Q&A 438: Is A Carnivore Diet Bad For You, How To Build More Muscle With Cold, The Best Baby Food, Alcohol Microdosing & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, Is a carnivore diet bad for you? How to build more muscle with cold, the best baby food, microdosing with alcohol and much, much more. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the Foreign. Dude. It's been a while.

Hey, man. Yeah, it has been a while. I feel like you pissed a bunch of people off last time because we didn't. No, it was actually. It wasn't you. I think it was also too, like, the Clubhouse feed wasn't working. It was, like, down for everybody and.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Completely melted.

Yeah, Clubhouse broke. I don't even know if people like it that we're using Clubhouse, but, I mean, there's a whole bunch of people in the room right now. And for people who are tuning into this episode and aren't familiar with these Q and A is we, you know, Jay and I always pop in and we rerecord the latest news flashes and answer questions. But we kind of got on the shtick a few months ago of just doing it live on Clubhouse. I don't even know the status of Clubhouse, if it's. If it's still like a respected social media platform or a thing of the past or what. But it is kind of fun to do it with a live audience just because you have. You have pressure. You can't take pee breaks, you can't fart, you can't say anything inaccurate or you get called out. Well, it depends. It can be the silent, deadly variety. But, yeah, later on in this show, we're going to open it up to any of you who happen to be live on Clubhouse right now, and we will answer all of your burning questions. And the other thing that we do on this show is, of course, the news flashes. And then also if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com if you're subscribed to the newsletter or you follow me on social media or anything like that. We always kind of push out on social media the time that we do these shows, even though it's you usually a couple of Wednesdays during the month, around around 10:30am because neither of us like to get up early and work, nor do we like to work late into the wee hours. So we choose a sane time. And so, yeah, that's how these things work. And gosh, we usually just start off talking about anything we happen to be interested in at the moment. You know, Jack, I'm kind of into something kind of cool now. A New kick of mine. Ceremonial grade. Ceremonial grade cacao. I've been really getting into it. Like I've been doing a ceremony.

Are we, what are we celebrating here?

I don't know. I can't even say that I can give a proper definition of ceremonial grade cacao. Although from what I understand it is like heirloom cacao, meaning it hasn't been super genetically modified. Like it's kind of the, the older unadulterated variety of cacao, higher in some of the dopaminerg compounds and blood flow precursors like the methylxanthines which are stimulants that are produced by the cacao plant. And theobromine, which is that compound that naturally lowers blood pressure but also acts as a stimulant similar to caffeine but has this real good feel good effect. Like it's dopaminergic. And of course cacao is really rich in antioxidants and anti inflammatory compounds as well. But somebody reached out to me on Instagram shout out to the, I think it's called the cacao laboratory and put this out on my weekly roundup at some point because we recorded my family and I at like this 45 minute long cacao sipping ceremony that we did with Florencia, the nice gal from over there. And it to me was an excuse to drink super duper expensive hot chocolate. But it actually Christmas time, yeah, it has this really, really great kind of like feel good energizing effect. And I've been just throwing down a cup frankly because chocolate still has calor calories and even though I like that, there's this drink I use sometimes and have been using for the past couple of years called my cacao which is like dried cacao shells and nibs that's calorie free and it's kind of like morning drinking chocolate. This cacao that you use for a cacao ceremony, you get ceremonial grade dark cacao bars and then you chop them up and you pour hot water over them and you can blend it if you want or you can just use a whisk and stir the cacao into the hot water and then you drink it. And so obviously because you're a cacao bar and typically like you know, a third to a half of a cacao bar, you've still got you know, 200, 300 calories in a cup. So I typically don't drink it first thing in the morning. I'll usually drink it like later on in the afternoon or like pre workout for a little bit of a Pre workout kick. But it's. It's kind of cool. Maybe it's because it's Christmas time and cacao has that nice Christmassy Santa clausy association, or maybe it's just because I'm coming up with a good excuse to have more chocolate. But I'm. I'm probably. I'm into ceremonial grade cacao now. I'm one of those cool people.

I feel like you need to, you know, you just need to go get you some, you know, really cool marshmallows made out of gelatin and then throw in some peppermint oil, maybe a little bit of crush candy cane up and. Well, I mean, just peppermint oil and some, you know, marshmallows.

I do have a giant bag of vegan marshmallows up in my pantry. I don't know what makes a marshmallow vegan because I was. I was unaware up until the point that somebody gave me a bag of vegan marshmallows last week that marshmallows actually involve the killing of animals. But I, I could probably.

Is there gelatin in marshmallow?

I don't know. But I'm. I'm sure true ceremonial cacao enthusiasts would. Would just withdraw in shock that I would do such a thing as bastardize my ceremonial grade cacao with marshmallows. But that's a good thing, really.

It's like drinking a really expensive wine out of a beer mug or something. It's a good idea, though.

And I like the idea of adding peppermint oil to it. I might just do that maybe tonight or tomorrow night or on. On Christmas day and, and see how it feels. How about you? You've been up to anything, Anything new lately?

Yeah, dude. Well, you know, the. I get shamelessly plug my. My new company, health technology company, Hanu Health. We've been, you know, running around like crazy, which means that we're moving and we're building and we're growing, which means, like, for me, I've been doing a ton of travel and I've had to. I've had to kind of like, remember how to hack travel again. Because, I don't know, like, you. For you, Ben, if like the last two years has been like, you know, mainly at home and not as much on planes and in airports. So for me it's been like, re educating myself on all of that just because I've been going a lot from west to east, east to west out in San Diego, back to, you know, South Carolina. And so it's just been an Absolute like kill of fatigue and kind of all these things. So for me it's been a lot of like reeducation and then just utilizing movement and light and food as like the main, you know, zeitgebers or resetters. And so that's been kind of fun to get back into. But it's, it's funny because like I've been traveling a lot for the last six months and now I'm kind of just sick of it. And then I'm like, yeah, I kind of want to just stay back at home again. So for the next like three weeks I'm at home. So that's, that's pretty nice.

There's all those hacks out there like trying to get outside barefoot at some point hours after you arrive at your destination or using intranasal glutathione spray to protect your immune system before you're getting onto an airplane or you know, doing your, your stretching exercises at the back of the airplane and being that annoying person blocking the pathway to the bathroom. But if you could like the top thing that you would say has been a game changer for you for travel or something unique you could share with folks what's something you're doing when you travel to keep yourself put together.

Yeah, one of the greatest things for me is eating at the customary time of the time zone that I'm in. So for instance, if I leave here on the east coast and I know I'm going to gain three hours, let's say I leave at 6am here and I arrive at, let's say 10am there, it's one o', clock, you know, my time. And so for me, like I'm, I'm friggin hungry, I'm ready to go, but in. Exactly. So for me though, I'm trying to delay my meals in order to kind of reset the clock, the circadian clock from the food that I intake. And so I'll eat, you know, again around 12, 12:30. And it can be really difficult initially, but I found that to be super helpful. And then the other thing is just prioritizing and optimizing sleep. And I know it sounds, you know, really, you know, just like of course dull, it's ridiculously easy, boring. But that is the primary thing. And you know, for most people who are very familiar with, with travel, whether it's, you know, domestic cross country travel or internationally, like it's so much easier going west to east. I'm sorry, east to west, west to east is the, is the tough one. Always coming back home for me is tough. And so that's where I find the biggest struggles. But thus far, like, I'm adjusting pretty well to, to the travel game again. I just, I try to limit it if I can because I just, I'm not a huge fan. Every once in a while. Cool. But not all the time.

Yeah, you know, I'm a fan of that. Delaying mealtime until it's the appropriate meal time at whatever destination that you're going to. But I do, I do cheat because there's a, there's a compound that can kind of modulate the inflammatory pathways that inevitably get ramped up when you're, when you're traveling, when you're exposed to all the dirty electricity in airports and flying 40,000ft above, you know, the earth. So you're not getting the grounding and the earthing effect and the stress from travel and the circadian disruption from travel. So I, I, a lot of times will throw back a shot of these ketone esters before I get flight or when I get to where I'm going. And I mean like, I can go six to eight hours easily without eating with those. And there's, there's a whole bunch of good ones out there now. Like probably my, my, my top three. I'm not super duper brand loyal with these things, but three companies make amazing ketone esters. Now that just fricking work. HVMN has one, They've got this new one that's like a version of a 13 butane that's just, yeah, they just brushed me. Oh my gosh, that stuff's so good. And then it's really good. Called Oxford has a good one. And then ketone aid. Like all three of those companies, you can't go wrong. Like, like their ketone esters just work. You need one shot of them and you do it like right before you get on your flight or when, when you board your plane or maybe when you get to where you're going if it's going to be a few hours until you eat. And again, it kills two birds with one stone because it crushes your appetite, but it also manages a lot of the inflammation that occurs when you travel. And like, I'm a huge fan of those. I always toss a bottle of those in my, in my airplane bag. Typically it's, it's those, I got some electrolytes, a little bit of nad and that's kind of like my, my go to travel Ziploc baggie is ketone esters, magnesium slash electrolytes and Nad and I always feel better with those three supplements when I travel.

Yeah, the ketone esters have been huge for me in travel, so I've been doing that as well. And the other thing that I've really enjoyed that I'll do during the flight, I'll actually like drink it while I'm flying is molecular hydrogen. And I found that to be extremely replenishing. It's kind of similar to what you were talking about in regards to, you know, magnesium and electrolytes, basically harnessing a.

Lot of that value. Yeah, that's funny you should bring that up. Literally like 10, 10 minutes ago, Tyler LeBaron, who's one of the kind of like the top molecular hydrogen researchers in the world, he texted me two new studies on molecular hydrogen that just came out. One showing the benefits of drinking hydrogen enriched water for cognitive performance, impressive results, and then another one on controlling the inflammation from TBI and concussion. Both are pretty impressive studies published in the Journal of Integrative Neuroscience. So yeah, throwing a few hydrogen tablets in the mix isn't a bad idea as well. And I'll probably tweet out those studies soon so people can take a look at them. But speaking of which, we should jump into today's news flashes cuz we got a whole bunch of them since it's been a little while since we recorded. Oh yeah. All right, let's do it, man. Let's do it. All right. So this, this first piece might seem like it's only relevant to those of you with small humans, AKA babies hanging around the house. But I, I think it's, it's interesting nonetheless. And even though I don't have babies, I like to keep my finger on the pulse of nutrition from the age of when you pop out the vahena all the way up till death. And this story kind of caught my attention. It was in Fortune magazine and it was about how the FDA basically tried to kind of shut down the marketing and the claims behind this infant formula company called Bobby. And what Bobby was doing was they were, they were trying to develop what they called like a more European esque baby formula that would be available in the US because apparently parents who buy from Europe prefer baby formula that's more like lactose and coconut oil and grass fed dairy formulas compared to like the palm oil and the corn syrup and the conventional dairy that you find in a lot of infant formulas and in the US and the FDA started to heavily restrict them to the point where they were kind of starting to shut down the profitability of this Baby company called Bobby. And so I looked into it just because I think it's sad that we don't have access to better baby formulas that are more simulative of breast milk here in the US you know, and this is probably a topic near and dear to my heart just because when my sons were born 13 years ago, my wife started an organic baby foods company. Very briefly, just for like a year. I didn't realize that her and, and my sister in law, you know, they, they had a local commercial kitchen and they had all these like organic fruits and vegetables that they were blending up with different oils and then flash freezing. And my kids of course got raised on that, that you know, baby food which was great for them but they never really like took it big time. They were, they were busy mommies and it never really took off. But since then I, you know, I've always been interested in how can we fuel young humans to be healthier. So you know, for example, one company that I've really been a fan of for a while is a company called Serenity Baby Foods. And Serenity Baby Foods is a baby foods company. It's more kind of like almost like a paleo approach to infant formulas where if you or not really formulas but more like actual baby food. Even though they actually have an infant formula now that they call their toddler formula, which is made from A2 milk, which is the form of milk with the protein in it that tends to be less allergenic and cause less immun immune issues in kids. And it's, it's basically a bunch of grass fed organic A2 whole milk and prebiotics like you know, a human oligosaccharides and fructooligosaccharides. They add a bunch of DHA into it for the kid's brain. I actually have some that I keep next to my nutribullet and I literally toss a couple of scoops of that in my smoothie when I'm not doing like the, like the, the kion protein. Just, just as you know, I have a few alternatives I put in my smoothie. It's nice, it's a nice creamy, tasty formula. Even though it was developed for kids like 12 to months. It's a, it's a good toddler formula. But then they also do baby food and their baby food's really good. Like they have one that's like wild caught salmon with organic butternut squash and beets. They have another one that's, that's like a bunch of different carrots Mixed with these, these different oils that contain omega 3s and 6s and 7s and 9s and really well formulated baby foods. But I thought, you know, what the heck, I'll go look at this, this Bobby company and see what they're doing and see why the FDA would want to shut them down. And like, I gotta, like they kind of sort of did a decent job. Like they put DHA in their baby food, which is fantastic for a kid's brain. And they've got some natural lactose and whey in there and some pasture raised dairy. But then I got my hands on the ingredient profile and frankly I'm not that depressed that the FDA is restricting him because basically it's like non fat milk. And non fat milk is not what a kid should be drinking. Kids should be drinking like full fat milk. And then they have a bunch of safflower and sunflower and soybean oil in there. So a bunch of vegetable oils. Yeah, it's not like, like you know, palm oil or canola oil, but they've got a bunch of like, you know, traditionally rancid or heavily processed oils in there. And then some of the stuff is okay, like organic whey protein concentrate, inorganic coconut oil. A host of different preservatives I wasn't a huge fan of. They're kind of like, I'd give them like a 7 on a 1 to 10 scale in terms of the ingredient profile for their baby formula. But I mean it's literally like a list a mile long of all of the stuff in there. And then I look at the ingredient list of something like the serenity baby food stuff. And like, you know, the, like I could read it to you right now. I wrote it down here that the, the Bobby formula is like lactose, non fat milk, saffloro, sunflower oil, soybean oil, whey protein, coconut oil, soy lecithin, calcium phosphate, potassium phosphate, sodium chloride, calcium carbonate, zinc, ascorbyl, palmitate. Just a ton of stuff. Some good, some bad.

Sounds conventional.

Yeah. But then the serenity baby foods, you look at the list on that, like the one I was talking about, the salmon. Here's the list. Organic butternut squash, wild caught salmon, organic beet water and organic olive oil.

Five ingredients.

Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, anytime I see not quite a frankenfood list of substances, but a pretty hefty list of substances compared to just like a pure, clean, plain Jane list. I'll typically go for the latter. But you know, the long story short is that I think it's kind of sad that the FDA is limiting the supply chain and the ability to market for companies like Baby who are like Bobby, who are trying to do a good job with an infant formula. It's at least a pretty good alternative to a lot of the Frankenfuels that are out there. Again, as we established, not the best, but it is interesting. I'll link to the article. But the long story short is parents out there and I'm knee deep in the process of writing a parenting book right now. So a lot of this is near and dear to my heart. Make sure you look at labels and go with companies like Bobby or like Serenity Baby Foods. And I think it's just sad that the FDA has taken action against companies like this because honestly, we need more healthy infant formulas out there.

Yeah, yeah. No, indeed. And it's like, it's interesting to watch kind of what gets regulated and what doesn't and for what reasons. And like when I was kind of reviewing the article and reading through it just now and correct me if I'm wrong, it's basically like they're saying that this company is targeting or saying that they're an influent infant formula when indeed like the FDA just doesn't classify them as an infant formula.

Yeah, basically, yeah, it's dumb titles, semantics related to that. There was an interesting study that came out on supplements. You know, my, my kids take some supplements. They take glutathione because they've, they've, they've both done genetic testing with the DNA company and I think that's smart for, for kids. You can still keep the data somewhat private, but it turns out like my kids have the gene that limit their ability to be able to harness vitamin D from sunlight. So I prioritize making sure that they get adequate vitamin D intake. They also have the gene that limits their ability to produce adequate amounts of brain derived neurotrophic factor which is miracle gro for the brain. So they use a little bit of lion's mane, you know, like on their heftier mental days or days where they've got a lot of academic studies they do a little bit of lion's mane extract. But this recent study looked at the effects of vitamin D and magnesium supplementation on the mental health status in this case of attention deficit hyperactive children. But you know, you can kind of paint with a broad brush here and extend some of the beneficial effects on behavioral function and mental health of children with these two supplements to kids in general. And they did find a pretty Significant effect, positive effect on mental health of children with vitamin D and magnesium supplementation. In this case, it was a pretty large amount, like they were getting about 50,000 IU a week of vitamin D and about 6 milligrams per kilogram, which isn't a huge amount, like 6 milligrams per kilogram a day of a guy. My size is like 400, 500 milligrams of magnesium, which is a pretty standard dosage. But it turned. It turns out that for kids, even if you haven't had your kids genetically tested and you're not dialing stuff in super specifically, it looks like for mental health and mental performance and overall cognitive health in children, that making sure you prioritize either via dietary sources or even a little bit of supplementation, that based on this latest study, vitamin D and magnesium supplementation for children is not only healthy and safe, but it's also a good little hack for cognitive performance. And especially if you have kids who are showing like ADHD like symptoms, which in my opinion is really just the definition of a child in general and especially a boy in general. Like, I think a lot of boys who are diagnosed with ADD and ADHD should instead be diagnosed as active healthy humans. Active health of healthy small humans with penises. Anyways, though, the, the.

You gotta throw in with the. With penises.

Right, Exactly. Just because boys tend to tend to be a little more hyperactive than girls generally depending on broad brush. I have boys and they just are. But anyways, regardless of whether or not your boys or your girls have ADD or ADHD or hyperactivity type of issues, I think that vitamin D and magnesium are two things that you should make sure they're getting enough of, whether via dietary sources or in this case, it appears to be safe to actually supplement with vitamin D and magnesium for kids. And you do that, you can buy them with some healthy baby foods like that. I think it's a pretty good one two combo. So.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, this is, this is always an important one. I mean, one of the biggest things for us, you know, we have two boys as well, and especially during the summertime when they can get vast amounts of vitamin D, it's like allow them to exert the energy that they do have. You know, we call it adhd. We call it, you know, just normal behavior. Like, you know, we place all these labels unfortunately on things. But I see it a lot of times with my boys, it's just normal energy and behavior that need, need to get out and they need to exercise, get them Outside in the sun, allow them to run around, play, lift and throw things, do whatever they want in order to get sun and get activity. It's a, it's a great thing. But I think that, you know, if, when we get to this time of the year when there is the potential need for supplementation because of the lack of vitamin D, it seems like that that could be a potentially a good route, especially for those who have just kind of high strung little ones.

Yeah. Supplementation for adults though, not a recent study, but one that was brought to my attention as I was coming up in the holiday season and working on an article on, on healthy cocktails and modulating the effects of excess drinking and some things that would help out with hangovers. I came across a study, it was actually published back in 2002, but it was a good reminder for me that I think a lot of people will be happy to hear about this time of year. And it evaluated the effects of moderate alcohol consumption on C. Radish protein, an inflammatory marker and fibrinogen. And in this study they had men and women, all healthy, non smoking, moderate alcohol drinkers consume, in the case of the men, four glasses, four servings of alcohol, in this case beer, and for women, 3 servings of beer. And they compared that to a control group using non alcoholic beer. My apologies to that control group because non alcoholic beer, it's gotten a little bit better, but it still tastes like shit in my opinion.

It still sucks.

Yeah, I'm not a beer fan anyways, but, but anyways, they looked at plasma, C reactive protein and fibrinogen levels and they decreased by 35% for inflammatory C reactive protein and by over 12% for fibrinogen. Two inflammatory markers in people who were engaged in moderate alcohol consumption. I've written before about the value of so called alcohol microdosing, right? They've shown that higher doses of alcohol, of course can cause alcohol induced dementia. It can, it can cause brain shrinkage similar to excess THC consumption. It can cause impaired focus and memory because it affects blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, which affects your rational thinking and your short term memory. High doses of alcohol have been shown to cause pretty profound brain inflammation in mice. Granted, these are the equivalent of five to six drinks a day in human and also in humans and rodent models. Both have been shown to cause increased risk of stroke. But then you look at moderate drinking and in this case we're talking about the equivalent of around one to three servings of alcohol a day. And typically it's around two to three in men, one to two in women. So this other study on BR I was talking about is actually a little bit higher than some other studies when we're talking about three in men and two in women. But basically, or actually that beer study, I'm sorry, it was four in men and three in women. Like four servings of alcohol in men, three servings of alcohol in women. And most of the other studies I've seen are closer to like 2 to 3 in men and 1 to 2 in women. But they've found that people who consume that amount of alcohol are three times more likely than non drinkers to live to the age of 85 or greater. A pretty significant protection against cognitive decline in the case of red wine. A significant decrease in dementia in rodent models, an increase in what's called glymphatic drainage, especially during sleep, like getting rid of inflammatory waste in the brain. Decreased risk of stroke in people who are drinking two to three drinks of alcohol a day. Lowered inflammation, similar to this other study that we talked about. And of course the relief of mental stress and even a normalization of the cortisol response. You know, Jay, I've personally always been a fan of like having a nice glass of organic biodynamic wine at the end of the day. Like I drink the, what's it called, the, the dry farm wine. I get, I get a shit of that dry farm wine to my house every month. And I haven't been drunk in probably it's been like 12 or 13 years now since I've been drunk or since I've ever had more than three drinks in a night. And yet I drink nearly every day a small serving of alcohol. And I'm more of like a one to one and a half drink guy. Like when I say glass of wine, I'm not doing the big old fishbowl glasses. Like I'm just moderate serving of wine. And I think that despite the fact that in health circles people still say any alcohol at all is going to be bad for you, I really am convinced just based on the research that I've seen because I pay attention to what the studies say and I think most guys, even though I'm at like one to one and a half servings of alcohol a day, I think most guys can justify two to three drinks a day and women one to two drinks a day at least, least of a really good like organic biodynamic wine or let's say like, like a really clean cocktail, like a gin or a vodka combined with Maybe a little bit lemon juice or bitters or pomegranate juice or something like that. And I, I think the pros outweigh the cons over and over again. I mean, and a lot of people don't like to hear that because kind of like red meat, we just are, we're, we're, we're, we're conditioned to associate it with lack of health just because we associate a lot of times the red meat thing with the football watching, beer drinking, McDonald's frequenting consumer, and in the case of alcohol with the person who's whatever, drinking a Margarita mix or 2 or 3 or 4 every night. But this idea of moderate drinking or microdosing with alcohol, I think it's just fine. Honestly. Honestly.

Yeah, there's a lot of super interesting information research out there. You know, regarding this study. There's a couple of concerns that I would have that I'm just thinking more anecdotally about me personally. The first would be that like the men were consuming four glasses of beer, which for me like four glasses just seems like a lot. I don't know if that's four pints. If that was like four eight ounce glass. I don't know what they consider four.

Glasses of beer would get me drunk, I can tell you that.

Yeah, yeah. I mean I'm a big guy. I mean I'm six foot five, like 215, like I. And even four glasses, that would be pretty, that just seems like I'd be pretty buzzed or you know, maybe even tipsy slash drunk off that. And so I couldn't see myself doing that much each night. And the other thing too. And I don't know if you've seen this Ben, or experienced this as well. I would just be worried about like the nervous system repair and recovery aspect because if I drink it in the evening, especially that much, even if it was three glasses, let's you know, tamper it down a little bit. You know, I'm not as crazy to drink four, but if I drink, drink three, then I would see kind of some significant disruption in my sleep architecture, especially in the realm of deep sleep, increased heart rate and then decreased hrv. And those would be a little bit more concerning from a recovery standpoint, which is why I wouldn't drink that much. But I'm kind of in more in line with you. Like one, one and a half glasses a night seems a little bit more fitting. I would just be concerned if people hear this and they're like, okay, well now I have the excuse of drinking four Glasses of beer, four glasses of wine.

It's kind of like the weight loss studies that sometimes will look just at how much weight you've lost, but don't look at things like whatever, fertility, endocrine system, thyroid hormone status, et cetera. This study and many other studies will look at just one to two health parameters, like in this case, CRP and fibrinogen, or in other cases other inflammatory markers or, or, or stress levels or something like that. But I, I would love to see a study where they're looking at, at lipids, they're looking at sleep, they're looking at inflammation, they're looking at the whole host of factors. And I suspect, as you've just alluded to, that what would come out of a study like that would be something closer to around like, you know, one drink in women and one to two in men as being something reasonable as a daily alcohol intake. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Long story short is that I wouldn't kick yourself too hard for having a few drinks a night over the holidays. It's not gonna destroy you. I think sometimes it just gets blown out of proportion. So, yeah, agreed. So there you have it. We just justified getting drunk over the holidays to all of our listeners. You're welcome if you could get drunk on one drink. Yes, that's right. For lightweights like us. But I can tell you that kind of paradoxically the use of anti inflammatory drugs is something that you do need to be careful with. This is not a super couple of years old, but it crossed my desk last week and it was something that I just decided I should bring up on the podcast because I still see this even in the health and fitness sector. Excuse me, is something that pops up over and over again and it's this idea of the use of anti inflammatory drugs. I'm just going to pop an ibuprofen. I'm sore after my workout, got a little headache. I'm going to take some Advil. We've established many times in this podcast in the past the increase in gut permeability and the impact on kidney function and the increase in the risk of toxin load and sepsis and a whole host of other issues with the moderate frequent use of anti inflammatory drugs like non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen or Advil, especially when we've got healthy alternatives like curcuminoids and turmeric saccharides and other compounds out there. There. This one for athletes showed that high doses of anti inflammatory drugs basically attenuated the adaptive response to Resistance training meaning if you are lifting weights to maximize muscle growth or muscle strength and you're getting sore or you're taking anti inflammatory drugs for some other reason, they really hold you back. They limit gene and protein expression of muscle growth regulators. We already know they do damage to the gut gut and even if you're not concerned about that or you've got an iron gut and you think your gut can take just shows and has, has been shown over and over again. Ibuprofen, Advil, etc freaking significantly impairs skeletal muscle adaptations to exercise. And I, I just, I still see so many people. I was at somebody's house, I'm not going to say their name but, but they're like somebody who's into health and I went into their bathroom and I used their bathroom. There's one of those big old Costco sized bot ibuprofen on the counter and it's just like.

And then you flushed it all down the toilet.

No, when there's so many healthy alternatives out there again like curcumin. You know I interviewed that guy named David Perez from that company Nourish. N U R I S H I'll link to that one in the show notes if you go to BenGreenfulFitness.com438 I mean the fact that people are still effing around with nonsteroidal anti inflammatory drugs just shocks me. It's, it's just, it's bad news bears. And especially if you're into fitness, it's not doing you any favors at all.

Yeah, it's no bueno. I remember back in the college bodybuilding days for me like we used to take ibuprofen like after you know, a really hard leg day or just like a really hard push pull day just because we were being big babies and then also said we thought hey you know what, we can recover faster like if we don't experience pain, almost like we'll work through it. Not. And then it comes, it comes to, you know, with this study here and then all the studies that we've seen on this in the past, it's like yeah, we were actually doing ourselves a huge disservice. And then so many people now just, they, they take ibuprofen simply because it's palliative. Like it's really helpful for them to kind of like get through the day if they don't have to think about or experience pain instead of just kind of like learning to live with it and kind of allow it to be there and I realized too, like the chronic pain population or those who have chronic pain are probably, probably like screaming at me as they listen to this. I'm not really, you know, referring to you. I don't think this is great for you either. I think there are much better strategies that are just healthier in general. But I think that we are so adverse to pain, like literally adverse to pain, that for a lot of us, we don't think twice before we pop an ibuprofen. Which is unfortunate.

Yeah. And anecdotal admittedly, but it's pretty rare that I don't talk to somebody who has incorporated cold showers or cold baths or cold soaks as a regular part of their routine, who has not reported significant not only increases in energy, increases in hrv, better sleep, it's better energy, but also lower levels of soreness and inflammation. And again, kind of, kind of a good segue into the next thing that I wanted to talk about and that's this idea that cooling enhances exercise performance. I was at a conference a few weeks ago with the folks who are working with the, the Stanford Cooling Glove Experiment researchers. You know where they.

Oh, with Dr. Craig Heller.

Yeah. Where they've developed this glove that enhances exercise performance when you circulate cold water around the hand because of these so called, or what are they called? The, the anastomosis type of vessels that are in the hands and the feet. And you cool those and it does job. Yeah. Cooling the rest of the body. Recent study in the Journal of Medicine and Science and Sports actually backs up this fact that cooling during exercise enhances performance, decreases your rating of perceived exertion, increases your ability to be able to push yourself because it can limit hyperthermia, which would cause faster central and peripheral fatigue and impair physical performance. But this was interesting because it showed that the area cooled actually matters. So for strength training, right, for or for anaerobic training, where you're going really hard, it turns out that whole body cooling is the best way to enhance exercise performance. Whether you're using something like one of these cool fat burner type of vests that you can wear, shout out to to coolfatburner.com I think they have a big Christmas sale going on right now by the way too. So if you don't give you stress, I know you just wear them while you're exercising. Cools the whole body while you're exercising. Jumping in a cold bath or a cold tub pre exercise or doing anything for whole body cooling is best for enhancing exercise performance. That's hard. And then for aerobic exercise, it's actually these areas where you have these. How do you say them again, Jay? The arterio.

The AV shunts.

The av. AV shunts, but it's the, the anus. Arteriovenous anastomosis I think is what you actually call these vessels that if you cool them, do a really good job cooling the rest of the body. And so this would be an example of using like a cooling glove or holding on to something cold or cooling your hands or your feet or even cold fluid ingestion, right? Like cold water and icy or slurry or even menthol flavored beverage that's not even cold but has like a menthol minty cooly taste to it that's better for aerobic exercise or like endurance performance. So it kind of depends on the type of performance they do. If you go on a long run, you could like drink something really cold and then keep the face and the neck and the torso cold. And then if you're looking for more of like a strength training anaerobic effect, just like do a full body cold soak beforehand or wear some of this cooling garment during. And it's a really significant magnitude of effect on exercise performance. A guy named Brad Kearns wrote an article that I link to if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com438 he wrote an article called the Unfrozen Caveman Runner where he talked about and he's like a master's level sprinter, how he really got into prior to his workouts at the pre workout ice bath. A lot of us are used to this concept of doing the ice bath after workout to decrease inflammation or decrease core temperature, but doing it before. Anybody who's done this, I don't know if you've ever done this, Jay, but if you like jump in a super cold cold tub before you go work out, you can crush it. Especially if it's like a high intensity sprint based workout. You got to be careful if there's a lot of biomechanical complexity because if the joint's very cold, it can limit some of the nervous system recruitment. And so if you're doing like an overhead snatch and you're super cold, you have higher risk of throwing out a shoulder because you're moving the bar wrong, etc. But if you just prime yourself with something like a pre cooling and then do a brief rewarming and then go into your all out sprints. The reason for that is a scientifically validated 200 to 300% increase in norepinephrine that lasts for like an hour after cold exposure. So in this case it's not being cold, it's more of the neurotransmitter response to the cold. And so it's a pretty cool pack. Is pre workout to really allow yourself to push yourself a lot harder if you get cold right before the workout. And then you can warm yourself up a little bit just to make sure you're warmed up. Then go do the workout and all those neurotransmitters are gonna be circulating in your system for like an hour after you get cold. And Brad wrote a big article about this on my website again that I'll link to. But. But this idea of using cold is really interesting. And then there was an article that I wrote way back in 2012.

For.

Lava magazine when I was racing in the half Ironman World Championships in Vegas. I did a story for that magazine where I wanted to see what would happen if in this case the race was at 109 degrees Fahrenheit, how I would perform and how I would do in terms of comparison to my previous races in the heat if I used. Well, what I had in that race was I was drinking ice cream cold slushies during the race. I had the cooling sleeves, which are xylitol infused cooling sleeves that you wear on your arm. I had a cooling hat, same thing, xylitol infused cooling hat. And then I had a cooling vest that I wore during the running portion of the event. And then I also had these little like cold frozen handheld palm coolers that you hold in each hand as you run. And I'll link to the article. It's still available online for free at the Lava Magazine magazine website. I'll hunt it down and put it in the show notes. But I literally was cool as a cucumber that entire race. And granted there are still issues with lactic acid and mental fatigue and physical fatigue from just pushing yourself, but the heat was not an issue. A lot of heat is hackable with these type of cold exposure strategies. And this recent study shows that not only is it hackable, but depending on what type of exercise you're going to do, anaerobic versus aerobic. Aerobic, the area that you cool can have an effect. So again, long story short is for anaerobic, hardcore strength type of stuff, getting as much of the body cold as possible, then going and crushing it is better. And then if it's just for aerobic performance, literally just like drinking something super Cold or cooling, just the face or the neck or the torso has a significant effect.

This is some of the most fascinating and I would say exciting research and kind of research topic area that I've encountered over the past year. If you haven't listened to this Ben yet, or your listeners haven't listened into this yet, there's a great podcast that was done with Dr. Craig Heller, who is the guy who created the Cool mitt out of Stanford and is doing a lot of this research on Andrew Huberman's podcast on the Huberman Lab. And it's so interesting. He's telling about these stories and these studies that they've done where they've looked at kind of utilizing football players both at standard and then professional football players and having them just kind of during the sets place their hands in these cool mitts or do these kind of like pre workout soaks or pre workout cold showers or cold immersions. And he was telling the story about this one football player who doubled his work volume in two to three days. So he was doing like, let's say like 40 dips, like in one set. And then, you know, he would kind of naturally, as his set progressions, you know, move forward, like he would lose strength, as everybody would. And it's not to say he didn't continue to lose strength as set goes on with a cool mitt, but he started to double his work volume like two to three days after using these mitts. So it's an incredible line of research. People can check out the Cool Mitt C O O L M I T T It's not available to the public just yet, just for professional athletes and I think Olympic athletes. But it's some incredible technology that I think that once it is available to consumers, it's gonna like revolutionize the way that we do workouts. You're gonna see everybody around the gym with their hands in and these big old mittens.

And for now you could just sprinkle a little peppermint oil in your hands and rub them together. And you know, if you have any leftover from your from your hotel drinking chocolate. Yeah. Don't rub your eyes or your balls. So a few other things. I know we're getting a little long in the tooth on our news flashes, but I'll fly through just a few more for people that I think were interesting. Pretty darn good reason not to be dinking around with your phone before you go to the gym. Like, hefty use of social media, whether before you're working out or while you're at the gym. Multiple studies now have piled up including this latest one about mental fatigue from smartphone use. We all know that it can be more difficult to say workout at the end of the day due to decision making fatigue and the fact that just when you're mentally fatigued, you have a harder time physically pushing yourself. Well, this latest study looks looked at compared to viewing a documentary prior to a workout, the use of a smartphone social network app prior to a workout. The smartphone social network app and deeping around your phone for 30 minutes led to much lower volume load during a strength training session and increased perception of mental fatigue. And when you pair that with a ton of other studies, including one that was done in swimmers showing a significant decrease in swimming performance performance when people were doing social media prior to their swimming workout, the use of social media applications causing mental fatigue and impairing decision making in in boxers. Another one that looked at the velocity of the bar with people who were engaged in social media prior to or during their workout in the weight room dictates that if you are still one of those people who's sitting on the bench in between your sets on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, on TikTok, whatever, it's just not a good idea. I always, always have my phone in airplane mode. I always, if I have a workout that I gotta go through, I always download it and even like, you know, like I have and I think I'd mentioned this on the podcast a few weeks ago, like I have a pretty massive fitness app. I partnered up with this company called Ladder and so every week I've got like six weeks of programmed workouts. Six workouts a week, you know, cues and tips and movements from me, a whole like chat room based around the workouts. But the fact is that the reason I like that app is it's got pocket control, meaning all of the cues that I give you as you're working out everything I say to you, you could have your phone in your pocket the whole workout out and not have to take it out and dink around with it. And anytime that you can do that and or have your phone in airplane mode, like I'm not against having your smartphone in the gym. It's great for counting, it's great for timers, it's great for if you have your workout written out or using a fitness app to be able to reference which exercise you're supposed to do. But specifically, specifically getting down to the root of the issue, social media prior to heading to the gym or while you're at the gym is basically going to make your workout less effective, period. There's like eight research studies now showing. So, you know, I just want to bring that up to tell people, freaking be careful. If you. I mean, if you listen to us on Clubhouse right now and you're at the gym, think twice. Unless you're just kind of passively listening and not interacting. It's just one of those things that I would be remiss, not to mention on the show, just because I see people doing it so much. And it's. It's just one of those things that's going to really detract from your performance, dude.

Totally. I mean, this is something I see every single day in the gym. And I've been guilty of it before, too. Like, I'm not going to sit here and lie and say, I've never done that. I mean, I've done it plenty of times, but I've really tried to change my behavior there because you'll just watch people, they'll get in a workload or a work set, and then they'll sit on their ass and they'll be on the phone for, you know, three to five minutes on social media. And. And, you know, these studies are really indicating this is a huge detriment to them. So the thing that I've been trying to do, I know I've mentioned on here on this podcast before and other podcasts as well, is a. Is a kind of a tip and trick that my buddy Ben Pakolski taught me, which is like, number one, get up, don't sit down during your rest. And then also just, like, do some breath work. Like engage in kind of that in breathwork and parasympathetic activity. Like, it's so helpful for me, and I kill two birds with one stone. Whereas, like, I'm just getting dumber the more I, like, scan through social media. So I've really made it a habit now to put that aside, really kind of. I do have my phone on me because I've got my headphones in. I'm listening to a podcast or.

Yeah, I use it for podcasts or audiobooks or music. Yep.

Yeah, but not social media.

Yeah, yeah, I'm. I'm the same way. I don't rest in between sets. I'll either do mobility exercises, I'll bounce up and down on my feet, I'll do breath work, but I. I don't sit at the gym at all. And you just get a much, much better workout that way. Even if you're recovering from a set of Squats, there's no reason that you can't do a core exercise or an upper body exercise in between. I just think too many people just sit around too much of the gym frankly. So.

Dopamine nation man.

Dopamine Nation doctor, That's right. Okay, a couple of other things and then we'll take a few questions here. The first is recent study on the carnivore diet. I'll be pretty brief on this one. They looked at the nutritional practices and health status of a large group of carnivore diet consumers, over 2,000 people. People, they looked at gastrointestinal events, at muscular responses, at skin health and dermatology, they looked at lipids, they looked at glycated hemoglobin, blood glucose, use of diabetic medications, triglycerides, everything. Essentially they found people consuming a carnivore diet actually had more health benefits and fewer adverse effects than people who were not consuming that. Granted, many people who are consuming, consuming any diet, whether it's vegan or carnivore or paleo or Weston A. Price or anything else, they're always going to be healthier just because they're more aware of what they're eating and typically they're cutting out the standard crap that the average consumer is ingesting. And yet this did show, like eating just meat isn't that big of a deal from a health standpoint, at least not short term. I think these people were eating this diet for around six months or so. Granted this, like many studies, was a survey based study. This was not a well controlled laboratory study. Who knows how much kale and quinoa these people were cheating on with their carnivore diet. But regardless, they were reporting they were eating a carnivore diet. They tested a bunch of stuff and they appeared to be just fine. So, so, you know, I'm one of those guys who has no issues at all. I think the average human could eat just meat, like a well comprised nose to tail, bone broth, bone marrow, organ meats, red meat for the rest of their life and be just fine. My beef with the carnivore diet, haha.

Is that what you did there?

It's just socially restrictive. Like you know when grandma brings over her green bean casserole for Thanksgiving and you got to be the asshole that doesn't eat it because all I'm eating is turkey, grandma, you know, or you, or you know, when you go to sushi, you can't have a seaweed salad, whatever. But, but long story short is this was the biggest study that I've seen to date on the carnivore diet and long term adherence to the carnivore diet and any health effects that arise from that appears to be a moot point. I still think people who are eating a carnivore diet, who are just eating rib eye steaks from Costco for breakfast, lunch and dinner are going to build up nutrition deficiencies over time versus people who are eating a more well comprised nose to tail Carnivore diet. Diet full of organic wild caught pasture raised grass fed grass finished meats and organ meats and bone broths and bone marrow and the like. But ultimately, long story short, carnivore diet, not a big deal. So yeah, yeah. From a health standpoint. Yeah. And then the, the, the last one was sleep duration. We all know that seven to nine hours is the recommended level of sleep for most people, with anywhere from six to seven hours plus a nap or a siesta or a meditation session also being another way to ensure that your sleep architecture is good. And that's really my jam. I sleep six to seven hours a night and then I do a 20 to 45 minute siesta right after lunch and that works just perfectly for me. But this latest study suggested that long sleep duration is just as bad as short sleep duration, especially for cognitive frailty and mental deficits. So unless you are a professional athlete with a higher amount of neuromuscular recovery implications, sleeping or being in bed for more than nine hours a night seems to have just as many health risks as sleeping less than six hours a night. Dictating the fact that more is not better. I think a lot of people are already aware of that. But normal sleep duration again, seven to nine hours a night night or six to seven hours a night plus a nap or a meditation session or a siesta or one of these like yoga nidra type of full body scans where you're just laying there for 30 minutes totally relaxing yourself, like that's pretty good. But what you want to avoid is sleeping less than six hours or being in bed sleeping longer than nine hours. Latest study just came out showed particularly in increase cognitive frailty. And this was over 4,000 participants in this study. This wasn't a rinky dinky like nine healthy women in Cincinnati study. This was a big big study in this case in China. And so just be careful with sleeping too much. I think sometimes in the biohacking health orthorexic dieting sector that we just tend to sometimes think oh, the more I can sleep the better. And if I can sleep 12 hours an hour, I'm gonna really rock it. But, baby, fact is, you're gonna waste a lot of your life, comma, you're not doing yourself any favors in the health department, especially once you exceed about nine hours. Unless. And again, you're. Unless you're a professional athlete. You know, if you're training three to four hours a day, you just need more neuromuscular recovery, you need more glymphatic drainage, you need more musculoskeletal recovery, you need more sleep time. But unless you fall into that category, like, don't be sleeping like a pro athlete if you're not a pro pro athlete. I mean, don't, don't, don't short yourself on sleep. But anybody out there sleeping more than nine hours, you may want to check yourself.

Do I just sound completely pompous that I think or feel. I don't know what would be the better word here? That sleeping more than nine hours just seems like an absolute waste of time. Like, just seems like such a waste of time to me.

It is kind of venturing into the don't waste your life type of category. I mean, there's a reason. What's that saying that the most impactful people are tired people? It's something like that. Like, if you look at all the world leaders and movers and shakers and inventors and entrepreneurs and people who are really making an impact in this world, yeah, they kind of die and go to their gravestone a little bit tired with some bags under their eyes. And honestly, I think that's okay, right? Like, it's okay to short yourself on sleep if that allows you to make maximum impact with your life. I don't think you should be like the Navy SEAL who says, I'm to going, I'm gonna sleep when I die. Yet at the same time, I think some of us just like, protect and prioritize our sleep almost too much, when in fact, we might be able to create more, make greater impact, spend more time with our kids, learn a new musical instrument, et cetera, we just slept a little bit less, you know, and again, we gotta strike a balance. But yeah, I think a lot of times, you know, podcasts about biohacking and health and sleep and exercise, etc. Some people just get too worked up about the sleep component, you know. And again, like my sweet spot, six, seven hours, and I go to bed about 9:30, I get up between 3:45 and 4:30am I get a wonderful, you know, four to five hours of work in before, you know, half the world is awake. I've got half the work day in. I slip into the basement right after lunch and take a 20 to 45 minute siesta. I'm good to go. And, and I'm far more productive with that versus like, you know, sleeping from whatever 9:30am till or 9:30pm until 6:30am I always feel like I'm wasting my life and I'm always playing catch up when I sleep. That much.

Agreed. It's not too dissimilar from my, my schedule.

All right, well, let's take a few questions. I know we've been going a little bit long already, but let's, let's do, let's do like, we'll do three questions. We'll keep our responses maybe not super duper long in the tooth. We'll do a little Q A here. Let's do it. All right, we got Harrison. Harrison, what's your question, man?

My question is you were talking before about cold therapy before workouts. And I'm wondering if you have seen this either with clients or in your research, the testosterone increase before workouts with cold therapy. And if so, do you agree or think that cold, like a shower, cold therapy, cold, cold shower before a workout is unique enough to evoke that response?

All right, so the link between cold therapy and testosterone. We already know there's a link between cold therapy and sperm. And that icing one's balls, avoiding excess heat, hot tubs, et cetera, has a pretty significant effect on sperm morphology, positive effect on sperm morphology. But they have done some studies on salivary testosterone levels, particularly as a response to a cold shower or a cold plunge or a cold dip. One recent study actually looked at, it was like a Swedish study, and they looked at men who were doing a cold glacial water dip prior to exercise, and they did see a significant boost in testosterone. The folks from that cool fat burner company that I talked about earlier, they've also had some internal studies where they've seen seen increases in salivary testosterone in response to cold exposure. There was another pretty recent study that was published in the spring of this year where they looked at testosterone, they looked at cortisol, they looked at dhea, and they found that in men who were doing a sauna with cold versus just the sauna, that the cold had a much bigger effect on endocrine function, particularly in testosterone. And there's a lot of other smaller studies that have looked into and found cold to increase testosterone. How long of an effect that Is like whether it's just a quick acute effect or whether it's a long term chronic effect is tough to say because most of these are looking at pretty immediate salivary response to cold. But long story short is that I really do think there's something to this idea of, of cold and the positive impact on testosterone and endocrine function and seemingly a significant increase in sperm count and fertility as well. So I'm gonna go thumbs up on that. You got anything to add, Jay?

Yeah. So, you know, one of the interesting things that came out of the, the lab in Stanford from Dr. Craig Heller was looking at the effects of an increase in adrenaline and epinephrine and how that relates to testosterone. And as we know kind of from basic physiology is that we see diminished testosterone with chronic enhancements of adrenal fatigue or chronic enhancements of adrenaline release. However, in the short term what we found and what they found is, and say we, I'm not a part of the group, is that as people kind of transiently or acutely increase adrenaline, that testosterone also will increase as well. So I think that there's an interplay play between testosterone and adrenaline and I would think that that's probably thethe major modulator there. But again, maybe more research needs to be done on that end.

Awesome. Cool. Easy, easy reply. Thanks. Good question, Harrison. Alright, let' slet's bring somebody else up.

Good morning. Afternoon everyone. Thanks for doing this. Great room. I'm just wondering, I don't know if you're gonna want to answer this or not, but what do you think? And it's not really to do with sports nutrition, but what do you think about the vaccine and its effects and what people can do to kind of, you know, not detox, but actually get themselves into a, you know, get some of these, some of the items out of your system. And if you don't want to answer this, I totally get it because I'm in the health field too. I do a radio show on I Heart Boston Providence and I kind of stay away from this subject myself because I don't want people to do what I do. But I'm just wondering your thoughts on that.

Yeah, sure. I did a whole podcast with Dr. Matt Cook about this and I'll link to it in the show notes if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com438 but we went over all of the things that he does to support any type of deleterious response to the vaccine with his patients. And in particular, even though I have that whole Document for free. If you go to the show notes of my interview with him. The main things that he uses is hydrotherapy meaning alternating hot and cold applications to improve the circulation of blood and lymph via peripheral visodilation and vasoconstriction which allows for removal of waste products from tissue issues. And then he uses a host of different supplementation, primarily mixed vitamin E, tocopherols and tocotrienols. Like Designs for Health has a good vitamin E product that mixes the tocopherols and the tocotrienols which which can help with blood clot prevention and lowering of blood viscosity and cell membrane protection. A ton of liposomal vitamin C, vitamin A which actually up like upregulates the the toll like receptors receptors in the GI tract which can help to modulate the immune response. Vitamin D3 also to help both the innate and adaptive immune responses. So you almost get like a better response to the vaccine. Vitamin B5 which allows for better histamine clearance. And people who have a little bit of a mast cell activation response to the vaccine. Something called pro resolving mediators which help to keep some of the accelerated inflammatory response that can cause like a like a long term side effect to the vaccine at bay. Some binders, particularly activated charcoal and bentonite or zeolite clay to help remove some of the chemical toxins and adjuvants that may be in the vaccines. He actually uses a homeopath called Thuja and another one called Arnica and primarily just does that for the arm pain and the body aches that you can get from the vaccine. A special type of mushroom called Agarikon mushroom which helps with the what he called the broad spectrum antiviral polypore which apparently again improves the immune system response to the vaccine. Grapefruit seed extract to improve the blood vessel wall and endothelial integrity. Higher dose melatonin to decrease the inflammasome response to the vaccine. Resveratrol to help stabilize the mast cell and the histamine response. Astragalus which also helps with the inflammatory response. But in people who are having a severe inflammatory response, apparently you need to be careful because it may cause some issues with that. A few different adaptogens primarily Holy basil and rhodiola. And then he uses colostrum to help to protect the gut and increase the production of immune activating antigens in the gut. And then NAD or NMN or NR as mitochondrial protectants and IV glutathione for the same reason. And then finally he uses a whole range of different injectable peptides, with probably the most notable for the immune system modulation being thymosin based beta 4. And I know that sounded like a lot of stuff, but that's all written down and that's all a free download in the podcast show notes that I have with him. If you. I'll just link to it if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com438 but I actually have Matt coming on on another podcast in about a week because since the podcast that he did with me in which he was pretty bullish on the vaccine, he said about a week after that show he started getting people right and left coming into his clinic who were like blind from the vaccine, people who were like getting paralysis and like all sorts of serious issues. So we're having another discussion in about a week, but his clinic has pretty much blown up and kind of like become a clinic that was primarily treating COVID patients to a clinic that's primarily treating people with vaccination symptoms that are almost like more problematic than Covid. So we're going to have a pretty interesting discussion guarantee. But in the meantime, should you need to get the vaccine or should you have been vaccinated and be concerned about some of the side effects, I would definitely access that document. So. Good question, Meg.

Oh no, that was awesome. That's so great. I'm so. I'm gonna definitely go and watch the show and you know, you're preaching what I'm preaching and we just need to get the word out there. Isn't it funny how the these cases where people have had injuries, they're not getting onto the news, you know, and it just bothers me because I myself was forced to get the vaccine. When I say forced, I wasn't a gun held to my head, but the department of Health in the state of Rhode island told me I need to get both vaccines or I would have to present myself in front of the board and all this crazy stuff. And then it also said at the end of that letter from the Department of Health, if you know anyone that is licensed in the state of Rhode island who has not gotten gotten the vaccine, please report them here. So I'm like, I do a radio show, knew somebody was going to report me and I did get tachycardia after it. So.

Yeah.

But I want to thank you so much, Ben.

Yeah, no problem. I can say I'll probably get vaccinated, but I'm waiting for, for Novavax or Inovio. So I would like to get vaccinated just to, just to protect myself against any variants and also to get rid of any of the problematic social restrictive issues. But I'm waiting for one that I'm more comfortable with to actually, actually get the jab, so to speak. So. All right, well, let's take one more question. All right, Shirin, Shirin, last question. Make it a good one.

I myself am an autoimmune transformational specialist and do a bunch of fun stuff and I work with clients and a lot of women listen to your podcast and they come to me and they're like, hey, I was listening to Ben and I'm gonna do the carnivore diet. Or they start intermittent fasting and what happens is their period, their cycle goes crazy. And I just wanted you to touch a little bit on, you know, some of the contraindications of the carnivore diet for women. If you've come across any, what your take is on how they affects female, affect female hormones and what women can do to prepare if they do want to do a diet or they can better support their cycle.

Yeah, so, so first of all, agnostic of the type of diet being consumed, many people who begin to diet also begin to fast or restrict calories. It's just the nature of being more aware of what you're eating and the timing of what you're eating. And especially in premenopausal women, there's a significant downregulation of a hormone called kisspeptin. I actually have some injectable kisspeptin in my refrigerator upstairs because it's so great for fertility and for testosterone. And so you can imagine that if that particular hormone were to decrease in women, what would happen? Well, we see a decrease in luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone. And lo and behold, what's one way to significantly downregulate Kisspeptin? Not eating for longer than 12 hours in premenopausal women. And so first of all, longer term intermittent fasts longer than about 12 hours in premenopausal women, especially when frequently performed, is not a good idea. I'm a bigger fan of a 10 to 12 hour overnight fast for premenopausal women. And because all those autophagy, cellular cleanup, longevity benefit effects don't kick in until after about 16 hours, then what you do is just a couple of times a month do like a 24 hour dinner time to dinnertime fast. So you're not frequently making a big dent in endocrine and fertility function, but just every once In a while you're getting those autophagy benefits. So first of all, don't excessively fast. Second of all, decreased or decreased adequacy of carbohydrates can impair the conversion of T4 into T3, can also increase cortisol and can impair endocrine function. And because a carnivore diet, just by the nature of the diet, tends to be lower in carbohydrates, inclusion of things like berries and honey, honey and like healthy. And I would even say if you're willing to kind of like bastardize the carnivore diet and even do like some safe starches like tubers, you know, sweet potatoes, yams, purple potatoes, et cetera. Most of the women who I help out with their diet, they're having minimum of 100 and typically close to 200 grams of carbohydrates a day, typically from sources like that, like berries and honey and tubers. And even those eating the carnivore diet are also doing that. And that's, that seems to really, really help out with the fertility part. Now the nice thing is if you do those things, you don't excessively fast and you eat adequate carbohydrate, if you're eating a well comprised nose to tail carnivore diet where you're getting like bone marrow and bone broth and a ton of omega 3 fatty acids and even saturated fats and pregnenolone precursors for things like progesterone and dhea, then what's going to happen is actually a pretty beautiful scenario. It's a little bit more to like, like the, like the Weston A. Price diet. If you google the Wesnay Price diet and look at the parameters of that diet, it's like a bunch of full fat dairy and you know, and fermented vegetables and butter and lard and pastured meats and you know, kind of a wonderful scenario for fertility and for overall endocrine function. And really the carnivore diet is almost just like a stripped down version of that that gets rid of some of the fermented vegetables and some of the spices, etc. And so I have no issues with the carnivore diet as far as women are concerned. I would just say that for endocrine function in general, don't excessively fast. Make sure you're eating a properly comprised nose to tail version of it and then open yourself up to the idea of including honey and berries and tubers and somewhere in the range of about 100 to 200 grams of carbs a day minimum for most healthy active females is a pretty good target to shoot for. And then if you're going, you know, if you're in for the longevity and the autophagy game, just toss in a couple of times a month to a 24 hour, like a dinnertime to dinnertime fast. And that's, that's the strategy that I would use. So the only last thing I'd throw in there is if you're postmenopausal. Nice thing is you, you, it actually is healthier to do like these 12 to 16 hour intermittent fasts. So it kind of depends on the phase of your cycle and where you're at as far as menopause is concerned. But that, that's what I would be doing as far as the carnivore diet goes and endocrine function and fertility. Fertility. So I hope that's helpful. Shirin. Good. Good question. Yeah.

Now or you just need to, you know, quit screwing up women's, you know, menstruation cycles. Ben, I mean, you're.

Yeah.

Causing some difficulties here.

Yeah.

But no, there seriously was something that I did have to say that was serious, which is there are two podcasters that I, I don't necessarily listen to as much for my own health because they're very women centric, but one's actually a kion coach. Her name's Angela Fox. I cannot remember Angela's podcast name, but it's really great because it focuses on specifically biohacking for women's health. And then there's another podcast by Lauren and Renee which is called Biohacker Babes. And I just tried to send a lot of women that direction just because that's not my area of expertise. But if your clients, I don't know if it's Sharon. Sharon. If your clients are really interested in overall women's health and biohacking, women's health, they are really great resources and they basically try everything that they suggest, kind of of similar to Ben, that immersive level of journalism. So I was just going to throw out their recommendations as well.

Awesome. Cool. Well, I dig it. Well, we've, we, man, we've gone through a lot. Oh yeah. Let's give something away before we, before we take off. So we haven't done this for a while, so we should do it. But the best way you can support this show because, you know, it's a big labor of love, we put a ton of time just in the shownotes alone. Like, we have really good shownotes. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com you'll see what I mean. Like we spend a ton of time on the show, notes. We have to have an audio editor or goes through and cleans up all of our crap because Jay and I are total audio amateurs. And so basically the best way to support the show is to leave us freaking reviews or give us your credit card number and just slip that to us under the table. But safer, just leave a review. Go. Go to wherever you listen and just pop it super quick. I'll take you five minutes. Leave us a review. Review. If we see your review and we like it and we read it on the show, we're going to send you straight from my front door. A gear pack, a cool tech exercise T shirt, a cool beanie great for this time of year, and a BPA free water bottle and some other goodies. So if you hear your review right on the show, which is about to happen, just email your T Shirt size to gearngreenfieldfitness.com that's gearngreenfieldfitness dot com and we'll get some something out to you. So that being said, Jay, you got a review to push out.

Oh yeah, man, it's Christmas time. So I gathered 10 reviews that I'm going to read today. No, not really. But I do have a really good one from April B6 who titled this as top notch science based content. So April said love, love, love that I can get the most updated information on how to upgrade my health.

And.

And it's also entertaining. That was my favorite part of the review. So thanks, April.

Short and sweet. I dig it.

April. I love it.

Email us april gearngreenfieldfitness.com we'll get a goodie bag out to you. And the rest of you, leave us a review. Leave us a ranking. Just do it. Come on. Holiday season. Now is the time to give. To give gifts and ugly sweaters and useless socks and reviews.

And drink alcohol.

That's right, and drink alcohol. All the shots notes are@bengateful fitness.com 4 3, 8. Check them out, Jay. I'll catch you on the flip side. I'm gonna go hunt me down some drinking chocolate.

Do it, man.

Peppermint and oil and all vegan marshmallows. I got it. I took my notes. All right, you guys. Later. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and post posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items, but the price is the same for you, and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion llc, the makers of Kion branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit regardless of the relationship. Relationship. If I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use support and with full authenticity and transparency recommend. In good conscience, I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body and spirit. And I will only ever link to products, products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.