Q&A 436: The Worst Food For Cancer Risk, Are Eggs Good Or Bad For You, The Sport That Makes You Live Longest, What Is The Healthiest Chocolate & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, the worst foods for increasing your cancer risk. Are eggs good or bad for you? The sports that make you live longer and much more. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the. Jay. Welcome, man.

Yeah, man, glad to be back here.

This is an interesting morning, very interesting morning for. For a few reasons. First of all, I feel fantastic because my sons and I have been cooking the heck out of organ meats lately. And I. I put aside my usual morning smoothie just, just for the morning, this morning, and I. I had a shot of that stuff that we've been talking about lately for a little surge of energy. And then I ate me a giant pile of heart liver, organic chicken wings, some Primal Kitchen buffalo sauce, some Primal Kitchen spicy ketchup, and a little bit of bacon for breakfast. How do you like that?

Dude, that's breakfast of champions. So were you just thinking, like, I'll go carnivore today, or was this an experiment?

Knowing you well, Winston Churchill, you know, who, who I admire in some respects, used to wake to a whiskey, a cigar, a newspaper, and he had something else that I think most people would consider to be unhealthy thrown in there. I forget what it was, and probably.

It was a slab of meat. I mean, because people consider that unhealthy.

Yeah. Slab of meat. Oh, that, that. You're actually right. He had bacon and eggs. Bacon, whiskey, cigar, and the newspaper. I think that that doesn't sound like a half bad way to start the day.

No, no, I mean, I think that's the only way.

Whiskey.

But, yeah, it sounds super American, which he wasn't, but it sounds super American. Maybe that's why we adopted some of those habits. But, yeah, sounds like a beautiful way to wake up.

Speaking of cigar, now I'm smoking. I'm literally smoking. Are you. As we are recording this podcast, you know, I think that I have let people know in the past or tweeted or whatever in the past about how if you use this type of oil called black pepper oil, you know, not only is black pepper great to put a few grinds in some water and some tea before you go do a sauna session, because it increases your body temperature pretty dramatically if you want to sweat more. But black pepper is also an ingredient that's used to alleviate nicotine cravings. It's actually used as a cigarette substitute.

Were you having some nicotine cravings this morning?

You know, I wasn't having nicotine cravings, per se. Although I do like to chew that Lucy gum stuff sometimes. But anyways, I had discovered that there's a company that makes almost like a. It's not a vape pen, but it looks like a vape pen. Yeah. But all it is, it's like this pen that you put an essential oil core into. So it's got these little, like, cotton cores and you just saturate the core and whatever essential oil that you want. In this case, you could do some like, black pepper. And then instead of hitting a vape pen or instead of hitting a cigarette, you just take a drag on black pepper extract instead. It works surprisingly well.

Yeah, yeah.

That pen is made by a company called Fume. It's fast. F u m. I can link to them in the show notes if people go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 436 once we get the shownotes out. But that's actually. I'm not smoking, quote, smoking black pepper today. I've got this. They made like a chocolate mint core. It's literally, like, especially after having liver and heart, it's this super yummy flavor. And literally it's like taking a hit, you know, like those fancy new THC pens that. But, I don't know, like strawberry and mint and purple grape and, you know, whatever else in there and crazy flavors. Like, you know, like, I think I even had a vape pen. A few weeks ago, someone gave me a hit on. I said, what is this? And they said it was sweet cheese.

Sweet cheese.

Thought I'd vaporize sweet cheese before. But this is, this is. This is not, you know, marijuana or THC or nicotine or anything. I'm literally just smoking, so to speak, because I don't know any other word to say. I could say sucking, I guess I'm sucking on a pen and it is a chocolate mint infusion. It's super tasty.

Chocolate mint infusion with black pepper. That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah. Does it, like, burn the back of your throat? I just feel like that black pepper could, like, really feel good on the back of the throat. No, it doesn't.

No. No. So. Well, I don't know. Maybe I've got a. Maybe my throat is calloused.

It could be.

What do you call it when you become used to something so used to it that you become desensitized to it?

Yeah. Desensitized.

Well, no, it's not calloused and it's not desensitized. And it. Words on the tip of my tongue. What's that?

Conditioned, Habituated.

Conditioned, not habituated. You know, when. When somebody has become desensitized to something to the extent to where they. They might lack a little bit of empathy or some jaded, calloused. Jaded. Jaded.

Okay.

Has become jaded. I believe that's the correct use of the word jaded. You know, kind of. I guess jaded. More. More is like. Kind of like lacking enthusiasm for life.

It can be, yeah. But anyway, sounds pretty sweet. I mean, yeah, I want some black pepper to cure some cravings myself.

Well, I'll see if I can snag a discount code from Fiume and toss all that into the show notes. People want to try a little bit of that. And I suppose we're getting along in the two. So we should jump into today's news flashes.

Sounds like fun.

All right, folks, well, if you are here live on Clubhouse, which is where we record this podcast, typically on Wednesdays, Wednesdays mornings around 10:30am Pacific, I always send out in my newsletter when we're gonna do a Clubhouse podcast. So if you subscribe to the newsletter@BenGreenfieldFitness.com you can get it on the live edition. And we'll be opening up to live questions here shortly. But in the meantime, of course, we love to cover just a few interesting anecdotes that have popped up over the weeks in between these shows. And one, one was pretty interesting. It was what's called an umbrella review. Umbrella review is basically a scientific review of all of the different apparati out there that could help protect you from rain falling on your head.

Oh, yeah, I learned. I learned about that when I was doing my doctoral work. Yes, that's exactly correct.

Trust me, I'm a doctor. Yeah, well, I mean, if you've done doctoral work, you could probably explain what an umbrella review is better than I could. Jay, what's an umbrella review?

Yeah, so an umbrella review is basically an overview of reviews, and particularly it is the compilation of multiple meta analyses that are then provided with a larger overview. So it basically answers a much larger question that takes all of these intensive meta analysis and then kind of combines it into one paper. So, like, the meta analysis is considered like the top of the line type of research review, whereas the umbrella would be, like, above that. So it, like, is umbrella in that. Basically everything within that category that is that we're trying to answer. So, yeah, it's a. It's a great form of review.

It's a review of reviews. Right. Essentially. See, I just said it way, way easier than you did an umbrella review.

That was the first sentence I said.

And this particular umbrella review was looking into all of the different foods that could be associated with, with cancer risk. Right. So they, they looked at a whole bunch of different kinds of cancer, you know, like breast and colorectal and eso, head and neck and liver cancer. And then they took all of the compounds that tend to be pretty heavily studied as being either carcinogenic or even potentially anti carcinogenic dairy products, milk, calcium, whole grains, coffee, and of course alcohol. And the compound that they looked at that was most associated with an increased risk of most cancers. What do you think it was, Jay?

You know, it's a tricky one because cancer is just a tricky one, especially on identifying what could be the cause agent. So I would have probably said something that was, you know, fried and like, you know, vegetable oil, like, you know, french fries or like donuts or something that would be.

Yeah, but I don't think they studied, I don't think they studied french fries and donuts. I think that they actually kind of kept it to relatively commonly, well, not commonly consumed foods. But you know, I'm trying to actually hunt down this study so I can get it in front of me. Yeah, it looks like citrus fruits, processed meat, egg, soy, coffee, poultry fiber, tomatoes, vegetables. And what else was on there? Alcohol. Like I mentioned whole grains. And so yeah, I guess they could have done french fries and donuts, but I don't think they did.

But I mean, among the things that you just mentioned, if french fries and you know, you know, highly fried stuff, that's insanely inflammatory. I mean you, I didn't think about it until you mentioned it, but alcohol seems like it would be highly correlated with plenty of types of cancers, especially if it's utilized in excess. So I think that would be, my next guess would be alcohol.

Yeah, my bet would have been on processed meat, especially based on, I think the last podcast we talked about, the recent meta analysis that was looking at all of the things that could subtract minutes from your life. If you like to think in highly mortalistic terms like that. I love to make up words mortalistic. And hot dogs were way up there. Processed meat was way up there. But in this case, in this meta analysis for cancer, particularly, not just all cause risk of death, but cancer, it was, you are correct, Jay, alcohol consumption. It was alcohol consumption positively associated with the risk of a wide variety of cancers. Of course there's the whole, what's it called, the James Bond theory, where the, where the people who are kind of like dicking around with, with processed meats and alcohol and fried foods, etc. Like they tend to kind of be eating a generally unhealthy diet anyways because sedentary and smoking too, most people kind of sort of think alcohol might be bad for you. Therefore they're people who aren't really making that great of food decisions anyways, comma, I really don't think that this particular umbrella study of studies or analysis of analyses was looking at let' organic biodynamic wine consumed by a Sardinian or a splash of bitters, you know, over the rocks with some lemon juice prior to a grass fed, grass finished rib eye. Right. They were literally looking at all right, who's drinking out there? And then matching that up with who's getting cancer out there and finding a pretty hefty correlation. And yet I stand by what I've stood by before. Like micro doses of a really healthy organic or biodynamic wine or other form of relative relatively non processed, low sugar alcohol I don't think is much of an issue for most people. But I would say that this, this definitely speaks volumes to the fact that probably contextualize with a standard American diet. Like alcohol from a cancer standpoint is one of the worst things that you could be consuming.

Yeah, I mean it comes back to kind of the problems that are found with some of these epidemiological studies. And I'm assuming that this meta analysis or, sorry, the umbrella of meta analysis was looking at a lot of compilations of, you know, epidemiological studies. I mean you can still calculate for things like effect size because you're looking at, you know, a large data set. But it's still like, it's really difficult for these studies to factor out all of these other confounding variables and then just highlight kind of one single compound like alcohol. I mean they, they've done it here, but it's still, I, I, I wholeheartedly agree with you because it's not contextualized. And so that makes it like, I don't want people to listen to this and be like, okay, that's it, I'm gonna get, you know, colorectal or esophageal cancer because I've, you know, drank a Gl wine tonight. Just, it's, it's not the case. But I mean, it's always something that we have to be cautious with. I mean, you know, I think you and I both agree excessive alcohol doesn't make sense within a, you know, healthy quote unquote lifestyle. Uh, but yeah, it's. It's interesting information, for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what won out, though, in terms of probably the biggest impact on reducing cancer risk, at least from what they looked at in this study?

Huh? Well, no, I have no idea what it would be.

Coffee.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I guess. Yeah. That's interesting.

Yeah.

I wouldn't have not have thought that would have been there, but it makes sense.

Yep. And there's no surprises there, of course. All right, so that was the umbrella review. We'll link to that one in the show notes. The show notes are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 436. Now, moving on to another. Another issue related to overall mortality. Great article in Preventive medicine about which sport allows you to live the which. And I'm gonna play the guessing game with you, Jay. Which sport do you think when. When you look at. Well, I'm not even gonna name all the sports. You don't have any clues in your head. I won't tell you what they looked at. I will shortly. But what sport was considered when compared to a sedentary lifestyle, to add the most amount of years to one's life? In this case, nearly 10 years of extra life compared to sedentary control for people who play this sport?

Yeah. So my, like, my heuristic goes to three different sports, and that's because I played all three of them. I will choose one. I will tell you that. The three, though, that I would have thought would have been like, soccer, basketball, or tennis. The reason being is because each of those are kind of like doing, like, hit training almost. Even though it's, like, it could be considered potentially excessive hit training, there is a bit of hit, especially if you're playing, like, singles tennis. Out of those, like, what do I think it would be? I would. I would probably choose.

I just have to interrupt you. Hit training. I see what you did there. Yeah.

You like that?

You like that? So what would you choose?

I would. I would think it's either. I'm gonna go with tennis. Yeah, I'm gonna go with tennis just because I played it.

Yeah. Yeah. One study in the past had. Had ranked tennis as number one and swimming as number two. This recent. This. This recent study, based on over 8,500 participants in the Copenhagen Heart study, definitely found tennis at the top of the list. Adding 10 years of life versus a sedentary lifestyle with badminton a close follow up. Wow.

Badminton. Get out of here.

Yeah.

Want to be tennis players bending down.

To pick up a birdie is going to make you live? Well, apparently it is. Soccer was third, cycling was fourth and swimming was fifth. You know what's interesting is that, and I find that this interesting that that many of the sports that are listed as sports that seem to cause a decrease in all cause risk of mortality tend to be sports that people would, would have picked up at an early age or sports that require a great deal of like balance or coordination or kind of like left, right hemispheric brain activity dictating that. You know, I'd be curious if let's you take a weightlifter who also plays chess. Right. Or someone who jogs but also reads profusely. You know, maybe if they're triggering their brain in some other way, they would live just as long as someone who say plays a, what might arguably be considered an intellectually or more mentally demanding sport like tennis or a sport that one would start earlier on in life, indicating that they've been active for longer in their life. Like tennis.

Right, yeah, that's a good point.

When they're kids. Plus you have that kind of like left, right hemispheric brain component. So. Yeah, it was interesting though. And I think that some type of racket sports causing you to shift from left to right hand, engaging you in some of the high intensity kind of like burst training that you alluded to, Jay, is probably something that's pretty good for you to consider picking up and putting in your back pocket.

Yeah. So I mean for me, I don't know if you view it this way, Ben, or ever viewed it this way, but like, like for me, when I go out and like exercise, especially if I'm doing like high level endurance exercise, like there is something about playing a sport like tennis where like I don't even think about myself exercising. But I know I'm getting all of these amazing benefits. I just really think about myself like playing a game, playing a sport. And I don't ever conceptualize it in my brain as like, oh, this is exercise for me. I know it is on the back end, but never like while I'm playing.

Yeah, that's the best kind of exercise, is the exercise that's sneaky that you don't know what you're actually doing.

Exactly.

So we'll link to that analysis in the show notes. Not an umbrella. I know the only good studies now are the umbrella variety. Okay, so here's a pretty good one. Everybody knows that I'm a huge fan, especially when I travel, of using blood flow restriction bands to fool my muscles into thinking they're Lifting a heavier weight than they actually are. And honestly, a lot of times when I travel, I mean, I'm like a fricking Groundhog Day model. I get up, I do a half hour of BFR training and the rest of the day I just go on walks and stuff, you know, take a cold shower here and there. And that's just like my go to when I travel. It's easy. It takes me, you know, literally like a pound of extra travel weight to throw some BFR bands into my suitcase. And one thing I've always wondered, because a lot of times I'll do a strength training workout with my BFR bands, like a, you know, string together some squats, some push ups. Usually I'll travel with a TRX style device that allows me to do some door frame pull ups, some lunges, you know, things along those lines. But then, you know, after I've done 20 to 30 minutes of BFR training in the morning, I'll sometimes go on a walk while still wearing the BFR bands, which is surprisingly hard, especially if you're walking uphill. Yeah, because you've got all this lactic acid trapped in muscle. Which of course is one of the reasons BFR training works is you get this big growth hormone response and you get this, this kind bounce back response and metabolic fitness when you trap all those metabolic byproducts into muscle tissue when you have the muscle slightly occluded with these BFR bands on either the arms or the legs or both. And it turns out that aerobic exercise combined with blood flow restriction actually has some pretty cool benefits. Now, in this case, this recent study which appeared in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research, what they looked at was just regular high intensity interval training. And then they looked at aerobic exercise with BFR bands and aerobic exercise without BFR bands on. Literally, you know, this could be something as simple as going for a walk or some people even go for a swim wearing these BFR bands or a bike ride. Now, no surprises here. High intensity interval training resulted in the greatest increase in VO2 max or maximum oxygen utilization, which is a very good metric of aerobic fitness and a very good thing to keep elevated, particularly as you age or if your goals are performance. But the VO2 max increase was pretty considerably close to what you got out of high intensity interval training when you were just doing aerobic training wearing BFR bands, meaning like, you know, doing like what I do, you know, stringing together some squats and push ups and pull ups, putting the bands on, but then just like heading out and going for a walk afterwards or even if you're not doing the strength training before, just, just going on a walk wearing these bands. And it's kind of cool because you can take a walk and make a walk on steroids when you're banded, so to speak. And it turns out that it actually has a pretty significant impact on maximum oxygen utilization, thus dictating that if you want a great strength aerobic combination workout, put on the BFR bands, do some body weight training and then head out for a walk. And that's a pretty good one, two combo. That again, I like because it's. BFR bands aren't that expensive. You could get like the fancy Katsu ones from Japan, which are pretty cool, I have to admit. Like the things that automatically inflate and deflate with the exact partial pressure that you want. But even just like the cheap ass BFR bands you can get on Amazon, you know, like that they're not half bad. And although they don't have a little tube inside them that the Katsu bands do, that allow for more delivery of blood to the muscle, but less blood coming out of the muscle. Those just regular BFR bands, you know, that you get on Amazon or whatever, they don't work half bad. And, and yeah, turns out that you get a pretty significant benefit just strapping them on and you know, hitting the, hitting the bike or going for a walk.

Yeah, super interesting. Did the study happen to mention like the minimum amount of time that you needed to engage in aerobic exercise and then also maybe the maximum amount case.

They were exercising for 18 minutes. So. Okay, yeah, but anybody's put on BFR bands, if you have them on at the proper pressure, like 18 minutes, you kind of feel it. I use that Vasper machine which is kind of like BFR on steroids. It's an expensive apparatus, but it's one of those things, I think Tony Robbins travels everywhere with his Vasper machine. I happen to be lucky enough to have one out in my little biohacking gym and I hop on that thing two or three times a week. It's a 21 minute workout and geez, it's just like even though I'm only producing 100 to 150 watts, which for anybody who's a cyclist who will turn out 400 watts, that doesn't seem like. But when your arms and legs are restricted, it actually is surprisingly difficult with a surprisingly low amount of inflammation and muscle damage afterwards. So you know, I still hop on that Vasper when I'm Home two or three times a week. And for me just to know, hey, even if I get nothing else done today, I can do 21 minutes on the Vasper and I'm getting the equivalent of like a two or three hour run. It's kind of a cool little time hack, hack, but it's also kind of sort of expensive too.

But oh, but like you said, I mean, just go get the cheap ones from Amazon and then do it after your workout, go for a walk and yeah, that's, it's the best way.

I mean that would be the poor man's version or the poor woman's version of the Vasper is just put on arm and leg BFR bands and then like hit the Airdyne for 21 minutes. Or like the elliptical trainer where you move both your arms and your legs or even just a walk where you're doing some brisk swinging of your arms and legs. So, so yeah, There you go. BFR training for VO2 max and a VO2 max maintenance or increase at lower intensities than what you'd get from a high intensity interval training workout or than what you need to achieve with a high intensity interval training workout. There you have it. All right, so what else do I have for you? Here's a great one. The age old question, are eggs good or bad for health? And Jay, I don't know about you, but this is one of those classics where every time you're sitting next to somebody like on an airplane and you start talking about nutrition, they're like, oh, it's all so confusing we're never going to figure it out. First they say eggs are good for you, then they say eggs are bad for you. Like that's, that's what people always bring up.

That is the stereotypical one.

Yeah, yeah, yep. And so it turns out that this actually has been looked into and there was actually a pretty decent article that came out about it. And I'm not going to bore people with all of the details of the article, but essentially the highlight of the summary is this. Eggs do have a lot of key things that your body relies upon on a regular basis, like cholesterol precursors and cholesterols themselves, like pretty bioavailable forms of amino acids, choline, which is wonderful for the brain, a host of different micronutrients that make eggs kind of like nature's perfect protein because you got your entire B complex, your, your D, your E, your K, phosphorus, calcium, potassium. I mean, we have chickens. And it overjoys my heart to know that my sons, my growing 13 year old boys go out there every morning, grab a few eggs from the chickens, clean off some of the chicken poop, since eggs do come out the chicken ass and then they come inside and my boys have eggs nearly every day and they eat liver with, with great frequency as well. And I think it's just, it's great to know that they're getting a lot of those, those vitamins from nature. But, but, but the article, of course, and I don't think this surprises anyone, gets into of course, all the benefits of what's inside the egg, but then also basically, you know, gets into the fact that most recent research and the US dietary guidelines suggest that the historical strike against eggs, especially the idea that they might be bad for your cholesterol, which is a myth, is not in fact true. And that's not a reason to avoid eggs. So that's old, old school that eggs, because they raise your cholesterol would be bad for you. Not the case. Are some people sensitive to or have an immune reaction to or are potentially allergic to some of the albumin and other proteins in eggs? Yeah, some people actually do have a legitimate egg intolerance or egg allergy. And you can use a good test like a Cyrex, I like that company Cyrex C Y R E X Food Allergy test to find out if that's the case for you. I find that most people tend to have a bigger issue with eggs when they are consuming just the albumin portion, just egg whites. And that's another old school myth that you go to the hotel buffet and you ask for the egg white omelette and leave the yolks aside because I don't want to d here at the table, baby. But it turns out that having the egg whites in the absence of the yolk is kind of like the equivalent of drinking like 2% homogenized pasteurized milk. Right. Like it's really is not the way that nature intended us to be consuming our eggs. It was supposed to be one perfect package. The article goes on to highlight research showing that eggs do not seem to increase cardiovascular risk. But a standard western diet eaten that includes eggs can have an impact on cardiovascular risk. And of course, because again, similar to the alcohol deal, we know that people who are eating a standard western diet and frequently eating eggs are probably eating 80% of their eggs at Denny's with a pancake and maybe a morning cup of Coke. Oh, speaking of which, I gotta open my Coke.

Yeah, nice.

I'm drinking, I'm drinking the Zevia cola flavor.

Cola, yeah, that's a good one.

Not just the cola, the Cherry Coke. You have the Zevia Cherry Coke. Coke.

Oh, it's, that's, that's the best cola flavor.

Someday we'll get this company to sponsor the podcast Super Dangerous. And, and, and so that's something to bear in mind is that the context of the eggs being consumed is important. And then the cooking method affects the nutritional profile and health of the egg, as does the hen's diet, which of course should come as no surprise because we are what we eat ate. And a healthy egg from a pastured hen, or at least a hen that has been fed something other than a diet extremely rich in omega 6 fatty acids or you know, monocropped corn or soy or wheat or something like that, dictates that these pasture raised hens are a lot better, especially if they haven't been fed commercial feed. You know, our hens eat insects and they eat worms and, and my wife sometimes brings, you know, special, you know, like whatever my kids will make overnight oatmeal and give the egg, give the chicken some of the leftover oatmeal, you know, but, but generally our chickens are not eating commercial feed. And furthermore, this study goes into how one cooks an egg is important. For example, heavy heating of eggs, high temperature that actually allows for a little bit more oxidation of some of the fats and cholesterols and could make eggs a little less healthy, you know, particularly if you're also. So frying them in a vegetable oil. But a poach or a soft boil yields the best nutritional value for eggs. It makes the, the protein in the egg whites more bioavailable. It allows the yolks, vitamins and lipids and micronutrients to remain relatively intact. So if you are going to make eggs a staple, don't cook them at a high temp. Be patient. And this goes for most proteins, long and slow is typically going to be healthier. Like the heart and the liver I had for breakfast this morning basically had about four or five minutes total at a high heat. And the entire rest of the time I just basically woke up yesterday morning, made a bag of heart and a bag of liver and then dropped it into my sous vide, which is just like a low temp water bath. And it was in there for 16 hours yesterday at 145 degrees Fahrenheit, which meant that when I finally cooked the heart and the liver, it required very little of that high heat cooking that might introduce more carcinogenic compounds into an ingredient or into a food. So long, slow, low cooking of a pastured egg is better for you than it is worse for you. And it's a great article in terms of basically these folks picking a bunch of nutritionists and smart people's brains about eggs and finding out the, the best way to cook them and whether or not they actually are healthy. And no surprises here, but the, the overall consensus, the final on eggs is if they're good, healthy eggs cooked low and slow in a stable oil, they're just fine. Arguably amazing for you.

So, yeah, you know, it's, it's really interesting because I still come back to that, that airplane, you know, airport conversation, which, it's like we have all this great evidence and information and maybe we, you know, just provide that education if it makes sense to the person we're talking to in the airport. But it's like, because there's been so much misinformation around this subject, I just, I feel like though it, though the evidence is there, like we're gonna still probably have this conversation for the rest of our life because of all the potential detriment that's been done prior to this. So here we go.

Great. All right, so, so I got one more for you before we're gonna jump into our, our lovely Q and A from the clubhouse audience. And that is the idea that a breathing tube through the butt could be an alternative to mechanical ventilators. Not kidding. A subtitle of this article was that animals can breathe through their butts. Breathe through their butts. But scientists have now shown that mammals can also harness the incredible breathing ability of our butts. All right. Huh.

It's our second nose. I got it.

Loaches. Whatever a loach is. Ever seen a loach maybe?

No idea.

Yeah, yeah, Loach, I, I think is, is a special little type of freshwater fish, if I recall properly. But anyways, they use their posterior intestine, AKA their asshole, as an accessory air breathing organ. And like I said, sea spiders and catfish are other examples. But a recent study in the journal Medicine now suggests that mammals, humans included, may be able to breathe through their rear ends. Maybe to breathe through their rear ends. Now this particular study actually looked into the idea of in mice using a model of oxygen deprivation preventing them from breathing through their lungs. I imagine they could probably just cover up their little mouse mouths and suffocate them. But then, then they gave them intestinal ventilation oxygen through an anal catheter. And it turns out that this remarkably elevated oxygen levels in the blood reduced the need For a mechanical ventilator, the oxygen diffused into the bloodstream through the colonic capillaries and was safely delivered to the lungs. And they even suggested that rectal ventilation could mitigate a ventilator shortage. And for me, of course, I'm not just thinking about. About management of something like Covid using a butt tube rather than a mechanical ventilator, but the idea that, heck, why not look into something like rectal ozone, rectal oxygen, and of course, everybody knows. I don't think it's a secret nowadays that once a week I do a coffee enema. It's amazing. I make a giant thing of organic coffee. I put some butyrate capsules in there. So I'm giving my colon a bunch of butyric acid. I put some probiotics in there. So I'm introducing some good colonic flora. I put a little bit of olive oil in there because it's very kind of almost like nourishing to the digestive tract. So, like, you're lining your colon with oil, really healthy oil. And then I lay on my side on the bathroom floor and just let all that soak into my body for 20 minutes, and I stand up and I just eliminate it all into the toilet. And, man, I feel amazing every time I do that. When I go weeks without doing the coffee enema, I'll start to get constipated and stuff. And, man, I just feel so great. Now everybody's like, I'm never gonna stick anything up my butt. It's kind of funny. It's more men than women. But whenever I'm doing consults with people, because I'll chat with 10 to 12 people a week, we'll go over lab and blood work and health. But it's kind of funny. 20% of the time when I'm talking to a guy, they lead with this. Oh, Ben, I can't wait to talk to you today, by the way. I'm not going to stick anything up my butt, just so you know.

Let me clarify off the back.

Let's establish that. And I'm like, oh, you're like, that's.

The only protocol I had for you. It was going to be nothing but things up the butt.

But now I can tell them, hey, you know what? You can breathe up your butt. God gave you that, asshole. Not just for getting rid of shit, but also for delivering vital oxygen to your brain and every once in a while, having a cup of coffee. Coffee.

So I feel like some dude or gal is listening to this, like an entrepreneur, and they're going to develop like some type of new scuba diving tour somewhere where you just use, like, you know, butt oxygen. It's going to happen. Maybe I'll do it.

Yeah, it could. And I briefly alluded to this fact, but I mean, rectal ozone therapy for introducing ozone, you know, as in like antiviral, antibacterial, kind of like overall health tonic into the bloodstream through the butt is one of the best ways to actually get, get ozone delivered to your body. And it's like I have an ozone generator in the room next to my office, and usually I drink a glass of ozone water, but occasionally you just like, take off the tube that attaches the ozone generator to your water mechanism and you instead attach it to a little bag and it takes two minutes to fill that bag with ozone. Then you literally take a catheter tube, you put it up your backside, you squeeze the ozone into your body, and it's, it's like, like an oil change for your blood. It's pretty cool. And I mean, it's one way of doing it. Yeah, I think a lot of people are just kind of like. I mean, let's face it, Jay, there's just like this kind of like cultural. Probably like a, like, you know, steeped in, in puritanical Christianity or something like that, that, that the butt is reserved for, for crapping out it only. And should you decide to do something like rectal ozone or a coffee enema, you risk delving into the, you know, horrific ancient times of, of Sodom and Gomorrah and sexual immorality and, and people shoving gerbils up their butts and, you know, no, it's, it's like, yeah, I draw the line somewhere, especially at gerbils, but I think that the, the asshole is useful for things other than taking a shit. So if there's one thing you take away from this podcast.

Yeah. I mean, people want to avoid, like, feeling like they're like, in defilement. So I mean, just think that it's, you know, it can be pretty ridiculous. But yeah.

Yeah. Last thing before I move on to Q and A regarding that. And I don't know if you've messed around with this, Jay, at all, but for you fellows out there, and for you ladies, I suppose they basically have what they call, like prostate massaging devices for having an orgasm on your prostate fellows. I actually have one of these devices that when inserted properly and used in, in the manner that is explained to you when you order one, results in an orgasm that is very unlike what you would normally experience from a. I don't know, what would you call it? Like a penile orgasm. And actually orgasming up the butt using one of these special tools is something that I think every guy especially should add to their bucket list. It actually feels really good.

So, yeah, that's. I love, I love where this podcast has taken its turn to.

Yeah, so there you have it. You know, before, before we go go any deeper into this whole, whole discussion about wake and can't put up your butt, let's go ahead and open things up to Q and A from our lovely clubhouse audience. Now, Sophia, who is our social media manager, is also a moderator on today's Q and A. And she's going to bring those of you who have your hand raised with a question to the stage here on Clubhouse. And we'll just take as many questions as we can here over the next little bit until I run out of Zevia Cola, I suppose. So. That being said, Sophia, Sophia, would you like to bring someone to stage?

I'm Zabi D. I'm a Chet practitioner and functional medicine practitioner. And one of my goals right now to adjunct my coaching practice is to join the fire service. Part of that is, of course, rigorous physical activity and I'm working with coaches for programming as well as some quantitative measurements of exercise performance. So, Jay, I know you have a really extensive background in heart rate variability and then obviously Exercise King. So I'm wondering, in addition to heart rate variability, we could Also look at VO2 max. Are there any markers that stand out to you too that I should be testing for as I prepare to join fire service? Thanks, I'm complete.

So the question here is what metrics are the best metrics to track if you are trying to track fitness in particular, and of course for longevity in the past, I think said, hands down, the best metrics to track are your levels of inflammation, like regular measurements of blood crp, and then also your glycemic variability, like what's going on with your blood glucose during the day in terms of basically the critical metrics for that combination of lifespan and health span. But when it comes to fitness, fitness metrics that you may want to track, gosh, I mean, like, where do we even start? So Xavi was saying that he is tracking his heart rate variability. I think that when I identify or when I interviewed Keith Raboy, the investor, his note about his focus on tracking the heart rate recovery, meaning two minutes of intense exercise such as step ups, and then tracking how long it takes the heart to return to baseline Afterwards towards. I think that's also an excellent and meaningful metric to track heart rate recovery. How quickly your heart rate returns to baseline after an intense two or three minute effort. And keeping track of that, whether it's four minutes or five minutes or six minutes or however long that is, I think that that is an important metric to track. There are other things, of course, that I think would be real yawners for people like strength or speed or, I don't know, body fat percentage. But we actually have other things at our disposal that we can track as well, using some of these newer methods of quantification of muscle power. Meaning that there are devices now that you can wear that will track the amount of force output generated by a muscle. And it's been a while since, since I've actually looked into the number of devices out there in terms of wearables that can test muscular power. Have you, have you been tracking much that. That category, Jay?

No, no, not muscular power. I mean, yeah, I would say kind of like exertion or strain would be like, whoop, is the only one that I know that's kind of doing that. But not, not from kind of the level of what you're mentioning.

Yeah, they're called wearable. Wearable inertial sensors. They measure velocity and power when you're doing an exercise. And for people who are really trying to track the amount of force production that they're producing in real time, it's a pretty good idea. They also have these for running. You can measure the amount of power that you're producing. Very similar to like a bike power meter with running power meters, which are typically an app that pairs to both a heart rate strap, a sensor that is typically worn, for example, around the wristband that's going to capture motion during running. And some of these sensors will also be attached to the running shoes, like pods that attach to your running shoe that measure power. And then they have a gosh, I'm gonna blank. And I'm sure somebody's listening to the podcast and they're like, screaming through me at the podcast. There's one that you can wear in the gym that does it as well. And if I do my homework, I could probably hunt it down and put it into the show. Notes, notes. Or if someone's on Clubhouse and happens to recall the name of that muscle power measuring device that one can use in the gym, that would be one to look into. But yeah, muscle power or running power would be one to look at. Heart rate recovery would be another one to look at. VO2 Max, I think, is wonderful, although it's a little bit more difficult to measure VO2 max directly using what's called calorimetry, which is what you do in an exercise physiology lab wearing a maximum mask. But they have some pretty good apps now that will, for example, pair to a watch like a Timex or Garmin or whatever, and predict your VO2 max based on your heart rate during exercise. And the predictions aren't half bad. So tracking your VO2 max would be another one. Of course, recovery metrics like Jay alluded to, like using an oura ring or a whoop ring or whoop wristband to measure things like your stress score, your readiness, et cetera. And that pulls in everything from your body temperature to your heart rate to your sleep cycles to your heart rate variability to your respiratory rate. And really, for me, if I'm exercising, I tend to go more based on feel and rating of perceived exertion. But then for recovery, I really do look at my aura metric every single day. And. And if it's super low, I have found that pushing through a low readiness score on my OURA ring inevitably results in some type of illness or injury two to three days later if I do that. So, you know, if I open up my aura app right now, I'm going to open it up because. And I'm only going to open it up because I know I didn't have a shitty score because I hate to be vulnerable and admit on a podcast if I'm actually a real human being who has crappy readiness scores sometimes. Some days. But my readiness score today is actually a. I get a crown today. It's at 95.

That's good.

You know what? That's high.

That's really high.

I'm glad because, you know, about once every week to. Once every two weeks, I do one of those full body catalyst electrical muscle stimulation workouts.

Yeah.

Yeah. Which are actually. They're pretty hard and they take a little bit of oomph and willpower, but.

You got that coming on.

Doing one today, sometime after this podcast. So it's good that my readiness score is high because I'm about to. To, like, push it way back down into the ditches here after doing an EMS workout. But. But yeah, those are a few that come to mind. I don't know, Jay, you got any throw in there?

Yeah, I mean, obviously I'm gonna, you know, beat the drum of heart rate variability as a primary metric for recovery, but, you know, I. I know I sound like a broken record, but one thing you want to keep in mind is that sometimes you're not getting a full picture if you just look at heart rate variability from your aura or your whoop, because it's just giving you one metric of nervous system repair and function functioning. So what I like to do is each morning I'll take a readiness score by utilizing like a Polar H10 or another, you know, wrist wearable PPG strap. And I'll use something like Elite HRV or HRV for training. And I'll run like a five minute reading just to look at my overall baseline after I wake up. And the one thing that I'm specifically looking for, that for you, Zavi, might be quite helpful is looking at changes in the high frequency band of heart rate variability. We actually know that the high frequency band receives only contributions from the parasympathetic nervous system system. So when the vagal break is removed, or basically like when you're engaged in a stress response, your parasympathetic response is inhibited. You'll actually see that slower.

Slow down a little bit here, Jay. Slow down a little bit. You don't lose people throwing around words like vagus nerve bands. So keep going, but slow down just a little bit.

Yeah, so, okay, so what I was saying is that if the brake is pulled off of the vagus nerve or if you're engaged in a stress response, then what will end up occurring is that that high frequency band will significantly drop because the contributions that occur from the parasympathetic nervous system are inhibited. So what's the practical kind of gist of what you would do with that? Well, if you see that your HF has significantly dropped below your baseline, let's say your baseline HF score is around, let's say 500, and it's, you know, 100 or 200 that day, then we have pretty reasonable suspicion and I guess you could say evidence to say that your parasympathetic nervous system's not fully engaging for some reason like it should be, which is indicative of, you know, over training, overreaching, stress, and so forth. So that's a really primary biometric that I would look at. And the other thing for you, Zabi, would be to look at respiratory fitness overall and then respiratory training. And so I'm a huge fan of Patrick McCune and oxygen advantage and his work and just kind of like assessing like your overall breath holding score, especially, you know, working with fire, as you mentioned, the ability to kind of maintain higher levels, levels of CO2 tolerance can be quite important as well, so those are kind of the two things that I would really look for. The biometric piece and then respiratory training and fitness. And I think that's a pretty good start.

Okay, cool. And, and I think the wearable that I was referring to, the one that will actually measure muscle speed or power and it also measures things like motion and landing impact, et cetera. I think it's called a move. M O O V I, you know, I, I, I don't have a lot of personal experience with it, but, but I believe that's the one that will actually measure some type of like motion or force during exercise. I could be wrong, but I think that's the one. There's also a study that appeared in the journal Digital Medicine called Wearable Sensors for monitoring the internal and external workload of the athlete. And I will link to that one in the show notes or at least some crack member of my team will link to that one in the show notes because it was a relatively recent article that gets into a lot of these wearables and might give you some other ideas as well. All right, well, let's go ahead and get another question up.

So I'm a big fan of chocolate and adding cacao to my shakes and I know a lot of the health benefits of them. But I'm also suddenly concerned after doing some reading of about the sort of the cadmium levels and lead levels in chocolate. So does the health benefits outweigh those potential issues or is there, what's the best way to select a chocolate that's not going to have very low levels of those two metals?

You run into the same thing with protein powders. That's another big one because I've been, let's just say I have been heavily researching for a specific and rather exciting reason and what the healthiest forms of protein are, the most bioavailable forms of protein, particularly powders, what the best tasting forms of protein are, and what are the lowest in common toxins, including metals, that we tend to find in protein powders? You will all learn quite soon why I've been steeped in protein powder research of late, although you can probably guess I'm a products formulator. But anyways, Mark is correct. As a matter of fact, there was an independent lab test a few years ago that tested like 100 plus different chocolate bars and chocolate products and found a shockingly high number of them contained lead or cadmium that was well above the recommended levels. And that included like Trader Joe's, Hershey's, Lindt, Whole Foods, Godiva Giardelli Theo, which is another popular one. Mars was another. And so, yes, it is an actual issue now in terms of avoiding these type of contaminants because lead and cadmium are definitely problematic. You can actually look into the sourcing of the chocolate itself. So, for example, there is a company called Forest Finest and they actually work with companies to identify the source of any given cocoa contaminant within the supply chain, then help them take protective steps to reduce the levels of that cadmium or that lead to the actual acceptable levels that go even lower than what trace amounts would be. So this Forest Finest company is one that actually does some research on chocolate bread brands. There are other companies that tend to be particularly adamant about their sourcing of things like, like cacao, for example. One that I really like that I would stand by is who Kitchen. They have a fantastic restaurant in New York City if you're ever there, Hu Kitchen. But they also make chocolate bars that you can find just about anywhere that are actually very, very low in any type of, of contaminants and very, very rich in a lot of things we look to chocolate for like flavanols and theobromine, etc. There is another company or another review that would be Consumer Labs. And what consumer labs@consumerlab.com has done is they go in and they analyze a lot of these cacao and cocoa and dark chocolate products to determine not only which ones are highest in things like flavanols and polyphenols, but also the lowest in things like lead and cadmium. Typically with Consumer Lab you join as a member. But I think that it's a pretty useful website for analyzing some of these brands. There's also another website and I'll link to some of these in the show notes at Berkeley Wellness. And Berkeley Wellness does a really good job analyzing some of these, some of these chocolate, some other foods as well. So that'd be another one to look into. Although I think they may have been purchased by what's it called, Healthline, I think is the name of the company. I think they may have begun or become Healthline recently. And then there's one final website called as you sow and as you sow has done a list of all of the amounts of lead and cadmium in certain products. Products. And that that'd be another one. And I'll link that. That's a super helpful table. So what I'll do is in the show notes, I'll link to these. But really what it comes down to is looking at the sourcing. I, I would say who I think is one of the better chocolate companies. Do you have any that you like that you know is doing, are doing a good job at looking at lead and cadmium? Jay?

No, no, I, I don't. I'm not a huge chocolate guy, though. I like it, but I just, I like it. I just don't think about it.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm pretty careful with a lot of them, but yeah. The Consumer Lab website I think did the biggest analysis that I'm aware of is just that because this question just came in, I didn't actually buy and download their report, but I will link to the Consumer Lab's full report on dark chocolate and cacao for anybody who wants to go in there. That's the problem with recording these live. If this was a prerecorded question, I'd have gone in and actually, actually pulled up that table and let you know about it. But in the meantime, just know that I'll put some links in the show notes to some super helpful tables for you. It's a great question, something that chocolate lovers should be aware of. Not all chocolate is created equal. Even if it's from Trader Joe's or Whole Foods. That doesn't guarantee it's going to be low in lead or cadmium. And I can say based off of where I've been with whey protein for particular, protein powders tend to, to present a similar issue.

What's going on, guys? I appreciate you hopping on here. Ben, long time fan. And I have a question for you guys more about testosterone. So it's going to be a little bit of a nuanced specific question because I'm sure we could go on for all day about testosterone, but specifically around low testosterone and how it relates to building muscles. So I know you had a lot of different podcast episodes been on testosterone. You had Jay Campbell on talked a lot about it. And one of the things about low testosterone. So if guys are around 300 mark of nanograms per decimeter, is that going to be an uphill battle trying to build muscle or is it just going to be maybe a little more difficult? Or is that a situation where guys should really look at improvement getting some testosterone replacement therapy? And if so, is testosterone really the godsend hormone to cure all, of course, without just going towards completely illegal steroids typing? Like, is testosterone really that magical or has it been blown more out of port?

All right, great question. First of all, yes, testosterone is pretty magical for muscle mass and muscle protein synthesis, even in the absence of lifting testosterone, particularly supplemental testosterone or what would be called supraphysiological doses of testosterone. Like you would be surprised at how much muscle you could gain or maintain by using something like that, even in the absence again of heavy weight training. That's because you tend to see higher levels of whole body protein synthesis. You tend to see a much better response to things like leucine and creatine. Meaning like if you're using other supplements and your testosterone is simultaneously elevated, you see a massive increase in muscle protein synthesis and also in the ability to be able to utilize a lot of these, these anabolic compounds like, like creatine or, or like you know, leucine, such as you would find in whey protein or, or amino acids, for example. So it's kind of like turkeys and cranberries to have like supplements that help you with muscle gain combined with elevated levels of testosterone. That's a pretty good place to be at. And you know, the thing is, of course, anytime that some guy says, hey Ben, should I get on testosterone? I say, well, have you covered your bases first? Because I've done extensive podcasts in the past about the importance of heavy weight training with long rest periods, high intensity interval training that's short, with long rest periods like 10 to 30 seconds hard effort, effort, 2 to 4 minutes of rest using the legs frequently in training, such as squats or deadlifts, because they have a very high density of androgen receptors in them. Making sure that all of the nutritional bases are covered, particularly zinc, dhea, creatine, boron, magnesium and vitamin D. Like every guy, before they even touch anything, like supplemental testosterone should consider those adequate carbohydrate intake, right? Not like long term carbohydrate sparing or intense ketosis for long periods of time. Regular sex, good relationships with the opposite sex, you know, all these things stack. And a lot of guys just don't stack enough things together, including good sleep and low stress, and then turn to supplemental testosterone as a band aid for a poor lifestyle. In my opinion, in the same way that when you are exercising and you're eating healthy, if you throw in like heat, cold, sunlight, earthing, grounding, water, minerals, maybe an EMF analysis of your home. Like all these things that people don't think about, it's more than just the icing on the cake, it brings you to a whole different level. Well, the same thing with testosterone. If you're stacking all those things I just mentioned along with weight training and eating healthy and movement, you tend to see A really, really good response in testosterone. That being said, levels decline as we age, especially in a post industrial era where men are not really like fighting and working with our hands and you're doing a lot of things during the day that would naturally keep testosterone levels elevated. And rampant access to pornography probably also is not helping because we tend to see higher levels of testosterone in men who are engaged in face to face personal communication and interaction with members of the opposite sex. Sex versus digital zeros and ones. And rampant access to potential mates with the click of a mouse, which actually isn't that great for testosterone. You don't need testosterone when you don't have to compete with other men for a woman. And so there's a lot of variables here. But ultimately, because levels can decline so dramatically, especially in modern men, I'm not opposed to when a man is somewhere between the ages of about 35 and 50, the use of small doses of supplemental testosterone. And I think that microdosing, so to speak, with testosterone to just get your levels slightly elevated, you know, like maybe take you from a regular of 300 up into a regular of say like 600 to 800, is not a bad idea. I don't think that injections are the way to do it. I think those do not mimic the natural diurnal variations of testosterone because you get one massive surge of testosterone. A lot of times, a lot of it gets converted into estrogen. A lot of times that massive surge leads to increased aggressiveness, increased formation of dht, which can cause hair loss and a host of other issues that dictate that a better way to engage in testosterone replacement therapy would be something like a small dose of testosterone cream or gel like Androgel, applied scrotally a little bit in the morning and a little bit in the evening, just, just to kind of match what your body would normally be producing. And I even think the other nice thing about small, small doses like that is if you ever decided you didn't want to be taking the testosterone, much easier to kind of back that off just bit by bit compared to backing off a massive injection dose a couple of times a week or even like a pellet which can't modulate quite as well. So those are a few of my thoughts. But ultimately, I mean, yeah, like when it comes to muscle size and muscle gain and achieving that in a more healthy manner than a lot of, I guess, common androgenic steroids might be able to achieve, I think testosterone is probably one of the best things for that. What do you think, Jay?

Yeah, man, Dude, I think you covered the entire basis there. And one thing that I haven'ti'm still a young guy, and I've done a lot to make sure. Sure that I take care of testosterone because simply, it kind of runs genetically in my family to not have such great tests when. When the males in my family get older. And one of the things that I've done, too, and just kind of tested pre and post, especially, like, once I started doing this was infrared light therapy every single day, or at least five. Five. Yeah. Yeah.

Lights on the balls.

Yep, Yep. And so that's been a huge one for me. And I'm no noticed too, that, like, I feel better, like, from a muscle synthesis kind of like, workout pump in the gym experience when I do engage in infrared light therapy as compared to when I don't. And I saw numbers go up. Testosterone went up again. I wasn't having problematic numbers, but they went up even still, which was a great sign. So, yeah, it's the. The one other thing I'd add.

Yeah. Yep. Well, you know, I. I know we're getting a little bit long in the tooth, but I almost feel like replying to, like, one more question, but we're gonna make this one, like, a super fun question, like, kind of like something unique. And. And so if you feel like you have just, like, an amazing question for us to finish on, raise your hand, and Sophia will bring you to stage. And if your question sucks, you're fired.

People just all put their hands down.

All of a sudden, that question, like, why is the sun good for you? They put their hand down. Oh, we got one. We have a brave. Okay, Alan just came to stage. All right, Alan, make it. Good man.

All right, let's see. It's unique here. I ordered a biochar. I'll be here the end of this week. Then what do you. I know you. Your routine. How do you incorporate it?

Basically, I think that I just about burnt out my biocharger a couple weekends ago because I. I host a annual men's mastermind at my house, where a bunch of, like, you know, men and kind of like the health entrepreneur and everything, Health entrepreneurs and cryptocurrency guys. And, you know, I'm part of this big group of guys. We call ourselves the Frontier Club. And we'll meet, you know, every quarter or so in a cool area, do something fun together. We have a Facebook group, you know, some WhatsApp groups. And anyways, I host an annual event at my house, and I swear, like, we had, like, 10 guys down in what I call my Zen den nearly, you know, any given point, all day long of the 25 guys who are here just like running that biocharger all day long. And of course I have a whole podcast about the biocharger and what it is and how it works. But basically it stacks a whole bunch of biohacks all into one device. So it uses infrared light, it uses frequencies and harmonics. It produces a ton of negative ions by simulating like thousands of lightning strikes a second. It produces pulsed electromagnetic field therapies to give you like this earthing or grounding effect. And then when you turn it on, you select a recipe like, I want anti inflammation inflammation or I want gut health. Or I want clear head. Or like this morning, because I run it every single morning on myself while I'm stretching and stuff. I did the HPA axis one this morning for a little bit of hormone balance and the thing just freaking works. It's amazing. I mean, even my kids will go in and flip it on to whatever chakra balancing setting and sit there and read a book while their chakras are getting balanced. It sounds kind of woo. And everybody who sees it on, they're like, oh boy, here we go. Somebody's charging, you know, whatever it costs, like, you know, 10,000 bucks or actually it's more. I think it's like $13,000 for, you know, for a flashy light machine. And I was super skeptical when I got it. But it like I use mine in the morning. I always run like the clear head protocol or the anti inflammatory protocol or the gut protocol or the HPA protocol. In the afternoon I like to run something that kind of like gives me a little bit of energy for the day because sometimes I'll take a break from work in the afternoon. I have a trampoline, like a mini trampoline in front of my biocharger and I go in there and jump up and down the trampoline, do some breath work and run a session. But they've got one like called Happy Days. They have one that's just like a general full body sweep. They have one that I'll use before, like plant medicine or something like that. That's, that's like a pineal gland clearing recipe that actually works really well. You also get better dreams after you use that because your pineal gland kind of up regulates its DMT production. So yeah, I really that this sounded like a commercial for the biocharger. But yeah, not only do I have one, but I use mine two or three times a day. And I think. I think they're just amazing. So I. Do you have one, Jay?

No. No. Give me the hookup, dude. Because, I mean, you're. You're selling it, so I'd love to give it a try, but. Yeah, no, I. I haven't tried one yet. I've seen, like, you use it. I've seen Luke Story use it, and you guys have nothing but good things to say about it. So. Yeah, if you're listening Biochar, send me one.

They're pretty cool. I doubt they're gonna send you one because it's kind of spendy, but it's for people who like to own nice things. It's pretty damp. Like, I'd much rather buy a biocharger than, like, a piece of art for my home just because it is kind of a piece of art too. You run it. It's just, like, amazing to. To look at as it goes.

Yeah.

So anyways, what I'll do is I'll. If I know I have some kind of a discount code on it tucked away somewhere and all. It's not, like, super hefty. Like, the thing is still gonna, like, be an investment similar to what you'd pay for, like, a small car, but, man, I do use mine. And I use mine, like, when I'm home two or three times a day, seven days a week, because it's not like I'm just, like, standing there in front of the biocharger with my mouth open, drooling, or like, I'm reading a magazine or a book or. Or I'm doing some breath work or I'm stretching. So I'm always stacking it with something I'd be doing anyways, I'm just doing it with, you know, all these different cool things happening outside my body as I'm doing it. So, yeah, I do dig the biocharger, Alan. Good. Good question. And so. So, yeah, let's. Let's give something away. Do you want to give something away, Jay? We like to give away a handy dandy. Ben Greenfield Fitness, you know, gear pack with a. With a beanie and a water bottle and a cool T shirt. And so if you leave this podcast a review, which super Duper helps the podcast out? Apple podcasts or Spotify or Samsung, wherever you're listening to the show. If we read your review on the show, all you gotta do is email gearngreenfieldfitness.com email gearngreenfieldfitness dot com and just basically leave your T shirt size. That's all we need to know. And we'll, we'll ship that out to you. So that all being said, Jay, do we have a review?

Yeah, we definitely have one. Which was. It's from. I don't even know like how you would say this. I'm just gonna spell it out. So the person who wrote it is a D S L TRMs, adult storms, maybe a D S L T RMs. And they said, always well researched, great information with plenty of educated perspective added in. From Ben. Open minded, Logical, scientific and grounded investigation into health topics. Love this show.

Hmm. I like that. Open minded is definitely something that I got called out for in that vaccine podcast.

I was wondering if you're gonna bring that up today.

Well, I'm still deep in the throes of research. As promised, I will be doing a follow up. So I've got three. I don't talk about the vaccines barely at all on my show because, well, you guys, it's a hill that you have to decide to die on as a health influencer. Highly, highly increases your chances of being pulled from YouTube and Facebook and Instagram. So I'm constantly asking myself, like, could I do the world better in terms of spreading information about health with those platforms or without them? But you do reach a point where, I mean, like I have to have a stance at a certain point and I've always had kind of like that moderated stance. I don't scapegoat any of the vaccinated, nor do I scapegoat any of the unvaccinated. I just approach this entire thing with an open mind because my goal is for not only for myself and my family to be as healthy as possible, but for the human race to actually survive and thrive. And so I've got a podcast I'm recording on Monday. I've got then a follow up podcast with Matt Cook. I'm recording about a week after that. And then it's looking like Dr. Peter McColla is going to come on the show too. So I've got like three different podcasts coming out about vaccinations. But, but just a quick aside right now, I'm not vaccinated yet. I haven't made a decision yet. I'm not opposed to the idea yet, but there's just a lot of things that I would say. In the next two weeks, you're gonna hear a lot of podcasts come out and you're going to hear my final take based on my available options at this point in terms of, of what I would do. So just stay tuned for that because More coming down the pipeline. But again, like since recording that podcast with Dr. Matthew Cook, I and my family have still not gotten vaccinated. You know, and I should mention we all have natural immunity because all of us have had Covid, which, you know, of course influences my decision a little bit. But just stay tuned folks. I'm still researching. I promise I will continue to research with an open mind mind and I promise that I will continue to not scapegoat either party and nor do I plan to think in the same black and white, divisive, often hateful terms that both parties have engaged in quite a bit. So just stay tuned. And I'm maintaining an open mind. Still just an information gathering phase because it is an important decision with both political and health implications that are pretty far reaching.

Yeah, man, no, I'm excited to hear what you, you know, the conclusion you come to. It's just, it's so freaking polarizing, man. It's the new politics and people just have such black and white views on it. So no, I appreciate your high level of open mindedness and then, dude, your willingness just to be vulnerable on here and you know, take from people, honestly, because, man, yeah, you, you got. Got it both on Instagram and on.

BenGreenville Fitness.com comments on the Instagram post within a few minutes after it got pulled. It was just, it was nuts. But yeah, very polarizing topic. But I promise I will, despite me being somewhat silent on it on my platform for the past year and a half or so, you might see a bit of an uptick in the conversation and the content regarding vaccines and Covid over the next month or so. So.

So it's great.

There you have it. And we're getting a little long in the tooth. I got my electrical muscle stimulation workout calling my name. So we're gonna go ahead and call this a podcast. All the shownotes, everything in detail are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 436 that's BenGreenfieldTanis.com 436 where you can leave your comments, your questions, dive into the discussion there in the comments. Leave your thoughts about everything from a eggs to alcohol to nicotine craving, curbing vape pens to everything else. We'll put it all in the show notes BenGreenfulFitness.com 436 until next time, Jay.

Yeah man, see you soon.

I'll see you later. 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. SA.