Biohacking Creativity, How Much Coffee You Should Drink, Ben's Spiritual Awakening & Much More With Pastor Lyle Phillips.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast, if you're looking for something that is a little bit friendlier to the pocketbook because supplements are expensive. Sure. The old school writer's friend of cup of coffee and cigarette. Yep, you replicate that with cup of coffee. What you do, and this is a relatively inexpensive supplement, is you get the supplement called L Theanine.

Okay.

Yeah, it's a powder you can find anywhere. About 100 milligrams paired with a cup of coffee causes the coffee to have a longer, slow bleed into the system. And L. Theanine shifts you into alpha brainwave mode to enhance creativity. And it's just a cheap hack for a cup of coffee. And yes, even though you wouldn't necessarily want to smoke a cigarette back to the temple, you can use sources of nicotine that wouldn't really have many of the artificial sweeteners or anything in them at all. I think the best one for that is they make nicotine toothpicks. So you can literally have a nicotine toothpick, like a cigarette sticking out of your mouth, cup of coffee with a little L. Theanine in it. And that's like a dirt cheap hack lot of people don't know about. That'll get you through hours upon hours of writing.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

Let's talk detoxification. There's a lot of mixed messages in the media now about detox. Do you need a detox? Do you not need to detox? Do you need to do the Fancy Ayurvedic like 12 week diarrhea protocol? Do you need to spend, you know, 30 bucks a day on a fresh pressed juice with 18 pounds of cilantro in it? The idea is you do need detoxification support sometimes. Some of these detox remedies, though, they kick your butt and they leave you like on the toilet all the time or they're incredibly expensive or very inconvenient. So that's where this stuff called push cat liver detox comes in. It's made by my friend, Dr. Chris Shade. Incredibly smart dude. He's been on my podcast before. He heads up this company called Quicksilver Scientific. So what Quicksilver Scientific did is they created this very simple two step protocol designed to support detoxification and removal of toxins from your body in a very quick and efficient manner. So improperly designed detox programs neglect removal. So sometimes they'll bind the toxins, but Then they wind up in nasty places like your brain. Quicksilver doesn't do that. They have toxin recirculation avoidance so the toxins don't recirculate through your body by pushing toxins through the bile into your gut then catching them with a binder for a safe and effective detox. Hence the name Push Catch Liver detox. So they have what's called liver sauce and ultrabinder. It's one, two step in this push Catch liver detox. So it boosts bile flow, hepatic detoxification pathways intercepts mobilize toxins in the gut for a very seamless, highly effective detox experience. That break the bank, that doesn't empty your wallet and that doesn't leave you in the bathroom all day. So I highly recommend Quicksilver Scientific because they take and make supplements that actually work in your body and they're giving all my listeners a big fat 15 discount. You visit quicksilverscientific.com and use code GREENFIELD15 for 15 off your purchase. That's quicksilverscientific.comben and use code GREENFIELD15 for fifteen percent off your entire purchase purchase. Enjoy. You may have been at like a gas station or convenience store or a random grocery store, whatever and you see these horribly branded sexual enhancement pills, you know, erection pills, whatever you want to call them. And those can be tempting, right? Throw them back and get a insty pleasurable experience. But we're talking about like four hour erections that won't go away and nasty side effects and heart issues and sweaty palms and a possible trip to the the hospital to get rid of that thing. And these are pharmaceuticals or they're crappy herbal compounds that are somewhat effective I guess with a ton of nasty side effects. So there is one natural sexual performance booster that I will stand behind. It's called Joy Mode. Joy Mode. So what it's got is L citrulline, arginine, yohimbine and vitamin C. What those first three components do, the L citrulline, the arginine and the yohimbine is they cause nitric oxide production, penile tissue relaxation. They work for women too do in your sex organs and increase sex drive. And the antioxidant vitamin C protects the nitric oxide from getting degraded and enhances the blood flow promoting effects of nitric oxide. So it's a very intelligently designed sexual performance enhancing supplements, a little powder. You tear open the sachet. By the way, it's amazing as a pre workout too if you happen to need A pre workout in a pinch you put in a little bit of water, just like an electrolyte and you do this like 45 minutes up to 4 hours prior to sexual activity. You get better blood flow, you get better erection quality and firmness, better orgasm for both males and females, better sexual energy, better sex drive and just overall an amazing experience without nasty prescription drugs or weird gas station pills. I'm going to give you a special offer for this Joy Mode stuff. You go to usejoymode.com greenfield that's usejoymode.com greenfield or you can just enter Greenfield on their website at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's joy mode.com greenfield Enjoy your joy Mode. Haya no seriously. Haya. It's a kid's multivitamin. It's amazing.

Most kids multivitamins, they got 5 grams.

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They can contribute to health issues.

Paradoxically, this Haya stuff, they make it with no sugar, no gummy junk, but it tastes amazing. Kids love it. It's a pediatrician approved super powered chewable vitamin. Okay, again, typical children's vitamins, they got like two teaspoons of sugar in them. They're basically candy in disguise. But Haya not only fills all the common gaps in modern kids diets to provide full body nourishment that children need with a yummy taste that kids love. But they've got vitamin D, B12C zinc, a whole host, 15 essential vitamins and minerals to support immunity and energy and brain function, mood, concentration, your child's teeth, their bones. But it's also guilt free, non gmo, vegan, dairy free, allergy free, gelatin free, nut free, everything else you can imagine. They designed this for kids of all ages. They send it straight to your door so parents have one less thing to worry about. And, and my kids love it. Everybody that I've showed it to, all the parents who children have tried it swear by this stuff. It's a multivitamin that parents can give to their kids guilt free and it fills all the gaps in so you don't have to worry about your children's nutrient and micronutrient status. Now here's the cool thing.

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So hiahealth.com Ben Hey. The following is a conversation with my friend Lyle Phillips. Lyle's a pretty cool cat. He's actually the lead pastor of a legacy church in East Nashville. He has a very cool backstory. You should look into him. Got rescued from a lifestyle of drugs and street living to running an amazing church down in Nashville. I've gone there and just the singing and the worship service alone is like nothing else you've ever experienced. So anyways, he and I have become friends. He just started a podcast called Conversations and we had a conversation on Conversations and we went into things that I don't think pastors talk much about, like smart drugs and nootropics and productivity and breath work and a whole lot of other cool, cool things. So the shownotes for this one you can find@BenGreenfieldLife.com Lyle that's BenGreenfieldLife.com L Y L E and this is interesting. In the weeks following this chat and chats with some other pastors, people who take care of congregations, people who are pretty, you know, smart and well versed when it comes to, say, religion, but perhaps not as well versed when it comes to health, I decided to arrange an event at my house. I am opening up my own home in October to a very, very small number of individuals. October 17th through the 20th, specifically pastors. I'm going to take maximum of 12 guys in, take you under my wings, feed you through the fire hose, teach you breath work, make you meals, and teach you how to make healthy meals, how to choose ingredients, the type of supplement, supplements that do and do not work, how to do body weight workouts, how to use workout technologies to enhance your fitness without breaking the bank, how to sleep better, how to breathe better. We're going to be doing cold tubs and ice baths and sauna and breath work and movement and hiking and amazing meals. And I'm not charging anything for this. Not charging anything for this. This is my ministry. This is me giving back. The only thing I'm asking guys to do is of course pick up your plane ticket to Spokane, throw a few nickels into the hat for some of the food costs for the week. And that's not going to be very much. So anyways, all the information on this you can find@BenGreenfieldLife.com WarriorsForGod that's BenGreenfieldLife.com Warriors For God and there's a Little form that you can fill out there if you want to be considered for attendance. So that's it. And let's move on to the conversation with Lyle.

Welcome back to Conversations podcast with Pastor Lyle. Today I am joined by my new friend, Mr. Ben Greenfield. How you doing, bro?

I'm pretty good. Especially considering this is, like, the first church I think I've ever been to that has a fancy toilet with the bidet.

Yes.

Literally, like in the. In the sanctuary, whatever you want to call it over there. Yep, that's. You guys have stepped it up.

What'd you think about that?

I mean, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this on your podcast, but there's even, like, all the way down to organic tampons. Like, you guys have it really figured out.

That's exactly right. Yeah, we're trying to, you know, biohack the church, bro.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's probably a phrase you never heard before.

Biohacking church. No, I haven't heard that a lot, but a lot of Christians are unhealthy, Starting with the warm water bidet. Seems like a good way to go for. For me.

Let's go, man. Let's go. Well, for some of you guys, you may not know Ben. You've never been exposed, perhaps, to his work, to his books. I have an amazing book of his right here, which is massive. You could knock somebody out of this, bro.

You could.

Boundless.

Yeah, it was meant to be a workout tool.

The first book of yours I ever read was beyond training, and I had the Kindle version. Was it this big? Physically?

No, it was smaller than that. I kind of wanted people to buy two so they could do their bicep curls with the. With the boundless book. But no, that one is big. That one took me three years to write and just, like, pull together all the information. I'm actually working on an update to it now, but I was telling you before we started recording, I just wrote the equivalent of that for parenting, for family and parenting and education and legacy and discipline, and it's called Boundless Parenting, and it's that big. But in my opinion, more meaningful than a book that teaches you how to, like, live a long time and have six pack abs. This book is about legacy and generational wealth and educating your children and defying the status quo and creating young human beings who are resilient and free thinking and creative. And as a. As a dad and a husband who's grown to appreciate faith and family even more than fitness now.

Yes.

Like, it's It's. I'm like, pinch me now. I'm dreaming now. The book's actually, like, being shipped out and people are getting it and posting pictures of it.

So are you getting some good feedback of people doing what's in the book and seeing immediate fruit with their children?

Oh, yeah. I've had multiple parents write in. Several of them have children who are now in prison. A few others have kids who are addicted to sugar. No, I'm just kidding. I've gotten very little feedback so far about the, the book from. Because people. I mean, as we're sitting here talking, like, people are literally just now, like, posting on Instagram and stuff, having got. But, but the pre reads I've gotten from, from people have been like, yes, there is no book that exists like this. I basically crowdsourced 33 different sets of parents, from pastors to educators to epidemiologists, to all these folks, to get the best of the best wisdom and knowledge from as many people as I could. Come on. And then put it all together in like, this cookbook for parenting.

Wow.

Yeah.

I think the first parenting book of yours that I read was also a Kindle version, a digital version, a teeny.

Tiny book I wrote. Yes. When, when my, my sons were like six. And so of course I had the whole parenting game figured out.

Figured out, yeah.

All figured out. Because, you know, the picture on the front is one of my sons, like, swinging his kettlebell, his first kettlebell in the backyard. And it's all about, like, how your kids should be barefoot and why you should let them, like, lick the floor and get kissed by the dog and how to work out with your kids and how to arrange the house so that they don't get exposed to, like, dirty electricity and lighting for their optimized circadian. Basically, like how to biohack a superhuman kid. Wow. Which is kind of like, I gotta go back and read. For the, for the first probably eight years of my kid's life, I was pretty gung ho. Like, these are gonna be little, like, you know, 4am Burpees and kettlebells, ice baths at 7, liver at 8 for breakfast type of kids. And I backed way off on it.

Okay.

I mean, we're, we're, we're pretty easy. I mean, we still do. For me, one of, one of the best parts of my week multiple times per week. That's like this father son bonding experience that I think is wonderful for adults and for children is we do breath work, heat, cold breath. So we, we have a sauna and we get in the sauna, I jack it up at like 5:30. We usually have our family dinner at like 7. Okay. And so about 5:30 I'll walk out of my office in the basement, turn up the temp of the sauna, and then I call my sons down at six and we all climb in the sauna. And it's already at like 160 degrees. And it's an infrared sauna.

Okay.

An infrared sauna makes light that heats up your tissues way more deeply and effectively than like a traditional dry sauna.

Right, right.

Steam sauna. I think infrared sauna, even though they consider it to be like a bastardization of sauna culture, if you'd ask somebody from Finland, right. Where saunas are really big and where all the research has been done on dry saunas, there's a lot happening in terms of like the photons of light exciting your mitochondria and causing this deep release of toxins and metals that occurs when you're in infrared.

Okay.

So we get in the infrared and we dive into about 20 to 40 minutes of breath work. And it's a lot of kind of like Wim Hof style stuff. This is not like sit and breathe and dwell on your positive affirmations. Very intense. I mean to the point where right now we're, we're training for free diving trips. We're doing a lot of exhale, hold, inhale holds. So we do 20 to 40 minutes. So my sons are learning how to turn up or turn down the dial on their nervous system, control their physiology, control their stress, focus through something hard where you're not moving in a seated lotus position. And then once we finish and we're drenched in sweat and our heart rates are through the roof and brains are just completely flooded with oxygen, we blown off a bunch of CO2 and everybody's veins are dilated from all the nitric oxide going through their systems. These are, these are my twin 14 year old sons. Then we march out this time of year through the Snow, barefoot, like 50 yards out to this little wooden shelter I have out in the forest back behind our house where we've got this giant cold. It's one of those old like fitness swimming pools with like the endless current that you swim against.

Yes.

But I turned it into get into an icy, amazing plunge. So we get in the plunge and we do the ice and then we go in, get ready to have dinner.

Okay.

And it is amazing for any human being to incorporate heat and cold and breath work. And so of all the things that are in that tiny superhumans book. The one thing that really stuck was we do heat, cold, and breath work.

Incredible.

It's. You feel so good, it's almost addictive.

Should we be doing this with our children? My son is eight.

There's, like, Scandinavian and Russian populations and, you know, even native American lore of people literally, from the time their kids are nearly newborn, throwing them in icy cold rivers and lakes and oceans and getting that mammalian dive reflex that occurs when you take that sharp breath in when you're first born, re triggering that over and over again through a child's early years of life. As we wait for the social workers to knock on the door of the church here, of course, yeah, drag us away.

They're irate at this point.

For all the hypothermic children, basically, it's great for a kid's immune system. It's great for a kid's nervous system and stress tolerance. It helps to convert their white adipose tissue into this metabolically active brown fat that keeps them warm and keeps their metabolisms elevated. I think it's fine for your kids to get started with cold as early as possible. I mean, you know, with my kids, when we take a shower, I'd put the water on cold. When I go swimming, they'd be on my back, you know, in the pool.

Yes.

You know, they've just always grown up with this notion that cold is not something to be feared. That you can go outside during their home school, but, you know, go outside during the. The school day and be like, have your shirt off and be barefoot and be walking around the snow, and that's perfectly fine and actually good for you.

That's amazing.

I think that humans who embrace cold and who even, like, live through winters versus all of you weaklings here in Tennessee who freak out when ice develops in the windshield.

Some.

The whole city right now, by the way, shut down. No one's doing 45 degree rain anyways, though. So I think that winter and cold definitely has this resilience effect on the human body. That's probably why you see, like, the seals getting cold and hypothermic in the water. And it's why you see, you know, the Russians doing their cold bath, and it's. There's definitely something to it.

That's amazing, man. I know for me, anytime I've done cold, like a ice bath, and I used to do it a lot more often than I do today, the effects of it, I mean, it's just huge. If you've never done it before, you.

Have to do it, it's hard not to feel good when you get out of the ice bath or down to the cold shower. And yeah, it sucks during. And there are certain things you can do to alleviate some of the suckiness. Like, you know, breath work beforehand.

Right.

That's how Wim Hof got popular, was he was fully in letting go. Fully in letting go. And you do that for, for three to four rounds, you know, with each fully in letting go being like 30 to 40 breaths. And with each, you're taking a deep inhale hold in the next.

All the air out. And you hold the exhale. And each exhale gets longer and longer. And when you do that, you get this flood of nitric oxide and warmth and blood through your body. That allows you to hold your breath longer, which you shouldn't be doing in cold water. You don't want to shallow water blackout.

Right.

But it also causes your body to be able to handle the stress a little bit better. So a lot of people will do like breath work and then get into the cold. That can make it easier. There are things that can accelerate your ability to be able to burn fat when you're doing cold, like green tea.

Okay.

One example, Bear brain, a common supplement you can get at a health food store. That'll do it. Caffeine can even accelerate it. Sure, that's another one. Getting the head wet early on in the process. A lot of people keep their head dry.

Yeah.

But if you can get your head wet.

Wet, right.

All the way under there, it activates that million dive reflex I was talking about.

Yep.

Triggering the main nerve that snakes through your body called the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve is responsible for turning up or turning down your nervous system. So when you get your head wet when you first get in, what that does is it allows your vagus nerve to help you to calm yourself down a little bit better.

Okay.

And then there's like, what would be called like a dorsal or stressed out, crouched over, rolled up in a fetal position. Almost like drawing. Let's say you're in the bath, drawing your knees up to your chest and putting your head down.

Right.

That triggers the body stress response. That's like, that's like the turtle mode, right? Yeah. Versus lay back. Put your head back luxuriously against the back of the tub or wherever else you're doing a cold soak and open up your body. Or if you're in the shower, open up your hands and your thumbs and turn your shoulders back. That pose sends a message to the body. It's Almost more like a power pose.

Yeah.

Oh, hey, I'm in control. Things are just fine here.

Fine.

This is good for me.

Yeah, I love this.

Exactly. And then finally there's like the people on Tick Tock or Instagram or whatever posting videos of them doing 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 15 minutes on these long ice soaks. That's. That intimidates a lot of people.

So do you need to do that?

No. You get benefits after, like, 10 seconds in terms of dopamine response and the adrenaline and epinephrine response. For me, most of the time it's two to a maximum of five minutes that I'll stay in the cold. You know, my. I'm skinny and I don't. I don't like being that cold anyways.

Right.

But you don't have to, like, do these super long, epic, you know, cold baths where, you know, you have your whole playlist pulled up and, you know, your family knows you're going to be in there an hour hogging the bathroom in the ice. No, these can be like, very brilliant. Quick cold shower after workout or. Or do a breath work session for 20 minutes in the sauna and then go jump in the cold for a couple minutes and then get out. Like, these brief bouts of cold are just fine.

I love that. Yeah, I love that. So if somebody doesn't have an ice plunge, for instance, because I would love to have one. And every time I get on Instagram or I go to websites to look, even these plastic barrels they're trying to sell for like, $799.

Overpriced caltrops.

Yeah.

What is happening with that? Do you just use your regular cold water in your shower? Because that doesn't seem cold enough for me.

What. What research. Research has shown is that 55 degrees or colder gives you an effect.

Okay.

It depends where you live, how cold the water will get, but they actually make you. Could I forget the brand, but you can look it up.

It's.

It's like probably the Google term would be like cold thermogenesis shower or something like that. They make shower head heads that will cool the water as it comes out of the shower.

Okay.

It's like a little chiller system on the shower head.

Yeah.

And I think that's like 70, 80 bucks that would allow you to take a super cold shower.

Okay.

The other hack is you can just go to the. The feed store and get a cattle trough for a fraction of the cost of these big tubs.

That's what I have.

Yeah. And you just fill that with water and drop by the gas station, grab some ice every now and again and keep it cold.

You get one for 100 bucks, by the way.

Yeah, Tractor supply. Yeah, exactly. And it doesn't have to be that cold. I mean, if you put ice in and it's like the fall or the winter, it's going to stay below 55 easily.

Yeah.

And then there's these nice biohacked systems like the Marazco and the cold plunge and the cold tub and a lot of these have actual chiller systems and ozone cleaning systems and all these fancy bells and whistles and. Yeah. In the middle of the summer it's 100 degrees out. Knowing there's something out in your backyard that's going to stay at like 33 degrees no matter what is nice, but it is expensive. The other thing you want to remember is if you have like one of those cattle troughs that you fill up with water and ice, it can get dirty. And the trick for that, if you don't want to constantly be changed out the water is every time you do it, just put a couple of tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide in.

Okay.

And it's easier on your body than chlorine easily cleans the water. If you have some funky friend who's getting in there too, or, you know, you. I don't know, you're just concerned from a hygienic standpoint that hydrogen peroxide is a good.

That'll do it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So the reason why I got into ice baths, to be honest, was probably from watching you watching Joe Rogan, watching other people who talk about it all the time for the mental benefits of it.

Yeah.

So as a pastor, for me, I'm constantly trying to figure out how to biohack my creativity.

Right.

I think that's how I found you. Because back in, let's see, when my wife and I first got married, 2013, 2014, I started watching CrossFit videos on YouTube because I was trying to figure out how do I increase my creativity quotient. I'm always writing, I'm always preparing sermons.

Kipping pull ups and cleaning jerks.

It didn't work as well as I expected, Ben.

Yeah.

But I think that's how I found you. So I'm wondering, aside from ice baths, is it really possible to hijack our creativity?

Yes.

Okay, how do you do that? Is there sort of some simple ways, small to big? Is there a spectrum?

Yeah, the, the. The so called limitless drug for pastors.

We need this.

Yes.

The, the Bradley Cooper of. Of Christ's kingdom.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, so hashtag goals.

Yeah. I mean you could put this into a few different categories when it comes to creativity.

Okay.

You can shift the brain into certain brainwave states, particularly like an alpha brainwave state. That would enhance creativity using external variables.

Okay.

Namely temperature regulation. Another one would be light and sound. Those would probably be the top three.

Okay.

Temperature regulation. We already discussed like, like if, if you are listening and can implement that cold shower, cold bath, regularly scheduled cold thermogenesis into your routine, you're automatically going to be able to shift your nervous system more into that alpha brain waves.

Before or after I go to.

Right, you would do it before. Ideally this would be like at the beginning of the day. If you can do like sauna, cold breath work at the beginning of the day, you're hitting three different variables that are all going to not only decrease stress but enhance creativity.

And also I'm a sermon prep protocol.

Right now with increased longevity. Yeah. So sauna, cold breath work in the morning. Doesn't be a long session, but it could. And if you don't have a sauna, it's okay to sit on your living room floor, do a 20 minute breath work session and then get in the cold. My one complaint, just slight rabbit hole here with a lot of these breath work apps is they're very new agey. Woo woo. Secular Whatever. You know, it's, it's either empty headed meditation and in scripture we're called to meditate upon God's word.

Yes.

And not just to empty our heads and allow, you know, whatever other entity might be in the room to take us over. Which can happen sometimes with meditation.

Yeah.

There's actually a great new book that just came out about this called the Enlightenment Trap.

No.

People are dying and getting possessed during meditation. A big part of that is they're not meditating on scripture or on God's word. No, it's written by Scott Cardi.

So. So it's, it's written by a non Christian.

Yeah, it's just about the dark side of new age and enlightenment and meditate meditation. It's a good book. Wow.

Not to get distracted.

It just came out. I don't even, I don't even know if I, I might have gotten an advanced copy. But it's, it's very, very interesting that people who are, who are kind of getting messed up from. And of course we know that can happen with things like ayahuasca and psilocybin and this whole plant medicine surge. But it can even Occur, you know, with, with meditation as well. Now back to the issue with a lot of these breath work apps that are all just like positive self affirmation, empty your head, you know, embrace the source or whatever right there. There's really not a whole lot that goes on during the breath work session that's uplifting from a spiritual sense. And my logic is if you're going to be sitting there for 20 minutes, you know, in addition to your breath, you might as well be focusing on something else. And my trick for this initially once I taught myself several different breathwork tactics like slow count, in for four, hold for two, out for eight or in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. Breathing. Yeah. Box breathing or like the Wim Hof style tactics was just to play soaking worship or some non lyrical uplifting.

Yes.

You know, almost. Almost like, like Christian music without lyrics.

Legacy, national habitation.

Yeah. Anybody's listening to soaking music.

What's it called? We did a soaking album.

Oh.

Each track is one hour long. So if you. Oh that's perfect for an hour then you can play one track. It's got four tracks, four hours for the album.

Yeah. And do. And just so you know, like I'll go back to my hotel room after this. I'm working on a cookbook right now.

Yeah.

And I've got a dinner tonight at 6:30. I'll put probably get to back to my hotel at 1:30 so I can embrace like the brain fog in the afternoon. And in my hotel room, the bed's five feet away. Do I crawl in there and take a little nap?

Yep.

I will get back to my hotel room, I'll sit on the floor of my hotel room, I'll do 20 minutes of breath work, I'll take a cold shower and then I'll jump into the cookbooks and you're ready. So this is what I'll be doing this afternoon.

Yeah.

Right. But you can either do music that's more uplifting or let's say you don't know what to do for breath work. You don't know when to breathe in, when to breathe out, you know when to do the hold, et cetera. My logic starting a couple months ago was why isn't there a Christian breath work app? There's some of like the Orthodox breath is prayer, like the Jesus prayer.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Breathe in. What do they say? Smell the flowers, blow out the candles. Right. So that's how you would do like breath is prayer. You smell the flowers, blow out the candle. So it's in through the nose, out through slightly pursed lips. And, and there's a variety of different breath prayers. There's even a whole book called Breath Is Prayer, which I think is fantastic. That's got about 25 different sections of scripture that can be used for breathless prayer. But, but the one, the earliest one practiced by like the early desert fathers and mothers was breathe in, oh Jesus, son of God. Breathe out, have mercy on my soul.

Wow.

Right. And that's a very, very simple breathwork routine where it's literally just for 10 minutes. Breathe in, oh Jesus, son of God. Breathe out, have mercy on my soul.

Wow.

But what I thought was, well, gosh, there's so much more that you could do with breath work just because it does shift you into almost like this receptive spiritual state. Yeah. You don't have to use breath work and biohacks to get close to God.

Sure.

But it is kind of cool that you can tweak your brainwaves in a way that opens you up spiritually, especially for. For conversations with God or to listen to his voice. And the silence. You know, I can hear God's voice in the still, small silence. Yes. I can hear God's voice in the still, small silence 90 seconds into an exhale hold during breath work. Even better. Which, which sounds kind of gimmicky, but it just is, you know, God. God gave us breath and there are certain ways that we can use our breath to enhance our ability to. To be spiritual.

Absolutely. So I do it before I get on stage on Sunday.

Yeah.

So, like, I'm standing backstage, I'm preparing to go up to preach, and I'm trying and tell me if I'm doing something wrong. I'm doing like the.

Yeah. Oh, no, that, that's, that's perfect. That's that Wim Hof style breath work that not only gives you confidence and swagger. Senior preacher swagger swaggering. But also the, the rush of oxygen to the brain that can help with, with your focus and the blowing off of the CO2, which can help you to manage anxiety. So, yes, there's, there's, there's something to that. If you were super wired up, you'd want to do inhales and long exhales if you were like nervous and, you know, but normally. Yeah, breathing yourself up, especially if you're confident, familiar with your congregation, you want to be a little bit more excited than, you know, so nervous about all these people you're going to go out and preach to. And I don't know if preachers use the same tactic as a lot of public speakers. Imagining everyone in the congregation naked.

I've never met one.

I'm guessing. Yeah, I'm guessing that's not something that's. That's done. Although it was a tip I was given once and 12 craziest tips I've been given for public speaking. And then I'll get back to the breath work was imagine everybody out there is naked.

Yep.

So that you think that they're just as nervous as you might be. And then I met this other guy who puts food in his. In his undershorts before he goes out on stage.

No way.

And he's a very well known, great speaker who I heard give a talk about how to give an effective speech. And he'll just be like, yeah, you know, I'll drop a few raisins down there or a little bit of leftovers from lunch. And he said, it's hard to feel uptight and nervous when you know you have food in your underwear.

No way.

Totally not joking. I never tried it. But this guy swears by a little bit of food in your underwear.

So just dump a casserole.

Granola bar. Casserole. Wow. Yeah. Little. Little green beans.

Dude, I've never heard of that.

Yeah, yeah, neither had I until I hear that. So anyways, what I decided to do a couple months ago was start to record breathwork apps or breathwork sessions. That would be, for example, the fruits of the Holy Spirit from Galatians. And that's the opening verse. And then, amazing. Three minutes of box breathing where you're dwelling upon that verse that's repeated a couple of times. And I've already had these in a bunch of audio sessions I'm going to release in an app soon. Amazing. And then move into your intense breath work for like two minutes. And on the inhale, you imagine breathing up all the fruits of the Holy Spirit. On the exhale, you exhale, hold, and it's all choreographed to music and everything. Amazing. And just listen and pray.

Come on.

And then you do another round. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Full inhale. Breathe in the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Full exhale. Pray.

Incredible.

So you do like three rounds of that and then finish with another three minutes of box breathing and then a final Lord's Prayer. And my idea, I mean, obviously the Bible's a big book, right?

Yes.

I already have like 30 different breathwork sessions mapped out on a Google Doc on my computer that. That I just need more time in the day to be able to record. But that's my goal is for Christians to be able to not have to own some kind of like a new agey Woo Woo app, to be able to do breath work and furthermore to come closer to the Creator and be able to enter into prayer in a deeper state.

Yes.

Through breath work.

This is incredible, bro. You're revolutionary for this.

I think it'll be really cool.

Thank you for doing this.

Yeah, I. I've seen a need for it for a long time and I think. And. And some of the sessions will just be super short. Some of the sessions will be like box breathing. Ten minutes of. Well, like, oh, Jesus, son of God, have mercy on my soul. Pray done.

Right.

And then others will be a lot more epic enough uplifting. And the first one I did is like 35 minutes long.

I can't wait to try this out.

Yeah. And so back to your question about creativity.

Yeah.

He called him breath work.

Okay.

Now I've kicked those horses to death. I think about as much as I can would be where to start. But then you've also, like I mentioned, got light and sound, Right? And sound. So the body can respond to photons of light. I mentioned when I was talking about the sauna, how light is able to do things like excite the mitochondria, the powerhouses of your cell. It's able to, when you see natural sunlight first thing in the morning, to be able to stimulate that cortisol awakening response that helps you to feel awake and alert. An illustrative example of that would be when I travel, to help me sleep, I use high doses of melatonin.

Okay.

And also, if I could show you my sleep scores, you know, here in Nashville, I'm sleeping eight and a half hours a night. Perfect sleep scores. And a lot of that's due to the melatonin that I take before I go to bed at night. Large amount. How much works?

When you say large amount, what do you mean? You talk about over 5 milligrams.

I use a 300 milligram melatonin suppository.

300 milligrams.

I get it from my friend in Sarasota, Florida. He's a doctor, Dr. John Laurence.

Wow.

He has a company called Mitozen. And normally that amount of melatonin would not be absorbed well orally and would result in a large peak followed by a drop that wakes you up. This by. By using the rectal delivery mechanisms gives you a slow release of melatonin all night long. You wake up and the problem is you're Groggy because the melatonin is still in your system.

Sure.

So I walk over to my hotel room window, I pull open the curtains. The sunlight comes in, hits my eyes, like in five minutes. I'm fine. As a matter of fact, if you take melatonin in the middle of the day, it won't make you sleepy if you're out in the light because the light shuts down that melatonin response.

No kidding.

So anyways, the. The reason I'm telling you this is that some form of light can be very stimulating for creativity and productivity. The two best kinds are red light delivered either intranasally or intracranially.

Okay.

And the same type of bright blue greenish spectrum from sunlight.

Okay.

Now, you could get all of that by just going out in the sunlight every morning before you start into your creative work.

Got it.

You could also, as an alternative to if you got to be indoors, or in addition to that, get two different kind of like, biohacking type of devices.

Okay.

One is called a voice V light. It's an infrared almost like a helmet that you put on that blasts your entire skull with infrared light. I do this 20 minutes in the morning, and it's like a cup of coffee for my brain. And there's a little probe attached to it that goes up your nose. They originally developed this for Alzheimer's and dementia.

Okay.

But it works fantastically for overall brain health.

So you've got a helmet on.

It's kind of like a helmet. It's not a full on helmet, but it's a bunch of. A bunch of lights that just get.

Are you doing breath work at the same time?

No, this is just first 20 minutes of writing for the day. That's what's on my head.

All right.

It's just like. And if you close your eyes, you can kind of sort of feel like this little buzzing hurt sensation.

Okay.

But you barely notice that it's on. Besides the fact that all of a sudden, just everything starts to go clear. Wow. That's. That's the first way that you could use light in addition to just natural sunlight. The second way is that the brain shifts into this gamma brainwave signal. Hyper creative, hyper focused Mode at about a 40Hz signal.

Okay.

And there's another company that makes a light very similar to the light boxes that they sell for seasonal affective disorder, such as you would put on your desk during the gray and dreary times.

I'm aware of those. Some of my friends, they suffer with seasonal depression.

Yeah.

So they'll put it.

That works fantastically.

So you could do that while you're writing a sermon, for instance.

Yeah. But there's one company called, I think it's. It's, it's Evy. I have one of these. I've had it for a couple of years now. It works really well. You press one button on it and it's like those seasonal effective disorder boxes. But it specifically creates the hertz signal designed for creativity focus.

Okay.

And so that is on my office desk. And usually what I do my first 20 minutes of writing for the day, I pull on the infrared light, I push that button. So basically I'm getting this 40 Hz signal of bright light from my desk and then the infrared light over my head.

Wow.

A lot of people don't realize how effective light is at shifting your brainwave state. The other one would be sound.

Okay.

Like I mentioned. So, so we, we've got breath work, heat, cold light, and then sound. You, you've probably heard of these apps that will produce like binaural beats to help you sleep. You know, based on the hypothesis that if you blast the left ear with 405 hertz and the right ear with 395 hertz, the delta on those is 10 hertz. So you shift yourself into like a 10 hertz alpha brainwave zone.

Interesting. I've done this on YouTube.

So like, I'll.

I'll put the headphones on during the sermon prep.

Yep. And most of these are designed.

Okay.

To be done with headphones.

Okay.

That's a mistake a lot of people don't make is unless you have like, I guess, surround sound speakers. We have a perfectly placed speaker on the left side of the desk and one on the right side of the desk.

Got it.

Headphones are best. And so some of these tracks or binaural beats are designed specifically to enhance creativity and focus and put you in kind of like that 10Hz all the way up to 40Hz brainwave zone. That would allow you to have enhanced creativity. Okay. I think the best one out there, I don't think it's even that expensive, is called Brain fm.

Brain fm.

Brain FM is designed and it's got like creativity, it's got focus, it's got like meditation, it's got sleep, like four different settings on it. That one works really well for anybody who likes to listen to external sounds to enhance creativity or focus. And if you, if you have headphones in particularly. Yep, that works really well.

Earlier this year, I made a pretty big statement that I think that when it comes to nad, Nicotinamide, adenine, dinucleotide. This molecule with great cellular protective and anti aging properties. When it comes to the bioavailability of it, I think that nothing beats, from What I've seen, NAD3, a version of NAD that's very bioavailable, difficult to find. But there is a new product that has added other proven longevity compounds, namely spermidine, niacinamide and resveratrol to the NAD3, making it the most complete and efficacious NAD supplement that I think exists anywhere. And it's called bio stack nad regen made by BioStack Labs. Nad regen, like regeneration. Now this is pretty impressive stuff. I'm popping three every morning right now. I'm also taking their cell shield. So those two in combination give an enormous age reversal longevity anti aging punch. When you get a three month supply of this stuff, they're going to send you a fourth bottle totally free. So you're getting a bottle completely free. You go to biostacklabs.com Ben BioStack B I O S T A C K labs.com Ben if you want to try this stuff out. So again, it's called NAD Regen. Lucy probably saw that smart drug movie called Lucy. It was like that other one called Limitless. Well, there actually is kind of sort.

Of the equivalent of a smart drug.

And it's called Lucy. It's an oral nicotine company, a modern oral nicotine company that makes nicotine gum and lozenges and pouches for folks who want the best, most responsible way to consume their nicotine. It's an adult product. You pop one, you get focus, you get clarity, you get better word recall and they taste amazing. And they aren't chock full of Frankenfuels like a lot of these gums out there are.

So the lozenges I think like the cherry ice one's amazing.

I really like the pomegranate gum. Those are probably my two top flavors. I use them in moderation, as you should too, because this product does contain nicotine and nicotine is an addictive chemical. But if you want to experiment with how you feel on nicotine, one of the old school nootropic brain enhancing compounds.

It'S out there and you want to.

Do so without doing things like, I don't know, smoking, you should check out Lucy's products. So you go to Lucy Co, Lucy L U C Y C O and you can use promo code BEN20BEN20. Use promo code BEN20 at checkout at Lucy Co and you're gonna get a big discount. So check them out. Nicotine gum, nicotine lozenges, nicotine pouches, but clean ones. So Lucy co and use code BEN20. All right folks, it's coming up. It's right around the corner. It's the Health Optimization Summit. Me and my entire family are headed to London for this thing and it is crazy amazing. It's this massive expo full of the best biohacks. You get to be ahead of the curve and see this stuff before it even hits the streets. You get entrance and access to all stages and breakout talks by an amazing variety of speakers. They've got 35 world class forward thinking speakers from the biohacking, nutrition, longevity, fitness, functional and preventive medicine fields. They've got next level exhibitors and workshops, amazing VIP experiences with parties, with gadgets, with refreshments, with priority seating, with upgraded goodie bags. And the list of speakers at this event is crazy. So it's happening June 17th and 18th this year. So it's coming up quick. Jim Kwik, Vishen Lakhani, Mimi Icon, my friend and dentist and former podcast guest, Dr. Dominique, Dr. Jolene Brighton, Dr. Mark Atkinson, Chris Gethin, Dr. Christopher Shade. The list goes on and on. Some of the best of the best speakers, the coolest crowd and the exhibition floor is absolutely mind blowingly amazing. Plus London is fun, great restaurants, cool people and it's a party. So if you want to go to this year's Health Optimization summit, here's how to get in with a discount that's going to give you 10% off of all the regular and the VIP tickets. So again, it's June 17th and 18th to the business Design center in London and here's your code. BenGreenfieldLife.comHOS23 that's BenGreenfieldLife.comHos23 use the code BenGreenfield for 10% off both regular and VIP tickets. That's Ben Greenfield for 10% off regular and VIP tickets. Enjoy.

I'm really fascinated by this and I'll, I'll tell you why. So like long before we met and I was mentioning this to you earlier, before we started going live like aniracetam, like which most people wouldn't have a clue what that is, but when nootropics kind of came on the scene and became more popular, at least from my perspective, stuff like that, pretty, I was pretty effective.

Nootropic, right?

Should I get it? But here's the thing, Ben, and tell me what you think it's like There was a certain level, I don't know if I should say conviction or because it was like personal conviction or it was holy spirit conviction. I was like, I don't know, is this right? Is this using drugs? So I just never tried it.

Right.

Like what do you think about that.

Big, big can of worms that you just opened up? So first of all, there's a few different directions that I could go with this. I want to make sure that I do do have a chance to tell you from a dietary and a supplement standpoint what would actually be effective and safe to enhance creativity. Or you've whatever flown to Tokyo and you got to give a sermon and you got there at 2am and the sermon's at 8. And what do I do? So let's address the ethical piece first.

Okay.

Is there any evidence in scripture that shifting one's state of focus or creativity is sin? Or is abusing the temple or is pulling others into sin causing your brother or your sister to stumble? I can't say that I'm aware of anything in scripture that forbids that, especially provided that there's no long term physiological damage that occurs because you're not drunk. The type of drug use actually. Well, the, the Bible specifically separates.

Yeah, go ahead. I think I know where you're going.

Sobriety from drug use for a specific reason for, for most of human history all the way up to present times, if you actually do the digging, drugs were used for the purpose of divining with the spirit world.

Right.

That and this, this is the definition of pharmakia. Right? Using drugs to divine with the spirit world.

Yes.

So when I step back and a lot of people hear pharmaculia and they're like pharmaceutical companies, evil conspiracy theory. You know, Pfizer has whatever.

Goat horns and devils in the basement. But that's not the case. They're drug company trying to help people and making some dumb profit driven mistakes along the way. But I don't consider that to be like the forbidden pharmacia that's in the Bible. So the, the reason that divination through the use of drugs, this so called pharmacia in the Bible is forbidden is because it is incredibly effective if you've actually used ayahuasca or psilocybin or anything like this in, in a set and setting that's not a rave or a club or you know, some party scene.

Right.

But with the intention to actually do things like ask Big G God or Little G God for answers or perhaps see what kind of entities Happen to be in the room with you at the time or be able to dialogue with someone from a distance who also happens to be on that same drug. Or if you're in the Amazon, I just interviewed a shaman in the Amazon about this. Go to battle with another shaman under the influence of something like ayahuasca.

Crazy.

It's totally crazy.

That's crazy.

But we don't live in a logical, rationale, materialistic, scientifically proven world. We live, we live in a world created by a spirit, by a God, by a deity. And there is magic and there are miracles and there is an entire Frank Peretti novel esque spiritual world that exists all around us.

This present darkness. Is that what it's called?

Present darkness in the darkness? You know, two examples or any of the modern work on, you know, the nephilim or you know, unseen realms.

Are you into that? Michael Heiser's books?

I'm, I wouldn't say I'm like into it, but I, I do find the whole idea fascinating. I was like creatures podcast at the music studio last night about. You realize like this stuff was given to us by the gods, like knowledge of music, knowledge of metallurgy, knowledge of instrumentation design, knowledge of makeup application, like if you read in the Bible. Exactly. Like this stuff was handed to us by the spirit world. We didn't come up with this on our own, so it is fascinating.

Oh, we're going deep now.

Yeah, we're getting away from creativity a little bit, but back to aniracetam. So the Bible separates drug use and pharmacia from the use of alcohol. Because while a red nosed alcoholic who is violating the laws of sobriety and temperance that were prudently laid down in particularly the Old Testament to allow for better societal stability in the same way that monogamy allows for better societal stability. Well, I think that is sound advice, but I don't see that the town drunk is having an issue with like demon possession or speaking to gods and other entities. And I actually think that that pharmakia, especially the modern infatuation with it and the fact that it's been placed upon a pedestal is like the path to spiritual enlightenment. Fragment is a very, very dangerous world indeed. However, I would separate both of those. Whether, whether we're talking about alcoholism and lack of sobriety and whether we're talking about pharmakia from the use of compounds or substances that enhances one's physiology or ability to focus. Because I realize that this is a little bit of a slippery slope fallacy. There are Foods that can shift your brainwave state to enhance creativity. Drugs aside.

Yeah.

This is kind of interesting because there's this whole idea in nutrition science of the doctrine of signatures. Certain things that look like other things in nature can be good for certain goals. Like, for example, in this case, a walnut looks like a tiny brain.

Like a brain.

Yeah. Well, a walnut is chock full of choline that actually can assist with brain performance. Interesting.

Eggs.

You crack them open in a pan, they look like eyes. Turns out some of the components and nutrients in eggs are good for eyesight. The sweet potato is kind of short of shaped like a pancreas. And it turns out that a sweet potato is actually pretty good for blood glucose management and insulin production. You know, the list could go on and on all the way down to this fascinating plant called strafanthem, which actually looks like a heart with a bunch of little tendrils and veins coming out of it. And it's called the insulin of the heart and is used by a bunch of functional medicine docs as something that allows someone to recover from a heart attack by regrowing the vessels in the heart.

We take that preventatively.

I'm not knowledgeable enough on it to know if it would work preventively. I know for people who have had cardiovascular attacks, it's something I. I interviewed a Dr. Thomas Cowan, author of a book called Human Heart, Cosmic Heart, if you want to dig into that.

Sure.

So anyways, God gave us all sorts of things on this planet that can be used to enhance our ability to be able to focus and engage in creativity, including in ancient times, using mortar and pestle and oil extracts and alcohol extracts, et cetera. The ability to be able to concentrate the components of these plants or even synthetically create molecules that are like them to enhance creativity or focus. Okay, so, you know, coffee would be an example. Green tea would be an example. Nicotine from the tobacco plant would be an example. Like, all of these things, when used moderately and responsibly and not in a way that would harm your temple. Right. I'm totally fine with like, like chewing.

A piece of nicotine gum. I've heard. I haven't tried. It can. Can help you with creativity, it can.

Help you with creativity, it can help you with focus. And then if you want to get into the nitty gritty of all that, you could also say, well, for me to be fully present for my family and my congregation, I need to make sure that my gut and my poops and bloating and constipation, all that is in order as well. And so then you just have to make a wise and prudent decision because most nicotine delivery products are chock full of artificial sweeteners and fermentable compounds and things that would affect the gut.

So you got it.

So you know, you got to dig in. And there are some companies like Lucy, for example, that make nicotine gum that has less of the artificial sweeteners in it. You can even import from the Amazon like, like the, the snortable nicotine compound hopping. You can just spray it up your nose and get a similar effect like, okay, so, so yeah, there are, there are workarounds with a lot of this stuff. But to cut straight to the chase, the problem is that you have to know what you're doing because you can drain the brain. Aniracetam you brought up, for example, speeds up the brain like a gas pedal and allows you to just go, go, go for a few hours. Problem is it also depletes that nutrient that I mentioned is found in walnuts, choline. And so you're driving the car a million miles an hour, you run out of gas in the tank, you crash and you feel crappy. So you would have to pair aniracetam with choline. Right. To be able to actually operate. And, and so because of that, rather than cowboying your way around random pharmaceutical websites and ordering something because you heard it could enhance creativity, I'm a bigger fan of done for you formulations that are very, very similar to just like over the counter supplements or things you can buy on Amazon that go beyond just like the fringe, like underground biohacking industry stuff that you buy in the dark corners of the Internet. Yeah. So I think some of the better formulated mixes or blends out there, even though I'm sure that several of these companies have advertised on my podcast in the past, et cetera, I've got no financial affiliation with by mentioning any of these. One would be on. It makes one called Alpha Brain.

Yes, I've heard of this.

That one is well formulated. One that I particularly, particularly like that I use a lot is called Qualia. Qualia is made by a company called Neurohacker Collective.

Okay.

And they make a product called Mind.

Okay.

I like the caffeine free mind mostly because I also like to have a cup of coffee in the morning and I don't like to over caffeinate myself. Yeah, so that would be another good done for you.

Blend.

And then if I could name one more, there's a company and this, this one I'm probably most impressed with a company called Newtopia. M O O T O P A.

Okay.

You go to their website, you fill out a questionnaire. Am I easily distracted? Do I struggle with sleep? Do I sleep too much? Do I feel demotivated? Do I feel excessively motivated? It's basically a questionnaire that allows them to determine what your specific neurotransmitter imbalances would be. They then custom design a box. It's not inexpensive. I think it's about $400 or so for a month. Month's supply. Frankly, most of the people I know, including myself, who will get something like that will take closer to two to three months to go through it. Because it's not like I'm popping smart drugs every day, but, you know, on those more cognitively demanding days.

Yes.

And so Nootopia, Qualia Mind or Alpha Brain would be three examples of supplements that would allow you to get the creativity without risking the idea that you might be depleting something or robbing Peter to pay Paul. And then if you're looking for something that is a little bit friendlier to the pocketbook, because supplements are expensive. Sure, the old school writer's friend of cup of coffee and cigarette.

Yep.

You replicate that with cup of coffee. But what you do, and this is a relatively inexpensive supplement, is you get the supplement called L Theanine. Okay, yeah, I've heard of this powder you can find anywhere. About 100 milligrams paired with a cup of coffee causes the coffee to have a longer, slow bleed into the system. And L Theanine shifts you into alpha brainwave mode to enhance creativity.

Wow.

And it's just a cheap hack for a cup of coffee. And yes, even though you wouldn't necessarily want to smoke a cigarette. Back to the temple.

Yep.

You can use sources of nicotine that wouldn't really have many of the artificial sweeteners or anything in them at all. I think the best one for that is they make nicotine toothpicks. So you can literally have a nicotine toothpick, like a cigarette sticking out of your mouth, cup of coffee with a little L Theanine in it. And that's like a dirt cheap hack a lot of people don't know about. They'll get you through hours upon hours of writing. Maybe not as fun and sexy and colorful as some of these pills and stuff.

Right.

And then the last thing that, that I would throw in there. Last two things I would throw in there. First of all, from a dietary standpoint point, the more you can consume Slow burning logs versus fast burning kindling as your fuel, the better. Carbohydrates, starches, processed foods, soft foods, drinkable foods, etc, those would all be fast burning kindling with a steep rise in energy followed by a sharp drop. That would best be paired before, during or after a workout if you're going to use that stuff at any time during the day.

Okay. Okay.

A state of ketosis accomplished with strategies such as fasting, carbohydrate restriction, higher intake of healthy Mediterranean style fats, putting a little bit of coconut oil or MCT oil in your coffee, or even these newer drinkable ketones that shift you into that state very readily.

Interesting.

Can give you a good long, slow bleed of energy that keeps you going all day long. So looking into ketosis, particularly not the style of what would be called dirty ketosis, where people are doing like sticks of butter and, you know, coconut oil. Energy bars.

Yeah, yeah.

Pooping out giant logs of grease, but basically more ketosis. Like Mediterranean, like high healthy fats, fish oil, fatty cut of salmon, maybe a little bit of blue zone style. Yeah. Almost like a. Almost like a low carb blue zone style diet.

Okay, got it.

That's a healthier approach to ketosis. And if you want to. Yeah, yeah, like MCT oil. Yeah, that'll get converted. Yeah, that's great stuff. I forgot about that. Yeah. You can put that in a little bit of coffee. So ketosis, and particularly a like a vegetable, plant rich form of ketosis. Okay. Is a good hack for the dietary component of focus and creativity. And then finally every once in a while, you need the big guns. You need the, oh, I am in book writing phase. And I'm on deadline three weeks. I'm gonna be sleeping four hours a night and taking care of the kids and making sure I take my wife on a Friday night date and preaching and delivering a sermon. This is a phase where I need the big guns. Or like I mentioned earlier, I'm flying to Tokyo. I get at 2am, I gotta deliver a sermon or a speech at 8am and freaking L. Theania, my coffee is not gonna do the trick. Yeah, there's one. And I would consider this to be a smart drug.

Okay.

You'd only want to use in moderation.

Okay.

To ensure that you don't have. You don't build up tolerance to it.

Okay.

Is called modafinil.

Okay.

Was the inspiration for the movie Limitless.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Developed for people with narcolepsy and then like Olympians started using it.

Label anti narcoleptic drug. Also goes by the name Provigil.

Okay. I've never tried this.

Yeah, yeah. And so usually a pill of that comes as about 200 milligrams.

Okay.

One pill would give you hyper productivity for about 24 hours.

Got it.

Half a pill, about 12 hours.

Okay.

What you need to realize though is that the mechanism of action is that it floods the cell response receptors with dopamine and serotonin. So everything feels rewarding, particularly work checklists and tasks. And you'll just go. And some people find that it makes them irritable and impersonable. Meaning like with your family you might be like, get out of the way, Dad's got to work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that can be an issue. The other issue is that anything that floods the cell receptors long, long term with dopamine, probably seen these new books like Dopamine Nation or People, People shutting down the dopamines on their phones by switching them to grayscale. The reason for that is that anytime the cells get flooded with dopamine, it builds up more receptors for dopamine on the cell surface and you need more and more dopamine to feel good. So if you were to start to take Modafilam, be like, I feel great. I'm gonna take this every day. And then you run out or you decide not to take it for a week, you feel kind of flat because nothing feels good. Sex doesn't feel as good. Ribeye steak isn't as good. Taking your kids to the beach doesn't feel as good because you don't have all that dopamine in your system. Yeah. So that would, even though I'm mentioning that as a good strategy.

Yeah, yeah.

This would be like big guns. I'm using this for this one day or this one. You know, one week hard stuff into.

12 hour stretch, three day stretch, it's like, that's max. That's it, it's over.

Yeah. So in summary, you have your natural mechanisms for creativity, light, sound, cold breath, work. You have your nutrients, you know, things like choline, fatty acids, ketones, a low carbohydrate diet. You have your done for you formulations like Qualia Mind or On an Alpha Brain or the Newtopia company with the cheap pack being the theanine, caffeine, nicotine, and then amazing big guns, something like Modafinil. And that would, that, that would give you a pretty good toolbox.

Okay. This is incredible, man.

Yeah.

I have two more questions for you because I know we're just about out of time One is more health related as it pertains to pastors, and the other one's just personal.

Okay.

On the.

On the.

On the health front, a lot of my friends that are pastors, you know, we don't always take the best care of ourselves. Pastors don't. I think that's kind of. A lot of people anticipate that. They see that a lot of pastors are overweight, they're unhealthy.

Too much marshmallow salad at the church potluck.

Yeah. Unfortunately, we're very sedentary. I mean, we sit around. The only time you see us active is, like, pulpit time.

And you run like a half marathon on stage. Last time I was at Legacy.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I try to get after, you know, I want to break the mold a little bit, and you're helping me to do that.

Thank you. By the way, I go. I go to a Reformed Baptist. Baptist church where nobody's wandering too far away from the. The podium.

That's right. Because they're standing right there.

Right.

Which.

In a suit and tie.

Are we allowed to talk about that church?

Yeah.

Okay. I. I love that church, by the way. Pastor Douglas Wilson, Christchurch Church.

I grew up in.

Yeah, you literally grew up there.

Yeah.

Which, by the way, I'm so afraid that one day he's gonna, like, intercept a teaching of mine and then just, like, roast me. Like, this guy's way off, you know.

Doug's super cool, but I love his books. Hyper intellectual. He's.

Yeah, he's a hero to me. You're a health hero to me. He's a theological hero to me. So, like, one of the things that I hear from a lot of pastors, and this is actually what a doctor told me. You have extreme adrenal fatigue. This is constant among my pastor friends. That's what they tell us all. Oh, adrenal fatigue. Adrenal fatigue.

Which technically isn't even a medical term, so.

Yeah.

I don't even know why they say that or what that even means, but usually they're like, well, how much coffee do you have? You have way too much coffee. Because that's what pastors drink constantly.

Yeah.

And you're emotionally depleted and exasperated and you need some help. And so this doesn't have to be long. But, like, is there some kind of quick dirty tip of, like, if you are concerned for your adrenal glands, how can we be more kind to ourselves. Ourselves in that sense.

Three things. First, adrenal fatigue is often over diagnosed, and in order to truly know Whether someone's adrenal glands are functioning the wrong way, you have to get a test that shows you not only what kind of hormones you're producing. Cortisol, testosterone, a lot of the things that the adrenal glands would help you to produce or be directly responsible for. For producing, but you also have to look at how quickly are those metabolites being broken down? Are the building blocks for those metabolites necessary or available in the human body? The only test I'm aware of that's a decent test to truly diagnose something like adrenal fatigue is called a Dutch panel. It's a dried urine panel. It collects 24 hours of urine and gives you everything you need to know. And a lot of times I will run that test on someone who has been diagnosed with adrenal fatigue, and it turns out that, for example, they're producing as much cortisol as they'd ever need. Right? Which is the definition of adrenal fatigue. Like you're not producing any cortisol, but, for example, that cortisol is getting broken down extremely quickly.

Right.

So. So, so there's some upstream issue happening, and a lot of times that might be everything from inadequate calorie intake to sometimes it can be excessive caffeination. So basically, it requires a lot of digging. So if you're diagnosed with adrenal fatigue, know that a lot of times it might not be that. It can be everything from hypothyroidism to carbohydrate depletion to neurotransmitter imbalances. So whenever somebody says I'm like, adrenal fatigue from what?

Right.

And. And there could be like, 10 different reasons. I have an article on my website somewhere about, like, the 10 different reasons for adrenal fatigue.

Okay.

So it's. I'll find more than just adrenal fatigue. The second thing is that there are certain things that can accelerate or amplify the amount of stress that's on the adrenal glands. These little glands that sit on top of your kidneys. And it is true that over caffeination, excessive use of supplements, excess exposure to artificial light in the evening, inadequate sleep, poor stress management, poor relationship relationships, et cetera. Those can all accelerate the rate at which the adrenal glands become exhausted. We talked about some things earlier. Heat, cold breath, work. I would throw exercise into this category.

So pastors should play pickleball.

Pastors should play pickleball.

That's a big thing amongst pastors now.

Icy cold, wearing as little clothing as Possible put food in your underwear. Yeah. Doing breath work prior to and getting in a sauna afterwards. Anyways, though the idea of figuring out things that give you energy other than stimulants, which might seem kind of paradoxical based on the discussion that we just had, but knowing when it's true, fatigue and you really need a cup of coffee versus I already had a cup of coffee two hours ago. All that caffeine is still in my system. I need to take a cold shower, do three minutes of WIM HOF breath work, and that's gonna be one way friendlier to my adrenal glands than all these drugs and compounds, et cetera. So that's number two. Number three is there are certain things that the adrenal gland needs to keep its gas tank topped off. The main two would be minerals and vitamin C. Okay. Minerals and vitamin C. A third one I would throw into the category of something that can assist with adrenal gland balance are so called adaptogens.

Okay.

Okay. So let me tell you how this would look. Minerals of vitamin C would be like, wake up in the morning, giant mason glass full of water with a teaspoon of sea salt and the squeeze of a lemon.

Got it.

Or there's a company called Jigsaw Health. They make something called adrenal cocktail. I'm lazy with the lemons and the salt, so I literally just. I put a powder, like a scoop of the adrenal cocktail in my morning glass of water.

Got it.

Okay. That's in addition to salting my food throughout the day, eating a diet that's got fruits and vegetables rich in vitamin C. The more stressed out you are, the more minerals you need, the more vitamin C you need. So that's really good for the adrenals. The other one, the adaptogens, those would be probably the two best that I'm aware of that seem to work for a wide variety of people are rishi mushroom extract, and another one you've probably heard of, ashwagandha. Yeah. So these can be used during times of the day when you feel like you have a lot of stress, when you're too dry, when you're too driven. Maybe you had too much coffee. Coffee, whatever.

Okay.

The. The definition of adaptogen is it will turn up the dials when the dials are too far down, and it'll turn down the dials when the dials are too far up. So different people will respond in different ways. But anybody who has adrenal issues or is. Is hard driven. So for me, for example, I do like to take an afternoon siesta sometimes after lunch. Yes, often, not because I need it, but because I know by the time we start our family dinner at 7:30, I'd be kind of tired if I just, just don't step out for like 20 or 30 minutes, meditate or you know, crawl in the corner of the office and you know, crawl on my desk and sleep like I'll, I'll just sleep anywhere.

This is like nsdr. Is that what they call it?

Nsdr? That's one way to do it, yeah. Yoga. Yoga Nidra, that's called, and that's very simple to do. Full body scan starting from the toes up to the head or the head down to the toes. That'll simulate a full sleep cycle. And you can download free yoga ninja tracks on Amazon on YouTube and that can actually be very effective for simulating a full sleep cycle in anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes. I'll do Yoga Nidra on the airplane sometimes noise blocking headphones and it works fantastically. And that's sometimes what I'll do when I step away in the afternoon after lunch. But I always take a couple of packets of, I say packets because I use a company called four Sigmatic and they make reishi mushroom extract. I'll take a couple of packets of those and then that kind of turns off my brain and settles me down but doesn't leave me as groggy as if I'd ever taken much of, I don't know, like, you know, sleep product or CBD or something like that. And so then I can get up and be ready to rumble again. So any hard charging high achiever, identifying some kind of adaptogen that you can use, usually like in the late afternoon to early evening, can also help out with adrenal stress. Okay, so in summary, if you really think you have adrenal fatigue, get a Dutch urine test to actually see if you truly have adrenal fatigue.

Okay.

If you want to make sure you take good care of your adrenals, start off the day with a whole bunch of minerals and vitamin C and continue to get minerals and vitamin C going in throughout the day. When you feel tempted to take a stimulant, double check yourself and ask if you should instead just eat the frog, do the hard thing, get in the corner, sit down, do three minutes of breath work or slip away and take a cold shower or do some jumping jacks or burpees or something other than a stimulant that will drain your adrenal glands more quickly than natural Energy from movement or cold. And then finally the use of adaptogens when you do feel like you're excessively stressed can be. Okay, so those are a few things to consider for.

That's super helpful. I guess I'm gonna sneak this one in. How much coffee is too much coffee?

Well, it depends on your genetics.

Okay.

You've probably heard some people like slow metabolizers. Yeah.

I mean, pastors just drink coffee all the time. All day, bro.

Yeah. And you can obviously build a tolerance to it. Okay.

My.

I have. I always switch the decaf for one week out of every month to check myself because I love the flavor of coffee. I like the glorious morning bowel movement that it gives you.

That's the best.

But I do want to make sure I'm not, of course, getting attached to anything. So I switched to decaf for a week out of every month, which kind of resets all the caffeine factors for. For like a slow caffeine metabolizer. It's not much. It's like 200, 300 milligrams of coffee. Sleep like a couple cups of coffee is too much for that person.

Wow.

It's just like in your system all the time. You don't sleep well because you take so long to break it down. Fast caffeine metabolizer. I mean, I've seen data on up to five cups a day as allowing you to get like the anti diabetic cardiovascular enhancing health effects of coffee without it being deleterious.

Okay.

I'm a fan of like a 2ish cup a day guy. Like a big morning cup and a big like after afternoon cup. I think that's pretty good. I'm a fast caffeine metabolizer. I know I can have a cup of coffee at three. I still sleep. Okay, same. I think two cups of coffee is a decent thing to shoot for, especially if you're taking all the drugs we talked about. Yeah, of course. That nicotine toothpick hanging out your mouth. We're gonna have pastor's man typing sermons. Nicotine preaching to.

Yeah.

Hitting their French press. Okay.

Speaking of coffee, got my last drop.

Do you want some more, bro?

I'm good.

Okay, this is my last question. So I. Since I have been listening to your podcast, reading your books, following you on YouTube, you know, I subscribe to you on everything. I've noticed just the uptick in you talking about your faith. And I'm wondering how has your audience responded to that? Have you had people meet that with some level of, you know, Resistance. Are they upset with you for talking about your faith? Now you're. I think the first time I DM'd you.

Yeah.

You had talked.

You were.

You had posted your b. You were doing a one year Bible.

Yeah.

I was like, dude, I thought Ben was a Christian. He just presents so much information in a way that I thought he would know Jesus.

Yeah.

So what's that been like for you?

Yeah, I mean, I. I was born into a Christian home, grew up worshiping, going to Sunday school, love the Lord and yes, memorize scripture, and was a, by all definitions, a pretty good kid. A pretty good, good little straight lace Christian kid. I was homeschooled.

Okay.

I graduated high school when I was 15, started college and I was 16. I think it was a little bit immature spiritually and succumbed to a lot of temptations in college. And so from the age of about, gosh, like 16 until I got married when I was 21. Okay. I kind of went off the deep end with, like, alcohol, women, things like that.

Yeah.

After I got married, really didn't have that great of a walk with the Lord for a good 10 years.

Okay.

And it was rough. Like, my wife and I would fight a lot, and I was traveling over the world and wasn't a present father and wasn't a great husband. And it took nearly breaking up with my wife.

Wow.

That caused me to see the light because I love my family so much and I love my wife so much. And I. I have such a vision of legacy for my sons and have such a deep desire for them to grow up to be godly young men. And, you know, I was just almost like a loser of a husband. And so I. I wound up when I realized I was about to lose my family. My wife was about to divorce me. I wasn't a present father, father. I didn't have any of the spiritual disciplines like meditation, prayer, reading, scripture, devotions woven into my life. I went to church once a month, maybe my wife went to church every week. And I would sometimes go and sometimes not.

Wow.

I. I really became convicted at about. About like 31, 32 years old. That not only. Well, what I realized initially was I needed to start putting my spiritual armor on. And, yeah, that for me to be the father and the husband who I knew that I should be and that God has called me to be.

Yes.

I needed to begin to spend a lot more time on my spiritual health. I didn't have any idea that that would eventually.

Become a process of me beginning to talk about those same things to My audience? Yeah, the emptiness and fitness and in biohacking and in health and nutrition. And yes, physical training is of some benefit, but it's a complete attachment and addiction for a large portion of my audience. For example, this whole biohacking health world. I began to talk about my own journey on my own platform, on my podcast, on my blog. I began to publish books like Fit Soul or Endure or the Spiritual Disciplines Journal. That's what I started doing with my family. In the morning, we'd meditate. In the evening, we'd meditate and do devotions together and scripture study together. We still do that in the morning and evening every single day. It's our coming together as a family. And I just began to share what I was doing with my audience. And frankly, it was very well received. There are so many Christians in the fitness world who hide their light under a bushel because it's just not cool to be like, trainer who talks about God, but maybe who also has like a nice body.

Yeah.

You know, or, you know, because it's too earthly or fleshly or worldly. But there are a ton of trainers who started to talk with their clients about their Christianity. A bunch of people who came out of the woodwork who, because they'd seen me, you know, the guy who was supposed to be like the cool worldly Instagram dude or whatever, begin to talk about my faith. They were inspired to share their own faith.

Amazing.

I'm now putting out two videos a week of, you know, spiritual lessons or inspirational videos. I, I saw a few comments on one this morning. And yeah, I get flack, like with a couple comments I saw this morning. One, one, because my, my post today was about how God will sometimes refine us with fire and trial and tribulation. And the best response when we're going through those type of trials is to, as Job said, thank the Lord, thank him for his blessings, thank you for whatever he's working in your life, and respond to tribulation with gratitude. And I saw two comments like, you worship a God who punishes you because he loves you. That's a pretty effed up God in my opinion. And then another person wrote, she. You mean she. When you're talking about God, you mean she, right? And so you get little comments like that. But frankly, I really haven't experienced much of a blowback. I don't know, maybe I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I'm being too flavorless. I don't know.

No, no.

But, but no, it's been very, very rewarding to Be able to feel as though the platform that God gave me in the fitness and the health and the biohacking world, very earthly, worldly, fleshly world, is now the same platform that he's given me, the ability to. To be able to turn around and speak to and tell people that, yes, caring for your temple is good. Yes, as a pastor, optimizing your brain, your creativity and focus is going to allow you to reach more people and do more and accomplish more and write more, produce more. But at the end of the day, all of this stuff is for naught unless we care for our spirit, for our soul, unless we actually are focused on the eternal things that will happen and far beyond this life. And unless ultimately, at the end of the day, we're loving our God and loving our neighbor as ourself. And it's just been so incredibly rewarding and so fulfilling. And I know that one of the reasons God gave me this platform is to now turn around and operate almost like behind enemy lines. Speaking to people who. I'm not going to run into a church or Sunday school or prayer room or whatever. These are people who are living in the gyms and, you know, triathlon start lines, you know, and, and folks who, who need to hear this message. I think so.

That's right.

Yeah.

Well, bro, thank you for doing it. Thank you for your courage, your bravery, speaking out, speaking up, sharing the Bible. I know, it's inspired me. Like I said, you're one of my heroes. And so for me now, knowing that we share faith together and we can talk about Jesus and the Bible, it just only makes me all the more happy. And I hope that I get the opportunity to introduce you to some of my friends who might follow me and listen to this podcast.

I, I real joy, absolutely love that. I mean, like, and, and one of the things that, that I'm trying to do now is I, I think the way I phrase it to you, once a text message was, you know, you. You guys go out and, and be Moses, and I just want to be able to hold up your staff and give you the endurance and, you know, whatever else you need that's, that's up inside my head to be able to help that happen. And it's beautiful, man. The more I can do that, the. The more I feel like, like, thank you, bro. That's my calling.

Thank you. And, and, and I want to say reciprocating, I'm here for you, man. I want to pray for you as you step out into those dark places and say, ben, we got your back. We're praying for you. We'll prophesy to you, we'll cover you, we'll be a blessing to you. And yeah, we, we'll put together a whole prayer team for you man. We got your back bro. Thanks for coming on my podcast. Podcast, it's just brand new so I appreciate you spending some time with me bro.

Sweet.

I appreciate you man. Thanks.

Thank you bro.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today and if you liked it or if you like what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.