396: The Myth About Antioxidants Blunting Exercise Response, Does Red Meat Really Give You Cancer, How To Make Coffee Healthier, Are Pre-Workout Supplements Addictive? (& The Brand New Ben Greenfield Podcast Co-Host Revealed!)

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, the myth about antioxidants blunting the exercise response. Does red meat really give you cancer? How to make coffee healthier? Are pre workout supplements addictive? The brand new Ben Greenfield podcast co host, and much more. I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet. From seal fit, kokoro, Spartan agoji, and the world's toughest mudder, to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, hormones, brain beauty and brawn to deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous life. Joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride. Well, if you were listening super duper carefully to the intro and my. My movie, what's it called? The movie previewer voice. Jay, what do you call the guy who, who does the movie announcing? I mean, the movie announcer voice.

I think it's quote, epic dude with epic voice. End quote.

Yes, the epic dude with the epic voice. If you're listening to the epic dude with the epic voice intro in which I try to sound really sexy and movie announcer ish, you may have noted that I mentioned something about a new podcast co host. And yes, we have a new podcast co host. If you are an old timey podcast listener, if you're an OG or you may remember Brock, my Canadian podcast sidekick who has moved on to greener pastures. I don't know, eating poutine, playing more hockey up Canada. You may even remember Rachel, my lovely, beautiful Australian vegan sidekick. And so what I've decided to do is get a Canadian, Australian vegan, hockey player, poutine eating sidekick and just combine Rachel and Brock. And therefore I give to you Doctor. Doctor. He's a doctor. Jay Wiles. He's not Canadian. Australian. I'm kidding. What's up, Jay?

What's up, Ben? Yeah, I was trying to think of a good nickname that I could go by, but I think that's just going to have to come organically because I.

Can'T think of one.

But it'll come in time.

Yeah, and I went through like a boatload of resumes. I was about to blow my brains out over all the fricking videos people sent me. Amazing people don't be offended. Those of you who sent in videos, you're all amazing, but I went through a ton of different videos of people who wanted to come and riff with me on these Q and A's, which, admittedly, we haven't been doing a lot of lately, but we're back at now. They're very popular. I never want to stop doing the Q and A's, but when I. When I saw you, Jay, it was love at first sight. I think that unicorn terrors and fairy twinkles coming from my computer wasn't the.

Name of my YouTube video I put is for, like, my sweet dear Ben or something like that. I just wanted to make sure that you knew that, because I just felt like we'd have that. That beautiful connection at first.

Yeah, it was pretty creepy.

Yeah.

But anyways, you're a doctor, which is kind of weird. Like, we've never actually had, like, a certified. Certified doctor on this. You're not. And you're not. You, like, you're a real doctor. You're an md.

No, I'm not a real doctor. I'm a doctor, just not an MD. We. We can. We can stick within the PhD world and still be cool, right?

Oh, you're a PhD. Geez. Everybody's. Everybody's let down now.

Everybody leaves. They just turned off the podcast.

Okay, so PhD, clinical health psychologist and nutritional psychology consultant. Is that right?

Yes, you got that right. Nobody knows what that is, but you got that right.

Yeah, it sounds like something to do with brains. Yeah.

Or maybe someone who knows something about brains, but I don't know if they actually have the brain.

Yeah, well, there's a picture of you on the front page of your website if you guys want to go stockj. It's drjwiles.com. maybe we can link to that in the show notes. Drjwiles.com, i'll put a link in the show notes. By the way, the show notes are going to be at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 396. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 396. We work our ass off on the show notes, so somebody better go read them. There's a picture on the front of your website with you with a laser light stuck up your nose. So you must not be a normal PhD psychologist.

No, unconventional is kind of what I go by. Fringy. I was called fringy this past weekend at a conference. I'm okay with that term. Unconventional.

I'll be epic. You be fringy. So what exactly do you do?

Man, that's multifaceted. So in an effort to not drive everybody crazy, I'll just kind of give you the brief overview. So basically I'm a health psychologist, which means that my doctoral work was trained as a clinical psychologist. But instead of kind of worrying about people's emotions, I worry about people's health. And so I spend a majority of my time working with the Department of Veterans affairs where I have kind of a specialty background in building complementary and integrative health program. So I work out of the upstate of Greenville, South Carolina. So I should say that in a.

Much southern voice or thought I heard a Southern twine.

Did you hear it? Or I could speak like the, the governor of South Carolina, Governor McMaster. That, that's how he talks. That's. Oh man, go Google. You'll hear Governor McMaster talking straight like this about our education in South Kakalaka.

That's, that's pretty good.

Or Frank Underwood, if anybody's a House of Cards fan. So where was I until I got into.

You're talking. So you have this nutrition clinic and you have kind of like this holistic approach on your website you say you use things like ketogenic paleo, anti inflammatory elimination type of lifestyle changes and you throw in things like mindfulness meditation, Tai chi and qigong and yoga and biofeedback and acupuncture. So you have a pretty holistic approach to managing people who have effed up brains.

Yeah, basically. Basically. So, you know, I see the entire realm of veteran population by entire realm. It's a quite diverse group of individuals. And so I do work in it from an integrative and holistic perspective, which, you know, is. We would like to think that's the predominant paradigm, but of course we know the medical, conventional medical model is still the predominant paradigm, but you know, things are slowly changing. So kind of my job is to bring those things out, incorporate those things into the VA healthcare system, especially within South Carolina, and do so, do so in a rock star fashion.

I dig it. Well, that's the question. I'm sure all the ladies are already wondering, you married? You have kids? Like, what's up with that?

Good question. I have to be careful with my answer because my wife listens to your podcast too.

So there you go.

Gave it away. But yeah, I am married. Been married for almost 10 years now. I've been with my wife for close to, I guess 11 or 12 years. We dated a little bit before we got married. Have a 15 month old son who is or little organic hippie baby. And we keep him outdoors as much as possible and he is pretty much.

Why do everything covered in dirt and dog feces like a young boy should.

Be all day, every day.

Good. How old are you?

So I am either going to lose fans or win fans with this one. I'm pretty young. I'm 31, baby.

I feel so wise and old. Okay, so your website says you quantify your sleep, your food, your hrv. You stand on an earthy and grounding mat while you work. You wear air tube head fins and protect yourself from emf. You put infrared and red lights up your nose. You take cold showers and sit in ice baths. You rarely wear sunglasses. You spend time outside barefoot. You wear blue light blocking glasses. You wear red light glasses. You meditate every day and you consider yourself to be a biohacker. So I think you'll fit right in, doctor.

I think, I think so, yeah. I mean that's kind of an overview of my day right then and there. And pomodoro breaks and swinging kettlebells do a lot of functional training. So that's, that's my life.

Do you jump on a mini trampoline wearing a training mask?

Oh no, I don't. That sounds like something you would do though.

You need to add that into your protocol. Okay. Preferably with a coffee enema tube stuck up your ass.

Sounds like the greatest protocol ever made.

Well folks, now that you know who Dr. J.T. wiles is, what do you think? Jay, shall we jump into today's news?

Let's jump into some news flashes.

All right, so the Internet of course has been exploding recently about the latest red meat gives you cancer study. Did you see this study?

Yeah, I saw this study. I mean, yeah, yeah, I saw the study.

Okay, so the title, the official title was Diet and colorectal cancer in UK Biobank a prospective study. And this was all based on what they call Cox regression models where they're looking at hazard ratios for colorectal cancer and they were specifically looking at meat consumption and they had a pretty good population size and a five and a half year follow up in the study and looked at first glance to have big boy pants on and be a pretty respectable study. So they had 175,000 or so people who were asked to recall what they ate. They used a food frequency questionnaire, you can even go find the food questionnaire online if you wanted to. And they looked at everything going on in these people's lives. And what the study kind of showed, according to media, is that People who ate moderate amounts of red meat had a 20% higher chance of getting cancer. Which kind of caught my attention because I'm in this phase right now where I'm eating a couple of ribeye steaks a day and liver and Braunschweiger and head cheese, dressing that up with a bunch of sardines and anchovies, and I'm kind of doing a little bit of a bastardized version of a carnivore diet, gaining some weight. So when I see. Yeah, and I'm getting swole. Getting swole. Eating meat and lifting weights. Life is good.

That's right. Even though I saw you lost a few pounds in your face, though, ended up shaving, didn't you?

Yeah, yeah, I shaved my beard off. Those of you who want to follow that story, go, go check out my Instagram gram. But anyways, so if you look at the actual increase in risk, that 20% is what's called a relative increase in risk, meaning everybody in this study started off with about a 0.5% risk of getting bowel cancer. And in the people who ate the most red meat, that risk increased by about 20% up to. Drum roll please. 0.6%, 0.6%, 0.5% to 0.6%. And yes, that's an increase, but it's a pretty tiny, tiny 0.1% increase increase. And furthermore, and this is the kicker, only processed meat was the one that was significantly linked to colon cancer. Meaning meat that has been heavily processed, combined with artificial compounds, had added nitrates, been heavily smoked, been heavily treated. I mean, it's like, you know, just, just like we could say about a, about, you know, a seed based oil versus a seed. It's. It's far different when it's exposed to oxidation and pressure and everything else. A, only a 0.1% absolute increase. B, this only happened with processed meat. C, there was no effect on women, only men. So ladies, keep on mowing down that beef jerky. And then when we look at what a lot of these studies leave out, in my opinion, is that the most carcinogenic thing that's been found to increase the carcinogenic potential of red meat? And I'll try to say carcinogenic a few more times just because it makes me sound smart and I can pronounce it. We know that when you combine heme based iron, which is the compound that's unique to red meat, that is the part that's probably the part of red meat that's most likely to cause the oxidative pathways that lead to processed meat causing cancer. It's only that carcinogenic when it is consumed alongside seed oils like high omega 6 seed oils, meaning like safflower oil or sunflower oil or canola oil or other oxidized vegetable oil or very concentrated sources of polyunsaturated fatty acids. And so, you know, I think the takeaway from this study really is that A, the media is stupid because they throw stuff way out of proportion. B, eat your red meat, but try and eat it in as processed and unadulterated form as possible and C, if you're gonna do this whole carnivore diet or even eat an appreciable amount of red meat, freaking limit your oxidized, you know, post industrial processed vegetable oils ruthlessly and you're probably gonna be alright. Granted, we could get into genetic factors that are, that are, you know, could potentially put you into a category that might conducive to a carnivore diet. And perhaps that's a discussion for another day because there are some genetic pathways that you can test that might indicate a lesser or greater need for something like meat. But I think the big takeaway is if you're gonna eat it, eat it as unprocessed as possible and limit the frickin seed oils.

Yeah, when you're saying limit the seed oils, you're referring mainly to how you're cooking and what oils you're cooking with or.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I mean a lot of, a lot of folks like you know my friend Dr. Paul Saladino who was on the podcast, he doesn't even use oil. Like he came over to my house and cook, cooked his steak and just, you know, tossed in the cast iron skillet with a little salt and that was it. And I've, I've been gradually progressing towards that route. And also just extra virgin olive oil and grass fed butter and of course a little olive oil and macadamia nut oil and avoiding even these days, you know, the, the whole food salad bar with the, you know, that's cold pressed expeller or expeller cold pressed organic canola oil. But it's, it's a seed oil nonetheless.

Right.

Anyways, do you ever cook with avocado oil? I do. Okay. I like it.

That's the one I use a lot.

It's good. Yeah, I just squeeze an avocado with my hand and squeeze the oil out so I make it. That's pretty epic because I'm swole like we mentioned. So we'll link to that Study in the show notes. You can check it out. Another really, really interesting paper that I found. I thought this was fascinating. Human adaptation to extreme environmental conditions. This paper went into how human beings specifically genetically adapt to that. We are all very interested in these days with the emergence of Wim Hof and that wonderful book by Scott Carney who I interviewed called what doesn't kill you. This concept of hormesis using things like cold and free diving or spearfishing or temperature exposure or using altitude or hyperbaric oxygen chambers or exercise with oxygen therapy. It's like people are kind of catching onto this idea that things that could completely crush us in small amounts are pretty good for us and or could crush us in large amounts or good for us in small amounts. But what this paper looked at was human adaptations to life in the Arctic or extreme cold, to high altitude and to diving or underwater, long periods of time spent underwater. And it was really, really interesting. Like for example, with the cold part of things. What they did in the paper was they looked at Northeast Siberian populations and these folks actually consume a very high fat D A lot of these Arctic populations do. And this high fat diet appears to be something that A they're kind of self selected for because it's tough to find, you know, kale growing in the snow. But B, it's something that seems to allow them to kind of have a little bit of that extra body fat or insulation. Yet they seem to have pretty favorable lipid profiles despite eating a high fat diet. So they looked at these folks genes and one of the things that they're able to do is you look like the Inuits who eat a diet primarily based on fish and marine mammals and what would be long chain omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids or PUFAs. What they found was they have specific mutations that are adaptations to a high fat diet that allow them to somehow concentrate those PUFAs more readily. There are some kind of rate limiting enzymes where they're very much able to decrease the endogenous synthesis of what are called long chain PUFAs. And that builds up the short chain PUFAs that one would normally get from vegetables. So essentially they're able to take a high fat diet and produce the same type of fatty acids they'd normally be getting from eating vegetables. And that's just this genetic adaptation that they've gotten that appears to provide not only protection against the cold, but also their ability to be able to get what they'd normally be eating, getting from vegetables by eating just a bunch of animal based fats instead. And so that was just one of the, of the mechanisms that we see in these cold environments. And the paper goes into some more, but that was one interesting takeaway. Another one was they looked at the Tibetan populations. Now here's the deal. People like the Tibetans who live at very high altitudes, normally you'd see that the human body, when it gets exposed to high altitude, produce a lot of what's called hypoxia induced factor, it's called hif. And that causes you to produce more erythropoietin or epo, which allows you to produce more red blood cells. Now there's a problem with that because if you have that mechanism going on all the time, it gives you a bunch of excess red blood cells, which increases oxygen delivery to the tissues. But, and this is why Tour de France writers will like die of exploding hearts when they, when they use epo, it increases blood viscosity, so it puts a lot more strain on the cardiovascular system.

That makes a lot more sense.

Yeah, exactly. But it turns out with these Tibetans, you would expect them to have like hypoxia inducible factors that go through the roof, but they actually express a certain gene that limits that HIF pathway. And they have developed other genetic pathways that allow their body to be able to mitigate the deleterious response to chronic altitude exposure or to be able to consume more oxygen at altitude without necessarily doing it by producing more red blood cells. So they don't get things like the atrial fibrillation or cardiovascular issues you see some humans experience when they're at high altitude. Instead, these people have grown the ability to be able to genetically adapt to high altitude based on mutations without actually producing more EPO or red blood cells. So I mean, the human body is just fascinating.

So adaptive.

Then the, yeah, the diving one, I don't know if you, if you read this study, Jay, but, but the diving one, this one was really interesting. So they looked at a bunch of sea nomads in Thailand. And that was actually what I was originally going to do in college was I was taking the C Nomad electives because I really wanted to be a C Nomad. Just sounds like a cool thing.

You already sound like you're a C Nomad.

Yeah, exactly. So these sea nomads who get repeated underwater training activity, they essentially just live this diving, free diving lifesty. And a lot of times there are depths over 100ft for minutes. And what they've actually done when they've genetically analyzed them is they have this adaptive mechanism, particularly in their spleen. And they have extremely large spleens. And the spleen is compressed when you go underwater like that, and that expulses a bunch of new red blood cells and gives them an oxygen boost. It's a gene called pde and it affects signaling pathways and even affects the thyroid hormone. So they express more levels of T4, the thyroid hormone T4, and that dramatically affects their spleen size. So these people who dive a lot, they have high thyroid hormone production, higher spleen sizes. So I think the big takeaway for this is that, yeah, you may not be able to change your body to a huge spleen or to, you know, less red blood cell viscosity, but the ability to be able to perform high altitudes or even be able to never eat vegetables again because you produce a bunch of the regular short chain fatty acids from fats. But what you may want to consider is that your body appears able to favorably adapt to cold exposure to some elements of high altitude or periods of low and high oxygen intermittent, and also to diving or going underwater or even just getting subjected to pressures using, let's say an HBOT chamber or one of those.

I forget.

I think they call them like a CPAP machine, something like that. But ultimately it's a pretty cool article when it goes into how the body adapts to these extreme environmental conditions. I'll link to it in the show notes, but I think it's kind of worth a read.

Yeah, it is pretty incredible. One of the things I was thinking about, Ben, I want to get your take on this is that let's say, for instance, adaptation to the life in the Arctic. So this is the Inuit. And the Inuit is a group of individuals that kind of the ketogenic community really kind of comes back to kind of they're huge fanboys of. And I'm not when I say ketogenic community, I would kind of put myself along that side. But I don't know if I'm an Inuit fanboy. We'll see. But I'm just kind of thinking and looking through this article is do you think this is a. I don't even know if I could say it the best way than like, is this support for us using the Inuit as a good example as people who were adaptive and how we can become more adaptive like them? Or does this kind of spoil the argument for the Inuit as an example of how a ketogenic diet is considered ancestral, if that makes sense.

I think all it says is that if you're going to Eat a ketogenic diet. You should get your genes analyzed to see what kind of genes you possess. In this case it would be the fads genes, the fatty acid desaturases genes. And you know, I actually talked about this in my very recent podcast with a gal who wrote the Wild Darien Diet. And we came up with like four or five different genetic SNPs that would dictate an inflammatory response to a ketogenic diet or an unfavorable lipid panel in response to a ketogenic diet. So I think all, all it tells you really is that before you choose any specific diet, at least frickin get your genes analyzed and see what you're able to handle.

Yeah, no, indeed. I think that's such an underutilized kind of avenue for many people who engage in a ketogenic diet, which has become so many with how popularized it's gotten.

Yeah, exactly. And then one other article I think is kind of fun. There was an article on biohacking. And since we've established the fact that both you and I I are biohackers, Jay. Very, very good biohackers, the best. But probably not as good as some of the people in this article. The title is Biohackers are implanting everything from magnets to sex toys. And in my opinion, I've said this before, that's a true biohacker.

That is. That's a grinder.

Yeah, you put a little cinnamon and butter in your coffee or you, I don't know. Yeah, you jump up and down on the trampoline with the training mask on or do your handstands on your vibration platform or whatever the case may be. I don't think that's biohacking. I think it's playing with fun toys and cooking. But biohacking, you know, originally was these people called the grinders. And they would treat their body as wetware, they called it, and then they would install hardware into the wetware. And this continues, you know, the true underground biohacking scene. It talks about a guy named Patrick Kramer who injects these microchips about the size of a grain of rice under the skin on people. And he call it, you know, he basically turns them into cyborgs. He implants these chips that these folks can use to unlock doors to store digital business cards. He'll put them in cats and dogs and livestock and humans as well. And apparently he's implanted like thousands of chips in the past year alone. He has three in his own hands, one to open his office door, one to store medical data and one to seamlessly share his contact information with other people. And apparently there's about 100,000 people. You know, these so called biohacking cyborgs now walking around with, with chips implanted in their body that could potentially include things like bionic limbs and computer brain connections, which of course we know. I think it's Elon Musk who's working on the whole computer brain connection piece of things. There's a gal named Moon Rybash, a Spanish gal who has a chip in her arm that's connected to seismic sensors. So she, you know, like kind of a, I guess like an Avenger or a mutant shield. She'll know automatically anywhere in the world when there's an earthquake. She's in the newest movie or that has occurred. Surely she's in it.

No?

Oh, she might be.

She might be in the background. I mean, hell, there's a thousand characters in that movie.

I heard it was good.

Actually haven't seen. I'm staying away from the Internet it though, because. Give it away.

Yeah, and no spoiler alerts, folks. If you reach out to stockjane, his website, don't tell him what happens in the Avenger movie. Do ask him about the laser lights in his nose though. There's another guy who installed an antenna in his head that lets him hear colors like he could hear pink or blue or whatever else. There's a guy named Rich Lee in Utah. I've talked about him before. I think he's the guy who had like an earpiece implanted in his ear to be able to hear, but better. But now he's developed a cyborg sex toy which is like a vibrating device you can implant in your pelvis, which I think sounds lovely.

It's called the Lovetron 9000.

What a hell of a. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Jay isn't making that up, folks. It's actually called the Lovetron 9000. I think it could probably double up as like, you know, people will use like compression socks or like vibrating things for recovery. You could probably use it on an airplane for recovery. You know, kind of keep the blood flowing. You flip it on, try and keep a straight face. When airline stewardess comes around, right? That's worth 15,000, you join your own mile high club, your implanted cyborg sex toy. And there's a whole bunch of other interesting gadgets that are talked about in the article. And yeah, it's Neuralink. That's the one that Elon Musk is working on that he's developing the brain computer interfaces that will to just interact with your computer. So there you have it. Yeah, I think we should have him on our show to smoke marijuana and see if, see if that holds him back at all. I guess he got in pretty big trouble. He was on, he was on the Joe Rogan podcast smoking marijuana.

Yeah, I think his stock dipped like crazy that day, but I think it's back.

Yeah. Yeah. Now all the stoners are driving Teslas, so. So anyways, those are a few news flashes for you guys and I'll link to all of these in the show notes. But every single day, usually twice a day, any interesting study I find, any research article, even anything about biohacked implanted sex toys, I tweet. So if you want to get these research studies hot off the presses, just go over to twitter.com BenGreenfeld and you can check them out there.

Indeed.

And I think we've gotten all the housekeeping out of the way and now we get to see what kind of odd questions have piled up over the past like two months since we've done an episode. What do you think? Want to dive in?

Let's dive into these.

Hello Ben, my name is Sartel and I'm from Salt Lake City. Been listening to your shows for many years and really appreciate it. I wanted to ask. I purchased recently a supplement, the Polyrhachis ant extract and I took this prior to a workout and I really felt an analgesic effect. I've had many shoulder surgeries and it felt a lot better when I took this. So I did some more research and noticed that this is touted to have anti inflammatory effects and be an antioxidant. So I know that antioxidants can blunt the hormetic effect of exercise. So I'm wondering if I need to worry about that with this supplement. Thanks for all you do and for many informative podcasts. Appreciate it.

So black ant extract. Have you ever used black ant extract, Jay?

I've never used it. You know, I've heard you talk about it. Is this that same stuff you brought on to the Joe Rogan experience when you went?

You call yourself a biohacking doctor and you've never eaten black ant extract?

I'll hang up my mic now.

Yeah, I did have a bottle of this when I went on the Joe Rogan podcast. I was down in LA and I was traveling and I needed to pick me up and I'd had a cup of coffee and you know, his episodes last like three hours and so I was Taking this black ant extract in his little side room. And he walked in there, I had this dropper bottle up to my mouth and so he whipped out his phone, he took a photo of me taking black ant extract. And then everybody and their dog wanted black ant extract. It's actually called Poly. Poly. Polyrhachis I think is how you pronounce it. Apparently Sartel got his hands on this stuff too. But the idea behind ant powder or black ant extract, you know, it's kind of like this doctrine of signatures, right? You, you eat an avocado, it's supposed to be good for your testicles, or you eat something red like pomegranate or tomato and supposedly good for cardiovascular health. You eat the meat of a big huge animal like an elk or a bison or a buffalo and you feel powerful and full of lifeblood and you eat a teeny tiny little ant. And they're very hardworking and full of endurance. And so apparently it's like a mild pick me up and especially good for endurance. And these things live amongst the ginseng roots high up in the mountains. So it's a perfect story of course for a nutrition supplement company to sell overpriced insects powdered up as a nutritional superfood. But it actually does have something to it, this ant extract. There's a few different universities that have done studies on the nutritional value of, of black ants and they found some interesting things. They actually have very high content of palmitic and oleic and linoleic acid. So you kind of, you know, you could consider these as like tiny little seeds and nuts, but actually a little bit more digestible. Less of the phytic acid inhibitors and more of some of the beneficial fatty acids that we'd get in seeds and nuts. They also, in these studies that they've done on the ant extract, they found them to be pretty high in of all things. And this could potentially put my entire company out of business. Essential amino acids. They've got all the essential amino acids in them. So they double up as an essential amino acid supplement as well.

Well, why don't you just add that to your kion aminos? I mean it doesn't have to put you out of business. We're just gonna throw some polyrhachis ant extract in there.

That's true. I might in upset some insect lovers and I'm not quite sure how scalable that supply chain is with ants, but it's, it would definitely be a unique selling point if I were to add that to the kion aminos. Very High in zinc, like 10 times higher in zinc than shellfish. I honestly think that's the biggest thing ant extract has going for it is it's just super high in zinc, which of course is fantastic, especially for men who want to increase their testosterone levels. But then the head of the ant has some really interesting nootropic compounds in it. And I'm blanking now on the name of the specific fatty acid that's present in their heads. It's kind of like, it gives it this bitter flavor, but it's actually, I used to mix this stuff with coffee. I don't have any in my pantry right now, but it's got that. And then also this thing called ecdysterone, which is a growth hormone that you find in the insect kingdom that could have an anabolic effect in humans. Now, that hasn't been studied, but it is high in these sterones. Wouldn't that suck? Getting like kicked out of your NCAA sanctioned sport for steroid use and all you were doing was picking ants out of the backyard because you were a poor college student who couldn't afford the cafeteria food.

Just trying to imagine explaining that to the board.

Ants. I swear it was ants. I haven't gone near Victor Conte anyways though. So ants are pretty, pretty, pretty rich in a lot of these things. They're also very high in minerals, surprisingly high in minerals. So you're getting something like a sea salt, zinc, essential amino acid, fatty acid, nootropic supplement when you use black ant extract. I get it from this company called Lost Empire Herbs, which you probably have to order from pretty quickly because they'll be. I think they were out of stock for like two months after that Joe Rogan episode. But I'll link to them in the show. Notes, notes. They brag on their website that their ant compounds have not been found to have sildenafil or the active ingredient of Viagra in them. So apparently at some point in the past, somebody must have put in Viagra in with the ants for them to need to claim that. Or maybe that just gives you boners. I don't know. I don't remember that being in effect when I, when I took it.

Now all I can think about is going and getting it.

Yeah, it has some vitamin C and some vitamin E in it. And this is kind of the meat of the question that Sartel asked is, you know, it's touted as having this anti inflammatory and antioxidant effect. And he knows that antioxidants can kind of perhaps blunt the Hormetic effect of exercise. Now, with ants, I'm just going to answer that question really quickly, but I want to get on the soapbox about hormesis here in general. But the amount of vitamin C and vitamin E found in ant extract is nowhere near. We're talking like, like 1/10 to 1/100 the amount of synthetic high dose vitamin C and vitamin E that was used in the few studies that have been shown that high dose synthetic vitamin C or vitamin E could actually blunt the hormetic response to exercise. So you don't need to worry about the ant issue, but I would like to kind of address this in a little bit greater detail. So hormesis is of course, this notion that low levels of stress, stress can stimulate or up regulate these different molecular pathways that would improve the capacity of cells or living organisms to withstand greater stress. So we're talking about anything like, you know, plant toxins or things that produce reactive oxygen species or sunlight radiation or cold or heat or exercise or anything like that, things that would kill you in large amounts or cause appreciable damage in large amounts. Amounts can actually cause genetic adaptations and biochemical pathways to be expressed that make you stronger in small amounts. The concept of this kind of originated in the 16th century when the Swiss physician Paris Elsus proposed that the dose determines that a thing is not a poison, or solely the dose determines that a thing is not a poison. And then the term hormesis was coined back in the 40s when they found that a natural antibiotic that was in cedar wood would inhibit the growth of wood decaying fungi in large doses, but had the opposite effect in low doses. And then there was an endocrinologist named Hans Selye who showed again that things that stress you out in small doses actually help you to bounce back strong, so to speak, or things that would kill you in large doses help you to bounce back stronger if you take them in small doses. So there's been a lot of studies that have been done on hormesis and particularly when we look at exercise. For example, much of what we know about how exercise conditions the body is based on, on long term adaptation to hormesis, because during exercise you get exposed to a bunch of different, what would be considered homeostatic perturbations. So that would be like thermal stress and metabolic stress and hypoxic stress and oxidative stress and mechanical stress. And those stimulate the release of reactive oxygen species and nitrogen species and cytokines and eicosanoids and growth factors, and all these different things that could potentially be inflammatory. And then those activate signaling pathways that control gene expression that causes an adaptive response to cause you to become stronger to being able to whatever, produce your own endogenous antioxidants or be able to remodel muscle more quickly or be able to produce new mitochondria to be able to handle the excess energy required requirements, et cetera. So the idea is that there are certain things that have been studied to be able to enhance exercise induced hormesis. There are certain things you can do that actually cause that adaptation to occur even more favorably. And many of these have been studied. I'm going to link to an interesting research paper over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 396 but for example, restricting dietary carbohydrate intake, meaning training in a low glycogen state can actually cause you to have an amplified stress mechanistic response to the exercise. And doing that in large amounts for long periods of time would be deleterious. But what happens is when you train in a low glycogen state, there's reduced ATP supply and you actually upregulate not only when carbohydrates are pre present your ability to be able to use them, but you also get a slight up regulation in oxidative damage. You can actually make exercise a little bit more difficult when you train in a low glycogen state. And of course you also train your body how to more quickly oxidize fatty acids and something called triacylglycerol when you do that. And so that's one thing that can enhance the hormetic response to exercise would be training in a low glycogen state. Another one that's really interesting that's been studied of late is training with blood flow restriction bands on this is also called KATSU training where you put tourniquets on your arms and your legs and they, they sell devices and bands now to do this. Have you ever done, done BFR training, Jay?

I have back in the day that was, that was when I was kind of going through more of my bodybuilding phase. Yeah, I was like 265.

Yeah, when I travel I'll have these bands in my suitcase. A lot of times I'll, you know, I'll throw down like a podcast. Push up, pull up, lunge, squat workout in my hotel room wearing those BFR bands. And it appears that satellite cell activation is similar to what you get from traditional heavy load strength training when you do this. And that satellite Cell activation is accompanied by an increase in the number of myonuclei, which means you can actually get your muscles bigger with just body weight training, using BFR training. But it's based on this concept that it actually enhances the hormetic effect of exercise. When you train in a low blood flow state, you can actually produce slightly more damage and cause yourself to be able to bounce back even stronger than you would if you had a little bit more limited damage. Another one would be exercising when the muscles are already hot. That would increase the thermal stress and increase the hormetic response to exercise. So this would be, for example, probably one of the most popular forms of this would be what's called heat preconditioning. And this is what most of the studies have been done on. That when you heat precondition, not only can you express more EPO or red blood cells, but you could also increase the amount of hypertrophy that occurs. And some studies have even shown that you can do this after the exercise session, like 20 to 30 minutes in a sauna after the exercise session, but preheating, and a lot of people don't know this. That's where most of the studies have been done. And so this would not only include a good warmup before a strength training session, but you know, for example, you know, going and doing your warmup in the sauna. If the gym has a sauna prior to the workout. We all know that makes the workout a lot more uncomfortable. But it enhances the hormetic response to exercise in a similar way as heat preloading. There's also the concept of mechanical preloading. So they've also found that if you do on the days in between you work, you work out or right prior to the workout, maximal isometric contractions, meaning like you do like a squat hold to failure before you begin your set of squats, you do a push up hold to failure or fatigue before you start, a set of bench press, etc. That also enhances the hormetic response and the hypertrophy response to the sets that you do at afterwards. And so you can use this as something like on in between days, in between your workouts you can do like a 60 second squat hold, 60 second lunge hold for each leg, 60 second push hold and like a dead hang for time. And this would enhance the effects of the strength training routine that you did the day before. And you could also use that same routine and do each of those right before. Like you know, hang time to failure, drop rest, and then do your pull Ups or, or push up, hold to failure, recover and then do your bench press. So that's called mechanical preloading. So obviously there are all sorts of ways, the most effective of which I just mentioned, that you could make hormesis occur more readily. And in the same way there are things that dampen exercise. Induced hormesis and antioxidant supplementation is one that's been studied and has been shown to create a disruption of redox signaling, meaning that oxidative stress that's supposed to make you stronger could get held back if you supplement with antioxidants. And it's also been shown that high dose antioxidant supplementation, with high dose being the key there. And in most studies they're using vitamin C or vitamin E. There are a few other studies that have used beta carotene. One study used N acetylcysteine, one used coenzyme Q, and there was another one that used alpha lipoic acids. These are all very common antioxidants, often sold as recovery supplements. They can attenuate things like mitochondrial biogenesis, hypertrophy, satellite cell response, and in most cases these were given in high doses to folks who were exercising and they caused that response and that limit in hypertension hypertrophy. Non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs, of course, like ibuprofen and Advil, have been shown to do almost the exact same thing. And so not only can those of course cause gut damage and potential exercise toxicity, particularly in conjunction with endurance exercise, but that's another one that can blunt the hormetic response to exercise. Cryotherapy is another. I get this question a lot. Ice massage, ice baths, cryotherapy chambers, etc. There is some evidence that those could also lower inflammation and oxidative stress to the extent where you may blunt the hormetic response to exercise. Those would be some of the top ones that have been studied for a blunted hormetic response. But here's the kicker. You gotta look at the studies in the same way you gotta look at like the red meat causes colon cancer studies, the antioxidant intake, for example. Example. This is a very interesting one because what they've shown is that once you get to a point where you have excess levels of reactive oxygen species, those excess levels of reactive oxygen species can cause a suppressive effect on the response to exercise, meaning if you're exercising very hard. And a lot of these studies we're talking about like people doing one hour bike rides three times a day a week, or doing like a typical three sets of ten, you know, with 70%1 RM, we're not talking about hefty crossfitters or Ironman athletes creating rampant oxidation, right? So one could make an argument that the rampant oxidation that occurs from hard and heavy exercise, if you're a very serious athlete or a professional athlete, would actually dictate the need for some amount of antioxidant supplementation to be able to, to also not blunt the hormetic response to exercise. So I think part of this is how hard are you exercising? And do you need to actually mitigate excess levels of reactive oxygen species? Because it's almost like a parabolic curve. A certain amount is good and when you get them very high and you've got rampant inflammation, you actually reduce your hormetic response to exercise. So part of it is kind of the doses, the poison with antioxidants, but a big part of it is, is how much damage have you actually created? Do you truly have a need for the antioxidants or are you just kind of a recreational athlete? And a lot of people just with horse sense know if you're doing CrossFit five times a week and you're exercising hard and heavy, you're probably fine taking that antioxidant supplement or doing cryotherapy, for example. Another example of this would be cryotherapy, right? Most of the studies that have been shown that cryotherapy inhibits the hormetic response to exercise size induced a pretty significant decrease in core temperature and skin temperature that was only able to be induced with 10 plus minutes of cold exposure, usually cold water immersion. Very few people are staying 10 minutes in a cryotherapy chamber. I don't consider a two to five minute cold shower or as I do, a quick plunge into the cold pool back behind my house to be anything near what you. You see in the studies that show that cryotherapy or cold thermogenesis can blunt the hormetic response to exercise. So again, like, it really, really depends. And you could probably even make an argument that once again, if you're a bodybuilder or an ironman triathlete or somebody doing like five, six CrossFit workouts a week, even then that amount of cryotherapy may be just fine for you because the amount of oxidation you're creating is actually blunting the hormetic response to exercise and you need to somehow nip that in the bud. So I don't know, does all that make sense?

Yeah, a lot of things to take into consideration. I Mean, one of the biggest things too, Ben, that stands out to me is that so many people, I think that they hear, whether it's from the news or from whatever avenue theirtheir physician, that it's like, you know, take as much antioxidants as you want. Like it's just resveratrol after resveratrol and not knowing kind of the effects of overtaking antioxidants, especially kind of taking into consideration, you know, what their overall exertion level from a physical standpoint comes from. So people need to, they need to know their numbers and they need to know the research.

Yeah. And I think another big part of this is that there are some antioxidants that are what are called selective antioxidants that have some very interesting studies behind them that shows, show that they don't actually blunt the hormetic response to exercise, but they at the same time can reduce a significant amount of toxic reactive oxygen species. These are the same type of antioxidants that have been shown to have a selective effect on carcinogenesis and be able to limit carcinogenic toxicity or the potential for cancer growth. But they only have cytotoxicity against cancer. So cells. And of the ones that I've seen the top three, and these would be three that I would be completely comfortable with people using after exercise, even arguably after exercise, it's not that difficult that doesn't fall into the categories I described earlier. And those three would be a water with hydrogen tablets or hydrogen rich water. So water with molecular hydrogen added that hydrogen is a selective antioxidant. And I'll link in the show notes to a whole podcast that I did on hydrogen rich water quercetin using quercetin that also appears to have a selective antioxidant effect. And you know, for example, I use true C hydrogen tablets. The quercetin I get is made by Thorne. They make a quercetin phytosome that's really good and really absorbed well and then green tea polyphenols. So you can literally go to Amazon and get like organic green tea polyphenol capsules or powder and those three of any of the antioxidants that you could use if you just want to play it safe. Hydrogen rich water, quercetin or green tea polyphenols all seem to be able to blunt some of that, you know, free radical response to exercise without blunting the hormetic response to exercise. So you could still have some antioxidants. And of the ones probably to stay away from if you want to play super safe, it'd be high dose synthetic vitamin C, high dose synthetic vitamin E, alpha lipoic acid, coenzyme Q10 and N acetylcysteine. Those would be the ones that you'd want to play it safe with if you really want to pay attention to what the research has told us about hormesis and the blunting of it.

But the other three you listed, you think would be good for everyone.

In any case, I think they're fine. And obviously there's some people, I don't know, maybe they get diarrhea from Kersetin or something. But yeah, in most cases those three are fine. I know green tea makes some people nauseous too. That's another thing. If you don't want nauseous diarrhea, maybe know your body, but yeah, those are at least worth experimenting with. So there you have it.

Cool.

Hi, Ben, My question is about coffee. I absolutely love coffee, and excellent coffee at that. I do have a concern that I am stressing my adrenals constantly. So how. What do you suggest about being able to still enjoy coffee and cleaning out the adrenals and if this is really an issue or not.

Thank you, Jay. Are you a, you a coffee drinker?

Quite the coffee drinker. I'm a bit of a coffee snob, if you will.

Really? How do you like your coffee?

Oh, man. Black is my soul.

Yeah, I'm with you right there.

Yeah. Really? I don't like, I don't like to put anything in it. I mean, you know, I'll drink, you know, some, some, you know, coffee with butter and MCT oil every once in a while. Sometimes that upsets kind of my, my digestive system a little bit. It could be the, the MCTS. I do have pure C8, but really I, I'm more of a fan of just drinking it black.

If you can't drink copious amounts of MCT oil, you're not a biohacker, my friend.

So. So I've been told. I'm just gonna drop that label.

Yeah, probably should. Anyways, I do like my coffee black, but lately I have been. And I just talked about this in today's weekly roundup. Every Friday I do a weekly roundup. I talk about my latest things I've been doing. I do and have been adding for insulin sensitivity, a couple of teaspoons of Ceylon cinnamon. And also, for the reasons I'll describe right now, some sea salt too, my. To my coffee. And I just put that in nutribullet and blend it Sometimes there's a little stevia in there, too, for. For flavor.

But does it taste like a cinnamon Dolce latte?

Yeah, it does a little bit, actually. I don't know. What's a. What's a Dolce? I. You know, I don't.

I don't remember. I just know they have it at Starbucks. I haven't been to a Starbucks in a long time, but I just remembered that they. They had them there. I have no idea. I know it's got cinnamon and some frothiness.

Oh, I thought maybe it was named after that nutrition. Nutritionist guy who works with the UFC fighters. Mike Dolce. I don't know if Starbucks would name a latte after him, but, yeah, probably not. I want Starbucks to name a latte after me. Call it the Greenfield Latte. Every gross superfood known to man blended in with your latte organ meats. You're gonna throw up your morning cup of coffee, but you're gonna live till you're 120, baby, with puke all over your car.

All right, so.

So anyways, yeah, caffeine, I mean, it can stimulate neuronal activity in the brain that can send messages to your pituitary gland, which stimulates your adrenal glands to produce adrenaline and cortisol. That's why when you drink a cup of coffee, it'll temporarily spike your blood sugar, right? Because your liver dumps a bunch of glycogen to get glucose into your bloodstream to allow you to run from a lion long term. You could argue that constant activation of the fight and flight response. Response could cause some type of a depletion of minerals, which would be responsible for assisting with adrenal function, or perhaps vitamin C, or perhaps even dopamine and serotonin, neurotransmitters that help to regulate the brain's reward and pleasure centers. But there's not really any scientific studies to back that up. There's no scientific studies, actually, on a loss of adrenal function and caffeine intake. And there's plenty of studies that suggest coffee protects against Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. And, you know, oddly enough, even though it causes glucose to get released into the bloodstream, it's very short and transient. So it protects against type 2 diabetes and liver disease. And so I think that it is smart, though, if you're concerned about hypoadrenia, and that is a condition which the adrenal glands can. Can begin to lower the amount of production of something like glucocorticoid. And if You've gotten, let's say, a good hormone test, like, say, a Dutch test, like a urine test, where you're peeing on a strip five times during the course of the day and you get the results back and it shows that you have consistently low cortisol, indicating some loss of adrenal function potentially. You may want to consider simply, as I do quite regularly, just shifting to a good organic, organic decaf, you know, like once every one to two months, just taking about seven days or so and switching to decaf. That's probably the simplest way to do this. And you know, not all decaf is created equal. That's one thing to consider. Today, most processors use pretty safe methods to remove the caffeine from coffee. But there is a method called indirect caffeination. And basically what they use is ethyl acetate, which is a lot of times derived from fruits, but can be accompanied by other unnatural solvents such as methylene chloride. And they used to use trichloroethylene, but they don't use that anymore since it was found to be carcinogenic. There's kind of like this, this myth on the Internet that they're still using that. They're not. But that is one method in which beans are decaffeinated, and I'm not as comfortable with that, versus a method called Swiss water process. And that's where they just. It's another indirect method. They just soak the beans in water, softens the beans, removes the caffeine, and they usually will run that liquid through activated charcoal or through carbon filters and that decaffeinates it. And then the fluid that you get afterwards is then returned back to the beans. It's dried. The beans retain a lot of their antioxidant potential and you get all the benefits of caffeine from a medical standpoint or all the benefits of coffee from a medical standpoint without the caffeine. And kind of a similar process would be carbon dioxide, where they soak the beans in compressed carbon dioxide and that removes a lot of the caffeine and then the solvent that contains the extracted caffeine evaporates and the beans return to room temperature. So I would go with Swiss water process or, or CO2 if you were going to go with decaf. And ultimately that could be helpful if you're concerned about the long term impact of coffee.

Ben, does the Swiss water process remove any of the polyphenols or any decafing process, removing beneficial polyphenols?

Both. You remove some of the antioxidants and Some of the polyphenols, which I suppose folks who are now arguing that the polyphenol in coffee could be cytotoxic, which I know Dr. Paul Saladino says that I consider them potentially cytotoxic, but I also consider that to be a hormetic effect. And so I would say if you're drinking 10 cups of coffee a day, you may want to worry, but in small doses, it's just fine. But, yeah, the decaf has slightly lower amounts of antioxidants, but it's pretty slight. So it's not something you have to worry about too much. And there are certain things you can do, though, like you can blend your coffee with certain things or take certain extracts at the same time or at a different type of time of day to support your adrenals. So, for example, I mentioned that I put Ceylon cinnamon, which is really good for insulin sensitivity and managing blood glucose, which could lower that blood glucose response that you'd naturally get from the coffee. And then I put sea salt in because minerals are a key component of adrenaline adrenal function. So that's one thing you can do, is just put a little Ceylon cinnamon and sea salt in your coffee. And I like that because it. That's pretty cheap and easy and most people can get their hands on organic Ceylon cinnamon and a good sea salt, and it tastes pretty good.

Do you use any type of sea salt?

I use this stuff called Colima sea salt. It's like it's harvested off the Mexican coast from spring water that kind of goes down the rocks that go down to the coastline. So it's not from seawater, which could have some plastics and metals and stuff in it. It's just from the. The rocks up above the sea.

So I've been using that Celtic sock for a while. I didn't know if you would recommend.

Celtic's really good, too. Celtic is actually even better than that. It's even higher in minerals and cleaner. I just happen to have about 20 bags of that. That Climisol. I think the Klimasol tastes better, honestly. But the Celtic's pretty good, too. Yeah, Celtic is up there. Then there are things you can mix with the coffee to actually cause the jitters to be lowered, or if you're like a slow coffee oxidizer, to allow the caffeine to get released over an extended period of time or to allow you to be more relaxed when you take the caffeine in. Probably the top three would be theanine reishi or Holy basil, which is Also known as Toltsi. So theanine, reishi or holy basil would all be things you could combine with coffee to make it healthier. I've even thought about at Kion, I might be giving away my business idea here and shooting myself in the foot, but I really. Watch yourself. I don't like the idea of like mixing a bunch of stuff into the beans and then selling like the, like the dried like powdered bean with all the stuff mixed into it. Because I think it adulterate the flavor. Adulterates the flavor of the bean. And I'm a coffee snob. Like, I want it to taste really good. But I was thinking people could order their Kion coffee, right, and get all the flavor and the antioxidants and the purity of the bean ravine. But then I could add in like a relaxation pack. Like I could take Tulsi and I could take Rishi and I could take Theanine and I could put that into like a pack for people and they could, they could add that into their shopping cart when they buy. I could even. I could even do the same thing with like upgrade your coffee, right? Like, I could have like a booster where it's got like lion's mane and maybe, you know, Alpha GPC and hooperzine or something like that. And you get that as like a way to make the coffee give you an extra boost. I think it'd be cool to dick around with like giving people the option to do that. I'd buy it. Yeah. My employees are just gonna kill me though if I add another skew at this point. But I think it's a good idea. I want to do it. I want to do it. Nobody steal my business idea, please. Or at least, you know, give me royalty. So anyways, that's what I'm thinking. But then there are alternatives to companies coffee. There are two that I really like. One is Dandy tea. A lot of people like dandy tea because it tastes a little bit like coffee, but it's wonderful for the liver. And you can get it off of Amazon. And it's primarily made with. With dandelion, which is very good for you. It's. It doesn't have a lot of the acidity or the bitterness of coffee, but it does have a lot of the flavor and that like it tastes, it takes eerily like coffee, coffee. And it's literally dandelions. Yeah, Yeah.

I feel like when I'm wanting a cup of coffee, like I'm wanting a damn cup of coffee. And so if I were to like sit down and try to drink this. And it didn't taste like coffee. I might be pretty pissed.

And you call yourself a hippie? Jeez, neither. Neither a hippie nor a biohacker are you, Jay.

Right now I'm just a. I'm a yuppie, let's be honest.

But it's actually, it's dandelion root, but it's admittedly it's got roasted barley, rye and chicory root in it as well. And they eliminate all the gluten from the barley and rye in the extraction process. So there's no actual gluten in it. But might be kind of fun to have one of these around your pantry as an alternative to coffee. The other one I like is my cacao. This one is awesome. It's cacao nibs and cacao shells. Zero calories and it tastes like you're drinking freaking pure, pure chocolate. I like it so much I will sometimes make coffee and put 2 tablespoons of my cacao in a nutribullet and then pour the coffee over that and blend it and make myself like chocolate coffee. It's really good.

Yeah, that sounds really good.

My friend Tucker Max, who like, he's a super well informed guy and a very famous author, he turned me onto this stuff because he doesn't drink coffee. He drinks this. It's so, so good. It's basically tea made from the shell of a cacao bean. Plus you get all the dopamine release that you get from cacao so you feel really good after you drink it. So that's another one that, that's a pretty handy alternative to coffee.

Does it taste like a hot chocolate?

It does, but it's really good. Plus it's almost guilt free because there's no calories in it. So that stuff is. Damn, I'm wanting some right now. Not actually talking to you about it.

Amazon car.

Yeah, my cacao. And then the last thing I would consider would be vitamin C. Basically. Vitamin C is also very important for the adrenals and you could supplement with vitamin C. Like there's a company called Jigsaw Health that makes a wonderful vitamin C lysine combo that I actually travel with because I like to keep my immune system supported when I'm traveling. It can also assist with your morning bowel movement if you mix it with little magnesium. Magnesium. There's another company called American Nutraceuticals that makes like a really good whole foods vitamin C. These would be to, as we've discussed, to probably avoid after exercise. But. And I Wouldn't combine them with the caffeine because it'd just make it taste like ass. But at some point, like before you go to bed at night, supplement with a little vitamin C. That can be very, very good for the adrenals as well. So I'd consider throwing that in there and yeah, that's, that's, that' sthat's where my thoughts go on the answer to this question. So hopefully that's helpful.

Yeah. Let's say if Noah, if you have not tried coffee with theanine and I use Thorne's brand as well, I know that's the one you recommended as well. Like that is probably one of my favorite stacks of anything. Like I could get rid of like any other type of, I guess you would say nootropic related supplements or adaptogens and I would do caffeine plus or coffee plus theanine. That is, that's it for me.

Yeah, it's a good mix. I think theanine coffee is at the top of the list. So there you have it.

Hi Ben, what's your take on pre workout supplements? There are so many different brands in the market. I assume the answer depends on what kind of exercise a person's doing and what he or she is trying to achieve from this workout session. In general, do you recommend taking pre workout supplements? Will my body become addictive to the extra boost? Meaning if I don't take the pre workout I will be weaker and slower. Thank you.

Pre workout supplements. I personally like to take a little caffeine and then I'll do some nicotine, some methylene blue, lsd usually like not a lot like just enough so that I'm slightly tripping and then THC, CBD and beetroot and jacked 3D and then I mix that with Red Bull in the, in the Vitamix and that's my pre workout. It's pretty safe, non addictive. You sleep well by about 1am and it just works. Wonderful, wonderful workout. You need to wear a diaper during your workout workout but it works.

When you say you, you fall asleep at 1am you mean you fall asleep on the, on the bench as you're bench pressing?

Yeah, I'm still bench pressing at that point. Yeah, 1001, 1002 and fall asleep.

Hormesis.

Yeah, I was big and. No but seriously I like I would take like red line and coffee and like three shots of espresso. When I was bodybuilding I would do a lot of pre workout subs and I'd be sipping them out of a, you know, out of a shaker bottle while I was working out. Oh yeah, and yeah, same here.

I mean I did, I did the exact same, man. I. So I remember when, when I was bodybuilding back in my early 20s we would take pre workout supplements just you know, like way beyond kind of the directions and but I'd be shitting my pants all the time because of the amount of magnesium and stuff. They'd just flood into it.

We had.

There's a company that put out something called Super Pump 250. I think they still make it nowadays but. But we always call it super dump 250 because that is exactly what would happen as soon as you take it.

Yeah, I want to come up with a supplement and name it Super. I don't know what it's gonna be yet, but it's gonna be super something. It'd be like super poop or maybe super sleep.

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, super awesome. Super epic. Anyways, so yeah, I mean this stuff can be bad news bears for some of the reasons we talked about earlier on the caffeine question. For the adrenals addictive potential, the feeling that you just can't do your workout unless you have it in your system. I mean both psychological and physiological. But what I like is the idea of using pre workouts that are either non addictive or non kind of psychostimulant, central nervous system based or both. And this would include devices as well. So what do I mean by that? Well, when it comes to supplements I'm a big fan of anything that increases blood flow in a similar way that Viagra would do do but without the actual central nervous system stimulants involved. There's one company, I've interviewed the founder of this company before, it's called Biotropic Labs and he does all these blood boosting compounds that literally do act like Viagra for the whole body, big amount of blood flow. He marketed and designed all these for altitude training athletes. But that would be a perfect example of very similar to beetroot but just kind of like upgrade beetroot. And that would be one that would, that would be appropriate. I think Another one would be not to toot my own horn, but essential amino acids. I mean those things are like a fricking shot in the arm because they stave off central nervous system fatigue by keeping tryptophan from crossing the blood brain barrier and making you sleepy like Thanksgiving dinner during a workout, especially a hard workout. But they also stave off muscle catabolism they give you a nice fuel to use as an alternative to carbohydrates and fats. And those just freaking work with no addictive potential or central nervous system stimulation. You could take them at 10pm and be asleep at 10, 10pm they actually help with sleep. So that's a.

And they won't give you the shits.

Yeah, for supplements I would consider that type of approach. Either amino acids or some kind of blood flow precursor devices. Right. There are devices. There's this one company called the nucalm. That thing's amazing. Amazing. It's for sleep, but they have like a separate audio track on it called Ignite that you could use for energy. And I'm a huge fan of the NuCalm device. I own one of those. It's expensive, it's like a $5,000 device. But I mean it's literally like having a nap in your pocket. And now they're rolling out like these pre workout tracks, you know, they're like audio tracks. Similarly, there are companies like Hay Halo.

Right.

It's a headset. It's called Transdirect Cranial stimulation. You put that on before a workout, you get this huge increase in motor neuron recruitment. But you're not having to drink three cups of coffee. So that's. You could use so called biohacks to do this. You could even implant a, what was it called? The Levitron 9000 pelvic.

Levtron 9000.

Yeah, the Levtron pelvic stimulator. Maybe that'll get you pumped up for a workout. And you could of course use a couple other tactics. I'm a big fan of brush breath work, like using like the WIM HOF technique to activate your sympathetic nervous system. Like doing like three just 60 second rounds of Wim Hof. You know, that type of breath work that can get you super pumped up for a workout. Again, no stimulants required. And then I'll link to an article in the show notes. But my friend Brad Kern recently wrote an article about not preheat conditioning before workout, but pre cool cooling. Literally jumping in an ice bath or a cold shower right before you go do your workout. That can be a huge shot in the arm and allow you to reduce your rating of perceived exertion and push harder during the workout. And research has fleshed this out because you're starting off with a lower core temperature and an endorphin release. So those are all examples, you know, just a few examples that come to mind for me of ways that you can Get a pre workout supplement without taking a traditional whatever, you know, redline or jak3d or one of those type of supplements.

Yeah, no good points. I mean, and she asks, you know, ifare these things addictive? And thethe answer to that is, I mean, absolutely, they are. I mean, these are working on plenty of receptors in our brains that are enhanced kind of addiction points in the brain. And so, I mean, staying away from the synthetically made stuff as much as possible, it's just going to benefit you.

Yeah, yeah. And there you guys go. I mean, the doctor said it. He's a certified brain guy. Yeah. So if he said it must be true.

I should market myself like a brain.

Guy instead of a brain the brain dude. All right, well, we're getting kind of long in the tooth for today's show, but we cannot end this show without giving some goodies away. So this is the part of the show and we want to give free swag. So we love itunes reviews. I haven't solicited them for a while, but they really help the show. If you go over to itunes or really anywhere you listen to your favorite podcast. But itunes is the most powerful. You leave a review. If you leave us a nice solid review and we love your review and we read it on the show and you hear us read it on the show, we're going to ship you a handy dandy swag pack with a cool T shirt. Ben Greenfield fitness T shirt, a water bottle, a beanie, pretty much a whole wardrobe. It'll replace your whole wardrobe and your kitchen cabinet. And you just email your T shirt size to gearngreenfieldfitness.com so you email to gear@greenbed greenfield fitness.com if you hear us read your review and you get a handy Dandy swag pack. So what do you think, Jay? You want to read this review?

Time to feel like Santa Claus. So, yeah, this one is from Tony Rose nc. I'm assuming he's at my neck of the woods ncb and I'm just assuming North Carolina. And he called his review the best podcast in the interwebs. He says, I listened to many podcasts but have never reviewed one. This is the only podcast. I don't fast forward through the commercials because they are as informative as the show's content. I've learned so much. I feel like I have a PhD in all matters of health, fitness and nutrition.

Just like you, Jeff.

Since August. Indeed. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Tony, come take over since August. Following many of Ben's tips, tricks and hacks. I've lost over 140 pounds and shrunk from a 50 inch to 34 inch waist. Thanks Ben.

Man, that's freaking incredible. We are turning big old strong men into wimpy 34 inch waist folks. Indeed. We're around the world. That's our job.

Massive muscle mass.

We shrink muscle mass. We shrink people. And now we have a shrink who shrinks people. Yeah, indeed. Yeah, that's what I get paid the big bucks for. Well Tony Rose in nc if that's where you're at. Email gear at Greenfield Fitness Systems, send you some sweatshirt, let us know your T shirt size and the rest of you go leave us a review. Well we promise to read it if it's really just bomb it sucks. Well at least still read it, just not on the show. So all the show notes, everything I've talked about from pre workout supplements to some of the coffee tips to black ant extract and beyond, all the articles you learned about the full calendar of where I'll be in the world. You can grab all that and a link to our new podcast host Jay Wiles website. Let me know what you think of Jay too because kind he's probably going to read it as well. All the comments you can leave and access the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 396 and Jay, how do they say goodbye down there in South Carolina? North Carolina, South Carolina, South Carolina.

I mean they say goodbye but just in a really strong redneck accents like goodbye.

All right, well as we say up here in Washington State to loo. Good day, goodbye. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float.