Do Blenders Damage Food Nutrients, Why Weightlifting Makes You A Faster Runner, How To Boost Dopamine Levels & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, how to boost your dopamine levels. Do blenders damage food? Can MSM work as a detox? How to use something called peptides to heal injuries, and much more.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Well, hello, Rachel. Or should I say. Should I say hola?

Yeah, hola, Ben. Good to see Slash hear you. It's been a whole month.

It has been a while. And you are in Mexico.

I am Mexico.

What are you doing? Besides buying Chiclets and dealing drugs, what are you doing in Mexico?

We kind of just came down to work from here for a couple of weeks, and so we're just set up and sort of enjoying Playa del Carmen. It's beautiful. Go to the beach every morning, watch the sunrise, walks along the beach, lots of swimming. They have these incredible cenotes, which are actually sinkholes, which is kind of weird, but they've crystal clear water. It's just beautiful.

And Chiclets.

And Chiclets, yes.

Are you getting your hands on lots of good Mexican food?

Lots of good Mexican food.

Lots of potato tops.

That's all they eat down here. No, it's delicious.

I love the American versions of international cuisines like the Olive Garden. Everybody knows that when you go to Italy, you get unlimited breadsticks and iceberg lettuce.

Cracks me up. But the food is actually incredible. We're very lucky. I found a really good vegan restaurant. Actually, it's not even super Mexican, but, yeah, lots of international food. Eating well, sleeping well, exercising well. It's incredible.

I like it, man. Vegan, Mexican sound pretty good. I love. I also love to lose. Yeah, that's my Mexican accent. I'm going to Canada. Eh? You are next week. Yeah. So. Well, you're in Mexico.

What are you going there for up.

Across the other border? Just dealing drugs. Same as you, really. Just in a different hemisphere.

Stop telling my secret.

No, actually, I am going up there to a friend's ranch to do some hiking with the boys and a little bit of hunting. Gonna hunt bear and moose. So while you're eating vegetables in Mexico. I'm gonna be up at a meetapalooza in Canada.

You're going to hunt a bear? My God.

Going to hunt a bear. Yeah.

Americans.

I will.

You're a funny bunch.

I will report on the show. And of course, as usual, just so we don't, don't offend anyone, I, I will be hunting and eating said bear, not just shooting the bear. So anyways, though, we have plenty to go over. It's been a while since we've done our Q A. So lot, a lot of new news flashes and cool geeked out information for folks. So let's dive in, shall we?

News flashes.

So this is the part of the show where I don't know, what do we do on this part of the show, Rachel?

We give epic information, epic information. News flashes. And you can get these news flashes and more if you follow Ben on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google and now Snapchat.

That's right. We're all over the Internet and we'll put links to all this stuff over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 359. But yes, indeed, this is the time of the show when we talk about cool things that we found on the Internets. And one really fun article that I thought was this article on Mark Staley Apple about the health habits of famous people from history, people some of whom I've never heard of, but some that were quite interesting, like Ben Franklin, the founding father. I don't know. Did you read this article, Rachel?

I did, yes. But I'd love to hear your take on Ben Franklin's health habits.

Ben Franklin was very much into cold thermogenesis. He would spend two or three hours swimming in the river in London every night, about three and a half miles in a single bout. And he slept in cold rooms and did quite a bit of cold water immersion.

Wow.

Ben Franklin. Which by the way, I have an upcoming article coming out this Monday about how keeping one's balls cold actually increases testosterone. It's actually a very interesting article. I'm also going to be talking about shining laser lights on your gonads and an iodine trick where you can actually smear iodine in your crotch to increase. Increase testosterone. Totally not kidding.

Wow.

Any of you out there who want to increase testosterone, you need to read this article that's coming out this Monday over at Ben Greenfield Fitness. So stay tuned for that one.

So Ben Franklin was the father of cold thermogenesis then?

The father of cold thermogenesis, yes. Let's call him, that Margaret Thatcher, she was called the Iron Lady. And they called her the Iron lady because she ate 28 eggs a week. I don't know what that has to do with iron. Oh, she ate steak as well. Perhaps that. Why, that's why. But. But on top of her 28 eggs a week, she ate spinach, tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, black coffee, steak, lamb chops, whiskey, fish and grapefruit. Grapefruit. And apparently she was. She was considered to be a quite healthy person. So another one that I think is interesting was Eugene Sandow, known as a physical culturist. And he's this guy, he was like one of the first strongmen, you know, like the old timey strongman who you see wearing like the leopard skin leotards.

Do they have those mustaches with the curly ends?

Yeah, the unitards. The guys who are like in the back of like Mad magazine selling young boys strength training equipment. You know, like the little dumbbells, stuff like that. Yeah. So he also was into cold bathing, what he called cold plunges, and built what they describe as a rippled, sinewy technique by training the body and the mind using the secret of the cold bath, using nutrition, and using recovery. And so he was another guy who was into cold. There was another one in here. Jeanne Calment. Jeanne Calment. This lady lived until she was 122 years old. Wow. She poured olive oil all over her food and very much like me, rubbed it into her skin. She probably got that trick from me. I'm sure she read my blog. She ate a kilo of chocolate a week and drank red wine daily.

Sounds like my kind of lady.

And yeah, she. She rode bikes. She took up fencing at the age of 85.

And how old did she live?

And she lived until she was 122.

Wow. Is she the oldest person. Oldest living person in the world?

I don't. I don't know if she's. I think she might be dead now. Perhaps a fencing accident, I don't know. And then, of course, Hippocrates is on there as well, the last one that I'll mention. And he was very much into walking. He did a copious amount of walking for everything from recovery to staving off depression to just like using it as man's best medicine and used it as almost like a cure all. And he was also the guy who said that disease begins in the gut. And he was very much into maintenance of a proper microbiome to stave off all manner of diseases. So walking and taking care of one's gut were Hippocrates big go tos. But the entire article is actually quite interesting.

I think it's very well written as well. It's very fun to read.

Well written. And if we learn anything, it is to be cold. Take cold plunges, eat lots of chocolate, use lots of olive oil, drink red wine, and eat 28 eggs a week. Speaking of which, I have six new chicks who just hatched yesterday outside. What? Chicks running around.

How exciting.

Yep.

Little babies. Are the boys playing with them?

Little babies. And my boys love them. So we have 16 chickens now.

How exciting.

Growing by leaps. And good job.

You made those chickens mate. Jessa told me that was hard work.

Apparently it is tough to get chickens to mate. Yeah. Put rose petals on the bark that lines.

Give him a nice bath. Play a little romantic.

Yeah, yeah.

Ukulele.

Not the ukulele. Who's the guy that. That plays the song let's get it on? Who is that?

I have no idea.

You don't know the lesson?

I know the song. I know the song. I don't know who it is.

Yeah, we. We pipe that out in the barn and they get it on. Apparently.

Finally worked. There you go. How to make your chickens mate from Greenfield.

Exactly. So another interesting article in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research, they did a systematic review of a ton of articles, 699 different articles that looked into the effects of strength training on running. And this is something that's kind of near and dear to my heart right now because I am preparing to put the icing on my 2016 racing cake by racing the Spartan Ultra Beast in Lake Tahoe in the first week of October. So this is like 30 plus miles of obstacles. And frankly, I have been slammed speaking, slammed speaking, writing, working on the rebranding of our business. So I haven't had much time to actually train for this thing. So my go to has been basically copious amounts of powerlifting and strength training and then just dropping at various points throughout the day to do 30 burpees. So not only am I getting swole and strong, but I'm tapping in all these benefits that this article goes into on the effects of strength training and running economy. Because I don't have a lot of time to run right now, but I do have a lot of time to stop here and there and lift heavy stuff. And what they found in this study was. And let me reach down, my voice may fade because I have the entire journal article right here in my hands. The entire big blue journal of Strength conditioning Research. They go into how strength training has been shown to cause more motor unit activation when you are running. Better lower limb coordination, better muscle co activation, decreased ground contact time, increased tendon stiffness, which basically allows you to bounce off the ground more quickly. And better biomechanical efficiency and muscle recruitment patterns, thus allowing a runner to run more efficiently at any given running speed. And they found by looking at these 699 different articles that basically some of the best, most elite runners in the world use strength training and specifically explosive and also plyometric strength training to tap into these benefits. And what they describe in the study is that typically a typical routine to allow for a strength training routine to make you a better runner is strength training two to three times a week and using in your strength training at least two to four different lower body exercises like squats or lunges or sideways lunges or anything else that would be considered a lower body exercise. Deadlifts would be another big one. Plus, and this is interesting, up to 200 jumps and 5 to 10 short sprints. Meaning that these folks weren't just strength training, they were also doing plyometrics. Right? Like hopping on and off things. Or I suppose, I suppose burpees could count to a certain extent. And then also doing very short, brief 10 to 30 second sprints along with this strength training.

So awesome. And it said it was for highly trained middle and long distance runners. Do you think it's the same for amateurs?

You know, in the studies that they've done on amateurs? And I actually have a whole book about this somewhere on Amazon. I wrote it about three years ago and it's called the Ultimate Guide to Strength Training for Endurance Athletes. And in that book I highlight how you actually see even more pronounced results in lesser trained athletes when it comes to the benefits of strength training for endurance. So quite interesting. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all the deadlifts I've been doing are somehow going to help me run 30 miles.

Well, according to this article, they will.

Yes, exactly. So if you're into running and you want to get faster at running, then go lift heavy stuff. Speaking of lifting stuff, lifting nuts, almonds. Did you see this article that I call the best almond article ever?

I did see it, yes.

So are you an almond fan?

I'm a massive almond fan.

I am also an almond fan. I think we even have a question in this podcast about almond milk.

Almonds. We do, yeah.

And we do almonds here. My wife makes almond cheese, we make almond milk, which is very easy. You just basically blend Almonds, and then you strain it through like a cheesecloth, and you get almond milk. And then what's left in the cheesecloth is almond cheese. My wife just made some the other day. And then you could take the almond cheese and mix it with things like she mixes it with, like, lavender and thyme and oregano, mint. And you can do all sorts of things with almonds and the leftover almond pulp after you make almond milk. But this article actually went into some of the pros and the cons of different ways that you eat your almonds. For example, if you buy sweet almonds, sweet almonds are pretty good for you. But bitter almonds actually contain a lot more, what are called glycosides on their skin. And. And that is a poison very much like a. It's called a cyanogenic glycoside. And it is. I'm trying to think of the name of the poison. Cyanide is what it is. Yeah. So you can actually simulate many of the same risks of cyanide poisoning if you're eating a lot of bitter almonds versus sweet almonds. So when you're buying your almonds and most of the almonds that you'll find, like California almonds, et cetera, they're already sweet almonds. But that's one thing is all. Avoid bitter almonds. Another one. Another takeaway from this article was that many of the beneficial lipids that are found in almonds are enhanced or released more by crushing the almonds, either by chewing them or by blending them, or by cutting them into pieces. You actually vastly improve the nutrients that you're able to derive from an almond by cutting it up into pieces. And especially one example of this would be, like, almond cheese or blending it and making almond milk, et cetera. But almond butter would be another example of this, of a way to actually break almonds up. So it turns out that if you're gonna have almonds, you either need to chew them or just beat the hell out of them to get more nutrients from them.

Good to know that one.

Yes. That was interesting. Roasting. Roasting kills a lot of the bacteria and fungi from almonds, but it can also create some amount of oxidation. And so what they found is that you do get more oxidized omega 6 fatty acids when you expose the almonds to high temperature, but at lower temperatures, like 120 degrees or less, like dehydrating almonds or doing. What we do in our house is we'll buy almonds, like, just basic sweet almonds, and. And then soak them and you can just soak them in a glass mason jar and then we stick them in a food dehydrator. So when you soak them, you decrease a lot of the digestive irritants that tend to be on the skin of a lot of almonds. And then when you dehydrate them, that mild heat actually opens up a lot more of the nutrients. It almost like pre digests the almond and so you get more nutritional benefit out of it. So there's a lot in this article when it comes to the benefits of almonds. But the bigger takeaways that I saw were to eat bitter almonds. When you eat almonds, avoid getting them too hot. Know that a lot of these nut butters, they use not a cold pressing, but they use a chemical extraction. So if you're going to make use a nut butter, you want to look for what's called cold pressed almond butter and then make sure that you. Another takeaway here was to keep the almonds out of the sunlight and out of very hot or very humid rooms when you store them, because they can produce more oxidation and more toxic mold in those cases.

What about storage in the fridge in cold?

Well, I actually am a big fan of storing nuts in the freezer, and that really limits oxidation. I do Brazil nuts, for example, a little handful of Brazil nuts each day, which are great for testosterone. But Brazil nuts that have been shelled and that you find in the bulk food section of many grocery stores, they do have a lot of mold on them and they're more prone to oxidation. And so I buy them in the shell and then I keep them in the freezer. So, yeah, all right, good to do it. It's a really good article on almonds. So if you're bored or if you're into nuts, go read this one. And then there was another article here that I thought was really interesting because we've had a few, few good podcasts lately about detoxification and specifically about metal detoxification. And a lot of times we talk about teeth, right. Like everybody has probably heard by now that if you have mercury fillings, they're probably not doing you any favors. Right?

Right.

When it comes to leaching metals. But this particular article shows that there is an enormous amount of metal exposure that they're actually finding, building up in people's brains and also leading to a significant increase in the risk of Alzheimer' from simple basic pollution. And we're not talking about things that are in your teeth. We're not talking about mercury fillings. But instead, things like brake dust is one that they talk about quite a bit in the article. What are called magnetite particles, which I guess is a form of iron oxide. And you'll find this in higher concentrations in areas that have lots of smoke, lots of industrial pollutants, lots of air pollution. And these metals are actually building up in the body. And you can even get them from things like car keys and Chinese toys. And there's a huge number of metals that we get exposed to. And this article goes into the fact that they've found that these are now building up in brain tissue.

Brains, wow.

And causing degenerative brain disease, Alzheimer's, mental illness, reduced intelligence, loss of the ability to smell. Well, which is apparently like the canary in the coal mine when it comes to Alzheimer's is you begin to lose your ability to smell. And the idea here is that you're breathing a lot of these metals right up your olfactory bulb and into what's called your frontal cortex. And so it affects thought processing.

That's scary.

I am definitely, definitely a fan of using any of these compounds that chelate metals. And what that means is, for example, you know, we did that podcast on this one form of a liquid called cyto detox. And that one was a podcast I recently did with Dr. Dan Pompa. I'd recommend you listen to that. I'd also recommend the podcast that I've done with Dr. David Minkoff on reducing your metal exposure. But I think that anybody living in a post industrial era needs to be consuming things that will help them to leach metals from their body. Oh, go ahead.

Are these the kind of metals that you can test for or do you kind of have to wait until the end and test the gray matter in your brain?

Yeah, I'm actually, I recently did one of these, these urine and hair analyses for metals. And I found that even in my own body, you know, I need to be doing metal detoxification medications and paying attention because there are certain things like lead and mercury present in amounts in my body just because, you know, I live in a metal infused post industrial era like most of the people that listen into this podcast. So yes, you can test for this stuff. Typically it's a hair or urine test. And I was actually supposed to do a podcast on this tomorrow about the results of this test, but I'm gonna go spearfishing instead because I hooked up with a local spear fisherman. So rather than podcasting about metals, I'm just gonna go catch fish that are, that are chock full of metals. I actually can't eat the fish that I get in the river here because there's so much metal in the Spokane River.

Well, we'll wait. With bated breath. Get it. Get the fun.

I get it. Baited breath part. Yeah, I get it. You're funny. Anyways, the next thing that I mentioned, the last thing that I wanted to mention, is this idea about the tricorder. Are you a Trekkie at all?

I'm not. I should be, though, because I'm super into sci fi, but I just, I don't know. Never got there, but tell me.

So there is a new, what's called a Tri Quarter X prize, and this allows anybody who enters into win this prize to get, I believe it's $10 million that they're giving away in early 2017. So coming up soon for anybody who can create this tricorder. And a tricorder is basically like a portable wireless device that you could hold in the palm of your hand, very much like you'll see on Star Trek that you use to scan the body and find anything that could be wrong with you. And so what this is is this competition requires you to develop a tricorder device that's able to diagnose a variety of different conditions. And they've actually got a bunch of metrics set up. It needs to be capable of capturing key health metrics. And they say diagnosing a set of 12 different diseases or conditions, including anemia, atrial fibrillation, pulmonary disease, diabetes, pneumonia, sleep apnea, urinary tract infection, and then they go on for different vital signs. Like, it has to be able to measure blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, and temperature. And then also be able to look at things like melanoma, mononucleosis, strep, throat, hypertension, hypothyroidism. And apparently there are a bunch of teams that are on the brink of developing a wireless device that can actually measure all of these things. And the website is called the tricorder Xprize. It's tricorderexprize.org, we'll link to it in the show notes. But anybody listening in, who wants to win $10 million, or perhaps more appropriately, who just wants to keep their finger on the pulse of when one of these tricorders is actually developed. It's a pretty interesting website.

Awesome stuff. I can't wait to have that. Definitely be helpful.

Oh, I want a tricorder for myself. I don't know how much they'll cost, but I would imagine 10 years from now they'll just be in the palm of anyone's hand at a fraction of the price of what a tricorder might actually cost when it first comes out. But either way, the $10 million Tricorder X Prize could actually happen. So we'll link to that and everything else that you've just discovered if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 359 listener Q&A. Hi, Ben. I'm Michael Munton from Orange County, California. I'm an industrial designer and my job depends on my creativity. I've heard that dopamine levels could be linked to creative performance. Do you have any suggestions for biohacking dopamine levels? Dopamine. Dopamine would be. Would be handy to have around at least more of it, although more is not better. And I'll get into that in a second. But dopamine is of course a neurotransmitter essential to the central nervous system. And it's a feel good neurotransmitter. And having high levels of dopamine prior to any activity can actually help make that activity more pleasurable. Like before you eat or before you have sex or before any type of activity where you'd want to enhance the pleasurable emotional response. The brain's reward and pleasure centers are really controlled by dopamine. And there are a lot of things that you can do to get dopamine up. And Michael is correct that higher dopamine levels can actually be linked to enhanced creativity. And I think that we talked about this. Do you remember when we talked about the warrior versus the warrior gene? Yeah. So the idea behind this is that some people are more creative because they have higher amounts of dopamine and there are advantages of high dopamine levels. So the idea behind this is you have what's called your COMT system, and that's a genetic system that interacts with the breakdown of dopamine. I'm forgetting what COMT stands for. I'm sure you remember right.

I could probably make something up. But no.

Yeah. So either way we don't need to get into what COMT stands for. But basically the idea here is that the COMT system helps to break down dopamine and neurotransmitters like norepinephrine and, and epinephrine. And some people break down dopamine more quickly and some people have dopamine that kind of hangs around for a long period of time.

So when you have tell that from them, whether you have the mutation or.

Not, you can get like a 23andMe test, a genetic, just a salivary test.

Is it the warrior or the warrior that breaks down dopamine?

Okay, so a lower amount of dopamine would mean that you're actually going to cope very, very well and extremely stressful conditions. And the reason for this is that if you have the COMT gene that creates way too much dopamine in a stressful condition, you tend to basically freak out and lose focus when you're stressed out. And so warriors, people with the warrior gene, they actually produce less dopamine, they have lower dopamine levels, and this allows them to cope extremely well in high stress situations. But it also leads to more of a propensity towards like anger and impulsivity and high risk behavior and substance abuse and addictions and cravings. So it's like that badass soldier who also happens to potentially, you know, if they're not fighting, have more of a, you know, more of a draw towards like, you know, drinking copious amounts of, of Coors Light and then slamming the can against their head and beating somebody up.

Right, right.

So, so that's like the low dopamine. And then we have the high dopamine people. And high dopamine people tend to be very creative, but they actually, when they do get thrust in these extremely stressful situations, they tend to freak out and they tend to not have as alert of mind or be as sharp and as quick because it's too much stress with too much dopamine around. And this would be the people who are the worriers now. They are more creative and they tend to be more satisfied by things that happen in life because they do indeed create more dopamine. But things that folks who have this creativeness and these high amounts of dopamine, they tend to be more of like the cat lady type syndrome. Right. They're more prone to schizophrenia and paranoia and anxiety and worry and all these things we would associate with that worrier syndrome. So higher levels of dopamine are not necessarily better in many cases. And especially if you're a very, very stressed out person or you're about to get thrust into a very stressful condition, having a whole bunch of extra dopamine around or perhaps even using like one of the dopamine based supplements that I'll talk about here in a second may actually not be the best thing. If you already have the gene that keeps you from breaking down dopamine really quickly like this COMT mutation. Does that make sense?

Very good information.

So it's Almost like this. This optimum, like a bell curve when it comes to dopamine. You want, you want, you know, just like Goldilocks. Not too high, not too low, but.

But just enough.

So what are somesome ways you could naturally increase dopamine if you weren't just gonna, like, take some kind of a dopamine supplement, even though those do exist, and I'll talk about them in a second. Well, one would be to stay away from things that might cause you to become addicted. You know, one thing that pops into my head is like, there's this website called your brain on porn, and it shows how constant exposure to pornography actually causes you to have an extremely low dopamine response to sex. And being addicted to, for example, certain types of food cause you to fall into this negative feedback loop to where you eventually get less and less pleasure from that food. Less and less. Yeah. So anytime you get overly addicted to something, the reward circuitry of your brain kicks into overdrive. You begin to crave the quick hit. And it's not a sustainable solution for dopamine production, and you eventually just need more and more dopamine to get that same response. So don't get addicted to stuff. That would be one way to ensure that you keep dopamine levels high. Having little tasks that you're able to check off during the day. Actually having a checklist. They've done studies on this and they found that people who have a checklist in which they're checking things off throughout the day, whether you're using the, remember the milk phone app, for example, or maybe you've got a little Moleskine journal that you write things down in and check off throughout the day. That actually causes up to a 25% increase in dopamine during the day when you are checking things off. Just that simple act of checking something off causes a dopamine surge.

Yeah, that makes total sense. I'm a fiend for that sort of stuff.

Mm, yeah, exactly. Creating something. So having music, playdough or clay or crayons or, you know, these new, like adult coloring books would count. Any of these things that help you to tap into creativity cause you to go into a state of alpha brainwave production that creates more dopamine. So, you know, arts, crafts, repairing bicycles, cars, drawing, photography, you name it. Anything interesting and creative causes you to elevate dopamine levels. Exercise. I probably don't need to tell you that specifically exercise outside gives you a pretty good jolt of dopamine. So that would be another one. And I was Yesterday, towards the end of the day, I was kind of in that mode where I almost had my eyes glazed over and my head was all fuzzy from just working all day, and I stepped outside and just rode my bike out to some organic farms near my house. Just out in the sunshine, pedaling down the road, big smile on my face like Kermit the Frog in a Muppet movie and riding his bike through the park with Miss Piggy. It was like that. Do you get the analogy? I do.

I do. I was gonna say, and then have.

A picnic anyways, though. So exercise in the sunshine and nature can get a dopamine levels increase as well. And music is another dopamine precursor. So, for example, last night I got a massage and I put in these special tunes. Remember the podcast that we did with the guy who produces music that's tuned at a specific frequency to affect different organs in your body?

Yes.

Huge dopamine rush when you listen to this stuff. I mean, any type of music can cause a release of dopamine, especially your favorite music and your favorite songs. And that's why music makes us happy. But listening to music can cause an increase in dopamine as well. And if you really want to, like, you know, biohack your music, go listen to the podcast that I did with Michael Tyrrell on Whole Tones music. We'll put a link to that one in the show notes. But it's like a CD that actually plays special tunes that cause a surge in dopamine, almost like a healing effect on different organs. Meditation increases dopamine, and all different forms of meditation, along with yoga, can both increase dopamine levels. And then, of course, there are foods and supplements that can increase dopamine. So when it comes to foods, some of the foods that increase dopamine would be foods that have higher levels of what's called tyrosine in them. Almonds, speak of the devil, happen to have high levels of tyrosine. So that would be one thing. Avocados and bananas are two other biggies. Both of those have a lot of dopamine precursors in them. And meats like beef, chicken, sources of tyrosine, those also would be dopamine precursors. Chocolate, we all know that that makes us feel happy. That's got dopamine precursors in it. And then a few others would be green tea, watermelon, and yogurt. All of these have higher levels of tyrosine. And tyrosine is one of the 22 key amino acids that's used to build proteins around the body and also to raise levels of different neurotransmitters. And one of the neurotransmitters that it raises is dopamine. So including some of those foods, especially almonds, avocados, bananas, beef and chicken. And then there's another that kind of flies under the radar in terms of affecting food that can boost dopamine and has actually been shown to help with anxiety and depression. And that is whey protein isolate. So whey protein isolate, even more than a lot of vegan forms of protein, helps you to make neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine and serotonins. That'd be another one to include. And I should mention that speaking of whey protein, we have a huge, huge amount of grass fed whey protein chocolate flavor and grass fed whey protein vanilla flavor from grass fed cows, growth hormone free. And it's got no artificial sweeteners in it. This is stuff that we've got excess of right now over at Greenfield Fitness System. So we've kind of got like a fire sale going on on grass fed whey protein right now. So if you want to get your hands on some of that stuff and you want the stuff that's not chock full of nasty ingredients, I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. If you want to use grass fed whey protein to get happier and then you could turn to supplements, I guess grass fed whey protein would be kind of like in between a food and a supplement. But then there's actual supplements that can increase dopamine and probably. Go ahead. Were you going to say something?

Is there a difference between how a body produces dopamine in response to to something like food versus something like a supplement?

Yes, because when you look at a food, usually you are consuming foods that contain, for example, you know, tyrosine that would be a precursor for you to produce dopamine or neurotransmitter precursors like amino acids to help you produce dopamine versus some supplements which actually contain just dopamine like mucuna. Dopa is an example and that's just a form of dopamine that you can buy in supplemental form that's M U C U N A, it's called mucuna L dopa and it's basically like a form of dopamine that you can purchase and consume. And it's more like eating dopamine rather than eating things that help you to make dopamine.

And what does that do to the Is that, is that a bad thing for the body or the brain?

If you take it in excess, it could potentially create kind of like a negative feedback loop that would keep you from creating your own dopamine levels. Or it could, again, if you're in a very, very stressful situation, like in a battle, I suppose, or like an MMA fighter, let's say, going into a fight, you actually wouldn't want to take dopamine because it may influence your ability to be able to think clearly in a stressful situation. But in an unstressful situation, such as just sitting around working during the day, dopamine appears to induce a lot of creativity and a lot of cool effects. There's another supplement that probably one of the better one ones that I like is it's called Brain Food. And this stuff called Brain Food, it's made by a company called Natural Stacks, and it has tyrosine in it, which gets converted in into L dopa, which is the direct precursor to dopamine. It also has L phenylalanine in it, which also gets converted into L tyrosine, which then gets converted into L dopa. And then there are some vitamins that help that conversion to take place. Vitamin B6, vitamin C and selenium all help you to produce dopamine from the tyrosine and the phenylalanine. So it's got that in it. And then they added in folate, vitamin B12, and something called trimethylglycine, and all three of those help to keep the dopamine from getting broken down as quickly. So that stuff's called Brain Food. It's made by a company called Natural Stacks, and we can link to that in the show notes as well. But yeah, between that and like bananas and avocado and exercise and music and checklists and creating stuff, there's a lot of cool ways that you can get your dopamine levels up.

Hey, Ben and Rachel, longtime listener, first time caller. My question is about making homemade almond butter for better digestibility and nutrient absorption. I usually soak, sprout, and dehydrate my nuts and seeds. The other day I decided to try my hand at homemade almond butter in the Vitamix. The ultimate product turned out great. Sprouted almond butter that's so much cheaper than what's in the store. But my concern is about oxidized oils. During the process, the almond butter got super hot. This is obviously needed for the almonds to release our oils and create a creamy consistency. But I'm afraid to eat it because of the potentially now damaged and oxidized polyunsaturated fats. Do you think this is an issue? I'd love to enjoy it, but not at the expense of my health. Oh, and Rachel, if you like lime, you should try adding that to your cucumber and basil infused water. Thanks.

So Rachel, did you actually add lime to your cucumber infused basil water based on Bacon's suggestion?

Well, I'm going to now. It's a great suggestion because I love lime.

Be careful with the limes in Mexico.

Why?

Never know. I hear things in Mexico have worms and giardia. I don't know if those would pair well with your chiclets and your drugs.

I am feeling pretty safe about the food and I'm definitely gonna add some lime to my cucumber infused basil water.

Apparently you're not in Tijuana.

No, I'm not.

All right. Okay. So blenders, damaging foods. You know, it is kind of interesting because you'll see this a lot. People will say that, you know, oxidation caused by oxygen being sucked into a blender is going to destroy nutrients in foods. And when foods get juiced and cut and chopped and shredded and peeled and chewed and dehydrated and exposed to air, you just start to lose all these nutrients. And it is true that you get a little bit of nutrient loss anytime you start to process a food. Whether it's in a blender or whether it's chopping it up for a salad or whatever else, foods gradually degrade. That's why eating fresher foods to a certain extent is degree better. Even though there are some exceptions to that. Like for example, I don't know if you've ever heard of the book by I forget her name. It's a book about eating. It's called Eating on the Wild side by Jo Robinson. And she talks about how if you take kale and you rip it up and then you put it in the refrigerator overnight, it actually thinks it's being eaten by a wild animal and it produces more antioxidants. And so you get more antioxidants in the kale, if you like, rip it up and then eat it the next morning. And sure, you may actually get a little bit of oxidation and destruction of some of the other nutrients in the kale, but when it comes to the antioxidants, you actually produce more when you rip it up and expose it to a little bit of stress prior to eating it.

Right. So some foods are okay to damage and others are not. So okay.

Well, when we look at actual damage with a blender, you got to kind of step back and look at the science of it. So there's this idea that there are enzymes that live in the cell membranes of plants. These enzymes are called polyphenol oxidases. They're also known as PPOs, and they help a plant be resistant to microbial and viral infections and even help a plant to be more resilient in, like, adverse climate like snow and excessive amounts of sun and heat and wind, et cetera. But these PPOs, they are an oxidant, and they can basically, when you blend a food, they can cause oxidation of that food or of a lot of what are called the phenolic compounds that you're going to find in fruits and vegetables. So we know these plant polyphenols are the part of the plant that offer protection against cancer and cardiovascular disease and neurodegenerative diseases. And there's all sorts of cool things that happen when you consume plant polyphenols. And you may. You may have heard of, like, anthocyanins and flavonoids, for example, so. So these are all things that would be considered plant polyphenols. Well, the idea here is that these PPOs, when present in high amounts and when kind of like released from the plant cell walls during the blending process, they can cause some. Some oxidation. And sometimes we'll notice that with, like, browning, you know, when we leave a fruit out or like an avocado out or something like that, starts to get a little bit of browning on it, that enzymatic browning is just the action of ppo. And so, you know, just to give you an example of how we could limit the oxidation of a fruit or vegetable when this PPO gets released. Have you ever, like, heard of the trick where you can take an apple, and if you have just half the apple and you want to keep the other half from going brown, you put a little bit of lime juice on a plate and put the apple on the lime juice.

I've heard that trick. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's because there is ascorbic acid in the lime juice that limits the activity of ppo. And so citric acid, because it can inhibit PPO activity, is something that you can add into a smoothie to prevent a lot of this oxidation from occurring. And I actually have this article over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com that I'll link to in the show Notes, where I talk about an experiment that a guest author did for the site where he took bananas. And speaking of, dopamine we talked about how bananas are high in dopamine. Well, dopamine is one of the things that can get broken down by ppo. And when it does, it causes what's called melanin production in the browning or the darkening or the browning of the banana. And so it's really interesting, this guy did a study where he basically blended bananas with differing amounts of citric acid and found that when you add a whole bunch of lemon juice to a smoothie, it actually prevents the browning, prevents a lot of this oxidation that occurs when you're blending in a smoothie. And then he took this one step further, further, and he added varying amounts of ice to see if you, if you reduce the temperature while at the same time increasing the acidity, if you could prevent oxidation even more. And it turns out that this is the case. Meaning, like, if you're going to make a smoothie with anything that is going to cause to get oxidized, right, like fruits, vegetables, or even nuts, if you add a little bit of ascorbic acid, like you squeeze half a lemon in there first, and then you add some cold water or some ice. And this is what I do when I make a smoothie now is I start with a cup full of ice and I squeeze a lemon in, and then I add all my other components on top of that. And it keeps oxidation from occurring and it keeps the activity of this PPO from causing extensive oxidation or damaging of the nutrients in the food. So basically, you want cold and acidity when you blend, and that keeps a lot of the issues from occurring when it comes to oxidation.

So would you recommend that for almond butter?

Now, for almonds, the idea here is that if we look at the smoke point of almonds, which would be the point at which an almond would start to get degraded, or not degraded, but oxidized, like the fats in almonds would start to get oxidized, the smoke point is about 4, 420 degrees Fahrenheit.

Oh, wow.

You're really not going to see anything much closer or much higher than about 200 degrees Fahrenheit when you're blending. And so you're not getting anywhere close to the amount of heat necessary to oxidize something like the fat in an almond. Now, it is enough heat to oxidize some of the components of fruits and vegetables, which is where this lemon juice ice trick can come in handy for vegetable and fruit blending. But for almonds, you really don't need to worry about this much at all in terms of blending Oxidizing the oils in almonds. And obviously, if you add. If you're blending an almond to make almond milk or almond butter, and you're putting a bunch of ice in there or water, you might dilute the almond milk or dilute the almond butter. So, I mean, what we do at our house is we soak the almonds, like I mentioned, and we roast them or dehydrate them at a really low temperature, and then we blend them. And then after you blend them with water or anything else that you want to add in to blend them with, and I suppose you could just use, like, very cold water, so this could work. Then you strain it through a cheesecloth, and that's how you make your almond butter. But ultimately, if you use lemon and ice when you're blending fruits and vegetables, you'll limit a lot of the oxidation. And with something like almonds, which are going to be a little bit more stable than the fruits and vegetables when it comes to oxidation, you would have to get them pretty dang hot, like more than 200 degrees in the blender for it to be an issue. So if you're worried about this at all, I suppose you could try and you could see if this affects the taste of an almond milk or an almond butter. You could squeeze lemon in there. You could put some cold water in there and try that out as a little bit of a hack to reduce oxidation. But I don't think it's. It's much of an issue.

Hi, Ben. My question is in regards to the podcast that you did about cancer. The doc on that podcast said that vegetables rich in sulfur bind up to mercury. I take msm, which is sulfur, and it was always my understanding that it actually detoxified your system. I would like it if you would address this and then just give some of your thoughts, pros and cons on msm. Thank you.

Well, you want to know a fun fact?

Another fun fact, too. In one episode, another fun fact.

I have a big, big bag of MSM in the glove compartment of both my cars because it is one of the most potent detoxification, or not detoxification, but antioxidants for neural tissue. I learned this trick from Dr. Jack Cruz, who works with a lot of people to help them heal from concussions. And if you get in, like, a car accident and you hit your head and you can somehow, you know, assuming you haven't hit your head so hard that you don't know where your glove compartment is, you can take a tablespoon of this msm. And just like get it into your body right away to shut down. A lot of the damage that can occur from a head injury or a TBI when you're in a car accident.

That's a great hack. Do they use that in sports where TBI and concussion.

Yep, yep. Any sulfur based antioxidant? So MSM is actually methyl sulfonyl methane. It's also in the magnesium lotion that I use on my, on my body, like I use the ancient minerals magnesium lotion. It's just magnesium plus msm and it's a. It's an organic sulfur compound. So when it comes to sulfur, the idea is that sulfur plays a pretty critical role in detoxification and in fighting inflammation. Those are the two main ways that sulfur works. And you've probably heard of glutathione before, which is one of the most important antioxidants that your body produces. Well, without sulfur, you can't make glutathione. And a sulfur is actually found in over 150 different compounds in the human body. There's sulfur in virtually every type of cell. So it is really important to get sulfur into your body or to get sulfurous based precursors into your body. And MSM is a pretty potent source of these sulfur based compounds. So what you could think about it as doing is basically increasing your body's ability to make its own antioxidant because it provides the sulfur based support for this. So, for example, if you look at glutathione, glutathione has two different states in your body. Reduced glutathione and then what's called oxidized glutathione. And the ratio of reduced glutathione to oxidized glutathione signifies the overall oxidative status or the ability of your blood plasma to address oxidative stress. And so what MSM does is it improves that ratio. It gives you more of the reduced glutathione. And the reduced glutathione is able to deal with free radicals better. So that's kind of like how MSM is actually working when it comes to the glutathione effect.

So when she talks about it binding to mercury, what do you think about that?

Yeah, so that's part of the detoxification idea of glutathione. MSM specifically can work as a chelating agent because of its molecular structure. It can readily bond with a lot of different chemicals. And that's why it can actually act as something that can remove heavy metals. And other toxins from the body. Unfortunately, using MSM as like a detoxification strategy can be dangerous for some of the reasons that I talked about when I interviewed Dr. Dan Pompa in terms of just dumping a whole bunch of sulfur into the body and using that as a way to free up heavy metals. The problem is it frees up heavy metals, but it can also cause them to simply recirculate and get redistributed to other tissues, including the brain. So I'm not as big a fan of MSM as something like the, you know, like Dr. Pompa and I. The one that we talked about was cyto detox as being, you know, a strategy for detoxification of heavy metals that doesn't cause this issue with sulfur based metals crossing the blood brain barrier after they've been bound up to something like msm. So you need to be careful with using copious amounts of MSM for something like a detox. But that's not to say that there aren't a lot of other benefits with using sulfur based compounds in smaller amounts as like a daily tonic. So the cool thing about MSM is you get this detoxification effect if you're using it in smaller amounts. I don't really think it's much of an issue. But in larger amounts, and especially if you've got high amounts of mercury, you'd probably be better off with something like this cyto detox stuff. But MSM is also known as the beauty mineral because it helps you produce a lot of collagen and a lot of keratin for healthy hair and healthy nails. And so it's good for that, it's good for, like I mentioned, fighting off inflammation. And so if you've been very, very beat up after a workout, getting some type of food that has MSM or using one of these organic MSM powders that you can find can be helpful as well. And MSM is found in or sulfur brace Precursors that are like MSM are found in a lot of stinky foods like garlic and onions would be another example. Eggs have some amount of sulfur in them. So there are ways that you can get a lot of these MSM like components from food.

And what would be, you recommend a smaller amount, what would be a small amount, similar amount to take each day.

As far as dosage of msm, most of my dosage now just comes from about a couple of quarter size dabs of this magnetic clay magnesium lotion that I put on my body. So I'm getting more of like a, like a transdermal absorption. But the general recommendations for MSM dosage is one teaspoon. That's about four grams for every 100 pounds of, of body weight. Right? So if you weigh 150 pounds, you'd take about one and a half teaspoons. And so that, that would give you thesethese sulfur precursors. But again sulfur is gonna come in eggs, you're gonna find it in fish, you're gonna find it in broccoli, garlic, whey protein isolate. Not to kick that horse to death. That's also got a lot of glutathione precursors and sulfur in it. So you can go take advantage of that fire sale on whey protein if you want other sulfur based precursors. But ultimately I would be a bigger fan of using something like the cyto detox than I would the MSM for like a metal detoxification just because of the issues with the crossing over the blood brain barrier once this stuff is bound to the metal. So I would be kind of careful with using it as like a chelating detoxification agent but like smaller amounts on a daily basis. But of that or any other sulfur rich food you should be, should be fine with. But the one thing that you should know is that using higher amounts of MSM can cause some constipation. So that's something you'd want to be careful with as well. You know, work in some magnesium or whip out the old squatty potty if you start using MSM in higher amounts. But ultimately, yeah, like a good organic msm, having that around in case you get like head injury or head damage. I'm a fan of that. If you're not getting a lot of sulfur based foods, supplementing with MSM can be helpful. But I wouldn't recommend using a whole bunch of MSM for something like a metal detox. I'd recommend something like the cyto detox for that and Cyto detox. Our link for that if you want to go read about it or watch the video about it, is BenGreenfieldFitness.com CYTO or I'll also link to this and some of the MSM powders that I like. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey Ben and Rachel, this is Randy from Los Angeles. My buddy Jonathan and I work out together. We are both suffering from different injuries. I have tendonitis and he's got a pulled muscle and we were debating or discussing which of the peptides that you've recommended in the past would be appropriate for each of us. I'm wondering if you could tell us the difference between BPC157 and TB500 in terms of their uses. Where would it be appropriate or the most efficacious to use BPC157? And where would be the best for what injuries would be the best use of TB500?

Thanks. Sounds like Randy and John are pretty messed up.

Yeah. A couple of interesting injuries between them.

Yeah, maybe. Maybe this is a clue, Randy and John, that if you. If you're working out together and Randy you have tendonitis, and John you have a pulled muscle, maybe you guys should. Should adjust the workout a little bit, perhaps make some. Make some mild adjustments in whatever it is that you're doing. But yeah, BPC157 and TB500, these are not aliens or alien spaceships. They are.

They do sound a little bit like alien spaceships.

They're peptides. So a peptide is just a sequence of amino acids. You know, I mentioned how chlorella has a peptide in it earlier. And a sequence of amino acids just means that you've got like, like valine and glutamine and alanine and propylene and all sorts of things just kind of like strung together in a sequence of carbons and hydrogens and nitrogens and oxygens. And so the name, the title, typically refers to the number of different amino acids that you'd find in a peptide sequence. So BPC157 actually stands for body protecting compound. BPC. Body protecting compound. They call it that because it's found in our body's own gastric juices in very small amounts where it serves to protect and to heal the gut. And what they found initially, you know, bodybuilders and bro science found this, and now it's kind of something that they've done a lot of medical research on for a variety of conditions, including healing tissue is if you get the super concentrated version of BPC and somehow get it into your system or like take it orally or inject it into an injury site, it can actually promote a huge amount of tendon healing and ligament healing and soft tissue healing and even cause mobilization of like, white blood cells into an area to reinitiate a healing process in, like, an old injury that has a bunch of scar tissue in it. And you can even take it orally, like literally, like take BPC and mix it with water and drink it to produce a therapeutic effect on things like inflammatory bowel disease and ulcers and all the things that you would expect, you know, a body protecting compound found in gastric juice to do. So it's almost like an unfair, magical compound you can put into your body. Which is probably why most peptides are banned by the World Anti Doping association and by USADA and by any governing body for sport. As a matter of fact, BPC157 is one of the only peptides that is actually not banned by wada. I don't know why. I imagine that they probably will ban it. There's just so many peptides out there that maybe they haven't yet added BPC157 to the banned list. But the way that it works is you can't order this from a supplement website. It's not sold and acceptable for human consumption by the fda. So you order it from like a, like a laboratory chemical website. Like Peptides Warehouse is one example. And I have a big article on BPC157 that I'll link to in the show. Notes that has some. Some sources for BPC and also complete instructions for how to mix it. But the basic idea is you order it and it comes in like a. It's like a little white powder, comes in a vial. And then you order what's called bacteriostatic water, which is like just a sterile form of water, and you mix the water in small amounts in with the bpc and then you'll use an insulin syringe. And BPC in any of these peptides are very, very fragile, but you draw the BPC up into the syringe and a general dose is typically about 200 to 800 micrograms, which is generally for an insulin syringe that holds a CC, for example, you're going to inject like 1/4 to 1 half of an insulin syringe and you simply inject either subcutaneously by pulling the skin away, or you inject intramuscularly by going directly into the muscle. Or even just literally, you can use an insulin syringe and just spray it very slowly into your mouth if you want to use oral absorption. And the peptide will act to heal either the area that you injected into, or if you take it orally, it's just got. Almost got like this systemic killing effect.

So why is it not for human consumption?

There's just not enough studies behind it to. To make them approve it as something that would be considered like a supplement or a food. And so, you know, it is one of those kind of like, proceed at your own risk type of compounds. But at the same time, there are reams of studies, many of them in rodents, that show everything from healing of tendons to healing of periodontitis to healing of irritable bowel disease. So there's a lot of decent research behind it, in my opinion. I use it. I have a vial of BBC157 in my refrigerator right now.

Grow an extra arm?

Not yet, no. Or an extra tumor? No. But I'll inject it. Like, I've been injected into my ankle, for example, this month, because I got a pretty nasty ankle sprain during my last Spartan race. And I've been trying to kind of nurse the ankle back to health. So what I've been doing is I'll use the BPC157 and then I slap. So I inject with the BPC157, then I slap. Electrical muscle stimulation on. I just do this before breakfast. So I sit with my foot up on a chair during breakfast with this device called a Mark Pro, which develop. It causes, like, electrical muscle stimulus stimulation to kind of like drive the BPC deeper into the tissue. So. So that's BPC 157. That's what it is. That's how it works. And it's basically just a peptide. Now, TB500 is also a peptide, but it's a different peptide. It's not known as body protecting compound. TB stands for thymosin beta. So thymosin beta. Actually, when. When you look at the research that has been done on it for building new blood vessels or for building new muscle tissue fibers, like, even causing you to have, like, muscle gain or new blood cell production or cell migration, there's a. There's even more research behind the potency of this TB500 for wound repair and tissue healing than there is on BPC157. So it's almost like BBC157, but a little bit stronger than that. But the actual. I mean, you get it in a powder, you reconstitute it using bacteriostatic water. It's kind of like the same way that you would use it in terms of injecting, et cetera. The only difference is that TB500 appears to be a little bit more versatile, appears to be able to travel at longer distances through tissues. And especially when it comes to muscle tissue and wound healing and regeneration of blood vessels, it appears to actually be more powerful than BPC157. However, it's also banned by the World Anti Doping association and completely banned in sport. And anytime you want to Go see if something is banned. The best website is there's a website called globaldro. G L O B A L D R O. And if you go to globaldroe.com you can, you can type in like any sport that you play and what country that you play, you know, whether it's like, you know, whatever. I compete in the sport of triathlon for Croatia. And you can, you can find anything that would be banned for that sport. And TB500 is, is definitely banned by, by world sporting organizations for, for, you know, the use of sports. So you can't use it if you're doing like Ironman triathlons or, you know, Spartan races or anything else that would be considered a World World Anti Doping association sanctioned sport. But if you're just, you know, average Joe off the street wanting to heal muscle faster, I'd say that TB500 would be even a better choice than BPC157. And I have an article on both. I have an article called how to use BPC157. I have another article called how to use TB500. And I'll put a link to both of those in the show notes if you want to read them and kind of see like pictures of how to inject, how to mix, etc.

So TB500 is a little bit stronger than BPC157. TB500 is also not for human consumption, but there's more research on it.

Yep, exactly. So as long as you're willing to treat yourself like a cute little rat or a horse, you just buy it from these, from these websites that sell things, you know, not intended for human consumption but for research, which by the way is common practice among like bodybuilders, etc. To just, just buy the stuff off of websites like that. But yeah, I mean, as with online foreign overseas pharmacies, proceed at your own risk when you're purchasing things to inject into your body. And I in no way endorse injecting laboratory chemicals into your body. However, I can personally attest to the fact that I have healed injuries extremely quickly injecting BPC157. While I will admit that, you know, there's not reams and reams of long term human studies on it. And yes, I may still spring a tumor out from the bottom of my foot, I think the healing effects are pretty dang cool. And concerning the fact that your body makes it anyways, in your gut, I'm not super duper concerned. So grab your needles and shoot up kids. There you have it. Well, Rachel, now that people know how to boost their dopamine levels and blend their foods without damaging, they know what to keep in their glove compartment in.

Case they get a head injury.

Horrible head on collision. They know how to inject strange chemicals into their bodies. I think we should now give people a chance to win some swag. What do you think?

I think that's a great idea.

All right, so this is the time of the show where if you have spread the good karma and you've gone to itunes, which helps this show up tremendously. If you go to itunes and you leave a five star review and say something nice, it really does help to increase our ranking in itunes so that we can be the top ranked podcast in itunes, which of course is the end all and the meaning of life. But anyways, if we read your review on the show and you hear your review read on the show, all you need to do is email gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com that's gear greenfieldfitness systems.com which by the way, is not going to be greenfieldfitnesssystems.com much longer. Rebranding everything. We have a new name for the company.

I don't even know this yet, you guys. This is the first time.

It's because the US Patent and trademark organization search is not quite done, so I can't yet say that new name.

It's exciting stuff.

Yeah. But anyways, I digress. If you hear your review read on the show and you email and you let us know your T shirt size, we'll send you a sweet gift back full of swag and of course a T shirt. And we have a great review this week From Love to Run2014 left us a five star review called incredible unique content. Rachel, you want to take this one away?

I do. Here we go. I am a huge consumer of podcasts on diet, health and fitness. I'm sure I've spent hundreds of hours soaking up information. A lot of that information is the same thing repeated. Unfortunately. I thought I was basically an expert stuck waiting for new science and research to learn anything new. That is until I discovered Ben Greenfield fitness Podcast. I was so wrong. So wrong. If you're an information junkie for all things with the human bottle body, this podcast is for you. The information he shares is backed and explained clearly with science and much he has tested on himself. My doctor laughs that I treat myself like a living experiment. And with Ben Greenfield, I'm not alone anymore. Going on 15 years or so of debilitating migraines and I Thought I had tried everything. Whatever you have going on, I think that Ben Greenfield will have some things for you to try out or possible triggers to ponder. Also super cool. I found out we live in the same city. You made a friend in Spokane?

I guess I did. It's crazy. That's crazy.

That's a brilliant review.

I actually have a listener in my city. Spokane is not too big. So there you have it. I actually just had a bunch of guys come up to my city and record a podcast here in my home studio, the guys from the Mind Pump podcast. So that should be interesting. I'm thinking about doing more podcasting from the home studio so here in my own city. But anyways, that is a fantastic review. I'm glad that you were so wrong stuck waiting for the new science and research to learn anything new. I'm glad that I can now help you learn new things every week. So there you have it. And we have a ton of really cool podcasts and interviews coming down the pipeline. I have been a busy boy because I've been voraciously consuming books and all my travels and all the time I've been spending on airplanes and gotten some really cool authors to agree to come on the show. So stay tuned for even more goodness coming down the pipeline because of all my travels to Canada and to Finland and I've got a big wedding I'm going to down in Kauai and some more hunts I'll be going on. I can't guarantee, Rachel, that you and I are going to have another Q and A, but I think for another like three weeks or so. But in the meantime, if you guys want to leave a question, if you want to access the show notes for anything that we talked about today, from the health habits of famous people to the Biohacker Summit in Helsinki, to my recommendations for increasing dopamine and beyond, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 3:59 thanks for listening in. And Rachel, adios amigos.

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