Fringe Supplement Stacks You've Never Heard Of, The Best Nootropic Combinations, The Latest Keto Support Compounds, Supplements That Act Like "Exercise In A Bottle" & Much More With Shawn Wells

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

But what's interesting is because as we age, we make less nad, but then we also catabolize nad faster. In that sweet spot in the middle is the Goldilocks zone, where we're getting plenty of stress and we're growing the size of our stress bucket and we can become harder to kill.

A lot of positive character traits that are derived from taking the hard road, which versus the easy road. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show, Folks. It has been quite some time since I have had a chat on my podcast with biochemists, dietitian, sports nutritionist, formulation scientists, arguably one of the world's best formulators in the whole supplements industry, my friend Sean Wells. Sean was actually on my podcast. Gosh, Sean, what was it, like three years ago? Something like that?

More than that, I think, like five years ago.

Yeah. So he's gotten super duper Internet famous since then. Just famous famous since then. But we did a podcast episode that was called the Nitty Gritty Underground World of Supplement Ingredients, Sports nutrition, frankenfuels, illegally laced compounds and more, where we just geeked out about all the nasty stuff that goes on behind the scenes in the supplement industry, which Sean obviously has an intimate connection to, just because he's constantly helping companies formulate supplements and hunting down all these crazy fringe raw ingredients from Siberian caves and everything else that he does. And so we had a great discussion then, and I'll link to that discussion in the show notes for today's podcast, which you can find@bengreenfieldfitness.com energyformula that's bengreenfieldfitness.com EnergyFormula the reason that is the URL for today's shownotes is because Sean just put the finishing touches on a book that I read this week in time for this podcast called the Energy Formula, where he gets into everything from like, you know, keto versus Paleo versus vegan, carnivore and stoicism and plant medicine and nootropics and infrared saunas and cold plunges and sleep and circadian architecture and just a ton of stuff. So really fun book and so many kind of like nitty gritty corners in it. Literally there are like sections in each chapter called the Formulator's Corner, which honestly, Sean, that was like one of my favorite parts of the book, seeing what somebody who knows as much about raw ingredients and supplements as you do kind of uses as so called stacks right to Optimize different areas of life. The geek in me loved that part. But he's also got just like tons of resource hacks in there, like products, devices, apps, all the things that kind of correlate to each chapter. It's a great book. So I'll link to it in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com energyformula but of course, inevitably when I read a book, I always have a bunch of questions for the author about it. And that's one of my favorite things about reading a book, is to be able to get a smart guy like Sean on the call and talk to him about it. So, Sean, first of all, welcome to the show, man. Welcome back to the show.

Thank you, Ben. It's an honor to be here. I'm a huge fan of you and to just have you read the book is awesome. I'm excited for this discussion.

Yeah, yeah, it'll be fun. And then of course, second, and this is way more important than the book, you being such a, I guess like a fellow self professed authority optimizer. Fill me in on what you had for breakfast this morning, if anything, and any special stacks you took, particularly like in the realm of smart drugs or nootropics or anything like that. And if you say a cup of coffee and a cigarette, we're gonna have to end the conversation.

So I'm about 40 hours into a 72 hour extended fast that I'm doing with my community online right now as a fasting challenge. And I'm actually feeling like this is like right when I start to turn the corner. Like, I don't know, between like 36 and 48 hours is when I start feeling amazing. I stop feeling as hungry and start having the breakthrough. So I'm glad that I'm feeling that way right now. So I haven't had anything for breakfast besides some Redmond Real salt and peak tea fasting tea. And that's what I had. It was like a ginger green tea combination and it was good.

Yeah, that actually that's so funny because I had my team call this morning with my Ben Greenfield fitness team and one of the guys on the team, he's doing a similar fasting protocol right now. He's complaining that he had a headache and I asked him if he was using electrolytes and he wasn't. And that's for the type of fast that you're doing. Key to stave off some of those headache and blood flow and aldosterone cortisol related blood pressure issues. So that's a good tip for folks who are doing any type of fast, like Sean is doing. And what'd you say you were also using? Addition to the electrolytes.

Yeah, Peak tea, which is a green tea. Fasting tea. But yeah, I also use the Redmond Real Salt, and they actually have a product called Relights that I was using as well that they sent me.

Relights? Is that like an electrolyte powder?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

And you're dead on. Like, honestly, like, I think hyponatremia is, like, so much more prevalent than we give it credit for. And a lot of times, speaking of, like, me being a formulator and looking at new ingredients and all this data, sometimes when I look at things like sodium citrate or sodium bicarbonate or sodium phosphate or all these different ingredients that are ergogenic ingredients, sometimes I wonder how much of that's actually the sodium playing a role. Because athletes typically are hyponatremic, and we see salt have a huge impact on performance.

You think athletes in particular are more hyponatre than dehydrated?

Are more hyponatremic than dehydrated? I think both. I think both, without a doubt, yeah.

Can you explain that to people who might not fully understand, like. Like, kind of the implications of hyponatremia? The reason I asked you, by the way, that question about athletes versus, say, like, non athletes is, you know, classic marathon scenarios is it is kind of like the non athletes back of the pack, people who are walking, who are drinking way too much water or Gatorade, who seem to be. In my experience, in the endurance sports industry, the folks who wind up with hyponatremia are kind of like diluted blood. Whereas the people who win the race, the athletes, tend to be, like 2 to 4% dehydrated at the finish line.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's a decline, pretty marked decline in performance. I think it's around like, 15% if you're hyponatremic. And that's not even, like, severe hyponatremic. They do go hand in hand with dehydration. When you sweat, the majority of that is salt. That's why electrolyte formulas are cool. It's great to get the chloride, the potassium, the calcium, the magnesium. But the majority of it is salt is what you're losing in your sweat. If you were to taste your urine, which don't do that, but if you were to taste your sweat or tears, this is all salt.

Do you mean sodium chloride salt?

Okay, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Sorry. Sodium chloride. So exactly what you're talking about. And athletes tend to be hyponatremic. And also keto dieters tend to be hyponatremic, which means low in sodium levels.

What you're saying is in a case like that, like the hyponatremia is brought on not necessarily by excess consumption of water or say like lack of sweating, you're saying that in that population it's specifically due to inadequate electrolyte intake.

Exactly. And then we see that how critical that is with the sodium potassium pump and muscular contraction and brain function. You have muscular weakness and twitching and dizziness and lightheadedness and headaches and all that kind of stuff. A lot of times when we're feeling hungry or we're feeling headaches, you know, people say to drink water. And that's true. We tend to be dehydrated. I think about 75, 80% of the population is dehydrated. But a lot of times that's being hyponatremic as well. When we're getting cravings, we think we want sugar, we think we want food. That's because we're not elevated enough in sodium. So that's where that can be a problem. So hypernatremia for sure.

Now, why are you such a big fan of the Redmond brand salt?

Because one, I've been to that mine and I've seen it personally and it's family owned, it's American. They really care about the composition. They don't add anything to it. Like a lot of the finer grain salts, they actually add things that are anti humectant to dry it out, like calcium phosphate and all these different conditioners and things like that. If it's more of a coarse salt, it's not going to get as sticky as quick. But if it's a fine salt, they tend to add a bunch of stuff to it. So that's more reason to either use at least a more coarse salt if you have to just use like a regular salt, white salt. But I prefer to use something like from a really good company from a great mind that I know, like has all the trace minerals in it. Is from really an incredible family too that has a great culture around it. Like they, they're very religious, they're, they're family oriented, they give back. Like it's just a great company.

That's amazing news for anyone who wants their kids to go work in a salt mine. You know that real salt would be the way to go. You don't set them all the way over to Siberia that that's actually cool because I know that Real Salt was one of the companies that when the whole. I think it was the Guardian that did the big article recently shining a light on the research showing plastic and sea salt, real salt, wound up being tested very low in plastic contamination. And I know that they were one company that wound up being really good. Another one that I found out about through another researcher I've had in the show who does a lot of water and electrolyte research, Robert Slovak. He said the Celtic salt is also a pretty good brand. So I use that quite a bit. And then I actually want to get your take on this versus salt. There's a lot of these liquid mineral solutions out there with probably the most popular right now that a lot of folks. And the, you know, the biohacking or the so called health optimization as you talk about are these, these raw marine fluids harvested from plankton. Usually it goes by the name Quinton, like Q U I N T O n. Have you messed around with that at all or compared it to salt at all?

You know, it's funny that you're bringing this up. I have not really, but I literally working on a project around this right now and looking into that guy, specifically Robert Slovak and his work on that product. I was literally just talking about this on a discovery call the other day for a company we were diving into this because I've been working on molecular hydrogen deuterium depleted water and that guy has done research on both as well as this type of water that you're talking about that has all these compounds in it where it's, you know, taking in inorganic material and turning it into organic. And it's, it's pretty incredible. Yes, I'm very into all this. I'm literally just exploring that right now.

Yeah, it's actually pretty cool. They, they actually have like these plankton blooms. Yeah, like, because, because you can't just drink seawater, it has to be passed through something just like, you know, the, the minerals and arguably even the structured water that you absorb from say like eating a tomato or a cucumber, you know, is more hydrating than if you were to like put a pinch of salt into water. And the, the idea behind this is, is the plankton allow for better absorption capacity of the minerals and then they micro filtrate it and put it in these little glass tip vials or foil pole tab vials. And dude, I put a couple of packets of those in my big morning glass of water. I start off the day with the water. Actually, I'd love to hear your take on my morning hydration solution. I start the day with. I add the Quinton to it. I put a little bit of vitamin C in there at a 2 to 1 ratio to baking soda to knock off some of the acidity and alkalize my body a little bit. And then I drop about three hydrogen tablets in there. So I got hydrogen, vitamin C, baking soda, and minerals. And it. And it's just a big glass of well water that. That's pretty decently filtered from here on my property. And that's every morning.

That's. That's awesome. And you're seeing a difference specifically with that Quinton?

Yeah. Yeah. Especially because I find sometimes that if I decide I want to go hit the kettlebells in the morning or hit the airdyne in the morning, which I do some mornings now, I feel like I can get into the workout faster and have a little bit less of what I perceive as a little bit of blood pressure dysregulation, or almost like my body kind of shifting from a really parasympathetic state in the morning to be able to handle hard workout. It seems like the minerals really help with that quite a bit especially and seem to move the bowel along pretty well, too.

Wow. I'm super interested to try that. Yeah. Like I said, it's just funny. I was literally talking about this yesterday and heard about it for the first time because I've been doing a lot of work over the last three years on deuterium depleted water. And we're actually optimizing all this equipment to get that price down pretty markedly. Want to make it more mainstream, and then been looking at the other side of that is like, molecular hydrogen and ways to actually have that in a ready to drink format instead of a tablet. And so I've been looking at both of those. The molecular hydrogen increasing the hydrogen ions, and then also the deuterium depleted is getting rid of the fat guy trying to go through the turnstile of the mitochondria, so to speak, like the excess deuterium. So it's kind of. It would be like a double whammy. And that's what I've been looking at, is maybe putting those two together.

Yeah. You know, I've actually. Because that's always the issue. Right. You got to put the hydrogen tablets in the water and then drink it like four minutes later before the hydrogen actually kind of dissolves off the top of the water. And I know that one company I was talking to was H2BEV. And I tried some of the cans that they sent to me and they basically have a canning process that allows for the hydrogen not to almost like leach from the can. So you just pop open the can, you still have to slam the whole can can right after you open it because of the same issues. Right. As soon as it's open, you'll get the hydrogen kind of dissolving off the top of it just because it's essentially a molecular gas. But from what I understand that there are already some companies who are canning hydrogen water.

Yep, yep, exactly. That's actually one of the companies I was talking to. So you're on it, Ben, you're on it. No surprise.

Yeah. And the deuterium, of course, just the process to, you know, because, because natural, like glacial water is very, very low in that deuterium, which kind of gums up your metabolic machinery. But to create that same scenario, like in a water production facility is prohibitively expensive. Which is why I think so many people aren't able to afford or can't get their hands on deuterium depleted water unless they want to pay like 16 bucks a bottle from Romania or something like that.

Exactly. And you really need to keep up with it consistently. So yeah, it could get pricey. But yeah, if money's no object, then you should be drinking lots of deuterium.

Depleted water and avoiding glyphosate like the plague because that, that'll actually introduce you to more deuterium exposure and, and, and limit some of the beta oxidation because you make your own deuterium depleted water if you're just burning fat. So, you know, limiting starches, sugars, herbicides, pesticides like you, you can decently deplete your body of deuterium just with some healthy lifestyle practices. But I mean, I, I went through like a six month stint after I interviewed Robert Slovak of drinking deuterium depleted water, and my levels were at like 150ppm. And at that point I was already like relatively keto, eating organic, not getting a lot of glyphosate exposure, like doing a lot of the things that arguably would naturally deplete my deuterium levels. And all I did was add in the deuterium depleted water and I went down to like 138. And I guess that, you know, you should be below 139 for ideal metabolic function when it comes to the levels of deuterium in your body. So it definitely did something that just natural lifestyle practices weren't doing.

Wow, that's impressive.

Yeah. It was super interesting. But we could geek out on water and salt all day. Well, there's so many things we geek out on all day. But there are things in your book that I think would be novel for people that they might not be familiar with that I really want to prioritize talking about. For example, you get in the book into how you kind of think like mito is the next keto, meaning like, you know, mitochondrial enhancement being really where a lot of the interest in health is shifting, you know, which is related to what we talked about when it comes to, you know, minerals and water. A lot of that is important just in order to provide adequate electrons for the electron transport chain, you know, where the mitochondria producing ATP. But there are some other things that you talk about. For example, you mentioned glutathione as one of your top. You call it like a mitochondrial dysregulation supplements. And so, you know, I'm curious just because, you know, a lot of people say glutathione is an orally bioavailable, you know, and if not, what could you take to replete glutathione levels? And you know, shouldn't everyone be taking glutathione? So I'm curious if you could share with people, you know, if you were to say that glutathione is one of the best things you could be doing for your mitochondria, how would you recommend people optimize their glutathione levels?

Yeah, that's a great question. Mitochondrial glutathione is really like the main line of defense to protect the mitochondria against the redox environment so that you don't have dysfunction or cell death. It also prevents impairment of the electron transport chain. The problem is, and I believe this, there are some studies of some companies selling just plain oral glutathione that say if you take enough, it works, it raises serum glutathione levels. But to me you have to take pretty high doses and the data is borderline sketchy to me. So liposomal glutathione seems to be a better alternative. It is a tripeptide, which means it can get broken down into those free amino acids. But really. And liposomal glutathione can taste funky and get very expensive. I think one of the best ways to boost glutathione is just N acetylcysteine. It's much cheaper. It actually is an acetyl group donor which can help with acetylcholine and a number of functions in the body. Acetylation also helps with delivery to more tissues, like across the blood brain barrier. And it's an antioxidant itself. N acetylcysteine is. So I'm really a big fan of that versus the questionable data around oral glutathione. Now, obviously, taking IV glutathione would be a very good way to raise it, and I'll probably bring that up with a number of compounds we'll discuss.

Or intramuscular.

Exactly, Exactly. But I would say NAC is probably the best way to do that.

And to clarify for people, when Sean says liposoma, I mean, you. You put the glutathione in a liposome, and that stabilizes it, protects the amino acid, basically, by encapsulating it in this microscopic lipid sphere, and then it can survive passage through the digestive system and arguably have better bioavailability. And typically, these are like. Usually it's almost like a tincture or kind of like a gel, like, texture that you would put into your mouth. And that's how I, when I do supplement with glutathione, tend to take it. I use one that's compounded with CoQ10 and PQQ, and it's actually called mitotherapy. The one I get is made by a company called OLMS Bio. It tastes like an orange creamsicle. My kids take it. They put a little bit of lactoferrin in there, which seems to stabilize the gut a little bit. And that one seems to work okay. But I have heard what you just pointed out, that something like N acetylcysteine can, in many people, be a better way to boost glutathione. And in terms of N acetylcysteine from everything I've looked into, the one made by Bio and Bantex, their Pharmanac, that one's supposed to be a pretty good form of nac. Have you looked into that one at all? It's like an effervescent tablet.

No, I haven't heard of that brand, but I'm sure it's great.

Yeah, it's supposed to be a super bioavailable form of nac. And I don't take it just because I have a whole refrigerator full of the PQQ CoQ10 Glutathione blend. And I'm fine with that for now, but that Pharmanac is supposed to be pretty good stuff. What do you like for N acetylcysteine that you've tried for brands, just a.

Straightforward brand like I use Thorne or Doctor's Best or Pure Encapsulations. Those are some of my go to brands.

Why are and this is a little bit of a rabbit hole and slightly related to what we talked about in our last podcast. When you talk about a brand like say Thorne or Standard Process, is it the fact that they're doing their own in house manufacturing that sets those companies apart? Is it the fact that, you know, they've got, you know, what a lot of other supplement companies don't have, like you know, a whole bunch of $40,000 mass spec machines or they're testing everything. I mean, what is it that would make you comfortable with a larger company like that in terms of supplement brand recommendations?

Yeah, it's not necessarily in house manufacturing. There's a lot of companies that use contract manufacturers that are elite level. In some ways I think that's even better these days. At one point in time that was true. If you had in house manufacturing you might be doing things better. But the way these contract manufacturers are inspected and the way they're doing business at such a massive level now, and they're basically pharmaceutical or over the counter level at a lot of these places they're going to do it better than you could do it in house, like let someone specialize and do that. But I think the biggest difference with Thorne or like you said Standard Process and some of these companies is they're investing so much money in quality control and they do a lot of testing. For example, when I was working on a supplement in particular, I was thinking of one with BioTrust. I did a multivitamin. I spent two years actually working on this formula because there's all these nutrient to nutrient interactions that take place. First off, I had to qualify each nutrient, testing each one as a raw material. Then I was doing like blending at smaller levels to see what would happen with these nutrients. And I kept sending that out for testing, sending that out for testing because there was all these nutrient interactions, all these things that were happening in blending where you'd have lower levels of some things. And so we had to do overages and then we did more advanced testing with things like stability work, accelerated and real time stability to see what's happening over time. And so like all that work, it's a ton. And to make sure that it doesn't have the things in it that you don't want in it, adulteration, toxins, heavy metals, all these things, I mean it just takes so much testing. Going back to that Old podcast, I'm sure I talked about fairy dusting and proprietary blends and all that kind of stuff, which is super frustrating to me because not only is that sneaky in terms of not including high levels of the key ingredients that you want, but two, they don't have to test against it. When you don't actually list a dose of that ingredient or, like, the standardization of that ingredient, you don't have to test against it. So when someone's being straightforward and they're listing each ingredient out, listing the dose, the form, the standardization, the genus and species, the plant part, that's when you can start trusting a company. When a company's been around 10, 20 years, when they have. When they work with practitioners, you know, I mean, these companies, they're certainly more expensive, but, you know, you're paying for that quality to get what's on the label and then also not get what's not on the label.

Yeah, kind of like you should look at your trail mix and make sure it doesn't say canola oil or sunflower oil or safflower oil on it. You should look at your supplement and make sure it doesn't say proprietary blend on it in most cases, for the reasons that you just talked about, this practice known as fairy dusting. One other really interesting anecdote from your book, I remember folding over this page because I hadn't heard of this, and it made sense when you talked about it. But when you look at certain plants like ginseng or rhodiola, they say, like an adaptogenic herb. When they actually study the efficacy of that, they're looking at the root of the plant, which is, like, more expensive than, say, like, the stem or the leaf or the flower. But what companies can do is they could use the stem or the leaf or the flower and say that that herb is present, but it's not the right part. It's not the root, it's not what's. What's actually been studied. I wasn't even aware of that.

Super frustrating. And they do that all the time, especially for, like, the top 10 or 20 herbs, where people are just looking for ginseng or rhodiola or ginkgo or whatever. And like, ginkgo has to be the leaf, ginseng has to be the root. There's different plant parts that have those key actives. That's why not only do you want to see the plant part, but you want to see what it's standardized for. Like, ginseng might be ginsenoside, a Or ginkgo might be the flea bones or whatever it is, you want it to be standardized to something and then you can go look it up on examine.com or wherever and hopefully that plant is legitimate. That's where again, the quality control comes in that, that, you know, they care like at thorn or standard process or pure encapsulations or whoever. They're not only going to have that, that herb at that level, they're going to have it standardized for the correct thing and have the correct plant part in there. And everything is going to be clear and straightforward.

There are other things that aren't necessarily plant derived, but that are. I don't know if I'm using the right word, but almost like synthetic ingredients or ingredients that have been created by humans. And you were actually pretty well known for patenting certain such molecules, like two that come to mind that I guess are kind of related to mitochondria and more specifically energy. I think they're two of the most popular branded energy ingredients in the world right now. Besides caffeine. They're in like 500 products and I know you got a ton of studies behind them. Theacrine and methyliberine, also known as Dynamine is the name for that one. Yeah. And then teacrine is also what theacrine is known as. I'm curious if you could explain to people how something like that is actually made, how you actually discover that compound and its activity and then figure out how to create it and put it into a supplement. And I'd love to also just hear a little bit more about those two in particular and what they do for people.

Yeah, amazing question and super proud of that. To be associated with T cream and Dynamine. Like you said, they're just in tons and tons of fat burners, pre workouts, energy drinks, et cetera. And it's been so exciting. I've been working with Dr. Hector Lopez and Dr. Tim Ziegenfuss for years on that. We patented these together, did a bunch of studies on these products, and they're in that methylxanthine family. So think of caffeine, theobromine, theophylline. But we explored some of these other compounds that just weren't out on the market. And we wondered like, hey, could these compounds really have an effect on energy and focus like these other ones do? And so we started exploring liberine, methylibrine and theacrine and seeing incredible results. We came out with T cream theacrine first. Not only were we seeing enhanced energy and focus, we Were also seeing things like pain reduction, reduce inflammation both cerebrally and systemically. Interestingly, we're seeing stimulated NAD production which gets into that mitochondria health that you were talking about. But what's really cool is it doesn't seem to have the habituation effect. There's a physiological need that becomes established with caffeine, a dependence literally. You'll see this with animal studies that by the third day the animal needed the caffeine just to get to baseline. It doesn't have that fast slow metabolizer difference with genetics like caffeine does. So it works more consistently. Some people say that they can have caffeine and go straight to bed and some people have a little bit of caffeine in the morning and then can't sleep at night. There's high genetic variance there. But that doesn't seem to happen with T crine and Dynamine and then there's less adaptation effect. So with caffeine, with continued use over time we see decreased efficacy. But with T crine and Dynamine that doesn't seem to happen.

Now are teacrine and dynamine, do they have two separate mechanisms of action? Like could you stack these two or would you just choose one or the other if you wanted kind of a pick me up alternative to caffeine?

They're somewhat similar in how they work. They're a little bit different. But the biggest difference is the half life. What we see is T cream tends to be more nootropic and a much longer half life. And dynamine is shorter half life and more energetic. So yeah, we're seeing a lot of people actually stack the two in different ratios. So like if you were going into a pre workout, you might have much higher dynamine, lower T cream ratio and then if you were in like a nootropic product, you would have higher T cream, lower dynamine ratio. And then we do see that they stack well. Similarly with some of the ingredients that have been shown to have synergistic effect with caffeine, like Alpha GPC and L theanine in particular, Alpha GPC really has like a true synergistic effect. I love that combination of T queen, Dynamine and Alpha gpc, Creatine, Dynamine and.

Alpha GPC got, you know, you know what's kind of interesting and this is another like total rabbit hole. But I've started to do it now. I have this, this device that it's, it's called an Infopathy generator and it's Based on the concept of infoceuticals. So what it does is, is it'll take the the oscillating molecular frequency of any molecule like caffeine or MDMA or you know, Swedish bitters or anything like that. You put a glass of water on top of the frequency generator and typically it'll infuse the water for about two to four minutes and then you drink the water to see what effect that that molecule has on the body. So what I've started doing like right now, I just wrote down this note about stacking the Dynamine with Theocrine and doing like Alpha gpc. I can go into this little device and select those three and then put the glass of water on top and drink the water and see if I notice any type of appreciable effect before actually like going online and buying the actual supplement. I've noted that the effects from the water are less than what I might get. Like if I use the caffeine molecule and I infuse a glass of water, it doesn't give me quite as much a pick me up as like a cup of coffee. But it's super interesting in that the water actually does give me like this caffeinated edge that it didn't before it was infused with that frequency. So you know, it's this whole different, you know, almost like a Masaru Umoto. You know, water carries information kind of a little bit slightly more woo woo when it comes to the world of supplementation. But I've been kind of geeking out on it for the past three weeks and recently recorded a podcast on it that might have come out by the time this podcast you and I are having gets released. But I'll take information like that and then just go try it before I buy it, so to speak on a glass of water.

That's insane. I have never heard of that.

It's super cool. It's called Infopathy and they also sell a wearable where you can just do it straight to your wrist as well if you want to do the wearable instead of the glass of water.

Is that similar to the idea of the HAP B?

Well, the HAP B, what they do with that? Yeah, it is similar. So the HAP is a wearable, it's like a large coil, it's a magnetic coil and they have about six different molecules they've studied for that, like caffeine, nicotine. I think MDMA is another. And you wear it and what it does is it subjects your body to the same magnetic frequency which is slightly different than the molecular oscillation frequency. But it's similar concept, right? You're using a device to deliver the same type of pharmaceutical or pharmacological or supplement effect as the actual substance ingestion itself. And again, the main thing I've noticed is you get a similar effect, but it's downregulated just slightly. I think that you do lose a little bit by not consuming orally, you know, or injection or via IV or whatever the actual compound. But it's just fascinating how much you can get with just pure energy and frequency versus consumption. It's, it's gonna, you know, it's, I guess it's gonna put, you know, guys like you and me in the supplements industry out of business. I don't know. But exactly, it's super interesting. So, so by the way, Teacraine and Dynamine, I, I, I didn't quite understand your response to this, but, but are those being synthesized in a lab or do you have like a, like a certain plant derivative that those are extracted from?

Right now it's full synthetic and it's, you know, GMP and Informed Choice tested for sport and all that. And we have like 20 studies, full safety studies on it. It's super clean, works well. And again, tested athletes can use it, but it is synthetic in the way it's produced. It's just too expensive to fully extract. But it does occur naturally in different tea leaves and cacao and things like that.

Okay, all right, got it. So that's that energy stack one more time just so people can write it down. It was three compounds, you said Teacrine.

Dynamine and Alpha gpc.

And Alpha gpc. Okay, cool. Alpha GPC is cool. Because I find that if you combine that with just about any nootropic.

Exactly.

It's almost like giving the nootropic extra gasoline because you're going to turn over your choline stores more quickly whenever your brain's working more quickly.

100.

So, yeah, I've found, you know, and you can of course just consume like egg yolk or walnut, you know, instead of using acetylcholine substance. But if, you know, let's say you're doing something like you are right now and you're fasting and you want the energy uptake, then you could just take an Alpha GPC supplement with something like that and it's, it's a cool way to go. Okay, so that was one question I had for you about two kind of, kind of fringe ish supplements. There was Another one that I wanted to ask you about because your name came up in a recent podcast interview that I did with Lucas Own of Ergogenic Health. And we were talking about an exercise mimetic that seems to be almost like the elusive exercise in a bottle, you know, and there are, there are SARMs that people experiment with, probably like Carterine would be one popular one that the GW 5015 that people will take to almost like get the effects of exercise, particularly the mitochondrial response and the fat loss response with less exercise. You know, CL Carnitine would be a little bit more of an old school approach, but it seems like a lot of people now are starting to talk about this L Biba, you know, as an exercise medic, can you explain to people what that is and how it works?

Yeah, it's an amino acid. It's beta aminoisobutyric acid. L baba. So B A I, B A Mitoburn is the branded name for it, but exactly, it is an exercise mimetic, meaning it's the signal for intense exercise. And so when your body is intensely exercising, you break down some of the BCAA muscle pool for those amino acids to use as a substrate as a fuel for your workout. And L Valine in particular is one of the ones that ends up converting into this L baba. And then when L BABA is seen, it's literally kind of like the holy grail, the signal for exercise that your body is intensely exercising. Almost all the things associated with intense exercise like increased BDNF neuroplasticity, increased bone mineral density, increased glucose tolerance and glycogen storage, improved muscle mass hypertrophy, decreased fat mass and improved fatty acid utilization, improved brown adipose tissue activation. All these things that you see are enhanced when BABA levels are higher in the plasma. And so I've been working on a lot of research to show that oral baba, when consumed, does increase plasma baba. And we have now shown that in both animal and human studies. It's really cool. This literally is one of the holy grails, so to speak. If you can think about. We can't say, because the FDA can't just say exercise in a bottle. And you don't need to work out or eat. Right? Because the FDA says with good exercise and diet, I mean, a way to think about this is like an exercise augmenter. So basically you're enhancing the, like getting more out of every rep, out of every step when you're using this compound to elevate your already endogenous BABA levels.

Okay, got it. Now, with Beiba, one of the first times I came across that was when I was looking into things that could upregulate white adipose tissue to the more metabolically active brown adipose tissue. Because I was researching a podcast I was recording on things you could take before cold thermogenesis to enhance the effects, particularly the fat conversion effects. And BABA popped up for that as well. Being something that could drive brown fat. Like development of white fat as almost a thermogenic agent.

Yeah, exactly. And that increases oxidation of the white adipose tissue. And that's like. It's really the dream. Like, everyone, I'm sure you've talked about it plenty of times on your show is either increasing number of brown adipose tissue cells, increasing the activity of those bat cells, or trying to somehow beige, meaning take white adipose tissue to more of a brown adipose tissue direction. The reason brown adipose tissue is brown is because it's mitochondrial dense. And there's a fair amount of iron in the mitochondria, so that's hemoglobin's high in iron. So the browning is meaning it's more mitochondrial dense. Okay. And so this is literally like brown adipose tissue. You only have about 6 to 7 ounces on your body. So about 98% of your body fat is white adipose tissue. But brown adipose tissue burns fat like nothing else. It's super thermogenic. And actually we have it on our bodies so that, like, for example, with babies, they can't shiver until about six to nine months to create heat thermogenesis. So you have brown adipose tissue on you for that reason. And then in particular, it's around, like, your collarbone. That's because that's your core. And it's so important to keep heat near your core in case your arms or legs are cut off or chewed off by an animal or whatever. Throughout history. This is a really interesting thing. We thought that after you're not a baby, you don't need brown adipose tissue anymore. But now we're looking at it as like, wait, this might be one of the big deals of why some people can eat whatever they want and not put on weight. Maybe it's because of brown adipose tissue. And not only they have more, but it's more active. Yes, you're right. Like cold thermogenesis jumping in, doing cold plunges and cryo. And also this Baba. And then there's another ingredient I've worked on called grains of paradise that does that as well.

Oh, yeah. I actually wanted to ask you about Grains of Paradise. So I'm glad you brought that up because you talk about that in the exercise section of the book. Can you explain that one to people? Got a great name, by the way.

That's the real name of it. But it's actually like a type of pepper, and that's no surprise. It works on that vanillin receptor similar to capsaicin and ginger and some of those compounds. And it tastes kind of gingery. It's actually used in some. It's in a Sam Adams beer. You can get it as a spice that you can add to food. But the amazing thing is that it literally enhances metabolism without a stimulant effect. Like 40 milligrams of grains of paradise extract. That's correctly made, like, to the study that has the six paradol and the other compounds in it, just 40 milligrams increased thermogenesis and caloric expenditure of around 100 calories a day, and that just one dose of 40 milligrams. So we don't even know, like, if you take 80 milligrams, what happens? 80 milligrams twice a day, what happens? So that's something that we're exploring right now, that it really increases caloric expenditure and upregulates brown adipose tissue activity with really no downside. It's not a stimulant. You might get a little bit of a gingery or peppery burn if you take a higher dose. Like some people that have a tendency to have reflux might not like it. But if you take it with a meal, you could ameliorate that. But, yeah, fascinating compound.

And this would be like the same Grains of Paradise that you could just buy on Amazon as a spice that you could put in a pepper grinder, 100% called guinea pepper, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But ideally, it has these four compounds, the six paradol in particular, standardized to a certain level in this Grains of Paradise extract that was used in the study and that I've been working with. But I still think using the spice is pretty awesome because it tastes good and you are getting some biological benefit.

Okay, got it. You know, it's kind of interesting because, you know, I think that one thing we should always make people aware of so that we don't get labeled as, I guess, like the lazy biohackers who pill pop their way into getting fit, is that I would never argue that any of this stuff replaces blood, sweat, tears, and shivering in a really cold ice bath. It's like the Icing on the cake. But let's say that even if it was just as good and you didn't have to exercise at all, and you didn't have to get in a cold bath at all, there is a great deal of. And I would imagine you agree with me, Sean. Character development, fortitude, you know, mental endurance, perseverance, A lot of positive character traits that are derived from taking the hard road versus the easy road.

Oh, that's. I mean, that's my through line in the book is being more resilient and being harder to kill. We are as easy to kill as we've ever been in history. You think about how thermically controlled we are, like from 68 to 72 degrees that we can't deal with outside stress. We have a very poor allostatic load, that stress bucket. If you were to look at a bell curve of stress where we could have EU stress, which EU stress, a positive stress, and then on the other side of that bell curve, we have distress where it's too much stress and it's counterproductive. It's no longer a hormetic effect. But in that sweet spot in the middle is the Goldilocks zone, where we're getting plenty of stress, where we're able to adapt from it. It's a hormetic stressor. And we're growing the size of our stress bucket. The allostatic load. That bucket can actually grow and we can become harder to kill. That is something that we've gotten away from, from doing the extended fasting, from doing the hot and cold and doing ketogenic diets or all these things that definitely are biohacks and are hormetic stressors that make us stronger. A great example of that is actually polyphenols, with them being xenohormetics. The higher the stress to those certain plants, the higher the polyphenol count. It's fascinating.

Yeah, it is pretty cool. And it reminds me of a poster that I have in my office that I'm looking at right now because I turned 40 in December. And so I had to have some kind of a goal for my 40th birthday. And so it's just a. It's just a one eight and a half by 11 sheet. At the bottom of it is a quote from Mark Rippeto that says, strong people are harder to kill than weak people, comma, and more useful in general. And then it has what I want to be able to wake up and do on my 40th birthday. And it is basically, I want to wake up because I had to go with the number four. I want to wake up on the morning of my 40th birthday and successfully complete in a 40 hour fasted state. Meaning I start 40 hours before my birthday party fasting. And I do, I want to do two to three rounds of Wim Hof leading up to a four minute breath hold, right? So I want a four minute static breath hold. I want one 40kg kettlebell Turkish get up per side. And this is all this would all be like facet on the morning of my 40th. Recover after that, be able to do a four minute dead hang. Right? Just hanging from a bar for four minutes. Recover after that, be able to do a 400 meter farmer's walk with that same 40 kg kettlebell, but one in each hand and then finish up with a four minute ice bath at 32 degrees. And that's like my goal. That's going to keep me working on my grip, my strength, my endurance, my breath and my cold tolerance during this year. Because I always have to have some on the schedule, else I just kind of digress and whatever, go sit in the sauna and read magazines. And so that whole harder to kill is definitely sitting in front of me. And I stare at it every morning when I walk into my office to remind me to get out there and do the hard thing, so to speak.

That's badass.

Yeah. So anybody who's turning 40 this year, you can only do if you turn 40, because obviously everything's built around number four. If you're 50, you got your work cut out for you. Because I guess everything, I don't know, five minute breath hold, five minute dead hang. I'll choose something else for the 50th. All right, cool. But we digress. There are some other cool supplements and compounds that you talk about in the book. Let's shift to blood sugar control. Because I recently did a podcast that people are really digging on continuous blood glucose monitoring. I interviewed the guy, Josh Clement from Levels Health. We geeked out on all these different ways to stabilize blood glucose and lower daily glycemic variability. And we talked about a few things like berberine, for example, and metformin. We talked about bitter melon. We talked about a lot of compounds people might be familiar with for controlling blood glucose. But there's one that you talk about in the book. I think this one briefly came up on my podcast with Lucas too. But it's a different form of berberine. Can you explain this one to people?

Yeah, it's dihydroberberine and it's actually when you consume berberine at the gut level, you convert it into dihydroberberine. So this is like a more active form. And then actually at the plasma level, you convert it back to berberine. But berberine has been shown head to head as a glucose disposal agent to be better than metformin in a number of ways. It's equivalent on lowering blood glucose, improving insulin sensitivity, but it was better on intra inflammation and lipids and a number of factors than metformin was. And metformin is one of the ultimate anti aging drugs, anti glycation end product drugs that has been shown to extend life, improve sirtuin gene activity, protect telomere length, et cetera, et cetera. So dihydroberirberine is the optimized form. And what we're seeing is it's about five times more bioavailable than berberine and it lasts about twice as long, about eight hours versus four hours. So it's really cool. And then you also don't get the GI distress that you typically get with both metformin and berberine because again, it's not having to convert at the gut level. So it's really cool. And it works on that amp K amp kinase level. But we're seeing that not only is it anti aging, working on glycation, end products and inflammation and ultimately oxidation, et cetera, but it's also, it seems to be like a mitochondrial hormetic that it has a little bit of that hormetic stress that we were talking about before to the mitochondria in kind of that Goldilocks zone way where it's a positive stressor and improving mitochondrial function. So on it, like, this is actually my number one ingredient that I recommend for anti aging.

And do you see any type of like, almost like a hypoglycemic episode if it's that powerful? Do you, do you note that, you know, because I've run into this before with even like, you know, bitter melon. Full disclosure, I think you know, this like, you know, at our, at Kion, our main blood sugar control compound is bitter melon with like acromion extract in it. And I've found that if I take that on an empty stomach pre exercise, I'll go like hypoglycemic during an exercise session. It's great if I'm gonna go punish some of Jessa's sourdough bread or have a glass of wine, but I have to be careful when I take something like that. I'm curious, if dihydroberine is this powerful, do you note that sometimes blood glucose can almost drop too low?

So it's really interesting and I don't have a blanket answer to that. We've been looking, we've performed several studies now and we have people that are hyper responders to it in terms of it seems to really improve insulin sensitivity and lower blood glucose greater than the rest of the population. And then some people that are kind of more normally responding to it. And there's actually a pretty big bio individual difference. So it's interesting. I would say maybe a quarter of people might respond that way and you just have to kind of test around with it with the dose. But most people don't go hypoglycemic. I don't. But what's amazing with it, here's an example of just berberine. When I was working on a product called IC5 of BioTrust, before I worked on dihydroberberine, this was just regular berberine, I think sulfate or hydrochloride, I can't remember, but it was 500 milligrams the typical dose. And I did a study with myself using a glucometer and I did this like one week apart. I was ketogenic and I decided to make my carbohydrate challenge similar to doing a dextrose load in a hospital with 75 grams of dextrose. But I was going to have more fun, I think three double stuffed Oreos and two frosted Pop Tarts. And so that was my carbohydrate challenge. Not very healthy, but I thought it would be fun.

Tasty, actually. Literally, that just reminded me you could do the, what do they call them, the tasty pastries instead of the Pop Tarts. Those are probably a newfangled healthy version of a pop tart. Healthy ish version.

Healthy ish, yeah. But anyway, like one week I took the berberine with it as an intervention and one week I did not. And I tested everything and my baseline was between 60 and 70 both times for my blood glucose. And when I did not take the berberine, I was at two hours. I was at 199. I guess I was a little bit insulin resistant from being pretty strict keto. But yeah, I was at 2 hours and 199and I don't even know when I was coming back down. And then the next week when I did, when I did the berberine with it, the same challenge, if you will, I never got above 100 and at one hour, I was already coming back down.

Interesting.

And I've had friends like staying ketosis that have had like, you know, a burger and fries. You know, it's just, it's crazy. And if you're not using it to like deflect the cheat, let's say, if you want to use that word, it also can increase your level of ketosis just in and of itself. So you'll get deeper into ketosis by using the dihydroberberine.

Okay, got it. Now, of course, one thing that can happen if you do have a hypoglycemic episode that I found. It's interesting because I can maintain normal energy levels, yet this particular compound seems to even drive me deeper into a state of hypoglycemia based on my blood glucose testing. And that would be exogenous ketones, like a shot of the HVMN or the ketone aid, ketone esters, or any of these so called beta hydroxybutyrate liquid supplements. Even if I'm hypoglycemic, it seems that if I have high levels of ketones, I can still function pretty dang well. And they honestly seem to even lower blood glucose, like I mentioned, even more. But I know you have this patent pending on a different form of bhb and I wanted to ask you about that. What's going on in terms of your keto research as far as like exogenous ketones?

Yeah, we have a patent around the active isomer, the dbhp, the rbhp, for performance. And it's fascinating. It's about two to three times. I mean, you would expect an active isomer to be twice as good as mixed isomer. So like think DLBHB or rsbhb, depends how you want to use nomenclature. But those are mixed isomers. So the active isomer, the biologically active form, is the rbhb, also called dbhb. So what happens there is it's about two to three times more active. And we see that like with how it works on a, like a glucometer that can look at ketone levels when you consume it. And even more interesting is the salts really matter too. And this was unexpected to us that the calcium form is actually the least effective. It seems to almost have like some buffering effect. And the sodium form, going back to what we were talking about at the top of the show, the sodium form actually has by far and away the best impact on increasing plasma BHB levels, which is fascinating. It's about 30% better. So really, really Interesting. And then we've actually worked on a free acid form as well of BHB that we have. And then we're working on like poly BHB as well, where BHB is just bound to itself. So we have a variety of compounds that we've worked on, including amino acid bound ones like to the ketogenic amino acids like lysine and leucine. So working on a lot of things. But the active isomer is one thing that we have and are proud to have in our arsenal because one of the downsides to taking exogenous ketones is that you have such a heavy mineral load and it causes some GI distress and you can get too much of these minerals. So when you're taking the mixed isomer, you have to take two to three times as much. And then when you're taking more of the calcium or some of these less optimal forms, you have to take more. And then of course, we've actually solved that all the way around by doing the free acid form where you're not getting any of those, but it's a little less stable. And that's something we've been working on.

Is that consumed also as a liquid or would that be like a powder or a capsule?

They're all powders. Yeah.

Okay, interesting. How's the taste? Salty.

Yeah. I mean, when you have like the, all the different BHB minerals, they're pretty salty. I think calcium gets used a lot because it's kind of the most benign, not surprisingly. And obviously the magnesium and especially the sodium have a little bit more of a saltier metallic taste. And then the free acid is acidic ish tasting. So that's something that you have to control for along with its stability. So there's more work to be done there. It's not all easy, but that's where something like the amino acid combination could be good, like the bhb, lysine or leucine.

Okay, now, medium chain triglyceride co administration with ketones, or even in the absence of ketones. But the presence of say like carbohydrate mitigation seems to also drive ketone production utilization pretty well. And I'm curious because you have a section in the book where you talk about MCTs, how not all MCTs are are created equal. And there are certain forms of medium chain triglycerides you prefer for the purposes specifically of stabilizing energy in a low carbohydrate scenario or something that one would take along with ketones. What type of MCT do You take or do you prefer.

Yeah, definitely. Without a doubt the best one that we've seen with MCTs, there's C8, C10, C12, these different carbon length chains for these fatty acids, we see that the caprylic acid, the C8, the shortest one, is actually the best one at being the most ketogenic. The C10 is less effective and C12, not really driving that at all. Lauric acid is actually really great as a virucidal and antibacterial and really boosting the immune system. So I actually love something called monolaurin when it to comes comes to the immune system. But C8 is the potent one, is the one that you want to get when it comes to increasing ketones. So yeah, mixing the two of those, which there's actually a patent around with Dr. Dom D' Agostino and others, mixing the two of those is ideal. If you were to mix like C8MCTS and then the ketone salts in general, like the active isomer, that sodium one that I was talking about.

Okay. And so if you were to supplement with, with a, with a C8 liquid, you would you get a systemic ketosis effect or is that primarily just going to provide bioavailable ketones for, for, for the brain, which is really, I think one of the top reasons people kind of put it in their coffee right now.

Yeah, it's both. It's, it's, it's definitely both. And, and I know, I love that systemic and cerebral effect that you get. It is a fuel, it is a fuel source. But also you're correct, like definitely for the brain, that's probably where you're seeing the most benefit.

Okay, got it. I wasi was really hoping you'd just say to cook up some bacon and coconut oil, but I'll go shell over the money for C8, I guess not quite as tasty, but I'll take one for the team. Okay. So there's one other compound that I think has caught a lot of attention of late that I'd be remiss not to ask you about because it kind of falls into the anti aging category and that would be nad. And I know that you've worked a little bit on, on nmn, the nicotinamide. What is it? Nicotinamide mononucleotide.

Yep.

Version of, you know, like a precursor to NAD to increase NAD levels. And of course there are folks like Chromadex who heavily promote the nicotinamide riboside, the NR version, and many people just can't afford or don't have the time to go do what I think is the best way to get nad, which would be just intravenous administration or arguably even subcutaneous injection. But you got to be working with a doctor to get that kind of stuff. So I'm curious if you were to pick your poison when it comes to getting the NAD levels elevated, what method you would choose based off the research that you've done and what this form of NMN is that you're working on.

I would say NMN is definitely better than NR nicotinamide riboside. It's more direct in the pathway. And when we look at the data, NR is really kind of underperformed and fairly equivocal at best. And NMN is definitely more exciting on that front of raising nad. Most of the data is animal data, unfortunately, at this point, because there isn't the patents around it like there is the nicotinamide riboside. You do hear a lot about NMN with David Sinclair for sure, which is a brilliant dude. But I agree that obviously IV NAD is best, but it sucks to feel crappy for three hours. And intranasal NAD is actually really interesting. That's something I've wanted to look into, but it's hard to judge because you don't know how much NAD is in each spray. So there's going to be wide variants.

And just based on the nasal passages, how much, and whether you actually kind of sniff properly when you do it. It's kind of like Hoppe, like the Amazonian nicotine based alkaloid. If you snort Hoppe, you can get a really good, almost like clarity inducing high from that for a few hours afterwards. If you resist continual sniffing afterwards, which is very difficult to do when you have that post nasal drip going on. But if you just breathe through your mouth for a little while afterwards, it kind of kind of settles in there, so to speak. And so proper intranasal administration would involve timing the plunging of the intranasal delivery device at the same time, as with one nostril plug, you breathe in and then you do it quickly to the other nostril and then you just avoid sniffing and sniffing and sniffing after that. I think that many people just administer intranasal supplements incorrectly.

Agreed. It's funny that you brought that up because right before this show I'm working with Dr. Daniel Stickler at Pyron and I've been doing the oxytocin and an intranasal ketamine and I did that for that show. Yeah, NMN needs to be stabilized. There are some issues with its stability. So you definitely want a quality version of nmn. And then it's looking like a lot of people are under dosing it. If you extrapolate the animal data, it looks like you need somewhere in the area of like maybe one to one and a half grams a day. And a lot of people are getting like 100 or 200 milligrams or something like that because it's expensive. So getting a quality one, getting the right dose, that's important. And then on the other side of this, you want CD38 inhibition, NADASE inhibition. And that's where something like I was talking about the polyphenols before, which I love. And, and you see polyphenols represented across all the blue zones of trans resveratrol with red wine and terrastilbene and blueberries. And you've talked about this stuff before. I've heard you talk about fisetin, which from strawberries, I think you use that strawberry powder. Yeah, my smoothie kind of comes out at the top of the heap. In a study where they looked at 10 different polyphenols. But what's really interesting is, and those raise NAD levels. But what's interesting is specifically because as we age we make less nad, but then we also catabolize NAD faster. One thing that you want to do is inhibit that CD38, that NADASE, so that more NAD hangs around longer. So you want to make more and you want to inhibit the NADase. So it's a two sided approach and it looks like apigenin or at least an optimized quercetin would both do that of the polyphenol. So that would be a double whammy, or maybe the triple whammy is to take fisetin, to take NMN and then to take apigenin. That would kind of be like my ultimate stack. And then like you were talking about before, adding in CoQ10 and PQQ as well, would be kind of the ultimate mitochondrial health stack.

That's funny. I just literally this week published an article by Dr. John Laurence on a protocol that he's developed called mito fast. And the way that you do the mito fast is you basically load with NAD for two days using these high dose NAD suppositories that he has, although he also has an option for a liposomal administration. And then as soon as you load up, you fast for two days. You do like a 48 hour water only fast. And he has a couple of compounds, it's called lusitol it's just basically like a brain support compound that you take and it's got some senolytics in it to clean up senescent cells. And then on the final two days it's actually a bunch of flavonoids like Facetin that you take to upregulate that NAD absorption, almost like post fast. And so it's really interesting he has kind of a similar protocol. It's a little bit more involved than what I just described in 30 seconds. But I'll link to that article in the show notes because it's actually super interesting. It's basically combining fasting with almost like an NAD pulse followed by flavonoids with kind of like an in between cycle of brain supporting compounds and senescent cell clearance. So it's kind of cool. It's right along those same lines.

Very cool.

Yeah.

I've actually been doing the iontophoresis NAD patches. The electrical kind of gives you like a little, a little like electro electrified feeling on your skin for an hour.

I like those, but I use them, I use them on a limited basis because of the skin irritation issues. And so honestly because NAD is a really great, great anti inflammatory and cellular protectant for something like long haul airline travel. So I'll slap if I'm gonna do like international travel, which I haven't been doing lately. But back when I was doing a lot more of this, I would just slap one of those like 8 to 12 hour high dose NAD delivery patches to my inner thigh and just get nad, you know, slow bled into my system during the entire flight, you know, and usually take a shot of ketones before and after a whole bunch of magnesium. And those are like my three top things to limit a lot of the radiation inflammatory damage from flying. But the problem with using the patches every day is the skin irritation. I just can't get past it.

Yeah, no, agreed. It's a weird feeling. I actually, one thing I did just last week in Dr. Stickler's office was the transcranial electrostimulation. Looking at the biofeedback with my breath and trying to be less hypocapnic and all that kind of stuff. And we went up pretty high and it was so intense on my scalp that I was actually tasting metallic coming out of my tongue. I was like, wow, this is really intense. It literally feels like you're sticking your finger in a socket and then you're trying to breathe slow inhalation, exhalation and you know, follow this ball on the screen and it's it's an intense protocol. I don't know if you've ever done that.

No, I have, I have not done that one yet. But that sounds, that sounds pretty interesting. I'll have to add that to my list of fringe things to try after I, after I shock my water with diacrine and Dynamine and try some of these tasty, tasty salts you're talking about. There's a, there's so much explosive diarrhea on the horizon, it's not even funny. Release explosive diarrhea potential. Well, I mean, this book, you know, it's kind of, you know, it's kind of like one of those books that again, like we could talk for hours and hours about, but I would, I would encourage people to just pick it up because it is jam packed. And again, like one of my favorite parts, like I was telling you before we started recording, Sean, was your Formulator's corner, where you really showcase a lot of your knowledge on many of the type of things that we got a chance to, to geek out on for the past hour or so, but all within the book and kind of spread throughout with really good, handy, practical. I don't want to make people think they got to have a degree in biochemistry to get through this thing. It's written for the layperson, but has a lot of this kind of cool, little known fringe stuff in it too. So I think you did a great job on the book. And I mentioned the book's title briefly at the beginning of the show, but it's called the Energy Formula. Six life changing ingredients to unleash your limitless potential. I'll link to it along with everything else that Sean and I discussed. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com EnergyFormula that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com energyformula in the meantime, Sean, I think that this, paired with the first podcast we did about five years ago, is like a master's degree in nutritional supplementation. So maybe not quite a master's degree, but certainly an education, a good education. And so you're always a wealth of knowledge when I talk with you and I appreciate what you do, man.

Oh, thank you so much, Ben. I really appreciate it. And yeah, the original podcast, it's funny. Like I get people, you know, writing me or emailing me that are still listening to it as kind of a, like you said, like a masterclass to get started on how to create a supplement company and do it the right way by looking at all the ways that people are doing it wrong and all the red flags we discussed. So yeah, that was a fun episode.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we established a few things right. Don't fairy dust, no proprietary formulas. And talk to Sean if you want the insider's knowledge, he's the man. So anyways, though, like I mentioned, everybody BenGreenfieldFitness.com energy formula for all the show notes and until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with the great Sean Wells signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.