#294: How Many Calories Do You Burn With Cold Thermogenesis, How To Build Muscle On A Vegan Diet, How To Use A Powerlung & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, how many calories do you burn with cold thermogenesis, autoimmune issues in kids, building muscle on a vegan diet, how to use something called a power lung, dangerous ingredients and muscle rubs, and much more.

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Hey Ben, how you doing this morning?

I am wide, wide awake and alert. Dude. I've, I've been really dumping stimulants into my body since I got up this morning.

Do tell.

So the first thing is that my electrician finally showed up and installed the light bulbs in our house. And I've chosen specific.

You've been carrying candles around for the last three weeks.

We've mostly been sunlight. And it's actually been really nice because I've been falling asleep at 9pm because there's been no light. Anyways, though, I'm using these new bulbs. They're made by a company called Lighting Science. And so in specific rooms of the house, like my office and my gym, the lights actually have more of the blue light wave spectrum and they're brighter lights, higher lumen. And then like in the bedroom doing.

The opposite of the hack in the evening where you limit the blue light, you're actually blasting yourself with blue light in the morning.

Yeah, and they also make a sleeping bulb. And I'll actually be talking about some of the lighting techniques I've used in my house at next week's bulletproof biohacking conference down in Pasadena. And we'll try and get some resources out to our listeners or a recording of that out to our listeners. But yeah, so that's number one is I've got light in my office now and I've got my awake and alert bulbs on. And it really is a pretty big blast of almost sunlight like light.

So is that better than actually standing? Like I've got a window wide open right next to me with sunlight just streaming in. Would I feel any advantage of having that light bulb as well? Or is the sun still a preferable?

I find, I find that these direct lights overhead seem to enhance the sun. So. But, you know, I could. Better than the sun.

That should be their slogan.

I could get skin cancer on Wednesday. I don't know, the other thing. Well, another couple of things. I took Siltep this morning and me too. That was something that I believe you actually connected me with. Brock.

Yeah. Nick from the Natural Stacks contacted us and. And wanted us to give it a try. And I was like, hell yeah.

Yeah. So Ciltep stands because Brock and I are willing to try anything once.

We'll pour anything into our body.

Mole or zit pops out from our ear or something. But it's. Ciltep stands for chemically induced long term potentiation. It's like a smart drug, basically. Tim Ferriss made it popular in an article that he wrote. And it's a blend of artichoke extract coleus for scoli, which is like a root L phenylalanine and acetyl L carnitine. So I just took some this morning right when I got up. It was the first time I'd actually tapped into that and feeling good, haven't. Yeah, I quite like it.

The question is, did you mix it with the smart caffeine?

No, but here's the third thing that I did and then I'll shut up. And this last thing is probably going to scare away a lot of our listeners, but as may be common knowledge, if you've been a long time listener.

To this podcast, I know where you're going with this.

Or reader of the Bengal Fitness blog. About once every one to two weeks, I give myself an enema. Yeah, I actually had a coffee enema about an hour ago in which you literally make coffee and you shoot it up your butt and it cleanses you from the inside and you feel like clean as a whistle and freaking fantastic afterwards because you actually absorb a lot of the components of the caffeine as well into your bloodstream.

Now that's the part I don't understand because your bowels should not have absorptive properties.

Well, of course they have absorptive properties. I mean, in your colon, where fiber ferments, that's where you produce a lot of fatty acids which get.

But not your bowel. Is it actually making it into your colon?

Yeah, it actually makes its way into your large intestine.

Okay, well, that makes sense because I was thinking like you're just shooting it into your bowels and your bowels really are like. That's the repository of things you don't want to absorb.

Shove this tube pretty far up your body. So I guess.

So I actually have an underestimated that.

I have an article if you go to BenGrinthelfitness.com and you do a search for enema. I have an entire article on how to do a coffee enema. And I know this is gross and weird and we probably just lost a bunch of listeners, but it is true. So I have my light bulbs, I have my siltep, and I have wiped my butt, but I also have coffee enema.

You know, it's just your butt. People get over it.

News flashes.

Every single day. You can get these news flashes delivered right to your computer's desktop if you follow Ben on twitter.com BenGreenfield and right now we're going to elucidate upon them.

That and photos of every meal that I eat. No, I'm just kidding. I don't Instagrammed. Of course I am not one of these lunch tweeters. CEO Fitness this was an interesting study that came out this week that showed that Companies that have CEOs who are fitter tend to have higher firm value.

So chief executive officers, like guys who run the company. This isn't a fancy acronym for something else. This is the guy or the woman who runs the company.

Marathon runners make better CEOs is what this study kind of sort of found. So what it looked at was they took a bunch of CEOs and using data from 2001 to 2011, they figured out which of the CEOs of all of these S&P 1500 companies had, at any given year, completed a marathon. And then they matched those findings with each company's market value. And they found that the companies that were run by marathon runners, pun intended. They found that these companies were 5% more profitable. And they actually wanted to check into whether or not it was that the marathon runners were better executives because they were fitter or. Or whether marathon runners as a group share some kind of similar preexisting characteristics. Right. That would make them better CEOs to start with.

Yeah, I'm thinking just going and getting Patrick Macau to run your company probably isn't a good idea.

Yeah, exactly. So, so to do that, they looked at groups of CEOs who were particularly likely to experience high levels of stress, under which that CEOs Fitness would technically be most beneficial. So they looked at like older CEOs and high tenure CEOs and CEOs with a high workload. And in all of those higher stress groups that they also included as part of the study, all the companies led by a fit CEO were 8 to 10% more valuable. Yeah. It doesn't entirely eliminate the possibility that Marathon Running CEOs share these personality traits that make them good at their job. But it does suggest that if you're fit and you're running a company, that fitness somehow helps you moderate stress and probably increases your cognitive performance, your productivity, etc. So the next time that you're strapping on the shoes to go out for a run or headed to the gym, if you happen to be a CEO or really anybody you know under a higher workload who's listening in, you can make that excuse to your partner, to the person who's giving you a hard time about heading out to the great outdoors, that it's actually going to make your wallet fatter.

So and next time you're interviewing for the CEO position, make sure that that is your first question.

Start just like show up in your running shoes and hearken back to all of those marathons that you ran in the past year and I guarantee you'll, you'll be bumped up to CEO in no time. A running shoe in so another couple of studies, these next two are on one specific molecule. And maybe I'll keep our listeners on a cliffhanger as I jump into this, but this molecule is something that I take 5 grams of a day every day. It's just like part of my morning routine. Even though I use a multivitamin and a fish oil. This is also something that I use every single day and have since I was a bodybuilder.

Which end of you does it go in?

Goes into my mouth. It's a, it's like a tablet. And two studies came out this week on this specific molecule. I feel like this is Sesame street, this mystery object. Anyways, one study showed that it suppresses the cortisol response to high intensity workouts, specifically lowering the amount of stress that is experienced after a very intense workout. In this case very, very intense swimming workouts. So lowered post workout cortisol, which in the actual study that showed what this molecule does, the researchers suggested that it could technically be used as a way to stave over training. And then another study again that just came out this week, showed that this same molecule stimulates fatty acid oxidation and triglyceride secretion. And all that means is that it allows you to tap into your own adipose tissue to mobilize your fat tissue as an energy source. Which means that if you were to use it prior to like you know, taking a cold shower or doing like a fasted morning aerobic workout, that type of thing, it would actually help you to mobilize fatty acids. And it is in fact the most researched and proven molecule over the past decade of any specific molecule in sports performance. And it's called creatine.

Creatine.

Creatine. So, yeah, there you have it.

If it's controlling the cortisol response from exercise, could that potentially sort of lower your energy level while you're working out?

What they were looking at was the cortisol response post exercise. So technically you want a little bit of a dump of cortisol during a workout and adrenaline, epinephrine, all of that will cause that to happen. It'll mobilize your liver glycogen and open up blood vessels and give you all sorts of acute stress responses that are beneficial. But that cortisol concentration remaining high for long periods of time, you know, high, constant, medium to high cortisol levels is a sign of overtraining in athletes. And eventually it leads to consistently low cortisol levels, which is technically adrenal fatigue. So you actually would benefit from slightly reduced cortisol concentrations post workout. You want cortisol to settle down, you know, because it is a stress hormone that in excess can cause things like immunosuppression over training symptoms, et cetera, you know, catabolism of muscle, that type of thing.

So, so taking the creatine is not actually inhibiting, inhibiting your ability to get that cortisol going. It just sort of flushes it faster and more effectively.

Exactly. And of course, just, just a quick thing here as far as like loading protocol, stuff like that. There's all sorts of protocols for creatine out there. What most studies have shown is that there really is no need to jump into like a 20 to 30 grams a day for a week and then taper off, that type of thing. You can just jump right in. You can take five grams a day, period.

So no loading necessary.

Yeah. And, and honestly, like, you don't have to spend a lot of money on fancy pants creatine supplements with all these added ingredients. I use one called CRE O2 and the reason I use that one is it's. It's made a few hours from my house. I know the guy that owns the company that makes it and basically has like this fat coating on it that for me, when I'm out running and stuff, keeps creatine from causing cramping. So I like that too. It's very, it's very stable. So that one's called Creo 2. He gave all of our listeners a 50% discount on it, by the way, like, nice for life, 50% discount. And I will put the discount code in the show notes for folks if you want to grab any creatine at 50% off or use the same stuff I use. So you can check that out at BenGreenfieldFitness.com294.

Listener Q&A.

Hey, Ben and Brock, this is Jared from the Midwest. I love the podcast and the book. I tried searching all over the net for this and apart from some videos that show elevated metabolic rate over the course of a day, really haven't had much luck finding specific calorie burning from cold thermogenesis in any of the forms. While I know you're not really big into the whole calorie concept, I was curious if you had any insight into how many calories were burned from the different forms of ct. Stay in an hour session. Thanks. Bye.

You know, at first I. I wasn't quite sure what Jared was getting at, but I, I understand now. There are so many different ways to make yourself cold. Apply skin or ice to your skin or just expose yourself to, to some sort of thermogenesis that I guess each one has a different reaction, doesn't it?

Yeah. And I covered this on a recent article that I wrote for T Nation and I'll link to that article if you want to read it. But basically I went over the three different you can do called thermogenesis, and I'll tell you about how many calories you can expect to burn. But let me cover which of the three intensities there are. So you've got like, what would basically be considered casual intensity. So that's where you would be like sitting in, in a room that's a little bit cold, like 60, 66 degrees without a lot of clothing on, you know, lounging around in your skivvies, for example, boxing shorts and. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And a what? A toque.

A toque. What's a, you know, a wool hat?

Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, the toque. Of course. How could I have forgotten?

You guys don't call them toques.

No, we call them, I don't know, beanies. So you're cooled off, but you're not cold. So you get this mild increase in your calorie burn because your autonomic nervous system does kick in to slightly increase your body temp. And this would be the same thing as like sleeping in a cold room, you know, walking around the cold, making sure you're not too bundled up. I frankly do that all day long. Like right now my office is in the basement, so it's already A little bit cold. I don't have my shirt on. I'm just wearing compression pants standing here at my workstation and I'm a little bit cold. If you look at my forearms right now, there are a few goosebumps and I'm at this casual cold thermo stage where, and I'll tell you how many calories here in a second, but my calorie burn is slightly bumped up. And then you've got moderate cold thermogenesis. So moderate cold thermogenesis is really the point where you start to get a little bit of brown fat formation. And remember that this brown adipose tissue or brown fat is the type of fat that actually produces heat. So it'll use your calories, use your fat, use whatever energy substrates you have in your body to generate heat rather than to generate like ATP based energy. And you can build brown fat once you get down anywhere below about 60 degrees in the room. So now we're talking about relatively cold and preferably closer to like 50, 55 degrees, ideally without a lot of clothing on. So this would be like you're going to go for a walk on a crisp spring fall morning and you're going to wear like a, maybe a cotton T shirt and a pair of shorts and you know, you'll, you'll wear your shoes. And technically, if you really want to hack things, you can wear like a glove and a, you know, or gloves. A glove if you would like to Michael Jackson it, or two gloves and homage. By keeping your feet and your hands and your head warm and the rest of your body cold, you actually keep your body from down, regulating your metabolism to protect your extremities.

So, so that hypothermic response.

But that's like, that's like moderate cold thermogenesis. Okay, so you're going to burn more calories with that.

And then the last shivering in that one.

Nope, you're really not going to be shivering. You're going to be goosebumping. And then you got hardcore cold thermogenesis. And I go into all this stuff in great detail in this T Nation article. But this is where you are doing things like wearing one of these vests like I've talked about before. Like I'll wear this cool fat burner vest where I actually pack ice that these little ice packs that come along with the vest. It drapes over my body. It covers the areas where brown adipose tissue tend to be really high, like my collarbones, upper neck, et cetera. And it really amps up fat burning. Same thing with like the, the 110% compression pants. These are, that's a specific company that makes these compression pants that come with ice sleeves so you can compress ice up against your legs and cool those areas of your body. And I'll put on the cool fat burner vest and I'll put on these compression pants with ice and get a double whammy. And you do shiver. And if you want the intense cold thermogenesis, you want to get to the point where you're shivering. So before you even do either of those protocols, you take a cold shower, for example. Another example of this would be swimming in cold water for a long time, like going for a 20, 30 plus minute swim in water that's pretty dang uncomfortable in terms of its temperature. So as far as what you can expect to burn for calories, they have done studies on this, indirect calorimetry studies where you have a mask attached to your face and you're measuring oxygen consumed, carbon dioxide produced, and that gives you a measurement of your metabolic rate. So for the sitting around in a slightly cold environment that's not dipping below 60 degrees, you get about an 8% increase in metabolism. 8%. And this is based off of data from eric over@coolfatburner.com so 8% increase on that. When we get up to the moderate levels where we're at like 50 to 60 degrees, we're definitely goosebumping, we're doing these cold walks, that type of thing. Then you're looking at anything from 30 up to 65% above normal. As far as the actual increase in the number of calories that you'd burn, say, snuggled up against the fire with your wool vest and your toque on, covered in your bare skin, versus walking around with your shirt off. So 30 to 65%. And then when we get to low level or like this hardcore intensity, Eric over at Cool Fat Burn, he calls it shiver surfing. Basically you're Getting anything from 65 to 75% bump up in calories. So basically now you're looking at what you'd get if you were running on a treadmill or you were bicycling or you were lifting weights or doing something that was burning a significant number of calories. So you're pretty much up there at the same level you'd be at if you were exercising once you get to the point where cold thermogenesis is making you shiver. So and of course, the other benefit from getting up to that level is you're Forming a lot of brown adipose tissue which is going to stay metabolically active for a while. Turning yourself into a big, big old polar bear. So nice. So, yeah, that's what you can expect. So it is pretty significant. I mean, even just sitting around at 60, 66 degrees around in that range without wearing, you know, much in terms of clothing, you can, you can definitely do it from there. And I'll put a picture in the show notes. I mentioned this Eric guy from Cool Fat Burner and it's pretty significant like because I've known him for a couple of years and kind of watched him transform. He's, he's rocking a six pack now and he's still doing all these nerdy tasks like where he wears gloves and a beanie and boots, but then he'll like take his shirt off and go into a cold room for hours. He's doing a lot of interesting stuff as far as this stuff goes. So check out that photo. I'll put it over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 292 along with the link to BenGreenfulFitness.com 294 along with the link to the T Nation article.

Hi, Ben and Brock. My question is about a soy free vegan bodybuilding program. I'm a vegan athlete looking to put on some muscle on a vegan diet, ideally soy free. I was looking to get your thoughts on food, meal plans, nutrition, any supplements that you would recommend to pack on some muscle. Any info would be great. Love the show. Thanks so much.

It's not possible, right? Like vegans basically are just doomed to be these stringy, hippie, smelly, greasy.

There are some vegan bodybuilders out there. There are some, there are some big old like 70s big vegans out there and they figured out how to do things the right way. They're not pushing grocery shopping carts through Whole Foods with buckets full of dinosaur kale. I can tell you that they're actually going out of their way. You pretty much have to engineer muscle on a vegan diet. And I followed a raw food vegan diet for about six months. I didn't do it the right way and I lost almost 10 pounds of muscle on that diet. I got way too skinny. If I could go back and do it over again, I'd definitely use some of the tips that I'll give to Mark. But before I even jump into the tips, let me say that, I mean, this may be a little bit of a cultural thing. I don't want to offend people. But a lot of times the mentality around the vegan lifestyle and the vegan eating pattern is an endurance lifestyle or a yoga lifestyle or a lifestyle that simply does not involve lifting heavy stuff. It's few and far between that you find vegans who are powerlifting, weightlifting and doing a lot of the heavier, more intense activities. And again, I know we have a lot of vegan and vegetarian listeners and I don't want to necessarily offend people, but I really do notice that. I think it's just like this. Maybe it's that veganism causes you to, because you're eating less protein, shy away from those type of activities, thinking that you may not have enough protein to repair and rebuild muscle or something like that. Or maybe it's that as you tap into endurance, running, cycling, yoga, stuff like that, it really is a culture that's based a little bit more on, you know, tofu and hemp seeds and you know, just like all these things that tend to kind of go hand in hand. It's weird culturally how that happens.

I think they, there's also a predisposition in a certain type of person who will choose a vegan lifestyle. They probably just have a little more of a gentle, loving kind of spirit. I mean, a lot of vegans do it for, for reasons that are, are very spiritual based or very. What's the word I'm looking for? I want to say hippie, but I don't mean to, don't mean that in the bad way. Which also doesn't really go hand in hand with throwing a lot of weights around and bulking up really huge.

Right.

You've got like your, your beer, swigging steak, chewing, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger chomping Arnold Schwarzenegger like, you know, hunters out in their flannel vest killing animals. And then you've got, you know, the, the quiet vegans eating their salads, running long distances and doing yoga. Right. Like, yeah, again, total stereotypes.

But there definitely is a correlation. There's definitely a predisposition for both of those. And there's obviously a crossover.

Yeah, but, but there are, I guess. Mark.

Mark is our crossover.

Yeah, there are exceptions. And what got me going down this, this slight segue is that the first thing you have to realize is that if you are doing like running, cycling, yoga, stuff like that, you need to shove some of that aside and simply lift heavy stuff. I mean, go listen to the podcast that I did with, with Dan John about Mass Made simple, which incidentally, if you were going to gain mass as quickly as Possible is the program that I'd recommend you do. It's a combination of barbell complexes, heavy weights, some very high rep, medium weight squats, which are a fantastic way to build muscle.

So many squats.

So many squats. Yeah. Brock's done that program. I've done that program and it's very, very good. I'll link to that podcast we did with Dan John in the show notes. But first of all, you must adjust your exercise to lift heavy stuff, period. So that being said, I wrote an article on how vegans can customize their diet to make sure that they fill in a lot of the holes. Now there are certain things I didn't talk about in that article because I wasn't really focusing on muscle loss as much as general health or muscle gain as the case may be, as much as general health. Some of my recommendations in that article as far as like supplements and food choices to fill in the holes, one was to avoid a lot of the textured vegetable proteins and processed soy products that you find in a lot of plant based foods that are trying to either replicate meat based foods like tofurkey or else common foods that you'll find in vegan diets. Basically once you get a lot of the isoflavones and the estrogen mimickers and things like that, you can create some estrogen dominance and that can cause some testosterone deficiencies that can limit your ability to build muscle. So you want to avoid basically plant based Frankenfoods is what I call them fake meats, textured vegetable proteins, processed soy products, even tofu. Avoid that stuff. If you're going to go plant based, those should not be staples in your diet. Another thing that tends to creep up quite a bit in vegan based diets are like soybean oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, sunflower oil, peanut oil, even margarine sometimes. Make sure that you're really careful to stay away from any of those type of more inflammatory omega 6 based vegetable oils. So that's another one to be careful with. I probably don't need to say this, but fat soluble vitamins, vitamin D, vitamin K2, vitamin A, all of those are really important for forming the hormones that you're gonna need for muscle building. So those you're probably gonna need to supplement with. So like vitamin K2, vitamin D3 and a vitamin A. I will link to that article that I wrote in the show notes for this episode so you can go look at the exact dosages because I'm really honestly just, I'm just not going to get into it here. So another couple of things that vegans tend to be deficient in and that I would really focus on, that I talk about in that article. One would be taurine. Taurine is this amino acid that's only found in animal foods and it's pretty critical for muscle repair and also like brain development and fighting free radicals. There are vegan taurine sources out there, but for that I'll give you a dosage. I recommend about a gram a day of taurine, preferably not from lots of Red Bull. So taurine would be another one. And then vitamin B12, vitamin B12 along with iron, you know, two things you're going to find in pretty heavy levels and things like red meat, you're probably going to need a little bit of vitamin B12, a little bit of extra iron. So I have all of those recommendations in that article. But if I could, if I were to go back and rewrite that article and say here's what you need to build muscle, I would Also add in 20 to 30 gram regularly timed doses throughout the day. Like if we're really trying to build mass, like you got to eat a lot and you got to eat frequently. You know, that's the mass building rule 101. Whether you're vegan or carnivore or omnivore or whatever, you lift heavy stuff and you eat a lot of food. And one of the things you're probably going to need is a good vegan based protein powder that you can mix up with something really calorie dense like coconut milk and a little bit of nut butter. And you know we're talking about pea hemp rice based protein blends. I like the living protein made by Living Fuel. That one's one that doesn't have a lot of like heavy metals in it and stuff like the, like the Garden of Life protein has in it. And then also the Thorn, which is another company that I'm a big fan of, they make a vegan protein as well. So either Living protein or Thorn vegan protein and getting doses of those in throughout the day. So 20 to 30 gram doses of protein timed regularly throughout the day can help a lot with muscle gain.

And those doses are important because I made the mistake of really, really loading way too much when I was doing the Mass Made simple program. And I actually got kind of, kind of fat around the middle. Like I've got some serious muscle but it and, and also got really strong, but I got kind of squishy around the belly.

You can get a lot of gluconeogenesis that occurs once you exceed about 30 grams as far as that dose goes, meaning that your body simply cannot utilize all of those amino acids and proteins for muscle repair and recovery and muscle formation. And you get a lot of it shunted into the liver, liver converted into glucose, converted into triglycerides and fatty acids, and basically stored away in your waistline, you know, like Brock experienced. So the other thing, the other thing is you want to go into every single one of those, like, heavy lifting workouts with high blood levels of amino acids. And if you find yourself burping up the protein or, you know, the pre and post workout meals are enough for you, but you still want to get higher levels of amino acids. Get an amino acid powder or an amino acid capsule, 5 to 10 grams of amino acids for every hour that you're lifting. If you really want to put on muscle as quickly as possible, keep yourself in a very anabolic state. That stuff works wonders because amino acid powders or capsules are non caloric but highly bioabsorbable. And your body will use those and rely upon them rather than catabolizing your own lean muscle for energy while you're lifting. And then the last thing that I would throw in would be, there is this vegan nutritionist slash powerlifter who's a big dude. He coaches a lot of big vegans. And his name is Mike Mailer. And Mike's got a podcast. It's a good podcast. It's called the Aggressive Strength Podcast. He also has a supplement, a testosterone boosting supplement. It's called Aggressive Strength. Aggressive Strength Testosterone Booster. That one.

It's just too much of a cliche.

Yeah, but I mean, it was designed by a vegan originally to address a lot of the testosterone deficits that you tend to see more often in active vegans. And it actually is a really good blend. It specifically can increase your luteinizing hormone, which enhances the ability of your testes to produce their own testosterone. So it's not like a testosterone replacement that shuts down your body's own ability to make testosterone. Rather, it is allowing your body to make more of its own. And it's also got some aromatase inhibitors in there which are going to keep some of those estrogens. If you are getting sources of soy, tofu, stuff like that in your diet, it'll keep a lot of that from having as much of a deleterious effect as it potentially could. So that one's called Aggressive Strength Testosterone. Now, I know that sounds like a lot of supplements. But honestly, like, if you look at the most jacked bodybuilders and weightlifters on the face of the planet, they are taking a lot of like, pills and capsules to help that out. I mean, you're, you're using, you're trying to get to an unnatural end by using a potentially unnatural means with regards to the amount of supplementation that you might be using to achieve that. But I mean, if you really want to get, if you really want to get swole, you may have to be doing everything from taurine to creatine to amino acids to these protein powders to a testosterone booster to the vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin K, avoiding the soy, avoiding the omega 6 fatty acids from the vegetable oils, looking at vitamin B12, looking at iron. A lot of stuff to consider. But if I were going to go on a vegan diet and I wanted to pack on as much muscle as possible, that's what I would do.

Hey Ben and Brock, this is Michael from the Netherlands and I got a question about how to go beyond training with a power lung. I've read that book of yours and I listened to a lot of podcasts, including the one you did with Greg Wells, but I couldn't really find what I was looking for in a podcast. You say you use it twice a week, but the manual prescribes twice daily. My question is how to get the maximum results out of the power lungs for cardiovascular performance? What, what are the optimal sets and reps? What is the amount of rest you need to recover or achieve super compensation? And what is the optimal training frequency with the power lung? So for instance, if I use it in the morning, does it affect my afternoon run or sprinting session? Or is it better to use after a training session to get the maximum out of the lungs and the muscles you use for breathing? So for instance, when you get home and do a few sets with the power lung while doing some static luncheons under a cold shower with a weighted vest, being hooked to an EMS device with vice versa style training bands on your legs to build up extra lactic acid while reading your book. So I really hope you can go beyond training with the powerlung and hope you can answer this question for me. Thanks.

Yes, Michael, you should definitely use it under a cold shower, doing static lunges with a weighted vest, being hooked to an EMS device with training bags on your legs to build up the lactic acid while reading beyond training.

Done. The power lung. You know what's funny? I keep a power lung in both my Cars for when I'm. I'm stuck in traffic and I'm. Or I'm driving and I want to work out because I'm a total multitasker. And, you know, you can hold it up to your mouth with one hand and you can do power lung sets. Like, I don't necessarily follow the powerlung instructions on the powerlung website or follow the instructions that Greg Wells gave us in that podcast that we did with the power lung guy, but I just go three seconds out and then three seconds in, and I try and do about 10 reps of that. So if I'm driving, let's say I fly down to la, for example, and I gotta drive to, let's say, San Diego. All every time I pass a certain mile marker or a certain. I make a game out of it. Like, every time I go under an overpass or whatever, I got to do 10 reps of 3 seconds in, 3 seconds out on the power lung. And so it was just like this little way that I'll build up my lungs and build up my inspiratory and expiratory muscle capacity while I am in the car. And that's honestly most of the time that I use the power lung because frankly, I, you know, I've got two power lungs that I own, and one's in one car, one's in the other car, and I don't really use the power lungs except when I'm in the car.

The way that there are no distracted driving laws in your state.

Don't tell. Okay, so the instructions on the powerlung website and the instructions that we talked about in the podcast that we did with the guy from powerlung was that what you're supposed to do is you inhale and exhale through the power lung, and it actually is about a 3 to 5 second inhale and a 3 to 5 second exhale, and you do that for a total of 10 repetitions. So kind of similar to what I do in the car. And then it says, take a short break and repeat those steps two more times for a total of 30 repetitions. And do that twice a day, every day. So twice a day for 10 minutes, they're saying to use the power lung. That's my protocol.

I. I followed when we first got our power lungs. I wanted to see what would happen. I did exactly that.

What'd you think?

I liked it. I. I felt. I don't know, I just felt stronger in my breathing, which seems weird, but it. It actually did have that effect.

Did you get big flappy cheeks like Louis Armstrong.

I already have those. Uncle Louie passed those.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I. I'm more like, you know, I'll use the power lung like once every. Because I actually don't drive that much, but once every week and a half to two weeks. You know, I'll. I'll use it for as many sets as I can while I'm driving around. And I definitely don't use it every day, so it's one of those things I just use every once in a while. And that's, that's how I use it. If you wanted to use it for maximum benefit, I mean, the studies that they've done on the power lung, that's what they were doing. That was twice a day for 10 minutes to actually strengthen the muscles that support your breathing. And that's where it's been shown by independent studies to improve your breathing capacity.

And that's for people with capd too, like with actual compromised breathing function.

Yeah. So if you want to go gold standard, you. You get one of these things and you use it twice a day for 10 minutes in the way that I just described. Now, the reason that, that I also don't go out of my way to use the power lung in exactly the way that described is I do a ton of other things for my breath. And I'm going to get into this in more detail, actually, in that biohacking presentation that I give at the Bulletproof conference. But like once a week, I swim with the front mounted swim snorkel that has the cardio cap on it, meaning that I swim with airflow restriction. So while I'm swimming, I'm having to breathe like through a straw. So I do that once a week. And typically at the end of that particular swim workout, I also do 10 sets underwater where I'm simply swimming for as long as possible, hypoxically underwater, holding my breath. So that's a, that's a lung buster workout. Like, you know, it's. Your muscles don't feel it, but your lungs and your breath control are definitely enhanced by a workout like that. And I do that once a week. I typically one to two times a week when I'm training, whatever the training session happens to be, whether I'm doing like kettlebell swings or I'm doing like a hike with a weighted backpack or whatever. I wear one of those elevation training masks, which is the mask that restricts air. And that's another way that I'm strengthening my lungs while I'm out there. When I go and sit in the sauna, because I go to the sauna about once or twice a week, and I'll just sit there for about 30 to 40 minutes. I'm reading magazines, I'm listening to music or podcasts. But I get to a point where all I can do because it's getting so hot in that sauna is just sitting and stare at the wall. And when I get to that point, I practice what's called box breathing, which is another great way to strengthen and train the lungs. And that's a four count in a four count hold, a four count exhale, and then a four count hold. And you'll find that after about a minute or so of box breathing in a sauna, you start to feel really short of breath. And it takes a lot of focus, especially on that exhale part. But what happens as you're doing this? You're stimulating your body to produce new red blood cells, new erythropoies to give you the ability to actually carry and deliver more oxygen, along with strengthening the muscles that are around your lungs. So, you know, you get a pretty big effect when you're doing all these things throughout the week. So that's why I don't use the Power Lung every day, is I've just got so many little things organically kind of spread throughout the week that I use to make my lungs stronger and enhance my breath control that I don't see a need to use it exactly as recommended. But what I will do for Michael is all the stuff I just talked about, like the swim snorkel, the cardio cap, the previous podcast that we did with the folks at Power Lung, the training mask that I use, like the elevation training mask. I even have like phone apps that I use that walk me through that box breathing protocol that I talked about. Oh, and there's even one other thing I do that I wanted to mention that I've been doing since I got back from SEAL fit. And that's Warrior breath breathing, where I'll finish up a yoga session. Because typically about twice a week, I'll go out on the porch and do about 30 minutes of yoga. I'll finish that session with about 50 to 100 warrior breaths, which is very sharp nasal inhales followed by sharp short exhales. That's a technique that Wim Hof talked about. Wim Hof, the iceman? The guy who, like, will go sit in snow and immerse himself in ice for like two hours. That's the technique that he uses to warm his body. He calls it inner fire breathing. Commander Mark Divine from Seal Fit calls it warrior breathing. But that's another great way to train your breath is, you know, basically it's. I'll try not to snot the microphone, but it sounds like this. But you're basically doing that for like a good two minutes and you get this super high hyper oxygenated feeling. And that, that's another thing that I've been doing a lot of lately.

Isn't that just straight up hyperventilating?

Yeah, it's very similar to just like hyperventilation.

So you have to be careful. If you've got a propensity for anxiety.

Probably set it off pretty bad. Yeah. Anyways though, I'll put a link to it to all the different little breath things that I do and previous podcasts that I've done and books that I recommend on breath control. I'll put a, I'll put a whole, whole host of stuff in there in the show notes for you, Michael, if you want to really geek out on this stuff. But you know, alternatively you could use your power lung while under a cold shower doing static lunges with a weighted vest, being hooked to an EMF device with training bands on your legs to build up extra lactic acid while you're reading my book. So.

Hey, Ben and Brock, this is Maury from New Jersey. Just wanted to get your thoughts on a ointment that I've been. I came up with. It's a mixture of coconut oil, topical magnesium and caffeine. I've been rubbing it on my knees and ankles and calves and it seems to be helping. I got the idea from a dream that I had a couple nights ago and I want to know if, if it's just all in my head or if you think that it's actually helping. Thanks, bye.

I think that sounds like it would.

Be a delicious, mmm, delicious mustard.

I don't think I would rub it on my knees. I think I would rub it on some toast.

My wife makes this cocoa rub like for her face. It's like infused with like cocoa. Like, I don't know, it's like cocoa fats or. I don't, I don't know what it is, but it makes me just want to like eat her face. If I can say that on the podcast. Sexy. That's right. And Maury, maybe I want to eat your face. That actually sounds pretty good. Coconut oil, topical magnesium and caffeine. Well, caffeine is actually something that has been shown to have an anti aging effect. It can Prevent the formation of wrinkles by enhancing blood flow to the skin. And caffeine is something that you'll find in a lot of anti aging serums out there.

Is that ingested or applied?

No, that's applied topically. Like I actually I bought a bunch of really high quality coffee infused oil when we were in Thailand last year. Actually Brock, you were there. We went over to that lemongrass place. It's like the world famous soap and natural product place that's on the island of Phuket out there in Thailand and we just loaded up with this stuff and brought back this coffee oil that's just amazing. You smear it on your face and you smell like a giant latte. No, more like a mocha, like a giant tasty mocha. But it has this anti aging effect too, which is really cool. But anyways, when it comes to muscle rubs, I have some that I definitely like and I do like that you're using that magnesium mori because that does have an effect that I'll talk about in a second. But you also do need to be careful and go easy with some of the medicated lotions and creams and gels and muscle rubs that are out there. There was a few years ago and this hit the news pretty big time. There was this New York City high school track star and she died from an overdose of one of these sports creams. So she used, I don't remember if it was Icy Hot or Ben Gay, but it was one of these popular over the counter pain relieving ointments that has as its key ingredient methyl salicylate which actually built up in her body because as we know your skin is a mouth and it somehow interacted with some type of aspirin that she was using and she went into cardiac arrest and she died.

Jeez.

There was this other athlete who died of a lidocaine overdose because she had like this lidocaine based numbing gel that she applied to her legs and she went into convulsions and then a coma and then. And she died. And obviously lidocaine is something that would be more prescribed by a physician, not found in like an over the counter muscle rub. But it's an example of what this stuff can do to you if you're not careful. So a few of the things that you need to be careful of, like that methyl salicylate that I talked about that you're going to find in Bengay, Icy Hot, Tiger Balm, all this stuff, it acts really similarly to aspirin and because you can go into a cardiac arrest from the blood thinning effect of aspirin. Using this stuff too much can also cause that same type of blood thinning issue. So I actually got kind of sick when I was a kid because I took one of these methyl salicylate creams that my mom had and I rubbed it all over my body because I thought it smelled really cool. I was like this giant mint. And I woke up in the middle of the night, not just shivering, but also feeling horribly sick. And my parents had to give me this bath and wipe it all off my body. And so, you know, maybe that's what happened to me, is a methyl salicylate overdose.

Maybe at some point your superpowers will.

Will focus on my spidey powers. So the lidocaine, the benzocaine, the tetracaine, all the things that you might get for numbing an area, those type of topical anesthetics, you're usually not going to find those in muscle rubs, but they definitely can cause basically an overdose type of effect. A lot of people have allergies to them, but you can also get pretty sick from overusing those. Hydrocortisone is another one that you'll find as an anti inflammatory topical steroid that will get prescribed in some cases for pain, you know, knee pain, elbow pain, stuff like that. But that can cause a little bit of an irritation effect as well. And in some people you can have a pretty significant allergic effect. So there are some anti aging creams that are out there that have like hydroquinone in them. And hydroquinone is actually one of the things that can be carcinogenic that's in those compounds. So you'd want to be careful with something like that. Even high doses of vitamin A, which you find in these other anti aging creams, high doses of that topically can cause vitamin A toxicity effect. So you'd want to be careful with that too.

Is that the one that turns you orange as well?

Yep, exactly. The main one though that I have the biggest issue with is this methyl salicylate that you'll find in like the smelly popular muscle rubs like Bengay and Icy Hot and Tiger Balm. And I don't use any of those. I do have a few favorite balms that I use that I'll go into. But first, magnesium. We've talked about it on the show before, but I mean, that stuff is magic. Like it displaces calcium, it relaxes muscles, it opens up cells, it supports detoxification, it's got a lot of cool stuff. The magnesium that I use is the stuff made by magnetic clay. And the primary ingredient is just magnesium chloride. But it's mixed with, like, olive oil and coconut oil, and they add in, like, msm, which helps to heal broken skin, broken blood vessels, torn muscles, things along those lines. So that is probably my favorite. Go to topical. That's one that I put on. I was talking to Tawny on Endurance Planet podcast about this the other day. We were talking about magnesium, and we both came to the conclusion that that's something that we're almost to the point where we're using that stuff, like, twice a day. Every time we take a shower, we just snather that stuff over any sore muscles. So that one's called Ancient Minerals Magnesium Lotion. But that's why magnesium works so well, is it not just relaxes a muscle, but it displaces a lot of the calcium buildup that can cause a muscle to be sore.

You're in a hurry, too. That stuff is almost instant.

And the lotion works way better than the spray, by the way. So you're totally bypassing your gut. You're going straight into the skin. You rub it straight on the area that actually needs that relaxation or that calcium displacement, and it works really, really well. So magnesium way up there on the list. The other topicals that I use pretty frequently. One thing I've been using a lot of lately, pre sleep, is just a little bit of lavender essential oil. I rub that into the back of my neck. I put about a drop on the pillow. And I'm a big fan of lavender now for relaxation. I've been using it when I travel. Something about lavender. I mean, you just fall asleep like a baby after you use that stuff.

Yeah, I hate the smell of lavender. I really do. I just dislike it so much. People keep buying me, like, I'm a terrible sleeper. I always wake up in the middle of the night. So people are constantly, like, getting me stuff like, oh, you have to try this, and it always has freaking lavender in it. I smell like some old lady.

So, first of all, you're gonna have to listen into the podcast that we have coming out in a couple weeks with Andy Murphy, because we. He literally re. He hypnotized me on the podcast. And then, like, basically we did an NLP session about sleep and, like, how to sleep better. In this case, we were doing one on how to sleep the night before a big race. So, yeah, tune into that podcast. If you haven't listened, is it gonna.

Make Me make me smell like lavender.

But I'm a big fan of like Downton Abbey. I'm a big fan of lavender. I don't know why lavender.

Maybe it's just a weird thing, horrific.

Experience that you're suppressing from childhood lavender. Lavenders beat me up and stole my freak lavender accident. Yeah. So lavender is another big one. And then the last one that I've used that I like is this stuff from Hammer Nutrition. It's called Hammer Balm and that's a pretty good formulation too. It's basically ginger root and clove oil and arnica. And arnica is an ingredient that you're going to find in a lot of these better natural, over the counter muscle rubs. It's a medicinal plant that's used to treat like skin wounds and bruises. But it works really well for muscle aches and pains too. That stuff's awesome.

Awesome. On bruises, if you've got a bruise somewhere where you don't want to have it for very long, just put some arnica on there.

Yeah. So if you look at my transdermal cabinet, it's basically magnesium lotion lavender. And then I've got some of this Hammer Balm as well. So. And I'll put links to all those in the show notes. But there's also this really interesting study on PubMed that goes into all the different ingredients that you'll find in muscle rubs. And one ingredient that's been shown in multiple studies to help with not just nerve pain like neuropathy, but also musculoskeletal pain and even arthritic symptoms is capsaicin. And I can't say that I actually have any muscle rub that I use right now or that I've even experimented with one that has capsaicin or, you know, this chili pepper from chilies. Yeah, yeah. That's the thing you get in your.

Eye when you're chopping up chilies.

Yeah. So if any of our listeners are out there and you've got a, that you've got an idea for a muscle rub that has capsaicin. Or maybe Mori can add this in with his coconut oil and his topical magnesium. Make you a little spicy, add some capsaicin in there. I thought that was interesting that of all the different things that this PubMed article goes into, capsaicin is one of the more popular. So another good one, by the way, that if you're in a pinch and you got to just get something from most grocery stores, you're going to be able to find this there. And a lot of natural physicians swear by it as well. It's got like arnica and chamomile and echinacea and a bunch of stuff in is called Traumeel and that's like a homeopathic muscle cream. A lot of people swear by that one too. And that one is also okay, doesn't have a lot of dangerous ingredients in it. So that one's Traumeel. T R A U M E E L so I'll I'll link to all these resources for you in the show notes, but those are some of the some of the better muscle rubs.

Hey Brock and Ben, thanks for the wonderful podcast. My question is related to my almost four year old son. Like many children his age, he has a persistent cough which is going on three years now. He eats a real food diet which includes some fruits and starches, potatoes and sweet potatoes, but without going on a full autoimmune diet, it's probably as good as I can get. His skin is always itchy despite being visibly fine, and he often complains of a sore tummy and has these insane mood swings. We've seen many doctors and specialists. However, we're having a hard time convincing them to do much investigation other than prescribing him drugs, which are mostly steroids and antibiotics that don't seem to work. Sodium Montelukast helped with the cough to some degree, but it had horrible side effects. We finally got one of the doctors to test for mould sensitivity, which did come back positive. However, it wasn't until we asked for the actual results that we even found out. We've since dealt with any of the mould we have control over, but that doesn't mean there isn't exposure elsewhere. We live in Australia, so we can't really order the tests without going through a doctor. So I was hoping for some suggested tests which I can then discuss with them. I'm going to take his fasted glucose tomorrow on the off chance that it's the start of type 1 diabetes he's developing, but we don't really have a history of that in the family and aside from that, I'm pretty much out of ideas. I really hope you can help. Thank you.

Wow, that doesn't sound very comfortable.

Yeah, it actually sounds a lot like my nephew. So I have a nephew who has an autoimmune disease and there's a lot of different like pediatric or what are called juvenile autoimmune diseases. So it's, it can be tough to put your finger on what exactly the autoimmune disease is. So type 1 diabetes is certainly one, but you've also got celiac disease can cause a lot of these symptoms. Just some pretty severe food intolerances, particularly with regards to gluten. I mean, that's the biggie for celiac. Lupus is another one. Rheumatoid arthritis, like a lot of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis can be another issue. Lupus one called scleroderma, which is more of like a skin issue, but it can cause some, some of these other issues that Andrew is talking about. So, you know, it can be tough to put your finger on exactly what type of autoimmune issue that a kid has. And frankly, you know, and this is something I talk about in my, in my Superhuman Kids book, you know, autoimmune disease and autoimmune issues due to our growing use of things like antibiotics and antibacterial hand soaps and, you know, C sections and lack of fermented foods in kids and opting for soy milk versus breast milk. I mean, it's becoming a much, much bigger issue in kids. And you tend to see all of these little issues. You know, itchy skin or skin rashes, you get tingling, you get joint pain or muscle pain or weakness that a lot of times will set in. You know, a little while after a meal, you'll get a persistent low grade fever. A lot of times swollen glands like in the neck or the armpits or where a lot of the lymph nodes tend to reside. Sometimes like brain fog, like a kid just has difficulty thinking or they stutter a lot. Sometimes you'll see hair loss. I mean, you know, a lot of the same things that you'll see in adults who have autoimmune diseases, you'll see in children as well. Now, I'll talk in a minute here about some of the things that you can do as far as testing is concerned. But the number one biggest issue when it comes to autoimmune disease in kids is that you have to realize that a very, very large portion of the immune system lies in the gut. And in many cases, leaky gut syndrome or gut inflammation is one of the leaks, bleeding factors that spills into a lot of these other issues that are created in a kid. So taking care of the gut is the number one most important thing that you can do. Like if your child was, say, born via C section, so they didn't pass through mom's birth canal to pick up all these good beneficial bacteria, or they weren't breastfed so they didn't get that colostrum that helps to seal up the gut lining and keep leaky gut from forming. I mean, two of the best things that you can do would be expose your child to a wide variety of fermented foods and then get them on some kind of colostrum supplement. And that could be anything from a straight up colostrum supplement to a good healthy raw goat's milk or cow's milk or anything like that that's going to have some of that colostrum in it. That's really important in addition to getting them started on fermented foods as much as you can, or even a good probiotic. Most kids can take about one third to one quarter the adult dose of a probiotic, whether it be prescript assist or caprobiotics or any of these probiotics kids can use. And you can open those up and put them in applesauce or if they don't want to swallow a capsule and that type of thing is fine. Now if I had a child with autoimmune issues, the diet that I would highly recommend in conjunction with the use of colostrum and fermented foods would be the autoimmune Paleo book. That would be the number one book that I would recommend as far as a very, very good way to eliminate a lot of the common things that are going to cause autoimmune triggers like grains, beans, eggs, nuts, nuts, seeds, nightshades, even some of the spices, et cetera, and give you a really beautiful done for you recipe guide that you can follow and that a kid is going to be able to eat. So it tells you that food is.

Like a, it's like a textbook. You can learn so much from that thing. It's awesome.

It's a good book and it was written by a friend of mine, Mickey Trescott. She lives over in Seattle. I trust her what she writes. She's studied this quite a bit, dealt with autoimmune issues herself. And you know, it's a really, really good guide, so I'll be sure to link to that for you. But some of the other things that I would definitely include just because again, the gut is the place to start with most of these issues. Bone broth, that would be enormously important. It can really help to heal up a gut lining of a child or an adult. The other thing that can really help with a lot of these guys inflammation would be like a really good, highly absorbable form of curcumin. And kids can do curcumin supplements in the same way that they can do probiotic supplements. There's no issues with children using curcumin, but that would be another thing that I would look into would be to use curcumin. I've talked before on the show about this one called rebound, that's a curcumin phytosome, meaning that it's actually bound up with a fat, it's highly absorbable. That would be another one that you could use. So when you're looking at this from like a supplementation standpoint, colostrum probiotics and some kind of really good anti inflammatory that'll help with joint pain, that'll, that'll also help with gut inflammation and that would be curcumin and then something like the paleo autoimmune diet, as far as an actual diet to follow in conjunction with some of these other things. Now as far as test testing, you know, you, you specifically asked about mold allergy. And, and first of all, as far as some of these other things that I mentioned, type 1 diabetes, you know, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, tests are going to vary as far as those are concerned. And what you would want to do is just basically go into the doctor and talk with your doctor about all the different tests that you can do for these type of things. Because frankly, you know, we could spend hours talking about each of the different tests for everything from celiac to type 1 diabetes to rheumatoid arthritis. But as far as mold goes, you can get a blood test for mold and it's sometimes called an RAST test, which stands for radio allergosorbent test. So that measures your immune system's response to mold. It measures the amount of certain antibodies in your bloodstream, what are known as, as IgE or immunoglobulin E antibodies. And they test for evidence of sensitivity to specific types of mold. And it's much, much more accurate than like a skin prick test. So it's called an IGE food mold panel or it's also known as an RAST test here in the States. You can get it through direct labs. You can literally like order it. You get the requisition form that you print off, you bring into a lab near your house. They do the blood draw and within about a week you get a PDF mailed to you that tells you which type of mold sensitivities that you were found to be sensitive to. And typical things that you'd find that may contain mold you're sensitive to would be like Egg whites, almonds are another big one. Shrimp, rice, beans, in some cases, some type of yeast, wheat, things along those lines. Peanuts are another big one. But basically, this will just give you a print off of every mold that you may or that your child may be sensitive to. So, I mean, it's not a cheap test here in the States if you order it through direct labs. I still think it's like a $600 test, but it kind of tells you for life what kind of IgE antibodies that you have circulating in your blood bloodstream that might be causing mold sensitivities. So we probably at some point in here should have an I am not a physician disclaimer.

Yeah.

Yeah, good call.

Ben is not a doctor. And the content provided on this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical or healthcare advice. Yeah, but those are the places that, that I would start. And if I had a kid who was showing autoimmune issues, you know, I would without a doubt jump right into an autoimmune diet combined with colostrum bone, broth, curcumin minimum, and then continued testing, you know, and talk to your doctor about some of the things that I mentioned that could be causing this issue. And that's where I'd start. So hope that helps.

I'm sure that'll help. That was. We're. We're going really long.

Are we?

Sorry folks.

Sorry folks. We better wrap this thing up.

Yeah, we've been trying to keep the show to it's all or less it's all that.

It's not that siltap and the enema tubes sticking on my backside. Well, let's. Let's give something away before we wrap this thing up, shall we?

Let's give away a beanie, a shirt and a BPA free water bottle all branded with the awesome Ben Greenfield fitness logo.

That's right. And if. If you hear us read your itunes review on the show and you email Ben@BenGreenfield Fitness.com we mail all that shiznat straight to your front door anywhere in the world. Seriously. Pick up the shipping costs and everything. So I'm actually gonna read this review because it actually it. Well, it'll be pretty self explanatory. So the name of the review is Ben might be the cat's pajamas but. And this review is from therealy and it says Brock is the bee's knees. Sure, Ben might have that Alphabet soup behind his name, but often overlooked is the genius that is Brock Skywalker Armstrong. Your ears Burning dude. Let's begin with his name. A Jedi mixed with the first man on the moon. You cannot get more legit than that. Brok is totally rad due to his ability to take the scientific jargon Ben's spews out and make it understandable for the person listening while on a tempo run or a bike ride. Let's face it, no.

So I dumb it down. Is that what they're saying? I'm good at dumbing it down, so.

Yeah, that's what they're saying. Nice. Let's face it, you. You caveman it, Brock. It says no one besides Ben has a low frequency house, a soundproof office, and a backyard that resembles a serial killer. In parentheses. Hay bales to throw spears at question mark.

Actually, Jack Cruz may have a very similar home.

Brock makes other biohacks like standing more, drinking fatty coffee and tracking heart rate seem manageable for the average human. Lastly, the guy came back from the dead. That is true, folks. By the way, if you're listening, Brock has died and come.

My death has been greatly exaggerated.

If that's not the reason to listen to this podcast, I don't know what is. He is like Jesus resurrected and showing Ben how to relate to podcasts ever since.

Too far.

Too much.

Wow.

You're a deity, dude. Seal fit training. Laughable compared to Brock's ability to live in Canada for most of the year. By far, Brock makes the show go around. And one reason I will always listen for health and fitness tips. Holy Shazam.

Thanks, mom.

Yeah, thanks, Brock's mom. Well, cool. Now that I know I've got Jesus as a podcast sidekick, I'm feeling pretty comfortable here. That or the fact that she thinks I'm a serial killer. All right, well, cool. That was a fantastic review. The real Ellie. So if you heard that, email us and we'll get you out a care package. And for all the rest of you listening in, head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com294 for all the handy dandy show notes and everything else that we talked about, from the All Day Energy cookbook to dangerous ingredients in muscle rubs to weird things that you can breathe through. So check all that out and have a healthy week.

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