How to biohack your home on a budget

Hey, I'm Ben Greenfield. Let's face it, biohackers get a bad rap not only for looking incredibly silly with the laser lights that we have attached to our head and the rest of our bodies, you don't have to have the expensive multi thousand dollar headsets.

Electrical stimulation machines, and massive panels and hyperbaric oxygen chambers and everything else that you see championed as the ideal biohacking solution. In this video, I want show you how I biohack my office, my kitchen, my bedroom and my living room to be able to make my body and my brain better, but do so without making my wallet too light. Get ready for some tips about how to biohack on a budget.

Welcome to my kitchen. You know, I think a lot of stuff celebrities and pro athletes and world famous biohackers spend a lot of money on meal delivery services, personal chefs, and, you know, fancy half million dollar kitchen setups. But I actually like to eat healthy and biohack my food, if you want to call it that, on a budget. And I want to show you some of the key staples that are hanging around my kitchen that I use to do that. So we're going to start right off the bat here with something really simple that I have over here in the corner of the kitchen. And.

That is a little countertop unit for making your own sprouts. Now, the reason this is important is because you can pay lots and lots of money and definitely break the budget by buying sprouts at the grocery store or the health food store. And it is shocking how simple sprouts are to make in your home. So while you can use a glass mason jar in your own setup, I actually have this handy, very inexpensive sprouting kit that keeps the sprouts at a 45 degree angle. And you can see here that I'm sprouting some chickpeas. And if you get a close up, you can see all the little tails that come out of these. As I'm unlocking nutrients and deactivating plant defense mechanisms in sprouts. Now, I first learned about the magic of sprouts when I interviewed the guy who wrote this book, Doug Evans. He wrote this book called the Sprout Book. Since I interviewed him four years ago, I've been making my own sprouts and put them in salads and grinding them up in smoothies and putting them on top of different casseroles and meats and other dishes just because they, unlike a lot of raw plants like kale and spinach, spinach, etc. Are incredibly digestible because the process of sprouting breaks down a lot of the things that your gut normally wouldn't be able to digest. And the fact is, I didn't realize how much I was overpaying for sprouts until I started to make my own. So, for example, as a matter of fact, Doug, the same guy who wrote that book, the sprout book, he has this company called the Sprouting Company. It's the same company I got this little sprouting kit from. He's got lentils, for example, and green peas and a salad mix. Now, sprouts are incredibly high in something called sulforaphane, which is basically like this cancer fighting compound. One of my friends you might be familiar with in the health industry, Dr. Rhonda Patrick, she's very into sulforaphane. And it turns out that sprouts not only have that, but they allow for a ton of nutrient density from any seed. You can sprout other things. I mean, you can even sprout nuts, for example, or quinoa would be another example. But I really like some of these seeds, like the salad mix, the green peas and the lentils. And so a sprouting kit for dirt cheap, we're literally talking pennies. To make your own batch of sprouts and just keep it going throughout the day is one fantastic way to get a lot of really good nutrients on a tight budget. So the next thing that I want to show you, if you come over to my refrigerator, are two other things that, similar to sprouts, I just always have a constant batch of. Now, the first is kefir. There's two different forms of kefir, however, water kefir, which is what this one is. And then I also have milk kefir, which is what this one is. Milk kefir is amazing as a marinade for four. Nature's multivitamin. What is nature's multivitamin? Some of you might have guessed it already. It's organ meats. So I don't really drink milk kefir that often, even though it is a nice creamy addition to smoothies. Right here in my refrigerator, I have a big old grass fed, grass finished beef heart. I get these beef hearts from this company called US Wellness Meats. And this is soaking in what's called a sous vide bag. I'll explain what that is later in milk kefir. So once this has been soaking for about 24 hours, it breaks down a lot of the fibers in normally tough organ meats, and it draws out a Lot of the gamey flavor. So what I do is I open up my sous vide bag, spelled S O u S V I D e, and I dump out the heart into my strainer. So you got a big old beef heart here. And then I'm gonna rinse it just with a little bit of lukewarm water. I put the heart back into the sous vide, because now the magic happens. Okay. And then I'm going to drop the heart into just this stainless steel water.

Jug, canister pot, whatever you want to call it. And then I put this wand in here. While you could pay a lot for a fancy sous vide setup, again, we're talking about budget. So this. This is called a joule sous vide wand. What I do is I put the heart in there with the sous vide wand. And for heart, I like to go at about 145. I like to do heart for a longer period of time. So this will go for about six hours or so. I'm going to move on to another great kitchen tool, kitchen hack that I like to use, and that's an air fryer. So air fryer is really cool because it allows you to make french fries, crispy shrimp, carrot fries, anything you'd normally fry but without using lots of oil, so it's healthier. These things are not very expensive, and you can cook just about anything in an air fryer. So what I'll do with that heart once it's done is I'll just thin slice it and put in this basket, slide it into the air fryer, set it, and forget it for about 10, 15 minutes. And I'll have this nice fried heart that's taken on all those flavors from the heart that's been in the sous vide bag for a while. And those are just a few of what many people would call biohacks that I just keep around the kitchen. And when you add all that up, it's not that expensive to have some really cool tools that allow for combining healthy eating with molecular gastronomy with biohacking. I also have a whole book about this. It's called the Boundless Cookbook and a sequel to it called the Boundless Kitchen. So you can check those out if you want even more tips. Just like this. I always have random tools scattered around the house. One of them is an alternative to an expensive infrared sauna. Now, I'm a huge fan of infrared saunas. I have one, but a lot of people don't have the footprint or the budget for an infrared sauna. Enter this bad boy. This, which I love for just like curling up inside and like reading in the living room, is an infrared sauna blanket. It's made by a company called higherdose. All it's got on this end is a little controller device. I have it jacked up all the way to eight within. I was using it last night. Within like five minutes, you're toasty warm. You can see that it's got zips in it. And you can zip yourself up inside and do your own sauna sweat session inside. You can see it's lined with fabric that I can clean if I do a lot of hefty sweating inside. But this is a perfect budget friendly alternative to a big infrared sauna. And it's just basically a wraparound sauna blanket made by higherdose. So this thing's pretty cool. Now one of the other things that I do, and some people laugh at me for this, boy, I swear by it. I've been doing this for like six years now. And it's a self traction device. Now before I show this to you, you might be familiar with inversion tables that you hang upside down from. Those work pretty well. But if you want something that's frankly less expensive and in my opinion works even better, it would be the yoga trapeze that hangs in a hollowed place in my living room. I'm going to show you what you can do with this. And it took me maybe like a couple of days to figure out how to use it. And then once I figured out how to use it, just like figuring out how to do new exercises at the gym, you just like have it in your head and it's amazing. So for this one.

You kind of get up in it just like this.

And once you're sitting in it as if you're sitting in a swing, which is just kind of fun in and of itself, I'll show you a cool move that you can do to loosen up your back and your hips and your hip flexors and your neck and your hamstrings. And what you do is you kind of take your legs and you cross them over the fabric and then you can just hang upside down. This is like level one. One of the first things you can do in the yoga trapeze. But then how do you get out of this thing? There's a lot of different ways to do it, but one of my favorites is I'll just go vertical, come like this, and then finish up with a nice stretch for the shoulders.

That thing is pretty amazing for the back. So those are a few of just the small random tools I have hanging around my living room that help me be healthier and feel better during the day without spending a lot of money. Welcome to my bedroom where arguably you could have ten $15,000 mattresses and all sorts of fancy hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber devices and maybe a cold tub next to your bedroom. But while you could spend a lot of money in your sleeping space and it is important to take care of your body and enhance sleep and there are a lot of cool biohacks for doing so, I wanted to show you a few of the things that will really move the dial but are going to be a little bit more budget friendly for you when it comes to biohacking your home on a budget. So the first thing that I want to show you is something that I've caught some flack for in the past because people think it's like laying on a bed of nails. But acupressure, meaning like an acupressure pillow and acupressure mat are kind of two pretty cool things that you can have in the bedroom. Now unlike some of my friends, I don't sleep on these things in the actual bed, but I have these next to the bed. And before I get into bed at night, if I want to read a book and I want to introduce into my body a lot of pain killing endorphins that ultimately allow me to fall asleep faster and slip into a relaxed state more readily, I can basically lay on this acupressure mat. Now we're going to keep this video G rated. Normally I would be pretty much in my underwear laying on this thing. So I've got my skin against these acupressure needles basically and for the first 30 seconds or so it's kind of uncomfortable. And then your body slips into this cool relaxed state. And acupressure is not that expensive. You don't have to go to an acupuncturist. You can see though that there's a little bit of a sharpness to these acupressure points that I'm laying on. Now. This particular mat is made by Pranamat P R A N A mat. You can also buy acupressure devices and mats easily on Amazon. The next is that it's trendy amongst biohackers right now to spend thousands of dollars on vagal nerve stimulation or even fancy injections into the neck to stimulate relaxation of the nervous system and activation of the rest and digest parasympathetic nervous system with things like vagal nerve blocks or what are called stellate ganglion nerve blocks. But you can actually get that same therapy in the comfort of your own home for a lot less using electronic vagal nerve stimulators. This is an example of something like that. This is called a pulsetto. And sometimes when I'm on my acupressure mat or when I'm laying in bed at night, or it's also kind of fantastic if you wake up and you can't get back to sleep. You put a little bit of an electrode conducting gel on the points that are on this po and then you put it around your neck. Now this ties to a phone app that I then activate. And the phone app even allows me to play music, by the way, which is kind of cool. And you put it on your neck like this, right over the area where your vagus nerve is, which is kind of like right underneath the back of your jawbone. And then you flip it on and it delivers this mild stimulation for up to 10 minutes right along your vagus nerve and induces this deep sense of relaxation. And again, these things are not that expensive. So this one's called a pulsetto. A lot of people might be familiar with the idea that different vibrations and so called haptic sensations, like say getting a massage would be a perfect example, can help to lull your body into a state of relaxation. But I keep by my bedside this little thing which I can put on my wrist or on my ankle. It's called an Apollo. And what the Apollo does is it delivers this mild vibratory sensation that can lull you into a state of relaxation or sleep. And which by the way, can also, depending on the settings that you have it on, be used for energy or for focus. And it even has this cool built in feature where even if you have it in airplane mode, it will auto detect if you're moving around at night or waking up and start to play a relaxing vibratory sensation that lulls you back into sleep. So not a hyper exposure device, considering the range of benefits that it gives you. I mean, you can wear it to a party and social function or in your bed for relaxation or sleep, or in the office for focus and energy. But this thing's called the Apollo. That also holds a hallowed place on my bedside light. And the amount of light that you're exposed to at night can make or break a good night of sleep. So I always have two sets of blue light blocking glasses. This is blue light blocking glass company called Raw Ra Ra Optics. It's really good German engineered steel and Italian acetate that they use in these frames. And they've engineered their lenses to truly block the type of blue light that shuts down melatonin production. A yellow pair for day or early evening and a red pair for night for blocking blue light and helping you sleep better and also eliminating a lot of this flicker and retinal irritation that can come from bright LED fluorescent lights and the backlit screens of monitors and phones. Fact is, especially if you have a home office, you can keep your metabolism boosted, but you don't necessarily have to have a fancy health club or gym or biohacking center membership to do so. So let me show you a few things that I have around my office that are a little less expensive than say, like a big walking treadmill that I have right here, but still allow me to stay active during the day. One is a basic pair of hand weights. These things are just a few bucks on Amazon. And for example, what I'll do with these is every hour or so during a day of work, I'll just take the hand weights, bring them up overhead, and do about one to two minutes of knee to elbow touches. And I like this particular move because it uses the left and right hemispheres of your brain, which kind of helps your brain to get turned on, but allows you just get like a quick metabolic boost sweat free. And it's just a great full body exercise you can do using an inexpensive pair of hand weights. And again, it's not going to like turn you into a hyper hulk, super macho super athlete. But it is kind of cool for a quick metabolic boost. And so I just keep those around the counter in my office. You also notice I have a kettlebell on the floor of my office. And that's because kettlebell swings, very similar to sprinting, can increase your metabolism and you can just pick up the kettlebell and put it down with a basic deadlift like this. You can of course take a kettlebell and you can lift it overhead. But one of my favorite moves to do when I'm taking a little break in the office is I'll just put the kettlebell on the floor, kind of tilt it up and do a set of basic kettlebell swings. Just 10 to 20 kettlebell swings then is a fantastic, inexpensive, office based exercise. And I tell you what, if I got to step over this thing every time I walk out of my office, it definitely keeps me moving. So I kind of keep it in an opportune place to where I might stub my toe on it. If I don't remember to do my kettlebell swings amongst all the other things littered underneath my desk. You could probably spend an hour in my office showing you all my little tricks here. This one right here is under the desk elliptical trainer. And I like this device because I can use it even if I'm just like typing on my keyboard. And all you do is you sit on this under desk elliptical trainer and you can pedal, and I can pedal while I'm recording a podcast, while I'm typing, while I'm surfing through emails and keep the metabolism elevated. It's not that expensive to get one of these under the desk elliptical trainers. It's less expensive than, say, like a walking treadmill like I have right here. But this is a handy little device if you just want to kind of turn your office, as you can see like mine is, into this space that just supports movement all day long. So even though there's all sorts of fancy, you know, more expensive devices like this nanov or a red light helmet or red light panel or anything like that in my office, and you could obviously spend tons of money on all these things, those are a few things that I keep around just to keep my body feeling good during the day without necessarily breaking the budget.