Q&A 390: Is Nicotine Healthy, How Long Does Stem Cell Therapy Last, A New Way To Fast & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Is nicotine healthy? How long does stem cell therapy last? A new way to fast, zero gravity beds, and much more.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental. He is Ben Green.

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Speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Hey, Ben, I. Do you smell something weird? I smell something strange. It kind of smells like liver. Is that possible? Liver? Do I smell liver?

Not.

Not pate, and hopefully not fatty liver. But as you and I were just chatting before we hit record, I am indeed doing a liver cleanse this week.

Ah, it smells like delightful, clean liver. Yeah.

I'm venturing down into the. The den of satanic hedonism this weekend in Vegas to watch UFC. UFC 229 is coming up.

And I thought you were going to that island that's called Hedonism, where everybody basically, I think it's just like a orgy sort of island.

I think there are. There are multiple places like that. I'm sure a whole bunch of single listeners. Ears just perked up who, including Monte Jamaica. I think that it's like a couple's resort. Isn't that how some of those resorts work? Like Sandals Resort in Jamaica? I think it's just one giant swingers compound.

I think so, yeah, that's sounds about right.

I don't know about this hedonism island that you allude to, but as a happily married man of 15 years, I'll probably not visit that place anytime soon.

Oh, I didn't allude to it. I came right out and said it.

Yeah. I don't know how we got in that from liver, but yes.

You said you're going to Vegas.

That's right. I'm going to Vegas to. To see UFC 229.

I have some Celine, of course, because her show is shutting down.

So right next to the cage, I've got seats. I don't think I'm going to go out of my way to go see Celine Dion, but my wife and I are gonna go watch guys beat each other up. The thing I'm doing though, this week is I'm cleansing my liver, though. I'm doing a liver Cleanse. I just finished competing in Spartan World Championships, where I won the title of the world's fittest CEO. Assuming you judge the world's fittest CEO by how well they crawl under barbed wire and carry a sandbag.

I do. How else would you.

Yeah, And I figure I got a few days to sit on my ass, or at least a few days to where I don't need to work out super duper hard. So what I'm doing is just this very passive cleanse, and I'm actually liking it quite a bit. I just finished breakfast and. For breakfast and. And actually also for the majority of my meals. For lunch and dinner, too, I've been eating kachari and drinking celery juice. Like, those are the kind of the two main components of the cleanse. Aside from not eating red meat, not drinking alcohol, not consuming caffeine. Aside from the caffeine I'm shooting at my butt every morning as part of the cleanse, which I guess makes a little bit more than a simple cleanse, since I am doing a coffee enema every morning. I'm drinking Epsom salts at night, which tastes like. Like ass.

Like seawater.

No, way worse than seawater. Way worse. Yes. Slough water. Yeah, like seawater. But I'm mixing it with Acacia fiber. So, basically what this means is I wake up every morning feeling as though I've been clinching my ass while laying in bed for the past eight hours.

Yeah. So, anyways, I'm going to test my liver enzymes. I published. I don't know if you listened to my last podcast, my solo episode.

I sure did.

What are we going to call those now? The solo solo sod. Yeah. So I'm.

A little bit concerned about my liver enzymes. So decided what the heck, I'm going to try this liver cleanse, which is. I know was bouncing all over the place, but let me spell this out.

For Bring it home. Bring it home.

Kachari.

Kachari.

And I'll tell you what that is in a moment. For most of my meals, celery juice, which is a fantastic liver cleanse. It just involves me juicing about five stalks of celery at the same time. I'm heating up my kachari to eat. So that. So that's really simple.

So, like a shot of celery. That doesn't sound like it would make much juice.

No, it comes out to about maybe 8 to 12 ounces or so.

Really?

By the time I've juiced it all, I mix that with. With malolactic powder. Because part of this cleanse is supposed to involve drinking copious amounts of apple cider. But I don't like apple cider and I didn't want all that sugar and so I am using malolactic instead, which is just a powder that you get off Amazon. It tastes like apple cider, but it actually does a pretty good job at enhancing several phases of the liver detoxification pathways.

Wait, just to clarify, not apple cider vinegar and not the fermented apple cider that would get you drunk, but like just.

Just juiced apple cider? Just juiced apples? Yes.

That does seem like a lot of sugar.

Yeah, it's part of a detoxification protocol developed in, in Europe and in Switzerland, actually, by one of the fellows who puts on the. Or developed a lot of the protocols that will be following when I take a whole bunch of people over to Switzerland next year. I will put links to that in the show notes. By the way, if anybody still wants to get in, I think there's a wait list, but it's at BenGreenfieldFitness.com390 where we'll spend like two weeks up in the Swiss Alps hiking and detoxing. But anyway, so there's the malolactic powder that I mix in with the celery juice, drink that eat the Kachari, do a coffee enema every morning, do the Epsom salts with the fiber source, which can be psyllium husk, it can be acacia, it could be triphala, just anything that kind of gets the bowels moving the next morning. And that's really it. Aside from just omitting anything that would be considered slightly acidic or something that would require more processing by the liver, such as, of course, alcohol, you know, anything like, I mean, Tylenol or something. Right. All those marijuana edibles that I eat entire chocolate bars of every night, all of that is out the window. So it's about a six day liver cleanse and the last day involves a few other little protocols, basically just like a longer fast and more of the Epsom salts. But. And I know we're really geeking out here, but a castor oil pack placed on the gallbladder and liver area and then you finish up and then I'll hop on the plane to Vegas and.

Go do feed your liver right back up with toxins.

Fantastic things I've done to my liver.

So, Kachari, one more question. Oh, yeah. Before you get to the guitar. So this isn't one of those cleanses that you just basically are increasing the Amount of waste that you're pooping out. This is like, like on a different kind of level, right?

Yeah, it's a different kind of level. It's really weird. I was laying in bed last night and I could feel my liver. This sounds really odd, but it was almost like it was twitching, like contracting. It's very odd.

I don't think it has those kind of muscle fibers.

Well, it could have been my gallbladder in terms of. It's, it's, you know, the liver produces gallbladder or the liver produces bile and gallbladder stores the bile. So my gallb have just been churning out bile. I don't know. Something is happening down there on my upper right quadrant, however, can tell you that. So Kachari, Kacharo, Kachari. It's essentially a one pot meal of split mung beans with a little bit of basmati rice. And then there are a whole bunch of different herbs that you put into that as it's. As it's simmering on the stove. And I literally made myself enough for the entire week, so I just had to do this once. But you mix things like cumin and fennel and coriander. Coriander, ginger, turmeric. I put some fenugreek in there, black mustard seeds. And then I used especially for the sulforaphane, which is actually really good for the liver and is enhanced by the presence of the mustard. I put kale and cauliflower and some cruciferous vegetables in there as well.

You simmer all of this with a little bit of coconut oil and coconut cream. Right. So it's got a little bit of a creamy texture and I think that makes it far more palatable. And then you simply serve with, and this is how I've been doing it, a little bit of fresh lime and a little bit of coconut yogurt and some sea salt to taste. And that's it. It's actually pretty pleasant. I could get used to this. Like, I'm not sick of it after having eaten it already this week, like eight times.

Other than the coconut yogurt, that sounds very similar to a lot of the stuff that I ate when I was in Peru last year.

Oh, really? Yeah.

Well, the Peruvians very fancy beans and rice.

Yeah, the Peruvians must have fantastic livers. So, yeah. Anyways, if I combust in a pile of explosive diarrhea during today's podcast episode or my liver turns gray and falls out, we know why.

And we know why.

News flash.

News flashes. That's pretty good news. Flashes. You know, I've thought in the past about how maybe it's a little bit gimmicky, how we have like the music and the radio announcer voice in between each of the little sections of our podcast, but at the same time it's kind of, kind of old schooly, like, you know.

Yeah, I feel like it's, we're like 1950s radio drama.

It breaks things up. Well, I think. And I don't know, I kind of like it. Yeah, it's like. What era did you say? 50s?

Yeah, I said 50s. But it could even be 30s maybe.

Yeah, yeah, 30.

Back to like War of the Worlds.

I don't know. I didn't listen to radio much in the 30s, but yeah, yeah, you missed out. It's, you know, I remember back in the day, like all the podcasts used to have like garage band sounds. They all the same ones in them, almost like Creative Commons and they use the same music. And some podcasts like ours still kind of have like the little music interludes in the radio announcer voice. And maybe someday I'll get rid of it, but for now I think it's kind of fun.

It's fun.

Anyways, if it annoys you and you're listening in, just leave us a comment over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and then, and then, of course.

Go to hell because we don't care what you think.

Yeah, we, we may not fire our radio announcer. So anyways, this is the part of the show where we talk about interesting things that came across my plate this week and one I thought was going to just be a silly article, like a, you know, have you ever seen the Sit and Be Fit on, on public television? The Sit and Be workouts, which are probably also on YouTube. Just go to YouTube and do a search for Sit and be Fit if you want to be entertained by a ridiculous workout. Anyways, though. So this article is about how to sit in a chair properly and it has this very pleasant older woman who's. Who's demonstrating via these wonderful animated gifs.

Pretty damn fit looking too. Like she, I'd listened to her.

She's a hot old lady. So anyways, Jean Couch, age 75. She's a Percher. She teaches people how to sit in chairs without back pain. And I thought some of her tips were really good. And we'll link to this if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 390 but three of the more potent tips shared in that article, if I could describe it to folks listening in who may not have time to go read the article. One is, when you sit in a chair, you want to sit on the edge of the, of the chair, which allows you to keep your pelvis from tucking under your spine and keeps your back from being in a C shape. So essentially what you want to do when you sit in a chair, you move yourself towards the edge of the chair so that you're as close as possible to having your knees below your hip sockets. So when you are leaning back on the chair, your knees are kind of like at or above the level of your hip sockets. And you want the level of the knees, you know, if you draw a horizontal plane from your hip sockets out to where your knees are to be just a little bit below the level of the hip sockets. And one of the best ways to do that is you simply, when you sit in the chair, kind of push yourself just a little bit more towards the edge of the chair. So pretty sell you the whole chair.

But you only need the edge.

Pretty much, yeah. We've made like half the chair useless with that tip. The next thing that she does is she recommends you build a perch. So this kind of remind me of a mother bird, you know, flitting through the forest and gathering sticks and leaves and branches. Oh, that's great sound effects. Brock. You do a very good, you do very good mother bird. You also chew up, chew up your food and spit it into your girlfriend's mouth before she eats.

That's gross. So anyways, you perch and the way that you do this is you find a pillow or you could take like a blanket or a jacket or a shirt or a rolled up yoga mat or whatever. And when you're sitting towards the edge of the chair, you make yourself this wedge shaped pillow. What that allows you to do is it tilts your pelvis forward so you're just slightly elevated above the chair. So again, your hip bones aren't kind of falling back and resting towards the back of the chair, but that wedge is almost keeping you pushed towards the front of the chair just slightly. And most people have some kind of a coat or, you know, something that you can just roll up and put behind you. If you had a restaurant, you could probably just ask for a whole bunch, bunch of napkins and do it that way. But you build yourself like this little bit of a perch that. I guess the best way to think about this is you put it just a little bit underneath the back part of your butt cheeks. It tilts your pelvis forward and it's a great Idea. So I've actually been trying a lot of this stuff since reading the article, and most of it works. Your back feels far more comfortable. And then the last one is when you're like sitting in your car or you're sitting on an airplane or anywhere where you really are relegated to, you know, you can't sit towards the edge of the chair when you're in your car or else your boobs are going to be stuck in the steering wheel and your chin's going to be, you know, close to the dashboard.

Steering with your chin.

Right. So what you do is you take your shirt or your jacket or your wedge or your yoga mat or whatever else happens to be in the car that you can use. Small child would probably work.

Small animal.

Yeah. Or an animal. Yeah. A bird. You would actually put the cushion that you create right in the middle of your mid back. In the mid back. Firm pillow, blanket, sweater, whatever. And then you elongate your spine by just kind of stretching your back over that pillow. And you've turned that painful, slouchy chair or car seat or airplane seat into a really comfortable.

Support. But also you keep yourself from slouching. You keep your back from again turning into that notoriously damaging C shape that you don't want to have. And those are the three tips. Those are the three tips. Sit at the edge of the seat, build a perch, and then put some kind of a cushion behind your mid back when you're in like a car seat or an airplane seat.

I took away a fourth thing from her images. If you look at the way her legs are positioned, she doesn't. She has like them sort of out in front of her. So she's not increasing, increasing that flexion that's happening in, in your hip flexors. So she's actually like opening up a little bit by keeping her legs more or less straight. And one often straighter than the other too, which kind of mimics that way that we always talk about the Captain Morgan stance. When you're standing at your desk, you should have one foot up occasionally. It's sort of the same idea.

Yeah. A bottle of rum in your hands.

So check out that article. And then another one that I like is this new study on express weight training. Have you heard about this new study that found you can build strength in just 13 minutes? So this was pretty interesting what, what it looked into. And this would not be a way to build copious amounts of athletic performance to allow you to go and, you know, compete in the CrossFit games, for example.

However, Or a bunch of muscle. Like gain a bunch of muscle mass, either.

Yeah.

This is only a way to build strength, which is great, but.

Yeah, right. Build strength, not hypertrophy. That's a good point. These folks weren't actually building muscle, but what they did in this study was they took a whole bunch of young men and they had one group complete five sets of each of the different exercises that they use. They use common exercises like the bench press and the lat pull down and the leg press. And a set of any of these exercises simply required the participants to lift to failure. And please note that they were lifting to failure. That's important. And One group did five sets of each exercise to failure with 90 seconds of rest between exercise. So at the gym for about 70 minutes. So pretty standard.

I think that's the general way most people do it. Including me.

Yes. And then the second group was asked to complete three sets of each exercise, and for them, they were at the gym for about 40 minutes. But the final group, they only had them do one set of each exercise, and it took that group about 13 minutes. So they did this for a relatively long period of time. They did it for eight weeks, and they were working out for three times a week. And they did before and after measurements of muscular strength. They also measured muscle size and muscle endurance, neither of which seemed to be significantly affected. But after the two months of training, after these eight weeks of training, all of the groups were stronger, including the group that did just one set. And in fact, the group that did just one set gained as much strength as the group that did three sets, and even the group that did five sets. So the caveat is that the group that did five sets definitely had a significantly greater amount of muscle mass development, so they gained better size. But when it came to strength, it turns out that these brief forays in the gym can do just fine in terms of a allowing you to maintain functional strength. I personally do this kind of a variation of this quite a bit when I travel. Probably the difference between me and the group in this study is that I'm in the gym a little bit longer, probably closer to, by the time I've warmed up and everything, 20 to 25 minutes. Because what I do is a single set to failure for five different exercises. The chest press, the pull down, the shoulder press, the seated row, and the leg press. But I do super slow training, which means that I'm doing any of those given exercises for about two to two and a half minutes. And furthermore, I finish off each set with a Quick kind of partial range of motion, series of explosive reps so that I completely exhaust the muscle. And, and this is important, I use my fast twitch muscle fibers, so I'm hitting those and not just the slower twitch fibers that you use during the super slow training. So that's kind of the variation that I use is a little bit more of a super slow approach. But I'm still doing just one single bleeding lactic acid out the eyeballs and ears set to failure, and then I'm done. And this study backs up the fact that that really does allow you to maintain strength, but also hack your life, so you've got more time available. So I think it's just, it's good for people to know that you don't have to spend that much time in the gym. Although I don't have. If your gym is your, like, getaway, if that's your meditation for the day, going to the gym for an hour and putting on an audiobook or the nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Ben Greenfield fitness podcast. Because this is definitely a podcast that's longer than 13 minutes. If that's your meditation, fine. But if you just want to get in and get out quickly, please know that a single set is all that it really takes.

Hey, let me ask you this. When you do your workout or when you would tell somebody to start this workout, how would you determine what weight to start with? Like, what would you load up the bar with, let's say, for a chest press single set?

You know what, my, my method is pretty rough around the edges, but the way that I do it is I do the first rep, and if I can't do the first rep with really good form, moving super slow, if I'm already arching my back, for example, on that first rep, then I reach down to the little pins on the weight stack and I decrease the weight by, by a, you know, a, a plate, right. And some of those machines have the micro adjustment little knob that you can turn that'll decrease it 5 or 10 pounds. So I do a little bit of tweaking on that first rep. If I can maintain perfect form on that first rep. And I can also sense that I'm not going to be completely toast within like 30 seconds or after one or two reps, then I'll keep the weight where it's at. But yeah, it's a little bit of kind of a foggy science. But the more that you do this style of training, the more you get used to just kind of knowing whether you've got way too Much weight loaded up or not enough. And then the other thing that you can do is you can strip set. You know, as you go through the set, if you get to three reps and you've had maybe 60 seconds of time under tension, and you know that you want to get two to two and a half minutes of time under tension, you can just decrease the weight a little bit. That's why I like to do this type of workout on machines because it's very simple. You know, on the chest, press to reach down, adjust the machine, keep going. Versus with dumbbells where you got to go rack them, you know, or, or the barbell where you gotta, you know, remove plates, add plates, etc, and so.

So yeah, that's, that was a good, a good measure because like the, the time under, under stress is probably the, the most important thing anyway. So instead of thinking about it in terms of weight, just think about what you can lift for two minutes without stopping or your, your form falling apart.

Yeah. And if you want to read a whole book about this, if you need to read an entire book to learn how to super slow train, which I don't think is necessary, but it's an interesting book, is Body by Science, by author Doug McGuff. Doug McGuff, great, great book on that.

All right, okay, I'll stop bugging you on this one. Move on.

The last thing was a simple method of fasting that produced some pretty profound body fat and metabolic results. In a nutshell, what this study did was they simply had people delay their morning meal, their breakfast by 90 minutes and then eat dinner 90 minutes earlier. Right. So they were creating essentially a compressed feeding window for these subjects during this 10 week study. So you call this time restricted feeding, which is a form of intermittent fasting. So the participants were split into two groups. The group that of course ate meals as they normally would eat meals just sprinkled throughout the day, and then another group that waited an extra 90 minutes to eat breakfast. Let's say you have your breakfast at 10am instead of 8:30am and then they move their dinner back. So instead of having dinner at, let's say 7:30pm you would have dinner at 6pm what they found was a significant response in fat. And as a matter of fact, the researchers found that people who changed their mealtimes lost on average more than twice as much body fat as the control group with this simple switch. What I like about this is it is a very simple switch for reduction of body fat via this compressed feeding window. You simply take whatever time you normally eat breakfast. And even if you're just gonna try this for a week to see what happens, just shift that breakfast time forward by 90 minutes. And yeah, that might mean that you're having breakfast at your office while you're working. And breakfast might be whatever, a smoothie or a handful of nuts and berries or say like maybe a cup of coffee with some superfoods or mushrooms or oils or something like blended in so that it's something that you can eat while you're working. And then for dinner, you simply have dinner earlier. Which of course also requires some, some shifts in your schedule. Like let's say you go to the gym normally in the afternoon or evening after work. Well, maybe you would actually have dinner and then get some things done, play with your kids, hang out, you know, redo whatever it is you're going to do and then go to the gym at, let's say like, you know, seven, because you've had dinner earlier. So, you know, it would require some switching of some of your schedules. But ultimately it's pretty, pretty significant the amount of fat loss that occurred by the introduction of this compressed feeding window. And I think this is a very logical and simple way for people to wrap their heads around it because that's all they did in the study, delay breakfast by 90 minutes and then have dinner 90 minutes earlier.

So I wouldn't suggest this for. I mean, most of the people who are listening to this podcast right now are probably already doing a compressed eating window. They're probably doing like 16 to 18 hour overnight intermittent fasts. Now, this isn't, you don't want to.

Add this on top of that? I'm going to interrupt you. I don't think most people are doing a 16 to 18 hour. I think most people are probably doing a 12 to 16 hour. But think about a 16 to 18 hour. You know, that usually requires completely skipping breakfast in most cases because you're not eating till, you know, noon or 1pm in many cases, if you're doing that type of fast, these folks are still eating breakfast. They're just eating breakfast later.

Okay, sure. So if you're already doing intermittent fasting, though, like, Even if it's 12 hours, this isn't necessarily on top of that. This is for people who aren't already engaging in some sort of intermittent fast.

Yeah, exactly. But anyways, we'll link to the study.

I just don't want a whole bunch of people running off and being like, well, I'm only eating for like six hours now. I guess I have to chop another three hours off of that.

Right. Another way to think about this is just have an 8 to 10 hour compressed feeding window.

Yeah.

Whenever you normally just, just try to spread all your meals within about eight to 10 hours. You know, preferably not between like let's say midnight and 8am try and choose something more conducive to circadian rhythmicity, like have all your meals between 10am and 6pm, for example. So the only other thing I should throw in there is that in our household, the Greenfield household, I have sacrificed the health benefits and the circadian rhythm benefits of an earlier dinner for the social and happiness benefits of having a family dinner. Because by the time my kids finish jiu jitsu and tennis and piano and post school activities, by the time I've finished, all I have to get done during the day, by the time my wife has actually, you know, gotten done with the goats and the chickens in the yard and everything we're doing, sometimes we just don't have the time to sit down together as a family until 8 or 8:30pm for dinner. And yes, that's not ideal because ideally you should have your dinner done with about three hours prior to bedtime. And ideally you should have this compressed feeding window. But I also, you know, in our household, family dinners are a must. Like that's the time when we gather around and we play table topics and we'll play some games game together Pictionary, which I find annoying because I have to stop every two minutes for meeting to draw something. But we really prioritize this time when the whole family can get together at the end of the day, we can't do it at breakfast because everyone's running around getting ready for the day, getting ready for school, lunchtime, the kids aren't here, and lunch is kind of an afterthought for me anyways. And I usually am working through lunch. And so dinner turns out to be the meal that allows us to have these family dinners that, in my opinion, are one of the things that kind of keeps our family together and all on the same page and lets us catch up on each other's lives and not be like ships in the night throughout the entire week. So, you know, for those of you listening in who feel like this could disrupt family dinners, for example, I personally think the importance of family dinners and a good social relationship with your family trumps any metabolic issues that might arise from having a slightly later dinner.

Yeah. In fact, even in that study, they said in the questionnaire after the study was done that the response or the respondents indicated that social eating and drinking opportunities were negatively impacted even by this 90 minute thing. So.

Yeah, right, it's a problem. Exactly. So don't do this if it means you got to sacrifice beers with the boys in the evening. Just not worth it.

Special announcements.

So this is the part of the show where I give everybody amazing deals that you can't get elsewhere. Don't fast forward this because we actually give you some pretty good deals and even extra tips. That Kachari that I mentioned. Remember how I was saying that coconut cream and coconut oil, you kind of include as you're simmering the split mung beans and the rice with all the spices and herbs. Well, coconut cream is actually a really good thing to have around, so. So it's extremely high in B vitamins and vitamin E. It's got a ton of selenium and phosphorus and magnesium in it. And coconut milk is of course quite popular. But coconut cream, it's creamier, it's more thick, it's a little bit more rich and you can get really good, high quality coconut cream that comes from ethically sourced. I guess this means they didn't kill any humans or small animals or pollute.

Seawater primates, I think, that are in danger here.

Yeah, they didn't take down any monkeys. So they use ethically sourced organic coconuts in the Philippines. And these are incredibly pure coconut extract. They only have coconut extract in water, no carrageenan or preservatives or anything like that. I order this and I order about once a month from this company called Thrive Market. What Thrive Market does is they carry a whole bunch of food and snacks and vitamins and supplements and personal care products and eco friendly cleaning supplies. But they give you about 50% off on average what you'd normally pay at like the fancy grocery store, like say whole paycheck. And then they also have about 70% of their catalog comprised of things you can't find on Amazon, like really good, clean, organic stuff that is kind of like a step above when it comes to health. And everything from organic. The way that it's ethically sourced, the way that it's shipped, packaged, everything. So you can actually get 25% on your first order to Thrive Market. And in addition to that, what they're giving all the listeners is $60 of free groceries, free shipping and a 30 day trial. So a ton of goodies from Thrive Market. And may I recommend the coconut cream if you're gonna clean up your liver like me, very simple. You just go to thrivemarket.com Ben thrivemarket.com Ben and you can be off to the races. Get the coconut flake cereal too while you're over there. That stuff's amazing.

And the, the sprouted popcorn. It's really good too.

Yes. So thrivemarket.com Ben I also, while I've got everyone's mouth watering, wants to fill you in. That's nat. So you can do the baby bird. The baby bird or the, the mommy bird throwing up. Mommy bird throwing up. And then that disgusting salivary sound that you just made.

I hope nobody has that. What's that called? The hyperphonia. No.

Yeah. The ability to be able to sense. What, how's that go again?

No, it's when you absolutely like irrationally hate the sound of like mouth noises.

Yes.

Misophonia. Misophonia.

That's what. Misophonia.

Sorry everybody. With misophonia.

Yep. That's why I'm not chewing my gum right now. So cod and coconut curry bowl with brown rice, sweet and spicy udon noodles with fried eggs and vegetables and seared chicken and roasted potatoes with kale salad and creamy Calabria dressing are just three of the meals that are on the menu this week at Blue Apron. So what Blue Apron does is they deliver all these farm fresh ingredients and step by step recipe cards to your door. And you choose any of these recipes, you cook them, you can make them in as little as 20 minutes. My kids make these meals, they ship them straight to the house and they've got all sorts of these fantastic chef designed recipes like the ones that I just talked about. For those of you who do things like the Whole30 diet, for example, example, they've got a whole, Whole30 approved menu. So they, they do have healthy stuff and they make it incredibly convenient. You know, speaking of family dinners, even if you don't have time to cook them because you're off whatever at soccer practice, you can get home and have one of these meals just ready to rumble in literally like 20 minutes. So everybody listening gets their first three meals free. Very simple. You go to blueapron.com Ben that's blueapron.com Ben so another thing you can eat is this stuff called Omax. Have you tried this yet, Brock? Omax O M A X so it's called Omax. What they pride themselves on is they make the purest Omega 3 supplements. So meaning that a lot of fish oil, you'll get fish burps and in many cases that's because of saturated fats and toxins and PCBs they remove all this stuff with this special distillation process that they use at Omax. So all you get left with with are these ultra pure omega 3 fatty acids. And they even have this cool thing they do called the freezer test challenge where if you freeze a lot of other fish oils they get cloudy and that's just all the Filler. But the Omax 3 Gels, they remain totally clear. They actually have one too that's like this really cool, like a CBD infused omega 3 fatty acid. Really it's called, yeah, it's really good for nighttime relaxation. It's got theanine cbd. I forget what else is in it. But anyways it's called called Omax 3 and Omax 3 Ultra Pure is the one that's just completely pure fish oil. So what you get is a free box of Omax. With any purchase from Omax they're just going to give you a free box that they'll throw in there. And to do that you go to tryomax.com ben and you get a free box of their Omax 3 Ultra Peer with any of the purchases there. So it's omax omax.com tryomax.com Ben in fact, I'm sorry, try T R Y tryomax.com Ben is the URL. And then the last thing is, and this is not probably is something that you could eat, it is clean enough to eat if you really wanted to. It is a deodorant and the primary ingredients are coconut oil, arrowroot powder, a little bit of sodium bicarbonate or baking soda and then essential oils. And the one that I use is Cedar Fresh. So if you smell me, anytime you see me, those of you out there happen to meet me at conferences and stuff. If I smell like a wonderful flavorful forest, like the kind of little elves running around in it, it's because I'm wearing this deodorant. I'm not eating it, I'm just wearing it. It's called Cedar Fresh. It's an organic plant based natural deodorant. And I get this. What's so funny?

You smell like BO and forest.

That's. Yeah, I smell like a.

Horribly detoxing liver and cedar. That's what I smell like right now. This is the same place I get my toothpaste, same place I get my body wash. It's on it. O n N I T A lot of people don't realize they have these fantastic personal care products over there and you get 10% off of all their stuff, their toothpaste, their deodorant, their body wash. Really clean stuff. And again, you could eat all your personal care products. You were stuck on a desert island and it's if for some strange region on that desert island all you had was your personal care products. I'd recommend you also have a fishing pole, but you could eat them. Go to Bengreenfield Fitness and your Kindle. Yes, my kindle. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com onnit that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com o n n I t that saves you 10% off of any purchase from Onnit. The only other things for today's news flashes that I should probably mention are just a few events that are coming up right around the corner that I know are full. Yet one is an event I'm teaching at for like docs and healthcare practitioners. I know we have a lot of people in Kionu going to this. Kionu is the private mastermind that I run for coaches. You can check it out over at getkion.com getk I-O-N.com and this is a place where you learn business building tips, where you learn a lot of more kind of like cutting edge scientific health concepts. It's called the live it to lead it conference. It is speak of the devil down in Vegas. Which means I get to be in.

Vegas, spend a lot of time there.

Twice the next few months. I know, seriously.

And you're not going to go see Celine?

No, Celine. It's Celine, not Celine. Anyway, so check that out. I'm also speaking at the American Academy of Anti Aging Medicine in Vegas in December. Come on man. So we'll put a link to a lot of these places where I'll be speaking over in the shownotes@bengreeklefitness.com 390 for those of you who aren't docs and don't want to go to crazy events in Vegas, I'll be also in Chicago racing the Spartan race in Chicago. I will be speaking at the biohacking conference the day before that, October 16th up in Toronto, Ontario. And then I will be also speaking at David Boulay's Chef Dinner November 13th in New York City. And the day before that I'll be over in Boston racing the Spartan race in Boston. So all sorts of events there that you can join. Joined me in. I realized that sounded like a lot but should you not have memorized any of that? Just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 390. We'll put all of that into the extremely robust show notes that we work on for you guys. And I think that's about it.

Listener Q and A.

Hi.

Been several different bed and mattress companies.

Promote these zero gravity beds. Do zero gravity beds or incline beds improve sleep quality or impact core muscles in a negative way? Also, can disconnecting the bed plug remove the electricity to improve sleep? Thank you much, John.

So I honestly had never heard of gravity beds before.

Really? I had to go under a rock. Everybody's talking about gravity beds.

Yeah, well, apparently, according to John, I'm. Yeah, I am living under a rock, but I've had gravity boots, I've had inversion tables. I've never tried a gravity bed.

Well, they were developed by NASA, so we automatically know that. That they must be well researched and efficacious. That's pretty much like if you want to claim that anything is worth someone's penny or in this case, many pennies, you tell them it was developed by NASA or that it came from Russia or Japan.

Right.

Those are the best ways to lend instant credibility to anything you say. And ideally, it's like NASA researchers working with Japanese and Russian researchers to develop something.

That's the trifecta.

That's the trifecta. That's the best way you can ensure that you get instant credibility. So the zero gravity position, though, all joking aside, it actually was something that NASA came up with. They invented this neutral body posture for astronauts to sit in as they would launch spacecrafts into orbit. So astronauts, of course, encounter zero gravity as a spacecraft changes speed as it orbits. And that's necessary to keep atmospheric pressure from. From pulling the spacecraft back in. And the centrifugal force that is used to accelerate the space vehicle works to offset gravity. And so they call this zero gravity. And NASA created a zero gravity seating position to alleviate the compression forces of pressure on the spine and the body of astronauts during these space shuttle takeoffs.

And that's basically the. The lazy boy position, like the recliner position, right?

Yeah, it is. It's popular. And a lot of these, like massage beds or relaxing beds that you'd sit in before you get your massage. There are some companies that have developed special beds, like a lot of pulse selectomegnetic field companies, PEMF companies like BE Beamer or Pulse Centers that develop these beds that you sit in that kind of blast your body with PEMF frequencies, which are great. I like those for things. Decrease inflammation, increase blood flow, you sleep better. But they originally all came from NASA and then Bed manufacturers and some of these biohacking device manufacturers realized the benefits that zero gravity would have if you somehow figured out a way to work these into a bed or something that you wouldn't necessarily find in a spaceship. So the zero gravity position, what it does, it relieves the pressures of gravity from the body by distributing your body weight evenly. So in most cases, it's an adjustable frame that allows for your legs and your head to be raised at a different angle to reduce back pressure and increase circulation. And so in a zero gravity position, the angle of the thighs and the torso get aligned, and then the upper body and the head are raised just a little bit, the knees are slightly bent, and, you know, if you can't picture it, just go to Google images and type in zero gravity and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. But what they found is that this results in less back pain and less neck pain. Excuse me. Because a flatbed adds pressure to your body's natural S shaped spinal column. And once you eliminate that flatness and you evenly distribute pressure, you actually can get relief of any pain or the production of like, you know, soreness and discomfort in your back and your neck when you're laying flat in your back. They've also studied this for snoring. And they found that the head gets slightly elevated in the zero gravity position. The airways open, it prevents the tongue from slipping back during sleep. So if you have like sleep apnea or you snore, then this is something that can help with that so you actually get, get better. Specifically rapid eye movement sleep cycles or REM sleep cycles when you do this, they've found that it takes unneeded pressure off of heart muscles. So if people have heart issues, they've had cardiovascular incidents, they've had heart attacks, you get better flow of blood through the heart. And so the zero gravity position could be good for people who are concerned about cardiovascular issues. People who get heartburn and acid reflux often, they just should not be eating so much damn food before they get into bed at night. But laying in zero gravity, if you do decide you just want to, you want to stuff your gaping maw and then stumble up the stairs and into bed. It does elevate the upper body, so stomach acids don't come easily back up. So it could help to ease heartburn and acid reflux. Although again, I think there are other underlying reasons for that. And you should fix a few things before you rush out to buy a zero gravity bed to fix your heartburn, probably you get less Swelling because the legs are elevated. Obviously you get better breathing, especially for people who have like allergies or asthma. They have used zero gravity beds for this and found that people breathe better in those type of situations. And sleep overall appears to be somewhat improved in terms of actual sleep cycles and circadian rhythmicity. So these zero gravity beds actually have a lot going for them. And there are companies that, that sell them. You know, I'll put links in the show notes. Probably one of the more popular ones. It's called, it's got a great name. It's called the ghost bed. The ghost bed. And it's an adjustable zero gravity bed. You can literally like push buttons on it and get the bed to be exactly at the angles that you want to be at. And they sell like this curvaceous base that allows you to adjust it to your needs. And compared to some of these like $10,000 organic mattresses is they're not that expensive. I mean, like, I think it's about 3,000 bucks to get like the whole kit and caboodle. Like, like the whole zero gravity base and the zero gravity curved mattress. There's another company on Amazon called Zero Gravity G Force, same thing. They've got like this, this big, like California King style adjustable bed. That one even has a massage option on it so you can get a zero gravity that way too.

It's like the beds in the old motels where you put a quarter in and it goes.

Just shakes like hell next to your.

Heart shaped hot tub. Exactly. There is also a company called Dynasty Mattress that has a pretty good one. I don't sleep on one. I don't sleep on one. Even though I do have one of the pulse center's PEMF tables. That actually is a zero gravity table. So I'll sometimes nap on that. So I can double up and get pulsed electromagnetic field therapy at the same time that I'm napping. And I'll put a link to my podcast with pulse centers in the show notes. But I don't have one of these beds. What I have is something called an intellibed. It's an actual intelligent bed. As the name implies, the intellibed, it does math. It uses gel. It uses gel and it's this double layer of gel. A lot of people ask me what kind of matrix that I sleep on. It's called a gel matrix that they use. So they blend gel with foam. So it's very supportive of the body. But it feels like you're laying on memory foam. Like it's actually A firm surface, but it feels like you're laying on memory foam. They call the technology they use in that dynamically adaptive cushioning. So it just kind of adapts to your body when you lay on it like a typical foam mattress does. But it's about three times more firm than a foam mattress. And they had a bunch of sleep scientists work with the company to develop this. Admittedly, the mattress that I sleep on is more expensive than any of these zero gravity beds. Like, I think that the total for my actual mattress was something like 7K. So. So that's a little bit more expensive. But I mean, they've got like this cooling technology fabric in it. It's got a 20 year warranty. They use copper infused latex. I mean, it's a, it's, it's a pretty nice bed. Like, I, I've, I've laid in some of these zero gravity beds and the angle of your body is cool, but man, I mean, these intelli beds can't be beat. And I just want to point out the elephant in the room here. It's also incredibly difficult to have sex on a zero gravity bed.

I'm just saying, like, somebody's bent in the wrong direction.

Yeah. And some of them are, are like I mentioned, they're, they're motorized and have the ability to like flip a switch so they can kind of go flat. But ultimately.

I like the intellibed. Like if you like to own nice things. I think the intellibed is top of the totem pole. I think these zero gravity beds are pretty cool. I'm actually building a guest house out in the forest behind my house. And maybe I'll get a zero gravity bed for that just so that people who come over or if I ever want to go sleep in a zero gravity bed after I've been traveling a lot or something, I want to drain my legs. I could. But yeah, it's an interesting question. And ultimately, to answer John's question, yeah, I mean they, they can definitely help. John also asks if unplugging them could help to remove the electricity to improve sleep. Yeah, anything that you have plugged in your bedroom that could be unplugged while you're asleep, it's a good idea. But what I do in my own bedroom is I just have these things called dirty electricity filters. And anything that's plugged in, in the bedroom is plugged into one of these dirty electricity filters. So it pretty significantly limits any amount of electrical pollution. And I did this big podcast with a building biologist in my, that was fun. And he, he definitely found with his little testing monitors that these dirty electricity filters did indeed keep me from, I don't know, sprouting a third green eye while I was asleep from electrical pollution. So there you have it. That's the skinny on zero gravity beds.

You know what I've been sleeping on recently that I just absolutely love and.

Is really cheap bed of name nails.

How did you know that's exactly what I was going to say? Bought some plywood, put some nails in it, Boom.

Hey guys, my name is Andrew. Ben's podcast with Tyler LeBaron. And the recent hydrogen water generator giveaway that you did has gotten me really interested in hydrogen water. In the podcast you guys mentioned that the antioxidant effect of the water doesn't blunt the hormetic effects of exercise. Could you explain a little bit more of what you mean by that to me and whether or not hydrogen water would counteract any adaptations to say, muscle hypertrophy or endurance training. Thanks. Love the podcast.

So apparently I can't say hydrogen rich water hide wojen. It comes down very much like Elmer Fudd hydrogen. Which water?

Yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to necessarily create an enormous amount of redundancy considering that, as Andrew alluded to, I interviewed Tyler Liberty on the director of the Molecular Hydrogen Institute and a friend of mine and we geeked out on this for like an hour. So I'll link to that podcast in the show notes if you really want to take a deep dive into molecular hydrogen. But in a nutshell, what it is is molecular hydrogen, or H2, also known as diatomic hydrogen. It's a tasteless, odorless gas and kind of like my own gas. It's tasteless and odorless. I've tried many times. Doesn't taste, doesn't stink. It's just gas. I'm like a, like a, like a little baby, you know, you know how babies are at that certain age when they're very young and their doesn't stink. I'm like, no, I'm like that with my guess. I guess you don't. You're not a father. Yeah, but I can tell you like.

Children, when their babies poop at all.

Costs, when babies are very young, their stool does not smell that bad at all. Like it's not sulfurous and nasty. And I think, I think it's just because they're just so freaking clean when they first pop out. They're doesn't stink. So anyways, what H2 does, is it mediates what's called the NRF2 pathway, which is an inflammatory pathway and that can regulate your levels of glutathione and superoxide dismutase and catalase and all these really beneficial endogenous antioxidants that you create. And in addition to that, very similar to say nitric oxide or CF or H2S or these other gaseous signaling molecules that are found in our body, it can modulate protein phosphorylation and gene expression and signal transduction. And that's the mechanism via which it provides a lot of its anti inflammatory effects and anti allergy effects. It's got some pretty cool what are called anti apoptotic effects, which means it can limit cell death, it can limit excess cell death. And, and one of the things that Tyler LeBaron and I talked about in that podcast episode was the fact that unlike many antioxidants like especially antioxidants like synthetic vitamin C or synthetic vitamin E, molecular rich hydrogen, specifically like when you drink it when it's been dissolved in water, it can actually allow you to decrease inflammation and recover more quickly without blunting the hormetic response to exercise. Meaning when you exercise, you would want for example, satellite cell proliferation to occur so that you can repair muscle cells so they grow back bigger or stronger, or so that you get the muscular effects of the workout that you're doing. And when you dump too many antioxidants in the body, the inflammatory pathways necessary for that mechanism to occur get shut down. The same could be said for example, for the response to training in terms of the buildup of mitochondrial dental. You can blunt that when you take a whole bunch of antioxidants or you like take a 20 minute ice bath after a workout. Well, there are some anti inflammatories and antioxidants that don't do that. Green tea polyphenols is one example. Ketone esters are another example. And hydrogen rich water is yet another example. Something that can ease inflammation, ease pain, it can assist with sleep. There's a lot of really interesting studies behind.

How about curcumin does curcumin does not.

Blunt the hormetic response to exercise. Curcumin would actually blunt the hormetic response exercise. Like that's. Yeah, yeah. Based on any of the studies that I've seen, you would want to time your turmeric or your curcumin intake for several hours after your workout and not pop something like that right after your workout.

Sorry for interrupting.

Anyways, what I do that's okay, asshole. What I do is I actually have these little tablets. They're made by a company called True Trusi T R U S I I that I travel with. Then I have in my basement an actual hydrogen water generator. And I've had several clients and even some of the sports teams that I work with purchase these hydrogen rich water generators and you just drink your water out of that rather than drinking your water out of the tap. So that's a really, really good way to get more hydrogen rich water. And then there are other companies and I'll put links in the show notes to a few other options. Like there's, there's one company.

I'm totally blanking on the name of it, but I've got a bunch of their cans up in my refrigerator right now and they do hydrogen rich water infused with fermented beet juice. This stuff has some really good research behind it for things like nitric oxide production. That's a really potent way to get your hydrogen rich water again, kind of spendy. But I'll put some links in the show notes to some other options. But even if you just have the tablets that you travel with and, or a hydrogen water generator can be a really cool way to get some of these benefits. And you know, I asked Tyler about this after our podcast and you know, he definitely backed up the fact that conventional antioxidants can negate the benefits of exercise training. And there's some pretty good research behind that. But there's zero studies that show that molecular hydrogen would impair exercise performance or training adaptations. And at the same time, there's several, several clinical studies that demonstrate pretty significantly that H2 can improve exercise performance and enhance exercise induced training adaptations. And you do definitely get a mild increase in free radicals, but those serve as signaling molecules to the body when you consume the H2. So it ultimately is probably one of the better forms of water, in my opinion, that you could be drinking. So I'm, I'm a huge fan of it. And hydrogen rich water is kind of, you know, I don't like to throw this term around too much, but it's like one of those biohacks that I, I use and drink on a, on a daily basis. I can, in addition to my kachari and my coffee enemas, of course.

Yeah, I can attest I've met Tyler at the A4M conference a year or so ago and dude is fit. So if he's using this stuff, stuff, it's, it's working for him.

Yeah, he's fit and he's smart. He's also the same guy who informed me when I was sitting next to him at a conference having lunch that I was making a, a big mistake by taking 5 grams of creatine a day. Because creatine is only absorbed maximum at like 2 grams. So if you're, if you like you still use, yeah, use 5 grams of creatine a day. But just like have a, have like just a basic creatine monohydrate powder on your kitchen counter counter. And when you have a glass of water, like put one and a half or two grams into the water, preferably warm, stir it up and drink it. That way rather than taking all your creatine at once, like in the morning or pre workout. Hey Ben, Gabe here. In the last year or so I've gone from smoking cigarettes to vaping to snuff pouches. And then more recently I've discovered this stuff called Zyn, which is non tobacco nicotine pouches, watches. And I was wondering what your thoughts were on them and what your thoughts were on nicotine in general, whether it's all good or all bad and when it should be used and not used. Thanks. I think I need to go take a big drag in my cigarette Apply.

You smoking parliaments.

Do you make a cigarette sound effect? Are you able to do that along with your bird?

Could you hear that?

Pretty good. That's pretty good.

It's me blowing a smoke ring.

I like that. I like that. Well, cigarettes, we of course know, have been proven time and time again, to be honest.

And not really with a cowboy hat or after sex.

If you want to look sexy, everybody.

Should have a packet of cigarettes around. They keep you lean and thin. But contrary to common opinion, because it's been thrown under the bus along with cigarettes. Nicotine. Nicotine is not a carcinogenic substance. I should note that if you already have a tumor, there's some evidence that nicotine may actually play a role in angiogenesis to tumors. Meaning, like if you already have a tumor, it's probably not a good idea to be using nicotine. So if you have cancer, don't rush out to buy Habitrol gum. The same could be said, for example, for protein, right? Like I'm a huge fan of protein for, for its anabolic benefits, its appetite satiating benefits, the fact that you know the amino acids and it can act as neurotransmitter precursors. But if I already had a tumor, I would eat very, very low amounts of protein because it could allow for Tumor growth. But I mean, with nicotine, unless you already have a tumor, it's not carcinogenic in the least. And it actually has a lot of really good things going for it that I can fill you in on right now.

Or it's not a tumor. Yeah. Before filling you in on this, I should note too that I probably consume close to 3-4mg of nicotine a day, whether via nicotine lozenges, like dissolved in the mouth pre workout, which I absolutely love. Nicotine gum. I chew on nicotine gum, usually a couple pieces a day. And then you'll occasionally find me like if I'm out at a dinner and it's like a late night dinner and I want to be up like all. A lot of times have like a nicotine toothpick sticking out my mouth. I also am a big fan of writing in my book with a nicotine toothpick and a cup of coffee, it's writer's best friend. That's a great one, two combo.

You feel badass with a big black cup of coffee and nicotine toothpick hanging out the corner of your mouth. Just a good look.

That is a good look. That's very dirty hairy of you.

Yeah, yeah, I'm all dirty hairy.

So you don't use the nicotine spray at all? Alcohol? That I don't like thing.

No, I don't use a nicotine spray. I know what you're talking about. I just don't. I don't. It's. It's available for sale in Canada, but you can't even buy it in the us.

Oh, yeah, that's right. It's a. Yeah, it's a Canadian invention and thing.

Yeah, it's. It's not impossible to get. I mean, I have Canadian friends. I could get it import. I just, I just don't, you know.

So I just like it because it freshens your breath while you're. You're getting your hit of nicotine.

Yeah. Well, you're becoming addicted to nicotine. You have wonderful breath. That is something that, that I should note. I get into the benefits. You do need to be careful. Nicotine is addictive. And just like when you try to quit smoking cigarettes, when you try to quit nicotine, you can get strong cravings and increased appetite and sleep disturbances and a little bit of irritability and restlessness. But I think that if you use it in moderation and you're already aware that it could be addictive, like me, like, I limit my use because I'm aware of the addictive potential. So I'm just careful with it. Like I mentioned, you'd want to be careful because it could be an angiogenic type of substance if you already have a tumor. And then there is some evidence that for adolescent users, like in people, this is the same reason, like I don't let my kids smoke weed. Addition to the fact it would annoy my wife and my kids don't like weed or the smell of it, it could impair the prefrontal cortex in adolescent users. And when you impair the preference prefrontal cortex, you of course limit cognitive performance. And they've shown that nicotine use during adolescence in studies can increase the risk of cognitive impairment later in life. They've shown the same thing with marijuana. And most of these studies, you're seeing these type of effects in anyone who is a user under about the age of 25. You know, I didn't go near, I didn't go near nicotine at all until I.

That's what's wrong with me.

Yeah. 36. I didn't touch marijuana because I was well aware of its ability to affect gray matter and cognition, et cetera. I was, I think 32 when I first even went near marijuana. I could say the same thing for alcohol and liver formation prior to the age of about 18. So there are certain situations in which you just want to wait until you're a grown up to use some of this stuff.

When did you wait to lose your V card?

My V card? My virginity.

Yeah.

Like 37.

No, I was, I was 15. But I can also proudly say that my wife and I actually waited until we got married to have sex. I'm proud of that because that was very hard to do. We were madly in love. We just wanted to be special.

Weird.

So, yeah, so we school, we waited. Yeah, we're old school. We're. We're Christian Baptist fundamentalist puritans. Yeah. So anyways though, back to nicotine. Back to nicotine. So nicotine increases wakefulness, motivation, alertness, creativity. It's been shown to increase activity across both hemispheres of the brain. So in folks who like microdose with lsd, you can actually get some of the same type of what are called bilateral neocortical activations via the use of nicotine. And it also increases, increases your alpha brain wave state, so you get better attention, better creativity. If you're an athlete, you're better able to enter into the zone. In addition to that, it has been studied and proven to improve your fine motor skills and also your short Term memory, your long term memory and what's called your working memory. So it can actually improve your ability to multitask, which is very interesting and significantly helpful I think for a lot of people. People. It's been shown to help with ADHD and ADD symptoms. It acts as a neuroprotective, meaning it can reduce inflammation in the brain. It stimulates what are called cholinergic receptors in the brain and by doing that it can act as a neuroprotective. But it also via a similar pathway blocks estrogen. So it has anti estrogenic effects, which is also important, especially for example men who want to have more free testosterone availability and less aromatization of testosterone into estrogens. Nicotine can help with that as well. It has been studied and shown to be beneficial for treating Alzheimer's, for treating Parkinson's and for treating Tourette syndrome. Three different neurodegenerative conditions. And for all of those it seems to act primarily upon what are called acetylcholine receptors. And so it's something that actually pairs quite well. Well for similar reasons with any type of nootropic or smart drug. It's very good to include in some of those stacks, let's say Qualia or Alpha Brain or Siltep, none of those have nicotine in them. But you can literally just use nicotine, nicotine gum, nicotine spray, whatever and have that at the same time as you have a nootropic or a smart drug. And it seems to enhance the effects. It also acts to, to lower inflammation, reduces TNF alpha production and cytokine production. It can assist with patients who have inflammation due to ulcerative colitis as well. Although the caveat there is you do need to be careful because a lot of these gums and lozenges, they do have things like artificial sweeteners or toxins or preservatives in it that could aggravate your gut if you already have a pre existing gut can condition especially. So you'd want to be kind of careful to choose pretty clean sources of nicotine if you were going to do something like that. And in addition to that, it's been shown to reduce pain. So people who are on nicotine score their pain much lower after surgery. It can be protective against ulcerative colitis, like I mentioned, but also enhance the production of intestinal mucosa. It actually can increase the thickness, thickness of mucus in the colon. That's with slightly higher doses, doses close to 5 milligrams, which could make you kind of jittery and be a, you know, like an incredible pick me up. But even in smaller amounts it seems to have the same anti inflammatory effect. It can help in weight loss and insulin control. Probably because it's a potent appetite suppressant. Like chewing on a, on a little bit of nicotine gum is a potent appetite suppressant but it also seems to be able to increase metabolism. Metabolism via what are called melanocortin MC4R receptors. Meaning you can actually see a little bit of bump up in metabolic rate because it has that angiogenic potential I talked about earlier. Yeah, if you have a tumor you'd want to avoid it. But because it can increase growth of tissues and blood vessel capillaries it can help with tissue repair and.

There'S a few other benefits of nicotine. But I mean the real big picture here is I'm a fan of, of it. You have to be careful because it can be addicting. You need to be careful if you're young and you use it. It pairs quite well with a lot of other nootropics and smart drug like compounds. In the show notes if you go there, I'll put a link to the pixotine nicotine toothpicks that I own and use. Really like the cinnamon flavor for example, I had my personal assistant go through and kind of do like a spreadsheet analysis of which of the nicotine gums is the lowest, lowest in preservatives or artificial sweeteners or chemicals. The brand Habitrol appears to be the best. And so I'll link to that one in the show notes. And then there are also these nicotine lozenges and again same thing. Like a lot of these, these, these lozenges or lozenges, however you want to pronounce that. They're really.

Never heard anybody say it that way.

Yeah, the bigger they are lozenges anyway.

Know.

Yeah, I'd say lozenges but yeah. Yeah. So Nyquitan makes these ones that are really small so they're almost like tiny little mints and they have less of the artificial sweeteners and preservatives in them. So for gum I'd go with Habitrol. For lozenges I'd go with Nyquitin. And then for toothpicks I like this brand called Pixotene. But I'll link to that stuff in the show notes. Most of those I think all of them those you could grab off Amazon. So there you have it. Nicotine, you know, with a asterisk is healthy.

I'm going to throw in One little warning there. If you weren't a smoker, you haven't experimented with nicotine before. Go easy at first. I've seen a couple of people do a couple sprays of the stuff that I was talking about and get really sick. So don't. Yeah, don't go whole hog until you know how you can handle. Handle it.

Have you ever done a snus nicotine snooze, like under the lower lip, like at a party or anything like that?

Not at a party. My. My uncle used to carry those around. He was a farmer.

Potent. Those things are potent. You get like slightly dizzy and then you're just like on fire for like an hour, an hour and a half. Those are pretty crazy.

It's like chewing tobacco. Same thing, just gross. And such a huge hit of nicotine.

Yeah, exactly.

I have a question about stem cell therapy. Love the podcast with Dr. Adelson. And my question regards is whether this is a permanent or temporary effect. Seems to me that it would be permanent. That is, after the therapy, you're essentially rolling back the clock on the treated area such that it is newer tissue and if taken care of properly, you know, you've essentially added years to your life of that area. The problem I have is at the end of the podcast, Dr. Adelson said that this has. This affects his patients for years and indicated that a lot of them come back and see him. He expects to see them in the next three to six years. That to me would indicate it's a temporary effect that needs to be retreated to obtain the same benefits. But based on all the theory you've described, it again doesn't truly add up that it's a temporary treatment. Would love some clarification. Thanks and love the podcast.

You know, I had this exact same question, Scott. Good question. Dr. Adelson did talk about people coming back occasionally and getting treatments again and again. So that. That raised that same. Huh. In my head.

Again and again. Yeah. So I took a little bit of a dive into the studies on how long stem cell therapy can actually last because they have actually looked into this. So there was one study where they took a whole bunch of patients who got treated with bone marrow concentrate, which is exactly what I did when I did that full body stem cell makeover at Dr. Adelson's clinic. And they followed them for 30 months with laboratory and radiographic and MRI studies. Every single patient after 30 months was still receiving therapeutic benefits. There's another study at the University of Paris and they followed over 500 patients for 18 years. After bone marrow stem cell treatment. And that study, they showed that of all those patients, only 15% of them needed to actually go on to receive any type of additional hip treatment, hip replacement, hip surgery, anything like that. So 85%, approximately, of those patients, the stem cells seem to stick with. And again, that was for 18 years. There was another study where they did.

But Ben, this is a brand new treatment, isn't it?

No, no, only in the U.S. yeah, only in the U.S. exactly. Thank you for asking that question, Brock.

Sorry, I just, I had a. I could hear everybody out in the audience going, 18 years.

Yeah. There was another study where they looked at knees, and this, I believe, was also a European study, and they found an average of 6 years of pretty much complete reduction of knee pain. And they looked at everything from complication rates to knee function scores to just the overall patient satisfaction. And so for those patients, it appeared that six years at least, like that was. I'm not saying all the benefits disappear after six years, but that was how long they followed people in that study. Another, more recent study followed. This was a 2015 study in the journal Cell Transplant. They followed over 1,000 patients for about four years, and they found that 63% of the patients maintained their improvements in pain and function, and 91% of the patients had at least a 50% improvement in function. So that showed that we were seeing benefits at least as long as four years in that study. And then there were other studies. There was one in Korea where they had patients and they followed them for about two years after stem cells were injected into their arthritic knees. And what happened after two years was the majority of the patients in that study had pain that had decreased by over 40%. And they also had an increase in cartilage production that was very significant. That was over 20%. There was another study in Iran of all places, where they again had a bone marrow stem cell ingestion reductions into the hip joint, the knee joint, or the ankle joint. And they noted that after a 30 month case study follow up, all the stem cell treatments lasted for the entire 30 months. So in most cases, we're seeing that these treatments aren't something like Botox that lasts maybe six months or a year at maximum, but we're talking about many years, in some cases up to 18 years. Dr. Adelson, when I reached out to him, sent me some other studies on the mesenchymal stem cell availability. One study looked at following up patients for about 600 days and they found significant survival of the stem cells and Efficacy of the treatments after that period of time. There was another study in which they did like, what was it, a 90 month follow up, a meta analysis where they followed up patients in a whole bunch of different studies. And some of the studies were up to 90 months and they found that there was a significant increase in outcome of anything that the patients had done for up to nine, 90 months. And then one final study that I noted looked at folks for up to about 48 months and found that they had significantly improved what they call histological and radiological outcomes and then also improved arthroscopic scored healing rates. So essentially just like the function in this case of the knee and knee osteoarthritis after stem cell injection. And then I can also tell you just from personal experience that my, my ding dong is still getting it up like I was 15 years old. Nobody wants to know that since I and I got my stem cell injection, my first one, I guess, I guess it's been about four months, you know, and that, that's definitely still with me. You know, like I've talked about like acoustic sound wave therapy and the effects of that last about a month and are probably pretty profound. But the stem cells just haven't ever seemed to have worn off period. So I think that this isn't one of those things where it's.

Some type of a conspiracy theory by stem cell docs to get you to come back over and over again for a protocol. It seems to last a pretty significant period of time. I don't know if it's permanent. Permanent, but based on the stem cell theory of aging, the fact that you're endogenous, stem cell availability seems to decrease as you age. Just having more stem cells available for your body to draw upon seems like, if you can afford it, a good idea. And what I'm doing now is I just get them systemically injected via IV one to two times a year because I have all my stem cells from when I was 35 years old stored by the US stem cell clinic down in Florida. And I can just get those injected and then those will basically migrate to whichever areas of the body where they are most needed for repair and recovery. So even if a stem cell, you know, like a full body stem cell makeover does not last forever, you can harvest and store your stem cells and just inject them on a regular basis to just keep that stem cell availability elevated.

So why do you think these people are coming back to Dr. Adelson on a regular basis? He was mentioning, I think farmers in particular were coming in with like bad shoulders and stuff from multiple treatments.

You know, I don't know, I think maybe he's doing different joints at different times. He has never expressed to me that anybody who does this full body stem cell makeover has to come back in for like touch up stem cells or anything like that. I guess if you re injured an area or something like that, you know, like if you strained your knee or you know, got in a car accident or something and you had a more acute need for an immediate stem cell injection, that would be a case where maybe you'd want to go back in for some touch up work. But I think the idea is this is supposed to be for life doing something like that. Full body stem cell makeover. It's not cheap. You know, if you do the full, I think the full meal deal like I did the cosmetic procedure, I did the sexual procedure and I did the musculoskeletal procedure. You're you know, I think all in, you're looking at north of 40,000 to do something like that. But you know, some people will spend that much on a car, I'll spend that much on my body.

So Yeah, I guess that's a good point. If they're not doing the forty thousand dollar version, they're doing the two thousand dollar version for their shoulder. That tends to be the or is the biggest problem in their life. Then maybe they're coming back for the other shoulder or the knee or something.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah, exactly.

So Dr. Adelson, Harry needs to work on his sales pitch.

Yeah. Well I will link to his clinic and his stuff and the US stem cell clinic as well where I have my stuff soared along with where you can buy your nicotine gum over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com390 Some great questions today. Oh and we need to give something away. You want to give something away?

We sure do.

Okay, this is the part of the show where if you've gone to itunes and you've left us a review, preferably a five star review, although that's not required and you've said something interesting and you hear your review read on the show, just let us know your T shirt size, email it to gearngreenfieldfitness.com your t shirt size to gearngreenfieldfitness dot com and we will send you. Why am I yawning right now? Yum. That was crazy. I think because I'm talking too much. I'm not getting enough oxygen in. We'll send you.

You're good.

Gear pack a piece, PCB, BPA, free water bottle and.

And PCB free.

Yeah, I won't have PCBs in it either. And then also a really cool tech T shirt for your workouts. Same one I wear to the gym quite often because I like to shamelessly plug my show.

Have you ever noticed when you get really sweaty and you lay on a bridge bench at the gym with that shirt, it actually leaves the logo? Like on the. On the bench.

No, but I never lay on the benches. That's good to know.

Check that out. When you're doing, like, bench press or something, if you're really sweaty, get up and look at the bench, and it just like, it's like a sweat outline of the. Of the BG logo.

Amazing. Free advertising.

There you go.

All right, well, there's this cat, Brett W. He wrote in and he left us five stars. He says my go to podcast cast. So what do you think, Brock? You want to take this one away?

Do you want to throw in the parts that are in quotation marks so it's authentic?

Let's try it. It'll be good.

All right, so basically, it looks like Brett left a review and made fun of everything. I happen to say a lot, just.

All the things that you. You like to throw in on a. On a regular basis.

Okay, now let's not make it complicated. Just read it.

Okay. Ben is one smart coach rookie, constantly offering a copious amount of information from his gaping maw for his listeners. Further, he pushes his guests to get into the practical brass tacks, often recruiting only those who have techniques and products that work like gangbusters, for which he in turn offers us sweet discounts. All told, Ben's show is a fantastic source of knowledge and can consistent part of my weekly routine.

I do use a lot of those things, like caping mall. He nailed it. Gangbusters. Copious, sweet discount codes. Yeah, yeah, that's a. That's a pretty sweet review. So thanks. Thanks for the copious amount of information, Brett. And just getting down to brass tacks, I'm gonna say that this podcast is done, and if you follow everything that I talked about in the show, it's gonna work like g Gangbusters for you.

That's because you're one smart cookie.

Check out the episode for some sweet discount codes. So that all being said, Brock, have an amazing week. Go eat yourself some Kachari, get yourself gaping ma. That's right. Shove it into your gaping ma. And we'll be back next week. But in the meantime, stay tuned for an amazing episode coming up this Saturday on DNA and genetic testing. And head to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 390 for all the show notes. We'll catch you on the flip side.

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