Q&A 439: Benefits Of Walking Backwards, The New Fountain Of Youth Pill, Biohacking Skin Health, Chemicals In Your Food & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, the benefits of walking backwards, the new fountain of youth pill, biohacking, skin, health, chemicals in your food, and much more. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Jay. What's going on, ma'? Am.

What's up, dude? Now, I'm just enjoying the cold weather that we have here in South Carolina, which is probably the warm spring weather.

That you have in Spokane, considering that I've had two cars so far in the ditch on my driveway and a giant sheet of ice that extends a quarter mile out from my house and have dumped probably about the equivalent of 4 tons of sand all over my property just in the past week alone to soak up all the. All the slipperiness. I think I probably got you beat, man.

Oh, you definitely do. It's like 40 degrees here. So it's, what, summertime for you?

Yeah, yeah, basically. Yeah. So anyways, though. So, gosh, usually we kick off these podcasts with some type of witty banter, and we've spent so much time digging through a bunch of tech issues, I don't know if I have any witty banter to present to you, Jay. So this is always a fun one to kick things off. Anything new or interesting for Brekkie this morning? Yeah. What did you have for breakfast? Question. Can never get old, in my opinion. People just love it.

It's always a good one. So I like talking about breakfast for me. Yeah, me too. But, I mean, mine's so boring because my breakfast was my lunch, which is as per the usual. And you have to remember, too, you know, I'm three hours ahead of you. So I had lunch about an hour or so ago around 12:30. So my. The way I broke my fast was with leftovers, which is what I normally break my fast with. So last night we had some.

Like when you're sitting around your house, like, with your friends and stuff, and you say, I'm gonna go have breakfast. Do you actually say that? Do you say, I'm going to go break my fast? Like, is that. Is that just the way that you talk? Are you one of those people?

I hold my nose up as high as I can when I say it. Pinky out. Especially with a nice cup in the hand.

Exactly. May I please go to the bathroom? Thank you.

That is. That's a one to one replication of exactly how I sound, Ben.

Well, that. That's nice. You broke your fast. Okay, well, sexy banter. I wasn't.

So what did you do.

You know, I. People always ask me what I put in my smoothie these days, and it always varies. But I'll tell you what my smoothie recipe is these days. These days. And it changes, like, every week, but. And then I get on this kick and I'll switch the rest, which is today. Right now. The smoothie recipe is. And I've been using the nutribullet. I get pretty good consistency with the nutribullet. I fill it with ice. I always have my frozen raw liver cubes. People think that's gross, but I always have frozen avocado cubes and frozen raw liver cubes in my freezer. Of course, that's redundant. They're frozen. They're in the freezer. The liver cubes. It's a great way to have organ meats and hide them in your smoothie and still have them taste good. It's super simple. You just get your liver. Like I order my liver from US Wellness Meats. I soak it in kefir or in buttermilk, or in a pinch, you could use lemon juice for about 24 hours. And then just rinse it off and puree it like in a. Literally in a blender, pour it into molds, freeze it. Put that in like, a mason jar or a Ziploc bag, keep it in the freezer. And when I make a smoothie, I just toss my liver cubes into the smoothie. And so I do ice and liver cubes. And then I do. Oh, my God, organics vanilla stevia, because it's like, the best stevia in the world. So I do a couple of dropper fulls of that for, like, my sweetness. I do a pinch of salt, pinch of a really good salt for the saltiness. And then what I have been on a kick on lately. I'm not just saying this for it to be a shameless plug. This is what I've been doing is like a crap ton of colostrum, meaning, like the kion colostrum. I do about eight heaping scoops of that. So I'm going through, like, two jars a week of colostrum because my gut fricking loves it and gives me this nice creamy consistency. And I just decided to go, like, lower protein, higher superfood in my morning smoothie. So I've got the colostrum in there. And then I don't know if you heard my podcast with the guy who runs a company Nourish, that make this. They make, like, this liquid curcumin. And because I'm Going through a knee injury right now. I put like a huge amount of that liquid curcumin in and then, and then a scoop of the kion creatine and then I blend all of that and my topping right now that I use because I always go through different toppings. But right now my topping is this stuff called Natola granola. It's like a grain free granola made out of prunes and coconut and gosh, I forget what all else is in there anyways. It's addictively good, it's crunchy good. And I just sprinkle that on top. So it's basically colostrum liver. Oh. And the actual liquid that I use to blend it up is goat milk. Because our goat is just churning out tons of milk right now. My wife is almost like gun to my head, forcing me to make the goat milk disappear. So goat milk is like the liquid that goes on top of the colostrum and the ice and the liver and the stevia and I just feel like it's lifeblood. It's an amazing smoothie.

I feel like most people are gonna be game for that smoothie, but I'm not sure they're necessarily gonna believe that you can hide the flavor of the liver.

You totally just said maybe I give it to my.

I know you can.

My friends, they visit, they love it. And sometimes I don't even tell them. They'll tell them after, like what? And then, you know, their face twists if they're not into the whole organ meat thing. But I got them anyway, so. Haha. Well, what do you think? Should we, should we jump into the news flashes? Because I got a good one for people who are already salivating. I got a good one.

Yeah. Let's open it up, man.

Here we go. Okay, so we always like to start off with something fun. I used to sit around even when I was a kid. I remember it would be cool if you were watching TV and they made it a more sensual experience. Like what if you could actually like smell the fresh baked chocolate chip cookies that mom pulls out of the oven on the TV show? Or maybe you're wearing a haptic suit and obviously this is real already. That's gonna like vibrate metaverse correspondence to the battle scene that's occurring. Anyways though, here's a good one for you. A Japanese professor just developed a prototype lickable TV screen. It's a lickable TV screen that you can use to actually taste the food that is being featured on the. On the television screen. Which to me you Know, especially since we're going through a global pandemic right now. Global viral pandemic. It just sounds like about the best, most practical invention ever. A TV screen that you can lick along with your friends. Of course. Just think about it.

But, Ben, you're going to get the question now. If you lick your TV screen and you taste something, did you just break your fast?

Did you just break your fast? Yep. Exactly. Are you still on ketosis if you're licking your tv? Anyways, it's very interesting. This is the same professor who also helped produce a fork that amplifies taste bud sensations and helps to make food taste more rich. And this new tv, a commercial version, he says it's going to cost about $875, and they're already, like, rolling out some. Some prototypes. So I'll link to the article. For anybody out there who's got $875 burning a hole in your pocket, and you want a lickable TV screen, there you have it, dude.

The metaverse is real. Are you the one who posted on Twitter, it might have been someone else, about the cooling and heating vest that can be connected to your tv? And when someone's, like, experiencing changes in climate, say they're out in, you know, the beaches of Miami, or if they're on top of Everest, like, it changes so that you, like, actually feel the temperature that the OR character is feeling. I don't know if that was you or somebody else, but I'm like, man, all this stuff combined, like, we're going to just have Oculus on our eyes, and we're going to be locked in. It's going to be like that movie Wall E. Seen that one?

Yeah, yeah. Except the very few of us who are actually, like, outside shooting shit and doing analog adventures. So, yeah, if I'm ever that guy with a neck beard in my mom's basement licking my tv, Jay, please read me the riot act and pull me out into the store. I will. Okay.

I'll come get you, man.

All right, Good. All right, so I just released today a podcast episode with Ben Patrick, the knees over toes guy. And I just had a great conversation with him. I started doing his knee rehab protocol for all these cartilage issues I'm having, because the doc wants to do, like, a full on scope to remove loose bodies and flaps and stuff from my knee. And I thought, you know what? I'm just gonna, like, go hardcore into Ben Patrick's program and try it. And already, just a couple of weeks in, the decrease in pain is Dramatic. So listen to that podcast if you' tuning into this show and you have knee issues or you want to kind of bulletproof your knees. But anyways, one thing that we talk about is walking backwards, walking backwards. And it's called retro walking. And I just wanted to visit it on this show and I'll link to a whole article on it. But the history and the science behind so called retro walking, which you can do literally like on a treadmill, you can, as Ben Patrick and I talk about, you can get an actual weight training sled and pull a sled backwards. You can just walk backwards in your driveway. What I've been doing is every time I walk, I try to take at least 100 of the steps during the walk backwards. And pretty much every time the thought comes into my head that I'm in a safe place where I could be walking backwards, I just turn around and walk backwards. And it turns out that there's this ancient Chinese proverb that goes like this, says a hundred steps backward are worth a thousand steps forwards. And Chinese people have been practicing this so called retro walking for centuries to maintain good health and as a cure for certain maladies, because they say that it restores the balance of ki, like life energy and your life force. But when you look at it from a biomechanical standpoint, it actually does strengthen the tibialis muscle and also works your glutes and your hip extensors in a little bit of a different way than forwards walking. And they've also found that the heart rate when you walk backwards is about 50% higher than conventional forwards walking. So you get a little bit better cardio. And that might just be because you're nervous about getting hit by a car that you can't see because you're walking backwards. I don't know. Good point. But anyways, they've also done a study on the development of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis and tried to see if retro walking would alleviate the knee pain or improve functional mobility of the knees for even like chronic osteoarthritis patients. And they found that as little as four weeks of backwards walking can not only alleviate the knee pain, but also seems to have a pretty significant impact due to the hip flexor stretching that occurs when you're walking backwards on your pelvic alignment and the pressure on your spinal discs and the alleviation of back pain. So it's super interesting. And then if you get into like the proprioceptive sensations and the idea that your Mind has to stay a little bit more active. You need better lower body coordination. Apparently it stimulates a greater function of the cerebellum, which is kind of like how your body detects where it's at in space. It's kind of part of your human body's sensory receptor location. It's something that as you age, could be a way to maintain balance to minimize falls related to aging, et cetera. So a lot going for it. And this article that I'll link to in the show notes, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 439 actually has instructional videos that show you how to walk backwards, which to me is just about as silly as my instructional video about how to take. How to take a cold shower. But really in reality, like, if you're doing backwards walking, a treadmill, there is a little bit of a form that you need. And in my episode with Ben Patrick, which I'll also link to in the show notes, I have a few videos where he shows kind of like the proper backwards walking form on a treadmill. Because you do want your knees to kind of extend over your toes and you want the speed at like one and a half to three or so, so you can really kind of like push through with your hip extensors. But yeah, if you're not walking backwards already, people should start. Seems to work.

Exactly. Dude, I love it. I can't speak highly enough of Ben Patrick's program. You know, that's what I basically utilized to rehab after my meniscal repair surgery. And the two exercises I would say that I found to be the most helpful and useful would have been the way you warm up, which within the ATG program you is backwards walking and then doing like his split squats, which for me in rehabbing was really difficult initially, but now is amazing.

Yeah, his, his. So I had to take off my hoodie. It's super, super hot in my office right now. His ass to grass split squats. Yeah, they're. And what I do actually is because I have this, this sauna, the. The clear light sauna is big enough for me to go in there and like do my heat training and these stretches at the same time from Ben Patrick's program. I've just been doing all in the sauna, which works perfectly. Yeah. Kill two birds. Yeah.

No, Perfect.

Yeah. So anyways, speaking of longevity and things that you can do to extend your health span or your lifespan, there's a new fountain of youth pill. Another one.

There's always a new one every Year man.

Okay, so this latest one is actually a flavonoid based pill. They've been studying it in China. They found that it boosts overall lifespan in elderly rodents by 9%, which is equivalent to more than a decade in humans. And the way that it works is it seems to flush out these so called like senescent cells or zombie cells in your body that are, they're like your aging cells, right? They accumulate as you get older and they can release chemicals that cause inflammation and shutting them down too early in life. Like excessive use of things like resveratrol and nad, et cetera, early in life might not be that great of an idea because senescent cells seem to allow for strengthening of the immune system and even like a stronger endocrine system early in life. But then as you age and these senescent cells accumulate, it seems to be a good idea to start to use these so called antiseinescent compounds. And this one is very, very similar to one we already know about called resveratrol. But this is not resveratrol. It's basically like a grape seed extract called PCC1. And considering that resveratrol in combination with NAD or NR similar to what David Sinclair has done a lot of research on and had pretty good results with, I think that this, this stuff is probably going to be kind of similar in terms of a really, really good one two stack with NAD or NR or NMN to, to halt or slow aging. Seems super safe. I mean honestly, it's just literally grapeseed extract. So yeah, there you have it. And kind of similar to resveratrol, you probably drink like 700 bottles of wine to get the equivalent right.

I know that, I know that David Sinclair still utilizes both resveratrol and mnr, but I wonder if add an extra component or as a replacement component would make sense. I guess that's where we leave it up to the researchers and scientists to tell us and give us more info.

Well, I mean, based on the idea that, you know, when you look at the so called synergistic components of food and the fact that, you know, you'll find resveratrol in grape seeds and you also find this PCC one in grape seeds, you know, I would imagine that harnessing as many different molecules as you can from a seed that seems to be pretty good for longevity could be a good idea. But obviously there's not a lot of studies on stacking these compounds versus, you know, what they do in isolation. But either way it's called PCC1. I don't know of any companies that are yet making it. I mean, you could probably do a search on Amazon or whatever and see if there's a grapeseed extract supplement that contains, you want to look for PCC1 is what it's called. But anyways, so yeah, interesting. Yet another thing to take to help you live longer.

Add it on the list.

Yeah. All right. So another interesting one related to longevity is. So you're no doubt familiar with plasmapheresis, like this idea of young blood transfer and transferring blood from a young mouse into an old mouse to help the old mouse take on the characteristics of the young mouse, or vice versa. It seems to work in opposite too. Like a transfer of blood from an old mouse into a young mouse seems to induce accelerated aging in the young mouse. But what they did in this study was they looked into the idea of infusing someone with a fit person's plasma, or in this case a fit, I should say rodents plasma. So what they did was they took exercise trained mice and they theorized that if they took the plasma from those exercise trained mice and transferred that plasma into non exercising sedentary mice that they might be able to reduce inflammation or reduce risk for Alzheimer's disease. And it turned out that when they transferred plasma from fit mice into unfit mice, it reduced the expression of these pro inflammatory genes in brain, it suppressed brain inflammation, and it enhanced neurogenesis, learning and memory in the recipient mice. Now again, like this has not been looked into in humans, but I could see very, very soon some kind of a clinic popping up where you can select your pro athlete of choice who has sold their plasma to that clinic for a billion million dollars. And you can get infused with maybe a little bit of Tom Brady plasma or, I don't know, Nadal Djokovic plasma, or you know, take your pick. So that's the future of aging. You don't need to go to the gym. You just basically waltz into your local plasma clinic and get infused with the plasma from your favorite athlete or crossfitter or maybe your neighbor down the street who's, who's fit. So there you have it.

I can't even begin to tell you the amount of people, especially those who could afford it, that would do it if they felt like they could replace like exercise and the time it took to exercise because a lot of people whine and complain about exercise, which is always so funny to me because it's something that I absolutely love. But they would probably do this in a heartbeat. So we joke about it. But I actually think that there are plenty of people who would say this is a great quick fix. Biohack done.

Yep. Yeah. So there you have it. For first person who gets in on that, leave a comment in the show notes, I'll link to them and I'll link to this article@BenGreenfieldFitness.com439 all right, so another one, Tyler LeBaron of the Molecular Hydrogen foundation, who's been a previous podcast guest of mine and kind of got me into this whole idea of drinking hydrogen enriched water, sent me over a couple of kind of cool studies because I still take about two or three of those hydrogen tablets from Water and Wellness or I get them too from Quicksilver Scientific and I put them in my morning glass of water. Usually I do a little bit of vitamin C, a little bit of baking soda, and I'll put a couple of drops of this hydrogen tablets in there because of the pretty potent anti inflammatory effect it can have. But it's like a selective antioxidant, meaning it's not going to quell your ability to be able to build new mitochondria after an exercise session or build new muscle after a weight training session. But these two latest studies actually show a pretty significant effect on a couple of important brain parameters. So one study showed that if you drink hydrogen enriched water, it actually can assist with shutting down the inflammation that's related to traumatic brain injury. Like it acts as what they describe in the study as a neuroprotective medical gas and recommend it for what's called cerebral infarction, but also neurodegenerative diseases like tbi. So you know, if you've had a concussion, if you've had a tbi, some people I know will even keep things like MSM in the glove compartment of their car. You could also make an argument that maybe a little bit of hydrogen tablets in the glove compartment of the car. So you know, if you get in an accident, somebody hits their head, you could actually quell brain inflammation as quickly as possible. You know, like having it on the sideline of a soccer game or football game. I think it's probably a pretty good idea based on what I've seen in other studies. But also this most recent study is pretty significant in terms of the ability of hydrogen rich water to be able to shut down inflammation in response to tbi. And then at the same time, another study, and Tyler was actually involved in this study, looked into the effects on cognitive performance. And what they found in that study was a significantly Improved amount of focus and speed and neuroplasticity as well as better aerobic performance and better strength training performance, all with the consumption of molecular hydrogen. But I should note that in this case, they combined it with nitric oxide. Right. So that would be like they literally were drinking canned hydrogen rich water with nitric oxide added to it. I think the name of the company that makes this stuff is H2BEV. I think they've actually sent me a few cans of it before, but basically it's hydrogen with nitric oxide. Or you could do a few of those hydrogen tablets, but mix them with beet juice, for example, or maybe pop a Viagra in a couple of hydrogen tablets. There's more than one way to skin the cap, but ultimately it looks like nitric oxide combined with hydrogen rich water or hydrogen tablets not only has a really, really cool effect on TBI and concussion in terms of quelling the inflammation related to that, that, but it also has a pretty skimpy impact on exercise performance and, and, and a really, really cool impact on cognition.

So, yeah, it's, it's so intriguing to me because prior to seeing this research, one of the things that I've been doing more recently, I guess you could say within the last six months, I interviewed a guy named Dr. Nathan Bryan, who's one of the most preeminent researchers on nitric oxide. You know who he is? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, he's been on, he's been on the show before. He's really cool. Cool.

Oh, nice. That's cool. Yeah, I mean, you know, brilliant dude when it comes to nitric oxide. And, you know, he created one of the first, you know, kind of tablet formulas for significantly increasing nitric oxide, which is Neo 40. And now he has his own brand. And I had him onto our podcast at honu. And one of the things that he, he just talked about was, you know, combining them with, you know, kind of different compounds for increasing nitric oxide. And I was kind of testing it here and there, but the one thing that I did is I always was taking hydrogen tabs, molecular hydrogen tabs from Water and Wellness. And I started combining that, taking like a double dosage of Neo 40 throughout the day, like one in the morning, one in the afternoon.

40 is like his, his really, really potent nitric oxide supplement.

Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. And I, I noticed immense cognitive benefits, but there wasn't a lot of research on there. And you know, he even mentioned on the podcast too that there's, you know, not a ton out there, but A lot of people report anecdotally like that there is a significant increase. So it's great to kind of have this, you know, confirming, you confirming type of. Of research that's been put out there by Tyler LeBaron that indicates that there is a reason why, you know, H2 plus nitric oxide increases overall cognition. So I love it because it just confirms my use of that combo.

Yeah, Nathan's company is pretty good. They do. They basically like Super Beat, Super Beat Soft Chews, Beet Elite and Neo40, all of which are really, really great at naturally. You know, all those are like natural Viagra for the body. But then the other cool thing that they make, and I'll hunt this down and link to it in the show notes, is salivary nitrite structure strips. So these are little strips you can put in your mouth. My sons and I did an experiment once where we were just trying out the different things that could increase our nitric oxide levels, like arugula and extra virgin olive oil and pumpkin seeds. So we spent a week. Because we like to do these little experiments at home. And we all had our little test strips and we would test during the day to see how high our nitric oxide levels were and to see who could win. And the one thing that actually made it higher than anything was we had some of that Neo40 and we all took some and your face almost turns beet red. This stuff works so well.

No, it really does. No, yeah, I did the same thing. I had the. I had the strips as well. And it was funny because I thought. I figured that because of my high intensity exercise levels and a lot of the things that I took in in regards to nutrition, I thought I was going to have a pretty high kind of starting baseline, but I didn't. I was fairly depleted in. No. But then when I started taking Neo 40, like, the strip went from like, you know, that little light pink color to like beet red. And. And I could just feel it. But then I saw it. So I was like, yeah, a little placebo effect maybe, but it was. It was incredible. So, yeah, I'd encourage people to test out. No. And try that stuff.

Yeah, exactly. And most people who use hyperbaric oxygen chambers, which I just absolutely love in terms of the effects on wound repair and recovery and decreased levels of soreness, I still nap in mine almost every day. Like my little soft shell one I keep in my basement downstairs. If I'm gonna take a nap, like nine times out of ten, I just crawl into that thing. But I Interviewed Scott Sher, who's kind of an expert in hyperbaric therapy. And he said in most cases, anything that you can consume like that before doing a hyperbaric session is going to increase even more the amount of oxygen delivery to tissues. And he actually recommended that if you were recovering from a TBI or concussion, not to do that, because you could almost flood the brain with too much oxygen and create too many free radicals. But aside from that case scenario, using any of these things before hyperbaric is really effective as well. And the reason I bring that up is because another study I wanted to mention today, just because I use the hyperbaric so much, I'm always looking at things that allow me to pat myself on the back and know it's helping out. Confirmation bias. So skin aging, they actually found a significant decrease in what's called fiber fragmentation and in tissue, senescent cells in skin biopsies, Meaning that all the things that would be related to skin breakdown or like excessive aging in the face, like worn down collagen fibers or elastin fibers, or senescent cells or broken blood vessels, muscles, hyperbaric sessions. And in this case, they did three months of daily hyperbaric therapy. And that's actually the thing with hyperbaric. That's why it's nice to have your own home unit, because most of the studies on it show that repeated use on a daily basis is where you really get the lion's share of the benefits. But what they found was that there was a significant kind of like, across the board improvement in all these aging targeted interventions for the skin, which is pretty cool because we already know that hyperbaric is really good for things like decreasing the rate at which telomeres shorten, or helping to, to clear out senescent cells, or helping with angiogenesis, the health of your blood vessels. But it turns out that in particular has a really, really great effect on the skin. So anybody out there who's kind of like, interested in all the things we're talking about right now regarding anti aging and longevity hyperbaric, yet another feather in the cap of it for that effect.

I think that might be my 2022 purchase is a hyperbaric oxygen therapy tank. Yeah, I've been been kind of delaying, pulling the trigger on it just because, you know, it takes up a little bit of space. You know, I want to make sure that, like, you know, I trust in the one I get. I just do a lot of research. I mean, like, oh, is it not?

I. I don't Have a very expensive one. Like, like, it's not like the forty thousand dollar hard shell, nice hospital one I use, the one from HBOT usa. The model I use is called a Vitaris. I still, I mean, it still is like a few thousand dollars. Plus if you get, you got to get a clean air compressor next to it that feeds the oxygen in. So you're breathing pure oxygen, you know, through a mask while you're in there in the chamber. So, you know, all, all in. You're probably looking at like, I think probably like 6 to 8k to have your own hyperbaric setup at home. So it's obviously not free, but it's.

But I mean, to go into a clinic that does it, it's probably extremely expensive. What, maybe like a hundred dollars a pop. So, I mean, yeah, you pay, you pay for it over time.

Plus it kind of doubles up as like a sensory deprivation chamber, you know, because you're just like cut off to the world. And it's like my special meditation spot. And I can do breath work in there. And you can. Dude, you're not supposed to do breath work in there. But I just do.

I can see, I can see that being.

My goodness. I can do like, I can do like 6 to 7 minute holds on inhalation after I do a round of WIM Hof if I'm in the hyperbaric. And you feel really good doing it too, because you're just like saturated with oxygen. So anyways, I guess we just gave them a shameless plug. But anyway, so yeah, if you're not using hyperbaric, I recommend you look into it. Okay, so what else? The next thing is essential amino acids because we're talking about brain health. And this was another one because I'm trying to do a good job segueing, if you didn't notice, Jay, into things that are relevant to whatever I've just been talking about. And in this case, neurodegenerative disorders did notice. And brain health seems to be assisted pretty dramatically by the use of essential amino acids. And in this case, what they looked at in a study published in Science Advances was how we could combat a low protein diet. And a low protein diet, contrary to popular belief, can actually accelerate brain degeneration in models of Alzheimer's disease. Obviously, too much protein, because typically due to excess methionine and excess leucine can accelerate aging. Inadequate protein can also be an issue for accelerating brain degeneration. So in this study they looked at something called Amino LP7. And Amino LP7 is based. I don't know if they sponsored the study. They probably did. But it's just a supplement, and it contains all of the essential amino acids. And what they found was that when they gave treated, or when they treated mice with progressive brain degeneration with this amino LP7, it suppressed neuronal death and reduced the rate of brain degeneration. So these mice still had plaques in the brain, but it basically put a break on the extent to which the mice were developing continued dementia and Alzheimer's. And so again, just because that's another supplement I use a lot is essential amino acids. And of course, Shameless Plug Kion, my company, makes essential amino acids. And that's one of the reasons I'm always kind of like, I perk up when I see a good amino acid study come out. But, yeah, I mean, it was just like a powder with the seven different amino acids. And they also did another study in people, not in rodents. And they found that these same blends of amino acids improve cognitive function. And also they looked at psychological and social function, what's called psychosocial functioning, and also found that it improved that. So. So, you know, I've always said these essential amino acids are like a Swiss army knife of supplementation, but there's another reason to consider using them is to stave off neurodegeneration and improve cognitive function.

Yeah, you may have missed this. Did you talk about dosage? Did you talk about how much they.

Were intaking total grams per day? Yeah, I don't remember what it was. Yeah, yeah.

I didn't know if there's. And I'm assuming, you know, there's this level, like the Goldilocks rule here, you know, not too much, not too little. I just didn't know if they had referred to into.

Usually it's like 5 to 10 grams per day. In a lot of these studies, I. For the Keon aminos, I usually take 10 to 20 grams a day. But I also know a guy, and I get a pretty good deal on it. Kind of like colostrum, like, how are you doing? Two jars of colostrum a week. That stuff's like 40 bucks a jar. But. Right. I. I mean, you know a guy.

I don't know, or two or three.

80 bucks a week for breakfast. It's not. That's not that bad. That's like, means I'm paying. I don't know. I. I guess it's a little bit. I'm paying probably like 10, 12 bucks a morning for my morning smoothie. But, you know, that's not that much. 10 to $12amorning. Come on. I mean people go to a juice bar, spend that much.

All right, so Starbucks and spend 15 bucks.

No, speaking of Starbucks, I got one other one for you. They did a study on potentially harmful industrial chemicals detected in common US fast food. So they tested all these different fast food restaurants. I know I'm going to be preaching to the choir. Everybody listening in. I know you're not like going to a frickin red robin every day for lunch. But they actually found which food items were the worst, were the very, very worst when it came to chemicals like phthalates and plasticizers and the type of things that would be considered endocrine disruptors. And so the worst worst offenders actually. You wanna know what the best was first?

Yeah, tell me. I don't even know. I couldn't even guess.

The best of all fast food restaurants, when it comes to the food you could order, that is the low, at least the foods they tested in chemicals was Cheese pizza.

Cheese pizza.

Yep.

Way to go Pizza Hut.

Yep. Okay, so the highest ones, the particularly nasty plasticizer called D E H T chicken burritos and cheeseburgers were the very highest in D E H T. And cheeseburgers across the board just like came up repetitively as one of the bigger problematic foods. So if you're eating fast food, stay away from the cheeseburger. Burritos probably aren't that great of an idea as well. Cheese pizza might be, you know, in a pinch. A decent pick for you though.

Cheese pizza and French fries, man. Because you didn't mention french fries being that bad. So they obviously must be a health food.

That's right. We know that potatoes are the most satiating food so at least you won't eat too many of them. We established that in our previous podcast. So I figure we probably have time for a few questions here and jump into the Q and A and find out what all the good folks on Clubhouse would like to hear. So let's see, we'll make sure that we can record this adequately. So what we do at this point in the show is if you raise your hand on Clubhouse, Sophia will bring you up on stage and we will record your question and there'll be a little bit of a delay as I adjust levels here. But Sophia, do you have somebody you want to bring up?

Hey, Jay, Ben, Sofia, this is Ron. I'm a New York City based cosmetic head. I am 56 year old lifelong fitness and wellness enthusiast. My question is about the debate about Protein levels needed as we age. Is it true that we should be increasing our protein intake as we get older? Mind you, I'm a weight trainer, lifelong weight trainer as well. This is Ron, thanks for.

All right, well, in a Q and A podcast a few weeks ago, I discussed a few of the reasons that people have trouble maintaining or putting on muscle, particularly as they age. And of course, one of the issues that came up in that meta analysis was inadequate amino acid and inadequate protein intake. Particularly related to the fact that your digestive enzyme production, your protease production as you age, and your hydrochloric acid production tend to decline, thus dictating that you're harnessing fewer amino acids from the protein that you are consuming. Consuming. When you combine that with the fact that you tend to build muscle less readily as you age, you know, just, just less satellite cell proliferation, less production of testosterone and other anabolic hormones, you kind of do have a little bit of an uphill battle. That's, that's why frailty and loss of muscle is why many people eventually die. Not to get all dark and depressing, but that's just what it is. So anyways, yeah, I think that not only making sure that especially as you age, that you get that minimum of 0.55 grams per pound of body weight and preferably up to or close to 0.8 grams per pound of body weight is a good idea, but I also think that for any meal in which you're consuming an appreciable amount of protein, aside from say like something very well pre digested like bone broth or collagen or amino acids, you should use some type of supplement that contains hydrochloric acid acid. Like Thorne has one called BioGest, that's a pretty decent one that contains ox bile and hcl and things like that. And then something that contains a good protein digesting enzyme that would be like our friends at Bioptimizers, they have one called masszymes. It's like a protease, a protein digesting enzyme. But yeah, I think that for aging individuals, I mean, honestly, that was what I got my dad for his birthday presentation present like a couple of years ago. You know, he's complaining of digestive issues. He was getting a little skinny and frail. I literally bought him a giant box of protein digesting enzymes because I'm one of those guys who just, you know, I'm practical. Sometimes I buy people very practical things or I buy them experiences. So I got my dad at just a shit ton of digestive enzymes. So, so yeah, Increased protein intake, or at least adequate protein intake as you age, combined with the use of protease, digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid is I think a pretty darn good idea. Total protein intake for the day should be 0.5 grams. No, actually 0.55 grams per pound up to 0.8 grams per pound. And as you age, I think you should go closer to 0.8 grams per pound.

Yeah, yeah, I was reading a research study. This is probably like, I don't know, a couple weeks ago or something. It might have been at the last Q and A podcast we did where the, it was like the formal recommendation was like that you should be at the, you know, point or zero point grams per kilogram. But I feel like that seems a little bit low. So I like the idea that's very low.

Especially if you're talking about grams per kilogram. Yeah, yeah, I'm talking about grams per pound.

Sorry, that was per meal. Okay, so yeah, it's. So I agree more with you. I just didn't know if people like see research studies like that and get really confused. But yeah, no, agreed. I think more towards the 0.5.

Well, sorry, most people for the total they can absorb for any given meal, meal, it tops out around 30 to 40 grams of protein per meal. So if that study you were reading said like 0.4 grams per kilogram and someone weighed like 80 kilograms, you know, that comes out to around like 40 grams. Ish. Just rough math in my head. So whatever you were reading was kind of like ballpark correct for any given meal. But then like by the end of the day, you know, 0.55 to 0.8 grams per pound is what you should shoot for. And for most people it comes out to about 30 to 40% of your total intake of calories from protein.

Right?

Yeah. All right, well, let's, let's take another question here.

I just wanted to see like how can I break the fast in a more sort of gentle way so it's a little easier to do that. I just feel like little nauseous. Very nauseous.

It's not uncommon, especially when intermittent fasting, to feel nauseous. A lot of times it is low blood sugar upon waking. That's also one of the reasons that a lot of people don't sleep as well when they are fasting. And why the use of things like a shot of ketones or amino acids to kind of be in a semi fasted state before bed can be helpful to kind of stave off Some of either the nausea or the sleeplessness that intermittent fasting can call. And then some people will wake with poor vagal nerve tone. Like you can actually track your hrv and, and Jay knows a lot about this. In many cases, if you get this dawn phenomenon of fasting sometimes or after fasting sometimes, it is vagal nerve function as well. And chanting, singing, humming, breath work, cold water face dunks, et cetera, can actually help with vagal tone and kind of help you feel really good faster when you wake up. That's one of the reasons why morning ayurvedic practices like coconut oil pulling and, and gargling and some breath work and some stretching, some type of rebounding or jumping up and down on a trampoline, a cold face dunk, tongue scraping, yes, those are all cool hygienic practices, but they're also really, really great for vagal nerve tone. So you could think about incorporating a lot of those kind of like ayurvedic morning practices. And I have a great podcast I did about like what an ayurvedic daily routine looks like because I incorporate a lot of those myself. And also, and I'll link to those@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 439 messing around with things like ketones or amino acids before you go to bed so that the drop in blood sugar is not as problematic for you. And then as far as like that classic question, what do I eat when I break a fast? Obviously, liquid foods, pureed foods, smashed foods, blended foods, anything that requires less complexity of chewing and a softer texture is always going to be better tolerated. But this is all coming from a guy who every time I fast, I tend to like unappreciable fast. Like if I fast for like a day or whatever or longer, I usually just break it with a giant ass steak. So I do take some digestive enzymes when I do. But yeah, I'm one of those guys who's just like, bring on the food when I'm breaking a fast. But if you're not one of those type of people, yeah, blend puree broths, you know, smash mortar and pestle, you know, what have you, have you. And then pay attention to vagal nerve tone. And you may want to even test your blood sugar. And I'll bet that a low blood glucose is going to kind of correlate to some of those feelings of nausea that you're having.

The one thing that I'll point out here, which is really interesting, especially in regards to fasting, is that when People are engaging in fasting and more longer term fast, and we'll say anything greater than 14 hours and especially greater than 16 hours is that one of the things that we'll start to really see, especially in the morning time, is that if sympathetic arousal or parasympathetic functioning is a little bit more heightened and we have a little bit more, what we refer to as vagal withdrawal. So that's basically a lesser activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. You will see that manifest in a lower hrv. So that can be a great proxy to look at in comparison to kind of your normalized self data. The one thing that I will say which is really interesting in the research is that if we have a more activated sympathetic nervous system and bagel withdrawal that's due to fasting. One of the problems that can occur is that the food that we did consume the night before because of high sympathetic arousal can start to ferment because gut functioning is lowering. Because when we're in a state of fight or flight, sympathetic arousal, we know that our digestive system, for all intents and purposes, is going to lower its level of functioning or at least kind of tone down its level.

That's why I always use a feeding tube if I'm stressed out.

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, that's one thing to consider because if you're having all this food start to ferment, then you're going to become nauseous and you may even have diarrhea if you break the fast in a way that is, you know, not how you should. So I would just be very cautious of that. Again, you can utilize HRV as a great proxy. Just first thing in the morning, prior to caffeine in the bed, even just take a quick reading. And then the other thing too, kind of, as you mentioned, is I break my fast almost every single day with avocado. Like, that's just my go to. It's just like a half of an avocado that I, that I eat and chew up and I'm pretty good after that. Then, you know, rock and roll with a steak or rock and roll with whatever type of meat. And I just found that that's typically, you know, pretty easy on the gut.

Sweet. All right, I think, well, there you have it. Avocado solving all the world's problems once again. All right, well, let's, let's, let's do one more question.

Hey, Ben. Hey, Jay.

Listen to you guys for a while.

I recently got my school tested and my clostridium Levels were maxed out and I've been pounding on colostrum, so it.

Looks like that's working. So thanks.

But I had no Lactobacillus growth and I've been trying to do all sorts, or I had been leading up to this, been trying to do all sorts of stuff to encourage gut bacteria growth. So I was wondering if you had any ideas on how to specifically target Lactobacillus.

Well, when you say Lactobacillus, I mean lactobacillus. There can be different forms of it, like, you know, Lactobacillica reuteri, for example, or Lactobacillus acidophilus. And typically you just eating a wide variety of fermented foods is the best way to increase Lactobacillus in general. So like, you know, kombucha, kefir, sauerkraut, miso, tempeh, etc. I am convinced, however, that the very, very best way to, if you're not just going to take a Lactobacillus probiotic, and if you were, I think seed company called Seed makes the best one out there just because it's, it survives the acidic nature of the, of the stomach and seems to travel through the gut pretty well. Well, but there's a guy named Dr. William Davis. Dr. William Davis in his practice uses yogurt a lot, like literally as a way to treat his patients in the same way that a doctor might use pharmaceuticals or supplements. He has a Sibo yogurt recipe. He has an oxytocin chemical producing yogurt recipe. He has a sleep yogurt recipe. He has just kind of like a, like a shotgun. You get them all onto your stomach. Yogurt recipe. And he also has a new book called Super Gut in which all of these yogurt recipes are featured. And it's kind of cool because I have read his book and I have his recipes and I'll order the probiotics from Amazon, you know, like my Lactobacillus reuteri and a little bit of inulin and a prebiotic fiber and basically order all those to the house, put them in a glass mason jar, dump a bunch of our goats goat milk on them, and then just like slip them into the food dehydrator for about 24 to 36 hours. And the cool thing is I can make 100 bucks worth of probiotics last me like the whole year by making and growing his yogurt. And the way that I'll use it is sometimes I'll put a little bit in the smoothie. In addition to the goat milk as a base, I will put a few like, tablespoons on top of a salad. For a nighttime dessert, I'll just basically put a few tablespoons in like a tiny little mug and sprinkle it with some dark chocolate or some stevia or something to kind of sweeten it up a little bit. But I think top of the totem pole would be a really well formulated yogurt. And I would look into Dr. William Davis's book Super Gut and also his yogurt recipes. I'm probably gonna have him on the podcast at some point soon, but I just like, I always have a few glass mason jars in my refrigerator with his yogurt because it's just like so easy to make and really like pennies on the dollar. Once you've bought the supplements, like bought the probiotics and the prebiotic fibers on Amazon on like they'll last for freaking ever because you're just growing them, you know, same way you'd grow like a sourdough bread starter or a kombucha mother or, you know, Scoby or anything like that. So what do you think, Jay?

Yeah, no, no, I, I, I like it. You know what's interesting is that it was probably about two months ago I actually had my gut panel done and I wasn't like, it wasn't that there was a lack of lactobacillus production kind of as, as Billy's indicated for him, but there were some, there were some levels that were low, kind of just all particular, just in particular. And they put me on my functional medicine practitioner put me on a supplement. I guess it's a probiotic, but it's also helpful for like blood glucose regulation as well. And really it's more of just kind of like, hey, let's test this out. I didn't really need much for blood glucose because it's pretty stable. I'm pretty metabolically flexible. But they put me on one called pendulum. Have you ever heard of pendulum, Ben?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's really interesting. It's not the cheapest in the world. I mean, I think it was like close to 200 bucks a month. So it's not the cheapest in the world. But what we found after a three month period with really not changing anything other than just taking pendulum was we found, number one, better glucose control, which was great. But the other thing was, is that I just saw my gut bacteria microbiome start to flourish in ways that I hadn't seen before just really off of this, this one change. So that was going to be. My recommendation is to look into Pendulum. I have no affiliation with Pendulum. Nothing as far as that goes. But interesting supplement.

Yeah. It harkens to the, to the gut studies in Israel that have been coming out for the past few years that show that the individualized response in blood sugar to say like a cookie versus a banana in some people and the fact that it is remarkably high in some people and just stable in others is all related to the microbiome balance. And it turns out that based on that research, certain bacterial strains have been discovered that do help to lower lower overall blood glucose and over time lower what's called hemoglobin A1C, which is like a three month snapshot of your blood glucose levels. And that Pendulum supplement is an example. And I forget what strains they use in it. You know, sometimes I think it's Akkermansia. Okay. Yeah. Because sometimes you can look at the label all. A lot of times reverse engineer supplements. I'll look at the label and be like, oh, here's what's in it. And I can get it for like a quarter of the cost over here. I mean, you always want to be careful about sourcing and everything. But anyway, so yeah, that's a good point too is the microbiome can have a pretty significant impact on blood glucose. So yeah, and we'll be sure that we link to all this stuff. I'll hunt down that Pendulum stuff and link to Dr. Davis's books and everything that we talked about. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com439 that's where the shownotes are going to be. And we always like to read a review. Like we're on Spotify, we're on Apple podcasts, wherever podcasts are found. If you leave us a review, it's super duper. Helps the show out and just helps us stay alive and keeps people aware that we even exist. And so if you're listening in, one of the best things you can do, karma wise, even if you're just like sitting there right now, just like pull open our podcast, wherever you're listening to it, leave it a review. But we also go through and we read those reviews and if we find one we like and then we read it right now on the show, I literally like go up to my upstairs bedroom and put together a gear pack for you and send it to you like a BPA free water bottle and a cool tech T shir and any other little Goodies I want to throw in there and ship you a cool package straight from my casa. So if you hear your review read, which you may about to be hearing, email gearngreenfieldfitness.com gearngreenfieldfitness.Com include your T shirt size and I'll get some out to you. So, Jay, you want to take it away?

Yeah, man. Got one from CMO23, who titled this review changed my life. And CMO23 so said if you would have told me a year ago that I would be fasting, taking cold showers, and sipping bone broth like Baby Yoda, I would have thought I lost my mind. But Ben's health and fitness advice has helped me to lose weight while gaining muscle. You changed my life, Ben. All right. Sipping bone broth like baby Yoda. That's interesting. I did not know that Baby Yoda's go to was bone broth.

Is that. Is that the. The thing's name? In the new Star Wars, Baby Yoda.

Doesn'T have an actual name, so. So its name is Grogu, and Grogu is like really kind of a ridiculous name. So Baby Yoda is kind of the go to for me.

Baby Yoda. Somebody's got to start the baby yoda bone broth.com website.

Exactly.

Awesome. All right, well, great review. Email your T shirt size or your Baby Yoda's T shirt size to gearngreenfeldfitness.com, we'll get something off to you. And for everybody else, leave a review. It's good karma. Helps us show out all the show notes as usual, which we spend a copious amount of time on to make them super helpful for. For you. All right. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 4:39 and I think that's about it. So, Jay, I'll let you get off to whatever it is you're getting off to. I don't know, testing your hrv. I know you just sit around all day and do that and I'm gonna go.

It's kind of funny.

I do. I may go. Try not to follow my ass out here in the ice. So. All right, you guys, thanks for listening in. Love every. Love you, everybody. Catch you on the flip side. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and 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 SO supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the 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 by body and spirit, and I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.