March 2, 2021 • 50 mins
In the 1990s we thought we’d identified the root cause of aging: nasty molecules called free radicals that wreaked havoc on our cells. Even better, we’d figured out how to counteract them with loads of antioxidants. Then science started raising questions.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and there's Jerry, and we're all looking
vibrant and healthy and just so alive and sexy. And
that makes the stuff you should know. Jerry's coat is shining,
(00:24):
it is. She's got that high pro glow, high pro glow.
Do you remember that? I do? Uh? And you know
we give our dogs the um this salmon juice that
comes in a squirt bottle. Whoa, it's like, you know,
like salmon skin oil, and that makes their coat shiny
(00:45):
and it smells like salmon skin, which I love. That's cool. Uh.
You me straight up cooks salmon with the skin on
for momo, Like that's what she has has cooked food
for dinners. Yeah, I mean I love salmon skin. It's
the best thing ever. It's so good. I just love
love um like raw salmon. Chuck, I like that too,
(01:06):
Like it's smoked too. Sure, sure what else? Injectable salmon?
Stick it in my neck? You go. You end up
with kind of like a requiem for a dream thing
going on. That's right. Uh, But you know this all
dovetails and antioxidants. I think it does because I think
if you eat a lot of raw salmon, especially good stuff,
(01:28):
you know, nothing grown in a toxic sewage dump, you're
gonna live a really, really long time. And we've known
it for a very long time that if you eat
healthy food, you're probably going to age a lot better
or a lot more. You're going to stay a lot
healthier as you age than say you would if you
(01:49):
just ate chunk for the whole time. It seems like
a no brainer. But along the way, a lot of
people have stopped to ask exactly why that might be. UM,
and we should say shout out to our book UM,
which has an entire chapter, chapter eight, on aging. It's
called Aging Colon Do We Gotta? And it's a pretty
good one if I do say so. I think the
(02:10):
first line of that chapter says, avoid sewer salmon. That's
precisely right. I mean, that's just some of the best
advice anyone could ever give anybody. It's a T shirt.
So UM. A lot of people, like I was saying,
have stopped and asked, like why, why, you know, why
would food help you? And obviously we need food for fuel,
But it turns out that, especially in the nineties, a
(02:32):
lot of food kind of hit the scene. Well, the
food was already there, but they were promoted a different
way thanks to some some recent findings that decided that
food that are high in antioxidants um would help you
age a lot better, possibly prolong your life, and prevent
(02:53):
certain kinds of age related diseases, everything from cancer to
neuro degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, just from meeting the foods
you ate, and it all seemed to have something to
do with those antioxidants, and that concept took off like
our rocket, and it's still around today. Actually. Yeah, and
this is when listeners are saying, oh God, are Josh
(03:15):
and Chuck gonna tell us now that science says antioxidants
aren't good too? And we well, let's just hang on
to that. You'll find out by the end of the episode. Yeah,
that's the people to stick around. That's the big reveal.
Let's give him some mcguffin's chuck. Uh. Yeah. Well, the
point of the whole intro here, though, is that it
was a big marketing blitz. Everything from blueberries to kale.
(03:38):
I mean, good lord, we had kale rammed down our throat,
like figuratively and literally for the past decade plus, um vitamins,
multi vitamins, vitamin E, vitamin C, beta caroteen, just all
of these superfoods, green tea of course, which we talked about.
And we're not saying these things aren't good for you.
These are all great, great things to eat, um, but
(04:01):
they were being touted as being high in antioxidants and
it will help you age and it will help you
combat something that everyone just heard the words free radicals
and and consumer said, well, I don't like the sound
of those. Yeah, exact, let's let's let's kill them even
though we don't understand them. Someone literally shoved kale down
(04:23):
your throat once. Yeah, you've never gone to that restaurant.
No kale shove kaloe me crazy? That explains a lot, yea,
it's I mean, kale's fine, but kale chips. Don't eat
more than like ten of them or you'll get sick
to your stomach. Yeah, what mean? So um, the you
hit upon this whole point. It's it's not so much
(04:44):
that antioxidants are good for you, it's that free radicals
are bad for you. That was the premise of this
whole thing in the nineties. And this idea of free
radicals is rooted in some really deep science and and
had a lot of scientific backing for really long time.
And I guess to kind of to get a little
(05:04):
bit of this out there, like science way overshot itself.
There was a really good, sensible hypothesis, and the scientific
community ran with it, and then they started doing studies.
And it wasn't entirely just the scientific community. Um, it
was largely those same marketers who were making money off
(05:24):
these super foods, you know that they could slap a
label on there. Now. It just got overhyped before before
the data was fully in. And my for my money though,
like once the data started coming in, it got even
more interesting. But let's just go back to the beginning
of all this, because like I was saying, free radicals
formed the basis for this whole thing, And there's this
(05:46):
whole idea that it's called the free radical theory of aging.
And it turns out that the guy who came up
with this was an m d. But he became and
he became interested in all of this when he was
a biochemist working for Shell Oil, developing things like pesticide strips.
The no pest strip, very famous kind of pesticide strip
(06:07):
of the United States, was developed by this guy named
Dr denhim harmon Um back in the fifties. And also
in the fifties he came up with that free radical
theory of aging. Yeah, so he was working at Shell
and one of the things that he was doing at
the time was working on chemical additives. That would you know,
they found out that sulfur and phosphorus were getting spoiled.
(06:31):
These compounds were breaking down in the oil and they
were really degrading over time because of free radical chain reactions.
And they learned back then, and this is pretty amazing
for the midnighteteen fifties, uh, that there was something called
uh free radicals, these reactive particles that would take electrons
from other atoms, and then those atoms would then say, well,
(06:54):
wait a minute, I'm on, I'm out of whack. Now
I want to steal some electrons to get back in
balance again. So it started this chain reaction where each
neighbor was getting their electrons stolen, and then the case
of oil, this sulfur and phosphorus would just continue to
break down until it was just gross. It was basically worthless.
So he's studying this stuff. He reads an article in
(07:16):
the Ladies Home Journal called Tomorrow you May be Younger,
and he was like, wait a minute, and he was like,
I'm studying these free radicals. It's breaking down oil. We
have cells in our body. Uh. We know that that
the atomic bomb and X rays and all that kind
of radiation really increases the free radicals in your body.
(07:38):
And you should see somebody after an atomic bomb. And
he put two and two together and he was like,
this is it. This is why we're aging. It's all
because these free radicals. Yeah, that the damage that they
do builds up over time, and once you reach a
certain point, that's your expiration date. But then along the way,
your systems start breaking down before the first cat astrophic
(08:00):
one fails completely, say like your heart giving out, and
that is aging. Everything from you know, loose saggy skin,
to um a build up of plaque in your in
your arteries, or your hardening of your arteries. That all
of this is an accumulation of the damage done by
these free radicals, which are again just simply a particle
(08:20):
that has an unpaired electron. So it can take someone
else's electron or can donate that electron. But either way,
it makes things that are normally stable, like the lining
of cells that gives cells their structure, unstable, and bad
things can happen to that. So doctor dr um Harmon
basically figured out that he had he had stumbled upon
(08:43):
the reason that we age and die, and when you
do something like that, you can take steps to mitigate it.
And this kicked off at the very beginning, the free
radical theory of aging. That took a few decades for
people to pick up on it, though, and like an
immediate thing that took off. Huh yeah, he was like,
I'm gonna get so rich on this right. Eventually he
(09:06):
kept checking his watch. Uh so, maybe we should go
do a little biology class primer for everyone to make
it a little more understandable. It's really kind of simple stuff.
But if you remember back in biology class, you probably
remember learning about the Crebs cycle capital K R, E, B,
S and S salbot. Geez. Here we go cellular respiration.
(09:30):
And the whole thing with respiration in the cells is
the whole point is to turn glucose into energy. And
that's pretty easy. We all understand that. Uh, we turn
that sugar into working energy for the body. It's our
metabolism at work, and this CREB cycle is that metabolic
process of doing so, of turning those glucose molecules into
(09:52):
something called a DNA scene triphosphate a t P, which
is like the fuel for the cells. Um. The thing
is is during this CRIB cycle, one of the one
of the by products or one of the products of it,
I guess, is free radicals, which is put a pin
in that because that's important. Your body when it under
(10:12):
undertakes its most important process, which is cellular respiration, UM,
it produces free radicals. Right. The problem is, UM, while
some of these free radicals are put to use UM,
others just kind of get away. They escape and they
start wandering around the body. And when they get away
(10:33):
and they're outside of the context that they're they're I
guess meant to be used for, that's when they start
to do some real damage. Yeah, that's when they go
to other molecules like oxygen and say, hey, let me
in oxygen. An oxygen is like sure, you know, I'm
down to party, And all of a sudden you have
an oxygen molecule that has an extra electron that's unpaired.
(10:57):
It's called the superoxide. That's it's like it would be awesome. Yeah,
like superoxide sounds like a positive word, but it's not.
It's like it would get your clothes just so so white,
you know, that's right. Uh, And there are other superoxides.
Hydrogen peroxide is one, and these are all collectively known
as reactive oxygen species because they're they're reacting, they're destabilized,
(11:21):
and like we said before, there they want to be
whole again and they want to be stable, so they
just start robbing electrons from their neighbor, and again you
have the same chain reaction, and that's basically free radicals
at work in the body, right, and so like just
to kind of put this, uh, give a human face
to this whole thing, if you have a reactive oxygen species,
(11:44):
they respond indiscriminately to whatever cell they come up against.
It doesn't matter to them. There's not one particular type
that that they like to take um electrons from or
donate electrons to. They'll destabilize whatever. And so if they
come across something like fatty acid molecule that helps create
structure for a cell um over time, if it sets
(12:07):
off a chain reaction. It can weaken that cell, and
when the cell wall is weak, the permeability is affected,
which means that all sorts of functions within the cell
can be impacted. In the cell can not only no
longer function and maybe decay and die, but it might
also produce some bad jams before it dies and screw
(12:27):
things up. So the proteins that it's meant to do
are still kind of trying to carry out their function,
but they're not doing it correctly, and so maybe they misfold,
and then you've got a whole other set of problems
on your hands. It's just a it's a it's not
good when a free radical, especially a reactive oxygen species,
gets loose. The problem is is they get loose like constantly,
(12:47):
there's a constant barrage of free radicals going through your body.
And Chuck it has to say after researching this, During
researching this, I now can can feel them. I can
hear them reacting throughout my body. And I didn't sleep
at all last night and I probably will never sleep again.
All right, Well, let's uh, I think we should take
(13:07):
a break. I'm gonna calm you down a little bit.
That was a nice primer, and I need to plug
in my laptop, so it's a perfect time to take
a bauz learn stuff with Joshua. Alright, so we're back
(13:49):
and Chuck. I am ashamed that we did not give
a huge shout out to Dave Ruse for helping us
out with this one fine example of the Rusee work,
because I mean, he did a great job. Um didn't
even so I could understand it. There was only one
part that I needed to go to a kids science website,
(14:10):
and it was for the Creb cycle. And I didn't
learn anything that I didn't already know. Uh from that data.
Did you remember the crib cycle from elementary school and
high school? Yeah? I didn't learn much about it, but
I'm always reminded of um The Adventures of Pete and
Pete because there was a company that had crib in
(14:30):
the name, and it always, for some reason, I always
associate the creb cycle with Pete and Pete. And it
would not be elementary school, though probably high school. No,
I don't know. I could see it in late elementaries. Yeah, middle,
let's go with middle. I didn't go to middle school, though.
You skipped right over boy genius no, we just didn't
(14:50):
have it. Then. It was one through seven, eight through
twelve until oh yeah, you went to that experimental school.
But experimental, they just they introduced middle school kind of
in the middle of my high school. So yeah, I
have to say, though, when you put together all of
your anecdotes from school, it sounds a lot like an
experimental school that you went to. They just didn't tell
you that. I think I had said this before. The
(15:12):
result of that was I was the My class was
the youngest class in the school in the eighth, ninth,
and tenth grade. There was nobody below us because they
kept peeling off grades to go to the middle school
right behind us. Oh that's that's interesting. Wow. So they
really carved out the middle there. Huh. Literally, they carved
out middle school and finally, by the time I was
(15:33):
a junior, there was a sophomore class behind me, and
we beat them up so hard. Yeah, I'll bet, because
you were all really just a class of super warrior
sleeper assassin. Yeah, super bullies, and we just couldn't wait
to beat up kids younger than us. Not true, that's
a very serious thing. By the way, of course, I've
never beat anybody you're talking like a guy who grew
(15:53):
up in the eighties, not a person of the ties. Chuck,
that's right. Uh, oh, we're at antioxidants. This is where
antioxidants come into play. The wonder thing. Yeah, because it
would make sense that if your body is producing billions
and billions of free radicals every second that are getting
loose and wreaking havoc, it would have some way to
(16:14):
alleviate this. And as you just said, antioxidants, yeah, like
the body has these. The body produces these on their own.
You don't have to eat I mean, blueberries are great.
You should eat blueberries and kale, but you don't have
to eat that stuff to get them. They just supply
you with extra We produced two main ones, uric acid
and glutath ione, and they don't actually wipe out free radicals,
(16:39):
but they neutralize free radicals. Because earlier you said you
can uh, you can take and you can actually give
an electron. And that's what these antioxidants do is they
they walk up and they're like, hey, hey, hey man,
chill out. You don't need to go stealing electrons. Have
one of mine. It's like a hippie putting a daisy
in the barrel of a rifle held by national guards,
(17:01):
you know, totally so, so that would be oxidative. The
other thing, taking an unpared electron, that's reductive. So the
whole process, that whole concept of a free radical being
able to do that is called redox, reductive oxidative. If
it just you know, if you want to like score
some points at your next biochem party, throw redox out there.
(17:26):
By the way, that refu made was very ironic now
that they think about it, which the hippie one, because
the hippie would not want to neutralize the free radical.
They are free radicals. Oh man, melted the membrane. I'm
like that. I feel like the guy on the poster
that says stoned again, you know what I mean, just
(17:47):
melted under the table. Uh So, like I said, vitamin's good, superfoods,
all these things can really help out our own antioxidant
production in our body and help protect you know, every
all these proteins and lipids and DNA and RNA basically
(18:07):
putting those daisies and all those rifles as fast as
they can, right exactly. So it is a good thing.
It is beneficial when you eat those blueberries or eat
or ing a pure cocoa. Um. However you ingest it,
uh like it does have that effect because you're introducing
these antioxidants to your body, and there are health benefits
to it. The thing is is you can eat blueberries
(18:31):
till you yourself are blue, like the poor girl from UM.
We just watched that. Yeah, it's which one the new
one or the old one? No, Like a few days ago,
we introduced my daughter to the Gene Wilder version, and
I gotta say he's great, but the movie is not
very good. Oh really, I really, I don't know, man,
I'm gonna take heap for this, but it's kind of
(18:51):
a garbage movie except for Gene Wilder. I don't wow.
Go when was the last time you saw it? Like
within the last year too? You know you might like it.
I'm not yuking your um. I just I didn't. I
thought it did not age well. I appreciate you not
yucky my um. Thank you. I have to say I've
actually somewhat come around on the remake. The first time
(19:13):
I saw it, I broke the TV. I thought was
so disappointed with it. But it's um, it actually has
somehow gotten slightly better. I'm not sure it changed somehow
or I did. I'm I'm assuming it changed. I'll have
to check it out. Yeah, I just don't hold me
to it if you don't like it, because I will
not be at all surprised. But anyway, you can eat
blueberries till you become uh bianca blueberry I think, yeah,
(19:39):
one of those two um, and you're probably not going
to neutralize all those free radicals in your body. And
so when an imbalance occurs between the number of free
radicals floating around causing havoc and the number of um
of antioccidents coming in and neutralizing them, you have what's
(20:01):
called oxidative stress And again this is what Dr Harmon
hypothesized was the basis for aging, that over time, all
this oxidative stress um is no longer able to be repaired.
There's just too many, too much damage to your systems
over time, and then slowly but surely, the clock starts
to wind down and you fall over in the middle
(20:21):
of the grocery store, ironically buying blueberries. Yeah. So Harmon
publishes a paper in nineteen fifty six called aging a
colon a theory based on free radical and radiation chemistry.
And this is where he kind of lays it all
out there and this this idea that he that he
hit upon, and he said, you know what we gotta do.
(20:42):
We gotta ingest more of these antioxidants. He said, I've
done some studies on some mice. He said, they got
a little moderate dose of antioxidants and they live longer.
So that proves everything right. And it didn't, you know,
it was nineteen fifty six. It wasn't like I think
you mentioned earlier. It wasn't didn't make the biggest spl
ash at first. It actually took weirdly. It kind of
(21:03):
took decades. Are not weirdly. I guess it sort of
makes sense. When the electron microscope or the electron scanner
was introduced in the eighties, they could actually see this
stuff happening and they said, wait a minute, these free
radicals are stealing electrons. They're bad, and these antioxidants are
sticking daisies in their rifles and that's good. And so
(21:24):
it got a little more traction. And then in the
nineties they did a very big study that said, hey,
if you're eating, if you're not eating a bunch of
fruits and vegetables and you're not getting those vitamin C
and E, you have a higher risk of getting cancer,
memory loss, bone breakage, sagging skin, like just aging in
all the wrong ways exactly. And so the implication was, well,
(21:47):
then take as much vitamin C and vitamin ese you
can possibly back into your And as a matter of fact,
Dr Harmon Um, who seems to have been a pretty
good guy from all accounts that I came across, Yeah,
he took a lot of vitamin C and E every day.
I mean hundreds of hundreds of times the recommended daily allowance,
which in and of itself is kind of in an
(22:09):
issue worth discussing um in its own thing. But um,
he also jogged two miles a day, which, as we'll see,
is very important. UM. And he lived at age and
apparently he said, uh, at some point it's important that
you accept if you're that you're going to die. We're
all going to die, but if you work at it
a little bit, you might just make it to a hundred.
(22:30):
And he came awfully close. So a lot of people
made a lot of UM, a lot of hey about
the fact that you know, he took a lot of
vitamin C and E every day and he's still you know,
he almost made it to a hundred UM and he
was he was very much alive. I mean this was
he died in two thousand fourteen. So when this really
finally hit in the nineties and everybody was like, this
(22:53):
is it. This is absolutely we have aging figured out
and we now know what to do with it or
do about it. Um, he would around to be kind
of fetted. And he was, I believe, nominated for the
Nobel Prize six times. He never won, but just being
nominated once, I mean I would love that. I'm not
saying that anybody should go out and do that necessarily,
(23:15):
but if you if you did, I would just think
it was great. Six times. I can't even imagine. Well,
I think after if they ever created a Nobel Prize
for podcasting, we'll get it, after Roman Mars, and after
Karen and Georgia, and after Ira Glass and after Terry Gross.
Terry Gross of course and wait, wait, don't tell me
(23:37):
all of NPR will get There's right, then Georgia and Karen,
then Roman Mars, then Mark Maron, then Jesse Thorne, then us.
I could see stuff they don't want you to know
slipping in there ahead of us, and our own college. Yeah,
I'll cut them. We got a long line ahead of us, Chuck,
Let's just keep doing our thing and see what happens. Okay, Oh,
(23:58):
that's right. So in the nineties it was such a
big deal. In the early nineties, the National Institute on
Aging in the U. S d A got together and
they said, Hey, you know what people love is USA
today style UM food rating scale graphics. So let's let's
put one of those together. We'll call it the Oxygen
(24:19):
radical Absorbance Capacity. No one's gonna know what the OREK is.
At least at least they stopped short of calling it oracle.
I give them credit. Yeah, that's true. They didn't go
look for an Ellen and e UM like life enabler
or something. Uh. And then they you know, they put
this out and it was basically kind of everything we
saw at a marketing It was. It was the blueberries
(24:42):
and the kale and the cocoa and all that stuff.
And and you know, like we said, marketing, they love
that stuff because that means they can sell things two
people packaged foods as healthy. Yeah, and like this thing
actually just said like here's how great coco is. But
it's great cocoa is red wine rose trials even better,
and so like, it was very helpful, especially at the
(25:04):
time because people were you know, into into health food
for years before that. The eighties was a huge, huge
boon for health food and this seems like the um
just the predictable, uh legacy of that, you know, Like
now now we've got even greater science and we can
tell you what foods are even better at prolonging your
(25:27):
life than you know, just your stupid brand muffin that
helps you poop. Go back to the eighties of Caveman Lawyer.
You know, this is like real science where we're saying
this food is a superfood and here's how much of
a superfood it is. That's what the orc did. Yeah,
but at some point I think someone stopped and said, well, listen,
(25:47):
we need to think about this a little bit more.
And that's what I love about science, Like something that
seemed really settled, it wasn't good enough for somebody at
some point, you know, and they said, let's start poking
around on this again, because we really still don't understand
it fully, because if your body is producing free radicals,
(26:08):
like the body doesn't usually just produce something that is
so damaging that it's literally killing it's its cells. So
let's kind of poke around and see what the deal
is with with these free radicals. And and yeah, I
guess some the logical answer is, well, God decreed it
that way, so this is why we that's the logical answer. Sure,
(26:29):
just you just run out of of something like you
just stop at some point. Um. But like you said,
some people said, no, no, no, there's gotta be there's
gotta be some some other thing going on here. It's
and it turns out it's astounding how close humans can
come to a mark and then just completely misinterpreted, you
(26:49):
know what I'm saying. And that seems like something that
happened here not completely misinterpreted, because there's plenty of stuff
that Dr Harmon supposed or that was the base is
of his supposition. That's still true. But I mean, I
guess I haven't quite put my finger on what's riveting
about this. But it's still to this day, Like I've
(27:10):
known about this for years and it's still this day.
I just find it so interesting. But the upshot was
when people started looking into um free radicals, so that
antioxidants neutralizing free radicals that's pretty set, like there's not
a lot of question about that, but just put a
pin in that for later. Um. But free radicals themselves
(27:33):
were portrayed as this villa like that's it, that's what's
killing you. These are the villains in all of our lives.
They're the reason for aging, they're the reason for disease.
They're the reasons you will die. Are free radicals. And
somebody somewhere along the way said, well, let me take
another look at them, and they found ah, wait a minute,
these are actually super useful in a lot of different ways.
(27:53):
And what the the change in paradigm that came from
all of this is that free radicals, Uh, depending on
the context where they are, the time that they exist,
like their lifespan a bunch of different factors, they're either
very destructive or the body can't exist or move forward
without them. Yeah, and a lot of these benefits, um,
(28:17):
I mean, they they're all kinds of benefits, but a
lot of them are based around the immune system. UM.
Like hydrogen peroxide. It's a free radical and it um,
you know, some immune cells need a little help from
hydrogen peroxide to help destroy these pathogens coming to our body. Um,
some of the other I think UH, and well, hydrogen
(28:39):
peroxide Again, it can also signal molecules that draw immune
cells to the side of an injury. So we're talking
like if you're a smoker or something, it can be
it can actually help attract immune cells to help stave
off UH cell damage because of that smoking. It's a
big It can be a signal er, right. UM. Hydrogen
(29:01):
peroxides also again it's a free radical. That's actually why
they say they no longer recommend using it to debride
wounds or clean a wound, or swish it around in
your mouth. It actually it's a free radical that will
damage whatever cells it comes in contact with. You don't
want to use hydrogen peroxide. UM. But the thyroid gland
produces it. It's part of producing thyroid hormone, like it
(29:24):
it needs. It's part of that process, just like it's
part of the crib cycle to produce energy. UM. I
saw another one. I didn't see the name in the
in the study, but UM, there was a free radical
that was linked to stronger contractions of cells in the
cardiac tissue, so it gave you a stronger heartbeat. They
figured out that when they removed this the heart beat still,
(29:45):
but it wasn't less, it wasn't as forceful or strong
a contraction. Um, there's just a bunch of different things
that different free radicals do in the body. Like they
clearly have a defined role depending on the context. Yeah,
and the other thing we'll take a break here in
a second. But the other thing we should mention too
is the exercise paradox, which is, you know, we know
(30:05):
exercise is really good for you, but we also learned
that exercise really increases your free radical levels. So that
was just another sort of uh notch or chink in
the armor. I guess where they were like, well, wait
a minute, if you're doing something really good for your
body is producing these extra free radicals, they got to
be good for something. So that's why, you know, people
(30:27):
looked into it and learned all of these benefits. So
I think we'll take a break now and we will
uh come back with some pretty interesting evidence on why
they might have had it all backwards. Alrighty, so evidence
(31:14):
that it was backwards. Um, they started doing some studies.
They started engineering organisms with really really high levels of
free radicals or antioxidants and just sort of looking at
what happened in terms of lifespan. And of course they thought, well, listen,
if you've got a lot of free radicals, you're gonna
you're gonna die a lot younger. It's gonna be yeah,
(31:36):
it's gonna be really bad. And if you if you
have really high antioxident levels, we're going to engineer all this,
bioengineer it. You're gonna live a lot longer. And they
found the opposite was true, which was it like shook
the medical community to its very core. Yeah. So there
was a type of round worm that was genetically engineered
to produce lots of superoxides, way more than your average roundworm.
(31:59):
And you would expect, since superoxides are a reactive oxygen species,
one of the most damaging types of free radicals, that
those round worms would just basically be born, you know,
shout why why was I born? And then die and
that would basically be the lifespan of it. And that's
not what happened at all. As a matter of fact,
not only did they live, um, they didn't die prematurely.
(32:22):
They actually lived longer than round worms that hadn't been
tinkered with genetically longer more free radicals longer lifespan in
this round worm and that definitely got their bow tie
spinning in the lab. Uh yeah. And they also said,
well what about the other ones that were pumped full
(32:42):
of antioxidants? They died faster, and they're like, what is
going on? Like if someone switching out our worms here?
And they all looked at the one guy who didn't
refuse to wear a bow tie. He's like, why is
everyone looking at me? I like my neckties. I like
my clip on necktie. Just fine. They entuate my genitalia.
What don't you remember there's a line from State in
(33:05):
Maine where this doctor wearing a bow tie, Oh my
gosh says, never trust the person of the bow tie
because the tie is meant to accentuate your genitalor. I
don't remember that line. I love that movie. Yeah, yeah,
it was there. My favorite part of that movie is
when Alec Bald went this out on the date with
(33:26):
Julius Stiles and drunk and crashes his car and then
he just gets out of the car and kind of
wanders off and goes so that happened. That movie was great.
He's got that great last line to He's like, well
beats working. Yeah, beats working. That was a great movie,
maybe the best movie about the thimb industry. Um. All right,
(33:47):
so they said round worms are one thing we need
to look at mice. So they bioengineered eighteen different strains
of mice. Again, some with really high levels of antioxidants,
others very low levels. They tracked these, they published. This
is over like an eight year period, and one of
the scientists that was talking about the results was like
he even cursed. He said, I watched those gd lifespan curves.
(34:12):
There was not an inch of difference between them. And
basically it was there was just no no difference in lifespan.
He couldn't find any No, there was Like this guy
worked for eight years breeding just different strains genetic strains
of mice and there was no difference. So like all
this data starts coming in. That one was two thousand
and eight to two thousand or two thousand one to
(34:33):
two thousand nine. I think, um, and this data starts
to accumulate there like did you hear about the round worms? Yeah?
Did you hear about the eighteen strains of mice? And
he said, yeah, it's crazy. That guy cursed and like
as the stuff started compiled. People were like, this doesn't
make any sense whatsoever. I guess someone else throughout the
naked role matt mole rat. The naked mole rat too,
(34:55):
which apparently produces way more naturally produces way more free
radicals than your average rat or mice mouse. I'm sorry, um,
And they typically have a lifespan that's about eight times
longer in the wild than wild mouse does, which again
doesn't make any sense. So all this stuff starts coming in,
and then finally people are like, well, wait a minute,
(35:17):
there's a lot of people who are taking lots of
antioxidants supplements right now, because I don't think we really
kind of like highlighted this um yet, Like in in
conjunction with those superfoods in the U. S d A
promoting its oric chart supplements blue up, especially supplements that
(35:40):
were proven antioxidants. People said, if you if you get
a lot of vitamin C from blueberries, what if I
just took like fistfuls of of like isolated vitamin C.
If I just took tons of vitamin C itself and
just got rid of the blueberries, And a lot a
lot of Americans were doing that, taking a lot of
(36:00):
supplements that were full of antioxidants, and now all of
a sudden, people are like, uh, maybe we should look
at how humans are doing with all of this. And
that's when that's when it got kind of scary all
of a sudden. Actually, yeah, I mean, like you said,
they had this robust population so they could do these
long term human clinical trials, and all these studies started
(36:21):
pouring in that said, people who were taking all these
multi vitamins are not living longer than the placebo group,
and sometimes even have a greater chance of dying from
things like cancer or heart disease and these things that
they're supposed to be protecting against by taking all these
multi vitamins. Yeah, the exact opposite of what everybody thought, right.
(36:42):
But here's the catch they found out is when they
started to dig a little deeper. In fact, they did
one study in eighteen thousand men and women. Uh, they
they found out that it was way worse in people
that already had something going on, like more lung cancer,
seven teen percent more deaths in a group that was
(37:03):
given beta carotene and retinal compared with people who didn't
get them. But when they looked they found out that,
oh but some of these people, like the highest rates
were among people who were smokers or who had been
exposed to asbestos, and they were like, wait a minute.
In fact, they even called off a study in Finland
because there were so many people getting uh. In the
antioxidant group, a lot of these people were smokers. They
(37:26):
were getting diagnosed with lung cancer. So they's like, we
got to cancel this thing and really see what's going
on here. Yeah, and it wasn't. It doesn't from what
I can tell, it wasn't. Just like they were like, Okay,
we don't know what's going on, so we need to
take a breather until we figure it out. I get
the impression that they were scared that they were actually
giving people lung cancer by giving high doses of beta
carotene to these smokers totally UH, and that they had
(37:48):
to cancel the study as a result, and that that
happened in more than more than just one place. Particularly,
it seemed like combining high doses of beta carotene, a
very potent antioxidant that's found naturally in the like carrots um,
with people who smoke, an environmental toxin that produces lots
and lots of free radicals, especially in the lungs, was
(38:12):
actually seeming to cause lung cancer trigger lung cancer in people.
So it was a really scary, eye opening, mind boggling
moment or not moment, but it's just course of years
over the I guess probably the course of a decade
when this stuff really started to come back. Um, that
really made people rethink whether we should be taking antioccident
(38:35):
supplements or not. Yeah, and rethink in a big way,
like and we should point out like not every single
study had a result that was this bad, but at
the best they were inconclusive. So a lot of these
journals had to walk back a lot of stuff. In
two thousand seven, the Journal of American Medical Association said,
(38:55):
you know, we did the sixty eight clinical trials, and
antioccident supplements do not reduce risk of death. I'm sorry,
we've been saying that for a while. The American Diabetes Association,
American Heart Association now say you don't even take these
supplements unless the doctor says, like you have a vitamin
deficiency and you need to and you need this one
specific supplement, not a bunch of them. And that rac
(39:19):
the poor Oracle can that website that that you would
say today graphic just got taken down altogether. Yeah, and
they deleted the data with it too, um, which I
personally take issue with. Yeah, I agree, but that just
kind of goes to show you And that's two thousand
and eleven that happened, But that goes to show you
just how sweeping the backlash was to hang onto the
(39:41):
data though, like parking on a MySpace page or something. Sure, sure,
so yeah, you know, justin Timberlake was a big investor
in the second round of my Space. I don't think
it went anywhere though. Was there a second round? They
tried to make a second round but it didn't work recently,
I want to say, within the last seven eight years,
(40:02):
and um, I feel like he sunk like a hundred
million dollars or some crazy amount into that to try
to try to like kick started again, and it just
did not happen. The people had spoken, you know what
I mean. But there was a huge, huge backlash to antioxidants.
But here's the thing, and this is really important and
I will go over it again in a second, but
(40:22):
I just really want to point this out. What they
focused on, what seemed to be the problem was not
antioxidants themselves. Was not eating a diet rich in antioxidant foods,
a very colorful diet filled with all the different kinds
of nutrients that you get from that stuff. That doesn't
seem to be the issue, which is why I don't
understand why the USDA took down that site. What seemed
(40:45):
to be the issue was taking enormous amounts on a
daily basis of antioxidants supplements isolated derived supplements that were
high doses of antioxidants. But even still, we haven't quite
reached the point where we understand why that might be
the case. And finally we kind of get to that
because it's totally counterintuitive why we're taking more antioxidants to
(41:09):
balance out oxidative stress in your body actually make you
likely or do die from the very stuff that you're
taking supplements to prevent. Why chuck, Yeah, Well, I mean
it seems like, you know, we mentioned earlier that free
radicals can really help out the immune system in a
lot of ways, and that's kind of what they landed on,
is that free radicals may not be the cause of
(41:30):
this oxidative damage, but might be the result of it.
So if you're a smoker or if you get that
asbesos exposure, your body is going to produce these free
radicals to signal, like we mentioned earlier, like hey, something's wrong.
You need to come down here and start, you know,
get to work, bring your little repair kit down here.
And if you're taking all this these massive levels of antioxidants,
(41:52):
it's gonna mute or muffle those the work of those
free radicals. And that's why it explains the fact that
people that had issues, like if you were a smoker
already or that asbestos exposure and you were taking all
these things, it was it was kind of suppressing your
immuno response, right. Um, It's almost like you were taking
(42:14):
such a high dose of these antioxidants that they came
in and were telling your body we got this, even
though it didn't really have it, which allowed like a
tumor to say run rampant were it allowed for these
processes of like your your arteries um clogging or hardening
to take place because your body thought it was covered.
That's the current theory. And again we don't want to
(42:34):
get ahead of ourselves. If we learned any lesson from
the initial round of this, it's that we need to
just kind of take it all as it comes and
try to figure it out. But that seems to be
the current understanding is that it's sent It dampens the
signals that free radical send to the immune system, which
actually allows disease to take place. It makes sense, you know,
(42:56):
It's like it's almost like, you know, the the immune
system needs to be out a little out of whack
to know, it needs to wake up and get to work.
You know. So if it's not getting out of whack
because antioxidants are just keeping that those electrons you know,
all locked in place, or you know, at least an
even trade going on, then your immune system isn't gonna
(43:16):
know what to do. It explains the round worms, It
explains the uh, the exercise paradox. It all kind of
dovetailed very nicely. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and
I mean it also makes sense so like, um, when
you use radiation therapy, you're actually creating purposely free radicals
that are targeting a tumor, a tumor, so that those
(43:36):
free radicals go in and break up the tumor cell
and destroy the cells that make up the tumor, I
should say. Um, And that actually kind of jibes with
something a concept called hormesis which I heard about, um
from a guy that you and I have been um
watching videos from, named doctor Mark Hyman. And um, he's
like a functional medicine doctor, which is basically like just
(43:58):
kind of used the whole body together and his food
is medicine kind of thing into that. Yeah, she would
love that guy all. But he's very down to earth
and and pretty pretty interesting. But um, there's this concept
called hormesis that he talks about. It's not his concept,
but he he kind of punches it up a lot,
but he Um. Hormesis is the idea that you stress
(44:19):
your body slightly so that when it repairs itself, it
actually makes itself slightly stronger, which that seems to be
the basis of free radicals and exercise. That whole exercise
paradox that when you exercise, you're actually stressing your body
so that when your body goes into repair itself, you
are better off than you were before. Like you can
(44:40):
you have a higher vo to max or v O
max um you have your muscles are stronger because they've
been repaired stronger than they were when you tore them
through exercise. That's why you have a down day between
if you're like a big weightlifter, like I remember when
I was a kid, Like I never lifted weights, but
dudes would try to get me to and they would
talk about weightlifting a lot, and they be like, Yeah,
I mean, you gotta have that down day. You got
(45:02):
to let those muscles repair, you know exactly. That's why
you also want to protein after you um you exercise,
so that you your body has a supply of stuff
to rebuild those muscles with and make them stronger. But
there's this whole idea that free radicals play the roles
in all these different things, from hormesis like exercise, to
um signaling to actually being part of the immune response
(45:24):
that messes up cells like that we don't want, like
tumor cells, and so if we suppress them with high
doses of antioxidant supplements, it interferes with our bodies natural
ability to do that rather than helping the body, where
we actually seem to have been hindering it with antioxidant supplements. Yeah,
and it's kind of interesting. I think, like, even though
(45:45):
even though the doctor wasn't right on the money, I
think in the end it did a lot of good
because I think where we landed and where we are
now is you shouldn't necessarily believe anyone when they say
they figured out the one thing without aging and dying,
and that it is a lot of different things going
on in your body over a long period of time,
(46:08):
and you can't say, this is it. I figured out
the one single thing that's going to keep you young
for more years and let you live longer. Yeah, there
is no, there's no fountain of youth. No, no, that's
the problem yet. But um, but it does seem like
oxidative stress does play a role in it. But it's
certainly not. There's it's just two. It's way more complicated,
and that was wishful thinking to think otherwise. But it
(46:29):
seems like where medicine is landed now is you know,
it still makes sense to reduce your exposure to things
that that cause oxidative stress, like cigarette smoke or asbestos
or you know, all sorts of environmental toxins, and then
to supplement your body's ability to take on free radicals
by eating very healthy um plant based although not entirely
(46:51):
plant um diet. Uh that's full of antioxidants, because that
seems to be true, But it seems like extracting those
antioxidants take some out of context that when you eat
them with food, there's a bunch of other nutrients they
interact with. That seems to actually that's where the health
benefits come from. It's from food. We haven't figured out
how to replicate that, and just extracting the antioxidants didn't
(47:13):
do it. So eat a lot of colorful plants and
you will probably be a little healthier than you would
have otherwise when you age. Yeah, and if you really
want bang for your buck, eat them raw. Yeah, there
you go. It depends on the plant. Like I like
to roast. I like to roast that cauliflower and broccoli. Yeah,
(47:35):
tastes so good. But if you can munch on some
raw edgies, that's really, really, really good for your body.
But I think there are some processes like blanching that
just lightly kind of cook something that unlock a lot
of those nutrients that otherwise we just pass right through
your your pooper. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I don't
think raw is entirely the way. I'm sorry raw people,
(47:56):
But anyway, you got anything else, I've got nothing else. Uh. Well,
since Chuck said that, it's time everybody for a listener,
ma'am uh. This is from the housing discrimination episode that
was a good one, if I may say so. Hey, guys,
Chuck was talking about locking in um property tax or
(48:18):
saying you don't have to pay property tax anymore. And
while that's a good idea, this is basically what California
did when it enacted Prop thirteen in night. And while
the originally stated goal of stopping displays displacement of older
homeowners was a good one, it's unintended negative consequences are huge. Um.
Here in California, your property taxes are essentially frozen when
(48:40):
you buy a property, but the law also allows you
to pass your tax basis to your children or grandchildren,
and the result is massive inequity. A very common situation
here in San Francisco is two households next door to
each other, uh similar homes, similar age, and similar financial means,
one of whom pays ten times what the other does
(49:00):
in property taxes while consuming the city services those taxes
pay for equally. It's a regressive tax that benefits the
half of the people who are lucky enough to inherit property,
while further burdening those trying to buy in like written control.
It's a good idea but flawed in practice because the
people who have it are not necessarily the people who
need it. PS. You should mention The Color of Law
(49:23):
by Richard Rothstein, probably one of the best books ever
written on housing discrimination. And oh, I don't have that
person's uh name. I feel bad now, probably Richard Rothstein
writing anonymously. I guess it's just anonymous. Sorry about that.
That was That was a good one. I'm interesting because
(49:44):
I guarantee that the kind of thing where somebody else
all right and be like no, no, no, that last
writer had it wrong. Here's the real deal on that.
Who knows. I'm I'm interested to see. I had not
heard of that before. Yeah, I mean, Emily and I
sort of lightly debated that the email. Um, actually I've
got it here. It's from Eric. Oh, thanks m cal Berkeley.
(50:05):
So here that's what he's talking about. But yeah, we
kind of debated that a little bit. I guess I
don't know. I'm not sure I feel about it, so
I'm not gonna run my mouth very wise chuck very wise. Um, well,
thanks again, Eric, that was a very interesting email. And
if you want to be like Eric and get in
touch with us about something that we possibly had overlooked.
(50:26):
We want to hear about it. You can send it
to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and there's Jerry, and we're all looking
vibrant and healthy and just so alive and sexy. And
that makes the stuff you should know. Jerry's coat is shining,
(00:24):
it is. She's got that high pro glow, high pro glow.
Do you remember that? I do? Uh? And you know
we give our dogs the um this salmon juice that
comes in a squirt bottle. Whoa, it's like, you know,
like salmon skin oil, and that makes their coat shiny
(00:45):
and it smells like salmon skin, which I love. That's cool. Uh.
You me straight up cooks salmon with the skin on
for momo, Like that's what she has has cooked food
for dinners. Yeah, I mean I love salmon skin. It's
the best thing ever. It's so good. I just love
love um like raw salmon. Chuck, I like that too,
(01:06):
Like it's smoked too. Sure, sure what else? Injectable salmon?
Stick it in my neck? You go. You end up
with kind of like a requiem for a dream thing
going on. That's right. Uh, But you know this all
dovetails and antioxidants. I think it does because I think
if you eat a lot of raw salmon, especially good stuff,
(01:28):
you know, nothing grown in a toxic sewage dump, you're
gonna live a really, really long time. And we've known
it for a very long time that if you eat
healthy food, you're probably going to age a lot better
or a lot more. You're going to stay a lot
healthier as you age than say you would if you
(01:49):
just ate chunk for the whole time. It seems like
a no brainer. But along the way, a lot of
people have stopped to ask exactly why that might be. UM,
and we should say shout out to our book UM,
which has an entire chapter, chapter eight, on aging. It's
called Aging Colon Do We Gotta? And it's a pretty
good one if I do say so. I think the
(02:10):
first line of that chapter says, avoid sewer salmon. That's
precisely right. I mean, that's just some of the best
advice anyone could ever give anybody. It's a T shirt.
So UM. A lot of people, like I was saying,
have stopped and asked, like why, why, you know, why
would food help you? And obviously we need food for fuel,
But it turns out that, especially in the nineties, a
(02:32):
lot of food kind of hit the scene. Well, the
food was already there, but they were promoted a different
way thanks to some some recent findings that decided that
food that are high in antioxidants um would help you
age a lot better, possibly prolong your life, and prevent
(02:53):
certain kinds of age related diseases, everything from cancer to
neuro degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, just from meeting the foods
you ate, and it all seemed to have something to
do with those antioxidants, and that concept took off like
our rocket, and it's still around today. Actually. Yeah, and
this is when listeners are saying, oh God, are Josh
(03:15):
and Chuck gonna tell us now that science says antioxidants
aren't good too? And we well, let's just hang on
to that. You'll find out by the end of the episode. Yeah,
that's the people to stick around. That's the big reveal.
Let's give him some mcguffin's chuck. Uh. Yeah. Well, the
point of the whole intro here, though, is that it
was a big marketing blitz. Everything from blueberries to kale.
(03:38):
I mean, good lord, we had kale rammed down our throat,
like figuratively and literally for the past decade plus, um vitamins,
multi vitamins, vitamin E, vitamin C, beta caroteen, just all
of these superfoods, green tea of course, which we talked about.
And we're not saying these things aren't good for you.
These are all great, great things to eat, um, but
(04:01):
they were being touted as being high in antioxidants and
it will help you age and it will help you
combat something that everyone just heard the words free radicals
and and consumer said, well, I don't like the sound
of those. Yeah, exact, let's let's let's kill them even
though we don't understand them. Someone literally shoved kale down
(04:23):
your throat once. Yeah, you've never gone to that restaurant.
No kale shove kaloe me crazy? That explains a lot, yea,
it's I mean, kale's fine, but kale chips. Don't eat
more than like ten of them or you'll get sick
to your stomach. Yeah, what mean? So um, the you
hit upon this whole point. It's it's not so much
(04:44):
that antioxidants are good for you, it's that free radicals
are bad for you. That was the premise of this
whole thing in the nineties. And this idea of free
radicals is rooted in some really deep science and and
had a lot of scientific backing for really long time.
And I guess to kind of to get a little
(05:04):
bit of this out there, like science way overshot itself.
There was a really good, sensible hypothesis, and the scientific
community ran with it, and then they started doing studies.
And it wasn't entirely just the scientific community. Um, it
was largely those same marketers who were making money off
(05:24):
these super foods, you know that they could slap a
label on there. Now. It just got overhyped before before
the data was fully in. And my for my money though,
like once the data started coming in, it got even
more interesting. But let's just go back to the beginning
of all this, because like I was saying, free radicals
formed the basis for this whole thing, And there's this
(05:46):
whole idea that it's called the free radical theory of aging.
And it turns out that the guy who came up
with this was an m d. But he became and
he became interested in all of this when he was
a biochemist working for Shell Oil, developing things like pesticide strips.
The no pest strip, very famous kind of pesticide strip
(06:07):
of the United States, was developed by this guy named
Dr denhim harmon Um back in the fifties. And also
in the fifties he came up with that free radical
theory of aging. Yeah, so he was working at Shell
and one of the things that he was doing at
the time was working on chemical additives. That would you know,
they found out that sulfur and phosphorus were getting spoiled.
(06:31):
These compounds were breaking down in the oil and they
were really degrading over time because of free radical chain reactions.
And they learned back then, and this is pretty amazing
for the midnighteteen fifties, uh, that there was something called
uh free radicals, these reactive particles that would take electrons
from other atoms, and then those atoms would then say, well,
(06:54):
wait a minute, I'm on, I'm out of whack. Now
I want to steal some electrons to get back in
balance again. So it started this chain reaction where each
neighbor was getting their electrons stolen, and then the case
of oil, this sulfur and phosphorus would just continue to
break down until it was just gross. It was basically worthless.
So he's studying this stuff. He reads an article in
(07:16):
the Ladies Home Journal called Tomorrow you May be Younger,
and he was like, wait a minute, and he was like,
I'm studying these free radicals. It's breaking down oil. We
have cells in our body. Uh. We know that that
the atomic bomb and X rays and all that kind
of radiation really increases the free radicals in your body.
(07:38):
And you should see somebody after an atomic bomb. And
he put two and two together and he was like,
this is it. This is why we're aging. It's all
because these free radicals. Yeah, that the damage that they
do builds up over time, and once you reach a
certain point, that's your expiration date. But then along the way,
your systems start breaking down before the first cat astrophic
(08:00):
one fails completely, say like your heart giving out, and
that is aging. Everything from you know, loose saggy skin,
to um a build up of plaque in your in
your arteries, or your hardening of your arteries. That all
of this is an accumulation of the damage done by
these free radicals, which are again just simply a particle
(08:20):
that has an unpaired electron. So it can take someone
else's electron or can donate that electron. But either way,
it makes things that are normally stable, like the lining
of cells that gives cells their structure, unstable, and bad
things can happen to that. So doctor dr um Harmon
basically figured out that he had he had stumbled upon
(08:43):
the reason that we age and die, and when you
do something like that, you can take steps to mitigate it.
And this kicked off at the very beginning, the free
radical theory of aging. That took a few decades for
people to pick up on it, though, and like an
immediate thing that took off. Huh yeah, he was like,
I'm gonna get so rich on this right. Eventually he
(09:06):
kept checking his watch. Uh so, maybe we should go
do a little biology class primer for everyone to make
it a little more understandable. It's really kind of simple stuff.
But if you remember back in biology class, you probably
remember learning about the Crebs cycle capital K R, E, B,
S and S salbot. Geez. Here we go cellular respiration.
(09:30):
And the whole thing with respiration in the cells is
the whole point is to turn glucose into energy. And
that's pretty easy. We all understand that. Uh, we turn
that sugar into working energy for the body. It's our
metabolism at work, and this CREB cycle is that metabolic
process of doing so, of turning those glucose molecules into
(09:52):
something called a DNA scene triphosphate a t P, which
is like the fuel for the cells. Um. The thing
is is during this CRIB cycle, one of the one
of the by products or one of the products of it,
I guess, is free radicals, which is put a pin
in that because that's important. Your body when it under
(10:12):
undertakes its most important process, which is cellular respiration, UM,
it produces free radicals. Right. The problem is, UM, while
some of these free radicals are put to use UM,
others just kind of get away. They escape and they
start wandering around the body. And when they get away
(10:33):
and they're outside of the context that they're they're I
guess meant to be used for, that's when they start
to do some real damage. Yeah, that's when they go
to other molecules like oxygen and say, hey, let me
in oxygen. An oxygen is like sure, you know, I'm
down to party, And all of a sudden you have
an oxygen molecule that has an extra electron that's unpaired.
(10:57):
It's called the superoxide. That's it's like it would be awesome. Yeah,
like superoxide sounds like a positive word, but it's not.
It's like it would get your clothes just so so white,
you know, that's right. Uh, And there are other superoxides.
Hydrogen peroxide is one, and these are all collectively known
as reactive oxygen species because they're they're reacting, they're destabilized,
(11:21):
and like we said before, there they want to be
whole again and they want to be stable, so they
just start robbing electrons from their neighbor, and again you
have the same chain reaction, and that's basically free radicals
at work in the body, right, and so like just
to kind of put this, uh, give a human face
to this whole thing, if you have a reactive oxygen species,
(11:44):
they respond indiscriminately to whatever cell they come up against.
It doesn't matter to them. There's not one particular type
that that they like to take um electrons from or
donate electrons to. They'll destabilize whatever. And so if they
come across something like fatty acid molecule that helps create
structure for a cell um over time, if it sets
(12:07):
off a chain reaction. It can weaken that cell, and
when the cell wall is weak, the permeability is affected,
which means that all sorts of functions within the cell
can be impacted. In the cell can not only no
longer function and maybe decay and die, but it might
also produce some bad jams before it dies and screw
(12:27):
things up. So the proteins that it's meant to do
are still kind of trying to carry out their function,
but they're not doing it correctly, and so maybe they misfold,
and then you've got a whole other set of problems
on your hands. It's just a it's a it's not
good when a free radical, especially a reactive oxygen species,
gets loose. The problem is is they get loose like constantly,
(12:47):
there's a constant barrage of free radicals going through your body.
And Chuck it has to say after researching this, During
researching this, I now can can feel them. I can
hear them reacting throughout my body. And I didn't sleep
at all last night and I probably will never sleep again.
All right, Well, let's uh, I think we should take
(13:07):
a break. I'm gonna calm you down a little bit.
That was a nice primer, and I need to plug
in my laptop, so it's a perfect time to take
a bauz learn stuff with Joshua. Alright, so we're back
(13:49):
and Chuck. I am ashamed that we did not give
a huge shout out to Dave Ruse for helping us
out with this one fine example of the Rusee work,
because I mean, he did a great job. Um didn't
even so I could understand it. There was only one
part that I needed to go to a kids science website,
(14:10):
and it was for the Creb cycle. And I didn't
learn anything that I didn't already know. Uh from that data.
Did you remember the crib cycle from elementary school and
high school? Yeah? I didn't learn much about it, but
I'm always reminded of um The Adventures of Pete and
Pete because there was a company that had crib in
(14:30):
the name, and it always, for some reason, I always
associate the creb cycle with Pete and Pete. And it
would not be elementary school, though probably high school. No,
I don't know. I could see it in late elementaries. Yeah, middle,
let's go with middle. I didn't go to middle school, though.
You skipped right over boy genius no, we just didn't
(14:50):
have it. Then. It was one through seven, eight through
twelve until oh yeah, you went to that experimental school.
But experimental, they just they introduced middle school kind of
in the middle of my high school. So yeah, I
have to say, though, when you put together all of
your anecdotes from school, it sounds a lot like an
experimental school that you went to. They just didn't tell
you that. I think I had said this before. The
(15:12):
result of that was I was the My class was
the youngest class in the school in the eighth, ninth,
and tenth grade. There was nobody below us because they
kept peeling off grades to go to the middle school
right behind us. Oh that's that's interesting. Wow. So they
really carved out the middle there. Huh. Literally, they carved
out middle school and finally, by the time I was
(15:33):
a junior, there was a sophomore class behind me, and
we beat them up so hard. Yeah, I'll bet, because
you were all really just a class of super warrior
sleeper assassin. Yeah, super bullies, and we just couldn't wait
to beat up kids younger than us. Not true, that's
a very serious thing. By the way, of course, I've
never beat anybody you're talking like a guy who grew
(15:53):
up in the eighties, not a person of the ties. Chuck,
that's right. Uh, oh, we're at antioxidants. This is where
antioxidants come into play. The wonder thing. Yeah, because it
would make sense that if your body is producing billions
and billions of free radicals every second that are getting
loose and wreaking havoc, it would have some way to
(16:14):
alleviate this. And as you just said, antioxidants, yeah, like
the body has these. The body produces these on their own.
You don't have to eat I mean, blueberries are great.
You should eat blueberries and kale, but you don't have
to eat that stuff to get them. They just supply
you with extra We produced two main ones, uric acid
and glutath ione, and they don't actually wipe out free radicals,
(16:39):
but they neutralize free radicals. Because earlier you said you
can uh, you can take and you can actually give
an electron. And that's what these antioxidants do is they
they walk up and they're like, hey, hey, hey man,
chill out. You don't need to go stealing electrons. Have
one of mine. It's like a hippie putting a daisy
in the barrel of a rifle held by national guards,
(17:01):
you know, totally so, so that would be oxidative. The
other thing, taking an unpared electron, that's reductive. So the
whole process, that whole concept of a free radical being
able to do that is called redox, reductive oxidative. If
it just you know, if you want to like score
some points at your next biochem party, throw redox out there.
(17:26):
By the way, that refu made was very ironic now
that they think about it, which the hippie one, because
the hippie would not want to neutralize the free radical.
They are free radicals. Oh man, melted the membrane. I'm
like that. I feel like the guy on the poster
that says stoned again, you know what I mean, just
(17:47):
melted under the table. Uh So, like I said, vitamin's good, superfoods,
all these things can really help out our own antioxidant
production in our body and help protect you know, every
all these proteins and lipids and DNA and RNA basically
(18:07):
putting those daisies and all those rifles as fast as
they can, right exactly. So it is a good thing.
It is beneficial when you eat those blueberries or eat
or ing a pure cocoa. Um. However you ingest it,
uh like it does have that effect because you're introducing
these antioxidants to your body, and there are health benefits
to it. The thing is is you can eat blueberries
(18:31):
till you yourself are blue, like the poor girl from UM.
We just watched that. Yeah, it's which one the new
one or the old one? No, Like a few days ago,
we introduced my daughter to the Gene Wilder version, and
I gotta say he's great, but the movie is not
very good. Oh really, I really, I don't know, man,
I'm gonna take heap for this, but it's kind of
(18:51):
a garbage movie except for Gene Wilder. I don't wow.
Go when was the last time you saw it? Like
within the last year too? You know you might like it.
I'm not yuking your um. I just I didn't. I
thought it did not age well. I appreciate you not
yucky my um. Thank you. I have to say I've
actually somewhat come around on the remake. The first time
(19:13):
I saw it, I broke the TV. I thought was
so disappointed with it. But it's um, it actually has
somehow gotten slightly better. I'm not sure it changed somehow
or I did. I'm I'm assuming it changed. I'll have
to check it out. Yeah, I just don't hold me
to it if you don't like it, because I will
not be at all surprised. But anyway, you can eat
blueberries till you become uh bianca blueberry I think, yeah,
(19:39):
one of those two um, and you're probably not going
to neutralize all those free radicals in your body. And
so when an imbalance occurs between the number of free
radicals floating around causing havoc and the number of um
of antioccidents coming in and neutralizing them, you have what's
(20:01):
called oxidative stress And again this is what Dr Harmon
hypothesized was the basis for aging, that over time, all
this oxidative stress um is no longer able to be repaired.
There's just too many, too much damage to your systems
over time, and then slowly but surely, the clock starts
to wind down and you fall over in the middle
(20:21):
of the grocery store, ironically buying blueberries. Yeah. So Harmon
publishes a paper in nineteen fifty six called aging a
colon a theory based on free radical and radiation chemistry.
And this is where he kind of lays it all
out there and this this idea that he that he
hit upon, and he said, you know what we gotta do.
(20:42):
We gotta ingest more of these antioxidants. He said, I've
done some studies on some mice. He said, they got
a little moderate dose of antioxidants and they live longer.
So that proves everything right. And it didn't, you know,
it was nineteen fifty six. It wasn't like I think
you mentioned earlier. It wasn't didn't make the biggest spl
ash at first. It actually took weirdly. It kind of
(21:03):
took decades. Are not weirdly. I guess it sort of
makes sense. When the electron microscope or the electron scanner
was introduced in the eighties, they could actually see this
stuff happening and they said, wait a minute, these free
radicals are stealing electrons. They're bad, and these antioxidants are
sticking daisies in their rifles and that's good. And so
(21:24):
it got a little more traction. And then in the
nineties they did a very big study that said, hey,
if you're eating, if you're not eating a bunch of
fruits and vegetables and you're not getting those vitamin C
and E, you have a higher risk of getting cancer,
memory loss, bone breakage, sagging skin, like just aging in
all the wrong ways exactly. And so the implication was, well,
(21:47):
then take as much vitamin C and vitamin ese you
can possibly back into your And as a matter of fact,
Dr Harmon Um, who seems to have been a pretty
good guy from all accounts that I came across, Yeah,
he took a lot of vitamin C and E every day.
I mean hundreds of hundreds of times the recommended daily allowance,
which in and of itself is kind of in an
(22:09):
issue worth discussing um in its own thing. But um,
he also jogged two miles a day, which, as we'll see,
is very important. UM. And he lived at age and
apparently he said, uh, at some point it's important that
you accept if you're that you're going to die. We're
all going to die, but if you work at it
a little bit, you might just make it to a hundred.
(22:30):
And he came awfully close. So a lot of people
made a lot of UM, a lot of hey about
the fact that you know, he took a lot of
vitamin C and E every day and he's still you know,
he almost made it to a hundred UM and he
was he was very much alive. I mean this was
he died in two thousand fourteen. So when this really
finally hit in the nineties and everybody was like, this
(22:53):
is it. This is absolutely we have aging figured out
and we now know what to do with it or
do about it. Um, he would around to be kind
of fetted. And he was, I believe, nominated for the
Nobel Prize six times. He never won, but just being
nominated once, I mean I would love that. I'm not
saying that anybody should go out and do that necessarily,
(23:15):
but if you if you did, I would just think
it was great. Six times. I can't even imagine. Well,
I think after if they ever created a Nobel Prize
for podcasting, we'll get it, after Roman Mars, and after
Karen and Georgia, and after Ira Glass and after Terry Gross.
Terry Gross of course and wait, wait, don't tell me
(23:37):
all of NPR will get There's right, then Georgia and Karen,
then Roman Mars, then Mark Maron, then Jesse Thorne, then us.
I could see stuff they don't want you to know
slipping in there ahead of us, and our own college. Yeah,
I'll cut them. We got a long line ahead of us, Chuck,
Let's just keep doing our thing and see what happens. Okay, Oh,
(23:58):
that's right. So in the nineties it was such a
big deal. In the early nineties, the National Institute on
Aging in the U. S d A got together and
they said, Hey, you know what people love is USA
today style UM food rating scale graphics. So let's let's
put one of those together. We'll call it the Oxygen
(24:19):
radical Absorbance Capacity. No one's gonna know what the OREK is.
At least at least they stopped short of calling it oracle.
I give them credit. Yeah, that's true. They didn't go
look for an Ellen and e UM like life enabler
or something. Uh. And then they you know, they put
this out and it was basically kind of everything we
saw at a marketing It was. It was the blueberries
(24:42):
and the kale and the cocoa and all that stuff.
And and you know, like we said, marketing, they love
that stuff because that means they can sell things two
people packaged foods as healthy. Yeah, and like this thing
actually just said like here's how great coco is. But
it's great cocoa is red wine rose trials even better,
and so like, it was very helpful, especially at the
(25:04):
time because people were you know, into into health food
for years before that. The eighties was a huge, huge
boon for health food and this seems like the um
just the predictable, uh legacy of that, you know, Like
now now we've got even greater science and we can
tell you what foods are even better at prolonging your
(25:27):
life than you know, just your stupid brand muffin that
helps you poop. Go back to the eighties of Caveman Lawyer.
You know, this is like real science where we're saying
this food is a superfood and here's how much of
a superfood it is. That's what the orc did. Yeah,
but at some point I think someone stopped and said, well, listen,
(25:47):
we need to think about this a little bit more.
And that's what I love about science, Like something that
seemed really settled, it wasn't good enough for somebody at
some point, you know, and they said, let's start poking
around on this again, because we really still don't understand
it fully, because if your body is producing free radicals,
(26:08):
like the body doesn't usually just produce something that is
so damaging that it's literally killing it's its cells. So
let's kind of poke around and see what the deal
is with with these free radicals. And and yeah, I
guess some the logical answer is, well, God decreed it
that way, so this is why we that's the logical answer. Sure,
(26:29):
just you just run out of of something like you
just stop at some point. Um. But like you said,
some people said, no, no, no, there's gotta be there's
gotta be some some other thing going on here. It's
and it turns out it's astounding how close humans can
come to a mark and then just completely misinterpreted, you
(26:49):
know what I'm saying. And that seems like something that
happened here not completely misinterpreted, because there's plenty of stuff
that Dr Harmon supposed or that was the base is
of his supposition. That's still true. But I mean, I
guess I haven't quite put my finger on what's riveting
about this. But it's still to this day, Like I've
(27:10):
known about this for years and it's still this day.
I just find it so interesting. But the upshot was
when people started looking into um free radicals, so that
antioxidants neutralizing free radicals that's pretty set, like there's not
a lot of question about that, but just put a
pin in that for later. Um. But free radicals themselves
(27:33):
were portrayed as this villa like that's it, that's what's
killing you. These are the villains in all of our lives.
They're the reason for aging, they're the reason for disease.
They're the reasons you will die. Are free radicals. And
somebody somewhere along the way said, well, let me take
another look at them, and they found ah, wait a minute,
these are actually super useful in a lot of different ways.
(27:53):
And what the the change in paradigm that came from
all of this is that free radicals, Uh, depending on
the context where they are, the time that they exist,
like their lifespan a bunch of different factors, they're either
very destructive or the body can't exist or move forward
without them. Yeah, and a lot of these benefits, um,
(28:17):
I mean, they they're all kinds of benefits, but a
lot of them are based around the immune system. UM.
Like hydrogen peroxide. It's a free radical and it um,
you know, some immune cells need a little help from
hydrogen peroxide to help destroy these pathogens coming to our body. Um,
some of the other I think UH, and well, hydrogen
(28:39):
peroxide Again, it can also signal molecules that draw immune
cells to the side of an injury. So we're talking
like if you're a smoker or something, it can be
it can actually help attract immune cells to help stave
off UH cell damage because of that smoking. It's a
big It can be a signal er, right. UM. Hydrogen
(29:01):
peroxides also again it's a free radical. That's actually why
they say they no longer recommend using it to debride
wounds or clean a wound, or swish it around in
your mouth. It actually it's a free radical that will
damage whatever cells it comes in contact with. You don't
want to use hydrogen peroxide. UM. But the thyroid gland
produces it. It's part of producing thyroid hormone, like it
(29:24):
it needs. It's part of that process, just like it's
part of the crib cycle to produce energy. UM. I
saw another one. I didn't see the name in the
in the study, but UM, there was a free radical
that was linked to stronger contractions of cells in the
cardiac tissue, so it gave you a stronger heartbeat. They
figured out that when they removed this the heart beat still,
(29:45):
but it wasn't less, it wasn't as forceful or strong
a contraction. Um, there's just a bunch of different things
that different free radicals do in the body. Like they
clearly have a defined role depending on the context. Yeah,
and the other thing we'll take a break here in
a second. But the other thing we should mention too
is the exercise paradox, which is, you know, we know
(30:05):
exercise is really good for you, but we also learned
that exercise really increases your free radical levels. So that
was just another sort of uh notch or chink in
the armor. I guess where they were like, well, wait
a minute, if you're doing something really good for your
body is producing these extra free radicals, they got to
be good for something. So that's why, you know, people
(30:27):
looked into it and learned all of these benefits. So
I think we'll take a break now and we will
uh come back with some pretty interesting evidence on why
they might have had it all backwards. Alrighty, so evidence
(31:14):
that it was backwards. Um, they started doing some studies.
They started engineering organisms with really really high levels of
free radicals or antioxidants and just sort of looking at
what happened in terms of lifespan. And of course they thought, well, listen,
if you've got a lot of free radicals, you're gonna
you're gonna die a lot younger. It's gonna be yeah,
(31:36):
it's gonna be really bad. And if you if you
have really high antioxident levels, we're going to engineer all this,
bioengineer it. You're gonna live a lot longer. And they
found the opposite was true, which was it like shook
the medical community to its very core. Yeah. So there
was a type of round worm that was genetically engineered
to produce lots of superoxides, way more than your average roundworm.
(31:59):
And you would expect, since superoxides are a reactive oxygen species,
one of the most damaging types of free radicals, that
those round worms would just basically be born, you know,
shout why why was I born? And then die and
that would basically be the lifespan of it. And that's
not what happened at all. As a matter of fact,
not only did they live, um, they didn't die prematurely.
(32:22):
They actually lived longer than round worms that hadn't been
tinkered with genetically longer more free radicals longer lifespan in
this round worm and that definitely got their bow tie
spinning in the lab. Uh yeah. And they also said,
well what about the other ones that were pumped full
(32:42):
of antioxidants? They died faster, and they're like, what is
going on? Like if someone switching out our worms here?
And they all looked at the one guy who didn't
refuse to wear a bow tie. He's like, why is
everyone looking at me? I like my neckties. I like
my clip on necktie. Just fine. They entuate my genitalia.
What don't you remember there's a line from State in
(33:05):
Maine where this doctor wearing a bow tie, Oh my
gosh says, never trust the person of the bow tie
because the tie is meant to accentuate your genitalor. I
don't remember that line. I love that movie. Yeah, yeah,
it was there. My favorite part of that movie is
when Alec Bald went this out on the date with
(33:26):
Julius Stiles and drunk and crashes his car and then
he just gets out of the car and kind of
wanders off and goes so that happened. That movie was great.
He's got that great last line to He's like, well
beats working. Yeah, beats working. That was a great movie,
maybe the best movie about the thimb industry. Um. All right,
(33:47):
so they said round worms are one thing we need
to look at mice. So they bioengineered eighteen different strains
of mice. Again, some with really high levels of antioxidants,
others very low levels. They tracked these, they published. This
is over like an eight year period, and one of
the scientists that was talking about the results was like
he even cursed. He said, I watched those gd lifespan curves.
(34:12):
There was not an inch of difference between them. And
basically it was there was just no no difference in lifespan.
He couldn't find any No, there was Like this guy
worked for eight years breeding just different strains genetic strains
of mice and there was no difference. So like all
this data starts coming in. That one was two thousand
and eight to two thousand or two thousand one to
(34:33):
two thousand nine. I think, um, and this data starts
to accumulate there like did you hear about the round worms? Yeah?
Did you hear about the eighteen strains of mice? And
he said, yeah, it's crazy. That guy cursed and like
as the stuff started compiled. People were like, this doesn't
make any sense whatsoever. I guess someone else throughout the
naked role matt mole rat. The naked mole rat too,
(34:55):
which apparently produces way more naturally produces way more free
radicals than your average rat or mice mouse. I'm sorry, um,
And they typically have a lifespan that's about eight times
longer in the wild than wild mouse does, which again
doesn't make any sense. So all this stuff starts coming in,
and then finally people are like, well, wait a minute,
(35:17):
there's a lot of people who are taking lots of
antioxidants supplements right now, because I don't think we really
kind of like highlighted this um yet, Like in in
conjunction with those superfoods in the U. S d A
promoting its oric chart supplements blue up, especially supplements that
(35:40):
were proven antioxidants. People said, if you if you get
a lot of vitamin C from blueberries, what if I
just took like fistfuls of of like isolated vitamin C.
If I just took tons of vitamin C itself and
just got rid of the blueberries, And a lot a
lot of Americans were doing that, taking a lot of
(36:00):
supplements that were full of antioxidants, and now all of
a sudden, people are like, uh, maybe we should look
at how humans are doing with all of this. And
that's when that's when it got kind of scary all
of a sudden. Actually, yeah, I mean, like you said,
they had this robust population so they could do these
long term human clinical trials, and all these studies started
(36:21):
pouring in that said, people who were taking all these
multi vitamins are not living longer than the placebo group,
and sometimes even have a greater chance of dying from
things like cancer or heart disease and these things that
they're supposed to be protecting against by taking all these
multi vitamins. Yeah, the exact opposite of what everybody thought, right.
(36:42):
But here's the catch they found out is when they
started to dig a little deeper. In fact, they did
one study in eighteen thousand men and women. Uh, they
they found out that it was way worse in people
that already had something going on, like more lung cancer,
seven teen percent more deaths in a group that was
(37:03):
given beta carotene and retinal compared with people who didn't
get them. But when they looked they found out that,
oh but some of these people, like the highest rates
were among people who were smokers or who had been
exposed to asbestos, and they were like, wait a minute.
In fact, they even called off a study in Finland
because there were so many people getting uh. In the
antioxidant group, a lot of these people were smokers. They
(37:26):
were getting diagnosed with lung cancer. So they's like, we
got to cancel this thing and really see what's going
on here. Yeah, and it wasn't. It doesn't from what
I can tell, it wasn't. Just like they were like, Okay,
we don't know what's going on, so we need to
take a breather until we figure it out. I get
the impression that they were scared that they were actually
giving people lung cancer by giving high doses of beta
carotene to these smokers totally UH, and that they had
(37:48):
to cancel the study as a result, and that that
happened in more than more than just one place. Particularly,
it seemed like combining high doses of beta carotene, a
very potent antioxidant that's found naturally in the like carrots um,
with people who smoke, an environmental toxin that produces lots
and lots of free radicals, especially in the lungs, was
(38:12):
actually seeming to cause lung cancer trigger lung cancer in people.
So it was a really scary, eye opening, mind boggling
moment or not moment, but it's just course of years
over the I guess probably the course of a decade
when this stuff really started to come back. Um, that
really made people rethink whether we should be taking antioccident
(38:35):
supplements or not. Yeah, and rethink in a big way,
like and we should point out like not every single
study had a result that was this bad, but at
the best they were inconclusive. So a lot of these
journals had to walk back a lot of stuff. In
two thousand seven, the Journal of American Medical Association said,
(38:55):
you know, we did the sixty eight clinical trials, and
antioccident supplements do not reduce risk of death. I'm sorry,
we've been saying that for a while. The American Diabetes Association,
American Heart Association now say you don't even take these
supplements unless the doctor says, like you have a vitamin
deficiency and you need to and you need this one
specific supplement, not a bunch of them. And that rac
(39:19):
the poor Oracle can that website that that you would
say today graphic just got taken down altogether. Yeah, and
they deleted the data with it too, um, which I
personally take issue with. Yeah, I agree, but that just
kind of goes to show you And that's two thousand
and eleven that happened, But that goes to show you
just how sweeping the backlash was to hang onto the
(39:41):
data though, like parking on a MySpace page or something. Sure, sure,
so yeah, you know, justin Timberlake was a big investor
in the second round of my Space. I don't think
it went anywhere though. Was there a second round? They
tried to make a second round but it didn't work recently,
I want to say, within the last seven eight years,
(40:02):
and um, I feel like he sunk like a hundred
million dollars or some crazy amount into that to try
to try to like kick started again, and it just
did not happen. The people had spoken, you know what
I mean. But there was a huge, huge backlash to antioxidants.
But here's the thing, and this is really important and
I will go over it again in a second, but
(40:22):
I just really want to point this out. What they
focused on, what seemed to be the problem was not
antioxidants themselves. Was not eating a diet rich in antioxidant foods,
a very colorful diet filled with all the different kinds
of nutrients that you get from that stuff. That doesn't
seem to be the issue, which is why I don't
understand why the USDA took down that site. What seemed
(40:45):
to be the issue was taking enormous amounts on a
daily basis of antioxidants supplements isolated derived supplements that were
high doses of antioxidants. But even still, we haven't quite
reached the point where we understand why that might be
the case. And finally we kind of get to that
because it's totally counterintuitive why we're taking more antioxidants to
(41:09):
balance out oxidative stress in your body actually make you
likely or do die from the very stuff that you're
taking supplements to prevent. Why chuck, Yeah, Well, I mean
it seems like, you know, we mentioned earlier that free
radicals can really help out the immune system in a
lot of ways, and that's kind of what they landed on,
is that free radicals may not be the cause of
(41:30):
this oxidative damage, but might be the result of it.
So if you're a smoker or if you get that
asbesos exposure, your body is going to produce these free
radicals to signal, like we mentioned earlier, like hey, something's wrong.
You need to come down here and start, you know,
get to work, bring your little repair kit down here.
And if you're taking all this these massive levels of antioxidants,
(41:52):
it's gonna mute or muffle those the work of those
free radicals. And that's why it explains the fact that
people that had issues, like if you were a smoker
already or that asbestos exposure and you were taking all
these things, it was it was kind of suppressing your
immuno response, right. Um, It's almost like you were taking
(42:14):
such a high dose of these antioxidants that they came
in and were telling your body we got this, even
though it didn't really have it, which allowed like a
tumor to say run rampant were it allowed for these
processes of like your your arteries um clogging or hardening
to take place because your body thought it was covered.
That's the current theory. And again we don't want to
(42:34):
get ahead of ourselves. If we learned any lesson from
the initial round of this, it's that we need to
just kind of take it all as it comes and
try to figure it out. But that seems to be
the current understanding is that it's sent It dampens the
signals that free radical send to the immune system, which
actually allows disease to take place. It makes sense, you know,
(42:56):
It's like it's almost like, you know, the the immune
system needs to be out a little out of whack
to know, it needs to wake up and get to work.
You know. So if it's not getting out of whack
because antioxidants are just keeping that those electrons you know,
all locked in place, or you know, at least an
even trade going on, then your immune system isn't gonna
(43:16):
know what to do. It explains the round worms, It
explains the uh, the exercise paradox. It all kind of
dovetailed very nicely. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and
I mean it also makes sense so like, um, when
you use radiation therapy, you're actually creating purposely free radicals
that are targeting a tumor, a tumor, so that those
(43:36):
free radicals go in and break up the tumor cell
and destroy the cells that make up the tumor, I
should say. Um, And that actually kind of jibes with
something a concept called hormesis which I heard about, um
from a guy that you and I have been um
watching videos from, named doctor Mark Hyman. And um, he's
like a functional medicine doctor, which is basically like just
(43:58):
kind of used the whole body together and his food
is medicine kind of thing into that. Yeah, she would
love that guy all. But he's very down to earth
and and pretty pretty interesting. But um, there's this concept
called hormesis that he talks about. It's not his concept,
but he he kind of punches it up a lot,
but he Um. Hormesis is the idea that you stress
(44:19):
your body slightly so that when it repairs itself, it
actually makes itself slightly stronger, which that seems to be
the basis of free radicals and exercise. That whole exercise
paradox that when you exercise, you're actually stressing your body
so that when your body goes into repair itself, you
are better off than you were before. Like you can
(44:40):
you have a higher vo to max or v O
max um you have your muscles are stronger because they've
been repaired stronger than they were when you tore them
through exercise. That's why you have a down day between
if you're like a big weightlifter, like I remember when
I was a kid, Like I never lifted weights, but
dudes would try to get me to and they would
talk about weightlifting a lot, and they be like, Yeah,
I mean, you gotta have that down day. You got
(45:02):
to let those muscles repair, you know exactly. That's why
you also want to protein after you um you exercise,
so that you your body has a supply of stuff
to rebuild those muscles with and make them stronger. But
there's this whole idea that free radicals play the roles
in all these different things, from hormesis like exercise, to
um signaling to actually being part of the immune response
(45:24):
that messes up cells like that we don't want, like
tumor cells, and so if we suppress them with high
doses of antioxidant supplements, it interferes with our bodies natural
ability to do that rather than helping the body, where
we actually seem to have been hindering it with antioxidant supplements. Yeah,
and it's kind of interesting. I think, like, even though
(45:45):
even though the doctor wasn't right on the money, I
think in the end it did a lot of good
because I think where we landed and where we are
now is you shouldn't necessarily believe anyone when they say
they figured out the one thing without aging and dying,
and that it is a lot of different things going
on in your body over a long period of time,
(46:08):
and you can't say, this is it. I figured out
the one single thing that's going to keep you young
for more years and let you live longer. Yeah, there
is no, there's no fountain of youth. No, no, that's
the problem yet. But um, but it does seem like
oxidative stress does play a role in it. But it's
certainly not. There's it's just two. It's way more complicated,
and that was wishful thinking to think otherwise. But it
(46:29):
seems like where medicine is landed now is you know,
it still makes sense to reduce your exposure to things
that that cause oxidative stress, like cigarette smoke or asbestos
or you know, all sorts of environmental toxins, and then
to supplement your body's ability to take on free radicals
by eating very healthy um plant based although not entirely
(46:51):
plant um diet. Uh that's full of antioxidants, because that
seems to be true, But it seems like extracting those
antioxidants take some out of context that when you eat
them with food, there's a bunch of other nutrients they
interact with. That seems to actually that's where the health
benefits come from. It's from food. We haven't figured out
how to replicate that, and just extracting the antioxidants didn't
(47:13):
do it. So eat a lot of colorful plants and
you will probably be a little healthier than you would
have otherwise when you age. Yeah, and if you really
want bang for your buck, eat them raw. Yeah, there
you go. It depends on the plant. Like I like
to roast. I like to roast that cauliflower and broccoli. Yeah,
(47:35):
tastes so good. But if you can munch on some
raw edgies, that's really, really, really good for your body.
But I think there are some processes like blanching that
just lightly kind of cook something that unlock a lot
of those nutrients that otherwise we just pass right through
your your pooper. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I don't
think raw is entirely the way. I'm sorry raw people,
(47:56):
But anyway, you got anything else, I've got nothing else. Uh. Well,
since Chuck said that, it's time everybody for a listener,
ma'am uh. This is from the housing discrimination episode that
was a good one, if I may say so. Hey, guys,
Chuck was talking about locking in um property tax or
(48:18):
saying you don't have to pay property tax anymore. And
while that's a good idea, this is basically what California
did when it enacted Prop thirteen in night. And while
the originally stated goal of stopping displays displacement of older
homeowners was a good one, it's unintended negative consequences are huge. Um.
Here in California, your property taxes are essentially frozen when
(48:40):
you buy a property, but the law also allows you
to pass your tax basis to your children or grandchildren,
and the result is massive inequity. A very common situation
here in San Francisco is two households next door to
each other, uh similar homes, similar age, and similar financial means,
one of whom pays ten times what the other does
(49:00):
in property taxes while consuming the city services those taxes
pay for equally. It's a regressive tax that benefits the
half of the people who are lucky enough to inherit property,
while further burdening those trying to buy in like written control.
It's a good idea but flawed in practice because the
people who have it are not necessarily the people who
need it. PS. You should mention The Color of Law
(49:23):
by Richard Rothstein, probably one of the best books ever
written on housing discrimination. And oh, I don't have that
person's uh name. I feel bad now, probably Richard Rothstein
writing anonymously. I guess it's just anonymous. Sorry about that.
That was That was a good one. I'm interesting because
(49:44):
I guarantee that the kind of thing where somebody else
all right and be like no, no, no, that last
writer had it wrong. Here's the real deal on that.
Who knows. I'm I'm interested to see. I had not
heard of that before. Yeah, I mean, Emily and I
sort of lightly debated that the email. Um, actually I've
got it here. It's from Eric. Oh, thanks m cal Berkeley.
(50:05):
So here that's what he's talking about. But yeah, we
kind of debated that a little bit. I guess I
don't know. I'm not sure I feel about it, so
I'm not gonna run my mouth very wise chuck very wise. Um, well,
thanks again, Eric, that was a very interesting email. And
if you want to be like Eric and get in
touch with us about something that we possibly had overlooked.
(50:26):
We want to hear about it. You can send it
to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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