Exogenous Ketones, Deuterium-Depleted Water, Near Vs. Far Infrared, Scorpion Stings & More! A Special Episode Recorded Live In Panama

Hey, what's shaking, baby? It's Ben Greenfield. And this show is a unique one because it was recorded from the jungles of Panama. I was at a fabulous digital detox retreat called Runga R U N G A in Panama, and we all gathered around one evening and recorded a live Q and A with all of the participants attending that particular event. And we delved into everything from near and far infrared therapy to exogenous ketones to the unfortunate scorpion sting that I sustained and much, much more. Recorded this one with my sidekick at that event, Aaron Alexander of the Aligned Podcast, a roll for and body worker and therapist who is a wealth of knowledge in his own right. And I think you'll enjoy this one. It's a special Sunday episode, so sit back and get ready for some action from Runga in this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

So a lot of the stuff that we can do, these natural things, you don't necessarily need to go out and get the supplement, right? A lot of this stuff is in most of this stuff. Maybe all this stuff I'm not sure we can get just from doing simple things like taking your shoes off, waking up early, checking the sun out, getting in the ocean. Sometimes we think the only type of body work or manual therapy is if it's really deep and really painful. Lymphatic massage is about the weight of a nickel. So as we're working through there to work with the lymphatic glands, you'll blast right through those guys if you do a deep elbow into the groin.

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. Hey, this is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, which is a little bit of a unique podcast because we are recording this bad boy not only in front of a live audience, but also along with my fellow podcaster of the alignment Align. Not align therapy, Just align. No, no, no. Align therapy.

I like how you went sultry when you said align. That was good.

I have a sultry voice. Not as sultry as you, my friend. Introduce yourself.

Aaron Alexander, Align Podcast for people listening to Align. Thanks for Listening. Thanks for tuning in. For people listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness same.

Yes, yes. My apologies to those of you who listen to both our podcasts. You suddenly realize you got totally shorted because you're having to listen to the same podcast episode on both of our respective podcasts. Visual. We are at Runga in Panama. If you don't know what Runga is freaking, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com type in Runga and you will learn a lot because I've interviewed Joe DiStefano about it and I'll put a link to those previous two episodes in the show. Notes. Have you ever interviewed Joe DiStefano about Runga on your podcast?

It's coming up. It's in the makings. Yeah, we're neighbors now.

Okay.

No, it's real talk.

All right. Yeah, yeah, have them over. Play your skin for them.

And Skin Flute podcast.

And we are. We are also not only in front of the ocean. I don't know which ocean this is. This the Atlantic, The Pacific Indian, Gulf of Mexico? What are we at?

I thought this was a lake.

It's the Pacific Ocean. Okay.

This is. All right, the ocean.

We're. We're listening to the lulling sounds of the Pacific Ocean about 9pm at night. Beautiful Sansara Resort. And we've got about 25 fabulous attendees from Runga here circled around us, ready to just slay us. Like, I was gonna say like tiny little Jews in the gladiator arena, but that would just sound wrong for the podcast. I don't know why that came to mind, like a Ben Hur movie or something, but let's go with something else. Like I was a Russell Crowe movie. Like throwing us to the lions was what I was thinking of, which is how that whole.

We mentioned the weeping virtual assistants, but.

Also, yeah, we've already thrown the Russians and the Jews under the bus.

Can't do that.

Okay? They're basically gonna ask us very highly scientific questions and look to us as experts to answer them, because we are experts in underwear sitting on the floor.

Go.

Okay.

Podcast, go.

So that being said, this is a full on Q and A podcast recorded from Panama with or without the assistance of the social lubricant that we refer to as ethanol. That being said, if any of you out there in our live studio audience have questions, then now is the time to jump in and ask them. Otherwise, you get to suffer through and listen to Aaron and I talk about whatever we frickin want, which is probably gonna be Aaron's passion. Burlesque. Dancing and the skin flute or my passion, which right now is whatever drink was the latest one I just got. I think I'm mixing my alcohols. Yeah, and you're dabbling with alcoholism. I've got both heavy amounts of mercury and ethanol circulating in my system. Dinner. Even though the fish is really good. So. Questions, questions, questions. Here we go. First question coming right up.

Coming in hot.

Introduce yourself. Not like your whole life story. Like, we really don't want to hear it on the podcast, just your name and your. Your question. I want to hear your life story later on.

After.

After. I'm Jim Stang from Detroit, and fitness is my life, partly because you inspired it. And I've listened to almost Aaron. He was looking at me, looking at me, not at Aaron. I forget your name almost all 380 of your podcasts. Many, twice. And, Aaron, I can't wait to start listening to all of your backlog as soon as I get home. Appreciate that true inspiration in person. The Beamer's okay. The Beamer is used by tens of thousands of hospitals and elite athletes in Europe. Oh, geez. You wrote your question. You read even NASA. This is going to be a serious question, but I haven't yet heard you talk about it. And the reason I say I've heard all your podcasts but not Aaron is because he might have mentioned it. I don't know.

Nope.

But it. It's changing the face of Europe, and. But it's new to America. What are your thoughts on the Beamer? Yeah, I don't know if it's new to America. I mean, yeah, it's. It's. It's been popping up at a lot of, you know, like the biohacking conferences is like this giant mat that you lay on or sit on or lounge on or have, like, a special chair made out of their. Their Beamer material that apparently is, I believe, primarily pulsed electromagnetic field frequencies. And I love the idea of being able to just lie on a giant mat of pemf. There is a host of research on PEMF for everything from healing stress fractures more readily to giving you a very similar effect, as if you were earthing or grounding and getting in touch with that 7.8Hz frequency that the Earth emits. We tend to see geomagnetic frequencies around the globe range from anywhere from 3 to 100 hertz. And by walking along the beach out here, smelling the ocean, being out in the forest, camping, laying on the ground like. Like we're getting exposed to. To a lot of these fields, but the idea behind the Beamer is it's bringing that kind of technology into our homes or into our offices, something we can lay on or sleep on. I like the idea, but I personally travel a lot, and because of that, you know, I don't really travel a lot of mat. I even have, like, a grounding and earthing mat at home that I don't travel with just. Just because I. I travel really light. Like, I don't check any bags. So, like, in my bag over there by the table, I actually have the same technology that. That is used in the Beamer, right? So I can generate a 3Hz frequency, up to a thousand hertz frequency, but it's a square that big, Right. Their technology is patented, and no one else can use what they have. It's pulse electromagnetic field frequencies. They might have an actual frequency that's patented. And I don't know what. I don't know what that actual frequency is, but. But, like, there is. So, like, just go to. Go to pubmed and do a search for pamf and you'll find a host of research that has existed far before Bemer patented their technology. Now, at the same time, I've used Beamer mats I've laid on them. You feel fabulous afterwards. You feel as though they're a great tool to recover your body. But they are kind of. Can be kind of bulky for travel. I don't personally have one at my house. The way I do it is I like to get infrared negative ion therapy, and PEMF all at the same time when I'm at home. And the way that I do that is I use what's called an earth pulse, and I put it underneath a biomat, and I do that while wearing a giant aluminum foil hat with. No, I'm just kidding. But. But that's. That's what I do is, is I use a Biomat combined with an earth pulse, and then I travel with something called a flex pulse, which generates a huge range of frequency. So I can literally just like, play it like a dj, right? I can set it for sleep or anxiety or, you know, muscle recovery. I put it on freaking Scorpion staying at 10-100 Hz the other night. So it's pulsing back and forth between the two frequencies. So the Beamer is cool. Good research behind it. I just disagree. That's like, the only way to get PEMF therapy. So. Aaron, quit hogging the microphone.

I don't really have anything to say about that.

Yeah.

Next question.

Yeah, there we go.

Easy. I feel like you nailed that.

Thank you. Yeah. All right, next. Next question. Next question. Here we go. Introduce yourself. Hello, I'm Angela Marie from San Diego. And tell us your life story. No, I'm just kidding. My question is, I know you've talked a lot about ketones on your podcast. Exogenous ketones are becoming very mainstream. A lot of people who don't currently have their diet, healthy, lifestyle in check, they're starting to take these exogenous ketones. Is there anyone that this could actually be hurting instead of helping? Aaron, you think people should be eating ketones? What are your thoughts on this?

I think I trust your thoughts on this subject. I'm looking forward to it. And I think that with anything, when we're isolating specific parts out of, you know, say, you know, any type of food, like we use the analogy of isolating pectin instead of eating the apple. You know, anytime that we're doing that, I think the short term, like right now, caprylic acid is a big thing. MCT oil, you know, and so we're doing so much and it's like the hot sexy in our industry, it's a hot, sexy thing to be utilizing. But the long term effects, we end up finding that out in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years. So anytime we're isolating an individual component out of something that was coming as a whole, and we've been assimilating that for potentially millions of years, I'm always, I just find it dubious, you know, so if I can get something from the whole form, I trust that more. But that's more of an intuition thing. And there's, you know, there's other science around that as well, but that's my sense.

Yeah, and I agree. I mean, you could take a lycopene supplement or get similar benefits from eating like a, like a whole raw tomato. And many would argue superior benefits to the isolated supplement form. Granted, if I'm on an airplane, I'm going to take a multivitamin that has lycopene in it because I don't want a big old tomato like squashing itself in my travel bag, for example. So there are times when we want to use better living through science. And exogenous ketones could be a time to do that. Right. Like, let's say you're an athlete and for you to get into ketosis via excessive fasting really doesn't jive well with the amount of exercise that you have to do. It's just not enough calories on board. But you want all the benefits of having ketones as a readily available fuel for your diaphragm or your heart or your brain or some of those tissues that burn ketones quite readily. That would be a situation where, and we see everybody from DARPA to Tour de France writers taking advantage of this fact. You would use ketones as a way to both have your cake and eat it too, enter into a state of ketosis without excessive fasting and without excessive calorie deprivation. Most people would benefit more from freaking learning how to fast, learning how to restrict carbohydrates, learning how to maybe not have their, their scone or their biscotti or their gluten free granola for breakfast and kind of like getting their body into a state of ketosis as the way that our ancestors might have while hunting down meat for a few days with limited amounts of food and, you know, lots of, lots of plants and maybe some mushrooms and then some things that allowed them to get food but not enough so that they actually were able to go out of a state of ketosis. So the idea would be use exogenous ketones if you need them, as like a performance aid or as almost like a hack or if you're doing like a long fast and you need a little bit of extra help because your boss doesn't understand that you can't take the day off work because you're going to take three days from eating and you might have a little bit of trouble getting energy. Well, in that case you need to take some ketones or some amino acids, some electrolytes and things are going to keep energy levels up. So there's a time and a place to take them. Right. And I have taken ketones before, like a race, for example, and I've even taken ketones and combined them with glucose. Right. So I have elevated blood glucose and elevated ketones at the same time. Theoretically, you could argue that that is very similar to diabetic ketoacidosis. Right. I'm creating a net acidotic state within my body. That's probably true. There's probably a biological bounce back. If you're constantly using exogenous ketones and eating at the same time with high blood glucose levels, that's not a natural state for the body to be in. Right. It'd be like me saying go out and fast for three days and figure out a way to keep your blood glucose high. Right. Unless you have exogenous ketones, like there's no way that you could actually achieve that metabolic state. So I think you need to be careful. But I think that for folks like athletes or soldiers or people who need to have calories and be in a state of ketosis, they're actually a pretty damn cool tool to use.

I liked what you mentioned just a few days ago of treating your supplements to be like food. So when you're looking at the ingredient list of your food, you want to understand what's inside of that. I think that we can just get ourselves down a slippery slope where we start counting this, countering this supplement with that supplement. It's the same argument that we have in the pharmaceutical industry. For me, personally, when I look at a supplement, I would like to understand what's inside that supplement and see it as, literally, I'm ingesting a food. It's not a cheat. It's a part of my diet. It's my nutrition, it's my food. And that kind of just that. Reframe. I've been pondering on that since you said that, so thanks.

Thank you. I'm glad I went that deep.

You went.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, you said it's deep enough.

For air and have to ponder for three days. Yeah.

It doesn't take much. It doesn't take much.

All right. Wow. Only two questions. Thanks for listening. Oh, another question. Okay. Hey, guys. Maria from New Jersey. I'm near. And by the way, I must say I'm surprised that no one has actually pitched themselves yet. Like, Maria from Maria.com. like, nobody's done that yet. No, I'm just surprised. Yeah, no, go ahead. Near or far infrared? Which is better? Near or far infrared? What is better? Well, I mean, what does the sun give us, Aaron? I mean, it's like both, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. So I always, like, whenever I get a question like that, you kind of sort of look to nature. It's like nature gives, like, talk about the Beamer mat. Right? Nature gives us a host of frequencies, from 3 up to 100, in a few cases, a thousand hertz when we're wandering through nature. Right. So we know from that that exposing ourselves to a wide variety of these PEMF frequencies and not just one patented frequency might be better for the body or ketones. Or, like, nature puts us in a place where we're sometimes going to be in a state of ketosis or our body's going to produce ketones. And that's not just by putting beta hydroxybutyrate in our coffee every morning. Right. Or near and far infrared therapy. If we walk out in the sun, the sun's giving us both. Right. And so you can't say, well, near infrared is better than far infrared. You know, what am I going to put in my sauna? What kind of like, freaking little tent am I going to build in my office that I saw this cool biohacking symposium and you know, and you know, am I going to go with this special lamp or that special lamp? I would expose yourself to as many different varieties of biologically natural light as possible. So like, you know, like a joov lamp over here to our left that would produce near and far infrared. But you know what? You're screwed if that's your only light because you're missing out on what uva, uvb, who knows what all those other frequencies are that the sun emits that we haven't even discovered yet to be biologically beneficial for the body. So the answer really is neither, right? Like, so I have a far infrared sauna, but I use a near infrared lamp. I go out in the sun for. I try to go out for a copious amount of time when the sun is shining every day. So I mean, near infrared, good for skin, collagen health, doesn't penetrate quite as deep, from what I understand, as far infrared does, which would be better for growth hormones, testosterone, athletic recovery. We're still missing out on the vitamin D benefits, which we're going to get more from some of the UVB exposure with some of the uva. So the answer is yes. Give me all of it.

It feels like with all these more myopically focused questions, or us focusing on near infrared, far infrared. It feels like a similar thing that both Ben and I went through around bodybuilding. So you start your journey off from a movement perspective of, okay, I want bicep, I want tricep. So what I do is you bicep curls. I do tricep extensions, right? So that's kind of like near infrared, far infrared, right. And then you realize, oh, my God, I actually really want to connect all the dots. And through that process of, say, a snatch or a deadlift or a squat or dance or martial art, anything where it forces integration of the body that puts pieces together that we might not even be shining the science flashlight on. And then maybe again two years, five years, all of a sudden, the science flashlight broadens a little bit and we start putting these dots together. We say, oh, my God, I wish I just went out in the sun every now and again.

Yeah, except for the adductor machine. Everyone should own the adductor machine. Yeah, the one with the thighs that goes in and out.

No, no, I take this, I Retract my previous statement.

Yeah, I mean, if you want good legs and fat loss at the same time, get the adductor machine. All right, let's take another question. And by the way, I'm totally going to use this opportunity to say that my drink is empty. I'm just saying I'm leaving Panama in a few hours. I would love to have, like, some kind of a chocolatey colada smoothie, something. Look at that. I just got myself a drink bottle. See that? See how I use podcasting to. To get myself free boost?

We've got an elite athlete here.

Oh, my gosh. This. Coming up. What was my favorite. My favorite drink of the week? Is that what you said are my favorite part of the week? Because they're probably. They're probably the same. My fit. My favorite part of the week was. Was learning how to surf like a champ, kind of more than I. Than I used to be.

I witnessed it. All right, we got a question.

Here we go. Danny from. You can, too. And my question is with the new year. You can, too. Is that like a city? It's a small city in Saskatchewan. Oh, okay. You can, too. It sounds like a spaceship.

I like that.

Okay, so my question is, with the new year coming up, you see a lot of New Year's resolutions coming up. So my question is, what advice would each of you give somebody who's looking to form a new habit? Oh, boy.

Yeah.

Well, I can tell you my best trick for forming a new habit, but it's not very advanced. I put a calendar on the fridge, because you know what? I open the fridge every freaking day and it's in front of me. That, or I'll put it on my desk, which is another place I go every day. I will sometimes use Evernote as well, especially when I know it's going to be a heavy travel period of time for me when I'm not going to be in front of my own fridge. And I use little X mark, check, mark, and I write down exactly what that habit is. Right? So right now, I'm completing a Tai Chi gong, meaning I'm going 100 days doing five minutes of Tai Chi every morning, which is basically when I get out of bed. Next to my bed in the morning, I'm doing kind of like a swaying, circular Tai Chi motion. And, you know, Paul Check challenged me to do that on the last podcast we recorded together, and I've been doing it. The checklist is actually on my refrigerator at home, and I make little checks each time that I do it. I'VE been doing it in my gratitude journal. And then when I get home, I transfer those from the gratitude journal onto the fridge. So for me there's gotta be pen to paper or you know, pen to chart on the fridge for me to form a new habit. For me, there's something magical about writing it down and checking it off. And there's that human psychology of checklists. Right. That we all love. Yeah.

I just read because I'm reading the five minute journal which just got from here, which is fantastic. So 85%, apparently of all New Year's resolutions.

It's a really boring journal to read because it's like day one, day two, day three, let's scratch that. Day four, day five. I just read this book in one.

So a part of what I, what I got out of there is. So I was just looking. It was 85% of all of our New Year's resolutions they have not working out. Right. And so with that, I think a big part is we end up setting too high of goals, you know, and so I think just having those little bit of rewards, like something that people have talked about quite a bit is the just like making your bed, you know, something to kind of keep you in this place of feeling like you're gaining good momentum. We do that a lot when we go see doctors or chiros or physios or whoever it may be and they focus on what's wrong with your body. So you go into this place and you want to be liberated and feel good and fix your knee and you come out feeling dependent on that thing. You feel broken. So if we can start to feed some of those little victories, all of a sudden we gain momentum off of that. Something that I will do with myself is just start it off with five minutes. If I'm looking to meditate for an hour. We don't start there. We start. It's like, shoot, I was just grateful for my meal today. Those little things like that felt good. I did a little bit of yoga that felt good. And then eventually you start to change your perception of yourself. I'm a person that gets things done as opposed to. I'm a person that fails repeatedly. I start things and then I stop. I start to habituate that self perception.

Yeah. The funny thing is websites like, is it Snapchat that uses this to their advantage where they, like people don't like to close that loop. Do you know what it's called? You're laughing out there in the audience. Do you remember what Snapchat calls that? Snapchat has this thing where people on Snapchat will make it a point to communicate with each other every day on Snapchat. And if you're the person who closes that loop or breaks that chain, then you fail. Essentially, it's this human psychology that we want to accomplish the same. It's like all of us here at this digital detox retreat, we're closing the loop of making sure that we keep all those little red notification marks and messengers in Facebook checked off. But that's human psychology. We want to go in there and check that check mark, check that list so it can work for or against you. And a lot of these social media companies, they realize that aspect of human psychology that we actually do love to get rid of the little red notification mark on our phones or in or.

In Facebook and just hacking out like Bruce Lee quote that everyone's probably heard too many times. We want to hack away the superfluous. Right? It's about subtraction, not addition. As I think that so many of us coming from, like, just looking at how you do anything is how you do everything. When you look into your laptop, when you open that, that screen up and it's bombarded with 67 different tabs, to me, that stresses me out immediately, you know, so if we're looking to create bigger change in our realities, whether it's our movement thing or whether it's, you know, whatever it may be, start looking at your laptop, you know, start looking at the organization of your room, start looking at the organization of your fridge, we can start to make little micro changes around our reality and then from there that spills into the macro. But self perception is a big thing, you know, and so words, we don't really give a shit about the words that we say as much as we care about the actual reality that we see. So just making those physical material changes, you end up again, more momentum.

Amazing. So this podcast is brought to you by. Should we make up a sponsor? This podcast is brought to you by Aaron Skinfluit, Scott Dahli's drum Joov. I guess we got a lot of joovv lights around here. My ukulele and whatever this horrid spawn of Satan. Drink.

Drink.

Joe DiStefano just brought me. It tastes like a glass of vodka with some brown thing added to it to make it look like an actual drink.

That's camel semen.

Yeah, camel semen. Camel semen. Biodynamically favorable, highly absorbable protein.

We've been drinking it all week.

I like me some camel semen. All right, another question, Another question. All right, here we go.

That was a commercial break.

That was that. We set our. We said all of our sponsors, we had the skin flu, the camel semen juve. Okay. Hey, Ben, this is Trent Pokey from Canada.

Question for you around lightheadedness and dizziness.

So do you have any recommendations or ways to prevent lightheadedness from dizziness, just from general standing up or, like, rolling.

On the ground, doing somersaults and things like that? And really what causes it as well.

Quit drinking so damn much comes to mind? Alcohol, I mean. All right, that's it. Well, nobody left. Okay. Nothing that fell flat. Nothing. Nothing. Wow, tough crowd. You know, in most cases, what you're looking at is either a sodium potassium imbalance or aldosterone depletion or something else that is affecting blood pressure, right? Some imbalance of hormones responsible for diuresis or for water retention or for sodium retention. So there are tests that you can do for that. I mean, you can get like a blood electrolyte balance test for your sodium, potassium, chromium, red blood cell magnesium levels, and actually see if you have identifiable imbalances. You can also do what I did when I was, like, a heavily competing athlete, specifically an ironman, right? We do a lot of sweating for a long time each day. I would lay awake at night, my heart would be pounding in my ears, and I couldn't figure it out until another athlete told me, hey, same thing happened to me. And I started putting a bunch of sea salt in water at night. And so I started doing that. And, you know, now you guys see me here, like, what do I have? My, my. My cute little bag that I pull out at the table at dinner every night here I have this bag of salt, right? Like in this case, like, Kona black salt. And I just, like, travel everywhere with salt. And if I don't travel with it, I'll, like, find a cool little local shop and just buy their salt. And if I don't have that, I'll go up to the restaurant, even if they have, like, just regular, iodized, you know, regular old table salt at the table. And I'll be like, hey, you don't need, like, kosher salt or rock salt back there at the bar. So I'll get my hands on, like, some of the better salt that doesn't have as many fillers added to it. And I. I just use copious amounts of salt. And since I started doing that and really being causing the amount of minerals in my diet, oh, by the way. Thank you, Joe. My. My. My charger, by the way, is plugged in. Sorry. All right. This podcast is also brought to you by my errand boy, slash bitch, Joe Stefano. So, yeah, I do a copious amount of salt consumption. Like, honestly, it's probably to the point where I'm pushing 6 grams or more of salt a day, especially down here. And that's really fixed the issue for me personally, because I used to deal with this a lot, where you stand up and you get dizzy. Athletes go through a lot of minerals, especially. What do you think, Aaron?

From a structural perspective, I'd explore also something like a cranial sacral therapy and see if there could be something inner ear related. So if there's, you know, your. Your face, your skull, it's all fluid floating bones. It's not just. Just, you know, adhesed. There's actually sutures in between there. And so we have. It's called motility. And so as we're sitting here, our face is kind of expanding outward and expanding upward and expanding outward and expanding upward. This is something that I would look at as well. On top of, from a nutritional perspective, is also from actually a structural perspective. So I might go see a cranial sacral therapist or an osteopath or somebody like that. That's a thought.

Sorry. Quick underwear adjustment. I want to make sure. No, no flesh pops out from my pink banana boxers I'm wearing on this podcast. Even though it's not a video podcast. Probably wouldn't matter.

It's brought to you by Ben's Moose Knuckle.

Yep, that's right. Ben's Moose Knuckle, visual sponsor of this podcast. All right, what else do we have out there for questions? Great question, Trent, by the way. Yes, we have a question from Amelia, our local raw, dark chocolate. Funny story about Amelia is we. We, the staff here, technically did not have, like, our meals catered for us on the weekend. And so Joe and Amelia disappeared into town the other night, and. And they. They went out there with. With a few friends, including Scott Dolly, who's been on my podcast before. And Scott came back. I'm talking with him. I'm like, well, where. Where did Amelia and Joe go? He's like, oh, they're up in the. They're up at Joe's place making dinner. I'm like, oh, they're making dinner because they invited me over for dinner. So. What. What. What'd they get? He's like, oh, you just. Carrots. My carrots? Like, yeah, I got some carrots. His Voice just kind of trails off, completely disinterested. And Emilia's just, like, raw food chef. And I know, though, I know your people, right? And I know that probably what I'd walk up there is, like, carrot cheesecake and some amazing, like, carrot souffle and a carrot casserole and some, like, giant carrot like. Like. Like brick that you made to taste like a ribeye steak. And that's all washed down with, like, like, a carrot superfood smoothie. So. And it was actually really good meal. I think you pretty much just took a bunch of vegetables and drowned them in coconut butter. But either way, it was amazing, so thank you. Salt. Yes, and sea salt. Honestly, sea salt and coconut butter added to anything. Just, like, brilliant. Plus, her. Her touch and amazing chopping skills.

And then I proceeded to pour the juices from the pan into my mouth.

There's nothing better.

It was. Yeah, it was legit.

Yeah. There's pretty much drinking coconut butter and orgasms. Those are the two best things in life, I'm pretty sure. All right, what's your question, Amelia? Oh, yeah, you got to come up to the microphone. Thank you for the kind words. Get closer. Top three tips for scorpion bites. Yeah. Such a random, non applicable question for, like, the general audience. We could probably make it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, opening the kimono. I got bit by a scorpion the first night I was here and was like. I couldn't move my leg the first day and was, like, lying awake in bed crying because I didn't have any cell phone reception, could get a hold of anybody. So I'm just, like, laying there, like, what just bit me and am I gonna die? Are the two things going through my head. And finally I wake up in the morning and take, like, an hour to hobble the 200 yards to the. To the resort and walk in. And they. They proceeded to engage in some pretty good TLC for me. The things that helped the most for my scorpion bite that would be helpful to make this applicable to the general audience for any stings, bites, wounds, etc. Was I made a poultice which draws the poison out of the wound. I used. I used a blender, and I made a poultice using a coffee filter and ginger root and fig leaf, and I blended all that together with hot water. I placed it on my knee, and I just let it sit over and over again on my knee to draw the poison out. Number two was frankincense essential oil. Who knew? Some crazy old house cleaning lady here at the resort who is apparently well versed in Mexican folklore. I mean, Panamanian folklore. She gave me frankincense oil. So there's that. And then like so, so lymph massage. Lymph massage. I had three lymph nodes in my upper femur that literally swelled, this was two days ago, to the size of golf balls. Like, I've never actually, I think I commented to you. And I'm like, I was just looking at myself in the mirror. Like my entire right crotch looks like it's like, like looks like an old lady's calf. Right? Like it's like, it's just like lumps everywhere. And I literally like massaged, massaged all of that out. I like masturbated my femur for a good hour and a lot of it went away. So, yeah, there you go. Poultices, frankincense oil and masturbation. Yeah.

Addition with lymphatic massage. Something you guys can tinker with if you're doing that with yourself. Sometimes we think the only type of body work or manual therapy is if it's really deep and really painful. Lymphatic massage is about the weight of a nickel. So as we're working through there to work with you with the lymphatic glands, you'll blast right through those guys if you do a deep elbow into the groin. So something just to tinker with. Ben had a really beautiful experience where he got to have an intimate experience with the glands up around his groin. Right. And so just in general, you guys, just something to play with. Having awareness of all the varieties of touch are helpful. And we don't always need to go in with grenades in order to create change.

I often fantasize about a deep elbow into my groin, though, I have to say. All right, next question. Question. Anybody in the audience? Don't be shy, come on up. Oh, no. Repeat question. All right, we'll take it. Hello, Angela again. So I've been hearing a lot about deuterium depleted water and I even tried it myself. I felt really good. But it's $10 for a small bottle. Do I really need that? Is spring water enough? What are your thoughts on that? Alright, this might be even more fringe than scorpion bites. DDW or deuterium depleted water is based on the concept that water that is imbalanced is heavy in this isotope called deuterium, which makes it very, very difficult for a cell to properly metabolize water. And the idea is that you do not engage in normal cellular metabolism as efficiently if the water that you're drinking is heavy in this isotope called deuterium. And if you actually analyze a lot of plants and a lot of the produce that we eat nowadays, it is full of deuterium heavy water that can be due to mineral depletion in the soil. Some have argued that it is due to radiation, some that it is due to glyphosate exposure. But the idea is that where the water that we're drinking is very heavy in deuterium and that leads to metabolic deficiencies and some have argued cancer. Not a lot of research on this, this deuterium light water that you would consume to compete with the deuterium heavy water. But there are some pretty compelling studies if you do a search on PubMed for deuterium depleted water and cancer. And there's actually studies in which they have literally reversed stage 4 prostate cancer by giving people, I believe it was for about 12 to 16 weeks, deuterium depleted water three times a day. The stuff is, it's pretty expensive. It's like 10 to 15 bucks a bottle. I've drank it before. You feel pretty good when you drink it. But I asked a few researchers who I respect about this. Dominique D' Agostino probably gave me the best, most informed reply. Dr. Mercola, another guy whose brain I picked about it, basically. And again, you know, Dominique and Joe, my apologies to you if I'm misquoting you on the show. But the idea is that theoretically, if you're in a state of ketosis and you're drinking really good, clean, clear, structured water with good minerals added to it, your body should be able to make its own deuterium depleted water as a byproduct of cellular metabolism. And you shouldn't have to multiple 10 to 15 bottles, dollar bottles of water each day. And I tend to agree with that too. That was, you know, like, I don't think God made the world so that we have to drink a bunch of like super expensive bottled water each day. Yes, there's this idea that we humans have kind of like, you know, more or less up the planet a little bit. And so it could be that, that now we have to kind of like really pay closer attention to the type of water that we drink. But ultimately I have yet to be convinced that's something we need to be spending, you know, 40 to 60 bucks a week on if I got cancer, or 40, 60 bucks a day on if I got cancer. Would I drink it? Honestly, I probably would based on the few research studies I've seen, especially as prostate cancer. And I know people who have or have had prostate cancer who are drinking heavy amounts of deuterium depleted water now. So, you know, it's an interesting thing to explore right now, I'd say. So I would hate to actually end today's podcast episode on deuterium depleted water scorpions. So let's do it. Let's go ahead and take one more question to wrap this bad boy up. Here we go. We've got a volunteer. I'm Stephanie from Alabama, and I want to know what you think about doing intravenous Meyers or B12, you know, type cocktail therapy versus injections and intravenous vitamin C for health versus for as an alternative cancer therapy as an alternative. Can't. You had to throw that in there at the end. The as alternative to cancer therapy thing, that's, that's the tricky. You ever get Myers cocktails, Aaron? Like, IVs?

I have, yeah. But I trust your opinion on this. Okay, this is your question.

All right. Apparently I put more needles into my body there.

Sorry about that.

You know, like the, like the scale for efficacy of everything from glutathione to vitamin C to, you know, all the different B vitamin complexes that are in a Myers cocktail would be taking a supplement that would be like the least effective way or like capsule that you swallow. Next would be like some kind of liposomal or sublingual delivery. Next would be a, some kind of a subcutaneous ejection. Next would be some kind of an intramuscular injection. Next would be actually mainlining it into the bloodstream. Right, Via an IV or a push IV or some method of, of delivering all those vitamins to your body in a, in a more concentrated way directly into the bloodstream. Especially if you have gut issues, right, to where you can't absorb micronutrients quite as well. I mean, like, like there are people who get Myers cocktails. It's like a 90 day difference between that and taking a multivitamin. Right there. There are a lot of people who have claimed to have had better progress compared to chemotherapy with the use of these type of things. I've seen way more evidence with this whole metabolic approach to cancer, right? Like the idea that cancer is a mitochondrial disease, not a micronutrient deficiency disease. So instead of doing like a Gerson protocol or heavy amounts of juicing or IVs, you instead approach it from the standpoint of mitochondrial health. Right? Like hyperbaric oxygen therapy and ketosis and infrared light and sunlight and water, good water. Everything you would normally do to enhance the health of the mitochondria you know, I think that that compared to just like mainlining as many nutrients as you can into your bloodstream is probably gonna put a bigger dent into cancer. Because you gotta look at it this way, the more nutrients you provide to the whole body, the more nutrients you provide into tumors. Right? So technically, just like dumping your body full of readily available metabolic products is, is not necessarily gonna kill cancer for the average person though. I mean, like, you know, speaking from my own personal experience, you feel like Superman after you get a Myers cocktail. You know, even more so if you're like hungover or, you know, you're detoxing or something like that. You know, I went through a period of time last year where I was literally like getting tiny little bottles of Meyer's cocktail and doing self administered push IVs into my left bicep, just like straight into the vein. And I was doing that instead of taking a multivitamin. So just once a week, I just didn't inject all my vitamins. Right. So yeah, I mean, it's kind of like better living through science, right? Like it's a way that you can mainline stuff in your bloodstream and just skip gut absorption altogether. And yeah, I mean it can be effective and I'd say spendy, but if you, if you really need to enhance your micronutrient availability and some people would say, why not just eat plants, right? Like we were talking before, they can be depleted in minerals, depleted nutrients, you know, the way they're grown these days. But yeah, I mean, like, I think there's more pros than cons. Aside from, from the harm to your wallet of doing things like Myers cocktails and vitamin IVs.

So.

Yeah, good question. Well, what do you think, Aaron? Shall we wrap this up?

I think it's time.

I think it is time. There are some sleepy eyes out there. So we are gonna release this as a podcast episode sometime in the very near future. For those of you listening from afar, thanks for tuning in. And for those of you here, thanks for attending and for putting up with our relentless skin flutes and half naked pink banana boxer banter. And Aaron, thanks for co hosting this bad boy with me.

Thank you so much. I will hopefully. Yeah, I look forward to re listening to this. I'm sure once the, once the, the alcohol wears off, it'll sound much different.

It'll sound way more intelligent. Trust me, everything sounds more intelligent the next day, the next morning. So I'm Ben from the Ben Greenfield fitness Podcast along with Aaron Alexander from the Aligned Therapy Aligned Podcast. I keep making it sound more complex than it is from the Align Podcast. And thanks. Thanks for listening. And you can check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com or Aaron, what's your website?

Aligntherapy.com and the previous. That was where it comes from. So you're kind of right. The previous episode that we just released on the Align podcast was with Joe Mercola, who Ben mentioned and Ben introduces the episode because. Because they love each other apparently. So. Yeah. But we get into the conversation around water and even kind of an interesting thing in relation to how your water, cellular water becomes structured, which is more stuff that you guys can pick Ben's brain about after here just upon walking along the beach. So a lot of the stuff that we can do, these natural things, you don't necessarily need to go out and get the supplement. Right. A lot of this stuff is in most of this stuff. Maybe all this stuff I'm not sure we can get just from doing simple things like taking your shoes off, waking up early, checking the sun out, getting in the ocean. We get into that with Mercola.

So that's a wrap. Amazing. That's a wrap. Thanks for listening, folks. Have a healthy week. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.