Full show notes: bengreenfieldlife.com/pharma

In this special repeat episode, Dr. Sandra Kaufmann breaks down which pharmaceuticals mimic the effects of things you already do for your health: what replaces a sauna session, what replaces a fast, what replaces a cold plunge (use code BENFORGE for $500 off select products), and what she takes with meals to blunt the damage from glucose spikes. I'm re-airing it now because of a new Nature paper finding that lithium is a naturally occurring brain nutrient, and that losing it may be one of the earliest steps toward Alzheimer's, at a dose in exactly the range Dr. Kaufmann described on this show years earlier.

You'll hear why she prefers pioglitazone over metformin for autophagy, how a Japanese gastritis drug connects to Alzheimer's, and how she worked her way up on an emergency blood pressure medication, starting at a dose that nearly knocked her off her feet and climbing to 100mg with no effect at all. The centerpiece is lithium (code BGL10 for 10% off): why the doses hidden inside popular nootropics are a fraction of what she considers useful, and everything it appears to do beyond mood, from controlling a pore in your mitochondria to building bone and growing new neurons. You'll also get her honest take on gene therapy versus pharmaceuticals, why peptides underperform in an older cell, and which molecule finally knocked astaxanthin off the top of her ranking system.

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