Ben Greenfield: Top 5 Health Biohacks + Benefits of Grounding, Light Therapy, and Biomarker Testing

The body is a battery. We all live our day-to-day existence driven by a certain electrochemical gradient across our cell membrane to allow things like minerals to move in and out of a cell and for that cell to become adequately depolarized to cause something like a muscle contraction. Any form of red light therapy is fantastic for keeping the battery charged.

Everyone I know is taking testosterone over the age of 35 or maybe 40.

You want to optimize testosterone levels, goals, and you don't want to get on testosterone replacement therapy.

What I'm actually really happy about right now, Ben, is that you're not on a treadmill.

I could be on a treadmill.

I mean, well, maybe you— I can see your body's not moving up and down. Are you on a treadmill?

I could be.

Oh my God, oh my God, of course you are! Oh my God, I was— I actually thought I was special for a second that you're gonna give me your undivided attention and just, you know, look at me and not exercise at the same time.

I, I could, I could not walk on the treadmill. I do that too. What do you prefer?

No, I think I actually find it hilarious because, um, I don't know who it was, someone was telling me that they were interviewing you or something, you're on their pod, I don't remember who, and they're like, he was like sweating on an incline talking to me for like an hour. And I was like, oh my God, that's hysterical, because I don't know you obviously don't know this, but I used to do this podcast on treadmills, and it would be like two treadmills like this.

Yeah.

And people would come over, and I was like just, you know, zipping on it like for hours, like hours a day, you know. I had like 4 podcasts like back to back, and I was like fine. And people would, I kid you not, be like dying on the treadmill because it was so hot in here as well. Like people were just like passing out left, right, and center.

Your guests were on the treadmill?

And me.

Okay.

We were both on the treadmill.

That must be that bad because I've had some guests come over to my house before and I'll like take them on a walk to do a podcast. And my guests are like, that person was huffing and puffing. They sounded like they were going to die. I would never take health advice from them. I'm like, oh, all right. So yeah, but for me, kind of like you, like I'm, I like do so many of my Zooms, my consults, so much on the treadmill. I almost feel like I focus better when— Totally. I'm just like moving a little bit.

Oh my God, by the way, 100%. Like, I— it's really hard for me to sit here. I stopped doing that many in a day because I— my brain doesn't function well. Like, I'm fatigued if I'm not moving. Like, I have to be— my brain works so much better and I'm so much more alert and focused when I'm like doing what you're doing.

Yeah. You know who else started doing a bunch of walking podcasts is Tim Ferriss. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's doing a lot of his now where either he's walking and his guest is sometimes walking too. He'll like send his guest a portable mic setup, which is kind of cool.

Really? Maybe I should start. Oh, I actually don't love doing this whole thing either. Like the whole virtual. I think it just is— it doesn't, it doesn't do— it doesn't serve well. I feel like you don't get as much of a one-on-one personal connection. You don't get— you don't get good clips for social media. I feel it's just a lower level podcast. Like, this is not ideal. I would have rather you being right here in front of me where we can walk together and do this.

You're never ever going to get a sponsorship from Zoom. You realize that?

I know. That's okay. I don't want a sponsorship from Zoom. It wouldn't be good for me anyway.

Not with language like that, Jenn. Not with language like that.

I know. I know. I just ruined a huge revenue stream for myself. But that's okay. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that.

That or Squadcast, of course.

Right. Or Riverside, actually, too. All of them. All of them. By the way, do you remember me? Like, I know we've met, obviously, at the biohacking conference. I think it was the first time we ever met each other.

I remember you. I just don't remember where we we met the first time.

Well, that's where we met, at the biohacking conference. And then, but we have so many mutual friends, and, um, you know, I'm very close with the Mind Pump dudes, and so are you, I think, too.

Oh yeah, they're awesome.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm very close with them. And in fact, Adam was just in LA like last week.

Oh, awesome.

Yeah, and I think you're awesome.

I mean, he could have chosen better places, but That's great that he at least was able to see you.

Yeah, I appreciated it. You're right. Yeah, he did me a favor by coming here, that's for sure. He could have gone anywhere. And I think you were here. I was going to have you with Darshan also, right? Because you were at the Global Summit where I was supposed to be.

Yeah. Yeah. I was just talking with him yesterday. I launched a supplements package with his new supplements company, Vitaboom.

I saw that. I saw that. So you have— by the way, I'm gonna— this is, this is part of the podcast because it's very— I think the stuff, the back, the behind the scenes is very interesting to most people, as it is to me.

Well, I gotta go do my hair and makeup now that you've told me that.

Oh, you're— luckily, luckily you look good no matter what.

Like an adult now. I'll start, I'll start acting like I'm actually excited to talk to you. And thanks for having me on, Jen. I really appreciate it.

You mean you weren't excited 10 minutes ago or 5 minutes ago?

I'm so honored and it was such a great introduction.

Yeah. Well, thank you. I'm honored to have you. Wait a minute. So, you're doing the life— you're doing the packages. What do you put in your supplement? What do you put in your packages?

Well, it's kind of funny because I was doing the therapeutic plasma exchange, the oil change for your whole body down at Next Health where they do this, which is pretty cool because you can remove problematic lipids like ApoB, for example. It may have a little bit of an impact on some chronic stealth coinfections like Lyme or mold. And, it's the idea that you're actually removing plasma and then replacing it with plasma from a healthy donor. And then, because when you remove your plasma, some of the good things like some of the minerals and fatty acids, for example, get removed from your bloodstream, you get an IV during or afterwards to start to replace some of the stuff that you're losing. So anyways, it's like an oil change for the body. And as a result, I'm sitting there at Next Health for like 4 hours and Darshan starts telling me about how he now has access to this technology that could take different supplements from different companies like, let's say, a vitamin D from Swanson and a vitamin B complex from Pure Encapsulations and resveratrol from Thorne or whatever and actually pick and pack each of those based on specifications, put them all into one box in a little packet form so that you could then rather than having 10 bottles on your shelf just have one box with all the stuff in there. I thought it was a pretty cool idea. And kind of tucked that away. And then, he approached me 2 months later and said, "Well, we're ready. We've developed this. And so, if you have certain ideas in mind for something that you'd want to bring to market and develop, let me know." And even though I have a supplements company, Kion, where we have— tooting my own horn, I like what we have, but there are some really more complex fancy formulations that I've always had tooling around at the back of my mind that we just don't really want to bring to market at Kion because of the complexity of sourcing all the different raw ingredients and different issues with having certain things in stock and being able to combine a whole bunch of supplements into one canister. It can get expensive and that can be a risky SKU to bring to market versus like at Kion, we just have a creatine or an amino acid or a coffee or things that are very easy for us to source and sell at a decent price. But then, there's, for me, for example, and I think this was probably because I spent so much of my life doing a lot of masochistic exercise, racing and Ironman triathlons and doing Spartan races and bodybuilding and far exceeding what the general recommendations for a healthy level of exercise should be. And, we know, and there's one doctor named— researcher named James O'Keefe who has done probably the lion's share of the research on this that there is a law of diminishing return with exercise. There's a so-called Goldilocks zone where if you're exceeding around 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity exercise, or 75 minutes per week of vigorous intensity exercise, then you can begin to see problems like arterial stiffness, plaque deposition in the arteries or in the heart, atherosclerosis, cholesterol and lipid issues, inflammation, even things like thyroid dysregulation or endocrine disruption, low testosterone in men, even in women, et cetera. So, there's all these issues with excessive exercise. And, a couple of years ago, I started doing more tests of my heart, like more than just LDL cholesterol and HDL and triglycerides and some of those things that can give you interesting information but that don't actually reflect or at least give you a very precise picture of what's going on at the organ level in the heart, for example. And, When I started doing these calcium scan scores, plaque tests, a very good test called a CT angiography, which is, I think, extremely good at seeing whether or not you actually have plaque in your heart and what's stable and unstable. I was shocked because I'm pretty fit, you know, high VO2 max, good grip strength, walk on my treadmill, you know, have that low-level aerobic exercise throughout the day. And yet, my heart was concerningly high in plaque and markers of inflammation.

So— Okay, wait, hold on. Wait, hold on because you said so many things that I have questions about in the last 5 minutes. That 5 minutes, that could be a podcast in itself. There's so much there. Okay. So, first thing that you said what I found to be exceptionally interesting because you were a maniac before with the with the exercise and the races and the triathlons. You're saying that, that you were, you were excessive. What made you like, so are you now not excessive with your exercise? That's the first part. Are you, have you completely revamped how you, like how you're bought, what you do with fitness and, and your overall, you know, movement?

I would say that a more appropriate word might be jaded because if you look at an Ironman triathlete, and even when I raced Ironman, I was known to be the minimum effective dose of exercise guy. I wasn't out training up to 30 hours per week like many of my peers, but I was still training anywhere from 10 to 15 hours per week, definitely more than an hour per day. When I say training, I mean exercising. I don't even count walking on a treadmill as the type of exercise that has been deemed problematic in literature. Meaning human beings just based on our ancestry, hunting, gathering, farming, building rock walls, climbing around, ambulating, finding new areas to live, et cetera, we're just fine moving at low-level physical intensity throughout the day. Even construction working, painting, some of these modern examples of a physically active job. But, when you look at something like training for a triathlon or a marathon or a Spartan Race or getting super into CrossFit, you're looking at a level of intensity and volume that involves running from a lion or at least exercising at a much harder pace than say walking on a treadmill while you're talking to a friend that the human body gets damaged by and gets inflamed by with long-term repetitive exposure to. So, even when I say 75 minutes of vigorous intensity exercise per day is the ceiling, and once you exceed that, you begin to see increased risk of mortality and increased arterial stiffness, heart issues, inflammation, et cetera. Well, it's all a little bit relative to what the definition of that intensity is. If you actually look at the definition of vigorous intensity physical exercise in exercise science literature, we're talking about, pardon the expression, balls to the wall, sucking air, lactic acid coming out your eyeballs holes really hard. There's not a lot of people besides people who have had a history of professional athletics or who are just wired up to really, really push, not a lot of people are actually going to exceed 75 minutes of vigorous intensity physical exercise per week. But, back to the root of your question. So, for me, I still work out at an intensity and volume level that a lot of people the average person, I don't want to diminish anybody, but the average person would get beat up by, kind of like you used to do your podcast on treadmills like you were talking about and sometimes your guests might not be able to keep up with you. People will come over to my house and work out with me and just literally feel totally exhausted. Me and my 16-year-old sons who train with me will wipe the floor with just about anybody who comes over to our house. And joins in with us for one of our kettlebell workouts or our outdoor sandbag workouts. We do a lot of functional stuff, a lot of plyometrics and sandbags and kegs and rocks and kettlebells. And, we do that for about an hour 4 days a week. So, we have 4 pretty hard training sessions per week. Everything else for me is walking, pickleball, tennis, sitting in the sauna or doing a little bit of yoga in the sauna, some cold plunging, and some breathwork. So, I have a very sane and for me doable exercise protocol compared to how I used to train, which was literally swimming and biking and running and lifting for an hour and a half or two, 7 days a week. Now, I have a hard training session that really pushes me 4 days a week for about an hour and everything else is just kind of fun or breathwork or sauna or cold or something that's pretty manageable.

How do you feel differently? Does your body have less inflammation? Do you feel you have more energy? What do you feel like?

I feel incredible. I mean, back to the heart thing, my lipid panel went from being lit up by a Christmas tree to looking really good as far as the triglyceride to HDL ratio, the ApoB, the Lp, the LDL, the inflammatory markers. I feel great. Libido is higher because my testosterone is higher and I have more energy levels. My joints feel better. I mean, I feel, knock on wood, probably better and also stronger and fitter than I've ever felt in my life. I mean, I even still just did a Spartan Race a few weeks ago down in Austin with my sons. And, it was a short one, one of those— I think it took me 38 minutes. This wasn't climbing around the mountains for 10 hours, but I feel really good. And, back to the heart health piece, when I saw how bad my heart was doing, I spent a good year doing a disproportionately high number of interviews with podcast guests about heart health, about inflammation, about arterial stiffness, about all the things out there that could help to address these issues. And I came across a lot of interesting things. Some things you would expect like magnesium, vitamin D, and minerals. Other things that have good research behind them but I think fly under the radar when it comes to heart health like all 3 forms of vitamin K. Or the—

What do you mean all 3 forms of vitamin K?

There's 3 different forms of vitamin K and they assist with cholesterol transport throughout the body and also removing plaque from arteries and reducing the amount of clotting potential. And so, it's required for normal healthy clotting response, transport of lipids, and removal of plaque from the arteries. And there's 3 different forms of vitamin K, and they all 3 work together along with magnesium and vitamin D to have proper function. Another example would be not just vitamin E, but specifically what are called tocotrienols from vitamin E, which are the ones that you get less of from your diet. You get more tocopherols from your diet. You can get tocotrienols in supplement form. For example, there's a plant called the annatto plant. It's very high in these tocotrienols from vitamin E. You can look at things like nature's statin, which could lower ApoB and LDL, which would be found in the form of something like red yeast rice extract rather than, let's say, a pharmaceutical statin. So, I had about— when Darshan came to me, I had 10 different things I was taking for my heart. So, I said, well, first question for you selfishly enough and also for a lot of my, I would say, more male than female clients but clients who deal with a lot of these same issues who have been coming over to me and they're fit and they're healthy on the outside but their CT angiography is showing high plaque. Sometimes you can get a non— it's a scan that's similar to a CT angiography but doesn't involve radiation. It's called a carotid intima-media thickness CIMT score, and that's like an ultrasound scan on either side of the neck that can show problematic plaque issues similar to a CT angiography but with less expense and radiation. Like, you're only supposed to get a CT angiography like once every 1.5 to 2 years max because you are getting a radioactive dye injected into your body to do it. And I think the CIMT is another way that you can look at heart health and do so on a more frequent basis. More safely.

Wait, do people— hold on, because I mean, there's so much. I swear, like, it's like your book Boundless. Do you remember that whole thing? Like, I mean, it takes a lifetime to— by the way, like, do people know about this CTN geography? Is it like a well-known thing? Because I've never heard of it.

It's becoming more well-known. I would say the most popular version of it is a version that includes software that implements AI-based diagnostic predictive imaging to analyze where the plaque resides, how much of it is stable, and how much of it is unstable. That's called a CLEARLY score, spelled with two Es, CLEARLY, C-L-E-A-R-L-Y. You look at really fancy executive health programs like Next Health or Wild Health or What's the one that Peter Diamandis is doing now and George Shapiro? Fountain Life. Yeah, Fountain Life. So, they're all using this clearly CTN geography. It is becoming more well-known as a way to truly know if something like a problematic lipid panel is actually manifesting as an issue because some people will have high LDL, low HDL, high triglycerides, elevated ApoB, elevated Lp, and then they'll go in and get a CT angiography or a scan like it and not have actual issues. It doesn't seem to be manifesting possibly for genetic reasons, possibly because they've had low inflammation and low blood glucose or two things that can cause cholesterols to become more atherosclerotic. And then, other people will have a really good lipid panel and kind of like me have plaque issues, even unstable plaque issues and unstable plaque issues in areas that are really concerning in the heart like the left ventricular ascending vessel, the LVA, which in guys, it's actually called the widowmaker when you have plaque in that and it disrupts. And, I had 8% LVA blockage. So, this was concerning to me. And this idea of getting a CT angiography is something that is becoming more well-known. But kind of like I was alluding to a little bit, I think that there are better ways now to test for plaque on a more frequent basis, which is important because you want to know if lifestyle adjustments you're making, like hitting the sauna more, you know, using magnesium, changing up your exercise protocol to be less hardcore, et cetera, you want to know if that's actually working. And getting a CT angiography every 1.5 to 2 years doesn't really cut it for that. But, for example, a CIMT, you can go to a website like— if you want to find a CIMT practitioner, vasolabs.com, I think, is a place where you can search for a practitioner. But this is a very simple, non-invasive, doesn't involve radiation scan, ultrasound scan of either side of the neck, the carotid artery. And it turns out there's about 98% prediction between what you see as far as any blockage, if any does exist, between a CIMT score and a CT angiography score. So you get a CIMT like if you wanted to, every day, or not that you would, but at least once a month if you actually wanted to track it. And, in addition to interviewing a lot of people about this stuff on my podcast, I read a lot of books. And, one book that was really interesting where I learned about a lot of these lesser-known diagnostic imaging tests for the heart is called "Prevention Myths." It's kind of funny, you probably can't see it behind me, but I have a giant bookshelf on the right side of my wall, and one shelf is just all books with a bunch of folded-over pages and highlighted sections for people I'm going to be interviewing on the podcast. Then, what happens is before I interview them, I go back to those books and I open up the dictation app on my phone and I go to each page and I just talk myself through all of my folded-over sections and highlighted sections and say, "Okay. So, on page 94, you said such and such." But, I want to ask you about this aspect of that, whatever. So, that's the way I set up for a lot of my podcasts. And, "Prevention Myths," that book I just mentioned is actually one that's over there because I'm going to be interviewing the doctors that wrote it, I think, in about a month.

Okay. I want to see that. Okay. So, "Prevention Myths," who's the doctor? I want to look into that one. That's up my alley too.

That one is Todd Eldredge. And Ford Brewer, Todd Eldridge and Ford Brewer. I know Todd Eldridge actually has a pretty good YouTube channel too on heart health stuff. So, that's a pretty good read if you want to kind of wrap your head around, well, what isn't my doctor ordering when it comes to things that could be going on in my heart that a standard lipid panel isn't telling me?

Okay. I don't mean to keep on cutting you off.

That's fine.

Okay. What I don't understand, honestly, Ben, is like, you're like a walking brain. I don't— are you just someone who can like retain, like you can see something one time, retain this information? Because how do you, how are you able, like you just rattled off in like 5 minutes, like 5 minutes or now 20 minutes, so much information and like, and difficult information and tests and things like, Do you just have like, are you, are you just like someone who has been academically just like, how are you? What is your background? How do you even have all this and know all this? And it's, it's, it's, I've never seen, you're like, I'm so fascinated by you. It's remarkable. It really is.

Well, I think that you can look at a certain, certain aspects of intelligence. Like some people like my wife have a high degree of emotional intelligence, right? Like, yeah, read people, she can talk to people, she's great at parties. I get super bored and want to find out where the ping pong table is in the garage or where the bookshelf is because I'm more like physical intelligence and intellectual intelligence. And yeah, I grew up very autodidactic, meaning I was homeschooled, but the version of homeschooling that my parents did was basically like give Ben books and just make sure that he knows when he needs to show up for the test. And that was like my life was I just love to read. I was very self-driven. I would figure out the answers for myself. My happy place was the library or in my bedroom reading books. I love to learn. I wasn't really into like science and biology and physiology and the things that I love to study now until I discovered the sport of tennis. When I was about 14 and I got super into tennis. And as a result, I started like running up the hills behind my house in North Idaho. We kind of lived out in the country. I started, you know, thinking more about what I would eat before a tennis match and after a tennis match, like pre and post-workout fueling. I got a little set of 10-pound dumbbells that I had no clue what to do with, but I would like lay on the edge of my bed and do curls. And, I grew up in a very strict family, but I had a little TV that my parents didn't know that I owned that was hidden in my closet underneath my pants. And so, I would just drag my TV out and lift weights in my room and put it away before my parents figured out I was watching TV in my bedroom because I was not allowed at our house. But anyways—

Wow. Wow. So, you really grew up strict. You weren't allowed to watch any TV?

Oh, my gosh. Well, You'll think this is funny. So at least you might think this is funny or sad, but like very, very strict house, especially as far as entertainment is concerned. I mean, I remember when my parents took us to the movie theater to see Aladdin, right? Which was like one of the first times I ever got to go to the movie theater. We had to stand outside the theater with my dad inside until the previews were done because my parents weren't sure if any of those previews had offensive content. And then, when Jasmine kissed Aladdin, we had to all cover our eyes. Really? Oh, super strict household. And then, my parents also had a box on the TV. It was called— it's like this little black box. We called it the squeeze box. But, anytime someone cursed during a movie, or a show, it would silence the movie and then put up closed caption up on the screen of a replacement word. So, the replacement for the F-word was "wow" or the S-H-word was like "crap" or something like that. And actually, what happened was my brothers and I had 2 brothers and 2 sisters, but my brothers and I got really good until we figured out how to disable that device. We got really good at lip reading and cursing because we would read the lips and figure out what was going on in the movie and then go and look up those words and build up a really good vernacular of curse words just because we almost got obsessed with this. I actually have a whole book on parenting. It's 700 pages long. And, one key thesis of that book is that if you don't want to create forbidden fruit in your household with the kids, try not to have stuff off-limits or just forbidden with no discussion. Instead, take the time and incorporate the presence of educating your child about any decision that they might make in life and then let them deal with the consequences of that decision. So, in our house now, there's no rules about porn. I have 16-year-old sons. There's no like, "Oh, you're not allowed to visit a porn website," or "Porn is banned in our house," or "No, we don't talk about that." But I've spent hours going through the yourbrainonporn.com website with them and teaching them about dopamine desensitization. I've taken them out to see, like, The Sound of Freedom and to learn about the sex slave industry and objectification of women and a lot of issues that the porn industry can contribute to and really set them up to where they understand the industry, they understand what's going on. They understand who's getting paid what and what position people are in when they're in that industry from a lifestyle or financial standpoint. And then, I let them make the decision. And, we rinse, wash, and repeat that for whatever, gluten, vegetable oil, candy, alcohol, weed, any vice or anything that many parents will say, "No, we don't talk about that," or "No, you aren't allowed to do that." Well, eventually what happens is you get a kid who's going to figure it out for themselves. It's like me. The first time I got drunk, I stole a bottle of Scotch that I found in my dad's office that his friend had given him as a gift. Because for me, alcohol was just like, "We don't talk about that. We don't do it. You're not allowed. That's for adults only." And whereas my sons have grown up, every time the Dry Farm Wines shipment arrives to our house, we'll open up the tasting notes and they'll get a little taste of it, a little shot. And see what it's like and we'll talk about the wine and what it pairs with. I guarantee my sons are never going to go steal a bottle of wine from the pantry and get drunk on it. It's not even a thing that would even be considered because it's not a forbidden fruit in the house. So, kind of a rabbit hole, but yeah, I grew up in a super strict house and then I walked onto the tennis team at Lewis-Clark State College and began to study exercise science. And just kind of never looked back. I applied all the intellectual firepower I had devoted up to that point to being president of the chess club and playing the violin and writing fantasy fiction and doing computer programming and basically just steered the entire ship in the direction of exercise and nutrition science, which is what I've studied since. But, to answer your question, yeah, I've always been pretty intellectual and very self-driven when it comes to gathering of information. And, I've also even from a very young age growing up in our local community being homeschooled and having lots of younger boys and girls who I mentored. Part of my side job was I taught creative writing and I taught sports camps and just always loved to educate and teach. So, a big part of me when I'm learning is knowing at the back of my mind, I'm going to have to teach this to a client. I'm going to need to teach this on a podcast or I'm going to need to have an intelligent conversation about this with the person who wrote the book at some point. And, that helps too. They say the best way to learn is to teach, right? See one, teach one, do one. That's the medical school adage. So, yeah, that's basically kind of my intellectual background.

It's fascinating. I mean, I don't really know many I can count on one hand people who have the plethora of information in the longevity, health, well— and you're like a guinea pig. You've tried literally everything, I feel. And I guess because I have so much I want to talk to you about, I don't know if I— I was actually going to say maybe we do a series because it's been 32 minutes and I haven't even gotten to my first question with you because You are literally like just, you have so much information of all of the things that you've tried, all of the different, like every time, like there's always iterations of you, right? When I met, when I met you for the first time in London, or when I see your, when I saw your book Boundless from years ago, like I feel like you're always iterating and trying and tweaking and yourself. What would you say? Are the top 5 health hacks or habits that really move the needle for people? Because not everybody, like you were saying, don't have the time, the ability, the energy, the wherewithal. And it's right now, I feel especially, there's so much information overload. A lot of yahoos are doing things and people are trying that and then they're trying something else and no one's really kind of like really knowing what to do. So, since you're such a great person that's really been there, done it, what would you say the top 5 habits would be for somebody? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. There definitely is a lot of confusion. It's not helped by the fact that the dirty secret in the nutrition industry is that if you want to make a lot of money, you write a book that vilifies a certain food group or nutrient and then champion that book as the ultimate diet for all of humankind. So, all of a sudden, people are trying out keto and carnivore and vegan and paleo and Pegan. And, the fact is the ketogenic diet that helped your neighbor lose 20 pounds might totally screw you over because you have genetic familial hypercholesterolemia or poorly functioning gallbladder, so you're not producing adequate bile to break all those extra fatty acids down. Or maybe you have an APOE4 gene that dictates an inflammatory response to saturated fat that increases your risk for dementia or Alzheimer's. And so, yeah, a certain amount of prudence is necessary, especially with all the information out there. That's why I think that the idea of self-quantification now is such a palatable and attractive idea because, A, you're able to, from the comfort of your own home now using websites like InsideTracker, WellnessFX, or Thorne or Cyfox or any of these home testing websites, get access to data about your body that would have cost you $10,000 at the Princeton Longevity Institute or Duke or via some fancy executive health panel. A decade ago, and now you can actually test and know, well, what is my genetic response to saturated fats? How is my gallbladder, my liver, and my kidney function, especially with regards to how I'm going to do on, let's say, a ketogenic diet? Do I genetically tend to have a carbohydrate sensitivity or a saturated fat sensitivity? And you kind of rinse, wash, and repeat and begin to understand how to customize your diet. Or your supplementation program to you. So, yeah, you're right, there is a lot of confusion. And, I do want to answer your actual question, but just so we don't leave people hanging, I'll finish up that story. I promise it'll take me 60 seconds. So, the Darshan story, that was the first question you asked me.

Oh, my God, you're still talking about that. Oh, my God.

So, I said, "Yes, let's take all the heart stuff and put that in one box." I said, "Here's my dream pre-workout and post-workout. Put that in another box. Here's my dream wake up in the morning. I don't want to open 8 bottles morning foundation protocol. Put that in another box." And—

That's so funny.

—here is what I like for sleep and put that in another box. And, that was basically how this Vitaboom thing started. And, I literally just got the first boxes to my house 2.5 weeks ago. And, it's kind of cool because you just pull out a packet and it tells you what to take when and you don't have to open a bunch of bottles. So anyways, that's what happened with the dark jams. Thank you.

Thank you for making it full circle. I appreciate that. Yeah.

Okay. So, what would you do though if you had to choose a certain number of variables to look, feel, and perform better, especially if you're trying a whole bunch of things and they're not working or you don't quite have the body or the brain or the sleep or the hormone balance or whatever that you want. Well, let's say that you're doing a good job reading Men's Health magazine or Women's Health magazine or whatever and you have your head wrapped around the workout of the day and physical activity and you're moving and you're doing some semblance of weight training and some semblance of cardio, you're working in some mobility you are eating or at least aware of not eating ultra-processed foods, seed oils, lots of added sugars. I wouldn't want to insult people's intelligence by telling them to move well and eat as naturally as possible. A lot of people kind of already know that. Yes, there are subtle nuances largely driven by the self-quantification aspects that I was just referring to, But, for the most part, let's say that my reply to your question is not based on someone not already moving and eating somewhat naturally. So then, what would be the things that you would put on top of that? Well, I think that to adequately address this question, it's important to have an understanding that the body is a battery. Live our day-to-day existence driven by a certain electrochemical gradient across our cell membrane to allow things like minerals to move in and out of a cell and for that cell to become adequately depolarized to cause something like a muscle contraction or the propagation of a neural signal or any other function that just allows you to live during the day. But, in addition to that, the mitochondria themselves They also have an electron transport chain via which electrons are shuttled back and forth across a membrane with the end result being ATP production or energy production. And your body produces oodles of ATP every single day. So, if you understand that, then you understand, okay, so my body is a battery. My body is an electrical machine. How can I keep that battery from being drained? And simultaneously, how can I keep it as charged up as possible? And this is where I think we're not served very well by something I alluded to a little bit earlier, and that's this idea of kind of an ancestral mismatch or an evolutionary mismatch. This idea that we are not building fences and gardening and working outside and hauling rocks and bringing a pack of Nigerian dwarf goats up a mountain every morning to get water and then coming back home. It's like the blessing of a post-industrial era is comfort and wealth and less injuries and less sunburns and less bleeding hands and calluses. But the side effect of that is chronic disease, right? Like full-on access to a range of hyperpalatable foods high in calories married to the ability to be in a relatively sedentary position without much uncomfortable fluctuation of heat or cold or movement or load-bearing or any of those other things that are a little bit difficult to experience during the day. And, some of us who are aware of this fabricate them artificially during the day by going to the gym or jumping in a cold bath or lifting a kettlebell or whatever. But, for the most part, our modern post-industrial lifestyles do not support the charging of the battery in a very good way. And so, what does charge the battery? Well, for example, every time that lightning strikes the surface of the planet or every time that solar radiation bombards the surface of the planet, our planet collects negative ions and carries a mild electrical charge. This is the entire science behind the theory of earthing or grounding, which entire book— documentaries have been produced about this idea that if you get a bare piece of your body in contact with the surface of the planet, there is a profound anti-inflammatory effect and a restoration of a negative cellular potential inside the cells along with increased production of ATP by the mitochondria. So, being outside barefoot or laying on your back on the ground, you only need 20 minutes. I think more is better, but getting in touch with the surface of the planet on a regular basis, preferably a daily basis, would be the first thing that is pretty free, pretty accessible, pretty easy and that more people could benefit from.

There are— Hold on. Wait. So, the first health hack or first tip or habit is earthing. Earthing. Yeah, earthing or grounding.

Okay. And, if you are stuck inside all day, I mean, there are hacks. You can get earthing or grounding mats that are literally plugged into the grounding outlet of your home So, that's pulling in the same charge as you'd get if you were standing barefoot outside. Or, in my office right next to me, you'd laugh, I literally have one next to me that I stand on when I'm standing at my standing desk during the day. And, there's a little metal cable coming out of this mat. I got it from a company called Ultimate Longevity. And then, that little cable goes out my office door because I'm on the ground floor and literally plugs into a metal stake staked into the ground. So, all that's happening is the electrons are traveling through that metal cable. And so, it's like I'm standing outside all day long without having to stand outside and deal with sweat and insects and the glare from the sunshine on my computer screen and not being able to have access to a microphone and all those things that would happen if I actually were outside. I still go outside, but That's an example of using technology or what some people would call biohacking to bring the outside inside, which many of us have to do if we don't get fired from our jobs or be a barefoot dirty hippie all day at the office. The other example of that, to give you one other example, would be what's called PEMF, pulsed electromagnetic field technology. This is like grounding on steroids. Takes that same signal and via a piece of technology that's usually a mat or some type of a pad that you place on an area of the body, usually an inflamed or injured area of the body, amplifies that signal and gives you the effect of earthing and grounding, especially the anti-inflammatory and pain management effects on steroids, like very concentrated high signal that's called a PEMF signal. And this would be—

I love that. I love those. I have a Therasage one. Have you ever heard of Therasage?

Therasage, they're great. I think that's Rob Benson's company. He's awesome.

Yeah. Rob is amazing and his wife Melody. They make a great PEMF mat, guys. Yeah, yeah.

That one's really good. A really good source of knowledge in the industry is Dr. William Pawlik. P-A-W-L-U-K. He has some devices on his website. Some people will even on their beds have a BEMER mat or a Body Balance mat or something that they literally sleep on during the night to do PEMF.

What's a BEMER mat? I've heard of that.

What is it? It is a PEMF signal basically. Oh, okay. It's a low-intensity PEMF signal you can lay on. My wife and I have our pillowcases and are sheet-grounded, meaning even though we're on the 3rd floor of the house, there's a little cable that comes out of the pillowcase and out of the sheet that plugs into the grounding outlet of the wall. I think we got those from Ultimate Longevity too. But basically, this idea of thinking more both indoors and outdoors, how can I be in touch with the surface of the planet more? There are even companies like Plugs and EarthRunners that have created soles of their shoes that allow your shoe to be collecting those negative ions far differently than you get if you were wearing a big built-up rubber-soled shoe. Or, you could go to Amazon and there are straps you can buy there if you just look on Amazon called Earthing Straps that you can outfit to any existing shoe. But, the big picture is just get in touch with the surface of the planet more. And here's a fun fact. You know the most concentrated source of the benefits of grounding and earthing that you can get while in nature? What do you think it would be, Jenn?

I don't know. The most concentrated?

Yeah, like a rock, a tree, grass.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold on. I would say grass. Hugging a cow. Grass or algae, maybe some in the ocean. Oh, you're super close.

Being submerged in a natural body of water, especially a natural body of water with a high mineral content. So, if you live near a lake, a river, especially the ocean. I'm jealous of people because I live in the inland Northwest of people who can go for a walk on the beach and get their feet or their body in the water on a daily basis because that's the most potent and powerful form of grounding that you can get access to is being immersed in a natural body of water.

Really? So, I live in LA, as you know. So, if I went to put my feet in the ocean in Santa Monica, that would be the best form of grounding.

It can be incredible for your body. It doesn't feel like you're doing much and then gradually day after day, you just start to feel better and better. Mood, energy levels, sleep, everything. What's also interesting if people don't have access to one of those natural bodies of water is that some people now have cold plunges. Do you have a cold plunge like a cold tub or something like that? I do. Yeah, I have a cold plunge. The metal ones, especially if they're plugged into a wall because some of them run on a 240V outlet, I have the Morozko Forge. So, if you have one of those metal cold plunges, especially one that plugs in for the filter or whatever. I had that thing tested by a building biologist and it's like 20x the amount of grounding that you get if you're standing on a lawn outside. So, that's also a way that you can get a ton of grounding is a metal cold plunge.

So, what about a regular cold plunge that's porcelain or a million other brands out there? Therasaage actually has a great one too.

Just has to be a conductive surface. A lot of these newer ones, they're rubber, which is great because they're inexpensive. But if you actually want to be grounded, now we're getting into the fringe stuff. It's like, well, people are like, why don't I just get in the cheap-ass cold plunge and then go stand in the lawn afterward? That works fine too. What I'm saying is if you want a grounded body of water, metal plugged in is actually really good. Just don't have a toaster next to it and you'll be—

Yeah, next to it, right. Okay, so the first— No hair dryers. No hair dryers. Okay, got it. One, check. We have 4 more to go and it's already an hour in. Okay, 2.

Okay, I'll be fast. I'll be faster with the rest of these.

You're going to have to come— By the way, when are you coming to LA? Because we're going to have to do this again. There's no chance.

October. Yeah. I'll be back in October. Yeah. Yeah. Good. But I'll at least finish my answer to this question. So— No, you have to do the whole thing.

Got to do the whole thing.

Photons of light, packets of light, particularly light from the near-infrared, red, and infrared wavelength spectrum, like about 640-ish to 850-nanometer wavelengths of light. These are absorbed by tissue and help to increase the charge in the body and assist the mitochondria, a certain complex within the mitochondria, with carrying electrons through that electron transport chain. And producing ATP. So, this means that not only sunlight, which has a full spectrum of light including infrared, near-infrared, and red light, but also the use of an infrared sauna. Right here next to me, this is meant to be an advertisement, but I have one of these Juve panels that I stand in front of for 20 minutes when I work in the morning. Any form of red light therapy is fantastic for keeping the battery charged. And, what's interesting is that there are certain pigmented compounds that you can consume in supplemental or dietary form that allow greater absorption of these wavelengths of light. So, message number 1 is get out in the sunlight and/or use certain forms of near-infrared, far-infrared, or red light therapy devices if your budget allows. Inside your home. And of course, by the way, one of the other advantages to having devices like this is sometimes you need, depending on where you live and what time of day you're going outside, a long time out in the sun to get an equivalent dose of indoor red light therapy. And sometimes that can mean a lot of UVA and UVB exposure and potential for skin damage. So, yes, you could go sunbathe for 2 hours a day, but I think that there can be some risks associated with that. So, I go out in the sun but I'm also very cognizant of not burning in my total exposure time, which is why I use a lot of these infrared panels.

So, would you say red light is equal to sunlight in terms of, I guess, not just efficacy but in terms of like effective, I guess, yeah, for things for your overall health?

I mean, red light has the same effect. Yes. Yes, except for circadian rhythmicity. The bluish-green spectrum wavelength of sunlight is what can suppress sleep drive or cause morning wakefulness and a morning cortisol awakening response. I mean, all of this is hackable. I have these glasses for if it's dark or gray outside that I keep at my desk. These ones are called the Re-Timers. There's another kind called the I/Os, but these produce like a bluish-green spectrum of light that's very similar to the circadian rhythmicity regulating aspects of sunlight. So, you could say, "Well, if I can't get outside much or if I live in Seattle or Portland and it's dark and dreary outside all the time, not only am I going to, for my body's battery, outfit my home with some near-infrared, far-infrared, and red light therapy options, but I'm also going to get one of those seasonal affective disorder boxes or a pair of glasses like this that produce a lot of blue light or green light such as you would get from sunlight. So, I actually just rewrote "Boundless" and I really geek out on this in the environmental chapter of that book where I go into the actual percentages of light for waking areas of the house, for sleeping areas of the house. And, even though it would be an hour for me to dig into the nitty-gritties of that. I can tell you the biggest gem I found in writing that chapter was there are two companies now, one called BonCharge and one called Block Blue Light, that sell bulb. This bulb is a low flicker, low EMF bulb, so it's healthy for biology. You plug it into the can in your house or however many cans you're going to use these light bulbs with. You flip on the light once and it makes all red light. So, when you're getting around in the morning, the sun has set, it's the evening time, you're getting ready for bed, you don't want to suppress melatonin with blue light, that's your light for evening. You put it on again, you turn off the light switch and you flip it on again, then it switches to twilight, which is kind of a mix of blue light and red light for example for the hours between, let's say, 5:00 and 8:00 PM where you're not going to go full-on red light, you don't want your whole house to look like a nightclub, but you want that orangish-red glow that's not super, super dark that still allows you to have a dinner party or hang out with friends or read a book in the living room or whatever. And then, you flip it on again and it does full-on daylight bluish-green light, bright overhead light, And in the past, I've told people, "Well, you should have the light bulbs in your bedroom be red light and maybe the light bulbs in the hallways upstairs are a little bit brighter but still kind of red. And then, the living room and the kitchen and the gym, you want more blue light." And now, I've just been telling people, "Well, just get those light bulbs and replace all your light bulbs in the house with those because then you literally can just go daylight, twilight, or nighttime." with one bulb.

That sounds really easy. Yeah, it sounds super easy.

I'm building a new house in Idaho right now and that's where that's going to be. And then, one other thing is that I mentioned that you can photosynthesize like a plant with certain pigments. You may have heard of some of these, Jenn. If you consume shilajit, pretty popular, it's an adaptogenic herb for energy, which is dark black, or you consume anything from the bluish-green spectrum, like spirulina or chlorella or that overpriced bluish-green algae juice from the cold-pressed juicery or whatever, like the bluish-green stuff. Yeah.

Or— Oh, wait, you mean the blue spirulina, that blue, that one? Yeah.

The blue is the best one, but the greens work too. Okay. Or, methylene blue, which is that supplement that a lot of biohackers use for cognition or some people are using it for viruses and stuff like that. The dark blues, the dark greens, and the dark blacks of the plant kingdom allow you to absorb a higher number of photons of light specifically from red light spectrum. So, this would be like, "Hey, I want to get the most energy and the most ATP production out of my infrared sauna session or out of my overpriced trip to go lay on a red light bed at a health club or whatever." You take shilajit and/or algae and/or methylene blue beforehand and it's crazy. I mean, I've done this several times. The amount of energy you get is through the roof when you combine that stuff with light therapy. Really? Yeah, it's kind of cool. So, the body can kind of sort of photosynthesize a little bit like a plant if you have the right pigments, these blacks, these dark blues, or these dark greens in your bloodstream.

So, what would we see happen? That's amazing. I always see you— Or energy.

I feel like you're on a cup of coffee IV.

Okay. So, where would people find this methylene blue? I see a lot of people in their mouth. I think you've done it a bunch. I've seen you with it a bunch of times. Do you do it every day? Do you just put it in your mouth and then go sit in the sauna or what's the—

Yeah, a few subtle pieces about methylene blue is first of all, it does turn everything blue. Walls, toilet bowls, everything. So, you do need to be careful if you use it as a supplement. Second, it is also used as fish tank cleaner. Don't get fish tank cleaner because it's not pharmaceutical-grade methylene blue, but that also means it has antiviral, antibacterial, and cleansing properties that dictate that very similar to something like say ozone therapy, you shouldn't do it every day because you don't want your body to be totally wiped out from a bacterial standpoint. You don't want a hyper-clean body. Part of the way our immune system and our microbiome functions is via certain bacterial amount and exposure to viruses and things like that. So, the gold standard protocol for methylene blue is typically 3 to 5 days of the week you take it, a small amount, and then you have a few days where you don't take it. And even though the blue mouth thing is great for companies for marketing it, It's called a troche. You let it dissolve in the lower or upper lip so it's being absorbed through the buccal membrane. I nowadays mostly just use a dropper bottle that I put right at the back of my throat because it doesn't turn my mouth blue and it still gets absorbed. And the one that I use is made by a company called BioBlue and it's just a dropper bottle with— it's actually methylene blue and then I think there's some NAD and some minerals in it. So, it's a good formula.

So, it's BioBlue. And so, basically, then you go sit in the sauna or do any of the earthing things and it will— Yeah.

In the sauna, go for a walk in the sunshine. It's not going to do much for the earthing piece, but anything involving light, yeah. Light, light, light.

That's what I meant. Sorry. The lighting piece, right. Okay. That's a good one to know. And you can buy this wherever. Okay. So, give me another one. Give me a couple more. Okay.

I'll give you— So, even though heat and cold are really important not only for that whole kind of comfort crisis thing I was talking about where throwing temperature dysregulation at your body so you have more stress resilience, more conversion of metabolically inactive white fat to metabolically active brown fat, more production of heat shock proteins, better heart health, better detoxification, better mood, There's all sorts of benefits of heat and cold, and they also can assist with blood flow and lymph flow through the body, which helps with electrical stabilization. So, even though I think that heat and cold are important, we'd be here another 2 hours if we got into the subtle nuances of those, but include heat and cold in addition to grounding and sunshine. But more importantly, because this is what is used to actually carry charged ions through your body, make sure that you have access to very good pure clean filtered water with a high intake of minerals both from food and water sources. Meaning, eat produce grown organically in mineral-rich soil. Use liberally throughout the day things like the LMNT electrolyte packets or Quinton or whatever your favorite electrolyte or mineral is that's a good clean mineral source. I'm a total salt nerd. If you go out to dinner with me, I open up my fanny pack, I always have an electrolyte packet in there, my digestive enzymes, and typically some kind of really, really good salt like a Florida Cells or a Kona black salt or a Mexican Coast salt or some type of really good salt because not only does It doesn't make food taste great, but it's also wonderful for carrying these charges through the body, for keeping the body's battery charged. And, salt is unfairly vilified primarily because sodium chloride, a component of salt that's added to heavily processed foods often used as a cheapo table salt on the counter, it's good for iodine because a lot of it's iodized, but because it's sodium chloride, that is not balanced with the 70+ other minerals that you find in real salt. Right. It's not so great for blood pressure. And so, use salt liberally but not isolated sodium chloride. Instead, use salt that's got magnesium, potassium, calcium, sodium, trace minerals. And so, just be very cognizant of not only drinking really, really good water that will help to carry that charge to the body, but using salts and electrolytes liberally. And so, if you're moving well, you're eating naturally, you're getting outside barefoot using grounding and earthing technologies, you're getting out in the sunshine and/or using red light technologies, you're engaging in some aspect of heat on a regular basis, some aspect of cold on a regular basis, And then, finally, drinking good clean pure filtered water and adding minerals liberally in throughout the day. That's going to be a really good way to keep the body's battery charged. I love this.

Okay. I have a question. What do you think of hydrogenated water? Is that a myth? Is it accurate? What do you think about it?

Hydrogen has been studied for about 25 years. For its ability to be a reductive agent within the body, meaning it can donate an electron. And when you donate an electron, what you can do is quell free radicals and reduce oxidative stress, two things that can accelerate aging and contribute to inflammation and long-term organ damage. So, because hydrogen can do that, if you add hydrogen into water, which allows it to dissolve in the water usually in tablet form and be absorbed, it can be a really great way to heal inflammation and fight oxidation. The only thing you need to be careful of is that the source of the hydrogen tablets matter. I've tested many of these brands. You can get a hydrogen water tester. It actually uses methylene blue as the agent. And, it's a very, very low what's called ppm of hydrogen that they give you, which is kind of a waste of money. But, if you're getting a good amount of hydrogen in the water, the one I'm using right now is made by Water and Wellness. I think a guy named— a really good source on this is Alex Tarnava and then also the Molecular Hydrogen Foundation, which is run by Tyler LeBaron. Alex Tarnava, and Tyler LeBaron are two guys I trust in the molecular hydrogen space. And, Alex, I think, helped to develop the hydrogen tablets for Water and Wellness. I also like the Echo Bottle if you want a bottle that will make hydrogen water for you without needing to add the tablets. That's another good brand. I've tested the PPM on it and it's actually almost double what you get from hydrogen tablets. It's inconvenient because you got to let it run for 10 minutes after you put your water Wait, I've got 2 questions.

I just got one. This is not an advertisement for Therasage. I know I brought them up 5 times and it wasn't on purpose, but they just came up with a hydrogen bottle. Can you check it out? Let me know what your thoughts on because I don't really know much about this space of hydrogen water. I'm learning it now.

I never trust the manufacturer. I literally, you can go to Amazon, and order an at-home hydrogen tester and then just test. And, some of them will say, "Oh, we make 4 ppm hydrogen," and it'll be half. So, usually, if I want to test something, I don't just ask the manufacturer for a laboratory certificate of analysis, I just test it myself just to make sure.

You could test it yourself. Okay. So, is it better to even try a bottle versus the tablets? I also just tried in front of me here is Life Force. I think right over there. Have you heard of the ones that are in the pouches and they're hydrogenated water? Are those good?

Yeah. So basically, I haven't used the Life Force before. This sounds like a really silly metric, but one thing to think about is look at how much the hydrogen bottle costs. Now, the hydrogen bottle is cool because I mean even though they'll only last for about, I think it's on average 200 to 400 cycles depending on the bottle, before they start to produce less hydrogen. They do produce, if you let them run for 10 minutes, twice as much hydrogen as a whole bunch of hydrogen tablets. And long-term, if you do the math because hydrogen tablets aren't cheap, you do save money. You just got to plan ahead when you— I usually have my hydrogen water in the afternoon and I just put it on at some point after lunch and then come back and drink it 10 minutes later. It's kind of silly, but It is difficult to make a good hydrogen bottle and sell it at a decent enough margin to keep your company in business for less than about $150. So, if you see some hydrogen bottle on Amazon or on a website or whatever for $70, $80, $90, I'm not saying it sucks, but I'm questioning how that company is staying in business with enough high-quality components to produce adequate hydrogen in that water and continue to do so for at least a couple of hundred cycles. So, that's just something to think about. I know it's kind of a silly metric and sometimes it backfires, but I would just consider, well, how much does it actually cost? That's one metric to look at. And then, just get a simple cheapo hydrogen water testing kit, hydrogen PPM testing kit on Amazon. You can test it yourself in 5 minutes.

I like that. What do you think of the genetic tests that are all the rage right now for people to get their baseline health? And then kind of moderate from there, you know. People like Gary Brecka is talking about it all the time, and, uh, now it's become very popular because of, I guess, his popularity. Yeah. I think those are— do you think those are, uh, like a, a very— I, I guess like a baseline test that people should be, uh, spending money on, or the better test just getting a regular blood panel with sort and how many markers should people be looking for, all the things. Yeah.

It is important that you brought up that clarification about the markers and I'll tell you why. I'll warn you, I'll probably have to wrap things up in about 5 minutes or so.

Yeah. No, me too. I'm looking at the clock and I— Yeah.

Okay. So, if you were to come to me and you want to be one of my clients for coaching, I'm not using this to advertise. I'm just using this as an illustrative example. I would have you do a stool test for yeast, parasites, fungus, bacteria, et cetera, to see what's actually manifesting and going on in your gut that could be causing bloating, gas, insomnia, et cetera. I would have you test your hormones, but I would have you use a urinary test, which unlike the one-time snapshot or or limited amount of information a blood or hormone— hormone or a blood or a saliva hormone panel is going to give you. A urinary hormone panel gives you a 24-hour run-through of cortisol, testosterone, estrogens, etc. I would have you do a really good gold standard food allergy test to see if you actually are producing— if your white blood cells are actually producing an autoimmune reaction to problematic food components. Whether that's green beans or codfish or cow's milk or goat's milk or freaking castrated camel's milk or whatever. So, I test that. Usually, that's a Zoomer panel or a Cyrex panel. I would run a micronutrient panel on you to look at all the fatty acids and amino acids and fungal markers and neurotransmitter metabolites and all the things that a basic blood panel wouldn't be able to tell you. And then, I would run a basic blood panel on you, LDL, HDL, white blood cells, red blood cells. That's kind of the main one that a doctor will usually run. And then finally, I would have you do a salivary genetic panel. And that is the least interesting to me yet also does give valuable data. The reason it's the least interesting to me is because a salivary genetic panel can tell me, "Oh, Jenn has a— based on her genetic SNPs, she has a high genetic propensity towards inflammation, a low amount of collagen or tendon repair mechanisms, and would probably benefit from an exercise routine that involved, let's say, weight training no more than 2 times per week." because she just can't. See, look at her genes. They just say she can't recover any faster than that. But then, you come to me and you're like, "Dude, I want to get some guns. I feel like my glutes could be a little bit more shapely. I want to work on my abs." And, I'm looking at all your goals and thinking, "Oh, well, I'm probably going to have Jen in the weight room 3 or 4 times a week or whatever doing 45, 60 minutes of training." and I have you do that and your inflammation markers are fine, your CRP is low, you're not getting injured, your joints feel good, you don't have a bunch of delayed onset muscle soreness, I care way more about that and the readily identifiable acute blood markers than I do about your freaking genes that said that you just couldn't handle that. Yeah. And granted, I mean, I know that that might seem like it conflicts with what I said earlier about, well, maybe if the ketogenic diet helped your neighbor lose 20 pounds, it's going to screw you because you have genetic familial hypercholesterolemia or whatever. Yes, it's still a factor to pay attention to, but even then, if you came to me and you're like, Ben, I want to try keto, I just really like the idea of it, let's experiment with it for 4 weeks, I'd say fine, but I would actually measure cholesterol. I would ask you about, do you have uncomfortable bowel movements and fatty acids in your stool and undigested food particles? And, do you have brain fog? And, are we seeing elevated homocysteine and other blood markers? And, are what your genes are telling you actually manifesting epigenetically? And, I always am more concerned about what's actually manifesting than what's actually predictive data. Even though the predictive data can be helpful, it's not like the lowest hanging fruit for self-quantification, if that makes sense. Yeah, it makes perfect sense.

So you're saying all of these tests are what you would test for, first of all, because right now, and I know we should wrap it and we can do this again, but you're saying it— Jeanette, the genetic panel is like a fourth you know, 1/7 of all the tests that we should be taking. How many biomarkers are they amount to? Because I just did one with Blokes and Joy, which is one of these companies that does all your blood, and then they see, you know, they see what you're deficient in and they do a personalized program. And they did 76 markers. Is that what you would do to number of markers?

Not as important, of course, as what's actually being tested because you test for 76 markers and it could be like half of that could be lipids and then the rest of it could be some chronic stealth coinfection like 18 different variants of a Lyme or fungal marker, which is great. But, if you're looking at the lowest-hanging fruit, if I could do— and this is super rough math in my head, If I were to have a client and they were to run through all those tests that I just talked about, absent the genetic test, which in and of itself is hundreds of markers, we're probably looking at around 150 markers that I'm actually opening up PDFs of and going through and taking notes about. I should clarify, I'm not a doctor, I don't give out medical advice, but all I tell my clients is, "Hey, here's what I'm seeing, here's what I would think about if I were you." and in your shoes. So, I need to be very clear, I'm not ever giving prescriptive advice. I'm not qualified to do that. I can't put someone on a medication. I can't even order a test for somebody. You got to order the test yourself. I'm just a brain who's on the other end helping with interpretation. So, I should clarify that, but usually it's around 150 markers that I'm looking at.

And, you're a big brain. Why urine testing for hormones, not blood test?

Because if you're doing urine, you're literally peeing anywhere from 5 to 6, sometimes 8 times a day. Yeah. Looking at the natural, not diurnal but multiurnal variation of hormone markers that occurs through the day. A single snapshot of blood can tell you something. Or, if a dude does a free blood testosterone test and I see his free testosterone is maybe 20 to 25x less than total testosterone because ratios are more important than the actual value, I like to see free testosterone anywhere from about 12 to 15 times less than total testosterone. So, I look more at ratios. But, if I see that it's super low, I don't need that guy to go out and do a 24-hour urinary hormone test if his free T is just rock bottom. But, in most cases, especially if someone is testing hormones because they're not sure, maybe it's not super low on a blood test, something's going on, they're fatigued, they're not sleeping well, Well, then I could look like a urinary test, for example. I know we're getting in the weeds again, so I'll be real quick about this, then we can wrap up. The urinary test, for example, let's look at cortisol. Well, it will not only tell me what your cortisol levels are, but it will tell me what the metabolites of the cortisol are. Meaning if you have really high cortisol on blood panel, I don't know if that's because you're super stressed out and you're not sleeping well and maybe you're pushing your body too hard in the gym and you're just jacked up and you're churning out a ton of cortisol, or maybe you're actually hypothyroid and have a sluggish thyroid. And what I would actually see if I were to test metabolites is a very low clearance of that cortisol, a low cholesterol or low cortisol metabolite count. Because that high cortisol is due to thyroid issues or metabolic issues, not due to stress and endocrine disruption related to stress. So, the urinary panel, if you're looking at this from a detective work standpoint, can just allow you to learn way more about what's going on with hormones and also understand why what's going on is going on, whereas blood can be helpful but it's still just a snapshot that doesn't tell you the whole picture.

I love that. And then the other thing is, and they say it really quickly, and then we can do this again because I want to talk about testosterone for 2 seconds because it's a big hot topic, uh, in middle age. Everyone I know is taking testosterone over the age of 35 or maybe 40. Um, and what I think you said to kind of bring it all back and loop it back to the beginning is these people are— I mean, we were— I was under the impression— I'm not on anything, and but what I was thinking is that if people are working out so hard, they're thinking that they're going to increase their testosterone from all the weightlifting and from the strength training. But you're saying, in your opinion, it actually can be detrimental if you have— it can actually lower your testosterone if you're working out too much or too, too often, basically.

Yeah, to a certain extent. Depends who I'm talking to, right? Like, there's— I'm always careful because, like, I think more people need to hear, like, go eat a shit ton of protein and hit the gym than need to hear the gym is going to kill you and protein is going to shorten lifespan, bro. Totally true. Excessively stimulating mTOR, right? So we have to bear in mind who we're talking to, but there is a subset of the population, gym rats, exercise junkies. Back when I was racing Ironman, I certainly fell into this category who just think that fitness is synonymous with health and fitness is synonymous with proper endocrine function. And, it's not. And, in many cases, especially with chronic cardio, if you're excessively doing aerobic exercise, you're stripping away fatty acids, you're churning excess cortisol which is stealing another upstream metabolite called pregnenolone from being able to produce testosterone, you're downregulating some of the signals from the hypothalamus to the testes to produce luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone to actually produce testosterone. So, you're causing a bunch of issues when you're excessively exercising. On the flip side, there's a large number of androgen receptors in the legs. One of the best ways to increase testosterone if you're training and training intelligently is to do squats and deadlifts and leg presses and Romanian deadlifts and glute thrusters and really use your legs and not be the guy with a big upper body and toothpick legs or the girl who never does leg day because testosterone is important for women too. So important. So yeah, if you're eating adequately, let me say it like this. Let's say you're concerned about testosterone. And, what I'm about to say is the equivalent for men or women. I mean, I've become increasingly aware, especially via some podcasts I've done lately with functional medicine practitioners who are women, that testosterone is very important for women. I had my wife do her test. She actually did her urinary test. Her levels are fine, so my wife is not on testosterone, but many women, especially perimenopausal women, benefit from beginning testosterone. But, let's say that you want to optimize testosterone levels and you don't want to get on testosterone replacement therapy. First thing I'm looking at is vitamin D, boron, magnesium, fish oil, creatine, amino acids, lifting heavy weights with the legs, sleep, cold exposure, sunshine, low amounts of stress, good amounts of relationships. That was 12 things, right? But, if you look at those 12 things alone, most people if they got all those dialed in are not going to have hormone issues or at least are going to have far less hormone issues, especially testosterone issues if they just tackle those variables alone. And then, if you're doing all that stuff and you feel really good, you're like, "Dude, I want to see how I feel on—" I have some guys ask me this. They're like, "Hey, my testosterone levels are at 600. I know a lot of people. I listen to Joe Rogan and I want to get my levels up to 1,000 and just see what that feels like because I want to be a beast." Then, I say, "Okay. So, if you want to do that, I kind of like the idea of a very small amount of testosterone cream." applied scrotally in the morning and again in the evening because that very closely mimics the natural diurnal variation of testosterone in a male versus injecting once or twice a week, which is a huge bolus of testosterone, which can cause things like excess DHT, aromatization to estrogen, man boobs, hair loss, mood issues, et cetera. So, even the form of testosterone replacement is important, but first address those other variables, right? Boron, zinc, magnesium, creatine, vitamin D, fish oil, amino acids, lifting weights with the legs, sunshine, sleep, low stress, and relationships. Start there for the testosterone piece. Move on to get a little bit more if you want to with Better Living Through Science. But, that's kind of the deal for testosterone.

That's a really good explanation. By the way, what's boron? So, is it a supplement? It's a mineral, yeah. Mineral. Okay. Boron, you said vitamin D, creatine.

What kind of amino acid? Essential amino acids. Essential. Okay. Minimum of 10 grams, up to 20 grams a day.

Okay. Okay. By the way, so good you are. Really. I think that you're like a walking encyclopedia beyond. When can I ask— when can we do this again? Because I have like— I didn't even— I don't know if you noticed, I was taking notes like a school kid here over here for myself.

What is it? Let's do it again in August. I've got my— yeah, let's do it again in August. It gives us a month or so.

I think you're just like— I would like to do— I wasn't joking when I said it, actually. I'm like, "You know, that's not a bad idea." I'd like to do a series because I can pick up any area and you can go— I can leave the mic. I could just kind of walk away and go work out and you could just talk for an hour on anything. It's pretty incredible, Ben. You are really, you are incredible. I have to say, you guys, if you haven't seen the Boundless— no, you are. It's amazing. It really is. If you— I know this is an old book, but you did revise it. The Boundless book is so good. It's heavy as hell. It's great just to plop down on a coffee table because it will take someone a lifetime to read through it. Everything you do. I think you have such great information. You're so knowledgeable. It's actually a pleasure talking to you, really.

Thank you for being on here. Well, thanks. And I did rewrite Boundless. The new version will be up in January. But I tell you what, what I'll do is after we finish here, I'll send an email to you and my team and tell them, "Hey, look, let's do August and we'll just find a time." That way, we get another one while it's fresh in our minds. And then, maybe when I'm down LA in October, we could take some listener questions or whatever.

That would be really— I would love that. That would be amazing. And I also want to— there's a thing I want to invite you to. I don't know what your schedule is, but I'll get your information and we can kind of figure it out. But seriously, you guys, Ben Greenfield, you're so good. Like, next level good. Thank you so much for being on this podcast.

Thank you. Sweet. Thanks, Jen. That was fun.