Q&A 450: Cannabis & Testosterone, The Most Filling Foods, Tom Brady’s Workout, & More

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life Podcast, Cannabis and testosterone, the foods that fill you up. The fastest. Non responders to exercise and a whole lot more.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

All right, today I want to talk about organ meats. Most of you know I'm a pretty big advocate of eating organ meats on the daily. As they say, they're like nature's multivitamins. Matter of fact, organ meats, especially those from grass fed grass finished cattle, are among the most nutrient rich foods on the planet. Nothing else actually even comes close. I'm talking about organs like liver and heart and kidney and spleen. And I know you're thinking, ew. So how could you get them in your diet every day if you didn't want to cook them fresh and you can't stand the taste or something like that? You get the encapsulated version super easy. I mean, I like the taste, I get the capsules and I actually chew on them. I'm not kidding. I chew on them like popcorn. I like them that much. But the ones I have are these heart and soil supplements. It's grass fed grass finished, regeneratively farmed beef organs in supplement form. So they're totally, totally primal. You don't have to like soak liver and figure out how to cook it, make it taste good. That guy, Paul Saladino, Dr. Paul Saladino has been on my podcast before the Carnivore MD he founded the company. He's pretty committed to quality. And they're also going to give all of us a 10% discount, which is great. So you go to HeartAndSoil Co and use code BEN10. That's HeartAndSoil Co and code BEN10 for your heart and soil organ meat goodness. All right, here's the deal. Whether you run or ride or hike or swim or work out, you understand what it means to have this deep desire to push harder and reach farther and go the extra mile. And believe it or not, the fuel for that drive can be in your blood. Can be in your blood. If you're not tracking your blood, then you're missing out on what you might need to actually know how to build endurance, boost energy and optimize your health and eat the right way and supplement the right way. And know if you're going to get sick or if you're not going to get sick or if you need certain nutrients or don't need other nutrients. There's this company called InsideTracker they not only do your blood, but your DNA and your fitness tracking data too. They identify where you're optimized and where you're not. And these scientists that work for the company, they're in aging, they're in genetics, they're in biometrics. They work together to give you a daily action plan on InsideTracker with personalized guidance on the right exercise and nutrition and supplementation for your body. So when you connect it with, let's say, like your Fitbit or your Garmin, you, you get to unlock real time recovery pro tips after you complete your workout. So it's like having a personal trainer and a nutritionist and a blood work person, whatever you call those, all in your own pocket. And they're gonna give 20% to all my listeners. If you just go to InsideTracker.com Ben that's InsideTracker.com Ben. You don't need a code. Go to InsideTracker.com Ben and you're off to the blood work and biomarker races. Let's talk about magnesium. So magnesium is an essential mineral responsible for 300 vital functions in your body, yet 60% of us are deficient. Now I started working with this company to actually get you magnesium in a very tasty manner. They're these wellness ingestibles from a company called Higherdose. And I helped them develop three different products. Detox drops, hydration powder, and chill chews. They're all designed to pair with the higher dose infrared, red light and PEMF devices like their sauna blanket and their infrared face mask and their mat. You take this stuff, you pair it with their products and you enhance the detox, enhance the effects. Like you can add the detox drops to your water before a workout or a sauna session. Bunch of hyper clean ingredients, binds to toxins. Nice minty flavor. I love that one I had in my coffee this morning actually. Then they have the hydration powder that's an electrolyte rich formula. It's got magnesium, a potent blend of B vitamins, a bunch of other goodies in there specifically to support a sauna session. So you just shoot this stuff back before you go in the sauna. Then they have chill chews. These are magnesium gummies. You eat them at night. They help to balance your body and relax. Mine, they're super good. They're low sugar. I'll just grab a handful of them. I don't know how many I'm supposed to eat. The bottle probably says. But I just grab a handful of them and Go to bed, and it's amazing. And they taste really good. So anyways, this company, higherdose, is building some great stuff, and I've consulted with them and helped them out with their menu, so to speak. So this stuff is huge thumbs up for me because I help them with it. So you go to higherdose.com ben to get 15% off of any of their stuff today. Higher dose.com Ben. Or you can just use promo code Ben, and that will get you 15% off. Jay. This is the live Twitter spaces Q and A. And you just informed me before we began recording that we're competing with a billionaire.

We are competing with not only a billionaire, but the billionaire who now owns Twitter. So the odds aren't in our favor in terms of if people are looking to hear something interesting, they may have to choose. Is it in health and wellness, or is it in just chaos, randomness, AI, whatever else. Neuralink, Twitter.

We could. We could just pretend we're Elon Musk.

Like, yeah, because I know I don't know that much artificial intelligence. I could speak.

Yeah.

Days about that. No, not really.

Didn't he smoke a joint on the Joe Rogan show? We could just smoke a joint. That's close enough.

It's still illegal here for me to do that, so I'd have to be breaking the law. Ben, you want me to do that?

I don't know. I can't swing a dead cat by the tail without hitting a dispensary up here in Washington state, so I'm safe on my end. You know, it's interesting, though, because the former guy who owned Twitter, Jack Dorsey, he came onto my podcast a couple of years ago and admitted that he had an eating disorder called intermittent fasting and caught a lot of flack for that. So maybe I just need to get Musk on the show so that we can find out what's wrong with him. From a health standpoint. Does he actually exercise and eat healthy? I don't know that much about Elon Musk and his focus on his body. I mean, obviously, he could probably just snap his fingers and become a cyborg.

If he wanted to, but I think he already is. I think it's already been well established that he's a cyborg. But, no, I don't know about his health and wellness practices. I just know that when he smoked weed on Rogan's podcast, like, his investors of his companies were not very happy with that, and so he received a lot of flack. Yeah, they were. It was. It was pretty Bad. Like, Tesla stock ended up sinking pretty bad. Like, it rose rather quickly afterwards, but it was a huge hit. It was really interesting.

Huh.

He just took one hit. Like, that was all it was, and it was.

A little tricky.

Wow, that's surprising. No, no, I just. I just looked on my. My phone here to see if there's actual, like, healthy habits that he has. It says he. He used to work 100 hours a week. Now he's down to 80 to 90 hours per week between Tesla and space. Oh, wait, no. That's like seven years ago. Huh. Interesting.

The last I heard, it was, like, 100, 120 hours that he was working, like, sleeping within, like, Tesla's factory and plants and. Yeah, now that he owns Twitter, I mean, I can't imagine that the workload's going down any. So have him on. Like, let's get him on to the Ben Greenfield Life podcast, because I want to hear about this guy's health practices and daily routine.

I'll text him after our show. The thing is, though, he. I think he does a little bit of running and lifting weights, but he also likes jiu jitsu, which I suppose would go well with smoking cannabis. So we could get him on the show to talk Jiu jitsu and weed.

Yeah, I think everybody in Austin has to have a black belt in jiu jitsu or you're not allowed to live there as a male, I heard at least that's just the word on the street.

Yeah, it seems. But the. The thing is that we need to talk about this guy's testosterone, too, because in today's news flashes, I've learned a little bit about cannabis and testosterone. So you think we should just jump right in?

Let's jump into that, man.

All right. Okay, so first of all, if you're listening live, we do answer questions here, if we have any live listeners. Since we've established the fact that the owner of Twitter has decided to compete with us, I think he just realized we were doing a spaces and wanted to get some of the wealth on his end. But either way, if you're here live, listening in, we do these a couple of times a month. On Wednesdays, you can actually ask your questions. We'll bring you on. I don't know what you call it on Twitter, Spaces on stage, whatever, and.

We'Ll answer your questions, all 3.5 of you in the room. So, that being said, before we do that, I like to jump into a few news flashes, a few interesting things that I came across as far as studies, that kind of Piqued my interest. And this one was actually on recreational cannabis. I get this question a lot about whether or not people think that smoking weed or eating edibles or doing whatever else one would do with the marijuana plant would cause things like infertility or lower testosterone. And there was an actual study that came out pretty recently, just last month. It was a retrospective cross sectional study. And the long story short is it found that male participants who recreationally used cannabis tended to have lower levels of total testosterone and, and poorer measures of what's called sperm morphology than those who didn't recreationally use cannabis. So the way they did this was they had about 2,000, a little over 2,000 white European men, and they analyzed them for normal testosterone levels, low testosterone levels that were what's called secondary hypogonadal. That means low testosterone levels have an involvement with the dysfunctional pituitary or hypothalamus in the brain. Okay, so that means like the brain isn't sending the testes the right signal to keep testosterone levels elevated. Then there's also primary hypogonadism, which unlike secondary hypogonadism, is associated with an actual dysfunction of the testicles, usually some kind of testicle failure or the Leydig cells in the testes aren't working properly, whatever. And so what they did was they asked all these people about their cannabis use during their lifetime, and all the people who reported recreationally using cannabis, not all of them, but a significant portion of them, tended to have lower total testosterone users levels than the non users of cannabis. Now there's some things to bear in mind because they found that the cannabis using participants were also more likely to consume alcohol. They're more likely to smoke cigarettes, who knows? Because a lot of people, there's the whole so called unhealthy user bias. A lot of people who smoke weed and who think that weed might not be good for them are the same type of people who might also be, I don't know, eating burgers and fries and I suppose in the case of weed, Doritos and Cheetos and other things that could have a negative impact on either sperm or on fertility. So what they found interestingly was that the cannabis didn't seem to affect what are called FSH or LH levels. And that means that it's likely that whatever was going on as far as the drop in testosterone was more occurring on the primary hypogonadal level, like dysfunction of the testes more than something going in the brain, which is kind of surprising to me. Because I've always associated cannabis with being a little bit of an effeminazing plant. It's known to have kind of like these yin qualities and it kind of settles people down. People use it for creativity, people rely upon it for many elements that one might associate with more, I suppose, effeminate characteristics.

Right.

You don't see a lot of power lifters smoking weed before they step up on the platform. But we've established that in jiu jitsu, at the same time people do use cannabis. So the long story short though is that based on the results of this study, if your testosterone is low or you're trying to maintain fertility, it doesn't appear that recreational frequent cannabis use is that great of an idea. I don't know. What do you think, Jay?

Yeah, I mean, I have my own thoughts. Just from simply a mental health standpoint, I don't think the data are really great, even from a recreational standpoint, in using it from a mental health standpoint and managing things like stress and because a lot of people say they use it for stress, but actually the more long term data do not point to it being an effective mechanism for it, maybe acutely. But afterwards, a lot of times, the heightened paranoia, increased anxiety, causes people to use more.

You're talking the cannabis with thc, right?

That's right. Yeah, that's right.

And so for here, I think it only makes sense though from a recreational standpoint, especially if you're battling with infertility issues, if you want better gains in the gym. All of these things seem to point to either reducing it, especially if you're using it frequently as a recreational drug, or just maybe not using it and finding something else as a replacement. But I'm a little bit more bullish on not using as opposed to using. That's just the personal thing. And from my own research, on the.

Flip side, it could save you some money on a vasectomy. Smoke a joint every night.

Good point. You got a bunch of men who are gonna piss off their wives.

Now, I think that probably a big part of this is that the dose is the poison too. Because if, if you're token up every night or regularly consuming an edible to sleep or something like that, I think that chronic long term use seems to be what the people in this study who had the infertility or the low testosterone were engaged in. I suppose that maybe if every once in a while you were going to use a little bit of cannabis to relax at the end of a stressful day or maybe engage in a creative, I Don't know, songwriting or art project or something like that. I could see some use cases where if you weren't using it chronically, recreationally, it probably wouldn't have as big of an impact. But I think that the majority of people who tend to have low testosterone and infertility seem to be using cannabis on a pretty frequent basis, like all year long, based on what I'm seeing in this study.

Yeah. Well, now, especially since it's so easy to get your hands on it and becoming relatively inexpensive compared to what it used to be. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. All right, well, so we've established that if you're, if you want to keep your testosterone levels elevated or be fertile, regular recreational, frequent use of cannabis probably isn't a good idea unless you're a billionaire designing electronic vehicles. Because from what I understand, Elon Musk actually has a lot of children and spread around the world.

Yeah, that's right. I think that's true. No, I do think that's true. Again, another thing, when you have him on to talk about, I'm not worried.

At all because he can't hear us right now because he's running his own Twitter spaces. So that's true. All right, so by the way, all the shownotes I'll link to@bengreenfieldlife.com 450 if people want to actually jump in and check out any of these studies that we're talking about. But the next thing that kind of piqued my interest was, I guess, a little bit of a duh study, but I'm going to talk about it anyways. And this was looking at foods that fill you up the fastest. And what type of things would not fill you up the fastest. There's this concept in nutrition called the satiety index, and there's this whole satiety index of common foods. It was developed back in the mid-90s, and it's an interesting index. We find that, that the highest satiety was actually produced by, well, I'll let you guess, Jay. We got ribeye steaks, we got liver, we got kale, we got blueberries, we've got goji berries, we've got sauerkraut, you name it. But what do you think is the most satiating food? Literally seven times higher than the least satiating food, at least in this pretty big study of the validated satiety index of common foods. Yeah.

So my initial thoughts, and again, I do not know the answer to this, this, but my initial thought is that it's going to Be something that's minimally, Minimally processed. It's going to be so therefore a whole food. The very first thing you mentioned was steak. You came and followed it up, right. With liver and organ meat. And so I was like, oh, maybe that's it. But my initial thought was, was a steak. That's a pretty heavily dense food. Minimally processed. That's what I'll go with.

Okay. The answer is actually the potato. Boiled potato. Interesting. Boiled potato. It has the highest satiety index of any food that's been looked at, including. Including meat. I think probably the reason for that is that, well, the density of, let's say a boiled potato and a steak might be somewhat similar. Right. You gotta chew them a decent amount and they take up some space in your stomach, etc. I think the problem is that the steak is too palatable. Right?

Yeah, it makes sense.

You can get a lot of people sitting down to a giant plate of boiled potatoes with no salt and no butter and no bacon bits, no sour cream with. With a big smile on their face because they're about to punish a giant bowl of boiled potatoes, bro. You know, but most people will eat a hefty steak and even overeat a hefty steak because it just tastes so darn good. Yeah. So that's not surprising. Now, you know what had the lowest satiety index? Like the food that was the least likely to fill you up.

Oh, see, that's. For me, it's like. I would imagine so I would imagine two things. It probably doesn't count this as a food. So I'll say this and then I'll say my. My next guess. My guess would be some type of like, like the calorie rich, sugar rich drink, like a soda or something that people could just like.

But again, I don't think they looked at drinks, though. This was food, this wasn't drinks. You can't count that.

So food wise, I'm gonna go with like, you know, something that's just really like overly processed and is not a whole food and is like really palatable in fat and sugar. So like, like a donut is coming to mind. I feel like if I wanted to, I could sit down.

Yeah.

12 donuts. Like Krispy Kreme hot and ready donuts. If I wanted to, I could do it. And I would be full afterwards, but I could do it.

You're pretty close. It was actually croissant.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I can see that, man. The flaky croissant. Oh, yeah, I can see that.

Yeah, the baked goods are actually pretty easy to overeat. Now, that being said, there is a guy I interviewed some time back who lost a lot of weight following what he called the croissant diet. You remember this guy?

No. What happened there?

Well, he basically used an older French recipe for croissants that used a lot of what's called stearic enhanced butter oil, which is like this long chain saturated fat that can actually fill you up quite a bit. And then what he did was he eliminated, like, all the vegetable oils, anything that might create a lot of inflammation. And he essentially was eating, like, a ketogenic version of a croissant, which actually, if you look at it traditional croissant recipe, it actually is pretty high in saturated fats, and you'd think it had a lot of carbs, but it's mostly just, like, some of the flaky, buttery carbohydrates in there. And if you cook a croissant the way that he does, and I'll link to the show notes with him. Gosh, I'm embarrassed now because I'm blanking on his name. He's got a company called Firebrand Meats. He sells, like, pork and pork lard and croissant diet. He also has the wine diet that he lost a lot of weight on, but it's all about eliminating vegetable oils and increasing the amount of stearic acid that you eat. And gosh darn it, I'm forgetting the guy's name. We talked for, like, two hours. Brad. It was Bradbrad somebody. Brad Marshall. Yeah, Brad Marshall. Yep, exactly. So if folks go to BenGreenfieldLife.com 450, which is where the shownotes are, I'll link to that podcast with them. But that's not the type of croissant that was looked at in this study on the effects of various foods in the satiety index. I think they were just using the classic whatever, like Starbucks or coffee shop croissant. So I think it depends on the croissant. But ultimately, the potatoes were the most filling. But the reason I wanted to get at this was that there was a more recent study that came out that was a randomized crossover trial in which they had people consume four foods that were typical of the Mediterranean diet. Hummus, or as we say, hummus, bread, gazpacho, which is the chilled soup made of tomatoes, typically, you know, sometimes some other vegetables, and then what's called aja blanco, which is a cold soup with water and bread and garlic and crushed almonds. And olive oil and salt and sometimes a little bit of vinegar in there. And so they mashed all these meals for calories right between the hummus, the bread, the gazpacho, and the aja blanco. And then they have participants report their hunger and satiety one and then two, and then three hours after eating the meal. Now then at the three hour mark, they were offered a test meal of pizza and given the opportunity to eat as much pizza as they want. In science, that's called ad libitum consumption. Okay, so the idea is eat this meal, we ask you how full you are one hour, two hour and three hours later. And at the three hour mark, you get to have another meal. And let's see how much of that other meal that you eat. So what they found was that the people who ate the most pizza three hours later were the people who had bread. So apparently having a bunch of carbs doesn't make you not want to have a bunch of carbs three hours later.

The next one was the aja blanco, which is like the liquid soupy stuff. The next least one was the hummus. And the people who ate the, the least amount of pizza was actually the people who had the gazpacho, the chilled soup made of tomatoes and vegetables, which is really interesting. Now, now the, the possible reason why this occurred is that the, the gazpacho probably didn't result in a big blood sugar spike followed by a, what would be called a postprandial drop in blood glucose, resulting in you having like the, the munchies later on. So the interesting thing here is, and you know, they weren't testing engineered foods that I think might have offered a superiority when it comes to satiety, like ketone esters or essential amino acids or, you know, or things that would really kind of like be a, be a diet hack, you know, a cheat, so to speak, to keep your satiety up. But they were just looking at some common foods in the Mediterranean diet. So long story short is if you want to not cheat on meals later on, having some kind of like, vegetable rich, soupy type of compound that doesn't spike the blood sugar actually seems, according to science, like a pretty good idea. And in addition to that, if you're eating a meal and you want that meal to fill you up quickly without you risking overeating, then including some type of, like, starchy potato with the meal would probably be a good idea. Now, you know the trick for potatoes, though, to make sure they don't spike your blood sugar too much.

Get them cold?

Yeah, you get them cold. You cook the potato, then you get it cold, and then you take it back out and you reheat. Increases the amount of resistant starch. It's basically this idea that you cool some foods after cooking, you increase the resistant starch content. And the resistant starch is just a. A long chain of glucose. Normal starches get broken down into glucose and absorb. But resistant starch, as the name implies, is resistant to digestion. And so when you cook the potato, then you cool it, then you take it back out cold. You got to reheat it, Reheat it cold. It's got a higher amount of the resistant starch because the resistant starch gets formed when foods are cooled after you cook them. It's called starch retrogradation. What that means is that the starches. Yeah, I know. The starches basically form a new structure, and that structure is resistant to digestion. Now, anything that's resistant to digestion, though, like say, sugar, alcohols, right. Artificial sweeteners, things like that, they can also give you gas. So you got to be a little bit careful not to overeat them. Yeah, yeah.

Have you ever just drank straight up resistant starch? I did that a few years ago. Horrible idea.

I destroyed my gut when I was racing Iron man when a couple years I got into. You don't have to throw them under the bus. Just in working for me, this you can superstarch stuff, which is really popular, super slow release fuel, but it ferments like heck in the stomach. And it was not a good scenario. I mean, we're talking about a bowling ball, baby, in my gut, while I was out riding the bike and just farts for hours afterwards. And I swear, I think I did a real number on my gut with that stuff. But nonetheless, the idea is that I think if you want to stay full and you don't have access to a lot of expensive engineered foods, cooked and cooled potatoes, and then some type of vegetable soup. This sounds like the post holiday diet that some people might need to go on. I mean, based on what science we can hypothesize all day long. Oh, it's ribeye steak. Oh, it's liver, it's kale, it's salads, whatever. But based on what the studies show, it's just vegetable soup and potatoes. Simple enough.

Oh, watch out for the bread, man. Dude, I can relate to that in terms of if I eat any bread, I just want more bread. Bread begets bread for me.

Well, bread appears to beget pizza too, so, yeah, that's another good, good point, Jay, is make sure that you're not consuming bread with any meal. If you don't want to overeat then or later on. So yeah, so there you have it. All right, so I used to spend a lot of mooka bucks, moolah money at juicery places where you fork over 13, 15, 17, whatever dollars 55 for the tiny, tiny little red bottle of superfoods, so called superfoods jam packed with a little bit of spinach, a little bit of moringa, and 18 apples and four bananas like diabetes in a bottle. A lot of the juice bars, they do a good job. But let's say you want to make this stuff for pennies on the dollar in your own home with all of the highest quality plant based ingredients, full organic with less than 3 grams of sugar per serving without all that fruit packed into them. But they still taste amazing. Enter the superfood powders from Organifi, spelled with an I Organifi. For less than three bucks a day, you can be juicing all day long. But none of the mess, none of the cleanup because these are just powders. You add them to water, cold water for most of their stuff. Although their golden milk lattes are fantastic with like frothy coconut milk. Anyways, fantastic superfood blends and you get 20% off. Organifi.com Ben Organifi with an I.com Ben is where you can be off to the races with your organifi superfood powder. All right, so in the morning, I wake up, stumble downstairs after I've brushed my teeth and done my coconut oil, pulling my tongue scraping and all my silly ayurvedic stuff. In the bathroom, I pour myself a giant mason glass full of water and I put into that water vitamin C and baking soda. But then these two other ingredients that are an amazing source of both electrolytes and hydrogen. The former being extremely dense minerals, super clean, harvested from phytoplankton blooms in the ocean. The second one being one of the best selective antioxidants to know humankind with so much research behind it for making you feel well and battling inflammation throughout the day without quelling healthy inflammatory processes. So the first one's called Quinton minerals. The second one is called active H2 hydrogen tablets. Okay, so that's the giant mason glass of water, baking soda, vitamin C, Quinton and hydrogen tablets. You feel so good, you don't cramp during the day, you have high energy levels, you're not as sore. I do this again in the mid afternoon to kind of like recharge my day. You have a great bowel movement about an hour later. It's so good. I've done podcasts with the water researcher named Robert Slovak, who I think is one of the smartest water guys out there besides my dad, Gary Greenfield, who's also pretty smart and Robert Slovak. He has basically the best website ever for biohacking and upgrading your water using all sorts of cool things like Quinton, active, H2 and a whole lot more. So you go to waterandwellness.com.

And if you use Code Greenfield over there, it'll give you 10% off of everything. Waterandwellness.com greenfield and use code greenfield for 10% off of everything. I recommend you start with the Quinton and the H2 tablets. Enjoy. Look, you may or may not be aware of this, but I spend countless hours each week knee deep in the latest research on everything from performance to digestion and gut issues to hormone optimization, anti aging, fat loss, mental performance, hyper productivity, nootropics, smart drugs, and a whole lot more. And then for the very small select number of VIP clients who I work with on a weekly basis, I take all that knowledge and over 20 years of experience optimizing the human body and I supply each of my clients with the exact fitness, nutrition, supplementation, biohacking and lifestyle plans that they need for full optimization. I'm incredibly thorough. I dig through every last shred of your data from blood work and biomarkers to DNA, saliva to stool and urine. I walk you through the whole process. I even track daily metrics like sleep rhythms and heart rate variability. In other words, I'm the CEO of your health and my number one goal is for you to be a high operator. Basically like the Navy Seal of whatever industry you happen to be in. Whether you're a hard charging executive elite athlete or a father or mother who just wants to get the most out of life and wants a no guesswork program that allows you to wake up in the morning and know exactly what to do. And also know that somebody's watching your back and taking care of everything for you 24 7. I do all that for you. Not only that, but I've trained a team of elite coaches. So even if you can't work with me because it's outside your budget or because there's no openings to work with me, you have full access to a well trained team who have learned all my knowledge and who meet with me on a monthly basis for office hours to continue to learn more and to talk about how we can deliver to you the most benefit using a very unique combination of ancient wisdom and cutting edge modern science that's constantly developing based on everything that we learn and then apply to you. So if this sounds like it's up your alley and you want to join the ranks of those who have access to every last shred of knowledge and experience that I've gained over the years, then you can go to BenGreenfieldCoaching.com to get started. It's BenGreenfieldCoaching.com fill out the form there. Someone will be in touch with you within 24 hours to get you fully dialed in, because it's time for you to start looking, feeling, and performing the way that you deserve. So go to BenGreenFootCoaching.com, select any option that works for you from a monthly phone call with me to VIP upgraded work where I'm taking care of everything for you 24. 7. It's all there at BenGreenfulCoaching.com See you there. All right, so then there was another super, super interesting couple of studies that I highlighted and I actually. Somewhere on my desk here. Let me find it. This is great. Podcasting me, searching around my desk for.

I feel like you did this last time we were here.

Did I?

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. I've got all sorts of. You ought to see my office. It's not a mess, but I know where everything is.

You're like that crazy professor that you go into their office and you're like, have you just been living in here for years, Professor?

Oh, here it is. Okay. So I kind of got sucked into a couple of studies that I found on people being non responders to exercise. It's really interesting. So there's this whole idea called an exercise non responder, meaning certain people who adhere to the general recommendations these days for exercise, which is about 150 minutes a week. Okay, 150 minutes of like some type of low intensity exercise per week is supposed to be the amount of exercise to engage in if you want to stave off the risk of a lot of chronic diseases, you know, overweight, obesity, et cetera. Well, and the abbreviation CRF means cardiorespiratory fitness. Okay. So basically, if you want a response from a cardiorespiratory fitness standpoint, we're not talking about like muscle gain. We're just talking about metabolic adaptations to be healthier and live a longer time. 150 minutes is generally bandied about as the Sweet spot. But there were a couple of studies that came across my radar and I'll link to them in the show notes that show that there's a pretty significant amount of the population, like up to 20% of the population that are non responders to that type of exercise or that volume of exercise. And the first study that I looked at basically found that if you increase the exercise intensity, it totally abolishes any of those non responders in people who are engaging in this type of exercise. And what the hypothesis is that there are certain people that need to have what are called peripheral adaptations in skeletal muscle, more mitochondrial mass, increased vascular structure and increased VO2 max to be able to respond to exercise. So what they found was that there are two ways to go about doing this. Either A, they totally eliminated the non response to exercise by doubling from 150 minutes a week to 300 minutes a week. We're talking low intensity exercise though, you know, like walking, riding a bike, swimming, things like that. But then the other strategy that they used was they simply increased the exercise intensity, which is obviously a little bit of a time hack. And they found that when they increase the exercise intensity, in addition to the other option increasing the amount of the exercise, it substantially decreased the rate of non responders to exercise. So basically people who are following that standard 150 minutes per week for exercise who aren't getting results, you either a have to get close to doubling that amount up to 300 minutes per week, or incorporating high intensity interval training and other things that trigger VO2 max and mitochondrial adaptations. And so it was interesting to me, like how many people just don't respond though?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So when you say when people are not getting results, you're talking about increasing their overall cardiorespiratory fitness or increasing overall overall VO2 max. Like when they don't see that occurring?

Well, no, no, I'm talking about reduction in cardiovascular disease risk.

Oh, got it. Okay, just missed that point. Which is another really interesting point.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then the other study kind of, kind of found the same thing, but what they did was they did high intensity exercise and they did 60 minutes of high intensity exercise for six weeks in a row and totally got rid of that non responder type of scenario. And they basically hypothesized that it was due to increased levels of circulating red blood cells and oxygen carry capacity of the blood along with better, what's called skeletal muscle capillarization, which is just basically feeding more blood into muscles. And so when I'm Looking over this, basically the takeaway message, the reason I wanted to highlight this is that when you see recommendations for X amount of exercise, or this many sets, or this many reps, or this amount of time on a treadmill or hiking outside or whatever, you need to understand that there's a. Like, that's just a parabolic curve. There's a great deal of people who fall outside of that curve who are either going to respond to smaller amounts of exercise or in this case, larger amounts of exercise or increased intensity. So, you know, there are a lot of trainers who will just throw the same workouts at people or people will read about how many minutes per week they're supposed to exercise and just roll with that. But there are a lot of people who seem to be non responders to this whole 150 minutes per week type of scenario who need up to 300 minutes or an increase in intensity. So what the second study that I looked at suggested was that we may want to consider raising the minimum level of exercise dose in physical activity guidelines for healthy adults based on how many people do not respond to that 150 minutes per week. Which kind of makes sense because if you look at human beings from an ancestral standpoint, I mean, being outside all day long, farming, hunting, gathering, foraging, etcetera, you'd often be moving at that low intensity exercise scenario for, you know, five, six, seven, eight hours per day and 150 minutes per week. I'm not that great at math. Boys that like three and a half hours per week when.

150. Yeah.

Two and a half or. I'm sorry, two and a half. Two and a half, yeah. See, I told you I'm not good at math. So two and a half hours per week versus multiple, multiple hours per day. You know, it does make sense that we might be falling short a little bit in terms of, of what people are giving the impression of as far as how much they're supposed to exercise versus how much they actually should be moving. I think that our podcast listeners are probably more active than the average person. And for a lot of folks, 150 minutes per week is kind of like a drop in the hat once they actually add up all the amount of time that they're whatever, playing tennis, playing golf, walking.

Playing other sports, lifting weights, doing high intensity exercise. Exercise, yoga, sauna, etc. But for the average person, it turns out that what we're currently told for exercise, especially at low intensity, is not true for a substantial portion of the population who actually need to go harder or up to double that amount of time to actually see the type of reduction in primarily cardiovascular disease risk that people would be exercising to achieve.

There was an interesting article that I was reading. I think it was in the New York Times, maybe another, another news outlet, but they were saying that if they did shift the recommended time of exercise, let's say from 150 to 300, they think that, that it could actually be quite beneficial because a lot of individuals who have the recommended 150 minutes per week, a lot of them set that as the goal, but then they only like make half of that goal where it's like if we get them to set a goal of 300 and they meet half of that goal, well, they're still meeting 150, which is a lot better than, you know, 75. So I think there's kind of the mental game that we could play by establishing these, these set guidelines at a little higher rate. But to your point, also, like the research and the evidence is kind of pretty clear that for many individuals, like they actually truly do need that 300 minutes of exercise a week or up their intensity and do a lot more, you know, hit or a lot more zone 5 level of cardio or, or workout. So, you know, I think it's kind of an interesting thing in terms of guidelines. Like I'd love to see some movement in what we provide as kind of the guideline.

Yeah, I don't know if I'm going to have her on the podcast, but I've been paying a little bit of attention to this Dr. Gabriel Lyon, who practices what she calls muscle centric medicine. L Y O N Gabriel Lyon. And you know, I'm really on the same page as her and I even commented on this at a recent event I was speaking at in Mexico a few days ago where I was talking about how beneficial it is to engage in walking and to have like a treadmill workstation, take phone calls outside, just basically try and achieve that 10,000 steps a day. But that's not enough for long term health and ultimate longevity because muscle is a glycogen sink muscle allows for an increase in mitochondrial content, muscle can allow for those peripheral adaptations and skeletal muscle capillarization that we're looking for. So you know, I tell people, yeah, walk 10,000 steps a day, but if you're really serious about longevity, you need to lift heavy stuff multiple times per week. And I think that that's what a lot of these recommendations leave out that 150 minutes of low intensity exercise per week is. I would Much, much rather see people just lifting heavy weights. I think that it's so neglected and again, I'm probably preaching to the choir with our audience, but I think that this concept of what Gabriel calls muscle centric medicine is really sound. I think she's writing a book.

I had heard her on a podcast somewhere and I was kind of nodding my head and agreeing and I would imagine maybe. I don't know if this will get down to her at some point, but if she, if she does wind up publishing a book on this concept of muscle centric medicine, I'll probably read it and I'll probably have her on the podcast at some point to dive into that a little bit more.

Yeah, I think it's probably well worth your time. She seems like a pretty interesting individual in terms of perspective. So.

Yeah, yeah. So in summary, before we turn to our audience to take a few questions, a careful with long term, frequent use of cannabis, if you're serious about fertility and testosterone, I'm not saying you need to completely avoid it. I think there could be a time and a place. But just be careful if you really want to keep your T levels up and your fertility up. The second would be that if you want to stay satiated, try to stay away from bread and don't be afraid of a cooked and cooled potato and vegetable soup as two really good ways to fill you up fast. Although we didn't even get into biohacks, I think that throwing ketone esters and essential amino acids particularly into the mix can be amazing for satiation. And then any dopaminergic compounds, like that guy I interviewed from the company Nootopia, Mark Effinger. He talked about this one product they make called dopa drops, which just basically make you not want to eat and keep you highly motivated because the dopamine you'd be seeking for in food is already satisfied via a supplement. Another example would be like mucuna dopamine, dopa, which is a dopamine precursor. Or there are even wakefulness agents. Probably the most popular would be Modafinil, AKA Provigil, as this thing that just floods the receptors with dopamine. But the problem is that'll keep you awake for 24 hours. I think the better compound that I'm into now that only lasts for about four to six hours in the bloodstream is called Paraxanthine. P A R A X A N T H I N E. That's a fantastic one. I've been drinking these drinks called Upgrade Energy drinks. Typically, I'll Usually have it about 4 o' clock or so in the afternoon. It gives you this nice clean bleed of energy for about four to six hours. Then you sleep well later on. And that was actually designed by a guy who's been a podcast guest before, Sean Wells. And so I think this paraxanthine compound is really good to get that dopamine surge too. So if you don't want to go for. For the boiled potatoes, cooked and cooled, and the vegetable soup approach, ketone esters, essential amino acids, and some type of dopaminergic agent like paraxanthine or dopa drops, or in a pinch, you could even take a modafinil tablet and cut it in quarters or something like that. Those are also really, really good, kind of more modern, newfangled ways to just keep your appetite at bay or to just crush through a really productive day without having to think about food as much.

That's it, man. That's the rundown.

Oh, and the last summary, of course, is lift weights. And that whole 150 minutes of exercise per week thing probably isn't enough for most people. So there you have it. All right, well, what do you think? Should we. Should we go ahead and start to take some questions from our beautiful listening audience here on Twitter? At least the folks aren't obsessed with Elon.

Well, a lot more people have found their way in. Maybe Elon's done so. Yeah, we should start taking them before he starts up another Twitter spaces in the next five minutes.

All right, let's do it. So looks like we have a. Daniel has requested to come on, so. All right, Daniel, we can hear you. Go ahead.

What's good, Ben? How you doing, man? Quick question. I was curious. Are you still taking any C60 supplements? I didn't know if you were into C60 still or had any evolved perspectives on that.

Yeah, C60. I interviewed Ian Mitchell, a real nice guy. Now, one of the things we talked about was C60 not only for its longevity enhancing properties, but also he even has some anecdotal data about using it in hair to keep hair from excessively graying or to even stimulate hair growth or stave off hair loss. And it's basically a pretty critical antioxidant. We look at things like glutathione and superoxide dismutase and coenzyme Q10, all really being crucial to the energy production of cells. And C60 actually helps to replace all those critical antioxidants. It's also known as buckminster folerene. If you look at the shape of it, it's this really unique soccer ball like shape. And that shape allows it to absorb free radicals and keep them from contaminating cells. And studies have shown that it actually has a pretty significant impact on longevity, particularly in rodent models. And then applied topically in wrinkles and for hair growth and people suffering from hair loss. And typically if you're not using it topically, it's consumed orally as a liquid. Now, Ian had a product that he introduced me to during that show that he said had nearly reversed dementia and Alzheimer's in some people who he had worked with when they went through a 12 week protocol of this stuff. And it's called Neuro Gosh. I'm going to link to it in the show notes because we talked about. It's neural Rx. Neural Rx. So basically he had left about six bottles of this stuff at my house. And it's C60 mixed with caprylic acid. Caprylic acid is something that was made popular by biohacker Dave Asprey. He called it brain octane. And it's kind of like MCT oil, but it's just the isolated components of MCT oil, namely the caprylic acid component that crosses the blood brain barrier and really results in this unique cognitive high as well. So what Ian did was he blended the C60 with caprylic acid and it's this really, really nice blend for cognitive function. So since he left those bottles at my house, what I've been doing is when I make my morning smoothie, just based on the fact that I figured it's great for the brain, seems to support cognitive function, seems like a well formulated product is I've been putting about a couple tablespoons of that in my morning smoothie. And I do think that C60, based on everything I've seen on it, is a pretty good, pretty good idea if you've got access to. It's not cheap. C60 is. I don't know how much a bottle that neural Rx costs. I'm gonna hazard a guess. It's. It's probably somewhere in the range of like, I don't know, 50 to 60 bucks or something like that. It might be more, I don't, I.

Don'T know, 144 bucks?

Oh, gosh, yeah. $144. Oh, wow, that was nice of him. He left me almost a thousand dollars worth of those bottles. I suppose so I gotta have him over to the house more. But anyway, so yeah, that's the form of C60 I've been using. He has some other products that we talked about on the show that he uses, C60 and one particularly is just pure C60, which is just the pure stuff. If you didn't want the neural Rx. But the neural Rx N E U R A L R X is what I've been using. And I had a friend who actually had pretty late stage Alzheimer's who I gave one bottle to. This might seem like an insensitive comment, but I think he forgot to take it much obvious for obvious reasons. So I don't know. Yeah, I don't know anybody who has actually reversed Alzheimer's or dementia with it, but Ian says that it has been something that he's seen, so there might be something to that as well. He said you had to take it for about 12 weeks, weeks in a row though, and you know, consume a serving every day. So. So yeah, I think if, you know, the only damage would be to your pocketbook, I suppose because the stuff isn't inexpensive. But yeah. Do you see 60 at all, Jay?

No. I remember you having this podcast and talking about it and I never pulled the trigger on it because I was looking at this stuff. Yeah, I mean 144 bucks, I mean you got to commit to it because that's what, like 24 servings that I'm seeing here. But I mean, if it's effective, I mean that's pretty cool. I mean, especially if they're. I know, I don't know again how substantiated the claims are for helping out with people who have late stage or early stage dementia or Alzheimer's. But if that is the case and it truly could be an effective strategy, then 144 bucks in the end would be nothing compared to other forms of Alzheimer's treatment.

Yeah. And Daniel, you asked the question, Daniel, are you taking it at all?

Yeah, so that's kind of the reason I asked. So back when I called you for a consultation last year, a couple years of issues which turned out to be mold poisoning and potentially like some tick borne illness left me with some significant cognitive issues. Balance, equilibrium, visual processing. And I ended up talking a good amount to Ian Mitchell one on one and he actually just sent me another bottle today and it really had a massive change in some of those neurological issues. I'm talking about like three years of the same issues and then within two months probably like an 80 improvement in some of those cognitive issues. And I also gave it to my grandpa who's got some Alzheimer's and definitely has Improved some of his day to day.

Oh, really?

We haven't done a full reversal, but he can. He's like, hey, can you order me another one of those bottles? It's definitely helping me through my days. I can't say it's full reversal yet, but he's also got some other habits that I think could be preventing improvements. So I couldn't say one way or the other, but definitely at least a daily improvement. And for me, a major improvement in my issues. So I was just curious if you were still into the C60 thing and the Olympic RX is just amazing as well.

Yeah, yeah. And speaking of cognitive enhancement, this is kind of like the total aside, but when I was in Mexico, I went out to dinner with a guy who designed a product that I featured in our holiday gift guide that I just published. If you're listening to this close to the time this podcast comes out, it should be on the front page of BenGreenfieldLife.com otherwise you can just search for Ben Greenfield 2022 holiday gift guide or something like that. But it's this red light. It's like a laser LED red light that you're probably familiar with that type of stuff with the big joovv panels. This device, it's made by a company called Revive R E V I V Rev. It's called a Kineon. I'm holding it in my hands right now, and it kind of looks like a headlamp, but it's got three different lamps on it kind of in this configuration that can be placed around joints, you know, knees, elbows, things like that. Real, real powerful targeted LED and laser red light. We know these red lights can be very, very good for upregulating mitochondrial activity and some of the cytochrome pathways in the mitochondria that allow for things like increased alertness, some antioxidant activity, and what many people report as a pick me up cognitively. And I've talked about in the past how, and I discussed this with Dr. John Lawrence, how when you combine red light with methylene blue, like actually taking methylene blue orally, or John makes methylene blue suppositories, that be another way to do it. If you're okay with annoying your partner by turning the toilet bowl in every house blue every time you go to the bathroom.

This red light seems to work really, really well with the methylene blue. So anyways, I went out to dinner with the guy who designed this when I was in Mexico, and he said, dude, what you should try doing is wrapping it around your neck. So the red light shining over the carotid arteries and a radio radiating all the blood as it passes through the neck. And so I got home from Mexico three days ago. And so yesterday morning, and also this morning, I took methylene blue when I woke up in the morning just with my cup of coffee. And then when I got down my office about a half hour later, I wrapped this red light device. It's called a Kineon. And again, we've got some kind of a discount on it. It was in the gift guide, so I'll put it in the show notes as well. Well, and man, like I felt like my brain just instantly turned on like, like a light bulb. And so that's kind of another interesting hack. When we're on the, on the, on the topic of cognitive enhancement and some of the cool new things out there for it is this, this light. They, you know, because I like these joov lamps, but they're full body. This thing just like concentrates it over any area of the body. Really, really powerful. That's kind of cool. Only stays on for five minutes. I've been leave me on for 10. So I'll press it. It sounds like this. I got my hands right now. See, I press, it turns on and then it'll stay on for five minutes and then it turns off, but then I'll press it again. I've been doing it for about 10 minutes and kind of a, kind of a cool device. So a new thing I'm doing while I'm standing at my desk in the morning. Working during the day, huh? Yeah.

That's pretty cool, dude. You should track your heart rate variability when you do that. Oh yeah, because if it's like an increased production of. No. Nitric oxide, if you're shining it over the carotid sinus, we know that that's where one of your high baroreflex response is located, right in that area. So you can actually influence heart rate variability by influencing the homeostatic blood pressure mechanisms that are located in that area.

Yeah.

So you should, yeah. Run a little test where you track HRV right in that time and see if you see any like really cool fluctuations. Because that'd be a really cool thing to talk about.

Well, from what I understand to, to target the vagus nerve, which is. Which is really the main nerve responsible for nervous system tone, you can actually shine lights on the back of the neck, like near the occipital bone, the back of the neck. So this device has got three lights on it. So the Way I do it is two of the lights are over the right and the left side of my neck kind of over the carotid, but then the back lights right back up against my occipital bone. So. That's a good point. I probably would see an impact on heart rate variability, so I'll try that. And I, you know, the device, I gotta remember how much it costs. It's, I don't think it's prohibitively expensive, you know, because the juve panel is like thousands and thousands of dollars. I think this thing's under 500 bucks. And then you add our discount. I don't know what it is, but I'll put it in the show notes. You could probably save even more, but, and plus, it travels well, so anyways. Cool.

Cool.

Little hack. All right, well, let's, let's bring somebody else up on. We've got a. Reed. Reed has made a request, so. Reed, go ahead.

Hey, Ben, thanks for bringing me up. I was just wondering what you thought of Tom Brady, like, the TB12 method, if that's, do you think that's an effective workout or exercise? You know, like, with the bands and stuff?

Something's obviously working for him. You know, I, I, I can't say that I've looked too hard into the exact TB12 exercise protocol. I mean, he, he's got a whole bunch of stuff that, you know, he has a real multimodal approach to his athletic longevity. Like, for example, you know, he, he avoids nightshades, which I don't think everybody has to do. But if you're serious and you want, like, every last little bit and go from good to great for your joints. Yeah, avoiding, you know, tomatoes, at least the seeds and the skins, you know, eggplants, nightshades, high amounts of seeds and nuts, things like that might be a good idea. But I know he does a lot of infrared. He focuses a lot on brain exercises and on recovery, focuses a lot on hydration. But the actual. I know he even has, like, a vibrating foam roller, which I really like. You know, a lot of the fascia work and a lot of kind of like the haptic sensation around the, around the.

Joints by using the vibrating type of foam rollers, vibrating platforms, things like that, I'm a fan of. But are you familiar, Reed, with his actual workout program as far as what it looks like?

Not his professional one, but just like the TB12 stuff that they promote. So it's more like the bands and all that, you know, like resistance bands.

Jay, do you know, have you ever seen like a sample TB12 workout.

No, I haven't. I've known it's around, but I actually have no clue what the actual workout is. I mean, before today I didn't even know there were bands included.

Let's see, let's see if we can find it here. Okay, so TB12 resistance bands. So he uses resistance bands. Looks like his trainer, Alex Guerrero designed this nine exercise workout for him during the season. And he has three types of bands. The bands with handles, the bands with long loops that come in different thicknesses, and then the shorter bands that you loop around your ankles and your knees, which I would imagine you could use like monster walk walks and things like that. It says that they do a pre workout with the vibrating foam roller, which is a good idea. You know, I like to use the vibration platform to turn on some extra motor units pre workout. Like that was actually my workout this morning, was I. I did a quick vasper cardio routine, then I did some push ups and squats on the vibration platform and then finished with some kettlebell work, Turkish get ups and kettlebell swings. And when you do the vibration priority to the main work, it does really seem to activate a lot more muscles. I had a fantastic interview with the folks from Power Plate about this that I'll link to in the show notes if anyone wants to listen in. I learned a ton about vibration from that particular interview. But then it looks like they do a standing row, they do a banded push up, they do a banded core rotation, banded deadlift, banded bicep curl, a banded tricep extension, banded lunge, banded shoulder press, and banded X squat. I mean, this looks like the type of thing that would be fantastic for like, you know, travel workout, hotel room, you know, minimal equipment type of routine. I gotta tell you, I would be surprised if Tom Brady weren't also, or at least had not also at some point in his career, done more traditional weightlifting using barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, you know, chains, things like that. The type of things you would see in a typical, you know, NFL strength conditioning facility versus just bands, frankly, because it's, it's difficult to induce things like hypertrophy and muscle mass and muscle gain with just bands. But as far as athleticism and as far as a good portable way to work out, I mean, you, you can, you can, you can get a lot out of bands. I mean, you know, I travel with, with, with some blood flow restriction bands, a few elastic bands, and then typically some type of suspension strap that I can hang from a doorway in A hotel room for things like push ups, et cetera. I mean, this workout looks, it looks okay for like a go to minimalist, quick 20 minute high intensity workout that would kind of get you strength and cardio at the same time. But I don't think it's necessarily implementing all the tools you would need need if you wanted to get after things like muscle mass, muscle hypertrophy, and perhaps some of the enhanced athleticism that you get from lifting heavier weights. I think that some people who are mesomorphic, which, you know, naturally athletic, muscular people, which probably defines, you know, like 80% of the folks in the NFL, likely including Tom Brady, looking at his body type, that these bands would allow you to maintain a lot of functional fitness. If you're somebody who's already got a decent amount of muscle, I'd say this would be the type of thing that would be more like a travel workout or the type of workout that you do on days in between. More traditional strength training though. But it, I mean it looks like a, like a pretty solid program. I mean, you know, grab your resistance bands and, and swear off nightshades and maybe you too will be a 40. What is he, 43 year old NFL quarterback? Yeah, whatever.

He's done old man in the NFL. Yeah. And he's doing, doing all right. Not the greatest season for him this season, but I mean, hey, listen, we all have a hard season once in a while. You know, back in my NFL career.

Yeah, he can always fall back on his days as a supermodel too if he needs to. So I'm not too worried about Tom Brady's success. All right, well, cool. Yeah, great, great question. You know, one thing I should emphasize though, and I talked with Joel Green about this when I interviewed him, is it this whole idea of young muscles, the post workout or pre workout pliability to activate blood flow to tissues to reduce cross linking and adhesions and fiber. I swear by my 15 minute foam roller session. Every single morning is something that just keeps me put together. I have very few aches and pains. I'm able to just wake up a lot of missiles in the body. My philosophy is that if I wake up in the morning, I do do 15 minutes of movement, mobility, foam rolling, etc. When I actually do work out during the day, I don't have to warm up barely at all. You know, I might hit an airdyne bike for three or four minutes and do some arm and leg swings and I'm ready to jump in because I just basically start every morning with what many would consider a traditional pre workout warmup. But this idea of maintaining young pliable muscles via the use of pretty regular foam rolling and deep tissue work and then adding the vibratory component into that, you know, I got the vibrating balls, the vibrating roller, the vibrating plate. I think that that vibration is a fantastic way to kind of upgrade a mobility protocol.

Yeah, I love it. I don't have to worry about it, man. I'm not an old man. I'm a young. I'm a young gun. So I don't deal with all that old people stuff.

I forgot. How old are you, Jay?

34.

Okay. Oh, yeah, you're a young buck. Yeah, see, I'm 40, so, yeah. Old man Masters. All right, let's go ahead and take somebody else up here. Looks like Elon has. No, I'm just kidding. Elon isn't here.

Elon, come on up. Ask your cannabis question.

Let's go ahead and go over to the text based questions and see what we got there.

Let's do it.

Okay. Thoughts on taurine. Thoughts on taurine. What do you think? You've used taurine, Jay? Yep.

Yeah, Yeah, I used to. I use. I don't. I said I was trying to think of the last time I've used it, but yeah, I mean, I've used it before just as a pre workout supplement, but yeah, it's been a while.

Okay. Well, taurine is an amino acid. It's an amino acid that. It actually does have a decent amount of research on it. So basically you'll find it all over the place in tissue that is electrically excitable. Okay. So like the heart, the brain muscle, the eyes. And the reason for that is because it's a sulfur containing amino acid that really allows some of these areas to maintain a proper charge. It's considered to be an essential nutrient, meaning it can be produced in your body, but the average person doesn't actually produce a huge amount of it. And low levels of taurine are associated primarily with cardiovascular disease and diabetes. You get it from meat like poultry, beef, dark meat, shellfish. A lot of vegans and vegetarians definitely should be supplementing with taurine. But there's a lot of benefits to it, like I mentioned, because of its effect on electrical excitability in cells. It seems to really help with cardiac output and stroke volume and cardiovascular performance. It also can reduce blood pressure and may even reduce total cholesterol and triglyceride levels. So it seems to have an impact on lipids too. They put it in a lot of Energy drinks, particularly combined with caffeine, because that 1, 2 combo of caffeine and taurine seems to have a complimentary effect in terms of a pickup in energy, which is why Red Bull gives you. What do they say? Red Bull gives you? Wings, Something like that. Wings. That's it, yeah, yeah. So basically, when Tauren is working, in addition to the electricity excitability, it's also an antioxidant. And this is how it acts on blood pressure. It reduces our blood. I said blood pressure, right? Not blood volume. Sometimes I say something.

You said blood pressure.

Okay, I said blood pressure. All right. So it enhances vasodilation, which is relaxation of blood vessels, increase in blood flow, and it helps to reduce production of angiotensin, which is a vasoconstrictor. And that can also, in addition, help with blood pressure. And so it is basically allowing for better blood flow, is better electrical excitability. And it may also increase the use of fat for fuel, which would have kind of like a carbohydrate sparing effect. Most studies are around like one and a half grams, two grams a day. A lot of folks will combine that into multiple little bouts throughout the day. For me, it's kind of like creatine. Technically. Creatine, it's five grams a day. And your ideal use, use out of it is splitting that into multiple doses, like 1 1/2 to 2 grams three times a day. Taurine is kind of like that. It's very similar to creatine in that respect. And a lot of these amino acids, it's about 0.5 grams three times a day. If you want to get the ultimate effects from taurine. But it's not a bad supplement. I question if you're already eating a decent amount of meat, whether it's that necessary because you're getting it from the metabolism of. Of cysteine in the meat and also the direct taurine that's right there in the meat itself. But especially if you're vegan or vegetarian or plant based, I think taurine could be a pretty good addition. I suspect it's probably in a couple of the supplements I take without me even being aware of it. Sometimes there's certain things, you look at the label like, oh, I already am taking that. But yeah, taurine's not bad. I don't think it's got any detrimental effects aside from if you're consuming it in the form of an ant energy drink with all the added sugars, et cetera. But ultimately, yeah, I'd go thumbs up on taurine.

So, yeah, the interesting thing about taurine being found in energy drinks, I was just thinking about this, and this is just me kind of word vomiting here, but you're putting in an amino acid that's a vasodilator with a heavy dose of vasoconstriction with the caffeine. So is the intention behind these individuals that make these products to maybe offset the deleterious vasoconstricting effects of high caffeine with something that helps to, like, offset it with vasodilation?

That's a good point. Maybe that's why it combines really well with caffeine, because caffeine has, like, that vasoconstrictive effect on the blood vessels. Although, as anybody who enhances their morning poo with a cup of coffee knows, that it also relaxes some of the digestive muscles muscles and can give you a better poo. So I think that in the case of adding it to an energy drink in combination with taurine, there probably is a pretty good crossover effect as far as it kind of battling a little bit of the vasoconstrictive effects of the caffeine. So that's a good point. Yeah, it's a match made in heaven. Yeah. You know, what I should do is try combining it with this paraxanthine stuff that I've been using and see what those effects are that the Begones Trout parents, paraxanthine.

True.

All right, let's see. We got time for one more question. People want to hop on going once, twice, three times, maybe four or five times. If you have a question, it's your last chance. We'll bring you up on stage, and you, too, can be a part of the Ben Greenfield Live Show. If not, we're just going to move on to our review of the day and give some stuff away. But I'll give people a few more seconds here.

That's right. Oh, we got one.

All right, here we go. All right. It's like fishing.

That's right.

All right, Gene, go ahead. Oh, hi, guys. Quick question.

This is maybe for Dr. J.

Just heard the Ben talking about supplements, like taurine, for example. Isn't there a danger of when you take supplements that if these substances are.

Produced by the body, then isn't there.

A danger that if you intake them, then your body will produce less of them? And then when you stop supplementing, then.

Your body has to deal with the.

Shock of not having enough, like, for example, with caffeine. So you're saying basically what you're Asking about is, are there supplements that would down regulate your natural production? Correct? I mean, taurine for example, because you talked about it. Yeah, it depends. It depends. There are certain supplements that are going to, via a negative feedback loop, cause your brain to quit sending the signal for your body to make it, because there's a detection that is coming from an exogenous source. With testosterone probably being the most popular example of something like that. You take it and technically your body starts producing less. And so you're kind of stuck taking testosterone for a while. Something like caffeine. It's not like your body is producing caffeine. And then when you drink coffee regularly, your body quits producing caffeine. Instead what happens is caffeine competes for a different relaxing molecule called adenosine on the cell receptor surface. And so what that results in is you needing more and more adenosine in order to feel sleepy. And the only trick for that is just knock off your caffeine habit for a while and then the adenosine receptor sensitivity kind of restores. And then there are other supplements like melatonin, where the research goes back and forth on whether or not it could slightly decrease the body's natural production. Although I think the evidence is weak on that. So it kind of depends on the actual supplement. One thing that I'm kind of intrigued by is the idea that we produce natural into cannabinoids for stress, for relaxation, for pain killing, et cetera. And what I've wondered and I haven't seen data on this, somebody out there might know and you could always add as a comment to the show notes, whether frequent use of CBD or cannabis containing compounds could actually decrease the body's ability to naturally combat stress or naturally produce relaxation or naturally produce painkilling compound compounds in the absence of cannabis. If you've been a frequent user and I haven't seen a lot of data behind that, but ultimately the answer to your question, long story short, is it depends on the actual supplement that we're talking about. And so in many cases you can use a good research based website for a lot of different compounds. I like examine.com for this, for example. Examine is one good, a good place to go and get really, really good peer reviewed research or clinical research on a wide variety of compounds from taurine to caffeine to melatonin to testosterone, you name it. And I've actually worked in conjunction with a lot of different folks in the supplement industry to help them with formulations or advice over how much of this and that to Put in Supplements and Examine is one of the websites that I'll actually use to advance advise me or at least get me started on some of the research behind some of these things, not only in terms of the dosage but also as far as any deleterious effects, side effects, activation of negative feedback loops, etc. So you know it, you know, long story is or short stories, it depends. But yeah, there are certain things like testosterone that would definitely reduce your body's own natural production. Certain things like melatonin where it's unclear, and certain things that your body isn't producing producing anyways. Much of like caffeine say, where, you know, it's more of you just becoming desensitized to it. Is there anything you'd add? Jay?

No, Yeah, I agree. 100 I think the one thing that's just my general rule of thumb is that if I'm developing any level of tolerance to something, which is just about everything that you take on a repeated basis, you develop some level of physiological tolerance. It's just to take a period of time off. And I, I'm the worst for me is caffeine because it is always the most difficult one for me to give up because I have. I won't use the word addiction because I don't want to use that word too lightly, but man, it is, it is probably the one of the things that I'm most physiologically addicted to in terms of compounds or substances. And when I go off of it, it's great for a period of time and then it always, you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder. So I love it when I get it. But for me it's, it's like the telltale sign is that I need more of it to like wake up and boost the body. Or like I've gotten like these weird ectopic heartbeats where like basically it's like my, my there's a beat of the heart outside of the heart's chamber. And so therefore it feels like a skipped beat. And that's like my immediate like, oh, I've taken in too much caffeine. I need a break for like a week or two weeks. Mainly A week. Two weeks is kind of difficult for me.

Yeah. And last, last thing I'd throw in there, just kind of a little hack. I guess this would be relevant to people who travel a lot is I like to go pretty minimalist when I travel. I don't like to travel a lot of bottles and supplements, etc. So I'll just grab my base supplements when I travel like mostly some of the kion stuff like the aminos and the creatine. And typically I'll grab a bottle of some liver supplements just because I don't have a lot of organ meats when I travel. And so I'll go as minimalist as possible possible just to basically push the reboot button on my supplements when I travel. And so that means every month I'm going for a period of five to seven days where a lot of the stuff I normally take I just don't have with me. And you know, it's a very rough hypothesis, pretty non scientific, but it's just this idea that, yeah, if you cut it out, it just ensures that, you know, as Anthony d' Amello so elegantly notes in his book, awareness that you're not attached to anything in life for your happiness and that you are able to say goodbye to certain things and push the reboot button on any dependency that you might have. And so that's kind of one thing because obviously if you don't take a certain supplement that you suspect you might be attached to when you travel, your only option is you either can't take it or you got to go buy it. And in most cases, you aren't going to get to where you travel and crave something you left at home so much you're going to go to Whole foods and spend 75 bucks on it. So that's just my cheap hack for making sure, you know, just checking myself when it comes to supplement use, you know. All right, well, I think we should wrap it up there. I think we covered a lot in all the show notes and you guys can go leave more of your questions, your comments and your feedback. Those are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com450 that's BenGreenfieldLife.com450 and do you have any testimonials picked out for today at all? Jay, we wanted to read a testimony on the show.

Man, I've got one.

Oh yeah, okay. Because if you listen to something podcast player and you leave us a review or a rating and you say something kind, which really helps to support the show. Anyways, we'll read your review on the show and then we'll send you a little surprise gift pack straight to your front doorstep and all you got to do is email gearngreenfieldlife.com that's gearngreenfieldlife.com with your T shirt size and we'll send you out a goodie. So what's the testimony for this week, Jay.

So this one comes from Lukehawk9999. So four nines and Luke says great info and entertaining. His podcast has interesting experts on many different health and fitness topics. Not only is it fascinating, Ben has a great sense of humor and is very entertaining. Love this podcast.

Well, thank you. So sweet. Thank you. Yeah. So Mr. 9999 email gear bengreenfieldlife.com with your T shirt size, we'll hook you up. I should note, by the way, speaking of sense of humor, I actually just posted this to Instagram as well. There was a podcast. The time that this podcast comes out a couple of weeks ago was a panel at this fantastic event called Runga. And I made a joke on the panel. We were all just hanging out, drinking wine, kind of like a party type environment, and I made a comment about vaginas. That in retrospect was actually a pretty insensitive and misogynistic comment and I think it upsets some people. I can't obviously just call everybody upset up on the phone, but I can at least paint with a broad brush. And on podcasts like this, tell folks, hey, I'm sorry about that comment.

It was insensitive and I shouldn't have made it. And I'm constantly learning. Every day I'm learning about how to become a better human being. But in that case, it was something that I definitely should not have said. So my apologies. I don't fancy myself as a crass comedian podcast or something like that where you'd expect that type of stuff on the show. I like to stay somewhat more fine than that. So if you heard that podcast, you were upset by it, please know that's not the type of person I'm trying to be. So not to end this podcast on a Debbie Downer, but anybody who heard my vagina comment during the Runga podcast, I'm sorry for making that comment. So please forgive me. And if you're graceful enough, keep listening. I promise I will not do stuff like that in the future.

I forgive you, Ben.

Oh, thank you, Jay. Thank you. Well, I think that's a nice place to end forgiveness. Love covers a multitude of sins, and forgiveness is right up there with love. All right, that all being said, all the shownotes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com 450. Thanks everybody for listening in. And Jay, go do your. Go to your red lights or your caffeine, your testosterone or whatever else this show has inspired you to do.

Headed right there, man.

All right, later everybody. This is cool, but you want to pay attention because it's coming up right around the Corner on Friday, December 2nd. You're going to get a chance to join me and some really powerful healing physicians down in Sarasota, Florida. This is a live event, goes from 8am to 5pm I'll be there. My friend and a brilliant former podcast guest, the Doctor Strange of Medicine, Dr. John Laurence, is going to be there. HBOT USA, Dr. Jason and Melissa Saunders are going to be there with their hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Brian Richards of Saunaspace, Harry Paul, one of John's friends who I recently met, who's also an amazing healer for an event that's super unique. It's all based around the elements, earth, fire, air and water with a ton of treatments and technologies and modalities and very unique biohacks that you're going to get exposed to during the entire event. Basically what I mean by that is when it comes to air, you're going to learn about hyperbaric oxygen and ozone and air filtration and everything you need to know to upgrade your air when it comes to Earth. Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, earthing, grounding, a host of other ways that you can use the power of the planet to enhance your health, your sleep, your recovery, your muscle gain, your fat loss, a lot more water. You'll learn about proper water filtration, how to upgrade your water, hydrogenated water, structured water, basically soup to nuts. That's everything you need to know about water and how to apply it in your home, in your office and your life. And then finally, fire is a fun one. Lots of cryotherapy, a little bit of ice too, breath work, inner fire practices, a ton of stuff when it comes to introducing the element of fire into your life. So this event is super unique. John and I have been working on it behind the scenes and it has come together amazingly. There's even a VIP experience. If you sign up for the VIP experience, you could come two days early or stay a few days after the event. And basically you will get all the medical protocols customized by Dr. John and his staff. If you claim one of those 10 VIP spots that'll include like IV methylene blue laser treatments, John's really unique Bliss release, which is basically an endonasal adjustment, which is essentially like a chiropractic adjustment through your nose for your entire stuff skull, which if you've had TBI or concussion or allergies or things like that in the past, it totally reboots that entire system. There's going to also be ozone treatments, Myers IV cocktails, Exosome treatments, IV laser, access to a CVAC machine. And John's entire facility is going to be at your beck and call if you got one of the VIP tickets. And then we're also probably going to have a little bit of a party later on in the evening after this event. The whole thing is going to be a pinch. Me, I'm dreaming full on cutting edge of biohacking experience and I'm just now letting the world know about it. So spots are going to fill up pretty fast. Space is limited, but if you want to get in now, here's how you go to BenGreenfieldLife.comElements event. That's BenGreenfieldLife.comEments event. It's in Sarasota, Florida. Again, it's all day Friday, December 2nd. I would come in early and stay after if you just want to try out all the crazy modalities there. You know, I don't know how fast those VIP tickets are going to sell out, but either way this thing is going to be absolutely amazing. I just can't wait. Like I'm pinching myself. Can't wait to be on the plane to head down there and do this. So check it out. BenGreenfieldLife Elements event and I'll see you there. I hope.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And if you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.