A Little-Known Trick To GET RID Of Pesky Gut Issues, Are You Burning As Many Calories As You *Think*?, Hair Growth Hacks & More: Solosode #486

In this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, little-known tricks to get rid of pesky gut issues. Are you burning as many calories as you think? Hair growth hacks and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. Hey, welcome to today's show recording yet again, my solo sode from the brand new office in— where am I? I'm in Idaho. I'm in North Idaho, a tiny, tiny little community. I got no gas station. I got no grocery store, but I got an office and I got a lot of good stuff for you today. All the show notes, the juicy, juicy show notes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/486. And, in these These episodes, I not only reply to your questions, which you can ask if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com and leave a question there, or you can interact with my AI clone over there if you just want to avoid listening to the podcast altogether because my voice annoys you and just chat with my— not my drone, what do you call it? My drone, my clone, the other own word. So, you can do that over at BenGreenfieldLife.com, lower right-hand corner, got a little clone. There's also a place on there where you can quickly click around. I forget where it is. And, click, click the part where you ask a question if that's precise enough directions for you. Hey, so I want to get into today just to jump straight to the chase, some news flashes for you because I'm constantly reading articles and books and finding interesting information. And, I thought this first one was kind of a doozy because I, like many people, have used these online metabolic rate calculators, the ones where you plug in often your weight, your height, your age, your sex, and it will approximate how many calories that you are burning per day. Now, there is an article that appears on the website Macrofactor, which is actually a great website for learning more about counting calories and metabolic rates. And they actually reported some pretty shocking information about these equations that are used to estimate basal metabolic rate or BMR, how many calories you're burning at rest doing not much at all besides just surviving, right? Because you can tack on to BMR activities of daily living, exercise, the thermic expenditure of food, et cetera. As a matter of fact, when I used to operate an exercise physiology and sports performance training center in Spokane, I would have people often come over to the office for what is called indirect calorimetry in which you wear a mask, you breathe oxygen, and exhale carbon dioxide. And based on oxygen consumed and carbon dioxide exhaled, you're able using that measurement to approximate the amount of calories that you're burning each day. There are some small at-home equivalents of that when it comes to looking at, say, the amount of fat versus carbohydrate utilization that you have at rest. One is called the— I have it over there in my drawer somewhere— the Lumen. It's a tiny little black device. You just take a big breath and breathe into it, and it lets you know your fat and carb utilization and can do a little bit of an approximation of your, what's called your respiratory quotient, right? The fat carb ratio. It doesn't tell you how many calories you're burning per day, but a lot of times these online calculators can be somewhat helpful for giving you a ballpark. But the thing is, these metabolic rates can widely vary, dramatically vary between individuals. So what are some things that you should know when you use one of these online equations to estimate your BMR? There is about a 68% chance that your actual BMR, the actual number of calories that you're burning at rest, is within 200 calories of the estimate provided, and a 95% chance that your actual BMR is within 400 calories of the estimate provided. Now, that's a pretty wide range, right? So if you have a BMR reported by a BMR equation of 1,500 calories per day, there's basically a 68% chance that your actual basal metabolic rate is somewhere between 1,300 and 1,700 calories per day, how many calories you would actually need to eat in order to, uh, survive each day to sustain metabolism. And a 95% chance that'd be between 1,100 and 1,900 calories per day. So technically, that variability means that if your Neighbor Nancy takes an online metabolic rate calculation, she's the same height, weight, age, sex, and body composition and has the same lifestyle as you, uh, and you do it too, then you could both have energy needs that differ by at least 800 calories per day. And this actually means some people actually do have fast metabolisms and some people have slow metabolisms. There are a variety of reasons that you might have a slow or a fast metabolism. Some of that come down to thyroid. Some of it can come down to the type of nutrients that you're consuming, right? Fat versus carbohydrate versus protein. Protein, for example, is something that takes more calories to burn. But, it's very interesting, this idea of fast versus slow metabolization or oxidation. For example, there's one test called an HTMA, hair tissue mineral analysis. You may have heard I launched a new website called the Life Network. It's an online healthy community membership website. And, as a part of that website, we have what's called the LifePrint. We wanted a very affordable, convenient, friendly way for people to test some things in their body without forking over money for a $10,000 executive health analysis. So, the HTMA, it's like a $100 test. You just clip some hair on your head or your crotch or wherever you want to clip your hair. And, it provides insights amongst many other things as to whether you're a slow or fast oxidizer. By analyzing the balance of minerals and ratios in hair. So, it evaluates minerals like your calcium to phosphorus ratio. A high ratio of calcium to phosphorus could indicate you're a slow oxidizer. Well, a low ratio, so more calcium than phosphorus could point to fast oxidation. Looks at sodium to magnesium ratios. A low ratio is associated with slow oxidation. A low ratio is slow oxidation. A high ratio, so a lot of sodium, relative to magnesium would be linked to fast oxidation. It looks at the potassium to sodium ratios, which reflects your adrenal activity. That also influences your oxidation rates. Now, people who are slow oxidizers tend to have sluggish adrenal and thyroid activity, and as reflected by an HTMA. So that would lead to slower metabolic processes, whereas a fast oxidizer would tend to exhibit higher adrenal and thyroid activity, and have a slightly faster metabolism. Furthermore, slow oxidizer— and this, this can influence whether you do a low-carb, high-fat or a high-carb, low-fat diet— slow oxidizers tend to not burn carbohydrates as efficiently. They get blood sugar imbalances and low energy. They typically do better with a higher protein, higher fat diet to stabilize blood sugar and give sustained energy. And a fast oxidizer, on the other hand, burns carbs quickly. They might have energy dips if they're not frequently snacking or refueling. They often have slightly higher adrenal and thyroid activity, so a higher metabolism. A lot of times they need more calories, a moderate to high carbohydrate intake. And so that also influences or could influence the actual results of a metabolic rate test, right? You could have two people again with similar height, weight, age, sex, and body composition, but one's a slow oxidizer, one's a fast oxidizer, and the fast oxidizer is probably going to err towards needing a a higher number of calories, whereas a slow oxidizer would need a lower number of calories. That's just one example amongst many other reasons why when you're doing an online metabolic rate calculator, you do need to paint with a pretty broad brush. Again, like, you could be literally 500, 600, 700 calories off what it's telling you you're at. And let's say you're burning— I'm gonna, I'm gonna do easy math here, okay? This would be really low, but, but just easy math because I'm not good at doing math off the top of my head. Let's say your BMR tells you you are burning 1,000 calories a day at rest, right? And typically these calculators come with an activity factor, right? Let's say you're exercising 5 days a week, moderate to high intensity for 45 minutes. So you would have an activity factor of 1.55. Uh, you plug that in and the number of calories you would need to sustain how many calories you're burning each day would be 1,550 calories. But it could be as high as 1,550 calories plus another 800 calories, right? Meaning you would be severely underfueling potentially unless you take that BMR calculator result and actually experiment with a little bit, pay attention to weight fluctuations if you're using the number of calories that it advised you to use, pay attention potentially to looking at a more precise measurement of calorie burn. Meaning at some point getting one of these indirect calorimetry tests where you actually go to a health club clinic or exercise physiology lab if you really want to measure it precisely. This is like what bodybuilders do because bodybuilders got to get it really, really dialed in for things like fat loss or muscle gain. So, these calculators, what I'm getting at here, they're useful, but you do need to take the results with a grain of salt and possibly even a grain of extra carbohydrate or fat. I'll link to the full paper, macrofactor.app, in the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/486. But, just something to think about when it comes to calorie burn. There was a recent review of meta-analyses, right? So meta-analyses being studies of studies, and they were looking at what improved issues related to irritable bowel syndrome. And irritable bowel syndrome, as you've probably heard of before, is essentially not feeling too great in the gut, you know, often associated with gas, bloating, bouncing back and forth between constipation, diarrhea, not quite knowing what's up, getting brain fog after a meal, etc. So what they looked at was 58 different meta-analyses that dug into what kind of nutritional interventions actually helped people with irritable bowel syndrome. Now, what they looked at was taking probiotics, taking prebiotics, eating a low FODMAP diet. We'll get into that in a second. Having more fiber or less fiber because less fiber often helps when you have IBS. Using glutamine, right? That's often a highly recommended way to pretty simply reduce IBS issues. Take about 5 grams of glutamine powder you can easily get on Amazon with each meal. And they also looked at a glutamine-free diet. They looked at peppermint oil, another thing that works really well. I mean, if I've like, if I'm getting on a plane and my gut's feeling a little bumpy, I will literally, I keep a bottle of peppermint oil in my fanny pack and I'll just rub a little bit on my stomach and rub it around a few times for about 30 seconds. And honestly, it feels really good. Usually, I'll put a few drops in my water as well. Peppermint's fantastic for gut, problematic gut issues. Aloe vera, which also is great for constipation. Vitamin D, a lot of people don't know vitamin D can help with a lot of gut issues. Curcumin, traditional Chinese medicine formula, I'm not even going to try to pronounce it, Tongxiyao Fang, we'll go with that Tongxiyao Fang. And so, they examined all of these to see what provided the strongest evidence for improving irritable bowel syndrome. Now, one was probiotics. That actually didn't surprise me too much. I think you need a well-formulated probiotic. I think honestly the very, very best way to do it is to make your own yogurt. I mean, in terms of the billion, billion count of probiotics you can get, I realize you aren't going to travel with yogurt, but if you're at home, there's this one yogurt recipe my wife and I make. It's called Dr. William Davis's Gut Fix Yogurt. I've done a whole podcast about it. It's in my cookbook. We get a couple of different probiotic strains. We mix them up with milk. We add a little inulin to feed the probiotics. We add a little bit of sugar. We use a 36-hour fermentation at 100 degrees in a yogurt maker. And, when I spoke with Dr. William Davis, I mean, he talked about how within 4 weeks of consuming a cup of that a day, he could eradicate small intestine bacterial overgrowth in his patients, which is a huge source of gas, bloating, et cetera. I'll link to that podcast in the shownotes. Probiotics were one, but then a low FODMAP diet was the other. Low FODMAP diet. So, FODMAP, what's that? Fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. I know it's a lot of words. Basically, these are poorly absorbed, highly fermentable carbohydrates that can contribute to gas and bloating and diarrhea due to their fermentability and the attraction of water to the intestinal tract. Now, these are not fermented compounds, right? This isn't like kimchi, sauerkraut, et cetera. These are fermentable compounds. So, a few of big culprits would be like apples, onions, wheat, right? Like, people will get a deleterious reaction to wheat. It's not because they're gluten intolerant or have celiac disease. In a lot of cases, it's simply because wheat can be very fermentable. So you get water that's sent to the bowel, and that causes diarrhea. And then you get gas production in the large intestine, which leads to bloating, distension, flatulence, abdominal pain, and constipation. A lot of people don't realize that buildup of gas actually— you'd think gas is kind of gross, but you think logically, like, a lot of gas in the large intestine would kind of force poop out, but it doesn't. It makes you more constipated. It kind of traps stuff in. So the FODMAP diet, obviously the low FODMAP diet, as the name implies, eliminates these foods that are high in FODMAPs. The one would be things that have a lot of polysaccharides and oligosaccharides. Legumes are a biggie. Onion, cabbage, and chicory root would be others. Lactose would be the disaccharide group. So basically you get rid of all dairy if you're doing a low FODMAP diet. So you're, you're switching to coconut yogurt instead of regular yogurt, etc. Fructose, right? Apples, pears, artichokes, asparagus, honey, fruit juices. I used to mainline energy gels back when I'd race Ironman triathlon and have horrific gas after a bike ride. I personally react really, really poorly to high FODMAP foods. You give me a salad made with apples and onions and maybe a cream dairy-based dressing with some honey and fructose on it, and I'm going to be painting the back of the toilet seat the next morning. So then, we've got mannitol and sorbitol. These are polyols, sugar alcohols. So, if you've ever had one of those diet energy drinks that's sweetened with something that ends with -ol in it and then you get bloating, that's often why, like maltitol, sorbitol, et cetera. There's a whole bunch of them out there. But, these are also found in apples and pears, so-called stone fruits. I don't do well with those. I don't eat them. At least, I rarely eat them. If I'm at a restaurant, I'll occasionally have the pear walnut goat cheese salad, but pretty few and far between, folks. Mushrooms, not like mushroom powder, but more like whole mushrooms can be an issue in a lot of people. Cauliflower and cruciferous vegetables. And again, a lot of like diet foods and beverages that are using sugar alcohols. You eliminate those in a low FODMAP diet, and there's often very, very good effects on all of the issues associated with irritable bowel. But it's very interesting because they did find that probiotics in a low FODMAP diet have the strongest evidence for for improving irritable bowel syndrome. But just after that paper came out, that was in August of 2024, uh, another one appeared in September of 2024 in the Journal of Nutrients. Okay, and I'll link to these papers in the show notes. Now, in this one, they actually compared a low FODMAP diet to a diet that was less restrictive, namely a diet that eliminated sucrose and, uh, starch. Eliminated sucrose and starch. So rather than eliminating every single fermentable food on the face of the planet, this one simply limited confectioneries, what we in the non-science world call candy or sweets, uh, sweetened dairy products. Not all dairy products, just sweetened dairy products. Think like Dannon yogurt with all the rotten fruit in the bottom, or, you know, your, um, chocolate milk with high fructose corn syrup, things like that. They got rid of ultra-processed foods, bread, pasta, and rice. The diet was primarily meat, fish, fat, natural dairy products, eggs, nuts, seeds, berries, other fruits and vegetables low in starch and sucrose. When the participants in this study had foods high in starch, they added fat or protein to them, both of which can reduce the fermentability of starch. Right. So you have rice and you're adding maybe some butter and some, I don't know, having it, having it with a can of sardines poured on top. That sounds like the way I would eat. And then they also had patients, and this, this is huge in and of itself, eat slowly and chew food thoroughly. And if they were going to have like the traditional bread and pasta dishes, they chose fiber-rich versions over white versions. Well, it turns out that in people with irritable bowel syndrome, reducing starch and sucrose was just as effective as a low FODMAP diet for improving symptoms. And they had a 6-month follow-up. This was a 4-week intervention. It's not like you're going to eat like this for the rest of your life. Sometimes it's just long enough to address some of the microbiome imbalances that might exist. I talk about that in my podcast with Joel Greene recently. And it's kind of cool because you don't necessarily have to eliminate as many foods with this approach. And I'll, I'll keep that list in the show notes, the list of things that you'd want to be careful with, as well as a list to the paper itself. But low starch, low sucrose, or starch and sucrose limited diet. This is the first time I've seen seen something work as good or better than a low FODMAP diet for people with gut issues. So, one to tuck away if you ever find yourself with constipation or diarrhea. And, as much as everybody just loves me talking about gut issues and poop and the toilet, I've got one more for you. So, this was very interesting. I want to tell you a story. I had a period of time where I was having some very problematic gut issues. I had tried a variety of diets, practitioners, you know, all the tricks in the book, colostrum, glutamine, probiotics, et cetera. And I felt as though there was something anatomical going on. It was associated with some low back pain, some hip tightness, some feelings of like burning or inflammation in the front of my gut. I wound up going and seeing a chiropractic doc who someone recommended to me, and he adjusted my thoracic spine. And, within 5 minutes, the burning in the front of the stomach had gone away, my hips suddenly felt released, and my bowels returned to normal. So, I tucked that away and I've still kept up an occasional chiropractic visit. I'm not there every week getting poked and prodded and snapped and popped, but I'm about once a month I'll go to a chiro. So anyways, I recently came across a paper that backs up the efficacy of what I experienced. So, this paper is called "Long-term remission and alleviation of symptoms in allergy and Crohn's disease patients following spinal adjustment for reduction of vertebral subluxations. That's a mouthful. So I'll explain. I'll explain you. This paper presents a whole bunch of case reports. All right. So it's not a large double-blinded, you know, long-term human clinical research study, but case reports of individuals with allergic reactions and Crohn's disease who experience long-term remission or significant symptom improvement following chiropractic adjustments. So what, uh, these patients had was abdominal pain, bloating, bowel irregularities. The Crohn's patients who had these chiropractic adjustments had fewer flare-ups and required less medication. The allergy sufferers reported diminished symptoms like nasal congestion and sneezing. And the question becomes, why would this be? Well, there's a few potential reasons for this. One would be nervous system regulation, right? There, there's a definite spine nervous system connection. So, misalignments in the spine, which are referred to in the chiropractic industry, not to bastardize the term too much, but I'm going to keep this somewhat simple, they're often called vertebral subluxations. And those can impinge nerves and disrupt the function of the nervous system coming off the spine, and that controls every organ including your gut. It may also influence the vagus nerve because spinal adjustments that help to properly restore nervous system function can also affect your HRV and the tone of your vagus nerve, and that can play a crucial role in regulating both digestion and gastric inflammation. As a matter of fact, there's an old book written by an OG in the fitness industry by Paul Chek called "Eat, Move, and Be Healthy." And, he has many instances in that book. It's fantastic. I recently read it with my sons for the second time. First time I read it, I was a fledgling personal trainer. He came out with the 25-year anniversary version. Shout-out to Paul Chek. And, he's big in that book about, hey, you have gut issues, maybe you're doing too many sit-ups, too many crunches, keeping your stomach sucked in, basically keeping your abs too tight, not training, uh, other abdominal and pelvic musculature support organs like your, uh, transversus abdominis, for example, or your obliques. And therefore, you're creating imbalances in the spine that then affect gut function. And I think he's onto something there in the same way that this paper is onto the link between the spine and gut function. So in addition, these adjustments might reduce inflammation because if you reduce stress on the nervous system, you can potentially lower systemic inflammation. By releasing the impingement on some of these nerves from the vertebra. Proper nervous system signaling can also help to regulate the immune response, possibly preventing immune system overactivation that you'd see in Crohn's and allergy issues. We know that the brain and the gut constantly communicate via the nervous system, so misalignments in the spine may interfere with that communication, also contributing to gastrointestinal issues. And then there's the stress reduction component, right? Chiropractic care can activate the parasympathetic nervous system. I've, I've been adjusted many times. I felt like I was going to fall asleep right there on the table after the adjustment due to the relaxation. But that relaxation could also improve digestive function. So this is a cascade of reasons why if you're having a whole bunch of gut issues, and let's say you're doing a lot of things I just talked about, right, like you're going low FODMAP or limiting starch and sucrose, maybe you're using probiotics, you know, glutamine, peppermint oil, aloe vera, all the things. Well, you may want to consider actually looking at the anatomy of your spine. Spine. And as much as the profession is often thrown under the bus, I think for right reasons sometimes because there are some practitioners just like allopathic medicine and chiropractic medicine that don't do a good job, there are many good practitioners out there who really do know their way around the spine. And if you just won't go see a chiropractic for some reason because I don't know, whatever, your great aunt threw out her neck for 3 weeks after she saw one, an osteopathically trained physician, DO, would also be a good person to talk to about this issue and ask them, hey, could you, could you look at my spine, maybe do some X-rays, see if we have any type of impingement going on, see if there's any adjustments that might allow or might affect my gut function. So anyways, I thought the paper was really interesting. I'll link to the whole thing in the show notes if you want to take a deep dive into the science, but something to think about if you have pesky gut issues. All right. Next, I've got some resources for you before we move on to a great question this week. One is a great website, very simple website, but it's called plasticlist.org, plasticlist.org. So if you visit this website, it has a very impressive list of a whole bunch of different foods and the exact microplastic and plastic content of those foods. It's got some really good, uh, industry advice as well as far as some ways that you can avoid contamination and some ways that you can look into even finding a lab to test certain things that you might consume on a regular basis, as well as a lot of, a lot of reports on plastics in the industry. But basically, they launched this website, I think it was about 8 months ago, to test 100 everyday foods for the presence of plastic chemicals based on, of course, the increasing concern that plastics are endocrine-disrupting chemicals. So, they're looking at phthalates, they're looking at BPA. They formed a team of folks and called more than 100 labs to find one that could have good experience, quality standards, and turnaround time to collect hundreds of samples. Then, they had them tested, they validated the results, and then they prepared them to share on this website. They collected 775 samples of 312 different foods and sent them to the lab. So, they tested for 18 different chemicals, also known as analytes, and they tested the foods that a lot of people eat, uh, fast food, sodas, water, milk, yogurt, produce, snack bars, as well as some, some actual brands like Blue Bottle Coffee, Salt and Straw ice cream, LaCroix, Tartine sourdough bread, the Core Power protein drinks. And then they listed all of the phthalates, bisphenols, and phthalate substitutes found in those foods. Now here's what's scary. They detected plastic chemicals in 86% of the foods they tested. At least one of the 18 chemicals they tested for was found in every baby food. Food, every prenatal supplement, human breast milk, yogurt, ice cream products, to name only a few categories. They also found plastic chemicals in all products tested from Starbucks, Gerber, Chobani, Strauss, Celsius, Blue Bottle, RXBAR, Coca-Cola, Tartine, and Ghirardelli chocolate. Now, last one's kind of sad. Uh, and they also found plastic chemicals in practically all the upscale and healthy foods that they tested— raw milk and beef straight from a farm, 22 different organic foods, 20 healthy grocery products from Whole Foods eggs. Aside from one product, the O Organics brand eggs, all of them contained plastic chemicals. Now, fortunately, on the website, they listed how much each of those things contained and the percentage limit that would be above, or the percentage of the limit that it actually was. Like, for example, um, Boba Guys black tea pearls, 32,571.4% above the limit for BPA. Uh, Spam canned meat, 6,800% above the limit for BPA. Uh, tap water that already had AquaTabs purification tablets added to it, 10,903% above the recommended allowed levels of BPA. Whole Foods wild-caught salmon, Japan, 968.6% above the recommended levels of BPA. Fiji water, 283.3% above the recommendations for DEHP, another plastic chemical. So then they list all of the different research that actually shows that this could be a problem. And they've got some really, really good materials on the website about how they build up and, you know, what's in baby food and what's in raw milk, you know, way too much for me to get into here, all the way down to tap water from different cities, etc. So I don't think you're necessarily going to climb into a cave and not ever eat anything from a grocery store or a farm again, but you can do things that help with this. I, for example, I think one of the best things you can do is sweat, right? I think there's something to be said about the longevity-enhancing results of a regular sauna practice, this, partially being attributed to the detoxification effects of just sweating stuff out, sweating these plastics out. You can breathe, you can move, you can metabolize, you can exercise, you can get fresh air, you can pay attention to the things that you can control like your air quality, your household cleaning chemicals, your personal care products. You can visit like ewg.org to find lots of clean varietals or even this website, plasticlist.org. You're going to have plastics that build up in you by living a modern industrial lifestyle no matter what. But in the same way that you would move lymph by sweating, by moving, by breathing, by exercising, the same could be said to a certain level from— if we're talking about plastics. Now, there are more modern— I talked about this in the last podcast, so listen to podcast number 485 if you want to learn about some more advanced blood filtration protocols like plasmapheresis and blood filters that can actually pull some of this stuff straight out of your blood. But, for the average person, it's just sweat, avoid the stuff that you can, be careful. But, we're going to get some plastic buildup no matter what. We're not getting chased by woolly mammoths or eaten by saber-toothed tigers, but the trade-off is we're eating food a lot of the times that we don't have control over. And, unless you're going to move to a pristine farm on a Himalayan mountaintop, you're going to run into some of this stuff. But, I would say if you visit this website, you can at least eliminate from your your regular staple diet some of the things that are the most problematic. And, that would certainly be my recommendation. Alright, another interesting website. Anybody who's read my book, "Boundless Parenting," knows that I have a little bit of a passion for parenting, for education, for the ways that we raise our children. As a matter of fact, my friend Tim Ferriss just had a great show with another friend of mine, Naval Ravikant, about this new book called "The Sovereign Child." I ordered it. I'm going to read it. It sounds like it contains a lot of information you're going to find in my book, "Boundless Parenting," and even more. But, because I'm so interested in this topic, I thought it was very interesting, this relatively short and sweet article I came across about screen time in kids and an experiment that someone ran on their child. Those are dangerous words, experiment on a child. But, this person wrote a little post. I originally saw it on X by @melissaonx, and she mentioned that early exposure to screens is, of course, a pervasive problem in modern parenting with a lot of compound effects on the long tail of a child's life. And the standard stance is just no screen time before 2 years old. That's actually the standard stance. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Pediatric Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But there is there's no stance or standard otherwise, as Melissa points out, on how to achieve this other than to simply abstain. She was looking for a more proactive and antifragile plan. So, she dug into the research. And after reading a lot of the research on screens and children, her basic understanding, and I would agree with this, was that there's neurological implications of screen time for a child under the age of 2 years old because their brain responds with alpha Those are associated with passive and disengaged states, and that sharply contrasts with beta waves, which are linked to active thinking and learning. Beta waves would come from a focused, concerted cognitive effort for problem solving or decision making. And so her primary objective was to minimize any potential interference from screens. So she decided to run an experiment with what is called Slow TV. Big. So, what she did was she took her child, I think it was a relative, I think 6 months old, I believe was the child, maybe earlier. And, I'm trying to remember if she listed on the website. Let me see if she listed here. She doesn't list. Oh, 3 months old, 3 months old. And, she says as soon as she started this, her kid was about 3 months old, it seemed to work very, very well. She picked a minimally stimulating channel called Slow TV on YouTube. She links, and I'll link to this article in the shownotes. Basically, one has movement and no music like a train through the snowy Swiss Alps in winter, 8.5 hours long. Sounds like the type of thing I'd watch to go to sleep. Another one has music and almost no movement, some girl with 3-ish hours, some kind of looping animation. She subscribed to YouTube Premium, so there are no ads shown while playing these. And, she left it on 24/7, 365 for 2 years. That's a little extreme. Might be an EMF implication there, but her child— she was essentially trying to make her child bored to death with screens, like get a whole bunch of alpha wave activity with screens, no beta waves. And then, at 18 months old, she took him to the eye doctor. So basically, when she took him to the eye doctor, the way they do the exam is they play the Pixar movie Cars and they say, "Look over there. Keep looking over there while I'm looking at your eyes. And the eye doctor quite literally could not get the child to look at the screen at all. The child was bored to death of screens and not interested in them at all. Melissa reports in the article, now at almost 3 years old, the child still thinks the iPhone is just a phone that calls people because they're not interested in the screen at all. Now, she lists a couple of books that gets into why this works, one called "Endangered Minds" and one called "Your Child's Growing Mind" on the neurological implications of screen time. But it's fascinating. You basically— this would be like trying to get someone to not want to go to the gym and basically creating a gym that has like a rusty set of dumbbells and a stability ball in the corner. The gym's not fun at all, you're not going to go. Like, there's the reverse of that. Make the screen not fun at all and basically, uh, season your child into complete boredom with screens by playing them super boring content 24/7 until they just realize that screens are not interesting at all. I thought it was an interesting experiment. Experiment. I don't recommend you go out and experiment neurologically with your children, but it's still just a fascinating idea. So anyways, I will link to Melissa's post. Her post on X actually received a lot of interesting and somewhat controversial comments around it. But something to think about, maybe it'd work for adults too. Get one of those like 77-inch OLED TV screens that don't harm your eyeballs, plug it in via Ethernet so you're not getting a bunch of EMF, and then just play all the time until you condition your brain into thinking there's absolutely nothing interesting going on on that screen at all because it's got no ads and it's like a train going through the Alps over and over and over again. Alright. Or, just listen to this podcast over and over and over again. So, I've got a question now. Luke asked an interesting question. Luke says, "What are your thoughts on Nutrafol?" Nutrafol. Okay, Nutrafol being linked to liver injury. So, Nutrafol. What is Nutrafol? It is a somewhat popular supplement for hair growth. It's an oral supplement for hair growth. It contains herbs, vitamins, minerals. It's marketed as safe and natural, but some recent concerns, I guess what's somewhat similar to concerns over wild-caught salmon from Whole Foods having plastics in it, have arisen about its potential link to liver injury. So, here's the thing, Here's the thing. Nutrafol has botanical ingredients in. These are called botanical ingredients, a lot of herbs. A lot of times you'll see this with Ayurvedic herbs, Chinese traditional medicine herbs, et cetera. It's got saw palmetto, ashwagandha, and curcumin in it, all of which have been associated with instances, somewhat rare instances but instances nonetheless, of herb-induced liver injury. A lot of people think supplements are fine, medications are not when it comes to your liver. A lot of herbs actually are not that great for your liver. This has happened in the nutrition industry before. Herbs that are tainted, herbs that require a lot of liver processing, herbs that based on your metabolism and your CYP genetics may just not be for you. So, saw palmetto seems to increase liver enzyme activity leading to liver strain in sensitive individuals. Ashwagandha has also been linked to elevated liver enzymes and acute liver injuries. I'll often see this in and, you know, biohackers and health enthusiasts who will do phone consults with for their lab work and their blood work, and they'll have really high liver enzymes they can't figure out because they don't drink alcohol and they do detoxes and they do a coffee enema and all these things, but they're just taking like 80 supplements a day, right? And, you know, a lot of times you get rid of the supplements and the liver enzymes go down, and then you just have to reintroduce the supplements one by one to see what seems to be causing liver enzymes to increase. And a lot of times it is the supplements or the powders that contain herbs. So, oh, and by the way, if this is an issue, one of the best things for lowering liver enzymes, and it's also a great post-alcohol drink, is DHM. It's called dihydromyricetin. It's like a Chinese raisin extract that does a fantastic job lowering liver enzymes. Not a medical doctor, don't take this as medical advice. I'm just saying there's a bottle in my pantry and I have 3 anytime I have a glass of wine. DHM, Level Up Health makes it. It. A lot of companies make it. I think Michaela Peterson, Jordan Peterson's daughter, has an anti-hangover product that has DHM in it. It's been around for years. I've known about it for like 10 years and use it if I'm drinking or if I'm concerned about my liver, have elevated liver enzymes, but it's becoming increasingly easier to find DHM. So the supplement industry, as you know, is less tightly regulated than the pharmaceutical industry. There are potential interactions and side effects not fully studied, and Nutrafol has what's called a proprietary blend that makes it even harder to pinpoint which ingredient or combination of ingredients could contribute to the liver issues. And there's a lot of people who have reported experiencing elevated liver enzymes or acute liver injury after taking Nutrafol. And this is because a lot of Nutrafol's ingredients are indeed metabolized by the liver, and overloading the liver with high concentrations of these substances, especially in people with preexisting liver fibrosis, like hardening of the liver tissue, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, or streaks of fat in the liver, people with elevated liver enzymes from alcohol consumption, et cetera, that can lead to liver inflammation and damage, specifically by inducing oxidative stress in the liver that can overwhelm the liver's detoxification pathways. In the case of some things like ashwagandha, there can be an autoimmune response that can harm liver cells in some rare cases. Saw palmetto, that impacts androgen metabolism. That's why a lot of times it's used to lower a prostate-specific antigen, PSA, in people who are concerned about enlarged prostate and want an alternative remedy for that, but it can cause some stress on the liver. So, using Nutrafol for hair growth might not be at the top of my totem pole when it comes to limiting hair loss. So, what are some things that I think are safer and more effective? Well, there's a lot to be said now for red light hair growth helmets. This one's called Restore. See, I wear that in the morning, it stays on for 12 minutes, and it uses specific wavelengths of light that can target hair growth. You can Google them or look them up, or I'll put a link to them in the shownotes. But red light for the head can stimulate hair follicles and promote growth, and they have been clinically shown to increase hair density and thickness over time. Derma rolling. I do this once a week. I don't know if you guys notice, but I have a really wild head of hair. These are the things I do. You roll a device with tiny needles over the scalp to stimulate blood flow and hair hair follicle regeneration. And, that can also enhance the absorption of anything you put on the hair afterwards. For example, an example of a topical that you could put on the hair would be anything with caffeine in it, aloe vera, rosemary oil, castor oil. That's an easy one to use. But, a lot of these topicals to help with hair growth, you can derma roll beforehand to enhance the absorption of them. A lot of people didn't realize that any oil that has caffeine added to it can actually be great for their— you can literally derma roll your hair and you spent coffee grounds almost like a rub, scrub that all over in your hair, leave it in for a little while, then go shower it off and A, see how pissed off your significant other gets that there's coffee grounds in the shower, and B, recycle those coffee grounds in a good way. Massages, simple scalp massages. I even have one of those scalp massage devices in the shower And, I love my new shower because I'm taking longer showers now because I can listen to podcasts and audiobooks in the shower. It's got a little shelf in it that stays dry. And so, I'll do this scalp massage thing. It's like this little thing with little rubber spikes come out of it, massaging the scalp, not quite as good as a derma roller, but it can improve blood circulation to hair follicles. And, that helps with nutrient delivery and can stimulate hair growth. So, on an average day, you could derma roll, put in some product, go put the red light helmet on, eventually wash the product out. And, that'd be an example of how to really, really spark things from a non-oral supplement standpoint. Some natural supplements and foods can help. Biotin, vitamin B7, also known as vitamin B7, biotin, that supports keratin production and that can strengthen hair. You find it in eggs and almonds and salmon, which unfortunately we now know can have microplastics in it. So, go with a good source. Shout-out to Seatopia. That's where I get my salmon. But, biotin would be one. Collagen, right, or essential amino acids. Those are needed for hair structure and help to support scalp health. I take 20 to 40 grams of Kion essential amino acids a day, and I take about 20 extra grams of collagen each day. So I do a ton of collagen and essential amino acids since I started doing that. Look at those ugly boys. I got to clip my nails about every week and a half or so. They grow like weeds, but so does my hair, which is great. Pumpkin seed oil, that one either oral or topical, has fatty acids and antioxidants in it that have been shown to to promote hair growth, particularly in men with what's called androgenic alopecia, genetically related hair loss. Omega-3 fatty acids, fish oil, chia seeds, walnuts, those can reduce inflammation and support scalp and follicle health. And then, a few other things that you would want to do is be careful with hair-damaging chemicals like sulfates and parabens. You're going to find a lot of shampoos and conditioners that are just the standard ones that don't say maybe appear on that ewg.org website. So, go with a clean shampoo and conditioner or anything else that you put in your hair. Poor sleep can affect cellular repair and that can impair hair growth. So, get your sleep. And, if you're not getting enough sleep, throw in your nap or your non-sleep deep rest yoga nidra style session. Stress management can also help to reduce hair loss. Don't wear a hat all the time so you're not limiting oxygen or or sunlight exposure to the hair. And those would be a few of the biggies. I think the biggest dial movers, honestly, and this is my protocol, is DermaRoll once a week, red light every day, some type of scalp treatment that is like a rub-in. There's actually a shampoo and conditioner that works pretty well also. There's also a shampoo and conditioner I've actually been pretty impressed with. I have some. It's called BioPillixin. BioPillixin. It's a hair activation shampoo, conditioner, and then serum. So, they have a whole box that comes with the shampoo, comes with a conditioner, and comes with the serum. And they have specific ingredients in that that are supposed to help with hair growth and strength and recovery. I bet you didn't know your hair could be strong, but you can get stronger hair by stimulating keratin production. The ingredients in it are niacinamide, aloe vera, an amino acid complex, something called vanillyl butyl ether, which is a warming agent that creates like this warm tingly sensation on the scalp for blood flow, zinc PCA, which regulates oil production without harming the skin, and then capilla longa. That's a great name for hair loss. Capilla longa demonstrated in studies up to an 89% reduction in hair loss and 52% improvement in hair density. I didn't know about this stuff at all. They sent a few bottles to my house 7 weeks ago. I've still got some. I went through the serum pretty quickly because I use it every single time I use the red light helmet. And then, they have the shampoo and the conditioner as well. I think by the nature of them having sent me some, it was free by the way, that happens to me sometimes as a podcaster, they also sent me a discount code for my audience. I'll hunt it down and put it in the show notes. It's Scandinavian Biolabs Biopilica. And shampoo, conditioner, and serum. So you could Derma Roll once a week, use their shampoo and conditioner, put their serum in after you rinse it out, go to the red light helmet, and that'd be a pretty dang good routine. The other thing you got to bear in mind is that if you're on testosterone replacement therapy and a lot of that's getting converted into DHT, you're going to have to choose between having elevated testosterone levels or just having less hair because that's a common side effect of testosterone replacement therapy. And there's not a lot of great fixes for it, unfortunately, besides just really using the minimum effective dose of testosterone. So anyways, that's all I've got for you today. I will link to everything that I've talked about in the shownotes if you go to bengreenfieldlife.com/486. That's bengreenfieldlife.com/486. One of the reasons I got to get out of here is I've got a meeting with some folks in India. I'm headed to India for 2 weeks, If you're one of my Indian listeners, look for my India tour speaking to a bunch of entrepreneurs organization, EO groups over there, a little Southeast Asia tour. So, I drop off the face of the map for a couple months there or a couple weeks in January 2025. That's where I'll be. Namaste. And, namaste to you, BenGreenfieldLife.com/486. Thanks for listening. To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks, and content to become the most complete boundless version of you. Visit BenGreenfieldLife.com.

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