of
non-nutrient components that themselves
may have benefits for health that we
don't fully understand yet that feed
your gut that are maybe just as relevant
that may enhance fiber's impact on
health.
>> Listen, I
>> preaching to the choir. I I I love
fruits and vegetables.
>> Well, thank you so much for taking time
out of your schedule. You have a very uh
unique research program. you know, I
have to say very few people uh can work
on as many different things and find
their points of intersection and um so
I'm grateful that you're exploring these
things. I appreciate your openness about
industry funded research. This is
something that I think people uh need to
know about. I I certainly learned about
that from you today and based on your
work, I think it's fair to say that we
shouldn't just be encouraging people to
get great sleep. We should be
encouraging people to eat
at times and foods that allow them to
get great sleep, which will allow them
to get better make better food choices.
>> Yes.
>> And so forth.
>> Yeah. So, you know, I talk often about a
vicious cycle where you don't sleep
well, you don't eat well, then that
makes you not sleep so well. And really
hoping for people to get into a
healthful cycle, right? where you get
good sleep, where you can make good food
choices that then helps you get better
sleep to keep propelling this uh this
cycle of better health.
>> I love it. It's a true integrative
medicine and science. I also can attest
that uh when you sleep well, you make
better food choices. When you eat well,
>> you sleep better. So, thank you so much
for coming, for taking time out of your
schedule. Really appreciate it. And I've
learned a ton. Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you for joining me for today's
discussion with Dr. from Marie Pierre
Strange. To learn more about her
laboratory's research and to find a link
to her book, Eat Better, Sleep Better,
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