Special 2-Part Anti-Aging Podcast - Basic & Ancestral Tactics To Enhance Longevity (No Fancy Biohac

I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet. From seal fit, Kokoro, Spartan, Agoji, and the world's toughest mudder to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, gut hormones, brain beauty and brawn to deliver you this podcast everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.

It is the most fun time in the world. A time to not eat and to look at things and get hungry and lay awake in bed at night trying to meditate and do breath work because you're hungry. No, really, I don't want to make fasting sound horrible. It's actually very good for you. Fasting is one of the best things you can do for your stem cells and what's called your cellular autophagy, your longevity, a host of benefits. You've been living under a rock if you don't know if fasting is good for you by now. And.

So into the power of fasting that I have put together a fasting bundle for you. I've got the two bags of kion coffee and then one bottle of the kion aminos. Now the coffee can of course enhance fat burning metabolism when you're in a fasted state, especially if you like drink a nice warm cup of coffee, then take a cold shower while you're fasted. Boom. You can watch fat melt off your waistline. But then the kion aminos, I like those and I use those. I've been using them during my fast this January because they maintain your muscle while you're fasting and they do so without spiking your blood glucose or your insulin levels. And so you kind of get to have your cake and eat it too, from a muscle maintenance or a muscle building or a tissue healing or. It's good for the gut too, because all those amino acids are used to support the lining of the gut. So it kind of, kind of does a lot of things. And it's simple, right? You just drink coffee, eat aminos and fast. That's the bundle I have for you. You go to getkion.com that's get K-I-O n.com and that bundle is on a big sale right now, so grab that one. In addition, this podcast is brought to you because seasonal affective disorder is an issue these days. People are getting seasonal affective disorder. Days get shorter in the winter. You don't see as much sunshine. And this means you're going to be depressed, you're going to be a really, really horrible person to be around. Life is going to suck unless you do like I do and you go Mr. Incredible on yourself and you get yourself an infrared light panel. And I have been using mine every day. My strategy is I have my cup of coffee, I make it, I go down to my standing desk and I do my first 20 minutes of work in the morning. And I've got this big light. It's called a joovv. And the way that I have my workstation set up is there's one behind me and there's one in front of me. You don't have to get two, but if you're an overachiever like me, you can. And I flip them on and I do the one in front of me and the one behind me like a joov sandwich and I take all my clothes off.

And I joov. So this has been the most annoying commercial intro ever, but you get a unique bonus when you get one of these joovv photobiomodulation panels for testosterone production, for skin health, for joint pain, for inflammation, for muscle recovery. The benefits goes on and on. Go. The benefits go on and on. You can even use it on your thyroid, like close up on your thyroid if you have thyroid issues. I'm not a doctor. That's not medical advice. But there is research.

So.

G-O-O-V-V.com Ben and you use code Ben at checkout.

What you are about to hear is a two part solo sode. At least the first part's a solo. So by yours truly. Now, in part one of this episode, I am going to discuss some of the low hanging fruit that will allow you to live a long time and feel really good doing it. And when I say low hanging fruit, I'm not referring to $10,000 low hanging pieces of fruit that require you to go to your favorite biohacking website and use your credit card to make spendy purchases that leave your neighbors laughing at you because you're standing in your underwear in front of a giant light panel. No, instead, these are going to be lessons that we can learn from our ancestors generations that came before us. Time honored principles, things we can get from the blue zones, et cetera. Now, the reason that I am also including a part two in this episode is that several times per year I go and I teach at an event called Runga that's R U N G A. You can check them out at Runga Life.

In my last Runga, which took place in the Dominican Republic, they have these things all over the world. They're now doing them primarily in the States and they're kind of like these immersive events where you do kettlebell training and.

Ice baths, kundalini, yoga adventures, lectures, bodywork, etc, along with amazing meals. During one such meal, I actually gave a Q and A and the Q and A was actually focused on a lot of these principles, reg, ancestral principles, longevity, et cetera. So I thought it would be interesting for you as kind of a bonus, kind of an addendum to what I'm about to go into with you now. So hopefully you enjoy this. And of course, as usual, I will create comprehensive show notes for you. You can get the show notes for today's episode if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 12ways and you're going to use the number 12 BenGreenfieldFitness.com12ways because I'm going to be going into 12 basic natural, ancestral, smart ways, if that's enough adjectives, tactics to enhance your longevity and feel really Good. So that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com 12ways1, 2ways. All right, so that all being said, let's start here. We know that demographers and epidemiologists and gerontologists and a whole host of researchers on aging have puzzled for a time over the theoretical question of the maximum potential for human lifespan. And along with that, there are a host of proposed practices that we can implement that supposedly help us achieve that potential. You know, it goes back and forth. And I'm working on a book on this right now on kind of how long a human being could live. You know, whether we're capable of the 969 year old age of folks like the biblical Methuselah or whether we're closer to living a period of, such as the, you know, there's, there's this Chinese lore guy named Lee ching Wen who's 256 years old or reportedly died at 256 years old just a few years ago. And then there's Jean Calment of France who died at 122 years recently. And currently the oldest living person is Violet Brown from Jamaica, or she's not the oldest. She actually just died a few months ago. She was 117. So right now the oldest person is 115, you know, but ultimately all of these people, whether you're looking at 1115 or 969, they're all living longer than the current American who's around 77 years old. And as actually the CDC just reported that life expectancy in the US dropped for the third year in a row. So ultimately we don't seem to be moving the anti aging dial much yet. We see this veritable laundry list of anti aging and longevity tactics. I mean, you know, Metformin, Rapamycin, Pterostilbene, resveratrol, Nadine. And then we get into like injections of growth hormones, testosterone stem cells, exosomes transferring the blood of young humans into old humans, you know, and a whole host of things that we're trying to do to enhance lifespan. But really when you step back and look at things from a natural and ancestral standpoint, sometimes I think we're spending just a little bit too much money and a little bit too much time on these advanced tactics when there are basic and natural habits that enhance longevity. And of course you no doubt may have heard of the book and the concept of the Blue Zones. The Blue Zones is a book written by Dan Buettner. His goal while writing this book was to discover certain populations in the world with the highest number of centenarians. People live over 100 years old. And then to teach the world how to use the lessons learned from these populations. So he specifically began in five different Blue zones. Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia, Italy, Nicoya, Costa Rica, Ikaria, Greece, and then the Seventh Day Adventist population in Loma Linda. He discovered a bunch of shared key characteristics that, that, that were consistent across nearly every single one of these populations. And I want to share with you some of those characteristics today and my own take on them that, that you know, Boudin doesn't get into in his book but that, you know, through some of my studying up on some of these principles, I've find regarding some, some very interesting practical takeaways that you can get from these folks. So let's just go ahead and jump right in. I'm going to give you the 12 strategies that you can use. And again, all the shownotes are going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 12 Ways 1, 2 Ways. So the first is don't smoke, which may seem obvious now. You know, unless you've again been living under rock, you're no doubt aware of the dangers of chronic smoking and the fact that cigarette smoking causes half a million deaths each year, and secondhand smoking isn't much better. But I think that one of the things that a lot of people don't realize Is that if they have been smoking, then there are steps that you can take to undo much of that damage. Because we know that when you stop smoking, your body begins to respond immediately. Six hours after you quit, the levels of the gas, carbon monoxide begin to decline, and your heart doesn't have to work as hard to pump oxygen. Within 12 weeks, so that's three months, your lung function improves. Coughing, sinus conjecture, shortness of breath, fatigue levels all start to decline. And during that time frame, your lungs, hair, like cleaning structures called cilia, those start to regrow in a very similar way that, like the intestinal celia, can become restored and renewed after you stop eating an inflammatory diet. After three months, your sexual performance improves. A lot of times, erectile dysfunction is associated with smoking because your testosterone levels normalizes and cardiovascular function returns to normal. And then after about nine months, your risk of heart and cardiovascular complications fail or fall. And after one year, it'll be like nothing had ever happened. At least to a certain extent. You can get up to about 80 to 90% of where you were at prior to being a heavy smoker, Even if you were a heavy smoker now. There are certain things that can help with this, however. So, for example, when you quit smoking, your adrenal glands must adapt to the lack of nicotine and other addictive chemicals you've grown used to. So I really like the use of an adaptogenic herb complex to support the adrenals, or even the use of basic supplements like St. John's Wort or ginseng, for example. Research has also shown you can minimize the damage to your arteries from smoking by taking a taurine supplement once every day for two months. Since smoking also damages skin, collagen and elastin, you should really include a diet that's rich in what are called proanthocyanidins. Those are a phytochemical. You find them in red wine. Don't replace smoking with copious amounts of alcohol, But a glass of red wine a day, Grapes, apples, blueberries, blackcurrants, hazelnuts, pecans, pistachios, all of these are big in these proanthocyanidins. And then you also have polyphenols, Particularly the ones found in kale sprouts and microgreens. Those help to repair the lungs alveoli and bronchioles So a quit smoking diet should include high amounts of those compounds as well. And then really good attention to air filtration and air optimization using really good air filters like a molecule or an air doctor. So the takeaway message is don't just stop smoking if you have been smoking, but include a lot of these strategies to support the the process of repair and recovery. Another thing that I really like is there's a pen called a feedback. I believe it's F u m is the way you pronounce it. F u m. I'll put a link in the show notes, but it's an essential oil vaping pen. Now if you've been vaping marijuana and you want to slowly decrease that habit or you've been smoking cigarettes, or you've been smoking joints, whatever. The cool thing about this pen is you can vape essential oils like black pepper, peppermint. What's another one that I really like as a pick me up? Cinnamon and nutmeg. That's really good. It's actually mildly psychedelic to smoke nutmeg. But basically this is an essential oil oil vape pen that gives you the mouth feel of smoking a cigarette or a vape pen without any of the damage. So that's one to look into. It's called the fume pen. I think that's the name of it. F u m. But I'll put a link in the show notes. I'll hunt it down and put a link in the show notes for you guys. So no smoking, that's number one. The next is to eat wild plants. Now, aside from the Seventh Day Adventist population of Loma Linda, most centenarians, they're not vegans or vegetarians, neither are they carnivores. But most follow a predominantly plant based diet and that's usually as a result of their dependency on their own homegrown or locally grown foods. Long lived Sardinians, Nicoyans and Okinawans consume nutrient dense produce that they grow in their own gardens. And they supplement that with small amounts of animal protein foods and a lot of traditional staples like legumes, which I'll get into later. Ancient grains like quinoa, amaranth and millet, sweet potatoes, non GMO corn and then lots of wild plants. And perhaps most notably the wild plants possess these natural built in defense mechanisms that subject the body and gut to mild amounts of stress. It's called a xenohormetic effect. So it allows your body to better mount and build its own internal antioxidant defenses. That's why I'm Not a huge fan of, you know, a strict, say, like a, what's called, like a plant paradox diet. That's a very popular diet right now. I think that's small amounts of these mild stressors to the gut are actually quite good as a hormetic stressor, similar to cold and heat and exercise and radiation from the sunlight, etc. So these phytochemicals of the plants, not only do they induce this hormetic mild cellular stress response that make your body more resilient to other more severe stressors, but they also of course have a lot of trace elements in them such as antioxidants and anthocyan and resveratrol. And you know, if you're doing green tea and a lot of these teas and tannic compounds, these folks are consuming what's called egcg, epigallo catechin, something sulforaphane from broccoli, catechins from dark chocolate. There's a lot of really good stuff when, when you expand your diet to include wild plants. And yes, I did just lump chocolate bars into the wild plant category. It is cacao, if you've ever had a cacao fruit. It's kind of a wild plant. But one really good book that I would recommend you read is this book called called Eating on the Wild side by Jo Robinson, where she teaches that if you like, cut up or tear apart plants like kale several hours before eating them, that causes the animal or the plant to ramp up its own natural defense mechanisms that make that xenohormetic stress even stronger. Now, in contrast to the wild plant intake, red meat is typically only eaten a few times a month, notably during holidays and festivals. And many of the blues are now sheep and goat milk and eggs and fish are eaten much more often, usually two or three times a week. When they do eat animal products, they tend to eat nose to tail. They tend to eat a lot of the more glycine rich things like the bone marrow and the bone broth. And they tend to be raised locally, grass fed or pasture raised wild, caught free range and free from any of the harmful substances that we get in a lot of westernized meat and dairy like antibiotics and growth hormone. So fish, eggs, eggs, wild plant intake and then moderated intake of red meat and animal products in general, something that you see quite a bit, a higher vegetable, lower meat intake. I mean, author Michael Pollan's recommendation to eat food not too much, mostly plants, is something that we see quite a bit. And again, when you do consume meat rather than Simply consuming the muscle portions that inevitably contain high levels of methionine with low levels of glycine, and that could be a mortality risk factor. You want to consume the more glycine rich portions of the animal, like the organ meats and the marrow and the bone broth. So we know we need to take care of undoing the damages of smoking and not smoke in general, and also eat a lot of wild plants. Number three is to avoid processed and packaged foods. Now, this may seem at first glance to be pretty straightforward, but the fact is that in an era of Trader Joe's and the healthy food sector at the airport newsstand and all of the fantastic items as you're checking out at Whole Foods, we are just bombarded with all these processed and packaged so called health foods. But if you turn over the label and you look at a lot of these, or you turn over the package and look at the label on a lot of these, the top two ingredients you see are ingredients that, in my opinion, trigger the two things that you should be most wary of if you're trying to live a long time, glycemic variability, which is essentially how many times your glucose fluctuates during the day and inflammation. And when you look at the label of a lot of these processed and packaged foods, what do you see? First ingredient, either some form of raw syrup or agave or organic cane sugar or some other way to make sugar essentially seem sexy. And vegetable oil, canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil. You pick up the apple chips or the banana pieces, or the coconut chips or coconut flakes, or the sugar snap peas or anything else that are in these packaged containers. A lot of times it's sugar and vegetable oil, some not as much. But ultimately, if you're eating from a package, if you're eating a packaged processed food, you're far more likely compared to eating a real recognizable food that your great grandparents would have actually recognized and eaten more readily, you're placing yourself at a higher risk of glycemic variability and inflammation. Yes, it's convenient. Yes, they're very tasty. Yes, they're fun, crinkly, colorful packages. And they appeal to our evolutionary desire for dense fat and sugar and calories and a fun time and a dopamine release when we're eating foods. But ultimately, the less that you can eat processed and packaged foods, even the so called healthy ones, the better. When you eat a lot of wild plants, by the way, in their natural form, it's difficult to eat a lot of processed and Packaged foods.

It's difficult for me to make my morning smoothie with kale and broccoli sprouts and cilantro and parsley and thyme and whatever else I happen to harvest or have available or have stored in the refrigerator. Vegetable crisper.

And at the same time eat all these processed and packaged ingredients that frankly, if you tried to put a bunch of wild plants into a, into a bag, they would just take up most of the bag. They're not dry, they don't have added flavors and things added to them. You know, you get what I'm saying? Like the more that you can eat naturally, as much of a pain in the ass as it can be from a convenience standpoint, it appears the longer that you're going to live. And it's not that those living in the blue zones never let themselves enjoy guilty pleasures. It's just that their guilty pleasures are typically antioxidant rich treats like a good local red wine or sake or coffee or herbal tea or simple desserts like nuts, cheese, berries, grapes. And not nuts that are coated in canola oil with extra M&M's added to them, but just like raw nuts. So anyways, audit your diet. Try and err towards like 80% real food, 20% processed packaged foods if you can. And I realize this may sound hypocritical for me being a guy who designs supplements and, and you know, I just love.

You know, finished last year producing an amazing like clean energy bar. But even that bar, when you look at it, it's just a bunch of real foods, right? And I, I only use honey as the preservative, like a really good organic honey. And then it's almonds and cacao nibs and chia seeds and sesame seeds. You know, it's, it's very rare that you can find a good healthy packaged or processed food like that that still fits the criteria of being a real recognizable food. But I mean that, that's one example. And I realize that's a selfish self serving example, using the Kion bar as an example, but it's not like all processed and packaged food, you should be vilified, but you do need to be careful with it. And even that bar, like my own energy bar, I might have four or five of those a week max. And I'm a pretty active guy. I'm not mowing down two or three of those a day. So number four, let's go into number four. Number four is to eat legumes. And this is another interesting one. A legume is A dry fruit, it's contained within the shell or pot of a plan. The most well known are like beans, peas, peanuts and alfalfa. And beans in particular seem to reign supreme in many blue zones like in Nicoya. Black beans are eaten in large quantities in the Mediterranean. Lentils, garbanzo beans and white beans are popular in Okinawa. Soybeans are eaten frequently. And this raises an eyebrow among many nutritionally savvy folks. Especially in an era of the popular paleo diet which frowns upon beans and legumes due to their high amount of gastric irritants and natural plant defense mechanisms such as phytates and lectins, which again are of elucidated in that book Plant Paradox. But the fact is legumes are high in non meat protein and amino acids, vitamins, minerals, appetite satiating and gut supporting fiber and slow burning carbohydrates that don't cause a large amount of glycemic variability. Now to me it's a little unclear whether the longevity gained from legume consumption is conferred from the inclusion of these slow release carbohydrates with the exclusion of blood sugar spiking refined carbs like white flour or sugar, or whether it's the nutrient density of legumes that makes them so special or the low glycemic index of legumes. I suspect it's both. I don't think everybody has to go out and make a giant vat of lentil chili every day. But I think the biggest clue that you can take from this legume eating habit is to eat carbohydrates that are a slower release carbohydrate that are more nutrient dense. So not just legumes, but sweet potatoes, taro, yam, carrot, beet, parsnip, either low glycemic index or low glycemic load, along with some of these super grains like quinoa and amaranth and millet, properly prepared, ferment, soaked, sprouted. You would be surprised at how much less gastric distress that you get when you prepare a legume or grain correctly. And we see a heavy amount of sprouting and fermenting and soaking and ancestral preparation techniques used in a lot of these longevity hot spots, you know, for let's say for one of these popular ones, lentils. Right, for lentils. The.

Practice for that is you got to soak them for eight hours, you know, and then you generally want to sprout them as well afterwards to give yourself a really good soaked and sprouted lentil. You know, I've got a whole list over on my website that I'll link to if you go to the show notes that kind of show you all these soak times for different things like barley and broccoli seed and buckwheat and lentils. But typically the issue that people get with gastric distress with these type of foods is either a they're not fermenting or soaking or sprouting them, or B, they have leaky gut and they need to heal their leaky gut prior to actually expanding the diet to include a lot of these foods. So ultimately though, legumes are something that we see a lot of these blue zones eating, and sometimes I think they're vilified too heavily in our modern kind of like paleo ish culture. And I think it's a better idea to just intelligently eat these foods rather than avoid them altogether. So the next one is Low Level physical activity number five. Low level physical activity. So centenarians in the Blue Zones tend to lead very active lives, but they rarely set foot in a gym or do a formal exercise program. So instead being active is just built into their life. They walk five to six miles a day, they farm, they garden, they spend time in nature, they do a lot of chores with their hands instead of machines. They tend to engage in spurts of high intensity movement or structured movement. By engaging in enjoyable exercise that rarely involves pounding away miles on a treadmill or inching their back under a barbell for a squat, you see a lot more yoga, tai chi, Qi gong, soccer, hiking, other games and social sports combined with just working with your hands. Now, I understand that we live in an era in which this can be difficult to do if you're not lucky enough to be a construction work or a painter or a farmer or a gardener or something like that. But you can hack your environment using everything from standing workstations to kettlebells in your cubicle to taking the stairs to having pomodoro breaks to replicate these same types of ancestral gathering, gardening and hunting esque movements throughout your day, even if you're relegated to a traditional post industrial era office setting. You know, my wife Jessa spends her days hauling alfalfa for the goats and feeding the chickens and pushing around wheelbarrows full of compost and rice rocks and chopping wood and fixing fences and planting trees and raking and shoveling and pulling weeds and gardening. And you know, I'm inside blogging and podcasting, but at the same time I'm getting 15,000 steps a day minimum. I'm a lot of times walking on my walking treadmills, I'm doing consults or phone calls or even dictating emails. I take breaks all throughout the day. I do at least 50 pull ups a day from the pull up bar in the door of my office because I just do five pull ups whenever I I walk next to that bar. It's actually in the room next to my office. I've got a hex bar deadlift set up in there to do deadlifts. I've got a kettlebell in my office so I can do kettlebell swings during the day. You just basically need to be creative and hack your environment to simulate this low level physical activity. I mean, the way you should think about it is this, unless you're a professional athlete or one of your primary goals in life is to train for and complete a triathlon or a CrossFit or Spartan or something like that. That.

Or some other modern day equivalent of a warrior training for battle, visiting the gym at some point during the day should be an option, not a necessity. And research backs this up. It shows that no matter how hard you exercise at the beginning or the end of the day with your special 30 to 60 minute gym routine, if you have your butt planted in a chair for 8 simultaneous hours during the rest of the day, it really doesn't do you much, much good. So ultimately, figure out a way that you can incorporate low level physical activity throughout the day. And don't fool yourself into thinking that training for a marathon or working out in the gym every day is something that folks who live a long time actually do. Next is to prioritize social engagement. So I recently did a podcast on the growing epidemic of loneliness and I'll link to that in the show notes. Along with the importance of social engagement. And certainly you see in most of the blue zones, family love and relationship is heavily emphasized and comes naturally because social connectedness is ingrained into a lot of these cultures. Compared to most westernized, hyper connected digital societies, these folks tend to be more engaged with, more conscientious of and more helpful to each other, and more willing to empathize, to express feelings, and even to wear their emotions on their sleeves. You know, the Okinawans have moais, which are groups of people who live together their entire lives, spending time talking and coping, cooking and supporting each other. Sardinians often finish their day in a local bar where they meet with their friends for a glass of red wine. The Seventh Day Adventists mingle with one another weekly or even daily during their religious practices. And their their observation of the Sabbath and family is also very important for people living in the blue zones. You know, again, the Seventh Day Adventists on these Sabbath days, in many cases they are observing that holiday spent with the family and socializing and in nature, nursing homes and hospice are pretty rare in the blue zones because people are expected to honor, value and take care of the elderly, including their older family members. So as a result, because of their pivotal role in society, elders are far more likely to have a social network and frequent visitors and trusted caregivers. And that results in less stress and more purposeful lives and a longer lifespan. So I kind of kicked this horse to death in my big podcast that I did on the growing epidemic of loneliness. So I will link to that in the show notes if you want to kind of learn a little bit more about how to use meetups, volunteering in your local community, how to create a network of friends. My favorite books for learning how to prioritize social engagement. But definitely understand that that's just as important it appears as not smoking what if I told you that you could sit down at the end of the day in your rocking chair or your La Z boy, or your $15,000 full body massage chair, whatever it is that you use in the evening to sit, and you had a nice popping hot cup of the same type of golden spice latte that you might get at a Starbucks, but without all the nasty chemicals in it. I'm talking about turmeric, ginger, reishi, lemon balm, turkey tail. I don't know why I'm talking so softly. Black pepper, coconut milk, cinnamon, acacia fiber as a prebiotic that also gives gives you these kind of cool, incredible dreams. This stuff was designed to be like a nighttime sipping solution that supports your joints and soothes your muscles and helps you wake up each day feeling rested. Plus, it's probably lower in calories and better for you than the giant bar of dark chocolate that you're going to only eat half of. And you mowed through the whole thing along with that extra half glass of red wine that you had. Probably. I'm just saying I know what goes on out there. So anyways, this stuff's called Organifi Goes gold and you get a 20% discount on it or any of the other fine fine products from Organifi. You just go to Organifi with an I. That's Organifi with an I. And the 20% discount code that you use is GREENFIELD. That's it. Enjoy. That simple. So the next habit is an interesting one we see that these folks drink low to moderate amounts of alcohol, especially wine. So four of the blue zones engage in moderate and regular alcohol consumption consumption. Take the Sardinians for example. They're famous for their regular consumption of this regional red wine that's very similar to Grenache. It's a dry wine that has two to three times the flavonoid content of other wines. You may have heard my podcast with Todd White from Dry Farm Wines. His wines are very similar. These old world biodynamic, antioxidant rich wines that are somewhat low in alcohol. Now, consuming wine with or before a meal can assist the body with the absorption of the artery scrubbing flavonoid antioxidants in the wine. And studies have shown that the consumption of wine is part of a Mediterranean diet can reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases and cancers. And I should throw on a quick caveat here. Remember, the Mediterranean diet includes intense amounts of fasting and elimination of red meat and high protein intake during certain periods of time during the year. It's not just eating olive oil and rib eye steak and fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But we find that with alcohol, regular, low level physical activity boosts these benefits even more. So some of these habits build on each other. There was one study in the European Society of Cardiology that found that moderate wine drinking combined with regular physical activity is a potent combination for cardiovascular disease prevention. You'll see these Sardinian shepherds. They walk up to five miles a day to tend to their flock. Flocks. But to walk up to their flocks or.

Their herds of sheep, they carry along these lunches of unleavened bread and fava beans, pecorino cheese and a local wine. And I know that a paleoenthusiast would be shocked. It's bread, it's beans, it's cheese, then alcohol. That sounds like a heart attack on a plate. You're gonna die of some horrible leaky gut syndrome. But it's simply not the case. Those are the type of foods these people are eating. I'm just saying it doesn't sell D books, but it's what they're eating. You know, you're no doubt familiar with resveratrol, which you find in wine. And that could be one thing that reduces some oxidative damage and combats the formation of plaque that's found in the brains of many dementia patients. But, you know, I think that it goes beyond that. I think when you look at a lot of these digestive and bitter rich wines and alcohols, these folks are drinking, it reduces the first phase insulin response to or enhances rather the first phase insulin response to a meal. So your blood glucose is a little bit lower when you eat the meal because you're, you're digesting it a little bit better. I also think that, you know, very similar to how the Finnish society sees a four to five year increase in lifespan from their sauna habit. I don't think it's just the sauna, I don't think it's just the alcohol. It's the fact that the sauna and the alcohol are often combined with these big social times of low stress at the end of the day where you're drinking a glass of wine with friends or you're in the sauna with some companions going from hot to cold. Like I think that the social and the relationship part of this should not be neglected either. And you know, the good news is even if you don't care for alcohol, that tannin filled antioxidant rich beverages in general like coffee and tea can give you a lot of the same benefits. And we see Sardinians and Akarians and Akoy all drinking copious amounts of coffee. And people in every blue zone drink tea. You know, especially the Okinawans who nurse green tea for much of the day. The Icarians thrive on the frequent consumption of rosemary and wild sage and dandelion tea. So you're getting a lot of these wild plant extracts as well. So there's a lot to be said for the alcohol component, you know, and I personally have a drink every single day. I haven't been drunk for it's been about six years since I've really truly been drunk. Like occasionally I'll have more than two drinks of alcohol and get a little bit buzzed. Even that's pretty rare. But compared to my college days where it was don't drink all week long and then choose a weekend or a couple days on the weekend and drink to excess. I now simply have one drink per day. Red wine or homemade Moscow Mule or a little bit of like a liqueur or you know, like one of my favorite drinks when I go out to a bar is I'll order what's called a Ben and J. Jitters. Ben and Jitters, which is on the rocks, a selection of any of the bitters that they have there behind the bar. And then you just put a shot of gin, which is a really clean burning alcohol on top of that. Sometimes I'll have them add a squeeze of lemon and I'll even add like a pinch of salt onto there. But it's amazing. It's called Ben and Jitters and essentially just bitters and gin on the rocks and it's an amazing pre meal digestive. Beef burns clean and that's the type of thing I drink mostly that and organic biodynamic wine and the occasional Moscow Mule, which again is like lime mint, typically some kind of clean gin or vodka and then ginger. And it's a fantastic digestif, especially if you can get a really good ginger. There's even a company called Zevia that makes a sugar free ginger beer which is amazing and I always have some of that in my refrigerator to make a Moscow man Mule. And you know, there are ways that you can drink and be healthy. So number that was number seven, Number eight is calorie restriction and fasting. This one I think is one that most people are aware of these days. And calorie restriction is a reduction in calorie intake that notably is not necessarily associated with malnutrition or starvation. Long term calorie restriction has been associated in many studies that you're no doubt aware of at this point with better weight management, anti aging, reduced risk of metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease and cancer. But for active athletes and exercise enthusiasts, I know a lot of people listening to this show are people who are already potentially near a healthy body fat percentage are already moving. Long term calorie restriction can have some downsides. It makes you cold, it makes you hungry, drop in metabolism, reduce lean muscle mass, and who wants to live a long life if you have low libido and you look like a poster child for an anti starvation campaign. So if your goal is rapid weight loss or you're morbidly obese with very, very high levels of storage fat available to burn, complete calorie restriction is a good strategy to accelerate fat loss. But even that strategy should be combined with periods of time during which you provide your body with ample calories and nutrients, like a weekly refeed, or if you're very athletic, even a daily refeed. Now I think intermittent fasting is probably the most popular, quickest effective and easiest way to jump into the benefits of caloric restriction without necessarily starving yourself. And that's just, just alternating cycles of eating and fasting. You know, for example, 12 to 16 hours every single night, going without eating, or using a compressed feeding window where you eat all your food within an 8 to 12 hour window during the day and then you're just done eating. I also like alternate day fasting where you would eat regularly one day and then fast the next day. You know, a dinner time to dinner time fast. And many people do that two to three times during the the week. There's the fasting mimicking diet made popular by the researcher Valter longo, in which four times a year for five days in a row, you just eat 40% of your normal daily calorie intake. Now I personally, this is my scenario because I'm still pretty active. I like to eat food. My wife's an amazing cook. I'm a foodie. I am not one of those guys who eats one meal a day. I'm obsessed with food. I love food, I love cooking, I love hunting and preparing the foods that I way that I, that I get out in the field. So the way that I do it is I do an intermittent fast every day, 12 to 16 hour intermittent fast every day. One to two times a month I do a 24 hour fast where it's just, you know, Saturday dinner to Sunday dinner fast. And then four times a year I do something very similar to the fasting mimicking diet. A lot of times I'm just doing like a liver cleanse with the ayurvedic stew, kitcharies, some celery juice, some coffee, some tea, et cetera. And that's four times a year. And that works very well for me. Intermittent fast every day, 24 hour fast, one to two times a month, four times a year, I have a five day cleansing period and that's it. And that works very well for me. And so, you know, they're unfamiliar to or they're unlikely to be familiar or to throw around terms like cr ing and if ing and adf ing and fmding. But these centenarians, and in a lot of these, these places like Nicoya and Sardinia and Okinawa, they tend to eat relatively small portions of whole foods. They consume a low to moderate calorie diet. By being mindful of their hunger, they're not consuming a lot of these calorie, dense, fat and sugar laden processed and packaged foods. You've probably heard of the Okinawans practicing this rule of hara hachi bu, which means they eat until they're about 80% full. And there's not a lot of nighttime snacking. And in many cases the biggest meal of the day day is lunch. All these forms of fasting work so well because it really comes down to your mitochondria inside your cells. Your mitochondrial networks generally alternate between two states, one called fused, one called fragmented and calorie restricted. Diets and fasting promote homeostasis which induces a healthy fluctuation between these fused and fragmented states, which allow mitochondria to last longer. Increases fatty acid oxidation, allows for normal free radical production and less damage occurring to the cells and the mitochondria contained within them. So if you want more on the fasting component, go listen to my podcast with Dr. Jason Fung, which is called the Complete Guide to Fasting, or read his book, which is also called the Complete Guide to Fasting. I think, you know, I just tell people who, who want to just learn everything there is to know about fasting to go read his book because it's the best one out there in my opinion, on fast fasting and I'll link to that one in the show. Notes Number nine is to possess a strong life purpose. And research has indeed proven that people who know their life and have a clear purpose for which they wake each morning, they live longer lives. So There was an 11 year NIH funded study that investigated the correlation between having a sense of purpose and longevity. And it showed that those who expressed having a clear purpose in life, they live longer than those who didn't have a purpose. And they stayed immersed in activities and communities, communities that allowed them to be involved in fulfilling that purpose. You know, the Okinawans call ikigai, which is translated into reason for being. The Nicoyans call it plan de vida, or reason to live. So I highly recommend that you know your purpose and you be able to name it in one succinct sentence. My purpose in life, personally, Ben Greenfield, is to empower people to live a more adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. To empower people to live a more adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My son, Taryn, is to create amazing art that inspires people and brings joy to their hearts. To create amazing art that inspires people and brings joy to their hearts. My wife, Jessa, is to raise two young men who will grow up to make this world a better place. And maybe that'll change. Maybe when the boys are 18 or 19, my wife's purpose in life will change to creating art that inspires people all around the world. She's an amazing artist, but you get the idea. You need to be able to name that in one succinct sentence. And if you need help identifying your purpose, I've got a couple of very quick tips for you. Number one, what did you like to do when you were a kid? What brought you joy when you were a kid? For me, it was reading, it was writing, it was the outdoors, and it was teaching, which I'M doing a lot of now. Number two, what puts you in the flow, right? Like what makes time go by very quickly? When are you in the zone? You know, for me when I'm writing like time just goes by like that. Some people hate to write. My wife absolutely hates to write. Minute by minute ticks by when she's writing. I love to write. I love to write books, articles, etc. So those two tips. What'd you like to do when you're a kid? What puts you in the zone? And then a couple of other tips for you. My friend Masson Kipp, who I interviewed and I'll put a link to his interview in the show Notes. He wrote a book called Claim youm Power, which is kind of like a 40 day series where you really hone in on your purpose in life using some of the strategies. I've described it a lot more. Or you start with my friend Mark Manson's advice. He wrote.

What'S the name of his book? How not to Give a or something like that. But anyways he says just do stuff that makes you forget to eat and put poop. If you want to know what your purpose in life is, think about the things that make you forget to eat and poop. I like that. The things that you don't even realize that you haven't taken a dump yet because you're so immersed in that activity. Number 10 is to have low amounts of stress. And it's a well known and heavily researched fact that chronic stress leads to inflammation and serves as the foundation for a lot of age related diseases. Centenarians in most of the world's longevity hotspots do not avoid stress, but they have built in systems that allow them to manage stress on a daily basis. So for Sardinians that might mean a glass of wine and a social dinner with family or friends at the end of the day. For the Seventh Day Adventists it could involve a quiet nature walk on Sabbath day. For the Okinawans it might be the concept of what's called a tege, which is translated as easygoing personality, which is based on the idea that life just unfolds at its own pace. So in Okinawa, if an event is scheduled to begin at noon, tayge might mean that people on Okinawan time begin showing up 30 minutes to an hour later, which I always experienced when I used to go to this triathlon in Jamaica, right show up on the starting line at 7am having timed your pre race breakfast perfectly and by 7:30am some dude was walking up rubbing his eyes, yawning and beginning to set up the race. And you know, maybe the race would start at, at 7:30, maybe 8, maybe 8:30. And you just kind of go with the flow. And so, you know, there are some situations in which you don't want to show up 30 to 60 minutes late, especially if you don't want to get fired from your job. But you get the idea. You need to ruthlessly eliminate haste and hurry from your life. And I think one of the best ways to really be able to control stress is to learn to do so and dodging meaning rather than relying on phosphatidylcholine and adaptogenic herbs and CBD and THC and all these things people are using to reduce stress. And even like, you know, headspace apps and calm and all this jazz. I think everybody should just learn simple breathwork tactics to reduce stress. I have a very comprehensive article on how to use your breath to internally control stress. I think you should be able to get dropped on a desert island with no technology, no supplements and no superfoods and be able to simply with your breath and your mind, control your stress. You can get to that point. You do a pretty dang good job. All right, number 11 is to engage in a spiritual discipline, religion, or belief in a higher power. And I think it just leads to a much more meaningful and hopeful life when you believe that the, there's a story for your life rather than believing that our experience is meaningless or without purpose or that we're a bunch of chunks of spiritless flesh and blood floating through space on a giant rock, then eventually dying and passing away into nothingness. And you know, a lot of people would scoff at the belief, you know, there, there is a spirituality if there's gods or demons or spirits or angels or souls and, and you know, even like, you know, creators or you know, these fourth dimensions that we can't access. But research has indeed shown a connection between longevity and faith. There was one study called Church Attendance, Allostatic Load and Mortality in Middle Aged Adults and that analyzed the relationship between religious practice, stress and death and controlled for all socioeconomic factors like health insurance and healthy lifestyle behaviors. And they found that churchgoers have a significantly lower risk of dying. And even after adjusting for age, sex, race, chronic medical conditions, churchgoers were 46% less likely to die compared to non churchgoers who had significantly higher rates of blood pressure and higher ratio of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol, a significantly higher mortality rate. And the data from the blue zones backs this up, all but five of the 263 centenarians that Dan Buettner interviewed for the book belong to some faith based community. And research also shows that attending faith based services like church four times per month can add four up to 14 years of life expectancy. And in all blue zones, centenarians were part of a religious community. And Buettner says in the book, people who pay attention to their spiritual side have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, depression, stress and suicide. And their immune systems seem to work better. Better to a certain extent, adherence to a religion allows them to relinquish the stresses of everyday life to a higher power. I couldn't put it any better myself. And I believe that a religious practice that includes spiritual disciplines like fasting, meditation, prayer, silence, solitude, worship, study, that's magnitudes more meaningful than a salad of wild plants or a glass of red wine or a dose of sunshine or a stem cell injection. I think that again kind of related to stress. Stress. One of the best ways to control is breath, work, spirituality. One of the best ways to enhance that is with fasting, meditation, prayer, periods of silence and solitude, worship with other people and study and you know, as a Bible believing Christian who has found that my own spiritual practice has vastly enhanced the richness of my life, my connection with my family and my own health, I simply cannot emphasize this highly enough. It's a big one and that's number 11. And then number 12 is to remain reproductively useful. We might as well pivot from church to sex.

And this strategy for optimizing longevity makes logical sense. You don't become reproductively useless. In other words, the more consistently you can send your body and brain the message that you are still a valuable contributing member of society, particularly when it comes to the propagation of your species, the longer nature will want to keep you around. So don't retire, don't quit learning new things. Don't surround yourself with older sedentary people in a nursing home or hospice setting. Instead, continue to have sex, to have children, or both.

So if you look at like the.

Tiny town of acciaroli, Italy, where one in eight citizens is over 100 years old, old, they've, they've studied this zone. And one finding that I'll link to in the show notes as to why these residents live so long is the observation by researchers that sex is rampant along with high consumption of the wild herbs parsley, sage and rosemary. It's a bunch of horny old people who have active sex lives who are eating a lot of wild plants. And, and you know, when you look at the research on the proposed micro models of aging, you know, mortality is often increasing in direct correlation to decreasing frequency. And the later in life to which women particularly have children, or the more children that they do have, the longer that they live. This doesn't mean that you have to go out and have children and make babies, but it does mean that frequent sexual intercourse sending your body immense message that you're attempting to create life and to remain reproductively useful. Even consideration of the use of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, which I'm not opposed to as a method of increasing your fertility status or maintaining your fertility status. All of this I think is prudent and smart when it comes to living a long time. I mean, there's this one fable, I don't know if it's a fable, but there's this guy named Leeching Wen who purportedly lived to 256 years old, passed away a few years ago, Chinese guy. It was said that he married 23 times and fathered over 200 children. And if that is true, he might be the best example of the fact that maintaining reproductive usefulness with age could be an excellent idea. So let's quickly review what we have learned thus far. Number Number one, don't smoke. Number two, eat wild plants. Number three, avoid processed and packaged foods. Number four, eat legumes or at least low glycemic index carbohydrates. Number five, incorporate low level physical activity throughout the day. Number six, prioritize social engagement and relationships. Number seven, drink low to moderate amounts of alcohol, particularly want. Number eight restrict calories and or fast. Number nine, possess a strong life purpose. Number 10, have low amounts of stress. Number 11, engage in a spiritual discipline, religion or belief in a higher power. And number 12, remain reproductively useful. So I hope this has been helpful for you. Like I mentioned, I have a part two that you're going to get to tune into right after I finish blabbing on here, which is a Q and A that took place at the Runga event in the Dominican Republic. But in the meantime, if you have questions, if you have comments, if you have feedback, if you have your own tips to add, if you have arguments against some of the things that I've just presented, then go ahead and go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 12ways BenGreenfieldFitness.com12ways and let me know your thoughts. There are certainly other things you can do. Stem cells and photobiomodulation and cryotherapy and parabiosis and, you know, all these modern tactics that a lot of anti aging enthusiasts and biohackers, including myself, are doing to enhance longevity. But you gotta form the foundation with these basic, basic habits. So I hope this has been helpful for you. And let's go ahead and move into the next part of today's show.

Hey, my name is James. I'm the editor of the podcast. Need to make a quick editor's note on the Runga Q and A recording the times where the audience members actually asked the questions, they were very hard to decipher what they were saying with all of the background noise, with all of the crickets chirping and everything. So what I'm going to be doing is just instead of trying to make their voices louder, which in turn makes the crickets louder and you can't hear it. Anyway, I'm going to ask the questions myself and then we'll just hand it right back to Ben. Just want to let you know what's going on. Here we go.

Let's do this. I've been told I've been ordered. All right, welcome to the official what year is it? It's 2018. Still 2018. Runga, Dominican Republic Post pork feed Q and A. So I actually had a glass of activated charcoal to try and clear my head of all the pork fat before I jumped into this 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper with lots of questions written on it. I can't believe you guys fit all these questions on one piece of paper.

Admittedly, I have not looked at these, so I'm just going to kind of choose them and hope that I'm not asking a sucky question halfway through it. So let's start in the.

What are the 2019 health trends? What are the 2019 health trends? It's kind of funny. I think I was telling Joe out there, Joe DiStefano.

About how when we go to PaleoFX, it's like whatever I see at Paleofx, for some odd reason, even though it's not like a huge event in the health industry per se, it's just like this little niche fitness event in Austin.

Whatever kind of seems to be prevalent there seems to be kind of prevalent in the industry in the following several months. And so this last year it was cbd, right? And now we're seeing CBD oil and CBD rice crackers and CBD peanut butter and CBD tinctures for your dogs and your pets and your bird and your lizard. Cbd everything. We're seeing keto Right. Like keto cookies and keto candy and keto shots and keto alcohol and keto, like you just put keto on anything, it sells like hotcakes. What is the ketogenic diet? Was one of the top searched terms on Google and then.

The last ones that were stem cell booths. I think we'll see even more of those this year. Like that's my prediction for 2019 is this whole idea of like stem cells and everybody wants to get stem cells and it seems like this magic way to somehow like push the reboot button on your body. The interesting thing about them, I think I was telling Cliff this today, is that all stem cells do is they up regulate your own signaling mechanisms in your body. They just signal your own white blood cells and stem cells and cytokines and immune factors to migrate to the area where the stem cells are circulating. So this whole idea of stem cells being big really I think is going to be a situation where people are not taking care of their own stem cells and endogenous cells. And some of those things I talked about in the lecture the other night, you know, even using things like chlorella and spirulina and colostrum and coffee berry fruit extract and.

What was another one that we talked about, aloe vera gel. All these things that can induce your own endogenous stem cell production or help. And I think we'll see a lot of people just out basically getting, getting expensive things done before they have taken care of the basics. Then the other one kind of related to that is I think fasting is going to be a really big health trend. Intermittent fasting, alternate day fasting.

And I think for better gonna be much more popular and a lot of people are going to be like doing like you know, bi yearly or quarterly five day fast, which like I was saying the other night, I really like daily intermittent fast, which we're doing a lot of here.

Does not count those of you who drank all the wine last night till midnight. The alcohol counts. Just saying give me a hard time.

And yeah, I think those will be some of the big health trends. CBD and keto continued stem cells fasting. Okay, what is your view about high animal protein and how IGF1 impacts longevity? So for those of you who don't know, IGF1 is insulin like growth factor one gets spiked very similar to growth hormone when you consume a lot of protein, when you consume a lot of food in general, especially when you consume a lot of meat. Dairy is enormously helpful at raising your IGF1, which is a good thing if you want to get swole, be anabolic, have really high libido, etc. But just like anything in life, if it's a seesaw balance and excess IGF1 will stimulate a protein called MTOR and can accelerate aging. So the idea is you want a sweet spot of IGF1, not too much, not too little. I think the last doc that I interviewed about IGF1 said a good number was somewhere about like 130 to 180 ish. And so that is one thing that concerns me about like the carnivore diet. In addition to like the lack of fiber from not eating the animal hoof to tail, some of the issues with the lack of glycine and proline etc, if you're just eating the meats, you know, some, some of the.

Voidedness of the bacterial content, missing out some of the polyphenols and antioxidants that you'd find in wild plants. I also think that a part of that all meat carnivore diet is excess stimulation of IGF1 and MTOR. And so what I tell people is if you want to maintain muscle, maintain weight, you know, your football player wants to put on 20 pounds, like eat dairy, eat meat. Like we know that causes growth, but we also know that like, you know, for example there are dwarf populations that have like a knockout gene for IGF1 or growth hormone, I forget which, but they have a host of health parameters that are favored because of that. So it's kind of like too much growth. I think in their case they have a markedly low risk of cancer because again that's one thing you associate with excess activity of IGF1 is enhanced proliferation of cells and that could include cancer cells. That's why like I'm not vegan, but if I ever. So the issue is not that meat and dairy has been shown to cause cancer, but they have been shown to induce a higher amount of tumor growth and feeding of blood vessels like angiogen to the tumor if you have them when you already do have cancer, right? So if I ever had cancer, one of the first things I'd stop is meat and dairy, right? Just like hands down I would go on a fully ketogenic plant rich diet if that ever happened to me. But ultimately it's not. I don't think we have a lot of people are going to give themselves cancer per se, but it can cause a little bit of accelerated aging. I'm a big fan of pressed pulse cycling right Meatless Mondays, periods of time during the year where you, where, where you fast from meat. Periods of time of the year where you're not eating dairy, eggs, meat, fish, where you're just having vegetables and some oils. I think that's incredibly helpful for the human body. Absolutely. Okay.

Let me see.

Best way to handle crinkle crunch when bending at the knees. You mean like an actual crinkle? What do you call crepitus? When you bend down and the joints are making that noise? I mean, a lot of times that's synovial fluid. That can be lack of mobility. Meaning that like maybe the patellar isn't tracking the way it's supposed to, or some other part of the joint isn't moving the way it's supposed to. You can talk to Scott Dally about that, you know, about mobility, about reducing fascial adhesions, about when it comes to synovial fluid. A lot of times that can be nutritional, it can be movement based, it can be scar tissue based. I mean, there's a lot of ways to come at it. But some of the things that I know can help with synovial fluid. There's one thing in particular, it's called cetyl myristoliate. It's like a type of fatty acid that you can find in supplemental form that can help with synovial fluid. Bone broth is good. Any of those glycine and proline rich sources, collagen probably has a little bit of ANOVA effect. But in my opinion, like, most of the time, I think people eat and supplement too much for injuries when a lot of it is just like mechanical. You know, if they started doing, you know, single leg bodyweight, hamstring, deadlifts, and, you know, and did some robust mobility work and, you know, freed up some fascia, I think nine times out of 10, you'd fix joint issues. But, you know, I think just like anything, people kind of want the easy way out. So ultimately I would get a lot of mobility work done and then just focus on snowbial fluid.

Top three biohacks for human optimization. Top three biohacks for human optimization. All comes down to the mitochondria. It all comes down to the mitochondria. So anything you do should be focused on taking care of the organelles within every single cell. And those are, I mean, you could call them biohacks, but they simply simulate what nature does to our bodies. So we know that the human body is a battery. And in addition to needing good, clean, pure water, and in addition to needing a high amount of minerals, in order to charge that battery, you need two other things. You need sunlight and you need the earth. Sunlight and the earth. So I think that sunlight or anything that simulates sunlight, like photobiomodulation, like getting red infrared, near infrared, far infrared light, when you have a lot of water and you have a lot of minerals on board. I love those. You know, they call them biohacks now, like biohack light panels like we have in the bathroom here. Right, Perfect example. But I think that that's one very useful biohack, assuming that you've got the water and the minerals for the waves to actually charge. Another one, like I mentioned grounding or earthing for the mitochondria. Well, the equivalent of that from a biohacking standpoint is pulsed electromagnetic field therapy. It's called pemf. You can get mats. You get like little travel devices like the flex poles or the earth pulse. You can get full on like. Well, they're mats basically that you sleep on that'll just go all night. There's one called the biobalance. There's another device called the Beamer. There's one called the pulse centers which is kind of like a super powerful one that they use in the rain racehorse industry. But that you can see induce profound impacts on things like cellular inflammation. Basically exercises your cells essentially almost like opening and closing pores in the cell membrane. So the.

I guess that was, that was two. Right. Photobiomodulation and pemf. Probably the last one. You know, even though of course we're surrounded by cold water and cold showers and cold baths and everything else, like cryotherapy chambers that simulate intense, intense amounts of cold for a relatively short period of time. I honestly think that's a pretty useful biohack. I mean when it comes to human health, is it a little bit unnecessary if you do have the ability to be able to jump in cold water or an ice bath or take a really cold shower? Probably. But just the general idea of cryotherapy is very helpful. For nitric oxide, for blood flow, for the vagus nerve, for weight loss, for white fat to brown fat conversion. I mean it's just there's a lot going for it. So that's what I would go for. Alright. Does high fat coffee break your fast? Anything with calories breaks your fast. Anything. Butter, anything we have in there. Coconut, manna, coconut oil. You are not fasting as soon as you officially have one of those. For example, what I've been doing is getting up in the morning, just having regular coffee with nothing in it. And then around 9:30 or so, I've been having a cup of coffee or a cup of chaga with some ghee or some coconut manna or some coconut oil in it. And that kind of counts as my breakfast. But if I would have had that when I first woke up, then I'm no longer in a fasted state. My body must tap into all those calories, which often, before you know it, because fat is so calorie dense, will be like a 600 calorie cup of coffee. Your body has to tap into all that before it begins to actually its own fats as a fuel or shift into cellular autophagy or some of the benefits you're looking for for fasting. So it is better, however, because at least it doesn't spike your insulin levels or your blood glucose levels, so you're at least not spiking insulin and venturing into the realm of glycemic variability. But it does break a fast. So you kind of. You're not generating inflammation or glycemic variability, but, you know, don't pull. You're not going to, like, lose weight if you're trying to fast and you're having 600 calories, cup of coffee for breakfast.

Okay, top five quick tips for raising kids. Holy cow.

All right, you want quick tips? I'll give them to you number one. What's that? That's a 15.

No.

Sardines, anchovies, mackerel, herring, Braunschweiger head cheese? No.

I guess number one big one is.

Don'T tell your kid no unless they're about to die. Unless they're about to, like, step out and get hit by a train or something. We don't really ever use the word no unless the consequences are dire. Meaning people are like, do you let your kids eat gluten? My kids can eat as much damn gluten as they want. Every birthday party they go to, they can stuff their faces full. All I do is I tell them the same kind of stuff you read in Grain Brain or any of these other books about gluten and the effect that it can have on neural inflammation, brain fog, the performance at school the next day, their tummies, the inflammation in their guts, the fact that it can cause immune reactions that then affect things like asthma or their skin condition. So I just educate them about everything involving gluten. And sometimes they'll go to a party and they'll have, like, half a cupcake and they'll come back and they'll be like, dad, I had half A cupcake. And I didn't want to have all the gluten. Or now they're using like gluten guardian. They actually will just like go to a restaurant and when the bread comes out, they'll just basically take their gluten guardian and have a piece of bread, right? So at least they know it pre digests it. But I have never ever said, don't eat bread, don't eat cupcakes. Because of course that would make them want to eat bread and cupcakes. Same goes for like my phone, right? People are like, how much time do your kids get on the phone? As much damn time as they want. Like they can flip on the WI fi and they can flip on the Bluetooth and they can set it on their little testicles while they play their Snapchatting games. And I'm not going to say don't do that. I simply tell them, hey, if you do that, you might wind up having kids that are a little bit funny because you're basically damaging your sperm. Or I will tell them that your skulls are pretty thin and that actually is going to kill brain cells if you hold it up next to your head. Or I will tell them, yeah, I like that you're using the phone in airplane mode, but you need to remember that if you're going to be on it before bed, you're going to have a pretty crappy night of sleep. So you should consider how late into the night you use it. Then take my phone and go to bed or do whatever they want. But there's never a no. You simply educate your child about what the consequences are of the decisions that they make and then let them make the decision. So that way you do not create forbidden fruit. You don't create bitter kids. You create free thinking, independent, independent kids who are able to make decisions for themselves. So I think that's one of the top things you can do. There's actually a book, I think it's called Love and Logic. Love or Logic? Love and Logic, something like that. But that's kind of that style of parenting. So that's. That was one. I won't give a like long paragraph for the others, but I would say make sure your kids get adequate vitamin D and vitamin K. Incredibly important for symmetry and beauty. So make sure they're getting both of those fat soluble vitamins in high amounts. Controversial, but I say genetically test your children. I did that with mine and I found out a bunch of things that I can now use to give them a step up in life in terms of their health. Right. They produce lower levels of BDNF than normal. So they're drinking lion's mane extract before school. And both of them don't have the gene responsible for helping them make glutathione. And so not only do they get glutathione, but they also get vitamin D because they have that same same gene responsible for not allowing them to use the sunlight to make vitamin D. One of them, actually the only genetic difference between the two of them, they're identical except one has the gene responsible for over aromatizing testosterone. And I've told them, I'm like, Taren, you'll probably get man boobs if you eat a lot of plastic and you do a lot of phthalates and parabens and use the wrong kind of shampoo. So you just got to be more careful with any of that kind of thing. And so what's that?

That one was called Utrients up in Canada. Utrients, Yeah, I interviewed their doc, Dr. Kareem Dhanani on my podcast. Yeah, they test for a lot more SNPs than 23andMe does. But ultimately I think that's another one. That's, that's the, that's the third, I would say the. Gosh, let me think of another two.

One is I think that in the same way that a lot, a lot of our hunter gatherer and ancestral tribes and some of the more ferocious and or long lived people have traditionally exposed their babies and their children to the cold at a really early age. I think it's pretty good step up in life. You teach your kid how to deal with the cold when they're young. So our kids go out and do cold soaks, cold baths, they do cold showers. Like they just understand the cold. They go out and play in the snow in their shirts and their T shirts. And I think that that's important too to give a kid the ability to be able to handle cold. Because it's not just cold, right. It's their nervous systems, it's their ability to regulate their vagus nerve, their response to stress. So there's a lot more than just cold going on there. And then the last one.

It'S kind of a little one. But I would pay attention to footwear. Like from a very early age, our kids were pretty much always barefoot, hikes, runs, wherever, except when we went indoors, like to church or to school. And then they always had Nike freeze or the equivalent of that. So going barefoot is another one that I like. There's a Lot more. I have a book on Amazon called How to Grow Tiny Super Humans. And I just go into all the things you do to create more resilient children. And those would be a few of them, though. Don't say no. Vitamin D, vitamin K, genetic testing.

Go barefoot or minimalist. And hell if I've forgotten the last one I just told you. Yeah, cold. Cold therapy. Yep, exactly. Okay, let's do a few more. Few more.

If you had to give three recommendations to healthy people who want to live long, what would they be? I mean, I pretty much kind of. Well.

We went over a lot of this in, in the other night's lecture. But I mean the, the top ones that come to mind are I just started down the road of the human battery. I mean the four things you need to charge it, water, minerals, sunlight, and the earth. So get out in the sun, be barefoot, or get outdoors or like, it's, it's kind of a dumbass solution. But if you have to, and you really, truly have an excuse not to be out in the sunlight or outside barefoot, use photobiomodulation and pemf, or ideally use both. And then that would be ones take care of the mitochondria. Number two would be fasting, intermittent fasting, alternate day fasting, fasting, mimicking diet, any form of fasting, which I already brought up as well, so I won't kick that horse to death. And then in addition to taking care of your mitochondria and fasting, what I'm going to do is keep this in like the physical fitness health department. Because I lectured a lot on relationships, social, ancestral practices, spiritual disciplines, things like that the other night. So if there was one more that you could do from a, from a physical standpoint, and I couldn't say cold showers.

Let me think about this.

Man. I mean, here's one that comes to mind. Like there's a lot of research on essential fatty acids, right? Omega 3s and Omega 6s and their, their importance for the human brain, for myelin sheaths, for the human nervous system, for skin. Somebody asked about the creaky joint for joints. So I would say the last one would be like, whether, whether you're vegan or meat based, make sure you're getting a lot of really good absorbable omega 3 fatty acids because they're very important and they kind of tie into that whole idea of keeping the human battery charged because they're important for the cell membrane as well. So that's what I would focus on. Mediterranean diet type of stuff. Olive oil and Avocado oil and sardines and fatty fish, things like that. Okay, what do you think? Thoughts on sunblock or sunglasses fitting? Question. Since we're in the Dominican Republic, I'm not a fan. I haven't touched sunscreen since I got here. None of you see me wearing sunglasses either. The former, because my strategy is that whenever I'm in a spot like this, I go out just long enough to where my skin gets warm. As soon as my skin starts to get warm, I know I'm burning. And then I get out of the sun. So you'll see me here just taking frequent short doses out into the sun, like 15, 20 minutes, and then I come back in. So. And. And I would stay out there longer, but I just came freaking Washington state. And as you guys probably saw, if anybody saw me in my American flag Speedo this morning, I got a big old whitish blue ass because my. My ass cheeks have not seen sunshine in a while. So basically the idea is that it depends on how much sun exposure that you've had. But ultimately, sunblock, usually you're just blocking uva, uvb, which you get a hormetic effect from that you learned the other night. You're blocking infrared, near infrared, red light. So I'm not a fan of sunblock. If you have to use it, like when I raced Ironman, yeah, I used it because I was doing something unnatural, right? I was out there 10 hours under the sun. But if I have the choice, and it's just a choice of me not being out in the sun and just being sane and not using sunblock, I'd rather not use it. Sunglasses again. Unless I'm snowpacking, boarding in the sun, the glint and the glare is going to damage my eyes or I'm, you know, whatever, out in a boat that's going through choppy water and the wind's hitting me in the face and salt water spraying me in the face. Don't wear sunglasses because as soon as you block the message to the protein receptors in your retina, you know, things like your. What they call it melanopsin. There's another important one. Basically, they're all opsin proteins, but as soon as those proteins are blocked, you will stop up regulating the production of the tanning pigment melanin. And so what that means is if you're wearing sunglasses and you aren't producing as much melanin, you're more likely to get more sun damage, right? So sun becomes more harmful. So I'm not a fan of wearing sunglasses unless it literally is to protect your eyes or if you live in California, because you don't look cool unless you're wearing sunglasses when you go go there. And I do sometimes when I go to California, wear sunglasses just to look cool. But not here. We're definitely not in California.

Okay, let's do. Let's do. What do you guys think? Three more. Three more questions. All right.

Yeah, we could take a few from the audience instead. You should do the last three from the audience.

Well, let's do one more from here, then. We'll do three from the audience.

See?

Okay. The thoughts of following a diet of eating only foods in season and allowing a break from naturally occurring plant toxins for longevity.

Yeah, absolutely. My podcast with Dan Pompa where we talked about feast, famine, cycling and like, the Native American populations who are eating squash and berries and bark and plants and shoots and buds and tubers and all sorts of things in the summer, in the spring. And then when winter rolled around, they were basically just like out in the frozen tundra killing goats and sheep and caribou and elk and doing something very similar to what we just did to that pig that we spit roasted for a few hours. And they'd just eat everything. Organ meats, skeletal meat, flesh, everything. And so their body was getting pressed, pulse cycling. They were getting the IGF1 mtor cycling because they were high protein, low protein, high fiber, lower fiber. So, yeah, I'm absolutely a fan of eating in season. Problem is, it's very hard for us, blessed in a Westernized society with just a cornucopia of food at the grocery store from all four corners of the planet to do that. So we actually have to go out of our ways and think about it and actually schedule times. Like, schedule times when you're going too fast or schedule times when you're going to pick up a book like whatever, Change your Schedule, Change youe Life or John Douillard's Mind Body Sport, or any of these books that kind of go into Ayurvedic seasonal eating. And you're literally gonna have whatever your Google Calendar reminder pop up a week beforehand, tell you, hey, next week, make sure you don't have a lot of meat in the freezer because you're shifting into plants and herbs and spices and vegetables. And, you know, then it pops up again when you. You're in the next phase. Or if you're growing all your own food and you're hunting your food and you're doing most of your foraging yourself at farmers markets, that's going to take care of itself as well. Because what's going to come to you seasonally is what will be growing around you and what the farmers have. But even in that situation, you kind of have to live life by the rule that you're not really going to go to the grocery store much. Right. And so if you have that kind of self control, then you can totally eat seasonally without forcing yourself into it and just going for what happens to be around if you're not frequenting Whole Foods or Erewhon, unfortunately, which I know I wouldn't have the self control to do if I live two blocks from Erwan like Joe does. Okay, so let's do three questions from the audience. Yes, they're in the back.

Question what are your top three tests in correlating lab and company frequency to monitor your health?

Yeah, top top three tests and frequency. Top three tests. One, I already mentioned DNA. I mean, I know crispr gene editing is coming along and things could change, but most scenarios you're testing that once in a lifetime. Like you're getting a good test doing once in a lifetime. You've got all your ancestry data, so you know how your ancestors ate. You've got all your health data, so you know what kind of things you're predisposed to. So you know what kind of supplements or food or lifestyle habits that you can adopt to stave that off. You can download your data, you can export the raw data to other websites. Websites to dig even deeper. You know, I've exported mine to Prometheus and found out my diabetic risk factors. I've exported to Strategene. And I found out the exact supplements that I should take if I am ever going to have more than two glasses of wine, like to block histamines. And you know, it's just something I don't process as much. So I'd say genetic test would be one, number two would be once yearly. Although. So I personally do it quarterly. I have a lot of my clients who can afford it doing it quarterly. But a really comprehensive blood panel, like a really comprehensive blood panel that tests for not just thyroid but TSH thyroid antibodies, T3, T4 reverse, T3.

Total, T4 total, T3 free, T4 free. Like everything or it doesn't just test for cholesterol, right. It tests for ldl, hdl, HDL particle, LDL particle apob.

Every parameter that you could test for cholesterol and particle size. So like a really comprehensive blood test. Now I worked with Wellness FX to create one called the Greenfield Longevity Panel. You could easily just like print that off and bring it into your doctor and just say, I want to test these things. Like, if you have a doc and didn't want to go through wellness fx, and that would be a pretty good list to start with. There's one for men and there's one for women. And then the last one, even though there's stool, I mean, there's, there's all sorts of different urine and blood tests. I'd say probably the last one that is pretty useful to do anytime you're feeling less than stellar, like you feel like your fatigue has changed, your libido has changed, or your menstrual cycles have changed or anything like that. The Dutch test, which tests a whole bunch of hormones. Melatonin, melatonin, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, cortisol, cortisol metabolites, testosterone metabolites. You can see how fast hormones are breaking down. You can see, well, my cortisol is not high because I'm stressed out. My cortisol is high because I'm not breaking it down properly. It's not like my adrenal glands are churning out tons of it because I'm always stressed out. It's simply because I have low cortisol metabolites. I'm not breaking down the cortisol enough. And. And so I could use some kind of a supplementation strategy to accelerate cortisol breakdown. But you learn a lot more than you with a blood test, specifically from a hormone standpoint. So those would be the three. That test is called a Dutch test.

Who's next? Yes, sir.

What type of diet would you recommend for a family of four with a weekly food budget of $100?

What kind of diet would I recommend to a family of four who could only spend about $100 a week? I would be doing a lot of, well, a lot of calorie dense and nutrient dense foods. Right? So nut butters, avocados and guacamoles, canned or tinned sardine, herring, smoked oyster, mackerel.

Any of those type of fish that aren't super expensive that you can get just like big batches of in bulk. I would be considering from a meat standpoint, just like once a year, buying like a share of like a quarter cow or a half cow and just having that for the whole year. So you just don't even need to go get meat. You know, if you have that and then you have like the, you know, some of those small cold water fish.

What are some others, like yogurt and dairy. It's pretty calorie dense, pretty nutrient dense dense. It's actually very easy to even make and ferment. I mean, you can do a lot yourself for pennies on the dollar. I mean, like, our food bill at our house is super cheap because, like, Jessa makes the sourdough and I make the yogurt, and she makes like the sauerkraut and the kimchi. And we just have a bunch of cheap ass canning jars and a few very affordable kitchen tools. And I mean, we are able to make and grow most of it. So that's a big one is the less you buy, you know, you invest once in half a cow and once in a nice little vertical gardening setup or just like a few days of hard labor to build some raised garden beds. And you've got a lot that you can grow yourself as well, which is just dirt cheap. I mean, we have pounds and pounds and pounds of produce. We give away, leave it at church, we give it to friends. Like, we have more than we know what to do with, and we barely pay it. You know, we paid for the seeds and the water. Right. And some of the composting and then just time. So those would be. Those would be. Some of the biggies would just be like a few nutrient dense things like dairy, milk, yogurt, guacamole, avocados, nut butters. Tubers are also pretty good as a starch. They're really nutrient dense. I mean, sweet potatoes, actually, potatoes of themselves, those are the most satiating food group that exists. Like more than liver, more than red meat, like more than anything. Potatoes are the most satiated thing that you can eat. So that's one as well.

Those are a few that come to mind. Yeah, good question. Let's go with one more cue. Pressure's on.

Better be. Good question. How do you find the right balance between the physical or tangible elements of what you teach and the spiritual and intangible elements?

How do you find balance between the spiritual disciplines and the physical disciplines? Basically, yeah. Yeah. Physical disciplines being, you know, think like, you know, if we relate this to the spiritual disciplines, kind of like a lot of the Theodore Roosevelt, you know, like the whole muscular Christianity movement.

You know, folks who are into buffeting their bodies because they're like the temple. Like, there's a lot of crossover there. And then the spiritual disciplines would be fasting, silence, solitude, meditation, gratitude, prayer. Like, those are the biggies when it comes to the spiritual disciplines as far as balancing them out.

You know, I guess I never really had much of a problem balancing it from a logistical standpoint, I mean, I get up, I do my gratitude journal. I have some silence and solitude in the morning where I'm breathing. I. I meditate a few times a week. I pray every day. I always have some kind of spiritual book that I'm reading, some kind of fiction book that I'm reading, and some kind of nonfiction book. So I spread that out pretty well. And then the physical disciplines, like, I can always take if I need to. And I'm not super physically active during my workday, you know, 40 to 60 minutes to get a workout in. I think the bigger issue comes from the idea of thinking about the importance of it, right? You think about doing all the physical disciplines. I think I talked about this on a podcast once about the. I forget who it was who said, you know, you spend two years of your life exercising so you can live longer, but those are two years of your life you'll never get back, Right? Or, you know, you spend so much time buffeting your body so you can better achieve your purpose in life. Like I was talking about the other night, like, keeping yourself healthy and vibrant and young, but you're almost, like, so obsessed with that. You never actually have the time left over to go out and volunteer in your local community or to help people or to develop your spiritual disciplines.

So I think that a good way to frame it is, yes, the physical disciplines are enhancing you to be able to achieve your spiritual purpose as best you can.

But at the same time, I think for ultimate meaning and making the biggest difference in the world, you should be less concerned about your six pack than about knowing the name of your neighbor and being able to help people out every once in a while. So you get to a certain point where you're, like, functional and capable of being very spiritually robust. And at that point, everything else past that is typically vanity. And of course, there are exceptions. Like, there are people that get paid to look good and be muscular, and that's how they feed their family, and that's how they bring home the bacon. And then, you know.

There are people who are maybe exercising. If they weren't exercising at this point in their life, they'd be drinking or doing drugs, and maybe they're spending a little bit more time exercising than they should, but it's better than the option at this point in their lives. So those are. That's kind of my thought stream there. But. But I think you can definitely have both. Like, I respect people who are a physically sound body, but also spiritually meaningful and sound people. You know, it flies the other way too. Like, Joel Saladin has a really good book about this, about how annoying it is when you go to like a church potluck where these people should be like, the people, they really believe they're made in the image of God, you know, and they have like, these deeply important spirits and souls. You'd think, like, those would be the people most likely to be like, taking care of the body like a temple. And it's just like Cheetos and potato salad and Doritos and just like, you know, horrible canola oil casseroles. And, you know, he talks about how, dude, like Christians and spiritual people, they should be like the best at taking care of the planet and the best at farming and gardening and doing all these things that actually enhance the body's spirituality and cares for the environment the way we're supposed to. So, yeah, I mean, it flies both ways. There are spiritual people who do a physical, physically shitty job, and there are physical people who do a spiritually shitty job. And I think that the ideal is you combine the two physically sound, spiritually sound, and mentally sound. Right. That's honestly the whole direction I'm steering my company is body, mind, spirit. That's why we're doing gratitude journals. We're even looking into supplementation strategies that would assist with focus and fasting and things that support the spiritual disciplines. We're really thinking hard about how we can not just be like a supplements company and not just be like a physical fitness content company, but be able to support people in their spiritual health as well. So, yeah, it's important, so thanks for asking. Okay, well, I think that's good. You guys look full of pork and tired and ready for your lovely bed inside the palace. So class is dismissed.

Want more? Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com where you can subscribe to my information packed and entertaining newsletter and click the link up on the right hand side of that webpage that says Ben Recommends, where you'll see a full list of everything I've ever recommended to enhance your body and your brain. Finally, to get your hands on all of the the unique supplement formulations that I personally develop, you can visit the website of my company, kion@getkon.com that's getK-I-O-N.com.

Sa.