Fitness, Biohacking, Smart Drug & Supplement Secrets Of One Of The Fastest Growing Sports On The Face Of The Planet.

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield. As you are listening to this podcast episode, I'm somewhere in the backwoods of Vermont competing in the 60 hour winter suffer fest called the Spartan Agoji. You can check that out@bengreenfieldfitness.com agogee that's a G O G E. Considering it is supposed to be about minus 10 degrees where I'm competing. I may or may not survive this ordeal and I'm probably frostbitten right now. So, as is likely obvious to you, you aren't going to get the normal weekly Q and A that I release on Wednesdays with my podcast sidekick, Rachel. But I do have a pretty fun episode for you today. I'm gonna keep it a mystery. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

Imagine a stadium where instead of a football field, it's a hologram and that is a Call of Duty field or something. And you can watch people throwing grenades and rockets and hel helicopters. And it's right there and it's live. Imagine instead of going to the movies, you can go to a stadium and watch something like that. It's a huge industry. It's estimated to grow over 500 million per year within the next two years. And something that I really want people to realize is that it needs to take off.

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 folks, it's Ben Greenfield and I want you to stop for a moment and imagine a stadium full of screaming fans. And then zoom in on the contestants and they're just sweating and their teeth are gritting from the intensity of the competition. So what do you think? This could be boxing or MMA or basketball or tennis or maybe American Ninja Warrior? Well, it's actually electronic sports, also known as esports. And the athletes I'm referring to are typically like headset wearing, energy drink guzzling, smart, drug popping gamers. And frankly, this sport is bound booming. The tournaments that they have for esports draw crowds that literally rival the biggest traditional sporting events. Their live streams online usually get 100,000 plus viewers. Companies like Coke and Nissan and Red Bull sponsor the tournaments. Last year, over 205 million people watched or played esports. And if you, if you compare this to like the World Series of Poker or the super bowl, basically the League of Legends championship, which is a championship in esports, where. And my guest expert today is going to be able to talk to this a little bit more intelligently, where they play League of Legends against each other. Apparently that sold out the Staples center when they had it there, and then when they had it a year later in Seoul, Korea, it sold out their 40,000 seat World cup stadium and had an online audience of 27 million people. And these things pay out too. We're talking about millions of dollars in prize money for winning these type of competition. So moms, if you're listening in, you may want to actually encourage your kids to keep playing video games if you want them to be able to take care of you in retirement. Anyways, though, the reason I'm talking about all this and the reason that I got an expert in this particular field of esports on the show today is because it's not just like online fun and gaming and money. There are some pretty significant health risks and fitness implications associated with this sport. There's drugs, there's drug testing. There is the physiological effects of having your senses constantly bombarded with blue light and glaring screens and bluetooth and wifi. And so in today's episode, we're not just going to talk about electronic sports and what they are, but we're going to talk about drugs, drug doping, the health effects of this stuff.

And.

And my guest today is named Zach Long. Zach owns Nusupps. Nusupps is basically like a nootropic and smart drug company and he has a wide range of specialties. He actually knows quite a bit. I've emailed Zach back and forth quite a bit. And he started his career in the US army and then he moved on to business. But what he studies in particular is, is performance enhancing drugs in gaming and nootropics and smart drugs in general. And his company, nousupps, even does things like sponsor gamers who are looking to go pro. So he's pretty involved with this industry. And Zach, I want to welcome you for coming on the show today.

Thank you, Ben. I'm glad to be here.

Sweet. So, dude, I'm just curious, how did you get involved in this mysterious world of electronic sports?

Well, you know, it's kind of funny. Esports found me in the sense of getting involved. I didn't go out of my way and try to play Call of Duty professionally or anything like that. But through my business adventures with nootropics and smart drugs, I realized that the most probably profitable sector of people would be the gamers, in the sense of they're going to see the most out of this. And I found that because if you look into it in the history of things, smart drugs were being taken by Olympic athletes way before esports even came around. In the late and early 90s, there's been a history of taking different nodropics and smart drugs for competition sports in the Olympics, like cross country skiing or the different marathon events that require a lot of endurance. And so that kind of, you know, I started looking into that and then I realized that gamers, they don't have anything like this other than Red Bull and Monster.

Yeah.

And I reached out, I started talking to a few, I gave them some samples, and they all swore up and down by it. And so I started really getting into it and I dived down in. And it's really an interesting kind of industry now because it's growing so big. It's got such an influence on our society in a way that most people can't even fathom. Because if you think about the age spectrum of these professional athletes and what it does to them and the health risk associated with it, it really is going to change the way that our society looks at sports. And that's why something. I don't know if you ever saw the movie Gamer. You ever see that with.

No.

Oh, it's. It's about this guy who's in prison and it's in the future. And what the inmates can do is they can play a video game. Well, they don't play the video game. A gamer plays the game. And they are the character of the game. And they like. It's like Call of Duty. So it's like prison inmates shooting each other, and if they win, they get out. But it's just a futuristic look of how gaming could be in the future. And when people think of 2050, they don't think of watching the super bowl like we just watched recently. They think of something different and they think of a futuristic sport. And that's kind of where esports is going. And that's why it's so interesting to kind of look into and study and be a part of.

That's crazy. So. So these athletes, like, what are they like? I mean, are they. Because honestly, dude, like, my experience with esports is I used to play World of Warcraft, right when World of Warcraft first became multiplayer Online, I would be on there for like two or three hours a day, but nobody was paying out, there was no money involved. There weren't people watching this thing on YouTube. But when we talk about these athletes, what kind of people are they? I mean, are these like fit people? Are they all just like, you know, fat with neck beards in their mom's basement or like what, what kind of athletes are we talking about?

You know, it's funny that you would say that, especially coming from a world of workout background. You know, it really depends. What I found is there's different caliber of athletes. There's the 16 year old who streams on Twitch and has a Twitter account set up. And you know, they're just a teenager, they're trying to go pro, but they can play on online tournaments because that's the way that it's set up. So they could be considered a professional athlete if they're winning tournaments with a team of other, say high schoolers. But then there's a more serious athlete which is ones that are say on professional teams like Cloud 9. Now when you have a serious team like this that plays in championships like you talked about, the League of legends championship, that 27 million viewers, when, when you have a caliber of athlete like that, they're playing probably eight to 12 hours a day, they're going through their concerted training just like how a pro athlete, a basketball athlete would spend so much time in the court. But they probably log more time because there's not that wear and tear on the body because you can only play so much basketball before you're like, I gotta go rest.

What kind of wear and tear is going on in the body? Are there tests where they've looked at things like. Well, for example, race car drivers, they're in a sedentary position somewhat, but their cardiovascular fitness and also the cardiovascular implications of driving a race car, it's through the roof. The combination of adrenaline and epinephrine and heat and you know, shifting the car, shifting your body. Their heart rates will be in excess of 150 plus beats per minute during a multi hour event for these gamers. Has anybody ever actually studied what's going on physiologically as far as how hard their heart is beating or how high their core temp is going or anything like that?

Well, actually, yeah, and that's an interesting thing because no, it's not going to be like race car driving where you're going to be studying it with multiple different scientists from different angles of the G force and things like that. Is that's going to have some serious immediate health risk to it. But the studies that have been sponsored, there was one series of studies and it was actually by the League of Legends creators. They did a series of studies on the negativity of the community because I'm sure you're aware if you played World of Warcraft or if you ever have children and you kind of watch them or hear them while they're yelling at their Xbox. It's not a nice, you know, it's not, it's not a nice environment. You're not going to talk about your feelings with your buddies on there. You're going to defend your mother.

Right, Right. So in terms of what we're seeing with health risks associated with gaming, I would imagine that the health risks, probably, I'm just hazarding a guess here, exceed the actual health benefits of sitting around playing video games for ungodly periods of time, trying to win money.

Absolutely.

But what do you see as far as the health risks? Like, like what's going on? Because I've heard about like kids in China dying and stuff like that from like playing video games for, for days in a, in a row. But what do you see? You know, I would imagine that's an anomaly. But what kind of things are happening in these quote unquote athletes when it comes to their health or their physiology?

There's, there's a lot, Honestly man, there's so much that it's, it's kind of ridiculous. Once you look into it, you're like really like wow. Like you said, the Chinese kid, He was a 24 year old gamer. He died in an Internet cafe of all places too. Like not in a basement or anything like that. That was playing wow. For 19 hours straight.

Holy.

Then there was the, there is a Taiwanese teen who also died after playing.

How did they die? Did they know how that actually happened?

Well, the Taiwanese teen, he died from cardiac arrest from 40 hours straight. The 24 year old gamer, I'm not sure how he died from China, but really there's a whole tier of health risks. You have the simple things that you could think of like the eye strain, the headaches, the wrist injuries that you're going to get from having a mouse under your hand all day. The blisters on your fingers, believe it or not. Then there's the back problems, but then you get into the more serious problems like cardiovascular issues because they're sitting down all day. Then you get into things like the social impact. For example, when you mentioned the basement dweller with the neck Beard. There's a real social impact that's coming from people that are spending hours a day not going out and playing video games. And there's been studies showing that depression has been linked to different types of Internet gaming, different types of gaming addictions. And even according to the American Psychiatric association, the apa, the Internet gaming disorder falls under a substance related and addictive disorder, personality disorder. So essentially you're seeing that these are serious things coming from just playing a video game all day. And a lot of kids do it and they don't see that it sets up a kind of a chain of events for later down their life.

Do you personally do a lot of gaming?

Well, you know, I have done some gaming, yeah. When I was in high school, I did a lot of gaming, yes. I played a very serious mmorpg just like you did, yeah.

And for you, have you looked into, for example, when we go above and beyond just sedentary amount of time spent sitting there playing, have you looked into blue light and the effects on circadian rhythm with long amounts of time spent gaming or Wi fi or Bluetooth radiation, either of those?

Well, I haven't looked into the circadian rhythm in terms of how to mitigate it, but I have noticed it myself. On me especially, I mean it's kind of common sense. But when you're just spending so much time on that, everything gets screwed up and you know, it's, it's difficult to kind of get back on that. As for the radiation through WI fi, I have not heard of that before and that's something that really interesting. Tell me more about it.

Well, that'd be one of my main concerns would be, you know, a, they've done studies on like night shift workers as well as, you know, this whole like e reader syndrome at night or what they call iPad insomnia, where exposure to blue light for long periods of time actually decreases your ability to produce melatonin. And so it affects your ability to engage in deep sleep cycles. And there's this concept of a circadian rhythm phase shift where if you are in a state of constant summer or constant sunlight exposure, it shifts your sleep time forward. But if your wake time isn't also adjusted, then what happens is your whole circadian rhythm gets shifted forward and you short yourself on sleep. The other kind of interesting thing is that your body achieves its primary amount of cooling and nervous system repair and memory formation between about 2 and 6am and if you haven't been asleep for about three or four hours by 2am that doesn't actually happen. And so if the blue light exposure is keeping you up till like 11am or midnight or something like that, you've only been asleep like two hours before you reach that 2am cycle. And so your body actually doesn't recover quite as quickly from a nervous system standpoint. So you see neuromuscular deficits and you see like a drop in heart rate variability, which is like the strength of the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. All sorts of interesting things. And then the wifi stuff is. We've talked about this a little bit on this podcast before with both WI fi and to a lesser known extent, Bluetooth. They've done studies on Bluetooth that have shown that long exposure to Bluetooth, especially near the head, which I know a lot of these gamers are wearing headsets, it can cause blood brain barrier leakage. In the studies that they've done in rodents.

Really? Yeah.

And then in WI fi, they've shown everything from like brain fog to aggravation of attention deficit disorder to, you know, like the, the N equals one Plant studies that they've done where plants die when they put, you know, a control plant away from a WI fi router and regular plant next to a WI fi router. I mean, it's one of the reasons that even though I'm like hyper connected in my house, it's all through metal shielded ethernet cable. So like, everything I do is typically, you know, through a cable or like on my phone, I use air tube, like an air tube headse rather than a Bluetooth headset. So, yeah, there's a lot of considerations. But one thing I know that you really specialize in, Zach, is this whole idea of smart drugs and supplements and what would be considered PEDs or performance enhancing drugs in esports. What are players kind of turning to if they're not using Monster or Red Bull? What are the more popular drugs that they're using that people are more aware of? I want to ask you too about the stuff that kind of flies under the radar that, that you found to be efficacious in these kind of situations. But first, what are some of the more popular ones that folks are using?

Well, of course, I mean, the first thing that comes to mind most people are aware of is Adderall, and a lot of them are taking Adderall and it's becoming a big thing. That's kind of actually what started the whole drug testing policy with the esl, which is the Electronic Sports League. But it was because of a very popular gamer coming out saying that the whole team took Adderall. So there's Adderall, then there's the dietary supplements like the caffeine and the different pre workouts that some people would even take just to give them focus. And then further down the rabbit hole, there's the whole wide range of nootropics, things that I would offer, things that you would find on the professional level, higher than the people that are just taking the dietary supplements. And then above that, even further down is supplements that are even new to me, things that I have to go start looking up and reviewing and seeing that they're brand new, things that haven't been tested and is dangerous. There's a lot of things that come from it. You know, you were talking about the health risk and we didn't even really touch on the ones associated with the drug abuse.

Yeah, that's what I want to get into. And like, one of the reasons I want to get into this because, like, I've heard about the use of Adderall, Ritalin. I know, is another big one. You know Adderall, also known as Modafinil. There's one calledare you familiar with? I think it's called Vyvanse. It's V, Y, V, A, N, C, E. I don't even know how it's pronounced, but I've heard about that one being used, like in esports for boosting concentration or improving reaction time or preventing fatigue. Is that one you're familiar with?

No. And see, that's what I'm talking about when I say new, because you can take something. I believe you said Modafinilin.

Yeah, Modafinil.

Yeah. Potato papado.

Anyways, what did you call it? Modafinilin.

Yeah. And you could take something like that, do a slight chemical process to it, make it a pro drug, and now it's Adrifinolin. And that's actually the sample that I sent you. And so it's just a pro drug of that.

So that adrophenolin that you sent me, that I tried, that's basically a version of Modafinil?

Yes.

Okay, interesting. Now, my experience with that, and by the way, fair warning to the listener, when Zach sent it to me, he was like, this stuff is metabolized by the liver. Be careful with it. But you sent it to me because I'm constantly kind of wanting to try out some of these things, and I combined it with something called Nupept. And I want to ask you about that too, but one of the things you told me was it's metabolized by the liver. Ben, don't use too much of this. Don't use it too often. Multiple days in a row. And. And when I used it, I found for me, I got about 12 solid hours worth of really focused productivity, and then I crashed. I know some people will get up to like 24 hours with stuff like Modafinil or Modafinil derivatives, but it's interesting stuff as far as these drugs actually go. What are the main things, first of all, that you're trying to achieve when you take a stimulant like this that would benefit, like esports or productivity at work? Like, what are the primary effects?

Well, but before. Before I say that you called it a stimulant. Now, technically, it is a type of stimulant, although I don't want people to consider it like Adderall or Ritalin because it's completely different the way it works in the body. And that's an important aspect that people have to look at because that affects what's going on on the gamer's side. But people would take these for a whole wide range of things. Students take them if they are trying to write a paper and they want a creativity paper and they need that boost, or if they're trying to make music and they're in college in a band or something, they'll take it for that because they can unlock parts of their brain that they didn't really have access to before, and it just allows them to use it, and then they kind of, after a prolonged period, I find that it allows you to recognize different aspects of your brain and different parts of yourself in a personality spectrum, and you can unlock that through different nootropics. Then academic professionals will take it in terms of research, in terms of data processing, they'll take it and just to crunch numbers for a prolonged period of time. Kind of think of if you've got a real grind of an office job. And, you know, I don't like to talk about it, but when I needed to support my family a little bit, I had to go work a job doing tech support. And I was just answering phones all day, and I would just. Adrenalphenoline was my go to supplement right there, because the day would fly by, I would be able to sustain a happy level of energy throughout the day. But then on the other spectrum, you have the Olympic athletes that are taking it because they're in triathlons. So really it affects everyone even further down the line. You have elderly patients that are battling Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and dementia in different parts of the world. And doctors will prescribe these nootropics to help fight these diseases.

Yeah, we've talked about those on the show, like lion's mane and Bacopa and things like that. Now, for esports, if you're talking about something that you mentioned, there's kind of a difference between a stimulant and something that would allow you to remain calm under pressure. Are you seeing both the use of stuff that blocks the effects of adrenaline? I guess. Would that be Valium or something like that, combined with the use of things like Adderall?

No, I don't think any esports players are taking Valium because that's definitely going to dull their senses. But a better one would be, say, l theanine. That's going to reduce the amount of anxiety they're going to feel. It's going to help promote a zen like feeling. And, yeah, they'll take that and they'll stack it. And a stack means just to combine it and they'll do it with something else like nupept and adriphenolin. Just like how you took those two, they'll throw in a few more. And that's actually one of the services that I offer when I sponsor a team or a player is I help them build a custom stack that's going to be the most effective combination of nootropics for them while they're playing. So, you know, I'll sit down and work with them. And if they find that they have problems with focus or they can't play for too long, or if they find that their reaction time just isn't fast enough, These are things that, you know, and you try to build a stack around that.

So what would be the implications for you being in an industry where you're actually providing athletes with this stuff? When it comes to drug testing, like, is any of this stuff drug testing? Like, when somebody wins, are they having to go test, take a pee? Are they getting blood tested? Like, how's that actually work?

Well, you know, that's where these different tiers come in. Like I said, there's the teenagers that are playing online tournaments, then there's the pro people that are playing around the world. And when it comes to drug testing, the only people that are getting drug tested are the ones playing in the stadiums because that's the only ones that can be drug tested. How is a team that spread across the country? One's in New York, one's in Florida, Washington and California A four man team, all playing on an online game through, you know, Xbox Live or something. How are they going to get drug tested? They can't. So the only people that really get drug tested are the top tier players, which leaves a whole range of people that they could potentially be at risk for different, you know, problems when they're not using safe things. And that's why it's really important that I stress to the people that I sponsor and different people that I talk to, do not abuse things that you shouldn't be using, such as Adderall and Ritalin and massive amounts of caffeine. You know, don't be staying up for 25 hours and putting yourself at risk to have cardiac arrest, because all these things.

Well, yeah, the other thing is you're going to get, if you do want to take it to the next level, you're going to get dependent on things to enhance your gaming that might be illegal once you, you do get to the next level. And when, when you get to that next level, are we talking about the same kind of stuff that would be illegal in terms of like the World Anti Doping association, which would just be like, like everything, you know, marijuana, Modafinil or Adderall, like all that stuff? Is it pretty much very similar to the World Anti Doping association list?

Exactly. And that's actually what they did is the esl, which is, you know, it's the Electronic Sports League. They just adopted the policies of the wada, which is the World Anti Doping Agency's drug policy. So they just copy and pasted their list over and said, we ban all this. The only thing they changed, which a lot of people would think of right away when you think of drug testing and video games, is marijuana. They said that they're not really going to care if marijuana comes up, but they are going to test for all the others, including things like steroids, including things like inhalers that people might use. It's a whole wide range of random things. But in terms of nootropics and smart drugs, there's only one that they ban and that's Modafinilin. And here's the kicker is, like I said, the one I sent you, Adrifinoline is a pro drug, which is essentially the same thing. It just is switched slightly over. So it's a different chemical and changes differently in your digestive tract. To go over to monofenolin, well, that is not banned. So you can see that there's loopholes here and there's a lot of risk that comes into Play when people don't take safety measures into hand and don't play responsibly.

Yeah. So in terms of the smart drug stack, so the neurotropic stacks that you recommend, I want to delve into now. We've gotten some of the health risks and the legal implications, aside from. So let's have some fun now and talk about some of the things that you have found to be most efficacious. I want to start actually, if you're game, pun intended, to talk about what you sent me. You sent me new PEPT and the Adraphanil that you've been talking about, like the modafinil derivative. What are those and how do they work and why did you send me both those?

Well, I sent you those two because they're personal favorites of mine. The adraphanil, as you call it, Adraphenolin, as I call it, is quite an interesting chemical. That's the one that you call the stimulant. Although it is not a stimulant. It is considered a type of stimulant because it keeps you awake and alert. But if you look at the actual methods that a stimulant works through in your body, it doesn't do that. It doesn't raise your cardiovascular levels. It doesn't increase your blood pressure, doesn't do anything that would affect your body temperature. It doesn't make you twitchy or kind of cracked out like different caffeine or stimulants would. What it does is it prohibits your body's ability to release the hormone that makes you feel tired. So it's essentially saying, which hormone is that? Do you know, I'd have to look it up.

It's a long, like, adrenaline and norepinephrine or something like that.

No, and it's not. It's not a major hormone either that you would think of. It's. It's a very obscure one. And it was just recently discovered, you know, within the last 30 years. And that's where this came into play. The drug itself was designed for people that have serious sleeping disorders and, you know, narcolepsy, things like that. And then in the early 90s, Silicon Valley executives kind of picked it up because they're like, whoa, this is a big deal. And that's the movie Limitless with Bradley Cooper that was based off of monofinilin. So it's kind of the beginning thing that started the whole smart drug quote, unquote. But then there's Nupept, and Nupept is a derivative of a very basic staple in the nootropic class and it's a ricetam. Now new pept.

A rice like piracetam or aniracetam.

Exactly. Now new pept is pracetam, essentially, although it's a thousand times more potent. And if you look at the ricetam family. Yeah, if you look at them, the very first one, Prystam, the one that was created way back in the 60s, they use that as the rating scale for other nootropics in terms of cognitive boost. That's got a level of one. And then if you go to say any rice tan, you'll see it's got somewhere around 10 times more potent. Oxy rice tan would be like 800 times more potent. And when I say more potent, I don't necessarily mean think of instead of one coffee you're having two espressos. I mean more potent in the sense of the cognitive boost and effects. You'll see, for example, further down the rice tan flaming line, there's coir rice tan, which is given to people that have eye disorders. And that's in European countries. In America they're not prescribed. So people would take them if they want to have something with their vision boosted. One of the major effects is people say that they have high definition vision.

And that's with neupept.

No, that was with Chlorcastam. Neupept. On the other hand, nupept helps the neuroplasticity of your brain and the way that your synapses work. Essentially you have acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter that is the basis for creating and recalling memories. Inupept helps with the formation of acetylcholine. And a metaphor I like to use is think of going from your house to another person's house with a letter and you're going to get in your car and drive down one block. Now say you have one letter and you're in that car going down that one block. When you take Neupept, that turns that one block into three different roads. And now you have six cars and you have six letters. So you just potentially, you know, cubed your output of letters that you can do in the same amount of time. And that's the metaphor I like to use. A little complex, but that's how your synapses and the data transfer through the chemical processes that go on and new peptides, essentially, in layman terms, it helps you learn, it helps you create memories, it helps you focus and it kind of gets rid of any residual Brain fog or slime that's going on in your, in your brain and you just kind of wake up.

And so you combine that with this Adafinil and for me it seemed to last about 12 hours. And that's a pretty common stack that you'll recommend to like a gamer or somebody wanting to like learn or enhance memory.

Well yeah, that would be a basic one For a gamer or say someone doing college paper or a professional. I would recommend something a little bit more in depth to be honest. You would take New pept, but Nupept, like I said, works by increasing your acetylcholine levels. Well, that requires that you have choline. Well in order to have that you must have a lot of liver in your diet, which most people don't eat any liver. So you would have to have a choline supplement such as Alpha.

Is that like phosphatidylcholine or acetylcholine?

Well, it really depends on the way that you want the choline to be metabolized and crossed over. I always recommend Alpha GPC because it works really well with rice tams. So including New pep. So a common stack for just a general gamer would be adriphenolin to give them that focus, New PEP to provide the mental clarity, the response time that they need. Alpha GPC to maximize NUPEP's potential and then one other synaptic booster that way that they can have kind of a more in depth reach to the potential boost they're getting. So I like to always recommend something like Phenol Price Sandwiches, a really great strategic booster in terms of gaming. When you're playing an FPS like Call of Duty or Battlefield or something and you're taking a supplement like Phenol Ricetam, it allows you to visualize the map 3D better in your head, at least for me.

And I always promote that one's phenylpiracetam when you're doing like mapping and stuff.

Correct.

Yeah, and that's, that's different than, than using like new peptides and an adapinil. You'd recommend phenylpiracetam instead of something like Neupept, which would still be considered a racetam.

No, I'd recommend all four of those.

Oh, so New pept, Adraphanil, phenyl Racetam.

Or what'd you call it, Phenyl phenylpricetam.

Phenylpiracetam and then some type of choline like Alpha gpc.

Correct. And that would be a good, well rounded stack and you might be thinking wow, four different chemicals, you know. Well, the thing is, they're really safe. There's no drug interaction between the last three. The only one that could potentially have one would be adrift. Like I said with the liver issue, you wouldn't take this daily. That one you would take probably twice a week on, if it's a gamer, on their training days, on their competition days, if it was, say, a college student or something like that, when they have a test, if they have a serious study session. So you tailor it around what you're doing that day, what you need. And I have a whole personal wide range of different nootropics that what I'll do is if I have a grind coming up, I'm going to take hydrophenolin. And if I have, say, a time where I'm going to go out and spend some time with my family, then I might take phenylprice stamp because it puts me in a good mood. So, yeah, you kind of tailor it.

Gotcha. That's interesting. Hey, I have a quick favor to ask of you as I'm working on the show notes for people because I know that folks who are riding their bike or running or something or gaming may not remember all this stuff. After our call, can you shoot me a few sample stacks with things spelled correctly just so I can make sure that if I put it in the show notes for people, people that they know the exact names of some of the stuff. Because the last thing I want is someone to get explosive diarrhea because they took a phosphate instead of a cyto or something like that.

Absolutely. Yeah. And in fact, I have three stacks already that I like to kind of put out as intro stacks. I have a creativity one. I have a busy work stack to get through that grind.

Okay, sweet. Send those over and I'll put the links. For those of you listening, I'm going to put the links to everything we talk about. I'll put a link to that movie gamer. Some of this other stuff over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com esports BenGreenfieldFitness.com esports is the URL. Zach, what's the creativity one?

So the creativity stack is actually going to be mainly for people that are going to be trying to do music, going to be trying to do art kind of projects. But essentially what it is is the basis of the stack is Annie Rice Tan is anti Rice Tam is a really big. I hate to say it this way, but there's no real good way to put it in layman terms. But it affects the left side, the left hemisphere, the creativity part of your brain. And it's been disproven that there's two hemispheres and all that. But I just like to kind of put it that way in layman's terms. So it's Anti Rice Tam. It's Phenolpricetam, because Phenolprice Tam is a mood stabilizer. It makes you feel really good and part of creativity is being in a good mood. Then it uses Pyrenthal instead of Alpha gpc. Just because the way that Pyrentrol works is almost like a B vitamin similar to it. So it gives you.

What did you call it? Pyrental?

Yeah. P Y, R I, T I, N O, L. Okay. And then new Pept, because Nupept is going to allow you to have that focus and sustain the creativity instead of just, you know, petering out. And then finally L Theanine, because that's gonna give you a Zen filling. And that's pretty important because you need to be able to be in the moment. And so that's five different ones.

L Theanine helps with your alpha brainwave production as well, right?

Correct.

Some of those things you can combine with coffee to decrease some of the jittery stimulant effect of coffee.

Correct. And that's very important when you're looking into doing anything that's creative. Because if you're not in the right mood, so to speak, it's not going to flow.

Right, okay, got it. So you've got this stack for hanging around the family, staying smart, using like a Paracetam. You've got the one that you recommend for gamers like New Pep, the Draft Nil Alpha GPC and Phenylperacetam. What else in addition to creativity and gaming?

Well, so one of the gaming stacks that I always give out and this is I have a. I have a gamer I sponsor and then what I give them is we work back and forth and so we'll take Parama Rice Tam. Now that's. I haven't mentioned that one yet. That one is. Well, I'll put it to you this way. It's the most expensive one on my site. So it's. It's a pretty good one. It's not easy to get and actually have a lot of problems getting it. So it's always out of stock. But I got some for him. He takes Primerozetam because Primeroztam is almost a stimulant in the sense of you're going to take it and you're working in long term memory as well as your focus and motivation is going to skyrocket. And now you're thinking, why is working in long term memory help with gaming? Because when you look at map, say a mini map and you're also walking through a forest, you're looking at the mini map to see where your guys are, where the enemy's at and what's around you. But you have to quickly look back and see who's in front of you to shoot them in that quick millisecond that you looked into the corner. You need to be able to process the information, memorize that information and recall it almost instantaneously without having to re look at it and take your eyes off the target. In order to do that you have to have a short term, a working and a long term memory all at 110%. So then primarize them. Also helps with the strategic thinking, like I said, with the 3D processing thinking I'm going to approach from the right, I'm going to come down, you know, I'll be on top of the enemy. So it's a huge, huge gaming one that I promote really to people that are looking, they're already at the top of their class and they're looking for that little bit extra. And then I stack that with adrifinoline, I'll do alcar for the primerizetam neupept and then depending on the person we'll go something else.

So interesting. Okay, cool. And you're gonna send all these again for me to put in the show notes for folks?

Absolutely, yeah.

Okay. Do you do any blood testing to see if like your liver enzymes are going up or if something is potentially something you're doing too much of, like if it's damaging an organ or anything like that or do you just pay attention to whether or not the right side of your body hurts?

Well, you know, I didn't think we were going to be getting to my medical records. If you want I can fax them over you. No, personally I haven't taken any looks into my, my own effects of it, mainly because I really take it safe. Adrifinoline and my liver is something that I care a lot about. So I don't, I won't abuse it in any sense. I'll take it only when need be. And I always tell that to people. Like I told to you, you know, don't take this every day. Just you know, you have to be responsible when you take any substance. And so I haven't really Noticed any side effects from Adrianoline at all for me, so I think it's because I play it safe. Although it does, you know, there's some people that just aren't smart about it or, you know, and for situations like that, it could be a real thing.

Now what about like using like glutathione or N acetylcysteine or any of these, these things that have been known to help cleanse the liver even, you know, like, like blending cilantro and celery juice and all these, these type of things, things that can lower like aspartate aminotransferase or alanine aminotransferase or some of these elevated liver enzymes. Do you, you know, even some people recommend like after a big like marijuana Bender to use 5 HTP for example, or something like on its alpha brain is another popular one for stuff like that. Like what are your thoughts on that type of thing on like mitigating the damage?

Well, there's always ways to do, I like to say homeopathic cleanses. I don't necessarily mean it's homeopathic because there's a lot of things that actually do five htp. Like you're saying with marijuana. Things like that. Those are important, but it's not something that I take into account as a daily ritual or anything that's important. If I find that I'm in the need of a cleanse, then yeah, I'll do it. But it's not something that is really a big staple. Although I know a lot of people are into that. And I can't say that it would hurt. You know, it wouldn't hurt at all. It would be the most proactive thing. It'd be like taking a vitamin, working out every day. You know, it's just a good healthy habit to have.

I did it like after you told me about how the Adafinil affects the liver. I doubled up my glutathione and also N acetylcysteine. Just helped my liver process some of that stuff. Like whenever I take a medicine or I've had a heavy night of drinking or you know, had like marijuana or something like that in my system, I always do that just, just to help the liver along a little bit. Not, not to justify like beating up your liver. But yeah, if you can dump like antioxidants, if you can dump binders like chlorella and charcoal and then you can dump like sulfur based cleaners or antioxidants like glutathione or N acetylcysteine in. I think that's just like smart. Smart body management. I'm hoping some gamers.

And how did that.

Picking up on some.

How did, how did that work for you? Did you find that it mitigated it to.

Yeah. I test my liver. I also take something called Rock Lotus extract. It's in this stuff called MPX100 and it's like, it's a compound that's a mix of bitter melon extract and Rock Lotus extract. So it's kind of like the diabetic drug metformin when it comes to decreasing your blood sugar. And then the Rock Lotus is like liver cleanse. I test my liver enzymes four times a year and they're always just like rock bottom as far as health goes. Occasionally, if I've exercised really, really hard like the day before, that'll elevate your liver enzymes. But otherwise, so far, knock on wood. It seems to be keeping me pretty clean. Even though I do occasionally do some, you know, some of the stuff that we're talking about when it comes to smart drugs. So it's a. Hopefully working well.

You got to send me some info on that. Thinking about all those four nights where I just milked the hangover and didn't do anything.

I'll make you a deal. If you send over your best stacks that you recommend to me to embed in the show notes for listeners, I'll also put in the show notes for those of you listening in. Kind of like my liver cleansing stack of choice. That has worked pretty well for me just based on my blood testing with Wellness fx. Zach, anything else that you wanted to go over today when it comes to electronic sports, Electronic sports, health, fitness, smart drugs, anything like that stuff you still want to get out there.

You know, it's a huge industry. It's growing. It's estimated to grow over 500 million per a year within the next two years. So it's an insane industry. And something that I really want people to realize is that it needs to take off. Because once it be, I mean, it already is. It's on espn, they're taking Staples center and you know, so it's taken off, but it really needs to take off because like I said earlier, this is the beginning of the future. This esports industry is going to set the standard for the next 20 and 30 years as sports developers. And think about it, what happens when the new product in five years from Google, which is some 3D technology or some virtual reality technology, comes out and they're sponsored with a huge industry like The NFL for gaming. And now we have virtual reality gaming. Maybe Imagine. Imagine a stadium where instead of a football field, it's a hologram and that is a Call of Duty field or something. And you can watch people throwing grenades and rockets and helicopters and it's right there and it's live. Imagine, instead of going to the movies, you can go to a stadium and watch something like that. Just some. In crazy fantasy. Like, I don't. I just feel like it's the future, you know, when you go to the movies and people get all bent up on Star wars and things like Avatar and all this sci fi, this is gonna be the next thing that people will be bent up on. So it needs to grow and it needs to take off. And so for the people out there, I always say, do it. Get a team going together, start competing, make some money. You can make some serious money. Make some money and help build the industry, you know?

Yeah, and, and I mean like, you know, I wanted to get on with you, Zach. Not because I personally have too keen of an interest in gaming. Because frankly, even though I, I love like the whole like Oculus Rift stuff and like, I like, you know, when I go to my mom's house, she's got a Wii and I'll play like Nintendo Wii dance. Like, I like the physical stuff and I still, still, for the reasons I, I highlighted earlier, kind of avoid it for both my kids and I just. Because, you know, dude, I live out in the forest, right? Like, I can go like slacklining and climb trees and my kids and I can whip out the paintball guns and the bows and just like go to go to battle out in the forest. And for me, I get a bigger kick out of that. But I know there's a lot of people that freaking love online gaming and some of these stacks, some of these personal care type of protocols, I think they're relevant to those folks. One other thing, Zach. You ever use gaming glasses, like blue light blocking, glare reducing glasses?

No, because I'm not that big of a gamer. You're not going to find me spend eight hours in front of a Xbox.

That's, that's something like, I used to have tons of eye strain from my time at a computer. And not just at night, but even during the day. A lot of the time I'll use like, like Gunar is one brand. There's another brand called Swanee's. There's one. One company just sent me a pair. They're like aviator style blue light blockers. I'm trying to Remember the name of the company. Anyways, I'll put it in the show notes. If a carbon shade. Carbon shade isn't. I think they're like on Indiegogo or something like that right now. But those help a ton too, with like eye strain and reducing like a lot of the blue light that shuts down melatonin and stuff like that. So that's another little one in turn, you know, in addition to like the liver cleanse stuff I talked about if you're taking, if you're taking antioxidants or if you're taking smart drugs.

Yeah. And you know, those are really good points. That's, that's what I'm talking about when I say get into the industry. Starting a business where you're like, there is one of the companies I'm working with that does blue light blocking glasses, no scope. They, you know, they start up, they get into the industry and they're starting something that's going to change the industry itself. And so it's important. And like you were saying how you live in the forest, what do you.

Mean they're starting something that's going to change the industry?

Well, think about it. When you start a business for an industry, you're changing that field, whether it be by affecting a competitor or whether it be by giving a quality product that sets a new standard. If I don't want to say any names, but if you look at a sponsor of one of the teams before I sponsored them, it was a product that helped with cognitive benefits, but essentially it was just a vapor and it was nothing, nothing more than a vapor. And that's all I really want to say because I don't want to get too much into it. And I feel like by me replacing them as a sponsor is because I have a better, more effective, safer product. And that's setting a standard. Do you see what I'm saying? So eventually, if, say, Google gets into it and they pull out some Oculus Rift type headset or some stadium hologram like I was talking about way in the future, that's going to be the new standard and it's going to progress. And that's the whole point. I just want to see a futuristic progression through America that's going to help grow. And that's why I think that esports is so interesting and lucrative because it's something that we've never seen before and it's great. And what you were saying about living in the forest with your kids, I think that's an important aspect too, is you don't want to be doing this for your, you know, 18 hours a day and make it an extreme. But it's, I feel like it's a great passion or career for the people that can do it right. And I don't think every, anyone should be pushed on it. You know, I don't think kids should be trained on legal lessons from five years till they're 18, you know?

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I hear you. But I do like Nintendo Wii dance, like I said, which I'm sure every single serious gamer listening in just totally lost all respect for me, especially because I've never played League of Legends and Shocker. I've never even played Halo. But that I know, I know even.

I played Halo, man.

Yeah. But I could probably kick your butt in either paintball or laser tag. Guaranteed. So anyways, after throwing down that gauntlet, Zach, I'm going to bring this episode to a close. But for those of you listening in, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com eSports. I'll link to Zach's site. I'll link to his stacks. I'm even going to give you a 10% discount code right there in the show notes for any of the stuff that Zach just talked about in case you want to proceed at your own risk and within the bounds of legality and try out any of the stuff that Zach just talked about. So, and if you have questions, you can leave them in the comment section and either Zach or I will reply or prove good at responding to comments and stuff like that that come through on podcasts. So that being said, Zach, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Hey, thank you, Ben. I appreciate it was a great honor. I hope you have a great one, man.

All right, folks, this is Ben Greenfield and Zach signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com you've.

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

Sam.