High-Fat Fudge Balls, The Best Fruits For Blood Sugar, Egg Allergies & More With "Fat For Fuel"...

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. Please leave a review in itunes because if you don't, then I will keep singing every single podcast episode. But if you do leave a review, I promise to never sing again. No, I'm serious. Reviews help out this show a ton. So just go to itunes and when you're in itunes, do a search for Ben Greenfield and leave the show a review. And that actually helps out with things like rankings and also makes me feel really good about myself. So there you go. Leave a review. This podcast is brought to you. Oh, and by the way, my guest on today's show has been a guest before. You will love him. We always geek out whenever he comes on the show, and today's show is no different. But before that, let's talk about professional baseball, because I know you're all professional baseball fans. Maybe not, but you should know that pitchers, professional baseball pitchers get injured a ton. And some of the biggest professional pitchers in the major League Baseball, mlb, not big like fat, big like famous. They use electrical muscle stimulation on their shoulders. I use electrical muscle stimulation on my own shoulders and my knees and all over my body every week. And I specifically use a form of electrical muscle stimulation that's different than other e stim devices. It's designed to actually grab your muscle fibers in a very therapeutic manner. And it is super simple to use. I just surround whatever hurts or whatever sore with these electrodes and turn it on and then I just go read a book or I go hang out with my kids. I don't really watch TV like the guys in the made for TV commercials getting six pack abs with the electrical muscle stimulation do, just because I don't really watch tv. However, you can use this and you can watch TV at the same time if you want to. It's actually the only recovery product that's FDA cleared for pain relief, so it must be good. It's called the Mark Pro. The Mark Pro M A R C pro. And you can grab one of these bad boys with a discount, a 5% discount, which actually considering it's like savings of I think over 30 bucks, it's a good deal. You just use promo code base BEN. B E N. Use promo code BEN@markpro.com if you want some of the most advanced electrical muscle stimulation for recovery on the face of the planet. This podcast is also brought to you by one of the most potent kind of like anti aging strategies I've ever discovered. Specifically an anti aging strategy for your crotch, whether you're a man or a woman. Let's face it stuff starts to down there feel a little bit less good during sex, or at least not as great as maybe it used to. You lose blood flow or perhaps you're just young and you want to go from good to great. Like you want to put on say like size or shove your libido through the roof. This particular technology works for any of that. I've had it done and I'm definitely not complaining about the results. It takes like 20 minutes to do and you just waltz into any of their clinics around the USA and it's a painless, high frequency acoustic, acoustic wave that they just apply down there in your nether regions. You walk in, you get it done, you walk out. I mean, they have a whole bunch of other stuff they can do. They can like do anti aging therapies, hormone therapies, platelet rich plasma injections for men or for women. But they pretty much specialize in either reversing or getting rid of things like erectile dysfunction, reversing aging, helping you to get to sleep better, and then also more or less turn you into a sex machine. So you get 150 bucks off any treatment from these folks and all you need to do is text the word greenfield to 3131 31. So this is called Gains wave G A I N S wave. So text the word greenfield the 313131 that gets you 150 bucks off your first gains wave treatment. I know it sounds kind of edgy and weird, but it frigging works or else I wouldn't be talking about it. And yeah, just head over to gainswave.com if you want to go to their website and click find a doctor. I had my therapy done in Miami out in the sunshine and again, just walked in. 20 minutes, boom, done, and I was operating like a machine for the next few months. So check it out. GainsWave.com or text the word GREENFIELD to 313131. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

Everyone who's using this is decimating their mitochondrial function, which is contributing to all the chronic disease that we have, the heart disease, the cancer, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases, obesity, you know, you name it. No one understands that. Well, 1600 died from cancer, but I believe 1500 died needlessly and suffer needlessly because they don't understand this information. Even your listeners do not have undetectable levels of glyphosate. So they've got glyphosate. They're exposed to it. It's massively exposed to in our processed foods, and as a result, they've got disrupted tight junctions in their gut.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And I would say it's probably been at least, possibly even over 100 years that folks around the world, and modern medicine especially, has accepted this scientific consensus that cancer is a genetic disease due to chromosomal damage in your cell nuclei or DNA damage. But there's this theory floating around out there that cancer may not be a genetic disease at all, and that Scient might be actually chasing kind of a flawed paradigm when it comes to cancer being a disease of damaged DNA. And cancer might instead be, as I've mentioned a few times before on podcasts with guests on this show, an issue with defective metabolism as a result of mitochondrial dysfunction. Now, even if you're listening to this show and you're not really concerned about cancer, you're more interested in just diet and optimization of performance. The fact is that the same things that can cause or delay or prevent mitochondrial dysfunction, the same kind of things that can really improve body and brain performance. And this is everything and a whole lot more that my guest on today's show goes into in his brand new book. So I've had this guy on the show before. Our last show was entitled Killing fat cells, fixing mitochondria, Growing superfoods, and more. The name of his new book is Fat for a revolutionary diet to combat cancer, boost brain power and increase your energy. Now, I read this book a few weeks ago and it's, you know, the title would make you think it's just a book about like a ketogenic diet and eating more fat. But it actually is pretty cutting edge as far as having a lot of things in it that I hadn't seen before in other books. And one of the main arguments in the book is that when your mitochondria get damaged in large numbers, it's pretty much impossible to be healthy. That is my guess argument at least. But we're going to delve into that in a little bit. More detail and kind of figure out what that means. So the guy I have on Today's show is Dr. Joseph Mercola, a board certified family physician who is probably one of the most well known natural medical practitioners on the face of the planet. He's got an incredibly popular website and his website is over@mercola.com. he's also, of course, written this brand new book, Fat for Fuel. And I'm going to put everything that we talk about today over in the show notes for this episode. And you can just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com FatForFuel that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com fatforfuel to check out the show notes for today's show. So Dr. Mercola, welcome back, man.

Hey, it's great to be back, Ben, and thanks for the kind introduction. You know, the reason I wrote this book was initially catalyzed by a book that recommended to you and you and fell in love with, which is Travis Christofferson's book, Tripping over the Truth.

Oh, man.

Yeah. Magnificent book. And you and I've heard you recommend that for, for guests that have had cancer, but I hope you would recommend this one because Travis was one of the people actually helped me edit this book, but it's really more of a how to implement the program where Travis Goadley in his, his book really goes into the reasons why it's an issue and doesn't really dive deep into how to do it. So I love Travis, you know, and he was one, one of the people who helped me edit this and as were about two dozen other experts in this area. So this is a peer reviewed book, just very similar to peer reviewed articles for scientific journals. Yeah, we've got the information down and you know, I didn't want there to be any mistakes or errors in the thinking of this. This is not my, I mean, I edited the whole thing and you know, signed off on it all. But it really is a collaborative consensus of what seems to be the state of the art at this point.

It is, man. And I mean, you've got a lot of quotes from people in there and you actually, you talk a little bit about Ron Rosedale in there and you have a quote from Ron Rosedale that I actually wanted to lead off with and ask you about. You say you eat today, or at least he says this and you have it in the book. You eat today to control the hormones that will tell your cells what to eat tomorrow. It's a little bit of a mouthful, but what does that mean? Exactly. And why'd you put that in the book so early?

Well, because most people, not your listeners, they're a rare subgroup of people who aren't burning fat as their primary fuel. But most people are burning carbohydrates, even though they consist of only 5% of the fuel in their body. They're burning that, and as a result, they're generating excess reactive oxygen species, which leads to excess free radicals, which is the foundational cause of most of the mitochondrial dysfunction that you referenced earlier. So that's a big part of it. But it also influences very important metabolic signaling pathways, and I'll bet you know what those are, right, Ben?

When you say metabolic signaling pathways, are you talking about just basic cellular signaling or.

Yeah, yeah, the three most important ones that really are controlled primarily by the foods you eat.

Okay, so when you're talking about cellular signaling pathways and those getting controlled by the foods that you eat, tell me a little bit about the biochemistry. Are you talking about the actual production of cytokines or.

Well, cytokines, but they're responsible for inflammation. But the foundational ones that really drive the production of those and many other pathways is insulin, leptin. And the most important one, which is believed to be, according to Dr. Rosedale, and I have to agree with him, is MTOR mechanistic target of rapamycin. So rapamycin is a cancer drug? Anti. Cancer drug, Very highly effective. In fact, many people you probably know are actually taking microdoses of this regularly for longevity benefits. I think it's a foolish strategy, but nevertheless, they're still doing it because it's so effective. So the issue is.

You mean microdoses of rapamycin?

Yeah. Yeah, there's a large number of people are doing that now.

Really? I mean, I was aware of a lot of folks using like, metformin to control blood glucose and insulin, but there. But there's people now using rapamycin pretty extensively too, huh?

Yeah, not as many as metformin. This is a far safer drug. I don't recommend the use of metformin. There's far safer alternatives like berberine, which will provide almost all the benefits with none of the downsides, because metformin is a mitochondrial poison. So why would you take something that's going to hurt your mitochondria even though it's going to lower your blood sugar? It's like taking insulin to lower your blood sugar, you know, it's just not. Doesn't make sense.

What do you mean? It's a mitochondrial poison.

That's exactly what it does. It poisons your mitochondria. I mean, it will lower blood sugar, but it does it in a way that is not consistent with natural pathways and it causes mitochondrial damage.

Interesting.

Yeah. And that's serious. There's a lot more ser. There's a lot more dangerous drugs in metformin as drugs go. It's one of the more benign ones, but it's still not the optimal way. If you're interested in that, just use berberine.

Interesting. What about some of these things? I think you and I have talked about these before. I don't know if we talked about them on the last show, though, but things like bitter melon extract or rock lotus extract. Have you come across either of those? Because that's what I personally use.

Yeah, you can use those. There's a lot of supportive nutraceuticals, and those are some. I like to really control it with the macronutrient ratios and then use individualized customized testing to determine if your implementation is correct. So, I mean, we can give generalized recommendations and strategies, but ultimately it depends what your body's doing.

What would you say are the top things that you do to control the hormones that would activate the cell signaling pathways that you actually want to activate when it comes to mitochondria?

Well, probably the most important is to, first of all, is to get your body to burn fat as a primary fuel. So for that process, I recommend cyclical ketosis. And there's a big difference. I didn't understand this when I started to engage in this process, and I wasn't doing cyclical, and it actually caused a lot of problems. And I actually, far too much waste, was losing muscle mass. And, you know, for some people, it's only going to take a few weeks to get to this, to be to position where their body's burning fat as their primary fuel. And for others, it might take a few months or even longer if they're metabolically damaged. So once you're there, though, then you need to implement a system where you're having a relatively high amount of carbohydrates, healthy carbohydrates, 150, 100, 150 grams, and significant amount of extra protein. But normally I like to keep my protein levels low, probably somewhere between 50 and 60 grams a day. Unless, like, today I was doing strength training, so I probably hit an 80 or 90 grams today.

Okay, gotcha. Soso, you do cyclic ketosis rather than strict ketosis because you basically lost too much weight and got too skinny when you were eating carbohydrates too extensively.

Yeah. And the problem is your body thinks you're dying. And, you know, the analogy I came up with is ketosis is good. It's very similar to exercise in that, you know, an exercise very well, better than anyone else, that you cause damage to your body. And really the magic and the benefit of exercise occurs in the recovery.

Right, right, exactly. Well, the recovery. And then also, and I actually want to talk to you about this because you, you talk about quite a bit in the book, so we can delve into it. But also the, the necessary inflammatory process, like not shutting down the inflammatory process post exercise is actually pretty important.

Yeah. Like you wouldn't want to dump into an ice pack after you did strength training. Not a good idea.

But a lot of people do that. They jump into the ice bath and they also take antioxidants.

Yeah. Which is not the wisest strategy. It's still better than nothing, but, you know, it could be improved. So anyway, exercise is somewhat similar to ketosis. You wouldn't want to exercise crazily, continuously without some type of recovery period. Well, the recovery period analogy in ketosis is actually the feasting. You know, once you've been able to burn fat as your primary fuel, then you feast. And that's where the metabolic magic occurs and where your ketones explode and your blood sugar actually drops. As long as you're burning fat as your primary fuel. It's just, it's just amazing to see it happen and not to do it every other day, but probably one or two days a week. You know, the days that you're strength training, I think is ideal because you're going to get an anabolic stimulus, increase your muscle mass and, you know, it's always helpful as you get older.

Wait, are you saying to. To feast on those days? Yeah, like do more food now? Now that seems paradoxical because these, with.

Respect, not to necessarily increase calories, it's the macronutrient ratio. So you want to have more healthy carbohydrates instead of limited to 50 grams or less.

Right.

Net carbs, which is total carbs minus fiber, and then more protein, maybe 25, 50% more, maybe even double if you're doing, if you're a big guy and you're doing a lot of strength training.

Now, what about the research that shows that you actually see when you fast post workout, for an extended period of time, like two to four hours, an actual increase in growth hormone and an increase in post workout testosterone, when you actually don't reach for, say like the protein shake on your way home from the gym.

Well, I'm not familiar with those studies that you're quoting, so I don't know if that' sthe have to look at the methods to understand if these people were actually burning fat as their primary fuel. My guess is they weren't. So it's a different metabolic scenario, and your hormones are gonna be optimized. Different. It's two completely different metabolic scenarios you're discussing. You know, one where they're burning carbohydrate as a primary fuel, and the other is fat. So you would expect different results in those groups.

Okay, gotcha. So what you're saying is that for someone who is fat adapted and perhaps doing like, this cyclic ketogenic type of state, if they're going into a workout in a state in which they're already burning a lot of fat as a fuel or potentially even going into a workout in a fasted state, that it's not necessary to fast post workout to see that increase in. In growth hormone or that anabolic response. And that for those people, they could likely do a little bit more like feasting post workout, more carbohydrate, which is good.

This is not a starvation process. It really is enjoyable, and it's something you can do the rest of your life. And I just wanted to address this cancer component, which you wisely mentioned initially, which was my initial catalyst for writing this book, because 40% of the women watching this or listening to this actually will come down with cancer in their lifetime, and 50% of the men. So even though they don't have it now, the likelihood is that they will. And if they don't, they're one of the few that don't. Then someone they know or love will come down with it. But, you know, so it's a serious issue, and it will be the leading cause of death by the end of the decade. So it's continuing to grow. It's going to surpass heart disease. So it's just such a. And it doesn't have to be that way. There's 1500 people a day, every day in the United States, Ben, are dying. Well, 1600 die from cancer, but I believe 1500 die needlessly and suffer needlessly because they don't understand this information.

So in the book, you go into this concept of mitochondrial metabolic therapy, which you call mmt for sure.

Yeah. Because it's a mouthful.

Yeah, exactly. So mmt, which I actually go to a conference every year called mastermind talks, they also call mmt. So I keep my Acronym straight here. But one of the things that you go into early on in the book is how, as part of the mmt, you're actually a fan of tracking your iron levels. And you talk about a lot in the book about the surprising effects of iron on mitochondrial health. Why is it that the iron is something that you harped on so much in a book that' sthat's about fat?

Wellem, first address the name mitochondrial metabolic therapy, because it's far more than just your figuring out what food to eat. It's also about improving your mitochondrial function. And this is one of the examples. But there are literally a dozen or more others that are really powerful adjuncts that work synergistically with the food choices to optimize mitochondrial function. We can hopefully talk about a few of them. I'll address two of these with the question that you had on iron. One is that most of the men listening to this will have excess iron. That's just a biochemical, biological fact. And how do you know when you get your blood test done? The simple blood test for that is ferritin F, E, R, R, I, T, I, N you can get online. You don't need a doctor's order. It's like $40 and the ideal range.

That's a blood test.

A blood test, yeah. You have to go to a lab. I don't think there's a spot. But blood test for that. So you get a lab. Maybe there's a card you can do. I don't know. But I mean, I think life extension does it. And then you get your results back. And ideally, the range should be 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter, which is coincidentally, at least my perception of the ideal range for vitamin D, which is another important mitochondrial hack. So the. That will be different, the range I just quoted than the optimal reference range. That comes back on the test because they're using antiquated standards. But we know from people who epidemiological studies where people are actually donating their blood two or three times a year, that the people who do this actually have significantly and radically reduced incidences of heart disease and cancer because it's iron. So why would that be? Now, let me just continue with the women. Most of the women, unless they're postmenopausal, they're not bleeding anymore. And obviously when you bleed, you're losing iron. So if they're not bleeding anymore, then they're also at risk. But if you're a child or premenopausal menstruating woman, Then it's not typically not an issue. In effect, you could be iron deficient. So you have to be careful.

Or if you're a badass spartan racer like me and you just bleed from barbed wire wounds every month.

Yeah, well, the amount of blood loss, you know, because typically we were not designed. We don't have normal excretion routes for iron. We don't excrete it in any way other than through blood loss.

Right.

You know, so that's, that's the reason why if you have an elevated level, it's above 40 to 60 actually, then the best way to do it is to get your blood, to donate your blood. A very noble thing to do and altruistic, of course. And you do it two, three times a year. And you're going to benefit yourself and others. So it's a great strategy, but metabolically, why it damages the mitochondria in the process of transferring electrons through the electron transport chain, one of the. You create a few reactive oxygen species and that's normal and healthy. And we'll discuss that in a moment with one of your other questions. But the one of those reactive oxygen species is peroxide. And when you have high levels of iron within the inner mitochondrial membrane, you will increase the level of hydroxyl free radical, which then proceeds very rapidly to damage mitochondrial cell membranes, DNA and proteins, and even cellular equivalents too. So it's highly damaging. Now, interestingly, I finished a book a few months ago and actually I think at the end of last year, and since that time I've continued to do my research for the next book I'm going to write, which is on native and non native EMFs, which also includes photobiology. But what I learned is that there's something even more dangerous that almost every one of your listeners is exposing themselves to that generates even more hydroxyl free radical than excess iron. And I'll bet you you have no idea, but something you're aware of and you take great pains to avoid.

Wait, I might want to guess this. Are you saying, like me personally, I get exposed to this as well as all of our listeners?

No, no. Yeah, you get. But you minimize your exposure. So you've got this, you understand it, and you're taking proactive measures to reduce your exposure.

Okay, so this would be something else that could produce hydroxyl free radicals?

Yes, absolutely.

I'm going to say. Let's go ahead. Well, so like, based on what you were just talking about, I'm going to say, I'm gonna say Wi Fi.

That's it. But the broader extension is microwave radiation. WI fi would be one of those. But cell phones are even more of a significant exposure. And the mechanism I just learned recently is actually that when you are exposed to this radiation, it is significant. And when. And we're actually going to be speaking together in a few days in Atlanta and I will show you the equipment I'm using to measure this. I will show you that the energy emitted from your cell phone when it's on, when you are connecting to a call is literally two to 300 times the energy that's coming out of it at one to two feet. And when you put that. That phone, when it's emitting that type of radiation, it's typically hundreds of microamps per square centimeter. You are, or Michael Watts, I'm sorry, microwatts you are. You are generating.

Basically peroxy nitrates which there's a react. Not a reactive oxygen species, but a reactive nitrogen species which causes more hydroxyl free radical production than the excess iron. And which, you know, how did you find this out?

Like, is this based on research?

Actually, one of the people I'm consulting with is the. I think you've heard of green wave filters.

Yeah, I mean, not to be the tinfoil hat guy, but I actually have one in every room in my house.

Yeah, well, that. You're a wise man. Because they're there to protect against dirty electricity, more accurately termed electromagnetic interference. Emi and the founder of that company is Richard Lear, who's just a fountain of information and I've just been collaborating with him recently. He actually wrote a very extensive paper on this that has hundreds of references to the literature that. And he believes it's a foundational cause of all chronic degenerative disease. I don't know if it's the one, but it's certainly a contributing factor. And he's. I mean this is. It clearly decimates mitochondrial functions, there's no question about it. So you've got to be taking proactive measures against this. And you know, I'm going to give a power. You know, most people, they think about cell phones thinking, you know, six years ago now the World Health Organization classified as a 2B carcinogen, which means possible carcinogen. And we know that it's associated with leukemia and brain tumors. But in some ways that's counterproductive because, you know, we know everyone uses cell phones and not everyone's dropping dead with brain tumors. But what they don't understand is that everyone who's using this is decimating Their mitochondrial function, which is contributing to all the chronic disease that we have. The heart disease, the cancer, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases, obesity, you know, you name it. So that's. That's not being that no one understands that.

But you use a cell phone. I mean, like you and I have talked on before.

Oh, yes, I use a cell phone. No question about it. But do you know how I hold the cell phone? I hold it with a selfie stick three feet from my body.

Are you serious?

I swear to God, I do not touch that thing.

See, what I do is I have it in one of those defender shield cases. And I know we sound like a couple of orthorexic guys talking here, but I use the cell phone case.

I will measure it.

Yeah, I'll bring it to Atlanta in a couple of days. But, yeah, I use the. I use the defender shield case with, like, air tubes, like. Like this special headset called an air tube headset. And you're.

You're saying, no, I. I will show you. That probably is not working. And once I show you, I think you're gonna use a selfie stick, too.

Oh, dude. Oh, man. All right, you're gonna turn me into the embarrassing guy walking through the airport with my selfie stick on my phone now, but.

Oh, it's okay.

No, I mean, I'm all about, like, using modern technology, but. But figuring out a way to kind of, like, fight that uphill battle for our health. But, yeah, I mean, like, this is.

Not a message to destroy your technology and avoid. I mean, it's given us so many darn benefits. It's responsible for most of my impact in helping people understand this information. But the issue is, like, now, many years ago, many people may remember or at least heard of the fact that when you went to a shoe store, they were. They were X raying children, X raying them to figure out which size shoe they needed. You remember hearing stories about that?

No.

They did. They used to do that, and they banned it because it's ionizing radiation. And we're gonna have a similar process. I predict that's going to occur in the future when we realize that how pernicious and toxic the exposure was. And it's even worse because the science is really known. But Richard Lear from Greenwave, he really has studied this extensively, and there's been a significant military suppression of this information because they were the primary users initially with the radar and stuff. So they suppress this. I mean, the EPA came out with some massive warnings about cancer, and then the White House Just bashed it and suppressed.

Well, you're saying that the military suppressed the actual information about the damaging effects of cell phones on mitochondrial health?

Well, not necessarily cell phones, because cell phones weren't invented until the 80s. They suppress this much earlier with. With the microwave radiation and the radars, because they. Yeah, so then. But then it got.

Just. Because it would have been useful for the military to have been using radars and. And it wouldn't have looked good if soldiers were exposed to this. Unh.

Right. That's big. Big reason for part of that, then. The other is the telecommunications industry, which is massive. You know, it's a. I think it's even larger than the pharmaceutical industry.

Wow. Conspiracy theory alert.

Yes, indeed. Indeed so. But with the. Science is clear. And you know what? When I show you this instrument, it's like a. It's a microwave. I'm sorry, Microwave radiation meter. It costs about $500, and it's real easy to show you a digital display, and, you know, you can quantitatively assess exactly what the exposure is.

Okay. All right, I'll check it out, and maybe I'll Snapchat it so people can see this live as we do it. One of the things that you mentioned, by the way, was that to backpedal to the iron issue, you said we should measure iron and ferritin, or can you just measure ferritin?

Well, I think ferritin is an adequate screen. Chris masterjohn, I think you've interviewed. I believe you have.

Oh, yeah, this is a friend of mine. Yeah, Good guy.

Yeah, yeah. So he's got some really excellent videos if you want to dive deep into it, that really goes into all the comprehensive tests that you can do. But from my perspective, ferritin is an incredibly effective, inexpensive screen.

Okay, so you measure ferritin. What number should you be looking for? If you or your doctor have measured.

Ferritin levels, same as vitamin D, 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter. Most of your males are probably over 100, 150. If you're over 150, you got problems in. There's a significant percentage, maybe 10, 20% or over 200, 300. And you are asking for problems. My dad almost died of this. I've got a genetic anemia inherited from him, and he has a tendency to increase iron levels. And his was like 8 or 900 when I diagnosed him, like, 20, 30 years ago.

Yeah, and actually, in the book, you've got, like, even if you don't get a blood test, you have symptoms of excess iron, like, you talk about like a bronze or a gray color to your skin. Joint pain, irregularity.

That doesn't happen too commonly. You have to get really high. So then you know, that would be like a genetic disease like hemochromatosis. But the average person just like this, you know that they're walking around with high glucose levels or high blood pressure and they don't even know it, it's still causing mitochondrial damage, which is the, you know, the common denominator for most of these diseases. And it appears to be the mechanism where these new exposures that we never had before, like glyphosate and cell phone radiation and microwaves radiation is, you know, that's how it's mediated through damaging mitochondrial. Mitochondrial function.

Yeah. You know, my. Well has very high levels of bacterial based iron in it and I actually have this pretty spe hydrogen peroxide filter I had to get installed in my house to lower levels of iron because it was like dying the sinks orange and red. And I was pretty concerned for a while. I did blood tests and everything just to make sure it was low. And now I have this spendy filter in my house. But yeah, a lot of people don't realize that water, and even seemingly clean municipal water, spring or not municipal, but well water or spring water, can be pretty high in iron levels. So yeah, you got to keep track of this stuff. One other thing you mentioned, and a.

Good detox program will actually lower that too. And that's where the infrared sauna and the cyto detox and a lot of the other things, you did an extensive component on that earlier this year.

Yeah, Dr. Pompa and I talked a lot about that in my last interview with him. By the way, I should mention that.

For these measurements of ferritin, I don't think you're supposed to use one of those blood spot tests like the fingertips prick test.

Okay.

And the reason for that apparently is that erythrocytes, when you do that, they get what's called hemolyzed. Like they get more damage than you would get.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, they, they release a whole bunch of ferritin and so you can get measured and you might actually freak out thinking that your levels are way too high if you do a blood spot test when in fact they might be normal. And it's just that the test causes the red blood cells to just spit out a bunch of ferritin.

So yeah, I always get mine done and through serum at the lab that he my blood.

Yeah.

So I've never done the other one.

I Want to delve into some of the practical recommendations that you gave and also some things that I wasn't sure of. When I read your book, for example, you talked about, you know, you talk quite a bit about getting yourself into a, into a fat adapted state. But you also mentioned that you are okay with eating specifically like two types of fruits, berries and grapes. Grapefruits. What is it about berries and grapefruits that would make them okay fruits to eat when it comes to kind of like keeping yourself in this fat adapted state?

I'm not sure about the grapefruits. I mean, I don't recall the details of why I put that in there or why was in there. That might have been one of the editors who put it in. But for fruits, in generally, it's really good if you're able to burn fat as your primary fuel, especially on your days where you're increasing. On your feasting days like today, I had like, gosh, 4 to 6 ounces of mulberries that were picked from my backyard and I also had 100 acerola cherries. And each one of those cherries has like 80 milligrams of vitamin C. I'm going to bring you some on Friday. So you can, you can feast in some of these cherries or just. Great. I mean, I get, I must harvest like 50 to 75 gallons of cherries a year, which is great.

Where do you harvest them?

For my trees.

Oh, wow. Okay. So you grow these?

I've got like, yeah, I've got like 60 fruit trees, so.

Oh, man, I gotta come down to your place sometime. So my, I thought, you know, grapefruit does have a very low glycemic index. I think the glycemic index is like below 30. I want to say it's like between 20 and 30 for grapefruit. And I believe berries are pretty similar, possibly even lower.

Right.

And so, you know, I used to, when I would recommend fruits to people, I used to recommend stone fruits like apples or pears. But I'm actually on the same page as you. Like, grapefruit and berries are actually two foods. Like if you are one of those people that wants to do like fruits for breakfast, that type of thing, and you're eating a high fat diet. They appear to be, they appear to be pretty. Okay. They don't really seem to spike blood sugar or anything like that much at all. Or insulin.

Yeah, the grapefruit. Grapefruits are a little bit better because obviously they have a lot of the phytonutrients in there with the dark color. So they give you many other benefits. The cherries with the vitamins, vitamin C and they only have per cherry there's less than 1 gram of net carbs, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, yeah. And obviously there's a lot to cherries too when it comes to the anti inflammatory effects, especially for some of the research they've done with joint pain. So you also do a lot of avocados. Like you say in the book that you're eating one to three avocados per day. You're really eating that many?

Yeah, I probably should take a break from. But I just love them so much and I don't seem to have developed a sensitivity to them. But it's wise to, you know, to switch things around. I just haven't done that with avocados. Yeah, I will put one in my smoothie, a half to one in my smoothie. So I'll have one or two smoothies a day and I put another, another one in my salad and sometimes I'll have a third one. And there's a really great dessert I made. It's called a fudge ball. Fudge ball recipe. And you can take two ripe avocados, a cup of raw cacao powder, organic preferably, and then put some stevia in there and some caprylic acid, MCT oil and mix it together and make them the size of a ping pong ball. And you've got some really tasty dessert.

That actually sounds really good. Do you freeze those? Like get them cold?

No, no, just fridge. Fridge is all you need.

Nice. Cool. Yeah.

If you wanted to store them for a long time, you could freeze them. But you know, you don't have to.

You have the fudge ball that you make, I have the sleep cake that I make and it's a little cbd. It's a little more involved. Well, it's raw cacao, just like you mentioned. I use ghee and I use coconut oil and like a countertop immersion blenders, this thing called a magical butter machine. And it heats at about 100 to 120 degrees or so. And then yeah, I put black pepper and turmeric for a lot of absorption of what else I put in there. And then yeah, I put a whole bunch of cbd, a whole bunch of kratom, which is also kind of like a euphoria inducing.

Oh yeah, I think crayon's great. I don't use it, but if you have pain, it's great.

Oh yeah, yeah. I put a whole Bunch of, I break open a whole bunch of these nature flex capsules, which is just a whole blend of, like, glucosamine and chondroitin and all sorts of joint support compounds. And then I put an entire packet of Reishi spores in there, which is a mushroom that really helps with, like, relaxation. A little bit of stevia, a little bit of sea salt, a little bit of cinnamon. And then basically that thing goes on the kitchen counter for like, eight hours. It just blends for like, eight hours. I pour them into molds and I freeze them, and I call them sleep cakes. So you take one of these, like, yeah, about an hour before you go to bed. I took, I took one last night, so I would bring one to it.

Bring what? Bring one to Atlanta. I love dry it.

I, I, I'll try. The problem with my, the, the problem with my, my latest recipe is I also decarboxylated a little bit of weed. And so they have about 5 milligrams or so of THC in them. So the problem is if I travel it with them, I might get in trouble. But, but I mean, I track all my sleep cycles and, and for when I really need a good night of sleep. And I'm not concerned about the house catching on fire. I have one of these and I'm just, I'm out for like nine hours. And it's like, very high levels of both REM and non rem. And I actually had a meeting in, in Seattle last month with a, with a company in Seattle that makes a whole bunch of edibles for Washington state. And I, I brought them some sleep cakes and said, hey, if you guys ever want the recipe, everyone else license this. I'm like, this is the best sleep supplement known to man. I think.

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Okay, so anyways, we digress.

Getting back to avocados, would you like to know how to get them for half, 50% off, close to it or cheaply?

Sure.

All right.

Does it involve a selfie stick?

No, no selfie sticks.

Okay, good.

So you just wait till your favorite grocery stores puts them on sale. Here's the key. And you buy like 30, 40, 50, which is I typically buy more if you have a large family. The key is to get them rock hard, green and rock hard, put them in the fridge and then they'll last for three to four weeks and just take them out three days before you're going to use them. And then as you get closer to the end of the three weeks, it's two days in one day. And then you just take them right out because they get ripe inside the fridge too.

Interesting. Okay. And you also have a special way that you try. You travel with avocados, right?

Yeah, I do. Yeah, I travel with them. Yeah, Like, I'll probably.

Tell me about your avocado transporting tip that you have in the. In the book.

It's a card, a round cardboard tube. Tube. Thick carbo tube is a mailing tube. And you just put them out. So if I'm traveling for a week or so, I'll put like seven or eight of those. And some of them I'll just travel with them green. So those are the easiest because TSA always, they just love to go in my tubes and take out my avocados and put them, scatter them throughout my luggage. But I pretty much bring almost all my food with me when I travel, so I rarely have to eat out. And one of the other tricks is that a really. Dominic d' Agostino inspired me by is the sardines, which is really one of the healthiest foods you can eat because it's a magnificent source of dha, probably the most important essential fatty acid you can possibly have. And so I use that as a protein source if I'm going out to eat and have a salad, because I don't want to travel with a salad, although I might do this weekend and just throw in my sardines. And you got your protein sources clean.

Yeah. You just have to be careful, though. I mean, when it comes to. And again, like, I don't want to sound too extreme for those of you listening in and feel like you got to like run for the hills with your selfie sticks and your tank tinfoil hats. But they're using a lot of herbicides now in avocado cultures. And you do have to be careful if you are using this recommendation to eat one to three avocados a day or include them as a frequent part of your diet. Not only to be careful with the skin and to purchase organic with the avocados, but to make sure that you're taking care of your gut from a glyphosate standpoint. I just interviewed a guy you introduced me to.

Zach Bush. And he actually great friend of mine, you know, he. He has a supplement, it's like a liquid called restore that you can like drink a shot of each day to. It. It more or less helps to. To grow the. The type of bacteria, I believe, or to heal up the gut lining in a way that keeps glyphosate from kind of like poking holes in the lining of your gut.

Well, it helps repair the damage from glyphosate by restoring intracellular communication and cleaning up those Tight junctions. But I would have to disagree with you on the avocados. They are one of the clean 15 fruits and they have a very thick skin. And we've actually independently, through a lab that we use, tested a whole wide variety and we did not find anything in there. And there's no.

Even if they're not organic.

Yeah, especially if they're not organic. I mean, this is the one that you can be pretty comfortable and confident that you're not going to have that done. And in fact, we offer through our site a glyph, say test to see how much is in your urine. And I've been having two to three avocados a day for a long time. And I had my urine tested and I got the results back just last week and it was undetectable, no glyphosate at all. So I don't think it's a concern.

Okay, gotcha. I had looked into it a while back and it was a link that I think it was. Stephanie Seneff may have sent it to me and it just like looked at parts per million on all these different foods, including like the ones that they say are clean. I think avocado was. It had a certain parts per million in terms of like residue of glyphosate on avocado.

Well, it might have been on the skin, but you don't, you don't eat the skin. Yeah, that's why it's, that's why it's clean because it just doesn't that thick. The skin is so thick, it just doesn't penetrate.

Okay, gotcha, gotcha. So do you buy avocado or buy organic? When you buy avocados, do you never, never have.

No, because I just don't think it's necessary. And you know, they can be expensive. Even non organic can't go to go. Go to $2 a piece. Which is why I gave the listeners those tips to get it down to closer to a dollar or less. Yeah. Because it's such a useful food. Not only is it high in the best types of. Some of the best types of fast, the monounsaturated, but it also has loads of potassium, which is hard to get in our diet. You really need a lot of potassium. The potassium to sodium ratio is so key.

Yeah, that's true. And there was actually, there was a recent study, I saw it a couple days ago about how most of the high blood pressure attributed to high sodium intake is mostly due to low potassium or sodium potassium imbalances and not really due to due to the high sodium itself. So, yeah, finding potassium sources like that are especially tasty. Potassium sources.

Yeah. That's one of the best ones. It really is. I mean, you eat three of those a day, you're getting over two grams of potassium, which is great. Real potassium, not a potassium supplement. It's best to come from real food.

Yeah. Now, you also, speaking of foods, you had a section in there that I wanted to ask you about. You said heating eggs was not a good idea. And I was thinking about that this morning. I was helping my son. He forgot to put oil on the pan as he was making his eggs. So I was helping him. We dumped some avocado oil in there, speaking of avocados, and kind of figured out how we could squeeze the oil in and get the eggs to the point where we could flip them. And I was explaining to him about how I was going to be interviewing you later on and how in your book you mentioned that you should couldn't heat eggs too much. And I was helping him keep the heat on low and explaining him how he may want to keep the whites a little bit runny. So we didn't get a lot of protein damage. But you actually say that you can alter the chemical composition of the protein. And that can not only. Of course, I was already aware of some of the issues with oxidation. But you say it could lead to an allergic reaction to the egg.

Yeah.

What would be the mechanism behind that?

The mechanism is quite simple. You know, these proteins, they have a variety of different structures, primary, tertiary, secondary structures that can be damaged with heat. So these bonding angles can be distorted and it actually forms a different configuration. And if you are one of the susceptible people, who the vast majority of people do not have, even your listeners do not have undetectable levels of glyphosate. So they've got glyphosate. They're exposed to it. It's massively exposed to in our processed foods. And as a result, they've got disrupted tight junctions in their gut. And these leak, which leads to leaky gut. And these proteins can easily permeate through and go into the bloodstream, causing an immune reaction. So we have to be careful. So I have eggs. And I think one of your later questions, maybe even the next one, has to do with what's in my smoothie. And I actually got this hint from Dr. Seyfried. Seyfried Rather. I had stopped eating eggs completely for a while, but then I realized there's such a magnificent source of nutrition, especially the yolks. I don't eat the white bites, I just save them and give them to my trainer. He loves them. He's got, he's got twice as muscle mass I do, so he uses them. I just have the yolk.

Trainers are a sucker for egg whites. I just eat the whole thing. But I mean, we have, we have so many eggs, so many chickens running around. I mean, the eggs, eggs are just like all over our refrigerator.

Yeah, you're making them out there with your chicken. And you're also a competitive athlete. I'm just in maintenance mode. I'm not in competition mode anymore. So I just, I want to keep my protein relatively minimal. I don't feel all that extra protein. I do need the benefit of phyto, all the nutrients that are in the egg yolk, which is, you know, I think one of the most magnificent sources of nutrition. And especially if you put them in a smoothie, they actually have phospholipids in there, which helps emulsify and make the bio. The other nutrients in there more bioavailable.

That's a good point. And I actually, I wasn't gonna ask you what's in your smoothie, but now that you bring it up, what is in your smoothie aside from eggs?

Two egg yolks. I've got two dozen things. Black sesame or black cumin. One tablespoon, which I soak overnight. Coriander, which is actually cilantro seeds, flax or pumpkin seeds. A tablespoon of each half to one avocado paw d', arco, which I think I introduced you to, which I soaked that overnight to raw cacao. Butter. Not butter, raw cacao.

Just raw cacao. It's just the nibs, but that I got allergic to it. Then white willow bar, hawthorn berries, psyllium. I use those eggshells, which you could use with all your chickens. Is I. As a source of a calcium supplement. I'll grind the eggshells really fine. I'll use about a half a teaspoon of that in my smoothie to get as a source of calcium and other micronutrients. Then chia seed, acetyl, carnitine, hawthorn berry, an ounce of fresh beet, teaspoon of caprylic acid, actually a tablespoon, a few squirts of stevia, some mulberries or acerola berries, and then a tablespoon of organic greens. And you've interviewed Tom Cowan before and that's, you know, he is. We make some organic greens and sell them that have about, I think half A dozen different vegetables and powders in them. So I put that in my smoothie and then taurine and some nutritional yeast.

Wow. Yeah, that's a pretty complex smoothie.

I'll show you all these ingredients. I travel with this all the time, so that's what I try.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Except for the eggs a little bit hard.

I tend to get lazy when I travel and just grab one of these. Meal replacement. I'll use Amber Nite or this other new one I've been messing around with called Ample. And I'm actually interviewing this guy tomorrow who made this stuff called Ample, which is pretty interesting. Probiotic pea protein, digestive enzyme blend.

How about the Mitomix bar? Did you like those?

Oh, the ones you sent me?

Yeah.

Oh yeah, they're fantastic. They're one of the tastier bars that I've had. Are those actually available for people to get you?

Yeah, they've been available for a while. Yeah, they're incredible. I mean, that's what I. So my, you know, I travel with the nutrients I just mentioned and I'll have mitochondria bars and macadamia nuts and some sardines and that's pretty much all the food I need when I travel.

Yeah, I'll, I'll put a link for folks to get those mitobars because that's like, like a, like a higher fat, lower carb type of, type of energy bar. That, that's your, your, your brainchild, right?

Yeah, yeah. I, we had like 20 different variations of. Before I finally signed off on it and got it right, the combinations right. But it has high amounts of fiber, very low protein, only 3 grams and then very low net carbs. Even with the double chocolate, it's only 5 grams of net carbs. So it's completely different. It's unlike anything out there on the market. No artificial sweeteners, all pretty much all organic ingredients. That's a really great bar. I've gone through so many of those things. I love them.

Yeah, those are pretty tasty. Now one thing I wanted to ask you when you're talking about your smoothie, I don't know if you heard this in the interview that I did, but it's something that I do. Now this gentleman who I interviewed actually went into how to minimize some of the oxidative damage you can do to. When you're making a smoothie with all these expensive superfoods. Your billion dollar smoothie, what he does. And the cool thing is if you're putting something like bone broth or collagen in your smoothie. The vitamin C from the trick I'm about to tell folks will increase the absorption of that. But you just basically start off your smoothie with cold water or ice at the very bottom of the smoothie along with anything that has ascorbic acid in it. Like half the squeeze of a lemon, for example, is what I use. And you have that as the base at the bottom of the blender before you blend everything. And the cooler temperature combined with the ascorbic acid keeps a lot of the oxidation and damage of the nutrients when you blend your smoothie from occurring. Because if you have a good blender that gets things hot and spins at a really fast pace, you can actually damage some of the things that you're blending. Blending.

No, I agree. And one of the other strategy you can use is use frozen fruit like mulberries. That's what I typically do is I put the frozen mulberries in, which gives you a nice cold drink anyway. But you know what's even better? Because this, this isn't available yet, but our team just, just came back from China like two weeks ago and one of the hottest things over there at these trade shows was a vacuum blender. So sucks the air out so there's no oxygen to oxidize the nutrients. And you're, you're blending it in a, in essentially a non oxygen environment.

That's sick. Can you get those in the US yet?

Oh yeah, we're gonna sell it. Yeah, we will sell it, but we've gotta fine tune it and you know, it usually takes us about a year to figure it out, but yeah, that's the next step is a vacuum. Vacuum blender.

That's sweet.

Even better.

I go through blender, so like I break a blender every couple of months. It's crazy. I'm an Amazon prime blender user for sure. Okay, so cool. Another thing that you mentioned, another tool, tool to throw out for folks that seems like a pretty useful tool that you talk about in the book, is actually a way to analyze what you're actually eating, like keep track of your food intake. And you recommend something called Cronometer. And I, you know, as a guy who writes meal plans for people and you know, looks over people's nutrition, I actually hadn't really used Cronometer much. But you're a pretty big fan of it. Why is it that this is the one that you like to use so much?

A lot of good reasons. The most I don't know which one you're using, but the most common one. What is my fitness Pal?

It's free.

Just like I can tell you what I've gotten to the point where I'm using now is all of my clients simply keep track of all their meals with a private Instagram account that they share with me.

Well, that's one thing.

And then every weekend I just go in and look at their food. Qualitatively, I found that to be very much more quick for my clients compared to just like there's no question take. But Chronometer is the one you recommend.

Recommend that involves interaction with a trained professional like yourself. So for those who don't have that opportunity, because you know what the numbers are, you know what it should be, but most of these people have no clue. So you need some type of nutrient tracker, whatever it is, to analyze your macronutrient ratios, your level. You got to measure precisely your level of protein and your level of net carbs. And you need to use a kitchen digital scale to input the food. So you need to get accurate numbers. But the problem with the other, other other nutrient trackers, primarily MyFitnessPal, is they use user generated data. So that makes it easier. So like if you, there was a food on there you didn't have and you entered the data and you weren't diligent about entering with the macro, the macronutrients in there and the numbers and they weren't accurate, then it's available to everyone on the planet and then they think that it's not vetted by anyone. So it's, there's loads of it. I would guess actually the majority of the information in that program is wrong. So in my viewpoint, no data is better than, than better than bad data, which is what you're getting because you think you're doing this right thing and it's not. So Chronometer is great. It was actually developed Chrono means age. And the developer is Aaron Davidson and he's really developed programs. Nothing existed like and he really is a longevity fanatic and he used it for himself and I had him revise it. So if you go to chronometer.com Mercola There's a special version of that program that is designed for ketogenic diet nutritional ketosis.

Okay, and why is it that that's a superior form of food tracking software?

Well, because all the data, I didn't finish the thought on that. All the data is vetted. So it's all they. Even though you could enter your own data, it's not available to anyone else. So the only data that you can put in there is either your own or, or the one that's, that's accurate. So you'll get the real information, the true information, not something that could be, could be wrong. Most likely is.

Okay, gotcha. And all you do is you enter in each meal that you eat and it gives you the actual.

Data that you know, like, like, like the, the fat intake, the protein, the carb.

Oh, it's really beautiful. Unlike my fitness pal, it gets just elegant, incredibly beautiful and useful graphical presentation, user interface is just magnificent. So it's simple to use, easy to understand. It takes maybe a little while to implement your recipe so that, you know, maybe a few hours and once you've done that, then literally you can enter your data like in a minute or two for the whole day. And I recommend and encourage people to enter the data before they eat it because it's impossible to uneat something. But if you planned your day and you know what you're going to eat, you can always. And then you say, oh, these ratios are, are off. Then you can change it.

Interesting. Well, what I'll do is, you know, I ate almost the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day anyway. So I could just take my staple meals and input them into chronometer and it'll tell me, for example, like it looks like, based on what you're saying in the book, like, it'll show me, instead of just like total fats, the precise percentage of like my monounsaturated. Monounsaturated fats.

Yeah.

Et cetera.

It's very detailed. And you can get the ratio, omega 3 to 6 ratio, zinc, calcium to magnesium ratios. It's just, it's just a great program. And it's free. It's free. So, you know, I mean, there are, there is an option to have an upgrade version if you want to put on your phone, but you don't need to. You can get all of, you can do all the benefit you need just with the free version. So.

Right, right now I also wanted to ask you about something that you discussed regarding reactive oxygen species and specifically this idea that there's almost like a paradox between ideal antioxidant intake and ideal reactive oxygen species intake and how you shouldn't suppress your Ross or your reactive oxygen species too much. How do you kind of figure that out? How do you determine how much reactive oxygen species you should get versus how many antioxidants you should take? Why is it kind of a paradox? Can you explain the reasoning behind including this in the book.

Sure. And it's really important point. Thank you for bringing it up. Because really that's the crux of why mitochondria get damaged now. Not be from reactive oxidizing species. But the key differentiate important just like that ketogenic diet. A cyclical ketogenic diet is excessive reactive oxygen species because your body needs some without a reactive oxygen. They're important signaling molecules and if you indiscriminately suppress them with large amounts of antioxidants, just like you think you're doing something good like cold thermogenesis, after you've done strengthening, you've abolished the inflammatory response that's going to produce the muscle strength, strength muscle hypertrophy. You're not, you're going to cause damage. And ideally the best way to generate antioxidants is by yourself. And you've discussed this before with mitohormesis where you take these types of nutrients that cause some damage like micro damage and then your body builds its own antioxidants defense. And then, and actually, actually more even more foundational of that is getting your body to burn fat as its primary fuel because you can generate 30 to 40% less reactive oxygen oxygen species. Which is why the cyclical ketogenic diet works. When you're burning fat as your primary fuel. It's when you're using glucose as your as your primary fuel that is burning so inefficiently you aren't creating ketones and they just generate far more reactive oxygen species. Especially if you're eating late at night. The last thing you want to do is eat late at night because your your body is designed to repair and recover. You're not burning any fat and you're putting your fuel in and the fuel backs up in the ATP electron transport chain and you just, you develop more reactive oxygen disease and you cause mitochondrial damage much interesting. Yeah.

When you say eating late at night though, what do you mean? And the reason I asked that, and this is probably because I am competing so much in sports right now and most of my very, very difficult workouts are occurring between about 5 and 7pm or so. If I don't have a big dinner, I usually wake up about one or two completely unable to get back to sleep because I'm just too depleted.

You and other competitive athletes are special case. I think that will shift once you stop competing. But the answer to eating late at night would be typically at least three hours before you go to sleep. Now you've got special needs because you're all ramped up you got a different physiology than most people and different goals. So to achieve those goals, you're going to have to break the rules a little bit.

Yeah, kind of. Although I haven't talked about this before on a podcast much, but next year I am slowly beginning to make the switch into essentially being a, a, a hunting and fishing athlete. You're going to see me a lot less like on the spartan racing circuit.

And kinder to your body.

I'm going to do a few of these, you know, like little hunting competition, but pretty much every single thing that I do is going to be either in my local community or with my kids. And I'm not going to be like the globe trotting, hard charging, how's it, how do you call it? The masochistic racer. I've just decided that, you know, at 35 years old, I'd rather make the right decision than wait until I'm like, you know, 50 to stop beating up my body to that extent.

So yeah.

I'm thinking about telomere length will increase too. Yeah.

You know, I did the interview. I don't know if you heard that.

No, I heard it.

I heard it with the people who analyze, you know, it was with, for those of you listening, it was with telo years and they analyze your telomere length, but they also, you know, one of the things that you have to take into consideration with that particular test is that they're looking at white blood cells only. Right. And in athletes who are constantly beating up their bodies, who have a little bit more inflammation, who have perhaps a little bit more white blood cell damage, you're only, look, you're looking at the most damaged component of an athlete's body. And so I would imagine if you looked at other cells other than just white blood cells, especially in like a relatively healthy person like myself, because frankly, I feel amazing every single day. I would imagine my actual biological age maybe might not be quite so old as that tele years. Measurement of just my white blood cells would, would have me to believe. I, I have my reservations about the complete accuracy of that test for somebody who, who does do like a lot, a lot of physical activity especially.

Yeah. So, but it's, you know, it's a tool, it's pretty expensive. When I did mine first, I did it like five, six years ago and it was several hundred dollars. So it's under a hundred dollars now, which is great.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So has anything, since you've written this book, is there anything that's come up aside from the selfie? Stick trick that you wish you had added to this book or anything that's come to light that you think is especially interesting in terms of either mitochondrial health or cancer prevention or any other things that you kind of dig into in this book or otherwise.

Well, let me just augment one thing about 20 minutes. I'm going to be interviewing Kate Shanahan, who I was inspired to contact through her presentation on your show.

That's wonderful.

Yeah, She's a great lady and has a magnificent presentation on fats. And since this diet is 60 to 85% fat, you got to pay attention to the quality of fat. If you don't, you're just going to decimate your health. So that's a key component and it would be a good resource for people who are interested in this is maybe to listen to that again, because she just did such a great job. But one of the things, things that weren't. I did just dive a little bit into photobiology. What I've learned since the book was published, though, and this was Dave Asprey's book came out in conjunction with that. He has the true dark glasses that he developed, which are actually red. And so I've changed that now. So after the sun goes down, you'll probably see me after sunset this weekend. I will be wearing red glasses.

Those true, those true dark glasses.

Well, I have a pair, but I just got a pair for nine bucks on Amazon. They're like laser safety, but the TrueDark.

Glasses are like $130.

Yeah. So I've, you know, I always try to keep the prices low if I can. So, so I have a pair of the TrueDark glasses, but I just use the $9 ones from Amazon.

Wait, are these some of those glasses that are like built in fidelity basically, like, like really, really, like ugly, like full face goggle?

No, they're not. But actually, you'll see. I've. You can, yeah, the Dave's don't look much better. I think these look better than Dave's, actually. But you can, there's. I'll give you some hints. There's a, there's a company, Chadwick Optical, C H A D W I C K, out of Virginia, Vermont, Pennsylvania, maybe. And they, you could take your glasses if you have glasses, or you can buy frames and you can mail it to them and they can, they can tint your glasses whatever color you want. So I had them initially done amber until I knew about these. I'm going to send them back and get some red ones done. So that you can.

I'll link to them in the show.

Notes, whatever frame you like. Just tell them that, you know, you've heard about them through me. It's not that I get a commission on it at all. I said, this needs to be available everywhere. Just don't know what to do. So the president of the company is Charlie, and he'll take care of them. And, you know, again, I don't get any commission on that at all. So it's just. It's just a resource because I was trying to figure out how to do this, how to get customized glasses. And this is. You have to find an optical company that will tint them for you.

Yeah, I use the Irlen lenses. And what I do with them is I take. I did one fitting where you sit down and they try out different colors with your eyes. And you do eye reading charts, and you do reading comprehension, visual acuity, reading speed. They figure out which color is going to work best for your specific rods and cones. And then I had them create the lenses for me. And then anytime they break or anytime I need a new frame, they'll just cut different lenses to fit the frame. And the initial investment, I mean, you got to pay like 400, $500 to kind of like do the initial fitting. But then once you get them, you kind of like, have your specific.

Yeah. With the Chadwick Optical, you just find online, you know, $50 pair of lenses that you. Or frames that you like, and you send to them, it's like another hundred dollars. So it's pretty, Pretty inexpensive.

Yeah, that sounds like, like a lot more affordable solution.

Yeah. And I imagine the biological.

Optimization for those. The glasses you discussed would be changed based on the time of day. And the reason I switched to red after sunset is that red amber will also filter out green and yellow light, which has some impact on melanin, melanopsin, and melatonin production. So. But only, Only after sunset. It's not necessary before.

Okay, got it. So you pretty much just like get the glasses that you want to get and you send them into this Chadwick Optical place.

The frames. The frames.

Okay.

You don't even have to get the.

Oh, you get the frames you want to get, and then Chadwick Optical will install whichever lenses that you want within those frames.

Yeah. Either your prescription, you know, you can mail them in, or you can. You can send your existing glasses in and they'll change those. I mean, they don't care. Or you can buy them new if you don't have. Because I don't I don't wear even reading glasses. You know, I've taken care of my retinal health. And if you don't, if you don't honor this biological imperative, you are exposing yourself to almost guaranteed assurance of damaging your retina as you age and increasing, radically increasing your risk of age related macular degeneration. So this is an important tool. And interestingly, you will preserve your ability.

To avoid.

The need for reading glasses as you age, which becomes pervasive. I mean, almost everyone you see over 40, 50 needs reading glasses.

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Really good resource and everything we talked about, by the way, for those of you listening in, because I know Dr. Mercola always just spills a bunch of cool tips and tools and tricks whenever I interview him, I'm going to put over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com FatForFuel that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Fat For Fuel. So go over there for the show notes and any questions or comments that you have, leave them over there and I'll be happy to jump in and reply and try and point you in the right direction. And I promise that I, I will also try and pull out my phone and Snapchat or Instagram a little bit when Dr. Mercola and I are together in Atlanta when he analyzes whether or not my cell phone is actually resulting in too much oxidation for my own body. So maybe we'll put something together for you guys on that. And that's gonna be over@snapchat.com bgfitness for all of you 13 year old listeners out there who are Snapchatting. All right, well, in the meantime, Dr. Mercola, thanks for coming back on the show. It's always really fun to have you on. I always learn, learn at least a dozen new things every time I talk to you.

Well, great. I look forward to connecting this weekend.

All right, folks. Well, this is Ben Greenfield and Dr. Mercola from BenGreenfieldFitness.com signing out. Be sure to check out the book Fat for a revolutionary diet to combat cancer, boost brain power and increase your energy and have a healthy, healthy week.

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