Is 5G Really That Dangerous, Plant-Based Diet Difficulties, Reversing Biological Age & Much More!

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

So there's a problem with the modern science in that sometimes we become too disconnected from nature or we develop so many shortcuts that all of a sudden we're no longer living anyway.

Our ancestors did that. Why can't we find enjoyment in it instead of always seeking comfort?

Biggest contributors to inflammation that exists and that I have found to be in huge quantities here in India, possibly even more than in America, is, is health.

Performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.

Well, here we are.

Today's episode is the final of a series of podcasts that you've probably or maybe not have heard of. My recent trip to India, which I managed to actually escape just in time before this whole pandemic set in, but nonetheless, I did a whirlwind tour of Bangalore and Delhi and Mumbai and recorded all the different panels and Q&As that I was on for your listening pleasure. And today's episode is a doozy. We get into everything from 5G and EMF hazards from mobile phones, and whether we do have to worry about 5G or not. Oh, and by the way, I am not one of those like, 5G causes coronavirus conspiracy theory kind of guys. I've been tweeting a lot of my thoughts about that. So if you go to twitter.com BenGreenfield that's where I've been pushing out a ton of. Not just information about that, but all of my thoughts. Research, studies, hacks, et cetera, for coronavirus. That's probably the best way to follow me when it comes to staying up to date on my own research with this whole pandemic. But we also get into anti aging, we get into aesthetics, we get into digestion and gut health, a whole host of stuff. So the show notes for today's show are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Mumbai. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com you guessed it. M u m bai hey, good afternoon.

Oh, come on, you guys got more than that.

Good afternoon.

Yeah, there we go.

I like to stand when I speak. Actually, I don't think I get enough energy sitting down. So thank you all for being here today. Before I introduce myself, I'd like to know, do we have people here from the fitness industry? Does people here know much about biohacking?

Yes.

And you want to know more, right? Okay, great. So let me tell you a little bit about Fizik Global and Hammer Clinics, first and foremost. So Fizik Global are the exclusive Hammer Clinics education partner. And we've had several hundred Hammer Clinics across the country over several years. We've educated thousands of fitness professionals and fitness enthusiasts and have played a major role in changing the way fitness is perceived in India and helped people to progress with their careers. For the very first time, we are introducing biohacking into India. Now, Physique Global has always been innovators when it comes to education biohacking. We had been told that it's too advanced to bring to India just yet. I don't believe it is. And we wanted to do something a little bit different. So as always, we wanted to get the best from any space when it comes to education. So with me on my right, please show a warm hand for Ben Greenfield. And on my left, you may know of him to Chris Gethin. My name is Jag Cheema. I am the CEO of Physiq Global and my role usually is to put these types of events together with our wonderful team who play a major role in that. Today we're going to be covering a lot of topics within the biohacking space. What we're going to try and do is to make it very relevant and connectable with your everyday lives. Does that sound good?

Yes.

So I'll tell you another thing. Any of the seminars forums that we have, they can be as high energy or as low energy as you want. So the energy that you give is what you're going to get back. So at the end of this, you may have a whole load of REM or deep sleep.

We don't want that.

Right. Okay, so. Or you'll be walking.

Isn't there like a gin and whiskey, like a tasting downstairs? I think we should probably bring some of that up here.

But the idea is that when you walk out of here, you should all walk away with something valuable that you can go and change your lives and the lives around you. How does that sound? So the way that we're going to format this is more of a panel discussion and at the end we're going to have Q and A's. There is quite a lot to go through. So if I tend to stop any one of my colleagues from speaking this only because of time constraint and the fact that I want to try and.

Get through as much as possible.

Is that good? Fantastic. Okay, so I'm gonna sit and speak, which I don't like normally doing, but I think it's appropriate. Ben, I want to congratulate you on your latest publication, Boundless.

Thank you.

It is already Wait for it.

Wait for it.

It's already the best number one bestseller in eight categories on Amazon. That deserves a round of applause. What does it mean to be boundless?

You know more about my book rank? I do, absolutely.

It's a heavy book.

It's. Yeah, it is. My apologies. What does it mean to be boundless? Well, it comes down to energy, really, and that's what we're going to be talking a lot about today. That's, that's why we do things like use scientific technology or biomass, because most of us just want more energy to accomplish more in life, to take whatever skills that we have been blessed with, whatever our true purpose and calling is in life, and to make the maximum impact with that, no matter what our skills or our purpose or our careers are. And what, what I noticed with increasing frequency is that people seem to be, A, getting a lot of phone calls and B, walking around with. With less energy than I think a human being deserves to have. You know, for the longest time, I myself was fooled into believing that a proper exercise habit or movement patterns or the perfect fitness routine or the best body or the biggest muscles or the most efficient heart would make one healthy, especially when combined with the perfect diet. And so for a long time, I myopically focused on exercise and diet and neglected so many of the other variables that contribute to our energy or our lack thereof. Things like our cognitive performance and how we care for our brain, how we attend to things like neuroplasticity and neural growth and inflammation, the blood, brain barrier and neurotransmitter balance, digestion, how to heal the gut, leaky guts, immune factors that are related to whether or not we get sick with increased frequency. You know, there are a whole host of things to attend to, the mitochondria. Perhaps the most important would be our spirit, our souls, the invisible part inside all of us that really does keep us going at the end of the day when we're 70 or 80 or 90. And that keeps going long after our bodies and our brains have perished. And so for me, boundless energy comes down to optimizing each of these different areas. Not just performance and food, but digestion, brain, sleep, hormones, immunity on down the line. And so, you know, really what I want to do with the book, what I mean when I say boundless is I want people. I want you to be able to have the energy that you want at your deck and call all day long. And that takes a multimodal approach. Right? It's not the perfect exercise routine. It's not the perfect diet. It's combining all these different variables. You're attending to every aspect of the body that is either going to strip you of energy or give you energy. So being boundless simply means having all the energy that you want. And that's why I wrote the book.

Awesome.

Chris, I know that you have recently been reading Ben's book.

What would you like to tell us about it so far?

It took you about three years to write that, correct?

Yeah, about three years.

He must be a very fast writer because it'll probably take me about three years to. To read is a huge book, but it's full of so much information. I'm probably about a quarter of the way through it. I like to usually read in bed in this position, but it's brought my posture up just by holding it. But it's a phenomenal piece of information that has a global structure that you'd find in so many other books. Usually when I read a book within this realm, there's good chapters in there that I take and create my own book from. And it's still a good book. If I take a chapter, you know, it isn't a waste of a book. But this has chapter after chapter of phenomenal information. Unfortunately, I just cannot carry that around while I'm traveling. So now I'm downloading the audio version to take back with me to the US on my long haul flight, which is about 40 odd hours. But it's information that you can take and apply. I ask all of you to read this book, but don't become a student of learning as so many of us do. As an example, years ago, growing up on a farm in Wales, we struggled financially. But my father purchased a book by Robert Kiofsky called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. He didn't just read that book, he applied it and then he purchased an investment property, then another, then another. Ten years later he had 40 investment properties and left the farm because he applied it for the betterment of us. So if you read this book, please don't just read it, apply it because you will have so much more boundless adventure and energy for your life and your loved ones. So please do that for us.

And if I could jump in real quick when it comes to reading in general, because I'm a voracious reader, I love to read. But we live in an information era, especially in an era of Kindle, for example, where it's so easy to have many, many books and be finishing one book with two or three or four or seven still left in your queue. To read. I have a lot of principles that I follow when I read books. You know, for example, one being that I never feel pressured to read an entire book. Like, I'll go through and get the highlights out of the book, get the most important parts, and then simply move on after I've devoured what I actually want from certain chapters of that book. But then I will take the, what I would deem the perennial bestsellers, as Ryan Holiday might call them, or the books that are crucial. I have one shelf on my bookshelf where I shelf the books I want to read every year, the best of the best. And I think it's better to come back to and return to the classics that really inspired you to drive those home over and over again than to just constantly be reading books, shelving them, and forgetting what's in them. So make sure that. That as you're reading them. And. And I would hope, of course, that Boundless becomes one of those books that you turn to year after year. But. But just know that that's one of my strategies when I read is I have those books that I do return to year after year. And I even use a program called Read Wise. And what Readwise does is it allows me to input the books that were my favorite books, and every week it will send me an email with the highlights of those books. They kind of stay top of mind and return to me week after week. But just make sure that as you read, you're cognizant that you want to take the good stuff and come back to it over and over again. That's a technique that I certainly use.

Awesome.

Ben, where can people find your book.

If they want to order it?

In India and in many international locations, it would be BoundlessBook.com Book Depository. BoundlessBook.com Book-Depository if you don't know how to spell depository, I'm sorry, turn your neighbor.

Awesome.

Okay, we're going to kick off with gut health. Now, there's a lot of effects of current diets, processed foods on the gut, and I think that's quite a. A big, big segment of the biohacking industry. Now what. How important is gut health then?

Well, it's important. I mean, I think everybody knows that the gut is important because that's where we drive not only all of our nutrients, but that's where, you know, most of the beings that are not us reside, our bacteria. And certainly there. There is a skin biome and a nasal biome and a hair biome. But the majority of the biome. The bacteria thrive and live in the gut, and they're constantly churning out neurotransmitters and what would be called postbiotics that contribute to a great deal of our energy levels or our lack of energy. And so, yeah, the gut is incredibly important not only for our nutrient absorption from food, but also for the care of that bacteria that impacts so many other functions within the body. I mean, when we were forming as an embryo in our mother's womb, there were two branches of our nervous system that basically took off, one being the enteric nervous system and one being the central nervous system. Many of us are familiar with the central nervous system as our brains and our neurons and our nerves. And the enteric nervous system is that entire nervous system that resides within the gut. And it's all fed and fueled by this vagus nerve that stems from the cranial nerves within the head and then snakes through the rest of the body to innervate the rest of the organs. But the reason this is important is because it means that if we don't care for our gut, we aren't cognizant as to what the status from a health standpoint or guts are. It's going to affect our mental function and our sleep function, our neurotransmitter production, our mood, our emotions, dramatically. And so by caring for the gut, you really are caring for the rest of your body. And so it's incredibly important. But the problem is that there are a variety of issues that can go wrong with it. And that's why I would say that functional medicine really has it right when they come at most issues. By leading with the gut, by testing the gut, by asking patients about gut function, and by determining what's actually going on in the guts, whether it be inflammation or parasites or yeast or fungus or bacterial imbalances or anything else, because it's such a root cause of disease, of chronic disease and poor energy levels among some people.

Chris, what kind of effects have processed.

Foods on your gut? There's a lot of effects. It isn't just coming from the processed food. It could be from, you know, like what Ben mentioned, what's in the ear. You know, it could be the pollutions. It could be the mold toxicity that can have an effect. I mentioned before that in 2014, when I had. I was diagnosed with mold toxicity by Dr. Spin out clinic in Oldsmont, Florida, the first thing that he did, you know, I had the stool test, the blood samples, absolutely everything, but it was a brain scan that showed the mold toxicity, but he didn't work in my brain. He worked on my gut for six weeks. I had the colonic hydrotherapy, glucose, various forms of iv, but this. The center focus for the next six months was to heal my gut. So, of course, fast foods, processed foods, can definitely have an effect on it, especially if you looked at. Look at the sources of the foods today that doesn't always have to come from fast foods. It could be just the meat that we're buying today that is just full of antibiotics, the vegetables that we think are healthy, or the salads that have glyphosate that's all over it, that can have an effect. So you have to be very, very cognizant of the sources of the food that you're eating, whether healthy or not.

And.

But I think it should be obvious to absolutely everybody that the processed foods, the vegetable fats, the fast foods that we have, and, you know, on top of that, with inactivity, the sugar as well, in combination with all of the above, is just a recipe for disaster for your gut that could have an inflammatory effect in your gut, which leads to a chemical response in your brain.

Now, there's a lot of myths that I come across, especially meeting people from various gyms across the country, where a lot of people compare ancestral living versus modern living. For example, ghee, back in the olden days, that used to be quite a big part of diet and even is with some people today. But a lot has changed. So, Ben, what is your view on ancestral living versus modern science?

You know, I don't necessarily think that the two need to exist in isolation. I mean, that's really the way that I live my life, right? Like, I live out in a forest, and we raise goats and chickens, and we grow most of our own vegetables, and I hunt much of our meat, and we spend lots of time in the sunshine and swimming in the river and plant foraging and living very connected to nature in a way that our ancestors would have. And when we're preparing grains or leggings or rices, we soak and we sprout and we ferment, and we use lots of what would be considered, you know, more ancestral preparation methods for our foods. But at the same time, you know, I'm sticking laser lights up my nose and standing naked in front of red light panels and using all manner of different biohacks for anything from exercise routine to enhancing sleep. And so I think that the two can go hand in hand. And I certainly even wrote Boundless with this viewpoint of combining ancestral living with modern science. I mean, you know, for example, you know I will, I will sleep on a map called a, called a body balance map, which emits about a 7.8Hz frequency that just blasts my body with the same frequency that would be emitted by the planet Earth for a reduction of inflammation while I sleep. But I also go outside barefoot, I go, go for walks, went for a walk today. And I'm wearing these sandals right now called Earth runners that have copper plugs built into the bottom of them that allow me to soak up the negative ions from the earth and get that anti inflammatory benefit when I'm simply outside in the sunshine. But of course I combine that with these, with these modern strategies such as grounding and earthing mats or propulsed electromagnetic field frequency or other things that help us to mimic what nature might give to us even when we're in our modern indoor boxes that we're living in. So I think that both can, can exist together. And you know, you can of course use either the wrong way. You know, for example, when it comes to modern science, one thing that I've noticed in the US that I would caution you about here in India as you become more interested in biohacking, is there are many biohackers who are kind of fat, sick and unhealthy in the US because they rely too much on the technology or they're so disconnected from nature that they're simply using a bunch of biohacks in their office or their home all day, getting bombarded by the WI fi or the Bluetooth or the non native EMF that all these devices might produce. And they're not getting biophotonic light from sunlight, they're not getting nourishing plant matter that's fresh. And they're not maintaining a connection with a planet Earth because they're inside on the third floor of an office building and they are using infrared and near red light panels, but not actually getting the full spectrum of light from the sun. And they are, for example, sometimes exercising, but exercising very, very short, brief doses, you know, using strategies that don't necessarily mimic, you know, the physical activity, the constant all day physical activity that our ancestors might experience. Right. So, so there's a problem with the modern science in that sometimes we become too disconnected from nature or we develop so many shortcuts that all of a sudden we're no longer living anyway. Like, like human beings have lived for thousands of years. And at the same time you can also overuse ancestral living. I know many people, for example, who will hear about some superfood whether it be ghee or blueberries or kale, and simply eat to excess. Many of these foods that can actually cause issues when consumed in excess, or they'll simply be in a hyper or caloric state because they hurt. Ghee is good for them, but they're putting three tablespoons of ghee in every cup of coffee that they're consuming during the day and their triglycerides are sky high and they have rampant levels of adipose tissue and they can't figure out why. And so, because you can overdo anything, even ancestral strategy. I mean, something as simple as developing skin cancer from the sun is a perfect example of that. Right? You know that mild frequent doses of sun are quite good for you and in fact reduce risk of skin cancer. But if you're out in the sun all day long, the opposite occurs. So I think that with both ancestral living and modern science, we should be open to the idea of combining the two. Right? You don't have to be just a hippie yoki, you don't have to, you know, just be some, you know, electrode infused biohacker. But by combining the two, you can kind of get the best of both worlds. However, you need to be cautious not to overdo either and to approach both with prudence and intelligence and wisdom. Sure.

Chris, do you think that modern science has now encouraged people to go back to understanding how ancestral living used to be?

Yeah, it's definitely brought awareness to it. Again. The biohacking side of things is growing, but the awareness of ancestral living has definitely gained exposure, which is a good thing. So now we're able to combine them both. You know, if we look back, you know, to the blue zones, and it was a great book that was published a couple of years ago, we see that, for instance, in Okinawa, they look at people that are over 100 years old and they are on average sit down and stand up on the floor 50 times per day. These people don't have any problems with arthritic conditions or anything like that. That is their resistance training. And they're moving around all day. I don't think there's even a word for retirement in those populations. They continue to move around. That population is celebrated and we should think about doing the same as well. We're always constantly thinking, okay, we're, how can we biohack our biology? How can we fit in as much exercise as intently in a short amount of time when we could be moving around all day? There's no problem with that. And as Ben mentioned with his Earthing shoes. Yeah, we've got that. And we've also got grassy patches outside that I did this morning. I meditated. I found myself some grass, and I grounded myself and meditated while the sun was shining on me this morning. That's free. Like, I woke up this morning and my readiness score was down, probably due to our workout yesterday. But I knew that I was going to work out again today because I'm going to be on a plane for many, many hours tomorrow, so I better get it done. So I used that opportunity to do something that was free, that was to meditate and then to manifest the workout that I was about to do, because I didn't feel like doing it then. I couldn't wait on the way to the gym. You know, I love that. And then, you know, obviously there's a lot of things that we participated in yesterday was, you know, like the hot and cold exposure. One thing that, you know, that our ancestors did many years ago. And what do we do today? We complain that it's too hot, can't go outside. We complain that it's too cold, can't go outside. Of course we can. You know, it's raining outside. Your skin is waterproof. You're okay. You won't drown out there. Go out there. You know, I love it when it's snowing outside. I'm going to lace up and go for a run. Same if it's raining. Whenever I go back to Wales and visit my father, you know, this Jack. We like to climb the highest peak in Wales, which is called Snowdon. And usually, given the Welsh weather, it's always raining. And we hate it on the way up there. But it's our way of bonding through suffering. Because when we come back down, we've enjoyed it so much more than if it was beautiful and if it was sunny and it was clear, you know, at the top for the view. But it's great. And our ancestors did that. Why can't we find enjoyment in it instead of always seeking comfort, as I. You know, I've done some of the Ironmans, not to the level that Ben did, but I just did that to get comfortable being uncomfortable. And it allowed a transcendence effect of discipline into so many other areas of my life. So the combination of both should. Should definitely be done. Before we go on to the next question, could you all do me a favor? Can you all put your phones on airplane mode, please? Can you do that?

It's actually a good point. Not only because of distractibility, but because there's zero reason to bombard this room with non native EMF signals if you're not actually planning on using your phone. It's something I see a lot people who. So we have X number of hours on this planet that we can live. And the way I think about it is the fewer number of those hours that I am bombarded by signals that the human body has actually not developed the ability to be able to deal with the better. So essentially if I don't plan on using my phone, it's on an airplane mode, period. And it's not just because I want to focus or decrease distractibility. It's because basically every time it's on, it's that much more damage you're doing to your DNA and your cells. And you might not have control over whether or not the hotel has their WI fi router switched on, but you do have control over the one form of non native DNF that's closest to you and in fact touching your body much at a time, and that's your phone. So, you know, and even if the phone is on, I'll at least make sure Bluetooth and WI fi are disabled because that's going to reduce some of that emf. So yeah, unless your wife is pregnant and about to have a baby is in the hospital, I would say the phone's off.

I just wanted to go back to yourself, Ben. We were in a restaurant the other day and I noticed when you were eating you were changing positions quite a bit. Does that have anything to do with digestion or anything like that?

I'm not necessarily convinced that the position that you are in while you're eating, assuming it is some form of a resting position, is going to increase or decrease digestion. Now there is something to think about and that is that I engage in low level physical activity during most of the day while I'm at my office. I'm walking, I'm standing, I'm lunging, I'm kneeling. You'll see me even during this panel today. I'm constantly changing positions not only to relieve stress on different joints, but also because there's this concept that non exercise activity thermogenesis or NEAT is one of the biggest contributors to metabolic burn and fat burn during the day. Just this concept of fidgeting and moving. You actually burn more calories with meat than you do with an exercise session. So, you know, when we live in a post industrial era with chairs everywhere, it becomes important to figure out ways that you can sit or rest without necessarily being in a seated position, which kind of Shortens your hip flexors, deactivates your glutes and can cause low back issues while at the same time essentially detraining one of the most important functional muscles of your body, your glutes. Now, at the same time, there is one time when I do rest, when I do allow myself to be in a position, position that I would not associate with exercise or with movement and that would be while eating. Because when you eat to get the proper incretin hormone response, which is going to be things like, like ghrelin to, to satisfy your, your appetite or at least send signals to modulate your appetite, things like insulin, digestive enzymes, release from the pancreas, etc, you want to be eating when you, when you in a rested or relaxed state. That's why if, for example, I haven't had breakfast and I have a meeting across town, I don't make myself a smoothie and drink it in the car while I'm driving, I simply fast because I know that the inflammatory and the blood glucose response to that food and the lack of digestion that will occur while I'm consuming that food in a stressed state will outweigh any of the nutrient benefits that I might derive from that food. Food. So when I eat, I ensure that I eat in a parasympathetic state. And this also includes things like a deep breath in and out several times prior to the meal, chewing each bite 25 to 40 times, saying a prayer of gratitude prior to the meal, eating with people rather than eating while working. Like there's a lot of things that I'll do to ensure that my food feeding is actually not, not harming my body, but is in fact enhancing my body and that I'm soaking up as many nutrients as possible from that food. Now the, the other advantage of, of being aware of positioning in chapter 18 of my book is all about symmetry and beauty and different positions that we can be in during the day, is that it also affects bone density. I was actually down in Bangalore, before we were in Delhi, before we came to Mumbai. And one gentleman I was talking to down there has actually done some bone density, some DEXA scan studies of Indian populations. And he's noted a decrease in bone density that correlates with the shift from a traditional squatting position, which would be a traditional position when eating or defecating, to this sitting position, which places low, less stress on the long bones of the spine and the long bones of the legs, which decreases bone density. So there's a lot of benefits from biomechanical bone Density from an activity and calorie burning level and also from a food and digestibility level that are dictated by our posture. And so it is something we should be aware of. Right. You should be cognizant of burning calories, staying active, keeping the metabolism elevated, keeping the glutes activated, keeping the hip flexors shortening when you're working and then when you're resting, especially when you're eating, adopting postures that would enhance digestion and allow the body to be in a relaxed state. I mean, one of my favorite places to eat is the floor, right? Sitting or kneeling or squatting on the floor, which is very simple to do with cushions and platters. And it is really, I think, a better way to approach eating versus sitting in chairs at a raised table.

Agreed.

I think in some cultures it still happens across the world. Could you imagine life without a mobile phone?

Yes, well, I could. I can't wait for the day I've had.

Well, actually, nowadays mobile phones are so accessible to almost everybody. Even children at school have mobile phones. And the first thing that people do when they go to someone's house, say, can I get the WI fi password? So even before they say hello to you. And actually it's becoming a problem, people are excited about 5G, for example. You know, I read a lot of blogs and people are talking about how efficient everything's going to be. It's going to be even better than 4G. But I want to talk about the effects of EMFs, 5G 4G cellular networks and how this affects the sleep cycles.

Possibly cue the phone.

We are recording this, by the way. And the previous biohacking seminar was also recorded. So I would really appreciate if you could switch your phones to silent or airplane mode.

It's authentic. It shows the problems that we have.

Okay, so what are your thoughts on EMF's 5G and the effects on possibly sleep cycles and other issues?

Yeah, I mean, I recently interviewed Dr. Joe Mercola about this. He just wrote a fantastic book I think everyone should read called. It's a great title. It's called emf. And in that book he highlights and many others, you know, such as Nick Pinnell who wrote the Non Tinfoil Guide to emf and you know, other books out there like Zapped by Annelise Gittleman and a few other titles that really highlight the biological impact of this non native emf, which would come from everything like appliances, especially smart appliances. Lighting that has been developed to sync with Bluetooth or WI fi to allow you to change the lighting in Your home appliances like washers and dryers, etc. But of course, phones, with the huge prevalence of them, are one of the biggest contributors to EMF, especially when you consider that with 5G, you need a host of panels spread throughout the city, because that small millimeter wave does not travel very far, right, 100 to 200 meters. And then for the 4G signals and other signals, you know, we're looking at cell phone towers that are necessary. So it's not just the cell phones that you're carrying around, but it's also the services used to distribute those signals that become a pretty big issue. Now, the. The issue, biologically, I would say that you need to be aware of is threefold. A, our bodies operate on electrochemical gradients. A negative charge on the inside of the cell and a positive charge on the outside of the cell. There's a great book by Jerry Tennant called Healing is Voltage. There's another good book by Robert Becker called the Body Electric. And both of these books do a very good job explaining how you create, really a metabolic firestorm. And that electrochemical balance kind of falls out of black. That's one of the reasons that I go outside walking barefoot or sleep on one of those Schumann resonance generating mats is because they're churning out negative ions, the same as a Himalayan salt lamp would, or the same as walking on the beach or swimming in the ocean would expose you to, because these help to restore the negative balance within the body. Now, when you are exposed to, say, a cell phone signal, what happens is there is a sharp influx of calcium into the cell. That's a positive charge that's filling your cell. So you shift that cell from a negative potential inside the cell to a positive charge inside the cell. And that affects most of the metabolic functions within the cell. So that's one problem, and that problem can be addressed. Specifically, magnesium is a wonderful supplement, all the more important if you live in an electrically charged area, because magnesium helps to offset some of that calcium in flux within the cell. And I usually double or triple up my magnesium intake on a day where I'm traveling on airplanes and airports, or when I'm in an urban environment where I know I'm surrounded by cell phone towers and 5G panels and a host of different WI FI signals. Problem number two would be the problem with radiation and its effect on DNA and the protein damage and protein unfolding that occurs in response to these signals. Now, the DNA damage can also be repaired to a certain extent, and the best way to do that is there's one molecule called nad, which has become quite popular in the US as a supplement. It can also be administered via IV or via like a transdermal patch. And NAD is fantastic at repairing the DNA fasting, like incorporating intermittent fasting or periods of caloric restrictions. Restriction will up regulate nad. A high intake of fermented foods, right, like yogurt or kimchi or sauerkraut or any of the wonderful fermented type of pickle preparations that you have here in India that can be wonderful for increasing nad. But I think that in a post industrial era where we're finding an uphill battle against radiation, I think NAD supplementation is something that becomes crucial. And NAD will only work to repair your DNA if you also have a high level of of sirtuins. Sirtuins are the compounds that you can get from things like cacao, red wine, blueberries and other darkly colored berries like blackberries, black raspberries, bilberries, etc, anything kind of, kind of dark purple, dark red. These are high in sirtuin rich compounds. And many supplements also have sirtuin like resveratrol or something that that's about 100 times more potent than resveratrol, pterostilmine. These also have pretty high levels of sirtuin that work very well when combined with nad. And then the final area where these cell phones, other signals can cause damage is they can upregulate inflammation, it cause chronic inflammation because they diminish the ability of a specific pathway in the body called the NF kappa B pathway to be able to modulate inflammation. Inflammation. Now when it comes to kind of stepping up the ability of that NF kappa B pathway to be able to restore its normal inflammation modulating activity, one of the best ways to do that is to have high levels of ketone bodies in your bloodstream, which again can be achieved via ancestral methods, particularly fasting and restriction of carbohydrates, especially ultra processed carbohydrates. But you can also use use supplements that directly increase your blood levels of ketones and help to regulate that NF kappa B pathway. And I certainly do this again on travel days when I'm flying all this. I'll do this tomorrow before I head to the airport, I drink a small bottle of ketone esters. And these ketone esters are wonderful at taking care of some of that inflammation that you're going to get from a lot of these non native EMF signals. So that's some of the damage that you're looking at, right? Positive influx within the Cell cell DNA damage and NF kappa B pathways. And then those are some of the things you can do to control that too. Magnesium, nad, sirtuins, ketones, fasting, and fermented foods can all help to restore some of the damage that's occurred.

Chris, I know that you definitely like to stay away from EMF damage as much as possible. What are some of the hacks that you use to try and protect yourself?

I moved out of the city. That was one. Moved to the outskirts of Boise. I'd be in the boonies with them if it was up to me, but my fiance wouldn't have it. So our compromises, the outskirts. So the protective measures that I do, the obvious things, you know, I earth myself as much as I possibly can. I have, you know, plenty of areas around my home to do so. But when I'm traveling, of course, we have to hack that environment. I to try travel with what's called, like an earthing mat. And I have that actually it's like a bed sheet. So, you know, I have that whenever I travel just to earth myself, because a lot of the times when we're usually traveling with an internal flight nearly every day, which has been a little bit easier. Thank you. This time around, Jack, my sleep score isn't so bad. Then I'll usually earth myself with an earthing mat or an earth in bed sheets on a daily basis. And I honestly found that it's had a huge effect, a bigger effect than pretty much everything else that I've applied. I'm pretty sure now Ben did mention something like, you know, like a PENF device. I have, like, a biobalance bed that I'll not actually have in my bed because I found that disrupted my sleep. I'll actually have that, like, on my couch. So if I'm reading, I'm on the PEMF device. And obviously I have, like, a shielded device that scrambles the EMF on my phone whenever possible. Mine's in a bit better condition than Ben's, and I actually haven't gone as far as having somebody come around to my house to check. Brian Hoyer has actually been around to Ben's house, and I believe he's doing a tour through Spokane, and he's actually coming to my place in April. So he will be able to check in my house where there is the most of the electricity, the EMFs that are penetrating my home. So I can do whatever I can to spend thousands of dollars, hopefully not to actually protect my home as well, because, you know, unfortunately, especially when you're living in a city, you just don't know how much you are plant being penetrated not just, just in your home, but by your neighbors as well. And you know, you've got JIO right here. You've got a lot of tech businesses right next door. You got to do whatever you can to protect yourself in those realms as well. And there is forms of clothing that you can wear. You know, if you look at the statistics of testosterone levels over the past 30 years, particularly in the military, they've actually done a lot of studies where their testosterone has just declined big time. Our DNA hasn't changed, our environment has. So you've got to do whatever you can to protect yourself from various environmental factors. So, you know, wearing the EMF blocking underwear that we, that we wear, you know, can obviously be a factor that could contribute to that as well. A couple of other things that Ben mentioned in regards to having the fermented foods and stuff like that. There's just one thing that I just want to bring up that I mentioned in Delhi because I know in Mumbai kombucha has come up pretty, pretty rapidly over the past couple of years. And I see everybody drinking kombucha like it's going out of style, thinking this is a great fermented superfood that I'm going to help heal my gut. You have to be very careful of the sugar that is in that as well, everything in moderation. And I haven't actually got it on today. I had it yesterday, a blood glucose monitor where I measured the effects on kombucha. I was very disappointed because I love kombucha myself, but my blood sugar levels actually went through the roof with that. And I think that was a combination of the sugar and the carbonation as well that had that effect. So a little bit of moderation and Ben's picking up the mic and I'm sure he's going to add to that.

I actually, I'm not going to add to that, although I do think that if you really are serious about this, that having a building biologist actually walk through your home or your office is very smart. I learned a great deal when Brian Hoyer did the walkthrough of my house about just little things. I could change things I could unplug little changes I could make to my choice of appliances, my choice of lighting where I was placing certain things like routers, etc. But because we're not even halfway through the day and we're, I would imagine, kind of filling you guys with all sorts of fear and this, this, it can sometimes feel like, oh geez, what do I do? I'm getting attacked from every angle. Like can I just curl up in a ball and go hide the cave? Just remember, I mean there are, there are these blue zones we've already talked about where people are living a disproportionately long period of time. And you know, some of them are cigarette smoking, gin chugging, 109 year old grandmas who are living long lives despite their lifestyles, not because of them. And this is because they have love, they have a social life, they have relationships, they have spiritual disciplines like gratitude and belief in a higher power. And there's all sorts of things that I think from just a pure emotional and mindset standpoint can make a lot of this stuff less stressful. I mean, I catch a lot of flack for this in the scientific community. Community because I believe in magic. I believe in magic, right? So, so for example, I, I believe that, you know, and I, I catch flack for this. I, I believe in creation, right? Like I believe some, some superpower that in my, in my case, I believe that God created the earth, right, like that. And, and I believe that I'm going to live forever when I die in eternal bliss, that I have this soul that just goes on and lives forever. And I even believe that when I do things like pray or have a positive attitude that there is some amount of protection that is conferred from that. I think that just a state of positivity can raise your emotional level and your frequency to the point where if you live in an urban environment, you have a job where you walk in and there's 10 Wi Fi routers and you've got, you know, 11 neighbors talking on their cell phones all the time and you're on a tiny airplane, this metal tube, and half the people forgot to put their phones in airplane mode. An airplane is equipped with WI Fi and you're breathing in jet fuel. I mean you, you can take things to the nth degree as far as being in a constant state of fear and that actually renders you a little bit more permeable to the damage that a lot of these things can cause. So don't underestimate the value of a positive attitude, a positive spiritual life. And you know, don't, don't, don't just myopically focus on the damage. Focus all also on your attitude and your emotions. Because you know what if I'm out of the fantastic dinner and I'm at someone's house and their grandma brings out Casserole. And casserole is just like drenched in glyphosate and vegetable oils. But I want to respect the family and not make people feel awkward and be part of the love and relationships. I will say, God, please protect me, and I'll just dive in.

Right.

So.

So, I mean, you know, as. As a believer in magic, I can get away with that. But I just want to emphasize. We don't want to sit here and fill you guys with scare tactics the whole time. Being part of it.

Yeah, I've offended cultures all around the world. Maybe I've taken some years off anyway, but I totally agree with what Ben is saying there. If I think to my grandfather, who just recently passed away in his 90s, in great health, I'd look at my mother's side of the family. And he had just such a great commitment, community of people around him the whole time. And I always remember that I actually thought it was weird to think about these people never argue, they never had any sort of disruption within their life. Everybody is just really connected. And I honestly believe that was what led to him to have such a great healthy life until the latter part of the years. But then you do have the people like Ozzy Osbourne, who's drinking and smoking and doing drugs and still living his life as he is. But maybe that is within his attitude. I know for me, when I was competing in natural bodybuilding, I was just stressed, I was edgy, everything had to be scheduled, I was punctual. And I probably just worked myself up with cortisol levels up here that what I was trying to do and feed my body with probably wasn't having the effect that it should. Because since I retired back over 11 years ago, even though I'm not even trying that hard to put on muscle or size, I find my body reacts so much better now at 45 years old than I did at 35 years old. And I think just the mental change and the tipping point and being so much calmer and more mindful and grateful and positive with purpose in everything that I do allows me to function without the inflammation, the pain, the problems, the niggling injuries that used to infest me. You know, it does have a manifest of effect when you change that scope on obviously who you surround your with, surround yourself with and how you feel, how you purposely go about your day. Because you can go out there with a bad perception or a good perception. Like, we've all seen that people who have everything, celebrities, but they're lonely, they're frustrated, they're depressed and there's some poor people out here begging on the roads, but they would invite you in to have one of their last meals, you know, because they've got a different perception and we all have that ability to do that within ourselves.

Awesome. We had a 45 minute discussion on EMFs and how this could affect your sleep quality at our last event and that will actually be posted online. So if you are following Ben or Chris or the Fizik Global platform, you'll have an opportunity to learn a little bit more about EMFs and how that can affect your sleep cycle. I want to talk about the misconception of vegan diets, source of foods and its effects.

What is your view on vegans?

Half hour ago I guess it was an hour ago I logged into Facebook and my brother had a photo of his daughter and he said my daughter, she's 11. She just pronounced that she's now vegetarian because she saw a movie about how animals are treated in capo food lots. There's fooding or whatever and you know, I just commented hooray. More ribeye for me. But it's my heart sunk a little bit I have to admit, because it's so difficult to thrive on a plant based diet if you're not doing it right. There are so many holes that need to be filled in. Not only can you not get taurine, creatine, carnosine, l carnitine, appreciable amounts of vitamin B12, DHA, et cetera from plant based foods, but you can also miss out if you're not structuring that plant based diet properly on a lot of other amino acids and fatty acids. Furthermore, we know that plants have natural built in defense mechanisms like the lectins in chickpeas, or the gluten in wheat, or the fatty acid in soy. And all of these can be problematic for that important component we were talking about earlier, the gut. And do things like cause damage to the lining of the gut or cause inhibition of proper nutrient absorption and can these matters be skirted? Yes, smart plant based diets actually can avoid many of these issues. They require doing things like, you know, taking your quinoa that you're going to eat that's covered in a soap like irritant called saponins and actually rinsing that quinoa and then letting it sit overnight, giving another rinse in the morning and sometimes three or four rinses is what you need to get rid of all that soap like irritant. When they do this in South America, they actually Go on and use those soaps to, to clean their clothing because it's such a good, you know, soap. And afterwards you can even unlock more of the amino acids and the fatty acids in that quinoa by leaving it in a jar for about a day or so until you see little sprouts start to emerge and then you've got sprouted quinoa with none of these saponin soap like irritant on the outside. I eat bread. My wife makes this lovely slow fermented sourdough bread in the process of fermentation, as you'd find in the flatbread here in India, that is of the sourdough variety. Pre digests the gluten, it lowers the glycemic index of the food and it's a more ancestral preparation method. The same could be said of hummus. Right? Like I can eat hummus just fine if it's from chickpeas that have been rinsed and soaked to reduce a lot of the lectin content of those chickpeas. Better yet, if they've been pressure cooked, which will reduce the lectin content even more. But if I don't know that that hummus has been prepared from chickpeas that have been treated in such a manner, I avoid them because I know that they're a gastric irritant. The problem is many plant based advocates do not go through this trouble to treat their food accordingly. In addition, if you're going to eat a plant based diet, you must be aware of the things you're not getting from plants that are impossible to get from plants. And I have a few articles on my website in my book Boundless, I dictate exactly what those compounds are. I rattled them off earlier. You know, things like taurine, creatine, carnosine, L carnitine, vitamin B12, DHA, et cetera. Your supplement budget is probably going to go up a little bit if you're not eating meat. Which for me begs the question. If you can get access to ethically raised meat that's been pastured in a regenerative way that takes into account the carbon footprint of the meat, the way that the soil is treated, the way that the animals are treated, the way that the crops are, the way the animals are rotated as they graze, then why not get a lot of the nutrients and the amino acids and the fatty acids that you need from including small to moderate amounts of meat in the diet, or at least things like fish and eggs. So, you know, I think that the ideal diet, even though it's going to vary based on your genetics in terms of how much protein, how much animal versus plants, etc. I think that the ideal diet is still an omnivorous diet comprised of plants that have been prepared in an ancestral manner and animals that have been raised in an ethical and humane manner. And so, you know, my own philosophy is, yes, I eat animals, but only if I know the source from which they came and whether or not they were ethically and humanely treated and whether or not the earth was loved in the way that those animals were raised. And I also eat plants and ensure that those plants are coming from sources that have not been sprayed with pesticides and herbicides or that have glyphosate residue on them. And also those plants have been prepared in a way that deactivates a lot of their natural built in plant defense mechanisms. It's one of the things that really irks me in the nutrition world right now is we have these myopic camps of the carnivore people and the plant based people, or the omnivorous people and the vegan vegetarian crowd. And you know, I think that God's good earth is chock full of all sorts of things that we can eat and enjoy, but really it just comes down to love. If we love our bodies, we love the people that we are eating with and surrounded with, and we love our food, and we're very cognizant of all those aspects that I just talked about, then we're going to be able to comprise a diet that takes into account the health of the planet and the health of our bodies.

Sounds good. Chris, as somebody who does a lot of endurance sports, Ironman, would you say, for example, with the Game Changers, there's a lot of people talking about athletes now, plant based diets. Do you think that makes a difference being vegan or do you think that it doesn't really matter as long as you supplement right?

Well, that's more performance based as opposed to health based. We do see a lot more endurance based athletes actually going over to vegan or vegetarian diets. Like we know Pritchard from Wales, we know very well, who competes in Deckers and 30 Ironmans in 30 half Ironmans in 30 days. And he's on a plant based diet. But when I had him on a podcast recently and I'm asking him in regards to his blood reports, his supplementation, he didn't really know that much about it. So even though he could be performing well, this is health optimized, you know, two completely different subjects. But this is the problem that we have with a lot of these documentaries. 11 year olds have access to it and maybe they're not old enough to make the right decisions for themselves at this particular time. Maybe it should only be accessible to somebody that's 16 or 18. And then that documentary obviously could be very biased. You have to take this into account as well. Now, I don't have a problem with people going vegan or vegetarian or anything like that. I have clients that are. So, you know, if it's for ethical reasons, I have full respect. But are they doing the right way? You know, like we have Lalit here as a vegetarian and people use that as an excuse for not being able to perform or put on muscle or be healthy. But Lalit is a perfect excuse. He's in great shape and he is all year round. And I like his attitude to food as well. Like we've been out and we've eaten a lot of time, but we will eat in front of him because he won't order food out a lot of the time because he likes to know that it's made at home under loving care. Love has been put into that food when it's being prepared. So he feels that when he's actually eating it. And I have a lot of respect for that and I have, you know, I've got plant beds at home. As you know, we have chickens as well, but not allowed to eat those chickens, just the eggs that are from it. But it's a very different scope of like the sources of the food as we mentioned before. But we have to be very careful of the information that we are pardon upon digesting. You know, we were told that the food pyramid, when it was turned on its head, that fats were bad and cornflakes at breakfast were good, which was pretty much like eating cheesecake in the morning. So we have to be very conscious of the decisions that we're making is based on what we researched ourselves and what may work for ourselves, not what a documentary or some expert is telling us to do. We have to know that our purpose is behind it and do whatever we can to get behind it with maybe proper supplementation. But, you know, you have to really take a deep, deep look into it. Then, yeah, you're going to have to supplement with algae or whatever to get, you know, to make sure that you're getting the fat fundamental fats within your diet so you can function properly.

One other thing I should throw in there is that diets can be used as a tool, right? So for example, if I had cancer, I would immediately stop most of my meat consumption and go on a very low protein diet. I would primarily be eating a plant rich ketogenic diet if I had cancer. However, that does not mean that that's the perfect diet for everyone and that just because it's useful for that specific use case that it works for every single human in any condition. Same thing with something like a carnivore diet. Right. Like if I had an autoimmune condition or leaky gut and needed to eliminate all these built in plant defense mechanisms and shift to a food group that if sourced properly, presents almost no damage to the gut and no immune issues.

Yeah.

Eat a carnivore diet for eight or nine, 10 or 12 weeks until you've alleviated some of that gut inflammation. But don't necessarily convince yourself that that is the diet that you can thrive upon for the rest of your life. And even in the case of veganism or vegetarianism, many people feel absolutely fantastic when they shift to that diet. It's often because they've eliminated a lot of the things they were eating before they switched that diet, you know, the hamburgers and the steaks cooked up and vegetable oil, the chicken nuggets, etc. And you can feel pretty good. It can be used as almost like a way to reboot or clean up or detox your body. But long term it becomes an issue if you all of a sudden think, gosh, I feel so great, I'm going to eat this for the next 20 years. Because then you start to build up the deficits that I started to talk about. So the important thing to realize is that sometimes you need to use a specific diet in a short term scenario to achieve a specific, specific effect and then begin to eat more all encompassing diets. So it's not as though whatever food or whatever diet that you are in that you're eating and it's helping you to feel good, is the diet that you'll be on for the rest of your life. Sometimes you need to work in different food strategies based on what your goals are at that time in your life.

Yeah. And just adding to that, like anybody who follows me will know that I actually go vegan every year. You know, so sometimes I'll do four, sometimes eight weeks. I like to do anything and everything in a cyclical fashion that makes me feel good and I like to have that approach every now and again. I feel like it takes a little bit of a stress away from my digestive system. Every now and again. I find that I Need a little bit more plant matter. And then whatever diet I go on to, then I just feel the effects of it that much more. Now. When I was on tor here last year, my father, after the tour, was diagnosed with cancer of the kidney, had that kidney removed and now he is on a very strict keto diet, high in plants, having high levels of vitamin C. I'd like to know where you got that H bot that I saw on your stories, actually, because maybe I'll send one of those over there to him as well. But that is going to serve him right now during his stage of life.

Awesome.

I'd like to talk about optimizing workouts and training. So I noticed yesterday we spoke about nasal breath work HRV during your workouts yesterday. Could you shed a little bit of light on that?

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of ways to, let's say, you know, biohack a workout. But I would say that if I could name two things that I use quite a bit these days, both of which I've been doing quite a bit here in India because they don't require much special equipment, but give you a lot of benefit. Number one. Yes, we did yesterday, Chris and I did a cardio and strength workout that involved four to five minute cardio effort on the bike or could have been a rowing machine or treadmill or whatever. And then we move on and we do a super set of strength exercises for about four rounds and go back to the bike. But every time we got on the bike, the entire cycle was nasal breathing. Because nasal breathing not only better oxygenates and cleans the air that you're breathing, but it does things like forces you to do deep diaphragmatic breathing because you're getting a little less air. It causes the induction of something called hif hypoxia, inducible factor, which can cause an increase in red blood cells and erythropoietin and open up nitric oxide. It can allow you to remain a little bit more parasympathetic state, especially between those hard sets where we're breathing through our mouth. So it teaches you to recover more quickly. It allows you to have better VO2 max because you're able to essentially learn how to use the oxygen that you are breathing in more efficiently because there's just less to go around. It's. So there's a variety of benefits to not just nasal breathing during a workout, but nasal breathing while you're sleeping and as you're working during the day. We know that when we chest breathe or when we mouth breathe, we breathe more from our chest. There are baroreceptors in the chest that can cause an amplification of cortisol. So we can be more stressed when we are breathing through our mouths versus when we're doing that deep diaphragmatic breathing through our nose. We know that when we are breathing through our mouths during sleep, we increase the risk of sleep apnea and we can actually even change our jaw structure. Since I began a habit of nasal breathing about four years ago, I've even received comments about my facial structure. And people have said, oh, your jaw seems more square bent. It looks like your facial structure has changed. And we see not only that happen with people who nasal breathe, but we see the opposite in kids who mouth breathe, which in many cases it's, you know, not to get too complex with you, but in a child who's eating, you know, dairy, GMO wheat, unfermented GMO soy, things that they might be allergic to or that would cause some type of food intolerance or food insensitivity, they're congested, right? You get that mild congestion. So the kid starts breathing through their mouth and it causes a jaw recession, which results in improper teeth formation and poor bone structure in the face. So it even contributes to facial symmetry and beauty in the growth of a human. So there's a lot of reasons that nasal breathing is important. And it's also something that you should train yourself to be able to do during a workout, during a walk. It's not that you don't mouth breathe during a workout, but you save your mouth breathing for the hardest parts of the workout and you absolutely have to open up the portal and get more air in. Another thing that, that I do quite a bit of, and that'll probably do doing later on today after our session is blood flow restriction training, where I will use tourniquets around the arms and around the legs to restrict blood flow. And what happens is when you do that, it tricks the muscles into thinking that they're lifting a heavier load than they actually are. And they respond by producing more mitochondria and more satellite cells that result in increased growth of muscle fibers, even though you're not lifting heavy weights, which of course, if I'm in a hotel that only has light weights or I need to do some type of bodyweight workout like push ups or squats with those blood flow restriction bands, I can do that and get a very effective body weight training workout. There's a lot of research in Japan because there they have Even developed these very precise handheld controllers that are linked to pneumatic devices. You attach the arms and the legs called Katsu training devices where you can very precisely dial in the millimeters of mercury of pressure that will be placed on the joints by this blood flow restriction training. And you can put on BFR bands and go for a walk or like I did a couple of days ago, go for a swim. You can do body weight training with BFR on. But I would say that nasal breathing and blood flow restriction training are two of my favorite ways to kind of biohack a workout without having to go out and buy some Fancy, you know, $50,000 exercise machine.

Chris, I noticed that you are also quite big with hrv. Could you shed a little bit of light on that?

Yeah. So the HRV is something that I've been measuring in a couple of ways with a bio strap and an app device and an OURA ring. And usually when I'm traveling lacking in sleep, HRV is down a little bit. So I'll usually use that as a dictation of if I'm going to go for a walk that day, low level of cardio, or I'm going to use machines with higher reps and not going to absolute failure, or if my HRV is up, then I'm going to go for a heavy strength workout because I feel good and recovered. I started tracking this when I noticed Ben was doing so when I was getting ready for, for a lot of endurance events because I noticed within endurance events, when I started getting plugged into that social pipeline, these people were encountering finding themselves injured more than strength trained athletes. Which I found was bizarre. That I'm thinking, God, all these people are doing it just running and swimming and cycling. How can that be? Mostly from running. But I just found out that a lot of them ignored their hrv. They will just go out and pound it, you know, their way of okay, this is going, my HRV is down. Maybe I'm just going to go for a 12 mile run today. That's hard. As opposed to my usual 18. So that's how I started utilizing that more than anything. And obviously sleep has a big effect on that. As you know that I've always had trouble with sleeping. When I was living here in India the first time when I had that mold toxicity, I was sleeping on average about three hours a night. So but I would pat myself on the back for it because I was still out training and I would still work until whatever night in the evening. Like you know, you see in the entrepreneur space today that you're burning a candle at both ends and you think it's cool, well, it catches up with you eventually. So I think with this quantification of the HRV can definitely have a positive effect on your health and your performance. You just bring yourself back a little bit more than others. And I've worked with clients here in India. I've got one obviously ridiculous. I'd have him training five to six days a week. Not always pushing it. But then I had like John Abraham would only train like three days a week because his HRV was through the roof, because he had a lot of decision making fatigue. He's a high playing businessman as well as an actor. And that definitely had an effect.

We should briefly define what HRV actually is. Are you guys familiar with that term heart rate variability? HIV heart rate variability? It's not your actual heart rate. It is the variability in the amount of time in between each beat of your heart. There should be mild beat to beat variability between each heartbeat that is indicative that your heart is properly being stimulated by your vagus nerve. Remember I talked about the vagus nerve when it comes to gut function. This is why an inflamed gut or gut dysfunction can actually lower your hrv and also why stress, which also can impact that vagus nerve, can also impact hrv. The thing is that vagus nerve innervates the sinoatrial node of your heart, which affects all those pacemaker cells of your heart. And so if your vagus nerve is toned properly, if you're in a state of low stress, if you're in a state of overall relatively robust health, what happens is that beat to beat variation goes up just slightly. You know, between one beat there might be 100 milliseconds, between another beat, 97, between another beat, 102. And when that happens, it shows that your sympathetic and your parasympathetic nervous system are properly tuned. So a high HRV is a good thing. We often associate a high heart rate with being bad or having poor cardiovascular fitness. But you want a high HRV if you actually want to be able to quantify whether or not your body is doing a good job dealing with stress, whether or not sleep is optimized. And it's a very, very good way to, without fancy blood and biomarker tests, just quantify overall health. And it's certainly a metric that I pay attention to every day. And multiple research sites have shown that when HRV drops and you continue to push through a low HRV and continue to do hard workouts when your HRV is low and continue to do stressed work days when your HRV is low is an excellent predictor that you are going to come down with an injury, with an illness or disrupted sleep within the next two to three days unless you pay attention to that and nip it in the bud. So it's an excellent metric to track.

Awesome. So with current lifestyles, there's, we've got kind of covered a lot of aspects of causes for aging faster. What other things would you say people need to look out for which actually cause aging faster? And how can we stop aging and in some cases reverse the aging process?

You know, I've said this many times before, but I think that the two biggest things to pay attention to when it comes to controlling or keeping your finger on the pulse of how quickly you are aging and really your overall health span, not just your lifespan, would be a glycemic variability, right? Like how often and the extent to which your blood glucose is fluctuating during the day, and B, your levels of inflammation, particularly your levels of chronic inflammation. You can measure the former with a cheap blood glucose monitor from the pharmacy in which you prick your finger and take a drop of blood, for example, right after you eat, and then two hours after you eat to see if it's returned to baseline. Maybe once in the morning to make sure that it's below 90 and once again in the evening before you go to bed, make sure it's below 90. Right? That's a simple metric. You can also wear a continuous blood glucose monitor, which I did last year for about 12 months. And I gained a great deal of insight about things that I might not have been able to get by training. Just doing the finger pricking because it's giving me real time measurements all day long. But by keeping blood glucose under control, using strategies like low level physical activity during the day, not eating a lot of ultra processed carbohydrates, lowering levels of stress, etc. You can actually keep that glycemic variability under pretty good control. And there are even like haps like cold thermogenesis or cryotherapy that make a great dent in glycemic variability. High consumptions of bitters and herbs and spices, minerals like chromium and vanadium, compounds like bitter melon extract, Ceylon cinnamon, apple cider vinegar, the selection of bitters that might be at the cocktail bar before you have dinner, all of these things can lower blood glucose and control glycemic variability when it comes to inflammation. There are some Things that we already talked about that are going to contribute to, to inflammation. Stress is one. The non native EMF that we talked about is another, probably the biggest one that is prevalent in our diets that we often are consuming with breakfast, lunch and dinner, many times without knowing it, or many times thinking we are eating healthy foods when we are in fact filling our bodies with. One of the biggest contributors to inflammation that exists on the planet, and that I have found to be in huge quantities here in India, possibly even more than in America, is vegetable oil. Vegetable oil is a fast track to chronic inflammation. I avoid it like the plague. Here at every restaurant I've been to, I call out the chef. I ask that things not be prepared in vegetable oil, but that they instead be prepared in ghee or extra virgin olive oil. When I buy my healthy food as I'm traveling through the airport, I always look at the ingredient label and gosh darn it, every little bag of, you know, quote unquote, you know, healthy sugar snap peas or, you know, beetroot chips or carrot chips or anything else, you might buy that from the healthy food section of the grocery store or the airport has canola oil or sunflower oil or safflower oil or some kind of rancid, heated, processed, pressurized vegetable oil. And one of the best things you can do for, for your inflammation levels is to be ruthlessly cognizant of the amount of vegetable oil that you are consuming and just put your foot down and say, I'm not going to eat vegetable oil anymore. If everybody did that, then I think that restaurants would get a heads up pretty quickly. Unfortunately, people just don't ask, don't care, and don't realize that almost everything is cooked in vegetable oil. So it really is an uphill battle, just like the uphill battle gets cell phones. But it's something to be really aware of. So I would say the two biggest things for longevity would be controlled glycemic variability and control inflammation.

Chris, talking about the glucose monitor, have you, I noticed obviously you've been wearing it for quite some time and I think when we met a year ago, you had one on your, on your arm as well. Have you changed the way you eat following what you've learned from that? And was you surprised?

There were some things that surprised me, some things that would probably be obvious to others, the difference between rolled oats and quick oats. But yeah, I've definitely changed my diet. I don't have half as much of the starch carbs as I used to. I Definitely go a little bit more for the higher fats because I was always conscious that I needed all these carbohydrates all the time to give me energy for everything that I did. And I just really didn't. I just need to be a little bit more efficient and a little bit more selective of the types of fats and the vegetables that I was putting in my food and put it on my plate. But like I said, I'm a very different person mentally, psychologically. So I feel that the absorption of the foods are that much better now because I take my time in eating. I take my time for a couple of minutes before I eat. I acknowledge the food, I'm grateful and I'm present when I'm eating the food now, you know, so gratitude is one of those things for sure. But it's your mental place. You have to be in a happier place. You see these people that are stressed all the time, they're working long hours and they age quickly. And I was definitely one of those people. But you know, thankfully a lot of people over the past few years have said, wow, you look like you're reversing your age. Well, I don't think it's by any coincidence, you know, I'm doing everything that I can to reverse the aging process now. And a lot of it is starting from the neck up. Being happier in a happier place really helps. Like I had stem cells about a year and a half ago and you know, I was dealing with a little bit of inflammation, a little bit of a few injuries which really had an effect on me, you know, not just physically, but the psychological effect, even when you're not conscious of it, that subconscious pain or that uncomfortability can have an effect. And you know, about six months after the stem cells, I feel amazing, feel phenomenal. One of the reasons why I had it is because I knew I wasn't going to slow down in what I'm doing. I enjoy what I do, but it's had such an effect on me. May not have a direct effect on my telomeres, but maybe indirect that it would, you know, and obviously mention that the sugar variability, you can see that with a blood glucose monitor. But some bits obvious here. You know, since I was living here in India, we've seen Starbucks just pop up absolutely everywhere. Very rarely do I see someone drinking a black coffee. They come out with like an 800 calorie filled. I don't know what it looks, looks like you should have a spoon instead of a straw with it. But we consume it not knowing the amount of sugar that we're drinking, you know, that along with the Cokes and with the jaggery and with all the cakes on top of that, your amazing Indian sweets can really have a detrimental effect. Not just what you see on the outside, but what you see on the inside. You know, going through all that oxidative stress. And a lot of people stay away from, from the sunlight, thinking that's going to age you. Obviously everything in excess is going to age you. But if you actually go out and get the sunlight, do a little bit of sun gazing for like 15 minutes in the morning, in the evening, get that restorative red light, I think that can really have a positive effect. And what's had a positive effect on me as well was shortening my workouts, going with, you know, quite intense within those workouts, but, you know, doing my strength training and then the long, arduous endurance work as well, definitely had a negative effect on me. And just being efficient and taking more time off and, you know, quantifying through my HRV data has had a positive effect on reversing the aging process.

So recently there was an article in the Times newspaper in the UK and it stated that your biological age is actually. So could you shed a little bit of light on that and enlighten us?

My emotional age is seven that biologically, that's a telomere analysis that's currently the most widely available way to quantify age is a measurement of the telomeres. Right, the end caps on your DNA strands that if excessively short or at an excessive rate of shortening, can indicate that your biological age is higher than it should be. Or is that more. It's more rapidly accelerating than it should be. I question some of the accuracy of the telomere analysis simply because it's measuring a limited number of cells within the body. And it's also not analyzing another important factor that contributes to aging, and that is methylation. And within the next year or so, what will be more widely available are these DNA methylation measurements that I think will more precisely quantify how long you can expect to live. But in my case, my biological age was measured via what I would consider to be one of the more accurate forms of telomere testing produced by a company called Spectracel. And yeah, so it turns out that a lot of what I'm doing seems to have impacted my biological age in a favorable manner. But I do a lot of things, you know, not only sunlight birthing and grounding and fresh air and living a less Stressful lifestyle and spending a lot of time with family, prioritizing social life and love and relationships. But I've also done more fringe things. I have done stem cells and often combine those stem cells of things that enhance their efficacy, such as exosomes for example, or pulsed electromagnetic field therapy or hyperbaric oxygen therapy. All of these things can enhance your stem cell mobility and your stem cell health. I've also used peptides quite a bit. Peptides are a huge Trend in the U.S. right now. And there are several peptides that have been researched in Russia to reduce all cause risk of mortality and have a significant impact on increasing lifespan or decreasing biological age. With a few of the more notable ones being one called epitalon, another one called humanin, and there's another one called Mott C. And these three peptides are simply injectable peptides that you do a very short series of each year and they have a very impressive effect on biological age. So peptides would be another thing that I still use with quite a bit of frequency. Short amino acid sequences that can act to target specific receptors to do things like increase mitochondria, or increase satellite cell proliferation and muscle growth, or decrease inflammation, or enhance neuroplasticity, or improve the integrity of the blood brain barrier. I mean they're like kind of like a Swiss army knife that you can use for just about anything. I would say that those are some of the, some of the bigger things that I've done from INS Anti aging standpoint. The chapter on anti aging in Boundless is about over 100 pages of stuff from the blue zones. Like different fasting strategies, the intake of a wide variety of plants and herbs and spices. You know, even things like having sex with good frequency to convince your body that still reproductively useful all the way down to, you know, things like peptides, the use of bioidentical hormone replacement. My wife now takes progesterone and, and that's kind of an anti aging strategy for her. You know, she's, you know she's still premenopausal, but it's something that's contributed to high levels of energy and libido for her. That's something that's important for females, for men. I'm not opposed to the use of testosterone. When the time arrives that testosterone begins to naturally decline. There's, there's a lot of different strategies both from modern science and as well from ants as well as from ancestral wisdom. But again it's a very multi modal approach to anti aging. And so by Stacking a lot of these modalities, I think we can make a pretty significant impact on biological age.

There's just one thing that I wanted to add to that because I'm usually quite a reclusive person and it's definitely had an effect on my mentality. Not in a good way probably. And one of the things that I've done to force myself to be a little bit more sociable. And I actually got this from Paul Saltino, I think the interview that you did with him on your podcast where he has like these wolf pack workouts. So I created one myself because I don't socialize otherwise unless it's through work. And I'm not going to go to a bar to socialize with my friends in Boise. So on a Saturday or Sunday morning at 8 o' clock in the morning, I'll have people come around the house and we will work out for an hour in my garage. We'll just do circuits and then we'll finish off with a sauna, an ice bath and a shake and communicate. And that's been really good for me, you know, purposefully. You know, my fiance has actually seen that within me because my fiance is a social butterfly. And I'm always like, go on out, have a good time. I am good at home with my book and my final collection. I love that when I get back home to Boise, she goes to Thailand for a couple of weeks. So I've got my books in my vinyl ready. But I will have those workouts as well. And that has really helped her. Talking about the stem cell proliferation that you can all do for free, as Ben mentioned, is fast. You know, that was the devil for me being a bodybuilder, fasting, why would I do such a thing? But then when I started incorporating it several years ago, lo and behold, I didn't wither away, I didn't lose all my muscle. And I was doing it for about eight months straight. And now at the moment I'm trying to put on a little bit size before I lean out. And I'm just doing it twice a week. But of course that's something that we can all do. But I love doing things like the fasting because it is another form of discipline that you can implement into your life that has a transcendence effect on other areas.

Awesome. So just before we move on from anti aging, there are a lot of clinics that are available in India, for example, the anti aging clinics that offer cosmetics. And I think that's quite a big thing because when we speak about anti aging in the wellness space. As a business, people can kind of get confused and be advised on treatments that they may need to or should take. Some are abrasive like Botox and prp. What would you say, and this is a question for both of you, would be the right approach for the aesthetics because you know, there's outside in and there's inside out when it comes to biohacking skin creams and things like that. So what are your thoughts on that?

I can tell you what I do and I feel like it works pretty well. And I have many of my clients do this, this as well. And they, they've noted good feedback from their spouses and from their community about the health of their face, their skin, etc. First of all, once a week I do a mask, a clay mask, so you can get a derma roller. This is all things you can do at home. You don't have to go to a fancy clinic to do this stuff. You, you use the derma roller all over your face and you can actually use it on your derma roller. Will wear out faster, but they're not expensive. You can use it on your head too, if you want to keep your hair around for a longer period of time. So I dermaroll everything and then use a clay mask. I use one from a company called Olitora, but it's a mix of fentonite clay and colostrum and all these different things that will detox the skin. And at the same time, when you're using that derma roller, you're getting rid of all the old skin cells. You know, men have an advantage in that we shave a lot. And so we're kind of naturally abrading some of those skin cells on the surface which with our, with our daily or every other day shave. But these derma rollers, especially when followed up by a clay mask when the pores are open, help tremendously. If anytime you are either using a clay mask or you are using some type of facial serum, which I'll get into in a second, and you can combine that with red light therapy or sunlight therapy, it will actually enhance the effects. When I do a clay mask, I'll try and you know, because I'll leave it on for 20 to 30 minutes, I'll go for a walk in the sunshine, look like a freak, walk around my neighborhood, play all over my face, or I'll stand in one in front of one of those photo biomodulation units that will do near infrared and red light on my face while that mask is on there. Okay. Once the mask comes off, then I do a serum. So there are a whole bunch of different plant based oils that can do things like increase collagen and elastin production on the skin, that can increase blood flow to the skin surface, that can decrease inflammation, and that can actually even feed that portion of the microbiome I was talking about earlier, the skin microbiome. And so, for example, my own company, Kion, we developed a serum that does that. There are a lot of other companies that produce these serums that you can put on every single day. So not only do I put the serum on after I do the clay mask, but every day I'll put the serum on. By the way, yes. If I'm derma rolling my hair, I also put the clay mask on my head. So, so I'll, you know, I go take a shower after the clay mask, just rinse everything off, then go straight in to put the serum on. Now, in addition to that, there is, I was talking about peptides. Now most peptides are too large to penetrate the skin surface, which is why they need to be injected. But some are small enough. Peptides are measured in daltons. And so a peptide that's about 50 Daltons or less will be able to be absorbed through the skin. And there's one peptide that's fantastic for reversing aging on skin and can also do the same for hair. If you put it in your hair, it's called ghkcu. It's a copper peptide. And that one's wonderful for the skin or for the hair, for almost increasing the firmness and increasing the collagen and elastin integrity on the skin. So that's what I do. Clay mask, daily use of serum, and then a copper peptide. Now, sometimes serums do not offer enough moisture and you need to use a natural moisturizer. And something like coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil actually works fantastically as a moisturizer. Even ghee works pretty well. And there are also companies that produce very, very natural moisturizers. We don't produce one. Kion, that same company that I get my clay mask from, Alitura, they do a great moisturizer or night mask. It's not that hard to find a moisturizer with all natural ingredients. And then finally, in terms of feeding your skin from the inside out, one of the best things you can do are either collagen or essential amino acids. Either are wonderful for, again, supplying your skin with ample amounts of what it needs for its collagen and its Elastin integrity. So, for example, one hack is you simply start to get heat. Try this for a month. Try to work in 40 grams of a collagen powder each day or 20 grams of essential amino acids each day for a month. And pay attention not only how your joints feel and how your muscles feel, but how your skin looks on your face. And it's dramatic, the improvement that you can see just by feeding your skin with what you eat. So those are a few of the tactics that I use for kind of like external beauty. Yes. The question was, do I use apple cider vinegar? What I do is with that clay mask, I do not mix the clay with water. I either use apple cider vinegar, which is wonderful as a tonic for the face, or use something else that's actually wonderful for blood flow and for the actual tone of the face. And that's red wine, right? There's a little bit of red wine left over from the night before. I mix the clay mask with that. And so especially if you don't like the slight burn, apple cider vinegar, red wine works really well to mix that clay mask.

Chris, your thoughts on how I look so beautiful? You'd be dying to ask this question. So I actually do not go out in the streets and disturb the neighbors with my clay mask. However, I do multitask. And this does include you, Ben. I actually have a coffee enema at that time. It's a key on coffee enema a lot of the time. And I will use that clay mask once a week. And fortunately, this is going to be a shameless plug. My fiance actually has a skincare company that doesn't have the parabens, the talc or anything like that. So it's her product that I'll actually use on my face during that time. And I scrub every day as well to get rid of all that skin. Dead, dead skin cells. I am a sweater. So, you know, I want to be careful of bacteria and things like that. There is actually an app that I use if I am out and I am exposed to other skin care products or hair products or shampoos or anything like that, even, even, even cleaning products that you use in your house. And that's like a Think Dirty app. There's various apps out there, but Think Dirty, you can pretty much much scan everything with your phone and see what is in that particular product that may have a negative effect, a carcinogenic effect, etc. And I think, you know, you all about clinics here. You know, what do I think about people doing it for Botox and stuff like that. Well, you know, it's going to be a psychological effect. You know, I have. I'm very conscious of my teeth, the lower row of my teeth. And I've spoken to you about getting veneers, getting them straightened out. Never bothered me in the past, unfortunately. I've got a typical British teeth and I need to spend a lot of money this year to get rid of the metal that I have in my teeth because I'm doing whatever I can to collate it out. But, you know, I'm still seeing a lot of heavy metal, obviously in my book, in my work, that I need to get this extracted out once and for all. But one of the things that isn't so much, you know, a vanity aspect, the front teeth is part of it. You know, I'm sure, you know, there's a lot of people out there that deal with this, that maybe their jawline isn't square, maybe their teeth aren't right and it's going to make them feel better. You know, if it makes you feel better, it's not going to have an adverse effect on your health. Then, hey, why not? You know, dry, dry brushing is one thing that I do. I worked on cruise liners back in the 90s as a massage therapist. And one of the things that we would always advise was dry skin brushing or lymphatic brushing. And I'll do that all the time, you know, pretty much on a daily basis. I'll always brush towards the lymphatic system, you know, my occipital nodes, inguinal nodes. That's one thing that I do. And, you know, while I was here in India training a South Indian actor called Mahesh Babu, some of you may know he was always in movies with the female. And I'd always have a female that was like 20 years younger than him because he looked so young. So a lot of the skincare routines I actually learned from him. But then I went more so for the natural versions of that and just going on to peptides. You mentioned about, like the copper peptides. People here were to actually go out and get those peptides. They is it accessible to everyone there?

Most peptides that I get, I get from a physician because the market is so rife with cheap knockoffs and impure peptides, which could do you more harm than good. So I actually always go to a doctor in the US to get peptides. I work with a company called Taylormade Compounding out of Kentucky that uses amino acid sequencer to produce very precise Sequences of peptides. So yeah, you don't just want to go to some Chinese website and get your peptides because they, they can do you more harm than good. So be careful when it comes to peptides. Absolutely. Yeah. Can I say a couple more things about beauty real quick? I need to thank India and the ayurvedic wisdom that has stemmed from here because I certainly, you know, when it comes to oral beauty care, use some Ayurvedic practices. I oil pull every morning with a blend of oils. I get them from a company called Dirt in the us they blended a bunch of different essential oils with extra virgin coconut oil. Extra virgin coconut oil on its own is just fine. You could put a few drops of essential oil, like peppermint for example, in there or thyme or oregano and you just oil pull for about 10 minutes or so when you get out of bed in the morning first thing and then just spit that into the trash can and rinse your mouth, mouth with water. That's fantastic for gum and oral health and for the microbiome of your mouth. Another thing that I do is I scrape my tongue. It takes five seconds. You know, I wake up in the morning, just scrape from the back to the front. And tongue scraper is very easy to get. If you don't have one, you can just use the backside of a spoon. But tongue scraping is another one that I, that I do to care for the health of the tongue.

Remind me not to eat at your place.

Yeah, yeah, I wash the spoons, don't worry. And then just a couple other things. Dentistry, you know, Chris talked about having metals removed from his mouth. But I, you know, in the same way that I am ruthlessly cognizant of avoiding vegetable oils, I would have stepped foot into the office of a conventional dentist, period. It is a fast track to introducing toxins straight into your brain, releasing metals into neural tissue. I only work with a holistic dentist, so I would only work the holistic organic dentist who's only natural products and who's taking care even if they're removing metals from the mouth to put you on programs that help to detox those metals that might be leaching into the rest of the body. So holistic dentistry is very important. And then one other thing I do is xylitol is a natural way to clean the mouth. So, you know, you guys see me chewing gum a lot. Always I'm chewing xylitol gum. I only brush my teeth once per day, right. I oil pole in the morning, brush my teeth at the end of the day with a bamboo toothbrush with about a medium firmness, so I'm not wearing away the enamel on the skin. And that's a, you know, I use a fluoride free or a charcoal toothpaste and that, that's a wonderful way to kind of care for your teeth all day long. Something as simple as xylitol gum. Finally, when again, kind of to get all woo and big picture when we're, when we're talking about things like beauty or muscle or aesthetics, obviously they're important because beauty, symmetry, muscle, you know, relatively low body fat percentage, especially the visceral fat around the organs. Yeah, they're essential for health. And if we're caring for our health and we're caring for and attending to our lifespan, we're able to make better impact on this planet with the purpose that we've been given because we have the energy and the help that we deserve. But at the same time, we have to be careful, especially those of us who are in the training and the fitness world and the biohacking world, not to shame or to judge others based on their appearance, nor to feel shame or judgment on ourselves about our appearance. So when we talk about things like beauty or symmetry or muscles or you've got a couple of former bodybuilders up here talking to you, and maybe we have more broad shoulders than somebody else might have or we can do harder workouts than other people. I think one of the, you know, and David Hawkins talks about this in his book Healing and Recovery. One of the lowest energetic frequencies that you can emit is shame, whether shame for yourself or shame on others. So I really want to encourage you to approach this entire project of biohacking and fitness and health in a space of non judgment. There are many people who are starting from square one. There are many people who are doing these type of things on a limited budget and might not be able to afford a photo biomodulation panel or a clay mask, but they can at least, you know, scrub their face and use a little olive oil on their face and go out in the sunshine. But no matter where someone is coming from, be very, very careful not to err into judgment or into shame. Because every single human being is worthy of love. Every single one of us is worthy of love. And you just need to make sure that you couch all of the things that we're telling you in the context of loving others in a spirit of non judgment.

I want to cover a little bit about pollution, blue lights and its effects India has quite bad air quality and especially in places like Delhi, you know, it's hazardous. I was reading an article in a newspaper where the air quality index reduced from like 790 to 500, 790 to like 700. And it was good news, but it was still hazardous. And when you compare that to London, you know, we had like a red alert when it went from zero to one. So what's your views on. And I'll start with you on this one, Chris, on, on air quality and the kind of biohacks that we can do through the problems that we face on a daily basis. Like even blue lights.

The blue lights.

Even blue lights, yeah.

We're exposed to.

Okay, yeah. With the pollution, obviously, you know, it can start in your home. You can have. Oh, yeah, sorry. You know, like air purifier. You know, there's plants, there's certain plants that you can put in your home that can help purify the air. You know, obviously this. The masks that Ben was wearing the other day, what was the mask? 95. C95.

That mask that I was wearing and that I've been wearing every time I go outside or go through the airport. Here is the N95. There's another company called Atmos that is. They recently debuted at the Consumer Electronics show with another mask called the AO Air. And the AO Air is an actual tiny little HEPA air filter that you actually wear. It's more expensive obviously than a disposable face mask, but the N95 is the one I was wearing.

Are there any supplements as well that get taken to help purify the air?

There are. I've seen a lot of research on smoking and lung cancer and reversing a lot of the damage on strength. Smoking Taurine is one that's quite helpful. Very simple to get. You know, there are, there are a variety of companies that make taurine capsules and taurine powder, full spectrum antioxidant blend, you know, and there are again, many variations of that. But it's not that hard to get your hands on some of these berry powders or greens powders that really help to, to introduce a lot of antioxidants in one fell swoop into your body. More than you might be able to get without digestive disorders, distress from eating all the salads and all the fruits you might need to eat to get that equivalent number of antioxidants. So I'm not opposed to antioxidant supplementation. And I would say probably two of the biggest things to address the Neural inflammation and neural damage that can be caused. And also the the risk for upper respiratory tract infection, bronchitis, pneumonia, and even coronavirus would be glutathione and N acetylcysteine, specifically via a nasal spray or via a nebulizer. So up in my room right now, I have a tiny bottle of this stuff called Gluta Stat. Glutastat is a mix of glutathione and acetylcysteine and antioxidants. But it, you can do it in a nasal spray, just a few sprays up each nostril, and then you snort like this for about 60 seconds and just get it as deep up into the neural tissue as you can. Those of you who use cocaine frequently will be my first to do this. The other thing that I have up there in my hotel room that I've also been using every day that's very inexpensive that you can get on Amazon, is a portable nebulizer. And a portable nebulizer is simply a very small unit that attaches to a mask that you can hold up to your face. And you pour this glutastat into the little delivery portal in it and you can just breathe it. So what I've been doing in the morning while I'm reading my research articles is I put that nebulizer over my face and I just alternate between taking one deep breath in through my nose and out, and then one deep breath in through my mouth and out. I do that for about 15 minutes or so in the morning. So I'm nebulizing glutathione and N acetylcysteine and antioxidants. And then when I get on the plane, I've got the glutastatin little nasal spray. And I can do that nasal spray every once in a while while I'm on a plane or you know, bus mall, crowded area, etc, So I think that's, that's one of the, one of the best things to do is that that nebulized or that inhaled via the nose. Glutathione and acetylcysteine and antioxidants along with taurine supplementation.

So you mentioned about blocking the blue lights as well. So, you know, one of the things that I definitely do at home and more so when I'm traveling, so I do actually have either incandescent bulbs that I will travel with, or I'll have my lava lamps so I can see what I'm doing in my hotel room without having to put on the lights that Obviously are giving me the. A lot of the artificial blue light. I don't always get exposure to the red light whilst I'm traveling. So I actually do have what's called like a jute goat, if you want to get that out. So I'll actually blast myself a little bit. You know, it's not going to have the effect of full panels, but I will blast myself my face usually with that first thing in the morning and maybe at night if I don't have the exposure to the blue light. And obviously, I'll usually wear like the blue light blocking glasses more so what Ben is wearing with a yellow lens during the day. But I actually lost mine or broke.

Mine during this trip.

So I'm wearing a red lens. Yeah. I am clumsy. I know. And, you know, those are the reason why I'm so strict on things like that is because I am sensitive to these things. I notice that I quantify it. And if I'm not very strict with blocking out a lot of the blue light, I notice my sleep score is terrible. You know, much like if I walk into a hotel room and I know within five minutes of this mold there, I can just feel it, you know, it feels like that there's dust mites in. It affects my chest and my lungs. And one of the other things that I'll do because there are photoreceptors on the skin as well, for a couple of hours before bed, I'm usually wearing pajamas or something long covering my arms, you know, to ensure that I'm not getting a lot of light blasting me then. And, you know, I unplugged everything in the room last night. So I didn't have any clocks or any standby lights or anything like that.

At the same time.

Awesome. So there must be quite a few people that travel frequently here. Is there any people. Can I see a show of hands on airplanes most of the time. Right. So I know that when we were traveling, there was quite a few processes that I think you were kind of undertaking to. To protect your own health. Could you tell us some of these travel hacks?

Yeah, I mean, we've covered some of them like, you know, blue light blocking glasses or nebulizing glutathione. I. I would say some of my biggies. The other thing that we already covered was like the magnesium and the nad slash of the ketones. Right. For. For the. For the airline radiation. But a few other things that I do, A, for immunity is I always travel with oil of oregano and a B, propolis spray the oil of oregano is the kion brand. The bee propolis spray is from beekeepers natural and with both of those I'll just do a little bit of that sublingually or spray the, the bee spray in the back of my mouth and that's wonderful for airborne pathogens and pollutants for keeping my immune system stable while I travel. For inflammation. Whenever I'm drinking water, I put a couple of hydrogen tablets in the water because hydrogen rich water is also fantastic for mitigating inflammation. So not only do I consume a lot of really good mineral rich water, if it doesn't have minerals in it, I'll just add a little bit of sea salt or trace liquid minerals to it when I travel, but I also add that hydrogen water to it when I travel. The EMF blocking. Yes. And I even take that to the nth degree for the long haul flights. Not only do I wear EMF blocking underwear such as like the, the lambs brand, there are a few other brands out there. Spartan is another brand. But I actually have a company out of Germany called ktc. They make a full kind of EMF blocking pair of pants, shirt and hat that I can wear for the really long haul flights like I'll be wearing tomorrow when I fly back to the us. I'll just wear those during the entire flight to protect myself from some of the EMF on the flight. Being very cognizant of how much you are eating because the fasting can reduce inflammation typically. I just got a bag of macadamia nuts which are very stable, kind of slow release form of fuel and I'll do a little bit of that with like some spirulina or chlorella tablets mixed in with the macadamia nuts. It's kind of like a perfect little trail mix, but like a travel friendly trail mix that kind of detoxifies you but also upregulates your ketone production and keeps you in a state of fat utilization while you're traveling. Because I'm not going to fast all the way back to the U.S. it's too long, right? So I'm going to want to eat a little bit. It'll be like macadamia nuts with spirulina and chlorella tablets. Let's see if there's anything else that I do when I try aside from just like, you know, movement, Little movement rules during the day. Like every time I use the bathroom in the airport or in the airplane, I do 40 air squats. You know, just squat up and down. I even do that when I'm at a restaurant. So if you have dinner with me and I come out of the bathroom all red faced and come back and sit down at the table again, it's not because I'm constipated, it's because I've been in the bathroom during, during my air squats and I have a little inboundless in one section. I've got five different like three to five minute short stretch routines of hip openers and things that you can rely upon not only during a busy day of work at the office, but also while you're waiting for the airplane or while you're on the airplane or while you're in any other position or any other state where you know you're going to be sedentary for long periods of time. Let me think. Those, aside from the stuff that we've already mentioned are probably some of the biggest things that I do when I travel. And then finally I work in a lot of power naps. So I always have noise blocking headphones. A really good sleep mask. Like I like the mindful sleep mask. I have a little bit of reishi mushroom extract which helps me to sleep without waking and feeling drowsy and back to talk right when the airplane lands or something like that. And then I use, I use an app called New Calm nucalm and it comes with a little like a vagus nerve stimulator and something you wear on your wrist to kind of shift you into a state of parasympathetic activation that works really well for like these quick 20 to 40 minute power naps. And some of the internal studies even at New calm show that 20 minutes with that device simulates a full 90 minute sleep cycle. So I can, I can really get high quality sleep within about 20 minutes. So the rest component is pretty important to me when I travel as well. Awesome.

Chris, your travel hacks.

So I haven't got all the clothes just yet. Still pretty stylish. You know, I'll actually have like what, you know, on a long haul flights I'll wear defender shield blankets. So instead of, you know, the blanket that they give you on the planes, I usually just throw that overhead and I'll have a defender shield blanket to help scramble a lot of the EMF that I'm surrounded with. You know, luckily of course we have the gamma rays but they don't have the WI fi on Air India which I'll be flying back on. So that's always a good thing to disconnect. And whilst I'm going through the airport sometimes, you know, they drop you off and you do walk to the terminal through the tarmac. So I am wearing these shoes with the earthy bar on the back so at least I can earth myself from one plane to the next. And much like Ben mentioned about the toilet squats, that's something that I def pit learns with movements. And I'll always bother the waitresses there. Do you call them waitresses? Strew less where I will just stretch. I'll usually stretch for about 15 minutes every couple of hours there because I just do find that I tighten up. It's funny, like I've got a major curvature of my spine. It did accumulate quite a lot of that from 15 years of motocross. And the only time that I have back issues, however, my back is pretty tight from yesterday is from flying. You know, I can deadlift, I can work out no problems, but it's flying. But if I find that I stretch myself out plenty of times, then I'm pretty good with that. And like the mask that I actually use is called a remedy mask from blue bloks. The reason why I like them is I don't know why this is. If I wear a conventional mask, you know, like the ones that you get on the airplane, the tightness around my head will create some form of like subtle anxiety for me. So it has to be loose fitting that then also blocks out the light. So I found that it's got like padding around the eye, blocks out everything. I find that mask personally works well for me. And then on top of that I've got the noise canceling headphones and plugs inside just in case there's a two year old screaming in my ear behind.

And I've got, I've got one quick thing because you talk about back here. If you hold the mic in front of my face, I'll show people this real quick. So this is something I'll do quite a bit on planes and in cars or when I'm sitting like you guys are at a conference. So I do about five of these anytime my back's feeling tight. You can try it if you'd like. You kind of put your hands on the front of your knees and then what you do is you're holding on your knees, you're gripping your knees, you're able to use them as counter pressure. And then you extend your back and as you extend your back, you take a giant breath in and just suck as much air in as you can. Like this extending, extending, extending. And then you exhale and curl yourself down and over. And then you inhale and extend again. Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe. And exhale down. We'll do one more. Inhale, extend, extend, extend, extend, extend. Push those hips forward. And exhale. And just fold yourself over. And if you're relegated to a seated position, that's just like a simple little hack that you can do that not only kind of oxygenates you, but also can lengthen those hip flexors, get a little bit of cerebral spinal fluid and blood flow to the spine. That. That's one quick one that I'll do just. Just from when I'm sitting for a long period of time and I have no option to stand up and stretch.

And a couple of lacrosse balls, like in a sock, can really help as well.

Yeah, you mean like. Like using the lacrosse balls and have them in place right behind the back?

Yeah, just to kind of massage yourself. Or if you're stuck in that position for a long time, like sometimes you're stuck in a Mumbai traffic, you can utilize it in your car, not as you're driving.

Just a little sleep check. Is everyone still awake?

Yeah.

Good.

Awesome.

So just before we get onto technology, wearable technology, and quantifying some of these hacks, I want to talk about some basic herbs. There is a lot of products that we spoke about that may not be readily available in India, but India is known for Ayurveda, and there is a lot of herbs that are available. What kind of herbs would you say are good for biohacking and what are their benefits? I mean, one of the most talked about herbs is probably turmeric. What are your favorites?

Turmeric is certainly up there. We use that in our. In our Kion Flex product. We don't use curcumin. We use Turmero saccharides, which are fantastic for joint inflammation. Kind of a lesser talked about component of turmeric, but. But much more bioavailable upon consumption than curcumin. So, yeah, I'm a huge fan of turmeric, especially when blended with things that make it even more bioavailable, such as black pepper and ghee, two other readily available compounds. Here in India, you can make yourself tea with turmeric, black pepper, and ghee. It's amazing. If you add a little coconut milk and stevia to that, it's almost like a great little latte, like tincture, and that would be like hot coconut milk. You can then foam with a latte frother. I am a big fan of astragalus or longelli I am a big fan of ashwagandha. For relaxation, let me think about a few other herbs that I work in. Mushrooms, I kind of sort of chunk into that category. I didn't talk about this when I talked about immunity, but chaga and turkey tail mushroom are absolutely amazing not only for their anti carcinogenic properties, but also for their ability to be able to strengthen the immune system. And then the reishi mushroom extract I talked about earlier for sleep. And let me think. I really like bitter melon. Bitter melon extract or berberine to kind of act similar to the diabetic drug metformin for decreasing blood glucose. Glucose after you've had a very carbohydrate intensive meal. Like having that before, after a big dinner can be really effective at lowering blood glucose after a meal. There's one kind of shotgun formulation of Chinese traditional herbs that I use called Tian Qi that's kind of just like a general tonic. And it's not only ashwagandha and astragalus, but a host of other Chinese herbs that I can't even pronounce like Oshi wu and all these different compounds that are absolutely amazing for focus and immunity, for health, for energy, et cetera. So the one caution I would give to you is there was a recent study displaying the hepatotoxicity, the liver stress that a lot of these herbs and herbal formulas place upon the body because they're laced, they're laced with pesticides, they're laced with herbicides, they've been sprayed with some kind of stabilizer or preservative. So you do need to be careful with the source. Typically you get what you pay for with Chinese herbs, with Ayurvedic herbs, et cetera. So I would be pretty careful to make sure that you're getting the herbs from like certified good manufacturing practices facility. Really the best way to go, the best way to go with herbs is to actually go to a doctor of Ayurvedic medicine or Chinese herbologist or a doctor of Chinese medicine and actually have them give you the herbs. And for people who have used herbs and gone to a doctor and get the actual real thing, the actual concentrated extract of the herb that is pure and clean. It's a night and day difference. So just as with peptides, with herbs, sourcing is very important.

Yeah. So one just, just go off of Ben mentioned the pathiciding group ingredients. One that's a look for when you're actually looking at some of these Ayurvedic herbs. We actually visited the KSM 66 plant here that has that patented form of ashwagandha that Ben mentioned. And we actually watched how it was sourced, how it was cleaned with milk. It was cleaned with milk as opposed to any harsh chemicals or anything like that. So go for the pathosid ingredients and sometimes you'd see like an R or TN next to it. And there's quite a few that I actually sourced here from India, KSM 66, Ashwagandha being one of them. And the LJ 100 which is the patented form of the Eurocoma longifolia root extract. And Prima V which is a patented form of the shilajit as well. And turmeric. Yeah, of course. That is a huge one for me. I actually came across tumeric as being very beneficial just by accident. Did anyone see the 12 week muscle building video trainer that was filmed here? Yeah. So I remember I was on the way to filming on one day and I never had nosebleeds ever. This nosebleed and it would not stop. And then one of the crews just stopped at the market and said, shove this up your nose and it was turmeric and I put it up my nose and just stopped bleeding straight away. So I do to turmeric quite a lot and I'll usually mix that with like black pepper or biography, help with the bioavailability of that. And Geneva Sylvester. So Ben mentioned about boomerang to help with the blood sugar regulation. I do use that and I'll use like chromium or chromate, which is a passive form of that. Chromium as well. Those are probably at the top of my list. Some of those that you'll notice were like testosterone supports. You know, as I'm getting a little bit older and I'm very active, I want to make sure that I maintain my natural, healthy testosterone levels as much as I possibly can as well.

You guys have a lot of tongkatly here too.

Yeah, that's wonderful for testosterone. Yeah, awesome.

So when we talk about technology and wearable technology, we've spoken about how we need to stay away from EMFs, they're harmful. But then at the same time, you know, sometimes people are confused. Should we use Bluetooth headphones? Should we use watches to track our workouts? Does that have an effect on us? Because of course, most of these wearable technologies you have to connect it with a mobile phone. I'm sure there could be some damage on that side. So there's Bluetooth headphones, rings, watches, heart rate monitors, guided meditation. So you're wearing devices for that also. And of course there's so many apps. So what's your views on wearable technology.

When it comes to biohacking? So I actually have a pretty strict filter. If there is a wearable technology and I only wear three things, I'll tell you in a moment what I wear them. It must be something that has the option for me to be able to disable the Bluetooth, to disable the WI fi and to place it in airplane mode. And it also has to be something that if it were to be tested by a building biologist or if I use an actual RF meter on it, does not produce a lot of dirty electricity. If it does, then in many cases the pros outweigh the cons. I'm still shocked in the biohacking movement and how many people come out with like, you know, some kind of sleep enhancing mattress or some kind of wearable gadget to track your HRV, etc. And they don't take into account at all the biological impact of the EMF that is producing. I'm not going to sleep on a mattress with built in WI fi that's throwing out a signal all night long to try and collect some kind of information on my body and transmit it. When in many cases something can be producing a very low frequency or collecting information without producing appreciable amounts of emf. And then once I do connect that to upload the information to a device, then it's for a very short period of time producing emf, then it can be deactivated. So for example, I'm wearing on my ankle right here something called the Apollo band. And the Apollo is developed by a company called Apollo Neuroscience. It was developed by a researcher who has worked with plant medicine such as psilocybin or ayahuasca, as a way to address trauma or ptsd. And for people who could not do plant medicine or did not want to do plant medicine, we wanted to figure out a way to actually elicit the same effects. We developed a device that delivers a non audible sound frequency that can cause a neurotransmitter or a brainwave response that can do things like induce a state of relaxation or induce a state of focus. Now this is not on right now. What I just did was I enabled Bluetooth on my phone. Okay, so Bluetooth was off. My phone's in airplane mode. I just enabled Bluetooth. I'm going to flip here and I'm going to put it in open mode, which just basically makes you a little bit more social and open okay, so there I just click that. I'm going to press play. And now the Apollo is off. I can feel this mild vibration traveling up my longbone, traveling up my tibia, okay? And that's going to immediately begin to stimulate my brain. Now, most people, once they turn this on, they'd be like, okay, it's on, good to go. But there's always one extra step. So as soon as I do that, I scroll to the screen that shows me the battery life on it and I click place on airplane mode, right? And I tested this. And when it is, when I don't go through that extra step, it churns out as much dirty electricity as my cell phone the whole time it's on. As soon as they put it on airplane mode, it's good to go, right? So sometimes it depends on how the device functions. That's one wearable that I use quite a bit. The other one is the Oura ring to self quantify and gather activity data, heart rate variability data, deep sleep data, light sleep data, etc. But again, this thing will churn out dirty EMF unless I turn it on airplane mode. So once it's on my finger, I had to put it on airplane mode. And it is kind of a hassle because any of these devices that can be enabled to be put on airplane mode can only be taken off airplane mode once you put them back on the charger that they came with, right? So I'll leave them on airplane mode for as long as possible. And then once I know the battery is dying, then I'll put them back on the charger, recharge them. That enables me to reconnect them to the device. And then the only other thing that I wear is a cheap ass $15 Timex watch. Because. Because almost all the watches out there, especially the Apple watch, it's one of the biggest culprits that's out there, but so are most of the Garmin devices, et cetera. It's literally like 24, 7, wearing a computer right against your skin that's constantly bombarding you with emf. And it's really hard to use those in a functional manner and have airplane mode enabled on them. So I just wear a cheap old watch. I wear a horror ring. I wear the Apollo when I need to use it for specific, specific function. And then everything else, I make sure that it can be disabled or the Bluetooth or wi Fi can be disabled. And you know, we talk about air quality like I have a molecule air filter, very, very fine filtration. Better than a HEPA air filter that I keep next to my bed. But often you don't know. So I literally go to the manufacturer's website, dig through the manuals on the website, find out that it does have built in Bluetooth and WI fi so they can deliver upgrades to the hardware that's built into the unit. Then I had to go through a series of steps to disable all of that. And so it can be kind of a pain in the ass, but I care about my body, I care about my brain. So if I'm going to use better living through science, I go through extra steps to make sure I'm not simultaneously being bombarded with ems. That's kind of my approach that that's the lens through which I view out of stuff.

Chris, it's funny you mention that about the mattress. The company contacted me about 8, 10, 10 months ago and they really wanted to send me these pillows that help with your sleep qualification. However, it's a Bluetooth device that has to stay on all night and your head is placed next to this thing. So how many of you actually have a phone in your bedroom on at night? Hands up. It's okay, it's all right. I am judging you. Just think about that. There's a good six, eight hours throughout the day that you do not have to have it on. How many of you actually check it first thing in the morning as soon as you wake up? Come on, come on, be real. That's it. That is potentially setting you up for a bad night's sleep first thing in the morning. The way that you act upon waking is usually how your day is dictated and how you actually go to bed at night. So do yourself a favor. You're not going to go get to the end of your life and go, you know what? I really regret not actually having my phone on me more. You know, I really wish I checked it two minutes earlier upon waking. Use that time to spend with yourself, with your thoughts, with your meditate manifest for your day. But there's no reason why you need to have that device next to your bed. You're going to get fired if you don't answer the phone at 2 o' clock in the morning. Maybe you should change your job if.

You do, you know.

So be very cognizant of when you have the phone with you. Keep it downstairs if you're working out, maybe have it outside or on airplane mode as Ben mentioned before. But you know, the OURA ring is something that I use. It is great because you can Put it on airplane mode all the time, and it is still tracking. And these guided meditation devices, as you mentioned, they can be good in the beginning, you know, just like you have a personal trainer in the beginning. But, you know, my job is as a trainer that I will train you, but you won't need me after several months. Hopefully you've got all the tools needed for you to apply on yourself. And it's the same with these guided meditations. Maybe they help you in the beginning, but maybe you don't need it after. So you're not constantly penetrating yourself and actually having that device of distraction next to you. I actually went to. There's a place in Boise that just opened last year called Source Meditation. And we actually go into this meditative space with no devices. And once a week or twice a week, they actually have sound meditation classes. And I love this. You can really feel the vibrations within your body, the positive vibrations. So that's what I think. Whenever I'm doing meditation now, I want to listen to the sounds. What vibrations do they have? And what does that effect on me? And with a guided meditation, you can't always get that, you know. So obviously, you know, I'll use like the. My Zone device. Of course we're going to get penetrated with that, but usually it's an hour, half hour. You know, I'm balancing my life. You know, I'm not going to completely be a hermit. I'm going to do whatever I can to keep my head afloat. And the other thing that I used is like the Morpheus for my hrd, but I pretty much use the whole room for everything else.

Awesome. We did actually speak about a lot of these gadgets at our last clinic, which was in Delhi. And we will be posting this on the social. So a lot of the topics which we may not have covered today have already been covered in the previous seminar, which you will be able to listen to online or Reboundless or in Boundless.

Yes.

We also did a podcast last night which was quite interesting. We spoke a lot about India, Ben's experiences, which you'll also be able to hear once it goes live. And I asked a question to Ben last night about his top 10 biohacks. And I think, you know, there was.

A lot more than 10.

But I'm gonna put Ben and Chris on the spot here, and I'll say, what's your top five? If you have to choose before we go to questions.

All right, top five, number one would be light. The use of these photobiomodulation, wearable Head devices, photobiomodulation panels, the use of red incandescent lights in the bedroom, regular incandescent, incandescent lights throughout the rest of the house. I'm always cognizant of the type of lights that I'm using and also even some of these light frequency devices that can do things like shift brainwave function, etc. So probably two that I use most frequently, the V light, V I E light for the head, and then the jube lights for the rest of the body. Number two would be grounding or earthing. Whether it be the use of grounding or earthing mats that I'll use while I'm sleeping, while I am working, or grounding and earthing shoes, or pulsed electromagnetic field technology, which is just kind of like a form of that same type of signal frequency. Number three would be hyperthermia. You know, I didn't talk about this when you're talking about beauty and skin health, but I do a deep sweat nearly every day when I'm at home and I think it's wonderful for detoxification. I also think it enhances skin health, it increases red blood cell production, it helps you to maintain muscle even when you're not exercising. It increases red blood cell production. So I have infrared sauna. But the use of an infrared sauna or a really good finish style dry sauna and getting a deep sweat on a few times a week, that would be number three. Number four would be the use of cryotherapy or cold thermogenesis. That's again something I do every single day. When I'm traveling, it's cold showers or visiting somewhere that has a cryotherapy chamber, or even swimming in a cold pool or cold river, cold lake, cold ocean. When I'm at home, it's an ice bath or a cold pool. Or there are some clients who I coach, I do Skype, consults and coach people all over the world. And one of my clients I was just with in India, he's down in Bangalore and he just has some ice packs in his freezer and he has a device called Cool Fat Burner because he's an office job. And he just puts these ice packs in his cool fat burner when he's at work. And he'll do about 30 to 40 minutes of cold during his, his first few hours, his first little bit of the work day, and allows him to start his day with cold, which is also fantastic for reducing your blood glucose the rest of the day. That's one thing that really surprised me when I wore a continuous blood glucose monitor, was how effective cold is at stabilizing blood glucose during the day. And then I would say this is something simple. But it's a real game changer for me as far as my energy levels go. And something that I discovered back when I was racing Ironman triathlon had very high levels of physical activity combined with stress. And I would lay awake in bed at night, could hear the blood pounding in my ears and could feel as though I was hypercortisolic. And the adrenal stored great deal with this specific compound. It tends to be imbalanced in a lot of people, especially people who are using table salt or sodium chloride. And that's trace minerals, trace minerals. I use trace minerals every single day. You can get a really good trace liquid mineral like the company Quinton Q U I N T O N. There's a wonderful one that I travel with and that I use at home. You can get a really good salt, like probably one of the better ones is Celtic salt. And you can put verbal pantry, really good full mineral salt into every glass of water that you drink during the day. But I think a lot of people are not only deficient in potassium and deficient in magnesium, but efficient a lot of the trace minerals. And since I started using trace minerals, it's been a real game changer for my health, for my sleep, for my energy levels. So I would say those would be the big three. Lighting, grounding and earthing. Heat, coal and nails.

There's a lot of repetition here anyway, but yet number one on that list for me is the hot and cold thermogenesis. I like to pair these two together as much as I possibly can. I do have an infrared sauna at my home. Hopefully Jack's going to be there in a couple of weeks time. He'll look forward to the sauna. I'm not sure he'll look forward to the ice bath that follows it. So the reason why I'll do sauna probably about five times a week minimum is because it does release what's called heat shock proteins. We have folded proteins in our body just through the aging process. So how do we fix that? A lot of it is through heat. You actually can get this as well through extreme activity like HIIT training. But heat actually helps with this. Now one of the reasons why I did heat a lot as well when I actually had shoulder surgery a couple of years ago is that studies have proven that that heat itself can prevent muscle wastage. Okay, They've done a lot of studies, particularly in the elderly as well. So a lot of it is because it helps with heat shock proteins. It can increase your testosterone levels, your natural growth hormone levels, and obviously it's a great detoxification for your skin to get rid of a lot of these heavy metal contaminants, particularly the ones I have in my teeth. And again, cold therapy. So even though Jack may not look forward to that as much, I actually look forward to the cold. I run very hot. I'm usually sweating. I grew up in Wales, where it's very, very cold. And I got used to, at a very young age, getting up at 5 o' clock in the morning, whether it was snow or whether it was rain. We go down feeding the animals, and I've just become, I guess, accustomed to it. So I struggle in the heat, but the cold, I love it. The reason why I like the hot and cold thermogenesis together is because it stimulates what's called, you know, the vagus nerve at the back of your neck. So whenever I get any ice, I make sure that I cover my thyroid and tone that vagus nerve. Okay? In doing so, I find that I'm much more emotionally stable than I was previously. Not that I was a psychotic killer or anything, but, you know, we all deal with frustration and stress and anxiety. I have some weird, anxious times. Jag knows about him. I cannot take anything other than an aisle seat. I have to have an aisle seat. I don't care if it's a carney jerk, just don't put me in an aisle in a middle seat or window seat. I have to have an aisle seat. That escape, you know, and I hate I can't be around little dogs. I have an anxiety issue with little dogs. And unfortunately, when I met my fiance, she had Chihuahuas. Now they're at her mother's place, but I still visit her mother's mother. But what I found, just since I've started doing hot and cold, mostly cold thermogenesis and stimulating that vagal nerve tone, I am so much more stable emotionally. Jack may not agree. I'm sure my fiance hopefully would agree, but that is one thing that I'd say is number one.

Number one for me.

You know, I see people that deal with depression. They. I have clients that deal with depression. And, you know, I know people on medication for depression, but I haven't met anybody that has actually been treated and cured of depression on medication. I just haven't seen it. So one thing that I get all my clients to do is, whenever possible, is the hot and Cold thermogenesis together. And the light has been a big thing for me because, you know, being a bodybuilder, always indoors on a StairMaster under artificial light. But then when I actually started doing more endurance work and living in the beautiful mountains of Boise, I found hundreds of miles of trails. And that's how I got into ultramarathon, because I thought, wow, this is my form of meditation now, active forms of meditation. I can listen to the sound underneath my feet, I can listen to the birds, I smell the fresh air, I've got the sun and I'm out there by myself. It's peaceful, it's tranquil, and I'm getting exposure to the sun because usually I'd start my run at like 4 or 5 o' clock in the morning and I'd watch that sunrise. So light has been a huge thing for me. So when, whenever possible, I'll always try to get outside in the morning and then at night. But if not, as you saw with the good device, I'll make sure that I blast myself in the morning. Actually, my fiance messaged me yesterday because she's got an inactive thyroid. She said, I don't know what's going on. I've been doing everything with my supplements. I'm staying hydrated, I've been sleeping, but I still feel lethargic. I said, have you been blasting yourself in the morning with the. Because it's still quite, quite cold in Boise and she hadn't. So, you know, one thing that I'd say is blasting yourself with some light in the morning whenever possible, because that can really, really help. Meditation and gratitude is huge for me. Being grateful because we're always chasing that woman, that car, that house. I want more numbers, I want more followers, I want more likes, you know, always chasing, chasing for something, you know, And I learned this from bodybuilding. Always trying to get that win. And if you're not getting that win, second place, you're the first place loser. And not really enjoying the journey because I admit I never enjoyed bodybuilding. I didn't like being on stage. I didn't like posing, oiling up or anything like that. Unless there's some, you know, nice female tanning assistant there with the oil enough. But I never really enjoyed it. But it was a great form of accountability because what way of putting your urgency on the line and standing on stage in your underpants, you know, so it's not as if you could cheat and hide it, you know, So I like that sense of urgency and it allowed me to evolve and Create a lot of discipline and structure in my life because in Wales I got into the party scene, drugs, alcohol, I could see what was happening with my social circle. So I needed this structure to really, you know, to pursue forward. But I was never grateful in a junior. I never had any gratitude in what I was trying to pursue. You know, I'd always get into an abyss after a show of depression because now I've lost the structure. I lead by times and punctuality. So now I actually participate in everything with complete gratitude. And, you know, when I compete in an endurance event, I wasn't. I'm not pushing myself to the extent like what Ben was. I just wanted to make sure that I enjoyed the process and finish within a good time. You know, I'm not there, you know, trying to finish in the last hour or anything, but I'm enjoying the process and I'm staying injury free during that. So I'm grateful. I'm grateful for the encouragement along the way. I'm grateful that every single, single one of you showed up. I'm grateful that Jack and Ben here are up here with me. And I want to enjoy every moment when my life flashes before me before I die. I want to have a lot of gratitude for the experience and the people that I've met along the way. The penf, that's really helped me as well. So I have like, what's called a biobalance and a flex pulse at home. I started using a FlexiPulse when I had my strong shoulder surgery. There's a lot of things that I was doing, but I just found that the PENF device, the earthing, a lot of things that I was doing. Like I remember being woken up and having my essential amino acids. I don't remember it, but there's a picture, you know, immediately after the surgery. But, you know, the PEMF devices really, really helped in that regard. It's like a trickle charge. You can get these massive, powerful devices that a lot of physicians have. Occasionally I'll use them, but this is kind of like a trickle charge of a battery that you'd have at home. And earthing, that's a big thing. You know, it's probably there in the top five for sure. You know, I'll use that as a form of my meditation and sun gazing. Usually in the morning, there's a place near me called Simplot Hill. I'll take my dog sleds up for a run in the morning. Whilst he's running, running around, causing chaos. I'm usually there Some gazing and earthing at the same time. And I'd say the last one is the quantification of like the Oura ring because I get my clients to use this whenever possible because it gives me so much data if they're sleeping well, if they're recovering well, if they've got a lot of decision making fatigue, if they're stressed, you know, all these sort of things.

So I'd say the Oura ring would be the last amount of six.

Well, I knew I was repeating a couple of these.

Right, so now it's time for questions. I'm sure there'll be plenty of questions. We do have a limited clock and we have tried to cover as much as we possibly can. So we're going to open up for questions. If you have a question.

Hi, thank you so much for this evening. I'm coming from Bangalore. The only reason I've come here is to ask you about BQC157. How do we get PPC157? How do you get it? Yeah, it's very difficult to find a few. Admittedly I don't know where to get high quality peptides in India because I've never had to actually source them here. My, my client in Bangalore, he travels to the US and brings them back on ice and gets them from a doctor over there. I don't know that there are any companies currently producing peptides in this, but my knowledge is limited as to whether or not there's a quality source here. So.

What about the alternative? Like oral? Like a doctor Seeds.

The only peptide that is able at this point to be orally consumed is kind of a variant of PPC. It's not exactly BPC157. There's a guy named Dr. Seeds and he has this thing called Dr. Seeds BPC. It's kind of similar. It's not as effective as the injectable bed guide, but he does have an oral tablet you can get. But that's even, that's not as good as like the injectable BPC157. So yeah, I would. I wish I had a better reply for you, but I don't. With hot and cold, I noticed that you do recommend sauna more than steam. Is there a reason for that? The reason that I generally do not recommend steam is because you don't know the source of the water that they are feeding into the steam room. And most health clubs and gyms and hotels do not filter that water. So you're essentially breathing in birth control pills, pharmaceuticals, fluoride anything else that might be in the water supply when you're in a steam room. So I'm very careful with steam rooms and if I'm at a spa, I actually straight up ask the type of water filtration that they use for their steam and if they don't know, I don't go in. My question is about supplements. So how does one actually decide what kind of supplementation do they need for themselves after having a natural diet and actually trying to consume a natural diet by, you know, understanding that these are the best kind of supplement micronutrients you get from that kind of food. So how do we decide whether we need a magnesium or zinc or vitamin A, B, K or something like that? Yes, the best way is via self quantification, meaning for digestive type of supplements and gut tests to see which probiotics you actually should be taking, whether you need digestive enzymes, whether you need anti parasitics, etc. For blood work you can identify vitamin D, magnesium, different thyroid needs like iodine, selenium, etc. Probably the best kind of like full panel to get would be a nutrival that covers a lot of the bases in terms of identifying all little holes in your diet that may need to be filled in with supplementation. That's a nutrival panel made by the company Genova Diagnostics that mutarel. That being said, there are specific supplements or specific nutrients or vitamins or minerals that nearly everyone tends to be deficient in or benefit from. Probably the biggest would be creatine, magnesium, some kind of mineral multivitamin complex that's like a blend of multivitamins that are chelated to minerals. And in addition to magnesium, creatine and minerals with multivitamins, probably the last biggest one would be some form of really good omega 3 fatty acids, like a really good high quality fish oil. Just because omega 3 omega 6 ratios in most diets are a little bit too, well, Omega 6 to Omega 3 is too high. So those would be some of the ones that I think across the board most people can benefit from. This is. First of all, thank you guys for being here. Coming to your hot and cold thermogenesis. This is a question. I know that Ben spoke about hot cold showers when you're traveling. I know on your blog and on the Mindvalley forum you talk about it's 20 seconds cold, 10 seconds hot. I know that Chris just mentioned that when Jack comes to visit he'll probably do a sauna and then we'll get into a nice bath Right after that. This is a bit of a technical question, but is there a benefit to doing one first and then the other, or does it not make a difference? If you do hot first, you cold first, hot first. Because if you come into the hot cold, it takes that much longer to get hot. Right. Always finish with cold, because if you finish with cold, you're going to burn a bunch of fat and more calories and increase your metabolic rate as your body tries to warm up. Aside from those two rules, start with heat, finish with cold. Whether you're doing whatever, you got a hot tub next to a cold pool, you're in 1 minute hot tub, 1 minute cold, 2 minutes hot, 2 minutes cold, finishing up with 5 minutes hot, 5 minutes cold, whether you're doing 30 minutes in the sauna, 5 minutes in the cold pool, whether you're doing 20 seconds of cold, 10 seconds of hot, finishing with the 20 seconds of cold. There's no hard and fast rules aside from start with heat, finish with cold.

Yeah, so just to follow up with that, obviously, yeah, following with the cold really helps, especially at night. Helps with your sleep. I find it really helps with my deep sleep cycle. And obviously if you finish with a cold as well, as Ben mentioned, just measuring through the blood glucose monitor, it really helps with your blood sugar regulation throughout the day.

Right. So thank you guys firstly for spreading your light and knowledge. I think all of us here have really benefited a lot in more ways than we can process right now. So my quick question was, how do, what would be your tips for like gut health and how do we restore that gut health and what do prebiotics and probiotics have to do with the same? Well, that's a, it's a pretty big topic, but I would, I would say that most of my clients who come to me for coaching always begin with a Genova diagnostics test. That's a three day gut test that will test for parasites, yeast, fungus, etc. So we are actually quantifying what is going on. Those who can afford to do so or who want to do so will also do a microbiome test, such as the biome or the longevity. But if I had to prioritize them, I would say the Genova diagnostics test is it gives you more applicable, readily actionable information that has more research behind it versus the full microbiome test, which I think is still in its infancy when it comes to the research about whether or not we test low and say XYZ bacteria, whether replenishment of that with ABC probiotic is going to actually make an appreciable difference in health. So I always start with that kind of quantification. In most cases there's some element of inflammation or leaky gut present. In many cases there's also some type of small intestine bacterial overgrowth present. For the former, it simply using things that heal the gut lining. Sometimes it's the implementation of a short term diet, right, like we talked about earlier, that eliminates most common food problems. I typically will use something like the paleo autoimmune diet or these days I'm beginning to use something like a nose, the tail carnivore diet or something else that just restricts a lot of built in plant defense mechanisms and gives the gut a little bit of a break. Typically that's combined with compressed feeding windows, intermittent fasting, etc. At the same time, I introduced nutrients that help to heal the gut. Some of my favorites are colostrum, bone broth, l glutamine and then a specific form of soil extract that can heal the gut from the ravages of glyphosate. That one is called lignite and is made by a company called Ion Biome in the us so those are some of my favorites for healing the gut. And for folks who are eating a plant based diet diet who do not want to do the bone broth, I'll have them make the chia seed gel where you take some chia seed, you mix it with water and you have a nice little slurry that's very healing and nourishing to the water of the gut. In the case of the latter. In the case of sibo it is far more complicated because when there is bacterial overgrowth, there are often mold, mycotoxins, biofilm and a lot of things that need to be addressed via a host of different herbal protocols like olive leaf extract, oregano. There are a variety of herbs, uber Ursula, the list goes on and on. And sometimes different bacteria will respond differently to different protocols, but that's always combined with low fodmap, low carb diet. So you're not feeding the bacteria and in many cases has to be combined with like low dose antibiotics, anti parasitics, et cetera, and then finally a slow reintroduction of probiotics and fermented foods which in the case of sibo can aggravate sibo if you haven't taken care of the bacterial overgrowth first. And then finally, regarding the question on probiotic supplementation, if you do think of your gut as a giant garden hose that Turns out, travels from your mouth to your anus and you think about taking a capsule like a probiotic. You know, it's almost like sprinkling little bits of bacteria here and there throughout that garden hose that may or may not populate the gut. And when you look at fermented foods, right, like a bunch of fiber wrapped in a bolus of bacteria that travels throughout the entire garden hose and paints the entire interior of that garden hose as it passes through, it makes me think that whether or not we're supplementing with probiotics, the use of fermented foods, as long as you tolerate the fibers and things like that that are present in those foods, is a better kind of more ancestral, holistic approach to replenishing the bacteria of the gut. So I tend to favor a wide variety of fermented foods over probiotic supplementation. And my own protocol is a wide variety of foods combined with one probiotic that I use called seed that's wrapped in an algal medium that withstands the acidic nature of the gut. It tends to do a good job populating the gut, although I don't think it's enough. I think it needs to be combined with, with a wide variety of fermented foods, which of course are also going to give you the prebiotic fiber that will feed the bacteria. Great questions. Thank you. Hey Ben, quick question.

You generally recommend a low carb Mediterranean.

Diet for the western population. Do you think the same applies for the Asian subcontinent? Or are we kind of better equipped to digest carbohydrates as a race? The reason that I tend to, if someone cannot afford or has not yet done self quantification, blood work, genetic work, gut work, et cetera, to very precisely determine which diet is going to be proper for them is because it appears that humans probably originated from somewhere close to the general area of the Mediterranean. And so we tend to be genetically favored to do pretty well with that mix of, of a rich variety of plants, herbs, spices, fish, high omega 3 fatty acids, and not a ton of, for example, processed carbohydrates, or copious amounts of red meat, or very, very large amounts of, say, unfermented dairy, etc. Now, that being said, you know, let's take an example of a country like India where a fiber rich, very plant dominant diet heavy in legumes has been a staple, along with some choice meats such as lamb and chicken, for example. That's a perfect case in which if you, if you're, you know, not living in America, which is a genetic melting pot, where these things become more confusing, but you can trace your ancestry back to being largely Indian, then eating like your ancestors is a pretty good idea, provided that the ancestral food that you're eating is to return to what I was talking about earlier, say, rich in chickpeas. But the chickpeas have been prepared properly, right? Soaked and rinsed or pressure cooked, or the meat has not been cooked in vegetable oils, or the chickens have not been raised in tiny cages and fed corn and grain, but have instead been raised out in pasture on insects, right? So if you can identify what your ancestors eat or ate and then approximate that diet in the way that your ancestors would have eaten it, without all the bastardization of it that we've introduced in modern culture, then you're probably going to be on a pretty good track to eating a diet that's appropriate for you.

I just want to take this opportunity to really thank Ben for coming over here to provide all this information to you. Even though I only live like a 30 minute flight from him, like I bumped into like Salt Lake and la and now in India of all places. But it's an absolute pleasure to share this stage. Now this happened when we actually did a podcast in LA and Jack just happened to be in LA for some meetings and Jack always says his thoughts become things, you know, and it did because he mentioned to Ben about coming here and Jack has just done a phenomenal, phenomenal job for putting on the very first biohacking forums here in India for you guys. So I just want to thank both Jack and.

I want to thank Chris for being such a badass, good looking, muscle bound dude that I feel safe, ultra safe. Just everywhere I travel with him, I walk through the airport, feel like if, if shit goes south, I got Chris on my side. So yeah, Stu's the real deal. Good man with a big heart. So you give a hand to Chris.

Too.

Just to say thank you to all of you because without the support that we've got for Physique Global over the years, these events definitely wouldn't be possible because we need that motivation to be able to bring more innovation.

Thank you. Amazing.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also note 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.