Ben Discusses Biohacking Gear and Practices for Optimal Cognitive Performance With Mansal Denton,

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, when you expose neural tissue to infrared light, there are two things that happen. First of all, you activate cytochrome oxidase in mitochondrial tissue and so you up regulate metabolic activity in neural tissue. And the other thing is you get a release of nitric oxide in response to that light, and that nitric oxide can cross the blood brain barrier and seep into the rest of the body as well. So you get a full body vasodilatory effect. They've also done really interesting EEG studies on this form of therapy. 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.

Hey, everybody, this is Mansal and welcome to the Brain Optimization Summit. Today I've got Ben Greenfield, who's been a personal friend and colleague for about three years. I think we first met at Paleo FX a few years ago and since then I've followed his biohacking pursuits and I'm excited to have him on. Welcome, Ben.

Thanks for having me on, dude.

So I identify as a biohacker and I know you have identified with yourself as one as well. So what does that mean to you? And where did you first get started with self experimentation?

I guess based on last night's Shark Tank episode that I was watching where those guys were trying to sell the nootropic infused gum at like a $40 million valuation and they got like, laughed out of Shark Tank. How did I forget which channel Shar Tank is on? But whatever the TV network posted at the bottom as these guys walked in through and was like, biohacking, optimizing human biology, using technology, nutrition, sleep, fitness, tactics, whatever, something like that. But I mean, that's honestly pretty close to it, right? It's figuring out ways to get the most out of the human body and the human brain using a variety of tactics, from technology to food to nutrition, we whatever. I mean, I don't really think it's important to have an exact definition of it because the grinders, the folks who are using the human machine as wetware and installing hardware in the human machine, they're doing things like chlorella implants into chlorella injections into the eyes to enhance night vision. Or chips installed like magnetic touch implants installed in the fingertips or lighting installed underneath the tattoos in their body to light up their tattoos. I mean, you could take it to the nth level and define that biohacking. Or I suppose you could jump on the status quo bandwagon and consider dropping a stick of butter into your coffee to be biohacking, which it kind of is, right? Like you're enhancing the absorption of the terpenes, the kawai alls and the cafe stalls in coffee and delivering large amounts of butyric acid to the gut by biohacking what would normally be just caffeine. So I mean, it kind of depends on your definition, but in terms of the first part of your question, the definition of biohacking is a bit sketchy. I think it depends on how serious you are in that realm. And then the sorry, my 8 year old son is standing here and he just drew a sketch of me walking on the treadmill and held it up and it makes me look pretty silly anyways, though, that's the hazards of having a home office. The second part of your question, self experimentation. You know, I really got into it when I was an Ironman triathlete and my freaking body started falling apart, right? Like I looked really good in spandex and I was like competing in the world championships down in Kona and thought I was just like the bee's knees when it came to fitness. But I started to have issues with sleep and with recovery and I started to get kind of cold during the day, so suspected perhaps something was going on with thyroid, you know, like my libido went down, I was getting erectile dysfunction some nights and you know, just all these little things that made me want to investigate what was going on with my body. And so that's when I started digging into the prospect of using any of these number of online lab services, wellness effects and direct labs to specifically test blood, to test saliva for hormones, even though now urine is a better parameter to test DNA using salivary analysis and to test gut function, because gut was another big issue I was having. And so I wanted to test parasites and yeast and fungus and stuff like that. And so just being, I didn't really hook up with a functional medicine doc, which is what a lot of people do. But I was homeschooled K through 12 and my MO has always been kind of like bypassing the boss, bypassing the rules and just kind of trying to get as close as I can to taking things into my own hands, educating myself, digging into my own health. And since I already had a master's degree in biomechanics and physiology, I was comfortable, you know, looking at my own blood parameters, my own blood data. And so I just started to. To take a dive. And then that would have been like, that was around like eight years ago when I was really like knee deep in Ironman triathlon. And since then, you know, I've done a lot of, a lot of both self experimentation and self quantification. And a lot of that has included, you know, biohacks for everything from. Oh geez. I mean, like the number of biohacks I do now is, is crazy. I'm, you know, I'm like that guy on Facebook who recently posted the parody video. Bouncing on a trampoline, wearing an elevation training mask while, you know, drinking Dr. Drinking the coffee with the two sticks of butter in it. And so whenever I talk about biohacks, I always like to, rather than me vomiting up a bunch of different biohacks that I happen to be doing, I always like to shut up and just listen to any questions you might have about things that, you know, your audience might be interested in, goals that, you know, your audience might be interested in that I can then share some biohacks that I use for. But yeah, that's kind of like the short slash long answer to your question.

Yeah, I think we're on a similar wavelength in the sense that there's this feeling of self responsibility that comes with our own hardware and software. I know that you and I are probably a little bit more geeky than most as far as how far we're willing to go down the rabbit hole. But many in my audience just kind of are interested in some of the 80, 20 things that you do. What are maybe the top three biohacks that you've found for own life, whether it be just diet or something more specific over the past eight years, varies.

Literally on a monthly basis because technology is progressing at a rapid speed, including technology that can enhance the brain or the body. So this month, for example, the main things I've been doing that have really been moving the dial on, I would say sleep and cognitive performance. If I could choose three things, really, all three would be mental based. Really, they would be head based. So one would be infrared therapy, specifically for neural tissue. So there is a device that was originally designed for Alzheimer's patients. It's called a VI Lite V I E. Light. When you expose neural Tissue to infrared light. There are two things that happen. First of all, you activate cytochrome oxidase in mitochondrial tissue and so you upregulate metabolic activity in neural tissue. And then the other thing is you get a release of nitric oxide in response to that light. And that nitric oxide can cross the blood brain barrier and seep into the rest of the body as well. So you get a full body vasodilatory effect. They've also done really interesting EEG studies on this form of therapy, which is basically headgear that you wear along with a little probe that you put into your nose. And they've shown that it increases in EEG studies alpha brainwave production. So like relaxed focus brainwave production in the evenings. I found that to be pretty useful for decreasing sleep latency. And I test that with a ring that looks like this called an OURA ring, which I wear for tracking heart rate variability and body temp and sleep and activity and things of that nature. And the other thing that I found this violite to be useful for, and the model that I use is called a Neuro is it's like a cup of coffee for your brain in the morning when you're low on sleep or you're jet lagged or. Not that I ever do this, but you've had too much alcohol or weed or something like that the night before. It kind of clears out your brain, which makes sense because it is something that's been shown to assist with things like cognitive function and executive function, specifically in Alzheimer's patients. So that's one thing that's about. It's a fourteen to fifteen hundred dollar unit, I think, well worth the investment. Another thing, the second thing I would say would be TDCS transd current stimulation specifically for performance. For physical performance. I've been using a device called a halo made by Halo Neuro I think is the name of the company. And it is a device that you, that you wear kind of over the frontal cortex of the head, almost looks like those big Bose headphones. You put it on, you wet the electrodes and it's basically a magnetic stimulation of the brain, the motor cortex specifically for about 20 minutes. And it is something that has been used by professional sports teams all last year. It just hit the general public a few weeks ago. The Golden State warriors, for example, would use it prior to scrimmages and games. But it increases both skill acquisition when done prior to a complex activity. It also decreases rating of perceived exertion during any workouts that follow. The use of it. And so I'll put it on for about 20 minutes. And for example, let's say I'm going to do a one hour workout. It would be, I'd wear it during the 20 minute warmup, you know, on a bicycle. And then I would do the hard part of the workout. Let's say it's squats, deads and cleans. And it vastly reduces the rating of perceived exertion and increases the total amount of weight lifted in a pretty, pretty shocking way. Like it's one of those things that you feel almost right away. So that's, that's just TDCS for the brain and the device I use for that is called the halo. And then the last thing, how much.

Do those run approximately?

I think those are about 600 or so. And then the last thing that I've been getting a lot of benefit out of for increasing focus, decreasing distractibility and increasing or decreasing any brain waves that I want to target, whether it's beta or theta or delta or alpha, has been neurofeedback, specifically electrode based neurofeedback. So I traveled down to la. I went to five days of training down there at a place called the Peak Brain Institute. They train you on how to basically fly a spaceship that appears on the screen. But prior to doing that, they do a full QEEG brain mapping of your brain. And they identify areas of increased distractibility, areas where there might be limited blood flow, areas where there are imbalances in things like beta theta ratios or the amount of alpha brainwave production. They train you how to attach the electrodes in the proper locations on your head and then you go back home with all the equipment and you continue to train. I've been training for about three months every other day for around 30 minutes. And they have, they have a practitioner who I have access to via cell phone and email, who I can, I can contact and say, hey, I, I need more focus today or I'm going to need better sleep on set tonight because I just got back from traveling back east or I've noticed that recently I've had more distractibility. I've been tempted to multitask more frequently. We need to shut down fast beta production. And what happens is when you, when you attach the electrodes to your head and you pull up the spaceship software, it's both auditory and visual, meaning that when you stray into the areas of brainwave production that you want to avoid, the spaceship stops flying and it stops making noise. Or you could even like overlay it over like A TV show. And like the TV show will start to fade or the music will start to fade. Like if you pull up Hulu or something and watch that while the electrodes are attached to your head and you watch it through the software, it's special software that it comes with that basically allows you to be rewarded or punished for the specific brainwave frequencies that you go into. So you program the software for the brainwave frequencies that you want to be rewarded for and the ones that you want to be punished for. And you essentially remap your brain using this neurofeedback based training. And that one's through a company that I went with called the Peak Brain Institute. They've got a few different locations in California. But I would say right now the three biggest biohacks I've been using, they're all related to cognitive performance. It would be that the violite or well, I guess the second one, the halo, is also for physical performance, but the vielite, the halo and then neurofeedback with Peak Brain Institute. So that's a smattering of what I've been up to of late.

Yeah. So for somebody who might be just making forays into cognitive enhancement, what are maybe one or two accessible suggestions that you might have? Maybe they don't feel like doing neurofeedback or they're concerned about a fifteen hundred dollar infrared light.

Right. So let's go with free then. Some of the biggest ones that I'd recommend, number one would be Kundalini yoga, which is a form of yoga that you can learn. You can get it online. You can have like I had a custom session created for me by a really good practitioner out of Hawaii, Summer Nicole, who actually had on my website. And you could go to my website@BenGreenvilleFitness.com and do a search for Kundalini Yoga and listen to the interview that I had with her. Or you could look for Kundalini yoga classes in your area or videos online. But it's a form of yoga that's been shown to do a really good job increasing cerebral blood flow. And it's also great exercise. It's a lot of breath work, it's a lot of movement. It's different than a lot of other forms of yoga that would be one. Another one would be cold water plunges, especially for the face. Even if you're not going to do the whole body, you get a lot of vagus nerve stimulation when you do, when you get your face. And that would include like the occipital lobe at the base of your skull under cold water. It's like filling up the sink with cold water or taking a cold shower works well. Cold bath works well. Cold soak, cold plunge. It's the winter right now. So if you happen to live in a cold location, that's pretty easy to do. But what happens is you activate a reflex called the mammalian dive reflex when you expose your face or your neck to cold. And that increases the tone of your vagus nerve. And that can improve everything from your ability to manage stress to things like heat tolerance and cold tolerance, Sleep onset heart rate variability, which is reflective of the strength of your nervous system. So that'd be another one. Kundalini yoga. Cold face plunges and then the last one. I mean really basic, a lot of people probably know about this, but just increasing the sources of nutrient dense choline or fat soluble vitamins in your diet and a lot of people don't get either of these foods. But the two most nutrient dense foods for a lot of precursors for cognitive performance to the most nutrient dudes on the dense foods on the face of the planet for this one is liver and one is shellfish. So just going out of your way to either consume liver or if you don't like the taste of liver, find a really good desiccated liver capsule. There's a variety of companies that make them. Like now foods has a decent desiccated liver on Amazon, but consuming liver on a frequent basis and then also doing an oyster feed or lobsters, clams, crabs, anything along those lines. From a shellfish standpoint, that's also really, really good in terms of nutrient density. Granted these days a lot of the shellfish have some toxins and some amount of metals and things like that in them. And you can mitigate some of that by consuming like an activated charcoal along with, you know, before, after the shellfish. But including liver and shellfish and eggs would be a close third. Like whole eggs with the yolk, like whole pastured eggs with the yolk in your diet. Cold water fish would be about a fourth. Those are also really, really good ways to improve the number of nutrients available to your brain.

That's perfect. I've just recently bought an entire box of oysters, basically canned oysters. Yeah, it's good travel food.

Oh yeah, those are great. I can canned oysters, like that's one of my go to meals like when I'm traveling and I'll go to like Whole foods. Right. Make a salad, run into the aisle where the, where the canned fish Are grab some canned oysters, dump that on the salad, and that's a great go to meal.

Yeah, I think I prefer sardines, but either way, in a pinch, they work.

Yeah, the oysters are slightly, they can be slightly more nutrient dense, but sardines, in my opinion, are tastier.

So actually, both sardines and oysters help me to prolong either ketogenesis or maintain a ketogenic diet while I'm traveling. And I know that some of the experiments you've done are around ketogenesis and you've even gone as far as to, you know, getting lab results and things. So what mental performance enhancements or, you know, negative effects have you seen from doing a ketogenic low carb diet?

What bad things have I seen from that?

Well, what benefits or negative side effects? I don't want to assume that they're all benefits for your brain necessarily.

Well, ketones are used as a, or can be used when in the presence of low blood glucose as a source of energy primarily for things like the heart, the liver, the diaphragm and the brain. And so based on that, considering that the diaphragm and the heart specifically are very, very crucial organs for cardiovascular endurance, anaerobic performance, and the brain, of course, for neural performance, one of the main things that I've noticed is enhanced cognition and also better aerobic endurance. Now, of course, the deficit to like strict ketosis and not doing, say like a nightly carbohydrate refeed or kind of like topping off your glycogen levels at the end of the day, the problem with it can be that, that sometimes you can not have that extra little bit in the gas tank that you need for anaerobic performance or for harder efforts. And because now I'm doing a lot of Spartan racing, a lot of weightlifting, a lot of, you know, harder, more anaerobic, more glycolytic efforts. What I do is I, I generally don't eat that many carbohydrates until the end of the day. And then in a post workout scenario, when my, my glute four transporters and other transporters necessary for shoving glucose into skeletal muscle tissue and liver tissue, when those are really elevated post workout, that's when I'll have my carbohydrates towards the end of the day, anywhere from 75 to 200 grams, depending on, on how active the day has been of carbohydrates. Then by the next morning, I'm kind of back into more of a ketotic state. But the benefits are Primarily neural and anaerobic endurance. And it's interesting now because when you have companies like Pruvit or Patrick Arnold's company, Ketoforce, putting out these ketones that you can actually consume exogenously, meaning that rather than consuming a high amount of MCT oil and coconut oil and fasting and restricting carbohydrates to get into ketosis, you can actually just consume ketones to get into ketosis. You can kind of sort of have the best of both worlds if you're looking at this from a pure performance standpoint, right? Like, you can technically have simultaneous high levels of glycogen availability, high levels of blood glucose, and also high levels of ketones. And that's something that I'll use occasionally for, like, a hard race. I'll still do, like, you know, sushi the night before and some carbohydrates the morning of, and then take ketones and, and be in basically both ketosis and high blood glucose. And you can really crush a workout doing that. I don't profess that to be healthy per se, but if you're just using it as, like a performance hack, you know, occasionally, especially when you're exercising hard, it's not like you're gonna exhaust the pancreas from an insulin standpoint, because you're extremely insulin sensitive when you're exercising, most of that glucose is getting burnt quite readily. But it's interesting to throw in some of those ketones every now and again, too, if you're doing this from a pure performance standpoint. Now, on the flip side, strict ketosis combined with high levels of physical activity, or just strict ketosis, that is, that's too low in carbohydrates, are like, dropping below like 30 to 40 grams per day of carbohydrates. I have noted in myself and also in a lot of the folks that I've worked with or done blood consults with, you tend to see kind of low levels of thyroid hormone because some amount of glucose is necessary for your T4 to T3 conversion. So you see some, like, cold temperatures, high TSH, high thyroid stimulating hormone because the brain is trying to coax you to churn out more thyroid. So you see some thyroid dysregulation, drop in testosterone in both males and females tends to also be a side effect of that, which makes sense because from an evolutionary or an ancestral standpoint, you'd want to downregulate fertility in a state of starvation that is combined with high levels of physical activity, right? So you wouldn't want to have babies when you're like, you know, traveling many miles without much food, which can be with strict ketosis, can, can fool your body into thinking it's doing. And then some joint pain, because a lot of the proteoglycans necessary for joint health, those are dependent upon a certain amount of glucose. And so you can get some joint, some thyroid and some hormonal issues if you kind of like take things too far or if you do ketosis and you're like training for an ironman or a Spartan or something like that, and you're following the trickle down advice from, let's say, somebody you know who's written a book on ketosis, but they're not an athlete. Right. They're not doing high levels of physical activity. They don't account for the fact that maybe you need like 50 to 100 to 200 grams more carbohydrate than they're recommending in their book, because frankly, you're burning it all. You know, that's something that you need to be aware of is you need to tweak and customize accordingly if you don't want to get some of those, those potential metabolic deficits.

Yeah, the tweaking individualistic carb intakes is huge, I think for most people just because, I mean, it's a very basic tenet, but everyone is so different. And 10 grams of carbohydrates seems to make a big difference between two people. So switching gears a little bit, one of the things that I've been most interested in from the, the things that you've created, the products that you've created is the CBD oil. And I know you have a formulation out there, and I'm definitely interested in getting your take on the federal ban or the schedule one that just happened. But what are some of the benefits that you've experienced using CBD oil and people can take moving forward even if they don't have an ailment. So I'm talking specifically enhancement purposes.

Yeah. So first of all, from an ailment standpoint, the foremost studied things that cannabidiol, specifically the cbd, that would be delivered in high concentrations in the absence of thc. So you're avoiding a lot of the psychoactivity and the paranoia and even some of the gray matter and the working memory issues that can come with high THC consumption. So you're looking at like isolated versions of cbd. And I'm not even talking like, you know, THC blends that are high in cbd. I'm talking about just Pure isolated cbd, it would be anxiety, depression, sleep and inflammation. Right. So those are four things that, that CBD has been shown to be quite efficacious for. Those are some of the most studied, studied parameters that CBD has been shown to affect. So decreasing anxiety, decreasing inflammation, enhancing sleep, and then also alleviating things like stress and depression. There's also been some evidence showing that it can improve insulin sensitivity, it can improve physical performance. There's some hormonal balance. There's even some evidence that it may have an effect on testosterone levels, which is great because THC can have the opposite effect. So there's a variety of things that CBD can be used for. I frankly, you know, like my formulation that I design, that I sell. I've blended it with turmeric, ashwagandha, lemon balm and magnesium, the turmeric for increased bioavailability. Because CBD is notoriously not water soluble. So it doesn't really penetrate a lot of the body's tissues unless it's blended in a certain way with turmeric or curcumin specifically, which can increase bioavailability. And then the ashwagandha, the lemon balm and the magnesium that I add to it, it's really good for stress and anxiety. Taking a nap in the middle of the day, sleeping at night, taking the edge off of like, you know, a stressful situation, such as, you know, being stuck in traffic or a tough day at work. So generally folks will take like one to two capsules during a stressful day just to kind of settle down a little bit, or they'll take three to five capsules at night to sleep. Now, granted that, you know, three to five capsules, each capsule is 10 milligrams, that's 30 to 50 milligrams. A non bioavailable, non water soluble CBD typically will have to take about five to 10 times that amount to get that much deliverability. So that's kind of like the, that's kind of like the, the, the uniqueness of that particular product. And I know I'm tooting my own horn by saying that, but I'm saying it anyways. And so that's, that's what I would use something like that for. As far as the new classification of CBD as a Schedule 1 controlled substance by the U.S. government, that law seems to, and I say seems to because it's still a bit fuzzy in terms of what the feds are actually regulating, but it seems to only apply to cannabidiol derived from marijuana. The cannabidiol derived from hemp, and specifically the cannabidiol that that's used in my product is derived from organic European based hemp that does not appear to be subject to these same federal laws that restrict its trade across borders or its consumption as a Schedule 1 controlled substance. That may change, but at this point I'm still selling it at Greenfield Fitness Systems. It's still available, it's still a product that I'm using, It's still a product that I'm shipping. Anything can change in this industry. The federal government, bless their little hearts, can make anything illegal, including fish oil. But at this point, if the CBD is derived from hemp, not marijuana, with the differentiation being that hemp has extremely low levels of THC, low than 0.3 levels of THC, it appears to be still legal.

Yeah, that actually brings. I had a few questions about the actual legality, but I created a movie recently that was discussing some of the top nootropics that are going to be in 2017. And I believe either CBD oil is getting so big that they decided they thought they needed to regulate it, or the fact that they regulated it is going to send everybody in droves to buy CBD oil. So either way, I think CBD oil is going to be growing.

Yeah, it's interesting. And the government also has a patent on CBD used specifically for the purposes of anti inflammation. So that may be part of it too, is that the government knows that it can potentially develop some kind of a therapeutic agent based on their patent for cbd. And so I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all. I don't think there's some dude sitting there rubbing his hands together like Mr. Smithers and the Simpsons or whatever, planning to launch some mighty government pill. But at the same time, there may be some lobbying activity going on that would influence the government's choice to classify this as a Schedule 1 controlled substance based on the fact that that they may be able to develop some kind of pharmaceutical based compound that utilizes cbd and when they do so, there wouldn't be a lot of competition on the market for it. If CBD is indeed a Schedule 1 controlled substance.

Yeah. So going back to your specific formulation, first of all, lemon balm is probably my favorite nootropic. For improving sleep, I take magnesium daily. How would you say CBD compares with some of those, you know, big guns like Ashwagandha for anxiety and depression reduction?

I've used Ashwagandha, lemon balm, ph gamma, aminobutyric acid, Microdoses and mega doses of melatonin, etc, CBD is pretty high up there. I swear by what I do each night for sleep is I take a small handful of the CBD capsules, the ones that have the ashwagandha and the lemon balm in them, and the magnesium. And then I have a very small packet of powder called Sleep Remedy developed by a former U.S. navy Seal named Dr. Kirk Parsley. And that's basically a little bit of pH, GABA, a small amount of omega 3 fatty acids, small amount of vitamin D, small amount of magnesium. That one, two combo I've found too in just about any environment, including travel, airplanes, etc, it knocks me out like a light. And I've taken CBD by itself as well and it works extremely well. But I find that when I don't combine it with a cocktail of other ingredients that I need more of it and that I actually do better when it comes to decreased sleep latency and also better sleep cycles and longer amount of time sleeping when I combine it with a lot of these other compounds. So I think I'm getting a little bit of synergy by combining it with a bunch of stuff. But when taken in higher doses all by itself, it's pretty damn efficacious.

I want to switch gears back to some novel methods of improving cognition that I've seen on your podcast and your blog. And one of them that caught my eye was the sound for improving sound waves to have enhanced mental performance. So how do you use sound waves? How have you used sound waves in order to improve mental performance? And can you explain that process?

Yeah, certainly. I'll delve into this and I'm going to fire off a warning signal to you that I've probably got a maximum of about 10 minutes left here, so I'm going to shove as much as I can in for you. So with sound, there are two different forms of sound that you can use. One is called binaural beats and binaural beats, that basically involves for example, playing 500Hz in one ear and 490Hz and the other ear through headphones, typically using some kind of sound producing app. And you split the difference between those two frequencies and you get a frequency of say 10 hertz, which would be like an alpha brainwave hertz, because your alpha brainwaves are approximately kind of like that in that 8 to 12 hertz range. And that lulls you into a specific sleep cycle. And you could use binaural beats to increase a little bit of beta for focus. You could Increase theta. You could. You could do, like, a delta pattern. You could even have some kind of app that walks you through multiple patterns throughout the night. An example of a good app that I'll use that has Binaural Beats built into it is called Sleep Strength. It's like a DJ for sleep, right? You can choose, like, piano tunes and binaural beats and a little bit of background white noise or pink noise or brown noise or, you know, noise at different frequencies. So it blocks a little bit of ambient sound. And that would be one example of how you could use sound for sleep. Binaural Beats specifically, there is another app called Brain FM and a kind of similar app called Zizz P Zizz. And both of those do not use binaural beats. It's a different form of sound. And quite frankly, I don't really understand how it's that much different than Binaural Beats, but it's a little bit more based on mental confusion, right? They're like. They're like playing a sound in one ear, then a sound in the other ear, and it's shifting and it's swirling, and it almost like hypnotizes you into the state that you want to be in. So, like Brain fm, you open up that app and you've got options for focus, for creativity, for sleep, for relaxation, for a power nap, for eight hours of sleep, et cetera. And that one, frankly, I've been using that more and more, and actually, I kind of like it. So what I've been doing with that, and I've found that this is huge for doing things like lucid dreaming or falling asleep at night when you've woken up, is I'll put on the Brain FM and I'll choose a sleep cycle on that. And Brain FM allows you to download the cycle so that you can have your phone in airplane mode and you don't have to have it on next to your head while you're asleep. So I'll put on the Brain FM sounds, and then I'll use what's called Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy, or pemf. And I have a very tiny little device. It's called a Delta Sleeper. I have a really fascinating podcast on it@bengreenfieldfitness.com deepsleep and in that podcast, we go into how PEMF, or pulsed electromagnetic Field Therapy, can be used for sleep. And typically, this device would be placed over the brachial plexus, which is essentially kind of like the area where your collarbone meets your shoulder. And that would cause feeding up that brachial plexus nerve up into the brain, the production of delta brain waves. But you can get both the production of delta brain waves and the induction of lucid dreaming if you place it over what they would call in like Ayurveda or in Eastern medicine, your third eye chakra right in between your eyes. That's basically over your pineal gland, which is the area of your body that would produce something like dmt, which is the same thing you'd get when you, when you say like smoke ayahuasca and you, you put that, that little delta sleeper over your, your pineal gland. And I, I frankly just use like a sleep mask to hold it on because I sleep with a sleep mask anyways. And then I'll put those brain FM beats in each ear and it's like hypnotism and lucid dreaming. It's actually really, really kind of fun and cool way to sleep. I always wake up with these, you know, not, not during the night, but, but when I wake up in the morning with these crazy, really cool lucid dreams. You know, sometimes flying, sometimes sex dreams, sometimes adventure dreams. But it's really interesting. So those are a couple of the ways that I will use sound to enhance sleep. With the note that I can also like take brain fm, blast it through my headphones and use that for fiction writing or for when I'm at a coffee shop and I want to block out a little bit of noise. So yeah, it's really fun to play with sound in that way.

Yeah, absolutely. And you've also mentioned light and so, you know, with the, what was it called? The violight device that you have.

Yeah, neuro.

Yeah. So I think it's just interesting to me where the future of these mental performance hacks are going, including sound and light. It's not just taking a pillar and thinking that we're going to become limitless, like I think a lot of people believe.

Right.

So if somebody is interested in finding more from you, more information about the different topics we've covered, where can they go and find you?

Well, I have a book and in the book I've got about 500 pages of biohacks from brain to digestion to sleep to hormones, et cetera, that is@Beyond Training Book.com. and then I also have a free podcast. I write articles on a frequent basis. I've got, literally, as dizzying as it may seem like almost 10 years worth of blog posts and articles and a searchable database, et cetera, over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com everything that I recommend that I find that I endorse is @greenfield fitness systems.com and if you're lazy and you can't remember URLs and you just want to cut straight to the chase, just Google my name, Ben Greenfield and you should arrive at the right place. I don't think there's a whole bunch of Ben Greenfield's in the health and fitness sector out there on the web. So yeah, just Google can always work in a pinch.

That's the hack that people are using these days to find things. It's just Google names, right?

Let me google that for you. The LMGTFY website.

Yeah. Well Ben, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom and giving people a place to start with nootropics and biohacking.

Thanks man. Thanks for having me on. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.