361: 12 Futuristic Inventions That Could Save Your Life, The Best Way To Purify Your Water, How To Fight Food Cravings & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show, 12 futuristic inventions that could save your life, the best way to purify water, how to fight food cravings, natural fixes for adult ADD and autism, how diatomaceous earth works, and much more. He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy, all the information you need in one place, right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Rachel, word on the street is that you're leaving us.

Yeah, I am. Just for 10 days though. Not going too far away.

Some, some strange fringe Buddhist, I don't know what, what exactly are you doing?

I am doing a Vipassana meditation, which is a 10 day silent retreat where you can't talk to anyone, you can't have any technology, no letter. Right. You're not even allowed to do yoga. Ten days, you meditate like an hour, three times a day and you spend the rest of the time walking around.

You don't talk to anybody?

No. I think you get about half an hour a day just to debrief because I imagine you just go absolutely crazy in your mind. You know, I've never done anything like this before. So half an hour a day, the only time you can talk.

But isn't that the idea that you want to go crazy in your mind and have some kind of an amazing breakthrough? Exactly. Now who is making sure that you don't talk to someone else? Like, are there actual like little mustached vipassana police there wandering around in big knee high boots ready to, ready to kick you out if you, if you.

Speak a word like, of a person. A totalitarian regime kind of like, no, I don't think so. Right? I don't think so. No. You share a room with someone and I think everyone's just under the impression that no one's allowed to talk to each other. But I'm thinking like, how crazy is it going to be when I wake up in the morning and I'm staring at somebody else but we can't talk to each other? Like, all I'm going to do is just like look at people. So it's going to be strange, but super exciting. Can't wait to have a massive meltdown.

Yeah, well, you might learn some kind of alternative communication technique to get along with others, like blinking. You know, Quick, quick. Before we delve into today's news flashes is I had a friend who went to a vipassana meditation retreat, and he was telling me how he started to discover very weird things about his body because he was sitting there for so long just with nothing to do that he was, like, discovering the way that he described. It was like little valves that he could activate in the back of his head that could move spinal fluid in and out of his brain. And he was learning how to consciously squeeze and open and contract these areas. And the occipital lobe, like, traveling up near the C1 and C2 vertebrae in the back of his head. And he's describing this to me. I'm like, you know what? If I was sitting silent for 10 days, I would probably begin to experiment with or find things about my body I didn't realize before. And for me, though, in particular, what comes to mind is the Will Ferrell Saturday Night Live yoga episode.

I haven't seen it. What does he do?

Oh, no, you'll have to Google it. It's not. It's not kid friendly. And I know some people are probably driving their kids in their minivans to school, listening to the Ben Greenfield fitness show. I'm just saying, if you wanted to, you could go Google Will Ferrell Saturday Night Live yoga.

Your friend sounds like an overachiever. Because I'm just hoping that I'm not gonna have a massive meltdown and cry for 10 days straight.

So he's also someone who's. Who's very into the use of plant based medicine during things like this. So who knows? He may have been, shall we say, tripping news flashes. You know what? That's it. You know what that is that I'm. That I'm sipping on here, Rachel.

What are you sipping on, Ben?

All right, so eight boxes of this showed up at my house yesterday. I have no clue who. Who sent them or anything, but it's. I'm guessing it was probably Zevia, because we did a podcast with Zevia a while back where we talked about, like, healthy soda. Anyways, like, oodles and oodles of Zevia sparkling water. I didn't know they made sparkling water. Showed up at my house a few days ago. So I'm drinking mandarin orange sparkling water. It's got a gluten free label. It's gluten free. It's vegan. That's good. It's probably organic. It's got carbonated water and stevia in it, so.

That sounds delicious.

Actually, you know what's really delicious is that I Jessa makes elderberry wine. We have an old elderberry tree on the edge of our property, and she harvested a bunch of elderberries and just makes this super potent, like, pucker factor. Extremely. Almost like medicinal tasting elderberry wine. And elderberry is good for you. It's actually really good for white blood cell production. And it's one of those things that I recommend to people as an immune booster during like, cold and flu season. But stuff packs a frigging punch in terms of, I'm guessing, alcohol content.

Oh, really? How long does it take her to make?

I think it was fermenting, so to speak, for almost a year. Oh, wow. And so it's in a bunch of like, old beer bottles now in our fridge and in the cellar. But I do half elderberry, and this is at least what I did last night. It's my new drink invention. And then half Zevia sparkling water. I use mandarin orange flavor and I poured that over ice and it's actually pretty good.

You made a fancy drink.

I did.

Plus, is it called the Greenfield?

I don't know what it's called. Yeah, it's called. It's called the with healthy stuff drink because the carbonated water drives the alcohol into your system. So. No. Yeah. I don't know if you knew that.

Double whammy. I did not.

Yeah, it's a little trick. You can drop an effervescent electrolyte tablet in there too, if you want to even further magnify the effect and make yourself feel healthier because at least you're getting minerals as you. As you kick your liver with elderberry. But speaking of strange things you can put into your body. And no, that's not a segue into a discussion about enemas, which it seems that phrase often segues into. There is an interesting article I want to talk about first for today's news flashes. And it appeared in the New York Times and it's an anti aging article. I love anti aging articles. I love them more the older I get, probably because I just want to figure out how to be, you know, like these, these, you know, bad ass old guys who are living on the island of Krakows farming and, you know.

Walking goats, having tons of sex with their lovers.

Yeah. And that's actually what this article gets into is this area called Asia Roli, Italy, in which they have, you know, this is considered one of those blue zones in which there's an extremely high number of what they call centenarians. And this article goes into a couple of things that I actually hadn't heard of before. For example, they found that there was one specific component that these people in Italy use crazy high amounts of. And this particular compound has been shown to aid in brain function. And these people have especially high concentrations of many of the. Like the polyphenols and the flavanols and the terpenes and the type of stuff that comes out of this herb in their system. And you know what it is? What? Rosemary.

Oh, wow. Did not expect that. One.

Boatloads of rosemary. Which is very interesting because. Because it actually is one of those things that protects you against, say, like the. The carcinogenic effect of red meat. Right. Which is why rosemary is recommended so much as a. As a marinade or a rub. So rosemary consumption, very, very high amount of rosemary consumption was one defining characteristic. They also. You hinted at this, Rachel. The way that they describe it is they say these older adults demonstrate a robust sexual appetite. At 95, they have brains more like someone who is 50. And at 50, you're still thinking a lot about sex.

That's brilliant. There's nothing more I want for my life than to be 90 years old and still have a robust sexual appetite.

Yeah. And it's really interesting because they have these very high levels of what's called adrenomedullin in their systems, which is a hormone that widens your blood vessels, that allows for really, really good. What's called microcirculation. And these people, it's almost like they have everything necessary for or everything that would be produced, like if you took a bunch of Viagra. Except for some reason, they have this combination of extremely good circulation, high amount of rosemary intake, and lots of sex. They actually say, the anthropologist who contributed to the article says that the sexual activity is huge.

I love the line above that where it says he reported an attempted seduction by a woman pumping water. Can you imagine?

So the women are wandering around seducing the old man. It sounds like a fantastic, wonderful place to live. Plus, it's Italy, so you can't go wrong. Right?

Great food, great women.

Check out that article. We'll link to it. Just go to the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 361 here's another interesting one. 12 futuristic products that might change your life. This one kind of turned my head because one of the things listed in this article is something that I wear every day, which is my fancy self Quantification ring. Oura ring actually appears. It's a ring that has a built in pulse oximeter and built in heart rate variability. Sleep activity monitoring, you know, spits out a little message to you at the beginning of the day about how what your readiness score is. But there's some other interesting products on here too. Did you get a chance to look at this one, Rachel?

I did like the chair made from old jeans, which I had to question whether that was really going to change my life. That's still a really interesting concept.

Some, some of these are pretty questionable about whether they'll actually change your, your life. But, but there are a few that are, that are pretty interesting. For example, the instant washing machine. You Simply drop this $150 cost pebble shaped nugget and some detergent into a sink and via ultrasonic waves it turns the sink into a washing machine. I could see that being quite handy for travel, Right?

Very handy. And to not have to have a couple of thousand dollar washing machine.

Yeah, because currently when I travel, my trick is I shower with my clothing and then I spread one towel on the floor of the bathroom. So take the wet clothing out, put the other towel on top of the wet clothing and jump up and down on the clothing.

Is that true?

Yeah. I learned this from a cyclist who does. A cyclist who does a lot of travel and just needs to wash his spandex every night at night. Here's another one, the Naked 3D fitness tracker. It's a $499 product that consists of a mirror and a rotating scale that captures a 3D scan of your body. And then that data gets delivered to an app so you can track how your body is changing over time.

That's brilliant.

I think that's kind of interesting for people who are orthorexic or obsessed with their, I guess, the 3D shape of their body.

What about the dirty air soothsayer?

I didn't see this. What was this one?

It monitors a room's temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, dust and other unpleasant things. And it gives you an air quality rate. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, that's interesting.

You seem way less enthused about that one.

Well, it seems like something that exists already, doesn't it? Because I know Withings. For example, the company Withings makes a body fat measuring scale that also measures the humidity and carbon dioxide and temperature in the room that you're in. So you can monitor not just your environment's health, but also how that might be affecting your propensity to Say have.

A muffin top with way better.

That's a correlation you want to track. And then the final one I wanted to mention was the crapper composting toilet. A glamping toilet. And this is for $625 only that you can, you can have for yourself a low tech, eco friendly composting toilet that is waterless, odorless and reduces waste volume.

I feel like that's a game changer, although I'm not going to take that camping with me. But if I was going to a glamping place and they had a composting toilet like that, I'd be super stoked.

You don't have to be a glamper. It's a toilet that helps the world. You can just feel good about yourself as you're crapping. That's great.

I feel good about myself when I'm crapping.

I do too. All right, so check out that article in the New York Times. Now here's another interesting one. Glycerol. Glycerol is something that I actually used to use before it got banned by the World Anti Doping Association. First couple of years that I raced triathlon for management of heat, specifically for what's called a hyper hydration effect, where you trick your body and into maintaining a higher amount of plasma volume than it would normally. You're increasing body water before exercise, which is actually one way to keep your blood volume elevated, to keep yourself very cool, especially during hot weather exercise, to increase blood volume, for example, during altitude performance. So glycerol, this, this compound that, that a lot of sports supplement companies used to sell, it got banned, it got prohibited by the World Anti Doping Association, I want to say, back in 2008, something like that, but they just did a study in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research in which they compared what are called sodium chloride tablets. Sodium chloride tablets, which I should mention, and I'll link to this in the show notes, can be had for as little as 12 bucks a bottle on Amazon. These actually caused hyperhydration that rivaled what this banned glycerol substance would cause when it comes to increase your ability to retain water prior to athletic performance. And of course, biggest takeaway here is that this stuff is not prohibited by the World Anti Doping Association. It's not illegal, it's not doping, it's not blood doping. It's a completely acceptable substance. Sodium chloride tablets. So if you're competing in hot weather, if you, I suppose, are doing a whole bunch of hot yoga and you want to hydrate yourself, really well, if you are competing at elevation, et cetera, you should check out these little sodium chloride induced tablets. The dosage that they used in this study, just in case anyone is interested, is each of the participants consumed seven 1 gram tablets of sodium chloride with nearly a liter of water. So not only do you take a lot of sodium chloride, but you take a lot of water and you, you retain a lot more water in a hyper hydrating effect.

And for $12 a bottle, that's an awesome little hack.

Yeah, not bad. And considering it's legal, at least for now.

Do you think. I was gonna say, do you think that they'll find a way to make that illegal?

Oh, yeah, eventually. Just like, just like the stuff that I use for extremely accelerated healing is BPC157. Yeah. That you can inject into any joint subc around any area of injury. Just a peptide that you can get from. I've got an article over at Ben Greenfield Fitness called how to use BPC157. It should be illegal. I mean, your body heals so much faster when you use it that it should be illegal, but it's just not. It just flies under. Every single other peptide is banned by the World Anti Doping association except this one.

Wow.

There you go. One other thing that I wanted to mention, speaking of banned substances, something that I think should be banned. Ibuprofen. I've talked before about how it causes everything from leaky gut syndrome to liver toxicity, and that especially occurs during exercise. And it especially, especially occurs during exercise in hot weather. Well, they have just finished another study on nonsteroidal anti inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen. And they found that it contributes heavily to the risk of heart failure. Literally, it can cause a myocardial cell death. Death when you are consuming ibuprofen. So yet another nail in the coffin of these COX2 inhibitors that I'm not a huge fan of. I'm a much, much bigger fan of turmeric and humanoids and all these other ways that we can shut down things like joint pain, for example.

Yeah. That's just so crazy.

Yeah, well, what's crazy is the number of people who are popping ibuprofen during exerc to allow them to be able to push through who don't realize how it's not only affecting the liver and the gut health and stomach lining, but now we know also the heart. So not only do I recommend that you check out this article if you're still on ibuprofen or you send it to somebody who is on Ibuprofen, if it's something that they're taking that or Advil or whatever. But I mean, look into natural alternatives and take care of your heart. I just had a fantastic interview that I'll be releasing, I believe, next week with a guy who wrote about why heart attacks really occur, how heart attacks actually aren't related to things like plaque buildup, per se. And he's got a really interesting take on heart health. I'd definitely tune into that one. It's an upcoming interview, but in the meantime, go check out this article on ibuprofen. And while you're at it, check out the 12 futuristic products that might change your life. Better sex and the fountain of youth with rosemary, sodium chloride tablets and a whole lot more. Right, Rachel?

Yes. And you can get those by following Ben on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.

That's right. And we'll put links to all that stuff because we're constantly pushing things out that, that you don't get anywhere else. Listener q and. A.

Hey, Ben, this is Krista Schwartz.

I had a question about your home water purification system. I wanted to know what brand it was or what type you use.

Also, I love your show. Thank you so much for all of the hard work you put into it. And keep up the good work. Thanks.

Okay, sure. Here we go. Water. Well, I don't. I don't purify my water because I just drink it straight out of my Zevia can. Actually, I should ask the people at Zevia. I don't know if this is a BPA free can.

You should.

I think, I think he actually mentioned this when I interviewed him on the podcast. They use, they use a special kind of can that doesn't leach as many metals into the water.

When they say as many metals.

Yeah.

What does that mean?

Well, I mean, honestly, if you're going to drink water out of a vessel, you should drink it out of glass. Because not only does glass help to structure the water, if the water gets exposed to sunlight or if you happen to set it down on the surface of the planet, which I know sounds woo woo, but it's true. Those are two of the ways that you can actually cause ions to not only go into the human body. Right. Which is why swimming and walking barefoot on the planet Earth is so good for you, but if you take like glass, bottled water, and you expose it to sunlight or you set it down on the surface of the Earth, it actually causes a transfer of negative ions into the water. And these create what is called an exclusion zone in the water. An exclusion zone means that you have a positively charged area in the middle of the water, negatively charged area near the outside of the water. And that can actually increase the capability of water to enhance intracellular hydration.

How long do you have to set it down on the ground for?

And I should mention, by the way, they've only shown this in blood vessel simulating tubes within a lab. They actually haven't figured out a way to go into the human body and see if it really truly causes increased intracellular hydration within the human body. So this is all kind of like blue sky and theoretical. I'll always tell you, if there's no actual research behind the stuff that I spew out. But the idea is that structured water actually is charged in a way that's very, very natural. And you can recharge water charge water by taking like glass, bottled water, putting it on sunlight or putting it on, on, on the earth. In terms of the amount of time, most earthing or grounding protocols are about five to 30 minutes for the human body. So I would imagine it's somewhat similar for, for something like water. You know, same thing with the human body, like to get adequate amounts of vitamin D for the day. It's somewhere right around 20 to 30 minutes of exposure to sunlight during a time of good UVA UVB production, like between about 10am and 2pm somewhere in that time frame. Kind of something I would imagine for water. So my own water purification system, mine's pretty interesting because I have a well, and contrary to popular belief, well water, not all well water, is pristine. Granted it's not going to have the birth control pills and the fluoride and the chlorine and all the nasty stuff that a lot of municipal water has in it. But at the same time, I've got things like bacterial based iron in my well water and I've got manganese in my well water and things that could be coming from, who knows, fertilizer runoff from local farms, or just the fact that water, when it's passing through underground springs, can sometimes hit areas that have very, very high mineral deposits of iron or manganese. And you actually don't want a lot of that building up in your body because frankly, bacterial based iron can turn your insides into rust if you drink too much of it. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to get rusty. So what I do is I use an iron filter and a manganese filter. Bet you didn't see that coming on my water. And then because the water, after it's taken up from the ground up through tubes, through an iron filter and through a manganese filter, I lose a lot of that ionic structure. You lose a lot of the positive negative ion separation that you would get when water is actually structured. Or another word for this would be clustered. So the water, after it passes through those two filters, it passes through these series of glass beads. It's called a vortex. And what I use for that is what's called a hydroenergizer, which is a whole house structured water unit. You can take it and no matter how you're filtering your water, you just take whatever water filtration system you're using, right? Like reverse osmosis or carbon block or whatever, and you put a structured water filter wherever the water is after it's passed through that other filter and it restructures the water. It's really simple.

Is that hard to do in a house that's already built?

No, because you just take the pipe, you find your water filter, and even if the water filter doesn't exist yet, you know, let's say you, you retrofit and you add a water filter. Or maybe you just want to structure your water and worry about filtering it later. You get one of these pipes and you just attach it in. Wherever water comes into your home, like from, let's say coming from the municipal water supply, you just put this pipe right there. And even if you rent, you can do it. But it's $199. It's called a whole house structured water unit. Now that's not going to filter the water per se, but it is something that I highly recommend that you include, especially if you're going to be drinking the water that's in your house. Is this structured water filter?

Are we starting with best case scenario here? So structured water and water filter is like where we should strive towards.

That's a really good one, two combo. And as far as the filter itself, I'll put a link to an article that I wrote about everything from treating your home for dirty electricity, to mold to fungus, to which household cleaners you should use and beyond. It's called how to detox your home. But in that article I talk about what I would recommend in terms of a filter to come prior to that, that structured water filter, you know, in addition to that structured water filter. And really the gold standard would be a reverse osmosis filter that actually is able to remineralize. So they make reverse osmosis filters that come with a built in remineralizer because reverse osmosis will do a really good job getting just about all unwanted substances, you know, like chlorine, for example, and fluoride, out of the water. But you also filter out a lot of good minerals like calcium and magnesium and potassium. And not only is mineralized water lower in minerals that your body needs for normal metabolism, but it also tends to be more acidic. So when minerals are alkalinic by nature, so when you add minerals back in, you get more alkalinic water as well, which can keep you from, for example, leaching minerals from your bones to replace the minerals that the water doesn't have in it.

So, and when you remineralize water, what do you do that with? Sounds like a dumb question, but it's.

Almost like a salt stick that's built into the filter that the water passes through after it's been through the reverse osmosis.

That, and how do you.

All the minerals back in.

How do you trust that salt stick?

Because the engineers that make these reverse osmosis filters with remineralizers, you're keeping your fingers crossed, know what they were doing right. You're gonna pay for a whole house. Reverse osmosis filter with remineralization, anywhere from 250 to 500 bucks. You can order them off of Amazon and you can have a plumber install them, or you can be your own plumber, just like I talked about in last week's podcast, how I installed my own little toilet bidet to give myself a butt wash after I poo. You could pretty easily, if you could install a toilet bidet, you could install a reverse osmosis filter, and it's much better than the other option, which would be a carbon block, because a carbon block, it's a charcoal filter, and it doesn't do quite as good a job with removing smaller minerals like, say, fluoride. So, but yeah, that's the 1, 2 combo is reverse osmosis plus the structured water filter. Now, a couple other things that I should mention. First of all, I think that you should test your water just like I think you should test your body to know if maybe you don't need to be taking vitamin D because your vitamin D levels are just fine. Or maybe you, you don't necessarily need to be wasting your money on, say, like a magnesium supplement because your red blood cell magnesium levels look just fine. But maybe you are the type of person who should be on, like a, like a thyroid glandular because you've got really low levels of T3 and T4 or perhaps you need to be on some type of like a ginger or turmeric based anti inflammatory because you have high levels of hscrp, right? An inflammatory marker. In the same way that you can kind of like, you know, laser target your supplementation protocol. You can laser target how you're treating your water. You can get home water test kits, you know, for example, I'll link in the show notes, but you can get these off of Amazon where you can test the water that's in your home. Now I don't think that's necessarily the best gold standard way to test water really. In an ideal scenario you should a, if you live in a municipal area, go to the EPA's website because they actually, at least in the U.S. they, they have the local municipality put yearly water reports up online because federal law requires that those reports be run on a regular basis. And you can actually look up the, the water report for whatever zip code that you happen to be in. I link to the specific page that allows you to just type your zip code in and see the exact levels of anything. You know, like lead is a biggie, for example, but they'll show you the parts per billion or the parts per million of anything that's in your water. So that's one thing that you can do is you can actually see what's in your water. You know, for example, where I live in Spokane, they don't add fluoride to the water, right? So I don't have to be quite as careful about fluoride filtration if I were on the municipal water supply. The other thing that you can do if you say don't have a municipal water supply, but you still want to get your water tested, but you don't want to flirt with the inaccuracy that a lot of these home water test kits tend to err towards because the home water test kits will give you ballpark, but they're not as good as getting tested by what's called a certified water testing laboratory. And again, the U.S. environmental Protection Agency, bless their hearts, the EPA, they actually do have a website where you can go and have your drinking water tested by contacting a laboratory that's certified for water testing in your state or your territory. And so I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Because state certified testing is actually a very good way to get your water laboratory certified tested. If you really, I mean you think about you're showering in it, you're bathing in it, drinking all the time. I mean, unless you're like me and you just drink Zevia. But I'm still not, I'm not showering in Zevia yet anyways, though. Yeah. So the EPA has some really good resources on their website for testing. I also wanted to throw in something else that I've been playing around with quite a bit lately. I have one on my countertop and recently they started working with Ben Greenfield Fitness to give all of our fans and listeners discounts. But it's this stuff called Aqua True. A Q U A T R U. And this is the first and only countertop reverse osmosis water purifier that doesn't require plumbing, that doesn't require insulation, but it filters out everything from carcinogens to perchlorate, which is basically rocket fuel that we tend to find in water, to gasoline additives, to prescription drug residue like antidepressants and hormones from birth control that wind up in people's water. They've got what's called a four stage filtration that removes over 20 different contaminants from water. And they've compared it against all these different like fridge water filters and pitcher filters. And those fridge water filters and pitcher filters, those remove very simple chemicals like chlorine, but they still leave behind a pretty toxic chemical concoction in terms of all the stuff that remains in the water. So the Aqua True has four stages. So basically stage one is a pre filter and then it passes through reverse osmosis, Then it passes through what's called a reverse osmosis membrane. Then it passes through an activated carbon filter. So basically it gets extremely pure. My one caveat, my one complaint about this thing is it doesn't have remineralization, so you still need to put a pinch of sea salt in your water or use trace liquid minerals, or use effervescent electrolyte tablets or still get minerals in your water. But as far as a very cool and very affordable way to get countertop reverse osmosis, especially if you rent and you don't want to put like a, you know, a whole system filter somewhere like that. It's, it's pretty affordable. They go for, I think the, the list price on those is 3, 49. And our code, if you just go to their website, we'll put a link in the, in the show notes, it's Aquatru water. But our code, you get 100 bucks off and the discount code is just $100, like $100. So you can get $100 off of an Aqua True countertop filtration And I've drank the water from it. It's actually, it's really good. I think it's worth buying.

And you. Is there anything that it doesn't filter out?

Not that one. That one surprisingly gets everything. It's the first countertop filter I've ever seen that actually gets everything. Not to make this sound like some big commercial or something, but, but it's, it's a, it's a good option. Okay. And you can, you can even use it, you know, when you travel if you wanted to. Like, if you've got like some kind of a, you know, an Airbnb you're going to go to for a couple of weeks or, you know, say like you have an RV or a boat. I mean, you could, you could put it in a lot of different places and just literally like take water from a river and have that be reverse osmosis filtered and carbon block filtered. So.

Wow, that's powerful.

Yeah, so that's, that's skinny in water. And then if you really want to take things to the nth level, keep your water in glass bottles, get it exposed to sunlight or infrared. Light would also work like infrared, near infrared. Put your water in your sauna, put it on the ground, get it exposed to lots of good negative ions. So water's cool stuff. I drink a lot of water. I'm kind of obsessed with water. My dad is in the water filter business. He's the guy who first kind of got me introduced to structured water filters. And I mean, it's a night and day difference in terms of the way that everything from just constipation to hydration, to how often you need to drink during workouts, to how often you pee. It' sit's amazing what drinking good water versus drinking crappy water can do for your body. So there you have it.

So the Aquatru, it's the cheap and easy way to go.

Yep, Aquatru is the cheap and easy way to go. Get your water tested either way. And if you're on gold standard reverse osmosis with remineralization plus structuring, and that will give you the gold standard stamp of approval from the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. Water. Hello, Ben and Rachel. I'm wondering if you have ever heard about the brain balance centers. While they are mostly geared toward children, I am wondering if there is any application of this sort of treatment training towards adults. The center is based on the work of Dr. Robert Melillo and his book Disconnected, the groundbreaking brain balance program for children with autism, adhd, dyslexia, and other neurological disorders. Thanks, James. In San Francisco. I've never been to a brain balance center. Have you, Rachel?

I haven't been to a brain balance center, no. I feel like my brain is pretty balanced but I can't see inside it so I should probably go and check it out.

I, I don't think my brain is balanced. I think I'm kind of weird. I, I, I'm working on it. I'm doing all this like an EMG training. I'm still doing the EMG training. I've done 40 sessions now of brain training.

You noticing a difference?

Oh my gosh.

Cutting edge stuff.

There's like five different protocols that like, I know which protocol now will help me with like early sleep onset. I've got one that I'll use for like pre workout priming. I've got one that I use just to decrease distractibility the whole rest of the day. There's one I actually do while I'm writing that puts me into alpha brainwave state while I'm writing it. It's really crazy. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I went down to LA and I trained with at this place called the Peak Brain Institute and they taught me for almost a week how to use these electrodes that you attach to your head that plug into this software. It's called neurofeedback and it detects or rewards you when you go into specific brainwave frequencies. Like if you've got it set in a setting where you want to increase alpha brainwaves and decrease stressful fast beta brainwaves, you can actually do a 30 minute training protocol and just shove yourself into this enhanced focus that literally lasts for days. It's really interesting stuff. And it permanently can rewire your brain into things like decreased distractibility and a shorter sleep latency, how long it takes you to fall asleep. It's really interesting stuff.

The only downside to it right now is just that it's particularly expensive. Right?

Yeah. For you to go to LA and do the full training and come, then they send you home with all the gear. It depends. But it's like 3,500, $4,000, something like that, which I think for permanently rewiring your brain is a pretty good deal. Yeah, I know that. Dave Asprey, the bulletproof exec, he's got a 40 years of Zen type of program where you achieve the equivalent of 40 years of monk meditation with a week of neurofeedback training. And this is kind of similar to that, except you're doing it in your own house with like an instructor on the other end who's looking at your protocols and giving you feedback and telling you whatever, your beta brainwaves are too fast, we need to switch you to a different protocol for the next day. But I don't think that this is what these brain balance centers do, because I looked into this and these brain balance centers. It is based on this book called Disconnected Kids, the groundbreaking brain balance program for children with autism, adhd, dyslexia and other neurological disorders. And the book itself is described as a fully customizable exercise program that targets physical, sensory and academic performance, a behavior modification plan, a food plan, and then a follow up program to help ensure lasting results. So I went to their website and it looks like it's kind of an integrated approach. But some concerns popped up right away for me. For example, when I clicked on their Clean eating nutrition system, there were some phrases in there that right off the bat were red flags for me if I had a kid or if I myself was dealing with something that tends to often be very immune system related. And I'll get into that and why that is in a second, like ADD or ADHD or autism. He's got recommendations for relatively hefty portions of legumes and grains, which are two things that I don't necessarily think are bad, but in many cases they can contribute to a lot of the immune system issues that magnify ADHD and autism, et cetera, symptoms. He talks a lot about lean protein, when in fact high amounts of healthy fat intake for brain are crucial. And their little pie plate that shows the percentages of what they recommend for food, healthy fats is like this tiny teeny sliver, right? Like it's like 5% of the pie chart. And so, you know, just the fact that the entire nutrition program appears relatively flawed gives me great pause to be able to say that this is something that I would recommend. That's not to say that there's not a specific nutrition approach that I would recommend. And there is one, but this would not be it. So when it comes to children or adults for something like autism, for example, one of the best people in my opinion to turn to as a resource is a doctor named Natasha Campbell McBride. And Natasha Campbell McBride is an MD and she has a graduate degree in neurology. So she's worked as a neurologist and as a neurosurgeon. And. And the interesting thing is that she had a child who was diagnosed autistic at A very young age. And she began to do a lot of research that kind of flew in the face of modern medicine because she realized that there were no really good answers in terms of what physicians were learning in medical school or what modern medicine was using to treat ADD and ADHD and autism. And a lot of these issues that seem to be related to the immune system. And what she discovered was that a lot of these autistic children, for example, they're born with perfectly normal brains and perfectly normal sensory organs and a perfectly normal nervous system. But then when she looked into their digestive system, that was a major source of the issues. So in many cases, these kids had like pathogenic microbes inside their digestive tract. They had leaky gut syndrome from very, very low levels of gut flora. You know, for example, being born via C section versus vaginal delivery or low amounts of breastfeeding and high amounts of like a soy protein, soy formula intake at birth. And what they found when she did some studies on these kids was that a lot of this toxicity would flow from the gut, through the body and into the brain. So they were getting a lot of these lipopolysaccharides and a lot of these toxins and microbes flooding into the bloodstream of a child and getting into the brain of the child. And this can happen with adults too. And that was contributing to the conglomerate of symptoms of autism and ADD and adhd, et cetera, like hyperactivity and dyslexia and obsessive compulsive disorder. And so her recommendation is you start by going after the child's or the adults, in this case, gut flora. So when we look at that, her entire program is called the GAPS Diet, G, A P S diet. And she's got a book, it's actually called Gut and Psychology Syndrome. That's what GAPS stands for. The book is called Gut and Psychology, Natural Treatment for Autism, Dyspraxia, add, dyslexia, adhd, Depression and schizophrenia. And this program is based off of a, a high intake of fermented foods and probiotics. So you're rebuilding all the beneficial bacteria in your gut that can tend to control some of these pathogenic disease causing microbes and bacteria and viruses and fungi. It's based around a lot of, of breastfeeding and very high intake of healthy fats, Vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K, dha, a lot of the things that help to restore health to the nervous system. So things like cod liver oil and algae and probiotic intake and again, very easily digestible Foods too, like leaving out a lot of the grains and legumes in favor of a higher amount of more ancestral foods and wild caught fish and dark greens and things like that. And then it's also got a very intense detoxification type of protocol along with it to get rid of a lot of these microbes that build up within the system. So, you know, Epsom salt baths, use of sea salt, the use of what's called seaweed powder, apple cider vinegar, baking soda, a lot of these things that naturally detox the body. If I were to recommend one book for folks who would want to learn how to, how to naturally control a lot of this stuff, it would be her book, the GAPS diet book.

So I'm curious, I'm curious if there's been any research done that's actually drawn a correlation between the gut and ADD and adhd.

Yeah, I know, I know that in her book she goes into a whole bunch of it. There's another book by a Harvard neurologist who studied autism for a couple of decades, and she wrote a book called the Autism Revolution. The Autism Revolution. And in that book she talks about how closely linked neurological function of patients with issues like ADD and autism. How closely linked that is to just basic toxin and cellular waste removal issues. So what we're talking about here are people who are low in glutathione, low in vitamin C, low in vitamin E. People have impaired what's called methylation, which is involved in producing neurotransmitters and managing gene expression and creating, for example, like really functional, healthy cell membranes. And so what she found was very similar to Natasha Campbell McBride. You need to both A, build up the gut flora and build up the body's ability to produce its own neurotransmitters, etc. Well, B, detoxifying the body with things like glutathione and binders and then also intake of a lot of key nutrients like again, dha, vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin K. So her book is actually really good too. That one's called the Autism Revolution. But it's really interesting. These aren't like fringe Unabomber style hippies out in the woods saying that you need to eat chlorella to fix autism. These are actual, like pediatric researchers who have found some pretty big links behind specifically the gut toxins and a lot of these symptoms. So.

And did you get a chance to look at the brain stuff in the brain balance center? It sounds like James is wondering if there is an application for adults in terms of brain Training?

Yeah. As far as the actual brain training, it doesn't look like they're, they're doing. So they have one part of it called, called sensory motor in which they work on motor skills and sensory detection. Right. Like proprioception, joint mobility and flexibility exercises, balancing exercises, what's called reflex training, gazing and eye based exercises. I like that approach of treating the nervous system, but I feel like you got to make sure that you're not treating a nervous system that's void of the nutrients necessary to build a healthy, healthy nervous system or a nervous system that's overloaded with toxins and metals that needs to be adjusted. Because I think that improving motor skills and sensory detection is good, but you need to come at things from another standpoint as well. If I were going to self manage this myself and not go to one of these brain balance centers, I would grab the GAPS diet book and then the other thing that I would use that's a really good integrated approach for sensory motor health. And I interviewed these folks, I could, I can dig up the interview and put it in the show notes because they have really good programs that they send to your house for training your entire nervous system. And that one's called Z Health. Z Health. I recorded a podcast with this guy named Dr. Eric Cobb. The title of the podcast is how to make your nervous system unstoppable, eliminate pain and build your brain. And this entire Z Health program, they've got a lot of different things. They've got their gym vision program which weans you off off of ever needing glasses again. They've got basically like balance programs for athletes, but they've got also programs that are designed just to make people functional again who may have become dysfunctional from things like neurological disorders. So that's called Z Health. And I'll link to that podcast. I'm making a note to myself right now. You go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 361 I'll link to the Z Health stuff in the show notes. But, but I always look at these things like if it were me, what would I do? If it were my kid, what would I do? And I'd say your biggest wins of everything I just mentioned would be grabbing the gut and psychology syndrome book, listening to that podcast on Z Health and really paying attention to the dietary and detoxification components.

Hello, Ben and Rachel. I was just thinking if you have any opinions or experience with diatomaceous earth, I'm taking it for possible intestinal parasites. And I was wondering if it has any research behind it or if you've experimented with it. Ben, because I know you were saying that you've had intestinal parasites before or if there are any other benefits than those of controlling intestinal parasites. Thank you so much and for all your amazing content. It's my favorite podcast and has been for years. Thank you.

So, Rachel, how would you pronounce. Oh, I'm diatomaceous. Just throwing me under the bus as an Australian. How do you guys say that word in Australia?

Well, I've phonetically pronounced it like I should, and it looks to me like it should be pronounced diatomaceous.

Diatomaceous. I like it. Diatomaceous. It's a. Diatomaceous, I believe, is how it's called. Diatomaceous.

Thank you.

Diatomaceous earth. It's also known as, like, edible earth, clay, like detoxification clay. Diatomaceous clay. But it actually. It's really interesting. So the word itself, it's called that because diatomaceous earth is actually made up of the fossilized remains of a bunch of tiny little aquatic organisms called. Ready for this? Diatoms. Seriously? No, they're called diatoms. You can find pictures of them on the Internet. They're what are called Microsoft fossils. They're these tiny little aquatic microorganisms that you find in, like, plankton and in, like, marine and freshwater sediments. And they're. They're really interesting, but you can actually collect their fossils and they form these giant rocks made almost entirely of these fossil. Diatoms. Diatoms.

So do they have to. Can. I mean, do they have to, like, find this stuff to make diatomaceous earth?

Or did they grow it, harvest it from the ocean like you harvest rocks in the ocean?

That's kind of cool.

Kind of cool. Kind of sexy. Did you ever watch. Do you ever watch Marvin Martian?

No.

Reference.

No. I also. I think that happened before I was from the Looney.

From the Looney Tunes.

I remember the Looney Tunes dude.

Marvin Martian. Hello. No, that. That. That's not. That was Mr. Bean. Marvin the Martian. My Ludium Q46 explosive space modulator. Excuse me, do you have any diatoms? I'm hunting for diatom microfossils.

Oh, never gets old.

Never, never. Cartoons are great, by the way, I was watching my children. If any of you don't read this website, if you ever want a cartoon fix, this is my favorite cartoon website on the face of the planet. Proceed with caution if you're easily offended. It's called the oatmeal. Theoatmeal.com T H E O A T M E A L the oatmeal.com My kids right now because they discovered this website and I'm. I'm a little concerned about that because it actually does have some things on there that are potentially offensive slash disturbing. You know, like, I don't know, exploding weasels fighting babies and stuff like that. But it's got a. It's. It has a. He's developed two card games, one called Exploding Kittens and one called Bears versus Babies. On the topic of cartoons, my kids lately have been begging me to buy them those card games. So to get some, some healthy father son time in, I might actually purchase my children Exploding Kittens so that I can play with them. So.

I don't know where to go with that.

I'm sorry. Legos. Exploding Kittens. Anyways though, so diatomaceous earth. You get it. And it looks like a white powder. You may be familiar with this because in many cases products like dusts and powders and pressurized liquids that are used to clean buildings or use in agricultural settings, sometimes used in gardens a lot of times, like in pet foods, you'll find diatomaceous earth because they'll put it into things to, for example, naturally eliminate viruses or naturally eliminate parasites because it breaks down the exoskeleton of, of any insect or bacteria. Like bedbugs, for example. You could sprinkle it on a bed for bed bugs. And in the human body, it has some pretty cool effects too. So diatomaceous earth, first of all, we were talking about detoxification, and it actually acts as a natural detoxifying agent, which is kind of cool because it's inexpensive. You can buy it online. Now, you need to make sure if you're going to ingest it, you want to get what's called food grade diatomaceous earth. That's a search term you'd want to use, food grade diatomaceous earth. I'll link to some of my favorites in the show notes. But the way that it works with detoxification is it has a silica in it, very high amounts of silica in it. And silica is an extremely high antioxidant compound. It's broken down in the body into what's called a colloidal form. And that colloidal form carries an extra electrical charge that attaches to free radicals and it also attaches to toxins, binds them and then removes them from the body via your sweat and your urine and your feces. So it can slow oxidative damage. And the other cool Thing is, it also binds aluminum, so it can be used for like, heavy metal detoxification. So that's, that's one cool thing that it can do. You can use it to also. Speak of the devil, purify water. So in many cases you'll. They'll use diatomaceous earth in water filters to help to purify the water that's passing through the filter. And you can also add a little bit of diatomaceous earth to the water that you drink to help to kill viruses and parasites and things along those lines. But it can be used as a way to purify water. It can be used as a parasite cleanse. So the cool thing about diatomaceous earth, again, is it breaks down the exoskeleton, breaks down the wall of just about any insect parasite, etc. And they've done some research on diatomaceous earth and what it does to parasites, and they found that it can drastically reduce the risk of parasitic and worm infection in both animals and humans. So that's another thing that's good for. And that's the thing that I'm most familiar with it for is people who get parasites or who do like a gut test, a stool test, and have parasites and get it removed that way.

And so is it just, is it a thick clay, is it liquid, or is it powder?

It's powder.

Okay. And you just mix it with water?

Mm, yep. It, you can use it as an insecticide. So if you have like ants and insects or bed bugs or anything like that in your house, you can use diatomaceous. You can sprinkle it wherever you're having insect issues. And like on contact, it kills insects. Wow. Because again, it, it literally just like goes straight through, like a razor blade through the waxy outer coating of an insect's exoskeleton and then basically the insect just dies.

So very cool.

What does.

I do that to humans, though, just.

So you know, you don't have to worry about it eating away your exoskeleton. It actually, interestingly, is very high in minerals, so it can assist with mineralization of bones as well. So when, when you consume it in oral form, it can help with that. You can also, like make your own toothpaste with it because it works really well for cleaning the teeth. It can work as a skin exfoliator for an anti aging effect, like a clay rub on the face. All sorts of cool things that you can use diatomaceous earth for. Excuse me, I'm burping up my zevia. Wow. That was gross.

And so four intestinal parasites with that same thing.

Hold on. You can taste my green smoothie inside my mouth. Wow. Nasty. What were you saying?

Okay, four intestinal parasites, Is that what you would recommend?

Yeah, honestly, if I had parasites, that's the one thing I'd use. I mean, there's other stuff that can speed up the process. I produce at Greenfield Fitness Systems, I make a product called Nature Cleanse. It's called Nature Cleanse Detox and Gut Cleanser. I know I'm throwing around the word detox on today's podcast a lot, but it's a mix. It's got a colon blended it, which is turkey, rhubarb root and slippery elm bark and marshmallow root and fennel seed and fenugreek, which is really, really good cleansing and, like, therapeutic for your. For your large intestine. If you get, like, irritable bowel syndrome or bloating or gas, stuff like that. It's got a mineral blend in it to remineralize your body and stuff moves through. So it's got, like, goats mineral whey, fermented mineral whey powder, and then some organic beet juice concentrate, which is also very high in minerals. It's got what's called a botanical blend in it, it to help to heal and soothe your stomach, which is made out of hyssop, ginger, yucca, rosemary, speak of the devil, and turmeric, and then an activated fiber blend. So it's just basically flaxseed meal, a little bit of apple fiber, a little bit of rice bran, and a little bit of arabinogalactin, and you put all that together, and if you were to take that along with diatomaceous earth, it would help you to kind of move stuff through a little bit. So I would combine it with something like that, just like a. A gentle detox. But I swear by that Nature Cleanse stuff. It's not something I use on a daily basis. Right. But if you've traveled a lot and you have a little bit of traveler's constipation you got to get rid of, or you're taking something like diatomaceous earth, and you need to move some stuff through your system, it works really well. You want to make sure you drink a ton of water when you use it. In my opinion, it works even better when you have a lot of water in your system. But that stuff's called Nature. Nature Cleanse. Nature Cleanse. So that would be something that you could combine with diatomaceous earth for like, a 12 combo for parasites. But yeah, absolutely. And you know what the sign is that you don't have parasites anymore.

What?

Okay, so this is nasty. Parasites hatch like when the moon is full or when there's moon cycles, they hatch. And so like every two weeks at night you get insomnia, like clockwork. And you know, in addition to having like some gut issues or you know, you could always do like a stool test or whatever. But laying awake at night like you know, every couple of weeks, like clockwork, for, for like a weekend or so, it's a pretty good sign you have parasites. It's kind of nasty, huh?

That is super.

It's because they're hatching. I don't know, they're laying, they're laying their little eggs inside of you at night. Isn't that gross?

It's like the stuff of my nightmares. I'm not gonna be able to sleep tonight, but it's not going to be because I have intestinal parasites.

Hi Ben. Toby Stevenson, Seattle, Washington. I'm a firefighter over in this area and was just wondering. I'm pretty good about fighting cravings on a normal day when I get sleep, but working 2448 hour shifts as a firefighter, my ability to fight those cravings is definitely less when I've been sleep deprived, definitely more hungry and my willpower isn't as good. And also obviously from lack of sleep, my workouts aren't as good. And being in shape is important to the job, obviously for injury prevention and it could be potentially my life. Do you have any recommendations? Biohacks supplements, good nutritional factoids for us to be able to recover and fight those cravings and get a better workout the next day. Thanks. Really Enjoy the podcast. I had food cravings yesterday.

What for?

I got up at 3:45am I yesterday because I just, I just was excited to work. I had a bunch of stuff to do, I had a bunch of articles to write. I Woke up at 3:45 and I was just like effort. I'm gonna get up and go, go work. So I did, worked really, really hard all day long and I, I actually did. Speaking of, of smart drugs, I did take, I, I took not smart drugs. I took just like natural nootropics in the morning.

Oh, did you just mix them up as well?

The big big cup of co coffee. And then I just worked hard the entire day and then collapsed last night. But all day long I had food cravings. And the reason for that is that what happens is you're more likely to reach for Donuts or pizza, or in my case, almond butter and dark chocolate. When you are low on sleep because not only do you produce more ghrelin, which is like your appetite stimulating hormone, and less leptin, which is your appetite regulating hormone when you're low on sleep.

Sleep.

But what researchers have found, and they did a study at UC Berkeley with fmri, with magnetic resonance imaging, and they found impaired activity in sleep derived people in the brain's frontal lobe, which governs things like complex decision making and also in the reward areas of the brain. Right. Like the areas of the brain that would normally cause, for example, a release of dopamine when you consume a food to help make you feel full and satiated and, and happy. You don't produce as much of that when you're low on sleep. And so you just walk around craving food. And in my opinion, exercise kind of sucks when you're low on sleep. So as Toby alluded to, his willpower isn't very good. He struggles to work out. So yeah, it can be tough after you've worked a 24 to 28 hour shift to actually control things like appetite and get a good workout in. So I definitely have a few little tips I would throw Toby's way. My dad was a firefighter, by the way, so I'm not just, I'm not just talking about my ass here. Yeah.

Your brother as well a firefighter?

Yeah, Zach was a firefighter. My dad, family of them, was a, was a firefighter. I was actually, I was a firefighter kind of. My dad was chief of the, of the, the Rural Fire Department down in Idaho. Lewson, Idaho. And I would go around with him on the truck and just like. So, so my job, you know, for example, there'd be like big fires raging across the hills is I would just like run into people's yards and like grab their garden hoses and begin to like help dig fire ditches and just like get all the, all the water wet around the house. I wasn't one of those guys who, who was like a real firefighter. I didn't have like the mask and the ax and, you know, the house. I wasn't a trained firefighter, but I.

Did and the overall I kind of.

Kind of worked as a firefighter.

That's awesome. You have to put it on the recipe. Good job then.

Thank you anyways though. So what do I do on a day like yesterday when I'm on sleep? First of all, there are ways that you can make food taste better without dumping extra calories into your body and one of my favorite ways to do that because I do a lot of like when I've got a busy day and I'm on the go and just in general, I do a lot of like, you know, coconut milk based smoothies and I do a lot of like, you know, like protein powder mixes. And you know, I'm not necessarily walking around like eating or you know, drinking bone broth and eating chicken carcasses all day long. I do, I will admit, a decent amount of just like engineered food when I'm working because it's fast, right? So I'll do like coconut milk mixed with like a rice protein powder mixed with like some unsweetened coconut flakes and a handful of raw almonds. Right, like, and that'll be the meal. So. So in many cases I found that just having a really, really good bottle of dark chocolate stevia on hand, that's one thing that can help food to taste good without dumping a bunch of calories into your body. Some people claim that the sweet taste of anything causes what's called an incretin hormone release or a gastric hormone release that sparks your appetite later on after you've tasted that sweet thing. I don't find that to be the case. I like dressing things up with a little dark chocolate stevia. So that's one thing. Another thing that I use quite a bit, you know, when I know I need to keep appetite cravings at bay is just a boatload of sparkling water because the bubbles and the carbonation keep you full. And again, I'll wait for my big fat check from Zevia because I keep talking about them and they're not a sponsor of today's show. Isn't that horrible? Yes, I know they're getting all this free pr. Just good karma. No, actually I've got like I order Pellegrino from Amazon now. I've got the Zevia stuff. I've got, my water is filtered, but then I have one of these soda streams. I can add carbonation of water. 90% of the water I drink is bubbly. I don't like to drink flat water very much at all. And the bubbly water helps to keep you full, in my opinion. So that's another thing. I use natural gum. So I chew gum a lot and that helps to keep appetite cravings at bay. The stuff I've been using lately, I kind of bounced around between brands because I found the stuff with zygote xylitol in it tended to like, I don't know if this is the case for everybody. But chomping on xylitol all day long kind of gives you the farts like that. Sugar, alcohol. It's a fermentable sugar alcohol. Xylitol is. And so a lot of times if you have gas and you can't figure out why it could be related to the gum that you're chewing.

The gum you're chewing.

Yeah. So now I've been using this stuff called simply gum. Simply gum. They've got bunch of different flavors. They've got cinnamon and mint and fennel and coffee and maple flavored gum. But it's extremely natural. They only use a few ingredients in the gum. There's a little bit of like a cane sugar in there, but it's extremely low amounts. Like we're talking just like a touch for flavor. So it actually doesn't have stevia or xylitol or anything in it. Both calls simply gum. Simply gum. It's advertised as non GMO vegan gum. So mint, cinnamon, ginger, fennel, coffee and maple. They've got like a sample pack. That's what I order and just keep in my bag. I love gum for controlling appetite cravings. Another one that I do quite a bit of, I have one to two servings of this a day. So if I'm having like lunch, it's usually a quick fry up in like a cast iron skillet for dinner. In many cases, whatever general Jessa makes. Because I tend to just like need I can eat and eat and eat if I'm not careful. So I like to get a lot of insoluble fiber into my system because it mixes with water and kind of expands in your stomach. So like if Jessa makes, let's say, you know, steak and salad, I will take the steak and salad she makes and I'll put it over a bed of this stuff. And it's called miracle new noodles. Miracle noodles. So they're made out of what's called like a Japanese yam. Extremely high in insoluble fiber. It's just like having something on a bed of pasta, but there's zero actual carbohydrates or calories. It's just all a bunch of insoluble fiber that expands in your stomach. So that's another one that I keep on hand. They're just like, they're gluten free noodles with zero net carbs made out of water soluble fiber. So it's something called a konjac plant that it's made from. So or shirataki Noodles is another name that it goes by, but they're zero carb noodles, so they call them miracle noodles. So that's another one that I would keep on hand, would be miracle Noodles. Another one. Another little hack here. Now we're getting into more of, like, the supplementation scenario would be if you're not producing as much dopamine in response to food intake when you're low on sleep, why not just, like, add a little dopamine into the equation? When you do eat, you can get dopamine supplements. There's this stuff called mucuna dopa extract, and it's just a dopamine precursor. Like, I have a little bottle of it upstairs. I have this stuff called brain food. It's made by. I forget. I think Natural Stacks is the company that makes this brain. It's called dopamine brain food. And as the name implies, it's just like dopamine precursors for your brain. And you can just take a few capsules of this stuff prior to eating, and it helps to replace a lot of that dopamine that you might not be taking. So it's called dopamine Brain food. That'd be another one that I'd look into as a supplement. A few other things that can quell your appetite. Ketones. So I wrote a whole article called how to get into ketosis. But there are these companies now making powders that are just what are called beta hydroxybutyrate salts in many cases mixed with, like, powdered mct. Pruvit is one good company. P R U V I T. And they're just like ketone salts that you can, you know, add to teas or coffees or whatever. And being able to get into a state of ketosis, especially like on a long day where you're tired and you need to control appetite, that comes in very handy as well, having some kind of ketones on hand to jack up your blood levels of ketones. Speaking of which, did you see the story that I did on Snapchat last week?

I didn't.

Okay, so here's the deal. The U.S. department of Defense, or DARPA, they are working to develop some type of fuel that the military can use, like a liquid ketone fuel that the military can use to keep themselves in ketosis for very long periods of time in the absence of food intake to increase performance.

Now, how long's a very long period of time?

Oh, like three to five days to just go, go, go with this little liquid shot. So I got my hands on the stuff that they've been trialing for these defense studies. It's the same stuff that I podcasted about when I spoke with Dr. Veach, who's like the world's top ketone researcher, and he was talking about how there are all these funding issues with development, developing this particular ketone, and it's still, you know, it costs like $30,000 to actually get a bottle. Well, they sent me a bottle of it and wow, I snapchatted the whole thing. I drank it, I did a workout. Like my ketones, I tested within 10 minutes. For anybody who does ketosis, this will be meaningful to you. Within 10 minutes. I'm sorry, it was 20 minutes. Within 10 minutes, my ketones jumped from about 0.9 up to 3.8. And then within 20 minutes, my ketones were up in the five. That's like your millimolar levels of ketones. And they stayed that way as I was just hammering on my bicycle. So they sent me another bottle and this time they wanted me to see what would happen if I mix it with glucose. So basically, you're jacking up your blood glucose and you're jacking up your blood ketones cycling simultaneously, which is not that great for health necessarily to have the high blood glucose. But for performance, this combination of high blood ketones and high blood glucose is technically allowing you to tap into the best of both worlds. Right? Extreme fat burning efficiency along with glycolysis. So the bottle gets here tomorrow and I'm supposed to use it for that toughest mudder that I'm racing on Saturday. So I'm literally going to slam them a bunch of glucose and exogenous ketones prior to that race and see what happens when you have both molecules in high concentration.

Is it going to be like rocket fuel and you better win?

I don't know that or pressure that or I'll have like diarrhea halfway through the race and I'll be, you know, crawling through the electroshock therapy with, with.

With poo running down your leg.

Crapshoot. Now I. Backside. Yeah, we'll see anyways though, so. So ketones, I don't necessarily recommend using that approach, but ketones can keep the appetite stimulated. A few other things that I would recommend. I did a podcast with a really good researcher named Alex Ritson on how to maintain muscle even when you can't work out. And many of the things that we talk about in that show you could use as passive fitness maintenance strategies when either decision making fatigue or cognitive fatigue or sleep based fatigue is keeping you from getting your actual workout in. What I mean by that is let's say you can't work out. You could do, for example, hot cold contrast therapy, still get the lymph fluid, still get the blood flow, you know, barrel sauna, dry sauna, infrared sauna, whatever. And combine that with cold showers and go back and forth and still get a workout without you actually having to say like throw a 225 pound barbell on your back and struggle under that weight as you're sleep deprived. Right. Another example would be electrostimulation where you're just outsourcing all the work that your brain would normally have to do to an external brain. In this case an electrostimulation unit. Don't get me wrong, they're still uncomfortable. Like your muscles are still contracting, you're still building up a bunch of lactic acid, there's still fatigue that sets in. But when you have an electrostimulation unit doing a lot of the work for you, that also can be a good strategy for, for exercising when you are, say sleep deprived. So that would be another option would be electrostimulation. So I like electrostimulation. I like hot cold contrast. Another one that actually works that we talked about last week, as silly as it may seem, is rebounding. Like literally jumping up and down on a trampoline. Studies have shown that that causes cardiovascular blood flow and even oxygen utilization. Similar to running at a moderate, moderate pace with none of the pounding, but at a lower, what's called rating of perceived exertion. Meaning you don't think you're working very hard. So you could literally, I mean if you're totally sleep deprived, you could just jump up and down on a trampoline. Trampoline while you're chewing your gum.

Always a lot more fun.

Yeah. And then another one that I really like that I've found to almost wake me up when I'm sleep deprived. And I've got a few sessions, I had some custom sessions created for me. I interviewed the gal that does these is Kundalini Yoga. There's something about the movement of energy through the seven chakras of your body. The focus on that third eye chakra, the swinging of the limbs, the deep breathing and the visualization that all work together in my opinion to make Kundalini Yoga a really good decision. On a day when you're sleep deprived or when you're too fatigued, they'll get like, let's say I'm formal, wad in or whatever else you're training for. Just basic Kundalini yoga session. And so if I wake up and I'm just beat up like I was yesterday. Yesterday I did a sauna session, I did a cold soak, I did Kundalini yoga and I went on a very easy bike ride. Right. So that's a typical day for me when I'm sleep deprived versus when I wake up and I know I'm ready and raring to go, I'll do something more difficult. Difficult. And maybe I'm not having to drink as much sparkling water and chew as much gum to keep my appetite satiated or take dopamine or anything like that. But those are a few of my tips for fighting food cravings. And also kind of still getting some semblance of a workout in even when you're tired.

Yeah. And Toby, you should try all those and let us know how you go in the comments section@bengreenfulfitness.com 361comments are are always good.

It's a good place to engage in healthy conversation. So yeah, I'll put a link to all those too. All those things I recommended, from the miracle noodles to the gum that I chew. Everything. And also everything else that we talked about this week over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 361 but don't go yet. A couple other things itunes reviews they immensely if there's one thing you could do for good karma, leave us a review in itunes. And we always give away a gift pack at the end of this show to the review that we choose to read on the show. So we're going to read a review that we got off of itunes. And if you hear your review read, all you need to do is email gear that's g e a rreenfieldfitnesssystems.com and when you email geergreenfieldfitnesssystems.Com we will send a gift pack straight to your house. Just be sure to let us know your T shirt size. So indicate small, medium, large, extra large or I think those are only four sizes. Possibly women, women's, women's or men's.

Yes. And this week's review comes from D. Moses. The title is Chuck Norris Protege. And it's five stars. And here we go. If you left your Chihuahua with Ben, you would get it back as a pit bull. Bears submit to him when he goes hunting. Jokes aside, you'll learn more about nutrition, supplementation, exercise and a lot more. His guests are extremely interesting to listen to and a great way to diversify your skills, knowledge and bookshelf. Since Most of them have written books. It's family friendly and highly recommended. Stop listening to the same song over and over again and indoctrinate yourself instead with the teachings of Mr. Greenfield and his guests.

Now, there is a flaw in that review.

Oh, no.

If you left your Chihuahua with me, you would not get it back as a pit bull. You would actually never get your Chihuahua back because it would be buried out in the forest somewhere. Because I can't stand Chihuahua. No, I wouldn't. I would never. I would never raise a finger to harm a small dog.

Dog.

But I'm. I have to admit that Chihuahuas drive me nuts.

I think that cute little thing.

I don't like those little yappers. That's just me. I'm never gonna be a guy with a little man purse who has a Chihuahua sticking up out of my purse. I'm never gonna have a little dog with a jeweled collar. I just. I don't know. I grew up and my grandparents had, like, these little Pomeranian dogs, and I just. I like a big, noble dog or like, I like a mastiff or a Labrador or a boxer or we have, like, a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Like, I like those kind of dogs.

Yeah, we got a Ridgeback. Ridgeback Lab mix.

Dogs that you look at and you're like, yeah, I see how you were related at one time to a wolf.

To wolf. Totally.

Yeah. Anyways, though, so. All right, well, we should wrap this thing up. So. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 361 is where you can go do everything from enter our Tough Mudder get together in Vegas to all the resources that we talked about on today's show. Check out the Finland Biohacker Summit or the Weston A. Price Conference or the Unbeatable Mind Retreat. Lots more goodies there, so check all that out. Fantastic interview coming at you this weekend, so be sure to download this weekend's podcast. You're going to love it. I'm just going to keep it a mystery history. It's a good one. And, Rachel, thanks for. Thanks for coming on and talking about water, autism, parasites, and more.

Thank you, Ben.

All right, catch you guys later. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance performance advice.

Sam.