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Dr. Chris Palmer

πŸ‘€ Speaker
2210 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

know the real money is not in the question what should i take the real money is in what should i do how can i change my life and my lifestyle to improve my health and um so i just yeah i just want to drill that home for people for better or worse i first learned about methylene blue from owning fish tanks you clean fish tanks with them or it's a thing you use um

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

I don't take it either, and I've not used it in any patients so far, but I'm very interested in possibly starting to use it in controlled ways in patients who clearly need something more. We're doing all of the right things. We're doing the lifestyle things. We're doing ketogenic interventions or other things, and they still are not well. There's still room for improvement.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

I don't take it either, and I've not used it in any patients so far, but I'm very interested in possibly starting to use it in controlled ways in patients who clearly need something more. We're doing all of the right things. We're doing the lifestyle things. We're doing ketogenic interventions or other things, and they still are not well. There's still room for improvement.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

I don't take it either, and I've not used it in any patients so far, but I'm very interested in possibly starting to use it in controlled ways in patients who clearly need something more. We're doing all of the right things. We're doing the lifestyle things. We're doing ketogenic interventions or other things, and they still are not well. There's still room for improvement.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

So methylene blue, as you said, has been around for a long time. It's relatively cheap as a fish tank cleaner. Methylene blue, fascinatingly, is primarily exclusively a mitochondrial agent. So it is an electron acceptor and donor, right? So that is what methylene blue does. It can accept electrons and it can donate electrons. So it's an electron shuttle, if you will.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

So methylene blue, as you said, has been around for a long time. It's relatively cheap as a fish tank cleaner. Methylene blue, fascinatingly, is primarily exclusively a mitochondrial agent. So it is an electron acceptor and donor, right? So that is what methylene blue does. It can accept electrons and it can donate electrons. So it's an electron shuttle, if you will.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

So methylene blue, as you said, has been around for a long time. It's relatively cheap as a fish tank cleaner. Methylene blue, fascinatingly, is primarily exclusively a mitochondrial agent. So it is an electron acceptor and donor, right? So that is what methylene blue does. It can accept electrons and it can donate electrons. So it's an electron shuttle, if you will.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

And how does that relate to mitochondria? Mitochondria, as they are producing ATP, electrons are flowing down the electron transport chain. And that is what results in the production of ATP. If it gets shuttled through the uncoupling protein, it results in heat production.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

And how does that relate to mitochondria? Mitochondria, as they are producing ATP, electrons are flowing down the electron transport chain. And that is what results in the production of ATP. If it gets shuttled through the uncoupling protein, it results in heat production.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

And how does that relate to mitochondria? Mitochondria, as they are producing ATP, electrons are flowing down the electron transport chain. And that is what results in the production of ATP. If it gets shuttled through the uncoupling protein, it results in heat production.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

And when electrons flow out of that system, when they leak out of that system, it creates reactive oxygen species, which again are very harmful to both mitochondria and cells. So if you have dysfunctional mitochondria, that don't seem to be able to contain the electrons appropriately. Electrons are leaking out.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

And when electrons flow out of that system, when they leak out of that system, it creates reactive oxygen species, which again are very harmful to both mitochondria and cells. So if you have dysfunctional mitochondria, that don't seem to be able to contain the electrons appropriately. Electrons are leaking out.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

And when electrons flow out of that system, when they leak out of that system, it creates reactive oxygen species, which again are very harmful to both mitochondria and cells. So if you have dysfunctional mitochondria, that don't seem to be able to contain the electrons appropriately. Electrons are leaking out.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

We've got decades of evidence that aging, neurodegeneration, even obesity, type 2 diabetes, and a wide range of neuropsychiatric disorders are associated with that process. The increased levels of reactive oxygen species, often referred to as oxidative stress. So we got decades of evidence strongly supporting that. Can methylene blue play a role in that?

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

We've got decades of evidence that aging, neurodegeneration, even obesity, type 2 diabetes, and a wide range of neuropsychiatric disorders are associated with that process. The increased levels of reactive oxygen species, often referred to as oxidative stress. So we got decades of evidence strongly supporting that. Can methylene blue play a role in that?

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

We've got decades of evidence that aging, neurodegeneration, even obesity, type 2 diabetes, and a wide range of neuropsychiatric disorders are associated with that process. The increased levels of reactive oxygen species, often referred to as oxidative stress. So we got decades of evidence strongly supporting that. Can methylene blue play a role in that?

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

Absolutely, because methylene blue can come in and take some of these wayward electrons and prevent them from creating reactive oxygen species, which might help calm things down. One of the challenges with methylene blue, as we discussed before, you can have too little and too much. Same with methylene blue. You can have too little and too much. You don't want to accept too many electrons.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

Absolutely, because methylene blue can come in and take some of these wayward electrons and prevent them from creating reactive oxygen species, which might help calm things down. One of the challenges with methylene blue, as we discussed before, you can have too little and too much. Same with methylene blue. You can have too little and too much. You don't want to accept too many electrons.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

Absolutely, because methylene blue can come in and take some of these wayward electrons and prevent them from creating reactive oxygen species, which might help calm things down. One of the challenges with methylene blue, as we discussed before, you can have too little and too much. Same with methylene blue. You can have too little and too much. You don't want to accept too many electrons.

Huberman Lab
Transform Your Mental Health With Diet & Lifestyle | Dr. Chris Palmer

These electrons need to be flowing to the places they should be flowing. As opposed to oxidative stress, the polar opposite of that is called reductive stress. And that, too, has been found in people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and some other disorders. So it's really about dysregulated kind of balance between oxidative and reductive stress.