Fertility Secrets, Overcoming Painkiller Addiction, & Meditation With Adam Wenguer of Element Health

People have to find out what's right for them in terms of what's going to improve their fertility. Some people have to trust the medical establishment, which I get. But I really encourage people to do their own research. Realize that CBD and a lot of other natural compounds can really contribute to improving your fertility, men and women.

Well, I was, I was telling my podcast guest today, Adam Winger, Wingauer Wengower. I'm always mispronouncing your name. You corrected me though. I think I've been doing it wrong for like four years. It's W e N G E U R. G U E R. G U E R. You say Wengauer. So use Winger Y Winger. Well, the other reason I'm, I'm telling folks this is I'm actually going to put the show notes for everything Adam and I talk about at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Adam Winger. And that's a D a M W E n G U E R. So if you're off running or working out or walking right now, you're just going to have to make a mental note to yourself and, and go visit the show notes because I always, always put some interesting stuff in there. And I'll include a link to the previous show that Adam and I did where we talked a lot about cbd. Obviously, Adam is the owner of his cb, CBD company. You're a real expert in the endocannabinoid system and all sorts of different medicines in general. But your CBD has really taken off. People seem to like it quite a bit. You've got the gummies now, you got the oils. And so we can talk about some of the interesting experiences you've had with cbd, particularly related like fertility and stuff, which I thought was a little bit mind blowing the last time we chatted. But to, to just give any of you listening who didn't hear my previous podcasts with Adam, a little bit of a background. Adam, you and I met at a, at a gym down in Miami, the Canyon Ranch, which I think is now called Carrillo. Right?

Yeah, Carillon.

Yeah, Carillon. I was close and There was another doctor there who was with. What was the doctor's name?

Dr. Kareem Danani.

Yeah, Dr. Kareem Danani. Yeah. And you were training him and we all hooked up at the facility down there and you brought us through this crazy workout where we're like going up and down a rock climbing wall and rowing ergometer. And rowing ergometer. It was pretty fun.

You got on a Bosu and Started doing kettlebell swings.

That's right.

We were going next level with it.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, I don't like to sit around too much at the gym, but it was a cool workout. But then, man, we've connected on so many levels since then, and now here we are sitting outside in Florida. I'm a little bit guilty because my whole family's back in Snowpocalypse right now in Washington state. And here I am in the. In the sunshine. But this is a cool setting. We've got some goats in the background. We've got some horses. We've got. I don't know what is like a ranch.

Yeah. It's a friend of mine's farm.

Yeah.

Films, podcast, and.

Yeah.

My farm is a bit out of the way, a little more off the grid.

Yeah.

And this is just the perfect setting, I thought, for podcast.

You weren't living in a farm when you and I first connected in Miami four years ago, were you? Right.

No, I was in Miami Beach.

Yeah.

I always lived in this one general area called Surfside and Bay Harbor.

Yeah.

It's laid back. It's great. But then when I knew I was going to have a son, right before, I guess the whole pandemic thing, I said, you know what, it's time to get out of the city.

Yeah.

And as you do, you live in a beautiful place in Washington. I mean, a lot of people are taking. Taking notice of how important it is to live on the land.

Yeah.

So we started looking and I found something and jumped on it right before the housing market went crazy.

So did you buy land and then build or you found a. You found a home?

The plan was to build, but we found the most amazing home. We call it the Bali Tree House.

Bali Tree House?

Yeah. I mean, it doesn't look like it's in Florida, and It's on about 13 acres. And when you see it, you're like, this has to be somewhere in Bali or Costa Rica.

Yeah.

I mean, it's mind blowing. We'll get you out there soon. And there we do everything from hunting hogs and deer to growing our own food. All sorts of good stuff.

Wow.

Perfect place to raise a son.

And what, what are you, what are you doing out on the farm as far as, like livestock or agriculture or gardening or anything like that?

Yeah. So my wife began gardening. We have a bunch of cows there that just had a bunch of calves. They're not ours, we don't own them, but there's some big ranchers. Florida's known for beef Cattle.

Yeah, for citrus.

And we actually rent the land to a bunch of our neighbors that are like serious beef and cattle farmers. And it's just nice to have them. We love having animals around.

Yeah. Yeah.

I end up not hunting my property because I just like seeing the animals.

Yeah. It's like hunting pets. That's why I'm a little careful with the white tailed deer on our property. It's almost like too easy first time.

And they're just gorgeous and yeah, I want to keep seeing them.

Yeah. If I was starving, I'd go out and harvest them. But yeah, but yeah, it's a, it's. It's kind of different when you have the pets just rolling around your house. You. You don't necessarily want to shoot them from the front porch.

Yeah.

Yeah. So for, for you, I think you were telling me.

On our last podcast possibly about how, how you're not only hunting like hog and deer, but alligator also.

Yeah, I've hunted a bunch of alligators.

Yeah.

I got into. What's an alligator hunt like? Oh, it's quite intense. I. I liked hunting with rifle. I never actually got into bow. I've practiced.

Yeah.

But I wanted to hunt by hand. I thought it would just be. I would have a greater connection to the animal aside from looking through a scope, seeing it happen. I want. Because hunting for me is a very emotional experience, very deeply spiritual experience.

Yes.

You know, I, I have such a profound love for animals. I have a lot of pets, but I want to be able to feed my family and also be prepared in case someone can't go to a grocery store.

Right.

And I find the meat to be more nutritious than even, you know, grass fed beef and well kept animals.

Yeah.

So I started with a wild boar, which is pretty wild. I mean, for me, it's not really a big deal. I've been doing it for a while now. But when I tell people they're like, you actually like, grab them with your hands and that's how you do it. We bring dogs. Yeah. Yeah. That's where I wanted to bring them.

How do you actually catch a boar with your hands?

So a lot of times they'll bring like four or five dogs. I don't really think that's fair. We usually bring like one or two. One is a.

These are like your dogs that you train for, for hunting.

I can't train my dog. I have too much going on to spend time to train them.

Okay.

But I have friends that. This is what they primarily do. They're these Florida cur. Dogs. No one's even heard of them. They look like cur dog. That's what they're called. Okay. C U R R. And these people think like, pit bulls are game animals. These animals can do anything for you on a farm for from like rounding up cattle to protecting your home. They're great with kids and you see them and they just look like skinny, emaciated dogs. It's very weird. They're 30 pounds and they have so much energy, you can't feed them enough food. But all they want to do is find boar and find animals.

Really?

Yeah. It's an incredible thing. It's a whole. It's a wormhole.

You can almost like a Rhodesian ridgeback. We used to have ridgebacks, you know, and originally in Africa, they're used to hunt lions, you know, in packs. So these dogs have been bred to be able to hunt things like boar.

Exactly. And usually there's one or people bring out a bunch to track them because they have great scent.

Yeah.

You have a GPS tracker on them and they have shields in case so they don't get injured too bad.

Wow.

And you track the gps, you start hearing them barking and the next thing you know, there's a wild boar that's trying to get away from them or kill them. And this is probably why I don't use my own dogs. So the two dogs will find the boar and then you have to time it really well because you can get severely injured. Yeah, I've seen people with their faces ripped open, their legs. And the bacteria from a boar is just horrible. Yeah. You can't just sew it up.

They're scary. When I've. When I've hunted wild pig in Hawaii, I had one shot where I had to. I had to track it into this, this. This big, big thicket of trees. And this was at like 2am and all you could hear around you were little snorts like the. And you know, and of course, all I was. My bow at that time. I didn't even have like a handgun or anything on me. And I was nervous as heck that I was just gonna get charged by something while I was digging around in there in the trees for the one that I shot.

They're unpredictable.

Yeah, it's like Old Yeller. You know, the old Old Yeller movie where, where they think it's. Is it the dog that gets beat up by the boars or the kid or. I don't remember, but they're.

Can I remember?

They're scary animals. So back to the hunting by hand thing. Once the dogs are on them, what do you do next?

So typically the dogs that we use, they don't attack them, they just find them and kind of disorient them a little bit with the barking. Yeah. A lot of people train one to be called a catch dog where they'll jump on the board, like on its ear or neck to keep it really preoccupied. So the ones we use are primarily bay. They'll. They'll kind of distract them. And then I come up at the ideal time. You don't want to do it head on. It's always got to be from the back and grab it by its legs and put it on its side. Once it's on its side, if you can control the legs, that's when people start hog tying.

You have to like sprint to run up and grab by the legs.

It's super primal, intense.

Wow.

And once you grab it and you have to have some strength there, you got to pick it up with your whole body, put it on its side. And if you let go at the wrong time, they'll get up and just hammer you. I mean, they had these like 2 inch. We call them cutters. They're tusks and they just rip through anything. And once you get it on its side, you don't want it to suffer. So we don't want it to be down too long. And you get a really big blade. We have like nine inch blades. And you put it through the armpit because they have like a big shield on their back and shoulders. Like you can take a knife and go like this and it won't go through.

Yeah.

Sharpest blade you've ever seen.

Yeah. I've shot boar before with a bow and arrow and unless that arrow is. Is just perfectly into the vitals, their skin's like freaking Kevlar.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So really quickly you put the blade in through their armpit. Twist as much as you can to hit vital organs hard. Lungs. Usually there's a spray, but you want to put it down as quick as possible. And I just found that that's more realistic for me. I could use a rifle. You may get a gut shot. Yeah, you never know. So this way, it's so quick and it goes down really quickly. Of course there's a little bit of like nervous energy you feel from it afterwards, but it does very quickly. As humane as possible. Much more humane than factory farming.

Yeah.

And then you have a big hog and you don't know. We've. I've had ones right before my wedding that were 300 pounds. And I served it at my wedding.

I was gonna ask you if you're actually eating these things.

Oh, yeah.

How's the meat?

It's delicious. And people say. So there's hogs that they call boar hogs. Those are the ones that still have their testicles. And they say because of the testosterone, it makes the meat taste more gamey. Yeah, I've never found that. I give it to my wife, she's like an amazing chef, and she'll put it in a slow cooker with pineapple, onion, all sorts of stuff. And you think you're eating like the most.

Delicious small pork from a restaurant. It's incredible.

Yeah, that's what I found. Wild game, the long, slow cook times. Like the other day I had a party. It was a pickleball party. A bunch of our friends got together, local pickleball facility called Selkirk up in Post Falls. And I had, I had some Axis deer and some sheep mutton. Right? Two, two meats that if you just take them out and whatever, you know, put them on the grill are going to be kind of.

Access is great though.

Yeah, access is good. But. But the trick is. And you can look like an expert chef, even though it doesn't take much at all. I just get a big roasting pan and pour a whole bottle of wine into the roasting pan. Throw some carrots, onions, you know, herbs, spices, whatever. And then you just cover that and slip it in the oven at like 250 degrees, leave it in there for six hours, pull it out, drench it in barbecue sauce, and it's like melt in your mouth. Amazing. Everybody thinks you're a great chef. Really. You know, it's just like wine roasting pan, walk away. So that's your slow cooking metal.

You're not using pressure cookers?

Oh, I've used pressure cookers. I've used a sous vide. The sous vide water bath is great for let's say like pork belly, for example. Anybody who hasn't used a sous vide, you want to use like the, the bags that don't leach a lot of plastic into the meat. So cautious with the plastic. Yeah. So there's one called stasher bags. Which are, which are, which are pretty heat resistant. Plastic.

And are they plastic?

Yeah, yeah, it's a plastic compound. I could, I could be wrong, but it was plastic. Like. Okay, what would you say? Silicone?

Silicone. I thought so.

Yeah, they might, they might be silicone Anyways though, for like a pork belly, you can Literally just like, take your giant slab of pork belly, put it in there like 5am Right? Walk away and leave out about 100. And I think pork belly is like 155 degrees. And then 12 hours later, you just take it out, you give it a quick sear on either side, or you can even use blowtorch. And it's just like melt in your mouth. Good, perfect consistency. And there's a few chefs who think this is like, a bastardization of cooking meat. Whether you do like, I had a 60 hour brisket once in the sous vide, which was amazing. Best brisket I've ever had in my life. Better than any Texas brisket I've had. And I was telling a pit master this, and he's like, you miss out on the blastom. Yeah, he's like. He said, you miss out on the terrar and the flavor. And the terrar would be like, similar to wine, how wine takes on certain characteristics, soil that it's grown in, and, and the, The. The. The rocks and the dirt and the probiotics in the soil all influence the flavor of the wine. Well, a lot of traditional barbecue masters say that, well, if you just put in a water bath and walk away, you're missing out on all, like, the smoking and the tending and the variations in temperature. But I tell you what, as far as ease goes, the. The sous vide is amazing.

Yeah.

You mentioned the pressure cooker, which is a good time hack. You know, you can do ribs that would normally take six hours. Like, you know, competition style ribs that just come off the bone so easily. You can. You can put them in the pressure cooker, and that's like 40 minutes, right? Wine, bone broth, again, your herbs and spices. And you impress your friends because you pull it out and it's. It tastes like you spent six hours tending this stuff. And the thing with the pressure cooker, very similar to, like, searing the meat. After you finish the sous vide with the pressure cooker, you just take it out of the pressure cooker, put it in a pan, toss in the oven for like, five minutes on broil with a little bit of barbecue sauce on there, so you get that fine little caramelization of flavor.

Is this in your cookbook?

Yeah, yeah. I've got. I've got some pressure cooker in there, some sous vide in there, some smoking, like on the Traeger grill in there, and then a few crock pot methods. Yeah, it's so good. Like, a lot of people, they just. I think if they discovered the Cool tools that are out there that aren't that difficult to learn how to use. You know, there's. There's so much you can do in the kitchen with so many varieties of meat.

You taught me for, like, a ribeye. Like, everyone's got a rib eye method. Yeah, I've tried it all. But you had one where it was so simple, and I think I was using reverse sear. Reverse sear? Yeah, with like, rosemary. And I never thought put rosemary in a steak, but, you know, preventing carcinogen formation.

Yeah.

And I still use rosemary, like, on everything now. Yeah, on the Traeger and whatnot. But those steaks with the crispy outside now, I've graduated more to, like, a Traeger. But the flavor is incredible.

Yeah, that's. That's the thing. Like, if you're able to smoke the steak beforehand, like, for an hour or so, if you have, like, a Traeger or a smoker, it's not a necessary process. But the reverse sear method, basically, you. You grill it for a little bit on either side, but then you have, like, a really, really hot pan, like a cast iron pan that you've heated, put some butter in that pan, and you finish it after you've grilled it on either side for, like, three or four minutes in the butter, just ready to go. It's pretty amazing. You mentioned rosemary and thyme, and there was a recent study that listed the antioxidant content of huge variety of herbs and spices and plants. And you know what? What? I started cooking with 2. 2 compounds. I started cooking with to avoid the carcinogenic potential to meat that are some of the highest antioxidants containing herbs and spices you can use when cooking. And both start with a C1. One is one of the most popular drugs known to humankind.

Don't tell me. Like, coffee.

Coffee. Okay. Yep. So you can do, like, a coffee rub, and that's amazing.

Super popular now, too.

Exactly.

Coffee on pizza. Coffee grinds.

Yeah. And if you make coffee anyways, you can save the grinds. You can dry them in, like, a food dehydrator, and you can literally have, like, a mason glass jar full of coffee rubber. Put a little cayenne, a little sea salt, a little paprika in there. That's a good rub. But 10 times higher than coffee is clove. This is a recent one I started cooking with. Yeah, it gives it, you know, the meat like this really nice flavor. You can mix a little allspice, which is also very high in antioxidants. A Little bit of nutmeg and you almost get like this nice fall, like pumpkin spicy flavor on the meat. Do that with a little bit of like raw honey for the caramelization.

I'm always concerned with like too much smoking. Like the trigger is so convenient. So like I try to minimize.

Yeah.

Carcinogenic effects.

There's always going to be. But you know, I'd rather dive cancer when I'm 85 from eating good meat. You know, die of natural causes when I'm 86 and miss out on all the fantastic barbecue my whole life. So the other question before we leave, the topic of, of hunting that I, I didn't close a loop on this, but the alligator.

Oh, right, right.

Yeah.

So, yeah, some people like to shoot them. I just, I never got into that. So we use a thing called the snatch hook, which is basically like fishing. So you're fishing and you reel them in and then I take. Once I get them on land, it's dangerous. Just like a boar. Once we pull it in, I use an ax or a hatchet and I get on its back. And you try to do a real quick cut right just below the skull.

Yeah.

And it dies very quickly and you get a lot of meat. And what's cool is you can use, you know, all the, the skin. I don't even think it's called skin, but I've made purses for my wife, for my mother in law. Exactly. And you can get them colored, different things.

You have to treat the skin or.

I don't do it personally. I bring it to like a taxidermist.

Okay.

And the meat's great. Really?

What's it taste like? I've had alligator jerky before, but.

Oh, really? The popular one is alligator nuggets. Especially here in Florida.

Don't tell me it's like the testicle, the alligator.

No, no, no.

They just fry it.

Yeah. So it'd be like a chicken nugget. We would use like avocado.

You fry that, you fry the meat. Right, right.

But I found that you could put it on the grill. It does have like a chicken taste to a different consistency. Yeah, Just another form of protein. Never try all the animals. I can.

Yeah.

You know, but now with like the Everglades and Burmese pythons running rampant, they're eating alligators or eating deer. I kind of want to like preserve alligators as much as possible.

You'd never eat a python, would you?

I, I probably would. I haven't had the opportunity.

Yeah.

Would you?

I would. I would eat anything once.

Exactly. Yeah.

Just about anything.

A lot of invasive species down here.

Yeah.

Learn that living in.

I know with a name like Benjamin Greenfield, I'm supposed to be Jewish and, you know, avoid all the pork and the shellfish and the alligator and everything, but I, I, I, I, I'm too much of a foodie. I'll try.

I do it. And I was raised Jewish. I'm like, I look like the opposite of that, you know?

Well, we also establish you're not vegan.

Oh, exactly. I'm allergic to it.

Yeah. So, you know, we had a little bit of a, of a discussion last time about your, your journey into becoming a father. It was very interesting. We were talking a little bit about your son before we started podcasting and how you and your wife thought for a very long time that you weren't going to be able to have kids at all. Tell me about what happened.

So in college, I didn't really think too far ahead. I said, I don't really want kids. I was a bit of a savage, you know, and I just thought I really enjoyed bodybuilding at the time. And I was also still doing MMA and I was using a good amount of steroids, like different types, to try to just maximize my performance.

Yeah.

Because when you're young, biohacking, you don't really worry about the long term consequences as much as when you're in your 30s. So I knew it had some sort of detrimental effect, but I didn't really overthink it. I figured technology, 10, 20 years down the road, I'll be fine.

Yeah.

But then we, I got married, decided we wanted to have kids, and I was on a testosterone replacement. Because when you use steroids for an extended period of time, especially for bodybuilding in those type of doses, there is a whole, just a host of affects. Your endocrine system. Yeah.

The liver.

Yeah. Yeah. Your h, hypothalamus, pituitary, testicular axis is affected and you just don't produce as much sperm. And we tried for about a year or two without success. And I think I was 36 at the time, and I thought, like, let me go to a professional, let me go to one of the medical professionals. And we sought out a doctor who. You've mentioned him before. I'm not gonna mention who he is. And I went to his office and he was renowned in Florida for improving fertility. Huh. So I get there and there were so many people in the waiting room.

Had you tested before that point? You're using one of these test kits, like your sperm and fertility?

I did. And they can change day to day a bit.

Yeah.

They said I was on the very, very low end. So I started getting tested more frequently and with this doctor. And it turned out I had zero spots. Like, they said zero.

Yeah.

Not like low.

Yeah.

You have no. No swimmers that are even immobile.

Yeah.

They're like. We haven't really seen that too frequently. We're seeing people with reduced sperm counts because of everything environmental these days. You know, lower testosterone levels, lower sperm counts. That's been going on for 20, 30 years now. But this one was very specific. I mean, I can relate to other people that are going through infertility issues just simply because environmental factors or choices or even their lack of spirituality, I think that plays a huge part. But that's a totally different thing. They told me zero. So they said, we have a protocol for you. We want you to stop using testosterone. We're going to give you this form of, like nasal testosterone. It's very short acting, so it won't affect your endocrine system. We're going to give you Clomid and hcg. They gave me a host of drugs.

Yeah. Clomid and HCG are very, very common to restore fertility or ball size. And guys who've been using a lot of testosterone.

And they gave me exceptionally high doses.

Like to the point of Clomid and hcg.

Yeah. I would have to look back at the numbers, but it was so high, to the point where I couldn't take that. I ended up doing less and I was so uncomfortable. You know, I practice jiu jitsu, like high, at a high level. Not like a world champion, but we train very hard. I'm still lifting very hard. Everything I do in life has a physical component to it, aside from my own personal, like, meditative practice. But I'm working out with my wife all the time. I'm very active.

Yeah.

And when we met, I was a trainer.

Yeah.

So I got off all that stuff. I started taking the meds they were telling me to get on, and I was just shrinking. My body was like very catabolic itself. And not like, oh, I'm not working out as much. It just didn't feel healthy.

Yeah.

I started feeling really sickly and emotional. I would be happy. And if I was happy, I was happy that I was happy.

Yeah.

Which is a strange thing. You're joyous that you have a good feeling.

Yeah.

So it gave me a taste of, like, depression, anger. And it would change on an hourly basis, not even a daily basis. And I said, okay, I'll Suck it up. This is. We know the end goal. We know what we're looking to achieve. And I did it for four to six months and it was just so uncomfortable. It affects your sleep. It affected everything. So I had to sit down with my wife and we talked about it. Her name's Kristen. You met her. We all went out to dinner and she said, look like your well being is more important and do we really want to have a child when you're feeling like this?

Yeah.

We believe that you should be happy and feel a greater connection to God. And that's when you're going to conceive that medical intervention isn't always the way. And we spoke so many times. I believe in, like, the power of our mind, of our spirit, what we can do on our own. We don't have to rely on the medical establishment. But I just thought, let me give them a shot. And I think it really failed. And I would go to their office every few months and I felt like cattle, like factory farming.

Yeah.

In and out. They would come in, they would literally like, grab your balls, do a blood test, you're out. It felt so impersonal. So I said, all right, I'm done with this. I got back on my low dose of testosterone optimization.

Right.

And just went about our life. And then the pandemic hit. So everyone was kind of stuck at home. Thank God. In Florida, we didn't really have it as bad as everyone else. But I decided, you know what? My father had passed in 2019, and I was a big meditator. I taught meditation. But when he had passed, I said, said, I want to meditate every day, every morning. I'm going to make this just a habit that happens every day no matter what, along with my other morning gratitude practice.

Yeah.

So I started doing that. And when I realized, like.

And what did that look like for you, the meditation.

It's funny, when you have experience with meditation and you teach it, you can kind of let it vary. I can say I'm going to include a little bit of breath work right now. Maybe I'll follow a guided meditation. Maybe I'll guide myself. Maybe I'll include it as part of a ceremony with natural herbs and plants. Luckily for me, I've had a lot of experience. So I made. I made like a creative, fun experience every day. Yeah, there's something about. I get up very early every day. My wife used to sleep very late before we had a child. So it gave me a good at least hour.

Spoiler alert.

You had a child.

Spoiler oh, yeah, we'll get to that.

So the meditations I really focus on. I thought about my father a lot. Just a remarkable person. Like, you felt the love when you got near him. He was a person that, like, they have that phrase, he'll give you a shirt off his back. I've seen him do this. And when he had passed, people came out of the woodwork. The guys that he, like, had hired to clean a pool or he did landscaping with, and they were. I saw them in person and they're crying. These are people that most people just shrug off and go, I'm hiring someone. He developed an interpersonal relationship with everyone he met. People loved him. And his funeral was like, so many people. Yeah, he was just such a remarkable person. He had come. He'd escaped communist Cuba. He was young. He was six years old, and he had worked while being in school in the University of Miami. Just an incredible, incredible person. He probably took on too much stress of other people, family and friends. I think that's why he probably died a bit too early. But I had a feeling that he would have a part in my fertility journey. I always pictured, like, having a son and him having a great part in my new family. Him being part of the family and. Yeah, just the joy he would feel. So I had a lot of meditations thinking about him also visualizing my son, visualizing my testicles filled with sperm. Visualizing literally the.

You would do this during your meditation? Literally. Like, visualize fertility.

Oh, for sure. I visualize Kristen telling me I'm pregnant coming out of, like, a pregnancy test. I'm a firm believer we create whatever we want in this world.

And I'm sure the fertility clinic would have laughed their ass off.

Oh, gosh. For this technique, they make you laugh. Anyways, the first time I went in there to get my sperm check, they sent me to, like a couple request. And she goes, oh, what are you doing? I said, oh, I'm doing a fertility check. She goes, oh, we're choking chickens today, huh? I'm like, oh, man, this is a medical establishment, you know? She sends me into this room and it was a bathroom. I'm like, what is going on? She goes, all right, here's your cup.

Yeah.

Full size mirror.

Like a.

It was a little awkward, but yeah, you gotta laugh about all these things.

Yeah, I've done the sperm test. They have kits now that they'll send to you. I forget the names of some of these. You can find them online, but it's very, very similar. They send you a Box. And you got to figure out how to get your sperm in there or your semen in there and. And then send it off, freeze it and set it off.

Oh, freeze it. Yeah, you have to give it to them within, like.

Yeah, you gotta set it off like an ice pack, something like that.

Oh, okay. So where were. Oh. So I was meditating. I was also, at the time, I was developing forms of planned medicine that I thought would be more short acting because I enjoyed. I wouldn't say I enjoyed plant medicine ceremonies, but I liked the outcome from them. I personally experienced tremendous suffering and challenges when I was doing these ceremonies. I hear about people go off and play the drums and have fun on an island somewhere. It was never like that for me. We took part in, like, in ceremonies where it was really facing your soul, digging deep into what traumas I may have caused other people or put on myself. At least that's how I experienced it. It was a good way to look in the mirror in a more profound way in a shorter period of time. So I was doing. We talked about it. The smokable version of ayahuasca.

Yeah.

And I decided I'm going to do this three or four times a week to connect potentially with the spirit of my son.

This is almost like a microdose of ayahuasca.

More potent.

Okay.

So it's not as long in duration, but it's more intense. And I don't recommend people take it unless it's in a ceremonial setting. I have a lot of practice in this, so that's why I was able to do it myself. And I've guided a lot of people, and I've worked under shamans that.

Are just phenomenal people in general, and they do really good work. And it's funny because it coincides so much with a lot of what you've said on podcasts about if these tools are to be used, they need to be used properly.

Yeah.

And everyone's different. You may have. It might not be a part of your life anymore, but no matter what, if it is, it needs to be held with a reverence and an honor for what we're doing. And I don't think it's to see other gods and beings. People. I think they misunderstand and they go for the fun and they misinterpret what's going on. I think it's very interpersonal way that we can connect with the collective consciousness and see what's not there for our typical five senses.

Okay.

But anyhow, I was able to connect with My father a lot, and I think with my son, a good amount.

And I just knew your son before your son was born. Before he was born. Yeah.

This is before he was. That I was even told I had active sperm.

Right.

And I just knew. I had a mindset that this is what's really going to happen. And I was sitting there meditating, and that would be an hour, a couple times a week. But I really attribute it to my gratitude practice and the meditation, visualizing what was going to happen, feeling the emotion of it, of when my son would be born. And I don't know what that's like. I've never experienced someone else's birth, but I could feel it in my core, in my cells. Wow. And then six months into that, I guess it was July of 2020, my wife said, go get checked. And when the doctor called me a few days ago, a few days before, after the test, he said, you have regular sperm like a normal guy sperm. And I was still on testosterone, and.

At that point had. Had you kind of tapered off the Clomid and the HCG and everything.

Oh, I. I stopped taking all that. Wow. I was able to get HCG and FSH again. I looked at the doses, and I took an eighth of the dose. I said, like, let me give this a little bit of a shot. I don't believe that you need to take these absurdly high doses. I used a lot of you turned me on to more like nose to tail eating. And talked to Jay Campbell, who you connected me with.

Yeah.

Great guy. And he was. He really explained to me how there's an epidemic of men with low testosterone. He's seeing men that just cannot have kids. Kids.

Yeah.

And I thought, if I conquer this beast, this is something I'm going to be able to help more men with.

Yeah.

Men don't want to talk about this.

Yeah.

It's all about being masculine. And I totally understand that. But a guy that doesn't produce sperm, he keeps it quiet.

Yeah.

A lot of times it affects his relationship. People get divorced because of this.

Yeah. And there's a lot of men now because of the. The rampant emergence of these testosterone clinics and testosterone optimization therapies that, like, you kind of get started on this stuff early. And they're unaware of a lot of things you're talking about when it comes to how to reverse that and still be able to. To have a child and a legacy and a family after making some of those mistakes of your youth, where all you just want to be a swole bro so you. You had also mentioned to me that the endocanninoid system was something that you had somehow linked to fertility and you began to use different cannabinoids as well, Is that correct?

I mean, owning that. We produce CBD and we distribute, and it's. To me, it's the highest level of cbd. I've taken everything. I've tried hundreds of brands and what we were producing for my friends and family in these really small batches, which is so potent, you actually got it, like right after it. Right after I'd ordered labels and bottles.

Yeah.

I believe on Amazon.

Yeah.

I was just selling it to, like, my friends so they could improve their sleep and just have, like a more balanced sensation.

Yeah. Now that was the elements element stuff, which I still use. You send me those droppers and I still do two or three droppers. Just about any evening where I've got levels of anxiety or stress, probably five nights a week, I'll use that. And, you know, now you have the gummies, which seem to work really well too. But I've never really experience a CBD like that that really seems to agree with my system. Allow me to stave off anxiety and, you know, as opposed to like smoking a joint or taking a hit on a vape pen, you still stay fully alert. And in my opinion, high levels of thc, they can be kind of feminizing, like it's kind of like a female plant. And that in and of itself tends to impact testosterone. There was a recent study that showed that high levels of THC can actually impair mitochondrial function, particularly neural tissue. And so you actually lose the ability of the mitochondria to function properly. There's. There's a lot of issues. I think there's a time and a place for things like pain management, for example. You know, I've had times when I've had.

You know, like. Like, for example, like stem cell protocols that leave you in a lot of pain for the first couple of days. And I'll use something like THC rather than. Than common opioids. And I know you have a history of opioids. We can talk about that later. But at the same time, I try to avoid THC whenever possible for a lot of the reasons of the side effects. But the CBD that you make, where are you actually getting the raw ingredients for that? Because it is super unique for some reason, the way I feel on it.

So we have family farms in Kentucky, and my wife. It just so happens. Kentucky, Kentucky. To me, that's where we Produce the strawberry strongest cbd. I'd like to grow in Florida eventually. But right now the rules are very, very strict. Okay. And Kentucky, we had some like the original licenses for research for CBD with the US Department of Agriculture. So there's a long history of farmers that know what they're doing in terms of hemp, but all sorts of crops. And it just so happens that my wife's family is from Vermont and they have family friends with farms and we'll do work with them as well. But it's such an amazing. What happens right now is how I discovered CBD was in 2016 and I was using it and I really enjoyed the effects. And then I just started noticing it was tapering off.

Okay.

And when I started studying the effects of CBD on the endocannabinoid system, how it works with serotonin receptors, we can go into details. It's not supposed to have that effect where you lose the sensations of better sleep, anti anxiolytic effects, all the cardiovascular effects, improved focus during the day. You shouldn't be losing this. You don't need higher doses like you would with say, pharmaceutical drugs or even thc. So I started finding out that these companies, as they grew, they were moving to California and Colorado and we started doing more research. We were flying out there and we were seeing that they were mass produced producing these plants. And there's nothing wrong with mass producing. As a company grows and you have to sell more, that's what happens. And they're hiring the cheapest labor possible. But all the grow techniques, from the quality of the soil to the water they're using, everything was just starting to go downhill. And they began, this is really interesting, using genetics from high THC plants. And they were genetically modifying it to lower the thickness THC and increase the cbd. So they weren't using these old, old strains of hemp, which has been around for thousands of years. They were actually trying to make it better and better. Just like they're using CBD isolates for everything. And synthetic CBD and synthetic cannabinoids. Cannabinoids, which aren't necessarily better. Sometimes we have to take a few steps back. And we developed a really old strain, an old industrial strain strain from the uk. And there's something about the cannabinoid profile that is just phenomenal. It has the perfect amount of what I think of cbd, cbn, cbg.

So it's not just CBD in your product.

We're doing full spectrum to the max. We're doing a crude Formula, which means it's going through even less filtration, distillation. I mean, you've tried ours. You can't mix it with food. Some people put it in their coffee. Mm. It's not bad, but it's. It's like you're eating the earth.

Yeah.

Other companies, they're making CBD flavored with strawberry with mint. And I get customers that want that kind of stuff. And I say, look, if you really want the benefits and the effects and you want to connect with the earth and feel balanced, you got to get over your sense of taste a little bit.

Yeah. And you use that during the day, you had mentioned, for focus.

Yeah.

And, you know, my primary use for it is, like, sleep and relaxation. But if you were to use it for focus, Tell me about the dosages and the difference between, like, daytime use and coffee or for focus or whatever, and what you'd use in the evening. Like, what kind of? What kind of. I realize it's going to vary widely from person to person, but approximately.

Well, I used a substantially lower dose during the day. The diurnal effect of the endocannabinoid system, which is something I dove into after hearing you mention it on a podcast. And that's the amazing thing about cbd. Well, CBD in itself doesn't attach to the cannabinoid receptors. It's not like directly activating them. It works by degrading fah, which is the enzyme responsible for degrading.

Anandamine, which is the primary endocannabinoid, the one that we produce internally. So that's cbd. But when you have a full spectrum formula, I'm getting cbg, cbn, minuscule amounts of thc. And the way these work on the endocannabin.

When you say minuscule amounts, by the way, you mean, like, less than 0.3, is that the THC is less than 0.3. So there's still, like, mild amounts of THC in it, but nowhere near what you'd experience for getting high.

Oh, yeah, you won't get high unless you're eating a couple gummies or taking a few really big droppers.

Yeah. I have found if I take, like, four droppers of your stuff and I do that before bed, if I wake up at, like, midnight or one to pee, I feel like I'm a little bit high. Like, nowhere near. If I were to, like, take a THC gummy or something like that. But you can. You can. You can feel the THC a little bit.

Oh, for sure. And especially with our new gummies, I formulated them. Just have slightly more still. All within the legal amount. What's allowed? But yeah, the gummies I'll use more recreationally. But circling back to your. What you said, during daytime use, I try to use very small amounts. And if you take it with your coffee or tea, you don't get like the. The drop in adenosine. Like, you know how they talk about waiting at least an hour and a half to drink your caffeine in the morning, otherwise you're going to experience a crash later on in the day.

Right.

Well, CBD also works very well with caffeine in preventing that crash by maintaining your levels of adenosine.

Similar to. Would that be something that. That something like theanine would do as well? A lot of people mix theanine with coffee.

Oh, yeah.

To enhance the alpha brainwave production and kind of allow the coffee to be oxidized a little more slowly. From what I understand. You. You think that CBD could be used similarly.

Oh, even more effectively. I personally like tea. I use like a yogi brand tea called Vanilla Energy, which is mind blowing. Has different forms of tea with theanine.

Really?

Yeah. And I'll take. I'm usually so focused from the moment I wake up and I start that gratitude, practice my meditation. I'm ready to go all day. But days that I don't know, especially before when my baby wasn't sleeping as much, you know, when they're a couple months old and they're feeding every few hours and we had them in our room the entire time, I needed a little extra focus, so I would take it in the morning.

Yeah.

And it's phenomenal, the effects. I took a little bit this morning and I just felt so sharp.

Really?

Yeah.

Interesting. I have a bottle here that you gave me, I think. Can you hand me a bottle?

Before we started here, we had a bunch of bottles.

Okay. So. So I'm just grabbing this bottle out because I may actually try this while we're podcasting just to. Just to see if it kicks in at all.

Like a quarter dropper.

I have some somewhere.

Oh.

Either way, I'll find it later.

Yeah.

Because I don't really do a lot of daytime CBDs. You have a bottle over there? Bring it over. We might as well make this a live experience on the show. Those gummies are fantastic, by the way. So back to the fertility piece. That's. That's the story that we were on and you had discovered. Just give this a shake. What do you think?

Like one dropper with that size, you could probably do three drops is 8 milligrams.

So, yeah, half a dropper would be like, what, around like 10? Something like that?

Yeah, maybe 15.

All right.

You could just twist it. The plastic.

I fall asleep during our show. Now we know why. So back to the fertility piece.

Tell me about what happened in terms of the cannabinoid system and fertility.

Oh, right. So in my research, I discovered that there are receptors, cannabinoid receptors, on the testicles, in the whole reproductive system of both males and females, and on sperm cells as well as eggs. So if this is allowing us to function more optimally in every way, I consider the endocannabinoid system sort of like our interface from the human body to nature.

Okay.

I use the example, and you probably want to put it under your tongue. Leave it there for.

I'm doing it right now.

You know how to do this?

There's a video version of this if you guys want to see what it looks like. We're Gonna put up BenGreenfieldLife.com AdamWenger so go ahead with the fertility piece.

So, yeah, if the endocannabinoid system. I think so. It's very earthy. That's how it should be.

Yeah, right.

Not hiding from the flavor reminds me.

A little bit of kava almost flavor. They're threshing. So what'd you find? Endocannabinoid receptors in the testicles.

Right. So if the endocannabinoid system I consider an interface to nature, the human body, our experience to nature. And I don't know if I use this example on our previous podcast. If we were walking in the forest and a tiger came out. Scares the living crap out of you. The fighter. The fight or flight response kicks in. Whatever the outcome might be, eventually the nervous system has to calm down and there's a whole cascade of hormones, neurotransmitters that contribute to this. Without the endocannabinoid system functioning at a high level, it's going to take much longer for the body to reach homeostasis that's on a hormone level. But the endocannabinoid system is responsible for so much in terms of muscle digestion.

The central nervous system system is filled with cannabinoid receptors, our immune response. I haven't been sick in five or six years.

Wow.

And this is in the middle of COVID I was training with people that found out they had Covid. And we were grappling, like, literally fighting, spitting sweat, perspiration, breathing on each other. I never felt anything I haven't had a cold in forever. And I believe that's to. That talks to the. To what CBD can do for your immune system as well. So coming back to fertility, there haven't been, like distinct studies on it. And every doctor said we can't recommend taking CBD to improve fertility, but that was a major component of it. I increased my doses. I was taking more during the day, a little bit more at night. My wife was also taking some. Once she got pregnant, we changed, we took her off cbd. We used it as needed. I completely cut out thc. I'm a fan of thc. I think it has its place like anything. I think everything is use or misuse. Nothing is inherently bad. If God gave it to us, it's meant to. It has a use, whether it's for us or not. And yeah, on that fertility journey, I just knew. I just got a sense when I hold something, when I hold cbd, maybe it's my practice of seeing things, not necessarily with these senses. When I feel my cbd, I knew it was good for my body and I didn't even want to take hcg, but I felt it. There was something about it. Clomid. I didn't respond that well. I just had a weird sense about it. And there are odd side effects with Clomid, but you have. People have to find out what's right for them in terms of what's going to improve their fertility. Some people have to trust the medical establishment, which I get. But I really encourage people to do their own research. Realize that CBD and a lot of other natural compounds can really contribute to improving your fertility. Men and women.

When did you actually find out that your wife was pregnant and how'd you feel?

Oh, so this isn't. This is a pretty interesting story. At that point, I think I was 38 and I said, you know what? I'm gonna freeze my sperm. Because I didn't want to do. I didn't want long term use of hc, ecg, fsh. And when I actually got that call saying, your sperm is very high, I said, you know what, we can wait this out and we'll continue trying, but I'm gonna go and freeze this, like, right now.

Yeah.

So I did a deep dive into in vitro fertilization and froze my sperm. And I was like, okay. That was like my golden ticket. I know it's here. And then we started thinking, you know what? We are not super young anymore, and I want to have a chance child as young as possible. I plan to Live forever, but why not enjoy every moment of it? So we decided to go through with ivf. There was a lot of steps you can take ahead of time, but I didn't want to put unnecessary trauma through my wife. It's much harder on the female. Blood work literally every. Every day or several times a week. And that's hard.

Yeah.

Huge needles in a young woman's vein. I mean, we could probably take it, but why do they have to do.

All the blood work on. On the female?

They're constantly checking for their ovulation levels.

Okay.

And with ivf, it's so precise. So we wanted to make sure we got it on the first bout. And we were blessed when they did. They basically, like, hyper inflate the ovaries to release more eggs. And we got. Or she had 19 eggs. And it's funny because that's an extremely high number. I think five to 10 is normal. And when they did an ultrasound, it said, she is 10. And we're like, okay. The concern there is that once it's combined with the sperm and formed embryos, you get a very small percentage. Some people only have one or two active embryos, and that's their chance. But hiding behind the follicle in her body. This is all new terminology to me. I'm not a fertility expert. There was like nine more eggs hiding. So when it came out she had 19 viable eggs. They combined my sperm with it that day. It's truly fascinating. Like, experience.

Yeah.

And they actually. It's funny because they had her on so many programs and taking so many things, and I cut out a ton of it. They wanted to put her on thyroid hormone, and I changed it to Armor Thyroid, a more natural version. We didn't tell the doctors this, but blood work showed, oh, she's in all the perfect levels for everything. So there are a lot of natural compounds that can mimic pharmaceutical versions with a lot less side effects. But basically, we got five embryos, five very highly rated embryos, which were three boys and two girls. I didn't even know this at the time, but you can choose the sex of your baby. So the highest rated one was a boy. And I told her, I said, I've always pictured us having a boy. And she's like, I love it. Let's do it. We just vibe so tight.

When you say the highest rated one, what does that mean?

They rate the embryos in terms of, I guess, the chromosomes, like the quality of the chromosomes, like the viability of if it's going to lead to a pregnancy. People don't realize that a majority of pregnancies, like if a woman tests positive or has a positive pregnancy test, most of the time they lose it. Or before she even takes the test, it just comes out of the body. God or whatever. If you want to say the human body wasn't meant to have it, that's what happens. It's a natural process and most people don't even realize it's happening. So out of the 19, five of them, so I don't know what that percentage is. About 25% chance that if I had impregnated her naturally, it was only a 25% chance that she would have a healthy embryo. So. So another benefit to IVF is you can test the embryos. We did genetic testing to make sure there was no down syndrome and basically anything else. So you have like almost a worry free pregnancy, which is incredible. And as much as I didn't want to do IVF at first, the more research I did and the more heart intent and the more I held it in a sacred manner, the more I was okay with the whole process and the more I let myself surrender to the long term goal. And it was funny. I was training jiu jitsu. She had. It's a minor procedure where they put the embryo inside. And it was mind blowing to me because we sit there and they have an ultrasound and the doctor, she says, look in this one area, it's the ovary or the uterus. And you're gonna see half the time, 50% of the time you see a tiny little star, a little spark. And that's when the, the embryo is connecting with the uterus and essentially conception just happened. And she said, like, I'm a scientist, I'm not supposed to say these things, but I think that's when God accepted that you are now pregnant and conceiving. When I heard her say that, I said, you know, we're like really seeing eye to eye. You're not just like a typical doctor attributing everything just to basic science. Yeah, because it is a miracle. Pregnancy is a miracle. Having a child is a miracle beyond anything I've experienced. And instead of a little spark, you saw it fly like a shooting star on camera. And even the doctor goes, whoa, whoa, I've never seen that before. And wow, it was just, it was such a powerful experience. Of course I'm in tears and I have it on camera and I had to send it to my entire family. And someone said to me, man, I was like, yeah, that's like a little Superman flying. They go, no, that's Thor. And I was like, that is Thor. I mean, and it's funny, that's his middle name.

Now that's your son's middle what, what's his first name?

Maxim. Thor Wenger. So he sounds like a little superhero.

Yeah.

The interesting thing is he was the highest rated embryo too. And the level, the speed of his development, his immune system, I mean, this kid is miraculous. He's learning things so quickly, way ahead of the curve. Not like this matters at a young age. It's just very interesting to see. Yeah, I've seen premature babies turn into complete geniuses and 6 foot 4 athletes. So who knows the correspond, the correlation between, you know, size, intelligence at a young age. But it's amazing. We've taught him some cool stuff. I'll get into later.

Did your wife follow a special diet during pregnancy?

Oh, yeah. Nose to tail.

We found out that in Africa they were doing studies that kids born or women that were pregnant more in the dry season, their babies had lower IQs and lower birth weights. And in the wet season when there was more greens and they were eating more greens and there was obviously more animals available to eat, their babies were larger, they had healthier pregnancies and they had smoother pregnancies. So we made sure to eat nose to tail. Tons of organs, organ pills, a lot of greens, vegetable, just the healthiest stuff. Obviously no seed oil.

Sounds almost like kind of like a Weston A Price type of diet.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Raw, a lot of like quality dairy. Everything was so specific.

Did you meant much in the way of like fermented vegetables, sauerkraut and kimchi and things like that?

We love that stuff. Keeping probiotics very high, antioxidants and like good level. Sometimes too much antioxidant is not a good thing. Yeah, especially as she's maintaining. She was kickboxing and doing MMA with me, not sparring till month eight and a half. Wow. And people didn't see her from the front. They saw her like, let's say from the back and they saw her hitting pads. And she could have been in the UFC. Top 10 in her division.

Really?

She is a beast of an athlete. She kicks like a mule. Her grappling is high level. And people would see her from the back and they're like, when's her fight? And then she'd turn and she's like nine months pregnant. She's like, what are you talking about? People are just mind blown. So the way we eat, you know, the way we think, she Would meditate with me a lot each morning. And I would read to her. I'd read to Max in the womb about how we want to have a birth, what we're going to do in the future. We were just preparing ourselves mentally and just connecting more with our source. And when she came to me, it was so funny. She said she had an appointment and I was going to train jiu jitsu. Just a typical blood work appointment. I'm on the mat, sparring really hard. I get off the mats, I'm drenched. I see her just dropping into the gym. I'm so happy to see her. And she goes, oh, yeah, I brought you a protein shake. Like, oh, I need it. I am just drained. So. So we open up the cooler, and inside I see this thing and it says, like, biohazard on the bag. I'm like, what is this? And I open up and it's a pregnancy test, and it says positive. And I just like, oh, cool. Oh, my God. You go from, like, people trying to choke you unconscious and break your limbs to running circles around the gym with my arm, my hands in the air. There's people training, like, MMA boxing on the gym, lifting deadlifts, clean jeans, and I'm just sprinting in a jiu jitsu kimono, like, at the top of my lungs, saying how happy I am, you know? Wow. I don't know. That was the most joy I experienced till he was born.

Yeah. Oh, the birds out here are certainly happy about it. They're.

They're making some sound.

What are those, ducks or geese or.

Yeah, they're excited. They like this. They like this concept of fertility. Well, I mean, it's such a cool, cool story, and I'm so happy for you. Oh.

I mean, you played a huge part.

Yeah, we have. We had a lot of chats about the. About the fertility thing back in the day.

Yeah.

But it's cool to see it all. All come to being.

Especially when a doctor tells you you're not gonna have kids.

Yeah.

So you just say, okay, my life is going to be a little bit different, but I knew deep down I was going to change that. Yeah, we change our paths every day. Every church choice, every moment.

Yeah. Speaking of changing paths, you know, I want to touch on this. It's a little bit different than the. Than the fertility discussion, but you actually had a significant struggle. We've talked about medicines and a little bit about. About drugs, but you actually were pretty heavy into opioids, weren't you?

Opioids, which eventually led to heroin and I was using cocaine to stay awake in college while I was on all that, getting good grades in school, still trying to bodybuild till it fall completely fell apart.

Opioid addiction has just run rampant and I'm just grateful it happened to me before the fentanyl, like the fentanyl epidemic, because that is just killing people left and right. It was bad enough as it is, but in college, prior to college, I was kickboxing, doing Muay Thai, and I suffered a leg injury we had talked about on the previous podcast. I got hit, like in the perineal nerve and my foot blew up. It looked like a football. And I was walking around on crutches. And at the time, a lot of people were having recreational use of Oxycontin. This is. I was like 17 years old and I tried it and I was like, wow, this is a fun thing. Didn't really get addicted at that point, but in college it became rampant and people realized, you can smoke it, you can snort it. I guess people were injecting it and they were doing it as a party drug. And I just figured I never really understood addiction. I had seen addiction before, but I used more pots, psychedelics. I tried cocaine a few times, but I never experienced full blown addiction. And I just started using it and it made everything really fun. Initially, when you start using opio, it's actually improves so much because your dopamine levels are so high that you feel good doing everything, including menial tasks. And sometimes you're in a class you don't really enjoy and you say, oh, I'll just take a little more of this. And now I'm having fun communicating with the professor. I'm able to study longer, but then the doses, you have to start getting higher and higher and higher. And I remember one time I'm like, this is becoming too expensive and I'm not feeling 100. Let me just stop. So I stopped and I wrote my very constipated too. Yeah, but of course, you know, I know my way around it. As a young biohacker, you take senna or certain amounts of caffeine at the right time, and the more you use it, the less constipated you get. It's usually in the initial rush of using it.

And I rode my bike to school and I started feeling under the weather, like I had the flu or a cold. And I just take off school. That day I was like 19 years old on the phone with my mom, and I just like every minute it's getting worse. And I told Her I'm not feeling well. And she said, go to the doctor. You know, just normal parent response. And I said, you know what, I'm just going to take one of my pills and give me a minute. I take it and like 20 minutes into our conversation, every symptom goes away. You have like a runny nose, gone, headache, clogged head, body aches, everything's gone. And I felt like Superman again. So I told my mom, I said, wow, I just took my pain meds. And she goes, yeah, that's called addiction. I go, no, no, I'm just taking like two or three a day. But 80 milligrams it came out to.

Like two or three oxy's a day.

Of 80 milligram oxygen, which I think came out to something like 64 percocets a day. And sometimes I would say, oh man, I want a stronger hit. Let me snort it or smoke it. And it was so common in my school those days, like in the university, in the party scene, people, I guess they hadn't hit the addiction part yet, so people were using it in bars and clubs and we just thought it was another recreational fun drug. But at that point it was super hard to get off. I actually couldn't. I had to stay on it for as long as possible. I tried weaning and eventually I tried Suboxone, which was another medication help get you off. I tried everything under the sun eventually. Just had to suck it up, lay in bed, sweat it out for a.

Few days, just stop cold turkey and go through the pain and the suffering.

I mean, I weaned as much as I could. I used Suboxone. These are not like perfect solutions. You still feel it, but the first three days you don't. It's funny, you're in it and you don't wish it. On your worst day enemy, you say like, oh my God, if I'm gone tomorrow, I'm okay. This is pain. Yeah, in such a weird way because it's physical. It feels like there's something trying to rip out of your spine and like these itches under your skin and you're trying to claw it. You're hot, but you're freezing. You're shivering, but you're sweating. It's the weirdest sensation. It's horrible. You can't think straight. Eventually I got clean. But the physical symptoms go away. But the mental symptoms and what you've done in the time that you're using it is the really detrimental effect. We don't grow emotionally. That's what I really came to realize is in the entire time, like, why was I using it not just for pain. I had injuries from mma. That's the excuse I make. But it's to not face our emotions. It's to avoid having emotional intelligence and facing real challenges. Sure. Physically doing jiu jitsu, fighting, these are hard things. Running miles, lifting weights, these are hard. But there is a component of your mental and spiritualness that we can avoid with drugs. And I find that most people do it, whether it's painkillers, whether it's barbiturates, you know, food, technology.

Yeah.

People will find any type of escape to avoid facing their soul. I believe Jung said that. So I ended up coming across a meditation class. If you want to hear how I completely got clean. Getting clean isn't just ending your physical symptoms, but it's actually addressing the root cause. Why am I going to this? What is my. My life is happening that I have a drive to do drugs, addictive drugs. And I discovered meditation in a class based on a book called Taming the Anxious Mind from John Kabad Zinn. And it was just all about mindfulness meditation. It's a very simple book. It's a small book anyone can pick up and get anxious mind taming. I'm sorry, the class was called Taming the anxious Mind. The book is called wherever you go, there you are.

Oh, I've heard of this. Okay.

Yeah, I mean, I've read it maybe five or six times now. It is next level in terms of just grasping the concept, the simple concept of meditation. We, we complicate it all the time. We think meditation complicate meditation. Yeah, we think you have to sit on a mountain. We're trying to seek enlightenment. We have to feel something in particular. But at least mindful meditation is about being okay with what you feel right then, which essentially is surrendering to the moment. It's listening to God and hearing what he wants to say and what he wants you to feel. I say he, but it could be whatever you interpret as your God and.

Meditation. It just resonated with me so deeply. The first time I did it, I was guided. It hit me so hard. And I understood so many synchronicities from that point. And when the semester ended, it was a three month course and it ended. And I talked to the professor and I said, hey, what's the next one? He goes, this is it. It's a one time course. If you want, you can come back and help teach. I see you're like, it's really sitting with You. So I did that another three months. I helped teach, which was fun, but I learned like the fundamentals of it, of what goes into meditation. Taming your mind, understanding your breath, little tricks and tips that stop people from meditating. And there's so many now with like Muse devices. I. I bought one after you had talked about it.

Yeah.

Interesting stuff.

There's so many messing around with that one a little bit myself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Insights. Interesting.

Yeah. To get actual feedback on your meditation.

Meditation was a little easier back then because we didn't have social media like in 2, 2003. Ish. Now we didn't have cell phones that did what they do now. But either way, I ended up finding a Zen Buddhist meditation center. And it was very. It was, it was cool to me because it had this sense of mystery behind it. And I went there and it was just a house, two story house. I walked inside and there was a dude with like a. He's the abbot of the Zen center. And I was raised Jewish, but I had step parents that were Christian and Catholic. So I had a reverence for religion. And I didn't know what Buddhism was. I thought it was like, oh, this is a religion in itself. And I talked to him and he told me that's not what it is. We practice meditation. There is a Buddhist religion, but we think sometimes that that actually gets in the way of it. This is just the principles we use for enhancing our meditative practice. And I walked inside and then he took me upstairs where they were teaching, where they were having a traditional meditation. And it was like a Buddhist temple in Tibet or India or Japan. I was just blown away. I had this cool. Since when you're a 19, 20 year old kid. This is very different. In Gainesville, where I went to school outside of University of Florida.

Yeah.

And it just, I gained certain areas, certain places, like if you go to a temple, a church, a place where a lot of people have meditated, you feel it. It's a very tangible sensation. And I got there and I sat there and I had only meditated 30 minutes at a time. And we sat for two hours. And meditation is not a blissful, easy thing. Meditation is a very challenging thing. It could be the most challenging thing. Sitting there, not doing anything, not thinking or addressing your thoughts. Most people think it's like this easy way to just bliss out and be lazy. I think it's the very opposite.

Yeah.

My teacher, and it's a famous quote, they used to say, meditate like your head is on fire. With that level of Intensity. And that just showed me another level of what was going on. Kind of like behind the scenes. Meditated meditation allowed me to see in between the lines a bit. If we're here, I use my five senses to see me and to see you or the grass in the chair. There is another world that we don't see, you know, a world of, like, intuition, of frequency and energy that we often neglect, especially when we're addicted to our phones or addicted to some sort of drug. And I found that I had, like, a lifelong journey ahead once I got into meditation. And that addiction was just a thing of my past. I realized right then what I was using the drugs for. And I saw a fairly clear path on how to get out of this mindset and change everything.

Wow.

Yeah, wow. Of course, we had planned.

And during. During that time, were you also still involved in jiu jitsu, or did you pick that up later on the martial arts component?

I started martial arts, like jiu jitsu, Muay Thai. Very young. Young. I actually started doing karate when I was four. It was very different. We would. I sparred and fought a lot, and it was cool, and I won tournaments. And then it was point fighting. And the odd thing was, I remember it to this day, I think I was seven. I was always getting first place. I was, like, ranked very high. And I came across this kid. He was very athletic, bigger than me. And I thought, you know what? I'm just going to use my techniques, get my points, win. And the second the ref went like this, he came sprinting at me, and I was like, this is not what you're supposed to do. And he jumped and kicked me in the mouth, full speed, like, beautiful kick. At least to me. It was like out of the Matrix at the time, but of course, I was seven. That had him come out, and he hit me in the mouth, and it was like, boom, rude awakening. And I look at my dad, who is like, my coach. That's time. And his, like. I could see, like, a little shock in him, too. And he's like, you got this. You got this. And I had to try to dig in deep. And I'm like, all righty, fight. And he just does it again.

Boom.

The same thing. And at that point, I just said, I want out of this. I didn't quit, but I think I probably gave up to an extent. Let him hit me. I get taken to the bathroom. My dad's there. I'm bleeding from my mouth. This is not a normal thing in a Taekwondo tournament for kids. And it was A rude awakening to reality right then. I'd experienced death in my family, certain things like that. But for me personally, on a physical level, this just woke me up. I was like, I just got hit by reality like it was a ton of bricks. I thought, I'm like little Billy Badass here. And I gave up training for a long time, just focused more on fitness. I'd done a little bit around, like, 18, 19, but I really liked bodybuilding because I guess we get into the superficial aspect of things. We like how it looks, we like how it feels. We like that the opposite sex is attracted to. There's so many components to fitness, especially bodybuilding, that is very superficial fitness, not.

So much the confidence that it gives you. Yeah.

And it's great. It's a good background. You know, when you understand the human body, this carries over into every facet of our existence.

But I learned right then that men in particular, we have this concept in mind. It's very disillusioned where we think we can defend ourselves at any moment. We think, if a guy came up and pushed me, a switch will flip. I'll just go crazy. I'll take him out. We all have this belief that that can happen, but the truth is so far from that. You need to train for combat, for defense, whether it's armed or unarmed. You need to train this extensively. If you don't, it's like saying, oh, I've run marathons, and that means I'm going to be a very effective basketball player.

Yeah.

Everything in life is an art, is a skill. From making love to anything we're learning, gardening, everything has to be learned and acquired. And I realized this, and especially at a time, you know, growing up in Miami was tough. We had talked about this, and I said, you know what? I want to start my martial arts training again. And I started a little bit later. I started when I was 27, and I loved jiu jitsu before that. Little bouts of it for a few months. And I said, right now I'm dedicating myself to it, and I'm gonna get my black belt. And jiu jitsu is a very different art from every other martial art. People don't understand jiu jitsu until they've done it. It just looks like you've done it a few times with your kids.

I know that my kids now been rolling for, gosh, like, eight years. Really. I've jumped in a few times, but, yeah, they're. They're doing well.

Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, eight years is significant, especially at that age.

Yeah.

It's like learning a new language.

Yeah. They started in the garage when they were six and now they're 14. They still go two or three times a week.

Really? I didn't know. They kept going.

They've, they've fought in a few tournaments. So, yeah, I'm, I, I almost wish that I had stuck with training with them, but I just didn't have the time to devote to it. And it's still, still something I see myself jumping back into at some point.

So they can't beat you up in the future or.

No, I'm just kidding.

I'm just kidding.

Yeah, yeah.

Jiu Jitsu is, this is like a different martial art. It's, it's a spiritual martial art. It's an intellectual martial art. It's different from. I'm throwing a kick, I'm throwing a punch, I'm setting traps with my footwork, my head movement. Other martial arts are great. I love Muay Thai, I love boxing, wrestling. But Jiu jitsu is. Jiu jitsu, like mimics our lives. Yeah. That's the cool thing about it. It's. They call it human chess. And I went into it the first time. So egotistical. I thought, oh, you know what? I'm going to be a better fighter. I'm going to pick up a new skill set so I can be better, more complete. Maybe I'll like try to fight professionally. And I got on the mat and I was just a savage trying to use all my power and all my strength, all my technique, everything. And it's funny, as you progress, your goals change so much. It becomes such an art. To remaining calm under fire.

Yeah. It's high level problem solving.

Right. When someone's on top of you, like literally trying to take your life, life away.

Yeah.

It is a game of life and death. And before death occurs, you say, I'm done. I forget where I heard this. You say, okay, tap, tap, tap. They let go. You hug your buddy again and you say, all right, let's do it again. But by me, tapping is essentially him saying, if this was on the battlefield, I just killed you and I'm going on to the next person. And there's something to that. It's figurative or it's a metaphorical death. And I like that because I had done a lot of psychedelics, a lot of. I don't like saying planned medicine. It's so overused. And I'd experience death to many aspects of parts of me. I think life and death are things we. Well, Life, we engage. I think death is something people avoid. It's almost like every decision in people's lives is what can I do to prolong death further? You know, they don't want to go to a hospital and visit a family member or we don't want to be around hospitals. We take supplements, we eat to lengthen our lives because we're so afraid of the last moment and what's going to happen after.

Yeah.

And I've a lot of my practice is betting is getting accustomed to death, understanding it, trying to know it on a grander scale. But in terms of Jiu Jitsu, it's an ego crusher. When I go in and I, I was really built at the time because I was lifting heavy 190 pounds, 5% body fat, totally focused, and some young dude that's like a computer engineer, that's 150 pounds is beating me five times in six minutes. That's a wake up call. That's an e, a kick to your ego real hard.

Yeah.

And if you maintain that mindset of ego, ego, you're going to quit. And I think they say 90% of people, yeah, 90% of people that start Jiu Jitsu don't make it to blue belt. Blue belt usually takes one year. 90% is only 10% of those people make it to blue belt. And of that 10%, only 1% make it to black belt. It took me 10 years to get my black belt. And I'm talking Jiu Jitsu is safe. But when you take it like you go in like a bull in a china shop.

10 years. That was pretty recent that you got your black belt, right?

I've been doing it for 12 years, but I got my black belt in June of 2021.

Okay.

From Jonah Toscore Shell. He used to be the head Jiu Jitsu coach at American Top Team, which is an MMA gym that is world renowned. They're one of the biggest and most successful MMA gyms in the world. And he taught Jiu Jitsu there to some of the highest caliber of fighters in the world. Two of his students, Brian and Kevin Mahesha, we call them the Twins, The Mahesha Twins. They were part of me getting my black belt.

And that set of 19 year old twins that nobody knows where they came from or what nationality they are, they're. Nobody knows who their dad was. Like, is that, is that the, the twins I'm thinking of, or.

It's a different set, but I think they competed with them several times on the, the same Level. Yeah, on the world and Pan American caliber level. And it's so funny, like jonatas. He came from Brazil, very traditional jiu jitsu from a lineage that goes so far back called Nova Unova. You now it's Brazilian. And this is a world renowned jiu jitsu and MMA gym that's brought some of the best fighters in the entire world to the ufc. Andre P. Pettineris gave his coach a black belt. And these are legends in the sport. These are not even just regular black belts. These are people that have dedicated their life to the art. And the twins, Brian and Kevin Mahecha. One is a specialist in kinesiology fitness training. The other one is a software engineer and they're twins and they bring their approach to Jiu jitsu where they create systems. So I'm not going there on the mat and they're going to say, hey, you're going to learn a choke today. You practice it for a week and then pray that it's ingrained in your nervous system. These guys develop such distinct systems where there's branches. They called it a tree. So the roots of the tree come up and they say, okay, this week we're working on this branch and there's a few smaller branches. We'll work on that. We're going to come back and go back to the tree and then come to this branch. It's a very systematic approach and to me, the most effective way I probably, if I trained, you know, more six, seven days a week, twice a day, I probably could have gotten my black belt sooner. These guys are geniuses in the art.

Yeah.

But I had element health. I had my fitness training going on. A lot of clients for wealth or wellness and health. And guys like us, we do a lot of things, you know. Yeah, you told me once, the life of an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur. I don't sleep as much as I like, but I'm motivated and hungry all the time. Yeah.

Yeah. A lot. A lot of the world's leaders, they're tired a little bit of the time. Yeah, it's okay. I think it was the, the stoic philosopher I was reading about in the Brian Holiday's book Discipline is Destiny recently. And it was this idea that it's so comfortable underneath the covers in the morning. You could just stay there. But is that what life's about, is about comfort or is it about battling that urge to stay in bed and said, get up and be impactful? I think maybe, you know, 1% of people actually accomplish that.

Do you still feel that urge to Stay in bed.

Oh, man. Every morning.

Really?

Yeah. Every. Every morning there's like that slight feeling of.

The resistance to getting up and going out to the garden, proverbial garden, and picking the weeds yet again that you know are going to pop up the next day. But then once you get up and that light hits your eyes and you. You jump into what it is that you're called to do, like what your purpose is in life, and you have to have that purpose, and that's what gets you out of bed in the morning. Knowing what that purpose is then, you know, it's. It's a resistance that's always there in the same. Same way that as Steven Pressfield talks about in books like the War of Art, like, there's always a little bit of resistance to writing, to creating. But if the resistance weren't there, it wouldn't be quite as magical an experience or as meaningful an experience. Everybody would do it. But by overcoming that resistance, you. You step out onto the battlefield. You know, you cross that. That portal from the ordinary world and the hero's journey, you know, to the great adventure. And a lot of people like the comfort of the ordinary world, but the ordinary world, despite its. Its comfort, holds you back from being the true human that you're called to be. So it's been cool seeing your journey. You know, it's in the past, what, four or five years? You know, not only your journey to fatherhood, but getting your black belt and jiu jitsu, building this massively successful CBD company. And, yes, it's just been really cool to see your journey, man. And I appreciate.

McKenna. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I mean, I owe so much to you, like, the knowledge you've instilled in me, the friendship, just being able to reach out to you and, I don't know, know that you have a great support from people with, like, mind. And it's so funny, as I've seen you grow over the years, as the birds fly away. That was wild. I seen you grow over the years. It's mirrored a lot of my growth. Growth, you know, as you've. You'll never leave fitness behind, but your purpose has grown.

Right.

And my purpose was growing at the same time. And your motivation to so many people. I know you don't want to hear. I'm not trying to blow smoke up your ass, but I appreciate my good friends that have, like, helped me along the way.

Yeah.

It's so much about connection. Yeah. You know, in this day and age, people think we have hundreds and hundreds of real Friends. And it's. Are your online friends your friends? Yeah, maybe they are, but I think there's, like, a handful of people that have a significant impact in your life, and that's part of the purpose, cultivating that garden of those friendships and those loved ones.

Yeah. Back to your father. Right. And you were talking about his funeral. At the end of the day, one of the most important considerations on your deathbed is, did I love adequately and was I loved adequately? And the only way for that to occur is for you to actually have relationships and friendships that go. Go deep and beyond digital. And it's.

It's.

We can. We can as, you know, biohackers or health enthusiasts or, you know, fitness junkies or whatever, spend our whole lives optimizing our bodies, and we forget about optimizing our relationships. And that's just something I've learned as I've grown older, is there's. There's nothing as meaningful as your relationship with God and your relationship with people. And if that's your priority, that's. That's the. The pedestal that you start with, then everything else just fills in the gaps beautifully. So to love people, love God, and I think. I think it's a great message. Your journey is inspiring, Adam, and thank you for coming on the show. Thank you once again. And for everybody listening in, I'll. I'll put all the show notes and link to Adams in my previous podcast if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com Adam Wenger. A D A M W E N G U E R. Yes. I had to look at my computer to double check one more time that I was spelling the name correctly, but I think I've nailed it. Now I'm not going to mispronounce your name for the next 10 years. Thanks for coming on the show.

No, thank you for having me and being this amazing environment, listening to the birds. Yeah, horrible.

Horses and ghosts. Those birds are wild. All right, man.