The Peter Attia Drive - #53 - AMA #6: Fasting framework, vitamin supplementation, antioxidants, time management, problem-solving, and more

Episode Date: May 13, 2019

In this “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) episode, Peter answers a wide range of questions from readers and podcast listeners. Bob Kaplan, Peter’s head of research, asks the questions. If you’re listening on a podcast player, you’ll be able to hear a preview of the AMA. If you’re a subscriber, you can watch or listen to this full episode on our website at the AMA #6 show notes page.  PLEASE NOTE: We are currently building a private RSS feed that will allow subscribers to listen uninterrupted on the podcast player of their choice. This will be released shortly. Questions are pulled from the AMA section on the website (peterattiamd.com). Any subscriber is welcome to submit questions. We discuss: Vitamin supplementation: Is it necessary if you eat a balanced diet? [2:00]; Antioxidants: What does current science have to say about antioxidants in food and supplements? [9:00]; How do you break a fast of more than three days? [17:15]; Does a morning black coffee break a fast? In other words, does black coffee raise insulin levels? [22:15]; When intermittent fasting, does the placement of the “feeding window” matter? [25:30]; Is it better to fast before or after a planned food binge (e.g., Thanksgiving)? [28:30]; Fasting protocol: Do you have a specific protocol to recommend? [31:30]; Time management: How do you manage your time between work, family, and your many personal interests? [35:45]; Problem solving: Can you breakdown your process of problem-solving? [46:45]; For those looking to gain a better understanding of biochemistry, pharmacology, etc., do you have any good textbooks or (online) resources to recommend? [49:00]; What are some of your favorite podcasts that you listen to? [51:15]; What is your favorite animal? [54:45]; and More. Learn more at www.PeterAttiaMD.com Connect with Peter on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Atia. The drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world, and this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics at peteratia-md.com.

Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of The Drive. I'd like to take a couple of minutes to talk about why we don't run ads on this podcast and why instead we've chosen to rely entirely on listener support. If you're listening to this, you probably already know, but the two things I care most about, professionally, are how to live longer and how to live better. I have a complete fascination and obsession with this topic. I practice it professionally, and I've seen firsthand how access to information is basically all people

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Another month and another AMA. Welcome to AMA number six. With me, your host, and my header research Bob Kaplan. As a reminder, these are for subscribers only. And if you are a subscriber, you'll be able to watch and listen to this full episode on our website. If you're listening to this on a podcast player, you will hear a preview now, and then you'll have to go over to our site to hear or watch the remainder. Based on the topics we cover in this AMA,

I have a feeling this one will be a fan favorite, which also ends in one of my favorite AMA moments as we have a special guest, Silky Years. In this episode, we talk about vitamins. Do you need to supplement them if you need a balanced diet? What's the deal with antioxidants? I go over my entire fasting framework, how to break a fast, what breaks a fast?

Does caffeine or coffee constitute that? How do you optimize it? What type of supplements should you be taking? I think I went into some detail on time restricted feeding. What does it mean to do 16-8 versus 18-6, and some of these things? And I talk about how I use time-restricted feeding to prepare for a huge food day, such as Thanksgiving.

I also go into intermittent fasting, which I distinguish from time-restricted feeding as periods of true fasting, sort of three days, five days, seven days, et cetera. I go into a bit of our process of learning and the importance of using a framework, which anyone who knows me personally knows I'm pretty emphatic about.

And of course, talk a little bit about some of the podcasts that I like to listen to, and we close it out with a little cameo of silky ears. Hey Peter, long time reader here. First time caller. Long time first time. What do you think of the assertion by many doctors and researchers that if you eat a balanced diet?

IE, low in process, foods, high in fruits and vegetables, that supplementation is completely unnecessary, and in fact, you're probably just peeing away most of the nutrients, thoughts. Yeah, that's tough, because supplementation is such a broad concept that I don't know what we're really referring to there. So, for example, would taking vitamin A or vitamin C or vitamin E be required under the circumstances

you describe almost assuredly not? It was A, E, D, and K, you're not necessarily peeing those out because they're fat soluble. Yeah, those are fat soluble, so yeah. But it's hard to say that you don't require any supplementation. I think that's a bit of an open question. In fact, we did a podcast a while ago with Chris Masterjohn, where we went super deep on the B vitamins, and in fact, the role of B vitamins in people that have mutations

in an enzyme that is responsible in part four of the methylation of these things. So I guess I'd have to take some issue with that. I understand that that's a very, like that's the cool kid approach today. I think people love to be cool today and sort of say, well, supplementation is a scam and you don't need any supplements. And I understand why people say that because the opposite end of that argument is equally nonsensical in my mind, which is like, you need to take 2,000 supplements a day and you need to supplement like biotin levels and stuff like that. I think that's also sort of equally silly.

So I guess no, I would sort of disagree with that. But I'd also put this in the context of, we might be splitting hairs. In other words, if you're really eating an awesome diet and you're exercising really well and you're sleeping really well and you're getting lots of outdoor exposure to sunlight, making your own vitamin D, etc. etc. What's the difference between you being on theoretically the most optimized supplement regimen versus not?

It might be so small that it's sort of like we're picking the wrong thing to discuss. I think one thing too to maybe differentiate is if you have a deficiency versus superphysiological doses is probably the one of the things so that I've never calculated this, maybe somebody has where they, you read these articles about super foods, all the foods that you must include in your diet every day. I just want to add all those up. You'd be the stay puff marshmallow man, nice ghost busters for reference right there. Scores and points there. That being said, I do think that super foods are super if they're providing something that

you are deficient in. Because then you'll feel like, wow, this is life changing because I had some deficiency and now I've made it up. Right. If you have zero vitamin C, you're in a bad place. If you have zero vitamin D, you're in a bad place. Having vitamin C above the level upon which you can make enough pro-line to make enough

collagen to not get scurvy, not that helpful. That said, look, there are some other interesting applications here. I do think there's, I'd love to see some research done on mega-dose intravenous vitamin C for viral infections. There was some research that was done on this, I think, in the 60s. My recollection is it looked sort of interesting, but wasn't really followed through upon. Obviously, Linus Pauling, who himself is a two-time Nobel laureate, although I think one

of them was a Nobel Peace Prize and not to diminish the Nobel Peace Prize, but I sort of fit some of the different. He was close on elucidating the structure of DNA, too, right, with Crick and Watson. He was either on their heels or right there. Yeah, but Pauling was a huge proponent of Vitamin C. And he was given enormous rain to sort of propose this and put this forward in large part because of his credentials.

Though I think for the most part people today view many of his views with respect to hypodoses of Vitamin C is sort of nonsensical. There's a book of letters by Richard Feynman. Back in the day, people used to write letters, rather than, I guess, email and tweets and things like that. And there's a letter from Linus Pauling to Richard Feynman. And then I think a Richard Feynman response,

but Feynman was diagnosed with... It's a phagyocansar. It's a phagygial cancer, and Pauling was putting in his two sense and his words of encouragement and things like that, but he talked about vitamin C and I think a couple of other things. And it was almost like organic foods and things like that, which was pretty interesting. Hey everyone, hope you enjoyed a sneak peek of this AMA. AMA, along with extensive show notes and member-only discounts on products that I think are awesome,

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