Fish Oil & Fat Loss, Is The Wim Hof Method Dangerous, The Dietary Cure For Acne And More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show, Fish oil and fat loss is the Wim Hof method dangerous. The dietary cure for acne, how to fix damage from a concussion, how to increase your appetite, 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 a 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.

Rachel, this podcast is going to be absolutely epic today.

More epic than usual.

Why is that more epic than usual? Although the ukulele is conspicuously absent. I am. I know, I'm sorry. I am holding my brand new lucky mug that I got for Christmas entitled. Well, the mug isn't entitled, but the mug actually has the title on it. Coffee Makes me poop. Coffee Makes me poop. That's right.

Who'd you get that off?

I don't even remember if they listen to this podcast. They're obviously gonna be pissed. But it's a brown mug with white font on it. You could probably find this on Amazon. Fantastic mug. Because actually, coffee does indeed make me poop. But this particular cup of coffee I'm drinking, I've added some. Some legal performance enhancing supplements to it. Such as, for example, I've put some. I'm holding my hands, this mushroom hot cocoa. So I put a packet of this in it. I'm going to turn it over and read it to you. It says cacao, cordyceps, guarana and cayenne pepper. So. So it's got a little bit of.

To it spice in it.

Yeah. And we've got also, I put some chaga in here, what's called dual extract chaga, which means the mushroom has been passed through both water and then also through alcohol. So what you get is both components of a mushroom. Like if you just boil mushrooms, you get the beta glucans, but then if you do like an alcohol extraction, you also get what are called the terpenes. And so I dropped a packet of that in there. Put that off to the side here. Oh, but wait, there's more. I'm not done.

Oh, my gosh.

I put some lion's mane in there, too. Remember how we talked about how lion's mane can, like increase blood flow to the brain and enhance cognitive performance. So I put some lion's mane in there, and the lion's mane has a little bit of mint leaf in it as well. So it's a bit of a digestif.

So how does it taste? Is my fundamental question.

Oh, it tastes explosively good. I'll trademark that.

Pun intended.

Yeah, so I put all that in there. But yeah, coffee. Coffee does make me poop. And as a matter of fact, speaking of things that make you poop, every month or so, I do kind of like a little private workshop for the members of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle. You out there, you know who you are walking around with your masked capes. Mass capes, masks and capes, perhaps, is what I meant to say. And I have a ton of stuff we're going. It's all the stuff that doctors and scientifically minded people, skeptics, et cetera, would get completely pissed about if they heard me talking on a podcast. But it's all the stuff I want to talk about anyway. So coming up on this upcoming one, not only am I talking about new ways to poop, and I'm serious, I'm doing an episode on.

It's my favorite topic.

Yeah, magnesium chloride enemas and butyrate enemas. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That was the sound of 8,000 listeners just unsubscribing. I'm also doing, oh, speaking of things you can put up your butt talking about THC enemas, talking about high, high dose fish oil. These are all things that I experiment with and then I talk to folks about them on the show. And it's all stuff that again, like, people would get really angry if they heard me really going into detail about this stuff on the podcast because they wouldn't want their kids giving themselves THC enemas. What else am I talking about? I said high dose fish oil.

And so when's that coming out?

I think we're doing this workshop on February 17th. I'm talking about topical cannabinoids and where they can best be used. And we're even going to include a little bedroom talk on that front. I'm going to talk about something that is legal and that came up in the recent Al Jazeera documentary on anti doping called Buckminsterfullerene C60, which is something that in studies on rats, allowed rats to live up to three times longer. Been experimenting with that, as well as a special form of pulsed electromagnetic therapy that you put over your collar under your collarbone while sleeping to enhance delta Brainwave production. So I possibly have just been stuck inside my house for much too long.

You've got some crazy stuff there. Oh, yes, and also sounds absolutely fascinating.

Adraphanil, which is a legal over the counter alternative to Modafinil. All sorts of things that I'll be talking about. But you can check that stuff out at the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle. But fear not, in today's podcast, there's also some, some real goodies. So what do you think, Rachel? Shall we dive in?

Let's get into it.

News flashes.

So starting out with news flashes, Ben, what have you got for us this week?

Well, I have the Consumer Electronic Show. Have you heard of this?

Oh, I haven't, no.

Yeah. So the Consumer Electronics show is this huge show that I never go to because I'm not a fan of consumer electronics. I know I just talked about putting magnets above my tit. But I'm really not too enamored with walking around constantly connected to devices. Like I've literally hardwired my entire home to eliminate all WiFi and Bluetooth. However, that being said, I do find some of this stuff quite interesting and I'm going to link in the show notes. So folks, go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 343. I'm going to link to this very interesting article that highlighted some of the coolest health and wellness and fitness devices that were showcased at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. So for example, one of the things showcased in this article is something called the peanut. Have you seen this, Rachel?

I haven't, no.

Okay. So the peanut is this little device. It's like the size of a quarter and you can put it in different places in your house or I suppose on your body or on different objects and it gives you information about those things. So for example, for example, you could put it on like a safe or a jewel box or a money box and it will automatically buzz or notify you if someone touches or moves that object.

Isn't that so basically, if your kids are trying to steal some money, you can smack them on the hand.

Yeah.

Or if somebody's like if you have like a hotel room, right, and you set something valuable out and you want to know if the cleaner is messing around, snooping around, you can do that. Here's something a little bit more fitness related. You can put it on like a bottle of supplements or vitamins or pills or capsules or medications or whatever, and it will work with any type of regular old pill container. And then you can Set it up for customizable scheduling. Like al me if I forget to take this on a Tuesday or if I forget to take this every day. And it will make the pill container buzz and alert you when you miss a dose or when you forget to take that particular thing. I know.

Yeah.

It has a smart wireless thermometer in it. So you could put it like in a bedroom, let's say like a baby's bedroom. Right. And it'll alert you if the temperature goes outside a certain range. You could put it in your fridge and it'll send you alert if the temperature goes like our fridge does. Occasionally open it and it's free, frozen, like the milk or something like that, which is super annoying. I don't understand refrigerators. I don't know how refrigerators work, but they freeze stuff sometimes.

Yes, they do.

So it'll do that. You can use it as a sleep monitor and also as an alarm clock. So it'll monitor your sleep and then it will awake you at your best. Optimal sleep time. When you kind of get out of your delta brainwave sleep. A lot of these apps will do that. It'll find when you're just kind of coming out of the deep, deep sleep range in the morning and then boom, it'll wake you up.

It's got to be a better way to wake up than mid sleep.

Does all sorts of things. You can put on keys to help find your keys. So that was one thing that I thought was entering. That one's called the peanut. The Peanut. And again, I'll link to all these if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 343 and I am not.

344.

344 rather 344. I'm glad somebody's on top of things. I'm not financially affiliated with any of these companies, by the way. I just think some of this stuff's cool.

What else you got?

They have the Hydrate Spark Smart water bottle that ensures you're properly hydrated throughout the day by sending messages to your phone from the water bottle, keeping track of exactly how much water that you've had during the day. So if you're one of those people who, like, forgets to drink water.

Struggles. Yeah.

Or if you're. Yeah. Unfortunately, I don't think that I could drink my. My coffee. Makes me poop coffee out of this thing. Maybe I could. I don't know. But it's called the Hydrate H I D R A T. The Spark Smart water bottle. That one's an Interesting one. Here's one. They've got the level device. This is another one that's showcased at the consumer show. It uses your breath to tell you when your body is burning fat. You breathe into it and it monitors. I'm not sure if it's acetone or beta hydroxybutyrate or like ketone bodies of other sorts or what, but you can literally just breathe into it and it'll tell you whether you're in fat burning mode or not.

That's super handy.

That one's called the. The level Levl. It may just measure carbon dioxide to approximate your carbohydrate and your fat burning percentages. A whole bunch of other ones. There's one called the smart sock. So the smart sock is literally a sock with a built in sensor that tells you your cadence, your foot landing, your heart rate, all sorts of things while you are running.

Oh, wow.

So yeah, that's probably not a sock you'd want to wash. I'm not sure. Maybe. Maybe you would want. I don't know how they keep the sock from getting just super gamey if you can't wash it.

So all the information just goes to an app on your phone.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

So all sorts of really cool things. So check out this article. I'll link to it. I only scratch the surface. For all you drooling nerds out there, you want to check this one out. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 344 if you want to check out that article. Another interesting news flash that came across my radar this week. So this was a supplement study. They took this supplement and they gave it to women. In this case, they were using a population of older females. And in this case, they used this particular supplement and they compared it to olive oil, just plain old olive oil as a placebo. And what they found was in these exercising females that they gave this particular supplement to. I know, I'm being super mysterious, aren't I?

So mysterious. I'm on the edge of my seat on purpose.

So it increased their resting metabolic rate by 14%. It increased their energy expenditure during exercise by 10%. It increased their rate of fat oxidation during rest by 19%. It increased fat oxidation during exercise by 27%. It lowered triglyceride levels, which are a big independent risk factor for coronary heart disease, by 29%. It increased lean mass by 4%. It increased functional capacity by 7% with zero changes occurring in the placebo group. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. And do you know what this was?

Well, I'm going To take an educated guess based on the title of this show and say maybe fish oil.

You are indeed correct. So, so they, they gave these ladies 3 grams per day of fish oil. This was over a 12 week period of time. It is important to know that a lot of these fat based supplements like vitamin D and fish oil, you have to take them and allow them to build up over time. Pretty impressive. One of the more impressive studies I've seen on omega 3 fatty acids that you find in fatty fish. Based on this, I hinted that I am experimenting with high dose fish oil and reporting on the results in the next Inner Circle episode. I'm taking about 6 grams per day because gosh darn it, I'm not an older female, I'm a big old strapping boy. So I figured I'll figure I'll double dose with this stuff and throw some enemas and some buckminsterfullerene into the mix.

If one is good, then three is better.

Oh, of course, that's always true. You know that. That's because science says so. Anyways though, really, really interesting and again I've mentioned that there's only a few supplements that I'm constantly experimenting with things but the only things I take regularly are fish oil, creatine, a multivitamin and adaptogenic herbs. And fish oil is definitely, definitely going to stay in my protocol based on the results of this study.

Awesome.

Yeah, yeah. So if you're not taking fish oil already or having fish as a regular part of your diet, you should be.

Vego vegan alternative to.

Yeah, you know chlorella and spirulina has some decent amount of omega 3 fatty acids in it. Walnuts as we mentioned on last week's show of the seeds and nuts that you could eat are not too bad but the EPA in and the, the ALA in seeds and nuts, it doesn't get converted into, into the, the bioactive really helpful form of dha. Very well. And so you may have to bite the bullet and just take it.

We just have to miss out.

Yeah, yeah. Or just become a pesca. A pesca vegetarian or pesca vegan.

A pescatarian Pesca vegan.

Pesca the ancient Indian word for fish. You know, you know what, what vegan means in ancient fun fact.

I don't know.

Crappy hunter. By the way, for those of you listening in Rachel is vegetarian. I am quite vegan friendly and eat a high amount of plants. Ritual is a friend of mine. I in no way have any amount of animosity towards people who eat plants. I just think people who eat plants may benefit from also eating pesca and ovo. Okay, that being said, here is an interesting one that has nothing to do with what we were just talking about, but I thought was really interesting. This guy, Ryan Hall. Do you know who Ryan hall is?

Nope.

Ryan hall is considered to be one of the fastest American distance runners in history. Wow. He's run the Boston Marathon far faster than any American runner. 2 hours, 4 minutes and 58 seconds. He is 33 years old and he just quit. He just dropped out because he had chronically low testosterone levels and adrenal fatigue. Exactly what we talked about last week. So if people are listening in and you want to get your head wrapped around adrenal fatigue and you know what probably happened to a guy like Ryan, go listen to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 343. When I see a story like this, though, it just, you know, this kind of stuff. Yeah. Volume combined with intensity of exercise certainly has been shown to be quite draining on the adrenal glands. It can shift a lot of your vitamin D and your other hormone precursors from testosterone, which is what Ryan turned out to be very deficient in, into cortisol. Because you need cortisol as an inflammatory control. It assists with repairing some of the damage that occurs from something like high volume, intense marathon training. But at the same time, it means you're missing out on testosterone, which is important for life. It's important for life and pleasure. So anyways, though, Ryan hall, by his chronic marathon training and this whole article in New York Times reports how it happened. It appears that he just basically, over a long period of time, drained his adrenals, drained his testosterone, pushed through it, and got to the point where he basically had to quit. The website Slow Twitch recently had an article about a cross country ski guy that this happened to. He got to the point where he couldn't walk 15 minutes without getting out of breath. And it just flabbergasts me the amount of people who will just forge ahead through adrenal fatigue and hormonal dysregulation, when in fact, this stuff is avoidable. It's less avoidable if you're a marathoner or an ironman triathlete, but it's still avoidable with smart training, with close attention to dietary intake, to supplementation, to recovery protocols. But, I mean, it's just. It's sad. I couldn't. I couldn't let this one go by without saying something about it just because it's avoidable.

Yeah. Do you think people aren't fully educated on it and that's why they sort of just see these symptoms and push through them, or do you think it's more that they're just trying to go too hard?

I think it's both. You know, I think that, that a lot of these, you know, a lot of these guys don't necessarily have like, you know, physiology or biochemistry degrees or anything like that, or they aren't doing like, you know, constant blood monitoring, so they can't get their finger on the pulse of what's going on with their hormones or their adrenal glands until it's too late. But, you know, they also don't know about doing things like, you know, smart recovery and perhaps using, you know, passive training protocols that we've talked about on this show before, like, you know, sauna and cold thermal and some of these things that can be used to enhance blood flow on a recovery day, rather than a recovery day being like a two hour run. They don't know about, you know, for example, using high dose vitamin D during tougher training protocols, using adaptogenic herbs to limit the amount of cortisol being produced. They don't necessarily even, you know, tap into. And I know this is gonna gross and out and probably make you puke, Rachel, but they don't know about using things like, you know, liver and, you know, ancestral organ meats and stuff like that to support proper hormone formation. I mean, you know, there's, there's a reason that guys who do the Tour de France eat horse in between stages because of the mitochondria and because of a lot of the hormonal precursors you find in cute little ponies. Anyways, though, it's an interesting article and I just wanted to throw it out there as a word of caution to folks who are out there training with that combination of volume and intensity. Be careful, keep track of your biomarkers, and don't be afraid to really delve deep into, into legal science. You know, you can't get on testosterone supplements or lotions or creams or things like that and ethically compete in sport, but there are other ways that you can support your body, so I had to bring that up.

Oh, and there you go.

By the way, speaking of volume and intensity, I think I confused a lot of people this morning.

Oh, why is that?

Yeah, I posted a brand new post to BenGreenfieldFitness.com announcing that I have been roped into by the good folks over at the Spartan Race Organization to be one of the first people to complete their coveted Spartan Delta. Which means that you go and you do a sprint, a super and a beast Spartan. You do an endurance trifecta, which is the Spartan Agoji. The which is like a 60 hour event in the snow back in Vermont. You do a 12 hour overnight hurricane, hurricane heat, which is literally just like a Spartan at night. Over and over and over again. You do an ultra beast. All these different events. And I decided to hop into this because you did. Yes.

And I thought we were just going with spot and spring.

Let me explain, let me explain. Back off, back off. So first of all, read the article because I go into what? Two reasons. Number one, this new Spartan Delta, Spartan Agoji. And you can check it out if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com agoji that's a G O G E. BenGreenFelFitness.com agogi you can read about what this is, but they're teaching life skills, survival skills, competition skills, social skills, all sorts of stuff over the course of this 60 hour event in Vermont and over the course of a lot of these other events that are part of the Spartan Delta. It's designed to make you a better, stronger, more resilient, more gritty, more educated person. It's not designed to just make you do loops around a race course for an ungodly number of hours as part of some masochistic, pointless feat. So there's that. Second of all, as I just mentioned when talking about Ryan hall, the problem and the overtraining issue and the injury issue and the cardiovascular issue with endurance sports has been shown to be the combination of volume and intensity. For me, the way that I'm approaching these events is I don't plan on going out and doing them hard. All my hard races are going to be like these short, you know, like sprint efforts, you know, stadium races, sprint, triathlon, stuff like that. But for these events, I plan on going out there and operating at low level aerobic intensity, building grit, building resilience, learning new skill sets for survival that will help to make me one of the toughest people on the face of the planet. Will help to make me a stronger man to be there for my family, for my kids, for other people. Will help me to inspire other people, teach other people, go out and do what I do right. Like a big part of what I do is I spend time in the trenches figuring out what works and what doesn't from a training standpoint, a nutrition standpoint, a mental standpoint, you name it. So the goal here is not for me to just go out and like crush myself for hours and hours on end at intensity. So yeah, and I go into this in detail in the post. Go read the post. But that's coming up. It's in like a month. So I've been doing a little more barefoot walks in the snow, let's put it that way. And by the way, a little bit of Wim Hof style training which we are going to talk about in this episode. So stay tuned because that's coming up shortly. But first we bring. What do we bring to folks, Rachel?

What do we bring to folks, Ben?

That's the special announcements. Boom.

It's time for the special announcements.

Special announcements.

Rachel, this podcast is brought to you by the cutest two little seven year old boys on the face of the planet.

Stop it. River and Tara.

Yeah, well, specifically it's brought to you by their new joy. They're actually upstairs right now as we are podcasting. They're upstairs cooking a multi course Israeli inspired dinner. They're cooking Israeli cuisine upstairs. They've been cooking almost every single night. They get up in the morning and they make themselves these elaborate breakfasts. But their new thing now is they're taking these meal kits that would get shipped to our house and they're learning how to cook using these meal kits. Like a couple nights ago they made get this autumn risotto with butternut squatch sage and pepitas. I don't even know what a pepita is and my kids are making it. Okay, well there you go. You know.

Where are the packs coming from?

Okay, so there's this company called HelloFresh. They are a sponsor of today's show and they ship these kits to our house. They ship these HelloFresh meal kits to our house. The kids open them, they make the meals, they show them exactly how to make them. It's like Lego kits for cooking. And I mean they're not designed for kids, but I mean they're working.

Your kids are like super smart.

And I've talked before about how I love for people to learn how to cook. And they deliver all this stuff to your doorstep in this special little insulated box so you don't get food poisoning or worms or anything like that crawling around in your, in your pepitas. But basically what they're offering all of our listeners is if you go to hellofresh.com, just like it sounds, hellofresh.com and you enter code Ben, they give you 35 bucks off your first week of this meal kit delivery service. So super cool service. I love this kind of stuff. You get to pick which meals you get. Like if you want to go gluten free or dairy free or healthy or I don't know, Japanese. You know, kind of like when you get on an airplane, whatever, you get to pick. So there you have it. Hellofresh.com but that's not all, Rachel. That is not all. No.

What else we got?

So this podcast is also brought to you by that same. Those mushroom packets, remember I was talking about? I put them in my coffee. They're all made by Four Sigma Foods. And what they're offering any of our listeners is they'll send you a full box of all their best selling coffees like this hot cocoa. I talked about some of these more hardcore mushroom products like the cordyceps and the chaga and the Reishi and the Lion's mane. They'll send you a big sampler pack and it is, this is actually a pretty Good deal. It's 10 bucks. They'll send you this full sampler pack and the special URL they're giving all of our listeners. And by the way, my apologies to everybody in Ukraine and Japan and Australia. This is USA only unfortunately, but it does include free shipping to the usa. So my apologies to everybody else that the folks at Four Sigma are racist. But that being said, you go to 4SigmaFoods.com sample. That's 4SigmaFoods.com Sample you spell out the word 4F O U R SigmaFoods.com sample I'll put a link in the show notes too. You can get this stuff. Well worth it. This is like my new infatuation. I have a big like a section of my pantry devoted to just shrooms. Shrooms. By the way, have you ever done like psilocybin or, or any of these more mind altering mushroom compounds?

I haven't. No. Have you?

No.

Are you going to?

Both that and ayahuasca are on my list. List. However, I don't. A lot of people do this stuff because they want to go soul searching or have some kind of like creative breakthrough or find themselves. And that's my, my barrier to entry is I have no deep desire to go find myself. I'm pretty happy.

Yeah.

With myself and me and I just don't. I'm not convinced that it's worth doing just for fun, for the sake of it.

Yeah.

For giggles. Maybe it is. I don't know. Maybe it's a lot of fun to just go do ayahuasca and throw up in the Jungle.

I'll be super interested, Ben, for you to do it and see if anything kind of hit you upside the head that you didn't expect would happen, you know.

No, maybe I'll go pro it.

Yeah.

Yeah. For all of our listeners.

Post it. Yeah, post it on YouTube. We'd love to see.

Yeah. Okay, so one other thing that has nothing to do with throwing up in the jungle. That is our final sponsor. So our final sponsor is Harry's. And I want to point out something I haven't really talked about too much with Harry's. If you like to own nice things, Harry's has this razor and it costs $20, actually. If you use. If you go to Harrys.com Ben. And use discount code Ben. Actually, you don't even have to go to Harrys.com Ben. Just go to Harrys.com and use discount code Ben, you can get one of these razors called a Winston. So I own one. I own one of these $20 razors. You get five bucks off. So $15 for you. It has. It's basically an ergonomic razor. If you've never held an ergonomic razor, you are missing out on an essential part of life. And shaving, no matter what body part you are shaving, it makes it better. It's like holding. Have you ever held, like, a really nice pen? I have, like, it. Or like a craftsman's knife that's just like, it feels like weighted in your hand just perfectly. That's the way that these blades are built. Like, I take it, I take it out of the drawer and it just. I don't know, compared to, like, the cheapo drugstore brands, it just, it has this feel that makes you just want to shave. I just want to shave and then grow the hair back right there and shave again. I could stay in my bathroom all day. Shave. Some people get addicted to drugs. Some people get addicted to alcohol. I get addicted to my razor. I have a love affair with my razor. My wife is jealous. So this one, it's made from precision grade aluminum. It's called the Winston. The Winston. And so I would just. I would challenge any of you out there. Go try a Winston. You can even add engraving to it. I think I mentioned this last week. You know, if somebody's stealing. If your loved one is stealing your razor and shaving their crotch with it, you can. You can add engraving to it just so they know when they're shaving their crotch with it that it. That it is yours. Send them on a guilt trip. So. So check that out. Harry's.com and use discount code. Ben, A few other quick special announcements that I wanted to bring up before we jump into this week's Q and A. Of course, the Early Bird premiere tickets for the best health conference of the year. At least what I consider to be the best conference of the year, Paleo fx. Those are on sale and you can get them@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Paleo 16. That stands for 2016. BenGreenfulFitness.com Paleo 16 you need to be there. If you're not there, you're a loser. There, I said it so.

Oh, said it out loud.

So get your tickets, get your tickets.

Don't need to be Paleo. Just come on down.

Don't need to be Paleo. You can bring your baguette, but. But check it out. BenGreenWellFitness.com Paleo16 that's May 27th through the 29th, but before that, March 12th, New York City. I'm speaking in New York City. A full day of talks with me and my fellow podcaster, the nutrition diva. You ever listened to her?

I have, yeah.

Yeah, she's good. She's good.

She's like a super fun day.

Yeah, she's like an opera singer and she's also a nutritionist and a podcaster and she's really cool and smart. So that one includes like priority seating, a VIP tote bag, a nice breakfast, really kind of like an intimate affair. So you can get it that@BenGreenfieldFitness.com whole life that is BenGreenfulFitness.com whole life. That one's March 12th. That other one I mentioned, the PaleoFX. That's May 27th through the 29th. Are there other events happening? Well, yes, there are.

Austin, Texas, right?

Yeah, yeah, there are other events, but we're not going to talk about them now. However, if you want to see the full list of goodies, events, places you can go if you're bored and you want to go buy plane tickets somewhere, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 344 and we'll link up everything for you using hyperlinks and Internets. So check it out. What do you think?

All right, Q and A. Let's do it.

Boom. Listener Q and A.

Hi, Ben. So I was wondering if you could answer some questions on the the WIM HOF method and any potential dangers that there are with the lack of oxygen in the brain and putting yourself forcing yourself into hyperventilation. Yeah, Are there anything. Any health risks with this method or. Or what? Thanks a lot, Rachel. Have you actually ever heard this Wim Hof guy talk? Like, have you heard any of my podcasts with him or. Or podcasts that other folks have done with him?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, he's like. He's like Polish. He gets very emotional. And, yeah, he talks like this, man. He says, you gotta go out and you gotta. You gotta get. You got to get your feet in the snow. You just do it and you just. Just. Just breathe, mother. Just breathe, mother. Freeze.

That was. That was. That was epic. Thank you. I have heard him. Yes.

Okay.

I don't remember him sounding like that, but he is definitely very passionate.

That's how he sounds. And the science is very interesting that, you know, go. If you. If you're familiar with the dude at all, I'll link in the show notes to this podcast because I've had him on my show twice, and we've. We've delved into his stuff pretty deeply. And actually, in the Freediving and Breath holding podcast that I just did this past Saturday with my freediving instructor, we talked about Wim Hof's methods as well, and we also talked about whether or not some of them might be dangerous. But basically, I've read all of his books and all of his methods, and the basic idea behind it is this. He has this breathing technique, and I'm going to give you a very, very brief overview of his breathing technique. The way that he describes it is by not breathing out completely, you get to a point at which a residual amount of air remains in the lungs, and you do this about 30 times. So it's like, right, so you're not breathing out completely. And when you finish that full cycle, you exhale everything. You hold, hold, hold. And then when you have to breathe, you breathe in, and you do this over and over again. You do that for like, five minutes, and you'll start to get lightheaded and you'll start to get tingling. And what's going on is you're increasing the oxygen content, but you're reducing CO2 content. You're reducing CO2 content. This is, in fact, hyperventilation. And what happens is when you reduce CO2, you actually increase, theoretically, the amount of oxygen being released. It's known as aerobic dissimulation, if you want to look at it from a scientific standpoint. And so in Wim's case, this has been shown to result in an actual increase in the core temperature of the body, a decrease in inflammatory cytokines an increase in blood flow to specific regions of the brain responsible for focus and the ability to be able to, for example, do what WIM is known to be able to do, which is tolerate the cold. Now, when you look at hyperventilation, you'll see some swimmers getting shallow water blackout from hyperventilation. This recently happened to that Dartmouth swimmer that we talked about a couple podcast episodes ago that died because he was combining hyperventilation with exertion with unsupervised underwater swimming. So, yeah, hyperventilation is, is basically breathing off a great amount of CO2. As you hyperventilate, you're creating low carbon dioxide levels. When you create low carbon dioxide levels, a few different things happen. First of all, your brain's blood vessels constrict, so that results in that tingling, that lightheadedness, because you get reduced blood flow to the brain. Now, yes, you do supercharge the body with oxygen, and theoretically, you increase your ability to, for example, be able to hold your breath for long periods of time. You shift your body into a state of what's called respiratory alkalosis, because when you lose a bunch of carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide is normally carried as what's called bicarbonate in your blood. And when you aren't carrying as much bicarbonate in your blood, you've got less hydrogen ions, what are called protons floating around. Protons are acidic, and so you create this alkalinic state, and it's really that alkalization that causes blood vessels to constrict. And when you get those blood vessels constricting, that affects nerves, it affects muscles, it can affect your awareness, it can affect your ability to basically have to know when to breathe is what it comes down to. Because normally it's the presence of carbon dioxide in your bloodstream that triggers that urge to breathe. And when you blow off all your carbon dioxide, your body's normal urge to breathe goes away. And when that normal urge to breathe goes away, if you are underwater, you might black out before your body remembers to breathe. And that is probably one of the more dangerous parts of this method. It's one of the reasons that doing it in an unsupervised situation could cause you to die. Now, yeah, I like two different forms of breathing. I do like this concept of using something like this to just try this. Let's say you live in an area where it's snowy. You want to go get in a cold pool, Just go through a few cycles of that, and you're gonna get tingly, and you're gonna get lightheaded. And remember, you end it with a full breath out, hold, hold, hold, then a full breath in. And you're gonna warm the body and everything. But be careful combining it with breath holds. It will warm your body and it will help you handle the cold. But you really have to be careful. With carbon dioxide levels in the body dropping too low if. Go ahead.

Does it have any other health impacts that aren't related to blacking out and forgetting to breathe?

You mean like deleterious health impacts?

Yeah. Restricting blood flow to the brain. Is there anything.

Yeah, long term hyperventilation, long term vasoconstriction would theoretically cause some issues with circulation to the brain. If you have a traumatic brain injury, concussion, which we're going to talk about later on in the episode, you'd want to be careful with this. But at the same time, brief periods of hypoxia are like hormesis. Just like brief exposure to cold, to heat, et cetera, you actually enhance your body's ability to be able to deliver oxygen to tissues when you are breathing normally. You just have to be careful not to overdo it. And I am just as big a fan of the opposite of actually retaining CO2 by taking deep breaths and short exhales. Deep breath, short exhale. When you do this, when you retain CO2, you actually cause vasodilation. And when you retain CO2, you also shift your body into the exact opposite of respiratory alkalosis. You shift into acidosis. When you shift into acidosis, what happens is oxygen gets released more readily from hemoglobin at the level of the tissues. And, and this means that when you are recovering from an intense muscular effort and you need to get oxygen back into those tissues, you don't want to hyperventilate. You technically want to blow off less CO2. So there's two different breathing techniques that you can use and two different breathing techniques that I personally use. If I'm going to go jump in the cold pool, I'll do the WIM HOF style breathing. But if I'm sitting around recovering after a workout or breathing during the day, I actually breathe in more than I breathe out. One easy way to do this during the day is you breathe in through your mouth and out through your nose. When you breathe into your mouth and out through your nose, you retain oxygen and you don't breathe off quite as much CO2. So two different ways you can do it. But of course, there is another aspect of the WIM HOF method, and that is cold exposure and this is something else that can be damaging if you're not careful. And I think everybody, anybody who's experimenting with this method, and this is a topic near and dear to my heart, because, like that agoji that I talked about in Vermont that I'm gonna do, it's gonna be cold. Like, you know, there are advertisements for it. You know, I saw a banner the other day put out by Spartan that said, nothing burns like the cold. And I've heard that, you know, we're gonna be sitting in. In the river for like an hour or two hours or something like that and walking through the snow, and so it's gonna suck. But at the same time, if you understand cold, it's really interesting. There's four phases that occur when you get exposed to cold. And by understanding these four phases, you can really equip yourself to handle the cold a little bit better. The first phase is called the cold shock response. It's very, very similar to that mammalian dive reflex that we've talked about before and that I spoke with the freediving instructor about when I had him on my podcast this past Saturday. And that's that sharp gasp reflex that occurs in response to rapid skin cooling and especially occurs if your head goes underwater. It's what can drive your body very quickly into sympathetic nervous system overdrive. Unless you're used to that. How do you get used to it? Shoving your face underwater? A lot of people, if they can't do a cold shower or if they got to first get their bodies used to the cold, the best thing you can do is deactivate that response or down regulate that response by frequently shoving your head into, like, a sink full of ice or getting your head cold. So that cold shock response is what a lot of times will cause people, for example, to go into cardiac arrest. Because when you get a significant cold shock response, your arteries narrow, you get vasoconstriction. So that means your heart has to work harder to pump the same volume of blood through your body. And if anybody has, like, a mineral deficiency or an underlying heart disease or cardiac arrhythmia, this is one of the proposed reasons why people, for example, die in triathlons, because people who have underlying heart issues go, their head hits the cold water, they get the cold shock response, they get the vasoconstriction, they get the sympathetic nervous system overdrive, and they go into shock or heart attack.

So, wow.

One thing you can do is just get your body used to that cold shock response. So that's one thing. Another thing that Happens as part of the cold shock response. Is that hyperventilation that I was just explaining. The trick, though, once you get into the water is not to continue to hyperventilate. You hyperventilate before you get in the water if you're using something like the WIM HOF technique. But once you're in the water, you begin breathing very slowly. I'm also a fan of box breathing because it down regulates the sympathetic nervous system response. That's a four count. In. Four count, hold. Four count out. Four count, hold. So understanding the cold shock response is very important. That will help you with the cold a little bit. Another issue that occurs after the cold shock response is called cold incapacitation. And that occurs after you've been in the water for about five to 15 minutes. This is why shrinkage happens. I was explaining shrinkage to my boys the other day when we were out in the cold pool. So vasoconstriction decreases blood flow to the extremities and does that to preserve heat to the core and protect your vital organs and still allow your periphery to cool. Now, muscles and nerve fibers, as you would guess, they don't work as well when it's cold. So you lose movement in your hands and your feet, and then you lose movement in your arms and your legs. Now, cold incapacitation can be staved off to a certain extent by ensuring that you contract and relax the muscles in the extremity. So you don't want to stay in the water completely still. You want to move your fingers slowly, move your toes slowly. But here's the key. When water is up against your skin and you're underwater, your skin naturally warms some of that water. And that's why I say slowly, right? You want to basically not let yourself sit completely still because that cold incapacitation will set in. But you also don't want to move too quickly. It's kind of like this happy medium between. Not like, like making the water move around too much, but also continuing to contract and relax your fingers, your toes, your extremities.

What does incapacitation literally means that like when you are past that 15 minute mark that you, your body just doesn't want to move.

Huh. And, and a lot of times that that's when hypothermia can set in. Hypothermia is going to vary with water temperature and it's going to vary with body mass. They actually did a really interesting study of about 700 people in which they asked them if you fall into ice water which is 0 degrees Celsius, you know, 32ish degrees Fahrenheit while wearing regular winter clothing. How long do you think it will take to become hypothermic? And the response of most people was zero to five minutes. The actual correct response. What do you think it is, Rachel?

Well past 15 minutes, 20 minutes.

It's actually 30 minutes or longer than it takes for hypothermia to set in. So it's actually, you can last pretty long in freezing cold water before you start to go unconscious, before you cool to the point of cardiac arrest, before you get to the point where you are shivering so hard that your body just kind of goes into shock. But it takes a while. And if you use some of these techniques, these breathing techniques, moving your fingers and your toes, hyperventilating before you get into the water. You know, you look at a guy like Wim Hof, he stayed in like a bucket of ice water. I think he was in there for like two hours or something, you know, because he trained his body to get to that point.

Yeah. So he. So you recommend box breathing while you are in that first five to 15 minutes?

Yeah, yeah. The whole time, if you can. Now what happens though? And a lot of people do cold water training, they know this. The issue is not when you're in the water, it's when you get out. Because when you get out, this is called circum rescue collapse among like cold water rescue people. And what happens is when you're fighting to stay alive, your senses get heightened and stress hormones are surging through your body and your blood pressure increases. And all these things happen to help keep you warm when you're in the water. And then when you get out of the water, this mental relaxation occurs. You get a decreased output of those stress hormones. And typically this takes about two to five minutes to set in. Your blood pressure drops, your muscles start to fail, you begin to shiver uncontrollably and you can go into cardiac arrest. And that's really what happens is when you get out of the water and you're standing around in the ambient air, not warming yourself, that is when the suckage really starts to happen. And that's what you need to be aware of, is you have to, if you get out of a long period of time spent cold water, you gotta get yourself warm quickly or make sure that you're actually being supervised by someone. So those are some potential issues with the Wim Hof method would be passing out because you don't have enough CO2. The cardiac shock and heart attack that could occur from the initial exposure to cold water. The potential for cold incapacitation if you're staying completely still in the water. And then finally this circum rescue collapse that can occur when you get out of the water unless you figure out a way to get your body warm pretty quickly.

Wow, those are all crazy risks.

Yeah. But at the same time, I mean I think learning his techniques are pretty good. And for those of you who want to and want to delve more deeply into his breathing techniques, I'll link to the two podcasts that I've done with him. If you go to BenGrudGelfitness.com 3444 you can, you can tune into those if you, if you are listening in. I believe Rachel has volunteered to grow a, grow a beard and lead everyone up a a quest of Mount Everest in shorts and and bare feet to go practice this technique. Is that correct, Rachel?

That's.

Am I thinking of someone else?

I guess.

There we go. So all right, Rachel has just volunteered. Hold her to it and leave. Leave a comment in the shownotes over@bengreenfulfitness.com 344 if you either A have questions about the Wim HOF technique or B have beard growing tips for Rachel.

Hey Ben and Rachel, huge fan of the podcast. Actually listen to the podcast when I'm doing manual labor or when I'm working out or walk into class or what have you. So definitely keep it up.

Guys.

I did have one question. What are some options for like a healthy cure for acne? I've heard about some things with like some essential oils and you know, using coconut oil. But I was wondering if there's maybe a, maybe like an all natural face wash to make or use or purchase and if you give any insight into that. Much appreciated. Thanks guys. Love the podcast. Keep it up.

Rachel. I have a great story about acne.

Oh, you do? That's not something you hear every day.

It does not involve squeezing your white heads at the mirror. Even though I was known to do that when I was a teenager. Who hasn't, right? Did you ever squeeze your white heads at the mirror?

I definitely did.

They pop on the mirror.

It's so satisfying and you gotta.

It's satisfying. You gotta like clean the mirror.

Yeah, yeah.

It's gross and satisfying all the same time. And you're guilty. But feel so you loved. It feels so good to pop those whiteheads. You put a warm cloth on them and pop them Anyways though, my wife actually dealt with Skin issues way more than I did. Like, she had acne and eczema. And I remember, like, she's been like a half hour in the bathroom before work in the morning, just, like, doing the makeup and covering up the little, like, you know, the pimples and all the. All the crap that builds up from acne. And at the time, we were eating a stereotypical health and fitness healthy diet, meaning we were like, full on whole grains, bread, you know, like, all bran and Kellogg's cereal. And we would do sandwiches for lunch and usually, like dinner we would do like, pasta and stuff like that. We were both, like, you know, dyed in the wool, kind of like basically endurance athlete diets, right? Like, at the time I was doing Iron man, she was a cross country runner. So that was just how we had learned to eat. Now she got this crappy little book from the library. And I remember it looked like it'd been printed from the library copy machine. It was like, bound with a little, like, thick black coil. You know, I'm talking about.

I know the type you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah. And. And it's called the Dietary Cure for Acne. This is like 10 years ago. And so she brings us home to our little condo, and she's reading it at the. At the kitchen table, and she tells me she's going to try this book. She can try this diet. And like, I was always the diet guy, right? Like, I was the bodybuilder and I was, like, messing around with different, like, sugar blends for, like, maltodextrin and fructose for my triathlons. And like, she was never the person to even give a crap about diet at all. But she picked up this diet book. It was called the Dietary Cure for Acne. It was written by this guy named Loren Cordain. And basically what this book went into was the concept of what's called hyperinsulinemia. Hyperinsulinemia, Excess levels of insulin in the bloodstream. And what the book highlighted or suggested was that this hyperinsulinemia condition triggers this hormonal cascade and what's called an endocrine response that results in unregulated growth and keratinization of epithelial cells. That means, like, a bunch of growth of skin cells and androgen mediated sebum secretion. Sebum secretion, which is basically acne. You know, sebum is all that stuff that we pop in front of the mirror. So, and the idea is that this is all triggered by what's called insulin, like, growth factor, also known as IGF1. And IGF1 is basically promoting acne in the same way that insulin does by promoting what's called follicular obstruction. So it also causes this androgen mediated sebum production, but it also causes hyperkeratosis, which is a thickening on the outer layers of the skin, and also epidermal hyperplasia, which is a proliferation of skin cells. So we put all these factors together and we basically have a bunch of skin cell growth, a bunch of sebum production, and this perfect storm for acne and breakouts to occur. And the idea behind this book was, hey, we limit insulin formation, we limit insulin like growth hormone formation and a lot of these androgenic endocrine based issues with the skin. And we could potentially get rid of things like acne and perhaps even by eliminating a lot of potential immune system triggers like, you know, commercial dairy and soy and wheat, we could also get rid of some immune related issues like say eczema or redness or swelling. So my wife starts this diet and within like a month, no problems. Her eczema goes away, her acne goes away. And that was honestly my first, that was my first exposure to like, you know, like, like we mentioned before, I'm not paleo, but that guy, Loren Cordain, he's considered like the father of the paleo movement and that. And that was my first introduction to like eating in a more ancestral way, realizing that there's a pretty significant hormonal response to food. And, and so when it comes to, to diet, I mean, the whole idea behind it was you limit insulin production by limiting dairy, which is a huge promoter of insulin like growth factor production. And you limit wheat, another very high glycemic index food, like whole wheat bread can spike your blood faster than white sugar. You limit a lot of fruits and carbs and even potatoes and rice and stuff like that. You save it for post workout when your body doesn't have to produce as much insulin in response to those foods. And as a result, it clears up your skin and it, it like, it worked perfectly for my wife. I've recommended it to a lot of people. It works very well for them. And I don't necessarily think that you have to completely eliminate dairy and that you have to completely eliminate grains, but in the initial phases of it, you may want to consider doing that just to shut down inflammation and shut down some kind of hyperactive immune response. But from a dietary standpoint, that book freaking rocks. I mean, if you have acne. So that would be my recommendation from a Diet standpoint.

And can acne be a manifestation of anything else other than the things that you just covered?

I think that's a. Aside from acne always seems to pop up if you happen to have a hot date planned. That's another big trigger. Big trigger.

The cure for acne.

Yeah, exactly. Gonna go out with someone who you need to impress. Acne will inevitably show up on your skin, usually your nose or like somewhere that is really hard, hard to cover up.

Really obvious. Yeah.

As far as the face stuff, though. So first of all, I should mention before I get into this face wash thing, for the past about six months, I have been developing a hypoallergenic anti aging skin serum. I am not in a position yet to release it into the wild for people to try, but I've been using for about two months. And what it is, it's a hypoallergenic formula that I designed to get rid of things like crow's eyes and fine lines and wrinkles and scars and stretch marks, skin discoloration, acne, eczema, you name it. And it's all organic. It's aloe vera, guyoba oil, carrot seed oil, triphala, lavender. It's got wild oregano oil in it, turmeric, lemon patchouli, like, like pretty much every organic compound known to man that has been shown to rejuvenate the skin or to be a topical formula that will get rid of like acne, eczema, et cetera. I'm probably about a month out from making that available to folks.

That is super exciting.

I'm pretty excited about it. And like I mentioned, I've been using it every single day. Super cool stuff. So I had to mention that. Stay tuned because that. It's called the, it's called the Greenfield Anti Aging Serum. And that will come out soon. It's gonna be very, very cool. But in the meantime, do I have a doozy for you. This is a really, really cool recipe that you can make. It's got natural antibacterial properties, it's got some enzymes and probiotics that are fantastic for the skin and it can really help out with acne. You still need to realize acne is an internal hormonal based problem related to insulin and insulin like growth factor. But this can be a good topical solution until the Greenfield Anti Aging Serum is released. Here's how it works. You get yourself some manuka honey. Manuka honey. You ever use this stuff, Rachel?

Yeah, I actually bought some recently to have with my breakfast though.

Oh, well, it's awesome. For smearing on your skin, like for wounds and burns like MRSA or like friction based issues and cyclists or cuts. It's really, really almost like magical stuff when it comes to being an antibacterial. But what you can do is you can use it as an actual face wash. You can get Manuka honey and you can use it as a face wash. Super duper simple solution. I know I've recommended all sorts of fancy formulas before on this show, but this one's very simple. You take a small amount of Manuka honey, like a teaspoon, and you rub your hands together with the honey. You wet your face with warm water. Before you do that, not after you do that. Wet your face with warm water, get the honey on your hands, and then massage the honey into your skins in a circular motion to all the areas of your face, all the skin based areas of your face. Then you just leave that on for 10 minutes. Just walk around with honey on your face. Stay away from dogs, birds, bees, anything you wouldn't want eating your face. And then you wash it off with warm water and you pat it dry. Makes your skin super soft, kills bacteria. It's a really, really cool, quick, easy cleanse. It's honey for your face.

Very simple. Who would have thought? And it has to be Manuka.

Mm.

Well, you could use like raw honey too. Raw honey has some cool antibacterial properties as well. But Manuka, by the way, Manuka is expensive. Like it's like 30 bucks for a tile. But like, Manuka works the best. So that's my recommendation again until the Greenfield Anti Aging Serum is released.

Does the Greenfield Anti Aging Serum have Manuka honey in it?

No, it doesn't. And there's. There's two reasons. Number one, already with the 15 ingredients I've got in there, if we were to add Manuka, it'd cost you like 90 bucks for a little bottle of it. And number two, I made it to be portable. Like, I want people to be able to like take it through TSA and have it in like a little bit, a four ounce container and be able to spray it. Like, spraying is very important and you just can't spray Manuka honey. And so it can be messy and. Yeah, so no, it doesn't have Manuka honey in it, but you could get Manuka honey and add it to it. Make that happen for yourself. So check that out. I'll put a link to some of my favorite Manuka honeys in the show notes if you want to get yourself some. But there's one maybe a company called. It's actually a New Zealand company called Manuka Health. They make a pretty good one. A lot of Manuka, honey, you'll find coming out of New Zealand, your. Your neighbors. Do you guys. Do you guys fight best folks in New Zealand or are you besties?

We love each other.

Okay. I wasn't sure.

According to me.

According to me, if you launch coconuts at them and they launch kiwi fruit at you across, that'd be a fun walk across the bay. All right.

Hey, Ben and Rachel, how's it going? My name is Jimmy. I wanted to ask you a question, Ben, about concussions and recovering from concussions. I know you've talked a lot about recovering from degenerative brain disorders and different types of nutrition and fitness things that can help with that, but I have had about either eight or nine concussions that I know of, some of which have involved some pretty significant blackout time, and there's probably a lot of others in there. And then recently I watched the movie Concussion and it just got me thinking about if there's things I need to be doing to just plan on that. Since I'm 25 and, you know, I still want to have a lot of healthy brain time ahead of me. So, yeah, I'd love to get your opinion on, you know, additional things other or maybe differently than some of the stuff you've talked about previously with Brain Health. Thanks a lot. Love the show. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Rachel, I don't know if you're aware of this. Jimmy's obviously not aware of it. We have done a lot of episodes on concussions and blood flow to the brain. A lot of them. Okay, maybe Jimmy's not aware of it because of his ongoing head damage. Sorry, Jimmy, no. Not supposed to make fun of listeners. Slap my hand. I can't make. I've learned I can't make fun of listeners accents. Can't make fun of questions.

So can't make fun of your co hosts accent.

That's right. That's right. So sorry, Jimmy. But either way, Jimmy, I want to give you a few big takeaways from the top three podcasts that we've done on brain health and concussions. And then I want to give you a few tips from my buddy and a physician named Dr. Jack Cruz, who has some really good information out there on concussions. So first of all, one guy that I interviewed was named Mark Tullius. Mark Tulius is an MMA fighter and we went over some of the issues that he's had with testosterone as well as with head damage from training and fighting. The biggest takeaways from the podcast with Mark Tullius and I'll link to his podcast in the show. Notes for you was he uses a lot of Lumosity Brain games and brain training apps. He uses Lumosity and then one called N Back training to ensure that he's doing activities that increase blood flow to his brain. And he also uses on its Alpha brain to assist with his memory and word recall. So those were his biggies was Lumosity and back training and then this Onit Alpha brain. And I'll link to his particular episode, but those are my biggest takeaways from his deal. So there's that. Now I also interviewed, I had a really extensive interview with this doctor named Kelly Ryder and the title of that was Concussions in Muscles and Podcast. If you, if you or a loved one have ever had a head injury. Now, we went into everything from SPECT scans to scanning the brain for damage, testing the brain, et cetera. But some of the big takeaways from Dr. Reiter, his recommendation for brain inflammation specifically related to concussions was a supplement called glutathione. That's one that he used quite a bit with his patients. And then also fish oil. And he used a brain training app called the Muse app, which is basically a headband that you wear on your head. And it's a form of neurofeedback where you have a guided app on the phone, like a guided meditation app with this Muse headband. So those are some of his recommendations. So glutathione, fish oil and the Muse headband. Whereas Mark Tulius recommended N Back training, the Lumosity brain app and then also the Onit Alpha brain supplement. Now, what I would say in terms of actual clinical based research, probably the podcast that we did, podcast number 341, in which we went over a very extensive treatise on Alzheimer's and cognitive performance. Actually, was it 341 or 340?

I think it might have been 3:40.

It was 340. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 340 and we'll link to that in the show notes as well. But in 340, what we went into was a study that they did that was literally showing reverse reversal of some of the cognitive issues that occur with Alzheimer's. And this is also pure gold for any of you out there who want to enhance cognitive performance or reverse some of the hypoperfusion that occurs from head damage. There is a Huge, huge list of stuff that we went into in that one. But they included ketosis based diet so that you're limiting the amount of glucose and advanced glycation end products that can cause inflammation and damage to the brain. It included intranasal light therapy using something called a VI lite. We talked about using pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, which is called pemf. The list of supplements was pretty extensive that we went through, but some of the biggies were again, fish oil, but also there's vitamin D, vitamin K, curcumin, which is a very potent neural anti inflammatory cannabidiol, using something called cbd, which is like a legal form of marijuana, high dose fish oil. And then we also even talked about creatine, which has some really interesting neuroprotective properties. I also have a full list in those show notes of a bunch of like other like face recognition and IQ tests and central nervous system tap tests. Like a huge list of stuff in that one. So that's pretty extensive. But go listen to podcast episode number 340 for that.

Yes.

And then finally, like I mentioned, there's this physician who I've had on the podcast a few times, Dr. Jack Cruz. He's a neurosurgeon, so he obviously knows a little bit about the head or at least I hope he does. And he has a really good article in which he lists some of the things that he recommends if you have had a concussion or a head injury. One of the things that he recommends is that you load with medium chain triglycerides to get yourself into ketosis prior to engaging in the at risk behavior like soccer or football or a fight or something like that. He actually likes you to go in with limited glucose consumption and a whole bunch of medium chain triglycerides on board or some of these ketones to enhance the actual fuel being used by your brain and limit the amount of potential for glycation damage that can go hand in hand with a concussion. So that's one of the things that he recommends. Another thing that he recommends that's really interesting is that you cool your posterior and your lateral neck area if you've been concussed or if you've had a concussion or if you're trying to heal from a concussion. Like that whole putting your head into ice water technique I talked about earlier, like a head cooling technique. He's a huge fan of that. To limit neuronal damage and get that bounce back blood flow to the head that occurs after you've removed your head from the cold water. He's also a huge fan of minerals. He recommends about 25 milligrams of zinc and 400 milligrams of magnesium as minerals to limit neuronal damage or to improve what he calls neuronal energy deficits. So he's got a very, very extensive article on concussioning, concussion management. He calls it the concussion prescription. And I will also link to that in the show notes as well for you, Jimmy. But basically I just wanted to give you some of the resources that we've made available in the past for concussions because it's certainly something that I've covered pretty extensively.

Yeah, I mean between those four different things that you just said, there's probably about a hundred different things to try.

Yeah. And I mean, let's put it this way. There are some people who are like in the anti aging sector and I know them and they're, they'll pop literally 50 pills every morning. And we talked about this. When we talk about Alzheimer's and cognitive performance, you want to throw everything in the kitchen sink from a biohacking and a gear and a supplement standpoint, go for it. If you want to be like me and put 18 different mushrooms in your coffee makes me poop mug, go for it. More power to you. It's better living through science. But ultimately use some of those resources. I'll put them in the show notes for you@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and best of luck.

Hey Ben. My name is Michael. I'm a hockey player trying to gain weight. I'm 5 foot 10, 160 pounds and I have a real hard time getting over 165. My goal is to be at around 180 pounds to stay competitive in the sport. I stay pretty active. I lift weights two to three times a week, train for cardio twice a week and I play hockey about twice a week. I've tried drinking a gallon of organic whole milk every day, but it doesn't really feel sustainable from a health perspective. And I was wondering what you would recommend to help me increase my appetite in a healthy way. Thank you very much.

So this is what I call skinny guy syndrome. My brother in law is a very skinny guy. My wife actually had me for Christmas one year write my brother in law a mass gain program. And he played college basketball and he had worked with all these different strength conditioning coaches and nutritionists to pack a bunch of muscle on his body. And I didn't really change that much in terms of what he was doing. I had him lifting heavy stuff but he was already doing that. But what I did do was I upped him from about 3,000 calories a day, which is what he was eating. And I put him on a 6 to 7,000 calorie a day diet.

Wow.

He began to pack on muscle like crazy. And a big, big part of gaining muscle, frankly guys, and this is coming from me, I'm 175 pounds right now. I used to be a 210 pound bodybuilder. I got that way by eating copious amounts of food like every two hours. I mean, it takes a lot of food if you're a hard gainer to put on serious amounts of mass. Listen to the podcast that I did with with Dan John. I'll link to it in the show notes. But I mean, basically his mass made simple program, you're lifting for about an hour to an hour and a half a few days a week, and then you're pretty much sitting around and watching football. You're living like a tortoise, right? Like trying to move as little as possible, eat copious amounts of food, and then every now and again lift heavy stuff. It's not necessarily heart healthy, it's not necessarily the best thing for your gut in terms of the strain that you're putting on your digestive system, but it's how you build mass. And frankly, if you're drinking a gallon of whole milk a day, Remember what I was just talking about when it comes to insulin. And insulin, like growth factoring acne, you ever see how many bodybuilders and high school athletes have acne and eczema? And all these issues related to mass gain. Big reason for it is because they're using dairy and wheat to grow mass. There are better ways to grow mass. You can use really dense sources like avocado, coconut milk, and even like less insulinogenic forms of protein. For example, like hemp and pea and rice protein. If you combine those with digestive enzymes, you get just as much of an anabolic response from them as whey protein and steak. So I mean, like, there are a lot of ways to reduce the amount of insulin and all the other crap that you get from like commercial milk and still put on mass. But part of this is appetite. Like, how do you increase your appetite? How do you keep yourself hungry? That's the tricky part. And believe it or not, there are things that you can do to increase your appetite. So drumroll, please. Here is how you get your appetite up. Number one, Ginger, ginger tea, ginger extracts. Ginger is not only a great digestif, but it's also an appetite stimulant. So ginger is one thing that you can include. You can get ginger root, you can get ginger supplements. Ginger, that would be number one. So another one that can help to increase appetite are what are called carminative spices. Carminative spices. So what carminative spices do is they increase or they basically change your appetite or increase your appetite by increasing the production of ghrelin. I like to think of that as something that makes your stomach growl, makes you hungry. So leptin is the hormone that limits your appetite. Ghrelin increases your appetite. Some of the things that can do that, mint, black pepper, cinnamon, in high amounts, is actually an appetite stimulant. One of the reasons cinnamon is also an appetite stimulant is it can plummet your blood glucose and make you hungry, which is why cinnamon is great for diabetics too, if you can control the hunger response. But if you combine cinnamon with a meal that would normally spike your blood glucose, like oatmeal, for example, it's a pretty good one two combo. So that's another one. Certain fruits are also known to stimulate hunger. Grapes, apples and blackberries all contain a lot of the similar digestifs that ginger does and help to increase your appetite. So those would be some other things to include. So we've got ginger, black pepper, cinnamon, coriander, mint, grapes, apples and blackberries. So you can add those to your grocery shopping list. There's a few others as well. Bitter tasting foods help to increase the secretion of digestive juices. And so you can eat these before a meal to improve digestion, but they can also increase your appetite. So this would be amaranth, fenugreek and bitter gourd. You can get those in, like, herbal form. You can get them as something that you can sprinkle over food. You can get them in teas. But those are three others. Amaranth, fenugreek and bitter gourd. Bitter gourd. So if you don't have any bitter gourds hanging around, now's the time to do it. Now's your excuse to go ape nuts on the gourds.

I don't even know what bitter gourd is.

It's kinda like bitter melon. So actually, yeah, actually a little bit similar to cinnamon, actually. It plummets your blood glucose as well. And then you could delve into the bodybuilding industry, where a lot of these guys are, like, using supplements to increase their appetites. They can eat copious amounts of food during the day. One Will cause you to produce a whole bunch of ghrelin, whole bunch of this appetite stimulating supplement or appetite stimulating hormones. If you're trying to lose weight, don't use this stuff. But if you're trying to gain weight and you want to eat a crapload of food, take something called plum extract about 30 minutes before a meal to stimulate your appetite.

Is that just plum?

Plum extract, it's like concentrated plummet and it causes a big release in this ghrelin.

So why doesn't plum, why don't plums make the list of foods that increase your appetite?

But then we take plum extract because plum extract is. It's like eating 20 more concentrated. Extremely concentrated.

Interesting.

Yeah. So we've got plum extract. Another one that you can use, believe it or not, is something we've talked about before, fish oil. By using a lot of fish oil, it can, can increase your appetite if you use a whole bunch of it prior to a meal. High dose fish oil. So if you take like 6 to 10 grams of fish oil, it's like three times more than they were using in that study that we talked about. That can increase your appetite. So you could like take fish oil before breakfast like in the morning to get your appetite going and it gets you eat a giant smoothie or giant breakfast, your man in a can, protein shake. So that'd be another one. And then of course there is weed. However, I'm not going to recommend that you smoke weed to stimulate your appetite because that might not be legal where you're at, might not be something that you want to do. But the very, very interesting thing is that cannabinoids can stimulate the appetite. And there is a plant that has cannabinoid like substances in it and the specific cannabinoid like substances that increase, increase your appetite called alkalamides and the extract that has alkalamides in it. And you can actually get what's called alkalamide extract. I can't say that 10 times fast is echinacea. You can get what's called an echinacea alkalamide supplement and that will stimulate your appetite very much in the same way that weed will without you having to spend your money on weed or, or without you having to break the law or get all paranoid or psychoactive. So echinacea alkalamides.

Who would have thought? Who would have thought? I had no idea.

There you go. I just saved you from having to smoke copious amounts of weed. I will put a link to the fish oil, the plum extract, the Echinacea, alkalamides and this Dan John Mass made simple in the program for you Michael. Those would be the best resources sources for you. In addition to like I mentioned grabbing yourself some grapes and cinnamon and all that other jazz. So go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 344 for that. And if you are listening in and you don't want to increase your appetite and get all swole like Michael wants to do, you'll also find everything else I talked about, the dietary care for acne, Wim HOF stuff, pretty much everything. That new fish oil study, the consumer Electronics show, all of that if you go to BenGrindleFitness.com 344 but wait, we're not done yet, are we?

Rachel Favorite part of the show.

Favorite part of the show. This is the time of the show when we leave a review. And oh by the way, I should mention speaking of reviews, if any of you are listening in, you must go to YouTube.com BenGreenfieldFitness because at YouTube.com BenGreenfieldFITNESS you can witness me doing a fireside unboxing video where I'm reviewing boxes of goodies that were sent to my house. And it's quite an entertaining video I must admit. So go to YouTube.com BenGreenful Fitness if you want to see me unboxing crap and being a weird in front of my fire, almost catching my cardigan on fire. Anyways though, if you hear your review read on this show, if you go to itunes, you leave us a few stars. Leave us a nice review and you hear your review read. Just email gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com Let us know your T shirt size. We'll send you a sweet gear pack, water bottle, Beanie slash toque and what else? A shirt. A tech T shirt. Makes your muscles look good. So we've got a review, a five star review called Wicked Good Stuff Left by Levy CB Rachel, you want to take this one away?

Yes. After listening to the podcast for only one month, I am hooked.

Wow, that didn't take long.

Ben's enthusiasm for a healthy mind and body is beyond inspiring. Already I have implemented much of his advice and I feel better than I have in years. My wife thinks I'm insane since I started taking ice cold showers every day. Good on ya mate. Love the show. Truly transformational.

My wife doesn't take cold showers if that makes you feel any better. Libby. She doesn't take cold showers. She doesn't do the sauna. She doesn't take any supplements. She rarely exercises. So that's okay though. We're like the yin. We're the yin and the yang. So as long as. Quick tip for you. Don't try to boogie with your wife, if you know what I mean, after you've taken an ice cold shower. I have discovered that after cold thermogenesis, no matter how horny you are, you cannot get it up.

Really?

Well, it's related to the science. It's because of science. Everything I just in science and the Seinfeld shrinkage episode, it just can't happen. There's too much vasoconstriction going on, so.

Oh, poor Jessa.

Just saying.

She'll have to wait till tomorrow.

Shall have to wait until tomorrow anyways, though. Levy, CB thank you for the great review. We love it. We'll send you a gear pack if you email geergreenfieldfitnesssystems.com that being said, I have drank my entire mug of coffee makes me poop coffee during this episode, which means that it is time for me to poop. And so that is a great way to sign off for today's episode. So again, if you're listening, hit BenGreenfieldFitness.com 344. Rachel, you can go poop.

I already pooped, but I'll have another go.

Yeah, have another go. And folks, thanks for listening. Have a healthy week. Stay tuned this weekend for a fantastic episode. We always have great weekend interviews and this weekend I'm going to keep a mystery, but you're going to want to listen in, trust me. So check it out. Make sure you subscribe on itunes. Rachel, I'll catch you later.

Bye, Ben.

Bye. Bye.

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

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