 On a recent Joe Rogan podcast, David Sinclair, who is a professor at Harvard known for his work done on aging as well as how to slow aging, spoke about two substances in red meat with a negative connotation, TMAO and mTOR. Unfortunately, he didn't really do his research on these two things. So let's take a look at the clip and discuss where he went wrong. So low carb, low sugar, any specific type of protein, do you limit your amount of protein? Yeah. I mean, I enjoy eating mammals just as much as anybody, but I try to avoid them. For the main or two main reasons. One is that there's this TMAO molecule that seems to cause heart disease. TMAO. Yeah. Yeah. And how is it linked to heart disease? Is these epidemiology studies? I forget, but I do recall that the study was able to give the TMAO to animals and they developed heart disease. So it's somehow causing it. I forget exactly how it might be damaging the genome. That's my recollection. With omnivores or predators? I think as red meat is the culprit. Right. So are they giving this to rats or are they giving this to? It was a mouse study again. So I mean mice might be different from humans, of course. Claiming that TMAO is a problem in red meat shows that he doesn't actually know how TMAO is produced in the body and the TMAO content of other foods. For anyone unfamiliar, your gut bacteria actually produces TMAO from certain substances. In red meat, it's carnitine, in eggs, it's choline, soybean oil also has choline, and gut bacteria can also make TMAO from nitrates, which are found in many, many vegetables. And TMAO is also very, very high in fish. So for someone to say that red meat is an issue for TMAO and not mention these other foods, it's a glaring issue that he doesn't actually know much about TMAO. So as I said, soybean oil is one of the highest sources of choline and there are plenty of nitrates found in vegetables. Even if you were concerned about choline consumption from eggs, there are no changes in TMAO levels as a result of egg consumption. The main concern of TMAO is its affiliation with heart disease, but if TMAO was so bad, why does this study show that fish is cardio-protective? Another consideration is the amount of TMAO in meat compared to eggs and seafood is minuscule. If we look at urinary excretion levels, it is very apparent that fish is the culprit here. On the contrary, this study shows that TMAO consumption through a high vegetable and fish diet is actually linked to promoting heart health by reducing thickening of certain tissues in the arterial wall. So let's take a look at what he has to say about mTOR. But the other problem with meat in general from animals is that there's a lot of amino acids in there and it's easy to eat a lot of meat. And so if you have high levels of amino acids, it will activate this mTOR pathway, one of those three longevity pathways, and you don't want that. You don't want that. You don't want that because mTOR has evolved to sense times of adversity and stress and hunger. So why do people see a performance benefit when they consume branch chain amino acids? Really good question. So in the short run, just like taking testosterone, it will give you performance benefits. But we think in the long run, it will actually come back to bite you. So how will branch chain amino acids come back to bite you? So branch chain amino acids will activate this mTOR pathway. And when we do that in animals, we actually reduce their lifespan. So it's the opposite. You want to keep those levels low. Blaming mTOR for aging is like blaming water for drowning you. There are other catalysts in our modern world that contribute to the issue. You're not going to drown from drinking a glass of water, but if you jump off a cruise ship, don't expect to have a good time. Of course, if you have cancer and your body can make cells quicker because you're consuming more fuel, the cancer is going to grow more. A great example of this is shown in this study. MTOR inhibitors cannot kill cancer cells. They can only slow the growth. This means that if you had cancer and reduced your meat consumption, it would slow the cancer growth down, allegedly. But the point is not to get cancer in the first place. And you know who didn't get cancer? Native people. Indigenous groups who ate plenty of high quality animal foods. This study shows that exercise creates an inflammatory response and that amino acids have a unique impact against this inflammation, showing a necessity in protein consumption and physical activity. This is another study showing that repamycin, a drug used to lower mTOR, is associated with hyperlipidemia, hyperglycemia, anemia, and stomatitis. Also showing incidents of cataracts and testicular degeneration. So, starving your body of nutrients in order to slow down cancer growth doesn't actually seem like a good idea if you actually understand the mechanisms of mTOR in the body. That's interesting. That seems, I mean, for a dummy like me, it seems counter-intuitive because what's making you perform better currently, you would think especially something like amino acids, a natural part of the human body, you would think that that would be beneficial. You're adding to your body something that it needs. Yeah, you would. But what you should consider is that it's a trade-off. There's a theory that's probably correct. It's some Tom Kirkwood's theory called the disposable soma. Our bodies want to do one of two things. We either want to grow really fast and reproduce fast, build up a lot of muscle, cells divide. That's great in the short run. You'd be fertile, you can run, but actually that's at the expense of hunkering down and building a long-lasting body, and that's a trade-off over time. And so animals that grow fast and reproduce fast, like a mouse, will only have a short lifespan. Whereas a whale that grows slowly and reproduces slowly will live a long time. Interesting. So the idea is you're limiting your calories, you're limiting your carbohydrates, you're limiting your protein, you're limiting your amino acids, but you're ramping up on all these beneficial molecules. Right. These pathways that have evolved since the beginning of life to make us live longer during adversity so we can thrive when times come back. This guy loves mentioning the word pathways without actually understanding them or explaining anything in depth. Can I call Harvard and have them send me a degree in biochemistry or something? I would prefer it to be framed in Italian marble. I think the problem stems here from lack of nutrients. The reason we are seeing benefits from caloric restriction, lower mTOR removal of these foods is because most people are consuming highly inflammatory foods without adequate fat soluble vitamin intake. If you do your research online, it becomes very clear that TMAO is a non-issue. But if you look into mTOR, there really is a lack of research and data on it. And there's only a small amount of things that are trying to convince people that mTOR is bad. And really, there's no contradicting evidence. So that's the main issue. But this is where the biochemistry degree comes in. This is where you need some logic to think about things. You have to have an understanding of the functions of cell differentiation, gene expression in the body, especially cell proliferation. You guys like my hair today? I feel like I'm in that movie Gangs of New York. I was like, how can I make my hair look silly today? You know, the reason I call my hair like this is because I've been mentioning my hair product that I made in every single video I think I made this week. And I put the hair product in my hair like six days ago, and I still can't wash it out. So if you guys want a pomade that will probably last you a year, definitely check it out. I'm going to launch it on Saturday. Thank you guys for watching. If you would like to support the channel, please subscribe and share the video. I have a bunch of products on my Amazon shop. You can check out below. My Patreon has a bunch of videos for my subscribers exclusively. If you guys would like to reach out to me for one-on-one consultations, you can shoot me an email frankatufano.com or reach out to me through the contact form on my website. As I mentioned, the hair product, you can check that out on frank-tufano.com. But let me know what you guys think of this and what videos you guys would like to see in the future. Great, thanks. Thanks for being here, man. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Really looking forward to talking to you. Very much so. This is a fascinating subject for me, anti-aging. The idea that you'll be able to stop aging or even possibly pull it back or very slowly slow it down. What do you think? I think that's all on the table. We've been doing this for years in the lab. Now we just got to figure out how to do it in people. When I talk to someone like you as an actual research scientist of this stuff, I always want to know, what are you doing to yourself? Ah, how long have you got? Like what do you do on a daily basis? What do I do? First of all, are you 100 years old? Uh, getting there. How old are you? Uh, turning 50. So you're turning 50? I wouldn't have thought you were 50. I would have figured you were for about 41, 42. Well, that's kind of you. Well, my brother's the negative control and he's, he's uh... Does he look like shit? Well, I can't say that but people say that he doesn't look as young as me and he's about three and a half years younger. Oh, so what are you doing personally? Well, you know, most of the time I'm in the lab and trying to run a bunch of companies to make these drugs a reality. Uh, but daily, you know, I try to keep a healthy weight. I do intermittent fasting, which is pretty easy because I'm so busy I forget to eat. How many hours do you give yourself every night? Uh, well, I suffer from late night snacking, but I try to skip breakfast and even skip lunch if I'm busy. So I'm a night eater.