Can Plant-Rich Keto Cure Cancer, Clearing Up Collagen Confusion, Peanut Butter Flavored Bone Broth & Much More!

I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet. From seal fit, kokoro, Spartan Agoji, and the world's toughest mudder to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, gut hormones, brain beauty and brawn to deliver you this podcast everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride. Welcome back. Or welcome to you for the first time. Maybe. Today's episode is quite interesting. It's heartwarming. It starts off with a heartwarming story about a guy who helped to cure his mom of cancer and then delves into like keto and things that you can use when you're fasting and different herbs to lower blood sugar. We take a deep dive with my guest today whose name is Dr. Axe. That's a great name. Axe. Dr. Axe. Hey, a quick thing towards the end of the podcast episode, for some reason my microphone decided to go to absolute crap and create a bunch of staticky audio whenever I would talk. I'm sorry, it's teeth grittingly painful. But you know what, listen through to the end for these last 10 minutes because you'll survive. And we do go over some very interesting information in the end. One of the things that I say at the end that you may not be able to quite understand because it gets so staticky is the show notes. All right. BenGreenfieldFitness.com JoshAxe that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com joshaxe and if you have questions or comments or feedback on this episode, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Joshaks all right, back to the episode and again, sorry for the static. I'm not a rookie, I promise. Well, howdy ho folks. I'm back and we are going to tackle in today's show we one of the things that everybody seemingly has a host of never unending questions to. Never unending. That's a double negative. Never ending questions too. Keto, the ketogenic diet, ketosis. And I have a friend, his name is Dr. Josh Axe. And Josh has taken a deep dive into keto. Not only did he just publish a brand new book called the Keto Diet, which is basically like a 30 day plan to kind of ease you into the keto diet. But he wove into that a lot of what he's known for like functional medicine and digestive health and herbal remedies. You've probably, if you've, if you've googled just about anything having to do with health or fitness or nutrition, you've probably run into some article that he has penned online because his website over@draxe.com is super popular for this kind of stuff. And he also has a nutrition company now called Ancient Nutrition. And I've been trying out some of their stuff, thumbing through their catalog. They're actually developing like this really cool suite of products all based around keto. And I will put a link to all of that stuff, Josh's new book and everything that we mentioned during today's show. If you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com JoshAxe that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com joshaxe and unlike they used to spell axe back in the mid medieval days, Josh's axe name is spelled with an E, A x, e. So bengreekful fitness.com joshaxe Josh, what's going on, dude?

Hey, how much? Ben, thanks for, thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's actually been quite a while since we talked. I think it was maybe like a paleo effects a couple years ago that I ran into.

Yeah, Paleo effects. I might have seen you at Cal Jam last year, but I think. And you're going this year, right?

I will be at that wonderful event called Cal Jam in Costa Mesa, California.

Yeah, awesome. Me too.

Yeah. For those of you who don't know what Cal Jam is, we'll put a link to that one in the show notes too. But it's this kind of gathering of chiropractic docs and alternative medicine docs, functional medicine practitioners, integrative medicine practitioners, nutritionists, fitness enthusiasts, etc. And it's kind of like a cross between an expo and a rock concert because there's breaks for. It's kind of a weird mashup run by this very interesting cat named Billy Demoss. Did you ever sit in and listen to the whole rock concert and everything they do there?

Yeah. You know what, I think it's fun as a speaker to go there too because you know, when you're, when a lot of people are teaching, whether it's in depth nutrition stuff or other things, it's, you know, kind of, kind of fun to listen to a band in between the speakers. So I love the setup. I think it's. I think it's great.

Yeah, it's very interesting, very unique. I got up there last year and I sang on stage. They roped me out there before my talk, which was a great icebreaker for my talk when I got to go out, sing rock music and then, then give my big boy talk. So anyways, though, you, you actually have a really, I think an interesting, almost a heartwarming story of how you got into, into just natural healing in general. And from what I understand, reading your book, it kind of began with your mom.

Yeah, yeah. Ya know, yeah. For myself, you know, I. And your family probably was like this. Ben too. Just. I know I've seen, you know, you doing triathlons and bodybuilding, everything else under the sun, but I. My family growing up was really into fitness and so my mom was actually my gym teacher in elementary school. She was a swim instructor and always seemed really fit. But at 40 years old, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. And so we lived in what I'll kind of call the medical model at the time. So anytime we were sick as kids, we got put on antibiotics and medications and we just had no idea how to eat healthy. We just thought, hey, if we were active and looked good, that meant we were actually healthy. So my mom went through all the conventional medical treatments and I remember her losing her hair, looking like she had aged 20 years and two weeks, and just thinking to myself, I was just in junior high at the time, like seventh or eighth grade, and just thinking, man, I never want to see anyone have to go through this again. I thought to myself too, man, there's got to be a better way. And you know, and praise God, she went through her cancer treatments and chemo and was eventually diagnosed as cancer free. And I remember them telling her she was healthy, but really after her treatment, she seemed sicker than ever. My mom got put on antidepressant drugs, anti anxiety drugs, thyroid medications. I mean, she was just. I remember my mom would get home from work teaching, then she would have to take a nap every day. She was just so tired and overwhelmed again. Diagnosed with chronic fatigue, she was just sick and tired all the time. And this went on for 10 years. About 10, 11 years later, I'm actually studying to become a physician and I had some great docs I was learning from. But my mom calls me a year before I graduate and she says in tears, I've got bad news. I've just been diagnosed with cancer again. They found tumors on my lungs and they want to go in and immediately start radiation and do surgery.

Was this like a different form of cancer?

It was, yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, this happens really commonly, Benny. I mean, you know, the number of people that have cancer return a second time, especially via metastasis or something like that, it's common. And so my mom, her first cancer, she had a lot in her lymph nodes, too. And so, you know, I flew back from Ohio, back to Ohio, where I grew up, and we sat down, we just kind of talked it through and prayed together. We just felt really led to take care of her all naturally. And I'd been, again, blessed to have a lot of doctors in my life who were in integrative medicine, who had a lot of knowledge that I learned from and had been learning from. And so we decided we were going to go at this naturally for four to six months, and if it didn't work, hey, maybe we'd do something different. But we decided to do that. And so, you know, I spent, I mean, you can imagine hundreds and hundreds of hours online and reading books and calling people to try and figure out what's the ideal health plan for my mom to.

How long ago was this, by the way?

This was, let me think, it would have been in 2006, so about 13.

Oh, dude. Like, it. Like, I can't imagine, because now you try to look for natural remedies, what works, what doesn't. And you are just. You go into it deep, dark hole. And it's very difficult to navigate actual, clinically proven strategies for managing something like cancer. I mean, back in 2006, I would imagine it was a little less cluttered up, but I mean, that's tough to try to navigate that.

Yeah, I'd say it was less cluttered, but what I did was I would find things, but then I would reach out to doctors to sort of validate them. People that I trusted, that I felt like were good physicians. I mean, in fact, Dr. Pompa was one of them. Dan, you know, Pompa was a guy, actually doctor.

He's been a guest on the show before. That dude is a wealth of knowledge.

Yeah. So I consulted with him and I called actually a guy over in Spain who. Doctor, I think, Raymond Hylu and some others. And so just, you know, really got a lot of great knowledge from some people called Oasis of Hope. Talked to a few doctors there, and I, you know, so I put together a plan for her. And one of the. Actually, one of the articles I read online was about one of the, it was a study on the keto diet. It was probably one of the first studies they'd done onon it for cancer. But I just sort of look started reading into, hey, it seems like cancer cells may feed off of sugar and use a process like fermentation. And so, you know, she didn't go, I'm not gonna call it a full on keto, but it was, it probably her diet was consisted of very little carbs. So the only carbs she ate were from berries and beets and carrots, you know, and she started consuming lots of healthy fats. She started doing a little bit of organic protein like wild salmon, but of course it was lots of veggies, lots of herbs and spices. And then we had her start doing, it was kind of like keto meats, Gerson therapy, you know, lots of vegetable juicing. And then, you know, I was able to talk to some herbal practitioners and we started doing a lot of herbs. I talked to this Chinese practitioner and we started putting her on. She did a combination of reishi mushroom with cordyceps. She started doing turmeric, we started doing higher doses of vitamin D and C. And she started doing this essential oil therapy where she got a lymphatic drainage massage with frankincense oil and myrrh and some others. And we just followed this whole on health protocol. The other thing we did, we had her speak healing statements and meditations and even verses from the Bible into an audio recorder. And she would listen to that every morning and every night. And then, and then she stopped working as much. She used to horseback ride as a kid. She started horseback riding. So we did all this stuff and she followed this plan for four months and after two weeks she started feeling so much better. But we went back to the oncologist in Columbus, Ohio and she called us the next day after she did a CT scan and her exact words were, Ben. She said, this is highly unusual. We don't typically see this, but your largest tumor shrunk from 2.5 centimeters down to 1.2. And your scans are looking. I can't believe how they've changed, but I want to make sure that, you know, you're going to continue to see improvements. I want you to come back in nine months, redo a scan again. She redid another scan and the tumors were almost completely gone then and now it's actually been 13 years and my mom is completely cancer free and healthy. Her and my dad retired from Ohio down in Florida. In fact, last Christmas she took a picture of her on my iPhone, she water skis. She's ran 5Ks with me. And so she's doing really amazing. She says she feels better now. She's about to turn 67 here in a few months and feels better now than she did in her. In her 30s. So she's. She's doing great.

Did you ever, like, write a book or write an article that kind of put together all. All of the things that you guys did?

I did, yeah. I think there's one online if you look up. Probably. I don't know what we titled. It might be like Dr. Axe's mom's cancer story. But I think we have a video on YouTube and I do believe we have an article that kind of goes through. Actually, I have her exact daily treatment written down. Like, the first thing she did in the morning would drink, she drank a glass of milk thistle tea with lemon juice, and then it was a veggie juice, and then it was very. But yeah, we have it. Yeah. Pretty laid out.

Is it the article online called How My Mother survived Stage four Breast Cancer?

I think so.

Okay, I'll link to that because I think a lot of people might find that very useful. That's the difficult part. You know, you have people like Dale Bredesen doing research on Alzheimer's and presenting this kind of multimodal approach to Alzheimer's that involves a ketogenic diet and high levels of DHA and hyperbaric oxygen therapy and laser lights on the head. But it gets kind of scoffed at by a lot of clinical practitioners because you can't actually take that stuff in and do like a double blinded clinical research study on it because it's so multimodal and all over the map. You know, I don't know if you've thought about that, but it is difficult. You know, what worked for your mom? The Gershon therapy, the keto, the fringe herbs that you were doing, you know, the Bible verses, the tapping, the chiro. It's so difficult.

Yeah. You know. Well, one of the things too, Ben, and I know that. I mean, you know, my belief system is that there isn't one diet for everybody. Of course, there's key principles that do apply to most people. Like, if somebody's eating like my mom was, which was, you know, fried chicken and pizza, you know, like, not eating good. And then she goes to, you know, almost anything she could have done would have been better. Right. Especially vegetable juicing and doing a lot of these other superfoods. But I think, you know, the principle of Chinese medicine, Ayurveda follows this, too. But, you know, Chinese medicine has their five elements. Ayurveda has their doshas, the three doshas. But looking at understanding each person physiologically and emotionally needs different foods and nutrients. You know, this is really unique. I have really. When my mom got sick, and especially years after I dove deep into Chinese medicine, one of the things I started finding was, I mean, I just thought this was radical. But certain emotions build disease in specific organs. So, like, for the emotion of worry, it actually causes disease in your upper gi, like your stomach and pancreas. And think about this. If somebody worries during a test about a test, it causes an upset stomach. If somebody gets really scared, like a kid gets scared from fear, it causes them to wet themselves. They can urinate. And so the emotion of fear, whether it's deep or subtle, causes dysfunction and disease to build up in the reproductive organs, kidney and bladder and adrenal area. Fear, again, adrenals that fight or fight response. The emotion of grief and depression actually cause disease in your immune system in Chinese medicine, so your colon and lungs. And this is crazy to hog the conversation, but just to give you an example of this, like, I had a patient come in once, and she developed autoimmune disease. And we sort of pinned it back to her. Her daughter was her best friend and left for college. She had hardly seen her for two years, and she was still dealing with this emotional, like, grief, depression, and loss. And her autoimmune disease came on the exact same time. So it's kind of crazy when you think about it. Like, same thing, like liver disease. Like, why do we call somebody an angry drunk? We drink alcohol. It actually causes overburden of the liver, which then causes you to act out in anger. But anger and frustration and patience and unforgiveness actually also cause disease in the liver and gallbladder. So all this is Chinese medicine. But, like, I started learning that with my mom, and so we started being real proactive in her dealing with, like, she had a lot of fear. And so we started being really proactive in, like, combating and psychologically and emotionally helping her, you know, beat, beat fear.

Hmm, that's interesting, this strange connection between your emotions and your organs. Because, you know, I think I first kind of heard about this when I was interviewing this professional basketball player over in Israel about bone cancer and how there's this belief that bitterness and anger can settle in the bones and cause things like bone cancer. But I think a lot of people don't realize this goes beyond cancer. And like you mentioned, like fear and fright affects the kidney and anger and frustration affects the liver and the gallbladder. And a lot of people kind of, you know, they scoff at that stuff and say it can't be. But we know, I mean, based on books like the Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton and some of the writings of Joe Dispenza, and there's a great new book called Mind to Matter by Dawson Church and Joe Dispenza. And it kind of flips it in reverse, you know, talks about, well, hey, if, you know, if emotions can cause disease, emotions can also heal certain issues, you know, positive emotions, positive beliefs. And, you know, that gets into the whole kind of what is called woo, woo science of how emotions affect biology in a positive or a negative way. But it's absolutely a fascinating field that I think not enough people pay attention to.

So, yeah, you know, the other thing I was going to say with that too is it's like I know a lot of people try and put all their faith in sort of the current conventional medical system in the AMA and what they believe is sort of this, this gospel. But I mean, Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, they're the two oldest forms of medicine outside of Egyptian medicine probably, and they are the most proven. And it's what they're based off of. It's like sort of this core and center of. And they're sort of based on millions of individual case studies over the past, you know, 3,500 years. So it's anyways, yeah, and it's interesting.

Because I remember when my great uncle was passing in Florida and this was about probably 10 years ago, I remember standing by his bedside and he was researching. He was in his 90s. He's done very well battling a disease. I think, I think it was cancer. I don't remember fully, but I was looking at his bookshelf and he had all these books and he had one book by this guy named Jordan Rubin, and this may have been even more than 10 years ago. I didn't really know much at all about holistic nutrition or anything like that. I kind of like to lift weights and drink protein shakes and that was about all I knew. But this book was about how this guy healed himself with his diet. And I found out later he's actually a friend of yours, Jordan Rubin, and he also has a very interesting story. You get into it a little bit in your book, but he did he have cancer as well? Is that the disease that he was fighting?

Dr. Yeah, it was. Yeah. Jordan Hadawas Diagnosed with testicular cancer. And at the time, this isthis really was shocking to even me when I found out. I found out. Yeah, he just beat it right when I met him, and he told me about a year afterwards, and most people he didn't tell till really just shared it about three, four years ago for the first time. And so, yeah, Jordan, his first thing he thought was cool, Crohn's and ulcerative colitis and, you know, lost £100 and was.

That's right. That's what that book that I was reading inin my great uncle's room was about. It was like, crohn's and ulcerative colitis, but he also got cancer.

You got it. Yeah. So that first book you wrote about the maker's diet. But then after that book, he was diagnosed, and he had sort of a rare surgery when he was a child where I think they implemented something in him, like, when he was just an infant that, like, predisposed him of getting testicular cancer by an astronomical amount. So it wasn't that he didn't eat pretty well or other things. It was. He was sort of predisposed because of something specific. But, yeah, hehe developed a plan for himself, doing a lot of what probably very similar to what I just shared about my mom. Very similar plan. And he did something like, he had an infrared sauna. He would sit in that for, like, almost two hours a day with essential oils on him, getting these essential oil massages. And I remember I went to his house the first time I visited. He was still on the diet. And I walked into his house, and I'm like, ben, the first thing. And probably people think of this when they walk into your house and my house. But for me to do this, it was like I was like, this guy is hardcore. Because the only thing he was eating at the time was he had this salmon flown in frozen from Alaska, and he made just salmon cerviche. He soaked in lemon juice and vinegar with some vegetables. Like, he ate that salmon cerviche for cancer raw. Yeah, that along with vegetable juice and salads and avocados, and that was almost all he was eating. And then, like, you know, loads of turmeric and galango and all these other herbs. But that's when I first met him. I'm like, dude, do you eat anything? Like, seriously? And. But anyways, come to find out. That's why. But anyways, yeah.

Wow. So what happened with his cancer?

So he beat it naturally. He never. Never took a single drug, you know, didn't do chemo, didn't do any radiation. And after, yeah, six months, he was diagnosed as being completely cancer free and just kind of put together a radical treatment plan. He, you know, I've talked him about this. I think part of it, too was, you know, at the time, he was building a supplement company which today is actually the number one selling brand in health food stores.

What's that one called?

Garden of Life. Yeah, so Jordan was building Garden of Life, and he was on the road doing something called the Perfect Weight America tour, living in an rv, not sleeping. I mean, he was. His emotional and mental stress levels were through the roof because the company wasn't doing well. He was kind of trying to save it at the time, working 80 hours a week and then, but, but anyways, you know, and then he put his health back at number one and was able to beat it.

But yeah, that's interesting. And this nutrition supplement company that he started, because I know that you work with him now to develop these keto supplements that we could talk about later. Things, things that enhance your ability to be able to get into ketosis. But is that also the same? Is this also like through Garden of Life, that he sells this stuff now?

Dr. No, he actually sold Garden of Life. And where. I think, I mean, I think Garden of Life is a okay company, but sometimes, I mean, now that Jordan's not there, the ownership, it. I can't speak for necessarily the quality of their products, but I know this about Jordan. Jordan, to me, is the best supplement formulator in the world in terms of looking at clinical studies and combining that with Eastern medicine and Chinese medicine, plus the current medical studies. The new company that he co founded with myself is Ancient Nutrition. We create everything from fermented herbs like turmeric and, you know, and holy basil and multivitamins and omegas and probiotics and of course, bone broth and collagen and a lot of keto products as well. So, yeah, it's. Ancient Nutrition is his new company.

Okay. I want to talk about that keto stuff later on. He actually, he lives on a farm out in Missouri, I guess, and he and I have talked on the phone a couple of times, but I'm planning on bringing my family out to his farm in, in the fall of this year to actually take one of the permaculture courses that they do out there. Have you done one of those?

It is. I've been out there. I've sat in on a little bit of it. Of the permaculture. I haven't I didn't sit through the, through the week long training, but man, it's a. He calls it Heal the Planet farm. And it's amazing. I went out there when he first bought it and it was literally like rocks and dirt. He started doing what's called, you're right, permaculture. Plus it's called the New Zealand method of ultra high density grazing. So he bought all this exotic livestock. He's got yak, water buffalo, you know, gazelle, like all these animals out there. And he has them rotate sort of throughout the property, eating grass and then they defecate, urinate on the soil. And now there's this lush grass growing and it's like the most beautiful property you've ever seen. But it's really amazing. He does what's called food foresting and one of his goals is to actually feed, you know, over 100,000, you know, orphans and kids around the world. But he follows this sort of amazing sort of ancient farming practices with his animal grazing and some of the, you know, the different, you know, walnut trees and exotic berries like Schisandra he's grown out there. It's. He's growing hemp out there. I mean, it's pretty incredible.

Yeah, I think he's even growing psilocybin as a matter of fact.

That's right. Yeah.

Which I think he'll be ahead of the curve if he's getting into formulation and supplements because, you know, even the state of Oregon now has, has introduced some amount of legality for that for certain purposes. So I honestly think that that's, you know, everybody's adding CBD to things now. I think that psilocybin is gonna be a compound that we're, we're going to begin to see in a lot of, especially these medicinal supplements.

Yeah, you know, one of his things out there at his ranch, it's. He has a manufacture, just a pure fermentation facility for, you know, for reishi cordyceps, lion's mane. And he actually has like certain colors of light and music he plays to help it in growing. And then within the mushrooms, he has them growing on cbd, hemp or other sort of superfoods. It' sit's justit's sort of next level stuff.

It's insane. He's growing, he's growing mushroom on hemp.

Yes.

Mm. Interesting. I'm gonna have to look into. I'll probably, when I go out there, for those of you who want to know more about this dude, I'll likely bring all my podcasting equipment and interview him. But in the meantime, his. His website for all the things we were just talking about is midwestpermaculture.com and I'll link to that in the show notes. I want to get into your book a little bit, Josh, because you talked about some things regarding the ketogenic diet and ways to enhance ketosis especially. Most people kind of have their heads at this point wrapped around the ketogenic diet. I've done podcasts in the past with guys like Dr. Jason Fung on the Ultimate Guide to Fasting where we dive into keto. I've interviewed the guys who wrote the Keto Bible. And so the idea of a low carb or ketogenic diet is, I don't think, foreign to people now. But in terms of ways to enhance that, that's what I like. In terms of some of the things you talk about in your book, and the first one that I wanted to get into because I wear a Dexcom G6 now, so I'm continuously tracking my blood glucose and I'm trying things like berberine and like bitter melon extract to lower my postprandial blood glucose. And it's very interesting how you see this stuff talked about and written about, but then when you actually consume it and then eat carbohydrates and note a lowering in blood sugar or stabilization of blood sugar, it's kind of cool to actually quantify. But you actually have in the book some things that you recommend for specifically, kind of like that blood sugar lowering effect that a lot of people are looking for when they're on a ketogenic diet or trying to enhance their glycemic control on a ketogenic diet. And in addition to things like bear brain, for example, that I already named. What are a few of your favorites for lowering blood sugar?

Yeah, you know, I think for blood sugar, again, one of the things I always look at is going back to Chinese medicine and sort of studying, hey, what did they know and what did they look at? So there's a few that I love. You know, I'm a huge fan of Holy basil, I think. Holy basil. Holy basil, from a compound standpoint is almost like a cross between clove and lavender, actually. And so it's got eugenol and some other really unique, really unique compounds that support lowering blood sugar. So that's one. Of course, cinnamon is fantastic with cinnamaldehyde. That's one. I think that's great. Hot peppers are known in Chinese medicine, whether it be from cayenne or black pepper or long pepper or Any of the others to support blood sugar. I think turmeric is great. You know, turmeric has, you know turmeric has curcumin which is very anti inflammatory which supports it. But also it's got another compound, especially if you get it in an oil form. It's called turmerone and that's been shown to support stem cell production in the body and actually help repair the brain and even the pancreas.

And so do you know if there's turmerone in curcumin?

There isn't. So the two main compounds in turmeric are curcumin and turmerone and so they're the two separate compounds. Turmero is the more sort of fat soluble component of turmeric. And you can look it up online turmerone stem cells on PubMed and look up some of the research or turmeric oil and that type of thing. But that's, that's one and then that's interesting.

And one thing I wanted to comment on regarding turmeric and I actually noted that you talk in your book about peppercorns and the black pepper extract, the. What's it called? The piperine.

Piperine, yeah.

That you find in those. And we know that a lot of supplement manufacturers are now combining that with curcumin or turmeric. And I think one important part of that is when you talk about the blood sugar lowering effect of curcumin or turmeric that it's actually not really that systemically available. Like it has an anti inflammatory activity in the gut. So if you want to take it for gut health and gut anti inflammation, don't get it combined with black pepper because it actually gets absorbed systemically. But if you combine with black pepper that actually allows it to act more systemically. So in many cases I think people might use turmeric or curcumin. I don't know if black pepper works withwith thiswhat'd you call it?

Turmerone. Yeah, so here, well here's what I was gonna say Ben too because this kind of goes back, you know we were talking about earlier with the sort of hey, you know, medicine today and you knowso they came out with that study, it was probably about eight years ago when theywhen they came out with the study saying you consume black pepper with turmeric or the compound piperine with curcumin increases the bioavailability and absorption. Well, you know like they were all like people in the medical community like Excited about this, applauding that this was a breakthrough. You know, like if we go online right now to Instagram or Pinterest or Facebook will see recipes for turmeric golden milk, which is that ancient aromatic recipe. That recipe has always been these specific ingredients. It's been turmeric combined with trikatu, which is a three spice blend ofof long pepper, black pepper, ginger, a warming spice blend, and then ghee. That's the.

What did you call that? Trikatoo.

Yeah, Tricha 2. Yeah. And anyway, so trick or two warming spices, like think about warm, like you consume cayenne or jalapeno or anything, you start sweating. It opens your pores, it also opens your capillaries, allowing nutrients then to get in the bloodstream and throughout the body. But this Ayurvedic recipe has been around for 3,000 years and our today's science just discovered that this works eight years ago. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, it's kind of crazy to think about, but yeah, it's not just piperine or black pepper. It's really all warming spices. Whether it's ginger or clove or black pepper, they're all gonna have that same beneficial effect on turmeric. Of course science will be like, well, that's not proven. Well, it's just, it's a basic principle that we know.

Soso could you get likelike cloves and black pepper, peppercorns and then maybe like chunks of turmeric and keep this in, for example, a pepper grinder on your table and just use this on your like the higher carbohydrate foods before you eat them.

Yeah, you definitely could. That's a great idea, actually. Great.

I might try this. I'm doing all these experiments now that I'm wearing this Dexcom, so that's easy enough. I actually have all that stuff at home. I just need to try it before a meal and see what it does. In addition to some of these herbs, there was one that you talked about in the book that I hadn't heard of before called Clary Sage. Clary Sage. What does that have to do with being in a keto book, this Clary Sage stuff?

Right. So one of the things I did in my book is I, you know, and just to get off track for one minute, then I'll bring it right back. But you know, I wanted to write a book on keto one because these principles essentially saved my mom's life, you know, and so or a lot of those principles. And then the other thing was A lot people were doing the keto diet the wrong way. Like, and Ben, I swear you, I was on Instagram the other day and they were talking about like one of the ultimate keto recipes. And I'm like, okay, what is. Was taking shredded conventional cheese, frying it in butter, putting bacon in the middle, and then doing that again and making a fried cheese bacon quesadilla and calling it keto. And I'm like, it is insane.

So ketogenic.

I love it. That's what gives this stuff a bad name. It's what? Well, it's that.

And if I could pipe in, it's like when you go to somebody's house and they're on a ketogenic diet and you open up their refrigerator, there's nothing green, there's nothing purple, there's nothing red, there's nothing blue. It's basically like white, white, white cream cheese, cream, some butter, some, some like shredded coconut and like eight other coconut compounds from coconut mana, the coconut oil, the coconut butter. And don't get me wrong, like, I actually like a lot of that stuff, even though I don't quite get on the, on the dairy bandwagon so much due to a lot of other issues. But it's shocking that a lot of people, like, they swallow thisthis modern bastardized ketogenic diet thing hook, line and sinker. When you look at our ancestors and a more ancestrally appropriate ketogenic diets like plants, fats, and oh, by the way, don't eat too often, do some fasting. And I'm not aware of many long lived indigenous populations that are eating frozen fat bombs for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, with writing a book, it was like, okay, I want to create like an anti inflammatory healing keto plan and just do the exact same thing I did with my patients. You know, I really believe that if the keto diet is done the right way, what the clinical research shows is it can be incredible for the brain and conditions like Alzheimer's. It can be amazing for insulin levels and blood sugar, whether it's diabetes or just really rapid weight loss. It can be great for, you know, there's a great study, it's an animal study, but on asd, so autistic spectrum disorders and their gut bacteria and benefiting that pcos and hormone balance for certain conditions. And so, you know, there's a lot of studies showing that it can be a powerful diet and could just getting into ketosis itself, whether it's through a keto diet or fasting we know that alone rest your pancreas allows that area of your body to sort of regenerate and re heal itself because it's not working so hard all the time. But all that being said, I wanted to create a sort of combined keto with very specific protocols for healing very specific conditions. So for instance, I have a plan in the book for keto diet for the keto cancer plan in the book where it's not only keto, but it's combining keto with vegetable juices with certain herbs like frankincense and reishi and turmeric. And then you brought up Clary Sage. I created a plan in the book for a keto plan for hormones for women. So I have sort of a keto where I talk about keto and thyroid and I go through how to do a keto and heal your thyroid. So it's combining keto and specific keto foods that are the colors green and black and purple, which are known in Chinese medicine to help with the thyroid, along with herbs like Clary sage, dong quai ashwagandha for older women, whole for older women, black cohosh for younger women, vitex. But sort of combine these Chinese herbal therapies with keto. And that's why I brought the Clary sage that was in the book. I recommend for loads of conditions, the diet, the supplements and the essential oils. So there's even specific essential oils good for certain conditions. So that's, that's why I mentioned Clary stage in the book. It was good for estrogen, balancing out estrogen.

Okay, so youyou talked about thyroid keto, and I think that might seem paradoxical to some people because, you know, for example, I did a strict ketogenic diet for a while to do the University of Connecticut study up at Jeff Volek's lab, and also for my triathlon training. And admittedly, you know, I was burning a lot of calories, training a lot. And that alone, chronic cardio has an impact on the thyroid. But, but my thyroid activity just plummeted. You know, my TSH went way up. A bioavailable T3 was through the roof. And even when I was still doing a lot of chronic cardio and a lot of ironman triathlon training, I started eating more carbs and my thyroid activity went up after I started eating more carbs. So how do you tackle the paradox of a ketogenic thyroid friendly diet? Is it just all these hormones or these herbs?

Yeah, it's a great question. So a few things here. One, the key to thyroid health on a keto diet and in general is you've got to keep stress hormones and cortisol low. I mean, that's theit's the biggest factor. So, you know, long distance, cardio and bet. It's funny, when I first started the keto diet, I was doing triathlons. I got so lean, it was like, man, my body fat dropped so low. But then I started getting a little tired, you know, from it, and I realized I gotta add some carbs back in with that amount of training. And so then started feeling better and very exact same thing you just experienced. So I think that, you know, and here's the other thing. When I recommend the keto diet to most people, I Recommend it for 30 to 90 days and then move into more keto cycling or just generally not going bonkers on the carbs. Like, our daily carb intake for a lot of people is like 60% of their diet. What people think is normal carbohydrate consumption is so off. It's so much. They consume so much more than what should be normal people should probably be consuming, I don't know, 33 to maybe 40%. Somebody's doing long distance, you know, triathlons, maybe 50. But for most people, maybe 30 to 40% of their diet, maybe that's carbs. And, you know, so I think most people ideally, hey, do keto for 30 to 90 days. But then you're moving into, hey, just keeping carbs in check, doing more fast, doing some other things, and your body's operating more like a hybrid car where, yeah, you're burning carbs for energy, but your body is dipping into ketosis or being in a mild state on occasion more often. And you're burning. You have two fuel sources. You're actually able to burn both more efficiently. And I think that's ideal for most people. So when I bring up the thyroid for keto, what somebody has to do is again, one, it really helps them lose weight, which a lot of people with hypothyroidism specifically need to do. But while they're doing it, they gotta keep stress hormones low. And I have a lot of advice for that in the book. And supplementing with a lot of the adaptogens like ashwagandha and keeping those low. But I don't think it's for somebody long term with hypothyroidism. I think then they need to add in, like, I think rice is a perfect carbohydrate in at least Chinese medicine. It's the most recommended carbohydrate typically for adrenal or your chi. But anyways, all that being said, I think taking the right herbs, keeping the emotional andand mental stress levels low, only doing it for a period of time, and then adding in berries and rice and seaweed and thosethose are, you know, foodfoods that support the thyroid.

Go back to what you said about rice. Why do you like rice so much.

Soso rice as a grain? And again, I'm not saying it's my favorite carb carbohydrate food, but rice, you know, in Chinese medicine was known to support, like, neurotransmitters. Like we've heard of gaba, you know, that type of thing, but really it was known to be the shape. So a lot of times in Chinese medicine, they look at foods by shape. So a short fat piece of rice is known to build your body's qi, which is essentially your reproductive and adrenal health, which they conthey closely connect your adrenals and your thyroid in Chinese medicine. And for instance, they would also say, like a walnut looks like your brain. And so that's gonna benefit, you know, like a hemisphere of your brain. Your carrots, you cutting them in half, that looks like an eye. So that's gonna support your eyes. Beats support the blood. Like. So in Chinese medicine, if a food looks like an organ or like a reishi mushroom looks identical to your kidneys and adrenals. Really?

That's one I didn't know about.

Yeah, if you just Google reishi mushroom online, you'll see it's like, wow, the shape of a kidney. So it's. Anyways, all that being said, that's why rice is one of those specific foods in Chinese medicine, and that is typically known to. Yeah. Be the more friendly grain for thyroid.

So you were talking about cycling the keto diet. How does this relate to the term you use in the book called keto forever? Cycling.

Yeah, so we sort of use that if somebody wants to follow it. And whether it's forever or just a longer period of time, more than 90 days, you know, I think it can benefit somebody to cycle. So this is something my wife did, Ben. She. My wife's really fit. In fact, she's a. She's a doctor. She's a CSCS strength trainer. She's a yoga instructor. So my wife is really fit, and it's pretty darn healthy. But she kind of like, she wanted to see fully her six pack, you know, like, she's really into fitness and.

Dangerous territory for a lady, as you know.

Yeah, I told her. And so Anyway, she's like, well, okay, I don't need, need to get that lean. But she just wanted to get down a few more percentage points. And she's not, she's probably like, I don't know, 17%. She wanted to get down to 15. She wasn't going crazy radical. She just wanted to see a little more definition. I'm like, so she went keto and she lost a couple pounds, another percentage of body fat. But then she did keto cycling. Actually, she saw better results that way and her hormones just went completely balanced. Not when she went full keto, but just when she ate more fat and ate less carbs. And so she kind of combined keto with carb cycling. And so we called it keto cycling. So she would do two keto days and then do a carb day, two keto days and a carb day. So on, like her leg days, like when she's working out harder, she would make those her carb days or if we're going out with friends. And so it kind of became this. She'd do sort of four keto days a week and three carb day. Three. And when I say carb day, she wasn't eating like, you know, a whole pizza. It was like, hey, sweet potato and more fruit and acai berry bowl in the morning, you know, those sorts of things. But man, she lost eight pounds and kind of reached her ideal body weight. She had like, you know, hormones just. And they were already pretty good. But she said she even noticed they got even better. And so anyways, that's kind of where it stemmed from, is us experimenting with Chelsea and she just saw really positive results with it. And so that's, that's where that came from. But yeah, we have a whole plan for that in the book too. If somebody wants to not be full on keto seven days a week, but wants to incorporate some of the keto principles and possibly dip into on that third day a mild state of ketosis. Then. Then that can happen.

Yeah. So it's basically like a rotating three day pattern where there's two days like full on keto where you're eating less than 30 grams of carbs. And then there's like one carb day where you're eating a lot of carbs or like 80 to 100 grams of them.

Yep.

And then you're going back into the three day or back into the two keto days again.

You got it.

Very interesting. You know, I personally, I keep things pretty non complex. I eat almost like the same meals or Very similar meals every single day, but I simply do not eat any carbohydrates at all until dinner. Depending on my levels of physical activity for the day, I'll eat somewhere in the range of like a hundred to 200 grams of carbs for dinner. A lot of people who are low carb zealots will say that's gonna give me diabetes or rip me out of my ketosis, but, but I am so freaking active, that's just restoring my liver glycogen, my muscle glycogen. I go to bed, my blood glucose is already low, I have these ketone monitors, and I'm already getting back into a level of ketosis within a couple hours after that meal. And then by the time I wake up the next morning, I'm burning fatty acids again as a fuel. I again go the whole day without eating any carbohydrates. I'll rinse, wash, and repeat that. The only modification I make is when I travel or I've got my ass planted in a sedentary position for a long time. I just don't eat carbs, so it works well for me. But this idea of a forever keto cycling plan, I think like the big picture, no matter how you cycle a ketogenic diet, is the idea that you have to have refeeds. We see very few examples of even maybe the Inuit population, a few others who are, who are kind of maybe genetically adapted to just like a strict not eating carbs type of diet. And maybe for management of like epilepsy or something like that, it's a prudent choice. Or if you've had a concussion or a tbi, you know, I'm a fan of a strict, strict ketogenic diet for a certain period of time after that. But I think that's the issue, is you do not want to start onto a strict ketogenic diet and then maybe a year later come into the doctor, a doctor like you with all these blood issues like low thyroid and low testosterone and joints hurting and be reaping the consequences of trying to be too strict with it. I think people just almost get dogmatic and overzealous, same thing as people do with a carnivore diet or a vegan diet. They get very dogmatic about this ketogenic diet and theythey wind up just effing up theirtheir metabolism and their hormones in the process.

Dr. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more. I think thatthat's what people need to realize. It's a true, you Know, for most people it's a time period based diet. It's 30 days, 60 days, 90 days and then kind of resetting your just like we do a cleanse or just like we do fasting. It's resetting yourself and then but just becoming more wise to, you know, what your macros actually look like. Just keeping things balanced and you know, reducing the carb load which most people go overboard on.

Yeah, I actually want to ask you about some of the other things that you weave into the book for supporting a ketogenic diet like keto bone broth and this keto fire stuff and things like that. But before I do, talk to me about your advice for vegans who want to do this. You know, vegans who want to get off the whole like gluten free cracker bandwagon and vegetarians who want to, you know, quit stuffing tofu cereal into their faces. Like, what would a ketogenic diet look like for a plant based eater?

Yeah, so I had actually it was interesting, a friend of mine, he does keto, he just was over in Asia and he was doing, he's putting together a docu series and he was over in Thailand and they were actually had a clinic that specializes in cancer treatments and they do that with actually more of a vegan or pescatarian keto approach. And so anyways, all that being said, so for somebody who wants to do this as a vegan, by the way, in the book we have a lot of plans. We have a keto plus intermittent fasting plan, a basic keto plan, a keto cancer plan, a keto vegan plan is one of them. And in that plan we have a sort of a 30 day plan for just hey, how to do keto as a vegan. But you know, for breakfast it's like a keto keto smoothie and you're doing like avocado and coconut milk and maybe a cup, maybe some blueberries, you know, and then for lunch you're doing, you know, avocado with maybe certain or you know, nuts and seeds, you know, source of protein. Maybe it's tempeh or something like that. But it'd have to be a, you know, smaller amount. You got to look at sort of what the carbs are there. Maybe it's miso soup, something like that. And then for dinner, you know, and some of this is hard for me to remember because I just don't, I personally don't do many vegan meals. But you know, you know, with that, you know, you might do like a Cauliflower steak and kale chips and you're using like tahini with those and that sort of thing. So there's. Yeah, so it's definitely doable and we lay out like a whole, you know, plan on how to do it. But you know, I think for a lot of vegans, they tend to really way overdue carbs even more than people that are not vegan. And so, you know, if you think about this, like, different organ systems have to deal with different macronutrients. So likelike your kidneys and stomach and liver have to deal a little bit more with protein. Well, really, youryour kidneys and stomach, youryourour liver and gallbladder deal more with fat. And then your pancreas more than anything, you know, has to deal with a lot of the carbohydrates and it's probably the most stressed organ for a lot of people, their pancreas. So as a vegan, it's like when you get off those carbs, all of a sudden youryour pancreas is like, man, I get to heal. Like, one of the principles I sort of teach and live by, Ben, is that foods don't heal you. Turmeric doesn't heal you, Bone broth doesn't heal you. Your body heals itself. And so that's why fasting is so powerful, is that when you rest a system of your body, like your pancreas, those beta cells, some of those other cells in the pancreas, regenerate and heal. And so anyways, that's why I think especially for vegans that tend to be even higher in their carb consumption, giving it a break with keto for even if it's just 30 days for some of those people, it can go a really long way.

Interesting. Yeah. And you lay it out, not a lot of books have the vegan or plant based approach. And I have some other question. I want to ask you about some of these products and these things that can enhance ketosis. And so if you're vegan or you're plant based and you're listening in, just grab the book, I'll link to. It's on Amazon. It's called the Keto diet. Actually. Is that what it's called, the Keto diet?

Yeah, Keto diet. We just called it keto. We removed the. So we call it Keto diet and. Yep.

Okay, cool. So somesome rapid fire here. First of all, bone, broth, protein powder. You talk about this multiple times in the book. What's the difference between that and protein Powder and that and bone broth.

Yeah. So bone broth protein powder really is just bone broth that's been turned into powder. Just like you make it at home in your crock pot or. So it' sit's bone broth in powder form. It's really high in collagen, really high in glucosamine, chondroitin, hyaluronic acid. It comes flavored in chocolate, vanilla or non flavored. And I add it to smoothies. It's the pro. Really the only protein powder I use at this point, for the most part. I actually have a chia seed protein I use on occasion too. But for the most part it's really just this bone broth protein because I noticed for myself, like the pea protein gives most people gas and bloating. It's really hard to digest. The brown rice protein, it's not necessarily complete hard to digest. And for the dairy proteins, to me, Ben, just wreck me. If I do a whey protein. My nose starts running. It's bad for the gut.

I used to wonder when I was a bodybuilder why I'd shit out a straw and have horrible gas. And it turns out like my body just doesn't like whey protein.

Yes. So for. And here's the other thing. When I consume supplements, I wanna supplement with something I'm not already getting in my diet. Like I get plenty of branched chain amino acids because I eat grass fed beef and wild salmon and that sort of thing. So. But I don't get much broth or collagen, so. So bone broth protein is just a great way both as a protein and a collagen supplement. So that' sthat's what I do personally.

Okay. So II know I don't wanna force you to shamelessly plug it, so I'm gonna do it. One of the things you make at ancient nutrition is organic bone broth protein. That's peanut butter flavored. That's like crack cocaine. You need to send me some more of that. You guys sent some to my house. I think I punished it in like a week. What I did was I made a smoothie with bone broth. I used some vanilla stevia and then I used that bone broth powder on top of that and whipped that up and put some coconut flakes on it. Holy hell. I don't know how you guys nail the peanut butter flavor, but man, it's good. Somebody, I think it was a few months ago I actually put that smoothie out on Instagram and somebody piped in and they were like, that has heavy metals in it. Bone broth has heavy metals in it. Bone broth powder has heavy metals in it. What's your take on this? Is this an issue?

Yeah, it was funny. We had. I mean, at this point, it's funny. We had this. A lot of people see him as sort of like, I. I don't want to be mean. Just. I'm just gonna say a radical person. And he wrote an article and he's all about like.

Oh, you. I see it.

You didn't.

Okay, yeah, we can keep it anonymous.

Yeah, I'm gonna keep it anonymous. I just. I don't want to throw stone the other way.

So somebody's gonn. Anyways, I post in the comments section, but. But do continue, doctor.

Yeah, so anyways, he. He wrote this article, like, and at the same time, he was about to put a. He's putting out his own protein powder. Just launched it. And so, you know, we. We wrote about this because Jordan and I met him before. Like, Jordan knows him fairly well and is like, hey, what. What are. Why don't you ask us for a research? You said that. And it wasn't just us, but we were the one that was highlighted because we were the largest brand that, hey, bone broth has heavy metals, and these powders have heavy metals. And we wrote him and we said, mike, here's our research. We did over 300 tests on bone broth protein, and it's the cleanest protein source. In fact, it was cleaner than organic turmeric. It was cleaner than the spirulina. It was like very incredibly. In fact, there was either 0 of all metals, plus there was a few that had just trace amounts which were normally occurring in food. You know, there's some normal metals in the soil and food, and that's fine. And so, but anyways, he. He then retracted the article, wrote a retraction article piece, but then left the original up because it was getting so many hits. Anyways, all that being said, it's very clean. In fact, we post all of our results and we posted them all 300 results online. But he didn't want to write it. Anyways, it was. It was a.

Makes me feel better because I want to keep eating that peanut butter bone. Roth. I'm actually, I'm gonna put a discount link for you guys listening in the show notes. It's. It's just. You go to the ancient nutrition website and there's a discount code. Ben, it's amazing.

Yeah, I was gonna say this too. I mean, people gotta Remember a lot of times companies that put out supplements, these are people just trying to make money. Like for Jordan and I, like, again, Jordan had cancer in the past. Like I had gut issues, my mom had cancer. Like, my mom's taking this product, I have to give it to her in good conscience. Jordan's six kids, five of who are adopted, like, you know, he's giving them these products every day. So Jordan and I, when we supplement, you know, formulate these products like we're formulating for our families, for my patients, I've cared for, for ourselves. Like we take this stuff every day. You know, I just had it this morning, so it's just. So anyways, I think that's another sort of differentiator too is we're, we really, we really care.

Yeah. The supplements industry is highly politicized, as you know. So. Okay, so a few others in some of these compounds that you're creating in ancient nutrition. Because you know, I've gotten actually a couple boxes of your stuff shipped to my house and kind of inspected the labels and was keeping up some questions or collecting some questions asking on the show. One of the things I noticed is on the collagen because you guys have like these collagen canisters, but it says type 1, type 2, type 3, type 5 and type X, which I guess would be 10 collagen. And I think that confuses a lot of people. What's the deal with all the different types of collagen in these collagen powders you guys are making?

Yes, soso, there are multiple types of collagen that make up different areas of our body. So for instance, and it's just like there are multiple types of antioxidants, multiple types of vitamins, and so there's multiple types of collagen. Type 1 and 3. Collagen is actually what makes up your skin, hair, nails and bones. Type 2 collagen is what makes up your ligaments, tendons, connective tissue and fascia. Type 5 and 10 collagen partially make up like your arterial walls and surround in support of sort of support certain organs. And so there are different types of collagen. So we're just, we really believe that just like you should get, like I said, if somebody only ate chicken breast, we think people can benefit more from eating not just chicken, but grass fed beef and wild salmon and some other soso. We created the first ever not just collagen protein. Every collagen protein out there today for the most part are 90% of them. They use bovine or beef collagen. Yeah, we do a mixture of bovine, beef collagen, chicken collagen, wild marine fish collagen, and then an eggshell membrane collagen. And from what we've seen in the studies, like the egg, you ever crack open an egg, there's like a little film inside the shell. Yeah, well, that film is all the collagen, but that has type 5 and 10 collagen. It seems to be, from the studies, one of the more or most anti inflammatory types of collagen. Type 2 collagen for your joints. And really chicken broth is really unique, which is where we get the collagen. And it has also glucosamine, chondroitin and hyaluronic acid, which those other broths don't have, which actually has been shown to support your body's own collagen production as well. So we wanted to have all these cofactors and all these different forms of collagen because we wanted it to be the most premium, the best collagen product out there. And that was. So that's sort of where we came up with multi collagen.

That's very interesting. So the type 5 and the type 10, those come from the eggshells.

You got it, exactly.

Okay. And each different type of collagen acts on a different body system. So rather than just getting one type, you've got bovine, you got chicken, you got fish. By the way, you're not going to get any vegans to eat this stuff. You've got every animal known to man in here and eggshells.

Actually.

Do you like anything for vegans or vegetarians? Well, well, vegetarians, I guess, could do the eggs and fish.

Yes. So here's the truth. So for vegans, there is not a vegan source of collagen, period. And that's, and that's just hard. A similar thing. It's not. There's not a vegan. Well, you know, it's hard to say, but there's not as much of a vegan true source of vitamin B12 necessarily, you know, or it's just typically not high in those foods. It's just hard. Same thing with EPA, you know, and Omega 3s. It's just. Justit's just not real common or it's not there. So same with collagen. Now if somebody's a vegan, and I've had lots of vegans, Ben, who've come up to me saying, hey, Dr. Axe, like I'm, I'm a vegan, but I've started to make one exception at your collagen and I can't believe the difference. So that does happen. But if somebody still is like I will never do an animal product, then consuming vitamin C does help with some collagen synthesis, which I would still encourage to do. And some herbs support stem cell production and tissue generation. So I think I'd focus on some of those foods like camu, camu acerola, cherry, amla berry, you know, those really vitamin C rich foods. Yeah. Uhm, and thenor maybe just do that as a powder every day. And then maybe some other things that support stem cells like reishi and turmeric andand that type of thing.

Yeah, that makes sense. Vitamin C is a big one. Like I often put a squeeze of a whole lemon or at least half a lemon in when I'm making a smoothie that's got bone broth in it. It because there's studies that really show that can enhance your collagen absorption. And I suppose if you'reif suppose you're vegan or vegetarian, you could, you could kind of cobble together collagen sources with them. Like you could buy like glycine or proline or arginine or some of these amino acids that don't come from any animal based source. And when you combine that with vitamin C, you could get some collagen. But yeah, it's, I think it's an uphill battle if you're plant based and you're trying to get collagen rounded out. I want to ask you about one other one that intrigued me and you guys sent this one to me, but I haven't actually tried this one yet. It's still in my cupboard. It's called keto fire. Keto fire? What is that one?

Yeah. So keto fire is a ketone supplement and ketones are made of keto salts. So essentially it'. Sit' st. Thethe scientific term is like beta hydroxybutyrate, but it' sit's essentially ketones already. So ketones can support your body into getting into ketosis faster. So if somebodylike now for yourself, Ben, you're wired. The way you eat, the way you exercise, you get into ketosis fast. Like I get into ketosis fast and. But for a lot of people, they wanted to get into ketosis or a deeper state faster.

I get out of ketosis fast too. I can punch a basket of sweet potato fries in about five minutes flat.

There you go. That's it. So anyways, that being said, like, I think for a lot of people taking it, you know, justjust for 30 days or a period of time. Taking a ketone supplement can be beneficial. You know, the other thing, we didn't do a real high dose of ketones. We did ketones, but we also did other herbs that we felt like, according to studies and what we know from chinese medicine were gonna support the body also getting into ketosis faster. So we did a lot of warming spices in there, like ginger and extracts from cayenne pepper and lemon.

Dr. Black pepper, too, like some of those ones we talked about. I noticed black pepper fruit extract is in there.

Yup. And long pepper. Yeah. So we did long lyn. Long pepper is the. Is probably our favorite. So we put that in there. You know, herbs like ashwagandha, I think there's some mcts in there. So, you know, we not only put just the ketones, but some of these other herbs and things that support your body getting into ketosis or a deeper state more quickly.

Mmm. So it's beta hydroxybutyrate salts, like ketone salts, ketone salts, medium chain triglycerides, and all these things that enhance your ability to be able to control blood sugar and get into ketosis. And you have aitlooks like you have aa caffeinated and also a non caffeinated version.

You got it. Yup.

I dig it. This is pretty cool. You guys are formulating somesome cool stuff over at Ancient nutrition is the name of the company.

Yeah. Let me share this with you. Ben too. I mean, we are super stoked about this. So in the future, we're, we're coming out with just some other cool lines. So at ourat Jordan's ranch, that's where we manufacture all these products. And you'rei'm so excited for you to see it. It is sort of unreal whatsome of what he's doing out there. But like, with our supplements, like a lot of companies, like, we have a turmeric supplement and a lot of people will, you know, justjust hey, take turmeric as a. Like, companies will just put out a general turmeric as a supplement. What we're doing at the ranch now is fermenting turmeric on hemp, and we're fermenting it also. And then we're combining it with, you know, black pepper and long pepper, and then we're doing different forms of it. We're fermenting turmeric, and then we're also doing a turmeric CO2 oil, which is liposomal, which is pretty awesome. And then Combining that with reishi, mushroom and all these other things. So like people should just read our labels. Like when you look at our turmeric. Turmeric. We have not just turmeric, but a warming spice blend, bitter spice blend for digestion, different forms of it. It's all, you know, all of it's certified organic. So it's pretty stuff we're pretty proud of and excited about too. So.

Dr.

Cool. Cool.

Well, I, in full disclosure to everybody listening in, I make some money and it helps to support the podcast. When you get anything from Ancient Nutrition, I want to make sure you guys know that. But I at the same time, like I'm using some of this stuff and I love it. Like their multi collagen is great for recovery. The peanut butter stuff is like crack cocaine. This keto fire I haven't tried yet. But as soon as I get home, I'm going to take that bad boy out of the cupboard and give it a trial and see how I feel in terms of energy levels during the day. But Josh and the folks at Ancient Nutrition were kind enough to offer everybody a 15% discount code, not all their stuff. And the code is Ben. It's just Ben. That'll get you 15% off the ancient Nutrition. And then also Josh's book is well worth a read. So I'll link to his book. I'll link to the story about his mom surviving stage four breast cancer and some of the things that he did. I'll link to Jordan Rubin's Midwest permaculture site, where I'm gonna go, like we were just talking about take my kids and my wife out there this October to check out how he's growing psilocybin on weed, however that works, and plenty more. So what were you saying, Josh?

Oh, nothing, man. I was gonna say, hey, thanks so much, man. I love doing these podcasts. I was gonna say too, if people are gonna check out the book, it's I think it's like $10 off right now on Amazon that they're selling it on there. So that's a great place to check it out. Or bookstores. But yeah, man, I always, always love being on with you, man. And yeah, I heard a podcast you did recently too, and I was Joe Rogan, man. It's like just a little bit of it. But like, what don't you do? You know, from preparing meats to anyways, everything else.

There's a lot I don't do. Like, I don't do movies and I don't do Hollywood. There you go kind of a dummy about the blockchain. So there are certainly things I don't know a lot about, but a lot of other people do. But anyways, that I think that's how you become an expert in stuff. You have to myopically focus on on the things that you want to specialize in and ignore the rest. So there's my handy dandy advice for the day. All right, Josh, thanks for coming on, man. And again, everybody listening in. I'm going to put links to Ancient Nutrition, the discount code, all the stuff you want over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com JoshAxe that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com JoshuaXe until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield with Josh Axe signing out for my BenGreenfieldFitness.com later, Josh.

Thanks, Ben.

Hey, that's it. Thanks for listening to the show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mention over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com where there's plenty of other goodies from yours truly, including the very helpful Ben recommends page. Now, one last thing. Please know that all the links, all the promo codes, pretty much every resource that I mention to you during each episode really helps to generate income for the podcast and kind of helps to float this thing and enables me to keep spending the time to bring you the content every week. So be sure to, to use the links, use the promo codes, use all of those goodies, too. All right? Right. Thanks for listening.