Q&A 411: The Effects Of Cold & Heat On Blood Glucose, A New Way To Increase Heat Shock Proteins, Ben's Weekly Routine, The Effects Of 5G On Respiration & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show. The effects of cold and heat on blood glucose. A new way to increase heat shock proteins, my weekly routine, the effects of 5G on respiration, and much more. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben, Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, Jay, it is by my calculation about 10:20am in the morning. On what day are we recording this? Wednesday. We are recording on Wednesday in late April. And I'm already thinking about dinner, man. Oh, I've been up to some wizardry.

Oh, I'm three hours ahead of you, so I'm definitely thinking about dinner. But do you have something special that you need to tell us about?

Oh, yeah. So. So I have heart. As you know, I'm a fan of organ meats and heart is one of them. I think heart just makes your heart healthy. That's that. That's my stupid doctrine of signatures hypothesis.

So stupid.

Yeah, it is a pretty good rich source of mitochondrial rich tissue. But anyways, more importantly, you can make it taste really good. So I have been using kefir as a marinade. It turns out that kefir is actually a really good marinade. You know, in the past I've used raw milk to like soak liver or heart or kidney or sweetbreads or anything else. Right. You know, it's way better than like, you know, the old school lemon juice vinegar tenderizing approach. But kefir works even better from the experience I've had in the past few weeks because I've been making kefir and then I'll put it in little bags or glass Pyrex jars with the meat or the organ meats that I'm marinating. So what I did was I have this giant beef heart. The good folks at Bel Campo Meets is where I got that one from. It's a regenerative farm down in Northern California. So they sent me this beef heart and I soaked it in kefir for a day and then got up this morning and transferred it into the crock pot with a bunch of bone broth. And then again, this is my stupid woo woo approach to cooking. I put up a lot of red things in there, like a lot more like kind of red heart healthy compounds like cayenne and paprika and chili flakes. Put a little cumin, little curry powder in there, some turmeric and a little bit of salt. And so that's going to go for about 10 hours at low in the, in the slow cooker. And then we'll have tacos tonight, so we'll use those, you know, the, the company of Siete. Have you tried their tortillas? No, make. They make all sorts of different grain free, gluten free tortillas, but they're almond flour tortilla. I know everybody's gonna be shouting about the oxalates and all that jazz, but I don't care. They taste amazing. So we'll have that with, you know like cubed avocados and, and some, some radishes, some cabbage, and do like a taco night with heart taco.

Oh, it's gonna sound amazing. Wait, so do you like mince up or like kind of like, I don't know, like smash up like you would beef, like just regular ground beef. Do you do the same thing to the heart to make it like a beefy texture or do you it up or what do you do for that?

Yeah, great question. So what I do is I trim the fat off the, off the outside of the heart because it has these little fatty layers on it. And I put that off to the side while it's crock potting. And then at the end of the day, what I'll do is I'll take a cast iron skillet, I'll put the fat in the cast iron skillet along with some butter and some onions and heat that up until the onions start to caramelize. And while that's heating up, I'll cube the heart and then I toss the heart in with the fat, the butter and the onions and give it about a 10 minute saute or so on that cast iron skillet. And then that's, that's what gets used as the taco filling. So I like to cube it. Yeah.

Oh, that sounds, it sounds pretty good. Even though, you know, I've tried a ton of different types of organ meats. I mean, growing up kind of in the south and then my grandfather was a farmer, I mean, we pretty much ate everything. Heart was one that I never really had much of a problem with. I actually can digest heart better. I won't even say digest like the taste of heart better than I do say liver actually, if you prepare it well. And my, my grandfather and grandmother always did it in buttermilk. They always soaked it in buttermilk.

Yeah.

And I always had a good time with it. Never actually, they never told me what it was. I just ate it as a child, so I was kind of thankful for that. But now it's just one of those things where I don't even think twice. I still have a harder time with liver, honestly.

Yeah. And I joke about the whole doctrine of signatures thing, but heart is actually super rich in Coenzyme Q10, which has been shown to be particularly helpful for cardiovascular health, you know, especially if one is on a statin. But even in the absence of a statin, CoQ10 is one of the best things for your heart. So it turns out heart is actually good for your heart.

Yeah.

So yeah, there you have it.

Well, you said, you said one of the things that you did was stupid was that you put a bunch of red stuff into your meal. Why do, why do you go red? Why was, why do you consider that stupid?

Because hearts are red. So I thought I'd put red spices in it because I figured they'd pair well together. It would have been a. If it would have been a, I suppose like a blueberry, I would have found some blue stuff.

Makes total sense.

I like to cook with color.

Yeah, me too, man.

How have you been?

I was telling you offline briefly that I guess we're technically online, but off the air. I'm friggin tired and I'm not, I'm normally not tired. I'm normally a very high energy, peppy guy.

You're usually pretty perky.

Yeah, yeah, I feel it. And I may not sound very tired right now, but that's just because like I haven't said like maybe but like three words throughout the day. So this is the first time I'm like actually talking, but I'm really tired, Ben.

Okay, fill me in. Why are you. Why are you so tired?

Well, so my wife and I actually. It's been about a week. The drum roll please. We had our second child about a week and a half ago and so his name is Micah Liam Wiles. He is, he was born 9lbs 5oz. He was a big guy.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah, he's a big guy, but super healthy.

My apologies to your wife's vagina.

I know.

Where did you guys go? C section.

No, no, no, no, no. She, she, she was split wide open. But not in the. Not from her stomach.

Visual.

Exactly. Right. Is a very nice visual. And if my wife listens to this, I may no longer be the co host of the Ben Greenville fitness podcast. But no, man, she, no, she had him all natural and it didn't look pleasant, but she's a trooper, man. And so it was weird. It was honestly weird having. Because, you know, when we had Regan, our first son, he's two now, we had him when there was so the Hospital system was working as it, you know, would normally do it and. But this whole birthing process was super strange because it was like a ghost town in the hospital. Like there was no one there other than physicians nursing, you know, the. The other staff of the hospital. But each, each person who was giving birth only was allowed to have one other individual so no family could come visit. It was just an odd process, but it was actually kind of nice because it was so incredibly quiet. But yeah, yeah.

Working on your own private hospital.

Yeah. Ye.

Now. Now you know what it feels like to be a billionaire and have a baby. Right. Your own. Your own ward. Well, cool, man. First, first of all, congratulations. Micah is a very strong name.

Oh, thank you.

Really Know of any famous. Are there any famous people named Micah?

Famous? I don't think. No, no, we went.

That's good.

We went biblical with. With Micah.

Even though, honestly, I guess it is a biblical name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Prophet Micah. So we went with. We went with it actually, because I just like the sound of it. I actually chose my first son's name, Regan. And then I ch. Again, if my wife hears this, she's probably going to beg to differ, you know, otherwise. But it actually was my choice and I just really liked them, thought they were strong names, especially with. With Micah. And so if we have any more, my guess is that I'll choose the next name.

That's amazing. Wow. Well, I'll have to. I'll have to put some heart in a little Ziploc bag and. And send it down to you as congratulatory.

Well, I appreciate it.

Slap on the back. Yeah, yeah, I'd smoke a cigar with you, but all I have is heart. So. Yeah, go with that.

Maybe next time.

Foreign. So a few cool news flashes. Now. I've been going ape nuts on Twitter and also Facebook as far as putting out a lot of research studies regarding, you know, Covid, the immune system, you know, ongoing research, the state of the vaccinations, et cetera. And all of that's over@twitter.com BenGreenfield or facebook.com bgfitness depending on which flavor of social media that you guys like to be tracks by you have been and yes. Yeah, well, I just. I steep myself in the literature every morning and just tweet out everything that I find. And this is the part of the show where we talk about a few of the more interesting takeaways and I don't really want to talk about anything virus related because honestly, it's exhausting and sometimes, sometimes it's refreshing to not talk about, about, I don't know, Wuhan and 5G and conspiracy theories and Bill Gates and viruses and vaccinations and. Anyways, though, so here's something cool. I figured out how to. Because, you know, as you know and as we talked about, I just don't like to have my phone on. I especially don't like the WI fi and the Bluetooth on, but I just don't even like the signal bouncing around. And you know, of course, also anytime you're downloading whatever, podcasts, audiobooks, anything else, you're using the data on your provider. Well, I figured out that you can plug your phone into the Ethernet. I never realized this before. Right.

So I don't want to steal your thunder, but, yeah, I've been doing this for a while now and actually I haven't done it with my phone. I've been doing it with my tablet.

Never realized it. So I. So I tweeted this out, but I just got the, you know, the Thunderbolt to. I think it's a Thunderbolt is a Thunderbolt that plugs into the. I don't know. It's just. Just do a search on lightning. Yeah. Okay. So. So Ethernet to lightning adapter. And it works perfectly. And I can, I can download files extremely quickly. I've been working in my office with my phone plugged, so my phone could be doing its thing in the background. I've got far lower signals, and so I got a couple of these. I put one up in the living room too. So now the boys and my wife can plug in when their phones are off or in airplane mode, which we largely try to do at our house anyways. And that's just a super quick tip for folks. But it actually works. The only thing it doesn't do. Haven't cracked the code on this is it doesn't send text messages when you have it plugged into the Ethernet. But aside from that, it works perfectly.

What I wonder, do you have an iPhone? Because you probably could go iPhone to iPhone is my guess. But you probably can't go iPhone to, like, Android.

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, because it seems like a couple of times a text message has sent. Yeah, so that makes sense.

If it's blue, you're good. If it's green, that means you're going to another provider or not another provider, but another type of phone system, os.

I'm glad I. I'm glad I have a young geek like you teach a Luddite like me. Okay, so cool. So. So try that out folks, if you want to have yet another way to keep your phone from, from blasting with radiation, which I think we have a question about 5G later on in this podcast we can, we can talk about, you know, some of the things regarding that we, we touched on I think in the last podcast. But we'll get more into that later on. And then there was another really interesting article that actually I came across it just now even though it was published in 2002 and it was about heat shock proteins. And these heat shock proteins, I think they're, they're absolutely amazing because you know, essentially they're one of the main mechanisms via which you induce stress tolerance or cellular resilience. So they, they repair denatured proteins or injured proteins. And it of interesting some of these long lived mammals, one of the more famous being the extremely attractive naked mole rat, it has really high levels naturally of heat shock proteins and DNA repair and it actually lives a disproportionately long time. And that in addition to its high carbon dioxide tolerance, it's kind of like low breathing rate, higher amount of CO2, appear to be two of the reasons that it's living a long time. And these heat shock proteins are of course something that humans can tap into most popularly via the use of saunas. And I suspect this is one of the reasons why in the Finnish longevity studies, you know, we see people living a disproportionately long period of time, men in particular, from a regular sauna practice of four to five times a week. I think part of this is the cellular protection that they're getting from these heat shock proteins. Anyways, though it turns out that in this study they found a, what's called a conditionally essential amino acid, enhanced stress induced heat shock protein expression and improved cellular survival as a result of that. And in this case the amino acid that they used was glutamine, a very inexpensive amino acid. You can buy like bulk glutamine powder on Amazon. And so my theory here is that if you have a sauna practice that the administration of glutamine, like just taking oral glutamine, you know, like, like 1 to 2 grams of glutamine might be something that could actually kind of upgrade your, your sauna experience if you're looking at it from a cellular resilience standpoint. And you know, granted in this particular study they, they were using an intravenous administration of glutamine, so they're just mainlining it straight into the bloodstream. And I don't think anybody's going to wander into their sauna with an IV hooked up to them. But regardless, the dosage was not extremely high. They were using in the range of like 0.15 to 0.75 grams per kilogram. And I'm not sure how oral administration, you know, taking like a, you know, gram up to typically doses a gram to 5 grams or so of glutamine. I don't know how to compare to that. But regardless, it's pretty interesting that glutamine seems to kind of upregulate heat shock protein production. So.

Yeah, no, that's, that's super interesting. Uh, there, there's so many people too, I wonder who are gonna start asking about this because I feel like glutamine in the past, I don't know, a few years or so has become more or less a, a, a bad word for some people because of the deregulation of mtor. The MTOR pathway. You had. Do you have any take on that or any.

That's, that's more, that's more methionine. That would be the bigger issue for excess stimulation of the MTOR pathway. And even that appears to not be the methionine that you get from like large amounts of muscle meat or red meat, but more the absence of glycine, meaning, you know, you know, we were just talking about organ meats, but you know, consuming a high amount of muscle meat without consuming like the bone broth, the bone marrow. Some of the other sources that would be in a nose to tail approach of glycine. That's the bigger issue is a methionine to glycine balance. But glutamine, you know, it's an interesting amino acid. It appears to have a favorable impact on blood glucose, on ammonia. So like pre exercise it could decrease some acidic buildup. It might actually increase heart capacity or exercise capacity. Although a lot of those studies have been done in people with heart conditions. However, it's relatively safe. Excuse me, inexpensive amino acid. And you know, it's not something I use more shameless plug the kion aminos more than I do just like isolated amino acids. But regardless, something for folks to try if they're into a sauna and to kind of, you know, I know we overuse this word, but biohack your sauna experience. So they have it. And then also related to this in the heat, I have been kind of testing out this new company called Levels that helps you to monitor your blood glucose. It ties into this blood glucose continuous blood glucose monitor called a Freestyle Libre and so I'm wearing a Freestyle libre now for continuous blood glucose monitoring. I don't think it's quite as accurate as the one I've used in the past called the Dexcom G6. But the freestyle, it's a little bit less expensive and they're using it now with this service called Levels. So I've been tracking my blood glucose which I've done in the past and I haven't learned that much. Interesting that I didn't already know about my response to say high protein versus fat versus carb, different lifestyle practices that could lower it. But I've just been extremely impressed as of late just because of all the heat and cold and breath work that I, that I've been doing during this quarantine at how much the blood glucose responds to fluctuations in temperature. And for example, you know, I've talked about in the past how much cold exposure plummets blood glucose and leaves you in a low blood glucose state for a long time. Even you know, throughout the entire day, eating, consuming, even carbohydrates. Doing cold in the morning just seems to make you super duper insulin sensitive or at least upregulates the glucose uptake so glucose doesn't stay in the bloodstream for a very long period of time. And I'll link to one interesting study that I found in the show notes for today. So all the shownotes are at BenGreenfieldFitness.com411 and the elevation of metabolic rate due to shivering, we know that that occurs with relatively long periods of cold exposure. But even what's called non shivering thermogenesis, it appears to cause this increase in glucose uptake and carbohydrate oxidation. Your body just, just burns through carbohydrates very quickly in response to cold. And so it doesn't surprise me when I'm messing around with this monitor that when I, when I do a cold bath or a cold soak or a cold shower, I see this dip in blood glucose. But the other interesting thing is that it goes way up in response to heat.

Oh yeah, like how high?

Really high, like 150, 160. Oh wow. It's a short lived increase, you know, similar to what you get from say like a cup of coffee. And so I began to dig into some of the literature around this and it turns out that there's this hyperglycemic effect that has been shown in literature in response to heat, particularly because you get an increase in certain hormones that oppose the action of insulin, particularly growth Hormone and another one called glucagon. And then the other thing that happens is the dilation of the blood vessels seems to increase the speed of insulin absorption and cause these kind of unusual variations in blood glucose levels. And a lot of people, because I posted a few of my screenshots to Instagram, people were like, oh, is that a bad thing? Like, should you not be spiking your blood glucose in the sauna? And the thing is, when you actually look at studies that are more long term on the effects of sauna on blood glucose levels, it turns out that it's one of those things where it increases temporarily when you're in the heat, but long term, the long term adaptations to that are actually a noticeable reduction in fasting blood glucose levels and an increase in insulin sensitivity. So it's kind of like this idea like, yeah, your heart's like a battery. You got X number of beats for your entire life. You know, creatures with a lower metabolic rate tend to live longer. And there's something to be said for that. But of course, people always say, well, why would you exercise them? Because exercise is like increasing your heart rate, therefore it could be decreasing lifespan. But the idea is if you're exercising for, let's say, say, an hour a day, your resting heart rate the entire rest of the day is appreciably lower. So technically, you're lowering your average heart rate. And the same could be said for sauna. It's going to increase your blood glucose levels while you're in there. But then a couple of things. A, it's going to be lower with a regular sauna practice as an average. And then B, if you're doing the cold right after the sauna, I've like, that spike just goes way down. It's like this rebound spike that just drops you almost into hypoglycemia. So justjust some really interesting things I've been finding out lately about kind of the interplay between blood glucose, heat and cold.

That's interesting. It's like increase it in the short term to decrease it in the long term is basically what I'm hearing.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Dr. That's cool. Soso. Yeah, very, very similar to what wewhat we'd see in practice, like hormesis, for example. And then one other thing. Did you hear my podcast with Eric Weinstein sign the, the guy who podcast, he's like the mathematical out of, out of la. You know, we, we had a really great show and one of the things he talked about was he's like, you Know, with all the self quantification, you'd think with people taking a dump every day that there would be some kind of like biometric evaluation one could do via their toilet on a daily basis. Because, like, these are fluids and solids coming out of your body that that could theoretically be assessed on a daily basis.

So, yeah, maybe for the normal person, for you. All I'm thinking is they're gonna be like, why is this really expensive yogurt up this guy's ass?

Well, ever since we had that podcast, people have been randomly, like tweeting me little, like, studies and anecdotes on toilets. And I had no clue. There was like this underground toilet industry where people are developing now, like, self quantified toilets. And the latest one was super interesting. It was from the Biomedical Engineering Journal. And what these folks developed is a mountable toilet system for personalized health monitoring via the analysis of what they called excreta, meaning your pee and your poop. And this one was really interesting because they developed this thing you put onto an existing toilet and it does urinalysis. So it will analyze proteins in your urine, bilirubin, protein, ketones, glucose, ph, like everything you'd get from a normal urine urine test strip. It'll test that and then also has what's called a Euroflow meter. So it'll test like urine urine volume and basically like your hydration status. And then it also has a built in 3D camera that analyzes this whole, like, Bristol stool scale. So you could actually analyze your stool classification. And not only does it look at the actual Bristol stool scale in terms of is it hard, is it firm, is it soft, et cetera. But then what they're doing is developing an ability to engage in what they call defecation monitoring, meaning there's like these pressure receptors on the seat surface that let's say you're constipated or you have difficulty going to the bathroom, it's actually analyzing when you push hard and when you push easy and could be used as almost like, like a biofeedback tool to teach people who are constipated how to kind of like, you know, relax more or when to breathe out, when to breathe in. Because technically you're supposed to breathe in, right? Which would cause your diaphragm to expand and would help to push matter out. So you're supposed to breathe in as you're kind of like pushing out to take a poop. And then you're supposed to exhale and your diaphragm kind of goes up and that vacuuming kind of pulls the rectum up into the body and then as you breathe out, you, you defecate again, like that's how you're supposed to do it. A lot of people don't even breathe the right way right when they poop. And a lot of practitioners who work with people who have difficulty with constipation or prolapse or something like that, they teach them how to breathe properly using biofeedback tools or just breath work that you do on the toilet. And it turns out this toilet seat also helps you to do that.

Well, and it's a lot less invasive too, because I don't do. And it's normally like physical therapists or physicians or nurse practitioners who are doing that type of like fecal incontinence type biofeedback. And you know, they pretty much have to stick a sensor up your ass. Whereas at least this one, it sounds like it's just the toilet seat that's sensing the amount of pressure that you're putting on. I'm assuming kind of taking like an EMG measurement, which is really, really cool because it's, it sounds really invasive, but it's less invasive than what we conventionally do.

Well, how about this? How's it gonna know who is pooping? And they figured out that too, because they have biometric identifications. There's a fingerprint scanner and there's also using the same camera, an anal crease scanner. It's essentially using the pattern of your anus to identify who you are. So it'll know, oh, this is Ben. He's taking a crap. I'm gonna keep his data because I've got his fingerprint, I know what his anal creases look like. And so you can just keep track of your own data as well as anybody else's who takes a dump on your toilet's data very seamlessly without getting people's poop confused with another person's poop.

Yeah, makes sense. I think Apple's actually going to that. They're no longer doing face id. They're doing anal crease id.

Boom. So there you go. I'll link to the study if anybody wants to take a deeper dive. I haven't actually used a toilet like that, but I love the idea of someday being wealthy enough to have one of those personal toilet systems, because right now I have one of those cheap ass bidets from Amazon on. But what I want. I visited a billionaire's house once and I went to his bathroom and like the toilet seat automatically opened When I walked in and music began to play and, and then, you know, you got the warm seat and the different selections for the temperatures of the bidet and whether it's going to go towards the front or the back and like one of those high end Japanese toilets. Someday I will make it and I will have one of those toilets.

Yep, be taking a just like Mark Cuban been.

All right, shall we launch into listener questions?

Let's do it.

Hey Ben, this is Dale from Austin, Texas. In regards to 5G, 5G does cause respiratory issues from what I've seen on PubMed and quite a few other issues. As far as toxins in the body, metals and such, what recommendations would you have for individuals to see if they have high toxic levels in their body? Certain tests that you would have people take for your protocol. Furthermore, I have not seen anything that actually you can wear outside unless you wrap your body in aluminum foil to protect you from 5G. I see a lot of companies are coming out with stuff, but how is that verified if it actually works? Any feedback on this would be appreciated. Thank you. You. So the way that, that I understand this question is that Dale is wondering about whether 5G, which of course has been all over the freaking news lately. And I, I don't, I don't think that the coronavirus is some scheme to spread 5G over the planet. Although, you know, I do have some issues with 5G but, but he wants to know whether it calls causes respiratory issues and also whether or not there's any way to kind of like protect yourself from 5G exposure. I guess, like, like any of these kind of Faraday cage type of setups or shielding tools or anything like that. And so. Right. I do have, I do have a few thoughts. I just finished reading this really, really compelling book called the Invisible Rainbow. Now I have some serious issues with the book because there's a ton of, I think faulty assumptions on correlation and causation. You know, like all during the Spanish flu pandemic, it's the same time when radio waves began to be released at higher frequencies. You know, that's one thing that I'm not, You know, it's kind of like the, you know, shark attacks are directly correlated to ice cream consumption. And you know, it's really the fact that people eat more ice cream in the summer, therefore they're in the water more. You know, there's a lot of little issues in the book, but ultimately one of the, of the things that I did take away from the book was that there's definitely a Disease of, I don't even know if you call it disease, but a condition of electro hypersensitivity, meaning some people really are more sensitive to what we would call EMFs, electromagnetic fields. And that book gets into how. What happens is that if you're exposed to a high amount of environmental toxins, toxins, in this case, the example used in the book was zinc, it affects what's called the porphyrin pathway. And these porphyrins, they're extremely important for oxygenation and for delivery of oxygen to the body. There's one porphyrin containing enzyme called cytochrome oxidase, which some people may have heard of before, that resides within your mitochondria, helps to deliver electrons from the food you, you eat to the oxygen that you breathe. So you tend to see a disruption of these porphyrin containing enzymes in direct response to EMF exposure. And mitochondrial dysfunction is something that's often reported with things like chronic fatigue syndrome or anxiety disorder. And a lot of these people with electro hypersensitivity seem to be displaying the same type of issues. And when they do muscle biopsies in people with chronic fatigue and anxiety disorder, they do show reduced cytochrome oxidase activity as well as impaired glucose metabolism. And most of this is due to damage of these porphyrin concepts or these porphyrin complexes. And it appears to be even more aggravated if there's a high level of environmental toxin exposure. So it does indeed seem that there's like this one, two combination of limited, limited cytochrome oxidase activity, combined with toxin exposure and the exposure to EMFs, causing people to really feel crappy, so to speak. And it appears that that's primarily due to the impact on the mitochondria. So when we back this up for people to understand this. So your mitochondria, they actually generate an electrical field and it's like 30 million volts per meter. It's stronger than light. And the mitochondrial membrane potential, that's the charge difference between the inner and the outer membrane of the mitochondria. And it tends to be around like negative 140 millivolts. And there are books like Dr. Robert Becker's the Body Electric or Jerry Tennant's book Healing Is Voltage, that kind of get into this concept a little bit more just about how the body really is something that operates largely based on electricity. And as a result, of course, electromagnetic fields are going to have an impact on that. The thing is, not all EMF is bad, right? We know that the planet Earth itself has A natural frequency, you know, it varies from 10 to 100 hertz, depending on where you're at and, you know, whether lightning has struck or whatever. But, you know, one. One common frequency that we find is what's called the native Schumann frequency, which means that it's about 7.83 hertz. That's the electromagnetic field that you're generally getting exposed to if you're, say, standing outside barefoot. Now, the idea here is that man made emf, which is a lot of times occurring at much higher frequencies and higher powers, it can cause oxidation of the mitochondrial membrane and also the generation of free radicals. And there are certain things that can impact that even more. Like I mentioned earlier, environmental toxin exposure impacting the porphyra containing compounds, polyunsaturated fats. Right. We know that's a big issue because they're very prone to oxidation. So if the membrane has a higher amount of polyunsaturated fats because you've been eating a lot of vegetable oil, that oxidation is going to occur to an even greater extent. And so the other thing is that, and Dr. Mercola and I talked about this when I interviewed him about his really good book called emf. Calcium channels tend to open and you get an influx of calcium into the cell. And what that can cause is more of a positive charge, like a straying away from the negative charge within the cell. The steep calcium influx and a high amount of intracellular calcium can damage the mitochondria. So when we put all this together, the issue is that all of the. That oxidative stress can also cause mitochondrial DNA mutations, and this can lead to more defective mitochondria, and then more defective mitochondria leads to more defective cells. And you almost get this really nasty kind of feedback loop with the more exposure to emf, the more exposure to toxins, the more exposure to vegetable oils, and you essentially just get poorly functioning mitochondria. Now, in my opinion, and I've talked about this on the podcast before, there are some are certain things that you can do to alleviate some of that damage if you come at it from an electrical standpoint. So, you know, especially for. For these cytochrome oxidase and porphyrin compounds, we know that, for example, getting outside barefoot, you know, earthing, grounding, that. That has a positive impact. So does sunlight exposure or exposure to red light or near infrared light, far infrared light, that, you know, the full light light spectrum. And as you and I discussed on the previous episode, there are even certain compounds that can accelerate the beneficial effects of exposure to light like methylene blue or chaga or you know, the dark green type of compounds you'd find in chlorella or cilantro. So you know, I would say first of all, if you're in a high 5G or high EMF environment, get outside barefoot, get exposed to sunlight, use these red light panels, consume chaga, look into like some microdosing with something like methylene blue, use a little bit of chlorella or cilantro. You're essentially eating black and blue and green foods and getting exposed to a lot of light. And a book like the Human Photosynthesis or Syer G's new book Regenerate. Get into this in a lot more detail this idea of the human body being able to photosynthesize to a certain extent. There are other things that I think can help heat and cold, help move electrons through the body. Massage. We know that the fascia is almost like this piezoelectric tissue and that responds well. Having a lot of minerals and drinking good, clean, pure water. These are just lifestyle practices that I think are good for generally charging the so called human battery. Now when we look specifically at 5G, that's where it gets a little bit difficult because I can't say that I've seen a lot of studies that direct directly show 5G to be damaging. I also haven't seen any studies that show it to be healthy. And that that's where my concern lies. And that's, you know, that's a discussion that I had for example with Dr. Mercola when I interviewed him about his new book. It's also a concern brought up in, in what I would consider to be a well balanced study on the effects of 5G on health being not some conspiracy theory. You know, the, the whatever at and t gods are like Mr. Smith in the heaven figuring out how they're going to destroy us with 5G. Instead like a well balanced look at the effects of 5G. And I'll link to this study in the show notes. But essentially what they get into in the study is that we need more studies on 5G. We need studies on what they call the dosimetry, like how the skin responds to specific frequency ranges and shortening intense pulses of 5g. There's no studies on inflammatory reactions. There's no study on the influence of a tissue temperature increase. Like they haven't looked at how 5G might cause an increase in tissue temperature which could increase oxidation. There's a lot of things that they haven't yet looked into. When it comes to 5G or if they have, that data has not yet been released. And so this particular study, it's a recent one, it was called, called 5G Wireless Communication Health Effects. A pragmatic review based on available studies regarding 6-100 GHz. And while there is some data showing 2G, 3G and 4G to be potentially harmful and cause some of the cellular damage, the same cannot be said of 5G. So it's one of those issues where we don't really know yet. You would think that based on what we do know about some of these other EMF frequencies, it would be prudent to take into account, you know, some of the recommendations that I just gave and that you know, that you would find in, in like that book the Invisible Rainbow that I mentioned or in Dr. Mercola's book EMF'd.

Yeah, I think people become reasonably concerned because the research is gonna end up becoming or come out post hoc. And I think that's where people get, get a little bit concerned with because they're like, well, why can't we have these things before? And I'm like, it's just not how it works. They put these things up without kind of our approval and then we test. And that's kind of just the unfortunate nature of the game.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a rush just to allow an unregulated 5G wireless infrastructure. And you know, again, like I'm a very open minded guy and I love technology. I use technology in my business. I have, you know, it's kind of like, you know, vaccines for example. If they were to develop a vaccine that allows for a property for adaptive humoral response and an innate response to something like coronavirus and the adjuvants in it were found to be relatively safe and not cause any damage. And there wasn't any kind of like cross contamination with animal based retroviruses or anything else like that. I would totally vaccinate. I'm very open minded when it comes to a lot of this stuff. Same thing with 5G. If it was shown to be completely safe, I'm fine, you know, and I'll activate my phone's 5G and use that instead of, you know, 3G or 4G. So you know, in fact, you know, the problem is that there's just not a lot of studies on it yet. So I personally plan to just play it safe. Now. There are websites that do sell to, you know, related to Dale's other question, certain shielding tools. Brian Hoyer, who I've Interviewed on the podcast before, he has a website called Fittingly Enough Enough Shielded Healing, where he sells different paints and curtains and blankets and, you know, all sorts of things that you could use that are essentially, you know, based on this concept of Faraday caging that would completely block the signal. There's another website called Less EMF where you can buy extremely unattractive clothing that you can wear on airplanes and look like a, like a hooded freak in a giant white garment.

You'll be on the. No one else is on a plane.

Nowadays anyway, somebody needs to create actual fashionable EMF blocking gear. But you know, I personally, you know, for long haul flights, I've got a little pair of pants on a shirt that I wear from this company in Germany that, you know, does some amount of EMF blocking. And anecdotally I feel better when I wear that when I fly. And so. So yeah, I'm not against this idea of getting some of this shielding material, but I, I think it's also quite prudent to do things like the sunlight exposure, the earthing, the ground, the consumption of some of these cytochrome oxidase supports like the methylene blue or chaga or cilantro or chlorella, along with water, minerals, heat, cold, any of these things that really kind of like charge the body's battery. And then as I've discussed, and I think this was also during the podcast with Mercola, when you look at the calcium channel influx in response to something like EMF express exposure, a diet that's rich in magnesium can help to off balance that when you look at some of the DNA damage, a diet that includes sirtuins like cacao, red wine, blueberries or blueberry powder, etc. Along with NAD or NAD precursors, it can help with that. And then anything regarding the modulation of some of these inflammatory pathways that seem to respond to EMF, like the believes the NRF2 pathway would be the primary one, some amount of nutritional ketosis or carbohydrate mitigation or the use of these ketone esters or ketone salts. I think that's also a prudent strategy. So I think there are dietary and lifestyle strategies that are just as important as, let's say, walking around with a giant Faraday cage or wearing EMF blocking underwear everywhere. Right?

No, agreed. If anybody is looking for a pretty fashionable shirt, I mean, I know it's just a shirt, but the company who I wear their underwear from, the Lambs company, I think you like them too, Ben, or you at least have talked about them before. They just came out with a shirt pretty recently and I got one in and they're actually quite comfy, which their underwear is comfy too, but it's fashionable as well. It just kind of looks like, I mean, some of my vuori clothes that I wear and I would consider them to be quite fashionable.

This podcast brought to you by Lambs Undies. Cool. Well, if anybody has anything else to add in or any studies that you found on 5G, feel free to let us know. Leave a comment in the shownotes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com411 just because I'm constantly learning about this stuff and keeping my finger on the pulse, so to speak, pun intended, of the entire EMF industry. But that book the Invisible Rainbow is interesting. I don't swallow hook, line and sinker and everything that the book talked about regarding like electricity and viruses and how it's responsible for every single global pandemic we've ever had. But there is some interesting data in the book and one of the big takeaways for me was, was the impact on these, these porphyrins and, and cytochrome oxidase and mitochondria. So it's, I think it's worth reading. Right.

So hey, while we're on this EMF train, if you will, I got like, I don't know, it's probably like 20 plus like direct messages on Instagram and, and, and via my email about the last podcast we did people asking, asking me about my smart meter cover, the one that I had. And I know that you and I, we reached out to Brian Hoyer and he got back to us on whether or not these things were actually effective. And he did tell us via email that these things can be effective. You just have to make sure they're covering the entire meter, which, the one I have and the one you linked to in our last podcast, it does cover the entire meter. So I just wanted to throw that out there because I got so many friggin questions about that dang thing.

Yeah, I just took my tinfoil hat and, and threw it out there. I just gotta make another tinfoil hat soon.

Yeah, there you go.

Fix that issue. Cheap way to do it. Hey, this is Ben. I'm gonna jump in here because although my, my reply hopefully was pretty thorough for you, I got some information after recording this podcast that you should know about. And, and this, this was pretty interesting to me because I reached out to my friend Brian Hoy, who I mentioned, who I think is really A top building biologist who exists, and he had a few thoughts. So he mentioned to me that a lot of these shielding fabrics are poorly thought out because they have metal in them. So you're essentially turning yourself into a big antenna when you wear a lot of this shielded clothing. And so these 5G shielding fabrics, they've been very popular, but they haven't changed changed in the last 10 to 15 years. They haven't advanced with the technology, and many of them will Shield things like 2.4 GHz, Wi Fi, or sometimes close to 5 GHz, but they aren't coming close to, for example, 5G exposure technology and some of these more advanced technologies. So some of these fabrics, I think if you're wearing them for 5G, may not work. And I know that Brian over at Shielded Healing is working on some different forms of CO clothing. And I would say if you visit his website, which I'll link to in the show notes, you could, I think he has a newsletter or something over there you could probably subscribe to and kind of know when, when some of the shielding fabrics get better and come out. But then he also recommended the prioritization of nitric oxide. So nose breathing specifically, he feels that that would be a really, really helpful strategy to keep you out of a sympathetic state, but also to equip your body body to better be able to withstand some of the cellular rigors that it goes through when exposed to emf. And then another thing that he is a big fan of is hydrogen water, just because of the selective antioxidant capability of that, which we'll talk about later in this podcast. But he said hydrogen water should definitely be a part of like an EMF protection protocol as well. So I thought I'd throw that stuff into the hat for you. And then finally over at Amazon, I made a list for you, a list of all the things that would be like in a 5G protection package to repair DNA, to offset the calcium influx into cells, and to down regulate the NRF2 pathway, all the things that are affected by 5G. So if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 5G package, that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com5G package package, you can get that Amazon list that I don't think is comprised of supplements you need to take every day, but certainly if you're exposed to high amounts of EMF, that's over there. So that's@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 5G package, I just put some of the same stuff I get off Amazon into a list for you if you just wanted to use the same stuff I use like the ketone salts or the magnesium or some of the sirtuin and NAD precursors like resveracel and a few of these other other choice things that I think would be prudent. So hopefully that helps and we'll get on to the next question.

Hi Ben, you often recommend hydrogen water.

I ordered some hydrogen tablets, I dissolved.

One tablet in water, drank it and my mouth became saturated with an overpowering metallic taste. I haven't had a cold for three years yet I got a canker sore within an hour and then got a.

Full blown cold within a day which.

Has taken me three weeks to get rid of. I have looked online and found nothing related to this. Do you have any ideas regarding this issue?

Well, first of all, I should comment that when you look at all the different forms of delivering molecular hydrogen to the body, and I have a big podcast coming out soon on molecular hydrogen because I'm convinced that it is one one of the most it's almost like an adaptogen for inflammation, meaning it can upregulate or downregulate cytokines, it can act as a pro oxidant, as an antioxidant. It has an effect on many of those inflammatory pathways we were talking about earlier, like the NF Kappa B pathway, the NRF2 pathway. It induces mitochondrial biogenesis. There's just a host of reasons that I really like molecular hyper hydrogen, you know, and I currently just put two tablets in a morning glass mason jar of water, typically two tablets in the evening ish time because it appears to respond well to like a diurnal dosing from a circadian rhythm standpoint. And I really am a fan of molecular hydrogen. And some of these tablets have. Well, first of all, I should say when you look at a lot of the big medical studies on molecular hydrogen, they're using high PPM air that they're infusing like people are breathing hydrogen air or they're using like a hydrogen iv, like saline hydrogen, but there's still some good research on just drinking hydrogen rich water and the oral consumption of hydrogen. It is bioavailable. And although you're not going to approach what you get from like an electrolysis based inhalation device or IV of saline clean of hydrogen, you get some good results out of the use of this molecular hydrogen. And I'm a fan. The tablets themselves typically are pretty clean. Most contain some kind of an organic acid to control the ph that's usually like malic acid or tartaric acid, some amount of magnesium. And it turns out that the magnesium actually very bioavailable. Like, a typical tablet will have like 80 milligrams or so of magnesium in it. It's actually a very bioavailable form of magnesium. So. So it counts towards your total magnesium consumption for the day, which is, you know, kind of relative to what we were just talking about regarding EMF as well. And then some kind of like a binder or a lubricant. Like, sometimes it's gonna be like a little bit of dextrose or sodium sterol. Some have natural flavors in them, which I'm meh on. I. I tend to avoid the ones with natural flavors just because you never know where the flavors were derived from. But. But ultimately, there's not a lot of fillers or excipients or things that need to be added to these tablets. You just drop it in water, let it dissolve. Takes three to four minutes. And then because hydrogen will dissolve into the air very quickly, you want to drink it pretty soon after you drop the tablet in there, as soon as the tablet has dissolved. Now, regarding a metallic taste, you know, there's a reactant agent that's used with the magnesium called a metallomagnesium reactant agent. And the thing is, if it's fully dissolved in the water, those tablets, tablets, all of that reactant gets converted to hydrogen and something called magnesium hydroxide. So there should be no metallic taste if you're dissolving a hydrogen tablet in water, unless you're drinking the water before the tablet has fully dissolved or even like actually drinking the actual tablet itself or eating the actual tablet itself. So you need to make sure you wait a good three to four minutes or look at whatever glass you poured it into to make sure that it is fully dissolved. The other thing that I would consider, because some of these metallomagnesium compounds could potentially clump, you may just want to give your water a quick stir after you've dissolved the hydrogen tablet in it, just to make sure there's no clumps in there and that it's fully dissolved. But that's the only thing that I can think of. And when he says he got a canker sore within an hour and a full body blown cold in a day, you can't get a cold in one day from something that you had like that morning. So if you get a cold, it would have been from. From something that was in your body, like, days. So this could Just be, you know, random correlation or coincidence. So. Yeah, but. But ultimately I'm a huge, huge fan of hydrogen. And I, I would say for anybody listening in, listen to my upcoming podcast with Dr. Or he's actually not a doctor, but he's a. He's an expert on hydrogen. Robert Slovak. I've interviewed him before on like alkaline water and structured water and different water filters. And we geeked out for nearly two hours about just hydrogen. So I. It's fresh on my mind. And after interviewing him, I could probably talk for another couple hours right now about hydrogen. But the long story short is I like it. I drink it twice a day, let the tablets fully dissolve, and I get mine now from his water and wellness website. So I'll link to that one in the show notes. He just has these H2 tablets you can also get. There are two other forms of hydrogen that I think are interesting. One is there's a company called Hydroshot that sends them in cans like canned hydrogen water, which is super convenient. Then there's another company called H Factor that does pouches. I think, I think both of those you can get on Amazon, but it's like kinda done for you. Hydrogen water that doesn't require you to dissolve a tablet. Same thing. As soon as you open them, you gotta drink the whole thing. But that could be another way toto do this if you'reif the tablets bother you, doctor.

So I. And I've heard thisi don't know if you've heard about this or if Robert and you talked about this. I mean. Iiyou'reyou're kinda. I won't say you're promoting it, but you mentioned it. So assuming that this isn't probably not the case. But I've heard, like with those H Factor pouches or even with the cans, there's the potential of the hydrogen dissipating just due to kind of its, its nature. I don't know if that's actually true.

Like. Yeah, yeah. So. So if the can is poorly formulated or poorly constructed or the pouch is poorly constructed, there can be micropores or there's dead space near the top where the hydrogen can dissolve. I asked him about those particular products, which is the reason I brought those two up. Apparently hydro shot for the can version version and this H Factor company for the pouched version. They're not only are they well formulated, but they also don't leach appreciable amounts of aluminum into the actual water.

That's good.

So those would be. Those would be two examples of brands that I would actually vouch for. If you're just gonna purchase and drink prepackaged hydrogen water.

Yeah, yeah. The tablets are just super easy, and I actually like the taste of them. To me, this might sound odd, but when I throw a couple tablets in and I drink it, it almost. Almost tastes like it adds, like a lemony taste to my water. Almost like I'm drinking lemon water. Does that sound odd?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, might. Might be a. I don't know if it's a changing the ph at all, but. Yeah, right. That's interesting. So. So hopefully that's helpful, Rob. And best of luck with those. Those canker sores, man. Don't go kiss anybody. Hi, Ben, this is Noah. So a few days ago, I got what appears to be burnout at work, and I've started working seven days a week because I love my work so much, and I have plenty of time each day, at least I think to recover. It's about seven hours of work a day. But I'm wondering even how fun my work may be, is it true that eventually the mental energy needed to keep up working seven days a week just wears out? Does that happen to you? Do you work seven days a week or do you take days off? And if you do take days off, is that because of mental recovery or actually just because you want to spend more time with your kids or going at adventures? What's a general weekly routine look like for? Ben Greenfield, thanks so much. You ever get burnt out, Jay?

Well, right now with a new newborn, I'm feeling it. But, you know, work, not so much. I think one of the things, you know, about my job and being a. Being a health psychologist is that, you know, I'm kind of. I'm kind of trained in a lot of techniques, if you will, or lifestyle kind of options. I mean, this is what I teach my patients, so it's not something that I have dealt with. I'm also very young in my career and very driven and motivated, but I could see certainly how myself and other individuals in the healthcare space could get burnout. And I see it very often, especially working, you know, for the government like I do. So it hasn't happened as much to me, but I'm not ruling that out. It could certainly happen at any time.

Yeah, I found an interesting article that I'll link to in the show Notes. That's the nine. The nine signs that you're working way, way too much. The. The nine signs are one. You can't remember the last time you had a real Vacation. Two is you're skipping out on your friends. Three is you're not sleeping. Four is you're suffering from hero syndrome, which would basically be you feel like you're the only one who can properly complete every task. Almost like you know, the micromanager, which I've certainly been guilty of. Next. What are we on number four? I think I said number four. You find yourself forgetting to eat lunch, which I, I never forget to eat lunch, so I'm definitely not overworking. Five, you're dreaming about work. I've had that happen before on like really, really busy weeks of work. Work. You dreaming about work. I think that actually is a pretty big sign. Yeah, but it is. Six, you never feel great, which is just immune system based and sleep based. Seven, your attitude is negative. Eight, you're missing deadlines. And then I must have missed one or else I said nine and lost count. But it is an interesting article. You know, those are a few clues if you weren't just use biometrics like is my HRV constantly low or is my respiratory rate constantly high? Or something like that. But they have definitely done research and shown that based on science, there's a certain number of hours per week that you should not work. Like working more than 10 hours a day. More than 10 hours a day is associated with a 60% jump in risk of cardiovascular issues. If you're working more than 40 hours hours a week, it's associated with increased alcohol and tobacco consumption. For all those people who need the cigarette or the glass of wine, 40 hours per week does not seem like that much. But there you have it. They say little productive work occurs after 50 hours per week. Injury rates are directly correlated to work hour increases, especially once you exceed 60 hours per week. And ultimately it appears that in most cases somewhere around the range of more than 50 hours and in some cases more than 40 hours appears to be hazardous to health. Now here's my problem with that. If you look into, and you're probably more of an expert on this than me, Jay, but if you look into self actualization and this idea that self actualized people actually love their work and for them work and play are identical, right? Which, and it sounds like Noah might be one of these self actual socialized people, then I think that a lot of that research might go out the window. Yeah, I'd agree. Now, now I absolutely love my job and I my average workday these days is probably ranges from 13 to 16 hours. Like by the time you add it up, like I work six days a week. For 13 to 16 hours. Like I, I get up, I'm in research, I'm reading, I have breakfast, I do the sauna, I go back, I'm working another four to five hours. I have lunch after lunch, quick nap and then another two to three hours, then workout and then you know, before dinner, another half hour after dinner, typically another half hour of just cleaning up stuff. You know, Saturdays I typically also put in a very long work day. So the thing is though, I would consider myself to be self actualized, meaning I absolutely love my job. I love to learn about health, health and fitness and spirituality and nutrition and love to read and then get those authors on the show. And like, like for me you can't keep me in bed in the morning. I wake up and I just want to go launch into the day. And so I would suspect that even though, you know, I'm personally working well in excess of 80 hours per week, that it's, that I don't feel as though it's impacting my health, deleterious, you know, I still sleep seven to eight hours for every 24 hour cycle. I still have time with my family, I still have time to stay fit, time for hobbies and you know, I've kind of woven life into work. And so I think that that idea of self actualization kind of plays into this. It depends on the kind of work that you're doing. And I actually found a really good article with a bunch of essays on how self actualized and cross creative people actually approach work. And the idea is that essentially work is play for these people who really succeed with a high amount of work. And then on the other hand this idea of the whole old school protestant work ethic or the, or the puritan ethic, which is kind of this idea that work should be hard, it'll make a man of you. The long cold winter walks to school and the arduous drill type root routine every single day. I think that approaching work and feeling as though it's not work unless it feels like work is probably not really going to do you much of a service versus work just being something that you're passionate about, that you absolutely love to do, that you're self actualized during, and that you even achieve a state of flow during. I'm not saying that sometimes work is not hard. Like, like for me sometimes like, you know, I'm working on like right now I'm working on recipe book and it's hard sometimes. So just like find time during the day to sit down, to apply myself and Work on recipes. But then once I'm heads down writing, it's like, dude, I get to tell people about how to make sprouts and my different organ meat prep tactics and this recipe and just a sourdough recipe. And when I first tasted this or when I first tried that, I think that ultimately even though there's some work involved, there's pleasure derived from it that make it not as damaging as if I were to approach it as just like a hardcore buckle down, protestant work ethic style sufferfest.

Yeah, and you make a great differentiation there. And I think that it needs to be stated. For me, it's one of those things like if I wake up or even when I'm going to bed at night, if I do not have this sense of meaning, purpose or fulfillment, then that makes me kind of question what was it about today that happened? What's going on in my life? How is this negative negatively impacting me? And that's the opportunity for me to then again either journal or, you know, kind of just take the time to meditate on what changes do I need to make. And sometimes for me that's been changes of completely dropping whatever it may be that's causing me a lot of struggle. And again, it's not that it's just something that causes me pain or suffering in the moment, but something that's just leading me to not feeling fulfilled or feeling passion or feeling feeling meaning or feeling purpose. And so that's where I just have to again take that step back. But I think that, you know, it's a good differentiation to say that it's not to say that these things won't be hard on us. Sometimes. Yeah, work can be really difficult. But if it's continually making us feel unfulfilled, if it's impacting our relationship with ourselves and with others, then I think that's the opportunity that we have to take to say is what I'm doing what I should be doing? Or do I need to kind of take another path right now or seek guidance? I mean, and guidance is something that I think is so incredibly helpful just to kind of have that Yoda in your life. If I could throw out the Star wars reference of the day.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, Thomas Edison has a great quote and that article linked to. He says, I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun. Yeah, obviously the dude worked. That's not. But he's saying, you know, based on our definition of work, sometimes maybe he didn't work, but you know, I Think if you, if you find more play and work, that's important. And I think that's also why I'm such a fan of the way that I school my kids via unschooling. It's all based on creative, unstructured free play. And they learn through that play. So as they grow, I'm hoping they develop this mentality towards work that really is more something that's based around. This is what I'm passionate about, this is what I love to do, this is what puts me in the flow. And therefore they will hopefully, from their schooling, carry that into, like life without it just being all, you know, factory work and putting, you know, square pegs into square holes and round pegs and round holes, et cetera. So that, that all being said, I do, I do take time off. So like I mentioned, six days a week I work my ass off and I observe the Sabbath, meaning that on Sundays I do as little work as possible. Even work workouts on Sunday are not as difficult. So the entire week as I'm putting in all these hours and all this time I have like a carrot on the end of a stick. This idea that, man, once I push myself, you know, away from the office Saturday night and sit down at dinner on Saturday night, it is just completely blissful all the way up until like Sunday after dinner when I'll check in on the email to make sure there's no Monday morning fires that I'm going to need to put out. And so Sunday is a time spent with family and it's hiking and it's worshiping and it's going to church and it's playing guitar and it's praying and it's meditating. And as a matter of fact, when you look into the science of the Sabbath, right? And all these different religions that have one day of the week where they observe complete rest and you know, admittedly do work hard to make sure that there is that buffer day where complete rest is possible. There appears to be really good health benefits derived from that. Now, granted, there's a lot of confounding variables because many religious people say don't drink or have some kind of a fasting practice or in some cases may have a higher number of friends and relationships from going to church or a better supportive community in their environment. And so I think there could be a of lot, a lot of confounding variables, even though admittedly there's a lot of people go to church who eat Twinkies and Doritos at the church potluck and so it kind of goes back and forth. But either way, I think that the impact of religion on mental and physical health cannot be denied. I even talk about this in boundless things like belief in higher power, purpose in life, friends, relationships, a meditative practice, a prayer practice, a gradual practice, gratitude practice, charity and volunteering in the community. Many of these things are woven into religion. And I'm not saying that you need to necessarily be religious to engage in a lot of those activities, but they're tied into a lot of these religions. And for me personally, growing up as a Christian and now still being a Christian and structuring my life in that way, that one Sabbath day of rest is, is an incredible part of my weekly routine and just refreshes the entire body. And even Monday is far easier when I stick to that routine and when Sunday is a complete day for family, for rest, for music, for fellowship, for church, for singing, etc. And so that's one big part of my week. So I would say a few things are, work is play for me because I'm approaching work from this standpoint of me being engaged in the things that I'm passionate about anyways. B, I have this one day that's completely off. And then another thing that's important is this idea. And this is kind of dumb, but a lot of people are aware of it. Just the breaks throughout the day, right? I take a lot of breaks throughout the day and for me they're super quick. They're super quick. We're talking like two to three minute breaks, sometimes dropping drop, 15 push ups, 30 jumping jacks, a few swings, go outside barefoot, look at the sun, walk back inside, keep working. You know, and I might do that every half hour, but there's, there's definitely something to be said for those mini breaks spread throughout the day. And especially during the quarantine where I've been working at home more a lot of like mini workouts rather than like one big workout at the beginning of the day or one big workout at the end of the day. I'm like doing 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there, a little bit of breathwork with the kids before dinner, and really structuring the day so that there's these multiple mini breaks, which originally was tough for me because I like to just get it all done right? Like if I'm going to do the workout, I just want to get it done and not think about it. But spreading these mini workouts throughout the day has actually been really super duper refreshing. And for me, back to the Cold and heat thing. One thing that I've found to be incredible, incredible during the day and even saved me some days from even needing to take a nap, is one quick cold plunge, like 60 second cold plunge that can give you energy for hours. It's nuts. And I think a lot of people don't even realize how powerful that can be.

Dr. Oh, yeah, no, no, indeed. Thethe thing that really kinda changed my. I won't even say I'll go as far as to say life. I mean, I know it sounds like hyperbole, but I will say it's life has been doing these pomodoro burn breaks just to kind of have some type of split in my day because it can get so mundane, especially if you have a computer job now. My job's not a computer job, but I know a lot of what you do, Ben, is on the computer. But I mean, if you're just sitting there staring for hours endlessly at these screens and you don't take the time to go and move, to get up, to get out of the room that you're in, to stop staring at screens, to get out and get some fresh air, then it is, it can be overwhelming. And so, yeah, have that break on, you know, on your weekend, if it's Saturday and Sunday, or just Sunday or just Saturday, whatever, whatever day you wanna make it. But also have it spread out throughout the day so you don't feel like I got up, you know, at 6am in the morning and didn't stop working until, you know, 8pm at night. I mean, that's gonna be brutal on your overall physical and mental health.

Yup. Yeah. And so, so yeah, I think, I think that kind of, kind of really helps people when it comes to giving an outline of generally how I approach work. So basically I work my ass off. I take a lot of pomodoro breaks. I have a really set routine and schedule. I have that one day where it's completely off. And then I also just approach work from a passion standpoint. And I guess the last thing I would throw in there because we're getting a little long in the tooth, but the last thing I would throw in there would be if I find myself doing something that my body is screaming at me that I don't want to do, I shove that whole Protestant work ethic aside, I walk away from that task and engage in a different task. Like if I'm working on, let's say, the recipe book I'm working on right now, and it's just complete mental block I'll go dig into emails and just bang it all my. Because I know, okay, I'm not in a productive mode. Maybe I'm in more of a reactive mode. I can take care of some of this other stuff on my plate, then come back to this when I'm ready. And so within reason, if you're not using that as a product procrastination tactic, but simply as a self identification tactic and a realization that maybe this isn't the time that I need to be working on this, that can be helpful as well.

Right?

Yeah.

I think we've become so rigid or legalistic in our, our work day and I think a lot of it is passed down kind of from, from some of our ancestors. Some of them, not all of them, think what you're doing with your kids is great. And I'm trying to do, you know, the similar thing with mine. Granted they're 2 and 0, but I think like this idea of, of not being so stuck on having to do kind of what's in front of us. I know there's some things that we have to get done, they are in front of us and we have, you know, work deadlines that are not, you know, imposed on us by ourselves, but by our superiors. So there's things that have to get done, but also sometimes there aren't things that have to get done. And we put that pressure on ourself and we maintain that rigidity and that leads to burnout. So no, undoubtedly we have to allow for some amount of appreciable flexibility or we will just throw aside everything we have and be in like a pit of despair. Because it can be overwhelming.

Yeah, well, the last thing I should mention is that I do have a drink at the end of the day every day.

And you call yourself a Christian, Ben.

I know, I know. And it's always some crazy cocktail that I mix up. Like since I got back from India, I've been doing like a little bit of gin and I put like cayenne and ginger and Cory coriander and usually like some kind of curry. And you know, pour that over ice with some sparkling, super spicy or you know, just like a glass of, you know, dry farm wines or some kind of organic wine. And then the other thing that I occasionally do to forego alcohol and if anybody wants to try this, it actually works really well. These liquid ketones, which, you know, speaking of emf, are pretty protective as it is for some of these inflammatory pathways. But the, yeah, the, the, the evening cocktail for me is, is nice. So I do that. I get high out of my mind and then I go to bed.

Right, Nice. My, my, my evening cocktail. I think you'll. If you haven't tried this, you should. So I'm just a big, like, gin and tonic guy. I love gin and tonic. Did you know that Zevia makes their own tonic? Yeah, you know, like the brand Zevia.

Yeah, they also do. They also do a ginger beer that's amazing for Moscow Mules.

Oh, I need to try that. I've not tried that one. Sprouts here has the ginger. Not the ginger, the. And so I love just some good old gin and tonic. Xevi.

Yeah? Get on it. All right, well, what do you think? Should we, should we give something away?

Oh, yeah, we should definitely give something away.

This is the time of the show when we read a review that you guys have so kindly left. If you hear your review read on the show. Leaving a review is one of the best ways to support this show. We're gonna ship you a handy dandy gear pack. You just email your T shirt size to gear. @BenGreenfieldFitness.com we put together a package, we send it straight to you. Who's our, who's our lucky winner today, Jay?

Our lucky winner is Raven, Raven3664, who entitled their review as excellent fitness education. And Raven said, Ben has a way of incorporating the most current and extreme biohacks with the old reliable values of nutrition, fitness and family. He has the most genuine curiosity for more knowledge and packages it all up perfectly across all platforms for an education you can't get anywhere else. Couldn't recommend it more for anyone searching for their own version of fitness.

So sweet. You probably could get this education other places. Yeah.

And boundless. Is that what you're gonna say?

Yeah. Boundless. Read boundless and you never have to listen to the podcast again. Balance will catch you up on the last 300 podcasts.

Exactly.

Shameless plug. All right, well, cool. Great review. Who, who was the person who read that again?

Raven3664.

All right, Raven, email gearngreenfieldfitness.com we'll ship you out some cool swag. And in the meantime, all the show notes for everything that we just talked about, from the tinfoil hats for your balls to the books that I recommended to all the research studies, everything that's@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 441 1. Jay, get back to that baby man.

Actually, literally just heard him start crying, so I'm gonna go do that.

Perfect timing. All right, let him in. 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 know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content 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.