Ben Greenfield: How to Actually Look 20 Years Younger + His Most Extreme Biohacks Revealed

What's the one thing that people are not doing properly for weight loss or fat loss?

One of the bigger mistakes that people make in the exercise department specifically would be hearing that zone 2 cardio, like aerobic cardio, burns a lot of fat. And that's like, they're just like the treadmill walking people because of that.

So because you see this whole thing about like the 12 incline, 3 miles an hour, 30 minutes.

Yeah, 12% incline, 3 miles per hour, 30 minutes. Yeah, yeah, 12, 12, 3, 30, something like that. Yeah, they're saying that that's like the 12, 3:30 is like the best workout.

And, you know, I tried it just to see what the whole, the hype was about. And I didn't burn very many calories.

Concurrent training, meaning doing strength and cardio at the same time, either in the same workout or throughout the week, is the most superior form for fat loss versus just strength or just cardio.

Ben Greenfield is one of a kind. He's back on the show. He is literally the most unique human I've ever— one of the most unique humans I've ever met. Oh, you're doing my shot.

And there's always these weird cocktails at your house. This is better than that. This tastes like somebody peed in it.

I don't know what that is. You just took it from my fridge, but these are Magic Minds, which are delicious.

It's probably been in your fridge for 4 years based on the way it tastes. These are pretty good though.

But these are Magic Minds. These are performance shots.

These are good.

You've never had them?

This will only keep me up till 2:00 a.m. No, I actually have seen these before. They're adaptogens.

Yeah. And they taste delicious. And I think that they really help with I mean, I take them before I work out. They're great for performance, but they're also great for mental focus and stress and blah, blah, blah. But I figured we do this— we usually— what we normally do, if you don't remember, we usually take a shot together, like a healthy performance.

It's only been 30 seconds since I took a shot, so if you take yours now, we still did it together.

I know, we're supposed to like clink it and then drink it. There's still a little bit left in the bottom of mine, but I'll tell you why I'm not doing it, because I just did one like 45 minutes ago, and I think there's a maximum of how many I should probably take in a day. So I'm not going to do my shot today because it's so late. They're adaptogens.

That's what the name means. Your body just adapts.

It'll be fine even with 50 grams of— okay, well, I can do a little bit so we can clean.

I mean, I'm kind of joking and kind of not. Like, the definition of an adaptogen is something that will kind of turn up your nervous system if it needs an excitatory stimuli and turn it down if it needs an inhibitory stimuli. So an adaptogen is safer to use at night than like a pure central nervous system stimulant like caffeine.

Your brain is Were you always like this? How do you remember and spew information at a pace that is a clip that is not human?

How do you contain all this? A, by being mostly stupid about most things in the world except health. And then, B, by doing what I think I first read in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes book where Watson meets Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes is going to try to forget Watson's name as soon as possible because he doesn't want stuff cluttering up his brain. And so, I I try to write stuff down all the time and get ruminating thoughts out of my brain as quickly as possible. And so, I try to tell myself that I have a clearer, cleaner head because of that.

But, it's the retention because I want to ask you a question. I'm not even sure if you can answer this, but because you retain though so much information in detail. It's not even just like most people or most people, they can kind of keep a couple of little elements of something. But, if I know when I, when I talk with you or interview or whatever, I just have to say one word, like, and you can kind of like rattle on everything up and down, sideways. Can— is there a way that someone can work? Is there like actually some kind of methodology where we can become more—

some kind of limitless smart drug? Yeah, besides an IV and Magic Mind.

I'm not even joking. Do you have any tips of how people can train their brains to retain information better?

Do I look like a developmental psychologist to you?

No, but you can play one.

Okay, so I'll play one on TV. So the, the way I look at it is you can stim the brain, which is what most people do, which is what I was just talking about, like caffeine, nicotine, energy drinks, Red Bull, whatever. It's like a dime a dozen. And like, a lot of energy drinks aren't bad. I mean, there's great brands out there, but it's one thing to just like turn the volume up on an organ that isn't necessarily going to just spit out good information if you turn the volume up. You have to actually provide building blocks to allow things like the formation of new neurons to occur and greater amounts of neuroplasticity and better connectivity between neurotransmitters and along a nerve as a nerve signal gets propagated. So, if you step back and you look at brain health in general beyond just taking things that make you feel more awake, which kind of move the dial a little bit, you need to do things that provide fuel for the brain. So, for example, if you actually look at how a nerve propagates a signal, there are these little insulatory sheaths around the nerves called myelin sheaths. And myelin sheaths are made up primarily of two different kinds of fats. Oleic acid and DHA. So oleic acid, as the name implies, is something you would find in like extra virgin olive oil. You find it in a lot of Mediterranean fats. You find it in, um, the diet of somebody who's not being like fat phobic, which is one of the worst things for your brain. And DHA you would get from, for example, fish oil, right? So docosahexaenoic acid is different than DHEA, right? A lot of people confuse it with that.

What's the difference?

Hormonal precursor, like night and day, right? Upstream metabolite for different hormones like, you know, cortisol, progesterone, testosterone, and it's great like if you need hormonal support. Um, DHA is a fatty acid that allows for those myelin sheaths to have the fat composition along with the oleic acid that they need. So first thing you would do is eat a diet that's rich in Mediterranean-style fats. Like, you've probably seen research that a Mediterranean diet is good for staving off Alzheimer's and dementia and stuff like that, and there's actually something to the idea of that being good specifically for nerve signal propagation. You also need in between those nerves to cross a little cleft in between each nerve neurotransmitters. And neurotransmitters are primarily made up of amino acids and they're supported by vitamin B, B like boy. So, if you have adequate protein in your diet, and you're breaking down that protein, which actually as you age you can use a little bit of Better Living Through Science for. Meaning, like, if you— in my opinion, if you're older than about 40 and you're consuming protein, you should have digestive enzymes along with the protein to help break it down and get more amino acids, which amongst other things, like say helping out with muscle, can help out with neurotransmitter formation. Collagen, essential amino acids, any of like the supplements that have these broken down proteins in them would also count. And then vitamin B, you can get that to a pretty great extent from meat. It's always an uphill battle for someone who follows a plant-based diet to have all the brain support that they need because you have lower levels of vitamin B, you have lower levels in many cases of the fats that I was talking about like the DHA and oleic acid, you have lower amounts of protein. And, it's not as though you can't eat a good plant-based diet and get a lot of that stuff, it's just harder than if you were eating meat.

Um, can I ask you a question about the digestive enzymes? So, um, you're saying as you get older, if you're— when you eat pro— is it when you eat, um, too much protein or when you eat protein in general? Protein in general, you should always have a digestive enzyme.

I mean, I'd even say just digestive enzymes, not just for protein, but in general as you age, as pancreatic enzyme production just decreases with age. It's a good idea to take digestive enzymes. A lot of people who get more gas and bloating from foods that didn't used to cause them issues will be able to get rid of that if they take digestive enzymes with their meal, and protein is one of the biggest.

So would you be taking it every— would you be taking— do you recommend people taking digestive enzymes after each meal or just after their biggest meal?

I take digestive enzymes now. I'm 43. I take them with pretty much every meal except— and this is not like deeply rooted in scientific scientific principles. It's just my own theory. When I have a smoothie, because it's kind of like easy to digest, yeah, it's blended and everything. And I might be totally off base. Like, there, there actually was one research study that showed that— back to the plant-based thing— if you have a plant-based protein like pea, hemp, rice, and you have whey protein, usually the whey protein would have more amino acid bioavailability than the plant-based protein. But if you take digestive enzymes with a plant-based protein— and in this study we're actually using like smoothie, like protein powder, the availability, the bioavailability of the amino acids in the plant-based protein becomes just as good as the animal-based protein. So, I think technically, I probably could get even more benefit if I just like threw a handful of digestive enzymes into my smoothie, but there's just so many things to do and so little time when I'm making my morning smoothie. Right before I got to get on phone calls, it's like one extra step to take. So, I don't use digestive enzymes when I'm having a smoothie, but pretty much every meal, like if I go out to a restaurant, Like, I actually take one of those little pill capsule things and I put digestive enzymes in there.

And you eat it before or after the meal, you said?

I mean, before is good, but if you forget, you can take it after. Most of the things that would be like blood sugar stabilizers, um, digestive enzymes, um, gallbladder support, taking them before the meal is best. But if you forget, you can still get benefits by taking them after, like, you know, on top of the food.

So it doesn't— so it doesn't— it matters a little bit, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't— it doesn't ruin the, uh, actual benefit of it. Yeah. So, um, so it helps— so let me just get this straight. So digestive enzymes help with bloating, digestion. What are the other things, other benefits people can get from digestive enzymes?

Mostly unlocking more nutrients from food because they're basically breaking down the food better. So you have like proteases that break down protein, amylases that break down carbs. You, you actually make salivary amylase in your mouth, which is why, like, if you put a cracker in your mouth and you pay attention, it starts to taste sweet because the salivary amylase automatically starts to turn the cracker into more simple carbohydrates, which tastes sweet. And then lipase is the last one. That would be like for fat, for lipids. Lipase. So if you look at like good digestive enzyme, usually it'll have a protease or some form of protease, some kind of an amylase, and some kind of a lipase in it.

Do you think it's necessary then? Because I remember years ago people were taking digestive enzymes after a big carb dinner, like they were having pizza or pasta, and they would take the digestive enzymes. Is there any benefit for taking it after carbs, or you think it's just really most important when you're eating a high protein meal?

It, I think, is most important with protein because protein would technically be the hardest to break down. Now, if you think about it, like, if you were to take a bunch of digestive enzymes with carbs, and a lot of people are concerned about like spiking their blood glucose now, your blood glucose would spike more because you're breaking down the carbs faster. Um, but there are other things you can take with carbs that a lot of people are doing now that lower the blood sugar response to a meal.

Like what?

Um, they're called GDAs, glucose disposal agents. They're things that basically like help shove glucose out of the bloodstream and into the muscle more readily. One of the ways that they, that they do that is either A, by increasing insulin sensitivity, right? So basically the cell receptors are more sensitive to the activity of insulin, and insulin is going to help shove glucose into the cells. Or they increase the expression of the transporters that pull glucose into, say, like, muscle. So an example of a glucose disposal agent, um, would be berberine. Dihydroberberine is kind of like a more powerful version of berberine. Some people call it like nature's metformin because it lowers blood glucose pretty well. Bitter melon extract is one. I A lot of the things that do this are bitter. Apple cider vinegar is another cheap hack that you can do before a meal that can lower blood glucose.

Do these things actually work?

They actually do. And they actually can work so effectively that if— and this has happened to me, if you take a really powerful one like dihydroberberine or bitter melon extract and you have carbs and then you go exercise or you have carbs but it's not that many carbs, you can actually watch your blood sugar and you start to go a little bit bow. Glycemic. Really? Yeah. But, if you're going to go to a steakhouse and punish the bread basket or have an extra cocktail or do something that's going to put extra sugar into the body, I think it's a good idea. And, if you're just up the creek without a paddle and you forgot to take your enzymes and your glucose disposal agents to the restaurant, if you go to a restaurant or you go to anywhere that has a bar and you look behind the bar, they always typically have a lineup of bitters. And, what are bitters? Bitters are bitter and anything bitter is a glucose disposal agent and anything bitter also stimulates the release of glucagon-like peptide, the GLP, that a lot of people will inject. And so, you get this mild satiation-inducing effect by having something bitter with a meal. That's one of the reasons some people will say to control blood glucose, have the bitter, the salad with the bitter vegetables earlier on the meal because it helps to control the blood glucose. From the carbs that you're going to have later on.

That's a good piece of advice. So, if you're at a restaurant, what would be something in a bar that would be bitter that they can take? Bitters. Bitters. I mean, no, bitters.

Bitters. It's kind of like the elephant in the room.

No, I'm not a drinker, so that's why. What do you— I don't order the bitters.

Hot water is a little bit bitter. But for me, honestly, I will order soda water with a squeeze of lemon and a splash of bitters. A, for that effect, like actual bitters. B, because I'm a lightweight and I usually don't drink more than one cocktail when I'm at a party. So, if you see me at a party and I've got a glass in my hand, usually it's bitters and soda water and lemon and I'm not actually drinking.

Drinking.

Nursing it. Yeah, yeah. And well, bitters have a little bit of alcohol, but it's not very much at all.

So, bitters is actually a drink. I thought you meant bitters like something to drink.

Bitters is an ingredient.

Like an ingredient to a drink. Yeah. I thought you were meaning more like bitters, like a bitter parsley or whatever they would put in a drink. No. That's how bad—

But something like that could work, I guess. I mean, yeah. But like bitters, like the actual concentrated bitters liquid that they use.

That would work for sure to like cut it. So of all those things you just said, you said the berberine, you said the bitter melon, you said a couple other things that help with glucose control. Which one works the most effective? Which one is the best one?

There's ginseng, there's chromium, there's vanadium. There are a whole bunch. I think probably the most powerful that you could just get as an over-the-counter besides metformin, which is the diabetic drug, is dihydroberberine. The only downside to it is that it's so potent that either A, it can cause a little bit of hypoglycemia and it gives a lot of people a little bit of stomach upset. And then, I have to sound like the fox guarding the henhouse because I own a supplements company and one of the products we have is a blood sugar stabilizer, and it's bitter melon. Oh, it is like the primary ingredient in that one, and it's called Lean.

And does it work?

I do, yeah.

Is this Kion?

And bitter melon actually also helps with gas and bloating. It does, yeah. So you get some extra effects.

But also digestive enzymes does that too, right?

Yeah, yep.

So what, what is like your—

so there's like the 28 different pills you can take before you go out to a restaurant.

I was gonna say, you could like take a whole thing. We could like basically have that as your meal because I remember hearing years ago about chromium and all these other things.

And that one's also chromium, vanadium. Those are minerals that help to support blood sugar.

But not as well as the ones that you just said.

A lot of supplements will combine the mineral-based ones with the bitters from almost like a cocktail. There's another one that's really good is called GDAID. It's a pretty powerful one too. GDAID.

Yeah.

I think that's made by BioSack. But there's a few good formulas out there. And don't get me wrong, There's nothing as powerful as lifting weights because chronically, it gives you more muscle. Muscle is like a metabolic sink that sucks up glucose. And acutely, it increases insulin sensitivity. It's like lifting weights before you go have a big meal is a good idea. And even if you're not doing a full-on weight training session, even just dropping and doing 50 push-ups or whatever. And then, the other one is cold. Cold is a potent glucose disposal agent, meaning If you do a cold bath or cold shower, cold soak or whatever, your glucose can stay stabilized for a really long time afterwards.

How long?

Hours. Like, I've, I've tested, and this is an n 1 because I wear the blood glucose monitor. I've done cold early in the day and it has stabilized my blood glucose the entire day if it's like a cold, cold session.

So how long do you do the cold session now for?

My sweet spot is 2 to 3 minutes.

Oh, you do 2-3 minutes?

Yeah, yeah.

And Let's talk about this because it's a great segue into my question that we asked. That was the first question I asked you yesterday at Coffee and Chill. Yes, at Coffee and Chill, the ice tub party. Yes, the, uh, cold plunge and coffee. I did the coffee, you did the cold plunge. What is your take on cold plunging and females? Because there's so much controversy right now with females, and also I think also for hormones and cold plunging, right? Yeah. What is your take on it? I know you're not a female, but you are knowledgeable.

I do not have a uterus.

Yes.

Yeah. That's the future of biohacking.

Yes.

It's coming.

Only time will tell.

Yeah. I mean, women are more sensitive to cold. No offense, but generally stereotyping.

They didn't know 100%.

We have lower amount of muscle mass and muscle is a thermogenic agent. And so, women tend to be more sensitive to the cold because of that. And then, if you are in your luteal phase, you're going to produce more estrogen and progesterone, and both of those can cause a more vasoconstrictive response to the cold. And, if you think about vasoconstriction, you're making a blood vessel smaller, so you're able to heat yourself a little less well if you have higher levels of estrogen and progesterone. The other thing that can happen is a higher cortisol response, like a higher sympathetic nervous system response. The question becomes, is any of that going to manifest in any actual issues? It's kind of theoretical that women have a different response to the cold, but is that going to cause your body to go into starvation mode, gain fat, get adrenal fatigue, be in sympathetic nervous system stimulation for hours on end? And, it's interesting because there's been studies on male versus female response to cold and female cortisol metabolic response to cold. Um, there was one study of almost 60 men, 60 women, and they exposed them to cold, and they measured a lot of the metabolic parameters that you would expect to be affected by cold, like insulin and glucose, um, and a compound that fat cells make called adiponectin and leptin. And the female versus the male response was different, but technically in that study these females almost across the board had a better metabolic response of all of those variables compared to the men. So metabolically, cold appears to be pretty good for women for things like, uh, fat burning, sugar stabilization, etc. And then there was another study where they did cold exposure for women for 12 weeks, and for the first 4 weeks as a lot of people would tell you, cortisol was spiking in those women. But then after the 4-week mark and up to the 12-week mark, cortisol stabilized and began to chronically lower, meaning there was like a stress resilience-inducing effect of regularly timed cold exposure in women. Um, studies have also shown that just like I was saying earlier, if you have a high amount of estrogen and progesterone, you get more vasoconstriction and a little bit higher cortisol response to the cold, but that doesn't mean it's causing anything bad. I would say if anything, there should be some kind of like a long-term study in women that also differentiates between different phases of the cycle to actually see if there's anything like fat gain, lower HRV, higher amounts of stress, anything. But today, nothing like that exists. And I think the only thing you can kind of reasonably say is that compared to men, women, and especially women in the luteal phase should consider doing cold that's slightly less cold for perhaps a shorter period of time than a man might.

Like, how much time? A minute or—

Well, it's all kind of theoretical, right? But, um, if you look at the effect of cold and its ability to be able to suppress the response to exercise, does. That's another reason that people say don't do the cold is because if the body's super cold, you shut down your own anti-inflammatory response and the body doesn't do things like mitochondrial proliferation and development of new mitochondria, or I should rather say mitochondrial biogenesis is what it'd be called, or building of new satellite cells for building new muscle. So, a lot of people have heard that and then they will exercise but not do cold after exercise because we've heard now that cold is bad for getting the response that you want from exercise. But the studies that have shown that to be true, which has been shown to be true, took cold exposure lengths from 10 to 20 minutes in length and a drop of almost a full Celsius in muscle tissue. And it takes a long time to, to do that. Like, there's not a lot of people— I don't know about you, but like, I don't even have the time to do 10 to 20 minutes of cold after a workout. If you're doing just like a quick cold plunge, which I actually think is really refreshing after a workout, especially if it's like summer and you don't want to be sweaty the rest of the day, right? It's not going to impair exercise response at all. And then if you look at, well, how long should women go, how cold compared to men, I think a pretty good rule is that if you get out of a cold plunge and you're like distractingly cold and having to shiver for a long period of time to heat up, you probably overdid it. I mean, that would be the same for men and women. I mean, unless you're literally like going for some kind of a Wim world record or just massive amounts of fat loss or something like that because you're trying to burn a bunch off with cold. And there's better ways to lose fat than stressing yourself with excess cold. I think just a reasonable amount of cold— for me, my sweet spot is 2 to 3 minutes, but I go pretty cold because it's just like a time hack, you know, right? The shorter time, colder, shorter time. So I do 33 degrees for 2 to 3 minutes, and I actually like to pre-workout cold because you get this surge of adrenaline. And I have an awesome workout if I get cold before the workout. And for that, it's literally just like 30 seconds. It's like, there's a cold plunge between me and my gym, it's at 33 degrees. I'll walk out there, take off my shorts, jump in, get out, towel off, put my shorts on, go into the gym. And that's just like 30 seconds, like just enough for, you know, a quick kind of like full body cup of coffee before you work out.

You know what's funny, I was going to say to you, I— how about just what I would think to kind of warm up your body. What's your take on maybe going into the sauna for like 5 minutes to kind of warm up, you know, for a warm-up?

Yeah.

And then working out because then you're like warming up your muscles. You're now like getting your body revved up as opposed to the opposite that you just said.

It's an interesting idea. So, some things to think about are first of all, if you look at sauna before or sauna after, if you want all of the performance-enhancing benefits of a sauna like the production of new red blood cells and erythropoietin or EPO, like a precursor to red blood cells, and you want a higher amount of heat shock proteins and you want better blood flow, getting in the sauna after you've exercised gives you way more benefits because your body is already kind of like hot and stressed and you're piling some extra heat on top of that. Getting in the sauna or preheating before exercise compared to precooling before exercise would technically not be as good because even though you're kind of heating up the muscles, A, you can do that with just a good dynamic warm-up, and B, you're shifting blood flow to the skin away from muscles, away from areas of the body where you'd prefer to have blood for performance. Environments. So this would be— well, let me ask you this. Like, if you walk into your gym and your gym's really hot, like, let's see, your gym's like 80 degrees, are you gonna have a better workout if the gym's at 80 degrees or if it's at like 65 degrees?

80 degrees. Really? Yeah, because I like to be hot. I hate, I hate, I hate going to like gyms like Equinox because the air conditioning is so cold I'm not even able to sweat, and then I don't feel like I'm really— I'm not pushing myself as hard versus if I sweating and really hot. I feel like your body is much more elastic and much more flexible.

You're a weird anomaly. Really? Well, let me explain why.

I am anyway, but that's—

Hot yoga is harder than regular yoga cardiovascularly because your body has to work that much harder to cool itself and it has to shift between shifting blood to the extremities to be able to cool the body and also get enough blood to the muscles to be able to fuel the muscles. Okay. And so the heart has to work harder, so the heart rate goes up. So if you're working out in a hot gym, then— and, and it's an actual hot gym, not like hot enough to where, you know, your muscles aren't so cold that you can't move, but hot enough to where like you're sweating more, you're having to move more blood flow around— your rating of perceived exertion, like how hard you perceive that workout to be and how hard arguably that workout actually is, is going to be higher if it's hotter. So if your goal is just like pure cardiovascular benefits, then working out in a hot environment might be superior. But if your goal is like strength, power, biomechanics, etc., like working out in, in a room that's like unreasonably hot would be less advantageous from a performance standpoint. Really? And there are nuances, like if you're, I acclimatizing to go do some kind of like a race or something in a higher— like, I used to ride my bike in a really hot room when I was getting ready for Ironman Hawaii. Or if your number one goal is like sweating, heat shock proteins, cardiovascular stimulus. Um, but I would argue that like, if you're in the gym gym, you should be in the gym to build strength and power. And if you want to like get really good cardio fitness, yeah, go ride your bike in a hot room or hit the sauna.

Well, it's funny you said that because I remember— do you know Laird Hamilton? Is obviously—

you do, right? Yes.

Okay, so I was I was with him in his sauna. He had a bike in there, like a spin bike. He's like spinning in the sauna. Yes. I was like, this is unbelievable. I could barely even sit in the sauna. He's like riding his bike in the sauna.

Yeah.

Because I mean, I think it— I thought it's training your endurance and stamina to a level.

It is.

Yeah. But I also thought like it's— I thought it's better for you basically. Versus like, do you ever go to Equinoxes or stuff like that?

It's different. Like, it's better for you cardiovascularly, right?

But not, not, not perform— not for, um, strength training and performance.

Yeah, power. And like, like, but why not? Everybody thinks about the gym a little bit differently, but I primarily think about the gym as a place to build muscle and get strong and develop power and separate the cardiovascular component wanted from that. Like, if I, if I wanted the best of both worlds, I would go to a gym where it was like 65 to 70 degrees in the weight training area and then get the most out of my cardio training. There's another room that's like kind of hot that you could go to your cardio in. So, you know what I'm saying? Like, it kind of depends on what your goals are.

But I, I'm so confused on to why would it be not as good or advantageous if I were to be in a warm place doing strength training because like if I'm doing a deadlift—

Because there's less blood flow to the muscles.

But if I'm deadlifting, right, and I can be way more flexible.

Supple.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, more supple. That's a great word.

That heat would allow you to do that, but you can pretty quickly cross a threshold from enough heat for the muscles to be warm and not stiff to so much heat that there's not enough blood to the muscles because the body has to shunt a bunch to the skin. To cool the body off. Okay. You know what I'm saying? So, it's like hot is good, but more is not necessarily better if you're wanting to get enough blood flow to the muscles to crank out a few extra reps and get strong.

Okay, fair. What's the one thing that people are not doing properly for weight loss or fat loss? We all know about strength training. We all know about eating protein. Okay, we got those down. And, the whole cardio versus strength training, I'm sure you believe that strength training is more important than cardio.

Uh, concurrent training, meaning doing strength and cardio at the same time, either in the same workout or throughout the week, is the most superior form for fat loss versus just strength or just cardio. Okay. Um, kind of like the order for fat loss is concurrent training and then aerobic training and then strength training.

Say more. What do you mean by concurrent? So people know.

Concurrent means is at the same— so an example of a concurrent workout, and there's like one classic workout that showed it just burnt way more calories and blasted more fat than just about any workout you could do, is you would do, let's say— and I'll give you an example of a workout that I do if I'm pressed for time and I just want to get as many benefits as possible out of the workout: metabolic stimuli, strength, etc. Now, before I explain this, there will be a few choice people listening in who know exercise science who will say, "Well, what about the interference effect?" The interference effect means that if you are doing cardio and strength, the strength isn't going to be quite as good as it could be if you were doing the cardio, and the cardio is going to be quite as good as it could be if you're doing the strength. But, both put together for fat loss and the metabolic stimuli are gold standard, and that's called concurrent training. So, this would be like I walk into, let's say, my hotel gym back here in Santa Monica and I do 2 minutes on the Aerodyne and then I do a superset of chest press to push-ups. And then, I do 2 minutes on the Aerodyne and then I do a superset of leg press to hamstring curls. And then, I do 2 minutes on the Aerodyne and I superset overhead press to band pull-aparts. And then finally, 2 minutes on the Aerodyne and lat pulldowns to seated rows. That's an example of a concurrent training workout where it's all done in the same set and you're kind of huffing wind and you have a metabolic rate that's through the roof. You're burning a ton of calories because you're never just sitting there watching TV in between sets and you're kind of moving the whole time. Another example of concurrent training from more of a weekly periodized standpoint would be— and I do this a lot of times when I'm at like full body strength Monday, core and cardio Tuesday, full body strength Wednesday, core and cardio Thursday, and then full body strength on Friday and core and cardio on Saturday. So that's an example of a week in which you're doing both aerobic and strength training. And back to the fat loss piece, that would be an example of the best way to move or exercise if you want to burn fat. I would say kind of related to that, one of the bigger mistakes that people make in the exercise department specifically would be hearing that zone 2 cardio, like aerobic cardio, burns a lot of fat. And that's like, they're just like the treadmill walking people because of that. And I like, I'd love to walk on a treadmill. I think it's great to do like low-level physical intensity during the day. I think it can be a little bit of a waste of time to do it at the gym. Like, I'm not talking about people who actually are doing that for a race like a triathlon or a marathon or something like that. People are just wanting to burn fat. I would rather see people getting Zone 2 cardio by walking on the treadmill during a Zoom call or by wearing a weighted vest while you're cleaning the garage or by parking a few blocks away from the restaurant, taking a brisk walk there and eating food and brisk walking back. And, that's where I get the majority of my Zone 2 cardio, just kind of moving during the day, jumping on the trampoline in your backyard.

Right.

But the issue is that— so, if you look at exercise physiology, there's this term called the RQ, the respiratory quotient. And if you were to go into an actual exercise physiology lab and put on one of these masks that measures the amount of oxygen that you consume and the amount of carbon dioxide that you produce, you can look at that ratio and get a pretty accurate evaluation of how much fat you're burning and how many carbs you're at rest or during exercise. The exercise version is you do it while you're on a treadmill or on a bicycle. The at-rest version is you're just like laying down getting your metabolic rate measured. And, if I were to put you on a treadmill and do that test, if you're walking at a really low intensity, you'd see a lower RQ. A lower RQ means you're burning more fat and less carbs. And then, as you get more and more intense, you begin to shift away from fat utilization, you begin to burn a higher and higher percentage of carbs, and then you get to the point where you're just like running so hard up a hill, almost ready to fall off the back of the treadmill, and you're burning like almost 100% carbs. So people hear that, and they hear that like this lower intensity or cardio burns a higher percentage of fat, and they think, all right, great, well, that's what I'm gonna like burn all the fat off my body. The problem is that you aren't burning that many calories at that low intensity. So if I'm burning say 70% fat but I'm burning 200 calories per hour walking in zone 2, and then I'm burning maybe 30% fat but I'm also burning 800 calories per hour during, say, one of those concurrent training sessions that I described, at the end of the day, I'm burning way more calories from fat by using intensity, high-intensity interval training and weight training than I am from doing zone 2 cardio.

So because you see this whole thing about like the 12 incline, 3 miles an hour, 30 minutes.

Yeah, I'm like, yeah, 12% incline, um, 3 miles per hour, 30 minutes. Yeah, yeah, 12, 12, 330, something like that.

Yeah. And they're saying that that's like the, the 12, 330 is like the best workout. And you know, I tried it just to see what the whole, the hype was about. Out and I didn't burn very many calories. No. And also psychologically, I didn't feel like I did very much.

Now, granted, the best workout is the workout you're actually going to do, right? And then for a lot of people, it's like, if I can turn my brain off and walk for 30 minutes, oh my God, that person's gonna burn more calories than the person who stops at the door of the gym because whatever they're supposed to be doing is way harder than that.

100%. It's like when people always say to me, like, what's the best— what's the— what's the best exercise to do? The one that you're actually going to do, for sure. But is that a— I just wanted to ask you because I think there's a misconception out that like if you just do that, you're going to change your body composition, and you don't agree with that.

Compared to doing nothing at all, you are not— not as much as if you were like doing a widely varied program with both strength training and HIIT.

And then, well, because on the— the only way to really change your body composition is through strength training, I found. Yeah, right. I mean, you're not—

well, I mean, like if you look at the legs of a Tour de France cyclist, you wouldn't say, okay, well They're like, they're not doing anything. So you, if you get enough reps at a high enough wattage doing cardio, you can change your body composition. Swimmers have huge shoulders and they're not spending a ton of time in the gym. So if you're at the extreme end of the cardio range, you can change your body composition. Yeah, but most people are not going to do that on an average, you know, cardio bunny workout machine.

But what would you say about this? Someone who runs, let's say, the 3, like a 3 incline at 5 miles an hour. 4 versus the 12, 3:30. What do you think is a better, uh, way to spend your time for efficiency and effectiveness?

For what? For fat loss. For fat loss, I would say.

And look, and keep the— like, think about all the things, the calories, the all that.

Yeah, the higher intensity one, the one that gets your heart rate higher, because of what's called post-exercise oxygen consumption, meaning that the harder that you work out, the higher your metabolic rate is after the workout, or the more muscles that you stimulate during a workout, the higher your metabolic rate is long term because muscle burns calories and you're adding new muscle to your body. So anything that keeps the metabolic rate elevated for a longer period of time is going to be better. And there are, of course, like subtle nuances. Like if you overtrain and spend like 2 hours doing super high-intensity stuff in the gym, you will eventually develop hormone imbalances that send your body into starvation mode. Then it wants to start holding on to fat and get the cortisol issues. So there's always kind of like a law of diminishing returns, but for the most part, you're going to burn more calories, burn more fat, and lose weight more effectively if you're exercising at a higher intensity instead of lower.

How do you know when that's happening? Like, how do people know when they are working out too, too much too often, uh, and they're getting a lot of these symptoms like holding on to fat and hormone imbalances. When is it— when do you— like, when do you know if it's that or if it's just like midlife or another thing happening? Like, are there signs that that's happening? Yeah.

Um, let's say that you weren't going to— um, by the way, I just bought a new shirt at TJ Maxx because I had to be in a documentary and I feel like I'm nippling out because I don't know how to wear this shirt.

Okay, good. But you do look very fancy in your new white shirt.

There you go. No logos. Yeah.

So, TJ Maxx.

Let's say you couldn't or you wouldn't or you don't have the time or just can't logistically get a blood test or a hormone test to actually see if you have hormone imbalances because frankly, that would be a pretty good idea if you really wanted to self-quantify is go get a urinary hormone test and see if cortisol is super low or you have low DHEA or low testosterone or any of these things that you could actually quantify. But that aside, some of the major things to pay attention to is— and this is something you could easily do with a wearable— elevated resting body temperature for multiple days in a row over and above what it would normally be, elevated resting heart rate over and above what it normally is, not for one day but like consistent patterns, like usually 3 days or more is beginning to give you clues that there's some type of nervous system dysregulation that can be pretty tied to the type of endocrine system dysregulation that occurs from overtraining. Poor sleep, being tired though but getting into bed and not being able to sleep, tired but wired. So, it's not like you don't want to get into bed but you get into bed and you're just like you can't sleep and you just lay there awake and you can sometimes hear your blood pounding in your ears. And sometimes because of the elevated body temperature and heart rate, you're a little bit hotter than usual and you just feel like sleep is disrupted. Swelling, like swelling in the fingers, swelling in the legs, swelling in the toes, just like feeling like Pillsbury Doughboy a little bit more often because cortisol dysregulation is linked to blood pressure regulation and also retention of fluids. So, that would be another one. Lack of appetite or a drop of appetite because if you are overtraining, maybe you look at this from an evolutionary biological standpoint, in a state of famine or starvation or excess stress, your body wants to hold on to calories because it's unlikely that this is a time of feasting and a time of caloric excess. So, when that happens, what you would tend to see is a drop in hunger. And, there's assuming you're not a GLP-1 agonist or something like that, but you're not as interested in food, you're not eating as much, you start to experience some of those things that might indicate a little bit of a downregulation of the metabolic rate. And it's interesting because some of this stuff is like acute and then changes as it becomes chronic. So some people that were really paying attention to what I just said would think, okay, so Ben, what you're saying is like my heart rate's elevated and my body temperature is elevated, but then if my thyroid is dysregulated, doesn't that make like the body get colder and slow down metabolism? And that's what happens if you ignore all this stuff and just go for too long a period of time, then your body just starts to slow everything down. So, it's like the early warning signs are tired and wired, elevated heart rate, elevated body temperature, but then— and lack of appetite. But then, long-term, it's like everything just starts to shut down and then you're cold and you're sluggish and your metabolism starts to slow. This is something I'm always a little bit cautious to talk about because I think more people, maybe not your audience, I don't know. For the most part, more people need to hear like move more, eat less, lose weight. And, there's fewer people that need to hear don't go to the gym, it's a big scary place and you're going to die of cortisol problem.

Overtraining, right?

Yeah. I mean, that is an issue with some people. And, I am serious that more people need to hear that because this is back to the root of your question about mistakes that people make. People sometimes grasp at straws that aren't that important or try to fry a fish that isn't that big of a fish that you need to fry. And, even though I love what what is going on to a certain extent in Washington, D.C. with Make America Healthy Again and the Maha campaign and increasing awareness of what's in our food and what ingredients are in the food supply. I think there's a lot of people almost myopically focusing on artificial sweeteners and food dyes and even seed oils to a certain extent as being the biggest problems when really if we just told more people, kids especially, like get outside, move more, exercise more, eat less calories, understand the difference, you know, between how many calories are in, I don't know, like a Costco hot dog and a salad. Like, those are the things that we need to be focusing on more. I'm not saying there's not some problems with what are petroleum in an ingredient, right, artificial sweeteners, but it's, it, it's not that big of an issue, especially when it comes to weight loss. Like, if I was coaching somebody for weight loss, I would much rather they be having like a sucralose, acetylsulfamic potassium-infused like stick packet that's 25 calories that makes them say like not stuff their face with an extra 600 calories because they're drinking some satiating synthetic compound than I would have them be like, nope, that has artificial sweeteners in it, so I'm just gonna go eat 6 apples. No, actually, like, at the end of the day, like, there is a calories in, calories out consideration stuff.

I mean, that's what I was going to say to you. I mean, at the end of the day, we try to overcomplicate things that don't need that much complication, or to your point, focus on the, uh, the, the wrong things and, and not focus on the foundational things like move more, eat less. And at the end of the day, it is calories in, calories out. Like, you know, you can say— yeah, huge part, it's a huge part of it. Yeah, you can say where you're getting your calories from and all these other things, but like if that Diet Coke is going to stop you from eating another, you know, large pizza, it's probably going to be okay for you to have that.

I'm just like, you like, if I'm on an airplane and they're bringing out the airplane food, like I'll have a Diet Coke just because I don't think about the airplane food, right? Yeah. And then I'm not going to drink like, well, technically the law of diminishing returns for carcinogenicity of Diet Coke is like 77 of them in one sitting, like before you get into the cancer-causing, you know, who's drinking that many? Yeah, not a lot of people. And, and more like, granted, there's more recent research showing that the equivalent of 2 to 3 cans can cause anxiety, like, in rodent models. And it was weird because they even showed, like, anxiety that gets passed on to the offspring. Maybe, maybe aspartame is, like, affecting genetics and sperm in some way. But again, like, it's a pretty far cry to, to, to correlate that to rodent models and then tell somebody, you know, Diet Coke is going to make you fat and unhealthy. Like, it's, it's— there are bigger fish to fry.

There are bigger fish to fry. What do you think of those machines? Like, those people now, um, everyone's all the rage. Like, you put these, um, electromagnetic things on your body and you work out with them and it stimulates the muscle. What do you think of that?

Well, I mean, like the— like the OG ones, like the As Seen on TV, like six-pack abs with the— like the stomach pulsing.

Well, those pulsing, or not even that one so much, but like there's like these bodysuits that I know you can wear.

Yeah, yeah. But the original ones were like the abs. And for me, as somebody who like appreciates the value of hard work and blood, sweat, and tears and getting the job done in the gym, I always thought it was kind of gimmicky. And then, I actually tried one of the full-body electrical muscle stimulation suits. And, it's not a walk in the park. Like, to actually get the muscle stimulation, A, it's a pretty significant contraction, B, it's a dashboard or a control unit that's bypassing your central governor, your brain, which sometimes forgets how to recruit certain motor units as you go through life. So, all of a sudden, you're using new muscles that you've never used before, so you're ungodly sore the next day in many cases. It is like your body temperature goes through the roof because you're using a whole bunch of muscles all at the same time. It would fall into the category of a biohack for muscle and they are effective. I would say the downside is they're a little bit just inconvenient to get on and get in and out of and everything. And they also, if you're not careful, can induce a pretty high amount of soreness. And that's my problem is whenever I'm doing a workout, I really want to feel it. And whenever I've used those EMS suits, I'm just useless for days. Really? Yeah. Well, this is funny. I don't know if you're like this, but sometimes if I've got an international flight or a period of time where I know I'm going to be sedentary, I'll crush a really hard workout before that just so I'm just less antsy. I'm like, "You know what?

I'm going to be separated." And you can't work out now anyway.

Electrical Muscle Stimulation suit before something like that because I know I'm just like, dude, I'm gonna be so sore, I'm not gonna want to work out anyways. And so I'll use it before a period of time where I know I'm going to be like super sedentary.

I like that, it's a good little hack. Give me some, um, of all the things you've done, what is the one thing that you think is like extremely effective, that like the one biohack that's like what that would shock people, and, and the one that's like so useless that like, you know, you kind of like were into years ago that's overhyped, that there's no bang for their buck?

Like, like a buy, like a technology, or just like a practice, or anything?

Well, because you're like a guinea pig, you've tried, you try everything.

Yeah, I would say that, um, so, so let's cut straight to the useless since we were just talking about fat. Any of those like so-called thermal burning agents, like pre-workouts that amp up fat oxidation or anything like that. It is true that like green tea extract, you know, EGCG, caffeine, any of these central nervous stimulants, they do shift the body into a state of higher fat oxidation, but it's such a small bump that, like, you're never gonna lose any appreciable amount of weight using some kind of, like, a thermic burning. Right. So that would be one that I'm just like, I'm still surprised at seeing those marketed, like, with raspberry ketone extract or whatever. Um, and then something surprising that I think might also be kind of like controversial as well is I think GLP agonists are some of the most useful weight loss compounds that we've ever developed through science and can be incredibly helpful for people who have difficulty controlling their appetite, who want to lose weight, who want to manage lipids, who want to like decrease liver enzymes. There's even evidence now with effects on neural inflammation. And I actually think they're really useful drugs. I think they're prescribed in a dosage that's too high. Like, if you were to go to a doctor and just get a standard prescription for, like, retatrutide or something like that, it's such a high dose that you get nauseous and you lose all enjoyment. Like, it's almost, like, anhedonic for life in general. Like, you lose just, like, the dopaminergic response to not just food but a lot of things, which is why depression is one of the side effects of some of these drugs. And it slows gastric motility, so you get constipation and gastric upset. And, you lose muscle because even though you hear you're supposed to go to the gym and lift weights and eat enough protein, if your favorite protein smoothie or steak makes you just super nauseous and want to throw up, you're not getting enough protein. Then, you go to the gym, you feel flat because you're not eating enough calories, then you don't want to lift weights. But, smaller dosages, we're talking, for example, 1/10 of the dose of something like retatrutide, It's like just enough of a stimulus to where somebody who has difficulty controlling calories can resist food much better than they would be able to do in the absence of that and not have a ton of the other side effects. And because there's a lot of other— an emerging body of, of research-proven system-wide effects of some of these agonists, I think that they're actually like a pretty cool and useful new thing for a lot of people.

So you're talking about the, the one that it works on the 3 receptors, right?

Retatrutide does. Yeah, it works on GLP. A few different, um, hormone or, or appetite and satiate—

do they compound?

Satiety-regulating mechanisms. GLP, uh, ghrelin, and one called GIP.

How is that different than trizeptide?

I think trizeptide is a dual agonist.

So it's 2.

It's 2.

So Ozempic is like old school. Yeah. Then you have triseptide.

I think it's one.

Ozempic is one.

And there's a new one that's coming out, it's like 5.

So 5? Yeah. What is that one called?

I don't even remember. I, I can tell you it's probably hard to pronounce.

I can definitely say that.

Retatrutide is hard enough.

It is. But yeah, compound that already.

You can, like, if you work with a good functional medicine doc, you can get stuff like that from a compounding pharmacy.

Oh really?

So there's, there's a new company called Peptual that's doing like, you get on phone with a doctor and you have like a consult with a doctor, and then they can prescribe you peptides after that. But they're not like the sold-for-human-research peptides, like they're actually like clean peptides.

So you believe in the microdosing, uh, microdosing at a really small amount for all, just if you just want to like turn off the food noise, what would you say the dose, like, should even be?

I'm not a doctor, but you play one. I can't take anything that I take as medical advice.

Okay, what do you—

what would you do for me? Theoretically, I would inject like 250 micrograms of retatrutide on like Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and then just see what happens. And most people will find that they have way better calorie control.

Really? But that's—

how is that? Oh, and we should also say this though, like, back to like the people who risk overtraining There are risks of like if you have an eating disorder and you struggle with anorexic or, or body image issues and you actually need to gain weight and you are— you look in the mirror and you think you're fat but you're actually not and you look fine, or you're too skinny, like this would be a bad idea for you, right?

But people don't know anymore if they are or not. That's the problem. Yeah, if you're anorexic, you don't see yourself as anorexic a lot of times.

That's the problem. So what I'm saying is like, I just know there's probably at least one person question was like, are you going to hurt a lot of people putting advice like this out? I will admit that like if you have an eating disorder, like these are not good compounds to be around.

No, they're terrible compounds to be around. But if you have not looked around, have you not noticed that everybody is thin now? I feel like everybody's taking a GLP-1. Like I've noticed that a lot.

I live in North Idaho, not—

okay, we don't live in LA.

I don't live in LA, but, but I, I, I do know of the phenomenon that you're talking about. And I've observed it, you know, mostly in like pop culture. And I think there are a lot of people on these. I mean, like, again, like, if you're not losing muscle and you're— and you're— but I think many of the people you're talking about are on a standard dose. They probably are losing muscle.

Well, this is what I'm concerned about. What happens when you get off of these things? If you're— even if you're microdosing, right? Like, is this something that people have to stay on forever? Like, what happens if, you know, after a year— they're very expensive, these things, right? So let's see, after a year, like, how do you titrate off this thing? Are you gonna— are you gonna gain all the weight back? Because you're not really changing the behavior, you're just changing your ability to, um, to think about it at that moment because you're medicated.

My response might be a little surprising, but, um, I think that's less of a risk than you would imagine. Because even though at the standard high dosages, the yo-yo waking is definitely an issue, because if you go— for me, like, super nauseous, I want to throw up around food, and that finally goes away like, "Thank God, I can have a steak." I get that and there could be yo-yo weight gain related to that. But, if we're talking about what I was just recommending like microdosing, it's like training wheels. If you have gone for such a long period of time being obsessed with food and you've almost forgotten what it feels like to not think about food all the time and then you do something for 4 or 8 or 12 weeks that retrains your brain how to not think about food all time and then you stop using that, you still maintain the recognition of or, or the, the sense of what it feels like to not be hungry or what it feels like to resist the food.

What's your take on—

and I'm actually talking about this from personal experience, like I, I have for almost a year now mess around with these things like just as self-experimentation because like, right, you pick a lot of stuff. Like I've taken a standard dose just to see what that feels like for a week and it's I've taken the baby doses and then just like not taking them at all. And I can tell you, like, if you take a baby dose and it suppresses hunger mechanisms and then you stop using it, it really is like training wheels. You're like, oh, like, even though I'm not on this anymore, I've taught myself that I wasn't eating that cheesecake because I was hungry. I was eating it just because I had poor satiety mechanisms and I don't actually need to eat that, right?

So you kind of remember. Yeah. But then eventually, just don't you go back to than just old patterns and old behaviors?

I don't know, but think about it like electrical muscle stimulation. It's like if I use an EMS suit to cheat my brain into firing, let's say, a muscle that a lot of people forget how to use, like the glute medius, and then I quit using electrical muscle stimulation, my body now remembers that that muscle is turned back on and I can start using it more when I'm doing squats and lunges and, you know, band walks or whatever in the gym. So I, I think that in many cases, in, in like exercise and fitness and nutrition you can use a little bit of better living through science for training wheels. I mean, people even do this with sex, right? Like, they'll use Viagra to induce an erection in a man who doesn't have true erectile dysfunction but who just has like this mental block to getting an erection. And then once a guy realizes that, oh, I can actually get it up, I'm not broken, you can actually taper off the Viagra and they don't have the erectile issues more.

Yeah, I guess that's true, right? Like, you're just kind of like proving to yourself that you can do it in a way, or showing yourself that you can do it. Yep, that makes sense to me. Yeah, because do you have food noise though? Because you said—

I can't imagine. Do I personally have food noise? Oh, for sure.

Yeah, like, it's—

and you know what, I don't anymore. I don't anymore. And I think it's because of GLPs.

So it just, it just stopped recently because of the fact that you're microdosing? Yeah, really.

Even when I'm not using it, like, just being able to just like go— um, you probably know the feeling, like walking into a restaurant with a bunch of friends, you're starving, like, let's order appetizer, get the food out here. Now it's just like, you can just, you know, or, or I, for example, can just like sit there and talk for 45 minutes and not be like scanning the menu frantically to make sure that when they come I'm able to get the order in, right? And again, like, you do have to be careful because you can undereat, you know.

But you're someone who's like, if you, you feel like you have to do all these things to keep weight on. So I would think that someone like you would not have that food noise because you can technically eat whatever you want and nothing happens.

A lot of food and gain weight. But then at the same time, um, the best way I can explain this is that constantly thinking about food can be distracting. Like when you're just like thinking about or planning your next meal, like it is just bit distracting. And, it's nice to be able to sit down to a meal when you've actually found the time and it's convenient enough to eat and eat and eat enough because you're not nauseous but also have the ability to be able to go a few hours and do some podcasts or whatever and not feel like you have to eat.

Yeah, right.

No, it's a little hard to describe unless you know.

It's the anxiety piece of it that gets taken away.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, but I, I'm careful not to under-eat.

Well, I mean, when you started all this, this whole thing, like 20— like, when did you start all this, like, guinea pigging stuff? Like 20 years ago?

15 years ago? Like, like, um, probably when I, when I was bodybuilding in college, because, like, bodybuilding's, you know, like the OG biohacking sports, right? Trying different pre-workouts. I never did, like, drug, drug, just because I couldn't afford them. You know, I was like a poor college student doing creatine and tuna fish and putting relish in the tuna fish to keep it low carb, and like, you know, dipping hot dogs in peanut butter. I mean, just like the cheapest calories I could get away with. But then there's also like certain pre-workouts, you're like, oh, what happens to the body if I take 10 grams of creatine instead of 5? And then going from that into Ironman triathlon where you're just trying out a whole bunch of different things to survive out there for 10 hours, right? And then open water swimming and adventure racing and obstacle course racing, a big part of it for me has been fueling and feeding extreme sports and using that as a testing ground. And then, eventually for me, just being an influencer and a podcaster and an author, it's a little bit of my prerogative now to just try things out to be able to report back from almost an immersive journalistic standpoint about what works.

Is it weird to you the evolution of your career? Did you ever think this is what you'd be doing when you were 16 years old or 18 years old? No.

No. So, I think it's a good idea if you look at, for example, the habits of many of the founding fathers, and there's a great book about this called "The Pursuit of Happiness." One of the things that many of them and many high achievers and successful people value the most is time. And, if you value time as much as if not more than money, then you do plan out your days pretty strictly in terms of habit and routine and structure. And, I am a creature of habit in that sense, but I also from a long-term business standpoint keep myself pretty open to opportunities. Not meaning I say yes everything. I say no to a lot, but I have never, for better or worse, had a 10-year plan of where I want to be from a business and a career standpoint because I find that if I structure my days to be highly effective and efficient, to do lots of deep work, to not fritter away a lot of time doom-scrolling and on social media and engaging with pop culture, I can get a lot done. And, when the opportunities come my way that I feel like I want to seize, I've got the ability to be able to seize them. And so, no, like, I never had a plan of like having a podcast for a long time or writing a bunch of books, or— these are not books, these are manuals or tomes, whatever you want to call them. Yeah. Um, yes, but yeah, I mean, it is, it is kind of fun to, to be a little bit open. And at the same time, like, if— like, I'm never going to be a mega billionaire with that approach. Like, if you really want to like be uber wealthy, you have to have like long-term business plan and be building to sell And, um, you know, I have companies where we're a little bit more focused on that, like, like my supplements company, like Kion. We actually have like really good long-term plans and growth plans and forecasting. But we're just like— me as a brand, I don't know about you, but it's kind of fun to keep things just like a little bit loose, loosey-goosey.

Yeah, but, but you've become like— you've created a niche that there's not many people in like biohacking that you can really call to, like like when I think of a biohacker, I think of you or your friend, right? So, I think there's only a few people that are doing this thing with real gusto. And, I wanted to always know what the trajectory, like if you didn't do this, what were you thinking you were going to do? You were doing these Ironmans and you're living in Idaho and you got a bunch of kids. Everyone seems to be so surprised, by the way, that—

I only have 2 kids.

Well, I guess 2 more than people thought. Twins. I know.

2 kids all at once. Yeah, twin 17-year-old boys.

I thought you had 3.

No, that I know of. Yeah, we have 2. We have goats and chickens and kids.

You have goats and chickens living on a farm. I mean, you know, like what would you have done if this didn't work out for you?

Like— Honest answer is the one thing that I always love to do and knew that I would do in some way somehow is to to teach. I love to learn new things, not just for the sake of learning new things, but to teach people.

You can see it.

I like to see people's eyes light up when they understand some concepts. And so, like, honestly, if you want to look at this from just like a formal, understandable standpoint, I probably would have been a teacher in some way or another.

But you are kind of a teacher. Yeah. Like, so you're basically doing all of these things kind of like— and like you come back to people and say this, but you do so many things. So then what would be like— because over the years, I mean, I'm just trying to think of all the wacky things I've seen you do and put on, and the sleep mechanisms. And like, would you say most of those things are kind of like—

I'm just waiting for the red light on the balls question.

What's the craziest thing you did to your crotch? Yeah, what was the craziest thing you've ever experimented with?

There are so many things that I don't think are that crazy because I just live in this world. But, a few examples would be I went to the only state where it's legal, Texas, and had my plasma taken out and replaced with 10 bags of young 18- to 25-year-old healthy male donor plasma as a full oil change for my body. I have gone under anesthesia in Utah several times and done a full-body stem cell procedure where they inject everything toe to head to hair to sex organs to everything with basically a stem cell soup. I've gone to Tijuana, Mexico, and had all of my blood pulled out via the, um, the, uh, what's it called, in your neck, the jugular in the neck, and pass through a filter that pulls out like spike proteins and, you know, anything that, that's basically built up in your body, and then had that over the course of 3 days reinfused back into my body. I've had, um, stem cells injected just about everywhere that you can imagine. And, um, those are a few of the things that I've done. One that's super interesting is I've done something that some people, um, might have heard of called the stellate ganglion nerve block, where a doctor uses ultrasound-guided imaging to direct this super long needle right next to your carotid artery, so you need to be super careful, and injects it like a nerve block right into your vagus nerve on one side. And then, because it's pretty much impossible to swallow or chew if you do both sides at once, the next day you go in and you do the other side and it completely resets your entire vagus nerve and you sit up from the table feeling like you've smoked a joint and had a glass of wine all at once and your HRV just goes through the roof for a couple of weeks. Normally, this is something that they would do for somebody who has extreme PTSD, for example, but it's also just good for relaxing the nervous system. And then, there was about an 8-year stint where I did very high amounts of just about every psychedelic and entheogen known to humankind in very large amounts just to see what they did to the brain.

Which ones and which one was the best one? One?

I wouldn't say that any of them are that great because— well, I'll come right out and say that I think that it's a very dangerous place to be taking heroic doses of large amounts of psychedelics because traditionally, they've been used to divine with the spirit world. And, I actually believe that you cross a spiritual portal and you can get exposed to different entities and interact with demons, angels, spirits, et cetera. And, that's a dangerous place for a human being to be. And that's one of the reasons that I don't mess around with any of that stuff anymore besides occasionally microdosing with psilocybin or something like that. So, the craziest one is not one, but there is a place that very few people know about based a little bit outside of Nashville, Tennessee out in the sticks, this giant mansion with barbed wire fences all over it and a giant sign on the gates that says, "We don't call Kops. And, uh, they have several people who work there who have undergone some pretty intensive training and are able to expertly combine like a whole bunch of different entheogens together to almost turn default or downregulate the default mode network while simultaneously turning your brain into like a supercomputer. And then your entire experience for anywhere from 6 to up to 30 hours in some cases is recorded as you're talking. And I did that 8 times over the course of 3 years. And that was probably just the craziest in terms of piles and piles and piles of papers and reams of material just written from my brain being in a totally different state. And now, just business ideas, relationship ideas, different breakthroughs, dealing with history of past things, the reason that a lot of people do these things. But again, I'm not saying this to brag about having done lots of drugs or something like that or even to endorse that in most cases for most people. What I mean is that it's much better in most cases to climb to the top of Mount Everest rather than being dropped off by a helicopter on top of Mount Everest. And a lot of people will hear me say something like that and not do the work, things like prayer and fasting and working on your relationships. And there's like, yes, I want to go do the drugs and get rid of the issues. And that's why you see a lot of people like going back to Peru for their 38th ayahuasca retreat to finally fix their issues. So I'm not saying that this stuff is like recommended, safe, a permanent solution. You asked me about crazy stuff that I've tried and done, and there was a phase where I used a those kind of compounds.

And how long— where was— like, what did it do to your brain, and how long were you affected? When you did that thing in the sticks in Nashville, what, what was it? What was the cocktail of things that they gave you? And do you remember, or did you use any of the ideas that you saw that you wrote, like, in your life, in real life?

Mm-hmm. Um, I don't want to say the cocktail stuff, just— I just don't know about boundaries and legality and stuff like that. It's many of the entheogens that you would know about, wachuma and lisergamize and psilocybin and ayahuasca and even a lot of different synthetics but kind of combined in a very precise fashion based on you and your needs and your body weight and your size and what it is you're looking for, et cetera.

Do you do it by yourself, by the way?

A few times. And then, I've also done it 6 times with my wife. And, it actually was really, really deepened our relationship to do something like that together. And again, I'm super cautious here because I also don't want to have somebody who's going through relationship issue and be like, "Oh, it's time to go to Tennessee and do drugs." But maybe it could be helpful actually. Could be.

Could be. Because people don't know what's out there if they don't know. The thing that you're speaking about, I don't think I've ever heard of it and I hear lots of things.

It kind of flies under the radar also because it's not legal.

Well, there you go.

It's one of the reasons I'm being cautious here is I don't want to get people in trouble because I mean, it's not as though people aren't doing this stuff in the U.S. So, it happens, but I just want to be careful. I would say that as far as the effects, you could make an argument that the long-term effects of many of these entheogens or psychedelic psychedelics when used properly can be long-term neuroplasticity and a changing of the brain that makes you less of a ruminator or less anal retentive or less OCD or less ADD or less of an asshole. And, I would say that I actually experienced many of those type of effects just like the ability to be able to think more creatively, act more freely, and be, you know, back to the creature of habit thing, which is a good thing, like a little bit more free-flowing in that respect. But I would say like of anything, like the number one thing that I got out of all of that stuff, if I could name one, was being able to— back to the training wheels piece— like talk to my wife about anything and just like be super transparent, honest with her, and her with me, and just see each other as actual real infinite spirits and souls. And us doing something like that, you hear about MDMA therapy, it would be kind of a baby version of that or MDMA therapy would be a baby version of what we did. And it definitely transformed our relationship. I think that it's not the only way that we could have transformed our relationship, that's just the I have a pastor, he says, "God draws straight with crooked lines." And, that just happens to be the way that we got to where we are right now. But again, I'm being super cautious right now just because—

Yeah, you're looking down, you're very uncomfortable.

Yeah, I'm thinking about my words carefully. Just because drugs can be so dangerous for so many people depending on your spiritual health, on your psychological health. So, just like the GLPs and everything else, a lot of this stuff is like, just because I'm talking about something I did and guinea pig, doesn't mean I recommend it for everybody.

But right, this is not being recommended for the average person. I understand that.

Do not take anything as advice.

Do not. But because you said it perfectly, like, people can either climb Mount Everest or they want to get dropped on the top of it, which is so true. Like, this is someone who's done everything and is like, basically uses his, his career in life to be like a professional guinea pig. So like, you're like not the say, like, if you're sticking like massive needles in your, you know, your jugular, that's not—

well, I didn't do it, a doctor did it.

Well, not you personally. Meanwhile, you were going to do your own IV outside, so I mean, I have done that. Well, there you go. So I'm saying like, you're not the normal, the average person, right? Um, why did you do it? If it helped your— you and your wife's relationship, why did you do it 6 times? Why didn't you just do it once and like be done? Why did you do it over and over?

Because it was so profound and deepening our relationship that we came back and did it several times. Also, as a part of that particular organization, you're kind of like supposed to do it multiple times, kind of like a build phase. Um, and then one of the reasons that I just hinted at that I stopped doing it was because I realized and this is one of the only podcasts in a really long time that I've even talked about this stuff, I realized that for every 9 people that it might help, there's one person who gets super psychologically or spiritually messed up from this stuff. And so now, I'm really careful saying, "Oh, go to entheogens and pharmacological psychedelics and ayahuasca and go find God with DMT." just because I think like, like these are like the nuclear bombs of the spiritual world. And you, you have to be way more careful with this stuff than what a lot of people think, right?

You said something else about like crossing over, like you said, like the spirits and angels and all that. Like, what do you mean by that? You mean like that's what's dangerous? Like you people are doing these things and it's like entering into a different universe and they don't even know it?

The way that humans have traditionally interacted with the spiritual world and pierced the veil and crossed the portal is typically via the use of some kind of chemical compound that puts the brain into a state where I personally don't believe it's just a soup of different neurochemicals, but I believe you are actually crossing into a different dimension And the fact that people from so many different walks of life who have never spoken to each other see similar elements of sacred geometry, see similar entities like purple fairies and fairies and praying mantises, have similar experiences, encounter each other in that space even without knowing that each other were in that space, seeing each other's spirits in that world. World. Some people coming back literally possessed with almost an entity or a demon on board. Really? People being able to go to South America and keep getting pulled back there because a shaman or someone who has the ability to be able to do this has somehow cursed or possessed them. And, even if you look at— here's a perfect example, astral travel, the ability to be able to go somewhere else in your mind while your body is in one place. LSD would be one of the traditional methods with which elements of the world of sorcery and witchcraft have done that. A witch riding on a broom, the stereotypical Halloween silhouette image of a witch riding on a broom is influenced by the fact that women sorcerers used to dip their brooms in a lysergamide, an LSD-like compound, and then apply that vaginally for the rapid absorption to then be able to travel mentally to a different world to be able to interact with different beings including the spiritual world. Now, it's like a witch riding on a broom, but that was where that originally came from. So, if you talk with someone who's done ayahuasca or a heroic dose of psilocybin or especially DMT, there's very few people who do something like that and come back denying the existence of a spiritual world, especially if they were an atheist before that. Because you really do cross over this portal where you realize there's a whole different dimension around us that we can't see in our native state, but that certain chemical compounds that grow on this planet or that are synthesized allow us to be able to delve into and interact with.

Do you know, have you ever heard of this place? It's called Rythmia. Have you been there before?

I bet you have. No, I haven't been there.

Oh, you haven't been there?

I'm familiar with it.

Oh, they sent me there. Like, I did this— like, they invited me to go there. Like, this is like 5 years ago, and I went there with my sister, and I think just why not? I thought it would be something fun to try, you know, be a fun little vacation. And what it is, basically, you're doing like ayahuasca for like a week.

Yeah.

Okay, it was— to say it was not my cup of tea is probably an understatement, but it didn't— the weird thing has been that. We did it like you do it 5 nights in a row, and they give you your portion, and every, every night it's a different type of ayahuasca. Yeah, but it didn't— I didn't feel it any of the nights. I didn't get me like I was. So what they do is they put you in that big room, you're with a bunch of people, strangers, you're stuck there between 12, like for 12 hours. Everyone's tripping, and people were demonic. That's what I was going to say to you. It was really be actually very scary because I'm still— I'm lying there like, oh my God, this is so not— like, not for me. It's not working. And they won't let you leave because it's like, I think, a danger to the— it's like a risk for them. But I'm sitting there and there's like a million people in this room who are literally like screaming and crying and barfing and like pooping. It was unbelievably insane to me. And in my head, I'm like, they have to be like— they're, they're literally out of their minds. They're like in another place. Because in real— no matter how high you are, no matter how drunk you are, people don't act and respond like that. It just doesn't happen. I've never seen a human with like— it— other than in that situation be that like out of their lines. Like, seriously, it's crazy. So is that why these things tend to like help people with trauma? Like, are they seeing things that are otherwise unable to see because they're not in the right dimension to like heal themselves? Does that make sense?

A lot of hard-charging high achievers who, like, no offense, are sometimes wired up to be like very controlling. Yeah, that's one of the reasons that like they are successful. Have probably, like you experienced, a little bit more difficulty turning off the brain, downregulating the default mode network. And in many cases—

I was so cold sober.

Yeah, there's training and pre-integration that's involved to actually help to teach you how to do that. Or in some cases, people will just carpet bomb you with more of the substance, which has biochemical implications for days and days afterwards. I think it's better to just do things like breathwork that teach you how to be comfortable in that space before you go in so the standard dose is able to shift you into the state that—

So, have you ever heard of this before? Yeah. You have? No, I'm not the first person to tell you that.

Oh, no, no. Like, like, like, like, that would be roughly translated as what would be called in, in the world of psychedelics, like, like the ability to be able to let go, right? And many people just— ego is on board and it's very hard to let the ego not be on board because that is a feeling that takes you out of the safety and control that is part of your success and that you've grown to become dependent on, but that if you're looking for the breakthroughs like physically or more appropriate like mentally or spiritually from something like that, like at some point you have to turn off that part of the brain and just let go to get the breakthroughs that you want. And related to the trauma piece, sometimes it is the ability of compounds like that to be able to train the brain how to let go of the control and how to understand once again what it feels like not to be gripping tightly and clutching tightly and to know that that's a safe place that one doesn't need to be afraid of. But, I think probably when it comes to trauma, and again, I'm no psychedelic expert, this is not something I'm I don't have a degree in mushrooms. But the—

You can open that if you want. Can you adjust your mic? Let's see something.

Yeah. So, the ability in that state to be able to access past memories and then process them when you are not in a state of full control is one of the things that they attribute to the success of something like that, being able to help someone release past traumas or deal with them as they come up again. It's kind of like stem cells. If you were to go to that place in Utah that I went to and get a full-body stem cell procedure, you get all sorts of aches and pains from all the old injuries that the stem cells just reinitiate. Your body remembers all that inflammation. The stem cells go battle to help to fix those areas that were never fully fixed. Whereas, kind of similar with something like psychedelics, they open up memories of these traumas that you just haven't given yourself a chance to deal with in the past and open them up when your brain is in a state where it's far more receptive to seeing those things in a new light and dealing with them.

But then, why are people going back over and over again? Like, why doesn't it cure somebody? Or it does help them for, let's say, a while, and then, like, I'm just, I'm just talking about my friends who've gone and done it, and it worked on them. Like, they were fine, and it worked and helped them, but then they went back again and again and again.

Comes down to the getting dropped off by a helicopter at the top of Mount Everest piece rather than learning how to climb Mount Everest, you have to get to a point where you understand that life is full of incidents that cause shame and guilt and fear. And, there will always be times in your life when things come up that leave you feeling less worthy, leave you feeling full of shame, leave you feeling guilty about something you've done or about something someone's done to and one of the ways to deal with that is to write a check, get on a plane, pop a pill, and try to nuke it once again. And now, I'm speaking from a very biased perspective because I'm also a man of faith. And, I believe that— and this is what I love about the Christian faith in particular is that is faith of forgiveness, meaning no matter what you've been through, no matter how horrible of a person you think you are, no matter how horrible the things are that have been done to you, the Jesus Christ figure in Christianity is there because is the story of Christianity is that God sent a sacrificial lamb to die on the cross, which was a very like painful thing to happen, but that happened so that we can then take all that shame and fear and guilt and just let it go by, for example, just dropping to our knees and praying that God would release it and laying all of that at the foot of the cross. There's a beautiful book about this called Pilgrim's Progress about this guy that's just struggling with this huge backpack, this burden for years. And then, in a part of the story, he gets to the base of this hill where there's a cross and all of a sudden, the heavy burden just comes tumbling off his back and he stands up and he's light and he's free. And even though psychadelics can do something like that, it's temporary. It's never permanent. And I think the, the only way to truly get rid of shame and guilt and fear in a permanent way is through an interaction with the divine in a way that goes beyond just drugs and in a way that goes to more of the Christian idea of just pure forgiveness no matter who you are and knowing that you are free to leave that and get rid of it because someone else has taken it for you.

Wow, that was a big answer. And what happens if you're not Christian and you're Jewish or another religion? What happens?

What happens to what?

To us? To us Jews? Or to anybody who's not like a Christian person? Is it that we have to— you, could you say you're a man of faith and all these things? You are. And is your message mostly for people to believe in something bigger and greater than themselves, right?

And to, yeah, to, to believe that like you as a human being can be forgiven and not carry shame and guilt and fear around your whole life because because there is a divine being who wrote a greater story for your life and that divine being loves you enough to accept you for who you are. Not that you should want to continue or continue to be a bad person because of that, but who loves you for who you are. And, that's why I think that not just spirituality but religiosity, having woven into your life in some way—

We have that in a Jewish—

It's a very freeing way to, to, to live, just to know there's a greater purpose written for your life, and no matter what, you are unconditionally loved.

Yeah, we have that in the Jewish world where I, I believe in having a higher— believing something higher than yourself as well. But we have something called— it's like, it's a Yom Kippur. It's like what we do too. It's like when you're repenting and all the things like that. I, I do agree with you. I think that's really important to like— it's a, it's a— to, it's a it kind of closes the entire pie. It's very much not like— I see when people don't have any of that in their lives, there's a lack of something and there's a searching for something.

Right. The eternal hole in the soul that can only be filled by something eternal because there's this gnawing that, "Wait, you're telling me we're a bunch of chunks of flesh and blood just floating on a giant rock through space and then at the end of the day, like you just kick the can one day, it's game over, and that's it. And to me, that's kind of like a hopeless way to live versus like, it is— there is, there's like a divine being that created the planet, and there's immortality and an afterlife, and there's way more to life than just like you and me being here for 80 or 90, or for like the best little biohackers, like 150 years. Like, I, I find that a really, really hopeful and happy way to live, just to know that, that there's like something greater outside of me and like a greater purpose written for my life.

Have you gotten more into faith and religion as you got older, or were you— did you grow up like this?

I grew up in a Christian church, like a Christian house. But, I think going through the hard knocks of life, just experiencing just living paycheck to paycheck and trying to make ends meet and trying to find your purpose in life and and making marriages work and raising kids, I think that all of that develops faith. I mean, there's a saying that gold is refined through fire. And, I think that as you grow especially through hardships that without a doubt for me personally, that has deepened my faith. For some people, weakens their faith like there must not be a God if all these bad things are happening to me. Um, but my perspective is that in many cases, you know, bad things happen so that the good things can shine through at an even higher level.

Yeah, that's— I mean, I always— that's— I like that. I mean, it's good to think that way, right? It's very— it's a very, uh, optimistic way of seeing things. I did this environmental toxicity test. Did you ever take one of these tests before? And it says that I have like super high arsenic poisoning.

Yeah.

Do you find these tests to be accurate? How important do you think these tests are? What are some of the tests that you think are the most important thing people should do for their—

for the environmental toxin test? The only thing I can tell you is try it again under a different name and see what happens.

Uh, what do you mean?

I say that because they can be kind of notorious for giving you wildly varying results from test to test.

Really?

Now, the thing that we do know is we live in a toxic environment and it's always a good idea to be cognizant of mold, mycotoxins, microplastics, but I would not put all your faith into a test like that. The test that I think you can get good data from is just like once in a lifetime, a genetic test just to see what kind of stuff you're hardwired up to potentially get a disease for, just only preventively. Basic blood panel. I do it once a quarter just to look at lipids and vitamins.

Yeah.

Just like the standard complete blood count, comprehensive metabolic panel type of stuff. Some kind of test once a year for micronutrients that the basic blood panel wouldn't cover. This would be, for example, there's one called Metabolomics to look at fatty acids and amino acids and fungal markers and little micronutrients that a basic blood test won't give you. Some type of hormone panel. I think blood will give you a snapshot shot, but saliva and urine can give you a little bit more of like a 24-hour running cycle of your hormones because hormones do fluctuate throughout the day. Um, and then the last couple I would think about would be basically everybody's favorite, some kind of a poop test.

Like, yeah, is that the Dutch?

No, Dutch is urine. Uh, there's one called the Genova Diagnostics that'll do like yeast, parasites, fungus, bacterial balance. Um, and I think that's good to do even just like once a year or like as symptoms arise if you've been traveling or whatever, you know, and you want if you got a parasite because you come back from Asia and you've got diarrhea or something like that.

Okay, but the poop test, like, what is the poop test test for?

Bacterial balance, inflammation in the gut, um, yeast, parasites, um, fungal markers, um, uh, clues for whether or not you might have leaky gut or gut permeability.

Issues.

It's a pretty good test.

Um, and but people don't just get it usually, like a functional medicine doctor would prescribe it if necessary, right?

There are some websites where you can like start an account and order some of these to your house, but usually a functional medicine doc is going to order most of these tests. And the last one I'd like think about would be like a good food allergy test, not one that's going to give you like a laundry list of false positives. Um, but like, uh, Zoomer is a good one, Cyrex, C-Y-R-E-X, that's a good one. So if I'm, if I'm like coaching somebody and writing out their nutrition plan and their training plan and everything, it's usually like those 5 or 6 tests that I recommend that they get for me to be able to sit down with that. And then like maybe some wearable data, like a blood glucose and a, and you know, an Oura or a Whoop or something like that. That usually gives me quite a bit of information to say, okay, well, here's a relatively customized way for you to supplement. Eat, you know, move, exercise, etc.

Uh, I have to ask you about your skin. I do all the time, but your skin's really nice. Thank you. And it looks like a baby's behind. It's really like smooth and young looking. What are you—

is it tire streaks on it?

No, there's nothing. I think like, I think it's genetics personally, but is there any kind of trick that you can tell us about how to, how to look 10 years younger that you've tried?

Rapid fire, besides using one of those face age apps to look 10 years younger, would be underlying building blocks for skin. So earlier we were talking about things like collagen, you know, amino acids, protein absorption, uh, anything that's going to help with the building blocks for the skin.

So do you believe— hold on, I'm going to do rapid fire— do you believe in collagen supplements? Supplements? Yes.

You think that helps? If you want really good skin, if you do like 20 to 40 grams of collagen and up to 20 grams of essential amino acids a day, that's good for the skin. Um, something that will increase blood flow to the skin, and there are different camps about this. Some people think a derma roller is just like ripping open the face and like microneedling pens better. I derma roll. I've done it for like 10 years, um, once 3 times a week. And then, right after I derma roll, I use a clay mask. I use one made by a company called Ollitora. And so, I just leave that on for 20 minutes. And then, 3 times a week, I do a red light mask, which is just like the— you've seen these before.

Yeah, I use the Therasage one.

The one I have is called— Therasage is good. iRestore, like the letter iRestore is the one I'm using.

Oh, yeah. I saw that one.

So, basically, once a week, dermarolling, clay mask, 3 times a week, the red light, good collagen, protein, and amino acids. And then, the last thing besides just the basics like don't go out in the sun too much and burn your skin is for products, I use Young Goose.

I use Young Goose.

I think it's a really good skincare company because they have these bioabsorbable anti-aging peptides. And, I feel my face has gotten better better since I started to use those. Really? Yeah, in a good way.

Because I use Young Goose. I got, um, I use their, uh, yeah, they have like any— no, what do they have in it? Spermidine? Is that what it's called? What is spermidine?

Uh, apparently it helps with DNA repair of the skin, kind of like the salmon sperm facials that you can get now.

Yeah, but isn't a lot of that stuff not like— it's pretty hyped.

Uh, probably overhyped. Yeah, you know, especially just because salmon sperm facial probably sells a lot of like procedures. Yeah, but I do think like you can make a case that spermidine can have some anti-aging effects on the skin.

How about all those things? Yeah, I mean, I actually, I do like my Young Goose. I have like all like a bunch of their products actually. It's very, very nice. Um, what about, uh, la la la la la. Okay, um, what was that other question I had for you about? Oh, uh, you were talking earlier about that plasma that you got taken at— you got like a bunch of 25-year-old plasma replacement therapy. The plasma replacement therapy, is that the same thing that that Don't Die Brian Johnson did with his son?

Yes, except I didn't use his son.

Okay, good. But you use some other random person? Same procedure but different person?

I don't know who it was. The bag just said healthy male, 18 to 25-year-old donor plasma.

But how do you know that's health— how do you know? Trust.

So you can have— nobody's died there yet. Really? Well, I mean, like, yeah, I trust the doctor. Like, I, I vet these people. I don't just go to random fly-by-night clinic and, you know, you know, go through the nail salon in the back. Right, right, right.

Plasma. So that actually, you did the same thing that he was doing?

Yeah, it was the same.

But you did it just one time?

Yeah, but I would do it again. It's not inexpensive, but how much is it? Do it again? I think it's about, said and done, around $40K to do like a procedure. Yeah. Um, but I felt so good after doing it. It's one of those things where I would consider like maybe every 5 years or something like that doing it.

What does it do?

You literally just like feel— this is, this is going to sound like super, uh, super broad, but you feel younger. You just like recover faster and you have higher libido and your head goes clear and you sleep better. Um, I, I've— it was one of the things I've done where like immediately I felt like unstoppable. Unstoppable, almost like too good, like I need more things to do type of energy. Yeah.

How long did it last at that level?

About 4 weeks. And then like, honestly, I did it like 5 months ago and I still feel like I feel better, just like younger.

Do you think that's why— and I'm not even saying this to like blow smoke up your ass— but do you think that's why you look young, because you did something like that?

I think a lot of this stuff just adds up because I've also done, I've also done, you know, stem cells in the face and exosome facials. But, but I think the The daily routine, the daily in and out things that I do make a pretty big difference, just derma rolling, clay mask, red light, peptides on the face just because you don't have to drive to a clinic and fly to see a doctor.

Yeah, you do that every day.

Some of them are not every day like derma rolling is once a week, clay mask is once a week, red light face masks 3 times a week. The Young Goose stuff, I never thought I'd use this many products but I literally do. I get their brochure and I do exactly what it says. It's like some kind of like serum, cream, lotion, like 4 things in the morning and 4 things in the evening.

That's what I do too.

Nod and smile and do what it says.

I do exactly the same thing. Okay, um, I think I can let you go now considering everyone's, everyone's sleeping, uh, back behind you.

But even all the Reddit truetime in the world would make me not start thinking about dinner about now.

You're so cute. Okay, um, by the way, Ben does have a new book out. It's It's actually a manual or an encyclopedia, whatever you'd like to call it. It's called Boundless. It's a revised version of his other book, Boundless, because his brand is called Boundless. It is literally an encyclopedia. It's unbelievably— just there's so much information on exercise, on overall health optimization, brain, peptides, stem cells, energy, focus, vitality. I mean, it's amazing. Just sex. We didn't even get to the sex part. There's so much gut bacteria, gut health. You guys, it's amazing. Everything that he does, he— well, look, nothing is like— it's everything. There's so much information. You guys have to pick the new one up because I think you revised it, what, 5 months ago or— yeah. So Ben Greenfield, check him out if you don't know who he is. And what else, Ben? Anything else?

I think we covered a lot.

Okay, bye everybody.

Plan the plane.

I'm landing. All right, cool.

Thanks, guys.

Okay, bye.