Q&A 467: Cheap Hacks To Reverse Aging, Life Extension For Dogs, Could Peptides Cause Cancer & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life Show, cheap hacks to reverse aging, life extension for dogs, could peptides cause cancer, and a whole lot more. Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show. Are you ready to hack your life? Let's do this. Welcome to the show. This will be interesting. It's fueled and brought to you by Jello. That's right, J-E-L-L-O. I have not sold out to big food. No, instead I actually have a colonoscopy tomorrow. Anybody out there ever done colonoscopy prep? It's fabulous. I think it's much, much more difficult than the act of the colonoscopy itself. The tube up the butt while you're under anesthesia is nothing compared to the prep. So in about 1 hour, exactly 1 hour and counting, I get to go up to my refrigerator and drink a giant solution of a compound designed to draw a bunch of water into my intestines and make me poop my guts out for about 4 hours. We'll do it again in the morning. It's designed to clean you out. But leading up to that, a whole week of what's called a low-residue, low-fiber diet—seeds, nuts, vegetables, gristle, colors, anything, anything that would mess up the colonoscopy you avoid. So, I've just mostly been eating chicken, fish, and baby food. And then, I made myself Jell-O, and Jell-O is allowed. And, let me tell you what, I just posted the Jell-O recipe to Instagram. It is something I'll repeat for sure because it's amazing. What I did was I took an entire bottle of ketones, I use the HVMN Ketone IQ. I used 8 cans of coconut water. I use the Once Upon a Coconut brand. It's one of the coconut waters that doesn't have a bunch of BPA and crap inside the can. And, I took those 2 liquids, the ketones and the coconut water, and I heated them just a little bit just till there's little bubbles in a pot on the stovetop, not the boiling, just kind of sort of hot like 150 degrees or so. Then, I took an entire canister of Kion Aminos. That's right, an entire thing. Dump that in there, about 20 tablespoons of gelatin, and about 5 tablespoons of honey. And, I stirred all that up. You want to take about 5 minutes to stir this all into the pot that has the ketones and the coconut water in it, okay? Because otherwise, it'll clump up. So, use a whisk and you just pour it in super slow. Pour the aminos in super slow. Pour the honey in super slow. And then, of course, pour the gelatin for sure in super slow because that's the full clump like a mother. So then, what you do is after you've heated all that up and incorporated it, you pour it into a glass shallow baking dish, the type you'd use for, oh, I don't know, Jell-O. And then, you set it in the refrigerator or in the freezer if you want to speed it up and you're impatient. And then, you cut it into Jell-O-sized bites. I've been living off that Jell-O today. I feel fantastic. I mean, I'm not going to eat Jell-O the rest of my life. I like ribeye steaks and smoothies too much for that. But, oh my gosh, try out the Jell-O recipe. I designed it for colonoscopy, but you know what? It's going to stick in my diet because I did a workout on it. I've been jamming all day on it and it's just ketones and aminos, a little bit of honey, bunch of gelatin, which is fantastic for your joints and your gut. And, my surgeon is going to be so proud of me tomorrow when he goes into my colon. And it looks like a giant amino acid-lined tube. I don't know. Hopefully this works out and I don't get kicked out of the operating room. I say operate, it's not an operation, the procedure room. So anyways, why am I doing a colonoscopy? I know, yeah, they have risks, et cetera. And the word puncture tends to come into the risk scenario, which makes everybody squirm whenever you're using words like colon and rectum and puncture in the same sentence. I'm getting it because I've got a multitude of colon cancer, colon cancer deaths and colon cancer illnesses in the family. My father, 3 cousins, my grandfather. And I think that for people who have a very high genetic risk like I do, that a screening like that is wise to do every 1 to 2 years. In addition to that, you may have heard my podcast with Dr. Avi Herskovitz, and we talked about liquid cancer biopsies. You can send your blood off to RGCC in Greece. Or in the US you can use kind of a cheap colon-only version called Cologuard, and you can actually see if there are blood markers of tumors prior to those tumors even being detectable by something like a colonoscopy. However, I still think that for peace of mind, it's good to go in there with the tube and the camera and make sure you're clean either way. So anyway, so there's your Jell-O recipe, and there's probably more than you ever wanted to know about colonoscopies. Maybe, I don't know. Maybe I should just do a whole episode on colon. I tell you what, I'll bring my podcasting microphone tomorrow morning to Deaconess Hospital in Spokane, and I'll just maybe ask the surgeon if we can attach the podcasting microphone to the colonoscopy tube and kill two birds with one stone. We'll see how that works out. That all being said, I got a lot more to talk to you about today than my own colon health and Jell-O. So let's do this. So I like to, I like to tell you about really interesting and compelling articles that I've discovered over the weeks and I definitely have some. If you want to get these hot off the press, follow me on Twitter. That's where I put out the majority of research studies, twitter.com/BenGreenfield. Yeah, I just realized after I said that it's X. I got to get in the habit. Sorry, Elon. X, I don't know, is x.com. I don't even know. It's just a browser tab and a phone app called X. Anyways, I release news flashes over there and you can also access all the shownotes over at BenGreenfieldLife.com/467. BenGreenfieldLife.com/467. We talk a lot on this show about expensive biohacks and therapeutic plasma exchange and massive $10,000 red light chambers, but there's a 55-year-old single mom who makes less than $100K per year and is reversing aging without spending millions. And, there was a story about her that I think was quite heartwarming. And hopeful for people who don't want to break the bank with the biohacking protocols. So, her name is Julie Gibson Clark. Now, you can go to this website. It's called the Rejuvenation Olympics. I'm on there. I'm actually going to do a repeat test. It's called a True Diagnostics aging test. I'm doing a repeat test in a couple of weeks. Anyways, you can actually compare your biological age, more specifically your rate of aging, to a host of other longevity enthusiasts. It's like this big global online longevity game for people who are super bored and have no friends, nothing better to do in life than to try and live a long time. But, what gets measured gets managed and sometimes it is fun to actually see if that NAD that you're cranking out $300 a month on is actually making a difference. So anyways, this gal Julie Clark, her results are pretty impressive especially considering what her longevity protocol is, which I'll get into shortly. She ranks higher than a previous podcast guest of mine, a guy who you may have heard of before, Bryan Johnson, a wealthy tech founder who spent like $2 million a year to reverse aging. She ranks higher than Peter Diamandis, the guy who has the venture fund that's put $500 million or more into longevity and healthy aging technologies. But unlike these tech millionaires and billionaires who are spending up to $1,000 an hour to see a rejuvenation doctor and engage in these crazy longevity protocols, Clark's comparatively a little bit ordinary. She makes less than 6 figures a year. She doesn't want to spend her savings trying to live forever since she will need enough to sustain her into this extreme old age it appears that she is likely going to have. So, she spends $27 a month on a gym membership. She spends $79 a month on a supplement called NOVOS, N-O-V-O-S. N-O-V-O-S. So, I'm a little bit familiar with this company called NOVOS. I actually dry powdered a pack when I was down at Las Vegas. What's it called? A4M Longevity Fest in Las Vegas. It's like the who's who of longevity and all these supplement manufacturers. It's like the Consumer Electronics Show for anti-aging. It occurs every year in Vegas, A4M Longevity Fest. Anybody can get it. You just bypass and go and try try out all the things including these supplements. And, Novos was there, so I'm realizing I did dry mouth a packet and you can see it on Instagram, meaning they gave me a packet, I dumped it in my mouth and it's microdose lithium, theanine, ginger, hyaluronic acid for the joints, pterostilbene, glucosamine sulfate, glycine, magnesium, fisetin, and calcium alpha-ketoglutarate. You might not know what half those things are, but many of them do have decent human research on them for for cellular longevity, for staving off DNA damage. So, she's apparently spending $79 a month on that stuff and the gym membership. So, she also has an exhausting daily routine. I'm just kidding. It's not that bad compared to what a lot of these other biohacking enthusiasts are doing. She has about 16 ounces of vegetables a day. She has carrots and radishes and peppers, and she gets a lot of these through salads and soups. So, she appears to be doing a little bit of slow food prep, which is fantastic for unlocking nutrients and decreasing the levels of plant defense compounds you might find in a lot of these foods. She limits the amount of refined sugars and grains that she eats. So, she's not necessarily no-carb, low-carb ketosis, but it appears she is at least taking into account some of the compounds that might not serve one, particularly in modern processed grains. She does a mix of cardio and strength workouts each week. And, this is important. I think a lot of these biohacking and anti-aging enthusiasts just don't don't lift weights enough or exercise to the extent that they should, especially socially. So, she does 2 days of upper body workouts with weights, 2 days of lower body, and 1 day of core. So, it's a 5-day split, 2 upper days, 2 lower days, and 1 core. And then, she does about 20 to 30 minutes of cardio 4 times a week. That's reasonable. On the weekend, she hikes, she kayaks, she plays pickleball. That's incredible. Hopefully, not from a kayak. And she takes a long walk. This all seems very doable. I don't know about you, but this all seems very doable. She does a sauna 3 times a week for 20 minutes, finishes that up with a cold shower, not an expensive visit to a cryotherapy chamber, just a cold shower. And, that's about all that it appears that she's doing or at least what she reports. So, it's basically strength training, cardio, heat, cold, walking, social sports, a large amount of physical activity, a wide array of whole foods without a myopic diet, $27 a month on gym membership, $79 a month on a supplement subscription, and the gal is crushing it on her biological age measurements. I think she is near the top of the list of this Rejuvenation Olympics. So, hooray. Keep it up, Julie Gibson Clark. Maybe I'll interview on my podcast someday. If somebody's connected to Julie, connect us. It'd be interesting to chat a little bit more about her approach, about her take, and about maybe some of the little things the article doesn't discuss. I'm always interested in these people's spiritual habits, if they do gratitude journaling, if they have stress control strategies. I'm curious what her sleeping protocol is. Doesn't talk a lot about that, but it's an interesting article. I'll link to it in the shownotes over at BenGreenfieldLife.com/467. Kind of similar to her protocol, another very interesting article hit Business Insider. I was tagged in it because Jack Dorsey appears in the article. And Jack came on my podcast a few years ago, the former CEO of Twitter, now X, we've established that. And amongst other things, caught a lot of flak. The dude's a lightning rod as it is, but he caught a lot of flak because people claim that the diet that he follows that he described to me on the podcast, the one meal a day with extensive fasting, was going to shove a lot of people with eating disorders into overdrive. And so, I still get tagged in articles about Jack and I got tagged in this one, so I read it because I'm narcissistic. Love to read articles that I'm tagged in. No, I actually thought this was very interesting. So, went into what some of the richest people in tech do particularly for their diet, which I suppose is related to the longevity that we just talked about. So, let's look into this. Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, a guy I also want to get on my podcast. I was supposed to go over to Necker Island to interview him couple of years ago. They wouldn't let me on the island though because I'm not vaccinated and I decided not to get vaccinated as a desperate attempt to interview Richard Branson, but I'm sure I'll interview him someday and maybe in space. Anyways, drinks 20 cups of tea a day. He says, "I'm not sure how I'd survive without English breakfast tea." He starts his day with fruit salad and muesli. Never know how to pronounce that, muesli for breakfast, oatmeal, fancy oatmeal. Occasionally, he eats kipper, a herring-like fish. He lives on a private Caribbean island, Necker Island. And, I know that he plays a lot of tennis. He has a lot of group meals. He says he gets about 6 hours of sleep a night. Might be undersleeping a little bit there, Mr. Branson. But, I think the 20 cups of tea a day could be onto something. It's English breakfast tea. It's caffeinated. There are reports that the French philosopher Voltaire drank up to 66 cups of coffee a day. So, Richard Branson is underachieving with 20 cups of tea. So, that's his protocol. Jeff Bezos says he likes to take his time in the morning and eat a healthy breakfast. He has pancakes every Sunday morning, but apparently, he's extremely dedicated to his workouts. I've also heard he's juiced to the gills. I don't know. Another interesting guy who I'd love to interview. It'd be kind of cool to do a round of all these tech billionaires and just get all their secrets and learn how they do all the things they do without dying yet. Anyways, Bezos has a breakfast of Mediterranean octopus with potatoes, bacon, green garlic yogurt, and a poached egg. A little bit different than that gal Julie Clark's somewhat plain non-breakfast octopus-based diet. But, it sounds like Jeff Bezos is maybe kind of sort of doing the Mediterranean thing. Then, there's Mark Cuban whose breakfast consists of a cup of coffee and 2 cookies from a company called Alyssa's Cookies, which I'm surely convinced that he's an investor in. Says they're high in protein and fiber and low in carbs. And he apparently lives on the things. I've never tried Alyssa's Cookies. I'm very curious now. And, he says his favorite flavor is the healthy oatmeal bite. And, he also says his ultimate meal is a McDonald's salad with some additions. He adds corn, cottage cheese, relish, and for croutons, some crunchy cereal. Mark, I got news for you. You're obviously crushing it in life, but there are probably some modifications that could be made to the McDonald's and cookies approach to your diet. Nonetheless, he seems to be a pretty healthy guy. So, that's him. Then, we get to Bill Gates. Oh, boy. I've never thought Bill Gates looked that healthy, but he says he loves Diet Coke so much that he drinks 3 or 4 a day. He says he's at least self-deprecating. He says all those cans also add up to something like 35 pounds of aluminum a year. Could be the case. Mr. Gates might need a metal detox. I don't know. And, his eating habits, he eats Cocoa Puffs for breakfast. Apparently loves cheeseburgers and has a real fondness for the powdered beverage Tang. Alright. Well, I guess he makes Mark Cuban look like a Himalayan monk sitting cross-legged on a pristine mountaintop drinking kale smoothies. Geez. Alright, Tang, Cocoa Puffs, and cheeseburgers. You win, Bill Gates. Steve Jobs, may he rest in peace, was known for his idiosyncratic eating habits. Says at one point his diet was strictly carrots and apples. He also was a fruitarian at one time, eating only fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and grains. I think that that's a fruit, vegetable, nut, seed, and grain-terian, not a fruitarian. But nonetheless, he wouldn't eat meat, and he swore off meat when he was a freshman and later gave up grains and milk. And he apparently thought his vegan diet caused him not to emit any sort of body odor. I haven't researched that, but it could be true. Now, of course, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He tried to heal himself through his diet. He had a lot of juice fruit and carrots for that. And then later, when part of his pancreas was removed, he reintroduced fish and other proteins. By the time of his death in 2011, he was on a mostly liquid diet. Man, the guy went through a lot. He went through a lot. But I think he actually was pretty, at least passionate about trying to eat healthy. Perhaps as passionate as Elon Musk. I don't know. Elon says, if there was a way that I could not eat so I could work more, I would not eat. And, this article says he doesn't have the healthiest diet, which makes me a little bit nervous to delve into it considering that they didn't quite say that about Bill Gates and his was not impressive. It says Musk used to skip breakfast or eat a Mars bar or donut to start his day. He says he's trying to cut down on sweet stuff and should have an omelet and coffee. But apparently, he still said on X recently that he eats a donut every morning and he says at least to Joe Rogan on a recent podcast, "I'd rather eat tasty food." and live a shorter life. Hey, healthy food can be tasty, Elon. I have a cookbook about that. I'll send it to you. You can invest in my cookbook. And his favorite cuisines are French and barbecue. And he also, like Gates, appears to be a massive fan of Diet Coke. A recent photo on X that claimed to be his bedside table had a gun and 4 cans of caffeine-free Diet Coke. That's interesting. 2 guns and 4 cans of Diet Coke. So there you have it. There's Elon Musk. And then there's Mark Zuckerberg, who apparently Elon Musk may someday fight in the cage. And, I would imagine Mark is a little bit more dedicated just being somewhat familiar with him. He says he has a kill-what-you-eat diet. Interesting. He set a personal challenge for himself to only eat meat from animals he had killed back in 2011. I don't know if he's still following that, but he says the diet included goats, pigs, chickens, and lobsters. Zuck was killing innocent lobsters. Unbelievable. And apparently, he even once treated Jack Dorsey to a goat that he had killed and Dorsey says the goat was served cold, so he stuck to salad. For dinner. And then, of course, that leads us straight into Jack Dorsey who used to be vegan. He says too much beta-carotene, the orange pigment found in carrots, caused his skin to turn orange. So then, he switched to a more paleo diet working out refined sugars, grains, and processed foods, and of course, fasting for long periods of time or doing an OMAD, one meal a day diet. Now, interestingly, Bryan Johnson is in this article. I interviewed Bryan. He eats the same thing every day. His diet is pretty impressive. It's very I would argue somewhat restrictive if you ever want to, I don't know, take the family out to a nice restaurant and maybe have some ice cream afterwards. He has a Green Giant smoothie with spermidine, creatine, collagen peptides, and cocoa flavonols for breakfast though. And, doesn't look half bad. I've seen pictures of it. I'd eat it. It's like a fancy overpriced acai bowl. Then, there's Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, or at least he was at the time this article was written. He's been a vegetarian since he was a child. He takes the diabetic drug metformin, which actually a lot of people take off-label as a way to slow aging. He takes methylated B12, omega-3, iron, and vitamin D3 as supplements. I don't necessarily endorse that approach without a few modifications. Like, you got to be careful with iron toxicity, and vitamin D should always be accompanied with vitamin K and magnesium, but it's not a bad stack to start. So Sam appears to be on the right track. Warren Buffett— Warren Buffett's on this, on this article. He was a one-quarter Coca-Cola, he said, in terms of his diet. He said he drinks 5 12-ounce servings per day. I believe he's an investor in Coca-Cola. So, Mark Cuban's got the cookies, but Warren Buffett has the Coke. So, apparently, he also has a diet largely comprised of McDonald's hamburgers and Oreos. And, he's rich. So, I think the takeaway from this article in general is that even if you're fabulously wealthy, you may not know crap about how to eat a healthy diet. But, it is interesting to see how much these guys bounce around. I mean, I don't know what I would do if I was a billionaire. I would probably be very busy and I would subsist primarily on amino acid and ketone Jell-O. That's likely my approach. But, I don't know, ask me in a year or so when I'm a tech billionaire. Now, we've talked a lot about aging for humans or at least the habits of aging and accelerated aging humans, but how about dogs? Now, I interviewed a fascinating gal named Karen Becker who wrote a wonderful book. I think anybody who owns a dog or plans to own a dog should get this book. It's called "Forever Dog: Surprising New Science to Help Your Canine Companion Live Younger, Healthier, and Longer." She was quoted in this brand-new article about a life-extension drug for dogs. I would imagine their human owners might actually steal a little bit. As a matter of fact, I don't know if you're aware of this, but there is a surge of interest in the health and biohacking and longevity sector of the use of dog dewormers used off-label in humans based on the idea that parasitic infections precede chronic diseases, particularly cancer. And a daily dose of, say, the dog dewormer Panacur, P-A-N-A-C-U-R, is something that a lot of people are actually doing as an antiparasitic, which I think is paradoxical because then you've got other people who are using helminthic therapy. Literally. I know several people in the biohacking sector who take whipworms and tapeworms to strengthen their immune system. So, I don't know, do you take the dewormer for longevity or do you eat worms for longevity? Might depend. You might have to just use yourself as an experiment. Anyways, so there's this San Francisco biotech company called Loyal. They're developing an experimental drug to extend the lifespan and improve the quality of large and giant dog breeds. And these large and giant dog breeds do tend to die a little bit earlier. Mixed breed dogs, mutts so to speak, which we love as our Greenfield family. We quit spending money on fancy expensive genetically engineered dogs years ago. Now, we just adopt cheap dogs and they're wonderful and they last a lot longer and don't have as many health issues. They're not as pretty, but you know what? I drive my old cars into the ground and I adopt dogs and I'm not all about materialistic tendencies to impress people with your dogs or your cars. Wear your clothes. But back to this drug. The FDA so far has not approved any drugs to extend the lifespan of animals or humans for that matter. But this new experimental drug that they've designed, it's an injection given every 3 to 6 months by a veterinarian, and it's meant to lower levels of a hormone called IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor 1. Large dogs tend to have a genetic variant that leads to high levels of IGF-1, Small dogs have a different variant, and inhibiting IGF-1 has been shown to increase lifespan in worm models and fly models and rodent models. And we all know dogs are just big worms. So in humans, you have very high levels and very low levels. I think there are sweet spots for insulin-like growth factor. I, I tend to like it to be around 125 to 200, in that range or so. Much higher, you get increased risk for cancer and accelerated growth. Much lower, and you're just a little frail and you get poor sleep and you don't repair. As well. And so a lot of humans, they'll use peptides like ipamorelin, for example. Others who go the more natural route will use things like deer antler velvet or colostrum as growth hormone precursors. And then of course, you can literally take growth hormone if you are so inclined. Anyways though, so they're trying to shut down or at least reduce IGF levels in large dogs. And the drug, at least early results appears to have some pretty promising potential in terms of extending the lifespan of your animals. Now, could you— here's where my, my cheapo hacking hat comes on— could you theoretically reduce IGF-1 via other methods? Absolutely. Fasting, exercise, good sleep, feeding the dog a diet that is not the grain-based dry dog food diet, that frankly I've never seen a wolf in the wild walk by with a stalk of grain in its mouth. They're omnivores and really largely carnivores. And so, I think that's a diet more appropriate to a dog. As a matter of fact, when I interviewed Karen Becker, the author of "Forever Dog," we talked a lot about what's called the biologically appropriate raw food diet for dogs. It's a little bit more laborious because you're basically blending up liver and kidney and heart beef and throwing oils in there and giving it to your dog. But, by controlling grain and sugar intake, by giving your dog lots of exercise, a little bit of cold here and there can help with the growth hormone control, you may actually be able to cheapen the cost of the IGF knockout approach. So anyways though, it is interesting though that the same approaches that might help a human meaning finding a balance of IGF-1, appears to also be something that is now promising for dogs of all breeds. And, like I tweeted, I'm just wondering how many humans are going to get their dog a prescription for this because it might be 10 times cheaper than an IGF-1-lowering drug for humans and take a little bit of their dog's dewormer and take a little bit of their dog's IGF-1-lowering agent and, hey, you got a match made in heaven. So anyways, I'll link to that article in the shownotes. And then, we get to Colostrum, which I just mentioned. Now, colostrum is something that is a natural way to increase growth hormone. I'll tell you all about it, but came across a fantastic summary and update of colostrum. Now, colostrum is a big part of my diet. Look, I'll come right out and say it. I own a company and we sell grass-fed, grass-finished colostrum, and it's fantastic, and you should go buy lots of it because it actually is amazing. My smoothie right now is Don't laugh. Raw liver, ice, bone broth, colostrum, little bit of Kion whey protein, and then I'll just throw a few superfoods in there like cacao nibs or a little bit of dark cacao powder, maybe some spirulina, and I blend it all up. But the colostrum, oh my gosh, it literally is liquid gold. That's what it's called in the health industry is liquid gold. And it specifically acts on your gut-immune axis. So, let's talk about this. Colostrum is the nutrient-rich fluid that female mammals produce in the first few days after giving birth, and it's the first source of gut-nourishing compounds for newborn mammals. It's got nutrients and antibodies and growth factors and bioactive compounds. I'll define what I mean by that shortly, but it's the very first food every mammal on the planet gets after birth, unless that is you're a human whose parents decided that soy formula was better engineered than mother's breast milk. Uh, but that's, that's a topic for another day. So colostrum is crucial for the development and the protection of newborns. Its benefits extend beyond infancy. My sons have used colostrum. I use colostrum. It's remarkable for its immune modulating properties. But here's how it works. So, you have your gut and your immune system. And the gut and immune system communicate through this thing called the gut immune axis. And this is like a network that connects your digestive tract to your immune defenses. Now, that communication is vital for the proper functioning of both the gut microbiota and the immune system. So, the gut microbiota contributes to immune regulation by producing molecules that control inflammation, which is a really key factor in maintaining a balanced immune response. And then, vice versa, the immune system helps to shape the composition and activity of the gut microbiota, meaning your immune system helps to maintain a diverse and balanced microbial community because it can eliminate harmful bacteria and promote the growth of beneficial microbes. The immune system also regulates, and this is important, the integrity of the gut barrier. So you hear about people with leaky gut or permeable gut. Now, that gut barrier is the protective shield that separates the gut contents from the rest of the body. And when it gets compromised, whatever, vegetable oil overconsumption, foods that you might be allergic to, stress, etc., harmful substances enter the bloodstream. That triggers an immune response, and that can potentially lead to chronic inflammation. And immune system dysfunction. So, what does all this have to do with colostrum? Well, colostrum has some things in it that help with this gut-immune axis. The first thing it has is antibodies that are known as immunoglobulins. Now, antibodies, as you might already know, are proteins that your immune system makes in response to foreign substances like, I don't know, bee sting or bacteria or viruses or toxins. They recognize and they bind to specific antigens, and those antigens are then marked for destruction by immune cells. Now, colostrum has a whole bunch of different classes of antibodies, but the most important ones are immunoglobulin A and immunoglobulin G, IgA and IgG. Now, IgA you find in mucosal tissues like your gut, your respiratory tract, and your urinary tract. It's your first line of defense against pathogens. It prevents their attachment to the mucus, in your gut. Then IgG, what that does is it identifies and neutralizes foreign objects like bacteria and viruses. And it also does this by binding to antigens on the surface of the pathogens, and that then labels them for destruction by immune cells. Now, IgG also promotes what's called phagocytosis, phagocytosis. So this means that what are called phagocytic cell-eating compounds like macrophages, This means they can engulf and digest the pathogens that have been tagged by the IgG. So, the IgG provides long-lasting immunity against pathogens. So, you got the IgA, which is helping to protect your mucosal surfaces, and then IgG is helping to nuke and phagocytize. I might have just made up that word. I'm pretty sure it's correct though, the actual pathogens. So, in addition to these immunoglobulins that I just told you about, Colostrum also has growth factors. So, growth factors, this is related to the IGF I was telling you about. Growth factors are proteins that regulate cell growth and differentiation and repair. So, for example, you'll find epidermal growth factor, EGF, in colostrum. That helps to promote the growth and repair of, you guessed it, your epithelial cells. And those line various body surfaces including, most notably, your GI tract. So, it enhances the integrity and the function of the gut lining. And then you have insulin-like growth factor. Sound familiar? IGF-1. That's a growth factor and you find it in colostrum and that stimulates cell growth and division in developing bone and muscle and other tissues. Not bad unless it gets way out of whack from excessive eating and excessive insulin and too much sugar and not enough exercise. But healthy levels of IGF-1 are important and colostrum helps to support that without having to use pharmaceuticals, peptides, etc. So next, colostrum has cytokines. Cytokines are messengers. They're little proteins. They act as messengers between immune cells. So colostrum has a bunch of these cytokines. They have names like interleukins, interferons, and tumor necrosis factors. Now, interleukins, these are essential for cell communication. They play a critical role in immune regulation. They activate immune cells, they regulate inflammation, they promote the differentiation and maturation of immune cells. That's what the interleukins do. Then, you have the interferons. These are antiviral proteins. This is one reason why colostrum can be so helpful in helping to defend your body against viral infections. And then, you have TNFs, remember tumor necrosis factors. Those are involved in immune surveillance and the elimination of abnormal cells. So, they induce cell death in cancer cells and they play a really critical role in the body's natural defense against tumors. So, you have all that going in colostrum. As well. So, when we look at what all is going on if you actually use colostrum, first of all, if you use it, understand that the salivary enzymes in your mouth help to predigest the colostrum. So, I dry powder it into my mouth, 1 scoop in the morning, 1 scoop in the evening, and let dissolve in my mouth. And then, in my smoothie, I make my smoothie thick enough to where it's already kind of spending a lot of time in my mouth as I eat my smoothie thick like ice cream from a spoon. So, understand that colostrum's got to hang around in your mouth for a little while to get the most benefits out of it. But, once it's done that, basically, it's fortifying the gut barrier. So, it's preventing the entry of harmful substances into the bloodstream. So, that's number one is supporting gut barrier integrity. Next, it's called the mother of the microbiome by many food scientists because it allows beneficial bacteria to proliferate and it keeps the gut barrier intact. The reason it does that is it has something else in it I haven't told you about yet, something called oligosaccharides. Oligosaccharides are prebiotic compounds that act as a food source for your hungry beneficial gut bacteria. And when they ferment these prebiotics, these oligosaccharides in colostrum, the bacteria then produce short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, which promote gut health and regulate immune response and cost a lot of money in a supplement if you were to just buy butyrate. But you can get your body to make it itself if you're consuming colostrum on a regular basis. So, the type of people who tend to do very well with colostrum would include people with SIBO, small intestine bacterial overgrowth, which produces a lot of gas and bloating, particularly when you eat things like garlic and onions and apples and other fermentable foods known as FODMAPs, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, And all of the things that I just told you about, the binding to toxins, the intestinal cell growth and healing, the control of the immune system, and even the unique peptides and amino acids that help with gut motility and decreasing diarrhea in IBS patients, all of this can be helped by colostrum. Now, colostrum is also good during cold and flu season, which at this time of year that I'm recording this for you is right upon us. And that's because it has something called lactoferrin. You might have heard of this. Lactoferrin has really great antiviral properties. It inhibits viruses from binding to and entering host cells, and it can disrupt the viral envelope, thus rendering viruses much more harmless. And that's the lactoferrin in the colostrum that helps with that. It also has what are called polypeptides, which in some studies have been shown to also have antiviral effects, particularly against the flu. But in addition to the gut lining and colds and flus and other infections, colostrum can prevent and reduce the symptoms of allergies because a healthy gut biome is linked to a reduced risk of allergies. If you struggle with allergies, I would look into your gut biome. I would look into probiotics, a wide variety of fermented foods, and I would also consider colostrum, namely because colostrum helps to balance what's called the Th1 and Th2 immune response. So allergies are often associated with an overactive Th2 response. Colostrum helps to shift that balance toward Th1 dominance, and that reduces overreaction to allergens that you might get from pets or air or walking through an airport or mall or anywhere else where your body is getting exposed to things that cause a mild inflammatory response. And by the way, the lactoferrin that's in the colostrum also helps with that because it helps to ease allergy symptoms as a natural anti-inflammatory. For things like runny nose and itchy eyes, et cetera. A lot of people, now 1 in 6 Americans, are reported to have an autoimmune disease. And colostrum actually has immunoglobulins in it that help to regulate an overactive immune response that drives autoimmune attacks on healthy tissue. So if you are sensitive to certain foods, if you've been told you have autoimmune issues, there's a lot of things that you can do. I mean, low-dose naltrexone and what's called a paleo autoimmune diet. Shout out to a fantastic author named Mickey Trescott. You can get her Paleo Autoimmune Cookbook and her book on Amazon. I think that's incredibly helpful. I think that a lot of natural compounds that help with the gut like glutamine can be helpful, bone broth in many cases, but colostrum is way up there as far as its ability to be able to regulate and slow autoimmune disease development that is often related to dysbiosis. Now, the last thing about colostrum that's interesting, and this is what first got me turned on to colostrum, is the fact that for athletes who exercise in the heat, it decreases the intestinal permeability, the inflammation, and the oxidative stress that occurs when you are exercising, particularly when you are exercising in the heat. So, the way I discovered colostrum was I used to race Ironman all over the world. And, a lot of them were hot like Thailand and Hawaii. And, Florida was another one, did an Ironman in California. They're all so hot and you're trying to eat at the same time that you're exercising in the heat. Colostrum helps with that. It helps to decrease intestinal permeability that occurs when exercising in the heat and when eating while exercising in the heat. So, that's a fantastic bonus and that's how I first got turned onto it before I started to realize all the other cool things that colostrum can do. Now, I would be remiss not to address one elephant in the room. And, that is that if you have a lactose intolerance, sometimes because of the trace amounts of lactose that are in colostrum, it can cause you the same type of gas and bloating you might get if you have a little bit of ice cream. Now, it's very low amounts of lactose. You would have to have a pretty significant lactose intolerance to consume colostrum and have adverse effects, but I want to name that. You may want to just get If you're lactose intolerant, you may want to get one bottle at first to try it and see how it agrees with you before you get more, before you order that 12-pack. So anyways, the inspiration for me to tell you all about colostrum came from a fantastic article by a very smart guy, Dr. Chris Kresser. I will link to that article in the shownotes, but highly recommend that you give it a read, that you familiarize yourself with colostrum, and you consider adding it into your healthy living protocol. So, you have it. Ben Greenfield: Alright. Well, I do have a listener Q&A today, but a couple other things that I wanted to mention to you before we get into this week's listener Q&A. So, the first is that I know many of you like to listen to podcasts. I like to listen to podcasts and audiobooks. There's been something that has been a frustration of mine, however. When I listen to podcasts, particularly if I'm working out or I'm doing something that I want to be hands-free for such as driving, and I hear something important, I can't highlight it the same way as I might use a highlighter in a book when I'm reading a book or use the highlight function in a Kindle when I'm reading electronically. Instead, I got to take my phone out, I got to look at the timestamp, I got to write a note to myself, "Hey, check out the shownotes and delve more deeply into this." Well, no longer because I've been using a new podcast app called Snipd, S-N-I-P-D. Now, this was inspired by a tweet that I sent out and I said, "Hey, is there a way to hands-free highlight, if you want to call it that, sections of podcasts without necessarily having to stop the podcast, take your phone out of your pocket, et cetera?" Turns out there is. So, here's the way it works. The Snipped app, you press the volume button or you press the forward button 3 times on your headphones or your earbuds. I just use the old-school Apple headphones. Press that 3 times. It will automatically clip, snip, and transcribe whatever time length you've defined as the time length that you want to highlight as you're listening to a podcast. I have mine set at 90 seconds. So, if I hear people talking about a certain thing, I snip it by pressing those buttons 3 times real fast, click, click, click. It will save those 90 seconds, transcribe them, send me an email digest at the end of the week or every day if I desire of the important things that I've highlighted from the podcast that I've listened to. And then, get this, if any of you out there use Readwise, Readwise is fantastic because it will take any of your Kindle highlights as well as popular Kindle highlights from physical books that you've read if you scan the physical book and take a picture of it or upload the title of it to Readwise. And every week or every month or every day, whatever you desire, it will send you everything that you've highlighted along with any of the most popular highlights from books that you said that you've read. And it keeps information that you found valuable top of mind in front of you on a syndicated basis without you having to go hunt down that book again in the archives of your Kindle, those deep dark cobweb-covered archives or go dig around the dusty attic of your house for an old book that you got to reference again. Readwise keeps track of all of it. Well, here's why I'm telling you this. Turns out that Readwise can sync to Snipd, meaning all of my podcast highlights can appear in my email inbox along with all of my book highlights. And for anybody who is a lifelong learner who loves to digest content and who sometimes loses track of what you've actually read or studied, this is a lifesaver. So, I am now just hooked on this podcast app. Great one for you podcast junkies out there. It's called Snipd. I'll put more information about that and this Readwise app so you can hunt them down in the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Five 467. It's been a game changer for me. So, check that out. And I think we're going to go ahead and delve into this week's listener Q&A. Alright, the first question comes from Bay Area 1976 and Mbogi 8000. I don't know how somebody— there's two people asked a question, but they figured it out beyond me. I'm a Luddite. So, they say, "Can BPC-157 feed polyp growth in the colon due to the creation of new blood vessels?" Wow, this is interesting. This reminds me of the questions I got a few months ago when the study came out showing that NAD could accelerate the growth of cancer. Turns out it's true. If you already have a preexisting tumor, in this case breast cancer, supplementing with NAD or NR, NMN may cause tumor growth. It would mean that if you have cancer, you may want to think twice about using NAD, particularly breast cancer. This is also something that came up in that old book by, I think, T. Colin Campbell called The China Study, in which he suggested that excess protein intake could cause cancer. Well, it turns out that in rats who had been given a toxin that caused tumor growth, that once a tumor was present, a high protein diet could accelerate tumor growth and put that tumor in a pro-anabolic state. No surprises there, right? So it's kind of one of those things where does this cause cancer or does this, if you already have cancer, have the potential to cause accelerated growth? You always have to ask yourself that because the media misses that part. They're like, oh, it's associated with tumor growth, so it must cause cancer. As a matter of fact, many of these things that cause cancer tumor growth in a state in which cancer is already present may actually be preventive in other cases. And we'll get into that. So for those of you who are unfamiliar with BPC-157, it's a peptide. It's technically called a pentadecapeptide. So that's a fancy term for a series of 15 amino acids held together by peptide bonds. It's also known as body protection compound. It's known as PL-10. It's known as PL-14736. It's known as what else, a bit— bpcen. It's got a lot of different names, but it's most popularly known as BPC-157. We've known about it since the early '90s. It's not found in many places, but in your gut, it actually is made as a body-protecting compound. That's exactly what it does. It protects and it heals tissue. Now, it's made synthetically. Right? It's derived from a protein found in the human gut, but it's just one part of that protein that's naturally produced in the digestive system. So then they synthesize this peptide. So a lot of people use it for healing up tissue, for oral consumption, which the FDA has not cracked down on, by the way. They've only cracked down on the injectable version of BPC-157. But the oral version, a lot of people use for, for gut issues and systemically for inflammation system-wide until the injectable version began to become less and less available. Thank you, FDA. I used to inject it into joints subcutaneously into abdominal tissue after like a plane flight or any other situation which I was a little bit more inflamed. And, in addition to all of its beneficial healing effects, it's also a strong, and this is particularly relevant to cancer, it's a strong angiomodulatory agent. Angiomodulatory means it affects how blood vessels are made. So, research suggests that BPC can help to heal tissue by increasing blood flow. And, one of the ways it does this is through what's called angiogenesis and vasculogenesis. That basically means it helps to create new arteries and new veins, right? Angiogenesis, new arteries. Vasculogenesis, new veins. But here's probably why my two astute listeners asked this question. Blood vessels are involved in the creation of tumors as well, right? And some researchers have speculated that by helping create new blood vessels to tissue, BPC-157 could also help supply the blood that supports cancerous tissue growth.. Now, no studies have shown that I'm aware of and that I can find that BPC-157 can actually support cancerous tissue growth, but there's a suggested mechanism of action that dictates that maybe it's helping to feed blood vessels into tumors. But then you could also look at studies that have, have been done on BPC's potential protective effects against cancer. So for example, if you have lesions and ulcers and stomach lining damage, and particularly schizophrenia can be found to cause damage to the stomach lining, BPC-157 can prevent those lesions from forming. And in one study, they gave mice what's called haloperidol, which forms stomach lesions, and the BPC-157 significantly reduced the size of those stomach lesions. And that means it's helping to prevent the damage to the stomach that could lead to cancerous tumors or cancerous stomach ulcers.. In addition, they've shown that BPC-157 can have an inhibitory effect on skin cancer cell growth. So, there's two feathers in the cap, so to speak, for BPC-157 for actually not causing cancer and in fact controlling formation of stomach cancer, skin cancer. Now, it might also help to treat some of the side effects of the drugs used to treat cancer. You take a chemotherapy drug like cyclophosphamide. Cyclophosphamide is a chemotherapy drug It's very effective at killing cancer cells, but it has some unfortunate side effects. And one of those is that it causes lesions to the stomach. See where I'm going here? And they've actually looked at the effects of BPC-157 in rats given this cyclophosphamide chemotherapeutic agent, and they found that the rats that were given the BPC had much smaller stomach lesions than the rats that were not given BPC-157. And the researchers concluded in that study that BPC-157 is a very safe anti-ulcer peptide. Now, BPC may also, and I think the same thing about amino acids in general, be helpful in treating cancer cachexia. So cachexia is also known as wasting syndrome. Okay, this is where somebody gets cancer and they lose body mass, including muscle and fat. It can be caused by cancer, could also be caused by AIDS, and almost half of cancer patients suffer from cachexia at some point. And cachexia is a problem because that leads to a lot of frailty complications, including death,. And some estimates go as high as 20% of cancer deaths being more related to cachexia than directly to the cancer itself. However, BPC-157 could help in the treatment of cachexia resulting from cancer. Now, when you look at all the other things that BPC-157 could do, improve inflammatory bowel disease, improve the ability for ligaments and tendons to heal, for muscles to heal, for bones to heal, for skin to regrow, to regenerate spinal tissue in some studies in rodent models, but still, it has a lot going for it. It seems to be very safe. It may even help to cure paradontitis, which is periodontal disease basically, and wound healing even from burns and significant skin wounds. So, here's the thing. I'm not that concerned about its potential for causing polyp growth in the colon due to creation of new blood vessels. I'm not going to say that's ironclad and that we don't still have a need for long-term human clinical research on the association between any peptide, including BPC-157, and cancer. However, it's very safe, it's very simple, and I'm personally comfortable using it. I probably, if I had a tumor, would not— let's say I go in for my colonoscopy tomorrow and I find a bunch of polyps growing. I would probably restrict my intake of anything anabolic for a while, IGF-1 or IGF-1 precursors or peptides, BPC-157, anything that could assist with the creation of new blood vessels. I mean, if I had— I have a whole list of things I would do if I got cancer, but, you know, I would be having a very polyphenol and flavanol forward ketogenic-based diet, and I would be doing, you know, a lot of fasting, a lot of grounding and earthing and movement and ozone and hyperbaric. And, you know, there's a whole list of things. I had a whole podcast about cancer. A few weeks ago, and I'll link to that one in the show notes because I went on for like 45 minutes in terms of all the different treatments out there. But anyways, long story short is I wouldn't worry that much about BPC-157. It's still available orally if you want to try it. There's a, there's a few sources out there. I still have a stock in my refrigerator of the injectable stuff. If you want to know more about the FDA cracking down on it, I have a series of videos on Instagram right now about peptides that you can go watch. There are Instagram.com/BenGreenfieldFitness. Alright. So, another great practical question from Big Sexy KG. Does boiling hot coffee over collagen peptides denature the peptides at all? Boiling— well, this is relevant because a lot of people are into putting collagen in their coffee. It doesn't have to be with, but with or without butter, right? Collagen can be put in your coffee and a lot of people really like that because collagen can be very protective to joints. It can assist with sarcopenia that occurs with age. I have many people who are aging and who are also health enthusiasts. Marc Sisson is probably the guy who first turned me onto this, 40 grams of collagen a day. Now, I do 40 grams of amino acids per day. I also drink bone broth. I do a little gelatin obviously here and there from my massive Jell-O projects. But collagen, it is a legitimate question because collagen supplements contain what are called hydrolyzed collagen peptides. Now, hydrolyzed collagen peptides are what you get when collagen protein is broken down to smaller portions so the collagen can be easily broken down and used by the body. Now, the process uses heat for the extraction of those peptides, and that heat is typically no hotter than 190 degrees because exposing collagen peptides to higher temperatures can result in degradation. Now, although heat can render the collagen powder less useful, If you actually have collagen peptides and you want to degrade them to the point where they're no longer functional at all, you have to get above 300°F. And if you're drinking your coffee at above 300°F, you're a mad scientist, you have a lot of pain tolerance, or you have no skin left on your lips or your mouth because coffee is typically brewed at 200°F or less. Now, if you put in collagen in your coffee and you want to play it safe, only heat your hot water if you have one of those electronic water heaters to 190°F. And, that'd be the safest way to go. But, you got to get close to 300 to really start to make the collagen so denatured that you're not going to get any benefits out of it. Now, this is important to know because dietary collagen cannot be absorbed. It has to be broken down to individual amino acids, which are the building blocks for proteins for your body to use. And, because of this, if you're just relying on collagen-rich foods and chewing the knuckles off of the chicken and having some bone marrow here and there or some bone broth, the collagen is not actually broken down. It's less absorbable. It's not going to hurt you, but you're not going to get all the benefits of a broken-down collagen peptide or hydrolyzed collagen. So when you hydrolyze it, it can actually increase its absorbability. And there are things like vitamin C that you can include, you know, like a match made in heaven is, you know, some collagen coffee and a handful of blueberries, for example, because vitamin C-rich foods help to boost collagen levels.. Now, you could also add vitamin C to your coffee. There's no reason you can't do that or take some liposomal vitamin C before you have your coffee with the collagen in it. Now, for the collagen to be absorbed, the proteins in it need to be denatured to alter their structure. And, that puts them into a predigested form that allows them to be more easily absorbed. And, that's done using heat. We've established it's only 190 degrees and you don't have to get much hotter than that. So, Long story short is it's pretty rare that you're going to be cooking with collagen above 200 degrees. But if you are making, I don't know, collagen bread or collagen casserole or collagen turkey or whatever, and you are doing higher temperatures, you are going to denature the collagen to a certain extent and render it possibly somewhat a little bit less beneficial for you. So, by the way, this got me thinking that there is one other thing I wanted to tell you guys. I don't want to get too long in the tooth here. The tooth, the teeth. I have more than one teeth. Anyways, there was a study related to coffee consumption, and I thought this was super interesting because you hear all about these morning cortisol awakening responses and how if you want the ideal morning cortisol awakening response, you should wait to have coffee because coffee will accelerate the onset of your morning cortisol awakening response potentially result in a disrupted circadian rhythm or at least accelerated tiredness in the afternoon. This is true. Caffeine can increase cortisol secretion upon acute consumption. But here's what this recent study found. It found that after 5 days of caffeine intake at a lot, 300 milligrams a day up to 600 milligrams a day, it completely abolished the cortisol response. To drinking caffeine in the morning. Meaning if you've been drinking caffeine for 5 days or more, then you don't have to worry about the cortisol awakening response because you're so tuned to coffee as it is. It's kind of a moot point. You've, you've developed what's called pharmacologic tolerance. Now, what's interesting is that everything reset when people stop using coffee for 6 days, right? So if you stop using caffeine for a while and you start using it again and you use it early in the morning, you can accelerate the onset of your cortisol awakening response. But if you, like I would say probably 90% of the people listening to this podcast, are a regular habitual caffeine or coffee consumer and your body has already developed some amount of pharmacologic tolerance to coffee, I don't think you need to worry about having a cup of coffee in that first hour when you get up, especially if it helps you, I don't know, poop before work or makes you happy while you're reading your newspaper or your Bible or doing your gratitude journaling or whatever it is that you do in the morning. I think the only thing you want to be careful with coffee is later afternoon dosing. For most people, 4:00 or 5:00 PM, you should start to cut it off and switch to adaptogens like reishi or ashwagandha or cordyceps or medicinal mushrooms or things that are going to allow for wakefulness without disrupting sleep pattern based on the somewhat long half-life of caffeine. But, it is interesting. You don't have to worry so much about that cortisol awakening response unless you haven't been using coffee at all. You've quit drinking coffee and you're coming back to it or you've been drinking coffee for any longer than 5 days. So, there you have it. You can put collagen in your coffee, just don't drink it too hot. And, you can also have coffee in the morning. You got my permission. You can wake up, have a cup of coffee. Hooray. That was worth the entire podcast right there. You're allowed to have coffee in the morning pretty soon after you get up. So, I will put links to all of these studies and plenty more if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/450. 467. BenGreenfieldLife.com/467. Leave the show a rating or review if you can wherever fine shows are found along with shows like this that are perhaps less fine but still deserve a review, gosh darn it. So, leave me a review. It helps me get bigger and better guests and helps me deliver to you an even better show. The show notes are very comprehensive. Again, they're all at BenGreenfieldLife.com/467. Have an amazing week. Comprehensive show notes, my weekly roundup, cutting-edge research and articles, my top recommendations for everything that you need to hack your life, and much more, visit BenGreenfieldLife.com.

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