Q&A 432: The Latest Pro Athlete Biohacking Tricks, World's First Mouth-Based Weight Loss Device, The Best Lightbulb For Sleep, Early Vs. Late Dinners & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, the latest pro athlete biohacking tricks, the world's first mouth based weight loss device, the best light bulb for sleep, early versus late dinners, and much, much more. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, welcome to today's show, Jay. How you doing?

Hey, man, I'm doing well. How are you, Benjamin?

I'm pretty good. I'm happy because I, I think I've. I've really, really cracked the code on how to make an amazing smoothie. After decades and decades of trying and writing cookbooks and articles about superfood smoothies and the like. You know what I think makes for a really good smoothie, Jay?

Oh, tell me. I mean, you come up with a new smoothie, I feel like every week, or you're like perfecting one. So I feel like you've really come upon something this week and I'm excited to hear.

So tell. Somebody even asked me the other day what my favorite food was and I said, smoothies. And they told me, that's not a food. And I said, yes, it is. So the trick to making a good smoothie, in my opinion, for like, mouth feel and satiety and the overall texture of the smoothie is to allow enough air to be introduced during the blending process to where you get this like, nice fluffy texture on the smoothie. Because I like to mix mine super thick, of course, as I've said a billion times before on the podcast, so I can eat my smoothie with a spoon like ice cream, but like thick, fluffy ice cream. So the trick is to put all your smoothie ingredients into the blender and then start the smoothie on a really. If you have one of the blenders that you can adjust the intensity on, on like the blending speed on, start it at a really, really super low intensity, and then like every 15 seconds, increase the intensity of the blending up to about the three minute mark. So we're talking about a pretty long blend.

Yeah.

But by starting, starting it low and increasing about every 15 seconds to high, you introduce air at greater and greater volumes into the actual smoothie bowl. And what winds up happening is by the end of about three minutes, you've got enough little tiny air bubbles introduced to the actual smoothie to where if you've got your ice to liquid to powder texture just right, you get this amazing, like, fluffy, airy smoothie. That's really good. Yeah, yeah.

So, you know what's interesting is that I have a Very similar process. Granted, my wife kind of makes the smoothies. Most of the time. I just kind of tell her what I want in it or she just puts whatever the hell she wants in it. And our smoothie ends up being like. When we serve it to other people and. And they taste it, they don't describe it necessarily as much like a smoothie. They say it tastes a little bit more like a mousse. Is that kind of how yours comes out? Like a mousse?

Yeah, exactly. So that's a really good way to describe it. It's kind of like a mousse. And. And yeah. And then you. Then you put all your toppings in and everything after that and stir those all in. The trick is you don't want to put or you don't want to leave your smoothie in the blender for too long after you've made all that. You want to consume it pretty quick afterwards because otherwise the air bubbles start to go away. These. These are all very, very important. Life.

No, they. They really are. Does your. Ben does your smoothie when you do this, instead of being, like, super cold, like, does it end up being, like, not necessarily room temperature, but not too much, like, cooler than. That's how mine is too.

Yeah. And a lot of people, I like it like that.

Me too. My wife complains about it. She, like, wants it, like, cold. And I prefer that moussey, like, almost like room temperature flavor and texture to, like, the cold, icy flavor. I don really like cold, icy smoothies anymore.

We. We are on the same page, brother. Kiss your brain freeze goodbye. So anyways, though, we have. We have a whole bunch of stuff to go over in today's podcast. This is the live Clubhouse recording. So if you're listening to this and it is the recorded version, just know that we do these every Wednesday, typically around 10:30am or not every Wednesday, every other Wednesday on Clubhouse. So if you want to attend and ask your questions live, you can. And we will be taking listener questions live. So welcome to all you fantastic faces who have joined us on Clubhouse. We'll be taking your questions after we kick off with some of the latest news flashes this week. And as usual, everything that is mentioned on today's show you can Access over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 4:32. 4:32 is the actual episode for today's show where the show notes are. So what do you think, Jay? Should we jump in?

Yeah, man, we got a lot to cover. Let's do it.

So this is the part of the show where everything that I talk about on, on Twitter, to BitCloud to Facebook, to Instagram and beyond, we kind of like choose the sexy stuff and unpack it in this section of the show. And this was an interesting article that appeared on the Red Bulletin and actually the Red Bull is a magazine put out by Red Bull. They actually recently interviewed me and I published the audio for that interview on the podcast last week, if anyone wants to listen in. But they've been increasingly doing a lot of articles on biohacking and technology and some of these more advanced modalities for improving performance or health or sleep or what have you. And they published a pretty cool article called these Biohacking Tricks Gives the World's Best Footballers the Ultimate Kick. Which caught my eye right off the bat because I think above most sports, footballing, AKA European soccer, tends to be kind of ahead of the curve when it comes to using more advanced modalities for performance or for recovery or for sleep or for anything else. So what they did with this article was they analyzed some of the so called biohacks that a lot of these professional footballers were doing. But then they ran them by a, I guess what would be considered like a professional, a person who does a lot of this biohacking and biohacking research. And actually the guy who interviewed me on that podcast, a guy named Andreas Breitfeld. And Andreas is a German, which just by being German, that automatically makes him a really good biohacker, whatever that means.

10 extra points.

Yeah, exactly. But, but I mean, he, he's one of those guys who's got like a lab in Munich and he does hyperbaric oxygen therapy and you know, headbands that measure brain waves and red light therapy panels, inhalation devices for structured water. And, and so what the magazine did was they took a look at what a lot of these professional footballers were doing, then they ran them by Andreas to see what his take was. So a few of them are, are pretty interesting. The first one I thought was kind of boring at first glance, but you know, it's interesting nonetheless. So Robert Lewandowski, who's a striker for the Polish team, what he says is not only does he no cow's milk, no wheat and almost no sugar. So kind of like that Tom Brady esque approach of not eating anything in your diet aside from say, bone broth. And then of course championing that as a healthy diet. But perhaps the most interesting part of the interview with him was he said he always eats his cake before his soup or always child, whatever, whatever is the carbohydrate content of his meal he eats first with the idea that you digest carbohydrates more quickly than protein, so it will aid digestion to eat your carbohydrates first. Now the, the commenter on this article says that there might be something to this because the glycogen stores in your liver, if you're a high trained athlete, are kind of empty. So they just like soak up all the carbohydrates and then you eat your high grade protein and your good f. I actually think that Mr. Robert Lewandowski is making a mistake with this particular tactic of eating the carbohydrates as the very first part of the meal. You know why that is?

Yeah, well, I mean, I have my own theory, but I'd love to hear kind of what, what you would state. And then I'll say if it's different.

My theories are probably the same. And that, that is that multiple research studies has shown that by consuming protein, fat and fiber early in a meal, you slow the glycemic index of that meal and make the carbohydrates that you're about to consume be released as sugar into the bloodstream more slowly. Which again, if you're an athlete and you've been working out all day like a soccer player does, probably doesn't matter. But if you're the average person, like, you actually should eat the protein, fat and fiber portions of your meal, or at least the lion's share of those early in the meal because it allows you to have a blood better blood glucose response to the carbohydrates. So basically, don't eat your dessert first or any other carbohydrate heavy portion of the meal first.

Yeah, no, that's exactly what I was thinking as well. And you know, the other thing too, I was just thinking, I was like, I really wonder if like this, this guy Robert Lewandowski, if he just really always wanted to do this as a kid and his parents always told him, now you can't do that. You have to eat your food first. And then you get your cake. And then finally he was like, I'm a man, screw you, I'll do what I want. And so he went first, cake first.

Yeah, well, a, Robert Lewandowski would be such a better soccer player if he decided that he would eat his soup first and then his cake. And B, I do break this rule sometimes because there's this wonderful restaurant that I eat at in Spokane called Baba's. It's a Mediterranean restaurant. I love that place. I go to it like once a week, but they don't take reservations. However, they're right next to the, to another local place that I really like called the Scoop, which is a gelato store. And they do gluten free, vegan like gelato flavors made out of coconut milk. And they always have these wonderful, wonderful recipes, you know, like mud pie and vegan strawberry cheesecake. And sometimes if I show up to Baba's and the wait's like an hour or I'll go have ice cream and go for a walk.

Dirty cheater. You.

Oh yeah. Yep. Yeah. All right. But we digress. Erling Haaland, he, his was kind of boring. He wears blue light blocking glasses. We've already established that's probably a decent idea. Just don't wear them when you're playing soccer. Another guy named Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

You got it right.

That's quite right. He, he is into Wim Hof style cold therapy and talks about how he spends three minutes in mobile deep freeze. Like he has a cryotherapy chamber that he and the team actually travel with. And the advice from Andreas who they interviewed afterwards was for him if he wanted to gain muscle mass, to not go into the cold straight after working out and to save the cold for later. What do you think?

Yeah, I mean, you don't want to blunt the hormetic response to stress that exercise induces. So I would agree with that. Would you disagree, Mr. Ben?

I would disagree because this is blown way out of proportion. So this idea behind like avoiding antioxidants after you exercise so that you don't blunt the hormetic response to exercise or the ability to build mitochondria post exercise. Or for example, the idea that if you want to build muscle, you shouldn't get cold after workout or visit the cryotherapy chamber. Well, in fact, the, the drop in core muscle temperature that has to occur in order for those adaptations to be blunted in response to cold. It takes like 10 minutes of extreme cold for that to happen. So basically if you're doing a cold shower, a three minute cryotherapy chamber, cold soak, whatever, like the drop in core temperature is actually pretty advantageous for recovery, especially if you're doing a training session, let's say in the three hours leading up to bedtime. As a matter of fact, unless you're getting incredibly teeth chattering cold, you really don't run much of a risk of blunting the hormetic response exercise. And they've measured the actual decrease in muscle core temperature that's required and something like 3 degrees Fahrenheit, which requires a pretty hefty amount of cold for a long period of time to be able to achieve. And similarly, with the antioxidant piece, you got to go super high dose vitamin E or super high dose vitamin C or both from like a synthetic vitamin E or vitamin C source in order for those adaptations to be blunted. So a lot of people see the research and they think they're gonna be super smart and sciency and not do any of this stuff post exercise. But ultimately it' sit's not as important as a lot of people think it is.

Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense. You know, for me, I guess when I think about actually like doing cold therapy, to me, like, I obviously I'll take cold showers, you know, I don't do much cryotherapy just because I prefer to take an actual cold plunge, a five to ten minute cold plunge. And from what you're saying, kind of the cold shower or doing like the cryotherapy may not have as much of a deleterious impact, muscle protein synthesis and so forth, moving forward as, say, getting in an actual, you know, cold plunge for an extensive period of time. So, like, you wouldn't jump in your Marozco after you're done with, you know, your training as compared to like, you would, you know, jump in a cold shower or jump in a crowd?

No, I'd jump in the marozco, which is 30 degrees. I just wouldn't stay in there for 10 minutes. Yeah, and, and again, the drop in core temperature that might assist with sleep later on and also the fact that you're not going to be pitting out at dinner and annoying all your friends by smelling funky. I think it's worth it to do cold. I think a nice splash of cold first workout is worth it. And most people are under a faulty impression that's going to blunt any response. All right, so let's do one more. Cristiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo is a great famous European footballer. He says that he takes six 90 minute naps over the course of 24 hours, which if you do the math means that he's spending like nine hours of a 24 hour period napping. So I don't know if he's just, if that's like on the regular or if he said that to the interviewer because that's maybe something he does when he travels because he also says he eats a total of six meals on each of those days too, like breakfast and two lunches and a snack and two dinners. And I'm like, dude, how's this guy even train? All he's doing is sleeping and eating right. But so they ran it by this guy Andreas, who says that this idea of what's actually called polyphasic sleep is wonderful and well researched, but that the downside is that nobody can keep it up. That is difficult to combine disappearing six times a day at an exact time. And to do that and have a vaguely normal working life or a halfway bearable family existence. I think that that's pretty much the general consensus that I've also heard about. Polyphasic sleep is to get you through a period of time of sleep deprivation or a really weird schedule. There actually is research to show that just by napping a whole bunch of different times over a 24 hour period, you can get by just fine without doing a longer, longer sleep period. But kind of like, let's say, I don't know, the Carnivore diet. It's incredibly socially restrictive to have to like, you know, just put everything down and nap every few hours. However, napping in general, there's a lot to be said for it. And this idea of polyphasic sleep, if you are going through a period of time where, I don't know, you're launching a new business or you're, I don't know, your crypto coin has an ico, or you're a professional athlete traveling around the globe and don't have enough time to get a proper sleep schedule in. It can work. It's just pretty unsustainable for long periods of time. I did in my book Beyond Training, I explored all these different so called Uberman or polyphasic sleep schedules and the. And basically what I came out with was here's how to do it if you're gonna do it. But it's not that sustainable for long periods of time.

Right?

Right.

No, indeed. No, it's super. It's, it's interesting. I would be very interested to hear how often he actually does this because again, yeah, it does restrict a lot of things that you can do in life and doesn't seem sustainable on a week to week basis. Also, Cristiano Ronaldo is one of those individuals who's highly trained, he's highly efficient with his performance and he's like a huge influencer and affiliate and sponsor, like very active on like social media. So I'm like, I mean, is he actually doing this that often or he, is he just saying like every once in a while.

Once a quarter, maybe.

I'll do this.

Meet media. Right. It's one of those sexy things that appears in an article. But you wonder if that's something that he does on the regular. Even though the caption underneath the little cartoon image of him sleeping says, Ronaldo takes six 90 minute naps before big games. Yeah, like six of them, dude, they.

Play, I mean, what is considered a big game. They play like once or twice every single week. Yeah. So come on.

Yeah, it doesn't seem that sustainable. Anyways, I'll link to the full article in the show notes over@bengreenfulfitness.com 432 for anybody who wants to read it. Another paper that came out that was related to something that I've harped on for a while and that's this idea that science is sexist. Science is sexist. And what I mean by that is this particular article got into the idea. It was published in June of 2021, but it was on molecular omics. Molecular omics. Now that might seem like a mouthful to a lot of people, but basically what they looked at was molecular, cellular and what's called organismal biology to investigate whether there are an appreciable amount of hormonal and molecular and metabolic differences in males versus females, both animal and human, that would dictate that the what is predominantly research done on male rodent models and male humans. And you know, I don't know if you really differentiate that much between like male yeast and female yeast or male fruit flies and female fruit flies, but essentially it's all skewed like 80% towards males. And the problem with that is that due to the difference in XY chromosomes that there are appreciable differences in terms of genetic expression, in terms of endocrine expression, in terms of gonadal and adrenal steroid hormones, and even response to certain environmental exposures that would dictate by us not paying attention to sexual differences in males versus females in most of the research that we do on everything from pharmaceuticals to supplements to nutritional protocols and beyond dictates that a, a lot of biological research has quite a bit of bias in it. And in fact, you know, sex actually does matter. Now this paper backed that up and made an argument for a little bit better job including consideration of sex and gender in research. But, but it is actually true. Not only are most of the researchers themselves male, but the subjects that are often used in many of these researchers are also male. And when you're reading a Research study. A lot of times even the abstract will not report the male versus female subject breakdown. And the complaint among researchers is that if you were going to actually allow for sex differences, that it would be problematic from an expense and a logistical feasibility standpoint for studies because they would need to introduce a whole new kind of like N or subject body as far as allowing for a male subject group versus a female subject group. But in fact, contextualism does matter heavily when it comes to sex related variables. And furthermore, you can change the scientific model a little bit to break out male versus female subjects and still get some pretty good data. But ultimately it returns back to something I've harped on over and over again, like we need to not have women's health science be an afterthought. We need to actually take into account the unique endocrine system and hormonal response and all the other variables, the gender related variables that go into species varying by sex in response to nutritional protocols and fitness protocols and supplementation protocols. And a lot of the things that we look at in physical culture research and it is kind of sad that we still do the lion's share of research by males on males, when in fact female biology is so much different in so many scenarios.

Yeah, no, it's, it's a great point. You know, one of the things that I do when I'm reviewing any type of literature, you know, mostmostmostly daily is I'll always look at kind of the footnotes or I'll look at the challenges, future directions for research. And it's such a commonality to see that as problematic within the research study. The researchers indicate that, you know, it was heavily influenced by kind of, you know, male bias because that's all we looked at were males. And when you look at like athletic studies and performance studies, that's when the skew even goes more positive towards male inclusion. So no, I completely agree with you that that's something that just tends to be overlooked. And one of the things that I was actually reading an article about this not too long ago is that they said that some of this bias comes because it was so heavily promoted for the last few decades that males go into the world of research. They're kind of dominated in the, in the research world, but we're seeing that flip a little bit. And now that we've got some, some, some more women within this field who are providing their voice, they're not going to let that one slip through the crack. So hopefully that'll change over time. But yeah, got to keep continuing to push for it.

Yeah, yeah. And in this particular study they highlighted that in over 100,000 humans there were 13 different complex phenotypes or kind of like variables in terms of the way that genetics were expressed, that displayed genetic, what's called heterogeneity, heterogeneity between males and females. And the genomic prediction model that they used using sex specific models heavily outpour outperformed any sex agnostic model. Meaning, you know, essentially just, just turn back to what I harped upon earlier. Like the vernacular here would be sex agnosticism in research is not doing us any favors. So anyways, just. And I'll link to it, possibly a boring sleepers paper for a lot of people, but it's called Molecular Omics Research should require Sex Annotation. So basically don't ignore the chicks people. So they have it. Okay, so another really interesting one was a study that looked at organic light emitting diodes. If you're not familiar with These, they're abbreviated OLEDs. And I've said this in the past and even in beyond training in the lighting section or in a boundless, my book Boundless in the lighting section, I do highlight the fact that these, these newer organic light emitting diodes as a light bulb option, they emit less blue light than traditional light emitting diodes. And this study found that the use of OLED light versus LED light at night was, was better at mitigating the suppression in melatonin that occurs in response to LED exposure. Now that being said, if you were going to look at getting a light bulb for the majority of cans in your house, incandescent is the form of lighting that despite requiring a little bit more power, so your power bill might go up just a little bit, is the most compatible with the human biology and the form of lighting. Incandescent lighting is the form of lighting that most closely simulates kind of like the full spectrum of what sunlight would give you. Now furthermore, something that's important to realize is that the, the lower the wattage on your bulbs that you're using, like if you're using 25 or 50 or 75 watt bulbs, the problem with those is that in order for the bulb to produce less light like that, it has to produce more what's called flicker, which is this imperceptible on, off, on off, on off. That can lead to not only disruption, circadian rhythm, but also some irritation to the retina that results in things like brain fog, a little bit of headache towards the end of the day, etc. So the best way to go would be to go for anywhere from like 100 to 250 watts, go for OLED or incandescent. And even if you're going to have led, try to choose more of a flicker free LED bulb. There's very few LED bulbs that are flicker free. Brian Hoyer, who has been a previous podcast guest of mine, who owns the company Shielded Healing and who does building biology walkthroughs of like offices and homes, he says there's one brand you can get on Amazon called Sunlight and they're non dimmable orange or yellow or red bulbs that are LEDs. So they don't have the full spectrum of infrared, like say an incandescent was. But a, you don't really need your full spectrum of infrared necessarily if you're already using like, like near infrared or far infrared panels or red light therapy or something like that. And furthermore, if you're just trying to block blue light at night, then, then these type of like sunlight LED bulbs or OLED bulbs, if you're trying to avoid the expensive incandescent, are probably just. But again, you still want to make sure that you're not doing the super duper low, like 60 watts for example, that produces this 60 Hertz flicker and that you're going for essentially 100 watts or more. Like there's even like these sauna space bulbs that they sell for the sauna and those produce a lot of heat, so a lot of people don't like them. But Those are like 250 watts, you know, photon bulbs that block out all the blue light. So if you wanted to go for a really, really high wattage light, you go with something like a sauna space. If you want to go for slightly lower wattage, you could go with sunlight bulbs if you just, just want to go gold standard. And this is what I do in my house. It's all incandescent and red incandescent. And then it turns out that if you can use these OLED bulbs based on this most recent research, that's not a bad option either for circadian rhythm or sleep. These organic light emitting diodes.

Yeah, no, it makes, it makes, makes total sense. One of the things that I have actually like thought about when I was reading this is that like the current iPhone and I believe most phones now use OLED screens and a lot of TVs now are, have OLED screens in them. So I don't want people to confuse this with, hey, I can now, you know, use as much oled and iPhone screens at night as I want to. So it's, it's, it's, that's not what this, you know, report is saying or the study is saying. But it's really good just to be conscientious of overall lighting, but especially just the type of bulbs because, because, you know, bulbs aren't necessarily made the exact same as you mentioned.

Exactly. So I'll link to that one as well if people want to review it. And then we're kind of bouncing around all over the place here as far as some different topics for research papers, but this one was really good too. It was a new article that came out on aging protein and amino acids. So what the article was going into was the idea of the protein paradox, which many people I think are now aware of that. And basically, as you reach old age, we're advised to increase protein consumption to save off muscle loss, to save off sarcopenia, to get adequate amino acids. But at the same time, protein seems to activate aging pathways and protein and amino acid restriction seem to often have these life extending type of effects. So there was this study that looked into the different amino acids and how they have different effects on various aging pathways in your body. And the idea is basically, well, how can you get enough protein to be able to have things like enough functional muscle mass as you age and to stave off muscle loss that would produce frailty or fragility with age, but not have so many amino acids going into your bloodstream that you are depressing lifespan through excess activation of mtor. So what it turns out to to be is that there's two different forms of amino acids that if you restrict them, seem to extend lifespan. The first is methionine and the second one is tryptophan. So methionine restriction is something that's been used in cancer therapy. It's something that seems to be a fingerprint of extreme longevity, especially in human centenarians. It increases fat oxidation when you restrict methionine. It lowers liver lipids when you restrict methionine and then tryptophan. You also see a delay in physiological decline when you restrict tryptophan, a reduction in tumor formation and also better cognitive function with age. Now, at the same time, there are certain amino acids that seem to increase lifespan. For example, glycine, Glycine supplementation increases lifespan. Glycine supplementation decreases chronic inflammation. Basically, glycine prevents the mitochondrial dysfunction that comes with aging. And so glycine is an amino acid that unlike methionine and Unlike tryptophan, seems to have a life extending type of effect. Another one that seems to actually be deleterious for lifespan would be branched chain amino acids, which again can prevent some amount of muscle wasting and are very popular as a weight training supplement. But the high levels of leucine and isoleucine and valine in branched chain amino acids seems to actually be one of those things that especially in excess, could shorten lifespan. So it's very interesting though, when you look at methionine and at tryptophan and at branched chain amino acids, well, where do you get the majority of these in two things that people seem to be consuming a lot of in a modern western context, which is like protein powders, meal replacement drinks, BCAA supplements and meat. Right. The same type of muscle meat that our ancestors would have given to the dogs in favor of things like the organ meats and the bone marrow and the bone broth and the fats and the collagen and the knuckles and all that jazz. Basically we're doing the complete opposite now, right? We don't eat a lot of organ meat meats. Wepainting with a broad brush for the most part. Most people don't eat a lot of bone marrow, bone broth, organ meats, et cetera. We eat the muscle meat that's really high in methionine and tryptophan and then bro, we suck down our protein shake or our BCAA supplement onto the way to the gym. And so the form of protein that we tend to get in most cases, unless we're aware of this type of research, is the type that does actually decrease lifespan. Whereas if you're doing like, like bone broth, bone marrow, doing more of like essential amino acids instead of branched chain amino acids, eating your organ meats, not doing excess ribeye steak, but maybe instead of those rib eye steaks, you're doing a couple nights a week, you're instead doing a big cup of bone broth, a little bit of liver or heart or kidney or bone marrow or something like that. There's just basically two different ways to optimize your protein intake. And whey one decreases lifespan and whey two doesn't seem to do that, that. So basically what this should inspire people to do is step back, look at your diet, look at your protein intake, and yeah, not only have certain days of the week or certain periods of the year where you're engaged in some amount of protein and amino acid restriction, but ensure that the lion's share of the protein sources that you do eat are more of like a nose to tail approach, somewhat low in the muscle meats. And then for your supplements, try and cut out the supplements that tend to have these BCAAs added to them and instead favor supplements with a more complete amino acid profile and especially supplements that might include, for example, things like glycine or some of the amino acids that are aside from the methionine and the tryptophan particularly.

Yeah, super interesting with methionine and BCAAs. Those are the two that I'd really harped on and heard in the past. Makes, makes a lot of sense. The one that I thought was quite interesting is I had not heard about, about how tryptophan restriction can extend lifespan. And this is a really important one and an interesting one for me because I have so many people who email me or write me because of, you know, my background obviously as a psychologist and they hear about, you know, people taking, you know, tryptophan L, tryptophan 5 HTP for, you know, serotonin synthesis because it is a precursor to serotonin and also melatonin obviously as well. And so it's interesting because for me I'm always like, let's get it in from, you know, a dietary, you know, regimen if we can. And obviously it's saying here that we might be eating too much, you know, tryptophan within the diet framework. So it's one of those things just to keep in mind because I know so many people nowadays are trying to supplement with tryptophan with 5 HTP and I think that it can have some positive effects but also too from a mood based standpoint. But if we're looking at, you know, longevity, anti aging, it may not prove to be as worthwhile on that end. So it's kind of a, that was, that was an interesting one to me.

Yeah, yeah. So hopefully that's, that's eye opening for people when it comes to your protein and your amino acid concerns consumption. And again, I'll link to that one as well@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 4:32 okay, we talked about lighting and this one was interesting because kind of related to the lighting concept. The name of this recent paper was the efficacy of combined bright light and melatonin therapies on sleep and circadian rhythm. Now in the past I've talked about how one of the best ways to reset your circadian rhythm or to shift your sleep cycle forwards or backwards is through the strategic use of light. Meaning that if I'm waking up at 4am in the morning and that's annoying to me and it's too early. And perhaps I've been traveling back east which is why I'm waking up at 4am but now I'm back on the Pacific time zone and I don't want to wake up that early. A reasonable strategy is to when I wake up at 4am Even if I am not staying in bed and I'm getting up and getting some things done, because it's annoying to just lay there for a couple hours and and stare at the ceiling, is to keep yourself in a somewhat dark environment, wear blue light blocking glasses, the same that are typically recommended for you to wear at night, but wear those in the morning. Avoid looking at bright screens, avoid even things like sunlight exposure until the time arrives when you actually want to start waking up, like, let's say 6am and at that point blast yourself with light, get out in the sunlight, take off the blue light blocking glasses, take your phone out of red light mode and switch it to full light mode mode, flip your computer monitors on and blast yourself with light. And that actually works very, very well to shift that circadian rhythm forward. And the same could be said for if you're like waking up super late, you'd shift towards setting your alarm a little bit earlier, but then blasting yourself with light after that alarm goes off, you're beginning to face shift backwards your circadian rhythm. Well, what this recent paper looked at was using the strategy that I've just described for the most part part, but then also combining that with melatonin in the evening. And what they found was that when it comes to shifting your circadian rhythm, specifically advancing your circadian rhythm, meaning allowing yourself to get up later and go to bed later, which would be such as you might want to do if you have been used to being somewhere in an eastern time zone, but now you're in a western time zone and you need to shift everything forward a little bit to better mimic what you're experiencing in that western time zone. That by doing the bright light exposure at a certain point during the day, preferably in the morning, when the time has arrived that you want to start getting up and then taking melatonin about 30 to 60 minutes prior to when you want to go to bed at night, that that actually is a better strategy than what they looked at in this study, which was doing that light trick all by itself. So what that means is if you combine the lighting adjustment in the morning with melatonin supplementation at night, it has even better effect at shifting your sleep wake phases. So it's kind of like a 1, 2 combo for travel, for jet lag, for circadian rhythm adjustment is to actually combine the circadian rhythm with the melatonin. Now, in this case, they weren't using like the sledgehammer of melatonin that I was talking about, like When I interviewed Dr. John Laroz, for example. Yeah, I believe they had somewhere in the range like 0.3 to 3 milligrams, like a kind of more standard dose of melatonin. But it turns out that again, light in the morning or in the early hours, melatonin in the evening hours. Again, for this paper, it was more for shifting the circadian rhythm forward. It would probably also work for shifting the circadian rhythm backwards as well, Meaning that you could use the light earlier in the day and the melatonin earlier in the day versus the light a little later in the morning and the melatonin a little later in the evening. But either way, it's that one, two combination of light and melatonin seems to do a really good job at shifting your circadian rhythm. Huh.

That's really, it's interesting. I have a love hate relationship with melatonin because every time I used it, whether it's in a small dose or a high dose, man, I always wake up groggy the morning after melatonin.

That' sthat's not uncommon at all. And the trick for that, if you use melatonin and it makes you wake up groggy, is to get as much sunlight exposure as you can in the morning, because for the same reason, it's a good idea to avoid a lot of bright light at night because it suppresses melatonin production. Basically it just blasts the melatonin out of your system more quickly when you get a whole bunch of light exposure in the morning after you've taken melatonin the evening before. So that's the best way to get over melatonin. Grogginess is light.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You know, once I've started doing so, now I'm that I'm doing a fair amount of zone two training and I like to do it in the mornings. Like getting out and getting some just blasted with sun while exercising is like the, the best one, two combo. So maybe try some melatonin, see if that'll help with eliminating that grogginess. Because that's the thing that's just a pain in the ass. Sometimes waking up and being like, well, I got to Sleep well, had a great night's rest, but now I feel like I'm not necessarily ready to take on the day and I'm like, eh, it's kind of counter.

Yep, exactly. All right, so a couple, couple more quick ones before we take a few listener questions here related again to sleep. New paper on the effects of dinner timing on sleep stage distribution. Now what this study looked at was whether shifting dinner from five hours before sleep to instead being one hour before sleep would affect sleep disorders or sleep regularity or sleep quality. Because we've been told many times, probably with Dr. Satchin Panda being at the forefront of this research, that by eating too close to bedtime we can disrupt sleep. And in fact many people now will champion finishing dinner anywhere from three to five hours before bedtime. Which I don't know anybody who goes out to restaurants at night who actually does that, but let's say yeah, you do. Didn't get any better sleep. And this study found that that wasn't really the case. They did find that the late dinner was actually associated with more deep sleep in the beginning of the night and more light sleep in the latter part of the night. And they called this postprandial hypersomnia, meaning you actually fall asleep, sleep better when you've had a slightly later dinner. But maybe the sleep later on might not be quite as good, especially if you're looking for deep sleep. But ultimately if you dig into the paper, there wasn't that big of a difference between eating dinner five hours before bedtime versus eating dinner one hour before bedtime when it comes to sleep architecture. Now here's the problem is that it was a pretty slow number of subjects in this or pretty low number of subjects in the study. It was like 20 adults. Adults. But I found this varies so much from person to person. Like athletes who eat an early dinner, their sleep totally goes to pot, totally sucks. Like they hear about all this research, someone who's, who's exercising, or not even necessarily an athlete, but just somebody who exercises more than the average lab coat wearing scientist, who's like standing in a lab all day, eats dinner at 4pm then sleeps like a baby when they go to bed at 9pm or whatever, like somebody's doing CrossFit, somebody who's hitting the gym, gym especially like after work during the day, somebody likes to lift weight, somebody who's bodybuilding, you know, maybe a triathlete. All those kind of people, they burn through enough calories to where if they finish dinner at let's say 5pm by the time they go to bed at 10pm hypoglycemia and low amounts of amino acids and often just like low blood sugar and low nutrient partitioning overall become such an issue that sleep sucks. Sucks in the same way that anybody who's been on, like, a fasting protocol knows that sleep just sucks. And a lot of times, the amount of, like, CBD and melatonin, all the other sleep support stuff that you have to take in order to actually sleep because you're depriving yourself of food in the hours leading up to bedtime leaves you just as groggy with just as poor sleep architecture as if you just, like, had a freaking meal before you go to bed. Top off your energy stores. So I find that the. It's kind of like the ketogenic diet, right? Like most of the research on the ketogenic diet that shows that, like, 30 to 50 grams of carbohydrates has all these healing effects and is good for epilepsy and attention span and decreased inflammation, et cetera. It's done in relatively sedentary subjects. And when you extrapolate that to the general population, it turns out that a better variant of a ketogenic or a low carb diet is like 100 to 300 grams of carbs per day, not the paltry 30 to 50 that are used in research for management of medical conditions. And the same could be said for a lot of this research on whether or not you should eat dinner or not eat dinner within the few hours prior to sleep. Basically what it comes down to is if you're going to bed and you're burping up your food and you have the meat sweats and you're picking, like, meat out of your teeth, and you're just groaning from a full food baby in your stomach. Stomach, yeah, your sleep's gonna suck. But if you're laying there and you're, like, chewing the insides of your cheeks and can't even remember what you had for dinner because it was so many hours ago, and you feel hypoglycemic and you lay awake and all you can think about is, like, a giant roast chicken as you're falling asleep because you're so freaking hungry, then that's a sign, most likely, especially psychosomatically, that you should have had more food before bed. And I don't know about you, Jay, but for me, my sweet spot is a huge, glorious dinner that I finish typically about an hour and a half, sometimes two hours before bed, and I sleep like a baby with that scenario and if I eat dinner at 5pm and then have my usual like 9:30, 10pm ish bedtime, my sleep absolutely sucks because I'm hungry. So ultimately it really matters on your activity levels, on how much you're eating for dinner, on a whole host of factors and studies like this just back up the fact that it's not the same for everybody. And most people I think sometimes shoot themselves in the foot from a sleep standpoint by you know, having what I would essentially classify as like an afternoon dinner and then not eating anything until they go to bed.

Yeah, this has been, this is, those were some of the exact thoughts that I had when I read this because I thought about a couple of things that I wanted to highlight. So kind of like you, like we, I try to eat a little bit later in the evening. However, it's really hard with little kids. I mean, you know, I only have, I have a three year old and a one year old and so they go to bed really early and we like to do a family dinner. But my wife and I have just kind of made the decision to shift back our eating a little bit later. Even though, you know, a lot of times it's like after they go to bed. So sometimes it can be a little bit too late. But you know, with, with family you kind of have to give and take. But one of the things that I thought about here is just yes, the wide amount of variance that's going to occur from individual to individual depending on kind of the their activity level and then other, you know, just host of different variables. One of the big ones here is that they are just looking at sleep architecture. So they're just looking at the sleep stages. They're not looking at things like heart rate, they're not looking at things like heart rate variability or nervous system functioning which actually interestingly enough, when you peruse the, the interwebs and research on heart rate variability with meals, especially how it affects sleep. Sleep is one of the things that we've seen is that individuals who are more highly active and engaged throughout the day, let's say like the crossfitter, somebody who's training throughout the day or at least, you know, largely in part of the day, is that we see these individuals actually when they eat closer to bed like that, they kind of have that before bed snack or where, you know, there's not that five hours before bed, we see their nervous systems better regulated but that the, the sedentary individual, if they eat too close to bedtime, we actually see dysregulation in their nervous system doing the exact same thing as what the other individual did. But again, the activity level in the, in the one individual kind of compensates for nervous system regulation more so than the sedentary individual. So it's, it's know thyself and know that they're just talking about sleep architecture and very kind of just basic population or sample that they studied.

Yup, yup. That, that about wraps it up, man, for sure. Oh, and by the way, should you be concerned about the effects of poor sleep on something like weight gain or weight loss? I should note that one last thing I wanted to mention before we take a few questions here from our Live Clubhouse audience is that researchers have developed the world's first mouth based weight loss device. Did you see this, Jay?

I did.

It's called the dental slim diet control. You guys got. I'm gonna link to it in the show. The show notes it's an intraoral device typically fitted by a dental professional to your upper and lower back teeth. It's got magnetic implants in it that have locking bolts that only allow you to open your mouth about 2 millimeters, thus restricting you to a liquid diet, but allowing for free speech and also ensuring that you don't suffocate because there is no restriction of breathing. It's essentially like, what do you call those things? Chastity belts. Yeah, chastity belt for your mouth. It literally locks your mouth shut. Your surgeon or whoever installed it is the person who has to like loosen the device and get it off your mouth. So basically what it does is it causes your mouth to be so shut. I bet people who are into like mouth taping at night and nasal breathing would really dig this thing. It just.

My first thought is, yeah, it's gonna force nasal breathing, right?

Exactly. So it just locks your mouth shut. You know, kind of like that, that gut surgery, like the, like the, the gastric band where it just kind of like locks your gut shut. Shut this. Locks your mouth shut. So for all you people who can't keep your gaping ma shut, who have no self control, who can't walk past a Cinnabon without whipping out your wallet, well, do we have the solution for you? The world's first weight loss device that literally locks your mouth shut with a giant silver clamp installed by a physician. And you too can now walk around happy and confident that you've got a six pack above low body fat percentage, a diet that you can adhere to because you can't open your mouth, and just the confidence you can function well in society. You won't be able to talk, but you can function well in society with your mouth shut and your jaw thrust forward because you can't eat if you.

Wanted to, baby, as long as they're mercury free, I might go for this. Give it a shot. I'll report back for the second sake of science.

Good point. Might have some heavy metals in your mouth, but check that out folks. I know I'll be a user, slash investor, the world's first weight loss device. So yeah, that's not going to happen anytime soon. Self control. That being said, shall we go ahead and take some questions from clubhouse?

Yeah, let's do it.

So, hi, I was curious in regards to the light impact on the circadian rhythm study and I just wanted to know how it works in a longitudinal way. Just because do you have to keep exposing yourself every day or did the study talk about after you've been exposed or you've been practicing this cycle procedure, then you know, after 20 days or 21 days or three weeks or whatever, your circadian rhythm goes back to whatever it is that you want. So can you touch on that a little?

It's a great question. Cutting straight to the chase, it is shocking how quickly circadian rhythm adjustments take place. Most of the clients that I work with who travel a lot, we can shift within about two to three days using, well, what are called zeitgebers, which are the three primary strategies to shift your circadian rhythm. It's light, which we already discussed. Movement meaning rather than saving your workout for the afternoon, if you were trying to shift your circadian rhythm backwards, you would actually do your workout in the morning. If you're trying to shift your circadian forward, you wouldn't exercise in the morning, you'd exercise in the mid morning, in the late afternoon, then food. Skip breakfast if you want to shift your circadian rhythm forward. Eat breakfast if you want to shift your circadian rhythm backwards. And preferably if you want to shift your circadian rhythm backwards, that breakfast should also include about 30 to 40 grams or so of protein. Right. So light exercise and food are the best ways to shift your circadian rhythm forwards or backwards. And you can do it in about two to three days. So this is a really short period of time that we're talking about in order to pull this off. So yeah, you do not have to incorporate this strategy. Even like the melatonin and sledgehammer strategy that I'll use for myself and for some of my clients where we'll do like 100 to 300 milligrams of melatonin. If we've shifted through a whole bunch of time zones or if we're trying to fix a sleep issue, like that's one to three days that we might do something like that, it's not ongoing for a long period of time at all. So yeah, PETA, you really, you don't have to do this stuff for long to see a pretty significant shift. But great question.

Yeah, yeah, it's been, been exactly my experience.

Yup. Alright, let's, let's go ahead and answer another question.

I've had exactly the problem that you folks were discussing where the literature seems to tell me to eat my meal late. I mean to eat my meal early. And I'm an athlete, so I have the hunger in the night problem or waking up really, really hungry. So I've been trying on my own this idea of having a snack, like a six o' clock dinner maybe and then a snack. But it still seems to seem like maybe the macros of what we eat closer to dinner may matter. And I haven't really figured that out. So how might an athlete optimize their eating if they set aside the idea that the meal must be early in the evening and then nothing afterwards?

Yeah, that's a great question. So it's certainly something to think about. Like let's say that you wanted to stave off the increase in, well, primarily thermic effect of feeding and body temperature that would disrupt sleep from a late meal. But you're also an athlete or a heavy exerciser and you also have an issue with the hypoglycemia or low amino acid or just the, the psychological hunger that occurs from restricting the size of the evening meal or shifting that evening meal to a really early time. Well, I mean, for me personally, when I've been in scenarios where like I'm with people who are eating at, let's say 5pm or you know, I'm at a, you know, this would happen to me at like a conference I'm teaching at for a week where all the dinners at the conference are early, early in the evening, thus dictating that, you know, I'm back in my hotel room after 10. Sometimes I've like gone on a beach walk or even a workout after dinner and I'm still hungry because I've had dinner like five hours before. Well, a slow bleed of ketones and amino acids and even some amounts of fructose which doesn't spike the blood glucose as high as say like glucose or maltodextrin. Or some of the other starches can be a really good strategy. So this is where the idea of like a spoonful of nut butter with a little bit of honey and some sea salt can be a really good way to enhance sleep. Or from a more advanced like scientific standpoint, a shot of ketone esters with some amino acids for a slow bleed of energy into the system, or something like, you know, coconut oil or some coconut meat, again with a little bit of sea salt and some type of fructose based source, like blueberries or a small handful of berries. Like, like this idea of snacking on things that allow for amino acids or ketones, fatty acids, some amount of salts and a little bit of fructose. Like that's kind of the sweet spot with, with to a certain extent collagen and, or essential amino acids is pretty effective also. So yeah, I have certain things in my pantry that are kind of like my go tos if I haven't had dinner very close to bedtime, but I know I'm going to be hungry or that my sleep is going to be disrupted if I'm hungry, hungry before bed. And the main things for me that I would grab from my pantry would be ketone esters, like a shot of ketone esters, a couple of scoops of kion aminos that'd be another example. A little bit of like a good raw organic honey, a little bit of collagen if I'm not doing the amino acids or a little bit of nut butter with a little bit of honey. And any of those would be something that, that, I mean everything I just mentioned is like 120 calories or less, but still allows for me to get just enough to where I feel like my appetite's gonna be satiated. I'm not gonna wake up hungry when I'm, when I'm trying to fall asleep. So those are, those are a few ideas, a few things that I would use. I don't know, anything, anything you would throw in there.

Jay yeah, so one of the things that I've used plenty of times before is ketone esters. So I actually use the, the KE or KE4 by ketone aid, which is a phenomenal one for me. I do like a cap full of that prior to bed. One of the things I was gonna ask you, Ben, because this is something that I've been toying around with, especially when I wear my CGM or if I have a CGM on it during that time when you, let's say if you were to like you know, take a tablespoon or so of honey like right before bed. Do you see any weird fluctuations with your blood glucose during the night when you do that? Like any significant drops or do you stay pretty stable because you don't eat the honey naked, you take it with ketone esters or you take it with like a nut butter.

Yeah, I definitely put pants on my honey. I rarely eat it naked. And no, I don't see any appreciable fluctuations in blood glucose because what we're talking about is a really small food intake anyways. B, I'm super duper metabolically efficient just because I'm kind of a, you know, nutrition Nazi so to speak, or at least many people would label me as such and so know I don't. You don't have a lot of metabolic disruptions in response to food intake anyways. And then finally like I mentioned, the fructose that is in something like a honey or a berry source doesn't cause as much glycemic fluctuation as like glucose or maltodextrin from let's say like you know, potatoes or cane sugar or something along those lines.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, for me it's just like a packaging of honey which I do enjoy before bed and then like a little bit of ketone esters for stabilization and I'm, I'm pretty good, good to go during the night. However, like when my wife has done something similar to that, she'll start to see like a little bit of a drop during night, like blood glucose drop at night generally around like 1 or 2am and then a start like a steep increase because of cortisol release. But she doesn't feel like bad about it in terms of like waking up and feeling, you know, groggy or feeling like she has had any, you know, high glycemic variability. Just something that I didn't know if anybody else has seen before. Really.

Yeah, yeah, all good points. Okay, let's, let' slet's take another question. Go ahead and bring somebody up to stage here. Alright.

Hey guys, I was wondering what type of supplements you can use for high blood pressure. Right now I'm kind of hypertensive, you know, high and at 130. But I'm taking aged garlic and also supplemented with serrapeptate. But was there anything else I could do?

Yeah, I don't think supplements help blood pressure very much. I think most people try to pop pills for blood pressure and they never address the underlying issue which is typically stress or sleep or fitness. So I mean you could pop supplements till the cows come home and I mean I could doctor Google for you or you could look it up yourself. But there are so many supplements that, that have been looked into for a little bit of an impact on blood pressure. Like magnesium, like fish oil, like garlic, like any vasodilatory product, like you know, a beetroot supplement, you name it, you could fill your entire pantry and notice a very, very small drop in blood pressure. Because in most cases a really, really good breath work practice, especially when combined with sauna, a really, really good exercise protocol, specifically an exercise protocol that trains you how to contract muscles and then fully release muscles. And there's even a, there's even a health device called the Zona health device that actually works really really well at reducing blood pressure. I've talked about it before. If you go to my website and search for, it's called, it's called the Zona and it's literally like an FDA cleared device for decreasing blood pressure. It's like a handheld grip dynamometer, sunlight exposure, low amounts of stress and a gratitude journaling, breath work, stress reduction practice, really good sleep. I have seen people pop garlic till the cows come home and take tons of beetroot and ashwagandha and herbal adaptogens and all this stuff for blood pressure. And honestly like until you actually, I guess address more the underlying issues which is basically muscle contraction followed by relaxation, sunlight, heat, sleep and low amounts of stress, you typically don't see much of an impact on blood pressure. And I mean this is coming from a guy who like sells supplements and who works for different supplement companies to help them develop supplements and researches supplements and all this jazz as basically I'm not a fan of supplements as much as I am a fan of lifestyle modalities for decreasing blood pressure. I don't know what would you have to say jay?

No, totally, 100% agree with this. And that's because there's so much low hanging fruit that is backed scientifically with research and evidence to demonstrate efficacy in reducing the blood pressure response. The one thing that I really teach people and want people to learn is how to balance and control their bureau baroreflex mechanism. So the baroreflex mechanism is the homeostatic mechanism that we have for regulating blood pressure. What's the best way of doing that? Per research and science, it is what you said Ben. It is learning appropriate breath work and using it throughout the day to condition the nervous system and the baroreflex mechanism to homo statically control the nervous system. So it takes work, it takes effort. It's not like, you know, you can pop a pill to just easily do that. However, it's something that's innately a part of us that has been proven to help regulate blood pressure. The other thing that I would mention is what you mentioned with the Zona. That's an isometric grip pressure exercise. Other isometric grip, you know, whether it be devices or isometric exercises, have been shown to be very effective in reducing, reducing blood pressure exercise just in general. So go for the low hanging fruit of nutrition, exercise and breath work or stress resiliency or stress adaptation and you're gonna get so much more bang for your buck. Yeah, more time, I wouldn't say more money, but more time that you have to devote to it, but much more longstanding conditioned results.

Yup, yup, exactly. So just goes to show you can't, you can't pill pop your way out of most situations. It takes a little bit more than that. And, and supplements are just the extra icing on the cake, which I think could be a perfect place for us to end because we're getting a little long on the tooth and we, we have covered a lot on today's show, but we could, as we usually do, give away some goodies to somebody who's left us a fantastic nice review on the, on the interwebs. You want to do that, Jay?

So here we go. This One is from Albert K2071. Albert K2071 who said, I've been listening to Ben's show for around four years now, studied his book Boundless last summer, and I consider it my unofficial masters in biohacking, health and wellness. His incredible work and his outlook on life has helped me to profoundly transform my health and my life. For that, I'm forever grateful. Thank you, Ben and thank you, Albert.

Thank you for pumping up my day and making my morning so. Yeah, Albert. Email gearngreenfulfitness.com with your T shirt size, we'll get a gear pack out to you. And for the rest of you, one of the best ways to support this show and to ensure that I can get kick butt guests on this show because Jay gets pretty boring, is to leave the show a review. And the better our show appears in Apple podcasts and everywhere else, the more likely it is that I'll be able to get the big folks. I know everybody wants me to interview Donald Trump, but how am I going to do it? Unless this show is one of the top health podcasts and itunes. So if you want to hear me jam with Donald Trump, go leave us a review. If you don't want to hear that, then just don't leave us the epitome of biohacking. That's right.

Donald Trump.

That's right. And all the show notes. All the show notes you're gonna find. Donald Trump was. He was sitting in front of me at the last UFC fight, actually.

Dude, I saw that. That's hilarious. That's some good seats, dude.

He wasn't drinking, I'll tell you that. But I was. I was drinking whiskey and staring at the back of Donald Trump's two pack. Day. What a day. Yeah. Shownotes are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 4:32 thank you to everybody who's joining us after this podcast comes out and also joining us live on Clubhouse. Have an amazing, amazing week. And Jay, I'll catch you on the flip side.

Sounds good, man. See you.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this, 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.

It.