Muscle Gain, Fat Loss, Stem Cells In the D*ck, Microdosing Plant Medicines, Splenda, Amino Acids, Content Creation, Adult Slurpees & More With Filmmaker & Content Creator Darren Doane.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

But anyone that can see knows that you take this stuff pretty lightly as well.

Well, you kind of have to.

And this is a crazy experiment that you're doing on yourself and you did it, but now you're sitting there and you're going, maybe went too far.

But you know, no toast and orange juice for breakfast.

Let's not keep coming back. I feel like you're shaming.

Yeah, they're not gonna be.

It feels like you're shaming the episode. I feel like you're shaming me.

I'm sor. Performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well folks, what you are about to listen to is a fun little chat with a new friend of mine. His name is Darren Doan. Darren is a filmmaker, he's an actor, he's a music video director. He has produced and edited projects for a client list that's pretty impressive. Toyota, Hurley, Nike, Saatchi and Saatchi, Atlantic Records, Universal Records, jbl ton of music videos from a whole bunch of bands that you have probably seen. And he also did. And if it's done in time for when this podcast comes out, I'm gonna link to it in the show notes for you, a pretty sexy how to create the most epic steak on the face of the planet video. With that I think you'd actually find pretty entertaining. So I'm going to link to Darren and all his stuff, his extremely entertaining Instagram channel, his podcast, the Doan cast, and everything that Darren does@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Doan D O A N E is how you spell his last name. I had trouble with that one too. Not Doane, not Dooanne, not Doane, but Doane D O A N E. Now Darren's a new friend of mine. He lives about an hour or so from me. So we've been hanging out, recording quite a bit lately and eating good food, I think cooking and food porn on steroids if you want to see that steak video we made. But anyways, on a recent foray of mine to my old haunting grounds in Moscow, Idaho, I stayed out at Darren's beautiful farmhouse out in the countryside. And we woke up at the ungodly hour of like 7am to go out to his home recording studio inside a giant shipping container. And we recorded a bit of a coffee fueled random show episode for you. It was kind of a wild free for all discussion where we weren't sure if I was interviewing him for my podcast or he was interviewing me for his podcast. But nonetheless it included stem cells and the ding dong microdosing plant medicines, Splenda amino acids, Levitical priests, weight loss, content creation, adult Slurpees from Starbucks. You'll want to buckle in for this one because it got pretty wild. And again, I'll link to all of Darren's Instagram channel and podcast in the show notes, as well as to that steak video. If it's done in time, which I really hope it is, because you're going to dig it, you're going to love it. It'll make you really want to go out and eat a steak. I mean, heck, if you've eaten tofurkey all your life, this will make you want to go out and eat a steak. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Doan D O A N E is where you can find the show notes for today's show.

Well, it's actually just fun to do. This is like, it's, it's fun to get to know each other and be friends, but, like, it's re, it is really, really interesting what you've carved out, like, for yourself in, like, literally the most crowded space on the planet.

Right?

Yeah. Right.

Like, I mean, that's fitness or health.

Or, I mean, that's, Yeah.

I mean, like, actually with that hair.

Thing, like, I have an idea for a workout video. Ben. You know, I mean, it's like, like, that's crazy that you, that's, I mean, to me, that just what, like, seems so antithetical. Like, what?

Yeah, it's just because with the fitness world in general, people are craving, like, science and a little bit deeper intellectualism and biohacking and, like, lot of the arguably brainier elements of fitness. People dig that stuff because it lends itself well to content. You can only get so far with how to do three variations of a dumbbell curl. But once you get into like, you know, neurology and neurogenesis and hair growth, like all these other avenues, it's like, holy cow, there's a lot to mind. And body optimization. And then you pair that with spiritual optimization.

Right.

And, and what people are really craving and, and do people, people eat it up?

Was there. I, because I, I, I want to get some questions in for you. And that's probably good for your audience, too. I'm sure you've got people.

That's kind of what I figured was we forever, right?

Yeah. I mean, you've been doing this for a while now. I'm assuming there's probably people that, like, don't. I mean, we. We always think, I can't tell my origin story again. Right. Like, but really, you. We probably should.

Every week, you know, there's always a different twist on an origin story.

That's so true. That's so true. Especially with, like, time and trying to figure it because you. What? I didn't realize.

Perspective on your origin story changes too.

Well, I didn't realize. I've been reading your book and my kids have been reading. Book.

Which one?

The. The. Not. Not the cookbook. We're doing stuff too. But the. The Big Ben Greenfield. The.

The boundless one.

Yeah, the.

It's like a huge.

No, the huge one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's it called again?

Boundless.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that one. But it also tells your history. You graduating high school at, like, what age?

High school? 15.

15.

Yeah.

Early.

Yeah.

You graduated early?

Ish. I mean, for homeschooler. Kind of late.

Yeah.

Kind of a late bloomer.

Well, I was gonna ask you that. Was.

Was that.

Was that more of a homeschool graduation or. Or. No. Or were you kind of smart?

Graduation, or were you kind of. I was kind of smart.

Yeah. That's what I mean.

I was. I was not. Well, no, I. I don't think I was smart for a homeschooler.

Okay. Right. Okay, right, right.

I was smart for a jock going on to play, like, tennis in college and, you know. Right. I was smart for that. For. For like a physical culture guy that I would.

But. But was there something where. I mean, did, like, if I was to go ask Nate Wilson, hey, was. Was like, Ben kind of a smart dude, like, back in the day, just for like, a fun question, what do you think he would say?

You'd probably say, yeah, I mean, like.

Are you a math guy? I was.

I was kind of a nerd. Like, I really like school.

Yeah.

I really liked. Yeah, I really like studying, and I like, test it out, like, 99th percentile whenever I take all the, you know, the. The. The. What do you call. Sat, Standardized, whatever.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, but I was. I always had that meant, like, nose in a book.

That's what I mean.

But actually, you know, if you would have asked, like, anybody back in the day or was. Been good at sports, it would have said no. Right. Like, I was good at, like, intellectual stuff.

Okay.

I had to try really, really hard and still have to try really, really hard in sports and fitness. I'm not natural, like, naturally. I'm. I'm like, more cranial.

Are you Coordinated?

No.

Like, can you dance or, like, break dance or.

I. I can be really good at anything if I try.

Okay.

Yeah.

Is that really your mentality?

So actually. So my mentality, because you're like a.

Real life meme to me, which is.

And I'm not saying this to be like, all, like, the popular, trendy Carol Dweck, you know? Yeah. Fixed mindset stuff. But so what I've identified about myself and the way that I learn is I don't like to learn in public. I like to make a bunch of mistakes on my own. When I'm writing, I don't like anybody to see what I'm writing. Any story, any book, nothing. I don't like to reveal anything to the world. A podcast, a story, song, a book, a dance move, a tennis serve, a basketball, free throw. Nothing. I like to figure out how to do it and often figure out how to do it myself. Possibly some of that might be the egotistical, narcissistic.

Yeah.

Part of me. And then I practice and practice and practice. Like, I. I am the most stubborn practicer on the face of the planet. Like, I like. Even when I competed in Ironman triathlon, I would literally sit on a bike for three hours with my bike, like, both pedals connected to a power meter with the screen showing how much percentage I was applying on the right foot and how much percentage I was applying on the left foot. And though just, like, ride for three hours until I could nail it at 50. 50.

How do you not go? But how do you. I mean, because in my journey, there was a moment where I. I remember looking at my family. I think I had two kids at the time. So get my wife two kids at the time. We're gonna do our first, like, family movie night. They were old enough, I think we did cars. Like, cars was the first. Like, they were old Wilson, but they were old enough to watch a movie, to be up on a Friday night. Like, it was like we were gonna get a movie night. I remember after that night thinking, I don't think I want to try to be a genius anymore in my craft. It was a really weird month. I remember because there's something about when you may have, like, I think I have the ability, maybe, but genius seems to me, based on all the pattern recognition, that you will lose your family.

So what you're saying is, let's say, like, an Elon Musk is so intertwined and obsessed with achieving excellence in his chosen path that he.

And I'm not picking on Elon.

More tempted to forsake. No. I'm sure if Elon was there, he'd smoke a joint with us right now, 100%. But he would be tempted to forsake his family.

Right?

Yeah. I think that you can definitely sacrifice your family life or your spiritual life for excellence or genius in your pursuits, but I think that being driven to excellence, wanting to create beauty.

Well, no, this is. And this is where I think this was a journey for me to even get here today. You joked about being narcissistic. I'm curious, because it'd be really easy for someone to say, okay, I go to Ben's stuff, his shirt's off, he's flexing. Literally just flexing. He's flexing, right.

I'm flexing right now.

Yeah.

Mostly because we're podcasting at 7am and.

You try to burn calories.

I'm holding in my morning poop. Right. You were joking last night. I got you. You get you. You. You kind of elbowed me because I used the old man phrase. I needed to take my shit, shower, and shave. Yeah. This morning before we jumped in.

Right.

And I actually. I'm proud of myself. I got that done. I got up, I made myself this tiny little thimble full of coffee. It is because you don't want to.

Be pooping 20 minutes into this.

No, I'm an intuitive eater. And I grabbed the coffee, and it's like my body was. I made myself the coffee. No, seriously, I'll pick up food and listen to what my body is speaking to me. And I felt more like a cream soda.

I saw that when you walked.

And a piece of nicotine gum. So as soon as I finish this coffee. Which is all for the cameras.

So, yeah, so we have this, like.

Yeah, I'm shifting straight into cream soda and nicotine gum. So. So anyways, no, I did get my char on shape, so I'm not flexing.

So I've. I've been listening to my body lately, too. And people that know me will say, this is getting funny. I can't believe Darren's talking like this. But I was raised. I mean, I was before I became a Christian in my mid-20s. I was raised in martial arts, spiritualism.

You were doing your farm chores in a tracksuit last night when I showed.

Well, that was a little. That. That's a new me. I was a suburban kid. You and. But loved all that stuff. There was an amazing health food store that I grew up next to. So when you grow up next to a health food store, I mean, in the 70s and 80s, you know, you're just, you know, you're. For whatever reason, there's a lot of bee pollen. I don't know why I was eating a lot of bee pollen back in the day, but that was like a big deal.

I'd be dirt poor if I grew next to a health food store.

Yeah.

No.

And so, you know, sprouts were on everything. Just. I think that was just standard, but loved all that stuff. But it's funny now that I've. I think I've got a lot of stuff in order, but listening to what my body is saying, it's fine this morning. That's why I love going through your book. But this morning I was like, I haven't had a piece of toast with butter and orange juice and I don't know, probably two months. Like, in the morning.

Yeah. Yeah.

And my body was like, you need to give that to me now. And it didn't feel like, fired.

You're fired from America.

Really?

You're not having toast and orange juice.

For breakfast every morning?

Scrambled eggs.

And it. Well, my. My wife makes these amazing. She's just for. Again, this comes back to.

It's kind of fun. Yeah.

It's coming out. For hanging out with you realizing diabetes for breakfast.

It's diabetes for breakfast. My kids have, like, you know, eggs, bacon, fish, avocado.

Right, right.

We don't do a lot of toast and orange juice. But that's my point, though.

I haven't done it in months. And you've been talking about trying to understand your body when it's a pure craving or it's. Yeah, this will actually. This will do.

Right?

This will do.

And this craving or a societal obligation. Right. In any situation, it could be food or movement or whatever, but, you know, society dictates that, you know, either a bowl of cereal or toast and orange juice is the American breakfast. And now the health world is becoming more aware of everything from intermittent fasting to having a cup of coffee, maybe with a little bit of coconut oil or butter in it, or. Or eating a more substantial breakfast like scrambled eggs with spinach and avocado and, you know, maybe some. Some sardines or something like that. And then there's the societal implications that dictate that whatever, when you go to the doctor's office or when you're waiting for the flight to take off, you sit in the chair. You don't stand and stretch. And so, you know, I think that if you live your life by these principles, that pretty much 99% of the world is kind of sort of unhealthy or slowly dying of some chronic disease because they eat for breakfast. What societies for breakfast. And move in the way that society moves, or more specifically does not move. You know, when you're willing to go outside the norms, do farm chores in your tracksuit, skip breakfast.

Absolutely.

You know, like me, before we did this session, this morning, before we hopped in for the podcast, I did my five Tibetan longevity exercises. Right? These, these are exercises or morning moves.

My longevity exercises.

21 movements of each one. The Scandinavian longevity, was that sitting in a sauna drinking whiskey?

Exactly. Right.

And. And so the five Tibetan longevity exercises are these five different moves that this reportedly long lived group of Tibetan monks somewhere off in Tibet, of course.

Right.

Do every morning it takes like 15 minutes. And it's these, these special moves where you spin counterclockwise and you do some bridges and, and some body shaking, some Tai chi esque moves. But dude, when I get up in the morning and I do that, like, my energy just. It takes me about 15 minutes. Energy's perfect.

I started planking in the morning.

Yeah.

And you know, it's funny, usually I have to say in conversations, no, I'm like, I'm not joking.

I.

With you. I don't have to do that.

Yeah.

Someone. This stuff is so, like, clearly we're not joking.

Of course, bro. We all plank.

Right. You know, but it's like, that is. I don't know what it does.

Front plank.

Yeah, front plank. Just, just. I don't know what it.

Yeah, it's.

What's my body doing?

What's happening? It's a plank, a properly performed plank. If you think about it, you're incorporating shoulder, forearm, musculature, the core. And there's a Russian kettlebell instructor who trained the Russian military and is considered to be like one of the, the like the OGs of fitness, especially kind of like hardcore fitness.

Okay.

His name's Pavel Zatoline. He's a Russian. Yeah. Kettlebell instructor, basically. But in his course he teaches what's called the hard style plank. And I took his whole course last year, went to the Russian kettlebell certification and everything, and got my piece of paper. And the, the hard style plank. You get into a front plank position.

Yeah.

And when in that front plank position, you've tightened every muscle in your body, you draw your elbows, which are on the ground.

Right.

Because your forearms are on the ground towards your toes, almost as though you're zipping up your entire core and everything just goes super tight. The longest you should be able to handle a proper hard style. Plank is like 10 seconds and your entire body fires up.

Yeah.

But even, even a kind of a half ass plank, you're, you're firing up every part of your body in that plank position.

Yeah.

And when done in the morning, you know, you're turning on muscles. If you haven't had a bowel movement yet, you're kind of starting to move some of the digestive juices. And these, these Tibetan longevity exercises are kind of that similar concept, but like five different moves. And you do them very precisely in 21 reps of each and you breathe the whole time. And my sons do them with me and when they get up earlier, when we're out on father son trips, they get up and do the Tibetan longevity exercises and love it. Yeah, it's, I talk about that in the book, actually, like how everybody should have a special series of like movement snacks that you do during the day. You have little breaks during the day where, you know, you, you might be stringing together, you know, tai chi, shaking, or some type of, you know, swinging back and forth or the, or the, or a plank. But like three different.

I do shadow boxing. I do shadow boxing. And with, what's with, with just some kind of, you know, front push kicks. It just gets my body going.

Yeah, it's like mini 10 to 15 minute workouts or even 2 to 5 minute routines. Because I work with actors, with executives, people who are just like, go, go, go. And then they have these little bits of time, like two to 15 minutes in between everything else that they're doing. So we just string together all these tiny mini workouts. And my whole philosophy on fitness is that whether or not you go to the gym or the shiny health club or your basement, you know, treadmill or whatever, for a proper formal, you know, what would be recognized as a workout.

Right.

You should structure your day so that you're just kind of moving and shaking all day long. And whether or not you go to the gym, you feel like you've actually just kind of kept the body moving all day long, whether it's walking everywhere, you know, when you got to take a phone call, stepping outside, dropping the new push ups in between calls.

Do you think people know how funny you are with everything you've built? Because you're actually a really funny guy. I'm just, I'm curious. Do you think that comes through?

Like, you mean, you mean like, like humorous? Yeah.

No, like, you know, you're funny, dude. Like, you're not. Laugh at. You Laugh with you. I mean, like, you're. You're a funny dude. You look at things in a real funny way. Stuff can look so serious and stuff. I mean, you. Again, it's not easy to walk around with your shirt off and not come across like an a hole and you pull it off.

I'm pretty sure I come across like, an a hole.

But. But you don't. But that, to me, that's.

The comments sometimes.

Well, but that's good. But, I mean, but you.

Deep, dark rabbit hole.

But it. But anyone that can see knows that you take this stuff pretty lightly as well.

Well, you kind of have to.

But that's what I mean, though. But it's like, it's. It's. You've built this whole thing. Whether you want to call it biohacking. I remember, I think the first, first time I heard of you, it was like some gnarly stem cell injection somewhere like that.

That was. I don't. Is your, Is your show for kids? The, the kids. No, we. Okay, we're. We're on your show. I was gonna say. Yeah, you know, the, the folks. I, I.

That was my first interview.

I got to say moms driving minivans. Like, turn around and, and tell your kids to, to put their hands over their ears. And then called out, because apparently guys drive minivans too, too, Darren. Okay, so I have to be. So all you dads and moms out there driving your kids around in minivans. Men's Health magazine, like, three years ago.

Let's talk. Let's. Let's talk about this, because this is my first introduction to you. I mean, I'd heard about you and known about you, but, you know, sometimes you just don't put the pieces together. And someone said to me, hey, this guy. Here's what I heard. You tell me if it's true. I heard there was this guy, and he got stem cells injected into his penis.

Yeah. Yeah.

True or false?

That, that, that's true. But there's a kind of a story behind that. I was supposed to write an article for Men's Health magazine.

Let's be honest.

There's always a story. Whenever you're talking about needles in general, there's some kind of a backstory.

Yeah.

And in this case, Men's Health magazine wanted me to write an article because I was doing a lot of freelance. I don't do that much freelancing anymore. I was kind of, you know, I did a lot of freelancing and a lot of outbound content. I used to you were kind of a nomad out there, kind of a little bit of a rab hole. But like, I built most of my business on content because I love to write. And then I started recording on my podcast a lot of what I was learning and writing about as kind of publishing content in an audio medium. But there's this concept in marketing that's basically like outbound content where you're writing for magazines, you're writing for other websites, you're basically getting links and traffic back to your platform based on content that you put on existing platforms that usually have a bigger footprint than you already have. So you kind of like piggybacking, but they need content and providing them value content. Exactly. So I used to wake up in the morning. This was back when I was mostly in the endurance sports world, when I was training triathletes and racing triathlons all over the world and, you know, and, and writing for triathlon magazines and sponsored by triathlon companies. And my shtick every morning was I would get up and I had like the little tabs on the, on the browser. This was probably Netscape or something like that way back in the day. And I had all the forums that I remember. Forums. This was kind of before social media and blog. Like there's still some forums out there. Like if Reddit's probably the best example of like forums. The last, the last website, last outstanding forum. That still does pretty well actually.

Yeah, absolutely.

Actually, I still do some Reddit AMAs and they perform remarkably well for marketing. You just get on, ask me anything for the next 24 hours on Reddit and then it just blows up. But anyways, what I used to do was I'd wake up in the morning and I would have like 20 different forums, mostly in the endurance sports and the triathlon world. And I would go and post on these forums and I would tell myself every single form I go to, I have to post at least one helpful thing. It was never marketing. It was never, oh, come back to my website and buy this coaching funnel triathlon training program that wrote. But I would always have a link to my, my products or my website in my bio, right. Of the forum, which is automatically filled in for you. So you don't have to fill that in every time you just post and your bio will link back to your site. So I would get so much traffic from Simply having like 20 different forums that I was on every day because I was like one of the known guys on the forums. You know, it's kind of like when You.

This is what year?

Yeah. It's like, if you go to Twitter, it's like everybody knows who at Jack is on Twitter.

Right. It was kind of like, what year is this?

Would have been like 2004 up till about 2007 or 8 or so early. Super active, you know, Started my podcast in 2005, you know, back when you had to like, code your own RSS feed.

See, now for my. We're doing a split here. Your audience. My audience. My audience is super geeked out on content and. And brand build. Dude, this is. Dude, mid-2000s.

Yeah.

You're doing what I think is so game changing right now. You were doing back then, which I think helps really put into context how in the world you mean. You were. You were so early.

Mm.

And the reach was insane. Like, back then, you could do an email blast and get like a 50% open rate. I mean, like, you. So you. This is so OG of you.

Yeah, I mean that. But. But that's what I love to do. I mean, like, like, even in high school, before I fell in love with the sport of tennis and got into physical culture and training and bought my first set of dumbbells and everything, I was full on computer program. I want to be a video game designer.

I would.

I would buy computers, tear apart the hard drives, you know, install new graphics cards. I was basically. When I wasn't studying, I was either in front of a computer or playing the violin or playing chess. Like, I was super.

And are you good at the violin?

Used to be okay. Yeah. Used to be probably kind of sweet squeaky. Now I could play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

You have strings on that song you played me.

Did you program the strings?

You have someone come in and do.

That or they tell on my SoundCloud. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have. I have a person who helps me out with that. I kind of map it all out.

But you get it.

You get it.

I mean, you get music.

Okay. I love music. If I could be any other person or have any other profession aside from what I'm doing right now, I would choose to be either an author of young adult fiction books and. Or a country music musician. Like a Christian country.

Right.

Musician. But anyways, back to the. The forum. So I post these forums all the time, and I just really valued producing content on other platforms and saw the value of that bringing traffic back to my own platform. So when I was writing and freelancing back to Stem Cells in the Dick for Men's Health magazine, good. They wanted me to do a story on like, what if a guy, like a so called biohacker was just go out and do everything you could for amplifying male sexual health and sexual performance.

Okay.

Like, what if you could go out and do everything from the old eastern practices of like not ejaculating for a month, all the tantra and all the tantrics, like multi orgasmic stuff to the. I'm old school to, to, to like the gas station dick pills that, that you have at the trucker stock. What have. What's in those? What you do?

Yeah.

What happens when you take them to, you know, these different like weightlifting devices that they. There's this one like called the penis gym. Like these magnets that you hang and then you get stronger every day. Just did it all. Spent, right, six months doing all this stuff. And it was. My wife thought it was hilarious. You know, Men's Health magazine sent the photographer to our house and they had like, you know, me and my boxers in the kitchen with her, like eating a banana while looking at me. And they get like the whole. You can still find it, the article, I'm sure, somewhere. But anyways, as a part of this whole. Oh, we will process which, which was just. It was crazy. We found out all sorts of stuff, right? The gas station pills, it's just basically ephedra and caffeine and Viagra. You want, you, you want Viagra without a prescription? Just go buy those.

Is there Viagra in it? Yeah. Is there a generic?

Is there a generic? You know, and, and your palms get sweaty and your heart rate goes through the roof. But you, they, they work as advertised or like the, the reduced ejaculation frequency, like you're so pent up because it's not reduced intercourse frequency, it's just reduced ejaculation frequency. So you're having sex but you're not coming. So you're. For, for the next few days you're just like all pent up. You have this energy and all you want to do is go crush the barbell. The gym. So a lot of this stuff seems to actually work. But then we got to what would arguably be considered the more expensive or advanced protocols on the list of things that they sent me that they wanted me to try. Right. And that was this idea.

So this was the kind of dirt level, what's out there in gas stations and dirty magazines.

Medicine. Because if you go to PubMed, you look at medical research in, in the realm of sexual health, you know, guys who have like erectile dysfunction or what's called Peyronie's disease or other abnormalities of the genitalia, which would be great for a podcast. Genitalial abnormalities. Yeah.

Just saying.

It's hard band the idea of using stem cells, like, literally extracting stem cells from, like, your bone marrow in your hip or, like, the fat in your. In your back, or even using, like, what would be called monatologous stem cells, meaning not your own, but, like, umbilical or amniotic or placebos.

Like when I drink yours.

Right, exactly. And injecting them into a joint, or in this case, injecting them into a bum dick would actually allow it to have useful vitality restored because you're basically, in theory, putting your young cells into.

In theory, but.

Right. In theory. That's why they do it in knees. Right. You're taking an old knee turning into young knee by putting stem cells that can turn into any new tissue.

But does a knee work the way a penis works?

I don't know. I can't say I've ever gotten an erection in my knee.

Right. Or.

Or impregnated my wife with my knee. Right. But it is a.

That, you know, body part that, you know.

That I know of. Yeah. Yeah. I don't. I'm pretty sure my wife would actually know.

Right. Sure.

If I had tried it with.

Or if her knee got him pregnant or for me, because we don't even know what that by my means.

Yeah.

So. But I say. Anyway, but you went there. You. You went there.

So. Yeah, I got the fat cells. I literally, like, flew down to Florida. They went, like, went to town on my back with a liposuction wand. Sex sucking. All the. All the. All the fat out. Then they concentrate it and they grow it and they expand the fat cells and they ship them up to a doctor. I go in the doctor's office and.

Tell me they put you under.

No, no, no. But. But what they do is they. And this doctor had done the protocol before on men who weren't necessarily doing it, just to see what would happen to a young, healthy male who did this, but rather to guys who had issues. And so they ship my stem cells up there on. On ice, you know, and you open the Styrofoam, the smoke's coming out. Yeah. Dry ice. And there's the stem cells. Right? Yeah.

And.

And so first he takes out a needle, and it's got the. To answer your question, the numbing stuff in it. And he injects me with all the.

Numbing, which is like an oxymoron.

Yeah, right.

Exactly.

When he numbs me up. But the deal is, anytime you're using the numbing needle, it's a very, very small gauge needle. So those you barely even feel. It's so small, it's like hair, like needle, which is good. And then the stem cells go into the bigger needle and he injects. He does either side, what's called the corpus cavernosum, which is either side. Okay. And then. And then the head. And so I. I did the whole protocol. You know, I'm numb for like the next six hours or whatever. And then I went home and my dick looked like it'd been run over by a semi truck. For the next three days, it's all like, purple, and I'm like, oh, gosh.

I don't need that image.

This was. This was as far as I should have taken it.

Okay, hold on, hold on. Stop there. You can see now that's. This is really interesting to me because at that point, you weren't doing this to be funny. Right? It wasn't a joke.

It wasn't a joke, but it was a slightly comedic article.

Right. I mean, but for you, though, you're into this stuff. Not that stuff per se, but you're into figuring out what the heck is going on, what will happen. You're wired this way.

Just like right now, before we start recording the podcast, I'm on a hair growth project where I'm doing all these crazy protocols up in Spokane. They're micro needling and taking my blood out of my arm and putting it into my hair. I just love, love, you know, this is real.

When people say biohacking, it's almost a term now. You're the og. You're literally doing it. And this is a crazy experiment that you're doing on yourself, and you did it, but now you're sitting there and you're going, maybe went too far.

Could have messed things up. Because, you know, any time you do a protocol like that, like. Like, you're kind of waiting for the smoke to clear, you know, Especially when it's a medical protocol. Yeah. And so, you know, just. Just like, you know, with the hair, it's like, is all my hair gonna fall out when I microneedle it and use little vibrators and put blood all over it? What happens afterwards? You just kind of trust the doctor.

Right.

And trust the research. And what happened was after about three days, basically tried to have sex for the first time since the protocol and just felt like a fricking like bull. Absolutely. As advertised, increased performance, longer orgasms. And the whole experience was amazing. And so it. It works as advertised. And I don't think that if a guy were to come to me asking me, you know what? What should I do? I can't get it up, or.

Disclaimer. Disclaimer. Ben's a married man. He's faithful to one woman.

Well, that was the funny part about this too. Was. Was. No, no. Is that I, like, I'm a total, you know, one. One woman man, family man. I got. Got my kids, Lovely, wonderful, magical relationship.

That's why this is also the kind.

Of article you would have expected a Playboy to write.

No pun intended. People don't have the balls to go and get their junk shot up with a knee. I mean, that. That's what I mean by when you. When people think they're funny or when people think you're like, dude, I watched you eat a testicle on Instagram the. The other day. What I thought was interesting. Not mine, no, no. But I thought was interesting. And this is what. This is what I mean by what I find you just really interesting as a person. You did the testicle challenge. You don't sensationalize anything. No, no, really? No. You could have sat there and like, here I go. Gonna eat. You're like, in your house, wife, family's in the back. You're like, I got this testicle. Did it come. A little olive oil? You're like, yeah, well, I ate it. You weren't like, you know, you didn't hype it up. You don't hype things up.

You're in marketing. You're. You're in content. I think you probably understand this, like, people crave, especially these days, authenticity.

Yeah.

Like the old school days. Like, let's say you and I were to walk here. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, America.

Hey, man, great to have you this morning.

Right? And you guys have your script, and we're reading off the script. So 8am I tell you what, man.

You couldn't pay me to shoot that up.

Okay, everybody quiet. We're gonna tell the scrambled eggs joke. Oh, my. So, Darren, did you have scrambled egg toast and orange juice this morning?

Did I ever tell you about the.

Latest research on diabetes?

Well, this is amazing because I have just been fascinated with this.

And you come.

Okay, we're gonna get commercial break, but when we come back, Ben is gonna tell us about his new. We don't have to be that anymore.

No, we don't have to be it. And people don't want that. People want. They want authentic either. Long form Conversation. Or they want a dude eating a testicle to just eat a testicle and not have, like the pomp and circumstance and bang the background and done his hair. It's like, right. Me sitting there right before dinner with my son, making cookies in the background testicle. And like, I. I think that authenticity, especially in these days where content is just it. Content is everywhere and everybody can do it. It's like the people who are just being themselves and finding interesting things to do and sharing that with other people and teaching it to other people, I think that's what people crave and that's what I dig as far as my own content is concerned. And what I. What I shouldn't say. Hate. That's too strong a word. But when I'm doing like a video or like, I just did like it, like a fitness app.

Right.

Anything like that, People always come to me, you know, podcast, commercial. They're like, say this. I'm like, and I'll look at it. It's a script. I'm like, no, I don't want to say, like, I just want to say what I want to say. You know, if advertising.

The amino thing you've been talking about lately.

Amino acids. Yeah.

Keon, I think this is fascinating because I've been working out now. I did a whole kind of weight loss thing, which is a whole other journey. I was just like, I'm just gonna eat less and just try to get my brain. Can I just get some mental toughness here first and just eat less, you know? Just eat less.

Yeah.

Not like 800, 500 calories a day. I'm talking about just kind of just eat less and get that first goal done.

Yeah.

Like, come on. There's a baseline of just, you know, not looking for any tricks or shortcuts. I do that for four, five, six months. Finally get back to working out. Now I'm two months into working out and not really much at all. Right. But reading your book, talking about lifting heavy things a few days a week, and, you know, I'm doing my 20 minute workout a day. That's it. I set my timer, I got four little things I do. I don't even want to think about it yet, but now I'm two months in, and now I'm like, well, I'd like to get. I probably should be putting something in my body maybe a little bit more. Right. Because I'm working out now. Right, Right. So I'm assuming I'm probably burning more.

Besides the gas station dick pills.

Exactly. Right. But now that I know that there is Viagra in it. And I'm listening. You talk about this, but the way you talk about it, how long you kind of been talking about it? The formulation behind it, the amino acids. Yeah, yeah, like. But I haven't taken an amino acid.

Careful, you're talking about nutrition with a guy who's eating nicotine gum and drinking so.

Well, that's what I like. And we're going to talk about my Splenda in a minute. But I haven't taken amino acids since I was in high school. Playing football, going to the gym, drinking Joe weed or weight gain.

Yeah.

And amino acids are amino acids, like a legitimate thing people should be thinking about.

Are you trying to throw me a softball as a guy who like sells amino acids?

No, I'm into it. No, I'm. Hold on, hold on. Here's the demo. No, because this is where real life, we're being authentic.

This wasn't planned. No, it's so, it's So I used to do amino acids a lot too, because I did bodybuilding. North Idaho Athletic Club. So we're in Moscow, Idaho.

Nyack.

So Nyack. Old school Nyack. I. I went to University of Idaho. I got. That's where I got my master's degree in exercise physiology and biomechanics. And I would appeal every semester to take like 30 plus credits.

Right.

So all I did was go to school and like class after class of class of class. I would go to Nyack at like five or six after I'd finish all my classes and train people until like eight or nine. So I was personal training there. And then a lot of other mornings I'd go and open the gym in the morning.

Okay.

Across the street from Nyack was a French bakery, which is where Bloom is at now.

Yes.

So I would work at the French. I would get there about 4am, open the bakery, you know, and the sourdough would be cooking in the back. And I didn't know, but I'm slightly gluten intolerant.

Okay.

And so I would basically eat all the previous day's baked goods for breakfast while I'm opening and so just would duck into the bathroom for horrific farts and come back in and make people bake goods and sell the Croqueman Soise and everything. All the people come into the French bakery to get in the morning and then I'd go sometimes over to the gym, train a couple of people and then go to classes all day, come back and train people at Nyack. And then after I'D finished at Nyack and go over to Bootsers and I'd work making coffees and family business. Five years at university, I slept like four or five hours a night. All I did was like work at Nyack, at Bootsers, at the French bakery and any of the random jobs I could get. I painted all summer for another guy, went to Christchurch and so I lived with him, painted houses all summer and then I go back to, go back to school after that. That was my life for five years down here. And so when I was at Nyack, one of my fellow personal trainers challenged me to be in a bodybuilding competition. Okay. I was coming up a year from then up in Spokane, Washington. Challenged you?

Yeah.

He was like, dude, you should do bodybuilding. So I'm doing it too. So that bastard drops off after like a month because like bodybuild, like true bodybuilding, especially when you're a lean ass, like hard gainer like me, like I was having to work out an extra two hours a day, you know, and so I was doing like full body, you know, really heavy workouts at Nyack, just crushing myself, sometimes two a days because you have the cardio that you're doing to strip the fat off. And then for a lean gainer what works really well is full body training. So lots of bench press, overhead press, squats, deadlifts, none of just like the bicep curls and the tricep push downs and what's called the single joint stuff. You just do all multi joint, big, yeah, big exercises. For me it was just all barbell and free weights and then you know, just, just like burning calories on the elliptical trainer and then you know, walk into class. And so I wound up going from 100, I was about 178, I went up to 215 and all I had because I was, I was a poor ass college student.

Right, because you weigh, you, I just asked you a month or two ago, what do you weigh right now?

I'm about 179 right now. And you were 250, 215, 3% body fat, didn't have much money and you know, of course, you know, what are you eating?

What are you eating back then?

Well, I wasn't on gear, like no steroids, no hormone. I couldn't afford any of that stuff. Like I knew a few guys at University of Idaho, like, like the, the football players, you know, sitting in the back, you know, some of the guys from Europe, you know, there was this one big German guy knew he had access to some of that stuff because he would sit in the back next to me in class and he had like these catalogs from Germany with all the steroids and like the horse pills and everything in them. I couldn't afford any of that, so, so I was on, I, I was using Redline, which was like the, the big pre workout back in the day that was kind of like those gas station pills, like sweaty palms, heart rate through the roof. But, but it works. I. For energy creatine.

Okay. Yeah.

I got a company called ABB Bodybuilding which makes these like man in a can protein shakes. It just basically is a can of chemicals.

Yeah.

Horrific. Yeah.

Which I've learned from you.

Yeah. But anyway, so I, I had these cans, I would drink like three or four of those a day because they give me a really good deal, you know, like a 50 discount, which means great. I had a cheap creatine and then.

I had high level creatine.

Well, I mean, so you can get creatine from Germany called Kriya Pure. That's actually what we use at Kion. We have a kion. We just get like the purest stuff we can get from.

Because creatine is what?

It's creatine monohydrate. It's just a molecule. It's an amino acid.

It is an amino acid that's split.

Into ATP and uses energy and actually just, just like regular creatine monohydrate is pretty affordable and works pretty well for putting on muscle as like a cheap muscle gain aid.

As a dumb kid in high school, I was always told that the creatine was just putting on water weight.

No, it does cause your muscles to retain some amount of water. Okay, so amount of glycogen, but which is like your storage carbohydrate.

But that was actually true what I just said. A little bit. There's a little bit of water.

But also because it gives your body an extra, what's called a substrate to produce ATP, your body's energy currency. If you combine creatine with weightlifting, you also put on muscle based on the idea that you'll be able to crank out a few extra reps for every set that you do because you have more creatine in your body.

But because. Why can I do a few more reps?

Because if you were to hop in your car and you were to drive to Spokane and I put X amount of gas in your tank.

Right.

And then you had a tiny little gas tank on the side of that, you could get like eight miles past Spokane. Right. Creatine is the extra little gas tank that lets you get eight miles past Spokane or that lets you, say, get two extra reps on the bench press. So you're basically able to put on just a little bit of extra muscle every time you go to the gym. That's kind of the idea behind creatine. Just extra gas in the tank you normally wouldn't otherwise have.

In general.

In general, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. And so then the last thing that I had access to was bcaas. Branched chain amino acids. Same thing as you took in football. Okay. Leucine, isoleucine, and valine are the names of those amino acids. And what they do is kind of similar to creatine. They give your body a little bit of energy that it can burn as extra energy during exercise, thus dictating that if you combine BCAAs and or creatine with a good weight training program, you'll put on muscle more quickly.

It's important.

Yeah.

Are you telling me that the. The reason why someone should be interested in amino acid anything is for more energy?

It technically would be increasing the bioavailable pool of amino acids in your body that can be used for anything from energy to recovery to, like, neurotransmitters for sleeping better. That's why it's such, like, a Swiss army knife.

Let me tell you what an idiot like me thinks. See, when. When I think amino acids, what I thought in high school and what I.

Think now, the ones that you took in high school and the ones that I was taking when I was bodybuilding are horrible.

Okay, okay. But were they horrible going the same direction? Meaning that was it still an attempt to get more energy? And therefore, if you have more energy, you can do more reps. If you can do more reps, you're gonna get bigger and stronger.

Yeah, it's the same idea, but the problem, and I didn't learn this until later on, with BCAAs, it's only three of the amino acids, and there's like, nine essential amino acids. So essentially, you're spending money on overpriced, flavored water that theoretically is supposed to help you build a better car, when all you're getting is three wheels of that car and not the doors, the chassis, the engine, anything else. You got a bunch of car parts that are unable to really, truly build a complete car. And so what supplement manufacturers know is that BCAAs give you this feeling of better energy, but they don't really result in meaningful muscle gain or energy levels unless they're accompanied by. By all the other amino acids.

That's my question. What helps muscle gain? Not energy. Are you saying it's tied together and you can't get muscle gain without energy?

So you either need to combine the BCAAs with like whey protein or some other protein source that allows you to.

Have all other amino acids. That's why this comes into play with.

The problem with that and then here's like coming full circle is you got to digest all that protein and you have to, if you're trying to like not put on a lot of weight, have all the calories from all that protein, the whey protein or the steak or the fish or whatever, which is great if you are just trying to get swole bro. But if you're also trying to like lose fat, ideally you would like a way to get all the amino acids without the shortcomings of the branched chain amino acids, but without all the calories of like the other complete protein sources. And that's what we did at Kion was we made an essential amino acids that's basically got all the stuff that branch chain amino acids do for you, plus all the stuff that protein does for you all in one supplement, but without the calories. So that's the idea now.

Okay, now it makes sense. Yeah.

And that's why people like it so much is. I mean then we just retooled the flavor and it's really good. And. And so you literally just gave me the opportunity to do a 15 minute.

Well, no big. But here's. But. But I think I am. But again, I think maybe I'm. I'm the demographic, right. I'm like, yeah, I know I need to do something. Something. But that wasn't. I had no idea. Again, I assume when I hear amino acids, I assume I'm going to take something and it's going to help my muscles form better.

Right? The number one demographic, people who want to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

Right.

Like that's the people who use it the most. And then like, you know, I started using those when I was competing in Ironman triathlon and I realized that when you run out of energy during a long run or during a long bike ride, like old school marathoning advice from the 80s is that you're bonked that you've run out of your orange juice and toast, right? But then when you look at it like a lot of times people still have like full muscle glycogen levels or full liver glycogen levels. They haven't run out of carbohydrates. But it's turkey dinner syndrome. What happens is as your body breaks down all of its muscle tissue while you're out on that three hour run or whatever part of that muscle contains tryptophan, same stuff that you get in turkey that makes you sleepy after Thanksgiving dinner. The tryptophan cross crosses your blood brain barrier and makes you tired. And your central nervous system, your brain is trained. God made us in this really cool way that if your body's doing a bunch of damage to yourself, it starts to shut itself down. What happens is you start to get sleepy as your body starts to degrade, basically because you're tearing your muscles apart. What I figured out during triathlon was that when I'd get tired during exercise, if I could get amino acids in my bloodstream, they compete for tryptophan and that blood brain barrier and you don't get the central nervous system fatigue and because at the same time I was getting into the whole low carb thing.

Yeah.

At the. Oh, so I could restrict carbohydrates but not get that same balking effect if I also take the amino acids. That's when I started taking was not for, for muscle gain. It was for like.

Well, now it makes sense why it wouldn't just be for muscle gain. But see, you turned me on to this. I don't think it's. I haven't gotten through all your book yet, but. But you turned me on a conversation where you said, I said I'm going, you know, high protein, high fat and just. I'm kind of doing that morning fasting, but I'm built that way. Anyways, I'm, I, I need a Jamba juice smoothie in the morning and then I'm done. Got rid of that. It's my coffee. I'm not really eating until. Unless my wife, she'll make great eggs with butter and stuff.

Just.

I love that. But high protein, high fat. But then you said drop some carbs at night in your dinner. Like at nighttime. Like if you're gonna do carbs.

Yeah.

Drop it there. Dude, that's been a game changer.

It. Well, it works.

Do people know this?

Because what happens. Some people know. But, but so you can have, you can have your being you. You can have your cake and eat it too.

Well, legitimately.

Yeah. Here's how it works. Restrict carbs all day long. Don't like literally like almost nothing occasionally for me, like I'll put a few blueberries in the morning smoothie or what. But you know, let's be honest.

Does that count?

Low glycemic index doesn't spike the blood sugar. You know, occasionally like some whatever seeds and nuts with a lunchtime salad which have some carbs, but, but you know, no toast and orange juice for breakfast.

Let's not keep coming back. I feel like you're shaming.

Yeah, they're not going to be.

It feels like you're shaming the episodes.

I'm sorry. So the, the idea though is that you restrict carbohydrates all day long, thus forcing your body to burn primarily fatty acids. And as a fuel you can literally retrain your body to operate more efficiently on its own fat. And fat from dietary sources versus carbs, which is important because most people walk around needing glucose as that short term fuel. You think about that as like the quick burning kindling when you want to train your body to be able to burn slow burning logs, which is what the fat is. Okay, the problem is that I've got.

Logs right here that I burn some logs.

You want to burn. Right. If you restrict the carbohydrates all the time, what happens is that your thyroid gland needs glucose and people go mental glycans for. So your joints need glucose, your brain needs trace amounts of around 40 grams of glucose a day. So if you restrict carbs constantly, you get low brain energy levels, your joints start to hurt, your testosterone decreases, your thyroid decreases. And this actually happened to me because I spent a month eating 90% fat, or I'm sorry, 12 months eating 90% fat because I was enrolled in a study at University of Connecticut, this was like eight years ago, where they want to take a group of athletes, endurance athletes who ate a standard like Gatorade Sports Science Institute prescribed high carb diet for 12 months and compare that to a group of athletes who followed like a high fat, low carb so called ketogenic diet for 12 months. And they brought us into a lab and they just ran every test, like the poop test. And they had me run on a treadmill for three hours just staring at a wall and a maximum exertion test on the treadmill and taking bloods and all this stuff. And ultimately that study was called the faster study. It's actually a famous study now in exercise science literature because it rewrote the textbook textbooks. What happened was that the amount of fat that they thought that athletes could burn during exercise was like half of what it actually was. If the athlete actually followed a high fat diet for a long period of time, like six plus months. Meaning that you could actually spare carbohydrates, exercise more efficiently, not have all the risk of chronic disease like diabetes and stuff that comes from high carb intake and actually transform your body into a fat burning machine. The side effect of me following that diet over 12 months was it was so low in carbs. My testosterone went down, my thyroid went down, I started to get joint pain, I had sleep issues. I had all the issues that go along with not enough carbs. So then after that test, I was like, well, I really like the way I feel on this diet except all these side effects. So let's try this. We know that carbohydrates are the precursor to melatonin, meaning that they help your body produce serotonin, which can be used to produce melatonin, which helps you sleep better at night. We know that if you're not spiking your blood glucose all day long, it's pretty healthy. But what if you just spike it once, like at night right before you go to bed? And what if you even make sure that it's not going to get spiked so much if, and I don't know if you and I talked about this, you do certain things before dinner to help get the carbohydrate into your muscles more efficiently. Efficiently. And there are certain supplements like berberine or bitter melon extract. Like, that's one of our, one of our supplements at Kion is Kion lean, which people take. Like I take that before the carb feed in the evening because it causes your body to take the carbs that you eat and shoves them into muscle tissue. So you wait, wait, wait, wait, wait all day long. You do something like berberine or apple cider vinegar or Ceylon cinnamon or bitter melon extract or they're called glucose disposal agents. You take that right before dinner. And like you and I are going to pizza tonight, going to Mylene's pizza, right? So right before pizza tonight, I'll have all of the key on lean and then have the pizza, right? And I'll have like 200 grams of carbs tonight for dinner, sleep like a baby, get up in the morning, rinse, wash and repeat. Like no carbs all day long. Save the carbs for the evening, all the carbs you want, and then go, well, all the carbs, you know, Right. Within reason. For me, it's usually like 150, 200 grams or so of carbs. Carbs, that's the sweet.

What's a slice of pizza? Thin slice.

Slice of pizza is probably like around 40 or 50 grams. Really? Yeah. So, you know, four slices of pizza, like that type of.

Right.

Yeah. That's a great. So. So that's. It's a perfect little hack.

It's those little things that I just think have been so fun to watch what you do, get to see what you do, spend time just around you and how you think about this stuff. Not that I think it's bad to be dogmatic, but you're. You're. Every question I've asked you about health, you've never had a blanketed answer. Because I think we know this in life in general. There's other factors before you give an answer to anything. Right. I mean, there's like, well, what are you looking to do? Right. What do you. I'm sure a certain diet for a certain lifestyle is gonna be totally different. If I'm just trying to be a healthy dad and husband, and I don't want to die of a heart.

There's certain principles that broadly apply, you know, you know, this, like, cross marketing across content. You know, everything. You know, your entire world of video production.

Y. What are you looking to do? Right. Yeah, but you. But you seem to. What, health. I mean, you do that. You. Again, you look at the hacking aspect is. I think it's funny we think of hack as a shortcut. Right. But really the way you hack is you have to be more thoughtful.

It's an efficiency mechanism or, you know, biohacking is the idea of using some kind of tool or technology or toy or smart scientific concept or principle to allow the human machine to operate more efficiently or to reach a goal more quickly than it might have been able to do otherwise in its native state. Right, right. And so the. The true original biohackers, they would refer to their body as wetware and then install certain elements into their body that they would call hardware to get the body to operate more efficiently. Like a compass that you can embed in your chest that will vibrate every time that you face true north. Or there was a guy named Kevin Warwick who was termed the original cyborg. He and his wife installed. Like, I think. I think it was Kevin. Like little magnets in their fingertips that allowed them to interact with screens like Minority Report.

Okay, Right.

Rather than having to type things in or, you know, there's the guy who injected chlorophyll into his eyeballs to be able to have night vision, you know, and like, that was the original Biohack was super.

Yeah, that's the.

I mean, yeah, like. Like stem cells in your dick type of stuff.

Yeah.

And you Know, whereas now biohacking could be putting butter in your coffee, right?

Or like, coffee, yeah.

Or jumping up and down on the trampoline in the morning, you know, and so I think that, like, the original biohacking was true biohacking, right? And now it's a pretty dang large umbrella.

Right?

But yet the concept still applies. It's like, well, what are you trying to do? And how can we use all these cool elements of science and smart living to allow you to do that? Particularly from a body self improvement standpoint or a brain self improvement standpoint to operate more efficiently.

How much flack have you gotten for the microdosing?

You mean microdosing with plant medicines?

If I go to your Instagram, I see the term microdosing. Forget what you're doing.

Microdosing specifically these days typically applies. It typically refers to using a minuscule or small dose of the type of things people would have traditionally used to achieve an altered state of consciousness, right? Such as psychedelics or hallucinogens in much smaller doses to instead allow for improved creativity or improved productivity or better focus or being able to work for a longer period of time without getting tired, those type of things. So let's say like psilocybin, for example, right? If I were to give you six grams of psilocybin, you'd probably be running naked through that field with your pants around your ankles, running for the trees to go in.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Yeah, no one needs probably a pretty good little addition to your weight loss protocol you're going after. And you guys would have fun with the video cameras. And, and, and granted, you know, there, there may have been certain reasons that God created that particular mushroom to be used in higher doses, you know, in a very, very controlled sentence setting for some type of spiritual breakthrough or commune with the divine or something along those lines. But psilocybin in much smaller doses can actually just have this.

Is that the assumption God would need an altered state for him to communicate something to.

Well, if you look at, for example, the oils and incenses that would have been used when the Levite priests entered into the holy of holies, those particular mixes really do shift you into some significant, significant altered states of consciousness. I've tried them. And, and like God dictated some very interesting blends, for example, in the book of Exodus that, you know, that the priest would use in the holy of holies, that absolutely shifted one into an altered state of consciousness. And in that state, anything from meditation to prayer to fasting, to speaking to God, to listening to God Becomes amplified like tenfold. And it's difficult to describe without being in that state, but it's, it's a little like I go on prayer walks in the morning where I open myself up to God and I'm speaking to God, listening to God and if I were to take even like 2 grams of psilocybin and do that same thing, right? It becomes, it's, it's like God with a megaphone, right? You know, and you, you simply, you feel a little bit more tuned in to, to your spiritual side.

But, but that almost seems like to me like that's like the equivalent of like injecting the stem cells into your dick. No, Meaning that I'm sure it's great for like a month. I'm always interested in the things that, well, but then what? Because every time I have my friends, what I'm going to, every time my friends are like micro dosing or tripping or all my friends that were either into it or into it. Now no one ever comes back from like a crazy mushroom spiritual enlightenment, like that changes their life and says, you know what, dude, Communism is theft. This free market system based on goods. And like when they come back, the thing they've experienced is a little wishy washy to me. It's not that it's not powerful. We should love each other. But it never seems to come with.

We should love each other. Collective human consciousness. We're all in this together, bro.

It never has legs. Does it have legs for you?

In the absence of faith and in my opinion, union with God and a deep relationship with God and I would go as far as which for many people who partake in those type of medicines is a stretch, but in my opinion is also crucial. A belief in the deity, the death, the burial and the resurrection of Christ as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins and really the only true path to salvation and eternal life and happiness and fulfillment in the absence of a belief in God, a relationship with God and a belief in Christ, I think that at the end of the day, the use of any of those type of medicines will result in a continued search for fulfillment.

That's why your layering of seems counterintuitive. But I want to give you the opportunity to really explain it. This doesn't seem to fit your profile.

Well when paired with an acknowledgment because.

How many grams are you talking about.

For us to forget, for humans to love each other and to strive for world peace and for judgment to be set aside in terms of, I guess being more Accepting of your fellow human being and covering conflict with peace and love and forgiveness. Really the only way that. That is going to result in a meaningful shift in the. I guess what many people who use these type of substances are kind of going after, like the salvation of humankind is the acknowledgement and dependence upon, at the end of the day, God and the death of Christ. The sacrifice of Christ as being the ultimate way to achieve that. That.

Right.

But in terms of opening up our perception and our. Really our deep spiritual experience of, I guess an understanding of that plant medicine seem to be able to shift you into that state much more quickly.

But the. Ever. But, but the left. I. 100%. How could you deny that? I'm curious for you.

I don't think it's for everybody though. I, I think that. That there are, there are certain people that can go out and do like, like a. A trip dose, for example, right. You know, and, and sit with that in a proper set and setting combined with a relationship with God and have that pour fruit into their life and also be able to share what they've learned or discovered with other people that allow that also to occur. But with microdosing, that's totally different. Microdosing would be using a far less perceptible dose like LSD or psilocybin or San Pedro cactus or anything else. Simply in the same way one might use a really nice cup of coffee. Coffee to get the day started. Or, or the same way.

Are you saying those two things that you believe in the category of health and fitness and molecular things have. Are you, Are you saying that you think micro dosing of, let's say, a mushroom and a cup of coffee, Are you putting those in the same category?

Oh, absolutely. Like, like we shifted ourselves into an altered state of consciousness with this cup of coffee. If you and I had never had coffee in our lives, we would kind of sort of be tripping balls right now. Like, like coffee. I mean, you can buy a bag of caffeine on Amazon that if you take like 10 teaspoons of, would kill you. I mean that that's how much caffeine can amplify the activity of the nervous system.

Right.

And when we're talking about like a small dose of psilocybin or LSD or something like that.

So is your category. So that is your category. I love understanding. What are you saying that me and you are hallucinating right now?

No, but if we weren't in a state where we'd been drinking coffee for long enough to where we'd grown pretty tolerant to the effects of caffeine and a cup of coffee. Something that our bodies can process and metabolize pretty quickly. We actually would be in an altered state of consciousness from something like a, like a hefty dose of caffeine. So what I'm saying is that when you look at any chemical contained in any plant that God created, really, the, the effect is in the dose. Like even a field of wheat out there contains a bunch of.

Yeah. What's poison?

Opioid binders in the gluten that technically make wheat somewhat addictive. That, that, you know, triggers a ton of opioid receptors in the body. And if we were to concentrate all that gluten and eat a ton of it, like, it'd be a far different effect than us having a nice lovely piece of like slow fermented sourdough bread. Right, right. So.

So anything in nature I say, right, like, I understand.

Yeah, anything in anything in nature, like you, you have to look at the actual dose. And smaller doses of certain chemicals can simply be used to turn on certain neurotransmitters in the brain, get the brain working more effectively. Whereas larger doses of those same chemicals can shift you into a state that could be considered either drunkenness with something like wine or a super altered state of consciousness, like a giant cup of cold brew given to an 8 year old kid. Or just send them Balkans, you know, or an adult who'd never had caffeine before.

I grew up going to 7:11. I love a Slurpee. There's a point in your life where you kind of go, I'm an adult, I can't walk in and get a Slurpee anymore.

Right.

I remember then when Starbucks having a blue stained mouth serving me any longer and nachos. But I remember when Starbucks explodes, right? And I remember thinking, these are just adult Slurpees, right? Like, yeah. And it was, it was okay, right. I remember thinking like that somehow became culturally acceptable to be able to walk out with a frapp at something something, Right. With whipped cream.

Yeah.

It's even more than a Slurpee, right. It actually was a, you know, a malt shake with everything and that became acceptable, right? Yeah, they're really just adult Slurpees, right?

Yeah, they really are adult Slurpees. Which is so funny because like, you know, back to the old, you know, Moscow days, it's probably just, just sitting here in Moscow, it's making me think back to those days was, you know, my, my dad started one of the first, like little coffee stands here in Moscow. Yeah, you know, that was back before Bootsers. Right. Eventually started Boots Coffee stand over by Auto's Produce.

Oh no. Okay.

Actually I'm headed down after this, down to the homecoming parade where my mom reopened this tiny little, you know, coffee stand.

Saw that.

But we used to sit at the silos. This was like when Starbucks was kind of like, like Starbucks was pretty fledgling and like me and my brothers, because my dad bought all these blenders and he had my brothers just sit there bored in the cup because he hired us to, to work the coffee stuff and we would come up with all these crazy recipes. We combine all these different chocolates and vanillas and syrups and salts that make, you know, all sorts of variants of, of frappuccinos. When we started Bootsers, we used to do like wine smoothies. We would literally just, just spend a bunch of time with a Vitamix and all these different coffees and espressos and like when I was 13, I was probably doing like seven or eight shots of espresso a day. Speaking of giving an eight year old kid. Yeah, and, yeah, and so this was at the same time Starbucks was coming out with all of its, you know, frappuccinos and, and whipped cream this and that, you know, the orange mocha Kappa frappes. And, and we're doing the same thing, just total molecular, you know, chemistry at the coffee stand, making thousand calorie beverages that we'd hand to people as they'd come through the coffee stand, say, what do you think of this new smoothie?

Right. We just came out with, fantastic.

This is great. You just gave me ice cream for breakfast.

Yeah, right. And it's totally acceptable. Matter of fact, it's actually cool. Yeah, it's actually like it legitimate, like, right. Oh, look at that.

I was talking to a little girl the other day and she said that she drank coffee. She was, she was just at our house too much people were at her house and she was sitting across me as I was chatting with her. She was with her family and she had said she has coffee every morning. I'm like, what kind of coffee do you have? And she's like, I have these drinks that mom and dad have when they go to the coffee shop in the mornings and then start to describe it. I'm like, oh geez, this girl's getting like these, these like 600 calorie like mocha. She thinks coffee is like the double triple chocolate mocha with the whipped cream and the rainbow sprinkles on Top right. And you know, so these things are highly palatable to children as well.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's a, you know, I'm into coffee, but I'm not into that, that form of coffee. I don't think that's done. Our, our, our, our, our, our health.

No much for service. And look, I, I know you have tons of stuff to do today. This is sort of part one of the no agenda.

This was absolutely no agenda.

You know, and we just, just, you.

Know, it was either a train wreck, right? From frappuccinos to stem cells in the genitals.

To microdose.

Yeah, to microdose.

We didn't get to Splenda because I. That's my favorite thing in the world.

Yeah, we'll throw them real quick because you can't refer to it and then us not close that loop. That's like the most annoying part for me in podcasts is where guys. And you're like, wait, wait, come back to that. You mentioned that.

Right?

So, so we'll close the loop on Splenda and then you gotta go. I know. Okay. Oh yeah, this is perfect. Okay, so Splenda, basically, it is a little bit of a neurotoxin.

Thank you. Thank you.

And it, along with Sucralose and NutraSweet, all these other artificial sweeteners can also alter the biome of the gut and result in a dysbiosis of the gut dictating that if there were a low calorie or no calorie sweetener alternative out there that did not do that, it would be a better choice. And the cool thing is there are two. What do you like about Stevia and Monk Fruit?

But what do you like about Splendid?

I like nothing about Splendid. Aside from the fact that maybe it allows people who are doing tons of sugar to wean themselves off sugar, but considering the fact that both Stevia and Monk Fruit are fabulous, tasty alternative sweeteners that do not have all of the chemical effects of Splenda and sucralose. And what would be considered artificial chemical based sweeteners dictates that it's kind of a no brainer to just switch out the Splenda for stevia or for Monk.

Fruit, but the Splenda in your world would also probably be like Diet Coke. You probably don't think Diet Coke.

I'm drinking this, right? This is a stevia flavored soda. All natural metals in the can. You should get them to sponsor the podcast now.

Yeah.

And, and I'm totally comfortable drinking this. Is it. Still kind of like making me want something sweet during the day.

Is that the problem?

Keeping my palate adjusted slightly towards a more dopaminergic desire for sweet things? Dopamine maybe.

Say that again.

Dopaminergic. Just flooding the body with dopamine all day long.

Dopaminergic.

There's concept of dopamine fasting now like. Like turn your iPhone to grayscale for a week so that you're not as engaged. All the colors and the iPhone becomes more boring. Same thing. Why not just eat potatoes for a week and reset the palate, Right? But if you'd like to have sweet things and you like to live a little Stevia or Monk fruit's way better than these artificial sweeteners. So I just switch it out for that.

Yeah.

And I'll. I'll try and remember later on or at dinner tonight or whatever. I always travel with my bag always has a bottle this butterscotch toffee flavored organic stevia. It's made by a company called Omica Organics and I just put that in coffee. I put it in club soda.

And that's the sweetness that you want.

It's the sweetness I want without the chemicals.

Love it Ben. Have a great day brother. Appreciate you.

Amazing. This is fun.

Thank you.

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