How You Really Lose Fat (You'll Be Surprised), How To Enhance Fat Loss Using Simple Breath Tactics, Plus Near Death Experiences, Psychedelics & More!.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

You're selling snake oil, boy. And I'm like, well, you know, I was dead for five days and I came back to life. I just want them to start tuning into their body and allowing their immune system and their physiology to speak for itself. And I think the doorway to that awareness is through breathing a miracle that just continues to astonish you. If you can do the due diligence of peeling back the layers of discovery through yourself and through this amazing, majestic, miraculous world that we dwell in.

Help, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield.

Welcome to the show. Well, hello, everyone. Say hello in your crazy ist voice. Hi. Hi. Hey. This is Ben and my son River. Welcome to the show. I had a really, really good podcast with the guy you're going to listen to. I feel like we talked for a really long time. His name is David. He lives in Florida, where I actually really want to go visit Florida soon. It made me want to go eat some fish and shellfish and hang out on the beach. And he lives, like, right on the beach and goes in the sand, in the ocean every day. We talked about how our family's different. We do the ice and the snow in the forest every day. He does the sand and the sun and the ocean every day. So it's kind of two different worlds. But anyways, it's a really cool episode. I think you guys will like my chat with David. Shall we go talk to David? Yeah, let's go talk to David.

Let's do it.

Well, folks, in the past, I have discussed a few times the link between your respiration, or to make me sound even smarter, your respiratory physiology and your body fat and kind of the link between carbon dioxide and body fat and breath. I've talked about it in an article that I published on my site and also in a podcast. I did a podcast on a whole bunch of reasons people don't burn fat and kind of got into respiration a little bit there. But I've never actually kind of tackled it really thoroughly on a podcast and hadn't thought about doing it much until actually my friend who was a recent podcast guest, Adam Wengauer, who's the Element Health CBD company. I interviewed him, and we geeked out on plant medicine and psychedelics and CBD and just a host of different topics afterwards. Adam, who I've gotten to know pretty well over the past three years, introduced me to one of his friends who not only has pretty thoroughly studied up on this link between breath and fat loss, but also has quite an extensive background in the fitness industry. He is a personal trainer, he's a model, he's a corporate wellness speaker, he's an entrepreneur, he is all over on magazine covers. So he actually does practice what he preaches or at least has access to really good photoshopping software because he's been on Muscle Fitness and Fitness Rx and Men's Health and Ironman magazine. Pretty prolific writer as well. He trains quite a few celebrity client from the U.S. special forces, the military, you know, NBA stars like Allen Iverson and really knows his way around fitness. He has also appeared on Netflix in the documentary the Perfect Physique and and also has been on a Michael Bay's blockbuster film called Pain and Gain along with the Rock and Mark Wahlberg. So the guy has, has done quite a bit in the fitness sector and so I thought it would be pretty cool to get on and chat not only about fat loss and respiratory physiology, but a few other things that Adam and David and I have been emailing about regarding everything from near death experiences to a whole lot more. So the podcast show notes for everything that my guest and I talk about you can find@BenGreenfieldFitness.com flow that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Flo his name is David Morin. That's M O R I N if you want to look him up. David Morin. And I guess I've already introduced you, David, so welcome to the show, man.

Awesome. Ben, thanks so much for having me, man. And quite gracious introduction considering your resume.

Oh yeah, well, I never do much resume measuring. I just say, say what I've been told and hope I'm not making up about somebody that winds up coming back to bite me in the butt. Anyways, I think it actually really interesting because, you know, again, based on all the magazine covers that I've seen, even though you and I haven't hung out, you appear to be a pretty fit dude. They're watching some of your videos and seeing some of the photos and, and I'm just curious, you know, not, not that having a nice body as you know, is a metric of say like health or longevity. But it is always interesting, you know, to, to speak to somebody who's very fit about what their routine looks like, you know, what your daily routine looks like as far as how you care for your body. And it's kind of funny because sometimes I'll ask this question and then an hour later we're wrapping up the podcast and we haven't even like gotten off of this first question because it gets so interesting. But anyways, I was wondering if you could kind of, kind of walk us through, you know, what, what your routine looks like on a day to day basis. If, if it, if it is consistent on a day to day basis.

Yeah, I mean, you know, yourself, you, you've got twin boys, I've got twin girls myself, and whatever the morning requires. But typically I live on the beach. I've got a nice. Thank God. I've got a nice peaceful condo in Miami. So my first thing I, you know, I have my bed set up so it's facing east. So the morning sun, that natural light wakes me up. Yeah. No alarm clock. So then I'll just proceed to go downstairs and, and what I've been doing lately, in the past three months, four months at the tail end of this whole pandemic lockdown thing, I've got a lot of injuries, you know, preexisting conditions from hardcore weightlifting and bodybuilding, strength conditioning and just kind of, you know, redlining it now that I'm 46. So mobility, joint health, you know, there's a lot of responsibilities with those relationships that your routine has to be very malleable so that you can adapt to just focusing on cultivating energy, grounding myself in the morning, getting that morning light, getting that nice, you know, that circadian rhythm going and just kind of dialing in for the day. You know, I set my agenda, set my agenda the previous day, so everything's there. I just want to be, I just want to be wide open and do it. Could be a number of different things. In a practical sense, I'll do, You know, I may go for a jog, I may go for a swim. I've got these paddles. I don't know if you're familiar with them. A lot of the guys like Georges St. Pierre, they're, they're big into using water resistance now. They use a kind of a water resistance style. Yeah. So. So I get into that too, because just the pronation and supination, the, the hip mobility, the, the shoulder opening up the shoulder, decompressing all the joint.

Yeah, they're called like those hydro revolution, like resistant. They almost look like barbells and dumbbells that you take into the water. You just train them. Train them in the water.

Yes.

Yeah, I've seen him using those before. And it's kind of funny, they're very similar because whenever I would get injured when I was a triathlete, I would have Something very similar. I would just strap to both legs and I would go run in the pool and it was just boring as hell. You know, just running in the pool is, is. Oh my gosh, it's. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone aqua jogging, so to speak, but it's incredibly effective if you can't run on land due to a joint injury or you know, a knee problem or whatever because it's non weight bearing. But yeah, I think, I think those are called the hydro, Hydro revolution, something like that that he uses.

Yeah. You know, I noticed that when you're kind of, you're putting your body in different environments, you, you're keen to develop a different kind of awareness. I think for a lot of guys, maybe yourself is like you, you're mentally tough and you want to grind on through any adversity during like Ironman Run or you know, an aggressive kind of powerlifting regimen, you kind of numb your senses, but you throw your body in that kind of, you know, different environment and you regain some of that body awareness and some of that sensitivity to say, oh yeah, now I see, you know, this problem with my elbow and how that's impacted my shoulder range of motion. And now I'm compensating here, overcompensating here. I think that's crucial. Just all of that morning ritual of slowly kind of just awakening yourself with different environments. I mean, I use the ocean particularly. I do some type of low impact, moderate cardio, could be a bike ride, but nothing that gets my heart rate up too high. I don't like to get my heart rate above maybe 100 in the morning, maybe for a duration. It could be a yoga routine, it could be, you know, that my neighbors think I'm crazy. I'm out there with a 12 pound maul hammer sometimes on the beach, just swinging it around like a madman, you know. And I live in a building where there's a few Russians and they're looking at me like, do you know what this is? You have any idea what you're doing? This is on our flag.

That's funny.

Yeah, you know, it's just I find the sand to be amazing too. In Miami you get a lot of that radiational heating off of the sand and it's so good for my feet and my ankles, strength and stuff. So I'll use sand resistance, I'll use sandbags that I'll fill and drag whatever I can find. And that is probably not going to be very helpful to your listeners, but it will cover the principle of make use of your environment, and hopefully you're in a place where you can explore new environments each day and pick up some novelty that you can incorporate in your daily routine.

I love that. That idea of living in a certain location and adapting your fitness routine to that location. For example, I am in the forest. You're on the beach, so you're doing sand. You're doing aquatic resistance, dumbbells or barbells, you're using sand bags. I'm in the trees. I'm in the forest, so I've got, like, ropes hanging from the trees. I've got rocks at the bottom of a gravel driveway. I've got, like, cinder blocks that I kind of drag up and through the forest, and then I've got cold. Right. So for a lot of times, for me, you know, it's. It's in the snow in my shorts with my shirt off. But it's kind of interesting. It's almost like, what's the old Jean Claude Van Damme film where they bring together all the warriors from all the different areas of the world and they fight against each other. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, bloodsport.

Yeah, bloodsport. It's almost like bloodsport for fitness, where you take all different fitness personalities or people who are into fitness and you just adapt your training to your environment. But I love that idea, and I think it's cool for the listeners to think about, like, look outside, what's around you, what kind of parks are near your home, and how can you design your fitness routine to be a part of your environment, which I would actually hazard a guess, and I don't know if you thought about this much before, David, that by doing so, of course, not only are you getting all the benefits that everybody knows about already from being outdoors, but you're probably also enhancing your immune system health a little bit too, by connecting to your local envirobiome. You know, just the, the. The flora and the bacteria and everything else that is in the exact place where you live. You know, kind of like consuming organic, raw honey from an area around you is actually very good for your immune system. You build up antibodies that are equipped to fight against the specific pathogens you might encounter in that specific environment.

100%. And that. That goes, right. That dovetails right into kind of what I do before I have my coffee. I just have a nice, you know, glass of water before I go outside. But I will enjoy a shot of bee pollen and maybe a tablespoon of royal jelly or sometimes, you know, some raw Honey with some wax in it, Something like that. Bee products are just incredible. Throughout my life, you know, I found myself being B vitamin deficient. That's the one thing I kind of struggle with. B vitamins, zinc, magnesium, calcium. I tend to burn through that stuff pretty quick. So I do, I do use a lot of bee products. I think it's underrated. A lot of strength and conditioning guys, a lot of bodybuilders, a lot of, you know, fitness, you know, let's say fitness personalities. I've never heard anyone say, yeah, you know, I live off B products, bro.

Well, it falls into apparently the category of being acceptable with this popular carnivore diet, you know, that everybody is consuming, it seems these days. And it actually is something a lot of carnivore enthusiasts will use the honey for the carbohydrate component. But man, you make a good point. The propolis, the royal jelly, I, I don't know if they're a sponsor for this podcast. I probably should have them be now, but in the past, Beekeepers Naturals is a company that sponsored my podcast and they send me, you know, propolis and royal jelly and, and I'm learning a ton of things about, you know, royal Jelly for its protective effects not only on neurodegenerative disorders, but, you know, wound healing, reproductive health. It seems to have an effect on telomere shortening as well. You know, propolis for gastrointestinal issues, you know, for, for dermatological issues. And then the pollen, you know, that alone is just, you know, it's an amazing, crunchy addition to a smoothie or salad or anything like that. And I don't want this to sound like a commercial for bee products, but there's one interesting study, you know, for those of you who are a little bit more scientific minded, that appeared in the. The Journal of Cell Longevity a couple of years ago. That's a comprehensive review of the biological actions of honey and propolis and royal jelly. And I'll link to it in the show notes. But I think everybody should have bee products and as a part of their medicine cabinet, if not a part of their just better living through science cabinet.

100%. I couldn't agree with you more. You know, bee pollen is a complete food. You know, you have, well, the B vitamins, you have, the enzymes you have, the amino acids, you have, you know, everything that you need. And it's kind of like the perfect trail food too, if you got a nice trail mix and you're going to go for a long hike. My kids Love it. You know it. And it's a unique opportunity to present this amazing product from nature to your kids. You and I both being fathers, I'm sure your kids don't have a problem with some of your more radical, radical natural suggestions, but my kids are a little more skeptical. But with bee products they think, honey, that's delicious. You know, the royal jelly, that's delicious. The propolis, I'm good with that. Here's the pollen. Okay. It's bitter, but it's kind of sweet. And they're introduced to bitters. I think that's a crucial thing for all the parents out there. Oh yeah, it's like get some bitters in your kids, you know.

Absolutely. There's a book by an author who studies animals and self selection of nutrition by animals named Fred Provenza. He wrote a book called Nourishment. And he does find that young animals tend to favor the more nutrient dense bitters deficient or slightly antioxidant deficient older plants because the younger animals don't yet need as many antioxidants or as many of those bitter phenols or terpenes or any of those other compounds as the older animals do. As a matter of fact, if they give the young animals anti nausea medication, they'll eat all the young plants because they don't have that nauseous feeling kick in when they've consumed too many antioxidants and too many bitters. And so I think to a certain extent, young humans don't really have a taste for a lot of bitter compounds because they don't need them physiologically quite as much. And yet kind of like coffee or kind of like the hops in beer, it grows on you as you get old. And I think it's not just because we acquire a taste for them. I think we physiologically, you know, based on just a little bit of built in inate intelligence, know that we might need more of these bitters. And it is funny you should bring this up because I have and for my gallbladder and liver health, drinking triphala tea at night, which is kind of an Ayurvedic, almost like something to enhance release of bile. It's great for having a good bowel movement the next morning. And it's a very interesting kind of three fruit blend of these three Indian herbs or fruits. And I gave some to my kids last night. You would have thought that I would have fed them just like a piece of dog poop off the floor. They were grimacing and gagging and I just Kind of drink it down and don't notice. Notice it much. But yeah, I think children are definitely far more sensitive to bitter tastes. And the bee products are a great way to introduce them to some of nature's vitamins with a little bit more of a sweet touch.

I'm going to get into that tea you just mentioned because gallbladder rupturing, gallbladders and gallbladders being removed runs in my family.

Yeah. Triphala is one of the best for overall gallbladder health. It's therapeutically used in ayurvedic medicine for a wide variety of gastrointestinal issues, but specifically for initiating the release of bile by the gallbladder. The only issue is that it can tend to induce a bowel movement. So effectively you wouldn't want to use it like in the morning with your smoothie or something like usually we take it at night and then when you wake up in the morning, you have a giant dump. But it definitely works as advertised in terms of enhancing liver and gallbladder and also just overall peristalsis as well. It's an interesting one to look into and I just personally buy it on Amazon. There's a bulk powder Triphala company. I forget who they are, but I'll. I'll put in the show notes for people. Okay, so, so your morning routine, you've got your honey, you've got your coffee, you've got your sand workouts, you've got your sunshine bedroom facing east. And then I would imagine at some point during the day, are you, are you working or are you retired off of your magazine cover royalty right now?

Well, I do a little bit of everything. I have an. I have an app that's running now that requires some social media activation. I have another product that's called Lynx Fitness. I don't know if you have seen these kind of friction boards. They're almost like sliders, but you have little pads and you can do hit training on them. You can do mobility work, you can do physical therapy on them. But your body weight plus about 25% resistance. Cause the surface acts as a kind of a friction surface instead of a sliding surface.

Okay. And it's called Lynx Fitness.

Lynx Fitness or Flowing. So Flowing is the European version, is a sister company out of Sweden, and Lynx is the United States and Canada version.

But are these kind of similar to the. To the. Very like. I used to go to a lot of fitness conferences and I used to run into Val, who does the Val slides, where, where you put your feet on these Sliding. They're almost like sliding discs. And you can do mountain climbers or, you know, adduction, abduction or any number of different moves as long as you have a relatively friction free surface. Is that, is that kind of along those same lines?

It's along the same lines. The board that we provide for you, there's a travel board and there's a studio board. The studio board is about 4 by 8 and that's the board I recommend. And yeah, you're provided with these kind of pads that are almost like fabric, but they provide the perfect amount of resistance because there's a patented friction surface that's almost like, let's say a very fine sandpaper grade. So you have to activate some muscle recruitment and some effort to get the flow going, get the sliding going. But once you get it going, you notice how the resistance kicks in and you're going to get a good workout. So.

Huh, and you invented that?

Well, no, I didn't invent it, but that's our product. I was the founder of the company in the United States.

Okay.

So I wrote all the fitness programs for it and then you know, of course help with the marketing and all the, all the front end image side of the product and investing and all that stuff. My real passion is really just, especially now in the times where, you know, everyone is so worried about, you know, everyone else spreading germs. I invented a respiratory enhancement product made from organic essential oils that are antiviral. So that's really my focal point in regards to my training too. It's just, you know, that, that mind body connection, that, that breath awareness, that, that, that heart coherence that listening to my heart, I, a lot, a lot of people think I'm listening to music when I'm out on the beach, have my headphones off so that I'm in a sensory deprivation and I can hear my heart rate, I can tune into my breathing. I try to sync myself up with the waves of the water. That's it? That's it, sir.

You mean you're using, you're using the headphones to block out sound so you can kind of like hear your heart rate and your ears a little bit better, that type of thing?

Yeah, just kind of block it out. But at the, you know, I'm kind of like a ninja about it, I guess.

Okay, interesting. Cool. That's a good idea.

Other than that, daily routine consultations. I do have a few clients down here. I train with only two or three. You know, right now we're trying to avoid, as you know as much face to face contact as possible. I still want to be as responsible as I can be and you know, not affect someone else's household and not affect my own household. So I'm doing as much distance training as I can and then of course, you know, strategizing for the future. I'm in the middle of writing a book. It's called the Divorce Man's Guide for Reinventing Yourself. That should be out sometime this summer.

Yeah, when you're running these companies like, like Links or the. I actually want to ask you about the essential oil because it may kind of tie into what I want to chat with you about regarding respiratory physiology and fat loss. But you know, I've got a, a manual treadmill workstation and kind of like a hand crank stand up desk and you know, one of these mats that has, you know, a topographical surface that I can stand on. So I've kind of got different working positions during the day and you know, I diffuse essential oil. I have my own little workspace set up I've talked about before. But do you kind of, I assume you're working from home. Do you have a setup that you've found to be particularly effective for or even a routine you found to be effective for maintaining your fitness or your health while you're running all these companies and working during the day?

Well, I usually, my rule is two hours on and 30 minutes off. So I'll only dedicate once my workday is going. I only do two hours in one particular place and I set a timer and then I just get up. I can be anywhere I could be. I've got two Tongas that I stand up in my kind of corner where I can see the ocean. That's kind of like my creative writing place. I've got like a nice little bonsai set up over there and a few kind of more meaningful pictures that I kind of put in that, in that area to get that kind of creative energy going. And you know, I set my workstation up on these tongas and that's where I'll do some writing. And then on my patio is where I have like a little workout station. So I'll go in between. I'll break because how I like to train. If I don't weight train, which I don't normally anymore, I'll do like maybe twice a week. I'll do weights. I'll do a full body workout with weights twice a week. But I like to do one particular muscle group for 15 minutes consecutively. Just training that one muscle group with various different range of motion, different stimulus. Could be body weight, could be weights, could be kettlebell. But I'll do 15 minutes, one like hiit cardio session a day, and then I'll do one, you know, one isolation of body weight.

What would that look like, doing like 15 minutes for one specific body part. Can you give me an example?

Well, if I was going to do, let's say very, very simple, I would do like a Bulgarian split squats with squats, maybe try to integrate some pistol squats and then maybe some mountain climbers. And then I would cycle that through. My mountain climbers would be kind of like my active rest in between the squats and the Bulgarian split squats or the jumping squats. However, whatever terminology you want to use, I would probably finish that workout with like an isometric hold. So I would try to do, you know, 90 seconds on. In a, like at a full squat position, like with hips below knees. I would try to hold that position for 90 seconds and then rest for 20 seconds. Seconds and then 90 seconds? Yep, something like that.

Okay.

I could do push ups like that. I could do rows like that. I have some heavyweight bands that I would use. You know, arms or arms and shoulders and delts are a little trickier, but I don't want to waste a lot of time with a lot of reps and a lot of, you know, using weight resistance and stuff. My body is really talking to me nowadays. I'm 46, right. I found that I can manage if I just cram in a lot of intensity without all the reps, using, you know, negatives, using isometrics and, you know, and then using like a Tabata. Tabata style, just as. As much intensity as I could pack into a certain time prescription then. Yeah, it works for me.

Interesting. So are you using any kind of, you know, whether for recovery as you age with all these fitness routines that you're doing or for sleep or anything else? Are you using any kind of technology, you know, biohacking modality, so to speak, like red light or hyperbaric oxygen? Or did you mess around with any kind of devices that you found to really be effective for you?

You know, I would love the opportunity to work with devices I haven't. I've heard the infrared light is really good. I've used infrared sauna and conventional saunas quite a bit, especially after, you know, I was in a coma before. So I'll tell you about that later, how I use the sauna to kind of rebuild myself and my endocrine system.

Oh, really? Is this, is this the near death experience? Adam alluded to that, that you had experience. Yeah, Okay. I definitely want to get into that.

Yeah.

Okay, interesting.

The only thing I can say that I use with any consistency would be biurnal beets. I'll probably put that on with like an ambient track. It's mostly nutritional. I tend to get into a really good relaxation response with some element health. CBD, they have a 1500 milligram. I'll use that. I usually put in capsules too. I'll have that ready. Or you know, maybe some passion flower, some zma. Something that's going to get me kind of nice and tranquil. I don't have a problem with sleeping too much. You know, I follow the golden rules of turning off the smartphones and the computers. I mean, it may be a rarity that I get on the phone and just do something because it requires my time. But like I said, I had the benefit and a lot of people don't. But if you ever get the opportunity to live in the ocean, you'll understand what I'm talking about. There's just an automatic succinct feeling of tranquil. When that moon rises over the water and you see those reflections and all of a sudden the winds die down and you hear the waves coming a little slower. It just puts me right in that sweet spot where I can just relax and wind down. So I have a pretty good routine of just winding down. What about you? I know that you've mentioned quite a lot of technology that you use. I'd be super interested to get your input on it.

There's a couple things I mess around with. One thing I should comment on, by the way, that just came across my mind as you were talking about, I guess some of the circadian rhythmicity issues is that it's my take that just based on human origins, a lot of human activity along the coastlines, origination probably in the Fertile Crescent somewhere, and just the overall data that I tend to see over and over again from an epidemiological standpoint that if you want to live a long time and be super healthy, living in a coastal area, being on the beach, in the sand, in the sunshine, frequently in water, including cold water, and eating a lot of fish and shellfish is one of the best things you can do for longevity. And then I'll of course get people asking me, well, then why are you living out in the forest eating nuts and berries and red meat and hunting and surviving the cold for six months out of the year? And part of it is just because I'm also a believer that you bloom where God has planted you and we're close to family and this is where we grew up, and I'm very happy here. But if you're strictly in it for health and longevity and nothing else matters to you, I think living in a, in a coastal area like you live, David, is really one of the keys to staying fit for a long time. And, you know, I'm not discounting the fact that maybe someday when I'm, you know, 60 or something, I might wind up being one of those Florida guys, but it actually is one of those things that I think you're on the right track for, especially when it comes to things like, you know, this, this whole circadian rhythm piece. Because I find like, you know, to answer your question in a long winded way, I find that especially in the winter and during the times I'm getting a lot less sun exposure, you know, aggravated by the fact that I live on a north facing slope where, you know, I've got sun for maybe 10am to 2pm even on a relatively sunny day, you know, I have to do a lot of other things to kind of regulate my circadian rhythm and sleep. So I would say from a technology standpoint, the best things I've found of late have been a lot of infrared light in the morning to simulate sunrise. So I use these big red light panels. And in addition to that, I wear blue light blockers in the morning, the red lenses. I use the raw blue light blockers with the red lenses to simulate for the first hour. So I'm waking up more of like a sunrise type of feel. So I keep most of the lights in the house off. You know, if I flip on a screen, like a phone screen or computer screen, I wear the red light glasses and then I flip on these red lights in the morning. And a lot of times I'll do infrared sauna and more red lights either in the morning or in the evening to kind of simulate more of a sunset feel. And then I just changed out all the bulbs in the bedroom to red incandescent bulbs. So the bedroom is very kind of sun setty as well when you, when you get into bed at night. And then I guess from a technology standpoint, the main things I like to use right now is I have this sound wave device called the Apollo and it creates these sound waves that lull your body into almost like a delta sleep. I just, I wrap it around my ankle. I did a podcast with the folks who Designed it, and I find that to be pretty effective. And then I use a little bit of essential oil, like a lavender, and I used to diffuse it. Now I just apply it back behind the vagus nerve behind both ears. Because I was doing some research on topical application of essential oils, and it turns out that you can actually see a pretty big increase in HRV and an increase in vagal nerve tone just by topical application near the back of the air where that vagal nerve lies. So I usually do something like lavender or rose or bergamot back behind the ears, flip on that Apollo. I've got the red light going. And then the only other thing I do pretty consistently is noise. I use a couple of different apps. One called AsleepStream, which does like pink noise, which compared to all the other ambient noise sources, really covers up noise well, lulls you into a sleep state. And then the other one that I use is called the Nucalm, because a lot of times I wake at like 4am and I want to sleep a little longer. So the nucalm has these options on its device like reboot or restore or fall back asleep. And so I'll play one of those for about sometimes 90 minutes while I'm just, you know, laying there kind of like in a dreamlike state in the morning snuggling with my wife. And those are, those are a few of the things off the top of my head I found to be pretty effective from a technology standpoint.

Yeah, I can totally see where you would have to necessitate those things based on where you're at. And yeah, that's the thing. I don't, I don't have to deal with the lack of sunlight at all. There's plenty. There's an abundance of sunlight here. Which kind of brings me to why I moved down here in the first place. So I've got psoriasis. So growing up and in, I lived in the uk. My mother was English. My father was a pilot in the military. He was a co pilot in Vietnam for the awacs, which is those big reconnaissance planes. And, you know, he met my mom when he was on tour, married her. And then I was born in Germany, we lived in Italy, we lived in Hawaii. We lived all around, you know, typical military brat family. Make friends for three years and then I'm gone. And it became, I guess through my mother's side, there was a lot of, you know, the English, you know, like hearty drinkers. So whenever I would have a drink of alcohol, let's say I was 16, 15, when I was in the UK, I'd start drinking all of a sudden, man, I just break out in scales. And, you know, a lot of people don't understand what psoriasis is. You should, you know, it's an autoimmune condition that just, you know, skin. Skin cells replicate at a faster rate, so it just appears scaly on the surface of the skin. And so, you know, you kind of leave a trail. It's a little bit embarrassing. In fact, my uncle was lead chair in the London Symphony for five years. And then. And he just continued to drink. And then his psoriasis escalated until he was so ashamed of his condition that he ended up dropping out. So it was something that I had seen alcoholism affect my family, and then I'd seen it kind of exacerbated and aggravated by this drinking. So I was like, look, what do I got to do to solve this? And the first thing was get sunshine, you know, so as soon as I got into sunshine, it cleared up immediately. And then I was like, oh, 100%. That firmly constructed this relationship with the son where most kids just take it for granted. It's like, yeah, I need this in my life.

Yeah, psoriasis is super interesting. I remember one of the first clients I trained when I was in college. He had pretty significant psoriasis. And I didn't even know that much about diet or autoimmunity at that point. But I wound up shifting him kind of like in a paleo ish direction. And he was just shocked at the impact that diet had on his autoimmune condition. And of course, if I would have had studied as much of folks like, well, Jack Cruz comes to mind as a guy who specializes in sunlight and circadian biology. Michael Hamblin is another really good researcher you can find on PubMed. I wish I'd have known that much about light back then. And I'm kind of in the midst of taking another deep dive into infrared lights. And it based on the work of someone named Tina Karu, who is the head of the Laser Technology Research center at the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, Russia. Some of her research is just absolutely amazing. I mean, she actually has a paper she's published entitled Is it Time to consider Photobiomodulation as a Drug Equivalent. And if you read that paper, it will just knock your socks off in terms of the wide variety effects not only of sunlight, but of red light in general, or so called photobiomodulation in general. It's crazy. I mean, sunlight just gets so underplayed. Light in general gets so underplayed.

Yeah, I mean, everything is light, right? I mean, it's all molecules arranged in certain configurations, but it's the origin is all light. It's very interesting stuff, you know, especially when you get into the talk of psychedelics and you realize, like, what's the source of all the visions of these plant compounds and these alkaloids? It's just they're all arrangements of different molecules. And what's responsible for the visions? Well, you know, it's the interaction between the brain and these molecules, and these molecules specifically trigger these visual centers in the brain. So it's kind of like, well, why. Well, why. Why am I watching a movie based on taking this plant substance? And what is it about this plant that has this information in it which produces these images and gives me these visions that are very unique? I mean, a lot of people say, well, you're just an active imagination. Your sensory gates are open. You're creating a reality based on preconceived information, or let's say, you know, information received at an earlier date that's just in your subconscious mind. And I'm like, it's stranger than you can imagine. It's kind of like Einstein's quote. It's like the universe is stranger than you can imagine. And I'm so glad you're in that field of research and validating that, because, you know, light is definitely where it's at, and a lot of people don't understand. It's like the food that you eat has a specific light characteristic to it. Is it dark food or is it light food? Yeah, I kind of look at food that way, you know, I'm sure you do, too.

Yeah, absolutely, I do. Okay. So there. There's a couple of things we got to talk about that I really want to talk to you about. And one is this study that appeared, I think, at the BMJ in 2014 called When Somebody Loses Weight, where does the fat Go? And the. The findings from that paper were quite interesting from a biochemical standpoint. And I'm wondering if you would be so kind as to unpack where fat actually goes when somebody loses weight and why we should care about that.

Well, what I learned from it was I may or may not be familiar with that paper, but Robert Merman, he's the one that did a TEDX on it. He's a biochemist out of Australia. He did a TedX on Where Does Fat Go? And they asked 100.

Actually, I believe his name is Reuben. He might go by Robert as well. But yeah, yeah, that's his paper in the bmj. When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?

Okay, perfect.

And by the way, just, just so folks know. Quick interruption. I'll link to that paper in the show notes for those of you who really want to geek out on it. The shownotes are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Flow. That's Flo. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Flow. All right, go ahead.

Yeah, I was astonished after years of trying different diet pills. Not that there's anything wrong with, with, you know, diet pills and supplementation or all these different, you know, expert analysis on what you should and shouldn't do to lose weight. And I think he asked in his presentation on the TEDx, you know, 100 fitness professionals, where does, where does the fat go after it's gone from the body? Where does it go? And people say, you know, they, you urinate it, you excrete it through the pores, you metabolize it. And the truth is, is that 80% of fat is excreted through respiration. You actually breathe out fat. And I know it sounds very strange to people that you would actually have something that's very tangible strapped to your waistline, and then it would just disappear every time you breathe. But the air that comes out of your body is heavier than the air that's coming in your body. He basically eloquently laid all this out and, you know, he breathed into a balloon, and then he was able to cool the balloon with liquid nitrogen and he was able to extract the very fine particles of fat which remained after he popped the bubble. You can see the whole presentation online. But then I started learning about, you know, the uncoupling of carbon from carbon dioxide, you know, carbohydrates and the carbon that you excrete. And let's say the what the triglycerides are uncoupled into the ketones of the. Was it acetone and beta hydroxybutyrate? That's all broken down to carbon, too. So when you breathe out, you're. You're basically attaching carbon molecules to the breath. And through the whole long chemical process, the whole biochemical process of metabolizing fat and excreting it through this combustible process that human respiration is, you know, what you're left with is carbon and H2O, that's what's left.

And this, by the way, is important because a lot of people believe that fat gets converted to energy or gets converted to heat, but that violates the conservation of math or the conservation of mass principle. Right. And so, you know, I think a good way for people to think about this is anytime you eat excess carbs or excess proteins, those get converted into triglycerides. Those get stored in the. In the lipid droplets of your adipocytes, your fat cells. And excess dietary fat doesn't even need to get converted. It just, you know, goes through lipolysis and re. Esterifies and also winds up in fat cells. And for you to. For access that, it has to be oxidized. Right. And to oxidize, like one single triglyceride molecule results in the need for you to inhale a certain amount of oxygen. You know, in the case of his research, you know, it was like, you know, a certain amount of oxygen correlates to a certain amount of body fat being oxidized, but then you also, as a byproduct of that, of course, produce carbon dioxide and water. And that study, which is very simple and elegant, all he did was he traced every atom's pathway out of the body, used labeled heavy oxygen to show where everything was going, and found that the majority of triglycerides being burnt, the majority of fatty acids being oxidized, were essentially Getting exhaled as CO2, showing that the lungs were the primary excretory organ for fat. So it's super interesting, and, you know, I think for a lot of people, it's like, okay, well, that is kind of interesting, but what does that mean? Does that mean if I just, like, hyperventilate all day, am I going to lose more weight? Or what would you say are the. Are the practical takeaways from that?

Well, you know, in terms of the delivery of, you know, my pulmonary embolism and the experience of, let's say, using breathing correctly, you know, there's a lot of research out there that says, you know, if you breathe, you know, too much, then you're compromising longevity. But I think I. I kind of approach that.

That'd be like Patrick McCown's research.

Exactly, exactly. And I kind of like the way I train. It's really strange since. Since my accident, 2015, I kind of. I hold my breath. I know I'm not supposed to, but it's kind of like when I dive in the water and I'm holding my breath, that's a hypoxic state that's activating, you know, these certain processes that are similar to, like. Like, let's say when you're training, I'm holding my breath while I'M training, too. People say you shouldn't do that, but I get. I get better dilation. I get better strength. I do long, deep, slow, controlled breaths for recovery periods between sets. I don't hyperventilate.

Now, when you say you hold your breath, are you talking about like a breath brace for, like, a heavy deadlift, or are you talking about like, you know, running in the sand or on an Airdyne, literally holding your breath?

No, the latter.

Okay. Are you. Are you holding on the exhale or on the inhale?

I'm holding on the inhale hold.

Okay, got it. And the reason I ask is a lot of people will, for improved oxygen delivery or to basically train the overall tidal volume, they'll take a giant breath and hold it on an Airdyne or a rowing machine or a bike or anything like that. However, to train tolerance to carbon dioxide, which is more like what a guy like Patrick McCown said is going to improve longevity or increase the delivery of oxygen in a tissue, they actually will hold, I believe, the exhale. And so it's interesting, you actually see both practice. I do both. I'll hold and inhale sometimes while I'm exercising. Sometimes I'll hold an exhale to kind of get the best of both worlds. You know, oxygen tolerance and CO2 tolerance. But ultimately, this idea of holding your breath during exercise, yeah, a lot of people here not to do it, but there's actually some cool effects that you can get out of it. You know, if you read Patrick McCown's book the Oxygen Advantage, it goes into this a lot more thoroughly. But, yeah, this idea of playing with breath during exercise is, I think, a wonderful, wonderful way to experiment with your respiratory physiology.

100%. And I find that what I'll do is I look at my energy levels, and this refractory period between sets is like building up the charge for the consecutive sets. And then what I'll do is I look at it as a pressure valve. So when you say, do you hold your breath? I do, but I don't. It's a slow release valve. So as I'm encountering the resistance, let's say for a deadlift, for example, so I can give your audience a visual. Initially, when I'm starting a pull, if it's a heavy weight, I will hold my breath. As I'm part way through the range of motion, I'll release slowly so that there is a resistance factor with holding my breath. And at the same time, the weight is leveraged against my breath. So there's this slow kind of release. I won't hold my breath as I'm holding, you know, in the top position. 400 pound deadlift. A lot of people get lightheaded and faint that way. But there's a connectivity and a sequencing and cadence to the breath that I'll use. And it's almost like the best way for me to remember it and internalize it. It's like when I go diving in the ocean, when I free dive, I'll commit to a set. There's, there's no way that I can change my mind when I'm already under the water. I've committed to the set. And so what I'm trying to do is, is I'm trying to, I'm trying to focus all the energy I have while I'm in that underwater state or while I'm in that lift. And then all that energy is allocated towards that lift with all the intensity. And then that way, you know, I'm holding my breath or I'm using a breathing technique. But when I come up, I'm obviously, and I'm obviously holding my breath to get the benefits of hypoxia and depleting, you know, getting the benefits of my breathing, my training. But when I come up, what I want is I want immune function regulation, I want recovery, you know, I want revitalization of energy storage, I want to clear lactic acid, I want to do all these recovery steps. And you know what too, I've noticed that I just feel overall better. I feel a sense of euphoria. I don't know if it's norepinephrine. I don't know what it is post set or post after max exertion of a set.

Yeah, yeah, A lot of people get that with breath exhale holds or breath inhale holds. There's even some kind of theories that that part of it is related not only to the nitric oxide production and the increase in CO2, but also a potential release of DMT by the pineal gland. Which is why, you know, holotropic breath work is something, you know, a guy like Stanislav Grof invented as an alternative to lsd. So there's a lot of interesting things happening from a neurotransmitter and a neurochemical standpoint. But I think a lot of people are probably wondering, well, why the heck are you holding your breath when we just established, based on Meerman's study, that you breathe off fat. So based off the fact that you breathe off fat, wouldn't over breathing be something or figuring out a way to just like breathe as much as possible. Be something that you would want to do. If your primary excretory organ for fat is your lungs and the main way you get rid of fat is breathing it off, why wouldn't you just kind of be like that all day long?

Yeah, I think the critical point of view that I like to express in terms of my product development, the essential oils and clearing the nasal pathway and like you just mentioned is increase in nitric oxide production through the nasal pathway, number one, Number two, recovery and immuno support. So you're not going to burn fat while you're doing it, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're not going to burn fat while you're doing the exercise. You're going to burn fat as your resting metabolic rate rises post workout.

So, well, you are going to burn fat, but the majority of the fat is burnt via non exercise activity thermogenesis all day long, just moving all day long, not the exercise session, and then also repaying the oxygen debt after you've exercised. So yeah, you're correct. Fat oxidation is primarily going to occur post workout because anytime you're moving, you're shifting the body into a state of carbohydrate utilization, you know, higher and higher percentages of carbohydrate utilization, lower and lower percentages of fat utilization. So yeah, the majority of the fat is burnt at very low intensities. However, I think, you know, some people still are under this idea, you know, based off the fact that you breathe off fat, that you should just try and over breathe, but it just, you know, it doesn't work that way. You're, you're, you're, you're essentially wanting to, if anything, I would say from a health and longevity standpoint, control breathing, do breath holds, do a lot of nasal breathing and minimalist breathing similar to what Patrick McCown recommends. And then as long as you're moving, as long as you're exercising, you know, it's almost just like this fact and correct me if I'm wrong, David, this fact that you breathe off fat is almost like a fun fact, but really doesn't change much in terms of my thoughts in terms of recommendations to move frequently, breathe through your nose, do breath holds, you know, and, and don't, don't over breathe unless you're doing like a holotropic breathwork session or Wim HOF or something like that to get ready for an ice bath.

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I, in me with my background in fitness, it's just another example of trying to deepen the breath, of pointing out the obvious. You know, a lot of people, they look at, okay, I want the body, I want the abs, I want the low body fat, I want the stats, I want the goals, I want all this, but they're neglecting the most fundamental thing. And for me, that unique little perspective on biochemistry and how humans excrete fat only points back to the very importance of realizing what is actually going on with your body. And there's so many other benefits to breathing. And then it just kind of opens up the door to all of these other benefits and understanding, hey, it's not just about, you know, losing fat. It's about controlling my anxiety. It's not just about, you know, controlling my anxiety. It's about, wait a second, I'm always congested this time of year. What is it about my sinuses this time of year? What is it about my asthma? What is it about all of these various things that I think this statistic is. Somewhere upwards of 65 to 70% of Americans experience compromised respiration every year. And when you're talking about compromised respiration, this is before, you know, the pandemics and all of this stuff. When you're talking about this, well, how much of that is affecting your performance? How much of that is affecting your cognitive performance, let alone your ability to motivate yourself to get to the gym or get what you need done or just how you treat people on a daily basis? I mean, all of that's impaired if your respiration is impaired. So I'm less of an advocate of solely promoting breathing more as a mechanism to lose fat. I'm a huge proponent of using breath to bring about awareness of the fact that every facet of your physiology could be optimized if you use particular breathing techniques and use them properly. So it's not about breathing more, I guess you could say it's about breathing correctly.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Now, now you've. You've alluded a couple of times to this special blend of essential oils. I know that's an actual product that you, that you sell for opening the respiratory pathways. And I'm curious what it is and how one would use something like that.

Yeah. Now we're getting into the plug. I can plug, plug my special sauce now.

You can plug your special sauce, David? Yes.

Everybody's like, you're selling snake oil, boy. And I'm like, well, you know, I was dead for five days and I came back to life. And this stuff makes me feel happy.

Which we're going to get into. After you explain your essential oils, we'll get into the near death experience.

Experience.

So.

So part of the formula I got when I was in Thailand a year after I recovered from my nde. And it was something that I was in the middle of nowhere and freaking out. I was listening to Joe Rogan actually and Brian Callan talk about, you know, the flu and how it was killing people. And then all of a sudden I started, you know, feeling the same way I was right before I had an embolism. And then, so I researched some different herbs, some expectorants and some different things that could like unclog my sinuses. And I was in Bangkok and I was walking around and I found some, some really cool jasmine oil. There's this, this guy comes out and I asked him all these Chinese herbs and he. No, no, not Di Guan. Di Guan. You tried it. 1. So I tried this green viscous hulk blood jasmine oil that he put in my hand and I just rubbed it together and immediately it just opened up my nasal pathway. So I grabbed a bottle of it and I went back. And I work with a lab down here who does some formulations and they're FDA certified. They have scientists and everything down. They told me what was in it. Most of it, they couldn't figure out a few of the compounds inside. So I basically reverse engineered this stuff and then added a few extra things. So it's a potent antiviral sanitizer. So my, my thing is especially now, sanitize, nebulize, exercise. So the essential oils, you got camphor, menthol, jasmine oil, wintergreen and rosemary. All of those things, they have robust literature supporting their antiviral characteristics. And I just spray it on my hands. And you nebulize it. So you nebulize the vapors.

Okay. So you can, you can use like a desktop nebulizer. You don't just have to like. Because a lot of times with essential oils used for respiratory physiology or clearing out the sinuses, One trick that Dr. Nick Berry from Essential Oil Wizardry showed to me was you just put a few drops in your hand, rub your hands together and just place both hands over the nose and inhale and inhale and breathe it all in. But then I even, like right now while you and I are talking, you know, I have essential oils in a diffuser right next to me. I'm diffusing peppermint and rosemary, which is kind of like my alertness blend for during the day while I'm working. But then I also nebulize oil, I nebulize silver, I nebulize glutathione with a face worn mask and just like a desktop nebulizer off of Amazon. And so you can take this essential oil that you make and nebulize it as well.

Oh, God. You know that you bring up silver. Yeah, you can definitely use that and nebulize it. But now that you bring up silver, I've got a nice, you know, colloidal silver spray that I just shove up my nose any chance I get. It's like people, my daughters, look at me like I'm crazy. Everybody looks at me like I'm crazy, and I'm like, I don't have sinus infections anymore. You know, it's like, yeah, that's the thing that people are missing, is that we live in environments that are full of particulate matter, break dust, God knows what's in the air that we breathe. If you live in the city, I mean, you, you probably don't experience that because you're. You're out in a beautiful pristine land. But you know, living in Miami, if I'm not on the beach, I'm exposed to brake dust and all this stuff, and it's like, how much of that stuff do you think is getting in your nose and in your body and compromising respiration? So I'm definitely using this to unobstruct my airways is especially, as you pointed out as well, is that nasal pathway is so essential for nitric oxide production and just immune function. So, yeah, I'll spray it in my hands exactly like that doctor that you referenced. And I'll nebulize it in the hands, which is very cool for me as a memory and a tribute to an homage to where the actual. One of the key ingredients from the formula came from Thailand. In Thailand, every time you buy something, they thank you with that same nebulizer position, you know, hand gesture. They put their hands together in prayer and they say thank you.

Right, right. Kop kun krab. Kop kun krab. Kop kun krab.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was like, wow, that, that really works for me. It helps me remember and give gratitude.

So you use it in the gym almost like smelling salts. You spray it in your hands, you rub your hands together and then you just kind of whiff. Take a whiff.

Exactly. Exactly.

Interesting. Okay.

And the more, and the more you breathe it, the more effective it is. I mean, it really does work. And it, it's, it's potent for about 30 minutes.

And what's, what's in it? Which essential oils.

So it's rosemary, wintergreen, jasmine and camphor and menthol.

Oh, camphor is potent. Camphor is like kind of like a cinnamon type of. Isn't it related to the cinnamon plant?

I think, I think you're right. Yeah. You know, Tiger bomb. Campers and Tiger bomb. So it's. Yeah, it's very potent.

Yeah, that stuff is potent. Wow. That, that alone to huff that would be pretty amazing. But yeah, it's in tiger, but it's in Vicks VapoRub. I think CBDfx has like a muscle balm that has it in there. And then a lot of people know biofreeze or Bengay, like it's in all that stuff. I've never actually thought about rubbing it on my hands and taking a whiff. But of course when you're congested, you can smear a little vapor rub underneath your nostrils. And you know, the interesting thing is that, you know, regardless, I assume. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, you're not marketing this as a way to burn more fat because you're breathing better, are you?

No, but because I come from the, the. My background is in fitness. I'm challenging people to pay attention to the way that they breathe and if they're, if their goal is to lose weight, which obviously obesity is a, you know, huge risk factor for all cause mortality. I'm just trying to get people to exercise more and breathe better. I think if I could teach people how to fish, they don't have to ask me for fish and diet pills and you know, training schedules so much. I just want them to start tuning into their body and allowing their immune system and their physiology to speak for itself. And I think the doorway to that awareness is through breathing. So no, I mean, I might mention it as a fun fact in relation to, hey, my product can help you breathe better. There's no claims that my product will help you burn fat better, but breathing better will help you burn fat better.

Right. Or just exercising more intensively, which peppermint, rosemary, etc. Those have been shown to really increase your exercise potential, increase your exercise tolerant tolerance, improve time to exertion, reduce rating of perceived exertion during hard exercise. And I interviewed A doctor named Dr. John Laurence out of Sarasota, Florida and he does like a peppermint rosemary cinnamon nasal spray. And then he has kind of like an upgrade to that that he adds the Amazonian herb hoppe to along with oxytocin and before I go and jam on the Aerodyne, I, I take a few huffs of that stuff. He calls it Zen Spray. And oh my gosh, it, it just, I mean, it rips you wide open. It's not quite as bad as snorting the actual true Hoppe powder from the Amazon, which for, for me, if I do that, like, I'm lit up for a couple of hours plus getting all sorts of green, chunky stuff coming out of my sinuses.

That's right.

But that, that Zen spray is amazing. And this sounds like it's right up that same alley. So that's very interesting. You know, I think anybody who's listening who hasn't experimented with essential oils for workouts, especially like you're, you know, compared to smelling salts or what. What's that stuff called? Nose Torque. You ever use Nose Torque?

Yep. No, I've never used it, but I've heard of it.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no, Nose Torque, it's, it's a trip. I, I use that to, to punk my friends sometimes. It's, it's, it's what the power lifters use, basically. Smelling salts, Nose torque, smelling salts. And if you are like, sleep deprived or if you're just down and you want to jack yourself up big time, that nose torque is amazing. But I'm, I'm more into the Zen spray now. But I mean, considering you get Nose torque for like 10 bucks, you can get a giant bottle of it on Amazon. It's actually worth having one on hand just to, you know, proceed with caution, but it's actually worth trying just to see what the effects are.

Yeah, it's like you want a, a little bit of Fireball Bourbon in your, in your liquor cabinet every once in a while. Right?

Exactly, exactly. That reminds me, I need to up my stock on that. I, I think the last time that I used Nose Torque was I, I told someone that it was like a lavender sleeping substance that would help them get to sleep and just told them to lay back, lay down. I said, okay, so on three, I want you to just take a giant breath in through your nose.

Yes.

They're like, 1, 2, 3, and oh my gosh, they hated me for months. The person who's listening, person who I did that to, I think, is listening to this podcast. So I'm sure he knows who he is and he's hating me all over again. Well, not to be too trite in addressing NDEs and near death experience experiences, but speaking of smelling salts and bringing people back from the dead, I'm I'm very curious about your. Your nde because you've alluded to it a couple of times before we get into that, by the way, you guys, I'll. I'll link to David's flow product or the. His Flow 2 product. I'm not making any money off it. I. And I. I'll link to his website in the show notes. So that being said, Mr. Snake Oil Salesman, now that we've established that's it, man.

I'm huffing. I'm huffing and I'm puffing.

Tell me about the near death experience.

So, bro, well, just to give you some backstory, two years prior to the experience, I did my first ayahuasca session. And at the end of the session, I actually had the entire health scenario scare, near death experience, heart tumor, the whole thing. I had the vision of it two years before. And what's really bizarre is the shaman at the end, and Adam was actually at that ceremony, at the end of that ceremony, the shaman carved from a ayahuasca vine, you know, a talisman. He would give, you know, someone a little memento, and he picked a heart for me, which was incredible because two years later, I was diagnosed with an atrial myxoma. After I was admitted to the hospital with respiratory arrest through a pulmonary embolism and then intubated for five days. And while I was in the netherworld for five days, I saw myself above myself as disembodied consciousness. I jumped back in my body and it just so happened to be that on my birthday, I came back to this plane of existence. Yeah, it's very. I can tell you this with the utmost certainty because I have witnesses that the reality that we live in and that we play in with altered states and we. We go into this visionary, imaginary world wherever we go in our brain, if it's the limbic system, the reptilian brain, neocortex. I don't know. I don't know. But we are tapped into something greater that is far more astonishing than we could ever imagine. And the evidence of this time and space continuum being, you know, out of. I guess like you can. At certain points, you can get the aroma that this linear existence, this. This way of accounting for time doesn't exist, because I jump back, I jump forward. My phone, the day that I came out of that coma turned on by itself, my girlfriend and my sister, who's an oncology nurse, was there in the room. The phone turned on. It started operating by itself. I thought it was malfunctioning. I told my girlfriend it was plugged into the wall. Charging. I told her to turn it off. It turned back on again. It had the fingerprint, fingerprint encryption safety. It opened up by itself. Boom, started operating again. Going through text messages like crazy. I told her, you know, just unplug the phone. It must be, you know, malfunctioning. And this is like within an hour of me being revived. Like I actually excavated myself, if anyone knows what that's like. You've got this huge plastic thing attached to your face with a lot of force holding this intubation tube. At the bottom of the tube, there's like a. Between a baseball and softball size inflatable device. It's kind of at the end of the intubation tube to secure the tube. Apparently I had perfect technique in extubating myself at 3am on my birthday because I just ripped the thing off my face and, you know, out. The doctor said I could have torn out my vocal cords. But, you know, three hours after waking up, shortly after, I see this phenomena with my phone turning on and off. And then all of a sudden it's like, finally I'm just like my sister and my girlfriend, like, what's going on? You know. So the thing turns on and it goes into pictures, it goes into text. I had all these texts populating because my phone was off. So I had all these text messages coming in from people I had heard that I was in the hospital. I was, you know, in the netherworld for five days. So the first, you know, few texts are coming through. And then one text comes through. It's my sister who lives in Arkansas. Her husband's a neurologist. She sends a picture of my grandmother's rosary. It zooms in real quick and then it goes right on. Christ. And it kind of does this function. I've never seen an iPhone do. It kind of bordered the picture with a flashing black and white frame. And it was just flashing. And it was doing this all by itself. No one was touching the phone. And it was doing it with such precision and such speed that it was like someone was remotely accessing my phone. And then. And it zooms out of that picture and it zooms into the pictures that when I was intubated and unconscious, in a coma, and it just zoomed in on my picture and did the same thing. It zoomed in on my face while I was like, out. And then it flashed.

Your phone did?

My phone did. By itself, yeah. I've got two witnesses that were in the room that watched the whole thing happen.

And what's your explanation for why you think something like that would have happened?

My explanation is that, and I, of course I can't prove it. The absence of evidence is the evidence of absence. I can only state with certainty that I did witness this thing. And I can say that there are forces at work that are beyond, you know, our brain's ability to access and interpret and those forces. As much as I was raised a Catholic and a Christian and then I strayed away from that, getting into college and, you know, in my academic kind of life and my social life and trying to create peace and purge and cleave the dogma from my thinking, I've completely turned back to my Christian foundations. Not that I was never not a Christian, but it was just I'm more a believer and an understander, understander of the orthodox mechanisms that have allowed Christianity to exist 2000 years after it was created.

Is this because of seeing something that made you believe that God existed during that nde? Was it an actual conversation that you had while you were in that state? What would you say pushed you over the edge to that extent?

I've never, I've never doubted God's existence. I've only at certain points in my life where I feel like my choices have led me down a road where I felt abandoned by God. I've always asked for, give me guidance, let me know that you're here. Like, I can't handle this anymore. I've, I'm cashed out. I'm done. I don't want to be here anymore. I don't know if I can pick myself up. It's like, I'll give an example. It's like after this occurred and I saw these kind of things happen in my phone, immediately walks in the cardiologist and says, wow. He sits by my bedside, mind you, I'm three hours out of a five day coma. And he says, look, we've discovered why you had a pulmonary embolism. We did an MRI of your heart. We found an atrial myxoma, which is a benign tumor. That's good. It's benign, but it's about, you know, gave me the measurements. It's about the size of the tip of your pinky.

Yeah. And those are very rare. Like a cardiac tumor is pretty rare.

Very rare. Yeah. Tumors don't form on cardiac tissue, on smooth muscle. But in this particular case, he tells me, you know, we're going to need to do open heart surgery. And I'm like, wait a second, you know, I'm supposed to be, you know, in Boise, Idaho, you know, Tomorrow doing filming Bodybuilding.com's $25,000 body transformation challenge, blah, blah, blah. You know, I had not even realized that I was out for five days yet. You know, I think actually my, my sister and my girlfriend played it had a cruel joke that they were going to put like, happy 2025. You know, you made it like, surprise, you Woke up, it's 10 years later. But, you know, he tells me we're gonna have to do operation. I'm like, everything I have is all in on fitness. And, you know, I went through this divorce and I was at a crossroads in my life before. And I said, maybe what I'm doing is not the best life for me. And I did actually. I had a surfer's bible, which was what I was married with. That bible fell on the floor out of a box that I was using to unpack my new life in my unfurnished apartment without the custody of my kids. And that Bible fell down, face down, but open to a page. And when I picked that book up and I read, said that rabbi, we are laying hands on the sick and that some unclean spirits are not able to be cured. And Christ said, well, only through fasting can this unclean spirit be removed. And so that was my pursuit into intermittent fasting, which my first, my first road down to fasting highway was a five day water fast. And it was, it changed my life. Absolutely changed my life in such a radical way. And really.

So you hadn't fasted much at that point?

Nope. This was 2000 and my divorce was 2010. My pulmonary embolism was 2015. So. So anyway, the doc says, you know, hey, we're gonna have to open you up, we're gonna have to take this tumor out, blah, blah, blah. It's like this, you know, the hell you are. You're not doing anything. Well, my phone starts acting up again. It starts dialing an old client of mine. And by this time, the phone has my complete attention. It dials this woman named Barbara, who used to be a client three years ago, who just so happened to be dating a cardiologist for a week. That same week I was in the hospital, Barbara had just started. And my phone knew to call Barbara. Well, I texted Barbara. I said, you know, hey, I'm in the hospital. She said, I know you're in the hospital. I've been meaning to get ahold of you. You know, My husband is Dean Roller. He's a cardiologist in Florida. I called Dean, he said, send over the mri. I'll tell you if you need to get the operation now. So he said, no, I don't think you need the operation now. It's not critical. I think you need to recover, and I think you need to be on anticoagulants. And we can do some more testing and observe from here. So my whole life would have changed, like from there. If they hadn't done an open heart surgery, my whole. Everything I've worked for in fitness would have ended right there. I was in the other world. All I can tell you is that when I came back, I was definitely reborn. My sight was different, my hearing was different. My girlfriend, who had never prayed ever.

After the near death experience, not after the fast.

Correct, Correct. After the near death experience, my girlfriend, who was terrified when they gave her the prognosis. After the third day, I was under. They said that sepsis was there. They had to. I was on kidney dialysis. I had seven different IVs in me. I had a catheter in me. I had this long electrode that they actually inserted under my right pec that was right onto my heart to monitor my heart. I was just a wreck. And she never prayed during our relationship. And then I don't want this to be about some big Bible session, you know, I'm not an advocate of pushing my beliefs on anybody else. All I can do is report what happened.

That's okay. I am.

Yeah.

Good.

Okay, cool. So, boom, I wake up. The second I wake up and she's there by my side. I had gotten her a necklace from Brazil, which was the Christ. And this necklace was one of those necklace that, you know, you let it on your. You leave it on your neck until it breaks off. And she said that she had prayed for the first time since she was a child when the doctors told her that I had a 50, 50 prognosis. And she started praying. And then when she opened her eyes, the necklace was on her arm and she started crying and she just got super emotional. So she told me that story from there. I dodged the bullet with the. With the open heart surgery because, of course, you know, these young doctors, I mean, they're so bright and so eager to test their knowledge and the new technology that they have in these cardiac wards. And of course, you know, they've got a ton of student debt they need to get off their chest. So fortunately, man, I dodged the bullet. It was just like any other normal day. I didn't know that I had a heart condition. I didn't know I had an atrial. I was a kid who grew up with a heart murmur that didn't have the diagnostics. I never had gotten, I guess, a thorough checkup, enough to get any imagery or any MRI scans to look that close at my heart. But they said I had a staph infection that ultimately led to, like, a walking pneumonia, which cascaded to a blood clot being released from that tumor into my lungs. And then I had respiratory arrest and then was intubated and then kind of barely got out. Barely got out with my life, you know.

Wow.

Yeah, wow.

And. And. And you did that. You did that fast afterwards and found that that had an impact on the tumor itself.

You know, I have been talking to different physicians, I guess. You know, I. I was considering doing stem cells, and then when I read that that tissue could grow because of introduction of stem cells, but they were. I have to get you some. There's different herbs that have been used in certain cases that have eliminated the atrial myxomas. And right now I'm on netokinase. I'm on natural anticoagulants, because I didn't. I can't take warfarin or all those things, man. I'm not. Those things are poison, man. I mean, they may save some people's lives, but I'm fully functional, and I've had no critical incidents since then. So I've just done my research, and I take natural, you know, I take ginkgo, take nattokinase, I take, you know, turmeric. All of them are, you know, kind of mess with blood platelet formation and thin the blood enough to. Yeah, so.

Yeah, of course, you know, for. For me, as a. As a Christian who believes in a magical God, fairy in the sky, you know, made everything we live on in. In a span of six days, I do not discount even things like material miracles, you know, the movement of necklaces, the ability of cell phones to somehow respond to some kind of a spiritual dimension or something going on from that standpoint. But whenever I have these conversations, it just. When I have these conversations or when I do some kind of a plant medicine experience, that takes me into a whole different dimension that I know is more than just serotonin and dopamine playing around in my head or DMT getting dumped from my pineal gland, and especially when I see the type of things that happen almost from a serendipity standpoint afterwards. I am a believer in a lot of this stuff, but I just find a lot of it so. So fascinating. Do you do you have books that you recommend or certain resources for people who would want to learn more about near death experiences or explanation of some of the phenomenon that you experienced?

Well, if you know, the Spirit Molecule obviously is a great book to start. I mean, that'll let you know this from scientific perspective, the kind of, the mechanisms of the death experience and what's going on in the brain.

The new Pixar movie, Soul.

Yeah, yeah. You know, there's a.

Which actually, it actually is. I don't watch many movies, but I watch that. That's a fantastic movie. If anybody has not seen that, you don't need to have kids to watch it. It's wonderful. It'll inspire you to be more mindful, to appreciate life more. I thought that movie was great.

Well, you know, the more you go down this whole rabbit hole of investigating every, every bit of the substance from which we're, you know, we're constituted, it's kind of like, why isn't it plausible to think that like you said, that there's some magical force that just created this gigantic ball of burning gas that's sustaining everything and that this invisible force called gravity, it's kind of like, look, I can say that I know Los Angeles, but I really don't. People can say that they know psychedelics or psychedelic experience. That's like saying that you have a phone book and you can know Los Angeles by opening up the yellow pages of Los Angeles and, or the white Pages and saying, looking at people's phone numbers and their names. We don't, we don't know anything. I mean, at least I don't, I don't know anything. And anytime I'm in those situations where I claim that I do, I'm dumped on my head and I'm left scratching going, we do live in a vibrant mystery, a miracle that just continues to astonish you. If you can do the due diligence of peeling back the layers of discovery through yourself and through this amazing, majestic, miraculous world that we dwell in. Anything that your, your listeners or anybody out there that wants to just, just find more about this. I mean, there's tons of documentaries, but I'm not a. I didn't go to the other side and find some vision of hell. Thankfully, fortunately, I didn't come back with some lessons. But what I did, what I did come back with this very palatable feeling of I made it because my willpower. You know, there's lessons in the esoteric, spiritual, you know, world of Buddhism and Taoism and even Christianity, the Gnostic, Texts and stuff is that, you know, your willpower not to train or to get in shape or your, your intellectual endeavors, all of these things that you want to achieve with in life, it's like it's a muscle, it's a willpower. And your free will, especially in today's world, in the United States, your free will is being questioned of its own validity and its own existence. Your own sovereignty, your ability to choose your path by doing the reps. And I think that just doing the reps every day allowed my soul to kind of find my body. You know, there's a serious neuromuscular connection and I think I've done enough to establish the angiogenesis, if you will. The blood capillaries are fully dilated and they're rooted into this body. And I don't think they're going anywhere for, anytime soon. So I think that's what I kind of learned, is that the work that I did, really, you know, I got, I got strong roots, man, you know.

Yeah, yeah. That's a good perspective too on just doing the work that is to be done every day. Chopping wood, carrying water. There's a great book by the same name and I'm actually working on an article about this idea right now of simply waking up each day doing as extraordinary a job as you can with whatever God has put on your plate for the day, and then sitting back and enjoying the success that goes along with that. Doing everything in a spirit of loving God and loving other people in an unselfish mindset. You do that and the success will follow. And obviously success may come in the form of an essential oil blend that you can huff and puff. It may come in the form of a slide based fitness product like you created, David, or anything else. I know I've been writing down a ton of stuff during this entire discussion that I'll link to@BenGreenfieldFitness.com flow I wish we had more time to just. I mean, we could geek out on near death experience. I feel like we almost barely scratched the surface of exploring everything that happened during that experience. But I'm hoping, and this is my goal with a lot of these shows, that we at least got people thinking a little bit about things like the afterlife, about things like, you know, spiritual phenomenology and phenomenons that can occur here on the, you know, on the earth dimension. And also, you know, a little bit of respiratory physiology and some other fun stuff thrown into the mix. So, David, this is, this is fascinating. I'm gonna link to A lot of the articles you've written on respiratory physiology and fat loss, everything we talked about, from, you know, B products to Patrick McCown's book to the to the nose torque stuff and then the Flow 50 or the Flow O2, your product. I'll link to all that, the show notes@bengreenfulfitness.com Flow again. I feel like, and I hate it when people say this on the podcast because I feel like it's an oft used phrase, but I feel like we could have talked forever, man.

Yeah, 100%. And I want your listeners to really understand the type of person that I perceive you to be. You're an inspiration to me, brother. Your diligence and your continued effort to be with a true spirit, the true pioneer spirit, to deliver this information and test this information in real time instead of waiting for scientific establishment to say yes or no. You are participating in an amazing scientific experiment every day. And I know that. I appreciate what you do if you don't hear it enough. You're the man, brother. And I really appreciate your time.

Thanks, man. That means a lot coming from a successful guy like you. So I really appreciate you coming on the show, appreciate Adam having introduced us. I'll link to the podcast that I record with Adam. If you guys didn't hear that, it's really fantastic. And at some point I'll have to make it down there to Miami to hang with you guys because I hear Florida is the place to be at right now during the time we're recording this, during the whole pandemic. I could use a little sunshine and fish, so you guys might see me sooner rather than later.

Anytime. Make casse su casa, brother.

All right, well, we'll have a little party down there. All right, well, folks, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with David Morin signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com show notes are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Flo, 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 of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.