372: Fringe Longevity Secrets, The Best "Minimalist" Exercise Plan, How To Calm Down After...

Episode 372 of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show (podcast) covers longevity tips, a minimalist exercise plan, stress management techniques, sexual performance advice, product/sponsor plugs, and listener Q&A. Ben Greenfield (host) and Brock discuss news items about centenarian athletes and longevity research, practical exercise routines to minimize time in the gym while preserving fitness, breath/qigong approaches and medical options for erectile dysfunction, and several stress-reduction tools and supplements. The episode mixes actionable recommendations with product promotions and event announcements.
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In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show, Fringe Longevity secrets the best minimalist exercise program. How to calm down after stress, how guys can get it up better, why so many nutrition products have caffeine and much, 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 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.
Brock, I'm looking very, very sexy right now.
Okay. Awkward, Awkward. We're actually recording this podcast at a strange time of day. Usually record at the butt crack of day Dawn. It's like, I don't know where everybody listening in is in the world, but it's like 6:40 here.
Yeah, I'm half asleep and half drunk. This is going to be crazy.
I know. Wait till you hear. Actually, you know what? I'm going to save this for the end of the podcast. I am not drunk. Like I mentioned in the last episode. I believe I've been being very careful with alcohol of late.
Like, careful not to spill it, you mean?
Yeah, yeah. My hands tremble when I drink because I need it so badly, so I have to be careful not to spill it.
Oh, you turned that sad.
No, I was with Paul Check of the Check Institute. If you don't know about him, I'll link to all of his stuff if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com372 but he taught me this amazing little technique that I'm doing as we're podcasting right now. I'm gonna save that.
Which is why you're looking sexy.
No, no, I'll explain why I'm looking sexy in a moment.
It's very confusing.
Wait for the end of the podcast, because it's blown my mind. When he showed me down. He showed me a lot of stuff. I did a big podcast with him. But one thing blew my mind. I'll tell you about at the. At the Outro.
I can't wait.
See how I did that? See how I hooked all of you into listening until the very end?
Totally. You're a genius.
Like the very end. Like after we give away stuff, I'll mention it, but no, I'm wearing my tighty pants. I have the Tightest pants in land on right now.
Are they called tighty pants?
They're called 110% compression. You've seen these before?
Oh, yeah, I've got some of those.
Yeah. The big, long, tight pants with little sleeves that you can fill with ice. Cause I went for a ride tonight on my elliptical trainer, and my knee's been bugging me a little bit since that West Virginia Spartan race, because the whole race was pretty much straight downhill.
Or West Virginia or straight uphill mountain mom.
Oh, that is a song. Take me home.
Take me home.
110% compression pants. I'm wearing those. They're stuffed with ice. And I have what's called an NG nanov device. If you hear a little, like, bubbling in the background, that's not a song. Okay. Okay. That's this thing called a nanov. Have you ever heard of this? Yeah.
Bubbles, sort of a mist at your face, and you. You breathe the ions so it bubbles.
A m. Well, yeah, so. So we all know that cell damage occurs, and one of the ways that cell damage can be mopped up is by the formation of good reactive oxygen species. We often hear about bad reactive oxygen species, but DNA damage and cellular damage can actually be cleaned up by reactive oxygen species that are vibrating at a certain frequency. And there's a specific electromagnetic wave that has the same wavelength as these excited reactive oxygen species in our cells. And it's just basic what's called redox signaling. And so what this machine that I have sitting here does is you fill it with water. And before it emits the water out, this little tube that you just kind of blow it yourself, basically while you're working at your desk or whatever, you breathe it, but it emits this electromagnetic frequency onto the humidified air. So you're basically breathing in the type of reactive oxygen species that heal tissue. And you feel amazing when you suck this stuff into your lungs. It's crazy.
I've tried it, and honestly, I didn't feel anything. I felt like a weirdo because I.
Was standing there like, how long did you use it?
Maybe not long enough. It was only, like, 10 minutes.
Oh, okay. Yeah, I usually use it for 30 minutes, and I get it straight into the mouth, so I'm just, like, breathing it right in. And I'm serious. If you guys want to check it out, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com ENG3. You need to like to own nice things, because this thing is frigging expensive. However, it is amazing for cellular repair and recovery and for being able to essentially Turn your entire day at the office into just like a make me live longer routine. One other thing I wanted to mention before we jump into a whole bunch of tips on how to live longer. All of our news flashes are about longevity, actually.
They are?
Yeah. You know who just left my house?
No. Where would I even start?
A guy that's like bigger than an orangutan. He got here last night and he trained me for about the past 18 hours in kettlebells and qigong. He's like this Eastern mysticist. He's the strength edition coach at Cal Poly and he specialized. He's a doctor of Qigong and one of only 12 RKC kettlebell instructors with his level of certification in the entire world. And he basically spent the day with me and my boys podcasting, teaching us qigong and kettlebell swings.
Wow.
It was amazing.
Sounds like a good day. So who is he?
It was a very interesting day. His name's Chris Holder and we're gonna have a really good podcast if you wanna look him up. I'll put a link to. He has a bunch of stuff on the Dragon Door publications website. If you guys go to the show notes, I'll put a link to everything. I of the show notes go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 372 and that's where you can access all of the goodness. There's plenty more goodness coming up in the special announcements. But for now, why don't we jump into the keys to badass track record breaking longevity, shall we? Brock?
I think we should.
News flashes.
All right, so the first thing that I tweeted out this week, if you follow me@twitter.com BenGreenfeld what I do is I wake up in the morning and I spend about an hour reading research journals, reading articles, reading books, and then I tweet the most amazing things that I find. I've been tweeting a lot. Thank you, Brock. Sound effects.
That's actually, I'm doing that with my mouth.
Fade away.
Okay.
That's very impressive. Thank you. Hold yourself back.
That's all I wanted you to say.
Okay. 101 year old breaks world running record and says I missed my nap for this. Her name is Julia Hurricane Hawkins.
Hurricane Hawkins. I love her.
She did 100 meters. And now remember, she's. She is pretty old. She's 101, so don't laugh. But she did in 40 seconds, 100 meters.
That's.
I told everybody not to laugh and I laughed. And anyways, that's like the World record. So here's what she says A, she skipped her nap to do the run. She's a voracious napper. So there's one thing that we can learn from a person who lives a long time done. And her two favorite sports aside from running, obviously, slash walking, a very fast 100 meter and cycling is gardening and spending a lot of time outdoors. So it turns out that one of the keys to badass track record breaking longevity is naps, time outdoors and gardening. Perfect. And that's what we learned from Julia. Hurricane Hawkins. But then there's this other dude.
Wait, wait, I want to bring up the way she trains first stuff. Did you read that part?
No.
She basically always leaves her telephone inside the house. So every time it rings, she has to run as fast as she can into the house. And that's basically how she trains for these 100 meter dashes.
That's brilliant. For two reasons. Number one, that she has to run inside the house. Number two, I was with Drew Canole, the guy who makes all these green juice powders that we talk about in San Diego. We went to work out at his gym in San Diego. And I don't go to gyms very much anymore. It's like a freaking nightclub, dude. Everybody's walking around like Snapchatting and Instagramming and the girls are all like dolled up to the tee and the dudes are wearing like camo pants and sunglasses on their head and like, you know, like shorts with the shoelaces kind of untied. You know, like stylish high tops and, you know, and their hair is all slicked back.
So Basically it's the 90s all over again.
Yeah. Or the 80s, I don't know. But, but everybody's just like, you know, working out on machines. And this was. I know. This is California. Not every gem is like this. I know CrossFit gyms are a little bit more rough around the edges, for example, but everybody's on their phone and I'm with, I'm not going to call out any names. But I was working out with people and they were on their phones and I told them, what in the hell are you doing? Put the phone down and do a fricking workout. We're at the gym. Yeah, right.
So anyways, they're apparently very important.
You gotta maintain your Instagram status. Dr. Shigaki Hinohara Shigiyaki Hinohara Longevity expert That's pretty good. That's gotta be pretty accurate. Yeah. Huawei sha ira putang wa. I can speak A little Mandarin. This guy's Japanese though.
Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah.
He's a longevity expert and he recently died, but he lived to 105 years old. This article on him was fascinating. He dished out a boatload of tips. But some of his biggies was he always took the stairs and he always did it two steps at a time. Yeah, okay. And that's my rule. I don't care how heavy the bags are that I'm bringing through the airport, I always take the frickin stairs. When I get to the hotel, not only do I turn down the bellhop for carrying my luggage, but if my floor is any lower than the 10th floor, I take the stairs and I'll leave my luggage downstairs, go back and get the second bag if I need to. Yeah, but that's just my rule. It's a good one. Yeah, exactly. He says don't ever retire, but if you must, do so a lot later than age 25.
65.
I'm sorry, 65.
Way later than 25.
Don't underestimate the beneficial effects of music in the company of animals.
I love that one.
Both can be therapeutic. His diet was very spartanesque. Coffee, milk and orange juice with a tablespoon of olive oil for breakfast, milk and a few biscuits and I'm sorry folks, but they probably weren't gluten free for lunch. Actually it was in Japan. They were probably rice, biscuits or something and then vegetables with a small portion of fish and rice for dinner.
That sounds awesome.
Yeah, amazing. He was also among 130 hostages in 1970 who spent four days trapped in 100 degree heat in North Korea or captured by radical communists somewhere armed with swords and pipe bombs. And so I think that, and this is actually something Paul Cheks told told me sometimes getting close to the brink of death during life is one of the best ways to live a longer time.
That's where you get your superpower from. Yeah, always.
Yeah. Also interestingly, he worked up to 18 hours a day, so so much for the work can kill you concept. And he took at least 2,000 or more steps a day, which isn't a boatload, but hey, it's a few little tips from that dude. That's an intriguing article. That one was in the New York Times. Now he got put to shame though by this other man. And I don't know if this is true or not.
Yeah, I have trouble with this one.
Li Chengyan. Li Ching Yen apparently lived an astonishing 256 years old and the article about him and it was on the Internet. So I know this is true. Says this is not a myth or a fictional tale. Oh, there you go. But apparently they wrote that he began an herbalist career at the age of 10. I think he's dead now. He recently died in 1749. He was 71. He joined the Chinese army as a teacher of martial arts. He was an herbalist. So for like 40 years, he survived on like wild plants and goji berry and ginseng and gotu kola and a little bit of rice wine. So he ate from the earth and it looks like he actually consumed alcohol, little rice wine. He says that he had once encountered an even older 500 year old man, which, frankly, I believe. But it's also interesting when we look at like, you know, Peter Diamandis and the longevity product that, you know, we're often taught that aging requires all these high tech devices that I admittedly just mentioned at the beginning of the podcast. But I also like this concept of, you know, like what I was doing this morning, going out gathering wild nettles and wild mint from the forest, bringing them back, making some tea, doing a little bit of intermittent fasting. And the way that he says it, his secret to long health. I love this quote. I want to put this on my wall. He says, keep a quiet heart. Sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a pigeon, and sleep like a dog. Isn't that amazing?
I like that. That's a T shirt right there.
I think that means you got it. You got to like move your back leg around a lot and yipe in your sleep.
Yes.
I'm pretty sure every once in a while. Yeah. Pee on the carpet, everyone. I don't know how a tortoise sits and I don't really know how a pigeon, I guess kind of a pigeon walks by thrusting its neck forward, back and forth.
It's nothing to do with your neck kind of poking through it.
Let me kind of poke my neck as I walk forward. Look at her. Pigeons coming through 256 years. Okay. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 372 again for all these articles. Here's one. Brain cells that control aging have been discovered. They found stem cells in the brain's hypothalamus that govern how fast aging occurs in the body. And what I thought was most intriguing about this, that like the center of aging in the body, you know what also happens in the hypothalamus?
Pretty much everything the hypothalamus is like, controls your temperature. Your heart rate, your respiration.
You can't just cheat and say everything.
No. Well, I tried to list a few things and then I ran out. So three things.
The main part of the brain that controls the stress response. There you go, right. It releases a corticotropic releasing hormone and vasopressin. And those activate what's called your hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. I've written some articles about this. But it's very intriguing that the area of the brain that carries the stem cells responsible for allowing you to live a longer time, the stem cells that control aging, that area of the brain responds directly to stress. And it is interesting that we know that mild amounts of stress, so called hormetic stressors, can extend life and that too much stress can cause accelerated aging. I think it's very interesting that they've actually found cells in the brain that show that that area of the brain is responsible for longevity. Isn't that interesting?
It does make sense in a very sort of circuitous way.
Yeah, it's very interesting. And anyways, that one, I just found it truly, it made me think again about controlling stress. And then finally speaking of controlling stress, science points to the single most valuable personality trait. Like if there are one person. And I read this a long time ago. I interviewed the author of a book called why Does Olga Run? You should go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and listen to that if you're interested in longevity. And in that book, why Does Olga Run? The author goes into the one characteristic that Olga held most important above all. Do you know what it is, Brock?
Conscientiousness.
Conscientiousness. How many syllables? It's a lot of syllables. Conscientious. 5. And I know a lot of people thought I'd probably say gratitude because I just wrote a gratitude journal. I don't know, I've been kicking that horse to death. Little bit. Yeah, a little bit. But hey, I'm grateful for it anyways though. Conscientiousness, the state of being thorough, careful, vigilant, or as I think a lot of people say these days, mindful. Right. It's. It's basically that idea that you have self discipline and carefulness and thoroughness and self organization and the tendency to think carefully before acting and just about the opposite of everything you do when you're holding a smartphone, pretty much that's a.
Good way to sum it up.
So conscientious. If you want to study up on conscientiousness, go read this Article. I'll link to it and all these other articles over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com372 but that's it, dude. Conscientiousness.
So sit like a tortoise, walk like a pigeon, be conscientious. Suck some brain cells out of your hypothalamus. Don't retire when you're 25. And what else did we learn? Oh, take naps, sleep like a dog.
And put your tight pants on.
Type pants on.
Special announcements.
Before I tell you about some pretty amazing sponsors, some new sponsors. That's some cool things.
I was shocked by these sponsors.
I need to mention that we have a bunch of gift packs available. So what we do is we hand pick 300 bucks worth of biohacks and supplements and fitness gear and books, and we mark them down 50% and send them to you. I don't think I need to say anything more than that. That's it.
Well, maybe tell people how to get it.
Oh, go to greenfield fitness systems.com gift pack.
Nice.
That's greenfield fitness systems.com gift Pack. We have seven available right now. Seven of those bad boys available. I know it's not that. Six. Considering 90,000 people listening to this podcast, I know that's not a lot. Seven will go fast, but check that out. Anyways, this podcast is brought to you by a tranto. A tranto.
A tranter, which has the best URL we've ever had from any sponsor ever, basically.
Really? What's their URL?
Lovemytummy.com Ben I like that.
Lovemytummy.com Ben okay, so here's the deal with this stuff. I've been giving it to a bunch of my clients who get bloated and gas and have all these issues with what's called small intestine bacterial overgrowth. And I use it for, like, two months because I've dealt with this before as well, and I want to see if it works. Dude, you don't fart at all when you take the.
You just. What fun is that?
I know. Exactly.
Come on.
No. Kiss your Dutch ovens goodbye, baby. So what they have is. It's peppermint leaf, which. And I'm gonna get these guys on the podcast at some point to go take a deep dive into this. But peppermint leaf with calms. That's. Calms your small bowel. And then they have this South American hardwood tree called cabrecho ext. And that soaks up the hydrogen that archae bacteria produce. It weakens the cell walls of Those bacteria. And then it's got a horse chestnut, a natural antibacterial from horse chestnut, which shuts down the methane production in these archae bacteria, so it reduces unwanted bacteria and all the gas that they produce. It was designed by a, by a gastroenterologist. I've actually met him. He's a gastroenterologist who also looks like he's a freaking like beast. He's a, he's like this big old weight training dude. I was actually just with him at a conference down in San Diego. Cool guy. Dr. Ken Brown. They've got two published clinical trials showing that it works in like 85% plus of the people who try it. If you're in the other 15% that fart after you try it, worry not. They have a 100 money back guarantee. And it wasn't designed as like an anti fart thing. It was designed for people with bloating and SIBO and IBS and leaky gut issues. And it's really cool. And the stuff, again, it actually works. And I'm, I don't let anybody just advertise in this podcast. I tried it for two months and it's cool. So also the, the cabracho, that's a macromolecule. That means it doesn't get absorbed and cause systemic side effects. And it stays in the small bowel and just does its little job down there. So. Lovemytummy.com Ben gets you 15 off a tractor. This podcast, speaking of Dutch ovens, is also brought to you by. Where are you going with this amazing, amazing bed with soft breathable sheets and an adaptive pillow and the ability to keep you cool as you sleep? Because as we've talked about before, your central nervous system needs to be kept cool as you sleep. And this particular mattress gives you free delivery. They give you free returns. You notice I'm talking kind of sexy. Now.
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It's all right.
Go to Casper.com Ben and you get 50 bucks off any other mattresses. Casper.com Ben so check that out if you're in the market for a mattress. And then that's not all, folks. This podcast is also brought to you. Why do I have to do this at night? Now this is going to make me hungry. Okay, what do heirloom tomato, lamb and beef burgers, chicken with cherry tomatoes, dates and couscous, and spicy lemongrass salmon all have in common?
Brock that sounds like Blue Apron, baby.
Along with chilled Hayashi chukaramis. Blue Apron, they send all these fresh ingredients to your home, along with all the recipe cards that you need to actually make said ingredients into an amazing, shockingly good meal. They send you new. It's like forcing yourself to learn how to cook or forcing somebody in your house to learn how to cook for you. They have a freshness guarantee. And the meals are actually really good. They really are. And they're extremely thorough. Like everything you need, the spices, the sauces, the actual food. They don't ship you the pots and pans. Those bastards do.
They clean them. The meals, the pots and pans.
No, they don't. You need. Yeah. You need a personal assistant. Yeah. Or yourself.
All right, fine.
Go to blue apron.com Ben and you get your first three meals free with free shipping. Blue apron.com Ben a blue Apron. A Better Way to Cook.
I'm busy trying to figure out if they actually deliver in Canada because I want to try that.
I don't know if they do. Go to their website.
Find out. I will.
Blueapron.com Ben A better Way to Cook. It's a better way to cook already.
Better way to cook.
Better way to cook. Okay, finally, speaking of cooking, this podcast is brought to you by the most nutrient dense superfood that you can get delivered straight to your front door. I've got a freezer full of it upstairs. You know what it is? Kale, acai berries, green tea. Guess, guess, guess.
I have no idea. I thought it was gonna be bone broth.
You could show off your knowledge and say like spirulina or something. But it is. It's bone broth with all the vitamins, the amino acids and the collagen that you get from animal bones and you get from connective tissue. They make it from organic chicken, 100% grass fed cattle. They slow simmer the bones for 20 hours with a whole bunch of organic vegetables and herbs. They've got one brand that they have a bunch of mushrooms, magical mushrooms. Not like soup, not like trippy magical, but like lion's mane, stuff like that. They slow simmer it, which extracts insane amounts of protein. So you get 10 grams of protein per serving. I've done a podcast with them with no preservatives. They can store it in the pantry for up to two years. And that frees up valuable refrigerator space. Although I keep it in the freezer because I like to use it as like a frozen slushie for my smoothies. Put a little lemon juice, a little bit bone broth in there. It's amazing. Yeah, it's actually so amazing. I've invested in this company, let me tell you that.
Is that why your face is all over this webpage?
Is my face on their front page?
It is.
Wow. Well, I love it. I love it. Frankly. I like my wife's bone broth, but she can only make so much bone broth to keep up with my bone broth addiction.
So, yeah, it sounds like you've got it bad.
You get 20% off, you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com well, you get 20% off their chicken bone broth. You might have to twist their arms to get the beef, but go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com ChickenBroth and you get 20% off your order. BenGreenfieldFitness.com chicken broth. And then a couple other things. First of all, there's like this new contest going on where you rate podcasts. Anybody listening in? Please, please, please go rate and review the Ben Greenfield Fitness show if you want good karma. And if you don't want to have nightmares and not sleep like a dog and walk like maybe a hawk or an eagle instead of a pigeon, a bald eagle, you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com podchaser remember that. Please don't just quit listening to the podcast and forget about this. It's good karma. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com podchaser BenGreenfulFitness.com podchaser and it might make you enter a code. Here's the code to enter and I'll tell you the code and I'll also put it in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 372 the code is Patreon. Patreon. The Patreon contest at Podchaser. So check that out.
It's worth supporting the show.
And there's some other really good podcasts on this list too. So I think you're going to need the help.
Okay. Few other things where I'm going to be in the world. I will be in LA racing the LA Stadium race August 18th through 20th. Come join me there. It'll be a blast. I'm also going to be in West Virginia racing the last race in the Spartan World Championship Series before Lake Tahoe on August 26th. So I'll be racing down in West Virginia. Come out there. We have a big Ben Greenfield fitness meetup at the race. Come see me covered in blood and barbed wire wounds and see me all grumpy and hangry. And we do a new Q and A. We actually did a Q and a big Q and A outside the big black Spartan protein tent. Usually we do them around 10am after the race ends, which is my carrot on the edge of the stick to actually be done by 10am because I have to be there for everybody. The who Wants to Live Forever Conference In Iceland is September 8 through 11. There's still time to get tickets for that. That's going to be a blast. And I'm leading a bike ride there which will be a ton of fun. The conference I might look forward to more than any conference. I think of the year, the Biohacker Summit in Helsinki, Finland, which I'm going to bring my wife and my kids to this year because so, I mean Finland is so freaking amazing. And we do like this three day kind of like thing after the conference and go off into the hills of Finland and camp and go wild plant foraging and bio. It's like this perfect blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science all mashed together and it's, it's amazing. So get your tickets to that. Those are still available. I'll be at the Weston A. Price conference in Minneapolis November 10th through the 13th and then finally the last two ones that you should really look into if you want to go on an amazing adventure with me. Both of these are open to the public. I'll put all the details in the show. Notes Kauai, Hawaii, December 7th through 9th we're doing what's called the XPT Experience with me and Kelly Starrett and Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reese where we're going to do like breath work and underwater workouts and outdoor workouts and biohacking and just about everything all these pro athletes do who are living life on the fringe, bleeding edge of performance. We're going to teach all that to everybody in Kauai, which is an amazing place to go by the way, if you haven't been to Kauai.
It's one of my favorite have not.
Favorite Islands and then also in addition to that, runga in Panama. And runga, you get to choose when you want to go. You can arrive as early as December 11th, you can depart as late as December 23rd. And that's basically two times a day. Bikram yoga. Have you ever done like two times a day, 90 minutes of Bikram yoga?
No, that's fine. I think I'd break.
You feel pretty amazing actually. Like I did it last year and you feel like a rock star. And like all this amazing organic food. You do adventures. We have like night fire dancing and parties. There may or may not be substances down there as well that we have lots of fun with. It's a digital detox, meaning there's not a lot of cell phones. You don't have to like drop your cell phone in a bucket and have it smashed by staff while you're there. But you do get it. You have the option of getting taken away. And not a lot of people use cell phones. There's no computers and other technology around. It's a really good time and you get a discount and you get a gift and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you go check it out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 372 so come with me down to Panama, baby.
Listener Q and A.
Hello Ben, I am stuck and can really use your help. I exercise a lot every day. I do CrossFit every day and then I do a lot of heavy weightlifting every day. Spending hours in the gym. I do heavy squats and heavy deadlifts and other things for my arms.
I have a lot of knee pain and I know that this is also a waste of time. I would like more time in my day. My question for you is how to responsibly reduce the amount of exercise that I do every day without gaining weight. My diet is pretty reeled in. I follow a ketogenic diet and my food is Paleo and Whole 30. I eat pretty cleanly and don't splurge a lot and I enjoy eating this way. So if you have suggestions on how to responsibly reduce the amount of exercise I do every day without gaining weight, I would really appreciate it. Thank you for everything that you do.
You'd be surprised at how little exercise you need to do to not gain weight.
I would.
I assuming you're tricking your body into living like a hunter, gatherer, gardener esque lifestyle and not having your butt planted in a chair all day. You're getting up, you're following this concept of Greasing the groove, which I do, right? I'll do like five pull ups every hour and for every hour that I sit, I do 100 jumping jacks. I have all these little rules that I follow during the day. The icing on the cake is the exercise and you don't have to spend a lot of time in the gym. And I've got a few good tips for you. Should we start with the really expensive stuff you could buy or should we start with the practical exercise recommendations?
Now let's start big.
All right, we'll start big or go home. You ever heard of the Vasper?
Yes, I've used one a couple times.
Some of the most efficient, productive dudes on the face of the planet, some of the richest dudes I know, they all own a Vasper and they use it like twice a week. And I've interviewed the folks at Vasper. It's a combination of cold therapy, compression packs that you put all over your body and this strange looking full body exercise machine that just destroys you in about 20 minutes. So you get about two hours worth of exercise in 20 minutes. The compression concentrates the lactic acid which gives you a big release of growth hormone. The cooling effect allows you to work at a much higher metabolic rate. It's grounded with copper plates so you get this grounding effect because you do it barefoot. And you can buy this for your house. You could also do a Google search for the name of your town plus the word Vasper. And if I could probably add like one cool exercise toy to my house right now without my wife killing me. So I unfortunately can't at this point. It would probably be a Vasper or this other thing. And by the way, I'll link to the podcast that I did with the folks at Vasper. Just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 372 but the other one is the ARX. And the ARX is a computer controlled unit that you do a rep against and it develops a force curve as you press against it and then it presses back against you as hard as possible. And it's very similar to the super slow routine outlined in the book by Doug McGuff called Body by Science, in which he has about five different exercises that you go to. Extremely slow and smooth and controlled. And I love this style of training because it increases peripheral blood pressure, it gives you a cardio and a strength workout at the same time. It is not impact based so you're able to do it and do it for life with very little Very little amounts. Well, you're sore, but you're not breaking down the joints. Don't get me wrong, you're sore as hell.
You're really sore.
Yeah, for like three days, but you don't have joint pain. And so the computer, you do this one rep, it generates a force curve. And what you do is for about the next four to six reps, you just try and beat or match this force curve or keep yourself from going, I think lower than 80% under the force curve. And as soon as you're unable to go anymore and you're completely exhausted, that's it. That's that one rep. It's a 12 to 15 minute workout, or that's that one set. It's a 12 to 15 Minute workout. Chest press, row, pull down, shoulder press. And my favorite, because it makes me feel like I'm having a baby, the leg press. And this machine is amazing. They make one called the Omni that does all this stuff. And I may or may not be getting one this year. I might have to build a special house out in the forest to move all this stuff into.
That's a good idea, actually.
But ultimately that's pretty cool too. And I interviewed those, the, those guys or one of the guys who introduced me that Keith Norris, it's called. The name of that episode is why Strong People Are Harder to Kill. He's pretty strong and this is like one of his favorite ways to get massive amounts of strength. Now that if you didn't want to buy this expensive machine, you could also do what I consider to be one of the most efficient ways to strength train. Not the only way you want to strength train. I'll get into why in a second. But it would be this body by science type of program by Doug McGuff. So that's called the ARX machine. But.
Even more detailed than that, what I recommend, if you were going to put together like the perfect exercise program, and I have kind of a whole article about this called how to Look Good Naked and Live a Long time over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, i'll link to that in the show notes. You want to hit just a few things each week, and if you choose each of these things that I'm talking about, then you will be able to get away with the minimum amount of exercise necessary for health, for performance, and for longevity. Because they have studied this. After about 450 minutes per week, the longevity benefits of exercise plateau. And another way to look at that is once you exceed about 60 minutes a day of vigorous intensity exercise or about 90 minutes a day of like moderate aerobic exercise. You don't get many more benefits from exercise. And in many cases you could increase. You know, some of the things we talked about in our last Q and A episode, the potential for a little bit of plaque formation, excessive inflammation or, you know, in, in the case of this collar, you know, knee pain, that type of thing. So anyways though, first thing you want to do is every single week you should do something. And, and they've actually shown you can maintain this by doing it once every two weeks. That targets VO2 max, right? The maximum amount of oxygen you can utilize, your lung capacity, the ability of your cells to extract oxygen from the bloodstream as oxygen rushes past, and the amount of the ability of the blood to actually carry the oxygen, right, like iron, hemoglobin, stuff like that. So the way that you target VO2 max is the gold standard for this that I like is four very, very easy to memorize. Four to six, four to six minute hard efforts with four to six minutes of recovery. That's it, easy. You could choose bicycle running, elliptical trainer, swimming, whatever, but four to six minutes long, four to six efforts, really hard, as hard as you can maintain maximum sustainable pace with four to six minutes of recovery. Now, of course, you need to take care of yourself from a nutritional standpoint, right? If you're vegan, you need to be eating spirulina and chlorella for iron and lots of dark leafy greens. You need lots of good sunlight exposure to activate the water inside your body, to help the blood actually get carried throughout the, the body. You need, if you are carnivorous, do more than fish and eggs. Try and get a lot of red meat down the pipeline. I eat red meat about once every three or four days and I go without it on certain days of the week because I think excess red meat, it can cause a buildup, what's called TMAO in the intestinal tract. And that might cause some sugar and inflammation issues. That's a whole different rabbit hole you can go down later. But anyways, take care of your iron and your blood. Neat red things like beets and watermelon and get, get nitric oxide precursors like arugula in your system. But ultimately, from an exercise standpoint, four to six minutes, four to six efforts, four to six minutes of recovery. Okay, so.
It'S Pellegrino, baby.
Ah, that's something you happened to.
No, no.
Is it beverage time? I'll have a sip of my drink too.
The Normally this, by this time of night, I'd drink a little elderberry wine or a little Fit vine wine. The hangover free organic red wine that I drink. Go listen to the episode I did with them. Blow your mind about how many I've had their stuff.
They throw amazing parties, those guys too.
I think you're thinking of the folks from Dry Farm Wines.
Oh yes I am.
They're also cool. Hi guys. Wine people. Okay, so the next part would be your mitochondrial density. Okay, so the VO2 Max. Try and do that once a week. The four to six thing, a four to six minute thing. Next would be mitochondrial density. Now for that, for mitochondrial density, the very best way to train it is very short, intense, 30 second efforts, all out, as hard as you can freaking go deep into the pain cave with four minutes of recovery. That's it. So you do about four to six of those too. See, easy to remember. Four to six, 30 second all out efforts with four minutes of recovery. And that's once a week. That's for mitochondrial biogenesis. Okay. And again, you need things to also help you out, like access to good sun, breathing good air. You know, the type of things I'm doing with like biohacks with, with my red lights and infrared sauna and this humidified air thing. All those things add up too. But ultimately, again, from an exercise standpoint, all out 30 seconds, four to six of those, four minutes of rest. And that also is something you try to work in once a week. Now, the final two things from a cardiovascular standpoint, number one would be lactic acid tolerance to get that growth hormone release and to get the ability to be able to tolerate the burn for that, what you'd want to work in again. And this one would be two to three times a week. But don't worry, it's short what is called a Tabata set. So two to three times a week you do a Tabata set, which is four minutes of 20 seconds, very hard, using anything you want, burpees, bicycling, swimming, whatever. 20 seconds hard, 10 seconds easy. Okay? And you just do what you warm up, you have four minutes, you cool down, that's it. Okay? And you only need to do that two to three times a week. You can lay this all out into a program on whichever days you want, you know, Tabata set Monday, Wednesday, Friday, your VO2 max set. On a Tuesday, your mitochondrial, that's the. On a Thursday, let's say. And then the other things worked in that I'm about to talk about where you can work them In. So the next one being Stamina. I like this one for the weekend. Stamina is what's neglected by, say, CrossFitters. CrossFitters. CrossFitters who, if you drop them in the middle of the forest, in many cases would probably die because they can't go for about a mile without pooping out. At least according to my calculations, during Spartan races, where they lead the whole race for, like, the first mile, and then you're a mile 12, and they're still at mile five. I love CrossFitters. Don't give me, like, I don't want to. Like, I realize I've done that twice now. CrossFitters. I actually like that form of exercise. If you're listening in, I think it's one of the better ways to work out. However, this component is missing for a lot of you, and this is stamina, right? Stamina, endurance, the ability to just go without a lot of fuel for long periods of time. Now, what I like to do is a fasted workout, right? So you learn how to utilize fatty acids efficiently as a fuel at an aerobic pace. This could be a hike. It could be biking to a coffee shop in the next city over. It could be a very long walk, like a nature walk or a neighborhood walk. Neighborhood walk. It could be.
Swimming. You know, it could be a combination of any of the above. But ultimately, I like that fasted, like, on a weekday morning. And that works out really, really well for a stamina session.
Wait a weekend. Weekend morning.
Weekend morning. Yep, Weekend morning. Okay. So that would be the stamina component, the endurance component. And I know everybody's asking, what about the strength? Well, once a week, that's where the CrossFit comes in. That's where. No, no, no. Once a week, we're talking about, like, and something you could do anytime, any place, no box required. Once a week, you do this super slow strength training program. You could use one of these ARX machines, and you could look for one of them in a city near you. Or Vasper. Or you could do. Actually, Vasper isn't really strength. That's a category all on its own.
That's more like Tabata. But not even.
Yeah, yeah, I'd count as maybe like a Tabata set. Actually, it'd be closer to like one of those VO2 max sets. You could also get Doug McGuff's book Body by Science and just do his training protocol in there, which you can do with just dumbbells and free weights or machines, but just. It takes about 12 to 20 minutes. Super slow Strength training routine once a week. If you really want maximum gains, twice a week max, that's it. Okay, so we've got our super slow strength. Now the thing is that when you look at satellite cell proliferation and longevity, the eccentric load from that super slow strength is important. But when you look at power and athleticism and explosiveness and the ability to develop small, wiry, efficient muscles, you still need to do explosive training. And I like explosive training one to two times a week. This could be a kettlebell routine. This could be playing, you know, playing a sport that has a load, you know, like swinging a tennis racket or even, you know, golfing could count in many cases. But something that's, that has some explosive, some power in it, some element of moving your muscles quickly. Probably one of the best things to do if you wanted to is just go to, go to the, you know, go to that article I wrote and I'll link to it@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 372 where I talk about this body weight only exercise program that they studied. And It's a simple seven minute workout and you do 30 seconds hard, 10 seconds off. And it's like jumping jacks and squats and dips. And you're supposed to do it as explosively as possible. And you can do that anywhere, airport, hotel, wherever. But 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off, and you just do each exercise for 30 on and 10 off. And if you're really glutton for punishment, you could do like two or three circuits of it. But if you do that once a week or even twice a week if you really wanted to, and the super slow strength training once or twice a week, you're looking, with everything I just described at working out. Let's say you split into a two a day with your warmup and your cooldown, you're looking at maybe working out 40 to 60 minutes a day and hitting every parameter that I think is necessary to hit in an exercise program.
Yeah. The way that you listed it, it really sounded like it was going to be not that different from, from what the caller explained of being like hitting CrossFit and then going, doing a bunch of weights and then. Yeah, but, but each one of these workouts is quite short.
Yeah. And, and honestly, I'm gonna be perfectly honest with you. If I wasn't training for, for Spartan and racing professionally, you know, cause I'm, I'm racing for, for Reebok and I have to show up to these races and do these very long races and train a lot that What I just described you is exactly what I would do and what I will do once I, you know, hang up the, the. The spartan jersey, so to speak, or, you know, I'm not doing Ironman triathlon or, you know what, whatever. That's. This, this is. This is the type of exercise program you do for life. So there you have it.
I'll tell you a secret. That's pretty much exactly what I'm doing these days. I'm doing a little more of the heavy lifting just because I'm. I'm vain and I like having bigger chest for the first time in my life. But other than that, this is pretty much exactly what I'm doing with my time now.
I love it. That's why you're so fit and sexy.
Looking naked, creepy time walking like a pigeon. All right, let's move on.
30 years old and I have a hard time getting an erection. I think it's because I work a lot. I'm not sure, but hopefully you can help me with this situation. I mostly work on a daily lifting heavy things, most likely not eating the proper foods. I do party a lot. I'm sure I gotta stop that. I smoke a lot of things. I know I shouldn't be doing that. Probably would affect my performance a bit. But if you can give me some foreigners that will enlighten my performance, please feel free. Thank you.
I was talking with Chris Holder about this, this qigong master on the podcast I did today. A lot of times you'll read that erectile dysfunction is the canary in the mind and the precursor to heart dise because of lack of endothelial function or loss of nitric oxide or anything that would involve blood flow or nitric oxide or cardiovascular function. And that can often be the case. But he described how in many people it's not. It's more of like a lower Dantian issue.
Yes. Can you explain what a danxian is?
Yeah, it's like the. The core center of your lower belly where all your sexual energy is stored. And a lot of guys, they get what's called stagnant qi down there. And you can actually breathe energy back into that area and you can do specific exercises. Like a. A perfect example is a kettlebell swing while breathing into that lower core section. And he took me through a few sessions, actually, last night before we had dinner, he took me through a few sessions where he was showing me how to activate my lower dantian. Yeah. And I'm just going to be straight up here. Earmuffs for the kids. If you don't want to explain this to him. He was like, what are your goals for this session? I'm like, you know what? Because I like to throw stuff out there and just see what happens. I'm like, I want to have hot sex tonight. He's like, all right, we're going to wake up your lower Dantian. And dude, I had like amazing sex last night and I slept like a baby and I got it up pretty dang fast. And probably the best book that outlines the type of things that he kind of went into with me. It's a really good book. It's called the Multi Orgasmic Man. Multi Orgasmic Man, That's a best seller right there. Yeah, it's a great book. And one of the things that you learn is how to breathe into your crotch. You learn all these other crazy things too, like self testicular massage and you know, weird stuff like sticking your pinky in your asshole. And you know, that book gets into a lot of stuff.
Wait, so where, where are you breathing through to get the air into your crotch?
So you're, you're basically putting your hands over kind of like your lower abdomen right below your navel, and you're focusing on breathing into that area, just inhaling, expanding, exhaling and relaxing as you breathe into that area. And you can close your eyes and almost imagine any, any Taoist, you know, sexual practitioner, qigong master, is probably going to want to jump through the microphone and throttle me for describing this in such simplistic terms. But you imagine you're breathing life force or energy or chi, or you can almost like imagine like kind of like a, a whitish orange light that you're breathing into that area as you inhale into your lower stomach and you feel your lower dantian fill and out. And I mean for. This works for women too. I asked Chris about this and it really works for women, for blood flow, for orgasm, for sexual performance, and for sexual health. And again, there are some very interesting twists on this that you can do during sex that the author of the Multi Orgasmic man gets into in that book. But basically it's this idea of studying up on this element of qigong called the lower dantian and learning how to breathe into it. So that's the first tip I would give you before I throw fringe supplements and all that jazz at you or, or going to one of these gainswave clinics and doing acoustic sound wave therapy for your crotch, which works. Make sure you know how to breathe into that lower dantian first. That's one thing.
And another thing would Be as I just mentioned, this acoustic sound wave therapy, it works. I've done it. I'm going back at the end of this month to do it again. And you basically get it up like a freaking 16 year old boy for a good solid two months. See what I did there? Straight solid two months. And it works. It's 20 minutes of sound wave therapy like a jackhammer like all around your crotch. I have an article in Playboy and an article in Men's Health about my own experience with it, which is pretty intense. And I'm going back there at the end of this month to not only do that, but to also do the platelet rich plasma injections right into my ding dong.
Right into your junk.
And that activates stem cell proliferation and you follow that up and again. Earmuffs for the kids. If you don't want to explain this all with my kids I just talk about this stuff and they're pretty cool with us. They walked in on mom and I having sex once and they just basically stood there and asked what was going on. So I, I got up and I told them pretty much the whole story of sex and how it works and just basically laid it all out to them and then they said okay. And I said, so next time you hear music or you hear mommy and daddy shouting in the room, just don't come in if you don't want to see that. Like, okay. And they walked out and went back to bed. So we're pretty open with our kids about this stuff. Just so you guys know.
I don't see why not. Like I don't have kids but I'd like to imagine that that's how I'd handle it too because.
Oh yeah.
Why?
Well, when I was, when I was with Paul. Check. You know, like, like he and his wife had sex and I just noticed because he told me because his kid was up there and he's like, he keeps his little like 17 month old kid in the crib right there at the base of the bed and kid just stands there and watching, giggles and laughs. Because they do a lot of like co sleeping and just like, you know, I don't know that I'm against the child being pretty aware of how babies are made and how love is made. I mean, yeah, there's to a certain extent that could get awkward with an audience but, but at the same time I, I like to be pretty forthright with my children about this kind of stuff. So you know what? I'm gonna quit saying earmuffs. Yeah. So anyways, acoustic Sound wave therapy. You can go to any of these gains Wave clinics. They have a. I think you. I should know our code for this. It's Gain Gainswave.
No, I think it's just gain.
Just call up any. Any Gainswave clinic and tell them you heard about on the podcast. They give you like your first treatment for I, I believe, like 150 bucks off or something like that.
Yeah, it's huge.
Yeah, just mention the show. So that works. And then I subscribe to this thing called the Examine Research Digest. Do you read this one, Brock?
I do. It's a great, great user.
Yeah, one of the best. It breaks down every supplement and herb by whether or not there's actually research proven efficacy behind it. And when you subscribe to it, you have the option, it's like an upsell to get what they call their stack guides. And they have a whole stack guide that shows which supplements actually work for libido and estrogen dysfunction or estrogen dysfunction, erectile dysfunction, which could be estrogen dysfunction.
It could be. It doesn't have to be.
So the drumroll, please. The core supplements that they list as the primary options are in the following order. The most effective for erectile dysfunction and for libido. Number one. Maca. M A C A maca. You can get organic maca root powder freaking, you know, anywhere. And there's no difference between the red or the black or the yellow, by the way. One and a half to three grams once a day with breakfast of maca. That's what's been shown to be most efficacious, according to research.
So you'd say the. The powder.
Yeah.
I used the tincture for quite a while. Is there a big difference?
Probably pretty similar, yeah. All right.
It tastes like crap, though it was not pleasant.
Yeah. Put your big boy pants on. You'll survive.
I'm wearing my tight next. Right now.
Low nitric oxide vessels. They cause blood vessels to narrow. Speaking of tight pants. A free ball when you can. Seriously, that helps. But. But cacao is number two. Cacao. Easy enough. The same flavonoids you find in grapeseed and pine bark and all the expensive supplements you can get from cacao. Polyphenols. Dark chocolate. About 40 grams of dark chocolate to like a chocolate bar, basically. Dark chocolate's one of the best things you can eat before sex. We used to know this when I was a bodybuilder backstage. Watermelon, dark chocolate and red wine. And they actually don't let you drink some of that, like the red wine or the chocolate or eat the chocolate backstage. Now, because it's so potent for bodybuilders, they consider it like a performance enhancing.
Whoops. What's going on there? What are you breaking? Everything okay?
My stool. I'm sitting with the mogo upright stool right now. It slipped on the carpet. So they don't let you eat some of that stuff backstage because it's actually so potent, they consider to be like a performance enhancing drug. So not milk chocolate, not white chocolate, but dark chocolate. That's number two.
White chocolate is not chocolate. Those lies. Lies.
It's good with peppermint at Christmas. Yo him B is the next one. Or yohimbine. Now that's. It's. It's elevates your heart rate and cause a lot of anxiety. So be careful. If you're prone to a heart attack or anxiety, steer clear of this stuff. It's an alkaloid that you find in the bark of this African tree called yohimbe. Usually you'll find it marketed as a fat burner, but it is a reliable treatment for erectile dysfunction. And for that one you take. Figure out your. Well, you just do this with your weight in pounds, but it's about 0.1 milligrams per pound of body weight. Pretty easy to remember. You take 0.1 milligrams per pound of body weight. There are a whole bunch of other things that they talk about in the examine guide, but the top three are those three maca, cacao, and yohimbi. So there's your. There's your erectile dysfunction stack.
I think the OhioHimbe is kind of funny, though, because you'll. You'll be able to get an erection, but you'll be having an anxiety attack, so you won't want to have sex.
That's right, baby. And finally go ready my article. I don't want to. I don't know why I keep saying baby during this podcast.
I think I've said baby because I don't have a shirt on.
Yeah, yeah.
I can't help it.
Maybe it's because we're recording in the evening. Anyways, I also have an article by the famous Dr. Ollie from Finland. Really cool guy. He is always at the biohacking summit in Finland and he's like, he's nuts about testosterone. He's nuts about nuts. And he wrote a big article for Ben Greenfield finish witness about 17 different testosterone biohacks. Everything from like red light therapy on your balls to zinc. And that article also has a bunch of things that will help you out with erectile dysfunction. So go read that one too. I'll link to it@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 372 hey Ben, what's up?
My name is Derek. I'm an opera singer living in Germany and I had a question about, you know, after my performances, I, I think I've built up a lot of adrenaline, a lot of stress hormones, and I was wondering what advice you have to help my body process these. Thanks a lot and keep up the great work. And on behalf of all your fans living in Germany.
Dead.
Figaro, Figaro, Figaro, I killed a wabbit. Poor little bunny, Poor widow.
Is that the only opera that you've seen?
No, I know more than the. What are they called? The Barber of Seville. Anyways, though, Brock, as an, as a former ballerina, I'm sure you're quite good at opera.
Not the singing part. I did perform in many operas as the dancer though, which is really fun.
Good man.
And actually our friend Monica Renegal is a opera singer.
The nutrition diva.
We know all kinds of of opera singers.
Anyway, Derek, shall I break this down for you?
Break it down.
So first of all, I have a great podcast that I did with the author of a book called Anxiety 101, Eudine Somebody. I think her name was like Eudene Harry, something like that. Go check out that podcast because that's got some great stuff on anxiety. But I'll give you my top five tips. My top five tips. Tip number one, which my friend Emily Fletcher of Ziva Meditation, who I interviewed on the show, is very into the last conference I was at a few days ago she was at, and she led the whole conference through this and everybody was just like Zen the rest of the day. We did this for about 5 minutes. Alternate Nostril breathing. There's a lot of breathwork patterns that have been shown to decrease cortisol and to remove stress and anxiety pretty quickly. And alternate nostril breathing is at the top of the list. And that's where you breathe in through your left nostril and you hold it and you breathe out through your right nostril. You breathe into your right nostril and you breathe in through your left nostril and then you whisper like I do.
But before you start this, go and blow your nose because if you're like me, something goes shooting out.
Exactly. Alternate nostril breathing number two is the one component, plant based component, that has more freaking studies behind it for its anxiolytic effects than I can shake a stick at. Everything from effects on cerebral blood flow to areas of the brain responsible for anxiety, to studies they've done on. On chronically stressed rodent models and human models. Not actually human models, but actual humans. There may have been some models, I don't know a ton of different anxiety responses to this. And that is.
I know what it is. I know what it is. It's beer, right?
Close beer. Cbd. Cbd, baby. I've been taking. Try this on for size. Take two of those before you take a nap in the afternoon. Oh, my goodness. You have the most amazing naps on the planet. The CBD I use has other anxiolytics in it or things that shut down anxiety, namely ashwagandha and lemon balm. And that's over@getnatureblend.com for the CBD. That would be. Number two. Would be CBD for sure. All right. Number three would be the quick coherence technique. I love this one. And this is where you focus your attention in an area of your heart, and you imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart or your chest area. And typically you'll inhale for five seconds and exhale for five seconds. And then you think of something that you're someone that you're grateful for or something you appreciate or you care for or something or someone you love. And as you breathe in and out of that heart area in your chest, you just let that feeling wash over you. Just thinking, dwelling upon something or someone that you love or that you're grateful for, it's that freaking easy. There's not a lot more to it. And they've shown that this, like, increases your HRV and decreases stress. That's a pretty good one, too. So the quick coherence technique, what do.
You use for that? What's your app of choice?
I use the. The Nature Beat app. It actually measures your HRV and kind of walks you through it. So that's what I use, the. The Nature Beat app.
I can't believe I forgot about that one.
Nature Beat. Greenfieldfitnesssystems.com Naturebeat, I think, is the. That's the one I use.
I have that one on my phone every morning.
Three minutes, push the little HRV for stress button, and that's it. The third one, should you not be able to get your hands on cbd, the next best thing is adaptogenic herbs. And my favorite blend is handmade by this Chinese herbologist in Oregon who's been on the podcast three times, who is not Chinese. Roger Drummer. He's not Chinese.
It's Rishi, Eleuthero, Rhodiola, ashwagandha, schizandra, eucomia, bark, gotu, kola. And he extracts this stuff at extremely, extremely high densities. Like, it is potent. And this one's in a pill. It's called Inner Peace. And specifically designed to regulate that hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal axis I was talking about earlier. It's probably the most powerful adaptogen that I've used in terms of something you can readily get for not too expensive in a capsule form. And that one's called, surprisingly enough, Inner Peace. So that would be number four, Inner Peace. It's an herbal adaptogen. And then the last one is a brand new device. Came out like a month ago. It's made by this company that used to only sell things you would. You had to get prescribed by a physician. It's this thing you wear around your head. It was known as the Fisher Wallace stimulator, but this new version of it, based on the frequency that it emits, there's this band you wear around your head. And it hits the two spots right above your ear, and it stimulates your brain to produce serotonin and melatonin while lowering cortisol. And it's crazy. Wrap this thing around your head. You can close your eyes and see like these strange flashes of light in your eyes. And you. You leave it on and it runs for like 20 minutes. And you just lay there and you can close your eyes and take a nap or you can just lay there and let it run. Amazing way to, like, you can get stressed out and it's, it's. It's almost like One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest. When you're going nuts and crazy and mad and swinging like a. Like an ax around like a murderer. And they do like, the electrostimulation just shock the heck out of your brain. This is like that, but in a much more gentle way. It just basically shocks stress away and it works.
I feel like you mixed a couple of Jack Nicholson movies together.
I think I just mixed up a bunch of, of a bunch of old horror movies.
That's right. If you're feeling like Jack Nicholson, this is the. This is the cure.
God bless Stanley Kubrick. Anyways, though, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com circadia and check this thing out. It's technically called transcranial electrical stimulation. It's safe for adults, it's safe for children. It works like gangbusters. So it's been a top five alternate nostril Breathing cbd, quick coherence technique, inner peace and this circadia device. So the keto one seems to have caffeine in it. I can't really tell how much caffeine.
But why do a lot of these things that are supposed to make you.
Feel so great have caffeine in them? Of course you feel great.
Everything good in the world has caffeine.
You know what, there is a reason that ketosis supplements have caffeine in them now. Including this keto one. The keto one is a beta hydroxybutyrate salt. I wrote a whole article about how ketones are. They've now been proven to increase longevity. We've come full circle. They contribute to this longevity protein called a FOXO forkhead boxo transcription factor which increases the transcription of genes that encode a bunch of antioxidant enzymes that help you to live longer. And ketones actually activate this. That's a total rabbit hole. But anyways, that's why I wrote that article.
Actually. Speaking of rabbit holes, how come nobody has sent us a recipe for the chunky monkey longevity ice cream?
That's right. That we talked about in the last episode. Get on that. Come on. People need a good ice cream recipe.
I guess we need to put caffeine in it.
Yeah. Anyways though, go listen to BenGreenfieldFitness.com371 if you don't know what we're talking about. Anyways though, so this keto one has caffeine in it as do a whole bunch of these other ketosis based supplements that are out there. And there's a reason for that. Caffeine intake increases plasma ketones and they've shown this to be the case when you combine straight up with nothing else. Well, we'll start up with nothing else. Or when you combine it with exogenous ketones, it significantly stimulates ketone production in a dose dependent manner. Meaning the more caffeine you use, the higher the level of plasma free fatty acids and the higher amount of ketosis you can get into. So it's actually a really good 12 combo to combine caffeine and ketones unless it's 10pm in time for bed. So that's why from a, from a scientific standpoint. But the interesting thing is that caffeine has an effect on a whole bunch of different like, like supplements and nutrients and, and vitamins. One is for example, like, like theanine. Caffeine elongates the effect of theanine and vice versa. And theanine. Is this really Interesting supplement that can do things like increase alpha brain waves and actually decrease stress a little bit and remove some of the jittery effect of caffeine. So that's why green tea for example, is such a kind of cool drink to have because it's that combination of theanine and caffeine. So that's one thing that caffeine also mixes with. Taurine is another Taurine. You'll find that like that chimera coffee stuff, it's a non essential sulfur containing amino acid that appears to improve the ability of caffeine to allow you to engage in cognitive performance, type of tasks, primarily executive thinking patterns and making decisions. And so taurine is another one that caffeine is a good one to stack with ephedrine, which you'll find in a lot of, in my opinion dangerous but effective fat loss supplements. Ephedra also works quite well combined with caffeine and the two have like this synergistic effect where you get like double the effect when you combine them. Same thing could be said for methamphetamine by the way.
So same amount of anxiety related jitteriness too.
Yep, yep, that's another one. There are also, there's a lot of different medications. You know, there's like one called, called propranolol which is like a beta blocker for high blood pressure. And that one, like caffeine antagonizes meaning like if you take caffeine at the same time that you take a beta blocker for high blood pressure, the caffeine kind of diminishes the effect of the beta blocker. And so any medication or supplement that you're taking, you should look into the effect of caffeine on it. But ultimately when it comes to taking it with ketones, the reason that's in a lot of those supplements is because it increases the effectiveness of ketones. And then of course there's, you know, the whole idea that a lot of people know about. Like if you're using an iron supplement, caffeine interferes with the body's absorption of iron. So you wouldn't want to have coffee with a supplement that has iron in it. You wouldn't. If you're really trying to get as much as you can out of your vitamin B vitamins, Caffeine causes a mild diuretic effect and so it can result in fluid loss and you pee out some of your B vitamins. So if you have a vitamin B deficiency, which not a lot of people do, although you know, hard charging high achievers, a Lot of times have low levels of B12, but caffeine can inhibit the absorption of that. Vitamin D is another one. Caffeine inhibits vitamin D receptors, so you want to be careful if you have low vitamin D. Same thing with calcium. Caffeine. And along with calcium or caffeine, along with iron or. Two things you'd want to avoid.
How about protein? Doesn't caffeine helps protein get to the right places? Doesn't it?
You know what? I don't know about that. I actually have not heard that. It may. It may. I don't know.
I thought you told me that it's.
Possible that I did in a previous podcast and I've forgotten about the research. So, yeah, that's possible. That it could. I mean, I could see a mechanism where caffeine would increase plasma availability of amino acids in the same way that it would fatty acids, but I don't know for sure. Don't quote me on that.
Anyways, I'm Googling it.
Yeah, Google it. But in the meantime, while you're Googling that Brock, let's give away some swag. And then I'll give my final tip from Paul. Check. First of all, remember, you can go to greenfieldfitnesssystems.com giftpak and get a gift pack. But if you just want us to send a handy dandy gear pack to you, all you got to do is leave us a review in itunes. Of course, if you want to get the double whammy, you could do that podchaser contest and also go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com podchaser but if you go to itunes and you leave us a review and you hear your review read on the show, all you need to do is email gear greenfield fitness systems.com that's gear greenfield fitness systems.com.
Talk and we'll. We'll leave your review. So. Or we'll send you a gift. You leave a review, we send you a gift.
Ah, you're confusing me even. And I know what's going on.
Just wait till you hear this review. The title of this one is called Body Epif. Or the person who left the review is called Body Epiphanies. And the title is Roasting Balls while inhaling Ayahuasca. Yes, you heard me right. This man is pure gold.
Pure gold.
Brock, you want to take this one away?
I do. It goes like this. I listen to hundreds of podcasts. Wow, this guy's got a lot of free time. Or girl, do we know what Sexton is?
Brandon. Name's Brandon. Probably a boy.
Oh, there you go. Okay. Ben is by far the top of the food chain in the realm of all things optimal health and fitness. Fitness. I especially loved his interview with Dr. Mercola. Or Mercola.
Merkola.
Mercola.
Merkola. Sounds.
Like a Muppet.
I think it sounds like that Swiss sore throat lozenge.
Yeah. Anyway, we digress.
I have learned a lot from him over the years and must say, if you aren't listening to Ben, you're missing out on gold in all caps. I mean, how many products can you tune into or how many podcasts are you can you tune into and hear about a man toasting his balls with some red light therapy using a joov light simultaneously while inhaling ayahuasca incense? This man has it all. I must forewarn you that he uses the word copious. Actually, you might say that you use copious copiously.
I do.
Just a random notation. All the fitness tips you could ask for with a massive serving of psychedelic talk that keeps you on on your toes. If you're interested in mind expansion and optimal performance, you need to be listening in. Cheers, Brandon. A Trin, B, C, T, B, M, H, H, P, N, C. I'm assuming he has a whole bunch of degrees or something.
Yeah, a lot of Alphabet letters.
I don't know what any of those are. I think he made those up.
Pretty sure he did because my name is Ben Greenfield, MSc, THT, PE, Z, Doctor. Anyways, though, Brandon, email gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com we will send you a handy dandy gear pack. Okay. Include your T shirt size, by the way.
Yes.
Here is my final tip for you, straight from Paul Chek.
Oh yeah, Geez, I almost forgot about this. Here we go.
Okay, this is freaking amazing. You need two to three components for this along with either A, what is called a volcano vaporizer or B, for the smaller, cheaper, more portable solution, what is called a magic flight box. Traditionally sold as a very small portable device to vaporize marijuana. However, it is an infrared conductive based coil that you could pretty much put any grass or herb in. And what Paul taught me how to do was you take your favorite loose leaf tea and you get like a marijuana vaporizer. You put your favorite loose leaf tea in and you add a very small amount of a good organic tobacco in the there. Because tobacco is notorious for pesticides and herbicides. He likes this Norwegian cuff called Stokkeby S T O K K E B Y E. And then you put a.
Drop pipe tobacco kind of stuff like the really nice Smelling stuff.
And then you put a drop of your favorite essential oil in there. Could be pine, it could be turmeric, it could be spruce. I like to use a lot of these kind of like woodsy essential oils. Just a drop and then you vaporize that the same way as you would marijuana. And it is amazing. A there's no smoke, so you're not getting the carcinogens and you're breathing in this blend of essential oils and a little bit of this wonderful smelling tobacco and a little bit of a tea of your choice, like a nice loose leaf like a green tea or a moriva tea or a moringa tea, like you name it. There's a whole bunch of different great organic loose leaf teas out there, but it's just like the most, it's like sipping a cup of coffee during the day or a green tea or anything. It's kind of like this Zen experience and it's really, really cool.
So does it need to be in one of those volcano shaped.
It needs to be in a. I use this tiny, tiny, tiny little thing you get on Amazon. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. It's called a magic flight box. Can take it anywhere in the world. TSA is not going to kick your butt if you get a little tobacco and tea and essential oils with your vaporizer. Right?
I mean they'll just make sure you.
Clean it up well, clean it out well. And actually you can mix marijuana with tobacco, tobacco and that's pretty amazing too, doing marijuana, tobacco and essential oils. But anyways, if you just want to do something that, that perhaps isn't slightly as so inebriating but gives you a nice little high during the day. That's it. Just remember, anytime that you vaporize anything, you can take in any toxins that are in there. So get organic. Make sure you steer clear. Anything that has herbicides and pesticides in it. But that's a little tip. Isn't that cool?
That's a good tip. Yeah, I'm going to give that a try.
It's actually quite nice. It's my new little favorite trick slash habit. So there you have it. So you learned all sorts of things. How to get it up, how to smoke, how to go to Panama and party, how to live a very long time, how to walk like a pigeon, how to sleep like a dog, and how to get your tight pants on. In today's episode, all the show notes, everything that we talked about, you can find over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 372-Brock. Have a wonderful night. I'm gonna make myself an omelet. My kids are at wilderness survival camp, which is why I was able to do this podcast at night. So they're probably fighting off wolves in the wilderness, but. So I'm gonna go make a. Make an omelet. Later, dude.
Good night.
You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.
Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.
Sam.
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