Ben Greenfield on Optimising Sleep, Gut Health & Top Health trends for 2020

This episode is brought to you by Nourish Me Organics, proud stockers of the Kefir company Kefir maker. The Easiest Way to Make Kefir at Home now what is kefir? Kefir is a fermented product that is loaded with probiotics, milk. Kefir has approximately 2 trillion organisms per 250ml served and there is so many benefits to kefir, from improving gut health to even potentially improving anxiety and depression and sleep. So guys, if you're interested in making your own kefir, head to www.nourishmeorganics.com and use the code BEN B E N2019 for 10% off our complete Kefir making kits. The easiest Way to Make Kefir at home. Hey guys, Cribben Govender from the Gut Health Gurus podcast. I've got a background in food science and nutrition and today I have a stellar guest for you. His name is Ben Greenfield and he is one of the biggest health influences in the world right now and I'm so grateful to have him onto the podcast. Ben, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast.

Hey dude, thanks for having me on. I'm stoked.

My pleasure. And I really wanted to get you on because you're one of the guys that are really progressive in the health space. You're talking about things like deuterium, which is extremely interesting and fascinating for me personally, so. And also gut health and a lot of other things. So I definitely wanted to get you onto the podcast. And what we like to do at the start of each podcast is to get it from the horse's mouth. Who is Ben Greenfield?

You call me a horse?

Yeah man.

I am an exercise physiologist and biomechanist. Formally that's what my master's degree is in. And along the way, in terms of being a pro athlete and consulting with a wide variety of folks from sports teams to CEOs and execs, corporations, etc. I've really kind of built my practice primarily around helping people optimize all aspects of physiology from digestion and the gut, as I know you specialize specialize into hormones, sleep performance recovery, fat loss, kind of spans the gamut. I tend to operate with the principle that I'm very open to modern technology, to science, to even so called biohacks, so to speak, as trendy and as oft overused the term as I think that is. But I tend to marry that with a lot of ancestral wisdom. Everything from principles drawn from Ayurvedic or traditional Chinese medicine to a lot of the things that I try to incorporate into my own life. Living as naturally as possible, hunting as much of my food as I can, wild plant foraging. Sure I take supplements and things like that too, but I generally try and live life with one foot in the realm of ancestral living and one foot in the realm of modern science. And for years and years kind of operated brick and mortar personal training studios and nutrition consulting facilities. Boots on the ground and over the past decade have increasingly progressed towards new media, podcasting, speaking, authoring, writing, and I do a great deal of investing and advising as well in the health and nutrition and fitness space. I work with still a limited number of clientele from around the world via Skype calls and phone calls, working on everything from meal plans and sleep optimization to preparation for performances like say an Ironman triathlon or a bodybuilding show or something like that. Aside from that, I spend as much time as I can with my family. I live out here in Washington state and we homeschool our kids. I like to delve into a bit of music, some guitar, some ukulele, some fiction writing, and I love to cook, I love the outdoors, try and pick up a tennis racket every now and again or get into a pickup basketball game. And yeah, that's me in a nutshell really.

Thank you for sharing. And people look at someone like you, almost like a superhero, you know all the things that you're doing. But let's get real with each other. What's your biggest health crisis or health challenge if you're open to sharing that you have faced in your life?

Yeah, probably two things that I tend to struggle with the most, it seems based on my current lifestyle. Generally. It's kind of funny because as a content producer, often if you see a content producing putting out podcasts that hone in on a specific topic or they're writing articles about a specific topic, in many cases it's because that's what's kind of bugging them at the time or bothering them at the time. And so to a great extent, a lot of my articles on BenGreenfieldFitness.com you'll see an article come up about how to naturally heal MRSA or a staph infection. And in that case, that article was written when I had flesh eating bacteria taken out my leg and I had to figure out how to get rid of it and do so as naturally as possible when I was doing a lot more. And I'm kind of phasing out of this period of my life when I was doing a lot of iron and triathlon racing and professional spartan competition and bodybuilding and a lot of these kind of masochistic, body damaging sports, you'd see me writing a great deal about recovery and all these different recovery tactics, from compression boots to infrared light to hyperbaric oxygen to all these things that can be used to recover the body faster. Currently you'll see me writing quite a bit about sleep and about gut health. And that's because in the case of the former, I've found myself increasingly on airplanes and traveling internationally to give talks at different health conferences or fitness events, or to private groups like EO or ypo. And because of that, circadian rhythm just gets thrown a huge wrench. I'm pretty keen right now on studying ways to mitigate the effects of jet lag, to increase sleep percentages and improve sleep cycles and to really get as much deep restoration as possible while living in kind of a hyper mobile post industrial era. That's one thing is I've found I've had to try harder and harder, and perhaps some of it is also due to the natural melatonin decrease and drop in sleep that occurs with age anyways. But I found myself very interested for myself selfishly and for an increasing number of clients. And people ask me about this tackling sleep and jet lag. And then the other component would be related again primarily to travel. And for me it began in my early triathlon days, probably from water, from unclean water. I wound up with a lot of different infections, from giardia to parasites, blastocytis. I had a brief bout with C. Difficile. I've always had issues with the gut that I think I was susceptible to. Also because I spent a great deal of my life eating a diet that I know produced a lot of inflammation in the gut, everything from pasteurized and homogenized dairy to certain food groups that I later found out I had a pretty pronounced immunoglobulin response to, such as certain legumes and beans that didn't quite agree with my body. Combine that with a lot of stress, athletic stress, and even more specifically athletic stress in the heat. Many of the competitions I toiled in for years were in hot weather and we know that that increases gut permeability. And so I've done a number on my gut over the years. So right now personally, in addition to trying to keep my circadian rhythms aligned, I am dealing with a little bit of almost like a mold or mycotoxin Overgrowth that I have made myself susceptible to, likely because of the combination of leaky gut stress and a lot of travel. So those are two areas that for me, I'm battling from a personal standpoint. And I think you'll find that just about every smiling face or six pack abs on Instagram, there's always some kind of a, as you've so astutely observed, some kind of a health thing going on behind the scenes. And people aren't necessarily posting photos of them straining on the toilet or bossing and turning during a night of sleep. But that's certainly something that people deal with. And I would say sleep and gut would probably be the top two that I've had to deal with over the past few years.

That's amazing because it's almost like you're scratching your own itch, like you're going through a particular challenge and then you're finding solutions. And in the process of finding the solution, you're actually sharing that journey with the world through your media, through your blogs and through your podcasts. And that's exactly the same thing that I'm doing. My biggest struggle was gut health and funny and depression and anxiety and funny enough, that's the things that I most often talk about because they're struggles for me. So that's really amazing then. So, so let's dig into those couple of areas because I think they'd be nice to explore what you've actually found as potential solutions for. Firstly, the first issue is your sleep and your jet lag. And then secondly, we can talk about some gut health solutions because it's huge. Guys like you, for athletes, the things that you do are incredibly pressurizing and stressful on the gut. So I'm not surprised that you've had those challenges. So let's jump into part one.

Sure. What would you like to know?

So in terms of your sleep hacks or your jet lag hacks, what would be the main things that you found that work for you?

Yeah. Not wanting to insult our listeners or our viewers intelligence. I know that there's a lot out there right now that exists on sleep and they're wonderful books and wonderful resources on sleep hygiene. Like sleeping in a cool environment, sleeping in a dark environment, eliminating distractions such as work in the form of television or computers or phones, et cetera from the bedroom, and even timing of meals or certain nutrients or supplements that may help with sleep. And I would say that just about everything that I have found to assist with sleep are variants of those specific sleep hygiene. Parameters, meaning that it's one thing to say, okay, well, I know my body is supposed to be cool when I sleep, or my body is supposed to be cool when I sleep, but what does that look like when you look at what actually moves the dial as far as keeping the body cool while sleeping? Well, there are a few things that I've found to be particularly helpful for regulating the body's temperature during sleep. First of all, whether it's a hotel room or my own bedroom, the optimal sleeping temperature based on both research and experimentation appears to be about 64 to 66 degrees Fahrenheit. And I found many people are not getting that cool in their ambient sleep environment. In addition to that, the sleeping surface is important, meaning that a mattress that does not hold a lot of the body's heat, I use one called an intellibed, that remains relatively cool, but during a night of sleep. And in addition, I have outfitted that with something called a chilipad, which circulates 55°F cold water under my body during sleep. And I have found that that massively improves sleep cycles. Now, when I'm traveling, because I don't have that nice mattress or that chili pad, I've found that a hot, cold contrast shower can give me similar effects. And what I mean by that is, is that rather than taking an icy cold shower prior to sleep, which can kind of activate the sympathetic nervous system and jack up the intensity of your awareness a little bit too much, a hot, cold contrast shower works very well to vasodilate and vasoconstrict the arteries and assist with sleep. And that is 20 seconds of cold and 10 seconds of hot. And you do that for about 10 times through for about a five minute shower before you go to bed. So 20 seconds of cold, 10 seconds of hot, 10 going back and forth with the faucet. And that can be a real game changer if you don't have the ability to be able to really, truly optimize the bed, especially to stay cool. The other thing that helps to keep the body cool during sleep is to wear a good pair of wool or smart wool socks, Meaning I sleep naked except with socks. And having the socks on to keep the feet warm frees up bed blood to travel to the core and the other areas of the body to keep the rest of the body cool. From a cooling standpoint, those are a few practical examples of ways to keep the body cool. And the only other thing I'd throw in there is that again, research has shown this and also Via self experimentation, I found this to be the case trying to finish up any intense exercise three hours prior to bedtime, as well as any heavy meals within two hours prior to bedtime. And that's just kind of a way of structuring your day. And if that means your largest meal of the day is, for example, lunch, which you'll find is often the practice in like Ayurvedic medicine, then that's just fine to have your big meal the day be lunch and a lighter meal towards the end of the day be dinner. Now, light, of course, sleeping in a dark environment, something that many people are aware of. We know that light, and especially artificial light and the blue light produced by LED monitors or screens, et cetera, can disrupt sleep cycles. And I think a lot of people have kind of wrapped their head around the idea of using blue light blocking glasses, or dimming the computer monitor, or activating night mode on a smartphone to limit the amount of artificial light that you're exposed to during sleep. But two things that I have found to be particularly helpful, number one is realizing that your sleep cycle is initiated early on in the day. And you actually would not want to limit your light exposure early in the day, meaning you would not want to wear blue light blocking glasses or dim the lights early in the day. And instead you want, especially between the time that you get up and about 2 o' clock in the afternoon, to get exposure to as much sunlight or bright light spectrums as possible, whether using biohacks such as near and red light panels, or devices such as the retimer glasses or the human charger in ear device that allow you to deliver concentrated sources of light to the eyes or to the ears. But then also, of course, nothing replaces natural sunlight. And so getting as much natural sunlight as possible, especially on the skin and on the eyes, early in the days, early on in the day, that helps a lot with the circadian rhythmicity, especially if you tend to have a hard time falling asleep earlier in the night, or if you want to shift your sleep cycles so that you can fall asleep earlier in the night. It all starts with the amount of light exposure during the day. And then the other thing that I found to be really, really useful, because inevitably you're going to flip on the lights in your bedroom or in your master bathroom when you get up to pee during the night, or when you're preparing to go to bed at night. I've replaced all the light bulbs in the bathroom and in the bedroom with a form of light that's very similar to like firelight or torchlight, and that would be red incandescent. So you can buy red incandescent bulbs off of Amazon or off of a lighting website, and you simply replace all the bulbs in your bedroom with red incandescent lighting. And that allows you to still be able to see and walk around your bedroom and get undressed and set things up for sleep at night, but not disrupt the sleep cycles with more of the artificial blue light wave spectrum. So those would be a couple of good handy tips for folks regarding light and then one other that I'd throw in there when it comes to the sleep hygiene, cold and absence of light, and especially absence of a lot of outside noise or what we now call sound pollution, especially if you're living in a large city. I do put in foam earplugs when I sleep, but there is especially for side sleepers. There's a company, I believe they're called Sleep Phones. And they make headphones that you can wear that are more like a soft headband that wrap around your head and allow you to sleep in a side position. And you can plug those headphones into your phone. So you put your phone in airplane mode and. And you plug those headphones into your phone. And then it turns out that they've studied all the different forms of noise. Like a lot of people are familiar with white noise to drown out background noise, but then there's also brown noise and pink noise and a few other forms of noise. And it turns out, I believe this was a study done at Stanford, that it's pink noise that tends to do the best job lulling you into a deeper sleep state. And so what you do is you put on these sleep phones and preferably some foam earplugs, so you're blocking out sirens and dogs barking and people up and down, or if you have a roommate or something like that, getting up and down during the night. And then you put on pink noise. And the app that I use for that right now is called sleepstream Sleep Stream. And so this Sleepstream app allows me to select the pink noise setting. And I put that on and it does a really good job, just like covering up all the noises. Because I'm a pretty light sleeper that would normally do disrupt sleep. And I'll even use that, for example, on airplanes in hotel rooms. If I need to just crawl away for a little while at a conference, I'll put those on. And then there's a really good sleep mask I use called the Mindfold. And the Mindfold Sleep Mask just blocks out all the ambient light. And so that combined with a good set of headphones, does a really good job at reducing sensory stimuli that might disrupt your sleep cycles. So those are a few things that I found to be pretty helpful. And then the only other thing I'd throw in, I talked about timing of food. But as far as anything else from a nutrient or a supplement standpoint, two supplements that I use with pretty good efficacy. One would be during travel. I use melatonin, but I use pretty high dose melatonin and I have not found that I do well with melatonin tablets or capsules. But if you can get a sublingual melatonin that you dissolve under your tongue in a liquid form, for example, I found a company called Quicksilver Scientific in the US that sells a really good melatonin that just knocks me out like a light, especially when I travel and you spray it under your tongue. And that one works really well. The other one is a. And you can also buy these. There's a physician in Florida I get these from. He has a melatonin suppository. So you can get like anal delivery of the melatonin rather than oral delivery. And that's really efficacious as well. If you don't really feel the capsules much, you're concerned about first pass metabolism in the liver or the acidic juices of the stomach disrupting your ability to be able to absorb the melatonin. A melatonin sublingual or melatonin suppository. And I combine that with cbd. It's important to note that if you don't feel much, if you use CBD to help you to sleep, in many cases, that's because the dosage is too low. And most of the dosages for CBD that have been shown to be efficacious for sleep are around 100 to 300 milligrams. If you look at the average dosage of a CBD supplement that you buy, it's closer to 5 to 10 milligrams. You literally have to take 10 plus times the dosage that's on the bottle to actually affect sleep. But I do that and I find it to be very effective for sleep, particularly after a stressful day, because targeting that endocannabinoid system really helps to deal quite a bit with stress. So melatonin and CBD are probably my two favorite sleep enhancing supplements.

That's awesome. So I'll just pause you there for a sec. A couple of things. Great tips, especially if you are traveling and you're not in your usual, usual sleep environment. And I struggle all the time if I'm in a foreign city. The lighting is different, the noise levels are different. So that's some amazing tips with the sleep masks, the earplugs, the white noise and the pink noise, and also the melatonin and CBD supplementation. Now, how do you deal with, for instance, something that might be impacting sleep, and it certainly impacts the gut, is the WI fi and the kind of dirty electricity situation. There's not much you can do in a hotel room, but how about at home? Do you have hard wiring or ethernet cables or things like that?

Well, there is something you can do when you travel. But yes, you are correct. At home, I don't have WI fi, so everything's just with the Ethernet. So if I want to use the computer, I plug it in via an ethernet cable so that I'm not getting a lot of WI FI signals bouncing around the home. Many of the folks who I work with, I have them buy a digital wall timer that you simply plug the WI FI router into. And all a digital wall timer does is it allows you to dictate the times of day that you would want that outlet to disable anything that's plugged into it. So you can get a digital wall timer and plug your WI FI router into that, then just set it to turn off between, for example, 10pm and 6am that way you don't have to worry about remembering to turn it off or to turn it back on, but it's at least off during a night of sleep. There are now companies that sell some pretty good devices that either scramble a WI FI signal or produce more native EMF signals similar to like what you'd, what you get from the planet Earth that override a lot of those WI FI signals. And there are two companies that sell devices small enough for you to be able to travel with. Both devices operate on different principles. One generates more of these native EMF signals that kind of COVID up the WI fi. And that would be the company Soma Vedic S O M A V E D I C And they're small devices that are small enough to be able to travel with. Then the other one that's more of like a WI FI scrambling device, uses a scalar energy field to scramble the WI FI signal and kind of keep it from doing as much damage to your body. They sell little devices you can put in your pocket for this as well as larger devices that you can plug into the wall. But either are small enough to travel with. And that's a company called Blue Shield bl. I don't think they spell the U with the blue with an e. I think it's Blu Shue. But if you were to just Google Blue Shield EMF or Blue Shield emf, regardless of which way you spell it, you should be able to come across those devices. I've blogged about them before. My website too. I don't think I have a podcast with those folks, but you could also find what I've written about the Soma Vedic or the Bluetooth on my own website@bengreenfulfitness.com but those are two kind of devices that you can travel with or that you can have in your own home. And I have both. I have enough to be able to throw a couple in the suitcase or have them plugged in at home.

I think it's a good segue. Now to talk about study. Very recently came out that WI fi radiation or these non native EMF fields may be enhancing growth of certain pathogens in the body and things like staph that are a huge problem in terms of antibiotic resistance. Now have you come across any of that research?

No, I haven't. But I'm pretty cognizant of the effects of these non native signals, particularly on inflammation and on gut health. And one thing I've been doing a lot of lately has been grounding or earthing, meaning not just going outside barefoot, but also there's a company called Ultimate Longevity and I did recently do a podcast with them. They sell little mats that you can travel with and place under the sheets so you're sleeping while grounded or earthed. They also sell a mat, there's one right next to me here in my office that you can stand on, or you can be seated in a chair and have your feet on it while you're during the day of work. And they just came out with a product. I just got my hands on it and I've been using it all week. I'm pretty excited about it. It's a wrap for your tummy. There's a host of research on the effects of using the natural signals emitted by the planet Earth to decrease inflammation. What this does is you plug it into the grounding outlet of any outlet in your home and it comes with a little meter to be able to test to make sure that your outlet is properly grounded. Then you just put it on like a back support belt and it literally just bathes your entire core, your low back and your gut in These negative ions while you're working or while you're standing around doing whatever it is that you're doing during the day. I think that that would be one really good strategy to help out with the effects of non native emf, particularly on gut function or on the inflammation related to infection.

Absolutely. And Cruz talked about it as well, about getting sunlight on the actual gut as much as he can to deal with a lot of these imbalances and inflammation.

Yeah, sunlight. Are these red light panels like the company joovv they make one. There's one beside me here. Folks are watching the video that I'll flip on when I'm typing on my computer in the morning. And I have one in front of me and then one behind me too. So the one in front of me is of course hitting my gut, my gonads, the entire front of my body and the back one bathes the back of my body and I just flip that on for 20 minutes. So I get 20 minutes of those healing infrared rays that you normally get from sunlight, even if it's wintertime or if I'm in my office and unable to get outdoors.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm with you. We're on the same page. I've got a small little panel just on the left side of me here with red light in infrared light and I've also got a juv panel upstairs in my bedroom and I literally invert. So I have an inverter and I invert before I go to sleep with my shirt off and just getting some infrared and red light onto the gut before I go to bed as well. So definitely on the same page. So Ben, what else? We're seguing nicely into gut health now. So you're a bit of a human guinea pig for want of a better word. But what's. What are some of your other biohacks or recommendations to keep your gut healthy?

Yeah, and again, similar to sleep and basic sleep hygiene that I know most people know about. I don't want to insult people's intelligence and tell you to whatever. Don't eat in a stress state or have some periods of fasting so your gut gets a chance to heal or avoid highly inflammatory foods like vegetable oils or large amounts of ultra processed or packaged foods or very large boluses of starches and sugars, etc. Most people know a lot of that stuff. As far as some of the things that might be lesser known that I've found to be very effective for either healing a gut or maintaining a healthy gut, one would be for gallbladder and liver function and also for gut peristalsis. For me, my digestion is incredible as long as I keep this up as a regular practice. It is something that you'll find a lot of in Ayurvedic medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. It's something less encouraged in Western medicine circles, I think, probably because of the amount of discomfort or embarrassment associated with it, but it would be the use of a coffee enema. I actually do a coffee enema once per week. If I've been traveling a lot or my diet has been compromised or it hasn't been as healthy as I would like, I will increase the frequency of that to two to three times a week. I find coffee enemas to be a really, really helpful staple in my weekly gut routine. And I typically just do those in the morning and retain the enema lying on my left side for about 20 minutes. So use a good organic coffee for something like that. But there's a lot of benefits also for that, for bile production and for liver and gallbladder health and also for stimulating your natural endogenous glutathione production. So that would be one that's less talked about, but that I find to be very helpful. Another would be the use of colostrum, which is something that is most often released by mother mammals in the first part of their breast milk to help to heal the lining of the gut of a newborn mammal, which typically have these zonulin proteins that tend to keep the gut lining open, which can be useful for absorption of a wide number of compounds when a mammal is in the womb. But upon birth, you want that to heal up pretty quickly, which is why breast milk is engineered to do so. But colostrum also works in adults very similarly. It's been shown in athletes to reduce gut permeability and gut discomfort that would arise during eating while exercising or exercising in the heat. It can also be useful for healing up leaky gut that might be brought on by an inflammatory diet or heavy use of antibiotics. And unfortunately, most colostrum is sold in a capsule form. And it's the saliva, the amylase in your mouth, that activates the growth factors in colostrum. You either need to break open the capsules and let them sit in your mouth, or you can purchase a colostrum powder you always want. Of course, grass fed organic sources for your colostrum. Most of them are either goat or bovine. But working colostrum in as a staple in the morning or in the evening, it's best on an empty stomach. I find that to be very helpful for gut health. Another thing that I do quite a bit of, and this is probably a better known strategy, but one that again, I utilize every day, and I'll even travel with powdered versions or with smaller boxed versions. And that's bone broth. I drink a lot of bone broth and I find bone broth to be in incredibly nourishing to the gut and also to work quite well in conjunction with colostrum. I typically have about two to three cups of bone broth per day. And when I don't, I notice a pretty significant difference in the stability and integrity of my gut and also the consistency of my bowel movements. So that's another one. Those would probably be two of the most important supplements that I use, if you want to consider them supplements, although they're really foods, would be colostrum and bone broth. Then I find that probably 90% of the people who I talk to who have gut issues have some form of a bacterial overgrowth, whether it is overactivity of fermenting bacteria or a small intestine bacterial overgrowth or something that causes gas and bloating. In many cases, the gas and bloating because it places pressure on the ileocecal valve that can also lead to constipation. Because of that, anything that can help to control the growth of that bacteria can almost overnight help a lot of people. One of the best ways to do that is a very low FODMAP diet, eliminating highly fermentable compounds such as garlic, such as onions. I encourage all my clients to just download a low FODMAP food chart just using a Google image search and to keep that on their phone until they get really familiar with which foods are most fermentable and to simply, whether it's at a buffet or restaurant or at home or shopping at the grocery store, whatever else, eliminate those foods that tend to be highly fermentable, at least for a short period of time until you've starved off those bacteria. So it doesn't mean you can't eat garlic and apples and onions and wheat and some of these fermentable foods for the rest of your life. But going for about a good four to six month stint with pretty strict avoidance of those high FODMAP foods that can be really, really helpful for the gut. If you are at the same time consuming or using substances that help to kill those overgrowths of bacteria, that can also be very useful. And again, although there are a wide variety of compounds that are often encouraged for this, such as oregano or bearberine or uva. Ursi is another. For example. There's one that's not talked about as much that I also think is really useful. I should say two really, because these two go really well hand in hand and they're borrowed from the increasingly fascinating world of peptide therapy. So peptides are small amino acid sequences typically administered via like a subcutaneous injection, very similar to how you would administer insulin. There are certain peptides that can either quell gut inflammation or have very good antibacterial properties against bacterial overgrowth. The two that you'd want to look into. And if you go to the website for the International peptide society@peptidesociety.org you can hunt down a physician who can administer these for you or source them for you. I don't recommend just buying them willy nilly off the Internet. But the two you'd want to look into or ask a doctor about are for the anti inflammatory effect BPC157. So it's BPC157. And then the one that you'd want to look into for the antibacterial antifungal effect would be LL37. BPC157 and LL37 are two injectable peptides that can work wonders for the gut, especially in people with compromised guts or bacterial overgrowth or gut inflammation. And both go very well with these other strategies I've described such as colostrum bone broth and a low fodmap diet.

I'll just pause you there for a sec. Couple of follow up questions. Firstly with the bone broth, what's your thoughts on using. So not everybody wants a boiled bone broth. So how about a collagen peptide supplement? Supplement?

Yeah, collagen peptides are cool because a lot of the collagen is already broken down. The peptides are more absorbable. I'm in no way opposed to collagen peptides. There's a company, I think it's called Ancestral Nutrition, I want to say here in the US that does a good collagen peptide formula. Collagen peptides can be a good alternative, as can just a basic gelatin like Great Lakes Gelatin for example. I still, for some reason, and I don't know if it's just thethe synergistic effect of the minerals and the liquid and the gelatin or what, but I always feel better with just really, really good high quality organic heated bone broth. I just find that to be more nourishing than, for example, collagen peptides or gelatin. But especially if you travel a lot, you can certainly use those. And I find increasingly I can find bone broth at a lot of grocery stores now in either the frozen section or kind of like the hot bar section. Whole Foods, for example, I think every single Whole Foods now has bone broth, as do many other grocery stores. So it's not that hard to find now, even when you travel.

Yeah. The second follow up question to that thread was maybe you're not familiar with this, but milk kefir, a fermented product, is loaded with peptides, functional peptides that now have studies that have all the things that you spoke about. So some peptides, there's about 15 or I think it's up to more than 20 of these peptides, Some of them that can actually kill other bacteria. So they're antibiotic in nature, the ability to kill off the bad guys and then they can also modulate the immune system. So that could be another potential strategy. So what's your thoughts on fermented foods?

Yeah, I really like kefir. The problem with it is it's very sour, as you know. And a lot of people will find kefir and they'll tell me, I absolutely love kefir. I'm drinking blueberry kefir, strawberry kefir, coconut banana kefir. And then you look at the label of their kefir bottle and 40 grams plus of sugar syrup.

This drives me crazy, eating the bacteria.

You need a good unadulterated kefir that doesn't have a lot of sugar added to it. Might not be as much of a burning mouth, but it is very good. I'm glad you brought that up.

And I've got a beer in my bonnet about kefir and the manufactured stuff. But here in Australia, it drives me bonkers because most of the kefirs are not even kefir. Ben. A lot of these products are just yoga cultures that have been called kefir. The only way you can really get kefir for real is if you make it yourself because the problem has been is the alcohol content that's produced. So in the states, in Australia, the alcohol regulation is like 0.5%. No one can produce a kefir that's below 0.5%. That's real. So all these cultures that are being used are from a lab, they're not from kefir grains.

Can you send me your kefir recipe? Because I will try it. My wife used to make kefir. It's probably been four years, but I always love to learn about new recipes. I have a fantastic coconut yogurt recipe from Dr. William Davis that I make with an L Retire strain of bacteria that I buy on Amazon and just mix with coconut milk and let it sit in the oven at about 100 to 110 degrees for a day. And I love that. But I would absolutely be all over a good kefir recipe if you want to send me what you have.

Absolutely. I'm going to send you some kefir grains, I'm going to send you a recipe and I'm going to send you the research on the functional peptides because I think it's going to blow your mind. And Ben, I think this is a good point now because we're pretty much coming up to time, but if you wouldn't mind staying on a little bit longer because. Because there's a couple of important threads to cover now. I heard you make the comment I've.

Got maybe about like 5, 10 minutes max. So.

Yeah, yeah, sure. So we'll get through this. So I heard you mention on social media that deuterium depleted water, deuterium depletion, I can't remember the context, was potentially going to be the, the biggest trend in the new decade that we're coming up to. So what's your follow up to that statement?

Yeah, I just did a big podcast on deuterium depleted water with deuterium just being it's very similar to hydrogen on the periodic table of the elements, but it's much, much heavier. Which means that any metabolic reaction that uses hydrogen in the body, most notably the electron transport chain, which utilizes hydrogen to generate ATP, it can be disrupted by high levels of deuterium, we are finding due to radiation, along with the use of pesticides and herbicides and higher sugar and carbohydrate intake, a buildup of deuterium in the body, with the former two reasons being because those chemicals and that radiation naturally carry deuterium isotopes. And with the latter being when you're not burning a lot of fats as energy, and you're especially burning primarily glucose for energy, you don't produce a lot of water via the process of beta oxidation, which is the breaking down of fats when you're not producing a lot of your body's own water, you are only put it this way, when you are producing a lot of your body's own water through beta oxidation, that water is naturally low in deuterium. Almost like creating your own deuterium depleted water. There is an ongoing and rapidly growing body of research on the health effects of deuterium, particularly when it comes to metabolic function, decrease in overall levels of inflammation and even a reduction in the rate of cancer growth. While deuterium is or deuterium depleted, water rather is a little bit expensive to buy. Now a lot of people are under the impression that you have to drink deuterium depleted water to lower your levels of deuterium, and you don't. You simply need to eat as organic as possible, avoid radiation as much as you can, and keep yourself in a state of fatty acid oxidation as much as possible. Another very interesting thing is that the level of oxygen and carbon dioxide levels that you simultaneously retain can increase your own deuterium levels. If you want a real good manual on how to breathe in a manner, because I don't have time to get into the entire practice right now. But if you want a good book that teaches you how to breathe in a manner that retains simultaneous levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide, I would check out the book the Oxygen Advantage by author Patrick McCown. Good Breathwork Protocol mitigation of starch and sugar intake, eating organic and also avoiding high levels of radiation would be a few ways that you could naturally lower your own deuterium levels. I go into a lot more strategies on the podcast I literally released three days ago at the time that you and I are talking. I podcasted with the folks from the Deuterium Depletion center in la and that would be it's about an hour long interview on deuterium and that would be be a good one for folks to listen to as well.

Absolutely. And we've had Gebbel Shomli, who's the expert in terms of deuterium and cancer. We've had Lazuli Boruch as well. So folks can go back, listen to your podcast and some of our podcasts and get the full story. But one thing you might be interested in, Ben, is this is some pretty new research coming out that certain types of bacteria, mannitol, I think it's mannitol metabolizing bacteria, primarily Lactobacilli, have also been shown to potentially reduce deuterium levels in the body. So again, I think in future maybe we're going to see some probiotic supplements coming onto the market that are claiming to reduce deuterium. So that's. What's that space for people. And the water one's interesting. The water one's interesting. We've got a huge Problem. Australian listeners may not be aware, but we've got one of the highest deuterium contents in the world. We've tested it. Our laboratory can test for deuterium with saliva or with water or urine. And we've found that deuterium levels in Australia are above 152, 153 in all our drinking water, pretty much. So where we're sitting in a pocket of lots of deuterium.

Oh, yeah. I mean, considering that when you buy deuterium depleted water, that's like in the 80s or 90s, that's pretty high levels.

Yeah, absolutely. Like Shanghai in that for cancer treatment and whatnot. Are using about 25 ppm.

Yeah. Oh, that's even lower.

Yeah, yeah, yep. So, Ben, appreciate you sharing that. We'll start to wrap now. We're coming into a new decade, 2020. I can't believe it, man. Where's the time going? Right? So what's your top three health, aside from the deuterium, what other top three health trends do you think we're going to see moving into the new decade?

I would say number one would be increased use of photobiomodulation therapy, meaning the use of near infrared and red light for everything from cranial treatment, intranasal treatment, full body treatment, the type of full body light panels we talked about earlier, infrared saunas, infrared light devices for the head, et cetera. They seem to have such a good effect on mitochondria that I think that the body of research on those is going to continue to grow. And I would point people towards, if you want to go to PubMed, look up some of the work of Dr. Michael Hamblin, H A M B L I N to kind of keep your finger on the pulse of photobiomodulation. So that'll be. One would be light therapy. Number two would be. I think that. And I might be jaded because this is a daily practice of mine that I already talked about earlier. But different forms of cryotherapy and cold thermogenesis. I think that we could see a future where most people who are tuned into health probably have some form of an ice bath, ice tub, chiller system on their showerhead, something that allows them to get really cold water, full body every day. I think for vagus nerve function, for nervous system function, for nitric oxide production, for decreasing inflammation. There's just so many benefits to cold. So I would say light and cold. And then the last one I realize I've also already mentioned, but again, I found so many benefits for it in My own life, for sleep, for inflammation, for decreasing the effects of non native emf. And that would be the use of grounding and earthing practices such as going outside barefoot or wearing earthing, grounding shoes. And also the use of some of these grounding devices like bands and mats and sleeping pads. I would say those three things would be light, cold and grounding. And it's kind of funny because when you think about some of these, they're just things that you would have found our ancestors doing anyways, that we are now in an era where we are faced with an increasing number of so called evolutionary mismatches, now realizing the benefits of. If you were living and you were camping, you'd be jumping in a cold lake and laying out in the sunshine in the morning and sleeping on the surface of the ground. Now in your apartment in New York City, you could also have a grounding mat, a very cold shower and a light panel to simulate some of that. So I think those are three areas that people will continue to get benefit from and devices that allow them to get that benefit will become increasingly affordable and available.

Totally, totally. And also sitting in front of a fire, that's what our ancestors would have been doing as well. So the red light could be a nice little mimic of that. And I'll add one more that I think is going to be huge for the next decade. One of the biggest fields of research I think we're going to see emerging is mitochondrial health. The work of Doug Wallace and co. And what we know is that the mitochondria have direct communication systems to the gut microbiome and to also our genesis. So I think this is going to be another massive, massive area of growth and development in the wellness world.

Yeah, absolutely.

And Ben, just before we go, if there was one thing that you could do for your health today, for the listeners, what would it be?

Think of anyone in your life who you might have a relationship with that is less than stellar, that there might be friction in and figure out a way to go to that person or one by one, those people and admit how silly it is to live life with regrets, with bitterness, with pent up emotions or little differences. Set those differences aside and just really be super transparent and authentic and, and happy in all of your relationships. We know that one of the regrets of the dying is that they didn't maintain old friendships or that they weren't completely authentic and transparent with their feelings, especially with their loved ones and their friends and their family. And I think that despite all the supplements and hacks and compounds and diets and things that you can do. I would say the number one thing you can do is just really make sure that all of the relationships in your life are optimized and happy and go about doing as much as you can. Especially. You know, I don't know when this interview is going to come out, but at this point we're going into the holiday season and many people are going to be around family and friends during this holiday season and opportunities are going to be ample to be able to mend old relationships or to be able to make existing relationships deeper and more connected and more loving. And so that's the number one thing that I think people can do right now for their health.

I love that. Ben, that's extremely touching. We've been talking about all these biohacks and sciencey stuff, but the number one recommendation is just human relationships, and that is absolute gold. Ben, if someone wants to reach out to you, they've listened to your podcast, you've blown their mind. They want to connect with you, they want to listen to your stuff. How do they find you on the interwebs?

Just BenGreenfieldFitness.com is my website, so that's a perfect place to start.

Awesome man. Ben, huge gratitude for you coming into the podcast. Thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day and your walk and your treadmill as you're talking.

All right, thanks, Ben. Have a wonderful day.

You too. Pleasure. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Gut Health Gurus with Ben Greenfield. Now, if you're interested in some of the things that we've talked about, there are links in the show notes available at www.podcast.nourishmeorganics.com. now, your support means the world to us to keep this podcast going and also to get the message out to more and more people so that we can help them. So please support us on Apple podcasts, on all your favorite podcast apps like Spotify, Stitcher, and leave us a kind review and be sure to subscribe. Now, Ben and I spoke about some really interesting strategies to improve gut health sleep. So Nourish Me Organics who are sponsoring this podcast have collagen supplements, they have colostrum blue light blocking glasses, red light panels, deuterium depleted water. But one thing I'd like to call your attention to is making your own kefir at home. And Nourish Me Organics have by far the most easiest, simple to use kits to make water kefir and milk kefir home. And guys don't get sucked into the store bought stuff because you're not going to get the same benefits that you get from making care for you at home. So if you want to check out these kits, head to www.nourishmeorganics.com and use the code BEN2019 for 10% off today. Until next time.