Carnivore Diet, Cleaning Out Your Colon, Eating Brains, Hunting Zebras & Much More With Paul Saladino.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, you get to a certain extent or to a certain point in life where you've climbed that first mountain or you have reached that point to where you are surviving and in cruise control and in comfort mode and you realize how unfulfilling that is. I think that these things are kind of the future of a lot of anti aging and longevity medicine particularly, but just medicine as a whole.

I almost brought you a testicle today.

I've eaten plenty of those. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield.

Welcome to the show. Hey guys and girls, this is Ben. I am in San Diego right now. If you're airplanes flying overhead, it's because I'm recording the introduction to today's show, a little wellness institute. I'm staying at cool little place called the Sanctuary Wellness Institute in San Diego where they do all sorts of cool energy work therapies and elixirs and homeopathic remedies, things like that. And I'm also, after I record this introduction for you, headed over to my friend Tom's and nad clinic where they do all sorts of different anti aging therapies in San Diego. And I'm just kind of recording all sorts of cool episodes as I make my way through San Diego, which means the city of I actually don't know what sand the City of Diegos is what San Diego means. The City of Diegos. That's where I'm at right now while I'm recording this for you. I'm a historian also, by the way, an American Californian historian, so I know these things. Trust me. My podcast guest on Today's episode is A2 Peter. If I'm going to be making up words, I might as well keep going, right? Paul Saladino, Dr. Paul Saladino, the carnivore, diet enthusiast and physician and one of the most well spoken and knowledgeable guys in the realm of nutrition, the gut brain axis and how food affects biology. We had a chance when I was in my hotel room a few days ago to sit, sit down on my patio, squat down literally shirtless like monkeys and record for about an hour or so. And we covered a lot in today's episode, everything from the Carnivore diet to peptides to parenting and beyond. So this will be a lovely little episode for you. You can get the show notes over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com Paul2BenGreenfieldFitness.com Paul the number two.

Ben welcome to the podcast.

Yo, Paul, thanks for Coming on, brother. Welcome to my casa de casa de San Diego.

This is your little hotel room in San Diego?

Yeah, my beautiful king size hotel room. Did you notice that when you walked in king size, there's a king size bed.

That's amazing. Yeah, that's amazing.

I'm. I'm rolling.

You're a baller right now.

Yeah, I took an Uber. You got a king size bed, huh? Yep.

But I wasn't your Uber driver this time.

No, you weren't my Uber driver.

People may remember that when we hung out in Paleo fx. I was your Uber driver.

Yeah. I couldn't afford you.

You didn't give me.

I'm not high rolling that high.

You didn't give me a good tip.

So eventually though, I'll be Bellagio and Paul Saladino will drive me everywhere.

It's a possibility. I think it'll happen soon. For people who are just listening to this, you're missing out. And you should listen or you should watch the YouTube footage because we're both just squatting. I mean, Ben's squatting. I'm sitting. Maybe I'll be squatting in a second on Ben's little patio in his room. And we're both shirtless.

And so you can see, as gentlemen do when they hang out half naked in hotel rooms in San Diego.

That's how we do with king size beds.

That's right. Don't tell my wife.

It's what stays in San Diego. What happens in San Diego stays in San Diego. Well, I know that you recently were at the Swiss Mountain Clinic, and I would love to hear about what happened there. I heard there were some. All kinds of crazy abductions and probings and.

There are some. Probing? Yeah, there are some probing. I think it's reverse probing. When stuff comes out while you're being probed. It's like a hollow probe called a cult. What do they call it? A colonic. I'd never done one of those before. That was. That was pretty trippy. And I'm not, I'm not shitting you. There's this guy named Bruno with a ponytail and the polo shirt, like a nice lime green polo shirt. As they were at the Swiss Mountain Clinic and walked into the room, had no clue what to expect. You know, I've done coffee enemas before. I do them regularly, so I'm comfortable with, with things going, going up where things usually come out. And he has this giant machine. It even has like a name on it. It's like colonic master 4000 or so. Like that Wasn't what it was. It was something like that, you know, that, like the. The sexy title and the numbers. And he puts the. You know, lubes it up and has me roll into my side and puts the tube where the tube goes and then has me kind of roll back over. So I'm on my back. The room is very hot. This was during the heat wave in Europe. It was 107 degrees that day in the Swiss Alps, in the mountains of Swiss Alps.

Very hot.

This clinic, as beautiful as it is, has no air conditioning. It's like a digital detox place. There's no WiFi, there's no Bluetooth, but. But there also happens to be no air conditioning. That's not uncommon in Europe anyways, though, so it's warm. I've got a tube at my butt. Bruno is hovering over me, and he begins to. As the tube is there, making almost like these strange suctioning noises, he begins to massage my abdomen. You know, the tube is making the.

Suctioning noises or Bruno is making the suctioning noises?

No, Bruno is just humming merrily to himself. He actually had a little music in the background. Yeah, it was. It was kind of like deep house music.

Like, did not have deep house music.

No, it. It was not like spa music. It was like deep house European music. And he begins to massage my abdomen in the direction of the large intestine. So he's. So he's going from. From the right side down across, pausing over the ileocecal valve, doing a little bit on. On the. The iliacus and psoas muscles. And. And nothing's happening. Or nothing's happening. And he told me, this is normal. This is normal. You wait. You wait so wedding way. And he keeps saying, the doors will open. The doors will open. And I'm like, the doors will open. What the hell? So I'm just, like, laying there. I'm like, maybe I just like, you know, I had my morning poo today. Nothing's in there. We're good. And all of a sudden, like, 20 minutes in, stuff starts to gurgle. Like, hardcore, like, gurgle. Like, my abdominals are, like, twitching, and I can feel my internal organs almost like shifting and peristalsis initiating at a very significant level. And so at that point, I feel. It's a strange sensation. You can feel stuff beginning to come out of you, but it's not like you're making it come out. It's like it's getting sucked out. Right? So. So it's not a smooth muscle contraction. That, that you're somehow consciously controlling. Stuff's just getting sucked out of you. And so little overhead plane there, we're getting spied on, maybe as a Bruno. Anyways, though, the. The machine, we'll call it The Colonic Master 4000 for now, has a window on it where you can see everything coming through this large glass tube. It's almost like those old school. You know, I used to go to Washington State University and visit the agricultural facilities there where they have the glass windows into the cows stomachs and you can see the bile and the green colors and the fecal matter and the bolus of food, everything. This is like that. And as my abdominals begin to twitch and I feel this peristalsis occurring, I look at this screen and there's just gum gunks and chunks and goo and green and strings and everything you can imagine, like little tiny alien parasites just like flowing out of my bowels. And for the next 25 minutes that continued. And after a while things kind of went clear again, right? And then Bruno stopped massage. He's massaging this whole time. Like this guy's gotta be just bored out of his mind. Just go left to right to left to right. And he keeps looking over at the screen and just humming along. And then he just stands up and says, okay, you're done. And I stood up. I had to squat in the toilet to get whatever was left in there kind of out because from what I understand, it pushes warm water up into you as it's kind of suctioning stuff out of you. I'm not a gastroenterologist, by the way, in case you hadn't guessed and felt clean as a whistle afterwards. Felt great. Like I felt wonderful. And so that was one of the more notable procedures. But they also do quite a bit in the realm of hypertherapy for cancer.

Hyper, like hyperthermia.

Hyperthermic therapy, yes. And so, for example, one of the therapies that I did, and I thumbed through the book in the head physician's office for a while while I was waiting for a consult with her. And there's actually a lot of really good research on, on cytotoxicity, on cancer cells and reduction in angiogenesis, I believe, with the use of these hyperthermic treatments. And I just, out of sheer curiosity wanted to try it. So I asked her if I could try hyperthermia because I wanted to see what it was like. And they have this giant tube, it's very similar to almost like a tanning bed. And just your head is sticking out of it. So they told me I needed to warm up prior. And again this is during the heat wave. So I went for a walk outside for about 20 minutes and I'm already sweating. Then I came in and they put me on a bicycle like a stationary bicycle in non air conditioned little gym they have there. And I rode my ass off for a half hour so I'm already dripping with sweat. Then I went in. And a little bit of a continuing theme here. They inserted a rectal probe into my, into my nice clean rectum at that point. And the goal is to reach, I believe the temperature is about 43 degrees Celsius. I forget what that translates to in Fahrenheit. But at the time they inserted the probe just from the walk and the bike ride, I was already at 39 degrees and I was very uncomfortable, mildly claustrophobic. Your entire body is in there, just your head is sticking out. There's a nurse attending you the whole time. She began to give me water that I would turn my head sideways and suck through a straw from a glass. And as my temperature approached 40 degrees she began to wipe down my face with an ice towel repeatedly. And from what I understand this is that the brain doesn't undergo damage from the hyperthermia. And I laid in there for about two hours. I got up to 41 and a half degrees and at that point I had to call it. And I mean I've trained for Ironman triathlon and saunas, you know, riding aerosol bikes. I've gone pretty hot or at least up until that point what I thought was pretty hot and my whole body felt like it was going to explode, like my heart rate was through the roof. I was up in the 150s at that point when I was above 40 degrees. And then you're under strict instructions, just go lay in bed for the rest of the day. And I couldn't do anything other than lay in bed the rest of the day. I mean it induces a fever. So I had a fever for about five hours.

Did you take your temperature afterwards? Like with a. I guess they don't probably don't have any Fahrenheit.

No, it was just a rectal probe. So I don't know up to afterwards. But, but as I laid there and cooled down on the table, you know, I was there on the table for 20 minutes after they turned off the machine and opened it and it was still at 40 when they took the probe out. So it was intense. And I could see that fever induction based on the Research I saw on hyperthermia being pretty effective. They also do a lot of liver treatments there. They have something called indiba, which is like a microcurrent frequency that apparently induces not only enhanced bile production, but somehow I don't know exactly what it's doing in the liver. Some of these treatments I didn't fully understand. They do a lot of different UV treatments of the blood, oxygenation of the blood, a lot of vitamin IVs. Gosh, there were like 20 different therapies that I did. Something called biophotonic therapy. They of course have some of the basic things you can do here in the US like pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, infrared, but it's all a one up to a three week protocol. They see many cancer patients, Lyme patients, mold and mycotoxin, Liverpool, you know, non alcoholic fatty liver disease. In addition to people who just want to do like a cleanse, you know, like a gallbladder liver cleanse. And before you arrive, they will research why you're coming in and then customize your nutrition protocol accordingly. So I was allowed to check the box of what I, the way that I wanted to eat. The first five days you're there, there's some pretty intensive fasting. It's mostly broths, teas, small amounts of like these little vegetable juices that they give you, small amounts of berry juices. No meat, no eggs, no protein, nothing like that. And then after those five days, you start onto the diet that they actually prescribed for you. And it kind of sucks because you know, there's like 30 other people at the clinic and some people already done with their treatment. So they're walking past you with these big beautiful salmon and trout from the local lakes and you know, this wonderful local grass fed lamb and beef. And you're sitting there, you know, sucking a vegetable juice and a little bit of tea and you're starved. But that's what they do hand in hand with the liver and the gallbladder cleanse. And then once you're done with that, for the rest of your time there, when you're sitting at the table, there's a little color code for where you're sitting with what meals that you've chosen. And after that the food was pretty good. It was again really good. Local fish and local meats and everything was very, you know, they do, you know, it's all gluten free, all lectin free. Like they, they dial things in pretty well. So I ate well after that point. Although it was tough being in Italy or right on the border of Italy for two weeks with no gelato. They have no. No, you know, espresso, no coffee. They have this thing called. Was it not Choco tea? It was. It's like a chicory root tea, basically, that. That. That simulates coffee. They're very successful. Apparently they've been able to reverse cancer in some scenarios. People do pre and post liver enzyme tests and have a really significant drop in liver enzymes. My digestion felt dramatically improved when I left there, although I don't know what it was because there were so many modes, so many protocols that I did while there. It was a cool experience. I. It's not something I do yearly. Like, some people go back there yearly. I would Def. I brought 26 people there, like, like, you know, listeners of my podcast and followers. And probably the coolest thing about it, other than the fact that I'm just interested, you know, I'm an immersive journalist, or at least I fancy myself that to a certain extent. And in addition to getting to try out a lot of these protocols of what's called European biological medicine, things you can't get in America. It was a complete digital detox. No Wi fi, no Bluetooth. Like I said, it was very clean. The air is very clean. You're up high in the Swiss Alps. There's no traffic, there's no pollution. I would hike in the Swiss Alps every day for hours. So there's a lot of nature therapy. I had a little field guide, and I like to do this when I'm. When I'm in a place where I'm going to be for a while. I like to identify the local plants for medicine and edible uses. And so I was able to go through and learn all the local forms of yarrow and mint and nettle and just spend a lot of time in nature. So that was pretty cool, too.

And you were there with your whole family, right?

My whole family.

Like your boys, your twin boys. Got to go. What did they think of the whole experience?

Well, you know, they're unschooling now, and so this. This was part, you know, beforehand. I don't require them to do anything in their unschooling. It's all choice. But I offered them a little bit of extra euro to spend, you know, when we went to Milan to. If they would research and write an essay on all these different protocols. So. So Taryn and River went in knowing a whole bunch about, you know, colonics and. And biophoton therapy and endometherapy. So they researched all this and they wrote an essay on it. Now they have a little website called gogreenfields.com where they publish, like, cooking recipes and videos.

And they have a podcast too, right?

Yeah, it's all mostly based around food. You'd love it. They have paleo baked donuts right up your alley. A little bit more than meat in there. But they wrote a little essay on this, so they would follow me around. Like, they had this one thing there called a Vichy shower, which is basically like hot cold contrast therapy, but it's high pressure water that washes over your body front to back, like a moving shower, like a massage. But you can alternate hot and cold. And so they were in charge of the temperature dial. And so they, you know, they would stand there, do the hot cold therapy. They. They came and washed all my blood. So they took out a pint of my blood and it underwent UV therapy for 20 minutes and they injected it back in. So they followed the nurse around and watched the nurse do the UV treatment on the blood. They, you know, they got to try all the different food. They checked out a lot of the therapies. They played in the Alps and went hiking. So they had a good time. And it was, it was mildly educational for them, too.

I heard you say on a podcast, because I know you recorded a podcast on your show that you released recently, like a question and answer with all the people that you brought.

Yeah, we did two different Q& A's for my podcast while we were there.

That's awesome. I know one of them is released. And on the podcast, you said that at one point while you were there, one of your boys got a steak and you just asked your wife to cut it because you didn't even trust yourself to.

Before I went there, this was between the time that I interviewed you at my house and the time that I went to the Swiss clinic. I did 12 weeks, relatively strict carnivore. You and I have talked about this before, but I threw in some berries, some honey, a little bit of root tuber, like cellular carbohydrates, things along those lines. But no raw vegetables, no bread, no grains. Just mostly, you know, organ meats, meats, fish, etc. And so when I arrived at the clinic, I hadn't been, you know, eating salads, I hadn't been doing vegetable juices, I hadn't been doing smoothies. So I went from one end of the spectrum to the other, and especially the first three days, because I would sit with my family and my wife, and neither of my sons were doing this protocol. So they Would get these hefty portions of meat and these ones wonderful scrambled eggs for breakfast and these cuts of fish. And I would sit there next to them and watch them eat this. And it was interesting. After about three days, I. I got over the cravings. Like. Like I was able to just sit there and eat this meager little salad and drink tea and coffee, but, man, that first bite of meat I was able to dig into when this thing ended.

Yeah, what was that?

Like freaking lifeblood.

Pretty good.

So good. Yeah. I felt my energy levels dragging after about five days, and I'm sure part of it was just pure caloric depletion.

Right?

But. But yeah, it was difficult, but it was interesting. It took about 72 hours and I was. I was okay after that point, but, man, it took everything for me not to reach across the table and have a few bites of their steak.

Snatch that steak off plate.

Yeah.

Well, how did you feel? I heard you say that in the podcast that you were doing the Q and A, that you'd been doing this carnivore type diet, which I thought was really cool. And I wanted to ask you, you know, how's it going? Like, how did you feel during that period? I will say that, you know, I'm writing this book and I'm. I'm trying to create different versions of a carnivore diet. And one of those versions is like a carnivore ish diet, which is basically what you're doing. It's carnivore plus things we might consider to be least toxic. Plant foods, low lectin, some attention to food, plant foods that might be more toxic or more triggering. So you, so you're pretty much. You were kind of doing a carnivorous diet. What was that? Like, how did you feel for those 12 weeks?

Yeah, what'd you notice? As I think you've heard me allude to it as my bastardized version of a carnivore diet. And it worked out very well for me. I mean, my digestive function was great. My bowel movements were actually very, very clean. Right. Like no undigested food particles that I'd been so accustomed to seeing. Little bits of seeds and nuts. Very smooth. You know, like the squatty potty unicorn commercial where it's just like a. Like a little bit of ice cream coming out of the little poo of your life. Cream dispenser. Yeah. Wonderful poos. Lots of energy. Significant increase in muscle mass because I was lifting. Simultaneously, I gained almost 10 pounds of muscle, most of which I. Well, not most. Of which I, I would say I lost. Let's see, I got from 175 up to about 186. Now I'm back down to 179. Primarily because I've been traveling. I've fallen off that diet. I was in Europe. I lost a bunch of muscle while at the Swiss Mountain Clinic. I also didn't have access to heavy weights. I was doing blood flow restriction training, body weight training and hiking. So part of it was that. But the increase in muscle mass, the improvement in digestive function, and also the simplicity of the diet was really nice. What I did not like about it was, and you know, this is something that my wife was probably most. Displeased isn't the right word, but this is something that she's very big on is traditions gathering around food, creating beautiful, colorful, vibrant meals, and these wonderful, wonderful, you know, salads and new recipes and, you know, making fresh baked sourdough cinnamon rolls for the children for breakfast and that whole social component. And even for me, as, as a foodie, as somebody who likes to cook, I missed going out. And, you know, one thing I love to do is I'll go out onto our land in the forest behind our house and harvest wild nettle and mint and dandelion and then go get rosemary and thyme from the garden and I get some pine nuts and some extra virgin olive oil, some salt, some pepper, and I make that into a pesto. Right. It's one of, one of, one of my little recipes I make at home and little things like that I did miss. And since getting back, I've worked in some of those things. Not because I feel that they are, and I agree with you on this, that, that they are an indispensable part of human physiological requirements. I do think that by eating nose to tail, we can certainly get everything that we need from meat or from animals. However, those things from a culinary and a social standpoint provide me with a great deal of enjoyment. And yes, they, you know, they, they originated to a certain extent as the ability for people who didn't have access to meat and fish to take what you call poor man's food and somehow make it taste better and somehow make that a traditional part of the diet. And I think that over the years it has transitioned from being poor man's food to being like these, you know, these, these traditional, enjoyable culinary staples. And as a, you know, as a married man with children in a wide variety of social scenarios, you know, you know, it's, it's, it is something that, that I enjoy and find part of my social life going beyond just like a strict carnivore approach and even beyond that, you know, that bastardized version of the carnivore diet that I, that I was eating earlier.

I think that's totally cool. One of the things that I am trying to discuss in my book in the beginning chapters is this quality of life equation. And you're clearly, I think, understanding that for some people the highest quality of life is eating some plant products from time to time. And you're clearly kicking ass in so many areas of your life. You don't have autoimmune disease, you don't have inflammation. And so I think in those types.

Of situations, I have a squeaky clean colon.

You have the most pristine colon that Bruno has seen in a long time. Glittering, glistening, sparkle colon. Your, your, your unicorn poo was just. I, I just can't believe you didn't see glitter coming out of you.

I never said I didn't.

Oh yeah, I wish. How come you didn't post that on Instagram?

I don't do, I don't do poo on Instagram. I've heard there's channels. I haven't even looked for them. Don't want to see that.

But I think this is totally appropriate that there people can employ a carnivore ish diet when they want and people can eat plants if that's the highest quality of life for them at their time in their life and if they're not having other autoimmune or inflammatory issues. What I'm super excited about is just giving people a tool so that if they want to leverage that in times when they are more sick, that there's another option. And I think that's actually really cool.

And having beverages as well. Like I like a glass of wine. We just saw Todd White walk by the dry farm wines guy. Like, I love his wine. You know, I'll probably go to his pool party tonight and have a glass. I like the kombucha that my wife makes. I like tea, I like coffee, I sell coffee. But I like it for more than just the fact that it allows me to afford a king size hotel room with a pimp and porch that I can record podcasts on. I, you know, I enjoy beverages as well. I mean, hell, I've got a refrigerator full of Zevia stevia plant flavored soda in my refrigerator right now with the mini fridge in there in the room. Like I, you know, I dig that stuff too.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think There's a balance there for sure. And I think what's most interesting for me is that people are different. And I kind of resisted this notion for a while. But the more I think about it, it's very clear that people have different tolerances for plant foods. And you can clearly tolerate a lot of plant foods. And I think some people can't. And perhaps that's the most important part of my message to people, is like, hey, if you can't tolerate plant foods, there are people out there like that, but then there are people like you, Rich Roll, maybe, you know, who. Who can probably tolerate plant foods to some extent. I know you're eating still a lot of animal foods and still kick a lot of ass with plant foods.

I can tell you one thing. Well, probably the. The two biggest takeaways that I got from delving more deeply into the carnivore diet inspired by you after I met you and learned a lot from you during that podcast that we recorded at my house, was a. I hadn't realized how much raw vegetables. And I'm still not really eating much in the way of, you know, aside from that brief foray at the Swiss Mountain Clinic. Salads, carrots, smoothies with kale blended in, just raw vegetables were really interfering with my digestion, were causing things like constipation, undigested food particles, a little bit of almost like irritable bowel type of syndrome. And I didn't really realize that until I really full on eliminated them. That was one thing that I discovered. The other thing that I discovered was just how freaking energizing from a libido standpoint, from a performance standpoint, from a muscle gain standpoint. Organ meats particularly are. Because, II mean, my organ meat consumption went through the roof. I mean, up. Up to probably the equivalent, about 2 pounds of liver and kidney and heart each week.

That's amazing.

You know, bone broth, every day, you know, at least a couple of cartons of that kettle and fire bone broth. So I was getting the collagenous component as well as well. And I've continued that. And my energy levels are just through the roof. When I travel, it's noticeable. And I do have a couple of different supplement manufacturers that I'm now getting the liver from. I haven't gotten into the other powdered versions of the organ meats that I know you get, like the brain and the heart. What's the company?

American ancestral supplements.

Yeah, ancestral supplements. I have some of their liver, but I haven't tried their other. Their other supplements.

They have a full range now. They have prostate.

I want to try brain Brain.

One of the guys on Instagram actually sent me real brain. He sent me, like, three pounds of lamb brain. It is amazing, Ben. I wanted to bring it to you, but I ate it all. Yeah, it's amazing. Well, guess what?

Does it taste like?

It's like. It's very. It's creamy. Of course I'm eating it raw because all the organs, I just eat raw now. I don't like to cook the organs, but it's, like, creamy and mild. I don't even know what to compare it to. It's like nothing else I've ever had. But it's very palatable. If you do.

You put salt on it.

I put a little salt on it, but it's. It's so crazy. I have the brain on a cutting board, and you can see the cerebellum. You can see, like, the back part of the brain. You can see the two hemispheres. It's a real trippy thing to see the brain. Like, I'm eating brain stem. It just. It's like a whole different interaction with the animal world. We are so.

Do you notice anything from, like, a nootropic standpoint when you eat brain? Like the Doctrine of Signatures phenomenon?

Too much confounding, I think, for me.

Yeah.

I don't know. You know, I almost brought you a testicle today. I want on Sunday.

I've eaten plenty of those whenever. Whenever I hunt.

That's right.

That's what I go after, you know, you. Well, I soak them in a little bit of lemon juice, thin slice them. Sometimes I'll dredge them in egg and a little bit of coconut flour, almond flour, and fry them up. But I have eaten test.

Have you had a raw test?

Never.

We're gonna eat one on Sunday.

Let's do it.

I've got. I've got a raw testicle. It's like the size of my fist. It's a lamb testicle. You can get them from the US Wellness Meats. They're really good.

We're going to a restaurant on Sunday. Can you bring it to the restaurant, Sneak it in? Is there a corking fee when you bring a testicle in?

We'll do an Instagram story about it. I'll just.

I'm game.

I'm gonna bring it in, like a glass thing and just plop it on my plate, and everybody we're there with is just gonna lose their shit. There you can see the epididymis. So people who don't know testicular anatomy. There's, like, the test. Testicle, and you can see all of the seminiferous tubules. And then testicle, it's big. And then you can see the epididymis going around it. We'll eat the whole thing. It's amazing.

Do you remove it from the membrane, though?

I eat the membrane, too.

Oh, well, I've never eaten the membrane. I always, always slip it out of the membrane just because it's hard to cut through.

Yeah, the membrane is hard to cut through, but a raw. A raw lamb testicle is super sweet, and it's really good.

Fascinating. I do have a friend who does one in his smoothie every morning. Dr. Matt Dawson, who's been on my podcast down in Lexington, Kentucky. He does. He does a testicle and a smoothie. Smoothie every morning.

I would. I mean, I think that that's. That's how I'm gonna invest my money in the future is brain and testicle. I've also been eating a lot of kidneys, so it's cool to hear. You were eating. You were eating liver, heart, and kidney, huh? That's awesome.

Yeah.

And how are you? Were you cooking them up? Were you eating them raw?

The. The kidney and the liver, I usually prepare the same way I. I soak it usually in vinegar or lemon, occasionally raw milk. I always do heart and raw milk. I do. I've experimented a bunch of different marinades and raw milk. The enzymatic process of raw milk just seems to make it taste the best to me and gives the best texture, like a nice soft texture. I either thin slice it and cook it in butter, or I thin slice it, dredge it in egg, dredge in coconut flour, almond flour, and fry it in butter. And that's the way I do heart. That's the way I do liver. That's the way I do kidney.

The organ meats are so cool because they have these unique nutrient profiles. You know, I've been looking a lot into the unique nutrient profiles of different organs. And kidney and heart and liver are actually really high in riboflavin, more than muscle meat. And riboflavin is this interesting vitamin B2 that a lot of people don't get enough of, and people with MTHFR polymorphisms don't get enough of. So those three organs are probably some of the most powerhouse organs. White Oak Pastures in Georgia. Are you familiar with them? No, I'll have to connect you with them. They do some really good stuff. They're sending me pancreas and spleen.

No kidding.

Which I've never eaten, but I'm really excited to eat. Pancreas and spleen.

Yeah, I don't think I ever had either of those.

Yeah, I'll try. I'll have to get you some. And then I'm eating a lot of suet. I don't know if that was something we talked about when I was on your podcast, but have you ever had suet like kidney fat? I think you'd really like it.

It's, it's pretty maybe accidentally just from, from, you know, field dressing animals. Because a lot of times I'm getting these organs from animals I feel dressed and, and it's kind of messy and. Yeah, you get some components that you.

Don'T feel like they are. It's my favorite fat right now. US Wellness meats will grind it into like a very thick grind and if you leave it out at room temperature with a little bit of salt, it tastes like a mozzarella cheese or something. That probably sounds gross to me.

No kidding.

No, it's really good.

I know us wellness meats have that. I order a lot from them.

Yeah, check it out.

We get our pet burger from them. So both our animals eat our raw food diet. Just all meat from U.S. wellness Meats. And, and that's where I get when I'm not getting it from the animals that I hunt. Liver. I've gotten heart and kidney from them. Love. Of course they're tomahawk grass fed. We had those grass finished. French cut ribeye steaks, my favorite cut in the planet.

Amazing.

We did have those.

Amazing.

And I have a whitetail deer and an elk hunt coming up. What is it August now? Yeah, it's August. So at the end of this month I'll be hunting whitetail and then a few days later I'll be going to Idaho opening season for about three days out in the St. Joe river going after elk, which I'm really excited about because not only is that a good portion of meat, but I have never successfully bow hunted an elk. So I'll hopefully get my first elk. And I also have a stake locker in my garage in which I can dry age this meat. And I haven't really had a chance to do a good job dry aging meat yet. So I'll dry age elk for a good four to six weeks minimum and get a really good flavor out of it.

That's going to be amazing.

Yeah.

Now when you get this elk, because I'm sending out good vibes for your hunting. Are you going to get the organs. Because when I. Oh yeah, because I hunted a deer once, right. And I got a deer many years ago in Flagstaff, and we did the silly thing. I didn't know this at the time, but we field dressed and we left all the organs on the ground. And some cougar was super excited about that. So when you get this elk, are you going to pack out the organs too?

Pack out the organs. The only time that I have not packed out the organs was when I was hunting in Hawaii and I hunted a wild horse, which is amazing meat. That's a, that's a delicacy in many countries. It's frowned upon because it's a work animal, you know, in America. And we have a certain, certain negative association with eating horse. But I mean, when I, when I was field dressing that thing, the brisket, you could like, poke your finger through just the most tender, mitochondrial dense rich meat with this wonderful, wonderful flavor. You know, I've cooked that thing 10 different ways since I brought home the meat. But the problem with a, with a large ruminant like that is you get a great deal of bloat within just an hour after the kill. And that thing was so bloated by the time we finished getting the skeletal muscle off that I was not about to cut into the. It just would have been an explosion. Right, so. So that one I didn't get the organs out of, but every other animal. Yeah, absolutely.

That's interesting that the ruminants bloat very quickly.

Yeah, it stinks, huh? It's gross.

Well, I've heard that indigenous cultures will eat the organ immediately, eat the liver immediately, and they'll eat it raw, probably.

Well, if I would have known, I would have started with that. And, you know, I think this is somewhat controversial and I wanted to ask you about it because it does reflect this whole idea of, you know, did our ancestors get their vegetables via other methods? This idea of cutting it open and harvesting the intestines, you know, where a lot of these grasses and plants that the ruminant has consumed are, and, you know, cooking those intestines over the fire immediately, which, which is what I understand is an ancestral practice. And, you know, if I were camping and had a fire right there, I could see myself doing something like that.

Yeah, I don't know. I'd have to really dig into it and talk to an anthropologist to see whether they clean the intestines. Because my impression is that a lot of times they clean the intestines, they don't actually eat the fecal matter. But sometimes I've heard of them eating the stomach contents.

Yeah, I don't know about the large intestine or which portion of the intestines that it is. Almost like a sausage, right? You just cut it out and cook it over the fire.

A poo sausage.

A poo sausage. Yeah.

Yeah, I'll leave that. I'll just. I'd probably just eat the intestine. Yeah, yeah. But it is, it is an interesting concept and I'm not sure. I saw this really cool video on Instagram the other day. Of course, it was Joe Rogan reposting Nature is Metal. And it was this lion that had killed a zebra. And the lion was eating the zebra next to some water. And the lion had become so full that this crocodile came up and just started eating, eating the intestines out of the zebra, eating the organs. And I think the lion had just gorged himself on the organs and then he just backed away and let the crocodile kind of eat the organs. But it was just so interesting to see that even the crocodile was going for the organs first. They weren't just the crocodile wasn't coming up and just taking a big bite out of the leg. You know, the crocodile wasn't eating the shoulder or anything. They just. My impression as a budding zoologist, but clearly a neophyte in the field, is that animals will just go for the viscera first.

Yeah. Well, you know, what's interesting about zebras is that for. For a long time, you know, I've hunted three axis bucks and an axis deer. It's a very, very flavorful, tender meat, widely considered to be one of the best wild game meats on the planet. But one of my guides when I was hunting Axis in Texas told me that there was another animal that was the best. The top of the totem pole when it comes to the flavor and the texture of wild game meat. This is actually an animal that you can, if you have enough money and you're able to afford a king size hotel room in San Diego, maybe. I've never done this. You can hunt. I think it's like a 20 to $30,000 tag. And I actually saw one of these animals when I was hungry hunting down in Texas. And it is a zebra. Now my hypothesis is that, you know, there's a book called Zebras don't get Ulcers, you know, about how much of a low stress animal the zebra is. And one of the best ways to ruin the texture and the flavor of meat is to allow the animal to know that it's being hunted or to take an unethical shot and to have that animal run for a long distance or be stressed out for a long time before it dies, because you get a lot of calcium influx into the tissue. You get a lot of rigor mortis, and it affects the flavor of the tissue due to the stress, due to hypercortisolic response. And so I think it might be because the zebra is such a low stress animal that the game meat might be so good. That might be the same reason that that horse tasted so good. Right. It's just not a super finicky, stressed out animal. And I don't know that much about. About zebras. I'm not a zebra ologist. I know more about, obviously, unicorns and horses. But it is interesting and it's on my list of meats that I'd like to try is zebra.

Zebra meat. I've always thought, I mean, maybe those animals are just reincarnated bodhisattvas. They're just reincarnated people that are super peaceful and they're just chilling and they're Zen in the moment. And that makes the meat amazing because they never get stressed.

Yeah, I'd prefer to be reincarnated as maybe like a gorilla or, I don't know, a python or a gray wolf.

But if you were a gorilla, you just sit around all day eating leaves.

I just don't want to have hooves and a giant stomach. It just seems awkward. Yeah, I want to. I want to be lithe and be able to stalk and run for miles through the forest.

Jaguar?

Yeah.

Jaguar. Tiger.

Yeah. Actually, gray wolf is usually my power animal. Like visualizations and meditation with a power animal. It's usually the gray wolf that I manifest.

Have you been to the Wild Animal park here in San Diego?

No.

It's amazing. You need to go. So we can talk about this after the podcast, but you need to go and take your family there. They have lions, tigers. They do a jaguar, they have a cheetah run. They'll race cheetahs against dogs that grow up with them. It's really cool.

You know, up in Spokane, where you came and visited me at my house, about two miles from there, up the hill, there actually is a wild cat cat. It's not called a zoo, not a compound. What would you call it? A sanctuary, something like that, where they have all these wild cats, tigers and lions and leopards. I took my boys there when they were 4. And the thing that I remember most distinctly about visiting this cat park was that every single cat There looked at my children like a giant snack, like a, like a popsicle that they just wanted to jump on. Like, oh, that's all I remember is they would just eye my kids. You could see this look in their eye. They were calculating. So I'm game to get to take my kids to this San Diego park as long as there's, there's good fences.

There'S, there's big fences and glass. It's amazing though, being it was the closest I've ever been to a lion. And it was, it was just memorable. You know, it's moving. Being that close to like an apex predator was really incredible. And of course, you know, we've incarcerated them. So I guess we're the apex predator. But yeah, apparently. And I've actually been quite fascinated by what they feed these animals in these, in these parks, you know, and they feed the animal. I think the lions, they said they feed a grind of kind of like probably what you feed your animals, they feed a grind of the whole animal. They don't just feed them muscle meat. And there's plenty of documentation of this that in the past, historically in these zoos when they fed lions just muscle meat, the lions became infertile. They had to feed the lion's liver and all the organs to get back the reproductive character capabilities because of the vitamin A and the way that vitamin A is metabolized in humans or the way that vitamin A is metabolized in mammals, especially lions, but similarly in humans. And they also feed the lion bones. So they'll give the lion a bone every week, but basically they give the lion, you know, just like a ground up animal with like all the fat, all the organs and then bones.

And that's otherwise when they just get the meat, they're like the Loma Linda lion.

Yeah, the Loma Linda lion.

Fertile. With the low sperm count, they become.

The low sperm count lion. And they don't want to, they don't want to mate, but they feed the lion 10 pounds of this stuff a day.

Well, you would get a kick out of this. We just returned from a wilderness survival course where I took kids and my wife out in the middle of nowhere and had this, you know, the survivor man type guy from the Spokane survival school teach us, you know, just basic primitive fire making skills. And we would take charcoal and some SAP from the tree and a little bit of clay from the dirt and we made epoxy glue over the fire in an old cut out Mountain Dew can and then used rocks to hone arrowheads. And we Made spears out of the wood from an ash tree and the epoxy glue and the arrowheads. And, you know, we did our bow drill fire, of course, and you know, debris shelters and all manner of different. Just basic primitive, primitive survival skills. But the very first day there, we spent like four hours just setting traps, like wire noose traps and these rock traps, you know, set up on. On stick formations with. We use little bits of peanut butter that he had as, as our bait, which I guess isn't quite primitive, but that's what we had. And we would go check those dam traps every single day while we were there, morning, afternoon and evening. And they were all set up to get catch mice, squirrel, rabbits, etc, we did not get a single thing. And we're going back out into the wilderness for a week later this month to practice all these skills without him. And my wife's like, ben, I'm just gonna do berries, I'm gonna find some mushrooms, gonna do some leaves. She's like, screw this whole mice, rat, rabbit, squirrel thing, because it's surprising how hard, hard you have to work for a few measly calories. So I mean, my, my plan is to spend the entire day making a really good weapon and then just spend the next few days getting a very large animal. Then you're just set.

It's so much better. And there's a great talk by Miki Bendor about this. I actually interviewed him on my YouTube channel. But in. He's an anthropologist, He's a paleoanthropologist. He's actually somebody that you would love talking to. And he has been able to sort of graphically illustrate or calculate the energy invested versus the energy return on small animals to tubers and then large animals. And when you're hunting small animals, according to his calculations, the energy return is essentially like hunting a tuber.

Oh, I burnt a shit ton of calories. Like making these little wire traps and finding the little. Because you got to find the exit hole, the entrance hole, and the path on which the squirrels and the rabbits travel, and then go out and check the traps three times a day. I'm like, I would rather make a spear, spend five hours doing that. Because you got to take the wood and hold it over the fire and then use like a tree as a crook to shape the stick into a perfectly straight stick. Make your glue. Get the, get the sharp object on the end. Using the glue, you cut a notch in the, in the end of the spear into which the arrow goes. Then you do epoxy on top of that and then use like a, like a cord wrap that you could use from cedar, for example, to make. I'd rather do all of that than just climb up in a tree and wait like that. That to me makes a lot better sense.

It makes so much more sense. And the thing about that is that when you hunt bigger animals, they have more fat. And I'm doing a talk at Ancestral Health this week and it's about animal fat and how valuable it is and how many unique micronutrients are in animal fat, vitamin K2 and things like this. But as you go up in size, there's more fat. The thing, the irony is that if you'd gotten a mouse or a squirrel or a rabbit, you guys would have gotten some protein, but that's it.

Increased risk of disease. Very small protein. Yeah.

No fat.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just not worth it.

Yeah, that, that or, you know, fish could be feasible if you, you can, if you can find a spot with some really good fatty fish. You know, some of these cold mountain lakes are amazing. I remember when we were up in the Beartooth mountains fishing. We pretty much had. It was, it was me and my wife and a couple of other couples, and we hiked about eight months miles up into the Beartooth mountains. These lakes were just frigid, so cold. And of course the fish are extremely fatty. And we weren't hunting them with primitive weapons. We just had fishing poles and aluminum foil and a few bottles of whiskey. And that's all we did was fish and whiskey for like three days. And these were the fattiest, most flavorful fish. You'd wrap them in aluminum foil, toss them on the fire. As soon as you heard crackling and popping, take them off, cut in. And just like one fish was like a feast.

So you could just eat, you could just survive on fatty fish for a few days.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. That is, that is what it's about, my friend. Those big animals, the fatty animals rather than the little guys. But let's highlight something else. You guys were saying. So when you guys were out doing the survival stuff, so your wife was saying that she's gonna do some plants. But like what kind of edible plants are even out there?

There are some plants that have a little bit higher amino acid content. You know, take for example, nettle, right. So we have, we have some pretty big white tailed deer on our property and some nettle patches. And that's a perfect place to hunt the deer because they love nettle. It's like candy for them. And these nettle Plants grow very tall. They have both seeds and leaves on them. You know, that's, that's one thing I mentioned, like, I'll make pesto out of. And you can actually get a decent amount of nutrients and amino acids out of, excuse me, nettle. And it's, it's a little bit of a pain in the ass to harvest because most nettle stings. But the interesting thing is most plants that have a little bit of a damaging effect like that, typically there's another plant that grows nearby that will soothe that effect. So, for example, plantain leaves. If you rub those on, on the sting of a nettle, it removes the sting of the nettle. And plantain is also edible as well. Well, it'll, you know, eat a lot of plantain. It'll give you a little bit of a stomachache. Same with nettle. You gotta heat it, you gotta kind of boil it, mash it. If you're really gonna eat it in that quantity.

It's kind of a diuretic, isn't it? I've heard that, yeah. If you eat too much nettle, you can get some diuresis.

Yeah, it can be up around there. A few others that are decent other than plantain and nettle would be wild mint. There's a decent amount of, of morel mushrooms if you find some hot spots. Like, I took my kids on another survival camp where we were out near Sandpoint, Idaho, in the woods out by Sandpoint, Idaho, and we just came across patch after patch of morels. That's another really, really good satiating source.

If it's the right time of year.

The mushrooms could be a little bit of starch. And so we came across a lot of that and a lot of mint. And we also got one rabbit. And so we did rabbit mint and morel. And it was fantastic. Like, I, I felt great on, you know, we had a giant dinner which is, you know, roasting the rabbit over the fire with, with morel and mint. I haven't gotten into bark harvesting much, but apparently the inner bark of the trees is something else that's, that's decent as far as harvesting berries. Like on our land, Oregon grape and black raspberry, they're growing all over the place right now. Like, I could go for a walk and probably walking over the course of about 100 yards, burning maybe 100 calories, doing that harvest a good 500 calories of organ, grape, berry and black raspberry. Right. So berries and leaves, you can get a decent amount from, you know, mushrooms if you know what you're doing and you can get the right quantity. Those are. Those are some of the main ones up there. Yeah.

I think it's also interesting to note that that's a particularly fertile area. You know, where you are is a lot of foods and perhaps, you know, I think indigenous cultures in every area knew the plants that were edible in those areas. But there's, like, a few plants in every area. You know, down here in the south, in the Southwest, in San Diego, there's probably a few plants that are edible, but the majority are just not. And you really have to know what you're doing to. And know the time of year and how to harvest them and how to process them, what not to overeat. It's. It's. It's doable. It's just not easy.

Yeah. Where we did that wilderness survival course, there was also this. This last one, there was also a lot of wild strawberry. And those are really. If you come across a wild strawberry patch, I mean, you can easily get like, 200 tiny little wild strawberries. Those things are like nature's candy. I mean, they're. They're delicious. Get a decent amount of calories from those. And then the other one was the. The cattail, which has a decent amount of starch in it.

I have a cattail story, so, yeah.

You can get starch out of cattail. What's your cattail story?

I was in. Have you ever been to Havasupai in Arizona? It's a gorgeous. It's a gorgeous canyon. So Havasupai Canyon, there's this water in there that's this iridescent blue because of the minerals in the water. I think it's lime in the water. And at the time, I was reading a lot of Tom Brown. You might be familiar with Tom Brown. Like, it's a tracker. Yeah. Your boys maybe have read him, but I was super into this stuff at the time, and he just extols the virtue of cattail and the cattail roots. And as we were going down into the canyon, you know, we're going down to backpack for a few days with my friends. I see some cattails. One of my other buddies is there, and. And he and I are kind of into the survival thing. We've never really done it to any extent, but it's been a fascination of mine, like, how do I survive in the wilderness? And I'm like, I'm gonna eat those cattails tonight. And I brought food, but I pick a bunch of cattails, and I'm super excited. Rolling into Camp. I've got my cattails. I go to make my dinner, which is like rehydrated, you know. I probably had some rehydrated vegetables at the time. I was eating plants and some rehydrated meat in the pot and I was boiling it and I threw in the cattail sort of root into the pot and I cooked it up and I ate it. And immediately like my eyes started watering, my tongue swelled up and I'm just allergic, I'm just very allergic to the grasses. And then about 10 o' clock at night, unzip the tent and just puke everywhere. Outside side. The whole interrupt. And in the morning, my buddies were just giving me such, such a hard time. They were all like, are you okay? But they could just hear me just round.

Sure. A deer didn't just take a giant on the cat tail that you ate.

I don't think so.

Giardia.

I don't think so. I think it was just, I was so allergic to the.

Because I, I got giardia this at this last survival course we did. And I was on the toilet for six days. Yeah, because the way that we were filtering the water was we use charcoal from the fire sand and some strawberry leaves in little cutoff plastic water bottles. And I was so proud of my little homemade water filter that I just, I, I drank out of that. I didn't boil the water, I just drank straight out of my little filter. I was, I worked so hard to make and got home from that thing. And like the night we got home, I had like this gurgling in my stomach and this like nasty, foamy.

Not the Bruno gurgling.

No, like bad. And so, so it took me five days to get over that. Speaking of Oregon grape, like I, I went out to my land and I harvested a bunch of wormwood and root from the Oregon grape, which is very rich in a bear brain like compound that, that has some antiparasitic and antibacterial activity. Same for wormwood. Made a ton of tea out of that stuff. I, I did some other things. I actually just wrote a blog post about how I naturally got rid of the giardia or at least got rid of the giardia without the use of antibiotics. Like I used some peptides. Like LL36 is a good antibacterial peptide that also has some success against things like sibo, for example. It's like an injectable peptide. I use the peptide BPC157 to help to heal up the gut because a lot of the giardia cysts can do damage to the gut lining and then a lot of colostrum, a lot of bone broth, and a few other anti g giardial plants. Particularly. I used garlic, like a lot of raw garlic. I used a lot of ginger, a lot of peppermint, and a lot of oregano.

Yeah, I think people ask me this question a lot of the time. I think there's definitely a medicinal use for plants. I mean, many of the molecules we use in western medicine are derived from plants. And I think there's differences between food use and medicinal use of plants. But that's a really interesting medicinal use of plants in western medicine. We would just give you flagyl, but it's really cool to hear that you just got rid of it in the past with herbs and some of these anti parasitic.

Yeah, they taste like ass. This would not be something that you'd rely upon as a primary source of calories. But you know, the same things that are used medicinally can also be used as flavor enhancers. Like when I make that pesto, I'll put a couple cloves of garlic in there quite often, you know, and I'll use a little bit of ginger here and there in food, foods and. And yeah, I think some of these medicinal compounds can also be used as flavor enhancing agents.

Have you ever had raw garlic? You ever done like a raw garlic clove?

Yeah, that's what I was doing.

Yeah, it's nasty. Yeah, I did it long time ago before I hiked the Pacific Crest trail with a buddy. We were doing this like dare. Oh, I can eat more raw garlic cloves than you. It's a horrible idea. No one listening to this should ever eat raw garlic.

Anyone who gets gas bloating has sibo, garlic, onions, apples, any of those vegetables. Very fodmap rich foods. You need to be very careful with. A lot of people, eliminate those, you know, even if they're not going strict carnivore or something like that. And then their gas and bloating just tremendously improves. I used to go to the whole food salad bar and this was, you know, when I didn't realize that raw vegetables were doing such a number on my gut. And I would make myself these massive salads and of course, two hours later I'd just almost be debilitated with bloating. But the salads were so good, covered in that vegan avocado dressing that they have there, A little bit of sea salt. But I would always finish up the salad by going to the garlic they have these roasted garlic buckets there. And I would get six tablespoons of garlic and just drench my salad in this garlic. And I'm certain that that was responsible for a great deal of the bloating. Just because it's such a ferment. Fermentable. What is a root? How would you classify garlic? I guess it's a.

It's kind of a tuber kind of root.

Ish. Yeah.

Did I ever tell you that I was a vegan?

No.

I was vegan once. I had a vegan phase for about seven months. I was a raw vegan maybe 12 or 13 years ago. And the amount of gas and bloating that I had was enormous.

Yeah.

But I was so ideologically committed that I ignored it. And all the people around me. There's this hilarious story. So I was a physician assistant in cardiology, and I shared an office with a few other women who were physician assistants, nurse practitioners. And they told stories to the CEO at the time, who's now a good friend of mine. They didn't. I didn't hear this at the time, but they would always tell him, man, Paul has the worst farts. He would say, like, what do you want me to do?

I don't know what's worse, because I used to be a bodybuilder and you'd go to these bodybuilding conventions and shows and you get on an elevator and you could literally, literally, like kill someone. Like mustard gas on one of these elevators because of the whey protein farts. And I. I had these same whey protein farts. They were horrid. Horrid. But yeah, vegan farts are probably right up there with it. I think that's probably why so many vegans are wear like the big flowy yoga clothes and tie dyed shirts. I'm totally stereotyping. But maybe it just kind of covers up some of the bloat.

The bloat. And hopefully it helps, you know, off gas, the emissions, because it's pretty brutal.

Yeah. My apologies to all my vegan friends listening. I know you're not all dirty hippies.

And maybe not all vegans have horrible gas, but Ben and I have had ridiculously bad gas.

The worst thing ever, I think, would be to be a vegan who has happens to cheat with whey protein. That would be the worst. Kill someone vegan whey protein fart. Yeah.

Talk to me a little bit about the peptides, because this is something that I know you've done a lot of research into. I don't know much about this.

But yeah, it's very interesting because you can, you can create amino acid sequences that target specific cellular functions. You know like the peptide TB500 specific specifically acts on actin and myosin fibers to repair them extremely rapidly. BPC157, it's a gastric peptide that you find naturally in the human gut, that heals the gut, but it can also be injected that same amino acid sequence and work systemically on inflammation. The LL37 that I mentioned, it's a very good anti parasitic antibacterial peptide. There are others that can cross the blood brain barrier and act as neural inflammatories and as pretty potent smart drug like compounds. And I've used Modafinil before and found these to be superior to that in terms of the clean cognitive function that you get. Peptides like Fosamax or not Fosamax, I don't know why I said Fosamax. Dihexa Dihexa is actually not an injectable. It's a topical absorbable cream that you would rub into your carotid arteries. And that one pairs quite well with another very popular cognitive enhancing peptide called Cerebralysine, also known as C Max. And that's an injectable peptide along with a couple others that work as kind of a neural anti inflammatory one called Penny Allen and one called Cortagen. And then there are others that are being researched and even some very interesting human clinical studies on decreased risk of all cause mortality. Epitalon is one and Epitalon has some really good human research behind it. A couple times a year you'd take Epitalon injectable for about a 10 day protocol to get those same effects. Others act very similarly to calorie restriction mimetics, to upregulate amp K pathways. Probably the two most studied right now that I think are very very cool peptides. One is called Humanin and another is called MOTC motsc. Many of these are unscheduled. They are not legally approved by the FDA for human consumption. Some of them are now prescribed by physicians, mostly physicians who are members of what are called the International Peptide Society. I think it's peptidesociety.org you can actually find a doctor who will work with you on a peptide protocol, which is important because a lot of these are inexpensively made in China. They've got a lot of other compounds in them, the incorrect amino acid sequences. But you know, for example, TaylorMade Compounding which is a company in Kentucky, they actually have amino acid sequencing machines where they're able to take one specific sequence, target it for the exact need that they're going after. Create the peptide, you typically get it in a very small bottle. You inject it via an insulin syringe. Many of them are extremely unstable under light, under temperature. So the way that you store it, the way that it's shipped, et cetera is very important. But I think that these things are kind of the future of a lot of anti aging and longevity medicine particularly, but just medicine as a whole. I think peptides are a really cool field.

Yeah, it's something I want to learn more about. It seems like at every conference I go to, the peptides talk is always the one that everybody wants to get go to. People are really talking about this.

Yeah, yeah. It's kind of similar in the bodybuilding sector and the fitness sector. There are some peptide like compounds like Ipamorelin and Tessamorelin and some growth hormone precursors or growth hormone secretion precursors that many bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts have found to just explode things like muscle gain and fat loss. Like if you see like a shredded bodybuilder, in many cases they're either using growth hormone or they're using some type of growth hormone related peptide. But now the field has gone far beyond that to a lot of what I consider to be more useful protocols, like some of these mitochondrial enhancement protocols, longevity enhancement protocols like Epitalon, and then also you know, some of these full body or gut healing therapies like the TB500 and BPC and then the nootropic compounds like the Dihexa, the Penialin, the Cortagen and the C Max or the Cerebralysine. So I think it's a really cool field too.

Do you know how the one, the Iptalon works for longevity?

It's acting on the mitochondrial membrane, but I don't know the exact mechanism of action. I know it does upregulate AMPK pathways like the others, but I think there is a cellular autophagy component as well.

Interesting. So how often are you using these personal.

Well, if you look at something like epitalon, a lot of the research is done in Russia on a lot of these peptides. And a prominent Russian researcher named Dr. Convincen did the human clinical research on Epitalon. And in that particular case it is a 10 day protocol of injecting epitalon every day, twice a year. I forget the exact dosage. I want to say it's something like some of these are very small dosages like microgram Dosages. Others are milligram like MOT C, which is kind of like a calorie restriction mimetic. That one is a protocol of 10 milligrams every three days for about a month and then you're just done. Others can be used whenever, say you're beat up and sore. Like you'd do TB500 and BPC157 simultaneously post workout on your hardest workout days of the week, you could do that year round. Another would be for example, if you have some kind of a gut infection, some really good evidence lately in terms of like eradicating SIBO would be something like LL37 where you do that daily as an injectable, a lot of times in the evening as well. And you just do that until the symptoms subside. So it varies from peptide to peptide.

Yeah. What are you using personally right now?

That nootropic stack that I mentioned. I just started experimenting with that. So that's, that's the, the dihexa Penny Allen cortagen cerebralysing stack in the morning typically pretty early in the morning because. Yeah, yeah, except the, the dihexa is, is right around the carotid artery. Topical BBC157 and TB500 just occasionally if I'm injured or really beat up like I just did back to back spartan races a couple of days ago and I did a hefty dose of TB500 and BPC157 after that. Others just on an occasional case by case basis. Like I experimented with LL37 like I mentioned during that giardia. I think it helped. And then I've done the epitalon protocol and I've done the Motsi protocol like both, both of those 10, 20 day protocols.

What did you notice after those two protocols?

Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. And, and the only reason I did them and I, I should have done like a life length or repeat diagnostics telomere test. Those two companies are kind of gold standard for telomere testing.

Right?

I didn't, I just did it based on looking at the human research on those two compounds. As far as mitochondrial enhancement, decreased risk, mortality is almost just like a longevity hack and out of sheer curiosity about whether or not I actually would feel anything. So those are kind of like for example, fish oil. Right. Like I don't notice a thing when I take fish oil. I've seen some of the data on it for decreased triglycerides and improved cardiovascular health and improved joint function. So I take it. But I can't say like I Notice a night and day difference. Whereas with like those nootropic peptides, man, it's like your brain turns on like a light bulb.

You notice a big difference with those.

Yeah.

What does that feel like?

BPC157 and TB500 too. Like, like if I've got a buggy knee and inject that thing with a large bolus, the next day it feels better.

Wow, it's like Wolverine status.

Yeah.

What does the nootropic effect of that stack feel like?

Clean burning energy with enhanced focus. Like I recently did a test called a WABI test, which is like a test of executive function where for example, on the computer screen you'll see for example a series of letters and numbers. And as fast as you can, you draw a line with the mouse connecting 1 to A to 2 to B to 3 to C to 4 to D to you know, 5 to E, so on and so forth. And my score was off the charts on that. And I tried those peptides beforehand and you know, it could be that I just naturally have executive function, but I like to say it was just the better living through chemistry that enabled me to do that. My auditory recognition capabilities were again, just like through the roof. So I think it's acting on multiple pathways of cognitive function. But it also seems to help out quite a bit when you are sleep deprived. Like I came in today, I wasn't feeling wonderful after getting up at 4am to fly down here. And I don't of like flying in airports. Anyways, I didn't take those peptides even though I have them in my refrigerator right now. Just because I didn't want to be up until midnight tonight writing an essay. Right. So if you take these, you want to do. It's very similar, something like modafinil. Like you don't want to take this stuff in, you know, afternoon, for example.

Because it'll just jack you up.

You're super productive. Yeah.

And you just have to have something that you're gonna do for the whole.

Exactly. Yeah. Your brain just goes into overtime.

I wonder. I would love to look into the mechanism. Do you know the mechanism of how they're working in the brain? Like what are they doing?

I know, I know there's some element of decreased neural inflammation. I know there is. There's a synaptic transmission effect, there's an effect on, on neuroplasticity, on nerve growth factor, on brain derived neurotrophic factor. Like I'm pretty sure it's multimodal.

I'll have to look kind of similar.

To something like lion's mane. Right. Like, there's like 10 different mechanisms of action of lion's mane.

Yeah, yeah.

The beta glucans in that. On cognitive function. Function.

And it's hard to really pinpoint what the real thing is going. What the major thing is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And some of these work on neurotransmitter function too. Like they're dopaminergic or. Or they, they will increase either density of serotonin receptors or decrease serotonin breakdown or cause like a flooding in the synaptic cleft. I mean, I would imagine that, you know, you probably would want to be careful with combining something like that with an antidepressant or a St. John's Wort or anything else. Else that would act on neurotransmitter function.

Yeah. You would probably not want to do anything with the peptides at least.

Yeah.

Unless you were under the supervision of a physician. And if you're taking other.

Yeah. Or even, or even something like alcohol. Right. You could, you could potentially induce something like glutamate excitotoxicity. So.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Dude, it's fun talking to you.

Yeah.

We have a good time.

Yeah. Geek out.

Totally geek out.

Colonics, injections, testicles and meat.

Meat and animal parks. So the last question that I always ask people on this podcast, now I don't always ask it. It's my new question because I'm trying to refine the podcast and I suspect you are going to have an amazing answer for this is what is the most radical thing you have done in the last month? Which is kind of ironic to ask Ben Greenfield, because, I mean, of all the radical things you've done, there's no shortage of them. Right.

I read two books. When I was down with Giardia, actually just laying in bed, I read two books. I think that sometimes pain and suffering can give you a great deal of insight because you go through almost a state of ego dissolution very similar to what you would experience in a plant based medicine experience. For example, the two books that I read were Falling Upward and the Second Mountain. Falling Upward is by Richard Rohr. And I forget who wrote the Second Mountain, but you could find it on Amazon. Both of those books describe how much of our lives we spend in almost a Maslow's hierarchy survival mode. Make money, have sex, get food, create some kind of a shelter for yourself, create a life. And you get to a certain extent or to a certain point in life where you've climbed that first mountain.

Or.

You have reached that point to where you are surviving and in cruise control and in comfort mode and you have your king size bed at the San Diego hotel and you realize how unfulfilling that is. You realize that there is much more to life than simply making it. And often it takes climbing that mountain and then falling off it, or experiencing pain and suffering, or experiencing the loss of meaning and even the loneliness that you get at the top of that mountain. And at that point and really this was a light bulb moment for me. I've already put out a couple of Instagram videos since then, kind of describing some of my thought processes on this. But you realize that true happiness and true joy, fulfillment and purpose is derived from dissolving the ego and realizing that you are interdependent on other human beings. And that the greatest thing that you can do is not to make it for yourself and not to figure out a way to get rid of your burden so that you can live comfortably in life, but to instead figure out a way that you can help to carry the burden of others. Figure out a way that you can love others, figure out a way that you can care for others, Figure out a way that you can, rather than being independent, become interdependent. And that includes things like getting to know your neighbors names and having people over for dinner and using your skills and talent and situation instead of to say, make money or get another follower on social media to actually form true friends and close relationships. There is such a lack of that, that type of meaning in our current day and age where it's so possible to whatever, start an online business, make money, become an entrepreneur, get a huge social media following and realize at the end of the day how much less meaning there is in that versus having your neighbors over for dinner and taking care of local homeless people and maybe going and strumming your guitar at a nursing home. And probably the most radical thing I've done in the past month is come to a pretty intense realization that I have a deep craving to steer my life and in that direction rather than in the direction of becoming as successful or as popular as I can be. And I mean already, you know, I'm not going to say which I've canceled and what I've backed out on, but you know, I've canceled multiple trips, multiple conferences, multiple commitments, multiple pretty high money making opportunities to in sped instead be at home, spending time with my family, being in my community, going to my church and just living in a little bit more of a. Just a caring, loving human way. So I realize that's not some sexy biohack, but that is probably the most radical thing that I've realized and radical things that I've started doing in the past month.

I love it. Dude, that's amazing. Thank you for sharing that.

Yeah.

You know, one of the things I noticed when I got to hang out with you in Washington was how clear it was to me that your family was super important to you. And I was really impressed with that. You know, I don't. I've never told you that personally, but the time that we spent together, you know, it was a. It was. At times, it was a very painful 24 hours because you were putting me through brutal workouts and then than grilling me in a podcast. But I think that one of the things that I came away with was like, my God, that guy loves his wife, he loves his kids. And I've been. I've looked at. I've seen your social media, and I've always been super impressed at the way you prioritize them. So I will absolutely value it, validate you on that. And I really appreciate that about you. And I've always thought that was something really unique about you. So I think you are.

There is nothing more important to me than family and God. And the one thing that's changed the most about that in the past month is I've realized that family is not just my family. It's the other humans in my community. They're my family, too, and I need to begin treating them the same way that I treat and prioritize my own family.

Yeah. That's awesome. I feel it because as a budding entrepreneur myself, I feel the grind. You know, I'm probably where you were 15 years ago, you know, even though you're younger than me, you know, but I feel it. And I don't like the grind. I don't like trying to climb that mountain. And so that's what you said there really resonates with me, and I can take a lot away from that, too, for. So thanks for sharing that, brother.

Thanks for having me on, man.

Yeah, man. I hope we'll do it again soon. And I look forward to eating testicle with you.

I can't wait.

All right.

And we got to post that to social media.

We will post that to social media.

Cool.

All right, later.

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, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.