Q&A 421: Microdosing With LSD, Fish Oil & Omega-6 Fatty Acid Confusion Cleared, The Latest Coffee Research, Staying Fit In Your Car & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, microdosing with LSD, fish oil and omega 6 fatty acid confusions. The latest coffee research, staying fit in your car, and a whole lot more. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, Jay, I need to do a little, my little mouth spray because I'm a little tired for some reason. My fire alarm went off this morning.

Like 4:00am oh, that's no good.

Yeah, yeah, but I, I have this mouth spray I actually, you know that, that beekeepers like propolis spray for the immune system?

Yeah, I actually started seeing that daily for the past like two weeks now.

So.

I know exactly.

Well, that's not what I'm using. I just emptied out the bottle because it's like a throat spray bottle. I didn't empty it. I just put it into a different container. I was going to waste all my propolis, but then I, I mixed nicotine and monk fruit in it. So I've got like this sour apple monk fruit sweetener with a little bit of nicotine and I've been using that as a little throat spray this morning just, just because I've been up since an ungodly hour. So what time I think that thing started going off, like 3:50 something. So I've been up since 4. 4:24:20 something. That's, that's this podcast, actually, this podcast is 421. So all the show notes, all the show notes folks are going to be@BenGreenFitness.com 421. Got in a workout in my garage, which is super cold right now, full of kettlebells. So I feel like Rocky. What's the movie? Rocky 4, where he's training in the Russian winter.

Yeah, Rocky 4.

Classic one, exactly. So I've been doing the, I'm getting ready for the. What's it called? The strong first kettlebell certification down in San Diego in, in January. And so I'm doing a lot of pavozetzelin protocols which are, they're kind of like super hard, short efforts. You know, he, he really is not a fan of going anything kind of above like the, the creatine phosphogenic range goes. Meaning that you're not doing any efforts that are longer than like 30 seconds. He's really not a fan of lactic acid. As a matter of fact, his book that I'm using for some of my training is called the Quick and the Dead. The quick being the people who train quickly and the Dead Being the people who do a lot of like lactic acid long metabolic style workouts. So you know, like this morning you.

Don'T want to be dead.

Yeah. This morning's workout is just, you know, swing swinging a kettlebell for about 10 reps. Like I think I had like a two pooed kettlebell and then kind of shake it off, come back, do 10 quick push ups, shake it off, come back, do 10 kettlebells, shake it off, come back. So I just do like 10 rounds of that. And that's, that's kind of a sample flavor of, of my, my style of training these days. Aside from long walks in the snow. Yeah, yeah.

So when you go to get certified, is it just a number of reps or is it form or what are they looking at?

Oh, they do everything from like a 5 minute 24 kilogram snatch test to you know, Turkish get up form goblet squats, certain, certain weights that you perform for a certain number of reps. It's all. If you go to their website, I think it's called strong first or just search for, for the strong first kettlebell so you can see it. But yeah, I always like to have a little, a little something something on the calendar to keep me motivated to go out in that icy cold garage, so.

Right. Cool stuff.

Well, plenty to talk about today. So what do you think? Should we do? All right.

Yeah, let's get into it.

Well, Jay, I know that you and I are both huge fans of LSD out of Matt. What are you on about 100 micrograms right now?

Yeah, let's, let's jump it up to 200. It's a, it's a go getter day.

Yeah, I could tell. No, in full disclosure, actually, I don't even know if, if you want this out there on the Internet, Jay, but I'm going to put out there anyway. I know both you and I have microdose with LSD and it's something I do, I do probably twice a week or so I'll do a little micro dose. Actually, I actually use lsa, not lsd. I think it's, it's a little bit better.

Actually, we can't talk about it now because I'm technically not connected to the federal government anymore, so. So we can open up that discussion.

Yeah, yeah, we, we actually have the same, the same folks. We get our microdosing protocol from kind of, it's kind of like the Jim, Jim Fadiman esque protocol. Really, really great protocol. But they just came out with a study that looked at mood and cognition after administration of low LSD doses, AKA microdoses, in healthy volunteers. And it was kind of interesting because they experimented with different doses. And Jim Fadiman, who I just mentioned, he's kind of the world's foremost authority on the subject of microdosing, particularly with LSD. And his standard regimen is 1/10 of a full dose of LSD. A full dose of LSD is like 100 micrograms on a microdose is about 10. And his gold standard protocol is 10 micrograms of LSD every third day. And what they looked at in this study was experimenting with a few different dosages. They used a 5, they used a 10, and they used a 20. And all three participants or all three groups did notice some significant differences. Like at 5, they said they got increased friendliness and arousal and decreased attention lapses. And then at 10, they said that all feelings of anger, depression, and fatigue abated, which I've actually found to be the case. Personally, that's kind of. My sweet spot is about 10. Although some people reported elevated levels of confusion and anxiety. And I don't know about you, Jay, but I also, if I haven't, if I'm doing that in a fasted state, haven't had breakfast, etcetera, I'll. I'll get a little bit of that anxiety as well. Yeah. Or.

Or if, for me, if I. If I am fasted, drink a cup of coffee and then take it too close to the time that I drink coffee, then it. It could be a little bit of a disaster. I mean, it's not awful, but it. It can. It can be a little shaky.

Yeah, LSD doesn't do well combined with other stimulants, in my opinion. And then at 20 micrograms, they saw a significant increase in positivity and vigor and happiness and what they called blissfulness and insightfulness. Uh, but the confusion and anxiety went up even more. So I think this study just kind of shows what we've already known, that 10 is probably a pretty good sweet spot. And ultimately that this stuff actually is effective as a nootropic smart drug and can even, unlike a lot of other smart drugs, like say, Modafinil, for example, actually make you more personable, more friendly, Increased mood state. So there you have it. Yeah.

Yeah, I guess, you know, we've kind of spoken to this. I know you've kind of harped on this. There's no need to beat a dead horse. But I would say, just if anybody is interested in getting into this Realm. Yeah, there's some really cool effects that you can get from it. It makes me very productive. However, I would just say just know you're sourcing. I just know your damn sourcing. Don't go out there and get anything crazy. And you probably will know sourcing. I'm not saying it's a one to one, but you'll probably know good sourcing when you're like, whoa, that's more expensive than I thought it would be.

Yeah, I mean, my perspective. Yeah, I mean, just to put all the cards out in table, you know, and I think you're on the same microdosing protocol as I am, jay. It's. It's $600 a month for what I pay for my. And that also includes a psilocybin microdose and also kind of like a. It's almost like an MDMA esque microdose. Like one. One is for focus, one is for creativity, one is for compassion. And you stack them on consecutive days. But yeah, it's not. I mean, $600 a month is not inexpensive. But I find, you know, my, my mood, my cognition, just the clean burn, the fact that I almost maintain a level of insightfulness that is over and above what I might experience from other compounds dictates that it's worth it for me. I mean, if I guess there are certain times of the year when I don't do that and I take a break. But for the most part, I enjoy that type of microdosing protocol. And all my research, I found it to be safe, I found it to be effective. And I've also found that I get hundreds of Instagram messages from people wanting to know my sourcing and I never reply to them because I can't legally do so. But I hook up some of my private clients with my supplier, so that's right. All right, so anyways, let's go ahead and move on to a probably more accessible stimulant that was also recently studied. And that was, well, two things. Coffee and also green tea. And this was. This was pleasant or pleasing to me to find out that the consumption of coffee, particularly one cup a day, is associated with a 12% lower mortality risk. And then two or more cups of coffee a day, a 41% reduced risk of mortality. And they found this to be even greater in people who drink both coffee and green tea. Meaning, like if you're one of those people who maybe has a cup of coffee in the morning and a cup of green tea later on in the day, the effects are actually magnified. So, you know, we already know that coffee can, you know, decrease all cause risk of mortality. But it's kind of cool that there's, there's an interplay between it and green tea. And I personally am not a fan of green tea. For some reason it makes me a little nauseous. It just doesn't agree with me. But it appears that coffee can make you live longer. So can green tea. And if you're consuming both, you almost get a magnified effect.

Yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty neat. Didn't we talk about green tea and coffee or maybe just green tea in our last podcast? I think we've beenwe've been given some good, some good reputation to the old green tea crowd. I'mI'm like you, I'm not a huge fan of green tea. I don't feel very, very good when I drink it. But maybe I should try to introduce. I haven't had it probably in about maybe a year or two years, so maybe I'll throw it back in there just to give it go.

You know, what we talked about in podcast 420 was how green tea can enhance fat loss during cold thermogenesis.

That's right, doctor.

That's kinda cool. Green tea oror if you don't like the taste of green tea like me, you can just get like the EGCG supplement on Amazon, for example. So go listen to 420 if you want more, more details on that whole protocol@bengreenfieldfitness.com 420 and then also a couple of kind of interesting news flashes this week about compounds in your food water that you may need to at least know about or be aware of, the first being arsenic. And it's kind of been well known in health circles for a while that even though brown rice might be a little bit more nutrient dense than white rice, it can be problematic because of the arsenic content. And there's a pretty decent amount of naturally occurring arsenic in brown rice that can do some damage as it accumulates in your body. And they just came out with a new study that tested a whole bunch of different ways to cook rice to try and reduce the arsenic content. And they found that this process, called PAR boiling, removes almost all of the arsenic from brown rice. And so the reason for this is, you know, rice, compared to all other cereals, can accumulate about 10 times as much arsenic, because in rice grains, the arsenic gets concentrated in the outer bran layer that surrounds the endosperm. And since brown rice is unmilled or unpolished and has more of that bran, that means it's going to have more arsenic than the white rice. And of course, the milling process will remove the arsenic from white rice, but then it removes like 75 to 90% of the nutrients. So while it tastes pretty good on sushi, it's not super nutrient dense. So ideally, you'd figure a way. Yeah, you'd figure a way to have brown rice, but then get rid of the arsenic. So parboiling, they found out, could do this. And par boiling is very simple. All you do is you put the rice into boiled water for five minutes. Okay. And you just let it sit there and boil for five minutes. Then you drain the water, you refresh the water, and then you continue to cook your brown rice. And that. That's. That's essentially par boiling. You could Google par boiling if you want a video to walk you through it. But, I mean, it's kind of like a double boil.

Yeah, it's almost like double boil and then getting rid of all the shit.

Yeah. They call the PBA method parboiling with absorption, meaning you. You boil it for five minutes, then you drain it and you refresh the water. And I'm assuming when you drain and refresh the water, that's where you're dumping out all the arsenic, right? Yeah. And then. Then you continue on and you cook. And it's interesting because what we've always done when we cook rice, if we're gonna have rice the next day, and my wife has done this for a long time, she just soaks the rice overnight in warm water on the kitchen counter. I would imagine that's probably doing the same thing.

It's like an expedited way of doing it.

Yeah. So anyways, though, cool, cool tactic for those of you concerned about dying of a horrible arsenic death, all of our listeners. And there's a great infographic that walks you through parboiling that I will link to if you go to BenGreenFitness.com421 that shows exactly what they did in study, like how many cups of water to use for every cup of raw rice, etc. Etc. And then the probably more interesting and possibly one that we may rabbit hole a little bit more into was the news flash that upset a lot of people when I tweeted this out that I am questioning whether or not I will continue to drink my precious Pellegrino. And I love Pellegrino. I mean, don't get me wrong, I have a nice. I have a nice water filtration system at home. And I have good well water and I have one of those hydrogen water machines. But there's just something about, you know, unscrewing a big old glass bottle of that carbonated Pellegrino refreshing from the fridge sometimes.

So refreshing.

Put a few drops like vanilla stevia in there so it tastes like vanilla cream soda. And I just, I like my Pellegrino. What can I say?

Me too.

But the website Truth About Fluoride recently obtained water quality reports from San Pellegrino and what they found was a fluoride content of 0.47 ppm. What does that mean? It means that that's pretty much as much fluoride as you might find in fluoridated municipal tap water, like higher than a lot of other brands. Now that was concerning to me. Although San Pellegrino tested out pretty well across the board for any other contaminants, it had pretty high levels of fluoride. Now first of all, let's step back and kind of talk about why that could be concerning in the first place. So basically when it comes to fluoride, particularly what's called sodium fluoride, we know that it can be good for preventing tooth decay. But once it is actually consumed and winds up in the body, we also know that it can accumulate in the pineal gland in the middle of the brain. And we also know that sodium fluoride, daily long term intake of sodium fluoride has been in multiple research studies linked to increased risk of cancer, DNA damage, thyroid disruption. Just because it can interfere with, with the normal function of thyroid, it can bind some of the same receptors as thyroid hormone. We know it's associated with neurological issues, increased risk of Alzheimer's disease, disruption in melatonin production, and then that whole pineal gland thing, it's an actual calcification of the pineal gland, which is also kind of concerning because the pineal gland is very important when it comes to endocrine function. It's also, you know, for anybody who does like plant medicine journeys or things like that, if you have a calcified pineal gland, you actually don't get much out of a plant medicine journey. So people have a lot of fluoride in their diet who also want to be spiritually woke, so to speak, aren't going to be able to do so if the pineal gland is calcified. Kind of an interesting rabbit hole here. There is a, there is a well known injectable peptide that can decalcify the pineal Gland, it's called. What is it? Penielen, I think, is the name of the, the peptide, if I recall properly. And I will actually occasionally do a bout of Penny Allen prior to something like a plant medicine journey just to make sure my pineal gland is totally clean. It's kind of like a little hack. So fluoride is problematic. And you could go to truthaboutfluoride.com or read a book like the Fluoride Deception by Chris Bryson to understand why. Large quantities of sodium fluoride in our water and food system was originally kind of developed by industries who were saddled with getting rid of toxic materials. And fluoride has been necessary for the processing and enriching of uranium. So they had to get rid of a whole bunch of fluoride and we started adding it to the water supply and the food supply. And again, I won't deny the proven benefits for bone and teeth, but the problem is that it's got a lot of other effects in the body that I think dictate. You may want to choose other methods to strengthen youryour bones and your teeth, like, you know, calcium and magnesium, et cetera. But there's another form of fluoride called calcium fluoride. Calcium fluoride, it's natural in underground water supplies. It's totally benign, and it doesn't have a lot of the same issues as sodium fluoride does. Okay, so calcium fluoride, it's different than what you might see added to fluoridated municipal water. What they add to fluoridated municipal water is sodium fluoride that's derived from industrial chemical waste products and it should be avoided. Now, if you look deeper into the Pellegrino study, guess what? It's calcium fluoride, natural fluoride, not the sodium fluoride. Therefore, Pellegrino still gets a thumbs up from me. And it turns out it's a form of fluoride that's important. Important. Now, when I was looking into alternatives to Pellegrino, I did find, because a lot of people asked me about this, what I was going to switch to the, the Mountain Valley sparkling water you can get from most grocery stores or from Amazon that's pretty clean. And then another one that Robert Slovak, who's a guy who I really respect when it comes to water filtration and all things water that he recommended to me is a brand called Donat, which you can also buy on Amazon or a lot of grocery stores. D O N A T. And the reason he likes that is because it's very high in magnesium and a lot, a lot of people don't get a lot of magnesium in their diets these days. It's more expensive than Pellegrino. But that brand Donat or the brand Mountain Valley appear to be pretty good options if you, if you didn't want to use Pellegrino or you, or you did so want an alternative. So the form of fluoride matters when it comes to Pellegrino. And in this case, because it is not the sodium fluoride form, really not an issue. This is interesting because they've been doing a lot of studies on bottled water recently. Like, I don't know if you saw the. Did you see the Consumer Reports study.

A couple months ago, the one about microplastics?

Well, well, they tested arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, and then a whole bunch of what are called pfas.

Oh, yeah, I did see that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so these are basically toxic chemicals, microplastics, etc. That you would find in bottled water. And most of them tested out pretty well. But one that was really concerning was Topo Chico. Tapo Chico actually is favorite one too. It's a, it's, it's a lot of people's favorite. And it actually tested pretty high, concerningly high. And at first I thought it was just the plastic version, but it's both the, both the plastic and the glass version of Tapo Chico, despite testing pretty high in minerals and magnesium, tested high in microplastics and a lot of these PFAs. And, and I'll link to the Consumer Reports study, but it turns out that there are a few brands of bottled water that are better than others. And the ones that got the big thumbs up for the testing of PFAS levels, and again, I'll link to the study were the thumbs up were on sparkling ice, Spindrift, San Pellegrino, Dasani and Schweppes. Right. All of those are fine.

Surprised Dasani was in there actually.

Yeah, Yeah, I think that that's like a Coca Cola product. I believe a few that people might be drinking right now that you may want to consider being a little more careful with Perrier, it tested kind of like borderline high. So did Lacroix. But Topo Chica was like off the charts. It was really high. So so was another brand called Polar. So Topo Cheek would be out. Pellegrino still in Perrier is kind of eh. And you know, ultimately the best way to go is just have your own filtered bottled water at home and maybe you could get one of those. What do they call them? The Sodastream. Carbonated water countertop. Yes.

Just get like an Aqua True and then filter your water through that, put it in the Soda Stream and you're good to go.

Exactly.

Except for, though you do need to re. Add the mineralization. So you could add in like a vial of Quinton and, and that could do it because you know, you want to get the mineral content. But if you're just looking for carbonated water, something more like a Lacroix, then yeah, just like Aqua True filtration system, plus like the Soda Stream and that's it.

Yeah. If you were going to add minerals to your water, that, that Quinton that you mentioned, which, which is harvested from like these phytoplankton blooms in the ocean and then micro filtered. That is from what I understand, of all the mineral sources out there, the highest. But it's also prohibitively expensive for a lot of people. And so I, I encourage folks who, who are on more of a budget. Just get the, the Celtic salt from the grocery store. That's really high. You can find it at most grocery stores you can get on Amazon and just put a pinch of that into your water, especially your filtered water, and you'll get the minerals right back in. So, yeah. Interesting things to think about when it comes to water, Justin. Yeah.

And you know, I'm glad that Pellegrino came on top as the good guy because, you know, I was actually, I was drinking Topo Chico for the longest time just because I preferred the taste of it. I drank Pellegrino for a long time. Then Peter Attia turned me onto Topo Chico and I was drinking it like a madman. Then that report came out which was like devastating, was a huge blow to my gut. And then you came out with this Twitter, you know, this tweet and said Pellegrino is now off the table. And I was, I was in a state of depression, man. I didn't know what to do. So thank you for bringing my mood back up.

Yeah. And I mean if you, if you watch that movie, I think it's, it's Dark Waters that shows how problematic these PFAs is. Specifically one called PFOA, which is one of the ones that they found to be pretty high in Tapo Chico are when it comes to, I mean, that film was about this whole community of unsuspecting people who basically had their water. There was like toxic sludge going into their water from the chemical company DuPont and it was a pretty concerning film called Dark Waters. Appropriately enough titled. It was like a thriller film. But if you really want to get concerned about water and be a total tiny foil hat wearing water consumption freak, watch that movie. But ultimately, you know, check out the Consumer Reports. Just be careful with some of the brands that are in that. And I'll link to that entire Consumer Reports study in the show notes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com421.

Hi Ben, this is Andrea. Here's my Q and A. What is the connection between drinking mushroom coffee and vitamin D levels? Even pre Covid, I always monitor my vitamin D levels. They are consistently in the 60s, just retested and levels went up to 78, just below the optimal recommendation level in the winter. With the possibility of the connection between vitamin D and Covid, I began slightly increasing my oral vitamin D, but by no more than 2,000 units a day. The only other dietary difference is the addition of four Sigmatic Lion Main Chaga coffee. As you well know, mushrooms are a great source of vitamin D. Do you think one cup of four Sigmatics coffee a day could have increased my vitamin D levels? I reached out to four Sigmatics directly to see if there were measurable vitamin D levels in their coffee. They responded that there was no research available. Any thoughts? Meeting with my endocrinologist soon and would love to have your feedback and expertise. Thanks.

Did you know you can get vitamin D from mushrooms, Jay?

I did. I didn't know you could get that much vitamin D from mushrooms, but I did know you could get some form of vitamin D from mushrooms.

You can, you can if they've been out in the sunlight. So you actually have to get. Okay, you got to get like a vitamin D lamp, right? Like, like you can get like a spirit vitamin D lamp on Amazon. It's sp S P E R T I which is actually great for the, for the winter for keeping your vitamin D levels up. They're like UVB lamps, but you can also get any mushrooms like shiitake maitake button and you can spread them out under sunlight or under one of these vitamin D lamps and they accumulate vitamin D. Now the kind of interesting thing is that there's two different forms of vitamin D. One is D3 cholecalciferol. That's what we get from primarily animal sources, you know, especially like oily fish like mackerel or sardines. And chovies are really high in vitamin D. Herring, trout, salmon. But then mushrooms actually are rich in vitamin D2. So D2 ergosterol, that's a little bit different. Now studies have shown that for long term buildup of vitamin D and like accumulation in the body and higher blood levels of 25 hydroxy vitamin D, which is what you're actually going after. If you're trying to amp up your vitamin D levels. Vitamin D3 is superior. That's undeniable. Like the New England Journal of Medicine did a pretty exhaustive study on this on vitamin D2 versus vitamin D3. However, you can still get an appreciable amount of vitamin D2 from mushrooms, especially if you're vegan or vegetarian or you like mushrooms like I do. And considering you also get like the beta glucans for the immune enhancement and they have these things called ergothiones in them which are really good antioxidant. They've got of course, the nerve growth stimulators for brain derived neurotrophic factor. A lot of mushrooms like Chaga, they have antimicrobial compounds that can inhibit viral infections. There's a lot of benefits that go beyond vitamin D for mushrooms. And so what they found is that the mushrooms need to be exposed to sunlight for a pretty significant amount of time, like so several hours per day. Which is fine if you're, if you're just foraging your mushrooms outdoors, but if you're not and you're just buying mushrooms from the grocery store, ideally you expose the underside to them, right. So like gills up or the underside up. And shiitakes are gonna be the best. Like a lot of the studies have been done on shiitakes, those are super high in D2 if you expose them to sunlight either outdoors or under one of these lamps. But yeah, you, you can get a decent amount of vitamin D even though it is again the vitamin D2 from mushrooms. And so you know, whether or not I think Andrea asked about the four sigmatic coffee and how much vitamin D that would have in it, I have no clue if they are exposing those mushrooms to sunlight prior to putting them into the coffee. So I actually don't know. And, and I.

It was lion's mane, chaga. She was the coffee. Lion's mane, chaga and coffee. I mean, and again, and this is just kind of my lack of knowledge on coffee. Does coffee have any vitamin D properties?

Not that I'm aware of. No.

No, I didn't think so.

Yeah. I didn't dig too deeply into studies on coffee and vitamin D. I can't think of a mechanism of action via which caffeine or coffee would increase like Serum vitamin D levels? Yeah, I don't know, I didn't dig into the literature too much on that, but I really cannot think of, of a mechanism of action whereby that would happen unless, unless it was related to, you know, potentially something like, you know, caffeine being slightly acidic, causing the need for minerals to be pulled from bone, in which case elevated serum vitamin D levels may assist with that. So yeah, you know, vitamin D is like, like a mechanism to maintain mineral status. It's possible but anyways, yeah, I don't know how much vitamin D the four Sigmatic has in it, but ultimately the big takeaway message here from peeps, if you don't have a chance to have meat for a vitamin D source, you can actually get pretty decent amounts from mushrooms. Although it's vitamin D2. And of course as I will be covering in an upcoming podcast, a big podcast on vitamin D with Dr. Mercola. Vitamin D intake is going to vary heavily in terms of supplementation and food sources from person to person as far as what's appropriate for you. And the gold standard is to simply test because is a cheap ass test. Just test your blood vitamin D levels about every quarter or so and shoot for a sweet spot of 40 to 80. And if you're below 40 I would recommend maybe upping your supplementation and your food intake. And if you're above 80 and you're supplementing, maybe back off of the supplementation so you're not getting excess vitamin D because that can also kind of pull a little bit of extra calcium into the arteries and isn't, isn't the best thing but, but ultimately you know, widely varied diet that's rich in a lot of these, you know, these small cold water fish, mushrooms, et cetera I think is the best way to, you know, you're getting both D2 and D3 so I think that's the best way to do it.

Yeah, I mean it's a super interesting question which you know, I think wewe gave a fairly straightforward answer. You know, she said it was consistently in the 60s, then it went up to 78. She did mention that she had increased her oral vitamin D she said by no more than 2,000 IUs a day. Which could play, you know, it could be a variable in a factor now it could, it is, but that would be interesting to kind of see like if the lion's mane from four Sigmatic, if that lion's mane Chaga coffee did indeed kind of like push the scale upwards. Uhm, yeah, just kind of a super interesting thing. I Guess a lot of people don't think about mushrooms or mushroom coffee as being, you know, a vitamin D enhancer.

Yeah, well, I, I know a few people who uh, who work at four Sigmatic listening to this podcast. So if you guys jump into the comments section, let us know if you're exposing the, your, your four Sig mushrooms to, to sunlight before you're making your coffee and stuff with them. So that would actually be really interesting to know. I just didn't have a chance to, to ask them and look into it, so. Great question.

Hi Ben, this is Chris from Australia. Firstly, big thank you for all the content you keep bringing and your book Boundless. I absolutely love it and I've slowly improved many aspects of my health over the years from your tips. Due to work commitments, I'll be doing a two hour commute by train a few times a week and this is going to eat in my exercise and recovery time, which I do not want. Do you have any suggestions to best utilize this time for recovery and, or training? Thanks.

You know, Jay, what I do is I drive a Dodge. I drive a Dodge Cummins Diesel 2500 and I just have a squat rack in the, the back of the truck and so. And you just.

Yeah, you do that while you're driving.

Stop every few miles, crank out some squats. No, I'm just kidding. You know, there's a lot of ways that you can stay fit during long drives, and I'm one of those guys who just doesn't like to sit still. As a matter of fact, I don't like road trips. I really don't. Yeah, me either. A lot of people like to see the great US from an RV or maybe their little Subaru Forester or RAV4 driving for miles on end until you're. Your knuckles are stuck to the steering wheel, you've been wrapped around there for so long and your eyeballs are burning out your head from looking at the mountains and the forest going by and the kids are screaming in the back seat and you're hungry and your hip flexors are tight and it's just a wonderful road trip that I have yet to wrap my head around the magic of. So I'm not a road trip guy, but off my soapbox, when I do have to drive, I do like to stay fit and I like to move. We have done a few podcasts in the past about this, but, but it's been a while, so I think it's worth revisiting a few of my more potent tips for, for staying fit During a road trip. So the first thing that I really like is there's a company called Captains of Crush. They make these wonderful hand grip strengtheners, though, that, you know, they'll start them at, like, I think, £40 and go up to hundreds of pounds, so you can kind of scale accordingly. And then they also sell these things called hand expander bands. So the Captains of Crush hand grips would be. You'd be gripping. And then the hand expander bands, you're expanding, and you can get a ton of really good grip training. And. And it's. It's kind of funny. What I like to do is I have one of those in my glove box, and I'll do like, 10 squeezes for the right hand and then 10 squeezes for the left hand and go back and forth while I'm driving. But then I actually will. When I squeeze, I'll do a Kegel exercise. Like, I'll squeeze my butt. I'll squeeze all my perennial muscles. So I'm strengthening all those orgasmic lower pelvic floor muscles and at the same time, training my hands. So that's one thing that I'll do is I'll combine hand grip strengtheners with Kegel exercises, which I know sounds super gimmicky and kind of weird, but actually, I mean, these are little.

Just have an orgasm while you drive.

Yeah, These are little muscles that you don't get a chance to train, maybe when you're at the gym. And so why not do it while you're driving safely? You know, technically, that means I'm. I'm. I've got one hand on the steering wheel, and I'm not doing the 10 and 2, you know, proper driving method that we all learn. Driver's ed, but captain's a Crush. Their hand grip strengtheners and their hand expander bands combined with Kegel exercises. That's one that works really well. Another one is there. There's some lung training devices that can also work pretty well. There's one called the power lung, which is basically like inspiratory and expiratory muscle training for your diaphragm and. And some of your respiratory muscles. And it simply provides resistance on both the inhale and the exhale. There is another device called the relaxator. The relaxator. It's like this little whistle that you put in your mouth, and you breathe in through your nose and then out through your mouth. And it kind of resists almost like a straw, how long that it takes for your exhale to occur. So you're training in that case, CO2 tolerance and actually also increasing your heart rate variability, which is useful if you're stressed out and stuck in traffic, for example. And so those are two things that you can use that might be a little bit more driver friendly than, say, like wearing one of those big elevation training masks while you're cruising down the highway. So one's called a powerlung and the other one is called the Relaxator. And those again, would easily fit into a glove box or into any compartment in your vehicle. The next one, and I use this on airplanes more than I do in cars, just because I don't like to fumble around electrodes and stuff while I'm driving, unless I'm passenger, in which case I do use these. But there's these electrical muscle stimulation devices that are more portable that you can use for recovery. You can use them for blood flow. You can use them. They actually can. Can pack a wallop when it comes to strength and endurance and muscle fiber recruitment. There's one called a Mark Pro that works pretty well. That one's more for recovery. There's one called a Compex that goes to even higher voltages that can be used for muscle training or for endurance or for power or for strength. And then there's one called the Power Dot, which is like a smaller kind of sexier unit that's run by an app on your phone. The Compex is wired. I think they might have a wireless version, but I don't remember. The Power Dot is wireless. So if you're concerned about Bluetooth or signals bouncing around in your car, you might want to go for a wired version. But those things can be really good too. Some kind of electrical muscle stimulation device. And again, I use those more on, like, long haul airplane flights than I do in cars, unless I'm riding passenger. But that's another good one, is electrical muscle stimulation devices. Then there are also isometric training devices. There's this one called the Activ 5, and it's this tiny little triangular unit. Really kind of a cool idea. It has a little phone app that walks you through all these different exercises, like thigh squeezes or pressing your palms together. And obviously a lot of these things can't be done while driving. But again, if you're a passenger, you could Easily use this Activ5 isometric training device to get a surprisingly good workout. I actually like the thing. So do my kids, because the app is kind of gamified. It'll be like, squeeze for 20 seconds and keep the rocket ship elevated and then relax for 10 seconds as the rocket ship goes back on course. You can almost like play these little video games on your phone using your muscles. It's a cool idea. It kind of gamifies the process. And again, that's not one that you'd use while you're driving. But if you're sitting passenger or if you're on an airplane, again, that would be another one that I think is handy and super portable. It's like the size of a cell phone. And then there are things you can do with without a device like steering wheel isometric, where you're holding the steering wheel and you're pulling yourself in really slowly, then pushing yourself away, right? Doing biceps squeezes, doing chest flies, doing push downs. Like you can do all sorts of isometric and movement based exercises just using the steering wheel. You can also do body weight resistance exercises. Like one of my favorite ones to do on an airplane is I will take a giant breath in, extend my whole back arch, reach for the sky, and then kind of come, compress everything and curl as I breathe out. Almost like that cat cow exercise that you do in yoga, except you can do it well seated. And it's actually a really great way to stretch the hip flexors as well. Kelly Starrett has a great book called Desk Bound where he teaches a lot of exercises that you can do while you're desk bound. And I found that many of them can be replicated if you're sitting on an airplane or sitting in a car. You can also train your deep core, right? I mentioned Kegel exercise and glute squeezes. Pelvic tilts would be another abdominal squeezes. There's something to be said for a lot of this. Twitching, contracting, isometric exercises that again you can easily do while you're driving. And then the neck, also front neck, back, neck, side to side neck, using your hands as resistance for isometric exercises for the neck. I mean, there's a lot that you can do when you're in a seated position or a sedentary position for long periods of of time. But those would be some of the biggies that I use. Hand grip strengtheners, hand expander bands, some type of inspiratory or expiratory breath training device, the electrical muscle stimulation, one of those isometric training devices. And then any number of different isometric or bodyweight resistance exercises. And if you go to bengreepilfitness.com421 I'll list some of my favorite such exercises that you could do while you're in your car or on an airplane. But yeah, I mean, there's no reason you can't train or recover during a commute or you could just listen to this podcast and your brain's going to be burning through glucose so fast.

That's the way to do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, the other thing that I do which is really more nervous system training than anything but certainly can apply to recovery from exercise, is that I do a lot of heart rate variability training. Of course I do. Right. And the way I train is actually via the LEAF device that I know that we've talked about here before. That is the wearable EKG that goes underneath the left breast and it will provide you haptic biofeedback. So you can kind of train and train the modulation of your heart rate variability and nervous system on a drive. So it's really good because for me it's just a good way, yes, to pass time, but to also feel like I'm exercising my nervous system in a way that I might not do during the rest of the day kind of gives me that devoted time. So another way to kind of just train, train the nervous system is to throw on a device similar to that. You don't have to, it doesn't have to be that one, but that's just easy because it vibrates on you to help synchronize your breathing. Whereas if you're having to use an app, you might have to look down and on the phone and it's not nearly as safe. So yeah, that's the only other one.

That I do useful. Although I don't have breasts, I have hardcore man packs. So I don't know if it worked for me. I just have striated pectoralis majors.

It probably won't work for you. Your muscles will prohibit the signal from reaching the ekg. So maybe, maybe for someone else who has breaths.

Alright, well, we have one more question and I think it's probably gonna be kind of a complicated question, so let's do it.

Hi Ben, this is Arianna Sommer. I'd like to know your take on omega 6 fatty acids like linoleic acid and arachidonic acid. So on the one side I've heard that these are essential fatty acids and that our body needs them, for example, to manage inflammation. On the other side, everyone is saying to not go near omega 6 fatty acids with a 10 foot pole. So which of this is it? Avoid them completely or try to just get enough of them? And if so, what is enough?

Oh man, this, this could be a can of worms. But I'm gonna. I'm gonna give it a stab. And this might be the most comprehensive answer I've ever given about omega 6 fatty acids. But in thinking about it, it's something that needs to be explained. So I'm just gonna go ahead and do it. So, you know, omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids, it's interesting because if you look historically at hunter gatherer diets, they tend to be, when it comes to omega 6 to omega 3 three fatty acid ratios, typically somewhere around 2 to 1 to 4 to 1. Okay. Our modern Western diet tends to be 20 to 1, up to 50 to 1 in favor of omega 6 fatty acids. Now, why is that a problem? Well, omega 6 fatty acids are essential. You actually need them for a normal inflammatory response. When you look at omega 6 fatty acids like linoleic acid or arachidonic acid, those are involved in mounting a healthy inflammatory response. They help to create, you know, swelling and redness and heat and pain. And you. You actually, of course, as we know, need inflammation in order to recover properly, in order to cause things like satellite cell proliferation, you know, mitochondrial biogenesis. And so you don't want zero omega 6 fatty acids, but the ratio is important. And most people are way out of balance. You know, healthy people. I see this way out of balance issue not brought on by excess vegetable oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, et cetera, consumption, but instead by those precious nut butters, by the handful of almonds here and there, by the impression that you just can't do enough seeds and nuts. And those things build up fast. I find in most people's blood and biomarkers that I can get really, really good normalization of most lipid markers and inflammatory markers in healthy people simply by having them stop seeds and nuts and nut butters and seed butters and seed oils completely for about a month. I'm not saying you got to live your whole life, you know, never getting that precious handful of macadamia nuts that frankly taste amazing. However, you do need to be careful, and. And it's the ratio that is important. It's the ratio that is important. Now, before I dig a little bit more into some of the ratios behind these fatty acids, one myth that floats around out there is that the omega 6 fatty acids are necessary for something called cardiolipin. Cardiolipin. And, you know, cardiolipin molecules are a part of. Of the mitochondria, and they're necessary for the proper production of ATP and the activity of the mitochondrial electron transport chain and if they are oxidized, that tends to be very problematic for mitochondrial health. Well, there were a few studies that looked into the composition of cardiolipin and they found that a large part of cardiolipin was comprised of linoleic acid, which is one of those essential omega 6 fatty acids. And so a lot of people will say, well, you definitely need to Prioritize your omega 6 fatty acid intake if you want proper mitochondrial bioenergetics. But the problem is that if you actually step back and look at other studies that have looked at cardiolipin composition, it turns out that cardiolipin tends to be high in linoleic acid. In people who, you guess it are consuming a lot of seed oils and nut oils, and in folks who are not consuming a lot of those. The primary components of cardiolipin are things like DHA and monounsaturated fatty acids and a lot of these arguably healthier higher omega 3 fatty acids that you would find in more of a Mediterranean diet in fish oil and small cold water fish, et cetera. So it actually is a Myth that omega 6 fatty acids are necessary for proper mitochondrial composition. As a matter of fact, one of the best ways to oxidize and damage cardiolipin is via omega 6 fatty acid and seed and nut oil intake, particularly if your ratios are skewed. So that whole cardiolipin thing, you can throw that out the window. That is a myth. Now when we look at the actual balance, that is necessary. So even though there are a lot of omega 6 or omega fats, you know, I list a host of them in the, in chapter five of Boundless. I get deep into this in Boundless, but I want to give people a little bit of a preview. So omega 3 fatty acids, those are the indispensable part of the cell membrane. Those are the ones with all the anti inflammatory benefits for protecting its heart disease and eczema and arthritis and cancer. We know dietary omega 3 fatty acids help with regulating inflammation and the immune system. And there's three main types of one type a lot of people have heard of, it's EPA and DHA, right? Those are the animal sourced long chain omega 3 fatty acids that you would primarily find in seafood. It's tough to get them from other sources. Now there's another omega 3 fatty acid called Ala Alpha Linoleic Acid. That's a plant based omega 3 fatty acid. And even though people will turn to things like chia seeds or flaxseeds to try and get that ala the conversion is remarkably poor. You could make an argument that you can get a decent amount from algae sources like spirulina and chlorella, but they still don't touch the small cold water fish with a 10 foot pole. When it comes to the actual availability of the omega 3 fatty acids, the omega 6 fatty acids, those are again essential. Those are the polyunsaturated fats which have, the reason they're called six is they have six carbon atoms at the double bond instead of three carbon atoms. We don't have to get deep into the biochemistry because I don't think it's that important for this conversation. But ultimately the omega 6 polyunsaturated fats we would get from things like vegetable oils, processed foods, salad dressings, the whole food salad bar, and especially, like I mentioned, nuts and seeds. And you do not need very many nuts and seeds or vegetable oils and at all to get your ratios way out of whack when it comes to omega 6 fatty acids, you know, particularly from seed oils. And then the, the last fatty acid I think is important for this conversation is omega 9 fatty acids. So those are monounsaturated fats with a single double bond. And you can get a decent amount of Omega 9s from, from Olive oil.

Right.

And so, so you know, that, that I think is a perfect way to ensure you're getting your Omega 9. So to eat a lot of small cold water fish or take fish oil and they get a whole bunch of olive oil, really limit your seed and nut oil consumption and you're going to be pretty, pretty balanced when it comes to the omega 3, omega 6 ratio. If you're, you're interested in the exact balance or the exact ratio, you know, we could look at this from an epidemiological standpoint. Again, you know, like I mentioned, you know, hunter gatherer populations, a lot of indigenous cultures, you know, our ancestors, they had a pretty low ratio of omega sixes to omega threes. You know, we want one to one, up to four to one. And really, you know, if you look at the linoleic acid and omega 6 fatty acid consumption in like the Paleolithic era or in our ancestors, almost none was from industrial seed oils, almost none. Whereas we get Most of our Omega 6s from packaged foods and industrial seed oil oils. So muscle meat of wild animals has, has two to five times more omega 6 than omega 3, but the fat is closer to a ratio of one to one. Right. So, so eating nose to tail is also something that I think has fallen to the wayside that possibly has also influenced our Omega 6 Omega 3 ratio as well as the fact that grain fed cattle, you know, being fed refined grains and seeds versus grass fed grass finished cattle tend to be higher in omega 6s and lower in omega 3s. Right. So, so there's a few other factors here that are contributing to our full intake of omega 6 fatty acids. But you know, if you're eating nose to tail, including lots of fish oils, including lots of olive oils, being careful with seed and nut consumption, you're gonna, you're gonna be able to get closer to what we see in say like Paleolithic eras or you know, or more, more healthy hunter gatherer tribes. So the actual ratio, if I, if I can give you a number based on the, the largest body of research that has been done on fatty acids, the optimal ratio if you're going to look at monounsaturated fatty acids to polyunsaturated fatty acids to saturated fats is six to one to one. Okay, six to one to one. Six parts monounsaturated, one part polyunsaturated, one part saturated. Okay. There's going to be some amount of genetic variability, but that across the board seems to be the actual ideal balance. Okay, so, and again, if you're following some of those recommendations I gave earlier, you're going to get close to that balance. Now. There are a whole lot of other benefits to maintaining high omega 3 fatty acid status. Like there was one trial, big trial called the DART trial, the diet and reinfarction trial. So they found in patients with a history of heart attack, increasing fatty fish consumption reduced all cause mortality by almost 30%. And then giving an omega 3 fatty acid supplement like a fish oil with EPA and DHA reduced all cause mortality by more than 50%. Okay, so small cold water fishing, something 30%. The, the inclusion of fish oil on top of the, that reduced it by more than 50%. There was, there was another big trial called, called the Gissi trial, Gissa trial or Gissi trial. And they tested EPA and DHA on over 11,000 patients who had recently had a heart attack. And those who were taking fish oil saw a significant reduction in non fatal secondary heart attacks, stroke and death. And then they had another big Italian randomized control trial and 7,000 patients with heart failure. And again they saw EPA and DHA supplementation significantly reduced all cause mortality. Probably the other most well known trial was the diet and omega 3 intervention trial, the DOIT trial. So they took 500 Norwegian men, they gave an omega 3 fatty acid supplement it was about 2 grams of EPA and DHA and they saw a 47% reduction in all cause mortality. Now all three of those studies, you should know if you're paying attention, were in people who had pre existing cardiovascular issues or preexisting heart attacks. Okay, so there was one other study that, and this one was more recent, it was 81,000 plus participants. Again, these people hadn't had a heart attack, but they did have high cardiovascular risk and they gave them a gram of omega 3 fatty acids via fish oil for a year. And what they found was a significant decrease in cardiac death, major adverse cardiovascular events and myocardial infarction. Okay, so in pre existing cardiovascular disease, I mean, it appears that fish oil and omega 3 fatty acid intake is a total no brainer. Now, in people without cardiovascular disease risk, there are a lot of other studies that have shown Omega 3s to be beneficial. For example, for athletic rep recovery. There was one recent randomized, double blind placebo controlled study in humans that showed eight weeks of not even that high of an omega 3 supplement or fish oil supplement played a protective role in motor nerve function and attenuated damage post exercise. Okay, so they also found, by the way, that stimulated muscle protein synthesis in older adults, meaning it helped to build muscle as well. So good for recovery, good for muscle building. They also had a recent systematic review and meta analysis on healthy adults and they found episodic memory significantly improved, again with DHA and EPA supplementation. Okay, so they've shown mood and memory improvements that are significant, athletic recovery improvements that are significant. The heart health benefits are undeniable. And there's a host of other studies on joints, on nerves, on circulation, on skin and hair health. I mean there's are some such a case to be made. It's almost like creatine. I mean one of the most well studied nutrients or supplements out there really is omega 3 fatty acids, particularly the EPA and the DHA that you get from fish oil. Now sourcing is important. Sourcing is very important because a lot of fish oil, it's either not sustainably sourced or it's high in toxins, mercury or low in omega 3 fatty acids, or else it's been shipped and allowed to become rancid or oxidized or heated or exposed to light. And then the other problem is that most commercial fish oils, you'll get them in ethyl ester form, very poorly absorbed. Okay. So most fish oil manufacturers do not reconvert the omega 3 fatty acids back into their natural triglyceride form. That's more bioavailable to the human body. It's like 70% more absorbable than the ethyl ester form. So not only do you want fish that is low in toxins, you know, low in mercury, so you want small cold water fish like anchovies, for example. You want to source some good waters, preferably sustainably sourced. And then you want it after the oil has been extracted from the fish, reconverted back into the triglyceride form. And then when it's sitting there in the bottle, the other thing you'll notice if you look at your bottle of fish oil, if it doesn't have something in there to preserve that's natural, you know, like, you know, vitamin E is, is a synthetic preservative. I'm not a huge fan of that, but astaxanthin is, is amazing for, I mean, acesanth, I think is one of the best fish oil preservatives that are out there. Rosemary extract is another. I've been looking into quite a bit because we've been working on a new fish oil formulation for kion. So behind the scenes I've been studying up on this stuff a ton and I think rosemary and astaxanthin are two of the best ways to preserve fish oil. They have a whole bunch of of health properties in and of themselves, but there's a lot of stuff to look for in a fish oil, but primarily low in toxins, low in Mercury, high in Omega 3s sourced from small cold water fish. Again, something like anchovies, triglyceride, not ethyl ester form, and then natural antioxidants to preserve it. Right? No artificial preservatives or tocopherols or vitamin E's. Instead things like astaxanthin or Rosenthal rosemary. So that all being said like that, that's pretty much exactly what we went for with the, with the kion fish oil. And I don't talk about that much on the podcast because it's a brand new supplement. I mean, you can getkeon.com now, but it's basically rosemary Astaxanthin, we shoved a ton of EPA and DHA in there, like in some cases, four times as much as most of the other brands that you get out there. Then we added astaxanthin, we added rosemary, we reconvert it back into the triglyceride form, and it is also at a fraction of the cost of almost every fish oil that's out in the market because we just went with a super simple formula, you know, we didn't add anything that we didn't need to add aside from the astaxanthin and the rosemary. And so far people are really liking it. The one question that I get is if you look at the label, it says there is sunflower oil in there. And I've had a few people ask me, wait, isn't that one of the omega 6 fatty acids? Well, it's the carrier oil. So when we extract the rosemary, right, for, for the fish oil, that, that, you know, rosemary itself has wonderful cognitive properties, but it's also a great way to preserve the fish oil and keep it from getting rancid. Well, we have to, we have to use some kind of a carrier for that rosemary. So what we use organic non GMO pressure extracted without heat, using natural carbon dioxide sunflower oil. So way different than what you'd get, you know, from like a store bought sunflower oil. And it's only 0.004% of the formula. Meaning that if you actually look at the ratio, it's like one part omega 3 fatty acids, or let me put it this way, it would be like a ratio of 26,000 to 1 omega 3s to omega 6s. Right. If you actually step back and look at the amount of sunflower oil in there versus the other components of the omega 3. So there's no issues with the sunflower oil part of it either. So ultimately I'm kind of rabbit holing here a little bit into, into fish oil. But if you were going to get your omega 3 fatty acid levels up, like taking just 2 to 4 of the kion omegas on a daily basis and then eating a lot of the small cold water fish like sardines, mackerel, anchovies, anovies, salmon, herring, those would be the five best, called the smash diet. Right? Salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardine and herring. And then we get our fish oil from kion, from anchovies, that's the source we use. And then just being really careful with the omega 6 fatty acid intake, particularly from seeds and nuts, and then getting a whole bunch of extra virgin olive oil in for your Omega 9s, I think that's really the best way to ensure that your fatty acid status is good. Now there is one other thing that I think is important and there's a great guy, his name is James DiNicolantonio. A little bit of a mouthful, but he actually has done a lot of research on how you could limit the amount of lipid oxidation and damage from vegetable oils and trans Fats. Are there certain things that you could consume that would help to protect against lipid peroxidation? And he's found certain things can actually help a ton. For example, intense exercise can, can short term create oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation, but long term you actually get lower inflammation and lower oxidation. So regular, you know, brief efforts of like heavy lifting or high intensity interval training that allows your body to be able to flip fight off lipid peroxidation even better. Another one, of course would be avoiding overcooking a food like high heat cooking, deep frying, grilling, sauteing, et cetera. That's why I've even been doing a lot more sous vide cooking, like the water bath cooking. Even though I really like the Traeger grill. And even when I use the Traeger, I don't use super high temps. But you do want to be careful excessively cooking especially meats and foods that have fats in them with, with high heat. And then when you look at things that can actually protect the membranes themselves, the things he's looked at were astaxanthin. Right? Astaxanthin from, from algae, salmon, pinkish red seafood. Same stuff we add to the kion fish oil that can actually help to reduce lipid peroxidation. Okay, so, so that's, that's one thing that's super helpful is astaxanthin, which, which also kind of can help to protect the skin. It's like an internal sunscreen. You gotta take pretty high doses. Like when I used to race Ironman Hawaii, I'd take 10 to 40 milligrams of astaxanthin pre race. And I think there's maybe I might be misspeaking. I think there's like 2 milligrams in the KION omegas, but it is enough to protect the fish oil at least. Spirulina is another one. I was really surprised about this spirulina. Like if, let's say you eat at the whole food salad bar, you could literally go grab some spirulina, like have one of those green drinks with the spirulina in it. Fantastic at limiting lipid peroxidation. Right. And so that's kind of like in the lipid peroxidation toolbox or the, what would you say, the first aid kit. Right. If you've had vegetable oils, have spirulina. Another one with really impressive data behind is glycine. Right? Glycine that you get from bone broth, bone Marrow eating, nose to tail, et cetera, about 3 to 5 grams of glycine can really reduce lipid peroxidation. So this is actually something I do after reading a lot of James's research is if I do have a meal that I know has an appreciable amount of vegetable oil in it, like I'm just, I mean, at the whole food salad bar, for example, I'll just have a big old cup of bone broth and then some spirulina tablets or spirulina supplement or one of those green drinks that has spirulina in it. And the extent to which both of those components can reduce lipid peroxidation is actually pretty dang impressive. And the only other three that I think are interesting that he looked into were garlic, turmeric and magnesium. Right. Which those are super easy to work into the diet. And so that shouldn't be used as an excuse to eat a whole bunch of seed and nut oils. But it is important to know that you can prevent oxidation of lipids, which occurs so prevalently in a westernized diet format by including some of those things like spirulina, glycine, garlic, turmeric, magnesium, occasional bounce of intense exercise, and then astaxanthin and then just avoiding overcooking your food. So kind of a long reply to the question, but that is where I would start. We'll link to the kion omegas in the shownotes@bengreenfulfitness.com 421. Don't use it as an excuse to not eat fish because I do both. I typically take these days I'm doing, my kids do two of the kion omegas in the morning, I do four. And then on the days where I'm having a big serving of fish, I step back and I have two. And then if I know I've had a lot of omega 6 fatty acids, I'll take as many as eight just to get the balance back up. So anyway, so with your normal being.

4, how many milligrams of EPA and DHA is that, if you can recall?

So we use about a one to one ish ratio of EPA to DHA, but one one gram, one capsule of the Kion Omegas has 530 of EPA, 435 of DHA. So it's not quite a perfect one to one ratio. So if I, if I take four, right. I'm getting 4,000 milligrams of Omega 3s, which is a lot. So four grams. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, that's. That's a pretty heavy load.

That would be similar to having like 12 ounces of mackerel. Like, it's. It's a decent amount. Yeah.

Yeah. So I. I take the. The. Oh, what's it called? The super essentials. Omega 3s. And so I think it's like per capsule. It's like not per capsule, but per gel. It's like, what, maybe 120 milligrams. I want to say EPA, 120 milligrams of DHA. So in order to get that, I mean, you know, I would have to. To take, I mean, a ton. I mean, I take. I take 10 of them, which gives me close to two and a half grams of EPA DHA. So you guys got some pretty potent stuff.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, that's what I used for a very long time was the Super Essentials. Right. Because it was a quality, pure, highly concentrated omega 3 fish oil. But this is better. It's less expensive, requires a smaller serving size. We have a higher concentration of EPA and dha. And, you know, at the price point, it's. It's actually better than the Super Essentials. So. Yeah, and that's. That's. That's what I've switched to. So hands on it. Yeah. So. BenGreenFitness.com421 we'll link to all this stuff. You go to GetKion.com for the Keon Omegas. Great question. Sorry we got into the weeds, but important stuff.

You got in the weeds.

Well, speaking of getting into the weeds, we're almost out of the weeds, but. But this is the part of the show where we like to give away some swag. So this is the time, if I can find my words, when. If you leave a review of this show on any of your favorite podcast players and you hear your review right on the show, we'll send you a sweet swag bag straight from me. T shirt, bpa, free water bottle, cool little beanie, and some other goodies. And all you need to do is, if you hear us read your review, just email gearngreenfieldfitness.com include your T shirt size, and we'll get a handy dandy gear pack right out to you. So, that being said, Jay, want to take it away?

I will. Since I knew, Ben, that you were gonna rabbit hole in that omega 6 fatty acids question, I chose a very, very pithy yet potent review from Andy Dew. And Andy Dew says, this is the most comprehensive biohacking podcast I've ever heard puts almost all others to shame. Which I thought was funny, and I wanted to highlight that word, almost all others to shame. Yeah, exactly. Oh, who's better? Who's better, Andy? Yeah, let us know. And if you don't let us know, we won't send you anything. Or if you do let us know, we won't send you anything.

Yeah. Bastard. All right.

Exactly.

Well, what we're gonna. We're gonna send some stuff anyways, Andy. So thanks for the review. And if you also think this is almost the best biocap hack, Bubba Biohacking podcast, if that's what you call us, then, yeah, leave a review. It really does help the show out. Leave your comments, your questions, your feedback, your own little things to add over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 4:21 and in the meantime, I am. I'm going to try and string myself awake a few more hours here and go fix a fire alarm upstairs.

Yeah, you do that. And I'm gonna go take some fish oil. So there we go.

All right, you guys, thanks for listening. And until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. J.T. wiles signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with the 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.