Probiotic Enemas, Digestive Enzyme Myths, Breathing 10 Kilograms of Oxygen, Low-Protein Diets &...

Podcast episode (Ben Greenfield hosting) featuring Matt Gallant (CEO of Bioptimizers) and Wade Lightheart discussing gut biohacking: probiotic enemas, digestive enzyme use and myths, protease importance, low-protein/vegetarian bodybuilding strategies, morning biohacks (ionized water, red/infrared light headgear), and practical protocols (fasting, enzyme/probiotic dosages, fermented coconut-water enemas). Episode mixes anecdotes, product mentions/promos, and references to clinical studies and patents.
Questions this video answers
November 12, 2016
Lactobacillus plantarum (P3OM)
15–20 minutes
About 4–8 hours (longer in cooler climates)
Typically 3–5 days
Chapters
Hey, it's Ben Greenfield and I'm going to apologize in advance to you because you are about to be subjected to a really nerdy conversation between myself and two guys who basically do crazy stuff, shine laser lights on our and do enemas and take copious amounts of fringe supplements, etc. So my apologies in advance. But hey, if anything, you'll at least be entertained and maybe learn a thing or two for this month's Christmas cocktail party. But before we jump in, speaking of learning a thing or two, I want to tell you about something that I learned recently and that is the fact that you can dump copious amounts. Copious. See if I can spit that out. Copious amounts of insect matter into your smoothie. Copious amounts of insect matter into your smoothie. And it still actually tastes pretty good. Really good actually. Like a Wendy's. You know those Wendy's Frosties that you used to get? I don't know. I don't know if anybody even gets those. I haven't been to Wendy's in a while, but I used to get the chocolate frosty. This one tastes like that, but a vanilla Frosty. And they do a chocolate one too. I just haven't yet tapped into the chocolate. I've just been using the vanilla. But it's this company called Krike C R I K and they make really super tasty protein. And this is protein that has three times the protein punch of beef and it actually blows away even organ meat in terms of nutrient density and of course it's ethical. But it's a cricket based protein powder, meaning that it is jam packed with the full amino acid profile that insects have. A lot of people don't know about this. As much calcium as milk, more iron than beef or spinach, more potassium than foods like avocado, but it tastes really, really good too. And you can just get it in a powder form and throw it in a smoothie. So I've been using the vanilla. They do a chocolate as well. But you get 15% off of any of this really tasty cricket based protein powder from Crick Nutrition. And here's how. Go to Crick me bgfitness. That was a mouthful, I will admit. Crick me. You spell it. C r I k dot me. Crick me. BGFitness. And if you want to get 15% off of your purchase, just use code BEN. B E N. So crick me BGFitness use code BEN. And they even have 100% money back guarantee, which trust me, you won't need to use because this stuff tastes amazing and again, like it's just as good as beef when it comes to protein. I also wanted to tell you about a new sponsor and.
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That means your body will hold on to enzymes as much as it can because they're so essential for bodily functions. And I believe that a high quality enzyme that is consumed on an empty stomach will become a metabolic or a systemic enzyme inside the body.
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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield and I want to actually share with you a relatively strange email that I got from today's guest. The subject line of the email was Probiotic enema. And the instructions in said email went a bit something like this. Break open a handful of capsules and ferment in coconut water. Reaches peak power around four to five hours of fermentation. However, you live in a cooler climate, Ben, so it might take longer. You can drink it and if it's still sweet, then you can go longer. When it starts to become acidic, that's when it's at its peak for your enema. Retention time should be 15 to 20 minutes. And I like doing the Batman version. I go upside down with the inversion table, so it really works its way down. I tend to do this after two days of fasting, so it really takes care of old bad bacteria in my gut.
That email was actually written to me by today's guest who is not only, as you would have guessed, a consummate gut biohacker, but he's also an entrepreneur. He's a poker champion, an ex rock guitarist, a strength conditioning coach with a degree in kinesiology, and the CEO of this company called Bioptimizers. His name is Matt Gallant and as you can imagine, Matt tends to think outside the box when it comes to things like nutrition and health. And he's not on his own. Today, he's joined by Wade. Wade Light Heart is your last name, Is that correct, Wade?
Yes, sir.
Okay. Light Heart, as in L I G H T H E A R T. Correct. Interesting. That's. That's a very. That's almost like a dirty hippie name. Like my children river and Taran Greenfield. But, but Wade, for those of you who are curious who he is, he's a natural bodybuilder, he's a vegetarian and a low protein diet advocate. We're going to talk about that a little bit in today's show. Three time all natural bodybuilding champion, which means he doesn't inject steroids into his butt cheek. He's the advisor to the American Anti Cancer Institute. He's the director of education at Bioptimizers, which is the company that Matt's the CEO of and he's been a vegetarian for over 13 years. He's also written a book I'll link to in the show notes called Staying Alive in a Toxic World. Now, everything that we are about to delve into, if you don't want to furiously take down, not instead want me to do all the hard work for you, you can Access over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com Gallant as in Matt's last name BenGreenfieldFitness.com G-A-L-A N T so Wade and Matt, welcome to the show.
It's great to be here, man. I think you've got the best help podcast out there. So it's a real honor to be on it.
Oh, well, thank you. It's an honor to get enema instructional emails from you.
Yeah, great to be here, Ben.
Oh, and by the way, lest anyone wonder, I did indeed follow that email that Matt wrote me about taking a bunch of probiotics, breaking them open into coconut water, letting the coconut water ferment, and actually hanging myself upside down and trying the enema. And you know what, that might be a good little icebreaker here, Matt, or at least a lead in. First of all, before I ask you about the strange daily routines that you do, why is it that one would actually do a probiotic enema? What's kind of the reason behind that?
Well, a lot of the toxins in our body come from undigested proteins. So we want to ideally go into every crevice in our body as well as in our blood, get some proteolytic enzymes and probiotics and break stuff down. So that's where just the intellectual or scientific or health concept came from. And I was doing a five day fast. I'm like, you know what, let's take this to next level. So did a colonic, and it was the best colonic ever in terms of what came out the next couple of days. And this was like day four. So it wasn't food coming out. It was like weird shaped rubber tar like stuff. So I knew that. Okay, this worked. This works. Yeah. So that's where it all came from.
Rubber tar, like stuff. You actually get that stuff coming out your butt. See, that didn't happen to me.
Did I not do it correctly? Well, and that was a colonic versus an enema. So it went deeper than just the enema would. But I think if we bump it up from one liter to maybe a gallon when we do the enema, we might start hitting those spots and you hang.
When you do this, you hang upside down. But do you actually use an inversion table or do you use. I think what you had mentioned to.
Me was I use a yoga swing.
Now what is a yoga swing? For people who aren't familiar with this.
Yoga swing is a very, very cool portable exercise device. I mean, you can do some bad workouts with it. It's almost like a trx, but it's like another level because you can hang and do some really cool inverted stuff or fall off of it in the gym and stuff and be laughed at. But yeah, it's a really cool device. So there's a couple of them out there. It used to be called, I think Ohm Swing or Ohm Yoga Ohm Swing. We'll find the links and pop them in the show notes for you.
Okay, cool. And this is like a lot of times what you see people using in those acro yoga classes. Right?
Right.
Okay.
Exactly.
Gotcha. Gotcha. Interesting. So, Matt, you are obviously a bit of a biohacker like me. You have these strange daily ro. I know that you've bounced back and forth on me via Facebook message and email when you're occasionally up to some crazy biohacks. And for you, in many cases, it seems like they're nutrition based. Can you describe just so folks can kind of wrap their heads around the type of things that you do. What your morning routine was leading into today's call? I guess it's about 10am when we're talking right now, so I imagine you've had time to at least get out of bed and engage in some manner of weirdness. So what have you been up to this morning?
Yep. So first of all, I woke up wolf style. I'm referring to a chronotype, not howling, which means I hit my snooze button three times. I actually really enjoyed the snooze. It's a good REM opportunity for me.
Wait, you said wolf style. You're referring to the book by Michael Bruce about the power of when you got it, where people are wolves, dolphins, lions and bears. And a wolf, if I'm not mistaken, if memory serves correctly, that's more of like a night person.
Right, Right.
So I'm the opposite of you and you're a lion. Right.
Okay.
Which I think Wade's a lion too. So you guys are in the same tribe.
And so as a wolf, actually hitting the snooze button on your alarm clock is supposed to be good.
Yeah.
I always intuitively felt that I'd get a lot of REM in those zones. And I do, and the book kind of endorsed it, so I'm rolling with it.
Okay, gotcha.
So you can see, I literally put my alarm 30 minutes before I actually want to wake up so that I can hit it three times.
Okay, gotcha.
Then the first thing I do, I pound about a half a liter to a liter of structured alkaline ionized mineral water, then weigh myself. Well, I actually weigh myself before doing the water, but weigh myself, drink the water, rebound for five minutes, I feel is really one of the best ways to wake up my entire body. Then I put on the Neuro from vielights, which is the whole headpiece. Love that device. It's just absolutely awesome. And then I take a bunch of supplements, including a lot of brain stuff, as well as enzymes and probiotics to kind of give my body some juice. And then I drank a coffee using alkaline water, a little bit of fats, some of our vitamins and minerals, and some reishi. I'm using some Reishi spore extract. My body just loves Reishi, so I'm really pushing that now.
A few things I want to delve into just slightly. You mentioned some type of. Did you say it was like a headgear or glasses that you're using?
Well, you recommended V lights, but they've got.
Oh, the V. You mean the intranasal light therapy.
Right. But they've got the whole headpiece now called Neuro, where you've got another piece that goes on top of the head which hits your default network. So not only are you hitting your prefrontal cortex with the light, but you've got this headpiece with five clusters of lights that are blasting your brain.
I feel left out that I didn't actually know about this. I'm still way back at the level where I'm just sticking stuff up my nose. Now you can actually bombard your entire head with this. Infrared style light therapy.
Exactly. And Dr. Lim says about double the power. And they just released a video where they've got somebody wired to a dry EEG machine and the whole brain just floods with alpha, which is always a good thing.
Oh, wow. I'm looking at a photograph of this. I'll link to this in the show notes for those of you who want to check it out. The Violight Neuro. It's described as a next generation transcranial intranasal near infrared headset. And it uses. It looks like it uses the 810 nanometer wavelength, which for those of you listening in the best Way I could describe this to you, if you haven't experimented with this type of stuff before, is it's like a cup of coffee for your brain. And it's actually the type of thing that they've shown to induce increased blood flow to the brain and almost like a therapeutic effect for people with, say, Alzheimer's. But I had no clue they had an entire full piece of headgear. This is really interesting. I may need to add this to my morning protocol, Matt. And then the other question I wanted to ask you, Matt, before we turn to Wade and find out what he's been up to this morning, is you mentioned that you alkalinize or you structure your water when you drink your water in the morning or when you make your coffee. What are you using to do that?
I am using a Kangen water machine, which I feel is one of the best health devices I've ever purchased, and I'll purchase just about all of them.
You can control the PH of the water. It micro clusters the water molecules, which means it makes the water molecules smaller and produces an antioxidant rich water instead of an oxidative water. If you really want to get into water, Wade Lightheart is one of the top experts on the planet. So you can dive pretty deep with.
Wade on that one.
Okay, cool. But you use one of these units made by the company Kangen.
Correct. Well, Enagic is the name of the company, and the SD501 is the device.
Okay. Now, with some of these alkaline water makers, one of the things that people have expressed concern about in the past is that the water passes over like a metal plate and that you might get exposed to some kind of increased heavy metal when you're drinking the water that's been structured, that's been passed over this plate. Do you know if that's the issue with some of these Kangen machines or.
What'S the deal with the way that the water is alkalinized?
I'll let Wade answer this one. Go for it, Wade.
Yeah. So there's a couple of issues that can come up when you come to ionization. First, let me qualify it a little bit, is you could ionize any kind of water with a battery and some metal and stick the electricity in there, and you get some form of ionization. That doesn't mean that's going to be healthy. So there is a very large range of quality when it comes to creating ionization. And so in order to make sure that you're making an ionized water that's safe. You want to use something that's at a medical grade. Technology using particularly titanium and platinum. And platinum is what creates the electron donor plate. So you have a platinum coating over a titanium plate and at a medical grade that's beyond 99% purity with cheaper ionizers. And I think that's where a lot of the issues come up, where people have concerns about, and I think they're legitimate, that they'll use maybe a 70% alloy and you don't necessarily know what other metals could be there and you could run into problems. And that's one of the reasons why I chose, when I did my investigation about eight, nine years ago when I started, and I've been on that train for a long time, is I chose one that had medical certification at 13, 4, 85. We want to have that designation in your ionizer. And that's going to ensure that you have safety of the water, that you're not going to create any metal toxins or things like that that's going to cause any problems. But ionization has been around, it's been used in medical institutions since, you know, the mid-1960s. And it's very safe if you're using a medical grade ionizer.
So you want to look when you, when you're using something to, if you're going to ionize water or experiment with how your body might feel, you'd want to use a medical grade. And I noticed that the Kangens, because I pulled this up to see if this was the type of thing one could get on Amazon. For example, they use what's called platinum coated titanium. Is that, is that what you'd be looking for, be platinum or titanium in terms of the actual metal plates?
Yeah, that's, that's, that's exactly it. And you want to use a solid plate. There's a lot of technology out there that are using a mesh plate. But what we found is mesh plates will break down over time simply because anytime you create ionization, you'll get buildup of minerals on those plates and then your machine may become defective. You know, a year, two years down the road out of the gate, it might be okay. But, but when you're talking about these platinum coatings, this is a very, very, very light coating. And that surface area and electrical power are going to, and how long the water's exposed to that is going to determine the quality or the intensity of the ionization that you create. And that's going to give you the, what I call the electron donors or the H ions that really power the things. In my opinion, it's the electrical based antioxidants that make all the difference in ionization, not necessarily the alkalinity.
Okay. Okay, got it. Yeah, I have, I have a, what's called a structured water filter at my house, which is, which is basically like a series of glass beads in which the water kind of passes through a vortex. It swirls the water so it, so it maintains some amount of structure. And then I mineralize it so I add some trace liquid minerals to it afterwards. But that's, that's my, my nerdy little water technique. But I've never actually, I've never actually owned or used one of these whole house water ionizers. It'd be interesting to, to mess around with. I think my wife would probably kill me if I put one more thing on the kitchen countertop though, to go along with it. The water, the water ozonator, the countertop reverse osmosis maker, you know that the soda stream that allows me to carbonate water. I think honestly, she would, her head would explain explode if I actually added yet another ionizer to the kitchen counter.
Well, if you don't mind a threat to your marriage, I'll hook you up with one and you can run some experiments on it.
Well, who knows? I don't know. If I turn into Superman, maybe she'll not complain. So Wade, speaking of Superman, you are a bodybuilder, a natural bodybuilder. You are also a vegetarian and a low protein diet advocate, which I want to talk to you a little bit more about because you don't see that in the bodybuilder building industry too much. I'm curious, first of all, since you are a low protein diet advocate and vegetarian bodybuilder, what did you have for breakfast this morning? What's the breakfast of a low protein bodybuilder look like?
First I took in about 10 kilos of oxygen through an intensive deep breathing practice and a meditation practice. So I think that a lot of people just don't concentrate on oxygen, that's the primary nutrient of the body. And a lot of people just totally avoid that. So that was the first thing that I did. And then like Matt.
I did about a liter of ionized water with the minerals and the ions. And also I took in some about 3 grams of essential fatty acids, all plant based fatty acids.
Five capsules of enzymes, two of the mastimes, two probiotics, and I took in about three grams of branched chain amino acids.
Interesting. And just to explore a few of those things, a Bit more. How do you measure? You said you breathed in 10 kilos of oxygen. How are you measuring the actual volume of oxygen that you're breathing in? And how are you exactly doing that?
Well, that's a, I'll qualify that. That's an estimate. That's an estimation. The average person probably brings in 80 kilos a day. So what I do is I get up in the morning and I have a meditative practice. So I get up, I have a series of what's called energization exercises. In other words, I work with the, if you've heard of prana or chi, I activate, you know, starts starting with my feet and I go through a series of exercises that I do that just kind of wakes up the body and gets you to separate the difference between muscular contraction and sending the electrical energy into the muscle. So there's, there's two different energy systems and it's well known in kind of eastern philosophy, but not so much in the western, maybe athletic world, although it's getting more popular. So I do that. I'll also put my hands on my, around my kidneys and I'll start doing a breathing which is very intense, which you start inhaling through the nose and exhaling. So it's like, you know, that kind of thing. And I'll do that for maybe five or ten minutes until I get, technically, I guess you'd call it, I get kind of high, I get an oxygen high. And that's when I know that I'm oxidated. Now, sometimes, depending on where I am or what I'm doing, it will only be a few minutes. And sometimes it's going to take me 10 or 15 minutes to get that oxygen high. I just keep going until I feel my brain get completely oxygenate. And then that's when I sit and do my meditation. And that practice will be anywhere from 15 minutes all the way up to an hour. Although that doesn't happen as much as I like to, simply because of the demands of business. And then from there I go over, I take my water, take my supplements, take my branch chain amino acids, and then I'm off to my day.
Now, branched chain amino acids. As a low protein guy, these branched chain amino acids that you're putting into your body, are these a substitute for like thethe whey protein or thethe bacon and eggs that someone trying to put on muscle would normally be consuming or are there other reasons that you're using branched chain amino acids?
Yeah, I'm using the branched chain amino acids just to prevent the breakdown of, you know, my.
Skeletal muscle mass. And if you look at, when it comes to a plant based guy, obviously just getting enough protein in your diet, if you're training really hard is an issue. So it's not just about what you eat, it's about what you absorb and utilize. And what I found over the years, and I've done a lot of experiments to kind of get this, you know, into that hyperstate, I can lower my protein. Prior to using branched chain amino acids, I found that 75 grams a day is what I could sustain my muscle mass. I'm around 200 pounds at 5 foot 8, you know, around 10% body fat. That's kind of where my zone is. If I go below 75 grams, I found that I would drop down. If I went above 100 grams, which is, it takes a lot of effort as a plant based guy, then I could, you know, put on muscle. I'm not trying to put on muscle, but now I've been doing experiments of how low I can go. And if I add three grams of branched chain amino acids two to four times a day, I can go to as low as 25 grams of protein. So what I found is it's the branched chain amino acids. And I think that's where plant based guys have more of a struggle. If I have those into my diet, I can really lower my protein intake without losing the muscle mass and without getting the food cravings that are often associated with a low protein diet.
Now, why wouldn't you consume essential amino acids? And the reason I ask about that is because, you know, the branched chain amino acids, for those of you who may not understand what this means, is the branched chains are just leucine, isoleucine and valine. And there are other supplements that are called EAAs, or essential amino acids, that don't just have the branched chains, which are primarily used for energy production and muscle metabolism, but they also have all the other amino acids that would be used for, like, neurotransmitter formation or for healing muscles even more quickly, et cetera. Why do you use the branched chain amino acids versus, like, essential amino acids?
Wade I use the branched chains simply because I found they're more effective in preserving muscle mass as far as training. So I can go out and really kick in a workout. You know, I'll go to the gym and do a full body workout or a heavy lifting workout and have no, no problems with it. When I do the just the full amino acid spectrum, I notice there's changes in my Appetite, I'll find I get a lot, have the same performance level at the gym. What's the technical reason for that? I'm not exactly sure. But in my own experiments, this is what I found have, have worked best for me. And so that's just the way I. It's the way I roll.
Gotcha.
Hey, it's me, Ben. I'm interrupting today's show. So rude of me. But I'm gonna do it anyways because I wanted to tell you about a way that you can ensure that you don't get sick this cold and flu season. So there's this idea that mushrooms actually have horrible bunch of ingredients in them that help to boost an inactive immune system and calm down a hyperactive immune system and help the body adapt to stress. It's called an adaptogen. When something does that. And there are a whole bunch of medicinal mushrooms that do this, like reishi and chaga and cordyceps and lion's mane. They contain terpenes and a blend of different chemicals that can actually help you to fight off flus, fight off colds, fight off infection, produce a lot of antiviral and antibacterial compounds. But what if just throwing this out there, what if you were to take all of them and put them into one little packet like every single mushroom? Would it explode? No, because I have that packet in my refrigerator right now. It's called the Winning x blend. It's 10 different mushrooms, count them, 10. And they're all the mushrooms that were specifically harvested for the purpose of fighting off the infection and helping the body to maintain a super strong immune system using what's called a dual extract, so a water soluble extract as well as a fat soluble extract. So this stuff is made by a company called four Sigmatic. It's called the Winning X mushroom blend. It's an overdose of mushrooms in a good way and you get 15% off it. Here's how. Go to 4sigmatic.com greenfield that's f o u sigmatic.com greenfield and the coupon code that you use to get 15% off of this Winning X stuff or anything there really is Ben Greenfield. So that's4sigmatic.com greenfield and use code bengreenfield I also wanted to tell you about something that I learned recently. There is coconut water, which you've no doubt heard of before. And coconut water is very high in vitamins and minerals and electrolytes. But you can actually take coconut water and you can produce coconut water powder using a freeze drying method. So one ton of coconut water can make about 60 kg or so of coconut water powder. But there was a study that they did in the international symposium on medicinal and aromatic plants where they tested the actual vitamin and mineral and medicinal property of a coconut water powder. And they found that you don't get any deterioration whatsoever compared to coconut water using this freeze dried type of method. So I thought this was interesting because I've always wondered where coconut powder comes from, if there's some magic coconut water pooping unicorn in the sky that makes coconut powder or if it can actually be made in a more healthy way. And it turns out freeze dried is the way to go. So there's this company that does a greens powder that has coconut powder as its base and they're called organifi. So they take like matcha green tea and wheatgrass and turmeric and ashwagandha and mint and spirulina and chlorella and they add it all to this coconut water powder base. And it is super tasty. You can put it in a blender along with anything. You could probably blend it up with those mushrooms out here. Just talking about. But you get 20% off of this stuff. And here's how you get 20% off this Organifi green juice powder. Just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com FitLife that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com fitlife and when you do, you just use discount code BEN to get 20% off. So use discount code BEN@BenGreenfieldFitness.com fitLife and enjoy your coconut water powder with a whole bunch of other stuff added to it. All right, let's get back to the show.
Now as far as the whole low protein diet, why would you be doing that in the first place?
Well, first and foremost, it just came out that way. Just being a plant based guy. I mean, keep in mind I grew up under the, you know, the more protein is better program. And you know, like all bodybuilders when I first started out and I, you know, I went crazy on that. And then in 2003 I had a complete blowout after I did the Mr. Universe. And I didn't understand prior to that there's a difference between consumption and absorption. And once I understood that I got educated about that, then I realized that, well, it's not really how much protein you eat, it's how much you absorb. And what's interesting is that, but 75 grams in a day, I'm probably absorbing and utilizing more protein than a guy that's eating 250 or 300 grams of protein a day.
Interesting. So as far as the actual.
Vegetarian approach to bodybuilding, obviously amino acids are something that you're going out of your way to supplement with. But what about a lot of these things that you tend to find vegetarians are deficient in, like you know, creatine or vitamin B12 or you know, DHA for neural fatty acid health, those type of things. Are you also including supplements like that or are you getting all that from food based nutrients?
No, I'm a big believer in supplementation for performance. I don't think it's really possible to hit the highest levels of performance without the add the addition of supplements. And of course you also need to know your genetic and epigenetic types. So for example, you may have issues absorbing and utilizing B12 or things like that. So again, all of my stuff comes down to what's optimized for myself. You can do kind of some generalizations, but I do take a plant based essential fatty acids. I struggled with the EFA program for many, many years and I think it was because I grew up in that high protein, low fat diets and I just, you know, Matt and I are almost total opposites on how we approach our diets and for our bodies. Which is kind of interesting because we, you know, we worked it, we've worked together for a long time. We have lots of great discussions about it because we're trying to find universal ideas. But I really, really needed to get that EFA stuff down and I, and I found a plant based blend that I did and I've been tested recently and you know, I'm good as gold on that as far as creatine and stuff. I supplement with it periodically. If I'm doing a peaking cycle, I think it's great. I don't use it year round, so I might do it for six or eight weeks, maybe two or three times a year depending on if I got a photo shoot or something to do that. I do notice a boost up on that.
Okay, got it. And are you using a specific supplement for your DHA or your epa? You mentioned the essential fatty acids that you've tested and you're, you're good to go on those. What do you actually use?
Yeah, there's a plant based blend by a company called Doterra that I picked up and man, it, it really, really made a difference for me. And so, you know, I'm not associated with the company or anything like that, but I really like the blend. It was, it was great.
That's is it now Doterra. That's like an essential oil company, isn't it?
Yeah, it's an essential oil company and they have a plant based version. I forget the name of it. I can probably go, I can run out a little bit later or send them in and I'll give them to the notes for the notes.
Send me a link later and I'll put them over in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Gallant okay, so that was obviously a bit of a rabbit hole. You guys have pretty elaborate routines and I would imagine we didn't even scratch the surface of what your entire day looks like. But you're particularly experts in this whole realm of probiotics and digestive enzymes. That's why I wanted to get you on the call because there's a lot of things other than like shooting probiotics up your butt and hanging from a yoga swing that people don't know about probiotics and about digestive enzymes. And enzymes in particular are something that fascinate me because I think that there are a lot of myths and even mysterious mistakes that people are making when they're using something like a digestive enzyme. So first of all, whichever of you would like to answer this question, I'm fine with. But why is it that your body can't just take the food that you eat and using the body's own amazing human built in mechanisms, digest food all on its own without actually needing to take some kind of an enzyme before you eat?
I'll answer that. First and foremost, if we go through a quick rundown of what happens in digestion number one, you put food in your body, you start masticating it, there's some enzymes released in your pitalin that starts breaking it down. The food enters into the upper cardiac portion of the stomach and from there the enzymes present in the food should start breaking that down. Now with humans, we're the only species on the planet that cooks their food. Every other species eats the food with its enzymes present and at that stage those are start to be breaking down. So for example, a tiger that goes off and eats a zebra, there's an enzyme called cathospin that becomes activated as soon as that enters into the body of the tiger. So when you consume any animal, whether it's a vegetarian or whether it's a carnivore, it always consumes its food in a live state. When it eats it, then the enzymes become active in it that start breaking down that food. So it actually preserves the enzymatic potential of the organism consuming the other one. Okay, so now after that cardiac portion, that first 30, 60 minutes, hydrochloric acid starts to come in. The food drops into the lower intestinal tract. This starts separating other amino acids inside the body and also disinfecting the food from any pathogens or bacteria. After that, what's called bicarbonate buffers are added to the mixture. And this keeps you from having ulcers in your duodenal and things like that. So as it enters into the intestinal tract, it's buffered. And if the formulation or the food is right, you have enzymes reactivated. Now, if you don't, what happens is your body is going to secrete enzymes stored up in its pancreas, for example, that's been manufactured in the liver. And you're gonna start using these enzymes to break down food. So your body will. It'll have a. What's called a metabolic load or an enzymatic capacity load on your body to actually start breaking down the food into smaller levels. And then finally, the bacteria in your intestinal tract will start converting that into utilizable material. So that's kind of the stages of digestion. Now, unfortunately, most people are consuming their food. They don't have the enzymes present. They don't cleave the essential amino acids at the top. They may not have enough hydrochloric acid inside the body to properly continue the breakdown. It enters into the intestinal tract, and we have what I call the turkey dinner syndrome. Everybody's had that Thanksgiving dinner, you know, where you, you know, you ate the big meal, and everybody kind of, you know, has the second helping, and they all run for the. The couch or the floor, and they'll. You lie there in a pool or drool till you wake up, and then you go back to the fridge for another helping of grandma's pie. Right, Right. Well, why is. People go, well, why is that happening? Well, number one, all the enzymes that your bodyour enzymatic capacity, the body was shunted to digest the food. And so it says, you know what? You know, Wade doesn't need to eat right now. He doesn't need to. He doesn't need to think right now. He doesn't need to do anything. He just needs to lay down when we digest that. And until that comes out, now what happens is, because we didn't cleave those essential amino acids in the top part of the digestive process, we started borrowing amino acids from the smooth muscle tissue in the intestinal tract that has A double effect. Number one, it has a drain on the form and tone of the colon and over time that can also lead to.
Poor contractions in the intestinal tract for people. And so what happens over time is we have these high protein diets, particularly in North American diets, where we eat a lot of meat based proteins and a lot of, you know, animal proteins and milk, casein based eggs, all that sort of stuff. And we're overloading our systems. And what that happens is we have a load on their enzymatic supply. And this was documented by a guy by the name of Dr. Edward Howell back in the 40s. And he said that by the time a person's 40, they have about 70% of the, of 70% less of the enzymes they had at birth. In other words, their ability to do metabolic work has been limited. And enzymes are responsible from thinking to blinking. So, so the reality is everybody requires enzymes to digest their food. Whether you're getting them from the food source that you're consuming, whether you're getting them manufactured from your body, or whether you're getting them in a supplemental form, you must have an enzyme to break down your food. And if you're operating at a compromised enzyme capacity, which most of us are, from our experience and our observations, supplementing your enzymes is probably the easiest, fastest and most efficient way to increase the absorption and utilization of your food and to reduce the use undigested proteins, which cause a variety of neurotoxin issues and toxicity inside the body. So that's what we've found and we've done and we've experimented. We've been worked on this for the last 14 years. I guess it's in 13, 14 years. And the reality is, I think the proof's in the pudding. And just from the experiential effect, the cognitive enhancement and also the health, energy and vitality levels that we experience.
Now, what would be the difference between using say like a digestive enzyme and just using what? Well, you'll see a lot of cultures used. You know, like for example, when I was in Italy, we drank, I believe it was grappa or vinsanto, right, Like a digestive based liqueur. And you'll see people doing things like shots of bitters or one very common approach is to simply drink some water with lemon juice in it prior to eating. What would be the primary difference between doing something like that and using, I guess, a more advanced digestive enzyme complement in capsule form or in pill form.
I'll grab this one. So, yeah, first of all, if we address the examples that you gave, I mean, a lot of stuff, some things like warm water, activate hydrochloric acid. So that's one of the reasons people kind of intuitively like drinking teas and stuff after a dinner. So that's one reason people do it. And as far as alcohol being a digestive aid, I laugh when I hear that. So I don't know too much about. It's a good marketing tool as a waiter. Hey, by the way, do you want a digestif? But I don't think it's going to really help people break down the nutrients and their food into usable components. Here's another way I'll answer the question. And that's if you were doing very high quality farming, farming your own food, only eating that, and I know you do a lot of this, Ben, and of course hunting your food and ideally eating it raw, which is pretty wild. I know there's one guy who's kind of semi famous for doing this. Then, yeah, maybe you wouldn't need enzymes if you had your own organic food and your soil is full of minerals and you're really doing a great job growing heirloom food that hasn't been GMO'd and you're eating it fresh then.
Yeah.
But the reality is for 99.9999% of the population, that's just not happening. So I think that's where supplementing with enzymes is a power move.
Okay, now with enzymes, I've talked about enzymes before on the podcast and I've mentioned, for example, probably the four most popular enzymes that I believe are in many of these digestive enzyme complexes. And the ones that I typically see are like papain, bromelain, trypsin and chymotrypsin. Right. Like an off the shelf digestive enzyme complex.
Are there other digestive enzymes that people should know about? Are all digestive enzymes just kind of, you know, the same molecules that help to break down the foods, you know, in your stomach or in your gut or what are the actual enzymes people should look for on a label.
So on a label, ideally, again, if you're taking it for the purpose of absorbing more nutrients from your general diet, you want a really broad mix. And I'll get into the most critical one last. But you know, things like alpha galactosidase, which helps you with beans and lentils. You know, obviously amylase is for carbs in general, cellulase, if you're eating a lot of veggies, there's a lot of cellulose that your Body struggles with cellulase will help with that. You know, you got things like invertase for sucrose, lactase for lactose. So for, you know, people that are lactose intolerant, once in a while if they want ice cream, they'll take lactase to help them deal with it. Otherwise they'll spook their family with some gassy bombs.
Right.
Then you got lipase for fat, you've got things like xylanase for plant fiber, again, peptidase for casein and milk proteins. So it goes on and on.
Right.
I mean, we could probably talk about different enzymes for a while. But the most important one, and especially for people that are concerned with, with fitness, recovering athletes and people who wanna build muscle, and I think health in general, the most important one by far, in our opinion is protease. And why is that? Well, first of all, you know, protein is how our bodies. Well, let me be more specific. Amino acids is how our body repairs itself, generates neurotransmitters for the brain, et cetera, et cetera. So. So on the plus side, if we can feed or give our body more neurotransmitters, we're gonna have again, better cognitive function and et cetera. So I have a good friend of mine, he's in his 70s, he started taking Mazymes in our P3OM or probiotic, and he was suffering from depression and now he's off his meds. Okay. So I'm not saying that healed him, but I do believe he just. That's the price of not being able to break food down is your brain's gonna get a lot less neurotransmitters with time.
Right, because amino acids are necessary precursors for neurotransmitter formation.
Exactly. And then on the preventing negative effects side, undigested protein is really one of the worst toxins we can have in our bodies. And I believe most people have way too much undigested protein. So for those two reasons, on the plus side of recovery, and we can get some really mind blowing studies on recovery from injuries and recovery from workouts. On the plus side, and again, avoiding the toxicity. So those are the two things that make protease so critical.
So undigested proteins would not just be like, that's not corn and carrot slices in your crap. That's actual like autoimmune reactions from undigested protein molecules crossing the gut barrier and winding up in the bloodstream.
You got it.
With probably the most common, I guess, being like one that I'm not sure Well, I suppose they do make gluten digesting enzymes that can help with this. I'm trying to recall the name of the most popular one off the top of my head. Do you guys remember? Is it gluten peptidase?
Yeah. There are enzymes that help. I mean, enzymes in general will help with people that are gluten sensitive or celiac. My wife is a celiac, so anytime she accidentally consumes it, she'll take 10 capsules and it helps a lot.
Accidentally meaning grabbing that baguette that looks so tasty?
No, it's probably more like me throwing flour in the air as I pound a peads on a Sunday night and infects the counter.
You're one of those guys. So you've got a ton of different types of digestive enzymes. It appears that the body can make itself and that also you could take in a supplemental form. But one of the things that you touched on as you were talking was this concept of, I believe, muscle repair and muscle recovery. And that's something, I guess, that a lot of people don't think about when it comes to digestive enzymes. I've actually had a few people in the past send me recovery supplements to my front door. And a lot of times I'll look at the label of these recovery supplements, and they do indeed have some of the same ingredients in them as a digestive enzyme complex would have in them. What's the crossover there? Why is it that something that you'd find in a digestive enzyme would help with muscle repair, recovery? What's going on from a physiological standpoint?
Sure. So I'll start with a really cool hack that everybody can do. And this hack was scientifically proven. We'll share the study in the show notes. So what you do, you take, let's say, three capsules of mouse dimes and a couple capsules of our probiotic, which is also proteolytic. And by the way, proteolytic means it just helps digest protein.
Okay. And by the way, just to interrupt you, because I don't want to confuse people, when you say mass zymes, that's a particular blend of digestive enzyme that you. That your company makes.
Correct. So we formulated mastlimes with the intent of giving athletes and bodybuilders an edge. So most enzymes, and not just athletes, but people that work out, you know, most enzymes are really weak in our opinion. They're very low in protease, and they don't have a variety of protease that works in a variety of ph Levels we can get deeper. It's going back to the hack. You take three capsules, two capsules of the P3, one, the probiotics. You mix it in with whatever protein shake. It doesn't matter if it's whey or hemp. We're big fans of plant based proteins, obviously. So whatever mix you're into, throw that in there, shake it, and then sip it while you're working out. And literally your body will start repairing itself a lot faster. So you can achieve more muscle growth, more gains, faster recovery by literally sipping on a pre digested protein shake. And that's really what the enzymes are doing. They're breaking down the protein from protein into usable amino acids. And you just sip on it and you're gonna get a lot more results. So now am I doctor? That's the mechanism.
Go ahead, doctor.
Am I, am I takingso? Let's say I wanna get swole. I want to enhance recovery whether I'm out on a hardcore bike ride or in the gym. I would take protein, let's say a whey protein or rice or hemp or a pea protein. Would I swallow the digestive enzyme Using this hack that you're talking about, Would I break open the digestive enzyme and pour it into the actual shake?
Yeah, make your shake and put the capsules in there so you break it open. I mean, and if you're lazy and you got a good blender, just throw the caps in there.
Now, could I do this in my morning green smoothie? Could I just take the digestive enzymes and when I blend the smoothie, Blend the enzymes in there with the smoothie?
Absolutely. And you'll see. Here's the two things you're gonna see. One, you're gonna visually see there's a biochemical party happening. Like you're gonna see like, wow, there's chemical re. There's literally chemical reactions happening that weren't there before. You're gonna see it. And second of all, you're gonna taste it. Like you're gonna. The taste is very different. You can taste some magic is happening. So those are the two things.
Interesting. I don't know, my green smoothie tastes pretty dang good already. So this will be interesting.
I'm not saying it's gonna taste better, by the way, but you're gonna taste like it's gonna be. Again, there's a biochemical reaction happening.
Got it. Now, you had also mentioned to add probiotics into the mix as well. Why would that be?
Well, again, certain probiotics like P3OM are proteolytic, so they enhance even more the protein digesting effects of mastimes. So it's a great one to knockout blow.
Okay, that makes sense. And one thing I wanted to ask you about. When it comes to that probiotic that you mentioned, you guys have this masszymes digestive enzyme, which is a blend of, I guess you've got what, like 13 or 14 different enzymes in there to help with everything from gluten digestion to lactose digestion. I mean, I'm looking at the label and it's got protease, peptidase, amylase, bromelain, galactosidase, glucoamylase, lipase, lactase, invertase, and diastase. But then in your probiotic, in stark contrast, there's only one ingredient. Lactobacillus plantarum. Why is it that they use that plantarum? Is it because that's the one that's proteolytic or, you know, most probiotic complexes, you see like, you know, seven to 10 different probiotics. Why do you guys just have one great question?
So our probiotic is a transient strain versus being a colonizer. So most people don't understand the difference. The colonizers will go and ideally build a colony on your intestinal tract of good guys. Our strain is like a Navy seal where it's going. And it's a great metaphor because if you read our patent, we'll put the patent in the show notes. It's in our patent. It's been shown to be antiviral, antiretroviral, anti tumoral. So it literally goes and just cleans house. And when I say clean house, taking care of the bad guys, the toxins, the bad bacteria just nukes them. Okay? And we know this to be true. I've had probably about seven different occasions where either myself or my wife or friends of ours have had food poisoning. Like you're going to the wrong buffet or whatever. And you give people 10 capsules and within 10, 15 minutes they're good, versus the people that didn't get the probiotics. They're sick for a couple days. So that's. We know that they're incredibly effective at cleaning house. They're very aggressive. They double every 20 minutes. And you've done the probiotic fermentation with the coconut water. I mean, it would take weeks to achieve a similar acidity with kombucha, for example, versus with the P3OM. It's ours. And that's just because it doubles very quickly. So in getting into why it's so special, we took L. Planterum and have put it through kind of a training process to make it stronger and more aggressive. So that's really the secret sauce. And you can read some of that inside the patent.
Okay, got it. So you'll put a link to that patent in the show notes so you can actually see if people want to look at some of the research behind this particular strain. They can check it out.
Exactly. And a great metaphor is that most probiotics are like a peacekeeping team versus our probiotics are Navy SEALs.
Got it. The Navy SEAL probiotics. You should have just called it, man, the Navy SEAL probiotic. I think that would have been much sexier than P3 omn. Now, another question regarding digestive enzymes. To backtrack a bit back into enzymes. You talked about this little hack where I could take enzymes and this P3O and probiotic and break it open and put it into a smoothie or a shake to enhance recovery or to enhance the muscle repair effect that a digestive enzyme can give you. Now, what I've heard before is that if you take digestive enzymes and you consume them without food, right? Like normally they would act upon the food that you're consuming, but if you take them on an empty stomach that they can actually help to break down, for example, fibrinogen that can contribute to muscle soreness, or they can assist with some of the things that would normally cause you to become sore or inhibit you from building muscle. Is that true or. And this is what I've always wondered, are the enzymes just going to kind of like eat away at your stomach lining and cause gut distress? Can you take digestive enzymes on an empty stomach? And if so, or if not, what's the effect that that's going to have?
Yeah, we can start and then I'll share some studies that are really mind blowing. Go ahead, Wade.
Great, I'll jump in here. Great question. And one of the things that, like yourself, we're very extreme in our testing. So I wanted to test this in excess. So I went on a 10 day fast and consumed 1,000 enzymes a day of these mast times to see if I would break down the. If I'd get one of two things. One, if I would affect my stomach lining, and number two, if I would break the GI barrier. In other words, get the runs. That didn't happen on any level. And I did feel really, really alert. And I did notice some other interesting things. For example, I went through an extreme liver detox My first time doing that, that was pretty neat. But what was interesting when you talk about taking it on an empty stomach, I had a friend of mine who had a huge fibrous necrosis scar from a spider bite that she had read. And it was about a half inch thick scar and probably three inches long. And I would give her the mass signs on an empty stomach and within 10 minutes this scar would become red and start to itch. And over the course of the next nine months she continued that, taking the Massymes twice a day on an empty stomach. She took five capsules twice a day in an empty stomach. And in nine months time the scar had changed from a reddish color to almost completely clear and it had reduced down to completely smooth. In fact, her daughter one day was rubbing her shoulder and said, mom, your scars gone. What happened? And so there was kind of anecdotal evidence or experiential that I got to witness firsthand to see that, you know, the breakdown of tissue and what happens. And when you take in a digestive enzyme on an empty stomach and there's no food, let's say to go, your body is going to preserve that you're not going to break the GI barrier. For example, if you look at vitamin C, there was an old protocol, I think Linus Pauling, that you take in as much vitamin C till you break the GI barrier, that is get the runs and then you cut the dosage and you stay on that dosage till you get the runs and you cut that dosage. And that was a protocol used by a lot of guys in orthomolecular nutrition and their early experimentations. And so you don't have that experience. And that means your body will hold on to enzymes as much as it can because they're so essential for bodily functions. And I believe that a high quality enzyme that is consumed on an empty stomach will become a metabolic or a systemic enzyme inside the body. And I think you're going to see more and more evidence of demonstrating that in the future. I can share with you this from my own personal experience from using mass Zymes. And over the years I went from extremely, you know, how you get that kind of fibrous, very hard muscle tissue, you know, from working out all those years and that sort of stuff. My muscle tissue is extremely pliable. And you know, whenever I got a body worker working on me, he or she is usually like, wow, for a guy that carries as much muscle as you, how come your tissues are so pliable? And I believe there's A direct correlation with the amount of enzymes that I'm using in your body for enhancement. And I think that's one of the big benefits. The other thing is you always want to use a cultured enzyme. There's a degree of potency in enzymes. So, you know, you have, you know, your regular food enzymes that are found in food. You have animal based enzymes, which are extracts from animals. And then you can go all the way up to cultured enzymes which are developed on specific cultures. And it's in a very elaborate process that increases the potency of that enzyme anywhere from 100 to a thousand times, depending on the enzyme, how long it was cultured, the quality of the culture, what nutrients it was used to grow, and what was the extraction process. And that's what we've kind of gone to. So I think why there's a lot of variance in the experiential reality of how people respond to enzymes is largely in part due to the quality of the enzyme they're doing, the dosage that they're doing and how long they sustain those dosages so that they get enough of the benefit that we can build up their enzymatic pool.
Okay, got it. So this is kind of similar to what I would do with, say.
Liver, a really gamey organ meat that I would imagine, I guess you probably don't eat too much of Wade, but to make it a little bit.
Less firm and less chewy, you actually soak it in lemon juice for a period of time. Or raw milk, which also has enzymes in it to actually make it taste good, to make that flesh a little bit more like butter, I suppose. So what you're saying is that when you consume digestive enzymes on an empty stomach or consume them for recovery, you kind of have a similar effect on things like scar tissue and areas of fibrous buildup, et cetera.
Exactly.
Okay.
But it goes even beyond that. And by the way, just hack alert. Cool tip alert. One of the things that I do, I take because I'm in Panama and it's tough to find really good meat here. So I'll buy some rib eyes that are locally raised. Pretty tough meat, but I'll put two or three capsules of the mass dimes and spread it on it for about 60 to 90 minutes. And it just completely starts. I mean, literally, it's breaking down the meat and digesting it.
That's a good idea.
And then I'll clean it, wash it, put the salt and pepper and whatever, and then cook it.
So if I don't have Any lemon juice or raw milk on hand. I could probably use kind of your, like what you're doing as a marinade to soften the meat. I could use that on like, you know, liver or anything else I was trying to soften. You could just break open these digestive enzymes.
Exactly. And if you want another hack to take that to the next level is the mazdymes. And then salt, like put some kosher salt, put the mazdymes first and then kosher salt on top and that really accelerates it. And then you clean it off.
Digestive enzymes with salt. One, two combo. I like it.
It's magic. So in terms of the proteolytic enzymes on a systemic level to speed up recovery, here's four really interesting studies and again we'll link that in the show. Notes 1. Dr. Fulgrave saw that sprains and strains could go from eight weeks of inactivity down to two weeks. J.M. zuklag, in a double blind clinical study using proteolytics enzymes for karate fighters showed absolutely mind blowing improvements. And you can read about this at page 143 of the book, Enzymes Enzyme Therapy.
What do you mean mind blowing improvements?
Well, here we go. Hematomas, 15.6 days to 6.6 days. Swelling 10 days to 4 days. Restriction of movement 12.6 days down to 5. Inflammation. And this is key for everybody. Inflammation, 10.5 days down to 3.8 and unfit for training 10.2 days to 4.2 days.
What were they using for something like this?
They were using a proteolytic enzyme mixture.
Okay, interesting.
And on an empty stomach, the key is to get systemic effects. Because if you take it with food, it's going to break down the food. Right. If you take it on an empty stomach, it's actually gonna get into the bloodstream and start doing some of these mind blowing improvements. We're talking about two more quick studies. Dr. Baumuller used enzymes also in a double blind. Studies showed ankle related injuries would recover up to 50% faster. And the last one is Dr. Lichtman treated boxers and he could take black eyes from 10 to 14 days down to one to three. So that's what we call systemic effects or benefits of enzymes.
Wow, I just sprained my ankle in this last toughest moderator race over the weekend. So maybe I should go upstairs and pop some digestive enzymes.
Pound it.
Boom. I like it. So in terms of enzymes, this is obviously really cool. I mean, I think a lot of people don't really know that you can use these for so many things other than just digesting food. Now.
In terms of the probiotic and enzyme mixture, if I take the probiotics and I take the enzymes at the same time, what's actually going on from a chemical standpoint that would allow either the probiotic to become more efficacious or the enzyme to become more efficacious?
Well, we've done the experiments, and you can actually see it on the website bioptimizer.com greenfield you'll see a video. It's an experiment we did. We took some raw meat, put it in three glasses with some vinegar, which is to kind of replicate stomach acid. One glass, there was nothing going on. And the second glass we had just enzymes. And then the third one, we had our enzymes and our probiotics. And you can see the breakdown is just happening that much faster. And it's because the probiotics are, again, proteolytic, so they're gonna help break thatthat protein down into amino acids. So they're just a great synergistic thing. Again, the proteases in the enzymes and the proteolytic nature of the probiotics are just gonna completely break down those proteins into usable aminos.
Okay, got it. Now, Wade, I had a question for you. In terms of people using digestive enzymes and mistakes that folks make. You know, obviously you could, I suppose, use a digestive enzyme that only has amylase or only has lactase energy. You could just, you know, that's. That's not rocket science. That maybe you just, when looking at the digestive enzyme label, aren't getting all of the different enzymes that Matt was talking about earlier that are responsible, you know, like cellulase for plant fiber and lactase for. For milk and peptidice for gluten. So you'd want a full spectrum. But are there other mistakes that people make when they're. When they're using a digestive enzyme?
Yeah, I'll go into a few things that kind of come up. I think number one is it's too weak. That's the most common one. If you go out to your store shelves and you look around, the thing is, particularly when you're looking at a performance side of things, you really want to concentrate heavily on the proteases. And what happens is those are the most expensive enzymes to make. So a lot of companies kind of cut corners on that simply because the average person isn't sophisticated enough in their education to understand the difference. The other thing is, I feel, from a performance standpoint, they don't take enough volume. We have developed a process that we've tested over the years that we find that taking a high volume of a proteolytic enzyme for say 90 days is sufficient enough that you start to get these kind of ulterior benefits to the product. And in other words, you get your system optimized, if you will, and then you can kind of adjust to your dosage. And of course, we've gone to even further extremes to that and some of our peak performance guys, they really push the limits on that. But for the average person, they just don't take enough and they don't take a high enough quality. And I'll add one other piece to it. When they get to protease, a lot of times people just classify as protease, as protease. But when you're going through that digestive process that I talked about earlier, you have to realize that that ph starts to change from, let's say a neutral or an alkaline state after that first 30 to 60 minutes, when the hydrochloric acid comes in, that that mixture is going to drop from, you know, say seven or eight to seven, to six to five to four, to, you know, to three. And you want proteases that work in all of those ranges. So, and the reason why you want that is because that's what's going to cleave the amino acids or the protein into the usable amino acids inside your body. So we have combined the three main ones, which is the 6.0, the 4.5 and the 3.0. That way we handle the full spectrum of ph. If you're using an animal based enzyme, and there's a lot of people that are using an animal based enzyme blend, its limitations within the ph are extreme and therefore you're not going to get the same effects. The other thing is, if you're not using all three of these.
You'Re not going to digest, absorb and utilize some of the key amino acids. And this is where I think you get people that are having challenges with maybe depression or they're having trouble putting on muscle, or they're having a variety of what we call proteolytic enzymatic pathway issues. This is where we make a distinction. By having the 6.0, the 4.5, the 3.0, you're going to get all those amino acids utilizable by your body so that it can do the repair, make the polypeptide change for your brain and get your whole body rocking and rolling the way it was supposed to. And that's, I think, the big, big mistakes that people make. The other thing is, you know, they don't take them before their meals. What I do is I carry a little tin with me. I take an Altoids, one of those little Altoids containers that you can fit kind of in that change piece of your jeans. And I pack about 25 enzymes inside that, and I just pop them before every single meal. And it makes a huge difference. So I think you need to take it just before the meal and that will suspend your body from producing the enzyme so you don't get the metabolic drain on your body. That's the other thing. So I think taking them just before is a big factor.
So you take it right before. What happens if you forget and you take it during or you take a digestive enzyme after a meal? Will you still get some effect?
Oh, you'll still get the benefits. But keep in mind, your body is extremely.
It'S extremely accurate. Dr. Howell determined that it had the specific. What do you call it? Your body was able to specify what food it has and what amount of enzymes it requires to break down that food. So if you ingest the food without, say, taking in your enzymes, your body is going to start preparing the preparation and release of those enzymes. It's kind of like Pavlov's dogs in the salivating. Same thing with your body. So if you take it beforehand, your body's gonna sense that the enzymes are present and it doesn't need to release that. And that's gonna reduce the metabolic drain of your enzymatic capacity.
Interesting. Okay. Wow. There's a lot here and I've been taking notes and I've got them. Again, if you're listening in over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com Gallant that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com G-A L L A N T Now, a couple of things. First of all, I know that over there or, or if you're listening and you can just go over to their website, buy Optimizers, just like it sounds like. Buyoptimizers.com greenfield you guys have a discount code over there that people can use or a discount that sets in for people.
Yeah, they're going to get up to between 23 and 45% off, depending on the size of the package. So, yeah, we went all in for you.
Cool. And then the other million dollar question. And I'll put a link to their website for you guys in the show notes or again, bioptimizers.com greenfield other million dollar question, because I think we just didn't get into enough detail on this, Matt. And it'll come full circle to how I introduced you the probiotic enema thing. What's kind of like your gold standard method to do this probiotic enema? Can you walk through it just real quick for folks and also go ahead what people can expect to feel why they would want to do this.
So I'm going to actually give a bigger protocol. So Wade and I are fans of fasting once, twice, three times a year. And we usually do. I typically do three to five days and Wade goes up to 10 days sometimes. And of course the research has come out on the benefits of that, how it resets the immune system and all this great stuff.
You mean fasting without eating anything at all?
Correct.
Okay, correct. Just water.
Right. But being a bio optimizer instead of just. So we're always looking to speed things up and accelerate the process. Right. So we will do a couple of things during the cleanse. One of them is, yeah, we're not eating food, but we'll take 10 capsules of Mouse Zymes and five capsules of P3OM three times a day. So what that's doing, it's getting into my bloodstream, doing those beautiful systemic benefits we talked about, as well as breaking down old undigested protein in my intestinal tract, which I think there's always some stuff there. So that's three times a day, 10 capsules of mazdaams, five of P3OM. We also love to do the Batman enema, so. So that's where you're gonna takeand I believe more is better here. So on my next one, and I've got one coming up soon, I'm gonna go up to a gallon, I think I usuallyi used to do a liter, but again, without the colonic machine, it's hard to get deep as I wanna go. So I'm gonna prepare about a gallon of coconut water. Obviously, get some nice fresh coconut water. With about a gallon, you're probably gonna need about six or seven capsules of P3Om, depending on the temperature of your ambient room. Because here's you know why you get sick and your body temperature goes up. And that's because every degree Celsius that your body goes up, enzymes double in.
Capacity or function. So that's why your body turns up the heat, so that the enzymes in your body can do more good. And it's similar with, when you're fermenting things, you know, the warmer the room is the faster it's gonna go. Four to eight hours depending on the temperature is what you want to do. And again, you should be, you should drink it and it should be a little bit acidic because the probiotics are literally eating the sugar, which is another hack, by the way, especially with the holidays coming up. If I'm pounding sugar like I did last night for an example, I'm gonna take 10 capsules of P3OM to help, to help literally break that sugar down andand feed the probiotics instead of me taking on the full blown blow there. But anyways, back to the protocol. Take the probiotics, throw it in the coconut water. When it becomes acidic, that means they've consumed the majority of the sugar and the PH is starting to change. And then you're going to basically go in the shower, put your feet up, have a enema bag, get some help, and then drop the liquid in there. And if you don't have the yoga swing or whatnot, keep your legs up for again, 15, 20 minutes. And if you have an inverted table or some sort of yoga swing hang and just let, let that liquid work its way through and clean house. So that's the protocol. Andand you'll be. Usually you'll see that nothing comes out because your body absorbed it. But if you go deep enough, you might notice the next couple of days some interesting things come out.
Okay, got it. So basically you ferment your probiotics for four to eight hours at room temperature, and if it's slightly hotter, it's gonna ferment faster. And you're fermenting it in coconut water and then you basically do a normal enema, but you're putting all that fermented probiotics up into your butt and hanging upside down for 10 minutes.
You got it.
Ish. Cool. I like it.
There's a little experiment for people to try this week. And if you want to use Matt and Wade's probiotic mix, if you want to use their digestive enzyme mix to tenderize meat or to shoot things up your butt, but you can go to.
Their website, buyoptimizers.com, bioptimizers.com greenfield or just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Gallant if you want all the show notes, the studies they talked about. I'll put a link to the previous podcast that I did with Violite on.
That light that Matt was talking about early on in the podcast. My Power of When podcast was with Michael Bruce about how to know if you're a lion or a dolphin or a wolf or a bear. And plenty of other resources for you guys if you want to take a deep dive into any of this stuff. And in the meantime, Matt and Wade, thanks for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us. Guys. You're a pair of unique dudes who are men after my own heart when it comes to trying to optimize the human body and brain using using cutting edge science. Thanks for coming on and sharing this stuff with us.
Yeah, and thank you. If it wasn't for you, I would not have tripled my deep sleep in the last six months, literally. I've always been a big fan of sleep, but the content that I've learned from you and some of your blog posts have completely radically changed my sleep and of course, my quality of life as a result. So thank you for doing what you do.
Sweet. Well, thanks, man. That's music to my ears. I'll keep doing it now that I know that somebody's listening in.
Yeah, we both love yourwe love your podcast, and I feel that you're right on the cutting edge of the health world. So it's a real pleasure to share a little bit of time with you.
Cool. Well, I'm gonna end this thing then before I get a big head. All right, you guys. Well, thanks for listening in again. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Gallant is where the shownotes are. Go to BioOptimizers.com Greenfield if you want some fat discounts on Matt and Wade's probiotic and enzyme complex. And until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Matt Gallant and Wade Lightheart signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.
You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.
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