To Hell & Back With Autoimmune Disease: How To Heal Autoimmunity With Diet, Relationships, Lifestyl

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

I gotta try before I get on drugs. He's like, all right, well, give it a try and come back and we'll put you on the meds. I never went back in and I never went on the medication. Never missing an event. Just being there all the time and doing everything I can to build my business 100% virtual and be home with them. Yeah, if someone can take away from this interview that, hey, I could just, like, simplify stuff and reduce the overwhelm, then my job is done.

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

Well, howdy ho. Today's podcast is with special guest Ryan Lee. You're gonna really dig this dude. We talk a little bit about joint pain, about autoimmunity, and about inflammation in today's show. So I would be remiss not to let you know about the brand new supplement I just launched. Been working behind the scenes in the secret Batman Labs at Kion on a brand new version of Kion Flex. So what we did was we managed to isolate this special part of turmeric that's not curcumin, which you might be familiar with. Instead, what we got are the tumerosaccharides, which are actually far more bioavailable and provide significant joint health benefits. The body of research on this stuff is absolutely staggering when it comes to reducing joint swelling and tenderness. And then we blended that with IU Flex, which comes from this ayurvedic superfruit called Terminalia. And this one improves joint flexibility. So it's going to help out with mobility, joint discomfort, joint soreness. And then we threw in proteolytic enzymes, which are kind of the final icing on the recovery cake. And these things, of course, have been used for a very long time to knock out soreness. But when you combine them with the turmosaccharides and the IU Flex, I've been popping three of these every night on an empty stomach. They're absolutely mind blowingly effective for supporting your joints and for helping you to bounce back after a tough workout or when you're injured. So we just launched this formula. It's called Flex. It's available now at a 10% discount to you. You go to getkion.com flex that's getk I-o n.com flex and you can use discount code BGF10 at the checkout to get 10% off. So while you're at it, while you're popping out your soreness with the Kion flex. You may also want to try this amazing blood flow formula called Organifi Red. Now with the red juice, they took 11 different superfoods like cordyceps and acai and beetroot and all these things that help to build your blood but also help to revitalize the skin. And they put them all together into this wonderful tasting red juice they call it. And if you look at the cost per serving on this stuff, it comes out to just a little bit over $1.50 for a giant bottle of this juice. You just put the powder into like a Nalgene water bottle, add some icy cold water, you drink this and you're getting red juice. It's equivalent what you pay like 12 to 15 bucks for at your local cold press juicery or anywhere else where you're getting these fancy overpriced juices. So Organifi has a green one, they have a gold one, but the red one, especially if you're an athlete or somebody looking for a blood flow and the anti aging effect, this stuff's really great. So. And it tastes really good too. Anyways, you get a 20% discount on any of the Organifi products, including the red juice. I highly recommend this one. And the way you do that is you go to Organifi.com Ben that's Organifi with an I.com Ben and use discount code BENG20FOREIGN.

Hey folks, my guest on today's podcast, Ryan Lee and I go pretty far back as a matter of fact. Not to blow, not to blow smoke, Ryan, but this guy that you're about to hear me talk to is probably responsible for initially kind of initiating and teaching me just about everything I know in the realm of online marketing and success in the fitness industry. I mean, it was like over a decade ago that I started to delve into Ryan's teachings and website like some, I think it was like some hokey strength training website with animated gifs and oh yeah, and like templates for workouts. And I used to sit there at the gym. Where the, where was I? The Liberty Lake Athletic Club, one of the first gyms I managed. And I'd use Ryan's systems and teachings and software to systematize a lot of what I was doing. And then I started to attend Ryan's conference back in the day in, in Connecticut. And I learned how to create information products and ebooks and virtual coaching programs and all these kind of, you know, profit generating and information scaling tools that I still utilize quite a bit to this day. But, I mean, Ryan is, is really one of the guys who's responsible for, for taking me from being a fledgling personal trainer into learning how to scale my knowledge and reach a lot more people. So you're going to get a chance to learn a lot more about Ryan shortly because he has a great story and he also has a lot to bring to the table as far as autoimmune disease, which we're going to address in detail today as well. So Ryan is an exercise physiologist. He recently founded a bar company called Rewind. He's written a ton of books, particularly in the fitness and the fitness business industry, like the Millionaire Workout and Passion to Profits. He's been featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. He's been named by Entrepreneur magazine as the world's number one lifestyle entrepreneur. And he also has a very interesting backstory that's occurred over the past few years in terms of his own personal health journey. So as you listen to Ryan and I chat it up, you can hit the show notes and leave your own questions or comments or feedback or delve into anything that we talk about. If you just go. BenGreenfieldFitness.com RyanLee that's L E E. BenGreenfieldFitness.Com RyanLee so, Ryan, welcome to the show, man.

Wow, what an intro. And I gotta say that it's been really, really cool to see your journey. And I do, you know, I remember everyone who goes to my events and I remember you from the beginning and we hit it off right away. I remember even hanging out at Sam after one of the. The events, just going out. Yeah, I just. And I was always struck by you. I'm like, man, this guy is sharp. Like, you just, you got it. And not only did you get it, you always implemented it. So it's been really, it's been so cool to see people like you and some other clients like Jeff Cavalier from Athleanx and Mike Gearing and so many people take this stuff and just go with it and impact so many lives. So. And I am, I'm truly grateful for you then kind of returning the favor and having me on your show today because I know you reach a lot of great people as well. So this is going to be fun. I'm just here to share and to help as many people as I can.

Well, thanks, man. Thanks. I appreciate your kind words. And I actually remember, Sam, you talking about the one that, that conference that you put on at the Egyptian Theater in Park City, Utah.

Yeah, in Park City.

Yeah. Yeah, I do recall that I connected with Garrett Gunderson there, who later went on to become my financial advisor for, like, seven years. I remember we all went to a. Actually, My. My faint memory is that. Is that we wound up at a nightclub in Park City afterwards, and one of your speakers, I think it was Mike Koenigs, wound up dancing on stage in a giant dinosaur costume. I believe that was.

That sounds about right. Yeah, that sounds about right. But. But I do. I do remember you. You were one of the guys. Whenever I'd have a product for sale, you know, you. Back in the day, you. You'd watch the receipts come in, and with almost without fail, one of the first one, two, or three orders. Ben Greenfield, Ben Greenfield Fitness. And, I mean, you went to almost all my events. You were there. You were in the front row. You were taking notes. So now we're ready to rock, baby. And it's just really cool seeing what you're doing. So enough now. We're done blowing smoke. Let's. Let's get some stuff out there. Ben.

I figured we could just blow smoke for an hour and people could sit back and listen.

We could do that, too.

Completely useless. Podcast. All right, sorry. Sorry, you guys. Sorry, our listeners. We'll get into the good stuff now. So, you know, I think a lot of people perhaps don't realize that you're kind of the Godfather a lot of the online fitness industry, Ryan. And before we delve into what's kind of changed for you recently, from what I understand, you actually got your start as, like, a personal trainer and strength coach coming from the realm of exercise physiology. But can you kind of give people a background of where you came from as far as going from a fledgling personal trainer into a guy who really made it in the fitness industry?

Sure. And actually, my first job, some people don't even realize this. I worked for six years right out of college in a children's rehab hospital. It was called Blythedale Children's Hospital. And I was a recreational therapist. I was a ctrs, a certified therapeutic recreation specialist. So I did adapted aquatics. So I took the kids in the pool and did exercise there. We did sports, games and fitness, even craft projects. I worked from 2pm to 10pm so we would do things like capture the flag at night after all the other therapists had left. So I spent six years doing that and on the side. So in the mornings when I had free, I was. I was a trainer, so I'd go to people's Houses I would go to, gyms I would run, speed agility clinics. I would. Then during lunch breaks or dinner breaks, when my hours shifted, I would train young athletes at their house. And that's what I did. At night I went. I put myself through graduate school and got a master's in exercise physiology.

Wait, wait, wait. I'm just going to stop you for just a second. Are you saying that you.

I have a lot of stuff.

You didn't start off by getting calf implants and an Instagram channel?

Well, I was practicing the selfie, whatever that. The face they did with those lips, the frozen. The fish lip selfie. I was working on that. Well, so this goes back to 94. And, you know, this is when I started at the children's hospital. And this was obviously really before the Internet took off. So the way I got into the Internet, working at the hospital, and it was like mid-1998, and I just got a computer at home, a compact, something. I don't remember what it was. It was like a compact all in one with like a floppy disk. We got the Internet dial up and I said, you know what? I should have a little website for my sports training company because I was training athletes and I used front page 98. I couldn't even get that up. So my neighbor Jonathan, who was 12 years old, I gave him 20 bucks and he helped me get my site up. And I mean, that's what happened. And I started writing articles about training because this was before, obviously before YouTube and Facebook and all this other stuff. And we, you know, back then, Ben, you couldn't have videos online, so it was just articles. Even when I took pictures, they would take five minutes to download. So it's just mostly articles.

Yeah, well, our articles and GIFs. Like, I remember when I used to go to a lot of your websites to learn these different strength moves. And you had. You had like software where you could put together workouts for people and then send them to them. There were no photos and videos. It was all those animated GIFs.

That was it. That was the only thing you could do. And no one obviously had smartphones, so you couldn't check it on the phone. So it was these little animated GIF files we created to show all the training because by way of my athletic background, so I was a competitive track and field athlete and ran all through college and captained my college track team. So that was my training. So I love doing speed training. But you're right, we couldn't really even do big photos or videos. So we started Doing that online. And lo and behold, this thing just kept growing. I hired a trainer, and some people might know this guy's name to help me create training programs. So people would pay me like a hundred dollars for a sports training program. You know, hey, I'm an 18 year old football player. Can I have a, you know, running back? Can I have a training program? They pay me a hundred bucks. And I hired a trainer to help me create programs. His name is Craig Valentine and he's pretty well known in personal development and fitness now and started, you know, runs etr. So Craig was my first guy I hired back in the late 90s. Then I started selling sports training equipment like medicine balls and bands. And it just really kind of grew from there. That was the beginning of it. And I started to learn, I started to become more of a marketer as I, as I started to look at my library of books. It was all fitness and strength and conditioning and NSCA and I had the. I was a CSCS and had my ACSM certification. And then slowly, you know, 10% of my books started to become business, 20%. And then eventually it was more business than fitness books. And then I started teaching. You know, other trainers like you would say, hey, Ryan, if you could do this stuff and sell these programs online and ebooks and training, could you help me? I said, sure, why not? And that's. That was where it really began in the early 2000s.

Yeah, I mean, it is interesting to hear about this because I think I was kind of, you know, kind of sort of joking when I talk about calf implants on Instagram. But it really is true that it is much easier nowadays to simply slap up a channel and start putting photos and videos of you working out. And people, a lot of times will, you know, they'll follow you based on your body or the size of your implants. But, you know, there's almost like this lack of folks who are still putting in the hard, hard work. Like, you know, another guy who's, who's getting a lot of publicity right now is Brent Contreras, you know, with his GL and his new glute book. And like, he's a perfect example of like, kind of an OG in the fitness industry who has run gyms and trained people's glutes for years and years, you know, before there were websites and Instagram and, you know, it's those kind of people that I think that, you know, if you're listening in and you're trying to assess whether or not someone's actually Real or legit, look into their history. Look into how many hundreds of people they've held boots on the ground in a brick and mortar type of scenario, actually watching people move and working with them one on one, versus how things have become largely these days, where you can go straight from a weekend personal training certification into an Instagram channel, into coaching people or having people buy your product with very, very little experience.

Zero, less than little experience. And you're right. I mean, I cut my teeth training clients, training athletes. I did an internship at Yale University and I worked with their strength and conditioning program. I mean, I was in there, I was doing cleans and jerks with them and I even did a study when I worked at the hospital. And I, I have a published thing about Osgood Schlatter. Like we did a whole scientific thing with. God, it's crazy the, the amount of training I did with clients, but you're right. Now someone could go get, get, you know, look pretty, fit, be good, good looking man or woman, and all of a sudden people are paying them money for their programs and they. It's just generic cookie cutter stuff.

Yeah, yeah. It's a blessing and a curse, though. I mean, at the same time, we don't have to use cartoons anymore to tell people, you know, which exercises.

Nothing wrong with the exercise. Right, right. And there's, there's some, there's absolutely some, some really good stuff. And it's, you know, the really good fitness professionals and strength and conditioning coaches who know their stuff can now demonstrate it as well. So there's, there's obviously good and bad with both, and people just have to be a little bit more discerning who they choose to listen to.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, in, in my estimation, I guess it was, I don't know, maybe five or six years ago, I could be wrong, but it seems like you went from putting on a lot of these conferences, training a lot of trainers in the fitness industry, putting out a lot of your books, a lot of your marketing materials, etc. And you kind of seem to fall off the map to a certain extent.

It was almost like Ryan Lee disappeared. Can you describe exactly what happened to you?

It was.

It was actually more like nine years ago where things really started to change. I started a supplement company and I brought on a couple of partners and we were the back end for a lot of the big online fitness guys. The company was called Pro Grade Nutrition. So basically every big trainer was selling our stuff and things were going really, really well. And I kind of took a little bit more behind the scenes approach of that. And I got out of just strictly working with fitness pros, and I started focusing more on just anyone who wanted to learn entrepreneurship. So I got out of specific fitness industry events, started teaching a little more general entrepreneurship, got behind the scenes with the nutrition company. And my wife and I, at that time, we had just had our fourth child. But then things within. I'm telling you, Ben, it's amazing how your life can change within like six months. So within a few months, our top promoter, basically pro grade, the way it was run, we were. We were an affiliate company. So all. We only did well when affiliates promoted.

That was a pro grade nutrition.

Yeah, exactly. So one of our top affiliates left and started his own company. Okay, cool. What wasn't cool was that all the other top affiliates were friends with this guy and left. So we had just done a multimillion dollar blanket order for some ingredients that we now owed, and our revenue kind of went off a cliff almost overnight. It was pretty shocking. Right around that time, my mom, she was only 63 at the time, was diagnosed with cancer and within three months had passed away. And then I launched a print magazine that failed after one issue because I'm like, oh, recurring revenue, right? You could charge monthly. And I didn't realize the print, you have to put out issues like three months in advance. So I had. And I just spent almost $100,000 doing an infomercial. The day I filmed it, I had a double sinus infection, couldn't speak. And we just, tough luck. So we couldn't air it. So it was like, I thought, so.

You had basically like a shit ton of stress building up all at once.

All at once. Within months, the fourth child, my mom passing away, the financial stress, all of this hit me. And I started eating more, not exercising as well. And everything just kind of came to this head where over the course of years, I started getting more joint pain. I was just kind of disappearing from everything. I'm like, I, you know, I was, I was just tired of everything. And my joints started hurting really badly to the point when I woke up one morning, I could barely walk. And I'm like, all right, there's something serious going on. Like, I was limping, I could not walk. I went to, like most people, if they have something going on with their body, you know, I went to my, my md. He didn't know what it was. I went to every doctor you could imagine. Well, my feet hurt. I went to a podiatrist, I went to a physical therapist. I went to two different chiropractors. Finally, I went to a rheumatologist, and he looked at me. He saw my toes were swollen, my hands were swollen, was asking me my health history, and in about two minutes, looked at me and said, said, you have an autoimmune. You have psoriatic arthritis. I'm like, what? And he said, yep, that's what you got. I said, well, all right. And I have a science. Well, I know that's inflammation. So, you know, what are we gonna do? Let's reduce inflammation. He goes, no, we got to put you on a methotrexate. Like, wait, what? Methotrexate? He's like, well, yeah, it's chemo, so just make sure you're not around anyone who's. Who gets sick. I said, doc, I have four.

They wanted to give you a chemo drug for autoimmune.

Yeah.

Is that common?

I have no idea. But I. I don't. I didn't stick around to find out because I said, well, it doesn't sound right. He's like, well, you have all these things. I don't even remember. He was saying something about, well, your white blood cells or this, and. And you have all this going on. So what we basically have to do is we don't know what's causing it, so we just have to kind of kill everything and then rebuild you back up. He said, so you'll have to come in, like, every week or two, we'll do blood tests. And I said, well. Well, isn't this dangerous? He's like, well, yeah, there are some side effects, and it could lead to this and potential cancer. I'm like, well, what? I said, but isn't something. I said, the autoimmune is a symptom. There's something causing it. Right? Like there's a cause and effect. Like there is something causing this inflammation. I said, if I clean up my diet, try to reduce my stress, maybe change up my exercise program, can't that help? He goes, no. I said, what? He said, we don't know what causes it. I said, well, I gotta try before I get on drugs. He's like, all right, well, give it a try and then come back and we'll put you on the meds. And that was, I don't know, five, six years ago. And I never went back in, and I never went on the medication.

Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, I don't want to gloss over this idea of stress because, I mean, if you now go to pubmed and you do some Research on autoimmune disease. Like, like there is a direct research linked association or research based association between basically the neuroendocrine response to stress. Right. All these hormones that get released in response to some kind of lifestyle incident, like whether it be a loved one dying or the type of business issues that you went through or just a whole bunch of bullets from the matrix getting thrown at you at once. And that can lead to a lot of issues that you can find in the literature on a huge release of cytokine production, a big dump of inflammation, hypersensitivity to foods, this thing called cell danger response that Neil Nathan talks about in the really good book Toxins. I mean you can go from being fine to having some significant. Typically it's like leaky gut issues or some type of gut dysregulation or autoimmune disease that manifest directly in response to the neuroendocrine issues that result from excess stress.

Yeah. And I had more stress than I've ever had in my life. And I have, I have zero doubt that was a major cause, a huge part of it. So it was, it was pretty scary though. And basically looking it up and him saying, well then you're, you know, I was, I loved running and sprinting and playing tennis and he's basically said I have to get on drugs and I'm probably not gonna able to do that stuff anymore. And now fast forward all these years later, I've, you know, I'm down 35 pounds. I'm the same weight and pants size I was in high school. I have, I'm not, I'm not gonna say I'm 100% pain free, but I'm probably 95% pain free. There are some times maybe if the weather, if it's really, if there's a thunderstorm, I'll feel it in my joints or if I feel extra stressed or the diet is not pretty clean, I'll feel it in my joints, usually in my hands. But for most, mostly it's like I've never felt better.

Yeah, I do remember, I guess it was probably like 2013, 2014, something like that. I got an email from you. It was not written directly to me. I think it was to your ENT audience about how you weren't going to be sending as many emails because you literally couldn't type. Like you couldn't move your fingers to type on the keyboard.

Yeah, it was, it was that bad. And I knew I still have a little self test, a little self test that I do to know if My joints are in pain or not, because it was so bad where I couldn't snap my fingers. It was so painful. I couldn't rub my fingers either together that hard. And even now, you could hear me. Oh, yeah. That's when I know if I could snap my fingers. I'm good.

You're snapping, baby.

Oh, baby. And, yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't type.

So. So this doc want to put you on chemo. You said no, you walked out.

What.

What'd you do? Like. Like, how. How'd you go from being where you're at now to how debilitated you were in that office?

The first thing I did was say, okay, who do I know? Who do I know in kind of the health space and natural space? I. First person I called was my. My buddy Brian Kurtz, who at that time was running boardroom, and they had a really popular health newsletter. And he had connections to every doctor you could imagine and naturopaths. And I said, brian, who's the best naturopath in the area? So Brian connected me with this great naturopath. And then we did some tests to see what foods I was most sensitive to. And the ones that came back for me, the biggie was dairy. And then there was gluten was the other one, and the cane sugar was a third one. So. So the first thing I did was, okay, let me go on a, like, elimination diet. And reduced. And not just reduced. I eliminated everything, all dairy, all gluten, all sugar from my diet. And within, man, Almost within, like, two days, I felt better. Not 100% better, but I was able to actually start, like, walking. And I stuck with that. And I started to lose weight for probably about a month or two strictly. And it just was really, really hard. I mean, that's all I can say. It was really hard to have zero dairy, zero gluten, zero sugar. With the kids, with birthday parties, with pizza night, with going, it just. It became harder. So I started, and the naturopath said, it's okay. You could start to slowly add in some of these things. Add in a little bit of gluten once in a while and some sugar. See how you slowly started to add it in. And I was feeling okay. And then, you know what happens over time? You start adding in more. You start adding in more, you start getting worse on the diet.

Stress level maintained. You know, was still going through some ups and downs, but eventually I started, you know, slowly started gaining the weight back, started getting a little bit more pain until about two and a Half years ago, I, we went on vacation. My wife and I with our kids came back. I couldn't put my pants back. I remember trying to put my jeans back on. And I said to my wife, did you wash them? She's like, what are you talking about? No, I didn't wash your pants. We were on vacation and I went to the doctor. I was sick, I didn't feel well. And he said, I have high blood pressure. And that scared the heck. That scared me more than my autoimmune. The high blood pressure and oh my God, am I gonna have a heart attack? I'm only. At that time I was like 45 and that, like, that was it. You have your kind of, you know, even though we're Jewish. I had my coming to Jesus moment and I was close, I'm only 5 8, I was close to £200. And I said, I gotta figure this out. And I look back at what worked for me, what didn't work for me, why I fell off my diet, how I started to introduce stress back into my life. And I went on like a simplification, just deep dive. And I said, the first thing I want to do is let me focus on my morning routine. Like, let me not, not that I was eating a lot of donuts and crap, but I just, I didn't have anything consistent. So I said, let me have something in the morning that I know is going to be healthy, that doesn't have the inflammatory stuff. And I started having bars and I tried every bar you could imagine. I tried, I didn't, I didn't try your. But your bar wasn't out at the time, I don't think Ben.

No, my bar has only been on for like two years.

Yeah, exactly. It was, it was before your bar, otherwise I would have tried your bar, of course. So I couldn't find. Yeah, I couldn't find. Of course, Ben Greenfield, come on. So I, I tried different bars and even though I couldn't find one that I truly loved, at least just having that and having a smaller amount of calories and trying to find things that didn't cause inflammation in the morning, having water, taking supplements, having every day for lunch, having a really good salad. And I'll give you my. You want to hear my special salad? Ben, this is.

Let's hear your salad. Alright. My listeners love love salad recipes. They love smoothie recipes. So fill me in.

Now, everyone, I tell my salad recipe today. Some people like, oh my God, that sounds great. Most people start dry heaving. This is it. I'll Take greens. Now what I found that the greens that I love a combination. I'll do half of it is spinach, like baby spinach. The other half is arugula. So you get that nice mix of two. I love arugula. The little, the herbdado flavor. And then a can of sardines with olive oil. So I use the olive oil as like the dressing and I throw in the sardines and I chop it all up. There you go. That's my salad.

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Yeah. And you know, whatever. Greens are gonna work for you. Great. Like I've, I've found for me it's been, it's been fine. But. And I, and I have had bok choy as well and I've had some combination with different bok choy and spinach and kale. I've tried everything but my. But it's usually greens with sardines and using the olive oil and I chop it up and it's just, that's like my go to lunch and then for dinner just trying to eat really good, clean, healthy foods as much as I can. But I now and what I did was because I remember last time I fell off because it was too strict. And I get it, and I totally get it. Ben And I know some people are like, look, you can never have xyz. You should never have pie or cookies or pizza. And I totally understand it. For me, it didn't work. So I'm even rewind my company. It's kind of like a fun 80s theme. So I have my 80s methodology where I try to eat really good clean foods 80% of the time and 20%, I'll have some fun. So especially if we know we're going out tonight and there's gonna be a birthday party and my kids and okay, I'm gonna have a, you know, I'll eat really clean today, I'll have a little piece of cake tonight. And I know some people, again, are really strict and they'll never deviate at all. No added sugar, no gluten, no dairy. And if you have dietary concerns or allergies, I totally get it. I'm just saying for me, that's worked. And I've been able to now maintain this for over two and a half years. No issues, no setbacks, just eating clean 80% of the time.

You never get any flare ups or anything like that anymore.

The only time I get a flare up is when I deviate from the 80 20. And I'm like, 20 80. So if I have a tough day or we have, I'll have, you know, if I have, let's say two slices of pizza, then it's so funny because I do feel it the next day. And I'm always, I'm always tweaking and I'm always trying to try different foods, see what works and see what doesn't. And even as we're recording this, the past week, well, actually past two weeks, I said, let me try to reduce or eliminate meat. Let me see how I feel going more of it like pescatarian.

Eliminate meat. Okay, I want to hear. Because that's counterintuitive because a lot of people now, they're like carnivore diet's one of the best things for autoimmune disease because you eliminate all these protein triggers from plant based foods.

I know, I know, but I've been trying it. So I went last week, I went 10 days in a row. No meat. I just, I did have seafood, so I had fish, but no, no red meat, no turkey, no chicken. And I was feeling like the best I felt really in a long time. Even though I've been feeling good, like, I felt even better. And a couple days ago, I took one of my kids out after a tennis tournament we went to where'd we go chipotle. I said, you know what? I'm gonna have this and I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have chicken. I'm gonna try it. And I had chicken the next day. My fingers were swollen.

Yeah, A big, big part of it too can be the meat, right? Like if it's like a grain or corn fed chicken or omega 6 laden meat versus like grass fed grass finished beef or pasture raised chicken, I think a big part of it can come down to that as well. But basically the way you went was almost like ultra simple. That was actually the name of Mark Hyman's book back in the day. Like one of the first autoimmune books was the Ultra Simple Diet, you know, where it was just basically eliminating everything that you eliminated. And that's the key for a lot of people who have these kind of autoimmune flare ups that are related to stress. Now, question for you, because I know you're like, you're back eastare you in Connecticut or New York now?

Connecticut.

Okay. Did you ever look into like lime or, you know, mold, mycotoxin, anything like that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got. Well, when they ran the tests for the autoimmune, they did test for Lyme and I didn't. It came back negative for Lyme.

Okay, gotcha. What about like heavy metal toxicity? That's another thing that tends to flare up for a lot of people.

I don't recall any of all the blood tests because I got a lot of blood work. Nothing. The only thing that came up was that inflammatory marker and I forget the H5. I can't remember the CRP. CRP, yes, exactly. That was the only thing that came out high. Everything they tested for, even the naturopath with heavy metals, nothing came back elevated in that.

Yeah, yeah. Did you, did you wind up incorporating lifestyle practices to control stress? Like, did you take up a meditation practice or yoga or anything like that?

Okay, so for stress and even exercise, I went again, simplicity, binge. So we talked about nutrition for stress. The first thing I did was say, okay, what's causing a lot of stress in my life? What's causing a lot of stress in my business? Even with my relationships or not even seeing my kids a lot. I was traveling a lot. Back when I was teaching business, I was traveling and speaking. Not a lot compared to some people, but, you know, maybe once a month and it adds up. And for I said that day, I said, I am. And I told my wife, wife, I'm done. Like, I am not traveling. I'm not going to any events. And that's why you even said it seemed like I disappeared about five, six years ago. That was the thing I said, I'm done. And I. For six years, I didn't attend one event. And I always get asked to speak at events. Not always, but I get asked pretty frequently. And I say no to everything. And I just did not travel for five or six years. So that was one thing. The other thing I did was close down or sell whatever businesses I could that were distracting me. I was opening up too many things, doing too many things at once. And I just focused on one business, one company. We just focused everything we could on the nutrition companies to pay off all the debt, and let's just close it. Let's just move on. So simplifying my business, simplifying getting rid of travel and just recommitting to my family, and even though they always came first, really being true to my words and making them first and everything, and making sure I coach every sport I possibly can, I still do. Never missing an event, never missing.

A sports event. Just being there all the time and doing everything I can to build my business 100% virtual and be home with them.

Yeah. Yeah. That's such a big one to travel. Because for me, it's like the way my life is right now is. It's almost like a cycle. I travel because I still travel pretty extensively to speak, to attend conferences, to race, to do all these things that I do and everything from the WI fi and the solar radiation and X ray radiation, all the airports that you travel through and the subpar food and.

The hotels and the places you stay that might have mold or mycotoxins or whatever. I'm traveling. I'm doing a bunch of damage to my body. Even though I try to travel as healthy as possible. And then I basically come home and. And reboot my body, you know, and I'm here in the fricking, you know, float tank and the sauna and, you know, doing all these electrical treatments in my basement and kind of like fixing everything. I feel amazing. I feel like a million bucks. And then I wave goodbye to the family and go travel again and then come back kind of sort of effed up. And it, you know, it's a tough cycle. And I do honestly, I question sometimes, I'm like, should I just sit at home and write books? Because that thought has crossed my mind before. And, you know, I sometimes feel as though I would be doing the world a disservice. You know, it's like, what's that book? I think it's Principle. Principle, the one by Ray Dalio. I forget the, the new. I think it's Principles. Yeah, principles. You know, he talks about how you, you kind of have to, you have to decide where you're going to draw the line between like the maximum amount of impact you can make in the world. And I feel like, you know, a lot of times for me travel is where I make that most impact in the world. But man, it's also just most damaging to your body from a stress standpoint. And yeah, you spend a lot of time cleaning up the mess, huh?

Oh, yeah. Oh, minute I stopped, I mean, it was like this weight was lifted off my shoulders because even at that time, my one who's 14 now, she was 9, 10, she would cry like crazy when I said I was going away for a day. And even now I'll travel maybe once or twice a year. And even now you're right, I feel it like I'll be on the airplane for five hours. I'm like. And I think, how do people do this all the time? It's just physically, mentally, you feel beat up. But the other thing before I forget in terms of stress, the other part you asked me the physical stuff. I go to reflexology a lot.

Saunas, cold showers, just time to let my mind just be. I don't even. And I used to do the headspace app, the 10 Minute Meditation. Now I'll just sit quietly and just breathe, just do deep breathing. The other thing I did was simplify my fitness because we come from a fitness background and there's so many different workouts we know and programs and you could do heavy lifting and slow and Olympic lifting and kettlebells and all this stuff. And I said, let me just what's going to be for me the most efficient way to make sure I do something consistently? Get some cardiovascular health and some strength. So I just work out at home. We have a treadmill in our bedroom. I have a kettlebell, a couple dumbbells, a pull up bar, and I do my workout takes 20, maybe 25 minutes max where I'll crank it on the highest incline on our treadmill, about 10 or 12%. And I walk, I walk at about 4.2 miles an hour. I do that for 200 meters. See, I'm a track guy, so I think in terms of meters, which takes about at that point pace, it takes about two minutes.

4.2.

If I recall, you're only about five feet tall, right, Ryan? So that's pretty Fast.

Shut your mouth.

So, yeah, it's very fast. I'm sprinting, so it's about two minutes. Jump off the treadmill and I'll do usually a set of 8 to 10 pull ups, 15 push ups, 20 different things of core exercise, go back on the treadmill for another two minutes, jump back off, do maybe 20 kettlebell swings, come back on for two minutes. And I do that until I complete a mile. So that takes about.

16 minutes on the treadmill and probably five minutes of transitioning and strength exercise. But in like 20 minutes, 22 minutes, I know I'm going to be done and I break a sweat and I feel good. And I've been doing that pretty consistently for now, two and a half years, and I do it at least five days a week now.

What about the. You mentioned briefly reflexology for people who aren't familiar with that, what is that and how does it work?

So with that, that's just really strong. They work with like the chakras with your feet, the nerves, the nerve endings on your feet. So for me, it's just an hour of absolute relaxation. It helps. Also.

You know, with the Eastern medicine, they talk about this thing with the lymph node and this part has your kidneys. I don't know how much of that works or not, but I do know that when I go two or three times a week, it feels incredible and I feel great. And I feel like it does help with circulation and reducing pain. So it's just for me, I find that there's a couple places that do it. It's an hour. They start off usually like a neck massage and then they'll do the feed for 45, 50 minutes. It.

Yeah, yeah. And, and there is something to that, that idea of energy fields and, and being able to kind of like free up energy to travel through specific areas of the body. When you do that type of deep tissue therapy on, on specific areas, you know, some people call it key and you know, traditional Chinese medicine. But, you know, basically it's kind of like opening up energy fields. And I think there's something to it. You know, that this idea, I think the feet would be considered to be the, the first chakra in.

Eastern medicine. And many people will feel really good. I even do this with my kids at night. I have really good essential oils. I'll just rub essential oil into their feet at night. And even from just a parenting standpoint, it actually really is kind of cool because it's almost like this little massage that you can give your child. It Makes them feel really good. For a while we did it with oil, oregano and then I use fish oil and now I actually have this oil. It's called first chakra, it's called root oil. And I'll put that on my feet at night, rub it into my kids feet and you just feel really good. It's like this grounding oil. But I really think there is something to the idea of reflexology. There's another book and I was actually trying to teach myself some of this stuff. A lot of times it's on airplanes when I'll mess around with this stuff. Whether it's hand grippers or breath devices or these books that teach you how to do self inflicted acupressure. Because I'm like a captive audience and I love to figure out things I can do while I'm sitting around. And there's this book about marma points which are basically these acupressure points all throughout the body. And I bought this book, I'll look at my bookshelf and for people listening in, I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But it basically walks you through all these different marma points and exactly how you can target them and where you need to process stress. And it actually really is cool. Like you can get rid of nausea, you can get rid of headaches, you can induce like immediate stress relief, you know, just by putting pressure. Even if it's just you putting pressure, not a therapist on specific areas of your body. So that one's called marmotherapy but it's very similar to reflexology.

Yeah.

There'S a lot of stuff we still don't know that we could take from. People have been doing these things for thousands a year. Another thing I do just because I'm on the laptop a lot and we all tend to lean forward a little bit and get the neck pain is I will at night you could start with a tennis ball and just laying on the tennis ball and putting it under your neck and under your occipital part of your occipital bone there and just having the gravity of your head lay down on the tennis ball, it feels really, really good. Just rolling it around. And if you get brave enough, which I've moved up to now a lacrosse ball, I mean it's it, I'll do it. I'll do this with my kids. And they, they kind of scream in pain. So I get a sick pleasure out of that. But I go back to the tennis ball with them. But it's really it feels really good. So. So a lot of these things, doing more joint mobility, just. Just feeling, you know, now that I'm. I'm 47, just trying to do things that help me move more and more range of motion, more suppleness, as opposed to trying to, like, do bench press, which I just. Yeah, I don't do anymore.

Speaking of the. The occipital bone and that kind of like, you know, using a lacrosse ball or a tennis ball, I actually have one of those. Have you ever seen those peanut base rollers that are. They're almost like two lacrosse balls kind of taped together?

Yep, yep.

Yeah, so. So you can get those, for example, on Amazon. You can get them with little spikes on them and you can roll those up and down the vertebra. And if you kind of roll, roll all the way up to your neck and just kind of trap it right underneath your neck and then start to turn your head to the left and the right. I do that when I wake up in the morning and it literally sounds like firecrackers going off when I hit that thing in the morning. Just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, all the way up the back. And then when you get to your head, I don't know if it's increasing cerebral spinal fluid to the brain or just the tension relief, but it is one of the best feelings in the world when you use one of these spiky balls up and down the back. As far as relaxation or just waking yourself up in the morning.

Morning. I gotta try that. I don't have the spiky ball. What I did was I jury rigged one where I put two lacrosse balls in a sock. So I got the two tennis balls kind of, or the two lacrosse balls kind of next to each other in a sock, and then I would just roll on that. So I'd have the two ball effect, but I didn't have the spiky one.

Yeah, yeah. I'll hunt it down and I'll find it on Amazon. I forget what the. What the manufacturer.

Show notes, baby. Show notes.

Put it, put it there in the show notes for you guys. So any other big wins that you're kind of incorporating from either a lifestyle or a recovery or a sleep or fitness standpoint that you found to be big wins for you?

Well, obviously you just said a key one. There is sleep. Sleep recovery. I mean, I've always been pretty good with it. I've always been pretty good with sleep.

But. But one thing I'm finding a little disturbing on kind of a larger scale is Everyone, especially in the entrepreneurial world or you see it online all the time. It's the methodology of you've got a hustle, hustle, grind, grind non stop 24 7. And it's really dangerous.

You look at some of the people talking about this, and these are guys that I'm older than and they look now they've aged 10 years in the past five years. They look 20 years older than me now. They don't look healthy. I think it's like adrenal fatigue. I just think it's a really dangerous thing trying to figure out, trying to think that, hey, if I just work harder, I'm going to succeed. You've got to recover. You've got to give your body, your mind, your spirit, whatever. Just, you've got to recover.

Yeah, I don't think that some of these cats like Jocko Willink, putting the photo of him getting up at 4am every morning, hit the gym, or, you know, David Goggins or, you know, like the Rock who will drop into a gym, you know, 1am when he gets to, you know, wherever he's flying in the world. Like, those guys can be inspiring for people who need to just get their ass off the couch and do the hard thing. Or, you know, you know, kids who are growing up with the silver spoon mentality who never have learned how to get up at 5am for a paper route or, you know, maybe crush the gym for a little while before school. But for the lion's share of people, I think a lot of that mentality does them more of a disservice than a service because people short themselves on sleep. They think that the only way to get fit is to crush the gym at 4:00am And I mean, in many cases that leads to or contributes to kind of that slippery slope towards what you wound up experiencing six years ago when your body just, your neuroendocrine system just shifted into amping up cytokine production. And, you know, it's almost like, it's almost like the body will eventually put brakes on you, whether it's autoimmune disease or cancer or, you know, or Lyme or anything else that you just become susceptible to because your body hits the brakes.

Yeah, your body knows your body needs the rest and recovery.

So I know what you're saying, though people do need sometimes. Like I think we've gone so far on the other end of the spectrum where we just over coddle the kids. Everything's gonna be okay, little Benny. Everything's gonna be fine. Don't Work hard. We teach our kids hard work, but you also need sleep and rest and recovery. And that's been a big part of my health journey, is really doing that. And not feeling guilty, too. Not feeling guilty about. About shutting your computer off. And for everyone, everyone's got their kind of downtime stuff where you want to recharge your batteries. Some people like going for a hike. I'm sure you. And you love probably doing your triathlon training and biking and running and swimming. Whatever crazy stuff you do. For the people who don't do that stuff. For me, I like at night, after I put my kids to bed, sometimes I'll read and I'll read a fiction book, like a political thriller. I'll watch some Netflix. And not feeling guilty about that, I think if you put in a good day's work and you're really super productive and you focus on the big stuff, you can rest your head knowing, okay, I gave it a really good effort today. Now let me have a half an hour, an hour of just, you know, unplugging. Shut your phone off. I don't even have my phone in my room. When I come home, my phone goes off. Off. Even my kids don't have phones. The only one who has a phone is my one who is a junior in high school. All my three other kids don't have any phones. So we're not a big screen family.

Yeah, yeah. See, we have screens. My kids have an itouch that they use because they have a little podcasting business now and they use the voice on that to record the photos and the videos to upload. But what we do is I switch everybody's phones, even my wife's, and I taught them how to. To. If you Google this, it's called the iPhone red light trick. And you can program the phone where if you press the home button three times, it sucks all the blue light out of the phone. It makes Instagram and everything else suck because it's all boring and your phone does not keep you up. It's also not that much fun to use and it's way better than the built in night shift mode. So we all just switch our phones to that at night and they're kind of like these, you know, these, these boring devices that don't make any light and don't have a lot of colors on them. So, you know, for me, that means if I need to check something before I go to bed, it's not going to suppress melatonin production at all.

Oh, I didn't. I never heard of that?

Yeah, it works really well. If you Google it, it's red phone or iPhone, red light trick. So it works, it works really well. You know, whenever I'm hanging out at a friend's house or I'm out at dinner and people look at my phone, they're like, how the hell did you do that? Because it's, it's way different than night shift. But it just, it works at night, you know, and plus you don't have to put on those, those, you know, those horrific looking, you know, red colored, blue light blocking glasses when you're out at a restaurant or whatever. So.

Yeah, we also have, we also have another thing that works well for the electronics and stuff in our house. Old school, we have a safe. We have a safe in our bedroom in the bedroom closet. And all the kids electronics all go in the safe, you know, because they do have an iPad stuff.

But what do your kids think about that? Do they dig it or is it kind of a chore form?

They don't really look. Well, my two youngest are fine with it. My 14 year old is fighting back. She's like, why can't I have a phone? We're like, no, you're not having one. So we definitely bump up against a little bit of resistance. But yeah, we're the parents.

You know, I have a, I have a different, different parenting philosophy. I, I actually let my kids spend as much time as they want on their phones. Like there's not a rule. They don't get taken away. But basically mom and I once, about 9, 9:30 rolls around, like we're pretty much, we, we're nose down in books or playing musical instruments. So our kids, like all they've grown up with is at nighttime. They're actually there. There isn't really phone time or screen time, not because you're not allowed to, but because we're basically breaking out all these other activities. Actually, board games are a third. So usually it's books, music, or board games. And so if you come to the Greenfield house like after nine, like pretty much everybody's either curled up in bed with a book, sitting on the couch playing guitar, or we're gathered around the dinner table playing a board game. So for our kids, we just try to present them with alternatives that make the screen less attractive at night.

Night, yeah. That's great.

Like everything in life, if you find something that works for you and for your family, that's great.

So you mentioned, I know you're kind of back in the fitness industry now. You're doing Some things. Doesn't sound like you're getting around and speaking and traveling as much, but you've got. Are you pretty much now just doing this bar company?

Yeah, yeah. Right now that's my entire focus is just our, our vegan gluten free energy bars.

It's 95% of my focus. I'll still write a daily ish email about business or leadership or things like that, but it's pretty much right now my nutrition company. And that's again, going back to that philosophy of simple. What's the one thing I need to focus on? And. But as you know, Ben, it could be a challenge because if you're this, if you're an entrepreneur, I mean, how many ideas you come to us, it's all day, it's nonstop, and sometimes it's hard to turn off. And there's other things that look attractive and you're like, oh man, I could just try this or I could do this, I could do this product. And it is a little bit of a challenge to resist.

Yeah, yeah. So the bar, as far as that goes, you said it's plant based, gluten free. Anything else special that kind of makes the bar stand out? Aside from the old school 80s nostalgia and the name Rewind.

The thing we're really most proud of is, well, we do a couple things. So we call them sneaky greens. So we add.

Kale and spinach into the bars and we have some fruits for antioxidant power, strawberries and blueberries. But the big thing is we just focus on the flavor, you know, going back to flavors that people grew up with that really love that thing because it's got it, you know how it is. Even with your bars, like, they gotta taste good, right? You could have the healthiest bar in the world, but if people don't like the way they taste, they're not gonna eat them. So our newest flavor is cinnamon coffee cake. And. But it' sthere's no artificial flavors or sweeteners and it tastes really good.

And we're just, well, I, I dig that idea of flavor. But then I think some couples companies will go the opposite route. And I want to throw these folks under the bus because, you know Tom, Tom and Ron who run this company, they're friends of mine, but you know, like Quest, if you eat a Quest bar, like they've nailed flavors like, you know, birthday cake flavor, and I forget what else. You know, kind of like bang energy drinks, they got the margarita flavor, but at the same time, when you see how that Flavor is achieved. Like there's a little bit of chemical action going on there. I'm not a fan of like some like basically if it tastes like birthday cake, it's tough to get that flavor without, without bastardizing the product just a little bit as far as the, the artificial sweeteners and all that jazz go. But yeah, some of these other flavors, you know, I know you guys have like a, like an almond butter and jelly. You mentioned the, the cinnamon coffee cake. Like some of these stuff that's more nuts. Cinnamon coffee. You can actually nail a pretty good ingredient profile and a good flavor, flavor profile with that type of combo.

Oh, absolutely. And the other one is coconut chocolate chip and we have a mint chocolate coming. So yeah, we're not going, we're not going to totally jump to shark and go birthday cake because you're right, it's really hard to do that. But we're still, no matter what we do, we're never going to have anything artificial and use things like sucralose. We're always going to try to have a clean bar. And you know, you know, with yours as well, it's just not easy to do. And just, I just want to put something good out there that tastes good that people like. And, and, and I know that people are gonna have different bars, they're gonna have different products. They'll have yours, they'll try mine one day, maybe they'll try a quest bar. They'll do an RX bar like cool. And if you like ours, great. If you want to have it as part of your day, great. And if you find something else that's good for you, that's great too.

Yeah. And then, and then of course the lip, the litmus test for the, for the bar though is whether or not you make a bodybuilder horrific. Clear the elevator whey protein fart after you've had the bar. That's the litmus test. Yeah.

Yeah. We have no whey protein. We're dairy free, we're vegan. So we obviously don't have any dairy or eggs or even honey. But yeah, no whey protein in ours either. No.

Yeah. It is kind of funny because. Yeah. Speaking of like traveling to fitness conferences and stuff, you go to some of these big health exposure, especially the ones that are really, really focused on the hardcore fitness crowd. And you walk around the expo and there's bars everywhere and when they're chock full, the whey protein isolate the sucralose, the acesulfamy potassium. The two things that I find most Notable, especially a lot of these bodybuilding type of conventions is a, people look pretty good from afar, but then as soon as you get close, you can see their skin's all red and inflamed, acne and wrinkles. And a lot of this stuff is related to the oxidizing inflammatory effect of this packaged food that they're eating. And then B, it's kind of like walking through the airport. There are horrific fart clouds everywhere. And I'm pretty sure it's related to the ingredients of some of this stuff.

It's definitely related to the ingredients. Yeah. And it's, and a lot of you know how it is. Like these, the bodybuilders, they're just, they don't, lots of, they don't really look healthy and they're. And they're not, not. And they're soft too. Like, they'll be big, but they're kind of soft and they're not athletic. But the way they eat is just. Yeah, it's, it's not always the healthiest, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, granted you could say the same thing about the other sport. You, you know, you recently brought up like triathlon, like I'd run in the same things a lot of times, the Ironman triathlon, but in that case, it's usually, it's kind of the opposite. It's, it's like the sugars, right? Fructose and maltodextrin and that, you know, they're really heavy into the endurance on. Or the, the sugars on that side and then the nasty proteins and calorie free sweeteners on the other side. Yeah, the power bars. Well, congratulations on not making a bar that results in multiple fart clouds, Ryan. I'm proud of you.

Well, we are. And on the packaging, we're fart cloud free. That's going to be our new tagline. No fart clouds. Yeah, we don't want.

Awesome.

Go get a way bar.

Have you blogged about your journey in recovered from autoimmune, written in your articles, contributed any books or anything like that? Or do you have any other information out there where people can find out more about your journey?

You know, it's funny, I did an article about it, but even as we speak, depending when this goes live, I'm rewriting it and adding a lot more detail. So I'm going to detail out my exact nutrition program, my exact fitness stuff. So I'm writing one as we speak. So if they go to tv.rewindbars.com by the time this goes live. It'll be up there and we'll have links to it.

Cool.

Yeah, cool.

Well, I'll link to that for you guys in the show. Notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com RyanLee Ryan's got a discount code. If you do want to try his bars, 20% off, use code Greenfield. You can try out his bars. There is no birthday cake flavor. I'm sorry, but the cinnamon coffee cake does sound pretty good.

It is really?

Also.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, send them to me. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm hopping on the plane to, to Dubai in about six days to go over there and, and speak at a few conferences. So, yeah, if you send them out, that'll be my, my fuel on, on Emirates. Wait, will be the. Yeah, yeah. And then everything else that we talked about, I'll hunt down that Beastie ball roller. We talked about some information on reflexology, some information for you guys on the scientific link between stress, particularly in autoimmune disease, which I think is one of the biggest lessons you can take from Ryan's story is nip the stress in the bud before your body slows you down. I'll link to all that stuff as well@BenGreenfieldFitness.com RyanLee and in the meantime, Ryan, a couple of things. A, thanks for, you know, I don't know if I ever said this to you before, but just thanks for everything that you did to kind of light the path and lead the way in terms of teaching a lot of us in the fitness industry how to take our information and scale it and hopefully make a lot more impact in the world. And B, thanks for sharing this story with us and for hopefully inspiring a few people and teaching a few people about how they can battle autoimmune through just simplicity with diet and simplicity with lifestyle, simplicity with travel, simplicity with fitness. I think it's a really smart approach.

Well, I appreciate it and thanks for your kind words. And I'm going to add a C onto there, onto the A, B and C.

Just thank you for doing what you're doing and continuing to change lives and for having me on let's like C, D and E. But this is, this has been great. And yeah, if someone can take away this from this interview that, hey, I could just like, simplify stuff and reduce the overwhelm, then my job is done. So thank you. Thanks for giving me and so many other people platform here to do this. Ben.

Awesome. Awesome, Ryan. All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Ryan Lee signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

Well, thanks for listening. Listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.