Gut Health, Longevity & Detox Hacks: The Science of Healing with Ritesh Bawri

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, my own strategy and what I recommend is daily and weekly detoxification. Daily detoxification is very simple, right? Sweating, movement, some type of lymph flow like jumping up and down on a trampoline, or even going on a walk where you're swinging your arms, sweating, and breathing, right? Because two major detoxification organs are our lungs and our skin. Once per week, I do a little bit more of an intense detox. Specifically, what I do is I I wake up and I take a binding agent. I like to use activated charcoal. And then, I move my body but I move it using G-forces. Then, moving lymph through the body is also important. So, once per week, I rub and tap each of my major lymph flow areas. After that, I hit the sauna and sweat things out for 30, 40 minutes. I like to use the infrared sauna just because you get a deeper sweat because those photons of light hit the skin and kind of warm you. From the inside out. And I do that once a week. 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 was recently a guest on the Ritesh Bari Show.

He enjoyed the discussion and wanted to share it here with you on the Boundless Life Podcast.

A big thank you to Ritesh for allowing us to share the episode.

Please find the show notes at bengreenfieldlife.com/riteshbawri, R-I-T-E-S-H B-A-W-R-I. Thanks and enjoy the episode. Hi Ben, welcome to the show. Really excited to have you here back in India. Welcome.

Thanks. It's good to be back in India for the third time.

Wonderful. So happy to have you here. So I want to jump straight in. There's a lot to unpack with you. You're literally one of those people I've learned everything I know from. So I'm just really excited to have you here. But let's just jump in straight away and talk about the gut. What is gut health? It's a very confusing topic. Lots of people say different kinds of things. In your understanding, what is it?

It's the one part of the body, arguably, that's inside of us yet exposed to the environment all the time. Because it's the tube that is very simplistically described as a garden hose that goes from your mouth to your anus, and anything that you're consuming is exposed to that environment. It's a very single, or a thin single-cell layer that lies between the gut and the bloodstream. And there's also many nerves that interact between the gut and the brain. So in third grade, you might've thought that the gut was just for digesting your tater tots and your Pop-Tarts. And now we know that the gut is responsible for a lot more than that. Neurotransmitter production and other elements related to the gut-brain axis, which is why gut issues are so often related to issues like depression, anxiety, poor sleep, brain fog, et cetera. And interestingly, because of that gut-brain axis, it can also occur in the opposite order, right? Anxiety, stress, relationship issues, et cetera, can often manifest in issues that you've never had before in your life, but that all of a sudden pop up like ulcers or autoimmune issues related to food intolerances or leaky gut issues where the lining of the gut becomes permeable. And so the gut-brain and the brain-gut axis is something is something that we're learning more and more about, and it dictates a lot of how we're able to deal with our environment, our spiritual, our physical, our mental, our emotional environments. Many functional medicine practitioners, and I don't necessarily agree with this philosophy, but I think there is a lot to it, will begin all of their treatments by looking at the gut, by testing the gut. And that would mean doing a stool analysis for things like parasites and yeast and fungus, even biome analysis of the gut are becoming more popular to look at what the actual genetic makeup of the bacteria in your gut actually are. I don't think that's as valuable as looking at parasites, yeast, fungus, bacterial balances, et cetera. But it is something that is allowing us to learn more and more about what someone should and should not eat. You look at the gut itself and why it tends to be problematic for a lot of people. There's 1,000 different things that could go wrong, right? You could get Clostridium difficile. You could— Sure. You could get a parasite. You could have a bacterial imbalance. You could even have anatomical or biomechanical abnormalities related to fascial adhesions. You might see this a lot in exercising populations who have very tight abs and tight hips. You can see things like prolapse and shifting of the organs with age that can also affect digestion. You can see bacterial imbalances, you know, from the small intestine all the way to the colon that affect things like acid reflux, et cetera. But I would say that the biggest issue that I see in people, if I'm looking at someone's gut test, is typically some type of a permeability issue, meaning that food that should normally pass through the digestive tract and be processed by the liver and allow for nutrients to be absorbed into the bloodstream actually results in undigested food particles and proteins passing into the bloodstream, and those can cause an autoimmune reaction. And one of the reasons for that is stress. You know, I tell people that your body has a distinctly different response to some expensive superfood spirulina, cacao nib, bee pollen-infused smoothie that you're consuming at home while you're reading the newspaper or visiting with your loved one or your child versus sucking down that same superfood smoothie when you're driving 120 kilometers an hour down the highway on the way to work. So it's eating in a stressed-out state, eating in what we'd call like a sympathetically driven fight-or-flight state, versus relaxing over food, breathing over food, meditation, prayer, gratitude, enjoying food with people. So I think one of the biggest issues that people have with their gut is they will treat food as a fuel that you just get into the body at some point regardless of what type of state that your nervous system is in, and that is not necessarily conducive to adequate production of digestive enzymes, of hormones that allow for satiety, or of the proper function of those gaps that would or would not allow undigested food particles and proteins to wind up in the bloodstream. And of course, we could talk about the gut until we're blue in the face, but I would say that the major thing, like if I could wave a magic wand and have people do one thing to help their gut, it would be to eat slowly, chew your food 25 to 40 times, think about your food, be mindful, pray over your food, be grateful for it, your food, eat it slowly and mindfully, and assess whether or not you're actually eating in a sympathetically driven state. That alone can change a lot of people's gut issues.

Sure. Now, wonderful. You've said so many different things, and I want to unpack some of these. So it's obvious to me that you clearly believe that the gut is central to pretty much everything that's going on in the human body, mind and body for that matter. If that's true, as a layperson, maybe someone who doesn't have the expertise, where am I really starting this? How am I trying to diagnose myself? How can I understand what's really going on?

The gut is important. I don't— I'm not convinced it's responsible for every last ailment known to humankind, as like I was saying, a lot of functional medicine practitioners do. I mean, there's so many other things that can cause issues, anything from your blood-brain barrier and having some type of a neurological issue that might affect your gut, to whatever, you know, a bunion in your big toe that's causing hip or knee or foot pain that has nothing whatsoever to do with your gut. But because the gut is so problematic for so many people, I think that if we were going to buckle down and focus upon one thing, it would be this idea of individual biochemistry or individual, I should say more appropriately, biochemical Individuality. Biochemical individuality basically implies that because everybody has different genetics, a different size of their stomach, their liver, their pancreas, their gallbladder, different bacterial composition in their gut, all influenced by genetics, by environment, by lifestyle. The problem that a lot of people face when it comes to their gut is that they've been led to believe or been told that there is a diet that they should follow. Sure. Right, or there's one perfect diet diet for all of humankind, and that diet does not work for that person, and that becomes very frustrating. So people looking at something like a ketogenic low-carb diet or carnivore plant-restricted diet, and they'll think that that's finally the solution to their gut ailments. And you simply can't take one single diet and apply it to all of humankind. I mean, it is a— you know, dirty secret in the nutrition industry that if you write a book and you wanna make a lot of money with the book, you, you know, say that there's one perfect diet for all of humankind and, you know, you paint some villain like gluten or lectin and maybe you sell a supplement off the back end to digest that villainous compound. And that is appealing to a lot of people who want to know, hey, what is the perfect diet for all of humankind? But the ketogenic diet that helped fix your friend's gut and help them lose 20 pounds might actually cause you a bunch of gut issues because you have poor bile production by your gallbladder and your liver and you can't break down fats well. Or maybe you have an inflammatory response to a high amount of saturated fats based on a genetic issue, like an APOE issue, or you might have familial hypercholesterolemia, it's just naturally high cholesterol and subsequent inflammation. In response to a high-fat diet. And maybe you think, "Okay, well then the carnivore diet is the diet for me," but maybe you are, from a genetic standpoint, what's called an overmethylator. So you have way too many methyl groups and you're pouring even more of them on top of that with meat consumption, or your biome is really dependent on adequate amounts of fiber, or— something like butyric acid for the colonic biome and flora, and you're not getting that from meat. And so if you really wanna know the type of diet that you should be eating, I think you can look at a couple of things. One, you can do a genetics test because a genetic test would allow you to see what it is that you're equipped to eat, what type of nutritional deficiencies you might have a risk for, what diseases you might have a risk for, all based on your ancestry and your genetics. So you might find out, for example, that omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil don't do a good job raising your HDL and lowering your triglycerides. You might be someone who needs more of a plant-based oil instead, or you might find out that if you consume high amounts of folic acid from grains and cereals and breads and the like, that that actually winds up getting converted into an inflammatory compound called homocysteine because you are a poor methylator. Or you might even find out that, you know, the average A cup of coffee completely messes up your sleep, even if you have it in the morning, because you're a slow oxidizer of coffee, which I'm obviously not. I can drink coffee at like 7:00 PM and I sleep just fine. Same for me. So a genetic test is one option. That's a very simple salivary test. Another option would be to actually get a gut test. That's literally, and they're becoming increasingly easy to get now, it's literally a swab of stool, typically off of tissue paper or out of something that's supplied to you that you would use when you're having a bowel movement. You send that off to the lab and you can find out parasites, yeast, fungus, bacterial imbalances, all of the type of things that might require replenishment. It might indicate, for example, you don't produce digestive enzymes that efficiently, so you need to take like a pancreatic enzyme supplement before you have a meal, or you have a bacterial imbalance, you might really benefit from a probiotic. I'm very data-driven when I can be, and I really encourage people who are able to do so to actually get a test to see, hey, is that diet that works so well for somebody else right for you, or should you tweak and customize based on some kind of a test? Now, that all being said, if we look at all of the Blue Zones areas where there's people who live a disproportionately long period of time, people where there's a lot of centenarians, you do see common dietary characteristics conducive to not just gut health but also longevity pop up over and over again. Uh, relatively low intake of processed and ultra-processed foods. Sure, because those require preservatives, they require added oils, often oils that can become rancid or oxidized if they're heated or pressurized or stored for a long period of time. You see added sugars, and you typically see lower nutrient density or compounds that can cause gut distress if you're constantly eating out of packages and containers and anything with a scannable label. You know, you should be able to open your refrigerator and have it look like you were shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store, right? Where the produce and vegetables and the fruits and the meats and the eggs and the dairy, et cetera, are versus up and down the aisles where you find a lot of packaged foods. Not that packaged foods shouldn't be a part of your diet at all, but they shouldn't be a major staple in your diet. You see a relatively high intake of a— diverse amount of plants and herbs and spices. And this is interesting because when you strictly begin to eliminate certain food groups, as you might do with a, in a carnivore diet or a keto diet, or even like a gluten-free or lectin-free, you know, low legume diet, paradoxically what happens is when you eat a wide variety of foods, you build bacteria in your gut that help you to digest those foods. So the bacteria in your gut become more and more diversified, so you're able to handle a wider variety of foods, which is a little bit paradoxical because you hear a lot of people say, well, if you have gut issues, just eliminate as much as possible. But that winds up coming back to bite you in the butt, sometimes both literally and figuratively, because you all of a sudden get a weaker and weaker biome. And this is why you see people who are eating a diet conducive to longevity and health, including a wide array of herbs and spices and vegetables and fruits. And maybe there is a time and place if they're coming off what we might call a standard westernized diet or a diet that's just rich in whatever, fried foods and sugar and ultra-processed ingredients, they might have to go through a period of time healing their gut where they may need to go like 12 weeks eating low-gluten diet without a lot of raw vegetables and raw fruits because their gut is a little bit— Torn up and scarred and not ready for that. But that's a short-term stint, but the ultimate goal should be to diversify the diet as much as possible, unless you literally have like full-blown celiac disease or some food allergy or something like that, so that your gut becomes more and more able to handle a wide variety of foods. The surge in peanut allergies that we've seen around the world, a big part of that is because parents began to be advised in the past 20 years to not give their kids peanuts. Peanuts. And so kids who don't get exposed to that peanut-based protein early in life wind up developing developing an autoimmune reaction or allergy to it that makes them able to have a less diverse diet. And in many cases, you could say the same thing for the gluten-free craze, where parents are like, "Well, I don't want my kid to have any gluten." Sure. Turns out a kid grows up and they're unable to handle bread and pasta and the like, not because they have a gluten allergy or they have celiac disease, but because it was so limited in their diet early on in life. So we see dietary diversity as being important. We see low intake of processed culture, processed foods being important. We see fasting as a big part of a lot of healthy cultures, whether it's a religious fast, whether it's some type of a cleansing or detoxification type of fast, or whether it's simply having certain periods of time during the day where you're going without eating, right? We live in an era in which we have 24/7 access to hyperpalatable foods. So our guts don't get a break. I mean, not just our guts, our cells themselves don't get a break because it's not just your gut that's having to process food, all those calories, all the extra glucose, for example, winds up needing to go through the cell and produce ATP, and the cells just don't get a break. They don't get to engage in cellular cleanup, also known as cellular autophagy, which is conducive to longevity. So, like, I go every 24 hours for 12 to 16 hours without eating. Okay. I finish dinner at 8:00 PM, I won't eat again until 8:00 AM. Technically, I don't eat till about 10:00 AM or so, so I've got around 14 hours a day where I'm just not putting a lot of food into my body. You don't have to do like a, you know, like a monthly 5-day water fast or something like that, but just starting with giving your body periods of time where it's not having to digest food is something that many people have lost touch with because we no longer live in like a hunter-gatherer indigenous tribe where there's, you know, feast, fast, famine cycles, and we can just open the refrigerator and eat whenever we want. Whatever we want. Eating in a parasympathetic state, right? We see that food is used as something that's celebratory, something that people gather around, back to what we were talking about earlier. Eating in a stress state is not conducive to gut health, but eating in a relaxed state, and there's even studies that back this up, that when you eat and you are relaxed, when your nervous system is downregulated, your blood glucose response to a meal is lower, your inflammatory response to a meal is lower, you feel fuller faster. And so thinking mindfully about when you eat and how you eat and not eating in a stressed-out state is also important. And when we put all these things together, right, low intake of processed foods, high amount of dietary diversity as soon as your gut is able to do so, eating in a parasympathetic state, including some element of fasting, then you can take all of those concepts and apply them to the diet that seems to be the diet that your ancestry is most geared towards, you know, and that can include something like a genetic test or a gut test to see what that is. So it takes a little bit of, of detective work, a little bit of sleuthing. If we were to just say, gosh, this is all too complex, I can't do all this testing, then I would say the best advice I can give you is that based on epidemiological studies of what what kind of diet seems to be the best primarily for cardiovascular disease, that's where a lot of these, these bigger studies are done on, it's some semblance of a Mediterranean diet, which is basically just a diet rich in a wide variety of herbs and plants and spices with a lot of, you know, omega-3 fatty acids and things like, you know, fish oils and eggs and things like that in it, um, relatively low in processed and ultra-processed ingredients. Um, typically there's some semblance fasting in that diet. And eating a diet like that seems to work really well for the widest variety of people. So, so those are just a few, a few things to think about when it comes to diet. But again, like, if you're listening in right now and you have gut issues, sometimes you do have to fix some of those issues before you actually start to branch out into a more diverse diet. And when I say fix some of those issues, There are widely available supplements or compounds or strategies for healing up a leaky gut or downregulating inflammation in the gut. Some examples of that would be L-glutamine, right? Very easy supplement to get. Taking about 5 grams of L-glutamine with each meal for around 4 to 8 weeks can really help to heal up a leaky gut. Another example would be colostrum, right? Babies, young mammals are born with a naturally leaky gut, and the first part of a mammal mother's milk cow's milk is rich in colostrum. And one of the reasons it's rich in colostrum is not only because it has a lot of growth factors in it that are good for hormones and muscle development, but also because those growth factors can help to heal the lining of a leaky gut. You hear about teas like slippery elm bark and marshmallow root extract and these kind of like slimy teas. Those can also help with mucus production in the gut, helping you to build up a layer that allows the gut to heal. There are even companies, and I'm not financially affiliated with one of these companies, for example, but there's a company out of Australia called Level Up Health, and they've taken a bunch of peptides and things that are very efficacious for healing up a gut, and they have something called Gut Repair Formula. I talk about that 'cause it's literally back in my hotel right now 'cause I travel with it. I don't take it all the time, but when you travel, due to circadian rhythm disruption, your biome shifts, and it's useful to have something like that to help to control gut inflammation. And then the last thing to think about would be in many cases there's some type of mold, mycotoxin infection issue. And for something like that, sometimes you need to use a binding agent like before you go to bed at night, charcoal, zeolite, cholestyramine is an interesting— have you heard of that one before? Yeah, yeah, sure, of course. Is that something that you can get in India? Not easy. Cholestyramine? Not easy. Yeah, 'cause some things you can buy over the counter, over here like sildenafil, you know, from Viagra that you can't get in the US, and then other things are harder to find. Yeah, cholestyramine is very powerful, but, you know, chlorella would be another one, but some type of binding agent that helps you to begin to bind and remove toxins from the gut. That can also be very helpful.

So I wanna push back on just one thing that you said. Of course, thank you, this has been extremely useful because you've covered such a wide depth of topics related to the gut. One of the things we did was we looked at gut health and what we found was you needed a library to get, to reference. So if you did a gut test on me, you needed a library to sort of figure out what was actually going on and what was the findings from my sort of stool sample and what did it actually indicate for our population, the Indian population. And I found the sample size was too small. So they had, if I remember correctly, only 10,000 samples. India is a very diverse country.

And this was a study of the gut microbiome, correct? Yes, exactly. So we're not talking about a test bacteria, yeast, fungus, et cetera, but the actual biome composition, the genetic composition of the gut.

Exactly. And so we found the sample size was too small just simply because India is too diverse. Yeah. You know, with the number of people, billion-plus people, many of whom are, you know, sort of regionally diverse. Our culture is diverse, food habits are diverse. So the sample size was not sufficient. Would you have any thoughts on that? Like, can you take, what we found in the US just literally applied to India? You talked about, let's say for example, a company out of Australia building something that can cure. Could you just apply that literally to India? Would you have to find something that was uniquely Indian?

When you look at companies, probably one of the more popular companies would be something like Viome. Sure. You know, doing a test of the actual, the genetic composition of the gut. Gut is taking someone's microbiome, their genetic makeup, and then predicting what foods that person might be predisposed to have as like a superfood or a food to avoid based on the notion, the guess, that the certain bacterial composition in the gut is best equipped to digest or not be able to digest certain foods. Certain foods. Sure. There's not a lot of data—

Exactly.

—to back up the fact that if you switch your diet based on those factors, you're going to become healthier or live longer. That's not even a test that I frequently recommend. Okay. Basically right now, it's information. Like, it'd be like if you did a whole genome analysis and paid a lot of money for that. We don't even know or have a lot of research because there's not a lot of data behind a ton of the SNPs that you'd have tested if you were to get a whole genome analysis. Correct. So it's better to get a genome analysis for the ones that we actually know based on big data and correlating that to actual blood work and actual epidemiological studies, what the effects of those genes have on people. So if you were gonna test your gut, like I'm, you know, based on the reasons that you've just outlined what I'm talking about, it's better to just do a stool test for bacteria, yeast, fungus, parasites, the stuff that actually shows what kind of critters are actually in your gut, right? Versus the genetic composition of the gut, which I don't think gives you much actionable data, again, based on genetic diversity and based on lack of big data. If a company like Viome keeps on testing people for, let's say, like the next 5 years and gets a whole bunch of big data and then they're actually able to develop proxies because all of those people have also done blood tests, they've looked at how long they've lived, they've looked at symptomatic questionnaires, et cetera, you would eventually get to the point where you could take that big data and say, okay, we actually can make a pretty good guess. An example of that would be a company like say TrueAge Diagnostics. So there's this, you've probably heard of folks like Bryan Johnson, for example. Sure, we'll talk about it. Big longevity guy in the US. And one of his claims to fame is that he's one of the leaders on the leaderboard for the Rejuvenation Olympics, which is a test of how quickly you're aging. So the TrueAge test will basically, via a blood spot, give you your pace of aging, which let's say your pace of aging is, I don't know, a good score might be 0.6 to 0.7, which means for a Every day you're only aging 0.65 of that day or whatever. That data is now something that they've matched up against several very large population studies of people who have high versus low vitamin D, people who tend to develop liver issues in response to alcohol versus those that don't, people who have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease from certain certain fat compositions. And now from that one blood spot test, you're able to match it to big data. And even if you don't get your vitamin D tested from that blood test, they can say, well, based on your results, you're low in vitamin D. And they have so much big data that they're able to do that, which means that we're slowly moving towards the point where there might be just one simple blood test that's highly affordable for the general population that you can get, not only look at your pace of aging but at your risk for a whole bunch of other stuff, including gut issues, but that's all big data that takes a long period of time, and we're not at that point yet with the gut biome data. Now, with that company out of Australia, that's not necessarily a company that has developed a supplement that's based on the biome composition of your gut. That's a supplement that has things in it that just help to heal the gut no matter who you are, like BPC-157 peptide, or, you know, there's other peptides like KPV and lorazetide and other things in there that specifically are designed to help heal a leaky gut no matter what your bacterial composition is.

I want to really quickly switch to women. You know, they make up half our population, and I think they have unique problems that are, you know, sort of very specific to women. Careful what you say.

I think your wife's around here somewhere.

Yeah, she is. She is here.

Women and all their problems.

Yeah, no, I don't mean problems as in a problem, but I just mean they have things that are very unique to them. And one of the things that we are starting to see a lot is actually what what is labelled now perimenopause. Women in their late 30s and even early 40s starting to get a lot of the symptoms that would ultimately become menopause. Something that could last even 10 years. And there's a fair amount of difficulty that they're going through. I wanted to get your thoughts on that. What do you think is going on? Why is it actually happening? We get, you know, girls who are like 7, 8, 9 starting to enter menarche. And then, you know, women starting to enter perimenopause and menopause much earlier than maybe normal.

Right, it's almost like an acceleration. Exactly, and then they're kind of two different issues, but they are related. Sure. If you look at pushing the accelerator on the development of female biology, estrogen is going to be a primary driver of that. And if a woman early in life is exposed to a lot of environmental estrogens, whether through commercial dairy or plastics or personal care products or household cleaning chemicals, or anything else like that that has a lot of synthetic estrogens in it, you are going to see something like you mentioned, early onset of menarchy. You're going to see eventually early onset of menopause or perimenopause at an age that would be earlier than expected. I'm 43. By the way, for guys, it's the opposite issue. It's andropause, right? Drop in testosterone. But a lot of times that's also driven by estrogen and estrogen exposure in the environment. My wife's 43. We've certainly talked about this quite a bit, the idea of, you know, there's this shift towards the beginning of what, if not managed properly, can cause brain fog and a drop in libido and, you know, night sweats causing poor sleep and, you know, poor physical function and performance and irritability and mood issues. Typically, for managing something like that, The obvious answer younger in life is to simply ensure that you're limiting exposure to synthetic chemicals and estrogens as much as possible, right? That a child is not eating out of plastic containers and drinking out of plastic water bottles and using personal care products and household cleaning chemicals that are full of a lot of these synthetic estrogens or forever chemicals, et cetera, or even, you know, using caution with, if, you know, if, for example, beef or dairy is being consumed, the actual hormones that the animals were exposed to, you know, prior to a young woman, or preferably a young man, consuming those foods. With perimenopause or menopause, usually the best strategy is to begin to address it pretty early, like 10 years before menopause would even kick in. And to do that effectively, you actually have to test. You need to test hormones. And getting blood work for hormones is going to give you a one-time snapshot of what's going on. It's not the best way to test for hormones because they fluctuate during the day. Sure, sure. Salivary test is a little bit better because typically you're doing a test multiple times during the day and seeing how estrogen, cortisol, testosterone, et cetera, is fluctuating throughout the day. A urine test is the very, very best way to test for hormones. And then it's a very similar type of thing as a saliva test. You're typically collecting urine at multiple points during the day to see what the values are at. The biggest issues that you tend to see when testing, one, no surprise, is excess of estrogens. Another would be a drop in progesterone or a need for something called pregnenolone, which is an upstream precursor of a lot of hormones. So many women who are entering into perimenopause will benefit from progesterone supplementation and/or pregnenolone supplementation. Because of genetics and the way that the liver processes certain compounds, some women feel really great with oral progesterone. My wife feels like total crap on oral progesterone because her liver metabolizes it very quickly, so she gets this huge peak. She feels great with transdermal progesterone, just applied a little bit to a hairless area of the body. Testosterone, Testosterone is another one that a lot of women have deficiencies in that goes hand in hand with a lot of the issues with perimenopause. Again, you have to test because even though a ton of women have low testosterone, my wife has tested and her testosterone levels are just fine, but she needs extra progesterone, right? So you have to be pretty data-driven when you're approaching this. But at a younger age, of course, just paying attention to environmental chemicals and exposure to synthetic estrogens or so-called xenoestrogens is important. Later on in life, it becomes a matter of actually doing urinary testing, preferably on like an annual basis, and then adjusting the hormones as age progresses.

Got it. So, but you know, the reality is that we will get exposed to these kinds of toxins, right? Plastic, for example, like even today, even drinking out of a plastic bottle. And that's just the practicality of our lives. Is there a way to detox yourself then? Like imagine that I have been exposed for whatever, 15, 20, 30 years. What's the detox protocol then for this?

I'm not a huge fan of like waiting until January 1st and doing some kind of 30-day, you know, intense cleanse where you gotta be 5 feet from a toilet. And you know, you guys even in Indian culture have some really great Ayurvedic cleanses like panchakarma, but those are pretty intense. My own strategy and what I recommend is daily and weekly detoxification. Daily detoxification is, is very simple, right? Sweating, movement, some type of lymph flow, like jumping up and down on a trampoline, or even going on a walk where you're swinging your arms, sweating and breathing, right? Because two major detoxification organs are our lungs and our skin. Once per week, I do a little bit more of an intense detox. Specifically, what I do is I wake up and I take a binding agent. I like to use activated charcoal. I actually have a supplement, uh, it's, it's activated charcoal, but it's also got zeolite supplement. The one I use is made by Designs for Health. And then I move my body, but I move it using G-forces because G-forces involve moving the cell in such a way that's a little bit different than what you get if you're just walking or exercising. So to increase G-forces, if you're not an astronaut flying to the moon, it'd be jumping up and down on a trampoline or using a vibration platform, right? So I wake up in the morning and then I'll have a podcast or an audiobook on and I'll jump up and down on a trampoline or stand on a vibration platform. Interesting. And then moving lymph through the body is also important. So once per week, I rub and tap each of my major lymph flow areas. So I start here on the chest and rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Then back behind the neck, rub, rub, rub, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Then to the front of the shoulders, right where the clavicle kind of hits the shoulders, rub, rub, rub, tap, tap, tap, Tap, tap, tap. Down the stomach, rub, rub, rub, tap, tap, tap. There's about 30 seconds per area. Then the groin, rub, rub, rub, tap, tap, tap. Back of the knees, rub, rub, rub, tap, tap, tap. Some people find they actually need to go have a bowel movement right after doing that, just because of the lymph circulation that that specific sequence causes. After that, I hit the sauna and sweat things out for 30, 40 minutes. I like to use the infrared sauna just 'cause you get a deeper sweat, 'cause those photons of light hit the skin and kind of warm you from the inside out. And I do that once a week, right? 'Cause I live in a modern environment, I travel all the time. You know, I'm here in India for a couple weeks, I'm making sure that I sweat while I'm here, I hit the sauna a few times. But doing something like that on a regular basis, right? Just like moving and sweating every day, and then once a week doing something where you're getting a little bit more intensive is important. And even though this is uncomfortable and people laugh about it and think it's funny, I'm not opposed to the idea of an enema. Enema also, right? Um, something like a coffee enema to increase your, your endogenous glutathione production, to help to move things along, to spark bile production by the gallbladder, to clean out the digestive tract. So I do a coffee enema once a week, typically on that same day that I'm doing that detoxification protocol. And that sounds like a lot, right? But if you do the math, you know, that whole detox protocol in the morning, that's like 45 minutes on a Wednesday morning a lot of times I'm just like, you know, listening to a podcast or an audiobook or, you know, like using audio as a university while I'm doing it. And then, you know, the coffee enema, I'm just laying on the bathroom floor going through some emails, reading a book. So it's not as though you're spending your whole life doing that. But yeah, we're fighting an uphill battle. And so you almost have to go out of your way to do some of these things. Correct. Yeah.

Talk to me a little bit about the sauna. Like, I think that's also something it's not as well understood. Like what's the right protocol? Is it longer duration, lower temperature, higher temperature, lower duration? What's the right protocol for this?

If you look at the majority of the studies showing that sauna is good for you coming out of Finland. Yeah, of course. They're going like 4 to 5 times a week for 20 to 45 minutes-ish. And you see reduced all-cause risk of mortality and lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer's and lower risk of cardiovascular disease. If you actually go to Finland, which I have, you know, and gone and saunaed at the Men's Sauna Society where there's 6 different temperatures of sauna and people are sitting in there and stopping occasionally and going and having a beer and some fish soup and jumping in the Baltic Sea and getting back in, there's more than just the heat, right? There's the socializing aspect, there's the disconnection aspect, there's the cold part, right? Which, which, you know, The whole thermal stress is also important for cardiovascular health and blood flow and lymph flow. So I think there's a little bit more to it than just being in the sauna. But as far as the ideal time length, temperature, et cetera, it depends on the sauna. So an infrared sauna is usually 150 to 175 degrees. Okay. Doesn't have to be that hot, but because those photons of light penetrate the skin, you tend to get a really deep sweat and you also get a lot of the benefits of red light exposure, which is good for collagen, for elastin, helps your mitochondria make more ATP. So there's a lot of benefits to the red light. For a dry sauna, you're usually looking at, I mean, 200, I've got one that goes up to 230, right? So dry sauna, you're not gonna be in there as long. So a dry sauna, even though in the Finnish studies, they're going sometimes up to 40 minutes, most people tap out at like 15 to 20 minutes in a dry sauna. Steam sauna, back to the whole toxin plastic thing, I'm not as big a fan of because when you're breathing in the steam that's in the steam sauna, if you don't know if the water's been filtered, then you could be breathing in the same type of water that you've avoided drinking elsewhere, but it's just being infused into the sauna atmosphere that you're in. So steam sauna, I'm not as big a fan of unless I know where the water's actually come from. And then as far as whether you do rounds or go back and forth, between the sauna and the cold. There's not a lot of good research showing any one thing that's best. I mean, what I like to do is do the heat first, 'cause if you do the cold first, you're gonna spend your first 10 or 15 minutes in the heat just warming yourself up from the cold. So I get super hot in the sauna and then I'll hit the cold for like 2 to 5 minutes, like really cold shower, cold plunge, cold soak, and call it good. And then every once in a while I'll do rounds. Where I'm going back and forth from the sauna to the cold, to the sauna, to the cold, which is incredible. And you feel great. It's good for muscle recovery and good for lymph and blood flow, but that takes more time, right? So that would be on like a Sunday or a Saturday where I have more time. And sometimes I'll do that with my sons or with friends. And it's fantastic for recovery.

Sure, my son and I went to an onsen spa, very similar. So different temperatures, hot, cold. I think there was 38, 40, 42, 44. You go round robin. Than the whole cold.

It was super fun. It was fun.

It was fun. I think if nothing else, the bonding was just fantastic. Yeah, yeah.

And you can even— there's like certain— I don't know if you knew this— there's certain supplements that you can take that cause your body to heat up faster so you sweat more. I see. Detox more. Uh, like Grains of Paradise pepper extract is one. Uh, niacin is another one that can really heat the body up. There's even like topical creams that have capsaicin and things like that in them that really help you to sweat even more. So it's kind of cool. You can amplify the experience. I think the bonding itself was so much fun that whatever else was happening, we didn't really care.

But I want to stay on the topic of women. One of the things that we're also starting to see is as you age, the protective benefits of the estrogen starts to wear off, right? Because of, you know, the woman actually starting to approach menopause. And we're starting to see a dramatic shift from low blood pressure to like a high blood pressure condition. Is there anything specifically that women can do to deal with it?

Blood pressure is— it's actually something that's near and dear to my heart because my wife's done genetic testing. And hopefully this doesn't embarrass her that I'm talking about it on a podcast, but she has two major genetic risk factors. I see. Mine are colon cancer and type 2 diabetes. Those are my major genetic risk factors. I don't see that as a doom scroll. I see that as empowerment. Sure. So I can do certain things to help with colon health and, you know, be cognizant of sugar and glucose, and I wear a continuous glucose monitor, and I keep track of that because I have risks. My wife's are osteoporosis and blood pressure. So one of the things that she does based on my recommendation is she's very cognizant of things that would be vasodilatory agents. Beets, watermelon, pumpkin seeds, extra virgin olive oil, beet powder extract, nitric oxide tablets, which are fantastic. There's companies like Calroy, they have a product called Vascanox that really helps with arterial health and with that vasodilation. Exercise is of course important, de-stressing, and monitoring blood pressure to see if there's certain things that would be contributing to high blood pressure. Typically it'd be stress, anxiety, poor sleep, you know, some of the things that you might not be cognizant of. This is not something that's available very many places in the world right now besides Canada and the UK. This is made by a company called Actea, this bracelet, and this is a continuous blood pressure monitor bracelet. That was developed by a team of cardiovascular physicians that correlates quite well to a cuff measurement. So I can now see my blood pressure in real time on a phone app. And I think that devices like this are gonna save a lot of lives because rather than having to wait wait, you know, a week or a month to go to the doctor's office or have someone else do a blood pressure cuff measurement on you. You know, similar to what we've done with continuous glucose monitors and step and HRV and sleep trackers, we can now do with blood pressure. So I think the major thing for a woman to focus on would be not only cardiovascular health, exercise, stress, anxiety, sleep, but then a lot of these blood flow agents that essentially work like fire hoses for the arteries. These vasodilatory agents. Sure.

If you don't mind, I just want to push back on the blood pressure monitor. Like, my little understanding is that your blood pressure can vary significantly between, you know, you having had water and not, taking your pressure on both hands, feet on the ground, you know, hand in a particular place. So obviously you can get like a very wide range of like readings. Does that still work in that situation or what are you learning actually?

Similar to how, If you're measuring your nervous system readiness, your HRV— Sure, we'll talk about that. It really is only accurate if you're still. Right. Which is why most monitors will do the majority of measurements when you're laying down. This only measures when, based on the accelerometer, it detects that you're very still. And then once per month, you actually recalibrate it to a cuff measurement. Got it. So it's not like it's measuring it all the time because your values would be all over the place. So I've noticed since I started wearing it, it seems like about 7 or 8 different times during the day, and it's mostly at night, it's actually taking my blood pressure, but I'm still able to see if there's any patterning data. And like a lot of these measurements, you know, like heart rate variability, for example, everybody's like, well, what should my perfect value be? What is the range? 20 to 200 based on the algorithm that's being used. Similar to genetics, it's gonna vary so widely from person to person that what you're looking for is a pattern, right? Is your nervous system readiness going up or down based on your subjective measurements? Similar to blood glucose, right? Some people are healthy at 70, 80, 90. My average blood glucose, and you know, I'm an exercising fit individual who's cognizant of carbohydrate consumption, I'm pretty good between about 95 and 100. A part of that is I restrict carbohydrates, and when you restrict carbohydrates, your body naturally will release extra glucose from the liver into the bloodstream. So paradoxically, if you're on a low-carb diet, your fasting blood glucose tends to be a little bit higher anyways. But what I pay more attention to is glycemic variability, right? How much is my blood sugar fluctuating and spiking and going up and down during the day versus how much of it is a normal baseline analysis besides eating, at which point it's gonna spike anyways. But the other thing I look at is after a meal, does it return close to baseline values within 2 hours. Sure. Right, so I'm more concerned about return to preprandial, like pre-feeding levels after I've eaten, and then how much it's spiking up and down during the day.

Interesting. So it's really a function of how you interpret the data. Yeah. As opposed to just like sort of collecting the data.

Right, just comparing the data to reference ranges, for example.

I want to also quickly talk about another topic you raised with respect to your wife, osteoporosis. At least in my limited understanding, I'm very keen to hear your thoughts. Exercise actually plays a very vital role, especially if you strength train, because the more you strength train, you micro fracture your bones, and then that builds stronger bones.

Strength training along the long axis, right, of the bone. So meaning, you know, overhead presses, squats, anything that causes a compression along the long axis of the bone.

So you'd advocate that for women as much as anyone else? Because somehow there's this notion, especially in India, I think it's changing now to a great extent, but that, you know, it's only men who should be exercising and you build big muscles if you do, which, you know, frankly, I think having done this for 10 years, it's not possible.

I mean, if you look at a CrossFitter female who's got, you know, 8-pack abs and pretty big muscles, they're eating a lot of protein, they're eating a lot of calories. Some of them are using exogenous hormones. Correct. Like, you have to do a lot as a woman to just get absolutely buff and swole from weight training. If you're doing a smart, you know, whatever, 3 times a week full-body weight training protocol, It's one of the best things you can do because muscle is not only a metabolic sink for glucose and carbohydrates and can help with metabolism, it's also something that helps you develop anti-fragility, strength, bone density. You know, there's one very popular doctor in the States right now, Dr. Gabriel Lyon, who has coined the term muscle-centric medicine and has a whole book about, you know, why strength training is so important, including for women. So women Women do not tend to bulk up from strength training. And there are simple things that you can do if they are, you know, adjusting your set ranges, your rep ranges, et cetera. So yeah, it's not something that you need to be worried about. And you're absolutely right. Not only is lack of loading of the bone going to be an osteoporotic risk, but so is low mineral intake. Correct. You know, it's another big one. Eating a diet that's very acidic, you know, very high in coffee, coffee and alcohol and sugar, which can leach a lot of minerals from the bones. Low intake of a wide variety of electrolytes and minerals. There's quite a bit when it comes to osteoporosis that a woman should be thinking about.

My mother's 72. I managed to get her to start strength training. So she's been strength training now for 5 years. And just simply because the merits of actually strength training is so great. And she feels stronger, she feels better.

You can start at any age. Any age, exactly. Wonderful, wonderful. Yes. Time to plant a tree is 20 years ago or today.

Yeah, exactly. Let's change topics a little bit. I wanna switch to neurological. In your book, "Boundless," you talked about doing a DUTCH test that gave me a sense.

Yeah, dried urine test. Yes, exactly.

So could you talk a little bit about that? How would I understand which sort of hormone I'm dominant in? Yeah. And how can I understand that? And then how can I use that to sort of understand where my mind is at? It's a little bit different than neurotransmitters.

The hormone piece, but when you look at the work of a guy like Dr. Eric Braverman, who I talk about in the book, he's developed a certain set of characteristics or tendencies that are associated with being dopamine dominant or acetylcholine dominant or serotonin dominant. And I even have quizzes in my book where you can determine what your profile actually is and adjust your lifestyle accordingly. For example, if you are dopamine dominant, in many cases, you tend to have a racing mind. You're one of those people who does really well developing some kind of an external brain, like a notebook that you carry around with you to write down ruminating thoughts or something you keep by your bedside that allows you to journal and get thoughts out of your mind and onto paper. If you're serotonin dominant, oftentimes, you can get anxious in social situations, you can get butterflies in your gut, you need to focus on meditation and anti-anxiety practices and breathwork, et cetera. And so there's a whole variety of different characteristics associated with each neurotransmitter dominance, but it's difficult to actually test the actual levels of neurotransmitters. You mentioned one test called the Dutch Test. It's about the closest that we can get right now. It's looking at— at urinary excretion of metabolites related to neurotransmitters. I see. So it's approximating or guessing at what the levels in the brain or the gut would actually be, but there's no good test right now to actually look at neurotransmitter dominance. Now, if you look at a genetic test, that can also tell you a little bit. There's one genetic SNP, for example, called the COMT gene, and you can test your COMT gene. MT gene and find out whether you clear dopamine quickly or whether you clear dopamine slowly. And if you clear dopamine quickly, you're like a thrill seeker who constantly needs to be going on adventures and heliskiing and getting dropped off mountains and playing extreme sports and doing things that actually, you know, keep you from going absolutely crazy because you just like to live life at a fast pace. And other people who are, who are slow dopamine processors, it'll just hang around for for a longer period of time and they need fewer of those hits. So it's a fascinating science. I would say the best way to figure out your actual dominance would be to just like, you know, take the test that, or it's not a test in my book, it's a test that's linked to from my book. You can get the Dutch test, even though I think that's more valuable for the type of hormone issues we were talking about earlier than it is for the neurotransmitter issues, even though it can give you some clues. Honestly, back to the gut, because so many of your neurotransmitters are made in your gut. Looking at whether you have gut inflammation, leaky gut, bacterial imbalances, et cetera, that can also help you with the neurotransmitter piece.

When we talk about neurological issues, one of the things that constantly keeps coming up is memory. And like, I'm, you know, already a victim. I forget things. I forget like medical terms that I've like, you know, spent the last 10 years sort of reading and learning about. What's going on? Why are we forgetting so much? Spike a lot after COVID. Is that just my imagination? Did we really sort of start losing memory because of whatever version of the COVID sort of effect you want to sort of think about?

There are blood-brain flow scans. One's called the SPECT scan that's made popular by this doctor named Dr. Daniel Amen. And I've seen SPECT scans, and this is not based on research, this is all anecdotal, of people who have a high load of spike protein from either vaccine injury or long COVID, and the blood flow to the brain is absolutely compromised. So that's because the spike protein affects your cardiovascular system. It acts on the vasculature in such a manner that you get reduced blood flow. There's another reason why, you know, you'll hear stories about people who had a, you know, vaccine or had COVID wind up, you know, healthy people having a heart attack. You see things like that because of the cardiovascular implications. With the memory piece, um, you know, absolutely paying attention to that. And unfortunately, there's not a lot of great ways to just detox spike protein out of the body. A lot of times you need more advanced medical filtration protocols like ozone plasmapheresis or blood exchange or things that'll actually pull stuff out of the body, which is expensive. There is a doctor named Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum who probably has one of the better titles on Long COVID or vaccine injuries, and he has a pretty good protocol that involves a more herbal approach. But the spike protein aside, for the memory and the neurological piece, Yeah, blood flow is an issue. I think that even though it seems like it's common sense, it's something that not a lot of people do. And this is based on the idea of increasing the connectivity between neurons and the growth of the number of neurons themselves, one called neuroplasticity and one called neurogenesis. Simply the idea of learning new things or challenging yourself with uncomfortable things, learning new things or challenging yourself with uncomfortable things. So learning new things, that can be Sudoku, crossword, learning a musical instrument, learning a new language. Travel is great for the brain. For the other piece, it would be things like doing a workout that involves complex movements that you're unaccustomed to, taking an ice bath, staying in a sauna until you're uncomfortably hot, doing things that go beyond just your standard ho-hum exercise protocol. So those are two things that I focus on quite a bit is have I made myself somewhat uncomfortable with something today physically and have I made myself uncomfortable with something today mentally? And then from a nutrient standpoint, there are certain things that can increase, for example, levels of BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor in the brain. A sauna would be a perfect example of that, like a robust sauna practice. There are nutrients also that can increase BDNF. The herbal approach to something like memory would involve some commonly known compounds. Ginkgo biloba is one that seems to be very good for the memory. There's another one called vinpocetine for blood flow. There's a lot of companies now that are creating almost like shotgun formulas for the brain and for memory and for blood flow. So you'll see like, you know, Onnit has one called Alpha Brain, Qualia has one called Mind. There's another company called WooQio, another company called Nootopia. I would say, and it's kind of funny I'm bringing this company up again, 'cause again, I'm not financially affiliated with them, but there's that same company out of Australia that has that gut repair formula I was talking about. They just came out with a formula called Neuro Regenerate, and it's like 10 different peptides and compounds that specifically help with blood flow to the brain, neurogenesis, and neuroplasticity. I have it back in my hotel room. Those are the two supplements from them that I actually have in my hotel room. So it's on my mind right now. I just break open a couple of capsules and put them in my coffee.

My son and I compete playing Lumosity. Yeah. And he just, it's just incredible. He's 11, but he just beats me every single time. Yeah. So I think clearly age is a factor here.

So I'll try and see if I can follow some of the practices. Lumosity, Brainscape, N-Back.

You talked about N-Back, exactly.

Some people will say those games simply make you smarter. Make you better at playing the game, but newer research is showing that they don't. For me, it's instrumentation. Before I left here to come to India, I was taking drum lessons, right? So I've got a drum set, it's in front of a big screen on YouTube. So I pull up YouTube, do a drum lesson, and I love it. You know, hand-eye coordination, learning something new. So my favorite place to challenge my brain is in the music room of the house. There's a guitar, ukulele, a banjo, a drum set. So I've always got something I can try. And because Music makes me happy also. And, you know, there's even something to be said for the healing frequencies of sounds. It's a little bit— there's a lot more going on than just challenging the brain when it comes to music.

Sure. So I'd like to change topics a little bit. Let's talk about stress. Stress is, you know, easily one of the biggest problems I think mankind suffers from today. Going back to what you were saying earlier about even eating in a stressed state. Yeah. What I found was HRV is one of those indicators that gives you understanding of what is happening. Could you talk a little bit about that? And what is stress, what can you do, what are the best hacks for sort of?

Yeah, HRV, I mean, you have to have a wearable to measure it. You know, like a ring works okay, there's wristbands. The most accurate way is via a chest strap. Sure. And it's just measuring the amount of time in between each beat of your heart, right? So you got heart rate, which, you know, 50, 60, 70, depending on the person. And then you have heart rate variability, which is the amount of time in between each beat of the heart. And so if you have a high heart rate variability, that means that there is a, a good response to the nervous system's stimulation of the pacemaker cells of the heart. So you might have your heartbeat and there's 90 milliseconds, then your heartbeats again is 95 milliseconds, and your heartbeats again is 89 milliseconds. And that's an indicator of better nervous system management than if the heart rate variability is low and the amount of time in between each beat of the heart is constant. So it's kind of cool because you can measure that now and it can be a pretty good indicator of your stress levels. And so, if you tend to see a pattern towards high HRV, a lot of times it means that you're doing a good job managing stress. And usually, you're doing a good job managing stress because you're not overworking, and maybe you're aware of and mindful of your breath patterns, and you're engaged in a gratitude practice, or you're keeping a second brain like I was talking about earlier and writing things down so you don't forget them and ruminate on them. And if you have a low HRV, typically you're doing all the opposite things. So it's, it's pretty cool because you can measure it nowadays. I would say that the biggest things that influence your HRV score would be anything related to your vagus nerve. So your vagus nerve is a cranial nerve that begins in your head and snakes through the entire body and innervates your gut and activates the pacemaker cells of the heart. And if you have good, what is called vagal nerve tone, typically you'll have lower amounts of stress or better ability to be able to handle stress. Yoga, breathwork, meditation, chanting, humming, singing, gargling, thermal stress like sauna and cold, exercise, all of these things can increase your HRV. And now there are even HRV stimulators. I have one back in my hotel room here in India. It's a set of headphones. It's made by a company called Hoole. And there's two electrodes that trigger your vagus nerve through the auricular area of your neck and literally do an electrical stimulation that helps to increase HRV and lower stress. So there's all sorts of different things that you can do to manage, but yeah, HRV will allow you to actually measure stress. And, you know, these devices are not that expensive now that allow you to do it.

So now imagine I found that my scores are not so good. What's like, in your opinion, the best practices, breathwork being one?

Yeah, a lot of the stuff that I just talked about, they help a ton. Obviously, in addition to those things, sleep, not overtraining, relationship management. Interestingly, good cardiovascular fitness is pretty highly correlated to a good HRV. And that means that even though the strength training that we were talking about is important, focusing on things like VO2 max or having an exercise session each week where you're breathless, you know, or pushing yourself cardiovascularly for a certain period of time. Good tolerance to lactic acid, meaning that you also have maybe a certain type of weight training where you're resting for a shorter period of time in between sets, so you feel the burn a little bit more. Or good mitochondrial health, which typically involves very short bursts of intense exercise with long rest periods. If you're focusing on some form of a training session each week that's increasing VO2 max, improving lactic acid tolerance, and increasing the health of the mitochondria, all of those will increase cardiovascular fitness to the extent where you'll have a pretty good impact on HRV.

There is this other concept called hormesis where you're pushing yourself a little bit, which in some sense is making you stronger, better. And that then goes back to helping you deal with stress better. Could you talk a little bit about that as well?

Yeah, yeah, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Exactly, yeah. And back to what we're talking about, like, with dietary diversity, right? Like, yeah, a lot of these plant defense compounds that people are avoiding when they're following a carnivore or a paleo diet, they actually seem to induce cellular resilience and your own antioxidant production in small amounts. So rather than eliminating gluten and eliminating lectin and eliminating peanuts, by consuming small amounts of those, you actually develop a more diverse gut and better ability to be able to— to create the compounds that help you to digest those foods. You know, many people will say these days that you should limit oxalates for joint health. Sure. And get rid of spinach and kale and cruciferous vegetables. Interestingly, those same compounds when fermenting in the colon produce the actual postbiotics that help you to digest oxalate. So the human body works pretty efficiently when it's not overloaded with a lot of these compounds. Sauna, if we did it in high amounts, would kill us due to dehydration and cardiac stress, but in small amounts seems to induce the production of heat shock proteins, which help your cells to become more resilient to stress. A long bout in a cold pool would result in a huge surge of adrenaline and epinephrine that stresses you way out, but in small amounts seems to induce the ability to deal well with that same surge of excitatory neurotransmitters. Weight training. Right? If you were in the gym for 2 hours, it would take a really long time to recover from, but a half-hour weight training session a day and your muscles become stronger, not weaker and overtrained. Small bits of running on a daily basis can help with cardiovascular fitness, but if you run 30 miles on a Saturday morning, your muscles would look like World War II, right? So a lot of these things, even alcohol, right? Like small amounts of alcohol on a regular basis based on a lot these studies done, you know, back to the Blue Zones and longevity hotspots, seems to induce an endogenous antioxidant response that induces cellular resilience when done in small doses on a regular basis, right? So not getting, you know, let's put it this way, there's a big difference between having 7 drinks on a Saturday night as your average of 7 drinks a week and having a glass of wine with the family at dinner as your 7 drinks a week. So yeah, these small things that are hormetic stressors can actually make you stronger when they're consumed or dosed in moderate or low to moderate amounts throughout the week. So yeah, I mean, it's the goal for longevity and health is not to live in a protective bubble, but to simply modulate the amount of stressors that you're exposed to.

We'll talk about the bubble in a minute. Let's switch to a fascinating topic that I know you've been working on. And it's something that actually interests me. So funny story, our family history actually is in construction. We've been— we've made construction materials for the last 40+ years, 60+ years actually. So plywood, cement, etc., etc. And I know now you've worked on this new home that you've sort of almost made new and you've, you know, put in all kinds of new things in that, in that. But the thing that you focused on is making it ecologically healthy for the human being. Could you talk a little bit about that, like reducing the electricity the dirty electricity, for example. The field is actually called building biology.

This idea of how do we create buildings that are biologically friendly to the human body. It's different than green building, right? Environmentally friendly building is good for the environment, but often, you know, some of the considerations for that aren't necessarily biological. Good for you, yeah, sure. So when we talk about exercise and nutrition, these are variables that certainly move the dial for health, health, but you don't see whatever Men's Health magazine or Women's Fitness or popular media in fitness or nutrition talking a lot about some of what might be considered more invisible variables, namely electricity, light, air, water, right? So I just finished building a home in North Idaho. The entire home, every floor of the house is shielded with a special kind of paint that restricts the amount of radio frequencies and EMFs that can come in from nearby cell phone towers or Wi-Fi signals. The floor is grounded so that anywhere you're walking in the house, you're actually pulling up the anti-inflammatory negative ions from the surface of the planet. Right, that's true. Because the floor actually has a conductive material that allows you to be grounded no matter where you're at in the house. There is no Wi-Fi because all of the rooms are wired with Cat 8 metal-shielded Ethernet cable. So even if I'm in my office, you know, there's an Ethernet cable and a USB-C to Ethernet adapter, and I can have my phone plugged into the Ethernet rather than having a radio frequency running from my phone. The water is a 14-stage filtration process that completely cleanses the water and then remineralizes the water. So the water water I'm showering in, I'm bathing in, I'm drinking. It's all super, you know, clean, pure. The HVAC system has, you know, HEPA air filters in it to cleanse the air, along with monitors for controlling that system that do not run on Wi-Fi or Alexa, but that instead are, you know, stupid home style little slider buttons that you use to adjust the heating in the home. So the idea is that But, in the environment, I focus on super clean air. I focus on very low amounts of man-made unnatural electricity, but high amounts of natural frequencies and electricity, really good clean pure water throughout the entire house. And then, even the lighting, when you walk into a room, if you flip the light on once, it'll be daytime. You flip it again, it'll go twilight. You flip it again, it will go red light. So, the circadian rhythmicity of any room can be adjusted. So rather than bright overhead fluorescent lighting with lots of flicker and EMF that causes irritation or brain fog, every single room is adjusted for ideal sleep-wake cycles and elimination of a lot of the light pollution that can cause issues. So light pollution, air pollution, water pollution, electrical pollution, we don't think about those a lot in our personal environments. Sure. And you can exercise until you're blue in the face, and eat a really healthy diet and still feel crappy. And sometimes the reason for that is because you're being bombarded with poor air, poor water, poor light, and poor electricity. So I've kind of built my own blue zone in a way to take into account a lot of those factors.

Fascinating. What about the building materials themselves? Like, did you do something?

Oh yeah, low VOC, low amounts of chemicals, plastics, et cetera, all natural materials, absolutely. Interesting.

I think that's a business right there. I think you should consult a biologist for—

Yeah, it is. I mean, not a lot of people are gonna build a house like that from the ground up. And there are consultants, you know, in the US. There's people I've worked with like Brian Hoyer has a company called Shielded Healing. He travels all over the world helping people with this. There's another guy called Brian Johnson from a company called Senergy 360 in Phoenix, and he does that as well. And so, yeah, there are building biologists that are actually consultants. But if you wanted kind of like a book that I think is one one of the better modern books that's kind of like a done-for-you manual for a lot of this, there's a gal named Paula Laporte who has a book called "A Prescription for a Healthy Home." And that one's just, you know, you could literally take that and hand it to a home builder, an architect, and say, "I want to take all this stuff into consideration." It'd be a pretty good start. Interesting. Yeah. Okay.

I'll switch topics again. I want to talk just two simple things in nutrition. Nutrition is one of those topics that everyone's talking about all the time. I wanted to ask you only two questions as far as nutrition is concerned. One is fueling a long run, and the second is protein when it comes to strength training specifically. I think both of these are misunderstood. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. So fueling the long run, if I did—

Fueling a long run, well, the question becomes why are you going on a long run in the first place? Because it's very biomechanically difficult on the body. I just interviewed a guy who wrote a book called Born book about all the reasons that human beings weren't necessarily born to run. The leaky gut issues that we talked about earlier are very magnified when you're trying to move and eat at the same time. I raced for years in Ironman triathlon and had gas, bloating, and digestive issues, you know, using the common approach of energy gels and energy bars and, you know, fructose and maltodextrin and sugars. If I could go back and do it all over again, and I did this the last 2 years I was racing, I would use as easy to digest a fuel as possible with as low amount of sugar as is possible to get by on. And so, what does that look like? If I were gonna go out for a long run now, let's say 3 hours, and I wanted enough fuel to take with me, but I didn't want a bunch of bloating and gastric distress, I would take colostrum or glutamine beforehand, like we talked about, to decrease the risk of getting leaky gut. I would use ketones. Ketones, which are a drinkable fuel that serve as readily available non-sugar-based fuel for the liver, the heart, the diaphragm, and the brain, and they're just magic for endurance. I would use amino acids, which help to stave off the central nervous system fatigue that occurs as muscles break down and tryptophan enters the brain. And I would use very small amounts of a non-fermentable starch, like a potato-based starch, like a dextrin or a dextrose. Dextrose-based starch. So I could have a water bottle or one of those flasks like a FuelBelt, and in that flask would be a mix of ketones, amino acids, and an example of a dextrin-based starch would be a company like Vitargo. They have a powder, but I'd use like 1/4 of what you'd normally use per hour for something like that because I've got the ketones and the amino acids on top of that. The only thing that's missing in a scenario like that that's even more important if you're consuming a lot of carbohydrates is minerals or electrolytes, right? So, and then you'd add minerals and electrolytes to that, like a packet of Element or some other electrolyte beverage. And then you're basically, and this would apply to long hiking, long biking, long running, et cetera. The mix is basically ketones, amino acids, electrolytes, and some type of potato-based starch or easy-to-digest starch. And that can keep you going for long periods of time without a lot of the gas gastric distress, even though using something like colostrum or glutamine beforehand can help with some of the distress that's gonna occur either way if you're eating while simultaneously jostling and moving your body.

Yeah. So I didn't come from an athletic background. I found walking to be much better for me. Yeah, I love walking. Like even a 2-hour walk as opposed to like a 2-hour run.

Walking's totally my jam.

Yeah, exactly. I think that's much better. Okay, and as far as the strength training and the protein is concerned, before, during, after, or how much, what is too much?

Protein varies quite a bit. There's some evidence amongst people who work out, lift weights specifically a lot, that they can get away with pretty high amounts of protein intake. We're talking like 1.2 grams per pound plus. Okay. You can do the translation to grams per kilogram. But in most cases, the sweet spot for protein is around 0.6 to 0.8 grams per pound. 1.8 grams per pound of protein. That would be in a day. Now, the consumption of that around exercise, the main thing to bear in mind is that if you have a high pool of bioavailable amino acids during exercise, you're going to break down muscle less quickly and you're gonna be in a little bit more of an anabolic muscle-building state. The way that I do it is I consume 10 to 20 grams of essential amino acids, which is basically like pre-digested protein, you know, kind of some like collagen, for example, before I work out. I consume nothing during the actual workout simply because I don't like to be distracted by eating while I'm working out. And then when I finish, I have about 30 grams of whey protein. Okay, so typically in most cases you can absorb anywhere from 20 to 40 grams of protein, and that would be in a post-workout scenario. If you wanted the best of the best and you didn't want to be digesting things during a workout, but you also wanted high levels of amino acids so you build muscle as quickly as possible, but then you also wanted to get as much muscle-building potential into your body afterwards, you would take 10 to 20 grams of essential amino acids before you work out. Not branched-chain amino acids, which are only 3 of the amino acids, isoleucine, leucine, and valine, but all 9 of the amino acids from essential amino acids. Then you work out, and then you have anywhere from 20 to 40 grams of a good bioavailable protein, either a mix if you're going vegan or vegetarian of like rice, pea, soy, you know, some type of protein that's a blend, so you're getting all the amino acids, or a fuller protein like a whey or an egg protein, for example. And as far as the timing goes, there is some evidence evidence that there's an anabolic post-feeding window. It's not as short as a lot of people think. That's 45 minutes. Some people are like, "Oh, I gotta drop the barbell and like go get into my bag right away to drink my pre-mixed protein shake." It's about 1 to 2 hours. Okay. So yeah, like for me, I usually work out from about 8:15 to 9:15 in the morning and usually have a smoothie around like 9:45. Got it.

Let's just change topics again. I wanna talk a little bit about the future of health. Okay. And I think one of the dramatic things that at least I see happening is the shift that's happening in the US where you have a new, hopefully, Secretary or Head of Health, Robert Kennedy. Yeah. Did he get confirmed, by the way? I'm not sure.

I don't think so yet. He had his confirmation, but I don't know if he got confirmed yet. Right, okay.

So imagine that he comes.

I haven't been reading many newspapers since I got over here.

Yeah, okay. So imagine he comes. Do you see the US changing? And then as a function of that, do you see the world changing in direction?

It's almost like a little bit of a swing from the, from the somewhat extreme left to the extreme right in a situation like that. Like RFK is obviously very anti-vaccine. I think there are some situations in which a vaccine could be effective and recommended. Like if you're traveling with a small child overseas and they have a weak immune system and you've made the decision that you're not gonna stay at home, they might actually need something like a, MMR or a minimal schedule of vaccines to actually protect them from the things they're gonna get exposed to in a foreign country at a young age. Or you could also just give them a lot of natural things and just not travel with a young infant. It kind of depends on the situation. There's also new mRNA-based vaccines that seem to be a little bit better, much lower in adjuvants, fewer issues. And so I think that vaccine technology is not all or nothing and I wouldn't want people to get get the impression from RFK's confirmation, if that happens, that all vaccines should be avoided. So I think that's a message some people might get. I'm a total libertarian capitalist, and even though a company like, say, Kellogg's might be using whatever, Red Number 3 or some type of seed oil, or McDonald's isn't using tallow in their fries, I don't wanna live in a country where the government can tell a business what they can or cannot— put in their food. I'd rather live in a country where there's proper consumer education and people know whether or not something is healthy because their parents or their school or their teacher taught them that, and then they're equipped with the decision about whether or not they're gonna keep a certain company in business based on what that company is, is putting into the food. So what I don't wanna see is excess restriction on companies, which I don't think is good for the economy, nor does it set up a scenario that I think I think is favorable for the long-term future, meaning the government being able to heavily regulate businesses versus allowing consumers to determine how successful that business is going to be because you have a savvy, educated consumer, right? So I'd like to see better public education, not necessarily way more restrictions placed upon businesses. Now it is true that the FDA does have certain things in the US that are generally recognized as safe. That probably should not be generally recognized as safe. So some of those things need to be revisited, such as Red Number 3. So rather than telling a business that they need to remove Red Number 3 from their cereal or whatever, it should instead be something that's simply removed from the FDA's generally recognized as safe list. So a lot of different rabbit holes there, but I think that long-term, a shift towards people becoming aware of things like pharmaceutical lobbying of subsidization of food, you know, via the grain, the corn, or the dairy industry. I think that as people learn more about these things, that the long-term effect is going to be an improvement in health. But what I don't wanna see is, you know, a highly restrictive country in which the government is able to basically slap a lot of businesses on the wrist. I'd rather businesses be able to do what they wanna do, but the consumer be well-educated so they can decide whether or not they're gonna give their money to that business. —business. Sure.

No, I mean, consumer education is clearly the holy grail here. I mean, if everyone was more aware and understood what was happening to them, I think the pushback to the company would be so instantaneous. The company would think something.

I would think, you know, podcasts like this and long-form education, like people are getting more and more.

I think so. I think so. I think so.

I don't know a lot of parents these days who are not concerned. I mean, and I don't just hang out with like, you know, wealthy parents who have unrestricted access to, you know, buying $30 coconut yogurt from Whole Foods or something like that, like parents who literally are making, you know, food decisions on a budget who are actually paying attention to the ingredient label of foods that their kid is getting.

Yeah, and making better choices. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, let me wrap up with the final question I wanted to ask you, which is you come across as someone who's deeply spiritual. Where does this come from? Like, what's the thought behind this and what's the sort of ideology here? Why do you believe that's so important? Most central to your existence.

Yeah, I live in an era in which there's a great deal of arguably transhumanistic tendencies towards biohacking yourself to immortality. Yeah. And maintaining a body and brain that lasts as long as freaking possible, using as many strategies as possible to be able to do that. But at the end of the day, whether you die when you're 80 or 100 or 120 or 150, we're all just gonna be, you know, old wrinkled up osteoporosis that start to panic, you know, near corpses. And very few people, I think, are going to lay on their deathbed concerned about how much they exercised or how much time they spent in a hyperbaric chamber or how good their skin looked when they were, you know, 90 versus 100. I believe that the soul that exists in all of us will go on on for eternity, for better or worse. And when you look at health and longevity, it's interesting 'cause there'll be like some gin-chugging, cigarette-smoking, 110-year-old great-grandmother in Sardinia, Italy who doesn't do any of the biohacks or the healthy living protocols or, you know, laser lights up her nose or all these things that biohackers are doing. Yet she seems to live a long and fruitful and fulfilling life because of an emphasis placed on relationships, connection to people, spiritual disciplines, gratitude, prayer, belief in a higher power. All of these things that are deeply fulfilling, that go beyond the physical. If you look at folks like, um, Pences or St. Augustine or C.S. Lewis, many of these philosophers and authors and theologians have described us as having an eternal hole in our soul that unless it is filled with something eternal leaves us ultimately feeling unfulfilled, no matter how much money or cars or homes or success or sex or business or anything else we try to put into that hole, including health, to feel fulfilled. You know, I've been very healthy. I think I am still pretty healthy, but I've been at times in my life extremely fit and on top the mountain and, you know, winning triathlons and fitness competitions and checking all the boxes, yet not very happy because I was disconnected from my family, disconnected from my wife, disconnected from my kids, and disconnected from God. And now that I've placed emphasis first and foremost on things like prayer, reading scripture, connecting with my family, meeting with my wife and children on a regular basis, prioritizing family and my my spiritual life over business and even over fitness, all the other things have become more fulfilling. And that's because my soul is actually filled with what the soul craves, which is relationships to the other souls on this planet and relationship with a higher power. So I think if we were gonna focus on anything, you know, getting down to the practical nitty-gritty, it is how we treat our spirit. What that looks like for me is when I get out of bed, the first thing that goes onto my phone is typically a very uplifting spiritual song or a sermon or an uplifting lecture that's all spiritual-based, right? Nothing health, nothing finances, nothing news. I listen to that while I'm stretching out, and then I drop to my knees at my bed and I pray. And it's not like hours and hours of prayer, but I have about a 5 to 10 minute prayer that I recite that— that I'm doing, you know, on my knees at bed, and then I get on with the rest of my day, but I pray before my meals, I pray with my family at night, we meet for family devotions and reading scriptures and prayer in the morning, and it's something that's become woven into my life because the soul, the spirit, is the most important thing to care for, and ultimately, if you're caring for that, you're going to, You develop relationships with other people more fully because you understand that they also have a soul and a spirit and an eternal spark and a being that goes way beyond their body or their wealth or their health or anything else that you might judge themselves by based on outward appearances. And so you've got a better relationship with other people and you also have a relationship with a higher power. And there's a great deal of confidence and a great deal of direction in life and a much greater ability to be able to take the stress that we were what you're talking about and know that there's someone, something that you can pray to and speak to who's able to help you through those times of stress that goes beyond just you trying to do it all based on your own power and your own volition. So my spiritual life is incredibly important to me and it's an integral part of my existence and I think the most important part.

Sure, so which actually in some sense is a great way to wrap up, which is that ultimately, the whole objective of being healthy, living a long life is in some sense to have a fulfilled life, to have a happy life, to have life that has some sense of purpose. And I think that's really what you're talking to, which I think is fascinating. There's that sense of balance, right? It's not just more reps or more weights or more whatever, right?

Or more supplements or whatever. Yeah, that's at the end of the day, that's pretty unfulfilling and a pretty lonely way to live. Exactly. Versus basically other people and God. Sure. Wonderful.

On that note, thank you very much. I was absolutely delighted to have you.

Yeah, this is the darkest, blackest podcast I think that I've ever done, but I love the vibe.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Lovely. Lovely having you. Bye. Thank you.

Thanks, man. To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks, and content to become the most complete, boundless version of you, visit bengreenfieldlife.com. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items, but the price is the same for you, and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Keyon LLC, the makers of Kion-branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support, and with full authenticity and transparency recommend in good conscience. I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body, and spirit. And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So, there's your fancy legal disclaimer.