365: 5 Reasons You Get Burnt Out From Exercise, 10 Natural Alternatives To Common Medications,...

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, five reasons you get burnt out from exercise, 10 natural alternatives to common medications, the latest news on the health effects of cannabis, and much more.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power.

Speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Rachel, did you have an epic weekend?

I did have an epic weekend. Do you want to know what I did?

Let me guess. You went snowmobiling. Dog sledding and skiing, as we did last weekend.

That was the weekend before, yeah. No, I didn't. This weekend I went to Disney World. Universal Studios.

You mean the one in Florida?

Yes, I went to Florida.

Wow. You get around.

I know. And then this Friday, I'm going to Costa Rica as well. So it's a big. There's a lot going on right now, but.

Wow. You gonna wear your Mickey Mouse hat to Costa Rica?

I might wear my NASA sweater. I'm all geeked out on space right now.

What'd you think of Disney World?

Disney World was fun. I loved Universal Studios more. They have a massive Harry Potter World, which was. I love Harry Potter. So it was so, so much fun.

I remember Epcot. I used to go to Epcot.

That's where we went.

Yeah, we'd go down to Disney World and I, I, I would, I would always, always. Not like Disney World, but always look forward to Epcot. They had the Purple Dragon there. Do you, do you remember the Purple Dragon?

I didn't see the damn Purple Dragon.

Something like. Not Figaro. Figment. Figaro, Something like that. Anyways, the Purple Dragon was epic. I used to love the Purple Dragon. I had, like, a Purple Dragon stuffed animal, everything. Epcot was always the draw that you.

Slept with every night.

Screw Mickey Mouse. It's all about the dragon.

Damn. Yeah, well, I love NASA, but I heard you had a fun night last night.

I did have a fun night last night. So I, I shot a Snapchat video. If any of you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Snapchat. You can check out all the, all the goodness and the slightly controversial material that I tend to publish there because I know it's going to disappear in 24 hours. So I might as well just put the most embarrassing things up there and.

It can't be used as evidence.

That's right. At least not for. Not after that 24 hour period. So anyways, I made a sleep edible yesterday and what I did was I took a whole bunch of CBD capsules and I broke them open. And this is the CBD that's blended with turmeric. And I put them into this machine called a magical butter machine, which is like a home immersion blender for making home edibles. And then I put a bunch of organic goat ghee in there. Yes, goat ghee. And then black pepper. A couple tablespoons of black pepper. Cause black pepper, when you combine that with turmeric, it makes anything more bioavailable. We'll actually talk about the science behind that a little bit in today's show. I put some stevia in there for some sweetness so it didn't taste like crap with all the turmeric and the black pepper. And then I put some dark cacao in there and I put an entire packet. Have you ever had reishi spores? No. So reishi is a mushroom that I find tends to induce quite a bit of sleepiness and relaxation. And I put like an entire bag of reishi spores from this company called four Sigmatic in there. So super duper bioavailable, dual extracted reishi and then a little bit of sea salt. And I may or may not have decarboxylated a bit of cannabis and thrown that in there.

And golly gosh, Ben.

Then basically you just turn the blender on and it goes for like two hours and blends. And then I pour it into these little like Reese's peanut butter cup style.

Molds that you hid from your children.

Popped one last night before I went to bed. And.

What we'll do, we'll post the Snapchat story this weekend. Friday. We always do a weekly roundup to BenGreenfieldFitness.com on Friday, so you'll have to wait with bated breath. But that's the recipe. We'll post the recipe too, so it was interesting. Or if you're listening to this episode when it comes out, My Snapchat story right now is less than 20 still be available. See me, I walked barefoot and naked out to my cold pool for a plunge this morning through the snow as I do every morning. And I was talking to the camera as I went about what, what ensued last night. Let's just say there was a Little bit of of TMI involved.

So check it out.

Yeah, we should probably jump into today's show.

News flashes.

Well, needless to say with that, with that little sleep edible I made last night that I ate at about 8, 8:30pm I had a pretty dang good night of sleep last night, I must say.

Well, I'm not surprised. I am.

I slept like a rock. Despite some of the things that I mentioned in that Snapchat story that happened a few times during the night that woke me up. But we digress because there's actually a very interesting study on sleep that came out. And as usual, this is the part of the show where you learn about some cool research that has hit the streets this week. And I'll link to all these studies that I talk about over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com therapy365 today's show is 365 so go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 365 for the shownotes. But this first study was actually about banking sleep and whether banking sleep works. Have you ever wondered that, Rachel, if you're going to go into a weekend where you're bouncing around between Disney World and Costa Rica and maybe not sleeping too much, whether if you just sleep a whole bunch in the week leading up to that, if it helps, whether that works.

Right?

Yeah.

Does it?

Yeah. Well, I've tried it before thinking that it probably does, feeling like it probably does. But they finally studied this, the nerds in the lab coats. So they took a bunch of guys and they had them stay an additional two hours in bed each night over six days. So they basically calculated that these guys got 75 minutes of additional sleep over their six day, what they called their sleep extension condition. Which sounds lovely. I dig being part of that study where you just basically get paid to lay in bed. And then what they did was they sleep dead deprived them. They actually had them go through a weekend where they not only sleep deprived them, but then they also tested their endocrine or their hormonal and their metabolism regulation and then also some tests of like their cognitive function, you know, executive function, et cetera and compared it to a group that did not get the, you know, the sleep extension beforehand. And what they found was there actually is a beneficial effect of banking sleep before a period of sleep deprivation.

Does it go in to say how much is too much or anything like that?

How much is too much sleep?

Sleep, yeah. To bank.

It doesn't. I mean we do know that when you Sleep. Unless you're professional athlete who's exercising, you know, like three to six hours a day. Once you're banking more than nine hours of sleep, it turns out to be like a law of diminishing returns when it comes to longevity. So there's basically increased mortality associated with less than seven hours of sleep per night. And also increased mortality links to more.

Than nine sleep per night.

Especially if you're like Fat Bastard in the Austin Powers movie, where your extra time in bed is spent eating like a giant chicken leg with oil dripping down your chin. I would imagine that'd probably not be quality time spent in bed, but anyways, it's called sleep extension before sleep loss effects on performance and neuromuscular function. Really interesting article. With an obvious takeaway. Right. It turns out that if you do anticipate going through a period of time, like a weekend or whatever, where you're not going to sleep much, it actually does help to bank sleep or bank naps.

Yeah. And we can do that by taking the Bengreenfield Fitness Sleep Edible.

Yeah, careful with that one. All right, so speaking of being careful, Nutella. Do you like Nutella or are you guys just all.

I hate Nutella and I'm all. Vegemite, I was gonna say, but I would love to know if Vegemite is actually healthy or if I've just been lied to my whole life from a tast.

Vegemite is far inferior to Nutella, in my opinion. That's true. Anyway, last week, there were headlines all over the place about Nutella. Nutella causes cancer, and Nutella doesn't cause cancer. And so the media was going back and forth, and this was all based on this report that came out in May of 2016. So last year, the European Food Safety Agency reported on a whole bunch of potentially carcinogenic compounds that were found in. Drumroll, please. Refined palm oil, which Nutella contains craploads of. And so this report focused on three different things that you can find in refined oil. And by the way, did you know that when it comes to Nutella, it is so popular that it uses a quarter of the world's entire hazelnut supply? Because it's a chocolate. For those of you who haven't had it before, it's a chocolate hazelnut spread. And it is, I must admit, pretty tasty. But it's also got a lot of this palm oil.

Insane. Yeah. And it's still in all of our damn hazelnuts.

Yeah. So. So this report goes into one compound called glycitrol ester or ge, which you'll find in palm oil in much, much higher amounts than you find in other oils. And then it also goes into a couple other compounds that you find alongside gel. They're called MCPD compounds. And what this goes into is how ge, at least in animal studies, has been shown to be a genotoxin, meaning it can damage DNA. That's what a genotoxin is. And that might be a causative step in the formation of cancer cells. And this is the point in today's show where I cough like a mother because I just had a giant green smoothie. Hold on. I think I've got chlorella attached to my tonsils.

There we go. We won't even edit that out.

So raw here.

Anyways, so all these. All these European supermarkets started pulling Nutella off their shelves after this study came out, because, you know, that's what the headlines were saying was, was, you know, nutella causes cancer because it has palm oil in it. And palm oil has this GE stuff. And 3 MP MCPD and 2 MPCD, if found along with the GE, can increase its risk for cancer. So that's. That's kind of like the. The initial part of this whole Nutella scare. Now, first of all, there's a few things you should consider. We are different than rats and mice, and none of these studies were done in humans. That kind of limits the conclusion that you can draw from the data, because people aren't like rodents, you know, and one example of that, you know, for example, rodents can make. When rodents consume glucose, they can make vitamin C out of glucose. Humans simply can't do that. That's just one simple example of the difference between, like, the metabolism of rodents versus the metabolism of humans. And the other thing that.

You should kind of look into is that this report didn't look at Nutella. All it did was it looked at very, very high amounts of palm oil compared to other fats. And Nutella is actually produced at pretty low temperatures. I'm not saying Nutella is perfect, but it is produced at pretty low temperatures. And it appears that the palm oil that's produced at really high temperatures is the type of palm oil that results in what's called genotoxicity. Now, in addition, there's something else that makes palm oil extremely, extremely carcinogenic. And that would be anything that has any type of chlorine in it. Now, this might make you raise an eyebrow and basically wonder why the heck I'm talking about chlorine, because who eats chlorine? Well, believe it or not. If you consume sucralose or Splenda that has chlorine in space. Oh my gosh. That is basically what sucralose is. It's a polychlorinated artificial sweetener. So if you happen to be consuming Nutella and also consuming artificial sweeteners and like diet soda and stuff like that. Yes. You probably are not doing your body any favors when it comes to carcinogenic risk. In addition, if you are looking at the label of anything that you eat and it contains what's called refined palm oil, especially in high amounts, and especially refined palm oil in processed or packaged foods, which means that it's probably been he to a pretty significant extent. That's also a warning sign if that's a staple in your diet, that you need to be careful. However.

Yeah. Because it is in a bunch of different things. Right. It's not in a lot of things that I eat, but I know it's in margarine and ice cream.

Exactly. Did you just call it margarine?

That's exactly what it's called. And it's aluminium. All right. It's not aluminum.

That's right. But if you are like my children who once every two weeks when they visit grandma's house where grandma has Nutella in the pantry and they spread a tablespoon of that on their sourdough bread along with some almond butter, they're not going to be sprouting tumors anytime soon. This is like daily consumption of highly refined palm oil in rodents appears to be an issue. And we can extend that to humans to a certain extent. I'll link to the entire report on this in the show notes. But ultimately, having a little Nutella every now and again, it's probably a lot better than having vegemite. I'm just saying.

No, you're wrong.

All right, well, anyway, so moving on.

So don't worry, the battle continues.

Nutella isn't going to kill you. Live a little every now and again. Okay, so the next one is an interesting paper on turmeric and dha. So turmeric, I was just talking about, about how it's something that I put into edibles. I put it into a lot of stuff. Like I make an anti aging tea that I blend turmeric with because it makes what are called the beta lapachines in the anti aging tea. And I'll put put my recipe for that in the show notes. It makes them far more bioavailable. And we also know that there's something called piperine. Do you know what you get piperine from Rachel.

It sounds like pepper.

Yeah, pepper. So that's the other thing. Like I sprinkle turmeric and black pepper anytime I have a whole bunch of vegetables. Turmeric, black pepper, a little bit of fat like some olive oil or some avocado oil or a can of sardines. That's a really good mix. And this paper just goes into the science behind the drastic bioavailability increase that you get when you combine black pepper and you combine turmeric and you combine some type of fat. And in particular what this paper goes into is how the type of fat that appears to work really, really well at allowing curcumin and black pepper to increase the amount of DHA in your brain, which is really important because most people are DHA deficient. Most people don't have enough of this really important fat in their brain to allow for optimized cognitive and neural function. But if you get some form of DHA along with turmeric, along with black pepper into your diet on a regular basis, you vastly increase the amount of DHA that's available for your brain. And do you know what some of the major sources of DHA are?

Go ahead.

Algae and fish. So if you're vegan or vegetarian doing LG curcumin and when I say algae, that could be like spirulina, chlorella, stuff like that, you could put some spirulina, some black pepper and some turmeric into a morning smoothie. Also, of course, fish is a really good source of dha. So krill oil, fish oil, sardines, like I do on your lunchtime salad, with some turmeric and some black pepper. But if you do not currently have in your pantry as a staple, like some good organic turmeric and some black pepper and then some type of DHA based fat available in your refrigerator, your pantry, and you're not combining those on a daily basis, then you're basically inducing stupidity. You're missing out on an important part of life and you're shrinking your brain. What? Especially if you're doing that with daily consumption of, of Nutella.

What amount of turmeric and black pepper are we talking?

So what I usually do is, is I go through about a teaspoon or so of turmeric a day and the ratio is actually it's like a 20 to 1. It's a, it's a very, very strange ratio of turmeric to black pepper, meaning that you don't need very much black pepper at all. But I don't care because I freaking love pepper. So I easily go through a good teaspoon of, of black pepper and a good teaspoon of turmeric on a daily basis. Often more when you consider I've got turmeric blended, you know, with like the edibles that I make or with the, the, the anti aging bark tea that I make. Like, I'm, I'm a big, big fan of biohacking the foods that I eat, because I'm gonna eat. I want to absorb as many nutrients as possible. And I like the taste of turmeric and I like the taste of black pepper. It's a great mix. It's almost as good as turkey and cranberry or chocolate and peanut butter. What's, what's a mix that you really like? Rachel, is there any, any Cool.

I'm buying into the American, which I never used to think this was so weird, but.

Salted caramel salt.

You guys are on to something.

Peanut butter and jelly salt and caramel. Macaroni and cheese. Yeah. Every, every orthorexic food Nazi on the planet has shut off this podcast episode now that we've endorsed it.

You're fired.

Nutella and macaroni and cheese. Okay.

Don't worry.

Speaking of eating very tasty comfort foods, there was a brand new study on cannabis. The, the health benefits of cannabis. And by the way, I don't want to give anybody the impression that we're a bunch of stoners on this podcast. We are. We are not. I, you know, I'd, I look at something like cannabis or marijuana or weed or whatever you want to call it, the same as I do, you know, any, any other thing that you might find in my refrigerator, from fish oil to chicken to almond butter. Right. Like, it's something that I'll use when the time is appropriate, such as a little bit of THC for creativity when I'm working on my book of fiction or I'm working on, on my musical practice or, you know, for example, a little bit of CBD in the evening when I want to sleep or when I've, when I've got a little bit of stress and anxiety during the day. So I don't want somebody to think that we're just like token up all, all day long.

Right. And it's also, I think, important to talk about it because the plant, it's just a plant. And it's been so demonized.

Right.

By our culture. It's like, it's like got to have these conversations, you know?

Yeah.

To Level the playing field a little.

Like kale or spinach.

Right. Like when you grow the plant, you're like, why does everyone hate this?

Right.

Very strange.

Exactly. So anyways, this was a brand new study in which scientists dug through more than 10 separate clinical studies and then reported in the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine in a groundbreaking 400 page report on the benefits posed by cannabis use. And there was an enormous number of verifiable medicinal uses backed by huge amounts of high quality science. This particular article basically says this could spell the end for weeds categorization as a Schedule 1 narcotic, simply because of the dizzying number of health effects and everything from anxiety to stress to sleep to schizophrenia to epilepsy to diabetes to endocrine balance and. And beyond. Basically, there's very, very scant evidence that it's linked to strokes or heart attacks or acts as a gateway drug or anything like that. Like, this was one of the biggest studies ever done on it. And it turns out that, that it's actually relatively safe in moderate doses. Just like kale can kill you or destroy your thyroid if you eat too much of it. You know, obviously cannabis can have its drawbacks in excess, but turns out this stuff is pretty darn safe and pretty darn beneficial.

So awesome.

There you have it. We'll link to that one in the show notes too, if you want to check it out. And then of course, no discussion of weed, Nutella and sardines and sleep would be complete without a little discussion about sex. And there was a fascinating article that came out this week. Did you see this one, Rachel?

I saw this article and I immediately posted it to Facebook. It is insane and it makes so much sense. And it also shows me how little we still know about bodies and humans.

That's right. So this, this entire article is about how sex is communication so biological.

On a biological level.

On a biological level. So biologists now believe that sexual intercourse isn't just like this sperm delivery process, like the mailman bringing sperm to the vagina, but it's actually a biological communication. So what that means is that when a woman gets exposed to sperm, you see a bunch of changes in her actual immune system based on seminal fluid having these tiny molecules that act as biological signals. So once they get deposited in the vagina or in the cervix, what happens is the woman's immune system adopts a profile that tolerates those sperm proteins and they're known as transplantation antigens. Basically what that means is that if fertilization takes place so if you start to grow a baby inside the woman after, after she gets exposed to the sperm, this is, this is how. This is how.

This is the birds and the bees.

Kids are made babies. This is how babies are made kids. I meant to say, anyways, the immune cells will recognize those transplantation antigens on the developing baby and support the process by allowing the embryo to implant on the wall of the uterus, rather than like rejecting that embryo as a foreign entity. And so it turns out that when a woman gets exposed to sperm, it's kind of like when a child is born. There's really interesting research on this too. Like one of the best things you can do is give them little powdered peanuts and egg and all sorts of things that people tend to develop allergies to because they didn't get exposed to it early on in life. Even gluten to a certain extent. There's some really interesting studies on this. It turns out that by just getting exposed to sperm, a woman's immune tolerance for being a mother, immune tolerance to a baby, goes up. And so it's almost this form of communication and it increases a woman's immune tolerance. And it turns out, interestingly, that women who use barrier methods like condoms or cervical caps, and then they conceive, they have an elevated risk of what's called preclampsia. And all this means is that if you're constantly having protected sex and not ever getting exposed to your partner's sperm, you know, perhaps not using, let's say like the timing method to occasionally have unprotected sex, you actually have an increased risk of birth issues if that happens to be the case. And so.

And there's some really good books about this. I like one called the woman code by Dr. Elisa Viti that goes into how to, along with your partner, engage in unprotected sex that still exposes the woman to sperm without necessarily causing it to have kids. It's a decent one when it comes to that. I know you keep trying to say something, so go ahead.

Well, it's just really fascinating that they actually think that the reason why there's such a high risk of this preeclampsia in donated eggs or sperm donation is because the female hasn't had prior contact with the donors sperm. Yeah, until the egg gets transplanted into the woman.

It's really.

Why isn't that crazy?

It's really fascinating. So, I mean, actually we did, we. We only scratched the surface of what it goes into in the article in terms of sex being like this form of molecular biological communication. But it's really fascinating. If anything, it's worth the picture of all the, all the cute little sperm surrounding the egg. So check this out.

Check it out.

It was on the website quillet. And we'll link to all of these over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 365.

Special announcements.

Speaking of sperm, this podcast is brought to you by something that I did a couple of months ago to get myself all sperminated. That, that sounded wrong. I did not get terminated, put inside of me. I don't want sperm inside me. That doesn't appeal to me. However, I did increase my ability to create it. So here's the deal. When dudes get old, the vessels in their genitalia weaken and get filled with microplaque and that results in guys having a harder time getting it up. And the same thing can happen to women. Like, like your, your intensity of orgasm can go down, your wetness can go down, et cetera, as those vessels weaken. And so what I did was I went down to Florida and I got this painless high frequency acoustic wave therapy done on my man last week. We had a bunch of like cash registers opening up, blocking out what I was saying. So I'm trying to, to be nice now. Anyways, on my nether regions, regions I got these acoustic waves and what they do is they open up old blood vessels and they stimulate the formation of new vessels. And for a good couple of months after I got that procedure done, not only was I harder, but my hardness was occurring on an extremely frequent basis like I was a 13 year old boy. It's totally safe. Doesn't carry a lot of the side effects like blurred vision and heart palpitations that things like Viagra and Cialis can cause. There's no pills, there's no prescription. You just basically go down and, and you get your shockwave therapy done. I mean for me, I went in there, I filled out all the medical forms, I got interviewed by the doc, and then this nurse just like took the shockwave thing to me for you know, for like 20 minutes as I sat there with the, with the numbing cream in my nether regions. And, and that was it. Boom. Walked out. And literally within like eight hours, it was like night and day in terms of like ready size and vascularity and everything.

So it's called things were happening.

Yeah, it's called gains wave. Gains wave. And they're offering any of our listeners, men or women, can get this done 150 bucks off a gains wave treatment. And it's pretty easy. You just text the word GREENFIELD to 3131 31. Without your phone. Do it now. Text word GREENFIELD to 3131 31. I guarantee you'll be pretty pleased with the results. And if you want to go down to Miami and and do it in my. You can do it anywhere in the US but if you want to go down to Miami and get it done down in Miami, where I got it done with Dr. Gaines himself, which is a great name for this procedure, by the way. To just to be.

It is a great name for many.

Things anyways though, they'll give you a fat discount down at that Miami clinic if you happen to want to go to Florida and get it done down there in the sun.

Already live in Florida.

Yeah. So. So just give them a call. You go to health gains.com too. Or again, you can just text the word greenfield to 3131 31. There is also a video going around the Internet right now of me hanging upside down in my living room. Have you seen this one?

I've seen this one.

Okay. And your dog I now have in addition to. Because I'm working on my gymnastics skills and I'm trying to work on my ring muscle up specifically. Which by the way, if you want to learn like one really functional exercise that will blast your upper body strength through the roof. It's a ring muscle up.

So can you do it yet?

Yes, I can do three now in a row unstopped. I know there's a bunch of gymnastics junkies who are snickering at me for being brave.

That's pretty solid.

But I'm happy with that right now. I can do one like a month ago and I just published an article on gymnastics training@BenGreenfieldFitness.com by the way, if anyone go over there and listen into it. But anyways, so I also have a yoga swing now hanging in my living room. My kids play on it and I hang from it twice a day. And the recommendation is that to traction your spine. So spinal traction basically increases the space between your vertebra like by about 1 to 2 millimeters. And so that can alleviate like spasms in your low back. It can alleviate trigger point related pain. It can reduce the electrical activity and muscles of the back. So I recently injured my back. So I've been hanging from it just to allow the back to relax in a very therapeutic way. So it's different than like an inversion table. It's. It's you're, you're kind of like swinging back and forth and there's like little handles you can hang on to to put yourself into different positions, like the banana or the flapjack or the flying squirrel. Like I've got a little, I've got a little car. Really fun on the kitchen table with 10 different. So I learned all 10 moves over the course of a month and now I can just jump up there and throw down in a yoga swing move anyways though. So I have this. It's called a yoga trapeze. A yoga trapeze is technically what it's called. It's not a yoga swing, a yoga trapeze. And it's made by this company called Yoga Body. And what yogabody is offering anybody who's listening in right now is the opportunity to use this thing for one buck. You just get it shipped to your house for one buck. You try it for 30 days and then if you like it, you can buy the whole thing. But you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com yogabody it's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Yogabody and if you go there, you can get it for a dollar. Or you can also use, if you decide you want to just buy it all at once and get a free DVD that shows you how to use it, which is what I did. I have the DVD that kind of walked me and my kids through all the different moves. The coupon code that you use is BEN. So you go to BenGrenthelfitness.com YogaBody and use coupon code BEN. And this is. It's a pretty cool device. I dig it. You can hang it from pull up bars, you can hang it from your rafters, you can hang it from wherever you want to in your house. But it's pretty, pretty handy.

Have you convinced your wife to give it a go yet?

Yeah, I actually came upon her. I caught her hanging from it just the other day. You know what else I caught my wife doing? Was wearing my little neurostimulator for the head the other day.

Uh oh, it's beginning.

Photo bio. She said she had a headache and so she actually put that on.

Maybe she's a podcast.

I don't know.

Becomes the biohacker.

Seriously, the shoemaker's wife is finally wearing shoes. Speaking of putting lights on your head, this is also something that I highly recommend. The human Charger. Have you used this yet, Rachel?

I have, I have one and it's brilliant.

Okay, so here's something I haven't talked about much on the show. I've talked about how it can decrease the symptoms of jet lag and increase mental alertness and decrease, especially during the winter, like seasonal affective disorder, when you have one of these human chargers, which is basically like a light therapy device that passes calibrated white light into both of your ear canals to hit photoreceptors in your brain. What I haven't talked about is the fact that it actually results in a release of chemical compounds. When those photosensitive areas of the brain get activated, you actually get a release of serotonin, you get a release of dopamine, and you get a release of noradrenaline, which means that you not only feel more alert when you stick it in your head orifices, as I call the ears, the head holes, but you also feel happier, which is kind of cool. Like, you can use this as, like, I was going to say liquid happiness. Liquid happiness is alcohol, I guess. Light happiness and light happiness. Yes. Electrical happiness in your ears. And it's totally safe. And it's actually something. The way that I use it is when I'm sitting at the kitchen table in the morning sipping my cup of coffee and just, like, going through a few of my little things for the day. These days, it's writing fiction. I'm doing that in the mornings right now.

Basically, one big hairy, audacious task.

One big hairy.

Which we learned about in last week's episode.

That's right. Actually, what I do right now is I'm writing in the mornings on weekdays, and then on the weekends, I'm writing in the evenings. But, yeah, the book should be done. I'm targeting it to be done by April.

How exciting. Are you gonna get it published?

I'm meeting with Sony Picture Studios in March. We're talking about getting it turned into a movie. Definitely getting it published.

So you guys heard it here first.

Stay tuned. Anyways, you can read that over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com the BenGreenfieldFitness.com the Forest. But even more importantly, you can get one of these human chargers. You go to humancharger.com Ben and you use code B fitness to get 20 off a human charger. 20% off a human charger with code bfitness@humancharger.com Ben. And then finally, Rachel, have you looked at this week's upcoming recipes from this company? Hellofresh.

I haven't yet.

Okay, well, let me tell you about what we get to eat. I think we're gonna have this Thursday. I'M having my father over for dinner. He's back from India. He's always all over the world. My dad, my dad's like a globe trotting entrepreneurial, you know, one of those. He's, he's a very, very eccentric but endearing man who's constantly off these days discovering fringe health and wellness things like he's.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I know the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Anyways, so what we're going to have is balsamic chicken rustico with provincial roasted root vegetables. So this is chicken breast, grape, tomatoes, onion, garlic, baby carrots, Yukon potatoes, balsamic vinegar, herbs de Provenche and honey, along with a little Nutella. Might just smear some Nutella on there just to get our cancer on. Anyways, so what are you getting that?

How are you getting that?

So HelloFresh ships these to your house. They have vegetarian menus, they have classic menus, they have family menus. You get the instructions, you get all the ingredients. They source everything from really good, healthy, sustainable sources. And anybody listening in can actually get a week of deliveries from HelloFresh at $35 off, $35 discount. If you go to HelloFresh.com and the code that you enter is Fitness35, you get 35 bucks off, which is pretty big savings. So HelloFresh.com if you too want to eat as I eat and, and use code Fitness35 to get everything just delivered to your doorstep in this cute little special insulated box. And it's all right there for you. Open it up, cook away. It's fun for the kids too, because they get these little ingredient cards that kind of show them how to cook and everything. So check that brilliant out. And finally, the last thing I should mention is that I'm traveling all over the world these days. But my next stop is going to be the Nutritional Therapy association conference in Vancouver, Washington. You can go to BenGreensworthFitness.com NTA to register for that one. But I'm going hunting for sheep and boar, going bow hunting for sheep and boar down in Hawaii and then spearfishing for tuna down in Hawaii, all off of the Big island at the end of February. Then I'll be jetting up to Portland OR slash, Vancouver, WA to speak at this thing. So if any of you live in Portland or near Vancouver, Washington, and you want to come hang out and eat awesome, nutrient dense foods and listen to me Talk, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com NTA.

Listener Q& A.

Hi Ben, thank you so much for your podcasts and your articles and your fitness advice. It's been so useful and so helpful. So thanks so much. My question is that I'm 25 years old and I found that I've plateaued with my training. In fact, I've started to dip in performance and every time I try and push beyond that plateau, my body seems to fight back. So I'll either burn out or fall a bit sick. So I'm just really wondering whether maybe you've experienced this before. If you have any advice for what I'm going through. Thanks so much.

You know what his problem is, Rachel?

What?

Too much Nutella.

Too much Nutella.

Sorry, feel sick.

Should have, should have gotten on board with the Vegemite, mate.

Gotta hold back a little bit, man. Know how good it is. There's so many things you can mix Nutella with too. I used to actually eat a lot of Nutella. I used to just like do spoonfuls of it along with almond butter.

And we are just so into Nutella in this episode.

That's right, baby. Anyways though, actually, you know what my, my vice of choice is now. Did you listen to me interview Kevin Rose?

Uh huh.

Did you listen to that episode? And, and by the way, for those you want to listen to me interview Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg and a, a guy with a whole bunch of interesting ideas. We talk about raw chocolate on that episode in this company called Fruition in New York that he works with that makes these amazing, like very, very dark chocolate, raw cacao bars. And after that episode, I contacted Fruition and swiped away with my credit card and got 25 of these chocolate peanut butter custom bars delivered to my home. And you know what the greatest thing is about them? Because they're like raw, extremely dark cacao.

Do you get a buzz from them?

Well, you do, but what's the greatest thing else? Everybody in my house hates them except me because I like, like really, really dark chocolate. Almost like bitter pucker chocolate. And it's just got that little bit of a peanut buttery taste to it.

Sounds divine.

Yeah. Mouth orgasm anyways though, so there are, I would, I would, I would say there are five reasons that you can get burnt out from exercise that fly under the radar or that a lot of people aren't aware of. So when they start to hit a plateau or they burn out or they feel sick, sometimes it isn't just that your kid came home with the sniffles or that you're just pushing yourself Too hard. There can a lot of times be other things going on. So there are five things, five things I would recommend that you look into. So the first is fascial scarring and fascial adhesions. So fascia is the fabric that's woven throughout every part of your body to hold you together. And a lot of times people in the medical community, they'll, they'll disregard fascia as unimportant because you can't look at it on an mri. So it must not matter. But fascia is the most prevalent tissue in the body. You know, aside from, you know, I suppose the skin is probably another one that's pretty high up there. But it's also one of the most pain sensitive areas of the body. As a matter of fact, other than the nerve system, there's nothing more pain sensitive than the fascia, which covers the body from the top of your head, what's called your cranial aponeurisis, all the way down to your plantar fascia on the bottom of your feet. This is actually really interesting because a lot of times if you get plantar fascia work done on the bottom of your feet, you can actually do things like get rid of headaches related to fascial tightness or if you get like. Have you ever had craniosacral work done on your head?

Yep.

Yeah. So if you get that done, a lot of times you'll feel like tension in your hips or tension in your feet melt away. It's very interesting. I even have this device called a myobuddy. It's like a vibrating massage therapy device. And I will sometimes take that to the bottom of my feet or the top of my head. And it's weird. It's like a wake me up for the entire body. And that's because if there's tightening or there's scarring or there's restriction of the fascia in one place, it can cause pain and dysfunction in other locations. It can even in some cases, result in things like sickness or disease when you've got a whole bunch of problems in your fascial membranes. The other thing it can do is it can cause your nervous system to misfire in all sorts of kind of crazy ways. So it's really interesting how fascia ties together so many different parts of our body. And fascia can get pretty messed up if you're not taking care of it. So there's some really interesting studies that you can look at in photographs and videos online of scarred and fibrotic connective tissue Versus normal connective tissue and scarred and fibrotic connective tissue literally just looks like World War II combined to, like, nice laid down symmetrical fascia. So. Yeah. And you've probably seen fascia before. Like, if you've had, you know, you probably haven't had the opportunity to cut up too many steaks, Rachel.

No, I haven't.

But, you know, if you buy like a whole. Yeah. If you hope. If you buy, like, let's say like a leg of lamb or something like that, you have, like, this thin, yellowish white, kind of cellophane, like, membrane that's wrapped around the meat or wrapped around the muscles, and that's fascia. And so it surrounds all your muscles and muscle bundles and groups of muscle and blood vessels and nerves. And anytime you've been training a lot and producing a lot of damage to muscle, you know, you can get fascial wear and tear over time. You can get what are called, what are called cross links or casts or nets, and things begin to not move properly. But then also you get nerve pain, you get sensitivity, you get decreased range of motion, and a lot of times that results in plateaus in performance or, or. Or increased prevalence of injuries or sickness or just not feeling all that well while you're working out.

Yeah, okay, that was gonna be. My question was, how would you know if this was the issue? So nerve pain, decreased range of motion.

Yeah, a lot of. Lot of soft tissue restriction, chronic pain, what are called fascial restrictions. And in many cases, if you take a pain pill or a muscle relaxer or an antidepressant or one of those special edibles I made last night, some of the pain melts away. And a lot of times that's because some of your fascia is relaxing. But a lot of the cross linking and a lot of the scar tissue and adhesions, those don't go away. And really, the best way to get these worked on is to do deep tissue work. And you could do that on yourself. Right. There's books like Kelly Starrett's Becoming a Supple Leopard, for example, is a fantastic book.

I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But I have, for example, an article just about mobility online about how to do things like deep tissue work and also what's called traction to begin to work on this fascia yourself. And granted, there are some areas that are hard to get into that you need to hire a massage therapist to get into. But if you're not doing plenty of deep tissue work, that would be reason number one. So I definitely look into the health of your fascia. And then number two, well, before we. Before we move on from the fascia, I actually, I was shredding all week on the snowboard Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But the guy I was shredding with, he actually flew up from Virginia. His name's Scott Dolly. I'm gonna have him on the podcast soon. And by day we were shredding, and by night, he was doing really, really intense fascial body work on me. So this is a topic near and dear to my heart, because I just got my fascia reamed on for three days in a row, and I feel like a new man when he's shoving. He even had what are called hawk tools, which are very similar to Graston that we've talked about on the show before. They're like these tools scraping tools that are shaped like medieval torture devices. And he was scraping the fascia on my entire body and opening up areas that I haven't touched literally in, like, years as far as is really working on adhesions in those areas. And I'm moving like a new man this week after he worked on me. But, I mean, he worked on me a good six hours over the course of the weekend. And I realized not everybody's going to have a. A grass and therapist come to your house and work on you. But. Yeah, well, but the trade was that I showed him around the slopes and he showed me around my fascia anyways, though, so topic near and dear to my heart, and I'm getting plenty of kind of like fascial guys actually in the podcast in the next couple of months, so stay tuned to the podcast as well. Okay, so the next thing I would look at is the tone of your vagus nerve. And we have done lots and lots of podcasts on the vagus nerve, which is the wandering nerve that starts at your brain stem, kind of similar to the fascia. Right. A little bit of. A little bit of a corollary here. Travels through several different major organs in your body, and it does a ton of things that you're probably unaware of. But basically, the vagus nerve innervates organs. It innervates the heart. It's involved with the inflammatory response to injury, including injuries that might occur from things like runs and weight training sessions. It is involved.

With breath, with activation of lung tissue, all sorts of different things. We've done entire episodes on the vagus nerve and the importance of the tone of the vagus nerve. It's why every morning, one of the first things that I personally do is I test my heart rate variability. So I roll over when I wake up in the morning, as we were talking about in the morning routines episode last week, and I strap on my little heart rate monitor. And while I'm doing my journaling and my gratitude, I test the tone of my vagus nerve. And what I found is that in athletes who are overtrained or who are on the brink of injury or illness, they tend to have very low vagal nerve tone. Meaning, specifically, if they test their heart rate variability, their heart rate variability is low. And a lot of times, what's called the power or the high frequency score, the parasympathetic nervous system score, that's also really low. There's a whole bunch of things that you can do to increase the tone of your vagus nerve. Three of the most powerful, in my opinion. Number one, something I mentioned earlier that I do every morning, and that is a cold soak or a cold shower or some form of cold therapy where your face is getting wet. That's why cryotherapy chambers don't count, because your face doesn't get wet. You don't get vagus nerve activation when you step in one of those fancy little chambers. Have you been in one of those, Rachel?

No, not yet.

So, I mean, the convenience is that your clothes and your skin don't get wet. But you pay 50, 60, 70 bucks to step into one of these special cryotherapy chambers, and there's a cool response. You get a decrease in. In inflammatory markers, and you get an increase in the strength and robustness of your immune system. But they really don't do crap for your vagus nerve. So you want to do some form of what's called cold thermogenesis with water, specifically getting your face underneath the water. So, like, when I go out and I do my cold soak in the morning, my rule is my head has to go under at least five times. Or when I'm doing, like, a really icy cold shower, my head has to go into the shower until I get a little bit of that ice cream headache. So that's what you're going for, for, I mean, trying to tone your vagus nerve with cold water. Another really, really powerful way. One of the more powerful ways to tone the vagus nerve is with jaw therapy, which you can do yourself. I actually have a video. If you go to YouTube and you do search for Ben Greenfield, jaw realignment, I shot a video with my massage therapist where we demonstrate exactly how to do jaw therapy. Because your trigeminal nerve in your jaw is attached to your vagus nerve. And a lot of times. Go ahead.

I just remember watching that video and I just, I felt so much pain just by watching it. It's intense. It's intense.

It's not comfortable. But you could show that video to your massage therapist and just be like, hey, do this to me. Assuming that you trust them and that you're okay with them cowboying their way around your jaw, but you can also do it yourself. Like actually that, not to beat a horse to death, but that massage, vibrating massage device I was talking about that I can use on my feet or the top of my head, I'm not using that on my jaw. Like I'll just, it's that, that myo buddy vibrator, I'll put it up against my jaw and just open and close my jaw repeatedly with that pressed up against it. And that's great for the, for the vagus nerve. So some form of jaw therapy I'd also recommend. And then finally.

Heart rate variability training. So don't just test your heart rate variability, but there is, there's one technique that I highly recommend. It's called the quick coherence technique. You can go to the website heartmath.org and read more about how to do this particular technique. It's very simple and you're gonna love it, Rachel, because it's very woo. I know you're, you're very woo girl. That's the only. Don't judge me through a 10 day Vipassana meditation.

Yes, that's true.

You have to be woo to like that stuff anyways though. So you, you think of something that you're very grateful for or that you have a lot of love in your life for, and you close your eyes, you take a deep breath and you imagine that getting placed into or on or near your heart with your eyes closed. And that's, I mean it's that simple. But believe it or not, there are so many people walking through their entire day living their lives, not just closing their eyes and occasionally thinking of what it is that they're grateful for and imagining that feeling washing over their body and going into their heart. And if you hook yourself up to. Not to get all scientific and nerdy with this, but if you hook yourself up to heart rate variability training like a heart rate variability training app, and you do this, you will be shocked probably that doing the. If you want to acutely change your heart rate variability score as you're measuring that, or the alternate Nostril breathing, both of those just jack the HRV score up through the roof. And if you do this on a regular basis, you train yourself how to have better vagal nerve tone. So that would be number two would be low HRV or low vagal nerve tone as another source of like a hidden source of a reason you get burnt out from exercise. So the next one that I often see, especially these days is not enough carbs shocker, meaning everybody who's into like ketosis and bulletproof and all the, all this other stuff, like especially athletes. Here's the problem. In the same way that there is trickle down advice from the bodybuilding industry that you must drop everything you're doing as soon as you finish a workout to go scarf down chicken breast and rice and broccoli and maltodextrin and fructose and whey protein. And all these things are going to help you get swole and anabolic and keep you from shriveling up to a tiny little raisin after your workout. Which is not true. Again, that's not true.

We talked about that.

In the bodybuilding industry, who's spending, you know, two a day, two hour workouts in the gym and trying to maintain 250 pounds of solid muscle at 3% body fat. Like that's the population that may benefit from prioritizing post workout nutrition. That and the high school or college football player, you know, the hard gain or lean kid who's trying to put on muscle. The rest of us actually benefit more from a longevity, a growth hormone and a testosterone standpoint from actually waiting for a little while after the workout to eat well. There's also this trickle down advice from the, from like the medical community that the best way to achieve fat burning status, the best way to get into ketosis is to eat no more than 40 to 60 grams of carbohydrate per day. And so we have all these crossfitters and Ironman triathletes and Spartan racers and all these folks like basically logging their diets and avoiding getting anywhere near.

Excess of 60 grams of carbohydrates per day, when in fact not only can you measure your blood ketones and still be in this high fat burning ketotic state with as high as 150 to 200 grams of carbohydrates per day if you're a very active person, but you also are living a life that's very different than say that person who's like trying to control Ms. Or epilepsy or seizures and is not exercising to the level that you are, but is writing books on ketosis. Right. There's a difference between ketosis for the average sedentary person trying to manage a medical condition and ketosis for the active athlete. So based on that, what I've found is that for a lot of the people that I work with, at the end of the day, we'll eat 100 to 200 grams of carbohydrates briefly, kind of get knocked out of our fat burning machine status for like one or two hours, but have more than adequate liver glycogen and muscle glycogen stores for the next day's workout without all the deleterious effects of excessive carbohydrate restriction. Because I went through a period of time where I. Where I was eating very, very low amount of carbohydrate. And I took hits on my thyroid, I took hits on my testosterone, I took hits on my immune system. And so you may simply need to eat more sweet potato fries. You know what I'm saying?

That's a simple one.

Yep, exactly. So ketosis for one person, the sedentary person trying to manage a medical disease, is not the same as ketosis for an athlete. So make sure you're eating enough carbohydrates. For most active people, it's 100 to 200 grams a day at least. The next thing that I'd mention would be hidden causes of fatigue. I did a whole podcast on this, but there is a shockingly high number of people who have some type of chronic infection or immune system issue that is resulting in chronic fatigue. And in particular in that podcast episode, which I'll link to and you can listen to in full detail. In particular, what we get into is first, chronic infections, right? So this would be like Epstein Barr or human herpes virus or some of these things that a lot of people have but don't realize. These are things that you can test for. But what happens is that you'll have lab markers consistent with really high pathogen activity and infection. So you'll see a lot of really high white blood cell counts or abnormal patterns of T cell counts. A lot of times you'll see an enlargement of the lymph glands, and all of those can be associated with chronic infection. We also talk in that podcast about biotoxin illness. This would be more of the type of things that you would get from mold or fungus. You can also test for this. Cyrex labs will allow you to test for a lot of environmental fungal biotoxins. But in many Cases, you might be living in an area that has a lot of fungus, a lot of mold, or you might have had an exposure to that. And that's another source of chronic fatigue that can be healed. And we talk about that, too in that podcast. There's also a really good website about this called Surviving Mold survivingmould, if you want to delve into how to test and how to fix an issue like that. Another one is impaired methylation. And impaired methylation can cause chronic fatigue. It's kind of a complex biochemical process, but basically, methylation is how your body produces coenzyme Q10 and carnitine, and those are really essential for producing cellular energy. And methylation also regulates gene expression, it regulates detoxification, it regulates folate metabolism. And folate's really important for the synthesis of things like DNA and rna, and it promotes normal immune function. And if you have issues in terms of your ability to methylate, you'll have really low folate and really low B12. And you can test methylation status with something like a 23andMe genetic analysis. You'd take your 23andMe test, and you log into your 23andMe account and you download the results, and then you upload those to a website like Genetic Genie. And Genetic Genie will tell you if you have some methylation pathway issues, like a genetic mutation that will cause that. And in many cases, it's as simple as, like, taking a really good multivitamin that's got something like methyl tetrahydrofolate in it, which allows you to get adequate amounts of folate and B12. But you wouldn't know that unless you test. And you wouldn't know that that's what's causing your chronic fatigue unless you test. I mean, you could just try taking, like, a really good vitamin B complex like that. And if your chronic fatigue goes away, well, there's your answer. But ultimately, methylation is another issue. And the. The multivitamin I recommend most often is the. The thorn ampm1. Like, it's got really high levels of the methyltetrahydrofolate in it. So that's. That's the one that I'm a fan of.

So how would you go about figuring out what the issue is?

Testing your genetics for methylation number one, mold test for, like, the. The biotoxin doing. Doing like a. Like a white blood cell test for the chronic infections. There were two others, though, that I didn't even mention that we talked about in that podcast. One's mitochondrial dysfunction and one's Gut dysfunction and mitochondrial dysfunction is usually an issue related to mutations in mitochondrial DNA. Some people who have mitochondrial dysfunction, it's because of dietary issues. It can be. Typically, I find mitochondria is more like invisible variables, right? Like poor air, poor lighting, poor electricity, poor water. Like a lot of those are kind of like hidden causes of mitochondrial damage. But mitochondrial dysfunction and gut dysfunctional function, that's kind of a no brainer. But you, you would have decreased absorption of nutrients because you have, you know, leaky gut issues, chronic inflammation, impaired detoxification, basically like a disrupted gut microbiome from elevated levels of like candida or intolerance of gluten or intolerance of lactose. Like that's something you can also test. You, you can test for dysbiosis, you can test for intestinal permeability, you can test for bacterial overgrowth, you can test for food intolerances. But gut dysfunction, even if you don't have a lot of bloating and gas, et cetera, just pure fatigue, can be related to the gut as well. So obviously there's a lot of testing, like you just mentioned, Rachel, that you would need to do, right? You'd get like a stool panel for the gut and you would get like a blood test. For the, for the chronic infection issue, you get a mold test, like through Cyrex for biotoxins. You would get a genetic test to look into your methylation status and then you would test your heart rate variability. You would make sure you're eating enough carbohydrates, and you would work on fascial adhesions with deep tissue work. And the only other thing that I didn't mention, and I'll link to one final article on here because I said I was going to give you five reasons, I just gave you four. Right? Fascial adhesions, low hrv, inadequate carb intake, and hidden causes of fatigue. The last one would just be a poorly structured or poorly periodized training program. And this answer is getting a little long in the tooth. So in terms of periodization, like the main thing, go, go read the article that I wrote about like all the different variables from like mitochondrial density to strength training to power training, to VO2 max training, to lactic acid threshold and muscle endurance training and how to lay those out properly throughout the year. The article is actually called how to Look Good Naked and Live a Long Time. But it's like a really good introduction, like how to train different energy systems and how surprisingly, infrequently you need to train like you only need to do a VO2 max training session once every two weeks. And this is based on exercise science research. To maintain VO2 max, a lot of people are doing that like four or five times a week. Or you only need to do like a high intensity interval training session a maximum of twice a week to maintain mitochondrial density. But again, a lot of people are doing that type of thing every day. So understanding, like how infrequently you need to do these type of sessions and then laying them out in a proper way throughout the year, which can come down to working with a coach or working with a trainer, or getting on a good training plan. All that is important too. Just basically incorporating this process of periodization, which means splitting the training year into certain periods where you're working on specific components of fitness. So you're not trying to throw them all at your body at once and just basically shove your body under the bus.

Right? I'm information overloaded. There's so much there.

Podcast is all about give you some dense, actionable information. So that's where I would start. I'll link to resources for each of those five different reasons you get burnt out from exercise in the show notes, but hopefully that gives you some general direction to work with. And then just like lay off the Nutella just a little bit.

Hi Ben and Rachel, this is Dave calling from Australia. I just want to say thank you for all of the amazing content you guys put out. It's absolutely phenomenal. I have a question about testosterone and sperm production as it relates to infrared. My wife and I are going to be trying to have our first child in the next couple of months and I currently do one session of hot yoga per week. It's an infrared, far infrared style of hot yoga that's at about 38 degrees Celsius. And I'm wondering whether you think that would interfere with sperm production and testosterone production. Thanks, guys. Can't wait to hear your response. You know, I think our. Our Australian listener database has increased considerably, Rachel, especially the. The male Australian contingent. I think you've got some crushers in Australia who have become podcast fans.

Either that or I'm massively affirmative actioning and putting a lot of Aussies on the podcast.

I'll have to check our Google Analytics and how they've changed since you came on as a podcast sidekick.

Yes, Dave, thanks for calling. I love hearing from comrades.

Female vegetarian Australian lists have all gone up. Yeah, yogis, good stuff. Woo woos. Anyways though, yes, if your wife and you are trying to have your first child in the next few months, you already learned that one important thing is to have unprotected sex a lot, to make sure her immune system is all ready, that all those sperm are, whatever, paving the way. Her cervix and paving the way.

Hot yoga, unfortunately, might not be doing you any favors because that kind of acts a little bit in the same way as hot tubs do in terms of, like, you know, drawing your testicles up inside your body and restricting some of that flow, or, I'm sorry, it's cold that draws them up inside your body, it's hot, that drops them. But basically, heat does appear to potentially cause a decreased production of sperm, unless it's heat from infrared rays, which you just referred to. And infrared can actually cause an increase in sperm production. And the reason behind this is. And the type of light is crucial, by the way. I'll get into that in a second.

But the creation of sperm cells and the creation of testosterone is based to a certain extent on mitochondrial energy metabolism. And interesting. This is why, ironically, things like Viagra have a really negative effect on sperm production, because drugs and compounds that interfere with mitochondrial energy metabolism in the Leydig cells of your testes can actually cause decreased sperm production. And Viagra, along with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors like antidepressants, those can do it. Statins can do it. Alcohol can do it. We have a whole podcast episode. If you were to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and just do a search there for sperm. Totally safe for work function to type into a search engine, by the way, just make sure you do it@bengreenfoldfitness.com Not.

Not in Google.

Yeah, unless you want some really cool Family Guy clips. Sperm is something that we've talked about quite a bit in the past. We love to talk about sperm and Nutella, and we have some really good episodes on sperm that we've done and how to increase sperm production. And there are other drugs and compounds that support ATP production in the mitochondria. Some of those would be like thyroid hormones, right? Or organ meats. Caffeine, surprisingly enough, can support ATP production in the mitochondria. Magnesium can do it. But a lot of those will boost sperm count and they'll boost general fertility, Right? So drink your cup of coffee and suck it down with some armor, thyroid, and you're well on your way to producing massive amounts of kiddos. But sperm production and ATP production in mitochondria, particularly in the mitochondria around your testicles, Those can get stimulated with exposure to red and infrared wavelengths. That's been shown in studies to boost testicular sperm production and viability of sperm. By the way, blue light and UV light have been shown to do just the opposite. Like a tanning bed, or extreme amounts of UVA and UVB, or like nude tanning out in the sunshine between 10am and 2pm Those could harm the mitochondria. Those could suppress ATP production in the mitochondria and reduce sperm count and reduce fertility. And that would not just be the sperm production in the testicles, but also the health of free sperm cells post ejaculation. They've actually found that sperm that get exposed to red light, even post exactly their little tail, swim faster. Right. No, I'm serious. The tail of sperm cells get powered by the mitochondria and it's very red light sensitive. Fascinating. The form of red light used in these studies that have been shown to increase sperm is about 600 to 950 nanometers of light. That's the wavelength of light that you'd want to use. And it appears that it's mostly efficacious when your balls are close to that light source, which they're not necessarily going to be during hot yoga. Especially when you consider that infrared rays can't penetrate clothing. That's why when you lay in a biomat or you do an infrared sauna, wearing as little clothing as possible is best for your body. I don't know if you're doing your yoga nude, but I doubt it's a thing.

It's a thing. Nude yoga. Well, it exists. Yeah, but I don't think he's practicing nude yoga. I don't know. Dave, are you.

Two feet away from me is a panel of lighting that emits light in the 600 to 700 nanometer wavelength. It's a visible red LED light. It's called a Joovv J O O V V. We've got a link. It's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Joovv or I'll link to an article that I wrote about it in the show notes. That's how I do it. I pull down my pants while I'm working. They might even be down.

Please don't say you're naked right now, please.

No, but sometimes when I'm on the phone or I'm working on emails, I just pull my pants down and for five to 20 minutes a day I shine it on my. And I don't do that because I'm necessarily trying to spit out a bunch of babies. I do it because it's also been shown to have dramatic, dramatic effects. Tripling effects on testosterone levels as well. So we can help out with that too. I have this whole article, 17 different ways to biohack your testosterone levels. I'll link to it in the shownotes, but I mentioned that as one of the methods. So you could certainly do something like that. You could do hot yoga, but you need to do it naked, Dave. If you're gonna do it, you need.

To just be in a permanent downward facing dog.

Or what's that other one? The frog position?

Happy baby.

I just feel super vulnerable. Or the happy baby position is the other one. Those are really good hip openers. But yeah, you have to. You have to. You have to have a lot of trust to be able to do that. I don't know why. I just feel like, really, I feel vulnerable when I'm doing happy baby. Does that say something about me? Happy baby or frog pose? I just kind of feel a little bit uncomfortable.

No, it's a good thing. That's half the reason. It's half the point. Yeah, everyone feels a little uncomfortable.

I always wonder too, if I'm like a guy in a room full of women doing hot yoga and tell me if this is correct, Rachel. Like, if the women feel a little bit weird or vulnerable or self conscious, like getting into the frog pose with their ass in my face, wearing their tight pants. Because usually the guys go in the back because the guys don't want to see everybody else doing them. Like, seeing them doing, like, crappy versions of yoga.

Yeah.

Ladies, it's not because we want to watch you. It's because we're embarrassed. But at the same time, do the girls up front get, like, really self conscious?

No, I don't think so. I think everyone's there to practice yoga.

Okay. Yeah, I was going to say, like, I'm. I'm not. I'm not checking out your booty. I'm just trying to. To ignore the extreme discomfort of being in the frog pose. But either way, just.

Thanks, Ben.

Thanks. Thanks for inviting me.

Thanks for clearing that up. Yeah.

All right. There we go. So don't get any sperm on your red light, Dave, and have fun.

Hi, Ben and Rachel, Jen here from New Hampshire.

I am a huge fan of the.

Show and I feel like my life.

Has definitely improved for the better. Obviously not improved to the worst, but.

Since I started listening to you, I feel like the quality of life is much better. But I do have some questions.

One is about intermittent fasting for teenagers.

Is it recommended? If so, do they follow the same protocol as adults?

And also I'm trying to do more natural healing like taking turmeric for anti inflammatory things.

But I just wonder if you could give a quick rundown of things.

I can. Ways I can replace like ibuprofen.

Things for heartburn, things for mood. Just the basics like natural ways. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

I love this question because I'm all about having a natural medicine cabinet.

Yes, it is a brilliant question and I have my pen and paper ready because I'm taking some serious notes.

I need my wife to listen. Speaking of my wife listening to podcasts, by the way, I need my wife to listen to this one because the very first one I want to talk about I've been trying to get her on the bandwagon of for years because it just makes my heart ache every time I see her popping ibuprofen. And she still does it like, like every couple of months. She'll get a headache and she'll just take ibuprofen. And I always tell her take curcumin because curcumin does the same thing in terms of reducing pain and inflammation without wearing away your gut lining or kicking your liver to death. So it's, you know, we talked about curcumin earlier. You already know if you're a smart cookie and you didn't fast forward that section that you can blend it with black pepper and a fat source to increase absorption even more. But there was even one study where they found that curcumin outperformed ibuprofen. This was for knee pain after six weeks of use. And the dosage doesn't have to be super high. It's about one to one and a half grams per day. But instead of ibuprofen, have curcumin around and understand that curcumin, A, unless it's blended with black pepper and fat, or B, unless it's in what's called its phytosomal form, is notoriously poorly absorbed. The form of curcumin that I have in my medicine cabinet is made by Thorn. It's a phytosomal form of curcumin that you don't necessarily have to whip out your Blendtec blender and blend with black pepper and a giant fillet of fish to actually make absorbable. You can just pop the capsules and you don't need that much one to one and a half grams. So curcumin as an alternative to ibuprofen or any other nonsteroidal anti inflammatory drug like Celebrex or aspirin. I highly recommend curcumin. So that would be number one.

Are we going to talk about nature? CBD for pain relief?

Nature? Well, for those of you listening, nature, CBD is like, it's, it's a blend that I personally designed and it has curcumin in it. It has curcumin, it has ashwagandha, has lemon balm, it has magnesium and it has cannabidiol. I broke up, I broke open 40 capsules last night in that Snapchat video and put them into that edible that I made. That's a lot.

That's a lot. That's a lot.

So good.

I need to say this. That supplement changed my life and I'm not kidding. I experienced experience very chronic period pain. And I'm 29 and probably for the last decade it's been like crazy, crazy bad. And I have always taken ibuprofen once a month and I didn't believe, but CBD could do anywhere near what ibuprofen does and it's so much better. I can't believe it. So I feel like we have to talk about cbd.

Well, I also need to say this. You can't find it on my website anymore.

Why not?

Unless you. So it's hidden. You have to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com CBD you have to know the URL to go to it because PayPal shut me down yesterday.

Oh my God.

So it's stupid. It's, it's the same as, as, you know, same as cannabis. Right. Like we were talking about how it shouldn't be a Schedule 1 control. Well, the form of CBD that I have on the site, fully legal, made from European organic hemp. However, PayPal yesterday decided they wanted to shut down all my website payment functionality if CBD could be found on the website. So now you actually have to know the URL to buy CBD because it's like hidden. So you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com CBD don't tell PayPal. By the way, if anybody's listening, you have a contact at PayPal let me know because, because like, this supplement is changing literally hundreds of thousands of people's lives and, and these payment companies don't want you to sell it because, I don't know, they don't want, they don't want the kids, I don't know, getting addicted to heroin because they took some gateway drug for their knee Pain, whatever. So anyways, we digress. Curcumin, though. Curcumin as an alternative to ibuprofen. Yes, for an alternative to Ambien or Valium or any of these other sleep aids that, yes, put you to sleep, but B, vastly inhibit your ability to get into deep sleep, which is where memory consolidation and neural repair and recovery occur. Which is why if you take Ambien or Valium, you sleep all night, but you're still kind of sleepy. You still have some brain fog the next day. Best alternative to that, in my opinion, is microdosing with melatonin and pH GABA. And the best way to do that, I think, is this little powder called Sleep Remedy. And it works just as well. Was designed for hard charging Navy SEALs and athletes, but anybody can use it. You can be a soccer mom and benefit from this stuff. But that's what I have around as an alternative to, like these knockout sleep drugs. And I guess what I have now as an alternative is also those edibles I made last night.

So.

Which we won't be selling@Greenfield Cinemasystems.com because PayPal would.

That's right.

Damn you, PayPal.

I wouldn't be able to sell those anyways. They'd be like $20 per tiny little Reese's peanut butter cup size edible with everything I've put into those. There's a lot of other stuff for sleep, but if you're gonna pick one thing, I'd say it'd be like that CBD stuff you were talking about, Rachel, or melatonin. So then there is. There's another. Really? I didn't realize how many people use this. Like eye drops for chronic dry eyes that suppress the inflammation that disrupts tear secretion. But you get burning and redness and discharge and immune suppression and inflammation suppression. It's basically a version of cyclosporine, which is almost like an antibiotic, but believe it or not, for the eyes. If you're using anything for the eyes, fish oil, fish oil, and specifically the omega 3 fatty acids from fish oil can help dry eyes and tears contain some oil. But if you don't have enough oil in your tears, which you won't unless you're eating adequate amounts of omega 3 fatty acids. Tears won't lubricate your eyes well enough. And so fish oil reduces inflammation in the eyes. You. It reduces your risk of developing macular degeneration, which is a common cause of blindness and eye issues. And you can simply take anywhere from 1 to 4 grams per day of fish oil as an alternative to any type of eye medication, like a really good, high quality fish oil packaged with really good amounts of antioxidants like astaxanthin and vitamin E to keep it from going rancid. Fish oil as an alternative for eye medications, that's another one, by the way. I'm not a doctor. Don't misconstrue any of this as medical advice. Please speak with your physician before you stop taking any pharmaceuticals. Blah, blah, blah. Anyways, though, so that's official for your eyes, the next one for statins. So there's statins like Lipitor and Crestor and Lavastatin, you know, all these things that are called HMG CoA reductase inhibitors. They call them that because they reduce cholesterol by inhibiting that enzyme, HMG CoA, which is necessary for cholesterol production. And the side effects include liver and muscle damage and complete stripping of coenzyme Q10 from your body, which means that you experience a whole bunch of mitochondrial damage and a lot of other metabolic issues related to stripping coenzyme Q10 from your body. Well, if you're trying to balance cholesterol, specifically if you're trying to decrease the amount of triglycerides, which are really more of kind of an independent risk factor for heart disease than cholesterol is, there's another compound that can help to do this and that can block the action of HMG COA reductase without causing all the issues that statins do. And it is called Bergamot orange. You can get it as an essential oil. B E R G A M O T orange. So if you have really high triglycerides, really high cholesterol, you know, like familial hypercholesteremia or some of the things just jacking your LDL through the root, then Bergamot orange, you can do a few drops of that in a glass of water in the morning and in the evening. Really, really good without the liver damage, without the muscle damage. So that would be. That would be number four. Number five, there are a lot of things that are prescribed now for pain related to nerve damage, like diabetic neuropathy and seizures and things like that. Neurontin is a really, really quite popular one for that. But the side effects are like drowsiness and confusion and dizziness and trouble walking, which nobody wants. But they've actually done a study where they've taken a whole bunch of people on Neurontin and they switched them to 600 milligrams a day of something called alpha lipoic acid. And not only did the subjects in the study note less pain relief, but they had a complete disappearance of their neuropathic symptoms and then a recurrence of it two weeks after they stopped taking the alpha lipoic acid. And the authors concluded that alpha lipoic acid is an effective and safe and cost effective treatment option for the majority of people with diabetic neuropathy. So alpha lipoic acid would be number five to have around, especially if you are somebody who wants to improve your nerve health without taking something like Neurontin. So that would be another one. The next one would be Fosamax. Fosamax is an extremely popular osteoporosis drug. It's what's called a biphosphonate. So it inhibits the work of osteoclasts in your bone. Those are the bone cells that break down and remove old bone. And it also causes things like stomach ulcers and osteonecrosis, which is the death of your jawbone and tooth loss and pain and infection. And what they've shown is that the combination of calcium and vitamin D can actually cause very, very similar effects to Fosamax in terms of improvements in bone mineral density without all those side effects. And I would even go one step further and tell you that if you want to ramp up bone building cellular activity without getting some of the risks that you can get with excessive vitamin D intake and excessive calcium intake, which is basically what's called hypercalcification. So you want to avoid that. You add in vitamin K. So a good vitamin D, vitamin K blend as an alternative to the osteoporosis drug. Fosamax is another one that I would highly recommend. I take vitamin D and vitamin K just about every day in the winter. My kids take it every day for their teeth because both of them have remineralized their teeth and gotten rid of cavities that they developed by using vitamin T, vitamin K, and a special remineralizing tooth powder that my wife makes. I can get into that later. But basically vitamin D, vitamin K, highly recommend that one as another. So I already recommended fish oil. I'm going to recommend it again. Prozac. Prozac is a really popular antidepressant. It's also a serotonin reuptake inhibitor or an ssri. That means it helps to keep serotonin floating around in your brain longer. But one of the things that can do the same thing thing, making your cell membranes more responsive to neurotransmitters like serotonin that latch onto those cells, receptor sites is fish oil. So again, a good, high quality fish oil. Now, for antidepressant activity, for eye health, all you need is like 1 to 4 grams. For antidepressant activity, you need anywhere from 4 to 10 grams. Right. So you need a higher dose if you're using fish oil as an antidepressant. But again, fish oil, very, very good, especially for serotonin. Yeah, exactly. So a few more I'd recommend. Irritable bowel syndrome. So there's one really popular drug called Donitol that's prescribed for irritable bowel syndrome. It's an antispasmodic, so it gets rid of pain and cramping, but it also causes constipation and dizziness and sweating and drowsiness and dry mouth. And one of the best alternatives to it that has been studied for relief of irritable bowel syndrome is peppermint oil. Again, very similar to that bergamot orange. You can take peppermint oil in a glass of water before meals, and it appears to be very, very effective and very similar to Donnatol in terms of its effect on GI health and in terms of its effects on reducing.

The preponderance of irritable bowel syndrome. So peppermint oil, if you're going to get.

Because we, we do peppermint tea as well.

Right.

Tale of peppermint tea to help for digestion.

Yeah. And, you know, there's ginger and licorice and all sorts of things, but peppermint is one that's actually been studied and that, that, that, that can really, really help with irritable bowel distension, flatulence, diarrhea, et cetera.

Do you know what the dose is for that? Is it a high dose?

You don't need much. I mean, literally a few drops of peppermint oil and a glass of water. So awesome. Or if you really want to belly up to the bar, just dump it straight into your mouth. Two more I've got for you. Benadryl. Diphenhydramine, it's also called. It's an antihistamine used to treat like, nasal allergies and congestion. It blocks receptor sites for histamine. Right. Which is the biochemical or the chemical that causes runny nose and scratchy eyes and things like that. And you find receptor sites for histamines in your nose and your eyes and your lungs. And there is a natural antihistamine that inhibits the release of histamine from immune cells. That's a really powerful anti Inflammatory and it's basically quercetin. Q U E R C E T I N For most of these things like quercetin and alpha lipoic acid, etc. That I'm recommending. I'll put links in the show notes but I generally like the supplement company Thorne for any of these type of like just, just fringe random supplements that you can have in your, in your medicine cabinet. I like quercetin as a natural antihistamine. If you get stuffed up, can really, really help. Dosage for that would be about 500 milligrams or so. So. And then finally glucophage, also known as metformin, a diabetes drug that increases insulin sensitivity. So it improves the sensitivity of insulin receptor sites on your cells, making it easier for them to pick up insulin and that then lowers your blood glucose levels. It's also kind of a darling of the anti aging community. Now metformin is for similar reasons, however, something that has very, very similar results in terms of lowering fasting blood glucose and improving insulin sensitivity is, you know this one, Rachel, I think cinnamon. Cinnamon, yes, Ceylon cinnamon. The equivalent, about two teaspoons a day of cinnamon. You need to be careful not to go much, much higher than that because when used frequently in high doses, cinnamon can be a little bit toxic. So you don't want to do too much. But I personally use about the equivalent of two teaspoons of cinnamon per day. It's got a lot of other really cool properties, including a lot of the anti aging properties, which is the reason a lot of people take metformin and a close second to cinnamon. And I've done postprandial blood glucose testing, meaning I've tested my blood glucose after a meal and found this to drastically lower my glucose response to everything from sushi and white rice to sweet potato fries to dark chocolate is a couple of capsules of something called bitter melon extract. Bitter melon extract and bitter melon extract can vastly lower your postprandial blood glucose. So that's another one that I highly recommend along with cinnamon as an alternative to something like metformin. Again, talk to your doctor before you get off drugs and start chugging cinnamon and peppermint oil. But those are my biggest recommendations as alternatives to a lot of the things that Jen was asking about. So I hope that's helpful. Jen. And now you've got a reason to throw out all your drugs or give them to somebody you don't like.

Ben, I was wondering if you still like the Cyto detox.

Do I still like the Cyto detox. Actually, that, that cyto detox stuff, it's, it's pretty crazy. Did you. Yeah.

How's it going? I'm very curious.

Well, I'll link to the big podcast that I did on because I'm doing, I'm, I'm halfway through the three month detox that I'm doing for 2017 that we've literally got 200 other Ben Greenfield fitness ers. I'll have to think of a better word than that at some point, doing this detox along with me. So we're doing everything from like morning coconut oil pulling to dry skin brushing to.

Basically really cleaning up the diet, really limiting things like alcohol and caffeine. And it's a full on detox protocol overseen by myself and also by Dr. Dan Pompa. It's closed now because we're obviously a month and a half in. So you have to wait until next year. If you want to do this detox next year, feel free. But in the meantime I'll put plenty of links in the shownotes where I walk through all the different protocols that we're using. If you wanted to kind of Mickey Mouse this thing and do it yourself. But one of the key components of it is this stuff called Cyto detox, which I actually interviewed Dr. Pompa about. And just real quick, from a bird's eye perspective, it's a source of what's called zeolite. So zeolite is something you get from volcanic ash and it gets mixed with seawater and then it fossilizes and it creates like this honeycomb porous cage structure with a natural negative charge on it. And when you consume zeolite in like liquid form, it basically moves toxins out of your body. It forms a cage around them and moves them out of your body. If you make the zeolite really, really small because it's notoriously poorly absorbed, kind of like curcumin. What happens is that you get far, far greater detoxification effects. You can create little fragments of zeolite, they're called hydrolyzed fragments and they're really pure water soluble particles of zeolite that do things like cross your blood brain barrier and permeate your cell membrane. And we're talking about, about like versions of zeolite that are about 10 times smaller than what you'd get if you were to just like buy zeolite from the health food store or whatever. And the name of this stuff, it's like patented and everything, it's called cyto Detox that technically it's called zeolite clinoptillolite. I know that's a mouthful, but zeolite clinoptillolite, and you take like 10 drops a day and that's it.

And how, how are you feeling? Are you noticing a difference?

Well, so this is gross, but like, one of the biggest things is my dumps are huge every morning because my body is kind of like getting rid of so many toxins.

So that is interesting.

It is.

That's one way to know that it's working.

Yeah. And my, my skin is just like really like super clean and smooth. Like I'm, I'm feeling good. Like I'm not getting a whole bunch of like all these rashes and like what they call like Herxheimer reactions and brain fog. And my. Probably admittedly wasn't too toxic going into this detox. For me, it's more like a little bit of better living through science. And also I gotta eat my own dog food, right? If I'm gonna bring 200 people through a detox, I wanna be doing what they're doing. And it's not just this cyto detox stuff. You do what's called a prep phase, which is a whole bunch of glutathione precursors and what are called methylation donors and microbiome colonizers for the gut. And then you move into the body phase, which we just started this week, which is a lot of the similar stuff, except you double your intake of that cyto detox that I just talked about. And then there's a bunch of what's called membrane regenerators that you take for your cell membrane. And then these binders, activated carbon and a few other things, Basilisk coagulans and some extracts that basically help to remove compounds from your body. And then next month we'll go into what's called a brain phase. So you do your brain last, because what you don't want is to detox your brain and then do the body phase and have all the toxins from the body cross the blood brain barrier, wind up in the brain and cause a bunch of neural issues, turn me into a freak ax murderer. So the idea is you do prep phase, then body phase, then brain phase. But yes, cyto detox is an integral component, particularly of the body and the brain phase. And so, yes, not only do I still take it, but I'm also doing, you know, the full meal deal when it comes to the detox. I've never really done something this, this comprehensive before, but we're getting nothing from like glowing reviews from everybody who's doing it. Everybody's feeling freaking amazing. And, and again, like, I'm sure a big part of it too is we're doing, you know, everybody's doing like saunas and cold showers and the dry skin brushing and the coconut oil pulling and the supplements and adjusting their diet. So it's kind of like a, it's a real kind of. You know, I hate this word, but it's like a synergistic. Synergistic effect. The word synergistic and proprietary are usually two words that always raise my eyebrow, make me think somebody's selling me snake oil. But ultimately, like, like this particular protocol is working really, really well. And I'm pretty happy to have hooked up with Dr. Pompa on it and I'll link to the podcast that I did with him in the shownotes because you can just get Cyto detox and just take it all by itself for a lot of these same effects. You can also do a lot of the things that I'm doing as part of this detox by listening to the full hour and a half long podcast where I detail everything that I'm doing as part of this detox. You don't have me necessarily there walking you through it, but you can at least listen to it and kind of put it together for yourself. So, yes, still taking the cyto detox and taking that along with my edibles and my Nutella. So there you have it. And I believe that is our last question for the day. So all we have left to do is give away some cool stuff.

Favorite part of the podcast.

Favorite part. This is where we read an itunes review. So if you leave us a five star review on itunes and a nice note, which is great karma for the show, and you hear your review read on the show, that means we're sending you a sweet ass gear pack. And all you need to do is email gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com with your T shirt size and then we, we stick that bad boy in the mail to you along with a BPA free water bottle and. And a sick beanie. So this particular review, it's a long one.

I mean, you should turn it off now if you don't want to be here for the next five seconds.

Take it away, Rachel. The review is a five star review by Shagalo24. The title of the review is incredible. And I'll let you read this one, Rachel.

Here we go. Incredible.

Incredible. That's it.

Incredible.

You know What? I'll take it.

Take it. That's awesome.

Versus you telling us your life story and about how much you laughed and cried and bonded with your family and blew sperm all over the place. Incredible works. We'll take it.

Yes.

So everything else that we talked about is at BenGreenfieldFitness.com365 the links about why you get burnt out from exercise, all our natural alternatives to common medications. Our link to go get your gonads blasted with sound waves. Everything else, go to BenGreenfulFitness.com365 it's all there. Rachel, thanks for joining me on this fantastic adventure once again.

Thanks for having me, Ben.

All right, folks, have a healthy week. Three, two. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.

Sa.