Q&A 415: What Is Ben Greenfield's Current Daily Routine? 13 New Body Hacks, What To Do About Caffeine Sensitivities & Alternatives To Coffee & Much More.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, what is my Current daily routine? 13 new body hacks, what to do about caffeine sensitivities and alternatives to coffee, and much more. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show, Foreign. Jay. I think I just punished, like, a thousand calories for breakfast.

Oh, sure, that's a lot of calories.

What?

I mean, what did you eat? An entire horse?

Well, you ever. You ever just, like, wake up hungry? So hungry hungry?

Not, not. I mean, honestly, not often, but yes. Sometimes. Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right. Well, often I'll wake up hungry if I have a pretty active day the day before and didn't eat enough for dinner. And it was my wife's birthday yesterday, so I surprised her and made a table reservation at a local restaurant that I will not name because they were practicing and doing a very good job. Pat them on the head of social distancing and wait, are you guys closed.

Down right now or something?

Well, yeah. Governor Inslee in Washington has an order that you are required to wear masks. And all tables cannot have any more than, I think, I think four people at them and be six feet apart. And so, you know, our party walks in, most of us not wearing masks, and we had this giant room with, like, tables that were six feet apart. And so I kind of gave a nudge, nudge, wink, wink to the server and said, if I move these tables, will you call the cops? And she's like, I didn't see anything. So I shoved all the tables together and made a. Made a huge long table for 14 people and we had dinner. But, you know, it was one of those restaurants that has, like, pretty decent looking vegan options on the menu. And something caught my eye. So for dinner, I ordered a cashew encrusted avocado, which kind of sounds good. Like, sir, there were a bed of sesame, sesame noodles with red peppers. And, you know, I got. I got my avocado, which turned out to be a half of an avocado encrusted, as promised, in cashews. Where's the thousand calories coming from? Washed with envy as my wife punished a halibut. And, you know, the guy across from her a bit into a filet medallion, and I had little avocado. And, you know, I went home and I've been trying not to eat too close to bedtime. So I didn't go home and snack. I came home and went to bed, but I woke up pretty hungry. So this morning I had like 40 grams of collagen with kefir and colostrum and I put like some ketone esters in there and a little bit of bone broth. I dumped some fish oil in there. Like I just went eight nuts on the smoothie this morning. So if I'm burping during this podcast episode, that's why. Right.

Hey, listen, I don't blame you. I mean, it sounded like you ordered off the kids menu compared to what everybody else did. I mean, half of an avocado and it probably costs like 40, 40 bucks for the half of.

Okay, yeah, it's like, you know, it's like the kids, man. It's getting it. Like getting the mini sliders and the peanut butter and jelly sandwich with maybe a, maybe a couple of chicken skewers on the side, you know, that kind of thing. So anyways though, what do you think? Should we jump into today's news flashes?

Let's get to them.

All right, well, this is the, this is the part of the show where I give you research. There's that part of the show and No, I. Yeah, this part of the show. I changed my voice and you know, I, I spent a lot of time in the morning reading research articles and find some of the more interesting or compelling or sexy or head turning ones and I tweet them and generally have some good comments and conversations on Twitter going on about this research. And then I pick some of the better ones and talk about them on the podcast and I'll link to all of the different articles and pieces of research that we're about to talk about. If you just go to the show notes, which are going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 415 that's BenGreenfulFitness.com 415. I think at some point over the past couple weeks we got confused and may have completely skipped altogether. What was it? What do we skip? 413 or.

Yeah, one of them. Yeah, we skipped one of them.

I don't know. Not that anybody cares, but if I give you a regular podcast listener, you might notice that we jump from episode 413 to 415 or something like that. But today's episode, you go to BenGreenFitness.com 415 there. That wasn't confusing enough. And speaking of numbers. Speaking of numbers, I want to start with something fun. I don't know if you saw this article, Jay, but there was this article that came out about body hacks. Body hacks 13. Body hacks. What science says about the new shortcuts to health and wellness. And I actually thought this was pretty interesting. So let's do a rapid fire of these body hack. Number one, looking at the color green can make you more creative. What do you think? True or false?

I didn't even know this was a thing. I'm going to go ahead and say that I'm pretty sure I saw a neuroscience paper about this and the answer is true.

The answer is true. The color green can aid creative tasks. If you're in your area of creativity, paint the room green. Wear a green T shirt or some green socks or green underwear. And there's actually a wonderful book I read that gets more into the science of color. And it is called Drunk Tank Pink. And if you want to know how to really tweak color, like what shirt to wear, if you want people to trust you, if you're a web designer, what color to make the button on your web website to get people more likely to click buy like it's got everything in there. And by the way, those two colors that I just alluded to are blue for trust and orange for the buy button on a website. But that book's really good. It's called Drunk Tank Pink.

Going to your website now to see if you've implemented those.

We'll see. Maybe you have.

Actually, I'm on your website.

Maybe I want people to trust. Maybe I want people to be creative on my website. So it's all green, right? You never know. Maybe I want people to get depressed. So it's black. Okay, so number two, rubbing pressure points on your body can prevent migraines. What do you think?

So, I mean, I would think that this sounds right. Maybe I'm just gullible to all of it. So let's say yes, true to that one too.

There are specific acupressure points that seem to in some cases alleviate the pain that people receive from migraines particularly. However, they have also noted that if you place pressure anywhere in the body, it seems to induce a placebo like effect as long as that person is told that that pressure on that part of the body is going to alleviate a headache. So, yes, acupressure seems to work, but also a lot of it might be placebo effect. However, for those of you who want to take a deeper dive into this, I interviewed a guy named Ian Clark some time ago and you can go and I'll put a link to that podcast in the show notes. And we did talk about quite a bit about these things called Marma points. M A R M A points, they come out of Eastern medicine. I, after interviewing him, purchased a book about marmopoint therapy and kind of experimented with different places you could touch for energy, for nausea, for headaches. And I was able to actually find some spots that do give pretty good effect. Like the nausea point between your thumb and your forefinger. There's a pretty good sleep point right around the. Just a few finger width steps above the wrist. And there's a few cool points on the face. And I've also found that rubbing your crotch seems to elicit some really interesting effects that I never would have expected. But that, that's a, that was a really interesting takeaway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm joking. Most, most people know you can, you can elicit an effect by rubbing one's crotch. So that's definitely an acupressure point. So, so there's that. My, my lame attempt at a dirty joke. Ok, placebos and placebo effect. And that was kind of a boring one because it was just whether or not the placebo effect or the sugar pill works. Of course we all know that. So we'll skip over that one. Not sexy. How about this one? Bend over in a chair to get rid of the hiccups. What do you think?

I've never heard of this one. It just sounds a little bit ridiculous. So I'm going to say false. But my guess is that it's true. But I'm going to say false.

They interviewed a professor in neurology and biochemistry at Georgetown University Medical center and he said it is true. You, you sit down, you bend forward at the waist. You really bend forward at the waist, then you drink some fluid and you stay in that bent over position until you finish drinking the fluid. So you drink in that bent over position hunched over in a chair, then you slowly sit up and apparently that overwhelms the spasm in the upper part of your digestive tract, allowing the muscles to relax, thus getting rid of the hiccups.

Huh, that's cool.

There's that.

I don't often get hiccups, but I'm gonna try it the next time.

Yeah, Another one about whether or not you can burn more calories by walking faster. Of course you can refresh quickly with a coffee nap. I get asked this one, you know, a lot because this goes, this gets bandied about quite a bit, right? You drink a cup of coffee, then you nap, then you wake up and you have more energy because the cup of coffee clears out some of that sleep drive chemical called adenosine. In your brain. And it seems to work for some people, which I would imagine would probably be the, probably the slow coffee oxidizers who are going to take a little bit more time for that caffeine to hit their bloodstream. I have found that in many people, including myself, I'm a fast coffee oxidizer. That if I have coffee and get down for a nap, by the time I'm two minutes into that nap, I'm wide awake because the coffee has already hit my system.

I'm the same way. That's exactly what I thought about when I read this. I'm like, you give me a cup of coffee and then tell me to go take a nap. It's an impossibility. It's just not gonna happen.

Dr. Not. Not gonna happen? No. Okay. So that depends. Improve your brain power by chewing gum. Some research suggests that chewing gum affects cognitive abilities. And this one is based on the idea that chewing gum sends more blood flow to the brain. And it, it seems to make sense. But there are no actual studies that show that coffee is going to have that, that effect in terms of actual like intelligence or brain power. But it does seem to, in one study, improve test taking abilities. And you're talking about gum, right?

I think you said coffee, but you meant gum.

Did I say coffee? I mean gum. We know coffee makes you smarter for sure, right? So, so yeah, I mean, but there's always a bunch of confounding variables, like maybe chewing gum just distracts you from the fact that you're stressed out about taking the test. Or you know, we know that fidgeting can increase brain power a little too. So maybe it's the, just the movement of any body part. But either way, worth a try. Seems to do something. Maybe if the gum has things like nicotine and caffeine in it or like, you know, a little LSD blotter hidden inside thethe chewing gum, perhaps that could have an effect too. So it might not be gum. Might be the ingredients within the gum studying study more effectively by taking a quick nap. And this was based on a research study at Saarland University that had people take a brief nap after studying, right? Like as one might do after a late night cram session. And the folks who basically did this quick power nap had memory performance that seemed pretty good even compared to people who actually slept, you know, for a longer period of time without the cramming effect. And so it seems to allow you to simulate a little bit of what you might get had you gone into a test. Well, Rested, which I for again, for me when. Because I used to do a lot of all nighters in college. I just. For four years. I took 30 plus credits a semester in college and finished four jobs. I was finished in two years if you did that. I was a workaholic in college and I didn't finish in two, but I did a master's degree in five.

Right.

And when I would do a late night cram session, I would always just have a Red Bull or a monster or a copious amount of caffeine, then go take the test. Because I found if I fell asleep, I was groggy. But even if just for 20 minutes, I was groggy during the test. So I just pushed through and sucked down caffeine and went into the test. That's the way I always did it. But apparently for some people, that quick power nap after a late night cram session seems to give you a quick surge of energy or at least allow you to still perform pretty well on the test. So that was an interesting one. See in the dark by keeping one eye closed. See in the dark by keeping one eye closed. And that one was kind of a head scratcher for. But apparently when you're in a dark room, your pupils expand to capture a whole bunch of light. And then when the lights turn on, your pupils contract. And when you cover one eye, one pupil is contracted, but the other one, the open one, is dilated. And then by switching from the, from the dilated pupil to the contracted pupil, apparently it enhances your ability to be able to see in the dark. And I, I don't quite understand how that works. Aside from the fact that when one eye is closed, apparently the pupil and the opposite eye and the eye that is open dilates a little bit more than it would have had the other eye been open.

Yeah, I still don't understand how that improves eyesight, but again, I'm no eye doctor, so I don't know.

But I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get an eye patch for next time I go hunting, like bow hunting. And I want to get kind of like a dusk shot in. I'm just gonna wear an eye patch.

Nice pirated out there.

There's that. Yeah, yeah. Clear a stuffy nose. With this simple trick. Press your tongue to the roof of your mouth while pressing on the middle of your forehead. I'm gonna say that again. Press your tongue to the roof of your mouth while pressing on the middle of your forehead. And apparently it moves a bone that I did not know existed. That Kind of sounds like it could have potential for another dirty joke called the Vomer bone. Say that 10 times fast. The Vomer bone separates the left and right nasal cavities. And when you press on that, well, you have your tongue pressed against the roof of your mouth. Apparently your sinuses loosen and all that gunk gets released and you're able to breathe clearly again. Huh. Weird.

Yeah, I'm pressing on that Vomer bone right now. Feels good.

I don't get congested very much. Yeah. But I'm going to be all over my Vomer bone. So use your right ear to hone in on conversations from far away.

Just your right ear.

Yeah. When sound enters your right ear, it's processed by the left side of your brain, which is generally responsible for speech and language development. So you technically have an easier time hearing through your right ear than through your left. And so apparently there is something to that. And I don't know, maybe if you listen with your left ear instead of your right ear, you're just going to be more sensitive and weepy. Right. Because right ear or the left ear would then correspond to the right side of the brain.

Start drawing pictures.

Yeah. Which we all know is the creative, artsy, fartsy side. So you can use this both ways. I think that's kind of interesting. That is interesting. Hold your breath longer by intentionally hyperventilating. I think most of our listeners know about like Wim HOF and hyperventilation. And of course that's. That's why people die doing hyperventilation than underwater swimming, because you blow off your CO2 and that's your body's signal to breathe. But it does work to hold your breath for a very long period of time. Yeah. And also to get that little rush of dmt. Go listen to my podcast with James Nestor. We talk about that. He's an interesting cat. We had a fun time with that show. James Nestor wrote the book called Breathe. We'll link to that one as well@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 515 probably one of my favorite episodes I recorded in the past couple of months.

I just read that book too, by the way, and it was phenomenal.

So yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good. Uhm, okay, so anyways, the last one is banish the call of nature by scratching your leg. Banish the call of nature by scratching your leg. If you scratch or rub the back of your calf for a few moments really vigorously, man, there's a lot of body parts. We gotta remember how to rub, scratch or rub the back of your calf for a few moments really vigorously and you can interrupt the message from your bladder to your brain just long enough for you to make it to the toilet.

I'm wondering if that's actually physiologically happening or if that's just a distraction technique. Does it have to be the back of your calf?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it seems, it seems like it wouldn't matter where you rub. But I don't know, the next time I'm on an airplane and I see somebody rushing past me in the aisle, rubbing the back of their calf, kind of half limping, half sprinting towards the back of the airplane, then I know that they're a podcast listener.

That's right.

So there's that. So super interesting article. And we'll link to that one in the show notes, even though you probably don't even need to read it now. But BenGreenfieldFitness.com 515 if you want to go dig into some of the studies and some of the interesting anecdotes from that one. And then the next one was interesting. This was super cruel. But what they did in a study is they sleep deprived a bunch of flies. They sleep deprived a bunch of tiny, poor little flies. Apparently it's, it's unethical to sleep deprive humans to the extent to where they sleep deprive these flies, which kind of says something in and of itself about sleep deprivation. You know, we know that prolonged sleep deprivation can be fatal. We've known that since the 80s when they did a study in rats that show that they just basically die with sleep deprivation. And yeah, rodents aren't tiny humans, but it does give us some clues that we might want to sleep if we don't want to die prematurely. And then they just this past June did a study on the accumulation of reactive oxygen species in sleep deprived fruit flies, which are much closer to humans than rodents are. Actually, I'm, I'm joking, but I'm kind of not flies. Flies are actually surprisingly similar to humans in terms of sleep and antioxidant biology. So it is kind of interesting. They can be conditioned too. Dr. Yeah. Anyways, so they decided, well, these sleep deprived flies, they're generating a huge amount of reactive oxygen species, particularly in their digestive tract. And they have observed similar mechanisms in humans who are sleep deprived in terms of actual gut oxidative damage. However, what they thought was, well, are there specific compounds? And they tested a whole bunch of them that could actually limit the formation of reactive oxygen species in the gut. In these sleep deprived flies. And they found a few that were particularly effective. And I'll tell you what they were, because of course now if you're sleep deprived, these are some things that you may want to have on hand for your sleep deprived toolkit. And they are. Drumroll please. You're probably gonna know what most of these are. Melatonin, which is really cool because we know melatonin is a super potent antioxidant anyways, and I don't know if at the time I believe that by the time this podcast comes out, I will have released my podcast episode with Dr. John Laurence in which amongst other things we talk about high dose like 100 to 200 milligram melatonin. Oh wow. And some of the interesting physiological benefits of that in terms of neuroprotection, also clearance of inflammation and even some anti cancer effects. And so melatonin is one. And then the other two that were the most effective were lipoic acid, like alpha lipoic acid, which we know is a pretty good antioxidant. And that's another one that seems to have a lot of other benefits. But lipoic acid and nad, nad nicotinamide soso. It turns out if you're sleep deprived and you're concerned about the oxidative damage from sleep deprivation, you do melatonin, lipoic acid and nad. Those were the three that seem to be the most effective at helping out these poor little fruit flies. So I thought that was kind of cool.

That's what you needed in college when you were pulling all those all nighters. Just some melatonin, lipoic acid and nad.

Yeah, and a lot of different sources for that. I mean I like Thorn for lipoic acid. They have a good lipoic acid nad a lot of different sources. But I think the company alive by nature, they do some good like nad nasal sprays and they also do like a good little sublingual NMN tablet. And Thorn has a good NAD too that I think they mix with resveratrol. And then for melatonin there, there's a few good sources out there. Quicksilver does like a little sublingual spray or a sublingual squirt of melatonin that I think works really well. And then like I mentioned for, for the higher dose stuff, that guy John Laurence has the, has the, the high dose melatonin suppositories. So yeah, so there you have it. Interesting. Yeah, I thought that was kinda cool. Yeah.

Hashtag save the fruit flies.

Hashtag save the fruit flies. That's right. And then four articles I came across because I was kinda digging into cholesterol a little bit. We did that whole podcast on Coff cholesterol and how to kind of, you know, why the cholesterol surge that you get from coffee isn't a bad thing, but also how you can kind of tweak that in the way that you roast your coffee and grind your coffee or filter or brew your coffee. And so I believe that was episode 412. But if you guys just go to the show Notes, we'll link to that podcast we did where we geeked out about coffee and cholesterol. And it kind of led into a deeper discussion about, you know, why high cholesterol isn't bad in of itself, and it's a necessary factor for atherosclerosis and heart disease, but in and of itself, it has to be rendered atherosclerotic. And there are many things that can cause cholesterol to become an issue. But I wanted to highlight four today. I wanted to highlight four things today, and I'm gonna link to each of the studies that are related to this. But one of the things that seems to really render. So if you have high cholesterol and you're concerned about it, you have high LDL and you're concerned about it, this would be one reason that you'd want to be concerned about it turns out that the ratio of oleic acid to linoleic acid in your body is one thing that can affect the risk of high cholesterol. Now, one of the best ways to have a poor ratio of oleic acid and linoleic acid would be to be eating a lot of polyunsaturated vegetable oils versus, like, the monounsaturated Mediterranean fats. Okay, so oleic acid, as the name implies, you can find that like an extra virgin olive oil or in avocado oil or, you know, or, you know, a lot of these, like, cold water fish and, you know, so you find oleic acid in a lot of these monounsaturated fat sources. You'll find linoleic acid in a lot of the vegetable oils, you know, canola, sunflower, safflower. And most people are aware that, you know, the former are superior to the latter anyways, but it turns out that particularly for cholesterol, but that combined with vitamin E deficiency. Vitamin E deficiency. So that factor of a diet high in vegetable oils but low in vitamin E appears to be one thing. And so I did a podcast about vitamin E and how a lot of the forms of vitamin E that are out there in the supplements industry, they're alpha tocopherol. They're not what you'd find in nature. In nature you find vitamin E packaging in kind of like eight different forms that are called mixed tocopherols and taco trienols. Yeah. And so when it comes to vitamin E, if you aren't just going to get that from dietary sources, if you aren't gonna get it from dietary sources. And do you know what some good dietary sources of vitamin E are, Jay? And putput you on the spot?

Uh, no. No. So I don't. If you ask me vitamin C, I could send a list, but vitamin E? No, go for it, man.

Well, I failed you, padawan. Ironically, Padawan. Vegetable oil. Vegetable oil can can be a source of the fat soluble vitamin vitamin E. But we've just established that would be like taking two steps forward and two steps back. So you don't want to get them from vegetables like sunflower, safflower, corn, even though that's often recommended. Nuts can be a pretty decent source like almonds or hazelnuts, which I don't call hazelnuts because it's so boring. I call them filberts. Filberts?

What?

Yeah, filbert. That's like the sexy name for hazelnuts. Filberts. You didn't know that?

No, I've never heard.

You're gonna sound sound so much smarter at your Christmas party and be able.

To tell people how to get their vitamin E now.

Yeah. Sunflower seeds, green leafy vegetables, avocados are not bad. So yay. Because I love those obviously, especially when they're encrusted in cashews and served to me at a dinner party. Squash is pretty good. Trout is actually a decent source of vitamin E. Broccoli isn't too bad. And the folks who I interviewed in that vitamin E podcast, that was a guy researcher from Designs for health and designs for Health, they dothey have a pretty good vitamin E formula. It's called matter of fact, this guy interviewed, he said there's one thing you take with him to a desert island would be this supplement. It's called Annatto Annatto. And so if you have high cholesterol, arguably that that might be a good supplement to throw into the mix along with just limiting, limiting PUFAs. So that was one thing was that and then the, the next was something that I've discussed before, but again I'll link to some research and that is the levels of what are called serum oxidized ldl Right. Which would be the more atherosclerotic form of damaging ldl. It just goes through the roof when fasting plasma glucose and hemoglobin A1C are elevated. And so, you know, and we're talking about, you know, blood sugar that frequently goes above 140, stays up there for more than two hours after a meal. Fasted blood glucose, it's higher than 90 consistently. Just over and over and over again we see that stimulating sustained hyperglycemia or chronic hyperglycemia leads to the accumulation of these advanced glycosin end products and oxidative stress that renders LDL to be atherosclerotic. So that one I think I've mentioned many times before. But don't just limit vegetable oils and get vitamin E, limit your glycemic variability. And I think anybody who's got high cholesterol or is even eating a high fat diet in order to keep their cholesterol up from a productive standpoint, because we know a high cholesterol in many cases has an association with reduced all cause risk of mortality. But I think anybody who's doing that, you oughta get like a continuous blood glucose monitor, even if just for a couple months and just kinda pay attention to your blood glucose and make sure that that LDL is not gonna be an issue. Because you know, I think it's favorable in the absence some of these risk factors and not so favorable inin the case of others. So that would be number two, number three is low exercise volume. Low exercise volume. It turns out that in people who have high cholesterol, particularly elevated LDL levels, that, and this was an interesting study that I'll link to, but three days of exercise per week for 60 minutes was highly protective in terms of the risk for developing cardiovascular disease in those who had high cholesterol. And obviously three 60 minute exercise sessions per week is not a lot. It was at a moderate intensity, about 70% intensity. And compared to a control group who did not exercise but had similar cholesterol levels pretty much across the board. Everything from vascular cell adhesion molecules to myeloperoxidase to all the things that would indicate that, that cholesterol could be atherosclerotic. They were all far lower in the exercise group. So you know, once again, don't, don't be like the ketogenic biohacker who's doing your 10 minute biohacked exercise session per week with like blood flow restriction bands. Like you gotta get out there and specifically do, do some Cardio and some high intensity interval training and even like some facet aerobic workouts. You know, those type of things. Especially if you're gonna be doing like a. Like a high fat, low carb diet. Yes, yes, Jay, I'm not lying. You can't get away with 10 minutes of it, no matter how many fancy biohacks you have.

Sometimes gotta get on it.

Just need some, some volume. Okay. And then the last thing that was interesting was low omega 3 fatty acid status, meaning that extra virgin olive oil and fish oil supplementation particularly seems to keep oxidized LDL from becoming an issue in people who have high cholesterol. And that's not only because of the alpha tocopherols that you're going to get from those very similar to the vitamin E that we just talked about, but the flavanols, the polyphenols, the omega 3 fatty acids. And so if you have high cholesterol, no brainer. Get really good extra virgin olive oil supplement with some really good fish oil. And that's gonna be protective. And as a matter of fact, I can tell you that the daily intake that was good for these people was much higher than what you would expect. 40 grams a day of extra virgin olive oil.

Oh, yeah.

Which I think comes out to like, good, you know, like three or four shot glasses or more during the day, and then 16 grams of fish oil. And when you consider most fish oil capsules are about one gram, you know, it's a pretty hefty handful. Maybe, maybe take, you know, five fish oil capsules with breakfast, five with lunch, five with dinner. Or maybe just have, you know, five with breakfast, but have some, you know, big old can of sardines and olive oil with lunch. But you get the idea. Extra virgin olive oil and fish oil. Good thing if you're going after all the benefits of high cholesterol and you wanna keep it from being problematic. So, yeah, there you have it. I think we just saved a lot of lives for all the sleep deprived people with high cholesterol who are trying to pee and don't know how to keep from peeing and are trying to make it to the toilet in time. Just scratch, scratch your calf. And with one hand on a bottle of extra virgin olive oil with some melatonin shoved up your ass and you're gonna live. So you're 150.

That's an epic day right there, man. If I could write my daily routine out, which I know we'll talk about yours in a minute, I'm sure that Sounds just like your day. Hey, I was gonna ask you because I'm curious and you may have mentioned this. And so it may just be, you know, again, the Padawan not paying attention. But when we talk about high cholesterol, are we talking about those who have yes, oxidized cholesterol or are we talking also too just like high serum cholesterol? So any type of, kind of high marked cholesterol.

Yeah, high serum cholesterol, High LDL particularly. Okay, okay, yeah, whatever. Everything I just went over is if you have high ldl. Yeah. Which might be actually a lot more.

People than what they. What we think. Because if they're again the ketogenic biohackers, they probably have high cholesterol.

That's right.

Hey, Ben, Sly, Nate here. I've seemed to have developed some caffeine sensitivity over the last two years. I used to love home roasting my own coffee, Exotic teas, nootropic supplements. But all of these seem way too powerful for me now. I had blood work done recently. Everything looks good as far as I can tell. I've tried upping my magnesium, adding glycine, experimenting with adaptogens, even lowering the dose. Nothing seems to work. I just tried it again after a long break of over one year without caffeine and it same symptoms come right back. I miss the productivity and the focus that it used to give me. And I'm hoping you can help me understand the biochemistry and maybe some other things I can do to get it back. Thanks.

You know, what possibly could have happened here, Nate and also Jay, because I know you're real coffee aficionado is May. Maybe Nate was drinking our world famous kion coffee and stopped. I'm guessing that that was most likely.

Obviously that's a given.

We only do. We only do a light to medium roast to limit the amount of caffeine and acrylamides and you know, it's mold and mycotoxin free, so you're not getting the cell danger response. And I'm just going to use this as a way to, to, to basically pimp out my product, so.

Yeah, of course you will.

I think that's the whole issue. Just start drinking keon coffee, you'll be fine. No, this is, this is actually well, super interesting because this doesn't just happen with coffee. Like, like you, you can develop these sensitivities, you know, whatever. Gluten, lactose, whole bunch of stuff that they just didn't have growing up or didn't have for, for a certain number of years. And like the elephant in the room, the big one is that, you know, we know that there are these peptides, they're called corticotrophin releasing factors, and they're responsible for coordinating your body's response to stress. Okay, we'll call them CRFs. And they do have some pretty potent effects on the gut because they can increase gut permeability. They can contribute to what's called visceral hypersensitivity perception to pain. And that's because these peptides actually affect what's called the HPA axis, your hypothalamic pituitary axis. They stimulate secretion of cortisol from the adrenal glands. And when that happens, you can change the physiological function of the gut. And one of the things that happens is more inflammatory cytokine levels in the gut and also the disruption of the microbiota in your gut, which increases susceptibility to certain pathogens and also can cause this so called leaky gut, AKA gut permeability. Thus allowing for proteins from foods, including those that you might not have been sensitive to in the past, to indeed become an issue, particularly triggering an autoimmune like reaction that can include things like jitteriness and, you know, extreme sensitivity, et cetera, in someone who was at one time just fine eating certain foods, went through a period of stress, car accident, trauma, divorce, loss of job, change of career, had a baby, went through a period of sleep deprivation, whatever, and all of a sudden the foods that you used to be able to eat, you can't eat anymore. That happens. That's a thing. And you know, of course, of course, you know, I'm not going to insult people's intelligence, but you know, the way that around that is you quit consuming the compounds that are causing the issues while at the same time embarking upon a gut healing protocol with specifically, I, I think some of the, the better things to, to heal the gut when you have a leaky gut would be colostrum and glutamine, like L glutamine, colostrum, bone broth, or anything that has an appreciable amount of glycine in it. And then the last one is it's a supplement called Restore. I really like that one. It's a lignite based supplement made by Dr. Zach Bush that also seems to have some really good effects for leaky gut. So those are a few of my favorites are colostrum, bone broth, L Glutamine, and this, this supplement called Restore. So I would, I would definitely consider that and kind of related to that, you can test for an antibody reaction to caffeine to the actual coffee bean itself. Because think about it, it's a bean, you know, just, just like a chickpea or, you know, or, you know, almond or, or a legume, you know, like a, like a peanut. And we know that, that, you know, allergies to beans are not uncommon. And you know, when you look at the coffee bean, you have proteins that you can have an intolerance to. And there is a test, it's just basically like a food specific ige IGG test. And I think it's one of the better, more sensitive tests out there called Cyrex. And they have a panel called the Cyrex array 10. It's a multiple food sensitivity screen. And one of the things that's on there is coffee. So you can actually see if you are actually allergic to coffee. That does not mean you can't drink coffee for the rest of your life, but it does indicate, especially if you could drink it for a while, and now you can't, that leaky gut is contributing to an antibody reaction to the coffee beans. So that's like one of the first things that comes to mind for me. So I'd look at that, I'd look at leaky gut and potential for food intolerance, specifically an antibody response to caffeine. Okay. So the next thing I would look at would be magnesium. We know that changes in diet, changes in sweating, you know, such as a regular sauna practice that you may have adopted, changes in supplementation habits, etcetera, can result in magnesium deficiency. It's not uncommon to have a magnesium deficiency. Well, magnesium and calcium will assist with heart muscle contracture, you know, and regulate the actual electrical activity of the heart. If you have a calcium magnesium imbalance, not only can you have a risk for more arterial calcification, including calcium deposits that can form on heart muscle that can keep the heart from contracting properly, but then magnesium can also, when it's out of balance with calcium, result in kind of like that pitter pattering of the heart, which results in kind of this jittery feeling after consuming coffee. And in some cases it can be as simple as a magnesium deficiency. So that's another thing to look at. And there's obviously a lot of ways to replenish magnesium and a lot of magnesium supplements out there. They seem to be kind of making the rounds on the podcast circuit of late. Matt Gallant and Wade Lart, who have been on the podcast before because they developed a form of magnesium that's got seven different forms of magnesium in it. It's called magnesium breakthrough. And I think that's a pretty good product. I also. The other magnesium form that I like is called mag srt and supplementation with magnesium might be another thing to look into. Okay, so I'd look at an allergic response to the coffee bean antibody response that's typically gonna go hand in hand with leaky gut. I would look at magnesium deficiency. I would look at again, like I briefly alluded to. And of course Dave Asprey has done a good job bringing this to the forefront of concern for a lot of people. The mold and mycotoxin of a lot of coffees. And a lot of people do have mold and mycotoxin sensitivity. And there's a really good book about this by Neil Nathan called Toxins not be called toxic. I don't remember toxins or toxic. Anyways, he gets into the accelerated sympathetic nervous system response and this so called cell danger response in folks who have mold and mycotoxin sensitivity or who have, you know, mold, mycotoxin biofilm buildup from exposure to mold in their environment or in their diet, who then consume foods that also have mold in them. And coffee is a notorious culprit for this that accelerate that cell danger response even more. And so I would consider like a mold test, like a mold and mycotoxin test. And if you go to the website survivingmold.com or you read Neil Nathan's book Toxins, then there's a lot of good resources on there for practitioners who can do a good job testing you for mold. That same company I mentioned earlier, Cyrex, they also have a really good mold panel. And so I would not throw the possibility of mold out the window. And of course make sure if you're not drinking like a good organic coffee that doesn't have mold mycotoxins in it that you begin doing. So once you're no longer sensitive to coffee. Go ahead, provide your plug. Quinoa coffee doesn't have mycotoxins or mold in it. Right. But I like to mix blue cheese with mine just to just. Cause I like me a little mold. Plus it's tasty. Okay. So I like my coffee. It take taste, yeasty. It's amazing. Okay, so the next thing would be the blood glucose response. Right, the blood glucose response. And we know that when you consume coffee, anybody who wears a continuous blood glucose monitor has, you know, had coffee and their blood glucose goes to the roof. It's a short, it's A transient spike in blood glucose. But you know, the cortisol that's accompanied by the coffee and the norepinephrine release can result in what's called glycogenolysis, breakdown of liver, storage of glycogen, thus resulting in a spike in blood sugar. Well, if you have poor pancreatic cell function or poor insulin function, that might be accompanied by a hypoglycemic drop from a really accelerated blood sugar response. Or it might also, if you, for example, are not producing enough insulin or have really poor insulin sensitivity, just a really long period of time that glucose is staying in the system. And so because of that, you may wanna just do some blood glucose testing and some hemoglobin A1C testing and some insulin monitoring to just make sure you haven't developed, you know, because this, this can happen later on in life like pre diabetes, oror high blood glucose or full blown type 2 diabetes. I mean those are all blood sugar related issues that if you have a cup of coffee could cause you to have these hyper hypoglycemic episodes that would result, result in what would seem to manifest as caffeine sensitivity. And you know, when I say coffee here, I'm painting with the broad, anything with caffeine, you know, energy drinks, et cetera. So that's another thing to think about. And then two last things to consider here. One is that as you age, you tend to see a slowing in what are called your CYP enzymes, which are the enzymes that are responsible for metabolizing a lot of drugs, including coffee. And this is related to the whole genetic testing and how some people are fast coffee oxidizers and some are slow coffee oxidizers. And the fast coffee oxidizers tend to have faster CYP enzyme activity and break down that coffee more quickly. And as you age, or if you're a slow coffee oxidizer, those enzymatic reactions slow, thus you become more sensitive to caffeine. So it might just be sorry, Nate, that you're getting old, right? Because obviously if this had always happened to you, it just means you're a slow coffee oxidizer or could mean that. But if it just happens to set in gradually, maybe it's just age slowing down your CYP enzymes. And there are certain ways that you could speed up cyp. Like, you know, grapefruit is notorious. I tell you not to consume grapefruit or grapefruit juice or grapefruit extract with some pharmaceuticals. And that's because it can, you know, accelerate the breakdown of those. So Quickly. So definitely, definitely don't put, put grapefruit in your coffee. I don't recommend that or mold. But you just have a bit of a, yeah, a little bit of slowing down of the CYP enzymes and sometimes, you know, in a similar note, just liver and gallbladder function. If liver and gallbladder, you know, if you test you have high liver enzymes or you know, a lot of people just basically need to enhance the phase 0, 1, 2 and 3 pathways of liver detoxification which can assist with restoration of proper enzymatic activity in the liver. And this is, this is why fasting is beneficial. This is why doing like a yearly cleanse is beneficial. Or even something like a quarterly fasting mimicking diet or there are some really good Ayurvedic cleanses out there. One that I like is called the Kayakalpa Cleanse. K A Y A K A L P A. That one's made by Dr. John Duyard in Boulder, Colorado. I use that with a lot of my clients if they come to me and we're kind of kick starting their program and they've got some high liver enzymes, that's a five day cleanse. The folks at Quicksilver Scientific have their Push Catch liver detox and that also is a really great formula that results in enhancing the detox pathways. But then there are a bunch of natural binders in them that catch toxins as they're released so that you eliminate them via stool and via sweat. Sweat. And so that one's called the Push Catch liver detox. Or alternatively there's that Kaya Kalpa cleanse. I wouldn't do both. That's too much. You don't wanna over cleanse, but you might just need to clean up shop from a liver and a gallbladder standpoint. And sometimes that can help out quite a bit in a situation like this as well. So those are some ideas for you. And then I'd be remiss, not to mention the fact that, that there are some good alternatives to coffee in the meantime that I, I weave in myself. Like I'm just careful not to drink coffee every day. So now I'm doing the reverse plug of my product. Yeah, coffee, everybody just pull. I don't drink it every day. Yeah, yeah.

Like I'm actually surprised that you don't.

Drink it every day.

Actually.

No, I don't for, for two reasons. A, I just, I'm cognizant of, of, you know, just shoving a bunch of caffeine down the hatch every day and B, Some, sometimes I've got a hankering for something different. And for example, sometimes, and this is one of my favorite things to do, I'll make cacao tea and blend it with chaga. And I think that's wonderful. It's a great little blend. I get this, my cacao, cacao nib, cacao shell powder. And it comes in a bag and I put it in a French press and I make cacao tea and I pour that over a couple packets of four Sigmatic Chaga. And sometimes I like to mix in a little stevia and a little sea salt. But sometimes I'll have chaga cacao tea instead of coffee, which is kind of cool because you still get a lot of the dopamine release from the cacao and that feel good effect but a little bit lower levels of caffeine. So that's one cool alternative that I like. The company, four Sigmatic, who we mentioned earlier, they make a coffee that's called an adaptogen coffee, meaning they made the coffee so that it wouldn't cause as many jitters. I'm not a huge fan that it comes pre ground. I think you lose a lot of the, the freshness and the shelf stability of coffee that's pre ground and you do have a little bit more potential for, for, for some carcinogenic buildup, et cetera. But they do use all organic fair trade coffee. And I think as long as you don't leave it on the shelf for a long period of time, it's not that bad. But they blend things in it like ashwagandha and holy basil. And they've also got some chaga in there as well. All things that kind of take the edge off the caffeine. So I'm not opposed to that as an option like this adaptogenic coffee like four Sigmatic makes. And then one other that I've been kind of liking lately, kind of a new company, but they sent me a few bags of their stuff and what they do is they take either one of their blends has a little bit of coffee in it, but most of it doesn't have coffee in it. But they market it as an alternative to coffee because it's kind of like chicory root as the base, which a lot of people who don't drink coffee, they will drink chicory root bases, but then they blend it with like ginger and cayenne and they throw a lot of things in there like maca and schizandra and they have like one that's a cacao flavor. They have one that they call the dirty flavor that has a little caffeine in it. They have one they call their sex tonic, which is literally like a bunch of nitric oxide precursors, aphrodisiac compounds, and then a little bit of cayenne for little kids kick. I like it. And I've been, I've been throwing that in the French press and a lot of times I'll blend it up with a little stevia and a little sea salt. And that one's called Rasa R A S A. They're a pretty new company, I think. I think they're out of Boulder actually. And I've actually liked some of their stuff too. You know, on a morning where I don't feel like making a cup of coffee. So those are probably the three things I don't do a lot of the four sigmatic adaptogenic coffee again because I don't like getting my coffee pre ground as much. But. But I have been doing a little bit more of that Chaga cacao blend and then I've been drinking some of this Rasa Rasa adaptogenic coffee. So, you know, those are some alternatives for you if the whole, you know, old school green tea thing. How boring. Or English tea. Yes. I don't, I don't like to have English tea for breakfast. It just always makes me feel like I need a crumpet and a scone and needs to be raining. Yeah. So was that Australian?

I was, I was Australian. I went Australian though.

Mike. Yeah. That's beer. Right. So anyways, Nate, I hope that's helpful. And those are a few things that, that come to mind. So. So yeah, there you have it. Man.

That was pretty. That was pretty extensive. I like it. What I. What I will say because I know it's, it's in the show notes and I don't believe you mentioned it, but it's something that I use all the time is, is incorporating some L theanine with my coffee. Like that for me is like that actually has been a game changer for me because I used to get a little bit of the coffee jitters when I would drink maybe non kion based coffee, but even, even with kion coffee or with any. Anything that I'm drinking in the morning that's, that's caffeinated, but especially coffee, you know, about 200 milligrams of L theanine. And that does the trick for me every time.

Yeah. Yep. No, I agree. The theanine's amazing too. And that's just one theanine's Kind of cool for, for pre sleep. It's, it's. I always like to have a little union around. Just any, anything you take that might make you too jittery, you know, whatever. You didn't cut your LSD blotter effectively. That's the second time I mentioned lsd.

That is what's on your mind, Ben?

Yeah, I guess. You know what is, we're recording this during our psychedelics week at Ben Greenfield Fitness. That's right. All week long on Instagram. And I think this podcast will have come out once psychedelics week is over. But I have been and, you know, putting out a lot of information about microdosing and stuff like that, so maybe that's why. All right, well, let's, let's go on to the, to the next question. And this, this one might be a little bit of a meaty question, but let's do it. What do you think? Let's go. Hi, Ben, my name is Sana. My favorite part of your show was when you talk about a need for daily routine, for workouts, supplements, meditation and things like that. I was wondering if you would mind sharing some of your own favorite workout routines and meditation practices in more detail. Thank you. Well, I get this question a lot and by the way, I don't do this much and tell me if it's distracting and Definitely go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com515 and let me know if I should not have done this. But I just started walking on my treadmill. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I don't walk a lot during, during these, I walk a lot during the day. I do a lot of my podcasts while I'm walking. I do a lot of my calls while I'm walking, but I don't walk a lot when I'm recording my own show. I don't, I don't know why. I just sometimes, I don't know. I just, I just don't. But I'm walking now, so if that's distracting to people, just let me know. I won't walk during my podcast. But gosh, I get asked this so much. You know, what, what's your morning routine? What's your afternoon routine? But it changes a lot, you know, just like anything, and especially for me because, you know, I'm kind of a self proclaimed immersive journalist and I'm always trying out, you know, new things. Whether it's, you like, the different coffee blends that we talked about, or it might be experimenting with alternatives or somebody will send new, some new fancy exercise device or biohacking device or brain tweaking or sleep device to my house. And so, you know, I'm always trying new things out. And so the reason I wanted to respond to this question was because I figure why not give people an update as to, you know, what, what, what I found to be really helpful, what's working for me right now and what I'm experimenting with. So I think, I think that's an interesting question. And so, you know, obviously for me to go through my routine might take a little bit of time, but we've got a little bit of time. So what do you think? Should we do it? Just maybe start with the morning, I suppose?

Yeah, yeah, I guess just walk us, walk us through your day. I mean people probably want to hear the details. So I say we've, we got time, let's give it to them. Even though I'm a little, I'm a little bit upset that they didn't ask about my routine. So screw you.

Oh, maybe we'll do, maybe we'll do Jay's. All right, sounds good. Okay, so I don't unless I have a flight to catch or an early morning meeting, which is really rare because I protect my mornings, I protect my mornings quite a bit. I try not to schedule anything work related until about 9:30-10:ish. And the reason for that is I'm just a big fan of the morning routine and of optimizing the body and the brain for extreme productivity the rest of the day. And I just do much better when I'm not getting out of bed and knowing that I have like 20 minutes until I got to be on my first call.

Right.

And so it's pretty rare that I wake with an alarm. I simply, I will just wake naturally. And for me these days and it seems to get earlier and earlier with each year. For me that's usually about 5am or so that I wake naturally. And that's typically with a 9:30 to 10pm is bedtime. Now I do take a nap later on, typically in the afternoon, a very quick 20 to a 30 minute power nap. And I'm just fine waking up that early with, with the power nap.

Do you do it like right after lunch, your nap?

Yeah, yeah, we can, we can get to that in a little bit when we get to lunch. But I haven't been getting out of bed right when I wake. And that was because after I interviewed Jim Pool from New Calm, he talked about how for people who wake up super early and who can't get back to Sleep, you can pretty much simulate one extra sleep cycle by playing one of these 20 to 50 minute ish Nucalm tracks. And so during the entire night of sleep, because I tend to be very sound sensitive while I sleep, I actually do have some noise playing. And the way that I'm doing this right now is my phone is in airplane mode mode on my bedside and I have this app called Sleep Stream. Sleep Stream. And Sleep stream has the option to play like white noise or brown noise or like middle meditation sounds. It's. I've described it in the past as like a DJ for sleep. And based on research of all the different forms of background noise that you can play to drown out, like bird song or sirens blaring or dogs barking or cars, you know, or I can often hear like semi trucks on the road near our house. We've got roosters, we've got goats, you know, so it does get kind of loud sometimes as early as like 3:45 in the morning. So I, I wear these, these, these sleeping headphones called sleep phones. And the sleep phones are, I'm a side sleeper. And so they're like super soft headphones that allow you to sleep on your side without like earbuds digging into your ears or anything like that. That. So I play this, this sleep stream and I play the pink noise because it appears that pink noise is the best form of noise for enhancing your sleep cycles and drowning out outside noise. So wait, what's the difference between airplane.

Mode and white noise?

It's just like the frequent. It's the frequency of the sound waves. So you know, subtle differences between like brown and white and pink. But, but pink is the best. So I play pink noise on this Sleep stream app through my sleep phones. But then what I've been doing, and I felt kind of guilty about this at first because I'm not that kind of guy who like usually when I wake up I'm like, get up, charge, attack the day. But I've been actually staying in bed and it'll depend on how busy my day is, how long I'll stay in bed. But I'll choose either a 20 minute or a 50 minute new calm track. And I lay there, there and I turn off the pink noise and I put on the new calm track and just kind of, I'm almost like in this half wake, half sleep state as the track plays. And it lulls you into this like deep breathing cycle and deep meditative state. And I just feel really, really good when I do that in the morning. So I'VE actually been playing a new calm track while I'm laying in bed in the morning. And they also just added a new track track to their app called Deep Recovery. And I'm really liking that one. I mean it just, it, you, you feel as though you've meditated for hours on end when you play that track and they've actually found that it, it amps up your, your delta and theta brain waves through the roof.

It's pretty, it's pretty awesome.

I'm not. Yeah, so I'm not getting out of bed right away in the morning.

Hey Ben, do you want to hear a really funny short story about nucalm in the morning that happened with me? Because I've actually been doing something similar.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, real fast. So I actually, this was a couple days ago, had my new calm system on. It was about 5am I woke up a little bit early but wanted to kind of extend it out a little bit, get some more restorative sleep in. Threw on just kind of the power nap on my, on my new calm and ended up kind of lulling myself back to sleep. But I was on my back and I usually don't sleep on my back. And dude, I went into one of the worst cases of sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations I've ever had. Like there were people that I saw in my room. It scared the ever living out of me. So I was like, you know, maybe I should do this on my side from now often because research indicates that it doesn't happen as often on your side. But just thought it was kind of cool. Didn't know if that ever happened to you.

Yeah, I've had some weird things happen with the new calm where you, you, you can, you, you just, you can go to another planet do. And I've never had that happen with any other kind of like sleep app nap. So and, and you are correct if you're laying on your back like with one of those like you know, neck support pillows or back sleeping pillows, it actually like that, you know, not to jump ahead to my, my afternoon nap, but that's actually how I tend to nap in the afternoon is I'll play a quick 20 minute power. So Newcom has two different power naps. They're each 20 minutes but I do those laying on my back and yeah like you're off on another planet within like two hours. And in both cases for the nap and for that morning when I wake, I have that little Apollo strap attached to my ankle and I always have that in airplane mode, too, but you can press the two little buttons on it, and it doesn't even need to be controlled by your phone. And I have it in either relax or sleep mode. And when I do that at the same time as the nucalm, either for a nap nap or for that morning kind of like quick extra sleep cycle, I mean, it like, doubles the effect in terms of the relaxation. So that thing's pretty cool, too. And I realized, like, you know, neither of Those devices, the NuCalm or the Apollo, are inexpensive. I'm just explaining to you what I did or what I'm doing right now. Give it to us. And so, yes, that works really well. And then what I do then is I do some journaling for about five minutes before I get out of bed, because if I wait and tell myself I'm going to do it later, I just don't. So I do my journaling. And for the longest time, up until about a month ago, I was just using the Christian Gratitude Journal. And that's simply you wake up, you read an inspirational Bible verse that's on each page, and you write down, what am I grateful for? Who can I, can I pray for or serve today? And what truth did I discover from today's Bible verse or today's reading and behind the scenes? I don't think I've ever said this on a podcast before. I've decided to work on a new version of that journal, and I'm changing the name of that journal. It's going to be the Spiritual Disciplines Journal. And here is. Here is how it goes, goes. And again, I won't spend too much time on any, because obviously we could be here for an hour or more talking about the routine. But I'll tell you in brief what it is. You wake up and you write down, what am I grateful for? Okay, so you have gratitude. And then you also write down, who can I help or pray for today? Okay, so you have gratitude and service worked into the morning journaling. Okay, so those are the only two things that I'm doing in the morning. What am I grateful for, for? And who can I pray for or serve today? And then I read the inspirational verse that's on the top page. And then in the evening. So the journal has two components, a morning and an evening. In the evening, you write down in a process of what's called self examination, which is a very powerful spiritual discipline. What good have I done this day? And what could I have done better? Right? Where did I rise to the occasion? Where Did I fail? And I find that self examination to be incredibly powerful at allowing you to realize where you fell short and how you can fix that in the future. And also what you may have done that enabled you to do a really good job that day. And I have found self examination to be so powerful in my own life. What good have I done this day? And what could I have done better that I decided that I wanted to change up the journal journal and shift it to a morning and evening journal in which the evening involves responding to that question, that self examination question. And then the other question that I write the answer to is how did I fulfill my life's purpose today? So as part of the redo of this journal, I'm writing out a pretty extensive introduction on not only the science and the practice of gratitude, but also the science and practice, practice of service, the science and practice of self examination, and how to find your purpose in life. And so this new journaling habit basically integrates four variables, gratitude and service. And then in the evening, self examination and purpose. And I have found this to be an amazing way to gratitude Only takes me five minutes in the morning or an amazing way to journal five minutes in the morning, five minutes in the evening. And it'll probably be like another four or five months before I actually have this as a, as a done for you journal. Kind of like the Christian gratitude journal, but that's, that's how I'm journaling.

That's cool.

I like it. So, so yeah, then I get out of bed and I go take a pee and, and I do two different things that are borrowed from Ayurvedic medicine. For my, my oral microbiome and my oral health. I make little coconut oil molds. And I typically put like peppermint and oregano and some cinnamon. I get a little clove and I just melt down the coconut oil and I put all these essential oils in there and then I pour it into molds. And I have a giant mason glass jar full of these coconut oil molds in my refrigerator. And so I get up and it takes me out 10 seconds. I do tongue scraping, scraping, or I use a copper tongue scraper. I use the one made by the company dirt. And I just scrape my tongue from back to front like three to five times to clean the tongue because you get a lot of like yeast, fungus, mold. All that can build up on your tongue overnight. So I scrape the tongue. It's an ayurvedic practice. And then I pop one of those homemade coconut oil pulling molds and I start to swish coconut oil around in my mouth. Okay. So I'm doing that as I'm kind of walking around getting things ready for the day. I also wasp my. This is also from Ayurveda and I'm interviewing an Ayurvedic medical practitioner soon because I've been really getting into especially some of the morning practices. One can, one can glean from Ayurvedic wisdom. And so the other thing that I do is a pretty good fit. Like I've got some really good face washing oils. I use the stuff from Ali Torah right now, their cleansing oil. And so I wash my face with warm water and just scrub, scrub, scrub my face and wash it. And yeah, once a week I'll do one of these clay masks from Alitura in the morning and put that on my face when I get up. That's just once a week. Most mornings I just do a really good facial cleansing wash and then follow that up with some of the kion skin serum, put that all over my face, I smear it over my hair as well and then go downstairs, get the coconut oil and start walking around getting ready for the day. While I'm swishing the coconut oil in my mouth. Mouth, I put the hot water on for the coffee, which is going to be typically French press kion coffee or that cacao chaga blend that I mentioned or this rasa stuff that I've been messing around with. And so while the hot water is heating for the coffee or for the tea, I do about 10 minutes of foam rolling and like deep tissue work and stretching. Right. And I do have one of those biocharger devices now. So typically I'll run like a 10, 15 minute biocharger session and do all my stretching and foam rolling and breath work while I am in front of that. And sometimes I'll go out in the sunshine and do it. Sometimes I'll just be doing the living room floor. But I always weave in about 10 to 15 minutes, just bodywork and breath work. And that's like while I'm coconut oil pulling, while the hot water is getting ready for the coffee or the tea.

That's multitasking.

And then. Yeah, yeah, I mean, why not? And then I spit out the coconut oil, rinse out my mouth with water, and then I, I pour the, the hot water over the coffee or over the tea in the French press. And then I go and fill a giant mason glass jar full of really good water. So I've got like a hydrogen water generator and you know, so I've got really good hydrogen water. And then I put a baking soda in that. I put vitamin C in that, like a vitamin C powder for baking soda. I'm just using arm and hammer for the vitamin C powder. I'm using the stuff from Jigsaw Health. And then it's got. The hydrogen is in there too. And I drink this giant mason glass jar full of baking soda and vitamin C and hydrogen, which is just a really wonderful time tonic. And, and so I drink that and then I go and oh, and by the way, well, well, I, while I'm drinking that because some I don't just like suck it all down at once, but while I'm drinking that, a lot of times I'm just like wandering around the kitchen prepping a few things, you know, getting the smoothie ready for later on, you know, making sure I have some stuff set aside for the work day, you know. And so at that point, point I, my coffee or my tea is ready and so I press down the French press, pour that into a giant mug and then I go downstairs to my office and for about 20 to 30 minutes I read. I read research articles, I read different digests and journals that I subscribe to and the whole time I'm sipping my coffee and the whole time I'm doing red light therapy, right? So I just flip on the red lights, go in my office, drink my coffee or tea and just jam and read, read, read. Okay. Because I'm a fast reader, I can usually get through about eight to 10 research articles while I'm sucking down my coffee in the morning. And I don't like to, you know, there's occasionally like somebody who's texting me who I really got to respond to or, you know, somebody hit me up on Voxer or there's like something urgent I got to take care of. But for the most part, I don't jump into emails or anything like that too intensively. At that point, I'm just trying to fill my head with knowledge because I do a lot of reading that then. And then the evening before bed, you know, I tend to read quite a bit as well.

Do you still read like a book a day? I remember you were doing that for a while.

No, I backed off on that. I found that I was going through books too quickly or feeling as though there were some really good books that I wanted to take more like a couple of weeks to read. And by trying to identify myself with reading a book a day, I was starting to, to sacrifice quality over quantity. So you Know, I just take as long as it takes me to read a book. But you know, I typically read, read usually I'm in the range right now of about eight to ten books a month. Okay.

Still heavy.

So. Yeah, yeah. And so I, you know, I finished drinking my coffee or my tea and doing my red light therapy and then I, I go and I use the restroom and kind of like I do a clay mask once a week. Once a week I'll do a, a coffee enema, you know, but, but most days are not, you know, enema and mask day. That's like one day of the week where I'm just like, you know, doing a little bit of extra. But I go and you use the restroom. And then after I've used the restroom, I'll do about 20 to 30 minutes of like something deep and restorative, like a sauna session with a little bit of a cold shower or a cold soak afterwards. I've really been liking that super cold Morozco forge in the morning. So that's like my done for you. Cold tub that'll I, I keep it about 33 degrees right now. So I'll do like 25, sometimes 30 minutes in the, in the clear light, infrared sauna and then I'll just go straight into the cold for two to five minutes. That's probably my favorite thing to do in the morning.

At first I thought you were gonna say you did 25 minutes in the Morozco. I was like, you're insane man.

No, just like two to five minutes. Sometimes I'll walk in the sunshine in the summer. Sometimes I'll just hop in the truck and I can get to the river in about eight to 10 minutes and I'll just drop the paddle board into the river, paddle board for you know, 20, 25 minutes and finish up a little cold water swim. Right. But my mornings are always something kind of like restorative and you know, not, not like a supper fest kind of workout most mornings, but just like a deep restorative movement session. And then once I finished up that 20 to 30 minutes, typically if something kind of deep and restorative and easy by then it's usually right around 9:15 or 9:30. And so I whip myself up a smoothie and for me, 99% of the time I'm just making a smoothie and it's not the same every morning, but it's usually almost always some semblance of my so called anti aging smoothie which I give the recipe for in Boundless. It's Also if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Anti Aging Smoothie smoothie or I'll put a link to it in the show notes as well. It's just a bunch of different superfoods all mixed into a blender all over a ton of ice, you know, some bone broth, some colostrum, et cetera. I mix it super thick, like a side bowl thick, so I can eat it with a spoon. And you know, typically I've got my smoothie all made by about 9:30. And between 9:30 and 10, I'm replying to emails, I'm, you know, replying to voxers, going through text messages and I kind of do all of that. That while I'm just like slowly eating my, my smoothie with a spoon. And I know I've said in the past, like, be careful with like working while you're eating a meal. Like, don't. But I don't do a lot of super stressed out stuff.

Right.

I'm just like enjoying the hell out of my smoothie, eating it with the spoon, going through all the, all the emails and everything and just getting ready to start the actual work day. We also have a big call for Keon. Every day at 9:45, we have what's called our team huddle. We get together, we met, we met at meditate for three minutes. We all talk about our objectives for the day. Usually we have a fun question like, you know, whatever, what superhero would you want to be for today? Or you know, who do you want to give a shout out to today? Or what are you grateful for today? You know, just, just simple things like that.

You do that every day.

And so we, yeah, we do that every day on Team huddle at, at 9:45 Pacific. And then after the team huddle, for me, the next five hours are typically like deep. Keep deep, focused work. So typically I'll keep notifications off only from people who are like super important. People like, you know, my assistant or people who I know need to get a hold of me, CEO of Keon Angela, or. Yeah, or you Jay, or my wife. But, but really, you know, those five hours from, you know, typically 9:30, 10 until around 2, 2:30, you know, I guess it's four, four and a half hours. I'm writing, I'm doing podcasts or podcast interviews, I'm producing. Right. I'm not in reactive mode. I'm not on a bunch of phone calls or, or you know, replying to a bunch of emails. But that's like my deep, productive work Time that, that's the lion's share of the productivity for me during the day is like 10 to 2 or 2, 30ish. Okay. So I just, I work my ass off, I take some breaks. Okay. You know, some little. Yeah, yeah, you know, like two five minute breaks. All. Sometimes I will, you know, because I, my office has a door that opens up to the outdoors. So sometimes I'll, you know, after 30 minutes of work, I'll, I'll go outdoors, do 30 push ups, stretch my quads, then go back inside and keep working. Right. And for the most part I'm working on my standing workstation. So I'm on my feet. You know, sometimes I'll go whatever, jump up and down in the mini trampoline for five minutes, you know, but usually about every half hour or so I'm taking, taking a short little break and then I eat lunch. And lunch is typically again, like I'm a creature of habit. I find a bunch of wonderful, you know, vegetables from the garden or from the refrigerator, cucumber and tomato or sauerkraut, kimchi, you know, sprouts, greens, anything like that. Like just a bunch of wonderful nourishing plants. And typically put a bunch of omega 3 fatty acids on like a bunch of extra virgin olive oil and a can of sardines, little handful of nuts. And I just have an amazing salad for lunch.

But not your big ass salad, just a modified big ass salad.

Yeah, yeah. I used to do a lot of like raw greens. Right now it's more like cucumbers, tomato, sometimes a little pumpkin mash. But you know, I don't do a lot of like the, the super high dose greens as much as some of the, more like I guess you'd call them like fruit vegetables like cucumbers, tomatoes and stuff. Like I find that agrees with my stomach more than a ton of kale and spinach. And I'm also a big fan. Now instead of the big mixed green kale, spinach approach, smaller amounts of things like sprouts and microgreens. And you know, I even read a book by Doug Evans called Sprouts and I'm able to make a lot of that myself now, which is really nice. And I also make a lot of my own yogurt, yogurt. And typically after lunch I'll have a little dollop of yogurt with a piece of dark chocolate in there. You know, that's kind of like my dessert after lunch. And then I take my nap. I do that quick 20 minute power nap during lunch. I am Pretty productive. Kind of like when I have my smoothie during lunch, I'm either like watching little videos people have sent me that I need to go through or I'm going through a few emails. I try to choose stressful activities, but I, I am pretty productive both during my breakfast and during my lunch. I don't really stop working, I just do the less stressful work during those times, sometimes read some blog posts, catch up on some more research, etc. And then my kids are at home all day long as well because they're homeschooled slash unschooled People are like, well, when do you see your kids? Well, everything I've just described, you know, whether I'm taking pomodoro breaks or stretching in the morning or making the coffee and tea or whatever. Like my kids are around and you know, I'm hugging them, asking about their day, you know, hanging out with them, you know, I'm doing my little stretch breaks, going in, checking in on them, you know, telling them a joke like we're just kind of, we're together, we're apart, but we're together all day long. And then, then I wake up from my nap and I'll. After I wake up from my nap, I'll do something that kind of gets my body. Sometimes I'll go jump in the cold pool. Sometimes I'll like jump up and down on the trampoline for five minutes. Sometimes I'll do a second biocharger session, you know, and they have like some really good energetic, amp you up type of sessions. But usually I'll do something that kind of gets my body back in work mode. And then from like 3 until 5 or so, I'll do more emails. A lot of times if I have phone calls to make, I'll do phone calls, but I'll typically take those while walking outdoors. I, my afternoons are more chunked into reactive work time, right. Reacting and replying to emails, jumping on phone calls, you know, things like that, if that makes sense. Yeah. And then I'm usually wrapped up with most of that by around like 5 or 5:30. And at 5 or 5:30 that's, that's when I'll either do a hard workout, right? Kettlebell training, high intensity interval training, the vasper machine, you know, a little like there's, I have got this, this heavy bag called fight camp out in my garage. Also do some, some glove work work just, just anything that's kind of hard, right? Like, you know, that's when your body temperature peaks and your grip strength peaks and your testosterone peaks. You know all the stuff that dictate a hard workout being pretty good for you. That happens like late afternoon, early evening. Plus it leaves me really insulin sensitive because we like to have these big wonderful, glorious family dinners together. I just like to go in, be able to just like eat what I want because I've just done a really hard workout, right? So, so yeah, typically those workouts are 40 to 60 minutes in duration. So I'm usually done with my workout around you know, 6:15, 6:30 somewhere around there. And sometimes I skip it and just go play tennis as a family or we go on a hike as a family. You know, if I just feel like I need some family time, I'll skip the hard workout and just go do something with the family. And sometimes if I'm really efficient, I'll do both, right. Like I'll go do a 20 minute Vasper session, then grab my kids and wife, we'll go hit the tennis balls for a half hour hour, right. And so you know, sometimes I'll try or, or I'll go do a, like a, a kettlebell high intensity interval training workout, then grab my boys and we go do breath work in the sauna, right. So sometimes I'll mash it up but usually I devote from 5:30 to 6:30 ish for something more physical like whether with the family or on my own. And and then at that point, you know, we've been ha, I've been trying to we, we for a long time. We were having dinner around like 8830 and we started to shift that closer to 7730 because I found that I actually feel better without those late night feedings. And so before I used to do all my guitar practice and my devotions and my scripture reading and my meditation, all that jazz, I kind of wanted to get all that out of the way before dinner and now I'm doing any of that stuff after dinner. So we have dinner around 77 30. And like that's, that's my real family time. Like we're talking hour, hour and a half, long dinners, card games, gratitude journals, catching up, telling jokes, listening to music. But we literally just like sit around the table for a really long time, just like hanging out as a family. Cool. And you know, and dinner widely varies, right? Sometimes it's roast chicken, sometimes it's, it's steak. You like most of the time. Like I'll make the meat dish because I really specialize in meat. And my wife will make a side and my kids will help out. You Know making a little dessert and, or make it some risotto or doing this side salad. But we all pitch in, we all do dinner together, then we all eat dinner together and play card games and play board games, Scrabble, quiddler hearts, canasta, you name it. Then like I mentioned, after dinner that's when I'll do a lot of the stuff that I used to do before dinner. So after dinner I'll practice guitar or play my kids kids some guitar songs. Sometimes we'll sing songs together as a family. I've been popping on sometimes and doing like Instagram live concerts on my Instagram channel. A lot of times I will go and after I play guitar and everything because my kids go to bed a little while before I do. So let's say it's like 8:30 or 9 and I finished playing my guitar, then I'll actually go down to the basement and I'll do a meditation session. I'll do like eco meditation or some deep breathing. I'll usually pair that with scripture reading or devotions or prayer. Like that's kind of like my spiritual time. That's in addition to doing that self examination and that answering of the purpose statement that I do when I'm laying in bed. But once I've done all that stuff then I make my way up to the bedroom. I recently did a blog post on the sleep stack I've been experimenting with which is just like five or six different nutrients from this company, Thorne. And it's like L Theanine and Gaba. And I've found that to be, to be pretty useful. So I'll just do that sleep stack, little CBD, pop that about 20 minutes before bed, grab a book, go upstairs, typically 9:39,45. By then I'm in bed, I'm reading and I'll read for like 20, 30 minutes until that sleep stack starts to kind of kick in. And then you know, I just start to go into my deep breathing, flip my Apollo into sleep mode, put those sleep phones on with the pink noise and go to sleep. And you know, depending on the night and what my wife and I have planned together, you know, on nights where we're going to make love or we want to connect a little or we want to talk a little bit more. Usually I'll just skip the meditation session, you know, and just, you know, free up 20, 30 minutes to just hang with my wife wife and, and do that instead. And then my wife went on amateur. I'm kidding. Yeah. And you know, my wife, you know well, if we're going to make love, I mean, sometimes we are up till 10:30, 11 some nights and you know, is what. Is what it is. But, you know, I think that's well worth it, obviously.

Renegade.

And, and then, you know, my wife and I pray together. We, we pray for all the people we've been wanting to pray for and we talk about each other's day and you know, usually we, we, you know, we fall asleep snuggling and you know, lull myself to sleep a little deep breathing. And I'll tell you, when that sleep sack hits my system, I'm like, out like a light. And then, yeah, sleep till about 5am or so and rinse, wash and repeat. And that's, that's the basics of how my, how my days are looking these days. Nice.

So you don't spend like three hours on Instagram, two hours on Facebook, five hours on Twitter.

Nothing like that. That. No, no. If anything, like when I'm doing my little stretch breaks during the day, sometimes I'll pop in and, you know, look at those. But yeah, yeah. So, so, yeah. Oh, speaking of the kids, I have to admit that I just realized it's. It's five minutes till noon and every week I have a big meeting with my kids and my wife and all the little teachers and tutors who help us out with our homeschooling and our unschooling. So that's coming up actually super, super quick. That's coming up in like five minutes. So even though there are a few little rabbit holes I could probably get into and I probably forgot some stuff, what I would like is for if you listen and you're curious about something I may have forgotten to mention, I don't like. I didn't say what supplements I take in the morning, which is basically, you know, creatine and fish oil and some kion aminos, stuff like that. But maybe a few little things I missed. But just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 515Live and ask me about anything I missed that you're still curious about and I'll, I'll pop in there because, you know, realistically, I'm, I'm out of time and we're out of town. And so that being said, we did not do a giveaway last time or the time. So do you want to do a giveaway?

Yeah, let's do, let's do one.

Let's, let's, let's do a giveaway. So this is the time when, if you've gone and left us a a nice little review on the site. We will we'll give you a cool Ben Greenfield fit fitness gear pack with a, with a beanie and a water bottle and a T shirt. And so if you hear your review read, you just email gearngreenfieldfitness.com that's gearngreenfieldfitness.Com Let us know your T shirt size and we'll get a handy dandy gear pack out to you. So that all being said, Jay, you want to take it away and read this week's review?

Let's do it. This one is from beattheheat and beat is B E E T Little little little vegetarian vegan action going here. But it's my go to podcast is what they labeled this one and they said after hearing Ben through other podcasts, I dived deep into his content. I'm always finding what I'm looking for exposed to even more around the topic, then leaving with obtainable tips to put into action. Honestly, Ben is someone I find living the ideal life. And we know his life now. He told us all about it. Ancestral living in harmony with nature, with access to all the tools and powerful foods and a loving, strong family. It is something I aspire to cultivate and provide as well in my life. Good review. Man or lady?

Yeah, yeah, they give me warm, warm fuzzies inside. Should I feel like I gotta feel like I gotta go rub back my calf now to keep myself from pissing my pants from all these warm fuzzies.

You've learned something today.

I don't know the trick for that. Yeah, yeah. Well, anyways, gosh, that went by fast. But I hope that's been helpful for you guys. And we'll link to everything, the studies and the coffee alternatives and the stuff I mentioned for my daily routine. And this is also where you can go leave your questions and your comments and your feedback@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 515 that's BenGreenfulFitness.com 515 and until next time, Jay, Ben, have an amazing day.

Yeah, you too, man.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show 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 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.