Staying Fit With Sunshine & Blood Flow Restriction, The Superiority Of Goose Eggs, The Latest On EMF Protection, Is Vegetable Oil The Root Cause Of Most Modern Diseases?

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast, what we believe the mechanism for damage from EMFs is because it catalyzes the release of calcium inside the cell because the levels of calcium outside the cell are 50,000 times higher. 50,000 times higher. So when it goes into the cell, it's a powerful signaling molecule. And what does the signal cell do? It tells cells what some of the things are. It increases the release of superoxide and also nitric oxide. And those are two molecules that they get even close to each other, they instantaneously, I mean, instantaneously form some— this reactive nitrogen species called peroxynitrite. And that is really, really damaging, probably collectively more, far more damaging than hydroxyl free radical because Hydroxyl radical only lasts about a billionth of a second. This peroxynitrite lasts 1,000 times longer, so long that it can actually migrate outside of the mitochondria, outside of that cell, and go into another cell mitochondria.

Wow.

Hang around that long.

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

Alright, folks.

In today's episode, which I recorded for you on-site with the great Dr. Joe Mercola down in Florida, we had a wide-ranging discussion on everything from the dangers of vegetable oil to intermittent hypoxic training to how this dude's beating young bucks in arm wrestling and a whole lot more. Dr. Joe first joined me on 2 episodes that I'll link to in the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Mercola3. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/Mercola, the number 3. We had one episode on killing fat cells and fixing mitochondria and growing superfoods. We had another one on EMFs and cell phone radiation and protecting yourselves from EMF exposure even though we give you an updated how-to on that in today's show. Dr. Mercola, he goes way back. He's a doctor of osteopathic medicine with a real holistic approach. He's a somewhat controversial, as you'll learn about in the first 10 to 15 minutes or so of today's episode. But for the longest time, you know, as a board-certified family physician, he practiced medicine, and he's written contributions and extensive experience in patient care. He was granted fellowship status by the American College of Nutrition. He's a best-selling author. He has everything from books about COVID-19 to the No Grain Diet to the Bird Flu Hoax to Effortless Healing, a whole bunch of different titles. He has a huge background in health, wellness, and technology. He runs the very popular website you may have come across before called Mercola.com, has multiple awards. I mean, I'm at his house and he just has plaques and awards all over the wall for all of the work that he's done in medicine, health, and beyond. And he just tirelessly works to disseminate important health information around the world, which sometimes turns him into a lightning rod and also earns him a lot of numerous awards and honors. And he's a very interesting guy as you're about to learn if you've never heard him chatting before. So anyways, Ben Greenfield. Sit back or walk or lift or whatever it is you're doing right now and get ready for a great episode with Dr. Joseph Mercola.

Alright, we did it. That was a fun little setup. Open the komodo for folks. Joe and I decided to try and do an entire podcast with no tech crew, no videographer, no scheduling, just lounging on the couch with our shirts peeled off. That's right. It might be the first shirtless episode duel shirtless episode that I've done in quite some time.

Yeah, it reminds me the last time I was with you personally was when we were at Mindshare in Arizona, Phoenix or California. Yeah, somewhere. And, we went to a lunch and we just decided, "Okay, this is going to be a shirtless table." We started a trend.

I remember that. We were the vitamin D table. You've always been big on vitamin D. And, by the way, I should get this out of the way before we even start. If you guys want the shownotes, I'll put them at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Merkola3. That's Mercola, the number 3, because Joe, this is the third time that I've interviewed you. We did an interview on all sorts of things. I remember we talked a little bit about vitamin D and then we had a whole interview about EMF. I would love to revisit that a little bit today as it pertains to linoleic acid particularly, not to scare people away with big words too early in the show. And then, today, I've returned to your compound in Florida. And yes, you have quite the lifestyle down here that includes plenty of shirtlessness. And you've always always been pretty big on vitamin D. I mean, you got a plaque on the wall over there about you being the Sunshine Doctor.

Well, for this entire century, right? So, it's long before COVID-19. Actually, my passion about vitamin D is somewhat what precipitated some of the challenges that I have by mainstream media because since we last connected, I've had the honor of being named the number 1 spreader of COVID misinformation in 2021.

That's better than being named the number 1 spreader of COVID That's right.

Yeah. By the White House. Biden and the head of the National Institutes of Health. So, it was the best honor I've ever gotten in my life.

Did you get a plaque or a trophy?

No, I'm actually— Masters, and you get a gold-plated mask. I did not get that. But, yeah. So, partially that was precipitated by the influence I built up over a quarter century of having a website but also my passion about vitamin D. And, I actually have written my first peer-reviewed article this century. Published in Nutrients, which is a pretty high-impact nutrition journal.

And, this might happen to people who are watching or listening to this podcast. If you click through to your website from say Twitter or some other sites, it will say you're about to enter an unsafe website or phishing site, disinformation or phishing. Is that why? I thought it was another mechanism.

No, they're doing that. They're putting these warnings up there to make the public believe that I'm an uncredible source.

Incredible source. Incredible.

I like incredible.

That's the best way to think about it. So, when something like that happens, I'm just curious, you know, you don't have to spill all the business secrets on the podcast, but does that have a pretty big impact on site visitors, on business?

Yeah, it did. It's actually that exposure. Yeah, yeah. It definitely helped us in many ways because we had been essentially buried for the most part in this Google algorithms. And all the exposure brought my book, The Truth About COVID-19, to number 1. And it was my best-selling book ever.

Could you actually buy that book on Amazon?

Oh yeah, yeah, you could. They never took it off. So it was number 1 on USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly.

I read that book when it first came out. It's fantastic.

Yeah.

But obviously pretty controversial.

Well, and that was 2 years, well, over 2 years ago now. And, you know, it was highly controversial and people claim me of lying through the book, but 2 years later, nothing's been disproven. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, we could obviously go down the COVID rabbit hole.

Yeah, we don't need to.

Blue in the face. But, back to the vitamin D piece which got us on this thread. So, was your argument that there's a specific impact of vitamin D on the immune system that would—

Yeah, that's my review paper that was published in Nutrients suggested that.

By the way, the reason I asked this question is just a few days ago, one of our mutual friends, Georgi Dinkov, he's more of a friend of yours. I follow his stuff. I haven't had him on the podcast yet, but he published an article showing that about 4,000, 10,000 international units a day of vitamin D was one of the best things you could do to both prevent and survive GI cancer. I'm dealing with a cancer in the family right now and I immediately sent that off to my family member because it's a very cheap and readily available supplement. It's also available via the sunshine. But, you're originally doing your research on it related to the immune system?

Well, I don't do lab research, but basically like you, investigative journalism, that goes and compiles information and interviews the world-class experts. I've interviewed almost every world-class researcher on vitamin D over the years. And, one of the fundamental benefits that it has is it radically reduces not just colon cancer, which is well documented for, but pretty much all types of cancers. It's very positive at preventing and treating cancers. Very similar to linoleic acid is being the exact converse in increasing the risk of every cancer.

Yeah. You walk around with your shirt off a lot, let alone shirtless walk on the beach. You're a big sunshine hunter. Would you say that's the best way to get vitamin D or do you supplement with it also?

I haven't taken a swallow of vitamin D supplement over 15 years. Really? Yeah. And yet, my vitamin D levels are consistently over 100 nanograms per milliliter.

100?

100 without swallowing.

What's your response to the people who are like, "Oh, it's going to cause calcification if you have too much vitamin D." Is that a myth or is there any truth behind that or why do people say that?

Well, you have to be very, very careful when you swallow vitamin D orally.

Oral supplementation.

Oral supplementation. Because there's no feedback loop going on. And, a lot of the research that was published initially suggested that there was all these different— they correlated all these benefits to vitamin D. But, most of the research, there wasn't it wasn't being that vitamin D level. People were taking vitamin D supplements. So, almost all the elevated vitamin D levels related to sun exposure merely. So, this really serves as a biomarker for sun exposure because there's other benefits other than ultraviolet B radiation, which only comprises about 4% of the spectrum of sunlight. And, that's the specific wavelength and frequency that causes your body to convert 7-deoxycholesterol to to vitamin D.

Now, is it true that there are certain genetic factors that might limit that conversion from occurring? Because I've seen people like—

Sure, there are.

Kashif Khan from The DNA Company, he's talked about that before on my podcast about how some people might have higher need for oral supplementation. Yeah.

And, more typically with the SNPs, there's the vitamin D receptors, but there are other variables that you can do. That make a big difference. One of them is vitamin K2.

Okay.

And then, the other would be magnesium. Yeah. So, a lot of people who aren't taking enough magnesium, once they add it, then their vitamin D levels tend to normalize.

Now, the form of vitamin D, as a matter of fact, I was just texting last time with another guy. I'm interested in having him on the show. I haven't yet, Dr. Tyler Pantner who does a lot related to genetic SNPs. I think he might do a little bit of work with Joe Cohen for SelfDecode if I'm not mistaken. He says that there's a form of oral vitamin D. Joe Cohen was at our table in Estremadura. That's right. That's right. He was also there. A cholecalciferol as an oral form that's more expensive but much more bioavailable and increases vitamin D levels within just a couple of weeks.

I think that's the other term for vitamin D is cholecalciferol.

Yeah. When you supplement with it, I believe a lot of times it's a hydroxy vitamin D form. It's less bioavailable than this cholecalciferol. I could only find one company. I forget the name of it. I'm going to hunt it down and put it in the shownotes, I will, that actually used this cholecalciferol form. The reason this is interesting for me is because according to Dr. Kahn, I have that SNP that would limit vitamin D conversion from sunlight, which makes sense because when I used to race Ironman, I was out in the sun sometimes 8 to 10 hours a day and I'd test and levels were 30 to 40. So now, I do supplement. I take around 2,000 units a day or so and my levels are typically in the 70s to 90s, the hundreds a year.

Yeah, I would suggest a slight modification of that. In fact, I was just updating in my script for my new masterclass in composing this, which is designed to empower people with the resources they need to survive the next coming crisis, I believe, which will be here at some point, not too distant future. But, the module was on sun exposure and then when you're seeking to optimize your vitamin D levels, if you don't have access all the time, of course, you're going to need an oral supplement. But, on the days that you do get out there, Don't take your vitamin D supplement. You're already getting it from the sun. That's your overdose.

Even if you have that genetic issue with your conversion?

I'm not convinced of that because you're getting a pretty high level. The 2,000 is not the normal dose for oral D supplementation for most people. It's usually closer to 8,000. That's typical adult requirements.

But, for some people, I know some functional medicine docs who will prescribe a vitamin D bomb, like 50,000 units of intramuscular.

Not recommended at all.

Yeah.

Not recommended.

Why don't you recommend an approach like that?

Well, because that you're inferring or implied, it's a parental intramuscular injection. The only way that's done is typically through vitamin K2, which is a plant-based version, not as healthy. Michael Holick, who is probably the premier vitamin researcher, is fond of it. Most of the others are not.

Is there anything to be said for that strategy some people use, especially plant-based diet enthusiasts who put mushrooms out in sunlight to harvest? Yeah. Concentrate vitamin D in mushrooms.

It doesn't concentrate, it actually converts it.

It converts— So, it's like go to human.

Yes, but it doesn't make vitamin D3. Humans make vitamin D3, animals make vitamin D3. When you irradiate lanolin, which is the primary almost exclusive raw material used to create vitamin D supplements—

You mean lanolin from sheep?

Yes. Okay. That's how they create vitamin D. They irradiate lanolin with UVB. So, that creates vitamin D3 when you make it from mushrooms, you create vitamin D2, which is I think called ergocalciferol. Yeah.

If you take ergocalciferol or D2, you can still elevate your D levels somewhat though, right?

There is some benefit to it because there's a cross-reactivity in receptors for sure, but it's not as good as D3. It really isn't. It's vastly inferior.

I grew pink oyster mushrooms all last year. I had little ride-alongs out in the forest and I grow them and I take them and put them out on the picnic table off the patio. Leave them out in the sun all day. They're like vegan bacon, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. So, so the, um, the, the crisis that you just referred to, I don't want to necessarily allow you to drop that and leave it behind. Are you talking about an economic crisis or everything else?

Well, very similar to what we have with COVID it's so much worse. Lockdowns, suppression, personal freedoms lost, you know, just tyrannical oppression by the government, authority. Authoritarian control over loss of personal freedoms.

Would there be a trigger for that, like another pandemic or something like that?

Yeah, there's going to be some ostensible trigger, or it could be a false flag like what they did with 9/11, but something will trigger it. It could be losing the grid, could be another clearly infectious pandemic that's high on the likelihood. But, you know, they've kind of— well, really, I mean, this was just a trial run, you know. I mean, they've been getting worse and worse every, every 2 or 3 years. They launch it and make it, you know, they try their tricks and they've gotten more sophisticated and smarter with time, of course. Yeah, so it's no surprise.

I mean, like, I feel like I'm a little bit more of a prepper on paper than you are, out in the forest and building a farm in Idaho with water systems and off-grid and everything.

Well, I haven't— I haven't shown you everything yet.

Maybe I haven't seen the bunker, but I gotta ask you, like, you know, You're doing an entire masterclass. I think you said it was 50+ modules and hours and hours of content, but without having to do the entire masterclass right here on the podcast, are there a few key things that you think people should do to prepare for something like this? Yeah.

One we just talked about, exposure to sun rather than swallowing vitamin D supplements because there's so many other benefits that being exposed to sun would be. Two primary ones would increase the production of melatonin not in your pineal gland but in the subcellular spaces in your mitochondria where it's absolutely needed because that's where most all the reactive oxygen species are generated in energy production.

I thought bright lights suppress melatonin.

In the pineal gland. Okay. Not in the subcellular mitochondrial space. Interesting.

In the mitochondria.

And, that's where you need melatonin.

So, if you have elevated levels of melatonin—

This is by Russell Reiter who's the primary researcher.

Yeah, yeah. He knows a lot about mitochondria. He's got 1,600 papers. Is if sunlight is elevating mitochondrial melatonin during the day, there would not be a sleepiness-inducing effect and it would instead just allow for the anti-inflammatory effect of melatonin on the cell membrane?

More antioxidant than anti-inflammatory. Yes, that's what happens. Yeah. This is why even if you can't get that because many people are unable to get sun exposure in the winter and most everywhere in the United States, then you can do— there's other strategies because it's the near-infrared frequency that generates that. So, you can do a near-infrared sauna. Oh, not sauna. Far infrared won't cause that to occur.

If it's one of those saunas that's a combination near-infrared and far infrared, do you think that's suffice? It is. Because some people say that the angle of the photons from the far infrared will negate some of the effects of near-infrared. I don't know how much there is.

I don't think so. I think I've not seen literature to support that. I suspect there would be a benefit if you had a sufficient— reaches sufficient threshold of near-infrared exposure.

Yeah. Okay. Now, some people would hear you say, well, there's going to be a crisis, so get out in the sun. It sounds kind of silly. So, the reason behind that would be to prepare your immune system to better—

Prepare your overall resilience, health resilience because if you're not healthy, look what happened if you weren't healthy in COVID. Yes, sir. A lot of people died. Yeah. So, the healthier you are, the more you'll be able to be resilient. So, I think that's probably one of the most foundational things is to get sun exposure. And, it's virtually been eliminated from our consciousness in the culture and actually, the exact converse has been embedded in it because almost all the dermatologists are warning people that the sun causes cancer. Well, you know what, Ben? Yeah. The sun does not cause cancer.

Just got published that the title of the book is "Get the F Out of the Sun." Yeah. And, it's literally just about how this idea that a lot of health freaks have championed that sunscreen is full of carcinogens and that the impact of sunscreen is more deleterious than exposure to sunlight is something that is leading a lot of people down the road getting skin cancer from sun exposure. Is there anything to be said for dangerous potential of sunlight when it comes to excess radiation like UVA or UVB?

Well, sure. There's no question that you never want to get sunburned. That would be foolish, but you really need to explore the fundamental reasons why sun exposure would cause cancer. Why would it trigger cancer?

Okay.

It's because of the other most important strategy which we alluded to earlier, which is linoleic acid, which is ostensibly an essential fat.

I can make it stronger. Explain that to people, linoleic acid.

Linoleic acid is—

And by the way, it's different because there's also alpha-linolenic acid, which is less of a polyunsaturated fat.

No, no, no, it's actually more.

It's more polyunsaturated.

It's an omega-3. At least linoleic has 2 double bonds, I think maybe linolenic has 2 double bonds.

It probably has 2. I think alpha-linolenic has more double bonds than linoleic acid, I believe.

Yeah. Most of the omega-3s typically—

Less damaging. ALA is less of a problem than linoleic acid.

Well, ostensibly, they state it because it's omega-3, alpha-linolenic. Yeah. Whereas linoleic, which is 80% of the omega-6 fats, when you're talking about omega-6 fats, you're almost always referring to linoleic acid.

Okay.

But, it's an excess of this. In the right quantities, the quantities that were essentially in every human on this planet prior to the Civil War, you will not get skin cancer if you had that level of linoleic acid in the tissue.

Low levels of linoleic acid.

Yeah, like 2%. The average person today is 12%.

Can you measure that?

Yeah, you can.

Absolutely. Really? Is that— what is it called, the OmegaQuant or the Omega—

Well, that will give you a that's much bigger quant. You have to do a fatty acid profile. But, the optimal way would be a tissue fat biopsy, which isn't that hard. It's better than muscle biopsy from my experience.

So, let's say people aren't going to get the biopsy. I guess the biggest elephant in the room here is when you use a term like linoleic acid and the fact that high concentrations of it would increase the possibility for damage in response to sun exposure. What would be some of the primary sources of linoleic acid in the modern American diet?

Well, the primary one is processed foods. And, I think it was like two-thirds of the calories in America, the American consumes are from processed foods. So, and the primary culprit there is, of course, industrially processed seed oils, which started around the American Civil War.

Okay.

And, they didn't—

And, that's why you said the Civil War because that's when seed oil processing began to increase?

Absolutely. And, it didn't become popular until the 20th century. What was it about the Civil War that caused that to happen? Just industrialization. Okay. And, we developed the technology to do it. We didn't previously never had it. Yeah. And, in the 19th century, 99% of the fat that we consumed, 99% came from animal sources, no linoleic acids. Really? Yes. And today, about 70%, maybe I mean, it's been a while since I looked at that. It's either 70% to 90% of the fat that Americans consume is from seed oils.

Wow. Totally flipped. Wow. Now, prior to that flip, what about some of these oils? I don't know if these would have certain concentrations of linoleic acid like extra virgin olive oil. Yeah. Well, those are minor ones.

That's typically the question that most people have is because they're ostensibly viewed as healthy oils, Mediterranean diet and such. If you had a healthy variety and the range is from 3% to 20% of an olive oil can be linoleic acid, the lower the better, of course, 3% is pretty darn safe. The problem with it is, Ben, and what I'm saying for olive oil is also true for avocado oil, is that 80% to 90% 80 to 90% of the commercial oils, avocado and olive, are adulterated. What are they adulterated with?

I've heard that before. They're adulterated with GMOs. Ben Greenfield, the olive oil hunter, he exposed that on my podcast. I was shocked.

Yeah. No, no, he may have. I'm sure he did expose it, but it was exposed many, many years ago. Yeah. I mean, 60 Minutes did. At least.

60 Minutes. The great olive oil hoax, he called it.

Yeah, 60 Minutes did a whole expose on that. Well over 10 hours.

Avocado oil was similar?

Yeah, almost identical to us. Yeah. And, the issue is that almost everyone, we're probably the rare anomaly and not that we're just both being shirtless, but we're both very low in linoleic acid.

Yeah.

We've known about this and consciously avoided it. Yeah.

For me, at least 9 years. Yeah, yeah. It's been ruthlessly eliminated from my diet.

Yeah. And, why is it so important? Because these seed oils get embedded in cell membranes and they have a very low turnover rate. They're not preferentially oxidized as fuel at all. They are stored in your tissue where saturated fat would be burned much quicker than PUFA, polyunsaturated fats.

Yeah.

So, it takes— if you're really, really diligent and hyper-obsessive-compulsive about avoiding them, you can lower it to almost to normal levels in about 3 years. That's about the earliest. Otherwise, it's close to—

That long if you've been following a standard processed food diet. Yes.

Okay. And, it could be longer. I think 5 years would probably be safer for most people, maybe 6 or 7.

What is it about the combination of that and sunlight that would make sunlight more dangerous?

Well, it essentially serves as the primary source of oxidative stress in your body.

Okay.

Because of these highly perishable— these bonds are highly susceptible to oxidative damage. Just one leg has these two simple double bonds. When it's exposed to free radicals in your body, which are normal, they're normal signaling molecules typically generated in mitochondria, things like superoxide dismutase and nitric oxide, hydrogen peroxide, hydroxyl free radicals, they damage those double bonds and they convert it to something called OXLAM, which is an oxidative linoleic acid metabolite.

What'd you call them? Oxalin?

OXLAM.

OXLAM.

Oh, oxidative linoleic acid metabolite.

Okay.

Oxidative linoleic acid metabolite. Yeah. They're primarily reactive aldehydes, things like maladioldehyde, 4-hydroxy nonanol, bioxyl.

These are a lot of the things that some functional medicine docs will test you forth.

Yeah.

That's what they show. That's why they need to do a detox. Yeah.

And, what is the almost exclusive source of these guys? Linoleic acid.

Really?

Yeah, exactly. And, people are worried about AGEs, advanced glycation end products, but the primary source of AGEs are linoleic acid metabolites. Really?

23% of AGEs. Most people will say it comes from the combination of sugar with a heated protein.

And, most people Most people would be wrong. I mean, I could show you the study. The study has been out for 20 years. Show 'em, Hans. Yeah. It's linoleic acid. So, I'm sort of dancing around that to answer your original question is why is it contributing to cancer. So, these oxalams are the primary reason. It's not because they increase inflammation. There are a lot of people who suggest to avoid eating the omega-6s because they increase inflammation because linoleic acids, the next metabolized converts to arachidonic acid which is a precursor for many pro-inflammatory like eicosanoids and prostaglandins, but that's not the mechanism. The mechanism is that increases oxalates. And, these oxidations go through the roof and essentially destroys your mitochondria prematurely because there's specific fats in your mitochondrial inner membrane like cardiolipin, which I'm sure you've heard of, responsible for forming that curve within the mitochondria.

And, that's not the membrane around the cell.

No, no.

It's the membrane around the mitochondria.

Yeah, the inner mitochondrial membrane. And, vast majority of the fat in there because of the perversion of her diet is cardiolipid.

So, the dietary intake of your fat can influence the type of fats that are on your inner mitochondrial membrane.

100%.

Diet can directly impact inner mitochondrial membrane composition.

Yeah. And now, I told you I wrote this review paper on vitamin D for Nutrients. Well, I just had another review paper published just this year, just a 2 months ago. It was a narrative review of linoleic acid damages. And, one of the— they had pretty aggressive reviewers at us. They had 4 of the peer reviewers and one of them was just— gave me the argument that linoleic acid has to be healthy because it's in breast milk. So, I obliterated and destroyed his argument because I went back and found a study published in 1950 where they fed this group of people who had 5% of the women had No, 5% of the content of breast milk in these women in the 1950s was linoleic acid, which is much below what it is today. It's closer to 15% today.

Because of women's diet.

It's radically increased. I mean, that was 75 years ago. So, what they did in the experiment, they gave pure soybean oil or something with just almost pure linoleic acid and they doubled it within 2 weeks.

Okay. So, they artificially elevated levels of linoleic acid in the breast milk in the study.

Yeah, because it's just a reflection. His argument was totally invalid because that would mean that, "Oh, DDT is in the breast milk, it's okay." No, no, it just accumulates whatever your body's feeding. It's the same thing with cardiolipin in your mitochondria. And, I've actually had a dialogue with some high-level Canadian clinician who believes that this isn't true because the common belief within conventional science is that 80% of the fatty acids in cardiolipin are linoleic acid. They think that's healthy.

Is that true, the 80%?

They say 80 to 90%. Yeah. And, I don't dispute.

Now, is that because 80 to 90% is supposed to be or is currently 80 to 90% based on the modern American diet?

Right, because we've been doing this for over 100 years.

So, you're saying you can find somebody 100 years ago, their mitochondrial membrane it wouldn't have such high levels of omega-3.

If there was a measure of your lives, yours or mine, it's not going to be as high.

I wish I could get it on a measurement. Yeah, you got to get a biopsy.

Yeah. I'm not sure the methodology in such a cardiolytic fatty acid concentration, but it's a research. I mean, not something you can do at Quest or LabCorp.

But surely, if you were to get that omega index score, which is far more common and available and you were to have a high omega-6 index to omega-3, it would be a pretty decent clue. Well, it's not so much—

I would disagree. It's not so much the ratio, you really need the absolute value. So, there are other tests. I mean, you could do a fat acid profile through Quest or LabCorp. There are other companies that provide pretty powerful data like NutrEval. NutrEval will give you that data too.

Okay. Yeah, NutrEval or the other one, the Metabolome, which is the test by Genova Diagnostics. It's very similar to the NutrEval. Yeah. So, what would you do if you were out at a Brazilian steakhouse or the Whole Foods salad bar or you actually consume linoleic acid because it's not like I mean, unless you're extremely cautious, you're going to be able to completely avoid it. Is there something you can consume or do afterwards?

Yeah, there are foods. Ultimately, it comes down to the food selection that you're having. And typically, animal foods would be a buyer, not all animal foods though.

What if you eat linoleic acid? Because I've heard Dr. James D. Nicolantonio talk about glycine, spirulina, I've heard other people talk about making keto most of the charcoal.

Well, activated charcoal would be one way because that's going to bind everything and help you excrete it. But, assuming you wanted to assimilate it, the best thing to do would be take vitamin E. And, I think almost every— Vitamin E. E, yeah. Interesting. It's a very potent inhibitor of peroxidation of the fatty acids.

Any specific form of vitamin E?

Yes, yeah. 80% to 90% of vitamin E is pure junk. It probably could make you worse.

Is that because— and I had a conversation with Dr. Barry Tan on Designs for Health about this. He was championing the idea of a variety of mixed tocopherols and tocotrienols. He said like the annatto plant was an example, something out of the East Coast.

Yeah. He likes annatto and I haven't carefully examined it, but the general principles are, first of all, you want it to be the natural isomers. So, you don't want synthetic and almost all of them are synthetic. And, how do you know it's synthetic? There's two isomers, a right and a left, a D and L. And, the only isomer you want is a dextro D. So, the D isomer. If it says DL, you know it's synthetic, throw it away.

Yeah.

So, that's one. And then, it shouldn't say acetate after it because that's another synthetic. So, D-alpha-tocopherol acetate, classic. You can go into almost any drugstore, that's what will happen. You just do not want that.

Are there certain dietary sources more readily available than enough?

Yeah, this is a great question. I mean, the best dietary sources are seed nuts and seed oils. It's like nature kind of put it in there.

Yeah.

So, it's really hard to get it. You almost have to take a supplement. And, you don't need a supplement for it the rest of your life. Once your seed oils are down like both of us, You may not need vitamin E at all and just the stuff you're going to get in normal foods is fine. But, if you're 99.99% of the population, you're going to really want it.

I'm sure people are now wondering about your diet. And, I mean, we just had what for breakfast? Rice and oatmeal with some egg yolks and some berries.

3 eggs.

It's interesting because I feel like if I would have had breakfast with you maybe 5 years ago, you were pretty low carbohydrate. Oh, yeah. So, tell me what's changed with your diet because that was a pretty good breakfast we had this morning. We didn't have water.

Well, it's sort of an extension of my appreciation, deep fundamental appreciation of the dangers of linoleic acid. I definitely want to go back to some of the other issues with cancer because there's some stats I got to share with you that are just mind-blowing. But, this deep appreciation of the dangers of linoleic acid, then I started wondering, well, who understood this a long time ago? And, it turns out Ray Peat was one of the main biologists—

Longevity guy.

Yeah, was warning about this 1980s, 1980s. And, I had known of his work since about the 1980s and absolutely discounted it because it was so bizarre, so weird. I thought he was a flaky knucklehead biologist, didn't know what he was talking about. But then, I said, if he knew about linoleic acid in the '80s, got to be this guy, He's got something up his sleeve. And, I started looking at him and examining what he was talking about. And, it blew my mind. And, I greatly regret that I just understood his brilliance. Literally, he's an iconic classic legend in my view. And, understanding mitochondrial function, how to optimize it. And, we would need 3 to 4 hours to go into that, so we don't have the time to do that. But, just take it for granted. This is going to be part of the things in the course is that just brilliant. He can help people understand how to optimize biological function and it's not with beta oxidation of fats in mitochondria. I was wrong. Totally wrong. The ideal one is glucose. And, the best source of food—

You mean consuming adequate amounts of glucose.

Well, glucose is a fuel. You can get it from different ways. Ideally, you want to get it where The glucose is bound to fructose as a disaccharide.

As you can find in honeys and fruits.

Absolutely. Yeah, honey, ripe fruits, which is key. But anyway, that goes in and optimizing that. So, that's how I became aware of this. And interestingly, I'll just give you a brief history because I integrated his approach earlier this year. I was pretty healthy. I mean, pretty healthy for the most part. Well, once I did it, I was having about 150 grams of carbs like you, but I upped it to about 400 to 500. Now, I'm not suggesting everyone needs to be 400 to 500. You have to have a high level of activity. You can't have insulin resistance. If you do, it'll be disaster.

That's what I understand is part of the Ray Peat approach is high energy flux, meaning marrying adequate carbohydrate intake even as high as what you're saying or working yourself up to that 400, 500 grams with activities that would increase glucose transporters doing some walking or staying physically active or getting sunlight or engaging in lifestyle activities that would be the opposite of not eating many carbohydrates, being cold, hungry, and libidoless and slightly inactive.

And low testosterone.

Yeah. And low testosterone, which I had to deal with when I was following this ketogenic diet.

Most everyone does. It's classic and it's just an absolute perfect classic illustration of the fact of inadequate cellular energy to make the testosterone. The answer is not testosterone replacement. The answer is to fix the problem. So anyway, I did this. I dropped 10 pounds in weight. My body fat went from 15% down to 12%.

You tripled your carbs and you dropped that amount of weight.

Wow. And that went from 15% to 12% done by the InLine, I think it's InLine Body Measurement, which I think is the best.

InBody.

InBody. That's what it is, InBody. It's almost identical to DEXA with none of the radiation. So, if you want to really know what your body fat is, I would do the InBody for sure. That was 15 the year before and then 12 shortly after that. My hs-CRP, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, I couldn't get it down below 0.8, which is still healthy.

Yeah, it's still more urban inflammation.

Yeah. So, I got it down to 0.18. It's good for you. My fasting blood sugar went down 10 points.

10 points? Wow.

Wow.

Why do you think that is? That's paradoxical that your blood glucose would have decreased when you tripled your carbohydrate intake.

Because your blood sugar is not necessarily related to the amount of carbs you're eating. I mean, it is directly related, but it has to do with the metabolic health.

I know where you're going. Are you talking about the potential adrenal for a hypercortisol response.

Yeah, when you don't have enough cortisol.

Causing a paradoxical rise in glycogenolysis and an increase in blood glucose because you're high cortisol due to lack of—

Well, that's what Georgi Dinkov helped me understand is that, yes, there's not an excursion of glucose levels. You have a very steady glucose level when you're low carb. It does it because your body wants to stay alive. If you go into low blood sugar levels, you will die.

The same reason that someone who's even eating a low-carb diet would would have extremely high blood glucose level after workout or after a sauna or after a cold plunge because there's a transient rise in glucose in response to stress. With those activities, you tend to see long-term blood glucose stabilization because the impact of those activities—

Well, the stabilization—

Hormetic stress.

The stabilization is only due to the secretion of cortisol and other stress hormones like glycogen, But what I'm saying is persistent carbohydrate depletion would cause the body to still need to—

oh, yeah, glucagon would still need to cause an elevation in blood glucose due to the stress, but that elevation of blood glucose has to come from the liver and from muscle and eventually muscle fiber breakdown.

Well, it's the other way around. It actually comes from the liver as a processing. It's the amino acids. Are sacrificially extracted from your muscles, your bone, and these really important tissues, and they're shuttled to the liver in a process called gluconeogenesis to create blood sugar.

What do you say to people who say, "Well, why not just increase dietary protein instead?" You could do that, but it's a very expensive way to do it.

And, there's some side effects because you create a lot of extra ammonia and that is really hard on your kidneys and many people are suffering with kidney challenges. Yeah. So, the ideal amount of protein from my understanding, and you certainly have your insights on it, but it's about 0.7 grams per pound of body weight.

Yeah. 0.55 is the minimum above 0.8 grams per pound, not grams per kilo, grams per pound, you tend to see a law of diminishing returns unless you're extremely high in weightlifting and bodybuilding. Some bodybuilders will still build and assimilate at 1.2 grams per pound plus, but that's pretty rare. It's a rare part of the population.

And, there's a downside to that. Yeah.

So, 0.7, that's a good approximation. So, based on that, I do want to get back to linoleic acid and cancer, by the way, but I'm just curious, what's a typical day of eating look like for you besides the rice and goose eggs and the blueberries and the watermelon we had for breakfast this morning?

Well, the eggs, the egg yolks that we have are from the chickens or the geese that I raise and they're fed very special diets. The geese? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

They're geese. I mean, why geese though?

Oh, well, we initially got them because we wanted them to eat the weeds. They eat a lot less food than chickens because they mostly eat the grass.

Is the egg profile similar as far as—

No, the egg profile is much dramatically improved. Yeah. Because they don't eat typical feed, they're mostly vegetarian. So, the result, their linoleic acid is much lower.

So, lower omega-6, lower linoleic acid in their eggs.

This is why chickens And pigs are not really great foods to eat. They are ideally, but they're monogastric animals. They only have one stomach. And as a result, they're just like us and any linoleic acid that they're given tends to accumulate in their tissues. So, I don't care if it's organic free-range chickens or pigs, they're almost all given grains which are loaded with linoleic acid. They're very, very high. So, pasture—

pasture and forage, they're good to catch sometimes.

Absolutely. It's very unusual. I mean, there are some, if you raise them yourself, you can avoid it, but it's a surprise a lot of people here. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, what I normally have, I'll typically, I love ripe fruit. It's probably the majority of my carbohydrates is ripe fruit. So, I'll start the day with, it depends if it's a rest day or it's a sauna day, so I'll do 3, 4, maybe even more, 4 pounds of cut watermelon, not the rind.

And ripe is because more important to you than say the resist starch. Oh, unripened. And for you, it's because of that blend of glucose and fructose. Right. Okay.

So, that's what I do. And I've had some kidney damage as a result of mercury, improper mercury extraction done 30 years ago. So, I scouted this. So, I cannot go high. I really rarely go over 105 grams of protein a day.

In it.

So, I have some lamb would be my primary meat, but I only have 3 ounces of lamb. That's it, relatively small amount. But so, my protein comes from other sources primarily.

That's still— because what do you weigh approximately?

180.

Okay. So, you're not too far below 0.7 grams per pound protein at 105 grams.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And then, because I'm a big believer of you and this is the first time you've been to my place, but I'm so impressed with your exercise routine. It's radically modified my things. We won't have time to talk about it, but believe me, I will acknowledge you in the course because you're such a classic illustration of implementing what I believe is— and I've been passionate about exercise as you have been since 1968.

Yeah. You were part of the big marathoning craze.

Yeah, yeah. Aerobic exercise. But I had most of it wrong and I'm gradually evolving and refining my progress, my perception of that. And, you radically helped in that area with respect to— because it's all about movement. It really is all about movement. You got to nail in, you are not a muscle, a bodybuilding muscle head, which a lot of people are because if you do excessive resistance training, yeah, if you do excessive resistance training, you will die prematurely. It's great stuff, but it's small doses.

Not to rabbit hole too much, but that's part of that J-curve that James was saying. Yeah, reverse J-curve. Yeah, reverse J-curve meaning that Not only do you reach a law of diminishing returns when you get to about 180 minutes of high to moderate intensity cardiovascular exercise, but the law of diminishing returns for what would be considered intense heavy weightlifting is even lower than that.

Much lower, yeah. Anything over an hour a week could be a problem. And, I saw you work out today and maybe you did about 5 to 10 minutes, maybe not even that. I mean, maybe zero because I mean, you were working out but you're working out that intensely.

What I do is I'll do a few lifts but then I do mobility. Yeah. It's almost all mobility. Get up and get down off the ground, a little foam rolling. So, even though I'm sometimes in the gym for an hour or two, I typically might reach 20 minutes or so of actual weight training during that time. When I'm at home, it's just that ARX.

But, your weight training isn't that intense.

It's not like you're pushing to failure. No, it's not like I'm going heavy. Yeah.

You're not in the pain camp.

I think it's better for the joints also. If I go heavy, It's not heavy, it's either blood flow restriction bands to trick the muscles into thinking they're lifting a heavy weight or a moderate weight lifted super slow, which I think carries with it much, much more longevity in sport and lower risk.

You really have it dialed in. I have great respect for what you've been able to— the knowledge and practical skill set you put together over your lifespan.

So, congratulations. Well, that's my jam. I know, I know. Strength and conditioning, that's what my degree was Yeah. So, back to the diet, you've got things like the goose eggs, you have the rice, the oatmeal, the berries, the ripe fruit. What about organ meats, meat, things like that?

Oh, yeah, yeah. You don't need much. I mean, maybe 10 grams of organ meat a day, small amount. And then, I have raw milk for sure. And, I have a lot of white rice, basmati white rice.

Why rice versus sweet potatoes or yams or purple potatoes?

You could use potatoes. You have to be somewhat careful. I'm not about potato-based, but I was having red potatoes, small red potatoes, not russet potatoes, but you have to be really careful and cook them incredibly well. I pressure cook mine because there's the starch that can form and we don't have the enzyme capacity to digest those starches easily. So, it passes through our small intestine into large intestine, forms this fuel for the bacteria in your colon.

You mean if you're consuming tubers without doing something like pressure cooking?

Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't know if I have any tuber other than rye, than potatoes. And then, they have to consider the oxalate issue too. But, if you're pressure cooking them, oxalates are water-soluble.

That's my understanding. Get rid of the oxalates, you can decrease a lot of lectin and get rid of any type of problematic starch by pressure cooking. I think that's the best way to cook the tuber.

Yeah. So, you do that and then your body can absorb the fuel rather than bacteria. The danger of bacteria doing it is that the gram-negative specifically, they can produce something called lipopolysaccharide and LPS for short, which is another term for endotoxin, which increases serotonin, which is a whole rabbit hole we can go down. But, bad news. So, I wanted to switch back to the linoleic acid because in my view, aside from sun exposure and and movement, which are— I mean, it's hard to prioritize them. They're fundamentally foundational.

Yeah, you don't have to prioritize them. Stack them.

I think you stack them. Yeah, absolutely.

Every day, I stack earthing and grounding, sunlight, some form of weight-bearing, hot, cold, water, minerals, and some type of movement and mobility. That's a typical day for me. If I can check off those boxes, I'm not spending biohacks.

You're doing another one and you done it for the last 9 years so you don't even recall it, but you're avoiding linoleic acid. Yeah. So, this is astonishing information. And, I kind of knew of it but I didn't compile it into a table until after I wrote my paper. But, as I was preparing presentations, I said, "Oh my gosh, this is crazy." So, the amount of obesity in the 1800s was about 1%. So, per 100,000, he had about 1,000 people. 1%.

Yeah. And, that's not because obesity was less reported, it was less existent.

It didn't exist. I mean, but it still was there because not all obesity is connected to linoleic acid. There's a lot of things that can cause it. Because even in the 19th century, they had obesity, 1%. Today, we have 40% on our way to 50%.

Are you referring to America primarily?

Well, industrialized countries in the West.

Okay.

Yeah. So, we've got an increase from 1% to 40% of 40x in that timeframe. Then, you go to diabetes. So, we didn't have that many diabetics. It was a lot less than 1,000. It was like Type 2 diabetes, not Type 1. Type 1 is an autoimmune disease.

And again, this was not necessarily because less knowledge of the condition existed and there were less diagnosed cases or there were underreported cases. This is pretty ironclad that they actually have less diabetes and have less obesity.

Yeah. And now, you can make a strong argument. I mean, you're not formally legally classified as diabetic, but either diabetes or prediabetes, which I consider a fasting blood sugar anything over 3 digits. Okay.

That's 30% of the country. Anything over 3 digits?

Yeah, 100 or more.

Oh, okay. I got what you're saying. Yes.

Okay.

Anything over— you don't mean immediate postprandial glucose?

No, no, no. I said fasting.

Oh, fasting glucose. Okay. Yes.

Okay. And, there is no danger to have a blood sugar 130.

But, for reasons I just stated earlier, don't test it right after you exercise or you'll freak out and think you're fasted glucose is way higher than it should be. Do it fasted and relaxed.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, it's 30% and it was like— it's gone up like 50x. No, wait, not 50x. I think it's 500x. I should have looked at the table.

Wait, what's gone up 500x? Diabetes.

Okay. Yeah. And, the treatment for diabetes is not glucose restriction, It isn't. Now, you can control it with a low-carb diet. That doesn't mean you're curing it at all. You know what the fundamental reason for almost all diabetes is?

I mean, I'm going to guess that you're going to say the old Mr. Brewdog, gas.

It's a little bit of gas.

But explain that. Why is that?

Because it ruins the ability in the mitochondria to allow glucose to be able to metabolize. So, if you can't metabolize it, then where's it going to go? It's going to be shuttled out into the into the cytosol of the cell and it's going to go into glycolysis. Yeah. And, you're going to increase lactate and it just messes things up. And basically, that is the Warburg metabolism. Otto Warburg was a guy that got one PhD in history.

I'm seeing the cancer link now. Keep going.

Yeah. He's commonly attributed that sugar is a fuel of cancer and he never, never said that and his work does not show that. That. It isn't the fuel of cancer at all. It uses it, but it's the distorted metabolism. Now, what is the Warburg effect? It's when your mitochondria is unable to burn glucose despite the fact that there's plenty of oxygen and it goes into glycolysis. Now, when you and I put on the—

Normally, if your mitochondria had blood glucose and there was oxygen available, it would be able to metabolize that glucose to produce ATP in a healthy normal state.

Yeah. Assuming you haven't overfed on glucose or you haven't been sedentary for a long time. But, if we were to sprint or put the KAATSU bands on and do some— go to real intense training.

Yeah. Blood flow restriction bands.

Yeah. Then, you are creating an oxygen deficit. There isn't enough oxygen to burn glucose. So, that is not the Warburg effect because you're going to create lactate. But, that's what your body is designed to do. That is a rescue mechanism. That's healthy. But, if you're doing that when there's plenty of oxygen, you have a problem. That's cancer metabolism. Yeah.

So, is that because the cancer will thrive not necessarily in the presence of high glucose but because it will thrive in an anaerobic high acidic state?

No, it's more fundamental than that. It's actually getting back to the creation of energy within the mitochondria. So, if it's shunted and you have to rely on beta oxidation, these processes are going to create ultimately more oxidative damage. They do that through a mechanism that we don't have time to discuss and virtually no one watching this understands. It does it through the creation of reductive stress, which why mechanisms— I think Ben Greenfield and I talked to this yesterday— some of the mechanisms of methylene blue and ozone are related to reducing that reductive stress. So, that's how they work. But, linoleic acid is the exact opposite, it causes reductive stress. And, that's one of the reasons that mitochondria is damaged and dies prematurely. It's all about the mitochondria.

Let's know if you're Dr. Steeleman, your argument, what's the number one argument against what you're saying regarding linoleic acid? Because surely you've gotten some pushback.

There really is no hardcore. I mean, other than the delusional concepts like it's in breast milk so it must be healthy, it's just an ignorance of the basic science of it. I mean, that is the fundamental component of Pete's work is low linoleic acid. Many people who teach it don't really— I mean, they mentioned it, all of them mentioned it, but they don't necessarily emphasize as much as I think they should. Yeah.

If you were to look at something like epidemiological data or Ben Greenfield's work in the Blue Zones or something like that, if you were to investigate those diets, would you find consistently lower amounts of linoleic acid, do you think?

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And the studies have been done. Chris Kenobi, who's an ophthalmologist by training, has essentially quit his practice and turned into an investigative journalist on this. And he's done great review of the world literature and 25 countries he's examined and done gathered statistics and made the graphs and everything. And I've kind of compiled that and put it into something even simpler. So, one of the most astonishing pieces of information, Ben, that I shared with you yesterday on our walk is that the incidence of heart disease in the United States was essentially unknown in the 19th century. The first reported heart attack in the United States was in 1912. 1912. Essentially, it was like maybe a handful of people had heart disease in the 19th century. So, we go from that to the point that we have over a quarter million people today in the United States dying every year, dying from heart attacks. That is millions of times increase.

Can you attribute that to one specific factor though? I mean, socioeconomic status means access to hyperpalatable foods. Foods and a more sedentary lifestyle due to the advent of technology and possibly more stress. And, there's got to be a cluster of factors that would result in that. I mean, surely you can't say all of it is related to linoleic acid.

Clearly not all of it. There's no question EMFs and everything too are also contributing. But, in my view, there's no other explanation for it. I mean, what else can cause it?

I do know how people— I do know how people go to India.

Yeah.

Yeah, because I had to be very careful in India. This was 3 years ago. I'd have to ask every time for the chef to come out and ask them to prepare my meal in olive oil or in ghee or butter. Ghee would do that. And, the reason for that is prior to going to India because I had to give a lot of talks on health and I noted that the increase in chronic disease, particularly diabetes in India, did not correlate at all to an increase in average percentage of carbohydrate or sugar intake. Right, exactly. Instead, skyrocketed. As soon as vegetable oil was introduced as a substitute oil for the common oils that are used there. So, I get what you're saying. I think it's still multifactorial, but I've seen some of the data on the increase in vegetable oil consumption, the direct rise in chronic disease.

That's exactly what it is. And Chris Kenobi has really done an excellent job documenting that. And now that I'm thinking about it and you mentioned that, probably the biggest argument against this would be the people saying that it's no, it's all the carbohydrates. It's all the carbs. And, if you go to certain countries like really large countries like China, one of the biggest countries in the world, and the amount of sugar is actually decreased, decreased, and visceral fat went up and disease went up just following that almost.

Ben Greenfield: Maybe you're at least making some friends now with the corn and grain lobbyists.

Corn and grain are full of seeds. That's the primary source. Yeah. This is not my first book.

Back to why the geese that eat the plants are going to be healthier than the chickens or pigs.

Right.

Yeah.

My first book in 2004, almost 20 years ago, was "The No-Grain Diet," which I wasn't thrilled with the title of that book, but it actually is good and I tend to agree with it except for the anomaly would be things like white rice, not brown rice because brown rice has a lot of the linolic acid in the hull. And, you could do oatmeal if you're careful, but gluten is not your friend and most of them are sprayed with glyphosate, so you got to be careful. I mean, I don't think virtually anyone should be eating wheat. Yeah.

You briefly mentioned EMF.

Yeah.

I was saying only that there might be a correlation because I'm just thinking here about the radiative effect of sunlight and the consequences of high linoleic acid consumption and sunlight exposure. It drives me nuts when I walk through the average resort and everybody's sitting around eating french fries and chicken wings. I think, "Oh my gosh, this is the worst time to be doing that." Preferably do it indoors out of the sun. But, when it comes to EMF, electromagnetic radiation or non-native EMF, dirty electricity, et cetera, would you have an increased susceptibility to the damages of that if you have high linoleic acid consumption?

Well, there's no study that shows that, but George Dinkov, who's a mentor of mine, has explained really clearly previously that people who have low linoleic acid diets have much less risk of dying from exposure to high doses of ionizing radiation, like from a nuclear blast.

But, an EMF like a Wi-Fi router, that's not ionizing radiation.

It's not, but they're real similar. In fact, so what happens, we believe the mechanism for damage from EMFs is because it catalyzes the release of calcium inside the cell because the levels of calcium outside the cell are 50,000 times higher, 50,000 times higher. So, when it goes into the cell, it's a powerful signaling molecule. What does the signal cell do? It tells cells— some of the things are it increases the release of superoxide and also nitric oxide. And, those are two molecules that they get even close to each other, mitochondria, they instantaneously, I mean instantaneously form some— this reactive nitrogen species called peroxynitrite. And that is really, really damaging, probably collectively more, far more damaging than hydroxyl free radical because hydroxyl radical only lasts about a billionth of a second. This peroxynitrite lasts 1,000 times longer, so long that it can actually migrate outside of the mitochondria, outside of that cell, cell and go into another cell mitochondria and hang around that long. So, as a result, the longer it stays around, it hangs around because it's almost as damaging as hydroxyl. But, hydroxyl is more damaging, but it lasts 1,000 times longer.

Yeah.

So anyway—

So, it's calcium influx into the cell. So, how would linoleic acid cause an increase in that already present calcium influx into the cell?

Well, that's how EMF we think does it. There's pretty strong evidence for that. It turns out that linoleic acid has the same molecular action.

That's what it causes.

It causes calcium to go into the cells. Not only does it create the oxalates, it causes— and I didn't put this in my paper either because I didn't connect the dots. Life is busy, you just forget to do something. But, this is an important component is that that's another way that linoleic acid contributes to increasing cancer is that through this calcium influx. But, the other thing that's almost in many ways very similar because it has a I think the same number of double bonds is estrogen. Estrogen is not your friend. It is not a postmenopausal woman's friend. This is dangerous, dangerous molecule.

You mean excess estrogen?

No, I mean— Yeah. No, you do. There's almost virtually no indication you can take an estrogen supplement.

Right. But, if your body is naturally producing some—

Yeah, yeah. You need some. You need some.

Yeah. And, why is that?

This calcium influx is one, but it's one of the primary contributors for cancer. No question. Excess estrogen. And, not only do we get it from supplements and well-intentioned but misinformed physicians prescribing it, but we get it from xenoestrogen. Xenoestrogen, phytoestrogens.

How much of it is the excess estrogen versus the progesterone to estrogen imbalance like low levels Well, that's a big part of it.

You're unquestionable. Now, we talked earlier about the major danger of low carbs is cause your body to release cortisol and cortisol just shreds your muscle protein. Well, guess what one of the most effective cortisol blockers are? The most effective. Progesterone.

Progesterone.

Yeah. It just annihilates it.

It's kind of funny, even a lot of guys, and there's an entire book written about this, I forget the doctor, wrote a book about anxiety, believe he used progesterone sometimes, transdermal. I mean, children who have ADD and ADHD. But, Dr. Chris Shade actually is who turned me onto this idea. He said, "Hey, stressed out at the end of the day, a little anxious, having trouble turning the brain off, just put a little progesterone on the inside of the forearm and almost immediately feel this drop in anxiety." Yeah.

Typically, we're looking for longer-term solutions so that you have to be really careful about because that will work short-term but long-term, it's not a good idea. It has to be absorbed connected with a long-chain fat to get absorbed. Because if you just swallow progesterone pills, which you can't really do, you can buy pregnenolone powder, you can buy DHA powder, but you can't buy progesterone powder.

I've just always recommended 3% transdermal progesterone.

I don't think it's a good idea long-term because I did that. The guy who recommended that initially was John Lee who passed away in '70s.

John Lee and then Dr. Michael somebody wrote the anxiety book and he's another guy. Yeah.

But yeah, it should be in a long-chain fat and ideally administered orally or you could do it I would do it subtransmucosally through suppository either vaginal or rectal. But, I can give you the link to a company that I really like that I think would does a really good job of it.

Oral progesterone.

Oral progesterone, yeah. Because I wouldn't do transdermal. I mean, it's okay for a while, but what I neglected to mention is that when I was using it in my practice, it worked almost for everyone in the first few months, but then 3, 6 months, it started felt this tolerance to technical access to it.

Yeah, I've heard there's a little bit of a technical lactose tolerance, especially the transdermal. And again, I would use it very infrequently.

Yeah, yeah, for you, you're after the sports. Yeah, but for a woman who needs it, and I would make a strong argument for many men, especially low-carbers, that progesterone could be a real benefit to them to increasing their testosterone level.

Yeah. And, I'm pretty chill as it is. You saw me in the intermittent hypoxic yesterday.

Oh, my gosh. You pressed the button. Yeah.

Yeah. I know that's kind of geeked-out exercise stuff for people, but tell people about that intermittent hypoxic just briefly, explain what that is.

Well, we have a device that can— it's a medical-grade device. So, it produces really pure clean oxygen. The oxygen level in the air that we breathe is about 20%. This device can dial that back down to as low as 9%, which is kind of dangerous. But, it's also attached to a pulse oximeter, a medical-grade pulse oximeter, One you buy for $25, it costs 20 times that. And, it accurately measures your PO2 levels. So, it can monitor to see what your blood oxygen concentration is. And, if you can get it down to the low 80s and keep it there, that's a really powerful stimulus to produce—

Not all the time. You mean short-term.

Short-term, yeah. With this device, it essentially gives you pulses of, in our case, it's about 15% oxygen concentration, which is not much different than room air, which is 20%. %. But then, you do that for 7 minutes or you can change the time, but essentially, 5 to 7 minutes, maybe 10. And then, for 2 minutes, you pop into hyperoxia where you get oxygen concentration like 30 room air or higher like 34% like we got. And then, it just generates all these intriguing hormonal and metabolic benefits, especially if you're doing it with a a mask on because you're getting this administered through an oxygen mask.

And, you're just sitting in a chair even though you told me beforehand, you're like, "This is going to feel like Wim Hof breathwork." I was like, "Yeah." So, I sat there for the first 10 minutes or so, didn't notice a lot. And then, gradually my fingers began to tingle. I feel that slight oxygen hunger when it dropped and then you get that rush of oxygen when it comes back in just like you're doing breathwork. This machine is doing it all kind of for you because I was laid back on an eye mask and like Newcomb in this deep meditative state would almost get trance-like every time it dropped the oxygen. And, it's called— the actual title for this would be IHT, intermittent hypoxia training. And, this unit that you use, are you able to share the brand?

Yeah. I'm currently using Cellgym. It probably has a different name now because they're in the process of changing things. So, it's mostly designed for commercials because it's pretty expensive. And, but it's a powerful thing. But you can, hopefully, they'll come up with home units at some point in the future. But you can, you know, to get that benefit, but you can get similar benefits. You're not going to get the IHT benefits, but just the NuCalm app by itself, which we like. It's kind of pricey.

I mean, you can meditate with that.

For meditation, yeah, especially with some good set of earbuds. Yeah. But, if you do use the NuCalm, you only want, there's only one channel. That works. I mean, too, you like the nap one too, but the rescue channel.

The rescue channel. Yeah.

And, all the apps are good.

I have a whole podcast about the NuCalm. I'll link to it in the shownotes. Again, BenGreenfieldLife.com/Mercola3, M-E-R-C-O-L-A, the number 3. The NuCalm is an app that has these trance-like sounds that are unlike anything I've ever heard.

Yeah, they're like 3-gigabyte files.

You're right. If you're going to use anything, And then, go to the rescue tracks and the 50 to 70 or 120-minute rescue tracks are amazing.

Yeah. My favorites are the 100 and then the 50.

Yeah.

And, it's something I do every day with— pretty much every day. I would say 5 to 6 times a week.

Either the Cell Gym or the new columnar bike. Both.

Yeah.

Both together in the gravity chair you have set up. I mean, that's a game changer.

Yeah.

I was telling you, Dr. John Lieurance, shout out to our friend John, he has this thing called the Shiftwave chair in his office. Which vibrates as you breathe in and breathe out in timing correlation to your breathing, that would be pretty amazing to— Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I haven't gotten those here, but thinking about it. One thing that I thought of as you were describing the deleterious impact of the combination of linoleic acid and EMFs is ever since talking to you about your first book and podcast EMF, and I still think people should go back and listen to that episode. I started anytime I'm on an airplane or in an Airbnb with a ton of different Wi-Fi signals coming in or pretty much anywhere besides my house, which like yours is the hardwired Ethernet, low EMF, and all the dirty electricity mitigation filters in it. I take magnesium, I take NAD, and I take hydrogen. Those are my top 3 that I'll take when I'm in a high EMF environment because the magnesium seems to offset some of the calcium influx than the hydrogen and the NAD or selected antioxidants.

I could— well, NAD isn't really an antioxidant. Alright.

Well, the NAD would be more for kind of like the DNA repair or protection.

Yeah. So, I would modify that somewhat now because I think exogenous ketones are really useful. I'm not a big fan of people going into ketosis themselves because the process of going into ketosis is stress response.

You mean ketosis without the use of exogenous ketones. Fasting or starving yourself into this. Yes.

Yeah. Or time-restricted eating, intermittent fasting. So, you don't really want to create ketones yourself initially, especially if you're metabolically healthy, but you can take exogenous ones. And, like Frank—

Frank Loza.

Yeah. I mean, those would be classic examples. They can really help.

KetoneAid.

KetoneAid, right. Yeah. And so, that can be really useful if you're getting exogenous. With respect to NAD precursor, NAD, I mean, you don't want to take NAD yourself, it's very expensive and it's unnecessary. But, I think the ideal one, this is one of my key points is niacinamide by itself. It's simple, inexpensive, you can get a year supply for $10.

Different than niacin and niacinamide? Totally different.

Well, they're both called vitamin B3. Niacin is the one that pumps your flush. NAD, what is that? It's searched for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. And, nicotinamide is another term for niacinamide. It's not niacin adenine Niacinamide. It's not niacinamide. Oh, interesting. The actual molecule of NAD is composed of niacinamide, not niacin. Yes, you can convert niacin to niacinamide, but it's not as efficient.

You can just supplement niacinamide and get a similar effect.

Like 50 milligrams. 50 milligrams. You don't want to take 500. More is not better. There's a Goldilocks dose.

Yeah. Yeah. I actually just tweeted about that, especially in someone with poor methyl donors or MTHFR deficit or high state of inflammation, high amounts of NAD can actually be harmful in a situation like that.

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I pretty much take niacinamide regularly. I think that's one of the core things. I mean, vitamin E, most people need niacinamide at a small level, 2 or 3 times a day, 50 milligrams. And, that is the best precursor and all the lifestyle, circadian rhythm optimization, exercise because NAMPT is the rate-limiting enzyme. But, you have to have the fuel once you've activated NADT to—

Yeah. Even infrared sauna, fermented foods, there's a few different things that will increase it.

Yeah, yeah. So, that's really good stuff.

All right. There's a video floating around of you out there and I want to hunt it down and put it in the show notes of you crushing a young virile man in an arm wrestling competition. Yes, indeed. Is that video out there?

Yes.

Find it and put it in the show notes? Absolutely. Okay. All right. So, note to my editor, hunt it down, put it in the show notes. Dr. Joe Mercola arm wrestling Dr. De from Miami. What's your secret? How'd you get strong enough to beat a young buck in arm wrestling?

Well, I hadn't been embracing Pete's work for about 6 months at that time.

Repeat?

Repeat, yeah. My mitochondria were tuned. I mean, I'm not only metabolically flexible, but I had ultimate fuel in my mitochondria glucose. Yeah. Ben Greenfield's substance. But, an additional thing I was doing was the KAATSU, the blood flow restriction training that I've been doing for about 6 years. And, what that does is it activates type 2 fibers, specifically the endurance fibers that you get high intensity and stuff. And, you can tell if you watch the video that he kind of— which is exactly what you expect, his type 1 fibers failed.

Exactly. Very 20, 30-second repetition. He had the initial push on you, but as soon as fast twitch muscle pooped out, you could see that you just kept recruiting and recruiting.

Yeah, that's right. And, my fast twitch fibers were much better trained, much better. That's what katsu does. And so, I just—

Lactate buffering. Yeah.

That's right, lactate buffering.

Yeah. It's an impressive video. I'll put that one in the shownotes.

I surprised a lot of people. It was really my achievement, my fitness achievement for this year. I mean, I've done a 400-pound deadlift before, 600-pound 50-pound leg press. But, I'm most pleased with that.

Yeah. That's impressive. We've only scratched the surface of your body of knowledge, but you've alluded to this masterclass a couple of times. How soon can people expect that to be out?

I'm hoping by the end of the year. It's going to be really, really inexpensive.

It's like we're recording in September of 2023, right?

Yeah. It's like we're targeting $5 a month.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. I want this to be available to everyone. Yeah. Yeah. And it's the purpose is to prepare people for what's coming with the health. Because I've been doing this for 50 years and I've compiled a lot of knowledge and, you know, it gets confusing because there's some of this, some of that. I feel it's my personal responsibility to put it all together, make it clear as can be. You know, it takes me like 10 to 20 hours to make one of these modules.

Yeah.

So I'm really excited about it. It consumes almost all my time.

I love to learn from you, man. I mean, a lot of people ask you who my what my mentors are, and I can't say that I have a specific person who I talk to on the phone or anything like that, but you've definitely influenced me a lot. So, I'm super grateful for you and grateful to be able to know you down here at 3P. 3P with Ray Peat. Alright. Well, folks, again, the show notes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife/Merkola3 including the arm wrestling video if you want to see that. If his masterclass is out, I'll stick it in there as well if that's out by now. If I'll put it in retro later on. And thank you so much, Joe, for doing this. Thank you to everybody for listening in. Till next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Joe Mercola signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com. Have an amazing week.

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