What Are The Best Supplements For Altitude?

Hey, you guys, what's up? I'm Ben Greenfield, and it's pretty rare that I actually get somebody on a Skype video interview with me. But the smiling mug that you see next to me right now is Craig Dinkle. And Craig, if you're a longtime podcast listener, is somebody that you might be familiar with because he first joined me in a podcast episode about how he would slam whole buckets of fried chicken and then shatter world swim records. And by the way, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you do a search for Dinkle, his last name, D I N K E L, you can listen to that highly entertaining episode. And in addition to that, we did another episode on how to legally dope your blood, how to legally increase your erythrofoietin using specific nutrients. And that's what I want to focus on today as fun as fried chicken is. Right, Craig?

Hey, listen, just a real quick input on that during those times that not only got me second fastest swimmer, sprinter in the world at that time, but that record was a high school record that stood for 20 years before it was broken. So fried chicken works.

You are a fricking phenom in terms of your swim records that you broke. And. And then you got into mountain climbing after that, Right? Which was what kind of sparked your interest in oxygen utilization?

Well, you know, the sprint. I was a sprinter, 100 meter, 50 meter freestyle, and butterfly. So that's really where the whole blood oxygen thing came about. But later, when I did get into mountain climbing, it made a difference, too, there as well.

Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, one last question before we turn to legally doping your blood. Have you had fried chicken in Japan before?

I didn't catch that. Have you had fried chicken?

Have you had fried chicken in Japan?

In Japan, yeah.

No.

Only in Texas. What's it like in Japan?

The fried chicken in Japan is freaking amazing. So if you ever get a chance to try fried chicken in Japan, do it.

Okay. It's on my bucket.

And those of you watching as well, if you ever get to go to Japan, something about it is just amazing. Like the way they bread it and the way they cook it is just like melts in your mouth. Good, good. Okay.

If they make fried chicken in any way in style that they do sushi, I'm sure I'm going to love it.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's probably right up there with their sushi. If they can somehow combine fried chicken and sushi, I would just probably move to Japan. I have in front of me. The three different things that we talked about in previous episodes that I really wanted to touch on today because, you know, I'm personally getting ready for Spartan World Championships right now, which is about 8,000ft of altitude. I'm very much into and have been for a while, I think, because I've kind of been in endurance sports. This concept of how can we build our blood specifically to carry oxygen, to generate new red blood cells, to generate more erythropoietin, or what you guys might be familiar with is epo, like these precursors of red blood cells. And so you have this whole line of nutrients that are designed to do that. And I want to talk to you about how one would actually use these because our previous two podcast episodes we really geeked out on the ingredients. But what I want to focus on is how you use these and also how you combine them. And we'll also, for those of you who are not familiar with these, we'll do a brief overview. But go listen to the podcast if you want the deep dive into the ingredients. So this one is your AFA formula and we do have links for all this stuff. Just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com BioTropic just like it looks right there. BenGreenfieldFitness.com BiTropic and below this video I am posting a discount code for you. So where you're watching this video, we're going to have a big fat discount code for you. But this stuff is called the AFA formula. And if you guys look at the ingredient label, I'm going to read it to you and you can look at has a flos aqui, which if I am not mistaken, Craig, is that a form of algae?

It is. It's considered by experts to be the creme de la creme of all of the algaes because it has both the nootropic effect and it also has a well researched ability to help with recovery as well. And a lot of the testimonials I get support that as well.

Okay, yeah, that's the one I think a lot of people wouldn't be familiar with. But like when we talked about that on the podcast episode, it blew my mind in terms of the effect that it has specifically on the blood.

We hear a lot about chlorella, but this AFA Flos aqua stuff is not talked about quite as much. Then beetroot is in here, which we know is great. It's like Viagra for the whole body. Cordyceps, which is basically, it's. It's considered like an adaptogen almost. Correct me if I'm wrong, Craig, but basically this would be something that's used by Sherpas who guide people up Mount Everest. It's an adrenal activator of lung tissue, another kind of favorite of the endurance world. And then liver anhydrate, that's kind of a shocking component of this. Why the liver?

Well, I'm a big believer in the B suite of vitamins. And there's only one other source that I'm aware of that I think, and I'm not even totally sure of this, that's a higher quality. This particular liver anhydrate is Argentinian grass fed, B fatted hormone free liver. And it is the highest form of B suite you can get. And I'm really, I've always been into this because it's got B suite of vitamins, produces a lot of energy, and the 9 and 12 often combine to help with red blood cell production. So the whole suite of the B suite, the whole suite you have to have anyway.

So it's B6, B9, B12. Everything you get if you were to eat a chunk of liver from a cow without having to actually fill up with the potatoes. That's right. And.

It also combines with the AFA in there to complete a full electrolyte set also. So you get an electrolyte suite from this as well.

And it's not a capsule, it's a tablet. Is there a reason to remove the tablet?

It's designed to break down quickly.

Yeah, yeah. I've actually tried chewing them. They're not that bad anyways though. So this was the very first one you developed, right?

Yes, that's correct.

Okay, now then you came out with this one. So this one's called the AFA formula and this one is called blood oxygen, nitric oxide, ATP and erythrocyte support. Now this one's a little bit different. It's got the beetroot in it and it's got the cordyceps in it and it's got the liver in it. But rather than having afa, this one has chlorella and echinacea. Why didn't you just stick with this one? Why did you add this one in too?

They do different things. The line that I currently have right now is all built around blood development, blood oxygen support. But there are prime movers in these two ingredients. And in the first one we mentioned, that's AFA for the recovery and any tropic effect. But the chlorella, a Lot of people, and me in particular, really like the detox effect of chlorella binds with heavy metals, pollutants and toxins in the bloodstream. We talked about that earlier and you cleared up some of how that actually works. But the idea of getting healthier and cleaner blood to the muscles and brain when you're working out and training was always very appealing to me. So I always felt that if you had cleaner stuff going to where you need it most, you're going to perform better. And euchanasia is really, really well documented for, for one thing in particular and for another thing that a lot of people don't know about, the thing that most people know about is the immune support that it gives. So it's well known for that. But it also has a backstory for helping with red blood cell production too. So that's why that's in there.

A lot of people think it's for immunity, but I believe in the podcast interview we did, it was like hundreds of percentage points of an increase in erythropoietin production via the use of echinacea. And then the other thing that I was going to mention about the chlorella, and we mentioned this study too, is that this combination of getting adequate sunlight and chlorophyll from dark green matter such as chlorella actually allows you to produce ATP in the absence of calories. Which I think is funny because we hear about breathetarians, which I'm not on board. I actually have a book back on my bookshelf right back there that I just read on breathitarianism and I'm a pretty open minded guy, but my exercise physiology brain was just like.

However, there is evidence that by consuming dark leafy matter or chlorella and then exposing your body to sunlight, you can actually produce ATP. That's another interesting thing about the chlorella. But in terms of these two, should people buy one or the other or can you take them both at the same time? Because a couple of the ingredients are the same, they both have liver, they both have beetroot, for example.

Yeah. So there's a doubling effect if you combine them. And that's a personal choice. And as a heavy user myself of supplement, I'm a big believer in trying things and finding out any way that I can tweak up to get the best benefit I can. So I always say that if you find something, this is one of those rare areas where I say, if you find something that really works, really don't break it and stick with it until you need to move on to something else because it's so hard to find things that do work. But I do combine them because I like the effect of the afa. It gives me a natural lift. There's no buzzy or caffeine y like lift in that, so you get that natural lift from it.

And I get a lot of reports.

From people from that. And the chlorella I take later in the day, so I don't get that lift. And I get the blood cleaning effect and all the doubling effect of the blood oxygen support.

I'm actually later this morning, I'm hitting the sauna and there's this concept that when you get nitric oxide or niacin or something like that in your bloodstream and then you go do the sauna, you get this big increase in detoxification and fat lysing as well. So I like this stack because I can use it for that too. I can also. I have this live O2 machine behind me. You can see the bag there. And I actually did a session on that this morning. It's a combination of hyperoxia and hypoxia. So this morning when I got up, I went in my pantry and I actually took two of each of these because I knew this morning I'd be doing hypoxia, hyperoxy training and the sauna. And I'm not just doing this to play around. Like I mentioned, I'm getting ready for World Championships. It's the altitude. I don't live on a mountain. I want blood building. So what I'm doing for three weeks during the World Championships is I'm using your supplements. Combining that with the hypoxic training in the sauna to allow me to be able to do this without doing the old Lance Armstrong method of laying down at the bottom of a bus somewhere and injecting blood that turns my heart so pumping into sludge. Okay, so the last one, and this is the one that we talked a little bit about in the last podcast that we did. This one is totally different. This one's called Oxia. And again, you guys can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com BioTropic to check these out and grab a discount under this video. But this one is L citrulline malic acid. It's also got cordyceps in there. But from what I understand, this is more of like a lactic acid buffer than it is a blood builder. Is that correct?

You can think of it as a lactic acid buffer. Definitely a blood builder. The Reason I developed this is because the first two formulas we talked about are pretty robust. They have lots of ingredients in them and as standalone products, they're going to help. They're going to make a difference. I think you've enjoyed them. And by the way, thanks for all the props. And you're insane with all the stuff that you do and hanging upside down in tubs and tanks and you're a crazy guy. It's fun to work with you. But the Oxia thing was built around the ICE idea of just a pure clean energy blood oxygen delivery system. So the L citrulline and malic acid are very well studied, well documented. You should research it yourself to have and in some cases very well scientifically shown to really increase vasodilation in a different way than beetroot does. So if one doesn't work for you to try the others, they're always moving.

Around or definitely stack them. The stacking is freaking crazy in terms of the rate at which you buffer lactic acid. And then also the very interesting thing is that I sweat a little bit more. It feels like it opens up my pores. But when it comes to malic acid and citrulline, there are so many other benefits. Again, I know I threw around this term already when I was talking about beetroot, but like Viagra for the whole body, I mean this is like that on steroids. And I think we mentioned this in our last podcast. This is actually a great pre sex stack as well. You take this stuff like 40 to 60 minutes before sex or anything that requires more vasodilation, more blood. Just think of anything that you would need that for and this adds up. Plus you get a little bit crazy in the bedroom. The lactic acid buffering effects is a nice little addition as well.

I gotta just throw a quick comment on that in my early frequently asked question section when I did the AFA and the beetroot. I actually touch on this a little bit because I don't like to. These are intended. I built these with athletics in mind and people who move and trying to help people who move perform better in training and better competitive outcomes. But there is that side effect and it goes both of these beetroot and L citrulline and malic acid go back a long way what it is you're talking about. But I never highlight that. It always comes to me from users. You believe some of the funny stories I've heard about what it is you're talking about on these products. But I do say in the frequently asked. I bury it in there real deep that, look, there is a side effect here and you do have to take responsibly. If you're an athlete, you're not wanting to get carried away when a meet or an event matters so much that you're getting this other benefit or side effect from it that takes away from your other performance that you're trying to do.

Hey, would you be game for the code that we're going to put underneath this video? Would you be game for us creating some kind of a code where people could just like get all three to do, like what I'm using to do, like what I'm doing, like, like what do you think we could do? And again, for those of you watching, we're just going to come up with something really good for you guys on this one.

Well, we can create, you know, we can create the usual code so if someone wants to do a one off, they could do that. Or we could create and we can create another code that combines all three at a really big discount.

What's the biggest percentage discount we can give people if. If they wanted to get all three bottles?

If you're okay with it, we could go size 30% to your folks.

Could you create code BEN30?

If I use BenGreenfieldFitness.com BioTropic we can use code BEN30 for people to get all three bottles at a 30% discount.

Absolutely.

Happy to do that for you. All right, you guys, we just hooked you up. So if I've got all three, what I've been doing is two of each when I wake up, because I'm a big old boy, I'm moving around a lot. I would say smaller people, probably one of each. I know on most of these bottles you have to take it once, three times a day. But would that be appropriate? Like when you first get up in the morning, if you were stacking with all three and you just wanted to crush the day, just do two of each.

I think if you. That's a really great question and I need to update the usage here and I want to put out there that I get a lot of questions on usage and people email me and I get very involved. So if anyone has any questions about the type of training routine they do, their diet, any of that stuff to help them tweak it for their particular workout or sport, just email me and I'll get involved. I just do that gratis because I love to help your audience and anyone else that comes on board. But if you're like you, you're a serious athlete. I would actually say for you, if you've got big workouts ahead of you, I would say Ben Greenfield should be taking like three of the AFA ahead of that workout because you want to get as much of that lift in there as you can. And you're working hard. I know you're routine, you're a hard worker. And then if you wanted to amp that up, let's just say you're going to do more in the afternoon. What I do is I then add the oxia to get the extra. I don't need the other robust stuff, so I just want. I already have that in my body. So I then add the oxia to get the vasodilation lift and the oxygenation lift. And then again late in the afternoon for me because sleeping is an issue for me. By the way, I just did that 23andMe thing and I found out that my delta waves are low and I'm a natural non sleeper. So that's a whole thing I've got to get into. I got to work with you on that. But that's why I take the chlorella product in the afternoon so I can get into the blood detox. I still like the oxygenation and the blood development that that gives me, but I want to move into blood detox at the end of the day and start to wind down. For me, the only exception I would make is that if you're a crazy elite level athlete and you have that afternoon workout that's every bit as tough as that morning workout, then I would continue with the AFA because you're burning so many calories and fatiguing up anyway that you're going to sleep well.

So I could take the oxia and the AFA like in the morning, like a couple of each. But then don't take this one until the afternoon. Then I can get that second pick me up by taking this one in the afternoon. Plus it's got the chlorella for the detox effect and the sleep effect.

Dr. That's how I do it. That's how I do it.

Dr. Okay, cool. That's what I'll try today then. All right, sweet. So what we're going to do for those of you guys watching is all three use code BEN30@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Bengal BioTropic. Just like it sounds and just like it looks right there. Biotropic. And then if people just want to get like one bottle. Do you remember the discount code that we have set up for folks. Craig?

Yeah, you could just use the Ben. We have a standing Ben coupon. That one right now is 20% in free shipping. I think that's pretty Ben.

No other numbers needed. Is it case sensitive at all or.

No? No, not case sensitive. So Ben, if you want one.

I just wanted one. Cool. Like over one. Yeah. Okay. All right, sweet. So Ben 10 or Ben for one. Ben 30 if you want to get all three. Sick. I love it, dude. Craig, thanks for coming on and sharing this stuff, man.

Hey, it's always a joy. I love hanging with you. It's always fun. Thanks a lot, pal.

Alright you guys, thanks for watching. Go check it out. BenGreenfieldFitness.com BioTropic use code BEN30. You gotta try this stuff. Especially if you want more blood. Better sex, better performance, bigger lungs, this stuff works.