The Dark Truth About Storebought WINE, Costco Hot Dogs & Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Metformin & GLP-1 Induced Muscle Loss?! & How To Biohack Surgery Recovery.

In this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, the dark truth about store-bought wine, Costco hot dogs, and extra virgin olive oil, metformin and GLP-1-induced muscle loss, and how to biohack surgery recovery, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. Today, I've got a lot of news flashes. I don't think I'm doing any listener Q&A today. If you have questions, you can always go to the website. You can interact with my AI clone there at BenGreenfieldLife.com, or you can ask a question for the podcast. But today, I just got a bunch of juicy crap for you. BenGreenfieldLife.com/484 is where the show notes reside. I actually just want to jump right in this whole surgery thing. It's interesting, I have a client right now who's in hip surgery. Uh, he came to me, he had some pretty severe arthritic conditions in his hip. Uh, we did a lot, but ultimately he needs surgery. So he's in surgery, and we've been talking back and forth about ways to enhance your recovery from surgery, ways to bounce back faster, because frankly, the old school rest, ice, compression, elevation, and Pop some ibuprofen is, well, it's old school. So I want to go over some of the things I would do if I ever, God forbid, had to get a surgery. Could happen someday. I'm a pretty active guy. I wouldn't be surprised. Or that you can do if you happen to go in for a hip replacement or a knee scope or a boob job, or I don't know, I don't even know what the recovery time is for a boob job. Haven't looked into that. Glad I haven't had to. But anyways, uh, surgery recovery, what are some of the things that I would do. I'm going to walk you through some of the dietary principles, some of the supplement principles, and some of the so-called biohacking principles that will assist with surgery recovery. And no, I'm not necessarily saying, you know, put butter in your coffee to recover faster from surgery. I'm going to talk more about technologies, you know, like PMF and HBOT and some of those weird alphabet letter soup acronyms. But let's start with the simple stuff. So first of all, Um, let's start with processed sugar. Big deal, right? You probably already knew that, but, but I do recommend reducing the intake of processed foods, especially those high in sugar, because that may enhance surgery recovery via the pathway of mitigating inflammation and stabilizing blood glucose levels. We know that high sugar intake— not having a sweet potato with dinner, you guys, and not like throwing out the beet chips that you got from the healthy food section at the airport store because they're laced with fine amounts of cane sugar, organic unicorn tear-infused cane sugar for that matter. But I'm not talking about that stuff. I'm talking about high sugar intake. Okay, I'm talking about soda pops and cake and candy and that whole grain scone frosted with frosting at the coffee shop. High sugar diets can lead to low chronic-grade inflammation that can impair the body's ability to heal wounds and recover from surgery trauma. Research has shown— I'm not just making this stuff up— that hyperglycemia delays wound healing. Specifically, it does that by reducing leukocyte function and increasing oxidative stress. So, if you want to reduce systemic inflammation and improve immune function, it would behoove you to eat only sugars that are more complex, sweet potatoes, yams, beets, maybe some good healthy fermented, soaked, or sprouted oats, grains, et cetera. But, I wouldn't focus too much on Twinkies. Speaking of Twinkies, I would also be careful with seed oils. I know they're a hot topic now. Soybean oil, canola oil, corn oil, very rich in omega-6 fatty acids. It's interesting, bodybuilders way back in the day, I think they, some of them still do that, will use arachidonic acid to increase inflammation post-workout for better muscle growth. You don't want to reduce inflammation post-workout. It's an interesting theory to just promote it hardcore, but you don't want to promote inflammation when you're trying to recover from surgery. An imbalance between omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids has also been associated with delayed wound healing and increased risk of complications post-surgery. And you're going to get a lot more omega-6 fatty acids if you're eating a lot of fried foods. I have no problem with you going to the Whole Foods salad bar that features cold expeller-pressed canola oil. It's vegetable oils that have been heated multiple times, exposed to a lot of oxygen and heat and light. And excess omega-6 intake can also lead to the production of pro-inflammatory eicosanoids. And that's an issue. So if you reduce seed oil consumption and consumption of fried foods, especially when you're recovering, I think it's just good for general lifestyle. A lot of these tips are— you'll lower inflammation, you'll create a more favorable environment for healing. All right, so basic unsexy stuff out of the way. Just don't mainline sugar and seed oils if you're trying to recover well. Bone broth. I would include a cup of bone broth with as many meals as possible. Bone broth is rich in collagen, amino acids like glycine and proline, and minerals that are essential for tissue repair. Collagen is going to provide structural support to skin and connective tissue. Which is crucial for wound healing. Glycine can support gut health and reduce inflammation and improve nutrient absorption. A lot of people didn't know that little glycine with a meal improves nutrient absorption. We're talking like around 4 to 6 grams. And studies have suggested that collagen supplementation can reduce recovery time after surgery by allowing for new tissue formation and reducing inflammation. You can just— you don't have to like buy a whole chicken or two and get out a crock pot and hobble around the kitchen in your crutches making your own bone broth. You can quite literally just buy it from the grocery store. We buy the Kettle Fire brand. There's other brands out there, good organic bone broth. There's even bone broth powders now. A company called Ancient Nutrition makes a good one. But bone broth would be a good idea. Of course, you could just supplement with collagen, right? That's not a bad idea. I don't put that in the whole food category, but collagen is the primary structural protein in connective tissue, skin, and bones. Research has also shown on the collagen supplementation promotes wound healing and improves skin elasticity and supports joint recovery. You've got amino acids, again, similar to what you'd find in bone broth and a collagen powder, collagen peptides like glycine and proline and hydroxyproline, all essential for tissue repair. And studies suggest that collagen can accelerate surgery recovery by improving the strength and integrity of all those newly formed baby tissues. That's super simple to do, and you could even upgrade bone broth by putting extra collagen into bone broth. The bone broth police are not going to come down and arrest you for doing that. Collagen powders, a lot of good ones are out there. I'll toss one brand out there I like. Ancient Nutrition has a good one. I'm working with a company now called 10X. They have a collagen powder. It's a few different brands out there, collagen, but just mainlining collagen. I mean, I would be getting at least 40 grams of collagen a day if it were me. Next, what kind of diet do you follow overall? And obviously, based on biochemical individuality, different diets are going to be right for different people. There's genetic factors, there's blood factors, there's gut factors, there's brain factors. But in general, if I were going to get surgery, I would follow something pretty close to what is called the Paleo Autoimmune Diet, or also known as the AIP. That diet focuses on nutrient-dense anti-inflammatory foods while simultaneously eliminating potential allergies and irritants or intolerances or plant chemicals that might in high doses promote inflammation. So we're talking about being careful with soy, grains, dairy, eating like a caveman, but a modern caveman, right? Tubers, meat, bone broth. Dairy is kind of sort of okay if it's fermented and really organic and good natural dairy. But in most cases, even that's something that's limited compared to protein and healthy vegetables and healthy fats on a paleo autoimmune diet. Shout out to a former podcast guest of mine, Mickey Trescott, who has the Paleo Autoimmune Diet book and cookbook. You can get them on Amazon. It's just a great diet for reducing inflammation, for improving autoimmune symptoms, and providing essential nutrients for tissue repair and reducing the risk of post-surgical complications. Super simple. It's one of the few elimination, mildly restrictive diets I know of that also doesn't taste like cardboard, or as I've been known to say, the foul dung of Satan. So, paleo autoimmune diet, that'd be another one that would fall from a dietary standpoint. Now let's jump into certain nutrients while we're on this nutrient category. I mentioned collagen. Yes. Essential amino acids. Yes, absolutely. They stimulate muscle protein synthesis. They reduce muscle loss even if you're sedentary. Very interesting studies on essential amino acids for that. They enhance overall recovery, again, particularly when mobility is restricted. So essential amino acids, a little different than branched-chain amino acids. They can be combined with collagen. I wouldn't combine your collagen and your essential amino acids in one powder in water. It's just going to throw off the ratios, but you can take both at different times throughout the day. Gun to my head, I were to get surgery tomorrow, I would be doing 40 grams of collagen a day. I would also be doing 20 grams of essential amino acids per day. I'm obviously biased here because I co-own a supplements company that sells essential amino acids, Kion, I think it's a great company, great ratios, well-researched, clean. So that's, that's the way I'd go around 20 grams a day of essential amino acids. Next one would be something for reduction of inflammation and supportive joint recovery. I am going to hop right back up on my soapbox here and recommend a product called Flex2U. It's got tumorosaccharides, serrapeptidase, proteolytic-like enzymes, all of which can reduce inflammation and support joint recovery. Really good for breaking down scar tissue, reducing swelling. Good research on many of these compounds for post-surgical pain, for improved mobility, for accelerated tissue healing. I would not take them with food because they're going to work more to break down, especially food with protein, the protein in the food, than doing what they need to do in your body. But something like KyonFlex, the standard dosage is 3. I'd personally double up if I had surgery, 3 in the morning on an empty stomach. 3 in the evening on an empty stomach. You don't have to take furious notes. I'll put all this stuff at bengreenfieldlife.com/484. What else in addition to collagen, essential amino acids, and something like Kion Flex would I do from a supplement standpoint? Peptides? Yeah, particularly BPC-157 and KPV. These are synthetic peptides that are known for their regenerative properties. BPC promotes tissue healing by stimulating angiogenesis, reduces inflammation. It protects cells from oxidative damage. Research has shown it can accelerate wound healing, reduce pain, support musculoskeletal recovery. You can take it orally, but it's mostly going to act in the gut if you take it orally. So, you'd have to get an injectable version. And these days, I'd recommend talking to a doctor. Some websites out there still have some pretty clean versions of peptides. I like one called Limitless Life, another company called Peptide Sciences. And similar to BPC-157, KPV, that's a derivative of something called alpha-melanocyte stimulating hormone. You don't need to know that. I'm just trying to sound smart, but it's got really good anti-inflammatory and pain management properties and could aid in post-surgical inflammation and tissue repair. I know there's a ton of different peptides out there. I just don't want to knock you over too much information. If I were to choose to, I'd use BPC-157 and KPV. Vitamin C. Doctors have been giving it for years to patients post-surgery, especially in military settings. Vitamin C is critical for collagen synthesis, immune function, wound healing, used for stuff like this, goes all the way back to World War II. You can get it in IVs, obviously at higher doses. You can also just take it as a supplement. Interestingly, with collagen, it acts as a cofactor in the production of collagen, which is essential for, again, repairing your skin, blood vessels, connective tissue. Vitamin C itself can accelerate wound healing and reduce infection risk, which is nice if you've been in a clinic or in a hospital. And deficiencies in vitamin C have been shown to delay recovery. Which could make inadequate post-surgery results, result in inadequate post-surgery results. So, high vitamin C intake, it's tough to not get disaster pants if you're taking more than about 2 grams of vitamin C. I would take 5 to 6 grams, just spread it out throughout the day. If you can get a vitamin C IV, great. I mean, those go up to freaking 100 grams. There's a lot of vitamin C in those. Throw a brand out at you, a company Jigsaw Health, they have something called Adrenal Cocktail. It's a blend of vitamin C and minerals, little powder packet you put in water, tastes pretty good. That'd be a good option. So vitamin C, definitely include that. Hydrogen. Now we're getting into the sexy stuff. Molecular hydrogen or H2, that's a very potent antioxidant. It reduces oxidative stress and inflammation by— you can probably hear my dogs in the background, probably UPS. Sorry. Or my dogs really like when I talk about hydrogen. It selectively neutralizes harmful free radicals, and research has shown that hydrogen therapy can improve wound healing, reduce pain, protect tissues from oxidative damage. You can get it in a tablet form, right? And that'll reduce inflammatory markers, support cellular repair. Very beneficial, in my opinion, for post-surgery recovery. You can take 2 or 3 tablets, drop them into water. They make bottles now, hydrogen water bottles. Those produce a slightly lower ppm, parts per million, of hydrogen compared to using the tablets, but they're convenient. And, either way, I would be throwing hydrogen into the daily routine. No reason that you can't mix that with vitamin C in the morning, for example. C60, carbon 60, and methylene blue. These you don't hear talked about as much and these are part of the so-called mitochondrial triad where you combine C60 and methylene blue with red light therapy for really good mitochondrial health. I think it's a great idea. Right. Not only do I think full-body red light therapy is fantastic for supporting collagen and elastin production, for speeding up your healing time post-surgery, uh, it's been shown to enhance mitochondrial function, promote the synthesis of ATP, promote collagen synthesis. Again, throwing that in there with vitamin C with your collagen intake. And it penetrates pretty deeply into tissues, which can trigger regenerative processes and reduce oxidative stress. While sweating in a sauna might not be a good idea with post-surgical wounds, red light panel, red light bed, great options. And then you take methylene blue and C60 30 to 60 minutes prior to the red light. Well, C60, like molecular hydrogen, is a very powerful antioxidant that can help to protect tissues from damage during surgical recovery and help with wound healing. Methylene blue helps to enhance your electron transport chain activity and reduce oxidative stress. So you could stack like in the morning C60, Methylene Blue, and then you go into your red light therapy about 30 to 60 minutes later. The guy who runs the website, Mike Bocalski, and he came up with this idea, at least I've heard him coin the term mitochondrial triad to take C60, take Methylene Blue, and then 30 to 60 minutes later use red light therapy. Great not only for his general energy and mitochondrial health, but it's a strategy I would use for surgery recovery as well. Okay, so we got those supplements, right? You got essential amino acids, collagen, Kion Flex, BPC-157, and KPV peptides if you can get them. High vitamin C intake, molecular hydrogen tablets, and C60, and methylene blue, particularly those last two, C60 and methylene blue, prior to red light therapy. In addition to red light therapy, what else would I throw in there in terms of technologies? Well, you've got earthing. Earthing or grounding is easy. It's free. You go outside barefoot or you use a grounding sheet or earthing sheet on your bed or your pillowcases, or like I'm standing on one made by the company Ultimate Longevity in my office right now. That reduces inflammation by allowing your body to absorb free electrons from the surface of the planet or the surface of a mat that neutralize or that will neutralize free radicals. There's one study published in the Journal of Inflammation Research showing that earthing could decrease recovery time and improve tissue repair post-surgery by reducing oxidative stress and improving blood viscosity, which increases circulation. And again, that's not a hard one or a very expensive one to do compared to a couple of these other technologies that I'll give a head nod to. Next one would be pulsed electromagnetic field therapy or PEMF. I sometimes call this grounding on steroids because you're really amplifying the signal with PEMF. PEMF can enhance tissue repair by increasing ATP production in your cells. It improves circulation. It also stimulates collagen production. That's the reason a lot of these things are used in the anti-aging or longevity world too because collagen is such an important compound for maintaining longevity in muscle and skin and hair. My nails grow like weeds. I have so much collagen and amino acids in my diet. There was a study in Bioelectromagnetics that found that PEMF therapy significantly shortened recovery time in patients post-surgery by reducing both inflammation and edema. PEMF, kind of like earthing and grounding, usually comes in the form of a mat they can lay on or stretch on. They also, in the case of a surgery, for example, even have coils and pads that can be placed directly over joints. Uh, there's different brands out there. I mentioned for earthing or grounding mats or devices, uh, one company I like is Ultimate Longevity. For PEMF, there would be Pulscenters. They have a unit that has coils and stuff that you attach to your body. It's very expensive though. Dr. William Pawluk has some great PEMF devices on his website, P-A-W-L-U-K, 10X. They have the Pure Wave PEMF mat. That's really good. They also do the red light bed and an oxygen device, their so-called Superhuman Protocol. If you just wanted to get all three, it would drain your bank account, but you'd I have a pretty cool setup at home. So, those would be a few of the things that I would consider from a PEMF standpoint. And then, last few things to consider here when it comes to biohacks. Hyperbaric oxygen absolutely enhances recovery. You can use a home soft-shell version, which is more affordable and convenient for post-surgery recovery. Hospitals and clinics have big hard-shell versions that go to really high pressures. It'll increase oxygen solubility in your blood. I totally said that word wrong, solubility in your blood that enhances tissue oxygenation, especially in areas with compromised blood flow due to surgery. And research has shown that HBOT reduces swelling, accelerates wound healing, promotes the formation of new blood vessels via angiogenesis, can reduce infection rates, helps me just feel like I have fantastic brain health. I'm not getting brain surgery anytime soon, just improves overall healing outcomes. And usually you'd want to do it for a decent period of time, 60 to 90 minutes a day if you can, but Hey, you're just going to be laying around anyways after surgery, so why not? Doesn't stack well with a lot of these protocols, but you could make a case for doing your hyperbaric. And then because you're saturated with oxygen, then you go into the red light therapy. The red light therapy will kick, uh, see, all chemical on you, kick nitric oxide synthase off one of the complexes in the mitochondria and allow for better oxygen uptake and ATP production. So that's a good stack, anything with oxygen and red light. Cryotherapy or anything cold, cold plunging, cryotherapy, it'll reduce inflammation and pain, constricts blood vessels, reduces tissue swelling. Then you get subsequent vasodilatory tissue expanding and blood vessel expanding response upon rewarming that helps to flush out metabolic waste products. Uh, research has shown cold exposure reduces levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, enhances muscle recovery by reducing oxidative stress, provides natural pain relief and numbs nerve endings, which can benefit post-surgical recovery. Again, you often have to be careful with water immersion after surgery. Sometimes, a cryotherapy chamber is fine. If you're in a cold area of the world, you can even just go outside in the cold weather for a little while, which is about the time this podcast comes out, going to be a viable option in many areas of the world. So, cold plunging or cryotherapy when you're able to do it, when you're able to expose wounds to water or sweat, things like cold plunging, infrared sauna, and modalities like that would definitely be beneficial. And then, once you're ready to get back to training, and I'll be doing this with my client, I'll primarily be using electrical muscle stimulation with him. These are pads that you can place on different muscles that will allow for muscle maintenance or growth or blood flow without necessarily needing to use a specific joint. So, let's say somebody has a hip surgery, they could use electrical muscle stimulation on the non-operated hip and on the upper body. Or, if someone has a shoulder surgery, they could use it for their core, their legs, et cetera. There are full-body suits. There's one called the Katalyst, spelled with a K, that I like. There are spot treatment devices, a portable one called the Powerdot, another one called the CompEx that are surprisingly powerful. There are really powerful ones like the ARP Wave or the Nūbi that also do a great job with electrical muscle stimulation, muscle maintenance, muscle growth, even if you're unable to lift heavier weights. So, big head nod to EMS, electrical muscle stimulation. And then secondarily, blood flow restriction training. This is where you use a, a band or device placed around the upper arms or the upper part of the legs to restrict blood flow to an area or occlude blood flow. And then you can do low-intensity or bodyweight exercise, and it almost fools your muscles into thinking that they're subjected to a heavy load while not subjecting the joint to an actual heavy load. And studies have shown that BFR is very effective in maintaining muscle mass and accelerating recovery. Particularly in patients, individuals, or athletes who cannot perform high-intensity exercise. It's also great as a 1-pound travel solution to have your own gym in a hotel room. I travel frequently with cheapo blood flow restriction bands, an elastic band, and doorframe suspension pull-up strap, and I've got to work out in my hotel room. That's perfect. Way better than the squeaky elliptical trainer and the rusty dumbbells at the hotel gym. So both electrical muscle stimulation and BFR training are modalities that should allow you to get back to physical function and working out more quickly after surgery without risking post-surgical damage to a joint that's been operated on. So, so just fed you through the fire hose there. But, you know, on a typical day, just, just to go through a summary of this, right, you reduce your intake of processed foods, sugars, and seed oils, have a cup of bone broth with each meal, and follow something like the Paleo Autoimmune Diet. Then, you're taking some collagen, some essential amino acids, some peptides like BPC-157 and KPV, and vitamin C, hydrogen, C60, and methylene blue. You're, from a biohacking standpoint, trying to get 20, 30 minutes of full-body red light therapy per day using red light panels or red light bed. You're using PMF, around 20 minutes of PMF a day or 20 minutes of grounding or earthing a day or both. 45 to 90 minutes of hyperbaric oxygen each day. Once movement allows based on wound healing or movement restrictions, electrical muscle stimulation, blood flow restriction band training, infrared sauna, and cryotherapy or cold plunging. And, I think that if you were to do a lot of these things, I'm not a doctor, don't misconstrue this as medical advice, but those are some of the things that I would definitely look into. Also, a fantastic book, shout out to Dr. Stephen Hussey, a former podcast guest of mine. He wrote a book called "Pain Sense" and he gets into the piezoelectric potential of tissue and how things like water, sunlight, and different often lesser talked about modalities to reduce pain and allow for faster healing can really move the dial here as well. So his book is called Pain Sense. I'm going to be interviewing him soon, but it'd be a good book to check out as well if you were recovering from surgery. So I know a lot of things to consider there, but those are my surgery biohacking recommendations. If you have your own to add or you want to kind of look through a list of some of the things that I just talked about, just go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/484. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/484. Now, we're going to move on. There's a former podcast guest of mine. He's known on Instagram as the Mass Spectrometry Guy or the Mass Spec Guy. His name is Ben Katz. Hopefully, I didn't butcher his last name. It's Katz, K-A-T-Z. So, mass spectrometry is where you measure— not to get too nerdy on you, it measures the mass-to-charge ratio of molecules in a sample and gives you the exact molecular weight of all the different things of something you test. When I interviewed Ben on my podcast, we were talking about everything from nicotine pouches to chocolate bar to CBD, and he'll analyze everything and find out whether or not it has in it what the label actually says that it's supposed to have in it. And also, it has other things that you wouldn't expect. Like when I interviewed him, massive amounts of caffeine in most of the Hershey's chocolate bars. Who knew? We also found different flavoring agents that were technically banned in nicotine products and a lot of interesting information. Well, he's done some pretty intriguing tests on some other products. I wanted to bring a few of them to light for you. And, you can, of course, go check out this guy on YouTube to watch some of his other videos. For example, I don't know about you, I used to go to Costco all the time, especially when I was a kid. And, coming out the door, I'd get the Costco hot dog. It was like the most calories at the lowest price, the best flavor I could get coming out of Costco. So he tested Costco hot dogs with his mass spectrometry analyzer, and the results are a little disappointing. I don't think I'll be getting the Costco hot dog on my way out of Costco anymore. My apologies to Costco. Maybe Costco, you'll hear this podcast and you'll adjust your hot dog design mechanisms because it's not a great picture. First of all, they contain plasticizers like trischloroethyl phosphate, which is technically a flame retardant. And viscosity regulator in plastics and polymers. But that's a little concerning when it comes to food safety. Surprisingly, these hot dogs also contain caffeine at 6.6 parts per million, which is less than in an energy drink, but it's a significant amount of caffeine in a hot dog you might be giving to, say, I don't know, a 6-year-old. They also included canola meal, which is a byproduct of vegetable oil extraction from pressed cake leftovers. They, uh, they had something called siapon in them, which is a molecule from oilseed crops like also abundant in pressed cake leftovers after oil extraction. I don't know what this thing is with cake leftovers that apparently they might be using in a Costco hot dog. But considering the leftover seed oil meal, plasticizers, and a hint of caffeine, it was a less than stellar review of the Costco hot dogs, I can tell you that. So then Ben went on and looked at Costco olive oil, Kirkland brand olive oil. My apologies again, Costco. I'm a Costco member, okay? These are just things I'm not going to be buying at Costco. Not that I bought a lot of hot dogs at Costco in the first place, but Kirkland olive oil, a lot of people buy it. Well, it shows signs of potential adulteration with canola oil. 10 times higher linoleic acid levels compared to your standard California olive oil. Much lower polyphenol content than a standard California olive oil. Uh, Kirkland's very high linoleic acid levels suggest that they are possibly, probably blending it with canola oil or other vegetable oils. It appears yellow and emulsified when he ran it through a centrifuge compared to the clear separation from the 100% California sustainably grown olive oil that he tested that you might also be able to buy at Costco. I think you can. They don't just have the Kirkland brand, but I wouldn't be buying it. So when it comes to olive oil, if you're shopping at Costco, interestingly, not all is created equal and I would skip the Kirkland brand. Throw one more at you. Yeah, he tested wine. This wasn't Costco wine. This was a wine that I used to buy all the time when I was in college and I couldn't afford good wine and I wanted to throw a party. The Barefoot wine, it was so cheap. I get for like $3.99, $4.99, $3.99, $4.99. So, what did he find in this? Well, he found that it had some interesting compounds in it, dihydro-alpha-ionone in this Barefoot Moscato deliciously sweet white wine. That's a synthetic flavor compound that is basically something that could be used to create a purely artificial white wine, basically putting chemicals in it to make it taste better. Concerning considering we already know that most wines in the U.S. have very high amounts of pesticides and herbicides. But, that was one thing that was very interesting. A ton of synthetic flavors and additives as well as a yellow pigment suggested that they dyed it and then added a little extra glutathione to improve the stability and preserve the aroma and the color. So, at least they thought of that. But that's interesting because it has a gold medal from the California State Fair right there on the label. Gold, 95 points. I wouldn't necessarily get Barefoot Moscato wine. Concerns about its authenticity and potential suspicious additives and unusual metabolite levels compared to a natural wine. So, that's just a flavor of the type of stuff that Mr. Mass Spec is putting out, Mr. Ben Katz. So, shout out to Ben for analyzing all this stuff. Bookmark or subscribe to his YouTube channel. I'm not affiliated with him at all. I just think it's fascinating he's able to go in as a third-party independent analyzer who's not necessarily getting paid to do this besides probably ads on his social media or something. He's finding out some stuff that serves us well when it comes to making healthier food choices. So, definitely just don't get a Costco hot dog drenched in Kirkland olive oil and wash it down with a glass or two of Barefoot Moscato wine. Wouldn't be a good idea. Don't do that. You don't need to do that. So, and check out my interview with him. I'll, I'll link to it in the show notes at bengreenfieldlife.com/484. Next up, new study on creatine. They compared creatine, which a lot of people take. I take creatine every day, 5 grams of creatine. If I'm sleep deprived or need a mental pick-me-up, 10 to 15 grams. Don't take 10 to 15 grams all at once. You'll paint the back of the toilet seat. You gotta split it in the multiple servings throughout the day. But, there's so many forms of creatine out there and people say, "Oh, my creatine is so much better. I got the Creatine Mega or the Creatine Hydro or the creatine this or that." So, this new study in the Journal of Physiology Research looked at supplementing with creatine monohydrate, just dirt cheap standard creatine monohydrate, easy to find, easy to get, or creatine hydrochloride. And then, they compared it the two forms of creatine. And then they had participants consume— one group consumed these supplements. They had a group of 40 people and perform resistance training for 8 weeks, and then they measured them after the resistance study. They found that creatine hydrochloride, despite, based on my little bit of amateur shopping, costing anywhere from 2 to 4 times that of creatine monohydrate, resulted in seen absolutely no better benefit on strength, hypertrophy, hormone responses, anything that they looked at compared to just plain old plain Jane creatine monohydrate. Yet again, showing that often paying for the fancy stuff is not necessarily something that you need to do. And this got me thinking more about creatine because of some creatine gummies that got sent to my house. And I'm hearing more and more people talking about about creatine gummies now. So this is, this is kind of interesting. There's, there's a journal that I occasionally read called Nutra Ingredients, and they had a report in which they looked into creatine gummies. The supplement manufacturer called NOW, they tested a bunch of creatine gummies, and they found that half of the creatine gummy brands out there failed to meet the dosage claims on the label. And furthermore, and this is a little bit concerning, creatine can break down into something called creatinine. Okay. When it's dissolved in water. So if the creatine remains dissolved for a long time in water, like you mix up a creatine monohydrate smoothie, you forget to drink it, you finish half of it the rest of the next day. It's not going to have much creatine in it. It's going to have relatively useless creatinine in it. Now, contrary to popular belief and contrary to what I think I've been guilty of saying in the past, creatinine is not going to harm your kidneys. But it is expensive pee. And then creatine will also break down if it's exposed to higher temperatures or a low pH environment. Considering the process of making a creatine gummy requires water, often acidic components like citric acid for flavor, there's great potential for degradation over time. And sure enough, this is what they found. NOW evaluated a total of 12 creatine brand gummies on the market using high performance liquid chromatography, not mass spectrometry but high-performance liquid chromatography is another good way to test. It's basically an analytical chemistry technique that separates compounds in a chemical mixture using pressure, pretty gold standard way to look into something. And so, even though a dosage of 5g was often on the label, 5,000 milligrams, 5 grams, which I recommend, tested samples claimed anywhere from 750 to 5,000 milligrams per serving, but a lot of them were way off of that. And instead, it looked like a lot of the creatine was likely breaking down into creatinine, which is a reasonable proposition based on the idea that you need water and you got to dissolve the creatine to make a creatine gummy. Now, creatinine is, is biologically inactive, right? It's not going to really give you any strength or power benefits or anything anything like that. It is a normal byproduct of muscle metabolism. This is why if you go and lift weights and you get a blood test and you have elevated creatinine, the doctor might tell you your kidneys are in trouble. Could just mean you worked out the day before. They don't cause kidney damage on their own. They could indicate kidney harm if you had really high levels and you hadn't worked out, but it still means that creatine gummies could be a total waste of your money. Now, I realize a lot of people out there are taking creatine gummies. For example, a shout-out to Dan McCormick. He's got a company called Create. They make a creatine Gummy. And he informed me that creatine can degrade in water, often takes days or weeks. It doesn't instantly degrade into creatine, and I've never said that. It will start to degrade though. But what he told me about, and I'll put this in a nutshell for you, is that if you reduce the amount of time that creatine sits in water, you cook at low temperatures, you use proper ingredients, you avoid a highly acidic environment, you can create a good creatine gummy. What I want to make sure you guys know is that if you're using creatine using a gummy, you do need to actually ask, like, ask the company for a certificate of analysis or go to this analysis that I will post in the shownotes that show some of the brands that this NOW Foods actually tested for creatine because a lot of them just— you're going to get expensive pee and waste your money. I guess they taste good. You're getting calories at least. But, you know, Create, you know, shout out to Dan. Looks like Create's making a good product to creatinine forward gummy and that one would be okay. The ones that I have in my refrigerator right now that I've been messing around with are from Organifi. Seems like they're doing a good job as well, although I have admittedly not seen their laboratory certificate of analysis because they just showed up in my refrigerator 2 days ago. However, do your research when it comes to creatine and creatine gummies and also know that a fancy form of creatine like creatine hydrochloride is not necessarily going to give you any advantage over plain Jane creatine monohydrate, although it may drain your bank account a little more quickly. What else? What else? Well, let's talk about muscle loss. Few concerns about muscle loss out there, particularly related to two very popular drugs. Let's start with the first one, metformin. Metformin. This was published in the Journal of Sarcopenia and Muscle. Metformin induces muscle atrophy. By transcriptional regulation of myostatin via HDAC6 and FOXO3A. But you don't necessarily need to know all that, all that alphabet letter soup stuff. So, well, the drug metformin is something a lot of people know about, right? One of the oldest and most widely used drugs for diabetes worldwide, often the first line of therapy because its mechanism of action and its side effects are fairly well known. Up to 90% of type 2 diabetics take metformin. And the, the thing that happens when you take metformin is it inhibits what's called complex 1 of the electron transport chain. That can result in the buildup of lactic acid, and it also allows for the activation of an enzyme called AMPK, the same enzyme that's activated by endurance exercise or training in a fasted state or calorie restriction. Restriction or a low-carb diet. So the pro-AMPK effects of a drug like metformin are why a lot of people are using it off-label as a longevity agent, as a so-called calorie restriction mimetic or an exercise mimetic. And when you increase AMPK activation, you also increase fatty acid oxidation, which is another reason a lot of people have type 2 diabetes are interested in it. The idea being that burning a lot of fat would help you to become more lean and help with the control of diabetes. But not only is there an increase in lactic acidosis, which is not necessarily a great thing to be having happen long-term because of the acidotic state that the cell would be in. Technically, cancer growth occurs, by the way, in case you didn't know this, in an acidotic environment or a lactate-rich environment. But perhaps just as concerningly, lean muscle mass loss is a pretty significant effect of using metformin, kind of similar to what you've heard, and I'll talk about this in a second, about GLP-1 agonists. This study that I just cited, it basically indicates that increased fatty acid oxidation in, in the presence of metformin. Metformin could lead to some amount of muscle wasting. So what this study that I just mentioned says is that metformin negatively affects the hypertrophic response to resistance training in healthy older individuals. That might be because it reduces inflammation so much. It, uh, might be, uh, because people are, are getting that increase in AMPK and fatty acid oxidation but all we know is that metformin compared to a placebo does not result in the same gains in lean body and muscle mass than people treated with metformin. Uh, there are results basically that support the negative effects of metformin on muscle hypertrophy. Now, does this mean that metformin is completely bad to take, especially if you have type 2 diabetes? It depends, right? If, if the benefits and the blood sugar control that you get from metformin in addition to the fatty acid oxidation are long-term offering you life-saving potential, then maybe you could put up with a little bit of lactic acidosis and muscle loss. But considering there are other options out there like berberine, dihydroberberine, bitter melon extract, exercise, just throwing that out there as an option, calorie control, carbohydrate control, etc. Mitochondria and the fact that other studies have shown that metformin may have a deleterious impact in your ability to be able to build new mitochondria make me think that I wouldn't use it as the first tool for something like metabolic management and type 2 diabetes. Again, I'm not a doctor. I don't want you to misconstrue this as medical advice, but I know, again, a lot of people in my world, in the longevity world, they're using it off-label as a longevity agent. And I just— the only thing I don't know, here's what I I don't know, you guys. I don't know if you start taking berberine or, you know, nature's metformin, dihydroberberine, whatever, that you will also get a bunch of lactic acidosis or that it will inhibit the complex 1 of the electron transport chain to the same effect. I would love to see a study on that, but I have not seen the same data on some of these natural alternatives to metformin on muscle wasting and an impact on mitochondria as I've seen with metformin. I, I have an entire, uh, article called "The Dark Side of Metformin." I'll link to it in the shownotes if you want to read up more on the mechanism of action. I'll also link to the website of, I don't know how to pronounce his name, Haidoot, this guy who writes some really good articles about metformin. And he did a recent report on it as well. This was how I became aware of the potential limit in muscle gain and the actual muscle atrophy that metformin causes specifically by activating AMPK, and myostatin. So, if you want to maintain and build muscle, metformin might not be the best thing for you to be on. Hey, quick interruption. The video might have disappeared for you, and I'm actually going back and inserting this quick snip for you about berberine and many of these other so-called glucose disposal agents or things that might act similarly to metformin. After I recorded this podcast episode, I went back and dug into the current research, And it does turn out that a lot of these compounds that people take, including berberine, dihydroberberine, we already talked about metformin, may negatively impact muscle hypertrophy, potentially causing muscle atrophy in some situations in very high dosages. The mechanism of action behind that is a suppression of protein synthesis, potential stimulation of protein degradation. In muscle tissue. And this is a lot of times in animal models with high dosages. But these glucose disposal agents, one of the things that they seem to do is increase the expression of something called Atrogin-1, which is a protein associated with muscle breakdown. In addition to that, things like berberine, you know, just like metformin, can influence muscle protein synthesis through the effects on the AMPK pathway. Which I already described to you. And, and, you know, it's the same pathway that you activate through calorie restriction, through fasting, through a lot of carbohydrate restriction, through excessive exercise. And in small dosages, that's okay. But if you're constantly going low sugar, sugar disposal agents, basically keeping blood sugar low or controlled at all costs, that might actually be an issue when it comes to building muscle. I mean, we know insulin, for example, is very anabolic. Your goal is not to suppress insulin all the time, but to have good surges of it when necessary for anabolism. Same thing for cortisol, right? That's why we exercise. You look like you're going to get nuked by a tiger right after you've worked out. I think I just combined metaphors there, but your muscles look like World War II. You look like you've been running from a lion or a tiger. And, I think I heard one person put it this way, if you were sitting at your desk and all of the things that occur when you exercise, increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, increased blood sugar, increased cortisol, increased breath rate, massive increase in body temperature were to occur if you were sitting at your office, they'd take you to the hospital. But instead, brief surges of that with exercise seems to promote strength and longevity when not done in excess. So similarly, I don't think that we should be focusing myopically on controlling blood sugar with all these different supplements that we might take before carbohydrate-rich if we're taking very high dosages. And man, when I look at the research, the dosages widely vary. But my modus operandi that I plan on, you know, after digging into this, and that I would recommend to you too, is just take the minimum recommended dose of anything you're taking to control blood sugar prior to a meal. And if you're a diabetic, well, you know, again, like I mentioned earlier, the beneficial effects of some of these things on blood sugar may may give you a greater number of pros than the impact on muscle hypertrophy. But I'm still not as big a fan of metformin, and I will use less or recommend that folks are careful with the amount of glucose disposal agents that they use. Eat enough protein, lift weights, blah, blah, blah, but just don't chase low blood sugar and low insulin myopically. There are times when surges are necessary, right? Humans do well on feast-fast growth recovery cycles. Finally, the last thing I should mention is that if there's positive effects on blood sugar control from supplements like this, that could indirectly support muscle growth by improving overall health, ability to hit the gym, energy levels, insulin sensitivity. So, we need to bear that in mind as well. I just want to make sure we have we have a balanced approach when it comes to some of these compounds. Similarly, it appears that now we know from a standard dose of a GLP-1 that a ton of muscle loss and even cardiac muscle loss occurs from standard dosing with GLP-1s. And if you go listen to my interview with Tina Moore, you'll hear about how microdosing with GLP-1, and I've tried that, can help you to control appetite pretty significantly. Significantly without a lot of the deleterious side effects, including muscle loss, that we're seeing with these GLP-1 agonists. So this, uh, the, there are a couple of papers, one called Semaglutide Reduces Cardiomyocyte Size and Cardiac Mass in Lean and Obese Mice, another one called, uh, The Effects of Medically Induced Weight Loss on Skeletal Muscle. And the long story short is that in some cases, nearly half of the weight loss that people are getting from using a common GLP-1 drug is from the loss of skeletal muscle mass. Now, in addition to that, there's now headlines that these GLP-1 agonists that are shrinking waistlines are also shrinking the human heart, right? Not just these other muscles, but actual cardiac muscle tissue. So this was in rodent models, and granted, you in not all cases are mice little humans, but the researchers in this study found that heart muscle decrease in both obese and lean mice. This was a systemic effect observed in mice that they then confirmed in cultured human heart cells, right? So not only are you, are you losing muscle mass, but you're losing cardiac muscle mass. And this rate of muscle decline is significantly higher than what is typically observed with a normal calorie-reduced diet or aging. Aging and could, of course, lead to a host of long-term health issues. Right. As we've heard from Gabriel Lyon, the muscle-centric medicine doctor, loss of muscle is not just loss of strength or loss of the ability to look good in your bikini or whatever, right? Is decreased immunity, is increased risk of infections, is poor wound healing, right? Muscle stores important building blocks, amino acids that the body uses when you're sick, when you're stressed, when you're injured to repair and to maintain strength. It also helps to play a huge role as a metabolic sink in managing blood sugar, which could help to prevent diabetes and maybe keep you from having to take metformin. Speak of the devil. Muscle even releases these special molecules that you're probably hearing more and more about called myokines. Myokines are signaling molecules that help other parts of the body to fight infections and to support your immune system. So preserving muscle is a pretty good idea. And I'm just seeing more and more people who look lean and gaunt, and I'm not saying they are, but I suspect they are on GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy and Mounjaro. And yeah, you could— they're like, you don't have to throw these drugs under the bus. You can use smaller amounts. I said in the past you can eat enough protein, but I took a standard dose for a while. You don't want to eat protein. Screw that. Like, you sit down to ribeye steak, you're not even interested in it at all. It's like something's broken in my brain. Why do I not want this beautiful ribeye steak or, you know, protein smoothie bowl that I would usually they just mow down in no time flat because of these GLP-1 drugs. So just telling someone eat lean protein, oh, and then go lift weights while you're nauseous and have diarrhea, right? That looks good on paper but doesn't work on the streets. Instead, I suggest smaller doses of these. And there are other things that can mimic GLP-1 or trigger GLP-1. Akkermansia. Another— what's a company I interviewed? Calocurb. They have a very bitter like molecule that can help with appetite cravings and carb control, exercise, cold. There's some things that can help a little bit. And I say cold, I realize some people get out of a cold plunge and want to just eat everything in sight. For me, it suppresses my appetite. And that's purely anecdotal, not based on research. But anyways, the long story short is two very commonly used drugs, GLP-1 agonist and metformin, appear to be bad news bears when it comes to do muscle maintenance. And so I would be very careful with these and potentially even use smaller dosages and go listen to my podcast with Tina Moore regarding GLP-1 drugs and go read my article, The Dark Side of Metformin, when it comes to more on metformin. I feel like I just scaremongered you, fearmongered you for the past hour. I mean, hopefully the surgery recovery stuff helps, but now everybody's going to be like super nervous about Costco hot dogs and metformin, GLP-1 drugs. Maybe you should be. Maybe you should be. I don't know. I'm just putting the information out there, my friend. So, BenGreenfieldLife.com/484 is where you can access the show notes, the surgery recovery notes, just everything I mentioned. I try and do a really good job with the show notes. You can also go to BenGreenfieldLife.com, leave a question for the podcast. Do me a favor, give me a rate rating or review wherever you listen to the Boundless Life Podcast, the new title again. And thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate you. Have a fantastic day. To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks, and content to become the most complete, boundless version of you, visit bengreenfieldlife.com.

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