There Is NO Perfect Diet (Find Out Why) | Featuring Ben Greenfield

You get on these hardcore rants that this is the only way and it has to be like this.

There is no reason for anyone to say there is one perfect diet for all of humankind.

Like, why am I just so off every day, every night?

God keeping you humble, giving you some type of a health issue so that you don't become that asshole podcaster who has it all figured out.

And all right everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli Podcast, and I am on cloud nine today because I have been waiting for my guest for quite a while and we've been trying to work this out. And he's one of the ones that I have wanted for a very long time. So I am super thankful that he got some time with me today because, you know, the schedules with people, it's crazy. But yeah, I'm going to give you a little intro, brother. I can't really do this, but he does it all. He— listen, he's one of the mainstays and I would argue one of, if not the most influential, I would say at least top 2 to 3 in the last at least decade in biohacking, health, fitness, wellness, you name it. I would definitely put him at my top of my list of go-to people, well-respected, well-renowned. Just quickly, he's a New York Times bestselling author. I'm sure many of you have seen his books, Boundless. He's got this big podcast. He's a former collegiate tennis, water polo, volleyball player. He's a 13-time Ironman triathlete.. He's been voted by the NSCA as America's top personal trainer. He's done it all. I'm not going to spend the whole podcast talking about his accolades, but my friends, Ben Greenfield.

And I suck at baseball and golf.

Been there, brother. Hey, man, thanks for coming on here with me today. I have been looking forward to this, like I said, for such a long time.

Thanks, man.

Well, Let's just get right into it, bro. I wanna utilize all this time to get as much knowledge out if you can. We're gonna just gonna go all over the place. I wanna hit first though on, I wanna start off with diet. I've been doing a lot of things with diet the past several years. And I've been running into so many different people on the carb side against the carb side, people that wanna argue, fight over it. Where do you stand on diets and do you have a specific go-to or, and what's your feeling on the polarizing topic of carbohydrates?

Yeah, just come out swinging with an easy question, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Well, as you know, the dogmatism behind diets kind of ranks right up there with religion and politics, probably not assisted much by the idea that religion and nutrition are often kind of intertwined in some ways, whether you eat pork and shellfish and whether cows are holy or not and all the elements that kind of go into the spiritual side of diet. That's probably why it's so dogmatic or one of the reasons. So, if you look at— there's a book that goes back to the '60s called "Biochemical Individuality." It's based on the idea that human beings have different vitamin D excretion rates and different oxalate excretion rates and a different size of the pancreas and the liver and the stomach and the gastrointestinal tract. And, when you pair that with this new era that we live in, this era of self-quantification where now we know we have wild variants in genetics, in detoxification capabilities, in methylation capabilities, in blood flow and nitric oxide capabilities. And, we also have different microbiomes, possibly parasites, yeast, fungus that may influence our nutrition choices or the impact of those. We have different hormone statuses, There is no reason for anyone to say there is one perfect diet for all of humankind. Thank you. And, there is no reason for anyone to follow one perfect diet for all of humankind because the ribeye and sauerkraut diet might completely screw over somebody with, let's say, overmethylation issues who needs a higher amount of glycogen and carbohydrate due to their physical activity. Who might even have some kind of an inflammatory response to saturated fats because they have, I don't know, an ApoE4 gene or something like that. So, I think the best way to go is to test, to self-quantify, and to figure out based on your genetics and your blood work and your activity levels and lifestyle and goals what diet is going to work best for you. And then, if you just can't afford to do that, you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're listening and you're a college student on a budget, you could make a pretty good case that possibly based on human origin in the Fertile Crescent, I don't know, possibly due to the fact that it's just a diet that's relatively diverse so it grows the microbiome pretty well. I would say some semblance of a Mediterranean diet is a pretty good idea. And, not the unlimited breadsticks, giant salad bowls, Mediterranean diet, but a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids with vegetables both fermented and raw and extra virgin olive oil and plenty of omega-3s and nuts and natural sources of cheese and a little bit of red wine here and there. All the things that you would tend to see somebody, I don't know, sucking down in Sardinia. That seems to work pretty well for somebody who just wants to throw a dart and hope that they hit the right diet. And then, the carb piece, I mean, that again is an area that's rife with a need for customization, Dylan. Yeah. So, I think that for the most part, being aware of carbohydrate intake and controlling added sugars especially to some extent is a good idea. I mean, I wear this blood glucose monitor. It tracks my glycemic variability, how much my blood glucose goes up and down throughout the day. That's more important to me really than my average blood glucose is just how many spikes I get and how long it stays elevated after a meal. And, in a sedentary person, in someone managing metabolic disease like a diabetic condition, even someone with epilepsy seizures, post-TBI, post-concussion, et cetera, you can make a case that a low-carb diet would be healthy at anywhere from 20 to 50 grams of carbohydrates per day, the so-called ketotic approach or ketogenic diet. And then, let's say an Ironman athlete or CrossFitter or even just the average gym junkie or a guy like me who's working out an hour a day and then whatever walking on a treadmill while I'm talking to you and burning a decent amount of calories. For me, and I do this, a low-carb diet is closer to 200 to 300 grams a day. So, part of it is who are you and what's your lifestyle and what would low-carb context be for you. And, when I say 200 to 300 grams per day, I actually time that. So, I eat very few carbohydrates most of the day. I'm going to have a little bit of a handful of blueberries sometimes in a morning smoothie or half a banana, Ben Greenfield: Me too. And so, I'm usually having some kind of a great smoothie like a superfood smoothie for breakfast. I have a big salad with, back to the Mediterranean thing, sardines, anchovies, extra virgin olive oil, seeds, nuts, et cetera at lunch. And then, dinner tends to be the most widely varying meal of the day just socially and logistically. You might be out at a restaurant, you might have friends over, you're hanging out with family, I'd rather have that be the time when I have the most flexibility for macros where I can grab the sweet potato fries and my wife's sourdough bread and a bunch of beets and carrots and parsnips and potatoes and maybe a little dark chocolate and yogurt and berries for dessert. And, the cool part about that approach is carbohydrates can also assist with production of serotonin, which then downstream can help to produce melatonin to give you better sleep. The only kickback you hear sometimes with this approach is a lot of people have heard, rightly so, that you're more insulin sensitive in the morning, meaning you would theoretically from a hormonal standpoint be better equipped to shove glucose into muscle and liver in the morning versus the evening. But, it's pretty easy to induce a temporary state of insulin sensitivity. And, I recommend somebody does this before or after any meal. You could go for a walk. You could lift weights in the early evening before dinner. You can even do a cold shower or a cold plunge. For me, between 6:00 and 7:00 is about when I'm finishing up work. So, I go hit a little bit on the pickleball court or play some tennis or a little frisbee golf, hang out with the family, go for a walk and make the last couple phone calls of the day. So, yeah, I mean, if you're just kind of a sedentary slob for the hours leading up to dinner, carbs might actually hit you and cause a little bit of a blood sugar spike. But, if you're physically active and you understand the idea of even just a 5- to 10-minute pre-dinner and/or post-dinner walk, it kind of becomes a moot point and becomes even more mooter of a point, if that's a phrase, if you've been restricting carbohydrates the rest of the day because Your muscles, assuming you're physically active, are kind of a little bit of a metabolic sink for glucose and they're a little bit deprived at that point in the day. So, long story short, summary of everything I just said is test yourself, self-quantify, and customize your diet to you. And, if you can't, follow some semblance of a Mediterranean diet, restrict carbs but not excessively unless you're managing some kind of a disease. And, if you are able to, time your carbs so you're having more of them in the evening.

Mm-hmm. See, this is one of those times where I like to point out to everybody when you can really tell you're talking to somebody with like credibility that's not relying on emotion when they talk about something. Because when you bring up the fact that it's all person-to-person specific and customizable, that's just basically everything in life. And when we fall into these traps where you get on these hardcore rants that this is the only way and it has to be like this, and I see people arguing without understanding that there are so many different conditions and people, like you said, the way we're training. I mean, I train, I don't know, man, almost 3 hours a day between cardio, one set, and then lifting at night. And I don't get enough carbs. I know it. And like you said, there's situations where it's necessary. So then that brings me to my next question, diet related, because you, I mean, you covered everything so intricately for us. Let's take a look at the fasting side of things. I've done a lot of study on this in terms of the cellular health, the long-term longevity, and I'm very spiritual. So, as you pointed out, you know, that goes back to the beginning of time, so there's reasoning for it. What's your thoughts on fasting in general? Do you incorporate it? And, if you do, how do you go about that with somebody that's training heavy?

Yeah. That's funny you mentioned prayer. There's actually an old book, it's called something like "The Atomic Power of Prayer and Fasting." Cheesy title, but it goes into how a deeper spiritual connection with God and a deeper prayer life can result from bouts of fasting that are intentionally built for a spiritual habit or purpose. Which, of course, most people know that a lot of religions have some kind of practice of fasting that's woven in. So, my opinion on fasting and then my opinion on fasting for, what did you say, someone who's very physically active?

Yeah, that top-level athlete or someone training like we do.

Yeah. I mean, when you're looking at a top-level athlete, first of all, just to touch on that first, most athletes do need to hear that performance is not necessarily synonymous with health. I spent 20 years as you mentioned briefly in the bio doing all sorts of different sports at a pretty high level and then Ironman triathlon and Spartan racing and adventure racing. And, there would be some weeks where I was exercising 20+ hours. And, races where I'd be going more than 3 days and at least 10+ hours. And, while those kind of things are great for character development, for endurance, for perseverance, for climbing your own personal Mount Everest, you shouldn't fool yourself into thinking that extreme exercise is long-term going to be healthy for you or increase longevity. It's interesting because the true definition of temperance is not complete restriction or abstinence from a certain activity but instead the ability to be able to modulate or self-control your usage of it and achieve a so-called Goldilocks zone. So, with exercise, temperance is prudent. And, if you look at research on, let's say, cardiovascular exercise and its effects on cardiovascular health, there is a Goldilocks zone. Once you exceed about 75 minutes of very high-intensity exercise, which barely anybody achieves anyways, but there are some CrossFitters, some extreme athletes who would exceed 75 minutes of what would be considered if you're using zones like Zone 4, Zone 5 cardio above lactic acid threshold on a weekly basis. And, once you exceed about 150 minutes or so of moderate-intensity exercise, which a lot of cardio bunnies and frowny face treadmill people at the gym do achieve, you start to see arterial stiffness and early onset atherosclerosis. It's just inducing too much inflammation without enough recovery. And, there's some people who are like, "Wait, human beings are primal creatures. We were built to move, baby. We should be moving all day long." Yes, but for anybody who's gone hunting or has a garden that you're out in during the day, or even as manual labor like construction work or painting or fence building or something, you're not running from a lion all day long during those activities. You're starting, you're stopping, you're at a low-level intensity, it's aerobic and conversational like I'm talking to you right now. And so, I'm really talking about the stuff that actually kind of beats you up. So, if you are— back to the fasting piece, fitting into that category of an elite exerciser, a gym junkie, an athlete, then you also need to accept the fact that since performance is not synonymous with longevity, some of the things that you're doing to support performance would also not be those things that have been studied for longevity. And fasting could be one of those, right? Excessive calorie restriction and even compressed feeding windows, which can hinder your ability to be able to fuel enough to restore muscle glycogen, to be able to get enough proteins and amino acids in for repair and recovery, to be able to hit an anabolic window. It just becomes more difficult, not impossible, but more difficult when you're fasting, all the more so if you, like you mentioned, Dylan, are a two-a-day type of athlete. So, I think that for a high performer, It's reasonable for males to go for anywhere from 12 to 14 hours. And, I think that's pretty doable as a daily intermittent fast. And, you would even still be semi-breaking that fast if you had an early morning workout. So, that would look like you're going to finish eating dinner at 8:00 p.m. and then let's say your workout starts at, I don't know, we'll even say it's late. We'll say it's 9:00 a.m. So, you're starting your workout with a 13-hour intermittent fasting window. You plan on having breakfast around, whatever, 10:15 when you get out of the gym and get your hands on a smoothie or a post-workout meal. Well, even then, you could battle some of the catabolic effects of that fasting window, which you might have been doing for longevity, maybe a gut break, et cetera, by using ketones pre-workout and by using essential amino acids pre-workout. And, I actually have a lot of my clients and athletes do this. I'll give them a little bit of the baby benefits of a short-term intermittent fast and then they're doing a shot of Ketone IQ, 1,3-butanediol, or a shot of KetoneAid, beta-hydroxybutyrate, or some variant of a ketone which isn't going to impact blood glucose and arguably not only keeps your body in a fasted state but magnifies the benefits of fasting. And then, essential amino acids, especially leucine-enriched essential amino acids to be able to stay anabolic with a very small rise in insulin with minimal calories. And so, that's how you would do it if you were kind of an exerciser who wanted the benefits of fasting. You do a 12-hour intermittent fast, 14 at the most, and then you do ketones and amino acids pre-fasted workout. If you're a female, that window shortens. Well, specifically if you're a premenopausal female. Perimenopausal, postmenopausal females, it'd be everything I just said. Premenopausal females would be closer to 10 hours. You tend to see a downregulation of kisspeptin, which is an upstream hormone that will assist with fertility regulation and endocrine regulation if you are going for longer than 10 hours regularly as an overnight intermittent fast. And, even more of an issue if you're a lean female. So, females should be a slightly shorter intermittent fasting window. And then, the number one thing that people who are familiar with fasting might be thinking is, "Well, Ben, I heard you get all the benefits of fasting once you exceed 16 hours. That's when real autophagy starts to kick in. And, that is true, but you don't need to do that daily. And, what I do with my more active clients is we do 1 to 2 times per month a 24-hour dinner-to-dinner fast. We're quitting on Saturday evening, don't eat again until Sunday evening dinner, and we try to time that on recovery day. So, if Sunday is a recovery day, then you're not going to need a ton of glycogen, you're not going to need a ton of anabolic factors like protein and amino acids. So, just quit face stuffing on Saturday, get your 24-hour cycle in a couple of times a month, and that can be pretty good for cellular autophagy and cleanup without the stress for an active person of more regular fasting periods, more regular long fasting periods.

Awesome. Great breakdown. I'm gonna touch on a multitude of things that you kinda touched on there. One thing I'll say that I understand now, which I wish I did earlier, was the abusive amount of cardio that you said, and I wanna convey that double time that overdoing it like anything else can have obviously an adverse effect. I did a calcium score a couple years ago and found plaque and thought, what is— how is this even possible? And, I think a lot of that correlation is training in zone 4 too many years too long and doing it for overextended periods of time. And I actually found a low ejection fraction on top of it. And so, it's been this years of study now for me on the heart and learning about several things that you're talking about and how to combat and overcome that and then teach others that are abusing themselves that think they're doing good where in fact they're harming long-term. So, I definitely want to get into some heart things with you, but I do want to touch on something else first.

By the way, the one saving grace of the type of plaque accumulation that occurs with hard exercise is that it does tend to be more stable and tightly packed. So, that is nice. It's usually less due to excess fat accumulation and foam cell production and a little bit more of a tight-packed inflammatory response. Still an issue if it builds up long-term, but less of an issue than someone with unstable plaque.

Let's stick with that then because that's— those are fabulous points and I want to get into that with you because I think you're extremely well-versed and I like to think now after what I've gone through the last 3 or 4 years that I can go back and forth with you on this. So, this will be good. Let's talk about that. So, you said stable plaque and then obviously, the fear is the soft plaque and so we're trying to A, avoid that and B, learn how to figure out how we can even find that in comparison to the hard plaque. And so for me, the, you know, we go in stages, right? We got the calcium score, we got a CT angio, and you can get a little bit more intricate. Like, I was in there and I had a catheter done and checked because I had a bout of heart palpitations. But then we go to the Cleerly test, which can actually show you the differentiation between soft and hard plaque. Can you kind of get into the dangers of soft plaque a little bit and then how we can figure out what is what and what we need to look for?

Yeah, a few subtle nuances on the diagnostics piece of it. Most people just do the lipid panel, which is it could give you clues, but lipid panel isn't necessarily reflective of tissue cholesterol deposition. It shows you what's floating around in the blood and there is some correlation, but I have seen— and by the way, I am not a doctor. Do not take any of this as medical advice. Right, of course. But I have seen people with very good lipid panels present with elevated plaque scores.

Me too.

And vice versa, people with pretty shitty lipid panels who don't appear to have significant plaque accumulation. That's why unlike full-body MRI, which is questionable as far as necessary diagnostic imaging largely because of the amount of false positives you'd find with it, some type of diagnostic imaging for the heart I think is pretty smart. Now, the easiest lowest-hanging fruit would just be a carotid ultrasound. There are websites like vasolabs.com where you can find a technician. It's called the CIMT, carotid intima-media thickness score, and it's just a non-invasive ultrasound on either side of the neck that can correlate with decent, not perfect accuracy, but decent accuracy to what's going on in the heart, right? Calcium in the carotid, can kind of indicate what's going on in the heart. And then, you step up to a basic calcium scan score, which a lot of people are familiar with or have done, which kind of gives you a score just like it sounds like. It'll tell you, "Hey, you have calcium or you don't have calcium." And, it can differentiate visually a little bit between stable versus unstable, soft versus hard, but it's not the greatest. It's kind of like the old school scan compared to what you were just describing, Dylan, which would be a CT angiography and especially a form of CT angiography called the CLEARLY scan. This would give you not only stable versus unstable plaque but with pretty good precision the location where that plaque resides and the amount of infiltration in the vasculature. And, there are some concerns about radiation from that test, especially if it's done on a repeated basis. The faster the machine, the less radiation. So, the really fast machine, you get less radiation than a cross-country flight to New York City from California. The slower machines, you could make a case for taking some iodine afterwards and not doing it any more often than maybe a year and a half. But even just doing it once, you're going to get pretty good information about the plaque, where it resides, whether it's stable versus unstable. And this is all interesting, but I think what's more relevant and important is what to do if you find plaque. That's a million-dollar question. What do you do? Because if you find the plaque, it is going to progress. It can be stable or unstable. If it's unstable, if it's It's soft, it will progress more quickly, but it will progress no matter what. It'll almost act like a little bit of a fly trap for additional deposition over time. So, the gold standard in allopathic medicine for plaque regression, and I don't really have a problem with this approach although it can create some side effects and it can be expensive for some if insurance doesn't cover it. Would be a low-dose statin combination like ezetimibe and rosuvastatin. That'd be an example. I forget, it's 5 of one, 10 of the other in terms of milligrams. I forget which. And, that's a pretty low dose of a statin. And, the only reason I'm saying this is there's actual research on plaque regression with that combination. And then, often that would be combined with what's called a PCSK9 inhibitor. Which basically upregulates expression of LDL receptors and gives LDL more to attach to. So, there's less plaque deposition that's going to occur. The issue would be PCSK9 can be expensive. And, I personally would be— this is pure theory, I just wonder what happens systemically if we upregulate LDL receptors long-term. Because that would mean less cholesterol available potentially for things like the endocrine system, the brain, areas that we know if we haven't swallowed the high cholesterol is bad for you tagline hook, line, and sinker might be impacted with long-term use of PCSK9. But, I don't know, that's pure theory. And then, with the Lodostatin, this is less of an issue but it's still an issue. There is some risk for coenzyme Q10 stripping and muscle soreness. So, you definitely want to use ubiquinol or CoQ10. But, kind of top of the totem pole based on research by Dr. Barry Tan would be something like annatto extract, which is kind of like mixed tocopherols and tocotrienols that can help to stave off CoQ10 degradation even better than just taking CoQ10 or ubiquinol. So, that would be the allopathic approach, low-dose statin combo with PCSK9 sometimes by itself, sometimes PCSK9 by itself. You could make a case for any 3 of those having an impact on plaque regression. Downsides for what I just mentioned plus the expense. The natural approach, even though there's a lot of things that might be good like red yeast rice extract, so-called nature statin. Niacin, magnesium, even things that aren't supplemental or oral nutraceuticals like red light therapy, which would help to structure water in the cells and assist with membrane fluidity, exercise, of course, to a certain extent within reason, pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, which would reduce red blood cell adhesions and assist with blood flow. Anything that would increase nitric oxide production even from a dietary standpoint, beets, beetroot, watermelon, arugula. Assuming you have a clean mouth, right? Mouthwash can nuke some of the bacteria that assist with conversion of dietary nitrates into nitric oxide. So, don't use mouthwash excessively, but nitric oxide-rich diet, a little bit of a baby tadalafil like a baby Cialis or baby Viagra like sildenafil. But, I would say top of the totem pole in terms of plaque progression if you did want to go to the natural route would be nattokinase and lumbrokinase. Yup. Nattokinase is the easiest to find in supplemental form. Most supplements only have it at about 1,000 to 2,000 units. You'd be hard-pressed to find any data showing an impact on anything less than 8,000 units. So, you got to take a lot of nattokinase if you're going to use that as a strategy But, that would be of all the things I've seen the best. I'm going to throw this in there too. I spent a couple of years digging into this for my own personal interest and use, and I worked with a company called VitaBoom. They created a product called Heart Health and it has about 9 of the different nutraceuticals that I identified as being effective for plaque regression if you did want to go the natural route. I realize I sound like a fox guarding the henhouse right now, but I'd be remiss not to mention it. And then, recently increased based on the data I was seeing the nattokinase dosage from 2,000 up to 10,000. So, that's a clinically effective dose arguably of nattokinase in it now. So, some things that you can do either going the natural route or the pharmaceutical route, paired with some of those lifestyle factors. And, I think it is important. I mean, and a lot of women are like, "Well, these are two dudes talking about having a heart attack." It's even called the widowmaker, right?

Yes.

Yeah. Perimenopausal, postmenopausal women have a shockingly increased significant risk for heart disease. And so, this is something older females in particular should be worried about too.

Brother, had I not checked at 41 years old, this would have been progressing, progressing, progressing, and I would have had no clue because I am like a full-blown 7-day-a-weeker almost and going nonstop. I take, you know, rest, but I mean, I go, go, go, and I would have never had a clue. And so I'm thankful I did. I want to run a couple things by you that I found and that I was told, and I'm smiling at a lot of things you're saying because I'm like, man, he's dialed in. So one, the nattokinase, there's a one, and I don't work with them by any stretch, but Natovena was the one I used, and it They have a higher count on their pills and I use that one. So, I do like 12,000 a day was what I was doing because I read in studies that was where it was really effective on actually reversing plaque. And, pomegranate juice is another one that I have found because I had gone back and I have been able to reverse plaque, but my situation was an elevated Lp and it was up to 330, which is, as you know, insanely high. My dad died of a heart attack at 59. And so, reversing that is not so easy. I've been able to get mine down to 90, in the 90s, which is pretty miraculous.

That's God's grace. And, a lot of classically trained physicians will tell you Lp is not modifiable at all. I disagree. I disagree for the same reason I disagree with people who say VO2 max is not very modifiable. Yeah. I would say by traditional methods, yes, possibly even just by following a normal heart-healthy diet, yes. But by introducing— did you do like high-dose niacin for the Lp or—

I did for a while. I started to get really, really elevated liver because I was slamming that with the red yeast rice. So, I backed off both, got my liver under control. And what I am on PCSK9 of Repatha and then I take Vascepa. I dropped the statin completely because I wasn't enjoying some of the feeling with it. But, I had— they had dropped my cholesterol into the 30s and I panicked and I had now with the higher animal fats and, you know, more good clean fats and saturated fats, I'm back up to 80 LDL which I know some people panic and I'm like, "Listen, that's actually quite good even with, you know, having some plaque considering I got my HDL up that high." But, the— I went to the Mayo Clinic and they told me using PCSK9s would be bad practice and I was just looking at them. Like, thanks for making me drive 3 hours to waste my time. But, I am thoroughly with you on everything you said. The natural things that you said, the baby aspirins, I'm going to talk to you after about that product you mentioned. But, I think the point here is that looking at your heart even if you think you're too young is of the utmost importance. When would you tell people to start really getting into it and looking at it?

If you have a family history of cardiovascular disease and you're a man, I would start as early as 30. And again, I'm not a doctor, but that would be my recommendation. And women, it's tougher to say. I mean, I would say at least right around perimenopause symptoms setting in. And this is a can of worms, dude. Now, we have athletes dropping dead on the field of practice at an increasing rate due to some type of vascular infiltration or inflammation. It appears that the most likely culprit is spike protein. Induced from either getting COVID or getting a COVID vaccination. So, these are young people, right? And COVID spike protein is not going to show up as a plaque issue. That's kind of a problem is you're going to be more looking at inflammatory markers, cytokines, hs-CRP, et cetera. But now, it's like, gosh, just in terms of checking on heart health overall, I would say 30 is a good time as a guy to really start paying attention to it and perimenopause for women. But then, if you've had COVID and it was pretty bad or you've done the vaccination, especially full series of the vaccinations, you should probably start tracking inflammatory markers in particular even earlier than that, pretty much ASAP.

Ben Greenfield: It's difficult. I'll tell you, I've had COVID I think 7 or 8 times, no vaccination. But, when I had the lower ejection fraction, I related it to that but all of my inflammatory markers are fucking like zero. So, it's kind of an anomaly. I'm trying to figure out what it is. I still feel like there's COVID reaction there somehow.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. I suspect that beyond inflammation, there might be an impact on arterial elasticity and stiffness. That is measurable. Typically, you can use like a photonic, like a photobiomodulation measurement for that. There's some frequency scanners that will do it. And, it's kind of tricky because part of it comes to just getting the spike protein out. And, I mean, that would literally involve flying to Vienna or London or Tijuana. At least those 3 places have clinics where they have a blood filtration unit. I've done it. You lay in a hospital bed for 2 or 3 days and just pulls your blood out and passes it through a filter designed to be like a sticky fly trap for the spike protein. The one I use is called the Seraph filter and it was designed specifically for this and then it goes back into the body.

Yeah, for sure. That's good to know.

So— Not like thousands and thousands of people are going to go pay. No. But, it's depending on how you're doing it, anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000 to do that.

It— everything is just like when you brought up the Repatha, you know how hard it was for me to get like the insurance to cover Repatha? They have to literally elevate your triglycerides and you have to be allergic to a statin. I mean, it's a list of things to get it approved.

And then if not, it's super expensive, like, like $3,000 a month on average.

Yeah, it's, it's insane. If you do GoodRx, even it's like $750. It's just unaffordable. So it's— and that sucks for people that are really trying. And then— for me, I've already got ultra-low blood pressure, so when you're doing something to fix your ejection fraction, you're very limited on what you can take. So, these Entrestos and these other— I can't do it. I tried. And so, Jardiance has been the one I've been relying on right now with D-ribose, high ubiquinol, like very high ubiquinol. And so, I have an echocardiogram follow-up in a couple weeks to measure it again because it dropped to 45, which is— not heart failure, but clearly low.

So which dropped to 45?

The— my ejection fraction.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's, dude, it's— and I swear it's COVID-related. But anyway, let's, let's— I want to talk to you about some cellular—

move on before we get shadowbanned, bro.

Right?

No, I want to.

So I, you know, like I told you off camera, I spent decades just really in fitness and, and bodybuilding. And, you know, more focused on that nutrition, but I started working with Timeline over a year ago and, and I really got into the cellular and bio— biology side, cellular health and talking about that. So I wanna talk to you about the importance of cellular health and, and for me it's like all disease and everything health-related really starts there with ourselves. How important is it to you to take care of cellular health, mitochondria health on your list of things? 'Cause you know, people talk about the gut, people talk about so many different things, but I think everything really starts and ends with cellular health. What do you think?

Well, I mean, you kind of cheated there because the gut is cellular health. Well, yeah. I mean, it's kind of like, how do I not agree with your question because cellular health and mitochondrial health are basically the foundational principles behind every organ system because every organ system has cells and almost all of them mitochondria. And so, it's important And, I think that a lot of people are aware, at least remotely aware of the type of things that would improve in particular the health of the cell membrane or the electron flow or electrochemical balance across the cells including the electron transport chain and the mitochondria. Let's name a few just to make sure people have these bases covered. So, for the cell membrane proper fluidity and rigidity, we kind of briefly touched on this with the cholesterol piece, but it would be avoiding a completely fat-phobic approach to diet, eating back to earlier in this podcast in a more Mediterranean fashion. So, you can go out and you can get a test called OmegaQuant. Which is just basically an omega index score and it'll show you a percentage of your omega fatty acids and it's a ratio of omega-3 to omega-6s. And, you want a percentage preferably at 8% or higher. Even though the reference range cutoff is at 4%, I think you can make a pretty strong case for being at 8% or above. So, you would achieve this by getting a good balance of fats in the diet and in particular prioritizing omega-3. Fatty acids. And, if you don't get a lot of them from your diet, taking 1 to 2 grams of fish oil a day. Ben Greenfield: Okay. The next part would be quelling of reactive oxygen species that would occur in response to mitochondrial energy production. You mentioned the gut, and the cool thing is this strategy is a one-two combo for both the gut and for that reactive oxygen species quelling, and that would be dietary diversity. We live in the salad is a lettuce, minikarotts tomato and ranch dressing culture. But, when you increase the plant diversity in particular that you take in, not only do you develop a more robust microbiome, but you expose yourself to a higher amount of the flavonols and polyphenols that help to quell the reactive oxygen species and to even the plant defense mechanisms that increase your own endogenous antioxidant production. This is why I'm a bigger fan if someone were to follow a carnivore diet of something like the modified version of it where you're doing a carnivore diet but with fermented vegetables, kimchi, sauerkraut, et cetera. Or, I mean, you could also just use one of these reds powders, greens powders, whatever, but you are missing out on that aspect of dietary diversity with something like a carnivore diet. And paradoxically, the more you limit your intake of things like gluten, lectins, A2 casein from dairy, et cetera, the less robust your microbiome population becomes and the less able you are to digest those foods. Hence, parents who heavily restrict peanuts with their children have older children with peanut allergies. Parents who excessively restrict gluten with their children have older children with gluten allergies. And I'm not saying You know, if you paint the back of the toilet seat after you go out for pizza and you have total actual allergies or severe intolerances to dairy or bread or pizza, don't eat it. But, if you excessively restrict dietary diversity or even don't just go and seek out some extra things like shoots and sprouts and microgreens and 8 different things on your salad instead of 3, you are going to short yourself in terms of flavanol polyphenol intake, dietary and microbiome diversity. So, it'd be the next thing to think about. The next would be down to the electrochemical piece. To maintain that proper charge, you do need adequate minerals. Yeah. Monocropping and fertilizer use can restrict, and I'm not just pulling this out my ass, you actually do see restricted mineral production in plants that are heavily sprayed and plants that are grown in stripped soil. So, we're not getting as many minerals in the average diet. So, using things like Trace Liquid Minerals, using really, really good salt and salting your food, using electrolytes, all the more so if you're using really good water purification because that will pull some of the minerals out. But, being really cognizant of adding minerals back to your food, eating mineral-rich fruit. Of course, eat organic, when you can or at least eat non-herbicide pesticide sprayed even if it's not certified organic. And then, just basically add a lot of minerals back into your diet. And then, the last thing would be there are certain elements of nature that can assist with that electrochemical balance or with the activity of the electron transport chain and thus mitochondrial energy production. And electrochemical balance across the cell membrane. Some of the biggies you'd see kind of big in the biohacking world right now, pulsed electromagnetic field mats or coils that you lay on, stretch on, sit on, et cetera, PEMF, grounding and earthing like going outside barefoot, using a grounding mat or an earthing mat, wearing grounding shoes, et cetera. Every time lightning strikes the surface of the planet or solar radiation bombards the surface of the planet, it collects these ions There's transdermal connectivity when your skin touches the earth, touches the beach, jumps in the ocean, whatever. So, that's another way to charge up the body. Sunlight specifically, this is why you see such a surge in infrared saunas and red light panels and red light beds and photobiomodulation is the technical term for it. Those spectrums of light are well absorbed by different protein complexes in your mitochondria and can increase activity of the electron transport chain and thus ATP production, kind of like a plant would photosynthesize. And, I'm not saying you can live on sunlight. I'm not one of those guys, but it can definitely help out with energy production and mitochondrial and cellular health. So, I'd focus on that. And so, if we come full circle, I would say just to name a few of the basics, good fat intake, especially from omega-3 or Mediterranean-style fats, good dietary diversity, pay attention to a lot of these variables like earthing, grounding, PEMF, sunlight, et cetera, and then good mineral intake.

Ben Greenfield: I'll tell you, Ben, I was a fashion model in my 20s. Oh, really? Yeah. So much work on camera.

I thought you had a little bit of a Zoolander look about you.

Not anymore. I'm older now, but I've struggled with like just a body dysmorphia and eating disorder even as a nutritionist, probably why I started studying nutrition so young. And you brought up the fear of fats, and I'll tell you, I lived the last 20, 25 years of my life in that fat phobic eating 15, 20 grams of fat a day till about a year ago. And when I made that shift, I'm up to like 130 grams of fat now. And I'm telling you, man, like my health, my clarity, my ability to sit and focus even when I don't sleep enough and the overall feeling and the skin, just everything. I mean, it has changed my life. And it's not like I didn't know it, but I'm glad you brought it up because I like to tell people like my struggles so they know what a mistake. And also, I'm pissed off that I wasn't cooking and Kerrygold and getting all these good foods and enjoying my food for so long, you know, but beef tallow. Yeah. Oh man. But, you know, just the amount of avocado and whole eggs. I was eating like all these just egg whites, low-fat yogurt. It's just a garbage diet. And you think you're doing well and you're not. You're actually hurting yourself and hindering yourself. And it's just— I'm glad you brought it up, man. I really am.

It's less satiating too.

Oh, jeez. I'm never angry during the day anymore or short-wicked or every 30 minutes getting up to go take a bite of peppers and onions, like, you know, like that type of thing. It's just, it's insane. So thanks for bringing that up, man. I appreciate that. You, you're covering every base when I ask a question, and it's, it's really nice. I do want to talk to you about the mind side. So like I said, I'm a spiritual guy. I, I really am focusing on the mind-body connection and lining up our neuro side, vagus nerve stimulation, with our health side. But I also argue that if If you're not really spiritually healthy, it's really hard to be overall healthy. But, what is your feeling on the mind-body correlation connection and bringing that all together and how do you kind of view that and look at it?

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, the vagus nerve is a really good perfect example. So now, you can use a ring or a wristband or a chest strap to measure your heart rate variability, which is basically an indication of the vagal nerve activation of the pacemaker cells of the heart. You have multiple cranial nerves. One cranial nerve, the vagus nerve, snakes through the body, innervates various organs, and it has branches, the sympathetic, the fight or flight, the parasympathetic, rest or digest branch. When working in good interplay would cause robustness of the pacemaker cells of the heart such that there is high variability between beats, right? Ba-bump, 1.1 milliseconds, ba-bump, 0.99 milliseconds, 0.985. And, if you see a low variability, that can be indication that your nervous system is kind of flat, kind of beat up, maybe stressed, in some cases overtrained. So, the vagus nerve, like you mentioned, is something that can play into a physical treatment of the mind-body connection, meaning that there are things that you can do to strengthen that connectivity between the vagus nerve and the heart, to strengthen the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic. Many things people would be familiar with as coming out of the hippie esoteric woo-woo yoga world, but it would be things like meditation, chanting, singing, humming, gargling, yoga, breathwork. All of these do a pretty good job increasing HRV. And, Any or all of those would fit well, and I would even say be crucial at least present for some of them for an overall really good level of both physical and mental fitness. There are other newer more technological devices that can stimulate the vagus nerve. They make electrical handheld devices like the TrueVaga or the HU list that you can hold up to your neck or that kind of stimulate the what's called the auricular branch of the vagus nerve underneath the ear to increase your HRV within just a few minutes, which is great if you're nervous, if you are about to get on an airplane or want to fall asleep more quickly or wake up and can't get back to sleep. There are also physicians who for people with really poor HRV and even things like PTSD who will do a stellate ganglion nerve block, which is basically an injection of an area around the vagus nerve bilaterally on either side of the neck. And, that's bringing out the big guns obviously, but you can even go in with a needle and actually stimulate the vagus nerve that way. So, a lot of different ways to do it, but people should be aware of the vagus nerve, the fact you can measure it, and the fact that using both kind of ancient wisdom and modern science, you can stimulate it. And then, you brought up prayer. And, it's interesting because the spiritual side of things is something that probably because the fitness and health world can be so materialistic is not addressed quite as much. Not only is It's something that doesn't feel immediately palatable in terms of the health effects that it produces, but it can be something that is a little bit more confusing in terms of where to start and often very dogmatic, right? Well, I'm going to be religious. What am I going to do, Hindu, Islam, Christian? And so, then that whole kind of can of worms gets opened up. No matter which way you look at it, you cannot deny the impact that has been shown in research that prayer has on health, that some type of extrinsic religious experience like church attendance and being a member of some type of a religious body and even group worship has on health, that intrinsic religiosity has on health, right? Belief in a greater purpose for your life, belief in an intelligence that exists outside of you, a higher being that has your best purpose in mind and even has your life not in a robot automaton way but in a goodwill way has your life kind of planned out for you that no matter what you're going through, you can cast your hopes upon that greater being and there actually is a plan written for your life. And, if you look at religions of salvation such as Christianity, even a so-called way out like the ability to be able to just cast all your cares upon a figure like Jesus. So, you have no more guilt and no more shame and you're not expected to be good on your own, but you're just basically doing it based on the path that that deity created for you by God stepping out of eternity into humanity and being crucified, taking on sins, and then you're able to just cast your sins at the foot of that cross. And, I have books about this like "Endure" and "Fit Soul." I have a journal called the Spiritual Disciplines Journal. And, the reason for that is that I was kind of at the tippy top of the world from a physical fitness, even a business fitness and mental fitness standpoint like 10 years ago, but I was very unhappy on the inside. And, I think I was experiencing what many, many people experience and even many ancient philosophers experience C.S. Lewis, Pences, Augustine, these guys all referred to this eternal hole in the soul, this gnawing for something that's greater outside of us. As a Disney princess might say, "There must be something greater out there." This idea that we are created as eternal beings and until we connect to that eternity that's outside of us, there's always that gnawing that there's something missing, something unfulfilling. And so, in business, $10 million needs to become $100 million, needs to become a billion. And, in fitness, no matter how fit you are and whatever pinnacle that you achieve or however many Ironmans you've done, it never quite feels like you've made it. It's not as fulfilling as you thought it would be. And, you could just throw anything at that eternal hole: sex and money and cars and homes and fame and power. And until you actually fill the eternal gnawing in your soul with something eternal, which would be belief in a higher power and some type of intrinsic religious experience, preferably combined with an extrinsic religious experience with— and I'm biased as a Christian, I think the most powerful of those would be actually saying a prayer to God that you can't do it on your own, you've realized that you aren't able to do this of your own power, but that you know that God has created a way for you to achieve happiness and eternal salvation through Jesus Christ. And, when you say that prayer and it becomes that simple, then all of a sudden your entire life changes. And, it's not like you trying to become good all the time and trying to be better all the time, but it's as though you are equipped and enabled and supported to do the best job that you can, but there's not guilt and fear and shame over failure. Instead, it's just you being helped up by God and by that belief in Jesus to do what it is that you've been called to do. And then, all those things like the money and the sex and the cars and the homes and the fitness, all of a sudden, they actually kind of become paradoxically fulfilling but not fulfilling in a way that you just want to chase after more and more of them. It's like, "Oh, I've got enough. I can be happy now." And, it's not like you lose your desire to pursue greatness or to pursue what it is you've been called to pursue in terms of just your impact here on this planet, but it feels less like grasping at straws and more like waking up in the morning happy to do that, happy you're about to just roll up your sleeves and do what it is that God has put on your plate for that day. So, long story short, long answer I know, but I would say if anything, since our bodies are going to fade and our bones are going to become porous and our muscles are going to be beef jerky at the end of the day, that the spiritual fitness is the most important thing because your soul is the one bright eternal spark that will go on to exist for better or worse for eternity. So, that's the part you should care about the most.

Ben Greenfield: Dude, you've been so insightful and you've shared so much, but what you just did right there for me and I hope for everybody is by far and away the most impactful. What you said there, if you looked at me on paper 7, 8 years ago, you would have thought I was had it all, right? I mean, making six figures a month, three, four cars in my drive, arcade games in my house, like everything a dude would want, you know, shoe collection. And I'm telling you, Ben Greenfield, every night I'd go, I'd look at my wife when I get into bed, and I'd just be sad, miserable, empty. Like I felt like, what is it? I can't feed myself enough shit that I'm buying and doing. And I'm like, why am I just so off? Every day, every night. And when I really became God first and I stopped worrying about everything, just let it happen and fall into place, it'll come if it's supposed to. And if it's not, and you know, you stop taking money from everybody throwing at you and selling out here and there and just doing what's good and right. Every single thing for me has fallen right into place as it should. And now I'm doing what I was put here to do. And I don't even worry about it. I don't wonder what's next or what— nothing. I'm stressed when I get on a flight or something if I'm going to be late. But, in general, that feeling that you just described is where for me and I think for a lot of people is it just completely changes. And, that's when the whole world will open up to you and then you can really become healthy and happy.

Yeah. And, it's not a magic— prosperity switch, right? No. We're not talking about like thinking you will grow rich because sometimes people hear you and I talking like, "Oh, wait, all I have to do is become religious and all of a sudden, everything just clicks and I'm making the money I make and getting the job I want." It's not like that. Your problems don't disappear, but what I would more accurately define it as is a contentedness switch. Yes. Being contented is not synonymous with being happy. It's not like you're just like, laughing and cruising through life all the time. Being contented is essentially that feeling that no matter what, no matter what you're going through, things are going to get better and you're right where you're supposed to be and all you're supposed to do is be in that moment, trust God, and do the very best job you can without despairing. And, the only way to really do that is to actually know that God is on your side and have a God that you can talk to.

That's it. And when people ask, like, how do I pray? It's really, it's just a conversation with God is all it is. And turning it over to him. One of the things that I've learned to embrace that's very hard, and it's still hard, I'm sure you probably deal with this too, is accepting like adversity, but understanding why it happened. And then seeing later on time and time again, wow, this happened because then it set me up for this, or it helped me do this. It shaped my future.

Adversity is multimodal. Adversity can be God keeping you humble, giving you some type of a health issue so that you don't become that asshole podcaster who has it all figured out and all of a sudden, you go farther away from God because all of your health problems are solved and you're just a walking picture of perfection. And, God sometimes puts you through adversity so that you are more empathetic towards what other people are going through. He might have a period of time where you go through financial distress just to open your eyes up to being able to help others when you have financial wealth to go around, or he might put you through a sickness so that you're a little bit more willing to take flowers to somebody who's in the hospital or take care of their dog or be there for them in some way. And then finally, and this is of course the age-old question, I don't know if it's a can of worms you should even open up towards the end here, but I'll briefly name it. There is this idea, "Well, why would God allow anything bad to happen in the first place?" And, some of the reasons that I've just described are the reasons. But then, the last reason, and this is probably the hardest one for people to swallow is, "Well, God's God, right? He made everything. You wouldn't even be alive right now if God hadn't made—" God does kind of call the shots, right? We don't know what kind of plan God has in mind, but God certainly does. And, Who are we to question that? We know that God draws straight lines with crooked sticks. And, that's the hard part about being a puny little human is there is an intelligent being outside of you and sometimes the way that they decide to pull off an incredible thing for the universe is not the way you would have done it.

Exactly. And, you don't question it. And, if everything was just the same every day, then what would the point of even be living? If we were all the same and nothing ever changed, there was there has to be failure with success, there has to be bad and good or else what would we have?

Ben Greenfield: There has to be evil with free will. God could have made us little robot automatons to just worship him all day, and don't get me wrong, that'd be great. But instead, God gave us free will and we get to decide what we want to do. And, you know what, sometimes we make the wrong choices and that's why there's evil, that's where there's sin. And, That's why the message of forgiveness is so beautiful. That's right.

I know you got to go here in a minute. I got one more for you if you can really quick. It's a quick one. And then I just want to say thank you again. I valued this. Let's do this. Your top 5 staple foods that you have every single day or incorporate most often in your diet.

Oh, how about I give you my grocery shopping list when I travel?

Do it. That's it. Do it.

Because I have the Whole Foods grocery shopping list or even just the Kroger's or whatever. Same thing. So, let's see if I can do this from memory. I'm going to hit the big ones. Okay. If I miss anything, it's because it's not important. So, this would be the person who says, "Ah," because I have clients who will say this sometimes. I'm like, "No, no, no." They'll be like, "Oh, I've been traveling for the past 10 days and I just went off the bandwagon. I've been eating out and couldn't find any good food." And so, I typically get the Whole Foods order in once I know about when my plane is going to land. And, I realize even Whole Foods is whole paycheck for a lot of people. So, Instacart, Rosar's, Albertsons, I don't care. You could pull what I'm about to describe to you off anywhere. The only reason I go Whole Foods is I like their chicken. So, I get one whole cold rotisserie chicken that easily goes in the mini fridge. That'll give me 2 days of protein. I get a bag of frozen blueberries. And, even those in a mini fridge in a hotel room will just stay good longer than the ones in the canister and they're cheaper. I get a bag or a little, whatever you call it, little— like the little canisters of macadamia nuts or walnuts. I get a few tins of either sardines or anchovies. A thing of mixed greens, a cucumber, a tomato, and a little thing of mustard which I use for the sauce with the chicken, just like good stone mustard. And then, if I've got any money left over, I got a bar of dark chocolate. Oh, and yogurt. I like the really good thick creamy coconut yogurt. So, I get all that stuff, it arrives at the hotel, everything can fit into the mini fridge that needs to fit into the mini fridge. I get the little utensils from the hotel restaurant or the ones that they put in the bag at Whole Foods, little salt packets and pepper packets even though a lot of times I travel with my own really good salt. And, I can do chicken salads, I can do yogurt with chocolate and blueberries, I can do chicken dipped in mustard, I can do a Mediterranean-style sardine salad with tomato and cucumbers on it. I can do a few pretty decent meals and eat really well on what I just described to you for everything I just said, that's still under $100. Yeah. Any grocery store, at least in the U.S. and many grocery stores around the world. So, that's just an example of how you could pull something like this off, be healthy even when you're on the road. And, everything I just said to you would totally fit into a home grocery shopping list too.

Man, if you saw the structure I have around my travel and food, the cooking and the VRBOs and everything I buy and what I do. And I, I even bring my own avocado so they're ripe. I, I'll have to tell you sometime off camera, it's, it's messed up, but it's, it, you know, it's just I'm that detailed of a guy. But I think what you said, you can do this even if you're on a quick trip to a hotel if you just do it right and take the time to map it out. I mean, you can really do it. So I'm with you, man. Look, I could go 20 more hours with you. I swear this was one of my favorite conversations I've ever had. I really appreciate it, man. It was. It was. You are the man for sure. And well, well earned all the accolades you have. And I don't think it's enough for you. So why don't you tell people, I know you got a couple new things that you've just had come out. You want to tell them about that and where to follow you? I mean, it's easy, but we'll just put it in the description. Let's see.

I think the coolest things for people would be, you know, I have a podcasts and write articles and stuff at BenGreenfieldLife.com. I have a new book. It's like the Bible of biohacking. It's called "Boundless" on Amazon or BoundlessBook.com. And, I just launched a new ketone-based bar with ketones in it, which is kind of unique. I don't know of anything like that that exists. It tastes pretty good. They got cinnamon roll and vanilla cheesecake, and we're working on chocolate. And, that's called the Boundless Bar. BoundlessBar.com. And so, those would be a few things to check out.

Yep. I'm going to try some of those myself. They fit right into my daily diet. So, I appreciate it again, brother. Thanks again. I'm going to look forward to seeing you at events and talking with you in the future. And, I appreciate everything that you do and that you've done all these years. And, I know you got a long way to go. So, thanks again for your time, man.

Cool. Thanks, Dylan.

Love you, bro. Love you too, man. Alright, everybody. That wraps up another one. Stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli and Ben Greenfield. Ben Greenfield signing off. Later.