In this video, Dr Rhonda Patrick dives into a wide range of health topics, which include micronutrient deficiencies, inflammation in the body, DNA damage, and aging. It’s very helpful to understand how our bodies can be damaged but also healed. Dr Patrick does an incredible job of explaining difficult concepts in lay terms so that the common person can grasp difficult biological concepts. Understanding something random like how Vitamin D can protect the length of telomeres in your brain is SUPER cool, because telomere length is a great indicator of how well a person is aging. Dr Patrick is extremely passionate about health and wellness and does her best to pass on her wealth of knowledge to the general public in a way that is helpful and easy to understand.
Dr. Patrick did her graduate research at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital where she investigated the link between mitochondrial metabolism, apoptosis, and cancer. Her groundbreaking work discovered that a protein that is critical for cell survival has two distinct mitochondrial localizations with disparate functions, linking it’s anti-apoptotic role to a previously unrecognized role in mitochondrial respiration and maintenance of mitochondrial structure. Her dissertation findings were published in the 2012 issue of Nature Cell Biology.
Dr. Patrick trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute with Dr. Bruce Ames. She investigated the effects of micronutrient (vitamins and minerals) inadequacies on metabolism, inflammation, DNA damage, and aging and whether supplementation can reverse the damage. In addition, she also investigated the role of vitamin D in brain function, behavior, and other physiological functions. In February of 2014 she published a paper in FASEB on how vitamin D regulates serotonin synthesis and how this relates to autism.
Dr. Patrick has also done research on aging at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences. At the Salk she investigated what role insulin signaling played in protein misfolding, which is commonly found in neurodegenerative diseases.