Q&A 420: Which Stimulants Are Safe To Take At Night, Maximizing Benefits Of Cold Thermogenesis, When To Do Blood Flow Restriction Training & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, which stimulants are safe to take at night, maximizing the benefits of cold thermogenesis, when to do blood flow restriction training and much more. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, Jay, I, I had to floss my teeth this morning before our podcast.

Oh, man. What did you have to floss your teeth for? That's a, that's an uppity scale thing around these, these waters.

Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, you guys got pretty big gaps in your teeth down there. That's right in the Southeast. So anyways, I have to be careful. By the way of insulting rednecks in the Southeast. I might, I might get people. We have drunk gun racks showing up at my door. You have to drive a long ways up to Washington state and then you have to find me. I had jerky for breakfast and I, I've got this new recipe. I've been making liver jerky. Liver jerky? Have you heard of this?

No, I mean, I have not heard of it actually. No, I've heard of it. Not tried it.

How could you not have heard of it? It's, it's famous by now. It's my, it's my famous liver jerky. No, I, I actually have been making both heart and liver jerky. It's kind of a cool way to get all the, all the nutrient benefits of organ meats. The heart has a lot of CoQ10 and the liver has all your fat soluble vitamins and some choline and, you know, other good nutrients in it. So what I did, and I do this with a lot of my organ meats. I soak it in kefir. You know, a lot of, a lot of cookbooks tell you to soak your organ meats in buttermilk or lemon juice or even salt water. But kefir turns out to be really, really great for breaking down and like drawing out a lot of kind of the gamey flavor. It's got these really good enzymes in it. And so I make kefir every week anyways because sometimes I'll use as a base for smoothies, often I'll use bone broth, but sometimes kefir. So I've got a batch in the fridge. It's super simple. It's kind of like making sauerkraut or pickles or any other ferment. And these kefir grain just kind of grow almost like a sourdough starter. So you just feed them every week with milk, and you get a new batch every week. And I found that with my kefir, if I put a little colostrum in there and a little bit of prebiotic fiber, it gets super creamy because the prebiotic fibers kind of feed the bacteria and the colostrum seems to lend some creaminess to it as well. So anyways though, I soaked the liver in that for about a day, like a good 24 hour soak. And then I found this really, really kind of cool trick that makes it just taste absolutely amazing before I put it in the food dehydrator. Right. So you cut it into your jerky sized pieces after you've soaked it in the kefir. Doing it afterwards, it just cuts easier. And then what I do after I rinse the kefir off and it's all chopped up in, my preferred jerky size is I sprinkle a bunch of salt on it before I put it on the dehydrator. But this last batch, what I did was I put all the little liver pieces into just like a stainless steel bowl and I coated it with. And I wish they were a sponsor for today's show because they're gonna get a shout out. I coated it with the organifi red juice. You know, it's got like pomegranate and cranberry and beets. And my thought process was that this could kind of like almost give like a caramelized type of texture to the jerky. And you know, it's a little bit sweet and it's got an interesting flavor profile. So I did that. So, you know, it's all coated with this red juice and in sea salt. It's like a red juice powder. I should clarify. And then I just did the, you know, the like a 12 hour, you know, jerky dehydration. I think the settings like 155 degrees. Yeah. Anyways. Oh my gosh, this jerky is so good. Like, like with this red juice powder and sea salt on it with that pre kefir soak, you know, I just finished writing a cookbook that's off of publisher right now. And I wrote to the publisher, I'm like, can I add this to the cookbook? This is amazing. And they're like, nope, sorry, already filled up. But anyways, so yeah, there's a little jerky recipe for those of you, those of you Martha Stewart who are out there listening in and want to dawn the apron and chop up some liver, baby.

Yeah. So a couple of things you say. So Ben Greenfield says that when you. When you perform kind of this routine of dehydrating this liver and heart, that it doesn't have a gamey taste. But to somebody who has not either partaken in liver or heart, do you think that that individual would say the same thing, or do you think they would still find it pretty gamey?

I think they find it pretty good because I had a dinner party at my house the other night, and there were three people who had never had organ meats, and I. I gave them all a piece of this jerky, and they loved it. They said it tastes, like, nice. So, yeah.

Does it actually, like, taste?

I mean, they were. They were drunk, but they thought it tasted pretty good.

The only caveat.

Yeah. Cool. So nice. Yeah. All right, well, let's jump into today's news flashes.

Let's do it.

I want to start with something kind of sad. Ireland's Supreme Court has ruled that bread sold by the fast food chain Subway contains so much sugar that it cannot legally be defined as bread.

Bummer. Now we can't go there anymore.

Yeah, I mean, we, We. We've all not. I was explaining to somebody I was doing a consultation with, and they couldn't lose weight, and they were having whole grain bread with breakfast. Whole grain bread with lunch. Like a sandwich with lunch and some toast with breakfast. And I was explaining to them that bread can spike your blood sugar higher than a Snickers bar, because a Snickers bar has some peanuts and some fats, a little bit of protein in it. But bread is notoriously high in terms of the glycemic index. It turns out that the sugar content of Subway sandwiches bread is about 10% of the way to the flour. And to be classified as bread, it's not supposed to be any higher than 2%. So that was one blow against Subway that makes. And I'm assuming it's the same in the US as it is in Ireland. I didn't do a ton of research, but at least kind of. Kind of raised my eyebrow because I'm always kind of, you know, paying attention to some of the stuff about food. But then a Canadian study, you know, which is closer to us than Ireland, so it must be legit. They. They found that the Subway chicken is only about 50% actual meat. You know, I'm not trying to take down Subway or anything, but I just want people to know, you know, because a lot of people still think Subway is healthy. So it's about 50% meat. And the rest is all in terms of the DNA that they Tested in the meat, they used a forensics DNA laboratory. All of the rest of it was just soy.

Wow.

Which is a little bit concerning because Subway actually claims that it's chicken strips and oven roasted chicken contains 1% or less of soy protein. But they actually did a forensics analysis process, which. And I think they use the same type of lab that can figure out who murdered somebody. So it must be, again, legit accurate. So, yeah, I mean, the food babe, remember the food babe when she's the health blogger who criticized Subway's bread for containing it was like azoto dicarbonamide, which is the ingredient found in yoga mats. And she was like, oh, you're eating yoga mats? I don't. Technically, when you consume that, the body breaks it down into water. So it's actually not as big of a deal as it sounds like. But this is a big deal. I mean, you're chomping down on fake meat and bread that's not even actually bread because it's so high in sugar when you're eating at Subway. So just, you know, proceed with caution, my friends.

Jeez.

Yeah.

So, yeah, there are a couple things here. Number one, I would actuallyI mean, I don't know this. I mean, you say that there's probably, you know, it's probably the same thing here in the US but my guess is that it could be even higher in sugar content here in the US Just because everybody here in the US has a fricking sweet tooth. So they might be like, oh, damn, we need more sugar in this bread. And the other thing is, man, I used to eat Subway when I was in college, like probably two or three times a week because, you know, I thought it was healthy. And the chicken was the thing that I always got. Oh, yeah. But it was always grotesque. Like, I never liked eating it. And so, I mean, I haven't been to Subway in probably a decade. And so I don't plan on going back.

Yeah, well, I switched to Subway from. I used to go to McDonald's for four years in college for lunch every day. And I did the Big Mac. I got the extra, like the secret sauce, giant Dr. Pepper and then the super sized fries. That was my lunch, like every day in college. And then I started taking all these nutrition classes and kind of learned a little bit about vegetable oils and, you know, sugars. And I switched to Subway because I thought it was healthy. And I ate Subway for about three years. And I actually really liked a lot of, like, their. What they had, like the meatball. The meatball Sandwich, I think that was one of my favorites. I still do walk by a Subway, kind of like when I walk by a Cinnabon at the airport. And I still do salivate a little bit, I gotta admit. Like, I still think it smells pretty bomb.

But then you remember you'll get man tits if you eat that chicken.

Yeah, yeah. So anyways though, shifting, shifting focus from Mantits and Subway, this was kind of cool because I love cold water swimming. I was have since I was a triathlete. Like, that's, that was one of my favorite parts, was just like having a nice, chilly, invigorating cold water swim. Even though my, my skinny ass often needed, you know, like a, like a wetsuit, even, even a thin wetsuit to be able to survive for that long. But at Cambridge University, they studied a bunch of cold water swimmers. And it was very interesting because doctors have known for a long time that cooling people down can protect their brains. Dr. Jack Cruz, for example, who's a neurosurgeon, who's kind of well known in the alternative health community and the biohacking community, is a guy who does some of his brain operations and uses cold thermogenesis, like ice packing around the head, and even has his patients do a lot of like, cold therapy leading into and after a surgery. And the reason for this is that what happens is you get the production of these cold shock proteins and the cold shock proteins, those can actually be relatively protective to the brain and have even been known to be associated with staving off things like Alzheimer's and dementia. And at Cambridge, one of the things that they did was they cooled mice, and then they also cooled mice with Alzheimer's disease and prion disease, which is the neurodegenerative disease of the brain, to the point where the mice became a little bit hypothermic, which actually people get hypothermic when they do this kind of intense cold water swimming, like the folks who meet every week on the bay in San Francisco and do the cold water swims out there, which I tried, I lasted like 10 minutes again, as long as my skinny ass could go. But then what they found was when they rewarmed the mice, the ordinary mice could regenerate their synapses, and the Alzheimer's and the prion mice could not. And they found levels of a cold shock protein called RBM3 really went up very quickly in the ordinary mice, but not in the mice with Alzheimer's and neurodegenerative disease. And what they showed was if they artificially boosted the RBM3 levels in the mice. With the Alzheimer's and the prion disease, they were actually able to stave off dementia and Alzheimer's. They were doing this because they're trying to develop a drug that prompts the production of RBM3 because we know only like 1% of the population who has dementia or Alzheimer's or is concerned about brain degeneration is actually going to get in an ice bath or go do cold water swims because they do kind of suck to a certain extent for a lot of people. Even though I think you get this rush of endorphins and it gets kind of like a sauna, you almost get addicted to a little bit of cold here and there after a while. Oh yeah. But they also tested a whole bunch of cold water swimmers during the winter. I think that was like the past four winters. They tested RBM3 levels in these winter and cold water swimmers at a club in London and they found they all had these really high levels of RBM3. And it turns out that essentially what this comes down to is that cold water swimming and the production of these cold shock proteins, which arguably you could also get through things like cold showers and, and cold water immersion, they stave off the progression of dementia and Alzheimer's and may even decrease your risk of actually developing that, even if you have a genetic propensity towards it due to the production of these cold shock proteins. It's also interesting because in the Finnish study they found the same thing with saunas. So I mean, once again it turns out that probably one of the best things you can do for your body is sauna a few times a week and cold water swim a few times a week or just cold water soak or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, totally agree. I mean, I had to grow to love this. I mean it's something that when I first started it, I hated it. And still for like the first like 15 seconds, I might hate it even still after a few years of doing this. But like from a neuro, like cognitive neuroprotective type, type factor, like this is, this is like my number one thing. It is like such an easy free hack for, for my overall kind of neurocognitive effects.

And so I love it. Yeah. And we know, related to the mantits that you brought up earlier, I don't know, is it offensive for us to say mantits?

I don't know, we'll say, we'll see in the comments.

Cancel culture. You never know. I'm sure, we're offending somebody anyways though, men.

We have tits.

I mean. Yeah, we do. So we know that in the case of something like cold thermogenesis, you get an increase of the conversion of metabolically inactive white adipose tissue into metabolically active brown fat. It's based off this thing called mitochondrial uncoupling protein. And this uncoupling protein generates heat, it burns calories, generate heat. And brown fat is very high in this uncoupling protein. Well, another study that recently came out showed that ketosis or ketones can significantly increase that conversion. And so even though this has never been actually studied, if we know that the consumption of ketones or the presence of ketosis, whether it's nutritional ketosis or in this case, they were actually they were consuming in rodent models, the ketone beta hydroxybutyrate, which is what you get in a lot of supplements that ketone salts or ketone esters, significant increase in the activation of this uncoupling protein and the conversion of white, white to brown fat. And so what this means theoretically is if you wanted to kind of enhance the effects of something like morning cold thermogenesis session, not only should you do it fasted, but you could also take a dose of these ketone esters or ketone salts prior and increase the effects of the white to brown adipose tissue conversion or the activation of this uncoupling protein. And that's really interesting because we did a podcast, do you remember that podcast a while back where I reported on a study that looked at all the different food ingredients that could enhance white to brown adipose tissue conversion?

Yeah, yeah, I definitely remember that one.

Yeah, they were capsaicin was one like red pepper. Resveratrol was another curcumin was one green tea, omega 3 fatty acids from fish and then like a topical menthol, you know, like those topical cooling ointments. And all of those can enhance the effects of cold thermogenesis. And so maybe this is an idea for my supplements company, Kion, or any other business minded person out there, but why not develop a pre cold thermogenesis product that's like red pepper resveratrol, curcumin, green tea and omega 3 fatty acids along with some ketone esters. And you could consume that prior to doing like a cold bath or a cold soak or a cold shower or a cold water swim and enhance the fat loss effects even more. That's my bright idea.

Dude, I'm game. I will, I will definitely partake well, you get the fat loss effects and also too, the cognitive boosting effects from both of them. So I mean, it' sit's a win win all the way around. So count me in.

Yeah, you know, you know, it wouldn't be that hard, honestly. You know, everybody's got a little bit of red pepper in theirin their pantry. Resveratrol is an easy supplement to get. Curcumin is an easy supplement to get. Green tea is simple to find. Any menthol topical lotion is simple to find. We are right now in the process of launching an amazing fish oil at Kion. And so once you put all that together, it'd be pretty easy to just like, you know, stock your pantry and have your little section, you know, even if nobody, you know, was able to formulate a supplement that was kind of like done for you and just, you know, have, have your, have your little stack that you take pre cold. So anyways, if anybody out there experiments with it, go to the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 420 and let us know if you try that out. If you, if you notice anything, if you do things like track your body composition, you know, on a regular basis or something like that, I'd be, I'd be curious. But it's, it's kind of a cool idea. So there you have it.

That is a cool idea. You know what else is cool is that you just mentioned that this is q and a 420. So all of our stoners are ready to go.

So I think, I think, you know, we used to, on all of our announcements, we had all these places I was going to speak and people would come see me speak and you know, and all these conferences and expos, none are happening. So our special announcement section is pretty simple to get through, really folks, because the world, the world has slowed down anyways. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 420 will also put all those discount codes, all the news flashes, and we'll also include robust show notes for everything you're about to learn about in today's listener Q and A. I've listened to a lot of your talks on using blood flow restriction bands, which I purchased when gyms were closed to use for kettlebell training and body we. Now that gyms are reopened, I'm back to training heavier weight with barbells, dumbbells and cable machines. Do you see any benefit to incorporating BFR with hard sets of strength training inside of a gym or not so much? Oh, BFR training It is kind of uncomfortable. It, I mean like the, the burn with BFR training is distractingly uncomfortable. But I mean I, I just got back from Sedona where I had like a four day getaway with, with Angelo, the CEO of Keon. You know, we were just planning out some stuff like our amazing fish oil and I just traveled my BFR bands and I also like to bring some of those X3 bar resistance training bands. And I do just like body weight resistance training. And that's generally kind of like the convenience factor of using the tourniquets or occlusion devices to cut off a little bit of blood flow to muscles and allow you to essentially trick your muscles into thinking they're lifting a heavy weight, even though you're just training with say body weight only or with some light resistance bands. And you know, we could go deep into the science. But in the show notes I'll include links to some pretty significant like Katsu and BFR training episodes that we've done. But I mean in, in, in a nutshell, you get an activation of these things called myogenic stem cells which are responsible for the repair of damaged muscles and the growth of growth of muscle fibers. Those increase just as much as they do with heavy resistance training. When you do bfr you get a significant increase in growth hormone and an insulin like growth factor to increase collagen synthesis post exercise and a downregulation in myostatin which inhibits cell growth. And so when you downregulate that you get more muscle hypertrophy, you get hypoxia because you're cutting off a lot of the blood delivery to the muscles. That hypoxic environment causes a surge in lactic acid which once you take the bands off, you get this big release of what's called hypoxia inducible factor which can grow new blood vessels. It increases like BDN and vascular endothelial growth factor for the brain. So you get like this rush in mental energy. And then you also get a little bit of cell swelling like this anabolic reaction of cell swelling not only due to the activation of those myogenic stem cells, but also the blood pooling from the blood rushing back in. And so if you are one of those people who just likes to have say fellows, you like to have your arms popping for a date night or something, this is the perfect workout to do on that day that you're going to wear your favorite T shirt or go to the beach. And so there's a lot of BFR training. But the question is specifically to hear, is it worth doing in conjunction with just regular weight training? Could you somehow get an advantage with doing it with barbells or dumbbells or cable machines? And it turns out they actually have researched this and what they've found when they've combined these blood flow restriction bands with resistance exercise, which is something I used to do back in the day when I was bodybuilding, I would tourniquet my arms and legs usually for about one workout every couple weeks or so, and just do my normal with the arms tourniquetted. And I would always get this amazing response. For a few days it was like I was just more swole. I didn't know about any of this.

And you were lifting as heavy as.

You would without the bands? Yeah, I was just doing my normal weight training routine, but with the bands on. Now, what they've found when they've actually looked into this is that if you do resistance exercise with the bands on versus without the bands, you actually do see a greater release of growth hormone, a greater release of testosterone, more of the benefits that I've just described. And the tricky part though is everything is way more difficult to lift. So you're probably going to be able to do fewer reps, which is, that's one reason that people who do BFR training, they're often trained more frequently because you're actually damaging the muscles less, but getting a lot of the same results without the muscle damage. However, you can exercise a little bit more frequently because you're typically doing fewer reps and sometimes using less weight when you're doing this blood flow restriction training. But it turns out the studies that have compared, like doing your high intensity training or weight training with BFR versus without bfr. With the BFR you actually do see, even if you're not able to do as many repetitions or even use as much weight increases similar to the gains that you would get without the bfr.

That's interesting. I did not expect you to say that actually.

Yeah, yeah, there's definitely something to it. Now, a lot of people get concerned about thrombosis, like the formation of a blood clot due to the obstruction of blood flow. But you know that there's no research that low intensity BFR increases the type of coagulation that would cause that, that breakdown of or the increase in the production of clots. As a matter of fact, the research on it shows it may increase due to more what's called fibrinolytic activity, the breakdown of clots. So we. That's Perfectly safe lifting super heavy with a lot of occlusion, though there's no studies I could find that looked at risk of increased coagulation or blood clot formation in that scenario. So I can't say I've seen any research that indicates that you're going to increase your risk of a clot by lifting heavy with BFR training. I can tell you though, bodybuilders do it all the time and you don't see bodybuilders dropping dead left and right of blood clots while they're doing BFR training. I haven't even seen a single case study or anecdotal study where that's occurred or anecdotal incident where that's occurred. So I'm not that concerned about it. I mean, proceed at your own risk and make sure that you're not putting them on too tight. And ideally, if you can afford it, you get one of these KATSU training devices that lets you very precisely dial in the millimeters of mercury that you would use to kind of stay in your safe range, which would definitely, for a heavy weight training session, probably not be, be anything above like 300 millimeters mercury pressure. But ultimately, yeah, you can see greater benefits by doing your normal weight training routine with BFR bands on or KATSU bands, even if you're not able to do as many reps, which you probably won't be able to do. So.

Yeah. Would you recommend bend, let's say, for this listener, if they're, let's say they're lifting four times a week. Like, do you think they should limit it to like once or twice a week? Or you think they, they'd be fine with doing it four times week a times a week?

You could just be. It'd suck. It's painful. Yeah, it's just a lot of burn. I mean, if you're a glutton for punishment. Yeah, I mean, the way I use BFR training is, honestly, you know, I, I only use it with body weight or with resistance bands when I'm traveling, you know, just. Yeah, and. And part of it too is, you know, you do get some restriction of movement that may impair your mobility, your biomechanics, your form, especially if you're doing things like, you know, squats, cleans, some more complex flex, barbell exercises, multi joint exercises. You just might not be able to maintain quite as good a form when you got lactic acid, you know, pouring out your eyeballs. So that's something to think about too. Yeah, it's kind of, kind of the same concept as, like, wearing those elevation training masks when you're training. Yeah. You're gonna. You're gonna strengthen your inspiratory and expiratory muscles and increase your CO2 tolerance and everything like that. But you. You can kind of impair biomechanics just because you're so gassed, so kind of that same concept, so. Right.

Anyways, though, yeah, it makes sense. I mean, you do. You do get a crazy good pump from it, but, yeah, I'm like, you only use it if I'm doing body weights or, like, sandbags or some functional fitness. I've never used them actually in the gym while, you know, doing bench or doing squats or deadlifts, but might give it a try this week.

All right, so there you have it. Hey, Ben. I recently had surgery for neck cancer and need to do six weeks of radiation. I was just wondering your thoughts on the top three things to do do to reduce side effects. Love the show. Oh, man. Well, my heart goes out to Jim, and Jim will keep you in our thoughts and prayers there with the surgery for neck cancer and the radiation, because I know that just kind of sucks when you're undergoing radiation therapy, and that is a form of ionizing radiation. Kind of depends on the type of radiation that's used. External beam radiation is generally delivered outside the body, but then there's like, internal beam radiation, where you're actually placing radioactive materials inside the body, which arguably would be a scenario in which the consumption of certain nutrients and compounds, et cetera, to limit some of the damage, could be a good idea. And there is, of course, evidence that external beam radiation therapy, based on the same concepts as the type of damaging ionizing radiation you might get from WI fi, routers, cell phones, et cetera, can do a little bit of damage to cell membranes or increase calcium influx into a cell, or even do a little bit of DNA damage. And so, arguably, even though I'm not a doctor and I don't want this to be misconstrued as medical advice, a lot of the same things that have been studied for any form of ionizing radiation, including cell phones, WI fi, et cetera, could extend to be applied to staving off some of the potential damage from therapeutic radiology. So. And technically, when you're placing radioactive material inside your body, that's a type of radiation therapy that's very commonly used to treat cancer. It's called BRCA therapy. When it's internal radiation, it's a little bit more problematic than the external radiation because, again, it's going straight into your actual body tissue, radioactive materials. But if I were actually undergoing radiation therapy, whether it was internal or external, there are certain things that I would do. And this, this actually has been, it's been studied. There's a very interesting, a very interesting paper that was published back in 2007 in which they investigated the radio protective potential of plants and herbs against the effects of ionizing radiation. You know, this is something anybody who does get exposed to EMFs, Wi Fi radiation therapy, you know, travels a lot through airports, et cetera, on a regular basis, should actually sit up and take, take notice of because, you know, the, the general concept here is that some plants and herbs do have radio protective potential. And that's, that's very, very similar to the idea of the xenohormetic effect, meaning that the, the polyphenols can scavenge radiation induced free radicals due to an elevation of cellular antioxidants by these plants and herbs. You know, they, they have, have mildly toxic compounds in them that of course have been roughly vilified by the carnivore community and that we actually covered in our last podcast. If you guys want to take a listen to podcasts 419 we kind of talk about which of these are problematic and which are not. Like lectins, gluten, phytic acids, et cetera, and even polyphenols. But These polyphenols upregulate MRNA's of antioxidant enzymes like catalase and glutathione transferase and glutathione peroxidase and superoxide dismutase. And so they can counteract a lot of the oxidative stress induced by ionizing radiation. I would argue the benefits of that occurring would exceed any cons in terms of like mild, you know, like, like a little bit of gut damage, for example, you know, like Stephen Gundry talks about in his book Plant Paradox. Or you know, potentially a little bit of the toxicity from some of the built in protective mechanisms of these plants. Plants. I think that the response in terms of cellular antioxidant production, especially in the face of ionizing radiation, dictates that I think the pros outweigh the cons of the consumption of the type of plant and herbs that have been shown to have some radio protective potential, specifically the ones that they looked at in this study that were most notable, even though they used a lot of like the, the, the botanical name. So it's tough to, to know exactly what they are. You know, when you look at like Mentha piperita. Right. We know that that's, that's going to be a form of black pepper, but it's not like you're going to type in Mentha piperita on Amazon and, and find what you want. But if you do some research on some of these, you know, it's not gonna be that hard. I'll link to the paper in the show notes. But a few of the biggies, a few of the most, most significant were Panax ginseng, which is commonly known. Pretty easy to get your hands on. Ginkgo biloba was another black pepper was one curcumin extract, like turmeric, curcumin, things like that. And then ginger. Ginger was a biggie as well. And I'll link to the full paper because there's actually over a dozen different nutrients that they looked at in the study. And there was actually another paper in 2011, and that happened after the Fukushima nuclear power power plant disaster in Japan in which they looked at resveratrol. And they found that resveratrol grape skin extract could actually protect against radiation injuries as well. So you could throw that in there along with your ginger, your ginseng, your ginkgo biloba, black pepper, turmeric, and some of the compounds that are in this study that I'll link to in the show notes. Also in 2013, in the Journal the Advanced Practices of Oncology, they looked at some complementary strategies for the management of radiation therapy. And in that study, they found aloe vera, glutamine, deglycerinated licorice extract. And then they actually identified quite a few in there. Probiotics, psyllium manuka honey, a calendula, melatonin, and even acupuncture, all to have some effect at limiting the damages of ionizing radiation. Now, I realize that I'm listing off a lot of things, but for those of you who want to dig into the papers, who are concerned about the effects of ionizing radiation and kind of want to put together your own stack, so to speak, what I'll do is if you go to the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 420 I'll link to a lot of these papers. Now, I would say, and this is my own strategy, which I developed after interviewing Dr. Joe Mercola and digging into his book EMF'd. We talked about the three basic mechanisms of action via which ionizing radiation can damage cells and mitochondria. It was basically direct DNA damage via radiation. This steep influx of calcium into the cell and then the upregulation of oxidative stress due to the activation of your body's inflammatory pathway called the NRF2 pathway. And what I did after interviewing him was every time I travel now, I use a higher amount of NAD along with sirtuin. In my case, I'll just use. Well, I. I think that something called. It's like an alternative to resveratrol. It is. Why am I blanking on the name of it? It's the one that starts with a P, and it's up in my pantry. But it's not pantry. It's, you know, I'm talking about tarot still being tarot still bean. So I, I take that because I think it's. It's better than resveratrol as far as the sirtuin goes, is. But I pair that with nad and then. And that's for the DNA damage. And then I use magnesium to offset the calcium influx. And then I just use ketones to downregulate the NRF2 pathway because, you know, I don't have the time to, like, you know, put 20 things into my suitcase when I travel, but I just use the NAD with the pteristobine, the magnesium, and the ketones. And that's what I use when I'm, like, going through airports, flying. I actually, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 5G package, I just made an Amazon list of those three things that I use to kind of protect myself from some of the damaging effects of ionizing radiation. But that's my approach. Although a lot of other things, like I mentioned from those other studies have been looked into. But, you know, I'm just kind of a creature who likes simplicity. So I use NAD and sirtuins, magnesium and ketones. A couple of these studies looked into a lot that goes beyond that, like the ginger, the ginkgo bonus biloba, the ginseng, the, you know, the curcumin, etc. But I think that armed with the results of those couple of studies and then that, that list I made@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 5G package, you should be able to get your hands on a decent amount of things for natural production. I don't think you got to use all of them, but I would just choose maybe three to five different ones thrown to the mix. And, yeah, that's. That's where I'd start. Hi, Ben, this is Caitlin from Canada, and I have a question. I have recently started chewing the Lucy nicotine gum. I'm not a smoker. I've never smoked before. I'm loving it and loving how it makes my brain feel. But I've noticed on my OURA ring that my readiness score has been dropping and it's been about a month and usually I get between 90 and 93 daily for my readiness. And it's now significantly dropped to like 75 to 82. I don't eat late. I eat by like 6pm, rarely have a drink, and am usually in bed by 9pm So I feel like I'm doing everything right. And I can't figure out what that change might be besides the nicotine. And I'm just wondering if nicotine could have any effects on overall recovery. Thank you. You chew that Lucy nicotine gum?

I do, I do. I don't do it as much as I used to, but I do.

Yeah. Yeah. Some. Some company is developing a new form that's flavored with like, it's flavored with, with monk fruit. They sent me a couple of their, their, their trial products. It's actually, it's pretty good. It's some, some keto company, I probably should say right now, but they're developing this nicotine gum that's got like, it's just like monk fruit and, and nicotine, and it's really good. It's like a 4 milligram dose of nicotine.

But does Lucy use. Do they. I thought they. Do they use stevia or do they use something.

They use all sorts of different stuff, but they use lower amounts of, of some of the artificial sweeteners and a lot of these other companies. And, you know, that's generally if I'm going to chew nicotine gum, usually I'll, I'll do that Lucy stuff. Or I also like John Laurence's Zen spray spray, which is like the Amazonian Hoppe. That's more of like a nasal spray that does have some nicotine in it as well. And I like it because unlike coffee, it has a pretty short half life. Nicotine does, meaning it's not gonna, it's not gonna stay in your system. You know, it's got a half life of a couple of hours. You know, it gets metabolized in the liver to conitine and. Or it's called cotinine. And then cotinine will stay in your system a little bit longer, but doesn't seem to disrupt sleep or activate the sympathetic nervous system quite as much as nicotine. And so because of that, I can chew a piece of nicotine gum before a dinner that I want to be a little bit more wakeful during. And maybe I'm tired at the end of the day and it doesn't wake me up quite as much as a cup of coffee or keep me awake quite as long as a cup of coffee might. But it is a stimulant. And they've actually looked into this. There's a few interesting studies that have looked into the effects of nicotine, specifically on activation of the sympathetic nervous system or specifically like reducing HRV. One study found that a single dose of 4mg produces a significant reduction in your heart rate variability due to its increase in what would be called the low frequency score. And so because of that, it could definitely affect your OURA ring readiness score. There was another one where they actually looked at rabbits and they found a similar thing like a nicotine induced catecholamine release that also decreased hrv. Now, interestingly, there was one study that found that nicotine actually did not lower hrv. And I don't know why, but in this case they combined it with black tea. I'm not quite sure why they combined nicotine and black tea. Maybe it's because a little bit bit of caffeine in the black tea, or maybe they're trying to see what some of the polyphenols would do. But in this case they use less nicotine. They use about 2 milligrams and they didn't find that it had as big of an impact on hrv. So there's definitely a dose response effect, you know, and you'd probably want to, if you're using it at night, especially go with as low a nicotine dose as you're able to use, you know, like closer to 2 milligrams, for example, or, you know, cut a 4 milligram piece in half or something, something like that. But yeah. So the OURA ring readiness score that Caitlin is referring to, what the OURA ring does, and that's generally the wearable that I prefer just because I don't like wearing something on my wrist. I wear like a cheap ass $15 Timex watch and then just my OURA ring. But it takes resting heart rate, it takes heart rate variability, right? The amount of time between your heartbeats, your body temperature and your respiratory rate rate. It takes those four variables and then it feeds that into an algorithm and kicks you out a readiness score. And I believe it also takes into account, in addition to the body temp, the heart rate, the HRV and the respiratory rate, I think it also takes into account your sleep balance and how much you've exercised, I'm pretty sure. Sleep. Yeah, it does, yeah. Okay, good. And so if you're consuming nicotine and noticing that it drops your readiness score, then theoretically, it's probably doing so Due to the slight increase in resting heart rate, probably the decrease in hrv. It does impact sleep parameters a little bit. It can disrupt deep sleep if you take it at night. And so it's one of those things where, I mean, the short answer is yes. I mean, it is a stimulant. Stimulant. It's less of a problematic stimulant at night compared to, say, like, caffeine, for example, or yerba mate or something like that. But it definitely is going to do, like. Basically, yeah. Nicotine decreases your heart rate variability and will decrease your readiness score due to not only the decrease in heart rate variability, but the increase in resting heart rate and the drop in sleep. And so you just have to ask yourself whether the surge in energy or the increased alertness that you might be looking, Looking for is worth thatthat trade off.

Yeah, I'd say, for Caitlin, just run a simple experiment. I mean, just try it with it, try it without it and see what happens to the readiness score. Consideration, body temperature, resting heart rate, you know, hrv, respiration rate, and sleep. And so, yeah, it's likely affecting some area. So kind of just open up the data and analyze it a little bit. And then from a heart rate variability standpoint, perspective, and this would kind of really qualify for everything we just mentioned, is that when you are taking any caffeine, but more specifically when you're taking in nicotine, this is a vasoconstrictor. This is also going to kick start the sympathetic nervous system. And so because of that, therefore, you're gonna see drops in hrv. The heart is gonna start regulating itself, because basically nicotine is going to be a signaler to the heart that, hey, you took this or this was ingested for a means. Like, you have reason to take this. And the reason for you to take this is to get up and get going, whether it's cognitive or it's physical performance, whatever it may be. And so you're just bound to see this. If I take nicotine, like, actually, for me, interestingly enough, Ben, if I have nicotine later in the afternoon, or I would say evening time, it's. I have a very similar response, actually, from a readiness perspective in my oura ring than when I drink alcohol. It almost looks exactly the same. I might have a little bit lower HRV with alcohol. But for the most part, it will drop my readiness. So for me, I kind of cut it off past one or two. But I just really am sensitive to nicotine.

Yeah, the vasoconstrictive effect is something too, that. I actually have had a couple of guys who start on nicotine. It might depend on your nitric oxide pathways too. Like if you have. Dr. Ben lynch, the author of the book Dirty Genes, would call a dirty nitric oxide pathway where you have trouble producing nitric oxide. Anyway, days. Or was it the last podcast where we took a deep dive into nitric oxide? I think it was.

Yeah, it was either the last one or the one before.

Yeah, it was podcast 418 or 419 if you check that. We geeked out on all the things that can decrease your ability to produce nitric oxide, like mouthwash, fluoridated toothpaste, you know, a host of factors. And, you know, if you already have impaired nitric oxide function or impaired nitric oxide production, it can also contribute to almost like an erectile dysfunction type of scenario if you throw nicotine in the mix along with that. So I have nothing against nicotine, you know, and of course we know it's. It's mildly addictive as well, which is a wonderful business model for a company like Lucy Gum. But anyways, ultimately, yeah, I mean, you do need to be aware of, of some of the, some of the potential trade offs. So, you know, this kind of ties into the next question. So let's play this question from Steven. Hey, Ben, this is Steve. I recently started taking night classes for my graduate degree. And the classes are typically from 8pm to 10pm, which is really late. I was wondering if you had any tips for maintaining mental acuity. Making sure that I'm nice and sharp for those classes without keeping me up too late afterwards. Because things like caffeine are great, but they do tend to disrupt my sleep and I want to get to sleep as soon as possible after those classes. So any advice you have would be great. Thanks. All right, well, as we were just talking about, nicotine could be one option due to its shorter half life compared to something like caffeine, which I think caffeine's a half life of what, 15 hours, 12 hours? Something like that?

Was it that long?

It depends whether you're slow or a fast coffee oxidizer, but it definitely will impair sleep at night more than nicotine because it's going to stay in your system for a longer period of time, even if you're a fast Coffee oxidizer. I mean in most cases coffee afternoon, whether you're slow or a fast oxidizer will disrupt sleep period. It just happens so there, you know, when I have to stay awake at night because I'm traveling outside my normal time zone, going to like late night dinners or parties or meetings, you know, which again happens when I travel or you know, even if I'm going to go, whatever, you'll see a fight in Vegas or something like that. There are times when I'm definitely out past my bedtime, but I know I still want to go to sleep. I don't want to take 100 micrograms of LSD and be up till 5am or drink a cup of coffee and sleep, but not really get my deep sleep cycles. And so there are certain things that I use at night. One I already mentioned and it would be due to the short half life I will use nicotine at night night, like before a dinner party, I'll pop some gum and chew it while I'm driving to the dinner party, right? So that's one thing that I've found when I take it still decreases my readiness score and decreases my HRV a little bit. But I can at least sleep, you know, if I, if I can take nicotine as late as like 8pm and still, you know, go to bed at 10:30 and be fine. Another one that's similar that I already mentioned due to the presence of small amounts of nicotine is that Zen nasal spray from Dr. John Laurentz, which is, which is a blend of oxytocin, which is kind of nice if you're out in a social setting. Anyways, it's great for a date, for a social setting, for an evening activity. But it's blended with a little bit of this Amazonian hoppe extract which is, it's just really great for clearing the head. It's got trace amounts of nicotine in it and it's actually a little bit of a vagal nerve stimulant. And so I think that that because of that there might be a trade off in terms of the potential impairment of hrv. The cool thing is, and I don't know if John and I talked about this on the show, was he has one version that's got the Amazonian hoppe in it, but then he has another version that's just peppermint and rosemary and I think it's, I believe it's cinnamon essential oil and a little bit of oxytocin. And so that doesn't even have any nicotine. But it's essentially like you're huffing peppermint and rosemary up your nose, which are all, all, you know, wonderful natural essential oil stimulants. And I'll do that at night a lot, you know, because I have both his Zen spray that's made of the hop A and then I also have his Zen spray that's made of just the regular essential oils. And the one with the essential oils at night doesn't disrupt sleep a bit. It's literally just like smelling peppermint and so.

Sounds spicy.

Yeah. So that's one. Yeah, it burns a little bit when it first goes in, but I mean it's. So that's, that's a really great option.

And is that available for purchase?

Yeah, it's all legal. You can totally purchase. I'll link to his website. We might even have a discount code or something somewhere. I'll hunt it down. And I did a great podcast with him. Super smart formulator. He does both the suppositories like the melatonin and the CBD suppositories and then the Zen spray and the Zen essential oil spray. So that'd be another option, another one that I'll do a lot of times in the later afternoon or the evening to get an increase in alertness as a mild stimulant without disrupting sleep and arguably actually enhancing deep sleep cycles. Based on some research on REM sleep is lion's mane. And lion's mane has trace amounts of caffeine in it, but not enough to really keep you awake at night. And studies on lion's mane have shown that it can increase REM sleep. And so that's great because we know it can improve focus, improve neuroplasticity, increase levels of brain derived neurotransmitters, atrophic factor, and even balance out the HPA axis a little bit, almost like an adaptogenic herb would. But it's not disruptive to sleep yet, can make you alert. And I know some people who swear by it for improving their dreams, like lucid dreaming and things like that. So lion's mane would be another. I know some people in the plant medicine sector will even take lion's mane right before bed along with a small dose of psilocybin. Psilocybin for enhanced dream cycles. And that doesn't work for me. I find psilocybin to be too stimulative for me. Even a microdose will just make me super creative. And I'll lay in bed thinking of amazing ideas. But lion's mane would be one that I think would definitely fit as an evening supplement. That's another one that I'm fine using at night. Doesn't keep me awake at all. Another one is L Theanine and L Theanine is just fantastic. It's an amino acid. You'll find it in green tea, like caffeine. It's got two components in it, theophylline and theobromine, that can enter the brain by crossing the blood brain barrier, but when it does so, it increases the formation of alpha brain waves. So it gives you this alert relaxation and affects GABA and dopamine pathways a little bit in a way that increases attention and brain function. But not only does it not keep you up at night, but if you combine it with a stimulant such as caffeine, it can actually make caffeine a little bit less stimulative. Right. And so it's one of those you can have in your back pocket, you know, if, if you happen to have made the mistake of having too much coffee. But it's also something that you can take by itself around 100mg or so I find to be the sweet spot. You could take it with lion's mane, you could stack it with anything I've just described. And that's another one that can be a stimulant you can use at night that's not going to going to deleteriously impact your sleep cycles. So that's one. And then there's one more, one more that I'm fine with taking a smaller dose of at night. And it's a nootropic formula. It's made by a company called Neurohacker Collective, it's called Qualia Mind. And it's like a whole shotgun for me. It's got like Huperzine, you know, for learning and memory. It's got Celestris, which enhances memory, memory and learning. It's got like artichoke heart, ginkgo biloba, but they make a caffeine free version of it. And even though if I'm going to crush a day of work and I want to take a nootropic formulation, I'll actually take anywhere from six to eight capsules of it in the morning. And the reason I like the caffeine free in the morning is because I still do like to have a cup of coffee a lot of times in the morning, I don't want to double up on my caffeine. But then I found in the evening, you Know if I just need a little pick me up, I'll take a half dose, like three or four. Never seems to impact my sleep at all. And that, that one already has, you know, if you take three or four, it's already got about 100 milligrams of theanine in it. So you're already getting some theanine too. And that, that's another kind of done for you formula that I find about a half dose of gives gives me good mental function in the evening. And you know, I'm talking about the caffeine free version, doesn't seem to impair sleep cycle at all. So that'd be another one to throw into the mix.

I think it's got lion mane, lion's mane in it as well. I'm not positive on that one. I think it does. I know it's got L Theanine but yeah, I love that as well. You know one other thing I would add too to give a try. I actually texted you this morning about this because I've recently been using. It is I actually have been using like a table. No, no, no, sorry. A teaspoon of the be powered by the beekeepers naturals brand which is kind of a mixture of honey propolis, royal jelly and bee pollen. And it is a great, just like cognitive pick me up that I can utilize without any negative side effects. I mean it's only got like 5 grams of sugar in it. So for you know, a teaspoon of honey isn't awful.

Yeah, that one's got a lot of like acetylcholine precursors in it, doesn't it?

Yup, it does, yeah. It's phenomenal. So I would, I would recommend that as well. Especially you know, if you take it right before class. I think kind of the amount of mental acuity you'll, you'll receive from that and if you like stack that on top of like you know, a small dose of qualia mind caffeine free, I think you're in for a good night of learning there, Steve.

Hmm. Awesome. Awesome. So there, there's your drug bag, Steve. Well that's great. Hopefully we came up with some new tips for people. You know, this was kind of fun because hopefully people have gotten some ideas for enhancing their cold thermogenesis, enhancing their gym time with the blood flow restriction training, enhancing their evening activities with non sleep disrupting stimulants, and staying the hell away from Subway. So we'll link to all this stuff@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 420 along with a brand new Kion fish oil and some of our other fantastic sponsors like Joovv and Clearlight. And who was the other sponsor we had today? Yori. Yeah in Viori clothing. So all@Bengreentelfitness.com 420 and we'll also give away some swag. Should we give away some swag?

Oh we got someone to give some swag to.

Let's do it. This is the part of the show where we will read a review and if you leave us a review on any podcast platform that you listen in on and say something nice and you hear your review read on the show, that means we're going to send you a sweet attitude gear pack with a BGF T shirt and beanie and BPA free water bottle. And all you gotta do is email gearngreenfieldfitness.com with your t shirt size if you hear your review read. So that being said, take it away Jay.

All right, so we've got a review from kim12345 she says, or maybe him. My health, energy and outlook has all increased because of this podcast. It is so fun to try new things to increase all these fundamentally important facets of life. The how to as well as the science that backs up the info in the podcast is what I needed to buy into this life enhancing info. Thank you Ben and team and thank you Kim.

Awesome. Well Kim, right gear@BenGreenfieldFitness.com let's know your T shirt size which is sweet gear pack sent your way. In the meantime, for the rest you listening in BenGreenfulFitness.com 420 is where you'll find all the show notes for your 420 enjoyment. And Jay, that was fun. Thanks man.

Hey, it was a blast man.

All right, catch you on the flip side. See ya. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the shown 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.