Q&A 460: Sex & Fertility, Smart Drugs, Can Cholesterol Increase Testosterone, The Truth About "Natural Flavors", Is Nitric Oxide Bad? & Much More.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life Show, sex and fertility, smart drugs, can cholesterol increase your testosterone, the truth about natural flavors, is nitric oxide bad, and much more. Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show. Alright, welcome, welcome everyone to this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life show. It's the time when I wax all things scientific, biohacking, longevity, spirituality, and a whole lot more to you, just me and my lonesome. There is a video episode of this show as well as comprehensive shownotes as usual available at BenGreenfieldLife.com. Ben-greenfield.com/460. Uh, am I feeling good or what? I just got back from Park City, Utah, where I did an epic climbing expedition with my friend Dr. Harry Adelson up there, scrambling all over the South Ridge up in Park City. And then the next day, he put me under a full-body anesthesia and injected every single joint of my body with stem cells, uh, Wharton's jelly umbilical-derived stem cells along with exosomes. A massive dose. It's called his full-body stem cell makeover. I do this thing every so occasionally, anywhere from every 1 year to every 5 years. I consider it to be one of the best longevity-enhancing protocols one can do, especially to make me at age 41 feel like I'm 18 and have recovery like freaking Wolverine. It's pretty crazy. So, I'm finally recovered from that protocol and just got back from Park City. Back on the home front, uh, and, uh, feeling very stem-celled, very stem-celled. So today I'm going to be going over some news flashes with you, replying to a few listener questions. And if you have a question you want to ask for the podcast, you can always do so on the socials, or you can leave a comment or a question or feedback over in the show notes at bengreenfieldlife.com/460. So gosh, a lot to cover with you today, so I figure what the heck, let's just jump right in. All right. Well, I figured we'd kick things off with the ever-popular topic of sex and fertility. So, the first study or really more appropriately a systematic review that I wanted to cover with you that was super interesting was this whole idea of male fertility and whether various antioxidants or nutrients can improve markers of Male fertility. Sorry, ladies, I'm sure that some of these things are good for you too, but this one was specifically about male fertility. They took male participants from 50 different studies that either had males with infertility or subfertility and then looked at what kind of antioxidants and nutrients would affect semen parameters, the outcomes of assisted reproductive therapy, and live birth rates. And so, what'd they find? Well, they looked at a whole bunch different popular fertility interventions that you no doubt see thrown at you on advertisements and Amazon and supplement websites and beyond: vitamin E, vitamin C, carnitines, coenzyme Q10, N-acetyl cysteine or NAC, zinc, folic acid, selenium, lycopene. And they did note that 29 of the 50 studies that they analyzed found substantial and significant beneficial effect of certain antioxidants and nutrients on male fertility. Now, I realize you may not have a mind like a steel trap, and some of you fellows listening in may also be desiring balls with a steel trap. So anyways, I will put a list of all of the ones that they found to be significantly beneficial along with the dosages in the shownotes. However, here's the quick overview. Vitamin E, yes, effective at 400 milligrams. Please note that with vitamin E, I am not a fan of synthetic supplementation of vitamin E. I think a full-spectrum vitamin E is better, meaning a mixed bag of tocopherols and tocotrienols, the two main components of vitamin E. I had a fantastic podcast with Dr. Barrie Tan about this. And because of that, I think one of the best food-based sources of vitamin E or plant-based sources of vitamin E is called annatto, A-N-N-A-T-T-O. Also happens to be fantastic for heart health. But you can get a natto from— there's one company called Designs for Health. I like that version. And they found about 400 milligrams in this review to be beneficial. Carnitine, meaning like L-carnitine, for example, which you can find in as capsules or even as an intramuscular injection. A lot of people who exercise are liking to inject with carnitine. I think I even mentioned that on Q&A 459 and gave the reasons why. But carnitine at 500 to 1,000 milligrams. Vitamin C, 500 to 1,000 milligrams, very similar to vitamin E. I'm not a fan of synthetic vitamin C supplementation. I like to recommend people get it from whole food sources, the main reason being there appears to be a little bit better bioavailability and cellular uptake of vitamin C in its whole food form versus synthetic ascorbic acid. Even though a lot of people will tell you they're similar, as you'll learn about, say, MSG later in this podcast, That's not necessarily the case once you get down into the nitty-gritty. Now, vitamin C, as far as a whole food source of that, I personally use a stuff from a company called Jigsaw Health. They make a whole foods vitamin C powder called Adrenal Cocktail. I think that's a pretty good version. Acerola cherries, by the way, are fantastic as well for vitamin C. At this new farm that I'm building over in Viola, Idaho right now, I definitely plan on figuring out a way to hack the system, and that might even include a greenhouse approach to be able to plant copious amounts of these cherries for the vitamin C content. But nonetheless, 500 to 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C. CoQ10, also great for heart health and an absolutely necessary supplement for anybody to be on if they're on a statin because the myopathy and muscle soreness one gets from statins is also because those things strip your body of CoQ10. You can also find CoQ10 in very high amounts in heart. As a matter of fact, I eat beef heart myself about once a week. And, uh, the trick, it's literally up in my refrigerator right now because I'm going to prepare it tomorrow night is you soak heart or any other organ meat you're going to cook in a dairy medium. Buttermilk works, like a thin yogurt works. And I like to use kefir. The enzymes in kefir degrade or, or, uh, kind of tear down some of the rough fiber in the heart or the chewy fiber in the heart, take some of the gamey flavor out of it. And then I like to sous vide. It's a water bath approach. You can get a sous vide Wand. There's one called the Joule that I like. I put that in a pot of water, drop the heart in there in a heat-resistant sous vide bag. Now, there's a brand called Stasher that's pretty good. And sous vide the heart in a water bath at about 145 degrees for around 8 hours. So I'll have it in that bag the whole day after I've rinsed the kefir off of it. And the kefir soak, by the way, is about 24 hours beforehand. And then I'll just give the heart a quick fry and some butter. So good. So anyways, heart is great for CoQ10. You can also supplement with CoQ10, 100 to 300 milligrams. N-acetylcysteine, also a great precursor for glutathione in the body. Fantastic, 600 milligrams. By the way, if you feel bad when you supplement with glutathione, if you feel like your body just doesn't feel right or you get brain fog or irritability or gastric upset or anything like that when you take glutathione, there's a reason for that. A high number of people do not contain the enzyme that allows you to use orally available glutathione. And so because of that, you often have to use glutathione precursors instead of glutathione, uh, and you can have that tested. There's a gene test for it. One company called The DNA Company, they're fantastic, they can do a gene test for it. I have a podcast coming up with them in which we discuss this issue with glutathione and some other things to think about in the realm of genetic testing. But nonetheless, N-acetylcysteine is a glutathione precursor. Selenium also. And this review found that not only N-acetylcysteine at 600 milligrams but selenium at 200 milligrams impacted favorably male fertility. Folic acid was another one, very similar to vitamin C and vitamin E. I recommend you not use a synthetic form of folic acid such as you would find in many multivitamins but a bioavailable form of folic acid. Once again, organ meats to the rescue. Liver is very high in folic acid, But if you're getting a supplement, you just want to look for methyltetrahydrofolate or, or a methylfolate, methylated folate version of folic acid rather than synthetic folic acid. The reason for that is it can get converted to homocysteine in the body, and that can be an inflammatory marker. So folic acid at 0.5 milligrams, zinc at 25 to 400 milligrams. If zinc upsets your stomach, look for a version called zinc bisglycinate. At Kion, we have an immunity product that's a mix of vitamin C and zinc, and we use zinc bisglycinate in that because it's, uh, it's just more friendly to the gut. So zinc at 25 to 400 milligrams. And then finally, lycopene, that fantastic compound you will find in tomatoes, uh, at 6 to 8 milligrams. So that's your rundown of all of the different things that have actually been studied and proven in the antioxidant and nutrient department for male fertility. Once again, vitamin E, carnitine, vitamin C, CoQ10, N-acetylcysteine, zinc, folic acid, selenium, and lycopene. So there you have it. All right, and I will link, as I do with all of these, to the full study in the show notes at bengreenfieldlife.com/460. All right, let's move on to another sex-related topic: wine. And this was interesting. There was a study that looked at wine and the consumption of wine, particularly for sexual function. This one discussed women but was primarily— again, sorry ladies— looking primarily at the fellas. Now, it's interesting because some of us consider wine to be an aphrodisiac, and I've always wondered, well, is that because it's actually a potent blood flow precursor? So much so that the cheap hack when I used to bodybuild was we'd drink red wine and dark chocolate backstage to allow for better vascularity? Or is it the relaxing component of red wine? Is the fact that maybe you're in Paris at a fancy restaurant drinking wine on a hot date, and that's why red wine has the, the, uh, the reputation as an aphrodisiac? I don't know what the answer is until I went through this study, at least. So, uh, let's talk about this. So red wine, alcoholic beverage, uh, it's obtained from the fermentation of dark-colored grapes rich in phytonutrients. And there is a lot in wine besides just water and ethanol. You've got organic acids, aldehydes, ketones, esters, minerals, lipids, what are called phenolics. So, there's a lot going on in wine. And, the beneficial health effects of red wine have been primarily associated with its polyphenolic content, very high amount of what are called flavonoids and non-flavonoids. So, we've got things like quercetin, myricetin, catechin, epicatechin, which you'd also find in things like green tea, what are called hydroxycinnamates like caffeic acid, coumaric acid, hydroxybenzonates, a lot of stuff going on in wine due to its polyphenol content. Now, the, the alcohol content of red wine has of course been a major issue of concern amongst many people, yet moderate alcohol consumption has also been associated with a cardioprotective effect and an increase in HDL, a reduction in your platelet adhesiveness, and those are both responsible for the onset of atherosclerosis. So it turns out that 1 to 3 glasses of wine per day may reduce cardiovascular risk. I know that some people will say that alcohol in any amount is bad for you. The studies being used to make that claim typically don't break out, say, drinking a glass of wine each night with dinner, and being a Tito Taller and having 7 glasses of wine all in a row on a weekend. It's important that wine be consumed in small doses, any alcohol be consumed in small doses, a small hormetic dose, so to speak. This would be the same as, say, running 25 miles on the weekend versus running 3 miles a day. Your body's going to be able to handle that far differently. So, the polyphenols in red wine are incredibly high, especially if it has a lot of the skins, a lot of the seeds, if it's a very tannic wine. I always choose biodynamic or organic wine such as you would find from the countries of France or New Zealand or Italy. Those tend to be 3 safe countries that use fewer herbicides and pesticides that often also use dry irrigation methods that result in higher antioxidant content of the grape, sometimes lower alcohol content. You can find a lot of this information in the podcast that I did with Todd White, who has a company called Dry Farm Wines. I've been a subscriber to their wine service for like 10 years. I get, I think it's around 6 or 8 bottles delivered once a month to my house, all organic biodynamic wine. So, this study said, well, if wine's got all these things going for it, what does it do when it comes to fertility, sexual desire, sexual function, spermatozoa, which is the name implies can be correlated with the quality of your sperm and just overall sexual function. So, they took all of the studies out there that have been done on red wine related to sex. And they found some interesting things. So, first of all, red wine appears to, in a dose-dependent manner, affect your follicle-stimulating hormone, testosterone, and prolactin levels. And this is a lot of studies that were done in male rodents, but it appears that all of these could be beneficial when it comes to restoration of erectile function. They've also found that red wine can cause a, a reduced amount of the breakdown of nitric oxide, the same reason people would take, say, Viagra or sildenafil to increase nitric oxide. Well, the polyphenols in red wine seem to allow for some smooth muscle relaxation, what's called the corpora cavernosa of the penis, and also increased penile vasodilation. Now, I don't know if I necessarily need to be drinking a lot of wine as I just got a massive amount of stem cells injected into my own nether regions. Nonetheless, in the absence of stem cells, red wine appears to be a pretty good idea when it comes to the polyphenol content and what that does to both your endocrine system as well as your balls when it comes to better sexual function. They've also found that the antioxidant properties and polyphenols found in red wine are positively correlated to serum testosterone levels. This is interesting. Most people tell you if you're going to drink alcohol, it will suppress your testosterone levels. But in fact, they have shown— and again, most of the studies, I will admit, were in rodent models— but that the low to moderate consumption of red wine actually resulted in an increase in testosterone levels and also seem to balance phytoestrogens or, or the, the phytoestrogens in wine seem to balance the body's estrogen levels. And that influenced what's called steroidogenesis and also seemed to cause a slight growth hormone response. So again, we're talking about low to moderate amounts, but that seems to be fantastic as well. Uh, they did look a little bit at women and they showed sexual desire and vaginal lubrication to be higher in women who consumed around a glass of wine a day. And it was actually better than women who consumed a whole lot of wine. So again, a little bit of a, a trade-off here when it comes to the amount that— of wine that you're drinking. If it's a giant fishbowl-sized glass of wine or multiple glasses or half the bottle, probably not. As a matter of fact, that appears to decrease female sexual function or the quality of female sexual function. But in small doses, again, around a glass a day, it seems to be beneficial. Beneficial for women. So, hooray. Hopefully, I'm making a lot of fans with what I'm saying about wine here. And again, we're all talking about low to moderate amounts, and this may vary from person to person depending on your ability to be able to metabolize alcohol. There are some genetic components here, but we're painting with a broad brush across a lot of studies. You should also note that chronic alcohol intake can reduce testosterone levels, impair spermatogenesis, and decrease testicular volume. Now, note that I said alcohol intake because if you isolate alcohol and give it to a human being in those doses, it doesn't appear to be beneficial. But then, when you combine it with the wide host of polyphenolic compounds in red wine, those appear to be protective against the actual effects of the alcohol. So, in a nutshell here, in a grape shell or grape skin, I should say, What it appears is that red wine intake seems to be beneficial for male reproductive function and sexual function in low to moderate amounts. And the same seems to be able to be said for women, at least when it comes to sexual desire and vaginal lubrication. So, there you have it. It turns out that when I was drinking red wine backstage when I used to bodybuild and found it to be incredibly vascular that it seems to have that same effect in the bedroom, so to speak. So, everybody rush out and grab your low to moderate dose of red wine. So, another thing related to hormones and to sexual function, and this was a look at testosterone and lipid profiles. The reason that I wanted to bring this up, and I've been guilty of saying this as well, is, "Hey, don't listen to your doctor when they tell you you have a high lipid score or high cholesterol because in fact cholesterol is something that is necessary for, say, the formation of your cell membranes or acts as a precursor for steroidogenesis or for testosterone or other estrogens, et cetera, in the human body." This is partially true. However, it does not require high amounts of cortisol. Uh, in other words, after digging into this, it appears that yes, even like, uh, very young human beings who tend to have very low cholesterol levels but are in a highly anabolic state and getting ready to go through puberty and have huge surges in testosterone tend to have low cholesterol levels. Furthermore, your blood cholesterol levels that you're testing don't really that closely mimic what's going on on a tissue level anyways. That's why I think anybody who's testing— and I've said this recently on a few podcasts— their cholesterol panels because they want to be careful that they don't develop heart disease should instead be putting more of a focus on their PLAC score or their calcium scan score and not their lipid values. If you're going to pay attention to anything from a heart health standpoint, I think it should be inflammation, should be blood glucose, uh, triglyceride level, and then possibly also this marker called APOB, a protein that might be associated with the potential for a high cholesterol count or high LDL to be problematic. But back to the testosterone piece. So what they found, uh, in this study that looked at the relationship between testosterone and lipid profile, and this was in Chinese men, was that testosterone levels were correlated negatively to triglycerides and LDL and positively with HDL. Meaning to a certain extent, the lower your cholesterol— I'm not going to say bad cholesterol because it drives me nuts. No cholesterol is bad, right? LDL cholesterol is good. HDL cholesterol is good. Impaired balances or values of those can be bad. But basically what they found was that if you have very high triglycerides and very high LDL, you tend to have lower testosterone. Not as a lot of high cholesterol diet advocates would say, higher testosterone. And if you have high HDL, that tends to be correlated with higher testosterone. So, when you're running into some paleo diet or eat 10 eggs a day or ribeyes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, dietary advocate who says that's how you keep your testosterone levels up because it increases cholesterol and when you increase your cholesterol, you increase your testosterone, please note that the amount of cholesterol that you need for adequate testosterone is nowhere near what you'd be getting from a that is very heavy in saturated fats, oils, and completely throws out the window the idea that some of this could contribute, especially in a heavily exercising or inflamed person, to the onset of cardiovascular disease. So, it— I'm not saying fats are bad. What I'm saying is that a high-fat diet is not going to increase your testosterone, at least not based on the research. And furthermore, you do need to make sure you are living a very low inflammation, avoiding hefty amounts of exercise, especially intense exercise, and taking very, very good care of the body and paying close attention to your plaque score or your calcium scan score if you are going to eat a high-fat diet. And arguably, you should also have a lot of artery-scrubbing polyphenols and flavonols in your diet as well. Now, you know, pomegranate would be a perfect example of that, or the lycopene from tomatoes, or the red wine I was just talking about. And frankly, I see a lot of these, like, carnivore, high-fat diet, you know, even like the dirty keto type of enthusiasts not consuming enough polyphenols because they're simply not eating enough of these vegetable compounds because they've heard that plants are going to kill you, so they don't. Uh, and I just think that's a bad idea from a cardiovascular disease standpoint. And furthermore, no, having super high cholesterol levels is not correlated with having high testosterone levels. Your body does need cholesterol to make testosterone, But you can get enough cholesterol to make testosterone from like 2 eggs a day, right? You don't need that much. And this study actually showed an inverse correlation between cholesterol and testosterone. It's just something to pay attention to and think about. Okay. Now, next we're actually going to move away from the sexual health and hormonal topic and into what I just happen to be intrigued with, experiment a lot with, talk to a lot of people about, and that is this whole idea of nootropics. One of the best papers I've ever read on nootropics came out a couple of weeks ago, and it goes over the mechanism of action and spectrum of effects of all these different drugs or compounds that people are using to enhance their cognition. Now, what are nootropics? Well, technically, they are classically defined as a group of drugs that have the ability to do a lot of things: improve memory, restore impaired cognitive function of the brain, improve learning and information reproduction, stimulate active wakefulness, and increase the body's resistance to adverse or extreme factors such as, say, excess stress or sleep deprivation. Uh, now according to the definition by the WHO, nootropic drugs include any drugs that have a direct activating effect on learning processes, improve memory and mental activity, and increase the brain's resistance to aggressive influences. Again, like say stress or even concussion or head injury, you can use a lot of these things for. So, the term nootropics comes from the Greek words nous and tropes. So, if someone asks you what nootropics mean, the word nous means mind or thinking and tropes means direction. So, literally, the word nootropics could be thought of as meaning mind director. And then it positively affects cognitive and integrative brain functions. That's how it would be defined by the Belgian scientists who coined this term. Now, there are a lot of different nootropic compounds out there. For example, I took some this morning. I'm holding them right here in my hand. If you want to see the video of what these things look like, this, uh, little canister that I'm holding is called called Upbeat. This other one is called Brain Flow. I'll read you the ingredients. I got these from a company called Nootopia, N-O-O-T-O-P-I-A. Kind of a cool service. You go to their website, you fill out a form that identifies your unique neurotransmitter type, and then they custom package a big black box of nootropics designed for a variety of effects and ship them to your house. So Upbeat, I, I stacked the Upbeat with the Brain Flow because they recommended these two as stacking well together. The Upbeat, which is recommended for confidence, ambition, positivity, and when speaking with other people to maximize emotional intelligence or EQ, is comprised of omnipept, theobromine, phenylalanine, acetyl-L-tyrosine, caffeine, 5-HTP, curcumin, grapeseed, forskolin, cayenne, piperine, methyl B complex, guarana, theacrine, vitamin D, and vitamin K. You'll learn about some of these in this article I'm about to tell you about. And then the other one, Brain Flow, it says increases verbal fluency and optimizes productivity. So if I guess if I lose my words during this podcast, it's gonna be a horrific advertisement for this stuff. Uh, the— it's, it's 2 capsules, one internal capsule inside this external fatty capsule. The internal capsule is Omnipept, caffeine, choline, pregnenolone, and piperine. And then, the oil is ginger oil, peppermint oil, black pepper oil, MCT oil, and melkagni seed oil. That's a new one. So anyways, I am taking a nootropic right now. And again, I got those from a company called, um, Nootopia. So anyways, what do all those things do? Well, this is where the magic of the article kicks in. It goes into all the different categories that you're going to find inside a nootropic or nootropic stack and defines what they do. So first, for example, racetams. Racetams, I think they're fantastic. This would include piracetam, oxiracetam, aniracetam, pramaracetam, rolziracetam. You know, there, there's a lot of them out there. But basically, racetams increase the brain metabolism, and when you combine them with anything that's going to improve the availability of choline to the brain, it's like pressing the gas pedal down harder on your brain while simultaneously dumping more fuel into the gas tank. That's why when— I don't think either of these, Upbeat or Brain Flow, have racetams in them. They have a few racetam-like compounds in them, but that's a reason that both of them also have choline and some other oils in them to replenish the brain's gasoline that it's burning through more quickly. So, the racetams, those would increase brain metabolism, and they're also classified as substances that have neuroprotective function for something like inflammation or oxidation in the brain. Uh, the next category would be what are called acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. These would be things that cause choline to be broken down more readily. You want more choline around because your brain needs to use it when you're thinking harder and trying to make your brain work faster. So this would include things like glantamine, donepezil, another one called tacrine, amiridin, but they're called acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. There are also other substances that can increase the synthesis of acetylcholine: acetyl-L-carnitine, cytocholine, lecithin, phosphatidylcholine. These are all fantastic additions to a nootropic. As a matter of fact, there's one guy who I interviewed recently, Andy Triana. He wrote an entire book. I've got it back there on my shelf, on nootropics and smart drugs. He says the best compound, the best two compounds he's found above all if you're going to stack them, I'm quoting this one from memory, but I believe it's the racetam, like some kind of racetam and then a choline. So, one makes the brain work faster, one basically restores the gasoline, and that's kind of like if you're just going to cut through a lot of the clutter and go straight to a really good stack that you could try if you've never tried something like this for the brain, that would be a good one to go for, racetam plus some kind of a choline like piracetam plus citrulline, for example. Then there are substances that affect the system of excitatory amino acids. This would be like glutamic acid or glycine. Substances that affect the GABA system, this would be like lithium or oxybutyrate or phenibut. And then what are called neuropeptides, this would be like neuropeptide Y, the intranasal peptides like Semax or Selinc. There's another one that's called Nupept, which is very interesting because when you heard me reading off the ingredients of Upbeat and Brain Flow, and you heard me say Omnipet, and, uh, they've got a few different forms of what are called Omnipet. That's very similar to Nupept, which is a neuropeptide, allows for these small amino acid fragments to go into the brain and can be very helpful. Then we have brain antioxidants like alpha-tocopherol and ubiquinone and selenium. We have neuroprotective drugs like vinpocetine. That's one that was used, I believe, in Dale book on The End of Alzheimer's as a treatment that they would use for Alzheimer's and dementia. I've seen that also when used in, uh, in management of TBI and concussions. Then finally, we have vitamins like vitamin E, vitamin B, vitamin B12, vitamin B6, alpha-lipoic acid, ginseng, ginkgo biloba, lemongrass, etc. These are vitamins and their vitamin analogs, which when combined have a neuroprotective effect on the brain. So, when we combine all these things together in the right way, and when you look at done-for-you supplements like the one I mentioned by Nootopia or Qualia has one called Mind or Onnit has one called the Alpha Brain, I believe, or there's a Chinese herbal one called Tian Chi, they're typically taking a lot of the substance that I just described and they're combining them all together to get this type of effect. Now, it is interesting, like a few of these I would love to just talk with you a little bit more about. So, for example, piracetam, it's antihypoxic, it's anxiolytic, and it's a nootropic. So, not only is it working to increase blood flow to the brain and increase oxygen for the brain, but also to decrease stress and anxiety and act as a nootropic for improved cognitive function. So, piracetam has a wide variety of mechanisms of action, which is why I think piracetam is one of the best nootropic type of ingredients out there. Phosphatidylcholine is another one that ranks really high, has what's called a cholinergic mechanism of action. They have shown that the administration of that to humans with cognitive dysfunction and dementia increases the concentration of acetylcholine in the brain and improves memory. So this can actually be used for brain deficits, or in a situation such as concussion or TBI. It may even have a protective effect, which a lot of these do, if it's in the system when you get the head injury. So for example, they've shown that being hydrated— let's say if you're a UFC fighter going into a fight— helps you to bounce back faster if you get hit in the head or injured. The same thing could be said for ketones. Lesser known, but high blood values of ketones— for example, when I was down in Salt Lake City, I went to the UFC fight, and I think there were 4 TKOs at the fight. Any of those guys, if they would have drank liquid ketones before their fight would have been able to stave off some of the brain damage that can occur when you get a concussion or a TBI. Well, you could say the same thing if you had something like a piracetam in your system or you had something like acetylcholine in your system. Most of these nootropics, they're not banned by world sporting organizations, so you can literally take them prior to an event in which you might have a risk for a head injury and stave off the potential damaging effects of a head injury. So, there's another one that I wanted to focus in on in this particular article even though I highly recommend you read it if you really want to wrap your head around what all these do. And, it's one that is right now not that popular but that I think will be quite popular. It is called mexitol, M-E-X-I-D-O-L. So, what is mexitol? Well, it was synthesized at the Zakusov Research Institute of Pharmacology It has antioxidant and antihypoxic properties. And also, it is a neuroprotective and anxiolytic and antidepressant and anticonvulsant and anti-alcoholic. And it has several other effects, including being able to allow for better mood, protection of the brain in response to stroke, and treatment of cognitive impairment in human people who have things like Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's, and multiple sclerosis. This one has a lot going for it. After reading this article, I actually bookmarked to start to go down the path of hunting down what appear to be safe sources of this Mexidol. And if you happen to be listening in and, and you've kind of done some of this research yourself, drop into the show notes and share this with everybody. Go to bengreenfieldlife.com/460 because Mexidol, which is technically 2-ethyl-6-methyl-3-hydroxypyridine succinate is something that of all of the different nootropics listed on this entire paper has what's called a polytarget mechanism of action and appears to work on a variety of different pathways in the brain for everything from memory improvement to mood improvement to mitochondrial biogenesis to a neuroprotective effect. So, that one seems to me from reading this entire article to be the one that would rank the highest. But anyways, if you really want to turn yourself into an expert on what kind of things that you can consume to make your brain work better, I highly recommend that you check out this article. I'll link to it in the show notes at bengreenfieldlife.com/460. And now I do believe it's time for our listener Q&A. All right, well, like I mentioned, if you want to leave your question, just go to the show notes at bengreenfieldlife.com/460, or you can send me a direct message on Instagram Instagram or Twitter or Facebook mentioning that you have a question for the podcast. And I keep track of all those on a spreadsheet and pick a few good ones every week. So, the first question is about natural flavors. This guy says, "I have a question regarding natural flavors. Bobby at FlavCity teaches to avoid all food with natural flavors because the ingredients used do not have to be disclosed. It is confusing when shopping clean products and you see natural flavors used? That's a great question. Let's see what Bobby at FlavCity, based on what I found is his most recent Instagram post, has to say about natural flavors. And the caption says, when you see natural flavors on the ingredient list, run, Forrest, run. It is one of the biggest issues in the grocery store, and almost every product contains it. Even organic natural flavors are still poopy sign, which I assume means So, uh, here actually is the audio of what Bobby at FlavCity has to say as he holds a canister of organic mustard, which apparently is going to kill you.

When you see natural flavoring on a label, which 90% of the ingredients in a grocery store has that, there's nothing natural about that. The rule is they have to start with something natural like a mustard seed, a tomato, a peach. As long as they start with something natural, they can literally add up 100 chemicals to it and change it and alter it in a lab with a scientist and still call it natural. The reason why they can do that is because it's not a government-regulated term, and it's totally bad for you because it kind of acts like MSG because it gets you hooked on the product. What they do is they isolate the most bold, flavorful properties in the natural flavoring to excite your taste buds, excite your brain, buy more. What happens when you buy more? They make more money. So, they pretty much have hijacked our taste buds and the natural flavorings are completely unnatural. So, stay away from that.

Alright. Well, this is interesting. And, by the way, I do not personally avoid natural flavors. I pay attention to their source, but I don't avoid natural flavors. Let's talk about natural flavors and where they even come from. So, they come from all around us, right? They come from fruits, vegetables, spices, leaves, trees. There are hundreds of natural substances substances that can be combined to make a strawberry flavor or a pomegranate flavor or ginger vanilla flavor, whatever. As a matter of fact, flavorists are actually people who have a full-time job as part chemists and part artists. I've worked with many of them, for example, to develop the flavor profiles of everything from the Kion Aminos to the whey protein to the energy bar. Flavor profiling agents are very good at what they do. They mix and match using a knowledge of chemistry and a pretty good palate to be able to make a food taste how you want it to taste and still allow that food to be packaged up and presented in the way that you would desire and say like a bar or a protein powder or whatever. And so, we'll find these flavors, of course, in most packaged products. And the question is, what happens when you consume them? So, if you If you get into this, when you're smelling or tasting natural flavors, you are in many cases smelling natural flavors, artificial flavors, or a combination of both. Now, both natural and artificial flavors are synthesized in laboratories, okay? Just because it's natural doesn't mean someone picked it off of a tree and somehow put it into your plastic packaging. They are synthesized in laboratories, but the a source of a natural flavor. Okay, an artificial flavor can come from anything— petroleum, other inedible substances, chemicals, whatever. But the definition of a natural flavor is it's anything that comes from a spice, a fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf, meat, seafood, poultry, egg, dairy product, or anything fermented from any of those foods. Now, the fact is natural and artificial flavors can be the exact same molecules. Nutritionally, there can be no difference between them, and both are used quite a bit in our modern world where we consume food that has been enhanced in some way by one of these so-called flavorists. For example, if you want to create a passion fruit-flavored product with actual passion fruit for, say, a vodka, a flavorist would need to consume basically a quarter of the world's passion fruit supply to make that happen. That's not cost effective nor is it friendly to the environment. So, they'll look for cheaper sources that mimic the passion fruit's molecular footprint. So, a flavor profiling agent will say, "Order fresh passion fruit from a supplier and taste it and identify using a special lexicon of words very similar to what a sommelier using a wine wheel might do." And then, they'll go into a research and development laboratory to identify the molecular fingerprint of the passion fruit. And try to match compounds to compounds that are available in a flavoring lab. Uh, some natural sources might be, you know, African violets to the bark of some random tree with a little bit of natural vanilla flavoring. And they're basically combining all of these things and then diluting those extracts with things like water or glycerin or ethanol to begin to build that tropical flavor profiling note. Now, this is something that of course makes a lot of people nervous because they think that they're— just the pure fact that it was created in a laboratory environment and has some sort of chemicals or extraction added to it that it could be unhealthy for you. And as a matter of fact, there are entire agencies such as FEMA is one that has a full-time job of evaluating what is called grass status of a lot of these flavors, generally recognized as safe status under authority granted to them by the United States Congress. And they publish annual reports on what is and is not recognized or generally recognized as safe. And most people in the food industry are using GRAS products, whether it's natural flavors or artificial flavors. That doesn't mean that there aren't specific use cases, like if you have, say, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, You should avoid sugar alcohols whether you consider them to be natural or artificial or whether they're generally recognized as safe or whatever. Your gut bacteria will metabolize the hell out of, say, mannitol or— what would be another couple of examples? Sometimes sucralose. There are others like allulose, et cetera. A lot of these can be very fermentable in the stomach if someone has SIBO. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad for you in terms of generally recognized as safe status, it's just not something that is going to agree well with your particular tummy. So, uh, now these, these flavorists, they're combining all of these different chemicals and solvents and emulsifiers and flavor enhancers and preservatives. And natural flavors and artificial flavors are both used in that same way. It's just that natural flavors must come from the bark, the tree, the root, the meat, the vegetable, etc. So, uh, when When you look at natural flavors then and the fact that they've been studied and generally recognized as safe, there's a lot bigger things to be worrying about. For example, if you visit the Whole Foods website, they have pretty good food ingredient standards. You won't find partially hydrogenated oils or FD&C colors or a high amount of preservatives that you'd use in packaged foods like a whole bunch of sulfites in wine. Or certain sweeteners like aspartame or aspartame acetylsulfamic salt or cyclamates or saccharin or sucralose or certain all-purpose white flours that have been bleached with, with benzoyl peroxide or bromated with the addition of potassium bromate. You won't find a lot of this stuff at Whole Foods. However, there are other things that they just make a big deal about at Whole Foods I don't think are that big of a deal. Like, you can't find activated charcoal in foods from Whole Foods. You can't find certain probiotic strains with really long names like Bacillus coagulans. Uh, you can't find, uh, certain things like ethylene glycol or even Hawaiian black salt or grapefruit seed extract. Like, they've got a lot of stuff that you can't find at Whole Foods that I would consider to be natural agents that are generally recognized as safe that you really don't have to worry as much about. So let's go into a little bit more of the research on when natural appears on food packaging, if you really should be forming your opinion on whether or not that food is healthy based on that. So, like I mentioned, we have FEMA, which is a trade group that evaluates the safety of flavor additives in the U.S. Now, in most cases, natural flavors appear safe for human consumption when consumed occasionally in processed or ultra-processed foods. Again, there's a lot of other things like the spike in blood glucose or the mix of vegetable oils and sugars, et cetera, that you do need to worry about in processed foods, but most of these natural flavors have had the heck studied out of them when it comes to whether or not there would actually be an adverse reaction. Now, yes, food manufacturers sometimes aren't required to disclose whether incidental additives in food come from a natural or a synthetic source. And some flavors sourced from genetically modified crops can be labeled as natural. And that might be concerning to some people. But at the same time, just because something is natural, even artificial, has a big scary name on, does not mean that it's bad for you. Okay. So, they'll use amyl acetate distilled from bananas to provide banana-like flavor in your baked goodies, or they'll use citral or geraniol, which is extracted from lemongrass or lemon or orange or pimento for a citrus-flavored beverage or sweet, or benzaldehyde. Yeah, it sounds scary, but they get it from almonds and cinnamon oil. Or castoreum, people say, "Oh, that's scary. It's found in the anal secretion of beavers." Well, Let me tell you, if you eat any amount of meat at all, you are eating a lot more than just the anal secretion of a beaver, so live with it. Other natural flavors, massoia lactone comes from coconuts, acetoin that comes from butter, linolenic ether that comes from honey. So, the artificial flavors, yes, they're less expensive to produce, they're more appealing to food manufacturers. You're going to find those more in food. But natural flavors, yeah, they're a little bit more expensive for these people to get their hands on or to make, but they also are studied a ton to confirm that they actually do meet safety standards. So, I think it's better if you're eating something and you get a tummy ache or your HRV drops or your blood parameters aren't responding well that you're careful with it, but I have seen zero evidence that you need to drop everything and avoid natural flavors. Now, of course, there are certain things that I don't trust the SDA on, or I'm sorry, the FDA on. Let's talk about like MSG. If you go to the FDA's website, they will actually say that the glutamate in MSG is chemically indistinguishable from the glutamate present in food proteins, and your body metabolizes both sources of glutamate in the exact same way. Uh, they say MSG occurs naturally in many foods like tomatoes and cheeses, and people, people have eaten glutamate-rich foods throughout history. And so if you go to a restaurant and they're using chemical MSG, that's exactly identical to the natural MSG that you would find in proteins. And that is simply not the case. Not only since 2018, to my awareness, have we had the ability to be able to measure stable isotope ratios of glutamic acid contained in food versus chemical MSG. And you can easily differentiate between the carbon and nitrogen ratios of glutamic acid versus MSG. When we look at MSG, there's actually two common forms of glutamic acid: L-glutamic acid and D-glutamic acid. The L-glutamic acid, which you find in protein, is the bound glutamic acid. Now, in real natural foods, amino acids are rarely free. Usually they're linked or they're bound. And so D-glutamic acid, which is artificial and chemically produced outside of the body, that is a different type of glutamic acid known as monosodium glutamate, or MSG. So the L-glutamic acid again is bound to protein. The D-glutamic acid is not and is used to make MSG. Now, when you eat foods containing proteins, your body breaks down the proteins, hydrolyzes them in the stomach or the lower intestines using hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes. And in a healthy person, your body controls the amount of glutamic acid that it derives from protein. It doesn't store excess glutamic acid in the body because in high amounts glutamic acid can cause a little bit of neurotoxicity or cellular toxicity. Now, utilize that way using the body's natural processes, eating glutamic acid that would be found in proteins or other, you know, plants, wheat, beets, corn, molasses, whatever, that, that's all going to be relatively harmless when it comes to the glutamic acid because it's bound. In a chemical MSG manufacturing plant, the bound glutamic acid is broken down or made free of proteins using hydrolysis and autolysis and modifying and fermenting, and it makes this white crystal powder that looks like salt or sugar. And that's the type of chemical MSG that they would use in a lot of restaurants. Now, when you consume that, you get a rapid uptake of the free glutamic acid. That rapid uptake can cause blood levels of glutamate that are 8 to 10 times higher than what you would get from food. And thus, you see a lot of people reporting, even though the studies are kind of weak on this, that they don't feel that great after they have, let's say, a huge meal at a restaurant. I'm not going to say Chinese restaurant because honestly, I think that's a little racist because almost every restaurant uses MSG. This isn't just Chinese restaurant syndrome, people. It's, it's, it's any restaurant really that uses high amount of MSG or any processed food that contains a high amount of MSG. Massive amounts of glutamic acid circulating in the body. And that might be a slight health hazard because high levels of that glutamic acid have been associated with cardiotoxicity, hepatotoxicity, neurotoxicity, low-grade inflammation, Uh, when you dig into the studies, it is in very high amounts. You're not going to have this happen to you if you're eating at a restaurant once a week that uses MSG in their foods. But if you're regularly consuming processed foods and eating out at restaurants that use MSG, theoretically you're getting close to the dose that in some of these studies has been shown to cause concerning effects. And so yes, one might argue MSG is a natural flavor because the way that you make it in a lab is to ferment sugar beet molasses, corn, cassava, and tapioca starch, which are all natural sources. And therefore, since MSG is natural, it's generally recognized as safe and good for you. But I beg to differ. We can't throw everything under the bus, but we need to pick what we are and are not going to vilify when it comes to natural flavors. And I realize it's a pain in the butt, but you just have to do your research. Search, right? Like, if you look at, say, like, our Kion Energy Bar, for example, or, uh, Kion Aminos, it'll say natural flavors on it. But we have done extensive looking into about whether the natural flavors that we use are good or bad, and the flavoring agents tend to stick to the generally recognized as safe standards for those type of natural flavors. Uh, however, I don't just eat anything that has natural flavors in it and don't ask any questions, because you do want to check whether or not there's actual research on the potential of those natural flavors to cause harm. I still am careful with processed and ultra-processed foods, but honestly, I'm way more worried about blood sugar spikes and vegetable oil and some of the stuff that's actually been proven to be deleterious for the human body, especially in high amounts. And I don't throw natural flavors under the bus. I think it's just a way for people to, you know, turn heads and get some social media clicks. But honestly, Just because something says natural flavors does not mean it's bad, my friends. So, there you have it. Alright, got a couple more questions here. Hello, Ben. Can you comment on nitric oxide from red light therapy? We hear that stimulating nitric oxide production could be more harmful than helpful. Actually, you know what, this is going to be the last question that I respond to because I've realized I am running a little bit short on time. So, this is the last one we'll go through. Nitric oxide. Well, contrary to popular belief, more nitric oxide is not better. As a matter of fact, nitric oxide is something that is considered a reactive oxygen species that can create inflammatory cell-damaging free radicals when present in the body in high amounts. As a matter of fact, if one were to inhale nitric oxide, despite nitric oxide in cardiovascular health research getting the much-coveted Nobel Prize you would actually have a lot of problems. It's a very volatile gas. And if you get high, high levels of nitric oxide in your system, you can get blurred vision, you can get respiratory ailments, hematologic damage, metabolic disorders, arterial stiffness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. Like, more is not necessarily better. And even in lower amounts, such as overdoing your red light therapy, you could actually get the formation of what are called reactive oxygen species in high amounts. So, uh, basically the, the interplay between NO and ROS is something that needs to be in balance, meaning that both reactive oxygen species and nitric oxide can have beneficial and deleterious effects depending on the concentration and the exposure time. And they've actually looked into this with red light therapy and have found that with most of these devices is once you exceed about 20 minutes of red light therapy, you can tend to get excess reactive oxygen species generation partially because of the big increase in NO that could be further aggravated by all these people who are taking arginine and citrulline and Viagra and all these blood flow precursors prior to doing their red light therapy. It's kind of like a phototoxic effect. Now, the reason this happens is, is, you know, red light therapy and near-infrared light therapy as well, the reason it works is it helps your cells to make more adenosine triphosphate or ATP. And that relies on the activation of the mitochondria, which are the batteries of your cells, which produce that energy currency. And that means more energy to drive cellular processes like testosterone production or cell reproduction or collagen synthesis, which is why we like red light for things like skin health benefits or sexual health benefits or just overall energy benefits. Now, the ATP is produced by an enzyme called ATP synthase, and that enzyme is like a tiny motor which operates in the fluid of your mitochondrial membrane. And like any motor, the less resistance, the faster the motor can work. So the fluid in your mitochondrial membrane is primarily made up of water, layers and layers of water. And this water exists in what's called the fourth phase. You can read a book called Cells, Gels, and the Engines of Life to see how water that's in your cells and exists between membranes is not a liquid or a gas or a solid, it's a gel. So when ATP synthase, your little nanomotor, is working its socks off to produce ATP, then you would actually slow the motor down because that structured water is more viscous than normal water, and you would actually see an increase in ATP production and an aligning of that water in response to light that allows for faster ATP output. And as a fallout from increased ATP output and mitochondrial respiration, you get an increase in reactive oxygen species. And so the more viscous the water in your cells is, the slower the ATP nanomotor operates and the less ATP is produced. And when you introduce red light, the light expands the water layers, that reduces the viscosity of the water, it allows the mitochondrial nanoturbine to speed up, and that produces more ATP, which is great for energy, but in excess doses can create a lot of nitric oxide and reactive oxygen species that can impair cellular function long term. And so again, this is why in most cases most devices come with a recommended treatment time. And in most cases, if it's a, like, an infrared sauna, it's anywhere from like 30 to 60 minutes. If it's one of these red light panels, it's 10 to 20 And so, you do need to be careful because they have found, again, formation of reactive oxygen species with overdosing of photobiomodulation. More is not better. But here's a tip for you. There is one compound that has been shown to inhibit nitric oxide-stimulated, what's called soluble guanylyl cyclase, and can actually slow down those ATP nanomotors just a little bit and can cause the NO to build up a little less quickly. That compound, which is fantastic to take prior to red light therapy, is called methylene blue. So you can actually stave off some of these effects by using methylene blue. Theoretically, you could also take a hefty dose of antioxidants after you've done a lot of red light therapy, and both of those would be beneficial to kind of stave off some of the potentially deleterious effects effects of a whole bunch of nitric oxide production in response to red light therapy. But it is a concern, and that is why you're not supposed to do excess red light therapy, because the excess nitric oxide and the excess reactive oxygen species that can result because of that. So great question, very intelligent question. I have a lot of, a lot of listeners who are smart cookies, so good job. That's going to wrap up everything I'm going to go over in today's episode. But again, you can leave your questions your comments, your feedback. You can watch the video version if you just want to see a talking head of me talking to the microphone, which is super entertaining, at bengreenfieldlife.com/460. And I highly recommend, if you're able to, leave the podcast a review or a ranking. That helps me tremendously. It really helps get more eyeballs on the show. It's one of the best things you can do. Don't just nod your head and say you're gonna do it, like, actually do it. It'll take you like 10 seconds to do. Just go in, Clicky-click, leave a star. I'd heavily appreciate it. And until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield signing out. Again, show notes are at bengreenfieldlife.com/460. Have an amazing week. 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. It means a lot. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume claim the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items, but the price is the same for you, and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion LLC, the makers of Kion-branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support, and with full authenticity and transparency recommend in good conscience. I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body, and spirit, and I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.