Toxic Underwear ALERT! What Your Underwear Is Doing To Your Balls (& Bloodstream) & How To Protect Yourself, With Daniel Baird.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast, a lot of the concern in the problematic area within conventional apparel production has been the use of toxic azo dyes. And those are known carcinogens that can actually be absorbed right through skin contact. And these are things that don't come out with conventional wash cycles, so they actually stay in the fabric, and then your, your skin's constantly coming into contact with them. The absorption rate of the genitals particularly is the highest in the body. In terms of our underwear, we use a water-based fiber-reactive dye certified under GOTS and OEKO-TEX. So, that's kind of that extra lens of precaution that we want to take when we're bringing our products to market. The dyes component of things is definitely an area of concern in conventional apparel.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show. Are you ready to hack your life? So, let's do this.

Alright, it's time to talk about underwear and your nads, so to speak. My guest on today's show, his name's Dan, Dan Baird. Dan is actually the co-founder and the CEO of a company that is doing a pretty good job taking care of your crotch. And, I'm going to let him explain as we go through this a little bit more about what that means and why you ought to care about it. But, as we go along here, all the shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/NADSpodcast. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/NADSpodcast where I'll link also to Dan's website and the fascinating stuff that he's doing in the realm of underwear. So, Dan, how'd you get interested in underwear, man?

Great question, Ben. First off, just want to say thank you for the opportunity to come on here today. Like I said to you before, I've been a big fan of yours for a long time. So, this is kind of a pretty surreal moment for us and this is just one of those opportunities that I don't want to take for granted. So, I just want to express my gratitude to you for having me on the show.

Well, that's great, but I may burst your bubble just a little bit here. I'm actually, even though we're only waist up on this podcast, I'm not wearing underwear right now. I am wearing shorts. I'm wearing Biore shorts, but I'm actually underwear-free. So, unfortunately, I should have thought in advance and put on some of those brand spanking new Nads underwear I have up in my closet. But regardless, I'll sit here underwear-free and listen to you talk about underwear. Alright. So, back to your story.

Sure. So, my name is Dan Baird. I am 28 years old. I'm a longtime health and wellness enthusiast, and advocate. I am an athlete. I am a brother, son, student of life. And as of lately, I am an entrepreneur. I am the co-founder and CEO of a company called Nads. Nads is a men's underwear brand built on sustainable, better-for-balls principles. We are on a mission to sort of shake up the underwear industry and provide men with organic, non-toxic underwear, a home that is better for their Boys Below the Belt.

So, are you just getting dressed one day and you decided you wanted a better set of underwear or do you have an actual background in fashion or science or something like that?

So, when I was 21 years old, I had this weird accident. I actually hit my head on the bottom of a pool and I fractured my C4 vertebrae in my neck. And, that sent me into what was pretty much just a world of inflammation from my skull all the way down into my glutes. And, it caused a bunch of muscular imbalances and I was dealing with crazy trigger points in my body. And, I started to crazy high levels of inflammation and very high levels of pain that came with that. So, that kind of set me out on this mission to reduce pain management. I started looking at significant ways to improve overall function of health as opposed to what I was used to at the time, which was more athletics and performance. So, I started really looking at what was going on underneath the surface. Right around the same time, I started experiencing symptoms that I thought were a little atypical for a young 23-year-old guy to be experiencing. Things like brain fog, chronic fatigue, fluctuating energy levels, these crazy high levels of inflammation like I mentioned. So, I finally got to a breaking point where I said, "Enough is enough. I need to start getting some actual concrete answers that I can take action against because I'm tired of regular doctors just telling me, 'You should just throw this Band-Aid solution at it or this Band-Aid solution at it. There's not going to be much you can do.'" So, I met up with the functional medicine practitioner at 23. I really wanted to understand what was going on underneath the surface because I refused to believe that that was the way I needed to live my life for the rest of my days. So, I met up with a guy named Joe Radich up at R3 Health in West Palm Beach who is awesome. And, I've been working with him for about half a decade now. And, that first meeting was very eye-opening because we did blood work and what actually would come back to show that I had a host of things going on sure enough, but the main thing that I thought was pretty alarming was that I actually had low testosterone at 23 years old.

Yeah, which by the way is not uncommon nowadays. Maybe we can get into why, but But yeah, it's shocking but not uncommon.

Right. It's unfortunate. That's the reality we live in. And, they're actually kind of in conventional medicine right now, they're lowering that threshold for what adequate testosterone levels are, which is a little bit alarming. But, that's a whole other issue. So, at 23, I had low T. I was experiencing all these symptoms. I found out that I had a hormonal imbalance going on and I set out on a mission to optimize areas of my life that might be contributing to this all while trying to bring down the inflammation that I was experiencing. From this injury that I had happen. So, I started looking at things in the environment that could have an adverse response or had an adverse effect on hormonal balance. And then, I started learning about endocrine-disrupting chemicals and how prevalent they are in everyday items like food storage containers, cosmetic products, cooking utensils and supplies, food, produce, you name it.

Even some healthy items, by the way, including eating higher up in the food chain, particularly from fish.

Right, exactly. So, even when you really think you're nailing what you're supposed to be doing, there's always ways where you can try and optimize more. And, it's just like Pandora's box, once it's open, it doesn't shut, right? So, I started learning about where these EDCs, these endocrine-disrupting chemicals were very prevalent in my personal environment. And so, I just started trying to make small switches to try and optimize my testosterone production. And in doing this, luckily the inflammation in my body and everything else sort of subsided. So my overall system health got a lot better and I was able to make positive strides in the world of testosterone. So about 2 years ago, I started looking at clothing that I was wearing to the gym because I thought, you know, the first line of defense to the part of my body that produces testosterone, my gonads, needs to be solid. And, I was wearing 100% polyester compression shorts to the gym every day for the last, I don't know, 15 years. And, 30 minutes of those sessions were in the 180-degree sauna. And then, I started looking at what polyester was made of and I found out that polyester is a plastic-based fabric derived from petrochemicals.

Really?

Yeah. So, right in line with the whole issue of microplastics comes this whole thing about clothing. Specifically what we're putting our packages in, right?

Right. Because we should know, by the way, heat aside increasing capillarization and blood flow to any area of the skin, we're talking about a very thin layer of skin in the testes particularly that's excellent for absorption. That's why a lot of men will use scrotal cream for testosterone enhancement like an AndroGel. Well, similar to the way that You might use a suppository for a medicine. That's a great delivery mechanism for better or worse for anything that's tucked up against your balls.

Yeah, exactly. The absorption rate of the genitals particularly is the highest in the body, right? So, it's one of those things where you don't have the luxury to just turn off what your skin is absorbing when it's in contact with things whether it's powder, cream, lotion, or fabric or the chemicals that are in fabrics. So, I set out to try and find a pair of underwear that was certified organic, nontoxic, and could actually hold up to the rigors of athletic training because that's such an important part of my life and my identity. And, I really couldn't find one. And, my background in branding and marketing and I had a little bit of the entrepreneurial bug, I just thought, "Hey, this is kind of a hole in the market right here and I think this is something where I can come into the market and make a product that actually makes an impact on people." and is in line with the whole health and wellness theme that has kind of been the theme of my life for a long time.

Yeah. By the way, probably not the greatest tagline for your product. We plug a hole in the market.

I don't know.

I like that better.

Depends who you're asking, I guess. Depends who you're talking to. But yeah, so we went out and we started doing research. I contacted my co-founder Steve, who's one of my all-time best buddies, and him and I are very alike in a lot of ways, personally and professionally. So we decided that this was the opportunity we want to finally sync up on and actually kind of, you know, sink our teeth into and explore. And we started looking at what materials might be best, and we ended up settling on organic cotton as our preference, mainly because of the certification and extra rigorous criteria that kind of already exists in that space, which we can get into in a little bit here. But long story short, We couldn't find underwear that was capable of what we were looking for that was also better for our packages. So, we went out and we found a way to manufacture it.

You mean specifically that crossover between performance and cleanliness as far as the fabric is concerned? Because there is some hippie-dippy loose-fitting underwear out there, but it's not really great for active enthusiasts or weight training or something something like that.

Yeah, exactly. So we wanted to try and find that blend of health performance, and then the third element is kind of that style aspect, right? Make something that's still something men want to wear that looks good on them. So that was kind of the, the crash background story for NAD's inception. It started out of personal frustration in the market and then kind of just started to take off from there.

Yeah, I have several questions about the actual composition of the fabric in clothing in general, but especially underwear. But before that, I was just reading yesterday, I don't know if you saw this study, I think it might have even been a meta-analysis. I don't have it in front of me right now. So, it could have been a study of studies, but a shockingly high amount of microplastics directly linked to erectile dysfunction now being found in penile and testicular tissue in men.

This was just news Yesterday, I feel like in the last 2 weeks we have had some serious development in the world of microplastics in testicles, penile tissue, and in actual semen itself. And I feel like we're just starting to actually open our eyes to this as a very big issue. In my opinion, I think microplastics pose one of the biggest threats to human health that is kind of out there right now. I don't think it's as known, but I think we're finally starting to get to that point where this is kind of the tip of the iceberg. We're about to really uncover the actual adverse effects of microplastics in the human body. And I specifically think that this decline in men's reproductive health is directly tied to microplastics and then all the chemicals and toxins that are just everywhere in our environment right now.

Yeah, and we definitely don't want to neglect talking about women. I know that you're now working on a women's line. We can talk about that later, but everything that we've so far discussed is also directly applicable to the highly permeable genitalia of a female as well.

Yeah, exactly. And, that's definitely something that should not be neglected. It's one of those things where when we decided to come after this business concept, we wanted to do so in a way that was a little bit more specific than most generalists approach. So, we went after men just because it's something that hasn't been talked about. There are a handful of companies out there that do, women's line products and have talked about this for a little while, but there was a shocking gap for any companies educating and providing a solution specifically for men. So, that was our angle.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, okay. Got it. So, I want to go over a few nuances as far as the fabric is concerned. First of all, when it comes to what's used to color my clothing as far as the dye or the coloring components, is that something to think about?

Sure, sure is. So, a lot of the concern in the problematic area within conventional apparel production has been the use of toxic azo dyes, right? And those are known carcinogens that can actually be absorbed right through skin contact. And these are things that don't come out with conventional wash cycles. So, that's another problematic issue with the apparel space is that a lot of these toxins and chemicals that are used in production actually embed into the fabrics themselves. They don't come out with washing. So they actually stay in the fabric and then your skin's constantly coming into contact with them. So, in terms of coloration and dyes, the main area of concern is typically these toxic azo dyes. So, that's kind of, I don't want to say it's on its way out, but more and more suppliers and manufacturers are aware of this now and are actually pushing away from those entirely, which is a very good sign for the market. And then, to take things a step further, in terms of our underwear, We use a water-based fiber-reactive dye certified under GOTS and OEKO-TEX. So that's kind of that extra lens of precaution that we wanted to take when we were bringing our products to market. But yeah, the dyes component of things is definitely an area of concern in conventional apparel.

What's that mean when you say GOTS?

Yeah, so GOTS is the Global Organic Textile Standard. And what that is, is a certifying body that is kind of the leading organic textile certifying body in the world. And they audit everything from cotton seed all the way to finished garment that you actually end up putting it on. So, they're auditing the entire supply chain to make sure that it is free of the typical chemicals and toxins found in most conventional apparel production. So, they're what we call the gold standard of organic certifications. And when we went to launch the business, that was the one area where we were not willing to compromise on. So, we work with the GOTS-certified supplier. And, every step of the way from when they actually plant that first cotton seed until when somebody puts on a pair of NADs is covered under GOTS certification.

If I'm wearing clothing that's cotton but that's not necessarily GOTS certified, it sounds to me like the issue isn't necessarily microplastics because that's not a polyester, but are we talking about what it is that the cotton plant is treated with like pesticides or herbicides or something like that?

Yeah. So, that's the thought. If we're comparing apples to apples, cotton will be better than 100% synthetic fabric. And then, organic cotton will be better than regular cotton. And then, certified organic cotton is kind of up there at the apex of everything. And the reason for that is that conventional cotton calls for heavy use of pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides in the actual farming. And then, this actually embeds into the raw material which then gets passed into the actual finished good and then can actually linger on in these garments. And then, they've actually been shown to be able to be absorbed right through the skin contact. Through skin contact.

Wow.

So then, obviously, with that amplification below the belt, you have a little bit of a problematic area there with pesticides and herbicides. And I actually was reading a study that said pesticides can linger in the skin and can actually act as a reservoir for extended release.

What's that mean, act as a reservoir for extended release?

So basically, it was the study that I think was from 2013 that said it was The primary focus of the study was looking at the areas of the body which had the highest amplification of actually absorption, of absorption. And it said that what we also found was that pesticides can linger in your skin and then in periods of, take sweating for example, you can kind of reactivate the absorption of those substances back into the body. So, they're even more so problematic.

Wow. Okay. So, related to the sweating piece, I think that another aspect I see in a lot of performance apparel is the idea of moisture wicking. So, you aren't getting damp and sweaty and warm and balmy balls. What do you do about that component?

Yeah. So, I think a lot of the concern with moisture wicking in general is that moisture wicking compounds call for perfluoroalkyl substances and PFCs and PFAs. And those are endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Those are right up there at the top with things like phthalates, BPA, formaldehyde, all these other ones. But for moisture-wicking specifically, to make these things water-resistant or waterproof, they get essentially coated with PFAs and PFCs. And these things can be absorbed directly into the skin as well. So there's a problematic area there. They can also be absorbed— they can also be ingested, right? So if there's going to be like an off-gassing of them from something, if you're wearing a raincoat, for example, which has been loaded with PFCs or PFAs, then you can actually breathe those chemicals in too. So, that's another problematic area. But, the misconception around moisture wicking, which we've learned a lot about in the last couple years, has been polyester fabrics, 100% synthetic fabrics, they actually don't allow for airflow to go through them. So, that means they also don't allow for sweat to pass through them. So, the sweat doesn't actually absorb into the fabric as much and it pretty much just gets trapped or runs down. So, that's why there's also issues with things like contact dermatitis and yeast infections from synthetic fabrics. That's more specific to women, but it also is prevalent in men as well. Whereas opposed to something like organic cotton or cotton in general, the air can flow through them and so can the moisture. The result is unfortunately a slightly heavier garment, right? It's going to kind of absorb that and it's going to carry it and it's going to be less conducive to what you might be used to in terms of having a more dry fitting garment. It's called DryFit for a reason. But, the trade-off is that you're having a cleaner, more non-toxic, more skin-friendly garment that you're wearing.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, okay. Got it. When it comes to these microplastics, these forever chemicals that you're referring to, the perfluorochemicals, et cetera, I mean, in your initial story, you were talking about how you tested testosterone, but did you do or do you recommend any particular form of testing to see what else is building up in your body related to some of the other things you were just talking about?

The short answer is I did not when I was 23, and I have not since then. I've tested for heavy metals, which is one that I get routinely done, uh, in terms of doing a specific microplastic or endocrine disrupting specific type of test. I need to learn more about that. I took more of a generalist approach and said, you know what, this is one of those areas where I know there's room for improvement let me go and pull on this pretty big lever and see how the rest of the system improves. And then once I get to a point where I've, you know, really exhausted that big lever, I can then get a little bit more into the nitty-gritty, into the fine details. I think we're probably— I think I'm about 5 and a half years since that original test, so I'm probably getting closer to that standpoint. And I think there's going to be a continuation of more developments of those types of tests now that this is becoming a little bit more commonplace of an issue.

Yeah, there's websites like DirectLabs where you can get a urinary toxin tests. And some of that can include microplastic evaluation, some of these other chemicals. And then another one is— and I think that this, this can give you a relatively high amount of accuracy as far as excretion of some of these— is the hair tissue mineral analysis, the HTMA, which is a very simple hair sample and a very affordable test to do.

And you can do them straight from the comfort of your home now.

Yeah, exactly. And honestly, a lot of people use not just hair from the head but alternatively the hair from the crotch for that. So, that's probably pretty reflective of what you might be getting from your underwear or even just systemically from other clothing. Exactly. So, what do you do though if you have the underwear issue sorted? What else are you wearing? I mean, obviously, you're not just wearing your NADs to the gym. So, how are you navigating all the other things, a t-shirt, pants, shorts, you know, hats, etc.?

The way we approach this whole situation is there's no way in 2024 to be perfect across the board. But if we try and take an effort to make an effort to take small mindful choices where we can, then the culmination of the parts makes a lot more sense in our work. Like the way that we kind of adopted this overall mantra has been that your base layer matters most, specifically your underwear. So that's why we came after that first. We may get into some other things down the line, but right now we're trying to just be the underwear guys. That said, if you're wearing a raincoat and you're wearing a shirt underneath it, then, you know, there's not that much skin contact with the raincoat to your body. So it's going to be a little different than if you're wearing, you know, 100% synthetic t-shirt, right? Especially when you're going to the gym. I think when you're in those times when you're sweating, you're significantly more porous. It's 10 times more important to make that choice. And although, like I mentioned, the cotton may be a little less moisture-wicking, the trade-off is that you're going to be putting yourself in a little bit of a sticky situation with the chemicals and toxins found in these 100% synthetic workout gear that have been marketed very well as workout-friendly, but they may not be body-friendly.

Yeah, you're really making me want to go audit my closet just a little bit more intensively after this show because I'm sure I have some culprits in there. The other issue I hear a lot of people talk about these days with regards to testosterone and reproductive health is the EMF component. Have you thought about that at all?

Yeah. So, I've thought about that a lot actually. And, I use a LapShield anytime I put my computer down on my lap now.

Can you explain to people what that is?

Yeah. So, it's an EMF-blocking LapShield. It's pretty much— it's a little outside of reach. I don't want to rip the headphones off. But, It's a thin board essentially and I put my laptop on top of it and it stops the EMFs from the laptop going down into my nads, right? So, that was something that I was aware of for quite some time. And, it also made me think— the reason I even opened my eyes to that was because I always thought about what my cell phone in my front pocket might be doing to my testosterone, my hormonal health, my reproductive system. And sure enough, more and more literature is coming out showing that it's a real issue, right? The effects of these things, even when they're just sitting dormant in our pocket, if they're not on airplane mode, they're hitting our, our parts, right? So they're hitting our leg, they're hitting our package, they're hitting our entire midsection. Um, so my thoughts on the matter, if you have the option to not put your phone in your pocket or put your laptop directly on your, your lap, uh, I would take that every day of the week. Always make that choice when you can. That's one of those things where It's going to be tricky to do that all the time. In terms of our business model from a product perspective, we've thought about EMF-blocking tech. Unfortunately, right now, we don't have enough information internally to make any direction on where we want to go with that. I don't think it's something that we're going to get into. Just honestly, Ben, I don't know if right now I'm capable of even speaking to it too much because I don't know enough about the manufacturing process of embedding So, the way it works is I think most clothing companies that have EMF-blocking tech, they embed silver into the fabric.

Yeah, yeah, most of them are silver. Yep.

So, they embed the silver into the fabric and the silver pretty much functions as a radiation-proof wall, whatever's behind the silver. Our whole thing is that we're trying to mitigate toxin exposure to our bodies through our skin specifically. I don't know enough about the manufacturing process of embedding the silver into the fabric. I can't imagine that we would still be able to withhold our GOTS organic certification principle when adding what's essentially a heavy metal into the fabric. So, I think it's very important to be aware of. I don't think it's something that you'll probably see from NADs anytime soon. I know there are companies out there that definitely have EMF tech.

Honestly, again, I need to go up to my closet though because Yeah, some of this EMF-blocking clothing does feel a little synthetic. I need to go look at the label to see what they're actually using because, yeah, you're right. I mean, there could be concerns about metal absorption into the testes if it's a silver-lined fabric. And, if they're using some kind of polyester or synthetic, that's problematic for the other reasons we already discussed. So, yeah, it's kind of a catch-22. You could get EMF blocking but also get the toxin absorption at the same time.

And that's the biggest concern, is, is there a way to be perfect and to, you know, hit all of the problematic areas with one product? Maybe, maybe we'll innovate and try and find out what that looks like. But as of right now, my personal opinion on the matter is that I'm going to wear my organic cotton underwear, and every step of the way I'm going to try and avoid having my phone in my pocket, right? And that's one of those things like even when I'm out for a walk now, I have my phone in my hand and I'm like, "Okay." Sometimes I'm even having it in my hand on airplane mode because it's still down close to my hip. And, the direct effect of that action, of that prohibitive action, hard to measure I think, but it's one of those things where it's kind of just like a domino. Once they start falling, you're making all these little choices and all these little mindful choices hopefully add up.

Yeah. I like that website DefenderShield. I've got one of those pads like you have from them. And then I use their case for my phone. And, I'm even so careful as to place the phone in my pocket camera facing outwards because the camera lens is the one part of the phone where the radiation isn't blocked. And, if you get something like a Defender Shield case, it actually says that on a label. It's like, "Okay. So, put your phone in the case and then when you're talking on your phone, if you're not holding it," which is a good idea, by the way, but if you have to have it against your body because you need your hands for other activities, then turn it so that the camera lens is facing outwards and that's that much less proximal radiation that you're getting exposed to.

Yeah. I was going to ask you. So, the entire screen of your phone is covered by that case, right?

Except the camera, yeah.

Except the camera. I was curious. That's about that type of tech. Yeah, that's interesting. I think what would be a cool product to see, I don't know if this is out there, I haven't dug in enough because I have that Laptop Shield is maybe just like a thin laptop snap-on case that's EMF-proof, right? I've been thinking about a way to do that for cell phones too, and Defender Shield sounds like they're on it, so that's awesome. What I'm super pumped about is seeing all of these CPG, direct-to-consumer companies pop up that are solving these little niche health concerns, right? I think we're kind of in this period of time right now where it's like the health and wellness renaissance. And the tech age has enabled us to create these companies that all contribute to the overall agenda of improving human health. We're pumped to be a part of it and just taking through the shape of underwear, right? But I'm curious as to, obviously, you're very plugged into the whole health and wellness scene and you have been for a long time. Has it been something where you've kind of seen this gradually happening? And do you think that in the last 12 months, it's definitely spiked?

Do you mean the growing awareness of EMFs?

No, I mean more so this kind of approach to prioritization of health.

Yeah, largely driven by these tech billionaires and biohackers with podcasts, guilty as charged, who are kind of leading the charge and saying, "Hey, how many little things can we adjust environmentally to address this ancestral mismatch that we live in? How can we address the comfort crisis with heat and cold adaptation?" How can we mitigate EMF with smart building biology principles and the type of protective gear that we're talking about? How can we reduce microplastic exposure by using glass and by using water filtration systems? I mean, yeah, I think there's a surge in interest in it. I still think there's a lot more work to be done. But yeah, just because we are kind of in a little bit of a silo in the biohacking and health podcasting space where A lot of people listen to this podcast are pretty aware of it, but their neighbor doesn't really know the difference between, I don't know, a Brita water filter or an AquaTru reverse osmosis or something like that. So yeah, there's a lot of subtle nuances. I want to get into some of the logistics of the underwear. First of all, certified organic, this GOTS certified. Anything I need to bear in mind when it comes to washing this NAD's underwear that I'm now using?

Here's the way that we kind of approach the whole thing. First off, you want to try and opt for some sort of certain non-toxic detergent, right? If it's a big brand detergent, it's likely got some problematic things in it.

By the way, total rabbit hole, but same for the new dishwashing pods. The dishwashing pods are just chock-full of microplastics. That's another area to focus on. But yes, you're right, the detergent is important.

Yeah. So, the detergent's the thing where obviously if you're making the investment and you're buying underwear and you're buying— our underwear goes from $27 up to $34. So, if you're making the investment in that, then you don't want to just bring that underwear in and then wash it with 100% synthetic not ideal detergent. So, first things first is you try and find some sort of non-toxic detergent.

Branch Basics or something like that.

Yeah, exactly. Something like Branch Basics. I use Dr. Bronner's Castile soap. I just do a little squirt in the washer and then I just wash it on— you can wash these. You're supposed to wash cotton on cold, right, ultimately because the fiber will contract a little bit and shrink. It's going to be really hard to avoid the shrinkage on anything that's cotton like this heavy cotton. And, the way that you could try and avoid that is to wash things on cold. So, the recommended care instruction is to wash on cold and then tumble dry on low. That said, it's going to hold up to if you tumble dry on high or if you wash it on warm, it's just going to probably shrink a little bit more. So, that's kind of the thing there. I would also recommend that if you have the option to, try to avoid washing your certified organic cotton underwear with a 100% polyester t-shirt because what happens in the laundry is that polyester will shed microplastics into the water.

Ben Greenfield: Oh, I didn't even think about that. So, back to what we were talking about earlier, even if you're making the choice, to prioritize underwear but you have a closet full of other plastic-infused materials, you'd still have to separate your loads accordingly to continue to protect your balls.

I don't think it's going to be as problematic as if you're wearing 100% polyester underwear as if you wash your shirt with your underwear. It's not going to be nearly as bad. But, if you're into taking every step and every precaution, I would try and say wash these with just other organic cotton fabrics if you can. And then, there's the whole issue of microplastics getting in the water supply from laundry, but we won't jump into that rabbit hole right now.

Yeah. And, there's probably a few people who are snickering right now listening to two dudes talk for 5 minutes about how they wash their underwear. But, these are the little subtle nuances like I was talking about that add up. So, what about styles in terms of performance versus dress versus daily wear? Are you guys doing different styles or is it just one style of the NAD's underwear?

Yeah, so we're still pretty new in the grand scheme of things. We're really fortunate in the fact that people ended up really liking our, our underwear and the business and the brand started to grow pretty fast over the last 12 months. We didn't really start this brand until March of last year. So, and like I mentioned, in the bigger picture, we're sort of brand new here and we're trying to pioneer this clean underwear initiative to the best of our ability. And so we haven't diversified too much with what we're actually offering. So we have a boxer brief and we have a boxer, and then we have an alt version of each of those. So we have a standard boxer brief, which is a slightly extended leg that comes in black, it comes in gray, and it comes in navy blue. And then we have the alt version of that product, which doesn't have a small fly opening. We call that one the No Fly Zone. It has extra compression. So that's our take on modern-day compression shorts. So, for the people who like compression when they're training, that's definitely the go-to option. People are loving those. And then, we have two styles of boxers. We have the standard boxer, which is just— here, I'll show you.

Got it right here.

A regular boxer is just a loose-fitting boxer short. It looks like it's made of t-shirt material as opposed to that really thin scratchy typical boxer material from most conventional brands. These are 100% cotton fabric. And then, we also have the Ball Natural style, which is essentially the same thing as the regular boxer short but we wrap the waistband. So, one of those things where this is a— in the world that we live in, these garments still need a little bit of function. So, right now, the tech is limited to where we're still working to try and find a way to eliminate this waistband over time. Right now, we don't have a solution for that. So, this waistband is still calls for the use of elastane, which is a synthetic material. But unfortunately, if we didn't use this, then no one would really want to wear the garments and then you'd be back to square one. So, we're trying to find that balance. So, what we ended up doing for the boxer shorts was we wrapped the waistband in the certified organic cotton. So then, all you guys hear is just certified organic cotton garment, no skin contact to the waistband. And then, we went a step further and just didn't even dye this. So, this is just the natural cotton color. And although we use certified non-toxic dyes for all of our styles, for those people who really want to go the extra mile, we made this style. And when we had to make a little funny joke around it, we called it the "Ball Natural." So, these are the Ball Natural boxers. These are my personal favorite.

Ball Natural. You're full of good puns today. Okay. So, you had briefly mentioned the women component, but on what's your website, It looks like you guys are featuring some kind of a women's line. Is that like a partnership with a different brand?

Exactly. So we, we do not carry our own women's products, but we have an affiliate partnership with a company called Panty Promise, and they're built on very similar principles to us. So we were having customers reach out and say, are you going to do women's? Where are you? Like, what do we do for women's? What about women's? So instead of us saying, hey, we need to just go and go into the deep end and launch a women's line, we were sending people to other brands' websites, just doing that. And then I came into contact with a woman named Jessica who started that company, and they're built on very similar principles. So I said, hey, why don't we just start sending the traffic from people who are looking for women's underwear to your brand? Because you stand for the same things that we do, so we can actually provide them with a solution that we stand behind as well. And then we kind of have just like a little cool partnership of us both fighting the big fight or the good fight against big underwear.

Yeah. Cool, cool. I like it. So, as far as you go, obviously you think a lot about this kind of stuff. I'm just curious stepping back and looking at you, Dan, what are some of the other things that you're doing in terms of the way that you're living your life or your daily routine that are big wins for you in the health department right now just because it's always interesting to hear different people's routines and what they're using. And, I always discover something new that we haven't talked about for on the show?

One of the things that I've been trying to adapt this year has been just the general theme of being mindful, right? I'm trying to make that just anything I do, I'm trying to make more mindful choices because in the past, I kind of was always trying to be perfect. And, with perfection comes a little bit of disappointment and any deviation from the course, right? So, part of this is tying in the overall thing into mental health and trying to have positive mindset and make these habits sustainable as opposed to making them rules, right? So, I believe in trying to have guidelines over rules. People do 80/20, I'm probably trying to do 95/5 for the most part. There are some areas of our lives where unfortunately we just don't have control over some of these things in our environment that might be exposing us to toxins or things that might not be ideal for human health. And, I think that I used to really stress over trying to avoid those things at all costs. And now, I try and mitigate my exposure to them as much as I can. And if I hit 95/5, 90/10 in terms of percentages, then I'm pretty pumped about that. But in terms of my overall health and wellness, over the last couple of years, I've tried to take a pretty hard pivot into a less is more approach. I watched the animal-based diet sort of rise in popularity and I gave that a shot for a little while.

You mean carnivore?

Sort of, pretty much very heavy into meat and eggs and raw dairy and then an abundance of fruit as well, fruit and raw honey. So, a little bit of a mix. And, I watched that happen and I started doing this and I've always been a fan of not blindly adapting things. I think that that's dangerous. I do think there's a benefit to it right now in the market because a lot of people are blindly adapting things that are drastically better than what they're typically doing. So, it's fine in that sense.

To interrupt you, I mean, if you're a social media influencer, it's not dangerous, it's highly profitable.

Right, right. 100%, it is. Definitely is. And I think that the good news is that there's a lot of people advocating for really good habits. I think it becomes dangerous when people who are following these people blindly adapt them and then abandon anything else that isn't that viewpoint. And then it creates a lot of polarity between these people who are all doing the similar task and action of trying to just improve. And, it kind of creates these little tribes with dichotomies between each of them when at the end of the day, we're all striving to kind of accomplish the same thing.

Right. That's why I didn't write "The Boundless Diet." I wrote "The Boundless Cookbook" and "The Boundless Kitchen," which is just a collection of recipes that are highly omnivorous because if you want to make a lot of money in the industry, you write a diet book and you champion that as the one perfect diet for all of humankind. But, there's so much biochemical individuality that just doesn't work at the end of the day besides for making money.

So spot on. And, that's why I have so much respect for you, Ben, and a lot of admiration for the approach that you take with your message. And, I've been following your journey for quite some time. And again, expressing a little extra gratitude to even have this little part of the journey together here. And, that's why I think it's super important that more and more people are trying to take that mindset and that approach is, "Hey, there's a lot of ways to do things right for yourself and for your health." And, just because this is working for me doesn't necessarily mean it's automatically going to work for you. So, in that journey of trying animal-based, I was testing every step of the way. So, every 4 months, every 5 months, I would go and get a test. And, I ended up doing that for— I think I did it for 10 months and then I pivoted from there into just more of an overall paleo-style diet where I eat a bunch of vegetables, I eat a lot of fruit, I do eat some grains. I eat a pretty good amount of meat. I eat wild-caught fish. I eat eggs. I do that. And for, for me personally, what I found is that I'm now in a sustain mode instead of I need to go and fix things. It's like, okay, this is the diet that's worked for me. You know, I dropped about 15 pounds and I'm now at a comfortable, functional, high-performance weight, which I probably should have been the whole time. And I think I was trying to hold on to more size for sport back in the day. And through that less is more approach, it's just I've simplified everything, right? So it's like, okay, if I can just eat foods from the earth, that's my general rule of thumb. If I can do that most of the time, 95% of the time, then I feel great most of the time. And then outside of that, one thing I've been working on lately, and this is tough as, you know, co-founder, CEO, entrepreneur, is not feeling like I have to go and do things. Because when I feel that I have to go and do them, I allow that mental burden to creep in and the stress to surmount. That's one of those things where that's an evergoing work in progress, right? I've paid a lot more attention recently to water as well with a lot of the talks of microplastics. So, even when I'm traveling in the airport, I am really trying not to drink from plastic water bottles. It's the number one thing where at all costs I'm doing my best to avoid it wherever I can.

Ben Greenfield: That's also interesting what you say about kind of your, your journey into omnivory and a more inclusive diet. It's kind of paradoxical because when you restrict a wide variety of foods and you go oxalate-free, low histamine, low FODMAP, etc., a lot of times what you create is a microbiome imbalance that results in you having immune system issues in response to many of these problematic foods that if you had a healthy microbiome would not be problematic because bacteria assist with the production of metabolites that break down those foods. That's essentially the thrust of a guy who I'm going to interview soon on my show, Joel Greene's new book, this idea that, yeah, if you eat a widely varied diet, especially rich in a wide variety of fermented foods and fiber-based plant matter and flavonols and polyphenols, then your microbiome composition shifts in such a manner that you create this positive feedback loop in which you're able to eat a wider and wider variety of foods because you're eating a wider and wider variety of microbiome-supporting foods.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, 100%. And, what I found interesting was that in this, I eat keto or I eat paleo or I eat carnivore or I eat animal-based, the shift back to introducing some of these things back into your diet can and probably will have some sort of repercussion on your system as a whole because you're introducing something that's been AWOL for a while. So, when I first pushed from animal-based into eating some vegetables again, I jumped right into the deep end and I was like, "You know what? I'm going to have a big salad every day for lunch, tons of greens, and I'm going to have a bunch of chopped bell peppers in there. I'm going to throw raw onion in there. It's going to be great." I had, for like about a week, I had really bad levels of inflammation in my back. And I was like, the only change I've made was introducing a bunch of vegetables at once. So I met up with my dietitian, my nutritionist, and I was like, hey, I just introduced vegetables back into the diet and here's what's going on. She was like, well, you jumped right into the deep end. And I was like, what do you mean? She was like, your body hasn't— it needs a little bit of time to adapt to that.

Right. It's almost very similar to like an infant with a peanut allergy. You have to gradually introduce them to that protein.

Yeah. And I think what happens is because of that elimination diet and then people throwing it back into tests and they don't gradually jump back into it, they're like, "Oh, that food's automatically bad for me," when we're actually better off eating those things. It might just take a little bit of an introduction period, right? I'm a firm believer of what we're talking about here is like eating kind of a little bit of everything is how we've evolved. And I think it's interesting that A lot of people are trying to talk about we need to eat like our ancestors, but we've evolved, right? So, what we eat should probably have evolved as well.

Yeah. I mean, our ancestors strictly speaking probably ate primarily tubers and bone marrow because once you take into account that poor access to a wide variety of fruits and produce and animals getting killed before you, early, early ancient man, probably subsisted on whatever was most widely available, which would have been tubers buried underneath the ground and the bones that they were able to crack open that the other animals couldn't get inside of.

Right, spot on. So, that's a whole other thing, the abundance and just the ability to have everything that we possibly could want or need at our disposal whenever we want. That goes further than just food, that goes now for information too. I think the rise of a lot of mental health issues is because of this just onslaught of info all the time.

Right, yeah. Self-diagnostic, Dr. Googling included. By the way, we do need to come up with the— I am going to write a diet book. It's going to be the Tuber Bone Marrow Diet. It's all just carrot fries and bone broth and beet chips.

Believe it or not, the carrots, that was the worst adverse response that I had when I introduced anything back into my diet after a long period of time without it. I was like, "You know what? A lot of people right now are eating a bunch of raw carrots and I'm guilty of blind adaptation." This was, I don't know, 3 or 4 years ago. I said, "No, I'm going to have 2 big raw carrots at the end of the night." The next day for me, my digestion, I was hurting. That one was definitely something where I needed to gradually introduce those back in and I just went straight for it.

Yeah, that's a big Ray Peat thing, introducing a raw carrot along with a meal for digestion. And, you see that a lot in the Ray Peat forums. It's like start small, mini carrots, baby carrots, and work your way up. Again, people probably laughing at us talking about the size of the carrot that you have with the meal for digestion. But yeah, I mean, the big picture here is start small with dietary adjustments rather than jumping, like you said, all in. How about from a fitness standpoint? Are there any big wins for you as far as equipment or approaches to staying fit? Because I know you're a relatively fit guy. You're busy, you're a CEO, you're running this company. So, what's working for you right now in the fitness department?

Yeah. So, it's a mirroring theme to how I approach kind of overall health and specifically with the nutrition is that less is more approach. So, back in the day, I would supplement so heavily, I would eat crazy amounts of different things and I would just try all these things. And the same thing happened in the gym. Basically, I would go in and I would spend, I don't know, 45 minutes to an hour and a half hitting one primary muscle group. From so many different angles, right? So, I would go and let's just take one for example. If I was going to go in and do a push day, I would go in and I would hit flat bench, I'd hit decline, I'd hit cable flies, I'd hit ground presses, I would do a converging press, I would do a reverse landmine press. I would do all of these things in one workout. And, I really was hitting plateaus and I wasn't that strong. I was carrying a little more bloat than I needed to. So, I don't know when the shift happened, But the way that I train now, which again goes back into that theme of kind of sustaining it and maintaining what I have going on, is I go into the gym and I warm up on the stepper usually for 10 to 15 minutes just to get a little bit warm. And back in the day, I would have been like, oh, you're going to kill the gains, right? Right.

Cardio, bro. You shrink.

Yeah, exactly. You shrink. I did shrink. I was 205 pounds. I'm 183 now. Significantly stronger than I've ever been, which is really crazy. And I think that's kind of like the whole resting healthy weight for output. But long story short, I warm up and then I have a muscle group that I'm going to hit for the day. Sometimes it's a push day, sometimes it's a pull day, sometimes it's an entire lower day. I kind of go pretty intuitively with what I'm going to do, and I'm really only doing 3 to 4 exercises per, like, per group that I'm doing, right? So for example, if I'm doing a push day, well then I'm going to pick one heavy load-up exercise like a bench press, and I'm going to probably do anywhere from 4 to 7 sets, and I'm going to just fully exert it on that set. And then I'm always going to try and do some sort of bodyweight movement with that. So I'll go and do like 10 by 10 of dips, and I'll just do bodyweight dips, or I'll do 5 by 10 with some weighted dips, and then I'll end up doing some sort of burnout with push-ups or something like that. And I try and carry that theme across everything. And, I can usually get my lifts done now between 30 to 50 minutes and they're super, super impactful.

Yeah, that idea of supersetting or triple supersetting at way higher volume in a much shorter period of time. I have a similar approach, rarely sitting around the gym. In between exercises, there'll be planks and Russian twists and different versions of core exercises.

So, do you do core every time you're training?

Indirectly. Because almost every workout I do these days involves a kettlebell swing or a deadlift or a squat or some loading exercise that whether or not I'm doing targeted core activity is hitting the core. And then, I'm a push-up guy. I do at least 100 push-ups a day just in between activities. When I finish this podcast, I'll probably drop and do 30 in my office. And so, yeah, I don't have any targeted core days per se, but it's just kind of sprinkled into every workout.

Yeah, I've kind of adapted that approach too. I will say you asked about, I think, equipment. My favorite piece of equipment, I would have laughed at myself for saying this years ago. So, with this injury in my neck that I experienced, it ended up having repercussions down into my low back and I ended up herniating L4 and L5. And, I think that was gradual wear and tear from overcompensating for imbalances. Long story short, I had crazy levels of pain into my sciatic nerve and into my upper glutes that would then shoot down into my legs for a while. And, I was like, "Okay, here we go. This is just another thing to add to the list." And then, I met one trainer who told me about the reverse hyper machine and actually loading it up with weight. So, for a while, I would lay against the end of the bench and I would just kick my legs back that way and I would slowly do it with no weight and I would pause at the top and really flex my lower back muscles and my glutes. And, that provided some relief for sure, but then I actually saw the reverse hyper and the pendulum and loading up with weight. So, I'll go on there like this morning, for example, my back started to feel a little bit tight. I must have slept wrong or something. Maybe I sat in the chair too long. And ultimately, I knew exactly what I had to do, which is I got to get on the reverse hyper, I got to put 2 45s on each side of it, and I got to go on pendulum. And what happens is you're not using muscle to get that all the way up. You're not muscling it up, you're using it as a pendulum. So, when you get to the top, your muscles are contracted and they're keeping the weight up there for a split second and then the weight and gravity will pull it down. And essentially what happens is you fold underneath the table and your lower body comes all the way in like a C-shape your body takes, and it essentially lubricates the spinal column. And I've been doing this 3 days a week for the last, I think, 2 years. And I don't want to say I'm pain-free because I'm going to jinx it and I'll knock on wood. But that has been the biggest game changer for lower back pain. And I think a lot of people deal with L4-L5 herniation and they don't realize it and they experience low back pain. So, when you're sitting in the chair all day, your lower back is essentially taking a beating and you're not training your lower back to take a beating. So, by doing this reverse hyper and making an effort to make it a consistent part of my day-to-day training routine, I have essentially bulletproofed my lower back from the stressors of sitting in a chair or driving in the car or bending over the wrong way to pick something up. It's like, "Okay, my lower back can take that beating." And oftentimes, the low back and the glutes are something that we don't really I think to train with that level of intensity for preventative cause.

Yeah, yeah. I'm very similar. If I don't take care of my back, I'll get some SI joint issues, occasional sciatica. I have mild L4-L5 degradation. And so, for me, I actually don't have a reverse hyper. I think if you were to have the ultimate gym for back, you'd have a reverse hyper, you would have a glute raise or a glute bridge, machine for loaded glute bridges and you have some form of traction like an inversion table. The Teeter Dex2 is fantastic.

Have you seen the Monkey Boots?

The Monkey Boots, I have those. Yep, those are fantastic as well as the Gravity Boots. But, you know what my number one, even though all these things, foam rolling your butt, reverse hyper, glute work, walking with the swing of the arms to lubricate the spine, number one thing that I do, You'll never guess.

I was going to say walking because that's the other component that I am religious about, but no, I don't know.

Alright. It's a yoga trapeze. I actually have one hanging in my living room. I hang upside down from it sometimes 2 or 3 times a day, at least once a day. There's about— there's like 100 exercises you can do when hanging in one of these yoga trapezes. And, by the way, for folks needing a visual, you go to the shownotes, I'll link to the reverse hyper exercise. I'll link to a Yoga Trapeze video so you can see how this works. But, I just have about 6 different moves committed to memory. And, at some point during the day, just hanging there just like the bike in my office or the kettlebell on the floor of the office or my walking treadmill. So, I got to walk by it all the time, so I do it. And, I hang upside down. You can do hip flexor stretches. You can do decompression. You can swing. And, I've used the inversion tables before. I've used the reverse hyper. I don't own one. If I own one, I'd use that more also. But this yoga swing or yoga trapeze is a game changer. I think mine's from Yoga Body and it's incredible. I teach people who come over to my house how to hang upside down on this thing. You can hear their back just popping up and down and everything's decompressing and very similar to what you do with the reverse hyper with the weight. You can even hold kettlebell, a small child, anything that allows you to kind of traction your spine as you're hanging from that thing. So, my wife jokes that someday she's going to find me at 6:00 a.m. in the morning with a concussion from the yoga swing finally breaking and plunging me headfirst down into the living room floor. But, it's my secret, man, the Yoga Trapeze.

Yoga Trapeze. So, is it mounted into the structure of the house or is it a standalone tool?

So, our house is kind of built like a big barn with railings and poles all over the place. So, I just have it hanging from the stairwell essentially going up the stairs kind of off to the side of it. So, I'm just kind of hanging in the middle of the living room.

That's crazy. We find these little things and they just become consistency. And I think that's what the body craves, is the body craves consistent action, right? If I don't take my walk, I go out and I live in Delray Beach in South Florida, and I go out and I have this loop, it's 3.2 miles, and I go out and like my body feels it if I take a day off from doing that walk, right? My mind feels it too. But ultimately, it's just like we become these creatures of habit. And when you're people like us who are very internally aware. We have that internal sense of awareness almost to a fault, right? We notice when those routines aren't as concrete in our life, right? Those are things that unfortunately kind of do become requirements, so it's harder to try and stray away from them a little bit, if you know what I mean.

Yeah. And then, once you start wearing the organic underwear, that becomes a part of the loop as well. Yeah, right. Hey, you know what I'm going to do, Dan? You're a fascinating guy. I'm going to link to your work, what you do, your channels, but then also folks, if you're listening and you want to deal on this NAD line or you want to check out the panty promises for women or look a little bit more into some of the studies and some of the things that Dan and I discussed on the show, go to bengreenfieldlife.com/nadspodcast. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/NADSpodcast. I'll link to everything there. Dan, anything else you want to throw in for people while I have you here?

No. I want to say thank you to everybody out there who's kind of supported the business and the brand in the last couple years since launch. My family has been super supportive in this being my first real endeavor. My team is awesome. The reason that we're able to grow is because we've got a great, great team in place. And then, I would say thank you to you for having me on the show. This is really a cool experience and I'm really grateful to be able to come on here, share parts of my journey, hear about your journey, and just kind of promote this overall theme of wellness optimization and just mindfulness, right?

Yeah, my pleasure, bro. Healing the world one or two balls at a time.

Yeah, exactly. And then, I will throw in one more thing here actually. You can find us at nadsunder.com. Nadsunder.com. Our social is @nadsunder. And, if you're inclined to follow me, my Instagram is @dan.baird1. And yeah, that's it.

Got it. Sweet. I'll put all that in the shownotes, folks, at BenGreenfieldLife.com/NADS-Podcast. Until next time, I'm Ben along with Dan Baird from NADS signing out. Have an amazing day.

Thanks, Ben.

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