Hormesis is the principle that a small, controlled stress can make the body more capable. sauna is one of the clearest examples: heat asks the cardiovascular system, sweat response, and cellular repair pathways to adapt.
Transcript from Hormetic stress: The benefit of SAUNA vs. broccoli.
in both joe rogan's recent podcast with andrew huberman and his previous podcast with ben patrick the concept of hormesis of plant foods specifically broccoli sulforaphane containing broccoli as a possible benefit of vegetables has come up multiple times joe and i talked about this in the first podcast we did but i wanted to do a little bit more in depth but still kind of short video on my views on this vegetables as hormetic agents issue to clarify it for joe and everyone so in these clips which i will show here from ben patrick's episode and from andrew huberman's recent episode just earlier this week joe is comparing vegetables to sauna the paul saladino always wants to talk about is plant defense chemicals and about eating plants that plants don't want you to eat them and so when you eat them they're excreting these plant defense chemicals now my thing on that is and this is uh one of the things that rhonda patrick likes to talk about is that that may have a hormetic effect so there might be benefit to that just like there's benefit to cold therapy and hot therapy and that there's some foods that eating them even though they do have these defense chemicals those defense chemicals at least in certain doses might have a beneficial effect on your body but he had this whole thing about them about the chemicals the oxalates in different forms of vegetables like kale and and other other vegetables that we think of being healthy that might not be good for you however there's other doctors that look at these chemicals and look at these things and say no these when you eat them in the proper quantities are good for you because they have a hermetic effect they have an effect similar to the effect that you get from being in a sauna like if you're in 185 degrees for the rest of your life you're dead right but if you're in 185 degrees for 20 minutes it's actually very good for you because your body produces these heat shock proteins in response to that heat so this this is where the debate sets in and this is where i'm not sure who's correct but what i do know is when i eat nothing but meat and fruit i feel [__] great my impression of the comparison there is that as we know that sauna increasing the heat in your environment can be a hormetic this is a word that means a little bit of a poison may be good for you and indeed there is a good amount of evidence that doing sonic can increase
evidence that doing sonic can increase heat shock proteins but sauna is stressful so it creates a stress then your body responds to that stress joe is comparing this stress from sauna to broccoli or vegetables in general now in my book the carnivore code i drew a distinction between these and i want to clarify that distinction this is molecular hormesis in the case of broccoli or sometimes called xeno-hormesis these are just hypothetical terms that are essentially made up by the scientific community nobody really knows if this happens versus environmental hormesis which i think is something that is well established and happens every day to us if we are living our lives outside a natural world environmental hormesis being things like sauna cold plunge maybe you're swimming in a cold river sometimes when i'm out surfing in the morning even in costa rica i get a little cold because the water is cold and i'm not wearing any wetsuit or the water is relatively cold but exercise also does this fasting does this it appears that sun exposure might even do this so there are clearly things that we experience in our environment heat cold exercise and fasting being the main environmental stressors that appear to be activators of a molecular system called the nrf2 system which i'll show in a moment now similarly plant compounds can activate this system but the difference is that plant compounds are like any pharmaceutical drug you take and that they are going to have many side effects in the human body some of which are catalogued some of which are not when you go to a doctor and get a medication many of you may not get medications from a doctor but believe me when a patient goes to a doctor and gets medication the doctor must give the patient some sort of an education regarding the side effects of that medication these side effects come in a package insert in these medications when the patient receives the medication from a pharmacist but these side effects of
pharmacist but these side effects of plant molecules have widely been ignored and that is what i will illustrate in this video but the high level difference here is that when you get into a sauna you are getting an environmental input there is no molecule going into your body when you are in the sun when you are exercising or when you go in a cold plunge you are getting an environmental input that is changing your biochemistry often causing a small amount of oxidative stress which turns on the nrf2 system which ultimately results in more glutathione which may be a good thing possibly for humans long term now when you do broccoli sprouts which contain sulforaphane i'll use that as the prototypic uh hormetic agent or quote-unquote antioxidant which is a misnomer as you'll see in this video you are taking in a molecule whether you're taking in sulforaphane pills whether you're taking in broccoli sprouts extract whole broccoli sprouts broccoli or cabbage or any other compound that contains isothiocyanates like sulforaphane you are taking in molecules now we must not ignore those molecules can have other side effects in the human body so yes as joe is comparing these sauna is in some ways similar to broccoli where these differ is that the broccoli has negative side effects and my argument regarding many plant foods that are widely touted as beneficial hormetics as humans is the juice is not worth the squeeze in this case the side effects of the broccoli sprouts or the sulforaphane probably outweigh the benefits because you can get the benefits by doing many other things like sauna like exercise like being in the sun like cold plunge and there's really no good data we really don't have good evidence that eating vegetables creates benefits above and beyond what living a quote-unquote healthy life may do for humans but we do know that these plant molecules have many side effects in humans something that i have tried to highlight with my work something that i think has been widely ignored in our consideration of vegetables and plant molecules historically in the nutrition sphere
historically in the nutrition sphere these negative side effects let's start with some of the benefits of sulforaphane illustrated in clinical studies i think this is what people get a little misled by so this is not to say that sulforaphane in broccoli sprouts which we're using as the prototypic hormetic agent doesn't have some benefits when considered with a myopic lens blinders not considering side effects in humans and i will show you a brief sampling of those benefits so here's a paper from molecular neuropsychology showing that sulforaphane augments glutathione and influences brain metabolites in human subjects a clinical pilot study so in this study they used large amounts of sulforaphane supplementation to get this much sulforaphane from broccoli or even more concentrated forms of sulforaphane and broccoli sprouts you would have to eat kilogram quantities of broccoli sprouts or broccoli and something that is not possible for any human even the most pious vegan could not eat this much broccoli or broccoli sprouts we know that sulforaphane levels peak at three milligrams per gram at around 48 hours of growing broccoli sprouts at three milligrams per gram you'd have to eat three and a half kilograms of broccoli sprouts to get 10 grams of sulforaphane which is the amount of sulforaphane that has been used in some of the trials with diabetes this is a trial looking at brain and blood levels these are psychiatric patients but as you'll see here when they were given sulforaphane there was an increase in glutathione in the blood and in certain regions of the brain okay this is what gets people excited and in this study which is broccoli sprouts reduce oxidative stress and type 2 diabetes is using broccoli sprout powder and they did show that in these patients with diabetes giving them broccoli sprout powder which contains sulforaphane improved total antioxidant capacity it improved uh oxidative stress
capacity it improved uh oxidative stress index it improved malon dialdehyde levels and it decreased oxidized low density of a protein this isn't that surprising because we know the mechanism of sulforaphane and it's the same mechanism of exercise it's the same mechanism of fasting well one of the mechanisms of fasting it's the same mechanism of sauna and a lot of the same mechanisms of coal plunging it's this nrf2 transcription factor which is associated with keep one you get this electrophiles oxidative stress which again can be things like sulforaphane which are oxidative stressors they are pro-oxidants not antioxidants and nrf2 dissociates moves across this is the nuclear membrane into the nucleus where it binds to other molecules at the antioxidant response element on a gene uh leading to polymerization this is a polymerase enzyme and transcription of genes okay these genes include things like glutathione synthase glutathione peroxidase etc genes involved in the overall antioxidant response in humans so this is to say that if you eat sulforaphane you can it appears that humans can turn on the formation of glutathione glutathione related genes improve your antioxidant response at least in the short term this is why i believe joe has been told by people like rhonda patrick that broccoli sprouts sulforaphane are good for you because they turn on glutathione production and indeed there are some good clinical outcomes there are a couple of things that are being missed here firstly you can get the same benefits you can turn on these same genes you can turn on that nrf2 system by doing things that are environmental hormetics without using molecular and or xeno hormesis the second and perhaps more important piece of the equation is that i think it's better for humans to turn on those genes and get glutathione production and get this optimal antioxidant response from environmental hermetics versus molecular
environmental hermetics versus molecular hormetics because of the side effects of the molecular hormetics in this case sulforaphane i'll show you those in one moment so what are the side effects what is the package insert of sulforaphane the main side effects of this molecule that i have concerns about involve inhibiting the absorption of iodine at the level of the thyroid leading to problems with thyroid hormone synthesis you can see papers like this illustrate this very clearly concentrations of thiocyanate and goitrin these are isothiocyanate compounds similar to sulforaphane in human plasma their precursor concentrations in brassica vegetables and the associated potential risk for hypothyroidism you can see that these are part of a family of isothiocyanates including sulforaphane and other isothiocyanates okay so radioiodine uptake to the thyroid is inhibited by 194 micromole of goitrin but not 77 micromole of goytrin collards brussels sprouts and some russian kale contain sufficient goitron to potentially decrease iodine uptake to the thyroid they go on to say that turnip tops commercial broccoli broccoli rob and kale don't have as much gold trini and are probably not going to be a problem but when you're trying to get to 10 grams of sulforaphane per day and you're eating pounds of broccoli sprouts or lots and lots of broccoli sprouts and again they didn't assay broccoli sprouts for amounts of goitron or other isothiocyanates nor have humans really fully investigated the anti-thyroid potential the goitrogenic potential of many of these isothiocyanates people are eating tons of broccoli sprouts concentrated isothiocyanates and broccoli sprouts powder what are we doing through our thyroids could we be nuking our thyroids in a negative way and for what just go get in your sauna just go get in your cold plunge just go exercise just go get in the sun yet another problem i have here is with some of the estrogenic potential of this
of the estrogenic potential of this family of plants the estrogenic effects of extracts from cabbage fermented cabbage and acidified brussels sprouts and they did it on a cell line so this is a human breast cancer cell line but they said that there are estrogenic effects of these compounds on a estrogen responsive cancer cell line these effects seem to be variable depending on the dose meaning that low doses have different effects than high doses but clearly compounds in the brassica family which includes broccoli brussels sprouts etc appear to affect us hormonally we must remember the intention of these plants is clear they're not our friends they don't want you to eat their leaves plants don't want you to eat a kale leaf or a broccoli floret or any of these things are we sure this is good for us are we sure this is the best way to increase our glutathione i would say no what is the best way to increase your glutathione i think it's by doing environmental hormetic activities which are things like cold water swimming here's a really interesting article on uric acid and glutathione levels during short-term whole body cold exposure they looked at 10 healthy subjects who swam in ice cold water i believe it was in germany and they looked at their glutathione levels what happens when you swim in cold water your glutathione levels go down oxidative stress happens activating the nrf2 system and then your glutathione levels go up in the future because there is a quote-unquote hormetic effect this is what we can achieve by doing activities in life why do we need sulforaphane and furthermore it's really important to understand that there are many studies like this one which show that increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables in your diet presumably which contain compounds like sulforaphane doesn't really change antioxidant markers or markers of oxidative stress after a 12-week intervention this is just one of a few but i'm just showing this one for the sake of uh brevity so this study was a 12-week randomized clinical trial 19 men and 26 women who
clinical trial 19 men and 26 women who had low reported fruit juice and vegetable intake less than three portions per day they were randomized to consume either their usual diet or a diet supplemented with additional 480 grams of fruit and vegetables and fruit juice for 12 weeks that's over a pound of fruit and vegetables and 300 milliliters of fruit juice for 12 weeks at the end of the study they said while increasing fruit juice and vegetable consumption increases circulating levels of beneficial nutrients this being carotenoids which are in the vegetables a 12-week intervention was not associated with effects on the antioxidant status or lymphocyte dna damage where are the benefits of the vegetables where the benefits of plant foods again it was mixed with fruit in this study but there are many studies like this which show that increasing fruit and vegetables in the diet doesn't change markers of oxidative stress or lymphocyte dna damage in a study that's longer than four weeks some of them are four some of them are eight some are twelve this has been my contention from the beginning number one we cannot convincingly say that the benefits of things like broccoli last long term the body doesn't adjust number two we are ignoring the side effects of these vegetables and plant compounds and number three we can get the same benefits without side effects by doing environmental hormetics so as joe is questioning yes vegetables are sort of like a sauna but a sauna doesn't have the side effects and why would you eat vegetables when you can go in the sauna and avoid the side effects these are the questions that remain obviously we don't fully understand all this but these are my contentions anecdotally there are so many people who improve by eliminating vegetables from their diet especially things like broccoli gi symptoms of gas and bloating improve thyroid symptoms mood symptoms all kinds of autoimmune symptoms improve by cutting out brassica vegetables we don't really fully understand the effects of this isothiocyanate compound family on humans yet we're being told
humans yet we're being told it's being preached from the pulpits of nutritional pism that we should eat tons of broccoli and tons of broccoli sprouts when our ancestors have done this no chance but we're not really backing it up nobody's really fully looking at the side effects of these and this is where i think the difference lies and it's why it's so important to understand that when it comes to hormesis a sauna is not like broccoli at all
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
A sauna (covered in detail here) session creates a simple environmental challenge. Temperature rises. The body responds by moving blood, producing sweat, and activating heat shock proteins that help protect cellular function.
The source contrasts environmental hormesis (our guide to hormesis) with compounds found in plants. The useful takeaway is not that one tool replaces another. It is that stressors only help when the body has enough resources to recover from them.
The benefit of heat does not happen inside intensity alone. It happens in the rebound: the slower breathing afterward, the drop in tension, the return to equilibrium.
"The useful stress is the one your body can answer."
Use sauna as a controlled signal for adaptation.
Keep nutrition broad and adequate enough to support recovery.
Leave space after heat for the nervous system to settle.
The practice is not about chasing intensity. It is about creating a signal, then giving the body room to adapt.
