Q&A 440: The Ultimate Guide To Grip Strength & Longevity, Ben's Latest Parenting Tips, Movement Snacks, Cannabis For Sleep & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, the Ultimate Guide to Grip, Strength and Longevity. My latest parenting tips, movement, snacks, cannabis for sleep, a live clubhouse Q and A and a whole lot more. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm feeling forlorn, lonely, neglected, isolated, abandoned. My Trusty podcast sidekick, Dr. J.T. wiles, is notoriously absent. I'm assuming he must have a snowstorm or a fallen log or a strike of lightning or some other natural disaster bestowed upon him as some type of crazy punishment from the heavens for heinous sin that he must have committed this week. That's the only logical conclusion that I can come to as to. As to why my friend Jay isn't isn't on the call today. But either way, we're gonna just rock and roll on forward without him, I suppose, until he joins in. So for those of you on the live Clubhouse Q and A, we will be going through live questions later on in this show and then early on in the show, we'll be talking about a lot of fun stuff, a lot of fun things in the realm of health, longevity, spirituality, biohack, sleep recovery, you name it. So typically this is also the part of the podcast where my podcast guest and I, or my podcast sidekick and I engage in what we call witty banter. I'm gonna have to go all schizophrenic, though, and witty banter with myself because he's not here. So, of course, anytime that I don't know what to say or what to talk to you about, I answer the age old question. That's a great way to kick off any podcast. What am I eating for breakfast these days? Well, well, I'm on a new kick, you guys, and I'm trying something out. This is a little bit of an experimentation. You know, you have these, these paleo ancestral carnivore ish diets that eat as close to a caveman with a club and a greasy chicken bone as possible. And then we have the modern newfangled Soylent Green biohack nutrition genetically modified. This apple will use CRISPR editing to change your sex type of nutritional protocols. And I kind of like to borrow, as I always have done, of a little bit of so called ancestral wisdom and a little bit of so called modern science. And because of that, I'm on a new dietary kick that I'm experimenting with during the month of January. I typically use January because although for a time of my life I became a little bit disillusioned with New Year's resolutions. I've realized that there is a great deal of benefit to be had from some type of a ceremonial head nod to a certain point in the year in which you are going to start or stop certain activities. So as hallmarky and trendy as a New Year's resolution might seem, it can actually be quite powerful, especially when you know that it's acceptable to make meaningful, impactful, or perhaps even slightly embarrassing or large life changes because everybody else is too. Right? It's the one time of year when it's okay to say, announce to the world that you've decided to dye your hair green. Like it's the one time of year when you're going to be more accepted for that. And so because of that, I'm dying my hair green. No, I'm just kidding. Basically, here's how I am structuring January 1st of all. I'm doing a breathwork session every single day and I'm doing a 60 minute breathwork session on one day of the weekends. And I'm doing this with my sons. We committed to 30 days. It is so impactful and such a mind shift and a consciousness shift for us in terms of developing patience, presence, focus, body awareness and the like that we plan on continuing this process. We're using an app called Othership and and I'll put a link in the show notes. I think they even supplied us with some kind of a discount code for our listeners. So if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 440 basically this app is a blend of binaural beats and wonderful instructors and done for you breathwork programs from beginner to advanced that are anywhere from two to 75 minutes in length. So my sons and I are doing about a 12 to 20 ish minute or so breathwork protocol every day, typically before dinner or before bed, like later on in the day when the day's work is done. It's kind of like the last thing we do before we gather the family for dinner. And if we can't squeeze it in, we do it right before we do our process of self examination before bed. And so that's one thing I'm doing. But I also made a dietary shift, alluding back to what I was saying about blending ancestral wisdom and modern science. And what I mean by that is that in the morning I am basically doing a shot of these newfangled ketones. It's called 1,3 butanediol. There's a few different companies making them. Right now I'm using both the bottle from Ketone Aid and I also use the HVMN brand. Both are a similar molecule, but it's probably the best drinkable ketone ester that has yet been developed in terms of satiating the appetite for hours on end. And so what I'm doing for breakfast in the morning is after a 12 to 16 hour overnight intermittent fast. I'm doing a shot of ketones, 20 grams of amino acids and one bottle of feel free. Feel free is this epic kind of like kratom kava, feel good, psychedelic without being psychedelic type of compound that produces what I would consider to be a really perfected blend of relaxation and focus. And so that's how I'm waking up. Not how I'm waking up, but how I'm basically eating around like 9:30am or so for breakfast, if you want to call that eating. So not only is it super effective for me because it's a time hack, I can literally get a super nutrient dense appetite satia meal, if you want to call it that, in five minutes flat. And thus I've saved up about a half hour of my morning for writing. And I'm working on a parenting book right now. And so I'm needing more time to write and so I've hacked time a little bit with that, but it just, it's working for me. It's super stable, clean energy. So ketones, aminos and a bottle of feel free for my breakfast, if you want to call it that. And then the rest of the day I'm basically just eating meat and fish and that's it. So, you know, for lunch today I'll have a pork chop and for dinner I'm going to have some roasted chicken. Yeah, I use some ghee or butter, olive oil, I use salt, some spices. And then the only other thing I'm throwing in there so I'm getting the amplified nutrient density and the range of flavor that I would normally get from vegetables is I'm using Dr. Thomas Cowan's vegetable powders, like his greens powder, low oxalate greens powder, his leaf protein powder, his summer savory powder, his ashitaba powder. Because I do think that plants give us a whole host of kind of like these phytonutrient, flavanol rich medicines, so to speak, that despite human beings being able to survive just fine on animals alone, I think kind of dresses up these meals a little bit. So that's it. Ketones, aminos and feel free for breakfast, meat the rest of the day with some vegetable powders thrown in. So there you have it. And hopefully if any of you decide you're going to try out that protocol, I can tell you right now it's pretty simple, pretty easy. And I feel great, to be honest with you. So great. I mean, like, you know, for me, the definition of great is I have good energy for workouts, I'm there for my family, I'm present, I have good energy, I'm in a good mood. And I also am able to get by on sleeping less while producing more. So right now I'm sleeping about six hours a night, quick 20 to 30 minute nap in the afternoon and I feel great. So there you have it. Hopefully that gives you something to chew on, pun intended in this case, I suppose. All right. As the California girl say, here we go on into today's news flashes. Well, as I mentioned, I am, I'm writing a parenting book right now, this parenting book so that you can get a little sneak peek of what it's going to be. It's written in the style of Tim Ferriss's Tribe of Mentors or Tools of Titans, to where I am curating and collecting responses to a whole host of insightful questions that I've developed about everything from discipline to education to presence to meaning to rituals and traditions. And because although I am a halfway parent, meaning my sons are 13, there's no saying that when they're 20, they're not going to wind up in prison. And I have no freaking clue what I'm talking about. So who am I to write a parenting book? But I have been able to dig into the minds of some of what I would consider to be the most impressive and very unique parents on the face of the planet who are raising really good, creative, free thinking, resilient children. And this book is coming together fantastically. It is a joy to work on and I think you all are going to dig it. It's going to be called Boundless Parenting and it will come out in September of 2022, which is after my next book that comes out. My next book is called Endore. That's already available@endorebook.com to sign up for, but that'll come up out in in April. But anyway, so I'm deep in the trenches of following some things regarding parenting. So we'll kick off today's news flashes with a couple of little parenting items which will be helpful for you whether you are a parent, you plan on being a parent, or you know, somebody who is a parent who could share this information with and impress them at a cocktail party that you know so much about parenting, even though you've never actually say, you know, pushed a baby out your vagina or, or, or made a, made a baby elsewise. So I hope that's not, I hope that's not offensive because we live in a culture now to where I think anybody can be a parent even if you don't have a vagina. More specifically, anyone can give birth if you don't have a vagina. So I heard. But anyways, I digress. I'm going to link in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 440 to this wonderful infographic which really sums up the way that I parent my children. My wife and I, when our sons were young, went through a program called Love and Logic. Love and Logic is basically a parenting approach in which you educate your children about the responsibility of the decision decisions that they might make in life, and then you let them deal with, so to speak, the consequences of those decisions. Now, of course, there are a few exceptions that rule, you know, if your child is approaching a hot stove and they're going to burn their hand off, you may want to actually slap their hand away or pull them away from the stove rather than letting them get the burn and deal with the consequences. But nonetheless, broadly defined, that's the general approach to Love and logic. Letting a kid take responsibility for making the right decisions themselves and educating them on what those right decisions might be. Now, this infographic is called Taming the Defiant Tips for Dealing with the Defiant Child. Not that any children are defiant, but a few little takeaways from that just so you can wrap your head around what this approach looks like. So first, use very few words. Use very few words. The infographic says it's tempting to raise our voices, lecture, or threaten. Using few words shows your child you can't be pulled into an argument. So when kids say, you can't make me, you would say, I love you too much to argue. They say, you can't make me. You say, I love you too much to argue. By the way, these tips come in fantastic for any type of negotiation with any human being, not just a child. Next is the sidestep approach that when you sidestep the power struggle, where a child is struggling with you and there's a power struggle, they want to do something and you don't want them to, or they don't want to do something and you want them to. Reacting immediately doesn't allow time to Determine a reasonable plan or anticipate how that kid's going to react. So you take time to calm down things. So what you do with the power struggle is you say, I'm going to do something about this. Let's talk later, okay? It lets you step away from the immediate consequence of, let's say a gut response like a spanking or a timeout or. No, you can't do that with no explanation. Instead, afford you the space to step away and think the next one is follow through. Follow through means you choose a consequence for a defined behavior that you're willing to enforce. And not following through is going to teach your child to ignore your requests. So, for example, if you say stop doing that and they don't listen, what you want to do is take action the very first time, take action the very first time and enforce whatever consequence that has been put into place. So that can be good or that can be bad. I'm going to give you a good illustration. I am interviewing Tony Robbins in a couple weeks about his new book. It's going to be a fantastic interview. His new book, Life Force is amazing. It's wonderful exploration of regenerative medicine and biohacking, all these cool new therapies that are coming down the pipeline. I read Tony Robbins book and it's so fantastic. I do this often with my sons. When I read a good book, I will offer them money, cash. In this case, a $25 gift certificate to their favorite breakfast restaurant in town, People's Waffles in Spokane. Shout out amazing farm to table Waffles restaurant. And basically what my sons will get if they read that book within two weeks and write a two page book report is a $25 gift card to People's Waffles. Well, I lead with immediate consequences, meaning prior to Friday and this is manifesting that they'll actually do it, I will purchase that gift card. I will have it waiting. So as soon as they deliver that report, they aren't waiting for the gift card. Boom, it's right there. Kids love the immediate consequences, especially positive consequences, and you don't want to delay consequences. So follow through, follow through. Follow through. With your kids, never ever neglect to follow through for something you've promised them, whether good or bad. Next is to lead with empathy. Lead with empathy. So offer kind words before delivering consequences and that will encourage a kid to think about their actions and helps to maintain love and respect. So if you do need to discipline a child, or let's say my son did not do his snow shoveling and dog poop scooping chores on a Friday, and he's supposed to go to his friend's slumber party that night. And I say, well, you know, if you show responsibility in small things, you'll be given responsibility in large things. You did not show responsibility in the small thing, which is your weekly chore. Therefore, I don't feel comfortable giving you responsibility to just go off and go to a, to an overnight slumber party. Well, you lead with something like this, son. I am. I'm heartbroken right now. I am. I'm very sad to tell you this. It's. It's not something that's going to be easy for me to say. And then you lay it out. But leading with empathy is really impactful for kids. And it really does mean a lot to them to see that you're not doing something from a disciplinary standpoint because you enjoy it per se as much as. Because you know it's going to make them a better person. And it makes you, in some cases, just as sad as it makes them. Even though I remember, I think it was my father who spanked me once, he said something like, this hurts me just as much as it hurts you. And I was like, I don't know. That little leather belt you're using on me stings quite a bit. I don't know if your butt's hurting as much as mine is right now, dad. Okay. And then finally, change the language. Speaking positively teaches children to make good choices on their own. Which means, like, instead of saying, you can't go play until you finish your homework, say, feel free to go play as soon as you finish your homework. Or instead of don't talk to me in that tone of voice, say, I'll listen to you as soon as your voice is as calm as mine. Okay, so those are a few examples. I'll link to the full infographic for you in the show notes, which again are BenGreenfieldFitness.com440 but if you're a parent or an educator or a teacher, you should really look into this love and logic parenting approach. And I'm noticing these common themes amongst the parents who are already submitting their replies for this parenting book I'm writing in, many of them use this consequential based, empathetic disciplinary approach, which is very much based on this love and logic. It's interesting how many parents are using that approach. Well, also related to parenting, this one is fresh on my mind because I have a baby living with me right now. I didn't have a baby. But my wife and I have a gal who moved in, who's living with us, who we're helping to provide a home for and she has a baby. So I'm surrounded by a baby right now. I'm seeing baby eating and baby pooping and baby farting, baby crying and all the baby things I haven't seen for about 13, 13 years. So there is a company called Serenity Baby Foods. I love this company. They make like full on organic grass fed beef with sweet potato, grass fed bison with squash, organic roots butternut squash with olive oil. They make baby food just absolutely jam packed with fatty acids and flavor, all organically sourced pasture raised grass fed wonderful company called Serenity Baby Foods. I wish they'd existed when my sons were young because my wife would have saved a lot of time because what she did was she drove around to organic farms, just bought all the shit and brought it home and made it herself. But anyways, the Serenity Company, they deliver this stuff out in pouches and they have a wonderful article that gets into what's called the critical flavor window. I don't know if any of you have ever heard of the critical flavor window, but basically between the ages of 6 to 18 months, your child develops this flavor window and in fact, tastes start to develop in the womb. A baby can detect the flavors from foods through the amniotic fluid, which is actually interesting to me because my sons love pad Thai and the very last vacation my wife and I went on when she was pregnant with my twin sons was indeed to Thailand. So they may have formed an appreciation for ghost peppers and rice noodles even when they were in the womb. But this palate development, this flavor development is interesting because research suggests that exposure to many sweet flavors and sugar can lead to picky eating, sugar addiction and obesity in children. But on the flip side, exposure to a wide variety of flavors and textures actually trains a child to be more open to engaging in those flavors. Like, let's say sardines and liver or, you know, or shellfish, you know, maybe those things that a child might not like early in life, asparagus, broccoli, etc. So the article has some great practical tips, like using herbs and spices like thyme and ginger and rosemary and oregano early, like in the 6 to 18 month phase, rather than salt, using seasonings like dulce and kelp, right, that give a great savory flavor. And I keep these on hand as an alternative to salt as well in my own pantry, just because they're chock full of Important nutrients like, you know, iodine, specifically these seaweed based vegetables. Bone broth. Giving your child bone broth and using bone broth in cooking to braise meats and steam veggies, because that's so savory and full of health benefits and a kid needs that blend of savory and sweet. And then think outside the box with a lot of strong flavored foods like limes and green olives and proscetto and sauerkraut and kombucha and even things like pork rinds and liver and mushrooms. Because the wider the variety of things you expose your child to, the more developed their palate is going to be later in life. So two things that I should comment on regarding this is a we use this approach with our sons and we never had like the adult food and the kid food, right? There was never adult macaroni and cheese or kid macaroni and cheese. Well, the adults have, you know, whatever, you know, steak and mushrooms. There was never the kid, you know, plain pepperoni pizza while the adults had some type of fancy Italian meal. So basically the children were always expected to eat whatever the adults ate, whatever was served on the table. And if they didn't want to eat, they could go to bed hungry. And they figured that out pretty darn quick. Secondarily, I should warn you that this does backfire just a little bit because now when we go out to restaurants and you know, since they were children, when we go out to restaurants, they never ask for the kids menu. They want the like the $48 ribeye with the au jus sauce off of the adult menu and rather than like the, you know, the $13 steak bites from the kids menu. So it has not paid off financially, but it certainly paid off from a health standpoint. And also as a side bonus, for those of you fathers with voracious appetites like mine, the kid's never gonna finish that rib eye steak. So, you know, extra steak for me too. Hooray. So a couple of interesting articles in the parenting department. I'll link to both of those. Alright, next we're gonna get into a couple of things regarding fitness. A couple of things regarding fitness. So did you know, and this was an article that came out on the BBC news website that exercise makes you smarter. Well, probably the answer is yes, but this article really gets into the idea that your blood vessels are like these inert tubes, they're a type of plumbing and at least that's what we've been taught. But that's really not the case. Each Blood vessel has its own live inner layer that responds to changes in things like blood flow and releases this wealth of chemicals in response. So as your vessels are working harder to keep your brain well supplied with oxygen, the cells in this live inner lining of the vasculature release molecules that act like fertilizer for the brain. Things like vascular endothelial growth factor, so called VEG or bdnf, which is like miracle grow for the brain. So essentially you're pumping these chemicals into your brain during exercise. So by taking movement snacks like squats, push ups, burpees, pull ups, swings, et cetera throughout a work day, you're literally continually pumping blood flow to your brain. Anytime that I am kind of feeling sluggish during the day, my go tos are a quick round of breathwork, a quick dunk of my head into a cold pool, or a quick round of squats or push ups or burpees or what have you, because those increase blood flow to the brain and then I'll try the coffee or the piece of nicotine gum or whatever. But exercise is always my go to. And what's interesting about this is that you can also hack this a little bit. Meaning that if you wear blood flow restriction bands like Katsu bands, and when I interviewed the guy who runs the Kaatsu company, and these are like pumpable bands that you can wear on your arms and legs, he'll wear them during the day and they're like pumping his arms and legs just while he's standing there at his desk. And I've tried this a few times and you literally feel like you're getting a little bit of extra blood flow to your brain. Very similar if you do a blood flow restriction style workout, whether you're using like a Vasper full body exercise machine, which is what I do three mornings a week, that combines blood flow restriction and cold and grounding and full body all in one 21 minute workout. Very cool machine, kind of expensive, but very cool. It's called a Vasper. Or I'll do a blood flow restriction band workout where I'll put on the Katsu bands on my arms or my legs and do a bodyweight workout with my arms and legs compressed. What happens is you're going to get a huge rush of lactic acid and this VEGF and BDNF to your brain after you finish a workout like that. But that means that if you use like a nootropic or you know, like let's say theanine or you're taking qualia mind, or you're using, you know, like microdosing with a psychedelic like psilocybin, or you're using, you know, nicotine or caffeine or whatever else, it will just shoot and rush into your brain if you're doing blood flow restriction training when you take those bands off. So the hack here is you dose up with your nootropic, you go do a blood flow restriction band workout, and then as soon as you take those bands off, it feels like your brain just gets this rocket ship to the moon. So if you haven't yet experimented with daily movement snacks to make you smarter or gotten into the whole biohack workout thing where you take nootropics, do a blood flow restriction band workout and then take the bands off and then just go crush a mentally demanding day. It's a very cool trick. And I'll link to this article that has a whole bunch of different ideas for movement snacks. In my book Boundless too, I've got a whole page that just gives you, like five different routines that are very similar to the same type of routines that I'll stop and do during the day when I'm at work. Okay, this next one's really cool. And this one is a new study that is very similar to studies that have come out before it. Hand grip asymmetry and weakness are associated with morbidity accumulation. Okay, this was in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, and it basically highlighted the fact that weak hand grip strength, and technically you can measure it, they have these things called dynamometers those measure hand grip strength. So men who can produce less than 26 kilograms on a dynamometer, squeezing it, and women who produce less than 16 kg, that classifies as weak. And that's associated with pretty much every morbidity that exists. Hypertension, diabetes, cancer, chronic lung disease, cardiovascular disease, stroke, arthritis, even psychiatric problems with a weak grip strength. Now, it's really interesting because we already know overall muscle strength is correlated with longevity, but specifically, grip strength has a high correlation. And there are many studies that have come out that are very similar to this. There was one that came out in 2019 entitled Grip Strength An Indispensable Biomarker for Older Adults that went into this same idea. I'll link to a whole bunch of these studies in the show notes, but basically I want to delve into this in a little bit more detail because it's fascinating why hand grip strength is such a good predictor of longevity. Probably one of the larger studies on just muscular strength Overall was a 2018 meta analysis this was over 2 million men and women and it showed that higher levels of upper and lower body muscular strength are associated with a lower risk of mortality. Okay, so that's huge. We already know stronger muscle strength strength means lower mortality. But then all these follow up studies on thousands and thousands of individuals show that long term mortality risk is specifically associated with grip strength, even when you isolate for some of the other confounding variables. So you know the reason for the muscle piece is we know that muscle mass is a glucose dump, meaning muscle will just take carbohydrates from your bloodstream and they'll dump them into the muscle if you have more muscle. And thus it's really, really great at managing metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance. That's probably, in my opinion, the number one reason that carrying larger amounts of muscle can be beneficial. But of course you have lower frailty. We know that good muscle quality is important for healing because muscle serves as a pool of amino acids. It's the reservoir where if you have physical trauma or severe infection or even cancer, your body uses the amino acids from your muscle. It catabolizes those and uses them as a reservoir for the healing process. So it's almost like by having a little bit of extra muscle, you're also building a greater amount of insurance for other diseases that might come to come to get you in life. Now when we look at hand grip strength studies, basically there are almost 40 different studies, there's probably more, but literally across millions and millions of people showing that higher hand grip strength is associated with a low all cause risk of mortality, risk of dying from just about anything at all. Now these dynamometers you can get and if you just go to Amazon and I'll link to it in the show notes as well, but you can just search for Dynanometer on Amazon and these will test the number of pounds or the number of kilograms that you're producing. Okay. And there are great tables and I'll link to them in the show notes that will give you an idea of where you fall in terms of your grip strength and how you match up to other people. But you get one of these dynamometers and you can begin to test it, because what gets measured gets managed, right? If you do a weekly grip strength test, it can be very, very motivating. The other way to do this kind of like the cheap hack or the easy hack is you do a hanging dead hang and you time how long you can dead hang from a bar and you just do that once a week. And ideally you should be able to maintain or improve your dead hang time. And so if you find that your hand grip strength is inadequate, what are some tips that you can use? Well, a few biggies because I'm super in hand grip strength. I do a ton. When I was, when I was racing for the Spartan pro team and just obstacle racing in general, even before I was racing for the pro team, I realized hand grip strength is one of the number one things in addition to running efficiency and economy that serves you well in an obstacle course race. So what did I do? I did a lot of farmers walks. Farmers walks are where literally you're just picking up a heavy pair of dumbbell and hold them at your sides and walking. And I would often just instead of recovering in between, you know, bench press and pull ups and core work, etc. In the weight room, I would just pick up dumbbells and walk around while I was recovering. Heavy deadlifts, preferably without a strap of course. Fat bars, meaning they sell fat bars. They're also called axle bars or even fat grips that you can attach to an existing bar. Anytime the bar is thicker, it's going to do a better job developing your grip strength. Towel pull ups are really good too. You can drape two small hand towels over like a pull up bar and instead of gripping the bar with your hands, you hold onto the towels. That's a really, really good way to develop grip strength as well. There's the rice trick. I don't know if any of you know about the rice bucket trick, but you find a five gallon bucket, you get a big bag of uncooked rice, you put the rice in there and then you mix a whole bunch of loose change like quarters and dimes and nickels into the bucket. Then you drop the loose change in there and you pour it into the rice and you stir it all around. And then you put one hand in the bucket and you move your fingers through the rice trying to get as much loose change as possible. That's a really good one also for kids, like if your kids in jiu jitsu or tennis or you know, some sport where they're using their grip a lot. Kids love this exercise as a way to develop muscular endurance for grip strength. Also static barbell hold, just like a static hang, like a static dead hang. You can literally just grab a barbell, load it with a bunch of weight like your deadlift weight stand, and just hold it in that standing position as long as you possibly can. Now another thing that I think is really useful especially for People who commute, who are in a car, a lot of. I keep one of these captains of crush hand grip strengtheners in the glove box of my car, right? So when I'm driving, I can literally go back and forth, right side to left side. And I'm kind of weird. Like, I'm always thinking in the car about how I can. How I can get stronger while I'm driving. So I combine that with, you know, these. These Kegel exercises where you'll grip the hand gripper and squeeze like you're stopping the flow of urine, and then release, and then squeeze and release. So you're basically doing grip strengthening strengthening and pelvic floor muscle strengthening at the same time. And so you can be that person at the stoplight, looking like you're trying to pass a giant bowel movement, when in fact, all you're doing is just training your grip strength and your little P muscles. But it's a cool little thing to do anytime you're thinking about driving around and what you can do when you drive. I even use some of these breathwork devices when I drive. Well, you need to be careful with those. There is one that works pretty well. It's called a relaxator. And you put the relaxator in your mouth, and it forces you to breathe in through your nose and then resist as your breath. It resists your breath out through your mouth, forcing you to do these inhales through your nose, thus allowing you to get all the nitric oxide and the humidification and the cleaning of the air that happens when it passes through the nasal passages. And then when you breathe out, your breath is long and exhaled and against a little bit of resistance. So it combines diaphragmatic strengthening with a little bit of that relaxing vagus nerve response that happens when you produce the long exhales. And it's one that I would consider to be safe for driving. You're not going to hyperventilate or pass out using this thing. It's very simple. I go on walks with it as well. And sometimes if I'm working out in the gym, I'll just put it in my mouth if I'm in my home gym and not at one of the gyms where you still have to wear a face diaper. But anyways, that thing's called a relaxator, and I'll toss a link to that one in the show notes, too. It's made by a guy who wrote a really, really great book on breath. I forget the name of the book, but that guy's name is Anders Olson, and really, really great breathwork expert. I've interviewed him on my show before. Okay, so one last thing regarding exercise. Another study, this one was in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research, and it was on certain things that you could do to recover more quickly from exercise. Now, we know that high dosing with antioxidants like vitamin C and vitamin E can do a really good job limiting the formation of a lot of inflammatory markers that occur post exercise, namely things like C reactive protein and creatine kinase and some of these parameters of oxidative stress like lipid peroxidation and radical peroxyls. Right. So vitamin C and vitamin do a really good job protecting against that. And we also know that cryotherapy or cold water immersion can reduce delayed onset muscle soreness and seems to do a pretty good job at reducing inflammatory markers as well. What this study did was they combined the two. They thought, well, if both work, what happens if you combine them? Well, indeed, when you look through the graphs of this study, it's pretty freaking impactful. The difference between just using an antioxidant, just doing an ice bath versus doing the antioxidant in the ice bath alone. Now, I'm very, very glad that the author of this paper threw in the important caveat. They noted this in the study. Don't do this immediately post exercise because you'll blunt your natural inflammatory response to exercise and thus your ability to be able to build muscle effectively. Okay, you want to space this like at least a couple hours out from your exercise session, but if you're already doing ice baths and you're trying to control soreness or inflammation, it seems that combining the ice bath with vitamin C, vitamin E, or one could argue, although in this study they use vitamin C and vitamin E, some type of like a full spectrum antioxidant, will allow you to reduce delayed onset muscle soreness in what is a pretty significant fashion based on the study results. And so something to think about including and throwing into the mix. A lot of people out there are already doing cold thermogenesis or cold immersion. A lot of people out there are already using antioxidants for recovery. I don't know a lot of people who are intentionally combining the two, but there's definitely a case that could be made for it. Okay, a few more things. I wanted to get into sleep. We're going to turn to sleep now. Cannabis use at night. I know a lot of people now are using cannabis. There's even this newer form of cannabis that's shockingly still legal. It's called Delta 8 THC. It's very similar to Delta 9 THC in that it seems to have potent psychedelic effects. It gets you high, but it's fully legal. Like you can order it online in edible or in smokeable or in oil or tincture form. And so I know a lot of people who are using it for sleep right now because it gives you almost this full body relaxing high that actually is very helpful for sleep. And in my own internal testing, even though I don't use it a lot, because I'm a little bit concerned about the potential estrogenic effects of frequent THC use and also the potential impacts on things like dream cycles and some of the deep sleep parameters. My sleep architecture doesn't suffer that much when I have used Delta 8 THC, although my body still responds best to about 200-300mg of CBD before bed if I'm going to target the endocannabinoid system for sleep. But what this study looked at was cannabis use, and that would be cannabis with THC and its impact on sleep. And it's very interesting, the findings. What they found was that cannabis use was linked to both short sleep times, meaning less than six hours, and more sleep times compared to the general population not using cannabis. Okay, so this is important because we also know that sleep times that are too short and sleep times that are too long are also associated with a decrease in longevity. Right. We're not supposed to sleep too short and we're not supposed to sleep too long. Ideally we're in about the six to nine hour range range. So what this means is that if you're using cannabis for sleep and you're finding that you're sleeping a really long time, or you're finding that you're sleeping a shorter time, it might not be the molecule for you. Or you may want to consider switching from something like cannabis to like a full spectrum CBD or a CBD isolator or something that's going to have a little bit less of a THC component in it. Because most of the studies that I've seen, the THC is responsible for the deleterious effects on sleep architecture. So what I'm saying here is, long story short, it's okay to use cannabis for sleep. There's a lot of evidence that can help with sleep because of its anxiolytic effect. But if you start using it, especially with THC in it, and you experience short sleep times or long sleep times, A, that's normal, but B, if you are one of those responders. Because endocannabinoid unique responses are highly dependent on genetics. I did a whole. There's a program that will actually test your individualized response to cannabis. I forget what it is. I'll try and hunt it down and put it in the show notes if I can find it. Because I featured it in a weekly roundup a few months back. I did the test and it's really interesting. It'll even give you your sweet spot for CBD dosage, your sweet spot for THC doses, the strains of marijuana that would really agree well with you and your genetics. Fascinating study. It's a genetic salivary analysis. So I will find it and put it in the show notes or somebody who's making the show notes will do it. But basically, just be cautious with cannabis and sleep. It's not harmful, but especially if it has THC in it. Be careful if you're sleeping short or sleeping long, meaning sleeping shorter than six hours, longer than nine hours. Proceed with caution on cannabis use. There was also related to sleep, a great overview of melatonin that came out in the New York Times and it was just a really fantastic article because I'll use melatonin occasionally like a sledgehammer. Meaning if I'm having really poor sleep cycles and I'm going through a time in my life where I feel like my circadian rhythm is just, just off, I've been traveling a lot. I need to push the big giant red reboot button, so to speak. I'll use my friend Dr. John Laurence's Zen products and take about a 200 to 600 dose of melatonin via either his melatonin suppository or his oral. And I realize that's a ton of melatonin, but if I do that for two or three days in a row, paired with a ton of bright morning light, I can orient myself to whatever time zone that I happen to be in much, much more quickly. It's a little bit of a hack. Obviously you get drowsy in the morning, but as soon as light hits your eyes, the melatonin begins to wane from your system pretty quickly. Now, during the day, your pineal gland, your little pea sized pineal gland remains pretty inactive. But then a few hours before your natural sleep time, when it starts to get dark outside and the light, which is that's preferably fading, if you're not looking at a lot of screens before you go to bed, the light entering your retina begins to fade. Well, that pineal gland Switches on, which then floods your brain with melatonin. Which is why melatonin is often called the hormone of darkness. Darkness. It's even referred to as the vampire hormone sometimes. And so when that happens, your respiration slows, cortisol falls, your eyelids begin to droop and you start to get sleepy. What's interesting is if you flood your body with melatonin during the day, when you're exposed to light, you actually don't really see much sleepiness. I dare any of you, maybe don't do the 300mg, but take like your standard 0.3 to 3mg dose of melatonin in the middle of the day. It won't really make you sleepy, but if you take it at night, it will have that effect. And a big part of that is the interplay between light and what's called your suprachiasmatic nucleus and the way that melatonin impacts you. And so it's really interesting that fact because melatonin is also a really good anti inflammatory. Some folks have even used it for its antiviral properties. And it can be taken during the day. And if you want to take melatonin during the day and you don't want to get sleepy, just bathe yourself in light and it can actually have an interesting effect from an anti inflammatory standpoint without making you sleepy. I think there's other better ways to fight inflammation during the day, like say curcumin or a cold shower. But nonetheless, in a pinch, melatonin could work. The article gets into dosage about 0.5 to 1 milligram, but you take it about 30 minutes to an hour before bedtime. I know a lot of people who keep the melatonin by the bedside and take it right before they fall asleep. What I do is I keep some melatonin by my bedside. I use the stuff for microdosing with melatonin I use the quicksilver scientific, very, very small, like liquid tincture of melatonin. And what I do is when I get in bed, I usually read for 20 to 30 minutes anyway. So right before I start reading, I'll take a little bit of that melatonin. As a total aside. As a total aside, this has nothing to do with melatonin. I've also been experimenting with infrared light treatment to the head prior to bed. They make these infrared light caps that they'll use a lot of times for things like Alzheimer's or dementia or improved cognitive output. And I use one called a vielight. But I Got their new one recently. It's called the Vielight Duo, and it allows you to shift to an alpha zone or a gamma zone. So in the morning I can put it at 40 hertz and just basically drive my brain into hyperdrive. It's like a cup of coffee for my head. But then in the evening I can run that alpha one. And I'm really liking specifically what it does to, like, sleep latency, like how much more quickly you fall asleep when you put this thing on. It essentially shifts your brain into a state in which you'd be if you were meditating. But it's a hack for me because rather than sitting in my bed doing breathwork and meditation, I can slap this thing on, pick up my book, be reading, and at the same time getting all the effects from a brainwave standpoint, as if I'm meditating. And that thing runs for about 20 minutes. So get in bed, take the melatonin, put the Vielight on the head and alpha Brainwave zone, read a good book, and then roll over and fall asleep. And so that's another thing I'm kind of throwing in the mix since I'm telling you guys about a few new things I've been experimenting with recently. Recently. And then a few other interesting things the article gets into in case you don't have time to read it, is there's a couple of calculators that will actually, they'll find out if you're flying, your destination, arrival points, your flight time, your normal sleep patterns. One called Jet Lag Rooster, the other one is made by Fleet Street Clinic. Both are in the App Store, Jet Lag Rooster or there's a calculator if you look up Fleet Street Clinic and they'll tell you when to take melatonin. Like what time is going to be best to take melatonin before you leave on your trip and when you get on your trip to be able to help shift your body into the right sleep cycle. So we know there's apps like that for vitamin D, there's apps like that for light. Well, there's an app like that for melatonin now as well, which is actually pretty cool. So, interesting article on melatonin. I thought it was super duper helpful and hopefully it helps you out a little bit as well. And then one last fun one to throw in there before I take just a few questions here in the time that we have left, if any of you have not seen the Spurious Correlations website, I knew of it a couple of years ago. I kind of forgot about it. But man, oh, man, when it comes to a relatively witty positioning of the correlation versus causation argument, this is about one of the best websites out there. So check it. I'll link to it in the show notes. It's run by a guy named Tyler Vijian. Vision Vigan. I don't know Vijian. Yeah, I'm not quite sure. Anyways, he gets into things like the direct correlation between us spending on science, space, and technology and. Drumroll, please. Suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation, or number of people who drowned by falling in a pool almost directly correlates between 1999 and 2009 with films Nicolas Cage appeared in. Per capita cheese consumption between 2000 and 2009 was directly correlated with the number of people who died by becoming tangled in their bed sheets. And, I mean, he's got like 40 different examples on here. I'll throw one more at you. And he actually has a whole book of this as well. So how about this? The. The US Crude oil imports from Norway directly correlate with drivers killed in a collision with a railway train. When you are looking at news headlines, people that correlate one incident to another always question whether it's a true correlation. And you may want to visit this website just to hammer that fact home for you. So check it out. Spurious correlations. I will link to that as well as all the other little research studies that I mentioned in this snippet@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 440 all right, let's bring somebody up for a question.

And just so you know, Ben, I've been here the whole time.

Oh, hello, Jay. You were here?

Dude, I've been here the whole time. The squadcast link is not working, so I'm not sure what happened, man.

Well, I can hear you loud and clear now, so maybe you can pipe in on. On the Q and A. Cool. Let's do it. Here we go.

Hey, so I've been reading that book that talks about your sleep time or your. Your chronotype.

Yeah, Dr. Michael Bruce's book.

That's the one.

Yeah.

And I definitely have a dolphin chronotype. And fortunately, my job. My job at 9, so that's. That's okay. And I try to get some sun in the morning.

And can you explain the dolphin. The dolphin chronotype to people who may not know?

Yeah, Dolphin chronotype is the person who never really sleeps.

Or they sleep.

They sleep lightly. They're kind of always.

Yeah, they're not. They're not a night owl, they're not an early bird. They're just kind of all over the map. Right.

So do you have any hacks or thoughts on optimizing that or being more alert? Is it even possible to change? And of course, according to his research, it's not really that you can take melatonin and then three days later your system will be back at your chronotype.

Yeah, he has a new book as well. I recently read it. I don't even know if it came out yet, but I actually at least got a beta copy. And in his new book he gets into this idea that you can, especially if you're a dolphin, engage in certain practices that allow you to more easily navigate a society that runs on some pretty set light dark cycles and a rhythm that might not correlate to the way that you're genetically built. Right. Like in ancient times you probably would have been like the sentry who was planted on the walls at night. And maybe you slept a little bit during the day or whatever. But anyways it won't come as a news flash that most of those things are things that we know as so called zeitgebers or circadian rhythm regulators anyways. Namely shifting your circadian rhythm to be more attuned to normal, if you want to call a normal sleep wake cycle by engaging in exercise, preferably in the first four hours of the day, hefty light exposure within an hour after waking and the use of things like sunrise, alarm clocks, et cetera to accelerate that process. And bright light boxes and bright light producing devices like say the human charger, which is the in ear bright light producing device or the retimer glasses which produce a bluish green spectrum very similar to sunlight that you wear during the day. Or the type of light boxes that they sell for seasonal affective disorder on Amazon. And then food like don't be a breakfast skipper as you're trying to align your circadian rhythm. Not only breakfast within the first couple hours after waking, but preferably a breakfast that is rich in protein, like 20 to 40 grams of protein with breakfast. And then in addition to that, even though Michael doesn't talk about this in his book, a couple other recommendations I have for you is consider the use of technologies that shift your brainwave states at the time of day that you need it shifted. Like you could use the Apollo wearable which produces a vibratory sensation. You wear it on your wrist or on your ankle and you can put it on awake and alert or you could put it on sleep and renew. Those are a couple of examples. So you could make sure you're putting on awake and alert at the time when you really do want to send your body a message that you want to wake up. Then put on sleep and renew at the time when you want to shift your circadian rhythm into more of a sleep phase. Very similarly, there's a device called the hapbe H A P B E E. And I've done an interview with both the founder of HAP B and also the founder of the Apollo device. HAP B operates a little bit differently than the Apollo. It's not a vibratory haptic sensation. It is a magnetic stimulation. And that one, same thing. You can put it in awake mode, you can put it in sleep mode, you can put it in a mode that simulates caffeine, you can put it in a mode that simulates, say, like adenosine or melatonin, two of your more sleepy nighttime hormones. So you could even throw those into the mix too. I mean, there's no reason, if you didn't want to pull out all the stops. You couldn't get up in the morning, you know, do a meal, an exercise session, have the, have the as much of the light exposure as possible, do the Apollo, do the HAP B. Then at night do the melatonin and again repeat the Apollo and the HAP B. But in more of a nighttime mode paired with the, with the nighttime light restriction, using blue light blocking glasses, et cetera. And that'd be not only effective for helping a dolphin to become more aligned with the circadian rhythm, it makes life easier from a societal standpoint, but then is also wonderful as like a jet lag strategy. Like, I'm flying to Portugal for this beautiful retreat that I get to be a part of at the Six Senses Retreat in Portugal coming up in March. And I guarantee in my travel bag and in my carry on bag on the airplane, I'll have a HAP B, I'll have an Apollo, I'll have the human charger, I'll have the retimer glasses, I'll have melatonin, and then I'll have some type of an energetic daytime compound. And by using those things in my travel bag, I'll be able to very rapidly shift my body onto the Portugal time zone when I get there, much faster than if I was just using, say, like exercise and food as my primary zeitgebers. So hopefully that helps. Justin and a great question, Jay. You have anything to add?

Interestingly enough, I did have some things to Say, because one of the things that I saw, I don't know if this was a published research paper or if this actually came from some other avenue of news, but I saw that those who have the dolphin chronotype typically are a little bit more higher strung and a little bit more anxiety or they have a little bit more anxiety or provoked by anxiety. And so one of the things that I would highly recommend is just the incorporation of like good strong mental breaks throughout the day and then also like the incorporation of more like parasympathetically engaging tools. So that could be things like hrv, biofeedback, it could be breath work. Just things to kind of break apart the day mentally, especially like if anxiety is of concern or stress is high of concern. So again, I don't remember where I read that. I don't know if that was a published research paper that showed that there was that combination. But I think because dolphins can have higher levels of insomnia that correlates highly with anxiety as well. So that's my two cents.

All right, cool, cool. Good feedback.

I got a question about how do you see your role in your perspective and your body's experience? Detoxification, rest periods. What role do you see detoxification playing in your lifestyle and how important is it?

I sometimes become a little bit disillusioned with the idea of done for. You sold detox or fasting programs. You know, there's kits out there like the Prolon kit and there are, you know, there's the old, you know, cayenne pepper honey whatchamacallit. What was that one called, Jay? The Master Cleanse. Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah, the Master Cleanse. So anyways, you know, this idea of basically f up nutritionally and from an environmental toxicity standpoint for a very long period of time, and then hit the sledgehammer or, you know, take the sledgehammer out and hit the body with a massive detox protocol every January 1st. I, I really don't think that approach is, well, let me put it this way. To me, that approach is, is the same idea of, you know, eat cookies non stop October through December and then massive exhausting weight loss phase through January. Can be tough on the body. You get these Herxheimer reactions. You spill toxins into the bloodstream as you burn fat cells and they release their toxins. And so I am a fan of the concept of detoxification, but I basically endorse it heavily through acts of omission, meaning no volatile organic compounds in the house like furniture or carpet that off gases. All clean household cleaning chemicals, personal care products, like full audit of everything. And I have a whole chapter about this in my book Boundless. And then you pair that with acts of commission, meaning what? I do like every Wednesday throughout the entire year, I do a coffee enema every day. I go 12 to 16 hours without eating. So I get that natural cellular autophagy cleanup four to five times a week. I do a deep sweat in the infrared sauna every morning. I jump up and down on a trampoline for five minutes for the lymph flow. Once a quarter, I do some type of a more extended fast, like a four to five day fast where I'm doing just bone, broth and vegetable juices, or like more of an ayurvedic based kitchari cleanse, or even like a juice fast or something along those lines. And so by spacing little periods of body cleanup throughout the year, which is a very common practice for much of human history, you know, from a religious standpoint and also a health standpoint, like, like identifiable ritualized routines throughout the year that you do to just keep your body clean, so to speak, I think that you can do a much better job maintaining a low toxin load, a low metal load, and a low inflammatory load versus just like letting stuff build up for a long period of time and, you know, finally washing the car once it's covered in mud, so to speak, versus kind of keeping it as sparkly and shiny throughout the year as you possibly can. So that's my general approach to detoxification.

So I appreciate you addressed both sides of the question. My question wasn't about the fad, so I'm glad you approached that. But it's more like how do you leverage the natural detoxification processes in the body, in your lifestyle, if at all? And is that important and why? I think that would be beneficial to other people and to learn your perspective on it.

I don't understand what you mean when you say leverage the natural detoxification protocol. Can you explain?

Yeah. So our bodies naturally have detoxification pathways. Precipitation elimination, defecation, perspiration. Right, right. And so a lot of people don't leverage them in the sense that they're not making conscious choices to use them and to make sure they're excreting and eliminating what needs to be what we're calling detoxed.

Okay, so I was. Yeah, I'm deaf. Okay, so I think what you're getting to is the major detoxification pathways. A we have our phase one through arguably phase four pathways in the liver where we're binding the toxins. And typically they're bound after they've been modified in some way to allow them to be excreted by the body. And then we have other pathways where they're actually removed from the body via the sweat, the stool, the urine, the breath, et cetera. And so you've got your nutrients that you use. And I certainly do endorse the use of nutrients that would enhance some of these phase one and other phase pathways in the liver. You know, glutathione, N acetylcysteine. One that flies under the radar that is like the best hangover cure in the world is dihydromyristine. Dihydromyristine. I've only found one company on Amazon that makes it, but I got that tip from, I think Sean Wells when I interviewed him on my podcast. And that one one's amazing. I'll hunt it down and link to it in the show notes. But basically you have the frequent use of compounds like that that help to accelerate those pathways. And then binders. I think that activated charcoal is probably top of the totem pole for that that you're doing typically prior to engaging in the things that will allow for excretion. So that would mean like once a week you'd wake up, you do glutathione, N acetylcysteine, dihydromyristeine at 6:00am, and then at say like 7:00am, you take your activated charcoal and then you go off after 7am and if you wanted to do the stool pathway, you do a coffee enema. If you want to combine them, you do like a coffee enema. Then you go straight into the infrared sauna and you sweat it out. And then you could also engage in a long exhale, short inhale, breathwork pattern. So you're also breathing out some of the CO2 and some of the metabolic, like, I guess what you refer to as almost like gases that are gonna occur as you're engaging in metabolism of toxins. And so that would be an example of how you could kind of like string all those detox pathways together, if that makes sense. So that's something you could easily do on a weekly basis. And that's very similar to mymy Wednesday morning, mostmost weeks of the year, dude.

So what was funny about Nathaniel's question is, and I love your response, Ben, in referring to the physiological detox pathways, but I'm going to go ahead and pull the psychologist card and talk about my own personal mental detox, which has actually been like a primary goal for me. At the, at the start of this year I was just immersed in too much news and information and it was such an overload for me. And so for me, like in order to engage in a mental detox, it's just been a lot more like spending time away from those things that I know are quite toxic to my spirit, to my relationships, to my overall mental and cognitive well being. And that's a bit of self awareness. But to self regulate, it's just been a lot more journaling, a lot more like walks where I put my phone in my pocket. I just engaged in a really solid mindful walk and allow the mind just to kind of go wherever it goes. Don't let there be this massive amount of suppression of thought and idea. And then the other thing that I've been doing a lot too is just like a lot more creative writing, which is not my forte necessarily. Like it's not something that I have tried to build or exercise as a skill, but it's just been almost like free association. And I never really had done that more as like for a mental detox. I just hadn't engaged in that type of practice.

Well, you guys, let's do one more question here. Let's do one more question. Let's make it a good one.

Hello.

Hello, John. What's going on man?

Hey, I just found you guys great, great content and I found your article. I kind of type a quick question on question, quick question is with respect to red light, I noticed there's nothing or I didn't see anything regarding eye protection. Are there any kind of cautions there? And then my other question is more with respect to a CGM and kind of tracking, you know, more of micro macros with respect to what, what food and combinations you eat and how that affects your blood sugar. If that's a metric out there. I didn't again didn't see any article or reference to that. So the tech with the CGM and then something with red light den eye protection. Thanks.

Yeah, great question. So yeah, the tech with the cgm, we've actually, we've covered this before on other podcasts. The idea of controlling glycemic variability and being aware of the individual response which comes down to everything from, from bacteria to genetics to pancreatic enzyme production, dictating that if you're not taking advantage of how easy it is right now to get your hands on a blood glucose monitor through a company like levels, slap that thing on, wear it for a month and see what your individualized response to meals are. You're missing out on a big thing you could do to impact your health. So absolutely, I'm a huge fan of that and we have plenty of articles. If you go to my website and you search for cgmngreenfieldfitness.com you'll find a few really helpful articles where I've written about how to use these CGMs and what you can find out from them. Regarding red light therapy, it's interesting because red light therapy has actual documented beneficial effects on eye health. Because your eyes are affected by mitochondrial dysfunction, your eye, specifically your retina, has the highest concentration of mitochondria in your whole body. It also, a lot of people don't realize this. It's got the highest metabolic demand in the body. Your eyes, it's the hardest working organization that you own. And the eyes actually respond really well to red light therapy. So it's been shown that it's a pretty safe and relatively non invasive approach for something like age related macular degeneration. And studies have shown that visual acuity in patients with age related macular degeneration can improve when treated with red light therapy. We're talking about like the near infrared lights that, you know, a company like Joovv makes them or you can get them like outfitted in your sauna. And it might actually do that by acting on what's called your retinal pigment epithelium, this thin layer of cells that protects your retina and regulates like nutrient and waste and metabolic byproducts. So it seems to help out with that. There's other studies that have shown that photobiomodulation can help out with diabetic retinopathy, meaning it might actually inhibit the degeneration of the capillaries in the eye that are related to like the leakage in those capillaries that are caused by diabetes. It's been shown to help with amblyopia, which is when the brain kind of ceases to recognize signals properly from the eye that can a lot of times occur, especially with age. And it appears that red light therapy helps to improve the electrical signals that are passing between the synapses in the gaps between neurons for your central nervous system, specifically related to your eye and allow for better communication between a weak eye and the brain. It's been shown to help out with glaucoma. There's a lot of eye conditions that this can help with and therefore the idea of slapping on a big old fat pair of Sunglasses when you're using light might actually be something that you want to think twice about. Now some of these studies also used a little bit of UV light. And we know that you do need to be careful with excess UVA light exposure and even UVB light exposure to a certain extent. If you're going to be out in the super bright sun in the desert or on a ski slope for a long period of time. Wearing sunglasses does seem to make pretty good sense when it comes to like a high dose of uv. With red and near infrared light though, it's pretty safe if it's in like the spectrum that is used on most of these devices, like that 600 to 800 nanometer ISH range. And you know, as with any of these type of treatments, you want to be careful with length of exposure. I wouldn't go longer than 10 to 20 minutes. And you also need to note that a lot of these studies even use near infrared, which is invisible to the naked eye. So if the light seems to be irritating to you, you can put whatever red light producing device that you're using in near infrared mode and just turn off the red light mode. Or you can always just wear the little goggles that come with the devices that they throw in as like a built in comfort mechanism for people whose eyes are bugged by the red light. But they don't throw those in because research has shown that like the red light spectrum is damaging to the eyes. If anything it's blue light and UV light that's going to have a negative effect on the mitochondria of the retina. So what do you think, Jay?

Yeah, no, no, I totally agree. I remember when the first JOOV panels came out like they would give you, it looked like those almost sun tanning goggles. And I think that, you know, initially they didn't have a ton of reason research to support like people looking directly at them. And to my knowledge, I don't think they still want you directly to look into the light. However, I do because of the studies that you mentioned. I think it's well worth the benefit. We know that IR and red light can have significant both retinal and cognitive and physiological benefits, period. You know another thing too is that like, for me, like I still see a lot of benefit in allowing that light to hit my eye, but a lot of benefit also too in getting full spectrum light, you know, during the day, especially in the morning, for circadian rhythm balance. But yeah, I think that they generally like still tell you not to look in the lights. But I think that's a complete, like, you know, CYA type thing and is less a. Because they don't think that it's beneficial. But for me personally, I mean, for the last, I guess what, three, four years that I've had juv panels, I've. I've looked at the light and actually found there to be pretty good benefit.

I have a, I have a massive red light outfitted in my clear light sauna. Like, they, they will sell you like an actual red light. Not a full spectrum, like, not like a near or mid infrared, but like, or, or a full spectrum infrared, but an actual red light that's like this massive bright light. And I'm staring at that thing doing yoga in my sauna like four to five times a week. And like, my, my eyes feel amazing and I've been doing that for a long time. I realize that's anecdotal and that, you know, it's an n equals 1. But nonetheless, I look at red light a lot and I have no concerns about it. So hopefully that helps out John. And gosh, I think that's about all we have time for today. Jay, you didn't happen to hunt down a review where we could give something away to any of the listeners of the show, did you?

Yeah, dude, I've got one man I can prepare.

Sweet. All right, well, this is the time when we reward people who leave the show a good review. One of the best ways to just, you know, keep our show in business and keep this podcast coming is to visit the show notes and to check out our sponsors and all the wonderful deals we have over there for you and those today or@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 440. But if you leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform, we're on Spotify, we're on even fricking YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Apple Music, you name it. If we hunt down a good review that you have left and we read it on the show, you just email gearngreenfieldfitness.com and I will piece together a handy dandy surprise gifts pack and send it your way straight from my front door. So, Jay, take it away. Who's. Who's the winner this week?

So this one comes from. I'm just gonna say the letters because I think it's probably just like initials or maybe a last name. Mgu, J, E, R. And they entitled this as. Or I should say titled this as Changed my life. Said thank you for providing amazingly soundful information that is life changing. It has occurred to me that I can do so much more to help my body to be the best it can be. Thank you for providing a platform on healthy living. And they signed it Tracy. So it came from Tracy.

Well, thanks Tracy. And I think Tracy, in a very passive aggressive way just called me a loudmouth by referring to our podcast as soundful. But I'll take it exactly what she was doing. Or maybe she's. Maybe she meant soulful. It was just an autocorrect. I'm gonna go with that. Yeah. Well anyways, Tracy, email gearngreetfulfitness.com I'll send you a handy dandy gift pack. And for the rest of you, thank you so much for joining us on Clubhouse. For those of you who are on the live Clubhouse Q and A and if you don't know how to get on that, well, if you follow me on any of my social media platforms, from Twitter to Instagram to Facebook, or even the free newsletter@BenGreenfieldFitness.com you'll always be the first to know when these Clubhouses are going to go live, even though it's typically Wednesday mornings a couple times a month at 10:30am Pacific Time. And for everybody else listening in, again, show notes are at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 440. Jay, thank you for ever so briefly showing up and taking a break from whatever you were up to to grace us with your presence.

I do what I can. You know, I was just, you know.

Out doing a cold plug. I figured all those fun stuff. Yeah. All right. All right folks, thanks for tuning in. Have an amazing week. 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 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, 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.