Biohacking Fitness In Asia & Beyond: How One Small Company Is Changing The Face Of Biomarker Testing, Agriculture, Pollution, Health & More!

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

In fact, all you're doing is not getting in the way of nature. You're just allowing nature to do its job.

Rinse it, soak it, sprout it. And if you want to take things to the next level and love our planet, take that water that you've rinsed it with, toss that in the laundry and you got laundry detergent.

It doesn't matter how good a nutrition plan you have, if you're going to be stressed out every time. That's the kind of feedback loops that we've been able to build in because of the connectivity, because you're saying, wow, wow, why isn't that working? And you're like, it's never going to work if he's going to be stressed.

Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield.

I just got back from India and one of the places that I went there absolutely knocked my socks off. Blew me away with what these folks are doing as far as not just fixing the environment over there with things like water remediation and biodegradable forms of plastic nanotechnology, food grade enzymes, but they're doing personal care products, household cleaning chemicals, biometric testing of blood biomarkers, genetics, the gut, personalized nutrition and fitness programming. They've got their hand in like 15 different pots. And when I walked in, my socks were actually blown. My, my socks were blown off. I don't even know if that's a phrase. All right, I'm just gonna roll with it. My socks were blown off by what these people are doing. So I got a chance to walk around and tour their entire facility. Microphone out, microphone hanging right out in the open with my guest on today's show, Shiva Subramanian. And you'll also hear during today's show, a client of mine named Krishna, who is a big entrepreneur over in India, who joined us for the episode and the three of us spent a long time just geeking out the different cool things that they're doing over in India. I think you're going to find this episode fascinating. I personally was just absolutely intrigued during the entire show, so I know that you will be too. All the show notes for everything that we talk about, you're going to be able to find over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com India Fitness. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com India fitness.

All right, folks, I just finished an amazing sweaty, sweaty workout. After sitting for 24 hours on a plane from Seattle, actually from Spokane to Seattle, Seattle to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Bangalore. And finally, after sleeping three hours last night and having a delicious smoothie, say hello, Krishna. My. Hello everyone here in India. Krishna is an amazing, brilliant local entrepreneur, fitness enthusiast, biohacker in his own right. We've been punishing anti aging smoothies.

Oh yeah.

And already an amazing morning. But I just finished a workout at this facility that's about 10 minutes from Krishna's house. And they're doing a lot of innovative things here. And I just, I could not not fill you guys in on all the cool things that I've seen already. So this is going to be one of those, those field trip esque podcasts where we'll be walking around talking about, describing to you a whole host of things. There'll be plenty of show notes. So the show notes for you today are going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com India Fitness. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com India fitness. And standing on my left side here is another gentleman you want to introduce yourself?

Yes, my name is Shiva and I'm the head of Connect Ventures.

Connect Ventures. And is Connect Ventures the name of the place I'm at right now?

Absolutely. That's where you're at.

Okay. So first of all, I walked into your facility. We came in off the busy streets outside, came upstairs, and when we first walked in, I'm gonna put a photograph of this for you guys in the show notes. But there was this whiteboard and I'm gonna walk out here to this whiteboard. It's right on the wall and it says the Connect Ventures ecosystem. And as soon as we walked in, this was the thing that flew first, caught my attention. And so can you describe what this is and what exactly you guys are doing here at Connect Ventures? What it means to have an ecosystem and you can take as deep a dive as you want, man, we got time.

The idea behind an ecosystem, Ben, was to actually fill in all the gaps that are there in any health scape or an environmental scape, because we realize that our genetics sustainability is equivalent to our environmental sustainability and that we couldn't talk about one thing without actually addressing the other. So what we did is we came up with 17 ventures, which we all self funded and created this ecosystem connecting the health of the soil to the health of the gut and, you know, human health and longevity and performance all connected with the paradigm of energy radiation so that we have tools to prevent radiation. All of that put together with this idea of actually living supernatural.

Okay, so I don't understand, and I know my audience might not understand this, but when you say, are you saying that in addition to the facility I'm standing in now, we'll go into the gym, we'll walk people through some of, like, the different exercise and recovery tools you have here. But are you saying that you guys have things like farms and water management facilities and things like that outside of this facility that I'm in now?

Absolutely. What we're trying to do is flesh out the whole journey from agriculture to natural functional farming to natural functioning foods and making sure that those foods fit into the anthropology of India as we are, and then translate into things like performance health.

Okay, so for example, that that superfood muffin that I took a bite of after my workout, that's coming from a farm that you guys are harvesting these natural ingredients from. So you've got that as one aspect. You've got an athlete consuming something like that after their workout, the water they might be drinking. I think I had, like a structured, filtered water post workout. So you're tying all this stuff together?

Absolutely. Okay, so the way we actually doing that is interesting because the potency of the soil is going to make sure that the nutrients and there's no dilution of nutrients in the food. We're still an agrarian economy, which means almost 70% of India is still in the agricultural zone. What we could do is quantum leap actually, in a sense, backwards, and actually still be able to get away from, you know, mass fertilization and pesticide because we still have large tracts of land that are still in natural state.

Are you talking about, like, regenerative agriculture systems, sustainable farming versus monocropping?

Absolutely. We are doing polycropping, agroforestry, trying to grow a plethora of crops, because one of the problems of modern India is that most people are moving into the cities, which means that the agricultural fields don't have as much labor as we used to traditionally.

Yeah.

The other way to now do it is to actually do agroforestry. So we are layering our crops using the principles of permaculture and the principles of biodynamic farming. And with that, we're able to get the value addition because we're able to blockchain all of this stuff. We put it into an artificial intelligence and blockchain it. So, you know, it's coming from this farm, it's getting going to the facility for the food, and then it becomes your super muffin. And the athlete knows exactly where that comes from and the journey that it's taken.

Now, when you say you're tracking, be the blockchain. Most people are mildly familiar with the blockchain, but would this mean there would be like a QR code on the muffin that I could scan and see where it came from, trace back the contract, trace back even the payment method used for. Is that what you mean by blockchain?

You're absolutely spot on. And that's what we've been in the journey of creating. We've got our beta version of it up and we're doing that with all our athletes. And this is our micro ecosystem. Now imagine taking this out and giving it to the whole country and then to all of Asia, right? Because we will then have a strong ethos based on our own anthropology, our own genetics, our own food and nourishment coming from our own history.

Now, I know that India, like the US is largely from a political standpoint, a democratic system. How do you overcome the fact that, at least I know in the US there's a huge barrier to taking a model like this and actually implementing it on a mass food standpoint? Like, you know, for example, monocropping of wheat, rice and corn is huge in the US And I could start even in Spokane, Washington, where I live. Something like this, right? Where we're, we're growing food from local farms. That's what's being used in the, in the gyms. We're focusing on air quality, water quality, solar production, etc. But are you actually going to scale this politically as well, do you think, or.

Absolutely, because we need to have a pulled system. And a pulled system means that urban living, the people who are educated, the people who understand health, are going to pull these products because there's suddenly a demand for them. There's a demand for variability, there's a demand for sustainability, which wasn't there 10 years ago, because 10 years ago it was still mass cropping because it was economical. But today we're seeing diabetes. We have over 60 million people with diabetes in the country. We're seeing like, you know, millions of cases of cancer, cardiovascular issues. So obviously it's become a concern.

Yeah, and it comes full circle. You made a good point. I mean, if you read like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, once you have an aggregating economy, you have mass quantity of people compressed into a small space where you also see propagation of disease, you see sedentary lifestyles, chronic disease, you know, diabetes, obesity, et cetera. So it's an interesting system that you've put together. It seems very like us standing in front of this whiteboard. And again, I'm going to put a photo of this. I have a whole team here taking notes and photos. We're put all this over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com India Fitness so you guys can see what all this actually looks like on the board. But I would like to delve into some of the nitty gritties of how you've woven some of this together into the actual facility. Because when Krishna brought me here, I expected to to have a cool gym I was gonna work out in. And I walked in, the very first thing was a bunch of like superfoods personal care products. I think I saw some like household clean. Were there household cleaning chemicals? You guys doing that?

So biodegradable plastics?

Yeah. Okay, cool. So walk me through this and I'll let you be the boss. Because you know what all the sexy stuff is. So where do you want to start?

Oh, let's start with the soil health, because I think that's like where anyone should start. Healthy soil means healthy. Everything else.

Well, I mean, stuff you could show me here at the facility.

Yeah, we can. I can walk.

You guys have dirt here?

Yeah, well, we got all the microbes that we.

Oh, amazing. Let's go check it out. So talk to me while we're walking.

So basically, healthy soil has been depleted because of the years of fertilizer, fertilization, and pesticides that have been used. So it's become very alkaline. What we have to do is bring the microbial biodiversity. And because of that, we have our own life sciences department that we've been working on getting all the old microbes back. So if you actually have a look in this room.

Oh, wow.

Actually see all the biodiversity that we actually have.

Can you guys take a photo of this for folks? Put this one in the show notes. Oh, wow.

Okay, so all of this is a nanotechnology. Now you've got to understand that going organic in India is going to very, very difficult. So what we have to do is work on the transition. So we came up with a organic nano biogrowth enhancer. What it has is all the micronutrients.

These are big bottles. You would put this into the soil itself as you're growing the food.

This is a foliar spray, but the.

Beauty of it is foliage. So this would be sprayed on trees.

For example, on the leaves. Now here's the thing. While the soil is a medium and Long term strategy, the farmer still needs to produce because we're a poor country. So you can't really have another problem. Right, because going organic is a 3, 5 year process. And during that time your productivity is.

Going to drop because you're not using herbicides, pesticides, you have to transition from a monocrop, essentially dirt instead of soil, etc.

Absolutely. And also if you think about it, the plant itself has epigenetically adapted to having that amount of chemicals and pesticides to survive. So you're going to have this die off, you're going to have this period of low productivity, but the regular farmer is not going to be able to sustain himself through it. So the first thing we needed to do is actually put something out that's going to help with increasing the productivity, increasing the health of this plant while we're working on the medium and long term strategies.

Now, this reminds me a little bit of what Dr. Zach Bush is doing in the US he's been on my podcast before and he's not only working on developing products that would regrow the microbial diversity of the soil, he's also harvesting something called lignite from the soil that actually helps to protect the gut from the ravages of glyphosate. And that leads me to something I'm thinking about here, and that is, as you're adding all these growth enhancers, all these biotics you guys are developing to regrow soil, what do you do about pesticide and herbicide residues that are left over? Is there a way to mop those up somehow? Absolutely.

The microbes are already doing that for you. If we can get our diversity back, it's automatically going to happen. Because what we're doing is not only putting in this aspect of it, we're also putting in things like, you know, the leguminous plants that are going to be putting the nitrogen back. Right, you're going to have like, you know, phosphate solubilization microbes. All of that are working in concert. And because of the layering that we have, you have the mulch coming in, the fibers are already going to dilute the effect of the pesticides and the fertilizers. And to add to this, Ben, if I may just go back, our great problem is water, because the water is also contaminated, as you know, and many countries.

Yes, I'm being very careful while I'm here. Everybody scared me. Well, not only am I only drinking water that either comes straight from Krishna or someone who I trust, or water that is like a pellegrin or a Perrier. And I'm even checking to see if it's been opened first. I'm pulling out, pulling out all the stops. But I'm also, as Krishna witnessed this morning at breakfast, I'm eating lots of hot peppers and curries. Matter of fact, I told him I was burping up one of those giant. What kind of pepper did you give me a breakfast?

Well, it was a South Indian green chili that was kind of roasted.

Yeah, I was burping that up while I was doing my push ups in there.

It's got some heat.

Yeah. I think anything that was in my gut is the dead now. In a good way. Yeah, that's all right. I don't mind the razor blades on the anus as long as the worms aren't there. Okay, so. So all of these different biotics, I've got about 12 different bottles in front of me. Each is a different bacterial strain or specifically designed for. For a tree versus a, say like a ground grown crop versus a legume, etc. So you have a big brochure here. Okay, cool.

If you look at it like you have two things from the neem tree that will help you control pests. You have specific things for specific problems.

And there's fungus too.

Yes, absolutely. And you can look at all the things that are coming out of nature that we're just taking out and basically making them accessible to the farmer so that it is available in large quantities and we can change or revolutionize the system. And this is cheaper than fertilizer and pesticide and our productivity remains the same. But if you have a look at this, this is pepper from our farms.

This is a black pepper that you grow.

Absolutely.

And it grows on our vines. Now this is the average size of pepper while we were using fertilizer and pesticide.

So that's kind of a small peppercorn. What do you call this pepper? Black pepper.

It's Indian black pepper. And this is what happened after we sprayed the nano biogrowth. And so these were our first experiments.

It's probably three times larger if you look at the width and the length combined.

So what it told us was very interesting. It meant that our plants had hit the potential of what pesticides and fertilizers they could take chemically. Anyway, once we went natural, the potential of the epigenetics that are in the plant itself blossomed.

Yeah.

So in fact, all you're doing is not getting in the way of nature. You're just allowing nature to do its job.

Yeah. Wow. Okay. So you have this brochure here. Can we put a PDF of this brochure in the show notes?

Absolutely.

Awesome. So folks can check because I know there's going to be. I mean, I'm personally interested just because we have a small backyard garden, but there's a lot of people listening to the podcast who are interested in food growth and sustainable egg. And I've never seen anything quite like this as far as the diversity of the different fungus and the bacteria. Now, it appears to me also that there are some products here. I see some, like, natural alternative wraps to plastic. These Busbee wraps. Are there things that you're creating in here that are in addition to the probiotic compounds, or are these just like random things you have hanging around the office? No, no.

We actually have basically come up recently with biodegradable plastic. So what we managed to do is get starch into a plastic machine and actually make it into plastic film. We've been able to do bottles. We can now basically throw your pet bottle outside, and the pet bottle will biodegrade.

This is like. This is like the plastic covering I would use to cover my yogurt when I put it in the fridge, but it's like beeswax. Amazing.

Wow.

And this one's like cellophane almost. But what's the actual ingredients in this? It says beeswax tree resin. How do you pronounce that? Yoba oil. Yeah, yoba oil and 100% cotton. And this is fully biodegradable. And you'd use this to cover food?

I've got some more stuff in the other office because that's the one that actually has all the tools. But you will be able to mold a keychain, and the keychain will be biodegradable, which means you throw it out in the soil, it degrades into glucose molecules and fats.

I don't know why I'd want to throw out my keychain, but that's a cool idea. Wow, this is amazing. Okay, so this is what you just showed me. That's like, how many different aspects of the. That whiteboard out there were there? Like 15, 17. Okay, so this is the soil diversity aspect of that and then the water.

Diversity, which is also in the same office. But over here, this team actually runs the biggest aquatic nursery in India. We have around 800,000 plants today with 150 species of aquatic plants that clean water. So if you think about it, that's why the water plants existed. That was part of their ecological necessity. What we've been able to do is because of India's vast aquatic ecology, been able to pick the plants and look at the biology and match this biology into wetlands. You've got to understand that India is a power poor country. Now if you think about water cleaning, Ben, and I know that you have a lot of experience with that. Most other countries have power that actually cleans water. But what happens if you don't have power?

Yeah.

So then it becomes a huge problem. Then we're not addressing a problem of people, we're addressing a problem for a certain economic level of people. What we then designed is an anaerobic system that connects up with the aquatic plants. Which means that any farmer can actually design a natural system which will actually flow through their farms. And imagine the water coming through is vortex goes through. But it's a consequence of the nature of water going through the anaerobic systems and plants, which is anyone can develop.

Amazing. I'm smiling, but I'm also cringing because you're taking me back to my microbiology days where I had a whole summer hunched in front of a chromatography and a fluorescence analysis type of apparatus to find specific bacteria that would bioremediate water and have been aware that that can be done. But it sounds like you guys have actually cracked the code on cleaning up water using things like bacteria, which is amazing.

Bacteria in conjunction with aquatic plants. If you think about it, the plants are oxidating the water. The root zone has got like a rich anaerobic area. Each root zone of each plant actually has a different anaerobic area. So if you mix and match it, I will give you one of the best ones that we're doing and I can show you a video of it is coffee. Coffee. The ph of coffee water is around 2 or 3 and we're able to clean all that, the bacterial load as well as the chemical load off that using this system of nothing but plants and just gravity flow with aggregates. It's an energy free system in poor countries that will then give them access to absolutely clean water. Right.

Amazing.

When you say coffee water, you're talking about the processing of the coffee bean on the plantations and how to handle the waste water and repurify that.

That's a very high acidity, low ph that's used for that.

If you look at the coffee plantations in India, the runoff from them and from this processing causes a lot of ecological damage. And systems like these could allow farmers to have essentially closed loop systems. You know, in water stricken water, sorry, in drought areas or Areas where the water table is low so they're not constantly pumping water out of the ground. So there's like levels of synergy here in terms of ecological sustainability that, you know, that would give farmers a lot of advantage.

I can tell you that cup of coffee you gave me before my workout was amazing. It wasn't kion coffee, I don't think, but it was good. Whatever it was tasted good.

So those are from our estate. Those are actually what pepper's grown.

So we have same place you're growing the black pepper, you're growing coffee.

Absolutely.

I love it.

And we grow other things like bananas. And this is the polycropping idea that we actually came up with.

Yeah. I wish I could grow bananas and coffee and black pepper up in Spokane, Washington.

I would.

I would feel far less guilty about importing avocados and bananas for my smoothies. Oh, wow. So this is the plastic?

Yep.

But this is full. This feels like actual plastic. This is fully. I could toss this out the window. So it's gonna biodegrade. Yeah, amazing.

This is the final process of getting our international certification for 100% biodegradability. And you know what the best part of this is that our concern was that the plastic industry is going bust in India because it's all about single use. Plastic is being banned, which means that we're going to have thousands and thousands of family without work. So what we did is we designed the starch to go and all the organic input to go into existing plastic machinery. So nobody has to do anything different. It's just the raw material that goes in that's different. So you keep even the families and their jobs together and you can provide the rest of the world with reusable plastic. Single use plastic, food plastic.

It begs the question, is this going to make plastic far more expensive?

No, it's going to make it like just the same price as the polypropylene or everything else that they're using currently. Because it all comes from natural sources. It starch.

Amazing. Amazing. And a big part of this, not to get too woo on you listeners is for me, the message of love is so important. I tell my kids the best things you can do as you go through life is to love God and to love others. And I think a big part of loving others includes loving the planet. And it's something we don't. I mean, it just. It drives me nuts when I see highly spiritual people in the US eating Twinkies and Doritos out of. Out of plastic packages and plastic bags. It's just like, you know, you preach the message of love, but this includes actually loving the planet that we live on because it's not going to be here anymore if we aren't doing stuff like this. So this is very cool. What else you got to show me?

Okay, so this is pretty much the agriculture, the water and you know, the plastic.

Amazing.

We also deal with waste over here. So we've done two amazing things.

Okay. Are we walking somewhere? Staying here?

Okay. Because I will send you the photographs of the system itself. What we did is use microbes to break down organic waste. India's got 70% is organic waste. So refuse from sewage is organic waste. Waste coming in from the garbage. Because we have so much of fresh fruit and vegetables, we're not a completely processed food country as yet. So there's a lot of organic waste. Now all of that organic waste, we managed to get these methanizing microbes to get us a huge quantity of methane. And what we're able to use with.

That methane, you could, I have a huge quantity of methane. You could just ask me. I'm a walking methane machine.

Excellent. Now we can make you a biogas electrical unit.

That's my next call. Be careful what I wish for. You guys do believe in, you guys do believe in reincarnation over here, right? I don't have, I don't want my next life as a methane producing bacteria. So you guys are producing these methanogenic bacteria.

Yes. So we have these waste management units and we produce methane. But what makes it interesting is because for every ton of waste, we're able to get a ton of gas. And with that we can get 1 kilowatt of energy. Now for a power hungry nation, imagine all your waste becoming electricity which can then power your pumps and the next part of the process. Right? Because now we're talking about water and we're talking about all of that. But what we've been able to do, when you say an ecosystem, is to do all of that in every area, which then makes it sustainable even away from the grid. And that's the magic of it. But to add to that, we figured out that the return on investment from a business perspective is going to be very difficult for a farmer to put in. So what we then did is, is built a reactor to be able to take this methane and make it into carbon nanotubes. So we can make multi walled carbon nanotubes. Just to give you an idea about this, the market for a kilogram can be anywhere upwards of $200 to $300. But because of the reactor and our setup with a methane and a zero energy loop, we can make these carbon nanotubes for like as little as $30. So you just made that that much cheaper.

And, and for the listener who is scratching their head, the carbon nanotube will allow you to achieve what the carbon.

Nanotubes is, an amazing composite material. If I put 0.01% of carbon nanotubes into cement, I could make it 25% stronger. And that is for like every ton of cement.

Wow.

So you're thinking like that much is going to save you 20% of your carbon footprint of cement.

Wow.

But every farmer can have one of those carbon nanotubes units. It's cheap, it's efficient, and that's the kind of integration that we're talking about in an ecosystem. Right. And if you think about fuel, if you put carbon nanotubes with a surfactant into fuel, it can make the fuel more efficient. You can use 30% less fuel just because of the way it acts as a lubricant in the fuel. You can use it for composites. You can make plastic into steel. You can get second grade steel and make it into the strongest thing possible. So the water filtration systems, water filtration systems, it's, it's unbelievable.

Human exoskeletons.

Absolutely.

A country full of iron, man. Yeah. I love it.

Exactly.

Cool.

Yeah.

So amazing.

You're able to bring the highest level of technology simply to this. Right?

Cool.

That's the kind of.

And again, for any of you who want to take a deeper, deeper dive on any of this, where we're putting show notes, we'll, we'll link to all the, the interesting science behind this if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com India Fitness. All right, what's next?

Okay, so let me walk you through.

I will follow. All right, we are now walking into the gym. Possibly a slight change of topic here, but this is where I just finished working out first. First, just completely, possibly non relevant question, but there's like samurai swords and ancient Japanese training and martial arts equipment all over. It was actually kind of cool working out with all this equipment in here. What's, what's the, what's the deal with all the Japanese weaponry?

Actually, the whole ethos of Kinect Ventures was built on the culture of a Japanese martial art which we all train. And that's the ethos of our office. It's this art called ninjutsu by our grand current living grandmaster, ninjutsu. Ninjutsu. It's called Button Kan Ninjutsu. And the current grandmaster is a gentleman called Masaki Hatsumi. The inspiration for putting up this whole facility actually comes from him, because he's the one who developed many of the concepts and principles that we use for our business today. And it's all about the supernatural nature, I should say. So that's where we drew our inspiration. It's because all moves. Movement. Ben, I was watching you move, and if you look at your movement as well, everything is natural and connected and flowing and.

Thank you. I'm like a ballerina.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, a ninjutsu artist.

It's exactly the same thing. But imagine an environment being exactly the same. Connected, moving together, collaborative. What I often like to say is that our organization is very much like a microbial symbiotic relationship.

Yeah, well, I mean, everything flows in that way, too. And, you know, as someone who's done a great deal of plant medicine, you know, when I'm in that deep, you can see things on a quantum physics, on a particle wave level. That just makes you realize how deeply complex and interconnected everything is. But the best word I can use to describe the movement of the particles and the waves is flow. Like everything flow, we respond to sound waves, we respond to airwaves. We respond to energy waves. And that flow can be chaotic, or it can be a little less full of entropy, a little less full of chaos. And it sounds to me like you guys are trying to create almost like, order out of some of the chaos.

You know what? It's interesting. Chaos has so much of energy. It's about harnessing it and moving with it.

Right.

And it orders itself. I don't think you can instill order, you know, as an individual, but, you know, working together, it sort of collaborates and flexes and moves in the direction that you want to. As you said, you know, the quantum wave is falling into the structures that we desire, even.

What kind of interesting things do you have here in the gym?

Well, as you can see, we have all the traditional kettlebell.

Yeah, it's very. It's. It's very similar, like a CrossFit or a functional fitness training facility here. I was a little bit bummed not to have a pec deck. I always like to hit the pec deck when I get off the airplane.

And we also have an integrated physiotherapy and the exercise physiology unit over here. So we have a lot of rehabilitation over there. We have the ewot energy, if that's.

Your SO EWAT exercise with oxygen therapy. And so this is a bike next to a device. So this bag, this giant bag here next to the exercise bike appears to be full. Is it full of oxygen?

Yes, absolutely, it's full of oxygen and it has a reservoir of oxygen. And what we've done is rigged the machine so that you have a negative flow. So you get up to like, you know, like, you know, it's 21% oxygen when we are actually out here, but we can get that to get down to 14%. So you create a hypoxic.

So you're hypoxic, but. But then you follow that up with hyperoxia.

Absolutely.

So you're cycling hypoxia and hyperoxia during the workout. Having experienced this myself, because I have a machine similar to this at home, the live O2, you essentially get a vasoconstrictive vasodilative effect as you fluctuate between hypoxia and hyperoxia. It's somewhat similar to what you'd feel like after doing a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber session, but with this ewat, the red blood cell response is pretty dramatic. Like, it's amazing for VO2. It's amazing for clearance of glymphatic drainage from the brain. I'm a huge fan of ewat. And so what you guys have done is you've rigged up this machine next to the exercise bicycle. You would flip it on a little bit before the workout to harness the oxygen from the ambient air in the gym. And then someone would get on this and actually alter between hypoxia and hyperoxia.

Absolutely. And also we're just at 800 meters over here. Many of our athletes are going to go off and train in different countries at different heights. We don't have the benefit of, you know, elevation over here. What we are able to do then is during the training period, put them in a hypoxic state for long periods of time. We have some of the top motocross champions who do the Dakar and all of them. So you can see that this will be a great tool for a lot of our athletes to be able to simulate, stimulate that. Considering we come from almost the plains, it's very difficult to get, you know.

I don't know how much you've done it, but probably the best thing about, about exercise oxygen therapy is when you've gone hypoxic and you've done one of your 15, 30, 60 second intervals or whatever in a hypoxic state and Then you flip the switch and bleed into full oxygen. And it is literally just, it's like being stuck underwater and coming up for air. It's, it's absolutely amazing. And of course the only thing is, you know it's going to be temporary and you got to go back into hypoxia. But most, most exercise with oxygen therapy protocols, they finish with hyperoxia. And so you finish just breathing pure oxygen. It's amazing. It's like dessert. Cool. Cool. I like it.

The other thing we have is like, we've been trying to get data on functional movement screening and musculoskeletal analysis because many people today are just running into workout without any understanding of their body. So for us everything is about, you know, being injury free, training for long periods of time. And I think a part of our protocols was to get qualitative information for our Indian population to see where we're at and what's happening. So for everyone who walks into the gym, we always do a screening and we build programs based on their outcomes that they desire and then we're able to back it up with physiology, nutrition. As you, you saw the functional foods and of course all the tools for each and every individual.

Yeah. As we walk into the next room, one thing I wanted to comment upon is I noticed most the athletes here and the folks who are working out are with the trainer and the trainer is always doing deep tissue work with them and a lot of movement protocols prior to jumping into the workout. So you've almost got a real emphasis on prehab prior to going into the routine. My, my own personal flavor as, as you know, then we get boots on the streets with all the CEOs and the execs listening in. And Krishna knows this because he's, I, I work with him a little bit and you know, he did his 15 minutes mobility this morning. I did my 15. But the way I do it is 10 to 15 minutes every morning. You, you treat the day like the entire day is going to be a workout. So I start my day with prehab. So at the drop of a hat, if I got to jump into a workout, 2 minute warm up and I'm good to go. But man, if you have the luxury of having a trainer who can do prehab on you before the workout, I.

Have to say, I mean, I'm about to give you a shameless plug. But some of the routines that you've had me establish in terms of mobility have made such an incredible difference and maybe even more so than the workouts that you've had me do, especially the intermittent low levels of physical activity, because after I do that foam rolling and lacrosse ball work in the morning, doing that low level stuff during the day, I mean, it's just my body feels so much better and it's so much maintained and loose, and I feel ready to do something almost at any time. I know we're a little off topic, but it's just a huge difference.

I haven't given you this workout in a while, but the greenfield mobility routine, do you remember the one hour? One.

Yep.

Yeah, so. So I've got this one that's an hour long. I came up with it as a program for recovery days, but it's a mashup of foam rolling and dynamic stretching and breath work, and you just basically do a full hour. And your body, your body feels kind of similar to, as if you'd done a massage afterwards. It's like a combination of massage and a workout. So maybe, maybe if I remember, I'll put that. Yeah, you got some calisthenics in there, you got some foam rolling, you got some lacrosse ball work, you've got some dynamic arm and leg swings. But it's a full hour long. And yeah, it's a, on a recovery day, it's a step up for, for mobility and rehab.

When we first started working together, you had me, you had me on that routine for about eight weeks. Yeah, a lot of. Yeah, a lot of dynamic and static.

Stretches and foam rolling, and I do that a lot.

And specific instructions on how to breathe while I'm doing it.

Yeah, I just took on like a super athlete in the US and he's going nuts because his first six weeks of training, he's like walking, breathing, meditating, foam rolling. Like he's, he's not doing his usual bodybuilding splits in the, the gym. But I keep telling, trust me, dude, like, we're, we're pushing the reboot button.

I remember that period. But you know, it was funny. It was at the end of that, all of a sudden I put on seven pounds of muscle mass.

Yeah.

Just from doing that.

Yeah, it was just. Wow, it's crazy. Your mitochondria start to respond. Yep. All right, what else we got here? Oh, we have a table with some devices on it. What do we got here?

So this is. Sorry. So this.

You can introduce yourself.

Yeah. So, hi, I'm Varun. I had the performance over here in Invictus.

You're one of the trainers here at.

Invictus, So one of the founders for Invictus. That handles the entire performance piece for athletes, recreational rehabilitation. We have a lot of our athletes that are actually going from India for the Olympics. We build. We're building systems for India in terms of protocol standards, performance as well as rehabilitation. Right. So just some of the things that we use, use something called as a shoulder sphere a lot for the rotator.

Cuff training and the shoulder sphere.

Yeah.

Okay, cool. We'll put a photo of this in the show notes for you guys.

Perfect. So we primarily use it for the shoulder in terms of stability. It's kind of perturbation training. But what has worked for rotator cuff is its ability to contract and relax. And that's what adds to dynamic stabilization.

Yes. You would strap this to the wrist, you would extend the arms and go through a full rotator cuff protocol. Yeah, I've never seen anything like this. That's cool. Can you get this in the U.S. yes.

It's actually made. I mean, we bought it down from the States.

Okay. The shoulder sphere. All right, cool. I'll put a link in the show notes.

So if you're talking about any throwing sport or anything with the overhead, you're talking about trying to create maximum velocity through the entire range. So your typical rotator cuff training doesn't really apply because it's not dynamic stabilization. It's not working on velocity. It's also not working through the entire pattern in which you are going to function.

It's largely, even at the professional sports level. Elastic bands, internal external rotation, horizontal flexion, extension. What's the rotation? The cross. You know, the elastic band system I'm talking about. A lot of MLB pitchers are using it. Crossover. Crossover symmetry, I think it's called.

Yeah. So you're talking about cross extension.

Yeah, but. But it's all. It's all the same type of motions. This is more dynamic.

Yeah. So this. You can use the same thing for stabilization for baseball, for. In cricket. We talk about fast bowling. You're talking about javelin. We're talking about all of those features. And it's. It's about rapid contraction and flexion. It's not just about creating a concentric or an eccentric force. You're talking about how quickly can it dynamically stabilize. To be able to constantly stabilize two gender that maximum velocity.

Yeah.

Right. So the forces that you have is different from when you have. When you're strengthening for a rate recover during using bands, weights, whatever.

Right. It's one of the biggest holes still in training. And Ryan Lowry in the States, you know Ryan Lowry, he's doing good. Yeah. Speed, strength, athletes I think is his website and he's, he's been on my show before. But we talk about velocity training and the importance, especially for athletes of, of moving out of a velocity that simulates sport in a dynamic scenario.

Absolutely. So you're talking about how the body self organizes when you put it through a variety of different tasks. Right. So. And that's pretty much what it is. And largely, predominantly right now, where we are going with the entire training is, is less about the muscular aspect only. It's more about how do you affect the neurophysiology of the body. Right. What kind of training that we can do to connect the two. It's less a of about the muscle and how it functions independently of the nervous system. How can we bring it together or.

Independent of the cardiovascular system? That's one issue that I still see with speed strength training, at least in the US is they've got a pretty good system for speed strength training. But once you throw physiological fatigue into the mix, there's still not a lot of systems that are combining physiological fatigue with any type of speed strength, which is a scenario. I mean you look at a quarterback in the NFL.

Absolutely. So there is a diminished motor control when you have the whole fatigue component. But the primary reason for that is because I mean the brain's function in terms of activating muscles is to give that huge bioelectrical output to the muscle. And hence if that fatigue sets in, then you have a lesser amount of bioelectricity pumped into the muscle and hence you have a, a decreased motor control as well. And which is where we're talking about it. So. But then that's where I think VBT is being great velocity based training.

Yeah.

In terms of figuring out what are the fatigue levels that they have and what are the correlating drop in performance for that particular athlete. Right. It's not a universal thing saying that everybody handles fatigue the same way. Some people react very different to fatigue and organize very differently under foot fatigue from say you and me. Right?

Yeah, yeah. What are you using to quantify velocity? Are you using like, like an EMG that an athlete would wear?

We use emg, we use like, we use the push band.

What's this, what's this device?

So it's a push band.

So it's the push band.

Push band.

Got it.

Right. So it actually checks velocity of the bar. So it can work. It has an accelerometer on it, but it works on a vertical axis. And now we're working on multi directional movement as well.

And so for someone who's not familiar with this device, it would allow me to for example, measure velocity. And if you did the calculation, also power output during something like an overhead.

Push press, push press, quads, deadlifts. Right. We don't, I mean you're looking at primarily for lower body movements where force, velocity, power are big factors also in terms of rehab. Right. So if I'm working with an ACL rehab client, I can't really reduce the load, but what I can do is work at a velocity, I can work on velocity at the same load.

Right.

But what we've seen is because of that, where I can take 60 kgs, which I know this actually can handle safely, even if he's doing an ACL rehab and over a period of four weeks show a dramatic increase in his 1 RM.

Yep.

Right. So I'm not talking about a purely physiological adaptation only over here. I'm talking about a neuromuscular adaptation that I'm looking for to increase the overall power output. Yeah, because tissue adaptation has to happen at a certain timeline. But your neurophysiology can happen way faster.

Now for those of you who are not super athletes or don't have an interest in, let's say professional sports and velocity curves, you know Krishna, this is relevant, but you'll notice how sometimes like on your program, we'll do bodyweight routines that are quick, explosive, get in, get out, move as fast as possible. And the reason for that is this is relevant for anti aging and longevity as well. Because telomere studies they've done in everyone from power lifters to rodent models like guinea pigs, they've found a distinct longevity advantage to the activation of those fast twitch type 2B muscle fibers and the ability to, to be able to move explosively. So even from just a pure anti aging and longevity play standpoint, yeah, we do our super slow training under heavy loads, which I like for the average, just a decreased risk of energy or of injury and maintain muscle mass and strength. But then you combine that with the deloaded power, high velocity type of workout, you know, just like the old school, whatever, New York Times 7 Minute Workout where it's all body weight, super quick, fast, explosive. And you know, this is something that even if you're not a super athlete is important just from a pure longevity play.

I've always been curious about why that longevity impact is there. It has something to do with the nature of your switch over from the creatine phosphate system to your mitochondrial based energy and the rate at which that happens. But is that kind of what's going on there? Is it giving you a longevity bump?

I suspect it is. And this is a word that's already been thrown around here. It's the neuromuscular advantage. It's the ability to be able to have enough neuromuscular awareness to where you can move quickly and functionally and precisely at a fast pace. And this would be, I'm stepping off a curb and, oh, wait, no, I'm not. Here comes a truck, right? Or reducing risk of fall in the elderly, because they actually have neuromuscular awareness and the ability to be able to move just a little bit more quickly because we've got things like motor neurological activation going on. And, you know, this even delves into the world of biohacking, where we have devices now like, you know, like the Halo, you know, tdcs for the head. Enhanced motor neuron activation go in and. Yeah, and it's not something I program a lot in my workouts. I try not to make people think, like, they gotta own some spendy biohack to do a workout. But if you use something like that prior to, like an explosive power training type of workout, you have enhanced motor neuron activation. Get more bang for your buck out of something like that. So. So yeah, you guys are doing cool things in the gym, too. I like it. Thanks for showing us, man. All right, where are we headed next?

This is our health office.

The health office. Yeah.

So this is our health by design. And what we do over here is we have a lot of radiation problems because we have a whole bunch of telephone towers across.

Cell phone towers. Yeah, Huge issue. Yeah.

So we have around only 3,000 watts. That's permissible according to the WHO. But because of India and the complexity of telecom, we have more than 20,000 watts in this area.

And for you guys, is it more the large millimeter wave cell phone towers is more the 5G?

No, it's large. So what we've been able to do is actually come up with like glaze and paints that actually bring it down to less than like 500 or 100. So every house can be protected inside. And we don't do the whole radiation. We measure radiation inside the houses, and then we're able to seal the system using paints and the glaze.

Amazing. I'm actually. I'm painting my house this spring now with the 5G rollout in the US it's going to cost me about 15,000 bucks, but I'm doing the full meal deal at my house just because now that There's I live out in the forest, but I can't escape from balloons and satellites.

Yeah, exactly. But, Ben, I think because of India, our economies are over here are fantastic. It's a nanotechnology that we came up with in India with one of our partners. So actually it's economical. Everyone can have it. That's what makes it really accessible. And also we're doing things like looking at the fungal issues that go along with our temperature fluctuations. So spores, spores that are because of the air conditioning and other things like that. So we have the genetics as you. And we're able to test the microbes as well as the genetics. So imagine we have that for including things like the walls, the air conditioning. We're using floor cleaners specifically for mold.

And mycotoxins for that. Similar to the bioremediation protocols you were talking about earlier. You use a specific bacteria or fungal strain. There's a company in the us, AI Biome, something like that. They sell like a spray that you can spray in your house that smells.

Really good as well. Yeah. They're using it as a deodorant as well, if I'm not mistaken, with Aodon. Yeah, things like that. So what we're able to do is integrate all of that together and do like paints, which are antifungal, and also floor cleaners because, you know, the amount of chemicals that are put in floor cleaners are disruptive for our health. And what we've been able to do is build micro communities that actually manufacture microbial floor floor cleaning agents, detergents, hand wash, dishwash, machine wash. And all of that is a part of what we're doing with Health by Design. Because you're like, everybody's investing in design and interiors. India is a growing economy, and now what we're doing is adding the health aspect of it. So what we call it is the health by design. So you design your house, your home from the go, from the get go, with all of that integrated into the your home systems.

So a couple of questions. First of all, if I drop a giant hot pepper fart in here, are you saying it's not going to smell at all?

No, no. I think you're going to kid us.

But make a lot of money if you can develop one of those. The other question is just a bigger picture question. So on that whiteboard in there, remind me the Connect Ventures. So essentially you guys, from a business standpoint, almost like a holding company for each of these different smaller companies doing like, designs for health or I'm sorry, Health by Designs. The biome company in the other room we looked at. Are you essentially a holding company for all these other companies?

Not at all. Actually we are partnered with every other company. So essentially all of us, I have a stake in all the companies and we all work together. So the idea being that we're an open platform of collaboration, so anyone who comes in, we're self funded, we integrate them. We already have the marketplace, so that's why the ecosystem, because anybody who walks in has already got everything. So imagine each individual company is going to feed off every.

Which is the root of the issue. And that's the problem in the US It's a completely disparate and disconnected culture. Like when I go down and I was recently in the training gym for a professional basketball team that brought me in to advise them on some of their training protocols in their facility. And when I got into air, light, water, electricity, mold, the nature of the hydration protocols, the coach's eyes were glazing over because it's a complete disconnect which shocks me, especially on a professional sports level in the US with as much money as you're pouring in these players.

Small increments, performance enhancement.

Oh, the lifetime value of a contract.

And losing, coming in last place.

Exactly. But the problem is there's not a model, right? It's okay, who are we going to bring in for air, who are we going to bring for water? So there's not really any one company that you just say, okay, this is who we bring in to make sure our athletes are 100% optimized or our executives are 100% optimized. So I get it, and that's always been like a pain point for me is how do we actually connect everything?

Well, I think the idea of a systemic approach to a lot of these things, and again, it's something that has yet to really take hold. I mean it takes hold a little bit here, a little bit there. I mean you're seeing one aspect of it here in India, but you know, I mean, you gotta also realize that people like you, people like Shiva, who are real exponents of this holistic systemic approach to health well being, fitness, performance enhancement, it still really is at sort of the cutting edge. I mean, maybe people are more aware of it now than 20 years ago when concepts of about holistic well being, really, really fringe. But it's still not even, has not even hit the steep part of the curve in my mind in terms of acceptance and understanding by a large segment of the population in any country.

And end of strength conditioning coach is measuring force velocity curves in the presence or absence of mold and mycotoxins in the training gym.

Right.

Like something as simple as that. Like these are just things nobody's even thinking about yet. Okay, so the primary thing you're doing with the health by design then is mold, mycotoxin environment, emf. You're essentially creating shielding and remediation solutions.

And also lux, you know, the lux levels as you know is huge.

So we talked lux for the light?

Yeah, absolutely.

The brightness.

So we actually do that for individual housing. So you can control the whole mood in the evening. You want to get into the red light spectrum during the day and actually educate people on that. So they have the option already built in into the control system systems so they don't have to do that later. So you know, you have all the systems in place. You have two different lighting systems in play. So you have the morning lighting, you can have your evening lighting.

My only beef with that is, is at least from, from my limited knowledge is most actually, actually all of those lighting solutions that I've found so far in the US that exist, they all have to be run by WI fi or Bluetooth. But if like my home my hardwired even we have amazing music system in the house, but we hardwired it all. Cat 7 shielded ethernet cable. So are you guys thinking about the way that it's controlled? Like WI fi versus Bluetooth versus hardwired?

Actually, you know, it's just, we're just using controls just to stay away from as much of WI fi coming into the house. Now these are the choices that you know, what we try to do is give.

When you say controls you mean like wall controls? Yes, analog base control systems.

Exactly. And keep it even simpler because not digital based WI Fi, we don't need to. The choice is actually very interesting. The choice goes to the consumer. You just are there to educate them and say look, these are the options. That's why it's helped by design. What level do you want to engage in?

The consumer wants convenience. The consumer wants to flop in bed and pick up their phone and shift their entire house into night mode. And the problem, the inherent problem with that is if it's controlled by your phone and you're making that trade off for the convenience you're essentially getting. Unless you have the ability to post phone activation, do a kill switch. And that's what some of the better wearable devices are doing. Like I'm wearing the OURA ring and then last night I Was wearing the Apollo ankle band. I can activate both from my phone, but then as soon as I do that, switch it into airplane mode. So as long as you can cut off all communication to the device once you put it into the setting you want it to be in, then you've kind of got the best of both worlds.

Absolutely. We also came up with a Faraday cage for the bed. So you have like a mesh. So the idea was to get a mesh made interspersed with the nanotechnology that we're talking about, and you actually have the mesh around your bed. And you know, that's another one. Which means that you have the convenience.

Is the Faraday mesh around the bed. Because my wife is still reserved, resistant to this because of the. The feng shui of the bedroom. Has it been made attractive yet? Well, this is what it looks like.

No, this is. Some of it. This is a zoo cage.

Yeah.

But we've got. We've got a really nice mesh as well. And just to give you an idea about like some, I mean, the. The possibility of it, this just goes behind anything that you want and you can use it anywhere. So. But we've got a really nice one, one that's really mellow.

I feel like if it could be kind of. Kind of similar to what we were just talking about. For example, it's hidden away. You put on your phone, you activate it as soon as you're in bed. Just, you know, comes up from the wall.

Exactly.

Surrounds the bed. Almost like a blackout curtain. You know, those automatically come down in the hotel room. Yeah, yeah, something like that. So it's not in the way later on. Or you don't want your Faraday cage when it's love making night, you know, whatever, that. That'd be the way to do it.

No, absolutely. Because today we see more and more people with electrosensitivity or sensitivity to electrical devices. And as you know, Ben, I think you've covered that already in many of your podcasts. And that's what we develop things. Because again, it has to be cheap, accessible. We don't have a lot of people over here may not have the economies of spending too much. So we had options available. And then actually we have our architects who actually do the design principles exactly like you said and actually customize it for each person to whatever they need.

Yeah, it can get expensive. I'm trying to find a doctor who will diagnose me with electro hypersensitivity right now so that my local power will remove the smart meter from my home without charging me the $50 per month. They want to charge me to not have the Smart. $50 a month is not. It's not a lot to pay for help, but it just irks me that I have to pay for that. So I'm trying to get a doctor to diagnose me so that I can then send a doctor's note to the electrical company and tell them, you got to remove this. I have a. I have a disease. I have a disorder. This can't be in my house. So very cool. Any. Anything else that you guys are doing with. With this help by Designs that's notable.

Yeah, we got the plants. I mean, I think you already discussed that one as well. We have a lot of the plants, you know, taking out a lot of the stuff in the air.

So not only do you have the technology in here, but you've also got something similar. Like what, the clean air study at NASA?

Exactly.

Peace lily ferns, English ivy. We use that natural bioremedian.

Absolutely right.

I love it. Test for wisdom and modern science. So as we're walking down the hallway here between rooms, I'm seeing dry skin brushes, organic cane sweetener soaps. I took a shower with your turmeric soap in the bathroom after my workout with what's going on with all these personal care products.

Performance hormones. You know, you've already covered a lot.

You guys are making these?

Yeah. What we have are partners working in villages and sustainable areas in our ecosystem, actually building it. So it goes. The economy goes back to the rural areas where the raw material actually comes from, and it becomes a small business for the people over there and the NGOs over there that actually make all the products. So Wild Ideas is one shot venture that actually does that. And to promote them, what we do is we are able to take these small ventures from the rural part of India and connect them up because they are way healthier than anything else that we find in the supermarkets.

So I'm holding the laundry powder right now. And of course, I always go straight to the ingredient label to see the laundry list of ingredients. And there's one ingredient says soapberries. What are soapberries?

It's a natural, actually. It's an Indian plant that actually lathers. And this has been how we have been bathing for centuries.

This laundry power is just like fruits. Fruit peel and seeds.

That's it.

Amazing.

And it works amazingly because it emulsifies everything.

Glass cleaner spray. I'm going to look at the ingredient label on this one. What's this one? Oh, Boutika Devadura oil. Serrala oil, three oils and water. Amazing. Can you get this stuff in the us?

No, I don't think it's available as yet. And that's what we're trying to do. Right?

I mean, I know there's companies like Thrive Market and the ewg. You could probably find the equivalent of this stuff, but you guys are producing it all as part of this, this fuller model. What's this one? This is Shine Shaw. Okay, so this is an all purpose cleaning powder. Soapberry. I'm not familiar with the soap, Barry. I'm intrigued. Retha. Is that the name of it in India? R E E T H A. That's right. Okay. And so, so you harvest this berry and you powder it.

It's a nut.

Oh, Indian soap berry. I have heard of this, yes. Okay.

Yeah.

So it's a dried nut that you.

Sort of falls to the ground and then you pick it up from the ground and there's certain processes that take place after you sort of boil it and then you filter it and then when it lathers, you let it cool and then that's what you extract and then utilize in all the formulations. Amazing. It can clean your clothes, it can clean your surfaces, it can be used as a. In your hair as well as a cleaner. We so seldomly think about the foods that we eat and the natural built in defense mechanisms that are in them and how those things, like so many people in the US eat quinoa. Right. Why aren't we, when we're rinsing our quinoa, actually taking the saponins and using the that to wash our clothes. Why don't we. We just don't even think about that. We instead say, quinoa is evil. Don't go near quinoa. No, wash your quinoa. Rinse it, soak it, sprout it. And if you want to take things to the next level and love our planet, take that water that you've rinsed it with, toss that in the laundry and you got laundry detergent. Yeah. Or mop the floor with it. I mean, these are things people need to be thinking more about. If you listen to the podcast, I'll try and teach you guys as much of this stuff as possible. And of course, a big part of the podcast is once you learn something, you can take a deeper dive on your own. But man, I love this idea of taking something that we'd normally find in nature that would hurt our guts if we ate it, harvesting all the cleaning mechanisms off it and using it for a purpose. I love it. All right, what's this room that we're walking into?

I suppose this one's for metabolic testing. Ben, we have the cardio coach for the VO2 testing.

The cardio coach. This brings me so I feel like I'm talking a lot about myself. I ran an exercise physiology lab for about five years in Spokane, Washington. So this looks like my old stomping grounds. So you have a cardio coach here which will analyze VO2 max.

Absolutely. And what we want to do is when we have many people coming in, we have people of all ages and we don't have very good VO2 data for India. We're not very heavily funded on data. So what we've been doing is actually beginning to create that with our clients. A it educates them and gives them objective parameters to consider, to improve and to understand. And in addition to that, it also gives us data so that we can see what the standard for an Indian population would be because we actually don't have it right.

You've got American data primarily in VO2 max. Really understand and VO2 max. You know, most of you who are listening are mildly familiar with maximum oxygen utilization that you can take in during rest and exercise. It's a wonderful parameter for fitness. It's actually along with grip strength and walking speed associated with longevity. And Christian, I actually didn't know you had access to this or I would have told you this, but you can actually do a VO2 max test and something like the cardio coach or any metabolic cart used to measure your VO2 will tell you because it's calorimetry, it's measuring the amount of carbon dioxide produced and oxygen consumed. So you know, based on carbons burnt, how much fat and how much carbohydrate you're burning at every single heart rate or speed. Thus you can identify something like your maximum fat burns.

What we call so your Z1, Z your zone 1, zone 2 can be precisely quantified.

My morning fasted walks during which I want to maximize fat burning, I now know this heart rate spot is 145 to 150, right? So you can, if you want to get the most out of that morning walk, you dial it in 145, 150 and you know you're burning as much fat as possible at that heart rate. Now there are other things to think about, like for example, if you are working out at a higher heart rate, sure your post exercise metabolic burn is going to be higher, but so is your appetite, so is your recovery time, etcetera So I mean, something like VO2 Max. Again, we're not just talking about something for super athletes. This is something the general population can use to identify things like fat burning zone, calories burnt, an anti aging type of metric to keep track of how well you're doing maintaining your oxygen utilization as you age. So I completely. This is my old world.

Well, after linking up with Shiva, you know, the big, you know, because I've been in India and I haven't had the resources, I didn't know where the resources were. You know, I know we've been working together and you know, it's been hard for me to coordinate blood work and coordinate some of these more advanced biometric quantification techniques that you've wanted to implement. And then, and then I met up with Shiva and it was like, oh my God, this is all here. I mean, I didn't even know I had this available until three months ago, four months ago, until, well, him and I started talking. And then all of a sudden it was like the light bulb went off.

I love it. And you also have high speed video cameras in here, so I assume you're doing gait analyses.

Absolutely. Because, you know, we have many people coming in and it's great for us to give them data and work on the data because what we've been trying to establish over here is credibility. And the best way to do that, Ben, is whether it's biomarkers or markers for metabolites or markers for RMR, VO2, anything, we should give them a before and after to show, you know, significant change. It's like a profit and loss account. And everybody understands that. But what happens is then they are able to, like you said, understand that this is the optimal place to be. And when they fall off the wagon, they know how to get back on and what to do. And the power is with your clients, your patrons. And that's how we've been able to educate and also engage them and motivate them into their own health.

Right. And whether you're in the US or India or Canada or wherever else, I mean, some of this stuff is as simple as googling the name of your city plus metabolic laboratory or metabolic testing. And you can find out things like I just talked about maximum fat burning zone. Shiva, you just said rmr, resting metabolic rate, Right? Like, am I having difficulty gaining or losing weight because my metabolic rate is low? Which most of the time I used to test people who would be like morbidly obese. They'd be like, my metabolism, they need testing. And they burn like 3,000 calories a day. No, it's that your non exercise activity thermogenesis each day, the money you're moving each day is too low. That's a much bigger contributor to fat burn than metabolic rates.

You're just eating too much.

Right. Snacking on those macadamia nuts all day long at the office. So the other interesting thing with the high speed video cameras and I used to find this because we had a system like this at Champion Sports Medicine in Spokane. What we would do is folks with chronic repetitive motion injuries. Now I did a lot of triathletes, we do a lot of run and bike analyses, but man, folks in New York City and la, folks who are walking like three, four, five miles a day and your feet are bugging you, your knees are bugging you, your hips, your psoas. In many cases we would find with the high speed. I don't know if you guys have found this here. You watch the ankles and the feet during a high speed video camera analysis. And something as simple as custom orthotics change in shoes, mild change in gait pattern, some tweaking of like the peroneal tunnels down around the Achilles and soft tissue work done around there. For people who walk a lot and struggle with pain, I mean one single high speed video camera analysis of gait can be a game changer. With my only complaint being people walk a little different on a treadmill than they do outdoors. But is what it is.

So what we do is we get the video outside as well.

Okay.

And then try and match it. So that's the only difference that we try and look. The idea is at the end of the day, it's not just data unless it's actionable. So we want to be able to see that in reality. And what we're able to do is do that. And exactly like you pointed out, that's the reason that we have.

Yeah. What software are you using for your.

I'm not actually sure, but I can ask the team for that.

Totally blanking on the one that I used to use. But after I quit working at that facility, they developed a phone app where with the slow motion speed of the phones now and the better cameras, you can actually with a friend and an iPhone and that software, it starts with a D. I'm blanking on the name of it. But you guys would know if you were to Google just like gait analysis software, phone, you can actually have a friend do it yourself and look at a lot of the movement patterns yourself.

So you could actually do gait analysis with an iPhone.

Now you can do gate analysis on iPhone. It's not as good as like three high speed video cameras like this give you some idea. It's not 3D, right? It's not 3D. You don't have a z axis, but you can still get a lot out of it. Yeah. What else? Any other cool little things you want to show me?

This is the physiology part of it. And what we've again doing, like I told you before, is to get all the biomarkers and the analytics and India.

So just a quick thing to give folks a visual. We just walked into this room where of course, every single room seems to have all these superfoods and things that you guys are producing. This one's got buttermilk and millet crackers, turmeric, barley grass, black pepper, all sorts of different teas. But then across the table are a host of lab reports and metabolic analyses of gut microbiome report, your metabolite report, vitality panel, genetic reports. You guys are running all these tests here?

Absolutely. We have our own systems biology lab. And what we've begun to do is actually integrate all this data together. India has less than 0.2% of its genetics mapped. We are over like a billion people. We hardly have any data that's actionable. And we are the only ones who actually have the microbiome. So we've done like 150 microbiome tests and we're beginning to see all the correlations.

You mean you guys Connect Ventures are the only people in India who are doing gut microbiomes?

Yes, we and our partners have called leucine and this is what we've been putting together and it's called Bug speaks, as you can see. And we put together a whole metagenomic sequencing of all your microbes.

This is su. Can I get like a, like a sample PDF of some of these printouts to put into the show Notes?

Absolutely.

This confidential information?

No, not at all.

That would be amazing because these are very comprehensive kind of printouts that you have for. So for your genome analysis, you're looking at everything from the microbiome response. This is kind of similar like biome in the US the biome response to certain foods, pathogen characterization is your urine metabolite report. Is this hormones?

No, our urine metabolites is everything. We do neurotransmitters, we do hormones, we do the Krebs cycle.

This would be similar to almost like a spectra cell analysis in the U.S. exactly.

And we have none of that here. So here's an amazing story. So during the past seven, eight years, I got most of these tests from all the labs that you recommended. And we figured out that we don't have any of it. So part of our journey was to.

Many of the things I helped to.

Build this, you helped to build this. And that what makes it. I think we owe you more than a thing. That's how we had to get you all the way down here to see the work that you actually got us to do.

Man.

Amazing. Okay. See organic panels, you're able to analyze pesticides and herbicides that are absolutely very practical within. Within the body. Are you actually analyzing.

This is the genetics. So genetic report. It's like a strategy, our version of it.

Right.

It's just telling you about your caffeine, all the common ones that you do. And this is like the. This one's more like the strategene kind of report. And all of this is in India because we don't actually have access to 23andMe. We don't have access to any of those tests.

You know what I find interesting when I travel to other countries and I have a win in Rome kind of approach where a lot of times I'll partake in the local cuisine. Sometimes it does agree with me, sometimes it does not. Because we're all genetically diverse and I'm an American mutt and I'm curious with you guys, with your genetic report and your analysis of the Indian population, have you yet struck on a specific diet that works well for Indians in general?

Actually, we're coming very close to figuring some certain things out. One of the most interesting things that we figured out is our microbiome is so diverse. The microbiome for the compared to the Caucasian microbiome. But it's also as diverse for the obese people as it is for lean. So the diversity is not the issue. It's the actinobacteria part of it. So looks like we were a fiber rich race. What's happened with the depletion and processing of food is that this seems to be have a huge cause of our metabolic diseases today.

So this is something lower butyrate, lower akkermansia.

Exactly. Spot on. And this has been an interesting part of of our discovery, which is why if you look at the foods and stuff that we're beginning to curate is to actually get all that back into the system. So yes, fiber is a huge one that we found. We also found something very interesting in terms of our DEXA scan and the analytics that we ran over there, the.

DEXA scan, meaning what we're using for bone density and fat maps.

Absolutely. And the reason I bring that up is we've done around 5, 600 of them. And from that data we figured out that the looks like we're a squatting society, but we've stopped squatting because after our English shocksheet patient over the past hundred years and every time we activate our pelvis, our bone density actually increases and it's the first place that we put on bone density and it's also the first place that we begin to lose bone density because we also have the standard conditioning. We're able to see those correlations happening because we have the repeat testing.

So you've got a 1, 2 combination with industrialization in India causing constipation, low bone density.

Exactly.

Interesting. You never think the two would go hand in hand. It also, you know, this is relevant to something that's been on my mind recently. This whole carnivore diet craze and the potential danger of taking a diet that might largely agree with say, like a pure, say northern European population who might be able to get by on fish, you know, nose to tail organ meats, etc. Who did not have for thousands of years copious amounts of legumes and fibers in their diet, and then trying to extend that diet and saying it's the perfect human diet or something like that, I think it's dangerous territory versus taking. And again, it's difficult when you have a melting pot like America versus let's say something, something like India where I think you guys are a little less genetically diverse. But you can, you can do tests like this and figure out a biome that's actually going to be appropriate generally.

And once you start figuring these things out and say for people like me, what am I? I'm half Indian, German, Irish, Ukrainian and Czech. What's my diet? I mean, if you're an American, but.

I'm a global butt, right?

I mean, you know, once you start figuring things out for people like me, how should be eating, how should I be tailoring my diet, how should that be interacting with my lifestyle? How does all of these things come in and how my body handles stresses or you know, the SMP mutations, how do they really affect me on say my mthfr cmt?

And I think the answer to that is quantification going in and quantification going out, meaning you quantify and you get an approximation of what you need and then from there you track heart rate variability you track inflammation, you track glycemic variability. And from there you can say, okay, and this series of tweaks is what's actually causing your diet to become customized. And that's frustrating for a lot of people because they just want to buy a book and find out that what's within that book is God's truth and the diet for them. And it's so much more complicated. And sometimes it does require some digging. But I think what will happen is the people who are doing the digging will generate trickle down information that keeps the people who can't afford to do the digging from having to do it.

And also, I mean, there is a certain amount of accept you have to, at some point in life, we all have to learn to accept that life is the reaction, is some complexity to life.

Yeah.

Not everything can just be simple. Not everything can be a yes or no question.

Yeah.

Some things in life are going to require you to be your own unique individual and do things that are uniquely individual and good for you. And they may not be the same things as for other people.

I have accepted, figure that out sometimes. I've accepted there are mysteries of the universe I cannot explain. I even catch flack for this, right? Like talking about, you know, God or higher powers or spirituality. People like, prove it. I'm like, can't, can't. It's mystery to me. And you know what? I'm okay with that. I. I believe in magic. So there, I said it. Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know, we're all going to the same place one way or another. So we're all going to think, figure.

It out sooner or later. All right, what else we got in here? My mouth is watering. You got crunchy nut butters, you got honey. What's up with the honey?

This is actually jaggery.

Jaggery? What's jaggery?

So it's the raw form of sugar. So when it's not processed, it's got.

All the molecules from sugarcane. Yeah.

It's all the molecules of magnesium. Everything with all the micronutrients in it. And what makes it interesting, it's got all the 36 molecules of magnesium that you need to process the glucose.

Wait, are you saying sugar is not poison?

Because it's not.

If it's actual real unprocessed sugar, I think Robert Lustig's gonna roll over in his grave eventually.

It's from sugar cane.

Is it a different part of the sugar cane that's used for in refined sugar or it's the same stuff just processed differently?

Just the juice just the juice and it's this coagulate co. And then you.

Could make it into the best approximation. Be like my wife's slow fermented non GMO red wheat berry sourdough bread from the rolling hills of the Palouse versus wonder bread.

By the way, we're having some sourdough bread coming over to the house tonight.

Oh, amazing. Amazing. I'm glad I crushed it on that rowing machine earlier.

Wow.

So it's just, it's mind boggling how you guys have woven all this together with. What is this?

Pepper. Fresh off the tree.

Fresh black pepper off the tree. Oh my gosh, that smells amazing.

You can take that back home with you, man.

Get all that bioperine. Wow. This is coffee. Elephant shade coffee. Oh my goodness. Permaculture coffee. Half arabica, half robusta. And this is grown in kind of that permaculture type of environment that you were alluding to.

Yeah, these are our estates.

Right.

We've actually done all of that.

Wow. Amazing. Amazing. Man, this is so cool. You guys are doing so much here. And these, these metamorphs. You gave me a, you gave me a bag of these last night when I arrived at the airport. I almost, I had good self control because I know about circadian rhythmicity. And I was careful not to eat too much last night when I got in because I always wait until breakfast as much as I can. But I did, I admit, eat half of a metamorph last night before I went to bed. Almond, flax, sesame, moringa seed, choco chips, dates, figs, pink salt. So these are like crackers that you guys are making.

We have a zero carb version and these are, you know, we have many versions of it. But essentially what we needed is we have a.50% of our population is vegetarian.

Yes.

Now if you look at the protein issues that we have, and we don't have access to pea protein in most places in India and we're used to solid food. So what we did is we essentially came up with all the essential amino acids in the best proportions, along with a really good ratio of omega three to six. We got four, one only. And we put an immunomodulatory moringa protein in there. And that's the one that we actually did in our food lab, which actually showed us amazing immunomodulatory effects.

You know, if you have almond, flax, sesame and moringa in here, you can actually change the label because this covers, you have BCAAs, you've actually got all your essentials in here. So you could change that to EAAS instead of bcaas.

We've got all the eaas.

Yeah, yeah, Amazing. That's a good, that's a good formulation. Especially people who are plant based for their protein. And also you'd still have to eat a hell of a lot to get enough protein versus rib eye. But you know, I'm jaded.

I also get, it's full of dietary fiber. And now if you, we had from the previous conversation, you'll understand for the Indian biome that would be like probably.

Pretty good with some of that, that peanut butter you guys make on top of it too. Wow. Wow. Cool.

That's the spread.

Okay. And, and what we'll do is for those of you who want to look at some, some of the labels of some of this stuff, more information on the ingredients, on the amino acid ratios, et cetera, we'll put all of this over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com India Fitness. You're probably guessing the show notes are going to be pretty comprehensive to this because we're covering everything from food to agriculture to physiology and fitness to bioremediation, mold, mycotoxins, emf. But it's a comprehensive picture and I'm very, very impressed. Anything else you want to show me?

This is the last.

All right, this is the last piece. Here we go.

This is the brain.

So we've got a computer with some electrodes look like they attach to some kind of a head worn device. What do we got going on here?

So we got the biofeedback device. Here's where we do the eeg, the biofeedback. We got the halo, all the things that we discussed because India is the land of yoga. But how do we know we're meditating? I mean it's very interesting. There are many people who do it but we have no again data for it. So what we've been doing is actually with this specializations that we have in this department, essentially beginning to create all the data so people are actually able to visualize what different breathing systems do for them, what kind of EEG they're able to do stress responses. We use this for everyone, it doesn't matter, athletes, CEOs, anyone who comes in because again nobody is capturing the data of the brain and it's, it's an illusion of meditation is worse than if you're not actually able to do something dual drive.

I've, I've played a game very similar to this in which you so to describe it to you guys. Go, go listen to my interview with Dr. Andrew Hill. If you want to take like a 90 minute deep dive into this. But essentially the electrodes are collecting information about your brainwave patterns, which will change almost subconsciously as you're staring at a screen. And for example, if you switch to higher degree of beta brainwave activation versus alpha, the car might slow down or the exhaust might stop coming out the back, or the music might fade, in which case your brain gets this subconscious slap on the wrist and shifts back into alpha. And I, I actually wound up purchasing the laptop and all the equipment from. From Peak Brain. And myself and my kids trained with this thing for like six months. And I noticed like, better sleep onset, decreased distractibility, better focus even. You know, during a podcast like this, I would have been, you know, not that I'm not kind of like a hey, squirrel, oh, hey, look over there kind of guy already, but I would be able to hear conversations going on outside and I'll be able to focus on you guys. This stuff completely changed my brain. Yeah. Amazing.

And what we managed to do is once we get all the data here, we. This is something you take home. It's a pulse oximeter, which I HRV device. So then the same technology which you've simulated on and worked on, you can take home. And it's a small pulse oximeter.

I can wear this on my finger to measure the amount of oxygen. And what does this have to do. Oh, so you've got an app and as you're meditating, you're able to increase the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream. Yes.

And as well as this would be.

Cool for all the WIM HOF people.

And the HRV as well, by the way, it's got all the data at the back end.

This will do. HR I didn't even know this thing existed.

Yeah.

Amazing.

That's a gift for you, Ben. You can take that and play with that.

Wow. So I Can people get this in the U.S. yes, I think so.

There are only two markets, the U.S. and the India.

Are you the biofeedback guy here? Biofeedback expert?

Yes.

What's your name?

Mon. Mon Brookman.

Cool. Where are you from?

Israel.

Israel.

Okay. Cool, cool.

Four years ago, I decided to come to India and see what India have to offer. As I believed in the Eastern psychology more than the Western psychology. And I found out the way to connect between the Western technology and the Eastern philosophy. We can prove performance not only heal diseases or disorders, but how can we upgrade people and have better performance on a database using ancient techniques and simple things that you can depend on yourself or not on your psychologist or therapist or someone else, but only on you.

And so you can use something like real time HRV and pulse oximetry data as you're meditating in real time. See what style or form or length or flavor of meditation affects your specific physiology in the most favorable manner. And then because this is something we run into, I don't know if you see this Krishna, but there's like you know, 30 different flavors of meditation out there. Just like there's 30 different diets out there.

And you can do just transcendental meditation. You can do straight in, out breathing, focus on your breath meditation. I mean there's. And there's a billion other flavors as well. You know another interesting thing, Sheila, which just coming here and listening to you talk about this, you know, you have the genetic testing and then you have the biometric feedback on meditation. And when you look at things like SMP mutations on what is it the MAOA or the COMT gene which are responsible for clearing epinephrine. One of those is epinephrine and norepinephrine and dopamine. And dopamine, right. How, if I'm saying it's slow on that. I've got an SMP for being slow on that. Maybe a device like this, they could develop a specific program like okay, you need to be up here to actually get the stress relief and be cleared because you're clearing slow. There's a way you can integrate genetic data with biometric.

The other thing that's cool about neurofeedback and about self quantification, real time of either brainwaves or things that correlate to brainwaves is you can test out your nootropics and smart drugs too. You can be like, am I a qualia mind or a siltep person? Right? And you can actually see how specific nootropic blends affect your mental function. How much does this cost? This I feel well device?

This is around a hundred dollar.

So for a hundred bucks somebody could quantify their meditation.

The meditation, even the time you get stuck in traffic, you can see how calm you can be when you are stuck in traffic. When you just finish sending your kids to school and you have five minutes to rest until you need to organize yourself. You can see what can you do in these five minutes. Nowadays we can't stop for two hours meditation. We have no time for that. If you want to be efficient, we have little, little or five, five, five minutes that will accumulate to two hours a day that we are wasting on different, different things. In this five, five minutes we can do so much for ourselves without changing our behavior much that we need to stop our day and continue. We can just on the go create a better flow.

That's the important part is that we tend to chunk meditation. I was talking to my kids about this the other day. You know, the, the importance and the power of prayer and how you don't actually have to, to feel the pressure to carve out 20 minutes in the day to stop and pray. Because I said the prayer of constancy, right? You walk outside, you take a breath. Oh, thank you God for that breath. And then you, you have your, your bite of meal. Oh, thank you for that bite of food. By the time the day's over, you prayed 30 times. But it's just like constant connection, just like meditation, constant brief stops for breath work.

And you activate it on the likes, pathways, all the pineal gland, everything that can heal you without too much effort, very easily, effortlessly. And this is what we are looking.

Yes, it's interesting.

It's like the meditative equivalent of the intermittent low level physical activity.

Right? Or the micro workouts. Yeah, exactly.

Ben, for example, for us it's integrated because society and stress. If you're going to eat while you're stressed at work, you may as well not eat because you know how the metabolism of that food is going to go down.

It's a waste. That happens to me sometimes. Like I gotta drive and it's lunchtime and so I'm gonna eat in the car and you eat this, you know, I'll make myself an amazing superfood smoothie and be completely dissatisfied and miss out on the flavor, on the nutrient because I'm driving, I'm trying, I'd rather just not eat.

Exactly. And tools like that for us are saving so many things because it doesn't matter how good a nutrition plan you have, if you're going to be stressed out every time. That's the kind of feedback loops that we've been able to build in because of the connectivity. Because you're saying, wow, why isn't that working? And you're like, it's never going to work. If he's going to be stressed, you got to get him. And then we have this department that comes up with a tool that will help with that. So it has to be integrated with.

The devices seem gimmicky, but they work. Like Christian, you and I were talking about this last night. I have a 15,000 step minimum and for me, when I wear the Oura ring, I'll push myself away from dinner at night, glance down, see 13,900 steps, and I'll go for a 10 minute postprandial stroll because I've gamified that 15,000 step count per day and it seems gimmicky. But my wife, for example, she'll say, why don't you just go for a walk after dinner every night just out of habit or out of self control. And for me, it's like I like to have a device that just tells me it motivates me. It motivates me. As gimmicky as it might sound, some of these so called gimmicks and gadgets, they lend themselves to motivation for living.

A better life just with the training peaks, right? And I've been having a hard time doing the gym workouts, but I've been really getting into the intermittent low levels of activity and even just tracking that. And like, okay, you know, I did my 120 Bowman push ups. I hit five reps of single set to failure on my X3 shoulder press. I did, you know, not five reps, five sessions of single set to failure over the course of the day. And I hit, you know, all these little things and I can see it. And it motivates you because you see the progress and you see the goal and it becomes part of your habits and then you start and it becomes just like the Zen of your daily routine. It's difficult sometimes to get there, but once it becomes that, it just relieves that need to package everything in these disparate aspects of your life, your health and your maintenance, and it just becomes the flow of your everyday routine.

I did my 40 damn squats every time I used the bathroom during that 20 hour flight to India.

I've been starting to go to the bathroom and do squats on planes. It works. I've even started doing some push ups in the Lufthansa first class.

I have been known to do push ups in some pretty strange places. And thank God for antibacterial hand spray. Let's just say that I'm sorry, Emirates.

Emirates has towels in there so you can put a towel down and do push ups.

Yep, yep. The things that happen in first class that people don't know happen. Well, guys, this has been amazing. This has been absolutely amazing. Shiva, thank you so much for sharing all this with us. Thank you, Ben Krishna. Thanks for exposing me to my pleasure wonders of the diversity of health that's happening here in India.

As soon as you and I have been talking about doing something in India for quite some time, I think at the Runga about two years ago. And when I met Shiva, I knew I had to put you two guys into the same room with something to record a podcast on because I knew it would just spark a lot of ideas. And he's a big exponent here of a lot of the things that I've been listening to on your podcast for the past two, three years and that we've been working through together. And it's just amazing to see someone in India who's. He also knew about you. And I remember telling you, hey, there's this guy in India. He's literally got 50 front backs of notes on every single podcast from the last seven years. And this guy is really religious about trying to implement stuff and, you know, wanted to see you guys get together.

Yeah.

Well, for those of you listening in, I hope this has gotten your creative wheels turning and perhaps gotten you interested in some things you might not have thought about. Maybe you're a fitness junkie who's never thought about permaculture. Maybe you're a mold enthusiast who's never thought much about tracking your meditation in a quantified format. Maybe you've never thought about using your kitchen from Costco to wash your clothes, but there's all sorts of interesting things this universe has to offer. And again, I'll make some pretty comprehensive show notes for you guys over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com India Fitness. And thank you so much for listening in. Until next time, I'm Ben from BenGreenfieldFitness.com signing out. Have an amazing day.

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