Ben Greenfield is Interviewed by Health & Wellness Expert, Christina Rice!

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.

Thank you again so much for coming on the show. I'm so excited to chat with you. I have been a huge fan of your podcast for a long time. You're actually one of the first podcasts I ever listened to.

Wow.

But for people who maybe aren't familiar with you, can you give a brief introduction for yourself?

What do you want to know?

I want to know, how do you describe your job to people? When people say, what do you do? What do you say?

That depends. If they're just like some, you know, 70 year old man sitting next to me on an airplane, I tell them I'm an author. Because that's generally what people understand if you say author. Otherwise, you know, I'm, I am a human performance coach and consultant. I help people get the most out of their bodies and their brains when it comes to everything from like cognitive performance to digestion, fat loss, hormone balance, physical, physical performance, sleep, you know, things along those lines. My master's degree is in exercise physiology and biomechanics and I've spent the past couple of decades racing as a professional athlete in sports like triathlon and obstacle course racing. And also, you know, doing a lot in like the nutrition sector and the exercise sector when it comes to studying, speaking, teaching and writing. I'm a, I'm a New York Times best selling author primarily on the topics of health and wellness and fitness. And you know, I spend most of my, most of my time writing and I travel around the world. I speak at different conferences on health and I blog and write articles over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I podcast and do video, a lot of new media type of things. And then I also, you know, play some music, write some fiction, have a little off grid home out here in Washington state where we raise goats and chickens and have a big garden and that's where myself and my wife and my, my twin boys reside.

Yeah, you have a lot going on. What, what first do you remember, like the moment when you felt like I need to get into biohacking like, have you always been like this?

There was never a moment when I thought I needed to get into biohacking because I think our perception of biohacking is silly. True biohacking is honestly based on this concept that the human body is hardware and. Or, I'm sorry, wetware. And what we place in is hardware. So people who are implanting magnets in their fingers via surgical intervention to be able to better interact with their devices, like the movie Minority Report, or people who are implanting chips in their brains to be able to telepathically communicate with other human beings, people who are injecting their eyeball with chlorophyll to enhance night vision, those are true biohackers, right? Putting. Putting like butter in your coffee and pressing blend. That's cooking. Or, you know, say, you know, going. Going to the gym and having some kind of, like, piece of electronic equipment you're wearing on your head before you go to the gym to help you work out better. That's just basically warming up for your workout. That's not, you know, it's not really biohacking. So I never, ever, you know, woke up one morning, I was like, hey, I'm going to be a biohacker. All I do is I just find cool things that make your body or your brain or your life better, whether it be, you know, planting fresh rosemary outside that I can, you know, smear on a steak or. Or make into a tea, or whether it be, you know, using one of these fancy devices that are, you know, often advertised as biohacks. But like I mentioned, I consider to just be better living through science, you know, and it's kind of interesting because in my life as an author and a blogger and a podcast are a lot of times, you know, companies who make things like, you know, little devices that enhance your cognitive performance or, you know, lights that you can use to keep you from staying awake at night or, you know, special recipes or smoothies or mushroom extracts or whatever, they just kind of send them to me, you know, to try them, because I've kind of got this shtick now as a. Almost like an immersive journalist. And so. So. So, yeah, I mean, for me, it's more a matter of just kind of my. My. I shouldn't say popularity, but my visibility as an author and a blogger has led to me inevitably being put in front of a lot of new things to try. And that's kind of led me down the road of. Of being identified as one of these biohackers, so to speak.

But you don't, you don't like to go by that, that name.

I don't really care. I'm agnostic. I just think it's a silly name.

Okay.

Got silly title and often like a silly overused word, in my opinion.

I see. Okay, well, I want to start talking about some of the different things you've tried to enhance your life and performance and cognition and all of the things. Is there anything that stands out for you as a popular trend nowadays that you just think is total?

Sure. Let's say, for example, the ketogenic diet. Right.

Oh, I'm so glad you said that.

Ketogenic diet bandwagon. I'm keto, I'm targeted keto. I'm cyclic keto, I'm morning keto, I'm sometimes keto, I'm fruit keto. Like, it's just silly. You know, people get on these diet bandwagons and keto, the ketogenic diet, you know, it's a therapeutic intervention originally designed to help people who had, like, epilepsy or seizures manage their symptoms better by reducing carbohydrate intake and by reducing the amount of glucose that wound up in the brain and by instead in making things like ketones from a higher fat, lower carbohydrate diet available to neural tissue. And it turns out that it's applicable for therapeutic application for things like head injuries or concussions or even issues with deep sea divers who get the bends or compression issues, things like that. The problem is that it's been hailed as the salvation for everything from fat loss to physical performance to cognitive enhancement, to a host of other issues that it's claimed to help with, including, and I will admit that it can be useful for this, like Alzheimer's and dementia, but the fact is, you have to eat the diet that's right for you. There's really not a lot of evidence that a high carb, low fat diet is any better than a high fat, low carb diet, or vice versa. When you look at the general population who are A, eating a healthy diet and B, not eating too many calories, right? Once you're eating a healthy diet comprised of real food and you're not overeating calories, it turns out that what's more important are the big picture items more than like, I'm high fat, low carb, I'm high carb, low fat. It's things like, I fast and I don't stuff my face all the time. I have periods of time where I just go without eating. Right. That's a variable that seems to make any diet very successful when it comes to everything from longevity to weight loss. Another example would be, I eat foods that are very nutrient dense, meaning that you might choose a quinoa versus a white rice or an amaranth or a millet versus white bread. You're choosing dense sources of fuel rather than calorie rich, nutrient poor sources of fuel. That's another prevailing characteristics that we see whether you're a high carb, low fat or high fat, low carb person. Another example would be blood sugar fluctuation, what's referred to in science as glycemic variability. Right. Like how much does your blood sugar go up and down during the day? And it turns out that, you know, if you're on, you know, a lot of people will say, well, that means you couldn't ever be on a high carb diet. No, that's not the case. Right. We see a lot of hunter gatherer populations eating taro and, you know, and plantain and carrot and parsnip and beets and raw honey and, and all manner of different carbohydrate sources as 70 to 80% of their diet. Right. Which would shock a ketogenic diet. Or they'd be like, oh, you're gonna drop dead and be in your grave tomorrow from eating. But the fact is they're active. They're walking, they're hunting, they're gathering, they're gardening, they're moving. And for someone who has an active lifestyle, just the simple act of moving allows your body to process those carbohydrates pretty efficiently and keep them from causing frequent spikes in the blood sugar versus someone sitting at their desk eating Snickers bar and drinking Gatorade, which would be an example of a higher carb intake, nutrient poor intake, large fluctuations in glycemic variability, not a lot of fasting between meals. But you could also say the same thing for someone sitting at their desk sucking down a cup of coffee full of butter and coconut oil and then eating a bunch of keto cupcakes for lunch. Right. So it's, it's very interesting. I think this whole ketogenic diet type of thing, you know, everybody thinks it's, it's the latest sexy new thing. And I might be guilty of that just because I, I personally, you know, have used that, that kind of approach, that higher fat, lower carb approach to do things like enhance my, my physical performance, particularly for endurance or to, you know, stave off appetite. But I also have found that I, you know, I've tested myself. And not every diet works perfectly for everyone. And I've tested like my blood glucose levels and I've tested my own glycemic variability and my own gut comfort. And it turns out that that approach, you know, of some amount of carbohydrate restriction works pretty well for me. But then I don't then turn around and say, hey everybody, keto diet is sent from God and this diet is the perfect diet for the entire planet. And you know, you're, you're a sinner if you eat a banana for lunch, right? That's, that's not the case. And I think that diet, diets in general are silly, but I think this whole ketogenic diet thing is just kind of way out of control in terms of people just thinking like it's the bee's knees, when in fact it's not. It's more major dietary principles that are key. And then if the ketogenic diet works for you, and you might be one of those people who it does work for, great. But if not, don't feel guilty. Like, you know, just eat a nutrient dense diet, restrict the amount of blood glucose fluctuation that's occurring in whatever diet that you're eating and engage in some amount of fasting or intermittent fasting. And if you kind of nail those variables, you know, you're going to be a lot better than just like sticking to some diet that might have worked for your neighbor but isn't going to work for you.

What, what differences did you notice for yourself when you were trying out keto? Like in terms of performance or your decomposition or cognitive performance, anything?

Well, I originally began to eat a higher fat, lower carb intake while training for Iron man, because ketones, which are generated when you burn a lot of fats as a fuel or when you restrict carbohydrates or you fast, they are a preferred source of fuel for the liver and the diaphragm and the heart and some of these organs that would be considered organs that assist with endurance performance. And in addition, it seems to me, and I've found this during like longer workouts, that having high levels of ketone seems to assist with focus, like with mental focus, which helps out quite a bit when you're riding a frickin bicycle for five hours or running a marathon. So that's how I originally began to utilize that type of dietary approach of carbohydrate restriction and high amount of ketone production and even intake of a lot of these ketone containing supplements was to assist with Endurance performance. And, and that's where I've found it to be useful. I've found it to be useful for restricting carbohydrate cravings. After you've, you know, followed a diet like that for about six months to two years, you start to really get less carbohydrate cravings. You start to become more efficient at using fat as a fuel, at burning your own fat as a fuel, at going for long periods of time without eating. Like, there are definitely some benefits that, that arise from it, but you could do the same thing with a, you know, a diet comprised of raw honey and sweet potato and quinoa and amaranth and millet and fruit. And, you know, you, you, you can still, if you're doing things like fasting and some amount of calorie restriction, still generate ketones on a diet like that. And I'll often eat a diet, you know, I just got back from hunting in Kona and I probably had the equivalent of about three pieces of fruit per day compared to the approximate maybe one piece of fruit every few days I might have when I'm back home. And I had a lot of carbohydrates, you know, I ate a lot of poi, which is like a, like a purple sweet potato kind of mush. I ate a lot of taro. I ate a lot of, a lot of fruits. Like I mentioned, a lot of fruits. And the, the fact is, when you are exposed to sunlight and you have a lot of vitamin D production and you're in a warmer climate, your ability to be able to be insulin sensitive and your ability to be able to process fructose better and process sugar better goes up. So I'll sometimes eat differently depending on where I'm at in the world. Right. So when you combine that with the fact that I love to delve into whatever the local population tends to eat anyways, it lends itself quite well to being really, like, really open to dietary flexibility, especially when I travel. So I do eat a lot more carbohydrates and a lot more fruit when I'm in sunny climates, for example. And that's important that when you're looking at your diet, especially if you travel a lot like I do, you don't, you know, adhere to such a restrictive diet that you're not able to enjoy the local culture or even change up your diet based on the season. Right. This is another idea of seasonal variability. Right. You might eat a ketogenic diet in the winter when it really is, you know, there's fewer vegetables there's fewer fruit, there's fewer starches and you've just got like fats and meat and preserved foods and stuff like that. Whereas in the summer, you know, when everything's growing and there's lots of fruits and you're out in the sunshine, you might shift to a higher and maybe you're more active too. Right. You might shift to a higher carbohydrate intake, higher fruit intake, that type of thing. So it can change seasonally and it can change when you travel.

Let's say someone feels they, you know, they say they feel really great on keto. Are there any negative long term effects? Like what if somebody just is like, I'm going to stay keto forever and never cycle in and out, what would.

You say now, now, what's the question exactly?

Like, are there any negative long term effects of staying in ketosis for just a really long time and never cycling in and out?

Depends. Like, if you're really, really active and you're burning a lot of carbohydrates and your body needs a little bit more carbohydrate intake for, you know, let's say a high amount of weightlifting or high amount of heavy training or something like that, sure. You can get to the point where you're sending your body the signal that there's not enough carbohydrates to convert inactive thyroid hormone to active thyroid hormone or to comprise like the, the, the glycoproteins in your joints to assist with joint health. Then you start to get joint pains and your metabolism starts to go down a little bit a lot of times. And this happens more often in women than in men. You see a downregulation of some of the enzymes or the hormones rather responsible for maintaining normal fertility. Because frankly, most human bodies, from an evolutionary standpoint are hardwired to down regulate fertility and to not want to make babies when you're starved and you're running from a lion because you wouldn't want to introduce children into a scenario like that. So yeah, there's some definite scenarios, especially in very active people, more often in females and in males and like I mentioned, in people who may not even be, from an ancestral standpoint, hardwired to be able to digest fats efficiently. Right. There are some people who have a high amount of saturated fat sensitivity who produce a lot of inflammation. It's called a PPAR gene issue. In response to high fat intake. There are some people with what's called familial hypercholesteremia who produce a lot of what's called lp, a cardiovascular risk marker in response to a high fat diet. And again, this comes all the way back to dietary individuality and people who may not be hardwired from an ancestral or genetic standpoint to really do well with a high fat diet, doing poorly if they shift to ketosis or something like that. So, yeah, there's a great deal of individuality and there's a great deal of modifications that need to be made if you're a very active person and even more so if you're a very active female.

Yeah, I think that the problem is that everybody's just looking for someone to give them a set of rules, you know, just to follow instead of figuring out what works best for them individually, which is why something like keto is so enticing to so many people. And I know people are listening to this right now and they're freaking out and they're saying, okay, well then how do I figure out what macronutrient ratio, for instance, works best for me? So how do you suggest people go about starting to figure that out for themselves, like what markers, what should they be paying attention to?

Yeah, I have a pretty comprehensive article on how to do this over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com called, I think it's just called how to customize your diet to you. It's called F diets, how to customize your diet to you, Something like that. And in that I outline how you can do. You can do a 23andMe, which is a genetic analysis, which is like a saliva test, and you just drip saliva into a tube. I found that if you sniff peanut butter, it helps you drip the saliva into the tube a little bit better. For some reason, I salivate over peanut butter. And that test will show you where your ancestors came from so that you could maybe look into the diet that they ate and try and emulate that diet a little bit more. You know, whether you're a higher carb, like southern eastern Asian or sub Saharan African, or maybe you're higher fat northern European descent, you can then also export that data to a company like DNA Fit, for example, and they'll run a nutrition report that lets you know, like your saturated fat sensitivity like I mentioned earlier, or which antioxidants that you might not naturally make yourself that you might need to actually supplement with to how likely carbohydrates are to spike your blood sugar, things like that. So genetic test is really important. I'm a fan of. This would be more for the realm of supplements. A blood Test, like a really good comprehensive blood test that'll tell you, do you need to be taking vitamin D or is your vitamin D so high that taking vitamin D like your neighbor is taking might cause arterial calcification for you because you already have a ton of vitamin D and taking more is just going to push you into toxicity range. Or, you know, are your red blood cell magnesium levels low or are they high? Or, you know, should you be on thyroid or should you not? Like, you know, blood tests can tell you a lot, especially when it comes to supplement selection. And then I also really like to encourage people to do a stool test to look at bacteria, yeast, fungus. You can, you can get some idea of food intolerances and food sensitivities. When you look at a, at a gut panel, there's one called Viome that's like a complete microbiome analysis. There's also a three day kit made by a company called Genova where you literally just like poop into the equivalent of a hot dog tray in the morning, each morning. And then you put that into their prepaid FedEx labels and ship it off. You got to keep it refrigerated. So for three days you might have little bags of your poop in the refrigerator next to your kale and your, your milk. And then you ship that off and you hope that your friends don't come over and open the refrigerator. And then the, I had that problem in college. Yeah, yeah, all that poop in the fridge. And then the, the other test, let's see, there's blood, there's saliva. Oh, the other test I was going to recommend would be like a really, really good food allergy panel. There's a company called Cyrex that does a pretty accurate one. And that would allow you to see, okay, you know, am I allergic to eggs? Am I allergic to certain forms of meat? And it's a pretty accurate test. It doesn't give you a whole bunch of false positives, but instead it's pretty accurate. So, yeah, testing is really important. And then of course, taking into account your physical activity levels, and that means that perhaps you, because you're an Ironman triathlete or a marathoner, or you're doing a CrossFit wad every other day, you might do, let's say a high fat, low carb diet, because you found based on some of the testing and some of the ideas I just laid out, that works pretty well for you. But then you might eat more carbohydrates, for example, right after that workout to refill your liver and your muscle carbohydrate stores for the next day's workout and to ensure that you get carbohydrates in, but you get them in right after you've worked out or, you know, within a few hours after you've worked out. So you're kind of hitting that area of time when you're more insulin sensitive and where that glucose isn't going to get spiked quite as much. So, you know, definitely taking into consideration your activity levels, your genetics, your blood markers, your, your, your gut and then your food allergies would be a, a few places to start to begin to customize your diet to what would actually work well for you. And, you know, there's a really good book called Wired to Eat by Rob Wolf that goes into like studies they did over in Israel that showed that some people have a very pronounced blood glucose response to a cookie or a banana and some people don't at all. And interestingly, a big part of that was based on the prevalence of certain bacteria in the digestive tract. And this is very interesting because what happens is when you eat, let's say you eat a junk diet or you eat a high sugar diet, you actually produce a lot of bacteria in your gut that begin to grow quite prevalent in response to that intake and grow used to that intake, you develop a biome that kind of does well with that type of diet. And then once you shift to, let's say carbohydrate restriction or calorie restriction or less sugar or something like that, those bacteria really, they, they don't go away. They, they stay in your gut. They're kind of ready to, to give you carbohydrate cravings and to take high energy foods and cause your body to store those more readily. And interestingly, one of the best ways to reset that microbiome and to, if you shift to like fasting and lower calorie intake and maybe some amount of carbohydrate restriction, where it makes sense you would introduce a lot of polyphenols and flavanols into your diet at the same time, things like rosemary and grapefruit extract and Ceylon cinnamon and a lot of like, kind of like things you would consider to be very antioxidant, rich blueberry extracts, high antioxidant foods, you know, like a lot of your dark leafy greens and a lot of herbs, right, like ginger and turmeric and curcumin and garlic. And what this does is it, it resets your microbiome profile to, to be A profile that is not quite an energy storage, carbohydrate craving profile, but more of kind of like a clean burning energy profile. So it's really interesting how the microbiome plays into this and more importantly, how using a lot of herbs and spices and things we would consider to be like bitters and digestifs and polyphenols and flavanols, and adding all those into a diet really, really seems to help to push the reboot button on the microbiome and assist even more with being able to shift your diet or being able to handle things like intermittent fasting or calorie restriction or a sane amount of carbohydrate restriction. And so I think that's just interesting that you can, you know, how important your gut bacteria play a role in this, considering they're kind of like foreigners living in your gut anyways. And so, yeah, that's another important thing to consider anytime you're making dietary adjustments is are you equipping your microbiome to kind of do well with those adjustments?

Yeah. And also, like taking into account how things change over time, like when you're saying Cyrex, for example, like those arrays are intolerances, not true allergies necessarily. So those intolerances will shift, right?

Yeah, so, yeah, exactly. So that would be an issue of, let's say you have leaky gut and that means that you have some intestinal wall issues where some of the, some of the, the, some of the lining of the gut is damaged. And so when you eat a food like let's say egg, you could get a lot of undigested proteins or a lot of albumin winding up in the bloodstream and your body mounts an immune reaction to those proteins that aren't supposed to be floating around in the bloodstream. But it's not an issue with you being allergic to eggs for your entire life. It's more of an issue of you having a leaky gut that creates a food intolerance to eggs. And so that would be an issue where you would restrict eggs for maybe like four weeks and at the same time do a lot of glutamine, a lot of bone broth, a lot of colostrum, a lot of, you know, there's a, there's a supplement called lignite that's more of like a probiotic, you know, soil based probiotic. All these things that help to heal the gut and to kind of like close up that leaky gut lining and then you can return to eating that food that you might love or that protein that you might need to restrict for a short period of time.

Yeah. And then also I just wanted to go back to the genetic testing for a second because I did want to ask you about that, so I know. So you recommend DNA fit for the analysis.

That one's cool because you don't have to hire a consultant to walk you through all the results because it's pretty easy. You get a PDF on the exercise that would be best for you and the nutrition that would approximately be best for you. And it's easy to understand, but there are some that take a really deep dive into alcohol tolerance and which antioxidants you should or should not take. And, you know, like some pretty advanced stuff. Like I like one called Strategene S T R A T A gene. I interviewed the guy that created that, Dr. Ben lynch, on my podcast. And you're able to identify the dirty genes. Like, for example, if I'm going to have more than one drink now based on those genetic results, I take Molybdamin, I take a supplement called Sammy, and I take something called Homocystex. And all of those help my body to create some of the specific antioxidants that I'm not able to create that help me to process the acetaldehyde that's created from me consuming more than one drink. So that's like my party stack. Right. And that's something that I know based on my genetic results. So you can find out all sorts of interesting things from the strategene. There's also, there's a really cool website called 23 and you'd at 23 and you com and 23 and you gives you a whole bunch of different websites that you can export your 23andMe data to and know everything from, you know, genetic predisposition to certain diseases that 23andMe is kind of restricted from giving you based on their FDA restrictions on releasing certain amounts of health data to different, different genetic analyses that can tell you some of the things that I just got into, like what you may or may not be able to handle from an alcohol standpoint or caffeine standpoint or frickin, whether you're gonna go BALD when you're 60 or not. I mean, the host of information gets pretty dizzying for a lot of this stuff.

Speaking of genetic mutations, you know, like a really popular one is the MTHFR mutation. Do you have any tips for people who have that?

Yeah, the MTHFR mutation is just related to your ability to be able to process Folate efficiently. So you normally have something called the methyltetrahydrofolate gene and that would convert the folate that you consume into methylfolate, which is like the active form of folate. And if you have a copy of that gene, that is basically a gene mutation, which is honestly kind of prevalent among a lot of people, what happens is when you eat foods that contain a lot of folic acid, or consume supplements that contain a lot of folic acid, your body can have a hard time converting it into folate active form and can instead convert it into homocysteine, which can be kind of damaging long term as it builds up. And there are a variety of fixes for an MTHFR gene mutation. But ultimately one of the things I really encourage people to do in that scenario is you're really, really careful with anything that has a bunch of folic acid added to it, including most multivitamins out there. And you instead look for natural forms like what's called mthf, methyltetrahydrofolate rather than folic acid on the multivitamin or something that might be enriched with a, with a B vitamin. Sometimes when the body has the impaired ability to be able to use certain nutrients, it's really important to focus on gut health. So, you know, taking into consideration some of those leaky gut issues that I talked about, eating a wide variety of fermented foods, being careful with things that would support Candida, which can make MTHFR symptoms worse, like high amounts of alcohol or high amounts of sugar, a lot of yeast containing foods, a lot of like moldy foods like cheeses and stuff. That, that's a pretty good idea. And then taking a lot of leafy greens, because dark leafy greens contain the methylated form of folate. So if you have that gene defect, you need more of that methylated form of folate. It's working in a lot of dark leafy greens is pretty good. And there's certain things that can deplete folate and you're going to need it more. If you have an MTHFR issue, for example, the pill, like hormonal compreceptus, those are, those are a big issue with, with folate metabolism. Then there's medicines like antacids that can affect with your vitamin B absorption, those, you know, prilosec, things like that, those you'd also be careful with. And then one of the biggest issues, I think for methylation that really flies under the radar is heavy metals. You know, if you have high levels of mercury or lead or, or, you know, any, any of these common heavy metals that you tend to see build up from freaking Chinese toys to, you know, gas station receipts. Like, you'd want to be pretty careful with that stuff too, and maybe even consider some kind of a metal detoxification protocol. Yeah, so, yeah, those are some of the biggies with regards to that.

What sorts of things would one, would you suggest one do for a heavy metal detox protocol?

For a heavy metal detox protocol, you've kind of got two options. One is there's this guy named Dr. Dan Pompa. I really like him. He has a program called True Cellular Detox. And I interviewed him on my podcast. And you could go listen to that interview because that's a pretty intensive like three month protocol that involves a special diet and a special set of supplements for three months. That one really cleans you out though, because you do a preparatory phase that prepares the cells and enhances the cell membrane health for the cells to be able to detox efficiently. And then it does a body detox and then a brain detox after that. And that's important because if you just take a bunch of supplements that kind of clean out a lot of heavy metals in your brain and then you do a body phase, what happens is that metals and toxins can move from your body up into your brain and cause a lot of the issues people experience when they detox, like personality changes and headaches and migraines and brain fog and dementia. It can even cause permanent damage to the brain. So it's really important not to just like go take boatloads of cilantro and chlorella every morning and call it your detox. And then you would do a brain phase after. So his is like a prep phase, a body phase, and a brain phase. I also like, there's this supplement called Metal Free, which is like a, it's an amino acid based chelating spray that just kind of surrounds metals and allows you to remove them via your stool. And that's, that's a little bit easier method. Technically it chelates the metals and so they pass out of the body without crossing the blood brain barrier. But it doesn't, they don't get deep into the cells. That detox doesn't get deep into the cells. And so, you know, I, I recommend everybody do something like the True Cellular Detox at some point. But that metal free stuff is, it's, it's pretty good at kind of cleaning up some of the basic issues.

Okay, do you have any recommendations in terms of analysis like to test for heavy metals?

Yeah, there's. There's a heavy metal elimination test. It's called. I think it's a edta. I forget the name of it. I have a couple podcasts on. I interviewed Dr. Greg Mongion on it, but it's like a urinary evaluation of metals. That one's pretty good. You can get a basic blood test. It'll show you lead and mercury. There's just a baseline blood panel from Wellness fx, for example. Thorne has a new heavy metals test that I recently did, and it was super easy. Thorn has some sexy new tests. I think I might have that test over on my Kion website, which is my supplement company. I might have it listed over there. I think I've got some of the Thorn tests over there. That's@getkion.com but if not, just do a search for Thorne Heavy Metal Test. You might be able to find it.

Okay, cool. Something else before I forget. I wanted to ask you because one interview I got a kick out of that you did was with Dr. Gundry. And I'm so curious for you to just say your opinion on if we should all be avoiding lectins.

Well, no, I mean, lectins are. I mean, that's. That's like asking me if we could just all avoid meat. It's like. Well, I know if your idea of eating meat is to hide in a tree until a deer with the sharp sticks coming out of its head comes underneath the tree and then you put a knife in your mouth like a pirate and you jump down and you try and kill it and wrestle it to the ground and then just like sit there and eat it with a fork and a knife. That's a pretty stupid way to eat meat. It's a pretty stupid way to hunt. You're either going to get killed or poisoned or sick or something. In the same way, it's a pretty stupid way to eat wheat, which has a lot of lectins in it. If you're just going to walk through a wheat field, like pick wheat stalks from the ground and chew on them, you're going to get a stomachache. You're going to get all of those lectins and those digestive assailants in the wheat that make it want to, you know, pass through your digestive tract and get pooped out somewhere else so it can grow. It's like an evolutionary defense mechanism for wheat. No, you take the wheat home and you mill it and grind it and then soak it and ferment it. Maybe you're gonna do some sprouts and, you know, nice slow, fermented sourdough bread or something like that. You're not gonna take a quinoa and just eat a bunch of quinoa which is covered in. It's got lectins, it's got saponins, which are soap like irritant. We go to South America and they rinse it over and over again and then a lot of times they'll let it sit overnight and they'll use a vinegar or lemon or an acidic medium and rinse it and soak it again. And a lot of times they'll use the water from rinsing the quinoa to wash clothes because it's got so many soap like molecules in it. And then eventually that quinoa is rendered digestible, right? In the same way that if I, if I shoot a deer, you know, right now, I just went hunting, like I mentioned, I've got a bunch of meat that I hung last night in a dry aging fridge out in my garage. And it'll hang there for two weeks and I'll clean it, I'll trim the fat off and I'll marinate it and I'll soak the liver and raw milk for 24 hours. I'll do all these things to make that meat digestible and healthy. Well, it's the same thing with plants. We just don't think about that. You know, this idea, plants can hurt you, right? Like you eat a bunch of, you know, unsoaked quinoa or, you know, none fermented wheat and you're going to get gluten issues and saponin issues and lectin issues. But if you soak and you sprout and you ferment and you use a lot of ancestral cooking methods, you can in most cases render most of these plant based compounds that assail the digestive tract relatively less harmful. And so that's the idea is you don't avoid lectins or you don't avoid all these plants that have lectins. You just learn how to freaking cook your food, right and you learn how to, how to prepare your food properly. And when you do that, you're going to get far less issues.

Excellent answer. Thanks for clearing that up. You talked a little bit before about fertility and something I wanted to ask you about is. Well, a lot of women who are listening to this podcast right now are having fertility issues. A lot of people are struggling with amenorrhea or just really imbalanced hormones, struggling with their periods. And I mean, I know you're not a woman, but I know you're really smart. And I was wondering if you have any hacks to help with fertility.

Exercise more or exercise less. Sorry. And eat more fat. That'd be a big one.

Okay.

A big, big one. And I found that, especially in women, that tends to almost immediately fix a lot of issues because you're giving the body what it needs for the proper amount of hormones while not stripping it of hormone precursors on the other side. So that's a big one. Would be eating more fat and having properly programmed exercise. In addition to that, avoidance of endocrine disruptors like personal care products, perfumes, colognes, Things that would be kind of chemical cocktails for the body. That's really important. Drinking water that doesn't have, like, pharmaceuticals and hormones and water that's been filtered really well, that's another really important one.

Stress type of filter do you like?

Well, it depends, you know, like, it depends where you live, what kind of water you have. Like, I. I get well water, so I don't have to use a fancy reverse osmosis because my water doesn't have a lot of, like, hormones and pharmaceuticals in it. But I've had it tested. It still has a lot of manganese in it, has a lot of iron in it. So it passes through a manganese filter than an iron filter, and then what's called a structured water filter, which kind of makes the water from being dead back to alive after it sat in cisterns and pipes and stuff like that. And so that's my water. For most people who live and drink from a municipal water supply, I recommend a reverse osmosis system. And the only issue with that is it just strips everything out of the water. So you'd want to get a reverse osmosis with remineralization, or else you'd want to get a reverse osmosis. But use a lot of salts or add trace liquid mineral drops back to your water. Do things to remineralize it. I have a. An article over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com called How to detox your home. And in that article, I kind of take a deep dive into a lot of these home detox tips. Cleaning up chemicals, cleaning up your water. A lot of those cause just as big an impact on your hormone levels as, say, just eating more fat and giving your body a break from. From daily hard exercise.

Awesome. Do it. Does it matter what type of fat?

Twinkies. Deep fried Twinkies, preferably.

That's not what I mean. I think right now there's this hot. People are like, on trying to, like, pick a side between, you know, saturated fats, like animal fats and plant fats. And all this fear of endotoxemia is going around and. Yeah, you think, do you lean in one direction or the other or just more of a balanced approach?

We do know that a high intake of sugars and carbohydrates in the presence of a high intake of fats can cause some amount of what's called lipopolysaccharide toxicity. And some of those issues you just alluded to. So being careful when you're eating a steak not to have three glasses of wine and a huge amount of bread and sweet potatoes. Sometimes I'll just have a steak and some rosemary and thyme and a little bit of salad on the side, right? And that avoids a lot of the lipopolysaccharide issues or other issues that might arise from that big, fatty cut of steak. Another example would be, you know, not doing, like a smoothie with a whole bunch of coconut oil and fat and butter in it and then adding a bunch of fruits to it, right? Kind of being careful with the. With the sugar and fat combination. And then, you know, for. For me, I like to really focus a lot on the monounsaturated fats and the saturated fats and some of the pol. Unsaturated fats that you find processed or cooked or rancid. This should go without saying, but canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, a lot of things you see in the package of the healthy food section at the grocery store on the trail mix that you thought was healthy. Those kind of things you gotta be most careful with because that's what kind of comprises your cell membranes, right? That your body's made up of the fats that you consume. So that's really important to be cognizant of, especially fats that are going to. Well, let me put it this way. I think fats are more villainous than sugar when it comes to bad fats, right? Like a lot of these processed, rancid, heavily cooked fats. And that's because your body can metabolize sugar, right? Like, let's say I'm. I. Somebody hands me a big old stick of cotton candy, right? And they're just like, you gotta eat this cotton candy. Well, they give me that, and then they also hand me, let's say, a basket of French fries, right? And they're like, you could do the cotton candy. You could do the french fries, and I would choose the cotton candy 10 times out of 10. And the reason for that is because the French fries are covered in like, a peanut oil or canola oil. And that's what is going to make up my body and my cells for the next three months. Right. It makes up your cell membranes. You can't get rid of it. Kate Shanahan, Dr. Kate Shanahan has a great book called Deep Nutrition about this. Well, the cotton candy, I could eat that and I could just drop and do 30 burpees and make myself insulin sensitive and burn off that glucose and kind of render my body somewhat unsusceptible to some of that damage. It's why consuming carbohydrates in the presence of exercise renders those carbohydrates a little bit more likely to be used as energy and not just spike your blood glucose or to get processed by the liver into triglycerides and stored as fats. But canola oil, vegetable oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, heated fats, fats that haven't been treated properly. You've been exposed to a lot of light or fish oil that's been left open and out in the light. All those are pretty dang bad for you because those can't just be burnt off. You can't just eat those and say, oh, I'm gonna go to the gym. Right. They literally make up your cell membrane. So those ones are pretty dangerous.

Okay, let's talk more about exercise. I know you have a very robust exercise routine, but for the general population who's not training for an ironman or Spartan, what do you think comprises, like a solid exercise routine for optimal health, longevity, body composition?

Yeah, I actually, I have a whole. A whole article about this called how to Look Good Naked and Live a Long Time. And in that article, I go into. And, you know, it's kind of complex in terms of the length of the article, but I'll give you the overview. And basically it's this you want to have each week sometime when you lift heavy stuff slowly. Like there's a book by Dr. Doug McGough called Body by Science that would be a perfect example of that. You have every week you do something light and explosive, like the New York Times 7 Minute Workout, which you could easily find by Googling or reading that article that I wrote. You have every week something that you do for mobility and movement. You know, like foam rolling and stretching, like dynamic stretching, arm swings, leg swings, foam rolling. I do that Every morning for a little bit just to prep the body for the day. And then every week you do something for mitochondrial density, which is like short hard efforts with long rest periods. Every week you do something for VO2 max, which is like longer, more difficult, four to six minute efforts. Every week you do something for your lactic acid tolerance, which would be like very short hard efforts, kind of like those mitochondrial density efforts but with shorter amounts of rest. And then every week you go out and you do something like kind of like fasted fat loss cardio, like some long hike on the weekend where you haven't had a lot of food before or during. So once you've kind of nailed each of those variables, you could stay fit for the rest of your life. And we're talking like 20 to 30 minutes a day of exercise. And that's assuming that you're staying physically active, you know, like while I'm talking to you. So far I've walked like probably two and a half, three miles because I'm walking on a treadmill while you and I talk and you know, throwing little kettlebell swings throughout the day, et cetera. So you know, by the time the day has ended, exercise is kind of an option. And I'll just choose one of those elements that I just described to kind of put the icing on the cake. But ultimately it comes down to super slow lifting, explosive lifting, something for the mitochondria, something for the lactic acid, something for the VO2 max, something for mobility and some kind of stamina effort. And again, like I could spend hours kind of detailing all that, but I just go read the article that I wrote called how to Look Good Naked and Live a Long Time. So on my website and I can kind of give you, give you an idea of everything.

So yeah, do you think that people need to lift really heavy to get the same benefits or. I know you did a little experiment with body weight for a while, right?

Body weight training. Yeah, yeah. So the deal with body weight training is that you can time under tension is what's most important. So I could do a set of five reps of the bench press, or I could do a set of 50 push ups to complete failure. And you're going to get similar results if all you're looking for is muscle toning or muscle gain. When it comes to absolute strength or absolute power, having actual weights seems to trump just body weight. But then even with that, the other way around that is this idea of blood flow restriction training or KATSU training. So a lot of times when I travel and I'm only doing body weight training. I have these little bands that'll wrap around my legs or wrap around my arms. They're essentially glorified tourniquets. And by restricting blood flow, you build up a lot of lactic acid, you generate a lot of growth hormone after the workout, and your body feels as though it's on a. Like, my legs are sore right now because when I was in Kona, I was just doing body weight squats in the morning with these blood flow restriction bands on, and I was doing like, you know, I do like 10 sets of 20 body weight squats and my legs afterwards felt like I'd done five sets of five heavy barbell squats. So it's kind of interesting how you can, you can, you can biohack it with these, with these tourniquets. So, so yeah, that's, that's, that's an example of, you know, body weight versus weightlifting. I, I like to do both. I mix it up. You know, when I travel, I do a ton of body weight and a lot of walking and some swimming and, you know, stuff that doesn't require me to go to a gym or find a lot of heavy weight. But then when I'm at home, I lift heavy weights. So I kind of, that's how I do things. Because I know that when I travel, I'm not going to have a chance to lift heavy weights, but I can do something body weight in my hotel room. Then when I'm at home, I get all swollen strong. And then when I travel, I go back to the body weight stuff.

Okay, cool. And I mean, so you just outlined sort of all the factors that we should include in a good exercise routine. How would you adjust that for somebody who's struggling with first fertility?

So, for example, I think the biggest issue is people who struggle with fertility who are exercise enthusiasts or gym junkies, they just don't know how to get that dopamine fix that they are accustomed to getting from exercise by engaging in other activities. So they just exercise every day hard. But you can, for example, have two to three recovery days where you're just doing yoga or infrared sauna or foam rolling or walking in the sunshine, doing things that still make you feel good, that still move the body, that aren't hard draining exercise sessions. And in addition to that, you can do things like learn a musical instrument or learn to cook or pick up a hobby like watercolor painting, do a lot of these other things that can cause a similar dopamine release as exercise. And movement, but that you haven't done yet discovered you'd be surprised at what can actually scratch that itch. And so you can have days where it's like, hey, I'm gonna skip the gym and today's my painting day, or today I'm not gonna go to the CrossFit wad. I'm literally just going for a walk in the sunshine with some awesome music on and I'm gonna get back and I'm gonna feel just as happy as I do when I leave that CrossFit box. And learning how to engage in those activities that allow the body to repair and recover and restore hormone balance. And doing those like three days of the week with the hard workouts, another three days of the week and maybe an easy recovery day where you go on a hike on another day of the week that's better than like six hard days of exercise.

Also. Okay, what about in terms of workout timing, what do you think is optimal? Like do you recommend training fasted or in the afternoon or what are the pros and cons of each?

Yeah, and I'm running a little bit short on time, but I'll wrap up as far as workout timing goes. Speaking of time, I am a fan of doing something very kind of like easy and stimulating for the parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system in the morning. I call this easing into the day because in the morning your cortisol levels are kind of high anyways and even higher if you've had a cup of coffee. And so I like to walk in the sunshine or something, some yoga or an easy swim or some movement that's more mobility based in the morning. And then when your body temperature peaks and your grip strength peaks and your post workout protein synthesis peaks and your reaction time increase or decreases. And a lot of the variables that allow you to do better with a hard workout, when all those peak between about 4 and 7pm later on in the day, that's when you do the hard workout. And as long as you finish the hard workout within about three hours before bedtime, it's not going to interrupt sleep patterns or anything like that. And that's a pretty good scenario. I like that scenario, like easy in the morning, harder in the evening, and then you throw in two to four recovery days where you're just taking care of the body and doing some of those things I just talked about. That's a pretty good scenario to kind of keep you active for life. And you also combine that like I mentioned, with kind of low level physical activity. Throughout the day to kind of keep you in that hunter, gatherer, gardener, Eskimo that your ancestors might have experienced. And that's, you know, like right now, while I'm inside and I'm walking on the treadmill talking to you, you know, my wife's outside and she's taking care of the goats and the chickens and she's chopping wood and she's pushing a wheelbarrow around, she's kneeling down in the garden, she's composting, she's training some of the goats to pack around, was pack goats. So she has a much different lifestyle than I do. But I'm essentially kind of simulating my own office, which she's doing outside while I'm working by walking on the treadmill and, you know, picking up the hex bar in between calls and doing a few kettlebell swings here and there. So. So yeah, that's. That's kind of how to set up the perfect. The perfect scenario.

Awesome. Okay, one, one last quick thing I want to ask you is, do you have any tips for, I mean, you like, read and consume so much information and memorize so much of it, and do you have any tips for, like, remembering everything that you come across?

Well, you don't. You actually want to keep a clear head. You don't want to remember everything that you come across. You instead want to generate a system where you can record those items. So I really like Kindle because Kindle keeps track of all your highlights, and so you can just have those automatically saved without having to worry about them. I use a pen whenever I read, so I underline, I fold over pages so that I can come back to and check out those pages later on. And then I make sure I read with intent. I read as though I'm going to need to teach that information or, you know, in my case, interview the podcast. On the podcast, you know, the author who wrote the book. So sometimes reading as though you'd have to teach that to someone else. Or sometimes I will go, you know, I'll read a book and with my wife and kids at the dinner table, I'll explain to them the core concepts of the book that I read. And it really helps to drive a lot of those concepts home when you're teaching it to someone, right? So read with intent. Read as though you're going to teach the information that you're reading. Read with a pen and fold over pages or when you're reading with a Kindle highlight. And then the very end, review those highlights that you've read. And those are a few of those little things. Again, I could talk for hours on reading and learning, but yeah, those are a few little ones.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, everybody. I know they can find you on your podcast. Do you have a favorite podcast that you recommend people start off with when they're listening to yours?

Oh, one of my. I was going to say I like the TED Radio Hour, but that's a different podcast.

Oh, no, I mean one of your own. Someone's going to go to your podcast and start with one of your.

Yeah, just like you could get to know who I am. I've got one, actually. This podcast is on my website, Kion K I O n over@getkion.com but it's just my COO interviewing me, about me, my life, my history, what I stand for, my dietary principles, my exercise principles. That'd be a pretty good one to kind of wrap your head around me and decide whether you want to listen to me drone on, or whether you want to go find something better to do with your time. Because I'm a freak. But that would be a good one, would be you just go to getkian.com and search for Ben Podcast. I'm sure you could probably find it, Christina, and embed it in the notes or whatever.

Absolutely. Cool. So they can find you@bengreenfieldfitness.com and then go to getkeon.com is there anywhere else that people should look for things?

I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram, Facebook, etc. But it's not rocket science to find me on those platforms.

All right. Awesome.

Yeah.

Okay, well, I'll link everything in the notes. Thank you again so much for taking time to talk to me. You're so interesting. I love all the work that you do. So thank you for everything you put out.

Well, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. And yeah, if I can help anybody out, just keep me posted. And again, I'm honored. Honored you thought of me and appreciate the interview.

Thank you.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness ideas, performance advice.

Sam.