How "Machine Learning" Can Predict Your Blood, Urine, Stool, Saliva & More!

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. And as it seems I am prone to do these days, I'm releasing another podcast episode on a day that I don't usually release podcast episodes because I'm just rife of amazing content. I'm surrounded by all these smart cookies who have amazing things that I want to tell you about. So today is no exception. You're going to learn about blood biochemistry, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and how all of this can blend together to diagnose and to fix your body. This podcast is brought to you by one sponsor today, Biotropic Labs. Biotropic is basically a company that produces some of the most potent oxygen enhancing and oxygen utilizing herbs and supplements that you'll find. You may recall the podcast that I've done in the past with this guy named Craig Dinkel. And Craig is a climber and a swimmer who is really into figuring out what makes the body tick, specifically when it comes to blood oxygen, nitric oxide, erythropoietin, which is your body's precursors for red blood cell production, and ATP. And he has these supplements that are combinations of very, very weird fringe things, but they actually work like liver extract mixed with chlorella mixed with nitric oxide precursors. Try this stuff before workout. It's really amazing. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And literally about 45 minutes ago, I took this thing called an EPA elite performance analysis Tool. What this tool promised to do for me was to Use something called machine learning, which I guess is kind of like artificial intelligence. Although today's guest will be able to fill us in thoroughly. Machine learning to predict biochemical results like what's going on with your blood and your urine and your stool, which is without you necessarily bleeding and peeing and pooping. And what this tool is supposed to do is it's supposed to predict different patterns of performance killers that you would regularly see in your body or in your brain, like blood sugar dysregulation or low sex hormones or gut dysbiosis or circadian rhythm issues or low oxygen availability, those type of things. And, and this entire algorithm was developed by a guy who's actually been on the show before. There was a show back in the day called the Underground test that shows you how to legally upgrade your epo, increase your oxygen levels, boost your red blood cells, and build double digit percentages in power and endurance. I know it's a mouthful, but this guy came on that show and in that show we talked about oxygen deliverability, something that will probably come up today as well. And I will link to that original show if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com machine learning. But now he's back. His name is Dr. Tommy Wood and Tommy is a senior fellow at the University of Washington, not too far from me on the other side of the state. He's the chief medical officer of Norrish Balance Thrive, which is this company that uses advanced biochemical testing to optimize performance, particularly in athletes. They work with thousands of athletes, athletes like Olympians and world champions, and they use all this data to develop what they're now doing, which are machine based learning algorithms to predict issues that you might have. And so Tommy himself has a bachelor's in biochemistry, has a medical degree from the University of Oxford. He has a PhD in neuroscience and physiology from the University of Oslo. The dude is one smart cookie and he has published and spoken on everything from like multiple sclerosis to insulin resistance to ancestral approaches to health. And he also competes in rowing, CrossFit, powerlifting and ultra endurance racing. So he's kind of an underachiever. Tommy, welcome back to the show, dude.

Thanks Ben. Thanks for having me again. Real pleasure to be here.

Yeah, word man. So, and by the way, I know that you and I are both going to be talking together over in Iceland, right?

Yeah. So the Icelandic Health Symposium. You're our star guest and I'll be hosting the conference and there'll be some other guys talking as well as you about how to Improve longevity, which is something that most people are really interested now. So, yeah, I'm really excited to do that and see that.

The who Wants to Live Forever conference. I don't know who came up with that name. They must sound sexier in Icelandic language. Who wants to live forever?

Well, I guess it's based on the Queen song, Freddie Mercury. So we have. So, yeah, the. The Icelandic guys came up with a name, but that's. That's where it came from.

Okay, I'm out of the loop on that one. September 8th through 11th. I'll put a link to that over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Machine learning, too. If you want to come hang out in Iceland, me and Tommy will both be there. So, Tommy, you sent me over this evaluation that I took. And. And I have to admit, like, I always have my eyebrow raised when I'm, like, answering questions online. And it's telling me if I might have, like, gut dysbiosis or low oxygen deliverability. But walk me through kind of like the idea behind this test.

Yeah. So one of the things that we want to do as well as make athletes perform better is try and find a way to make the stuff that we do accessible to more people. You know, we do a lot of testing, gut testing through the stool and urine and then blood tests. And this is stuff that's expensive and not necessarily everybody has access to, both because they're in a country where they don't have it or because they don't have the money.

Or they live in New York.

Or they live in New York. Exactly.

Where you can't do this stuff. Yeah.

And so one of the things we want to do is try and find a way to get some similar results as we would get on these tests, but maybe using a different approach. And machine learning is really the best way to do this. It's going to improve rapidly, improve our ability to diagnose disease, hopefully give us much better insights into the causes of disease. And it's really good at stuff like pattern recognition. So machine learning is already outperforming radiologists in terms of ability to detect cancers on X rays. It can predict longevity from a CT scan. So just by training an algorithm with examples, it will then get some data from a new person and can then predict something based on what it's seen previously. So we have data from a thousand athletes, and this includes all that stuff you talked about. So advanced blood panels, stool tests, urine tests. And then at the same time, we asked them a questionnaire, which is the things that you did. And it covers stuff like how well you sleep, your sex drive, how well you recover, whether you feel lonely, whether you feel angry. And all these kind of things that we know are sort of simmering under the surface in a lot of athletes, and they don't necessarily know how to express or how to deal with it. And we originally thought that maybe we could predict some. Some fancy tests, like the urine test from a blood test, because most people can get a blood test. But then we moved one step further away, and we're now based just on the answers to a questionnaire, which is a questionnaire we send to everybody when they first turn up and work with us, but then also over time to sort of track how they're doing. You know, based on those test results, I can tell you with a very high, high degree of accuracy whether, say, you have a yeast overgrowth or whether you have some kind of blood glucose problem, you know, high fasting blood.

And that's just because a whole bunch of other people who have replied to this question who have also done blood testing or urine testing or gut testing, for example, have. Have displayed the same issues.

Yeah, exactly. And the good thing about the machine, if you want to call it that, is that the things that I might think are important in terms of, say, blood sugar control aren't necessarily what the machine picks up. So on some of the things that we've analyzed, the algorithm decided that what was really important was the time of day that somebody's answering the questionnaire. So maybe it means something that you're more likely to do the questionnaire in the morning than you are in the evening. And then that figures into the algorithm to then predict what's happening later on. So there are lots of things and interactions that it can pick up. And if you think about. So you did 53 questions, there's five answers for each. It's just an analog scale from none at all to lots, essentially. And you have five to the power of 53 different combinations there, which is a lot of combinations. I don't know the number in my head, plus all this other stuff that is being analyzed at the same time. It can pick up associations between symptoms that, you know, a human just would never be able to see.

Okay, are you able to send me these results? Because we're going to go through them, but in case people want to download them, is there like a PDF that folks could look at to kind of, kind of go along with these results as we look through what it's telling me?

Yeah, definitely we can. If Anybody does. When people do the analysis, you'll get a ranking for. So we have five most common problems that we see in people. So there's blood sugar dysregulation, low sex hormones, suboptimal hemoglobin levels, something we call low oxygen deliverability, a gut dysbiosis, and then also a circadian or an HPA axis dysregulation. Those are the top five things. And you'll get a ranking in terms of what's most important for you personally, and then sort of gives you an idea of what you can focus on. We have data on the back end which sort of breaks down all those predictions and gives percentages and things like that. So we can definitely send that for you, and then people can look through it as we talk about it.

Okay, so go through explaining what each of these are with me. And I want to do this in a way that kind of outlines to people what these top five things are that tend to be the performance killers that you see regularly in your athletes so they can wrap their heads around them. So it looks like the first one. Well, I really don't care which one you want to start with, but what I'd like to do is just launch into the first performance killer and then get into how that is determined and then what someone would commonly do about something like that.

Yeah, sure. So we can go for the thing that came top. You know, your top ranking was a gut dysbiosis. So that's what it predicted. And sort of your overall probability was fairly low. So it was 30%. So, you know, we're not saying you definitely have a dysbiosis, but if you have one of these issues, then that's your most likely one. And of those, I then have the sub data which suggests me that if you have a dysbiosis, it's most likely to be a yeast overgrowth. And that's what, you know, we'd see on gut testing. So we might see it on a stool test. Or you can see, you can see some evidence of fungal overgrowth markers, yeast overgrowth markers, on a urinary organic acid test, which I've known. I know you've done before as well. So say somebody has, you know, they predict gut dysbiosis, and then we want to look for potential causes.

Right.

So, you know, it could be something, your environment in. In athletes, particularly over training, you know, pushing the gut too hard. So, you know, training, you know, really, really intensely, and then, you know, eating right afterwards or eating inappropriate foods. Right. Right afterwards. Particularly, you know, more processed type foods that can definitely drive driver dysbiosis, you know, drive something like a yeast overgrowth. So, you know, for somebody like that, we might want to look at how their training is structured. They might want to look at their diet. We might want to look at an elimination diet or some probiotics potentially. And if, you know, somebody does come back and their top problem is likely a gut dysbiosis, we would, you know, still, at this point, we'd. We'd still do a formal stool test because we want to make sure that we know exactly what we're treating.

So you're doing the questionnaire.

Yeah.

And that's allowing you to say, okay, well, if you're gonna spend whatever, a thousand bucks, these are the tests that you should get based on your questionnaire. So it's almost like you're pre screening someone to make sure they're not getting a bunch of tests that they don't necessarily need to be getting because they're asymptomatic for a certain issue.

Yeah.

So in my case, for example, this ranked high. Let me pull it up here. The gut dysbiosis ranked high. You'd say, okay, well, you should get an organic amino acids test, like, like a urinary test. And by the way, me and, and your, your buddy over there at Norris, Balance Thrive, Chris, we actually did a whole podcast on the. On the nourish Balance Thrive or on the. On the organic amino acids test. I'll, I'll link to in the show notes here. But you would say, okay, go get this test, because that's going to help us determine if this really was the case with you, or would you just go straight to fixing somebody before testing based on the results of a questionnaire?

Yeah, that's absolutely. The goal is getting to a point where we can predict stuff with a high enough accuracy such that we can skip the expensive testing and we can try an empirical protocol at the moment, particularly for the gut dysbiosis, just because there are a wide range of different pathogens that could be causing issues. We will still do a stool test. However it allows us. The analysis allows us, like you said, to just focus on the test that somebody really needs. So it gives us a way to, you know, reduce the cost to the user potentially, but also allows us to start much sooner. Right. So as soon as somebody comes to us, we know the gut dysbiosis is their main issue. You know, we can still look at some of that other stuff like their training and their diet and we can really focus in on that because we know that that's where the issue is. And then when the, when the test results come back, then we can start to treat. The long term goal is that, you know, we can then skip the testing altogether and we can start treating just based on, based on the results of the algorithm. And that's something that we're definitely moving towards. We released the algorithm, we were so excited about it that we thought we'd come and talk to you about it because that's something that you and your listeners would really enjoy.

Yeah, it's super interesting. So we've got gut dysbiosis. What would be the second most common thing that either you're seeing in me that you want to talk about or that would be like the next performance killer? Because there's five total, right?

Yeah. So. So again, let's just work down your list. So the next, the next most likely one was low oxygen deliverability. And that's something that we, we look at. It's basic, it's basically lower than optimal haemoglobin, so it's not the same as an anemia. So when somebody has very low hemoglobin, they'd be considered to be anemic and we have higher cutoffs than that. So if people are familiar with, with the values, it would be something like less than 14.5 grams per deciliter of hemoglobin in men and less than 13 in women. So we have different cutoffs in men and women. And the reason why this is super important is because we know that something like power at a given intensity, so say threshold power, functional threshold power increases linearly with hemoglobin. So that's why boost blood doping is so successful in endurance sports, is because it just, it makes you faster and it makes you more powerful. So if we can identify things that might be causing you to have a lower hemoglobin than you might like, then you know, absolutely, that's going to, that's going to result in better performance almost immediately as that hemoglobin starts to come up. So we're basically looking at anything that's going to be causing inflammation and oxidative stress. So that could definitely be over training. We know there's an interaction between training volume, hepcidin and iron regulation, which can then lead to an anemia, particularly in endurance athletes. We would then again go to the gut dysbiosis. So if you had both predicted low oxygen deliverability and a gut dysbiosis, then we know there's probably an interaction there. Iron overload is actually something that we see associated with anemias, which is slightly counterintuitive, but we've definitely had some people with excess iron accumulation. And this is what we talked about partially when we were on the podcast the last time. And if they do something like a therapeutic phlebotomy, they donate some blood. We've actually seen hemoglobin go up despite the fact that they're, that they're donating blood. So there's definitely an interactive interesting interaction there and then some other toxin exposures. So we do, you know, if we think that somebody has a likely toxic exposure, either heavy metals or we also do a non heavy metal tox test through Great Plains, which looks at some interesting organic pollutants. And those can also interact with things like generate oxidative stress, interact with iron metabolism. So all of those things are something that's where we really going to narrow down and focus if low oxygen deliverability is your top issue.

Okay, gotcha. I'm actually looking over my most recent lab results to see if this questionnaire is actually, is actually accurate when it comes to hemoglobin. I'm trying to find my, my hemoglobin results here to see if I can, I can hunt him down because what value did you say you like to see for hemoglobin in men, for example?

At least 14.5.

At least 14.5. Okay, let's see if I can see.

And it's, and it's worth saying that I don't think that anybody that we put into the, into the algorithm is quite, as, quite as superhuman as you are, Ben. So we'll actually use your data and we have, we have some of your biochemical data previously. We now have your results from this test. We will then put that back into the algorithm so we can continuously update on my hemoglobin.

It's at 14.4, so.

Oh, just managed it.

There you go. You got something. You know, I have done that, that, that urine test, that organic amino acids test, and I also did that along with like a small intestine bacterial overgrowth test, I think it was. And it did show that there were some issues with like, not a yeast overgrowth, but I believe it was almost like a little bit of like a bacterial overgrowth, like a small intestine bacterial overgrowth. So that might also go hand in hand with agreeing with some of the results of your gut dysbiosis prediction. So, yeah, you're on track so far in terms of your ability to seance my performance killers. Okay, so what would number three be?

So number three on your list was hormone imbalance. And that's essentially low, low testosterone in males. That's sort of our main indicator, and the way that we normally measure that is using a Dutch test, which I know that you've done before. And for you, you know, by, by. By the time we're working our way down this list, your likelihood of having low testosterone is pretty low. That's just. This is where it, this is where it ranked. But when we're looking at low testosterone, you know, that's probably something that people are going to be really interested in because they know that that's associated with health, well, being, definitely performance. And this is something where we can really dig in and get you started on a lot of stuff very early, even if we don't have, you know, even. Even if we don't have, like an absolute test telling you exactly how. How high your testosterone is. Because we know we can do stuff like work on your light exposure. Ben, are you straddling your joov right now?

Am I straddling it?

Yeah, your light on your balls.

I'm not there, dude. I'll flip it on now. I am.

That's one of your favorite hacks. I know, but so getting light at the right time, bright light in the morning, is really good for improving testosterone production, proper sleep. We will look at your training strength, chaining, maybe get you out chopping some wood, cold thermogenesis. You know, look at your calorie intake. So people who aren't eating enough calories or eating enough carbs, that can definitely reduce testosterone levels. Maybe think about your micronutrient status and then again, might think of some toxin exposure. And if necessary, we could do some detox stuff. And so really early on, there are loads of things that we know that we can implement to try and get your testosterone back up. And that's just based on the results of, you know, based on this questionnaire.

Chopping wood is an interesting one. You know what I do now, because I do chop wood, but not in the middle of the summer. But I've got one of these maces, one of these on it, maces. And I actually slam it against a tire, and I include that as part of my workout. And you do kind of feel a little bit more macho after you do it.

Yeah. So my version is I'm clearing out some. Some stuff in the back of my yard, so I have a pickaxe. So this morning I was out in the sun with my pickaxe digging up some, some weeds and rubble and stuff. So, you know, anything like that I think is going to give you that, give you that feeling and hopefully boost some testosterone too.

Okay, got it. So we've got, number one is gut dysbiosis is one thing that this thing can predict. And then we've got oxygen deliverability issues and then low sex hormones or some kind of a hormonal imbalance. What would be number four here?

Yeah, so number four for you. And again, I think very unlikely that you have this, but glucose intolerance and that's something that we're seeing even in maybe because of the amount of exercise athletes are doing. We're seeing higher than, higher fasting blood glucose than we'd like. So the cutoff that we use is 88mg per deciliter higher HbA1c. So we look at above 5.3 as an HbA1c target or high fasting insulin. So a fasting insulin greater than 5, all of those we know, as that starts to creep up, that's going to be associated with poor performance in the long term, but especially worse health and associated with cardiovascular disease and various types of cancer and dementia and all that kind of stuff. So we really focus on getting that blood sugar sorted. And that's actually fairly common, particularly in a lot of hard charging athletes. So if somebody came to us and blood sugar dysregulation was their top issue, you know, we definitely start by tracking fasting blood glucose. You can do that with a, with a blood glute, you know, a cheap blood glucose monitor and finger prick. Or if you're, you know, really want to dive into it, you can do a continuous glucose monitor. And then depending on what we see, we might look at some time restricted eating or intermittent fasting. Again, we talk about strength training and walking. We want to try and get some, get a greater glucose demand in some of your cells. Really important to look at circadian rhythm and sleep timing. And then we might look at something like a low carb diet or an elimination diet. If there's something that you're eating that's maybe causing an issue and then that's causing a high blood glucose response. Sometimes you might see lower blood glucose than we'd like. And then we look at stuff like cortisol autonomic function. So look at hrv. Again we look at the urinary organic acids test things like mitochondrial function, which can be altered in people with a poor energy status or very low blood glucose. So Depending on how that goes, we can approach that in different ways. But again, you can see that a lot of the stuff we're finding issues in people and a lot of the stuff is something we can implement straight away for free, without any fancy testing.

Yeah. By the way, speaking of blood glucose, are you one of those guys who's a fan of this metformin that everybody's using these days? It seems like in the anti aging sector.

Yeah, it's such an interesting question because in people who have dysregulated blood glucose, so say somebody who has a type 2 diabetic, when you put them on metformin, their cancer risk decreases, their mortality risk decreases. There's definitely appears to be a longevity benefit. It's also been done in a number of animal models. However, it does kind of give me a bit of pause for somebody who's healthy to take it because we know it is a mitochondrial poison, that it affects complex one particularly. So we talk so much about mitochondrial function and if you're a hard charging athlete who wants their mitochondria to be working as well and as hard as possible and then also recover properly, then I do kind of wonder if it's, if it's something we should be recommending to everybody. And it's not something that, at least until I've seen a study in healthy people, it's not something I'm going to take personally.

When you say that it's a mitochondrial poison, can you explain what you mean by that?

Yeah, that's probably a severe way to state it. But part of the mechanism of action of metformin is to inhibit the first complex complex of the electron transport chain, complex one in the mitochondria. So that has some feed on effects that then can activate things like ampk. And you're getting some of those, you're sort of activating some of those pathways that you know, you'll activate with exercise too. So AMPK is activated. It's like the energy sensor in the cell activated when you do endurance training, but also intense resistance training. And some of the benefits are coming from activating, from activating ampk. And that's associated with, you know, the way that it interferes with complex one. So I think it's definitely possible to get the benefits of the same benefits or similar benefits by doing something else, say like strength training or some aerobic training or maybe you take some, some polyphenols that can activate AMPK or NRF2 and that can sort of activate those pathways without actually affecting the mitochondria at the same time. So that's, that's where I'm leaning in terms of, in terms of the evidence and how best, best to approach that.

Yeah, I just think there's a lot better options out there personally, because I've messed around a little bit with postprandial blood glucose measurements and I've found things like apple cider vinegar and Ceylon cinnamon, for example, to work pretty dang well at controlling blood glucose post carbohydrate rich meal, you know, versus this metformin stuff.

So yeah, I definitely agree with doing. Yeah, yeah, stuff like that.

Plus you can still get a lot of the calorie mimicking anti aging and longevity effects without necessarily taking, you know, again, what might be kind of, kind of an extreme definition, but mitochondrial poison in a way. Plus I have actually seen some evidence too that metformin may interfere a bit with sleep and deep sleep cycles. So that could be another issue when it comes to that particular drug. So I justi raise an eyebrow. How many people are freaking using that stuff? Okay, so we've got gut dysbiosis, we've got a suboptimal hemoglobin or low oxygen deliverability, low sex hormones, blood sugar dysregulation, and then what's the fifth parameter, the fifth performance killer that you guys look at?

So the, the fifth one is circadian rhythm or HPA axis dysregulation. And the reason that those are kind of lumped together is because we're basically looking at cortisol timing and the cortisol pattern over the course of the day. So that's, that's what we look at. We use the Dutch test. Originally, a long time ago we did like the, the cortisol saliva test. But you know, the Dutch test is just so much better than that. So if you have cortisol outside of the normal range at any one particular point in time, that's going to tell us that you have some kind of circadian or HPA axis dysregulation. And then we're going to look at stuff, you know, again, we talked about light, getting light at the right time early in the day, not at night, getting food at the right time. So particularly eating when it's light outside. But then also stuff like stress management if appropriate. And then something that we talk about a lot because it's so important is social isolation or social connectivity, like how many friends you have, the quality of your relationships, whether your work stresses just don't make. It just aren't worth handling. And you should Try and do something else, all of those things. And again, it's something you talk about too. Having a greater goal in life is super important. And all of that can translate to seeing these changes on a cortisol test. So depending on who you are and what we see, particularly on the responses to your questions, because we ask questions about social isolation and stress and anger and all that kind of stuff, then we can sort of start to pinpoint where maybe you need to focus.

Okay, so have you actually gone in and studied whether this is true or is this all just blue sky? That if I take this test and it's suggesting that I have an issue like the top on the camp is gut dysbiosis. Have you then taken a group of people who gave these responses, tested them and found out these tests were accurate, this machine based learning test was accurate?

I mean, that's a great question, right? Because we can say all this stuff, but we want it to work in real life. And we're currently running the first set of guys who are getting the prediction done and then we'll get the test done afterwards. We haven't done the full suite of testing afterwards, but what we have done, and we've actually been really pleasantly surprised by, is when we've gotten this analysis out there, we've been approached by a number of new clients who have known issues with certain things and obviously they don't tell us about that upfront, but they do the analysis tool and then that's, you know, it predicts it, you know, right off the bat. So we've had guys with, you know, low testosterone or low free testosterone or libido issues. And then that's their number one problem. We've had guys with problems with blood sugar, you know, types of diabetes or pre diabetes, and that comes out top. We've also had some people who, they know there's some issues in their gut and that's come out top. So even though we're still working on the next step to get people tested after they do the analysis, the people who've come in fresh, we've never seen them before and they have a known issue that's being predicted straight away. It's worth mentioning that when we train the algorithm, we split up the data. So the algorithm, the algorithm was trained with 80% of our data, 75% of our data in fact, and then the other 25% we used to test how well the algorithm predicted things. So then I know how well the algorithm is predicting stuff because we've already tested it out in 25% of our patients or clients.

Gotcha. Very interesting. So in terms of machine based learning, is this something that is taking place in other areas of, of medicine at this point?

Yeah, definitely. And people might have heard of IBM, Watson, that's sort of IBM's artificial intelligence, machine learning algorithm or platform. And a lot of big hospitals are kind of employing this. And the idea is that we're going to find ways sort of machine learning is going to assist the physician or assist the healthcare provider in some way because it can, it can sort of, it can boost their decision making. We know that it's, you know, unlike a human, it's completely objective. I said it can find associations that maybe we wouldn't be able to see otherwise. It can reduce cost, increase speed and, you know, doesn't require any training, unlike a physician who might require, you know, years of training to get to the point where they're, you know, as good as they can be. So there's a load of interest in the healthcare field. What we're hoping to do is kind of introduce a new way of thinking about it. And the reason why I think that's important is because the rapid diagnosis is something that's really important in places where they don't have enough doctors or they don't have any doctors. So you think about places in the third world, if you can do some diagnosis that doesn't require a physician to be there, those guys could really, really benefit. However, in the Western world, we know that faster diagnosis isn't necessarily the issue. We have a lot of diseases where we're not really digging down into the root cause and stopping them much earlier. So if we're just applying machine learning to loads and loads of patient data, once they already have the, that's not necessarily going to tell us anything about how the disease happened in the first place. And that's what we need to know. So we're kind of trying to move the process up much earlier so that we can get some even subjective data, just like how somebody feels and then try and find something out and intervene much sooner than say, trying to do some complex diagnostic task, which is maybe not what most people in the Western world need from a machine learning type health care platform.

Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting. So knowing what you know about these top five things that you see cropping up over and over again, especially in active people, blood sugar dysregulation and low sex hormones, suboptimal hemoglobin or low oxygen deliverability, gut dysbiosis and circadian Rhythm or hypothalamic pituitary, adrenal axis dysregulation? That's a mouthful. I'm curious about you, Tommy, because, like, you know, you're a pretty smart guy, like I mentioned, and you're well educated. I'm kind of curious how you structure your day personally to set yourself up to be optimized on a lot of these levels, like what kind of routines and what kind of nutrients and what kind of food groups and what kind of exercise that you personally do or you endorse based on what you know, based on what you've learned. I'm just curious how it is that you're setting up your day. So, for example, if I could ask you a few questions. You don't mind, do you?

No, absolutely not.

Do you have like a morning routine or anything like that?

Yeah, definitely. And it's something that I've sort of managed to develop while I've been in the US because when I was doing my PhD, it's just kind of every day is just triage, trying to get, get it done and get things finished and get out. So now that, now that I'm here, my day, you know, first thing I get up, I get outside. You know, we have a. I have a yard here, so I'm usually outside barefoot with my dog or dogs now. So we're out running around outside, then I usually come in, I'll make myself, I have a cup of coffee in the morning, I. I make a smoothie which, which just sort of sets me up for the day with lots of nutrients. It has various plant powders. I get mine from Four Sigmatic and Dr. Cowan's garden. Not that I have any affiliation with them, I just love them.

I love Dr. Cowan's garden. Dude.

Yeah, that's some good stuff.

And for those of you who, who are listening In, I interviewed Dr. Cowan about these delicious, nutritious vegetable powders that he makes. And we have a whole cupboard full of them. And every time mom makes dinner, it's like an insult to mom, right? I telli, tell the kids, go grab all of Dr. Cowan's garden powders. And usually they'll choose like two or three and bring them out and just dump em all over all the food. For those of you listening in, I'll put a link to my interview with Dr. Cowan in the show notes. You can learn more about these superfood plants that he grows and powders, but you're putting those in your smoothies along with the four Sigmatic mushrooms, Tommy?

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, there's like a. There's like a vegetable type base. So whenever I'm cooking in the kitchen, I'll always end up with like ends of vegetables and things like that. They get thrown in a bag in the freezer. That becomes the base of the smoothie with like some berries, probably some coconut milk too, and then. And then some powders. And that's like my breakfast.

So you just keep the whole bag of stuff in the freezer and then dump it into the blender. So when you're, when you're collecting berries and plants and stuff like that during the day, you're actually freezing them and then taking them out and blending them?

Yeah.

That's interesting. It's a lot different than what I do is just like a boatload of ice and then some ascorbic acid, like a squeeze of lemon or lime. And then I'm typically just like picking them fresh and putting them in there. But that's a good idea to freeze some of it. I hadn't thought of that. Now what I do freeze are the. I've been putting broccoli sprouts in my morning smoothie.

Oh, yeah.

And so I freeze those because from what I understand, you actually get a little bit more activity of the sulforaphane in the broccoli sprouts when you freeze. Freeze them first.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I have. I have a slight. So I definitely want some sulfur pain, too. I have a slightly different way of getting mine. I. I made a. I developed like a tea product for nourishment, thrive. And one of the main ingredients is broccoli seeds.

Oh, yeah, that hormone, what is it called?

Hormity.

Yeah, you sent me some. It's good stuff.

Thanks. But, yeah, so. So actually the highest concentration is in the seeds. And then you activate them with some warm water and then you can sort of top it up as a tea or I sort of activate my tea and then I just pour it into my. I pour it into my smoothie so I get all that good stuff. And there's some other things, like some, some berry anthocyanins and some green tea extract. And I sort of get that all in there. And so all those nutrients sort of come at the same time.

Nice. I like it. Okay, so you've got your morning smoothie, you've got your cup of coffee. What does your exercise routine look like, Tommy, when it comes to striking the balance? Balance between avoiding excessive inflammation or gut dysbiosis from exercise, but also enhancing longevity with, with movement. What are you doing.

So I, so I just moved house and I'm in the process of building my home gym. But in, in the, in the meantime, the last few months what I've been doing is, you know, three or four times a week I'm out. Like I said, I'm with my pickaxe for maybe an hour. There's quite a lot of stuff I have to clear. So that's kind of like my, it's my warm up. And then I've been doing, have a weights fest and some rings in the, in the area that I'm going to build my gym. So you know, I'll do some, some light gymnastics and you know, maybe I'll do some lunges or push ups with the weights vest and then I have some blood flow restriction bands. So I'm doing a bit of blood flow restriction training and then I just have some, some, some like rubber bands with handles. So I can do some, do some other, you know, some of the exercises you might do with dumbbells. You know, I can do those with the resistance bands, you know, and if you add some blood flow restriction then you can sort of get some of that, you get that metabolic benefit without adding a huge amount of stress. So that kind of gives me a work the muscles in those sort of the strength, more strength type domain. If I've got a bit of, you know, add some weight to myself or you know, I do some blood blood flow restriction training and that sort of gets the metabolic benefit but you know, sort of overall the total stress is much lower than maybe what I was exposing myself to when I was training for like ultra endurance marathons.

Yeah, I have blood flow restriction training bands and the way that I use those is I wrap them like a tourniquet around my arms and my legs. And this would be on a day where I don't want to beat my body up too much in terms of eccentric muscle tissue damage. But I'll do exercises like body weight squats or push ups wearing these bands. What type of workout do you do when you're wearing a blood flow restriction band on the arms or the legs?

So I'll mainly focus on a lot of push ups and then some, some, you know, and then maybe also, you know, if I'm, if I'm doing a bit of an arm workout, you know, some bicep curls and tricep extensions with the, with like some resistance bands. Those are great with the blood flow restriction bands. And then one of my favorite things actually is just to put the bands around the top of my thighs and then just go out lunging in the garden, and I'll just sort of lunge up and down for a few minutes. And, you know, if anybody thought that a few lunges wasn't a hard workout, as soon as you put those bands on, it becomes, you know, it's a lot of fun.

Yeah, Yeah. I actually had a guy who designed some of these bands come to my house. He happened to be here for, like, an entrepreneurship mastermind group that I have at my house every year. And he took me through a workout, and he was doing sets of 30, 20, and 10, which I guess is one of the more efficacious ways to train with these bands on is you'll do 30 reps of an exercise and introduce a whole bunch of blood and lactic acid, and then a short recovery period and then 20 reps of the same exercise, then a short recovery period, and then 10. And he was having me on many of the exercises, like pyramid up and weight as I went. So just in those very short breaks and between, I'd pyramid up and the actual weight that I would use. But, yeah, you get a good pump, as Arnold would say, when using those things.

Yeah, definitely.

Okay, so you've got a blood flow restriction training and pickaxing. You've got your superfood smoothie with your hormo tea and youryour broccoli seeds or your broccoli sprouts, your cup of coffee, your four sigmatic mushroom extracts. What about for your spirit? Do you have, like, a meditation or a yoga or a gratitude routine or anything like that that you do?

Yeah, that's something that I've been bringing in more and more recently. It wasn't something. It was something that, you know, you always know that you should do but haven't been doing. So I mainly use. I use a combination of the Headspace app, which I'm sure people have heard of, and then I also do some of the guided meditations on Brain fm. That's the other app. So I generally do that towards the end of the day. Or, you know, we often. We often know that it's really important to change how you interact with your work environment. So if somebody. If somebody is getting stressed at work and work stresses about, that's the perfect place to do some of these meditation or mindfulness practices. So if you can then associate work with some of the more karmic meditation, then you can actually change the way that you respond to stresses at work. So, you know, if work's getting really tough, then I'll sit down for 10 or 15 minutes and then I'll, I'll do some of that meditation too. So. So that's how I do mine.

Okay, gotcha. So you like the Headspace app and did you say you do any journaling or anything like that?

So I do not do any journaling, but that is definitely on my, on my list of stuff to start. Absolutely.

I know I'm jaded now that I've created a gratitude journal, but I still, like three years now, I, I've barely missed a day. I swear by the morning. Journaling man.

Yeah, I was around at Mike Motzel's house recently doing some podcasts with him and he said the same thing. So I need to, I need to get, get started on that.

Yeah. What are some other key things that you do each day that you wouldn't miss from a health standpoint or a longevity standpoint or just a happiness standpoint really?

So the importance of gratitude is very important to me. And though I don't journal it, it's really important to me to always be thankful to others. And I think about, I'm conscious about that whenever somebody does something for me or in a way that benefits me or, you know, anything like that, I always try and make sure that I'm thankful to them. And this is something that I learned and it's an interesting place to learn about. When I was working as a doctor in hospital, one thing you learn is that if you're nice to your co workers, especially the nurses, as a doctor, your life is just so much better. And then also the patient gets better care. So, you know, being nice to people, thankful to people, that's, that's super, super important to me. Then I try and move every day and I don't, you know, so I have stand up desks, I try and walk, I do, I don't necessarily work out every day, but try and move every day, get exposure to light every morning particularly. And then I do, you know, all that stuff at night that, that we know is, that we know is important. So like I have blue blocking glasses, efflux on my computer if I'm exposing myself to a screen, which I do less and less now at night. So all that kind of stuff to kind of bookend my day and make sure that I'm getting the right light exposure. I think that's really important too.

Interesting. Are you a fan of any of this idea of hormetic stressors of cold or heat? Like, are you one of those guys who's doing barefoot walks Up Mount Kilimanjaro or at least jumping in a cold bathtub every week or doing sauna treatments or things like this.

Yeah, so I have Scandinavian genes, I'm half Icelandic. So that stuff is kind of, is kind of built into me where I am at the moment. I'm in the process of building a cold plunge and will then get a sauna once I've. Once I've built my home gym. So it's not something I'm doing every day currently, but when I've had access to it. So when I was worked in Norway before I moved to the US So I had access to a sauna and cold plunge at the gym, so I was doing that. And so definitely something that I agree we should be doing more of. Just not something I have in my house right now.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. All right, I'm gonna come full circle back to this elite performance analysis tool. This is something that someone. Is it something someone would purchase on your site or is this just something someone takes for free?

Yeah, so the analysis is free. You can come onto the website. So people, you know, people listening to this podcast can go to the URL ben.nbt.AI they go there, then, you know, we know that they're coming from this podcast and then they can do the analysis. And what that will give them is then a ranking based on, you know, where those five issues are in terms of, you know, what was their number one particularly. So, so then when we see what their number one issue is, they'll also get, you know, you'll get some follow up. So you'll get some podcasts where Chris or I have talked about that particular issue and, you know, strategies that you can do to try and overcome it. A lot of people will then want to, you know, dig in a lot deeper. So this is part, this is now, you know, the first part of working with us. So somebody does, does the analysis, they decide they want to work with us as coaches and maybe dig in to their performance and get them performing as, as well as possible. You know, and this could be anybody with a performance goal. Your performance goal could just be playing with your kids for the next 10 years. You know, it doesn't have to be that you want to qualify for the Boston, you know, marathon or Kona. You know, it can just be whatever your performance goal is. We can definitely help you with that. And so somebody comes in, they, they do the analysis, then they can jump on a free call with us, we'll talk about what the analysis found, what they can maybe start doing. We'll get them started straight away on the most important things that they can fix. You know, then we'll do the necessary testing, we'll tweak the program, and then over time, you know, we have what we call sprints. So we'll talk to you on a call. We'll set up a Kanban board so it's kind of like a to do list. So we can always see what we've suggested you do. We can all see what you're doing because it's like an interactive, it's an interactive board, so we can always see who's doing what. And if you have any questions, you let us know. And so we'll set some tasks, you do them for two weeks, you meet up with us again, and we iterate that over the next few months and see you improve. And then we'll reuse the analysis over time so we can see how you're doing. We don't necessarily need to redo all the tests because you can redo the analysis to see, okay, great, my likelihood of the gut dysbiosis is coming down or my blood sugar control is improving, my circadian dysregulation is improving. So we can then use that to track over time. And then if necessary, we can, we can also retest, but it's kind of allowing us to get started with people much faster, get a much better idea of where they need to focus, and then allow us to track over time.

Got it. Cool. I like it. And by the way, for those of you who have difficulty Remembering all these URLs and everything, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Machine Learning and I'll put a link to all this over there. I also will upload my own results. You can kind of see what this simple little algorithm look like. And there's some cool, cute little videos that walk you through each of these things too, like the gut dysbiosis and the oxygen and issues and everything else. But it really is interesting these five issues that you see pop up over and over again because I definitely see these same things in a lot of people. And it's kind of cool that you guys have identified them and then figured out a way via a simple questionnaire for people to figure out whether they actually have some of these issues. So I like it. And also for those of you listening in, when you visit the Show Notes, I will indeed put a link to that conference in Iceland because it promises to be a really great one when it comes to anti aging and longevity and I'll be speaking there. I'll also be leading a bicycle ride through Iceland for those of you who want to join me there. That'll be fun as well for all fitness levels. So check all that out. And again, that's going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Machine Learning Tommy, was there anything else you wanted to fill people in on when it comes to the elite performance analysis tool Norrish Balance Thrive Iceland, your broccoli sprouts or anything else?

Well, yeah, if people are interested in our tea, they can go to hormetea.com, which is H o r m e t e a dot com and have a look and try it out. But the main thing is that if somebody's listening to this podcast and they can come to Iceland on the main days on the 8th of September and if you sign up to work with us on our elite performance program and you can come to Iceland, we will buy you a ticket to the conference and you can come and have your first consultation with us in a hot tub in Iceland and we can talk about all things health related. So if you're interested in that, we will definitely help get you there and we'd love to see you in person because that's what really drives us and we really enjoy just meeting everybody we work with and getting them the best.

Possible results in a hot tub. Wow, that's quite tough. You can't turn that down. All right, well cool folks. I'll put a link to Iceland, the EPA tool. Everything else is that Tommy and I talked about as well as the previous podcast that I've done with Tommy. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com machine learning thanks for listening in and have a healthy week.

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