Ben Greenfield: The #1 Biohack Is Free (And It's Not Diet or Exercise)

I have learned a lot since being fooled into thinking that you can out-exercise your diet and like chronic repetitive motion exercise is the healthiest way to go. Now I'm a huge fan of walking.

These are all biohacking tools. You only keep 3 practices, what would they be?

Ben Greenfield is a world-renowned biohacker and performance coach. From world-class endurance to leading breakthroughs in human health, he's spent decades testing what actually works.

What's emerging around rejuvenation practices that are a little bit strange.

The newer thing that I just discovered is salmon sperm.

What I'm hearing you say is that some of these technologies that have helped us in many ways live better also have a dark side.

There's even a term called the paradox of loneliness. I think it was Surgeon General in 2023 identified loneliness as the equivalent of smoking like 15 cigarettes a day. And I used to think you got to make the money first.

What made you kind of flip in terms of your priorities?

Almost getting a divorce.

We seem to be in protein craze right now? Are we kind of going overboard on the too much protein side?

I would hate to cause people to think that they shouldn't prioritize something like—

Well, Ben, it's been a while. It's been about 5 years since you've been on the podcast. You know, you've been a really instrumental figure in helping a lot of people figure out how to uplevel their health. There's a term that's thrown around a lot by, by people in the space called biohacking. It's like— It's thrown around a lot. In some ways I like the term, in some ways I don't. And the way I think about it, and I'd like you to define it, is the way I think about it is anything that's going to help you optimize your health or improve your body's own functional systems. And how do you think about biohacking? How would you define it?

I would say anything that you can use to optimize your cellular or metabolic health, that would be considered something that allows you to do it in a more time-efficient or efficient way. Than you might be able to do in a native state.

Yeah.

So you're essentially hacking the OS, you know, using a tool or technology or, you know, whether it be a, you know, peptide or hyperbaric oxygen or red light therapy or anything like that.

So the Native Americans out west who used to do sweat lodges, they were biohacking?

Well, I mean, you know, technically they created a natural environment in which to increase heat. And maybe, you know, if we acknowledge that biohacking would be considered a more scientific approach, maybe if they were inside of type of an electronically configured machine that could get hotter than they might be able to create with a native sweat tent.

Oh, those are pretty damn hot.

Have you ever been in one? Yeah. They are very hot and dark and there's— Yeah, the drumbeat gets pretty loud and you kind of want to bust out of there.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I agree that the term is used a lot. And sometimes if I'm going to give a talk on a stage or do a podcast and somebody introduces me as a biohacker, I don't know quite what to think. It seems like, "Oh, they can't have the term biohacker." I mean, Dave Asprey has popularized that.

All the gizmos and gadgets. And I think at a very fundamental level for me though, it's about understanding human biology and the levers you can pull to move it toward a state of more vibrant optimal health. And there's a lot of things you can do from what you eat to different types of exercise to restoration tools, relaxation, optimizing sleep. These are all kind of in a sense biohacking tools. But I think the things that I'd like to talk to you about are the things that you've learned over doing this for 20 years about what works, what doesn't work, what's sort of the things that you used to lean on that you now find maybe aren't all they were cracked up to be. And what are some of the newer things that you maybe weren't doing back then that you maybe have changed and evolved and maybe shifted more from just elite sports performance to more enhanced health?

I would say— Probably the two top things that come to mind would be my approach to exercise and my approach to community. I was hardcore. I raced for Team Timex in Ironman triathlon for 10 years. I switched to Reebok and raced obstacle course racing for another 4 years. Before that, I was 2 years as a bodybuilder. I mean, literally just lean, mean, 3% body fat and 215 pounds, just a piece of libidoless muscle who'd hang out on the couch and go visit the gym and drink protein shakes. So, I experienced the extreme— Yeah, not ahead there. Ironman, triathlon, and bodybuilding, do not do those sports for health. Do them for photos and to climb your own personal Mount Everest, but don't fool yourself into thinking that those are actually healthy sports. And, I think researchers like James O'Keefe have popularized this idea that there's a so-called Goldilocks zone of exercise. Once you exceed, I think it's about 150 50 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise and about 70 minutes of high-intensity exercise, which we could define because I think some people get scared when they hear don't exceed 70 minutes of high-intensity exercise until they understand what high-intensity exercise truly is. But anyways, once, once you exceed those bounds, then you start to see things like atherosclerosis, increased risk of mortality, arterial stiffness, a lot of the things that you would expect if someone was in a chronic inflammatory state without adequate recovery. And if you look at, I don't know, either the bodybuilding or the marathoning craze of the '80s or the surge of CrossFit and fitness competitions, Spartan, HIROX, it's very easy to fall into that category of someone who over-exercises. And I certainly did for a long time and experienced a lot of the issues that go along with that. Not to mention that I was also one of the early adopters of the whole keto low-carb thing for endurance sports, which is another kind of nail in the coffin if you don't have— it's not a bad approach, but if you excessively restrict carbs, you just don't have enough for thyroid, for testosterone, for the proteoglycans and joints. You can basically destroy yourself with excessive carb restriction married to excessive exercise. Yeah. So I have learned a lot since being fooled into thinking that you can basically out-exercise your diet, that the more is better, and especially that like chronic repetitive motion exercise, you know, like running and cycling and swimming that I did a lot of, is the healthiest way to go. Now I'm a huge fan of walking.

Wow, that's like a big Iron Man walking, 100-mile race.

I run occasionally, so— well, if I'm playing pickleball, I guess that counts as running. Pickleball or family tennis on Wednesday nights. And then occasionally when I walk down to the mailbox, because we have a long driveway, I'll be like, "Okay, I'm going to grab the mail and run back up the driveway." Yeah. I mean, Mark Sisson just wrote a book about this, Born to Walk. It's about this whole idea that human beings are more biomechanically designed for walking and it's more favorable for cardiovascular adaptations without excess damage to the body. Compared to running, which I think is a good idea.

Chase and catch an animal, right?

You do, but for very short periods of time, not at a slow pace, in short bursts. And I consider that to be a healthy form of running. But yeah, 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise, first of all, that definition would be not necessarily what people might think of as going for a walk or gardening or cleaning the garage or even tooling around your house with a 10-pound weighted vest on if that's your thing. I consider all of that to be just primal natural movement. In physiology, you'd call it NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis.

Yeah, I did a lot of that. It's called fidgeting.

You used to have the people in the fidget. Yeah, yeah.

In my medical school, that was crazy.

The fancy name for these, there was actually a study that came out on glycemic variability and doing this. They called them soleus push-ups, which is basically what you and I probably call a seated calf raise. But those type of little things, None of that falls into the category of the 150 minutes of moderate exercise that if you exceed would be bad for you. We're talking about the frowny face jaunt on the treadmill for 45 minutes a day or the triathlete or marathoner or swimmer or cyclist who's getting 1.5 to 2 hours of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise. Definitionally, if you wanted to get into the physiology of it, you know, you've got your aerobic threshold. You technically have, you have two different thresholds that you cross during exercise, VT1 and VT2. VT1 is ventilatory threshold 1. That's when it starts to get hard to carry on a conversation, and that's when you've reached what's called aerobic threshold. That's what a lot of people now call zone 2. I think, for example, probably Dr. Peter Attia has, has popularized the most this notion of zone 2 exercise.

That's right.

Zone 2 exercise, that'd be kind of like the zone you get into when you get to VT1. And then you exercise and exercise and you're gradually burning more and more carbs and less and less fat and lactic acid is starting to build up and you're beginning to be hungry for oxygen and you eventually reach VT2, which is when lactic acid starts to accumulate more quickly than it can be removed. Some people also call that like the anaerobic threshold. So, that 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise that if you exceed is no longer that great for you is that whole stretch between VT1 and VT2. And so again, most people who are just moving around during the day, they're still below VT1. Yeah, right. Like I can— I walk on my treadmill sometimes when I'm doing a podcast.

Right.

And that all counts as just, you know, nothing close to the type of exercise that would be bad for you. And then the 70 minutes that if you exceed that per week is also bad on top of the 150. Right, exactly. It's not the, the combinatorial effect of the two of them. It's like don't exceed 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise. Or at least try not to exceed it too much. And then also don't exceed 70 minutes of vigorous intensity exercise.

Within that 150 minutes or in addition, like 220 minutes or—

They would be— So let's say you are— I'll give you an example. Let's say you're an endurance athlete and you're barely doing any vigorous intensity exercise, but you're logging like 300 minutes of moderate intensity exercise throughout the week. You would be past the Goldilocks zone regardless of whether or not you've done the high-intensity stuff. And similarly, if you're a CrossFitter who's logging like 100 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise per week and barely doing any of the 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise, you'd also fall into that no zone. That would be risky to get into. The 70 minutes, that high-intensity exercise, that would be all the stuff that's past VT2. That would be pretty intense burn going pretty hard. Most people— during that, you walk into the average gym and 1 person out of 100 might really truly be in that zone, but it's still— there's still a lot people who do and keep saying this word, I don't want to throw them under the bus, but like CrossFit 6 times a week, or, you know, they're training for something very intense, obstacle course racing, you know, an athlete who's heavy in training. Again, like, I have no problem with people going out and doing an Ironman or, you know, training for CrossFit or anything like that. What I'm saying is that I used to think that that was heart-healthy activity, and now I can see that, oh, it's, it's more something that's great for perseverance, for endurance, for character, and to, again, climb your own personal Mount Everest, but it's not healthy for you. And I used to think that it was, and I changed my stance on that.

And so, the data basically is that if we over-exercise in the ways you just talked about, that you increase your risk of inflammation, oxidative stress, cardiovascular disease, vascular stiffness, all things you don't want as you get older. Now, the problem has been I don't think most people even come close to 150 minutes of exercise.

I think we're speaking to the subset of the population that's like the gym junkies. Which, you know, I think is still a significant portion of people. And then the other thing—

although during COVID I, I went to Maui and, you know, there wasn't a lot to do because it was like hiding exercise. So I work out, strength training in the morning, and then I would go for a 2.5-hour bike ride with 2,500 feet elevation. Yeah, get my heart rate up. I don't know, I felt great. Yeah, then I might play tennis in the afternoon.

Yeah, I was probably overdoing it, possibly, which you can do for, for short stints of time. And then the other thing is, like, you and I were talking about biohacking I doubt that any of the studies that have looked into excessive exercise have taken those training populations and given them NormaTec or Hyperice recovery boots and a hyperbaric chamber and some red light therapy and cryotherapy and all these things that can accelerate recovery of the neuromuscular and the musculoskeletal systems. So, it's possible that if you have the right tools at your disposal, you could go significantly beyond those two zones that have been identified as excess exercise. That's where the hack comes in. You might be able to hack it a little bit because I know if I'm able to be at home exercising and I'm using all my special tools at home like laying on a PEMF mat or breathing oxygen or hitting the red light bed or something like that, I feel way better than if I'm traveling and I do the same workout, I'm just back into the hotel room. Yeah. So now I walk, I do a little bit of super slow weightlifting, like 2 or 3 times a week, moving the— Have you ever done super slow training?

I've heard about it.

Yeah. Doug McGuff, I think he was an emergency room physician. He wrote a great book called Body by Science, where he gets into the fact that when you move muscles very slowly, very high amounts of what is called time under tension, up to about 2 minutes or so, that you can get really great strength and cardiovascular results with a very low amount of training volume and a low risk of injury because you're moving the muscles in a very predictive and controlled fashion. Heavier weights to do that, use heavier weights. Well, I use— there's a lot of machines now that can make it easier. Like there's the Tonal.

I have one of those.

I was just working out on there. It's the eccentric setting, the burnout setting. Like, like you can literally load up your Tonal with, let's say, deadlift, chest press, pulldown, squat, row, and overhead press. But there's a setting on the Tonal where instead of choosing number of reps, you can choose number of seconds. You set that on 120 seconds and you just do one set of each of those exercises. You put the Tonal on burnout mode and preferably also on eccentric mode, right? So it's pulling you back. Yeah. Every time that you're finishing a rep. That would be a perfect example of super slow training. And the nice part about it is it's over with quickly and you get really great strength adaptations with a lower risk of injury. The sucky part about it is it sucks. It's not only a little boring, but it hurts a little bit going for 2 minutes and you think you're at about 115 seconds and you look at the screen and it says 65 or something like that. There's the ARX. That's the one that I use. And it's kind of a horse. I mean, it literally is like a 2-horsepower engine. I tell my friends it's like fighting a giant robot. Oh, but same thing, that one will push and pull you through a range of motion. But again, it's just one single set for each exercise. So when I'm at home, I do that about 3 times a week. And when I travel, I kind of try to use like Nautilus machines at the gym or free weights to do the same thing. Or I use blood flow restriction bands.

Yeah.

Which you can put around the arms and the legs to trick your muscles into thinking they're under a heavier load than they actually are because the lactic acid isn't able to get out of the muscle. I did like 10 pounds with bicep curls.

It's hard.

I feel like, ah, that's great for like rehab or when you don't have access to much training equipment. I mean, if I'm traveling, like here in Austin, even though I've actually had access to fantastic training facilities since I've been here, I always throw in my bag one elastic band, some BFR bands, and one of those doorframe suspension straps that you can do pull-ups with. And that's like 2 pounds worth of equipment. Yeah, but I can get a great workout in my hotel room or in a park.

Just about anywhere. Yeah, so there's some ways to do that.

So yeah, I walk, I do that. And besides that, just like play pickleball, play tennis, uh, built a frisbee golf course on the new property. So yeah, besides that, it's just sports. But if you were to talk to me, like, back to the root of your question, like, you know, 10 years ago, I would have been like, well, I wake up in the morning and I ride my bike to the gym and I swim 2,000 meters, then I go upstairs and I hit the weights, and then I ride home.

And later on that afternoon, I go for a run And when you did that, did you feel okay or did you feel badly?

I thought I felt okay. And now I have way more energy, way more libido. My inflammatory markers, my lipids, like everything looks way better on blood work. So yeah, I feel a lot better with the— I probably average what someone might call exercise about 45 to 60 minutes a day. And then everything else is just walking and moving.

That's good. That's good. It's still more than most people do, but it is, it is more.

But it's, uh, yeah, I would say I've definitely changed, changed my stance on exercise.

And now you're, you're, you're heading over 40, right?

I'm 43.

That's amazing.

Yeah, well, I'm 43, but I was telling you before we recorded, I, I, for the past 2 days I've been doing a plasma exchange with the, the little bag that I had infused after I gave 2 liters of my plasmas at 18 to 25-year-old healthy male plasma. And so that was dripping into my body the past couple of days. So I don't know, I might be 18 to 25 now.

So, okay, this is a whole other rabbit hole I want to go down, which is sort of what's emerging around rejuvenation practices that are a little bit strange. And I want to talk about them because I found them very helpful, but there's some really interesting strategies that you can get into when you're older that really help you to stave off some of the ravages of aging.

Yeah.

And in your sort of exploration of what's out there, you know, you focus on diet, you focus on exercise, and some of these other recovery tools, you know, whether it's red light therapy or a PMF mat or hyperbaric chamber, hot and cold therapy, these are all things that help you heal or recover and repair. What are the things that are— have you found that are, that are now kind of catching your interest as, as innovations that have science behind them that help people to deal with the complications of aging?

Let's see. We could probably chunk it into kind of face, body, and internal cellular processes. I would say, and this is something that I do on a regular basis, you can get a microneedling pen. Most of the really good face products come out of Korea. They're big on aesthetics and face and beauty there. So, you get a microneedling pen or you can, of course, go to a clinic that does microneedling. Even though it's a little bit more like like a little bit more of a ripping effect, you can use a derma roller. You can consider this to be like aerating your lawn. And then once you've done this, you would apply a product that would allow for renewal of cells or stimulation of collagen or elastin in the face.

And that stuff really works.

I mean, if you look at before-after photos of people who do it, I can't cite like a human clinical study that says that it works because this, this is all very qualitative when we're talking about the face. I do that about once a week. My wife does also.

And then you go to a clinic or have a machine?

She has done both a clinic and then also has the little thing at home that you do it with yourself.

A little pen? Because this is like—

this isn't like— well, if you go to a clinic, like, they can do it very quickly with like the full-on, you know, they have like— I think like a bigger version of microneedling. It's not comfortable. Like, it's a— it's less than a bumblebee sting, but you can feel it. The derma roller, same thing. It's— the derma roller feels a little bit more abrasive almost like you're scraping your face. The microneedling feels like teeny tiny punctures, but it's, it's not bad. Some clinics, if you go to a clinic to do it, will literally numb your face before they do it, so you can barely feel anything at all. It's just weird if you— I had it once, have dinner later on, your lips are numb like, like they would be if you left them.

I went to a clinic, a stem cell clinic in Costa Rica, and they basically put you asleep and then they— oh yeah, the needles— and then they put the stem cells in.

Yeah, if you're going to do a full stem cell protocol or a cold laser protocol on the face, which literally makes your face look like you've been hit by a truck for about 3 weeks. And typically, people who do this, if they're a Hollywood celeb and they disappear for a little while or somebody goes on medical tourism to Tijuana or wherever, they're disappearing for a while because they just look like trash for about 3 weeks and then you look fantastic. And I only know this because my wife has done it and she just looks scary and couldn't leave the house for a couple of weeks. And then, about a month later, she I mean, she looked way younger. And that was a cold laser with the stem cells. But as far as doing something a little less invasive, just self-inflicted derma rolling or microneedling, and then you typically apply a facial product. There are absorbable peptides now. Companies like Young Goose or Ollitora who are doing some peptides like GHK copper peptides using things like NAD in their face products. A lot of times you'll combine it with something like a red light mask. To drive it deeper into the tissue or to enhance the collagen attraction to the face or the elastin production. But then, the newer thing that I just discovered is salmon sperm. I'm not joking, but I was just at a clinic and they told me that they want to do that. They wanted to give me an exosome microneedling facial. And I'm sitting there nodding and then they say, "And then we finish it up." with salmon sperm. And apparently there— it's some kind of like a DNA isolate from literal salmon sperm. Maybe it's from Clearwater down in Orofino. I don't know. They got some— they got some steelhead down there. Yeah, you could probably just like start a milking farm yourself. Uh, but yeah, so salmon sperm is the newer thing that they're putting on people's faces, apparently with very good results. So yeah, for the face, typically you are initiating some type of mildly aggressive of damage to the face and then following that up with a product that assists with healing, almost like exercise, right? You're damaging muscle, then allowing it to repair and recover so that it grows back in a more renewed fashion, a stronger fashion, laser or whatever. Yeah, for the body, I think a lot of people already know about stem cells and exosomes. I think there's, there's always been a lot of up-and-comers in the stem cell industry. I would say the two that seem to be most popular right now in regenerative medicine circles would be something like a VSEL, which is a very small embryonic-like cell, I believe is what that stands for, VSEL. They'll typically do some kind of injection and then red light therapy, which apparently attracts more signaling molecules to the area that they've injected. And that's something that's used for like a joint treatment, for example. And then another form of cells, MUSE cells. Yeah, MUSE stands for multi-lineage— yeah, stress-inducing cells, something like that. But apparently Generally, they have a really good effect with very good or less chance of an immune system reaction in the body and less, I believe it's called tumoro— you would know this word better than me, tumorigenicity, something like that. So, less cancer-causing potential. There's always some kind of new forms of stem cells that seem to be coming out.

Using those for orthopedic treatments for injuries or trauma or things that you want to repair.

Yeah, yeah. But then, as far as biohacking is concerned—

Those get very expensive.

Yeah. Those are spendy things. Yeah. Of the idea of— and I do this just about every day at home— some kind of electricity, right, to restore the electrical potential of the body, especially considering the electrical soup that we all live in nowadays. Man-made electrical soup. PMF mat, grounding mat, earthing mat. You know, I'm wearing grounding shoes right now, so these, these shoes allow me to have conductivity when I'm walking outside. You know, I've just built a new house, and the house is tricked out as far as like air, light, water, electricity, everything. But for the electrical component, every single floor of the house is grounded with a copper conductive surface that then feeds into the ground. So if I'm on the third floor of the house, it's still as though I'm barefoot on the planet.

And you notice a difference in how you feel from that?

Oh, absolutely. You feel fantastic. I mean, you feel like you're outside as a dirty barefoot hippie. I was inside your house during the day. You sleep better, you feel better. PMF mats are kind of like a concentrated version of that.

And what is— can you describe that? Because you mentioned a few times, what is a PMF mat? What does it stand for? What does it do? How does it work?

Electromagnetic field therapy. PMF stands for— these are usually a mat. Sometimes there's some type of a PEMF unit that is attached to a coil or a bed. There's companies that produce like full-on like lounger chairs and massage tables. And usually there is a hertz setting that you can set it on, like anywhere from 0 up to in some cases thousands of hertz, and an amplitude or power setting. And when you wrap it around a joint or you on one of these, it causes the cell to have an influx of negative ions. So you're essentially depolarizing the cell, you know, and, and so you're supposed to have a slightly negative charge on the inside of the cell, slightly positive charge on the outside, and this allows for better blood flow and also allows your cell membranes to have a better electrical charge across the membrane. So you would heal faster, you would have less inflammation, you'd recover better. My favorite way to use it is if I have like a cramp or a tight spot in my back, or like my left knee gives me issues sometimes, I will wrap a PEMF coil around that or lay down on the PEMF mat on my back. And the higher intensity PEMF mats just seem to relax everything once you've laid in them for a little while.

Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I had back surgery recently and I got a PMF machine. Yeah. And you lay in this kind of sandwich, there's a coil on top, then coils on the bottom. I did it for myself and I would notice it would go right to the area where I had the surgery. So it would go right to where the pain was.

Right. That's very— like the area that's the tightest is the area that feels like it initially reacts in almost like a— nearly like a painful—

yeah. And I, and I didn't know that it was— I thought it just goes to everybody like that, like in my hips and my back. And then I had somebody else use it and they're like, oh, it went to my stomach. Or yeah. My shoulder or went to exactly the area where I'm having challenges. And I was like, that's amazing that it actually seems to go right to where the issues are and you feel the intensity of it. And you feel— I mean, the one I have particularly is a super high-powered one and it's called the Hugo that really you can jack up the current in it and it feels so intense.

The Hugo. And then the other one I know of that's super powerful, the Pulse Center. Those would be the two that are really good for actual injuries. Dr. William Pawluk, he has one on his website. I forget the name of it. It's also a high-intensity one. That's good for back cramps, muscle spasms, injuries, et cetera. And then, there's lower-intensity ones that seem to induce more of a full-body effect that you'd use for just relaxation or stimulation or wakefulness like the one I have underneath the top sheet in my bed is called a Pure Wave. And that one you can barely feel at all unlike the Hugo or the Pulse Centers, but it's kind of more like a full-body sweep that's alternating between thousands of different frequencies. Whereas, the Hugo or one of these others, you just put it on a certain hertz frequency like 7.8, for example, and you just target a muscle at that frequency for a short period of time. Yeah.

12 to 30 minutes.

Exactly. Yeah. And it feels great.

Yeah. I threw somebody on the other day who had back pain and they were like, "Ah, this is amazing." Incredible for the back.

Yeah. As a matter of fact, I've injured my back a few times in different cities and one of the first things I'll do is Google PMF plus the name of this and try and hunt down a mat that I can actually use because it's that effective at acute injuries. In addition to electricity, light. I use light a lot, not only for circadian rhythmicity but also for the recovery effects and the blood flow effects.

Red light therapy.

Red light therapy and also from a circadian standpoint, blue light therapy. I mean, the sun has this whole bluish-green spectrum. It's kind of cool. They even sell meters now where you can hold the meter up and see the light spectrum frequency in a different room or where you might be outside. As a matter of fact, if you have a pair of blue light blocking glasses or something like that, you can put the lens over cover of this light meter and actually see what it's actually blocking or what it's concentrating, which is kind of cool to see if your, your blue light blockers actually work. Yeah, yeah. For example, in my house, what we did was we put throughout the house bulbs into each can that when you flip on the light bulb once, it will go to daytime mode. You flip it on again, it goes to twilight mode. You flip it on again, it goes into evening mode. So you don't have to have like different lamps and different lamp stands in each area of the house. You just got one bulb bulb. It's called a full-spectrum bulb. BonCharge makes one, Block Blue Light makes one. Those are two companies that do like a flicker-free, right? So there's no back-end flicker. If you take a video of it with your, you know, iPhone camera in slow motion, you wouldn't catch a flicker, which is something that kind of causes a little bit of retinal irritation during the day and eventually can lead to kind of a brain foggy feeling if you've been under— Yeah, bright light. You and I were like under these lights all day, we'd definitely feel because we're getting a little bit of flicker. And then they're low EMF, right, which is something you also want to take into consideration with your lighting system.

So basically, every room in the house, light bulbs that go in any light socket.

Yeah, exactly. And then the main areas of the house, because you're missing out on some of the full spectrum of sunlight, even though they're a little bit more of a power hog and they're harder to find, we have incandescent lighting, right? So we've combined incandescent with OLED lighting for the circadian rhythm component. And then if I'm, for example, I'm in Texas right now.

That sounds like a science project.

It is. It's super fun. If I'm in Texas right now and I fly back to Idaho at, I get home on Sunday. So at 7:00 AM on Sunday morning, or let's put it this way, at, I've been waking up about 6:00 AM here. So at 4:00 AM on Sunday morning, Idaho time, it will be 6:00 AM Texas time. And my eyes will probably, flip wide open and I'll be ready to rumble because my body still thinks it's 6:00 AM. So, the way you can kind of play with circadian rhythmicity is rather than flipping on lights, rather than taking your phone out of night mode, rather than looking at a computer, you would actually put on blue light blockers. And this is something I'll leave. Put on blue light blockers, keep the phone in night mode, keep the lights in the house as dim as possible. And then, when the time arrives when you actually do want to start waking up, up, that's when you just blast yourself with blue light using either like sunlight, which you can go out sunlight. There's devices. And let's say, I don't know, like Las Vegas, you know, have access to sunlight or you can't get outdoors. You can wear glasses. Like there's a pair called the AYO's, A-Y-O. There's another pair called the Re-Timers. And these produce really bright bluish-green light that shifts your body into your new time zone more rapidly. And now, they even make lenses So, I just mentioned blue light blockers. Now, they have blue light concentrator glasses that will concentrate just the blue light spectrum from the room or from outdoors so that in the morning, if you really want to blast yourself with blue light, you just wear glasses that instead of blocking blue light, concentrate blue light the first 30 minutes of the day. And this can jumpstart your circadian rhythm. And not a lot of this has to do with healing the body, but that force.

Well, this, I had surgery as I mentioned, and I I slept for 4 hours a night for a couple of months. And in my recovery, the sleep doctor I was working with to try to get my sleep reset had me wear these special things in the morning, which I can show you later. It basically is a— it's like I put it on, it gives you bright light in your eyes. It's like glasses that just shoots light in.

And it was kind of bluish, greenish, bright.

Yeah.

It's like those seasonal affective disorder lamps. Exactly, right.

But you wear them. But you wear them, right?

Exactly right. There was a company, I don't think they're in business anymore, they're called the Human Charger, and they were designed to stimulate the photoreceptors in your ears with bright light. I don't know if they still make them, but yeah, there was a time when you could literally have the light in your ears and the light in your eyes if you wanted to shift your circadian rhythm forward or backward. And of course, the opposite applies also. We'll dim the lights at night. Yeah. This is different than red light panels or red light beds or red light wraparound devices. I'm a fan of all of those for Cancer Recovery and use them almost every day, but I'm more kind of intrigued and find more useful the idea of using light for circadian rhythmicity. And then oxygen is kind of— that's kind of like a new thing for me. Like, you were showing me how you have an IHHT device, intermittent hypoxic and hyperoxic training.

And in English, that means you—

that means you come down— yeah, go up to Mount Everest but without getting off the couch, right? So, so you're essentially training your cellular physiology and flooding your cells with oxygen after starving them of oxygen while you're just sitting there, which is fantastic, especially if you're just, I don't know, watching something or meditating. I think a lot of people find that they almost shift into more of like a theta wave state when they're using something like that. I feel like that in the hyperbaric, actually. So it's good for a nap, good for meditation. Um, another way to starve the cells of oxygen and then flood them with oxygen is called EWOT, exercise with oxygen training. And this would be a similar idea, except in this case, you would use— I have a device called the LiveO2. It's next to my exercise apparatus, my cardio machine. I can breathe hypoxic air and then at the flip of a switch, for example, if I'm going to sprint, flip it to hyperoxia and flood my cells with oxygen, which normally you'd only be able to do if you under pressure, like in a hyperbaric chamber. So there's two different ways to do this. You either get into a hyperbaric chamber or you exercise or sit while giving yourselves hypoxia plus hyperoxia. And then, yeah, and honestly, like, if you— I don't know, if you're hungover, tired, if you're just getting started warming up in the gym and you feel a little stale, if you just put on an oxygen mask, if you happen to have one of these devices, and just put it on full oxygen, you know, so you're breathing like 93% oxygen for the first few minutes of your workout, you feel incredible. Yeah. You feel unstoppable. I mean, even without a fancy pre-workout.

So what is a low oxygen state doing, the hypoxia?

The hypoxia is starving the cells of oxygen. So it's a brief, almost like hormetic effect to where you're going to upregulate oxygen intake once you turn the oxygen back up. So you're basically going to get more oxygen into the tissues than you would otherwise.

But a lot of these machines, they work on, on helping your mitochondria rejuvenate. So it helps you with mitophagy and getting rid of old mitochondria and then helps you create new mitochondria and help them work better.

Probably the mitophagy would be induced by the hypoxic state, right? You're essentially creating a stressor that kills off old mitochondria and then flooding the cells with oxygen afterwards.

So mitochondria basically run on oxygen and food. Yeah. That's what makes energy. Yeah.

So you're taking away the oxygen. I don't know if it would work any better if you were in a fasted state, you know, like in a low glucose state also. But electricity, Light, oxygen. I would say those are 3 big ones for me in the whole like recovery performance department that I use almost every day at home.

And hyperbaric oxygen chambers also. Yeah, we'll do something different, but they, they're very effective for recovery.

And yeah, you're breathing oxygen, uh, typically you're breathing oxygen even though you don't have to. You're still going to get a little bit of oxygen delivery just in a pressurized environment, but in most cases you have a cannula. Or a mask and you're breathing oxygen.

Breathing up to 100% oxygen. Yeah, exactly. Oxygen under pressure. Yeah. And what does that do to your body?

The pressure drives more oxygen into tissue.

So it's a way of oxygenating yourself. But the— we're finding that it actually has a lot of benefits in activating stem cells and increasing stem cell production, killing all the zombie cells, which are the senescent aging cells that cause inflammation throughout your body. They increase telomere length. They have a lot of interesting kind of rejuvenation properties. And Bryan Johnson just published something.

Yeah, the hyperbarics.

And he was talking about how all the things he'd done over the years, when he did a series of these hyperbaric sessions, it led to him improving a lot of his biomarkers that he had were stuck. And Israel published a study where they've used this technology for brain health and rejuvenation, longevity, and they had pretty compelling data about it.

Yeah, it is pretty impressive. And I'm glad you said the word series, Because I think a lot of people will hear hyperbaric and they'll do one session and expect the results. But in most of these studies, they're doing several weeks of hyperbaric. You're doing 20, 30, 40 sessions.

Yeah.

60 sessions. It lasts an hour, an hour and a half.

Couple hours, yeah. Like you can get on the PMF pack if your back hurts and it'll be better right away. But this is a commitment.

Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong. If you're jet-lagged or hungover and you do a hyperbaric session, you're going to feel a little bit better. But if you're in it for the longevity effects.

So these are kind of cool tools. And they're Some of them are expensive like a hyperbaric chamber, but some of them are not that price prohibitive. And they can be things you add to your daily life to help.

You can walk outside barefoot in the sunshine and do breathwork for free. That's right. Which is, like I mentioned, community. And I think that's the thing is that you see whatever the 110-year-old grandma in Sardinia, Italy who's smoking the occasional cigarette and perhaps drinking more alcohol than would be considered the hormetic effect and yet still living a long and happy life because of the community piece. That's right. And I think it was the Surgeon General in 2023 identified loneliness as the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And so, you're seeing increased blood pressure, increased cortisol, what else? Increased inflammation. You see even increased expression of genes related to inflammatory cytokines and a decreased regulation of genes responsible for antiviral activity. It's almost like nature wants to kill you off when you're lonely.

There's an interesting field called sociogenomics. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. No. But I actually came up with this term independently because I realized after working in Haiti and learning about the work of Paul Farmer, who used community health workers and basically neighbors helping neighbors to help people treat AIDS and TB and some of the most challenging public health conditions in the world, which most of the public health community had given up on because they had to take their medications on a regular schedule for multidrug-resistant TB and for AIDS. And it was too hard. They didn't have clean water, they didn't have watches, they didn't have like— they were just super poor and difficult. But he really used the power of community to help heal. And I realized that when I started looking into literature, that it can work for good or for bad. If you're in a dynamic with somebody and then you're in a conflict situation or a fight, you're going to express all these genes that are inflammatory. As your emotions get inflamed, your biology gets inflamed. But if you're in a loving, deep heart-centered connection with somebody, the opposite happens. You activate all these anti-inflammatory genes and healing genes and repair genes. Which is fascinating to me. And so you can use community as a tool. I know you just launched a new community platform, which is to help people connect around that.

Oh yeah. And I think that's useful if you are—

It's called the Go Life Network, right?

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of community platforms. I mean, there's— I mean, yeah, I think a lot of the people in the industry now, you mentioned Dave Asprey, I think he has one. Gary Brecka has one. Bryan Johnson, who we were just talking about, he has one. Do you have a community?

Yeah. It's called the Hyman Hive.

HYVE. Yeah, yeah, that's a great— is it like HIV?

And no, it's HIV.

Oh, it's still HIV.

That's a good idea though.

Anyways though, I think the importance if you're in a community is, even if it's a digital community, is to try and connect with people in that digital community who might actually be in the same region as you or be traveling to the same area or conference as you because there's actually a book by Sherry Turkle called Reclaiming Conversation where she gets into the idea that a digital interaction misses a prefix and it misses an actual IRL relationship, an in real life relationship. And I think if you look at the underlying biological mechanisms behind that, if I were to shake your hand, we're triggering skin receptors, your Pacinian corpuscles. So, you're getting a stimulation of the vagus nerve, which is going to lower blood pressure and lower heart rate and lower cortisol and all those things that we look for when we're trying to increase heart rate variability. We'd see an oxytocin release, which is your trusting, loving, snuggling hormone, which a lot of animals who are monogamous and mate for life have oxytocin receptors. And a lot of animals who do not don't, but you can genetically modify like a mouse to express oxytocin receptors and it will become more socially active when you do that. Whereas like a human or a prairie vole, we've already got them built in.

I know we got a dog. He must have a lot of those receptors because he's constantly—

Dogs, kittens, yeah, a lot. We have baby goats. I think they have a few. You get the oxytocin release and then, of course, that can result in a subsequent serotonin release You've got another feel-good neurotransmitter hanging around. You look at the research by the HeartMath Institute on the electromagnetic signal produced by the brain or produced by the heart that can actually affect the energy of those around you. And we miss a lot of those if we're in a purely digital environment. And so, even me, I tend to be an introvert. I tend to be a loner. I'm one of those guys who can be super happy by myself for long periods of time. And yet, when I look at all the research, I think if I'm spending time doing light and water and electricity and air optimization and all these biohacks that—

Getting a hug could be a biohack.

Yeah. I need to be going out of my way to also build community beyond just— Dunbar's number is 150, right? The approximate network of people that we're able to interact with and stay in touch with. But what Dunbar was getting at when he came up with that number was also the idea that the deeper those layers, the more satisfied and happy a person was, right? So, you have your 5 intimate family members or very close friends and 15 kind of sort of friends, then 50 people who you get around with on a regular basis and maybe a few dozen others in your community. And once you fall out of those layers, it's like this built-in ancestral mechanism where you break out. So it's like the body goes into this state of nervous system stress.

I mean, if you don't have those relationships.

If you aren't connected to people, it's the equivalent of banishment, which would mean in a time—

That was a punishment.

That would've been punishment or death. It would've been ostracism. That literally comes from a Greek term for the pottery shard called the ostraca that they used to actually write the name of the person who they wish to banish for 10 years from in the church and organized religion, excommunicare, excommunication, putting you out of communion, the exact opposite of companionship. Pan is like breaking bread with someone, companionship. Excommunication is getting thrust out of that banishment. I think that's a French word, bannir, to send away, to expel, to push out. So, if that happens to a human, we go into this sympathetic nervous system back to the running from a lion mode because we become hypervigilant. We no longer have anyone around us to protect us. And that would've served us very well in an ancestral environment in which we had no one around us. So we had to have our guard up in order to not get eaten by a bear alone out in the forest. Now there's even a term called the paradox of loneliness. And the paradox of loneliness is similar to The paradox of obesity, for example, right? We have built-in calorie conservation mechanisms that have served us really well thousands of years ago. If we didn't have access to ample amounts of food and we came across, let's say, a kill, I don't know, woolly mammoth or whatever, we would want to eat as much as possible to store away as much fat as possible for when the times of need arose again. And now with 24/7 access to hyperpalatable food and like a Ben Jerry's, 2 blocks away, those same calorie conservation mechanisms cause overweight or obesity, which is paradoxical. With loneliness, it's also paradoxical, right? Because when we're away from people or even perceive that we're away from people, because there is this idea of not just subjective loneliness, right, being lonely, but also subjective loneliness, seeing whatever friends and followers and fans and likes somebody else has, comparing that to yours, and suddenly feeling like you're not keeping up and you're subjectively lonely. Whether it's objective or subjective loneliness, those same biological mechanisms that we were talking about, increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, increased cortisol. Well, what's that make you? Nervous, anxious, depressed, irritable. And here's the paradox part, being the type of person who's exactly the type of person that nobody wants to hang around with. So, you almost create this vicious cycle of loneliness. So, that's why I think it's so important to check yourself and ask, "Hey, have I been by myself all week? Am I in loner mode? Am I keeping in touch with old friends or making new friends? Am I taking my earbuds out and maybe foregoing a podcast and just going on a hike with somebody and having a chat?" These are things that people need to think about just as much as whatever red light bed or PMF or whatever.

It's one of the key things around longevity. And I remember traveling out to the blue zones when I was writing my book, Young Forever, It was just striking to me how there wasn't loneliness, how everybody, even if they didn't have kids, they'd be taken in by a niece or a nephew when they got older. Or somebody's wife died, their kids would move in with them. There was just a whole network in the community where everybody was part of it. And there was community celebrations, community connection, and it was pretty remarkable. And I think there was a— Dan Buettner's talked a lot about this, but it's definitely underrated. You can do all these fancy things and take all the supplements and eat all the great food and exercise and do all these biohacking things. But if you don't have community—

Huddled up and lonely inside a hyperbaric chamber sucking on a bee propolis lollipop with your binaural beats. And yeah, I mean, you're still by yourself. I mean, back to Moscow, Idaho, my mom who doesn't exercise and eat as healthy as she knows her son would like her to— Welcome to the club. Is actually in pretty good health because she has a coffee shop in downtown Moscow. It's like the hub of the town, and she's like the grandma of the community, you know, hanging out with all these college students and pouring beer and, you know, walking all over the coffee shop and visiting with people. And I am so glad that she has that outlet because I know after having seen a lot of these, you know, studies and data and the Blue Zone stuff on loneliness that, you know, even if she's not exercising and eating as healthy as I'd She's up to some very good activity when it comes to her longevity, her happiness. That's like the— what's the article? Five Regrets of the Dying. It's an article in the book by the palliative care practitioner where she talks about what people expressed on their deathbeds. And it was basically, "I wish I'd chosen to show my true emotions more. I wish I'd chosen to be happier." I wish I'd work less. I wish I'd been my true authentic self instead of who I thought the world expected me to be. And the last one was, I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends.

And it wasn't, I wish I answered all my emails.

Right. I wish I got to zero inbox every Thursday. No, because I mean, everybody knows your work will eat you alive if that's the highest order of priorities. It probably took me until I was 35 years old to figure that out, that my order of priorities is God and my spiritual health, and then my wife, because if you and your spouse don't put your oxygen mask on first, you can't be there for the kids. And then the kids, and then my health, which isn't hard for me because it's an industry that I work in. And then business comes last. Yeah. You know, I used to think you just got to make the money first, and then once you've made enough money, you'll be able to take care of the kids and have enough time to, you know, go on adventures and have many vacations.

And what made you kind of flip in terms of your, your priorities?

Almost getting a divorce. Like, literally, I was such an unpresent father and husband traveling all over the world at the time, not just for speaking in conferences, but also racing in Ironman. And I was really not putting my family first. My wife, for the first 5 years of my son's existence, was basically raising my sons almost by herself because I'd pop in, pop out, go out, and give myself the excuse that I was just out slaying dragons and providing for the family. And it took a pretty rocky patch with her for me to buckle down and start to put family first. And I mean, I literally, I'm kind of like an all or nothing guy. So I jumped into it pretty hardcore and we started to build a family constitution and a family mission statement based on a family core set of values. We all went to a cabin in Utah for 3 days and developed a family logo, which then led to a family crest and family flags and a giant family logo sign and logos on our pickleball paddles and our hats and our shirts that we wear out. We started doing a morning and a family meeting where every morning I gather the whole family at 7:00 AM and we sit around the living room and we talk about our evening, we talk about the day, we read the Bible together, we pray, we have a hug and just this super happy coming together in the morning. And then the same thing—

And you get your teenage boys to do this? That's impressive.

Oh, yeah. 7:00 PM, like clockwork, we all gather in the kitchen. We sing a song together. I bring my sons through a book that we are typically going together with each month. I bring them through a book. So we have our chapter discussion before dinner and we have a whole game closet full of hundreds of games and we play games for an hour and a half. And so every single day I've almost like guarded me from being a workaholic because I bookended 7:00 AM. No matter what I'm doing, I have to be present on the living room floor with the family or somebody's going to wonder where I am or what's going on. 7:00 PM, same thing, like clockwork. That's my ending because I have to be there with the family, get to be there with the family because it's like this amazing party that we have. And we've been doing that for 10 years.

That's incredible.

Not only do my sons have a real identity of what it means to be a Greenfield and what we stand for and what we hold dear and what each little portion of the family crest means, but they feel a real sense of belonging. And I think there's a far less chance of creating a rags-to-riches-to-rags mentality or silver spoon mentality in a young man or young woman who really identifies with a sense of pride in the family name and wanting to build generational health and generational wealth and continue to build upon what you've started as a parent, basically legacy.

So, that's incredible, Ben. That is incredible. That's true biohacking. That's like— Yeah.

And, it's so meaningful. I mean, I miss out on work. I work less than I used to. I probably make money at a far slower pace than a lot of my friends, but it's kind of a little bit like the old adage of, "Mama ain't happy and nobody happy." like, if my whole family's happy—

well, you've rejiggered your priorities. I feel incredible to understand what matters. Yeah. And it takes a long time for people to figure that out, if ever. Yeah. You know, yeah. Have you ever wished there was a trusted space where you can get real support on your health journey, where your questions get answered and you don't feel like you're doing it all alone? Well, that's exactly what's happening inside my brand new membership community, the Hyman Hive, and I couldn't be more excited about it. Thousands of members are already inside sharing wins and asking meaningful questions, supporting one another like never before. The conversations are powerful, the camaraderie is real, and the community is growing every single day. Inside the Hive, you'll get monthly live sessions with me, office hours with our resident functional nutritionist, science-backed protocols, monthly challenges, behind-the-scenes content, and so much more, all designed to help you create healthier habits that actually stick. Whether you're whether you're just getting started or fine-tuning your routine, The Hive meets you where you are and gives you the tools and support to keep going. If you're ready to take control of your health with a community that truly gets it, join us at drhyman.com/hive. That's drhyman.com/hive. You know, all the things you probably do in your day, my guess is that's probably the thing that keeps you the happiest and the healthiest.

It's, it's, it's the best. I mean, it's, you know, not to get too esoteric or woo, but I And if you think about the two most eternal things that we are surrounded with every day of our lives, it's either other souls or God. Everything else is going to pass away, all of our books and homes and money and sex and cars and everything. There's this idea that comes from ancient philosophers like Penses or Augustine or more modern authors like C.S. Lewis of this hole in the soul, this eternal hole in the soul that will always feel empty unless you fill it with something eternal. So all material wealth, our business, even our health, all of that is material and temporary. But if you're able to fill that hole with a relationship with a higher power and relationship with other people, then all the other stuff becomes even more fulfilling. It's almost like the icing on the cake. It's true. And I think a lot of people just miss out on the part of starting with the eternal and then all the other stuff becomes fulfilling and instead chase money, chase cars, chase houses, chase women, chase men, whatever, thinking that that's what's going to make them happy when it's family, it's community, it's God.

For me, it was similar. I mean, I went through many years of just focusing on my career and work and I had to kind of rejigger things and realize what was important. And now I just went through pretty serious health crisis, back surgery and almost died. It was pretty intense. An infection in my back. And what was so meaningful and powerful was the amount of people that were there for me, who were in the hospital with me, who came and visited me, who— there was, I think, a WhatsApp thread of like, it was sort of 100-plus people. Wow. There was healing circles and people praying for me. It made me realize that I've invested a lot of time and energy in building connections and community and friendships that are deep and that are not related to who I am in terms of in the world, but just more who I am as a human being. And in terms of my soul friends, I call them.

It's a powerful memento mori-esque exercise, this idea of asking yourself, And actually there's an author named Jon Ortberg, and I think he puts it like this. He has a book that says, his book is called I'd Like You More If You Were More Like Me. He has a lot of books, but this is a great book. And he has a part of that book where he lists kind of like the Five Regrets of the Dying, all of the questions you might be asking yourself when you are at death's door towards the end of your life. And the last question that he lists there is, "Who will cry at my funeral?" who will cry at my funeral. And even in digital community, I know I probably have thousands of people who follow me on Instagram or Facebook or whatever who really are not going to give a crap about my funeral and move on to the next expert or author or podcast or whatever if I were to pass away. But my local network of community and friends and family members, And people who I've built, again, IRL, flesh and blood relationships with, those people will. And back to the loneliness piece, it is kind of sad that we do live in a time when it's so easy to build those super shaky digital relationships that unless they blossom into something else are kind of flat at the end of the day.

That's amazing. And when you have that kind of structure that you put in your day around connection and family just even having the thought of creating family values and what your mission is and how you take care of each other, how you relate to each other, what's important and what you focus on. It's something I think just so few people ever think of doing. And my guess is your kids are pretty well adjusted. They're probably not addicts. They're doing okay in school. They're probably happy.

I mean, we give them a lot of drugs and hang them from cages and that keeps them alive. I'm kidding. I think if a child is given time and love and presence. That's one thing. And I think most parents and people are aware of that, but I think it's time and love and presence and this deep sense of belonging, like knowing that they're part of a movement or part of something greater. I'm not saying like turn your family into a cult or something like that, but this idea of like having in the same way that you would brand a business and in an ideal scenario in a successful business, all your employees know what the business's values and mission statement and core purposes you essentially brand your family the same way as you would brand a business, all the way down to the freaking logo and the sign on the wall. And that's what we did for our family, and it's, it's incredible.

Well, you're sort of like, uh, kind of touching on this concept of like rules to live by, like what are the simple principles and rules to live by, right? And most people probably don't know this piece about you, and I think that's a— it's such a gift that you shared it because it's something that I think most people probably hopefully take away from this and understand that it makes them reflect on where they have done it or haven't done it in their own life. And hopefully it'll inspire people to actually lean into this. And I wonder, given all the things, you talked everything from your soul to PMF mats.

Salmon sperm.

Salmon sperm, other reasons. After years and years of experimenting and optimizing and at every level, you're obviously, you're your body, your mind, your spirit, your soul. I'm wondering what you are down to and distill down to in terms of key practices that you want to keep. Let's say if you only keep 3 practices, what would they be? Or 5, whatever you think has stood the test of time and you want to carry forward going forward.

Key principles: move well. And as we've established, not too much at too high an intensity. But I think movement is underrated and it's very easy to not move. I'm shocked at the number of people who get a movement meter or wearable and think they're taking 10,000 steps a day and they're taking 3,000. Yeah. So, move more, eat well, which I think most people are aware of and you have many books about this and you don't have to follow a special diet, but back to the Blue Zones, eat in a mindful state, eat a wide variety of plants and herbs and spices, throw a little bit of hormesis in there occasionally from plants and herbs and spices. Maybe even alcohol, avoid ultra-processed foods, and eat well. I would say thermal stress or discomfort is underrated. We live in a temperature-controlled climate. So, subjecting yourself to the ancestral rigors of heat and cold on a regular basis, that's why I think we see a growing body of research on things like a sauna practice. And I think we'll see more and more coming out on cryotherapy and cold immersion because Very similar to exercise. We need to be throwing stressors at our body even down to the hypoxia that we were talking about for mitophagy, just for cellular autophagy in general and cellular resilience. You need to do uncomfortable things within limit as we were talking about earlier. So, I would say move well, eat well.

Stress our bodies.

Thermal stress, yeah, or just discomfort in general. And if I could name a couple of others, I would say take care of your personal environment. We touched on air, light, water, electricity. So pay attention to quality of your air and the cleanliness of your air, your water filtration system, and what kind of water bottles you're drinking out of when you travel. Um, your lighting environment, especially how much LED, high flicker, high EMF light you might be exposed to on a regular basis, and sunlight on the good side of things. And then the electrical environment that you live in, you know, even my house, like, there is no Wi-Fi. You pull up to the bar at the kitchen and you peek under the bar and there's 6 little Ethernet ports there where anybody can plug in if they want to, but they're not going to get a Wi-Fi signal. I didn't want a house where it was inconvenient and I'd have a bunch of upset visitors who could never get on the internet. So I literally have Cat 8 metal shielded Ethernet throughout the entire house. You can just plug in. You don't have to go to those extremes, but little things like unplug your Wi-Fi router where you're sleeping at night, for example. Personal environment, discomfort, move well, eat well, and And then, I would say the last thing is something that we just got done touching on. It would be the fifth thing I'd name and that would be your spiritual health, which I think includes your spiritual practice and your relationships/community. And those would probably be the 5 that I would distill it down to.

Yeah, pretty sage advice, pretty solid. And I think the one part I think people might not I completely understand, and it's worth diving more into your work about this, is this piece around how do you control your environment to support your health, whether it's—

How do you build your own blue zone?

Yeah. A lot of people feel pretty bad most of the time, and it's often the result of things that we're not aware of, like the quality of our air or the quality of our water or the—

Yeah. They're exercising and they're eating healthy and they still feel like crap by 2:00 PM.

And so what I'm hearing you say is that some of these technologies that have helped us in many ways live better, more fun or interesting lives also have a dark side and that there's ways to mitigate that dark side and rejuvenate your body in many different ways. So lastly, I just kind of want to sort of hear what your thoughts are about the latest longevity trends. What are the things that are popping for you that you think are worth leaning into? And what are the things that maybe are like, misconceptions or things that are misunderstood or maybe not right.

We talked about some of the beauty trends. And so—

Salmon sperm, I'm going to take that one.

Salmon sperm. And yeah, we didn't touch on this, but another thing the same clinic does is they do Botox injections into your sexual organs, which apparently relaxes the muscle tissue and allows for better vascularity. My wife was very concerned when I told her I was going to Austin to get a paralytic toxin injected into my man piece. But they just had this health optimization event down here and it was a lot of the things that you would expect to see, lots of different kinds of the 18 flavors and variants of beef tallow and beef jerky and energy bars. And I think a lot of the cool technologies like we discussed, you tend to see those more like A4M in Vegas or something like that that are kind of like the cool things coming down the pipeline. For me personally, that I have been getting super into, and I briefly mentioned this to you as I was looking at your biohacking setup here, the idea of combining different modalities to relax and kind of downregulate the nervous system. Namely haptic sensations, light, and sound in some kind of combinatorial environment. So, what I mean by that is when I travel, I have one of these Apollo wristbands or ankle bands that will vibrate and then a NeuroVizr, which is a headset that you wear that produces light and sound. And there's something about light plus sound plus vibration that will knock me out on an airplane or after a busy day at a conference when I have too many central nervous system stimulants in me. And at home, I have this vibrating chair called the Shiftwave, which is kind of cool. It just vibrates your whole body. You can wear a fingertip sensor and it'll kind of do it in combination with your actual heart rate variability as you breathe in and breathe out. But then right above the Shiftwave chair, I've got this lamp called the Roxeva, and that also does light sound therapy. So I've got a travel setup, the NeuroVizr plus the Apollo, and at home, the big guns, the Shiftwave plus the Roxieva.

And so, you don't wear an eye mask when you do the Shiftwave?

The Shiftwave, you can wear an eye mask if you're just doing the Shiftwave, but the way I do it is I've got eyes open and there's an AV cable that comes out of the Roxieva because they've got about 20 different sessions that are built for haptic sensations.

And haptic is vibration.

Yeah, vibration. The Roxieva comes with this teeny tiny little bass speaker that that you put under a table or to vibrate your body. So, I thought, "Well, why not hook it up to the freaking Shiftwave?" So, I plugged the AV cable into the input of the Shiftwave. So now, when the lights come on, they're just blasting off to outer space, which is incredible. If you just need to check out at 3:00 PM and turn your brain off, you're getting blasted with light, you have the headphones in, so the sound is doing the thing in conjunction to the light, and then that's feeding into full-body vibration. And, it's pretty cool to essentially just just knock stress flat out of your body. I feel incredible when I do that or the—

For 10 minutes.

The Apollo. Oh, I'll run it. My scheduling team knows that you don't schedule anything for Ben between about 2:00 and 3:30 PM because I finish lunch and I go into my little lounge and I'll spend just anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes. It's kind of part of my job, if you want to call it that, to try out all these new devices. So, the other day, I was trying out the new Muse. Muse has some Athena headband that detects blood flow and brain waves, or I'll be messing around with Shiftwave, or what happens if I plug this into that, or if I take my NeuralVisor into the hyperbaric chamber. So that's my relaxation experimentation time. Yeah. And, uh, it— I'm not in there for an hour and a half, but usually, you know, well, that's a little bit of padding time on the other end to come out and, you know, and get back into the emails and stuff.

What I found is that stress is, is an incredibly exhausting thing in your body. And if you have ways of discharging the stress— now, Tony Robbins talks about changing your state, whether it's just jumping up and down or breathing or whatever. And this was a state—

prey animal would relax after being chased by a predator by shaking.

By shaking, right. And so there's these devices or tools you can use to help reset your nervous system. You can do it with breathwork, you can do meditation, you can do it stretching. There's a lot of ways to do it, yoga. But these technologies are pretty cool because they kind of— we all are living in this heightened state of cortisol. And so how do you kind of drop out of that? And so these technologies are pretty—

And it's a routine thing too. I'm typically up between 4:30 and 5:00 AM because I like to have that time when the world doesn't expect me to be up and I don't have to be guilty about having my phone off so I can do my morning routine and get ready for the day and have my time with God and have my coffee and just have my morning to myself. Because I also have a family and we have these wonderful, glorious family dinner parties, I'm usually not in bed till 10:00. So, I'm getting maybe 6 hours of sleep a night, but I find that if I can program in 30 to 60 minutes of relaxation in the afternoon, it's almost like time hacking. Because if you add it up, that's still only 7 hours I'm supposed to be getting. Depending on the research you look at, 7 to 9 hours, but I can be super present for my family at dinner as long as I have that afternoon checkout time. So, I'd much rather get up super early and nap than sleep in, not have my morning, and just bang out the rest of the day. So, I would say that's what I'm excited about, just the use of haptics sensation, light, and sound. And then what'd you ask me? What is overrated?

Yeah, what, what are the things that you like are like, ah, that's kind of like misconceptions?

I would hate to cause people to think that they shouldn't prioritize something like, uh, you know, like the whole CICO calorie in calorie out equation, because I do think that trumps a lot. But I think there's a lot of people— maybe this is similar to, to my reply to you about exercise— who are overdoing the whole intermittent fasting keto thing. There's, you know, I talked to a lot of, for example, especially premenopausal women who are doing 16-hour fasts and they're seeing these intense hormonal imbalances and downregulation of fertility. And, they're essentially treating themselves as men when women, especially premenopausal women, do better on a 10 to 12-hour intermittent fast and strength training and adequate protein and all the— So, I see a lot of cardio bunnies, that's a stereotype, who are doing excess intermittent fasting. So, that's one one thing that I think is overrated. And then, look, I am all about controlling glycemic variability. You know, a lot of times I wear a blood glucose monitor. I am aware and cognizant of my carbohydrate, starch, and sugar intake. But I think a lot of people now, especially with the surge in CGMs, they're just scared of carbs, scared of sugar, and often equate what would be considered traditionally a therapeutic ketogenic diet, right, like 30 to 40 grams of carbs or whatever a day that you'd use to, you in a situation of TBI, concussion, Alzheimer's, et cetera. And they're saying, "Oh, well, this is like my new cognitive-enhancing superpower." And you tend to see, back to what I was saying earlier for me back when I did that when exercising a lot, impact on the thyroid, impact on testosterone, impact on joint health. The way that I do things now after experimenting with a lot of different approaches is I kind of think you can have your cake and eat it too. I don't eat a lot of carbs and sugars most of the day. I save my carbs until the evening, which is typically the meal that tends to be the most social, the most difficult sometimes to control what you're eating because you're out at restaurants, you're with friends, you're at a party, whatever. So, I eat low-carb, relatively keto most of the day, and then I'll have 250 to 350 grams of carbs at night, which is great because you sock away a little bit of liver glycogen and muscle glycogen for a great workout the next morning.

So we do a little bit of a serotonin and melatonin response. It's not going to be like white flour.

You're not eating— no, sweet potato, purple potato, yam, beet, parsnip, dark chocolate, yogurt. So, you know, good carbohydrate sources. Um, you know, do a lot of like carrot fries, sweet potato fries.

So not a lot of grains or beans.

Not a lot of grains or beans. Besides, my wife does really, really good fermented sourdough bread, so she makes those crunchy cannonballs which are pretty good with a little bit of honey and sea salt on them. I'm basically in a pretty glycemically stable state the entire day, quick feeding at night that because I'm usually doing something active before dinner, playing tennis or pickleball with the family, doing a sauna cold plunge, going on a quick walk, or even using bitters, for example, before the meal, I'm inducing almost like a temporary state of heightened insulin sensitivity prior to the evening carbohydrate feeding. So, I'm not getting a huge blood sugar spike that lasts till midnight then a hypoglycemic drop that wakes me up at 1:00 AM or whatever. So, I'm active around dinnertime. I have some bitters with dinner, which kind of act as glucose disposal agents. And then, I sleep like a baby and then get up the next morning and rinse, wash, and repeat. And, I see a lot of people who just go for way too long restricting carbohydrates, whereas I think more of a carb refeeding approach works way better. And, that's the way I've eaten for probably more than a decade now.

And you're talking about carbs like sweet potatoes and things that are much lower glycemic and have lots of fiber.

Yeah. I avoid non-nutritionally dense carbohydrates. I generally avoid, period.

Ice cream?

Yeah. Well, it depends on the ice cream. There's some good brands out now. And we have goats. My sons make some pretty good goat milk ice cream. Amazing. But yeah, it depends. But yeah, most ultra-processed starches and sugars you should avoid in general, but especially even in the health world, I just see people being carb-phobic.

Well, you see fat-phobic. Now it's carb-phobic. Exactly.

And then we're all— Hopefully, it doesn't become protein-phobic soon.

That'd be the one to watch. Well, that's interesting because protein is something we've talked about on the podcast and with other guests like Gabrielle Lyon, but we seem to be in a protein craze right now. And in all the Natural Food Expo, all the meat bars and protein bars and protein snacks. Yesterday I tried a new bar that was made with whey protein and beef collagen and beef tallow. And it was actually pretty good.

There's a lot of them. They're super tasty.

And I was like, wow, this is really lots of good fat, lots of high-quality protein. What's your take? Are we kind of going overboard on the too much protein side or are we—

I mean, depending on the studies that you look at, I mean, there's some that go up to like 3 grams per pound and some studies on bodybuilders on protein intake. I'm kind of a fan of the 1-ish gram per pound sweet spot.

Which is twice as much or more than the RDA, which is the government sort of minimum amount.

Exactly. And I think if you're not physically active, you might be able to get away with a little bit less than that. I would rather people be prioritizing protein than running from it. But I think with protein, it's the quality that matters. Because if you— well, let's say you're plant-based and you're rotating legumes and grains and eating a variety of quinoa and peas and maybe some seeds and nuts, et cetera. The issue on that side is unless you're taking the time to properly prepare, soak, sprout, ferment, slow prepare those foods is going to do a number on your gut and you're not going to unlock a lot of amino acids from those protein sources anyway. So, you're probably going to wind up a little bit protein deficient unless you really go out of your way to do a plant-based diet correctly. And then, on the omnivorous or carnivorous side, you see people who a lot of times have more of the IIFYM approach and they're just like, "Hey, if I'm getting enough protein, I don't care if it's from a McDonald's Big Mac with maybe the bun removed or something like that, or a Costco steak or a Rosar steak, or, you know, or, you know, hopefully, you know, grass-fed, grass-finished, good pastured sources. So I think the cleanliness of the animal from which you're getting the protein is really important, not necessarily because the protein is going to be that different, but because of all the other things along with it, you know, whatever— what might be concentrated in the fats or something like that.

But there may be good things. I mean, you know, there's, uh, Stephen van Velez has some interesting studies looking bison and bison just that are purely fed on regenerative methods using kind of multiple wild plants that they eat versus a bison that's mostly grass-fed, but then is feedlot-fed at the end with corn and grains. And they did very detailed metabolomic studies where they looked at not just things that were bad because they probably weren't given these bison hormones and antibiotics and things like that, but they were still eating like a grain diet. Diet, that the metabolites in the meat of the fully regenerative bison were really quite different and had all sorts of phytochemicals that weren't in the other meat, all sorts of fatty acids that weren't in there and other benefits that you wouldn't expect.

I'm not convinced the amino acid composition would be different. Yeah, right. You know, if we're talking about purely the proteins, but yeah, I think as much as you can go out of your way to ensure that the quality of the protein source is superior, the earlier, the better. If you look at some of the people who are waving the red flag on protein, typically it's around potential for something like gluconeogenesis where you get excess protein causing some type of an insulinogenic reaction or a glucose spike.

Yeah. I met a guy who's carnivore recently and he's like, his insulin levels were pretty high. And I'm like, "Oh, that's interesting." Yeah, exactly.

Which you can do. You also tend to see folks in the longevity camp who raise concern about excess stimulation of mTOR, which theoretically results in impaired longevity, um, from, uh, excessive methionine intake, right? The amino acid that you find in a lot of meat, especially if you're not eating a nose-to-tail source and balancing out methionine with glycine. So I think the variety of your protein intake matters, you know, getting sources that are rich in glycine lean protein and collagen and gelatin and not just eating meat is important. I think— Yeah, I think— I don't like the term lean protein for the most part. I think that a fatty cut of salmon and the egg with the yolk and getting, as long as the animal's been fed well, a little bit of the CLAs and the saturated fats from well-fed pork or cow, I think that's a good idea. But yeah, I think that you could make a case that if you get too much methionine and too high a protein intake to the point of acidity or excess mTOR activation or gluconeogenesis or something like that, like it could be bad, but I don't think many people are reaching that higher level of protein intake.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think, you know, it is the only macronutrient we need in gram amounts.

Yeah.

You know, essential fatty acids, we need milligram amounts. Carbohydrates, we don't need them, although they help us in different ways, but there's no essential carbohydrate.

Carbohydrate.

Yeah. Um, so it's interesting, it's an interesting moment. Like, we've got this low-fat, low-carb, high-protein. Now I think the world just kind of keeps spinning around the nutrition confusion.

Yeah, I think, uh, people need to just like focus on— very dogmatic, you know, nutrition is very dogmatic. And it's also an easy industry to make money in because people want a perfect solution. That's right, right. So if you can come up with a perfect bar or the perfect book or, you know, the perfect diet or whatever, like, you're gonna rake in some cash for a little bit and then people will move on to the next big thing once they realize that one isn't working for them.

That's right. I mean, it's— I always say, don't let your ideology run over your biology.

Yeah.

Like, pay attention to how you feel and what's going on in your body.

Don't let your ideology run over your biology.

You know, because they gotta listen to your body. It's basically the bottom line. Yeah. It's generally the smartest doctor in the room. Yeah. And Ben, you know, your work's been so great. You've, you've really helped bring so many of these ideas into public consciousness. And I think I really encourage people to check out more of your work. And you've got a new book coming out that's sort of an update of your older book, The Boundless, is just coming out April. So where can people find you online?

My hub is bengreenfieldlife.com.

Ben Greenfield Life. And you can connect to everything you're doing there.

Pretty much.

Yeah. That's great. And thank you so much for being such a sort of pioneer and thinking about tools and practices and things from a scientific perspective and kind of separating the wheat from chaff and helping us sort of navigate what are often very strange and controversial topics with, you know, humor, intelligence, and grace. Thank you, Ben, for being on the podcast.

Thanks, man.

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