Q&A 427: Blue Steak, Dirty Carpet, Growing Your Brain With Food Deprivation, Using HRV To Choose The Best Exercises, Natural Ways To Increase DHEA & Much More!

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Blue steak, dirty carpet, growing your brain like your evolutionary ancestors. A whole host of Clubhouse Q and A questions from our fantastic listeners and much, much more. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Jcsong.

What's up?

We did it. We're back on. Back on Clubhouse once again.

Hey, man, we're getting faster and faster. Only took us like 20 minutes to set up today.

Amazing. Well, the clubhouse room is filling up. We're going to be getting to a ton of great, great questions today. And I'm feeling energized. You know why I'm feeling energized? I'll give you a clue. It has nothing to do with, with nootropics, with smart drugs, with coffee.

My first guess, seriously, was that you threw those. What, what's that crap you throw in your eye that you've been talking about.

For the past two buckets, those Sananga eye drops? No.

Yeah, I thought that was it.

I did not do that. No, I, I, I've got this article that I am actually working on. I'll hopefully publish it in the next maybe two or three weeks over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com but I've really been studying up on this whole idea of kind of like activating qi and kind of like getting energy flowing through the different meridians or chakras of the body. I'm just going to throw out as many woo woo words as I can here in the introduction just to scare away anybody who's not a yogi. And anyways, there's this old book that was published in 1939. It's called the Eye of Revelation. Have you ever heard of it?

No, Okay. I have not. I can't say I have.

So this, this book. What, you haven't been going to the library for your, for your books from the 1930s?

Haven't been checking out, you know, chi books from 1939 here recently, but give me some time.

The book, the Eye of Revelation, it is, it is on, it is on Kindle as well. And anyways, it's written by this guy named Peter Kelder who is stationed or who described the story of this, this British army officer who was stationed and who apparently discovered this so called fountain of youth, meaning he studied with a bunch of these like old school Tibetan monks who had a certain series of rites that they would do each day and apparently they had a remarkable amount of vitality and youthfulness. And he actually wound up recording all of these different moves that they did. There's five, arguably six of them. And, and it's a fascinating read, but what I did was I've actually been studying up on these so called five Tibetan rites along with the sixth rite that induces an even greater kind of fountain of youth effect. And then combine them with several other exercises that I've borrowed from like tai chi, qigong and a few different breathwork protocols. And I've woven all these together into like this 15 minute morning routine that I do. And it's everything from like, you know, twisting side to side to different spinning motions, to these kneeling back bends to a tabletop exercise, to some things people might be familiar with from yoga. Like the upward downward dog is basically one of the five Tibetan rights. And so yesterday I filmed about a 20 minute video walking people through the whole thing. But I didn't want to publish the video until I actually wrote an article about it as well. And so, yeah, I've been doing these five Tibetan rites along with a few other moves each morning. And this book, the Eye of Revelation, is really, really super interesting. And by the way, there's also a really good website@t5t.com they actually are like selling their own version of the Tibetan rights. But you can actually, there's a bunch of free resources and information on that website to learn more about the rights and what they actually are. And then there's actually also a really good book by a guy I'm going to have on the podcast called the Reality Revolution. It's by this guy named Brian Scott and he details some of the things he's mashed up with the five Tibetan rights. And so anyways, stay tuned because we're going to release that soon on the podcast. But that's the morning routine I've been geeking out on and I will get into it in more detail.

Yeah, I bet you're experiencing or you will if you haven't, or anybody who utilizes this will experience this. A fair amount of parasympathetic flow. So the reason, and I don't know if you're measuring this, you know, by via heart rate variability or anything, but some of the positions that you mentioned, especially like in child's pose, can be quite parasympathetic, parasympathetically stimulating. And it sounds kind of contradictory to one another, however, it's something that I use a lot of with my clientele in order to kind of expand the diaphragm, increase vagal tone. So I mean, that's kind of right up my alley.

Oh yeah, I'm sure a lot of this could could be quantified as well, even though I haven't really like one of the beauty aspects and simplicity of it is you don't need like a foam roller, a mobility ball, a biocharger, a PEMF mat, a heart rate variability. This is just like you and your body. So I like this routine because you can take it on the road with you as well. And I'll link to a few of the resources if you go to the show notes for today's podcast, which are going to be once they're published, unless you're listening to this live, in which case those show notes aren't available yet. They're@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 427. I'll link to the book that I'm getting some of this stuff from and then I'll also link to or also just send it on my newsletter, which is straight from the website. Once I release the video that walks people through the whole routine. So anyways though, we should dive in pretty soon. But before we do, Jay, did you do anything particularly intriguing to enhance your energy levels this morning?

So I wouldn't say anything out of the ordinary. So I got my workout in. I hate doing this. You know, I'm on the east coast and so my workouts are generally like I like to do kind of like the 3pm 4pm workout and so I had to do mine this morning around 10 or so, which isn't optimal for me. But for me it's better to get it in than to not do it at all. So I'm not whining, but I just took some ketone esters right before we started this podcast because I was feeling like a little bit at afternoon, like lag because it's 1:45 now for me and now I'm just. No, I'm jolted, man. Dude, I'm feeling pretty good right now. Even though that stuff tastes like man snake piss. Is that a word? Can we say that I don't think.

It tastes too bad. I gave some to my kids the other day. I told them it tastes like rocket fuel. And one of my sons drank like half the bottle of the ketone esters. One from Ketone Aid that doesn't taste that great. But. But he was like, it's not that bad. So fortunately the kids are a chip off the old block and they don't mind the taste of stuff that really has the flavor of straight up ass because as long as it has a functional effect, we're all happy. And that's an astute observation, by the way, that you made. And then we can jump into the news flashes here because I want to allow a little bit of extra time for Q and A. And that is that the best time of day to work out, based on science, based on research journals, based on a deep, deep body of exercise physiology research is Drumroll, plea, please. The time of day when you're most likely to do it. So there you have it.

There you have it all.

Well, let's go ahead and let's jump into today's news flashes. All right, so this is the time on the show when I delve into a few of the more particularly intriguing things that I have brought up on, particularly Twitter and Facebook, where I release a whole bunch of different news flashes and articles and research studies that I've stumbled across. You know, since I spend a little bit of time each day, typically around an hour or so, just reading journals and articles and everything from SCI hub to PubMed and beyond. And then I choose a few of the better, more intriguing ones and talk about them in the news flashes section of the show. And I've got a few doozies today. Got a few doozies today. So, Jay, do you remember when. And this would have been, I think, podcast 424. We got into this ridonkulous article about tackling climate change through human engineering in which we. We had a discussion about this article that proposed that we do things like induce pharmacological meat intolerance in people by injecting them with specific compounds that would basically make them allergic to meat. Right? Similar to, like a nicotine patch that someone could put on a patch that would fill them with a sugar, like, like alpha galactose, for example, that would cause them to produce antibodies that fight against any of the sugars that might be found in meat. They also propose that we could somehow engineer humans to make them smaller, thus reducing human ecological footprints. They've also, in that particular article, discussed cognitive enhancement to make people smarter, because the link between lowered birth rates and smarter people having fewer kids and then finally pharmacologically inducing things like altruism or empathy, which would theoretically lead to more climate awareness and better environmental responsibility, specifically by getting a whole bunch of oxytocin into people's systems so that they were better capable of caring for the planet based on increased empathy. And it was a very interesting discussion that we had about that particular article. And if you guys want, you can go back to BenGreenfieldFitness.com422 to hear us kind of weave through some of those proposals, which I think are, in my own opinion, absolutely bullshit, but are, I guess, to be grammatically correct, I should say absolute bullshit. Yes, but, but I recently read an article this week that is right along the same veins as that. And I suppose veins here is a pun intended term because the article is about coloring our steaks blue could help reduce the world's insatiable demand for meat. I don't know if you read this, Jay. Yeah, I did, but there was a review of blue foods that was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. And it gets into this idea, beginning with a story about how color plays an important part in the enjoyment of food, how our appetite is conditioned by our senses of sight, but also by things like smell and taste. And he talks about this one kind of study, I guess, that they did where they, they dimmed the lights or somehow reduced people's ability to be able to see their food. And then they, they had a steak that was kind of like this bluish gray color, celery that was kind of pink, salads that were a little bit like a muddy violet green, peas that kind of looked like black caviar, milk that was like blood red blue eggs and like a kind of like a sickly yellow color to the coffee. And the dinner turned into an absolute failure because all the guests lost their appetite. Unless you're looking at the success of a meal being dependent upon how many calories one consumes, in which case you could argue that it was a smashing success because people ate less food. So blue it appears, and especially blue associated with a food that we don't expect to be blue. It's not like a blue raspberry smoothie or a blue piece of candy, but rather particularly meat and fish. It's a very od putting color, probably because from an evolutionary or an ancestral standpoint, we tend to associate blue with, with mold, which makes sense kind of this self protective mechanism that when you're looking at the color of a food, it is one thing to pay attention to. It's like when you're doing, you know, wilderness survival and plant foraging. It's very few red foods that you can actually eat without getting sick. Red is often a color of warning in nature. Or like black spots on a, on a leaf or a plant could indicate, for example, mold. That'd be another ex. And the interesting thing is that they've found in multiple studies that coloring food, particularly meat or Fish or animal based protein blue reduces the palatability rating of that food. And so this article proposed that we deliberately taint meat by injecting it with like a blue food dye, you know, such as salmon, beef, etc. And that if we do that, we may actually reduce patterns of food consumption that could lead to poor health patterns and basically induce people to eat less meat by coloring food differently. Now, of course, this, this entire article is based upon the arguably faulty premise that meat or fish are bad for you, which I think we've established many times on this podcast are not if they're kind of like unprocessed, healthier forms of meat, not paired with say like, you know, broccoli drenched in vegetable oil from your local steakhouse, or you know, the bun, the mayo, the vegetable oils, everything else that might be on a burger from a fast food restaurant, but nonetheless, making food less attractive by coloring it differently is what is the main thrust of this article. And it was written by a gentleman who actually published a very interesting book. I'll try and find it and link to it in the show notes called Sense Hack, which just gets into, you know, basically as the name implies, how to hack our senses to cause us to do more things or do less things. But in this case, hacking food would involve making it a less palatable color. And this is actually very interesting also because they already do this in a way with bacon. Like they'll, they'll take, they'll take bacon from like unhealthy like you know, cafo feedlot hogs. That's heavily processed bacon full of nitrates that are used in meat processing. Which I agree is, is one of the reasons that red meat and meat in general has such a bad rap, particularly related to its carcinogenic potential. It's due to the processing of the meat. And in many cases these N nitroso compounds that are formed when red meat particularly is processed, you know, the heme iron and the amines and the amides in red meat will interact with the nitrates used in meat processing to form these carcinogenic compounds. And one of the things that they do with, with bacon is they'll use specific processing methods that turn the bacon like this nice, like rich, rosy color to make it a little bit more palatable. Even though post processing and especially from unhealthy hogs, bacon's kind of like this nasty, like brownish gray color. Yep. And so they, they actually already do color bacon. They, they also color like farmed salmon. They'll dye that with like kind of A, a darker reddish orange dye to make it look like it's a more rich, you know, astaxanthin fed salmon. And so this is something that's already done, but now the proposal is we do this in reverse and make people less likely to eat meat by painting our meat blue. So what do you think about that?

Yeah, it's just interesting they're coming after meat again because like you made a comment and one of the first things I thought about is, oh yeah, you know, you don't think about like a blue raspberry gummy as being like, you know, non palatable. You think that, okay, that kind of matches with what I expect. But what if we made gummy bears all gray or we made donuts all black or some other pastry, like some kind of off color? Like what if we spent our efforts doing writing about that instead of meat? Because I didn't know too. One of the questions I had a follow up was, was this coming strictly from a nutritional standpoint or was this also coming from like an environmental sustainability standpoint? Because I feel like that is another area where they kind of put meat in the crapper, if you will.

But.

But yeah, I mean, that's just, that's exactly where my mind went.

I don't think that it was necessarily one or the other per se, but the article itself basically says that patterns of food consumption, specifically traditionally farmed animal protein, are like unsustainable at a global level. And so I think it's actually looking at both minimizing risks to health, which again, I think is a flawed premise, unless we're talking about processed meat, but then also the direct health impact on the body. So I in no way endorse government or any other body legislating that companies like McDonald's or Burger King develop a blue or a purple Big Mac. But I don't know, maybe if you have a certain processed meat food that you're addicted to, or you want to drink less coffee and you want to turn that yellow or turn your sushi blue or do some other type of color hacking to reduce the palatability of a food that you might have a problem with. I mean, I see something there, but I would never want to see businesses legislated to turn their food to specific color so that we consume less of it. But it's an interesting article, interesting idea.

Sure. I'd be put off by a blue stake too. The article is pretty accurate in that sense. But should we be doing that or should government step in to make other companies, organizations do that, yeah, that's a whole different story. And yet my answer would be no.

Well, maybe those of you live on Clubhouse, you can pipe in if we bring any of you up during the Q and A to tell me what you think about this. But you can also leave your comments@bengreenfieldfitness.com 427about whether or not you would endorse the development of blue meat. I personally like my big old tomahawks and ribeyes and any other food that I prepare to be the exact color that nature intended it to be. Unless I put a nice, a nice big, you know, like coffee rub on there, in which case, yeah, it is a little, little brownish or reddish or whatever the case may be. But speaking of ridiculousness, here's, here's another interesting theory. Why not make the insides of our house more dirty? Oh wait, you know what, There was one other thing I did want to mention that I forgot about in relation to that color thing. You know how a lot of folks will wear like blue light blocking glasses at night? Like with a red lens or orange lens? I break all the rules. I don't do that at all. During dinner I whip the glasses off my face because I've found whether I'm out at a steakhouse or any other restaurant or I'm having dinner at home with the family, as soon as I put those glasses on, I experience myself subjectively reduced palatability of the food that I'm eating. I rarely if ever eat food with blue light blocking glasses on because I just can't see my food as well. And I enjoy my food a lot better with those glasses off. So that's interesting. Screw my circadian rhythms. I want to enjoy my steak.

I've got little, little kids, so I don't. We eat at like 5pm you probably eat at what, like 7 or 8?

Yeah, we eat around 7 or 8. Yeah, like 7:38. Yep. We eat late dinners just because it's more conducive to our big glorious family dinners that we have. So circadian rhythm be screwed. I'm whipping off my blue light blocking glasses and eating late just because it renders my life far more enjoyable. So there's something to just enjoying life also and not being starved, hungry, cold, and Libido less for 160 years that you've hacked for your life on this planet. Anyways, though, here's another snippet of ridiculousness. So there was an article in the Wall Street Journal and the article was about different ways that we could enhance Immune system health, especially during the era of COVID And one of the suggestions was to bring the outside in. To bring the outside in. And this was based off of studies of the indoor environments at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare where they packed a thin layer of microbial rich soil from rural areas of Finland into rugs and then placed those rugs into homes. And they found that microbes got distributed through the air in the home over the course of several weeks, thus increasing the diversity of the indoor microbiota, increasing the microbial richness in home spaces, and basically creating a scenario in which there were more beneficial microbes indoors by basically bringing dirty carpets and dirty rugs into the house. And so the hypothesis here or the proposal of Joel Saladin, who has a wonderful little musings blog called thelunaticfarmer.com he wrote an article about this and basically laid out this idea of a million dollar business opportunity for people who want to develop dirt and soil and dirty carpets and dirty rugs that folks could put into their house like a compost soil entry mat for doorways that would enhan their immune system while they were kicking around their house. Now I don't know about you Jay, but in my home that would be as simple as taking down the sign right by the door that says please remove your shoes and or kicking the kids outside to, you know, roll around outside in the dirt a little bit during the day versus bringing all the dirt indoors, which I kind of find humorous because for so long many of us have operated with this idea that we take off our shoes before we come ins and we don't spread dirt all over our carpet and our rugs for obvious reasons. Well, this proposal is that we do the exact opposite. It's kind of like that. I think it was the AO Biome was a company that came out with like a micro like spray, like a, like a probiotic soil based probiotic spray that you could, you could spray around your house or the development of all these spendy soil probiotic organisms. When I interviewed a guy, I forget who it was back in the day, who demonstrated that you could get just as many by like going outside every once in a while and like putting your finger in the dirt and licking your finger. So it's kind of funny how we'll pay to do things that we could get for free outdoors. And I will totally not be surprised if somebody does come out with a compost infused doorway mat that you can rub yourself and your feet in before you go into your house and walk around to Increase the micro diversity of your house and turn it into its own little, you know, McDonald's farm. So.

Right.

Yeah, it is funny and you're probably right that somebody is gonna probably go with this. I don't, I don't know if it's gonna be a, if it's gonna be marketed very well. But the one thing that I was thinking about two things. Yes. If you've got kids, especially like for me, I've got two younger kids that are outside all the time in the dirt, like planting, you know, gardening, let them come inside and have a blast inside. The other thing is if you have a dog, your dog is running outside, getting their feet all in the dirt and mud and whatever else and bringing in the biome as well. So just let that happen. And if you don't have either, then I'd say like what you said, go out barefoot or go out with your shoes on and then just maybe not kick them off immediately drag a, drag a little bit of dirt around the house and there you go, problem solved. And then you spend $0.

Yep, exactly. I just love how we're living in this era where we're making blue stakes and dirt infused doorway mats. It just seems absolutely ridiculous. And then here's something that's kind of cool. There was actually a really compelling study and this is the last thing I want to mention before we jump into the Q and A for today. It was an evolutionary perspective on why food over consumption impairs cognition, why food overconsumption impairs cognition. And basically the theory of this article is that our brain structures and our neuronal networks from the time that we were hunter gatherers, those did things like mediate spatial navigation and decision making and the ability to be able to acquire food in unpredictable food acquisition scenarios. Like if you can't open your refrigerator and get food. Essentially what this paper is showing is that you see an increase in neuroplasticity, brain derived neurotrophic factor and brain growth by being forced to, in a hungry state, go out and engage in all the mental time travel and problem solving and social cognition and spatial awareness required for you to harvest your own food. Whether that would be going out to the field or going out with a weapon to actually engage in food acquisition. And they lay out a really, really cool kind of like biological mechanism that relates to optimal or conversely suboptimal cognitive function based on food availability. So in the presence of food deprivation and or fasting or intermittent fasting, we see more ketone bodies produced naturally with no Ketone esters or coconut oil fat bombs in your freezer required. And we see intensified cognition. Both of those lead to an increase in what's called adaptive cellular signaling, where you see an increase in things like brain derived neurotrophic factor 1 called PGC1alpha, which allows for better mitochondrial function. Increase in the expression of what's called NRF2 and NF Kappa B, which will long term be able to modulate your levels of inflammation, an upregulation in antioxidant enzymes. Based on those two pathways, an increase in cellular autophagy and longevity enhanced what's called a GABAergic tone, which is kind of similar to like your, your vagal nerve tone or your neurotransmitter balance. And all of this results in better synaptic plasticity, better neurogenesis and better neuroprotection. And you know anybody who's say, gone out hungry on the morning of a hunt, for those of you who are hunters out there or want to get into hunting, you do have this weird kind of like mental edge, mental high. Even if it's like 4 o' clock in the morning and you're out in the dark getting ready to go hunt deer, it's like your brain is just operating in this different hyper excitable type of way where you're tuned in, your senses are a little bit more alive and alert and you feel, you can almost feel the neuroplasticity. Whereas in the presence of food abundance and overeating, you see what the authors of this paper describe as cognitive complacency. So a disengagement of all those adaptive signaling pathways that I just talked about. And what they demonstrated in this study based on a literature review was what's called synaptic dysfunction, impaired neurogenesis and neuronal degeneration in folks who compared to people who have food deprivation or absence of copious amounts of food, always handy when you open the refrigerator or you open your pantry in the presence of food abundance, we actually see people becoming more or less in both rodent and human models, more stupid based on having access to lots of food and not having to go out and find your own food. And I'm not saying that everybody needs to be a hunter, but if you can artificially create a scenario in which you have sporadic food availability by for example, having a less full refrigerator, shopping at fewer grocery stores that allow you to purchase bulk food, or at least having that bulk food a little less conveniently available, I don't know, buried in a concrete bunker in your backyard or something, or you're doing things like let's say you live in the city and every time you want to go to your favorite restaurant, you have a rule that you gotta walk there instead of drive there's gotta walk a mile to go find your food. Basically figuring out a way to force yourself, even in an era of food abundance, to kind of like a food scarcity type of scenario where there's less food around your house, where you're forcing yourself to exercise before you actually go out and have food, or you engage in periods of food deprivation or intermittent fasting. It actually appears to not only be good from a longevity standpoint, but it's actually wonderful for just like getting smarter. Isn't that interesting?

Super interesting. The one thing that I thought about is that when there's food abundance, then it's much more easy from a neurological standpoint for us to go on autopilot. Because really there's nothing at stake. There's no risk there really. I mean, you always kind of know in the back of your head like there's no reason for you to kind of get up and go because the thing that can continue to sustain life, I. E. Food is just, you know, an arm's length away or maybe a short walk away. Uhm, so I kinda see it as like the brain just kinda knows when there's food abundance I can go on autopilot. There's no need for me to kind of rev up and get ready for action. And. And it's quite the opposite when there's food scarcity. So I like that this was able to kind of highlight the physiological aspects and kind of brain and neuronal networking of this. But yeah, it just makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's super interesting. And of course, you know, at the risk of shooting ourselves in the foot now, we're going to move on and give people a bunch of fantastic discount codes on things like my new cookbook and a brand new secret product we just released from Kion and some different greens powder and even Butcherbox, we're going to give you guys a bunch of discounts on those shortly. So if you want to become smarter, ignore everything that we're about to say. Don't get coffee, don't get meat, don't get greens powders. You know, figure out how to, to grow a coffee tree a mile from your house and go harvest your own coffee beans. Don't get butcherbox and maybe go out and hunt, I don't know, a nearby cow and for God's sake, don't drink any organifi green powder. You need to go out and harvest your own nettle and spinach and mint and all that jazz if you really, truly want to be Einstein. Status. I'm just saying your sponsors are going to be pissed.

Ben.

We're going to start taking some live questions.

Ben, I'm actually enjoying the mountain biking trail in Sedona as I listen to the podcast we discussed. But it was. Yeah, it was fantastic. Listen to the podcast. I love the finish in regards to redundancy because it's so funny living in a time where, you know, the Tibetan rights are obviously, those are way too simple to be effective. Obviously we can't just detox our body and then have our body communicate to us what are the healthy foods to eat. We can't just get outside. We have to create walls and doorways to bring in the microbiome. So not as much of a question, but just wanted to touch base on the beauty of the direction our planet's heading and really the simple solutions that. That are available. So I appreciate, appreciate what it is you're doing and making the natural solutions fun.

So, Blair, are you having a heart attack right now? Are you, like, out hiking or something?

I am currently dragging my mountain bike up, up a hill in Sedona.

Oh, amazing. I love Sedona.

Oh, it's fantastic.

After, after you go mountain biking, make sure you go visit Chocolatree and have one of their. They have a salad there that's amazing. The chocolate tree salad. And of course, you gotta have a chocolate too.

Green goddess and chocolate. Way to go.

Yeah. Well, that was a total waste bringing you on stage, Blair, because you didn't really have a question. But it was refreshing to hear from a listener who's out enjoying an adventure while engaging in this week's one question.

I had, I guess, in regards to the parasympathetic versus sympathetic balance that you and Jay opened up with in regards to Tibetan rights and other activities. What sort of exercises have you noticed that provide the preferred balance in that parasympathetic to sympathetic ratio of information exchange?

I try to choose exercises that are parasympathetically, I guess, what you might call unbalanced. When I'm working out because I want to decrease my heart rate variability in most cases pretty significantly while I am working out by choosing exercises that ultimately stress my body and activate the sympathetic nervous system as much as possible, because that's kind of why I'm working out for that particular hormetic stress. Just like if I'm going to do cold exposure, I'd like for that cold water to be as cold as possible, as stressful as possible, because it just means I'll have to spend less time in it and the payoff will be higher. And I used to, for a period of time when I was doing a lot of trialing with heart rate variability monitors, wear one that would collect my HRV in real time. I just used a Bluetooth enabled heart rate strap. I was using one made by a company called Viva V I I I V A. The Polar H6 also works very well for this and I simply paired it to an app app that I helped to develop called Nature Beat, which will gather both parasympathetic and sympathetic balance in real time as you're working out or meditating or breathing or whatever you're doing. So you can kind of see how that's affecting heart rate variability. And also heart rate variability split into both sympathetic and parasympathetic in real time. And for example, what I found was that exercises, and no surprises here, such as uphill sprinting, back squats and deadlifts, all caused a very significant decrease in HRV and shift from parasympathetic into sympathetic mode. Whereas other exercises that seemed safer for my body, like push ups for example, or even pull ups, didn't really seem to do that versus things that either loaded me or forced me to be in a scenario where it seemed as though my body thought that it was running from a lot in. Now when you choose those type of sympathetically stimulating activities through trial and error and real time HRV testing, and then begin to weave those specific stressful activities in your workout routine, then pair it with what a guy like Paul Check would call working in. Meaning you do the working out, then the working in. And the working in means that you finish a workout laying straight on your back in something like the yoga chaturanga. I believe it's called the chaturanga, the corpse pose, simply doing deep nasal breathing. Or you do a series of squats that are very slow and tai chi esque, where you're going to the ground and scooping up energy and then reaching up over your head, breathing through your nose, or you are recovering in between sets by say riding very easily on a stationary bicycle while engaged in nasal breathing. Those are all examples what we call working in versus working out. Pavel Zatolin, kettlebell instructor, is also very big on doing a very hard kettlebell set and then sometimes just doing like deep nasal breathing in between Then going back and smashing it with the next 10 to 30 second set and coming back again and again. He talks about those type of techniques in his books like the Quick and the Dead or Simple and Sinister. And so I think what it really comes down to is sympathetically stimulating yourself as much as possible and then chasing that with something that's very, very parasympathetically stimulating. And if you're into biohacking, you can even engage in more parasympathetic stimulus by using like a biocharger set in post workout relaxation mode or a pair of Normatec boots or pulse electromagnetic field therapy, which I find shifts me into parasympathetic balance very quickly and increases my hrv. So really it doesn't come down to necessarily parasympathetic sympathetic balance as much as something more like a press pulse or something very similar, like a fast feast, fast cycle in nutrition. Nutrition where you're really stressing yourself out sympathetically and then activating the parasympathetic as much as possible after that. Jay is somebody who kind of specializes in heart rate variability and sympathetic parasympathetic balance. Is there anything you'd bring to the table as far as exercise considerations for getting the most out of HRV measurement during or after exercise?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that one of the things that you hit on kind of at the end of what you just provided was very important. Important is that there's this bit of misconception that goes around and, you know, I've done this in the past too, so I'm not going to say that, you know, it's, it's, you know, below me to do it or above me, whichever one fits. But there's this talk about parasympathetic sympathetic or autonomic balance and that would insinuate that these things have a one to one or should have a one to one relationship with one another. Whereas that's not really the case. We can actually influence one or the other or actually have them both turn on and off. And I won't say turn on and off, modulate upwards or downwards at the same exact time. So a lot of it has to do with intention. So if you are doing something, let's say high intensity, or if you're doing something like you mentioned, bend, squats, deadlifts, bench press, you would expect, and you would want the sympathetic nervous system to be the one in the driver's seat and you'd want to relinquish the brake, which is the parasympathetic nervous system. This is going to kick your body into high gear and allow you to engage in the full workout out. The one thing that I would say to be cautionary of is trying to then kind of counterbalance that by saying, oh well, then I must include a sympathetic, I mean, sorry, parasympathetic exercise or routine. It's not that it's a bad thing, but if you're utilizing a biometric like HRV to measure those and you're in a full workout and you kind of work in, like you mentioned, what Paul Check said, you're not going to see an LF HF ratio, which is what we consider the balance. I put that in air quotes, even though you can't see it, but we call that the balance ratio. You're not gonna see that go to 1 to 1. During a workout, you might see some relinquished control of the sympathetic nervous system and more of the activating of the brake, but you won't see them go one to one. And that's where I think a few people kinda find some mistake in utilizing HRV as a biometric. Now there are so many people, like everybody says, you know, I know how to exercise in order to engage the sympathetic nervous system. That's kind of easy, straightforward, makes sense. However, engaging the parasympathetic nervous system through exercise is very. What I recommend is very similar to what you mentioned, Ben. Doing things like different yoga poses, things like Tai Chi is another one. One of the ones that I mentioned even at the beginning of this podcast was child's pose. And I'll just go through really quickly for the sake of not getting too long in the tooth. Child's pose can be really important, especially if you do a modified one with the legs in an outward direction away from one another. The reason being is because it allows for lateral expansion of the ribcage as well as has a downward movement of both the lungs and the diaphragm to allow for more expansion of the lungs. And then that actually helps with vagal tone. The reason being is because expansion of the lower part of the lungs is where most of the bulk innervations of the vagus nerve or the tenth cranial nerve lie. So I have a lot of people will engage in that nasal breathing, deep diaphragmatic breathing in child's pose, and almost a bulk majority of people who engage in that will see HRV fly upwards really high. Their HF or high frequency band will fly up really high. And that's a good indicator of a parasympathetic flow or parasympathetic engagement. So I just wanted to kind of clarify kind of some terminology there because I mistakenly throw out the word balance as well. And I would think that it's more of modulation, kind of being able to utilize your control and volition to go in and out of each branch of the nervous system and then use them correspondingly and together. So, yeah, hopefully that helps, Blair.

Yeah. And one other thing I'd throw in there before we bring on our next question is that if you don't have access to a heart rate variability monitor, one of the things that happens when your sympathetic nervous system is stimulated is you engage in more glycogenolysis, which is basically releasing of glucose from the liver, for example, to supply quick energy. And so this is something that happens to me during sauna sessions, for example. I know those are sympathetically stimulating for me at least. Least when I'm exercising in the sauna or doing yoga in the sauna or getting myself very hot in the sauna. Because even if I'm not tracking hrv, if I look at my blood glucose measurement, it goes through the roof. It's kind of like that paradoxical increase in blood glucose that some people will get from high intensity interval training, or from intense sauna or from heavy weightlifting. And anytime that you're seeing a big glucose spike in response to an activity, it's a pretty good sign that that activity is stimulating the sympathetic nervous system. And again, that's not a bad thing. Even a cup of coffee will stimulate the sympathetic nervous system and cause a surge in blood glucose. But it appears that the long term effects of that are an increase in insulin sensitivity and an increase in glucose balance once that short transient rise in blood glucose has occurred. So even if you don't have a heart rate variability model, you can just pay attention to your blood glucose. Anytime it spikes up, that indicates that that's probably an activity. Unless it's just like you're eating a cookie that indicates your sympathetic nervous system is being stressed in a certain manner. So if you're not checking HRV and you just have a blood glucose monitor, there's that. Although I don't know many, many people who are so geeked out that they own a blood glucose monitor that they don't also have a heart rate variability monitor. So there's that. All right, well, let's go with another question here.

So, long story short, like, I'm proud to go back to the cage as a professional MMA fighter, and I, I'm going to check my blood work next month, but I checked my DHEA level and it was within the range, but it wasn't optimal because of my sleep deprived state or whatever. And since professional MMF fighting is World Anti Doping association sanctioned spouse, so I can do the, you know, illegal DHEA supplement or cream team. Is there any strategy to increase the DHEA level naturally?

Yeah, you can't use it. And this is actually kind of, kind of interesting because I, I know a guy in Spartan racing who wound up getting, I think he got his, his trophy or his winning stripped after a race because he thought he was supplementing with dha. At least this is what he said and he was taking dhea. Which are, which are, is far different. And DHEA is actually really interesting. I actually have an article coming out soon about DHEA and this guy named Ray Pete, who's kind of like a fringe online anti aging guru who is very bullish on using a stack of DHEA, pregnenolone and progesterone as what he calls like the 3 youth hormone stack. With progesterone being the basic hormone of adaptation and resistance to stress, pregnenolone being kind of a really good precursor for progesterone, but also having a lot of like youth associated protective properties. And then DHEA is one that recently has been been studied and shown specifically in combination with something like metformin to really be something that, because the decline in, is very significant, kind of similar to NAD with age supplementation with DHEA, like taking 25, 50 milligrams of DHEA on a daily basis seems to do a really good job kind of putting the brakes on aging, so to speak, and just increasing vitality and libido in a pretty cool way overall. But of course that's one of the reasons also banned by wada, by usada, if you're doing a UFC fight, obviously that'd be something that would be, be banned for you to take. But it's also problematic because athletes have a higher turnover of cholesterols and fatty acids. They see a steeper rise or a steeper drop in DHEA levels with time. And by the time most folks are about 80, their DHEA levels are like 90% lower than what they were in young adulthood. And that's where you see a lot of the effects of things like everything from lowered libido to sarcopenia or muscle loss to a drop in bone density. Low concentrations of DHEA are associated with immunosenescence, with osteoporosis, with physical frailty. And so it's a real key to Longevity, but of course it's again problematic for people who can't actually supplement with it. Now here's my main tip for you, is that your body uses cholesterol to make dhea. So I mean, anytime you're eating a diet that's wide in a variety of healthy fats like coconut milk and coconut oil and an organic grass fed grass, finished butter, flaxseed powder, chia seed slurries, olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, you know, a Weston A Price type of diet approach, that's one thing. Another one that's interesting is ashwagandha. Although you need to be careful with it because a lot of, you know, studies have shown that a lot of these Indian ayurvedic herbs tend to be tainted with things like metals and other toxins. So you need to be careful of your source. There are some companies out there, like Gaia herbs that do good sourcing, these type of compounds. But ashwagandha has been shown in studies to be able to naturally increase DHEA levels. There was one double blind, randomized placebo controlled style or trial that they did where folks were taking about a 300 milligram capsule of Ashwagandha a couple of times a day and they saw a pretty significant decrease in their perceived stress scores. But then they also saw a bump up specifically in dhea. And so ashwagandha might be one to look into. Last I checked, that's not something that was, that was banned. And there are some other herbs that have been looked into for dhea. Maca is another one. And that's also just a really cool, cool powder overall for just overall like muscle gain, libido and energy levels. So maca would be one you could add to a little smoothie. Wild yam is something that's been looked into as a potential precursor for DHEA because it's high in something called dias genetics, which your body can turn into things like progesterone or dhea. So wild yam root or wild yam extract could be another one to look into. And then finally rhodiola, which is one of these adaptogenic herbs. That's one that's also been associated with a slight uptick in dhea. So you could look into some of these so called adaptogens like ashwagandha or maca or rhodiola. And then also a diet that's adequate in fats and fatty acids. And that's where I'd start with kind of a natural bump in, in dhea. So I hope that's helpful. All right, let's, let's, let's go ahead and take another question.

I've been making a lot of kombucha and doing a lot of fermentation. Sometimes it gets a little moldy. Sometimes you're not quite sure what's going on. I was thinking, do you think there's any possibility that a tiny bit of mold. Obviously it depends what the mold is and there's a ton of different types of mold mold, but is there a possibility of there being some slight hermetic response from mold or is it all just bad, super problematic?

That's, that's a really good question. You know, kombucha is something that I'm, I'm pretty careful with. For, for me personally, we used to make it a lot and from, from a fermentation liquid standpoint, I, I kind of switched to using kefir because I actually found that I was getting a lot of candida like issues with kombucha and like some gas and bloating. A lot of people who are histamine sensitive don't do as well with kombucha either. But, you know, the scoby that you use for kombucha is not necessarily mold per se, but can be infested by mold. Like mold can infest a kombucha culture. And if that happens, the general recommendations are go back and make sure you're using cleaned and sanitized and sterilized equipment that might be coming in contact with your mold. You can't even salvage your scoby if it's been infected with molds. You got to start over with like a new scoby, a new starter tee, and, and I can put links in the show notes because I've done previous podcasts on how to make your own kombucha. But it, it's something that across the board, if you, if you listen to most folks who are making their own kombucha or read like some of these kombucha cookbooks, it pretty much kind of like destroys your kombucha and it's a good idea to cut to toss your kombucha if it has become moldy. Now, of course, you know, we know that there is a hormetic response to the consumption of plant based toxins, you know, and this is why trace amounts of like lectins and gluten and phytic acid, etc. Might not be something that we have to completely avoid. Mold can be something you gotta be a little bit more careful with. Just because of its ability to be able to stay in the body, particularly if biofilms are formed. And you can develop almost like a cell danger syndrome through mold and mycotoxin accumulation in the body. I'm not quite sure that the stress defense response or the upregulation in endogenous antioxidants or the hormetic response or anything like that is worse worth the risk of cellular damage or a drop in cellular function that could occur with mold exposure. So if it were me, I'd be pretty careful with mold, you know, and I just don't mess around with mold quite as much. Like I'm a little less hesitant with some of the plant based toxins, you know, again, like gluten and lectins, trace amounts of those I'm okay with. But I'm pretty careful with mold. Even if I like dry age estate because I have like a dry aging fridge out in my garage, I make sure the mold is all completely scraped off of that thing just because, you know, it's kind of like mushrooms. Like if you're plant foraging, the one you want to be super careful with is mushrooms because that's the one that can actually kill you if you're not careful. And you know, molds, molds just so problematic and takes such a long time to get out of the system. And if you are infected with mold, it's such a long process to systematically get it out of blood, GI tract, nasal passages, especially if it's in there long term. And forms of biofilm which is super tough to break down and you know, requires a host of different herbal antimicrobial protocols. I just, if it were me, I wouldn't consume it. I'd toss it out and start over. I don't know. What do you think, Jay?

For me I am, I try to be a little bit more lenient on things and not be too much of a, a, I don't know, food and toxin nazi at times. But mold isis one that I have to be very careful personally because I battled with mold toxicity when I was in my mid-20s and you're right, it took me a really long time to recover from it. And I'll even notice now like if I, like I'm not paying attention. I'm eating some, let's say like blueberries or blackberries and there's a little bit of mold in there and I kind of notice it after the fact. Like I see that there was, you know, some in the, in the packaging or whatever it may be. I don't know it could be a head thing, a little bit of a placebo thing, but I still feel rough off. And so for me, like kombucha is one that I stay away from. Uhm, there's a couple other foods as well. Coffee is one that I watch out for. It's why I only provide the shameless plug of drink Kion for the most part because I'm really worried about kind of what mold will do to me personally. So I think it might just depend too on how Alexander feels or how you feel Alexander when you drink it. However, it's again like if this stuff is continuing to build up in the body, like do you want to take the risk of kind of having it become more toxic and starting to present itself in the form of manifestation of symptoms and then you have to get on the journey and the road of trying to recover from it, which is not fun, it's not easy and it's not cheap. Uhm, so yeah, I'm kind of with you there, Ben.

Yeah. Andand one last thing to think about here is like there's, there's some cases where there are a few moldy foods that are considered to be okay unless you're really mold sensitive or have some pretty significant histamine reactivity. Like the white mold you'd find like Brie or Camembert cheese. Right. It gives it that smooth, creamy texture and unique aroma. And like the blue molds that you'll see in, you know, in the veins and blue cheese, which gives it like that peppery kind of umami taste or even like a fermented soy sauce or a fermented miso or fermented, fermented tempeh. Much of the taste and texture on those coming from mold fermentation, we could even say like penicillin and other antibiotics. Those are developed from molds as well. Some enzymes are created industrially using manufactured mold and even like compost for example, that we'd find in organic materials contains mold. So there are some cases where mold has been shown to be safe. But considering that nearly every kombucha expert I've talked to has said if the Scoby gets mold on it, toss it out. You got to be super careful. Dictates that in a case like that, I would actually rather be safe than sorry. So that's my, it's my counsel to you, man, is I wouldn't, I wouldn't be sucking down moldy kombucha if it was me.

Yeah, I'm definitely not looking to culture any mold with my Kombucha actively. Just kind of curious about how. How serious I should be. But yeah, I hear you talking about mold, mycotoxins all the time and definitely not looking to build that up in my gut.

Yeah, yeah, I'd be careful. All right, let's go with one more question. Let's make it a good one, and then if we have time, we will go ahead and jump into a quick.

Giveaway, no pressure, make it a good one.

Hey, everyone, thanks for taking the question. Bit tough. Hoping that this is a good one. Basically, I've been following you guys for a long time and started integrating sauna practice. That said, living in an apartment building, I've had to basically rent time at local, you know, clinics here. I'm curious if you've had any experience with any of the tent saunas, bed saunas, things that someone in, you know, an apartment building could get that, you know, low EMF, low BPAs, things of that nature or if they're even, you know, effective?

Well, yeah, I mean, there's one. I'm missing it because I gave it to my mom. Mom who's having hip pain and she's going and laying on it after work and just melting away her hip pain. It's an infrared sauna blanket. A low EMF infrared sauna blanket. My wife tried to convince me the last time that I got a cold to have a shot of vodka and go lay in this blanket. Based on some old, I don't know, what do you call it? The old wives remedy. Is that sexist for me to say? What's it called, Jay? Old wives remedy.

Like an old wives tale. Old wives tale.

Old wives tale. I don't know. Grandma's remedy. Tie a dead chicken around your neck, you know, take a shot of vodka and go lay inside a sauna. Anyways, though, these higher. It's made by higher dose. Higher dose. It's a really cool company. They do like infrared PEMF mats, infrared sauna blankets. I think they actually sell an infrared sauna on their website as well. But their infrared sauna blankets are one of the few, like low EMF sauna blankets out there. If I put that thing up on, I think nine is the highest setting and get inside it, I'll be sweating within like 10 minutes. Like they heat up remarkably fast.

Yeah, I can't do nine.

Yeah. I have an old video on YouTube where I took a biomat and some of those space age, like silvery Mylar thermal blankets and like wrapped three of those around the biomat and that also was like kind of like a makeshift sauna that I could just like go wrap myself up and lay inside. That actually worked pretty well. Also, if you happen to have like a biomat or one of these, these like, you know, you know, natural low EMF heating mats with some, some of those Mylar blankets, that works pretty well. You can also just like put a bunch of clothes on. This is what I used to do when I trained for Ironman Triathlon. A bunch of non breathable clothes and just jam on a, on a bicycle. Kind of like the, you know, like the old school wrestlers trying to make weight and, and sweat out things that way. And so there's a few options for you, but I'd say top of the totem pole for me. Like, are those infrared sauna blankets made by higher, higher dose? Those things just, they work, they heat up super fast, they're low emf. And honestly you get like this almost euphoric feeling when you get out of it. And you still get all the benefits of, of heat therapy. You can't obviously do yoga when you're laying inside a blanket or move around like you could inside an infrared sauna. But if you're just looking for the heat and the sweat and the infrared, I'd go with something like that. Personally, you get super hot. I thought it was gimmicky when they first sent it to me and I was like, oh, here we go. And another gimmicky problem. But I mean like, it's actually, it works remarkably well. So yeah, it's called higher dose. So that's the one I check out, ma'.

Am.

I think sauna space has one that's kind of like that and, and theirs isn't bad. I think it's very, very much focused on the light versus the heat. Their philosophy is that you get more benefits out of the light than like the deep sweat. So you'll never get as hot in one of those tents and those small ones where your head sticks out. I've done those before, like health expos and stuff like that and they actually don't work that bad. You look like a total tool when you're sitting inside it with, with your, with your head popping out. But I'm, but honestly, like, if you want to like do some laptop work and have your laptop there, your head sticking out of the sauna, you know, working a little bit with your arms out and still sweating on the inside. I mean, there are companies, I don't know any off the top of my head, but they do those, those saunas. Where your head just kind of pops out the top and you, you sit there like a little pee in a pod and you know your lower body is sweating and your head's popping out the top. So you know if you've got a, you've got a big enough space to at least do one of those as, as a halfway between a sauna blanket and a full on sauna, those, those aren't a half bad option either.

I will say too. I just wanted to kind of throw my two, two cents in there because I, I use both the higher dose blanket sauna as well as a clear light and I do like, you know, the, the, the regular formal sauna. Obviously it takes up more space, the clear light takes up more space. But I can do more functional movements in it. Yoga or some kettlebell swings or whatever I want to there. However, if I am looking to sweat, like if the goal is, is to sweat, then I get in my blanket like I'm always gonna sweat more and it doesn't take nearly as long. I can't believe you can sit in there with a nine for any appreciable amount of time, Ben, because I put it on like six and for me within about 15 to 20 minutes, like I'm drenched. Like I have to put a towel inside of that blanket because it's just, just so hot. So I mean for me, I like the blanket because it's easy, roll it up, throw it in a closet and they're relatively inexpensive. I say that I don't mean to like rude to anybody like where the pricing is, but I think it's like 500 bucks and for a sauna it might even be cheaper than that, I'm not sure. But for that price point, I mean it's a hell of a product.

There's some ideas for you, Adam, and you can eat your blue steak inside your sauna. You have it. Well, we have just enough time here as we're wrapping up to give a goodie away. So this is the time of the show. We're going to choose our top review from podcast review websites like for example Apple Podcast. You can also leave reviews on Spotify, on, on the new Samsung platform or wherever fine podcasts are found or unfined podcasts like ours. And if you leave a review and we read your review on your show, we're going to send you a handy dandy Ben Greenfield fitness gear pack with a wonderful custom made toque which is like a beanie Ben Greenfield fitness workout shirt and a BPA free water bottle. The Ben Greenfield Fitness water bottle. And all you got to do is if you hear your review read right now, you just email gearngreenfulfitness.com that's G E A R gearngreenfulfitness.Com and we will send you a gear pack. You just got to email us with your, with your shirt size. We'll make it happen. Your shirt size and your address. So this is our sneaky way of stalking people by getting their home addresses. But anyways, Jay, what do you think? You want to, you want to take this one away?

Yeah, I've got one. I was trying to see if this individual might be in the room because that'd be pretty sweet if they were in here. We could bring them on stage and give them a round of applause. But this review, I don't see him. It comes from a J. Matthew King and they titled they review the best health pod. They said Ben brings awesome content and isn't afraid to delve into complex and controversial topics. Ben does all the work and research so you don't have to. Thank you, Mr. J. Matthew King.

That's nice work and research. So you can trust anything I say and not go to PubMed to verify at all and you'll be off to the races if you trust me that much. But fortunately for you guys, I will put links to all the research, studies and everything we talk about if you want to check to see if it's actually verifiable. If you go to BenGruthelfitness.com 42 7. The only thing you aren't going to find that's verifiable is whether or not those five Tibetan longevity rights actually do make you live until you're 150 years old. Like a Tibetan monk. You may have to buy that giant orange kit they wear all the. So to make that happen, I think they were the orange. Aren't those the guys that were the orange ones? The orange, Yeah, I think that is. Yeah.

Some type of monk.

Yeah. All right, well. Well, in the meantime though, for all of our, our, our Clubhouse attendees, thanks for popping in. If you were listening to this podcast after it comes out, you can go find me on Clubhouse or Jay on Clubhouse. And we'll always put out notes on Instagram and the Ben Green Fitness newsletter and beyond. Whenever we're going to do one of these Q and A podcast, which is usually about 10:30am Pacific Time on Wednesdays. That's when we tend to record these podcasts. And also if you want the shownotes, go to BenGreenfulFitness.com 427 if there are elements of this podcast that you think could be improved, or the clubhouse Q and A that you think could be improved from a technical or production or structuring standpoint, we are always open to your feedback. We rely on you to help make this podcast better. So again, just go to BenGreenfulFitness.com 427 and leave your comments there if you have any criticism or helpful anecdotes for us. And finally, make sure that you take off your shoes when you go into your house. Unless you want to have the immune system of Wolverine, in which case wear your dude or shoes around the house, eat steak that's colored the way steak is supposed to be, engage in a little food insecurity and intermittent fasting here and there, and live a long, healthy and productive life. As I think someone said on Star Trek way back in the day in some way. Do you remember what the startech guy say said?

It was like, that is something I have like zero percent, I think.

I think it was live long and be healthy, but I'm not.

Live long and prosper. See, I.

That's right.

That much.

That's right. That's right. All right, folks, Live long and prosper. That's our new tagline. Now that's cool. Again, over and out. I'm gonna leave this room quietly. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promos 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.