How UK's Leading Biohacker Eats, Drinks & Optimizes His Life - An Interview With Tim Gray.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, when I sold my agencies, actually is one of the things that I wanted to do is say that I wouldn't be tied to an office ever again. Walk the walk and talk the talk. Not just, you know, be sat in a office.

So what's the actual scene like in London right now as far as biohacking is concerned? Is it popular that the UK is kind of catching up to the US ahead of the us or what's the scene actually like over there?

Keep my food intake in and my daily training and stretching and everything together pretty solidly. Otherwise I shrink back down quite quickly.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show. All right, folks, on today's show I have a guy who is known, and I have no clue what this means, as the UK's leading biohacker. I also know him as the founder of this thing called the Health Optimization Summit, which is going to happen in London. Actually, my guest name is Tim Gray. Tim, when is the biohacking or health optimization summit thing happening in London? What's the dates for that?

28Th, 29th of May.

Okay, how come, how come you weirdos spell optimization with an S instead of a Z?

How many people ask me this? Because we're all. Guess we're awkward Brits.

Oh, geez. All right, well, I'll let you, I'll let you get away with the, with the S as long as I can tell British dentistry jokes. Right? Isn't that the, isn't that the stereotype for Brits, you gotta tell dentistry or tooth jokes?

Yep. Yeah. Or get us to wait in a queue.

Yeah, exactly. In a queue. So anyways, rather than a line, I know that Tim, you've founded, invested in multiple six figure businesses, digital marketing agencies, you got one of London's first hyperbaric oxygen clinics, and you're known for. Well known for detailed tracking of like, you know, a few dozen different biomarkers per day. You're pretty prolific in the whole biohacking scene. We'll talk later on about this crazy summit that you've put together. I'm planning on making my way over there myself, actually. So if people want to go check out the Health Optimization Summit, what I'll do is I'll give you a big old fat discount code if you want to attend and you want to go hang out in London and we'll talk more about what to expect over there. But like Tim mentioned, that's going to be May 28th and 29th. So I'll link to that and everything else that and I talk about. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tim Gray. That's spelled with an A, not an E because you know, he's British. Tim Gray. So, Tim, welcome man.

Thanks for having me, Ben.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I don't think we've actually podcasted before, have we? Like, I have, I'm having like this deja vu, but I don't, I really don't think we have.

No, no, we hung out a few times, but yeah, yeah, for sure.

We've run into each other at random biohacking events where I think people think all we do lay around on the floor doing coffee enemas and shoving laser lights up our nose. So tell me about what, what got you into this whole biohacking scene? Because I don't think that this has been like your track forever.

I mean, around 2010, I kind of got ill. Like a lot of people that get into the biohacking space, I think it's through a place of need, realizing that the doctors don't quite help them as they would hope they could. And I started initially just with like things like bloating and started getting food intolerances and brain fog and just like.

Out of the blue.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like one, one day I ate pasta because I thought that that was healthy way back when.

Me too. I used to shove down boatloads of that stuff to get ready for my triathlons. You know, I had to have the, the pasta feed parties. By the way, this health crisis that you started having, what were you doing at the time when that happened? Like for a job?

Yeah, I was running marketing agency. I was doing 16, 18 hour days. I was waking up shoving any old food in my mouth, not eating anything decent during the day, eating, and then jumping straight into bed again. Wash, rinse and repeat six days a week. And on the, on the other night I would go out and get absolutely wasted because, you know, that's what people that stress do supposedly. And. Yeah, and thus, you know, the perfect storm. And I went traveling to Bali and I was there for about a month and on the way back I got a kidney stone stuck in one of my ureters, which was evil, beyond, beyond evil. I was in hospital for several days and at the end of it they just said, well, we don't know why people get them, but you know, you just will. You have to put up with it for Life and you know, I was walking around stressed for a whole year, worrying about having another one stuck and whether or not I could go out without having to take some drugs with me, painkillers, just in case. And. And then I started getting urinary tract infections, you know, at least once a week and taking more and more antibiotics, which made my bloating even worse. And then I started getting chronic fatigue and all sorts of things and it started spiring out of control. Yeah, it got really, really bad. Really, really bad. And I was in and out of the doctors. I got to know the receptionist by first name basis as a result. And one week I was in the doctors every day in one week. And it's just like I said to the doctor at the end of it, like, what's wrong with me? He shrugged his shoulders and said, I don't know, can't find anything wrong. All the tests were coming back fine, everything was good. But in fact, you know, I was absolutely screwed. So I, my mum actually drove me home because I wasn't able to drive, I was so ill. And I started googling and like a, I guess like a marketing strategy or business solution I was trying to do. I'd grab the post it notes, slap them across the wall of all the different symptoms and things I had and started researching one by one, strategically to figure out what was going on. Fast forward three years of working on loads of stuff and then I heard about bulletproof coffee. And.

That'S like the entry level into biohacking for like half the world's population for sure.

Yeah. And then I realized that there's a load of crazy fools out there like me that was just popping supplements or trying loads of different things to try and optimize their performance and get better. Brain fog to sort their brain fog, sorry. And kind of went from there really. One of the things that I stumbled across that was a game changer for me was hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which is why I opened a clinic. And it was so expensive, so hard to get hold of in the UK without traveling outside of London for some reason. I found that, you know, it works so well for my energy and my mental clarity. I'd in fact sit in the chamber and work for hours on end because it's just so good.

Well. Well what, what was like the. If the hyperbaric oxygen helped you so much, do you know what was actually wrong with you? Was it more of a brain issue that was manifesting in gut brain access symptoms and so oxygenation of the brain was helping or Was it? What was it?

Yes and no. It turned out I actually had mercury poisoning because I had previously a mouthful of metal, and I'd been addicted to tuna and salmon sushi for years, thinking it was healthy all the time. And my levels of mercury were so high it was causing, you know, mitochondrial dysfunction left and right. And also I was a chronic mouth breather, not a nose breather. I didn't exercise enough because I was working around the clock. It's just the perfect storm. And oxygenation wasn't something that I was particularly good at. Although we should be as humans. And for me, hyperbaric, it was literally a light bulb. It was night or day.

It doesn't really make sense at first glance why you would want to be in pressurized oxygen with a greater concentration of oxygen, like in an HBOT chamber. For something like heavy metals. It's tough to draw the link. But I know that that's One thing that Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt recommends is the use of HBOC as a way to detox heavy metals. And I believe it's just due to the increased metabolism that occurs from a cellular standpoint. So if you've had, say, like a binder that you've taken, like charcoal or, or a GI binder or cilantro or something like that, it may actually help to rid the body of mercury and heavy metals just by speeding up the process. I suppose probably you could also do some damage if you didn't have binders in your system and you're just taking a bunch of stuff to up regulate your, you know, like your phase zero through four liver detox pathways. You'd probably just kind of like be moving metals around in your body inside a hyperbaric chamber, which could, you know, that's that classic Mad Hatter syndrome some people get when they try to detox and all the metals wind up in the brain based on the, you know, the osmotic gradient over to the brain. So. Yeah, that's interesting though. That helped you out so much.

Yeah, it was amazing. I mean, my body started healing properly. My brain was on fire. It's just like it felt like it was me again. So I kind of like having three sessions a week, hour and a half each session, and yeah, it kind of became a staple for me. But it is a plaster, though, as you know, with a lot of these biohacks, you know, what are the. What is it reversing? Why do you need it and someone else does? You can constantly keep on having this plaster when you're chronically ill and Figuring out the root cause and getting to that. But in the meantime, hyperbaric worked really well for me. Now I just do it once a week or something or other when I want to chill.

Yeah. So you basically started a hyperbaric clinic where you could essentially profit from people paying a certain fee to come in and use the chambers for a certain period of time?

Yeah, I mean, I did it just because I needed a clinic nearby. Actually, I didn't do it for the money. I, you know, my companies were quite successful. I didn't need the money. I just thought a clinic nearby would be nice. I can jump in it and it will cover the costs. But it turned out to be, you know, a really good venture. It was the first private clinic in London. Like it now there's about eight or nine of them popped up.

Do you still have that?

That clinic I exited about four years ago now. Three, four years ago. But it served me well. It serves me very well.

Okay, gotcha. So now are you just like full on just doing this health optimization with an S summit?

Yes. I sold up my agencies just because.

It wasn't me anymore.

The team drank Coca cola, ate birthday cakes, drank smoke, everything. And for me, as a biohacker that want to be optimal, that's not really the environment I want to be in. So I decided to sell up and focus on the summit full time, which I did back in 2018 though.

Although it would be cool to also be a biocaker. A biohacker? Biocaker. Have you have your cake and eat it too. You get enough dihydroberine and bitter melon and cold thermogenesis in your system and maybe you can get away with it. But that actually leads me to something I wanted to ask. You're known as a pretty prolific biohacker and you know, like I mentioned, as UK's leading biohacker, so I actually love when I get somebody like that on my show to actually kind of get a sneak peek into what your life looks like, like what a typical day in your life would look like. And obviously this, this might rabbit hole a little bit. I might interrupt you, but could you walk me through kind of like your typical day as far as some of the, some of the sexy stuff that you're doing. And I don't want to hear about exercise and eating healthy. Screw that. I want to, I want to hear about all the sexy biohacks. No, I'm just kidding. Just, just, just throw it all in there. I want to, I want to hear about Tim's Day.

Yeah, well, it starts from the moment I wake up. Obviously if I'm thinking chronologically, it's opening the curtains, getting fresh, clean light and errant in the room and light into my eyes because obviously resetting the circadian rhythm on a daily basis, making sure you haven't got, you know, phone junk light in your eyes immediately, which is where most people go wrong, I think.

Yeah, like just, just too, too much blue light in the absence of the infrared spectrum when they, when they first get up, looking at the screen. Although we've established that you're lazy now, if you're opening your shades and there's already sunlight.

Well, it depends, it depends on the time of year and where you are a travel, you know, six, six, nine months of the year. So I really, I like to keep it consistent within my sleep and waking hours. But yeah, it does, it does change contextually. But I have blackout blinds to make sure that I get enough sleep and the right sleep, but I try to reset accordingly. So yeah, so fresh air, sunlight into the eyes, hydrate always with reverse osmosis, remineralized water, usually with, you know, hypertonic or something like that added to it or in my mouth, which is great. So it's very, very simple things. Like one of the things that I like to really focus on is the, you know, obviously getting the fundamentals right because it's what a lot of people seem to miss. And people don't realize the power of breathing through your nose or, you know, ensuring that you're sleeping the right amount of time, as I'm sure many of your listeners are really used to now. But the common, you know, the general public aren't really aware of this. So things as simple as having mineralized water first thing in the morning to support your detoxification and your energy production, support your adrenals on waking is super important. Whereas I think many people just jump up and have their bulletproof coffee or bulletproof style coffee immediately on waking without actually getting any water into them first, which is just madness.

Yeah, yeah. And I think some of it too is like the nuances of the simple stuff. Like yeah, you're supposed to get light in the morning, but that doesn't mean necessarily, as you've alluded to, flipping on the lights in your house. Yeah, maybe if you've got, you know, like this is in my bedroom, my bathroom, it's all red incandescent bulbs. So yeah, I do flip on my lights first thing when I get up, but that's literally to simulate sunrise because that's the form of lighting I've chosen for my bedroom. Same thing. My phone from the night before is still in red light mode. Right. Using the color filter option on the iOS app. And then I typically put on the red set of blue light blockers in the morning. So like for the first hour or so that I'm wandering around just doing all my, like I, I am mostly under red light. And then like an hour after I get up, that's when I'll like start to open the shades. I've got some blue light producing devices in my office. You know, I'll throw in the ear and the eyes blue lights, you know, like the human charger or the, the retimer device. But yeah, I typically go red light for about the first hour and then bright light, like blue light sunlight from there on out. But it's these subtle nuances that I think really help people get even more benef of the general advice that they've heard. Like get light in the morning. Well, it's red light. Or like you mentioned with your hydration. Yeah, get water in the morning, but as you've alluded to, get water that is clean, that's filtered, that has like some really hypertonic minerals added to it. Like I don't know if you're using the Quinton minerals, but it's a perfect example. And maybe add some vitamin C in there for your adrenals, some, some baking soda out to alkalize your body at the beginning of the day. And so like these are the, these are the little additions that I think wind up paying dividends for people.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the devil is in the detail and I mean it's quite funny. Touch on one thing. Obviously I do red light therapy most days actually. I really find that it's great for me. But it's funny how many people say I love red light therapy and I do it just before I go to bed, but they end up having sleep problems. And I find that some people, it really keeps them awake and some people, it works for them. I think the devil is in the detail for a lot of individuals. I don't think they realize that there are finer details to hydrating or finer details to morning light exposure or to red light therapy and things.

You're right, the red light at night can be stimulating for a lot of people. I mean, there's some companies like Juve, who has sponsored this podcast in the past, they have like an ambient mode on their red light devices where you can have it be a little less bright or Honestly, you could like use a red light device, but put on blue light blocking glasses so you have a little less stimulus to your eyes. And so, yeah, even the use of red light at night, you do, you do have to be a little bit careful with how much stimulus you actually get. I mean, for me in the bedroom, like the, I use very low wattage red incandescent bulbs, so I'm not even using like those, those big old flashy, you know, like the photobiomodulation panels. Like, I typically will use those in the morning because I feel like they're just a little, they are kind of stimulating, at least for me personally.

Likewise. Likewise. I mean, they really do for me. That's why I love them in the morning. So, yeah, so that's part of my morning routine as well, actually. But I think that probably the most important thing out of my whole daily routine, and I'm, I'm sure from part of your journey, it seems that you've been on a similar, similar route, is that a lot of the health optimization or biohacking that you do actually comes from within us in terms of mindset, inner work. And so one thing that is a massive part of my morning routine now, that is probably my most sacred part, is sitting down and reflecting in silence for 10 minutes, just reflecting on anything.

That might have triggered me on the.

Day, on the previous day. If there's something that's upset me or, you know, something I haven't reacted as stoically or, you know, as cleanly as I felt I should have done. I always sit and reflect on it and think about it from every angle that I possibly can to say, you know, what can I learn from this? What does it say about me? For instance? I'll give you an example. And this is so powerful because you're like, you're self optimizing every single day with every single thing that you might have automatically had a automatic reaction to for your whole life. But when something like this happens, you think, well, how can I be better? And an example was I had some builders come to my house the other week. I'll be quick on this. And one of them spoke to me like, you know, I was stupid. And I almost triggered. I didn't. The next morning when I reflected, I thought, why did I almost trigger? And she was like, well, because this person spoke to me like I was stupid. Well, why would I trigger if someone speaks to me like I'm stupid? Because I'm not. It's like, exactly. Perhaps when I was younger, I used to feel stupid. So if someone called me stupid, I would feel stupid. But now I know I'm not, so there's no need to me to trigger anymore for something like that. So sitting reflecting on this on a daily basis actually before I set my day really means that I'm set up for a solid day, mindset wise, as well as all the other traditional biohacks such as hyperbaric and Red light and everything else that I do on a daily basis.

I think that that's a good point. You know, if you look at the four questions that you can ask as turnarounds, it's a. Oh gosh, what's the book with the four questions about? Is this true? How do I know this to be true? Do you remember the process I'm alluding to? Inspiring Katie? So she has this whole kind of like system that you feed frustration through or you feed angst through and it involves asking yourself whether or not something is true. If it's true, can you absolutely know that it's true? How do you react when you believe that thought? And then what happens like if you reverse that thought? It's called the four Questions by Byron Cade. It's a great book, but a lot of times when someone insults you like that, in some cases what it actually is is not you being annoyed that they think you're stupid, it's you being annoyed at yourself because you're thinking they're stupid. And a lot of times those, those things that annoy you are actually you projecting something about yourself on the other person, which, which is super interesting. When you were describing that for some reason that that book by Byron, Katie just came into my head. But, but even more importantly, perhaps this idea of quiet time, I think especially for people who are in like the high achieving self optimization driven industry is of utmost importance. And you know, a couple examples that I could give related to that Tim, would be there's an excellent business book that I read that was one of the formative books for business. For me it's called the Road Less Stupid. And the entire book is based around an entrepreneur carving out for themselves so called thinking time and asking themselves specific questions during that thinking time with a journal, undistracted. Or in my case just because I like to move. My thinking time is when I go on a walk, put same thing, phones in airplane mode, undistracted, often with nothing playing in the earbuds at all. And it's just my thinking time to solve problems. And yet your subconscious has its thinking time during the entire night of Sleep if you program your subconscious before you go to bed. But carving at that thinking time, I think is really, really critical. And same as you, probably one of the biggest. It's not a biohack. It's almost like the thing you do before, or more importantly than all the other hacks, is to strip it all down to pure simplicity. And for me, in addition to that walk, that is my thinking time in the morning, I carve out 20 minutes. And that is basically just like my worship, prayer, silence, meditation, charge up the spiritual battery time. And, you know, often that involves, like, playing some amazing music, lighting a candle, lighting insets, sitting in silence, listening to the voice of God, then speaking to God, then asking God for things, and reading a section of scripture. And I mean, like, honestly, I. I could throw everything out. Like, you know, the red lights and the. The water and the cold stuff and the laser lights and the enemas and whatever. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt like, that for me would be the most important thing if I could choose anything.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, it takes it back to simplicity. I mean, this is the things. It's like the morning routine. I mean, I do have so many different things that I do, you know, from using, like, I've got a wrist vitruvian form at the moment, which I absolutely love. So I use that on a daily basis. And I have my rebounder, which is next to my standing desk, which is earthed out, so I stand earth doubt all day and jump on the rebounder in between calls and things and all of these things, but without the mind being in the right place, such as my affirmations and the visualizations. Every day, you know, I find that I'm set up so I need less biohacks. And it's the same with when I'm traveling, actually. Like, for instance, I spend, you know, six to nine months a year traveling. I generally follow the sun and work remotely. But I find that when I'm in somewhere like Croatia in summer, I need very few biohacks. I need very few supplements. I'm eating, you know, fresh seafood. I'm eating. I'm getting plenty of sunlight. I'm grounded all day. I don't need my grounding shoe straps or my grounding desk. It's. It's just amazing how much easier it is when you're closer to nature. And I think this is the, you know, the commonality of. With a lot of biohacks, they are mimicking nature in some form. Red light therapy or, you know, sad lighting or hyperbaric oxygen therapy day is stacked with all of these things when I'm in the city, but when I'm out of the city it's a very different story.

So, so do you eat breakfast at some point during this timeline in the morning? Are you one of those, you know, freaking like Omad crazy warrior guys?

No, I'm not like sim, sim land. He. I'm not into the one meal a day. I need to get myself 3,000, 3,000 calories a day roughly of good, obviously clean calories a day. So I have to have a pretty heavy breakfast and I start with obviously really good bacon, eggs, raw dairy. I really like a 2A2 dairy specifically, which works best for me. So I have three meals a day but I start from around 9am and finish at 5.30pm that's my, my eating window which works amazingly for me. As a result my heart rate variability is probably 30% higher.

Yeah, so like an 8 hour ish feeding window. And you, you're not one of those like smoothie, superfood, coffee, tea guys like your, your old school bacon, eggs, yogurt, punish that and get on with the day?

Yeah, that's right. I mean I do have a, I do have a butter coffee with some collagen thrown into it depending on time, but it's not a staple these days. It's more of a, more of a bonus because I really enjoy the taste of it. That does find its way into my daily routine.

Do you do any like workouts or anything like that in the, in the morning?

Yeah, I do. I have a whole stretching, stretching routine. I have working with a functional, actually a really, really great functional practitioner at the moment of rebalancing my body, my muscles so that I'm more balanced, I walk straighter and things like that. Refinement. So I have stretches on that and I have whole weight routine. I also have the Vitruvian form as I mentioned earlier, that is in my daily routine at the moment.

What's that called?

Vitruvian form. It's a barrel resistance training platform basically with almost bands on it. So it does eccentric, concentric and it's all built into one unit. It's bloody amazing. If you haven't tried it out, you should get one.

Yeah, it sounds super cool. What's it called? The Vitruvian trainer.

Yes, that's right.

Yeah. Huh. Yeah, I'll check it out. My wife will probably flip because we need another exercise machine like a hole in the head. I'll look it up either way. So how long does this workout take you to do?

Yeah, so I have about 20 minutes on it. It has all preset workouts and things like that. This isn't an AD by the way. I just think it's bloody awesome. And about 20 minutes different workout depending on what your goal is for that day or that week. So it has a whole trainer program and you use your iPad and it guides you through everything. So I find that that's really good. And then obviously I'm in the gym two to three times a week on top of that as well. Or I have a specific, a specific protocol that I'm working on at the moment. I'm typically without training and eating my, what my body seems to want. I sit at 59 kilos but when I, if I don't push myself that is. So I'm around, around 74 kilos at the moment. So I need to keep my, keep my food intake in and my, my daily training and stretching and everything together pretty solidly. Otherwise it's. Otherwise I shrink back down quite quickly.

I kind of run into the same thing. Like I'm a total total hard gainer, you know, lean, mean. But I have to work hard to keep like muscle on my body, which I do. Not too much of it but enough for the anti aging component and the grip strength and the mitochondrial density and as the so called sink for carbohydrates and glycogen. And you know, I'd, I make it a point to lift at least three days a week and you know, typically to, to lift something other than like a, you know, Gwyneth Paltrow esque tiny dumbbell or band. You know, I try to go heavy a few times a week and then I throw you know, gosh, a lot of organ meats, a lot of meat in general, a lot of, you know, a lot of components that help to keep the muscle on. I'm even using some things called bioregulator peptides right now. I don't know if you're familiar with those, but they're basically very similar to the consumption of organ meats. But basically they're really small amino acid sequences that target like there's one for the thyroid, one for the thymus, one for the liver, one for the kidneys, one for the balls and you just basically take this giant handful of these, these, these supplements called peptide bioregulators. Ton of research on amount of Russia but I have been doing that for about, it's pretty new, probably like a month now. And I feel amazing when I use those things and I feel like I am able to work out harder, longer and recover faster. So there's definitely something to them.

Yeah, I've tried the, the ones out of Russia which are the Cavison. I think it's Cavinson. Yeah, something like that. Peptides Russia, which, yeah, bioregulate ones which are really, quite, really quite special things.

It's Dr. Cavinson by the way, he's the guy who's done most of the research on them. So yeah, the same, same guy, same, same general, general philosophy. Okay, so anyways, you, you've got this workout, you got your water, you got your light, you got your, your quiet time, your thinking time. At some point in the day are you actually working or because you're primarily doing this summer, is it mostly just like, you know, emails and computer type of stuff at home?

So it's a mix between meeting speakers, heading out, meeting speakers or meeting with exhibitors but majority of it, 80% of it is working from home or you know, working from remotely somewhere or other just from a standing desk or on a beach which is a. When I sold my agencies actually as one of the things I wanted to do is say that I wouldn't be tied to an office ever again. I really wanted to be able to walk the walk and talk the talk, not just, you know, be sat in a office for half of my life and dream about, you know, being in nature and having to. You'd buy hacking to reverse everything that I was, you know, all the damage I was creating. So I'm very, very lucky to be able to work from just pretty much anywhere except for the, you know, the last six weeks before the event every.

Year and in the morning by the way, I should have asked you this but with like that, that yogurt, eggs, bacon, type of brekkie. Are there any particular supplements beside those peptide bioregulators that we talked about that you think are real, real game changers like real go to's for you, especially for people who are interested in the pointy edge of biohacking or longevity for example.

Yeah, it's a great question. Personally I have various genetic components that I need optimizing for. So for instance, I'm one of the MTHFR guys so I really, I find for me the trimethylglycine is my hero supplement of all actually. And that's for multiple reasons actually. I find that my heart rate variability doubles, almost doubles with trimethylglycine before bed. But if I have it in the morning, my, my Energy is significantly better. So I stack that with B12, methyl cobalamin and folate. Methyl folate as well. So I have those three together, which is really my hero product in the morning. The other one that I really like, it's saw palmetto at the moment. I particularly like that. I find that that's good for me at the moment just because of. With my training and various other things changing then it's caused various different things. For instance, I had a tension in the prostate area, so saw palmetto I find to be very, very good for me. So those staples at the moment in terms of supplementation. But I was at a point where I was taking, you know, kind of 20, 30 different supplements every single day and relying on them and it's just actually gets a bit out of control. And as I'm sure you've probably gone through this, this route as well, Ben, is like, more, more doesn't necessarily equal better is about strategically using these things to support your goals, not necessarily just necking as many supplements as you can get in.

Yeah, yeah. And that's interesting what you say about, about the MTHFR gene and this stack that's been helping you out so much for people listening. The MTHFR gene just basically codes for an enzyme that converts the folate that you would normally eat in food into the active form. It's called 5 methyltetrahydrofolate. And if you have a mutation in that gene, it affects how much folate your body is going to be able to metabolize and absorb. And in many people who have this gene, one of the things that you see is extremely high levels of what's called homocysteine. And that can cause basically symptoms such as inflammation, brain fog, et cetera, and trimethylglycine. It's also known as betaine, you might have seen it by that name, or tmg. That actually reduces the homocysteine. And it seems to be pretty supported that trimethylglycine also by some form of active B12, like hydroxylcobalamin. And I don't know if that's the one that you're taking, Tim. And then like a really good form of magnesium. That's kind of like one of the holy trilogies for the MTHFR thing is magnesium and TMG and active B12. And there's obviously a lot of other stuff that you can do, but for people who test and have that. Yeah, that. That seems to help them out. Out quite a bit, you know, along with, of course, you know, detoxing their environment and removing inflammatory foods, et cetera, et cetera. But, but yeah, I think, I think that's a, that's a pretty good stack for that. And so in terms of like middle of the day lunch, are you like a nap siesta guy or do you just kind of pound through the day until that, that five o' clock meal?

Yeah, no chance of, no chance of resting during the day. I love powering through. I really enjoy powering through. I find that my mind is at peak, you know, after I've had breakfast all to kind of five or six o' clock and you know, when sun sets, the blue blockers go on and that's when I start, you know, calming down and you know, getting more relaxed, ready for, more ready for resting in the evening. I found that I've always been a night owl, you know, quote unquote night owl my whole life. And I realized that I'm just one of these super sensitive to blue light guys. So I would always be up till 2 or 3 o' clock all the way through to when I was like 30. And after finding blue blocking glasses, I realized that in fact no, I wasn't a night owl. I was just severely under slept and aging myself too fast as a result. And now my, my sleep is the other way around. It's kind of get to bed at 10:30, wake up at 6, 6:30, something like that every day depending on how much sleep, sleep I need based on the activity I've had for that day. So I don't, I don't sleep during the day. I just get it done, power through and super productive with you know, everything scheduled and organized accordingly.

Okay, so, and then, so what do you do for lunch?

I really, really enjoy ribeye steak with and some olive oil. I'm generally a high, higher fat guy and higher protein, low carb, that's what my body thrives on. And maybe some chicken breast with some tarragon ginger and things stir fried in something like that. So it's a really, really meat, meat, predominant meal actually throughout every meal. But I do use sweet potato accordingly after training on training days and things like that. But I'm one of these guys that loves the organ meats like you do, I think. And predominantly meat heavy with, with a lot olive oil, coconut oil and, and the usual things like that.

Yeah, and, and so when you, when you get into the afternoon and everything, are you, are you like moving and training twice a day? Are you, are, do you have like a treadmill workstation or some kind of Setup to stay active during the day or how do you tackle that component?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly that. Well, I have a rebounder next to my desk. I have various different foam rollers. I make sure that I go out for a walk every single day. I schedule that I do have. I only have one workout most days, but really getting. Getting some steps in making sure that I'm just stretching throughout the day and using the rebounder, which I think the rebounder is one of my favorite. One of my favorite breakouts actually, during my working day, because I can do that four or five times quite easily for five to 10 minutes ago. And I find that that really rejuvenates me and it gets my mind firing up again, especially in between calls when I've had, you know, five or six calls, one after the other after the other.

And so that's like a mini trampoline. What's that look like for you? If you use it? Like, what exactly are you doing?

So it's just literally bouncing on it. And it's for lymphatic flow and just getting, layman's terms, the ju flowing, getting the body moving. And obviously it's soft, soft. So it's low impact trampoline. It's. I think it's by Bellicon. I think it is. And it's just. Just like two and a half feet across. So it's a mini trampoline. Really great little rebounder, actually.

Yeah, I actually. You do use the rebounder in the morning. I actually like to combine it with breath work. Like, you gotta be super careful because obviously you're bouncing up and down and up upright. So proceed at your own risk. But I will actually, on one bounce, do the fully in letting go fully in letting go fully. And I'll bounce like 30 times like that. And then on the 30th bounce, just like suck all the air in, shoot it out the top of the head while I'm still bouncing. Just like you'd normally do during WIM hof. And then once I've held it up there for about five to 10 seconds, I'll be blast it all out, hold the exhale for as long as I can. And again, like, you got to be careful. If you haven't done this before, you need to make sure you're. You're comfortable with managing the dizziness. But it actually works pretty well to. And it charges me up. Holy cow. Like in the morning. But right before I do that, that whole like worship meditation, prayer, journaling thing, I'll just like pump up a really Good. Like praise and worship song or a really good motivational song. And just bounce and do that breath work. And there's something about the bouncing and the breath work that just lights me up and, and same thing as you do. If I've got low energy during the day, I have that trampoline right next to my office and I'll just go bounce on it or drag out in the sunshine and bounce on it and do breath work. And it sounds silly, but, I mean, the thing actually freaking works. I used to laugh at all the old people on trampolines and now I actually see a lot of benefit I of it. All right, maybe I'm just getting old. I don't know.

Me too, then. No, I think, I think it's really, really nice. I mean, I think, you know, the sedentary lifestyle is, you know, as, you know, one of the biggest killers that there are. And I think reversing that if you're in the house. I feel like a fraud if I'm not out for whatever reason and you know, work is busy, especially depending on the time of year and not actually getting moving at all. And having a rebounder just to keep it simple is, is really beneficial. Is very underrated. And you're right about the breath work. Practice nose breathing. And I have to force myself to do it because I've been a mouth breather my whole life. You know, I mouth tape at night, most nights as well, just to keep me on track. And when I first started rebounding, I actually had a 12 foot huge thing in my last garden and I couldn't, I couldn't trampoline without mouth breathing. You know, if I was doing it, it just couldn't. And it, it's amazing to see how much I've trained myself over the last couple of years because now I can consistently nose breathe while rebounding, even have my mouth taped at the same time. So it's really showing that I'm dealing with the carbon dioxide better, meaning that I'm obviously better oxygenated and partially the reason why I don't need to use hyperbaric oxygen therapy so much these days, I guess.

Yeah, exactly. And the one thing that I find, of course, with the mouth tape, because I, I finally had a holistic dentist who I had on the show. Dr. Loud talked me into doing it after she did some testing on me and found that I did have like a dip in blood oxygen a few times during the night and possibly a couple snoring episodes. So I, I decided I'd start doing it. But I have a, like a beard and a mustache now, so I can't really tape. But I. I figured out you can use these. These little things are called, like, turbines. They're nose clips, lips. Or you can get those little stickers that you attach to your nose that open up the airways in your nasal passages. And that seems to just automatically kind of shift me almost like subconsciously into nasal breathing during the night. So that's what I use instead of the mouth tape, and works pretty well. Somebody needs to come up with a mouth tape that works with men's facial hair, by the way. Business idea for somebody bloody brilliant.

Those nose clips are actually really good. There's actually a test I did recently for. So I'm having laser therapy to reverse snoring, or I have been snoring a little bit over the last. Coming over the last few months, and I went to a snoring clinic that does laser therapy to help reverse that. And they have like a 75% success rate. They were telling me. So one of the tests that they're doing is you actually use a snore app to see how much you snore. You do that for a week, and then after you've done that for a week and you've got your baseline, you then use those nose clips to open up your sinuses and see if your snoring changes. They then know if it's a throat or a nose snore, and then they can use the laser therapy accordingly to help you. And so, interestingly for me, while I do breathe much better nose breathing using the clips that you were mentioning, actually I'm more of a throat snorer, which means that the laser therapy that they do actually helps tighten up, help the throat produce more collagen and tighten it up so that you don't actually snore so much. They've got a really good success rate. Looking forward to seeing them, actually, next week for my. For my laser therapy session. After all this, all this damn tracking I've been doing for the last few months.

What kind of laser is this?

I don't actually know. In all honesty, it's very similar. They were telling me to the type of laser therapy that they use for vaginal rejuvenation. In fact, it's the same machine, just with a different setting. They're giving me the full demo of it on Wednesday.

So they're using a vagina laser on your throat?

Kind of, yeah, kind of.

They're actually going to be at the.

Summit because they've got such a Good track record on storing. I'm using them out obviously before they're exhibiting. But they've had such good success rate and seen so many testimonials on it that, that I've invited them to come to the summit.

Interesting.

And we could probably talk like for, for a really long time about your personal routine. But I actually did want to ask you a few questions about this summit, you know, because, because a lot of times these are just like, you know, expos With a handful of speakers and a few random biohacks you know, everybody's seen before. But I'm curious, like in terms of stuff that you think is kind of cutting edge or exciting, what have you learned as far as meeting with exhibitors about some cool new technology coming down the pipeline or what is it that you're most excited about from like a speaker standpoint or an experience standpoint? Just, just fill me in on this whole thing. Help us wrap our heads around it in.

While in America obviously you have various conferences like Paleo Effects and whatnot in the uk In Europe you're not, we're not really used to having something of such sort of big size and especially with you know, some, many American or worldwide speakers in one place. So we kind of like get really, really hyped up about it. Whereas I think in America you get a lot more used to it. So we got obviously 105, I think it is exhibitors this year, you know, ranging from, you know, dry farm wines, for instance. Who doesn't love dry farm wines? We've got sunlight and saunas and actually Hap Beef Happy device is going to be here this year. We've got a standing desk brand, we've got the spermidine guys coming, which is going to be awesome. We've got photo biomodulation company, we've got called Thor who do a really amazing red light bed actually. I'm not sure if you're familiar with those guys or not. And then we've got Andy from Alatura coming as well with his, his male natural skin care.

Can you explain the Thor bed to me exactly? Because, because a lot of clinics in the US have that as well.

Yes, it's basically a full body. It looks like a sunbed, a lie down sunbed and it's red light therapy. It's pretty much the most premium red light bed that you can find. They go into a lot of clinics. They've been. The guy behind Thor actually is. His name is James Carroll. He's actually a speaker of ours as well. He is all about quantification and the science. It's not just, you know, here's a red light device and we hope it works. He's spoken to Congress about this, about the uses of red light therapy and laser therapy and his whole company is around photobiomodulation and the cutting edge technology. Now the, the Nova Thor is the name of the actual.

The Nova Thor. So you were talking about the Nova Thor bed and just pick up wherever you'd like. Fill me in on the Nova Thor and how exactly that works.

Yeah, so the Nova Thor is basically the creme de la creme of, I guess, red light beds. It's a whole body red light device that looks like one of the lie down sunbeds. The guys at Thor, I guess really are into the heavy science of it. They've spoken to Congress. Red light therapy and the utilization of it in, you know, the medical setting.

Is I guess the creme de la.

Creme of red light devices for mainly for clinics and things like that. So instead of just having a device leaning up against the wall which is traditional to use at home, which are great, but for more of a clinical setting, the Novothor is the big boy, I guess.

Yeah, yeah. And do people actually buy this for their home and lay down in it at their home or is this something that's more like you would have at a clinic that someone would go to and visit?

It's definitely more of a clinic style thing because it's a big unit. It's as big as a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. I mean, I know people have got it at home, but it's a big, big and expensive unit. You know, we're talking hundreds in the hundreds of thousands of bucks a unit, I think.

Okay, so, so that's, that's one of the exhibitors that you have. But how many other people do you actually have exhibiting at this event?

Yes, we've got 105 exhibitors. 105? Yeah, that's. We've got constant glucose monitors. We've got various different testing companies. We've got obviously dry farm Win and we're doing a dry farm wine party on the Saturday night. God. We've even got healthy cosmetics for the girls. Really clean, really clean brand of cosmetics that I brought in from Lithuania, which is amazing. We've got urine testing at home analysis device coming as well. We've got Aqua True reverse osmosis filters. I mean we've got 105 brands like this. Really? It's spent. I've spent the last three years approaching testing and Choosing them one by one myself for the event. So everything, everything that's here. So, you know, I've used and know personally. So. Yeah, and then in terms of the speakers, obviously, you know what?

No, go, go ahead, go ahead.

Yeah, so the speakers obviously yourself. We've got Dr. Sachin Panda and Jolene Brighton talking about female hormone optimization. We've got Patrick McGowan, Jim Quick, Vishen Lakhiani, Shalia. A good friend of mine, Chris Geddin, I think, actually, I think he might be a mutual friend of ours, actually, and Diana Rogers from Sacred Cow, which I'm really looking forward to that actually, because I don't know if you've had Diana on the podcast or not before, but she talks about sustainability and supply chain and healthy clean meats. So I'm really looking forward to having her come to London.

Yeah, there's a few devices that are.

There.

That are super interesting, like the sensate. The sensate is something I've actually had a chance to try out. I noticed they were going to be at the event. It's very interesting. You hang it around your neck. It's a vagal nerve stimulator that vibrates and correlates to audio that plays for relaxation and for vagal nerve stimulation. That's one that I think is super interesting. Another one that's called probably kind of in a similar category as the Braintap, which I actually had used a few years ago and just started using it again. It's like a light sound machine that. Oh my gosh, it just like almost instantly shifts you into this hypnotic esque state. So that one's kind of cool too. And then there's a few that I'm actually unfamiliar with, like the Tau patch. What's the Tau patch?

Yeah, Tau Patch is actually a really interesting little. I say devices, they're more like stickers that you put on you and it essentially helps concentrate light and energy into the body. It's actually, actually mutual friend of ours, Martin Tobias introduced me to them a few years ago actually. And yeah, they've been really, really popular. Martin Valley was really good for his energy and whatnot. They've been tested, I think it was with people with multiple cirrhosis and they've got done studies behind people with Parkinson's and things. So, yeah, it's really, really good.

I think.

I guess the best way to describe it would be almost like acupuncture, but using natural light therapy, I guess, and the little stickers that you put on several places on your body.

Okay, okay. So it's like going over. It's something that would be placed on different meridians on the body. Very similar, like acupuncture, but instead of using a needle, it's using more like a light therapy.

Exactly, exactly that.

Yeah.

Interesting. Okay, now a couple others that I'm kind of unfamiliar with the mind. What's the mind?

Scopic Mindscopic, a natural nootropics brand. So they have, you know, for instance, Alpha GPC stacked with several mushrooms as well. They also do a 5 HTP. They call it a mood stabilizer or a mood enhancer as well, which is one of my favorites actually. So, yeah, so the natural nootropics, really, really clean.

Great, guys.

I mean, it's a European brand, comes from Holland actually. We don't have such an abundance of nootropics as you guys do over there. And I think one that's similar. Similar is Neurohacker, the Qualia, which.

Yeah, yeah, that one's super interesting. Okay, so in terms of a lot of the exhibitors, a lot of the devices there, and specifically regarding like, devices in particular, is there anything that you think is just gonna be kind of a total pattern interrupt for people, like something that folks have not seen before that they'll be seeing at the event or that you've come across? You know, even people aren't going to be able to make it to the event that you just think is super cool that you're super stoked about.

My personal favorite is actually Braintap, which you've already, which you've just mentioned, which is obviously kind of like light. Light enhancement and sound meditative, which I really like. And I think for you guys in the States, it's probably more commonplace because they've exhibited. They've exhibited various conferences around the States, but for the uk, I think it's brilliant. I actually love stack that when I'm in my hyperbaric chamber. So I use Brain Tap while I'm in the hyperbaric and I feel like I'm, you know, almost. Almost high and in between the states of, you know, being awake and asleep and actually dreaming actually while I'm awake. So it's really, really a solid device actually. So I'm really excited for them to come to London. That was a lot of work to get them here, but. But they're here, so that's probably my favorite.

I have, I've experienced the same thing with the Brain Tap. I use it in the hyperbaric chamber and it's a total game changer. I mean, you put on for 20 minutes, you feel like you've been in deep sleep for a coup. The only other thing I've experienced that with is the new calming device. But the Brain Tap actually has the light stimulation in addition to the sound. And the super interesting thing that you might like is by the time you guys have your day, I actually have two sessions in the Brain Tap. I took my entire morning meditation routine and evening meditation routine and we coded that. So if people have the Brain Tap and own the app, I think it's actually going to be less as soon as like probably by the time this podcast got my whole like, meditation routine is in the brain tab now. So that's, that's pretty cool. That's like a brand new development I'm pretty excited about.

Awesome.

Awesome. I'm looking forward to checking that one out. Awesome. I mean, the other one is Katsu, the Kaatsu. But I mean, I think again, that's one that you're very familiar with and in the States is quite, it's quite common, but for us in the uk, I mean, it's a really good device and they're just bringing out a new version of it, I've heard.

Yeah, they actually have a pretty, pretty slick new version of that. And that's the blood flow restriction training for people who haven't yet experienced that. Kaatsu is kind of like the creme de la creme way to do it. Tim, tell me about the sexy little what people get if they do the VIP package for the event.

Yeah, so VIP is speaker and VIP dinner on the Friday night. So you get to have dinner with.

Likes of you and all the other.

Speakers that are coming along. So that's a really nice, fancy, fancy event on the Friday night. So you get to. We spread the dinner out. So you get to sit next to certain speakers and things like that, which is really cool. And then obviously we have a huge VIP room where you can hang out and chill and speak with speakers and try out various different devices that aren't available in the main hall as well. It's a really nice experience with the VIP. We got great feedback from it from our 2019 event event. So we've enhanced it even more this year. The VIP dinner is going to be a very special one, so I'm really looking forward to that.

So all my heroes and all my.

Colleagues in one room at the same time.

Bloody brilliant.

So if there's ever any speakers or anyone that comes along or wants to meet, that's the time.

Yeah. And what's the Actual scene like in London right now as far as biohacking is concerned, is this a popular thing or do you think that, that the UK is kind of catching up to the US ahead of the US or what's the scene actually like over there?

I think the name biohacking is bigger in the States than it is in the uk. That's just because a lot of people don't necessarily understand what it means. And I actually did a survey on Oxford street in London to ask people if they wanted to biohack themselves. And they said less than a tenth of a percent of people even knew what it meant. But when we said do you want to optimize your health? We got 94%. Exactly, exactly. You know, we had 94% of people said yes to optimizing their health. 5% of people said a loved one and 1% of people are just busy.

On their lunch break.

So the biohacking scene is actually quite big, but it's not necessarily labeled as that so much. Over here. We call it health optimization. We have a meetup that runs, you know, every six, eight weeks in London. We pull three to 500 people every month for one of the events. So we have very, very active scene over here, but under the label of health optimization. But biohacking is definitely growing as a label. It's becoming bigger and bigger and bigger every, every month. And I think that the media has been grabbing a hold of a lot of it, a lot as well. And in fact you had a full time spread on a few months ago, I think in, in the UK on biohacking, where they called you the out the alphas Alpha, I think from memory.

Oh geez. Gosh. I guess that's better than be at the beta's beta. Well, this whole thing looks, looks amazing. I can't wait to just hop on a plane and come over there. From what I understand, you don't have to jump through any crazy injections and treatments to come over there and do it. I'm going to be there. A whole bunch of other speakers are.

Going to be there.

Like Tim alluded to, Tim's going to be there. This whole VIP experience looks just amazing. I know that you can also. I'll put a link to it if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tim Gray but you can also get access to a lot of the resources, recordings and stuff from the event, from previous event. So it's all there on their website. So I'll link to that, I'll link to Tim's stuff and to everything else that we talked about. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tim Gray and if you have questions about any of these devices, any of your own little tips to add, feel free to leave your comments and your questions and your feedback over there. Tim, thanks for coming on, for sharing with us what UK's leading biohacker is up to and for putting this event on.

No worries.

Thanks for having me Ben.

It's awesome.

Whilst I'm a biohacker and biohackers are known for using all of the tech and gadgets and supplements and everything, I really like to take it back to basics wherever possible because how our ancestors lived meant that they survived and we made it to this point. So my belief is that biohacking is essentially mimicking nature by using technology to mimic nature, such as if you don't have a garden you are using an earthing mousepad or if you don't have clean air you get an air filter or if you don't see sunrise and sunset you have a red light therapy stack. Etc etc so my daily routine will.

Run through.

And explain why each of the things I have in there. But bear in mind I try to keep it simplistic. So upon waking I hydrate with reverse osmosis water that has hypertonic added to it. Now the bind is chlorella specifically, which is an algae that has an affinity to metals. It also binds to household toxins, pesticides, herbicides and mycotoxins. And because chlorella is a living organism, it binds to toxic metals but not essential minerals. I also take it when I eat seafood for this reason as well. So I start the day the moment I wake with water binders. And now the hypertonic by Kinton Labs is the perfect way to supplement minerals and trace elements. At low doses it supports your adrenals on waking and it supports detoxification as well. Now depending on my location and the bedroom and the natural lighting, I wear my blue blocking glasses when I wake and I keep them on until I'm ready to roll. This ensures that I keep my circadian rhythm in check. Now as soon as I've gone downstairs I have my non fat soluble supplements such as my DAO enzyme. Now because of a genetic disposition I have, I often have have histamine issues with aged meats or whatnot and they give me headaches or a stuffy nose. The DAO enzyme helps with that. It also ensures that my heart rate variability is high and my resting heart rate is low. I also take trimethylglycine which is a methyl donor and assists with detoxification energy production and actually helps me feel great. I rate it as my top number one supplement of all time. Now once I've had my non fat soluble supplements, I have my bulletproof style coffee with butter, MCT and collagen. This is breaking my fast and I have my fat soluble supplements like astaxanthin for instance with it. Now because I'm a hard gainer and I find it very, very difficult to put on weight, I have to eat a lot, lot, very fast metabolism. So I'm really focused on eating as much protein as I can and that's usually around 2 to 250 grams of protein a day. So I like adding collagen and various other proteins to my foods. This just ensures I hit these goals each day. Next is my daily reflection. It's one of my best and favorite biohacks of all time. Now, now, inner work is something amazing and as Ben and I discussed in the podcast, if you don't deal with what's going on the inside, it's very difficult to deal with what's going on on the outside. So if something triggers me or confuses me or upsets me or one of many things like this each morning after I've had my bulletproof proof style coffee, I will sit down and reflect and I call it my silence time. And that's for 10 minutes where I close my eyes and just sit in silence and I can think through anything. But if there's something that's triggered me, I reflect and ask myself why. And now that's obvious because it's very easy to do. But when you look at it in the mindset that why did this trigger me? What did this tell me about me and what insecurities could it have come from? I find that I am optimizing on a daily basis and one by one tackling things that trigger me. As a result, I'm finding myself to be much calmer and much more stoic. And stoicism is part of the biohacking mindset, in my opinion. I also sit down and do my visualizations, and that is to picture things that I want to achieve in my life or states that I want to be in. This goes on for about five minutes. And I also have my affirmations which I read through every day, which takes me seven minutes. And these affirmations are very, very powerful because I find myself changing over a period of time for the things that I wish to be. Once I finish these things this is about half an hour in total. I do my breathwork practice and I have a device called Aerofit, no affiliate. It helps you train your lung strength and capacity. It's a little device you put in your mouth. Now, I am a proponent of nose breathing, not mouth breathing. And I mouth tape at night to make sure that I do breathe through my nose actually helps with my sleep significantly. But this device is for the mouth, and because you're only using it for a few minutes a day, mouth breathing in those few minutes a day isn't an issue anyway. This device helps you track over a period of time your progression and quantifies your breath work. So for the traditional biohacker, it's a great tool for that. Next, I jump onto my roman chair and do my stretches. And I've recently started using a Vitruvian trainer. It's called Vitruvian form and it's a revert. It's a resistance training device that works with eccentric and concentric for weight training and stretching and rowing machine and everything all in one. It's actually really amazing. And I'm in the gym two to three times a week with a specific protocol that's been put together to help me realign my posture and for my body gains goals. And two times a week, depending on the day and how I'm feeling in my workload, I have a hyperbaric oxygen session and that's for one and a half hours. And I do that at 1.4 atmospheric pressures. This really rejuvenates me. And if I've had a tough day, mentally strained, or if I've recently had a flight, then, then this really picks me up before I hit the hay in the evening. During this time I'm sitting down and reading. You know, I have a thing where I ensure that I read 20 pages every single day. Because if you're not feeding your brain, you're going backwards, in my opinion. So it's really important to keep your brain alive and to exercise it as well as your body. So 20 pages a day turns into two books a month, something like that. Although last year I read 53 books. Then once I finished reading, I jump in front of the red light stack and often have methylene blue transcription in my mouth as well. I like to do this in the morning because it stimulates me. I find that it helps me heal. And if I have it in the evening, it affects my sleep. I find that my heart rate is slightly increased, probably about five beats a minute, and my heart rate variability is probably about 30% lower. I think a lot of people don't seem to realize that red light therapy can stimulate you and keep you awake or make you be a little bit more restless at night. So if you are experiencing this or if you do use red light at night, I would recommend you trying it first thing in the morning instead. Now three times a week, I also use a neti pot and then, and that's just with saline solution to clear my sinuses. I also add colloidal silver and one drop of iodine, lugal ziodine to be specific. And this helps keep my sinuses clear and healthy, especially with current pandemic. Afterwards, I have my aminos and I'm a big fan of aminos. It's a staple for me, just like with Ben. And it's really important for fueling your muscles supporting your endocrine system. It aids faster recovery. It helps fire up my brain without stimulating it. It actually improves my sleep as well. And it's especially good for vegans. Often vegans don't have enough protein, necessarily bioavailable protein, and if they're fermented source aminos, then you assimilate them very, very easily and quickly. So I found vegans bouncing down the road after having them in the past. So I really recommend trying some aminos. By this point, I am working in the morning and I have a rebounder next to my desk, my standing desk, so that I'm keeping my lymphatic system flowing, which aids detoxification and keeps my brain active.

Actually.

Now I make sure that I practice breathwork while I am on the rebounder and I have my mouth taped so that I'm practicing nose breathing. It's very, very difficult to actually trampoline with your mouth taped because you default to breathing through your mouth often. So I've been practicing for this for a long time. My breakfast consists of things such as duck eggs, which is a big one for me because duck eggs generally have higher protein and much cleaner. They're generally not factory farmed like chickens. I have nitrate free bacon and I take an aniracetam ham at the same time. Well, typically I have chicken breast with grated ginger in it. Afterwards I have a whey protein shake with A2 protein raw milk so I find this to be much better. A1 protein I don't do so well with. I work for an hour solidly to clear up the quick emails and quick distractions that I might have through for the day. And I have a grounding pad on my standing desk That I have my wrists on the whole time. Then I go outside and I get walking and I try to get in 10,000 steps a day. But it really does depend on my workload. During this time I take my shoes off and I'm walking in the grass in the park nearby. And also I have many walking meetings as well. I find that this keeps my brain active. It helps me get my steps in and not being a lazy man working in the house all day. My lunch is predominantly meat these days and it's usually a rib eye with some greens and some cheese. It's all organic, sustainable farmed meat from local farms and usually with one veg on the side, but that's it. I find that I do much better on a predominantly meat based diet. I also make my own sauces things. Now I'm very strict my calendar and I take calls between 2 and 5pm two days a week. The rest of the time is for head down work or various other things I have going on for work. I find that calls and meetings really distract me from my day and make me much less efficient. So minimizing this and blocking out times for them really has helped. I finish work at 6:30pm sharp. This means I respect my evenings and squeeze more into the day. I become become significantly more productive as a result. I have my dinner just before sunset and then as sun sets I put my blue blocking glasses on. If I have dinner later than 6:30pm Then my heart rate variability is probably about 30% lower and my resting heart rate is 10 to 12 beats higher. Now this is based on work by Dr. Sachin Panda from the book the Circadian Code, where with rodents he gave them two sets of rodents meals. One could eat whatever they liked throughout the whole day, 24 hours a day. And another set of rodents had the same amount of food but limited to a six hour window. Now the mice that had the food in the restricted time actually lost weight. Now this is because apparently there you produce up to 50 times less insulin after sunset because certain genes turn off as a result you have higher blood sugar through the night and you're stirring that as fat over a period of time. So because I like to stay lean while working on building my muscle, I don't eat after 6:30 as a result. Now preparing for sleep means you need to prepare during the day and that means winding down in the evening. That means not using too many devices devices or watching films that stimulate you or will put you into fight or flight mode, such as watching war films or films with killing that damages your sleep significantly. I'm also when I go to bed I have a kill switch for the whole house so it turns off the wi fi, the wall sockets. I turn my phone off and my sleep is 15% better consistently. As a result, my Aura scores are 92 to 95 daily except for when I'm traveling and it comes down about 10 points. I also have blackout blinds and a face mask as well because I find that I sleep much better and if I'm sleeping much later than sunset, the blackout blinds obviously help me have the amount of sleep that I need to have. Quality sleep is amazing. Before bed I take trimethylglycine, about 1.5 grams which also because of my genetic component of MTHFR gene, the trimethylglycine helps improve my heart rate variability about 20%. I always drink reverse osmosis water and I use hypertonic throughout the day. I use digestive enzymes with ox bile to support my high fat and high protein diet and I find that my digestion has improved significantly as a result. In the house there's no lights on after 7pm and in my bedroom and bathroom I only have automatic red lights so that I don't mess up my circadian rhythm. And then I lock down and sleep and wash, rinse and repeat until it happens again. As you know, central to biohacking is tracking as what you don't measure you can't manage. Subjective score is better than no score, but devices like the OURA ring for sleep, an aero fit for breath work, air quality monitors for optimizing your oxygen, and the myriad of blood tests available means you can be very diagnostic and optimized far more efficiently and effectively. It also spins up your weed wins and confirms them. I like to collate my data into a spreadsheet which helps me spot trends and correlations across all of the devices and all of the techniques tests. And it starts with my daily aura scores. If my readiness is low, I take it easy and I don't train. If my readiness score is high, I push harder. My sleep score is usually around 92 to 94 out of 100 because I assure that I check all of the variables that might affect it. If I have a day of a low score, I figure out what negatively impacted it and then flip it. Consistency is key. My key data points that I watch closest are obviously my heart rate variability because it's one of the best predictors for overall health. My resting heart rate, my sleep score, my readiness score. I pay attention to my deep sleep and REM sleep ratios specifically and really look to optimize these as as much much as I can. I also monitor my carbon dioxide levels in my room overnight and also in my office and I notice that when carbon dioxide levels are higher, my brain fog is also higher. This is something where the spreadsheet really helps me. I also track my mental clarity on a subjective level in the spreadsheet every day and I also check my cellular metabolomics tests specifically. I also check my hormones twice a year and my metabolic age as well. Most tests I do twice a year, but standard blood works I seem to do every two to three months now, which includes liver and kidney functions. When you combine all of this data, it really does give you a strong power to be able to optimize on all fronts. But I also do work with functional practitioners as well to ensure that I am not missing anything that a medical professional would see. That's a typical day for me and I hope you found some interesting points in there.

All right folks, well, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Tim Gray signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. If you liked it, or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much me. Means a lot.