THIS Is #1 FASTEST Way To BURN Fat Around Your Organs

0:00 Dr.

0:00 Rhonda Patrick, I am fascinated by so many of the things that you

0:04 talked about and they're front of mind for me at the moment

0:06 because I'm a 33-year-old man and I know from doing this podcast

0:10 and looking at graphs like this one which we'll talk about today,

0:13 which I don't think most people have ever seen in their lives,

0:15 that this is the age where things might start changing direction

0:21 from here on over the next decade and there's things I can

0:23 do to set myself up now if I listen to your advice

0:27 for the remaining decades of my life to be remarkably different.

0:31 I'm playing with this in my hands at the moment.

0:33 It's for anyone that can't see it,

0:34 you should probably look at the screen right now.

0:35 It's a yellow blob of squigy slightly disgusting material.

0:43 What is this?

0:45 And why does this matter?

0:47 So this represents visceral fat.

0:51 It's something that most people haven't heard of.

0:55 Many people have heard of fat, they know fat is bad,

0:58 but they don't realize there are different kinds of fat.

1:01 Mhm.

1:00 There [clears throat] is visceral fat and this is

1:02 the kind of fat that you can't really pinch.

1:06 Adipose tissue kind of fat, right?

1:07 I mean, if you opened up your body,

1:09 you could pinch it because it's deep, deep within your body.

1:13 It's often referred to as belly fat.

1:17 Mhm.

1:16 And it's it's surrounding your organs like your liver,

1:19 your kidney, you know, your intestines.

1:22 This is a very deep belly fat.

1:24 And it's very different from subcutaneous fat.

1:27 You can actually be lean but have a high amount of visceral fat.

1:32 We call these metabolically unhealthy people.

1:35 So visceral fat, you mentioned you're 33,

1:39 the average 33-year-old male has how much visceral fat?

1:43 According to the data,

1:44 it says roughly 1.2 lb at the age of 30 and then for a woman,

1:49 0.5 lb of visceral fat at the age of 30.

1:52 At 40, it's 1.7 lb for a man and 0.7 lb for a woman at 50,

1:57 2.2 lbs for a man, 1 lb for a woman,

2:00 and at 60, 2.7 lbs of visceral fat, and 1.54 lbs for a woman,

2:08 which is the highest risk for metabolic syndromes at that age.

2:10 But, I mean, all of them are pretty scary.

2:12 It is.

2:12 And as you notice, the trend is as you get older,

2:15 you have a higher risk of having more of it.

2:18 70% of women over the age of 50 have a high amount of visceral fat.

2:21 50% of men over the age of 50 have a high amount of visceral fat.

2:25 This visceral fat, for one, it's going to double your risk of early mortality.

2:30 Full stop.

2:30 That's That's, you know, it's it's going to double your risk.

2:33 Double your risk.

2:34 Double.

2:34 Double.

2:35 Visceral fat is, as I mentioned, different from the other kind of fat,

2:40 the subcutaneous kind of fat, the adipose tissue kind of fat, in several ways.

2:44 One is that it is metabolically active.

2:49 It is secreting inflammatory cytokines.

2:52 These are, you know, molecules that are signaling to the immune system,

2:57 but they're also involved with damaging our cells.

3:00 And for this reason, people with a high amount of visceral fat

3:04 are 44% more likely to get metastatic cancer.

3:08 That's cancer that's going to metastasize.

3:11 Very dangerous types of cancer.

3:12 They're also more likely, you mentioned metabolic syndrome.

3:15 This is a big big thing with visceral fat.

3:18 This type of fat is constantly

3:22 breaking down triglycerides into free fatty acids.

3:25 It's constantly doing it.

3:27 What's triglycerides?

3:28 Triglycerides are how your body is able to store

3:32 fatty acids and fat and use them for later, you know, energy, right?

3:37 So, they're constantly breaking them down and using them.

3:40 They're using these these fatty acids.

3:42 But, typically what happens in your body when you eat a meal,

3:46 you have your glucose levels go up, right?

3:48 Your blood sugar elevates, your glucose levels go up,

3:51 and that signals to the pancreas in your body to make insulin.

3:54 Insulin is this hormone that plays a role in many things.

3:57 One of it is to tell different parts of the body to take glucose glucose up,

4:01 like your liver, your muscle, your adipose tissue.

4:03 Well, the problem is is this visceral

4:05 fat is constantly making those free fatty acids,

4:08 and so those fatty acids it doesn't it doesn't respond

4:12 this this we call it it's not really an organ,

4:15 but this type of fat doesn't respond to insulin.

4:18 So, whereas the subcutaneous fat will stop

4:21 breaking down fat and using fat as energy.

4:23 It says, "Okay, look, I have energy here.

4:25 I got to do something with this energy.

4:26 Let me let me store it for later use,

4:28 right?" Well, that that doesn't happen with visceral fat.

4:32 What happens is it just keeps going, keeps going, keeps going.

4:35 What happens is when your visceral fat is metabolically active like

4:39 that, it is basically making it where insulin can't work its job.

4:46 And so, what happens is that glucose can't go into your liver.

4:50 It stays in your blood system.

4:51 And you really want it to be stored in your liver, right?

4:53 You want it to be stored in your liver as glycogen

4:54 to be used as energy when you're fasting or when you're,

4:57 you know, physically active or when I whenever you need it, right?

5:00 Also in your muscle, same thing,

5:02 stored as glycogen or stored in your adipose tissue.

5:05 Um and so and so none of that happens because insulin

5:08 it's not able to to basically act on your your your organs.

5:12 It there's no signal.

5:14 So, no nobody's getting the phone call, "Hey,

5:16 time to take the glucose up." It's not happening, right?

5:18 So, the glucose sits around.

5:19 So, what happens is your body freaks out because it's not

5:23 good to have glucose sitting around in your bloodstream for a while.

5:26 It causes a lot of damage, right?

5:28 Mhm.

5:28 And [clears throat] so,

5:28 what happens is your body makes even more insulin to try to overcompensate.

5:32 Your body goes, "Oh, maybe that wasn't enough insulin because, you know,

5:35 the glucose isn't coming in to the organs like the liver like it's supposed to.

5:39 So, let me put some more out."

5:41 And for anyone that doesn't know,

5:42 insulin is kind of like the taxi driver that goes

5:44 and picks up the glucose and takes it home.

5:46 Right, exactly.

5:47 It's taking it home.

5:48 It's taking it back to the liver.

5:49 And so, what happens when you make more insulin,

5:52 you're overcompensating in such a way that now glucose really

5:55 does get taken up into these other organs like the liver.

5:59 And it so much so that it causes your blood

6:03 glucose levels to go down and and you're crashing.

6:06 And all of a sudden, this is responsible for that you know,

6:10 people that eat a meal and they're kind of insulin resistant,

6:13 they eat a meal and then all of a sudden they're crashing an hour later.

6:16 We're like, why am I why do I have no energy?

6:19 Why am I hungry?

6:20 Right?

6:21 Because when you're after you crash, your your blood glucose levels go down.

6:24 That's what I mean by crashing.

6:26 Um really far far down, not not normal levels, but like below that.

6:30 And so, then your body should tries to overcompensate by going, "Oh, I'm hungry.

6:34 I need to eat." And so,

6:35 you start to have these cravings for like energy dense foods.

6:38 And that's part of this cycle of the beginnings of insulin resistance.

6:42 And so, what I'm talking about here with visceral fat,

6:45 it causes insulin resistance.

6:46 And that's essentially the take home here.

6:48 By by its constantly metabolizing fatty acids,

6:52 it's it's stopping that taxi car from going and getting the glucose.

6:56 It's It's not happening.

6:57 It's not responding.

6:58 You're not picking up the driver, right?

7:00 And so, you become insulin resistant.

7:02 And that has a lot of problems.

7:04 One, it's going to affect your immediate energy levels.

7:07 It's going to affect the way you're feeling.

7:09 And two, it's going to make you more likely to become type 2 diabetic.

7:13 Cuz eventually, your body will won't be able

7:16 to produce enough insulin to bring the glucose in.

7:19 And so, then you become type 2 diabetic.

7:21 So, that is a big consequence of having this visceral fat

7:25 in addition to those inflammatory molecules

7:28 that are being generated from this fat.

7:29 It's just so metabolically active.

7:32 And that inflammation that you're generating not only

7:34 does things like raise your cancer risk by 44%, it also makes you tired.

7:39 It gives you brain fog, lethargy.

7:43 When your immune system is being activated by this inflammation,

7:47 you're taking energy away from your brain.

7:49 It It's a lot of energy to activate your immune system.

7:52 And so Yeah, so that energy is now going to the wrong place.

7:56 It's not going to your brain.

7:57 So you can feel You won't feel cognitively as sharp and

8:00 Absolutely [clears throat] won't.

8:01 Just think about when you're when you're when you have an infection.

8:03 Your immune system is very active.

8:05 You're fighting off a pathogen, right?

8:07 Do you feel like you're tired or do

8:08 you feel like you're cognity cognitively at your

8:11 Oh, yeah.

8:12 I'm like I'm I'm out of out of action for several days usually.

8:14 Right.

8:15 You're tired and your brain isn't working.

8:16 And part of that reason is because your activation

8:19 of your immune system is sucking energy away from your brain.

8:21 And the other reason is because the inflammation being generated

8:25 gets into the brain and disrupts neurotransmitters and things like that.

8:28 So you're It's like a double whammy.

8:30 You're not Your your brain isn't working working properly.

8:33 And so there's a lot of people walking around constantly feeling tired,

8:37 feeling lethargic, feeling brain fog.

8:39 And they might have a high amount of visceral fat and not even know it.

8:43 So typically Looking at the data, I mean most people have too much visceral fat.

8:48 Most people do have too much visceral fat.

8:49 And typically a really high amount is I would say

8:54 a proxy for it would be measuring your waist circumference.

8:57 So like if women have a waist circumference of 35 in or greater,

9:01 that is a sign of too much visceral fat.

9:04 If men have a waist circumference of 40 in or more,

9:06 that is a sign of too much visceral fat.

9:09 Ideally you would go and get what's called a DEXA scan.

9:12 Now this is not something that's routinely done

9:14 and it doesn't necessarily have to be done

9:15 unless you're that person that really likes

9:17 to go the extra mile and directly measure things.

9:19 That [clears throat] would be another way to do it.

9:21 You really want to have below 300, you know, grams of visceral fat.

9:25 Ideally closer to zero the better.

9:27 Me and my friend went and got a DEXA scan done.

9:30 And the remarkable thing is I weigh a lot

9:32 more than him and I'm much bigger than him.

9:34 He's skinny.

9:36 But after the DEXA scan, they said that he had too much visceral fat.

9:40 Which I thought this I thought you must be

9:42 like big or a beast to have visceral fat,

9:44 but he's a skinny guy, and the DEXA scan said too much visceral fat.

9:48 Yes, that's the thing.

9:50 You know, I was involved in clinical research

9:51 for many years when I was doing my postgraduate training,

9:54 and we were looking at populations

9:56 of people that were metabolically unhealthy, maybe overweight,

10:00 obese in some cases, and you would have someone come in that they looked skinny.

10:05 They looked like they were

10:06 metabolically healthy because they weren't overweight,

10:09 and yet all of their biomarker data was showing the opposite.

10:12 Like you they looked on paper, if you would have shown me their metabolic data,

10:15 I would go, "Oh, this is an overweight obese person." So,

10:18 these are these are lean but metabolically unhealthy people,

10:20 and a large percentage of that has to do with an increase in visceral fat.

10:24 You won't even necessarily know that you're

10:26 getting higher amounts of visceral fat.

10:28 It's not necessarily going to be reflected on the scale.

10:31 You know, you mentioned maybe a pound, maybe a little bit more.

10:33 That's like daily fluctuation in some cases, right?

10:36 Like I mean, I don't know about you,

10:38 but like I I can fluctuate a pound from day to day, for sure.

10:41 If you're talking about 500 g or less,

10:43 that's not going to be, you know, reflected on the scale, either.

10:46 You might be going, "Well, what why visceral fat?

10:49 What's causing visceral fat?" You know, I mentioned age, that's a big one.

10:53 Hormones is a big one.

10:55 Women are very susceptible as they go through perimenopause and menopause

10:58 because estrogen actually tells helps tell the body how to store energy,

11:03 and it tells it to store energy in fat in adipose tissue, not viscerally.

11:09 So, when your estrogen starts to go

11:10 down during perimenopause and then menopause,

11:14 women really start to gain a lot of this this belly fat.

11:17 They gain a lot of the visceral fat.

11:18 Testosterone also, it doesn't tell the body how to store the fat so much,

11:23 it helps you burn visceral fat.

11:25 So, men are a little bit more protected when they're younger, as well,

11:28 but as they age, of course, testosterone goes down,

11:30 as well, and that affects the visceral fat.

11:32 But mostly, it's our diet

11:34 and our lifestyle that's really affecting visceral fat.

11:37 It's kind of mind-blowing how quickly you can gain visceral fat.

11:41 Like there was sleep is a big one.

11:44 When you're When you miss sleep, that is something that can really you can start

11:48 to store You can start to gain visceral fat very quickly.

11:51 Um there was a study in healthy young men.

11:54 These men were sleep restricted.

11:56 Typically, when sleep restriction studies are done,

11:58 you're you're looking at 4 hours of sleep per night.

12:00 So, pretty severe.

12:02 Not out of the ordinary.

12:03 I did many of those college, graduate school, deadlines.

12:07 Definitely as a new parent.

12:08 I mean, it's unfortunately drags on for months.

12:11 So, these men were only sleeping 4 hours a night for 2 weeks.

12:14 Okay, these were healthy young men, college-age students.

12:16 Okay, young.

12:18 They gained 11% visceral fat after that 2 weeks, but not a pound on the scale.

12:23 But they had 11% higher visceral fat after just you know,

12:28 2 weeks of not getting enough sleep.

12:30 And they weighed the same.

12:31 Pretty much.

12:32 it was the composition of their body that's shifting.

12:35 Yes.

12:35 Also, the visceral fat, like like I said,

12:37 you're not gaining pounds and pounds and pounds of it necessarily.

12:40 You know, you're you're gaining grams and grams, but like it's happening.

12:43 And And any amount that you're starting to gain is unhealthy, right?

12:47 It's going to start causing insulin resistance.

12:49 It's going to start, you know, causing fatty liver.

12:51 That's another thing it does it cuz it's around the liver.

12:54 It basically the liver doesn't know what to do with all the fat,

12:56 so it starts to make and store it around the fat.

12:58 And so, you start to get this nonalcoholic fatty liver,

13:00 which is happening now in like young people.

13:03 So, sleep is one.

13:04 Another major, major, I would say, lever for gaining visceral fat is your diet.

13:09 Quality and quantity.

13:11 So, if you start to be in a caloric excess constantly,

13:15 you can start to gain visceral fat.

13:17 And that's also been shown in studies.

13:19 So, there was a recent study that again was

13:22 in healthy young men given about 1,200 extra calories a day.

13:26 And it was mostly from ultra-processed foods, right?

13:30 I mean, they're 1,200 calories, so like Big Mac and a Coke.

13:34 Big Mac and fries, whatever, you know.

13:35 So, you're you're talking about almost like an extra meal a day.

13:39 And from processed foods, ultra-processed foods, for 5 days,

13:44 they were given, you know, this extra caloric intake.

13:46 After that 5 days, they started to gain visceral fat,

13:50 they started to have signs of fatty liver after 5 days,

13:53 and their brains became insulin-resistant.

13:55 And this is important.

13:57 Yes, you So, how many calories were they having in excess?

14:01 1,200 to 1,500.

14:02 In excess?

14:04 More than what they were usually going to eat, yes.

14:09 Okay.

14:08 Yes.

14:08 So, you know, it's a lot of people are eating caloric excess, you know, daily.

14:14 They're not They're not exercising,

14:16 and there's no energy expenditure, and they're eating more.

14:19 And so, they're in in, you know, 1,200.

14:22 Now, this is the extreme end, right?

14:24 I'm giving you the extreme end cuz that's what they do usually

14:26 in in studies like this because they want to get a significant result.

14:29 But after 5 days, they they were gaining a visceral fat,

14:33 their brains became insulin-resistant.

14:35 So, insulin is also very important for the brain.

14:38 The brain is telling the body how to store the fat and how to store energy.

14:42 And when the And when insulin's not able

14:43 to to get into the brain and have its action,

14:46 then you start to not have the brain tell the body how to store this energy,

14:50 and it ends up storing it viscerally.

14:52 It's like this default.

14:54 Do you know, putting those two things together,

14:55 the thing I've noticed that impacts my performance

14:58 the most as it relates to articulation,

15:00 cognitive performance, my ability to think, is those two things coming together.

15:04 You talked about sleep and diet.

15:06 It's when I have I eat late.

15:10 Mhm.

15:10 Close It's when I eat close to sleep.

15:11 If I do that a couple of nights in a row, I feel like my brain no longer works.

15:16 Yes, yeah.

15:17 You know, obviously, we all have to like live our lives,

15:19 and there's social things,

15:20 and it's fun to go out and have a dinner with your friends or an event, right?

15:24 But, it's not a good idea to eat a meal, a big meal,

15:29 three at three hours before fewer than three hours before bed.

15:33 So, you want to stop eating three hours before bed.

15:36 And three is really the magic number

15:37 in multiple studies because when you eat a meal,

15:41 it is activating your sympathetic nervous system, right?

15:45 That's the fight or flight response.

15:48 That's not what you want active when you're about to go to bed.

15:50 When activating the sympathetic nervous system right before you're going to bed,

15:53 let's say you eat a meal within an hour of bedtime, you're digesting all that.

15:58 It's your sympathetic nervous system's active.

16:00 And even if you're sleeping, it's [snorts] not good sleep.

16:04 It's fragmented sleep.

16:05 And so, it's disrupted sleep because you you need

16:09 to be in that parasympathetic part of, you know,

16:12 the nervous system, that dominance needs to be parasympathetic,

16:15 which is the res- rest, restore.

16:18 It's called rest and digest.

16:20 But, I don't like digest because actually

16:21 digesting is what activates the sympathetic nervous system.

16:24 So, it's like the recovery, right?

16:26 So, should I stay up then for three hours?

16:28 If I If I eat at midnight, should I stay up till 3:00 a.m.?

16:32 No.

16:32 No, you should just go to bed, but don't do it on a daily basis, right?

16:36 I mean, the the key is the habit, you know, the habit.

16:39 And so, if you need to eat something before bed,

16:42 you should do something that's light,

16:44 maybe a protein shake with some almond milk,

16:47 you know, something that's not super heavy.

16:49 I've heard you talk about fiber.

16:51 Resistant starch does it interestingly seem to help improve sleep.

16:56 And so, you know, maybe some rice or a potato, a little bit of rice or a potato.

17:01 or something.

17:03 [laughter] Maybe not a fried potato.

17:04 Baked baked potato and then cool it cuz then it's resistant starch, right?

17:07 Cuz then it's good for your your gut microbiome.

17:12 Why?

17:11 It changes the composition of the fiber.

17:15 Mhm.

17:14 And [clears throat] and you can cook it, let it cool,

17:17 and then heat it again if you like to eat

17:18 it heated as long as it went through a cooling part.

17:21 Well, and then you can eat it.

17:22 But, that's resistant starch.

17:23 Resistant starch is also in green bananas.

17:25 Very beneficial for the gut and also for interestingly for improving sleep.

17:30 So, things that are really moving the needle to to make

17:33 you gain visceral fat or being basically being in a caloric excess,

17:37 especially from refined high-fat, high-sugar foods.

17:41 And then not getting enough sleep move the needle.

17:45 Chronic stress is an amplifier of it.

17:48 So, if you're constantly having cortisol,

17:50 that's kind of stopping the body from storing energy

17:53 right the right way and it's going viscerally as well.

17:55 I would say that amplifies, especially if it's like in the context

17:59 of being in a caloric excess and not exercising.

18:02 Alcohol is another one.

18:03 If you drink If you're excessively consuming alcohol,

18:06 you're going to store a lot of the energy

18:07 that you're also consuming is going to be stored viscerally.

18:09 I mean, you've seen the beer belly, right?

18:11 I mean, that's like a thing.

18:12 It's visceral fat.

18:14 It's It's not beer.

18:15 It's visceral fat.

18:16 So, alcohol is another one.

18:18 In terms of losing visceral fat, I mean,

18:20 the good news is is that you can lose it quite easily and quite rapidly.

18:25 I was going to say parents have a hard time because

18:27 you're [clears throat] naming those things about like sleep and stress.

18:30 And And I was thinking, gosh,

18:32 parents have like a have it coming from them from all sides.

18:35 They do.

18:35 Um the But, see, this is where the good news comes in because, you know,

18:39 part of the reason why sleep is causing you to gain more visceral sleep loss is

18:45 causing you to gain visceral fat is because

18:47 it's causing your body to become insulin resistant.

18:49 It's like this vicious cycle.

18:51 Visceral fat causes insulin resistance.

18:53 Insulin resistance causes more visceral fat.

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