Q&A 434: The Hidden Anti-Aging Molecule In Your Gut, A New Longevity "Drug", Exercise Vs. Diet For Fat Loss, Ben's Pre-Workout Mix & Much More!

Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, hey, this ought to be a fun podcast episode. It's Ben Greenfield here and I usually do like a Q and A podcast episode for you. Technically this would be Q and a number 434. And I guess it is still gonna be a Q and A if a Q and A involves me asking questions to myself. Because it's just me all by my lonesome today. You know, I've been traveling a lot. I was in Austin, then I was in la and I didn't have a chance to get all the good folks together for our usual clubhouse Q and A. But I had so many interesting. I get all these news flashes, these co pieces of research on everything from the gut to longevity to muscle gain to stress, that I had a whole bunch of things I wanted to talk to you about today. So I figured why not hop on and give you the latest and the greatest in almost like an abbreviated news flash episode. So that's exactly what we're gonna do. I'll take a sip of my morning. What am I drinking here? I've got halvesies, I have half a can of zevia that I poured over ice and I poured some of this stuff called True True kava into it. Let's see, it says it's a famous natural plant based beverage. Famous, wow. Born in the islands of the South Pacific where it has been used for over 3,000 years. So it must be good. Connoisseurs describe the kava experience as a calm yet productive enhanced state of natural sobriety. Natural sobriety. I mean, aren't you naturally sober if you don't drink anything at all? I don't know. Anyways, though, let me look at it. It's got a. Yeah, it's got kava root in. That's all just. Oh, kava and stevia. So doesn't taste half bad. It's called Tru Kava. I'll link to this stuff. Now they gotta sponsor my show. I'll link to this. You know, I've actually been liking kava. There's this other drink I've been drinking called Feel Free. Oh my gosh. Like, I'll pop one of those in the afternoon. It's like a painkiller, like a euphoric painkiller, but you'll crush a workout on it. You feel great at a party. It crushes your appetite. Like I don't crave anything like alcohol or calories or anything on it. And that stuff's called Feel Free. Tell you what, for all you people want to try the two latest forms of kava I've been messing around with, I'll link to them in the show notes, so go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com434 that's one I'm sipping on right now. It'll probably be annoying you with during the podcast. It's called True Kava. Apparently they process it in a way where the kava doesn't F up your liver. And then the other one's called Feel Free, which is like a blend of kratom and kava. So anyways, that's interesting. Later on I'll give you a few discount codes. We'll probably have a few other sponsors, I would imagine that I have to say, so that we can support this show. But actually a couple special announcements before we jump in. Las Vegas Keto Expo is happening October 15th and the 16th, 2021. You could swing by. I'm gonna be speaking there, I guess like 13, 14 other keto experts, a few hundred guests at probably some expo floor in Vegas. So if you want to come to Vegas and see me and see how boring I actually am in Vegas, you know, I get these fancy hotel rooms at the casino and then bring down my nice Vegas party clothes and my. I don't know, what else do you bring to Vegas? No, sound like an idiot. My hiking shoes to hike out in Red Rock Canyon. And then I go to bed at like 9pm and read fiction in bed in my giant Vegas hotel room suite. No cocaine, no hookers. Just a nice book of fiction. I'm reading a really great one right now by a guy named Andy Weir. He wrote the Martian. He has a new book. It's called Operation Hail Mary. Oh my gosh. It's really good. If you like fiction. Yeah, check that one out. It'll probably get made into a movie, I suppose. But the book is really, really good. It's hilarious too. Hilarious and a thought provoking and scientific book. Great one to give to your kid. If you want your kid to learn math and physics and chemistry but you don't want to twist their arm to study more, just give them that book because they won't be able to understand it unless they study that stuff. So shout out to Andy Ware. So a few things I want to share with you. So as I mentioned, gonna do a little bit of an abbreviated news flash episode and the first thing I want to get into is this idea of ancient medicine. I read a fascinating article on substack written by a guy named Anton Howes, about how our ancestors actually some pretty interesting alchemical methods, so to speak, that actually got results. That actually got results. So, you know, physicians, for example, they would often prescribe mercury to treat syphilis, which was effectively the HIV or the AIDS of the early modern world, which I guess the late 18th century affected like one out of every five people who lived in London, which is crazy. But mercury, despite it being poisonous, seems to work along the same lines as chemotherapy. It would, like, kill the disease before it killed the patient. And it turns out that mercury is actually something that they were kind of onto. Eventually they switched it out for bismuth salts, which is a heavy metal that's less toxic than mercury. But, you know, way back in the day they figured out, oh, hey, metal can be good for syphilis. And then the book also goes on to talk about this special form of clay known as terra sagalata, or stamped earth. And this had been in ancient times, stamps with the head of a guy named Artemis. And then by the 17th century, they had it stamped with a sultan's seal. But basically, this clay that they used had these powerful antibacterial properties. And they would mix mud with water and leave it out, and then they would apply the stamp and then it was left to stagnate or else dug up at certain times of year. And they've now done advances in DNA sequencing on this clay and they found that it's got a fungus in it that's closely related to penicillin and has this antibacterial and even an antimalarial effect because it's like another antimalarial drug. So they were using metal for, for syphilis, they were using clay for certain gut issues. And it turns out that we found out that that actually works. And then the other thing that we see if we look back at this study that I talked about, like way back in the day was this whole, like thieves, essential oil mix that apparently is something that way back when was being used for things like staph and MRSA very effectively. And this article goes on and on, but this idea that our ancestors were actually onto some pretty cool stuff and they got things right, they got a lot of things wrong, like leeches and even I think mercury is kind of pushing the boundaries. But I thought it was a thought provoking article nonetheless. Now, related to ancient things, a new study has popped up. There's a Japanese study, and this Japanese study was looking at a group of Japanese centenarians who seem to have these seemingly magical health powers, right? They have an average age of 107. They're amongst the healthiest and longest living humans on earth, protected from chronic diseases that inevitably haunt a lot of the rest of us as we age, like obesity and diabetes and hypertension and cancer. But what they found in these people that really stood out was the trillions of microbes that lived in their gut. It wasn't the amount of the microbes, but it was the composition of those gut bugs. The composition of those gut bugs. Basically, they had a bacterial signature that was similar to the strains of bacteria in each. Not in every single one of the centenarians, but a lot of them had a very similar microbiome. And one strain in particular stood out. And it was a type of bile acid. Okay. Or as a type of bacteria that synthesizes bile acid. Now, bile acid is what you might know as this kind of boring bodily fluid that's commonly known for digesting fats, but it's now being called as a class of enterohormones, hormones that go beyond their classic role in fat digestion and absorption. So what they found is that these bile acids help to protect centenaries against infection and other environmental stressors. So, well, it's really interesting because we know that the gut bile acid can tend to decrease a little bit as one ages. And these secondary bile acids are really powerful. So they've done studies in mice before, they looked at these microbiomes in humans and they found that the gut bile acids help to regulate immune cells and prevent some dangerous microbes from taking over the gut. And what they looked at in these seniors was a particular group of gut bugs called odorobacterassi. Odorobacterassi. And that churned out this little bile acid called isoallolithocholic acid or isoallolca. So isoallolca was described by the researchers, one of the most potent antimicrobial agents, selective against gram positive microbes and multi drug resistant pathogens. And when they infected mice with say like clostridium, which can be a really horrific bacteria that causes severe diarrhea, their bodies easily eliminate eliminated clostridium without getting any of these side effects or infection. And that was just by feeding them this bacteria that produces this bile acid. So it turns out that bile acids can actually be really, really great. And you can actually, you know, there are supplements. Like there's one that I use called, it's made by Thorne, called Thorne Biogest. And it's actually got bile acids in it. This is also important if you've had your gallbladder removed. You know, it's all the more important to include bile acids in your diet. But just fascinating that these things go way, way beyond isolated to, say, digesting fats in the gut. Now, I've got great segues today because we're going to talk more about fat. There's a new study in the UK that shows that if you really want to blast fat off your body, then you need to include resistance training exercise. You need to include resistance training exercise. So here's how this goes. When your muscle is placed on a mechanical load, it releases this thing called a vesicle. It's a sort of a little bubble. A lot of people will call these exosomes. And the vesicle contains mRNA, which is kind of interesting because all the people who freak out about the MRNA containing vaccines, and I'm not going to give my stance on those and get in those weeds right now, These are the same people that will go out and get exosome therapy and stem cells, which also contain Microrna. So it is interesting we use Microrna in modern medicine, but anyways, our bodies make it too. Of course the vesicle contains micro mRNA. When the muscle gets exposed to weight training that travels through the blood to the fat cells. Now these vesicles reach the fat cells, they get taken up by the fat cells, then they Release something called MIR1 and that targets this protein that basically inhibits the ability of the body to be able to be resistant to fat. Basically it drives fat cells to release fat when epinephrine gets released. So when you lift weights, you release epinephrine, but then you also activate this release of fat cells that is caused signaling vesicle, so called paracrine effect. And so the fat cells pour out a lot of fat for the muscles to burn. And it creates this perfect scenario for losing body fat. So if you're lifting weights, you're already producing plenty of adrenaline. You don't produce as much with easy weights, you produce more with heavier weights. But the muscle under the load needs fuel, and you got plenty of fuel in the form of fat just wallowing around in fat cells around the muscle. And this paper, which was performed or was a report based on experiments done on both rodents and humans, that in particular lifting heavy weights does a great job at activating these vesicles and shifting the body into this really, really cool fat burning mode. And it's one of the reasons why you actually see resistance training. Kind of paradoxically, a lot of times, even more so than cardio, to be really, really effective at inducing exercise induced fat loss. So yet another good reason to lift weights and I would say yet another good reason to occasionally lift weights in a fasted state. So you're tapping into those fat cells in your own body rather than say like fat cells that are circulating around your bloodstream or glucose circulating around in your bloodstream. And so it's just a real interesting study. Now the other thing that is related to this and is yet another reason to keep muscle on as you age is that what they found is that fat free mass is directly related to metabolism in aging humans. So what does this mean? Well, basically, when they measure total and basal energy expenditure in a large cohort of subject, they looked at people from 20 years old all the way up to 60 years old, was they found that the fat free mass loss as you age rapidly accelerates the decline in metabolic rate. And therefore by maintaining muscle and thus maintaining an elevated tissue metabolism, with age, you stave off a great deal of that metabolic downregulation that occurs with age and in many people can cause things like resistance to weight loss. So, you know, that's probably no surprise that if you lift weights, you're going to increase your daily energy expenditure. But this was a more subtle nuance. It was the fact that the drop in daily energy expenditure, especially in aging individuals, is staved off remarkably by maintaining some level of fat free mass. And since last I looked, there's not a great way to grow new bones or grow an appreciable amount, appreciable amount of bony tissue. Best way to do that is with resistance training. So the other study on exercise and basically anti aging, and I even tweeted this out as the fact that I found the new anti aging pill. And I'll link to this and all the other research if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com434 is they looked at nine different hallmarks of aging. Nine different hallmarks of aging. And so when you look at all the different reasons that people age, I mean, it's pretty staggering all of the things that cause the aging to occur. So you see an increase in inflammation, depression, anxiety, a drop in what's called progenitor cell functional capacity and vascular endothelial function. You see an increase in what's called endothelial or blood vessel oxidative stress. You can see some type of insulin sensitivity sit in and glucose dysregulation. You can see a drop in what are called hematopoietic stem cells and also an increase in or decrease in bone mineral density, increase in sarcopenia, decrease in the glucose uptake by muscles, decrease in fatty acid metabolism, decrease in VO2 max, decrease in executive function and memory, decrease in neurogenesis, decrease in growth factors in the brain. When you look at exercise, everything I just listed off, exercise basically fights against every single one of those. And this was a massive meta analysis of all the different studies out there that look at the ability of exercise to be able to halt many of the hallmarks of aging or even reverse many of the hallmarks of aging. And again, when it comes to metabolism and glucose control, peripheral and central nervous system, muscle, bone, skin, cardiopulmonary, longevity, health span, exercise has a profound impact on all of them. Now one thing that you should note based on this study is that the volume of exercise matters. Now I've said in the past that the sweet spot is 60 minutes or less of high intensity exercise per day or 90 minutes or less of low to moderate intensity exercise exercise per day. But this study basically said about 150 to 2000 minutes a week. 150 to 2000 minutes a week. So let's see, 150, that's like less than three hours per week. 2000 minutes per week is less than 30 hours per week. But basically what it comes down to is you don't want to be like the ironman triathlete training 40 hours a week. If you're training a couple hours a week, you're probably not doing enough. But it was 150 minutes to 2,000 minutes a week. And this was across all ages, caused a remarkable decrease in the hallmarks of a ton of different aging processes. Now I'm going to link to the full paper because the full paper is online for free and has some great graphics in there that show all the different hallmarks of aging and exactly where exercise attacks each of those different mechanisms. But just a really, really great study. It should motivate you to get off your butt and go, I don't know, put on your running shoes or pick up some heavy shit. Sip of my collar. Okay, so that's the new anti aging pill. Yep, it's moving now. What's also interesting is that another study compared and this one you're going to find fascinating. So what they did was they put people into a negative energy balance like you would get if you're on a diet or you weren't eating enough calories or you were exercising a lot or exercising and restricting calories. And what they found was what they looked at. First of all, what they looked at was participants in which they got them into a negative energy balance by having them exercise their way to a negative energy balance. Exercising to burn calories and burn a greater number of calories than you're taking in caloric restriction to do the same thing, or combining exercise with caloric restriction. Now, here's what's interesting. When we look at visceral fat, which is arguably one of the types of fats that's of particular concern because it is the type of fat that's associated with an increase in metabolic risk. And you compare that to the amount of subcutaneous fat loss, which is, you know, that's more of the fat along your arms, your legs, less. Less problematic. When it comes to chronic disease risk factors, what the findings were was that all the groups that experienced a negative energy balance through either caloric restriction or exercise lost fat. But the group that achieved all of their weight loss via exercise lost the most amount of the visceral fat, even more than the people who got the negative balance through a combination of exercise and calorie restriction. So this kind of shows you that, I mean, from a fat loss and particularly a decrease in the problematic type of fat that we're trying to get, the best way to do it is via movement, not just dieting. And even movement alone seems to be able to do it. This is probably because skeletal muscle can act in different organs, just like hormones. The skeletal muscle secretions act in different hormones in different organs. So those molecules are called myocardial, and their secretion is influenced by exercise. For example, IL6, which is a cytokine that gets secreted by your muscles during exercise that promotes, we know this visceral adipose tissue loss in response to exercise, possibly even related to that vesicle signaling effect that I brought up earlier that they've just studied and found. But I mean, if you're in a scenario where, like, dieting is not an option, whatever, maybe it's a highly social scenario, or you're at a family union or you're on vacation or whatever, you can still stave off all of the nasty fat accumulation. That's the most problematic kind of fat accumulation through just exercise. It actually beats out dieting, which I thought was super interesting. Now, there was another thing that, you know, it's related to. It's actually really. To a Bible verse that I really like. So this is Bible verse in Exodus that says it makes God sound really bad, but it's actually, it's kind of true. Like, it's sage advice says God punishes the children and their children for the sin of parents to the third and fourth generation. I mean, like, God has built into our DNA and our genetics that if parents mess up big times, big time, sometimes the children suffer the effects. Like, we know this is true with cigarette smoking. We know this is true with like post traumatic stress disorder, for example. And we know that it's true with alcoholism. We know that's true with, like, what a mother might eat, well, you know, while the child's in the womb. Well, what they looked at in this latest study was the memory of neuronal mitochondrial stress. So it's the impact of parental experiences, which has been observed in many studies to extend over multiple generations in various organisms. But this latest study, which was published in the Nature of Cell Biology, showed that neural mitochondrial stress signals get transmitted to the mitochondria in the germline and can promote inheritance of that mitochondrial DNA across many generations. Meaning there's this transgenerational inheritance of mitochondrial stress. And in this case, the animals that were related to parents transgenerationally that were under a lot of stress, took longer time to sexually mature and produce less progeny, which kind of makes sense because you wouldn't want to bring new babies into a stressed out environment. And this tended to proliferate across 50 plus generations. Obviously they didn't have time to study this one in humans. This is in C. Elegans, which is a type of worm that they often study these type of aging or stress related mechanisms in. But it's fascinating that nearly every mammal they've ever studied and this kind of makes you think about the way you raise your kids and the way you treat your body, is able to pass on the memory of stress or the impact of disease. So it's just something that kind of makes you think twice and think about the way that you live, which, as you've learned from today's podcast, should include weight training, should include exercise in General, at least 300 minutes a week and less than 2,000 minutes a week. It should include a low amount of stress. It should include controlling exposure to toxins, which can also get passed down genetically. And when it comes to dieting, exercise beats out dieting if you have to make a decision. And then you ought to take care of your gut bile too, and maybe try some of those ancient medicine remedies that are pretty fascinating that I'll link to in the show notes. But you can actually all of these studies and pretty much anything else I talk about if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 4th.

Well hello everyone. This is a little bit of a change up, a bit of a curve.

Ball, so to speak.

I'm out on a walk right now, a beautiful sunshine walk on the old farming road back behind my house, getting kissed by a dose of sunshine. You know, I had a little snafu with my podcast this morning in that I released the wrong episode, oops, Bad me. And I got it all fixed. But it kind of resulted in me basically wanting to get some fodder. Some questions from my wonderful, wonderful followers here on Instagram Live. I am actually going to plan on releasing as part of a podcast Q and A and news Flash episode this this very weekend. So this is your chance to get featured on the podcast. I had thought about making people who ask questions a guest and bringing you on live with me. It's possible that I am just too much of a Luddite to pull that off. And so what I may do instead is read questions that you have. Whether it's questions, for example, I've gotten a lot of them about that pre workout mix that I posted to Instagram recently to news flashes I've done to the latest questions you might have about biohacks or nutrition or fitness or anything like that. We're just going to jam for a little while here and I'll reply to your questions now. If you are listening to this podcast when it comes out, technically this is podcast number 434. You'll obviously be aware that since I'm walking outdoors the audio is not the highest quality, but I promise that the content will be i8 so anyways, I've just finished preparing myself a little bit of salmon for lunch. It's hunting season, so I was out hunting this morning for whitetail deer. Did another hunt over the lunch hour, had a little bit of salmon. I'm going on a walk now and then I'll be out hunting again this evening. So let's just dive into your Q and A. This is a great one. Healthy Ketosis Life says How should hunger feel? This is a really, really interesting question because it confuses a lot of people, right? Like basically how do you know if your hunger is a craving or if your hunger is actual legitimate physiological need for calories or low blood sugar or perhaps central nervous system fatigue from low amounts of amino acids which technically can allow tryptophan to cross your blood brain barrier and make you sleepy. And I have to tell you that the number one metric I have found to assess whether or not I'm truly hungry, if we're looking at this from a technology standpoint. And then I'll give you kind of like the poor person's version of this shortly is to use a blood glucose monitor or a continuous blood glucose monitor without fail. If I'm hungry and my blood glucose is below, for me about 80, and I found this to be the case for many other people, that's a sign that it's true low blood sugar and that I may actually have a need for calories. Are there wrenches that could be thrown into the equation? Absolutely. For example, you could have just eaten a meal and be experiencing a hypoglycemic drop, in which case, if you were to look at a continuous blood glucose monitor, your blood glucose would be really, really high and then drop low. That's typically not a sign of hunger. Usually true hunger is when the blood glucose is low and has stayed low for a certain period of time, typically like a good 40 to 60 minutes at 80 or below. Another example in which this wouldn't be an accurate metric would be if you've, say, consumed a serving of ketone esters. Ketone esters, I have found, and ketone salts to a certain extent, tend to lower blood glucose dramatically, probably because you really don't need much of a throughput of glucose when you have ketones in your system. But even though blood glucose is low, you're probably not hungry or in need of much fuel because you have those ketone esters in your bloodstream. Now, that poor person's version that I alluded to is the old standby. That's the love of registered dietitians and nutritionists the world round. If you're hungry, drink a great big glass of water and then wait 10 to 15 minutes. And if you're still hungry after drinking 16 to 24 ounces of water, you know, I always have one of those big glass mason jars around. Then you probably actually are hungry. You probably actually do need calories. Furthermore, if you find yourself hungry day after day and you're noticing loss in lean mass, like I use a Withings body scale at my house to measure not only my weight, but also my lean mass, my body fat percentage, then that could be a sign that you are under fueling. Also, if you're taking blood measurements and you're seeing low thyroid, low testosterone, low progesterone, kind of that cluster of factors that would dictate that you are underfed, then obviously that's a little bit more of an invasive measurement, but that can give you a good clue too. So technically true hunger should feel as though you're hungry, be accompanied by low blood glucose levels, slash not be something that's fit fixed with something as simple as drinking a giant glass of water. So hopefully that kind of kind of answers your question to a certain extent. Healthy ketosis life Chris B2211 says what would you tell Joe Rogan? I believe you're referring to the fact that Joe Rogan got Covid. From what I understand he recovered from it. He did Ivermectin, which is also what I did when I got Covid and which I think can vastly accelerate the bounce back process from that and also decrease potential for development of long haul Covid. However, let's say someone has taken their ivermectin, they've gone to and this is my recommendation, the Institute for Functional Medicine website and you can literally like google this Institute for Functional Medicine Covid. They have their entire line of research, proven supplements, dosages, everything over there for everything from selenium to zinc to vitamin C, etc. Many of which are also anti inflammatories. Which means that those are also things that can, because they're decreasing cytokines and inflammation, lower the risk for developing long haul Covid and may also decrease increased Covid duration and also the severity of COVID symptoms. Let's say you're already doing that though. Like you've used something like avermectin, maybe hydroxychloroquine, both which may be considered curse words these days, I don't know. And you're following the functional medicine website's recommendation? I have a kind of it's not a private document, but not a lot of people know about it. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com VirusQA@BenGreenfieldFitness.com VirusIQA for the past two years I've been throwing little snippets, little tricks, little tips, little known substances and all sorts of things over there that again will decrease symptom duration and intensity for many people and that also can be used to decrease the potential for development of long haul Covid. Some notable takeaways from that document would include the use, preferably as acutely as possible, of the peptides thymosin alpha 1 TB 500 and BPC 157, all administered as injectable peptides to quell the inflammatory firestorm. They pair quite well if you have a functional medicine doc and you can get these from a functional medicine Doc with two other really, really good injectable antioxidants, namely quercetin and oleopyrin. That's O L E O P U R I N Very similar to kind of like the potent concentrated flavanol you would get from like an extra virgin olive oil. I recommend that most people who are concerned about COVID or have Covid look into nebulizing. Get a desktop nebulizer and you can nebulize either hydrogen peroxide, which is the kind of like the cheaper but pretty effective version on the daily, typically a couple of times a day. You can also nebulize something I think is even better. I take something called glutastat, which I order from Dr. John Laurence in Florida. It's glutathione mixed with a whole bunch of essential oils. And then I blend that with colloidal silver and nebulize that. I'll nebulize that, you know, during travel as well. I have a little travel nebulizer. It's great for the immune system, but a nebulizer can work fantastically as well. I recommend an ozone generator if you have access to ozone at that URL that I gave you. BenGreenfieldFitness.com VirusQA There is information on the type of ozonation setup and system that I use, but either don't grimace rectal insufflation of ozone or even just drinking ozone water or using ozone with some of the attachments that come with these ozone devices. They typically come with a nose attachment for breathing in ozone that you pass through olive oil, which kind of puts in this lipophilic medium that makes it non harsh to your upper respiratory tract. Or you can also deliver the ozone into the ears using like an ear device that's somewhat similar as well. So the peptides, the nebulizing the ozone, all the recommendations from the Institute for Functional Medicine. And then the other thing that I recommend if you're able to, is hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which seems to do a really, really good job at mitigating some of the issues that can occur from a vasculature standpoint and paying attention to blood quality overall. You know, vitamin K, fish oil, a lot of things that would potentially decrease clotting factors. There's also an herb that I talk about on that page called yarrow. You know, when I got Covid, I harvested a bunch of wild yarrow from my backyard, dried it, dehydrated it, powdered it, pulverized it in a blender and used that pretty Extensively to decrease any risk of any risk of clotting, you know. And for me Covid was about a day that I struggled with it and then it was just gone. None of this is considered me medical advice. I'm just throwing out some of the things based on Chris V's question about what I would do, you know, if I had it and hopefully that document again just a free shared Google Doc. I have BenGreenfieldFitness.com VirusQA will be helpful to you because it includes pretty much everything that I've ever learned really about managing Covid and decreasing potential for long haul Covid Ethan says did I go to college and if so for what I did go to college. I started college when I was 15 just because I was homeschooled and I was ahead of the curve. Initially I studied athletic training so I worked a lot in the athletic training room, you know, taping ankles, learning, massage therapy, you know, administering ice baths to people and didn't take long before I realized I didn't really want to be an athletic trainer and shifted my major to exercise physiology which I obviously loved and still use a lot of what I learned there to this day and put together a self directed master's degree that was exercise physiology, biomechanics, human nutrition and pre med. So I took all the organic chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology, etc etc courses and basically took the MD cats as well, got accepted to a bunch of medical schools, wound up not going to medical school and instead, you know, kind of going down the down the fitness and health and more kind of like preventive aspects of human betterment instead. But yeah, I did go to college. I bit off all I could chew. I took 30 to 34 credits a semester for five years, worked five jobs all during college and I was definitely a workaholic type a hard charging high achiever all through college. I slept maybe I slept about four hours a night all through college and continued to sleep very, very little for the next 10 years after as I built my business, built my company, worked as a personal trainer, worked as an author, you know, worked a whole bunch of different jobs. I've just always worked really hard. My dad was a serial entrepreneur. I watched him just work his fingers to the bone. Same thing with my grandpa. And I'm trying to raise my children with a better aspect of work life balance which I've since adopted. But yes, I went to college and I went in pretty hardcore. I don't think college is for everyone, but yeah, I went to college. So Ray Pete's opinion on keto and PUFAs. Yeah, this is this idea that by metabolizing excess ketones and particularly polyunsaturated fatty acids acids that you are going to create potentially more free radicals and more cellular oxidation simply because there's not enough carbohydrates to kind of like down regulate a little bit of the excessive uncoupling protein activity. I'm kind of like bastardizing the full explanation. And I do agree that strict ketosis and especially high, high amount of ketones combined with high amounts of fish oil combined with a severe amount of carbohydrate restriction with a lot of people are doing these days, appears to from a free radical and an inflammation or oxidation standpoint, not be as favorable as moderate ketosis, cyclic ketosis, carbohydrate refeeds and not like overdosing on polyunsaturated fatty acids, including fish oil, and ensuring any polyunsaturated fatty acid intake is from a really good clean source that hasn't been exposed to a lot of heat, a lot of pressure, a lot of oxidizing factors, etc. So yeah, I think Ray Pete's onto something in terms of the potential for inflammation and excessive oxidation that some people are creating with strict ketosis combined with things like high dose fish oil and hefty intake of saturated fats. But I don't think that a state of nutritional ketosis is overall harmful if it's paired with enough carbohydrate intake like a cyclic ref feed such as, you know, a nightly refeed for very busy, you know, athletes or you know, a weekend refeed, you know, every week or a couple of times a week for a lot of other people, kind of like a 5, 2 type of fasting diet. But yeah, you do need to be careful. You know, I'm not one of those guys who's full on, you know, keto, high dose fish oil, saturated fats, keep fat bombs full of coconut oil in your freezer type of guys. So. All right, all right, let's see other questions here. Any post concussion syndrome tips? I mean it's a good question. Just because anybody who prizes brain health should know about some of these tips. Anyone who say like journeys with plant medicines, which I would also consider to be the equivalent of a TBI or concussion in many cases. As far as some of the oxidation or inflammation that can create neural tissue, this would also be important. There's a guy who I interviewed some time back, Dr. Dan Engel, who's actually both a plant medicine facilitator as well as an expert in TBI concussion management, he has a facility down in Austin, Texas and he wrote a book called the Concussion Repair Manual. In addition to that, Dale Bredesen wrote a book called the End of Alzheimer's. And many of the protocols in that I would also consider to be very good protocols for TBI dying concussion. A few of the major takeaways would be, you know, upon the actual injury itself, not only adequate hydration, but shifting to a very ketone rich diet. Again not for life, but for several weeks following the injury. Simply because glucose can cause a little bit more oxidation when it's metabolized for fuel extensively by the brain post concussion. I also like to weave in coconut oil and MCT oil and also because the impact that can have on, on on healing up a lot of the issues that occur even again temporarily, slightly higher dose fish oil. I'm a huge fan of the head worn infrared light devices made by a company called Vielight V I E L I G H T And I'll link to all this stuff in the show notes if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com434 unless you're listening to this live, in which case the show notes don't yet exist. So I like the infrared light therapy. They have an alpha unit and a gamma unit. The alpha unit is better. It's a 10 Hz frequency for post TBI percussion. The gamma one which is 40 Hz is better for like meditation, focus, sometimes relaxation, things like that. Hyperbaric oxygen. Absolutely. As much as possible, you know, 60 to 90 minutes. And it's preferably some type of blood flow precursor taken beforehand like beetroot or sildenafil or cialis. Just something that really opens up a lot of blood vessels prior to getting into the hyperbaric. A few of the other things that I would recommend you look into would be hefty amounts of grounding and earthing for the inflammatory component. Very similar to what Jack Cruz does when he's using surgical techniques and combining it with cold, using cold thermogenesis, especially for the head. There's even a company called Cryo Helmet and they make like a, like a head freezing device that literally is like an ice pack for your skull. That's another one that could come in handy. And then if you go to my website, I've done a few really, really extensive podcasts on concussion and TBI management with everyone from, from fighters to positions. So I obviously have hours of content that I can't quite scratch the surface on in a Kind of a short podcast Q and A. But that is where I would start as far as some things to look into for the TBI and concussion component. All right, someone says, what do you apply and how do you take care of your hair? Well, again, I have a lot of hair episodes, but I'll tell you exactly what I do right now, because obviously I'm growing up my hair, growing up my beard, going for that, I guess, Jesus Christ, Einstein look these days, and every morning I wake up and I use a brush that's like a really bristly brush, and I brush, brush, brush my hair. But that brush is also very similar, like a derma roller for the scalp. And after I brushed everything, I then wash my face pretty intensively. I will often use my hands, or what's called a gua sha scraping tool, to, like, get a lot of blood flow to the face. And I work my face just like I would a massage therapist every single morning, not only for kind of like a more youthful look, but also for the increase in blood flow, which can assist with. With hair health and follicle health. After I've done all that, like, brushing and massaging to my face, typically for about one to two minutes when I first get up, I'll then apply the Oxano product that I did a podcast with Jay campbell about. It's two different formulas. One's copper peptide and one's C60. And I just rub the first one vigorously into my hair. You're supposed to let it sit for like a minute or two before you put Formula 2 in. So I'll go, like, take a pee and then come back and then same thing, just rub formula two into my beard, my hair, everything, and then I repeat that whole thing, typically at night before bed. The only other thing that I do is I do a clay mask once every week, and I use an actual derma roller for that. All over my scalp, my face, everything. I know in my podcast with Dr. Cameron Chestnut, he said that was slightly traumatic to the tissue, but I really dig the results I get from it. And I think when you not too frequently, it's just fine. So I do that derma roller and I do the clay mask afterwards. And when I rub that clay mask off, I do a ton of the. The kion skin serum, which is like 12 different oils that I developed. And I keep that skin serum in my bag. And anytime out in the sun, you know, after a walk like this, other intervals during the day, I'll just slap that serum on my face. So I go back and forth between the serum and then the Oxano C60 and GHK copper peptide products. And aside from that, just make sure I get enough collagen, enough amino acids. I don't wear a hat too frequently, so my head gets a lot of oxygen, a lot of infrared light, and that's generally how I care for my hair. Even though this is the first time in my life now that I'm growing my hair out that I'm paying more than 10 bucks for a haircut. I didn't realize haircuts cost so much because I usually up until like a few months ago just go to Supercuts or whatever and get a haircut. And now I'm going to an actual barber who actually cuts my hair. And she even puts on like safety glasses when she does my beard because apparently it kicks off a bunch of like sharp little hairs when she, when she cuts my beard. But paying $50 for a haircut is a very, very new thing for me. I never, never thought I'd do. Someone says why do I wear wired earphones versus wireless? Well, that's a great question. Even though Bluetooth isn't as big of an issue as WI fi or cell phone radiation, there's some evidence that it can cause a little bit of cell clumping. There's some evidence that it does create a little bit of low level radiation. Subjectively, I find I get faster onset during the day of things like brain fogs, headaches, etc. When I'm taking the majority of my calls on a Bluetooth headset versus a wired headset. So I typically use the defender shield air tube headset or if I'm lazy like I'm being right now, I just use the wired headset that you get from Apple. And I'm, you know, I'm not as concerned about Bluetooth as I am about WI Fi and cell phone signals and, and bigger forms of higher intensity so called dirty electricity. But if I have the option not to use Bluetooth, I figure, you know, why not, why not not use it. So, and again, subjectively I feel better just eliminating as many sources of non native electricity from my life as I can. Even like all the devices I own in my home, smart appliances, etc. I disable wi fi, I disable Bluetooth. It's just kind of my, my general rule. Okay, so let's go with, let's go with two more questions. Questions. Let's go with two more questions. Do I run? I love this question. I'm trying to pick a few. I'VE never answered before on podcasts. I ran, you know, I played tennis in college up until that point. Really hadn't run longer than a mile through tennis. Really tried not to run too much because I didn't want to convert all my explosive fast twitch muscle fiber to slow twitch muscle fiber. I was a total power athlete. Played center for the basketball team, played middle for the men's volleyball team, played singles and doubles tennis and did a lot of bodybuilding and plyometrics. And then about two years into college for I think what would be the first time in my life I ran more than about two miles and I kind of liked it. And third year of college, wound up signing up for like a 10 mile road race. I got second place in and again I, I just dug the meditative aspect of running and just the ability for me to get inside my own head, listen to great music and go out for a run. And so for the next 20 years, yeah, I mean like from Ironman triathlon to Spartan racing, I ran a ton. I still had a minimalist running approach because running is hard on the body, that eccentric muscle tissue damage. So I'd cross train a lot with aqua jogging, with elliptical trainers, with cycling for my sports. But for 20 years I would run anywhere from typically about 15 up to around 35, sometimes 40 miles a week. Now I don't run barely at all. I play tennis with my family a couple times a week. Sometimes when I check the mail in my driveway, which is about 400 meters long, I'll run back up the driveway. If I'm being chased, I'll occasionally run. Or if I'm chasing my sons during a game of tag, I'll run. I probably run a total of about one to two miles a week. The majority of my cardio comes from battle rope, med ball slams, Airdyne bicycle, the Vasper Full Body Electrical muscle or the Vasper Full body exercise machine. And then a lot of the strength training that I do, I'm using minimal rest periods and sometimes like body weight, high rep stuff. So I get quite a bit of cardio when I'm doing that. I paddleboard, I play some frisbee golf. But as far as like going out for a run, bro, let's go out for a run. If you asked me to go out for a run today, right now it'd be a flat no. I just don't really run at all and I feel pretty good with that. Will I start running again someday? Maybe. But right now I enjoy minimally running. I just did it for so long, I think I almost, like, burnt out on it. So. All right, let's see. Let's go with one more question. And then I think I'm going to release some of these questions this weekend for maybe the people who couldn't make it live to the show. A lot of fringe questions about weird growths on people's arms and strange diseases that people have. Please don't try to get that stuff solved on Instagram Live. I don't recommend it. Okay, here's an interesting one. Do I wear sunscreen? This is the first year of my life where I think, you know, I put on sunscreen one time this entire year. Both me and my sons and my wife will occasionally put on a little bit of coconut oil, which has a natural SPF of around 6 or so. I use that copper peptide stuff I talked about. And also the C60, which I think is great for skin healing. I use the Kion Skin Serum a lot, our Kion Omega. I put Astaxanthin in those, which is like an internal edible sunscreen. And I take about six capsules of the Kion Omegas every morning. Sometimes I'll take even more Astaxanthin than that if I'm going to be out in the sun for a long period of time. But I basically went this entire year, entire summer, through a huge heat wave, Vegas, Spokane, anywhere I go not wearing sunscreen. And part of it is due to, obviously, what most people know about the time toxins in a lot of modern sunscreens. Part of it was just an experiment to see if I did burn, if I did notice inflammation or wrinkles or things like that. And honestly, I feel great. Plus, it's a little bit of a time hack, too, not having to rub in sunscreen every time you go out in the sun. So, yeah, I wear a hat sometimes. I'll cover my body if I'm going to be out in the sun for a long period of time. But no, I don't think I'll ever go back to wearing sunscreen much at all. All right, so what I'm going to do because I got to end pretty soon is I'm going to end this Instagram live. I'm going to put all the show notes when this comes out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 434. You know, maybe we'll do this every once in a while. The audio isn't going to be great because it's just through my cheap ass. As we've already established, Apple Wired headphones but what the heck, we'll roll with it. And I was inspired to get on and respond to some of your guys questions. So I love you. Thanks for attending, thanks for the great questions and I'll I'll see you all on the flip side.

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