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The Peter Attia Drive

#46 - Chris Masterjohn, Ph.D.: Navigating the many pathways to health and disease - NAD and sirtuins, methylation, MTHFR and COMT, choline deficiency and NAFLD, TMAO, creatine, and more

The Peter Attia Drive

Peter Attia, MD

Health & Fitness, Medicine, Fitness

4.77.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2019

⏱️ 172 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Chris Masterjohn, entrepreneur, independent researcher, and doctorate in nutrition, elucidates the latest research on the risk and benefits of NAD supplements, and shares his personal intuition on the topic. We also dive deep into choline deficiency and its role in the rising prevalence of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. From there, Chris enlightens us on the importance of methylation, a simple yet profoundly important biochemical process affecting our physical and mental health. He also describes the variations of the genes MTHFR and COMT, enzymes which play important roles in methylation and which have profound impacts on our well-being.

We discuss:

  • Chris’s background, falling in love with biochemistry, and decision to pursue research over medicine [7:45];
  • Choline: what it is, why it is important, and how a deficiency can cause non-alcoholic fatty liver disease [11:45];
  • NAFLD: increasing prevalence and potential causes [25:00];
  • TMAO: Should we be worried about the TMAO content in choline and our foods? [39:15];
  • Types of fatty acids: How they may predispose us to different types of illnesses [53:30];
  • Why don’t we see low VLDL in patients with NAFLD? [59:45];
  • Understanding flux, and how machine learning may affect medicine in the near future [1:03:15];
  • NAD: How it works, supplements, sirtuins, and the central role of the liver [1:09:30];
  • Intravenous NAD [1:33:00];
  • Oral NR: Is it the optimal way to get more NAD? [1:38:30];
  • What is the possible harm of taking an NAD precursor? [1:47:15];
  • The MTHFR gene [1:49:45];
  • The methylation pathway [1:58:15];
  • The COMT gene [2:04:30];
  • Creatine: The uses and benefits and its important role in methylation [2:10:15];
  • Dietary strategies for MTHFR: choline, creatine, folate, and glycine [2:16:45];
  • How to mitigate the negative effects of NAD supplements [2:23:45];
  • A case study of a person with high homocysteine [2:28:00];
  • What is the level of evidence that you need to take action? [2:32:15];
  • Does Chris supplement with NAD precursors? And can it improve symptoms of rosacea? [2:35:45];
  • Decision making in the face of inconclusive data, and trying to disentangle the placebo effect [2:39:00];
  • What does Chris believe to be true that very few people would agree with him about? [2:43:15];
  • How to follow Chris’s work [2:48:45]; and
  • More.

Learn more at www.PeterAttiaMD.com
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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Atia.

0:10.0

The drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking,

0:15.7

along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working

0:19.6

with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world, and this podcast

0:23.8

is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality

0:28.3

more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's

0:32.5

episode and other topics at peteratiamd.com.

0:41.6

Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of The Drive. I'd like to take a couple of

0:45.6

minutes to talk about why we don't run ads on this podcast and why instead we've chosen to rely

0:50.8

entirely on listener support. If you're listening to this, you probably already know, but the two things

0:55.9

I care most about professionally are how to live longer and how to live better. I have a

1:01.4

complete fascination and obsession with this topic. I practice it professionally and I've seen

1:06.6

firsthand how access to information is basically all people need to make better decisions and

1:11.6

improve the quality of their lives. Curating and sharing this knowledge is not easy and even

1:16.7

before starting the podcast that became clear to me. The sheer volume of material published in this

1:21.5

space is overwhelming. I'm fortunate to have a great team that helps me continue learning and

1:26.7

sharing this information with you. To take one example, our show notes are in a league of their own.

1:32.7

In fact, we now have a full-time person that is dedicated to producing those and the feedback has

1:37.4

mirrored this. So all of this raises a natural question. How will we continue to fund the work

1:43.2

necessary to support this? As you probably know, the tried and true way to do this is to sell ads,

1:49.1

but after a lot of contemplation, that model just doesn't feel right to me for a few reasons.

1:54.9

Now the first and most important of these is trust. I'm not sure how you could trust me

...

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