Dry Sauna Vs Infrared Vs Hot Tub, Little Known Ways To Heal The Gut, Maintaining Muscle With Ketones and More! Solosode: 495

In this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, dry sauna versus infrared versus hot tubs, little-known ways to heal the gut, maintaining muscle with ketones, and a whole lot more.

Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond.

Ben Greenfield: This is going to be a special episode of the solo show, the Q&A, the news flashes episodes that I do because I'm walking on my treadmill. You're used to me walking on my treadmill when I interview guests. And, a lot of times, I'm just planted all lazy and sedentary when I do these episodes for you. But, I've got a doozy of a show for you today. And, What can I say? I'm a little pent up. I've been sitting all morning, and I think I'm going to go for a stroll while I share plenty for you from the archives, so to speak. Everything I talk about is going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/495. So, I'm going to get this out of the way right away since I'm walking while I'm talking to you. Many of you have asked me what treadmill I use as a walking treadmill. For my desk. It's called a Walkolution. And, a lot of times when I'm preparing PowerPoints, going through consults with clients who I coach, doing a podcast like this, I simply use this cheapo remote that I'm holding up for the camera that is tied to my computer and then I'm able to scroll through stuff and then I walk on this treadmill. The Walkolution treadmill is a non-motorized treadmill. So, there's no EMF. If you see the lineup of treadmills at the average gym. That's just a giant EMF soup area of the gym. And, it's better to exercise, I think, than to avoid EMFs. Yet, I don't want motorized noise and electrical pollution in my office as much as I can mitigate that. So, this is a plush foam surface that stretches and strengthens my feet that's pretty whisper quiet. And, when you walk on a manual treadmill, you also get better glute activation, and more natural ground reaction forces. So, there. There's your commercial for the treadmill that I use. But, what I'm going to do in the shownotes is I just had a mastermind at my house with 20 guys and I put together this binder for them because they were just wandering around my house looking at my air filtration system and my workout equipment and my upgraded biohacked home gym and everything from what red light bed and red light panels do I use to my vibrating Shiftwave chair, my light sound therapy, magic mushroom devices as I call them, my hyperbaric chamber. Just like, what are all the things littered around my house? What kind of bed do I sleep in? So, I put it all in this binder and I'll put that for you in the shownotes. I call it Ben's Biohacking Binder for the purposes of alliteration, of course. And so, if you go to the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com, BenGreenfieldLife.com/495. I will put that there in case you just want to outfit your home with all the cool tools that are in my home. So, there we go. Housekeeping items out of the way and let's go ahead and jump into all of the very interesting things that I want to share with you today. So, the first is that I have really changed my outlook on my sauna practice, namely, I have always been the guy who's like, "Crank it up, baby. Get it as hot as possible. Hotter is better." I've ridden the AirDyne in Laird Hamilton's sauna down at his place in Malibu wearing oven mitts. I used to literally put on 3 layers of clothing and ride my bike in a sauna getting ready for Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii. Anytime I have any sauna, it's just like, press the plus button, press the up arrow, get it as hot as it can go. But, I've been looking into sauna and not only how hot is too hot but what's the difference in terms of the cardiovascular thermoregulatory and immune system benefits of dry versus infrared versus hot water immersion, aka the a heart-shaped hot tub on your back patio. So, first of all, it turns out that once the sauna temperature, the indoor sauna temperature exceeds about 100°C, that's 212°F for those of you who didn't do that in your head, there is an elevated dementia risk. So, there was a 2020 study published in Preventive Medicine Reports that looked at the association between sauna and dementia risk. And, this was in over 14,000 people or almost rather 14,000 people, 13,994 people in Finland, both men and women. They found that on average sauna temperatures over 212°F or higher were associated with increased dementia risk. And, this was a study that took place over 39 years. So, this was the first 20 years of follow-up that they found this significant association. And, it's interesting kind of paradoxical because dementia risk goes down when you're below 212 degrees, basically 176 to 211 degrees Fahrenheit. That range is great for lowering dementia risk, specifically when you are doing anywhere from 4 to 6 sessions per week that aren't that long, 5 to 14 minutes. And again, that's another adjustment I've made because I used to think Longer is better in the sauna and just go in there and count off the minutes and the seconds and tap your feet and distract yourself until you get to the point where you got to crawl out of the sauna. But, 5 to 14 minutes, that is really not that long. And so now, I'm doing about 10 to 12 minutes, 212 degrees in my dry sauna in the afternoon jumping into a quick cold plunge for about 2 minutes at around 33 degrees. And for me, that's just like how I'm kind of starting my afternoon and it feels great. And it's also nice to know that, A, you don't have to be so hot that there's smoke coming out your ears, and B, 5 to 14 minutes is pretty doable for a lot of people. And again, there's that reduced dementia risk, which is incredible. So, the other thing that's very interesting regarding saunas is a brand new study. This is hot off the presses in the Journal of Regulatory, Integrative, and Comparative Physiology. So, this research article looked at thermoregulatory cardiovascular and immune system responses to different passive heat therapy modalities. So, namely, they did hot tub or hot water immersion, they did dry sauna, and they did infrared sauna. The results were pretty surprising in terms of the benefits of a sauna. The hot water immersion won out as far as all the benefits go for your cardiovascular health, for your ability to be able to regulate temperature, create beneficial heat shock proteins, et cetera, some of the things related to dementia risk, and the immune system response, the favorable immune system modulation that occurs in response to heat. So, at first glance, when you first hear this or read this, you might think, "Well, gosh, throw out the sauna. Don't worry about spending money on a sauna. I already have a hot tub. I already have a bathtub. I can just do hot water immersion and get all the benefits." And that's partially true, but what you should know is that the hot water immersion in the study was 45 minutes at about 105 degrees. That's a long time. That's a chunkier time. The dry sauna, what they actually did was 3 10-minute sessions. And, it was pretty low temperature compared to what we were just talking about, 176°F with 5 minutes of recovery at just regular room temperature. And then, the infrared sauna, like the hot water immersion, was 45 minutes at a pretty big range, 113 up to 149°F. My Infrared sauna goes up into the 170s. It tops out at that, which means the infrared sauna, you always got to preheat it longer and stay in there a little bit longer. But, if we're looking at this from a time hacking standpoint, I mean, for me, I would still prefer the dry sauna to get the majority of the heat-based benefits at around 212 degrees compared to sitting in a bath for 45 minutes. It's just a long time. Ben Greenfield: This study is interesting. I think what it does show is that if you don't have a sauna, you are traveling or whatever, you don't have access to a sauna, you don't want a sauna, you don't like a sauna, you can get benefits from a hot tub or a hot bath. You really can. You just need to be in there a while. And frankly, I enjoy a sauna more than I enjoy a bath. I think the hot tub, I kind of go back and forth on. It is nice to be able to socialize in the hot tub. Maybe your sauna is too small to socialize in, but you have a hot tub big enough for people for having some friends over and visiting. And, there's no reason you can't do a long hot tub session on a Sunday morning and a dry sauna session a few times a week and maybe an infrared here and there. But ultimately, it is interesting the benefits that you can get from hot water immersion. And again, all these studies I'll link to in the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/495. 5. Okay. So, let's keep going. There was another study that looked at step count. This wasn't a study, this was what's called a meta-analysis, a study of studies. Now, for the longest time, you may have heard that 10,000 steps a day is like gold standard. And you, like many people including myself, might even be wearing some kind of a meter. I've got the Whoop on here, My wife and I are both using the Whoop. She's discovered that it actually is something that helps with tracking cycles and hormone regulation, which is kind of a cool feature in Whoop. They're not a partner of mine. I'm not affiliated with them. Wish I was, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. But Whoop is what my wife and I use right now. So, what this meta-analysis found was that walking 7,000 steps a day as compared to walking 2,000 steps a day resulted in— I'll go through this real quick— 20% lower risk of all-cause mortality. That's risk of dying from anything except maybe getting hit by a bus when you're walking. Uh, 25% lower risk of cardiovascular disease, 47% lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality, 37% lower risk of cancer mortality, 14% lower risk of type 2 diabetes, 38% lower risk of dementia, 22% lower risk of depression symptoms, 28% lower risk of falls. Again, a little bit paradoxical that taking more steps lowers your risk of falling, but it is what it is. And, this all makes me feel really good that right now I'm telling you all this while walking. However, that is a little bit of a lower volume of walking than many people have been led to believe that they need for health. Now, what's interesting is that when people increased from 7,000 to 12,000 steps per day, there were further improvements in the risks of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, cancer mortality, and depressive symptoms. But the lion's share of the benefits began to kick in at 3,000 steps and kind of started to taper off a little bit in terms of really meaningful outcomes after 7,000 steps. So, that means that if you can get around 7,000 steps a day, you're going to get most of the benefits of walking. Now, what's that look like from a time standpoint for those of you who need help wrapping your head around this? Well, if you were to take, let's say, a slow pace, that's about 80 steps per minute. If you just wanted to count for 60 seconds how many steps you take and you take 80 steps, that's considered a slow pace. It would take you about 88 minutes. To walk 7,000 steps. If you were to walk at a moderate pace, so moderate would be about 100 steps per minute. Well, if you're taking 100 steps per minute, it'd take you about an hour and 10 minutes, 70 minutes. And, if you were a brisk walker, and walking briskly is not as fast as you think but it's still pretty fast. And, by the way, brisk walking is very well associated with longevity right up there with grip strength and VO2 max, 120 steps per minute. So, start walking, see if you're hitting 120 steps, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, in a minute, in 60 seconds. And that means you can walk 7,000 steps in 58 minutes. Now, of course, you don't have to walk all 7,000 steps at once. This is just throughout the day, but that's how long it would take if you wanted to do it all at once. You could actually make a case for it being better to not do it all at once so you're upregulating your metabolism multiple times per day. But, 7,000 at 120 steps per minute would only take you 58 minutes, and it gets you the lion's share of the benefits. That doesn't mean that more is not still going to get you benefits, but the results begin to taper off. Now, the commonly cited 10,000 steps per day actually originated from a 1965 Japanese marketing campaign for a pedometer The pedometer is called the Mampokei, meaning 10,000 steps meter. And, that was promoted for decades without an actual clear evidence base. People just began to repeat it. They began to parrot that 10,000 steps a day. But, what this newer meta-analysis shows is that it's actually about 7,000 steps, not 10,000, to get you most of the benefits. So, good to know. And hopefully, that along with knowing that you only have to sauna for 5 to 14 minutes if you're using 220 12 degrees will hopefully save you a little bit of time. And, this whole idea of moving throughout the day, getting that 7,000 steps throughout the day is important because I've said for a long time on this podcast and elsewhere that it should be your goal for the workday, for the trip to the gym at the beginning or the end of the day to be an option, not a necessity because you've woven so much physical activity into your day already that you've just kind of got this natural movement that, yeah, is not going to build massive amounts of muscle, but at least you're maintaining some element of cardiometabolic health. Now, I believe it was 1 or 2 podcast episodes ago where I described this meta-analysis of 14 different studies showing that these brief exercise snacks can be anywhere from 20 seconds long to 10 minutes. And, by spreading these throughout the day, you get a significant improvement in cardiometabolic health parameters. Well, related to this idea of moving, there was another study that recently came out. It was titled "The Association Between Daily Sitting Time and Accelerated Aging." And, this was a study in women. I'm sure some of the results we could extrapolate to men, but it turns out that Aging markers in women were 42% worse when they sat for 4 to 6 hours per day, 67% worse when they sat for 6 to 8 hours per day, and 107% worse when they sat for 8 or more hours per day. Now, this is related to other studies I've mentioned in the past that show that if you exercise, let's say at the beginning of, of the day, and then you spend 8 hours per day not moving in between that exercise session and the next day, you actually see very little meaningful improvement in fitness compared to if you get up throughout the day and don't sit as much. And, in this study, they were looking at inflammatory markers, at creatinine levels, at what's called the immune inflammation index, and they did what's called a phenotypic age calculation. And, essentially, it turns out that The more you sit, at least starting at the 4-hour mark, the lower the healthy parameters related to healthy aging become. So, I mean, obviously, the fix here is very simple. If you're listening to this podcast and you've made it this far in, you probably already make it a point to move throughout the day, but this just shows how important it is to not be seated for long periods of time. And again, Maybe it's great that I chose to walk on the treadmill during this episode. Alright, so I know some people struggle with gut issues, so I want to address this in the next little section that I go into. There was a paper that came out that looked at the best non-drug therapies for significant gut issues, the best non-drug therapies for significant gut issues., and this one was called Effectiveness and Safety of Non-Pharmacological Therapies for the Treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease. So they looked at 62 different randomized control trials where people had Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, which is this inflammatory immune-mediated disorder of the GI tract, some pretty serious gut issues. And then they looked at all of the different therapies that were not involving pharmacology. They looked at traditional Chinese medicine. They looked at acupuncture with moxibustion. That's a heat therapy that involves literally burning a dried plant like mugwort, aka moxa, to warm and stimulate the acupuncture points that you're working on, on different areas of the body. And so, of all of the different treatments that seem to help the best, It turns out that changing up your diet, no surprises there, was a huge help, meaning eliminating problematic foods, eliminating fermentable foods. You could Google the low FODMAP diet. It's one of the best diet for gut issues. It eliminates a lot of things that tend to ferment in the gut and cause gas and bloating. Stands for something like FODMAP, fermentable, no fructans, oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. I believe that's what the FODMAPs are. But anyways, diet, acupuncture, and fecal transplant was— or those are the top ones. Now, this idea of fecal transplant, this is super interesting. I've talked about acupuncture before on the podcast. A lot of people can wrap their heads around that, and it is very relaxing. I've done a few acupuncture sessions. They're great. And, I think there is a lot of evidence out there for acupuncture for a wide variety of conditions. I've interviewed acupuncturists on this show before. I'll put links to those podcasts in the shownotes. But, the poop transplant, the fecal transplant, that is possibly a new one for some of you or something that seems like it's way out there as far as anything that might be accessible to you if you struggle with gut issues ranging from Crohn's colitis, irritable bowel disorder, all the way to something like SIBO, right? Like excessive gas and bloating that just won't go away. So there is a new paper that I looked at after reading this other paper about how good of an effect that this FMT has on gut issues. And it's very interesting. Fecal microbiota transplantation is what FMT stands for. It also is known as stool transplantation. So literally the transfer of processed, usually screened and treated fecal matter, which has everything in it, the bacteria, the viruses, the fungi, the bacteriophages, the metabolites, from a healthy donor to your GI tract, either orally in capsule form. Just so you know, you don't have to chew on poop or make a poop smoothie. This is not Fear Factor. Or via an enema, right? So like colonoscopy style or There was one guy who was an epidemiologist, I believe, and even hung himself upside down in some kind of Hozda hunter-gatherer tribe and did his own DIY fecal transplant there. His name is Jeff. I interviewed him back in the day. I'll find that one and put it in the shownotes for those who want to listen to it. But, the goal here is to restore a disrupted or dysbiotic gut microbiome to a healthy state. This treatment was first documented in 4th century China for food poisoning and diarrhea. And then, it revived in the 20th century and gained quite a bit of prominence in the mid-2000s, around 2013, as a breakthrough therapy for recurrent C. difficile infection. And, that is an infection that can be life-threatening that was found to respond pretty well to FMT. But now, it turns out that a lot of conditions respond well to FMT. Irritable bowel syndrome, right, that's abdominal pain, altered bowel habits, bloating, etc. Small intestine bacterial overgrowth or SIBO, which is a condition characterized by excessive bacteria in the small intestine, bloating, diarrhea, alternating bowel habits between constipation and diarrhea. And FMT seems to be indicated for both of these issues. Now, I'm holding in my hands a newer paper that looked at quality of life, fatigue, mood improvement, SIBO drives in the microbial content of the gut. And this paper describes how high-dose capsules over the course of several weeks, not even doing an enema or colonoscopy, but high-dose capsules can actually have a really good effect. And the way it's done is first you do gut prep. So this is not just like go to Walgreens, buy poop pills, start taking them. So I'll tell you a source here shortly where you can get this stuff, but you start with gut prep. So you take an antibiotic or an antifungal for 1 to 2 weeks before the FMT, and you typically stop that like 2 days prior. And that has been shown to impact the magnitude and the duration of the improvements post-FMT. Now, all cards on the table, I've had recurrent SIBO for 5 years, a little bit longer than that actually, and I have decided I'm going to do an FMT. You guys, I am 8 days out from taking my FMT treatment. I've got 4 bottles of capsules in the fridge. I'll tell you where I got them shortly. I told my wife and kids not to eat them. Don't eat dad's poop pills. And I'm currently on a dose of Rifaximin. I've been on it for the past 2 weeks to kind of clean out the gut before I do this. Now, the next thing is that the day before you do a bowel cleanse, this would be very similar to what you do before a colonoscopy, right? You like drink some magnesium oxide or magnesium citrate or Move Prep. You know, coffee enema optional if you want to do that. You basically clean out the colon. And, on that day, you just basically have clear beverages ideally. So, the gut's just kind of totally cleaned out. You could also do a water fast on that day if that's helpful. Just basically you're trying to get a blank slate for when you start the capsules. And then, if you're doing this orally, which most people at home are going to do, Couple other things are important. You stop all probiotics, binding agents, any supplements that have herbs with antimicrobial activity like berberine. You just cut all that out, right? Anything that's antimicrobial because you don't want to kill the poop pills. And then what you do is you take about 30 capsules of the pills, like a whole bottle of them, and then you do a maintenance dose. I'm planning on a maintenance dose of a couple of capsules a day for about 12 weeks. That kind of slow introduction of them seems to be what your gut responds best to. And, you just keep them in the fridge. They're all from these healthy screened donors. And, I'll keep you guys posted on how it goes, but I think for nuking gut issues that just won't go away, this is something that based on research seems like you could look into. And before, like up until now, you often had to go to like a clinic, sometimes travel overseas like to London to have this overseen. You can do it now. You still have to go through a doctor. So the company that makes the product that I'm using is called Novel Biome. If you want to go to their website to read about what they do, it's N-O-V-E-L Biome, Novel Biome. And then they have different doctors that they work with The guy who I'm working with on this who basically, you do a telemedicine consult, you could contact their clinic. I'll put a link to their clinic in the shownotes. It's Dr. Matt Cook at BioReset Medical in San Jose. So, he's got access to the Novel Biome stuff because you got to go through a doctor. He would do or one of his clinic staff would do a phone call with you to kind of make sure that you're properly screened. And then, you get these poop pills and you're off to the races. And, they can also help you out with like a Rifaximin prescription or whatever you need for your antimicrobial for the couple of weeks leading up to that. So, hopefully, that helps a lot of you with gut issues that you might be dealing with. This is kind of like the newest, latest treatment. I know it's gross and there's at least a few of you who are going to walk up to me at the next conference you see me at and be like, "My spouse just cost me a bunch of money asking me to buy poop pills for them. I get that. I get it. Okay. And then one other thing related to the gut, and I think this is interesting because I am one of those guys who has some true gluten sensitivities. I've been tested. I have an antibody reaction to multiple gliadins, right? The protein that you would find in wheat. But this one really caught my eye. There was a 7-day randomized crossover trial in people with irritable bowel syndrome, and they found that many of them were convinced that their problems were caused by gluten. And so, what they did was they actually tested how much of this is actually in your head. So, they had people eat what they thought was a meal that contained gluten, and then they had other people eat a meal that actually had gluten. Now, the people who were convinced that they had eaten gluten actually displayed a deleterious response to the gluten, even though the meal didn't actually have gluten in it. Meaning, and this has been shown in, in other studies, like with lactose, uh, with like milkshakes and calories and blood glucose response, um, if you think that you're allergic to something, if you believe that you're symptomatic to gluten or dairy or whatever, you can actually think yourself into bloating, gas, indigestion, et cetera, when in fact, if nobody had told you or if somebody would have said, "Here's a sandwich, it's gluten-free bread, you'll be fine," and it was actually— this would be a horrible trick, I guess, but it was actually bread with gluten. If you didn't know it had gluten in it, and had been told that it was gluten-free, if someone literally lied to you like they did in this study, then you might not have symptoms. Now, this, in my opinion, makes a case to test, to actually do a true dried spot food allergy test or Cyrex panel. I'll link in the shownotes to the test, like the test page that I have for the test that I recommend. But, I mean, if you think you're allergic to something, I mean, a really good food allergy test is not inexpensive, okay? My last test I paid $450 for, but for me, the peace of mind of knowing— and I'll typically do this about once a year— of knowing what foods are triggering a reaction for me, it's worth it. Now, why would I have to do it multiple times a year? Does it change? Yes, it does. Stress, some kind of immune incident, food poisoning, et cetera, can cause leaky gut issues and gut sensitivities that cause a food that didn't cause an inflammatory response last year to cause an inflammatory response now. That's why the person who has an omelet or scrambled eggs in the morning for 3 years all of a sudden has brain fog by 11:00 a.m. after they have eggs, or the person who used to be able to go out for their friends, like a really good farm-to-table organic pizza place and punish the pizza, now they're like painting the back of the toilet seat the next morning if they come near gluten or wheat. So it's worth it to test, in my opinion. And again, like, not super cheap to get a good test, but worth it in my opinion. So I just thought that was really interesting, that piece about gluten, wheat, etc. Okay, we are almost done here, but I have been getting a lot of questions about ketones. K-E-T-O-N-E-S. You've probably seen them. They're championed as that ketones are really good preferred fuel for the brain, for the heart, for the diaphragm, for the liver. I would agree with that. They help you to have good energy levels when your blood glucose is low. They can be combined with carbohydrates for sports for a really good performance-enhancing effect. I've been a fan of ketones for years. Now, the reason I'm saying this is there's kind of like this rumor, this rumble, if you're a nerd enough to be paying attention to this, that ketone intake might be bad for the liver and contribute to some non-alcoholic fatty liver disease-like symptoms and high liver enzymes. Now, here is what you need to know. A, this is true, but it's true in what are called supraphysiological dosages, and I'll link to these in the studies, meaning Let's say you would use, like, I don't know, like Ketone IQ, for example. You would have to take 28 shots of that, which is a lot, to replicate the type of liver issues that they showed in rodents, that is, in the study. This wasn't even in humans. And so, not only that, but additional studies, and I'll link to these in the shownotes, on those same ketones show no hepatotoxicity, even from the one that's been kind of vilified called 1,3-butandiol, again in rodent models. But it's been shown to be somewhat reno protective, meaning protective for the kidneys. Now, there is a guy, Dr. Andrew Kutnick, who was recently on the show, who I believe is collaborating with a group looking at improvements of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, improvements in it. Using a 1,3-butanediol-containing ketone esters. I know that's a mouthful, but the 1,3-butanediol is the one that a lot of people say, well, technically it's an alcohol, it's going to harm your liver, it produces elevated liver enzymes. Guys, you have to like mainline it. You have to drink a ton of it for it to be an issue. So don't worry if— and again, like Ketone IQ didn't pay for this, but like, don't worry if you're drinking something like Ketone IQ or 1,3-butandiol. A lot of you know I recently launched a bar with ketones in it. Those ketones aren't 1,3-butandiol, they're beta-hydroxybutyrate, different ketone. But no matter what, like, if you're using ketones, I have seen no evidence that you need to be worried about this underground rumbling that ketones might elevate liver enzymes. If you want to do a test and you're already using them and maybe you like did a blood test and you had elevated liver enzymes, sure, cut them out for 2 weeks. Retest. Let me know in the comments section if you notice anything. I'm not concerned at all based on all the research that I've seen, but just in case you were wondering about ketones, that's what you need to know about whether or not they're actually an issue. And, I think that about wraps up today's show and everything that I wanted to share with you. I will in the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/495 links to everything I talked about, my biohacking binder with the cool tools, the studies on the sauna stuff, the poop pills place, everything. So, if you dig these shows and you just like to hear my ramblings on random things that hopefully make your life better, let me know. Leave the podcast a ranking, a review wherever you find it. And, thanks for listening in. I'm Ben Greenfield with the Boundless Life Podcast. Until next time, signing out.

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