How Protein Could Shorten Your Life, Is DNA Testing Dangerous, Should You Eat Sugar With Fat & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, how protein could shorten your life. Is DNA testing dangerous? How to sleep less stressed? Should you eat sugar with fat? Natural remedies for night terrors, and much more.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movements get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

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Rachel, we're back.

You're home.

Yay.

Finally.

Yeah. Been all over the place lately, From London to Paleofx to racing the Spartan in San Francisco and beyond. But you know what? It's always nice to just come home to the quiet little place in the forest.

Yeah. What's the first thing that you do when you get home?

My wife. My wife is actually in Oregon right now with her family. I managed to somehow avoid the annual Oregon vacation with the in laws. Not quite sure how that happened.

Lucky you.

I was able to play the I've been traveling too much card.

Yeah, you have been traveling a lot. So what was the first thing that you did when you got home?

Well, that means I'm in charge of the goats and the chickens. Dragon, lizard, and so I spent. Spent a lot of time making sure that toffee and caramel, the Nigerian dwarf goats that we have for milk are taken care of and got them all set up with their alfalfa and their feed. Took care of the chickens, gathered the eggs. I planted a bunch of new raspberry bushes, which I'm excited about.

Oh, that sounds lovely.

And then I spent a lot of time shooting my bow because I'm actually turning right around and headed down to Salt Lake City this Friday for the Train to Hunt competition. So.

Wow. No rest for you.

No rest. Actually, a few days of nice, easy rest and not leaving the house. Yeah. Goats, chickens, planted the raspberry bushes, did some shooting with my bow. I played the ukulele on the back porch. Tell you what, Rachel, there is. There's. There's a good side to just being home and not traveling and having a chance to. To forsake hypermobility and just spend some time on the home front.

I'm sure I absolutely love it. So I feel you.

By the way, one thing we should mention to folks is in case you want to meet up with me on any of these adventures that I'm off on from the train to hunt down in Salt Lake City this weekend to the Spartan Race the following weekend down in Dallas, Texas, the Spartan Race the next weekend in Boise, Idaho. We actually have a full calendar now up where you can track everything that's going on, where I'm going to be speaking, where I'm going to be competing, so that if you ever want to meet up or meet, you can do so. So you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Calendar and at BenGreenfieldFitness.com calendar you can see all the goodness that is the Ben Greenfield Fitness calendar.

So basically, people can just stalk you all the time now.

I think of it more as community building than stalking, but yes, Rachel, Yes.

News flashes.

Well, Rachel, since it's been quite some time since we've done our official, normally weekly Q and A in which we reveal news flashes, I figured I'd give people a few extra news flashes this morning. What do you think?

Yes, that sounds awesome. You've got five for us.

I have five news flashes, all kind of focused on like longevity and anti aging. I think it's because I'm getting so old.

Yes, but you still got a baby face because you use the anti aging serum.

Yes, yes, that and for many years copious amounts of olive oil smeared onto my face. Anyways, though, Laird Hamilton, our friend Laird Hamilton published a very interesting article that I'll link to in the show notes. And the show notes, by the way, if you're listening in, all the show notes are at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 352 and Laird Hamilton talks about his 10 point plan to live forever. And I think that forever might be a little bit of an over exaggeration. But some of his points were I think, notable. And I don't know if you got a chance to check out this article, Rachel, but for example, one of the ones that he has on there is to golf ball your bare feet.

Yeah, I saw that one.

And he talks about how your feet are loaded with nerve endings and that one of the best things you can do to allow you to absorb energy from the earth so the earth emits this electrical frequency. A lot of people are aware of this concept of grounding and earthing. And if the nerves in your feet are constantly compressed or the tendons and the ligaments and the tiny muscles in your feet have a lot of like cross linking and adhesions then you actually don't really root yourself to the earth as well. So he does golf ball rolling on the bottom of his feet.

Awesome. I'd love to do that.

Here's the criteria, by the way. This is my criteria. If you can stand on two golf balls under your foot, then you've got pretty good foot stability and pretty good foot integrity or fascia integrity of the foot. If it hurts to stand on top of a golf ball or two, then you need to do some footwork.

So two golf balls under one foot. And does it have to be anywhere in particular, like under the arch?

Yeah, yeah. As close to under the arch, side by side as possible.

A good little experiment to do your.

Sign that you've become superhuman. Another one that he likes is to ensure that you do the water workout from hell. And this is something that he'll do, I believe every week, is he'll jump into a 10 to 12 foot deep pool and sink to the bottom and then do weightlifting while holding his breath at the bottom of the pool. And he'll do things like jumping and doing explosive squats out of the pool to blast his legs. He'll do like water tre with the, with the feet up above the water so that the core contracts. But it's this combination. And for any of you listening in, do take caution. You can hurt yourself. There is something called shallow water blackout. But ultimately he's a big, big fan of doing these kind of like hypoxic workouts in the water. And I think that that probably relates to some of the vagus nerve tone stuff that we're going to talk about later on in this podcast in terms of its relation to longevity. But that's another one that he has in there thought was interesting. And then finally he has this thing called the golf board. Have you seen this?

I saw it, yeah.

He talks about how coming up with new ideas, being innovative in all aspects of your life is important for staying young. And a couple of months ago when I was down in Kauai, I got a chance to hang out in Laird's garage. And he has all these little inventions that he's created over the years, from the very first stand up paddle board to this hydrofoil board that sticks up out of the water. But he's got this new one called the golf board, which is basically like kind of a skateboard for golfers. I think it actually looks like a lot of fun. I'll put a link again in the show notes to this, but if you haven't yet tried this golf Board. And you're a golfer, you may want to check it out.

Looks kind of epic. Looks like very futuristic.

Be laughed at by all your, your real dyed in the wool golfing friends. But when you outlive them by 30 years, it could be worth it.

He's laughing now.

Speaking of living a long time, a new study came out that looked into whether or not the protein recommendations being given to good old grandpa might actually be a little bit low. So this is a brand new study that I thought was really interesting. So what they did was they looked at the way that we currently determine how much protein people need. And the way that we typically do it is we look at someone's nitrogen balance. We look at how much nitrogen that they are taking in via proteins via like amino acids, right? And then they look at the amount of nitrogen being excreted in the urine. And by doing that, they figure out what kind of nitrogen balance is ideal to stave off things like decreased muscle function or impaired immune system response. It turns out though, that this method of nitrogen balance may have some limitations. So for example, it can be notoriously inaccurate. It can be tough to measure all of the nitrogen that actually does get excreted versus all of the nitrogen that you actually do take in. And it also requires five to 10 days of giving people all sorts of different kinds of amino acids to see how they respond to those individual amino acids. So it's kind of a clunky way to test how much protein that you need. And there's this brand new alternative method called indicator amino acid oxidation method. And in this method they actually use a protein or an amino acid rather, that's been labeled with an isotope. An isotope is basically just like a tracking device that you can attach to a molecule, more or less. And so what they did was they used this newer, more accurate, what's called IAAO method to determine protein requirements for older people, in this case older men, men over the age of 65. And what they found was that for these guys to be able to stay in protein balance, the current recommendations are actually too low. And using this new method, what they found was that the rda, the recommended daily allowance for older men is, and here's the number for those of you data heads out there, 0.94 to 1.24 grams of protein per kilogram per day, which is actually nearly twice as much as they've been recommending that older individuals take in, which, which has always kind of baffled me a little bit that protein requirements for younger people are relatively adequate, right? Now, in terms of what we're recommended to take in, but protein requirements for older individuals tend to be very, very low. And the reason I think this is, this is interesting is because sarcopenia, the gradual loss of muscle, that's actually related to not enough protein intake. And also you tend to produce less of what's called hydrochloric acid or HCl as you age. And HCL is responsible for helping you break down proteins into amino acids. And so in many cases it would seem that older people would need more amino acids or more protein. And it turns out, based on this study, that the more accurate recommendation for people who are over 65 is actually close to like 0.94 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. And I'll let all of you out there who still do math in pounds do the conversion won't be hard. Mr. Google can help you. And 1.24 grams per kilogram would be like your approximate goal for protein intake if you're older.

So is there any chance that they have underestimated the protein intake for people that aren't over 65?

No, in most cases for the protein intake for people who aren't over 65, it appears to be adequate. And in many cases, I wanted to get into this actually, sometimes it can be too high. If you read like Men's Health or a lot of these publications, you know, Prevention magazine, et cetera, they'll have really high protein intake recommendations like 40 to 50% of your daily intake to keep your appetite satiated and to build lean muscle and to maintain nitrogen balance, etc. But it turns out that you actually need to be careful with that for a couple of reasons and I'll get into those in just a second. But in the meantime, if you want to look at this other study that I just talked about, the official title, and I'll link to the study in the show notes is dietary protein requirements of men over 65 years old determined by the indicator amino acid oxidation technique is higher than the current estimated average requirement. Sums it up.

That is quite the title, doesn't it?

But the title does it justice. So check that out. But be careful with protein. And here's why. There was another recent study that they did that looked at protein intake and specifically doing protein feedings that are greater than about 30 grams. So my recommendation has always been to not sit down to a protein rich meal that contains more than 30 grams because most people can't absorb a lot more protein than that. And you also get a big dump of what is called glucagon. In response to a very, very big dose of protein. Glucagon causes your liver to release a bunch of glucose. And this is why protein can spike insulin and it can spike blood glucose. This is why you need to be careful when you sit down to a steak or dairy has even more potential for having this insulinogenic glucagon releasing effect. You actually can spike your blood sugar and spike your insulin levels and it can cause some of the same metabolic issues as sitting down to a whole bunch of sugar. And there is this study and I'll link to it in the show notes that shows that the highest increase in glucagon occurs when A, you exceed about 30 grams of protein. Okay. So if you're going to do protein, don't do a lot more than 30 grams at a sitting and B, when you use really fast release protein sources. And some of the fastest releasing protein sources are protein powders. And so you need to be careful with protein powders. Whey is the highest, so whey protein isolate. And interestingly there's something called P peptide hydrolysate, which is more of like a vegan form of pea protein powder. Both of those you need to be careful with, especially in excess. So don't rely on protein powders as your as your main source of protein and especially don't do more than about 30 grams at a sitting.

That is some good info right there.

But there's more when it comes to protein intake. There's also another article I'm going to link to that goes into how proteins can get oxidized. So I've talked before about how sugars can get oxidized in the bloodstream. We've actually got a question, I believe that a listener called in asking about whether they should be careful consuming sugar in the presence of fatty acids. And I have some thoughts on that and how sugar can oxidize cholesterol. But it turns out that protein can also cause this effect. Some of the things that happen or that you can do to protein to cause protein to become damaging to your body, to cause protein to oxidize would include high heat frying of protein. So frying of meat, frying of protein containing foods is something you should be really careful with very long term dry curing like you'd find with a lot of jerkies and a lot of like preserved meats out there, that also causes quite a bit of oxidative reactions to occur in protein. So I'm not saying you should completely avoid beef jerky all you paleo heads out there, but you need to be careful with shouldn't be like your primary source of protein intake, these dry cured proteins. It should be more something you save for camping, hiking, backpacking, et cetera. And if you have access to protein that's been perhaps not dry cured or not heated really high, that's the type of protein you should choose. When you do have the option, it turns out that protein in packaged form that's been stored and cooled and frozen and in many cases irradiated to reduce bacterial contamination or exposed to anything else that happens. When you package protein like chicken legs and chicken breasts and proteins that you're going to find processed and packaged, you need to be somewhat careful with how much, and I would say this with any food, how much packaged protein that you actually eat. The biggest exceptions to that would be nature's perfect package, the egg. That's an example of a protein that really, I think, you know, it's packaged, it's preserved. Qu. Well, eggs can stay on your countertop for a long period of time with minimal addition of preservatives and packaging and processing. And so if you're going to do protein in its packaged form, do eggs. So there's that. Now in terms of what you can do rather than what you should simply avoid, first of all, get your protein fresh as much as possible. So buy your meat fresh poultry, fresh fish fresh, say that 10 times fast. And try to try to avoid storing your proteins for long, long periods of time when you can. So that's, that's one way to avoid this protein oxidation. Avoid protein that's been irradiated or high pressure treated or industrial processed. That'd be another thing to be careful with. Even if you're going to your butcher to buy meats, you want to ask them for the freshest cuts, preferably culinary herbs and spices can reduce a lot of the oxidation that occurs to proteins. And this is why you'll see a lot of this stuff used in like, you know, dry rubs and things like that for meat. So we're talking about things like thyme and basil and ginger and parsley and black pepper and rosemary and curries. When you consume proteins, especially when you're consuming heated proteins and heated meats, the use of a lot of these spices can limit a lot of that oxidation that occurs or fight some of that oxidation or heal some of that oxidation in your body.

So do you rub the meat prior to cooking it?

Yes, ideally. Ideally, the meat is cooked in the presence of those protein powders like I was talking about. Earlier, you want to store those in a cool, dry place and prevent them from getting heated. And ideally, when they're getting shipped to you, they should not be getting heated also because that can cause oxidation of like your whey protein or your vegan protein. So you want to be careful with that. And then the last thing would be like dairy proteins, dairy proteins that have been high heat pasteurized. You want to be really careful with that because that can damage the protein structure of the dairy protein and also cause oxidation. So I'm going to link in the show notes to a really good article on protein oxidation and also on this issue with protein causing sugar spikes. But ultimately what it comes down to is that A, if you're older, you may need a little bit more protein than you've been led to believe. But B, be careful with really fast release protein sources and don't eat more than about 30 grams at a time. And C, be careful that your proteins are getting oxidized.

Geeking out on the proteins over here.

That's the skinny young proteins. So, yeah. And then the final thing that I wanted to mention, since we're geeking out on longevity and anti aging, is Alzheimer's disease. Now, we had a huge podcast on Alzheimer's disease where I recommended everything from pulsed electromagnetic field frequencies to a whole variety of different nootropics and compounds and strategies that have been shown to reverse or to heal Alzheimer's. You know, intranasal light therapy and all sorts of things. This, this newest research shows that Alzheimer's may actually be something that is a communicable disease or a disease that at least manifests itself as a potentially infectious disease. Did you see this?

I saw it and I don't understand. Okay, so I need help.

Basically what they've done is they've been able to take senile plaques from Alzheimer's patients and inject them into mice and found that the mice actually developed Alzheimer's by being exposed to this dilute fluid from the neocortex of Alzheimer's patients. And then they've also found a lot of other interesting things that I'm going to link to. But for example, they have found that periodontitis or microbes living in dental plaque, those can actually create what's called a biofilm that can invade the brain and cause cognitive decline and Alzheimer's. So it turns out that bacteria in your mouth may contribute to Alzheimer's getting exposed to bacteria from other people who have Alzheimer's may potentially be infectious with Alzheimer's. Herpes virus is another one that they've recently found to have a significant correlation with the development of Alzheimer's disease. So you may want to make sure that you clear up that herpes if you care about your brain. Another one was atherosclerosis. They found that when you have atherosclerosis, it may actually produce or cause an upregulated production of things like herpes, as well as something else called chlamydophila, which you may know as chlamydia. And both of these, characterized by plaque formation, can also contribute to Alzheimer's disease. And then finally, there's something called biotoxin exposure, which would be like, molds and fungus and things like that. And those may also cause what's called a chronic inflammatory response syndrome that could cause Alzheimer's. So the big picture here is that a lot of times we think about taking care of our brains, limiting our intake of sugars, getting exposed to good, natural forms of light during the day, et cetera, for enhancing our cognitive performance. But it turns out that keeping a clean mouth, keeping a clean crotch, and keeping clean arteries may also be really, really important when it comes to staving off your risk for getting Alzheimer's.

Well, I don't know about you, but my mouth, crotch, and arteries are pretty clean.

Good. Keep them clean and you'll stay smart. Kids.

Listener q and a.

Foreign.

Hey, Ben. Hey, Rachel. This is Preston. I have a question following up from your episode 348 podcast. My question is in Dr. Sharon's Mulhem.

I guess that's how you say it.

Sorry, I definitely butchered that. In her book Inheritance, she mentions that getting your genes tested could put you at risk for insurance policy exclusions for you and your future kids. So how real of a threat is that? And do I have to worry about genetic testing companies getting taken over by bigger companies? And is that a problem for me moving forward? All right, thanks. See ya. Rachel, have you actually gotten your DNA tested yet?

I have got my DNA tested, but I got it done in Australia, like, ages ago, so I need to get done again because our men in black.

Coats following you down dark alleys now, they.

They aren't. But I am waiting for that to happen.

Your genetic data is out there. It's gonna be like something out of What's. What's the show. Not. Is it the Avengers, in which they're mutants?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

No, it's not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. What's. What's the. What's the show where. X Men. X Men is what I'm Thinking of. Yeah.

Yes.

You find out. You find out you're a mutant and you get taken.

Yeah, I mean, it's like there's something pretty profound out there about me. It's like the most kind of personal information. It is kind of crazy to think about it.

Well, there's actually a name for this. It's called genetic discrimination. And genetic discrimination, it occurs when people are treated differently by an employer or health insurance company because they have a gene mutation that causes increased risk of an inherited disorder. Like I have higher than normal risk, for example, of, and I hope my health insurer isn't listening in type 2 diabetes and prostate cancer. Like that. That's. Those, those are my two genetic risks. You know, that's why I do things like control my blood sugar or I also eat every single day fresh tomatoes, so I get lycopene for the prostate cancer risk. But, you know, I personally like knowing that stuff because it helps me make intelligent decisions about what I am or I'm not going to put into body. And the idea behind this genetic discrimination is that we actually have protective mechanisms set up that would keep you from getting discriminated against or keep you from getting health insurance or keep you from getting a job based on the results of your genetic testing. So first of all, there are federal anti discrimination laws that have been going on for a long time, like even before genetic testing became popular. And this, this began back in the 80s. But there, there are acts like the American with Disabilities act or the ADA and that prohibits discrimination based on disability. And technically a genetic defect or a genetic predisposition would or can be considered a disability. So the American with Disabilities act can protect you from getting discriminated against. Another one is called hipaa, which a lot of us are familiar with. And HIPAA is the only federal law that directly addresses the issue of genetic discrimination. Aside from this, this newest law that I'll talk about in just a second. But HIPAA actually prohibits employers from refusing to offer health coverage due to genetic information. So HIPAA would be another one. There's another one called the Title VII Civil Rights act, and this one goes way back to the 60s. And you could make an argument that genetic discrimination based off of anything that would be like a racial genetic defect. Defect is probably not the right word, but you know, genetic disorder or an ethnically linked genetic disorder, technically that is race or ethnicity discrimination. If, let's say you are African American and you have the gene responsible for giving you high blood pressure because you conserve salt, which is a common genetic trait, of African American people that genetic risk for high blood pressure, Technically you're protected by the Civil Rights act from someone discriminating against you.

Based on that, I'm really curious about how the concept of pre existing conditions plays into this, because it makes sense, obviously. But then I wonder how insurance companies can stop people from accessing health insurance because of pre existing conditions.

Well, here's the deal. There is a new act that got passed in 2008. It's called the Genetic Information Non Discrimination act, or GI. And this new act arose as genetic testing became more popular. And basically it spells up very, very clearly that it is completely against the law for health insurers to request or require or to use genetic information to make decisions about your eligibility for health insurance or your health insurance premium, or the health contribution amount or the terms of coverage. And it also makes it against the law for employers to use genetic information to make decisions about hiring you or firing you, or promoting you or paying you or in any other way mistreating you. So the only thing that this doesn't cover is if you already have some kind of a health condition and that condition is related to a genetic disease or was diagnosed in part by a genetic test, then technically a health insurer could make a decision about eligibility. And all that means is that let's say that I have type 2 diabetes and my health insurer wants to charge me more for my health insurance because I have type 2 diabetes. They can take into account the fact that my type 2 diabetes is not just related to me having type 2 diabetes, but also related to the fact that I have a higher genetic risk for type 2 diabetes. So if I walk in with the actual condition and the actual disease that my genes say I'm at a higher predisposition for, that GINA act does not protect me against that if the disease has already manifested.

Manifested totally.

But otherwise you can't be discriminated against like it is technically illegal, at least in the U.S. you know, and I realize I'm. I'm not. I'm not painting with a broad brush over every country here, but we're protected.

I come from a country with free health care, so nobody cares about this.

You don't need to worry about this. But there is a pretty cool little hack that you can use if privacy is something that you really, really care about. I'm going to put a link for folks who are listening in. But you can go completely under the radar with your genetic testing if you're concerned that at any point confidentiality might be breached. So here is how you can do it. You need a virtual private network service. I actually have one of these installed on my computer when I buy massive amounts of illegal performance enhancing drugs online. And Viagra. No, I'm just kidding. These private WI fi services actually work really well. If you're say at an airport, you don't want somebody hacking into your computer. Join the airport Wi Fi. So it's called a VPN service. There's one called private wi fi. It's just privatewifi.com that's the one that I have on my computer. And it allows you to not only view websites like Hulu for example, when you're in a different country, but also allows you to mask your IP address. So you do that and then you want to use what is called private browsing mode on your browser. This would be where you use like Chrome or Firefox. So you open this, this, this private WI fi, you have that running and then you use your private browsing mode. And then you want to be able to mask all your credit card and your content information or your contact information. There's something called Mask me that can do this. It's called Mask Me M A S K me. And again, I'll link to all this stuff in the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com so what this means is that you've got a masked IP address, you've got a masked browser and then you use Mask me to pay with your credit card. It allows you to like load up a virtual credit card basically with money and pay using a credit card that's not traceable back to you.

This is so hilariously dodgy, Ben.

Oh but, but it makes sense. Like if you really.

It does.

Some somebody actually did this. They wrote a whole article about it and managed to with, with per get their 23andMe data, do it completely via private browsing under a false name and have access to all that data.

So that's really cool.

Totally doable. I'll link to it in the show notes. Ultimately, if you really really care it and you're pretty concerned and you're a conspiracy theorist and you believe in chemtrails and all that jazz, this is probably going to be you who uses this method. I personally really don't care that much. I mean if I can't get health insurance, I'm one of those guys that has like a flexible savings account and only high deductible health insurance set up anyways. And then I just take care of my body. But ultimately you are protected if you're in the US and if you really want to use 23andMe or any other form of genetic testing without giving up your genetic privacy, it's totally doable. You just have to be a propeller head.

Ben, this is Ryan Walker reaching out to you from Mobile, Alabama. I have a question regarding night terrors. I'm not sure if that's exactly what it is, but all I know is that I'm waking up in the middle of the night and I'm terrified. So when I put those two together, it makes sense that they would be night terrors. I wake up from a deep sleep and I'm in this full blown panic and it's really put a hindrance on my sleep quality, you can imagine, not only because I'm waking up in this panic, but because I'm in a pitch black room. Right? Because we all know that sleeping in a pitch black room is going to be conducive to good deep sleep phases. So I jump up like a chicken with my head cut off. I'm feeling around the walls like I'm trying to read Braille or something, looking for a light switch and a doorknob, and I'm in this complete panic. And as soon as I see some light, I snap out of it and I just pass out from this adrenaline rush. You know what it's like when you have this really adrenaline charged feeling and soon, soon after you're just exhausted. And then I just pass out asleep, fine the rest of the night. It's horrible. And I was hoping maybe you could give me some insight into what's going on. I've heard things like eating too soon before bedtime can keep you a little too metabolically active at night. So please help me figure out what's going on from a physiological and neurological standpoint, what I can do to get rid of this issue. Thank you. And thank Rachel so much for everything that you've been doing and the amazing content that you put out all the time. So I look forward to hearing your response in the near future. Thank you. Bye. Bye.

Dude, my brother used to get these. My brother Zach used to get these night terrors.

Oh, it sounds so scary.

Oh my goodness. Yeah, I would. It would be like at a predictable time every night, usually sometime between midnight and 2. And he would wake up screaming bloody murder. Like the loudest scream you've ever heard. And he'd go running down the hallway to mom. And every time it would be some kind of like terrible, terrible dream or nightmare. And I'd get this huge adrenaline rush from my brother screaming and I wouldn't be able to fall back asleep. And he got these for a few years. And technically it is an actual diagnosable sleep disorder. And what it is is this feeling of terror or this feeling of dread. So it's a little bit different than just having a bad dream. And it typically occurs during what's called stage three to four non rapid eye movements delete or NREM sleep. So when you are in delta sleep or slow wave sleep, that would be the period of time during which a night terror would tend to happen. And it's during the first half of a sleep cycle when delta sleep occurs most often. And so people with more delta sleep activity can be more prone to night terrors. Now this is important to understand because it's going to relate to this. Speaking of genes, this genetic defect that allows some people to get by on less sleep may actually predispose them to getting more night terrors. Night terrors, and I'll talk about this in a second, because basically humans in general have more delta sleep than animals. We talked about this several episodes ago. That's why your dog lays around the house all day sleeping. But you don't need to do that. It's because when you go to sleep, your sleep is far more restorative. Human being sleep is far more restorative than any other animal on the face of the planet because of how much extra time we spend in delta sleep. But in some people, these night terrors occur during that non rapid eye movement sleep and there's a panic attack and they're sweating. They've actually done what's called electroencephalography or EEG measurements of people who have had night terrors and they find that they get ripped out of this delta sleep. They go straight into alpha brainwaves, highly alert brainwave production, and they get things like tachycardia, extremely rapid heartbeats, flushing, big rush of blood to the face and to the extremities. I mean, it's full on activation of the sympathetic nervous system during sleep. So it is an issue. However, the good news is there are things that you can do about it.

Awesome. Tell us.

So first of all, when it comes to your pre bed habits, and this to me is kind of, it seems pretty common sense, but pre bed habits are pretty important, relaxing sleep environments. So I'm going to talk a little bit more later on in this podcast about how to activate your vagus nerve a little bit more while you sleep. What they found is that for Night terrors in children or adults, consistent wake and bedtime, that's important. Okay, so going to bed at a similar time each night. Really wish my parents had listened to this podcast when I was a kid. Going to bed at the same time each night, like a 9pm or 10pm bedtime. Ensuring that you have a cool sleep environment actually makes you less likely to get ripped out of this deep sleep. So somewhere between about 60 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit is an ideal sleep environment, a very dark sleep environment. So if your child has a nightlight or something like that, counterintuitively, that night light may actually contribute to an increased ability for them to be brought rapidly out of non rapid eye movement sleep. So if you can keep it dark, all the better. That means not a lot of stimulating gadgets in the bedroom either, like TVs or video games or computers or iPads, et cetera. They found that large meals before bedtime can actually contribute to night terrors as well. So you'd want to be careful with large meals if you get hungry during the night. You'd want things that cause a slow bleed of food fuel into the body, like collagen would be one example. So like a big cup of bone broth. Or another one would be medium chain triglycerides. Again, a really good stable source of fat for pre sleeps, like coconut milk or coconut oil. But no big meals, right? Like no pizza and chocolate before bed. And then the last thing would be anything like for kids, especially lullabies, a warm bath with a little bit of Epsom salts or lavender, like anything that activates the parasympathetic nervous system before bed can help to limit these type of night terrors. There's also better living through science. So it's really, really interesting. But starting back in 1988, they began doing clinical studies on night terrors. And they found that what are called scheduled awakenings can be used to prevent night terrors. So what this means is that you know how they make these alarm clocks now where the alarm clock will start vibrating, will go off at whatever time range during the morning that you have indicated that you want to be woken up. It monitors your activity. It tracks when you're in your lightest stage of sleep during that time of morning, and then the alarm goes off during that time, so you're not getting ripped out of deep sleep. Now what they use in kids or adults who have night terrors is something very, very similar. It's this little device and I'll link to it in the show, not it's called the L U L L Y, the Lully, and it's called a sleep guardian. What it does is it records your sleep activity and it will monitor when you tend to get night terrors. And night terrors tend to strike within about two to three hours after falling asleep during that first phase of non rapid eye movement sleep. And it gently wakes you up with a vibration or a light noise during that cycle and then you fall back asleep, but without the night terror. And they've actually done clinical studies on this thing and it works to stop up to 80% of night terrors.

Wow, that's huge.

Yeah, it's called a scheduled awakening, the L U L L Y. So it works in kids and in adults. And by the way, a lot of doctors will try and medicate with like Xanax or Valium or some kind of diazepam or sedative. Please go listen to the podcast that I did with Dr. Kirk Parsley about this because it shuts down. Those medications shut down the frontal cortex. They cause you to become less aware of your surroundings. So you do get more relaxed. That's how you can, you know, fall asleep on the airplane when you have Valium with a glass of wine or, you know, take Ambien or something like that before bed to fall asleep. But unfortunately, it keeps you from actually getting into that deep sleep cycle, which is why it works so well for night terrors, but why it's so crappy when it comes to getting a relaxing night of sleep. That's why people who take like Ambien and Valium and stuff like that, they finally have to nap later on in the afternoon because their body never gets that deep sleep during the night cycle. So be careful with that. But here is my theory, completely unproven by science. Drum roll please, about people who sleep less getting night terrors. Because I have many friends who are those type of people who seem to be able to sleep just fine for three to four hours per night and operate like a rock star. And some people will say they routinely need just six hours of sleep per night. Well, there was a study that they did a couple of years ago where they showed that there are genes and there's specifically a genetic mutation on a gene called DEC2 that allows you to be a short sleeper. Specifically, what that genetic defect does is it causes you to go into more delta sleep more quickly and to thus need fewer sleep cycles during the night because you go into your delta sleep so quickly. Now remember, delta sleep is the time during which night terrors occur. And I have a guess that people who possess this particular gene defect, this mutation on Dec2, not only have higher risk for things like nightmares and sleep terrors, but I think that they're probably getting more of what is called a DMT dump. Have you heard of DMT before?

I have, yeah.

So dimethyltryptamine, it's something that is. Well, it's something that some people will use as a psychedelic because it's a plant based medicine. It's one of those things that you would get a high amount of when you use ayahuasca. Typically you'll use DMT from one part of a plant and then what's called a monamine oxidase inhibitor from another part of the plant. And that's how ayahuasca works as like a psychedelic or hallucinogenic plant based medicine. But your body can make its own endogenous dmt. And there's some evidence that during very slow deep sleep you can actually have metaphysical experiences very similar to what you get from like ayahuasca or psilocybin. And some people produce higher amounts of this dimethyltryptamine than others. And again, this is just my complete random theory. My guess is that people with this genetic defect to have more night terrors are producing more DMT during that extra delta sleep that they actually do get.

Interesting.

The last thing. And this is going to be totally woo woo.

I love it.

Totally woo woo. But I have had these DMT night terrors before during one time of my life. In many cases, people who begin to experiment with things that put you into deeper amounts of deep sleep, like this delta sleeper device for example, that I've talked about before, they will find that they get nightmares for a short period of time and you can actually go through almost like a detoxification of your brain with these huge amounts of DMT that get released during deep sleep if you've gone for a very, very long period of time during your life when you don't get deep sleep. But there's another thing that can cause a big release of DMT or dimethyltryptamine. And that would be these patterns that you can actually put in your bedroom at night. There are these things called sacred geometry posters. And again, I realize I'm deep into the land of woo woo now. Now somebody sent me these sacred geometry posters and told me that they would give me enhanced delta sleep if I put them in my room. So I did. And I had horrible, horrible psychedelic hallucinogenic type of nightmares for Two weeks. And finally my wife made me throw them away. So I threw them away.

That's crazy.

Later on I had a conversation with the person who sent me these sacred geometry posters. He said that's very common for the first couple of weeks. Weeks as your body kind of slowly detoxes itself and you get these big releases of DMT during the night. Fascinating stuff. I think we know really interesting. We know a lot less about sleep than we think we do, and especially about this DMT that gets released during sleep. And I suspect that we'll eventually figure out ways where we can have really positive hallucinogenic type of events during sleep using DMT a little bit responsibly for sleep. But in the meantime, night terrors, genetic mutations that allow you to sleep, less scheduled sleep, awakenings, all the stuff I just talked about. If you want to dig into that even more, along with this book about DMT called the Spirit Molecule. I'll link to all that over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 352.

Hey Ben and Rachel, My name is Dylan from Melbourne. I've been a long time listener and an advocate of pretty much all the advice you give. One of the ones I use regularly is actually carb backloading. Now as an endurance athlete I find it very useful. But what I found interesting recently was a study by Michael Mosley about the effects of food on your blood sugar levels and the amount of fat in your blood. He did a test where he had a fry up in the morning and measured his blood sugar and fat levels. He also had the same fry up in the evening. What he found was that the sugar and fat levels were higher and were also maintained higher when he did it at night, when he ate the fry up at night. So in the same way, I guess this flies in the face of car backloading from a health standpoint anyway, because I don't imagine you want to go to sleep with elevated blood and sugar and fat levels. So just like to hear your opinion on this. Bearing in mind it wasn't from an endurance standpoint, it was from a general health standpoint anyway, so keep up the good work and look forward from hearing your opinion. Bye guys.

Rachel, I'm going to, at the risk of my own embarrassment, have to ask you this because I'm hoping someone, including you, knows what is a fry up.

It is a breakfast basically just like bacon, eggs, sausages, potatoes, potatoes and I guess it originates. I think it's English, but we do use that, that those words for breakfast in Australia as well. But it is mostly English.

I. I've made this. Some. Is this where you would take like a bunch of potatoes and eggs and maybe like some leftovers from the fridge and you get a big casserole?

Yeah, it's like a really. You fry up a massive breakfast and.

You drench it all in ketchup and Tabasco sauce.

There you go. You got it.

I have done this. I've done this.

Welcome to the world of fry.

I always thought it was just called being responsible with leftovers. It's called a fry up. Interesting. My kids do this sometimes too. I actually did last night because I'm a bachelor right now my wife and kids are gone and like I mentioned, I'm at home taking care of the farm. I had, I guess what would be considered a healthy fry up. Last night I roasted a giant garlic bulb. And while that was roasting, with a little bit of olive oil and sea salt in the oven, I took miracle noodles, which are these shirataki noodles made out of Japanese yam. And I sauteed them in a cast iron skillet with a little bit of venison, some pine nuts, some avocado, some fresh tomato. And what else did I have in there? Oh, a little spoonful of almond butter and cayenne pepper.

Yum.

And I suppose that what I made was indeed qualifies a fry up.

I think so.

One thing that did not have in it my own fry up was carbohydrates, like starchy carbohydrates, sugar, et cetera. And there is a reason for that. There is a definite reason for that. Now I looked into this Michael Mosley guy that he was asking about and Michael Mosley, it appears that he is the creator of something called the blood sugar diet, which just like it sounds like, no surprises, here is a diet based on a low carb Mediterranean style of eating, which of course I wouldn't, I would endorse that style of eating in, in most cases. I think that one of the things that's missing from modern man's version of the Mediterranean diet is the fact that like I know people who follow a true Mediterranean diet and half the time they're engaged in fasting, like full on like multi day fasts. They're engaged in intermittent fasting, like going for long periods of time without eating, or they are engaged in protein modified fasting, which means like certain periods of time where they're not eating dairy and meat and stuff like that. I highly suspect that in addition to the lower amounts of sugary carbohydrates that the amount of fasting and the amount of protein restriction in a Mediterranean diet is just as responsible for its success as the absence of sugars. That being said, however, when it comes to cholesterol, the idea here is that when you consume sugar, sugar, especially sugar with a high glycemic index, you know, starchy sugars, white sugars, et cetera, these can actually cause the formation of small cholesterol particles and small, dense LDL cholesterol that tends to become formed when you have presence a, fats and b, high amounts of glucose in the bloodstream. Those can become far more, or they're a form of cholesterol becomes far more able to weasel their way into the lining of cell walls and cause the buildup of plaques. And what this means is that if you have high sugar and high insulin levels in combination with high amounts of fat and triglyceride circulating through the bloodstream, it is one of the worst things that you can do when it comes to vascular health, risk for atherosclerosis and the buildup of plaques. This is why, for example, one of the worst things that you could do is like make yourself a cup of bulletproof coffee and put a couple teaspoons of sugar into that, right? Because you just got this dump of glucose and fats into your body. However, another example of this would be having a cup of bulletproof coffee and then a big serving of eggs and bacon, based on what you just learned about earlier in this podcast about the release of glucagon and the breakdown of liver glycogen and the release of glucose into the bloodstream from large protein feedings. Another example would be a fry up in which you're taking a bunch of oil and then potatoes, right, which are going to get broken down into glucose. And so you're shoving glucose and fats into your bloodstream simultaneously and in this case, heated or more oxidized fats. So this would not be a good idea. You should not, in just about any case whatsoever consume sugars with fats, the exception to this rule. Because I know all of a sudden this sounds like no fun at all for those of you who want your wine with your bar of dark chocolate or your steak with your sweet potato fries, right? So let's talk about how we can have our cake and eat it too, shall we? Okay, so basically, you can either a, put yourself into a scenario where you have extremely upregulated GLUT4 transporter activity. What this means?

What does that mean?

What this means is that you're keeping your pancreas from having to release as much insulin to shove glucose into muscle tissue or liver tissue. And you're also up regulating your body's ability to take sugar out of the bloodstream very quickly and get it into muscle so that it's not hanging around the bloodstream. Heavy weightlifting and sprinting are two of the best ways to do this. So prior to your and this is why about the only time of day where you'll see me eating carbohydrates at the same time as fat, such as, you know, I'll do sweet potato fries with a steak or I will do for example avocados with a cracker or wine with dark chocolate. It will be post hard exercise. Usually you've got about a two hour window during which you have this upregulated GLUT4 transporter activity. So that would be one way to do it. Another way would be to use any number of things that have been shown to increase the uptake of glucose in the muscle or liver tissue or to decrease the. Or I'm sorry, to increase your sensitivity to insulin. So insulin, which is responsible for taking glucose and getting it into tissues acts much, much better. I talked about this at Paleo FX and I mentioned three different compounds that can do this when taken prior to a carbohydrate and fat containing meal. One would be the equivalent of about 2 teaspoons of cinnamon and it would need to be the cinnamon variety called Ceylon cinnamon C E Y L O N. Another would be apple cider vinegar and the equivalent of about 2 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar is the amount that can help with what's called your postprandial blood glucose or how long sugar hangs around in your bloodstream after a meal. And then finally a bitter melon extract. And there's this supplement called MPX100. I will take two capsules of that prior to a big carbohydrate containing meal. And by the way, any of these strategies could also be used in an an oops moment in which you wound up at a party and had a bunch of carbs and fat. You could also do this afterwards and still get some of the benefit. But basically any of those three strategies, the cinnamon, the apple cider vinegar or the bitter melon extract can also help if you are having sugar combined with fat. And yes, I personally do both right. So I exercise at some point between 4 and 7pm My dinner has sugar with fat. But then I also will do either MPX 100 or apple cider Vinegar before dinner and typically earlier on in the day, like in the afternoon. I've had some cinnamon as well.

So is the cinnamon and the apple cider vinegar and the bitter melon extract, are they the sort of same level as a massive workout beforehand Workout, in.

My opinion, and I don't have the exact postprandial blood glucose readings or research on this, but a workout, in my opinion would be superior to popping a pill. Yeah, that's just. But that's not based on research, that's just based on my own hunch in terms of the upregulation of glute. 4. In an ideal scenario, you kind of do both if you're not going fully, let's say ketotic or high fat, no carb at the end of the day. And I personally think that people should do, especially active people should do end of the day carbohydrate refeeds. But remember, the ultimate goal here is to do that refeed and to get the sugar out of the bloodstream and into the muscle or out of the bloodstream and into the liver as fast as possible. So that's not hanging around. So that's the strategy. That way you have the best of both worlds, right? Like you're restoring your glycogen levels for the next day's workout and for hormones and for everything else that you need that glycogen for. But then you're also not getting the formation of these small, dense LDL particles. So that being said, I will admit that I did learn something in this podcast episode and that would be what a fry up is.

Hi Ben, Tim here, Big fan of your podcasts and of all the work you do. So for the past few years I've been working on calming my nervous system and I've used a lot of different modalities to get at what might be some deep seated trauma. I've done somatic experiencing, psychotherapy, Rolfing used heart math, meditation, and a few others. I've made a lot of progress, but I still get the sense that sleeping, of all things, is triggering my nervous system. I sleep really well, but I wake up really stiff, often with a clenched psoas and chest. I wonder if you have any ideas for things I can do to help me sleep with a longer, more open body sleep so that I can wake up and not only move better, but likely have more energy. Okay, thank you for taking my question.

This is actually a really interesting question because I don't know about you, Rachel, but it seems to kind of relate a little bit to this idea of night terrors. Right?

It does, yeah.

Did you do that on purpose?

I did. This was going to be just a massive sleep episode, but I thought everyone would just get sick of hearing about it.

Yeah. For those of you wondering, Rachel chooses the questions and it seems like sometimes you have. Well, now this is going to make you sound stupid. I was going to say sometimes you have moments of pure brilliance in which the questions from the podcast episodes seem to really flow. And it certainly seems to relate quite a bit to this idea of natural remedies for night terrors. So, yeah. How do you activate your parasympathetic nervous system during sleep? How do you sleep? Sleep less stressed? How do you get into those deep sleep cycles more readily? I've certainly talked about this a lot before on podcast episodes. Right. Like how to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system. I've talked about the use of lavender before bed to decrease cortisol.

Right.

And how I'll use a cold air diffuser and literally diffuse lavender or rose oil or bergamot oil next to my bedstem when I'm sleeping. Phosphatidylserine. There's specifically a supplement made by Thorne called ISO phos. That's a really absorbable form of phosphatidylserine. And that and lavender are really two of the only things that have been shown to decrease salivary cortisol or serum cortisol when it comes to supplements.

Yeah. What's phosphatidylserine?

Phosphatidylserine is just basically a molecule. Your body makes some of it itself, but it's a completely natural molecule that can be used to decrease the amount of cortisol that you produce or to break down cortisol a little bit more readily. It's also a lot of times used to enhance memory or to enhance focus or to support healthy brain function. So you'll find it many times added to, like, blends or of, like, smart drugs ingredients. And by the. By the way, the reason I like Thorne is they don't put, like, GMO or binders or coatings or what are called disintegrants or fillers or lubricants like magnesium steroid, into their supplements. So you see me recommending them quite a bit. But, yeah, phosphatidylserase, it's more or less a phospholipid. You find it in brain cell membranes naturally, but you can also take it in supplement form.

Love it. Thank you.

So the other things that I would look into, first of all if you wake up stiff with a clenched psoas and chest, I would get one of these pulse oximeters that you can put on your fingertip that will allow you to measure your pulse oxygenation or your blood oxygen levels during the night. And if you're seeing that they dip, that they have certain points where they drop from like 95 down to 65, or down from where they're at normally to a significantly lower level during sleep, that can indicate that you have obstructive sleep apnea or some other form of sleep apnea in which you are not breathing for certain periods of time during the night. Now, you can have professional sleep monitoring equipment sent to your house that's like laboratory grade sleep monitoring equipment. There's a group called the Sleep Medicine Group that will send this equipment to your house. It's run by Dr. Joseph Zell, who I've interviewed on the podcast before. But you can also kind of use the poor man's version and just like put one of these fingertip pulse oximeters on that you can get for like 30 or 40 bucks off of Amazon, you want to get the one that will take measurements the whole night while you're asleep. And that can also give you really interesting information about your oxygen levels while you're asleep. So that would be another thing to look into. Now, I talked about this also at Paleofx, and that would be the importance of your vagus nerve. Vagus simply means wanderer. And this nerve is called the vagus nerve because it wanders all over your body to a bunch of different organs. So it connects your brain to your gut, your heart, your liver, your gallbladder, your lungs, your gonads, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the things that the vagus nerve does is it promotes the release of acetylcholine. And when that happens, it is a signal to your heart to have better heart rate variability. And it's a signal to your parasympathetic nervous system to go into its rest and digest and sleep mode. And so the tone or the health of your vagus nerve is extremely important for ensuring that the sleep that you do get is relaxed sleep. And that's why during, and I promise this is the last time we'll kick this horse to death. This is why, during that Paleo FX presentation, I mentioned that one of the best ways to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system is to get what's called a jaw realignment, or to get deep tissue and chiropractic work done on your head. Neck and jaw because your vagus nerve connects to your trigeminal nerve. And in many cases people who jaw clench or people who have sleep apnea or people who have poor posture, they tend to have poor vagal nerve tone because this trigeminal nerve is compressed and it's connected to the vagus nerve. So looking into your head, neck and jaw and specifically deep tissue work on the head, neck and jaw, that can be another thing that can be very, very helpful when it comes to like a pre sleep habit. So I am working on a big podcast about other ways that you can tone the vagus nerve. But I'm just going to throw a little bit of a rapid fire list out of other ideas that can actually assist with activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. So are you ready for this, Rachel?

I'm ready.

Let's hear it. Okay, take out your notepad. Probiotics or the use of fermented foods, ensuring that you have good gut bacteria. Basically deep and slow breathing, that's kind of a no brainer. But try like alternate nostril breathing for example, or box breathing. Positive social relationships meditation, Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, which I talked about earlier. The use of any of these devices. For example, I use this one, one called the delta sleeper that you can put on your body that causes your vagus nerve to become toned while you're asleep. Cold, taking a bath prior to bed or keeping the bedroom cold can enhance with the vagus nerve activation during sleep. Massage and foam rolling would also count as something you could do prior to sleep. Singing or chanting or gargling. Anything that involves like some kind of like humming type of sound or sensation in the throat that can assist with vagal nerve tone. Again, that's related to this trigeminal nerve. Sleeping on your right side instead of your left side can enhance vagal nerve tone just because of the way that the vagus nerve moves through the body. What else? Yoga is another one. Ensuring that you have adequate levels of minerals, specifically zinc and serotonin. Those can also help out quite a bit. Fish oil, and this is one of the only supplements that I personally use is fish oil every morning because of its effect on the vagus nerve because of all the EPA and the DHA in it. That's another one. And then finally, don't laugh. Enemas, specifically coffee enemas. Those can assist with digestion, they can assist with bile production, they can assist with gallbladder and liver health, and they can assist with vagal nerve tone. And yes, I have A whole article about this@BenGreenfieldFitness.com but a couple of times a month I personally do a coffee enema. I actually do shoot coffee up my butt and it all comes down to sleeping less stressed. Interesting, you say. You say interesting as though I will never do that.

That was gonna be exactly what I was gonna say. Don't know about the coffee enema, but interesting.

You never know. You. You stayed as a podcast host long enough and you're gonna find I know everything from coffee enemas to nighttime pulse oximetry to chewing nicotine gum to much, much.

Honestly. Honestly, it's already happened. Let's.

Yes, yes. We're all about having an open mind and self experimentation within the bounds of morality, legality and ethicality on the bench.

Wow. Was that our mission statement that I've never heard?

Yeah, I just made that up. So anyways, so if you want to access the show notes, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 352 and you can dig into the resources for everything that I just talked about when it comes to vagal nerve tone, as well as a really good article that you can read on ways that you can enhance your vagal nerve tone. So that being said, speaking of vagal nerve tone, one of the ways that you can improve the health of your vagus nerve is via gratitude. And one of the best ways to express gratitude. You're going to love this segue, Rachel.

That was brilliant. Ben, you are a genius.

Is by leaving us a positive review on itunes. And if you leave us a five star review on itunes and you say something nice and we read it on the show, that means that you have been chosen. Your review has been chosen and we will send you a killer Ben Greenfield fitness gear pack that has our beanie water bottle and a very cool workout shirt in it. So we got something today for hyper 4M. So if you hear your review read on the show, just email GeerGreenfieldFitnessSystems, include your T shirt size and you're going to get a gear pack. So that being said, Rachel, you want to take this one away?

Yes. All right. It's titled wow. One of the best podcasts, bar none. You have to check this one out. I've come to enjoy my daily walks with my dogs by my side and the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast in my ears. Originally, I took Ben's young looks and laid back demeanor to indicate he was inexperienced and knew little about the field of biohacking, nutrition and fitness. I was quite wrong.

Ben.

Wait, about my young looks and laid back demeanor or about the experience?

Well, I don't know. You'll have to ask. Let's hope it's the latter.

Maybe he took a closer look at me.

Ben has proven extremely knowledgeable about so many topics and has enough background to dig into the physiology and anatomy of optimal health. I love hearing about his daily routines and trying to incorporate them into my own routines. In addition to talking with popular and mainstream guests, Ben isn't afraid to dive into more woo woo topics and I really enjoy those forays such as dm.

So do I.

And what was the other one? The geometric posters.

That's right. Sacred.

Sacred geometry. Yeah. The recent podcast on Kundalini Yoga was very interesting and even though I have practiced yoga for years, I've never spent any time learning about Kundalini. If you're interested in fitness, nutrition and living well, Ben and Rachel make an excellent podcast that's well worth your time.

I love it.

That was brilliant.

That's a wonderful My head is big now, My young looks and my laid back demeanor. There we go. I'll take it. So if you want to leave a review, go to itunes. It does not have to be an epic book like the review that we just read. However, leave five stars. Say something nice. Helps out with good karma for the show and of course helps out with your vagal nerve tone. And if you want to read more about Laird Hamilton's 10 point plan to live forever, or you want to get the gorilla pudding recipe, or you want to find out more about sacred geometry posters or anything else that we talked about in this episode, head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 352 it's looking like, as has not been the case lately, that we're going to be back next week with more wonderful Q and A. And in the meantime you can also leave your comments over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 352Rachel I'll catch you next week.

See you later.

Later.

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

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