159: Biohacking Strategies to Heal Chronic Health Conditions with Ben Greenfield

All right, so we are about to listen to a conversation that I had with Ben Greenfield. I just finished the conversation up. Ben Greenfield is literally like, when you come out of this conversation, he's like this encyclopedia of all of this incredible research and knowledge that we can use to apply to ourselves. The frame and the lens of this conversation that we had was that that Ben is a, is a biohacking expert. He is literally one of the top people in the world at understanding research and how to do things to make our bodies perform better. What I wanted to talk to him about is like, hey, how can we apply biohacking principles to those of us who are dealing with chronic health issues, which a lot of times stem from chronic inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction. And they'll manifest, you know, in our brains and our guts and skin, different areas like that. And what he was able to share in this show, short, you know, it's about 40 minute conversation. It felt like it was 10 minutes. Like, I could tell you had so much to go into, but for you guys listening, I don't want you to feel overwhelmed from the conversation. What I suspect that you'll probably do is pause this, listen to this episode a couple times. He lists out so many different types of practices you can try, how you can implement them, companies where you can find stuff, supplements to try. Like there's. He goes through all this very quickly. So what I want you to do is like in prep for this episode, like, I want you to look at this episode. Like this episode is going to help me support my healing journey. I think he said it in here at one point too. He was like, you know, by implementing some of these strategies that we're talking about, you can actually accelerate your healing process. Right. And so that was the idea. It's not to come here and tell you how to detox, remold specifically, or anything like that, but there are key biological components to how our body just works and what we need to do to support in these areas. Right. And there are little things that you can do outside of the protocols that your doctors are giving you that will actually help you kind of move this process along faster and let you get to where you need to go. That was the goal of this conversation. And honestly, I think it over delivered even more than I thought that it would. I'm so appreciative to Ben, really excited for you guys to listen to this one. So let's jump in.

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr, and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

Foreign.

Hey, everyone. What is going on? Really pumped today for the guest that we have on. I've personally been following this person for quite a long time in my book, and I love for him to explain how he describes himself in my book. This is one of the top thought leaders in the world of longevity and biohacking. Uh, and I think that there's a really awesome conversation that we're going to have here, and I'm really excited to get into it. So while we're talking, you're walking, getting your steps in, and while you're doing everything, it's all the little things. Everyone, this is Ben Greenfield. Ben, how you doing, man?

Hey. Hey, what's up?

It's great to have you. It's great to have you. For. For those who might not know who you are, I'd love to just get a. A quick background on who you are and sort of what you think your place is in. In the world and what your mission is and what you're trying to do so people have a feel for it.

Sure. What do you want to know?

Well, I guess, I mean, for me personally, as we're getting into this is, like I said, you know. You know, Ben has written books, he has an incredibly successful podcast, puts out all kinds of information on health, longevity. He's a. His mind on biohacking is amazing and research is amazing. So I guess the big question is, how does somebody even get into going down that road and. And what had you wanting, you know, finding a passion for this stuff?

Oh, that's easy. You take steroids and take your shirt off on Instagram. Everybody knows that's the best way to make a name for yourself in the health industry. Right?

That's exactly.

You know, I've always been pretty autodidactic, I guess. You know, I was homeschooled K through 12 over in my neighboring state of Idaho. I live up in Washington state now in the Inland Northwest, and I. I really got interested in my teenage years in sports and physical culture and wound up studying biomechanics and exercise physiology in college and got a master's degree at University of Idaho in that thought about going into medicine for a while. I got accepted to a handful of medical schools after taking all the pre meds and the MCATs. But I actually wound up opening up a string of gyms and studios across Idaho and Washington, specializing in, I suppose, what you might consider like early day biohacking, blood analysis and self quantification, high speed video camera analysis of movement and gait, blood lactate testing, VO2 max testing, calorie testing. I guess I've always kind of really loved the marriage of technology to biology. And so when my sons were born 15 years ago, I have twin boys, I realized I kind of wanted to be a stay at home dad and homeschool them and be a little bit more present at home. So then I started a podcast and I started writing books and I started doing more online consulting and speaking and really a lot of what I do now. And of course, along the way, it's kind of funny, I was talking with my sons about this last night. We're reading. We go through a book about every two weeks, and the book we're going through right now, it's excellent. It's by Morgan Housel, the guy that wrote the Psychology of Money. And he just came out with a new book about lessons we can learn from history and culture called Same as Ever. And so every night about seven before dinner, we have about five or 10 minutes where we just discuss that day's chapter. It's a great way to pass on knowledge to my sons and keep each other accountable with a decent reading cadence. And the title of the chapter was Keep Running. And amongst other things, the idea was never stop learning, never stop developing, never shut down your intense curiosity for life and for discovering new things that are relevant to your business or your sector that you operate in on a daily basis. And so I carve out at least a couple hours every day to read the research, to, you know, go through journals and journal digests, to read books, of course, have a podcast where I talk with people way smarter than me a couple of times a week. And so, you know, I suppose my university education was the foundation. And I've just kind of been in orbit ever since, just learning and, and, you know, gathering information and trying to disseminate and decode that and pass it on to other people the best way I can. So that's what kind of got me into it, though, was just initially, you know, having a real love for all things human performance and studying that and continuing to study it and continue to learn it and teach about it.

It's amazing. How old are your boys?

Oh, they're 15.

They're 15. I. I have a five year old girl and a two and a half year old boy and starting, you know, we read at night and stuff and I'm starting to transition out of like more of the kid books with my older one and trying to get into, you know, different things like that. She's got her first chapter, things like this, so things Amazing. So hearing how you sort of structure your day with your kids is, is interesting because it helps me sort of figure out how I want to think through that type of thing too.

Yeah, I, I think you can carve out time for both. So. Right. We, we go through a lot more of that. I, I try and I usually have the next two books kind of planned out and I try to have a good balance of finance, of self development, of religion and spirituality. Kind of like all the things that they're not really learning from their formal curriculum. You know, being homeschooled, they still have a wide ranging curriculum and a lot of experiential activities and field trips and the like thrown in. But you know, when you look at the core of it, it's still reading, writing, arithmetic, rhetoric, logic, et cetera. And there's certain things that, whether your kids are public or private school or homeschooled, I think kind of fit in at the beginning or the end of the day as a little bit of icing on the cake. So you know, right now we've got Same as Ever, which I suppose might be categorized as History of Social Studies. The next one I'm taking them through after that is a book on purpose, Arthur Brooks new book that he co wrote with Oprah Winfrey. After that I'm gonna be the next one is Dale Carnegie's how to Win Friends and Influence People Just because, you know, kids don't learn how to make friends necessarily, you know, or, or tactics for communication. Similarly, a few months ago I took him through Chris Voss's Never Split the Difference Negotiation book and Master class. But related to your comment about kind of like grown up or adulting books and then just stories, we still do bedtime stories. I mean we still, not every night, but we'll still sit down and read a Christmas story or go through a work of fiction. And so I try to carve out time for that too. I told my sons, I'm like, listen, when you guys get tired of dad reading your stories at night, just let me know and I'll stop doing it. But I'll keep doing it until they kick me out of their rooms at night because they want to do something better.

I love it. You Know, I saw something the other day, it said 90% of the time you have your, with your kids or before the, like they turn the age of. I was like 13 or 15 or like whatever, you know, before they start.

Yeah, that statistics drives me batty. I, I don't think it's true. I'm not buying it. I think that if you do a good job as a parent developing a close knit family, a family unit, family traditions, I mean, we've even gone so far as a family logo, a family crest, a family handbook. I think that your ideal vision as a parent is to create a scenario in which your kids and your kids, kids and beyond just want to keep hanging out and coming back for more. And Even though that 90%, some people say 95, some 98, I think it makes sense if you're operating this philosophy. Well, when they're 18, they're out of the house, they're moving away, they're starting their own stuff. I kind of like the idea of just like a village, a family community, and even considering encouraging your children to attend a university close to home or to build a home close to home. Because having hypermobility that we have now with airline travel, et cetera is a blessing in some respects, but it's really a new phenomenon. Not to just be kind of having a family and a generation setting up roots in the same ecological and environmental and geographical region. And so my vision is, you know, that, that 90 never goes away. We're just always, you know, hanging out and having a good time.

I love that point of view. The hat that I'm wearing right now, which everybody always asks me, this is our family, Chris. I designed my wife.

Oh, that's cool.

So I like, all of this is just like, I'm like, yes, this is exactly how I've been thinking through things too. It's really cool. Well, awesome. I love. Let's, let's kind of get into it. So for everyone listening, you know, a lot of times it's either me talking about specific things in your house, which is not the purpose of this episode, or I'm typically bringing on health experts to come in and talk more about, you know, on the medical side of things specific to, you know, environmental exposures, Lyme disease, you know, cognitive decline, all these different things, right? The, the interesting thing about Ben and what I'm like, so excited to talk about with you is there are things that we can do to optimize ourselves outside side of, you know, treating a, a particular, you know, disease that we, that, that has Been like put upon us or symptoms that we have or something like that. And, and that, that there are ways to do that that are not necessarily incredibly expensive either. And I think a lot of this stuff people just don't really know about. And what my goal and my hope is and what we could talk about today is looking at the world of biohacking.

But more so in the, in the lens of how do we attack a couple of key issues, which I'll outline in a second, that most of the user base or the listener base here has, as opposed to biohacking, in like the lens of longevity. Right, Because I think a lot of the biohacking stuff is really set in this like longevity lens, which is great. But if we have specific things that we're trying to achieve in a short term, and there's specific, you know, kind of core body issues that are going on, what are some of those, like, larger longevity kind of principles that we can apply to something a little more specific and maybe even adaptations of those principles if someone is more hypersensitive, for example. So to give you some context, Ben, you know, people that we work with, you know, in our business, and then people that you obviously listen to the show, a lot of them are impacted by mold, mold toxins, environmental exposures. And ultimately what's happening is that there's a chronic inflammatory condition that's getting created throughout the body. And generally there's a mitochondrial dysfunction that's associated with that. And how it manifests can be all over the place if you have chronic inflammation. But I would say some of the primary areas, you know, that we see a lot is in the brain. So you're talking like brain fog, cognitive decline, dementia, you know, early onset, all, you know, things like that. Big time gut issues are tied into this. So, you know, leaky gut overgrowth, parasites that, things like that. And then like skin, you know, eczema, breakouts, things like that, that a lot of times are tied to gut in general and like, and nervous system stuff where you're talking more like anxiety, depression, sleep, insomnia, stuff like that. So those are kind of the four, I would say, like most common buckets that I see from our clients and in turn probably people who are listening here. So it's brain, gut, nervous system, skin, are kind of the four areas, I think. But the underlying root cause to a lot of that, specific to who's listening here, is a chronic inflammatory issue which in turn is, you know, causing a mitochondrial dysfunction in addition to that. And so with that lens, looking at it the one other thing that I want to throw out here in this little game that we're going to play here, I guess, is is this additional consideration that when someone is chronically ill and they are, you know, trying to go through treatments or, or, or modalities or things they're trying to do to kind of improve sometimes the level of sensitivity in the person, like they might be so toxic or so overboard on what's going on that for example, sitting in a sauna is not tenable to that person, let's say, because it's releasing too much, it's there too much for their body to handle. So what I would love to try to do and talk about here are kind of key biohacking principles that can apply to a general chronic inflammatory kind of reduction, let's say. And then are there adaptations of some of those core principles that are like a lesser kind of, you know, concentration or severity or extent of that item that can maybe be executed for someone like that? Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. You know, and there's a lot of places we could go with all of that. But I suppose the first thing that comes to mind for me when you bring that up is that, you know, when I, when I work with someone and I'm looking over their blood work and their labs and also wearable data like HRV and sleep and things that are reflective of nervous system health, I often see what I would describe as a four legged stool. Meaning that you'll tend to see a cluster of issues in people who also tend to be susceptible to chronic stealth co infections like mold line, Epstein Barr, et cetera. The first tends to be some kind of genetic methylation deficit. You know, I don't think that that's the root cause of every issue that exists, but you do tend to see that repeatedly in people. And that's obviously something that can be easily ascertained via a salivary DNA analysis to see how impaired your methylation pathways might be. But you know, first of all, treating that is important with bioavailable sources of natural folic acid like methylfolate or methyl tetrahydrofolate. In some cases that might be organ meat consumption or organ glandulars. In other cases it might be a well formulated multivitamin like Thorne or Designs for Health or a company that actually uses natural forms of folic acid. And that would be paired with reducing synthetic sources of folic acid that especially in a poor methylator can lead to homocysteine buildup and be inflammatory. And it's Shocking. You know how many so called healthy energy drinks and multivitamins and pretty much most fortified cereals and grains are in terms of their folic acid content. But that's kind of like leg one of the stool that I tend to see.

Can we dive into that a little bit more? So are we talking HFR gene? That's. Is that what you're talking about here?

Yeah, yeah, got it. There are other methylation based genes, but yeah, that's the major one.

Got it. And so the general con, like specifically with the folic acid one, because I've dove into this a little bit lately too. So essentially, and you could tell me if I'm understanding this incorrectly or not, correct me. But if your mthfr, for example is whichever one is not good, that doesn't let you, that doesn't let you process properly, then essentially like if you're bringing in, and I think I read this specifically for like pregnant women, like you are given folate or folic acid I think generally in that sense. But if you're someone who doesn't process it properly or can methylate it properly, then you're actually getting something that your body can't process and it creates a host of other. Is that the general idea?

Right. Convergent into homocysteine and elevated inflammation. So yeah, folic acid is just generally a good idea to avoid. But especially if you're a poor methylator, it would be something to begin inspecting food labels for while simultaneously saturating your body with natural sources of methylfolate. So that would be the first. The, the second would be if you are a poor methylator because the methylation process supports things like DNA repair, you know, detoxification, etc, you will usually see accumulation of metals and toxins to a higher extent than you would see in a poor methylator. And so in addition to methylation support, you need to consider detoxification support. With of course the problem being that if the third leg of the stool is present, which you already alluded to, chronic inflammatory response or cell danger response, you know, essentially the body being stuck in almost like a fight or flight, sympathetic nervous system scenario. Many detoxification strategies that are recommended to folks tend to be at least initially a little bit too harsh or stressful. And you have to begin with some very, very simple concepts. I think probably the top two or I would say three actually in this case would be movement, not Crossfit, you know, not intensity interval training, but literally walking, light, swimming, stretching, yoga, etc. Second would be some form of G forces that allow you to address lymph circulation such as Tai Chi shaking, rebounding on a mini trampoline, or even self inflicted lymphatic massage, for example. One thing, I actually do this. Don't laugh. I do this when I'm jumping up and down on a trampoline. You don't have to do that. I just do it because the G forces that you get from a trampoline really allow for better lymph fluid circulation and detoxification. But there are certain lymph points that you can massage and tap to improve lymph circulation, but not necessarily need hefty amounts of sweating at a high temp sauna or hefty amounts of exercise. Those points are the collarbone right here. You can kind of massage that and tap it back kind of underneath the ears behind the jawbone where you would tend to get like a sore throat and swollen lymph glands. Again, you can massage it and tap it. And usually I'll just do about a minute per area. Then the armpit area kind of like at the edge of the chest, right underneath there. Massage and tap the stomach, right? Massage and sometimes the stomach. I'll do a longer period of time on because it feels really good to just slap, slap, slap, slap, slap. The inguinal and the groin, same thing, massage and slap. And then the back of the knees is where you finish. So you hit those six spots. And that can be really useful for kind of like a light self inflicted lymph detoxification that doesn't require, you know, a lot of stress on the body. Now if you can handle deep sweating, if you can handle, you know, coffee enemas, you know, if you can handle things like heat and cold therapy for more circulation, those are definitely beneficial. And at the top of the totem pole would be one of these heftier cleanses like a Ayurvedic based Panchakarma cleanse or you know. Dr. John Douillard is a physician in Boulder, Colorado who uses an ayurvedic approach and has options for both a five day cleanse as well as a what he calls a two week Colorado cleanse. There are companies like Quicksilver Scientific that use a more, I suppose, modern approach. I have some clients go through their detox cube, which is about a three month protocol. Another guy in the health sector, Dr. Dan Pompa, has one called the True cellular Detox, which is a combination of binders and liver detoxification pathway support agents. But as you alluded to, if people have some pretty significant mold symptoms they probably want to start towards the bottom of that totem pole with just like movement, tai chi shaking, a little bit of lymph massage, then you can get up to the stage where you might be doing sauna or an enema, sauna a few times a week, enema on a weekly basis. Then if you feel good, you can move on to a more arguably intense detoxification protocol. But really that's. The second leg of the stool would be somehow releasing the toxins or the metals that have accumulated within the body in addition to methylation support and avoidance of synthetic folic acid. So those would be the first two things that I would consider.

I'll stop there for a moment just to make sure you don't have any questions about what I've got covered so far.

No, I think this makes sense. It's the idea of like, you don't want to detox and flood toxin into your body if you can't get it out. Right. And so it's, it's start at the bottom and make sure your detox pathways, your methylation pathways are able to handle whatever you're then going to detox out. And basically step two of this pyramid. Yeah, right.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because it is binding and releasing. And that's why even if someone were going to do, let's say, the middle part of that phase, like a regular sauna practice or, or the use of an enema, that's where binding agents can be useful, like chlorella or activated charcoal. But you wouldn't want to take a binding agent all on its own without engaging in the release practices, because then you're essentially just redistributing metals and toxins throughout the body. And in many cases, based on osmotic gradients, it winds up in neural tissue in the brain. And that creates a lot of mental issues for folks. So you do want to make sure you're not just taking activated charcoal, for example. You have to combine that with releasing through stool and sweat and breath, the actual toxins. So that would be another thing to think about. The third kind of leg of the stool would be, again, what we've mentioned a couple of times would be you are in fight and flight syndrome, or fight or flight syndrome. The central nervous system can be stressed when you're methylating poorly and you have a high toxin load or mold or any other chronic stealth co infection. And this one's pretty straightforward. But you have to downregulate the nervous system, you have to engage in stress and meditative practices, prayer, gratitude, breath work, for example, all the things that you would consider to be things that would tone the vagus nerve and thus decrease stress by balancing the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. Those should be daily practices. And from a biohacking standpoint, yeah, you can certainly upregulate or accelerate that process of restoring nervous system health. For example, a few things that you could try are vagal nerve stimulating agents. For example, there's a company called Vielight, they have a red light stimulating collar that delivers red light directly over the vagus nerve at the back of the neck. There is a company called Truvaga and another company called pulsetto, both of which have developed relatively affordable at home devices that can stimulate the vagus nerve with the mild electrical signal that many people, especially people who have a high amount of sympathetic tone, find very relaxing. There are also sensory deprivation strategies. Many people will visit a float tank or use a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to kind of put themselves into a state where the world can't get at you. And you're also in a very relaxing environment. And finally, there are head worn devices. These are considered to be like light sound stimulation devices or neurofeedback based devices that accelerate the process of nervous system repair and recovery. A few examples of good ones would be, there's one called the Braintap, which is a light sound stimulation machine with over 800 recipes, many of which are designed for stress control and nervous system balancing and can even be paired with breathwork. There is another relatively new device called the Sense AI and that is basically a home based neurofeedback unit that uses audio and visual cues to shift your body out of say like high stressful beta brainwave production and in the more relaxed delta or theta or alpha production. Another similar light sound stimulation device that ties to an app on your phone is called the Neurovisor. That one's a little bit more powerful than the Braintap. Some people find it almost too stimulating. And then that same company that I mentioned, Vielight, that makes the vagal nerve stimulator, they actually have cranial and intranasal red light therapy devices that can be set to a specific hertz frequency to again down regulate the nervous system using specific light cues. It's a concept called photobiomodulation. So as you can imagine, once you introduce some of these so called biohacking technologies, you can get arguably better and faster results in a pretty safe manner than you might get from just breath work or just meditation, or just a gratitude Journal or something like that. And so that's what you'd want to consider for that third leg of the stool. So now we've got addressing methylation, we've got detoxification and we've got rebalancing of the nervous system. And there's, there's one other thing I consider that tends to fly under the radar. But does that make sense so far?

It does. I like to, as far as the nervous system component goes, maybe to just add a little context to why it's important, maybe a little more is to talk through. If you're in a constant sympathetic state, what does that do to your body? And it's a bit. Because now your, your body's prioritizing different things, right? So it's, it's really like a limiting factor in the natural healing that the body is able to do. Is that correct?

Well, sure. I mean, imagine you're at the gym doing a hard workout or a high intensity interval training cardio session or something like that. Well, your blood pressure is up, your heart rate is up, the liver is spilling massive amounts of glucose into the body, so you're hyperglycemic. If you ever test your blood glucose during a hard workout of the gym, it's usually through the roof. You are breathing rapidly, you're in a state of hyper vigilance. And just imagine if you were driving down the highway in your car and all of a sudden your body felt like that. It'd freak you out, right? Because that amount of stress is something that the body can naturally handle in a situation in which it's briefly going to battle whatever, you know, from an ancestral standpoint, running from a lion or you know, engaging the latter parts of the hunt, where you're finally taking down the animal and your heart rate's up and you're shooting and, and you know, chasing it down or whatever. But yeah, long term chronic activation of the sympathetic nervous system, as you can imagine, is exhausting, especially if you're trying to sleep at night. So that's just the strategy behind this is we want to down regulate the sympathetic nervous system. And honestly this can be measured, I think heart rate variability, which is a measurement of the delta in terms of the heartbeat signal, the difference in time between each individual heartbeat with the idea that there should be mild beat to beat variation between each heartbeat. The vagus nerve is what sends a signal to the pacemaker cells in the heart to speed up or slow down the heart rate. In a properly toned nervous system with good sympathetic and parasympathetic Nervous balance, your heart might beat and there'd be 0.8 milliseconds and your heart would beat again, there'd be 0.89, your heart would beat again, there'D be 0.78 and you'd see good fluctuation in terms of the beat to beat interval. And that would result in what would measure on a wearable, such as, I don't know, ring or a wristwatch or a wrist device, high heart rate variability. And of course, as you can imagine, poor vagal tone or especially a excess state of sympathetic nervous system activity or even over training in an athlete, which would be excess parasympathetic nervous system activity. Actually that would result in a low heart rate variability. So heart rate variability is a great tracking method to see how your efforts to downregulate the sympathetic nervous system are actually coming to fruition.

So in theory, if you're stimulating the vagus nerves through some of the things that we talked about here, then your HRV would go up in theory from very, just top line thought process.

Yeah, and I left out one. That's cold water. Again, as you alluded to, that can be stressful for many people who are already a little bit too sympathetically activated. But the fact is most of the benefits of vagal nerve toning from cold water come from the head and the neck getting cold. And so you can literally do cold water face dunks and not necessarily get the whole body in and have an intense shivering response. So you know, you don't have to guilt yourself in and outputting the whole body into the, into a cold environment.

And then I had one more question. You were talking through like delta beta, the different waves of the, you know. Yeah, right, sorry. So PEMF mats. So I, I, I have one of those that I actually have started using and I noticed like I use it at night and I put it at 3 hertz to try to really emphasize the delta wave. And, and it like it works. I mean I get super tired and then I also notice like through I wear a woo for sleep tracking. I also notice like improvements there. And it has identified that practice as a 10% positive in my recovery. Is that, is that another way, do you feel like that's an effective way to kind of modulate your, your brainwave and look at it like that?

Well, pulsed electromagnetic frequencies are going to cause a little bit more permeability in the cell membrane and essentially allow for flushing of toxins or an increase in the intake of metabolites. Sometimes it'll speed up activity of the electron transport chain, it'll decrease inflammation. It can, when you use a lower hertz frequency, as you alluded to, even shift the brain into a certain brainwave pattern. And it can work for that. I mean, I also have a PEMF device that I sleep on. It's one of the few that I could find that will stay on for 12 hours during the night. It's made by Dr. William Pollack. P A W L U X K P A W L U K. That one's called the, I call the body balance or the biobalance, I forget, but you can find it on his website. But even PEMF can be very stimulating and excessively stimulating to people who are already in a hyped up state of nervous system stress. And because of that, I am totally open to the idea of, and I myself get a lot of benefit from, as do my clients, the use of grounding or earthing technologies, such as a good pair of grounding or earthing shoes, or grounding or earthing straps that you outfit to your existing pair of shoes that allow you to absorb a lot of negative ions that build up on the surface of the planet when lightning strikes the planet or when solar radiation strikes the planet. The Earth is basically one giant ibuprofen pill when it comes to its anti inflammatory benefits. But for example, here in my office, I've got a grounding mat that I stand on when I'm working at my computer. Even though I have a PEMF mat on my bed, underneath the top sheet I actually have a full king size grounding mat and all the pillows are grounded as well. And this can be a really good strategy for getting a lot of the benefits of PMF with a little less of the intense stimulation. And it actually very much relates to what I would consider to be the fourth leg of the stool I was describing. And this is the one that I think a lot of people don't catch. But that is important. I mean, if you have a high metal load and you're in a state of hypersensitivity, you typically also are carrying with you some degree of electro hypersensitivity. And so I think it's a really smart idea to audit your home and your working environment for magnetic frequencies, radio frequencies, dirty electricity and AC power surges. And you know, I certainly have a little bit of electro hypersensitivity myself. Many people do. And I feel wonderful when I'm at home compared to when I'm at an Airbnb or at a hotel because I've got dirty Electricity filters plugged into each room in the house. I don't have WI Fi. Everything is.

Hardwired with metal shielded Cat 7 Ethernet cable. I've got the grounding and earthing mats that I described. I've got solar panels, but I've got a dirty electricity filter on the solar panel configuration. So I'm getting fewer AC power surges as the solar converts from DC to ac.

I've had what is called a building biologist go through my home and the guy use was Brian Hoyer at Shielded Healing with a series of meters that measure different forms of electricity to ensure that my body is not getting exposed to a high amount of them when I'm in my, my, in my home and office space. And of course, as you can imagine, because your night of sleep is the arguably one third of your life during which the majority of nervous system repair and recovery is occurring, if there were one area of your home you were going to start with, it would be the bedroom, right? Like moving any appliances out of the bedroom, getting rid of anything that doesn't have the ability to be able to disable WI fi, putting dirty electricity filters in the outlets, making sure that the lighting is flicker free and is not LED but is OLED or biological LED or halogen or incandescent. Making sure that the bed has, for example, a grounding sheet or if you can handle it, a PEMF mat on it. And making sure that anything plugged in next to the bed has been tested and is not producing a large amount of electricity while you're asleep. So, you know, that's the part I think a lot of people miss. They'll cover, you know, they'll take all the supplements and do all the detoxes, but still just be in a WI Fi and electrical soup all day long. And I think that can really inhibit the healing process.

Yeah, you're 100% on it. A lot of our clients specifically and people that we interact with become sensitive to emf. And it's a big piece of what happens. And for those people who have not experienced it and aren't feeling it, you just kind of feel like that, like, how does that even happen? I feel fine. But you start adding all these different exposures and different things that your body has to deal with and the sensitivities start to increase at an exponential rate at some point when your body is just overloaded with everything and, and this, even multiple chemical sensitivity, like all these different things that like start to occur. Mass cell activation, innovation, like a lot of that stuff happens after the root load of whatever your exposure is kicks in and then just kind of starts like flooding in on top of it. And so a lot of, A lot of this stuff is so cool because the way that it's, that you're breaking it down, there are things here that we can do that are lesser, that are a lesser amount of severity or concentration on the body, like, like you describing, hey, PMF might actually do some detox, which we don't necessarily want to do. If you're that sensitive, here's grounding as an alternative to that, where you're getting benefits like that. Like, it's all. This is all very helpful. And I, and I think the goal of this is for people to be able to walk away and say, hey, how do I maximize my recovery through this process? Understanding where I'm at and how many options are there? What are the different kind of levels of these options that I can do? And the fact that you're like this knowledge base is just spitting out these things that, like, while you're probably walked a mile and a half while we're talking already on your, on your treadmill is, is very, very awesome and incredibly helpful.

Yeah. And, you know, there are, there are little things that I think. I don't know if you've talked about these things or not, but to consider, for example, if, if you are in a chronically inflamed state or have some element of cell danger response syndrome, you are going to have a higher level of reactive oxygen species and free radicals and thus creating a scenario in which you're supporting what is called mitochondrial uncoupling can be a smart idea, meaning that you're essentially lowering the rate of free radicals produced by the electron transport chain by shifting mitochondria into essentially what you might consider to be heat production. An example of mitochondrial coupling strategies would be the use of bitters and herbs and spices, particularly prior to a meal. Bitter melon extract is a perfect example of that. The use of polyphenols, such as red powders, or the dark blues and purples of the plant kingdom, red wine, blueberries, pomegranates, et cetera. I even have instead of black pepper in my pepper grinder in the kitchen, grains of paradise pepper, organic grains of paradise pepper, which I use as a spice in my kitchen, which is also a mitochondrial uncoupling agent. Ketones. These are kind of like a newer trend in the health industry, these drinkable ketones that shift your body into a state of ketosis without the stress of carbohydrate and calorie restriction, those are mitochondrial uncoupling agents. Cold is probably one of the more powerful mitochondrial uncoupling agents if you can handle it without excess stress. And of course the best way to know that, as I described earlier, is how does your HRV respond long term to something like cold therapy. But one thing to think about would be looking into mitochondrial uncoupling agents and weaving some of those strategies in your routine. And then the other that I would think about that might fly under the radar would be an approach to inflammation that a lot of functional medicine doctors have embraced over the years and that has been a staple of Russian functional medicine and longevity for over 30 years. And that would be the use of peptides. And although the FDA has recently cracked down on many peptides, in my opinion, not because they're unsafe but because I think because of pharmaceutical interest in them. Because they're very effective and safe, but also very affordable. And so they're low hanging fruit for pharmaceutical companies to pick up if lobbying as it has done successfully can convince the FDA to classify many of them. But they're still available, many companies are selling them. But marking them as not for human consumption for research only, that doesn't mean you can't use them. Obviously proceed with your own research and knowing what you're getting into. But there are a few peptides that are enormously helpful for their anti inflammatory effect. BPC157 is one. There's another one called thymosin beta TB500, that's another. And oral BPC157 is still legal to get. Injectable is not legal for human consumption, but you can still get it. And these are injected very similarly to how a diabetic would inject insulin, with an insulin symptoms subcutaneously on the abdomen or the buttocks. And so peptides like that can be very effective. And there are other peptides that support the mitochondria. One of the more powerful one is called mot C M O T S C. Another very powerful one is called epitalon EPI T a L O N. And in my opinion, if your pocketbook allows for it and you're willing to kind of use something that might be considered a little bit more fringe, you can go to websites like Peptide Sciences or Can Labs or Limitless Life or even go through a practitioner such as Bioreset Medical in San Jose or Craig Conover's clinic in South Carolina and you can get peptides and a peptide protocol. And if you're going to Use any. I'd say look into BPC157 and TB500 for inflammation and then MOTC and Epitalon for the mitochondrial support. And many people get results far more quickly once they begin incorporating peptides into their healing protocol.

Can you explain what peptides are and what they do?

They're very short chains of amino acids that directly travel to the organ or the tissue for which they are.

They're synthesized to target. So in the case of BBC 157 that acts as a healing gastric peptide and also as an anti inflammatory agent for joints and also as an anti inflammatory agent systemically TB500 would have a greater effect on the thymus gland and also on tendons and ligaments. MOT C and epitalon, those would both act on the mitochondrial membrane to support that while also decreasing inflammation in the mitochondria. And actually, if you take a deep dive into the Russian research, There are over 30 different peptides called peptide bioregulators. A guy named Dr. Kavinson has done research on decreased all cause risk of mortality with the use of these. And there are companies like Anti Aging Systems that literally sell peptide bioregulators designed to target each organ. And again, this might sound like a little bit of a hefty biohack for many people or a lot to do, but just one single 10 day protocol of peptide bioregulators can be rejuvenating for the entire organ system. It just requires, you're basically swallowing like 30 capsules a day for 10 days in a row. But that, you know, that's, that's like kind of like the top of the totem pole as far as peptides are concerned. Yeah, they're just amino acid chains that target specific organs or organ functions.

Wow, this is awesome. This is all really cool. I know we're running up on time. Is there anything else that you feel like that we should throw out here and kind of the spirit of what we're chatting about today?

You know, I would imagine the people who listen to your podcast, Brian, they already have been exposed to some of your recommendations on testing, both testing the environment and testing their body. But I would encourage people to do your research and to understand that, you know, the average so called mold eradication expert might not actually be doing the right type of testing for your environment.

For example, just like a simple air test in the center of the room in a house. Or you might have a doctor who maybe will do a neutral valve panel or a metabolomics panel for mold markers, but they're not actually doing a urinary mycotoxin or even in some cases, a hair analysis. So just make sure that. I would say, I would trust Brian a lot of the information he has. There's a great website called Surviving Mold, which I'm sure you're aware of as well, Brian, and good resources out there. But I would say just make sure that you are testing intelligently both your body and your environment. And then armed with that knowledge, you can dive into some of these strategies I've just explained. And of course, some of the environmental and biological mold eradication strategies that Brian, I'm sure, has talked about on his podcast.

Awesome. Ben, listen, this is. I feel like this flew by. There's just so much here, which is awesome. Really, really appreciate you taking the time to. To talk through all this stuff with us. And I'm sure everybody listening is very appreciative and grateful as well.

Yeah, it's my pleasure, man. I hope it's been helpful. And keep up the good work. People need this information in an era in which we are indoors way more than I would say what we're meant to be or what we're designed to be. The mold issue is, of course, just a growing concern when you pair that with stress and with the cell danger response and, you know, methylation issues. I think that this is a very, very important topic for people to be aware of. So thank you for. For being a resource for people.

Yeah, absolutely. We're coming up on Christmas, by the way, so happy holidays to you, too. As we get. As we get there.

Yes. Get your mold. Free Christmas tree.

All right. Thanks, man.

All right, thanks, Brian.

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