Q&A 452: Does NR or NAD Cause Cancer, THC & Your Brain, "Super-Ager" Brains, & Artery Unclogging

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life Podcast, does NR nad really cause cancer? The latest on THC in your brain, super age, your brains, artery unclogging tricks 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, I'm on the road right now. I was actually on a walk last night and I walked past one of these juicery places and of course they sell these, you know, super expensive high end cold pressed juices, but man, are they expensive. But back in my bag, I've just got one little canister of super easy to travel with powder that does all the same stuff with me and I could literally have a juice every day for two weeks of travel and it would cost me about the same as one juice at one of these juiceries. So the other cool thing is I don't have to worry about the sugar like the 18 apples and three bananas they pack into those juices at the average juicery. Instead, the stuff that I use has less than 3 grams of sugar per serving. It's also glyphosate free, full organic, free of fillers, and uses the highest quality plant based ingredients in powders like green, red, gold, you name it. Very, very great tasting as well. It's a superfood blend that you just mix with water or your favorite beverage while you're on the go. So you can basically be like eating salads all day without actually eating salads. You can get 20% off of this stuff. It's made by Organifi, who also strive to keep prices as low as possible on this stuff. To make it easy on your pocketbook, you go to Organifi.com Ben that's Organifi with an I.

And if you go to Organifi.com Ben they'll give you 20% off of your first order. At Organifi, save yourself some money and get yourself some veg in a very, very super concentrated format. Check them out. Organifi.com Ben one of my favorite not carbohydrate, not fat, not protein. Little known secret macronutrients is now back in stock. It's called ketones. The ones I use are made by hvmn. They're called Ketone iq. They're perfect for staving your appetite for hours on end, running from meeting to meeting when you can't get food, any type of endurance activity. Because ketones are a great fuel for the heart, for the liver, for the diaphragm. Anytime you want A great amount of portability, convenience on an airplane. It's amazing because you're not even tempted at all by any food the whole time you're sitting on the airplane. Ketones are 28% more efficient at generating energy than sugar alone. That means you could do a lot more with a lot less. Especially when your body gets pushed to limits. Because ketones help you convert stored fat into energy. And then with ketone iq, you can actually get that without having to fast and excessively restrict carbohydrates. They created this stuff through a $6 million contract from the U.S. department of Defense. Deep partnerships with some of the top researchers in ketone science. It's a truly cutting edge drink. It avoids the insulin spikes, the caffeine jitters, the mid afternoon energy crashes, the super simple, you just throw this stuff back, I'll toss back a shot straight out of the bottle. Some people like to mix it with a little water, stevia, stuff like that. But either way, HVMN stands by their products 100%. If you're not satisfied, your order is free. That's how much they believe, and I believe in the power of ketones. Been used them for years and years. Here's how to get 20% off of any purchase of Ketone IQ. You go to hvmn.me beng. H, v m n me Bengal. Use code BENG. That gets you 20% off of any purchase of ketone IQ. You can also find them at any California Earth bar locations, which are usually within an equinox, so check them out. Hvmn ME beng. All right, after the end of the year, work obligations and holiday family fun, I know you can get stressed, worn out, lack motivation. It's definitely not the way you want to start the new year. So you're feeling like you need a holiday from the holidays. I got a solution for you. Start taking magnesium every night before you go to bed. Why? Because stress depletes your magnesium levels. And magnesium is critical for getting deep and restorative sleep. The magnesium I recommend you use is called Magnesium Breakthrough. They got seven unique forms of magnesium in there. Everything your brain and body actually needs in a very bio absorbable form. When you get all seven forms of magnesium, all seven critical forms, that's when the magic really happens. Every function in your body gets upgraded from your sleep to your brain. From stress to pain to inflammation. Even better, when you make magnesium breakthrough part of your daily routine. You rested, you recharged, you're ready to crush all your new Year's resolutions and I'm going to give you a 10% discount on this stuff with a special gift that you'll unlock with your purchase. You go to magbreakthrough.com Ben that's M A G breakthrough.com Ben now they'll get your free gift 10% discount. Get on that magnesium. It'll make stress management way easier. Trust me, you'll love the way you feel. All right, let's do it. All right. Well, welcome to today's show. It's me flying solo today. It is one of those episodes where I give you some of the latest findings in research and fitness and health and biohacking and longevity and beyond. This is also an episode that I typically do live on Twitter spaces. I think that's what it's called at least. However, since I'm flying solo today, I have no co host, no helper and I'm a little bit of a luddite. I have no clue if I'll be doing this on Twitter spaces or not. We'll find out. And if, if it works, it works. If not, then we'll just have a nice little Q and A. Just you and me. Just you and me. A fireside chat. Alright, so today I want to share with you some of the latest findings but I also want to let you know that all the shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com452 that's BenGreenfieldLife.com452 and I suppose I could just jump right into what I think caught a lot of people by surprise recently. There's this idea that nicotinamide, nad nr, et cetera, as a very popular anti aging and longevity hack or supplement if you want to call it might be associated with cancer. And I want to fill you in on what occurred here. There was a hot off the press study that was published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics. Seems like a strange journal to be studying supplement. But anyways, what happened in that study was they looked into this supplement that a lot of people take frankly called nr and they decided to see if there were any issues with NR and cancer. So let me fill you in here real quickly. NR, it's a form of vitamin B3. It's also known as niacin. You'll find it naturally in things like cow's milk and yeast and beer and, and it's also formed when we digest niacin found in foods, namely niacin in forms you may be familiar with is nadh and nadph well, niacin is like the building block of NAD in the body. And NAD is essentially it's a critical molecule for your body to be able to generate energy from food. It's also a little bit of a cellular protectant, and that's why a lot of people swear by it for its longevity enhancing mechanisms. However, does it cause cancer? Well, what they did in this study was they used what's called a biosensor system. I suppose that's why they publish it in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics. And what this biosensor system allows them to do is look at the uptake of NR into cells and tissues of live animals in real time, which is actually kind of cool. And so what they did was they took nr, the same stuff that a lot of people pop every day, as a pill for longevity and for energy and for cellular protection. And they added a nitrogen to the nr and that made a new kind of compound, technically called Azidonr A Z I D o n R. Now a Z I d o n R Azetonr can't be turned into nad. That's why I put the nitrogen on it. So this way they can track it and see what it does as it goes throughout the body. And what they specifically wanted to look at was whether it influenced the outcome of cancer, in this case, triple negative breast cancer. Triple negative means that the breast cancer is negative for three different proteins, estrogen and progesterone. And this growth factor called HER2. The reason that they they look at each of these proteins in breast cancers, each one is a potential target for treatments. And triple negative breast cancer has fewer treatment options than other types of breast cancer because it's negative for these three different proteins. So there's fewer ways to come at it. Well, basically, when they gave the NR or looked at the NR uptake, when it came to the situation where there was breast cancer, they found that the triple negative breast cancer cells took up four times as much of the NR as the other cancer cells. And then they looked at whether the NR supplementation could fuel the growth and metastasis of triple negative breast cancer cells in mice. And it turns out that, and this is no surprise because it appears these breast cancer cells could, could take up NR quite readily. They found brain metastases in 9 out of 11 mice that were fed NR and only 3 out of the 12 control mice that they did not give it to. Now, some people step back and look at this and say, okay, well, breast cancer cells take up NR and NR Seems to aggravate mice who have been injected with cancer cells and then given nr. So we should avoid this stuff like the plague. Right, well, first question, dose, right? Did they use a dose that's similar to what the average human being is supplementing with? Well, if you actually do the math, which you can do, you can look at what they give to the mice and usually you would divide that by a certain number to adjust for the difference in surface area between mice and humans and then divide that again to account for this being a short term study. And when you do all the math, I won't bore you or belabor you with that. Turns out that they were using the equivalent of what the average person takes when it comes to NR supplementation, like around 25-30mg or so. A lot of people actually take quite a bit more than that and that's considered to be a low dose of nr. Well, does this now mean that you should not take NR because it's going to give you cancer? Like all of the headlines immediately popped up and said, well, this is the problem. There was this book a long time ago called the China Study and it basically said protein causes cancer. High amounts of protein causes cancer. Protein from meat causes cancer. What they failed to really point out at least thoroughly in that book was that, yeah, protein seems to fuel cancer. When cancer is pre existent in mice and rodent models that, that were injected with a toxin to induce cancer growth, then given high amounts of protein. Protein in the average cancer free person does not cause cancer. Right. So like if I were to get cancer, there are many things I would do. One of the first things I would do is I would limit my protein intake and I would limit my carbohydrate intake because both seem to be capable of fueling cancer. And I would shift to like a vegetable rich ketogenic approach, you know, almost similar to like Garrison therapy. However, when cancer is not present, that doesn't mean that protein gives you cancer. And, and you could say the same thing about this study on nr. It's a model, it's a study that assumes the existence of cancer. And so yeah, if you have breast cancer specifically, I would not be using NR or NAD or NMN because it appears to be able to aggravate or fuel that in the same way. I wouldn't be eating a high protein diet if I had cancer like that. And so it's something that, you know, always needs to be taken with a grain of salt, so to speak, or a grain of nad, I suppose in this case. And yes, NR has a lot of great data behind it for its longevity enhancing properties. It's something that David Sinclair has studied up on quite a bit. I haven't talked with him. I don't know what he thought of this study. But basically, yeah, if you have cancer, you may want to avoid it. You should avoid it, in my opinion. But this study should not be used to suggest that healthy people could get cancer from supplementing with nicotinamide riboside. Right. It may actually help to prevent cancer because some studies have shown that nicotinamide can reduce the risk of melanoma, for example. But yeah, if you have cancer, I would not use NR anymore. And that's a new recommendation based on the science. But no, NR is not going to give you cancer. All right, so cleared that up and I'll link to the study and everything if you want to check it out for yourself, if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com 452 along with a great paper that my friend Chris Masterjohn wrote breaking down the whole recent NR causes cancer scare. So speaking of scare, here's one that might scare you if you're a pothead. This is not a brand new study, but it's one that recently.

Came across my radar because there was a doctor on a podcast who said that THC was really bad for your brain, that cannabis, that weed was really bad for your brain. And there's multiple people, probably most notably Daniel Amen, a great researcher and physician when it comes to neural health, who really says that cannabis is about the worst thing you can do for your brain. Now, I am not completely against cannabis. I think especially high thc. Cannabis is good for painkilling. You know, it could even be used as an alternative to opiates in many cases in smaller amounts. I think it's good for creativity. I think that especially for female orgasmic experience, it's wonderful for sex. So I think there's a time and place where THC fits in. But despite its potential therapeutic use, this study basically highlighted the fact that cannabis, especially high thc, Cannabis appears to be a risk factor for ischemic stroke in young adults, which is true. And so they evaluated the effects of THC on brain mitochondrial function and oxidative stress, which are key factors involved in stroke. They didn't do this in humans, though. They did it in rodent models. Now let me fill you in on what this all means. So basically, when we look at the mitochondria, they're the main source of ATP production. They're particularly involved in the balance between cell survival and cell death. And most cell energy get through something called oxidative phosphorylation, which is a process that requires the action of a set of enzyme complexes located in a part of the mitochondria called the inner mitochondrial membrane. Now, this inner mitochondrial membrane.

As it produces energy.

Basically it's leaking a certain number of free radicals, a certain amount of reactive oxygen species, and that's normal. They're even used as signaling molecules. It's a reason that in people who over exercise and have excessively high metabolisms and eat too much food, they wind up with a lot of free radicals, a lot of inflammation, a lot of these reactive oxygen species. Well, what they wanted to look at in this particular study was whether THC would increase that reactive oxygen species production by the mitochondrial in the brain and contribute to the toxicity or perhaps the ischemic stroke risk of something like cannabis use in young adults. Well, turns out that when they looked in vitro in the brains of mice and rats, so getting little mice and rats high, what they found was a really significant increase in free radical leakage in the brain after THC exposure that supports this idea that a fraction of the electrons that reduce oxygen to reactive oxygen species in the respiratory chain are much greater in the presence of cannabis. Okay, so your brain basically goes into free radical overproduction hyperdrive, at least theoretically, when exposed to high amounts of THC containing cannabis, especially if you're a little mouse. However.

The brains of mice and rats can give us clues as to what occurs in the brains of humans. I would love to see a study on the effects of cannabis in the brain, what's called in vivo in humans via both intravenous as well as inhalation and edible based routes. But when I saw this, and I saw that not only do we see THC related neuronal damage, but but you also see this increase in brain reactive oxygen species production. Got me thinking about a few things. First, regular frequent THC usage. This is yet another nail in the coffin that suggests that it's not the best thing for your brain. Really isn't. There's a time and a place, Just like there's a time and a place for a cocktail and there's a time and a place for a donut. But I would not really, if you want to prioritize your mental health, be a frequent user of THC containing cannabis. The same might not be said for cbd, which actually has some great anti inflammatory properties. But then the other thing I would consider is in the same way that I recommend that like if you're going to have vegetable oil, you know, sauces, dressings, et cetera, and I don't even like the whole food salad bar with their cold expeller, pressed canola oil or whatever, there are certain protective compounds that can help with that. Spirulina is one, glycine is another. Those can help to kind of mop up the damage from something like vegetable oil in terms of what it does to the cell membrane. Well, if you are going to use THC and perhaps you see where I'm going here. High intake of antioxidants and I revealed a whole bunch of the highest antioxidant containing foods like clove and allspice and gooseberry in Q&A451. So that might be a good one for you to go back and listen to and look at the chart of. I would consider stepping up the antioxidant intake on any days, which should be few and far between anyways, in which you're exposing your brain to a high amount of THC because there's some pretty good evidence that you're going to really ramp up your reactive oxygen species production in a case like that. So A, be careful with your THC usage. B, I would use a lot of antioxidants if you were going to use thc. Now I did mention cbd, the non psychoactive component or one of the non psychoactive components of thc. And this was interesting. I figured while I was talking about cannabis I'd bring this up because it's a brand new study. They looked at the use of CBD cannabidiol in the management of insomnia. And what they did was they had a bunch of studies, 34 different studies that they looked into, several of which used CBD predominant therapy and some of which used CBD in a certain ratio with thc, usually an equal one to one ratio. Now what they found was that CBD alone or CBD in a one to one ratio with THC could be quite beneficial in alleviating the symptoms of insomnia. Which is great to know. Now here's what this paper didn't mention. THC can actually, and I'm not like intentionally throwing cannabis under the bus here, THC containing cannabis and I don't have anything against it, again for the right time and place, I think it can be a good molecule to use for things like creativity and sex and pain killing. But what they fail to mention in this analysis is that THC across a wide variety of people can cause a real decrease in both deep sleep as well as dreaming and memory consolidation during sleep. And if, and this is what this study kind of speaks to me concerning, if CBD can give you just as good an amount of sleep without deleteriously impacting sleep architecture in the same way that THC does, why not use cbd? And I use CBD pretty regularly for sleep. I have these little gummies I get from Element Health. I actually recently interviewed the folks at Element Health about these things and I think they work very well for sleep. They're full spectrum cbd. So they have a very, very small amount of THC in them, but you'd have to eat a ton of them if you were going to say get high. And then they have a little tincture, like a little dropper bottle with tincture. And so CBD I think is great for insomnia. But I would not use CBD with THC in it when you're, when you're able to just get the CBD and isolate or at least a full spectrum cbd. But speaking of insomnia, because it is something that I occasionally get, I would say about two or three times a year I'll come down with a multi day bout of something very closely resembling insomnia. And usually it occurs after I have returned home from a bout of international travel and my circadian rhythmicity is just all messed up. Well, one of the things that I have found to be super duper helpful for me, and I believe I heard about this originally from Dr. Andrew Huberman, is this non sleep deep rest protocol, also known as Yoga Nidra. Chronic insomnia is something that has been looked into in terms of how it actually responds to, to a Yoga Nidra practice. And for me at least Yoga Nidra, if I wake up in the wee hours of the morning, can't get back to sleep and don't want to take some kind of a supplement or don't have one, or if I just want to lull myself naturally back into a sleep or a sleep like state works very well. The way that I do it is I have a track. So I have like the Muse app on my phone. I have another one called Sleep Space. I also have a couple of just downloaded YouTube tracks on my phone and all of them range from 10 to 40 minutes in length, but they're all Yoga NIDRA tracks. And essentially a big, big part of it for me at least is this body scan where you're scanning your feet and relaxing your feet, then moving up to your Ankles and relaxing your ankles and your knees and relaxing your knees. Typically, I'll get up to about my hips and then go dead to the world. Sometimes I will stay awake and alert enough to go all the way up to the top of the head. And even if I don't fall asleep or lose track of myself or my mental awareness, by the time I've got up to the top of my head, it is still incredibly relaxing. And it does seem to provide the feeling of having slept without necessarily having slept. And it also occasionally just lulls you back into a state of sleep because it's difficult to ruminate on the type of thoughts that would normally keep you awake if you're scanning your body and going up and down your body because it almost distracts your thoughts from doing other things. It's kind of like this concept. There's a device out there. I don't like it because I can't sleep with things wrapped around my head that well. But there's a device called the Ebb Ebb, and it circulates cold water through this device that you wrap around your head based on research that shows that cold water can shift blood away from the frontal cortices of the brain and allow for less thought rumination to keep you awake. And I have one I've tried. I wake up with it all cockeyed and halfway hanging off my head and wires coming out. And maybe there's a way to eventually design something that's a little bit less invasive, but nonetheless, Yoga Nidra seems to give me a very, very similar experience. And it's also useful to be used as, say, like a nap, for example. So, anyways, I just wanted to point that out when it comes to insomnia. And then the other thing that I've found lately, and I don't know if I've talked about it on a podcast before, but I feel like it gives me a similar experience as Yoga Nidra. It's a meditation app that somebody told me about a few months ago, and I've been using it and I really like it. It's called Synctuition. S Y N C T U I T I O N. It's like dozens and dozens of different journeys. You almost get a similar effect as though you've done like some kind of, like a. I don't like a plant medicine journey or deep breath work, but the way that the sounds are engineered and the fact that there's a specific theme for each mini journey, like the one I did today was about the miracle inside of each of us. The one yesterday was called Destiny. You start at level one, you go all the way up to level seven. And they increase in advancement in terms of the binaural beats that are used and the intensity of the protocol. And I've made it all the way up to to level seven on this thing and done almost every meditation in it. And I love it. Each meditation lasts about 22 to 27 minutes, which is a nice little sweet spot for me. And I usually do it when I'm laying in bed. Like if, let's say I wake up at like 4 and I don't want to get out of bed till 4:30, I'll switch on Sync Tuition Just lay there either snuggling with my wife and playing it in the track, or else I like to put a pillow underneath my knees and just kind of lay back and have my head cradled and do it that way. But this Think Tuition app seems to work really, really well and sometimes I'll fall back asleep and stay in bed. So anyways, Synctuition is also an interesting1. So CBD, Yoga Nidra, synctuition. There are many, many other things that can help with insomnia and help to support sleep. I mean, my supplements company, Kion, we have a fantastic sleep product called Sleep. Fittingly enough, it takes a little while to hit your system, like 20 or 30 minutes. So what I do is I actually take the capsules, even though there's a sleep powder as well. I just have the capsules up by my bedside right now and I just chew on them and let it dissolve under my tongue. And I feel like it hits me in about 10 minutes. And it's just a few different relaxing compounds like theanine and tryptophan. So Kion Sleeps used to work well. But I also, I love to find things that don't require me to be attached to some kind of chemical or supplement to sleep. And I think that Yoga Nidra or the Synctuition app, alone or in combination with something like Kion Sleep or cbd are really fantastic solutions for people who wanna sleep better. Cause who doesn't wanna sleep better and who hasn't occasionally had to deal with a frustrating insomnia? It's probably one of the most frustrating things I've had to deal with. And again, fortunately only pops up a couple times a year. All right, I got my latest shipment just in time for winter sports and physical activities, and I'm happy it's my clothing shipment. There's probably when you see me in videos and photos and Stuff like that one brand of clothing that I'm wearing more than any other brand. It's called Viori, that V U O R I. My wife wears their performance joggers, which she swears is like the softest joggers she owns. They come in a bunch of new colors. You got to hurry up and get these new colors while you can because they sell out quick. You go to vuori.com ben v U-O-R-I.com ben and they'll give you 20% off your first purchase and free shipping on any order. That's over 75 bucks and free returns. But they also have the leggings with the high waist, a drawstring tie, and no slip fit for girls. They've got their core short, which is their super comfortable men's lined athletic short with like compression built into performance. And then they got a men's performance jogger, which is awesome and super comfortable and great for lounging around on Christmas morning or Thanksgiving. I'm just saying. So Vuori.com Ben V-O-R-I.com Ben is where you can go to discover the versatility of Vuori clothing for yourself. All right, Remember last time you were at a gas station and you saw those like over the counter sexual performance enhancing pills? They're tempting, I know, but if you ever actually looked at the ingredients, it's a bunch of central nervous system overstimulants that give you four hour erection and nasty side effects and heart problems, a possible trip to the hospital. And yeah, there are certain pharmaceuticals out there that you could take for enhanced sexual performance. But why not go au naturale? There's this company called Joy Mode. My wife and I have been using this stuff. What it is is it's a powder you pour into water. It's got L, citrulline, arginine, yohimbine, and vitamin C. The arginine and the yohimbine increase nitric oxide production and relaxation in your genitalia and increased sex drive. And the antioxidant action of the vitamin C protects the nitric oxide from what's called oxidative degradation, which further enhances the blood flow, promoting activity of the nitric oxide. So put all that together, you get enhanced sex drive and blood flow for both ladies and gentlemen to their nether regions. And it doesn't have all the sorts of side effects that prescription medications or over the counter gas station pills come with you. Just tear open the sachet, you mix it with some water. I dump it straight into my mouth because I'm weird like that. And they take about 45 minutes to four hours prior to sexual activity. It'll last about five hours or so. You get better blood flow, better erection, core quality and firmness screaming, better orgasms, better sexual energy, better sex drive. So if you want to spice things up in the bedroom naturally and boost your sex performance naturally and do it without nasty prescription drugs or pharmaceuticals or prescriptions, then here's my offer for you. Go to usejoymode.com greenfield that's usejoymode J-O-Y mode.com greenfield or you can just enter the code greenfield@usejoymode.com and they'll get you 20% off your first order. So have fun with that one. Let's keep talking about the brain, shall we? This is really interesting. They have this thing called the Super Aging Research Program. It's at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease. That's a mouthful. What they've done is they've recruited a whole bunch of participants to be a part of what they call this Super Aging Research Program. So this superager, as defined by these Northwestern researchers, is an adult over the age of 80 who seems to have a superior memory capacity that resembles that of a middle age adult, meaning a young brain, a super aging brain. Now, these elderly individuals must, in order to be classified as a superager, demonstrate their ability to recall everyday events and previous personal experiences significantly better than the people who are in their 50s or 60s. Their performance on other cognitive tests doesn't necessarily need to be superior, but they need to have better ability to recall. And they're specifically looking at memory capacity. Now, they believe that the data obtained from this study are going to have some pretty significant implications for elucidating the mechanisms responsible for things like Alzheimer's onset and dementia onset. And so in this program, what they do is they have the participants who are considered to be superagers provide blood samples, and they also do MRI imaging and positron emitted tomography PET scans of their brains. And by the way, I should note, little bragging moment here. I just got a full body mri, including an MRI in my brain at this facility called Fountain Life in Naples, Florida. I'm gonna do a podcast on it soon. And it turns out that I'm in the 98th percentile in terms of my cortical thickness and the rate of shrinking in the cortices of my brain. So yay for me, something's working. Maybe it's that avoidance of THC or the yoga nidra or whatever, I don't know. But anyways. Furthermore, after a superager dies, they donate their brain to the super aging program. And that's how they look at things like the cortical thickness and the shrinking and things like that. And by the way, the cortex is responsible for decision making processes and critical thinking and retention and memories. And so what they're hypothesizing, these researchers at Northwestern, is that the delayed shrinking in the superager's brain might be due to larger and healthier neurons, particularly within a part of the cortex called the entorhinal cortex, which is usually the first part of the brain that gets affected in Alzheimer's disease is the part of the brain that plays a pretty significant role in memory and learning. So in addition to having what appears to be a more resilient cortex, these superagers have fewer, what are called tau tangles, which you may have heard of as these protein infiltration tangles that are heavily associated with Alzheimer's disease. Now, they also found these things called von economo neurons. Von economo neurons, vens that are located in the frontoinsular cortex and the anterior limbic area of the brain. Now, these are what are called elongated bipolar neurons, and they are involved with regulating emotions and attentiveness. Now, they also found the brains of superagers have a significantly greater concentration of these von economo neurons, these vens. So we've got fewer tangles, we have more vens, we have less brain shrinkage. We have what appears to be a thin, thicker cortex and less degradation of the cortex in these superagers. Now here's the thing. Is this genetics or are there certain things that these superagers are doing that might actually help this to occur? And I'm going to link to the full article for you if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com 452 and you want to take a deeper dive. But basically they have found this is probably not going to surprise you. Most of these superagers appear to remain relatively physically active on a daily basis. But in addition to that, they constantly use their brains every day. They're always reading, learning something new. Most of them have not retired or continue to work well into their 80s. In addition to that, they're very social. They often have a lot of family and friends. Many of them are active volunteers within their community. And they have this strong sense of connection. Connection, it seems to be a distinguishing feature, actually, compared to even otherwise healthy individuals of the same age. As these superagers is the connection and the involvement with community. And sure, there might be some genetics at play here too, and I didn't really see that come up in the, in the article at all. But remaining physically active, remaining mentally active, and remaining socially active appears to do a lot of things to the brain in particular, that can help to shift you a little bit more into the status of a superager. So interesting information, good to know. And I think that more people probably could be a superager if they went out of their way to do those things, physical activity, mental activity, and relationship activity. So there you have it. All right, so this next one, this is actually interesting. This is related to my trip to that Fountain Life medical facility I was talking about. They actually found, and this didn't really surprise me because I have a family history of coronary artery disease on my mother's side.

They found a little bit of an onset of coronary artery disease in me. Not anything super concerning pretty stable plaque. But nonetheless, it kind of sent me down this rabbit hole of looking into ways that I could either reverse coronary artery damage. And then beyond statins, which there's a little bit of data behind, there are some other things. Low dose testosterone seems to have an impact on it. There are certain injectable, what are called PCSK9 inhibitors that seem to do a pretty good job at slowing or reversing the onset of coronary artery disease. But as a guy who also likes to look at as much as possible natural solutions that are out there on God's great planet, I came across some interesting data on the, on the artery unclogging capabilities of pomegranate extract and pomegranate juice. Now, for example, there is one Israeli study that looked at patients with a narrowing of their carotid arteries that occurred as a result of atherosclerosis. And remember, the carotid artery in your neck, right? Those are responsible for more than 80% of the blood flow to your brain. And so when those narrow, that's a pretty major risk factor for stroke. Well, among the patients that were given daily pomegranate juice supplements for one year, these atherosclerotic lesions in the carotid artery decreased by 35%. And actually they grew 9% in a control group who didn't get the pomegranate. So the pomegranate actually reversed existing atherosclerosis.

And this is really interesting because they found it had a really, really good impact on blood pressure as well, which of course could actually aggravate or intensify the potential for a stroke in people with pre existing coronary heart disease. So it has almost this, like this artery unclogging effect and increases blood flow. Now it seems to also prevent damage to the arterial walls and improve blood flow to the heart. Now pomegranate has a lot of other good things going for it. It helps to benefit people with diabetes, it can kill prostate cancer cells, it can fight degeneration of joint tissue. And obviously it's pretty low cost to get like a concentrated pomegranate juice. Or I suppose if you're trying to watch your calories or your fructose intake, you could get a pomegranate juice extract. There was one company that sponsored this podcast some time back. They actually still are sponsored Timeline Nutrition. They make a blueberry extract with high amounts of what's called urolithin A, which even appears to have some life extending properties. It produced by the bacteria in your gut in response to the intake of things like blueberries and. Drumroll please. Pomegranates. And so there's probably a little bit of a longevity enhancing effect of these pomegranates as well. So if you're not doing something like I would say blueberry extract or pomegranate extract or pomegranate juice or wild blueberries in your smoothie, it'd probably be a good idea, especially for your heart health, for long term heart health, to consider doing something like that as a really cool, natural way to scrub the arteries, to unclog the arteries. And I think that after coming across this data and taking a dive into it, especially when looking at my own coronary artery disease results from fountain life, because I'm all about, I never look at these things and consider them to be crushing or defeat us. When you find out something about your genetics, like, I have a high risk of type 2 diabetes, but I follow this cyclic ketogenic approach and my blood sugar is fantastic. My fasting's about 60 and my hemoglobin A1C is like 4, 7. And so I'm fine as far as that goes. So whenever I come across data like this, it excites me. I'm like, oh, I have a new challenge here. How can I help my body and equip my body to stave off this thing that could potentially take me out? And so whenever you hear about stuff like this, note it and make it a part of your protocol. And so pomegranate is going to be a great, great thing to include. And hey, if anybody out there has a pomegranate supplement or a pomegranate powder, a particular pomegranate juice that you looked into and really like, let me know. It'd be interesting to know a little bit more about it. So you could go to BenGreenfieldLife.com 452 and leave your comments over there. By the way, polyphenolic antioxidants have also been studied to lower the ability of LDL to become oxidized in the formation of what are called macrophage foam cells, which you might also be familiar with as something that can attenuate atherosclerosis or aggravate atherosclerosis development. So basically there's just a lot going on for pomegranate juice. And that other study I mentioned is a pretty recent study. And in people who are consuming pomegranate juice regularly, just the good old pomegranate juice that you can buy at, I think just about any grocery store, forget the name of the popular one, P + something like that. So anyways, that's cool. There's also another element of the fruit kingdom that came across my radar recently in October 2022 study. I've been aware of this one for a little while and so I thought it was kind of cool when it turns out that there's a lot of benefits. So many of you may have heard of kiwi fruits, kiwi as something that can improve sleep by specifically improving serotonin and subsequent melatonin production. Before a night of sleep, a lot of people will not eat a couple of kiwi fruits because they don't want to eat too much sugar before bed or something like that. I don't think kiwis are that big of an issue. I don't think you're going to become morbidly obese by having a kiwi or two before you go to bed. But as a guy who intermittent fasts, etc. I don't eat a lot of fruit fruit right before I go to bed. However, this was not related to sleep. This related to constipation. Chronic constipation, highly prevalent worldwide. I would say if I err on one side of things like flowing too loosely or being constipated, I would err towards the side of constipation. And so what this recent study looked into was the consumption of gold kiwifruit, which is just a. It's a form of kiwifruit and they wanted to see what it did in comparison to psyllium. Very common fiber that's used for management of constipation. And they found that the kiwifruit, a couple of gold kiwi fruit eaten daily, doesn't have to be at night before you go to bed, was as effective as fiber matched psyllium in treating constipation and was very safe and very effective. Well, the kiwi, the way that this works is kiwis, they have a really high water holding capacity and high viscosity which, which helps with fecal bulking and softening. You may have heard my interview and I'll link to it in the show notes with the author of a book called Quench. We get into how a lot of fruits contain a certain form of water that's not water or that's not a liquid or gas or solid, but it's more of like a gel like structure. There's even a researcher at University of Washington named Dr. Gerald Pollock who has done research showing that a lot of the water in the body and in the cells, both intracellularly and extracellular cellularly, is, it's bonded in a certain way that turns into a little bit more of a viscous gel. And that type of viscous gel is very hydrating. Like if you've ever had like a chia seed slurry where you soak chia seeds in water, I suppose even more fittingly if you had jello, you know, with gelatin, you've of course experienced water in a gel like format and you'll find it in that format in fruits. And kiwis in particular have a high amount of this gel based water content. And so that can help with fecal softening and bulking. But then kiwi also has a high amount of a probiotic enzyme in it called actinidin. Actinidin is an enzyme that breaks down proteins. It also increases gastric emptying. It might even have a little bit of a laxative effect through its stimulation of receptors in the colon. And then when you combine that with the fact that kiwis have a really high polyphenol content, which can confer digestive health benefits. And they can also promote the growth of beneficial gut bacteria like bifidobacteria, so they can fend off harmful bacteria and have some really good antibacterial and anti inflammatory properties, there's a lot going on when it comes to kiwis and your GI health. So what I did, and I'm going to experiment with this for a little while, is I ordered just like a kiwi powder, like a organic kiwi fruit powder from Amazon. And I'm going to try putting that like with my glass of water that I have with dinner, stir it in. Sometimes I make little cocktails at home. Like I'll do like some instead of having alcohol, I'll have a glass of ice with some soda water and some electrolytes and sometimes I'll throw some ketones in there, a little bit of kava and I just play around and make these alcohol free cocktails. I had a few recipes like that. Actually my book, my Boundless Cookbook has a lot of alcohol free cocktail recipes, you know, like ketones and kava and superfoods, etc. Mixed with waters. And so I'm going to start to try a little bit of kiwi powder just because of how many benefits it seems to have for the gut and just kind of step back and see what happens. So for those of you who want to try kiwifruit, go for it. Let me know how it goes and I'll link in the show notes to that study as well. Well, if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com 452 all right, so that's that for kiwis. Now I have I think one other kind of cool, cool little. It's not really a study. It's an article that I came across recently that I wanted to share with you. I think it's really fantastic. And since we've talked about sleep a little bit on today's show show, I suppose we might as well stay in that lane. And I want to tell you about an article that I found that was just really solid that I think you'd like. It's called 10 sleep hacks to change your life. 10 sleep hacks to change your life. Now this is written by a sleep specialist I'm going to get on the podcast soon. His name is Dr. Daniel Gartenberg. He actually developed that app I mentioned earlier, the the Sleep Space app, which kind of tracks your sleep and plays little noises when you're in deep sleep to lull you into deep sleep and can even activate an alarm function based on your deep sleep levels. And he's got a lot of lot of stuff going on from gadgets and gizmos and supplements for sleep. But he wrote this article and thought it was good. It had some really good reminders and when it comes to sleep hygiene. So I'm going to share a few of the big ones with you. I'll share all 10 with you and then you can go read the article link to it BenGreenfieldLife.com 452 and again, I'm going to get this guy on the podcast eventually because he's got some good information. Number one, establish a bedtime routine. In sleep sciences Say sleep happens 30 minutes before bedtime. And so if you have trouble falling asleep, you need to have some kind of a wind down routine. For me, it's kind of wandering into the bedroom, getting out my book, laying out all the little things like my earplugs and my sleep mask, turning on my little chili pad that circulates cold water under my bed, sliding into bed, picking up the book, reading. Then I pray for about five minutes with my wife. And then you go to sleep and it's almost like this routine. But just like you'd have a pre game routine. Even tennis. When I played college tennis, I used to bounce the ball three times before every serve. I still do that with pickleball. So bedtime routine. Next is consistency. Okay? The more consistent you are with your circadian rhythmicity, meaning if you go to bed at 10pm on the weekdays, try to go to bed at 10pm instead of 1 or 2am on the weekends. Right? Instead of going back and forth between different sleep and wake times as much as possible, be consistent with your sleep and wake times. Go to bed and wake at a single similar time every day as much as possible. Number three is to control your light in the day. Of all the things that can impact your circadian rhythm, I think light is the biggest. That means at least 30 minutes and preferably to two hours of sunlight exposure. Big amounts of natural light exposure. Even if you're just installing bulbs in your office that are halogen or incandescent or closer to the spectrum that sunlight would produce, that light exposure decreases the flow of melatonin, staves off the sleep drive, and then you of course eliminate the large amounts of light at night with blue light blockers and red incandescent bulbs, etc. Controlling light is number three, and it's actually in this article number four, because number four is controlling light at night. This guy wrote the article, Dr. Daniel. He actually recommends a certain type of light called a LIFX light. And I don't have LIFX lights. I got some different brands. But LIFX light is a brand lifx and I think he might even have helped to produce those lights. But they're deep red home environment light. Okay, so any rooms that are associated with sleep, like your master bedroom or your master bathroom or your kid's bedroom, you would install something like a red incandescent bulb or a very warm glowing bulb, preferably the halogen or the incandescent variety. Or if you got to go with led, go with oled. And because they kick off a lot of emf, avoid dimmers as much as possible. Next one is reduce noise in the bedroom. Now, obviously, there's a lot of ways to do this. Like I mentioned, I'll use earplugs, you know, make sure the windows are closed, etc. But you can also introduce certain noises, certain sounds that block out ambient sounds. And you may have heard about these apps that will make, like, white noise and brown noise and purple noise. I don't even know what the colors come from. I'm sure somebody does. I just haven't really researched that much. But pink noise. Pink noise is the best kind of noise for drowning out background sounds while simultaneously improving your sleep quality, particularly your deep sleep quality. So pink noise, if you're going to play any kind of noise on the app, go with pink noise. Okay, the next tip, tip number six is to compartmentalize a racing mind. To compartment. Compartmentalize a racing mind. All this means is you create an external brain next to your bedside. Typically, for me, at least, it's a journal with a pen. I use a pilot pen that has a little light on it, right? So when I push the pen on, it'll light up. And that prevents thoughts from surfacing when you're trying to sleep and keeps you at 4:00am from thinking, oh, I gotta do this, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. I better get up and just start doing it so that I'm gonna forget this stuff. Okay. Being able to write stuff down, whether before you go to bed or at some point when you wake up, is called compartmentalization. Compartmentalization for anybody who has ruminant thoughts or racing mind, very, very great tactic. Okay, next is track it to hack it. The doctor says track it to hack it. So whether you use a Fitbit or a Oura ring or an Apple watch or a bedded or a bio strap or a Withings or Garmin, whatever. What's that new mattress? The eight sleep mattress. Now, I personally am pretty picky. I don't like to use something that tracks sleep if it kicks off a lot of dirty electricity. So for me, I'll use the Oura ring because I can put that in airplane mode. I believe the whoop strap is the only that can be placed in airplane mode. I will. If any device does quantify me, I want to make sure that I can disable bluetooth I can disable wi, fi, etc. But all comparisons and quantifications allow you to do is better understand how your behaviors are impacting your sleep. And a lot of people don't like the fact that they feel like they got a good night's sleep and they're full of energy and the day is going to be amazing, bro. And then they look at their wearable data and it says, oh, you got 70% of your sleep. And then all of a sudden they're like, I mean, never mind. I kind of feel like crap today. So it's not about your devices bossing you around and telling you how you feel based on how you truly feel. You got to be in touch with your body as well. But, man, in terms of the ability to be able to correlate anything from, like, body temperature to pulse oximetry, to the activities that you did or did not do before bed, to what you ate, et cetera, you can just gather so much data and really hack more quickly your way into figuring out what determines a good night of sleep for you and a bad night of sleep. So tracking that's number seven. Number eight is help your sleep by helping your family sleep, right? Because if your significant other or your dog or your cat or whatever is restless or is fighting for blankets or is snoring, that's obviously going to impact your sleep. So I think a lot of people, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, maybe you're like a, you know, biohacking or health enthusiast. How often do you share this stuff with a child or with a spouse? With a dog or a cat, I suppose, maybe not the dog or the cat so much, but basically, the more you can help others in your environment to sleep, the better you're going to sleep. So, I mean, like, if my wife has, let's say she has a cough, right? Like, sometimes my wife will have a cough and it'll keep me up. I will proactively go out and get the Fisherman's cough drops. I think they're called the Fisherman's, the really powerful ones. And I'll put them on my wife's bedside and I'll say, babe, I got cough drops for you. And just something as simple as that can help me get a better night of sleep. And of course I care for my wife. I love her. This is all just selfish so that I can sleep better. But doing things to help others sleep is going to really help you. So I like to kind of go through the house and make sure every we Go to the kid's bedroom. We do their bedtime routine with a song and a story and a meditation. My wife and I pray I make sure she's relaxed and her day went well. And that really allows me to sleep when I know that others aren't up and down all the time during the night. I'm probably the worst sleeper on the in the house. Personally, I think I'm the one that's the most kind of awake and alert and in sentry mode during sleep. But help others around you to sleep. Number nine. This is an interesting one. Take a hot shower or bath an hour before bed. A hot shower bath an hour before bed. So this hot shower bath counterintuitively will decrease the body's core temperature as the blood gets shunted away from the core into the extremities to cool those extremities that have been heated from the hot shower or the bath. But then you also get this relaxation effect, whether it's a magnesium bath or some people even like a lukewarm shower. Some people will put wool socks on to heat the feet to shunt blood over to the feet and away from the core. There's a lot of different ways that you can do this, but improving deep sleep in particular, when it comes to improving deep sleep, it seems some type of a warm or hot shower or bath around an hour before bed seems to help out quite a bit. And I have this wonderful routine. I only do this maybe once a week or so, but it's a real treat. I'll put magnesium salts into the bath like I like the ancient minerals has a really good magnesium bath soak. And then I'll put some essential oils like lavender or rose or bergamot. I'll put some red lights on, like one of those joovv red lights. Light lamps in the bedroom and so. Or in the, in the bathroom. And so you got your salts and your oils and your red light and a good book and man, I never have a bad night of sleep after something like that. I don't know, we'll see. Maybe if I. If I throw some of that kiwi fruit in the mix, it'll. It'll amplify the experience even more. But anyway, so getting the body warmed like a warm, relaxing hot bath or hot shower. And then finally, tip number 10 is to work. So wake up gradually. Okay? So there are smart lights like my kids, they wake up with an alarm called a smart light. So it plays little bird songs and gradually comes up like the sunlight in the bedroom. There are many apps now like the Sonic Sleep Coach is one example. I believe the Oura ring has this function now, as many wearables they'll detect when you're going through your sleep cycles. As you're getting to that light sleep cycle later in the morning, it'll start to wake you rather than an alarm blaring as you're in deep sleep and ripping you out of sleep, which can have this really intense cortisol awakening response or produce this intense cortisol awakening response. That gradual increase in those concentrations of stress hormone can help you to feel a lot better when you wake up. It's another reason not to just wake up and turn on the phone, drink a cup of coffee. Easing yourself into the day and easing yourself into the day, even starting with the alarm, seems to be a pretty smart strategy. So if you want to delve into more of the details of that particular article, I'll link to it if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com 452 it's BenGreenfieldLife.com 452 but it's 10 sleep hacks to change your life well, I failed today because I couldn't figure out how to get Twitter Spaces working and so I don't have any live Q&As today. But I hope that you learned a little bit and if you do want to join in for any of these what are usual usually live Q and A experiences, you can go to BenGreenfieldLife.com you can subscribe to the free newsletter there and you'll see in the newsletter in the weekly roundup when these Twitter Spaces events are going to occur. You can also, and this might even be more simple, you can just follow me on Twitter twitter.com BenGreenfield and I always tweet out if you days prior when we're going to do these Q and A episodes, you can hop on and ask questions and so anyways, lots of resources out there for you. I hope this has been helpful for you. If you have your own things to add, your own recommendations on pomegranates or sleep hacks or anything else, go to BenGreenfieldLife.com 452. You can leave your questions, your comments, your feedback over there. Have an amazing week. Just imagine a hotel surrounded by nature, vineyards and gardens. This forest classified as a historical garden in a very special country at a hotel located in the oldest demarcated wine region in the world. Imagine this place has a state of the art spa, 2,200 square meters, 10 treatment rooms, an indoor pool with underwater sound and chromotherapy. Imagine a kitchen team that brings to the table not just delicious food at this place, but values, environmental sustainability and wellness and local sensitivity and global sensibility. Imagine being able to be bathed in luxury and being able to be local, to buy local and to eat local. Not caged off as some fancy tourist, but as a part of the community and part of the terrar of the region. Well, that's exactly what you experience in Portugal at their Six Senses Luxury Retreat. And I'm going to be there for a special event that you can read up on@BenGreenfieldLife.com it's called the Boundless Retreat and at BenGreenfieldLife.com sixsenses you can see everything we're doing every day starts with a healthy farmhouse breakfast morning movement session with me. You get access to three different 60 minute spa treatments that you can choose from throughout the day, indoor pool and vitality suites, meditation, sound healing, an alchemy bar with kokedama and yogurts and pickles and sprouts, workshops, retreat meals, all made from locally sourced organic produce, Q&As and sing along sessions with me. This is going to be an amazing, remarkable once in a lifetime experience. You get four nights full board accommodation in a deluxe room there at the facility and this thing, as you can imagine, is going to fill up fast. It's in Portugal, at the Six Senses Retreat in Portugal. Again, all the details are@BenGreenfieldLife.com SixSenses and the dates are February 27th through March 3rd, 2023. February 27th through March 3rdrd, 2023. I hope to see you there.

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.