Ben Greenfield: How to Actually Optimize Your Biology Without Going Extreme

People are still super intimidated by wearables. They're intimidated by CGM. They're intimidated by biomarkers. And you're saying here that it's super easy to do that.

The wearables, I want to see daily HRV, so heart rate variability, which is a good metric for stress even in the absence of like a continuous cortisol monitor. I think it's the closest thing to giving you a pretty good idea of what your cortisol levels are. Generally, if your HRV is low, and especially low chronically, you know, usually you have some type of adrenal issues going on. Activity level, so step count, sleep score, and body temperature. So those are some of the base resting.

Ben, what's up? This is amazing to have you here.

I know, again, in your big corporate headquarters.

Yeah, yeah, it's fancy. I, um, I mean, you've seen this thing from the very beginning. Like, you, you are the You were the first person that came to Next Health when we opened in Century City and did a book launch party. Do you remember that?

Yeah. In the mall. I mean, mostly I was going to SunLife for the little donuts, but you guys were across the whole thing. Yeah, we did a big book launch.

Big book launch party. And that was like the beginning of Next Health, like a couple years after the beginning.

And now you're opening like your 357,000th facility in 800 countries across the world.

Almost, almost. Are there 800 countries in the world?

I don't even know. I know. I'm not a geography guy. Yeah, don't ask me.

Geography questions. Yeah. And so like, you know, you've seen this whole journey and you've been a huge friend of the business and I really appreciate you for, for joining us on everything and teaching me a lot of what I know. Yeah, I've learned so much from you.

Well, you guys saved my ass when I'm in LA too. Like, I get my IV and my cryo and yeah, get charged up.

Exactly. Get your plasma exchange sometimes.

I just came up from down south. They literally just pulled the needle out of my arm and I came up here.

Here you are. It's amazing. I'm drunk up. And so when I say I learned a lot from you. You know, in traditional medical education, you don't get a lot of education at all around nutrition, exercise, sleep. So you contributed a large body of knowledge there. I remember one of your first books about, you know, exercise and movement.

Yeah, and that's probably Beyond Training.

Beyond Training, that's the one.

Yes. That was the one I wrote when I saw the light, or at least began to see the light, that being fit was not synonymous with being healthy. Yes. That was basically that whole book was, you know, as the title implies, Beyond Training because I wrote that as I was coming out of years of Ironman racing and still training pretty hard, but it was right when self-quantification was becoming a thing and right when I started to look at my blood and biomarkers and had the "oh crap" moment that I could run really fast in spandex, but that stuff was not going well on the inside. And, that's what started that whole movement of sleep and hormones and recovery and using biohacks to enhance recovery. And, that's what initially got me sucked down the rabbit hole was writing that book to solve my own problems. Specifically, the idea that, that fitness was not synonymous with health.

Yeah. And it's such an important point because I see a lot of athletes here at Nexo, this patients, and they look amazing, like they're jacked, right? But they, you check their blood tests and there's metabolic disasters going on, inflammation through the roof. And you know, I'm curious, like what made you get that first? 'Cause you were a bodybuilder in high school. Then you started doing Ironmans, right?

Well, actually, I was a tennis player.

Tennis player, okay.

In high school. So I played college tennis. And then a year and a half into college tennis, I dropped out because, A, I was getting my ass kicked. B, I just like burnt out on tennis because it was like my life from the age of 14 until I was at that point. I started college kind of early. I started college when I was— when I just right before I turned 16 because I was homeschooled. And I also wanted to play other sports and do other things. So then I started to play— the first couple years I played middle or whole set for the water polo team and middle for the men's volleyball team. And then I got into bodybuilding. And then I went up to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and saw an Ironman. And I was like, "That's badass. Like I would love to do that." So started doing triathlon. I actually became the president of the triathlon club. And I came along because I wasn't into sports at all. And like when I was a kid, I was president of the chess club. So that's how far I went. So I'm president of the triathlon club, and that got me sucked down the rabbit hole of Ironman. You know, raced Ironman for I don't know how many years. And then I kind of like how I watched an Ironman, that got me interested in that. I watched, I watched an obstacle course race, the Spartan World Championships. I'm like, that looks badass. So I, towards the tail end of my triathlon career, I, I signed up for a Spartan race. And then, you know, back to the like you know, different levels of fitness. I know certain levels of fitness aren't synonymous with function. I realized like, dude, I can't like carry a sandbag up a mountain. I don't know how to climb a rope. I, you know, I've got, I've got aerobics but very little strength. So then I had— I literally built like an obstacle course in my backyard to learn how to do Spartan. And long story short, I got recruited by Reebok to race for the Spartan Pro Racing Team. So I did that for 4 years, and then finally like got sane like 3 years ago and, you know, started like walking and playing pickleball. And yeah, yeah, um, but, but yeah, I mean, across, across all those activities, whatever, bodybuilding, Ironman, Spartan, HIROX, Tough Mudder, all the obstacle course racing, you see over and over again, um, like blood and biomarker parameters that, that are kind of shocking.

Yeah, it's so true. And, you know, you're kind of the OG in this field of looking at biomarkers and using it to inform your, your exercise, your nutrition, all of it. But I'm just curious, like, when you got your first biomarker test, was it because you were feeling sick, or did you say, you know, I really need to look at what's going on under the hood? What was the impetus to get that?

I, I probably could have felt better than I felt, but I didn't get it because I thought something was wrong. I got it because I was a podcaster and an up-and-coming influencer at the time. People just start to send you tests to try, and this stuff pops up on the radar. So, um, when I, when I started to do my first blood testing, it was right after I did the FASTER study with Dr. Jeff Volek at University of Connecticut. This was the study where they had one group of endurance athletes follow a high-fat, low-carb diet, like, like almost like a therapeutic ketogenic diet for 12 months. I was in the keto group. Got it. Yeah, I mean, like 20 grams of carbs a day, like walk past an Italian restaurant and want to chew your arm off type of level. And then they had a group follow like the standard, you know, Gatorade Sports Science Institute recommended, you know, 65 to 85% carbohydrate diet. And they flew us to University of Connecticut. They did muscle biopsies. If people haven't done that before, it's like literally like a guillotine going into your quads. And they did biopsies, a fat biopsy on the back, um, you know, we carried around a jug measure our urine and everything for 24 hours when we got there. We did a stool test. And then, the evening we got there was a VO2 max test, so running to exhaustion on the treadmill. Then, the next day was a 3-hour run on the treadmill, which is horrible because it was just a white wall in the lab staring at the wall, running on the treadmill wearing a gas mask to measure oxygen consumed and carbon dioxide produced. So, you get your fat carbohydrate oxidation, which was kind of the meat of the study. The hypothesis being if you eat a high-fat diet, you might oxidize more fat during exercise. And then, you know, a needle in the arm collecting bloods, you know, while you're just jamming on the treadmill for 3 hours. So the outcome of that study almost like rewrote the exercise physiology textbooks because up until that point, the prevailing theory was that you could burn like 1 gram of fat per minute. And those of us who followed the high-fat ketogenic diet for an extended period of time, which is important because fat adaptation takes time. Yeah, you don't become a fat-burning machine after 4 weeks or whatever, right? We were burning 1.5 grams plus of fat. Wow. Per minute. So, um, it— the study demonstrably proved that you could shift substrate oxidation when you shift your diet, especially if you shift your diet for a long period of time. And more importantly, if you restrict sugar and carbohydrates, your body becomes more efficient at burning fats. And even though the study didn't really discuss this, um, in the, in the discussion section of the study, since then ongoing research has shown that a big part of it is ketone utilization. So, um, the issue though is that when you restrict carbs that much and combine it with like Ironman-level exercise, you see thyroid dysregulation, you see hypogonadism, uh, you, you don't even have enough proteoglycans for your joints. So you see poor joint recovery. And I was experiencing some of what I didn't know at the time were the symptoms of a lot of those things. But then I did a blood test, and back to the root of the question you asked like 10 minutes ago, that's when I saw, um, you know, super high TSH, low T3, low total testosterone, low free testosterone, high CRP, low vitamin D. You know, like, like, wow, probably 12 to 15 things lit up like a Christmas tree. And that's when I realized, A, I should write a book about this. Yeah. Just to start to get the word out about what I've found out about my own body. And B, I should do something about this in terms of how I train and how I eat.

Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. And I mean, I remember this study because it was a pivotal kind of moment. And also I remember there was kind of a movement of keto athletes, like athletes that were doing triathlons, ultra marathons on keto.

Yeah. So books about it, like one of my books, like even before Beyond Training, I don't remember the name. It was like The Low Carb Athlete. There's a whole bunch of like The Low Carb Athlete, The War on Carbs, like all of these low carb books. Um, if I could go back and rewrite that book, it would be the cyclic low carb diet because that's actually how I eat now. Yeah, like I think you can achieve the shift in substrate utilization by restricting sugar and carbs for, let's say, for a very active person, this would be the case most of the day, and then having carbs at the end of the day so you get right? Carbohydrate refeed, you restock the liver and muscle glycogen for maybe a morning workout. The next day, you get a bump up in serotonin for a little bit of extra melatonin, so you sleep better. You have more of your carb, um, like, um, bank account for the usually what's the most wide-ranging meal of the day from a macro standpoint. Like, you're out at a restaurant or you're eating with the family, and that's most days. Yeah, it's just low carb, high protein, high fat most of the day, and then in the evening, all of you— yeah, sweet potato, sourdough bread, dark chocolate, red wine, whatever.

So you're cycling within a 24-hour period, going carb, low carb, to, to just a regular—

active person could even do like a cyclic low carb diet that's like on a weekly basis. Yeah. And obviously it's going to vary a lot based on your activity levels, your carb sensitivity. I mean, this, this is why I'm a huge fan of, you know, the CGMs. Exactly. Monitoring this stuff.

Yeah. I can't wait till the CGM can also monitor ketone levels Um, it's coming soon. I talked to some of the scientists that are developing the new next generation of monitors, and they will be able to monitor ketones.

The same monitor? The same monitor. Glucose and ketones? Yep. Interesting.

Yeah, same one.

You know, because, because the glucose, you know, it's interstitial fluid that that tiny little needle is measuring, which correlates pretty well with blood glucose. I have no clue how interstitial ketones would correlate to blood ketones.

I think there's just a conversion factor that you have to take into account, just like you do with interstitial fluid glucose. But, you know, and there's other markers that we're gonna be able to get from the continuous wearable, like even cortisol levels potentially as well. So I mean, this is a tremendous amount of data that's gonna be coming at us. And, you know, right now the CGM's pretty easy, I think, with the apps. Like, are you wearing Levels or which one are you wearing?

There's Levels, Dexcom G7. The only thing I don't like about it, and I don't know if you've worn the G7 before, and this is something that I've verified on the, you know, Reddit forums, which are, you know, yeah, uh, you know, pretty credible really, uh, it doesn't do well in the heat. Like, I don't know, like, I jack up my— so my sauna's 230.

Oh.

And if I go in the sauna, it can give me wacky readings for a couple of days, and half the time the sensor just poops out. Fails. So business idea, somebody needs to develop like an insulatory patch that goes over the G7 that protects it in some way from the heat.

For the frequent sauna user, right? For sure. Huh, that's interesting. Yeah, but I think the apps will be able to show you everything. I mean, I was saying with the CGM, the glucose is pretty easy to just do it yourself. But I mean, this is a perfect example of technology and AI convergence where now we can use artificial intelligence to really sort through the data of what's going on and super personalize your carbs, your macros, for throughout the day for each individual person.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, because I mean, like, I say the cyclic low-carb thing works for me, but yeah, it, it is going to differ quite a bit from person to person. Like, I don't know if you have like the APOE4 gene, like, you're definitely going to need to be more careful if you are following that diet for your saturated fat intake.

Exactly.

You know, same thing if you have poorly functioning, you know, liver or gallbladder or, you know, or, you know, you're unable to get enough protein on a diet like that.

So, you know, that's what I love about you, Ben. It's like you, you are always, and every message you put out there, you're like, this isn't for everybody. You know, you're really going down the, you go down the explanation of what you're doing and why you're doing it for you. But you also always mention like, this does not work for everybody and it's really an N of 1. Yeah. Right.

I mean, that, and that's, that's, and I mean, man, we live in an era where it's not that hard to do, you know, from, from the CGMs and the wearables to, you know, self-quantification and blood and biomarker testing, like, is pretty easy to customize now. So it's great.

Let's dive into that a little bit more because I think, you know, people are still super intimidated by wearables. They're intimidated by CGM. They're intimidated by biomarkers. And you're saying here that it's super easy to do that. Kind of break it down for someone that's like, I would say, fresh off the boat of getting their health order.

But they want like a data-driven approach.

They want a data-driven approach. How would you guide that person to get a data-driven approach?

So wave a magic wand and then this is what I would do. Let's say somebody comes to me and they want me to write out a nutrition plan and a training plan and get everything dialed in. From a quantification standpoint, the wearables, I want to see daily HRV, so heart rate variability, which is a good metric for stress even in the absence of a continuous cortisol monitor. I think it's the closest thing to giving you a pretty good idea of what your cortisol levels are. Generally, if your HRV is low and especially low chronically, usually you have some type of adrenal issue. Exactly. Um, I like to see the same thing from the wearable, uh, activity level. So, step count, uh, look at sleep score and, uh, body temperature. Like, those are some of the biggest— resting heart rate. You know, they're rolling out all sorts of other measurements now. You know, there's the blood pressure one. Um, I know you did a podcast with a guy who's, who's got a continuous blood pressure monitor now. I know Whoop is working on something like that as well. Um, And, you know, now they're doing like your approximation of your biological age based on cardiovascular parameters. So they're working with, with big data, but at the same time, you know, I don't know how accurate that is. Um, so I like to see that. And then from a testing standpoint, I think some of the biggies to look at are your basic blood panel, right? So you have your CMP and your CBC and just basically what your doctor is going to order. Something that's going to look a little more specifically at micronutrients. So fatty acids, amino acids, markers that a basic blood panel won't pick up. Yeah. Um, one that I use right now for that is Metabolomics. Oh, and I'm not a doctor. What I have is just like a Rupa account. So yeah, I'll have clients go there, I'll tell them which tests I recommend kind of get-go to get them started. Um, a stool panel. Yeah, so like a Genova Diagnostics 3-day. So you're looking at yeast, parasites, you know, fungal markers. I'm not as big of a fan of the gut biome tests. I think they're interesting. Yeah, but I, I haven't seen enough data that you could, based on what the bacterial composition of the gut is, the genetics of the gut, really trust the laundry list of foods that are going to be like superfoods for you and not great foods for you, because it will change dramatically based on the foods that you're eating, right? And so, yeah, a food might be a superfood for you because you've just been eating it for so long.

Yeah.

And then you've developed the bacterial composition to be able to, to to cope with that food. Um, and you know, as a brief aside, I think that, you know, that makes a pretty important, um, case for dietary diversity, right? The more diverse your diet, the less myopically you're avoiding all these different plant defense molecules and the 12 different books that have all the different things that you're not supposed to eat. You know, paradoxically, the less diverse your diet becomes, the less diverse a diet you're able to cope with. So meaning like if you're restricting gluten and oxalates and lectins and phytates, your bacterial composition will shift in such a manner that you're less able to digest.

Wow, that's such an important point, right?

Exactly. So dietary diversity is important, and something like that test will show you, you know, inflammation, you know, microbiome balance, etc. Um, some type of hormone panel. Um, I like the Dutch test. Yeah, just like the urinary hormone panel, for sure. Uh, it'll give you upstream and downstream metabolites of hormones and, you know, kind of more than just the snapshot, right, that blood gives you. Uh, some kind of a good food allergy test that isn't going to give you like a laundry list of false positives. Uh, Cyrex has a good one. Zoomer has a good one. Um, we use the Zoomer one. Yeah, yeah. And, uh, and then a genetic test. Yeah, a DNA salivary test. So that's like 6 different tests and a wearable, which sounds like a lot, but I mean, you know, if, if someone's listening and they're a high achiever and they just want all the data, that would be kind of example of everything that you're going to collect to be able to really dive in and know, hey, do I need vitamin D or not? You know, should I be on this supplement or not? What kind of diet should I eat, etc.?

Yeah, no, that, that's a great battery of tests. And how often would you get those on somebody? Waving a magic wand?

Well, if you're not getting like CRISPR gene editing, the DNA one would be once, um, the basic blood panel, that'd be more like a quarterly thing. The fancier blood panel would be an annual. The gut panel, typically an annual unless you're symptomatic, right? Because people who travel a lot, they'll come back with critters in their gut or some kind of gut issue. So sometimes for people who travel a lot, that can be up to like 4 times a year, right? Um, the hormone one, that's usually something like annual. Yeah. Um, the food allergy one is pretty seldom. I mean, you, you will, as you change your diet and typically as you become healthier specifically, have a less pronounced autoimmune reaction to certain food groups. So it might be that as you clean up your diet and you become healthier, you retest that because foods that you might not have been able to tolerate, foods that you might have produced a white blood cell reaction against, you no longer do. Yeah, so exactly that one you'd repeat. Um, so yeah, most of them are annual, a couple are quarterly, you know, one is once in a lifetime. Wearables, just like every day, you just wear it.

Yeah, okay, that's perfect. That's a great protocol. It's pretty similar to what we do here at Next Health. Um, we, we call that our Total Wellness Panel, and we try to get that on people once a year. And yeah, we, we're huge proponents of wearables. Some people have like data overwhelm. And so I just turn it off and let us look at it.

Fantastic night of sleep. Yeah, not so great as soon as you look at your data.

Exactly, and you get stressed out about it. But yeah, I think that, I think to have some sort of protocol in place that you stick to year after year after year can totally change the directionality of your health. And then you need to have someone kind of review that with you. And I know you're, are you still doing any private clients where you're reviewing? Results with people a little bit.

So, so my typical week— so I coach 8 people right now. The maximum number of people I would coach is 10. Those, those are people in like my fancy VIP program where I sit down every Saturday, I look over the wearable data, I write out the training plan, monitor the nutrition, and just basically act as kind of like the CEO of that person's nutrition and fitness program. And then I've typically got another 10 to 12 hours a week when I'm just on the phone with people, just à la carte, just, just talking about their data. And again, like, like I need to get this out there. I am not a doctor. I don't give out medical advice. I literally just like get on the horn with people and talk with them about what I see and what I think about if I were in their shoes. But I don't prescribe anything. I don't actually give out medical advice for sure.

I mean, I think, you know, by the time you get to a prescription or medical advice— I need the t-shirt, "I'm not a doctor." Well, I mean, there's a lot going on prior to that. I mean, that's the problem with, um, the way we think about our health in general in this country, is we wait for something to go so bad that we get a prescription for it or we end up in the surgery. And there's about 30 years of badness going on in your biology before then that, you know, to your point, you didn't know necessarily need a doctor review, just someone who is extremely well-versed in those tests and what they mean and why you can, what you can do to change directionality without a pharmaceutical. Yeah.

And I mean, like, you know, when we get in the complexities of blood testing and customization, you know, diet customization and supplement personalization, you don't want to lose the forest for the trees. At the end of the day, there are certain principles that matter more than anything else, like calories in, calories out. Yeah, I know people argue, oh, you're gonna have a different hormonal response to 100 calories of kale versus 100 calories of Oreos, and, you know, ultra-processed foods might alter your insulinogenic profiles that you're going to respond more poorly to certain types of calories. I agree with all of that. But at the end of the day, if you are eating more calories than you're burning, you're gonna have a really hard time losing weight. And if you came to me and you wanted to lose weight and you were exercising and burning like 2,200 calories a day, you could technically lose weight on a 1,900-calorie-a-day Coca-Cola diet, right? Like, like, you know, calories in, calories out trumps everything. Yeah. Um, similar thing with movement, like, like exercising, moving, getting your step count in, um, and, and doing it throughout the day, that trumps everything as well. And when I say throughout the day, I mean, I don't know if you've seen some of this research, but there are multiple studies demonstrating that the benefits of exercise— let's say like the formal exercise, the formal fabricated exercise in a box where you go to the gym and pick stuff up and put it down, because we don't— we're not farmers and construction workers and painters anymore. The benefits of that slip away at a pretty significant rate if you're sitting for more than 8 hours a day. Exactly. So you have to fabricate your lifestyle to, you know, have a kettlebell on the floor of your cubicle that you trip over and a pull-up bar on the door of the office and a walking treadmill and, and, you know, little movement breaks throughout the day. But moving more and eating less, um, those are the most important. And, um, this might be controversial, but if even if you look at like, you know, Make America Healthy Again, right, the Maha campaign, I I love the awareness that they're bringing to the state of nutrition, um, and overall health in our country, but I think there are bigger fish to fry than like artificial sweeteners and food dyes. Like, like, the majority of people don't need to hear that as much as they need to hear, hey, just like eat less food and move more. And education about that should trump everything.

Do you see they're bringing the Presidential Fitness Test back? No. Yeah.

Just announced yesterday. I honestly don't even remember what all goes into the Presidential Fitness Test.

I remember doing this.

Honestly, I was homeschooled, so I didn't have to do it.

Oh, you didn't have to do it. Okay. Yeah. Every year you'd have to do the Presidential Fitness Test. Yeah. I think it was the beginning of the year and end of year. I might be remembering that wrong. And I mean, it was stressful for a lot of people, but it really just got the school system thinking about how are we going to get the most amount of kids to pass this thing?

Yeah.

And then they would add in activity throughout the day to make that happen. And then when it went away, I mean, you know, a lot of schools just cut out physical education completely. Yeah. And so that's coming back.

Have you seen the old videos of like physical education in the '50s and the '60s where it's crazy? It's crap. I couldn't do when I was off the course racing, just like crazy monkey bars and obstacle courses, you know, box jumps. And yeah, I would love to see that.

Yeah, yeah. So it's supposedly it's coming. Hopefully it sticks. We'll see, we'll see. Yeah. So yeah, you're right, obviously it starts with fundamentals of food, nutrition, sleep, exercise. But, you know, you've been a biohacker probably more years than you've been— more years than you're not been a biohacker, right? I mean, this is—

if you want to call it— I mean, like, in my opinion, like, bio— like, the original biohacking was like, you know, implants and wearables, you know, like the compass that would vibrate when you face true north and the magnetic implants in the fingers and, you know, even like vagal nerve stimulators or whatever. And now It's like putting collagen in your lasagna, you're a biohacker. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, you know, whatever the definition of the term is, I've been messing around with that stuff for a while.

Yeah. And that was gonna be one of my questions for you. How has, in your mind, the term kind of evolved and changed from when you first started to now? About 20 years or so.

The term biohacking? Yeah. I mean, I don't know if the term has changed much because, you know, roughly, defined depending on what definition you look at, you know, using science, technology, self-experimentation, and self-quantification to somehow optimize the human body. I think, um, you could also kind of throw in the angle that technically it's using some form of external manipulation to, like a computer hacker would do with an OS, get the human machine to, to operate more efficiently or more quickly than it might otherwise be able to. So an example of that would be like when I raced Ironman, one of the rules was that for every mile that you run, you should put your feet up, legs up against the wall for a minute. So, if you go for a 10-mile run, if you put your legs up against the wall for a minute, that helps to drain the blood out of the legs. Well, now you can do that tenfold with a set of NormaTec or Hyperice boots or whatever. So, it's like a gradated compression biohack. You also hear that to to get something like, um, like a solar callus, which is basically a development of a layer, the corneal layer of the skin, that makes you less susceptible to the damaging effects of excessive UVA and UVB radiation. Ideally, you should get exposed to some form of red and infrared light in the morning and in the evening, almost like a, like a light sandwich, right? Sunlight during the day, red light in the evening, red light in the morning. Well, you could biohack that if you weren't climb up to the top of a mountain to watch the sunrise by using red light panels or a red light bed.

I didn't know that. I didn't know that could— Yeah. Does that replace the sunscreen or is like an added benefit?

I wouldn't use it as a replacement for sunscreen. Like you're going to be out, you know, high noon, you know, in the sun for a long period of time. I'd still protect yourself.

But— And you call that a solar callus?

Yes, it's called the stratus corneum, I think, is the actual layer that develops. You know, I'm not a huge— I use sunscreen on my face, you know, mostly just because of the anti-aging effect. I'm not that concerned about the skin cancer component just because I have same sun exposure, meaning I just don't burn. My rule is I don't burn, I don't stay out there long enough to burn. Good rule. But, back to the biohacking piece, if you look at a lot of these technologies, red light, oxygen, electrical modalities, to a certain extent, supplementation based on self-quantification, we're just basically accelerating recovery or accelerating health at a more rapid pace than we might be able to do in a native natural state.

Yeah. And so that's the definition of it. And I love that you added in self-quantification and self-experimentation. I think really looking at N of 1 as understanding like what are the biomarkers you're trying to track, do an intervention, see what happens, and then you just keep— that's like a virtuous pathway to just getting this right more and more until you figure out a lot of hacks. You can call them hacks or just habits or modalities.

Yeah.

Day after day to just optimize your health. And the other thing I wanted to ask you, though, is also have you noticed as you've aged, what are you— I shouldn't ask.

How old are you? Yes, I'm 43.

You're now 43.

I feel like I'm 18, but I'm 43. I actually feel better than I do when I was 18.

You look great.

I mean, I feel good.

How has what you've been doing changed from your 20s to your 40s now?

I mean, one, one big piece we already hit on, which is even though exercising is good, the level and intensity and, and voluminous nature of the exercise have altered considerably. It's just critical. Um, yeah, yeah. And, and it's critical, you know, based on the adrenaline overtraining piece. It's critical based on research, you know, showing arterial stiffness and atherosclerotic type conditions once you reach a certain level of exercise, which actually wasn't that high. Um, and there's also just, you know, the time component, right? There's a lot of things in life that happen outside the gym, believe it or not. Um, so I, I exercise less in a formal sense. I would say I move more, you know. So I, I literally did used to be the guy that would go to the gym and then just like sit in my office during the day. Yeah. Um, so that's changed.

Um, you have a walking desk now, I see.

Yeah, I have a walking— I walk a lot. Yeah, I probably take like 20,000 steps a day.

I hit 20,000 yesterday. I was like, this is great. Which treadmill do you use? Yeah, so I have this one that's, I forgot the name of it, but it's just a pad that goes under my desk. And it's really heavy. So it's like a full-on treadmill, but no, you know, none of the top part of it. And you just put a, I put a custom-made desk on top of it. 'Cause I was using it for years and it wasn't the right height. I'm 6'2" and it just, I just couldn't get it high enough. And I didn't wanna like keep stacking books and stuff under my keyboard. So I just had a thing made for me. Yeah.

Yeah. It's got a foam surface. It's a manual treadmill, first of all, because we were talking about my house before we started recording. It's a very safe zone, all circadian-friendly lighting and really good water filtration, really good air scrubbers and air filtration, and all low VOC non-toxic materials. And, there's very low EMF. So, I'm looking at how I can limit EMF here and there. And, manual treadmills are are actually a pretty big source of electrical pollution. So it's a manual treadmill, but then it's like this whisper-soft, quiet surface. It's like a foam surface. Uh, it's interesting because I interviewed this guy on my podcast like 10 years ago, and he's an inventor, a Swiss inventor who spent time in Korea. You can't make this shit up. Walking in like the Korean rice paddy fields, and his feet became so supple and strong that he came back to Switzerland and developed shoes and a standing mat for the desk that have the same plush material. It's a company that was called Kybun, K-Y-B-U-N. And then, fast forward 10 years and I see this treadmill. It turns out he's the man behind the material that they used on this treadmill. So, the treadmill actually stretches and strengthens your feet as you're walking on it.

Amazing.

I forgot how we got on the topic of treadmills. Yeah, it's a manual.

So, it's not electric. Yeah, yeah. It actually requires some effort and energy to make this thing work. Yeah.

Arguably there's a little bit more of, uh, of a glute component, which is important. Glute strengthening, hip flexor stretching component when you're forced to create a little bit more of the ground reaction forces versus it just kind of pulling underneath you.

Okay, I got to come over and try this thing.

Oh, so you're asking me what I've changed? Yeah. So yeah, I would say one piece is the exercise component.

Um, so you've added more movement throughout the day?

Yeah, more movement throughout the day, less of a focus on just like the masochistic gym workouts. I would say that I, I have— I've actually, back to the dietary diversity thing, um, embraced much more the concept of not avoiding plant defense molecules. Like, just like a lot of people probably did and have and do, I paid a lot of attention to all the books coming out about gluten and oxalates and, you know, paleo and carnivore and, you know, the, the agricultural revolution destroying our guts with the advent of, you know, being able to milk cows and drink dairy all the time and have grains, quinoa, amaranth, the millet. I think that introducing a lot of plants, grains, grasses, and dietary diversity renders, like I was saying before, like a hormetic, mildly toxic impact on the gut that improves the versatility of the biome, but then also important things like endogenous antioxidant production, cellular resilience. I mean, the way I think about this is part of living a long time and feeling good is embracing mild elements of discomfort in moderation throughout the day. And if you think about what we do to stay healthy, almost all of it is poisonous or toxic or would kill us if we did large amounts of it, right? Yeah. Exercise makes the muscles look like World War II, and, you know, or exercise and saunas strain the heart, and cold causes a sympathetic nervous system response, right? And alcohol is toxic even though small amounts of it actually induce your own glutathione response. And then, you look at all the grasses and the grains and the plant defense molecules, and those technically cause a similar effect as well. So, just the whole idea of hormesis, instead of myopically avoiding foods because they're the sexy ones to avoid and they follow this special dogmatic diet, thinking in a little bit more open-minded way and instead just asking, is this really bad, or is this part of the baby talk that you see so often in our industry? Yes, no, good, bad, black, white. And typically it's, it's the levels that matter, you know. And, and for the most part, small exposure to things that are bad for you are in the long run good for you.

Yeah, it's so true. And I think, you know, um, to your point, like, I think having all these like toxins supposedly in your food it sells a lot of books, sells a lot of supplements. But the reality is we've been eating these plants for generations and generations. And like you said, when you eliminate a certain part of that diet, whether you're trying to avoid oxalates, you're trying to avoid lectins, you get less diverse of a diet, which is actually also not great for your gut too. So, yeah, makes total sense. Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned, and I, I agree with you, I think these microbiome tests where they're like, you know, taking one sample and then they're giving you, here are the foods you should eat, here are the foods you should not eat. Really, it's hard to believe because, you know, you do your microbiome test now and then 3 hours from now you do another one, it's changed.

You know what though, like, that happens. Like, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but I have, I have seen panels come back for everything from like mold, mycotoxins, hormone results from different companies, same person, different name, absolutely different results from one day day to the next. So yeah, I think you need to, you need to take everything with a grain of salt, um, you know. And there are certain tests, like a lot of the ones that we've already talked about and mentioned, I will stand behind as, as good tests, right? Um, you know, and then there's, there's, there are other hormetic stressors because I, you know, I don't want to mislead people. There are certain things that are just like bad for you, bad for sure, like metals and microplastics, right? There is no hormetic response to those that I'm aware of. Um, EMF, Maybe, like, like you do see like an influx of calcium as the calcium-gated channels open up in response to high amounts of electrical pollution that might induce some type of a hormetic advantage that, that we're currently unaware of, right? Um, but yeah, metals and microplastics are, are big ones. And, you know, microplastics even more so because they're just harder to get rid of, you know. The Dalton size is so large that you can pass like, what, 100 Dalton microplastic through a sweat gland and then the buck stops there. It stops there. Microplastics are like 100 to 1,000 Daltons and most of them are of the larger variety. So, you can't go sweat them out. Metals, sweat, urine, stool, good detoxification protocols, you can do a decent job. With higher levels, you'll still need some kind of chelation protocol or something more intensive. You probably know more about this than me, but the only thing I know of to really get them out of the body is an actual blood filtration.

Yeah, plasma exchange. That removes basically all the microplastics in your plasma. But also, you know, these microplastics, as we know, are in our tissues. If you take a brain of someone after an autopsy and you get rid of all the tissue, you'll be left with about, you know, a credit card size amount of plastic. It's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. Same thing in your testicles. Same thing— they found microplastics in cardiac coronary blood vessels. So it's a big problem. And the only real way I think that you can mitigate the damage from this is you have to reduce exposure constantly and consistently in your clothing, in your, you know, plastic bottles, all of it, all day long. And that's not even counting for the chemicals they add to plastics, like, you know, BPA and all these chemicals too.

It's hard to do. I mean, to me, that fits into the same category as electrical pollution. It's like, it's really hard to move to a pristine Himalayan mountaintop and become a, like, Amish Luddite. It's just hard to do. You have You have to embrace the fact that, yeah, you might actually by living a modern post-industrial connected lifestyle take a couple of weeks or maybe a few months off of your life or at least live in a more sympathetically driven state. But I think the pros outweigh the cons of being connected, family, friends, be able to run your business on the internet. Microplastics, probably similar category. It's like, yes, I like to go to the coffee shop and get a nice piping hot paper cup of coffee. And, you know, and there's certain things that are just difficult to avoid. There's probably people just like leaping through the podcast right now saying, why don't you bring your stainless steel cup to the coffee shop?

Exactly.

Yeah. Um, but yeah, it is, it is difficult, right? Like, you have to choose your battles. And I think you, you can have a reasonable approach to microplastics. Like, don't use cellophane, don't have plastic containers, you know, avoid the ones that are more degradable, don't have the heated crinkly plastic water bottles, right? But yeah, limiting all exposure is pretty tough.

It's pretty tough. But like with everything, you know, you can make simple changes in your house that last you the rest of your life. Like, for example, we have a Keurig machine in the house. Those little plastic K-Cups are a disaster. So you can buy now—

I don't even like the way the coffee tastes.

Well, I don't use Keurig. I actually use a mushroom blend coffee from Four Sigmatic that, that now I buy these metal, fully metal stainless steel containers that you can buy. On Amazon and you put the coffee in there and you put that in the Keurig machine.

And it works in a Keurig?

It works. I'm gonna make you a cup here and you can try it.

It works amazing. I just had a cold brew from SunLife. I probably should have another cup. You can do mushrooms though, right? It doesn't have to be coffee or tea or whatever. It can be anything.

Yeah, I use Four Sigmatic and you can put in this metal cup and it works great in a Keurig machine.

Yeah, you're right. Like From Our Place, they have good kitchen appliances and cookware. I found a blender called the Beast. I think Our Place might make it that has blades that don't corrode or degrade as much as a standard metal blade, and then plastic that doesn't degrade as much as a typical blender jar. So if you start to search around, like, like there are sources that you can outfit your kitchen with because obviously what we eat and drink are two primary sources. Yeah. So yeah, you're right. Like you can outfit your home in such a way that you're at least getting less exposure there, right?

Absolutely. And I think also, you know, the key message there is you do it one time and then it lasts. That habit lasts you forever because you're not going to go out and buy new metal Keurig plastic cups if you have the metal ones. You're just going to buy regular coffee from now on. So you're— yeah, that's like one problem solved. Same with, you know, you buy one metal Yeti and that's your coffee cup at home. You're not going to use a paper one accidentally, you know, those kind of things. So yeah. And then, you know, I love this concept of hormesis. The last time you and I talked, you know, we were at a conference and you had an entire presentation on hormesis.

Yeah, that was your conference.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it was based on the mitochondrial free radical theory of aging dictating that, that one of the primary causes of aging is a theory is exposure to free radicals and reactive oxygen species. And, um, there, there's research since then indicating that those same free radicals and reactive oxygen species may serve as signaling molecules that induce cellular resilience and the idea of completely eliminating inflammation, taking massive amounts of antioxidants, not giving the body the chance to mount its own inflammatory response, could paradoxically induce cellular weakness instead of cellular strength. And I think one of the most controversial or popular slides, whichever way you want to look at it, during that presentation was the alcohol. Yeah, yeah, because you could make a case— I realize this is controversial because, you know, there's lots of data on No, but you could make a case that small doses of alcohol in moderation, like baby doses on a regular basis, could be better for you than not drinking alcohol at all. And if you look at a lot of the studies showing alcohol to be damaging, let's say at a dose of, say, like, you know, an average of 7 drinks a week, there's not a good differentiation between all 7 of those drinks occurring at once versus them being spread out. I mean, like, you know, take another hormetic stressor like running, right? If I tell you running is good for you, your body is going to respond differently to running 21 miles on a Saturday morning versus 3 miles every weekday. It's just a different volume that the body is unable to adapt its own inflammatory response or anti-inflammatory response to. And there are conditions that seem to respond pretty well to alcohol intake like cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, dementia, kidney stones, and there are certain conditions that that would be totally contraindicated like fatty liver disease, breast cancer, esophageal cancer. There's certain things that you just stay away from alcohol, period. But I drink, I probably average 4 to 5 drinks a week, very little bit of organic biodynamic wine or a little bit of mezcal, which has the agave fibers in it, so you get a little bit of prebiotics. Not a ton, but enough to make you feel good about drinking mezcal. Well, um, I've been drunk in 17 years. You know, I will occasionally— like, like, my idea of hedonistic alcohol excess is I will have a cocktail when I'm out on a date with my wife while we're having appetizers or waiting for the food, and then her and I will split pour a glass of red.

Nice.

And that's enough for me.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's a, it's a good way of thinking about it. And, um, I think there's other hormetic stresses that you can do that might be considered bioactive like heat, cold, like you were talking about, um, high-intensity training, although it's not a biohack, it does induce that as well. Um, what are some of the other ones people can put into their life besides alcohol?

Plant diversity. Okay. Uh, UVA and UVB radiation in moderation. Thermal stress, which you already mentioned. Um, plant diversity, uh, loading with strength, loading the heart with cardiovascular exercise. Um, what else? Uh, oxygen. I mean, oxygen is technically an oxidative stress, so, um, intermittent hypoxic training with something like, uh, like a Cell Gym or, or a LiveO2, um, actually breathing oxygen exercise with oxygen therapy, EWOT, uh, you know, there, there are devices like the HyperMax where you can breathe like 93% oxygen, um, or a hyperbaric chamber. Those would all be examples of using oxygen as a stressor. Um, you know, certain bitter agents as well, you know, a lot of the things that you would use for blood glucose stabilization, those are mild stressors also. Metformin. Yep. Yeah, metformin, bitter melon extract, apple cider vinegar would kind of fit into that category. But, that kind of falls back into the plant defense mechanism piece. Those would be some of the biggies. And, it's interesting because you think about some of this stuff or you can think about some of this stuff the same way that you think about things like mTOR inhibition. You want to do certain things that don't put your body in a pro-growth phase all the time. It's the same way that you want to do certain things that stress the body on a regular basis. And many of these things that stress the body do also act as, as mTOR inhibition mechanisms. So the idea of like feast-fast cycling, like intermittent fasting, going for certain periods of time without food and then having something like a protein refeed. Or if we want to get super advanced, doing something like a couple of times a year or some type of a cycle of, of a growth hormone stimulating peptide, for example, where you have like a pro-growth phase. And I do that, like I'll do 2 12-week cycles of, uh, Tesamorelin every morning, every year, 5 days on, 2 days off. Ipramorelin, CJC, or Sermorelin in the evening. So I have a couple times a year when I'm kind of pro-growth, but that's not something I would do all the time, all year long. Yeah, yeah. And many people will use like rapamycin for something like this, for the mTOR inhibition. Um, so, so yeah, a lot of these things you need to think about in terms of cycling, cycling the stressors or modulating the stressors.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, our body is not meant to be in a state of stress all the time. It also is not meant to be in a state of non-stress all the time.

Yeah, a state of growth all the time, right? Yeah, right, exactly. Anabolic catabolic cycles.

Yeah. And peptides is a perfect example of— most peptides you should be cycling. They should not be— yeah. Peptides are basically biological signals that we've now emulated in the lab that we can give ourselves. And all biological signals have cycles, on and off cycles that are different based on circadian rhythms and other rhythms. And so cycling is important.

Yeah, I mean, even if you look at like the, you know, mostly the Russian longevity research on mitochondrial stimulation, like two classic peptides, MOTC and epitalon, like those depending on the protocols, Sometimes it's just like 10 to 20 days a couple of times a year of a dose of those. And I think it's important to bring up because a lot of people— I had a question at a talk I was giving last night and this guy was saying he just used BPC-157 every single day as just like a preventive anti-inflammatory. And I told him, look, you might want to consider using it when you're injured, using it when you actually need it versus just like because it's around, injecting it every day. Yeah, you know, like I have a whole pantry full of supplements, but I don't take them all every day. Exactly. Like, there's certain times when you're going to do like a, like, um, a senolytic agent, which might be a couple of times a month. There's certain times when you're going to do a blood glucose stabilizer, like before you have carbohydrates. There, you know, methylene blue would be another example of something I wouldn't recommend using every single day. Technically, it impairs mitochondrial pathways. It attaches to a chromophore and blocks part of the electron transport chain. But that's advantageous if you're in a state of hypoxia or inflammation. So, if I'm beat up, I'm sleep-deprived, I've been on an airplane, I haven't been eating as good of a diet as I'd like to, I'll take Methylene Blue. But, that wouldn't be a daily for me. And then, with that one, I think you also just need to be careful of the overall impact on the microbiome of taking fish tank cleaner every single day.

Yeah, Methylene Blue is a whole other topic. And, I am I'm, uh, super interested in it. But to your point, like, I think you cycle things, you use them when your body needs them, and that also prevents, for many peptides, receptor saturation, a downregulation of receptors as well, which can also occur. And so, you know, if you take BPC-157 all the time, pretty soon your receptors get saturated, you're wasting your time and money, and then they start downregulating, and now it takes more BPC to have the same effect. And so that's also a theoretical problem with some of these peptides.

This is also why I have 1 to 2 cups of coffee a week at home, and I'll have like 2 to 3 cups of coffee a day when I travel. And my receptors are super ready because I have fewer of them for the coffee that I know I need when I'm sleeping less, I'm outside my time zone, you know, I'm doing more outside of my normal habits. So I, you know, caffeine for me is kind of like a sometimes drug.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, big question for you. Um, you've tried almost everything under the sun, I think, right? What are, what are 2 or 3 things— I've seen your Instagram, you do a lot of stuff. Yeah. What are 2 or 3 things that you maybe wish you hadn't tried, or you would not recommend for anybody, or you tried and would not do again?

Um, oh gosh, let's see. Um, I think that— and this would also fit into the category of something I used to do a lot of in high amounts that I think has a law of diminishing return. Burns, um, especially more so for women during their ovulatory phase when estrogen and progesterone are elevated and there's a more vasoconstrictive cortisol response, would be cold. Like a long cold session. Like, I, I used to think the more the better with cold, and I would do like 10 to 20 minute long sessions or like 45 to 60 minute like open water chilly swims. And you can get excess sympathetic stimulation. I disagree with the people who are like, who are straight-up cold baths are just bad for women. Yes, women will get more vasoconstriction and a higher cortisol response due to higher estrogen and progesterone levels and have a harder time heating up because of generally lower muscle mass. That doesn't mean don't do them. I mean, just pay attention to the volume and the temperature. But, I would say something I wouldn't do as much of is just the extreme cold, almost like the Wim Hof type of cold stuff, which looks good on Instagram but generally can be stressful for the body. That would be an example of a hormetic agent that you can do in excess.

Yeah.

So, it would be one. I wish I had really sexy stories of how I've completely messed myself up, but most of them are just super stupid like trying to make my own edibles by learning how to decarboxylate THC myself and getting the decimal point wrong and just nuking myself with 100 migs of THC, you know, just like stupid kitchen stuff like that. But there's not a lot that I've done that I haven't felt pretty good from, you know, stem cells to peptides. Amazing. Yeah. To just about every protocol.

What about a couple of things that you think has had an outside benefit, like, well, not expected, that just you did it and you're like, whoa, that really was beneficial for me beyond the basics, you know?

You know, I'll give you a recent one. I started microdosing with Radha Trutype. Side.

Oh, okay.

And the cognitive clarity, um, the, the, the lack of what I expected, you know, gut discomfort, um, no constipation, no issues with gastric motility. Um, I started using 250 micrograms 3 days a week. Standard dose would be 2.5 mgs. Um, and that's one that I feel pretty good on. And, you know, and initially I thought it might have mild appetite suppression effects, just like eat less cheesecake type of effects, but but, um, I actually feel like, like, from a, from a full metabolic standpoint, as far as how I feel in blood sugar, insulin response, apparently, even though I haven't done a great deal of quantification— I got a blood draw the other day, so we'll see— um, it has a pretty favorable effect on lipids, on liver enzymes. So, um, nice. That's one that was kind of surprising.

I agree. I mean, you know, people don't realize is we have GLP receptors not just in our gut, but they're in our brain, yeah, on our immune cells.

And that's a triple agonist, so yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, SubiOne. And, um, the other one that, that I found for a little bit better, uh, cognitive clarity has been really bumping up choline intake. Um, you know, especially if you're like caffeinating a lot, using central nervous system stimulants, using nootropics, using smart drugs, a— you just burn through choline faster, which you'll find in eggs and walnuts and fish. But I've been taking a little bit of extra choline in a supplement form.

Yeah. Okay.

It's just like capsule.

Yeah. Wow. Amazing. So, you know, um, there's a few supplements that I'm a big believer of that I've started taking. Um, one of them is our friend Colleen's supplement, uh, acromancia.

Acromancia.

Yep. Big, big deal. Yep.

And that, and that one for the— specifically the, the app— I mean, it has other effects even, even, you know, arguably on things like athletic performance, but the The appetite suppression effects really kick in with that one, in my opinion at least, after about 8 to 12 weeks. Like, kind of builds up and then you, you start to, to feel it. Like, they're, uh, they have one called the Metabolic Control. It's like Akkermansia, come out with a few others.

Exactly. And I think Akkermansia is this kind of keystone bacteria in our gut that not just helps us make GLP-1, but also there's so many other substances that it's, um, that it's creating for us that we don't even know of, and biological signals signals and interaction with their enterocytes that it's, it's really an incredible discovery. And then, are you taking Urolithin A?

I am. Um, I was, I was kind of skeptical of the data initially because, you know, I had the people from Timeline on the podcast and everything I could find was mice and rodent data. Yeah, it was translated to humans, was around 500 milligrams of Urolithin. Um, and then they came out with human data like in the past year. It was pretty impressive from like performance and strength standpoint. So I am addicted to the Urolithin-A strawberry-flavored gummies. They're like 250 milligrams. And so I'm getting 1,000 because I put— I basically, I make a smoothie in the morning and I put 4 of them in my smoothie. Um, so yes, I'm using Urolithin.

Yeah. And they don't— for me, they don't raise my blood sugar at all because there's no real sugar in them. It's like— what is it?

I love the gummies now. They're using stevia or allulose, which is largely like arguably like a negative glycemic index sweetener. Allulose is Fantastic. Yeah. Um, you know, monk fruit, stevia, allulose. Yeah, a lot of these gummies, people think they'll raise your blood sugar. And the newer sugar-free options are nice because they don't do that. And unlike the older, like, sugar alcohols, you know, that just saturated the keto industry and the bodybuilding industry, anything that ends with the -ol, it gives you like a food— or, you know, like a, like a baby, you know, bloating and gas.

For sure.

Yeah, basically, you know, they get metabolized and into gas.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, a lot of, a lot of the newer sweeteners are pretty incredible.

Yeah, if you don't know about allulose, or obviously you should know about stevia and monk fruit by now, but if you know about allulose, that's another one to really take a deep dive into, especially if you need a little bit of sugar with your coffee in the morning. Yeah, it's a good way to get that in. Um, anything else? What's your favorite, like, NAD form nowadays?

Uh, I'm using— I bounce all over the place. The, the past two I've used have just been niacinamide with some precursors that, that assist with how long it sticks around in the bloodstream. So I was using, uh, what's called BioStack NAD Regen. Uh, now I'm using Qualia NAD. I like the patches too. Yeah. Um, there's a couple companies doing NAD patches. I just got NAD IV downstairs. Um, I'm not too picky on the form of NAD. I would, I would say that the funnest thing I've done lately is, um, and I, I don't think I've ever talked about this before on a podcast yet, so.

All right, let's hear it.

Yeah, here first.

Yeah.

Okay, so ketones taste like ass. Like, like, Ketone IQ does a pretty good job with theirs. Yeah, um, arguably is 1,3-butanediol, which is a less nasty tasting ketone than beta-hydroxybutyrate. But beta-hydroxybutyrate is also a little bit more powerful. It's more expensive, but it can be more powerful. And you can even like kind of alter the what's called the L and, and D configuration of beta-hydroxybutyrate to get more mental effects or more physical effects. But long story short is ketone Ketones are great for endurance performance, preferred fuel for the liver, for the heart, for the diaphragm, for the brain. You can go for long periods of time in a fasted state, but they just don't taste great. So, I had this harebrained idea 5 months ago of making a ketone bar that could actually taste good and to try and get at least a gram of ketones in there. So, I worked with some flavor profiling agents from this company called Ketone Labs for a while and we came out with with blueberry pie, vanilla cheesecake, and cookie dough. Wow. And they're 250 calories a pop, full gram of ketones. They taste incredible. You know, they got— they're all natural. They got collagen and sea salt and, you know, and different natural flavoring agents in them and some stevia, some monk fruit. Um, they're not for sale yet, but that's been like my latest project behind the scenes. And it's called the Boundless Bar. I love it. I wrote the book Boundless, so now I can do— so my idea is I want to start doing things like in the, in the Boundless sphere because I have a supplements company.

Yeah, right.

We keep things pretty simple, like we don't mess around and we're not introducing more SKUs from a business standpoint. We're just keeping things as simple as possible at that company. But with Boundless, I want to start to create things that fit underneath the Boundless category by just partnering up with companies. So I'm doing the Boundless bar, we're gonna do some Boundless like blue light blocking glasses.

And but the whole Boundless line, the bars are really good. I can't wait to have one.

Oh yeah, I, I can't wait for them to like be for sale somewhere.

Yeah, that sounds really good. Yeah, because I can't do ketones because it's just the smell and the taste.

Yeah, this is like—

yeah, yeah, I agree.

Ketone IQ does a good job. Taste the ketones.

Oh, that's amazing.

Unless you're like some kind of a weird supertaster. Game changer.

Game changer. So the book Boundless, you're in the second edition. It went to— went from like blue to red now, so you know you have the right one if you buy the red copy. Yeah, this is like— I mean, you're an incredible encyclopedic knowledge of everything in health, wellness, biohacking, whatever you call it, and you put it all in this book. I love the book. Um, tell us a little bit about the book.

Um, it's like encyclopedia, like a Bible of biohacking. Yeah, uh, sacrilegious, but yeah, it's like the Bible. So, um, it's, it's almost like a cookbook. So you just flip to whatever chapter you want— sex, sleep, hormones, anti-aging, uh, inside stories. It started as an anti-aging book, and then I realized there's so many pathways that affect aging that to just like write a chapter on each of the different things, each of their pain points people have. So, you know, muscle, fat loss. Um, so yeah, it, it's a big book, but I, I wanted to write a big, beautiful coffee table-esque book with cool graphics and diagrams and illustrations because I like to read those kind of— like, whenever like Tim Ferriss comes out with a book and it's like massively thick and you gotta take it to the beach for a week, like, I like books like that that are just fun and you keep them on your coffee table and you're always thumbing through So, so that's, that's how I did Boundless.

That's amazing. I'm so, so excited. You've written so many books around parenting and religion, and I really love the volume of stuff. I don't know how you do it, but I'm a huge fan of all your writings, your podcast, your social Life Network. Tell us about Life Network.

Oh, that's been fun. Yeah, we, we made an app and a website and we have 30 40+ experts and, and growing body of experts in there who all do like AMAs, Q&As. A lot of your favorite people in the health industry are in there, ad-free podcasts. But then there's a whole community forum. We've got local meetups we call Spaces where we're starting to vet and verify restaurants, gyms, places you can go that are healthy in the city. Almost like a one-stop shop for everything that you need for health, but with the social campaign component built in. Surprisingly, the, the most popular part of the app right now is if you push the little— it's free to download and, and free to be a member, and if you pay there you can get like extra ad-free stuff. But, um, the most popular part is those little brain icon in the lower right corner of the app. You push that and it lets you start a chat or get on a phone call with me. Oh wow. And it's a clone trained on 20 years of my podcasts, all my books, my entire website. And so that is the thing that people use the most. They're like, well, screw that, I want to pay to have a phone call with Ben. So, so, and, and I've done it, like I've called myself up and had a conversation with me, um, you know, about how I should eat and what restaurant I should go to. And it's surprisingly, it's almost like creepy, it's pretty accurate. So yeah, so that's called the Life Network and it's been pretty fun.

Amazing, amazing. Well, Ben, it's, we could talk forever. It's been an incredible pleasure having you on the pod again. We're going to go down and do an event now, a live event.

Yeah, um, we get to talk some more, we get to talk some more.

Um, so I want to get you down there so we're not late for our own event. Let's do it. But, uh, what else you want to put out there? How can people find you? All that stuff? Easy.

Uh, bengreenfieldlife.com. Um, Boundless is just wherever you get books.

And get the book. Pretty easy. Yeah. Awesome, man. Thanks, man. Thank you for joining. Thanks. Yeah.