Q&A 424: Giant News Flash Episode Of Random, Shocking, Groundbreaking Information on Longevity, Muscle & More, Biohacking ADD & ADHD, Is Ritalin Healthy, & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, a giant news flash episode of random shocking groundbreaking information on longevity, muscle and more. Biohacking, ADD and ADHD is riddle and healthy and what your pee can tell you about your body, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Jay.

What's up, dude?

You got Covid?

I got Covid, absolutely did. Which I think might have manifested a little bit differently in me than it did for you.

How are you doing?

I'm, I'm doing, I'm doing okay. You know, I, I have really been, for the most part, you know, just obviously quarantining, but just taking care of myself in the, in the best way possible. But, you know, I, I've, I've had kind of things go up and down and left and right, but overall I'm, I'm doing really well.

When you say it hit you. Well, I mean, I, I think people who listen to this show may have heard me mention. I got it. My wife and I both got it. I. I had sniffles for a day. She had sniffles and a little tickle in the back of her throat. The most annoying part for her, she couldn't taste her coffee for a day and then it was just kind of gone. Did it hit you harder?

So I would say it hit me longer. I don't know if harder would be a good way to define it. So basically last Wednesday, which is a week from now, we record on Wednesdays, I woke up in the middle of the night and actually I turned to my wife. She just went and attended to our 10 month old who was crying, and so she went and put him back to bed.

Because you were sleeping like the lazy ass that you are.

That's very, like, as accurate as it gets.

Earplugs, eye mask, maybe some essential oils. And she's off nursing a kid.

Yeah. So, of course then when I turn over to her and I say, are you feeling okay? She probably is like, what an asshole. Why would you ask that? But yeah, no, I did. I looked over to her and I was like, I'm feeling a little bit off. Like I feel like my body's warm. And when I woke up that morning, I looked on my aura ring and I actually, I posted in this on Instagram and a lot of people gave, gave their shocking comments. But you know, my HRV is normally anywhere from right about 100 up to like 140 or so. That's kind of my range.

Yeah.

And my HR like 16 yeah, it's pretty good. But my HRV was at a 16. My body temperature had gone up almost 5 degrees. And then my heart rate was like 76. And I was like, I have never seen those numbers before. And it was at that moment I said, oh, crap, I bet I've got Covid. So I got a test that day and lucky me, I got Covid.

Yeah, that's interesting because for me, I looked at my OURA ring data in, in retrospect, afterwards, and for about four days before I actually manifested symptoms, I saw anywhere from a 3 to 4 degree rise in body temperature consistently every day based on those measurements. So, so yeah, there's, there's something to body temperature. I didn't see a big impact on my, my heart rate variability, but I definitely saw, saw the impact on body temperature. But now I'm, I'm cold. I've been cold for the past five days because, and I've, I've briefly alluded to this on Instagram. I'm doing a five day juice fast right now. I'm on Jay. I'm on day five of a five day juice fast. Dreaming of ribeye steaks. You are. My kids, bless their little hearts, make bacon every morning for breakfast. They cooked up a bunch of ham last night. You know, I, I did this podcast. Maybe folks heard it or, or article that I recently wrote@BenGreenfieldFitness.com, i'll link to it in the show notes. By the way, you guys, everything Jay and I talk about, you'll find at BenGreenfieldFitness.com424 BenGreenfieldFitness.com 424 anyway, so I interviewed my friend Junaid from Farmer's Juice. They go around, they find all these sustainable organic farms. They make low carb keto juices like carrots. And actually the carrot one's pretty good, to be honest with you. It's like carrot and turmeric and ginger. And it's the only one I'm not sick of yet. You know, they've got a beat. They've got, of course, all the different green ones, kind of an energizing green one, a relaxing nighttime green one. And then about five different shots, you know, the tiny little shots that you pay like 12 bucks, you know, for an ounce for the cold pressed juicery. So they got a bunch of those shots too. And so after I interviewed Junaid and I was thinking about this because I like to do some type of a quarterly cleanup, whether it's a fasting Mimicking diet where I reduce the number of calories that I'm consuming by 40 to 50%. I've done these ayurvedic cleanse where you eat kitchery stew and olive oil and ghee and do coffee enemas for five days. But I've never done a full on juice fast. And so my wife committed to doing it with me. So I had an accountability partner and she is crushing it. She's off plane playing tennis and hiking and volunteering all over the community. And she's vibrant and bouncy and I am cold. I have diarrhea, non stop beautiful. You know, part of the juice fast. I don't want to paint this in a bad light. I just think it's not agreeable to my temperament, digestively, so to speak. But part of it is you also start and end each day with one of these customized charcoal drinks that they make. They're actually pretty good. They're like, there's lim watermelon flavored charcoal drinks. But for some reason my body has been rebelling against this thing big time. I've lost seven pounds. I'm gonna be writing an article about this. I'm measuring ketones. I'm measuring everything from DHEA to testosterone, cortisol, vitamin D, all the major blood markers. I've got these home testing kits from Thorne. So I'm doing that. I'm doing the biosense breath ketone monitoring, you know, of course tracking my aura ring data and my sleep and all of that. But you know, it probably comes out to about 500 calories a day or so of primarily vegetable juices. You know, none of these juices are very fruit forward. They're always, you know, kind of low carb and keto. But I am, I am struggling mentally and physically. I will, I will admit, and I'm sure this is good for me. Uh, it's gotta be because stuff's getting cleaned up big time. But man, I, I cannot tell you how much I'm looking forward to having a steak tomorrow night.

Yeah, I can't imagine. I feel like. So people who do juices, I've only ever done one in my life, but people who do juice cleanses. The two things that I hear most commonly are, well, number one is obviously you're hungry. And then number two, people just get really freaking cranky when they're on juices. Doctor, have you been like, cranky?

Shut the F up. No, I haven't been cranky. Now, now, I did make one modification, Jay, and, and that is that I've been. I've been drinking some of these liquid ketones, right, Because. Because I really. I'm still working out, like, you know. Yeah, yeah. I'm still. I'm still exercising. I'm still swinging kettlebells, you know. And so I've been taking some ketone esters and a little bit of the kion aminos. Right. And so a lot of times I'll just like, start to drink my juice. And then once I've had about an ounce or so of the juice, I'll just dump a small shot of ketones in there and a scoop of aminos. And that. That seems to help out a little bit. You know, one. One thing, though, that has been profound is, you know, I do, like, evening prayer time. I do morning meditation, and I do breath work most days. And all of those have been actually quite a bit. I guess the best way to describe them would be deeper. Like, my breath work is deeper. And then I. I do that. That massage therapy session that I've talked about on the show before, where I. I go deep in my massage therapy sessions. Like I lay on a sound healing table. My massage therapist is amazing. She specializes in, like, fascial trauma work. Typically, I'll use something like, like ketamine or. And. And combine that with a little bit of psilocybin, a little bit of THC prior to the massage, and I. I kind of treat my massage therapy sessions almost like a plant medicine journey. And I got my massage a couple of nights ago while in the midst of this juice fast, and I went deep, deep into kind of like this journey. And so there's something to be said for kind of combining fasting, breath work, prayer, meditation, plant medicine, et cetera, with this type of juice dieta, so to speak. So it certainly enhanced those aspects. So there's that.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's interesting. I feel like again, when I've done my. My one juice cleanse, like, my cognitive faculties were like, not there. So, like, trying to concentrate, trying to be mindful was very difficult. And I think that's maybe why I was so cranky. But that's good you didn't experience that aspect.

Well, that's.

That's really annoying.

That has happened to me in the evenings. Like, like at the end of the day, I've just been getting tired, you know, because we usually have these big, glorious family dinners where we all prepare a giant meal together in the kitchen, and we're making roasted chicken and grilling steaks. And so we're not doing that and by about 8pm Shot a wheat grass. Yeah, I've just been literally taking my kids up to their room and just laying on their bed with them and reading them stories for like an hour at night because that's about all I kind of have the mental energy to do. So my kids, absolutely, of course, love the juice fast because Dad's reading Wild west stories and you know, they're their book of virtues and, you know, so. So my kids are getting a lot of quality reading time at night, but mostly because that's because Dad's too, too funky to do just about anything else. So anyways, though, we have a lot of news flashes today because it's been a while since we've done a Q A and we have some great questions, so we should dive in.

Let's do it. Get rid of this woe is me banter.

Oh, but, but I will. For those of you who want to try the juice fast, I did work with Farmer's Juice and I kind of like advised them on what an ideal juice fast would look like in terms of calories. And I put together six different kits for them based on body weight and activity levels. A guy like me, it's seven different juices and four different shots and then a charcoal at the beginning and at the end of the day for my wife, it comes out to a charcoal at the beginning of the day and then four juices and two shots. And so anybody who wants to try one of these juice fasts out, as attractive as I've just made it sound. Exactly. I'll, I'll link to all that in the show notes and to the, to the Farmer's Juice website and our special discount codes for them and everything@bengreenfieldfitness.com for 24. All right, so let's start off with, with a few just random news flashes here, Jay. And the first is this new drug, this new drug that appears to reverse age related mental decline within days. I don't know if you heard about this one, but this kind of hit the news at the beginning of the month. And it was a study done at UC San Francisco. They studied up on this drug called isrib. ISRIB stands for Integrated Stress Response Inhibitor. Integrated Stress Response Inhibitor. And what they found was that in just a few days it could restore memory function after traumatic brain injury. It could restore cognitive impairments in conditions like down syndrome, for example, prevent noise related hearing loss, fight certain types of cancer, enhance cognition even in healthy, in this case in rodent models. And it seems to be like this magical new wonder drug for, for the brain specifically. It seems to act by rebooting the cell's protein production machinery after it gets kind of throttled by a stress response or by a traumatic brain injury. And it's absolutely fascinating. I don't think that there's any supplement or pharmaceutical companies that have kind of rolled it out yet, although there are some working on it. But it's super interesting. It's one to keep an eye on. I know one company out of San Francisco licensed the technology company called Calico and they're like an anti aging pharmaceutical company but it's ISRIB is R I B1 to keep an eye on for sure. I think it's very interesting especially, especially for like, you know, like, like NFL athletes or UFC fighters or anyone who's concerned about traumatic brain injury. Super interesting. And I did find because I, I often do this when I find some kind of a new drug or new compound that looks intriguing. There's a website called Sigma Aldrich where you can buy research laboratory chemicals not sold for human consumption. And they, they sell this. I didn't get it because my brain works just fine. Man. Catch.

Thank you.

Anyway, so I need to, I've done that before Sigma Algers like, like you'll find out I've even done this like plant medicines. Like you'll find the active ingredient of some plant medicine. Like I did this with like a, like a DMT derivative for example. You can go to Sigma Eldritch Eldritch and get anything honestly like proceed, proceed with caution. But you know, rather than, than trying to find like some supplements website or you know, fringe European or foreign URL that only takes cryptocurrency you can get just about anything from Sigma Eldritch and it's, it's kind of funny because it's like pennies on the dollar. Dirt cheap laboratory chemicals that you could theoretically kill yourself with. But you can also kind of use that as a form of, of self experimentation if you're one of those French biohackers who doesn't mind the occasional bout of explosive diarrhea. So.

Or listen to your disclaimer that you could kill yourself and just stay away.

Yeah, but isrib so, so check it out and I'll link to that one in the, in the show notes. And then kind of concerningly there was this article that came out, I don't know if you saw this called Tackling Climate Change through Human Engineering. And I read this article and I was shocked. It's basically an article about how we can use human engineering to solve some issues such as climate change or overpopulation, they call it geoengineering, actually is the name for this. So, for example, and the author of this article is obviously a bit biased because the first thing that they propose is to induce in human beings pharmacological meat intolerance. Meaning that based on the author's belief that livestock farming accounts for like, you know, a ton of the world's greenhouse emissions, which is technically not true, if we're talking about regenerative agriculture, if we're talking about CAFO food lots and methane production, you know, potentially that, that would be an issue. Although I would argue that monocropping of soy and wheat and, and other grains is just as big an issue as, as CAFO food lots. But regardless, what they've proposed is that what they can do is in the same way that if you get bit by, say, like a Lone Star tick, I don't know if you've heard about this, it can make you allergic to red meat. Yeah, that's a, that's a known thing.

Terrifying.

Yeah. Lone Star ticks have this sugar called Alpha Gal, which is also found in red meat, but not in people. And normally people who consume Alpha Gal and meat have no problems. But when they get bit by this Lone Star tick, it transfers Alpha Gal into their blood. They produce antibodies to fight the sugar, and then the next time they eat red meat, they have an allergic reaction to it. And so what this author proposed is why not get a patch like, similar to a nicotine patch, in which one could get a slow bleed of Alpha Gal delivered into their system, thus rendering them intolerant to the consumption of milk or crayfish or meat or anything else that this would render them allergic against. Therefore, rather than telling people don't eat meat, you just make them allergic to it. And that's how we can save the planet. So.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's sounds like one step too far.

So another, another proposal is that, you know, concerns about ecological footprints are partly correlated with human body size. Right. In human metabolic rate. And so another proposal was something called pre implantation genetic diagnosis, which you would employ in fertility clinics and used to select for shorter, smaller children so that we have shorter, smaller humans populating the planet, and thus we could do that. Or the other thing that the author proposed is hormone treatment to lower levels of growth hormone or lower levels of somatotropin. So kids are born with excessively small size or smaller bones. And thus, if we have Smaller humans walking around the planet, technically we would do less damage to the planet. So that sounds like.

Does anybody not think this is batshit crazy when they hear it? Well, just me.

I mean, this was a full on article. I know, I'll link to the article.

Sounds insane.

How about this one? Lowering birth rates. Right? So, so population control. What they've found is that there is a direct correlation between, and I'm not saying this to be offensive, this is just what's written in the article, but with cognitive function and birth rate. Meaning. Well, essentially they're arguing that stupid people tend to have more babies. Right. So why not figure out a way to use engineering with smart drugs like they propose, specifically Ritalin and Modafinil, thus making people smarter. And they are theorizing that these cognitive enhancements would increase the ability of people to educate themselves, which would then affect fertility, specifically because we all know smarter people have fewer babies. I don't know if that's true, but that's what the author is saying. And that would indirectly affect climate change because we'd have lower amount of humans being produced and smarter people. So there's that one.

This just all sounds like 1930s Germany to me. Oh yeah.

But you know what, this is the kind of stuff that, you know, we laugh at it now, but these are the type of things that, you know, based on just this, this slippery slope of everything from population control to concern over the planet at the cost of human function could become a viable reality. One other that they propose, pharmacological induction of altruism and empathy. Because if we have more altruism and empathy, it would increase the chances that we would care for the environment. And so in this case, what they propose is a noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor along with pharmacological delivery of oxytocin. Very similar to, again, to what you could deliver through a patch. And oxytocin, of course, is the trust drug that is released after you orgasm or when a woman is breastfeeding, et cetera. And thus what they're proposing is that if we pharmacologically induce altruism and empathy, we'll care better for the planet. And that's a fantastic case for human engineering. So there you have it.

So there you have it.

Yeah, yeah. So I'll link to the article. I was a little bit shocked reading through it, but you know what, it's, it's, it's at least thought provoking. So.

Yeah, I guess, I guess that's one way to put it.

Yeah. And Thinking or speaking of engineering, one other one that is a little bit, a little bit lighter now that we've got everybody concerned about their, their oxytocin patches is the, the engineering of food. And there was a very interesting article that came out on a design website about engineering of food. And of course, we've known for a long time that packaged food manufacturers engineer food to make it highly palatable. High amounts of sugar and fat combined specifically. Because we know that the composition of human breast milk specifically is very similar to that of ice cream. It's highly palatable. It's a blend of sugars and fats and ketones and that make humans want to be coming back to it over and over again. And of course, they've discovered that when they do this with, with foods, this combination of sugars and fats, we trigger that, that built in mechanism from when we were babies to crave these highly palatable foods, which in a baby is good because it causes a small human to put on size, dramatically increase growth hormone, you know, grow body fat, et cetera. But in a, in a grown human can induce things like, you know, morbid obesity. Anyways, though, what they talked about was the Pringles shape. They designed the Pringles in the shape of what's called a hyperbolic paraboloid. And the hyperbolic paraboloid is this unique geometry that is appealing from a symmetrical standpoint to humans. They've actually found that you get a dopaminergic response when you see this because it's naturally proportioned to conform to what's called the golden ratio, which is the same type of mathematical ratio you would see in the pyramids or in a supermodel or in something else that might be appealing to the human eye. And they've taken this same type of parabolic architecture and worked it into the geometry of chips. And so when you have Pringles, Pringles aren't just shaped that way so they can fit more into the Pringles tube. They're shaped that way because they've studied it and found that the dopaminergic response to just seeing the Pringles chip in that shape makes you want to eat it. Isn't that crazy?

Fascinating. That is. That is crazy.

Yeah.

The food engineer that designed that and then leaked this is gonna get fired. But I appreciate them letting us know.

Yeah, hyperbolic paraboloid chip shapes. So interesting.

You know, everybody eats Pringles wrong. I learned that as a kid.

What do you mean?

So everybody puts the Pringle in kind of like with the, I guess the curvature facing downward and, and that is not where they put the seasoning. They put the seasoning on the chips. You need to flip it upside down so that it covers all 9,000 taste buds. I learned that as a kid.

Actually, I didn't know that. I'm gonna have to try that next time I have Pringles, which is never. Yup, but exactly. That's good to know. Someonesomeone should come up. You know what we should do at Kion is come up with like a healthy Pringle. I think, dude, I'd, I'll buy and make it in a hyperbolic paraboloid shape. And that's how I'm gonna make my billion dollars. So there you have it. Well, speaking of food, let's shift and talk a little bit about, about longevity. So there is the man who is presumed to be the oldest living man on earth. 115 years old. He's a Ukrainian fella. His name is Hiori Nestori Nestor. My apologies to all the Ukrainian folks for me butchering their Ukrainian accents. Anyway, they interviewed him. They interviewed him about a whole bunch of things. His lifestyle, his diet. He is not into marriage. He attributes part of his longevity. He says, I liked my freedom. I would spend my time with one girl and then another and then would go off somewhere with the guys. So he was a player. Player, yeah.

He's such a player.

Yeah. Although there is something to be said that, you know, for, for this fact that when you settle down and when you get married, your testosterone decreases, which is kind of like this proposed built in mechanism to keep men being a little bit more faithful. But you know, there's also several proposed methods of longevity that do argue that the more offspring one has early in life and the more mating experiences one has earlier in life, the longer they live. That's not my personal argument for, for promiscuity, however, you know, even if you're married, having more kids and having more sex can induce longevity. At least especially if you do it earlier in life. But this guy also says, I always stayed in the fresh air. I went barefoot everywhere. So he's grounding, he was earthing, he's getting fresh air, negative ions, nature therapy. He slept out of doors in the summer. He would just sleep outside during the summer. But then his diet was milk, cheese and potatoes. Milk, cheese and potatoes. Yeah. Yeah. So of course he was Ukrainian too.

That's hardcore.

Yeah. And in wartime he ate cat. In wartime he ate cattle feed, raw cabbage and grass. So I guess occasionally he took a break from the, from the milk, the cheese and the potatoes. But this was interesting to me because they, they literally just came out with a study in which they were investigating longevity and specifically mental longevity and staving off cognitive decline. And they studied a whole bunch of foods using nutritional assessments of half a million UK participants. And they came up with four significant findings. Cheese by far was shown to be the most protective food against age related cognitive problems even late into life. Cheese, fascinating. So there's cheese that does not make me feel good about my juicing diet right now because last I checked there wasn't any Parmesan in my kale Shakespeare. And then also daily consumption of alcohol, particularly red wine, was related to lifelong improvements in cognitive function. We've talked about this on the show before. This concept of microdosing with alcohol, right? Not binging, not getting that toxic acetaldehyde dump that you get from, say, not drinking for five days of the week, then going out and partying on the weekends, but just having a little glass of alcohol, a little serving of alcohol at the end of the day. And it turns out maybe you don't have that along with the charcuterie plate because the cheese seems to pair quite well with that. So there's something to be said with cheese and wine. So that was. Number two was alcohol. Number three was weekly consumption of lamb, not other red meats, but lamb. Which is interesting because lamb's like one of the most hypoallergenic meats you can consume and a very, very bioavailable source of protein. So weekly consumption of lamb and then the last one that they found was excessive consumption of salt was bad. But of course we need to take that in context because most of the salt that people consume is just like table salt, like sodium chloride, which granted you get some of your iodine from, but you don't get your 72 plus different trace minerals. And I would be curious what it'd look like if someone were consuming a good salt and a good, you know, trace mineral source versus just, you know, excess table salt. But the, the big takeaways from this, you know, from, from, from the guy the longest living man on earth was milk. Cheese and potatoes seem to be something that, at least if you're Ukrainian, helps you live a long time, especially if you're going outside barefoot and sleeping outdoors in the summer. And then for, for anybody, wide variety of the population, cheese, little bits of alcohol, regular consumption of lamb, and avoiding excessive consumption of table salt. And those are the four best ways based on this massive study to stave off cognitive decline and stay smart late into life. So isn't that cool? Dr.

I like it. You know, one of the things. Yeah, that's really cool. I think one of the main things that stuck out to me about this dude who's made it to 115is theI mean, obviously we don't know his whole life story, but what he described on how he got to 115 was simplicity. And he's like, listen, I kind of just keep it simple. I hate milk. I eat potatoes, I guess I drink milk, eat potatoes, you know, eat cheese. And then I just go be barefoot and sleep outdoors.

That's it. Yeah. Hyperbaric oxygen chamber injecting peptides. I don't know, maybe if he might have he had been while living longer. Yeah. So also related to longevity, and I just alluded to this. But another study, more sex makes you live longer, at least if you're a naked mole rat. So this was a comprehensive transcriptome analysis on mammalian species. And they looked at a whole bunch of gene pathways involved in anabolism, like growth hormone and IGF1. And they found that early on in life, early on in life, these higher levels of growth hormone and IGF1 were protective later on in life. And what this means is that anything that would be like, highly anabolic early on in life, like say, you know, cheese, milk, breast milk, lifting weights, you know, eating adequate calories, and, you know, frequent mating or sexual experiences induces longevity later on in life, which kind of flies in the face of this whole concept of constantly fast and inhibit MTOR activation. A lot of these things that a lot of longevity enthusiasts are into. It turns out that especially if you're a mammal, especially if you're a young mammal, that's not great advice. If you're a young mammal, you should lift weights, eat cheese, have sex, and at least if you're a naked mole rat. And honestly, they do a lot of studies that tend to correlate pretty well to humans in naked mole rats and also mice and dogs and in cats to a certain extent. And a lot of this stuff does cross over into humans. But it turns out that in this particular study, one of the better ways for mammalian species to live a long time was to have more reproductive encounters earlier in life. So I don't think you're going to.

Have a lot of young males arguing against this.

No, I doubt it. And again, I'm not making an argument here for promiscuity. You know, folk folks know I'm a, I'M a good Christian man. I good boy. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, that doesn't mean you can't get married toto your high school sweetheart and make love to her multiple times a week. Especially as you guys are young and, you know, have a lot of kids and bless the planet with lots of children, avoiding these oxytocin patches and the Ritalin and the other drugs toto induce cognitive enhancement to make you smarter so you have less kids, you know, put your middle finger up at that. Exactly. But definitely, you know, fuel your body well and have lots of sex when you're young and you live a long time. So, yeah, there you have it. And then there was one other longevity study that I thought was interesting and kind of flew in the face of what we consider to be, I guess, like, popularly accepted as dogmatic wisdom in health. And this was a study on plasma biomarkers that could influence long term metabolic health and reduction of cardiovascular disease risk markers. And what they looked at in this study was a whole bunch of different lipids. And they actually found that higher levels of ldlp, which a lot of cardiovascular doctors tell you will put you at a high risk of myocardial infarction and early death. They were actually protective against myocardial death and metabolic disease. Meaning that ldl, the so called bad cholesterol, that's really, as we know, not bad. That's actually something that appeared to be protective. And actually in the study, it was worse to have low HDL than it was to have this high ldlp. Another thing that they found in the study was it was high levels of glycated A, which is kind of related to high blood sugar and inflammation. That was also something that was very unfavorable. But your levels of low density lipoprotein were not a bad thing. And the LDLP is technically, it's a small, dense LDL particle. And we actually hear a lot that the more of these particles in your system, the greater your heart disease risk. But it turns out in this study that wasn't really the case as much as having low HDL and high levels of inflammation was the case. So if your doctor's trying to put you on a statin to decrease small, dense LDL levels, and you don't have a lot of other risk factors related to cardiovascular disease, you may want to think twice because this was a pretty big study and it was entitled Novel Plasma Biomarkers Improved Discrimination of Metabolic Health Independent of Weight. And LDLP was protective.

It'll take like, what, 15 years for this to come around. But I'm glad we've got the research. But I feel like conventionally, like conventional doctors, it takes a long time for them to come around to this type of research and still listen because you kind of sit in a dogmatic view that you learn in med school. And so yeah, I'm hoping that any docs out there are listening, implement it.

Yeah, yeah. And interestingly, of course one of the ways that you can get your LDL P up is to eat cheese. So that's right. Another feather in the cap for you, for your cheese. Alright. So also of course we know that related to longevity is muscle, is muscle. And there's, there's been a few interesting studies that have come out on muscle lately. One looked into the best way to put put on muscle and the influence of what's called a strength phase followed by what's called a hypertrophy phase compared to not doing a strength phase prior to a hypertrophy phase. And what they found in this study was that in resistance trained individuals, if you do about a three week, in this case they use a three week. Even though arguably you could use any number of weeks, three weeks, strength oriented period, right. Where you're lifting very low reps with a very heavy weight. They were using one to three repetitions in this study before they moved on to the stereotypical like 8 to 12 repetition type of scenario. The people who preceded their muscle building phase, right, there's eight to 12, four sets or so of resistance training with about four sets of one to three reps of a more maximum weight. They put on much more muscle than the people who didn't build strength before they built muscle. And so rather than going to the gym and saying I'm going to do, you know, high rep, lower weight, you know, Gwyneth Paltrow elastic band esque exercises. And then eventually I'm going to get to the point where I can use heavier weights and build muscle. It might behoove you, you know, even if you're an inexperienced weightlifter and you got to use machines to do this to actually lift pretty heavy, right. When you first start to lift because that's going to better equip you to be able to put on muscle once you get into more of like, like a muscle building phase or if you're kind of getting ready for swimsuit season, you know, it's February when we're recording this podcast and you know, you want to be able to slip into that bikini or those sexy trunks in June, maybe you should think right now about doing more strength oriented activities, just lifting heavy stuff. And then later on, after a few weeks of that, then you progress more in a kind of like a hypertrophy phase. But, you know, and this is something that has been studied before and kind of agrees with the prevailing literature on this, get strong before you get big or get strong before you attempt to put on muscle or to induce changes in body composition. And it seems to benefit you quite a bit.

Yeah, yeah, no, I'd agree. It makes sense on paper. I remember when I was bodybuilding back in college and a lot of the guys who I'd work out with, their primary goal was just how much weight can I put on? Like, what can I do to kind of make myself look better aesthetically? And you had these really big, large, muscular guys in the gym, but dude, they were weak, like their muscle was soft, like they could barely lift anything. And for me, I was like, I need to flip the script on this because I hate the idea of, you know, let's say weighing, you know, I'm six foot five, you know, I hate this idea of, you know, weighing 250 pounds, but, you know, not being able to bench. But the bar, like, it's like, come on. Like, I feel like I can get bigger by getting stronger. So that's kind of what I focused on initially and I feel like it, it paid off. So I'm just singing my praises for a minute.

My, my go to for that is one heavy kettlebell and a good, a good hex bar. Like those, those are my, my top two methods. I like those even better than barbell, honestly. The hex bar on the kettlebell, because I can do goblet squats with the kettlebell and swing it heavy and, you know, do any number of exercises. And then I pair that with, with the hex bar. And those are probably my, my top two methods for staying strong. Aside from, of course, eating cheese and having sex. Also how to stop muscle mass loss as you age. This was interesting because this has been kind of like a, a secret in the bodybuilding industry for quite some time. I remember there were bodybuilders doing this way back in the day, like 20 years ago when I was doing bodybuilding in college. They figured out a way to increase inflammation post exercise. Right. A lot of us, you know, we talk about, you know, taking ibuprofen or naproxen or getting in the cold bath or taking vitamin C or vitamin E or any number of antioxidants post exercise to quell inflammation and quell soreness. When in fact to build muscle, as we've talked about before on this show, you want to not shut down the inflammatory response because that the, you know, those free radicals can be signaling mechanisms for inducing the mitochondrial and the muscle fiber growth or the muscle fiber number increase response that you want post training. Well, you know, so, so bodybuilders have known for a while you don't shut down inflammation. In fact, some bodybuilders will even use arachidonic acid to keep soreness high post workout as a muscle building tactic. And there's this enzyme called 15pgth. 15pgth breaks down prostaglandin in your body. Okay. And what they found is that when you break down prostaglandin, which is technically an inflammatory molecule in the body, you get muscle atrophy. And by inhibiting that 15 PG DH, you can increase muscle mass and muscle strength and exercise performance. Thus of course kind of dictating that shutting down inflammation, shutting down prostaglandin production, especially through the use of things like non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs, can seriously hinder muscle regeneration. And so this recent study kind of talked about this well established connection between prostaglandin and muscle mass. And they found that blocking the enzyme that breaks down prostaglandin could reverse age related muscle loss in mice, meaning that they actually used this mechanism to stop prostaglandin formation. And these mice were able to maintain muscle mass. And there are certain things that you can do to support healthy levels of prostaglandin. For example, ginger and turmeric seem to actually support healthy levels of prostaglandin, whereas higher levels of like synthetic vitamin C or synthetic vitamin E don't. Magnesium and zinc seem to also be something that can support prostaglandin formation. And some bodybuilders will just use straight up arachidonic acid. Right? Arachidonic acid, I remember using that which we know can induce inflammation. You would find that, you know, in large amounts in like seeds and nuts and stuff like that. And again, you know, I'm, I'm not saying that high levels of prostaglandins and high levels of arachidonic acid are going to help you to live a long time. I think you do have to be careful with all of the arachidonic acid you're going to find, particularly in polyunsaturated omega 6 fatty acids, because a lot of those are rancid seed and nut based oils and things like canola oil that I think can cause widespread inflammatory and Metabolic issues that are not favorable for the human body. But compared to completely shutting down your intake of omega 6 fatty acids, particularly if your goal is to gain muscle, appears to be something that may actually inhibit your ability to maintain muscle later into life. So whereas I think you should prioritize omega 3 fatty acids and fish oil and maybe eligible sources of omega 3, et cetera, the inclusion of some of these natural sources of arachidonic acid, particularly post workout, you know, and you'll find high levels of arachidonic acid, even things like poultry and eggs, for example, those are two great sources of arachidonic acid. If you aren't just going to supplement with it with a, you know, omega 6 fatty acid supplement is something that may actually help you to put on muscle. I think probably the biggest takeaway from this though is just don't do everything you can to shut down inflammation after you've done a workout, which we've talked about on the show before.

So, yeah, yeah, don't just immediately jump into an ice bath or.

Right.

Yeah, I totally agree. It's, it's interesting that you mentioned that. I honestly, in college had no idea why I was taking arachidonic acid. I was just told I'd take it. But that was interesting. I didn't realize kind of that's, that's kind of the goal behind it. And so, you know, this one's interesting to me because I think it's, again, it comes back to that balance. It's like, do I want to, you know, do I want to kind of gain this muscle, kind of increase strength, kind of, you know, you know, get, get that on that end or do I also want to, you know, engage in longevity? And so for me, it's one of those ones where it's like, eh, kind of a little bit of give and take here, which, which you mentioned. So yeah, just be careful.

Right. And, and, and, and just so people know, like you, you can buy arachidonic acid supplements on Amazon. Like, like you can just go like, get arachidonic acid capsules and theoretically, you know, even though you're purchasing essentially polyunsaturated fatty acids, omega 6 fatty acids, which have kind of been thrown under the bus lately, you're at least getting a lot fewer of say like the, the toxins and the fillers and the chemicals and the solvents you get from say just like consuming, you know, swigging canola oil post workout or something like that. And I actually, I'm not sure how they manufacture the arachidonic acid. But I do know at least if you're gonna use that as a muscle building or a muscle maintenance and, you know, later into life type of strategy, it's probably better than just, you know, chugging canola oil.

So, yeah, I'd say so. I had a friend of mine, I don't know how legitimate of a source this is, but he indicated that in college that his physician told him that one of the main reasons that he developed gynecomastia was because he was taking excessive arachidonic acid. And I don't know, kind of if there's legitimacy to that. Have you heard that before? I was just thinking people watching. Yeah, yeah.

Excess intake of omega 6 fatty acids and arachidonic acids can be estrogenic. So.

Right.

You'd want to be careful, especially if you're one of those people who did your 23andMe and found out you're predisposed to man boobies. So careful with that. Okay. So one other study related to muscle, and I realize this is a hefty little news flash segment, but lots of cool stuff to talk about since it's been a while since we've done this. Essential amino acids and protein synthesis. What this study looked into was this idea that one of the best ways to build muscle, as I talked about when I interviewed Milo Sarkev, who actually sucks down essential amino acids literally in between sets during his workout, is to maintain high blood levels of amino acids. And they looked into this exact strategy. Eating essential amino acids during a training session and even including essential amino acids with things like whey protein and meals. And they found that there was a significant decrease in whole body protein breakdown and increase in muscle protein synthesis when these essential amino acids were consumed on a regular basis. They found a certain subsequent significant expansion of the skeletal muscle protein pool. And you know, I've been a fan of essential amino acids for the longest time. I began to use them like 15 years ago. You know, full disclosure that that's probably our top selling supplement at Kion now are essential amino acids. And that's because people have found them to be like a, a Swiss army knife for supplementation. But this later study showed that the extent to which they stave off whole body protein breakdown is just absolutely amazing. And especially for the anabolic effect, if you have high blood levels of essential amino acids during your actual workout, the anabolic response is absolutely significantly greater. If that's not. I don't know if I use enough adjectives there or I suppose those are what do you call them adverbs, the lys. Yes. So anyways, though, and when, by the way, we did just reformulate our aminos at Kion, we kind of changed up some of the ratios based on some research we've been doing on things like phenylalanine and tyrosine and histidine. And so I'm convinced that our aminos now, based on the recent research, are in the exact ratio necessary for maintaining muscle protein synthesis, particularly and staving off muscle protein breakdown. So this most recent, recent study just backed that up big time. So I was pretty excited to see it considering that that's, that's probably my favorite supplement besides coffee, if you want to call that a supplement that we carry at Kion. So same here you have it. Oh, and by the way, I was going to save this for the, for the special announcements, but I, I should mention this anyway, since I'm right here. We're having a President's Day sale at Keon. President's Day sale, everything is 15% off, plus 25% off bundles and 25% off your first month of subscription. So if you want to stock up on aminos or any of your favorite Kion goodies, you just go to getkion.com getK-I-O-N.com BenGreenfield and your code, drumroll please. Is President's Day. I didn't allow time for the drum roll, but that's okay. President's Day is your code. And you should know we have all new branding. Have you seen the new branding, Jay?

I have, man. It's beautiful. So, so many good colors and squiggly lines.

And a lot of people don't know this, but we changed up the packaging. The packaging is, is even more environmentally friendly. We're using like these bamboo derivatives in the packaging. Way less plastic. And if you guys haven't seen the brand new Kion rebrand, which was influenced by everything from extensive meetings between me and the team to, to our customer base to plant medicine and beyond, it's pretty much one of the coolest looking supplement bottles and supplement packagings you're ever going to see. And you can check it out now and take advantage of the President's day savings@getkion.com BenGreenfeld and use code PresidentsDay. So there you have that. And then I wanted to get into one last thing. Have you ever, have you ever used the website podcast Notes? Jay?

I have not, no.

Podcast notes is pretty cool. So there's lots of podcasts we know the podcasts are like the new blog now. There's like 100 new podcasts every single day, it seems. Like, not new podcast episodes, like new podcast shows. Who's gonna keep up with all that? Well, this website, Podcast Notes, they find the best of the best podcasts and they summarize them for you. And, and I'll put a link to Podcast Notes in the show Notes. They even have like a 10% discount code for us for anybody who wants like their, their premium membership. So you have access to just literally in five minutes you can read some, you know, let's say some two hour long deep dive science episode. They just summarize the whole thing. You don't get if you were to listen to the, or read the summary of say, like the podcast you're listening to right now. You don't get the rollicking, you know, witty banter between Jay and I, but you would at least get all the key takeaways. And anyways, I wanted to mention that they recently did the top takeaways from 2020 Health Edition, meaning they took all their favorite health podcasts from 2020, all their favorite episodes, and they summarized all the key takeaways, and it was actually a pretty fantastic article. So I'm not going to give you everything that's in the entire article, but I will tell you some of the biggies. So the key takeaways from all the top podcasts in 2020 that they kind of just like put all the key takeaways together into one was no surprise here. Avoid industrial seed oils. So like podcast podcast over podcast pretty much. Rice bran, grapeseed, safflower, sunflower, soy, cottonseed, corn and canola, AKA rapeseed, ruthlessly mitigate that stuff, except in very, very small amounts. Okay, so vegetable seed oils and, you know, replaced with olive and avocado and coconut oil, et cetera. They found that the four things talked about most often to live longer were A, intermittent fasting, B, time restricted eating, which would mean like, you know, not only do an intermittent fast of 12 to 16 hours if you're a guy, 10 to 12 hours if you're a female, but compress your feeding into about eight to 12 hours during the the day. Okay, so eat between the hours of, let's say 10am and 6pm Ketogenic diet, right? Or at least some element of carbohydrate mitigation, and then exercise. All those increase atrophy and decrease inflammation. And so the only thing is that if your goal, I don't know why they said Exercise would increase atrophy and decrease inflammation. Maybe long term it could, but I think exercise would actually be decrease atrophy, increase inflammation and thus induce longevity. So I don't know if they quite summarize that correctly, but whatever limit starch and sugar intake, consider that gluten free cakes and cookies are still cakes and cookies. Eat good fats and eat a ton of vegetables while avoiding starchy vegetables like potatoes. Relatively sound advice. Although if you talk to our Ukrainian friend, he had potatoes so you know moderating and not french fries.

And we trust em.

Doctor consume some type of bone broth or collagen supplement. Right. Theythey basically say a lot of people are walking around deficient in amino acids, which I guess is related to the research study I just talked about. So maybe we could say bone broth or collagen or essential amino acids. You know, 30% of your entire body's protein makeup is from collagen. So skin, hair, nails, bones, gut lining, arterial walls and even the placenta when a woman is creating a new baby baby are all dependent on those amino acids. So regularly consuming bone broth or collagen or if you're vegan, essential amino acids, ours are all sourced from vegan plant based sources. And so if you're concerned about the aminals then you can use an amino acids but that's another big one. And then one that I was impressed to see come up over and over again in this summary of all all the top health podcasts of 2020 was using a sauna four to seven times per week for at least 20 minutes to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, sudden cardiac death, to improve arterial compliance, to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease, to enhance mood. Sauna, sauna, sauna came up again and again. So those are like their indisputable health tips where basically you know, avoid rancid seed oils, consume healthy oils, do something that's going to increase atrophy and decrease inflammation like fasting and time restricted eating and a low carb diet. Limit starch and sugar intake, eat lots of good fats, avoid too much starchy vegetable intake like potatoes, consume bone broth or collagen or essential amino acids and use a sauna. So there you have it.

Yeah, sound advice.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's all pretty sound advice. So what do you think? Did we knock people out with enough research there?

Oh man, we're almost an hour in and we haven't even got to questions. So yeah.

All right, well Ben BenGreenfieldFitness.com424 if you want to read through some of these studies yourself. And if you're interested in every study, hot off the press as soon as it comes out, follow me on Twitter. I release a ton of podcasts or I should say news flashes on twitter@twitter.com BenGreenfield and if you're not a tweeter, I do the same thing on Facebook. I also summarize them all on Facebook. And what I like about Facebook is there's a lot of interesting discussions when I do with extra studies and input from people underneath. And that's all@facebook.com bgfitness.

Hi, Ben. My name is Elle. I am a triathlete, a yogi, and I also have adhd. I was prescribed Ritalin recently, which has helped me a lot, except that it's compromised the quality of my deep sleep. I have a very excited parasympathetic nervous system. I do a lot of different yoga and different breathing exercises and transcendental transcendental meditation and prayer to help reactivate my parasympathetic nervous system to balance it. However, I still have issues with my deep sleep supplements, biohacks, breathing, yoga and exercises aside. And I was wondering if you could help me with this one. Thanks so much for taking the time. Love your podcast, Love your work. Thanks for sharing, brother. Be blessed and be a blessing.

Ella's a triathlete, she's a yogi, and she has adhd. I've never heard of that before.

That's an interesting combo for sure.

Interesting combo. Yeah. So Ritalin. Ritalin is. Yeah, that's. That's interesting. I'm not a huge fan of Ritalin. And honestly, you know, we don't have a lot of time to get into, to all of the issues with Ritalin, as much as I would like to get into some of, some of the positive alternatives to Ritalin and that, I don't know, you probably have some thoughts on Ritalin as a, as a brain guy. Jay, what are your thoughts on Ritalin?

Yeah, you know, it's a really interesting one. Ritalin has been around for a very, very long time, and this is not a new pharmaceutical. And I've actually seen within many individuals, you know, we're typically talking young children when we talk Ritalin, even though I'm assuming, you know, l is not a child. But for a lot of, lot of children, it's very interesting because, you know, we're introducing a pharmaceutical that is intended to activate the prefrontal lobe of the, of the frontal cortex and the Problem with it is, is on a developing brain, this can result in some unfortunate changes and modifications and then unfortunately, reliance on the drug. I have seen it work effectively for a lot of kids. However, it's always kind of like that cost benefit analysis that has to go into taking the medication on whether or not, you know, kind of the side effects, especially the more long term or long haul effects, or whether or not they're going to kind of justify, you know, kind of having, you know, a kid who's well behaved, if you will. So it's, it's, it's a, it's a tough call, honestly, because I can't, you know, a lot of parents, like, they feel like this is the last resort, like they have to have something like this to help with their children. However, you know, a lot of them on the kind of other side of things, when kind of the kid gets of age, a lot of them will say that they regret it because of some of the long term effects. So, yeah, it's, it's a tough call.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, methylphenidate is what it's called. And I really think that there are, there are better ways to approach ADD and ADHD just because methylphenidate acts in a similar way to cocaine in the brain. And there's been some studies that, that have shown those type of compounds to be associated with earlier onset of bipolar disorder, some amount of growth suppression, and just all the issues that go into excessive stimulation using something like that. So, so, you know, when you look at other ways to control ADHD that, you know, aren't going to temporarily kind of, I guess, permanently affect reward signaling in the brain, there's some interesting things. Like when you look at functional medicine, for example, you know, the big areas they look at are nutritional deficiencies that can contribute to addna, adhd, and some of the common deficiency are magnesium, zinc, and interestingly, lithium, which is now used in a lot of these kind of like smart drug nootropic type of compounds. And so I would look into magnesium deficiencies, I would look into zinc deficiencies. And supplementation with zinc and magnesium in the absence of a deficiency doesn't seem to affect dramatically ADD and adhd. But if you are deficient in zinc or deficient in magnesium, both of which could be tested via, you know, like a mineral analysis, that's something that could contribute to ADD and ADHD and something that I would definitely look into. And then deficiency of lithium, which is a little bit more difficult to test for, is also something that is associated with ADD and adhd. So that's one thing that I would look at now. There's also this concept of the gut brain connection, which has been well established. And gut dysbiosis is also something that can cause kids to be impulsive, overactive, you know, even get worse on medications. And so assessing gut health, especially from a food standpoint, even when it comes to like gluten, commercial dairy, et cetera, that's something else I would consider. Copper. Elevated levels of copper seem to be something that correlate to ADD and adhd. And we tend to have very, very elevated levels of copper common in the water supply. There was one study where they looked at lead in elementary school water fountains in Massachusetts and they found elevated copper to be rampant. And these kids with elevated copper seem to actually have higher levels of ADD and adhd, which is interesting because the zinc to copper ratio is very important. And so if that's accompanied by zinc deficiency efficiency, or if zinc is adequate, but copper is in excess to the extent to where the copper zinc ratio is off, that's something to think about too. So you probably have a higher need for lithium, you probably have a lower need for copper, and you probably need to consider your zinc, your magnesium, and then also just the overall diet composition in general. So those are some things that functional medicine look at that are, that are some of the biggies. Now there's also this really interesting book when it comes to other treatments for ADD and adhd, written by a guy named Michael Platt, which, which I read recently. And whereas a lot of stuff Ella's doing is good, like the, like, you know, breathing and yoga and exercise, Michael Platt gets into this idea that progesterone particularly can be something that can assist quite a bit with this concept of adrenaline dominance and its relation to ADD and adhd. And he even uses it in some of the children that he works with as a therapy, about a 5% progesterone cream. You can find Michael Platt's actual brand of progesterone cream. You can get it on Amazon. He has this all natural, bioidentical, very clean progesterone came, it's called Plat Pro 5% progesterone cream. And you apply a little bit like to the inner thigh or to the inner arm, like a hair free area of the body, you know, a very small amount of that. And that seems to be very useful as kind of like an alternative treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And that would be in men and in women and in kids. He's using that you know, a lot of times progesterone is considered to be something that women would use especially as they they age and is something like estrogen dominance might set in. But it appears to be something that that Platt has done some research on. His book's called Adrenaline Dominance. And then the book that gets into a lot of those functional medicine approaches that I talked about, that book's called Finally Focused the Breakthrough Natural Treatment Plan for ADHD that restores attention, minimizes hyperactivity and helps eliminate drug side effects. That's by James Greenblatt. Those are probably two of the better books out there. It's interesting both of the authors names end in att. Michael Platt and James Green Blatt. Those would be two books that I would check out and those I'll link to in the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 424neurofeedback I was talking with my friend Andrew Hill at Peak Brain Institute. I know you've done quite a bit with neurofeedback at your place, Jay. Are you a fan of that for things like adhd? Because I've seen seen some, some pretty good data behind neurofeedback and ADD adhd.

Oh yeah, no, absolutely. I mean the data is unresounding. I mean one of the biggest things that we see is that this is considered a Class 5 treatment. And a Class 5 treatment for ADHD means that it is on a par in terms of efficacy with medication. So when we look at things like Adderall, we look at Ritalin and then we look at neurofeedback, they are classified, classified under the same level of treatment. So they're equally as found to be as effective. But obviously with neurofeedback you do not have the, the negative side effects that you would with the medication. So no, this is my go to. If anybody comes to me and they're complaining of adhd, we're gonna do a qeeg which is a brain map and then we're gonna do neurofeedback. Based on what I see. And for those with adhd, it's typically what's called theta beta training or it's a down training of theta waves in the frontal lobe and an up training of beta waves. So yeah, I'm a huge fan of neurofeedback for adhd.

Okay, great. Yeah. And gogo check out. I'll link to it in the show notes some of the previous podcast episodes I've done with the folks at Peak Brain Institute about that because you can go see a practitioner, you can also use some of this equipment in your own home and you know, even some of those home use devices. Even though Andrew Hill wasn't a huge fan of the, compared to clinical neurofeedback, but like the, like the mind lift that that comes along with that Muse headband is something that, that kind of is like a home version of neurofeedback that again might not be as good as clinical neurofeedback, but is still going to have some, some amount of benefit. So look in, look into that. And then there was also a, a paper that was published called Alternative Treatments for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. You can find this one on PubMed. But they looked into some, into some alternative therapies and the main ones that they found that could be useful as alternatives to something like Ritalin, as far as actual treatments that you might do with a practitioner. In addition to neurofeedback, one was acupuncture and one was hypnotherapy. And so those are two that appear to be somewhat helpful. They also looked into biloba, ginkgo biloba, and that's a component of a lot of these nootropic compounds. That one appeared to be somewhat helpful and that's also a really, really good one for memory. And then keeping your levels of essential fatty acids, particularly omega 3 fatty acids and fatty acids derived from, from fish oil and primrose oil may be helpful if you have an omega fatty acid deficiency, kind of similar to magnesium and zinc. If you don't have a deficiency, probably not helpful. But especially people who might be following a plant based diet, vegan, vegetarian, et cetera, in whom omega 3 fatty acids tend to be at a little bit more of a deficit. That would be something to look into. So, and I'll link to that paper as well. So those are a few things that I would consider before I turn to something like Ritalin. So I think, I think that should give l a few things to work with. What do you think, Jay?

Yeah, I think that's pretty good.

Okay.

Hey, Ben Pollock here from Pemberton, British Columbia. Thanks for all the hard work and the amazing information that you bring for us so that we can live an amazing life. My, a burning question is about pee. Sometimes when I pee it's foamy. Sometimes when I pee it's not foamy. Sometimes in between, is there something that pee tells us and if so, what? Thanks very much. Keep it real.

I love this question. Foamy pee, anything about pee Sometimes it just means you're peeing super. Sometimes it means somebody just cleaned the toilet and there's like those chemicals in there, you know, when you pee. And, and you know, we have a house cleaner comes over once a week and I always wonder if I'm supposed to be peeing in the toilet when it's got the blue stuff in it or. And I hope it doesn't mess her up, but I gotta pee. And so. Yeah, same thing. Yeah. So, so assuming somebody hasn't been cleaning your toilet, you know, that, that, that's, that's very interesting when it comes to, to the foamy pee because I, you know, there's a lot of, of reasons that you might have so called foamy piss. You might just have a super fast urine stream. All right, you just might be, I don't know, maybe Ben is well endowed.

Blasting away.

Blasting away, right? Normal urinary stream is about 15 milliliters per second. I don't know why I know that random fact. But if you know that if your pee looks bubblier than usual, it might just be coming out a little faster. You know, I study up on these things. I have, I have odd cocktail party knowledge in my head. Love it. So, so that's one thing. You know, sometimes if your kidneys are not filtering properly, your pee could look foamy because there's excess protein in it. Or you might just be eating too much protein, right? And so you, you could get your kidneys checked out or at least if you're getting a blood test, look at your albumin levels, look at your creatinine levels, look at your blood urea nitrogen levels. And, and if they're a little off, you may wanna actually assess the health of your kidney. Maybe go on a juice fast like I am. So anyways, look at excess protein, look at your kidney function. If you're dehydrated, similarly, that, that could make your urine foamy, right? But usually it's gonna be foamy and yellow. If that's the case, but look into dehydration, excess sugar in your urine, excess sugar in your urine. You know, like pre diabetes for example, or just, just too much sugar in your diet overall, similar to too much protein, that can result in foaminess.

Right?

And so the reason for that is that diabetes is going to affect the body's insulin levels and hypertension, it can affect blood flow to the kidneys, impair kidney function, cause increased protein in the urine and then also sugar in the urine. And that can cause foamy pee. Okay. Anytime we've got excess protein or excess sugar in the pee, it's going to be a little bit more foamy. Chronic infection. Chronic infection can also cause excess protein in your urine, again primarily by affecting kidney filtration. I'm talking about things like hepatitis or HIV for example. So that's something that you would want to visit with a physician about, but it's something that can cause that. Another thing that can cause problems with kidney filtration, high levels of protein in the urine would be a high intake of non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs which you've already established. If you want to get swole, you shouldn't be using like Advil and Motrin and Aleve. But it can also affect kidney function. So that's another one to think about. Autoimmune issues. Autoimmune issues, right. Those can, those can affect kidney filtration and cause foamy pee. Right. And you know, everything from food allergies to excess stress can cause some autoimmune type of conditions. But that'd be another one to at least look into would be the, you know, the potential for autoimmunity, you know, so you can consider a food allergy test or a test for some immune antibodies in your system. A lot of these things I know, I'm just kind of like glossing over, but these are things you can look into and take a deeper dive into even certain types of blood cancer like multiple myeloma, right? That's a type of cancer that forms in the plasma cells of your blood that can lead to excess protein in the urine and cause it to look foamy. Right? So, so most of the conditions like autoimmune issues or some types of blood cancer, pain medications, chronic infections, et cetera, even prediabetes or diabetes, usually they're causing excess protein in the urine through affecting kidney filtration and that then leads to foamy pee. So something to think about now I have an article I published some time back called 10 things your pee can tell you about your body. Because these P strips that you can get, you know, these urinalysis strips for like pennies on the dollar from your local pharmacy, they can actually be really cool ways to test a whole bunch of things at home. You know those ones with the color comparison chart on them where you can hold up your pee and you know, see if it matches up the greens and the yellows and the blues. You can learn about all sorts of stuff. I'll link to the article in the show notes. But like the specific gravity of your urine that can can tell you things about your hydration levels or the amount of protein in your urine. You can assess liver function because these P strips will tell you about how much a urobilinbilinogen is in your system. Right? And that's something that can be elevated if you have a beat up liver. And so that's another thing these pee strips can look at. They can test for ketones, which is not going to be as accurate as even a blood ketone ketone test. But you can use these P strips, test ketones, you can use them to test your glucose, you can use them to test your ph, right, your blood pH. You would want the average urine sample tested about 6.0 or so. But you can use them to test ph, because if your urine PH is very low, that could indicate an acidic environment, which would put you at risk for things like kidney stones or diabetic ketoacidosis or diarrhea or starvation. Whereas a higher than normal urine ph could indicate indicate things like low stomach acid or UTI or respiratory alkalosis where you're breathing off too much carbon dioxide. So that's another interesting thing. They could test for nitrites, right? And a lot of bacteria that cause urinary tract infections like E. Coli or Enterobacter or Klebsiella or Proteus, those have enzymes that reduce the nitrate present in urine. And so you tend to have more nitrite in your urine. And of course these tests can also look at intact red blood cells in the urine. And blood present in high quantities in the urine can also indicate some type of kidney inflammation or urinary tract infection. And I actually did a whole story about how I tweaked my diet and did a whole bunch of self experimentation with acidic versus alkaline diets and a whole bunch of urine analysis. And I found out some interesting, interesting things. So I'll link to that article in the show notes. We're a bit too long in the tooth for me to get into the whole nitty gritty of that article, but it's actually pretty interesting how I was using urine data to assess a whole bunch of different things. So check out that article called 10 things your peak and tell you about your body. And then the other interesting thing is there's this new company and I've actually been experimenting with their strips. It's an in home wellness track that can test for vitamin B levels, for magnesium, for vitamin C, for ketones, for ph, for hydration, even for cortisol. And it's this strip that you pee on, but it's fancier than the ones that you get from your local drugstore. It's called Vessel Health. And Vessel health will track a lot of the things that like a home blood test would test for, but they do it with your pee. They're even rolling out a COVID test. A COVID test? Yeah. Yeah, they're rolling out a COVID test card where you can literally pee on a strip and. And do an at home COVID test using your pee. Isn't that crazy?

That is, yeah. Does it give you like the results there? You have to ship it off?

No, everything's right there. It's instant results. Yeah. I've got about 10 of these pee strips up in my pantry. Not the COVID ones because they haven't rolled those out yet, but the other ones. And super simple. The cool thing is what happens is you pee on this strip and then the vessel card has a QR code on it. You scan the QR code and it'll basically tell you a whole bunch of stuff about your pee.

Whoa.

Yeah. Which is. Which is very convenient for people who don't like needles but don't mind, you know, pee and soso. Yeah, it's called Vessel Health. Brand new company. I'm kind of keeping my eyes on them and I'll link to them in the show notes, but it's an in home wellness tracker. You're not peeing on your phone. You're peeing on the. The. On the strip, and then you're scanning the QR code with your phone. Please don't pee on your phone, folks. We already know there's enough. There's more fecal matter on most phones than they're on toilet seats. The last piece of data I saw. So clean your phone frequently. Have you seen those? Those? I have one now. The. The at home phone chargers that also clean your phone using uv.

Oh, yeah, like soap boxes or something like that.

Yeah. Whenever I get home from a bunch of travel, I put my phone on one of those. Those phone chargers. Now I have my office that'll like clean my phone and charge it simultaneously.

Yeah, I need one of those.

Yeah. I guess I could just use an alcohol swab and save myself like 200 bucks from one of these UV scanners. But I like to own cool things and have random pieces of technology in my office just because it makes me feel good about myself. True. Anyways, Vessel health is the name of that company. So I looked them up too, and hopefully that gives you some clips, clues. Ben. About. About Foamy P. Foamy P. I should titled this podcast the Foamy P show. So yeah, anyway, Pringles show. Yeah, yeah, Foamy P and Pringles. Hyperbolic Pringles. So I feel like we've probably run out of time, Jay, but I think we probably do have a few minutes left to be able to give something cool away.

Yeah, there's always time for that.

We love to check out the reviews that you, you guys leave on Apple podcasts or wherever fine podcasts are found. And if we pick a review and we read your review on the show, we then turn around and we send you a Handy Dandy Ben Greenfield fitness gear pack. Bpa, free water bottle, a sweet ass beanie, cool workout T shirt with the BGF logo. And we want to send our top reviewer for the week one of these gear packs. And so if you hear your review read on the ship show, all you got to do is email gearngreenfieldfitness.com with your t shirt size and we'll hook you up. So Jay, that being said, who, who's our big winner this week?

The big winner for this week is Keegan Andrew 11. And Keegan Andrew 11 wrote this podcast will help you unlock your potential. A myriad of guests that offer many different perspectives. Ben also has a great sense of humor. Love it. That's it, man.

But Jay. And Jay's a fuddy duddy.

That's right. I didn't read that part. You have to look at that on the show notes. But I just, I just wanted to make sure that you knew that. Keegan Andrew thinks that you have a great sense of humor.

You know, I brought you on as the clown for the witty banter. J. So I think it's ironic that I'm getting called out for the humor. I'm supposed to be the nerd. You're supposed to write that. You're supposed to be the clown. The guy who, who on the late night TV show stands back there and tells jokes while the Andy Richter. Yeah, the Andy Richter of the Ben Greenfield show. But I love it. Apparently that's not working out.

So I guess.

Anyways, though, we appreciate your kind words and what, what's his name again?

Keegan. Andrew 11.

Keegan. Email gearngreenfieldfitness.com with your T shirt size. We'll get a handy Dandy gear pack out to you. The rest of you, that's one of the best ways you can support this show besides sending us massive amounts of cash in the mail, is to leave your review to subscribe to the show and leave your review wherever you hear fine shows. It helps support us. It helps feed our kids. It helps keep me stocked up with juice and hopefully soon, ribeye steaks. So, Jay, I think that's it. Well, and we'll link to everything again, you guys@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 4:24 and I guess we should probably wrap things up there. What do you think?

Yeah, man. Until next time.

All right, until next time, everybody. We'll catch you, as they say, on the flip side. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfield Fitness.com along 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.