Q&A 435: 5 Death-Defying Supplements, What Foods Kill You Fastest, The Best Pre-Workout Mix, Carb Cravings After Cold Thermogenesis & Much More!

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, five death defying supplements, what foods kill you the fastest, the best pre workout mix, and much, much more.

Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield.

Welcome to the. Jay, what's going on, dude?

Oh, man. Living the dream. How about you, man?

I'm also living the dream. Jay slash hyped up on pain meds. Today I'm on oxycodone. Yeah.

Are you serious?

Oh, man. Yeah. This ought to be an interesting show. Oxycodone. And I thought about taking some kratom, but I just followed doctor's orders. Just like a little half capsule. I got knee surgery a couple days ago.

Oh, wow. I knew you were having some significant knee problems and you had been for a while, but didn't know it was gonna require surgery. Like, what type of surgery was it?

Well, the Wall Street Journal, actually, timely enough, just published an article called a knee or hip replacement without surgical procedure. And I will. I'll link to that particular article in the shownotes for Today's podcast. That BenGreenfieldFitness.com 435. Fascinating article that gets into this whole idea that cartilage has no blood provision or nerves and kind of a restricted capacity to fix itself. Yet there's a lot of cool protocols coming out in regenerative medicine that kind of restore and regrow articular cartilage, which is that layer of connective tissue that covers the end of our bones and allows our joints to maneuver. In the past, we'd have to get that type of thing resurfaced or get a knee joint replacement, which a lot of times in a young person like me, who's young but been pushing my body really hard for the past 20 years, the idea of getting a joint replacement is not that exciting of a prospect, especially considering those joint replacements don't last for a real long time. This article got into everything from brand new experimental drugs like one called sprotheramine, which stimulates the. The cartilage cells, these little cartilage cells called chondrocytes, to regrow. It gets into another injectable drug called Lora Sivivant, and that inhibits the proteins that cause, like, cartilage degeneration and the development of arthritis. And then it also gets into these really cool procedures, like an intraosseous procedure where you would actually take bone marrow out of a patient's, say, hip. And then what you would do is you would go in with a needle and like digital ultrasound Guided imaging and drill little holes in the, in the surface where you see cartilage generation. Kind of like in the same way you would fertilize a lawn. And then you just fill all those little holes with the bone marrow. And the bone marrow stimulates the new cartilage to grow in a similar way as you would get if you were to literally just like repair all the cartilage. Almost like a surgical glue. Like a surgical cartilage glue patch. So anyways, Dr. Matt Cook, who really specializes in all these cutting edge regenerative medical protocols, two days ago he actually did that exact protocol on my knee. And it is minimally invasive, but it's still invasive. You know, he had to put me under ketamine and nitrous oxide laughing gas. And I don't remember anything. I remember walking in the treatment room and don't remember much past that. But then, you know, about 12 hours later, just all those areas that got really, really needled and a bunch of bone marrow injected, they did get pretty painful to the extent where, like, I couldn't sleep. And so I, I do have a little bit of oxycodone, so. So I'm, I've been hyped up on, on pain meds. Not hyped up, but kind of like, I shouldn't say microdosed on pain meds. And so if I'm a little bit unlucid today, that could be why. But, but you know, with, with as long as I've been beating up my knee and as much as I've kind of had this type of protocol on my radar for a while, uh, we're actually gonna, we're gonna cover it all, I think, in this. Well, at the time that this podcast is coming out, I think my podcast with him will already have been released. But it's pretty, pretty cool protocol and I think he did a bang up job with it. And, you know, my, my knee feels all right aside from, you know, some of that pain that kicks in and that. He said that'll last about three days or so and then kind of subside, but yeah. Anyways, how about you? You want any, you want any drugs today?

Uh, no, not at all. I mean, is Alpha GPC a drug? That's about all I want today, doctor.

Alpha GPC as like a, like a smart drug, you mean?

Yeah, yeah, like a nootropic.

Well, we're gon, we're gonna get into some cool nootropics today, actually.

Ah, nice. Yeah, no, that's super interesting about your knee I don't know what is up with you and I and our knees. Like, when, when are you supposed to feel, like, the beneficial effects of this? I know you're just kind of feeling the deleterious pain, but, but like, how long does this take to kind of like operate or work?

Oh, to my understanding, within like a week or so. Once some of the, you know, when some of the surgical discomfort goes away, it's, it's already starting to regenerate, which is great. You know, I'm doing other things to kind of speed along, like hyperbaric and a little bit of infrared light therapy. I did some Normatec boost this morning. You know, and literally right now, while we're talking, I have the, just so my quads don't completely atrophy, I've got the, the, what do you call it? The Mark Pro Electro stem. Just kind of pump it away. So if you can hear a low level, low level buzz in the background, it's electrical muscle stimulation jamming away on my quads because you know me, I got a multitask or podcasting.

So kill as many birds with one stone as you can.

That's right. So we're going to jump into today's news flashes. As usual, we're recording this podcast live on Clubhouse. We do this on Wednesday mornings, typically a couple times a month around 10:30am live. I always send out via the Ben Greenfield Fitness newsletter when we're going to be recording. So if you subscribe to that free newsletter@BenGreenfieldFitness.com you can find out when we're going to record these shows on Clubhouse. And what we'll do is we'll go through the news flashes and then we'll open it up to our wonderful Clubhouse audience here for a little bit of Q and A. So what do you think, Jay? Should we jump into the news flashes?

Yeah, man, I'm excited about these.

All right, let's do it. All right. So this is pretty interesting. There was this new study and it was in the research journal of Nature and Food and what they did. It was mildly depressing, I suppose, for people who don't eat that healthy. But they figured out which foods take a certain number of actual minutes off of your life and which foods actually may do the opposite, actually grant minutes of healthy life to your body, like.

Every time you eat it.

Yeah, yeah, basically like, like for instance, they found that eating one hot dog costs a person 36 minutes of so called healthy life. So they were, they were looking at health span and lifespan. They Found like eating about 30 grams of nuts, like a little handful of nuts and seeds provides a gain of about 25 minutes of healthy life. They, they found that just eat a.

Couple handful of nuts and then your hot dog at the same time you offset it. I mean, that's it.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah, exactly. Processed meat was a biggie. It was like 0.45 minutes lost per gram of processed meat consumed in the U.S. they analyzed thousands of different foods, including the carbon footprint, which I'll talk about in a little bit because the carbon footprint of some of these foods is pretty interesting as well. And there's a cool little graph that I'll link to in the show notes. People who don't want to read the whole study and just show some of the popular foods like wild caught salmon adds about 20 minutes. An apple aboutlooks like about 15 minutes or so for an apple. Whole grain toast. Whole grain toast, about 30 minutes. And you know, who knows how much healthy user bias, how much they customize this based on people's unique guts and biomes. You know, I would tend to agree that things like the soda, the hot dog, the processed meat, the things that fall on the right side of the curve in terms of decreasing life, really, truly are probably the most deleterious. I do think that there are some people for whom whole grain toast, if, you know, if you've got gluten sensitivities, et cetera, you know, that might actually subtract a few years of, or minutes at least of quality life, or at least you might not live shorter, but you might paint the back of your toilet seat a little bit more frequently depending on who you are. That's true. But yeah, the hot dog was the most profound. I think the hot dog was basically like the worst thing on there. One hot dog, 36 minutes of your life subtracted from your life every time you have a hot dog. And I'm assuming we're not talking about like a grass fed, grass finished beef dog or pastured pork. I assume we're talking about the average American hot dog here.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and what are people pairing that with when you eat a hot dog? People are eating like chips and fries and beer and shit. So it's like, again, are they just singling out those foods? Are they like, oh, look, these people are eating hot dogs, therefore, like they're taking this amount of time off their life, not factoring in. They're also eating, you know, the processed bread that's in the hot dog. Or you know, around the hot dog than the, you know, the fries, the chips.

I think, I think Paul Saladino has called that the James Bond effect, where they say that meat could shorten lifespan. But a lot of people who eat meat are the same people who because meat has been so heavily vilified, are also like drinking beer, shorten themselves on sleep, maybe not wearing their seatbelt, like people who just kind of like live a risky life in general and ignore standard health advice. So yeah, there's, there's some of that going on too, I suppose, because you could do a healthy hot dog and you could do an unhealthy hot dog. It depends onon how you do it. And obviously if you're having a hot dog, a lot of times you're having a soda too or some other processed meat. I mean, you know, the ones that fall right in the center of the curve were kinda interesting. Like an egg was kinda like hit or miss, but again like what kind of egg are we talking about? So yeah, either way though, it was interesting. It was an interesting index and gives me pause about processed meat and hotdogs at least. So the other part of it though was like thethe idea they looked into sustainable foods and, and even though this, this was, this was kind of a different article and a different take on, on what is what is called the government's new national Food strategy based on a year long independent review of which foods are most sustainable. Like, kind of like good for you, slash, good for the planet. And this one I believe was primarily done in the uk but we can still, we can still glean some, some interesting information from it. Like oats for example. Oats can be grown at high altitudes. They're good break crop, meaning they can be sown in between harvest to replenish the soil and you know, a good oat especially if you like, you know, do like the overnight oats where you're, you're fermenting them a little bit and soaking them and making them super digestible if they're grown without artificial chemicals in a way that's friendly to the ecosystem. Oats are one of the, one of the more sustainable foods that you can eat. So, so oats were in there. Another one was locally grown vegetables, preferably fresh or fermented or pickled. Like the more you can, you know, no surprise here, shop at farmers markets and shop locally, but in particular like locally grown fruits and vegetables. Seasonally consumed fruits and vegetables are pretty high up there and that wasn't really a news flash to me at Least mussels and bivalves. Bivalves. So we're talking about like oysters, mussels, clams, scallops, all these things that thrive on microscopic organic matter. Well, their cultivation transforms waste into carbon storage. And of course, for anyone who enjoys, you know, oysters and clams and scallops and maybe some seafood paella, you know, some pretty delicious food as well. And, and farming, you know, mussels, for example, it's super simple. You just like lower ropes into the sea and the mussels attach themselves to the ropes. You don't have to feed them. You come back in two and a half years and just harvest the mussels. Like that's how they actually, you know, quote farm, unquote mussels. So that's a really sustainable source of food. You know, all these mussels and bivalves, obviously if they are grown in an area where the seawater is pure, that's another pretty decent option for both your body and for the planet. Another one they got into is pulses. Pulses. And they're very, very nutrient dense. Pulses are. So do you know what, do you know what a pulse is by the way?

No.

Okay.

Yeah.

Heartbeat. So. So. Well, close. So. So a pulse would be. Let me think of some examples of a good pulse. Gosh, I'm trying to remember if, if legumes would fall into that category. I'm pretty sure they do. But like beans, lentils, peas, those would probably be like the, the top few. I believe the definition is like, it's just like an edible seed that grows inside a pod and in many cases again to make them digestible and to unlock a lot of the proteins and the complex slow burning carbs and the vitamins and the minerals that are in pulses. You still need to do things like soaking and fermenting and sprouting, but they definitely top the list or are on the list of sustainable foods because they have the ability to self fertilize the soil. You know, they have these root nodules that contain bacteria that convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia. And so even if they aren't grown organically, actually legumes don't even need any artificial fertilizer, which, which of course can degrade the soil so the pulses actually allow carbon to get locked in. And you know, beans, lentils, etc. Especially if they're used with livestock and crop rotation, which is what this article gets into, that's another super duper safe food and nutrient dense food for the planet. Seaweed was on there. You know, seaweed like Your, your algae, for example, your spirulina chlorella, stuff like that. Seaweed absorbs carbon dioxide, but then it also reduces the acidification of the ocean. So you get all these microorganisms and sea life that flourishes. And then it relies on nitrogen and phosphate to grow. So you could grow seaweed in areas where there's agricultural runoff and then you could convert those pollutants into actual nutrients, which is super cool. So it can be used as a bioremediant, but then also as a food. So seaweed's another one that's up there for meat. Venison was really high in terms of like a nutrient rich meat that's produced from the grass and forage plants and trees that humans really can't utilize as well. But you know, deer populations are so routinely cold or harvested, right. They don't outstrip the supply of wild vegetation. They encroach on farmland, right? So you're kind of getting rid of pests in some areas as well. So venison, you know, like white tailed deer, black tailed deer, mule deer, access deer, it's actually a pretty sustainable source of wild meat. Probably one of the more, the more sustainable sources of wild meat. And so they also get into waste food, right? Like preserving and making stock from meat and fish bones, using like the skins and the seeds and the leaves of a lot of the fruits and the vegetables that we consume. You know, they got a recipe on there for banana skin curry, which actually looks pretty good. And then they talk about other companies that are repurposing waste, like taking surplus bread and turning that into beer, or taking surplus fruit and turning it into like condiments and chutneys. So really great article, you know, and it got me thinking about, you know what, why not do a cookbook just chock full of locally grown vegetables, you know, fresh and fermented and pickled, maybe some oats, some mussels, some bivalves, some pulses, some seaweed, some venison, some waste food. And maybe that'll be my boundless cookbook too. Just save the Save the planet.

Coming soon.

Eat good. Yeah, so love it. Anyways, eat this to save the world. Great, great article. So now we know what we'll take minutes off of our life and what we'll do will add minutes to the planet. One kinda, kinda interesting article that came out as well that I think kinda kind of is along the same vein of some of the things that we've been talking about was just fantastic. It's called the Corruption of The human diet. And it was on the Root Cause MD website. I forget who writes that website. I forget the name of the person who runs it. Maybe you could look it up. I was thinking it was Tim Noakes at first, but I don't think it is Tim Noakes.

Yeah, I can check.

Yeah, check out who runs the Root Cause website. But basically what they got into was like an abbreviated list of all the major events and milestones that deliberately accelerated our collective loss of ancestral dietary wisdom. Like probably the worst things that have happened over the past few years for us from a perspective, like losing touch with ancestral dietary wisdom and the way that we would have eaten from an ancestral standpoint. So do you want to hear what a few of them are, Jay? Yeah.

Yeah, tell me.

And I realize some of this stuff's going to be controversial, so one was. Drumroll, please. The Seventh Day Adventist Church. I have many friends who are Seventh Day Adventists. Nothing against it, but it says the active promotion of vegetarianism and the discouragement of animal meat consumption in adherence to puritanical religious beliefs didn't do us a lot of favors. They believed animal foods encouraged the sinful tendency of masturbation. Like Kellogg's Corn Flakes were developed to keep guys from masturbating, like lower their libido. But then you've also got the issue with monocropping with excess consumption of grains and carbohydrates in the absence of adequate proteins and fats, and kind of this religiously motivated vegetarian propaganda that kind of made its way into mainstream dietary consciousness. But it wasn't really like sustainable healthy vegetarianism. It was more like Kellogg's Corn Flakes breakfast cereal type of vegetarianism. Like nutrient poor grain based anti aphrodisiac foods, like literally to shut down sexual expression. Which is kind of interesting when you look at the origin of that diet. And again, I'm not saying this to offend Seventh Day Adventists, it's just one of the things that's listed. Another one was the invention of Crisco. So in the 20s, Procter Gamble commercially hydrogenated cottonseed oil as a substitute for what we know now is pretty healthy in moderate amounts like butter and lard. So Crisco was the very first mass produced seed oil. And that was like the beginning of the commercial movement to replace nutrient dense animal fats with really heavily processed polyunsaturated plant oils, which we now know are highly oxidizable and highly pro inflammatory vegetable oils. But Crisco was kind of like what got the ball Rolling on corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, grapeseed oil, all these inedible plants that got turned into cash crops for industrial processing and marketing for human consumption. It kind of started off with Procter and Gamble's Crisco. That was another one that, that, that, that didn't do us much of a service. He lists the, the diet heart hypothesis, right? This, this idea, yeah. Epidemiologist Ancel Keys, right. He proposed this diet heart hypothesis with potulated that saturated animal fat because it had a deleterious effect on blood cholesterol, which we also now know is not true, was the chief causative agent of coronary heart disease. And that whole kind of like unrigorously based, correlative epidemiological observation that he kind of like made up all this, or at least it was a lot of correlation, not causation, but it basically ignored the pathological contribution of refined sugar and carbohydrates to heart disease and vegetable oils and disregarded the fact that there was conflicting evidence about the idea that saturated animal fats might actually be good for you. And it started like half a century, you know, of this universally promulgated misconception that animal fat is inherently harmful. So that was another one in the 50s that happened. The closing of the gold window was an interesting one. So this was in the 70s when Richard Nixon basically severed the last remaining link between the US dollar and the gold standard. That happened in the 70s. But when he did that, consumer prices skyrocketed and that included food prices. So, so he appointed this guy named Earl Butts, who was an agronomist and agribusiness lobbyist to the Secretary of the U.S. department of Agriculture with the goal of bringing down the price of food. But the way that Butts did that was by forcing small scale farms to consolidate into bigger operations that facilitated like industrial monocropping farming methods that kind of stripped our soil of nutrients and allowed for like, you know, corn subsidies, grain subsidies, subsidized corn. Yeah. The cheapness of ultra processed high fructose corn syrup as like this ubiquitous food additive. And so it allowed for again, like cheap, nutrient poor, energy dense plant crops like corn and wheat and soy to kind of like take over and become really cheap. So that's kind of like why pop was so inexpensive and still is so inexpensive. Right. Or, you know, corn and wheat and soy based foods are easier for people to afford than foods that might arguably be more nutrient dense or healthy for them. So that was an interesting one later on in the 70s, the development of the American Dietary Guidelines, which were actually written by, you guessed it, a vegetarian Seventh Day Adventist. And there they come again, man. It was a whole plant based, high carb diet. You know, the traditional American food pyramid that has since seems to be falling out of favor a little bit as we've realized that extremely low consumption of healthy fats paired with very high carbohydrates and huge intake of like glycemic spiking grains and stuff might not be that great. But you know, there's been five decades of dietary guidelines that were based off these original ADA guidelines that kind of reflected the interests of the agricultural lobby, the food industry and the Seventh Day Adventist doctrines. And so we're fighting against 50 years of damage that that caused. So that was another one. Big Pharma and statins, right? The rise of the statin class of medications added Big Pharma to the list of another powerful lobbyist that would allow for the ongoing pathologization of saturated fats, right? Because, because statins inhibit your body's natural synthesis of cholesterol, which we now know is essential for every cell membrane and has numerous positive roles for endocrine function and beyond. But when Big Pharma developed statins, they contrived this medicatable disease called hypercholesterolemia. And this allowed for a lot of statins to be sold, but it also allowed in the same vein for red meat and eggs and full fat dairy to become demonized and replaced with largely polyunsaturated seed oils, right? And then monocropping and, you know, and the problem with, with American soil that we now have. But a big part of that was not only due to some of those other things I've been talking about, but Big Pharma and statins contributed as well. And then a couple other that were interesting even. There's a whole bunch that are discussed in the article. One was interesting. It's the, the, the Roundup glyphosate in Monsanto, right? And this was in the mid-90s, you know, and I remember this because, you know, I was, I guess I was probably like 15, 16 years old when Roundup Ready was invented, you know, and, and genetically modified cotton was the first commercial crop that could be sprayed with industrial herbicide during its growth cycle. But the resistance to glyphosate, which was the main ingredient, Roundup got bred into corn and soy and a whole bunch of other edible crops. And that GMO technology allowed farmers to spray Roundup all over the place that could kill competing weeds, but it left the crop standing. And, and now we know that glyphosate exposure is a human carcinogen and associated with a host of human diseases. It disrupts your key microbial metabolism pathways in your gut. It disrupts normal commensal microflora in your gut. And we know that the use of glyphosate on food crops resulted in detectable levels in finished food crops. So we had this widespread use of industrial pesticides and herbicides on both GMO and non GMO monocropping operations. And despite glyphosate falling out of favor, a lot of those operations continue with other forms of pesticides and herbicides in the United States, particularly to this day. So that was another big one.

Exactly.

And I would say one more that was interesting was the whole. And we kind of touched on this with the hot dog thing, the carcinogenicity of red meat. And this was pretty recent. It was in 2015 when the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is an arm of the World Health Organization, the who, they declared red meat as a probable carcinogen based on the interpretation of like 22 different experts take on the literature. But it was a bunch of these poor quality epidemiological studies that didn't take into account some of the stuff that we talked about, like, where's the meat coming from? What's the health status of the person eating the meat? What else are they consuming along with the meat? Soda, french fries, whatever. And so that was another one that did not do us any favors when it comes to the root causes of disease caused by, like, dietary and political factors. Just a fascinating article though. Like, I've only scratched the surface in explaining it, but I'll, I'll link to it in the show. It's called the Corruption of the Human Diet and that. Fascinating.

Yeah, yeah, it's super neat. Like, I don't think that there's a ton of controversy in this, at least amongst the people that are listening to this podcast. However, you know, I think kind of, you know, if you talk to the World Health Organization, you talk to the fda, they would probably have a lot to say about each of these, about how, you know, we're kind of falsifying the information. But I think that there's just too much kind of compelling information for us not to look each, look over each of these as probable, you know, or potentials at least for being kind of the corruption of the human diet. And you can kind of see this just like really Clear path of how we've gotten to, you know, some of the ideology and kind of the commonly held beliefs now on food by kind of following this path. So yeah, super intriguing to see it this way mapped out.

Yep, yep. And then here, here's a sexy one. The the five anti aging nootropics that scientists believe may defeat death. Kind of a hyperbolic type of, type of, you know, pipe dream of transhumanists type of title. But it is interesting that they list five. I, I did. I think I've talked about all five either in my book or on the show before. So the five of them are C60. Right. And C60 is like, it's called a fullerene. It's 60 carbon molecules that it's considered a super antioxidant. Right. It's the same thing I'm using for my hair, for hair growth. But it's this little carbon molecule. It chelates toxins in the body. It's a very powerful antioxidant. A lot of people get what's called a Herxheimer reaction when they first start taking it because it just like claws toxins out of your deep tissue, then they enter your bloodstream. So some people get a pretty powerful detox reaction to it. But it really is one of the darlings of the anti aging in the beauty industry now. And it's also a little bit of a nootropic as well in terms of kind of like turning your brain on. In longevity clinical trials, it extends lifespan in animals by like 90%, you know, and that was an animal trial in which it prevented the tumors that typically kill off rats. So carbon 60 is 1, so C60.

Have you used that one?

Yeah, yeah, I've used it before. Yup.

Doctor, I've never tried that one. I think I've tried every one on this list, but not that one.

I don't use it orally right now, but I use it on my hair. You know, it's part of that Oxano, GHK, copper peptide, C60 blend that I use. So yeah, maybe some of this getting absorbed into my bloodstream I would imagine since my skin is a mouse nootropic through the scalp.

Yeah, I like it.

Nmn, NR or NAD was the second one. And you know what NAD does is basically it helps to protect your DNA and increases the health of your mitochondria. So it's metabolized normally from vitamin B3. Right. But as Dr. David Sinclair, probably the most popular Harvard anti aging scientist who has kind of championed the use of these things it's kind of like if you use resveratrol or a lot of these sirtuins like blueberry and dark chocolate and stuff, that helps to accelerate the activity of your sirtuin genes, which help to protect your DNA and extend life. And then nicotinamide or NMN or NR or any of these NAD precursors or IVs or anything like that, those are kind of like the fuel for the sirtuins to work. So you know that, that's why, you know, you look at some companies, like Thorne, for example, they've developed like an NMN or I think it's NR is their product, but they've combined it with resveratrol. Right. Perfect example of stacking a sirtuin with an NAD precursor. And so, so NAD is up there along with C60. Another one is glutathione. Right. Glutathione is interesting because it's just basically like an electron lender. Right. You have all these lone electrons, these molecular interlopers that are kind of needing to be cleaned up and washed out of the body. And glutathione, particularly if it's in liposomal form or what's called acetyl form, which makes it more absorbable. I use a brand called Ohms Bio, which combines glutathione with, I think mitoq and PQQ and some other mitochondrial protections. But it tastes like an orange creamsicle. So it's really good. That's an example of like a bioabsorbable glutathione. Quicksilver Scientific has another really good one. It's like a liposomal glutathione. Glutathione is number three and then CoQ10, CoQ10. And that's actually something that is in that alms bioglutathione that I use, basically, CoQ10 is something that helps to protect the mitochondria. Ubiquinol is the form that seems to be the best way. Take it. It's like a reduced form of coenzyme Q10. It's better absorbed than what's called oxidized Q10, which is called ubiquinone. But if you can use ubiquinol, basically CoQ10 is one of the best things you can do for your mitochondria. So that definitely falls in there as well.

And I never conceptualized it as a nootropic, though.

Yeah. And you could stack all these together. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. They're titling these as anti aging nootropics because A lot of people don't talk about these as like smart drugs, but you know, if you're, if your cells and your mitochondria are working well, your brain's gonna be operating a little more. More cleanly too. And then the last one I talked, I didn't really, I hadn't really known about this much until I was doing research for my last book, Boundless, but it's called SKQ1. It's also an antioxidant, but it's a really powerful antioxidant. It basically drags a molecule of a different antioxidant called PQQ into your mitochondria. And that also does a great job at protecting the mitochondria, kind of like the C60 or the CoQ10 or the Glutathione does. So a lot of these have activity in the mitochondria, but those are the five of them. Those are the five of them. So we've got, and I don't think they were in any order of importance, C60, NAD, Glutathione, CoQ10 and SKQ. And I would definitely agree that if someone were to stack those five together, you'd really be kind of staying a step ahead in the whole anti aging game.

Yeah.

Next supplement. I hear what you're saying.

Yeah, Again, some companies will take that and just fairy dust. Some supplement with, with barely any of the actual amount necessary to induce an effect. That's what some companies will do. They'll just like, oh, these five are good for you. We're gonna take like one tenth of what they actually use in the studies. Make a supplement, slap it on there, say it's a proprietary blend. So make sure that you actually look into the studies and dose accordingly. In Boundless, in the chapter on anti aging, I actually have all the doses for all those listed. I don't have them all memorized, but yeah, you'd be surprised at how many supplements don't actually have the efficacious amount in them. Yeah. And then the last thing I wanted to mention, speaking of efficacious amounts, remember how I, how I did that post that just took off? It kind of went viral. I talked about this pre workout blend I've been using. It's just like, it's. And it's like amazing. And I just, I researched all the things that could technically allow you to just like crush a workout without having hefty amount of calories prior to the workout. So what I tweeted was you basically do 5 grams of creatine 50 to 100 milligrams of caffeine, which is the equivalent of a small cup of coffee. Although you can just get caffeine tabs, preferably time release caffeine tabs from Amazon. Time release 50 to 100 milligram caffeine tabs. One serving of ketone esters like Ketone Aid or HVMN or Oxford or any of these companies that do these ketone esters. Do one serving of those. About 10 grams of essential amino acids like the kion aminos is perfect for this. That's what I've been using. And then a half teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate which acts as like a lactate buffer, like arm and hammer baking soda. So you combine creatine, caffeine, ketone esters, essential aminos and sodium bicarb. You just stir this all up into a cup like 30 to 45 minutes before your workout. Drink that down. And what I wrote was like, try this and tell me you don't think you're on steroids. And so a couple of things came out of that. First, the folks at Infopathy who developed that device that allows you to charge up water with the frequency of any different supplements, they actually made what they call a super pre workout complex that basically you put your glass of water on top and press start transfer. It's on Infopathy's website now as an actual recipe. So now they've got my stem cells, they have this Ben Greenfield stem cell mix. But then they added my pre workout mix and all it is ketone esters, essential amino acids, sodium bicarb, creatine and caffeine. And just like infuses the water with that. And I noticed about maybe about a quarter, a third to a quarter the effect I'd get from actually taking all those supplements. But considering it's more like free because you're just, you know, you're basically using the idea that water can carry frequencies of certain molecules similar to homeopathy. Again, like, I didn't believe in that thing when I first got it, but I use it now to charge up my water. And you could, if you want to double up, make your pre workout mix and then run this Infopathy device, pre workout mix on your pre workout mix and like double up the efficacy of your pre workout mix. And I could see that, I could.

See it being potent. You know, I think like any of those things by themselves has a fair amount of potency to them, but you combine them all and I think that you will feel like a huge you know what bodybuilders refer to as the pump in the gym. I think you'll get a really good blood pump. Uhm, you know, one of the two things that I would even think about adding like just for me and this is personally because I love taking these pre workout. Let me know what you think. Ben, what about adding also too like some beetroot powder and some citrulline to that? Do you think it makes it a little bit too potent to add that in or do you think those are viable options?

Doctor?

Well, you, you could add a blood flow precursor because not nothing I really listed as much of a blood flow precursor.

Right, exactly.

You could, you could totally do that. Yeah, like a little beetroot, a little citrulline, a little arginine. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Those are my favorite things to add in when I. Because, because I love mixing creatine with a little bit of caffeine and then I'll do, you know, a scoop of kion aminos and then some citrulline and then like maybe some organifi or like organifi red or some beef.

I guess I just forgot about that because I take a handful of Viagra every morning, so didn't seem to. Yeah, you could add that in. Oh, and then there was one new study. I'd be remiss not to briefly mention this. It was a new meta analysis on creatine and they actually showed higher dosages, especially for seniors who want to use creatine for what it's been shown to be helpful for in seniors, which is like muscle maintenance or muscle gain. They found that in seniors you could actually nearly double the dose I've been recommending. Like they got up to about nine and a half grams as being like safe and efficacious in seniors, which kind of makes sense because you tend to see lower levels of creatine and lean tissue anyways as people get older. So it appears that if you are an older individual, I would say if you're like 50 plus or so, you could actually get away with doing a little bit more creatine, like doing close to 5 grams a couple of times a day. So as I age I might start to slowly increase my dose of creatine just based off of what I've seen of this. Just a very basic inexpensive creatine monohydrate. So that was interesting. Just like a brand new study on creatine that literally came out a few days ago. So I figured I'd give it a shout out on the podcast.

But did they say anything about, like, any potential additional water retention or bloat because of that additional.

Only if you do that. That loading phase where people will take like 20 plus grams a day for a week, which I've never recommended.

Yeah, no, that's terrible.

If you do a loading phase, you can see that. But. But unless you're throwing in a loading phase. Yeah, they showed the sweet spot is about three. Up to nine and a half grams of creatine. And I'll. I'll link to that study. I'll link to all the studies that we talked about, including that. That knee or hip replacement without surgery article if you go to. To BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I suppose what we could do now is just open things up to Q and A. What do you think?

Yeah, let's open it up.

Hey, good morning, Ben. Good morning, Jay. Good morning, Sophia. This is Dr. Charles R. Freeman here in San Diego. And greetings to those around the world. We are involved in NAV treatment here in San Diego. We detox people off alcohol, high levels of opiates, and we use IV for anywhere between 6 days and 10 days. Depends on the severity of the addiction. I heard you mention nad, and at first I was thinking this question might be a little bit off topic, but then you mentioned it is. Do you guys believe that NAD can also be used for different psychiatric conditions? I'm thinking in particular ADD or ADHD because of the neurological components of it and maybe other complex anxiety disorders like ocd. What's your experience of that? And it's really good to be connected here. I've been really enjoying the topic. My first cousin, Anthony Freeman's in the audience, and he's an amazing athlete, very expert in physiology, biotech and nutrition, et cetera.

Basically, just in case we didn't get that question coming through. Okay. From the doc. He was asking about NAD as a potential for something that could increase brain health, particularly for like ADD or adhd. And this is actually something that I've seen in the past. I believe that it was a study where. It was a clinical research study. They gave like 20 mgs or so of NAD. And you saw, basically based on a measurement of brain function, they were doing like a. Like a brain scan. I think it was a. It wasn't a qeeg. I think it was one. It was something very, very similar to a SPECT scan. But they found that in an ADHD person, the brain's frontal lobe cells have less activity, and that's compared to a person without adhd. And upon the consumption of nad, in this case, it was nadh. What they actually showed was the brain's frontal lobe activity, where you would see an increase in the areas of cognitive function and relief of some ADHD symptoms that actually seemed to return with the higher levels of NAD in the blood. Now, I should note here that from what I've seen in terms of like, whether you should supplement with NAD or whether you should supplement with NR or whether you should supplement with nmn, nmn, one of the precursors for precursors for nad, appears to be the one that may best wind up in the hypothalamus and may best be indicated for some of, like the brain or the nootropic effects that one might be looking for with NAD. But this particular study was using 20 milligrams of what's called NADH, which is they were using like a stabilized form of nadh. And I don't know what brand they were using, but ultimately, yeah, it appears that there could be some promise for ADD and ADHD treatments with nad. And overall, I think NAD is just wonderful for cognitive function. There was another study I talked about in a podcast a while ago about the idea of NAD actually being one of those things that, along with creatine, speak of the devil, seems to help out quite a bit with cognitive performance in a state of sleep deprivation. So ultimately, yes, it appears that there's. There's something going on there with nad, and the good doctor has brought up a good point. So let's go ahead and take somebody else up on stage.

Hey, may I ask one more question in regards to the insidious benzodiazepines and sedative hypnotics that are used for sleep and anxiety?

Well, I suppose since I'm ramped up on pain meds right now, you can. Yeah.

So I am a behavioral medicine psychologist, holistic, Removing these psychotropics that are very dangerous. Of course, benzodiazepines have been correlated with Alzheimer's, dementia long term. There's good research on that. Now, ambulance is some of these blackout drugs that are used for sleep are killing brain cells. Of course, now the oxies and the other analgesics, there's been a class action lawsuit and they paid a lot of money with Oxford Cotton. We believe that Ambien and Lynessa are going to be the next targets for class action lawsuit. What are your experiences just in terms of people's acceptance of this as knowledge or people just want the silver bullet of getting to sleep and they don't really care about the consequences on their brain health and longevity.

So yeah, this is like the classic, you know, benzodiazepines, you know, or Valium or something of the like, actually makes people think that they're asleep. And I know a lot of people who will pop one or half of a benzo to get to sleep. But it is as you know, I think Kirk Parsley, for example, has described it as such and so has the guy who wrote the book why We Sleep, Matthew Walker. It's kind of more like taking a sledgehammer to the brain because benzodiazepines are rapid eye movement or REM sleep suppressant medications. And so basically because REM sleep plays a really important role in learning and memory consolidation, you'll tend to see people who sleep and rely upon benzodiazepines for sleep. They don't get the same type of learning and memory consolidation as they should be getting because you see a real significant drop in rapid eye movement sleep. And I even think that right now they're trying to look into newer drugs that may actually enhance REM sleep. This is kind of like one of those deals where you stack another drug on top of another because of the deleterious effect one has. And I don't know if that's the best way to go versus using more natural forms of anti anxiety type of strategies, meditation and you know, yoga, nidra and you know, breath work and other things like that to get after the same anti anxiety effects people are looking for when they use a benzodiazepine or even things like vagal nerve stimulators or things like the nucalm device or the, you know, there's a whole bunch of devices out there now, the Apollo, the Hap B, a lot of these things that will simulate either electronically or magnetically what many people are going after when they use one of these benzodiazepines, which just shuts down your REM sleep cycles. But ultimately, you know, I think the biggest problem is a real, real disruption of learning and memory consolidation in people who use benzodiazepines for sleep. Essentially you're just like asking for a stupid pill before you go to bed while significantly affecting sleep architecture. So I don't know, what do you think, Jay?

Yeah, so the biggest components that I would focus on here is the disruption of sleep architecture that has been evidenced by benzodiazepines. So two primary things. One is, yes, taking a sledgehammer to REM sleep for memory consolidation and recovery. Also too, a disruption in deep Sleep. And then also see we see some significant impacts, more so or less on an acute stand, but more so on a chronic stand from central nervous and autonomic nervous system functioning. And how this manifests is actually one of the proxies is hrv. And so what we'll see is with individuals who take benzodiazepine when they go to sleep, let's say it's Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, what they'll see is an inability to directly go into deep sleep right away, as we normally would be with the typical sleep architecture. And they'll see that heart rate variability has this really interesting movement because of the GABA receptor activity and vagal attenuation modulation. We'll see heart rate variability spike really, really high, as if the person is experiencing kind of like this significant vagal response. But then we have kind of this, this really sharp decrease in heart rate variability as the half life of the medication wears off throughout the night. So what we end up seeing is that comparative to their orthostatic baseline after a benzo, it will go way up and then sharply go way down, far below the reaches of their baseline. And, and so what this is showing us is that yes, it's having vagal attenuation, which basically just means that it's affecting the vagus nerve in a way that they would want it to have happen. But the problem is that the recovery is not there. It doesn't recover back to the baseline. It actually sinks well below the baseline of this person experiencing anxiety. So this is kind of problematic because yes, in the short term it can provide some really good effects for, for the individual who really needs some kind of transient relief from anxiety or maybe even needs help with falling asleep. But the problem is again, it completely changes the architecture of sleep and then completely changes vagal attenuation. And the person over a long period of time will become conditioned and habituated to this response. And so their orthostatic baseline of heart rate variability, again a good proxy for nervous system functioning, will then begin to shift in the direction that we do not want to see, reducing their natural ability and resiliency to adapt to stress and anxiety. So there's a lot of potential problems with it. More education, more research need to be had, but that's, I think, a pretty strong and compelling starting place.

Good points, good points, interesting discussion. But yeah, I personally, especially considering the fact that due to the impact on REM sleep, you tend to see a lot of daytime sleepiness with, with the use of benzodiazepines. I'm just, I'm, I'm not a fan unless I'm on a really, really long haul airplane flight and I just gotta crash out. Even then I'd honestly, I'd rather have an edible and watch a good movie. So let's, let's, let's bring somebody else up on stage here.

Sophia, I have a pretty simple question about a cold shower. I recently added a 30 to 1 minute cold shower after my workout before I have a carb richer breakfast. But I have the feeling that afterwards for the rest of the day, my cravings for food just went up compared when I don't have a cold shower. Do you have an explanation for that? Some mechanistics or so. Thank you very much.

I definitely know why this happens because I wear a continuous blood glucose monitor, baby. And cold absolutely plummets your blood glucose. And in people who are pretty sensitive to that and people who maybe follow a relatively strict low carb or ketogenic diet in which their liver and muscle glycogen stores might not be high enough to be able to supply enough glucose to restore that kind of like hypoglycemic episode you see can often occur after cold. You just get damn hungry. It's the reason you hear about guys like Michael Phelps eating 10,000 plus calories a day. That cold water, in addition to maybe a little bit of weed really spikes the appetite. And so typically what I found to be a really good strategy is a be really careful if you're doing a lot of cold in the morning with any blood glucose disposal agents like berberine or bitter melon or apple cider vinegar or Ceylon cinnamon or any of these things that people will take before a meal to lower their blood glucose. While there are some people who I find that don't see as significant a blood glucose response to cold thermogenesis, they actually can benefit from some of the ability of some of those compounds to not only help to lower blood glucose, but also assist with the conversion of the relatively metabolically inactive white fat into metabolically active brown fat. So sometimes those type of supplements and we have a whole podcast I'll link to in the show, notes about the kind of compounds that you can consume prior to cold thermogenesis to amp up the conversion of white fat to brown fat like bitter melon or berberine or Ceylon cinnamon or, or a black pepper extract or grains of paradise pepper extract. You know, there's a lot of little things that can do it, but if you tend to just get super duper hungry after cold, you may want to avoid some of those. Another one would be just taking anything that's going to allow you to have an alternative substrate to glucose in your bloodstream. Probably my two favorites for that would be prior to doing like a hefty amount of cold or doing a workout. You know, like sometimes my sons and I in the summer especially we'll do a workout where we'll do like a round of Wim Hof two minutes in the cold bath, 30 push ups and do like five rounds of that as our, as our cold and body weight and breath workout for the day. Well, I'll do something like a shot of ketones and amino acids very similar like that pre workout blend that I talked about because my body's getting something to burn to replace a lot of that glucose that's dipping after cold thermogenesis. I've also found that if you're getting yourself to the point where you're like shivering, that's where you really start to burn a lot of calories. And if I know that I want to avoid consumption of hyper palatable foods or like caloric hyper compensation after cold, I'm careful not to stay in so long that I get to the point where I'm shivering because it appears to be the shivering that really really spikes the appetite significantly. So I'd be careful with your length of time too. Like me, I'll typically do, I like to do 32, 39 degrees like in that range for two to five minutes. And I know with that I can get all the benefits of cold without being hella hungry. Chew my arm off afterwards if it's, if it's hotter than that like say 40 to 55 degrees sometimes I'll go up to 10 minutes. But basically if I get myself to the point of shivering, I know I'm going to be super duper hungry. And the fact is that you get a lot of the benefits of cold thermogenesis without actually getting yourself to the point where you're having to shiver to warm yourself up which just burns a ton of calories. Which is great to know if you're using cold to burn fat or to lose weight. But also you have to be cognizant that it's pretty easy to over consume calories afterwards. That's where I throw things like ketones which are a great appetite suppressant. Amino acids. There's another one I found that's a really, really good appetite suppressant I've been using lately. It's this they advertise it as like an adaptogenic energy complex, but it's a blend of kratom and kava. It's called feel Free. And if I do a bottle of feel Free or even if I take a bottle of feel Free and some aminos or some ketone esters, like, that'll crush my appetite for like five or six hours. That's another really, really good one that I found. What about you, Jay? Any pulses post cold thermo appetite and craving hacks? Yeah.

So you definitely stole my one. In regards to ketone esters, I've really used that. And what's funny is that my experience, Kevin, is very similar to yours. So when I kind of in isolation do cold thermogenesis or like a cold plunge and I don't take something like say ketone esters, I will experience the same response as you, Kevin. And I think it's because of the extreme blood glucose drop, me being kind of a lower carb athlete. But one of the other things that I have started doing here within the last probably four to six months or so is I just have not been doing a lot of cold in isolation. I've actually been doing a lot more hot, cold contrast. So I'll do a lot of work in the sauna, you know, some breath work in the sauna, about 20 minutes or so and about 200 degrees. Dry, dry sauna, then immediately into a cold plunge and I actually get to the point of shiver. I want that effect. And then I get back into the sauna and it's another 15, 20 minutes and then back into the cold plunge. And maybe, I don't know, maybe you have some insight on this, Ben, but it's probably due to the kind of extreme fluctuations in blood glucose, kind of the spike that you get from going in to the, into the sauna and then the huge drop and kind of maybe the evening out. I don't know, I'm just kind of, you know, bull crap. And my idea on this here, but I have found that that's even outside of using ketone esters, that hot cold contrast has actually been a great way for me to not have kind of like that post hunger craving type experience. So I don't know, do you think that might offset Ben or what's your idea on why I might experience that?

Well, yeah, the heat kind of spikes the blood glucose and allows for immobilization of liver glycogen particularly and a little bit of muscle glycogen into the bloodstream. And the problem is of course, by raising the Glucose transiently through heat combined with cold, you're getting a lot of the recovery effects of hot cold contrast. But you might be defeating the purpose of like a lot of the fat loss that you want with the cold. So I would say if you use that strategy, like finish with the cold. Yeah. And you may find that just adding a little heat could actually allow for just enough blood glucose to get released where you don't see as much of a hypoglycemic episode after the cold. So, yeah, I mean that, that's. I mean, it's kind of like a pretty straightforward strategy. If cold makes you hungry, do your cold, but then get a little bit warm afterwards or get warm at a certain period of time while you're doing your cold, like going back and forth from the heat to the cold. And that could help out a little bit too. So. Great question, Kevin, and hopefully that gives you a few little tips. Let's do one more question. Let's bring one more person up.

Hello. Hi. My question is I, for as long as I can remember, just take a long time to feel awake when I get up. I just thought that was sort of nothing I could affect. Until just a few months ago, I thought, oh, maybe I can change this because by the afternoon I feel great. I feel wide awake. I recently, you know, learned about the. There's like a sensor on the bottom of the eye. So to get bright light in the morning first thing has been really helpful. But I still have like, I feel like I almost like I have a congested head. Just something about the act of being horizontal might be. I don't know enough about this stuff. So that's why I'm asking, is it, could that be it or should I exercise closer to the morning? Or is it just some sort of hormone that gets released that would make me feel just, you know, many, many, many hours after I'm up and about, I finally feel like myself.

So, yeah, this is called sleep inertia is what you're referring to. So, you know, you have all these sleep stages that you go through. We already established that benzodiazepines are the hottest thing for those sleep stages. But you got your first three stages, your non REM sleep stages, and then you have that REM sleep, which is what the benzodiazepines seem to seem to pretty significantly impact. Now what sleep inertia is parts of the brain take time to fully wake up even after you've actually woken up. And the part of the brain that's responsible for your physical Functioning. It's the brainstem arousal system, it's called. And then you have the part of your brain that controls your thinking and your decision making and your self control and that's called the prefrontal cortex. And the brainstem arousal system is going to become active basically right when you wake up. But then the prefrontal cortex takes more time to become active and alert. And until the prefrontal cortex becomes active, you're going to feel tired, you're going to feel groggy, you're going to have that kind of like that delayed waning away of your sleep inertia. And the reason for that is typically because of melatonin, the sleep hormone. That's why a lot of people who take a lot of melatonin, they'll be super groggy when they wake up because melatonin has to kind of like make its way out of the prefrontal cortex and it gets really, really bad if A, you oversleep or B, you get ineffective sleep. So getting sufficient sleep is of course the most important thing, like paying attention to your wind down routine. Light in the room, cold in the room, no business or work in bed, just sleep in bed. You know, a safe environment, the absence of noise, a lot of the type of normal sleep hygiene principles that I've talked about a lot in the past. Now a couple of things to think about. Caffeine and alcohol. And caffeine has a pretty long half life in many people dictating that for some people, like drinking a cup of coffee after like 11am what caffeine and alcohol can do is they block the neurotransmitters that are responsible for melatonin production. So be super careful with caffeine and alcohol, particularly before bed. And even a heavy exercise session or a heavy meal within three hours before you go to bed can impact or impair that sleep inertia. When you actually wake up, don't use snooze, don't use an alarm clock, try to, try to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. And that really reduces the impact of sleep inertia as well. So it's like some normal sleep hygiene concepts. We know that a ton of sunlight and bright light in the morning is one of the best ways to get melatonin kind of to fade away pretty quickly. So get a lot of light exposure in the morning. And then I'm a big fan of a lot of ayurvedic principles for clearing morning drowsiness. Primarily things like dry skin, brushing, jumping up and down on a mini trampoline, splashing cold water on the face, doing gargling and coconut oil pulling. And a lot of these things that I actually had a whole podcast where I talked with this ayurvedic physician for like an hour about her morning routine. And those are exactly the same type of things that I do when I wake up. And so working in some of those Ayurvedic principles in your morning routine. And then there are certain biohacks that I love, like the full body red light panels. That does a really good job, especially when I use those and turn on all the lights in my office, especially if I can't get out in the sunlight when I get up. Caffeine is one of the best ways to counteract sleep inertia. And caffeine in the morning is just a go to for knocking down some of that sleep grogginess. There is a machine called the Biocharger and that has. It's like a mix of radio frequency, infrared light, negative ion frequencies and pemf. And there's some functions on that, like morning wakefulness functions and one function called clear head that I swear by if I'm drowsy in the morning. And now we're getting into some of the more expensive biohacks, but something like that and something like the V light, which is like an infrared light that you can put on your head that specifically shifts you into an alpha brainwave alert type of zone. That or the Apollo, the sound producing Apollo wristband and or the magnetic electric producer or the electromagnetic frequency producing haptic be device like the Apollo, the HAP B, the biocharger and the red light panels are probably like the top four things I use in the morning to really like use technology to wake myself up. If I've been traveling a lot, I'm outside of my time zones, et cetera. And then all these Ayurvedic things like coconut oil pulling, tongue scraping, cold water splash in the face, a little bit of stretching and foam rolling, a little bit of jumping up and down on the trampoline, and some dry skin brushing. And then some of those technologies that I talked about. And then finally I have a whole article about these things called the five Tibetan Longevity Rites. And because I sleep differently and I'm on different sleep cycles, when I travel I do those. Especially when I travel, I do those five or those. Yeah, it's five of them. The five Tibetan longevity rights. Even though it's part of this whole morning travel stretch routine that I do that I Have a whole article on. I'll link to it in the show notes if you go to bengreefieldfitness.com 435 and that's more of like, you know, moving all the energy through the invisible chakras and meridians in your body. And you know, some people think it's kind of woo, but if I'm groggy and I want to feel like a million bucks, like, like that Tibetan longevity exercise really seems to wake me up and shift me out of morning grogginess as well. So those are, those are a few of my probably my biggest go tos. You got any to throw in there, Jay?

Yeah, absolutely. I love this question. I would say I'm naturally a morning person, so the highest level of energy I have are between the times I wake up and then about midday day. And so I'm having to kind of utilize more. You could even, you know, I guess refer to biohacking strategies later in the day. But there are a few things, a lot of what you've mentioned, but some other things too just to keep in mind. So there was a great podcast that was done here probably about three or four months ago, maybe not even that long ago, that was on kind of focus and health and waking up and work efficiency, which was done by Dr. Andrew Huberman on his podcast. And one of the great things that he talks about because he really studies the efficacy of kind of utilizing different strategies, especially through pathways of the eyes to help with focus. And one great subject matter he brought up, he said like when he wakes up, one of the first things he does is like he gets up, he goes outside, which Ben has already mentioned, get a lot of blue light, sunlight to help wake up the nervous system, but also too, he generates forward movement. So he goes on a walk. The first thing is he does and what this also helps to do, he doesn't look down at his phone, he doesn't look down at the ground. He allows himself to look out at the landscape and everything that's passing him by. And this is termed as optic flow. And what optic flow helps to do is it generates a lot of the hard working circuits in the brain to wake up and become focused to the environment. It's a very self preservation protection type of mechanism that we have built in. So the amygdala and limbic system in the brain is activated as well as the frontal cortex to be able to consolidate this information into something meaningful and practical. So I like this idea of optic flow and really trying to look out to the Horizon look at things moving in your environment when you're on your walk in the morning. But then also too just the generation of movement in and of itself can help with waking you up. So that's one thing I like to do. The other thing too, if I'm having a particularly tough time waking up in the morning and kind of caffeine's not working for me, enhancing oxygen, optic flows not working or maybe isn't as effective as I'd like it to be, then I will utilize. And this is gonna, you know, probably be, you know, a no brainer coming from me. And you should expect it is I'll utilize breath work. And the way I utilize breath work is actually not through engaging in slot calm, parasympathetically activating breathing. I'll actually do much more kind of like vigorous Wim Hof style esque type breathing in order to activate the sympathetic nervous system. And I have found that to be so, so effective in just kind of like giving me like a punch to the face, like a slap, like wake up. And it can be so effective and you know, because the last thing I want to do is turn to more caffeine, you know, get jitters and whatever. So I would say those are the only two things that I would add. You know, you can start throwing in biohacks, you know, if you need them, like you've mentioned later on. But you know, just a couple, couple additional things.

Yeah, there was one thing I was thinking of as you were, you were talking about that the WIM hof like the Pranayama style breathwork. I actually. And proceed with caution folks. I don't want anybody to get a concussion or tbi. Maybe we could just do a podcast on that if they do. But I will often do some of that breath work while I'm jumping up and down on the trampoline in front of the biocharger. I've had people come visit my house. They're like, what's your morning routine? I'm like, come jump on the trampoline in front of the biocharger with me. We'll have a cup of coffee, stand out in the sunlight. You're going to feel like a million bucks. So hopefully that gives you some ideas, Gabriela. And we'll link to everything that we Talked about@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 435 but as we're prone to do, we'll finish up by giving away a little goodie here. So this is the part of the show where if you've left a review for this show and that's anywhere where fine find podcasts are found. Spotify, Apple, Samsung, anywhere. And we read your review on the show. We're going to send you a handy dandy gear pack with Ben Greenfield fitness beanie and cool T shirt and a BPA free water bottle. All sorts of goodies. You just need to email gearngreenfieldfitness.com with your T shirt size and we'll hook you up with all that. So email gearngreenfieldfitness.com if you are the person whose review is about to be ready. Jay, you want to take this one away?

Yeah, let's do it, man. So this one comes from Jay Ifert. E, I F F E R T J ifrt, they say. Thank you so much, Ben, for all you do. Your insightfulness, knowledge, passion and experience is truly remarkable. I learned more from your work than a dozen other health and fitness books and podcasts. Having been an elite athlete transitioning to life, your work has changed my life. Your book, beyond training, podcasts, cookbook, all your wisdom nuggets, everything. Thank you.

That's so nice. I like it. It makes it sound like elite athletes don't have a life. The athletes with no life transition to normal life. Yeah, yeah, Living like a monk to living like a real person. But I get it. Well, great review. Email gearngreenfieldfitness.com we'll send you a sweet t shirt and BPA free water bottle and a beanie. Probably a BPA free beanie too. And I'm pretty sure the T shirts BPA free too. So better man. Plasticize your body. Speaking of which, I started up a sous vide this morning in my my plastic free stasher bags. You know what? I'm sous vide all day that I'm gonna prep tonight.

Lamb.

Oxtail.

Oxtail.

Ooh, I'm gonna make. I'm gonna make grilled oxtail that I'm gonna sous vide all day. Then I'm gonna grill it because oxtail needs a long slow break down like collagen. So eat some tail. My hypothesis is that that eating tail might help to repair my knee.

So yeah, makes total sense.

Yeah, it makes total sense. Eat joints to repair joints. Like supports. Like as they say. Well, folks, for those of you who joined us on Clubhouse, thank you so much for the awesome questions. We'll be back in the next couple of weeks. For those of you listening to this podcast when it comes out, all the shownotes are going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 4:35 Everything we talk about knee or hip replacements without surgery. That weird electronic way to get my pre workout complex in. Everything that we talked about, the research, studies, you name it. We'll put all the links in there. So go to BenGreenfulPins.com 435J I'll catch you on the flip side man.

Yeah man, it's been a blast as always.

Alright, later folks.

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 Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

Sam.