Dr. Rachele Pojednic, Exercise Science and Nutrition to Optimize Physical Well-being Ep 217

What's up everybody welcome to another episode of the Live Better Now podcast. I got a special guest for you guys. Today my guest is Dr. Rachelle Pajednik. She's an associate professor and program director of exercise science in Norwich University's Health and Human Performance Department and a research associate at the Institute of Life Salmedicine at Harvard Medical School. Now, I got connected with Dr. Pajednik because as you guys saw my recent episode with Joe DeSena, the CEO and founder of Spark, he invited me to the summer death therase here in June of 2023 and obviously I couldn't say no. He asked me if I wanted redemption from my recent Iron Man of Barcelona where I missed the car off by six minutes. I said absolutely how am I going to get redemption and that's when he put the invite on the table and he connected me with Dr. Pajednik because the beginning of my death therase is going to be a two day intensive. I'm going to call it military bootcamp. I don't know much about it but Norwich is a military college and this two day bootcamp is the start of my death therase. I'm super excited so I had to have Dr. Pajednik on the podcast to ask her some questions, talk a little bit about exercise and nutrition and just really looking forward to death therase. Dr. Pajednik how you doing today? I'm so great thanks so much for having me. It's awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to hop on the podcast today. Tell us a little bit about what you do. Tell us a little bit more about your credentials, some of your research and I guess we'll start from there. Yeah so I really operate both in the academic space in the nutrition and exercise world as well as in the fitness and wellness space. I like to think of my life as a series of Venn diagrams so I started in the fitness and wellness space way back. I was 18 years old just a personal trainer back in the day really excited. I was an athlete and then it really has evolved through teaching science to middle schoolers going back to school and getting a degree in nutritional biochemistry with a specialization in exercise physiology so really trying to understand how nutrition affects exercise and vice versa. And for a while I was looking at how to prevent chronic diseases so diseases like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, psychophenia, so the tissue that I really care about is muscle. And that led me to Norwich University which is as you mentioned a senior military college. So we are training the majority of our students to become what we call tactical athletes. So this could be a war fighter, so soldier, sailor, marine, guardian. And then we also have a significant amount of our students that go on to the alphabet agencies. So FBI, CIA, civil service, then they go to firefighting and police. And so along that way I really started working with this tactical population to help enhance performance, recovery, and that's really where I live now is utilizing these very accessible modalities. So everybody eats, everybody has the opportunity to exercise. And it's funny because again this series of end diagrams when you look at human performance optimization in war fighters, it's all the same pathways as it is for, I would call us amateur athletes on the back end, right? Or even just people trying to perform best at work when you look at these pathways, how can you optimize is going to be pretty much the same across populations. You have to take a little bit more intention with some populations than others. But that's really where I land now is how can we take this information, give it to normal average humans like you and me, and then also to people that really need their bodies and their minds to be optimized in order to do their job that in some cases survive through their job. Yeah, wow. Okay, well, I think I would, if I had to guess the analytics on Spotify and Apple of my audience aren't super, super specific. But if I had to guess, I would say nine out of 10 of the people that are listening are not endurance athletes are not ultra marathoners are not Ironman and are not trying to do a Spartan ultra. But they do want to live a healthier life and they do want to perform better in their work and they do want to live longer and they do want to prevent chronic illnesses and disease. So my first question for you is there some sort of test that they can do this weekend to see how good of shape they're in, whether it's how many can you do 100 pushups within five minutes, can you run a mile without stopping? Is there any tests that they can do to see their fitness level at the moment? Yeah, so there are two that are really accessible to the average human. One is going to test aerobic endurance and then the other is going to test strength or strength endurance. So the first one is we would call it the YMCA step test. You can go and find this on the, you know, the Googles. And basically what you're going to do is step for a series of times up and down, up and down and you take your heart rate before and after. And there are norms that you can compare yourself to so it sort of gives you based upon your resting heart rate and then the heart rate that you get to, whether or not you're in fair, poor, good, excellent shape. That's one that's really accessible to every average human. And I will say that's a test that we use pretty regularly in the field for research because it's really hard to test aerobic capacity unless you're in, you know, a physiology lab, which we also do. But this is one that we can use out in the field. The other is really interesting and this doesn't really have like fantastic norms yet. But there was a really terrific study that was done about five or six years ago on firefighters. And what they found was that if they could do a certain amount of push ups, then later on in life, they had significantly less risk for diseases like cardiovascular disease, which hits the firefighter population at interestingly and exponentially higher rate than it does even the average population. And we know cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of all humans on the planet. So non-tom mutable disease. And so there are norms as well. And I can send you this if you want to put it in the links or we can sort of send it out. But essentially if you can do more than about 25 to 30 push ups in a row, you're in pretty good shape. Okay. Yeah. All right. It would to test the YMCA test to test our far great. And then if you can do 25 to 30 push ups in a row, well, if I could share my screen right now, which I'm not going to, but if I could, I would show you my habit tracker. And one of the things on my habit tracker when it comes to my health category is doing 100 push ups a day. And I do this without fail, usually before like 9 a.m. Now I just want to get a little bit of advice from you. Is that excessive? Like some of these when I am sore, I still do the 100 push ups just because I'm trying to build that discipline. But is that a little aggressive? What are your thoughts on that? Do you do them all in a row? No, I do them like either in three or four sets. I'll do like 40 the first time, 25 and then like 25, 35, whatever the next time. Or I'll do it in the sauna. I'll do like a 20 minutes sauna session and every minute I'll do 10, something like that. So I don't know. I just, just some feedback for me real quick. Yeah. Totally. So two things that come up as first, no, not excessive. So if you can do three by 30 push ups, like that's actually, you know, that's pretty optimal. So I would say that that, you know, you're definitely on the higher end of health metrics, which is pretty awesome. And that's where we want to be, right? Like, especially at your moment in life with your age, like if you can have that maximize it now and then sort of try and maintain that as well as you can throughout your lifespan, that's in really good. You're in really good shape. The other thing that I'm thinking about with your sauna push up is one of the things that we know specifically about exercise. And you've talked about this on your podcast is it is as is sauna and acute stressor on your body, right? And that's one of the most important things that we are finding. And this kind of goes back to Joe and all of the things that he talks about with Spartan is that acute stressors, not long-term stress, right? So there's different types of stress that we want to be careful about. There are stressors that are going to really negatively affect your body, long-term stresses, environmental stresses, anxiety, depression, those kinds of things. We want to avoid that. However, if we use things like exercise and I'm intrigued about exercise in the sauna, I think all of the hot yogis would be really interested in that outcome is the idea that if you can give your body and your mind a cute, so short-term amounts of stress, that actually helps to increase health span over your lifetime. So when you think about lifespan versus health span, the average human is going to live somewhere between 85 and 105 years old and the biohackers are trying to push that envelope a little bit, right? But really what we want to do with health span is to keep you as vibrant and living your day-to-day life as possible until the day you die. I like to think about it as I want to go, I don't play tennis, but I want to go play a game of tennis, have a glass of wine and go to bed and not wake up, right? That's kind of like, I want to be feeling joy and going and doing my thing until literally the moment that I can't do it anymore. And so that, when we think about these acute stressors, and there's a lot of data that's starting to come out about this when we were looking at muscle, I mentioned my tissue with muscle. What we find is that muscle is a tissue that likes to have a little bit of inflammation, just a little bit. You mentioned soreness, right? So just a little, we want to stress it out. That's how we make it stronger. That's how we make it more robust. And this, as it turns out, is something that applies to all tissues in your body. A little bit of stress that you can control is going to be really helpful for you long term. So I don't have any good data to say, to push ups in the sauna, work better than push ups in your living room. But I can tell you that a little bit of that added stress might be helpful. Yeah. I appreciate that answer. And I want you to be completely honest with me and I don't want you to hold back. And I know you'll do that because you're that type of person. But I feel like I do the push ups in the sauna because I like to stack my habits. And if I'm sitting in the sauna for 20 minutes, I either want to be meditating or I want to be listening to a good audio book or podcast or want to be banging out some push ups. So sometimes I do three of those things where I'm doing my 20 minutes on a, I'm doing push ups and I'm listening to a good audio book or podcast. So all about just like optimizing my time and creating more time being efficient things like that. I don't think, oh, I definitely don't do push ups in the sauna. Just I think they're better in the sauna. It's kind of just the time for me to do it because I can't sit still. But my next question, my next topic that I kind of want to pivot to is about nutrition because there is so there's a plethora of information out there. And a lot of stuff contradicts other things. And as more and more people have a platform and more and more people tweet and have podcasts and write books, which is very, very easy now. I feel like we get overwhelmed. And I myself get overwhelmed as well. You know, I try intermittent fasting. Then I go to not fasting. Then I try just doing a whole 30 or I try vegetarian and then I'm like, oh, no, just for me. And like try to come up what works best for me. And obviously it depends like if I'm training or am I not training right now. I'm in week two of a 16 week training book for Ironman Cosmell. And I'm burning 2500 calories a day for sure. You know, yes, I was on the bike for over an hour. The day before that I ran four miles and swam 1500 yards. And it's been even though it's only week two. I know it's only going to ramp up. And so I'm trying to figure out what works best for me. But what works best for me might not work best for Dr. Pichetnik. What works best for you might not work best for, you know, James over there. So I want to get your answer and I want to get your perspective on like if there is a protocol for the human being or is it really just specific to that person, their biology, their physiology, their activity level, so on and so forth. Yeah, it's such a good and important question. And as this field of precision nutrition starts to really evolve, this is the question that, you know, the researchers are asking individual humans are asking biohackers have been sort of at the like leading edge of this for a long period of time. I will tell you this, there are common threads among everything that you just talked about that are really important for every human being. When we look at the, you know, the full plethora of data that we have, how you apply those threads are going to be different depending on whether or not you are training for two, three hours a day or you are at your desk on a Tuesday afternoon, editing a podcast, right? So those are going to be really different applications, but the threads remain the same. I'll tell you what the threads are. It's fairly simple. If we were to choose and fill your plate, what you want to be thinking about are fruits, vegetables, meats that have a significant amount of unsaturated fat. So these tend to be fish because the unsaturated fat specifically, we know to be a potent antioxidant and inflammatory that your body knows what to do with. Adding in things like spices and, you know, these places where we tend to spend a ton of money on supplements, we can get these from the food system. Hydration is going to be key. And if you can sort of nail all of those things, you're going to be getting the right amount of carbohydrate, both complex carbohydrates, starches and fibers, which are really important. You're going to be getting the right amount of protein, you're going to be getting the right amount and the right type of fat. And you're also going to be hydrated. We know that dehydration can be really impactful for performance. So if you can nail that most of the time, you're going to be in really good shape. Again, there are ways that we would strategize for somebody that is training hard for somebody that is sedentary most of the week, but works really hard on the weekends for somebody that is, has a hard time exercising at all. There are ways that we would strategize this based upon calorie intake. And you mentioned, I'm burning 2,500 calories a day. That's just an exercise, right? That's not including your, you know, basal needs of like what your body needs to recover, what your brain needs in order to function appropriately. And so I think this is where the nuance and the precision really starts to become important. And in that case, if you can hit these main threads, so fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, lean, unsaturated fat type of proteins, hydration, in that case, you're 90% of the way there. That last 10% is really going to depend on you, your activity, and then potentially also some genetics. Right. Okay. So, you know, it seems very elementary and very basic. And I like to keep, even though I know your knowledge and your experience in your research can go so in-depth, so in-depth. I just don't think this audience is the type of people that want to know a lot about the science. You know, and it's great. I'm very interested in the science. I really am. I love learning about physiology and biohacking, central nervous system and how we can operate as efficiently and as optimally as possible. But I like to keep a lot of these conversations simple and applicable. Right. So, you know, what can these people be doing? Taking those two tests. Can you do 30 push-ups? You know, do the YMCA test house your heart rate? You know, making sure you eat fruits and veggies, making sure you eat an protein that have unsaturated fat, nuts, seeds, leafy greens. But I wanted to touch on the supplements real quick because I'm someone who goes back and forth of, should I be taking supplements? Should I not be taking supplements? I still do strength training. I like to lift weights often and obviously do push-ups and things like that. And typically, over the last, you know, 15 to 20 years of my strength training journey, it's like, oh, you got to drink protein shake 15 minutes after a workout. And I've been doing that all, you know, here and there. But I've realized that protein kind of makes me feel bloated. Right. Like a protein shake, I get kind of a tharjagging, you know, my stomach kind of hurts. So I don't think protein really mixes well with me. And then I'm like, okay, well, let me make sure I get my protein from food and things like that. But to take that one step further, and I'm going to get to the question I promised, is like, what supplements should I be taking? So I'm like, all right, what are the most important supplements? I do a lot of research. All right. Seems like a fish oil omega-3s. Like, those type of fats, they're good for the joints, they're good for brain health, they're good for skin and nails. That seems like a pretty good one. Then I hear magnesium. You know, our body doesn't really produce a lot of magnesium and magnesium is good to get high quality sleep. So take it before you go to sleep. And then I hear about altheonine. And I'm like, okay, wait a second. Who do I know that knows the most about this? Oh, Andrew Cuberman, right? Stanford, right? So let me listen to a Cuberman lab. I'm listening to Cuberman lab. And every 30 seconds I hear by this supplement, moment is this, AG1, this. And I'm like, f***, I'm like, yeah, you know, AG1 is definitely paying this guy, you know, a couple of seven figures to be talking about this. And I guarantee you, moment is this definitely paying him a couple of seven figures to do this. And that bet he talks about that he brings with him when he travels that I'm calling bullshit on that, right? So I'm like, you know, and he has, you know, I don't know the exact analytics. He definitely has 20 million people that probably listen every. So they don't publicize. It's not to disclose how many listeners he has, but there's 35 million people that listen to podcasts on Spotify. He's the number one. There's 30 million people that listen to Apple. He's number one. I'm like, all right, what should I be doing? And supplementation, I promise I'm getting to the question. Supplementation is something that you don't see in immediate effect. For example, if I go on the bike, my legs feel pumped. They feel swollen. I'm on the bike for two hours and man, I'm feeling good and strong, but taking fish oil for a week, I don't really see a difference. And this stuff is expensive. So can you elaborate a little bit on your perspective and your opinion on supplements and things like that? Yeah, sure. I think one thing that you just mentioned that's really important is we do get a lot of information, a lot of paid information from sources, even really highly trained and reputable sources. The one thing that I would just say about listening to different podcasts is a person can't be an expert in everything, right? And this is why they bring in the experts. So my suggestion, and this is just a blatant, not necessarily respond to a specific podcaster or not, is to listen to the advice of the experts that they bring in rather than the practices necessarily that they engage in or the products that they're pushing. Because at the end of the day, there's potentially an ulterior motive there to your point. When we think about supplementation, there actually are sort of three different reasons why you would supplement. One is essentially to add something to your diet that you might not be getting. So for example, if you're a vegan, you are not intaking enough B12. There's just no way to get it from plant foods, so supplementing is critical, right? If you are a person that lives in the cold weather climates, northeast, you are not making vitamin D in your skin. in the winter time, it's impossible to do. So taking a vitamin D supplement is a really good idea. If you just have, you know, you're a small person like me and you just don't have a ton of intake of food, you might wanna think about a multivitamin, right? Where it's just like, I know some days I'm not getting enough of one thing, so I just top everything off with a multivitamin during the day. So that's strategy number one. Strategy number two is what you were talking about where we're taking a supplement to enhance something right now. And there are certain supplements that can do that, right? So you can take a supplement and feel something right away. A lot of the herbals will act this way, where you take something and you feel better in, you know, a several hours to 24 to 48 hours, right? And there's a decent amount of supplementation research that shows that that is the case, although those are potentially lacking. The last, and this is where you're talking about with something like Omega-3s, where you're like, I don't feel any different. You'll feel different at age 84, if you take these supplements. And this is something that's really hard in the nutrition space where everything is a sound bite, everything is 30 seconds. Everything is, I wanna feel better right now. We really don't give enough credit to the longevity piece. Remember, longevity is not, can I live to 120? It's, can I live to 120? Well. And so when we look at a supplement like Omega-3s, what we see, those are beneficial for brain health to make sure that we don't have neurodegeneration. Okay, when does neurodegeneration happen? It starts to happen at age 65, 70, 75. So if you're consistent with your Omega-3s during your lifespan, those are the times when you're gonna hopefully not notice declines in performance. Things like Omega-3s are really important for cardiovascular health. When do you develop cardiovascular issues, catharose, sclerosis, have a heart attack? 65, 70, 75. So you have to think about these things where, yes, you wanna feel better right now, and there's certainly some supplements that can help with that and performance in this moment. And there are also things that you wanna think about making sure that you have on board for your whole life, so that your 85 year old self will think your 40 year old self right now for thinking about them, you know, in the proactive sense. You got it, okay? So I wanna get a quick opinion from you on what I should be doing. This is not for the audience, even though they're gonna listen to this. I wanna know what I should be doing. So based on what you just said, I feel like I should start taking visual Omega-3s again. - Good idea. - Okay, and then the old. - Especially if you don't eat a lot of fish, which people tend to not eat enough, so yes, I would say a great idea. - Okay, so do you have a brand that you recommend? - I don't. The one thing that I do say is you wanna make sure that there's just a really solid third party testing. So I work with a lot of athletes and the supplement industry is very unregulated from a testing perspective. And so there could be a lot of contaminants that end up in products. So I would say, don't buy the really cheap stuff just because there's potential risk there. However, be really careful about the very expensive labeled stuff too, because if they're not third party testing, like if you get an Instagram ad that comes across and they're like, we're gonna personalize this supplement just for you and you're paying $100 a bottle and there's no third party testing. You don't really know what's in there. Anybody, anybody can call a formulae and become a supplement provider, guru, whatever. So be careful. - Okay. - Third party testing is what you wanna be looking for. - And then magnesium, should I be taking magnesium? - Magnesium is an interesting one. So if you take a multivitamin, you should be getting enough magnesium in your day. There are specific molecules of magnesium that can be helpful for things like sleep, cardiovascular health, and each one comes with its own little buddy. It can come with an amino acid. It can come with another mineral. It's certainly not going to hurt you, although I will tell you this, with supplements, you wanna be very careful because we live in a society where we feel if a little is good, a lot is better. And in supplements specifically, these are, they tend to be super physiologic doses, meaning they're in amounts that your body doesn't really know what to do with. So stand, you know, 100% of your daily value is gonna be great. So if you look at your multivitamin and you've got 100% of your magnesium and your multivitamin, you're good to go. The other thing that I would caution you with magnesium specifically is that several of them are used as elapsidives, like they specifically are going to have elapsidive effects if you think of milk of magnesium. Yep. So be careful when you're choosing the magnesium supplements, read the back label and make sure you're not choosing the elapsidive version. - Okay, so omega-3s got the feedback on magnesium, I'll make a decision on magnesium. Is there anything else that you think is essential? - So if you're thinking about performance, we think protein is always going to be critical. So making sure that you're getting enough of that protein, even if the shakes make your stomach feel a little queasy, choose another product. We do know that getting enough protein, which is about two grams per kilogram of body weight per day. Give or take. So the recommendation for the average human is 0.8. We're seeming to think that that's not quite enough up to about 0.2 is where you're gonna see performance benefits. So two grams per kilo per day, I tend to think of as average for the athletic human. And there are other products. So it might be the, if you're taking away protein or away isolate, that can be a little bit irritating. So if you look at products that are protein, make sure that you're getting a full complement of the amino acids, particularly the essential amino acids. There are nine. You can get plant proteins, you can get pea proteins, you can get others that are going to be helpful. Collagen is not a complete protein. So be careful about that one. There's very limited data on whether or not collagen is helpful for recovery. - Interesting. - So you wanna be looking for that full complement of amino acids. - Okay, all right. Omega-3s and protein for sure. And I'm gonna make a decision on the magnesium. - Yep. - All right. All right, so there's two, there's two more things I just wanna talk about. 'Cause I'm very busy and I really appreciate your time. So on June 28th, I'm flying to Vermont and I'm gonna be going through it today. - You're very lucky. - I am. - You know that. - I feel very grateful and appreciative that Joe put this offer on the table because this is a once in a lifetime experience, opportunity. And getting the invite from the CEO and founder of Spartan himself is something that I could not have said no to. And I do not wanna say no. And I'm gonna be bringing a couple buddies of mine that I've done ultra-spartan races and iron man's and things like that. So we're gonna have a good team and a good crew and a lot of support around each other and accountability, which is gonna help all of us get through this treacherous, is the word I'm gonna use experience. But, tell, can you film me in a little bit about this, I'm gonna call it a two day military boot camp that I'm gonna be going through it. What should I be expecting? - Yeah, so we are calling this Mertak. So this is a collaboration between Norwich University, Senior Military College and Spartan. We are also super thrilled about it. So Mertak, everything in the military has an acronym, everything. So this one stands for Military Resilience and Tactical Athlete Course, Mertak. And so what this is is a real combination of some of the physical training that we do with our warfighters, with our special operators. So if you come to Norwich, you'll know that we have our own mountain, it's called Fittingly So Pain Mountain, named after a human, but there it is. And so we're gonna be camping out on Pain Mountain, you're gonna be eating MREs, which are the nutrition that we give to our warfighters, so they can pack it and put it, you know, they can carry it with them. So you're getting an experience of that. And then we're gonna put you in the classroom and we're gonna have you working with, so alternating this physical training, we're gonna have you working with the professionals that work and help the, you know, the people, the tactical athletes that need human performance optimization for their job. So this is going to apply to sports athletes, but really this is, we take this super seriously because if somebody doesn't do these things, you know, especially if they're out, you know, they're out wherever they're going to be stationed in the world, it's really important that they understand how to do this so that they come home. So there's a really serious element of this as well. And so you're gonna be learning from our best experts on nutrition, on sleep, on stress and resilience. You're gonna be learning from one of the premier strength and conditioning coaches in the country. So Scott Koffield is our strength and conditioning coach. He's amazing. Been working with tactical athletes and elite level athletes for the whole time. You're gonna be hearing from our wrestling coach, Alex Whitney, who is really good friends with Joe, to think about how to optimize your emotional resilience. And, you know, when you're in a situation and you are feeling super stressed out and there are a million things going on around you, how can you become really internalized, really focused so that you're not distracted? So we're really taking this across the board. You're gonna be experiencing the physical elements of what it means to be a tactical athlete as well. as really learning what the knowledge that you need to have and the experiential components that you need to have to perform at the highest level when it matters most. - Okay, amazing. All right, great. Awesome, thank you so much for all the info. I'm super excited to take on the death race and take on Murtak and Pain Mountain. - Yeah. - I love getting out of my comfort zone. I started to recently take leaps of faith on different experiences. And when I started my Iron Man journey back in 2021, 2020, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me and it led to so many other amazing opportunities. And I just wanna say for all the people out there, I wanna thank everyone that listens to the podcast because the numbers are consistently going up. We've reached over 610 Spotify followers, which is amazing. We're about to cross 75,000 streams. We're currently at 76 reviews on Apple Podcasts. Let's see if we can get that up to 100 by the end of May. And the podcast has been a great platform for me to connect with amazing individuals, including yourself, Dr. Pajednik, Joe DeSena, other New York Times bestselling authors and people that are just living like to the fullest. So as we conclude this episode, I do wanna play a little game with you. This is a game I do like to play with doctors and therapists and coaches and experts and it's short. It's really short, I promise. I'm gonna just say a word. And it's gonna be somewhat health-related. Some of these have very positive benefits. Some of these have very negative benefits. And I just wanna get your initial feedback. You know what, one word, it could be great. It could be awful. It could be, oh my God, never do that. It could be, that's amazing. It could be no comment. 'Cause some of these are a little like, I wouldn't say controversial, but please feel free to say no comment and off the record between you and I, if any of these come up that you don't even want me to be on podcast, we'll edit it out. But if it's something you don't like, just say no comment, okay? Not it. Okay, cold plunge. Pretty good. Okay, yoga. Good for your brain. Okay, intermittent fasting. Not good. Okay, HGH. Controversial. Ice cream. Delicious. Red light therapy. Not enough data, potentially helpful. Okay, EMF radiation. Same. Okay, blue light exposure. Not good for sleep. Yoga. Really good for the gut. Ice cream. Potentially better. Oh my God, that's life changing. So do it. Don't drink it. Coffee. Really good in the morning, really bad in the afternoon. Okay, silo sivin. Very interesting. Some really fantastic data coming out, not ready for prime time yet. Okay, alcohol. One drink per day for women, two drink per day for men. Be careful of the headlines. Okay, okay. Mastervation. Fun. Okay. Adderall. Controversial, really helpful for some people, not to be taken lightly. Okay, and last one, marijuana. The data is really questionable. I'll elaborate ever so slightly. I have a couple of studies right now looking at CBD. There are a lot of claims being made specifically in a health and recovery space. There are five studies on muscle, health and recovery in humans, and most of them are null, which means there is no benefit. But I'm, I'm bullish, but we'll see. Bullish on CBD. What about, what about THC? Yeah, THC is, we could go into this for a long period of time, but the amount of THC is really important. More tends to probably not be better for your health. Yeah, and especially the brain. Especially the brain. Yeah, not my area specifically with brain health, but it does seem that the data shows that the strains have more and more THC in them, and that could potentially be harmful. Got it. Awesome. Dr. Pajernik, thank you so much for your time today. I know you're super busy, and it was great having you on the podcast. It was really an honor. I'm glad that we were able to connect through Joe, DeCena CEO and founder of Spartan Race, going to be taking on that death race last week of June. Don't know when it starts. Don't know when it ends, and that is extremely scary. It's all those people that are listening on Apple, Spotify, Audible, Google Podcast. You can head over to the website, Lake Coach Act of the Common. If you want to connect, don't forget to leave an honest review. We recommend five stars. I'm going to drop Dr. Pajernik's socials, her website links to a lot of the stuff. You're right. Link the MerckTack. Join us in Vermont at the end of June. Join us. It's open for everybody. So come on up. Exactly. Link to MerckTack. I'll drop the link to MerckTack in the podcast notes. Dr. Pajernik, thank you so much for your time today, and I look forward to connecting with you again soon. My pleasure. Thanks, Zach. [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]