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The Peter Attia Drive

#69 - Ronesh Sinha, M.D.: Insights into the manifestation of metabolic disease in a patient population predisposed to metabolic syndrome, and what it teaches us more broadly

The Peter Attia Drive

Peter Attia, MD

Health & Fitness, Medicine, Fitness

4.77.3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2019

⏱️ 119 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Dr. Ronesh Sinha, a physician, author, and educator based in Silicon Valley, shares his many insights into metabolic illness that he has gleaned from his South Asian patient population. In this conversation we focus on hyperinsulinemia, insulin resistance, metabolic dysregulation, inflammation, blood pressure, obesity, etc. and ways to address them with nutrition, sleep, exercise, stress management, and more. We also take a deep dive into insulin resistant phenotypes, evolutionary theory and geographic determinants of insulin resistance which provides insight into the genetic architecture and pathophysiology of metabolic syndrome. Additionally, we discuss the surprisingly interrelated topic of stress, and how we might be inadvertently passing this on to our children, leading to mental and physical sickness down the road.

We discuss:

  • How a stubborn case of insulin resistance connected Peter with Ronesh [7:15];
  • Ronesh’s clinical treatment focus of metabolic illnesses in South and East Asian patient populations [8:45];
  • The distinction between visceral fat and subcutaneous fat stores [15:00];
  • Shortcomings of a body mass index (BMI) calculator for evaluating metabolic disease risk [17:15];
  • Cortisol and blood glucose variability [28:30];
  • Insulin’s role in elevated blood glucose: A symptom of metabolic syndrome [33:25];
  • Mechanistic explanations of insulin resistance (there may be more than one) [35:15];
  • Theories on origins and evolutionary reasons for insulin resistance [40:00];
  • The inverse relationship between the amount of brown adipose tissue and rates of insulin resistance, and the role of climate in patterns and prevalence of insulin resistance [49:50];
  • Vitamin D levels, hyperinsulinemia, and other effects [53:45];
  • The evolutionary benefit of being able to turn fructose into fat (and the price we are now paying for it) [58:00];
  • The VO2 max relationship to insulin resistance and familial metabolic health [59:30];
  • Using zone 2 fitness test to evaluate mitochondrial performance [1:01:15];
  • Exercise for long-term functional health [1:06:00];
  • Lifestyle changes to improve insulin resistance and other metabolic phenotypes [1:14:00];
  • Is PCOS a manifestation of insulin resistance? [1:21:00];
  • The impact of stress on adiposity, and Peter’s treatment regimen for overweight females resistant to typical nutritional approaches [1:23:45];
  • How a culture of achievement and expectations can lead to undue stress, unhappiness, and health problems in our children (a Silicon Valley case study) [1:35:00];
  • The negative impact of devices and social media on children [1:48:45];
  • How you can help yourself, your family, and your community without being an MD or PhD [1:55:00]; and
  • More.

Learn more: https://peterattiamd.com/

Show notes page for this episode:https://peterattiamd.com/roneshsinha/

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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 improve

1:11.8

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

1:17.3

the podcast that became clear to me, the sheer volume of material published in this space is overwhelming.

1:23.2

I'm fortunate to have a great team that helps me continue learning and sharing this information

1:27.8

with you. To take one example, our show notes are in a league of their own. In fact, we now have a

1:33.7

full-time person that is dedicated to producing those and the feedback has mirrored this. So all of

1:39.4

this raises a natural question, how will we continue to fund the work necessary to support this?

1:45.6

As you probably know, the tried and true way to do this is to sell ads, but after a lot of

1:50.2

contemplation, that model just doesn't feel right to me for a few reasons. Now the first and most

1:55.8

important of these is trust. I'm not sure how you could trust me if I'm telling you about something

...

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