Shattering The Myths Of Detox Therapy, Infrared Saunas, Health Scams & More.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, have somebody actually take a picture of you with a thermographic imaging camera While you've spent 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes in an infrared sauna. And then you're able to actually see what parts of your body are being warmed up by the infrared rays coming off the emitters. The steam generators will release steam as soon as it boils, and it'll be boiling at a lower temperature than usually what a distiller is using. So that first steam that comes off at the lower temperature is filled with all of the stuff in the water you don't want. Either I just get an infrared sauna, or I get one that was big enough where I could do some exercise in it and I'd like to put on there probably a stationary bike where I could do some high intensity training on it. Then I probably was designed for exercise with oxygen training. While I'm in the sauna, I'm all about efficiency and time.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition. Voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness.

His show provides you with everything you.

Need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy, all the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And in today's podcast, you're going to get to meet Alex Terrace. And I've only known Alex for about a month or so after being introduced to him by one of my friends who was getting me some information on infrared saunas.

And.

And Alex's job is to actually test and review health technology or, you know, detox therapy or all these. These pieces of health gear out there and biohacking gear, like saunas and cold lasers and infrared and hyperbaric oxygen therapy and oxygen concentrators, steam generators, whole body vibration. You get the idea. Just all these things that you probably see ads for on the Internet and that you probably see being talked about a lot in, like, the alternative health community. But Alex actually kind of gets down and dirty, and he's a wealth of knowledge when it comes to this stuff. Everything from like, the patents and the engineering to the design to the warranties, to just, like, all the little things to look for, how to know whether or not you're saving money or getting scammed how to know whether or not this stuff actually works versus, you know, has no research behind it. So Alex and I are going to talk about a lot of that stuff today. And he has a master's degree in nutrition. He's got. He's got over a decade of experience working as a consultant for the sports and the health and the spa industry. And he does have a website as well. His website is over@healthhacksreviewed.com and I know that's a pretty long URL to remember. So everything Alex and I talk about today, along with his website and anything else that you need in terms of goodies will be over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com health scams. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com HealthScams. That's where you can grab the show notes for this episode. So, Alex, I gotta tell you, man, most folks that I talk to who are in the detox or the holistic health industry, they have some kind of a crazy story like some cancerous tumor or some crazy autoimmune disease that they went to or something that led them to, to the point where they started experimenting with some of these things that might not necessarily be accepted as common practice by Western medicine. I'm curious, is that the case for you or is this just all strictly business?

Yeah, that's definitely the case. And thanks, Ben, for having me on. Kind of started actually back in 2000 and around that time I was going to school and then after that progressed into kind of going to my master's, that type of thing. The whole time as I'm kind of studying things, when I actually got to really test out what I knew in the real world, I started to really notice that unfortunately, you can't just always really correct things and really improve everybody's health situation. Especially when we're talking about like high performance and kind of really taking things to the next level just solely through food, food and diet. It just didn't quite seem to be enough just with based on all the kind of environmental crap out there. And I mean, you name it. And so I basically just wanted to become more effective at what I did. And now this was down in Austin, Texas, in that area. And they just have a variety of different types of stuff from spas and real alternative therapies and things like that. I was like exposed to a variety of different things. Initially though, back then I just kind of thought a lot of that equipment, you know, when I first came across, it was just, it was interesting, but I didn't think it probably did a whole lot basically, but you know, it wasn't, it wasn't until I actually, I was introduced to company working with 9 11. Basically firemen, trainers and people who were basically on the ground at the time got exposed to a lot of toxins. And talking to just a few of those guys actually in person and actually hearing the stories of different types of equipment that they were using to detox, that just, that kind of woke me up. I was, I was hearing just crazy stories, you know, sweating, you know, neon green and just all sorts of bizarre stuff.

And these were firefighters?

Yeah.

That's crazy. My dad and my brother are or were firefighters. Is this just like pollutants that they're getting exposed to in burning buildings?

No, no, no. Really related to 9 11.

Oh, specifically related to 9 11.

And the buildings came down, all that kind of stuff. There's just all sorts of. It was old buildings. And you know, this actually translates into just individuals in the construction industry and those types of industries where they work, they get exposed to just all sorts of stuff. Plummers get exposed to all sorts of toxins. But whatever the heck it was in the Twin Towers, I mean, they were sweating out neon colors and they were using heavily different types of equipment to do that. Of course, one of the main things they were using was infrared saunas. It was kind of after that and then I was just kind of shocked. I then started to actually try a lot of stuff myself. Starting to realize that I can't take anybody else's word for it. And I just kind of just started to experiment with different sorts of things at different local spas and found that I got good results with some stuff. And honestly, not a lot of good results with sometimes different brands at different spas or detox clinics we're carrying.

So I gotta ask you, dude, because I guess like in Spokane, Washington, where I live, there's not a lot of spas or detox clinics, or at least I'm not aware of them. If there are, I would imagine maybe there's more because you're in New York City, right? For sure, yeah. Would you just like wander into a spa or into a detox clinic and just like start using their stuff or how does that work exactly? I mean, is that like walking into the place of the mall and using their massage chair?

That would be nice if that was the case, but unfortunately they. Yeah, most places have a lot of this expensive equipment. They certainly want to monetize their investment. So normally different types of places, and I've Actually helped them structure this different facilities. They'll usually charge by half hour or 45 minutes or an hour hour or 30 minute increments for use of different types of different devices or equipment.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, interesting. I honestly don't know if I've ever been to a place where you. I've done like the float tank, I guess I've done the float tank, the cryotherapy, those are examples of places where you go to rent equipment or use equipment for a certain period of time. So interesting. Okay, so you and I, like I mentioned we first connected because I and I'm working on a big article about this too that'll be published soon at BenGreenfieldFitness.com but I delved into infrared saunas and I've always wanted to build a sauna. And after a ton of research and talking with you and some other folks, I decided that an infrared sauna was going to serve my needs best. I'd like to hear it from you though. As far as these infrared saunas go, why would somebody want to use something like that as opposed to say like a dry sauna or a steam room or something of that nature?

Yeah, great question. So you know, traditional sauna, traditional CMER has been around forever and we certainly know the benefits of that. There's been plenty of studies with that. And actually a lot of the same kind of principles of using those therapies, those types of equipment do actually translate over to infrared. Really the only difference is when you're in infrared sauna it's not so much about the ambient heat. Heat in the cabin. You know, it's not going to be 190 degrees or over 200 degrees or somewhere up there. Really the goal of going in infrared sauna is for the infrared exposure itself. And we actually know a great deal about infrared exposure. And so the real difference is that infrared spectrum penetrates the body, passes through it passes through several types of materials.

Just, just like sunlight.

Right, exactly. And you know, obviously if you're behind glass in the sun, you know, UVAs and UVBs diminish, but infrared still comes through. Of course. That's why you have glass windows on one side of your house and, or upstairs and it gets, you know, infinitely hotter. It's all infrared. You know, that's what actually is creating the heat there. So infrared will pass through the body. And so why that's so awesome really is that it's not cooking you from the inside out, but it certainly is raising the resonant frequency inside of the cells. And so it passes in usually about like anywhere from. It depends on the type of tissue it's being exposed to, but about an inch to an inch and a half. And it's essentially then warming your cells up or warming your body from the inside out, directly penetrating through fat cells and all these different types of tissues. And that's a very big difference than just being around a heater, quote, unquote. Right. Just putting out radiant heat.

Right. But it's not like a mic. When you talk about vibrating cells, we're not talking about, like microwave, like frequencies.

Right.

You're not sitting inside a microwave.

Right. So the key is that it's all these different types of frequencies from the X rays, cosmic rays, radio waves, microwaves. That's all on the electromagnetic spectrum. Okay. And granted, some of that is certainly damaging, like, you know, gamma wave exposure, right. To X rays. Microwaves are on there. But infrared is going to be more closer to the UV spectrum. Basically. Some electromagnetic waves are not harmful to the body. And your own body actually, really, when you get fundamentally down to the cells, is working on an electromagnetic spectrum. So, for example, you'll see a lot of these saunas advertise, you know, 9.4 microns. You know, our saunas produce this, you know, our infrared saunas. So really where they get that number from is a long time ago, scientists were actually ever able to measure that the infrared is given off by the mitochondria in the cells, and that is measurable to around 9.4 microns.

So your body is actually producing its own infrared.

Exactly. And it's actually fundamental to mitochondria working. Literally, if they were not using that, you'd be dead. So it's that fundamental electron transport chain.

Is that what's behind, like, some of these cameras that will take a photo of you and show that the human body is actually producing light.

Exactly, exactly. And I actually use. I've used that. People know me for doing all sorts of crazy reviews with all sorts of alternative ways of testing things. And so that's actually a fantastic way to test an infrared sauna before I actually deal with them. And then I plug that into emitter in and then I have my own camera and I can actually just measure it. I can measure it a couple different ways and see if that matches up with their specs. So those cameras are actually very useful. And they don't really lie per se, but, yeah, the body's giving that off. So when you walk into a room and it's like, oh, my God, it's so hot in here, hot in this club or wherever we're going. That's all infrared literally coming off of people's bodies and that starts to build up.

Now, I've talked about it on a podcast before, Alex, but I actually, and some people make fun of me for this. I sleep sometimes on this infrared mat, this thing called a biomat. And it emits these infrared wavelengths that, like you explained, they heat you from the inside out and they have a little bit of a detoxification effect because they are literally vibrating cells and from what I understand, causing a little bit of lipolysis. And so when you get the fat cells broken open, you get some of the toxins and the PCBs and the BPA and the metals and some of the things that can accumulate in fat cells, either getting processed by your liver or getting passed out through your skin via your sweat.

And by the way, the key here is mobilization. Basically, when we say detox, that's all. Liver mobilization is really what infrared's doing.

Right? Right. A lot of people, I think, are under the false impression that most of it comes out through your skin. And I actually learned this recently. Most of it's actually coming out through your stool and your urine when you're doing something like infrared and you actually don't do a ton of detox through your skin. Even though the article that I'm writing right now about my experience so far with infrared kind of delves into ways that you can accelerate that lipolysis detox process. And I'll save that goodie for later for folks who visit the website. But one of the things I wanted to ask you and the reason I brought up this biomat was it has, the biomat has an EMF blocker. Right. Like a built in EMF blocker to reduce electrical pollution and the amount of electromagnetic frequencies you'd be getting exposed to from the big controller unit that plugs into the wall and the heater unit that's, that's heating the actual mat. From what I understand from our discussion, that's also a pretty big, big issue with saunas.

Absolutely. Yeah. I would say that it's nowadays, actually not as much of an issue. They cleaned up their act a bit, literally probably like seven years ago. If you have a sauna basically right now, an infrared sauna maybe seven plus years older or even older than that. Seven years going to the past. Yeah. Most of those back then were just, you were basically sitting surround. They didn't shield the EMF off the wiring or anything. It's kind of like sitting in a cage wiring around you. And yeah, the EMFs were very, very high. And then people really started to get on them about it. And of course, all these companies want to meet consumer requests and demand and they had to compete with one another too. Clearlife, for example, they were first ones to come out with the emf, you know, free, you know, it's no emf and they're a big company. And so a lot of companies followed suit after them, trying to stay competitive, which I have no problem with if they're reducing the emf. But yeah, it was kind of off the charts at that point. Basically. Now all the mainstream companies that actually advertise and that people might have heard of, they've pretty much gotten their EMF down substantially to probably levels that you would encounter when you're in front of a computer screen or something like that. I still test obviously all these to back up their claims. And I still do find some hot spots of wiring issues with some of them. But in general, actually they have improved the thing that now I'm trying to get the industry to take a look at and become. The next thing that people get on these companies about is actually off gassing. Really, because that's just. Now that's the whole next thing. So they kind of fixed, they did fix the emf, unless you're getting more of an off brand, cheap sauna or something like that. But yeah, the off gassing. And the real issue with that is a lot of these companies, most of them are getting their woods from wood manufacturers, mills and things like that that are putting their. Selling their wood normally to different industries for different industry applications, not for being heated up by infrared and, you know, having somebody, you know, a real human being breathing inside this whole thing.

So, so these are, these are VOCs, organic compounds that these woods are releasing.

Yeah, they're true. I mean, they're. Think about it, if you're going to have wood on a deck or a house or even in the kitchen where it needs to be waterproof. Right. Cabinets, I mean, all these different applications, again, are. Yeah, they have to be treated in a special way.

Yeah, When I built my house last year, we used all low VOC compounds. And actually I've got a guy, literally while we're talking right now, staining the barn where we're keeping the goats, and even for the animals, I have him using a low VOC stain just to reduce the amount of off gassing that our animals get exposed to. That's really interesting about saunas. Though I did not know that about the off gassing issue with the wood and saunas, which seems like it'd be a pretty serious issue when it's getting heated all the time.

Exactly. And to make matters worse, a lot of the saunas, since they're mainly just wood, most of these companies mass manufacture, these companies get their saunas from. So to do that really effectively, it's just better to use, it's easier and cheaper to use glues and adhesives for all the different wood pieces because remember, you have insulation in there and normally you have like three different layers of wood at least. And so they glue almost everything. Now we have infrared passing through the wood, breaking down chemical bonds very effectively in all the glues. So you have off gassing coming a lot, even more so from the actual wood, from the actual glue itself and all these different adhesives they're using. And I mean they'll even go as far as to. Most of them are actually even gluing the emitters themselves on the walls. Wow.

So I'm assuming that there are specific brands of saunas that aren't doing this or certain types of wood that people should look for.

Yes, the answer is very few saunas, very few companies are actually avoiding all of these things and also not using wood that is being treated and used for other specifically untreated and specifically more hypoallergenic and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, in general, it's very few companies and that's simple reason because their margins are a lot less, their labor costs are way higher. And the reason that they would want to do that is if they are genuinely focused on, number one, helping people therapeutically. Most sauna companies, it's not, it's number one, make money. Number two, maybe try to help people.

Yeah. So yeah. So are you going to have a list on your website somewhere, your health tax reviewed website of which saunas off gas?

Yeah, It'll be grouped into tiers. I group everything into tiers. I think that's the best way to look at it. It's kind of like best value saunas, you know, and here's what to expect in terms of construction, you know, you know, high infrared output sort of saunas, you know, super clean saunas. I mean I get people all the time who have limes or all sorts of different sensitivity sensitivities and really they can only be in like a super clean sauna. But yeah, I break it all out and break it all down.

Okay, cool. Yeah, because I mean, I'm a Huge fan. The reason I'm doing it is mostly for the performance enhancing effect. And the recent studies that showed the increase that is up there with erythropoietin or illegal performance enhancing drugs if you go sit in a sauna after you exercise. But I also like the idea of the lipolysis, the detox and then this recent. You probably saw the Finnish study that came out that showed when you're visiting a sauna four to five times per week, there is a significant increase in longevity. And that's why I'm putting this sauna in my house is because I just can't make it to the gym four to five times a week. But I can easily sit in my home and read books for 20 or 30 minutes in my sauna. Yeah.

And the key is actually when we exercise, obviously your heart rate goes up. Right. So the same thing happens when you're raising your core body temperature. Your heart rate will increase a little bit and. Yeah, and I mean we also have, you know, increases in circulation and lymphatic system. You know, infrared does a variety of different things. Yeah. And in combination with that, the closer thing to even kind of exercising is taking advantage of that increase in heart rate that we can do with infrared and then also breathing in concentrated oxygen. So that's something that I've set up at different sorts of clinics.

Are you talking about hyperbaric?

No, not necessarily. So really, just think about it. Anything that kind of increases our heart rate and our demand for oxygen and burning that into ATP, if. What if we actually deliver concentrated oxygen when that's actually happening. So for example, the way to supercharge infrared sauna kind of situation is with breathing concentrated oxygen. So an oxygen concentrator simply takes ambient air and actually will concentrate down to like 97% oxygen different than oxygen tank. Right. You know, that's just pure oxygen. And it's a little complicated.

But isn't the idea. I mean, I'm just, I'm totally playing devil's advocate here, Alex, but with a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber, you're actually getting increased pressure simultaneous to the increased availability of oxygen. So that that pressure is able to drive the oxygen into tissue. If you have a greater concentration of oxygen without that pressure, do you actually get more oxygen delivery to tissues?

I would say that the one thing we haven't seen is maybe we will see is a side by side study comparison. Right. With exercise oxygen training with the concentrator and with hyperbaric. The answer is that you're correct that when you Have a little bit more pressure. With hyperbaric, for sure, that's greatly aiding the ability for our water to actually dissolve in oxygen, which is then supplying the cells. But with a concentrator, it's doing it a different way. It's unique in that when you're lying in a hyperbaric chamber, you're going to be not moving. Your heart rate's going to be about the same. Your demand for oxygen will generally be about the same as if you were.

Lying outside of the chamber, unless you're doing baby crunches. I used to do that in tanning beds. I used to sit in tanning beds and do baby crunches.

You can do different sorts of things in chambers, but it has to be a large chamber, which can get a little expensive. But what you're doing is you're increasing, really the demand on cells when you're exercising that they actually require a greater amount of oxygen, chemical substrate and energy, and ATP. You're then meeting that increased demand. You're actually exceeding the rate that normally is possible, responsible for these cells, and then supplying oxygen right then and there when it needs it. So you're kind of able to go above and beyond basically what you normally could do with just your normal 22% concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere.

Gotcha.

So they are slightly different. Basically, my advice is this is. Hyperbarics are really kind of good for people that can't really exercise or that are really, really weak or have, like, a major, major disease or, you know, that type of thing. But if you can actually push yourself and really increase the demand on your system for oxygen and then supply it to a tremendous amount in that moment, really take advantage of that opportunity, in my experience, the results are actually superior.

Okay, I was just curious what you would say. I sometimes play devil's advocate, even when I know Alex, but there actually is. There's some interesting data on hyperoxia even in the absence of that partial pressure of oxygen. And I know that it has been shown to increase diffusion of oxygen in skeletal muscle even without the increase in pressure. And I'll put a link to some of the research in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com HealthScams if you guys want to check it out. But it also reduces the rate at which phosphocreatine degrades. And what that means is that you have enhanced creatine availability, and somehow you're using alternate energy sources such as glucose or fatty acids for that creatine sparing effect. So it's kind of interesting. There's some pretty cool proposed mechanisms of action that occur when you breathe concentrated oxygen while in a state of metabolic stress, like if you're in a sauna or post exercise that occur even if you're not in one of these fancy hyperbaric chambers. So it's interesting, right.

I'd actually touch on just one difference with part of what concentrated oxygen as well as hyperbaric is doing that's just a little bit unique is that instead of the cells being totally reliant on oxygen coming from red blood cells, which is. Right. What most mainstream exercise science, we know all about that when you do these other approaches where the cells are, you're actually dissolving a much greater amount of oxygen in the actual water around the cells. And so you're correct, they're getting an alternative sort of electron transport source of hydrogen is then taking oxygen into the cells, but directly through the cell membrane. Directly from the water field around it.

Yeah.

Versus from the red blood cells.

So that's super interesting because. And this is, this is a brand new study that just came out recently and it's, it was on, it's on chlorophyll and the fact that when you consume a chlorophyll rich food, right, Like a dark leafy green would be a perfect example. And then you get exposed to infrared radiation, particularly from, from sunlight. In this case, you actually produce ATP similarly to what you would produce if you were consuming calories. In other words, like plants, humans have a little bit of a mechanism or an ability to be able to produce energy from a combination of chlorophyll and sunlight. I don't know if you saw that, that study, but it's really interesting. And the more melanin you have, right, like the darker you are, that's crazy. The greater the propensity for that to occur. Which is really interesting because like the darker skinned people tend to come from areas that have more sunlight and more vegetation. Really interesting. And I'll put a link by the way, for people listening, I'll put a link to that study as well in the show notes. If you guys want to see this brand new study on chlorophyll and sunlight. So you could basically, you could eat dark leafy greens or like do your smoothie and then go, go into an infrared sauna and do something like a, like an oxygen concentrator while in your infrared sauna. And sure, you could also go eat kale out in the sunshine. But this seems like a, like a pretty cool little, little biohack so, yes.

I completely agree with you.

Yeah. Nice. By the way, oxygen concentrator. Is that like a great big unit you have to drag around, or are these like small things that attach to your face? How do those work exactly?

I actually had a crazy idea yesterday about if I could get a smaller one, I could throw it on the back of a bike or something and be using when I was going around. But they are usually, it depends on. It basically has to do with how many liters of oxygen you want to receive per minute. So the ones you're using for hyperbaric chambers are actually very small. Very, very small and very light. The ones that are, they're using for, like, more exercise with oxygen training, have to supply like 100 liters of oxygen in a minute. So they have a special chamber and all that kind of stuff. So that is really something that is not. I mean, you can certainly throw in the back of your trunk, but it's just a lot less portable.

Okay, gotcha, gotcha. All right, so in terms of hyperbaric oxygen, obviously we touched on that a little bit, but there are chambers now. For example, I saw one at the Bulletproof Biohacking conference down in LA earlier this year that you can purchase for your home and use for hyperbaric oxygen therapy. What's your opinion on those in terms of their health? I mean, is it like an infrared sauna where you're getting exposed to emf? Are they efficacious compared to what you would experience in, say, a clinical setting where they'd be getting used for things like wound healing? But what's the deal with hyperbaric oxygen chambers?

Yeah, sure. So there was a lot of controversy for years with hospitals, and a lot of places like that have been using them for a long time or diving related things that the Navy, et cetera. But those are generally hard shell chambers. They're much more expensive. Hundreds of thousands to millions depending on how big they are. And generally those pressures, the atmospheric pressure in those is much, much higher than what we call soft shell or mild hyperbaric therapy. So those ones that you saw at the show, certainly if you touch it, it's soft shell. Right, right. Collapses down and you can. It's actually kind of portable. So really, doctors in the mainstream were kind of against them for a while because they said, well, you know, all the studies were done with much higher, you know, atmospheric pressure. You know, lower atmospheric pressure just probably won't work, and so on and so forth. And yet the industry still continued to grow despite all that. And then now at this point, we have at least a couple hundred studies with the soft shells and showing that there is absolutely efficacy of tissue regeneration and just all sorts of different things. Right. Reductions in inflammation, et cetera. With lower pressure. When I'm talking about lower pressure, you know, it's going to be somewhere around like 3 to 3.5 ata.

What happens if you use higher pressure?

Well, what's interesting is that they actually have a legal limit. It's actually illegal in the United States to sell anything higher than 3.5, but there is in Europe it's a little bit higher. And that has more to do with probably like the safety of what a. What a chamber can withhold the material. What happens if you go higher? You get better health results. It actually has to do with what it is, is it looks like this. If you use a lower pressure softgel chamber, maybe you can do a session for an hour. Okay. But if you use something that's, you know, one atmospheric pressure higher, you might shave off, you know, 30 to 40 minutes. So essentially, higher pressure is just dissolving the rate of oxygen higher in the water.

But you can't get higher pressure in the US like legally, like you can't purchase.

Yeah. So there are ways of modifying a chamber unofficially that some people do to actually increase the pressure. But yes, you can if, you know, if you have, you know, a lot of disposable income and you can get a hard shell chamber, but, you know.

That'S how much is like a hard shell hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber cost?

Probably the. For a small one, probably the best price I could source out is probably like 80 grand and up.

Holy cow.

To 150. And that's on the low end.

Okay, gotcha. So compared to. Well, how much does an oxygen concentrator cost?

Well, the ones that come with chambers, they usually throw them in free. They might be like a thousand bucks, 800 bucks. Some of the really good ones with high capacity, it's like 1500.

So you could spend like 3000 to $4000 on an infrared sauna, spend like maybe $1000 on an oxygen concentrator and kind of set up your own chamber that would still supply you with high oxygen, but wouldn't give you the hyperbaric therapy per se.

Correct. You'd be doing a little bit more of an exercise with oxygen. Yeah. Right. And you got to remember that these are really fundamentally synergistic. Right. Because the mitochondria is using infrared to actually slow down photons and do all sorts of essential things for its function with the electron transport chain. And at the same time that's increasing the efficiency of oxygen actually getting transported across the membrane as well. These are kind of the fundamental things, you know, mitochondria, hydrogen, electrons, oxygen that cells require.

Right.

It's not calories, it's at that level we're talking about, you know, particles here.

Yeah, well, I mean, that's why, I mean, sorry to interrupt you, but I gotta inject this because I know we get people who snicker about like oxygen concentration, hyperbaric and why don't you just go outside and take a walk? And it certainly is true that what we're talking about goes way above and beyond like what you were talking about with your own personal story. Right. It goes way above and beyond nutrition and food and calories because sunlight, electrons, water, air, these type of things, those have a profound effect on our biological system that doesn't get talked about enough compared to like popping pills and eating a specific diet. But I think when we're talking about using something like oxygen concentrators, infrared, hyperbaric, even some of the other stuff I know we're going to talk about, we're just talking about better living through science, concentrating our exposure to the equivalent, the man made equivalent of things like sunlight and air and electrons.

Yeah. And you got to look at it this way. Sunlight, air and just living outside, whatever that would be sufficient if we never stressed and we never had any environmental pollutants and we had no inflammation in our body. So in a fantasy world. Yeah, it's great, go take a hike.

Yeah.

You know, literally. But nobody's like that, you know, nobody walking around. So.

Yeah, and my take on it is, is so if you're doing like Ironman triathlons and spartan racing and bike racing and CrossFit wads and all these things that are technically unnatural for the body in many cases. If you saw what the inflammation from exercise was doing to your body, you probably would think twice about exercising. It's not an anti aging or a longevity based activity really when you look at what a lot of people are doing. And that's where a lot of this stuff comes into play too, right? It's like, well, yeah, for the average person, maybe sunshine and water and a fresh walk outside is going to be enough to repair and recover you if you're living a low toxin, low inflammation, low sadomasochistic exercise sessions, lifestyle. But if not, yeah, some of this stuff can come in handy. So anyways though, I know we could talk theory all day long, but I've got a few others I want to ask you about steam generators. I noticed that you've talked about steam generators a little bit. What exactly are those?

Yeah, pretty simple. So things that are producing steam in a steam room. A steam generator simply is a boiler. Obviously, when we boil water on a stove, that's producing steam. Right. So that's essentially a really simple way of what actually a generator is doing. It's taking water through a line, and then it's going to a little, you know, heating coil and heating up that water, and it's building up the pressure. And then at some point. So if you've ever been in a steam room at a gym, usually most of the gyms have pretty cheap generators. So you're sitting there for a while, and then all of a sudden you hear a loud noise and all the steam comes out. That means the tanks have actually filled up with steam. And then it's just being released on a time schedule. And that steam can get up to 160 degrees. I mean, there's a temperature control just like a sauna. And then so the benefits are actually very similar to saunas. Just regular heated saunas. I'm talking about traditional finished saunas, probably. Really the main difference is it's probably that I'd say is hydration. A steam room obviously, is much more hydrating because we're talking about tons of water particles floating around at the same time. However, that can be a big drawback because if you're using a steam room, most gyms out there, except for some really expensive clubs, if you're spending 400amonth on your gym, they probably have a better steam room. But in general, they don't filter the line, they don't filter the water that's going into the steam generator. And so we all know there's a bunch of crap in tap water.

Right. So you're talking about, like, fluoride and chlorine and stuff like that. If I'm at a commercial gym, I'm just getting that dispersed into the air around me. I'm sitting in the same room.

So the really terrible thing to think about is that we all know that the lungs not only release 2 pounds of toxins effectively every day with your breath, but they can also inhale, just like you inhale, like glutathione or all these different sorts of therapies or medications. It's an effective way to get things directly into your bloodstream. So if you want to effectively get.

Yeah, I mean, like. Like vape vaping. Vaping marijuana, Right. Like that's a way to just hyper concentrate it in your bloodstream. So steam gen. Oh my gosh, this is really interesting. So is it possible for a gym or a health club or a spa to filter that water prior to steam generation?

Yes, it's a very simple question that probably the manager may or may not know. They might have to call somebody, but you essentially would ask them, hey, on your line, your water line to your steam generator, are you filtering that line? You know, and if you're filling and if you really want to do your homework, it could be a crappy filter, right? There's a lot of bad water filters out there. So you may also want to find out, hey, what's the brand or company that put in that water filter on that line? And yeah, because otherwise. Now here's the thing is there's different. The worst situation is that it's different than distilling. See, some might confuse some people, right? When you distill water, hey, that's a fantastic way to remove almost everything out of water. That's a surefire guarantee. But this is not a distiller. A steam generator is not a distiller. So the goal of a generator is to create the first amount of steam as quickly as possible. So water, water. What's unique about water, and actually mysterious still to the chemistry field, is it has multiple boiling points. So there's a lot of unique things about water which no other chemicals hold. But so what that means is steam generators will release steam as soon as it boils and it'll be boiling at a lower temperature than usually what a distiller is using. So in other words, that first steam that comes off at the lower temperature is filled with all of the stuff in the water you don't want. If you let it go for longer, you know, like a distiller, then it would actually start to really boil off a lot of stuff. And if you condense that water, it'd be pretty clean.

So if you use a steam generator in your home and you do a good job filtering the water in your home, you could use one. But if I'm understanding you correctly, you would actually have to build a full steam room. Or are these devices that you could theoretically put the eucalyptus oil in and attach a mask to your face if you just want to do steam therapy to clear your sinuses or something.

If you want to do steam therapy, I just recommend a nebulizer, okay? With a nebulizer, you can throw in anything, really anything into that Nebulizer and basically inhale it directly into your lungs and your sinuses. That's a nice little hack for if you want to get stuff directly into your bloodstream in a steam generator. Yes, there's always ways to add in essential oils as well and drip it in there. But yeah, you can definitely filter your water really well, either with a whole home filter or just filter the line going to the generator and be fine and breathe, you know, steam that's clean. But actually this. Redoing a shower, because you have to redo the shower a little bit if you have one in the bathtub, is actually a more popular thing than even saunas. And a lot of people do this. They just simply because it's a pretty simple install. And you just convert. Yeah, you just convert your shower and just. I would like to add a little note that if you're googling around checking this out, definitely do not buy a steam shower that's prefabricated. So you see these like showrooms or online and, you know, it looks like a shower kind of thing, but it's got all the fixtures in there already and it's already all lined up. You don't want those. Almost all of them have problems, cracking problems. I mean, you name it. They're just complicated and expensive to maintain. You just want to convert your existing with a contractor, your existing shower, it's not that expensive. And then run your steam through there. Just got to seal it properly.

Nice. Nice. That's pretty cool. I love this stuff. I'm actually, I mentioned, I know a couple times already this article I'm working on about saunas. And one of the things I'm talking about, and again, I'll keep it under wraps for now, just until people can read the post, but is how to biohack your sauna to get more heat out of it using low EMF heaters and some. Some insulatory concepts. But I love home projects like that that allow you to create your own equivalent of an expensive health spa in your own home.

And let me just throw this one other thing in. One of the really good hacks for a steam room is you can actually very affordably just get some infrared emitters, the actual parts, and as you're doing redoing your sauna shower, you can actually just put some infrared emitters into the walls. Uh, so while you're sitting in your steam room, you're getting infrared therapy.

Mmm, that's pretty cool.

Dr. That's pretty cool. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Too bad, too bad. So Many of our listeners are on the cold shower bandwagon now. They're gonna start taking hot steam filled infrared.

Infrared showers. Well, actually here's the thing is, I'm glad you brought that up is really we still wanna utilize the advantages of now of hydrotherapy, which is hot cold therapy. Right. So what I recommend in my protocols is that people use the steam room when they start to feel warm after five minutes. Depends on where you set it. Get up and turn on your shower to cold. And depending on where you want to mobilize toxins and direct them. This is back to hydrotherapy principles is where you should aim that cold water. So in general, always aim that cold water on your lower parts of your body. Aim it over on your liver, into your gut basically, not into your upper body. Otherwise all toxins will just go wherever that cold water is. So that's a key. And then go back, shut it off. You know, you're just gonna warm up again, then get back up and then do another cold shower again. And I promise you get way better results that way. Because you're moving your lymphatic system, you're greatly moving your circulation. Because remember when you're sitting in a steam room, you're just sitting in a steam room. Yeah, your heart rate's increasing, blah, blah, blah, vasodilation. But then to mix it up with cold, I mean that's, you'll actually feel shifts around. I actually feel my lymphatic system in my chest actually move.

Interesting. Yeah, I have some clients who have purchased those commercial ice makers off of Craigslist and they keep a commercial ice maker in their garage because that's the one thing that happens when you're doing like ice baths and cold soaks is you run out of ice super fast and you're tiny, crappy little freezer ice maker. And so I've got a couple of people who will stand in their hot shower, but it'll be right beside like the, the cold bath. And I'll go back and forth from the cold bath to the hot shower. So hydrotherapy is good stuff, dude, I like it. Okay, so I've got a, I've got another question for you. And then I want to jump into a few of kind of like the, the dark and dirty secrets of the whole health industry. And that is, you know, regarding a lot of these things people make fun of like mini trampolines and rebounders, whole body vibration, stuff like that. Do you use anything like that or do you see any efficacy in that stuff?

Yes. Yeah, I actually use all. I actually use all of it. And so here's the thing is, as these products have come back out over the last few decades, what has consistently happened in every product category is, you know, something is designed, some studies are done, people are really excited about it, universities are involved, and then what happens is once there's a little bit of a buzz and there's, and some companies see there's money to be made, enter in the offshore, mainly the east, usually India, China, Korea, enter in these manufacturers that want to get a piece of the action. And so they will flood the industry. And I mean really flood it. So if we're talking about, you know, whole body vibration machines, for example, you know, 95% of them, 95% of the brands are just resellers, they're rebranded and they come from the same three manufacturers in China.

So you could probably like find them on Alibaba.

Exactly. And so if you want to know how much these things really cost, so, you know, you're like, wait a minute, that costs. They're actually manufacturers selling it for 350 or 250. But I could get this great deal at my home and garden show on one for $3,500. This is the reality. And again, 95% of rebrands. The problem with this is that they have basically spoiled all these product categories in people's minds. And so they'll try several of these machines out different equipment, doesn't matter the product category. And yes, statistically, the chances of them trying a really good one are very low. They're just going to try something that was designed to appear therapeutic or was designed, you know, just doesn't have the engineering behind it and it's a cheap machine. And so they don't really get the benefits. And then they think, well, wait a minute, whole body vibration doesn't work, or, you know, ionic foot valves, they don't work. But that's because probably what they tried didn't work. You know what I mean? But it doesn't necessarily mean every product is so.

Okay, so, so in terms of, of who's making these products, let's say in the US or, or in Canada, let's say that they're not some cheap. And I don't, I'm not trying to be racist here, but let's say it's not, you know, some cheap Chinese knockoff, right? Like, what's the difference in the engineering? Like, is there something that the engineers over here are doing that's different? Or is it, you know, using more expensive parts, Is there some level of knowledge that's missing? Like, explain to me what the difference in engineering would actually be.

And of course, it really depends on the product we're talking about, because they're all very different. A vibration machine works fundamentally the same as a rebounder, for example, or a trampoline. We're dealing with acceleration forces and G forces and things like that on the cells in the body, but they're obviously very different. When we get down to the actual engineering involved in general, the short answer is you can always. With the cheap product that a lot of these manufacturers produce, we can always count on cheap components, cheap grade of components. A lot of times they'll use components that were graded, and for different industry applications, they technically work.

Can you give me an example?

Yeah. I'll actually give you an example from the SANAA industry, infrared sauna industry, because this actually accounts for 90% of saunas which are carbon saunas. They will vary almost all the time. You see a carbon sauna, and you can tell by the way, if you look inside the infrared sauna, it has some black things on the wall, basically some black squares. That's a carbon sauna. They're getting most of that carbon from the flooring industry in China that they use to heat apartments and floors through infrared. And that's fine. You know, it's a fantastic way to heat your apartment. But when you're putting it into a sauna, the actual wiring, from the EMF to the actual wiring involved to the circuit breaker, all that kind of stuff, all those specifications and gradings of that, certifications that go with that, electrical components that is graded for that in your floor construction sort of application. And so inside of a sauna, it's a little sketchy because it's not supposed to go next to, for example, wood. It's also not supposed to get to such high temperatures they're using in saunas. It also runs to a transformer, which is putting off massive amounts of emf. And it's right there in front of you because it's a small sauna, it's not your apartment.

But the sauna itself could look the same, and it would be less expensive. And you wouldn't really know anything if you weren't actually looking into the source of those carbon plates.

Yeah. So you really have to break it apart. There's almost ways, actually, when you've researched all these different product categories enough, you can actually just tell by the look of something what manufacturer made it. So I can look at 10 different brands of sauna and know what Chinese manufacturer it came from. And by the way, again, 95% of saunas do come from China. There is one from Korea, but that's pretty much it. And then one from Japan, but yeah, so, yeah, they may look the same. And that's the thing is, so several companies could go to one manufacturer and say, hey, you know, we would like to brand our own sauna here and import it. Can you make this part of the frame a little bit different? Can you change the door and knob? If it's something that manufacturers willing to do, won't really cost them too much, they don't have to change up their systems. I mean, their manufacturing processes, then they will. And then some things look slightly different. A lot of them look identical. But regarding even aesthetics, what really matters, what we want to look at is the therapeutics of something.

Right?

That's what really counts. And therapeutically, they're all identical.

Yeah, yeah. I don't care if it's ugly. I want it to be safe and I want it to work well. Well, I carry a little. Well, my wife cares if it's ugly. So I don't want to ask you about patents, right? Because you see, like, what's the word? Proprietary. Right. Like, that's a big one that gets thrown around and then patented. When people are claiming that things are patented, like, what do you look for? I mean, how do you find out if it's true versus not true? I mean, when you. Alex, when you're looking at a company that's making a claim, especially regarding like a patent or proprietary process, what do you look for?

Well, I would say this is. Well, first off, a company normally wouldn't lie in their marketing material either on their website or brochures. If they have a patent, they're usually proud of that and it costs them a bunch of money and it differentiates them from consumers. So I've never found a case where a company claimed a patent wherein it wasn't actually patented. And you can actually look that up, obviously, very easily. There's databases, US patents databases, and I always check anyways to just see when it was usually filed. So that's real. Now, just because something's patented doesn't necessarily mean it has any therapeutic efficacy to it. You can patent whatever they.

True. Yeah.

You know, as long as it's technically not like anything else and it's innovative. Right. But then. But the reality is with most of these product categories, what usually tended to happen was the first products that came out, which are usually the best, those who really did the hardcore engineering and then everybody kind of followed suit and copied them. It's usually the first guys on the scene who had filed all the patents. And so because they did that and it's sometimes hard to come up with an innovative solution around the patent, most of these other competitors then will mainly just come up with trademarks, trademark terms. And I mean a lot of that sometimes falls just under proprietary. And usually there's not always a TM behind it. But a lot of the times there is in marketing material. And the truth is that something trademark, of course, even it holds less water than something patented. Almost all the time you see something trademarked no matter how fancy it sounds. And believe me, I know very expensive medical device companies who are marking up products tremendously solely based off trademarked terms.

Yeah, and a trademark is just, that's like a name, right? Like you can define like a color or a sound or a smell or just like a title as a trademark.

I mean, if you have some sort of feature basically that's unique, you know, you can still come up with a unique feature. Doesn't mean it's therapeutic at all. But if it's unique and then we file for a trademark, there you go. And sure, another company can't use the same trademark terms. So really the only value with trademarks is purely marketing, purely about sales. Patents are different. Again, you have to look into it to see if it actually has any therapeutic value to it. But in general that's a good sign is if you do see a company that has a couple patents or this or that, and you say, okay, this, we at least know this company's more committed to investing in their products.

Yeah.

Willing to spend the money.

And some stuff can be both patented and trademarked, Right?

Absolutely. And a good company would do that, of course, if you want to, you know.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I caught flack just in the past month because I was talking about hybrid nanoengineering because I came out with this CBD product that is hybrid nanoengineering. People are like, oh, that's just like some like catch all phrase. But if you go and look at the actual patent that Dr. Mewa, the guy who I worked with to design this water soluble form of cannabidiol. That's not just a phrase. Yeah, it is trademarked the term hybrid nanoengineering, but he's actually patented the process of combining cannabidiols with curcuminoids to make this tiny little nanoengineered particle. Right. There's an actual process that's taking place. That's not. It's not just like a fancy marketing term. Whereas, I don't know, you could say. I'm trying to think of an example now of like, I don't. Let's say like a sauna. Right. Could trademark the term extra whatever. Like some kind of.

I'll give you one. Like 360 wave. Yeah, 360 wave. I still have yet to figure out what that means, but there are some of the, you know, the next generation.

Right.

Carbon panels. Yeah.

And all that means like 360 wave. Right. Like you've got infrared panels around you in the sauna, but it's the same as the other sauna that's not using the 360 wave trademark term. So it's interesting. Yeah. The whole trademark versus patent and, you know, the difference between like, patented, really innovative, functional features that have engineering behind them versus like trademark terms that they're using to entice you into increased perceived value.

So see, with the patents, this is why this helps with a lot of research in all these product categories. If you do see that patent, you look it up, you see what company. You can also find that manufacturer information. Sometimes that way at the time when they had filed that patent, which was usually based off some R and D that the company actually did. And so Vibration machine company spent $1 million or $2 million on their RD and also came up with these two patents on their machine. Meanwhile, this other company has a few trademark terms, no patents, they were founded, and you look up the llc, et cetera, and they have absolutely no R and D or anything invested in their company. Just right off the bat, you start to see, well, okay, I should probably start to look a little bit further into the company. You spend a couple million dollars, they seem to be pretty. You don't spend a couple million dollars just to market a shoddy product.

Okay, so. So speaking of shoddy products, what if it says it's made in the usa? And I realize that there's some Jeeps and Fords, for example, no offense to anybody who drives them, but I drive Japanese cars, I drive Toyotas, I drive Acuras, I drive Hondas. Those are the only cars I drive because they just last for freaking ever. And I barely spend anything on their upkeep and maintenance. But in many cases, I do look for made in the usa because a lot of times something made in the USA is working better, you know, so, you know, everything from, like, my bows to my chainsaws to, you know, things that I have in my garage for home improvement. Like a lot of that stuff is made in the usa. My tools are made in the USA and they just work way better when it comes to a lot of these. These like detox therapies and personal health equipment. If it says it's made in the usa, what's that actually mean?

Yeah, so as long as it doesn't have a TM after the Made in the usa, could be made, you know, in Zaire as TM after it. But as long as it doesn't have that, it usually means that. And you still even want to check, by the way, you can't. The rule of thumb is you never trust any company. But yeah, generally it means it is manufactured in the United States. However, sometimes if you read a little bit further in, I have seen cases where it's made in the usa, but they were likening that term and they did explain themselves in the small print to that it was assembled in the United States. And so sometimes why you want to look a little bit further into it.

So basically you can have a bunch of prefabbed pieces from China that have been assembled in the USA and they can honestly say it's made in the usa.

Yeah, they could snap on one again, even with super expensive medical devices, I've seen this. They could snap on one piece and then just check over everything, make sure that everything looks good and maybe test it out. And now it's made in the, made in the U.S. but in general, what I'm saying is all these different therapeutic product categories, and this is, this is a good rule of thumb, at least 90 to 95% of them are coming from China, are coming from India, are coming from, I mean, they're coming from those areas. And so you just will always assume that basically is the rule of thumb and it's, you can just count them on your hand, the companies in any product category. And generally it's, it's also not a coincidence that the ones you can count on your hand that aren't manufactured in those places are the ones that actually work. It's just, it happens again and again. The reason they flooded the market was to just copy things so they appear to work, you know, but the margins are just ridiculous. And I just actually want to add in one thing here is that you have to think about the reality of what it's like for a manufacturer overseas. One of the reasons things just get worse and worse over time in quality is because these manufacturers are competing with one another. So anything that one does, they'll Try to copy that and vice versa. They're all trying to make for a better margin, profit margin for their US Importers or the companies that are going to resell, they have to appeal to them more and say, hey, my margins are 5% better this year. Well, how did they improve that margin? There's only one way. Usually the way they do it is they just find cheaper grades of components or just little shortcuts. So it's not a good model. Especially when we're talking about things that should be therapeutic.

Now, how about the people selling you this stuff on the website or over the phone or in person, like the sales and customer service people, when you're buying, let's say, let's say like a sauna, right? Because we've talked about saunas a lot today. What do you look for? Like, how educated are these people? If I call, let's say some sauna company up on the phone, as far as what's actually going to work for me?

Well, there's two things. They are usually very well educated specifically on their product, on their company. They're trained, you know, just like any salespeople are, and they're trained to represent their company well, you know, but that's it. And also just legally, contractually just working for them. They're required also to not say certain things, to adhere to specific sales protocols and guidelines. You know, like for example, if you call up different steam generator companies and you try to get some dirt on another company and say, hey, what do you think about this person brand over here? You know, like they have this and this, you know, feature and patent. A lot of times I see this, people just say, yeah, we don't know. We have no idea. So you can't talk to them and have them help you. Of course, even, even if, even if, you know, you're trying to, you're bringing up a point about a different feature another company has and you want to see if theirs is better, they usually can't even explain that. The only thing they can do is just really in a very marketing type of way, salesy way, just kind of talk about their one thing. And usually almost all of them are never educated with health. And so if we're talking about therapeutic products here, you know, we're not talking about, you know, tar that you're going to pave on your driveway. And if it's a good consistency, we're talking about stuff that could majorly impact your health, those types of products. You really want to talk to somebody who is not just there to sell you something, but who actually can talk to you about your health and how your unique health goals are going to match up with the product. And, you know, it just really surprises me that you really can't even talk to them when it comes to getting more background research or any sort of proof or evidence for their claims that they might make in their materials. You really have to go to the top if you have any hopes getting that kind of information.

That's a good point. I have two observations on that. First of all, going to the top or doing your own research and not necessarily trusting what a sales or customer service rep says. I actually bought an incline trainer, right, like an incline trainer treadmill from NordicTrack recently and I wanted to know if there was a way to actually turn off the WI fi, right, so you didn't have exposure to emf. So I'm asking the sales and customer service person and the entire time they're trying to upsell me on the benefits of keeping my WI FI on because they know that one of the ways that they sell, they continue to make Money on a NordicTrack is when your WiFi is connected. They can feed you the ability to be able to purchase extra workouts from Jillian Michaels and whoever. So they wouldn't tell me whether or not the wifi was something I could turn off. And eventually I wound up doing forum research, classic forum, where you go and you ask other people in forums who are using it and, and found out that I could turn it off. But ultimately that person, they just wanted the sale and didn't really know the product that well. And then the other example of this is like, it's actually something I pull my hair out about because I have a website and we sell things like supplements, right, and health items. And people have specific questions, right, like about how to use a fat burner or how to use some kind of a supplements that's supposed to control like postprandial blood glucose or something like that. And a lot of times I'm one of the only people who knows the answer when it comes to usage and interference with medications and the actual biochemical mechanism of action and all these things that I went to school to learn. But it's hard because that means that I have one stint on Fridays, I spend four to five hours just replying to questions in forums and customer service questions from people who need to know things. And I could outsource that to a sales or a customer service person, but frankly, they just don't have. I wish I could clone Myself, Right. Like, that's. That's kind of like the. The issue that I run into sometimes. But ultimately, you know, it's an example of how it actually would be. It would be super duper easy for me to hire one of these customer service teams in like, you know, India or wherever and just get folks questions answered in like a boilerplate format that, you know, says, yes, this will work. Now this won't work, et cetera. But yeah, it's tough. Anyways, man, I want to ask you a question about you.

Sure.

Specifically, you obviously review a ton of this stuff. We've talked about steam generators and oxygen concentrators and saunas and whole body vibration. I think you even mentioned the ionic foot baths for detoxing. The ones with the nasty photos on the Internet where the foot's clean and then the water's full of dirty LG black crap. Anyways, though, let's say you could build your ultimate man cave, right? Like your ultimate detox cave, whatever. And you were going to build some kind of a chamber in your home that had like, all of the best health and detox and exercise equipment you could have in it. What would you include? And I know this is always tough. I hate the numbered questions because I feel like they limit you. But let's just give you a range. Like, what. What are the top, like, two to five things that you would include? And then what would you just like, totally avoid because, you know, it's total bowl and doesn't work.

Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. I've set up these exact types of situations. And you're correct, by the way, that normally to get really, really good results is what I've seen in people is it usually comes down to having like three or more types of equipment. And the synergy of it just does a lot better. Again, there's no silver bullet. One product. So in there, depends. You never said how much money I could spend, but, well, if.

Let's just. Yeah, the sky's the limit, dude. I mean, actually, you know what? No, not like the $80,000 hyperbaric, but let's say, like, you know, you were going to spend maybe like what you'd make, like in like anywhere from, let's say, like one to three months. Right. So, you know, significant, significant portion, like, same rules. If you're gonna buy an engagement ring for some chick.

And I just want to throw this one to the side here, that if I did have unlimited funds, then I would. I actually know somebody who can turn the whole space, the whole room into a Hyperbaric chamber. So anything I do in there is in concentrated oxygen. That's my dream. I would have that. But yeah, if I had that's similar.

To my dream except it's actually hypo. I would love to have like a full on elevation room that's you know like 15, 20,000ft.

Yeah, they do make them that you can sleep in.

Yeah, yeah. I've seen them before in gyms that you can actually train in. I think hypoxia makes some for gyms that you can like these fall in like glass boxes. Anyways, though we digress.

Yes. So if I had, you know, six figure salary or something or less then in my priorities would be with you know, an infrared sauna that was big enough. Either I just get an infrared sauna or I get one that was big enough where I could do some exercise in it. And I'd like to put on there maybe like probably a stationary bike actually or just something pretty simple like that where I could do some high intensity training on it. Could be a rowing machine maybe. I'll swap out different types of things in there and then I probably for sure with that run a concentrator that's designed for exercise with oxygen training while I'm in the sauna. I'm all about efficiency and time. So you know, right then and there, I mean think about. I'm doing three different things that could be doing in 30 minutes or an hour. That's probably how I'd set that up. If not, I could have some of that equipment outside the infrared sauna. There is also some. I probably have a hyperbaric chamber as well. Just from the standpoint of, you know, I can actually take naps in there, power naps. I don't know what kind of sleep cycle you have or whatever, but there's different types of sleep cycles.

No, I actually nap every day on that biomat.

Exactly. So what you can do too is, and I would actually I've done this at different clinics is you put an infrared pad or matt or some sort of PEMF machine and you can do that in combination while you're in the hyperbaric chamber. Lots times I'll do work in there as well in the hyperbaric chamber, but. And I'd probably also have a chi machine in there as well. If you're familiar with those. They kind of shake the legs a little bit. So while you're laying in the chamber you're also getting some lymphatic movement as well. At the same time.

Chi machine is that, like something you attach to your legs that vibrates them kind of.

It's actually an older device, came out a couple decades ago. You put your legs up on it.

Is that like chi?

Yeah, chi. And there's a couple companies that actually work with that have basically copied the same thing, but for a lot less. It's like a very, very simple device, and it just moves your legs to the side, back and forth in a rhythmic movement.

It's almost like a vibration platform that your legs go on while you're lying on your back, back on the ground, side to side.

It's a very unique. There's really nothing kind of.

Yeah, my. My. My dad's into some of these, like, detox therapy protocols and stuff like that. And so when I go visit my grandma in Florida, she has like a mini trampoline and like a vibrator and. Right. Vibration platform. Never thought I'd talk about my grandma's vibrator on a podcast.

Vibration platform is for sure. I'd have to have.

But yeah, she has one of these like. Like foot vibrator things. It's kind of interesting. So it's a chi. Chi machine, right?

Yeah. So you can use that in there as well. I always try to combine as many things as I can.

Yeah.

But the. And then the other thing I sometimes combine in the infrared sauna that I would want to put in there is for sure an ionic foot bath, because that's just so convenient when you're already sitting, you know, in an infrared sauna, I can be reading or meditating or whatever, doing breath work, etcetera, While I have my feet in one of these baths. Just keep in mind 98% of them are pretty bad and they don't really work.

Yeah, I was gonna say, like, that. I've. I've seen a lot of the evidence that that's just some chemical reaction that they put into the actual.

Yeah. Let me give you. Let me give you the quick synopsis because there's so much confusion, and even with the studies that were done is the. The thing that really killed the industry was not just the flood of electrolysis machines. They don't do anything. But. But the. The real issue was the belief, and it was marketed this way, that there's actually some crap in your body coming out through your feet. Okay. So that was the problem. And the problem was also that the few studies that were done were looking for stuff in the water. I mean, it was already doomed from the start. They weren't going to find anything. But if you Start to now really learn how cells work. And I really mean that with cell polarity and zeta potential of the blood and redox potential, the electron transport chain, all these really basic fundamental things, then you can start to very easily understand how potentially an ionic foot bath actually works. And it's creating and supplying a huge, huge amount of negative polarity in the water in negative ions. And your pores do have 20. And there's 20,000 pores on the bottom of your feet. So they do. You do release a lot of toxins outside your feet just normally walking around. Again, it doesn't work that way when you're. When you got your feet in a salty solution. But what your body can readily absorb for sure is negative ions. You know, you can inhale it at the beach.

I've got a negative ion generator right underneath my feet right now.

Exactly. And for sure, ions are small enough to pass through the pores of the feet. And if your body needs them, if it actually needs them, it'll actually draw them in. And so that's. And of course, there's much more to talk about than that, but I just wanted to explain the basic mechanisms. So the way it's actually helping the body really has more to do with electrostatic potential and really, you know, electrically, what it's doing to the cells and making those resources available. And another way to look at it is it's very similar, like a product like megahydrate or something is working when you're ingesting a huge amount of negative hydrogen ions. And so you're just inside instead absorbing the negative ions from the water. But then again, most of the machines don't really do a good job of that at all anyway. So that's an easy thing that I do in there as well. A pemf, for sure. I would have in there as well.

That again, the pulse electromagnetic frequency.

Yes. And again, a lot of them are grossly overpriced. They're at 4 falsely inflated margins, and 98% of them were based off of incomplete research because all of the research got botched when they actually published it. And that was originally done by Dr. Dennis, and this was like 20 years ago, but when he was doing it for NASA and DARPA when he created these devices. In fact, if you see a PMF that's expensive, it's just like seeing an IBM computer from 1992, you know, how much would that cost today? Well, it should cost like 40 bucks or less, but back then, it's expensive. So if you see those devices that Are really expensive. Just know that. Yeah, well, that's how much they were costing because they were very expensive and old technology back then. But I actually use an isis. It's I, C, E S E. And that's small, portable, about 17 years advanced, has all the complete research actually Behind it by Dr. Dennis. That's the perfect thing that I use while I'm doing these different types of therapies. Because it is so portable and localized, I can be using on my brain different parts of my body. I'm in the sauna chamber on a bike. I mean, it's, it fits in my pocket. So I'm always doing that. I would have to have that therapy for sure in my man cave trying to think what else.

Okay, so, so let me, let me ask you this. What's one thing that you would like never put in there but you see people buying?

What I mostly see people buying is a lot of the product categories we talk about and I've worked with. But just buying the wrong brand, just buying something that isn't what it appears to be.

Like what would be an example of that?

So, you know, like, yeah, bright vibration machine or something like that could be any of the products we've talked about that just don't last. You know, like, for example, vibration machines, 90% of the time they actually lie about their specifications. Literally. It's hard to believe, but they actually lie. So it's like going to a car dealership and I'm saying, well, this goes up to 180 miles an hour and you see the odometer and you know, it gets 20 miles to the gallon. And then lo and behold, you find out they were completely lying. It actually doesn't do any of that. So, yeah, so good luck trying to find something on your own. But that's what commonly happens. I would say there are some types of exercise equipment that was not engineered properly early for, with biomechanics in mind. That's the other thing you got to look at is all these companies that copy some of these original products and sell them out there. They don't have engineers that are studied in biomechanics of the body and physiology and actually understand very many times make mistakes in designing equipment because they don't really understand how the body actually works. So I'll give you like a really common example which might be a little controversial some people, but elliptical machines. So how, how popular are those? Yeah, right. So people buy those all the time. People, I get asked about them a lot. But you know, when they actually Developed them. Even the original one, which was not long ago, it was like early 90s. Yeah, they didn't really have very educated consultants with biomechanics and so. And further, they did do some studies at different kinesiological biomechanical universities and all that sort of thing. And despite having that information come out that it's weakening different parts of the body and the legs because it keeps your foot really unnaturally flat, right as you're going through that full range of motion, it keeps it kind of fixed. That was causing problems. It will cause problems long term. And so in, and this is common by the way, in different industries. So in light of getting that information, they still didn't make any changes because who the heck reads those studies? And that's in some old journal article somewhere, you know. But that's. So that would be a common mistake.

So just, just like the average elliptical trainer or a lot of these elliptical trainers that are inexpensive home versions. Because I've seen the same thing even at gyms, you get on them and when you compare those to like one of the more expensive, let's say like a pre core elliptical trainer, the range of motion just feels like it's destroying your hips and your knees, even though it's a quote unquote elliptical trainer. So yeah, I completely. A lot of these things that lock you into range of motion, like you will never find these in my home. Like a Smith machine. Like a lot of like this nautilus style equipment that is simply cheaply made and so your joints aren't placed the proper angles. I think anything that has you loading a joint that is, that is not biomechanically made or engineered properly, like that's, that's to me a bigger risk. And obviously we've talked about some of the other stuff as far as like EMF and, and heavy metals and ion exposure and things like that. But you know, there's one other thing I tell people I probably wouldn't have in my house. One of these countertop water alkalinizing machines like that pass like water over a metal plate to alkalinize water. I get questions about those all the time. And yeah, just because you get water that has metals in it. And I've talked to people who they jack this thing up like 9.0 for alkalinity. And one lady I was talking to, her child started having seizures from using these countertop water because she was like more alkalinity is better. Didn't really understand that there's, there's a certain acid alkaline balance that you can, you can definitely step outside of if you're over alkalinizing your water and using like one of these countertop machines. So there's that.

And really, because you just brought it up, this is the quick 10 second explanation of that whole debate. And this is how you, you clear up the whole thing with alkaline water and all those kind of products is there's a difference. And people can Wikipedia and Google this. There's a difference between something that has alkalinity and something that's alkaline. So a lemon, for example, has alkalinity potential in it after it runs through your system. Remember, alkalinity potential a lot of times has to do with the, for example, trace minerals that are in something. Right, right. But just because you change the water to alkaline.

Sure.

You put your ph strip in there and yeah, it's obviously alkaline. That doesn't mean that in your body it has alkalinity potential. You know, there's a variety of different things, especially mineral related, that your body has to use in order to balance the acid alkaline sort of thing. You know, it's, you can't, for example, so if you really actually wanted more of the benefits of alkalinity in your water, you would add something to your water. You know, you'd actually add like a trace mineral matrix or heck, just, you know, put a tiny pinch of, tiny pinch of baking soda, squeeze a little lemon and maybe put some real high grade salt in there. Suddenly your water has alkalinity. And yes, you could test the ph and it might be alkaline, but that's way different than just running through a device that's doing a little bit of ionization. That's just alkaline water. There's no alkalinity to it. And then the problem with that is your stomach is what to actually have a healthy balance. Different regions of your tract have different pHs. Your stomach does not have an alkaline BH. So now you're swallowing a whole bunch of alkaline water all day long or around meal time and it's like, well, wait a minute, your stomach's supposed to be very acidic.

Yeah. My take on water is get rid of chlorine, get rid of fluoride, get rid of metals and great big minerals and then just squeeze a little bit of lemon juice in there if you want some alkalinity.

Yeah.

Obviously we could probably have a very, very long discussion on water filters because I have this entire elaborate system set up in my House. But maybe that's the discussion for another day because we've been going for a while here, Alex, and this is a ton of really good information. So here's the deal. If you are listening in, I've been furiously taking notes and you can go grab all the show notes, all the goodies Alex and I talk about over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com HealthScams that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Healthscams I'll put a link to the infrared sauna stuff. The research I discussed about concentrated oxygen training, the research about the cells that are powered by sunlight and chlorophyll. We'll talk about this ICES unit that Alex mentioned for pemf. I know there's a good website on, I believe lifehacker about that one or maybe it's self hacked. But anyways, a ton of information. I'll try and give you guys some good links. Alex, website like I mentioned is healthtax reviewed.com also what I'll put in the show notes and I'll tell you about it right now if you want it. 15% discount on anything. Like any of the saunas, any of the stuff Alex reviews. I like that he's not just like selling one brand, he just reviews stuff. And he can act as a middleman to get you good deals on stuff. But anyways, he is graciously offering all of us a 15% discount on any of the stuff that he features over there. And that code is BENGREEN15. That's BENGREEN1 5. So BENGREEN1 5 will give you 15% off anything on Alex's site. You can use that code anytime, as much as you want. Healthhacksreviewed.com is his site. Shownotes are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Healthscams Alex, thanks for your time, dude.

Absolutely. It was a lot of fun and would love to jump in with more information in the future.

Yeah, for sure. And yeah, now. Now I feel a little bit better about going out and getting one of those dorky little foot baths now that I know a little bit more about it.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Talk to me before you do that.

Cool, I'll do that. I'm talking to you now about any. Anytime I buy anything from a little man cave, you're gonna be the first guy I call up, so. All right, cool. Well again folks, BenGreefulFitness.com HealthScams thanks for listening in and have a healthy week. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.