The Latest Cool Longevity Drugs, The Best Way To Exercise For Your Mitochondria, Fasting For Men Vs. Women & Much More With Dr. Chris Shade.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, for most healthy people, it doesn't matter that much if you have a tablespoon of butter in your morning coffee versus not.

We used to have uricase and we were fruit livers and stuff, and then we ran out of fruit. The ones who lived through that were the ones who had mutation that didn't have the uricase. There's all these feedback loops that keep you into ampd.

And I mean, if there's anything that people get out of this whole podcast, it's probably to take up fencing.

Help.

Performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.

Hey.

So this is a fun episode with my buddy Chris Shade. He interviewed me, I interviewed him. Geez, I don't know which way we were going, but this is what it sounds like when two geeky guys nerd out. I was on a walk during this show and he interviewed me while I was out on a walk. And I had a blast on this episode. So I think you're really, really going to dig it.

Welcome to Shades of Health Podcast, and I'm here with the one and only Ben Greenfield. Now, we don't see Ben. We have this placeholder of him. He looks very much like Chris Hemsworth.

But yeah, I was going to say use Thor. Please use Thor if you're using a placeholder.

Emerald Thor. He's walking through an ice field now. And so we can relate it to that in some way. But yeah, we're going to join Ben today and we're going to talk about a couple of things. One of the things is good long term biohacks. There's so many things you can jump into, really, and have all kinds of tech and stuff, but what can we incorporate long term into our life, get the most out of? And so we'll talk about that. And then I want to talk about women and biohacks for women. Yeah, I mean, one, we love women and we love talking about women, but they have very different responses to a lot of the things that we do, like fasting, intermittent fasting, keto. And so you've been around this for a long time.

Everybody's noticing how sexist Chris is doing right now.

Yes, yes, please notice that. And so we'll talk about biohacks for women, high fat for women, you know, anything around hormones for women, and then a little bit of, you know, ampk versus ampd shifting. This sort of perlmutter got me on this obsession with uric acid and how oh, geez. Yeah. And how you can get stuck into these certain pathways that are just like pulling you down away from AMPK all the time. They're all survival pathways and they include endogenous production of fructose. Even if you stay away from high fructose corn syrup, you can make it yourself. So with that, let's start with the first one there. In fact, let's start first by talking about how you're doing. How's your knee?

Well, I mean, first of all, I feel a great deal of pressure now. Knowing everything that we're going to talk about for the next 10 years.

Hopefully we can cover all that. My knee. Well, our mutual friend Dr. Matt Cook stuck a bunch of needles into it. He did what's called an intraosse needling protocol where he took all the cartilage. I've worn down over 20 years of being an idiot doing Ironman triathlons and all that stuff. And so he, and then he fills all those little plugged up holes with bone marrow and it regrows the cartilage and it's pretty cool. And I went in for a follow up MRI and lo and behold, all that cartilage that you normally have to get a knee replacement to fix on that lateral side is all fixed up. But you know that whole idea where when you're holding a bunch of putty and you squeeze it in your fists and a little bit pops out one crack. So you're showing that one crack pops out the other. So now that I've got medial knee pain, probably because I started using my knee differently. So I'm sorting through some, some, some, some after effects I didn't anticipate, but ultimately, yeah, regenerative medicine is so cool. I love this idea that we can now in a very minimally enhances manner, go in and do something like regrow cartilage with a little bit of osteomedling and plugging it up with some, some bone marrow. Silly putty.

Did he do that? Did he have like the ultrasound on and he was going into where the, where the stuff was and was he dissolving any and sucking it out or was he just breaking it up?

Yeah, ultrasound guided imaging. I've always had that protocol done. It's pretty cool because you don't even need anesthesia. You can just see your whole joint image right there on the screen. And you know, it's really not that uncomfortable at all. He did a little bit of a drainage of fluid. You know, everybody who's got pain a lot of times that pain is due to fluid sloshing around and putting pressure on nerves. So, you know, I did a little bit of that and then did the whole patching up protocol. So, you know, the other really cool thing for joints right now is this idea of taking a joint and moving it through full range of motion in almost like a shearing manner.

Right.

And so, you know, you'll see now a guy I actually just interviewed on my podcast, Ben Patrick, known as the knees over toes guy. You know, all this stuff's very counterintuitive. You squat with your knees in front of your toes. You do kind of like ass to grasp, you know, split squat lunges with your knees over your toes, and you load your knee in a shearing fashion. Counterintuitive and contraindicatory to what most physical therapists and orthopedic surgeons will tell you. But, gosh, I met him and started doing his program within, like, two weeks of, you know, doing it on a regular basis. My knee pain is kind of melting away. So, you know, it's interesting too, how a lot of physical therapy modalities were still figuring out this whole thing. It's kind of like, I don't know, it wouldn't surprise me these days if we found a new organ we didn't know existed right next to the liver or something. And it's like, why are we trying to get to Mars right now? Can we just make sure we know everything in our. In our bodies first?

No doubt. And did you know I had a. I just got back from Medellin, Columbia, where we're doing stem cells, and I'd gone down there two years and this years ago. And this experience was totally different because of the guy that we were working with, this Dr. Gonzale, and.

He believed in recreating the injury before putting the stems in there.

And he would do it with oxidative therapy. So we did ozone first. We did UV light, like a six pass uva, UVC light. And then in certain joints, you do ozone right into the joint. And now this time when we did it versus other times I've done it, the amount of inflammation and pain that came the next day into the areas that had been damaged, the worst in the past was insane. Like, totally redid the injury. So did you have any of those experiences when Matt did your knee when you were doing the other stuff?

Yeah. That paracrine signaling effect can be shocking in terms of reinitiating of a healing response almost in a way that harkens very similar to.

Almost.

A humoral Immune response. You see the body all of a sudden remembering and coming back and reinitiating inflammation in a very surprising manner. Freaks a lot of people out. Like I got stem cells and it made me even worse. Yeah, totally. And the fact is it does temporarily. And that idea of reinitiating the injury and then managing it properly in the same way that if you've been injured, been an idiot, say sprained your ankle playing tennis and just continue to play tennis, you got all the scar tissue laid down.

In almost like a cross linked and adhesive manner, dictating that using say like a graston scraping tool or ultrasound or a deep tissue massage work, you can go back in and break up that scar tissue. When you do, you know, you get pain, you get redness, you get inflammation, you get swelling because you're reinitiating the healing response. But now, hey, this is cool, you're in a situation now where you can go about healing that injury the way you should have probably done it in the first place if you weren't being a shithead. And you know, and now, now that you spent $20,000 on stem cells, you've, you're, you're invested and you're ready to go about doing it the right way.

Absolutely. And they wanted you not taking anti inflammatories before and trying not to take them after. Now in the he like insane re inflammation, you need to do a little bit of management. And so since then I've been trying to manage without so much, you know, without so much anti inflammatory and you're trying, you know, and that's causing fog and stuff and fuzziness and you're like, all right, I just gotta let, let enough of this through to keep this healing response going.

Yeah, you could either just quit being a little bitch or you could use instead of an anti inflammatory like you know, an opioid, an opioid bind, you know, like, like Kratom or something like that. Because a lot of times, you know, people who are in pain due to an injury. Yeah. Sometimes for the injury to heal or for like satellite cell proliferation or mitochondrial biogenesis, you don't want to quell the inflammation.

Right.

But you can, you can use things that don't quell inflammation. That would include everything from like a nerve block to you know, like an opioid mimicker, like, like Kratom or something like that. And those aren't going to really interfere with the inflammatory pathways too much.

Right. When this first lit up, you know, I was like, oh my God. And then it calmed down A little bit. And they were going to get me an OxyContin prescription and it was like, yeah, don't do the anti inflammatories, just do an opioid. And so the window for that, you know, stopped and but there, you know, that's what they're going to do in the future there. And it was amazing doing this oxidative therapy before that really just so heightened and that reinitiation of that injury and that rebuilding of that. And so I think it'll be great as we go forward in regenerative medicine. Just getting people used to the idea, the expectation that this stuff's going to wind up and that's going to be part of the fixing. And then also I think we have to get a much more sophisticated understanding or analytical platform for cytokines so that we can differentiate the healing inflammation from that grinding like senescent cell NF kappa beta type of inflammation.

Right, right. You mean a way to be able to differentiate between the flavor of cytokine that might be responsible for the inflammatory response versus like a cytokine that might be more involved in like nociception or.

Increased pain or something like that? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, because there's good ones. But then you know, you look at like senescent cells, what are they doing? They're this constant pro inflammatory signal that's a negative pro inflammatory signal and you know, free radicals and stuff. So how do we see them versus the regenerative inflammation?

Yeah, and that's something I've thought about too because you know, there's kind of this concept that some amount of what I suppose you'd call like a cinnamorphicity could be advantageous early in life for growth responses for growth hormone, for all those things that we might want to quell, very similar to modulating the MTOR pathway later on in life. And so it's this idea that maybe there are a bunch of whatever, like 20 year old people keen on biohacking and supplementation out there, taking a bunch of anti senescent compounds that maybe don't need to be at that age. Does that make sense?

Oh yeah, totally. Yeah. You know, if it's a break to the whole thing and excessive growth has its problem problems, you know, maybe there's times when you need that. You know the interesting thing.

As I was starting to get into senescence, I realized there's this because you're like, well why the fuck did they do that? You know, why are the mitochondria sending out these signals? And then I'M like, oh, there's acute and chronic senescence. And acute senescence is like, you were having that when you were having your knee worked on, when I was having my foot worked on. When all the damage is in one place, they're sending out signals for the immune cells to come in and eat the bad tissue. But when they're distributed all through in small places as age driven senescent cells, there's not enough of a chorus or a signal for the immune system to find them. And so they're sort of propagating diffusely. So there is appropriate senescence and, and inappropriate senescence.

Would there be a way that one could. Let's say you wanted to early on in life, especially have certain times of the year very similar to how you might do a fast or a targeted autophagy drive at certain points during the year. A targeted cinemorphic drive at certain points during the year. Like, let's say you actually wanted to amplify senescent signaling as almost like a hormetic trigger. Would you see any benefit in doing so? And if so, would there be certain compounds that you could use to like drive senescence and like pulse it? Let's say, like, you know, once a year early in life as kind of like a hormetic trigger.

That's a great, that's a, that's a great thought. And then we got to think, you know, what are the things that really drive that? But, you know, generally things that are driving senescence are toxins and mitochondrial damage.

And so you can just have like cheeseburger week.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

It could be an acute sunburn. Does it, you know.

Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah. Well, we'll have to think on that one. That's.

I know. I'm gonna look more into that. It's an interesting thought.

Yeah. And then, you know, our ability to even measure this stuff is all kind of crazy. You know, like senescent compounds, you know, they're coming out of senescent cells, but then if you go and you break a whole bunch of them, you get a massive rise in the senescent levels in the cells. In fact, we had some, we were doing some pilot studies and we had people on this ampk charge this, you know, strong quercetin and bear brine and resveratrol, and they're all senolytics of some order. And so you're measuring that beta galactosidase as a measure of how much total senescence cell you have. And this stuff shoots roof as you start exploding all of These cells. And so we gotta learn how to use these markers. And you know, there's a lot of stuff that's really in its infancy, but. But I really look forward to figuring out how to do this stuff the best.

Yeah, that's interesting. You know, related to that effect on AMP K. You know, if earlier you were talking about David Perlmutter and his thoughts about the AMP K to AMP D conversion in response to. I think from what I understand about David is that he's concerned about high purine intake or fructose intake as precursors to uric acid formation, causing basically like an increase in AMP D formation which can result in long term cognitive decline, inflammation, poor gut health, et cetera. And then of course, the idea would be, well, decrease your uric acid intake by eating a low purine diet, right? Like limiting your fish consumption or organic consumption.

You know, that is such a tiny part of the whole thing. And it's because the purines go right into uric acid. And uric acid then is an AMPK inhibitor keeping you into ampd. So for people listening, you have. When your energy runs low, you have two ways to go. AMPK mobilizes energy glycogen and increases glucose stores, and that's what puts you into ketosis and mobilizes your fat energy. And that's associated with longevity and being trim mtor blocking the catabolism. But AMPD is the other way you can go when the ATP goes low. And that is associated with lowering ATP in the cells and stimulating uric acid production and stimulating fat accumulation and stimulating proximity pro inflammatory stuff. And that's associated with the obesity. It's, it's all which by, by the.

Way, I don't want to derail you, but that would be great in a time of famine or starvation or low food availability. I mean, you know, humans are one of the mammals who have low levels of uricase enzyme production, which probably served us well at a certain point, you know, being able to convert to AMP D so we can store away fat for times of need, but it's just not serving us well now in a state of caloric hypervailability.

Yeah, and it happened. I just got a paper. They were looking back and it happened during an ice age. We used to have uric ACE and we were fruit livers and stuff. And then we ran out of fruit. The ones who lived through that were the ones who had mutation that didn't have the uric ace. And then when you look into it, there's all these feedback Loops that keep you into ampd.

And so uric acid is one of them. But there's a number of them and there's a number of pathways by which you endogenously make fructose, and especially in the brain. And so when you have high peaks of glucose from high glycemic food, even if there's no fructose in it, you saturate your normal glucose metabolism and you shunt a bunch into fructose. But now here is the one as I'm looking that was. That was like, damn. So high salt does it and alcohol does it all by creating osmolar gradients, and that's shifting you over into fructose production. And in fact, that's part of. I've always. Alcohol consumption chronic is associated with gaining weight and metabolic disease and stuff. But when you hear people talk about why, it's like, oh, that's bullshit. You know, people will be like, because alcohol is a sugar. It's not a sugar. It was a sugar. It's not a sugar anymore. But it's because of its ability to sort of push these switches. And what we've been looking at is, you know, what are the compounds that bring you back from all that, you know, and it turns out a bunch of these things that are NPK generators are also blocking a lot of those feedback loops. So quercetin is kind of chief among them. Quercetin and luteolin as xanthine oxidase inhibitors, which inhibit formation of fructose, but they're NPK activators. And they also are blocking this aldose reductase, which is what allows alcohol, salt and high sugar levels to shift you into fructose production. And so as you look at that, and I think that's how people get stuck over in the people who can't lose weight. And even, you know, they think they're doing the right diets and they're trying to go keto, but they just can't generate the ketones. They just can't generate the weight loss. I think that's where we have to block all these little things along the way and pull out a bunch of dietary things and coordinate that with the lifestyle stuff to flip them over.

Right. And of course, all that would be true unless you're going to want to go compete on the TV show Naked and Afraid and you want a whole bunch of energy availability. Because, I mean, if you think about it really, like, it's actually a pretty good idea if your body can make fructose instead of glucose out of some of those substrates because the muscles don't contain the enzyme necessary for converting fructose into appreciable levels of glycogen that could be burnt for energy. Therefore you're going to shift those pathways towards fat storage and in kind of a camel hump fat type of scenario, be better equipped to survive in a state of caloric deficiencies. But of course we once again return to the whole evolutionary mismatch and the idea that, well, there's very, very few use cases for that scenario while we're well fed.

But the other thing that it shows is looking at this is a whole paper on the fructose metabolism. The brain driving Alzheimer's. Fructose in the brain drives foraging. It makes you bingy. That's why high fructose Corinthians here makes you want more high fructose corn syrup. And you know why? A lot of these things just make you super hungry. And so, you know, it's, it's on us now. You know, we're coaching people, you know, to flip over into these, you know, cleaner metabolism paths, but we gotta know some of the hitches and the things that stop that, right?

And then we should give a head nod of course to the fact that, you know, when we're talking about teresitin or other antisenolytic agents or senolytic agents or anything like that, you know, there is absolutely nothing, at least as far as I've seen, that would be at the top of the totem pole compared to high intensity interval training for activation of AMPK pathways. And you know, there's kind of like two ways to induce mitochondrial biogenesis, right? There's like the PGC1 alpha pathway where you're doing like long aerobic training sessions, you know, kind of like the Ironman triathlete marathon type of scenario. And then you've got your, your AMP K pathway which is more high intensity interval training. And again like if people are listening and you want to get into nitty gritty specifics, I mean really like the gold standard scenario for something like amp K activation is about 10 to 30 seconds, balls out, you know, smoke coming out your ears, effort followed by about four to five minutes of active recovery done about four to five times, right? And so, you know, even in our sector we see people coming out with like these, you know, the, like the. What's the company, Carol? They do like an artificial intelligence bike where you're just sitting on a. I.

Was going to ask you about that.

Couple of, couple of 22nd effort, but really you just basically need access to any piece of cardio apparatus. You set your timer, you warm up for four minutes, go 30 seconds, balls out. Go again for four minutes easy, 30 seconds, balls out. And you do that basically four to five times. And you're basically triggering that amp K pathway more than, more than probably a dump truck full of Kersetin.

And.

That was what I wanted to get from, you.

Know, it's not that you can't, you know, some people are real stubborn to jump over an mk. So the quercetin is also blocking the formation of uric acid. It's increasing the clearance of uric acid. So if you can use the supplements, not as much to drive the ampk, but to get rid of the other things that are holding or to block the other things that are holding you into ampd, and then you use the high power hit to flip you over into ampk. That's how I see this stuff kind of going. And, you know, once you get stuck in APD and you build. This is funny because then the downstream element, the uric acid, is keeping you in there. And so you need this stuff to block the formation and you need to hydrate like hell and you need to pee like hell. And so you need to, you know, you need to supplement all that to let that drive off. But then the superpower switch is that interval training that you're just saying?

Yeah, yeah. And I, and I don't know about the mechanism of action, whether it is any type of buffering effect that kerosene might have on uric acid. And this is another thing to think about that I don't know the answer to. But obviously when, when you look at just about any effort from an exercise standpoint that exceeds around 20 seconds. We just threw 30 seconds out there, you're forming a certain amount of lactic acid. Not as much as you might get from a highly glycolytic, you know, one and a half or two minute effort. But. But it's really interesting because when you look at lactic acid, and not only the fact that it causes an amplified growth hormone response, but it is one of those molecules that can cross the blood brain barrier and is actually a pretty stable source of fuel for the brain, amplifies vascular endothelial growth, factor in neural tissue, can increase BDNF and is actually a pretty cool little molecule. I would just be curious if some of these compounds that you could theoretically propose could be combined with exercise to increase even greater the amount of AMP K might simultaneously decrease lactic acid buildup. And therefore be something to kind of like an ice bath might quell the hormetic response to exercise. Maybe it's something you separate. So you got like your interval training session in the morning and then you would take your uric acid buffering agent in the evening. And I have no clue if the mechanisms of action would be similar for uric acid versus lactic acid would have to be the case. But it's just a thought.

No, it's a great question. I'll look into it. But quercetin blocks xanthine oxidase, which forms uric acid, and it hits a couple of different enzymes, including the aldose reductase, which puts you into the endogenous production of fructose. So it's working not just on the npk, but on all these downstream metabolites. But you absolutely do not. For getting rid of the uric acid, you do not have to have it at the same time that you're working out. And so if it, if it does get in the way of lactic acid. And we'll look that up. Yeah, you just do them at a different time. But you know, taking the diuretics and the quercetin and you know, one or two other things will bring, it'll move the machinery over and they'll clear out of your body. Especially doing nanoparticles. They're done in 90 minutes, they're out of the body. So they've done their job, they're draining stuff out, they're blocking the production of uric acid. And then, you know, a couple hours later, or maybe you do them at night, then you go.

That's good to know. That's good to know. Because I don't, you know, the only thing I like to take before my exercise session is my horse syringe of andro. And if I'm distracted by having to take kerosene or anything else, it's just going to be a pain in the ass. So. All right, good. Good to know.

Hey, how do you use hydrogen around exercise?

Well, hydrogen as a selective antioxidant is one of those few compounds from an anti inflammatory standpoint that not only am I comfortable taking it around exercise as opposed to say, high dose vitamin C or a super cold ice bath or something like that, potent anti inflammatories I'd actually want to separate from the exercise session by a few hours. Hydrogen doesn't fall into that category. And considering that particularly hydrogen and actually Tyler Lebaron from Molecular Hydrogen foundation made me aware of this study just about a Week and a half ago. Molecular hydrogen, when combined with nitric oxide, which, there's a few different ways to do that. You could use a canned hydrogen oxide beverage. Yeah, you can do that. You could like, you know, go to like, you know, Nathan Bryan. He sells a bunch of supplements that do a really good job increasing nitric oxide. You can pop a Viagra Citrulline.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, yeah. But basically, anytime you combine nitric oxide with hydrogen rich water, hydrogen inhalation, you actually see this really cool interplay between cognitive output and neuroplasticity, particularly when combined with exercise. So this whole, like, exercise makes you smarter type of effect might actually be amplified by increasing levels of hydrogen nitric oxide pre exercise. And it also appears to be able to help with exercise recovery while also not wanting your muscle, your mitochondrial response. So I typically just, I'm one of those guys. It's just pretty simple. I wake up in the morning and I just have a big glass mason jar of hydrogen water. And I don't go out of my way to time it before exercise. Although when I used to compete in spartan races and stuff, I'd always, you know, my last glass of water before the race, I'd always dissolve a few hydrogen tablets.

Right, yeah. Now, you know, when you hear Tyler talk about hydrogen, he'll often call it an exercise mimetic. And so it's funny because it's got this selective antioxidant for just getting hydroxyl radical, like the worst of the worst. And otherwise it seems to, to have these hormetic actions associated with light peroxidants. So it's NRF2 and it's an AMPK activator and it's, you know, kind of like Kristen. It's in the body for, you know, 90 minutes tops. It goes in, does its job and goes out and seems to make everything work better that you're trying to do. And so like you said, that's something that's not going to douse any of the appropriate flames that you're trying to create when you work out.

Did you ever take a bath in it, though? That's the million dollar question.

No, I have not.

I hear people talk about that they do baths. Apparently there's some transdermal absorption and I mean, you know, I'm like Queen Cleopatra. If there's something I can take a bath in, I'll do it at least once, whether it's milk or wine or whatever. And, you know, so I take magnesium baths about once a week for soreness anyways, you know, Get a good book and soak for 20 or 30 minutes. And I tried some of those hydrogen tabs and I can't say I like, you know, went out and crushed a PR in the bench press or anything the next day. But it is interesting. They're actually selling them for bathtubs now.

But mass transfer wise, you know, how much is going into you versus into the air, you know, versus you drop those capsules. I mean, you don't even really need to dissolve the tablets. You can just throw them all in and everything is going into your body versus like the transdermal one. I was like, well, I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you're supposed to drink hydrogen enriched water within like whatever, three to five minutes after you dispense it, I'm curious how much is still in the bathtub after you've drawn up your bath.

Yeah, like I can tell you right now as a chemist, like zippo, you know, or not. Not a whole lot.

Yeah. And probably the level of importance to which this is going to be impactful or meaningful for the world is like a one on a scale one to ten. So.

Right, right. So all right, so, you know, we actually kind of hit as I was talking about long term biohacks. What are the kind of things that you could do that really work? And you know, some people, you know, are not, you know, Ben Greenfield, Ironman triathlon people, but if they can do, you know, some hiit stuff, everybody can accomplish some, some hiit stuff. And if they can use that, especially, you know, with a little bit of fasting as a big ampk driver, that's something that's there, you know, what do you think are other, you know, easy to, you know, easy enough to incorporate long term biohacks?

Oh, that's simple. That's a softball, man. It's just all electron flow. Right. So basically, I mean, it's just to jump straight into the chase. It's grounding or earthing, basically, whether that be preferably via the use of just like you know, grinding shoes or being outside barefoot or rock climbing or trees or the sand on the beach or swimming in the ocean or even like a lot of these ice baths. Now I actually tested my, I have one of those Morozco Forge ice tubs and, and I, I tested it with one of those like that phase angle measurement device. And it's like, it's, it's like 20 times the amount of grounding or earthing I'd get while standing outside barefoot. So even like being submerged in a Body of water is like one of the best, best things, especially if it's plugged, plugged into the grounding outlet of your home.

Yeah, I was gonna say is that because, because you have the ground into the. Oh great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so grounding and everything, sunlight, you know, red light therapy is right up there as well. And then hot and cold water and minerals. I mean like really assuming that you're moving. Low level physical activity during the day, high levels of what's called non exercise activity thermogenesis, preferably taking 10,000 steps or more a day and just moving and shaking all day long, eating well, painting with a very broad brush for most people, some semblance of a Mediterranean esque diet. There's all sorts of dietary customization issues you can get into. So let's say you got those two bases covered because you've been reading Men's Health magazine like a good little boy or Women's Health or whatever. And then the stuff they don't talk about, well, it's just all kind of like electron flow stuff. So basically it's, it's grounding and earthing and, and then really, really good photonic light exposure, preferably via the use of sunlight as well as a lot of these infrared and, and near infrared light treatment saunas and, and light panels and then pretty robust sauna or heat practice. And even if you can't do that, you know, I, I didn't used to be able to like back when I was training for Ironman and stuff like that, I, I didn't have a sauna, I couldn't afford one, but I would just wear extra clothes when I'd exercise. You know, ways to trigger heat shock proteins without, you know, using your favorite podcaster's discount code to buy a giant sauna for your basement.

Yes, exactly.

And, and then you've got cold, which is obviously free, easy and pairs quite well with the heat and is honestly like those are dailies for me. Heat and cold dailies, earth and grounding, daily infrared light use or sunlight. And then the last two would just be, I mean you gotta, you gotta carry these charges through your body. So really good clear, clean, filtered, structured, you know, getting a little bit woo woo. Preferably energy enhanced water that's been exposed to good frequencies and good energy and good emotions and then minerals, you know, whether it's, it's, you know, something like Quinton or you just a really good full spectrum electrolyte or a variation thereof as well as, you know, produce grown in mineral rich soil and I think, I think those six would just like, you know.

Stop taking all their supplements and you know, the crazy fancy stuff and just start with that base, throw in some good relationships. You know, there's probably one other that I'd consider throwing into that equation that I've just been more and more, well I should say two others really, but I find more and more integral to my own practice in terms of just making me feel like a million bucks and it would be.

Sound medicine and breath work. So what I mean by that is my sons And I, my 13 year old sons and I are on basically a breathwork gong right now where we're doing 100 days of breath work. And those are typically, when I say a breath work, our sessions last anywhere from 15 minutes to 60 minutes. Usually we'll do like the 60 minute sessions on the weekends very much kind of like holotropic esque type of work. Usually flatten our back in the sauna. And then the other sessions are typically like in the morning as a wake up, kind of like alkalizing pranayama breathwork type of section or in the evening kind of blowing off some CO2 with the longer exhale sessions. So I think the breath work is pretty integral and the clients that I work with like, it's kind of like a required practice on the daily now and then the other one, sound medicine, you know, just the fact that our cells respond and are, are so tuned into frequencies and you know this idea that I used to think was woo, you know, some people use like tuning forks that are tuned to specific cells or the body or specific sound healing tracks, you know, like, you know, whatever. People wear that love tuner necklace where you blow on it, it's like, it's, it's like the most expensive shitty harmonica known to man. But it's basically, you know, 528 hertz and you blow into it.

Right, right.

It makes that little sound and I used to kind of raise an eyebrow, that stuff. But man, like I, you know, I, I have that company, Biomat. I don't know if this is a good brand or whatever, but they sent me one of their acoustic like sound healing tables and I have a bunch of these sound healing tracks. There's a bunch of companies that make different tracks so you can download at specific frequencies and some will just for an hour go from the root chakra frequency all the way up to the crown and back down. And so about once a week or so or for example because you can put on top of a massage table when I get a massage, I'll do one of those sound frequency sessions and that. And then also the fact that when you're doing a lot of the breath work, you're humming or you're making an audible sound and often an audible range of sounds. And then, you know, I love to play the guitar and sing and play my hand pan stuff anyways, but I think if someone doesn't have kind of like some form of a robust and.

Mindful intentional use of sound in their life, specifically by doing something like a sound bath or a chanting, singing, humming practice or breath work with audible exhales, they're probably missing out on a really, really cool and easy way to feel better. So, you know, I would probably throw breathwork and sound medicine on top of the earthing, the grounding, the light, the heat, the cold, the water and the minerals as another couple to consider.

No, I mean breath work for sure. And I like that you brought up the sound medicine. And you know, I recognize very clearly you're talking about a two way street there. One is hearing sounds that are harmonizing you and the other one is making the sounds and so engaging the throat chakra. And so many people are so screwed up in their throat chakra and they should see if they're having a hard time doing that if they can't generate dynamic range or around certain people, they don't have that dynamic range to look into why that is and free up that knot because it's a super powerful one for expressing yourself and having emotional harmony and manifestation and is, you know, then the gateway up to the higher chakras and, and being able to open yourself up and communicate with the universe.

I tell you what, like, I've, like, my wife was pretty cool, I think from day one, but I've witnessed her blossom into just a beautiful, wonderful, blessed woman over the past, I would say like about three years or so. And part of that is she's just kind of like found her voice, she's found her boldness. She was dyslexic growing up. She didn't have that great of an experience in school and kind of grew up being told she was small, she was stupid.

And so whenever we've done energy scans, for example, with her AO scan or my health or whatever, the throat chakra is always kind of closed and blatant.

Right.

And you know what's kind of funny is I got on her, oh gosh, like it was about three years ago, you know, to start doing a lot of these breathwork sessions, sound healing sessions, and Throat chakra work and acupuncture. And she is like the shoemaker's wife, wears no shoes. Like she never does anything I tell her. But basically she just started up just a super robust prayer practice where she's like sitting up in the bedroom. You know, typically she gets up, she gets ready for the day, then she just like puts some earplugs in and sits in this little meditation cushion in the corner of the bedroom for like an hour. And you know, when I walk in there, I can hear she's like praying, she's talking to God, she's reading scripture and she's basically, I mean, she's toning her throat chakra when she's doing all those things. And obviously there's a huge emotional, you know, spiritual, you know, even like a neuro, theological component to that as well. But, you know, and, and I swear she's just become more bold, more forthright, just able to, you know, for better or worse, for me being her husband, you're able to voice her opinions more forthrightly. And, and so yeah, it really is interesting, this idea of, I think in a lot of people working on the throat chakra or whatever that means for you, being something that could probably benefit you, especially if you're one of those people who feels kind of though you.

Want to be more of your true authentic self rather than who you think the world expects you to be, you know, Absolutely.

You know, my ex wife went through almost exactly the same thing. You know, she was, you know, the shoulders are in, you know, you're guarding the throat chakra. You don't know that you want to be heard and stuff. She wasn't, you know, raised intellectual like me. And then she went through a period where she, she obsessed on quantum physics and you know, astrophysics stuff and would listen to it all and then relate it back and, you know, have to talk to this PhD about this high end stuff. And so that was giving her strength there. And she became a fencer and you know, run around and stabbing people and screaming and stuff. And those two together brought her out to a space she'd never been before. And I think that's so important for us to recognize that in the people in our communities and our families, when they can't do that, and try to encourage them to find whatever that mix of practices is to open up that space of that. Your own creativity and your own dynamic interaction with the spirit of the universe.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, if there's anything that people get out of this whole podcast, it's probably to take up fencing.

Gave.

Her an ability to stab me. And that, that made her happy, you know, she was like, all right, we're gonna go fence. I'm like, oh, you mean I'm just gonna get hit.

Okay, that was funny. Some people take up salsa sometimes. Like, yeah.

And so now that we're on the subject of women, what are the, you know, this. I think it probably came up the most in terms of fasting and keto, where guys just thrive on the shit, but women sometimes have a hard time, you know, where. How have you seen that start to resolve?

Well, I mean, first of all, it kind of depends, you know, like, for example, it would depend on premenopausal versus postmenopausal. Post menopausal women, very similar to men.

Don'T seem to experience the same type of endocrine dysregulation as premenopausal women do in response to long fasts, particularly fasts that exceed about 12 hours in duration. That's when there seems to be a little bit of a dip in kisspeptin hormone in premenopausal women, which leads to some luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone.

Imbalances that could decrease fertility or the proper balance of endocrine hormones, thus dictating that. Well, in men, a fast of 12 to 16 hours as like an intermittent daily fast seems somewhat appropriate and well tolerated in premenopausal women. And a lot of like, the lean, athletic premenopausal women who I've worked with especially all the more so seem to do better with like a 10 to 12 hour intermittent fast. Which, which kind of brings up the point of, well, if autophagy doesn't kick in until 16 hours or more, then, you know, am I screwed? Do I just have to choose between fertility and longevity? And really what I, what I have most of, like, the, like the lean, active premenopausal women who I work with do is, is they'll do a 10 to 12 hour intermittent daily fast. But then to tap into autophagy, typically just a couple of times a month, we'll work in a dinner time to dinner time, you know, where it's like a Saturday night to Sunday night. So they're getting like around 24 hours or so. And, and then, you know, as I do, you know, I encourage most of my clients to weave in a, like a quarterly cleanup where we're doing like a juice fast or bone broth fast or a fasting mimicking diet or something like that. But you know, those are, those are short term bouts into what one could argue could cause some amount of endocrine dysregulation in a fasting female. But, but I'm not concerned as long as it's not on the regular, you know, just kind of following that. How many of our days is how we live our lives?

How many days in your quarterlies?

Oh, four to five days.

Four to five.

And for me personally, just because I'm in the industry, bro, so, you know, everybody's talking to me about the latest panchakarma or bone broth or you know, or you know, fasting mimicking diet or ABC this, XYZ that. So for me personally, it's kind of fun. Cause I'll just be like, oh, oh, okay, well that's the one I'm gonna try this fall and then I'm gonna try that one this winter. So I'll just like experiment with stuff and I can tell you the fast. The fast that I have felt the best on above all of them has been the, you know, the kitchery stew one where you have like the mung beans and the ghee and olive oil, a little bit of grapefruit. On that last day you get like that whole liver dump. And I like, I always feel that's what I did too.

I freaking love kitchari. You know, it's hard, you know, I'm a pit of vada, but that vada comes out if I don't eat for long.

Plus you get to eat shit. It's probably like the cheapest fast. You didn't have to buy any fancy supplements or anything. You just do it.

It's like brown rice, mung beans and three spices. Coriander, cumin and turmeric.

Yeah, there's one other spice. It starts with an A. I forget, it's like not ashitaba. It's something else. But anyways, there's one other that kind of amps it up a little bit.

Okay.

Name of it. And there's even guys like another guy down there in Boulder Bayou, Dr. John Douillard. He's got a little ebook that he publishes, like a five day little kitchen cleanse guide that I'll tell you once, go read that and do that one. But anyway, so for women, yeah, that's kind of the skinny on the fasting piece. And then the other thing to bear in mind is that when you are in the, the follicular phase, you might actually tolerate fasting a little bit better just due to the increased estrogen bioavailability and there's certain phases that you might feel a little bit better in if you check out a book like Lisa Vitti's got her flow book. But you can also experiment with just basically fasting during or doing the more extended fast during that part of the period where you're utilizing fatty acids a little bit more efficiently. Anyways. And then the other interesting thing is that also for women.

You know, I always thought it was interesting when I used to compete in endurance sports. And the longer and longer the event goes, the closer and closer the women's champion finishing time comes to the men's champion finishing time, because women seem to just do better the longer and slower that the event gets. And part of that is obviously due to fast twitch muscle fiber composition and the increased strength and power in the male species as a whole. Anyways, you know, painting with a broad brush, because, you know, I don't want to be sexist or anything, you know, me. But then the other part of it is that women also tend to metabolize fatty acids really efficiently. And although the body of studies on women's ability to, let's say, be able to, you know, push, you know, beta hydroxybutyrate and use that a little bit more readily as a ketone body or anything like that, there's not a ton of studies on that. There is some, or there are some rodent studies that seem to show that female rodent models in ketosis seem to have even more stabilized cognition, like decreased level of cognitive decline compared to males. So women may actually be able to utilize ketone bodies a little bit more effectively as well. But painting with a broad brush, women shouldn't fast as long as guys should as premenopausal women.

So. But possibly, you know, without fasting, if they just. Well, would you. If they're taking, say, fat in the morning, you know, keto coffee or just, you know, mcts or whatever. Are you still considering that fasting or do you think that's enough calories to sort of, sort of split the difference for them?

Yeah, I mean, obviously it depends if you're putting like, you know, whatever 5 grams of butane dial in your morning coffee, that's not really going to, I think, trigger your endocrine system much at all or be recognized by your body as an appreciable source of calories. But if you're doing like the whole like quarter stick of butter with some mushrooms and, you know, such a raw honey or whatever, like, you know, I think if, if there's some sort of triggering event to your body that there's some calories present. Again, this is all anecdotal because there's no studies on this. So this is all theoretical. But I would think that because a meal like that, and that is a meal by the way, dumping a bunch of fat into your coffee because that does kind of break a fast, that's probably enough of a signaling event where you're not going to see a significant downregulation in fertility. Although of course the best thing to do is just test your LH and your FSH or, or run like a Dutch protocol for a few months and just kind of experiment with a few days where you wake up and you do fasted exercise. And then maybe a few days where you just fast without exercise. And then maybe a few days where you do like the butter in your coffee or some type of ketogenic starter with exercise, then another few without exercise, then you've just got a little bit of a pain in the ass. But over the course of maybe six months you're going to have your whole physiology figured out if you run a few tests like that.

Right, I got you. Well, let's go back into and sort of, you know, before we wrap up, just dissect that a little bit more. Just thethe fat part. Not even in relation to women fat in the morning. So on one hand some people say, well, fat doesn't break the fast because you don't have any insulin generation and there's no branched chain, well, there's no carbs, there's no branch chain amino acids, acids. So you're still MTOR block and AMPK activated. But there's gotta be other signals that you're getting just from the calories.

Yeah, yeah. There's an incredent hormone response even if it's not calories, even if it's just like the taste of stevia or monk fruit or allulose or something like that. Dictating that if your goals are pure autophagy and living as long as possible while cold and hungry and libido less then yeah, I mean like you should probably not do anything at all in the morning. But I think that for most active healthy people, like it's more of just like a mental masturbatory grasping at straws argument that really at the end of the day it doesn't matter that much if you have a tablespoon of butter in your morning coffee versus not. I don't think for most people, I think there's much more important fish to fry. Yeah.

And Especially, you know, if you're trying to get some of the intermittent fast. And what you're looking for is just, you know, a little more mtor blood locking lemuria npk. You know, I don't see that the, that the fat's gonna screw that up, but it is gonna give you some juice.

Yeah, exactly. And again, as. As you noted, especially in the absence of leucine or any type of MTOR trigger. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's a moot point. And honestly, if you're concerned about the calories, I mean, just cut straight to the chase and have some ketone esters instead. If you're really that worried and you're that concerned about being hungry until lunch or whatever, like, that's probably the easiest way to hack things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Overall, it's always been, you know, my recommendation that, yeah, just take the fat in the morning and just wait until lunch. You know, I think that's sort of like, especially for guys and postmenopausal women that just don't freaking eat breakfast. And if you need something, you know, put a little, little bit of fat in your coffee and just wait till lunch is just, just such a simple freaking way to go. And, you know, in my heavy supplement world, we take some ampk charge and some, some hydrogen water and some PC and, you know, everybody seems to do real well on that.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's just experimentation and figure out what works for you. Like, I experiment, obviously, you can imagine, Chris, just because it's kind of my job. I experiment with this stuff all the time. Like while we're talking right now, like, my breakfast this morning was colostrum with.

A couple of dropper fulls of that true kava stuff to kind of take the edge off a handful of qualia mind and.

Two shots of this one. Three butane diol ketone ester. So, you know, and I'll do that. So right now we're talking on ketones, colostrum, kava, and qualia. And then people, of course, will leave a comment and be like, so is that the new based on research, like, gold standard way to start off your morning? No, it's just like what I'm experimenting with. And I don't feel half bad. I mean, maybe I'll do it again tomorrow. But again, that's what I do is I just, like, I'll experiment with stuff and just kind of see. See how I feel.

Yeah, no, that's definitely what I do too. I know for a little while I was, I was adrenally depleted. There was a lot of going on. And you know, one of my friends got me eating more carbs and stuff andand I just don't do. So later in the day I do, but like, I just do best if I don't eat in the morning. I drink coffee, I take ampi charge, which, you know, just takes away all theall the hunger and just go until lunch and you know, a couple other supplements and go, go juice in there. And I just feel great as long as I keep doing that. And I gotta say, understanding the uric acid path and, you know, if there's, you know, a fault I have is I go out and drink too much and understanding that thethat the alcoholoh and I use too much salt and understanding that those two are pushing ampd and that I can block those and you know, roll back a little bit on my consumption, but I can block those. Those are really helped. You know, I've noticed lower uric acid acid levels in the morning and so just some key little places where we can shift the needle.

Yeah. And from an alcohol standpoint, two things to give a head nod to that I've already mentioned at some point during our podcast. Anyways, like, ketones and kava are amazing as alcohol substitutes at night. Like literally just like a serving of like one three butane dial with like a really good kava root extract. You could literally put that on ice with some lemon juice juice and like, you'd feel 10 times better than if you had a cocktail with none of that, none of the blowback.

So now the kava for sure, you know, GABA agonist. And that's the thing with the alcohol. It's a GABA agonist. And so, you know, you're chilling that out, but I did not know about the ketones. I mean, do you know?

Yeah, they're GABAergic. Yeah, they're GABAergic. I mean, look at, look at gamma, gamma hydroxybutyrate, which the feds outlawed as date rape drug. That's, that's, that's one.

That'S 14 butane diet. 14 butane diet. It's a ketone, basically. So, yeah, I mean, the most potent sleep tonic known to humankind that shockingly doesn't actually seem to disrupt sleep architecture much at all. The ghb, the unfortunate part is just too dangerous to mix with alcohol, but at least from a social standpoint. So anyways, so yeah, ketones, actually, as a gabaergic agent in the evening to buy with another GABAergic agent like Kava.

It's.

It's a pretty good mix.

Plus, you don't wake up.

You don't wake up hungry at night.

Yeah, well, that's fantastic. And, well, you know, part of that waking up hungry is that freaking the brain fructose development. And so they're the things that block that. And there. Quercetin again does that. But, yeah, that's a good one. So Gaba and ketones for Friday night or maybe for Thursday night.

There you go.

There you go.

All right.

Well, thank you, Ben. It's been great. I think we've covered a lot of great things. I love those. You know, you're sort of top six there. And I'll put those in the show notes.

Anything else you want to throw in right now?

Oh, you know what? I know that you've got this podcast, and I think we might be even releasing this audio on. On my podcast as well. I think that was some of the chatter going around. So I would say to my guests who are. Anybody who's still listening hasn't gotten sick of us yet. If you don't know about Chris, you know, if you guys have heard me talk about anything from, like, you know, Lipocom to Quicksilver Scientific to, like, the detoxification protocols to the crazy mad scientist who I know named Chris Shade, like, that's Chris. And so if you guys haven't yet gone and tapped into his stuff, I'll link to it on my end in my show notes as well. And then. And your podcast, this one that we're doing on your side, Chris, is called Shades of Health. Right?

Shades of health on drchrisha.com and we'll get you. We'll get you a discount code for your people for the Quicksilver store as well. And. Yeah, and we'll just, you know, cross pollinate. And I'll encourage people. Instead of trying to get Peter McCullough on mine, I'll encourage him to go back onto yours and look through all of Ben's awesome podcasts in there. And I'm gonna go back and look at the. The knee. The knee, foot, toe guy. Because I. Dr. Yeah. I have structural issues that sort of all land in my feet, and so they're always stressed out a little bit. And that's where I put my stem cells. And. And so I'm sure, you know, he'll have the right exercises to, like, tear those things open and let them heal.

Right? Sweet. Sweet. Well, that. That all sounds amazing. And then, yeah, I only cross pollinate with people who take showers regularly, so be sure to do that. And Chris, I love you and thanks for the chat man.

All right, love you too. I look forward to seeing you again soon. We'll see you at Runga and we'll keep all this going.

All right? Later.

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