How Rich Guys Stay Fit, Heart Rate Recovery, Resting Heart Rate Tracking, Heart Rate Variability, Cold Soak Temperatures, Little-Known Pre-Sleep Supplements & Much More With Keith Rabois.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

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Them the capital help, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. All right, folks, my guest on today's show is Keith Raboy. Now, if you're involved in the financial industry in any way whatsoever, you're probably familiar with this guy. He's an entrepreneurial executive, he's an investor. He's been instrumental in multiple startups since the early 2000s. He's provided seed capital to companies like Airbnb and Lyft and YouTube and wish and Yammer. And he also co founded Opendoor, which is a home selling startup and has led investments for DoorDash, for Stripe, for Thoughtspot, for Affirm, for Even Financial for Piazz. And He's a former PayPal exec as well. But he's also, and this is something that perhaps flies under the radar just a little bit, pretty keen on things like fitness and sleep and heart rate tracking and personal optimization to the extent that I thought he would be a great guest to have on today's show because it's often quite interesting for me at least, to hear how guys who are super successful from a business and a financial standpoint, but also happen to be healthy and fit managed to pull that off. And it's always interesting when I get somebody like Keith on the show because, you know, you go from the white coat wearing lab scientist and some exercise physiology lab to the actual person out there, you know, managing a job, juggling a lot of tasks and still being able to optimize their body and brain. So as you hear Keith and I chat today, if you want to access the show notes for anything we talk about, any resources, anything like that, you're going to be able to find them over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Keith that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com K E I T H Keith, welcome to the show, man.

Pleasure to be with you.

Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to have you on. And like I mentioned, you know, I've heard you actually in multiple podcast interviews because I actually like to listen to some podcasts about investing and in business. I've heard you discuss how you do have a pretty intense interest in health and longevity and fitness. And I'm just curious if you've always kind of, kind of been into caring for your body or is that a, is that a habit that you've developed of late?

I've always been pretty convinced that there's a strong connection between how your brain forms, how healthy your body is and that there's not two different worlds that you don't just be, you know, you can't be successful in thinking if your body isn't healthy and fit. And in like the obvious example to start with, baseline fundamentals, rudimentary basic principles is you need sleep, you need sleep to be healthy and you need sleep to perform mental tasks. But in fact there's more connection between your fitness level and your heart rate and your ability to think and be creative and be decisive. And so I've always connected all of these things together in my life and tried to integrate them and made them a priority. So I don't think I'm trading off work in technology and investing and entrepreneurialism versus health and fitness. I think they're symbiotic and I try to maximize my performance just like an athlete would. Just the way I deploy my sort of skills is slightly different and measured by different metrics than an athlete would. But that the training program, the regimen, the thinking behind it is very, very similar. Just like the best athletes, they're pretty optimized on their athletic performance, but some of the delta is in their mental performance, their mental ability. Yeah, those also. That translates back into my world, my professional world. But so yes, I've been getting eight hours sleep, for example, for all of my life.

Yeah, I definitely want to talk a little bit about sleep. You mentioned there that heart rate is something that you actually take into account and you hear people talk about cardiovascular health, for example, and blood pressure and things along those lines. But getting into the nitty gritty. When you say heart rate, what exactly do you mean by that? What are you doing with heart rate? Or I suppose with, if you also are alluding to this, something like heart rate variability.

So I measure three things associated with heart rate. I have a resting heart rate, two minute recovery and an HRV variability. So they're all used somewhat for different purposes. Resting Heart rate is a pretty good measure of overall health. It's not perfect, but it's a pretty good proxy. I was reading research last week, in fact, that it might predict your likelihood of suffering from cancer. HRV I use differently. I use HRV as a way of measuring whether I'm over training or recovering enough. So I like to train twice a day. But there'll be times when my HRV is lower than normal and I might back off the intensity of my training until my HRV is in a more normal zone. So I use that as a proxy for how much recovery and rest am I getting against how much exertion and stress is in my life. And then the best single metric I use that I actually optimize my training for is what's known as a two minute recovery, which is basically just means exactly what it sounds like, which is you take your body to as intense an exercise as you can tolerate and then you stop and then you see how fast and how strongly your heart rate recovers after two minutes. And if you knew nothing else about somebody but what their two minute recovery was, you could predict a lot about their health, not just their fitness.

Yeah, I remember taking the 2 minute heart rate recovery test way back in exercise physiology classes. You know, as a metric of how quickly the heart is able to actually recover post exercise. Have you, have you found meaningful methods to actually reduce the amount of time that takes the heart rate to recover after bringing yourself to maximum exertion?

Oh, absolutely. So most of my training is focused around increasing my 2 minute recovery and improving it, which is basically increasing the delta. And so high intensity interval training is probably the best way to do it. Hill incline running for example, some sports are pretty good start and stop sports where your sprint, stop, start, sprint, stop. So soccer for example, can be a pretty good way to train. But I actually prefer like these kind of high intensity training programs. Now think like a Barry's boot Camp style workout and I found significant success by using those programs to improve it.

I actually, I've never taken a Barry's boot Camp, but you know, I totally get the concept of high intensity interval training with interval of course being the key for the heart rate recovery because you are pushing hard and then allowing the heart rate to recover and then pushing hard again. I personally do that typically three or four times a week using either the hell bike out in my garage, that Airdyne bike with the arms and the legs, or this machine called a Vasper, which it's similar to a full body exercise machine, but it has blood flow restriction cuffs on it. So there's a little bit of an added variable there. It circulates icy cold water through these blood flow restriction cuffs and it's a, it's a spendy little exercise. I think it's like a $70,000 cardio unit. But in terms of high intensity interval training, it's kind of, kind of next level. But this idea behind the amount of time that it takes the heart rate to recover in between these intervals and then the tracking of the resting heart, I'm curious if you've actually found that as your two minute recovery time improves, if you've seen that your resting heart rate also drops accordingly or your HRV increases.

I think there is a correlation. I have noticed correlations in both of those over the years. Probably not a strict one to one mapping, but overall, as I've improved my two minute recovery, my resting heart rate has dropped and my HRV has tended to improve.

Hmm. Now, what would a typical workout look like for you? Like if you were going to do specifically a cardio workout designed to enhance two minute recovery or some flavor of interval training, whether whether you want to describe what you're doing in a Barry's boot camp or what you might be doing on your own, what would a typical workout actually be for you?

Sure, a typical workout is about 50 minutes and it's probably subdivided roughly half into cardio and roughly half into resistance training, typically with weights. And I'd swap back and forth, call it every six to ten minutes between the two. So imagine two or three sets of each. The cardio component would typically be a mix of jog, run, sprint, jog, run, sprint, jog, run, sprint. So bring the heart rate up max, bring it back down, not all the way, but to, you know, so where you can breathe normal relatively normally and then sprint back up and then vary the incline. So try to do the same on a flat road, a flat kind of ground surface, and you can obviously sprint faster typically, but then increase the incline and try to maintain as much of the speed. And then there's different cycle. It's like different patterns of up and down. You can vary it like 30 seconds, 30 seconds at the highest intensity or 60 seconds at the highest intensity or vice versa. I kind of rotate that around somewhat for mental variety. I'm not sure how much the physical training part really requires that, but in synchronized to music. So I think music has proven to be very effective for improving performance. It also is very effective for improving emotional tolerance of intensity training, which is related to there's a lot of good studies. They're collected in a nice book written by Professor McDougall at Stanford called the Joy of Movement. The research on the effect of music, in particular kinds of music and athletic performance. So this is always. My workouts are always synchronized with like EDM style music.

Yeah. Have you ever heard of, by the way, high intensity repeat training instead of high intensity interval training, like they call it hurt versus hit, where you're, you're only exercising for like 10 seconds or less. So the, the concept here is you would reduce the amount of lactic acid buildup but still allow for enough intensity to give a little bit of a cardiovascular stimulus. So it would be like, you know, 10 seconds as hard as you can go while you're out in a long walk. Say like, you know, every fifth telephone pole or something like that. And then total recovery, but for a much longer period of time than you do with hit. Have you ever messed around with something like that?

I've never done that. I've done more. Something, maybe a hybrid in between is 20 seconds of intensity and 10 seconds recovery. That seems to work. I would worry about the 10 seconds, whether you can really bring your heart rate up. I'd like to bring my heart rate up to basically max. I know most people guide you to 80% of max, but I like to bring it up pretty damn close to max. And I don't know if in 10 seconds in most activities, if you could get anywhere, you might need closer to 20 seconds.

Yeah, that's the tricky part is because until you're up to 20 and usually even closer to 30 seconds, you're really not tapping into carbohydrate. You're just splitting, splitting phosphogens like the creatine phosphogenic system. And once you get going for about 30 seconds or more, you're burning sugar. But as a byproduct of that, you're also producing lactic acid. And some of the champions of this H I R T versus the HIIT training, they're citing research that shows that you can get long term degradation of the mitochondria and some heart scarring if you're doing repetitive efforts that are 30 seconds in duration or longer. Probably the guy that talks about this the most is a Russian kettlebell trainer named Pavel Zet. And all of his training is based around like 10 seconds quick snappy kettlebell swings. And then you're just kind of like walking around for a minute or so, coming back and then doing those, those short snappy kettlebell Swings again. And I personally get the idea of being careful with excess high intensity interval training, you know, especially these intervals that last longer than about 20 seconds. But I think that, that doing a little bit of both to me seems to make sense. Like hit that super high end, super powerful 10 seconds or less system and then also work in a few workouts where you longer. So you hit both, both systems really.

I guess it depends partially on what you're optimizing for. So if you're, If I were optimizing for performance, like think athletic performance, I think I would be more sympathetic to the 10 second training. I'm not sure as I'm as sympathetic for other purposes. I do agree though that there is some danger on the heart scarring. It's a very vigorous debate. I actually have been studying this a lot myself. I think it's unclear to you whether it's the test for like heart tissue scarring that are sensitive to high intensity training or in fact there's underlying like damage that even alone is a big. I've actually interviewed five world class cardiologists trying to get to the bottom of this and they have very conflicting answers.

Yeah, the most recent one, it was actually really recent, it was in the Journal of Applied Physiology and I think it was just in June where they found that elite athletes had mitochondrial impairment from their intense workouts. But these were folks, you know, who were doing, we're talking like Ironman Tria, triathlon, 20 plus hour per week level with multiple, multiple hit sessions per week. Whereas a lot of the research that I've seen on heart health with more moderate amounts of hiit, like a couple of Tabata sessions a week or a couple of hit sessions per week that are maybe 15 to 30 minutes in duration, those seem reasonable and even beneficial for cardiovascular health. Whereas I think it's the excess hit that develops the problem with not only potential for mitochondrial degradation, but then some of the, like the. I don't know if you've ever gotten like a calcium scan score.

Yes, yeah, that's exactly what I'm referring to is there's a lot of evidence that elite athletes score high on a calcium score, which is not what you want. It's actually normally quite scary. However, there's also some research that says it's actually not. Although your calcium score is high, it isn't increasing your chance of a heart event. Yeah, I've actually been debating with all these cardiologists.

No, you're actually right because I got a calcium scan score in LA last year. I Went down there and I wanted to do a story on what could a middle aged man do when it comes to every last test known to science to find out the health of your ticker. You know, like, like a flow scan score and a resting EKG and exercise ekg, et cetera. And a calcium scan was part of that. And the doctors were a little concerned because I think my score was around 35 or 40. And then upon further digging, what I found out was that athletes who have high calcium, it tends to be like this small, dense, tightly packed calcium that is not the type of calcification that produces the same amount of heart disease risk as someone who has developed calcification due to, let's say, chronic inflammation or a poor diet or excess sugar or vegetable oil consumption or something like that. So it appears to be the patterning of the calcification being different in athletes and being an issue that despite a high calcium scan score, doesn't really make you as prone to cardiovascular disease.

I had the same issue. I actually did get an initial screen on a calcium score that was high, then was alerted to this research. And given my propensity to do this training, at least half of my cardiologists are convinced that you're right. The other half still are a little bit more traditional and believe that any calcium score that's elevated is a signal of significant risk for a primary cardio event. But in any event, I think the more the better, the more research that's being developed suggests your version is more correct. But this is all like, you know, being developed in real time. One thing I do do though, back to the training, you know, where's the line? I definitely measure the total minutes per week that are in each zone and you know, I maybe go close to the line of what's recommended, but I typically will only be in the max heart rate zone over an entire week for somewhere between 60 and 90min. So that's not, maybe not ideal, a little bit too high, but it's definitely not, you know, at the, you know, crazy level where you're taking on a significant incremental risk.

Yeah, yeah, I think it was James o' Keefe who was, was the, the exercise science researcher who came out with most of the data that shows really a ton of the risks in terms of exercise. Decreasing lifespan set in when you're exceeding on a daily basis like an hour of moderate to high cardiovas or 90 minutes of moderate cardiovascular exercise. And there's not a lot of people, aside from again, like some of the fringe Ironman triathletes and the people who are just hammering all day long who are getting anywhere close to that. So I think, I think the dose is the poison in this case.

Yeah. The most I would do in a day that would qualify as in that range would be 40 minutes. So that would be like a pretty intense day.

Yeah, yeah. And most people who can do high intensity interval training or think they're doing it for 60 plus minutes, like if you can do an hour of hit on a regular basis, you're a beast. Because like true high intensity interval training, those intervals are actually pretty tough. And most people who, who think they're doing hit are kind of like scratching the surface of, of how hard they should be going during the actual interval portion of the hit training.

No, absolutely. I was looking at my workout this morning, which wasn't that rigorous. I mean, it was on the easier scale of what I would do. And there's only three minutes in a peak cardio zone. It was 15 minutes in like a true cardio zone, and 25 minutes in like, you know, a pretty lightweight zone and then four minutes of warmup. So the distribution is very different than a lot of people's intuition.

What are you using to track? What's your wearable of choice?

So I wear an Apple Watch, partially because it's the easiest device to use for lots of purposes. I actually like the social features I have maxed out. I share my data with 40 friends and track back and forth, so it's the most social product. And then I output it into an app that's called Zones, which is the easiest way to visualize the best I've seen for visualization of the data.

Okay, yeah, I haven't heard of Zones before. I'll have to look that one up. So when it comes to the other thing that you mentioned in your introduction about a couple of things that you're into tracking, you also mentioned sleep. Are you using the same thing for tracking sleep, the Apple Watch?

I do not use the Apple Watch for tracking sleep, partially because I think it drains the battery. Secondly, it's also not very accurate. So if you're going to track your sleep, it's really critical that you can engage in accurate sleep stage discrimination. And any risk worn device is not going to be very accurate for discriminating REM sleep or steep sleep. And so most of my life I've been using old school Zeo Z E O devices. Zio went bankrupt as a company like nine or ten years ago, but I've been able to scavenger hunt together a reasonable number of old Zio machines, but I've not found anything that's accurate enough for my tastes in Zio. However, at Founders Fund, we recently invested in a company that is developing a head worn device that will be more accurate than Zio that will correctly discriminate between deep sleep and REM sleep. I do use also an H sleep mattress which the major function of an eight sleep mattress is it lowers your core body temperature using cooling which induces more deep sleep. But there is HRV tracking and overall sleep tracking embedded in the mattress and so I do triangulate some of that data.

Okay, I didn't realize eight sleep was actually tracking that as well. You know, I use the chilipad which circulates the cold water under my sheet while I'm asleep. The thing that's kept me from using some of these more advanced mattresses and even some of the, some of the head worn wear that'll measure, I think one that I looked into was dream, that'll measure the EEG signals which as you've alluded to that can be a more accurate way of determining sleep stages than say like some of these wrist worn or finger worn monitors. You know the thing that's given me a little bit of pause is this idea of nervous system recovery during sleep and the idea of being unplugged from an appreciable amount of like non native EMF while you're asleep. You know, like WI fi signals and bluetooth and signals bouncing around the room. So do you consider any of that stuff when it comes to your sleep space?

I haven't. I'll have to investigate that more. I mean I understand the logic or the concern, but I haven't studied whether the eight hours when you're sleeping, it's critical to be completely divorced from that and how much damage you get from like an 8 sleep mattress measuring HRV or some head worn device like dream. The one I funded is not dream, but I haven't really studied that too carefully.

Yeah, generally what I look at is whether or not something that is gathering data can be shifted into airplane mode during sleep, gather data during sleep. And then once you connect, like I wear an aura ring for example, and I can just put it in airplane mode, it'll collect data, then I can upload that data the next day. And I, you know, I, I've noticed because I had a, what's called a building biologist just come to my home and do a walkthrough, you know, with a meter of the areas of the house where there were, there were larger amounts of say like, you know, radio tower signaling, cell phone signaling, non native emf, et cetera. And one of the places that he recommended I really focus on was the bedroom again because that's where a lot of the nervous system repair and recovery takes place during sleep. So if you can take that, you know, a third of your life approximately when you want to optimize repair and be unplugged, that it could be a prudent choice to do so. So I did that and I actually did notice, you know, because I quantify a lot stuff to a significant rise, like a 5 to 7 point rise in HRV during the night of sleep, which would technically indicate, you know, a good impact on parasympathetic balance. So, so I, you know, I'm not this way everywhere, you know, like obviously my office is plugged in, we're talking on the Internet right now. I use my phone. But when it comes to sleep, I just basically have this metric now or when I walk in and I'll do the same thing in a hotel room now. You know, pretty much anything that can be unplugged or placed in airplane mode, I'll unplug, replace an airplane mode. And I've found that to have a dramatic impact on sleep.

Interesting. Yeah, I'm going to have to test that out. That's a significant delta in hrv. And maybe the H sleep can't really be put in airplane mode right now, but I suspect with product iteration it should be able, some variant of that is definitely possible.

Yeah. And there's certainly ways to mitigate some of the damage. I mean really, I think the main issue is, according to what I've looked into, that the calcium influx that occurs in the cell in response to some of the, some of the electrochemical adjustments in response this non native emf. So if you can do things like supplement with magnesium before bed. Right. Which helps. Yeah, that helps to offset the calcium influx. I also do that when I fly on airplanes for the same reason. And then two others that seem to have an impact on some of those functions that get affected by non native math during sleep are ketones. Like not. I mean, you could be in a state of ketosis obviously by adjusting, you know, the macronutrient composition of your dinner or just like taking something like ketone salts or ketone esters prior to sleep. And that's another one that I've, that I've looked into and found to have a little bit of efficacy behind it. And then the Last one is nad, which is obviously a pretty popular anti aging molecule these days. But the magnesium, the ketones and the NAD seem to be the top three for mitigating some of those effects of non native emf. If you do have to be exposed to that during a night of sleep.

Well, that's great because I actually naturally do two of those three things for many years, done NAD supplementation and then a significant magnesium proponent as well. So I don't do the ketone stuff, but maybe I'm getting some of the benefits anyway or some of the offsets.

Yeah, you probably are. And I want to ask you about your diet here in just a little bit. But what I thought would actually be interesting and this will probably rabbit hole as we go along is we talked about sleep and we talked about your workout flavor of choice. But I'm just curious for you, what are some of your big wins when it comes to your own day in the life as far as caring for your body and brain? If you want to maybe walk the listeners through what your morning routine might look like or what some of the things you might be weaving into your day at work might look like or even your evening routine, I might interrupt you a little bit as we go.

But yeah, the fundamental building block is starting with the eight hour sleep, right. So I reverse engineer that into my schedule and just try to go to bed as early as I can and as consistently as possible. So let's be to be specific, say try to fall asleep around 10pm Might drag maybe by 30 minutes, but try to be as consistent as possible and then I'll typically wake up, as you might expect, somewhere around the 6:37am that leaves a little bit of a window where my body doesn't feel like it's stressed that God forbid I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm not going to get eight hours sleep. So I like having a buffer. Typically don't have to set an alarm clock, which is also a good metric for first, are you getting enough sleep? And then B, it's sort of it seems for me at least, and I don't know if there's research on this causes less of difficulty of falling asleep. If I know I can just wake up at any time once I set an alarm clock, it causes like artificial stress I think in my brain.

Yeah, they've actually, they've done research like that in medical students where they found that when they know they're going to be woken up, you know, to like, like when they are, when they're the hospital or whatnot and need to catch up on a few hours of Z's before they're. They're back, but they're on call, that sleep is disrupted. Even the mere fact of knowing that something is going to be waking you up disrupt sleep. Which is super interesting because an alarm clock technically fall into that category.

Yeah, well, it certainly has applied to my life. Like I sleep poor sleep when I have to set an alarm clock.

Right. For like a flight or something.

Yeah, night flight is typically, it's very rare when I need to set an alarm clock, certainly averaging at most once a week. So I think that's allowed me to sleep better, but it also ensures I'm getting the proper amount of sleep as well. So that's one technique. But then I wake up, up and then I will typically immediately jump into a workout. So when I say immediately, like 30 minutes or so, you know, I'll have all these supplements that I'll consume, basically wake myself up and then I will try to do an early morning workout of like a high intensity program. And that would typically be the 50 minutes. Then I might relax, shower.

You're doing that, you're doing that fasted, that, that workout in the morning. Morning.

I'm actually not doing it purely fasted. I know I should in many ways, but I need a, I feel I need. So it's more of a mental crutch, but I feel I need some energy. And so I will typically have a protein bar of like, you know, 20 grams of protein to 120 calories or something. Otherwise I just feel mentally drained and you know, it's psychosomatic. Maybe it's not real that if I go into a high intensity workout without any supplement, without any food, I just feel weaker. I don't enjoy that feeling. It surely would be better for body composition if nothing better, if nothing else to go into a fasted state. But I've never found I can do it intentionally. I just basically give up on that and then I'll have a little bit of a caffeine spike. These days I use like a Celsius drink to get that caffeine spike. If I have more time, I'll like prepare like a green ice green tea.

What's a Celsius drink?

It's a branded kind of combination a lot of athletes are actually using. It's becoming a fairly popular brand. It was pretty obscure a few years ago. You can find them in many places now. It's a combination of the active ingredient in green tea and mostly caffeine.

The interesting thing about like those morning workouts that are fasted, you know, I kind of ran into the same issue myself. And then I started doing basically like a carb loading protocol where I would, I don't eat carbohydrates the whole day, right? So I'm in a state of fatty acid utilization, you know, burning ketones, vegetables, you know, healthy Mediterranean style, fats, proteins throughout the day. And then at the very end of the day I'll typically have anywhere from, you know, depending on the day's level of physical activity, 100 to 250 grams of carbohydrates, right? With dinner, sweet potato, yam, rice, red wine, dark chocolate, what have you. And then I get up in the morning and do a fasted workout. And what I find is that as long as I've had carbohydrates the night before, typically kind of like you just alluded to, like the first two to five minutes of the workout you feel a little bit flat because you don't have the supplements in your system. Although I do. I do do some caffeine, like I'll do some blood, black coffee or a little bit of tea or whatever prior to the workout. But aside from that, no actual calories. And what happens is when you begin the workout, the adrenaline and the norepinephrine, everything that gets released as you start working out, that causes your liver and your muscles to start to dump some of the glycogen that they stopped away from the previous evening's carbohydrate feeding. And so that bumps your blood glucose up rather than you getting the blood glucose elevated from, let's say a drink or pre workout meal prior. And once I started doing that fat, I began to be able to just crush the morning workouts. But it takes that evening carb refeed and then I'll do a 12 to 16 hour overnight intermittent fast, get up, work out, be able to burn those carbs from the night before and feel fine. But then if I restrict dinner, if I do what a lot of folks are doing now, where they'll eat at 4pm and then to optimize sleep, not eat anything after that. But for me, if I have a 7 or 8pm dinner with 100, 200 grams of carbs and I'm working out 8am the next morning, I feel great. So that, that, that, that's the flip that I switched to allow me to do the fasted morning workouts and still feel like I could push the envelope.

I haven't tried the carb Loading before, you know, bed sort of thing or dinner. Maybe I'll try that a couple of days and just see how I feel. I do have this sensation often of the first three to five minutes being the most difficult. And then, you know, because of the adrenaline and all the other variables I find, you know, for example, if I am a little sleep deprived or God forbid, I'm still hungover or something, the first three to five minutes are really what if I can make you through that? Or time travel when I somewhat famous among my friends for landing in a new time zone and immediately going from the airport to a high intensity training program. And similarly, once the adrenaline kicks in, I can handle it. But the first three to eight minutes are pretty brutal.

Yeah, yeah, that's a suck. I find that much more so for a post travel exercise routine than an early morning, morning or morning exercise routine. I've even, I've kind of shifted just based on this whole concept of, you know, airline radiation and inflammation and disconnection from the surface of the planet. Which is one reason why they've found, for example, astronauts to be just so physiologically effed up when they get back from space. Travel is actual disconnection from, from the electrical conductivity of the planet. What I now do after I travel is it's typically take the shoes off or wear one of the those pairs of earthing or grounding shoes that keep you connected to the earth. And typically for me now it's either a long walk in the sunshine or if I can hunt down a body of water that's amazing, if I can go for a swim post travel, I'll choose that 9 times out of 10 versus hitting the gym nowadays.

That makes sense. Certainly the natural sunlight is clearly outstanding. One of the benefits of living in Miami is I can find natural sunlight much more easily and much more consistently. But I'm going to try the car barb technique before dinner and then try a few days of not having a protein bar before my workout. Because it clearly is better for body composition training to do that.

Oh yeah, I mean like that's all a lot of people ask me about fat loss throughout the course of the year. And I think one of the best methods for fat loss is to wake up, do your morning workout in a fasted state. Right. So you're tapping into your own fatty acids versus any fatty acids or calories that you've consumed from a pre workout meal meal. And then I always finish with about three to five minutes of cold, like cold shower, cold soak, cold jump in A lake or river, ocean, or whatever I can find near a hotel or at my house. And the cold shifts your body into a huge state of fat burning simply because you're burning more calories to generate heat. And I do that almost 365 days a year. Morning fasted workout finish with cold. And specifically for body composition. It's just absolutely amazing.

Yeah. So I am a very big fan of cold plunge, 54 degrees, you know, 8 to 10 minutes, et cetera, post workout. I don't currently do that enough, but I'm building into my house a cold plunge pool that will allow me to do it every day. Unfortunately, the construction of it is taking much longer than it should with various permitting issues and engineering issues. But eventually I will get it to every day. So I've only been able to do it kind of on an hour ad hoc basis, but I'm really looking forward.

You're getting one of those like cold plunge systems in your house?

Yeah, I've used it before for athletic training. You know, when I travel for specific kinds of training, I have some friends who have access to one, so I really enjoy it. I found I haven't done it consistently enough to see the fat loss benefits, but I feel the benefit the next day. So I can do a very vigorous, let's say legs workouts, squats, deadlifts, lunges, everything. And if I can do a cold plunge, sort of after the next day, I'm fresh, ready to run, ready to play soccer, basketball, with almost no impact from the day before training. Whereas typically I would feel some lactic acid the day after a heavy squat day, and can power through it mentally on a treadmill or in a high intensity exercise. But it probably has some performance attributes if I'm playing tennis, basketball or soccer that I don't really enjoy. Degradation there. Pretty excited about the cold plunge. Last year during COVID I went to iceland for like 10 days. And fortunately we were living in a house that had a cold plunge in the backyard. So I was able to use it every day and it felt great. I wasn't training aggressively enough to take, to take advantage of all the benefits. One of the disadvantages of being in Iceland was I was deprived of my normal workout program. But the benefit was I was cold plunging every single day.

It's kind of funny that you actually had to have a cold plunge in Iceland, although in Miami it makes better sense. I'm not going to rib you for saying that 54 degrees is cold, because that makes sense if you're Floridian. I Keep mine at about. Well, I have one of these like done for you. Chiller system cold tubs. It's made by a company called Morozco. And I'll maintain like 32 degrees. When it's 110 degrees outside, it's literally right. So my office, I can see it from here and I'll go jump in that during the day, sometimes a couple of times a day in the summer, it's like a full body cup of coffee. And it does have a lot of benefits. I think the only thing is that, and you may have come across this as well, is that research shows that as you've already kind of experienced the drop in core temperature and the drop in post exercise muscle soreness, even the next day is pretty profound. Especially with cold water immersion. Even more than, than like those, those cryotherapy chambers. There's, there's some people though that still eschew that idea and avoid the cold plunge post workout because they've heard that it blunts the hormetic response to exercise. Like, like it blunts mitochondrial adaptations or muscle growth. But I looked into the data on this and you, you have to get the muscle core temp to drop by something. It's like three plus degrees. And that, that takes a good 10 plus minutes in pretty significant cold for that to happen. So if you're just like jumping in a cold bath for, you know, like I do like, like two to five minutes after the workout just to get the core temp down, you're fine. But I think the people who do themselves a disservice are the people who exercise and then get into the cold for like 10, 20 minutes. That, that's where you see a lot of diminishing returns or that's where you'd want to save the cold plunge for later in the day. Like a few hours after the workout, after your body's kind of had a chance to mount its own endogenous antioxidant defense and kind of upregulate mitochondrial production. Everything you'd look for after workout and then you do the cold later on in the day. But quick cold soak post workout, you're spot on. I mean, it's great for the next day soreness and for being able to come back the next day just as fresh.

Yeah, I try to max, I try to keep it in the zone of 8 to 10 minutes, maybe 12 minutes, absolute max. I was taught. But I've never independently verified that 54 degrees was the ideal temperature for this. That you don't really need to go colder to get the benefits you're looking for.

Well, you're right. You're right in that most of the research has shown that to get the benefits of cold, cold you got to be at 55 or lower. But the reason I go 32 is it's a time hack because they've also done a lot of comparisons of longer soaks at slightly elevated temperatures versus shorter soaks at very cold temperatures. And you get the same benefits from just a couple of minutes at 32 degrees as you would from 8 to 10 minutes at 55. So if I, if I can give myself an extra eight minutes every day by just going colder water and a shorter soak, you know, even though it's a little bit more of a suck festival, I like to do it that way. But really you get the same benefits either way. It's just a matter of how much time you want to invest.

That makes sense. That makes sense. But I am definitely looking forward to, hopefully by January or so I'll have this whole maybe earlier setup at my house and I can take advantage of this.

Yeah, it's a pretty sweet setup that'll be cool for you to have. So one thing I didn't ask you as you were talking about your slide sleep was like, before you go to bed, are you taking any supplements to enhance sleep or do you have any, I guess, biohacks in the bedroom that you use to enhance your sleep besides that eight sleep mattress?

Yeah, so I do several things and none of it's like. Well, very few components are like rocket science or anything radical, but classic ambient temperature is pretty cool. My bedroom, ideally 65, 64 degrees, blackout shade, sleep with an eye mask, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All the basic stuff, consistent sleep. I try to eat dinner relatively early, not the 4pm but for all intents and purposes, I really like to be eating closer to seven than, you know, later. Not always possible. Certainly one disadvantage in Miami is people like. Also in New York City, people eat out later. But I will typically be on the earlier end of the spectrum if I can eat at 6:37. I'm pretty happy, almost not really thrilled about eating past 8pm because I think it does at the margin impact my sleep. Second, I do take a supplement produced by a company called Thorne called Recovery Pro, which is a combination of supplements designed for recovery from training, but also sleep sleep enhancement.

They recently discontinued Recovery Pro, I think. So I'm hoping you stocked up on it.

I think they remixed it. Okay formulation, but you can Buy some of the active. They also sell some of the active ingredients separately as like a pill. This is like a cocktail you mix with water before bed. But in any event, I've been doing this for a few years. I think it's effective for me. Don't really know. I take magnesium supplements, as we discussed, on an ad hoc basis. So I have have a jar sort of supplements near my bed and if for whatever set of reasons I feel like I should take one, I'll just grab it. I also do use one drug that's been very effective for me called Roserum R O Z E R E M that's designed for reducing issues with sleep onset. It's pretty magical. It's fairly underrated. Not that many people know about it. Even though I think the profile of the drug is incredible. It has almost no side effects and is extremely effective.

It's not like a Diazepam, like a Valium.

No, it has a very different impact. It's also allegedly non addictive. But the good news and bad news is you can't use it on an ad hoc basis. You basically have to take it every day. But I found it to be incredibly effective for me in both avoiding sleep onset issues, which I used to suffer from, and time trial.

So.

But it is the kind of thing that you can't just use once a month.

Yeah. Oh, interesting. You know, I'm just looking it up right now. Okay. It's acting on a similar mechanism of action as melatonin. That's interesting.

Yes. So it's like it feels like melatonin on steroids in some ways. It's not exact. That's a simplification, but directionally correct.

Yeah, that's interesting. You know, I use, especially when I travel as kind of like a sleep sledgehammer for sleep to realign the circadian rhythm. High dose melatonin. I actually have this doctor in Florida and I get a melatonin suppositories from him because they kind of slowly release into the system while you sleep. But we're talking a lot. It's like 200 to 300 milligrams of melatonin. One of the side effects of that is of course you're a little bit drowsy when you wake up. And for the same reason that avoidance of blue light at night is a good idea because. Because blue light suppresses melatonin. Just getting blasted with sunlight as soon as you wake up, that kind of banishes all the grogginess that you get from high dose melatonin. Prior to sleep. But that rosarium doesn't leave you groggy at all in the morning.

No, I found it. I can't discern any difference between rosarium induced sleep and natural sleep. Unlike with melatonin, which I almost never actually use anymore. Having read why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, I think the proper use of melatonin is for time travel and time adjustment, not for, you know, general sleep issues. I think it does, it isn't effective for that because it actually doesn't align the curves of sleep and circadian rhythm correctly. But for readjusting to a new time zone, it's effective. I do Try to get eight to 10 minutes of natural sunlight every morning, ideally between 6 and 8am which is the best and most effective time in Florida. It's actually pretty easy to do in other obviously living other places. It takes more of a conscious effort to do that. But I think I've never really found myself groggy in the morning with. Unless I've taken extra supplements for some reason the drug itself, rosaring, doesn't induce it.

Right. That's interesting. Cool, I'll look into that one. And then so we got to your morning. You get that morning workout in with your pre workout bar. And then are you also having breakfast at some point after your work workout?

Um, depends on the day. Uh, so what I'll do is typically post my workout I'll have like a traditional protein shake. Um, uh, and that's going to be kind of, you know, mix of protein, yogurt, banana, something, you know, that type that may be sufficient for me. Um, I mean it's probably, you're probably talking 300ish calories kind of size. In some mornings that may be enough to kind of motivate me through lunch. Some other mornings, depending on where I'm going next, what meetings I have, I may have a more traditional breakfast instead. Like eggs, scrambled eggs, sometimes yogurt and granola. That's pretty variable. I'd say maybe four days a week it's just protein shake and go to work. The other three days it's more of a traditional breakfast.

Yeah, yeah. And so if you decided to do that, that carbohydrate backloading or carbohydrate refeeding in the evening, then the only adjustment you need to make would be to instead of having things like yogurt or bananas or blueberries or other forms of carbohydrates in the morning smoothie, you'd shift it so it's more like whatever like nut seeds or Nut butters or coconut milk or bone broth or stevia or like all, all fats and proteins and then, then take all those carbohydrates you'd normally have in the morning and shift them into an evening scenario. That's the only issue with doing that carbohydrate feeding is, is you know, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Right? So if, so if you're going to save all the carbohydrates for the evening, you got to, you got to decrease them for the breakfast and lunch feedings. But, and then that's what I do. I have a smoothie every morning at some point after my workout. Typically I wait around an hour or so just because if you, if you fast for a little while post workout, you get a little bit of an increase in growth hormone and testosterone. But then I'll just put, put a bunch of ice and bone broth and stevia and salt and you know, some coconut flakes and stuff like that, like all, all protein and fat based compounds in the blender and have like almost, you know, some people would consider to be almost like a ketogenic smoothie for my, my post workout meal and that allows me to save the carbs for the evening.

That makes sense. I mean the one thing that I do differently is I, maybe there's more modern research on this. I still subscribe and adhere to the kind of the old school advice of about having the protein smoothie within 20 minutes of finishing your workout.

So, so it's accurate but like a lot of nutrition information that's, that's trickled down advice from the bodybuilding and the pro athlete sectors. Because if, if you do not eat within about 20 to 60 minutes following your workout, if you don't do that kind of like recommended protein carb refeed, what happens is that if you are going to work out again again within eight hours, the glycogen and amino acid levels aren't fully replenished to the extent to where you could throw down a really good workout routine within eight hours. But if you're not one of those people who's doing like a, like a hard pro athlete or bodybuilder esque, you know, to a day routine. I'm not talking about like you know, a short workout in the morning and a sauna in the afternoon or something. I'm talking about like crushing it in the morning and then having scrimmage or practice or another, you know, you know, just rip you wide open session later on in the day. What They've shown in research is that by eating ad libitum, just by eating your normal diet for the next 24 hours after your workout, by the time you get to the next morning's workout, everything's topped off just fine as it is and your body's repaired properly and everything. So it kind of depends, you know, and for most folks, it's the pro athletes or the bodybuilders, et cetera, who need to worry about the prioritizing the timing of the post workout meal, if that makes sense.

Sense, yeah, that makes tons of sense. And so, yeah, I think the way I'd probably start applying that now is on days where I'm definitely going to do two vigorous workouts to maybe prioritize the timing. And then on days when I know I'm going to basically do one primary workout. Yeah, just eat kind of my normal diet.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that'd be prudent. Okay, so you get your breakfast in. I'm assuming at some point, because you appear on paper to be a successful executive, you are actually working at some point.

Yeah, unfortunately, I do do work. I do typically do a lot of meetings. Probably call it somewhere between six and ten meetings a day.

Now. Now when you're working, are you, are you one of those like treadmill workstation, you know, pomodoro breaks to swing kettlebells type of guys? Like, are you moving throughout the day?

No, none of that. I mean, partially by meetings in my work is really entails conversations with other people. And so I think that would be more distracting. And so even if I were convinced of the benefits, I don't know if it'd be a realistic option. I do think there are benefits of a standing desk, et cetera. I've experimented with those over the years, but I'm still meeting with a lot of people. One on one conversations, one on conference rooms with five people where that wouldn't really be very effective. I've read some recent research that was very intriguing about the destination benefits of trying to do work while you're on a treadmill. But I don't know that it'll translate that well to the kinds of things I need to do. So I just basically am separating that part of my life. When I'm at work, focused, meeting with colleagues, my phone's away, I'm just dialed into listening to what they have to say, helping them try to address and solve and prioritize their problems and challenges. And then as soon as I can escape that, I'll go back to, you know, being Healthy and focused on my own stuff.

Yeah, yeah. I think the treadmill research, it's mostly based on the idea, you know, and there were, there was even the kind of like the ancient Greek practice of these walking universities where students would learn as they were wandering. You do get an upregulation of brain derived neurotrophic factor which is kind of like miracle growth for the brain. So if you're engaged in learning, like let's say you're going to watch a, I don't know, a documentary or even maybe you're going to review like a video of a deck that somebody, somebody sent you or something like that, then there actually is something to be said for moving as you digest that because you might be able to assimilate it better. But if it's more of like a complicated board meeting or discussion that's a little bit more involved or something where you're not learning but you're also producing information, sometimes it can be distracting, like I'll sometimes do zoom calls with my team and things like that on the treadmill. But because a great deal of my work involves writing and authoring and working on articles, I can't produce very great content while I'm moving, for example on treadmill and doing those types of things.

No, that makes sense. Yeah. Unfortunately there are times when I'm trying to assimilate and learn and maybe I should be moving more. But I think I'm off often I need to take notes and need to be interacting and I don't think the movement really works so well or at least no one's created, you know, like a perfect product for that yet. But the research is pretty interesting and fascinating and I was moderately unaware of it until recently.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So, so you get through the workday and then I think you mentioned early on in our discussion that you try to do two movement sessions in a day or two, kind of like workout ish type of type of sessions.

So ideally, yeah, so ideally after finishing my work I will go to your second high intensity training. So my ideal schedule schedule is one in the morning and one late afternoon or the evening. So that's what I'm going to do. Today for example, I worked out my first program was 8:20am to 9:10 and then I'm going to do another program at 4:45. That's like ideal for me. Now sometimes I have to batch them more tightly together like logistically, often on a weekend, for example, sometimes I'll actually do them back to back which is mostly Time efficient. So from a professional standpoint, it's great, great to be able to do back to back, you know, showering once, one protein shake, et cetera. But I think my body actually prefers the recovery, you know, for the eight hours or six hours or seven hours in between.

I agree. And that might be based on some of the nutrition information I was sharing with you earlier about this idea of nutrient replenishment. Needing a certain period of time, you know, to restore amino acid pools and for the nervous system to recover, et cetera. So that spacing of about six to eight hours, that works very well for me. Also, you know, I'm typically working out sometime around 8 or 9 and then when I'm finishing up a lot of my work, typically around like 5 to 7pm ish, that's when I'm returning for another session. Although for me I'll save the more complex. Like a lot of times I'll do something more cardio ish or sauna or cold pool, etc. In the mornings. And then for the more complex activities like let's say weight training, your body temperature peaks, your reaction time peaks, your testosterone peaks, your grip strength peaks. All these things peak in the afternoon to early evening. So I'll do kind of like whatever the more complex, complex routine of the day is. Typically later on in the day if I do have the luxury of time to do it to a day.

Yeah. And then I will do that too. So on days where I'm only doing one high intensity training program, then I will do strength training and that'll be, that'll be a quick session but very heavy weight. So it's the, you know, the compliment to the stuff to the kind of activities that are difficult to do in a high intensity session. So I'll do 15 to 30 minutes, minutes of heavy backloaded squats, pull ups, heavy dumbbell rows, et cetera.

Yeah, yep. Yeah. Um, so, so when you finish that, that afternoon or evening workout, you know, I, I didn't even ask you this but, but are you actually eating anything between breakfast and that workout? Do you have a lunch break?

I do. Well, I don't have a lunch break, but I do have lunch, so I would typically.

Sounds like me. Lunch equals a salad and replying to e emails.

Yeah, I will either be working through a lunch meeting where I have food but I'm consuming while I'm working or catching up on emails definitely over lunch, or maybe I'll get like a sort of 15 minute break and go grab a sandwich or something like that. But it's typically tightly compressed time and more like a utilitarian meal.

Yeah, yeah. And so you are basically working through lunch, you get to the end of the day, you throw it on that workout and then as you're kind, kind of like going between the workout and dinner, anything else that you're doing in between that period of time to get yourself ready for your evening wind down routine?

Not really. You know, ideally I'll try to figure out some, find some time to either catch up on emails if I've been in meetings all day with other people or if, If I have 15 to 30 minutes spare, I will read a book like Long form content. Sometimes I'll do that in the morning of extra time or access time. Sometimes I'll take a nap. That depends on finding a. I'm pretty proficient on 20 minute naps, but I need to be in a place, an environment where I can easily find a bed that's comfortable and that's not always possible. Like today I may have time before my 4:45 to take a quick 20 minute nap and I'll feel great. I'll have more energy in my brain, I'll be much more alert if I can get a 20 minute nap in between.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I'm a huge napper and I'm at the point now where I'll just crawl under a desk or a conference table, just wherever I happen to be. But I always, always in my work bag I've got a really good sleep mask. I use one called the Mindfold, which is actually one that a lot of like plant medicine practitioners will use to completely block off light for a like a psilocybin ceremony or something like that. I found this mask and it just works fantastically. So I use this mindful mask like over the ear noise blocking headphones, phones. And then I've got this app called nucalm and it has like a, it's got a bunch of different options on it but it has this 20 to 30 minute power nap function on it that'll just blast me off to the middle of nowhere. You know, even if there's a bunch of people talking in the room and I lay down with all that stuff on. And then typically I'll use at least one wearable that kind of lulls you off to sleep. Like there's one called the Apollo. It produces this micro vibration around your ankle, around your wrist, wherever you tend to wear it and it will induce a brainwave response that actually is very relaxing. So I'll either put that on or there's this newer device called a HAP B. I don't know if you've heard of that one, but it uses like a magnetic signal to simulate. I mean you could use it for wakefulness. Like it'll simulate theobromine or caffeine or nicotine, but then it'll also simulate like CBD or melatonin in if you've had too much caffeine prior to bed, it'll simulate adenosine. And so typically for my naps, I, you know, I'll take about three minutes just hooking myself up to all that stuff and then I can go dead to the world anywhere on the face of the planet. But it does take some, it does take a little bit of better living through science to really be able to check out for mid afternoon nap.

Yeah, I've never been able to artificially nap. If I can get a nice comfortable bed with a cool temperature, I can have a really effective of, you know, amazing, amazingly revitalizing nap. But if I have to try to find a way to sleep in some unusual environment, I just can't do it.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. Well, I, it's kind of funny because when I interview like business execs or super successful people like you, always at the back of my mind during the interview I'm thinking, oh, this is, this is a busy and important person. They probably have a whole bunch of important things to rush off and go and do. And so I want to be respectful of your time. However, I would also be super amiss not to ask you as a guy who's actually not only in the investment industry but also keen on fitness, about what some of the things you are excited about in terms of the future of the fitness or the health optimization or the biohacking industry, what it is you're excited about, what you kind of think the future will look like, whether it's, whether it's like customization, personalization, home workouts, what are the type of things that get you excited about. If you could riff for a little bit about the fitness industry as a whole from your perspective as an investor or somebody who's involved with it on a personal level.

Yeah, so we've invested in a couple areas. Improving sleep, enhancing sleep. I mentioned eight sleep for example. But that's not the only one. Anything that would improve the quality of sleep. Sleep I think has massive benefits for health, fitness, basically happiness for huge. It's probably the single best thing we could do for human performance, is to increase quality of sleep. Second, we also like to invest in areas that extend human lifespan. That's an area that I think is very raw. And we're just seeing the first generation of founders, entrepreneurs and companies that there. But obviously be very interested personally and professionally in that area. Home fitness we have invested in. I think there's some benefits to investing in the home fitness world, but it's not clear to me yet when the world reverts back to normal, how much of that's durable, how much of that just becomes part of a hybrid mix. So you know, instead of going to the, let's say a gym five days a week, I now go three days a week and then I do two workouts at home. I think there's some, some mixes of behaviors for people who are interested in.

Stuff, I guess that assumes that things will revert back to normal. Isn't there, isn't there some like law of human psychology that dictates that once we introduce a law or a principle like say like mask wearing or you know, a little bit more difficulty in terms of the ability to be able to attend a class at a gym without jumping through a bunch of health safety hoops, that it just kind of stays that way? I forget the name of that law. And obviously this is.

Yeah, I actually don't know where, you know, where this, you know, sort of where the residual, you know, kind of lands. But I suspect we wind up in some hybrid. So I'll use a peloton bike once in a while. For example, I have one if I need an extra cardio, you know, session without as much drain, I'll use that because it's very efficient. It's at home, usually not bringing me into the, you know, top cardio zone. But it's a nice cardio compliment. I'll do stuff like that. We've invested in a company called Tempo which has strength training based programming for home for, you know, with that basically uses real resistance weights. We're looking for opportunities. I think the bigger area for innovation that maybe transcends all of these would be the personalization. So I think most of nutrition advice, maybe even most of health advice, it suffers from a flaw of averages problem that on an average population, X or Y or Z is good for you or bad for you, but that most people are not average and that the advice is therefore incorrect for them. I think this is what accounts for these conflicting studies that we see in the media. You know, bananas are good for you or they're bad for you, eggs are good for you or bad for you, et cetera, et Cetera, et cetera. I think the reason why is there's some subtle differences in the population they were testing and that different people respond very differently.

Oh yeah, I mean there's a huge amount of biochemical individuality. I mean that, that's, that's kind of like the whole magic of self quantification and it becoming increasingly affordable. But yeah, I mean like, you know, the ketogenic diet that helps one person can produce, you know, inflammation and increased risk for Alzheimer's and dementia and malabsorption of saturated fats and a whole bunch of issues in somebody else. So yeah, I mean I see the same thing in that there's a huge need, preferably via a great deal of AI and automation, if possible, to develop more personalized exercise and health and nutrition and supplementation prescriptions based on self quantified data. But it just seems like such a young industry, which actually surprises me. I thought we'd be farther ahead.

I would have too. Yeah, I would have guessed it would be further ahead. I think part of the reason why is no one's developed a great non invasive way to personalize. Yes. So the stuff I've seen that is effective requires blood draws and you know, those are tolerable, but they're not tolerable every day necessarily or not tolerable every day to kind of a mainstream productized sense. So I think as we can develop proxies that are accurate enough for personalization that don't require consistent blood draws or require at least micro, micro, you know, blood, micro drops of blood, then I think we can see some, you know, commercialization at scale of this stuff.

Yeah, I mean, you know, and there are companies that are kind of sort of doing that like you know. Well, you brought up Thorne, right. Thorne has its home test kits now there's another company called Base, there's a couple that are doing you know, urine measurements like, like vessel, but you know, it. Nobody has kind of like an all encompassing solution now and even those companies that I just mentioned named, the only recommendations that you're getting are what supplements to take or what dietary adjustments to make and there's still no exercise or lifestyle or say like you know, biohacking recommendations. Like, like they're still pretty niche when it comes to the universality of the recommendations.

Yeah, and I think that's the problem is normal people, normal in quotes, require like a kind of want someone to guide them or something to guide them of. Like here are my goals, tell me what to do, right. Take whatever test you need to take and Throw it through whatever machine or whatever combination of that and machine you need. But then tell me what I should do to achieve my goals and simplify it for me. Like, okay, eat this, don't eat that, change your workout program from X to Y, more intense, less intense, whatever the case are. But right now you can only if you know you have a specific concern or issue, you can find these tests or quantification techniques and isolate it. But being isolated feedback without knowing the context of everything else you do in your life or whatever your goals are, really isn't that helpful to most people.

Right? Exactly. And that's the problem. Like, like your CRP is elevated, you're at high risk for heart disease, you need to go in for a workup and avoid high intensity exercise, when in fact your CRP is, is elevated because you lifted weights the day before.

Exactly. There's all these dimensions and the canonical examples are just simple glucose sensitivity and insulin spikes. There are people who can eat pizza with no insulin spike, and there's people who can eat chocolate chip cookies and some people can eat bananas with no insulin spikes. But you need to know that for you, and it's very liberating if you happen to be one of the people who can consume your favorite foods without insulin spikes. But then you might be surprised that things that are otherwise healthy for other people, that don't cause insulin spikes actually do affect your body, like apples or something. So being able to tune your diet. But that's only on one dimension.

Right? And even those recommendations, all they're looking at is the microbiome response to a food and how that would affect blood sugar levels, or the insulinogenic, like the pancreatic response. But even those tests don't take into account the fact that in some people, like let's say almonds, which you wouldn't expect to spike your blood sugar at all if someone's allergic to them.

Right.

You get a sympathetic nervous system response. The liver produces, you know, glucose in the very same ways we were talking about earlier when you're warming up for a workout and you get a blood glucose response to a food because you're actually intolerant to it. When most doctors would say, oh, you have high blood sugar, you know, eat almonds as one of your staple foods because they're a low glycemic index food. There's just, there's so many variables that I think that the development of like an AI or automated platform to, to interpret and then self quantified data and then prescribe exercise and health and lifestyle and dietary modifications based on that. There's just a long way to go still. But it's also exciting, you know, I think that.

Extremely exciting. I have a vision of how, you know, how it should evolve. But I'm looking for an entrepreneur who wants to do all the hard work where I can just get in the capital.

Yeah, yeah. Word. Well, we've been going for a little while and I want to be respectful of your time. But if people want to kind of get inside your head and learn more about what you do or tune into your thoughts more, where's your most prolific platform? Would it be Twitter, Instagram website?

Yeah, I use, I use Twitter. Just rob away. I combine combine business advice, technology advice, startup advisors advice, health and fitness activities, research I discovered I find interesting readings I find. So that's probably the easiest way to track me.

Awesome. Cool. I'll go, I'm gonna go. Have to go over there and follow you right now because I just realized I don't think I actually follow you on Twitter. So to make that happen. Keith, thank you so much for, for coming on the show. For those of you listening in, again, like, I took notes on everything Keith and I talked about in this discussion. I feel like I could to talk to you for another hour, but at this point we'll call it a show. But I'm going to put all the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com Keith for any of you who want to take a deeper dive. And you can also leave your comments, your questions and your own feedback over there@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Keith. Keith, thanks so much for coming on the show and sharing all this with us, man. I love what you're up your wealth of knowledge.

It's been a pleasure. I learned a lot. I'm going to have to follow up on a lot of your suggestions.

Yeah, no more bananas in the morning smoothie, I guess, anyway, and I'm sorry about that. And also no more saying that 54 degrees is cold. Aside from that. All right, well, Keith, I'll catch you later. And everybody else, thanks for listening in. I'm Ben Greenfield and Keith Raboy signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please, please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.