Q&A 423: Does Weed Make You Stupid & Does Cannabis Affect Testosterone?, What's The Best Pre-Workout Formula?, Should Teens Fast? & Much More.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, does weed make you stupid and does cannabis affect your testosterone? What's the best pre workout formula? Should teens fast? And much more.

Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more.

My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, hello. This is actually a bit awkward because I am recording this podcast episode for you absolutely solo. I received a last minute notice today that my Trusty podcast sidekick J.T. wiles, Dr. J.T. wiles, is indisposed. I think his Internet crashed. So it was just me. But there were so many kind of cool news flashes about weed and cannabis and testosterone and other like herbs and compounds that came out this week, as well as some great questions that came through from you, the listeners that I figured I would jump in and do a little solo. So Q and A for you today. So A everything I talk about you're going to find@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 423If I mentioned research, studies, products, special events, anything like that, you can get access to everything in the show. Notes that we work laboriously over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 423 and and then also if you like these kind of Q and A episodes and you want to actually go leave a question for the podcast, you can also do that@bengreenfieldfitness.com 423 because I usually start this episode with witty banter with my sidekick. And since my sidekick is not here, I'm not even going to worry about the weedy banter. I'm just going to jump straight into today's hot news flashes for you guys. This just in. Does weed make you stupid? I know that there's been lots of controversy about this in the past because it has been shown that, for example, heavy use of THC might affect the gray matter in the brain, particularly in young individuals. Which is why I don't think anyone prior to the age of 18 should be using much marijuana, for example, just because there might be some effect on overall anatomical structuring of neural tissue. However, this most recent study that just came out looked at the effects of cannabis use on cognitive function in in healthy aging adults, particularly older adults who were over 50 years old, which is like the fastest growing population of people who use cannabis. They say it's for pain. I think it's because there's a lot of grandparents out there sitting around watching Family Guy on the couch chuckling a little bit more heavily due to their doses of thc. Anyways, though, what this study looked at was a bunch of different articles and studies that had dug into whether or not THC affects, particularly cognition, what's called cognitive function. And what they found, lo and behold, was that this systematic review observed extremely low doses of THC improved cognition in older individuals, both humans and rodents. Higher chronic doses also, and this is going to be a bit of a surprise to you, also seem to improve cognition a little bit as well. And so I thought this was pretty interesting, so I thought I'd dig into it a little bit more, because when you read the headlines of these studies, sometimes it's a little different than what's actually going on behind the scenes. So, yeah, this was a systematic review. It looked at the effects of cannabis use on cognitive function in the context of healthy aging. They took a bunch of studies in both adults and mice, and they looked at particularly older adults and mice because they wanted to see what it does to older people who use cannabis. And the background of this was that, like I mentioned, a lot of research suggests cannabis might alter cognition, might alter brain morphology, or the growth of gray matter in the brain particularly, or the shrinkage of it more specifically. So what they found was that again, the THC treated older models performed better on cognitive tasks. And so then I dug into some of the other research that has influenced some of the mutterings out there about whether or not the use of weed might make you stupid. And you can indeed find another research study that came out just this past month on the use of THC and impairment of short term memory and working performance. And so whereas overall cognitive function in older adults doesn't seem to be affected, the actual use of THC on a chronic basis especially, and I'm talking about thc, not cbd, it does appear to impact working memory. And so if memory, word recall, et cetera, is important to you on any given day or in life in general, you may actually want to be a little bit careful with cannabis. Now here's the interesting thing. There was yet another recent review that looked at the effects of cannabis use on cognition. And what this found was that when THC is co administered with cbd, right? So if you were going to use marijuana or cannabis, but use a higher CBD blend or supplement said compound with cbd, you actually see a reduction in the impact on memory and a reduction in the impact on cognitive performance, specifically the deleterious impact on cognitive performance. So what this is looking like is a, if you're older, you know, and you're using cannabis for, let's say, pain management or Something like that, you don't have to worry too much about it shrinking your brain or impairing cognitive function. However, there is some evidence that it might affect your short term memory, whether you're young or old. With that being said, if you take some CBD at the same time that you take THC, and we're talking even like a microdose of CBD, like 10 milligrams, 20 milligrams, right around that range, you can stave off some of these effects on cognition and working memory if you are concerned about that. And then furthermore, again, the evidence that I've seen over and over again does show that if you're younger and you're concerned about anatomical formation of your central nervous system, gray matter in the brain, et cetera, it might be a good idea to avoid marijuana altogether until your central nervous system is fully formed. So that is the latest on THC when it comes to cognition. However, there were also some interesting studies that came out this month that looked at the effects of cannabis use on sexual function. So this was kind of interesting, a look at both erectile dysfunction as well as testosterone levels. So the first thing is that cannabis users were found to be twice as likely to experience erectile. Erectile dysfunction. The overall prevalence of erectile dysfunction in cannabis users was about 70% and in control groups it was only about 35%. And so I'm not quite sure what's going on here. You know, if it is more of a relaxation, a decrease in blood flow, whether it might also be something that could be co administered with the cannabis. For example, we know a lot of people who smoke weed would also be people who might also smoke cigarettes. And we know that nicotine is a vasoconstrictive agent and in some people can impair erectile function. Likelike. I know some people who even will use like, you know, nicotine lozenges or nicotine gum or some other form of nicotine outside of a cigarette, and they'll have that happen. And so if you're one of those people who uses nicotine and struggles with getting it up, fellas, you may want to be careful with that. And you may also really want to be careful with cannabis. If it doubles your risk of erectile dysfunction, that could actually be an issue. And you know, these are people, again, who are, who are pretty frequent cannabis users. I don't think that smoking a joint every now and again is going to significantly impact sexual function, although it might acutely, as I think many men know, impair sexual performance acutely and Some people actually like to use THC for sex. And there are ways around this, like beetroot or Viagra or anything else that might improve blood flow to the genitalia, while at the same time using something that might, you know, increase the risk of erectile dysfunction. You can always stack certain things to offset the effects of other things. But ultimately turns out that if you have issues with erectile dysfunction and you're a marijuana user, you may want to consider thinking twice about the use of marijuana. And what's actually interesting is that the erectile dysfunction does not appear to be related to, say, like, a drop in testosterone. Because another study, and this is the final one I wanted to tell you about when it comes to thc, for anybody who's just not interested in pot whatsoever, don't worry, we're almost done with this part. Regular THC users, and they actually define these as people who use THC at least one time per month, which I wouldn't classify as a regular THC user. But anyway, somebody who uses THC at least one time per month, every month for at least a year. These people had higher testosterone. Okay. They actually saw an increase in testosterone in regular users of thc. And again, there are so many confounding variables here. Like, you know, I don't know, our more daring alpha males, more likely to use marijuana. I don't know. Would they be the same type of people who might be having sex frequently, which would also indirectly increase testosterone? Maybe. But ultimately, it looks like you don't have to worry too much about the impact on testosterone if you are a frequent. And if by frequent we mean once a month THC user. Now, they didn't look at people who were using it, like, acutely every single day. We know that, you know, frequent targeting of the endocannabinoid system could probably cause some relaxation and almost like it's considered kind of like a female plant. Right. In plant medicine, it's considered one of those more kind of like, I guess it would be called yin compounds. And so I suspect that if you heavily use thc, not only are you going to see an impact on erectile dysfunction, but also on testosterone, but it appears occasional use, even though occasional use may even impact erectile dysfunction, could actually cause a slight increase in testosterone or at least is associated with an increase in testosterone. So. So there you have it. That's the latest on thc. All sorts of interesting things we can learn from that. Now, the other thing when it comes to testosterone is that there were other herbs that were recently looked into when it comes to things that actually work for increasing testosterone function or testosterone concentration in men. And this was kind of a cool study because what they did was they did a systematic review of all the literature out there on all these different crazy compounds and herbs that you could use to increase testosterone. They looked at fenugreek and ashwagandha, ginseng, forskoli. I think There were like 32 different studies that they looked at and 13 different herbs that they investigated. Because as you know, you know, anybody who's looked at the ingredients, labels of those gas station dick pills understands that there are a host of different compounds and herbs that are often championed as being able to increase testosterone. What they actually found. Drumroll, please. In terms of what actually, at least in this systematic review, caused a statistically significant increase in testosterone concentrations were fenugreek seed, ashwagandha, ginseng, and then the last one was forscoli. Okay? Those are all readily available herbs. Obviously, you got to be careful where you get herbs because sometimes they can be laden with metals or other compounds, herbicides, pesticides, etc. But fenugreek for scoli, ashwagandha and ginseng, I think it would be cool to come out with a testosterone increasing formula that combine those with the type of nutrients that I have in many podcasts before noted are notoriously low in men who have low testosterone, namely vitamin D, boron, zinc, DHEA, creatine, and omega 3 fatty acids. And if you were to combine that with fenugreek, forskoli, ashwagandha and ginseng, based on what I've seen in research, you could actually have a pretty cool testosterone increasing formula. So there's an idea for you supplement manufacturers out there, unless I beat you to it in my secret Batman labs at Kion. We'll see. So anyways, speaking of kion, I obviously had a lot of questions come my way when we launched that fish oil or Kion Omega a few weeks ago because it has astaxanthin. And I got lots of questions about astaxanthin. And so I wanted to tell you a little bit about astaxanthin because there were some other research studies that came out this month that looked into this fascinating compound. So this is really cool. And you gotta bear in mind, like this particular study, actually both these studies I'm gonna tell you about, they're using kind of like higher doses of astaxanthin, anywhere from 6 up to 20 milligrams. I used to take like 40 milligrams of astaxanthin when I'd race Ironman Hawaii because it is really good as almost like an edible sunscreen. It's a really good skin protectant in higher doses. The kion omeg that we just launched, the fish oil that we add astaxanthin to to just basically keep the fish oil from getting damaged or oxidized, that only has about 2 milligrams of astaxanthin in one of the softgel capsules. So you'd have to take you know, at least like four capsules to start to get into the range used in a lot of these studies. But anyways, what they looked at with, with astaxanthin was its use as what's called a geroprotector. What's a geroprotector? So a geroprotector is any compound that would be considered something that protects against aging. And there's obviously been a lot of scientific interest in all these natural compounds with geroprotective activities in the past several years. Now, among a lot of these studied molecules, Astaxanthin is a pretty highly promising candidate because it acts on so many different pathways, particularly one called the Foxo3, which is one of only two genes that's been shown to robustly affect human longevity. But it's also been shown to do things like slow down brain aging by increasing brain derived neurotrophic factors. And it's also been shown to stave off damage, particularly oxidative damage to lipids, which is why we put it in the, in the key on fish oil to protein and to DNA. So when you look at astaxanthin, it's acting on a wide variety of pathways. So the reason for this is it belongs to this phytochemical family, it's called carotenoids. So carotenoids are these natural called tetra terpenoid pigments. And they're found in plants and algae and fungi and bacteria. They're usually classified as carotenes or xanthophylls. And so what these carotenoids do is they are what are called photoprotective compounds within these plants. They scavenge free radicals and reactive oxygen species within the plant cells. But then they can also in animals help to act as precursors to certain vitamins. For example, retinol or vitamin A is something that would bethat would be increased via the use of caroten intake. And there are different carotenoids that you'll hear talked about like lutein and zeaxanthin, really good for the eyes, lycopene from something like tomatoes, good for the prostate gland. There's another one called cryptoxanthin, which acts kind of similar to astaxanthin. But astaxanthin is one of the primary marine carotenoids. So that means you'll find it in fish and crustaceous, what would you call them, animals, crustaceous sea creatures like lobsters and crabs and edible seaweeds particularly are very high diet in these carotenoids. And you also find them pretty common in diets that would be abundant in marine foods, like the Japanese diet or the Inuin diet or a lot of the coastal countries along the Mediterranean area. They have a diet that tends to be high in a lot of these carotenoids, particularly marine carotenoid astaxanthin. And so when we look at astaxanthin, it's synthesized by microalgae and by plankton. It's producing the cytoplasm of microalgae and plankton mainly to counteract oxidative stress in these compounds. So the microalgae, for example, will produce astaxanthin in high amounts when they're under environmental stress or adverse culture conditions like high light or high salinity or nutrient deprivation. And the astaxanthin helps to protect these marine compounds. But then when fish eat phytoplankton or microalgae, the astaxanthin gets accumulated in the bodies of the fish and that gives the pinkish red color in like the flesh or the shells or even the feathers. Like flamingos, for example. Those will feed on phytoplankton and microalgae. And that's why flamingos are pink. Pink is the astaxanthin, which is kind of cool to think about, or like a nice dark reddish pink cut of wild caught salmon. That's because the astaxanthin content, whereas the dark reddish pink color of salmon from a farmed source is probably because they freaking dyed it. So anyways, you'll find this astaxanthin in a lot of marine compounds. And you can of course also supplement with it, but it is an extremely powerful antioxidant. I remember I interviewed one anti aging researcher who wrote a book, Sandra Kaufman, and she did like a rank prioritization of all the different anti aging compounds out there. And astaxanthin was up there with like NAD and curcumin in terms of its effect at protecting the brain and Also acting on a host of different longevity increasing pathways. So it has all these different pro longevity mechanisms because it acts on the NRF2 pathways to modulate inflammation. It acts on the PGC1 Alpha pathways to increase things like mitochondrial biogenesis and mitochondrial health along with glucose regulation. It acts on again that pathway I mentioned earlier, the FoxO3 pathway, which is amazing for DNA repair. You've heard me talk about that Clotho protein and the incredibly expensive probiotic called, oh, what's it called? Immortal. Right. It's a probiotic that increases the activity in the Clotho gene. Well, the Clothogene is this really cool anti aging gene that appears to be one of the prime genes involved in delaying cellular senescence and extending lifespan through regulation of a whole bunch of different anti aging cellular processes. Well, it turns out that in addition to probiotics, Astaxanthin is something that can also increase the activity of this Clotho protein. And so the other thing that it does is it acts on these SIRT1 pathways which again will along with NAD particularly acts to protect DNA. So it's really cool all the different pathways that astaxanthin is acting on as an anti aging compound. I'll link to this fascinating article in the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com if you want to read up a little bit more on all the different ways that astaxanthin can work. But at the same time that this anti aging study just came out, another paper came across my radar that looked at the neuroprotective role of astaxanthin. So based on everything that I've just told you, you know that it's great for general systemic anti aging, but it's also been receiving a lot of attention for its use in the potential prevention or co treatment of neurological pathologies like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. And really interesting because it turns out I looked into this a little bit more. It's one of the few antioxidants that can actually cross your blood brain barrier. Right. Your central nervous system is kind of isolated from all the other compartments of the human body through the blood brain barrier, which helps to keep neurotoxins from penetrating into the brain or keep like immune cells or infectious agents from getting into things like cerebral spinal fluid or neural tissue. But there are some things that can cross the blood brain barrier to act as neural anti inflammatory. And it turns out that astaxanthin is one of those. And when it does so, it increases nerve cell regeneration, it increases the production of brain derived neurotrophic factor. And it acts on all these pathways that increase neuronal survival and neuronal growth and differentiation of new neurons. And I looked into the studies on lateral sclerosis or als, on cerebral ischemia and reperfusion, especially after TBI or concussion, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's, and there's actually a ton of literature out there on the use of astaxanthin. And again, some of the ranges aren't super high. We're talking like 6-20mg around in that range and you know, in some rodent models as low as two. But it's, it's pretty interesting all the different effects that astaxanthin can have. And then finally, a couple months ago, a final journal study came out looking at acute respiratory distress syndrome and acute lung injury in respiratory response to COVID 19. And this particular study looked at microalgae derived natural astaxanthin as an antioctant and broad spectrum anti inflammatory compound that could be protective against the cytokine storm associated with acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome. And this article summarized the most likely benefits of astaxanthin as being an adjunctive in attenuation of COVID 19 induced health adversaries. And so this was also very interesting and I'm definitely going to add it to my own potential protocol should I ever come down with something like acute respiratory distress syndrome or acute lung injury related to Covid. So all sorts of super interesting new research on astaxanthin just because I've been geeking out on it since it's part of one of the new formulas we have at Kion. And it turns out that the effects of athaxanthin just keep on impressing me more and more. So, so super interesting compound is definitely part of my daily protocol for sure now. So I'll link to all these studies if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 423 and next, I want to give you guys some big fat discount codes. So let's do this.

Hey, Ben. My name's Jason and I'm 46 years old and I've got cold hands. They get worse in the wintertime, but they're cool in the summer. Probably. I'm thinking Raynaud's, but I don't want to claim that, that I'm open to any feedback you have on maybe how to make it better, anything. Physiology, neurology, supplements, testing, breath work. I'm open to all of it any help is much appreciated. Thank you very much.

Oh, man. I get cold hands and feet myself. Not as bad as my wife, I think. My wife has Raynaud. She hasn't been diagnosed with Raynaud's, but she gets super cold hands and feet. I think my hands and feet just get cold because I just tend to have. Have really genetically low body fat percentage. Like, year round. I'm around 4 to 7% body fat, so I just don't have a lot of insulation. But man, like Raynaud syndrome, which is quite common, especially in people who are complaining about what you're doing. Jason, it really is an issue if you get, like, numb or tingling feeling in your fingers or toes when it's really cold outside, or if you just feel like your hands and feet get colder than all your friends hands and feet, it's probably a good sign that you may have Raynaud's. About 5% of people who live in the US actually have have Raynaud's. And there's a couple different things that can cause it, but it's basically this condition that affects the blood vessels that carry blood from the heart to different parts of the body. People with Raynaud's, they get these episodes of what's called vasospasm. So the blood vessels narrow and reduce blood flow to the extremities, particularly in response to cold. And there was this French physician back in the 1800s named Maurice Raynaud, and he's the guy who identified this, which is why it's named after him. The. And he explained that thewhat's called the tricolor change that occurs when the blood vessels narrow and cut off the blood supply to the extremities, so that the extremities, like the fingers or the toes, they'll kind of look pale or white or a little bit bluish because the lack of oxygen. And then the blood rushes back in and they turn red after the cold exposure. And there's two types of Raynaud's. You got primary Raynaud's, which is also called Raynaud's disease, and that's the more common form, but some less severe. And that's basically the reduced blood flow to the arteries. And then you have secondary Raynaud's, which is usually linked to, like, an autoimmune disorder or a connective tissue disorder or some other type of environmental or lifestyle factor that would be causing that, that vasoconstrictive effect. But people with Raynaud's usually would get, like, this attack where things get super duper cold, especially if you get exposed to cold. So you get tingling, you get numbness, you get coldness. The extremities will turn white first and then blue, and they'll feel really painful, but then they'll turn bright red and start to throb and burn when the blood flow returns. I think anybody can almost simulate this, even if they don't have Raynaud's. If they get out into the cold, snow or ice, get super cold, then go take a hot shower. And you know how everything almost like itches and tingles when you get in the hot shower. That's what people with Raynaud's feel like a lot, especially when they get into the cold, cold. And so cold temperatures are obviously one of the main ways that this can get triggered. It's also triggered due to stress and anxiety. Some people will get a Raynaud's attack even when they aren't exposed to cold temperatures. If they're exposed to a lot of stress and anxiety, they'll actually start to notice the tingling in their fingertips and that loss of blood flow, which is super interesting. It can be aggravated, especially secondary Raynaud's syndrome, which I mentioned, that can be aggravated by auto immune disorders like scleroderma. That's a connective tissue disease. It's like an autoimmune disease that means hard skin. That's what scleroderma means, is hard skin. And you get this abnormal growth of connective tissue where the skin gets really thick and hard and builds up scar tissue, so the blood vessels can't feed that area, like the fingers or the toes quite as well. Lupus is another type of autoimmune disease that affects the skin and that also can cause Raynaud's phenomenon or, or secondary Raynaud. Raynaud's rheumatoid arthritis is another, and there's a few other autoimmune diseases dictating that people have secondary Raynaud's. Like, if you have Raynaud's syndrome, but you also know that you've got, like some weird food allergies and some weird autoimmune issues, you'd be kind of a perfect candidate. And I'm not a doctor, I don't want you to misconstrue this as medical advice. But for kind of adopting more of an autoimmune diet, like, I really like my friend Mickey Trescott's Paleo autoimmune protocol as a food elimination protocol that can manage a lot of autoimmune issues. Issues that doesn't taste like cardboard or just straight up ass. It's actually A really, really good, tasty cookbook. The Paleo Autoimmune Cookbook and the Paleo Autoimmune Diet Book, both of which I think you can find on Amazon, written by Mickey Trescott. I think are, are two of the better autoimmune type of books out there for kind of a dietary approach to a lot of these autoimmune issues, which could be kind of helpful for you if you feel like your Raynaud's is triggered by autoimmune. If you smoke, smoke, if you drink alcohol and anything that's going to cause vasoconstriction, that can also, including, like I mentioned earlier, maybe cannabis or nicotine could also aggravate it a little bit as well. And so that's something to think about. More importantly, what can you do about it? Well, anything that would be a vasodilator can help, like anything with nitrates in it, like beet juice, red juice. I talk about that organifi. Red stuff in the, in the sponsor section. Anything that increases blood flow, like that nitroglycerin cream, even like Viagra or sildenafil or anything along those lines that would increase blood flow would be something that can help out a little bit with Raynaud's syndrome. Nitrates or nitrate rich diet. And if you go back and listen to the podcast episode in which we talked about nitric oxide a ton, we just geeked out on everything you could do to increase nitric oxide and everything, everything that decreases nitric oxide, like the use of mouthwash or cleaning out the mouth too much, because the mouth is where a lot of the conversion into nitric oxide by the oral bacteria takes place. Go listen to that podcast episode and make sure that if you struggle with Raynaud's or anything else related to vasoconstriction, including things like erectile dysfunction or poor sports performance, that you go and listen to that big podcast episode that we did on nitric oxide, and I'll link to that one in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 4 423. Prostaglandin is a special medication that's often used to open the blood vessels, but there's a lot of adverse effects associated with prostaglandin, like headaches and nausea. And in my opinion, you can simulate a lot of what you get from prostaglandin medication, which is straight up slightly higher dose fish oil. I feel like I'm being a shill for fish oil now because that's the second time I brought it up on today's show. But I'm just saying in terms of a vasodilatory type of, of compound and also a slight blood thinning agent, which might help out a little bit here, too, that's something to think about, would be, you know, like, higher dose fish oil. When I say higher dose, I'm talking like around 8 to 10 grams or so. I personally usually take about 6 to 8 grams of fish oil a day just because I feel so good on it. A few other things that you could think about doing acupuncture. Interestingly, there have been some really good studies on acupuncture treatment with Raynaud's syndrome. Syndrome, and so acupuncture. I'm not sure if it's due to the increase in blood flow or due to the increase in so called key or life force energy to an area of the body. That one also appears to be somewhat helpful, along with an autoimmune type of diet and the avoidance of any type of vasoconstrictive compounds and the consumption of the type of things that would actually increase blood flow. And by the way, things that can be vasoconstrictive medications would be be like birth control pills, migraine meditation, beta blockers that slow your heart rates, a lot of ADHD medications. Those can all be vasoconstrictive agents. And I'm not saying to stop taking a medication that your doctor has you on, but be aware if something that you're using is vasoconstrictive. And again, even like nicotine can be that way to a certain extent. Caffeine can cause vasoconstriction in some people. Cannabis, like I mentioned, can cause that. So if you're using a lot of these, these type of supplements and compounds, you may want to experiment with not using them when you get exposed to cold particularly, and instead choosing things like nitric oxide precursors, fish oil, et cetera, prior to cold exposure. And you may want to look into the acupuncture piece as well. There's also some people who have been using the WIM HOF protocol to increase circulation. And this is really interesting because you'd think that that type of repetitive cold exposure, such as doing breath work followed by cold thermogenesis, would aggravate Raynaud's. But it turns out that it may actually help to build circulation or at least increase your ability to kind of like train yourself to subconsciously increase circulation. And you look at some of these old yogis who are able to like, turn one hand red while Keeping the other hand the same color. There's some crazy videos. If I can hunt them down, I'll put them in the show notes. But they can literally send blood to different areas of their body by using a lot of breathwork techniques. Techniques. And a lot of these yogic practices are something that WIM HOF is actually built upon. The WIM HOF breathwork tactic is actually built upon. And so there was this one lecture that was given at the Cold Research Division of the U.S. army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine a few years ago in which a physician was talking about how he and his colleague were developing a protocol to help people with Raynaud's train themselves to regain circulation in their feet, fingers. And all they were doing was three to six times a day, they were putting their hands into warm water and then into cold water and then into warm water and then into cold water. And they did that for 50 rounds, like 50 days in a row. That cold water, warm water, almost like a hot, cold contrast bath for the hands. And all the 150 test subjects that they use there were able to venture out into the cold afterwards without losing circulation to their hands. And the the doctor who ran that study, his name was Dr. Murray Hamlet, he said basically they were just retraining the blood vessels to dilate rather than to constrict in response to the cold. And he claimed that it worked extremely well. And so that's something to think about, is just doing almost like hot, cold contrast for your hands. And considering the hot, cold contrast for the entire body for nitric oxide production, for vagal nerve stimulation, et cetera, is really fantastic. You could just do the whole body, do three rounds of a cold soak to a sauna or a cold soak to a hot tub, or do a hot, cold contrast shower of 20 seconds hot, 10 seconds cold, or 20 seconds cold, 10 seconds hot for 10 times through. But it turns out that that might actually have a pretty good effect. So I'll link to some of these ideas for you in the show notes, including the WIM HOF protocol and the Paleo autoimmune books and some of this other stuff I just mentioned. So hopefully that's helpful for you, Jason. And let's move on to the next question.

What's up? Ben Preston here, longtime listener, constant applier of everything you talk about on the podcast and in Boundless. But when it comes right down to it, I'm still wanting to take a scoop of pre workout, dump it in the mixer, shake it up, and go rep it out with the bros at the gym. So what's the deal with pre workout powder and what. How much stimulants should I be intaking on a daily basis? You know, going to the gym every day, but I'm using pre workout like three, four times a week. All right, love to hear your thoughts.

Well, hello, Preston, longtime listener, constant applier of everything I talk about in my podcast and inboundless. That's fantastic. It sounds like you're really drinking the Kool Aid, which is a horrific analogy because I think that comes from some kind of a cult in which they had the Kool Aid spiked with arsenic or something like that and a whole bunch of people died. And that's where that whole expression originated. Originated from. I think it was a Jonestown massacre. And so don't go actually, actually drink the Kool Aid. But in this case, there is some stuff you can drink because we're talking about pre workouts, pre workout stimulants. Now, in podcast 420, Jay and I talked about all the kind of things you could take before, like a nighttime workout that would be considered a stimulant that would give you energy for a workout, but that would not stimulate the central nervous nervous system to the extent to where you might impair sleep function. And so that'd be a really good episode for you to listen to. But the main things just to review super quick and then you can go dig into that episode. Then I'm gonna share with you a few other ideas that I have were microdose of nicotine, because it's in and out of your system a lot faster than caffeine, but can give you a little bit of a cognitive pickup for workout. We talked about using that either via gum or a lozenge or using the Amazonian herb or powder called hoppe. There's this stuff called Zen spray that you can get from Dr. John Lawrence in Florida. And I'll use this a lot of times for my evening kettlebell workouts out in my icy cold garage. I'll do like two to three sprays of that stuff up my nose. It burns like you're smoking a cigarette up your nose for about 30 seconds and then almost like smelling salts, you feel like you could go kill somebody or crush a kettlebell. And so that that Zen spray works really well. That's another option. Lion's mane extract, even though it has small trace amounts of caffeine in it, is great for an evening workout because it'll give you mental and cognitive energy without keeping you up at night. And A lot of people actually swear by lion's mane to help with things like lucid and vivid dreaming. A lot of people will use that common microdosing stack of psilocybin and lion's mane and actually use a little bit of that in the evening and find that they dream better. That's not the case for me. I find psilocybin. Psilocybin keeps me awake if I take it at night. But a little bit of lion's mane pre workout can be another one to mess around with. Theanine is also quite useful because it increases alpha brainwave production and kind of puts you in the flow, but again won't keep you up at night. And that's also something that people will use for sleep and dreaming as well. So L. Theanine powder, like 100 to 200 milligrams of L. Theanine. The company Qualia, they make a really great nootropic formulation that's caffeine free called, called Qualia Mind. That would be another one to look into. And then the last one would be like a royal jelly acetylcholine precursor. And there's a company called Beekeepers Naturals that makes one called Bee Powered. And any of those would be considered nootropics or central nervous system stimulants that wouldn't affect circadian rhythm or keep you awake at night or even be something that if you're using them during the day, day you become super dependent on. Except maybe nicotine, which is arguably a little bit addictive or perhaps a lot addictive for many people. But the cool thing is a lot of those compounds I just listed are also just useful for general work day function without giving you the jitteriness of a cup of coffee or affecting your circadian rhythm in the same way as a cup of coffee might. Now, I also had a really interesting podcast with a bodybuilder named Milo Sarko Workhev, and that was fascinating. I'll link to that one in the shownotes. But he went through his pre workout formula because he's into not only intra workout intake of certain compounds based on the theory that when the blood flow is hot and heavy to your muscles, that if you're drinking something in between your sets or sometimes even in between your reps, you're going to increase delivery of that compound like amino acids or creatine or beta alanine or something like that into your mind muscles. And so he's one of those guys who, like many bodybuilders, will just walk around lifting with a shaker cup full of compounds. But then he also had his super secret go to pre workout formula which is no longer super secret because we talked about it on the show and I'm going to tell you what it is right now and it's kind of complex and I'll put the whole recipe in the show notes. But his go to and I tried this after I interviewed him and even though I'm not a bit like I don't go to the gym for hours anymore, I'm just, just like in and out, 20, 30 minutes quick kettlebell workout or whatever. But it is a pretty life giving compound when it comes to a pre workout formula. So he uses about 10 grams of essential amino acids, 5 grams of leucine, 10 grams of glutamine, 5 grams of creatine, 5 grams of citrulline, 3 grams of arginine. Those would be both blood flow agents, 3 grams of beta alanine, 3 grams of carnitine. So a couple of things to buffer lactic acid and then about 2 to 3 grams of an electrolyte Dr. Light Drink Powder. He puts all that in a shaker cup and sucks it down. And what I like about that is if you look through the formula, you know, from amino acids to citrulline to arginine to beta alanine etc, you know, it's not like you're drinking a bunch of yerba mate and caffeine and ephedralite compounds on a lot of the stuff that feel like they're giving you a heart attack before your workout. Instead these are natural compounds that mostly just allow for better post workout protein synthesis. This they stave off some of the release of tryptophane across the blood brain barrier. So you get a little bit less central nervous system fatigue during your workout. So I really like that formula. I realized just like any recipe you probably didn't write all that down or remember it. But I'll link to that in my podcast with Milos in the show notes. And if you wanted to kind of use some of the same stuff I use, my personal go to even though I like to do a lot of my workouts fasted if I am going to eat something because I know where workouts hard and heavy and I just don't have enough in my system to get through my go to is very simple. I do 5 grams of creatine, 10 grams of aminos and then a serving of exogenous ketones, right like the HVMN or the ketone aid, exogenous ketones. Okay. So I just do creatine, aminos and ketones and then I do a couple sprays of that Zen spray in each nostril and then just go crush it. And that's, that's my, that's my go to workout stack, personally. So I've got my ketones, ketones, I've got my aminos, I've got my creatine, and I've got my basically nicotine that I'm spraying up both nostrils for endurance athletes. The only modification that I make to that for the people who are going out and exercising for two, three, four hours is I add in a little bit of what's called high molecular weight starch. I like one called Vitargo or one called glycofuse. And these would be for a slow bleed of carbohydrates, hydrates into the system to go along with the creatine, the aminos and the ketones. And then I also recommend again for those longer bouts, electrolytes like the Thorn catalytes, for example. And I'll have for example, my ironman athletes or my marathoners just mix all that up in a shaker cup, right? So they got a low molecular weight or a high molecular weight starch, electrolytes, creatine, aminos and ketones. And that's just like their, their rocket fuel for a long bike ride or a long run or something like that. And so I'll put all these recipes in the show notes, but that's the basics when it comes to your pre workout formula. So I hope that's helpful, Mr. Preston, and thanks for your support.

Hey Ben, my name is Rama. I'm 16 years old and I am curious how much fasting and intermittent fasting would you recommend for a teenager like me to avoid or even improve my running performance format? And also how much is too much exercise for my health? Thank you very much. Love you, Ben.

Oh man. Fasting. You know, it's interesting because like I'm, I did a podcast interview with my friend Dr. Dan Pompa and you know, he, his whole family fasts a lot, a lot. Like they're obsessed with fasting. And I've witnessed one of his sons go from being kind of what would probably be classified as morbidly obese to just being trim and fit and muscular and looks great, great, you know, cleared up skin issues and all sorts of stuff for him. And I think he was like 13 or 14 when he started doing like two or three day fasts. And you know, you look at many cultures who, from a religious standpoint, have fasting as a part of their religion, you know, like the, the Orthodox church, for example, or, you know, when you, when you look at Ramadan, for example, and you see young people fasting all the time and it's not a big issue at all. You know, young people can burn through fat stores the same as adults, although arguably because they're rapidly growing and their metabolisms are higher. You do have to be more careful with caloric restriction or extended fasting. I think the bigger issue with fasting, and this was something that kind of turned into a bit of a controversy last year, is the potential for the creation of eating disorders. So there was this year long research project that they decided to do in Melbourne that caught a lot of flak. What they got criticized for was that this study was unethical because what they wanted to look into was the effects of intermittent fasting on teenagers, right? And so essentially there was this petition by Change.org to call a halt to the study because they said that the study would cause a harmful stigma around body size by making teenagers particularly die diet, skip meals, reduce calorie intake, and have a higher likelihood of developing disordered eating behaviors. And all they wanted to do in this study was look at a comparison of intermittent fasting, meaning certain periods of time where you're simply not eating any food and then eating to your general metabolic needs in the window, that is a compressed feeding window, outside of that intermittent feeding window. And they wanted to compare that to just like a restricted calorie plan. And they did catch a lot of flak. You can go look at the study and all the details of it, because I think they're still actually taking participants in that study who are 13 to 17 years old. I don't think they shut it down. I just don't think they launched it yet. But that's@fasttracktrial.com, where they were going to compare intermittent fasting with simple caloric restriction in teenagers. Because it is interesting that you can almost have as many calories as you'd normally have, eat them within a compressed feeding window, such as between the hours of 10am to 6pm and see as much weight loss as you would get if you were actually restricting calories, which is kind of cool if you're somebody who doesn't want to restrict calories. You want to get all the calories that you need to maintain a normal metabolism, but you don't want to get all of the potential for triggering excessive aging or, or weight gain or something like that. With getting all those calories, you just eat them over a shorter period of time and then have a long fast in between. Well, you know, there's zero evidence that this could be deleterious for teenagers who are actually getting enough calories, getting enough nutrients, getting enough minerals, you know, I would have no issue if my twin 12 year old boys decided that they were going to eat between the hours of 10am and 6pm and that's it. As long as they were eating enough calories, there's no biological reason reason that this would be deleterious for them. Now, mentally, mentally, is there an issue? Well yeah, if someone is being orthorexic or borderline anorexic, obsessing over foods, obsessing over these feeding windows, obsessing over whether their fast was 12 or 14 or 16 hours, I could see the potential for some type of body dissatisfaction or some type of eating disorder being produced in a teenager who is simply being too anal about the whole fasting piece. However, if a young person simply knows that, hey, take care of your body, eat a ton of really nutrient dense foods and I'll get into what I think the best diet would be for teenagers in a moment and then compress that in a certain period of time. I don't think there's any issue with getting the message across across to teenagers that you don't have to stuff food into your face 24, 7. And as a matter of fact, that might be deleterious for your blood sugar or just your overall longevity or health, you know, and Dr. Jason Fung, who's probably one of the better guys out there when it comes to being an expert on fasting, you know, he says that basically the main thing to teach kids when it comes to food is not only try to have some type of a window each day where you're going without eating, such as, you know, let's say like 8pm to 8am a.m. for example. Even though I think he actually endorses like a 16 hour fasting window for young people and adolescents, but he also says basically just tell them there's no need to eat snacks, eat real food and decrease added sugar consumption. Those are his top three tips that he gives. I think it was one of his books where I came across that on intermittent fasting for teenagers. But again, if they're getting adequate nutrients and calories, a compressed feeding window for a teenager is no big issue. Now longer fast, you know, three to five day fast, water fast, severe caloric restriction, et cetera. I think for a growing young person is not a great idea unless again, like they're obese, they're overweight, they have a lot of fat stores to burn. And even in that case, you need to be careful that you don't create a situation of an eating disorder or just just a myopic focus on food being bad or eating being bad versus eating being highly nutritious. Nutritious, but simply being something that you don't have to do 24 7. That being said, my boys, as they enter into their teenage years, essentially they're going to be on a straight up Weston A Price type of diet, which I think is the best way to raise a healthy young male or female with optimized hormones, optimized fertility, optimized bone density, healthy hair, skin, teeth, nails. And the Wes N A Price diet is very straightforward. It's all like beef, lamb, game, organ meats, poultry, eggs, all from pasture fed animals, animals, wild fish and fish eggs and shellfish from unpolluted waters. A lot of full fat milk products, which I'm not a fan for. A lot of adults who might be concerned about getting too fat or having too many calories or excessively triggering growth hormone consumed. But for growing teenagers it's amazing. Like full fat milk products from pasture fed cows, preferably raw or fermented raw milk, whole yogurt, kefir, cultured butter, full fat raw cheeses, fresh and sweet sour cream. If a teenager or adolescent has lactose intolerance or insulin sensitivity issues that cause them to break out or they seem to get acne and stuff. When they include those type of full fat milk products in their diet, that would be one you could cut out. But that one, if they can tolerate it, is wonderful, especially for a growing young human being. Animal fats like lard and tallow and egg yolks and cream and butter use liberal. Literally no vegetable oils unless they're traditional like extra virgin olive oil or Expeller Express sesame oil or small amounts of Expeller Express flax oil or tropical oils like coconut oil or natural palm kernel oil or palm oil or cod liver oil or fish oil, all of those fantastic as part of the Weston A. Price diet. A lot of fresh fruits and vegetables like steamed with butter, whole grains, legumes and nuts, but only if they've been soaked and sprouted or sour, leavened or fermented to neutralize a lot of the phytic acid and the enzyme inhibitors and the other anti nutrients. A young person's gut health is super important. So a lot of enzyme rich lacto, fermented vegetables and fruits and beverages and kombuchas and fermented condiments like miso and natto and tempeh in the diet, along with lots of homemade stocks from bones, right, like beef stock and lamb stock and chicken stock and bone broke broth. All of that is absolutely wonderful. Plenty of electrolytes from unrefined salt, a lot of herbs and spices like turmeric and cacao and cinnamon. And this is the way that my kids will be eating all through teenagehood, guaranteed. And you know, knock on wood. But I, you know, I, I think they're going to grow up to be just as big and strong as all the other people I've helped with idealizing a diet for a young person. You, you combine all those super nutrient dense and arguably even calorie dense foods in the context of some compressed feeding windows, you know, like a 168 or even like a 12 12. You know, where it's, where it's 16 hours of eating or I'm sorry, 16 hours of fasting, eight hours of eating or 12 12. And I think that's just fine for an adolescent or a teenager. I see zero issues. So I hope that's helpful. Rama and great question. All right, you guys, I think those are all the questions I'm gonna get through on today's solo sode guys, because it gets boring just talking to myself, even though I guess I'm not talking to myself, I'm talking to you. But I will, I'll put show notes for everything that I went over in today's show. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 4:23 that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com 423. You can leave a question when you go over there. Be sure to leave this podcast a review. I'll put all of our fantastic sponsors, which if you support it, really helps out the show. I'll put all of them over in the show notes along with all those discount codes as well. And I hope that this, this short but dense solo so Q and A has been helpful. Again, shownotes are going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 423. Thanks for listening. Until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield signing out.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, 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.

Sa.